#and also space bar plays the timeline and also plays the physics

[animatedjen]

hello animatedjen!! I hope your day has been beautiful 🧡 I've recently moved into an apartment and have decided to get a gaming monitor for my PS5, so I can game at my desk and save some space while still enjoying photo mode sessions. if I remember correctly you play Jedi on PC, so maybe my question for you isn't relevant, but is there a monitor you use & like or would recommend for this purpose? I know these things are expensive and you seemed like a good person to ask about getting my investment right the first time around! especially since I would also use it for professional photo & video editing on occasion, and I know that's relevant to your career field as well. any advice you have on making a flexible set up would be so appreciated! thank you in advance!! I hope this question isn't too bothersome! P.S. I want you to know that you're a micro celebrity amongst my coworker friends because they see your photo mode shots rotate as my desktop wallpapers all day every day haha 😅

Congrats on the apartment!! And I'm very honored to be your work desktop wallpaper 💛 Respawn should be giving you a referral bonus!

Right now I'm using a Gigabyte QHD 34" ultrawide gaming monitor I got secondhand. Good specs for the price, but it's not super color accurate when compared to my Macbook retina screen - it could be calibrated more via software or a physical tool, but for now I use the monitor for gaming, general life stuff, and pre-color editing. I have a DP cable for the PC and HDMI for the Macbook or PS5, so it's easy to switch between devices.

The ultrawide aspect ratio also means I crop my photomode shots to 16:9 to post on socials, since 21:9 photos are very skinny (see above) and people often scroll Tumblr on their small, vertically-oriented phone screens. On the plus side, it's great for video editing since I can see more of the timeline at once. And no black bars during Jedi Survivor cutscenes!

You'll have to decide your budget and what specs are most important to you for photo/video work - I'd recommend a screen somewhere between 24" and 34", with QHD (2K) or UHD (4K) resolution. A higher refresh rate (at least 60hz, if not 120/144/240hz) helps for gaming and video with higher framerates. Color accuracy is tricky, but if you're not creating high-end photo prints or color grading for Netflix, something good (but not perfect) will be just fine. Some monitors will be better for gaming, and some better for photo/video editing, so decide which one to prioritize.

I've seen ASUS ProArt, Dell UltraSharp, and BenQ monitors recommended when I've shopped around before, but I skew towards non-gamer, Mac-friendly tech since more of my client work is on that system and the Jedi stuff is (sadly) not my paid job (yet). But if any other gamer/creative professionals want to drop recs in the comments, y'all probably know more than I do! 🙌

Thanks for the ask and sorry I can't be more helpful. Look forward to seeing the photomode shots from your new monitor :)

[diegeticdivinity]

Alright! So G-man's species is known as Space Worms, but their real names are unpronounceable to other beings as Space Worms have no vocal cords and body language is very important to their speech. Space Worms are capable of shape-shifting and general reality distortion as they are multidimensional beings. Most Space Worms work for the writers of a story, making sure the story being told is going as it should. G-man works for the writers of the Half Life story. G-man has an alright relationship with the other Space Worms, he doesn't talk to them much anymore. He does occasionally go back to the White Void to greet the Wormlings (young Space Worms). He loves children, and he is very caring. He is usually the one who teaches the Wormlings how to use their abilities, and finds them homes so they can learn more about the universe they will later watch over. He is fascinated by life in general, but he loves humans especially due to spending so much time around them. While he does study how humans have evolved and changed, he would much prefer to talk to real humans to find out how they think and work. He is quite emotionally attached to Gordon, Alyx, and Adrian simply because he talks to them often. He has two adopted children. They are both from Half LIfe VR but the A.I. is Self Aware because that's how I got into Half Life also he just...has a canon son in that series. His son Tommy is a human that can teleport short distances and see further in the timeline do to a sort of radiation from being around G-man so much. Benrey, his other son, is a sort of glitch in the universe. He cares about them both immensely, he had always wanted to care for someone. Of course, since he has kids he has a house. It's a large, empty place, barring the rooms his children would be in and his lego room. The lights are rarely ever on, and it can get a little cold due to the size, but he likes it. He has a cat named Midnight who he just adores. She's a very clingy cat too so he doesn't mind. G-man loves music and art and just creation in general, it's so human to him. He can play the accordian, lyre, and trombone since they all interested him. He also writes poetry occasionally, and he loves building things with lego. He's made a scale model of Black Mesa, and is working on a model of the Combine Citadel. G-man is mostly adverse to physical touch unless he is very comfortable with that person, but if he knows you well he accepts it. It's just do to sensory things. He loves sharing and acts ! It's his love language! If he likes you he'll want to show you things he think you will like. He'll help you to show he cares. He also sometimes just wants to sit next to someone and show them pictures of his kids and his anthroplogy research or play them a song, just so show he cares.

Aaaaa I love it this is incredible the lore is so cool<333

My G’ is also very fond of the arts and creation, and while I consider the G’ in HLVRAI a separate being from the one seen in HL whom I usually talk about (they are both Overseers and close friends, HL!G is an uncle of sorts to Tommy!) the idea of him adopting Benrey too is absolutely adorable~

Love how the meta theory is incorporated here, I find that stuff super interesting ahh

Wonderful all around, thank you for sharing!!!

[iat410-wallace]

Blog Post #3 (Feb. 15th)

Over the past 2 weeks, the team began development of the game using Unity, completing a cumulative prototype for the first milestone. This included both exploration and management activities, as well as implementing early visuals for UI.

I was tasked with creating the shop scene which facilitates the management portion of our game. This included the angled top-down view where players move as the avatar-based herbalist, and then interact with a workstation to enter an herb mixing and grinding sequence. An NPC would also walk in to place an order to prompt the player for which herbs they want in their mix.

My first rendition of this is seen above, where the NPC walks in, places the order with three of the existing herb. The player can interact with a work station, leading to a drag & drop herb activity. Once herbs are in the mortar, the player can press the space bar to simulate grinding the herbs.

After further development in the first week, I took visuals from the artists Bea & Zynab to implement into the game and added the temporary prototype main menu and tutorial screens. Additionally, while the other developer Ilyas worked on the exploration scene, I made a temporary mini-world to test the collectible herb Prefabs that I made. The grinding activity was reviewed by the team, and we decided to make it more kinaesthetic instead, having the player physically grind the herbs to add immersive simulation. The NPC now also gave a response to the order, and would check whether or not you got it right.

By the second week, I further finalized the game to prepare for playtesting as I added two additional herb types and random NPCs order. This helped add challenge to the prototype, making it feel more like a complete game. The NPC would return in an endless loop after completing each order with a new prompt each time.

The last step was combining the scenes I created with the outdoor exploration scene Ilyas created, which utilized the collectible herbs prefabs I made, as well as moving the shop entry point to a temporary graphic by Bea. I ended the week by playtesting, as well as playing around with Timeline in Unity as we will need to create multiple cutscenes to implement narrative beats.

The team has not encountered any issues thus far. We are working collaboratively, as developers are utilizing GitHub to work simultaneously on different scripts and scenes, and artists are creating graphics and designing UI, sharing completed ones to developers. My personal challenge thus far has been learning the Unity interface and functionalities, as it is my first time working with the game engine. With my experience in Java & Processing, I can quickly transfer my coding knowledge to C# and properly use scripts which I learned while coding with Lua. I will continue to develop my skills by self-learning through reference documentation and video tutorials.

For the following weeks, I will improve some interaction bugs, such as keypresses not registering properly, as well as optimizing my existing scripts. I will be further developing the shop scene with updated graphics and starting to define more complex NPC behavior as we make official levels for our game.

[tallmantall]

James Donaldson on Mental Health - Understanding Trauma: Healing and Recovery

Trauma is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that can have a significant impact on a person's mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It can stem from a variety of sources, such as childhood abuse, domestic violence, accidents, natural disasters, war, or witnessing a traumatic event. While some individuals may be resilient and able to cope with trauma, many others face a long and arduous journey toward healing and recovery. Traumatic experiences often leave lasting imprints on a person's mind and body, altering their perception of the world and themselves. Symptoms of trauma can manifest in various ways, including flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, avoidance of certain situations or places, hyperarousal, difficulty concentrating, or emotional numbing. These symptoms can greatly impair an individual's ability to function in daily life and maintain healthy relationships, leading to feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression. Understanding trauma is crucial in order to provide appropriate support and facilitate recovery. It is important to recognize that trauma affects people differently and that there is no universal timeline for healing. Some individuals may recover relatively quickly, while for others, the process may take years or even a lifetime. Patience, empathy, and a non-judgmental attitude are essential in supporting someone who has experienced trauma. #James Donaldson notes:Welcome to the “next chapter” of my life… being a voice and an advocate for #mentalhealthawarenessandsuicideprevention, especially pertaining to our younger generation of students and student-athletes.Getting men to speak up and reach out for help and assistance is one of my passions. Us men need to not suffer in silence or drown our sorrows in alcohol, hang out at bars and strip joints, or get involved with drug use.Having gone through a recent bout of #depression and #suicidalthoughts myself, I realize now, that I can make a huge difference in the lives of so many by sharing my story, and by sharing various resources I come across as I work in this space.  #http://bit.ly/JamesMentalHealthArticleFind out more about the work I do on my 501c3 non-profit foundationwebsite www.yourgiftoflife.org Order your copy of James Donaldson's latest book,#CelebratingYourGiftofLife: From The Verge of Suicide to a Life of Purpose and Joy Link for 40 Habits Signupbit.ly/40HabitsofMentalHealth www.celebratingyourgiftoflife.com Recovery from trauma involves a multifaceted approach that addresses the psychological, emotional, and physical aspects of the individual's well-being. Therapeutic interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and somatic experiencing, can help individuals process and integrate traumatic memories, develop coping strategies, and restore a sense of safety and control in their lives. In addition to therapy, social support plays a crucial role in healing from trauma. Friends, family, and support groups can offer validation, understanding, and a safe space to share experiences, fears, and hopes. Connection with others who have experienced similar trauma can provide a sense of belonging and reduce the feelings of isolation often associated with trauma. Self-care practices are also integral to the recovery process. Engaging in activities that promote relaxation, such as yoga, meditation, or spending time in nature, can help regulate the nervous system and reduce symptoms of anxiety and hyperarousal. Physical exercise, proper nutrition, and adequate sleep are vital in restoring the body's equilibrium and promoting overall well-being. It is important to remember that healing from trauma is not a linear process. There may be setbacks and challenges along the way, and progress may feel slow or non-existent at times. It is crucial to be patient and compassionate with oneself during this journey, celebrating even the smallest victories and seeking help when needed. Trauma, although a painful experience, can also be a catalyst for personal growth and resilience. With the right support, individuals have the ability to heal, find meaning, and rebuild their lives. It is a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit that individuals can transcend the darkness of trauma and find hope on the other side. Image prompt: A serene sunset over a calm ocean, symbolizing hope and healing. Tags: trauma, healing, recovery, mental health, therapy, support, self-care Read the full article

[kaibutsushidousha]

Saihara couldn't pay his bills with just detective work, so lately he got a second job as a magazine journalist. Chasing around celebrity adultery cases or so I hear. If you believe the rumors, Saihara was the writer who ratted Angie out. He used to be so innocent... Oh, how people change. I hear he drinks and smokes all day. Well, detective experience doesn't help you applying for any other kind of job.

Momota... You've all heard this one before, but he's still on his delusional ramblings about going to space as he constantly switches between low-paying jobs and uses that money to drink in broad daylight. I ran into him the other day and he kept pestering me for money. He lost all his hair and his facial features are almost unrecognizable. He fell as low as a person can fall. I wish I could say it's a lie.

Amami lived as an adventurer going from country to country until a few years ago but had to stop because of covid, and the nail salon he had as a side business also fell away because, well, it was Amami's popularity with the customers that held that establishment in place, so with him reaching his thirties, he lost clientele to places with younger men and fell under. He now works as a hired manager at a bar. Most of his money was spent on his overseas trips, but he's living with the 40-year-old owner of his bar and she pays his bills.

Shinguuji is a regular college professor. So regular that you practically can't recognize the person he was in his school days. He got married, had children, rented a house, and is living what's pretty much the very image of the unbelievably ordinary life of a happy family. But lately, murdered bodies of young women have been popping up in the town where Shinguuji lives, and they all have their hands cut off. Perfectly suspicious. I'm considering selling the info to Saihara. I need the money to buy a new fridge.

Hoshi was already out of options since his student days. His life teaches that there's generally no rehabilitation for people who made a mistake once. He now works for the organized crime in a job completely unrelated to tennis. Last I met him, he said he worked with moneylending... Despite being in his thirties, he looks like a fat 50-year-old with missing teeth. That's one classmate I seriously don't want to see ever again.

Gonta is... as famous as ever in the entomologist community, but a few years ago, he left in search of a not-yet-discovered bug and we never heard from him again. What's he doing nowadays? Is he even alive? By the way, I'm often seeing a strange bug I never heard about before flying around me. Could be me... No, never mind me. A man in his thirties shouldn't be spouting delusions like this.

Ki-bo is the same as always. The exact same. Never grew up from how he was. While we all became adults and grew estranged from each other, this one guy still interacts with us with the same sense of distance and temperature we had back in the day. Words can't describe how unpleasant this is. Eh, not that I can expect any better from a machine. The rumors say he got into a super hard physical labor job to buy a smartphone. Which is the way to go, robots should indeed be doing harder physical labor than humans can. But I wonder what it feels like to buy a machine smarter than yourself. Doesn't it make him feel dead inside?

I wish I could say it's a lie, but none of this is. This timeline certainly exists. I'm simply receiving all the information from this other timeline and writing it down exactly as is. Huh? This talk sounds like a teenage delusion? Well, it's easy to see why: it's because I'm still a 14-year-old middle-schooler in the timeline I'm from. I was lying about being in my thirties. Ah, I'm so looking forward to meeting all these people in the future. And we're going to play a killing game, right? Awesome. I'm guaranteed to survive if I play my game right, but I'm still not sure if that's what I'm going for. Sounds like a decent timeline to aim for. Neeheehee... Should I play to win or not?

Kodaka April Fools tweets 2024

Lying just because it's April Fools' is so dull. Honestly painful to watch. Lying in general doesn't do you any good. In my younger days, I told every lie I could, saying some genuinely insane stuff about being a supreme leader of evil and whatnot, and thanks to that, now that I'm in my thirties, I got famous for all the wrong reasons and can't find a stable job because people think I'm associated with the yakuza... Sigh, I wanna deck my cringe younger self's face. Quit lying for fun while you can.

My classmates aren't doing great either. Thinking you're hot shit during your school days always comes back to bite you... My advice to my past self: slow and steady effort is worth more than any talent. Also, the part of life you spent larping with that silly horse laugh is not going to be one you'll want to remember later. I wish I could make that clear to him. White lies aren't a thing. Talent is never enough. My class is proof of that. Wanna know what my classmates are like now that we're in our thirties?

Akamatsu became a piano teacher. Her player skills capped off in her teens, it seems. But she's not that good at teaching so she's considered kinda mid at her job. And now she's struggling with the father of a student incessantly hitting on her. Tough world to live in.

Toujou opened a housekeeping company but she was too strict with her employees so everyone quit. And now she's doing everything on her own. Sucks to be in your thirties without any successors or employees. She's a prime example of how being so much better than anyone else doesn't do you any good. Well, she's always working for celebrities, so she's doing well financially, but I heard about some major court fight about a missing item under suspicion of theft from one of her clients. That can't be nice.

