#and immediately saying 'don't let the historian find out'

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

thinking about how i would hypothetically rewrite rwby (i probably never actually will because i can't fucking commit, tbh)

and i think the overall key would be like

"make it narrower, but deeper"

like to use an analogy. RWBY to me is like. rain on a salt flat. looks cool, expansive, but shallow as hell.

which i do understand. this is a hypocritical complaint, tbh. i *do* often abandon my own ideas, and make things overcomplicated.

(i even had to edit the above down, it was 3x longer for no good reason.)

but instead, i'd make rwby more like a deep pond rather than the big wet salt flat.

"wtf does that Mean tho"

well here's a basic rundown.

-axe the racism. i am black, and find it a fundamentally poor allegory, even *with* more polish. tbh on a more shallow front i'd also just like doing animal jokes without it being racist.

-retool it to classism that affects all races (also helps my issue with Cinder's backstory feeling like a Faunus backstory)

-(yes, yes, intersectionality, the two issues are fundamentally intertwined, i know, i know, but you get the gist of it)

-this could make the thing with adam and blake *more* interesting in some ways, as because Blake has a well-off family and just sympathizes with the cause, Adam grows to resent that, feeling she'll never *really* understand or *really* be willing to go as far as the movement needs, in his eyes.

-salem's a mortal, middle-aged woman who became obsessed with illegal grimm research and experimented on herself. Not some Ancient Great Evil.

- similarly, Ozpin is Just The Headmaster. No Epic Cosmic Destiny or reincarnations.

-there is no fucking ever after

-there are no fucking relics

-there are no confirmed gods but there Are religions

"ohh you're sooo high and mighty, removing stuff rather than having the bravery to add or build on anything"

okay, fucko strawman i invented, i see you.

-there *is* magic. (but Atlas isn't held up by magic, it really is just Gravity Dust now)

-simply put, "magic" is now defined as "being able to draw upon the world's Aura rather than yours, and without reliance on Dust"

-btw, Dust is just a sort of "crystalized" version of world Aura, so now the three concepts are neatly tied together (yes, this makes it TECHNICALLY a renewable resource, but it replenishes slow as fuck)

-by extension, Grimm (And Salem and Cinder) are magic in a parasitic sort of sense. (they passively suck the Aura outta things and can slowly sicken and kill just by *existing* somewhere for too long/ too great a number. But as a direct result of how this wouldn't be sustainable for them long-term, they *usually* have a natural instinct to spread out and wander, which lets the land recover and makes them a little more manageable to fight).

-by further extension, Cinder's Grimm arm is neatly explained as a further exploitation of Grimm's pre-existing parasitic, power sapping nature

-Silver eyes are magic, as what they draw upon is the collective hope, willpower, and general positive energy of humanity

-Ozpin and Salem were like. multidisciplinary scientists/historians who both sought to study and revive magic for human usage, as it's not only more flexible, but neither of them missed the implications of a power source that can cut out Dust as a middleman entirely, either.

-Salem of course IMMEDIATELY saw the connection of Grimm being, BY FAR, the most abundant avenue for magic around.

-Ozpin was all like "Saleypoos. Saleykins. My sweet. Grimm are like the world's parasites. This *has* to be a bad idea."

- "Ohrrrr Ozzed Pin my Sweet, Don't You Gnow? all we have to do is modify the Grimm tissue to make it more cooperative and less harmful! You know, Watts thinks that he's really onto something with using cybernetic implants to control and alter their behavior... and I've been talking to this wonderful Dr. Merlot fellow, and if we include his theories, I really think we have a shot at this!"

-"Weeeelll... ok... if you say so. I know I can always trust you :)))"

-OZPIN COULD, IN FACT, NOT TRUST HER (Or Dr. Merlot, or Watts, for that matter)

-This raises the fucked up possibility that, in fact, Salem is *such* a recent phenomenon that the reason the Branwens can become birds is because this is a power granted by sketchy Grimm research, and *this* is why everyone else is so affronted, because it takes it from "oh cool he gave them powers" to "WHAT DO YOU *MEAN* YOU DID SECRET GRIMM EXPERIMENTS ON ORPHANS, EVEN IF THEY DID CONSENT. HOW ARE YOU EVEN HEADMASTER. WHAT."

- Yang being the one who is particularly affronted and concerned because now she's paranoid that she was born secretly maybe like 5% Grimm without knowing it.

Weiss: come on Yang... don't be ridiculous...

Ruby: yeah, i mean, sure your eyes turn red when you use your Semblance, but I'm sure that's just-

Yang: oh my GOD my eyes DO turn red!

Blake, loudly whispering through clenched teeth: Ruby! Not helping!

Nora, oblivous: welllll your Semblance does kinda, in a way, absorb energy from others, which *might* sound a *liiiiittle* like a Grimm, BUT-

Blake: NORA.

Weiss: *facepalm*

Yang: *existential crisis*

[jamisonwritestf2trash]

Please rant about it!!

Ok!

But also, I'm linking the videos just incase people stumble across this and want to watch the videos after seeing this:

HBomberguy's Video

Todd in the Shadows video

————————————————————

I'm starting out with some of my favorite parts before a mini rant bc, yeah! (This is nowhere near all of my favorite parts, but there's just so much it'd take me hours to compile.

————————————————————

Immediately starting with a Harlan Ellison moment was amazing

The "world's most fuckable twink" line absolutely took me out, but then him going into the explanation about plagiarism being disrespectful right after was like two back to back gut punches, in the best way. Because he was so fucking right about it.

The grammar mistakes he points out are so funny

Him overlaying Brian Deer's documentary over Blair's video was also great.

Him calling Blair out for being lazy and honestly a shitty person was also great.

ALSO! BLAIR CITING HER SOURSE AND IT BEING A PIRACY WEBCITE!?

Also also him making fun of how her sprite moves 😭

Him calling out Internet Historian for being a piece of shit

German board game joke

How he points out Reilly's skill and talent

"Just don't touch the screen or move the mouse awa..."

"MASTER OF SHIT!" (rips the wall down)

"There's one group more important than historians, or journalists, or anyone else with a real job, and that's gay people."

————————————————————

Rant time :)

My mini rant is just about how fucking stomach churning the second half is. Like, let me tell you, I watched that entire section, mouth agape, in shock and horror. I can bearly fathom how lazy, pathetic, and malicious you'd have to be to pull some of the shit he (Somerton) did. (The first half stuff was insanely bad too don't get me wrong)

Hbomberguy did an amazing job showing the visual of how many parts of the queer horror video were plagiarized, I legitimately gasped when the highlighted portions were shown.

Every time you think he can't get any lower, he does. It's baffling, and honestly, I wish I could say more about how mad this makes me, but I'm so mad and tired that I can't think of words so mini rant over, I suppose.

————————————————————

But also, sorry, this is one thing I feel like no one is mentioning, and it's driving me insane. I also watched Todd in the Shadows video (which is also really good btw) and at least three parts of the video debunk lies Somerton said about nazis, the main ones being, (and I'm taking the titles from the yt video so you can find these in the time stamps)

1. The SS was "teeming with homosexuals"

2. The hitler youth was also run by homosexuals

3. The nazis created our current body standards.

In the three mentioned above, Somerton's lies are genuinely just him writing gay fan fic about nazi Germany (at least that's how I felt about what he was speaking and wording things) and it's fucking disgusting. He says things in such a skin crawling way it makes me sick.

And no one seems to be talking about it or how fucking weird it is, but hey, maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my mini rant and my favorite parts. Sorry it's all kinda messy.

[laytontheories]

Well, I've gone into too much detail about Amelia Ruth and Frederick Bargland so I might as well continue the series.

Let's discuss Marco Brock:

What we know about Marco is that he is an Amateur Historian. He loves Ambrosia so much that he went to a fancy opera with his backpack and journal.

Honestly I don't even think he was in it for Eternal Life. He probably went to the opera because he genuinely enjoyed it.

When Descole says something special will happen, Marco cheers. Maybe they'll be giving VIP tickets to whoever knows the most about Ambrosia? That would definitely be him!

When he finds out about the game and how the losers will lose their lives, Marco is understandably shocked and asks what's going on. Despite this, he stays and is able to solve the puzzles correctly.

While the other contestants talk and discuss the answer with one another, Marco works by himself. He seems to prefer being alone. That is until he meets Curtis O'Donnell.

It looks like a new ship has set sail! And I don't mean the Crown Petone.

When they make it onto land, Marco immediately recognises it as Ambrosia and excitedly pulls out his scrapbook to info-dump on everyone. He's so happy. It's pretty wholesome.

This is when I get mad. Even though Marco solved all the puzzles correctly, he was still eliminated. Descole broke the rules to his own game because Amelia had to be the winner. Marco should have gotten a consolation prize at least.

To make matters worse, Janice and Luke escape, leaving Marco to be physically attacked by Descole's men who steal his precious scrapbook.

But everything goes alright in the end. Marco reunites with Curtis and they have a nice chat. They are so distracted they don't even notice a photo is being taken until it's too late.

Because of this, the pair instead take a selfie together in front of the Ambrosian stone. How cute!

I'm sure Marco will be excited to explore Ambrosia and learn more about it.

Maybe he and Curtis can get a boat and travel the world together, researching the Azran and battling sea creatures along the way.

[omniblades-and-stars]

9 & 10 for Valethen!

Oh a twofer! Here we go!

9. a future historian’s account of your OC’s actions

While many contemporary writings cover the vast breadth of Lavellan's actions, for many volumes could be written about the events surrounding the Inquisition of 9:41 Dragon, very few seem to address what, exactly, happened at the Winter Palace in Halamshiral.

The results of Inquisitor Lavellan's meddling at Empress Celine Valmont I's pivotal ball are not in dispute. The Empress was slain, her cousin Duke Gaspard de Chalons ascended as emperor in her place, and the woman rumored to be Celene's lover, an elf named Briala, was granted the title of Marquise of the Dales. The results of this course of events are well documented by primary sources. Court historian Lady Marcellete kept detailed notes, albeit biased and littered with rumors and gossip overheard in dark corners during the ball, and of court activity until her replacement in the year 9:44 Dragon.

