#and forgetting to tell his kids he was a magic knight

[loosesodamarble]

The best thing about Yami as a character is the fact that he has secrets, not out of a desire to keep people in the dark or a sense of shame for his past.

But because he probably doesn’t think to let people know stuff about him.

The audience is consistently shown that Yami has connections to people and none of the Bulls are made remotely aware of it.

Lotus reveals he had an encounter with Yami and Luck’s response is to ask “you know the captain?” Not say “The captain’s mentioned a guy like you before.” Safe to say that Yami doesn’t even boast about his past battle victories.

Henry’s existence, despite the Bulls living in Henry’s house, is a surprise as the squad thought he was a ghost at first. It’s honestly silliest case since how does a group go 6-7 years without meeting their (essentially) landlord?

Zora’s status as a Bull comes as a shock to Asta, Noelle, and Luck at the gathering of the Royal Knights. And none of the Bulls recognized him at the exam so he never showed himself earlier and Yami likely didn’t talk about him even to describe his looks.

Nacht being vice captain, the fact that the squad had a vice captain at all to top it off, was a bombshell to Asta but also long standing members like Finral and Vanessa.

There’s also the fact that Yami has a sister back home which Asta was floored by. (Note that Yami outright lied about being born to fishermen but he just quietly omitted Ichika’s existence in his recounting of his life.)

The details of Yami’s history and relationships are a mystery to the whole squad. It’s not done maliciously by any means. Yami comes off as the type to think “they’ll find out eventually so no need to tell them now.” And leaves it up to fate whether or not anyone learns anything about his past.

Also, literally every time, those reveals happen at some wildly inconvenient times. It’s either in the middle of a fight or when everyone is stressing about an upcoming battle or after Yami’s been freaking kidnapped.

[deadsetobsessions]

AU of my Gotham/Tim Drake! Danny where Danny doesn’t know any knowledge beforehand about the DC universe.

Danny doesn’t know how he got here, but the fact that he now shares something in common with Vlad other than their technical halfa status disgusts him

His new name is Timothy Jackson Drake. It’s so far removed from Danny that his parents had him examined for deafness because he didn’t respond to it. He got better at it, at putting on the mask Janet and Jack Drake wanted to see. So they took him to the circus.

He meets Dick Grayson. Danny thinks the kid is adorable, even if Danny himself is technically younger. He sees the flying Graysons fall. The buzzing in his head doesn’t go away.

He’s five, when the fading spirit of Gotham reaches out and pleads her King to protect her city in her stead. She is fading. He says yes, because she’s one of his. The buzzing in his head settles and oh because that’s what’s been missing this entire time. Danny didn’t have a haunt and Gotham gave him one.

He grieves when she dies, the new title settling around small shoulders, and the city grieves with him. In the city proper, Batman and Robin are having the worst night of their lives in the sudden storm.

He’s nine. Robin is Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson, in turn, is an idiot. Batman… well, he’s at least mentoring and protecting the child vigilante, which is more than Danny ever had. He grows fond of them. How could he not, when they tried their hardest to help his city? To help him?

He shows himself, to the duo, in his Phantom form. It’s still him, still modeled after Danny Fenton’s face instead of Tim Drake’s. Ghosts are a reflection of the soul, after all.

“Who are you,” Batman demands, shielding Robin with half a step.

“Gotham.” He replies. Danny wills the city to affirm his claim and the city wraps its arms around the vigilantes. Batman and Robin understands, a deep well of pure knowledge being tapped into in ways they weren’t truly meant to understand.

“…How?”

“Magic,” Phantom says, dry. He tells them of city spirits, and that they can call him in times of dire need.

Dick calls him to help with Two Face. Two Face learns the pain of unmelting ice to the balls.

His core aches when the Bats fight, but Danny knows now that it is inevitable. They’re part of his haunt, his ‘fraid. He knows these things far before they come into fruition.

Dick moves to a sister city. Phantom expands his haunt to Bludhaven because he doesn’t, won’t, ever leave his Robins to themselves.

Nightwing is hopeful, is pleasantly surprised, and very suspicious when he shows up during patrol.

“Gotham…? What are you doing here…? This isn’t, well, Gotham?”

“Satellite City. It is an extension of myself. You were Robin, yes. You’re Nightwing, now. But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect you when I can.”

Phantom goes back, and finds a kid trying to steal tires to make a living. He guides his Knight to him. The starved features, the bones Danny could see, it tugs at his core. It feels like the Ancient of Fate themselves were pulling him along.

“How’d you know I was taking the wheels?”

“Gotham.”

“Are you… high on shrooms or something?”

Bruce sighs. Batman asks Gotham to meet the new Robin, and chuckles when Jason is surprised by the glowing green figure.

Phantom hides this Robin just as much as the last one. He curls shadows around his vigilantes, sometimes at the same time, and softens what little sounds they made while stalking through his city for crime.

He makes small jokes with Jason. Danny forgets, a little, the crushing loneliness of being Timothy Drake.

“I didn’t kill Garzona!”

“You-”

Batman stops as a chill he’s never had experienced directed at him weaves around his neck. An angry Gotham.

“He didn’t kill him.” Danny slides a cold hand on Jason’s shoulders.

But the damage had been done and the next day, Batman is begging Danny to tell him any clues of where Jason had gone.

“Ethiopia.”

He clears the way for Batman to get to Robin. He clears the way for Bruce to get to Jason.

He’d fallen into the trap of believing that Batman would handle everything when in the end, he’s just a man in a mantle that demands more than he ever thought he’d have to pay.

Robin is dead and Danny grieves. The skies crack open and pours a torrent of smogged rain water upon the streets of Gotham. Despite that, Crime Alley is untouched by flood. They say the second Robin was protecting his home.

In a way, it’s not wrong.

Gotham fishes Batman from the bay, carelessly tossing the broken Joker against a shipping container.

“You can’t keep doing this. You’ll die.”

Bruce, Batman, lays on his back, eyes glazed and empty. “Maybe I want to.” He admits. And Danny can’t lose someone else. It’s already bad enough he feels the death of everyone in his city, he can’t lose him too. But Dick won’t come back. He already denied Gotham when Phantom had asked him to come back. Granted, Dick was nervous about denying him the entire time, but Danny realized that he’d lost a brother in the colors his parents chose for Dick. Danny- Phantom had cradled Dick in a swaddle of shadows and comfort.

“Alright.”

“Is it? Alright? I- I don’t want to fail you, Gotham.”

“It is. You’ve always made me proud. You will always make me proud. Whether it be by different name, it matters to me not. Stay. Heal.”

Like Dick was given permission, like he received a hint of peace, Dick Grayson crumpled to the floor and sobbed into Gotham’s shoulder.

(Later, long after Dick Grayson realized his little brother was also his city personified, he cries again into Tim’s shoulders after the later dropped a flower pot perfectly on top of Catalina Flores’ head.)

Gotham, Phantom, Danny makes a choice.

“Tomorrow, a child will show up at your door. You will let him in.”

“No- I can’t. I won’t.” He knows what Danny will ask of him.

“You will.” Danny doesn’t ever do it with his people, with his city, but dire times call for dire actions. It is an order. And Batman is Gotham’s knight. “You will. You will train him. You need a Robin to leash your brutality. I need a Robin, for Robin is my hope. The city’s hope. Our people’s hope. Do not forget the goal you have set out to accomplish in my city.”

Batman rages at him, until he falls unconscious from the wounds he’s gathered. Danny brings him home. He tells Alfred what to expect tomorrow. Bruce wakes up, eyes fixated on the crack that appeared on Danny’s neon green face. “Did. Did I do that?”

Danny nods slowly.

Batman crumples into Bruce Wayne. “Okay.” He says. “Alright. Tomorrow.”

Gotham watches him, unreadable. “Tomorrow.” He says, before fading away.

Tim Drake shows up at the door. Nightwing shows up not long after. Tim Drake adapts to Bruce Wayne’s cold looks and brutal training. Slowly, but surely, he leashes in Batman’s grief fueled brutality and less criminals go to prison with half of their lives beaten out of them.

Batman doesn’t see Gotham as much anymore. He feared that he’s angered his city, that he is no longer welcome.

When Tim figures it out… he allows the roads and the shadows to help Batman once more.

Batman stared intently at the extra coverage. “Thank you,” Tim hears him whisper. “I’m sorry.”

And when Jason Todd comes back to life and attacks Tim in the tower, Tim lets Hood beat him. Gotham had failed him, as Jason’s city. He deserves it. (He doesn’t but Danny had gone past the point of being healthy about his own physical wellbeing. Perhaps being a city spirit this long had affected him, even with the King’s title mitigating the worst of the damages.

“HE REPLACED ME!”

“Because I ordered him to.” Tim whispers, past the pain of a broken leg.

“You? Order Batman around? If you’re going to lie, make it a better one, Replacement.”

Tim catches Jason’s wrist, the one holding the knife to Tim’s throat.

“Robin,” he says simply, allowing Gotham to come out and peer at the child that is his.

Jason stares, disbelieving. Gotham had… Gotham had come by and approved of his plans to clean up Crime Alley. Gotham had extracted a promise not to damage the buildings.

“No.”

His city stares back and him and Jason stumbles away. Tim shifts into Danny, into Gotham.

“You…”

“I am Gotham. I- I did not want to wear these colors. They were yours and Dick’s. But Bruce was hurting the city, he was hurting me. So I made sure he stopped.”

Jason stares at the new cracks, the fresh ones he just caused and the old ones he does not remember being on Danny’s ghostly skin.

Jason swallows. “I’m sorry.”

“As am I. I am sorry I was not there to save you. I am sorry that you died.”

Jason stares at him. The Replacement is Gotham. Jason almost destroyed his city.

“I am glad that you’ve returned. That you’re alive, now.”

“…Really?”

“Always.”

Alternative Version of the above Tower Scene:

Jason slides the knife against the Replacement’s neck.

Danny sighs. “I can’t believe I’m dying again.”

Jason pauses. “What the fuck did you just say, Replacement?”

Danny rolls his eyes at him and Jason rethinks his decision of not offing the little fucker right away.

“You think you’re the first one to die in this household? Get a grip. I did it first, way before you did, jackass.”

Tim is 14. He’s a child. What the fuck is Jason doing?

“When…?”

“How do you think I became Gotham, little bird?”

Jason freezes. And then he’s scrambling backwards, the knife flung away in his horror.

Tim shifts into Gotham and Jason bites back a cut of regret and bitterness.

He… no, what? What even is happening?

“Why is the Joker not dead? You… you told me that you loved me. That Gotham… that-”

“I’m cruel, little bird. The Joker would not suffer as much if he were dead.”

“He’s killing people! He’s killing your own!”

“So everyone thinks.”

“What?”

“I am Gotham, little bird. Mass hallucinogenic gasses are so within my reach to the point it is concerning. Perhaps you should help Ivy with the city clean up?”

“Huh?!”

[sol-consort]

Yeah, hi me again, dragon age girl. Unfortunately I have to tell you that I think I wanna squirt straight on that bald dude's head, even though I'm 128% sure it's gonna end badly because I was watching edits of them (and accidentally spoiled myself I'm pretty sure😐) and they're all angsty so I think he's gonna betray me in some way. But oh well, I love a doomed lovers moment. I can't wait to complain and cry about it later.