Yumeno got to her thirties still saying magic is real, so she's past the point of no return. She agrees that's an unhinged way to live, but she's too old to suddenly change gimmicks. Work takes her all over the country, but her gimmick doesn't allow her to publicly drink, so she has to get plastered alone in her hotel room after shows. I wish she could fix her life with real magic.

Harukawa? ...Haven't heard that name in a long time. Now she was a living edgy fantasy. The past tense was because I hadn't heard of her in a long time. I don't know the details, but apparently, she went to some war zone outside of Japan because her first love didn't want to date her. Takes some real edgelord to react to a broken heart like that, but if she's still alive, I have no idea how her thirties are treating her. My personal guess is that she's a mother of many.

Chabashira opened her Aikido school but is having a hard time attracting students. So she had the idea of starting an anti-sexual-harassment campaign that could double as advertisement, but thanks to her cluelessness when it comes to romance, she got canceled for mistakenly tossing men in regular couples. She's still doing the "degenerate males" bit in her thirties. Girl really needs to get on with the times. Rumor goes that she still downs huge packs of tequila bottles with Yumeno every now and then. Really don't think there's any salvaging her reputation.

Shirogane is an office lady still continuing her cosplay hobby on the side. She could be doing well if she knew how to keep her mouth shut but frequently rambles about cosplay history and etiquette, so no one likes having her around. Stay emotionally dependent on a single hobby long enough and your passion starts to close you off to others. That's her problem.

Angie was the most successful in the class! She made big money both on the art and the religion fronts. However, there were some controversies about her devotees selling counterfeits of her paintings at exorbitant prices and one magazine made a huge news coverage of it, which resulted in her catching the police's attention. She's been recently untraceable, with the rumors saying that she'll never be back to Japan.

Oh, and Iruma... Up until some point, she had the best life of all of us. She made big money off of her inventions' patents. So far so good. Things only started going off-rails after she married an ex-stripper. The two started a YouTube channel together. And later, her husband ran in last year's elections and lost big time. They got an awful debt from his election campaign and she had to get into side jobs to pay it off. And her husband? Disappeared. No word from Iruma herself about what happened. Tough world to live in.

No further updates from Kodaka in the past 3 hours, so I assume he went to sleep and will come back to tweet about the 7 remaining boys in the morning.

[sarah-dipitous]

Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 32

Crossroad Blues/Tooth and Claw

I think I'm in for two good episodes tonight...

"Crossroad Blues"

Would I Survive the First Five Minutes??: Are we getting our first glimpses of hell hounds? (as far as we really get glimpses of them anyway) Sorry to this man, but you don't trade away your soul for the ability to play an instrument (if that's what you did). You better be the best there's ever been already when your soul is on the line. Yet to be seen...but I don't think I'd be selling my soul, so they wouldn't be after me anyway...

Dean, that's definitely a "you're right but you didn't have to say it" kind of thought. Not every...no, I don't know that there are very many people who would be thinking about how much or...how hard a hell hound could hump your leg...

DEAN DOESN'T KNOW WHAT MYSPACE ISSSSS. Poor thing. Also...omg MYSPACE being relevant. But '06 is about right. Facebook is still pretty much just for college students. They MIGHT have opened it up to high schoolers by then.

Man, this demon was just making deal after deal at that bar. Makes sense, I promised to name my first born Red Gyarados while at a bar with friends once.

Ok. I get it now. The demon at this particular crossroads is REALLY, REALLY PRETTY. But you wanted to make that pact BEFORE you saw her, sir.

OKAY. If so few people believe in the supernatural in this fictional universe, how are all these people making this many pacts in so little time?

This guy's the only one..........oh, sorry. It's an "Oh, Dean" time for me. Them piecing together and stewing over the fact John made that deal.

This demon is good....at being a demon, not actually good.

This...music is not sounding good for this demon. Don't worry, Dean. You will know sooner or later (end of next season) what Hell is like.

Sam's worry and uncertainty as to what Dean was planning on doing when he trapped the demon is...I wanna give him a hug

Not a bad episode. The information they got was important, but there was just a lot of "this person made a deal and so we need to track them down" that...just didn't interest me

"Been On My Mind...": The demon kisses to seal their pacts, but otherwise...nothin'

"Tooth and Claw"

...why do I feel like I've turned on the wrong show?? Seems like it's at least from the right country, but this opening scene is....just...wtf. Why was there a huge martial arts fight??

Ok. I am actually watching the right show. Still. What. the actual. fuck. was that opening?!

Hearing David get to use his natural Scottish accent IS in fact doing things for me. And Rose trying to copy and FAILING MISERABLY is perfection

7 minutes in and I couldn't agree more with the post I reblogged a few days ago. Those two definitely fucked since the last episode

Oh...oh. THIS is where Torchwood as a concept begins (physically, it's already been mentioned several times in the show, even if I didn't. Somehow, I never watched Torchwood.)

OH THAT TELESCOPE. it's BEAUTIFUL.

For a scene that consists of food being prepared and Rose going through the lady of the house's closet, the music is INTENSE.

Ooooo jumpscaaare. Maid in the closet. Starts telling Rose everything as all the guards get drugged. This is a WEIRD episode for on that deals with time travel and not space travel.

So...the werewolf is actually an alien possessing a human?

One of my favorite things about Doctor Who especially in this era is how fake the CGI monsters look. Like, I love practical effects when you can do them, but there's something about bad TV CGI that I really do like. It's charming, in a way that bad CGI in movies isn't

Watching the Doctor figure out that there's a trap within the trap for Queen Victoria that's meant for the wolf is like watching Brian David Gilbert try to reconcile the Legend of Zelda timeline, and I have to wonder if he got any inspiration for his whole thing for Unraveled from this.

The diamond...as soon as I saw it, I knew it was meant to go in that telescope

Also the piecing together historical fact with what has just occurred in the episode, making the royal family werewolves this time around is always a fun time.

(I think I wrote too much the other day and I'm suffering because of that)

[phoenixyfriend]

Uncle Ben and Little Luke

AKA we combine several types of time travel for maximum Soft Chaos, let’s go

EDIT NOW THAT I’VE WRITTEN THIS UP: jfc this ended up much angstier than initially intended uhhhhhhhhhh sorry

So a common enough thing I’ve seen in time travel fics is characters getting de-aged when tossed back physically, to neither the age they should be in that time, nor the age they were from the time they left, but whatever is most convenient. This is usually de-aging OT Obi-Wan into his TCW self, for reasons relating to, chiefly, removing the damage of Tatooine absolutely destroying his body alongside PTSD-driven alcoholism, but also because fic writers are horny, and Ewan McGregor playing a late-thirties negotiator is on average more appealing to people than Alec Guinness playing a vaguely feral desert hermit.

So, here’s how it plays out:

We take Luke and Ben from some point in the OT. There are a variety of options depending on how angsty we want it to be. My first instinct is ‘right after Owen and Beru die’ but I want to have that sweet angst where Luke knows that his dad is Vader and that Obi-Wan was trying to convince him to kill his own father without telling him that.

We’ll go with shortly after Bespin, and then they end up significantly before TPM. The Obi-Wan of the timeline proper is, eh, let’s say eighteen. Not really ready to be a knight, but old enough that we don’t have to worry about “if we go save Shmi, do we somehow wipe out Anakin?��� which is absolutely a worry. Anakin is a toddler, and is in no place to be evil, on account of being literally two years old. He can’t even explode people with his brain yet.

Now, Ben finds himself mid-thirties, as is traditional. He’s not upset at this, because his joints hurt so much less than they used to! His knees aren’t exactly teenage-perfect, but by the Force are they better than they were in the years before he died! His hair has color! He doesn’t have arthritis! And, goodness, no physical withdrawal symptoms! The psychological aspect is still there, but nonetheless, he’s in much better shape than he last remembers being.

Luke looks like he’s about six. He was recently twenty-two. This is not an upgrade. Ben keeps having to carry him. He can’t see over the counter when they enter a bar for information. He can’t enter the bar in the first place. He’s very annoyed by all of this.

Ben is not annoyed. Ben is having a lot of emotions, actually, but annoyance isn’t one of them. He didn’t get to help raise Luke the way he might have if Anakin hadn’t lost his shit, okay, he sees a small Luke and he wants to hug him and cry.

Luke would like to be able to purchase a speeder part without the lady at the stall asking him if he needs his “dad’s” permission.

Once they figure out when and where they are, they need to decide where and how to leave. There are general shenanigans to gamble their way into enough money to hire a ship. They are in the ass end of nowhere, but definitely not Tatooine. There appears to be a jungle. There appears to be a significant variety of man-eating creatures. There appears to be a temple to the Force of questionable origin. None of this is actually helpful, except for the moment they find a “baby’s first lightsaber” in the temple.

Luke only has one hand and, being a six-year-old, his body is growing too fast for him to bother with getting a wired-in prosthesis the way he could as an adult. He can get a more basic prosthesis, but nothing that attaches to the neurons. He’ll outgrow it too fast.

He’s tiny and he’s not used to doing things with just one hand. He uses the Force to do what one hand can't, and every time someone tries to tell him he's misusing the Force he whaps them with the empty sleeve.

So, you know, they find out what year it is. Ben has a breakdown. Luke is upset that he left behind his friends. Ben admits to him that Leia was his twin. Luke stares in horror because dude, she kissed him, you couldn’t have mentioned this earlier???

Ben points out that Beru and Owen were keeping Luke away from him for nineteen years, and then they had about three days of awkward travel to find Leia in the first place, and then Ben died. He didn’t have a whole lot of time to figure out how to tell him.

(This sparks an argument that lasts several days. All onlookers assume that Ben’s son is throwing a tantrum. He doesn’t correct them, even though this is a very valid reason to be upset, because the truth is much harder to explain.)

Sooooo they travel. Mostly, Ben plays Sabacc, cleans house, and pays their way towards Coruscant. Luke still really wants to learn to be a Proper Jedi, even though Ben is pretty sure that Luke would have... a lot of difference of opinion with the Temple, but sure. Coruscant. They can at least stop by, and see Qui-Gon, and Mace, and Quinlan, and Bant, and everyone else that’s still alive and not tragically deceased in the horror following the start of the Clone Wars and then the birth of the Empire, and Ben can have a nice sob over all his dead friends being alive again.

Ben is only barely holding it together while Luke is in the room with him at any given point. But it’s fine! It’s fine. He’s fine. All of his loved ones have come back to life! It’s great! HE’S FINE.

He is not fine.

Luke is also grieving all the people who haven’t been born yet, but he’s... significantly more okay than Ben is.

The closer they get to the Core, the more often people just assume Ben is Luke’s father, and then look shocked and uncomfortable when Luke flatly calls him by his name, and they just... compromise. This is the point at which Luke starts calling him “Uncle Ben.”

Ben cries in his bunk later that night. Luke overhears it and wonders how the HELL Ben is more unstable now, when there’s a chance to fix things and no Vader or Empire trying to kill or capture both of them, and all his friends are alive.

(Luke will later learn a lot about PTSD and realize this is actually a fairly normal situation, to process significant events and emotions only after gaining safety or catharsis.)

(Twenty years on a ball of sand with an alcohol addiction and debilitating fear of the man you raised as your own brother is not, in fact, safe or cathartic.)

At any rate, they’ve settled into that pattern by the time they reach the Inner Rim. The Inner Rim is the part of the galaxy at which they’ve collected enough money (and mental stability) to travel a little better, and to take a few more risks.

Risks like “manipulate people with those baby blues.”

Ben tells Luke that he’s a menace, after he pouts so cutely that he gets a free scarf added on to a purchase that Ben makes. Luke responds that Ben has no room to talk, since he flirted a free breakfast out of that one inn owner.

Also, Luke is currently physically six. That is objectively a situation that sucks. He deserves to use it for all it’s worth if he’s stuck like this.

“You know, if you keep wearing all-black and looking longingly at the velvet cape and Space Chanel boots, the temple is going to worry that you’re a darksider.”

“Uncle Ben... you told me, yesterday, that I sparkle so brightly in the Force that it’s almost blinding.”

“Yes, but the gloves--”

They don’t agree on this, but Ben relents. He does actually understand good fashion, unfortunately, and he’s not unaware of how much Leia taught Luke about such things.

Luke’s about forty years ahead of the curve, of course, but Skywalkers are prone to such things. It’s usually in regards to technology, granted, but...

They get to Coruscant. Ben is very obviously a Jedi. He knows all the right words and walks like a Soresu master and feels warm and comforting in the Force. They let him in with minimal questions. They note down “my first padawan left the order to have a child, but died shortly after; I consider Luke here to be my nephew, and have raised him as such,” and move on.

Luke is vaguely annoyed because he already had an uncle (and aunt) that raised him, but he admits that a person can have more than one uncle. He can live with this. Ben was more family to Anakin than Owen was, in some ways, so it’s kind of true. Luke is even working on feeling more childish affection for Ben instead of the complicated mess of emotions that come from being lied to about some very large and important subjects, and then seeing the person saying those lies have regular emotional breakdowns due to something as small as Luke saying he likes the curve of the hull on that freighter.

(Apparently he sounds just like his father did as a child. This is almost heartwarming.)

The thing is! The thing. The thing is, they almost make it to the Halls of Healing to get looked over for weird viruses, or Outer Rim Parasites, or whatever the hells needs to be happening. They almost make it without Ben having a flashback to dead younglings or brainwashed troopers or the declaration of a Sith Empire. They almost make it without incident.

Then Ben sees Qui-Gon, and freezes, and does not move again.

Luke cannot get him to restart.

People are staring.

They haven’t even made it to Medical, Uncle Ben, come on.

Young, local Obi-Wan comes over and asks if there’s something he can do to help. Or maybe this “Ben” knows Qui-Gon? Master Jinn doesn’t recognize Ben, but maybe Luke knows more?

Luke does know more, but what Luke actually says is “he probably needs a mind healer.”

(Ben will not appreciate this.)

(Ben is unfortunately standing in the middle of the hallway and completely unresponsive, and is unable to argue with this assertion.)

(Ben is pretty much proving this assertion entirely correct, actually.)

Obi-Wan is helpful, if a little bitchy in the manner of most late-teens individuals, and offers to help get Uncle Ben down to the Halls of Healing. It involves Obi-Wan gently pushing on Ben’s shoulders, and Qui-Gon offering to carry Luke so he can be in Ben’s sights (because Ben is a Mystery, and Qui-Gon is quite fond of those, so he wants to stay involved). Ben kind of just... shuffles on down.

There are medical tests. They ask about how Luke lost his hand. He refuses to talk about it. They ask how Ben got all his scars. Luke says he doesn’t know. They ask if he knows why Ben looks like he’s been through a war. Luke says it’s because he probably was.

They check for foreign viruses. They find evidence of thus-far-unpatented vaccinations. They ask Luke if he knows what he’s vaccinated for.

“How would I know? I’m six.”

They agree that this is a good excuse.

(It is not. He’s lying. They do not know this.)

They do some more tests. They find a lot of questionable medical bullshit in Ben’s body. Most of this is from the clone wars, but they don’t know this. Someone realizes they haven’t gotten a ping back from the Shadow Network regarding “do we have permission to pull the medical file of a Jedi that isn’t in the normal database? We’re assuming you know who he is, since we don’t.”

The Shadow Network does not know who Ben is.

