#and balance wasn't even a being or sentient

[fuck-you-too-world]

Okay, listen. I was just minding my own business and was reading a good fic (not DP unfortunately) and this come to my mind.

Hear me out!

Human Sacrifice

Danny died inside the portal actually cause him to be a human sacrifice for the Infinite Realm. So like the Zone needs some sort of sacrifice to keep it balanced but over time people who knows about the Realm or who left offering (you know like how people believe in small gods etc and left offering for them and the stuff? Yeah those things are what keeping the zone's balance).

But then some humans decide to disturb the already fragile balance that has been loosing it's hold after humans mostly stopped believing so much on the nature and the unseen. It was the first time human tempted to tear a hole through the dimension and now another hole is about to be made. (We all know who these humans are)

The Realm is already weak enough without the sacrifice and with its King gone mad long long time ago and is currently locked away, unless they found someone to replace the King and is compatible with the Realm. The next tear might cause the balance to finally tipped off and the barrier keeping both Realm separated would disappear. Causing chaos to break lose all over the dimensions.

But it seems the Balance itself won't take it and has already decide to take matter into their own hands.

A boy has died and survived the ceremony that day, making him the perfect embodiment of Balance as he is dead and part of the Realm with the ectoplasm inside him and yet alive for the living Realm still has its claim on him.

Alive yet dead.

The Balance has choose it's Host and champion.

The Human Sacrifice had been made.

[just-j-really]

Unsoulmates AU, part 6!

(Masterpost) (AO3)

"Have you found your person yet?" Morpheus asks, while Hob wrestles with their dinner dishes.

Hob had dragged Morpheus back to his flat to force some food into him after Morpheus had admitted that, with the opening date for Will's play drawing closer, he can't remember the last time he had a full meal. He'd sort of been expecting Morpheus to leave as soon as he'd eaten, since he'd only agreed to food in the first place because Hob had promised to reheat some leftovers and let him go.

He had, in fact, suggested several times that Morpheus consider things like going home and getting some sleep, and Morpheus had replied that sleep could wait until the problem with act two was fixed and-

The point is Hob isn't really sure why Morpheus is still sitting in his kitchen, asking him questions Hob's already answered, instead of doing either of those things, and it takes every ounce of self-control he has to derail himself from saying I think I did. I think I did, even if you find way too much amusement in my lack of spoon-washing ability.

What he says instead is, "Do you think Soulmates account for dishes?"

"What?" Morpheus asks, taking his seeming change of subject entirely in stride.

"They're supposed to be your Perfect Other Half, right?" Hob says, with only a little bit of sarcasm. "So does that mean my soulmate just loves doing dishes? To balance me out? Because that doesn't seem-" and then chokes on the rest of the sentence, because Morpheus has appeared at his elbow and taken the plate he'd been washing directly out of his hands.

"Oh, you don't- I wasn't asking-" Hob manages to sputter, once he's gotten over the shock. In that time, Morpheus has dropped the plate four times, splattered water all over his nice coat, and, crucially, made even less progress re: dishes than Hob was making.

"You can dry," Morpheus informs him, and that's that.

"Have you found your person yet?" Morpheus asks, through the door to Hob's flat. Hob had texted him- something, earlier, to let him know he was too sick to cook tonight, sorry. He's not sure what words he'd used, in hindsight. He's not sure they were English. He'd taken a nap immediately afterwards and woken up to find his fever finally gone down and Morpheus at his door with takeout.

Hob's not letting him in. He's not risking spreading this bullshit.

"You find 'em for me," Hob says, sliding to a seat against the door. It's nice, not to be standing. He might take a nap here.

Morpheus makes. A noise. A raspy, grating noise, like the sound that the concept of rusted metal would make if it were sentient, had some sort of lung disease, and was being tortured.

Hob is back on his feet and flinging the door open before he can think, coming face-to-face with Morpheus, who has one hand clamped over his mouth to stifle his-

Laughter, Hob realizes. With the context of the way Morpheus' eyes are sparkling and his hand is doing nothing to hide a wry smile, that horrific noise was definitely laughter. The weird little snorting sound he's currently doing an extremely unsuccessful job of muffling is him giggling.

It's hideous, and unrestrained, and adorable, and Hob immediately decides that he would cross and burn any number of bridges in order to hear him laugh like that again.

"I'll take the food for now, though," he says, voice hoarse in a way that has nothing to do with illness.

For some reason this sets off Morpheus laughing again, which means that despite the ache in all Hob's limbs and the fact that standing so quickly made the room start wobbling and his stomach churning, today officially gets marked as one of the best he's had all year.

"Have you found your person yet?" Morpheus asks, opening night of his and Will's play, the moment Hob pushes through the crowd in the lobby close enough to speak to him.

"You're asking me that now?" Hob replies. His eyes are still itchy from crying and he thinks he's going to need another week or so to be able to think clearly, after Morpheus methodically, delicately pulled his soul apart and rewove it into something better over the course of four acts, and he doesn't have the words to explain any of that so instead he just sweeps Morpheus up in a hug that lifts his feet from the ground.

Morpheus makes a startled little noise and clings to Hob's shoulders with both arms. "You're incredible," Hob says. He allows himself to hold Morpheus for one more moment, not long enough to matter to anyone but him, before gently setting him down. "Absolutely incredible. I don't- that was amazing. How the fuck are you this talented," he says. "I think you broke me."

In all the time he's been rambling, Morpheus has kept his arms around Hob's neck, perfectly still, like he's afraid he'll fall if he lets go even though his feet are firmly back on the floor. So Hob tugs him a little closer, and Morpheus sighs a little and leans against his chest, and Hob gets so distracted trying to preserve every detail of this moment in his memory that he forgets he was trying to explain to Morpheus how beautiful his play was-

And now they're just. Standing in a corner. Hugging.

Hob's life is perfect.

"Sorry," Hob says, eventually. "I should let you talk to people." The crowd around them is beginning to thin out, and as much as he wants to Morpheus all to himself he knows he should let him go mingle.

To his surprise, Morpheus shrugs. "That can wait."

It's a shot of sugary delight directly into Hob's bloodstream, and he can't restrain the smile that spreads across his face, over-enthusiastic to the point of hurting his cheeks a little. Morpheus wants to spend time with him! Specifically! Over reaping the rewards of the project that's consumed his heart and soul for as long as Hob's known him! Life is so wonderful!

Hob pulls out of the hug, just enough to scan the room. He's not familiar with this theater, but there has to be somewhere nearby they could slip off to, for a bit. Maybe talk a little. Maybe-

Maybe. Maybe Morpheus still has an arm looped around his shoulders, even though they're no longer hugging. Maybe Hob's arm is still around Morpheus' waist, and Morpheus has done nothing to shrug it off. Maybe, when Hob wraps that arm a little tighter, Morpheus only leans into him, lets his head drop onto Hob's shoulder. Even though there's a crowd around them, and anyone could see him nuzzling up against Hob in a way most people only do with their soulmates.

Maybe, Hob realizes, that crowd is so firmly clustered around Will not a single one of them would notice if he and Morpheus were actually, currently fucking. They're looking with Will with a sort of fervor that suggests he's going to start healing the sick with a touch or something. It doesn't seem like he's making any particular effort to direct them over to Morpheus, either, and sure Hob's been clinging to Morpheus for the past several minutes but Will's never seen that as a problem before.

"Wow," Hob says, not bothering to disguise his distaste, "Does he normally do this?"

"What?" Morpheus asks, sounding genuinely confused.

"This," Hob says, nodding at Will and His Adoring Public. They're still standing close enough that he barely needs to move his chin for Morpheus to understand what he means.

"It's his work," Morpheus says, his voice distant. "He deserves the credit."

Which is. Fair, Hob supposes. Probably. He could maybe even convince himself of that if Morpheus' expression weren't so resigned.

So he turns his head to Morpheus, close enough that no one else will be able to hear him, and says, "You deserve just as much. That bit where they hold hands in the last scene, after she dies? That made me cry. And I know that was all you." It was a tiny, subtle bit of stage directing that had the entire play's worth of meaning packed into it, of course that was Morpheus'.

Morpheus goes very, very still. The look on his face is less shocked than entirely disbelieving, like Hob had just recited some lost verse of poetry that archaeologists would sell their souls to rediscover.

"Don't deny it," Hob says, softly. "You broke my heart. Take responsibility," he adds, keeping his tone light enough that Morpheus can accept it as teasing even if what he means is Take my heart.

A small, pleased smile slips across Morpheus' face, and he melts back against Hob's side, lets his arm drop to Hob's waist. "I'm. In fucking awe of how talented you are," Hob says quietly. "And everybody else should be, too. You should have to wear sunglasses in public all the time to avoid getting mobbed by fans. There should be statues of you, and parades, and-"

"Yes, yes, alright," Morpheus says, elbowing him. He somehow manages to bring them even closer together with the gesture, so he's leaning more against Hob's chest than his side. "That part isn't important," he adds. "The play itself is. People saw it and it moved them, inspired them. That's what matters." His tone is the textbook example of 'haughty artist, far above mortal concerns.' It compliments his smile- satisfied, a little flustered- beautifully. What matters to Hob, at any rate, is that the confidence finally doesn't seem like a front.

"I still think you should get a statue," he murmurs, voice low, "But if you really don't mind missing out on all this, you wanna get out of here?"

[noneorother]

The art director & the Good Omens book cover tier list of doom, part 3

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3

I am your resident Art Director/Good Omens enthusiast, and welcome to my completely meta-free book cover tier list. Listen, making a book cover is HARD. I should know. But while we salute these artists for their hard work and time, I think we can all admit that once in a while, the vision is just not on. And on very rare occasions, publishers seemed to have managed to commission the cover art directly from hell... here's where we left off last time:

21. Labas zīmes, Latvian cover

Our boys are back! And they are so ready to join the Dead Boy Detective agency. I would say that Latvians don't wear much tartan, so Argyle might seem like a similar print, but it just seems so... not Good Omens. Much like Crowley's flying purple people eater tail and Aziraphale's Conan the Barbarian sword, we're straying into niche AU fan fiction territory here. I mean, it's not *wrong*, but it certainly ain't right, either.