"I wanna squirt straight on that bald dude's head" - Anon, 2024.

When I tell you this line alone convinced me to go install the game and try it out because there is no way boiled egg of a man could ever pull this tremendously

And oh.

Oh.

Was I wrong.

I never thought I liked assertive passive-aggressive men until now...damn. The way he so causally takes your hand and does what he does. No explanation. Eggboi kinda hot.

But then, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the most amazing perfect pair of tits to ever exist, and my brain did a complete factory reset.

FORGET BALDIE BASICS I WANT HIM I WANT TO SUCK ON HIS—

God. What a big juicy personality. I bet his heart is just as massive. They're staring at me, I just can't stop looking. Don't ask me what colour anything is idk man his eyes were purple maybe uhhh milk

BUT ALSO...also there is the hot ruggish knight woman whom I want to protect me and carry me to safety in her arms <3 also let me ride her thigh, the armour stays ON during smooch sex.

Lastly, my toxic trait is that I simply cannot play a game without creating the most gorgeous barbie-esque doll of a character. Pretty ladies all around! Brown hair my beloved. I clearly have a type but shhh

LOOK AT HER MY HEART CAN'T TAKE IT. My pretty doll! My bratz girlie!! A snotty noble human who's completely ignorant of the way of the world but thinks she knows it all + doesn't want to be here and would rather be back home in her privileged cushy life sipping on margaritas in pool parties, but forced to be the hero against her will. So she pretends to care and says what others want to hear.

I plan for her not to take anything seriously until the realisation of how dire this situation is, all the deaths and tragedies, make her have a change of heart and actually tries to help and save others. Becoming more jaded with time and losing that innocent naivety and arrogance.

Oh and double blade rouge bc dagger go swoosh swoosh aka she doesn't wanna carry a sword (it might break a nail) and never cared much for bows (splinters might make her fingertips calloused) and can't do magic for shit (magic?? HERESY! BURN THE WITCH NOW <- most normal aristocratic family teaching)

Sp daggers/theif bc she may or may not have used to lock pick her mother's sweets box as kid to steal candy, but we don't talk about that...or how the dress she's wearing rn is her older sister's, she took it from her closest without permission. Aka, why the blood splatters are okay with her.

[six-of-ravens]

FINISHED MY SONG OF THE LIONESS REREAD!!!!

(if this makes no sense please bear with me, it's after midnight)

Overall, some parts of the series didn't hold up as well as I thought they would, but many parts did. Alanna is still my homegirl. The swordfights and sorcery and all that never fail to entertain. There is a bit more sexism than I remember, and some of the parts with the Bazhir didn't age very well, but it remains a classic.

BOOKS RANKED BASED ON HOW MUCH I LIKED THEM:

1. Lioness Rampant - I think this is the book where Pierce really hit her stride as a writer. The world seems fuller, the plot thicker, the characters more established. The pacing is a lot better, too: this book is about 100 pages longer than all the others and Pierce uses those pages well. The final battle against Roger is a little anticlimactic (though it's preceded by like four other battles) but well earned. I hated Liam for the most part, because frankly he's a shit boyfriend to Alanna, but also she dates 3 men over the series and I guess one of them had to suck for real. I did love Thom though - I think he and Raistlin cemented my love for asshole fuckup mildly, ambitiously evil wizards early on.

2. Alanna: The First Adventure - this one is kind of tied for first place. It's a shorter book, but the pacing is decent and we get all that wonderful knight school content. Extremely entertaining, and a very fun start to the series.

3. The Woman who Rides like a Man - a nice breather of a book after the events of the first two, lots of character growth for Alanna, with cool desert sorcery and fighting and all. I think this book is what really set the pattern for The Immortals and the Circle of Magic books - Pierce looooves writing kids learning magic, and she's good at it. That said, there are obviously a lot of Issues with the portrayal Bazhir (clearly based off a combo of Islamic folk and Native Americans) as violent and sexist, and Alanna and Jonathan (especially Jonathan, as the Voice) take on kinda cringe white saviour roles. It's not the most explicitly horrible thing ever but it does grate a bit.

4. In the Hand of the Goddess - well, someone had to be last. This is kind of the weird middle child in the quartet, where Alanna is in the midst of becoming a knight but there's a lot of random events that happen in that time. Most of the book is told in a series of vignettes - mainly incidents where Alanna or Jon narrowly avoid death or injury due to Duke Roger's schemes. However, they're a little too disconnected and Alanna's motivation (or lack thereof) is a little too vague until the final scene to satisfy me. The official explanation is that Roger was veiling Alanna so she just kept forgetting to report him, but we never actually see this in the story. She just builds up all these theories and is 100% certain it's him but doesn't tell anyone but Myles because she's certain no one will believe her (and why would they - at this point he's a respected noble). Idk, I just wanted more like....harmony between the ending and these vignettes I guess. Also, there's the horrible cringe subplot of everyone, including the goddess, treating Alanna like she's some frigid old hateful spinster when she's 15 and doing the normal teenage thing of going "I'll never have a boyfriend!!" I just wish some of the patronizing speech had been cut and Alanna discovered her sexuality without all that BS. Also, George is quite creepy in this one, he's quite a bit older than Alanna and she's still underage by modern terms so I didn't enjoy his attempts at romance as much as in the next book.

ANYWAY. Childhood favourites, like 8/10 will read again, just have to brace myself for the 80s-ness of certain things and remember this was the author's first series and she was still experimenting with style.

[bestworstcase]

oscar fully made me cry. the merge... :(

my son is in DANGER…

but. the thought i have rattling around in my brain. i don’t think that was oscar.

1. despite his uncertainty, oscar still sounds like himself in the 9.11 animatic.

i could not… tell you exactly what it is dismuke is doing with his voice to differentiate between them, but there is an audible distinction (i think it might be that oz is pitched very slightly lower in conjunction with a subtle shift in intonation and cadence) and that doesn’t change at all through the end of v8. (unlike their syntax, which has been gradually converging since v6 and is mostly indistinguishable now.) the epilogue soliloquy is in Oscar Voice; but this latest beyond? very distinct Ozpin Voice.

2. the lead into this conversation is deliberately ambiguous: jaune talks about feeling displaced and lost to himself now that he’s “been young, and old, and young again,” says that he’d rather forget, because he was the rusted knight, but the rusted knight wasn’t him. and THEN, lately he’s been spending more time with “the person [he] thought would relate most.”

not “with oscar,” and the thing is? the experience jaune describes? being young then old then young again, growing into someone else, a make-believe hero who was not himself and then being separated from that make-believe version of himself and confronted with the question of who he is now that he’s himself again… that’s. a lot closer to ozma’s experience than it is to oscar’s; oscar is just a kid who had the misfortune to become a vessel for someone else, with his core struggle as a character being how hard he’s striving to STAY himself for as long as he can. whereas ozma keeps reincarnating and being changed to fit this mold he’s been poured into, and then he dies and is separated and ‘reborn’ again. young then old then young again. jaune was the rusted knight, but the rusted knight wasn’t jaune, and who is jaune now? / ozma was ozpin, but ozpin wasn’t ozma, and who is ozma now?

(versus: oscar isn’t ozma, and is fighting as hard as he can to stay oscar, but he’s scared that he isn’t really oscar anymore.)

3. “if you’re not sure where to start, i do have a suggestion, if you’d like. […] think about the good times, what little they might have been, that you spent in the ever after. […] it might be able to help you remember what it was all for, and rewrite the story in your own way.”

that’s. what ozma did, after the lost fable, when he found the wherewithal to return. note the mirroring here of sentiments expressed in ‘until the end’: “all memories are dark, and light is fading/we try so hard, but what are we fighting for? […] i promise i’ll be here until…/our story has been told” -> “think about the good times, what little they might have been, to remind yourself what it was all for, and rewrite the story in your own way.”

ozma. ozma loves stories, and tells stories about himself to make sense of his life and to try to hold on to what’s true amid all the senseless horror of his existence. “our stories help explain who we are and why we’re here,” ozpin writes in the introduction to fairytales of remnant.

and, in the afterward: “No one is guaranteed a happy ending, but the tales told about Remnant and its people do hold a bittersweet promise: who we are and what we do are important enough to be remembered and shared. We exist. Our existence means something. Stories will survive longer than all of us, but through them, we may continue on.”

now, by the end of v8, oscar has begun to dabble in this too—quoting from ‘the girl who fell through the world’ to express his fears and loneliness—but still with a degree of separation between himself and the stories. oscar “never understood why [the girl] was so sad […] but now it makes more sense;” he’s rethinking a story from his childhood with new perspective. whereas oz uses this same story self-referentially: “a young girl flees the consequences of a choice to a magical place, but, never having learned from her initial failure, she only succeeds in spreading it. i failed all of you. i should have trusted you with the truth, and should never have run the day you discovered it.”

oscar relates to alyx, empathizes with the character through his own experience. “i understand now why she felt so sad.”

oz projects himself onto alyx to explain the choices he made and his resultant failures. “i fled the consequences of my choices and then failed to learn from my mistake, so i failed all of you.”

similarly, oscar says “i shouldn’t be surprised you’re so familiar with fairytales,” and ozpin answers “i’ve lived through my share of them.” to oscar, these are just stories that resonate with his own life; to ozma, the stories are his life. yes?

but, he hasn’t actually ‘lived through’ any fairytales—he wrote fairytales about himself.

jaune lived through a fairytale—‘the girl who fell through the world’ was a beloved childhood story that he knew and recognized as a fairytale once he found himself in it. but for lewis, the journey through ever after was an experience that later inspired him to write a fictional story where everything turned out alright.

so to lewis, ‘the girl who fell through the world’ was a way of making peace with what really happened, honoring his sister and his friend, and moving on. but to jaune, that story is a horrifying, haunting reminder of his failure to live up to it. it’s a burden he’s carried for decades.

and i believe this is a distinction that oz—who has, like lewis did, written many fictional stories about his own life as a way of comforting himself and preserving something true within a story that isn’t real—would notice. i’m not sure that oscar would.

oscar’s fear has always been about losing himself and becoming just another one of oz’s lives. for him, the question is “who am i? am i still me? how long can i stay myself?”

oz… doesn’t know who he is, and hasn’t for a very long time, but he’s chiefly concerned not with his identity but his purpose: what is he fighting for? why is he here? what does he want? (“we live in fear that we might fail/fear that we’ll succeed/fear that we may not provide the things our loved ones need”—what ozma wants is in opposition to his task, and so he is both afraid to fail and terrified that he might one day succeed.)

so this suggestion, think about the good times to remind yourself what it was all for?

i really don’t think that’s an idea oscar would have. i think oscar would see in jaune’s struggle something more like his own distress when oz returned: “i’m not upset that you left; i’m upset you came back. i started to feel like me—not the same me i was before all of this, but the me i always wanted to be. i felt like i was actually part of the team.”

and because of that, i think oscar would advise jaune to do what he did while oz was gone: accept that he can’t ever go back to who he used to be, but think about who he wants to be and strive to become that version of himself, focus on taking action and being present and reaching out to participate until the distance he feels is closed.

which is good advice in general but also probably not what’s best for jaune right now; if he doesn’t take the time to reflect and process all the trauma he endured in the ever after and make peace with the rusted knight now, it’s just going to sink down and fester inside him forever until he faces it.