There were rumors that the Inquisitor, an apostate mage and an elf, performed a blood magic ritual there in the ballroom, controlling Grand Duchess Florianne de Chalons' mind and forcing her to murder her cousin. This outlandish rumor can be dismissed out of hand. Many people at the time were horrified to watch as the Inquisitor stood by and allowed the murder of the empress. Many speculate that Lavellan thought to gain more power over Orlesian politics by installing the Grand Duke to the throne.

Inquisitor Lavellan's own letters tell a different story. Found in the Chantry library documenting the time during the Inquisition's existence and Divine Victoria records, the Inquisitor wrote to many people in the aftermath of that ball, and the many conflicts that followed both in Orlais and the rest of Thedas.

In one letter, written to Divine Victoria shortly after her ascension in the year 9:43 Dragon, Valethen expressed her doubts about the decision, saying, "The Duke is a brute and just as bad, if not worse than his cousin. I would be glad to never be involved in Orlesian politics again."

As to the Inquisitor's motives for allowing Empress Celene to be assassinated, very few records still exist. However, I have located one letter, written to Marquise Briala. It is undated, but appears to have been written in the immediate time after the ball.

Briala, Marquise of the Dales,

I apologize if I have not titled this letter correctly. I'm afraid I quite used up all of the grace and courtly knowledge that could be afforded to me at the Winter Palace.

I am writing to you, Briala, because I feel I must explain my own actions to you. I know what the Empress meant to you, and to witness what I allowed, I know you must believe me a conniving and heartless bitch. Perhaps you are correct.

I know what she did to crush that elven rebellion. What she has had you do. These are not secrets to me. You must understand the rage I feel in my heart, to see people like me, like you, subjugated and cruelly treated within the walls of her own palace, to know what crimes she has committed against my people. I could not find it in my heart to forgive it, did not have the strength to overlook it. It was petty, I will admit.

I fear Gaspard is no better, though I find some relief that he finds his power neutered. Were it truly up to me, I would have let Orlais' nobles play their horrid little games until they bury themselves in the ground. And I might have if it would not have a profoundly negative effect on the common people, and a far worse one on the elves.

I don't seek forgiveness, I ask for none. I only wish to be understood not for a power hungry politician, and just for the person I actually am, as broken and flawed as the rest.

Keep yourself well and safe, Briala. I would not trust the Duke not to scheme against you in the coming years.

Sincerely,

Inquisitor Valethen Lavellan

Contemporary sources, mostly written by Orlesian nobility, often overlook how Celene's burning of the elven alienage in Val Royeaux might have colored the Inquisitor's perception of the embattled Empress. Much was made at the time of the Inquisitor's Dalish heritage, and even more of her magic, but very little was afforded to her desire to see the wrongs against her people righted. That she was an elf made it easy for her to be a villain in the Orlesian Court, a notion that must be held up to the same standards of the normal course of affairs of Orlesian politics. It is no secret that the Great Game often involves murder schemes, spying, and strategic inaction. What they found so offensive was simply that she was an outsider who excelled at their own Game.

An Excerpt from "On The History of Divine Justinia V's Inquisition", written by Sister Alicia Delcroix, Chantry Historian

10. a description of your OC by someone who hates them

Found in the archives of the Chantry in Val Royeaux

Revered Mother Hevara,

I must impress upon you the dire state of Divine Justinia's Inquisition. The rumors you have heard don't come close to scratching the truth of things, and the truth is far worse than you could believe.

The prisoner, the Dalish elf from the Free Marches, and the only suspect in the Divine's murder, has not only been freed, the people have taken to calling her the Herald of Andraste, simply because she claims that a woman helped her out of the Breach after the explosion.

Are we to allow such heresy based on the hallucinations of an elf, and an apostate mage, no less?

The woman herself says that she makes no such claims. I do not know if it is better or worse that she steadfastly denies the title of Herald, as the reasoning for it is her belief in the elven gods. For Andraste's sake, she has one of those heretical tattoos declaring her as a follower of a false myth. Worse, after an inquiry into the meaning of it, I am told that it represents their god of secrets. This bodes ill, I tell you. This unassuming woman does not even need to speak, she does little enough of it anyhow, to weaken the Chantry even further. Her very existence is trouble enough.

However, it's her magic that concerns me the most. She makes no secret of it, proud as she is that she learned without the proper guidance of a Circle. Lavellan uses it for even the smallest thing, such as heating her tea when it has grown cold, to conjuring flower blossoms just for the vanity of decorating her hair. She flaunts her magic for all to see, and I suspect it is simply because she knows it upsets the few Templars who remain loyal to the Chantry, knowing they are rendered impotent currently.

We must put a stop to this Inquisition. I have no doubts that this is not what our beloved Divine intended. I fear what will happen in the time to come if they are not brought to heel, and this apostate along with them.

Faithfully,

Grand Chancellor Roderick Asignon

Another Codex ask game? You bet your ass! Blow me up!

[knickynoo]

Back to the Future: The Animated Series, s01ep11 "Gone Fishin'" Review and Commentary

Previous episodes linked HERE

In this episode: Marty, Jules, and Verne try to undo one of Doc's deep-seated childhood traumas, only to end up sending his life wildly off course.

I shall preface this by letting anyone reading know that Tumblr has been messing up my gifsets and pictures in my previous posts. Gifs and pics that should be side by side end up enlarged and stacked vertically when viewed on the dashboard through a desktop. I've been unable to figure out how to fix it and have no clue why it's doing this to me. It is a source of great frustration and makes me not want to do these reviews anymore. But I'm trudging along. Just wanted to let people know in case it looked wonky. It's not on purpose!

Alrighty, let's dive in.

Okay, so this episode has my favorite live-action opening segment in the series thus far. We begin with black-and-white footage of Doc, accompanied by him doing a voice-over where he explains that he was visiting the 1920s. As he's doing the voice-over, the Doc on screen is just waving at the camera the entire time, and it is delightful. He becomes increasingly frantic as the waving goes on.

Doc goes on to explain that he'd been in the 1920s to meet Thomas Edison and get him to autograph a very large lightbulb, which we then see as we return to the "present day." Doc immediately drops and shatters it as he's showing it to us.

Quickly moving on from the tragedy (he says he'll make a return trip to get extra bulbs autographed) Doc goes on to talk about the '20s—silent films in particular.

"I'm sure you've all heard of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton," he says, "but only the real film historians among you recall Daredevil Brown. Talk about a Hollywood success story."

Hmm...well, that's an intriguing little piece of info, isn't it? Who is this Daredevil Brown?? Doc leads us into the cartoon to hear the full story. "It all began with a fishing trip," he tells us with a haunted expression.

We shall find out the reason for this expression shortly. Into the cartoon, we go!

While working in his lab, Doc is approached by Verne, who hands him a flyer for the upcoming "Father and Son Big Mouth Bass Off." It's apparently an annual Hill Valley event, and Verne really wants to go with his dad. Doc, however, reacts with immediate terror, crumples up the flyer, and quite literally begins convulsing as he tries to tell his son that he can't go. He then stumbles into the living room and collapses on the couch, still in an agitated state.

Jules decides to show Doc his new invention—a helmet that allows you to watch TV without disturbing others in the room with the images/sounds, and Doc figures trying it will be a good way to get his mind off of the terror he just experienced. Unfortunately, it's a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show, which, if you're familiar with it, has an opening sequence of the main character going fishing with his son. Doc rips off the device and runs straight into the wall.

I don't know about all of you, but I think Doc might have experienced some fishing-related trauma?? I mean. Just a guess.

Also, I would like to point out that throughout much of these opening scenes, Doc's eyes randomly turn blue, which is the second instance I've noticed of a character's eye color changing mid-scene (the first was in Swing Low, Sweet Chariot Race). And I'd really like to know why this was happening. Whoever was in charge of character eye color, you dropped the ball here. You probably didn't think anyone would be scrutinizing this series closely enough to notice 30+ years later, but you were wrong.

Getting back on track here, Jules and Verne sneak into their parents' bedroom that night with a plan to figure out what's going on with their father. Jules has invented a device consisting of an in-ear piece connected to a screen that allows someone to view the wearer's thoughts. Y'all, Jules is 10-years-old, and he's incomprehensibly brilliant. He just whipped up an invention to see a person's thoughts. This is something that can be put to horrible use if it falls into the wrong hands.

As they use the device, miniature versions of Jules and Verne appear on the screen and "travel" through Doc's brain. They pass a "brainstorm," a long pathway containing his "library of knowledge," and then come to a huge wall.

Whoever was in charge of spelling, you dropped the ball here, too. Admittance is spelled incorrectly.

I sincerely am curious as to how these mistakes slipped by and made it into the completed versions of the episodes. In a way, though, it kind of adds to the fun.

Jules gets a readout on the screen that says: "Memory block, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 5, 1926." With this information, the boys now know that something significant enough happened to their dad on this date that a gigantic wall was erected in his brain to block the whole thing out. The mini versions of Jules and Verne on the screen get out pickaxes and chip away at the block until they break through and can see the memory.

In a show so centered around time travel, I must remind myself to suspend my disbelief in these absolutely absurd and impossible moments.

Anyway, Jules and Verne access the hidden away memory and see their four-year-old father fishing. As he casts his line, he falls into the water, nearly drowns, and is terrorized by various sea creatures.

Nobody is around to run to his aid as he splashes around and calls for help. Jules and Verne feel it's their duty to travel back to that date and stop Doc from having this terrible, scarring experience.

As they sneak the DeLorean out of the garage, they're caught by Marty, who has decided it is of the utmost importance that he make a visit to Doc's house at 11:30 at night to get his hoverboard. Jules explains their plan, to which Marty replies, "Milwaukee? That must have been when Doc stayed with his oddball Uncle Oliver." And I must say that I like that Marty knows this little bit of Doc Brown trivia and that Doc has obviously told Marty at least this one story about his childhood.

Marty agrees to not tattle on the boys if they let him tag along? He tells them he wants to travel to a time when he'll be smarter than Doc. Off they go to 1926.

"How much can a little kid know?" Marty asks as they approach Little Doc, whom I will just refer to as Emmett from here on out. Everybody look at him, please.