Tier: Does the Job

22. Bons Augùrios, Portuguese

Let me start by saying this cover is so close to being in the blessed category. The layout and spacing are divine, the imagery is simple and whimsical, it reflects the humour inside the gravitas to give you an idea of the *feeling* of reading Good Omens. So few of these covers have gotten this aspect of good design right. Honestly, I would slow clap if it wasn't for that random FLAME JIZZ stuck to the bottom right hand corner of the book. Who's idea was that? Dagon's?

Tier: Great

23. Semne Bune, Romanian cover

I admire two things about this cover: 1) Their utter commitment to a clean 3-colour palette and comprehensible layout. 2) Symbolic demon giving a principality head joke RIGHT ON THE FRONT COVER. This designer had balls. cotillion-sized balls. Now, does Aziraphale's sword have a sentient rooster tassel that watches said head-giving in horror? I sure hope not, but I don't see how that could be allegorical so, I'm torn. I feel like this goes in two categories for completely different reasons. And seeing as I'm in charge around here...

Tier: Great & Not so Good (Omens)

23. Semne Bune, Romanian cover cont.

Compared to the last cover's gigantic double-entendre, this feels so tame and logical. The text is centred and balanced. There's breathing room, and we have wing symbolism! I've never seen a cover try to split Terry and Neil's names like that, which is a fun twist but BY GOD that center line is not straight near the right end of the feathers and it is sending this cover straight down to Does the Job. It's grounded there forever.

Tier: Does the Job

25. HYVIÄ ENTEITÄ, Finnish cover

In this list, having something actually *relevant* to the main plot of the book and not mangling and main characters really puts you in rarefied air. All the motorcycles are book accurate which means somebody read something! Would I have ever picked the empty parking lot of Famine's restaurant as a subject worth a cover? Absolutely not. But the sick 80s lightning tips it into "fine" territory. The text is yellow. It's pretty.

Tier: Does the Job

26. Head ended, Estonian cover.

My face after staring at this cover for ten minutes and finally realizing that this is Hastur and Ligur waiting around for Crowley to pull up:

The artist's face after watching me do that:

Do I even need to rate this? It's called HEAD ENDED. I don't know how to be funnier than that.

Tier: WTF

27. Dobry Omen, Polish cover

Some good points for trying to be original with the layout of the title by drawing a custom pitchfork "Y", but the heinous kerning and the fact the whole text block is not even centred kind of makes me take all the points back. I feel like we're pretty heavy on the demonic, extremely light on the angelic in this take. Maybe it's because on his death bed the lead guitarist of White Snake will finally admit to having designed this cover in his spare time.

Tier: Not so Good (Omens)

28. Good Omens, Hungarian cover

If I told you this designer did not read the book, and instead just watched the trailer of The Omen (the movie) and vibed this heinous brown carpet swatch into existence, you would one hundred percent believe me. I can't even talk about the faux belle-époque font right now. I am irrationally angry.

Tier: WTF

29. Good Omens, Bulgarian cover

WHO. IS. DADDY. WIZARD?? Is all I can think when I look at this cover. Aziraphale & Grommet are recognizable enough, and you could make the case for telescope monkey being Adam, but I need to find this cover designer and shake them until they tell me who this deranged Gargamel is supposed to be. I must know.

Tier: Bad

30. BELAS MALDIÇÕES, Portuguese cover

After all we've been through on this list so far, this truly sucks. It's not even weird. It's just puce text layered atop text to create a great yawn of a cover. Shout out to the designer of the Diablo PC game font, I hope you got paid.

Tier: Bad

Part 3 roundup:

[dronekittycuddles]

First OC post!! Hello!! Intro post coming soon but in the meantime - a little silly something i wrote during classes at uni. Enjoy!!

N patted his lap, an invitation. Uzi didn't waste time, immediately crawling onto the larger drone, burying her head into his shoulder. He chuckled, encompassing them in a gentle hug.

The two robots stayed like that for a while, N rubbing small circles on the other's back. Uzi fully relaxed into him. The disassembler's attention drifted from his girlfriend to the bag he brought with him. Right, snacks! N leaned slightly to his left, reaching for one of the battery packs on top. He pulled out a bundle of zinc-air buttons, Uzi's favourite.

"Uzi, baby." N spoke softly as to not spook his little. "Look what I got, your favourite batteries!" He took one out of the package and held it up to Uzi's face. She looked back, eyeing the snack, before burying her face back into him with a displeased whine. N frowned.

"Hey, buddy. Are you not feeling well?" He's met with another whine, this time much softer. She didn't want to admit it it seems, but to him it was a clear confirmation.

Gently, N pried Uzi away from himself, to check her temperature. The purple drone pouted as the back of N's hand met her upper screen.

"Hm, you're not overheating. I don't see any warnings popping up either..." He met Uzi's discontent glare, seemingly from being separated from her source of warmth and comfort. N thought for a moment before finally asking, "Is it your tummy? Do you have a tummy ache?"

Uzi grimaced and shoved her head back into N's shoulder. Bingo.

"Hey, that's nothing to be embarrassed about, little dude. We'll get you fixed right up." N already had an idea of what could help. He just had to figure out how to get up with an /extremely/ clingy little glued to him. He was pretty certain getting her off of him willingly would be borderline impossible, and the last thing he wants right now is to make her more upset than she already is. So, the tall drone moved his hand to support Uzi from the bottom and tried as best he could to stand up, using a wooden bedframe and his tail as balancing aids. He succeeded, carefully making his way into the kitchen, but not before grabbing a tall baby bottle from one of Uzi's drawers.

Fortunately, her father already left their shared apartment, and wasn't scheduled to return for another few hours. That meant N didn't have to rush or hide with preparing Uzi's little meal. Which was great because, to be quite honest, making anything while only having one hand available was going to take longer, whether he liked it or not. At least he had his tail, too.

N pressed on regardless, rummaging through the fridge until he found what he was looking for - a bottle of power steering fluid. It was much lighter on the stomach than oil, but could still help lubricate some of Uzi's internal mechanisms. Hopefully, that would be enough to solve or, at least, partially quell her problem.

At some point while N was busy doing his very best /not/ to spill the liquid everywhere, the little purple drone slowly readjusted herself on his arm so she could see what he was doing. She gazed at his every move with curious eyes.

N took notice of that, fixing his attention back to his little with a smile, after popping the bottle in a microwave for about a minute.

"What's up, buddy? Wanted to peek what's for dinner tonight?" Uzi didn't respond, but her expression seemed to brighten. She loved when N talked to her, he knew, even despite the fact that tiny Uzi wasn't very keen on speaking herself.

Suddenly, one bitey tail extended from Uzi's rear. Though instead of, well, biting, it only swished happily below her. N chuckled, making the other drone form a blush of embarrassment.

"Oh, what's that? Your friend decided to show up for some food as well?" Uzi's tail stopped wagging and bought its "head" up for N to pet and then promptly went back to swaying happily. It wasn't sentient, not really, but it was fun to pretend it was.

The microwave beeped, an unpleasant sound that N quickly silenced by clicking one of the buttons. He retrieved the warmed bottle, capped it and shook to make sure the liquid was all equally warmed. It wasn't very hot, which was exactly what he wanted.

"Okay." N made his way to the living room. Usually, he would return to Uzi's room, but now that the apartment was empty, he much preferred using the armchair. It provides much better support for both him and Uzi than a cold wall does, plus it's much more comfortable.

He sat down with a grunt and let Uzi adjust herself in his arms. With a bit of help, she laid down across N's lap, head resting on his metal bicep. The disassembler brought the bottle up to her lips. Uzi still hesitated, though, visor displaying a worried look.

"C'mon, buddy. It'll make you feel better." N used his 'trapped' hand to pet the little drone's shoulder. "Promise." He smiled softly.

That seemed to be enough to assure Uzi. Placing her hands on the bottle in a loose grip, she shyly took the silicone nib into her mouth and began drinking.

Almost immediately, N felt her body relax, warmth from the drink spreading through her insides. The purple drone's hold on the bottle tightened, prompting N to let go. He used his now free hand to draw small circles on her stomach, providing further comfort.

"Don't drink too fast." He didn't want her to choke on accident. But Uzi didn't seem to be in a rush, savouring all the pleasant sensations soothing her aching stomach.

After a while, all the liquid was gone. Uzi began chewing on the soft silicone with a content hum. It didn't last long though, with N removing the bottle from her grip shortly after. He was met with a whimper of protest.

"Zi, you know I can't let you chew on the bottle. You'll break it." He knows this, because it already happened. Twice. Neither of them were big fans of venturing out in search of a new one, but it was up to the disassembler to make sure they didn't have to.

In response, Uzi glued herself to the taller drone's chest, and... began nibbling his shirt.

"Hey!" N pried the material out her mouth, which earned him another whine. "My clothes are not for biting either, young lady! You have toys for that!" He scolded his little, but quickly shifted tones. He didn't want Uzi to think he was /actually/ mad at her. "Speaking of, we should probably get you some, huh, ya little shark?" N booped the other drone square in the middle of her display, making her giggle.

He got up, making sure both the bottle and Uzi were secure in his grasp, and made his way back to the bedroom.

This time, Uzi wasn't as opposed to being torn away from N, but still complained with various noises of dissatisfaction once set on the bed. The other drone gave her a quick forehead kiss.

"I'll come back to cuddle in a second, okay? I'm just getting the toys for you."

Soon, he was done rummaging through drawers, picking out two teethers; a blue bird- shaped water one and a hard one, attached to a plush crocodile - and a black pacifier, strapped to a lanyard clip patterned with happy dogs. N really liked that one.

The taller drone smiled as he laid down on the bed, opening his arms. Uzi pressed herself against his side, one hand grabbing for a teether. N let her choose which one she wanted - his little went for the bird.

Uzi released the hoodie sleeve she was mercilessly mauling and slipped the soft plastic between her lips. Now, tightly snuggled against her boyfriend, the purple drone began to feel drowsy.

N took notice of that, and without missing a beat came up with an offer.

"Want me to tell you a story, little buddy?"

Uzi perked up a bit at that, her tail wagging rapidly. N was really good at making up fantasy stories on the fly, or so he's told. But the fact that he isn't reading means that, every single time, the story is different. Which is why Uzi loves them so much.