…and that is precisely what oz did to himself. so ozma is the one better equipped to offer guidance for this specific problem, and as he and oscar are now on the same page—both of them fighting the curse together, and oz committed to honesty—i think oscar would be pretty open to hearing oz’s perspective.

4. the 9.11 animatic implies that oscar and oz might be hiding how bad it’s getting from the others, and B1 drops a pretty… anvil-sized… hint that it’s getting really difficult for people who aren’t close to them to tell who’s who.

jaune and oscar were close friends… but jaune spent several decades alone, and all the people he cares about have become strange to him now. he’s bound to have forgotten details, lost the familiarity he once had even as the love was undiminished.

and he’s never gotten along with ozpin.

but from oz and oscar’s perspective, jaune was there when oz reconciled with everyone else, and oz has been keeping his promises since then, and by this point it’s been months and any lingering friction with the ones who didn’t fall has probably been long since put to bed. they’re used to cooperating with each other, both in fighting the curse and dealing with the problems as they arise in vacuo, and by the end of v8 they were trading places pretty smoothly when oz needed to talk.

in the 9.11 animatic we have ren going “hope you two are okay”—their closest friends have gotten used to casually addressing them as two people. in v7, when ironwood isn’t sure, he asks. that’s probably become the new normal. (especially as i can’t imagine their friends feeling anything but awful if they guessed wrong.)

so like. it wouldn’t be at all unreasonable for them to just kinda

absentmindedly forget

that jaune can’t discern at a glance who is fronting, and is liable to assume he’s talking to oscar unless told otherwise.

and then. there’s… this:

“he’s in your head, isn’t he? did you already know about this? […] how much longer can we even trust him? how do we even know it’s really him? what if we’ve been talking to that liar this whole time?”

the last time jaune thought there was even a possibility that oz might be pretending to be oscar, he flew off the handle and shoved oscar into a wall. and that was before he spent several decades deteriorating in isolation.

so if oz went “mind if i talk to him this time?” and oscar went “sure,” and both of them assumed out of habit that jaune would ask if he wasn’t certain but also knows oscar well enough to be able to tell most of the time…

like

that’s a little bit

fraught, isn’t it? because they didn’t mean to deceive him, but they’re both aware that this exact scenario really freaks him out. and springing that on him when he’s in the middle of opening up about such a sensitive subject…

“you mean ozpin has… right?”

“of course! 😬”—to me this reaction reads a lot more like awkward-panic he thinks i’m you what do we do?! than oscar realizing he mixed up himself and oz.

especially because, even though oscar appears in the 9.11 animatic to be hiding how bad it’s gotten, he’s never kept it a secret that he does not want this or that he’s really scared of what will happen to him at the end. back in v6 he said this TO JAUNE:

No, it's okay. These past few days, I've been scared of the same things you were. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be... me. But I did some thinking, and I do know that I want to do everything I can to help with whatever time I have left.

so i don’t believe oscar would be able to just “of course! anyway–” such a big thing. not want to talk about it and try to play it off as a slip of the tongue, yes, but i think it would have more weight. like this is what he’s been dreading from the moment ozpin first spoke to him, and that fear has only grown deeper since then. his part in the 9.11 animatic is equal parts despair and terror.

if this were oscar, i’d expect at least a pause, and probably a response more in the vein of “right—ozpin has” to reaffirm and reinforce that separation between himself and oz. this is a kid who preferred to stay on the whale and be tortured rather than risk accelerating the curse by using magic!

whereas.

“of course! ahem. um, if you’re not sure where to start…”

like jaune saying “the person i thought would relate most,” there’s a little ambiguity here. of course he meant ozpin. that would be true regardless of whether the one speaking is oscar or oz. the more salient question, the question that jaune does not ask and the one that isn’t answered, is “are you ozpin?”

because oz answering “of course!” and then not clarifying that he didn’t actually misspeak would be… a very classic oz move, and newfound commitment to being honest or not—if he thought jaune knew who he was until Right Then, it’s a delicate situation and the history is fraught and oz knows jaune is touchy about this; in the moment, playing along as ‘oscar’ is pretty understandable.

and we’ve seen oscar pretend to be ozpin under pressure, when salem put him on the spot through her assumption that she was talking to oz; the reversal of oz awkwardly letting jaune’s presumption that he’s oscar pass uncorrected isn’t much of a stretch.

so it’s like. the voice, the actual advice given, and the way he reacts when jaune ‘corrects’ him—it all sounds like ozma, to the point that up until jaune interjected “you mean ozpin has, right?” i was like That’s Ozma, and on thinking about it and considering the deliberate ambiguity of “the person i thought would relate most” and that the one speaking doesn’t confirm he isn’t oz, only affirms that by “myself” he did of course mean ozpin…

points. That’s Ozma.

[medusapelagia]

Seeds of Dreams, Seeds of Truth 8\11

Rating: Mature Relationship: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Tags: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Magic, Regent Prince/King Steve Harrington, Knight Eddie Munson, Prison, Sick Steve Harrington, Vomiting, Attempted Murder, Poisoning, Double povs, Panic Attacks, Magic,

written for @steddiesummerexchange

Read it here or on AO3

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, (Part 9, Part 10, Part 11)

WC: 1640

The next morning, while the guards are finalizing the plan before leaving the mages' house, Chrissy gets closer to Eddie, and gives him a little vial; inside a shiny silver liquid swishes from one side to the other.

“What’s that?”

“Poison.” She declares quietly, “It’s enough for both of you.”

Eddie takes the vial and stares at the little bottle and its liquid before hiding it inside his armor. He hopes it doesn’t come to it, but when a mage gives you poison, knowing that you are going to fight a very powerful dark mage, you take it. No questions asked.

“It’s not painful, or so the book said. I never really tried it for obvious reasons.” She adds with a shy smile.

“What about the others?” Eddie asks, looking at his companions who are getting ready to leave.

“They won’t need it.” It’s the only answer she gives him before going back inside the house.

“May your path be clear and safe,” Robin says, making a little movement with her hand that looks like a blessing.

The two women remain near the door, waving at them while the men head into the woods.

“Don’t look back.” Steve says to Eddie, without turning. “You’ll never find that house again.”

“How do you… don’t tell me. You dreamt of it.”

Steve smirks at him with glee in his eyes and Eddie groans, annoyed, while he follows him into the woods.

They traverse the woods, trying to be as quiet as possible, but the air is tense. Eddie knows his men, they are strong and loyal, but they know nothing of mages and curses and they are scared of a power that could kill them in their sleep.

“Don’t be scared.” Steve says, walking side by side with Eddie. “The mages will protect us. We just have to get near the castle walls before night, and then this nightmare will be over.”

The man nods, following his king until the light permits it, and when the sun starts to set they are hiding so close to the castle that they can see the torches shine in the darkness.

Eddie feels anxious: there are just a few of them while the castle is guarded by hundreds of men and a dark mage. Even if the mages promised them that all the people in the castle would be safely asleep in a dreamless sleep, he could see the tower guards moving from one side to the other, holding their torches high. Eddie curses under his breath. It is one thing getting in and out to rescue his king, but attacking a castle with just a few is a suicide mission.

“You think too loud,” Steve tells him, sitting next to him while Eddie keeps watching.

“And you should rest.” Eddie scolds him, “You almost died, did you forget that?”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted because you keep reminding me, don’t you?”

“Is it a bad thing that I’m worried about you?”

“No, it’s really sweet.” Steve takes Eddie’s hand and turns it to look at the long scar he has on his palm, the same that Steve has.

“We were young. And stupid.” Eddie says, freeing his hand from Steve’s gentle grip.

“We were kids. And we were brave.” Steve replies, “Blood brothers.” 

It meant a lot to Eddie when he proposed to Steve to become his blood brother, they cut each other's palm in the woods, letting the blood enrich the soil while they shook their bloody hands. It was Joyce who found them and cleaned their cuts, scolding them for doing something so stupid, but they were happy.

Eddie turns toward Steve and grabs his hand, kissing the scarred palm with affection.

“I’m worried for you.” He finally confesses. “I don’t think I can protect you this time.”

“I know you are, my love, and I’m very sorry for doing this to you. But we can’t let that monster win, can we?”

Eddie doesn’t reply, but grabs Steve’s hair, tugs the boy toward himself, and kisses him. It’s neither sweet nor tender. It’s a hungry kiss that tastes like a farewell and Eddie hates it so much that he can’t stop kissing Steve, letting his tongue explore that mouth that he knows so well, licking those lips that have kissed every scar on his body.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And some words never sounded so cruel.

“Look!” Gareth whispers, pointing at the towers. The red flames of the torches are no longer visible and the castle's sounds get slowly muffled and then they stop, leaving the castle surrounded by an ominous silence.

“It’s time.” Steve says, “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not,” Eddie replies, getting up with the other men.

Steve gives him a sad smile, “The throne room. You’ll find him there.” He says, taking a potion from his jacket that Eddie has never seen before, and gulping it down in one go. “Don’t go where I can’t follow you,” Steve whispers before falling on the ground, asleep.

“Steve? Steve?!” Eddie yells, but the boy is deeply asleep while his eyelids move around, searching for something, or maybe for someone.

“Come on Eddie! We have to go! The quicker we get inside the sooner we’ll save him!” Gareth reminds him, and Eddie is sure that no duty he has ever had in his life was as hard as leaving his king asleep in the woods at the mercy of a dark mage. He nods and starts to run toward the secret escape at the back of the castle, the same door that was built to let the sovereign escape and that now will let his most loyal men get back inside.

The corridor is dark and their eyes need a moment to get used to the faint light that comes from the stairs, they run toward the light, finding people asleep in the castle corridors. They stop to check on a couple of them, confirming that they are alive but asleep, so they run toward the throne room, blades out, roaring and screaming.

Eddie kicks the door open and finds King Richard Harrington sitting on his throne, his eyes closed like he was resting.

“King Richard?” Jeff calls, stepping closer, but Eddie grabs him by his arm and yanks him back.

“Something is wrong, Jeff, something is very wrong. It was too easy.” Eddie says, looking around to detect any kind of trap, but it seems that they are alone: no guards, no maidens, it seems like the entire castle is under a spell.

“You did notice, finally. I’m glad.” King Richard says, opening his eyes and revealing a pair of inhuman blue eyes with golden flakes that shine brightly. 

“What does it mean?” Eddie yells, stepping in front of his men, ready to fight to death.

“Oh, so you are not as smart as you pretend to be. You still think that you are in the castle, huh?”

Eddie turns around: he is in the castle! They have moved across the secret passages, and…

“Oh, yeah, thank you so much for showing me that secret passage. It'll make it easier to kill your little princeling when he arrives because he will, you know that right?” the King says, transforming into a tall creature with blue eyes.

“What?”

“He is fighting. For you. Such a sweet gesture. It’s a pity that the poison your friend gave you is still securely in your armor. You left your king defenseless while you were asleep in the woods. All of you. Apart from him.” The creature says, stepping closer to Eddie and lifting his chin. “It’s such a pity that the poison didn’t work on him, but I should be thankful to you: now I’ll have the opportunity to absorb his life’s essence directly, like I did with his father.”

“What?”