As Marty immediately discovers, he is not smarter than this four-year-old version of his friend. After jokingly asking Emmett what he knows, Emmett replies, "Several languages, the Periodic Table, the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere, and the Encyclopedia from 'A' to 'Grrr.'" (He hasn't made his way through the FULL encyclopedia yet, evidently.)

While I know that this cartoon can hardly be considered canon to the world set up in the trilogy, I love that Emmett can speak multiple languages and wouldn't mind at all incorporating that into my general Doc Brown headcanons. I just wish he'd mentioned which ones he spoke. German is likely one, but I'm not sure about the others.

Emmett tells his new friends that he's waiting for his Uncle Oliver to take him fishing "like he promised" and then directs their gazes up to where Uncle Oliver is—wayyy up in the air—attempting to break the record for flagpole-sitting.

We quickly learn that Uncle Oliver is obsessed with trying to set records, perform wild acts, and become famous. Marty tries to persuade him to take his nephew fishing, but Uncle Oliver isn't that interested in Emmett—a trait that seems to be common amongst the Brown men. I am looking at you, Erhardt! >:(

Marty, Jules, and Verne opt to just take Emmett themselves, and Jules is able to get his future father to stand in a spot where he won't fall into the water. Instead, Marty falls in, lol.

While teaching him how to properly cast, Emmett ends up getting his line hooked to the underside of a small biplane and carried away.

The plane is part of a nearby stunt show, and Emmett gets taken along for the ride as it does loops and tricks in the air. Everyone watching from the stands is impressed by this young performer, and he quickly wins lots of adoring fans. When he's approached by a camera man who asks if he wants to be a star, Uncle Oliver's eyes turn into dollar signs, and he jumps at the chance to be Emmett's manager.

"All I wanted was to go fishing," Emmett points out. Too bad, buddy, you're about to be exploited by your uncle for fame and fortune. Uncle Oliver signs a contract with a famous producer who says he'll make Emmett a star. Marty and Verne are psyched by this development, but Jules (the only one with a brain) points out that they've seriously altered their father's life. The boys decide they have to monitor the situation closely.

From there, we go to Hollywood, where Emmett is quickly thrust into stardom. We see a clip of a silent film he's in, which includes a scene of him dangling from a very high clocktower by his suspenders, falling and bouncing around on a building's awnings, and landing in a fountain. He's dubbed "Daredevil Emmett" and quickly garners many fans.

Little Emmett's amazing feats capture the entire country, and he's soon got his own line of comics, a drink named after him, and multiple other products. He's on the radio, in the newspapers, and is being talked about all over.

Emmett is less than enthusiastic about the whole ordeal, but Uncle Oliver doesn't see any issue with it. He's loving living vicariously through his nephew and brushes off Marty's concern that all this daredevil stuff isn't good for Emmett. We then see the very lavish life that Emmett and Uncle Oliver are living.

...how long have Marty and the boys been in the '20s for all of this to be happening?? I mean, this all started with taking Emmett fishing, and now they're living in Hollywood; Emmett has become a movie star, has a line of products named after him, and has moved into a massive mansion with his uncle. Have they been in 1926 for months?

While Marty, Jules, and Verne are having fun in the pool, Emmett asks if he can swim with them, to which Uncle Oliver says no. He doesn't want to risk Emmett getting hurt, which would hurt his career. Emmett storms off angrily. Marty once again voices his concern for Emmett's well-being. This time, Oliver almost listens, but then he receives a phone call with an offer for Emmett to go over a waterfall while he's inside a barrel, and Oliver can't turn it down.

On the day of the stunt, Marty and the boys discover that the man behind the idea is D. W. Tannen. When Emmett expresses concern about the safety of everything, D. W. assures him he won't actually be going over the falls; a dummy will be in the barrel, and people will just think it's Emmett. Except, surprise! D. W. is lying, and he has no intention of switching a dummy into the barrel. He wants this to be real, and that means sending a four-year-old child over the edge of a waterfall. Nice guy.

Thankfully, Marty, Jules, and Verne, overhear D. W. talking, and Jules forms a plan to save his father. Marty's evidently a key part of the plan, and he and Jules have this exchange, which makes me laugh.

Jules's plan is to have Marty serve as a tightrope walker in the opening act—complete with gum stuck to the bottom of his shoes to keep him from slipping. While the crowd is distracted by Marty, Jules will stick a mini, spare flux capacitor to the barrel (which will have Verne in it, not Emmett) and transport the barrel someplace else.

Oliver, who is not in on the plan, actually gets a chance to redeem himself as he sees the barrel start to go toward the waterfall. Thinking his nephew is actually inside, he dives into the water to try to save him, finally coming to his senses about how money-hungry he'd become. Marty pulls Oliver out of the water, the barrel goes over the falls, and it's transported out of harm's way via the flux capacitor.. Back on the dock, Oliver and Emmett are reunited, and Oliver takes his nephew fishing.

With everything set back to normal, the boys return home, where they discover that Doc is now eager to join the father-and-son fishing tournament. The end!

Back in Real Doc's lab, he teaches us about gravity.

He also ends up dropping that bowling ball on his foot.

And that's the end of the episode. This one is a lot of fun, and I LOVED seeing the young version of Doc. He's adorable. I'm glad Uncle Oliver saw the error of his ways, but it took thinking his nephew was about to die going over a waterfall to change him. I wonder if Doc has any male family members who weren't terrible??

Anyway, good episode. Join me next time to watch Doc spiral into an existential crisis after thinking he's used up all his brainpower.

[racefortheironthrone]

Hey there,

So I read the Locked Tomb series a few months ago and one thing that occurred to me after reading Nona the Ninth was that the John Gauis’s account of the end of the world could not be fundamentally trusted.  While I believe that Tamsyn Muir intended for these passages to be “true” or “Accurate” to what happened I found unable to accept the chapters due to the number and severity of lies told by John.  It also led to me notice any inconsistency, irregularity, or any implausible scenario and to see it as evidence of another lie by John. 

My question I suppose is if an author uses an unreliable narrator when (or if) should the audience trust said narrator again.  

In part my extreme skepticism started when John mentioned the oxygen crisis, that such a scenario would be so sever and immediate that there would be little time for John’s necromantic schemes.  It was further stoked by John’s impractical cryogenic plan (why would you send frozen people to the Kuiper Belt), and later on John’s  mis-remembering when and how original-Gideon died and that he was telling this story to Harrow hark trying to convinced her to join him.

I am quite certain that my extreme distrust is unwarranted and that Muir intended for us to believe John’s tale but I cannot help but notice the inconsistencies and find John utterly dishonest and unbelievable.

I'm glad you asked this question, because it allows me to talk about how to apply historiographical methodology to literary analysis.

One of the terms that I was exposed to during my training as a historian is the "hermeneutics of suspicion" - the practice of reading texts such that the on-its-face meaning of the text is false and that you have to read the text solely for its deeper, hidden meanings. The problem with the hermeneutics of suspicion is that, taken to a logical conclusion, all texts and meanings become false, and for lack of evidence, all academic inquiry shuts down and we wind up sitting on the floor with our hands over our mouths.

Now, this doesn't mean that you have to take texts as 100% valid either, but rather that good methodological practice requires a careful weighing and balancing of bias, rather than simplistic binaries.

So in the case of John's narrative in Nona the Ninth, is John meant to be an unreliable narrator? Yes. However, because Tamsyn Muir does actually play fair with the readers, she makes it quite clear when John is lying to Harrow/Alecto:

"I said I made a mistake. She let it go eventually because the others were telling her to lay off. Just said Guys as careful as you shouldn't have accidents. If you've got a gun learn how to aim it. This is too big for fuckups now... "Did you ever find out what happened? With your accident?" He turned to her and he smiled a funny little smile. It only used one half of his mouth. In the dream his new eyes did not show happiness or unhappiness. And he said, "Come on, love. Guys as careful as me don't have accidents."

And here again:

"I did need to do it, Harrow. There was no other way. Once those bombs were going off, there was no hope for Melbourne anyway-- G- was dead meat." She said-- "You said that G-'s bomb went off first." "Yeah, it did," he said impatiently. "Of course it did...Look-what does it matter? In the end, why the hell does it matter?"

Unfortunately for John Gaius, Harrowhark Nonagesimus is smarter than he is when she's in her right mind and she catches the discrepancies in his story - just as we are meant to do.

So what I would say is that, unless it's something where Tamsyn Muir gives us clues like this where other characters are calling John out on his bullshit, you should treat worldbuilding issues like the population of Earth, or the logistics of cryocans, or the speed of shuttle transports in the Nine Houses, etc. as either mistakes on the part of the author (when they actually are mistakes) or just part of the overall willing suspension of disbelief that comes with speculative fiction.

[mdhwrites]

I think a major part of my frustration with Luz's character arc (if it can be called that) is that I think the best character arcs often involve the character starting at a place where there is something they are wrong about or there is some flaw they need to grow from. Anne from Amphibia (and Sasha and Marcy as well) is a great example of how to do this well. But Luz never really has her fundamental beliefs or character challenged except I suppose in Episode 2 of the show when she learns she's not a chosen one. (Which as you've pointed out before is arguably undermined by some of the chosen one-like tropes she falls into later anyway.) There's nothing (according to the show) that she was wrong about or needed to change her mind about or needed to grow in any way from. The only thing she learns is that it's okay for her to be herself. Which, uh, pretty sure she already knew that in Episode 1? "Us weirdos stick together" and "no one should be punished for who they are" and all that? So really she learned nothing. I like Luz well enough and I find her charming (when she's not pointlessly angsting about ~helping Belos~ anyway) but come on, that's no way to write an interesting main character. Anyway that's my two cents, any thoughts on the matter? 🦎