N chuckled, dragging a fluffy comforter over both of them. He pulled Uzi closer, her brilliantly purple eyes looking straight up at him.

"Okay, so, once upon a time..."

------

It didn't take long for sleepiness to overtake Uzi - they barely made it halfway through the story before [SLEEP MODE] appeared on the girl's screen. N took that as his cue, slowly taking the falling teether out of her mouth and replacing it with a pacifier, which he gingerly clipped to her hoodie.

After turning off the bedside lamp, N enveloped Uzi in a tight hug and closed his eyes.

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

[lol-jackles]

hey! so, I want your opinion on soulless!sam, because I think jared did a great job playing this other version of sam

Soulless!Sam was a great character. I loved that in the beginning of season 6, he wasn't just acting as a SoullessSam, he was acting as SoullessSam faking being the real Sam for Dean, and there were many times where he almost but not quite convincing pull it off.   Speaking as someone with a theater background, I was impressed with how Jared pulled it off as I wouldn't know how to approach that role. Often actors play the fake character fully as if they are the real character until the ta!da reveal.

First, what is a soul? In the SPN-verse, the soul is the person’s self.   We’ve seen the souls of Dean, Sam, and Bobby in Heaven and Hell and they appear to be no different from themselves on Earth. What makes up the self is the conscious, subconscious, and emotion, which I like to call the trinity.

When we see soulless people on the show, they give into their worse impulses because there were no trinity to hold them in check. Some feel free once unshackled of their soul, some shackle themselves to prevent hurting others, some make the cold calculation for the "greater good", and others rely on people they admire for guidance. When Sam, Donatello, and Jack lost their souls, they cycle through those four reactions.

SoullessSam felt he became a better hunter when unshackled by a soul, but he also let Dean get turned into a vampire and killed Robin to take way the monster's leverage. Skill and rationality does not necessarily make for a great hunter. It has to be a balance between knowledge and the heart in order to make the best possible decision under the circumstances. Sam is all about the heart and always listening because he wants to help. SoullessSam has no heart and only listens to figure out how to mathematically come to the best scenario, though without taking in the value of an individual life.

SoullessSam's worst impulse was to tell the truth without softening the blow because he no longer feels the love (or guilt or shame) towards Dean or others. But without emotion, Soulless Sam can't make decisions for himself because all arguments are equal; emotions are the tie breakers. Dean recognizes this when he saw how blindly SoullessSam followed their grandfather's order.  Then Sam left their grandfather to follow Dean even when he knew that Dean's endgoal for him was not in his best interest.

I was sympathetic for SoullessSam because he lived and experienced life, he's a fully sentient being and none of us could really blame him for trying to protect himself from being resouled, as he knew it would mean his death. In the end, Soulless Sam wasn’t evil, he just didn’t care.

.

Though SoullessSam said he did not love Dean, he still fell right back to the codependency pattern due to a lifetime of being brothers. It was basic Sam actually guiding Soulless Sam, not Dean. Sam has always taken responsibility for his actions (as those of others). Soulless Sam had access to all of Sam's memories, including his "it doesn't matter what you are, it only matters what you do" creed. It would have made sense for SoullessSam to adopt the creed that seems to be the heart of Sam's motivation and used it as his guide. And it can be reasonably argued that Soulless Sam is proof of Sam's inherently goodness. With Sam's memories and skills, SoullessSam could have done whatever he wanted and leave a trail of destructions. Instead he returned to the family business of hunting things and saving lives, despite the flawed execution of it.  

[goodboyaudios]

So I was rewatching the "betraying your friends" ep from MOTH, and was wondering something...when Cataclysm offered power to Zed, what if he DID accept it? What would happen then?

I actually made a while AU about this on Discord so I'm happy to share it here!

I'm now calling it: BIRTH OF THE SECOND SUN In this timeline, Mirrin is killed by Mahann and Zed is humiliated by Mahann and Gienne. He does manage to snatch away the Demonomicon, but he is truly alone with no one to warn him or comfort him in any way. Without hesitation, he accepts Cataclysm's offer…

After accepting Cataclysm's gift for power, Zed becomes a sorcerer of Untempic and Faenic elements. He is now just as powerful as the guardian, but while the guardian has a balance on such energies, Zed does not. On top of that, the quick influx of power overwhelms him, forcing him to go crazy, but he doesn't become the next Anarchanist, he transcends it. He sees things beyond normal perception, witnesses events that may never happen, but always had, he decides to continue where his long deceased mother left off.

He teleports straight to Makkaro's house in a display of divine fury. Makkaro, realizing the power Zed has received, panics and flees to his castle, narrowly avoiding his death. He knows its only a matter of time before Zed finds him again. He summons forth the Snake Titan and prepares for battle. Both of them are connected in some way to Cataclysm and they both have similar goals, but while Makkaro wants to do it in the name of justice and revenge, Zed wants to do it to unify and prepare the Manasians for something that could spell the end of everything. Just as Makkaro has set up a few rudimentary defenses, Zed appears.

The battle is hard fought and the effects are felt across the world. The undead and vampires pose no threat to Zed and are instantaneously dealt with. The snake titan is the only edge Makkaro has over Zed as its body cannot be destroyed, nor can it even be penetrated by anything from Manas. Even the Guardian couldn't defeat it. So instead, Zed, being the little smarty-pants he is, uses his incredible power to create time magic out of thin air, and using it to reset Shee Khan into it's original form. It is now alive, containing its soul that was once trapped in the desert of Shee, and it is pissed off at Makkaro.

But Makkaro isn't a fool either. He wasn't sure if Shee Khan would be always willing to serve him, so he implanted magical runes within the body of Shee Khan to send it back to the desert if something were to go awry. The downside of this teleport is that it causes massive seismic and ecological damage to the ocean, creating chasms and sending tsunamis to the east and west. Now, its just Zed and Makkaro. Makkaro attempts to reason with Zed. He asks him what he wants, to which Zed responds, "To crush any opposition". Makkaro realizes that he has no choice now, but to fully submit himself to the demonic magic. In order to prevent this tyrant from rising, he must become what he was doomed to be. A Lich Anarchanist. After submitting to his dark power, the fight truly begins…

Raze, the Guardian, hasn't been able to be touched, because the magic that gets near her cell fizzles away to nothing. However, that doesn't stop the shockwaves from knocking the walls loose and allowing Raze to rescue Taurus. Upon reuniting and seeing Zed and Makkaro go at it like Dragonball characters, Raze intervenes. She realizes she can't kill either of them as Makkaro's lich form seems to be un-killable and Zed is using BS time magic. As she looks at the two fighting, she remembers the time she entered through the Lightmaster engines. She recognizes that these two, through their conflict have become a source of infinite power. They have become the sentient light.

While I'm still thinking about this, I'd like to say Raze also made Makkaro and Zed dream in the Second sun. In this dream, Zed and the guardian went on an adventure and ran into Detective Aetherward and Gienne on another case. While working together, Zed realizes that he just wanted a family and Makkaro and Gienne have talked about children. In this timeline, Makkaro and Gienne are safely together without threat from the family. And Zed's family isn't murdered, but just travels a lot and doesn't have as much time for him. Zed becomes adopted by Makkaro and Gienne and even becomes a big brother to their birth child. The Guardian watches over them as a close friend and even helps Zed reunite with his long lost family on occasion. But in the end, it's just a dream shared by two dying consciousnesses.

[polvuz]

just watched tazercract's last vod (in prison) and omfg. we might've finally got a opening to destroy the federation.

tbh I never was very fond of walter bob or any other minion, because to me that's all they're— federation minions. but this stream opened my eyes.

they are Not just minions, they are their own person. I've seen many people saying they the inhabitants gave some minions personality (like walter bob getting his name and appearance because of them) and yes I totally agree! but also, the prison guards already have a personality. and as far as I know, they first direct contact with sentient beings was with tazercraft, in prison. like backpack guard saying his name is classified? I don't watch many povs, so it could be news to only me, but since when the federation workers have names? since when they have -or rather, known- their existence as a Living Being With Consciousness? without having to be Given by others? hell, even cucurucho doesn't have a name. he tolerated to be called like that because humans, especially, crave significance, so obviously they'd give him a name. and he is even gone far by acknowledging and taking it as his own.

but that's all because of human interference.

now, at the end of the stream.

walter bob frequently did Not reciprocate mike's (numerous) hugs tentative throughout the entire episode, but in the end he Did hug mike back. this, to me, show how organic, alive, and emotional walter bob is. completely opposite of cucurucho.

if it was cucurucho, rather than any other minion, then it would've been 100% less emotional. "I want to escape!" "no." and so on. if walter bob was like cucurucho, then he would NEVER do anything. pac and mike want to escape? who cares. they feel sorry for breaking rules? no one asked.

the guards are, too, different. they were playing and talking lightly with tazercraft and walter bob whenever they felt like. pac talked so fondly of pancho that backpack guard decided to give him a whole PIE even though pac wasn't hungry anymore! the pan guard always listened to tazercraft! and even thought they were aggressive and violent against the prisoners, it's clearly they are alive.

when walter bob was took away, he was looking at tazercraft, as if either saying goodbye or for help. may be my mind, but he looked in despair to find out his first ever opportunity of being happy was teared away from him. and then the guard's message: "this is for my partner, you will not see your friend again." this has so many emotions. grief. anger. frustration. pain. revengeness and even denial. he is Not like cucurucho. he is like everyone else. he has feelings, he has a personality, he has a soul and a consciousness.

and where do I want to go with this? well, knowing all of this, the inhabitants might have a chance against the federation. the federation is strictly -might even say religiously- rational. everything done is done for a bigger, logical reason. no action is taken before being planned, calculated and accepted. not a single detail is left out and if it is, its for a reason. but they lack emotion. they lack life. and the inhabitants -the order- is full of it. they have emotions, they have life, they have logic, they have death. they have everything in balance. we have walter bob, who doesn't not want to be on the federation's side anymore. we have backpack guard, that despite developing an hatred towards pac and mike, he might be coerced to go against the federation (it's not like cucurucho will console him or treat respectably his grief, so he might turn his back at them).

and yes, I know this is little comparing to the federation size, ammo, technology, etc. but fuck it. you don't overthrow someone without doing little by little.