The healers, of course, go “huh, that’s weird, but maybe the name he gave his nephew was fake. We can’t exactly ask ‘Ben’ for more details right now. We already had to sedate him. Let’s check the DNA!”

The DNA pulls up as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The padawan who brought this guy in two hours ago.

“Huh, that’s weird. Let’s call in Kenobi and ask if he knows what’s going on.”

Obi-Wan absolutely does not know what’s going on.

They ask Luke.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, lying through his teeth and not even pretending otherwise.

“You’re not a very good liar,” teenage Obi-Wan tells him.

“I’m not trying to be,” Luke says. “Can you get Master Yoda? I feel like we’re going to need him.”

They normally wouldn’t get Yoda on the request of a six-year-old, but they also normally don’t have a catatonic thirty-something Jedi who looks like he’s been through a war popping up in the medical database as the pimply teenage padawan that broke his pinky trying to do a Badass Ataru Flip last week.

Or... whatever Luke i... is... oh dear.

“Young one,” Qui-Gon asks, while people whisper-shout behind him, not realizing he’s cutting the Correlian Knot and just asking the kid himself. “Do you know why your midichlorian count is so high? It’s almost unheard of.”

“Uncle Ben said my dad was the Chosen One,” Luke says, because he is capable of being a little shit and is actually really eager to let Ben deal with some of the fallout. He feels for the man, really, but he’s also tired of being the one to field every single question.

Also, the expressions that pass on Qui-Gon’s face are hilarious.

(Luke may or may not be more affected by his six-year-old brain than he would like to admit.)

“Thank you,” Qui-Gon says, sounding more than a little strangled about it.

It takes another three hours for Ben to wake up.

He listens to the questions. He hears what they say his ‘nephew’ said. He looks at Luke.

“Is this revenge for not telling you about Leia?”

“It’s not revenge,” Luke does not lie. “I just don’t know how to explain it.”

“It’s pretty easy to explain.”

“It’s not my secret.”

“This is revenge for the Leia thing.”

“No,” Luke says. “Revenge for the Leia thing was when I ate a live frog in front of you.”

This is the point at which someone interrupts and points out that they appear to be stalling.

“Oh, he is,” Luke tells them. He gestures at Ben. “I can’t tell you more, because it’s more his story than mine.”

“I’m afraid, Master, that I am very likely to have an emotional breakdown if I allow myself to consider the reality of this situation for longer than the fraction of a second I already have,” Ben reports, full of false cheer. “Suffice to say, I am far from stable and have only held out this far for Luke’s sake.”

“Can you explain why you have my DNA?” Obi-Wan asks, as the person who’s most concerningly involved in this situation.

“You can,” Ben says, smiling like there is absolutely nothing wrong in the slightest, ever. “I’m you, from the future. I actually died and spent a few years dead before coming back. I’m not sure why I’m younger than I was when I died, but I appreciate being able to put on my shoes without my knees attempting to mutiny.”

“He needs a mind healer,” Luke reiterates, in case the strained grin hasn’t made it clear. “So do I, but not as much.”

“I have felt literally every person in this Temple save for Luke and Yoda die,” Ben reports, looking a shade more manic than a few seconds earlier. “It’s very overwhelming to feel you all being alive again. I may be approaching a mental breakdown, and I’ve been rather strictly advised against using alcohol to treat my traumas again.”

Luke kicks him in the thigh. It’s not a very hard kick, because he is very small, and he does actually like Ben. “I’m not letting you turn into an old drunk again.”

After several seconds of silence, a healer quietly suggests that everyone clear the room, and asks if someone could fetch Master Yoda as the youngling requested.

(THIS IS ALMOST THREE THOUSAND WORDS. I started it less than two hours ago. Why am I like this.)

[tommyspeakycap]

Can I request some chilly fluff? Anything really, just some cute sweet chilly fluff with a little bit of angst maybe?

of course! here's an idea that's been swimming around my brain all day lol

helping hand

ben isn't coping with his newest responsibility and his best friend comes to save the day once again

It's honestly less about the news than it is about the fact that you didn’t here it from him. Texts have gone mostly unanswered since you read that online article you first believed was false, only for it to be confirmed by him. You offered a congratulations despite the pain it brought to you to hear that you had completely lost your chance.

You had probably called him about a million times, each time ringing out and some even being hung up after merely a few rings.

At first, you worried that something had happened. Then you managed to wrangle the news out of Mason that everything was well, you let yourself have those days of utter heartbreak that he had found a girl, started to settle down and then completely cut you out of the picture. This was the first time in all of your 23 years that you hadn't been able to speak to him about things that were going on. He seemed to have completely fogotten about you and you couldn't bring yourself to think of a reason why.

She never really did like you, his girlfriend. You could only imagine it had something to do with the fact that Ben was incredibly close with you. A lot of girls had been unhappy with the fact that while dating Ben, they were subject to teasing that everyone was surprised he was dating when they had thought he was so clearly in love with you. You understand that, it would be irritating but nothing had ever happened between you and Ben that might suggest you would ever get together. People just love a rumour.

What had really hit you, however was seeing her from the Instagram you followed. She didn't even appear to be in London, never mind with him and that made no sense by the timeline you had managed to figure out.

That's how you found yourself standing at his door with what felt like a million bags and a feeling of hurt you had never actually had before. You cornered Mason, refusing to leave until he told you what the hell was going on and when he did, you were gone like a flash with a broken heart to seek out the man who needed you now more than he ever did.

Your heart shatters even more when you step into his house, pushing it open and pulling out the key he gave you a few months ago as you head carefully to the kitchen. You can hear him trying to talk, his voice strained and croaky as he attempts to speak over the sound of the screaming baby girl.

"Come on sweetheart," he begs, "Please take your bottle, I promise you're just tired."

His house is messier than you've ever seen it with gifts unopened, blankets and bottles, baby toys and clothes strewn around everywhere you could see.

You're quick and quiet to get to work clearing the place up, clean clothes being folded and sat in his clean laundry hamper while sorting the dirty things and shoving them into the washing machine by colour before tidying away all the blankets into the baby boxes he had set up in his front room. The infant upstairs screams the entire time you whiz around, throwing an entire bin bag worth of rubbish out of his kitchen before restocking all the shelves and his empty fridge with food for him and milk powder for the little girl. The pizza you shoved in the oven the second you arrived was finished after 15 minutes, so you plated that and left it on the kitchen island before you decided to make you presence known to him.

"Need a helping hand?"

His head whips around rapidly, instinctively tucking his daughter closer into his chest before he recognised your voice and turned his face back away from you. "You shouldn't be here, (y/n)." He mumbles, bouncing his legs to try and get that screeching to stop before he starts crying again himself.

How had everything ended up so messy? He found a girl that he thought he loved, he had his best friends and he had you. She got pregnant and he was ecstatic until she told him she wasn't interested in having a baby. It was too late to do anything about it, so she gave birth to that baby and legally signed over parental rights wholly and fully to a destroyed Ben. You, of course, had to find this out half from the tabloids and half from Mason. Ben was absolutely affronted. He was mortified. How had he gotten himself in this position?

You were the first and only person he wanted to tell. He was desperate to seek out your arms and have an absolute sob to you so you could help him fix this like you do with everything else, but he couldn't bring himself to face you. He cut you off slowly and carefully without even noticing himself because she had coaxed him into it. She played him like a fiddle, let him grow her platform and fund her lifestyle until she had everything she wanted from him and left him with something that was supposed to be theirs to love forever.

As if things couldn't get worse, from the moment he found out she was having a baby he had realised he didn't want kids or a life with anyone but you and now here he is, with a baby that has no mother and he had lost you. How could he just go back crying to you now after all the hurt he had caused you? What kind of person does that? He made this mess and it was his to clean up.

"Mason told me what happened. You can fight me all you want, Ben but I'm not going to go anywhere so you may as well just let me help." You say firmly, not inviting a single space for him to actually contest your words. His shoulder deflate even further than they already are as he finally turns to meet your eyes.

There's bags and dark circles beneath his with greasy, messy hair and a shirt he probably hadn't changed in longer than he should.

"I'm sorry." He croaks, clamping down on his lip with his teeth so he doesn't immediately burst out crying at the sight of you standing there in his house. God, he's missed you so much he couldn't even begin to put it into words and his emotions are so messed up from the lack of sleep that he'll cry at just about anything right now. "It's forgotten about. We don't have to talk about it, I'm here to help."

The weight that lifts off of Ben's shoulder is the kind of immense relief that only really you can bring to him, honestly. There are few people that he has ever met that can ease him like you can and knowing he doesn't have to explain this whole situation really is something he's so thankful for.

"This is Lilly," he says weakly, nodding his head down at her whining. You smile immediately and without thought, stepping forward to get a closer look at the small baby, only two weeks old and already giving her dad a run for his money. "Hello Lilly," you coo softly, raising your hand to stroke her cheek with your finger in the most gentle manner he's ever seen. "Can I? I feel like I've missed out on two weeks worth of aunt (y/n) cuddles."

He tries not to think much into the fact you refer to yourself as her aunt because if he lets enough thought onto it, he'll find himself breaking his heart over you all over again. Ben nods, passing her into your arms carefully.

"I'll feed her, I made some pizza for you so you should go eat." You hold our your hand to take the bottle from him, but he frowns. "I-" Ben stutters, "I don't want to just lump you with her, plus she's upset so I shouldn't leave her y'know? It's not fair on-"

"Go and eat Ben, and have a shower while you're at it. We'll be fine in here, I've babysat a million times before." You shrug, taking the bottle from him as you step further into the nursery instead of standing in the doorway cradling the still whimpering little girl in her pink onesie. "But I-"

"Go."

"I should-"

"Ben go, now."

Ben sighs in defeat and turns on his heel, the rumbling of his stomach finally giving him away as he realises just how hungry and smelly he actually is. No wonder the infant was crying in his hold.

He trudges downstairs, hearing the sounds of those winging dying down as he does, half expecting to walk into the messy swamp he had left when he went upstairs earlier this morning, only to see the whole bottom floor of the house was basically as spotless as it had been the day he moved in, bar the baby variety adjustments he had made to welcome the new arrival.

He makes a mental note to thank you more and do some grovelling and apologising later on. He knows he has to do it and he knows he'll explain in more detail what really happened probably later today, but for now he will scoff that pizza down his throat faster than he has ever consumed a meal in all of his life before raining the cupboards that he discovered you had stocked. He is reminded with every step he takes around his house that this is you, again, here holding him up when the world around him feels like its completely crumbled.

This is what you do, you keep him together, fix him up after the heartbreaks and breakups preparing him for the next girl who's pieces you'll have to pick up when they hurt him. This time he doesn't want another girl, he wants you. This time, the one time that he would be miles too late. He's got a baby now that he needs to focus on and he can't imagine that you're going to want an instant family even if you could really see past the fact he had ghosted you for nearly five straight months from the moment he found out his girlfriend was pregnant. He can't forgive himself, so how on earth would you?

If he would ask, you would tell him you already had. Seeing how hurt he was, how genuinely sorry things had ended dup like this with everyone in his life he was was enough for you. It was enough to cause you actual physical pain. You never could hold a grudge considering the situation he had ended up in.

Ben had never ever once in his life being more thankful for his shower. He’s also pretty sure he fell asleep against the wall with the heat of the shower steam loosening his muscles and the fatigue of barely an hours sleep catching up to him. He towel dries off his hair, letting the towel hang around his neck as he rubs it against his head while he pads along the soft carpet of his hallway from the bedroom to his beautifully done pink nursery where he hears no crying, at all.

But he does here soft talking.

“Giving your daddy a hard time eh, pretty girl.” You hum softly, slowly swaying from side to side. She lays in your arms, looking up at you and stealing every bit of your heart with her daddies eyes. “He deserves it a little, you know. Just ‘cause he done me out of some adorable baby cuddles y’know?” Ben can hear the teasing smile on your lips as he leans against the doorframe out of your sight, keeping quiet so as not to be detected. “But he’s a good man, sweet girl. One of the best, actually. And i know he’s already such a good daddy to you, he loves you so so much. Do you know that, eh?” You say quietly. Ben catches the sight of you swaying that amazed little baby who coos up at you, reaching for your finger to hold. “Mhm, and i love you too. You have no idea how loved you are.” That’s one thing Ben can agree on.

“And you might not know it now because you’re little, but i do know one thing for absolute certain; I’m always gonna be here for you, and for your daddy even if he’s as stubborn about it as they come. You’ve got to help me out though, eh sweet girl? Be good to that daddy of yours. Yeah, sleepy baby? Mhm, my sweet girl.” The way you hum, bouncing her carefully and swaying in just the right way for her to fall asleep in your arms. Ben watches you for only a minute more, softly singing a little lullaby to her that makes Ben’s heart swell to ache so much that he has to take a small little video before he heads off downstairs with one last look.

When you finally greet him downstairs with a tight hug that he sinks into immediately, resting his cheek on your shoulder as your hands massage your fingers through his freshly cleaned hairs as his arms hug around your waist. “I’ve missed you.” He admits, words muffled by your sweatshirt. The feeling of your fingers at the nape of his neck makes him hum in content and sink into you peacefully just like his baby daughter did not half an hour ago. You’re just perfect for them both in every way and there is not one bone in his body that doesn’t wish he had started his family with you.

But with that realisation comes one more; that he will not settle until he has given everything he has, tried with every morsel of him to earn your forgiveness. He might not of started his family with you, but he is damn determined to make you part of it.

[twh-news]

Loki’s production designer on the Modernist inspiration behind the show’s stunning visuals | The Art Newspaper

By Helen Stoilas

Kasra Farahani explains why the Time Variance Authority waiting room looks so much like the Breuer building, and how the inside of a Fabergé egg became an alien train carriage.

Fans of Modernist design can find a lot to appreciate in Loki, the television series starring Tom Hiddleston recently released by Marvel Studios on the streaming channel Disney+. The stunning production is clearly influenced by Brutalist and Neo-Futurist architecture, as well as Soviet Socialist art and sculpture. Visual references can be seen from the very first episode, in which the magic-wielding god of mischief is apprehended by a universe-spanning police force known as the Time Variance Authority for “crimes against the Sacred Timeline” (stay with us).

One early scene, for example, was filmed on a custom-built set that bears a striking resemblance to the lobby of the Marcel Breuer building in New York which once housed the Whitney Museum—and now houses the Frick—while another was shot on location in the Neo-Futurist Atlanta Marriott Marquis hotel, designed by the architect John C. Portman, Jr (with some monumental statues later edited into the soaring atrium). The Art Newspaper spoke to the series’ production designer, Kasra Farahani, about his inspirations for the look of the show.

The Art Newspaper: Loki's director, Kate Herron has called this series a love letter to sci-fi and you see a lot of visual homages to films like Brazil, A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner. But there's also a clear influence of Modernist design on the look of the series overall. You studied industrial design early in your career. Were there specific examples of Modernist architecture and design that you were looking at when you started working on the series?

Kasra Farahani: So many, everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Breuer, to Mies van der Rohe to Paul Rudolph—you have a shot in the John Portman building—to Oscar Niemeyer. And then a lot of Eastern European, Soviet-influenced Modernism played a big part in it as well. I can honestly tell you that my first and foremost inspiration was Modernism. Part of that is because the TVA (Time Variance Authority) is a bureaucracy and I think, archetypically, so much of what we know a bureaucracy to be is that post-war, highly funded institutional look. And there's a lot of different versions of that, whether it's the Washington, DC version, like the Hoover building, or whether it's what we had in Los Angeles, where I grew up, where there's a huge amount of post-war architecture built for the population boom. Like the elementary school, middle school and high school that I went to were all mid-century Modernist.