“Oh, dear boy, I’m so sorry to inform you that King Richard never came back from the war.” He sneers. “He had it coming. It was his ancestor’s fault if my family died. They took from me what I loved the most and now I’m going to take from your young king what he loves the most: you!”

“Attack!” Eddie yells to his companions but when he doesn’t hear the clanging of the metal he turns and sees that he is alone in the throne room and his heart starts to beat faster and faster.

“Nothing that you see here is real. I made it up just for you. You are asleep, Eddie. This is a dream. Or better. A nightmare. ”

“I would have never…” Eddie clenches his jaw.

“But you did. You fell asleep and you gave me exactly what I needed: access to your memories, and guess what? Your lover and you are connected in so many ways. It will be so fun killing you and telling him exactly how I did it before killing him too.” The dark mage chuckles, “You are his and he is yours. What did you think he did when he saw your body fly in the air? He bolted toward the castle. And he is getting close, I can feel his fear and his pain. I don't even have to look at his mind to know what his worst nightmares are, because I already know it. He will be so devastated when I show him how you died in pain, screaming his name, begging him to help you. So if you would be so kind now, I really need you to scream.”

Eddie has never been in such pain. Every fiber of his body is screaming, but he keeps biting the inside of his cheeks with a muffled moan. If Steve is coming, all he has to do is to resist long enough to give him the chance to kill that monster.

tag list: @katyawriteswhump, @themagicalari

[olympeline]

(Part 4 of my Catch the Queen USUK AU! Damn, I just can’t stop writing this one 👀)

Back to the young days of the future Spades royal couple. Alfred was delighted when Arthur came back and then kept on coming back after that. Oh, and Alfred didn’t learn his real name for a long time but I’m going to use it just because it’s easier, heh. Arthur would always insist he didn’t need help and he probably wouldn’t come back and he was getting better at finding food and blah, blah, tsundere intensifies. Alfred was happy to share his meals and he actually found Arthur’s blustering pretty cute. Arthur was cute in general under all the dirt. He never failed to turn red and get extra flustered when Alfred said so. So Alfred did, often. He was playful by nature and enjoyed some cheerful teasing of the kind he used to direct at Mattie. Arthur never took real offence. Or, if he did, the lure of meat and bread outweighed it. Soon Arthur was visiting every few days, then every other day, then finally every day. Alfred was ecstatic and the doctors who came to see him remarked on his better mood and appetite. Though unfortunately still judged that Alfred’s physical condition wasn’t improving.

For Arthur’s part, finding Alfred was a godsend. Despite his insistence he was doing fine it was only Alfred’s kindness that had kept him going. Arthur was the kind of kid who thought himself “practically grown up” but he was only nine when he ran away. He never had much of a plan beyond some vague notion about finding his old family. All knowledge of them had been kept secret from him since he was taken to the palace. Arthur didn’t know he had a mother and four older brothers. But that’s another story. Back to this tale, Arthur ended up living in the woods close to Alfred’s house. Yep, it’s feral England forest child go time! He ran away during the summer and it was mild enough that his old cloak gave enough warmth to sleep outside. Alfred let him have some old blankets for a makeshift tent, Arthur could collect branches and light fires with his magic, the trees kept the worst of the rain off, there were berries to eat, a stream to drink from and bathe in, and Alfred gave him extra food when the forest fair wasn’t enough. Not to mention company when Arthur got too lonely. Which was often even though he claimed it was fine and he liked being alone. He didn’t dare go into the town with rumours of his disappearance growing louder as time passed despite the best efforts of the court. It wasn’t an easy life but Arthur could make do. It was better than going back.

Anyway, time passed and the two boys became close. They were very different personality-wise but you know what they say about opposites attracting. Alfred was a sunny extrovert and Arthur a prickly introvert and they balanced each other out nicely. They played what games Alfred could, Arthur read to him, and they talked about everything and nothing. Arthur got very skilled at diving under the bed or out the window at the sound of footsteps outside Alfred’s room. Alfred told Arthur all about his family, his home, his school, his dream about becoming a knight, everything except his sickness. Arthur never asked again after the first time even though the effects were obvious. It took Alfred triple the length of time to tell him all that and by the end of Arthur’s visits, Alfred was always exhausted. He often fell asleep midway and made Arthur promise to wake him up, which he never did. Better to let Alfred rest no matter how much it irritated his host. Meanwhile, getting Arthur to talk about himself was like getting blood from a stone. Forget finding out about his friend’s past, it took ages for Arthur to even admit his name wasn’t Oliver! Alfred was determined as ever but Arthur matched him in sheer obstinacy when the subject was his mysterious origins. Alfred itched with curiosity and tried hard to notice clues in what Arthur said and did, but he didn’t get much. Just that Arthur had probably come from somewhere rich. His manners were too refined for a peasant. More than Alfred’s own.

By the time the first frosts came, the boys were close as best friends could be. But the chill in the air meant bad news for Alfred and his condition abruptly took a turn for the worse. He sickened more and more and eventually there was grave talk amongst the household staff about whether young Matthew should be sent for. Just in case he needed to say goodbye. Talk Arthur happened to overhear one day whilst sneaking around the house to climb in through Alfred’s window as usual. Horrified and furious at the adults for giving up, Arthur decided to do something drastic. He was a mage, so he would use his magic to heal Alfred. Other healers had failed but Arthur was…the thing he’d run away from. The role he didn’t like thinking about. Still marked by the black spade over his heart. The Queen of Spades was the most powerful mage in the kingdom. Arthur had learnt the basics of healing magic and this had to be just “that but more,” right? Arthur pictured Alfred’s wasted frame, felt his Mark burn on his chest, and knew he had to try. He waited for a full moon and sneaked into Alfred’s room at witching hour. Alfred was asleep when he came and Arthur was glad. He didn’t want him to be disappointed if he failed.

But he didn’t fail. It took every drop of magical energy Arthur had and it didn’t matter that Alfred was asleep to begin with because he woke up halfway through anyway as the spell gouged deep into his lungs. Arthur had to clap his free hand over his friend’s mouth to stop him screaming, trembling from the strain of holding Alfred down and channeling the Queen’s dark power. Arthur pushed and pushed harder than he ever had, felt something deep inside his soul tear and bleed, but he wouldn’t give up. Spades are the vicious suit not meant for white magic beyond the basics. But Arthur - through sheer, pigheaded stubborness - somehow managed to direct that attacking energy against Alfred’s illness. To the day he died Arthur would never know how he did it but - somehow, someway - he did it. He could tell the moment the spell ended and Alfred knocked his hand away and jerked up in bed: panting and drawing in huge lungfuls of air. Arthur watched him through rapidly darkening vision and felt warmth bloom in his chest.

“Oh, good,” Arthur doesn’t remember slurring faintly. “It worked. Thank you…”

Then his eyes rolled up and he fell off the bed and faceplanted on the floor in a dead faint. He would have been happy if he’d stayed conscious long enough to hear Alfred cry out his name: voice clear and strong. There was no doubt his friend could breathe again. Arthur slept a full two days and a night afterwards and Alfred had to resort to bundling him under the bed as soon as morning light brought his nurse. Fortunately everyone was too distracted by Alfred’s miraculous recovery to notice anything strange about his room. Arthur - magically drained - slept through all the chaos. He didn’t wake up till the middle of the next night. Alfred wedged a chair against the door to avoid more close calls, then dragged Arthur into bed with him. Arthur woke up in his arms and Alfred’s bright blue eyes were the first thing he saw. But only for a moment because Alfred couldn’t wait to hug him when he saw Arthur was awake. Joyfully squeezing Arthur and thanking him over and over. And then it was Arthur’s turn to wheeze because by the Holy Four, Alfred hugged like a vice! It was like being embraced by a full grown man. His back might have cracked.

If Arthur hadn’t been distracted by his own joy (it worked! IT WORKED! Alfred was going to be okay!) and exhaustion, he might have taken a moment to wonder if it was normal for a boy their age to be that strong. Alfred had boasted of his pre-sickness athletics but never mentioned strength beyond what was normal. Arthur might have wondered but then Alfred let go and was thanking Arthur over and over, and praising him, and asking how did it, and - and -

And Arthur forgot all about Alfred’s weird burst of strength. He wanted to be happy not worry and there was probably nothing to worry about anyway. It was probably a normal hug and Arthur was just achey after the spell. Probably.

Probably.

(Hehe. 😉 What’s happening here? Whooo knoooows. Anyway, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Next part up when I’ve finished typing it out.)

[lazerswordweilder]

I’ve had an au rattling around in my skull for a while so here:

A 20ish Danny ends up in the DC universe one way or another, then he meets Shazam, and wtf that’s a homeless child. So Danny gets himself some fake IDs and whatnot and buys a house, inviting adopting with no choice because that is a hoMELESS CHILD- Shazam and then Danny uses some magic. The House is really in the ghost zone but it’s also in Fawcett city and Amity Park.

So the hero sanctuary begins and it’s in The House. Danny travels between so many different realms in between his duties as Phantom and Danny and he slowly picks up more kids.

He brings Peter Parker home and for the first time Peter has someone who understands him, someone who helps with his homework and understands what it feels like to try and do a test with a concussion, Peter spends time there so often it becomes a second hone, The House gets a new location in New York.

Then Dan starts a redemption arc and Dani decides to settle down at the house too, they even weeks where they do nothing but hang out together and they have odd weeks where they travel the world or do odd jobs for some money.

Next is Nico from Percy Jackson, he finally find people who aren’t creeped out by his death energy, who understand what it’s like to be so different, where did you think he stayed in between his time at camp half blood and the underworld, The House gets a small plot of land half an hour away from Camp Halfblood.

By this point Jazz moves in and acts as the mom, Sam and Tucker follow shortly after and this is when The House fully becomes Dannys home, his haunt is Amity, but his nest (think that’s the right terminology) will always be The House.

There’s also Harry Potter, Danny knows he can’t intervene much here but he gives Harry enough food that he doesn’t get malnutrition and heals injuries given to him unfairly and tells him stories that give Harry hope, Harry moves on quickly when he finds Hogwarts but never forgets and says hi to his second dad (Danny) on each of his death days. Harry becomes an even bigger embodiment of the third brother, when he does die, death is an old friend he can see again and Danny welcomes him back into The House with open arms.

Basically every child who gives up too much to become a hero finds sanctuary at The House, they aren’t judged about their powers and the needs and other things that come with them. Having someone to heal their wounds after fights is a welcome relief for each child and they have someone to lean on if all goes wrong, they’ll always have their dad (Danny, Tuckers too irresponsible for that), their moms (Sam and Jazz), their siblings, they’ll always have their family.

One day, Shazam gets beaten up within an inch of his life by Darkseid. Darkseid goes down in seconds to the angry family and if Danny asked Fright Knight to trap him in his own personal worst fear for a while, well no one has to know.

[rmoonstoner]

***

Poisoned Empanadas

***

Pairing:

Moon Knight (Jake Lockley) x Spider!fem!reader

Spider-Man 2099 (Miguel O'Hara) x Spider!fem!reader

***

18+

Warnings:

Violence, strong language, mentions of death, mentions of depression, sexual themes, someone gets hurt

***

Summary:

A wild Miguel appears once again!