[thewisaaaaad]

Ok, I forgot to talk about the Sins, even though they are a cornerstone of my AU. WHOOPS

So the sins: what are they? Well they are sentient manifestations of a specific flaw taken to the extremes. For instance, there is a vast difference between being proud of a job well done, and being proud of hurting someone else for fun.

Anyways, these were a byproduct of the creation of the world. they were meant to motivate mortals, but instead they got a little out of hand because there were no limits on them. So, the Celestial Beings (or Old Gods) had the crowns made as a countermeasure, and to ensure mortals sought them out for a cure to their sins, they gave the crowns power over natural phenomena, such as the moon, the sun, and yes, death.

However, the crowns are imperfect, as all things are. Though the gods were immune to sin growing in their own hearts, that didn't mean that it couldn't come from elsewhere. And once the crowns were passed on to mortals, the sin that had festered in life wasn't simply erased.

When the gods began to vanish in the lands outside the old faith, Sin ruled. People were twisted into monsters, even objects could be affected and turned into slavering beasts, and fear ruled. That is the land that Jalala comes from. There are no cults, there are no gods. Only hell on earth, or heaven to the sinful.

Now, I wanted to talk about WHY the crowns become infected with sin. This is because, as I stated, each crown is imperfect. each has a sin that it is vulnerable to. And these sins in no way reflect the will of their bearer.

For the green crown, the will of chaos and order, its weakness is Wrath. That Sin will turn the once lush forest of Darkwood into a toxic swamp, filled with all sorts of poisons, including whispers that drive those brave or foolhardy enough to remain to attack those that trust them.

For the yellow crown, the arbiter of feast and famine, its vulnerability lies with Gluttony. The Sin burns bright, seeking to consume the entirety of the fertile lands of Anura in its blaze. The empty husks of creatures not quick enough to flee wander the wasteland, a fire burning where their stomach once sat.

For the blue crown, master of plague and cure, it falls ill to Sloth. This Sin, rather predictably, doesn't do much, but its mere presence sends the balance into dissaray. Ice coats the surface of the ocean of Anchordeep, the sheet trapping the faithful within its walls. That same sheet drops pillars of ice flowing from the surface, freezing those unfortunate enough to not see it coming. Frozen corpses drift through the quiet city, searching for a warmth they can no longer call their own.

The purple crown, emblem of war and wisdom, it falls before Envy. This Sin has no real power of its own, driving its hunger for any scraps it can claim. It turns the caverns of Silkcradle into trap infested nests, the designs stolen from the memories of jealous hunters, the halls staffed by death machines crafted in the minds of long dead inventors who wished to do away with a rival. Arcing sparks of electricity light the rooms and bar doorways, taken from a god who long held envy in their own heart.

Greed was always here. Unlike their siblings, they saw the risk that was being taken and chose not to gamble. Loosing everything was simply too likely, and so they stayed in their lane, slowly coaxing mortals into achieving better results for higher rewards. They are NOTHING like their sibling, and only takes what is offered. They cling tightly to what they have earned, and will aid the new crown to see it stay that way.

Bloodlust does not have a realm. the only thing they leave behind is bony trees that bear fleshy fruits hanging from its bear branches, and those fruits seek only to water the roots with blood.

[spaced-out-human]

Cecilia

Sounds are powerful. Most sentient species, however, have a limited vocal range. Your average being makes soft clicks or low rumbles at best. Their languages took millennia to develop- and the latter half was often purposeful. After all, why wouldn't anyone want to edit their genome if it makes life easier?

The species that can make noise don't have much control over their pitch. They don't need to. Others "hear" with specialized pads, designed to pick up the slightest vibration... (Don't ever touch them, you hear?) Anyway-

You know how the human voice can literally break glass? Yeah, so do the higher-ups in any organization that knows what they're doing. In the Rhusngi's Immigration fleet, crews are chosen through a complex AI system. Applications take Jovian aeons to process- But this ain't Rhusngi Immigration.

There's no one name for what we are. A bunch of idiots, taking random jobs here and there- wait, what? No, we're not- We just do deliveries! *unintelligible alien muttering* Sure, it can be dangerous, but we're not stupid. Our crews communicate, for Dsheng's sake.

I understand your concern- Ship 7 does have a more, er, potent blend of species... they balance each other out- The two humans? Hhhhhhharmless. *xe hisses, frustrated.*

｡.:*☆*: .｡:*.:*☆☆*

"Aaaaaalright, Bumblebees! Another day, another dollar! Everybody, up, up, up!"

Kit's voice crackled with enthusiasm and static. It reverberated through the black-and-yellow ship, signaling the start of another shift. Satisfied, she hung up the mic and turned to complete her video log.

"Today marks Gregorian-month three of employment. Most of the crew have been here for years- that's what Faizan says, at least. I bet he knows the exact date and time everyone joined. Hell, he probably has a spreadsheet with everyone's information in like six different languages... Getting used to him has been rough, not to mention living with other species-"

"There have been some difficulties, sure, but yeah. It's made us closer, I think. -Besides, now it's even. Seventh ship, seven crew members!" Faizan chimes in, startling the teenager.

"OH hey Faizan-" They pause their recording. "-how long have you been here? Don't you have to be securing deliveries or something?"

He chuckles. "Already did. Two dozen boxes of cargo, and all of them need scanning." He holds a small device up to his mouth and speaks into it, making a series of clicks. A rather versatile language, quite like morse code. For Kit, he spoke in English. "That means you too- be at the loading deck in 5."

☆☆

A mantis-like insectoid paced across the cargo hold, complaining in her native language.

"Eh, they're on time when it really matters." Faizan answered. "Give 'em a break, Needih."

It wasn't until after the rest of the crew gathered that Kit burst through the door. They braced for a lecture, but it never came. "Kit, you and I are unloading today. Needih has the scanner." The two got to work, moving packages from the hatch as the rest of the crew chattered away. Their cargo wasn't particularly large today, nor moving- thank God.

"Kit, you need to..." Faizan started hesitantly.

"...I don't know what could possibly happen for you to start managing your time better. More chores, perhaps?"

Kit frowned when he stopped talking-

"You know you're breaking my heart..." They turned the sentence into a melody.

Faizan stopped in his tracks, a smirk on his face.

"You're shaking my confidence, daily." He replied.

--Here's a link for y'all--

He didn't know what he expected- The song was old. Really old. And Kit had never even set foot on Earth...

Kit started tapping the side of the box and stomped to a rhythm Faizan hadn't heard in forever-

"...'Celia... you're breaking my heart..."

Faizan's eyes lit up. Of course Kit sang the higher part, and of course he knew the lower one.

"You're shaking my confidence daily!"

Needih was in awe. She felt her shell shake with the vibration- it was impossible to describe. Sometimes, on her home planet, wilder sounds would align- but that was incredibly rare. Almost mythical. The crew all "heard" in different ways. We're lucky 'cause they're similar enough to communicate...

"...I'm down on my knees, I'm beggin' you please to come home!"

Jaws dropped. Scrounge and Sdaer put down their drinks, eyes wide. Scrounge let out a deep rumble and tilted his ursine head. Faizan rolled his eyes and kept singing- the crew had never seen him like this...

The two humans sang like nobody else was in the room. They felt a sense of belonging, of harmony, like nothing else in the universe.

For the first time in years, Faizan dropped the package. He and Kit tapped out a beat on every available surface- the walls, the floor, even the boxes. And they laughed. It scared the hell out of the rest of the crew, who were too stunned to do anything but stare.

Goodness knows how Kit was able to sense Faizan's movements before they happened- and vice versa. Sure, they both missed a beat here and there but what did you expect? They're only human.

"Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!" He exclaimed, conveniently skipping to the good part. Kit grinned.

☆☆

"God, I haven't sang in years..." Faizan paused and looked around the room. The crew was just. In shock.

"To, skh..." Sdaer struggled with the English. "To quote you, what the fUCK was THAT?"

"That was harmony." Kit said with a smile. And the humans just? Got back to work? Kit hummed softly, and Faizan smiled (without baring his teeth, to be polite- as if he and the newbie didn't just break goodness-knows-how-many-galaxies' regulations).

[sunwarmed-ash]

Fucking friday- fic preview 2

@sweeteatercat asked for what I had so here's yet another DBH one-shot I'm working on

complicated hankconvin, angst and draaaaaamaaa

A lot can change in a near decade. 

Androids, for instance. They went from cell phones to sentient beings with rights in half that time. Case and point, the heavy influx of android officers post revolution and the reinstatement of one specific RK800 to the police force. 

Hank Anderson is another example. He has gone from, top of the academy, number one father and husband, to disgraced, angry, grieving father with a disciplinary record as thick as his dick. 

Then there's Gavin. Gavin who’s never been the same since Toni.

The world changed, but he just didn't. Couldn't. He felt halted in place by that one specific, traumatizing moment in time. His skin sure didn't forget the event, how could he expect his mind to?

Now, It's 2040. The Robot Revolution that started in Detroit and shook the world has started to balance back out. Things are different, some good, some bad. And that includes life at the DPD. 

In terms of androids and Hank, they are great. Too phcking great for Gavin’s preference. The star pupil and mentor duo are all just about married at this phcking point. The plastic replacement is even living with Hank and Sumo. Where Gavin wants to be. And it hurts so bad that Gavin has missed every one of his chances with Hank. 

Connor makes Hank laugh at something, so loud Gavin can hear it all the way across the bullpen. It fills Gavin’s throat with bile spurred on by his irrevocable jealousy. Connor wasn't even human, and yet Hank has gone from Connor’s biggest threat to his biggest obsessor.

So much for still blaming them for killing Cole… 

Gavin’s gotta get out of here. He can't watch them anymore. He needs air. 

“Going to smoke,” he says to Tina who barely even acknowledges him, nose deep in her phone swiping through Tinder. Gavin wishes he could trust casual sex enough to use the app. But not after Toni, Jason, and Eric. 

Never again. 

-

His hands are shaking so hard he drops his lighter three times onto the half frozen surface of the smokers patio. He phcking hates today. Hates Anderson. Hates his plastic replacement. Hates that he will never be good enough for anybody again… Hates that he’s so ruined.