I was also looking a lot at Brutalism and the Modernism in former Soviet states, that are heavily influenced by Socialism and Soviet architecture, and where scale is such a big driving force of the design.

The size of some of the buildings in the show are kind of overwhelming. I know that some filming was done in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, with that huge soaring atrium. You just completely get dwarfed by that kind of architecture.

Yeah, that's right. That one we used for the TVA archives because we couldn't justify building a big set, but once I scouted it, I saw that we could bring in these massive Time-Keeper sculptures at the scale you would typically only see in an exterior, which is a fantastical thing. The TVA sets themselves, which were almost entirely full 360-degree sets, were very much designed as an intentional paradox between the stoic, large-scale Brutalism form language, and the surfacing and palette and whimsical patterning, which is very much taken from American mid-century Modern. Those two things create these spaces that feel at once super intimidating and then uncomfortably inviting and warm at the same time.

That’s kind of the irony of a lot of Modernism, Brutalism especially, it had these utopian ideals of creating affordable social housing, but then a lot of the people found it really oppressive to live in.

Yeah. Modernism has been that way the whole time—it was designed to be super cheap and utilitarian and routinely it ends up being the most expensive kind of architecture. Another thing readers may be curious to know about is the TBA expanse, which is essentially the view outside some windows.

That futuristic cityscape you can see….

Yeah. They had very strange and unique parameters to try to design that. The TVA exists outside of the physical world—so there's no weather, there's no roofs, there's no difference between interior and exterior, there's not necessarily even gravity in the way that we know it. But there are these meandering colonnades that we took a lot of inspiration from Brasilia—and obviously a lot of the super cities that were drawn in comics. But also there's some really beautiful conceptual sketches that Frank Lloyd Wright did of a version Los Angeles in the early 20th century that had Roman-like colonnades and plazas and a lot of that fed into what the TVA expanse is.

You mentioned all the sets you built for Loki, especially for the TVA. There's two that where used a lot. The Time Theater, where so much of kind of Loki’s personal story gets told, and looks like its straight out of the Barbican in London, with these huge colour-coded directional numbers on the walls. And then there's the Miss Minutes waiting room with those circular lights that looks almost exactly like the lobby of the Breuer building in New York—to the point where I reached out to the museum to ask if you’d filmed there. You even got the silver-tipped light bulbs right.

We were very inspired by that, but it's different in some very subtle, but for me, very important ways. Number one, the size of the bulbs is much smaller, they were manipulated to create eyeballs, basically. Another important difference is that in the Breuer building, they have these dishes hanging in space, whereas in ours, they're negative space, there's a solid ceiling. It creates a matrix of eyeballs peering down, like the always-watching Time-Keepers. And maybe the most important difference is that the ceiling is slammed down—you know the cheapest apartment you can go into has an eight-foot ceiling, this is six inches shorter than that, and our actor is about six-foot-three. The idea was to create a sort of trash compactor feeling in this claustrophobic space with this matrix of eyes, watching as all of this is happening.

The time theater was for me very inspired by Pier Luigi Nervi.

I liked that waffle coffered ceiling you have in that room.

Thanks. We were very happy with it, and it created this kind of forest of light columns which helps set the neo-noirish, interrogative nature of the space. And the unnecessarily large super graphics that you mentioned are a very Paul Rudolph sort of a thing, he did that in his building too, and I love that.

For me, it’s very important not to reference a set design from other films, that why I reference architecture, painting, photography, these other art forms, more than anything else, because inevitably when you’re working in archetypes, there’s a lot of overlap.

And as Loki goes into different times and locations, you get a completely different design environment in those places. There’s a scene on a train car, that has a very Art Deco look.

That was inspired by the inside of a Fabergé egg, Art Deco meets Alien.

And when you finally meet the Time-Keepers in the most recent episode, it’s like they're in a pre-Colombian pyramid or a ziggurat.

I was looking at Indian stepwells, this almost fractal quality with these descending stairs going into one another—but we imagined them going out every direction, with an Escher-like quality, like they are tessellating themselves to infinity.

I read on Twitter that you literally bought a bowling alley from Omaha and brought it to Atlanta to create Loki's Palace in the Void in the last episode, which is this crazy, surreal, amusement park, junk yard-like place.

We bought the floor of a bowling alley, everything else we built. That was a lot of fun because the script gave us a lot of runway. The proposal was to do this bowling alley because essentially everything in the Void has been discarded from time, and more things fall into it and accumulate and so you end up with these strata. I liked the idea of like a bowling alley that's been smashed over your knee or something. The net effect is when you first enter, you have all these lane lines pointing down at this throne, which was supposed to be stolen from a mall Santa. And then there's these crazy alien plants that are growing through it that have taken parasitic hold of the place. In many ways, I think its a narrative microcosm of the Void itself, which is like a salad bar of these disparate aberrations slammed together. Things like the bowling alley all have these micro-narratives that we in the art department have come up with to help flush out the design and make them specific. For example, there's portraits on the wall of like bowler of the month, and they’re not quite human. It's not in the episode, but those things are important for us in the art department.

At the very end of the most recent episode, we get a glimpse into this city that Loki and Sylvie (played by Sophia Di Martino) are walking into. Can tell us anything about what inspired those scenes, what we're about to see?

You can call me back in a week. All I can say is that the TVA is definitely the visual and narrative anchor of the story, but there's a lot of great worlds to see. And I think what people are responding to is the breadth of the visual variety of the show. And episode six won't be any different. It's really cool, and maybe some of my favorite stuff.

[notsowrites]

the heart i know

Alex misses Michael terribly while he's off on an roadtrip with his siblings.

This idea has been knocking around in my head for a while, and somehow ballooned into 6500 words.

(AO3 Link)

<3

----------

Despite living in a house with three brothers growing up, Alex had always felt alone. His time in the Air Force had never dissuaded him of that feeling, even as he was constantly surrounded by others. Part of him knew it was the secrets he'd kept, the parts he'd been unable to speak freely about, show the world his whole truth. Buying the house in Roswell after his accident, he'd dedicated time to trying to make it into a home.

But even as he filled it with music and books, and decorated the rooms exactly how he wanted for the first time in his life, he couldn't deny that it felt as though something was missing. An emptiness still lingered through the walls, and though Alex loved this place that was all his own, it wasn't quite home yet.

It wasn't until after - after he'd dated Forrest, after he and Michael had spent months carefully navigating a tentative friendship, after they'd slowly and carefully fallen back together, after Michael had begun to spend more nights sleeping next to Alex than not - that Alex started to truly enjoy the space he'd once carved out for himself.

In his study, against the wall opposite his own desk set up for days when he works from home, is a drafting table covered in sketch paper and notebooks filled with calculations. The sight never fails to make Alex smile, to fill him with a sense of pride for the way Michael's mind works, how he is able to conceptualize and design things, and turn them into a reality. The bookshelves in the room now hold more than just Alex's coding textbooks, and the random literary novels he's acquired when he's had free moments to read, but mathematics and physics, books on environmental science and agriculture that Alex would never have dreamed of owning or reading.

There's a black Stetson that regularly hangs from the hook in the hallway near the front door, a pair of well worn cowboy boots are usually nestled on the floor next to his own work boots. And though he'll never admit it out loud, opening the door to the hallway closet basks him in the familiar and comforting smell of rain that accompanies everything Michael owns.

Before, the most he'd ever left sitting out on the kitchen table had been his laptop, now there are notebooks full of Michael's handwriting that regularly disappear and reappear usually occupying the space at the far end.

In the living room, the blanket he'd kept meticulously folded on the back of the couch rarely ends up that way these days, instead thrown haphazardly after an impromptu nap. Though it's usually Michael who dozes on the couch because he'd been watching and listening to Alex play on the keyboard or trying to work out a new chord progression for a song. He wonders if it should bother him, the way Michael drifts off during those times, but it never does.

The kitchen remains immaculate, save for one new notebook shoved in between the cutting boards that sit neatly against the back splash - Michael's recipe book. Each time he finds some new dish to try, he scribbles the ingredients and the instructions down for reference, though Alex has never seen the notebook open while Michael is cooking. As if he's already committed the entire thing to memory.

But one of the best reminders in the entire house that shows Alex how much this isn't just where he lives and rested his head at night, but is a home he shares with the person he loves, is the modifications to the bathroom. When he'd bought the house, Alex had immediately installed a grab bar and purchased a cheap little bench he could sit on - enough to make do in the shower, but never anything more than functional of their intended purpose. It had been the renovations that Michael had undertaken, designing a more comfortable bench, and a much more accessible grab bar system, that allowed Alex to truly begin to enjoy taking showers, no longer feeling like they were just a necessary, but also something to relax him after a long tiring day on base.

He sits at the dining room table now, setting up the new computer he's purchased for Michael. Of course he'd been unable to stick to a budget, too concerned with making sure Michael had the best for the work he was going to be doing on it. Alex had asked, of course, after realizing that Michael was often just using the browser on his cell phone to search for things, and sticking to pen and paper for everything else. Michael had hemmed and hawed, claimed he didn't need one, and Alex had gotten him one morning, after they'd woken each other up with lazy blow jobs, to admit how much easier his own computer could make things.

Alex misses him terribly.

"I feel pathetic," he'd admitted to Maria three days into Michael's trip with Max, Isobel, and Liz.

"You wanna come over?" She'd asked, taking pity on him. "We can just cozy on the sofa and watch cheesy romcoms and gorge on junk food."

He appreciated the offer, and almost took her up on it. The problem was, the trip Michael had taken didn't have a defined timeline. It all hinged on what they found up in following some clues that led North regarding the UFO crash and it's survivors. Alex had tried to go with him, hadn't wanted to be so far away in case something went wrong, but when his PTO request was denied due to insufficient notice, he'd relented after Michael had convinced him he'd check in every day.

But now it’s been three days since the time they’d spoken, and Alex is starting to worry. He’d resisted during the first twelve hours, convincing himself Michael just hadn’t found a moment alone. The remaining twenty four had been agony, especially when there’s been no answer on anyone’s cell phone - Michael, Isobel, Liz, and Max’s all had gone to voicemail in the end.

"He'll call," Maria had said when he'd told her. "Perhaps there's no signal where they are."

He'd been surprised, given her own ancestral ties to the crash, that she'd elected to stay in Roswell. But Maria had gently reminded him that she was more concerned about Mimi than road trips with no definitive answers, and she had a business to run - sometimes personal trips just had to be sacrificed.

So he occupies himself with setting up the new programs on Michael's computer, making sure it all runs smoothly for when he returns, and buries himself in work projects to pass the time, and tries to not think something went wrong and that's why Michael hasn't gotten in touch.

"We're on our way back," Michael greets him in the first conversation they've had in thirty six hours. "We ran into some problems, so I can't talk long, but we're maybe four-"

"Six!" Alex hears Liz shout in the background.

"-hours away, and there's nothing stopping me from coming right to you."

Alex looks at the clock, and how it's after midnight now, which means it'll be well into the morning hours before Michael is walking through the front door.

"I know you'll probably be tired-"

Michael scoffs, laughing and it's the most wonderful sound Alex has heard in days.

"Tell those bastards you're going to be late."

Alex smiles. "I might not leave at all then."

It's tempting to think about, calling out to spend the entire day with Michael instead. But he has three meetings scheduled, none of which he can get out of short of being on a ventilator. But it will mean that when he gets home in the afternoon, Michael will be there.

He reluctantly falls asleep after that, curled up on Michael's side of the bed, face buried in the pillow that no matter how many times it gets washed, always smells exactly like Michael. It doesn't make Alex miss him any less, but it's been his only comfort these last couple days.

When his alarm goes off several hours later, Alex stubbornly doesn't think about how he woke up alone again. He takes his morning shower on autopilot, wanting to go through the motions enough so that he can just come home to Michael. Breakfast is coffee and cereal, same as it's been every day Michael has been gone, because while Alex is able to cook for himself when he has to - recipes are not that hard to follow - he prefers Michael's cooking. A voice in his head tells him it's just because it means he doesn't have to, but that's not it. He loves watching Michael experiment with things, adding spices or flavors that he never would have dreamed of, and everything still tasting delicious. He'd tried not to be too surprised the first time he’d watched Michael cook for him, curiosity getting the better of him.

"Did you learn from one of the people you lived with?*

Michael had shaken his head, concentrating on the vegetables he'd been chopping up.

"Sanders was the first one who took an interest. After I started working for him, sometimes I'd crash on his couch, and he'd cook me breakfast in the morning. First time someone didn't make me feel like I was an imposition."

Alex's heart always broke hearing about what it had been like for Michael growing up. To not have any memories of happier times, but believing they existed and surviving on that hope. He's often wondered since if there was a way to retrieve the memories that Max, Isobel, and Michael couldn't remember. Particularly after learning about Nora and Louise, and how hard they'd tried to protect their children. His own childhood hadn't always been bad, there had been some good moments, memories from before his mom left when it had felt like they had been something akin to a happy family. It was only after she left when things had changed.

It’s that fear now, of possibly turning into a monster like his father, that keeps Alex from entertaining the possibility of a family. Neither he or Michael have brought it up, and Alex wonders if it’s because they’re both too scared of repeating the unpleasantness of their childhoods. Part of him knows, believes, that he would never turn into the monster that his father was, but fear isn’t always rational, and it doesn’t always make sense, Alex knows that. Maybe one day he’ll believe it too.

Because deep down, he wants it. He wants to marry Michael some day. He's had part of a proposal written since he was seventeen, when he was younger and more naive. There's never been anyone else who made him fell so fast and hard, but Alex doesn't care.

He continues on autopilot as he goes about his day, making the commute to the base, attending his meetings, going over a project that's currently in development for the land the Air Force had purchased from the Foster's several years prior - delayed because of funding and approval issues. He skips lunch, trying to make it through the day faster, and spends most of his last meeting staring at the clock in the corner of his laptop screen.

The drive home is excruciating - it feels longer than it ever has before. There's no new text messages, no missed calls, no voicemails, and Alex tries not to think about how it's probably only because Michael was exhausted. Hopefully he fell asleep the moment he hit the bed, and that's where he's going to find Michael when he gets home.

It's just been two extremely long weeks.

He toes his boots off inside the front door, and drapes his jacket on the hook. There's a black duffel laying near one of the chairs at the dining table, and Alex lets out a sigh of relief. He wastes no time pushing open the bedroom door, greeted by darkness because Michael has all the curtains pulled tight to keep out the sun. He closes the door behind him and pulls his shirt over his head, dropping it in the middle of the floor as he makes his way to the bathroom, flipping on a light. Inside, he partially closes the door and removes his pants, sitting down on the window seat to remove his prosthetic. There's a crutch leaning against the wall, one of the places Michael is always diligent in making sure to place one of his spares. The stress of the past several days has traveled all through his body, and Alex feels it acutely in his hip, and around his stump, which feels extra sensitive to pressure as he removes the liner. He debates the merits of drawing a bath, letting himself relax and let the tension melt away - but it would mean delaying being near, and getting to touch, Michael again for the first time in two weeks, and he decides against it.