***

Chapter 5 - Pizza Rolls

Yes. I said it. Pizza rolls to me are just little pizza filled Empanadas. My favorite kind are the big Great Value bag of them. Let me tell you about the homemade pizza rolls I made recently. I got puff pastry, then filled them with cream cheese and extra old aged cheddar, diced dry aged salami, diced habaneros, diced onions, homemade garlic pizza sauce, and then close them up, cover in garlic butter, sprinkle with parmesan, and bake on parchment paper for 15-25 min on 350.

***

Another week had rolled on by since that very explicit dream and you hadn't run into Miguel at all. Even when you outright asked the criminals on whether or not they had seen a jacked up Spider-Man, they genuinely looked confused and terrified that there was yet another Spider-Man, and this one was bigger than any of the others. It almost made you question his existence, had the wizard not kept asking if you had seen him again?

Every.

Damned.

Night.

You nearly lost hope on running into him. Maybe he found his way back to where he came from? Maybe he had to leave the city to find the thing he needed in order to do so?

Either way, you managed to get out to patrol for an entire seven days without seeing any sign of him. Perhaps he was busy, which was good. It was getting old being asked the same question every night. At least Peter had the decency to not ask about Miguel while in Stephen's presence. That would just trigger the doctor into playfully teasing you about it.

Thankfully, he hadn't asked about Miguel at all for today, come to think of it. Stephen had said Peter was there when he opened up a viewing orb to see where you were. Maybe Peter's little magic caffeine fit made him forget? Oh, who were you kidding, he aced his finals, so of course he'd remember seeing Miguel in the orb.

"Hey! Nice to see you!" Peter called out as you flipped yourself over the ledge to see only him at the meeting point. He was just packing up Gwen's bag that she had left the previous night.

"Hi! How are you?" You greeted him as he handed you a protein bar.

"Doing good. Since I did so well on my reports, I got a few recommendations from some of the professors. I showed them to Stephen, and told him I want to get my engineering and chemistry certification."

"So you plan on getting a doctorate?"

"Yes! I hope it makes Stephen proud. It's not the same kind of doctor, and it's more what Tony would have wanted-" Peter rambled a bit and you placed a hand to his shoulder.

"Stephen is proud of you. He'd be proud of you no matter what subject you pick. He would be proud even if you failed, because you tried so hard. You don't give up when it gets rough. He knows how much Tony meant to you and Tony wasn't one to stop achieving his dreams when he failed at something. You and Stephen share that drive, and it'll take you far." You said with a bright smile.

It wasn't a lie, because Strange talked about the boy a lot. He always asked how he was doing after a patrol, and he would be the one to do most of the first aid on the team. If he ever had to help Peter with an injury, the man would fuss while patching the boy up. Stephen would even be constantly mentioning how proud Tony would have been, had he been around to see Peter's achievements. The doctor almost sounded like a sweet old grandmother affectionately referring to her grandchild when he spoke of Peter.

"Thank you. That feels good hearing that from you." Peter replied as he cracked a grin.

"So… Does this mean I have to call you Doctor Parker? Or Doctor Spider-Man? Oooh! I know! How about Spider-Doctor?" You gently teased him. Peter burst out laughing while shaking his head.

"Absolutely not! It will be Doctor Parker, and then just the same old, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." He chuckled with a wink.

"Ah, good. Though… What about Doctor Webs?!" You gave a laugh back as you tried to picture it. He laughed and shook his head. The both of you got ready to head out, suiting up fully and slinging away into the night as you kept roasting Peter on the names he could use.

***

Most of the night was pretty calm. There was a fender bender pretty early on and a guy needed to be pulled from the wreckage, so Peter had helped. You didn't have much to offer in assistance, so you sat perched up on a shopping market roof to watch him while you called an ambulance. When all was said and done, you left to go seek out other problem areas that might need some help. The small police scanner Peter had built into his wrist watch sure did help a lot, and it reminded you of Miguel's watch.

Another occurrence was a man being held at knife point by a local drunk. Peter and you managed to talk the guy down and check him into a local drop-in center for outreach help. From there, everything was good. Nothing was off, which was great. It was so great that you and Peter stopped for a bite to eat on top of Stark Tower. About half way through your sandwich, Peter's watch and phone went off. He picked it up to check and his face fell.

"What's wrong, Peter?"

"There's been a breach in the Stark Tower security systems." He grumbled as he jammed the rest of his food into his mouth and chewed vigorously. You huffed and opened your sandwich and hurriedly removed the good bits, shoving them into your mouth and discarding the bread and other bits you didn't enjoy much. You both chewed in silence as you wiped your faces and hands.

"What? But we are sitting on the building..?" You asked with a confused face as you opened a soda to wash your mouth out, then handed it over to Peter so he could do the same.

"Yeah… I suppose we should go check it out, then?" He suggested. How could you say no?

Since Peter already had official security clearance, it was easy to get inside. You followed him in and down to the lower levels. He didn't bother to creep about. He acted like he owned the place, which he kind of did now that Tony was gone. Peter glanced at his watch a few times.

"Looks like the disturbance is in the vaults." Peter announced as he pointed to another stairwell. His tech was telling him the breach was in the power core reactor vault on the main floor. It was separated from the one that powered the building, and that was underground.

Peter directed you to the stairwell and down the center of the spiral stairs. He chose to use a web rope, while you descended with a disk of light. Once at the main floor, Peter quietly peeked down a hallway and motioned for you to follow. You darkened your suit and dimmed the lights in the hallway slowly, while Peter made his way towards the vault room.

There was a clatter of sorts the closer you got. Peter was a bit nervous, his spider senses no doubt going insane as he twitched at any noise. Yours, however, wasn't going off at all. You thought that was odd, considering the threatening nature of the noises that you were hearing. Scraping and clanking to be specific could be heard, followed by what sounded like drawers and doors opening and closing rapidly. The occasional crash of glass tinking against glass could be heard as well.

Peter stopped at the door, a weak light coming from inside. You could hear someone grumbling to someone. A man, talking to a woman. Peter was opening the door as you realized the voices sounded familiar, and before you could tell him to wait, Peter was zipping inside to confront the individuals.

"I'd stop that if I were you. Mr. Stark might be gone, but this building is still owned by his associates." Peter said as he clung to the roof in front of a large storage room door. The noises suddenly stopped and a growl erupted from the room.

"Spidey, uh, maybe we should be careful-" You started to say, when a large metal box was hurled at him. Thankfully, Peter managed to smack it away in time.

"Not one for talking, huh? Are you the strong silent type?" Peter said as he fired off a warning shot into the storage room. A small crash could be heard as a bunch of things fell to the ground and scattered all over the floor and out the door. You hid in the shadows and got closer to the door as Peter dropped down and darted into the room after the noise.

"Friday! Spidey needs the rest of the backup lights off!" You called out. The noises suddenly stopped as that familiar voice went 'huh?' And a second later, and the lights went out.

A scuffle occurred. You could hear Peter get hit and grunt as he came flying out of the room and hit the wall on the other side of the room. You gasped when it registered. You heard the distinct sound of bone breaking and Peter hissing in pain.

There was another crash, so you turned and stepped into the storage room, seeing a dark figure smash a window and climb up into it. The moon light hit his form just right, and you could tell immediately that it was Miguel. He turned to look back at you, tilted his head, then jumped. You looked back at Peter, seeing he was getting up and rubbing his neck.

You had a choice. Stay and help Peter, or chase Miguel.

"Get that jerk, Galaxy-Spider!" Peter shouted as he huffed while leaning against the wall. His arm looked like it was bent the wrong way, and his voice was dripping with pain.

That fucking dick broke your friend's arm!

You saw red, and then in an instant, you were across the room, handing Peter your bag for anything he would need, before running to and jumping from the window that Miguel had escaped from.

As you hit the night air, you looked around, catching a glimpse of Miguel zipping up a web to the roof of the building you just left. You scowled and hissed as you summoned a circle of light and stepped on it. You braced yourself and sent it straight upwards towards Miguel.

When he turned his head to check if he had gotten away, he recoiled in surprise when he saw that you were only meters behind him.

He reached out and shot a web to the next building over and kicked away from the tower. He used the momentum of the sudden change in trajectory to rocket himself away. He was fast, like ridiculously fast for a large hulking mass of muscle. It made sense, Jake was slightly smaller, but the cabbie was pretty fucking fast. So, of course Miguel, with the same setup, would be faster since he was a Spider.

Right?

"Get your ass back here!" You demanded as you aimed at him and shot off a web. He managed to twist himself out of the way. In doing so, he landed against the building and sprang away from it to go to another across the street.

"Fucker! I swear to the Gods, if you make me chase you, I am not going to be a happy girl!" You called out while making a series of glowing lights appear to get to him. He had gained a fair distance, now being three blocks away.

You could do this. You had chased far worse things than Miguel. This should be easy for you.

One blob at time, but surprisingly quickly as you hopped, skipped, and jumped your way to the fleeing Spider. You gave chase for over ten minutes, drawing you far away from the Stark Tower and the Sanctum. You hauled ass and pushed yourself to catch up with him, each breath coming out in a rush.

Closer.

Closer.

Closer…

Your lungs were burning and your muscles were aching with the effort to get to him. You were angry and upset that he had hurt your friend, and had the audacity to break and enter the building that belonged to said friend. You had an idea of what he was looking for, and you even offered to help him, yet here you were, chasing a potential thief that refused any help.

When Miguel looked back, you were almost able to grab at his ankle. The panic was evident in his body language, and in that split second, he shot you in the face with his webs.

Everything went dark and you stumbled while trying to pull the web from your face. You lost your footing, slipping and falling off the light. A strangled squeak came from you as your head smacked against another gob of light. Dizziness filled you as you kept falling. The ground would soon meet you and you were sure it would hurt and do some major damage.

A whoosh of air hit your ears as you were suddenly grabbed and sent flying. It took a moment to realize you weren't falling, but now were being carried while swinging in the air. Large muscular arms held you tightly against a well sculpted torso. The heat from the man was radiating nicely and it felt safe and warm, even though a few moments ago you wanted to punch him in his stupid face. A few moments later, and Miguel was setting you down gently, but he didn't let go. He was holding on in an effort to avoid you lashing out at him as he removed the webs from your face.

Well, you didn't lash out. You stayed still while trying to control your breathing. Your mask was taken off and when you looked up, Miguel had already discarded his on roof you were on. He held a look of concern as he inspected your head, finding a bump, but otherwise everything was fine.

"You gave me a scare, there. You weren't supposed to fall."

"Well you weren't supposed to commit a felony by breaking and entering Stark Tower, then I am pretty sure you broke my friend's arm!" You snapped at him and Miguel let go of you and took a step back.

"I broke his shocking arm!?" He seemed surprised and his face melted into remorse.

"I am sorry. He was trying to stop me from getting the information I needed, and he shot a web at Lyla. She's all I have left. I didn't mean to hurt him. I'm still getting used to these powers." He stammered as he showed you the lack of pockets and anything on his person, but the watch. You sighed, but still had to ask.

"Did you steal anything?"

"No! Well, uh, just the information I needed. I swear, I didn't take any of those glowing core things." He said and turned around.

"See? And no, I didn't put anything up there." He indicated to his rear, and it drew a small laugh from you. You cleared your throat and stood up.