He’s three pulls into his third cigarette when his fist comes in contact with the bricked pillar. Pain shoots through his split knuckles and radiates up his dominant arm into his shoulder. It still doesn't hurt as much as being alone does. Having nothing and no one. He’s old (37), he's damaged, (seuxally truamatized beyond repair), no one wants him (why would they?) Not in the way he wants them. Ever.

All that’s left for him is a lifetime on this endless, repetitive cycle. Forever. 

Something drops and splashes behind him. It takes him a moment to check back in and realize who and what it was. 

The what, was coffee. Rapidly cooling and soaking into the bottom of his pant leg. 

The who was Connor, Anderson’s new phcking soulmate, who stands there with his dumb mouth open wide enough to catch flies. His eyes are on Gavin’s hand, which now that Gavin looks at it he can see it’s bleeding. Alot. 

The overwhelming feeling of being caught sends Gavin’s defenses reeling.

“PHCKING WHAT?”

Gavin watches as Connor shows fear for the first time ever. Good. leave me the phck alone. 

“I-I…” Connor said, looking at the empty styrofoam cup and reaching to pick it up. He doesn't look at Gavin’s hand again, but he finds Gavin’s eyes and that's worse. “Detective…”

“The phck are you doing out here Connor?”

His LED flashes yellow.

“I...I was bringing you a coffee.”

Gavin scoffs. Yeah fucking right. 

“Why?”

“A peace offering.”

A peace offering?!

“For what? Am I not leaving you alone enough?"

“Yes. Well, I suppose that's the root of the problem. I don't, want you to ignore me.”

Was Connor joking? Did Gavin fall and hit his head? 

“You want me to go back to picking on you?”

“No. I just- a fresh start? For the both of us. Maybe? We are coworkers now and I think it-”

Gavin’s disbelieving scoff is mean. 

“No thanks. I’m not really looking for any friends.”

Connor looks genuinely upset by the rejection and Gavin doesn't know what the phck he exspects. What the hell would they even have in common? Except for a hard on for Hank. 

“Very well. Can I get you something for your hand Detective? It's still bleeding.”

“Get the phck out of here Connor.”

-

When Gavin comes back from the bathroom he can feel Connor’s eyes on him. He ignores him. He doesn't understand why the android suddenly cares. No one has cared about or even paid attention to Gavin Reed in a very long time. 

-

“Hank I have to tell you something.”

Connors' tone has Hank's eyes widening in fear.

“Oh, okay shit, is everything alright?”

Connor's LED flicks between red and yellow.

“I- don't know. I think I witnessed something I feel compelled to report. But I’m worried about betraying this person's confidence.”

“Uh, okay, well, um, is someone else’s life in danger because of this… event?”

“No.”

“Is this person a danger to themselves?”

“The potential for that… is high.”

“Shit… It's someone here?”

“...Yes.”

“Do I know them?”

Connor laughs ironically.  

“Yes.”

Hank’s quiet for a moment and then, 

“...Shit.”��

Connor’s LED is a steady pulsing red.

when Hank’s trained detective eyes land on Gavin who had just sat back down from the bathroom, Hank stands and sighs.

“I’ll handle it.” Hank promises.

[crescentblossom66]

Prompt 11 Foreign

Hat Kid looked back down at the planet that she had lost her time pieces on for the last time before leaving to return home. Mafia Town had been a strange place already, the first thing that she found was out of order were those comically large meat-on-a-bones that the Mafia were balancing and rolling on. Was that just the quickest way to transport them, if so, it was super unhygenic and was likely ruining that meat. Even the layout of the island was strange. Unless one could jump as high as her, it was nearly impossible to get around...she really wondered how the less than agile Mafia Goons could get around.

Dead Bird Studio was not much different. From the fact that a whole country of sentient birds being absurd, to the fact that a movie studio in a hostile environment, such as a desert, to birds making movies, all of it was so strange to her. Why were penguins in a on the moon and then went down to the desert? What kind of bird was the Conductor? And how was that studio even standing in the first place, there was a huge void under it and its structure was standing on sand! This whole building was a lawsuit just waiting to happen. Another weird thing was the train, how could it have so many rooms? It should have been one straight forward line, yet it had huge rooms on the sides, just what was up with that?

Subcon may just have been the strangest of them all though. From the marshes with those creep water hands trying to drag you under, to the area west of the stumb of her BFF. How was that area burning seemingly forever? Those statues were very scary too, maybe the scariest things in that forest. The way they chased after her at such high speeds after barely being out of her vision had nearly caused her to stumble and fall. Those fire spirits erecting those walls that caused her to be unable to preceed, requiring her to literally kill them had been a hassle...and a burden on her mind had she not been soulless at the time. The whole existence of the minions and Snatcher and the queen was baffling her as well. They were dead, right? So could they still be around?

Alpines were mostly normal, except the Twilight Bell, she still had no idea how it had transported her to a different dimension entirely. Also, how did they get those banners to come out after blowing those strange horns? The air up there was so thin that getting enough air to blow inot them was a very hard task for the nomads, it wasn't up to debate that if she hadn't activated those things, the nomads had no way to even get to the other areas...how did those goats move between mounts, did they climb? They certainly were to heavy for the lines to carry them to other places.

All things considered, this planet was very weird, yet she wished that she could have stayed just a little longer, but she had to make it home. Perhaps one day, she'd return.

[possumcollege]

I dont know how it took me till you posted that most recent sole survivor art to learn you were a fallout enjoyed, it fills me with joy. Fave companion/storyline?

Of the main companions, I think my favorites are Dogmeat, Nick, and Piper, but I've probably brought Ada along more than anyone.

I really love the character of this robot, built by a band of survivors from spare parts, developing attachments and feelings. I appreciate her trying to square the conflicting input of grief and justice at the point where neither really fixes anything unless the root of that injury is repaired. Ada's friends died because the robots programming was flawed and lacked the ability to see struggling humans as viable, not because Isabel wanted them to kill. At that point, killing her would be cathartic but it punishes her for a mistake she rekt didn't intend and lowers us to the level of the other wasteland factions who perpetuate the broken exterminationist view of conflict. It lets Ada continue to grow as a living being in spite of her loss and status as a robot. It's something I love about Ada in my interpretation that I felt was lacking in my impression of Curie.

The game wants to give us a romanceable female synth who is even less experienced than we are, so porting a robot's memory into a "human" works but that's a bit cheap for my taste. I don't dislike Curie but I would've enjoyed the option to help her realize a human body wasn't strictly necessary to help people. Developing the "humanity" in a machine feels more in line with rebuilding a better world than finding ways to eliminate the anthropocentric limitations of machines in a world where they can be fully sentient.

And yes, I think you should still be able to romance Robot Curie. It seems to work for Mr. Zwicky and Miss Edna! I think that's sweet and let's be play this as a world where people realize joy is precious wherever you find it instead of queueing up Curie's emergent personality. We see plenty of other robots with fully functional autonomous identities. The ability to accept them for who they are and can become in spite of their origins is a wonderful aspect of the world for me.

In general, I like keeping folks around and trying to give them another chance to make a go of it in the Commonwealth without the Institute or the Brotherhood trying to pull the strings from above or below. I try not to kill anyone I know I don't have to unless they're going to keep trying to kill me.

I've destroyed the Prydwen and the Institute every time, but I wish there could've been opportunities to bring a few BOS characters over to my side in the process, Proctor Ingram, in particular. I also like that there are hard choices to make though, that characters you would want to join you can just have incompatible ideology and loyalty.

For the game's sake I back the minutemen and the Railroad, but ideologically, the Atom Cats are my "faction" of choice. They're good people, hacking out a place for themselves, putting their skills to less genocidal use, and trying to bring a bit of light and beauty to their little peninsula. They watch out for their friends and neighbors. They ain't so keen on exterminating anything in particular. They aren't looking to rule over anything in spite of their impressive power armor skills. My favorite outfit these days is the armored AC jacket and modded Mechanist helmet.

Far Harbor has some great missions too. The hotel murder mystery is a hoot and the settlement locations offer a lot to play with. I try to strike a live-and-let-live balance there too, preserving the synth refuge, Far Harbor, and the CoA if I can help it. I never rat them out to the BoS. The memory-retrieval mini game missions are miserable though! It glitched out on my first playthrough and I couldn't finish it before my PS4 died.

Favorite settlements are probably vault 88, the Starlite drive-in (makes a fanatic multistory apartment base), Spectacle Island, Abernathy farm, Egret Tours Marina, the lumber mill, Outpost Zimonja, Greygarden, and the lighthouse. I'm a fan of modding-off the build limits and resource cheats so I can build elaborate apartment blocks out of scaffolding, warehouse bits and vault pieces. I can't get enough of encasing ruined buildings in larger buildings like warehouses or vault atrium assets too. After a while, the settlement building becomes my favorite aspect of the game after the story and world-building.

[cherryao3nova]

God!Frank, An AU of Frank from SAMS on YT. He was created during the time i was thinking about who Frank could actually be and then I got hit by my Fic: View From the Other Side (of the Void). The Frank in my story is introduced in chapter 2.

He is now on my ArtFight as a charater to draw!

Name: one that can not be spoken by mortal toungue. Nickname: Frank / Forkface Age: Unknown, was formed with the first sentient robot. Powers: portals between the living and dead world, granting animatronics to go back, even turing them into ghosts. Can make rooms darker, teleportation and telekinisis. Has Magic. Its purple.

Frank is a Higher Being, an Eldrich Horror, a Cryptid God of Animatronic Death. A relativly new God of the Underworld, but one that holds power- for the animatronics that gain sentiance must go somewhere after death.

He lives in the void between life and death and greets every animatronic personally. He has an unsertting aura of power, one that cuses fear in others. His voice is also unsettling when spoken out loud, so he sticks to speaking though peoples minds.

Frank enjoys chaos and deals and hes a little shit to those who deserve it.

((Below is a bit from chapter two of My AO3 story: View From the Other Side (of the Void) - Afterlife AU.))

There was movement once again in the corner of his eye causing Eclipse to spin around so fast that he almost lost his balance, eager to catch what it was this time.

He almost lost his temper when at first he didn’t see anything, the figure blended well with the surrounding blackness- only for the figure he had been searching for to appear a few feet away, like the opacity was gradually turning up.