Crutch nestled under his elbow, Alex makes his way back into the bedroom, naked except for his boxers, and crawls into bed, letting his crutch fall to the floor. He lets his hands sweep up Michael's legs, past his hips and stomach - a thrill traveling through his body that Michael had fallen asleep naked and ready for him - body following as Alex leans down to place feather light kisses to Michael's skin. He continues upward, pressing his face into Michael's neck, breathing in that familiar and comforting rain smell, his whole body relaxing in response. Alex presses a kiss to somewhere along Michael's jawline, before feeling Michael's arms move, wrapping around him, and pulling their bodies tightly together, indicating he’s awake too.

Without a word, just Michael pushing up to try and find his lips, kisses landing on his cheek, and neck, before finding his lips, Alex feels as he lets go of his hold, and Michael's hand brushes against him. He shifts a bit, so Michael doesn't have to try and squeeze his hand between their bodies, and reaches down, taking Michael in his hand. It's rough, just skin on skin, and Alex knows that friction can't feel good. He pauses, leaning back, and retrieving the bottle of lube from the nightstand where he'd left it during Michael's absence. Carefully he coats his hand, recapping the lid, and reaching back down, fingers wrapped around Michael again as he runs his thumb over the head, which makes Michael moan so so beautifully, and Alex wonders if he'd even touched himself at all during the trip, if he'd been alone long enough to. He jerks Michael off, keeping his face pressed against the side of Michael's neck until Michael is shifting, turning his head and pressing his open mouth against Alex's. He quickens the pace, sensing Michael is close, and pushes his other hand into Michael's curls, pulling at them slightly, but causing the desired effect as Michael thrusts up to meet his hand, and Alex slows his pace, letting him ride it out, pressing kisses to Michael's cheek as he settles back against the pillows.

"Welcome home," Alex whispers, nuzzling against Michael’s cheek, reveling in the contact.

“I told you I’d make it back.” 

Alex lets Michael press their lips together, before watching as he slides out from underneath him, pushing up off the bed and heading into the bathroom. Alex only moves as far enough to sit up, his eyes never leaving Michael, watching as he moves around, grabbing a washcloth from the closet, and running it under the hot water. 

Finally, thanks to the light of the bathroom, Alex gets a good look at Michael, and immediately sits up in bed, blinking hard at the sight. Michael’s body is covered in bruises -most of them are on his abdomen and back, and Alex is pretty sure there’s a cut on his cheek below his left eye.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Alex yells out, suddenly pissed off that Michael hadn’t said anything, Alex had put his hands on those bruises, they had to have hurt.

Michael pauses, looking down at himself like just realizing the bruises are there, before glancing back at Alex, shrugging his shoulders, and Alex tries to maintain his composure. It’s not going to do him any good to get angry at Michael.

“Turns out the people we were looking for were actually looking for Jones. They saw Max, and wouldn’t believe that he was someone else.” 

“And Liz and Isobel-”

“They’re fine - it’s only me and Max who get to look like this. The girls had stayed at the hotel the night this happened - or well, the two days we were missing afterward.”

“Missing?” Alex is seething now, understanding the reasoning behind the fact that he hadn’t been able to get in touch with Michael or anyone else for several days. “Did you forget you have telekinetic powers?”

Michael smiles at him, making his way back into the bedroom, and leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead. It doesn’t do anything to calm Alex down, but he appreciates that Michael knows he needs the physical contact of some kind in this moment.

“They had some sort of serum, something similar I’m guessing to what Helena Ortecho dosed me with when she wanted me to build the atomizer. Rendered me powerless for almost two days. Max too.” Michael slides back onto the bed, and Alex immediately leans forward, hands carefully running across the skin, careful to avoid all the places where Michael has bruises and cuts.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Michael doesn’t reply, and turns away from him, running a hand through his curls, and Alex watches as they slowly fall back into place.

“I don’t want to hurt you-”

“You didn’t-”

Alex glares at him, and thankfully Michael doesn’t finish his sentence. 

“Because you would have stopped touching me, and I didn’t-” Michael sighs, reaching out and taking Alex’s hand. He lets him, adjusting so their fingers are intertwined, and watches as Michael presses a kiss to the back of his hand. “Because it’s been two weeks, and nothing these past two weeks has felt as good as your hands on me.”

“Michael.”

Alex takes a deep breath, and barely lets the idea form in his mind, knowing that he’ll overthink it and talk himself out of it if he does. He pushes himself up, maneuvering on the bed, until he’s straddling Michael’s lap, legs wrapped around his hips. Alex digs his hands into Michael’s hair, and pulls their lips together, foreheads gently knocking against one another. The feeling of them pressing together, only the thin layer of his own boxers in the way makes Alex grind down harder, needing the touch.

Michael flips them, so Alex is underneath him, but his legs still wrapped around Michael’s hips, pulling them close together, and Alex laughs into Michael’s chest as he leans over him and retrieves the bottle of lube from earlier. Alex watches, as patiently as he can, as Michael stands up, pulling his boxers down and squirting some onto his hand, coating his fingers, before reaching down and with one finger pressing into Alex. 

It has been too long as he pushes down into the contact, hands gripping into the sheets of the bed as Michael adds another finger, using just the tiniest bit of force to open him up. And Alex can’t look away, can’t stare at anything except Michael’s face, and the focus in his eyes in how he’s touching Alex. He feels Michael press in one more finger, and while he appreciates the care Michael is putting into making sure he’s ready, Alex finds that he doesn’t care, he just needs, needs-

Michael’s fingers slide out, and Alex groans at the loss, before Michael is lining himself up and pushing forward, and Alex wraps his legs around Michael’s hips again, urging him forward, filling him up. For a moment, they stay like that, Michael buried inside him, and Alex reaches up, grabbing hold of Michael’s shoulders, his neck, and finally his face, and pulling him down into a desperate crush of their lips before he feels Michael pull out, almost all the way but still inside him and holding him open, before thrusting back in. When Michael hits that spot inside him that sends him wild, Alex can’t do anything except bury his teeth into the junction where Michael’s neck meets his shoulder, the rain smell that is so very Michael all he can focus on, before he reaches down and takes himself in hand, leaning into the tightness he can feel forming, his orgasm inching closer now.

Michael’s orgasm hits first as he continues to thrust forward, dropping his head to Alex’s chest with a muffled groan, as Alex continues to jerk himself off, feeling his own orgasm grow, but the friction is too much, and it’s wrong, and as he slows down his movements, he feels Michael’s hand cover his own, and Alex pulls back, watching as Michael takes over. It doesn’t take long, Alex has spent too many nights dreaming about Michael’s hands on him, and it’s as Michael thumb brushes across the tip that Alex lets go, moaning out his own climax into the curls on top of Michael’s head, fingertips pressed into the skin of Michael’s back.

He pulls Michael down into him, their bodies pressed tight, and Alex keeps his legs wrapped tight around him, one hand digging into his curls as they both breath deep and heavy, coming down from their highs. 

It takes another couple minutes before Michael is pushing himself up, and pulling Alex with him, and Alex realizes too late, Michael is carrying him into the bathroom. He doesn’t protest as Michael carefully sets him down next to the shower, and Alex gracefully falls onto the bench, leaning forward and turning the water on, watching as Michael disappears back into the bedroom, returning moments later with his crutch. Alex uses this opportunity to clean himself up, removing the remaining evidence from his skin, letting his fingers dance across Michael’s skin as he watches him do the same.

They dry off, Michael double checking his crutch is within reach, before pressing their lips together one more time, and disappearing back out into the bedroom. He returns a moment later with boxers, and a t-shirt, leaving them on the sink for Alex to get to, and disappears again back into the bedroom again.

By the time Alex has put on the boxers, and pulled the t-shirt over his head, Michael is standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of black boxers, and his hair is towel dried enough that it’s wet, but not dripping onto the floor. 

“Dinner?” Michael asks, and all Alex can focus on is the cut next to Michael’s left eye. It’s already in the healing stages, clearly having been received several days earlier, but it’s entire presence makes Alex angry. “I wasn’t thinking anything too complicated, maybe fajitas? If we have the ingredients, since I’m sure you haven’t cooked anything while I’ve been gone.”

Alex scoffs at him. “I went shopping yesterday.”

He takes his time getting dressed, and fishing out one of Michael’s clean work shirts from the dresser, pushing him arms into the sleeves, pressing his nose into the fabric. He’s always amazed at how well the rain smell persists, but it’s comforting, and it makes him feel like he’s surrounded by Michael even in those moments he’s not. He stands in the middle of the bedroom, debating whether or not to put his prosthetic back on, eventually deciding against it - they’re not going anywhere else tonight, and the idea of wrangling with it when they’re just going to end up going back to bed in a few hours isn’t appealing to him at all.

By the time he makes it out into the main room, standing at the foot of the dining room table, Michael, who has slipped into Alex’s Air Force hoodie so he’s not walking around shirtless, has already spread out the necessary ingredients on the counter in the kitchen. There’s a pan on the stove, and Michael is concentrating on slicing the steak into strips, the vegetables from the crisper waiting to be cut up next. Alex doesn’t pay too much attention to the specifics of the cooking, and glances down at the table, only to notice Michael’s regular notebooks are missing, though the laptop that is his gift is exactly where he left it.

Alex watches, transfixed, as Michael scribbles something into one of those notebooks, and then retrieves his cooking notebook from it’s spot against the wall, writing something down in that as well. The way Michael moves, Alex can’t even begin to imagine what his thought process is like to be able to shift around constantly like he does, one idea after another flowing through his mind, needing to be captured and saved. 

As far as he can tell, Michael hasn’t seen him yet. Which is fine, because Alex is more than happy in this moment to enjoy watching him, reveling in how comfortable Michael looks. He thinks of the drafting table in the study, and two vehicles parked in the garage, and Michael’s clothes with their own space in the dressers, and in the closet, and can’t look away from Michael in the kitchen, cooking and looking very much like this is his home. And Alex thinks of every time Michael has told him about not belonging, about not feeling wanted, and about how often he’d been shuffled around the system, and something tightens in Alex’s chest.

Years ago, he’d seen this beautiful, handsome boy who made his heart beat just a little bit faster, and offered him a warm place to sleep at night. A boy who had stood up for him when no one else would, who had without hesitation put himself between Alex and danger time and time again. Who looked at Alex like he was the only person in the world that mattered, and Alex has always wondered if he’s worthy of that love, of that devotion. But Michael has never looked at him any other way, even in their worst moments, during the arguments and the fighting - Alex has never doubted that Michael loved him. Because while Alex knows he’s always had trouble verbalizing his feelings, Michael has always been one to stand tall and declare them in the most beautiful ways.

And Alex knows that, without a doubt, there is nowhere else he would rather be in this moment. 

“Michael,” he chokes out, because the words are clawing up his throat, and usually Alex is careful about what he says, and how he says it, and he’s never - at least he doesn’t think he has - truly told Michael how he feels. And standing here now, after being apart for two weeks, and the issues with keeping in touch during that time, and the fucking bruises, and it’s all too much for him to keep in now.

“I was thinking about my workshop, and how we can modify some space in the basement here if that’s-”

Alex doesn’t let him finish, can’t even process what Michael is talking about past agreeing with it because he's talking like he knows this is his space, and Alex can't help but feel happy and so fucking proud to see that Michael knows this is his home too.

“Michael,” he starts again, waiting until Michael is looking back at him. “I am so fucking in love with you.”

He was expecting a reaction of some kind, probably something akin to Michael just crossing the room and kissing him. What he certainly doesn’t expect is to hear the knife clatter to the floor, and Michael swear under his breath, and for him to turn the water in the sink on, shoving his hand underneath it.

It takes Alex’s brain a moment to come back online, wondering what just happened, before he realizes that Michael has sliced his hand open. But before he can move, Michael has grabbed a dishtowel, and wrapped it around his hand, as he rushes toward Alex, good hand reaching out and pulling their bodies together, kissing Alex. And Alex is helpless, he melts into Michael’s touch, his arms wrapping around Michael’s waist and pulling himself closer, and Alex faintly realizes his crutch has fallen to the floor.

“You’re such an idiot,” Alex says against Michael’s lips, but Michael just shakes his head, diving back in and kissing him again.

“I don’t care,” Michael replies against his lips, and Alex feels helpless to stop him. "I'm happy to be your idiot."

“We’re going to have to call Kyle now, and have him look at your hand-”

“It’s really not that bad-”

Alex grabs Michael’s wrist, pulling back far enough to get a better look at it, the towel wrapped tightly enough for now, and Alex knows the only reason he hasn’t immediately settled into worrying about an infection is because of Michael’s alien DNA and it’s resistance to human diseases and ailments.

“What if you need stitches?”

Michael smiles, leaning in again, and Alex doesn’t stop him.

"I'm gonna go put my prosthetic on, and then call Kyle, so please, no more accidents." Alex tugs at the dish towel, and Michael yanks his hand back.

In the bathroom, Alex collapses back on the window seat, and takes a deep breath, cursing the events of tonight. Well, not all of them because he'd never regret Michael - even through the good and bad between them, Alex has learned to take it all in stride. He just can't believe Michael's reaction to what he'd said had been to slice his hand open.

He calls Kyle first, leaning against the wall, and wondering if he should never had said anything at all. They're lucky - Kyle isn't working, and agrees to come over, but Alex can hear the apprehension in his voice and knows he's going to have to figure out a way to repay the favor.

By the time Alex has put his prosthetic back on, Kyle is letting himself in through the front door, backpack slung over his shoulder, looking as though he'd rather be anywhere but here - and Alex can't blame him for that. His status as Alien Doctor means he's the only one who can treat the aliens without fear of discovery.

“Do I even want to know?” Kyle asks, carefully pulling back the dishtowel, and inspecting the wound. Alex watches as Michael ignores the question, his good hand reaching toward the new laptop that's still sitting on the table.

“Guerin’s an idiot,” Alex supplies from where he’s standing in the kitchen heating up leftover pizza, since dinner was ruined, and Alex was done letting Michael near sharp objects for the evening. As Kyle sets about cleaning and bandaging Michael’s cut, including dropping a full bottle of nail polish remover on the table for Michael to drink, Alex moves around the kitchen, cleaning up the ruined dinner that Michael had planned for them, shaking his head at the half cut up meat and vegetables, and putting anything that can be saved back in the fridge. 

“Yeah,” Michael adds, not paying attention to Kyle, his gaze firmly settled on watching Alex in between sips of acetone. “But you love me.”

Alex watches Kyle stop what he’s doing, eyes moving up first to Michael’s, and then over to his own, as if asking if he needs to tell Michael to shut up before he starts telling Kyle things he definitely doesn’t need to, or want to, know.

“Did you just figure that out, Guerin?” Kyle replies instead, and Alex wonders if he thought that the safest option. “Cuz the rest of us had bets on how long it would take you two to figure your shit out.”

Alex glares at Kyle, remembering several conversations years ago, where Kyle had tried to nudge him into talking to Michael, insisting that it was the key to everything between them. It hadn’t been bad advice, it had been exactly what Alex had needed to hear. The problem was, like it had always been with them, timing. 

Timing had always been their enemy, even from the very beginning. Alex had thought they’d beaten it, after everything they’d been through where they’d all but given up on ever being together. He doesn’t like to dwell on it too much, on their crashing back together in the weeks following the reunion, or how fast he’d pulled away due to the threat of his father still lingering over them, choosing to protect Michael over being with him.

“Who won?” Michael asks, and Alex glances over to see Kyle bent over Michael’s hand, gauze pressed against the wound. He doesn’t want to know how far off their friends were, if he and Michael had spent too much time letting everything else get in the way instead of trying to work things out between them. But he’s already cleaned up the kitchen, and after all of this, Alex really just wants to eat dinner and take Michael to bed, and not wake up until the morning.