So this is great in conjunction with my earlier blog because it is effectively a question about what you prioritize or think is important in a main character. What parts of character analysis do you care about? But I talked about character analysis in general this morning. Let's talk main character analysis. And yes, I've done this before somewhat with talking about if Luz is a good protagonist but didn't talk about main characters and arcs. So why don't protagonists usually have a more defined arc than the characters around them? That answer is actually pretty simple: The more defined they are, the less you can do with them. The character might say no a plotline or not react correctly to another character who needs them to behave in a specific way for their plotline. The more their character demands actual attention, the harder it is to tell the rest of the story since they are theoretically the focal point of the story. Frankly, this happens with Luz. Part of why S2B struggles to FUNCTION, let alone S3, is because Luz is demanding attention when before now she didn't. She was there, she might do things but the character she was interacting with, or the element of the world, was what came first. The most immediate example post Yesterday's Lie of this is actually the beginning of Elsewhere Elsewhen. Lilith just got hired to be a historian... But Lilith is a plot device almost as much as the time pools are in that episode. That's why Luz misses most of the party because the show wants to claim she's doubling down on her angst and worries and so she's finally actually putting more work towards figuring out what's going on. If the mouse hadn't spoken up, it's questionable if she would have gone to the party at all. And that sucks for Lilith's character because she HAS to be simplified than in order to not take up too much attention from what Luz is doing and her personal plot line. She's a gag character mostly in that episode for that reason because Luz is the dramatic anchor now despite this episode featuring what is theoretically a large change for Lilith in accepting a position DRASTICALLY lower than her original one. Reaching Out suffers similarly. It is theoretically about Amity's relationship with her father but Luz's angst is such a priority that Amity even struggling in the tournament isn't allowed because that would take too much time away. Luz can't properly react to Amity because the writers are so focused on her keeping this secret. Worst yet, to both Reaching Out and Falls and Follies, is that the writers can't have Luz actually stop lying so despite Amity asking Luz to stop TWICE, that can't have an impact on anything because they will not let Luz get past this. If she does, Hollow Mind's aftermath either is instantly resolved and we don't get her trying to stay in the human (which boy if that wouldn't have been nice) or becomes far more complex and has negative ramifications as characters have to now treat Luz differently based on the new information. Frankly it's a problem with ALL the character writing in TOH. Statements and future plans matter more than what the characters might actually do or real growth. This is also why characters are replaced as much they grow into new versions of themselves. Momma Eda is incompatible with her old self unless more thought and more complex answers are put into how she handles new problems dictated what she theoretically grew into. It's better to just forget most of what Eda does in S1 instead and just accept the new characterization.

And when your form of character arcs through replacement, that's a REAL problem for your main character. They dictate the tone and focus of the show after all. They have to change by inches without throwing the entire thing out of whack. And MOST people agree that S2B feels entirely different from the rest of the series, if not also S3 in general. And yeah, that's gonna happen when everyone has to now deal with an angry, upset, lying, secretive ball of emotions that is what Luz became in S2B. All while not being allowed to actually influence these emotions because the resolution is only allowed in S3. And halfway through it at that! Frankly, I would argue that instead of the issue with Luz being that she had no arc (and it's fine if that is the bigger deal to you. Arcs are compelling and spending too much with a main character who never changed is what made me eventually stop watching Randy Cunningham: Ninth Grade Ninja) but that when they tried to change her, they put no real thought into it. Despite this being their main character, their core, they treated Luz like they do any plot point, any character arc, any theme. It's just to make a statement and to try to prove it's better without the thought needed to make it better than other shows. And you do that to your main character and you are going to kill your story. ========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[the-bird-and-the-flute]

Sebastian (Akihiko) - ikevamp - AU event - two hearts bound by destiny

Just finished reading his premium. And I'm stuck in the middle of his sweet end lol

as sebastian does not get many events, I'll try to sum up what happened in his AU story.

Chapter 1

MC and Sebastian are dating (they call him by his real name in this event. I'm so confused lol). They met each other in France when MC's company transferred her to work there for a while. And Sebastian was there researching something as a historian.

When they got back to Japan, they decided to live together.

In this chapter we see Sebastian and MC cooking together. He also has excellent cooking skills in this AU. Seeing them cooking together was probably my favorite moment.

Chapter 2

They went to town to celebrate the New Year. After watching the fireworks, they go to the shrine to pray. Once they are done with that, they decide to go to a woman who is some type of seer.

MC and Sebastian grab some sort of paper that may predict if you'll get lucky or not in the new year.

MC gets the bad luck paper, while Sebastian gets the good one. She, for a second, gets gloomy thinking this will be a bad omen, especially about her relationship with Sebastian. But she pushes that bad thought aside and they both move on their outing.

The place they were in was extremely crowded. MC gets lost, but after a while Sebastian texted/called her (I don't remember which one xD) saying he was going to wait for her outside of that area.

Chapter 3 - Premium

MC sees Sebastian talking to a random woman. She doesn't have much time to process that because some weirdos encircled her. The men were drunk and tried to force her to come with them to a party.

Sebastian sees MC and immediately rushes over to save her. With his karate moves, he protected MC and restrained one of the guys. They get scared of him and run away.

The mysterious woman sees them on the street and gives them a ride to their place. Inside the car, MC finds out that this woman is Sebastian's older sister.

She asks Sebastian why he doesn't visit their parents. Sebastian says he will think about it. MC kind of invites herself to go too and then Sebastian agrees to meet them.

At home, he explains that he avoids talking about their family because when he traveled for work, he lost touch with his mom and dad, that's why he didn't visit them. But as he decides to take a step further in his relationship with MC, he concludes it's time she finally meets them.

My favorite lines (highly recommend to see this here napoleon stans lol)

My opinion

Tbh, I didn't like this AU event with Sebastian. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I think the story was not that engaging. Idk if they always write Sebastian stories that way, but it felt as something was missing. Let's hope we can get more sebastian in the future :D

I wonder if Arthur or Leonardo's stories were good...

[goddesspharo]

to offer another perspective on the tgm cast miles topic (as a self proclaimed kinda historian), miles just has never been as close to the rest of the cast even during filming/pre movie release… you can kinda tell through years of group outings and pics where he’s missing and generally how the cast talks abt one another. most likely just a not all your coworkers are your friends type thing and maybe a personality thing to an extent.. i mean it’s true that miles does tend to do his own thing and is always on vacation so and always with his wife so. also at the time miles was definitely the most well established/known of the younger cast (w the exception of maybe jay ellis and he also is less involved to an extent) so perhaps felt less of a need to mingle. there’s like.. a non-negligible number of crew stories saying how glen was very outgoing with the crew in general whereas miles wasn’t etc etc. anyway, i don’t think there’s any bad blood between them and all of them seem very happy to see each other when they do but i just don’t think any of them are really going out of their way to see miles (bday parties, going out together, hanging out… except for the time where miles/keleigh and glen were separately on vacay in i think it was cabo and then met up for a day which was very funny to me) and they’re not as close which affects photos/how they interact on carpets/yada yada (also lmfao just realized how much i wrote!! not to go on a long spiel in your inbox this is just my… special interest and i almost never get to talk abt it)

I know next to nothing about Miles Teller's life outside of his movies because I genuinely do not care. But in general, audiences should stop assuming that actors all love each other just because they were in a blockbuster together and if they don't spend time together once the contract ends, it means there is "bad blood." I think it just means that acting is like any other job. Much like every other profession in existence, you don't necessarily love all of your co-workers or want to hang out with everyone outside of work. I'm sure actors feel that way too! And that is fine! That's why the concept of work friends exists! Work-life balances are good and normal! Sure, it's charming when the TGM cast members randomly show up to support each other's premieres or plays and I still find it wholesome whenever The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants ladies get together (those traveling pants were made of strong stuff!), but it shouldn't be like some sort of parasocial expectation. Everyone should live their best life by spending time with whoever they want.

Besides, at the end of the day, we all know that the only person whose contact info everyone on that set committed to memory immediately was Tom Cruise's anyway, let's be real.

[spacecadetspe]

A snippet from last year...

Aug. 14, 2023

It's been a fairly good week without many incidents.  The exception was in dealing with a text from X.

W lost a set of Fortitude's car keys, and so to teach him a lesson, we're requiring him to "pay back" the value of the key fob in exercises.  The key fob would be $375 to replace, so we rounded down to 300 exercises.  Well, W told X, and X came at me, demanding that I find some other way to punish W.

I felt my hackles rise as soon as I saw the long-ass text he'd sent me.  How dare he suddenly claim to care!

But I took a breath and waited for the trigger to pass.  I told X about the keys, and that I'd been trying to get W to eat healthier and exercise more.  I also refused to take the money out of his allowance or give him more chores, because I don't believe in free labor or putting a child into debt.  And spanking him won't solve anything at all, so either he can join a sports team, or we can do a few short workouts per week, which is what W was freaking out about.

W doesn't want to join a sports team for some reason that he hasn't made clear yet.  I think he's scared of what his peers think, and is worried that they'll be mean to him.  He threw a tantrum with X, who caved, of course.

So... all this to say that I'm still livid at this sorry excuse for male flesh that is pretending to care only when his child is throwing a tantrum.

That being said, the weekend went pretty smoothly, with W only really showing resistance a single time.  I think he's learning pretty quickly that I don't tolerate bullshit, or being treated as if I'm stupid.  He's learning that exercise gives him more energy, and being without his phone allows him to learn communication skills and bond.

It was only after W had returned to his father Sunday evening that I got a summons from Vassilios.  This was unusual, after an uneventful week (which I needed; my wounds are still healing), so I was stunned to see him so worried.  He came in and offered me a black obsidian mati, and told me that it had been found during the last rounds.

"It belongs to Epiales," he explained solemnly.  "Sometimes he goes by the moniker 'the Black Dream.'"

"A nightmare," I mused.  "And what's his specialty?"

Vassilios' expression grew grave.  "The worst nightmares imaginable."

I felt myself grow serious, and I made the attempt to translate his name.  The best I could come up with was "the proud one."  Hypnos had named him after a sin.  "Oh my."

He nodded.  "He's indiscriminate, sociopathic; even violent.  He's been known to attack or kill dreamers.  It's been said he's half demon."

I'd never heard of a demonic half-breed outside of literary fiction.  I was surprised they actually exist.  Maybe I shouldn't have been.  "Which one?" I asked.

Vassilios didn't know, so I advised him to go find Flauros, who is living among Rath's troops in the Dream World as a human.  "He's a sort of family historian for demon-kind," I said.  "That could help us."

Vassilios left, and almost immediately after, Phantasos popped in.  He didn't know much about Epiales, namely because Hypnos had been the only one who was ever able to keep him in line.  I shudder at the thought.