"Well, you need to come back with me. Tell P- Tell Spidey that you're sorry and that you didn't mean to cause any harm, though you clearly did, you big brute. If you don't, the wizard will make your life really fucking hard." You scolded him and pointed back towards the tower. Miguel frowned as he looked down and sighed.

"Fine. I'm sorry I ran."

"Good! Now I'll just shoot him a text and let him know I am on the way back with you." You muttered while going for your pack. You froze when you remembered handing it to Peter.

"Ah, shit. I can't. I forgot I left my bag with him. Well, you're gonna just have to watch your back while we go."

***

By the time you got back to the tower, Peter had already called Stephen in. You could tell they were there because there was a warm orange glow of the portals he was so fond of. You had to check and make sure Miguel didn't just fuck off, which, thankfully, he didn't.

As you approached, you could see Stephen bent over Peter. He was fixing up his arm with magic and making sure Peter was alright when the lad sat up and pointed at you and Miguel.

"That's the guy!" Peter said as he jostled forward a bit and winced. Stephen smacked him lightly on the shoulder.

"Stay still. The last thing we need is you distracting me while I am trying to set the bone back into place!"

"But, Stephen, the guy that broke my arm is right there!" Peter argued with a whine.

"Settle down. I know he's there. I can clearly see him." Stephen said as he twisted Peter's arm suddenly. A loud crack was heard, and Peter gasped and almost threw up.

"But you're not even facing him…" Peter protested quietly. Stephen huffed and pointed up to his forehead and Peter went quiet. He didn't bother asking how he could still see Miguel, when that eye wasn't even facing him. He knew it was magic and left it at that.

"Heya, doc. I found the guy. Brought him back. He's willing to apologize and explain himself." You said as you motioned to Miguel, then to Peter.

"Good. I look forward to hearing about why he's caused such a fuss." Stephen stood there looking at everyone with his arms crossed. He looked mad and annoyed. Of course he'd be.

Miguel was nervous. He was shifting from one foot to the other as he looked at Peter.

"I, uh… I am sorry for breaking your arm. I… I am also sorry for breaking into this building." He glanced at Peter, then at Stephen, before his eyes landed on you.

"Okay. Cool. Apology accepted. Now, please enlighten me as to why you broke into my building?" Peter asked while Stephen started using magic to speed up the healing process.

"Your building?"

"Yes. This is my building."

"So that makes you Peter Parker, then." Miguel said as he motioned to the room around him.

"The man that Tony Stark left all his technology and businesses to. Wow. That's wild. You're so young." Miguel looked at you and huffed.

"You could have told me that, you know. I wouldn't have broken in here if I knew that this place belonged to your friend." Miguel complained and rubbed his face.

"You're a dick. I offered to ask my friends for help, but nooo, you said you wanted to do it all by yourself!" You said and threw both hands over to Peter. Peter was perfectly fine by now, Stephen's spell having worked its magic and fixed what Miguel had broken.

"I said I could have asked, and yet, you declined and ended up hurting my friend. I think you owe me an apology as well Miguel!"

"You're right. I'm sorry. I should have asked for help. I should have accepted your offer."

"Okay. Enough of this garbage. Can we go back to the Sanctum? I really need to finish this book I borrowed from Wong." Stephen spoke up and started walking through the portal.

"You're not going to punish me?" Miguel had a look of surprise on his face.

"No. That's for Peter and her to decide. I have enough shit to deal with already. Besides, you're a Spider-Folk. That's their jurisdiction." Stephen announced and then he went straight to sit at his desk with his book.

"Let's get going. You know how much he hates waiting." Peter whispered to you.

You nodded and looked at Miguel, curling your finger in a silent command to follow. Miguel hung his head in frustration as he followed on through. Once inside the library, the portal closed up behind you. Peter was the first to fling his mask off and flop into one of the arm chairs by the fireplace. You took yours off as you sat in the love seat and laid across it.

Miguel awkwardly looked at the other leather chair and sat down. From this angle he could see everyone, and he noticed the wizard's third eye was staring at him through the reflection of the mirror up on the wall beside him. That was unnerving, so he turned to look at Peter. The boy gave him an obnoxious smile as he looked Miguel over.

"That's a weird choice in a suit. You look like you're wearing a child's costume. I can see some of the seams are ripping." Peter quipped and you giggled.

"Look, my outfit was poorly planned in the time that I had." Miguel huffed and rolled his eyes as he relaxed into the chair.

He was spread eagle with the way he sat, and your eyes wandered down. Just a peek, right? What could it hurt?

"Hey, doc! Can ya fix up his ugly suit?" Peter glanced at you as he called out to Stephen.

You looked away as you blushed, Miguel eyeing you carefully as he crossed one leg over the other. Stephen grumbled and flicked his hands towards Miguel, and his suit resized and darkened with textures that weren't there before. Strange went right back to reading, but he was eavesdropping, ready to spring into action should Miguel blow his top.

Miguel's reaction was an undignified squeak and a grunt as the new suit formed around him. He stared at the gloves, noting the rubber like pads on the fingertips and the slits at the tips of the fingers for his claws. He got up and went over to the mirror and gawked at himself, twisting right and left as he looked at the professional fine detailing of the fabric patterns. Miguel looked like he was wearing boot shaped socks.

He didn't know what to say as he looked at you in the reflection of the mirror. You had been staring at him, eyes looking right at his impressive looking legs, looking up to his nice tight ass, then up his back to his shoulders, and finally to his eyes. You blushed and bit your inner cheek as you smiled at him. He winked at you and then turned to thank the doctor.

Miguel explained who he was, where he was from, and when. Stephen quietly listened, while Peter kept interrupting him to make a joke or a remark about something, like if he really fell into a dumpster, or if you had pushed him. It took about an hour to explain himself in what only took ten minutes to you privately. Stephen decided Miguel wasn't a threat, and offered to let him stay, but Miguel was very adamant about having a hotel room and that he didn't wish to be a burden.

Stephen wasn't having any of it. He refused Miguel's excuses and he showed him to a room, claiming he owed his son at least one day and night of his time for the inconvenience of temporarily breaking his arm. Miguel relented and followed Stephen to the room, and you didn't hear from him all night.

***

Series Masterlist

***

Note:

Sorry Peter. Miguel is really sorry.

Please like it if you enjoyed it, leave a comment, and share! ❤️ 💙

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Special thanks to:

Beta reader:

@einno-arko @theaussiedragon

Proof reader:

@iceclaw101

Ideas:

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[jessilynallendilla]

So I just read Danny Phantom: A Glitch in Time and...it was ok

Had this come out when I was a kid and just watched Ultimate Enemy I would have gone absolutely feral over it

this show came out in 2004 so not quite sure how to feel about the updated technology IMO it would have been cool to have a time capsule of the show than the common floating timeline you see in comics

unlike with DC graphic novels you can tell the person that wrote this is actually a fan of the show and not a rando corporate pick the plot is plausible and the characters stay in character

A loyal tribute that brings in new lore and character growth

it also retcons the hated movie Phantom Planet

And it leaves enough to be curious for the sequel

People either seem to love it saying it's a good continuation the more serious take they wanted or hate it saying they're tired of villains being complex and redeemable and not pure evil anymore and the plot seems too much like tumblr fanfiction

I made notes as a read it so spoilers under the cut

Dash Kwan Paulina and Star are ghost hunters 

Tucker has instagram/twitter “Spectregram” fans 

The Fentons supply the town’s ghost hunting tech unasked 

Tucker’s wiki “click-a-pedia" has him listed as married to Ember 

Danny and Jazz just accept their father is such a bungler he can’t even kill a guy by abandoning him in space 

Dan was strong enough to dent the only thing that can contain him and just it being knocked off a shelf was enough for him to break out (why Clockwork the Master of Time never foresaw this happening moved it from a table to a more secure location ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  ) 

So uh... Dan just absorbed “ate” Clockwork  

Ecto energy can reach atomic bomb levels so dimension ending threat there 

Since the Disasteroid his powers have been fading their theories match their personalities Tucker-science Sam-government Jazz-trauma  

“Do you have any childhood trauma you wanna talk about?” (like Jazz as if you weren’t there) 

Vlad found a primordial source of ecto energy and just kept that information to himself for a rainy day 

Jazz has a magical girl transformation for her ghost fighting suit 

Vlad is just “ignore those clones” (there in clothes so did Vlad just buy multiple copies of Danny’s favorite outfit how did he know his size) 

Vlad is such an old man who doesn’t know how to use modern computers 

“not a place of honor” ah the nuclear waste warning (we don’t really get much more exploration of this or the seven ancients) 

Sam is a horse girl 

Valerie still holding that grudge huh 

In Pariah’s Keep Danny is suffers from bad memories and holds Sam’s hand to comfort himself 

The Keep is Fright Knight’s domain  

Danny just forgets humans are the ghosts in the Ghost Zone (in line with how often he forgets what powers he has) 

Fright Knight calls Pariah his master 

Vlad is such a loser he keeps getting his shit kicked 

Maddie “That’s not my Danny.” 

The Ghost Zone and human world were split in half an unnatural divide 

Danny is still a C student (io don't think he's going to be an astronaut)

Ghosts are manifestations of human emotions not separate entities (take that Fartman) 

Eventually they start to lose their human identity it’s why some are less human 

Vlad has his own “Where’s the rest of it?” meme 

They figured out all ghosts run on some emotional drive or purpose  

Danny realizes his purpose is protection but now there’s no longer the monster of the week threat or his parents he never asked himself what he wanted 

Now instead of constant fighting he’ll help the ghost achieve their desires they just want to keep doing in death what they did in life and heal the rift 

Fight for control Clockwork 

Vlad finally grew as a person realizing it was his action and drive for power that drew everyone away and has making amends as his new purpose 

Dan just doesn’t want to be alone (makes sense the “no more painful human emotions” +Vlad’s anger and abandonment issues so he’s all the emotions and pain) 

Dan is destabilizing flashing back to his pre Dark child form because he’s a being outside his destroyed timeline  

Danny is the GOAT 

Clockwork needs to fix what he can of the time streams and Danny has two choices Post Disasteroid+no powers or Pre Disasteroid+powers  

Danny gives up being accepted so he can fix the realms “I’m Danny Phantom, proctor of humans and ghosts!” 

They are back to being invisible losers and Sam is just happy goths aren’t popular anymore 

The city doesn’t know how they avoided the Disasteroid but the Mayor declares ghosts are responsible for everything the city will now have a branch of ghost hunters and Danny Phantom is again public enemy #1 

Clockwork transfers Dan from Vlad into one of the empty clones he’s Vlad’s responsibility now he’ll be too busy to help again 

Clockwork’s powers are finite (so he isn’t omnipotent and all powerful) but he still feels something wrong in the stitches he feels weaker now 

And Valerie has a Time Medallion and is pissed (but there was a Valerie in the crowd at the Mayor’s speech so the two Valeries might meet up in the sequel)  

Jazz is ecstatic she was right about ghosts being emotions based  

[sophfandoms53]

There was something magical about the way the crowd at Sonic Symphony on Saturday was just so connected throughout every single song. Not even just all the screams and the cheers and singing of the lyrics.

That memory of a sold out theater filled with Sonic fans with no shame about loving this franchise and it’s music I will truly never forget any of it. It was something younger Soph would have never thought could happen to her but I’m so glad I can stand here for my younger self and tell her it happened and that she has nothing to be ashamed about🥹🫶

It was just a night of joy and fun. Everyone just had a good time with it. It was so surreal.