“Max.” That’s a surprising answer, Alex thinks. He’d expected it to be Maria or Isobel. Or even Kyle himself, who seemed to have picked up on what Guerin meant to him long before Alex was even willing to admit to himself that it could be obvious to anyone. “And even he was off by about four months. You two really did take forever.”

“I’m surprised Maria didn’t win.”

“She took herself out of the running, said it’d be cheating.”

Alex is thankful when the oven beeps, indicating the pizza is ready, and ignores the remaining conversation between Kyle and Michael. He removes the tray from the oven, and plates two slices each on plates for him and Michael, before wondering if Kyle is hungry. But as he turns around with the intention of asking, Kyle is standing up, backpack in hand, looking ready to leave.

“I don’t want to know what caused that cut, but for my sanity, please don’t do it again.”

And with that, he’s gone, leaving the two of them alone again.

“Alex, what is this?” Michael asks, fingers running across the smooth top of the laptop.

“It’s yours,” he replies, matter of factly. He knows Michael is going to resist, going to insist he doesn’t need or want it.

“I didn’t ask-”

Alex takes a deep breath, because he knew the fight was coming. He knew that Michael would resist it, because that’s how Michael is. He gives and gives and gives, and Alex has watched him reject things people have done for him over and over again, thinking they were debts that needed to be repaid. 

“I know you didn’t, but with all your research and your designs - I thought this would make it easier.”

Michael doesn’t say anything to that, and Alex wonders if he’s not going to actually argue against it.Maybe it’s just the events of tonight, maybe Michael is going to save the bickering for another day, another evening. 

Instead, Michael shakes his head, eyeing the computer one more time, and pushing up off the chair, and walking into the kitchen. Alex tries to not focus on his injured hand, on the stark white bandage wrapped around reminding him of a different time in their lives, causing him to flinch away, picking up a plate and taking a bite of pizza.

He watches Michael lean against the counter across from him,  picking up a slice of pizza and testing if it’s cool enough to eat. It’s shit timing, but Alex needs to know something, needs to ask Michael about tonight.

“Did you not know?”

Michael pauses, pizza poised in front of his mouth, and frowns at him, before dropping the slice back onto the plate, and sliding it back onto the counter.

“Of course I knew.”

“Because I know I’m not good with words, I know that I don’t make those big grand declarations like you do that take my breath away and render me speechless.”

“Alex-”

“I just,” he pauses, leveraging himself across the linoleum until he’s standing in Michael’s space, fingers itching to reach out and make contact. “It felt important to tell you.”

He lets Michael crowd him against the cabinetry, pizza temporarily forgotten. Wraps his arms around Michael's neck, as Michael pulls him on with his hands settled on his hips, and Alex just loves this man. He's infuriating and he's beautiful, and more than anything else, Alex wouldn't trade anything in their past if it meant changing getting here.

"I told you a long time ago, I don't look away from you. I never could." Alex lets Michael lean in, foreheads pressed together, noses bumping, lips pressed together in smiles. "You're my home, Alex. You made me believe, when no one else did, that I didn't have to build a ship and leave. That I could have a family here too."

Alex thinks about home and Michael's plans for moving his workshop into the basement and kisses him again and again and again, feeling like he's that seventeen year old boy again who got nervous around the boy he liked. Except now they're grown up, they're men who have seen more and done more, and changed them. But one thing through it all has remained the same.

"You really want to move your workshop here?" Alex asks, knowing the answer, but needing Michael to understand that he's asking to make sure. He needs to hear it from Michael.

"Do you not-"

"No!" Alex immediately replies, and then catches himself, knowing how this has to sound. "Fuck. No, I want you to. I'm just - I'm making sure it's what you want."

Michael reaches behind him, and Alex twists his head to see it's one of his notebooks, and they pull away from each other just enough so Michael can flip through the pages to find something specific. Be holds it up so Alex can see and-

It's a design for a prosthetic for him.

Alex takes the notebook, staring at the pages, not understanding half the calculations and formulas scribbled in the margins, but not caring because he understands the design schematic.

"I just thought I could try and make you something that was lighter and easier to get on and off-"

Alex lunges forward, cutting Michael off, and wrapping his arms back around him, using Michael and the countertop for balance and leverage to stay upright. He kisses Michael over and over again, and thinks about everything Michael does for him.

"Say it again," Michael says, pulling back so they can look each other in the eye.

Alex buries his face in Michael's shoulder, pressing his lips against the skin of his neck, but he's smiling. He hasn't felt this happy, this excited, this in love since he was seventeen. He knows Michael is waiting for him, the ever patient partner that as a teenager he never dreamed of deserving, much less finding.

"I love you."

[anextraordinarymuse]

Thoughts on 1x01: Pilot

So @jonesgirl88 and I have been struggling to nail down the timeline of Signed, Sealed, Delivered (Katie likes puzzles and I'm an analyzer, but it's also helpful for fic writing purposes). I went back and re-watched it all from the very first episode, and, well ... I have Thoughts™.

First, and unrelated to anything to do with Oliver x Shane ... Oliver had some great one liners in the pilot. "I have a government service pay level higher than you can count", and "It's Shakespeare, peasants." Perfection!

Okay, at the time of the pilot we learn that Shane's dad has died some time in the last 14 months. We also learn that her dad is the reason that Shane is a rule breaker now despite being a rule follower at heart (she went to see him in the hospital, was turned away because it was outside of visiting hours, and then her dad died in the night before she could work things out with him/apologize/say goodbye). So, Shane's rebellious streak is fairly new when she meets Oliver. Also, Oliver and Shane are (at heart) more alike than either of them initially realizes.

Charlie and Kelly (the letter and characters that the pilot story follows) and their story foreshadows Oliver and Shane's story, but you only start to understand that on a second watch through. (Actually, in many ways, every story in every episode mirrors Oliver and Shane and their journey to each other to some extent). Examples: Charlie is working at a job that is just a job to him and is stuck in a rut when he meets Kelly (this is Shane; she tells Oliver that their job is "just a job, not some woo woo spiritual journey."); Kelly isn't really living her life because she's dying and has mostly accepted it, but changes her mind and wants to live after she meets Charlie (this is Oliver; he's alive but not living, and it's only Shane's arrival that makes him want to change). Kelly and Charlie spend one day together and then are separated for a year - a year in which Kelly has to put in the time and the effort to change and get better (health-wise) before she can meet Charlie where he is when she meets him. He's ready to jump in feet first immediately, but Kelly isn't.

Shane is ready to jump in feet first immediately when she meets Oliver, but Oliver has work that he has to do before he can meet her where she is (not just Holly, but in figuring out how to let himself move on and learn to live again).

Shane picks up on the fact that Rita has feelings for Norman as soon as meets them despite the fact that Norman is totally clueless. When they're in the bar toward the end of the episode, Rita asks Norman to dance and he redirects and asks to play shuffle board instead. The camera shows us both Shane and Oliver's reaction to that: Oliver's expression is more subtle, but they both know that Norman is missing the point and a chance right there by declining. After Norman and Rita walk away, Shane says "she has a terrible crush on him, you know that right?" And Oliver replies "that's very insightful, considering she absolutely terrifies him." Who says which line is very telling here (as we'll soon start to see): Shane has a terrible crush on Oliver, and she terrifies him. Mostly because she is unwilling to let him stay frozen: Shane expects more from Oliver than anyone else he knows and won't let him remain stuck. We can safely say even from this pilot episode that Oliver isn't the biggest fan of change, and can be very resistant to it (but will eventually warm up to change, given time).

On a side note, and I've already mentioned this before, but Oliver and Shane have absolutely zero concept of personal space from the get go. 90% of the time they stand close enough to touch each other for absolutely no reason. (Their arms and shoulders often brush or touch each other). And in almost every shot where it shows the four of our postables standing together, Shane is alone on one side of Oliver and Norman and Rita default to the other side, or Shane and Oliver are next to each other regardless of where Rita and Norman are standing. The only time Rita or Norman stand or sit between Oliver and Shane is when they aren't getting along; otherwise, there's literally nothing (physical) separating Shane and Oliver. This blocking visually establishes the connection between these two, and it does it right from the start.

Here's examples of what I mean about the blocking.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

Oliver and Shane start healing each other from day one. They start giving up little pieces of their pain and trauma immediately. Oliver tells Shane about his wife; Shane tells him about her dad; she calls him out on not facing the truth and finding his wife; he calls her out on not wanting to open her birthday card and face her pain. But at the end of the episode, they both rise to the other person's challenge: Oliver gives Charlie a sewing kit that he took from the hotel in DC that he stayed in when Holly left him (literally giving away a piece of his pain); Shane opens her birthday card from her father and uses the $20 inside to buy coffee for herself and the others. Shane and Oliver are each other's catalyst for change and healing.

Oliver's change is also reflected in the fate of the DLO. At one point in the pilot the DLO is being shut down because it's no longer viable/has outlived its purpose. At the end of the episode, rather than being shut down the DLO is actually expanded (or, you know ... it grows/changes). Oliver is the DLO, and both needed Shane's arrival and presence to move forward.

Remember a few paragraphs ago when I said that Oliver and Shane both witnessed Norman's missed (or given up) opportunity to dance with Rita? Well, Oliver doesn't miss or pass up his chance to dance with Shane even though we learn later on that he apparently doesn't dance. Shane has already challenged and goaded Oliver several times in the episode by this point (even pleaded with him at one point) and he has ignored several of them or resisted her ideas and influence, but he still doesn't let this opportunity go without answer. In fact, it's interesting that in a professional capacity Oliver is rather resistant to Shane and her influence: he won't keep reading the letter, he won't just deliver the letter to Charlie even though they're standing right outside his house ... Oliver won't step out of bounds despite all of Shane's pleading and prodding. But personally? Oliver blows right through his self-imposed boundaries. During their first meeting Oliver says he won't call her Shane, but he proceeds to do it twice later in the episode (once even calling her "my dear Shane"); she tries to leave and he immediately goes after her and doesn't accept her attempt to quit; we only find this one out later, but apparently Oliver doesn't dance ... yet he dances with Shane the first time she asks.

This is a masterful way to introduce us to the division and dichotomy that exists in Oliver (and that becomes more apparent as we go, specifically between Holly and Shane). One of my favorite things about this show is how they establish Shane and Oliver's connection not just from the beginning, but through multiple mediums and layers.

We'll explore all of this more in episode two.

[venusandromedadjarin]

Bogota, Colombia

Ch. 2, Mi Cielo

18+, angst, brief sex, language, smoking, canon timeline, 1.7k words

The plane touches down in Bogota, Columbia at 7pm sharp, right on time, which means you had all of thirty minutes to find your way through security, baggage claim and down to the waiting area before Agent Murphy is due to pick you up. If your instinct is right, as soon as you hand over your credentials, Escobar would know you had landed in his country and there was nothing you could do about it. At security, you hand over your I.D. and passport, they give you some bullshit excuse about needing to check it in the back, and just like that, you know you’re on the radar. Sighing, you wait and check the time. Fifteen minutes and counting down. 

The kid finally returns, apologizing and handing your items back to you. You wave him off, “Sólo estás haciendo tu trabajo.” He gives you a small smile before motioning for you to pass. The baggage claim isn’t incredibly difficult to find, but you have to wait for the slow machine to spit out your bag . Another time check shows five minutes to spare. Rushing through the crowd, you descend the stairs and spot the whitest guy in the airport. Your heels click on the floor as you walk over to him, “Hola, gringo. Murphy, I’m guessing?”

He grimaces and takes your bag, normally you would contest the action but you’re too tired to argue. “Not you too, Lucio. Is it that bad?”

“Eh, could be worse,” you say as you make a show of looking him over. He’s tall and handsome, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Definitely sticks out like a sore thumb in Columbia. He chuckles as the hot air greets you both outside. It’s early evening but the humidity immediately cloaks you both. “Headquarters?”

“No, the ambassador told me to just come get you. We can celebrate tonight and then work tomorrow I guess.” He stops in front of an inconspicuous black jeep before unlocking the back and lifting your suitcase into it before moving to get in the driver’s seat. Observant, you think as you silently thank whatever God there is that he didn’t open your door, too. 

“Celebrate?” You lift a brow as you climb into the jeep, your skirt riding up on your thighs. 

“We’ll let you get settled first then drinks are on Peña,” he looks extra concentrated as he weaves through the narrow streets.

“Glad to see you volunteer him for shit too.” You put a cigarette between your lips, rolling down the window, “¿Te importa?”

He waves you off as you light it, blowing the smoke outside. “You know Peña?”

“Javi and I go way back. We were DEA in Texas.” Nervous to change the subject, you motion to the outside as you pass a clinic, “Where are we going exactly?”

As if he also doesn’t want to talk about Javi, he ignores your comment, “The apartments. They’re pretty nice. Connie said she can help you decorate if you want.” He huffs out a laugh.

“Connie’s your wife right?”

He pulls up in front of a dingy building with a gate out front, “Yeah, she’s the greatest. You’ll like her I think.” You smile at him, the nerves bubbling up in your abdomen at the thought of seeing Javi. He goes to unlock the door as you grab your purse and luggage, following up the stairs behind you. “Here’s your key, it’s down the hall and to the left. Javi is here,” he points at a door to the right which definitely has sexual noises echoing from it. You both cringe. “Connie and I are upstairs.” He glances down at his watch in the crappy fluorescent light, “Say we hit the bar in an hour?”

“Sounds good,” you turn to walk down the hall as he climbs the stairs but pause and call out to him, “and, hey, you can call me your y/n.”

He sarcastically salutes. “Steve,” he laughs and then runs up the stairs. A minute later you hear a sweet voice and then the door closes. Rushing inside your own apartment, you go to the phone, dialing quickly. 

“Val,” she picks up after three rings, “I’m here, chica.” She rambles on and you answer in the spaces of her breaths: “No, I haven’t seen him yet.” “Yeah, tonight.” “Drinks I guess.” “No, no, you’re the only one with this number.” “Si, claro. Y tu, Val.” 

The click of her receiver echoes into the silence of the apartment as you look around for the first time. It’s not much, but it’s home for now and it could be worse. Being an agent sometimes had its perks. You spot the radio in the corner and immediately dial it to the liveliest station you can find, cranking the volume up. Stripping, you find the shower and wash the sweat of the flight off, your stomach doing flips as your mind races between the job and the life you’re embarking on. 

————————————-

The leather of the couch sticks to both of their bodies as Javi grips Helena to him with a strong arm, their moans echoing through his apartment as he pounds into her. Breathing heavy, he collapses on top of her, kissing her neck as she revels in the orgasm he just gave her. He knows it, too. “Mejoramos cada vez que practicamos, ¿eh?”

“Ay, eres increíble, Javier.” She’s still breathing heavy, her fingers tangling with his brown hair.

“Bueno… No te pases, eh.” Helena leaves the couch as Javi lights up a cigarette, taking a drag before standing to pull on his jeans. 

“Es la verdad. ¿Qué me ofreces para tomar?”

“Whisky o agua de la llave.” He leans back on the couch, hearing music from somewhere down the hall. His thoughts wander as Helena starts getting dressed, complaining about his apartment needing a woman. She refuses the money he tries to hand her, instead taking his cigarette and puffing out the smoke. He watches her intently, before she leans over him.