It's nice to have someone looking in on me.  Lately I've felt like someone has been watching my every move, and to be fair, that probably was the Black Dream, himself.  And at the time, it felt better to think it might be Phantasos, rather something as baneful as Epiales.

But, without warning, the mati began to tremble, and Epiales appeared and demanded that I hand over the Dream Staff.

I tried to make small talk, even let him try his hand at wielding the staff and the great book of spells.  His reaction was to accuse me of stalling.

"Stalling?" I scoffed.  "I just handed you the book and staff.  How exactly does that look like stalling?"

He didn't answer; he only made it clear that the only thing that would satisfy him was the complete subjugation of the Dream World.  His demonic heritage allowed him to wield the dream staff in a way that no other oneiros could.

Phantasos' reaction was to draw his bow.

"You missed something," I said.  "You're so proud and so hasty that you forgot some crucial information."

"And what's that?" he growled.

"One, the oneiroi didn't choose me for the role; I was assigned.  You weren't.  Two, I built this place.  It responds to my whim.  I have the high ground.  Three: there are eight Virtues holding the title of Dream Lord, and you chose to pick on the strongest one.  And baby, you aren't even on my radar.  That should tell you how close you are to fucking up right now."

As expected, he didn't listen.  He began corrupting the nexus, freezing the oneiroi mid-transit and poisoning them with demonic energy.  So I took his powers.  I cursed him to human form, laden with painful empathy, broke his signet ring, and beheaded him.  Using the power of the primordials, I purified the nexus, and then called Thanatos to take Epiales' body away.

The nexus will recover... but so must I.  I've channeled too much energy, and my wounds are still far too fresh to overexert myself again.  As much as I'd rather keep company with Phobetor, Morpheus, or Phantasos... I'm just not sure I have the energy.

[blood-autumn]

D2: Fucked honour but not conscience

-You should see her boobs! - while his potential client was delightfully nibbling on some student from all sides, the blond was rummaging through the pockets of his tobacco-soaked leather jacket for a crumpled packet of cheap cigarettes. Pulling out a paper casing, he greedily gulped it down, immediately slamming his palms into the pockets of his jeans, trying to find a lighter.

-And booty… - he lustfully continued, as if she were picturing the object of his adoration in front of him.

-Pussy! - after another failed attempt at lighting a cigarette, the smoker blurted out.

-He-he-he, her fingers haven't got to her yet," the client corrected cheekily.

-Go ahead, man… - his skinny interlocutor reacted indifferently, finally taking a long-awaited puff. - Or better yet, get the money," he exhaled a copious stream of tobacco smoke and felt a rush of unforgettable high. - I don't give a shit what drives your libido.

-Did you find it? - shivering with impatience, the client asked and choked on a stream of smoke.

-Inaccessibility is an illusion, you just have to know how to look for it,- he exhaled the rest of the tobacco and intuitively looked around to see if there was another "principled" weirdo hanging around the stairwell. - The first, money, - after briefly watching the client rummage around in his rucksack, he finally got his hands on some twisted banknotes. - Give me a second… - student carefully unfolded it and checked the authenticity of each paper thoroughly in the light. - That's all right," he said, and then he tucked the payment into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a miniature bag. - You know you shouldn't shout about it on every corner, don't you?

-Of course, dude, - he said excitedly. - Listen, - after twirling the packet in his hands, the former client soon spoke less confidently. - Is this drug really as good as they say it is?

-Why I should know it? - having extinguished the bullock against the wall and made his mark on the history of local smokers, he also replied indifferently: - I‘m too busy for mixing drugs with alcohol and let alone push this mishmash of nothing on an unsuspecting girls.

🎶 Super Besse – Net nichego

-Peek-a-boo, what are you doing? - a young female voice echoed near the landing, deeply embedded in his memory by its pretentiously suave manner of speech. - Smoking's bad for you, - as soon as the majestic shadow towered over the client's body, he immediately curled up and fled.

-It's not against the law to fuck up lungs," he commented angrily on her reproachful remark, trying not to spew out all the bile he'd accumulated since their last confrontation. - All the more, it's not your jurisdiction," he finally came out into the light and came face to face with his standard of righteousness within the walls of this shit-house.

-Really?! - she was indignant. - What if you're still selling nude pictures?

The guy's palm involuntarily clenched into a hard fist, ready to punch his interlocutor.

-One way or the other, - the brown-haired woman added with her hands at her sides: - You‘re the only familiar correspondence student that‘s why I had to torture you with questions, - noticing his intrigue, she showed him some screenshots of cringe correspondence from her student chat room.

-Oh, what are you expected? - the blond man responded sarcastically to her shocking discovery. - They need They need something to keep them busy until the next session, and our historian is the least grey-haired teacher in uni (he means university).

-It‘s disgusting! - the girl's ardent thirst for justice reawakened. - Now they would argue about the existence of a wife, then they would look for her, and in the end, those buzzers would be in trouble.

-Emilia, - the guy said her name dryly, - we‘re buzzers too.

-They're the smoker's buzzers! - She blurted out gustily, muffled when she heard a heavy cough.

-What are you up to? - The guy asked, coughing at last, with a touch of curiosity.

-Of course, a preventive conversation," she said earnestly, convinced of the efficacy of her idea. - What's so funny?! - The young woman was immediately indignant when she heard his laughter.

-Give it to me," taking the smartphone from her hands, he began to swiftly rummage through the dialogue files and select a suitable photo for the realization of the planned mischief. - It's already too late to play games with them, - bringing the speaker to his lips, he asked the piece intellect to generate a famous American singer near the teacher. - They'll fall for it, I bet.

-Mark, - the young woman snatched the phone away and muttered unhappily. - Not all people are degenerates.

-Really?! - he pulled a miniature dictaphone out of his pocket. - You're caught by the hand like a cheapskate.

Contents of the diary

[seasideretreat]

Shamanism

I don't know what I want to do. There are many jobs to choose from: priest, IT guy, salesman, mailman, historian, archive employee, writer. But I am thinking maybe I should be a shaman. Sure, it's not a very realistic job, but why shouldn't it be possible? There've been shamans since the beginning of time, since time immemorial. That's also a job that I've meditated on: Let's Player. But I find games exhausting these days. I couldn't Let's Play to save my life. Well, maybe I could to save my life but I dunno, it's weird.

They say a shaman communicates with the spirit realm through altered states of consciousness, such as a trance. I do not experience many altered states of consciousness during my daily life, but I do experiment with unusual thought-patterns. Nonetheless, this don't give me many powers. It just makes me feel terrible. However, half the time I just don't know what else to do. I figure if I can't think of any intelligent way to go about doing something, I might as well try to do it in a crazy way.

Truth is, I suppose, I just want to talk. Nonetheless, I don't have anything to say. That's why I want to talk about nothing in particular, or failing that, about something paradoxical and excellent. I don't know, bad things are always happening, and there isn't any reason to say anything superfluous, nor should we say foolish things, but I just don't know what else to do than say ridiculous things. Oh yeah, I have a lot of ridiculous thoughts. I am lonely and isolated, and I just don't have anything to live for, I guess.

It all started in college I suppose. I was thinking: what do I have to do? And then I lost my mind. I still don't have a mind, and I am still not doing anything exceptional; the world is miserable. I think maybe I could be an IT guy, but that requires actual math skills, or programming skills or what have you, and I can't immediately get those or anything, or I just can't do anything right now that corresponds to a career or anything in IT. So, I was thinking, I should study theology. But that's expensive, in time and money.

So if you don't study theology, what is left? Shamanism. How can you learn shamanism? That's the thing: there ain't no reason to learn shamanism, and so it can't be learned. You could travel Asia and talk to shamans there, but I doubt you will become a shaman that way. You see, there is a church that allows you to profile yourself as a theology major, but there ain't no shamanic cult to help you practice your shamanism in the public sphere. When you figure you could be a priest, you don't do anything either.

You need to meet people. I worked for a call center for a while - that was pleasant. You talked to many people. But you also got a lot of crap. Still, it was partially worth it, maybe, because you really got to communicate with the costumers. So I am thinking, you could be a salesman. Then you are also a priest of sorts. But I guess this is what they mean when they say that money talks. But you know, we think of the shaman as a kind of unique priest, but you could just be a medium. That's all too common. Superstition.

I like horoscopes, to some extent, and even tarot's got my attention. But there is the Yi Ching; there is the whole Confucianism thing: that's all shamanic to some extent, except that it is organized, officialized. You could run a New Age store, or publish a New Age magazine. You could open a spa. You could teach esperanto. There is a whole bunch of fringy activities that are kind of shamanic, but yeah: still no easy way out of the rat race, I suppose. You could join a neo-pagan society.

Sure, there's artist's communities and all that crap, but that ain't a job. This is the thing: a priest can only exist in a society that believes in something - if we believe in nothing, there cannot be priests. Still, many people believe in horoscopes. But that's not the same kind of belief, is it? There's credulity and faith. Horoscopes ain't faith. Sure, people believe in science; therefore, we sometimes refer to universities as "temples of science". Oftentimes, people don't show up out of sheer interest, but out of loyalty.

It's very simple: it's all about power. You can be a shaman if you want to be, but you can't just tell people to obey your shamanism. If your leaders believe in it, you can do it, but if they do not, you can't. It's a belief in you as a shaman. This is the difference between a salesman and a priest: a priest says you must give him money, a salesman that you should give him money. This is what I concluded, also: that in writing religion is really nothing more than polemics, and that we believe in chivalry, i.e. fighting for what's right.

I could be a carpenter. I could be a tailor. I could be a soldier. This line of thought is making me schizophrenic. The problem is that I don't do anything. I could be a musician. I could be a scientist. I just don't know. I should just learn IT. If I like it, it could become my job, and if I don't like it, I have a bunch of skills that'll come in handy. I could go back to school, maybe study theology, maybe get a doctorate. The point is to keep developing yourself. As far as shamanism goes, I can just continue writing, and meditating on spirituality...

[asimovsideburns]

Archipelago session summary 15, in which our heroes attempt insider gambling, history is not taken at face value, and we confront The Return of Denim.