What was even more horrifying was that the face the figure had, was so familiar. Before him stood what looked like… Moon, two times taller than he was and even without all of that, Eclipse instantly could tell that this, this was not his the Moon he knew.

The creature's forehead, nose and chin stuck outwards like a fork, with a multitude of small rays surrounding its face, sharp claws for hands and dead eyes that looked into the very depth of his soul. A horrifying image and one that would give even the real his Moon Nightmares. It? They? The Being just stood there, staring at him, breathing disturbingly heavily, not saying anything.

“Hello?” Eclipse called out, the annoyance already starting to win over the fear and disturbingly unsettling feeling. 

Still they said nothing, just breathed. “Well? Are you going to just stand there? Say something? Can you even talk?” Silence. “You know, It’s rude to not introduce yourself!” He huffs out.

Suddenly a sharp screeching sound was heard, something like an old demon who’s also asthmatic, having run a marathon and needed to desperately breathe in an inhaler. 

Eclipse flinches back a little with a shudder running down his spine, his instincts screaming at him to RUN, putting him on edge, tensing as he becomes guarded. What even was this- this thing ?!

“What the heck-?!” But he can’t get out more than that as the creature starts to talk. “T-taaalk? I. Can. t-taaalk.” It huffs out brokenly, as if sucking in air at the same time as it talked, as if it hurt to talk the ‘proper’ way.  The tone was mocking him. 

‘And yet I prefer to talk, like this’ It seemed to be the same voice, echoing around him and through every single atom of his now digital body. It eerily sounded similar to Moon, yet was more, airy, a cross between a hiss and something otherworldly. An Eldritch Horror. 

His instincts, once again SCREAMED at him to get away, and had he been human, it would have made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He hated how it felt, how it made him want to hide away from the raw power that reverbed around him, making him grit his teeth, wishing the other being never spoke again. 

He wasn’t sure why he had not noticed before, as if the being before him was hiding from him, but it wasn't till now that Eclipse could feel the RAW power flowing from the creature, cause if him to instinctively take a step back, making the fork faced moon huff out a laugh, as if he enjoyed the fact he put the other animatronic on edge.

‘Scared? As you rightfully should be. And yet, you are fortunate. You, have yet to do something to upset me, and you should continue to do so.’ 

There was a grin in the echoing voice, as if knowing that he made his instincts churn and loving every cringe that came from him.

“What-? Who-? Who the heck are you? WHAT are you?!” Eclipse spat out, needing answers despite knowing this would prolong the unsettling conversation.

‘I am the Guardian of this area, that is all you need to know. I have no name, not one that can be said by mortal tongue, so you may call me as you wish, yet some have given… willgive me the name… Frank.’ “Frank?! That’s such a stupidly plain name.”

‘Your opinion to me, matters not, yet you are now a dweller of this realm. You are but the first of a few that will be residing here, others will join you at some point in time.’ “Others?! What? Who! And where the heck am I? Last thing I remember is that I was about to die!” Eclipse snapped out, hating the very thought that he was under this higher being's mercy. ‘Yes you are correct. This place is beyond life. You have passed on beyond the veil. Your journey came to an end. But no, this is not what humans call heaven nor is it hell. For in reality, you are not a mortal, but an animatronic, for if you are not damaged or erased, you would live for a long period. This is a place specifically for your kind, created by myself.’ The bastard was talking in circles! Growling Eclipse glared at- at Frank. “Okay, great, so I died, whoopty do, Sun succeeded and now I’m in, what, an animatronic limbo place? Fantastic. Does that mean there are others here, right now?”

‘Others there may be, but you will not ever come across those who are here, only those who I allow you to interact with, will ever cross your path.’ “Wait, so I’m your prisoner now or something? Am I meant to stay here in the pitch black for the rest of eternity?!” The lava coloured animatronic snaps.

Frank snickers at him, making Eclipse even more upset. ‘Pitch Black? All I see is white.’ The Eldritch Horror grins, showing off even more of its sharp teeth, before lifting a hand. There was a sound, as if someone snapped their fingers, and then his surroundings shifted. It was like he opened his eyes after a long nap, or the lights suddenly switched on and you had to blink to regulate the brightness and the black melted away to a soft creamy white.

Before him, was what seemed to be a canvas screen strung up together with star fairy lights, a projector sat on a small table across from it. A star patterned carpet sat under a few beanbags before the screen, a coffee table parked on the carpet in front of the beanbags and a second table with snacks stood near to the one with the projector, as if ready for an outdoor movie party with friends… 

‘This is where you shall stay now. This is your afterlife. You may do as you wish, ask for what you want; book hobbies or movies. But I must warn you, the default on the projector will always be the life of your family, those who you left behind.’ Eclipse snarls at that. “They are NOT my family.”

‘Perhaps not, but that is what you strived for. I can see your innermost wants, thoughts and desires. You WANTED to have a family, It's why you kept updating lunar, you were afraid to lose your brother. You had even planned to let Sun and Moon out once you had completed your goal. So I am more than sure you will be glad to keep up with what they are doing. For there are things to come and others to join you here. I doubt you would want to be caught unawares.’

The higher being, the Eldritchgod?, Frank, said cryptically.

“Yeah whatever. As if you could succeed to keep me prisoner here. If you can see all of that, then you know exactly what I can do. Just you watch.” Eclipse huffs out and walks towards the beanbags, happy to see that there were at least some things to do other than watching that shit. There has got to be a way to get out of here.

'We shall see.’ Frank smirks as they walk away. This was going to be quite entertaining.

My AO3 story: View From the Other Side (of the Void) - Afterlife AU.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Okay, talking about Ozpin/Ozma from RWBY here because from the looks of things, no one else is.

Unfortunately the dude's motivations makes some fans hesitant to trust him, if they don't hesitate to villainize him.

His motivations? Unite the world into one of peace, call the gods of said world with four magical artifacts that have a lot of power, because in any other circumstances they would kill everyone, and ask them to please put his very evil ex-wife, aka SALEM, out of her misery that they caused via making her immortal.

Context? Okay so Salem was locked into her tower by her dad, but she sent letters out asking for some kind of help. Ozma didn't hesitate to do so, rescuing her. It was love at first sight for those two. And later on, they even got married.

However eventually Ozma died young. To injury, sickness, maybe a magic curse, it's unknown what the cause is. So Salem went to the gods to try and bring him back. When one denied her because doing so can cause funkiness with the balance of the world, she went to the other one, leaving the part about them being her second choice.

This god, despite being a horrifying god of darkness with a temper, was willing to bring Ozma back because Salem praised him and said he was her first choice. Till his brother, the god of light and calmer of the two, came in, forcibly calmed him down, and explained the way Salem was manipulating him. Afterwards they cursed her with immortality that will only end after she learns to appreciate all aspects of life or something.

So Salem decided to lead a bunch of humans and probably faunus idk if they existed yet in an uprising against them via saying they gods are withholding immortality from them out of revenge. So the gods kill everyone except her, say she'll have to wait for the next batch of sentient life to, evolve I think, without any kind of magic, then vanished. With the god of darkness breaking the moon due to his bad mood.

During the wait Salem jumped into these tar pits that Grimm spawn out of trying to die but it just made her a human with Grimm features. But she can just hide those features! So don't worry about how that could effect her mental state!

Anyways when humanity and fanus were a thing again the god of light found a random human and shoved Ozma's soul into him (without Ozma knowing if I remember correctly), told him to unite humanity or he and his brother will kill everyone after he collects and brings together the four uber powerful artifacts, and that his wife is a freak of nature that must be destroyed. Understandably, Ozma decided to ignore the last part and focus on the first two parts. And he even found his wife again, who clearly wasn't a freak of nature!

Anyways they get married (again) and due to their magic became the rulers of the country they were in because everyone is willing to listen to the two who can kill the Grimm with ease. They even had four daughters! Who, upon showing signs of having magic, Salem went a bit creepy about replacing humanity with their descendants.

Ozma then remembered what the god of light said, so he decided to take the kids out of the castle before going to talk to his wife to ensure that if they came to blows, the kids were away from the crossfire. However Salem caught him doing just that, snapped, and started trying to kill him without giving him time to explain. And would you look at that! Their daughters got caught in the crossfire! Causing Salem to get even angrier! This is when Ozma in a grief fueled rage killed her, only to learn she's immortal and very much looks like a Grimm. Then Salem turns around, cripples his one leg, then kills him.

This is when Ozma learns he has a version of immortality where he body hops into people of a similar mindset as his or something. Anyways for a while he is depressed as fuck, and evading his homicidal ex-wife, so he becomes a drunk hermit. Well, after he used the artifact of knowledge to try and learn how to kill said ex-wife but he was told he can't kill her which made his mental state even worse because the mind of said artifact, in my opinion, is a fucking JERK-

Eventually, with help of others (even if they don't know the full story), he pulls himself together and even starts to hear the voices of those he accidentally body snatches, so he then starts to reach out to those the person originally in charge of the body knows. And apparently their minds/souls start to fuse together after some point so there's that guilt.

Anyways, he starts trying to unite Remnant, and created a secret society to oppose Salem. And because it's implied that everyone he told the truth to betrayed him turned against him, he started to say the absolute bare minimum, including leaving out the fact that Salem was immortal, to avoid that.

So basically, to sum it all up, blame the brothers, Salem despite having a tragic backstory is still not a good person, and Ozpin is traumatized as FU-

GOD that's a lot

I did wonder what was Up with Salem and also I heard something about Ozpin bodyjumping.

But also yo what the FUCK

[mattnben-bennmatt]

Ben Affleck, at the top of his game

Entertainment Weekly (11 January 2022)

The actor-director has seen fame from both sides now — and he's ready to talk (with Matt Damon, and us) about it.

By Leah Greenblatt

-

It's one of those endless blue-haze days in Los Angeles, and Ben Affleck is leaning back on the diving board of a borrowed Bel Air estate to catch the sun, his long torso arced like a bell curve. For a moment it seems like he might actually fall in, bringing a precariously perched photographer and several yards of creamy, expensive-looking knitwear with him. But his balance is better than it looks: Affleck, 49, has walked the plank many times before, and tumbled from greater heights than this. He's also climbed back up again, a story of outsize stardom and second chances played out in the public eye for nearly three decades now.