“Dame un beso,” when he doesn’t make a move, she repeats herself, gently cupping the side of his face and kissing him. As she leaves, she gives him a crumb of information that would help the investigation and he looks longingly after her when the door shuts. That damn music echoes down the hall and he grunts, deciding to take a shower before going to get drinks and having to see you. 

————————————-

You hear voices outside near the gate when you close your door behind you, double checking the lock before descending the concrete steps. His back is turned to you right now, but you recognize his brown curls and that damn leather jacket he wears everywhere. The signature stance of standing with his hand on your hip makes you blush, but before he even has the chance to turn around, you’re being enveloped in a hug while Steve calls out to his wife. You laugh against the blonde woman, nervous but hugging her back.

“You must be y/n, I’m so excited to meet you. When I found out Steve was going to have a female partner, it made the move down here easier since there’d be another girl. I’m a nurse, so I’m not as badass as you but hopefully we can still be friends.”

“You must be Connie,” you pull back from her and hold her at arm’s length, “and by the way, nurses are still badass. Don’t let these boys make you think any different.” She smiles at you and you wave to Steve as she goes to grab his hand, Javi finally turning around and letting his eyes hungrily slide over your body. “Where are we going?” You decide to play with him a little longer, not saying anything but also not missing the questioning glance Connie shoots at Steve who just shrugs. 

“A little hole in the wall down the street. We can walk.” Connie looks a little nervous, but tucks herself into Steve’s side as they lead the way, your heels clicking as you walk behind them, Javi taking up the rear. You can practically feel his eyes on your ass. Once the couple in front of you is deep in conversation, Connie whispering about safety and Steve assuring her you’re all armed, Javi grabs your wrist and pulls you to a stop.

“You want to tell me what the fuck you’re doing here?” He hisses, careful to keep his voice low. Finally, he puts his hand on the small of your back, telling you to keep walking so it doesn’t look suspicious. 

“First off, he knows we know each other, pendejo,” you shrug out from beneath his hand, embarrassed by the physical reaction you have to his touch. “I’m guessing the Ambassador told you I’m your other partner. I called to tell you myself but you acted like a dick, as usual.”

He angrily rubs a hand over his face before pinching the bridge of his nose, “Did you ask to come here?”

“No, Javi. I’m not a lovestruck little girl. I got assigned here and I accepted. It’s fucking Escobar, did you think I would refuse it because of” - you gesture wildly between the two of you - “whatever the fuck is going on between us?”

“There’s nothing going on,” he whispers.

“If that’s easier for you to believe then fine, say the words.”

He’s quiet for a moment as he stares at you underneath the neon light of the bar, Steve whistles and waves before ducking inside. Javi’s brown eyes search yours, pleading with you and you’re suddenly struck by how much you missed him. Job or no job, he’s standing right in front of you and neither of you can admit that simple fact. You shake your head, ready to go down shots inside and forget you even asked, the anger bubbling inside your chest, “Maldito, Javíer.”

Just as you turn to pull open the door, he yanks you back to him, his forehead meeting yours, and whispers, “Mujer hermosa, obstinada.” Taking your hand in his, he gives it a squeeze before pulling open the door and leading you inside. 

[algernoninwonderland]

“Porter sur toi un nouveau regard”: basic outlines and preparatory notes

What better way to celebrate a fic being completed than me releasing some of the basic notes I took while planning it? Here they are, with a few additions.

 It all started as a prompt I got on Discord, the very simple “love at first sight” and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it at first, but the idea of sight stuck with me. Are your first impressions the right ones? Can you learn to see someone a certain way or another? It’s ultimately a story about learning to see other people and yourself, isn’t it?

Which meant I had to take a certain point of view, because an omniscient floating eye is emotionally detached. Character POV may have a limited scope, but that may help empathise with them. This is a story about Kagami, so it was only fair for Kagami to be the centre of it.

Chapter 1: 

“How does Kagami truly feel about Marinette before Ikari Gozen”? 

While Marinette sees the two of them as rivals, that rivalry is one-sided, and Kagami wouldn’t take that girl seriously. She’s simply annoying. 

Kagami is a lonely character, who genuinely wants to make friends, still, and she’s anything but cool or smooth. She doesn’t know the other characters the way the audience does, at all.

Tomoe Tsurugi sucks.

Switching from “Dupain-Cheng” to “Marinette Dupain-Cheng” to “Marinette” would be a nice way to keep the reader hooked. Lots of tiny details that’ll come back later on!

Comphet. 

Lots of comphet already. What you “should” like, a calculated, conscious choice.

A few jabs at the show because why not.

Chapter 2:

Filling gaps in characterisation and timeline to make sure that everything hurts later on! Including pre-Adrigami. People thought the paperwork between Tomoe and Gabriel was a marriage contract, not quite, but an arranged relationship? Definitely from Tomoe’s side.

Are Kagami and Marinette already going on dates when they visit the city together all on their own? Isn’t that the true sapphic experience.

Also, the promise of them going to the terrace rooftop on sunny days! It’ll come back later on.

The Bike Motive. Marinette driving her forward.

“Your hair is beautiful” but make it much gayer. 

I hate the André scene in the finale, it sucks and it’s awful for everyone. It should be awful for both Marinette and Kagami. Comphet. So much comphet. 

Kagami’s impression of brokenness is something we’ll come back to over and over again.

Adrien doesn’t notice because he’s Adrien. The kiss. Nothing.

“K-Kagami!” End with a cliffhanger for more suffering.

As a side note, I made myself cry writing this chapter.

Chapter 3:

Everything hurts. Everything. Hurts. 

Identity reveals don’t solve anything, they still fail, and Marinette still isn’t willing to show herself to Kagami, still hiding behind a facade.

Just because Marinette understands things a little better doesn’t mean it hurts any less

They are both lying to each other and themselves and they don’t even realise it.

“Fixing the brokenness” through comphet.

Nothing is solved at all.

Falling asleep on a chaise longue plus blanket

Chapter 4:

Life as a socialite in Paris, concerts and restaurants, wearing clothes she hasn’t chosen

The Adrien routine, pulling chairs and flowers

It’s all miserable still, lots of “shoulds”

Fencing competition, fencing competition ahead. Tomoe is a terrible parent and a terrible coach.

Text conversations with Marinette, overdoes joy with emojis

The Bike Motive Returns, with more feelings, Marinette’s almost desperate gestures

(Kagami as the only person she can fully confide in, but still won’t)

An early birthday present… But Kagami is born in November, Marinette is a mess and so is her room.

Hug and first hint of reciprocated Marigami? Just the happiness of having someone like Kagami who admires her work as Marinette.

Falling asleep on a chaise longue plus blanket, part deux.

KAGAMI IN A SUIT!!!

Kisses on the cheek are really common in France, not Japan. A heavy kiss.

Dress or suit?

Marinette is a mess, texts at night. Difference between Adrien and Marinette’s texts, Adrien’s more self-centred.

No sense of space in Tokyo, jet lag and closed house. Closed spaces. 

Chapter 5:

I’m going to write a full chapter about sabre fencing and people will love it

Lots of sneaky (or not so sneaky) GL and Yuri manga/anime references. Make Juri Arisugawa part of the Jury.

All the locations are real

Marinette overdoes it again, Kagami can’t tell.

Kagami’s technique dissecting her opponents. She is a champion already.

Teach the readers about fencing whilst describing it. Have opponents be challenging in specific, understandable ways.

She chooses the suit. What even is subtlety.

As a side note: it was a really fun one to write.

Chapter 6:

Marinette internship phone call, Nathalie’s plan. No way Gabriel would accept to work with a kid. Flirting, Kagami as a muse?

The Foucault chapter. Everything is a prison. Restaurant, vertical stripes on wall as prison bars, the relationship, the self-locking car. This is no Utena car.

Everything is wrong, including the food

Adrigami friendship, much better than Adrigami romance. Rose/Chair. She doesn’t hate him at all, she just doesn’t love him… It wouldn’t work, she’s gay and he’s a liar.

Self-imposed gestures of affection.

Do not describe the kisses, they’re just a thing she has to do

Marinette is a mess, Ladybug is a mess, hell imagery, falling down a hole, almost dying. We are in the car with Kagami and we want to do something, anything, and we can’t.

Chapter 7:

The first step to things being alright again is to admit that they aren’t alright now

Nighttime conversation, Kagami letting Ladybug in

Marinette finally showing herself bare to Kagami but still tries not to until the dam breaks. Being a hero is miserable. Being the Guardian when you are a child with no guidance or support is miserable. Kagami as the only person she can trust.

Botched Lukanette date?

“I’m just so tired.”

“You are not a failure, you are so courageous, a genius fashion designer and my best friend”

(Additional note: I cried writing that passage)

Sharing the burden: help in more than just words.

“I hate that you have to see me like that.”

But showing your vulnerability and still being accepted as true love

Kagami truly sees Marinette now.

“Tutorship” and Tomoe being awful but excuse works. Help is material, homework, tidying up the room together.

“Stop feeling guilty about letting other people help you.”

Flirting hidden behind jokes, Kagami lying to herself. Way to ruin the mood.

Marigami baking.

Harlem 88, postal workers, acab

Watching television on the same couch, or rather watching Marinette watch television.

Umbrella scene with polka dots.

Kagami fully aware of her feeling and afraid of them, afraid that Marinette might feel the same

Chapter 8:

more fencing, Kagami absolutely rules

Worrying about Marinette alone with Gabriel, rightfully so, but can’t say that out loud

Stereotypical outdated Japanese-ness, Kagami can’t conform, doesn’t know how to put on her houmongi on her own. Tomoe and paradoxes, her daughter is both weak and “too muscular” at the same time.

The Palais Royal. The Buren columns are very climbable.

Gabriel, “quite miraculous”. Testing the waters, Kagami doesn’t notice. 

Jealousy when Adrien speaks of Marinette?

Ratatouille reference! Tatou. 

Tomoe playing the role of the exotic Japanese to be accepted. 

Drunk parents, drunk on power and self-satisfaction. 

Adrien’s kiss, forced to return it. 

Fear that Adrien might become Marinette’s muse

The bike motive once more

Barkk’s power is tracking magical signatures, each is different from the other

Marinette taking control over her own life, making plans to stop Hawk Moth instead of passively waiting for each attack, 

“She was never broken. She is in love with another girl.”

Marinette is in love with her too, but is ready to wait.

Chapter 9:

Adrien IS Chat Noir, up to the entitlement and his way of being physically affectionate. Stay true to canon and canon implications.

Adrigami/DJWifi double date, Alya means well but doesn’t know everything

Wordbuilding: of course the Ladyblog isn’t the only website ever, bad rival, Daily Bugle pun.

Not hating someone doesn’t mean you should be with them.

Hints of Adrigami friendship again, relief at avoiding romance.

Food at Kagami’s, cooker, formally perfect but not personal

Marinette and Barkk, closer to their goal

The Turtle Pearl bracelet: a shield, a great way to show feeling of danger, symbol of love

Kagami is the one to kiss Marinette on the cheek this time

Chapter 10:

Tomoe is a bad instructor episode 100

In which Adrien proves himself to truly be also Chat Noir, i.e. unable to understand personal barriers and entitlement. Still Kagami’s POV. He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, insistence≠playfulness. certainly won’t apologise

The bike motive again. Scenic road and conversation

Going to Orsay, definitely a date!

Chat Noir was moody during akuma crisis because of course he was.

Chapter 11:

Adrigami “break”, Adrien sucks at admitting that he’s anything but perfect and being confronted with that.

Kagami bluntness.

Adrigami isn’t about Adrigami, it’s about the Tsurugi family’s status and Tomoe terrified of consequences. Attacking the room instead of Kagami herself.

The Turtle Pearl glows when wearer feels endangered or imminent danger

The museum pictures, the two of them together

Aquarium date?

“Voice of reason” isn’t the voice of reason at all.

Barkk is in the bag, smells everything

Chapter 12:

Kagami as Tomoe’s messenger

Agreste mansion as a mausoleum, setting up the geography, security cameras, cold. Painting of Émilie, goal is near

Nathalie being extremely good at pretending she didn’t just knock that kid unconscious months ago, she’s awful and it’s great.

Marinette internship, Gabriel wears a bowtie… Resembles a butterfly.

Barkk in the bag, smells everything.

Stressful phone call, feels feverish, it’s him and that’s undeniable.

Marinette the detective.

“Thanks for being there for me”

“Thank you for trusting me so much”

Having dinner with Hawk Moth, it’s awful and stressful

No more chair/rose

Adrien is miserable but not aggressive. Building up to final fight

Chapter 13:

Meet the Dupain-Chengs, short, awkward, sweet moment

Marinette’s room, perfectly clean

From creepy stalker to detective, without downplaying the former or overplaying the latter

The two are complementary, very concrete things, 

The plan: catch Hawk Moth red-handed, take it outside and expose him to the world

How the Kwami Pearls work: just like the Miraculouses themselves, feeding off the host, only more brutal. Marinette trying to reassure Kagami

Re-explain Turtle Pearl and other powers, illusion, thunder, time-rewind and portal

Gabriel owns original Degas painting since they are both assholes

Adrien/Chat still not great at all

Ice-cream but no biphobia/lesbophobia this time, just a regular shop suggested by Juleka.

The Pont des Arts, no more locks, just like in real life.

The confession, the kiss: consent and everything is right, but also desperate. Marinette really wants to do it well.

Longg is back, also, hype

Side note: I cried writing this one.

Chapters 14-15

Ryuko infiltrating the mansion, all in the details

I hate that Hawk Moth’s lair is an actual real physical space in the show, but if this needs to be material, then so be it. He was allowed to turn his house into that because he got help from the Mayor/Audrey.

Chat Noir can’t fight, near breakdown.

Nathalie knew. Remake of first fight, only Ryuko has clear upper hand.

Having missiles in your house isn’t a good idea.

The Turtle Pearl serves its purpose at last, 

Gabriel mostly defeats himself on his own, hubris, the whole extent of his power dynamic with Nathalie

Going back to the Champ de Mars, 

Teamwork, taking the butterfly down. Chat Noir rejects his father entirely, cataclysm-ed akuma.

The mansion again, entirely destroyed, paintings of Émilie burning. Spell book and tablet recovered.

Chapter 16:

Taking the big bad down is useless if you don’t take down the power structures that allowed him to strive in the first place. Killing Voldemort only solves that much.

Discovering it all on a phone screen, shut-in

ACAB no matter your gender

They are just following orders and happy to do so, and Gabriel still has some power over them

Tomoe plays by the rules, even though these rules are awful

Kagami’s anger

Chapter 17:

Aquarium date, aquarium date! Fish facts

Kagami’s anger still, doesn’t die out, render it through environment and senses

Water as a healing motive, fish facts

Hot outside - cold inside, ice-cream

Kagami nearly blows out because of kids after being slightly soothed

The power of love is strong but it can’t solve everything.

Additional note: someone in the comments asked me if Kagami had ASD, and the answer is, I don’t know, you tell me! If you think she is on the spectrum, then she is!

Addressing Kagami being closeted, because there’s simply no other way. This isn’t good. Having to live hidden out of fear isn’t good..

The bike motive, + ice cream

Kagami uses the word “lesbian” for the first time to describe her own experience.

Chapter 18:

Tomoe has feelings and these feelings suck. Under the guise of rules, abuse.

Kagami fighting back.