Kendril is sorting out some business on her own (her player had a previous obligation shift schedule suddenly and couldn’t make it), so the party takes the chance to reconnect a bit. Honestly, we needed a bit of a breather episode after the last few sessions.

First, Shrimp and Chantry decide to go over the maps together while Chantry gets a handle on the big picture situation, so Mason decides to ask Vratya if they, as part of the annulment proceedings, have any way of getting information before the people making bets so that they can make some money. Vratya replies that they really wish Mason had suggested that before they completely removed themself from having any control over said proceedings.

Nevertheless, they decide to go forward with their plan. Vratya lurks around the proceedings for a bit and, on a 25 investigation, is able to come up with a rock solid prediction. Mason, meanwhile, is trying to find someone to make the bet for them, since everybody in town knows they’re involved. She finds a guy who’s just come into town and, although he doesn’t believe that she really knows things about Alvfjeller marriage law (her (bad) lie being that she’s won too many bets based that knowledge and now nobody will bet against her), he’s more than happy to place the bet for them. She gives him 20 gold, with the promise that he can have 4 gold if they win, or 2 if they lose. He takes the money to go place a bet, and then leaves town with all 20 gold pieces.

Mason and Vratya decide not to tell Shrimp and Chantry about their adventure today.

You know, I think they might be bonding. It’s a winter miracle.

Speaking of winter, it’s beginning to snow; townsfolk are beginning to bundle up and cocoa is making an appearance. Shrimp heads over to Graywind Arms, Armor, and Adventuring Gear to visit with Linene--firstly to apologize for destroying one of her practice dummies the other day and secondly to subtly find out if she had any information on the dragon-shaped hill from the vision. Linene accepts Shrimps apology, teasingly noting that you can never really have too much firewood around these parts, and is more than happy to chat. Linene is a retired adventurer, having visited and traveled Muldrana in her youth, and has passionate opinions on craftsmanship and preparedness that she is more than willing to share. When conversation turns to the dragon-shaped hill, she is more than happy to share its history. She pulls down a large book from a shelf to show her.

Long ago, a green dragon named Azdraka came from the dragon lands to the distant north, and terrorized the High Road near here. To defeat it, the heir to the Alvfjell throne, an orc named Hrizka Flicker-Blade, joined two parties of adventurers and joined the dragon in battle. In the end, she defeated it, but her and her companions lost their lives in the process. Her dying wish was to be entombed with them and with the dragon itself, and the people obeyed it, creating the Dragon Barrow to the west.

Thanking Linene, Shrimp heads back to the tavern, pondering what they’ve heard. He notes that the history gives no reason for Azdraka to have come south, and makes no mention of what the dragons might have said about it, and resolves to take the story with a grain of salt--not everything is as black and white as it might seem at first glance. She also realized, on a fairly high arcana check, that the tale contained more information that it might first appear--every adventurer had a signature weapon or ability, but Hrizka’s seemed to change throughout the story despite her always being referred to as having and using a weapon, singular. Combined with her epithet “Flicker-Blade”, it is likely that she had some sort of magical weapon that could change forms... and the history made no mention of it passing to a new owner.

At the tavern, the group comes together to discuss plans. They don’t want to head out of town without Kendril, but it’s a good time to decide where they do want to go once they’re ready to leave. There’s a job board quest directing them to the ruins of an old fortress to the south, to clear them out and fortify them in case the townspeople need to evacuate; a second job board quest is asking for a group to escort a mine overseer to a nearby mine to the east; to the north is that oddly persistent thunderstorm, as well as a final job board quest that mentions bandits and strange magic; and to the west is the dragon-shaped hill from their vision. Finally, there’s the big picture problem of getting to and dealing with the dragon, which they’re hoping Kendril will help them with.

They send a message to Charlie, the bandit leader at the School of Savras, through the Sending Stone they gave him earlier, asking him if he knows anything about the bandits to the north. He replies that they 1) work under a different commander than he does, somebody named Brakkis, 2) are assholes, and 3) he doesn’t care if the party murders them.

Armed with this information, they decide that the bandits can most likely wait for now--and that the job board quests most definitely can--and determine to head to the Dragon Barrow next to try to find some context for the previous draconic incident that might help them deal with this one.

Remember that snow I mentioned earlier? The party will need to make sure that they’re prepared for the upcoming weather, soon. Shrimp knows enough about the mountains that he’ll be able to get them through when it’s time to find the dragon’s lair, even if it keeps snowing (easing the time pressure), but also enough to know that they’ll need to invest in some cold weather gear—and also to have noticed that the thunderstorm brewing to the north seems both unseasonal and oddly persistent, not dispersing or being pushed along by the wind. Leaving aside odd storms and increasingly difficult mountain terrain, though, they’re going to need to get new, warmer clothes, which can only mean one thing:

Shopping montage!

In the end, the outfits land like this:

1) Shrimp has standard cold weather clothes with a red-and-back plaid flannel lined, waterproofed jloak (jeans cloak)

2) Mason has elected to omit snow boots from her cold weather outfit, but does have a denim jacked with an inner lining of white fur, which fluffs stylishly out at the collar

3) Vratya has a very comfortable looking sweater, a jacket, fur lined snow boots, a knitted shawl worn as a hood (if it has a more specific name I either don’t know or am blanking on it, sorry), and fleece lined leggings, over which are worn his Extremely Burned Jorts With Scorch Marks Across The Ass Like Juicy On Yoga Pants

4) Chantry has sensible boots and a pair of completely regular jeans, a tight black tactical thermal over-shirt which hides his many, many Sailor tattoos, and one of those earflap hats “that dads wear”

5) Although Kendril is not present, the party resolves to, on a fairly decent insight check, get her one denim cloak fastener chain and five denim chain belts, each in different colors so they can be layered or worn separately. Each chain is made of individual denim chain-links, which have been hand sewn custom for this order

Also, I would be absolutely failing in my duties as chronicler of this story if I failed to mention that Chantry at first wanted to have something with a zipper or chest window to show off the tattoo over his heart that proclaims his affiliation with Schaefer Inter-Island Shipping and their employer, James Schaefer, and that all the party members were really trying to make it work until I called for a Common Sense roll (wisdom save) and, as the only person to get something that wasn’t a 9 (he got a nat 20), was also the only person to realize that maybe prominently displaying the tattoo proclaiming your affiliation with someone isn’t the best idea when you’re trying to keep that person’s involvement in local affairs a secret.

He gracefully allowed himself to be talked out of the “chest window on the winter outfit” idea.

[vyloy]

Ok Byakuya with a male or gn! reader who is the Ultimate Historian wherein they hang out in reader's room talking about history and stuff (for the 100 followers event) Also Love all your works! Keep it up!

100 Followers Event

Byakuya Togami, 十神 白夜 x Gn reader

Fujoshis dni, you will be blocked

Warnings: ooc, rushed writing

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"What a surprise to be seeing you here, Mr. Togami", you say ,not taking your eyes off of your book for even a second, "Your room seems to have a lot of books, don't get any wrong ideas I have no intention talking to you any further",he said with his signature hand cross, he's an odd individual that's for sure, "Go ahead and borrow anything you want" ,your eyes still not moving from the book, you look up to find the Togami heir towering over you, tapping his finger on the page you were in the middle of reading, "I want to borrow this one" the blonde smugly said, you sighed, you hate it when someone Interrupts your reading time and the man infront of you did just that "Let me rephrase that you can borrow anything except the one i'm reading right now" ,your response didn't faze him as he just stared at you,smirking, " if you want, read with me" ,"what's it in for me?", "an evening with a known historian", "And i'm an heir, why would an evening with some historian be important for me?", you were a bit offended by this but brushed it off, " suit yourself, don't read this then", your eyes went back to the book, only getting to read a few sentences before Byakuya sat beside you, scoffing in defeat, peaking at the book, "you finally came around", you smugly remarked.

The next day, you woke up to a very tired looking Togami heir next to you, the both of you seemed to have fallen asleep while reading, you noticed how peaceful he looked without the smug attitude he had all the time, being mesmerized by his face and the morning grogginess, you unconsciously touched his cheek, his eyes began to slowly open, "W-what are you doing?!", he jumped up, he never lets anyone see his vulnerable side, "Geez...Stop being dramatic, i was just waking you up..", you got up feeling the soreness that was caused by sleeping on the couch, you stretched your arms before realizing it was almost time for breakfast, you went to the bathroom immediately to get ready.

Once you got out of the bathroom, you saw Byakuya sleeping on your bed, walking up to him, you slapped his hand, jolting the man awake while glaring at you, "Go take a bath already, it' almost time for us to have breakfast, I'm starved".

"There you two are! We were almost about to leave you both out of breakfast", Asahina exclaimed as the both of you walked into the kitchen, "Apologies, Mr Togami here really took his time when getting ready", the man just glared at you, "I for one don't rush things, unless i want to end up looking like you", he sarcastically said, earning him an eye roll from you.

After breakfast, you were on your way to your room when a certain blonde haired heir ran after you, "Are you busy tonight?", he asked, panting a bit, "No? Why do you ask?", you questioned, "nothing in particular" was all he said before you left the hall.

Back in your room, you began to again, start reading, there wasn't a lot to do while stuck in the school, you did like reading though, Monokuma was kind enough to give you your own bookshelves filled with the books you had gotten over the years, as you flipped through the pages, you began humming a song you have always been fond of ever since you were a kid, it helped with both calming yourself down and also letting you focus more on books.

Before long, it was the evening, you had forgotten lunch, nobody called for you during it, you closed your book and opened your door to find Byakuya reaching for the handle, "oh? What are you doing here?", you asked, "It's dinner, you don't want to miss another meal or you'll get too skinny", he pushed up his glasses, not wanting to seem as if he was worried about you not eating lunch.

You both walked towards the cafeteria to have dinner, the atmosphere seemed tense, "Woah, i was gone for a couple hours and this is what i return to?", you asked jokingly though, nobody laughed "Okay this is awkward, what happened?", still, nobody said a word, "Toko seems to be not coming out of her room", Makoto answered, "Maybe she's not in the mood to?", "could be the case but we've been hearing her talk to whatbseems to be herself, it's really weird", Kyoto added to the conversation, it then returned to being dead silent with only sounds coming from the dishes on the table, you sat down with Byakuya and ate, realizing how hungry you were.