Things in this franchise that were memed and made fun of were celebrated. I honestly couldn’t believe it while I stood there.

When they started I Am All of Me and the way everyone screamed the moment Shadow pulled out that gun. The way we cheered when Maria got shot was so unserious 😭 (there’s footage of this online btw)

Everyone singing the lyrics to I’m Here’s section of the Frontier’s medley.

That one person yelling “Here we….” And the rest of us finished it with “GO!” during Unleashed’s medley.

The speech Ty made before leading into Endless Possibilities about what it was like for him growing up as that nerdy kid into video games and music and how he never let that stop him and look where he is now because the possibilities truly are never ending. It made me break beyond words during Endless Possibilities.

The “Good! Great! Awesome! Outstanding! Amazing!” BOTH times during Planet Wisp.

The chant for Live and Learn.

The JOY for both His World and Knight of the Wind.

How we all collectively lost our minds during Escape From the City.

And how they added in an acoustic version of One Way Dream as a thank you to us for selling out the night and being such an interactive audience. And knowing One Way Dream was Sega’s love letter to the fans for sticking by just made it hit all the more harder for me🥹

To any Sonic fan, if you can, go see this show. Your younger self and your current self will thank you for it. It’s completely worth it and it makes all the love and dedication to this franchise and to these characters mean so much more.

[rebelspykatie]

Spent all my years in believing you

@steddie-week Day One - Pining/Somebody to Love Link to AO3 | 1k | Rated T

He’s not sure when it started.

Maybe it was Eddie’s first day at Hawkins Middle School, when he first came to live with Wayne and had to start at a new school in the middle of the year. No one knew who he was, and he was just as lost. Mostly he was angry. And scared. But here was this boy. Kind and sweet, who offered to show him the good food in the cafeteria, who showed him the bathroom that had the least amount of graffiti and working toilets, who wanted to know more about him, even if everyone else in the school shied away from the new kid.

Maybe it was the first day of his sophomore year, when he’d all but forgotten about that boy, only for him to show up at the locker down the hall. They were just blips on each other’s radars, ships passing in the night. Before anyone realized he was attractive and talented both on the court and in a swimming pool, he would wave at Eddie from his end of the hallway. They shared fourth period English with Mr. Rolland and he always offered Eddie an extra pencil when he would inevitably forget his.

Maybe it was the first time Eddie saw him compete. He’s had to watch from afar, as he gets more and more popular, while Eddie strays further from the socially acceptable paths of his peers. The shining star of the basketball team, the up and coming talent on their swim team, the most sought after lifeguard at the local pool versus the trailer park trash that listened to his music a little too loud and devoured fantasy novels, the kid who could barely afford school lunches, the one whose parents abandoned him and left him to live with his uncle, the one that couldn’t stop taunting jocks even when they roughed him up. All of that melted away when he watched him glide across the water. Eddie was witnessing magic happen, even if he was there under the guise of earning extra credit in gym class.

Maybe it was the first time he stopped the bullies from coming after him, dragging Eddie up by his elbow, wiping the blood from his split lip with the sleeve of his sweater. Billy Hargrove spat in their direction, but all it took was one harsh look from him as he held Eddie upright to have Billy scrambling back down the alley. It was the first time he talked directly to Eddie in years. Swooping in like a knight in shining armor that Eddie didn’t ask for and didn’t see coming. He gently helped him to his van and patched up the cuts on his hands from the gravel and Eddie couldn’t help thinking he was staring directly into the sun, burning up in the atmosphere as he came back down to earth.

Maybe it’s when he watched him stumble on his way to his locker, face beat in and shoulders hunched. Eddie had never seen him look like this, even when Byers beat the shit out of him last year. Cheeks purpling and swollen so badly he can’t even put in his locker combination correctly, fumbling a few times before Eddie made his way over and he lets Eddie gently push him aside, asking quietly for the numbers. People were staring but he didn't seem to notice. He looked almost as lost as Eddie felt on the day they met. Eddie wants to find out who hurt him and hurt them back. It’s sudden and fierce and shakes him to his core.

Maybe it’s almost two years later when Eddie’s holding a broken bottle to his throat. Eddie’s head is filled with horrific delusions about a dead girl on his ceiling, while he clamors up the wall trying to get away from the sharp edge almost slicing through his jugular. When he calmly tells Eddie that he knows all about the monsters under the bed, or well, under their feet. The bruises on his face, the tremor in his hands, the flinch at flashing lights, finally making sense. He’s bringing Eddie into the fold and protecting him at every turn. When he takes his shirt off and dives head first into danger and Eddie’s not sure whether to swoon over his bare chest or his unrelenting heroic idiocy that nearly gets them killed.

Maybe it’s when he’s carried out of the upside down, cradled in the arms of the person who warned him not to be heroic, as if he has exclusive rights to making such moves. He’s so cautious when he lays Eddie down in the stretcher they wheel out for him at the hospital, as if they weren’t frantically dashing through rapidly closing portals while Eddie’s insides were leaking out of his abdomen just a few minutes prior. He opens his eyes again to the sounds of beeping machines and his uncle talking quietly to him in the corner. They’ve become friends while he’s been unconscious and it makes his veins feel like hot lava.

Maybe it’s quiet car rides when Eddie’s new trailer is too stuffy and his car is already idling outside before Eddie can call him. Maybe it’s meals that appear in their freezer without Wayne or Eddie ever stepping foot in the kitchen. Maybe it’s Eddie panicking in physical therapy and clutching his arm like Vecna is standing right there breathing down their necks and not six feet under the ground. Maybe it’s the way he takes care of the kids and never asks for anything in return. Maybe it’s Wayne dragging him to the couch to watch baseball together, handing them all a beer and looking all too pleased when Eddie rolls his eyes.

Maybe it’s all of those moments, melding together to form this bigger picture. The universe had always given him somebody to love. The two of them, together, but separate. Lives intertwined in ways they never could have imagined. Or maybe it doesn’t matter when it started or that the years haven’t been kind to either one of them, but that it’s always been Steve. And they might finally have a chance to be Eddie and Steve. Together.

[nugulover69]

Courtesy of @spandexual the Guzegers! IN 3D!! (da sims 4) (guze timeline is around 2004~2005, hence the fashion Choices on display)

Decided I'd write some blurbs as well. below the cut bc I don't want this post to be a mile long

Short premise summary: the baddies are a cult called the Church of the Sun. Their leader, Chairman Sugiyama, works with a heart-themed demon named Vena Cava to collect human vital energy for World Domination Purposes

The red and his mother are ex-members who run a ghost hunting business to stop the villains MOTWs. the team's henshin devices were stolen from the cult. it's not ghost busters, totally legally distinct

Theming is knights, mythology (of the japanese and european variety) and ghosts/yokai

Shinsuke Yoshinaga ❤️📿

From a young age, he often smuggled miscellanea from the outside world, like magazines and movies. he was particularly fond of horror movies and shonen manga

Father was banished to super hell after trying to expose the cult's world domination plans. Shinsuke fully believes he's still alive and just needs to be rescued

Picked his teammates at random at a food market, got a lil too gun-ho over having the freedom of choice

Generally affable and highly curious of people, often too curious like asking invasive or simply blunt questions (social cues who)

Reika Fujisaki 💛👑

Former idol turned tarento. highly attuned to what's hot and what's not

Public persona of a brash, ditzy faux-American girl, which the public is starting to get tired of bc hey honey shouldn't you think abt settling down and having kids at your ancient age of 25

She takes whatever gigs she can find bc she is NOT irrelevant she WILL be the greatest entertainer of this generation TRUST

Joined the team for publicity, which has been working somewhat but unfortunately she keeps saying strange or accidentally insulting things to fellow celebrities

Norio Wahilani 🖤🔪

Deathmatch wrestler from The States who just recently moved to Japan. throws in english words constantly (to annoy his english-illerate teammates but also bc he just forgets certain words)

Cantankerous, snarky and and misanthropic. only agreed to join bc he likes the excuse to be violent without repercussions

Actually deeply insecure, only feels comfortable in his own skin when wrestling

TERRIFIED of trains, will NOT ride them

(may or may not be a repressed gay man but shhhh don't worry abt that)

Haruhi Matsumoto 💙💸

From Osaka, easy to tell bc of her strong dialect

Always hocking her wares, whether those be off brand clothes or literal snake oil

Although she appears affable, she is highly distrusting and often lies abt her intentions or past. true backstory is her mother died when she was young and her father was cold-at-best, preferring to gamble and drink over raising her

Magnet for stray animals, especially cats

Miso Inoue 💖🧠

Computer nerd and otaku with a fashion sense stuck in the 80s

Comes from a rural mountain village, deeply embarrassed abt it

Viewed as weird even among his fellow otaku nerds bc he prefers voluptuous adult women over skinny lolis

Cosmically unlucky in a slapstick cartoon kinda way, his laptop satchel is always getting stolen and tossed around

Kohei Sugiyama 🧡☀️

Evil sixth initially sent to kill the guzes. defected from the church after his papa tried to turn him into a demon bc he had failed to kill the team so many times

Childhood friend of Shinsuke who grew apart as Shinsuke's family's belief in the church teachings waned

Had basically zero knowledge of how the outside world worked, even less than Shinsuke. this boy does not understand why people are poor and thinks computers are literal magic

Stole his hi-vis vest from a construction worker

Never not carrying his trusty khakkhara, his main weapon and security blanket (ignore that its not in this picture)

Everyone except for Shinsuke hates him terribly bc he routinely calls them idiotic heathens and is only nice to Shinsuke, feeling he's the only one who understands his pain

[oddberryshortcake]

WHAT DO YOU THINK Lilia and Silver’s conversation will be like at the end of this Chapter? After things calm down?

(cause they Have to have a talk, twst pls 😭 these boys are overdue a conversation)

IT CAN GO A LOT OF DIFFERENT WAYS!! 

First things first, I don’t think Lilia had any intention of telling Silver anything about his past. 

Lilia lies a decent amount to people he cares about and he has some pretty justified reasons to (even if they are a detriment to himself and others, such as never telling Malleus that his magic and life were significantly depleted via hatching him because he didn’t want Malleus to feel guilty and the senate shamed him for it) 

Silver’s bio parents have been dead for over 400 years. The people who knew him back then are all gone, the kingdom he was once a prince to has been erased by history.

There’s no easy way to tell your son, who is physically and mentally only 17 years old, that he was actually put under a 400+ year old spell to keep him asleep as his home decayed around him. 

How do you even explain that to a kid? And let’s not forget Silver’s bio dad killing Malleus’s mom, which is something that is also a secret to Malleus. 

I’m sure Lilia figured that since so much time had passed, that there’d be no way Silver would ever figure it out. Lilia could give him his bio parent’s ring and talk about them distantly, not as someone who knew and interacted with them, but as someone who could simply just confirm that they loved Silver and wanted the best for him. 

Liliia promises to talk to Silver about everything, because now he has no choice but to. But that assuring smile he had, I think, is both a calm under fire sort of vibe but also, I think he witnessed Silver overcoming his complex feelings over his origins and remembers how Silver fought to live with his reassurance. 