After a mid-career swerve toward directing films like Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo (for which he won Best Picture), the actor has returned to his first love, turning in fresh, revelatory performances in Ridley Scott's medieval epic The Last Duel and George Clooney's warmhearted drama The Tender Bar. To mark the occasion, Affleck's erstwhile creative partner and oldest friend in the business, Matt Damon (it's been 24 years since they took home their Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting, how do you like them apples?), sat down to discuss life, love, and all the roles — School Ties, Armageddon, and yes, even Gigli — that made the man. —Leah Greenblatt

MATT DAMON: Ben Affleck, it's great to see you here today.

BEN AFFLECK: Hey there, man! Welcome to the red carpet. Before we get into your project, who are you sleeping with?

[Laughs] Well we're here to talk about The Tender Bar, a movie directed by George Clooney which you star in. I guess I first became aware of it when you called me very excited that you read a great script that Bill Monahan wrote and George offered you a job. I promptly called George and he said that it was because you were cheaper than me. But as the month went on, I started to wonder if he was telling me the entire truth.

He told me that you argued too much. "I got tired of dealing with Damon's bull----. You're gonna do what I tell you, right?"

How was I going to just take his notes and not say anything? But you said you received some of the best direction of your career from Georgie, so I was wondering if you could help people understand what that means.

Well, first of all, because you'd worked with George, I had worked with George, I knew him well and liked him quite a bit. You've always been very smart about picking great directors, and lucky that good directors have picked you. I feel like you really understood that very early on and how well it served you, and I remember George being somebody about whom you just raved.

So aside from being deeply jealous and developing a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing, I did think, "Oh, that would be nice one day, if that happened to me." So when he just called me out of the blue — you know how rare it is that a finished, wonderful script shows up with a really great director, and all you have to do is to just basically be conscious and sentient and say yes.

I mean, especially today, right?

Yeah, I knew that this was kind of mine to screw up. I couldn't imagine there wasn't a long line of people that wanted to take this part, so I really respected his confidence and faith in me, and I wanted to do well for him. I wanted to do it for myself. There's an emotional scene in the end where I give the kid [Tye Sheridan] a car, and every time I read the script, I cried. So I showed up and I really got ready and did my thing. We did the first take and I thought, God, this is it. This is all working. George came over and he said, "Yeah... Giving a car to someone is supposed to be fun."

That's what he said?

I was like, "Right, yes, of course. I've been playing it completely wrong." Other directors can talk to you for an hour and a half and it doesn't seem clear what they're driving at, whereas George has this gift of succinctness and insight. But also just being directed by somebody who's done this job that I've been trying to do for, I don't know, 30 years, is such a comfort and a relief.... My dad worked in a bar, as you know. All that stuff was very familiar to me. So my only concern was, "Should I be working harder than this? It shouldn't feel this smooth."

I've always said, as an actor, your only excuse for not being good is "I didn't know what movie I was in."

It's interesting, because that was the very first thing George did. I mean, a director's job in large measure is tone. Is it more comic? More serious? For me, every time I work with a director that I really admire, and even some I don't — I can learn from negative examples, too — but I just feel like I become a much better director.

I remember Francis [Ford Coppola] sold these little cigars at his winery that are called Carmine Thrifties, they're named after his father. And on the side of the box, it says, "Steal from the best." Which brings me to my next question: Is there anything you're going to carry forward into your own directing coming out of this experience?

I think it's hard to overestimate the degree to which a director's attitude, openness, comfort, generosity pervades the set and sets a tone. George does that better than I do. And he was enormously respectful of the degree to which I take very seriously my need to be there with my children for my half of the custody. I mean, he bent over backwards. You didn't have to be there until midnight every night [or] obliterate the rest of your life in order to do this. Because he's got this spectacular wife, he's got his children, he's got a very rich, full life. He's got to sell coffee—

He sells tequila, too.

Tequila and coffee. That's no joke.

He's got you in the morning and the night.

I'll tell you what I want to be. I want to be George Clooney selling coffee and tequila. Because that really frees you up to do the movies you want to do.

So speaking of awesome actors, I've been tasked with going all the way back to the beginning of your career.

Don't be afraid to relieve yourself of some of that burden, if it feels unduly burdensome.

I take my job very seriously here at Entertainment Weekly.

That's what I'm afraid of.

But before we go back to where it started, let's talk for a second about where you are. Do you attribute it to just, "You play in traffic long enough, you're bound to get hit by some cars?" Is that why your performances are so good of late? Like what you did in The Way Back and The Last Duel. It's full, it's rich, it's invested. It's right. And you're not reaching.

Thank you. That means a lot. Sometimes people will go, "You know, you've really gotten better as you were older," which sometimes feels like "You're not that bad-looking in person! You're not as stupid as I thought you were!" I have some performances as a younger person that I really liked. I knew [Good Will Hunting's] Chuckie Sullivan. I felt an affinity for Ned Alleyn in Shakespeare in Love, and really connected with the character in Chasing Amy.

Changing Lanes! You were great in that one.

That's where I met Bradley [Cooper], actually. Starting off, you have these ideas about success. You know, my mother made $28,000 a year. So I would be like, "How could I justifiably say no to this?" Just not understanding the value of turning things down. People talk about your choices and I want to say, "Well, it's not like I was passing on Scorsese movies." Like, "No, Marty, I'm good. I'm going to do Surviving Christmas." Part of our fates are controlled by the opportunities we have in terms of material and directors.

Absolutely.

That's a big one. And then also, I've always felt more comfortable playing characters that weren't the traditional kind of protagonist. You do this much better than I do, and it's not a backhanded compliment because you find a way to make characters interesting and flawed and real. Because you can't, as a storyteller, alienate the audience from your protagonist. Then you're just watching a movie about somebody you're either judging or don't like or don't believe. And that just blows the whole thing up.

It's deceptively difficult to play the leading-man role. It's like Denzel [Washington], you just can't help but like him and want to be him and admire him. That's a level of being interesting so that you draw people in. One of the nice things about getting older, if you're lucky, is you stop bulls---ting yourself and you start going, You know, I actually know where my feelings are. And the more I figured it out, the more accessible that was. I know what painful is and I know what disillusioned is and I know what ambivalent is, I know what nostalgia is.

Right.

I had a really nadir experience around Justice League for a lot of different reasons. Not blaming anybody, there's a lot of things that happened. But really what it was is that I wasn't happy. I didn't like being there. I didn't think it was interesting. And then some really s---ty things, awful things happened. But, that's when I was like, I'm not going to do that anymore.

In fact, I talked to you about it and you were a principal influence on that decision. I want to do the things that would bring me joy. Then we went and did Last Duel and I had fun every day on this movie. I wasn't the star, I wasn't likable. I was a villain. I wasn't all the things I thought I was supposed to be when I started out and yet it was a wonderful experience. And it was all just stuff that came along that I wasn't chasing.

My only thing is that now I live in fear every time I do another movie, I'm like, Do I still feel that, am I still good? I'm afraid it's going to go away, you know? 'Cause it's elusive. But I'm happy now. I'm feeling it now. And I do think I've gotten better. I think people generally get better with the age and experience—

Some might not. They might get in really bad, corrosive habits.

If you're smart, you learn from people who are really good. And I think our friendship helped kind of inculcate that knowledge in me. We were very generous and open with stuff. Being around other people that you liked and respected and were smart just made you better.

You said to me and I've always repeated it — I mean this is when we started writing together, you were 20 and I was 22 — really starkly, you were like, "Judge me for how good my good ideas are and not how bad my bad ideas are."

Everyone's got bad ideas. Like David Fincher, who is brilliant, every now and again, you go, "Hmm, I don't know." But then you find out he has the humility to go, "Oh, huh."

I remember that with the Coen brothers, more than once. One of them would come up and give me a note after a take and then the other one would be off talking to another actor and would come up and give me the exact opposite note. And without fail, I would always say, "Joel, Ethan just told me the opposite thing," or "Ethan, Joel just told me to do the opposite thing." And no matter who it was, the second guy would say, "Oh yeah, do what he said." [Laughs]

Let me ask you a question about the business before I start running these old movies by you. Given The Last Duel, which I'm drinking my tea and shamelessly promoting with a Last Duel mug that I made...

Did you hand-paint it? Matt Damon, hold the mug!

Obviously it was a box office failure. But interestingly enough, it's number one on iTunes. So it means that there is an audience, just one that was unwilling to go in the middle of a pandemic to the theater. How does that make you feel, coming out with another drama — did COVID just accelerate something that was going to take 10 or 15 years, or is it coming back?

You know, I won't hedge, because that's always boring. I will say, when The Way Back came out, it was released the week they closed the theaters [for the pandemic]. But even before then I knew this movie about grief and a child dying and alcoholism and recovery is just not going to get adults in the seats. We were just talking about Narcos: Mexico, Succession, Mare of Easttown. There's these amazing things being done on streamers. Roma! It's not just some formulaic TV procedural like when we were kids. And you could only watch it like my dad, on an 11-inch black-and-white TV.

If I had to bet, a drama like Argo would not be made theatrically now. That wasn't that long ago. It would be a limited series. I think movies in theaters are going to become more expensive, event-ized. They're mostly going to be for younger people, and mostly about "Hey, I'm so into the Marvel Universe, I can't wait to see what happens next." And there'll be 40 movies a year theatrically, probably, all IP, sequel, animated.

The Last Duel really clinched it for me. I've had bad movies that didn't work and I didn't blink. I know why people didn't go — because they weren't good. But I liked what we did. I like what we had to say. I'm really proud of it. So I was really confused. And then to see that it did well on streaming, I thought, "Well, there you go. That's where the audience is."

Heading back into a time machine now—

If I thought I was going to be held accountable for these movies 20 years later...

Thirty years, dude. Thirty. Let's start with School Ties because that was the first time we did a feature film together. What do you remember?

I knew my nine lines back to front. I loved every day I was on a call sheet, every day I got to come to work. You were there, in Boston. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

Even by the dump in Lowell. Remember?

We literally were next to a dump and thought we were kings. I knew I was playing the one s---ty anti-Semitic bully character, so I figured it was probably not going to be great for me career-wise, but I loved it.

I wasn't in this, but Dazed and Confused, that was your first time working with and meeting Rick Linklater and all those guys.