Power is material, through connections and money, nothing that can’t be bought

Kagami’s first demonstration, don’t make it too violent but still ACAB

Nino and Alya as reporters, Julerose and Luka seasoned protestors

The Palais de Justice’s gilded gates are closed vs the crowd

Marinette using her powers for something other than Hawk Moth, strong stance but also still a 15 yo kid’s understanding of the situation

Chapters 19-20:

No tanabata because Tomoe is terrible

The rooftop terrace at last, more Marigami wholesomeness

Dupain-Cheng house vs Tsurugi house, the furniture and dishes, the meal, more Tom and Sabine

Marinette has been cut from her Chinese heritage, exploring that (callback to Mandarin app, chapter 1) and bitterness of it

Adrien moving on in England, still Plagg with him, he’ll become a rich prep boy

Marinette as a Guardians, her own spell book

Duusuu is devouring Émilie’s soul and neither Marinette nor Kagami knows

Françoise Dupont at night, fencing classes, Marinette moves like Ladybug

The future: it is bright but bittersweet, let’s talk about it together

And there was only one bed

Oh, to cuddle with your girlfriend in her bed for the first time

Watching the sun rise together, calm breakfast

Side note: I also cried writing this one.

Chapter 21, epilogue

A new beginning

Kagami turning her back on her mother almost entirely

The bike motive, but Kagami no longer needs Marinette to show her the way now

New school, familiar faces but not only

An ordinary bracelet for Marinette, but proof of love despite everything

End on their hands.

[ibeuchu]

{Diego x sister!reader}   Nuthouse

summary: After escaping the apocalypse y/n and her siblings are scattered over time in Dallas. One day, while looking through newspapers she sees a note about very familiar looking loony being kept in a local nuthouse… 

note: I just wanted to say it’s my first thing i have ever written so I’m sorry for the chaos, also english is not my first language and it’s just for fun. Let me know what you think! Enjoy xoxo

11 months and 14 days. Thats how long ago y/n landed in Dallas after an impressive time jump. However, no matter how impressive this time travel was, after a harsh landing at the back of the shops, it didn’t take much time for y/n to realise that something went wrong. No sight of her siblings. Anyone. She cursed under her breath. Of course it couldn’t go right. Nothing ever goes right with her family. It wasn’t perfect. Imperfect to say is quite a light word. Not to say dysfunctional. But after all, it was her family. After all that shit with funeral, Vanya and saving the world she thought that maybe… there is small chance… a tiny chance… to feel like a real siblings… Again. And first time. Like a real family that actually spends time together and talks with each other because they simply like it. Not because their father died or they have to find an owner of some bloody fake eye. But just because they are a family. Nevertheless she had to forget about it now. After searching for her family for weeks she actually gave up walking on the dark streets at night and looking for any evidence that might gave her hope to see her brothers and sisters again. During the day she worked in a fashion salon. With her artistic skills she quickly found a job as a helper of local fashion designer. Not to say her „futuristic” ideas were warmly welcome by the extravagant old owner. Deeply in her heart she thanked her father for drawing lessons. 

Despite moving on with her life she still had this feeling that told her it’s not over. Something is gonna happen and her family is no doubt involved in it. 

It was 8:50 in the morning and y/n was just about to finish her breakfast, sitting outside the local bakery sipping her black coffee and nibbling her croissant. 

Five would kill for that coffee. 

Stop. She couldn’t think about them now. Now she had a job to do. And it was to search all of the available newspapers about new deliveries to the haberdasherys. She needs to know when to buy new fabric and materials before the opponents do it. She heard a rumour that this week that one small shop at the end of the road is gonna sell silk. Very limited amount so she must be fast. While wondering if short, pyjama like silk dresses are a go for she turned last page. Some notes about missing people, some notes of wanted murderers, some notes about weidros from the local nuthouse. But just before flipping the newspaper off her gaze landed on these weirdos. On one of them to be specific. And to be even more specific on a dark haired man, with deep brown eyes and a sizeable scar going just above his right ear. 

This can’t be…

Or maybe it can…

If I survived the space jump then maybe… 

Nooo you’re working too much y/n your brain doesn’t work clearly…

No, what the fuck! I may be the one they should send to this madhouse but I’ll recognise my brother everywhere! 

And this is him… It’s Diego.

Next thing she knew she was driving blue Cadillac to the address she found in a phone book. She left old Carl note about urgent family business. 

He’ll be surprised. I told him I don’t have any contact with my family. Well that wasn’t a lie.  

After what it felt like an eternity she pulled on a parking lot outside grey building. She almost run to the entrance and next second y/n found herself sitting on a very uncomfortable chair with her hands on the oak table. When she sat there she finally let her brain do its work. 

What are you going to do now huh? 

What are you gonna tell him? 

Hi, what the fuck did you do to be put in a nuthouse in 70’s?? 

Or maybe hey, I thought you died??

Any of those options suited y/n. The fact they weren’t in a good terms before Vanya’s recital didn’t help. It was all about the same thing as always. Diego wanted to be a Batman, y/n didn’t like the idea of her being a Robin. Especially when they had to work together to stop their sister from starting an apocalypse. It didn’t sound like a perfect time to play superheroes and villains. Nevertheless things got complicated even more when Hazel and Cha Cha killed this lady cop Diego was fond of. His maniacal will to get a revenge didn’t go well with y/n’s cold calculating brain. Yes, she was a bit like Five. But only a bit. She slightly regretted that her smartass brother wasn’t there with her. 

He would know what to say. 

Maybe not something nice and fitting the situation… But still.

Lost in thoughts y/n was fiddling with her fingers but abruptly stopped when she heard the chair across from her being moved. Man wearing white hospital like clothes was standing behind it. He sat down slowly. The scar wasn’t visible under his long messy hair. He didn’t say a thing just sat there in silence. 

What did you do this time? 

y/n asked quietly her voice not cooperating with her. She half smiled though her eyes remained serious. 

I was just… you know… messing around. 

He chuckled lightly, his eyes never leaving hers. 

y/n couldn’t get over how much he changed. Physically that is. On the inside he was still the same old Diego, she knew it. His eyes didn’t lose that sparkle and y/n knew he was up to something. She just didn’t know what it was. Yet. 

How long have you been here? 

She asked when she managed to keep her voice steady. 

5 months and few weeks. But it won’t be long. 

What do you mean? She asked curiously.

He leaned in, their foreheads almost touching. It was weird to be so close to him after such a long time. Now she could see every detail of his face. A few new tiny bruises. Little scars, almost invisible if you’re standing next to him. And few wrinkles around his eyes. Well we’re not kids anymore she remembered herself. She wasn’t the only one who was studying their sibling. Diego was in a slight awe. She looked good. Like really good. Not like someone who has been literally thrown into different timeline in unknown city without family nor friends and somehow had to keep her shit together. She was really beautiful, Diego thought. And she has grown up. She always looked very young, her facial features stopped her in her 20s. But now she was more mature. More beautiful. 

He stared at her for a good while totally forgetting why they bent down. 

Well? What are you planning? She broke the silence a bit confused.

Oh yes…um… I’m sawing bars on the windows. It’s a matter of days they won’t see me again. He smiled mischievously at her. 

Well she was right, Diego changed only on the outside. Inside he was still the same goofball as always. 

5 minutes left! y/n heard the guard yelling

She smiled slightly and went to pull back when a hand grabbed her own one. She looked up. Diego stayed bent forward on the table holding her hand eyes glued to the oak surface. She slowly took a grasp of his hands returning to face him. When she was back only few inches away he looked up. His eyes were no longer cheeky and cocky. Now they gave her a warm look. Maybe a bit sad? No, not sad… maybe… She couldn’t figure out what was hiding in them. There were some emotions she couldn’t really locate. 

y/n… She heard him whisper quietly 

Being that close didn’t help. 

I-I-… I’m sorry… for everything…and- 

She shook her head firmly. The last thing she wanted to do now was to blame anyone. Especially someone who was so close to her heart.  

No Diego, its okay. Really. Everything that happened… it was a hard time. She gave him one of her smiles that make it impossible to argue with her. 

She slightly hung her head so he couldn’t see the sight of tears that appeared in her bright eyes. Here it is. Unemotional y/n in tears. Great.  She felt someone rest their forehead on hers. God how she missed him. All of them. He gave her small bit of feeling like it was all right now. She felt his firm grip on her bony hands. She lost some weight and it didn’t went unnoticed by Diego. His overprotective brother instincts kicking in but what could he expect? She had to work hard to face this new situation, not to mention it was y/n after all. Always caring for others, never for herself. 

She looked up. 

If ,as usual, something goes wrong with your plan- she heard him chuckle- I’ll get you out. 

She half smiled raffishly. He met her gaze. Giving her hands a final squeeze he leaned even closer and whispered: 

I think someone here has a hero complex and wants to save others. He smiled at her. 

Now y/n could clearly see what was hiding in his eyes. Well it wasn’t even hiding. He was just happy to see her. The happiest he has been ever since some carless childhood moments. 

Y/n snorted lightly. You’d wish.  Here we are, things getting back to new normal. 

Finally she straightened her back. It was quite painful considering the position she was sitting in. She stood up and circled the table heading to the exit. She put a hand on his shoulder when she was passing him, his eyes never leaving her figure. 

When she was just about to press the handle- 

y/n.

She half turned her head.

Have you already talked with five?

Before her brain could process the infromation- 

…I...WHAT?

[emsartwork]

Witch uniforms and power scale maybe?

yes! 

Both witches and fairies have a set signature magic color, but unlike fairies, whose transformations are generated by their subconscious, Witches are not limited to a specific color palate. While it is traditional to match uniforms to the witch’s signature color, many modern witches wear whatever they want and only loosely follow the traditional uniform guidelines. My winxsona here will be in more traditional styles. 

Novice’s only have the upper eye mark, this is equivalent to magic winx power wise. Apprentices have upper and lower witchmarks, but the shapes are not large or defined yet, this is equivalent to Charmix, but is a constant as opposed to the short burst charmix offers fairies. Graduation to full fledged Witches is marked by crafting an enchanted outfit. There clothes start as regular-non magical items, but are layered over with many different spells(such as a flight) and as a result it takes on a shimmery appearance. another common element is contrast edging on the bodice. 

Sorceresses (ex. Griffin) are a general power boost, they are very well rounded in elemental magic and are the most common witch profession. This is sort of equivalent to Harmonix but not really. Sorceresses are identifiable by their vest/coat-tails and metal necklace. The necklace is a little dangerous to craft, but not much more than normal metal working. They are used as either a conduit to channel and direct the witch’s magic(basically if a spell backfires on them the necklace would break instead of the witch) or a power booster (”vibing” with the witch’s magic in a way that increases the power)

Enchantresses (ex. the trix in season 6) are the most flashy witch profession and they have a significant boost in core magic production. They are incredibly good at attack and healing, but are left with little defense because they have so much of their focus on pouring magic out of themselves, as a result this witch profession is a little more dangerous to live in. Witches become enchantresses by wrapping themselves in a physical manifestation of their magic for three days and three nights, this can sometimes make the witch VERY sick(and in some singular cases it does result in death) instead of boosting their core. They are identified by metallic accents and gigantic sleeves.

Coven Matriarchs are becoming less common as magic school have mostly taken over the training of young witches. Most of the time Matriarchs are older witches who take a group of younger ones under their wing to provide training and fellowship. Depending on the witch’s history she could have different skills than listed as this is definitely more of a status position than a magical profession (like griffin as headmistress could technically be considered a matriarch but she prefers not to go by that because she has a large school instead of a bonded group) On earth, Witches did the smart thing early and went into hiding, keeping their magic hidden or avoiding using it to avoid attracting the wizards. Coven matriarchs remained in their uniforms despite the risk because it was important to them that younger generations knew they could have a safe and supportive community to go when they started developing magic, which is how the “witch” look was associated with pointy hats and cloaks, essential parts of the Matriarch uniform. They also pin their cloak with a broach that is connected to all of their daughters’(the term for younger witches in the coven) and sisters’(witches of the same age or older than the matriarch) cores, allowing them to sense when something is wrong, and draw on or guide the other’s magic if necessary. Matriarchs tend to develop strong conscious(and unconscious but i forgot to add it lol) magics as their role generally requires them to guide and grow their coven. 

Druids are one of the more solitary witch professions, often living as hermits or nomads far away from cities. Druids are masters in healing, being able to direct the natural magic in plants and the land almost as well as their own core magic. It is a little dangerous living as a druid, just because the lifestyle leaves a witch open to the wilds, and working with natural magic can occasionally backfire on you. They are identified by a wooden staff with a gem, and a tunic vest pinned across the chest. Many druids favor pants over skirts for ease of movement. Druids also have a high tolerance to Wild magic compared to other witches.

Priestesses(i spelled it wrong oops) are structurally ingrained in most societies, tho whether they are magic users depends on the individual. Priestess Witches connect to the natural magic around their temples, and are the point of contact for Ethereal fairies and the human population. They are blessed with some amount of Ethereal Magic. As always, dealing with Ethereal fairies can be fraught with danger and most priestesses hope to live an uneventful life in case the Ethereal they deal with is feeling cranky. Priestesses are identifiable by a floor length skirt/dress, sash, and metallic garland in their choice of magical plant(this one is belladonna/nightshade)

Mediums are a rare breed, needing to posses some natural talent for spiritual magic, a magic type that fairies don’t have a transformation relating to. the closest equivalent is time and unconscious magic, as mediums usually contact the spirits of people who have died(so they don’t have a conscious mind) in the past. Mediums are experts at sensing thin spots in the fabric of existence and spirits of all kinds(whether human or not) and are often used to cleanse spaces of negative ones. Though mediums can sometimes contact the dead, they are unable to bring spirits back to this plane of existence. Some Mediums have to take special precautions because they are so receptive to spirits they are easily possessed, which is why they wear veils and subdued colors. they are also identified by their crystal orbs, a tool used to clarify spirits and channel magic through it.

Psychics are like.... a less dangerous, redirected, sister of Mediums. While mediums can learn of the future from some spirits, their magic is usually directed towards the past. Psychics’ magic are directed towards the future, and they posses both conscious and unconscious magic as they divine the future usually through sorting through another person’s traits. Psychics are identified by their paneled belt and by their use of cards. The kind of cards used can be individualized as the Psychic will create her own language and connection with her cards, the most common used are very similar to earth’s tarot cards and are called Craft cards. Craft cards are also the inspiration for the Maiden, Mother, Crone card game which is the second most common card set to use and its what Tecna and Stormy are playing here!

Ancestral Type witches are a one-off category in the current winx timeline, only the ancestral have been seen in this form, and sometimes especially powerful witches are called ancestral with out actually being in this category. It is unknown what exactly caused the ancestral witches to reach this form, and while they weren’t blessed by the Ethereals as far as anyone knows, the bar for Ethereal magic is where scholars have decided to put their magic level because nothing else really seemed to compare. specializations in magic could also influence the other bars but i just did the basic. The core magic bar is technically OVER the highest levels recorded but the ancestrals are usually not counted in statistical magic analysis. Being at the level of Ancestral is incredibly dangerous and unstable. Ancestral power levels can be achieved by some witches but only for a VERY brief moment and have a lot of bad consequences afterwards. The ancestral “Form” isn’t quite a uniform, and isn’t quite a transformation either, its thought to be the high magic levels mutating the witch’s clothing. It’s identifiable by being terrifying the floor length tails, signature magic color becoming highly saturated and combined with black, some sheer aspects, glowing sections, and a “solid light” set of horns+symbol. The witch’s eyes also change to the signature color, the top mark becomes black and the bottom mark has magic leaking into it from the eyes. 

Hope this is understandable!