When you did go back to your room, Byakuya went in with you to 'read some books' or so he says, you sat on your bed and continued residng the book you read before you went to eat dinner, "What do you think of this one?", Byakuya asked, asking for your opinion on the book he picked, "Oh that one, it's alright i can say, it's about-", you began explaining for hours on end, you loved talking about history while Byakuya stared at your expressions, you looked so happy explaining everything to him that he couldn't help but feel butterflies in his stomach, "And that's the end of the story, did you catch everythi-...", your voice got lower as you finished your sentence, you saw Byakuya's flushed expression ,"What are you blushing for?", you chuckled, you didnt say anything amusing, did you?, Byakuya realized he wss blushing and turned his head away, not wanting to be embarrassed by you.

"You know, you're an odd fellow, Byakuya", you said while resting your head on your arm, staring at him as he's doing the same thing, "how so?", "I saw you on the television a few times, you didnt seem well, like you now", you then continued, "you really do have a soft side, don't you?", "I'm not sure what you're talking about", he began to get flushed yet again, "haha...You can stop the act, have we met before? You seem to know me well", you chuckled a bit at his expression yet again, "no we hadn't met before this, i just watched a couple of your documentaries a few times in the past, dont flatter yourself or anything though, i was just bored", 'liar', you thought to yourself, "Do you maybe like me?", you asked, already knowing the answer, "No", he bluntly answers while turning his face away from you, you got up and turned him to make him face your way, then kissed him, his face flushed even more, "You really dont remember?", "huh?", "you promised to marry me one day when we were children, how did you forget?".

"Y/N! I'll marry you someday, don't forget that!", the young byakuya gave a toothy grin, confusing y/n for a second before the child answered, "mhm!"

"Does that mean i finally get to be yours?", you laughed, "I...Uh...", it seemed you overloaded the poor Byakuya, he can't form a sentence anymore.

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Taglist: @ohdearalatus @secretivemessenger

I'm about to pass out

[phykios]

If I Were A Blackbird, part 9 [co-written with @darkmagyk] [read on ao3]

For three days, Percy had gone back to his room in the evening, taken out his phone, and stared at the name Annabeth Chase in his contacts. He’d toyed with the idea of changing it a few times to Princess Annabeth. Or maybe just adding a crown emoji or something. But he’d done nothing, save for closing his phone, and sighing with relief when Jason showed up and he no longer had the space for a long, quiet, private conversation with… no one. 

But on that third day, he had nothing to do. It was a rest day, with no practice, press things, or even friend’s events to watch. Jason was right on the cusp of his big race, so he wasn’t even around to distract him. 

And as the hours dragged on, the name in his phone could not be ignored.

He’d called his mom. He’d facetimed Estelle, managing to avoid Paul for royal watcher reasons. Luke was technically at work, but they’d spent an hour or so texting. He’d even IMed Nico about his travel plans.

All his attempts to reach out to Rachel had ended with her asking if he’d called his princess back yet. 

He was basically down to messaging Thalia, who would be rightly pissed if he interrupted her in the middle of something important, or breaking down, and actually calling Annabeth. Just to talk to her. Just to hear her voice.

So he listened to half a podcast on the history of the Byzantine Empire. But he could not focus, barely making it through half an episode on the history of the Fourth Crusade. Not when Annabeth’s phone number waited for him. 

He tried to imagine what she would even say to him, if he called to talk. In your dreams? Thanks for the memories? 

For that matter, what would he even say to her? 

The minutes ticked on. He watched his battery drain, ever so slowly, rubbing his thumb across the screen every time it threatened to go to sleep. It was just after 3 pm when, finally, he hit her name on his contact screen, and listened to it ring. 

After two rings, he was ready to give it up. This was a stupid idea. She didn’t want to talk to him. She was screening his calls. She had something more important to do. She didn’t…

“Hello?” 

And his heart jumped.

He’d almost expected her to sound different. More princess-y? What were princesses supposed to sound like? More European, at least. He still didn’t hear much of an accent from her. 

“Percy?”

Oh, shit, he hadn’t meant to not say hi.

“Oh, did you not mean to call?” 

Oh, shit, he hadn’t meant to swear! “No,” he said, quickly, “no, I just… I didn’t really expect you to pick up.” 

“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, sounding… confused. Or sad. Maybe. 

“Cause… I figured you had more important things to do than talk to me,” he said. 

“I always want to talk to you,” she said, simply, and with a palpable conviction, even over the phone. 

He blushed, even though she couldn’t see it. How do you even respond to something like that? “Me too,” he said, then immediately had to physically sit on his hand so he didn’t smack himself. Fucking idiot. 

But she laughed, a tinkling, musical thing. Like stars strewn across a dark sky, pointing the way to shore. 

He let out a laugh too, shaky, but firm. “So… am I going to be put on some government watchlist for calling you?”

She laughed again, a soft chuckle. Gods, her laugh was the same as he remembered it. And so damn pretty. “I don't really know how to tell you this, but they've already run like four background checks on you.”

That was… something. Not exactly surprising. But still not something he’d considered. “So… find anything good?” he asked, partly out of a sense of preservation, because boy, did he have some wacky stuff in his background. 

“We have determined,” she said. Was that the Royal We he had heard so much about? “That you, Percy Jackson, are a sailor, a historian, and an upstanding gentleman who loves his family and his sport.” 

Oh. Well that was nice.

“My dad was very impressed by your academic background, too,” she added.

“Oh.” Her dad was impressed. He had impressed her dad, the future king of Sweden. If Paul were here, he would have had a coronary. “Anything else?” Hopefully he would impress the future queen, too.

“Yes. We determined that you were also devastatingly handsome.” 

“Well… that’s nice.” He had expected flirting even less than the future king of Sweden being interested in his academics.

“Were you expecting them to find something?” 

Talk about loaded questions. He was suddenly extremely thankful for all the times Luke had been there during a run in with the police. No one ever caught Luke up to anything. And some minor larceny had never been Percy’s modus operandi on his own, anyway. “Not really,” he said instead. “But, ah… got any weird holes I might be able to fill?” he offered up, thinking about a rather glaring one, and wondering what her people might have come up in the father-sized void in Percy’s life.

“Yeah, actually.” He thought he could sense a light layer of trepidation in her voice, hidden beneath her casual tone. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to listen to her voice for hours, mining for every hidden meaning and nuance. “Your father? His name’s not on your birth certificate.” 

“So,” Percy said, “before I actually tell you,” sort of, “I want to state, for the record, that it is super weird that you know that.” 

“Sorry.” 

“No, no, don’t be sorry,” he said, sitting up as the tone of her voice dropped. “It’s okay, I totally get it. And I’m sure Swedish James Bond has a gun trained on me right now.” 

She laughed again, maybe a little bit more subdued. “You aren’t that big a deal.” 

“Ouch,” he grimaced. “That is just what my ego needed to hear.” 

“Good. Girls like a little humility, especially from a sports star-turned-influencer.”

“Do they? I thought they were into bad Olympic puns and blue sandwiches.”

“Some of the weirder ones, maybe.” 

“Nah,” he said, “only the ones worth knowing.”

She was silent, for a moment. He imagined her maybe sitting on her hotel bed, a mirror image to him, holding her phone, and smiling down at it. At his words. He imagined her lips as they curved upwards, highlighting her strong cheekbones, little crinkles at the corner of her gorgeous eyes. 

He coughed, dry and useless. “Anyway, um… my dad.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said, extending him the same grace he had given her earlier.

“It’s okay,” he said. “If it helps, I don’t mind.”

And she didn’t push back against it.

Percy sighed, leaning back against his headboard. “My dad… He’s… I don’t even know how to describe him.”

“What does he do?” 

He had a sudden image of Annabeth at a desk, pencil in hand, bent over and furiously scribbling away in her Percy dossier. It had hearts all over it, and a cartoon valkyrie on the front. The mental picture made him smile. “He’s kind of a bum. He fishes a lot, but other than that… I’ve gone fishing with him a few times, but,” he shrugged, “I’ve really had next to no contact with him.”

She hummed over the phone, sympathetic. “Does that bother you?”

“Not really,” he scoffed. “My dad’s the kind of asshole who had a fling with an eighteen year old girl who was completely alone in the world, and then didn’t even stick around long enough to put his name on the birth certificate.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“I’m not. And I don’t need you to be sorry about him, either,” he said. “It’s just… you know when you spend your whole life swinging wildly between cursing someone’s name and wanting nothing more than their acknowledgement and approval?” 

“Yeah,” she said, softly, and with more than a little bitterness. “Yeah, I do know that feeling.”

“Things are good with your dad, though, right?” He prodded, softly. Her dad. Prince Frederick. Future king of Sweden. 

“He’s only about half of it.” 

Ah. “Your mom?” 

“Mmhmm.”

“Wikipedia said she died when you were a baby.” He cringed as soon as he’d said it, as absolutely nothing from that sentence worked on any level.

Annabeth actually snorted in response. “Want to talk about weird? Cite my Wikipedia page.” 

“Well, you were probably breaking down my high school transcript with Maxwell Smart before I even knew you had a Wikipedia page. So there.” 

“Oh, yes, I was very disappointed by that B+ you got in Latin.” 

“That was my teacher’s fault for scheduling the midterm the day before my swim meet.”

She sobered. “Percy, I was kidding. I haven’t seen anything like that. I… doing checks on you wasn’t my idea, I swear,” she said. “It was more a… preventative measure once the pictures got out. I only knew about the thing with your dad because it was mentioned in the debrief.”

“You had a debrief on me, and my calls are still allowed to come through?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. So damn earnest. His heart skipped another beat. “And I didn’t mean to be weird about your father. I just… I do know what it's like to be missing a parent and to desperately want their approval, and also to hate that they aren’t there for you.” 

“Did your dad ever look at you, and you knew he was seeing your mom, and it kind of crushed you?” Percy asked, quietly. It hadn’t happened a lot, not really. But every time he’d noticed it, he’d felt it in his chest. He’d felt guilty about it, too, which was why he’d never mentioned it to Luke. Luke had so much worse to deal with on the mom front than he did. It hadn’t seemed fair to bring it up. 