He was a model to us as we looked around and thought for the first time, "Maybe we can make our own movie," you know? You can do Reservoir Dogs or Slacker or Clerks or Do the Right Thing. People were kind of working outside of the system, and that was inspiring.

Look, it's a bunch of 19-year-old kids shooting nights in a party scene in Texas. So it was barely distinguishable, the time at the hotel and the time on the set. I got to know Matthew [McConaughey] when he was first starting out. Rory [Cochrane], I stayed friends with him, he was in Argo. Anthony Rapp and Joey Lauren Adams and Renée Zellweger, it was just an abundance of riches.

And then it bombed. Bombed! Nobody saw the movie, but it got great reviews. I remember there was a [former EW film critic] Owen Gleiberman review saying "Once every decade..." and I thought this was hyperbole. But it ended up being true, it's a real cult movie that people still talk about and I'm glad to be a part of it. And again, I was the single unappealing character in a movie of enormously appealing people. So not a great career strength. [Laughs]

Well now, speaking of DIY filmmaking: Mall Rats. You obviously have got to talk about Kevin [Smith], but maybe fold them all in because you've got Chasing Amy, too.

I was, once again, playing the bully, running around, throwing people into their lockers. But I liked Kevin. He's funny and smart and charming. We got along.

Kevin also saved Good Will Hunting. This is not a small side note. He is the reason Good Will Hunting got made. We were dead in the water, all the offers had evaporated.

I promised him I would thank him if we ever got an Oscar and promptly forgot. And then I told him, "If I ever win again I swear to God I'm going to thank you." Forgot again.

Kevin and Gus [Van Sant, Good Will's director] and Robin [Williams] were equally important. And I think Francis [Ford Coppola] vouched for me with Robin.

God, he was a wonderful guy. And funny! It was the first time I ever got to hang out with somebody that talented and that famous. I remember walking down the street in Boston with him, he had done Good Morning, Vietnam and Awakenings and Fisher King and all that. And all everybody in Boston would say was "Nanu, nanu."

Yeah.

Mork from Ork.

Mork! But he did do that — he would just do take after take after take because that beautiful brain of his would always come up with something different to do.... So from there, I remember when you got Armageddon. We got split where people went, "Oh, well, Ben's the big movie guy. And Matt's the serious guy," because I did Saving Private Ryan. But the fact was that we were desperate to get another job, and I would've happily taken Armageddon. You would've happily taken Saving Private Ryan. I remember I was shooting [The Talented Mr.] Ripley in Italy when that thing opened, and it was a massive hit. That was a terrific cast.

Yeah, Bruce Willis, Owen Wilson, Billy Bob [Thornton], Mike Duncan. This was real Hollywood, which I felt like I had never seen. They dug out two stages of Disney for huge asteroid craters, and I didn't even think about the fact that the basic premise of the movie was totally absurd.

Why are they training oil drillers to be astronauts rather than astronauts to be oil drillers? You would think the learning curve would be somewhat more steep on the oil-drillers-to-astronauts route. But it was fun and the right time. It's funny, Bruce dropped out of a movie, and as the deal for dropping out of this movie that wasn't working is that we get to put you in two movies, and they put him in Armageddon and The Sixth Sense.

Oh my God, really?

Yes! And I was a little naive about the opinions people would form about me. Or Michael [Bay] and Jerry [Bruckheimer]'s focus on aesthetics, like, "You guys gotta go to the tanning bed!" They made me fix my teeth and work out and be sexy. Be sexy, how do I do that? "Go to the gym!" Running in the gym and putting oil on my body and stuff, and it just turned out to be a long-form version of one of those male topless calendars, in a garage, carrying a tire, kind of greased up. Michael had a vision of a glistening male torso in the oil, and he was like, "That's going to go in the trailer and sell tickets!" And you know, what can you say? We could have made, I think, 400 Chasing Amys for what we made Armageddon for.

It's funny because that's the one movie of mine that my kids have watched and they'll kind of all admit to liking, even though they relentlessly mock it and me. "What are you, driving a tank on the moon?" But they had fun, you know what I mean? They won't even watch The Town. So there you have it.

My kids won't watch my stuff, either. All right, wow, they have a lot of movies they want me to ask you about.

Skip to the ones that are interesting.

Let's touch on Gigli because it's directed by one of our favorite directors, Marty Brest. Where does it sit with you now?

You know, it's an interesting thing because it was a really easy choice. I loved Midnight Run. I loved Beverly Hills Cop. I loved Scent of a Woman. Marty's obviously enormously gifted. There's no question in my mind that this was a guy I wanted to work with. There was wonderful stuff in there. There are things where my daughter will be like, "This is ableist and disgusting," and okay. The way we see stuff has changed a little bit, or a lot in some cases. And there are things that seemed they could work at the time and don't in retrospect.

But really, the truth about that movie and what it taught me was how much everything around a movie sort of dictates the way people see it. But for being a movie that's such a famous bomb and a disaster, very few people actually saw the movie. It doesn't work, by the way. It's a sort of horse's head in a cow's body. And the studio at the time, because I had begun having this relationship with Jennifer Lopez, which was selling a lot of magazines and appeared to generate a lot of enthusiasm, they just predictably latched onto, "They want a romantic comedy. They want the two of them together. More of that!" And it was just like that SNL sketch: "Bad Idea."

But even movies like The Sum of All Fears that worked commercially but didn't have any depth to them, I didn't do anything particularly interesting in them. [Gigli] didn't work and we did five weeks of reshoots, which we knew were not gonna work. It was a movie that didn't work.... Interestingly, I learned more about directing on that movie than anything else because Marty is a brilliant director, really gifted. It's not like it's worse than all... there's a bunch of horrible movies and in terms of losing money, I've had five movies — at least! — that have lost more money than Gigli has.

It's just that it became a story in and of itself. The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm. And I remember talking to Marty the Friday it came out and I was like it's just spectacular, it's a tsunami, it couldn't be worse. This is as bad as it gets.

I thought my job was to be a cipher. I can see now how people looked at me and thought of this person as some callow frat guy who's cavalier, or has too much. It engendered a lot of negative feelings in people about me. There's that aspect of people that I got to see that was sad and hard, it was depressing and really made me question things and feel disappointed and have a lot of self-doubt. But if the reaction to Gigli hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have ultimately decided, "I don't really have any other avenue but to direct movies," which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life. So in those ways, it's a gift. And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life.

I remember you saying to me at that time — probably around the opening weekend, and I never forgot it — you said, "I'm in the worst possible place you can be. I can sell magazines, but not movie tickets."

Yeah. I remember feeling like it was the worst of both worlds. I always viewed it that the tax you paid to get the chance to do this work was to sacrifice your private life, and people were going to have license to make sport of you to some degree. And I didn't go into it blindly. I knew that Sean Penn and Madonna were a tabloid story when I was young. I knew that could happen. Jennifer and I happened to be together at a time where the whole industry of celebrity journalism, if you want to call it that, sort of exploded. But I thought, "S---, this is really not how I had hoped to go, where I'm going to be, what? Famous for being an a--hole or a failure and not able to work?"

I can't think of a worse outcome. Because I've never found any virtue in fame at all. I've probably gotten out of a couple of [traffic] tickets. I've gotten reservations at restaurants. But the whole point was to be able to do this job. That was it. Otherwise, what is it worth? It's corrosive. It changes the relationships you have with other people. But one of the things that time showed me is that it is those moments of crisis or pain or perspective that are strong enough to make you go, "F--- it. Well, this doesn't work. I've got to do something different." I've definitely learned more from failure than I have from success.

Yeah. Well, we're not ending on the note of failure because the postscript to the story is, after 2006, you became a world-renowned director. You won an Academy Award for Best Picture, which is really the highest mountaintop in our business. I'm wrapping this up because I'm late for dinner. My kids are staring at me through the window.

I know how it goes.

But you've had a remarkable last decade and a half that is culminating with some of your best acting work that you've ever done and The Tender Bar is another example of that. And I dare say your writing is pretty damn good. I was really proud of the work you did on The Last Duel.

I love you, man. I want you to do all my interviews. Are you cheap? [Laughs]

I'm free, actually. I'm free.

To be honest... Thank you. It's true, it ends on a much happier note. Not easy and not always smooth, but good. I don't know that that would've been possible for me alone, doing this job in this world without somebody I grew up with who I loved, who I knew loved me and had my back, who believed in me, and whom the popularity of my movies or what people said about me wasn't going to change what they thought about me.

This friendship has been essential and defining and so important to me in my life. There were a few critical times, which are private and I don't want to share, but where your support was so profoundly meaningful to me that I don't think I would've been able to be successful without it. So let me take this opportunity to thank you—

—in a Zoom interview. [Laughs] Congratulations on another great piece of work, and I hope people go see The Tender Bar. We've just got to get people to see the movies.

Well, that may go away, but we'll always be good. And we'll finally have figured it out when we hit the dinner-theater circuit.

We're each a fan club of one for the other. All right, man. I love you.

I love you, buddy.

[themxtleycrew]

@ragingfists

When she had been brought to this... wherever this was. She had feared the worst, that Jack's efforts, everything he and the others had sacrificed had been for nothing, that Lufenia had returned. She was ready to fight back, even considered giving in to the Fiend within her, only to be met with an unfamiliar woman. She didn't look like any of the Lufenians, and she said her name was Cosmos, introducing herself as the Goddess of Harmony, and opposite to Chaos.

Speaking softly, but also enlisting Neon as her agent, the girl, of course, questioned her logic. Not long ago, Neon served Chaos as the Fire Fiend, at one point she even tried to impersonate Chaos. Cosmos again asked Neon's aid, even saying she could use this as a means of redemption.

And so that's when Neon went from being Marilith, Fiend of Chaos, to Neon, agent of Cosmos.

And now here she was in an unfamiliar world, here to remove agents of Chaos and maintain balance... Which somehow involved her getting lost in some forest, and being attacked by a sentient train?

While she had tried her best to fend off the locomotive apparition, she couldn't bring herself to use fire magic against it, and since she wasn't versed in holy magic either, she found herself effectively useless against the possessed machine. That was until he arrived. A lone man, coming in from seemingly nowhere, and lifting the train right off its tracks, with his bare hands.

"I... what?" She was at a loss for words.