His biggest fear might’ve been Silver hating himself for his lineage, and he did for a moment. But Silver overcame that and Lilia has the chance to finally be truthful with him and probably express all the complicated things he felt- like his contemplation over killing Silver, the fact the Knight saved Lilia and the egg, that he adopted Silver to see if he could love a human and he could. 

Now here’s a crazy possibility, what if twst throws the biggest curveball ever and wipes Silver’s memory of everything that happened (He established in 7.3 that he has trouble remembering his dreams, this includes his signature spell which he can only access while dreaming) 

Would Lilia still tell Silver the truth? 

Who knows. 

It would suck if they reverse development but there’s always a possibility. Maybe Lilia would try to continue on as nothing happened and then decide (maybe at Malleus and Sebek’s insistence) that he does need to talk to Silver about these things. 

I keep getting vibes that something bad might happen even after the overblot is over with. That’s also me being very attached to the 1959 Sleeping Beauty movie (and Maleficent 2014!) where, despite everything, Aurora is always cursed one way or another. 

Best case scenario- We get an absolute banger of a monologue from Lilia and a follow up conversation, a nice little wrap up to the question Lilia asked himself years ago. Can he love a human? Yes he can! Also Malleus is his son too, and the senate can stay tf away from him lol And the found family is found once more. (I hope this one happens)

Worst case scenario- Silver (or everyone) forgets everything and we simply wipe this under the rug. Or, it could be glossed over with no solid wrap ups like poor Scarabia :( 

One question that still remains that hasn’t been wrapped up yet is the exact reason why Silver is falling asleep so frequently when the spell he was under has seemingly been broken for years. I hope the game will address that so we can see is it Silver’s lack of self-love? Was the spell never fully broken? Will it ever completely break? What would Lilia and Silver’s relationship be like when this blessing turned curse isn’t hanging over them 

If 7.7 doesn’t get back on a plot development track I’ll cry 

[deputyclover]

Dump

*Clover lays unconscious on a flower bed as Rose tries to wake him up but fails.

Daddy? Oh no.

*Rose runs through the dump to find help and finds the dummy.

Ugh, nobody here, Daddy isn't doing good!

*Rose turns around to find help but stops as the dummy moves in front of her.

Hahaha... Too intimidated to fight me, huh!?

No! I need to find help!

Oh really? Well, human. I'll 'help' you before you leave!

What?

*Mad Dummy starts attacking Rose as she dodges the magic attacks and some of them hit the Mad Dummy.

OWWWW, you DUMMIES!! Watch where you're aiming your magic attacks!

...

Hey! You! Forget I said anything about magic!!!

*Rose continues to dodge attacks and redirects them to the Mad Dummy.

Dummies. Dummies! DUMMIES! Remember how I said to NOT shoot at me? Well... FAILURES! YOU'RE FIRED! YOU'RE ALL BEING REPLACED!!! Hahaha. Hahaha! HAHAHA! Now you'll see my true power: Relying on people that aren't garbage!

*Robot Dummies start shooting missiles at Rose but she dodges them and continues to redirect them.

OK, YOU CAN'T HURT ME AND I CAN'T HURT YOU! YOU'LL BE STUCK FIGHTING ME... Forever. Forever! FOREVER!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!

*The Mad Dummy starts getting hit by tears.

Wh... What the heck is this!? Ergh! Acid rain!?! Oh, FORGET IT!! I'm outta here!

*Mad Dummy leaves and Napstablook arrives.

...sorry, i interrupted you didn't i?

No! You saved me!

oh. ok. bye...

*Napstablook leaves and Rose follows, trying to find someone to wake Clover up.

*Rose eventually finds Gerson's store.

Woah there! Been a long time since I've seen one of you.

Hello, I need help!

Oh really?

Yeah, my daddy is unconscious in the dump!

Now why were you there?

We were being chased by some scary knight!

Ah, Undyne. She just came through here, asking about someone who looked just like you... I'd watch you back, kid.

Ok. Thanks!

*Rose leaves to find other help.

*About a minute later, Clover enters the shop.

I'm so sorry for bothering you sir, but have you seen my daughter? She has brown hair, blue eyes, white skin, and is wearing a red hoodie.

Why yes, she was in here about a minute ago.

Thank you so much!

*Clover leaves to find Rose and heads to a dark hallway-like room.

Behind you.

*Clover sees Undyne behind him.

...

Seven. Seven human souls. With the power of seven human souls, our king... King ASGORE Dreemur, will become a god. With that power, ASGORE can finally shatter the barrier. He will finally take the surface back from humanity, and give them back the suffering and pain that we have endured. Understand, human? This is your only chance at redemption.

You know those shadow creatures that were neither human nor monster that attacked earlier this year? I stopped them.

I don't care.

*Undyne pulls out her spear and starts to charge at Clover as MK exits the bushes.

MK: Undyne! I'll help you fight! YO!!!! You did it!!! Undyne is right in front of you!!! You've got front row seats to her fight!!! ... wait. Who's she fighting?

*undyne grabs MK and takes them away.

MK: H-hey! You aren't gonna tell my parents about this, are you?

*The two leave and Clover looks around.

ROSE! WHERE ARE YOU?

Daddy?

ROSE!

*Clover hugs his daughter tightly.

I'm so happy you aren't harmed.

Thanks Daddy!

*Rose hugs Clover back.

Come on, we need to leave this area.

*Clover holds Rose's hand as they walk and get to the narrow bridge.

MK: Yo! Yo, I know I'm not supposed to be here, but I wanna ask you something. Man, I've never had to ask anyone this before Rose... Umm... Yo... You're human, right? Man! I knew it! ... well, I know it now, I mean... Undyne told me "stay away from the humans." So, like, ummm... I guess that makes us enemies or something. But I kinda stink at that, haha. Yo, say something mean so I can hate you? Please?

No MK, you're my friend.

You know what, I got to do it. ...Man I can't do it. I'm gonna go home now.

*MK turns to leave and trips and holds on for dear life.

MK: Yo, w-w-wait! Help! I tripped!

MK!

*Rose and Clover run towards monster kid as Undyne arrives and the two help MK up and Undyne leaves, seeing the humans caring.

Yo, you really saved me. Guess being enemies was a nice thought, haha. We'll just have to be friends instead. Man, I should really go home, my parents must be worried sick about me! Later, Rose!

*MK leaves.

Ok Rose, I think we're gonna fight Undyne, so I want you to run until you see someone we know, ok?

Ok!

Good.

*The father and daughter duo continue their journey.

[loosesodamarble]

Ooo for the headcanon ask game; how about…Julius and Yami please Erika 🥰💕?

Alrighty then Lyra! Lemme dig deep into my mind for some good ol' Julius and Yami content!

It got a little lengthy so I'll be putting the headcanons under a "read more."

.....

Julius Novachrono

Realistic Headcanon: Has probably drunk Vanessa under the table. While in disguise of course. We know he's a sturdy drinker so maybe one evening while he was exploring the kingdom, he happened upon Vanessa at a bar and they had a little competition. Julius won and delivered Vanessa back to the Black Bull base.

Not realistic but hilarious Headcanon: When Julius got de-aged, his youthful body causes some headache for his adult brain. Like his taste buds. Julius usually didn't take his tea or coffee with sweeteners but in a the body of a 13-year-old, suddenly black coffee is too strong for him. Also, it's not like he could drink any problems away with a kid's body. He'd just die again, in a less epic way. He was stuck sipping on a juice box while Marx grilled him on paperwork again. (Not totally unrealistic but I think it's unrealistic to think that Julius' taste buds would be so sensitive that he can't drink tea/coffee at all after de-aging.)

Heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends Headcanon: Julius was originally the one to want to find a way to make "perfected" humans. He and Lucius were originally wheelchair-users. Julius didn't mind needing a wheelchair but he could tell it bothered Lucius a great deal. So he proposed that they find a way to restore their legs and even extend that chance to other people. He wanted to bring peace and healing to the world. It was Lucius who took things to the extreme, believing that the only way to attain peace was to make humans completely equal in all ways and control everything. Julius just wanted to help his soul twin. He just wanted to do good. But his ideals got twisted by Lucius.

Unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own Headcanon: Julius was Yami's legal guardian for a time. Yami was a foreign orphan with no connection to anyone in Clover. So when Julius found him, he was like "you're my responsibility now." Though the guardianship was only really on paper. Until joining the Magic Knights, Yami still lived in those ruins on the beach and kept to himself. It was that way partially because Yami snuck away while Julius was caught up with something else and partially because Julius realized he couldn't force Yami to be his kid and thus just left him be. Then, when Yami was fifteen and got his grimoire, he became an adult in Clover's eyes and thus his own legal entity. Thus, Julius' guardianship over Yami was over. Still, to this day, Yami is in the records for being part of House Novachrono. The money Julius saved under that name went to Yami and that's how he's not completely broke. (Also William is part of Julius' will and gets some Novachrono cash, but it affects him less as William is already financially stable.)

...

Sukehiro Yami

Realistic Headcanon: Sukehiro thinks in Hino/Japanese. All his thoughts, his battle strategies and jokes and such, all happen in the Hino language. And when processing what others say, he translates from English/the Cloverian language to JPN. It's fine when he's on his own or on a battlefield and not making banter. But in a conversation, he can appear a little slow as he always takes a few extra seconds to double process what's being said. Even after so many years in Clover. But he intentionally keeps Hino in his mind so he doesn't forget.

Not realistic but hilarious Headcanon: Rather than thinking Nacht and Morgen were the same person because they're twins, I headcanon that Sukehiro refused to believe that they were at all related until he was legit brought to their house and shown that they are in fact related. There are several factors to this: -Names. Sukehiro could've confused the name order during his early years in Clover so he thought Faust was the twins' first names (like meeting two Jakes) while Nacht and Morgen were their family names. -Their appearances. Sukehiro didn't know hair bleaching was a thing. So how could pale-haired Nacht be related to a guy whose hair is black as night? -Attitudes. He can't imagine a shithead like Nacht hanging out with a sweetheart like Morgen so it clearly meant they were raised under different roofs. Sure their ki could've told Sukehiro they were related but Yami could've also been denial. And when it sunk in that Morgen and Nacht were in fact related, twins even, Sukehiro accuses them of actively trying to fuck with him. When no, Sukehiro is just dumb.

Heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends Headcanon: Sukehiro could very well develop lung cancer in the future. Like, he smokes quite frequently from what we've seen. And if the incident of Lucius showing himself and disappearing Asta is anything to go by, then he chain smokes when he's distressed. On top of that, he's been smoking for about 10 years now. Maybe healing magic can be used to treat his lungs and prevent cancer but it's not very clear. So, worst case scenario, Sukehiro develops lung cancer and whatever happy future he has is short-lived...

Unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own Headcanon: Sukehiro killed his family. I don't care if canon says Ichika actually did it. I hate that. No way a 7-year-old could massacre at least a dozen people, even on crazy demon drugs. I say that Ichika went on a rampage and severely injured the Yami clan. But then Sukehiro was the one to finish them off if they hadn't already bled to death. That would explain why Ichika remembers seeing Sukehiro carrying a sword and with blood on him, because he finished the job for her. Ichika still carries a lot of the blame but like... Sukehiro should get kills under his belt.

.....

Headcanons ask game