She sighed, heavy, world weary, and tinny. “He did.” 

“It sucks.” 

“It does,” Annabeth agreed. “Is… I saw that you had a stepfather. What’s he like?”

In his mind’s eye, he was at his mother’s wedding again, walking her down the aisle, and trying not to cry at the naked love and adoration on his stepfather’s face. “Paul’s amazing,” he said. “He’s just what my mom always deserved.” She’d avoided relationships for so long, devoting so much of herself to taking care of Percy and May and Luke. He couldn’t even really remember her having a lot of friends. He’d been so happy when she’d seriously started working on her writing again, and then going back to school. And then when she’d met Paul, and they’d gotten serious, he’d been absolutely thrilled for them.

“Oh,” said Annabeth, taken aback. “I… I’m glad.”

Oh. “Um… I guess you and your stepmother… uh…” He trailed off, unsure how to continue his thought without accidentally insulting a member of the royals. Somehow, Paul would sense it, and then he’d probably have a heart attack. 

Annabeth sighed. “You don’t want to hear about my messy family politics.” 

“I think family politics for royalty might just be normal politics.” 

“That’s my point,” she said, tiredly. Percy figured maybe she had tread this ground before, maybe even hundreds of times–with her family, with her friends, with her country, even. She had no reason to rehash it, and especially not with him. 

But. “I love my stepdad,” he said, “and he's awesome for my mom. But, also, when I was two, my mom started working for my Aunt May, who we later found out had a relationship with my paternal cousin. I am pretty familiar with weird, fucked up families.” Even giant, old, European ones. Though he didn’t say that part. “So, if you want to vent, or something… I can listen. I don’t mind.” 

She didn’t say anything, not for a long time. But he could still hear the gentle static of the ambient noise of her room. Sitting here, together, in silence, separated only by a phone signal, it was strangely, wonderfully intimate. 

“I don’t really want to,” she said, after a few minutes. 

“Of course. You don’t have to share anything with me.” 

She sighed. “It's not that. It's more just like… I want to talk to you about happier things. Things I actually like. I may not like my stepmother, but I do like you.” 

Percy smiled, slow and creeping, even though she couldn’t see him. “You… like me?” 

“I do,” she said. “Do you like me?”

“I do.” 

And if either of them noticed that those sounded like the responses at a wedding, they didn’t say it out loud. 

“So,” Annabeth said, the noises over the phone making it sound like she was readjusting her position. Maybe she was snuggling into bed, pulling a blanket over her, her hair spread out over her pillow as she relaxed. “What are you up to, today?”

“It's a rest day,” he said. “With the big race coming up, I have to relax at least a little. I have one every two or three days, but my last rest day fell on the equestrian event, so I went and watched my cousin. And my other cousin Nico was there, so we had fun.” He was finally going to get to properly see Nico at dinner tonight, which was good. And Nico hadn’t given him any shit about the whole princess thing. Which was doubly nice. Though, Percy couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t because of the whole countess for a mother thing, or because he’d spend so much time in his father’s court. 

“But not today?”

“Not today.” Nico and Hazel were celebrating her silver together. And he’d been invited, but with that kind of reluctant vibe that made it clear the siblings wanted some sibling time, at least until dinner. “What about you? Don’t you have some babies to kiss, or some war to avert, or some village to sack?” 

***

She laughed, despite herself, her head back against her pillow. “I wish,” she said. “You could come with me. We’d sack up and down the coast.” 

“You think I’d be good in a fight?” He asked, a smile in his voice. 

And yeah, actually, she did. But she wasn’t sure why. “You did mention fencing in an interview, right?” 

“You watched my interview?” 

“Wikipedia,” she quickly responded. That was going to be a good get out of jail free card so she didn’t look like a total stalker. At least for a while.

“Well, I did do some fencing, both standard style and more of a–period style, for a time. People tell me I’m not half bad with a sword.” 

“Neither am I,” she said, “We should have a go, sometime.” 

“Oh, I’d like that very much,” he said, his voice tipping down an octave or so. 

Color rising in her cheeks, she changed the topic. “I was–I was actually thinking about the boat thing. Vikings were seafarers, as much as anything. I bet you could get me to all the most well-stocked monasteries.” 

“Well, I’ll admit I’m better in salt water, then fresh, and I know the vikings liked to go up river.” His voice was so bright, like he was talking to a normal girl, a regular old twenty-something who was chatting up the boy she liked, asking if he were down to do some pillaging. “But I bet I could handle a longboat. I’ve managed a lot of boats in my time. I could get you anywhere you want to go.”

“Guess you should have run away with me that day in the marina. We could be living large by now, viking down the coast of Florida.” 

“I do hate Miami,” he said.

For a moment, she could picture it: him, her, a boat, and the open waters. No shitty family to hold them down. No reporters to trail their every step. No responsibilities beyond each other. “I’m sorry, Percy.” The words tripped out of her, like a runner out of the gate. “I’m so sorry that I dragged you into all this.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s really not.”

He sighed. “I guess not. But I understand.” 

“You do?” she asked, twisting the blanket around her finger. “You’re… not mad?”

A pause. “Maybe I am, a little bit.”

She swallowed. “Makes sense,” she mumbled. “I did lie to you. I’m really, really sorry. I should have told you the truth from the beginning.” 

He actually let out a little laugh. But it wasn’t his normal, buoyant, grinning laugh. It was wry, instead. A little dark. A little guarded. “That’s not why I’m mad.” 

“It’s not?”

“Of course not,” he said. “Look, I’m not, I don’t think, unreasonable. You had no reason to tell me at the beginning. Honestly, it would have sounded like a line. And as hard as it is for me to believe, we did only just meet a little while ago.” And that was the truth, wasn’t it. They’d only just met, not even more than a month ago. They’d known each other for so little time… but it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. “And I’m not entitled to all your secrets. Just like you’re not entitled to all of mine.” 

“You have secrets?”

“Of course I do, Annabeth. Gods, yes, I have secrets. And I like you–a lot. But I’m not–I don’t want to share them all with you right now. And I’ll always extend to you the same courtesy.” 

“Oh,” She said, a wave of curiosity bubbling up in her. A desperation to know. To find out. He’d learned her secrets, after all. But then again, not all of them. Not even the juiciest of them. But, then… “So, why are you mad?”

She heard him blow his breath out, tinny and staticky. “Because… Look, I totally get not wanting to give me the whole story. I’m sure starting off with ‘Hey, I'm a princess and I have security and sometimes the press follows me around’ would have been intimidating. But we didn’t have to go somewhere so public as a movie theater. Or even just walking around the city. I would have happily kept up seeing you in private places.” 

And then, a second fantasy, even more whimsical than the first. They were walking down the streets of Stockholm together on a bright, sunny afternoon, holding hands. She closed her eyes, willing it away.  

“I’m not mad that you didn’t tell me you were a princess. I’m still scared the Swedish government is going to put out a hit on me, but I’m not mad about that. But I am mad that you put me in a really shitty situation with the paps and Twitter and the world, when you knew better, and I didn’t.” 

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say in response. It was not enough. 

“Me too,” he agreed. “I… I can’t say it's okay. Or that it isn’t a big deal. But I know you didn’t mean to do it. So, that helps. I can take negligence over cruelty any day.”

“Still.”

“Yeah. But I’ll get over it.” 

“Soon?” And it was such a dumb, childish thing to ask. 

“Probably,” he said. “You’re pretty cute.” 

“I thought I was beautiful?”

“That, too.”

“Well,” she said, biting her lip to keep herself from smiling too hard, “if… if you want something private… You said it was a rest day. I could send my driver to pick you up. I’ve got a princess suite and I can get you almost any kind of room service for dining.” 

“Almost?”

“Well, I haven’t tried everything yet.” Or… “Or, if you wanted… Maybe I could give you something better to eat.”

“Oh, yeah?” 

Sense memory reared its head, the tug of his lip between his teeth, the feel of his hair in her hands. “I think it could easily be arranged.” 

He hummed across the phone, vibrating into her ear. “I like the sound of that. Tell me more.” 

“This bed is awfully big,” she said, lowering her voice to match. “And I’ve been in it all by myself for days now.” 

“No other Olympian gentlemen callers?” He asked. 

She shook her head. “No one else would help me sack Palm Beach. What use would I have for them?”

“Is that all I am to you? Some muscle? A tongue and a pair of thighs?” 

He didn’t sound too put out at the idea. “But what strong thighs they are, and what a talented tongue. I’ll give you a sword, if you want.”

“But I already have a sword.” 

Boy did he. It reminded her of her favorite dagger, actually. It wasn’t the biggest or flashiest. But it could get into where it needed to go. And do all sorts of damage once inside. 

If Percy had taught her anything, it was that the old saying was true: it wasn’t the size of the wave, it was the motion of the ocean.

“I mean, I do really have a sword, but… that’s not what you meant… uh…” And now he was all tongue tied and adorable and he was probably blushing and she was so blindly desperate to see him. And his sword. Metaphorical or not.

“Um,” she confidently began her offer, “I can call Hans, my driver from the other night, to go pick you up. Sound good?”

But she was not met by any more delicious flirting or awkward stammering. Just a long moment of silence that got longer and longer. 

And his voice had returned to its normal, pleasant tenor when he said, “Maybe we should pump the brakes a bit.”

“Oh.” And she knew she couldn’t keep her deep deep disappointment out of it. 

“Not–not for long,” he rushed, “just… maybe until after the Olympics are over.” Another three weeks. She felt her heart jump into her throat. 

It was probably the smart thing to do. She was working. They were both working. But, then again, the idea of waiting on pins and needles for the rest of this pomp and circumstance was not exactly her idea of a good time. “Sure,” she said, eventually. “That sounds good.”

“Thanks.” 

But, she supposed it was worth it, just to hear the relief in his voice. She could give him a little more time to think about it before dragging him down with her into her world. 

“I should probably warn you, while you think about things,” and she hated to do this, but it was only fair. “Things might calm down a little, but speculation, attention, media stuff. It won’t go away. Even after the Olympics. So… you should probably consider that, while you’re deciding if this is a thing you want to get involved in.” 

“I think you misunderstood,” he said. “I’m not deciding about anything. I’ve made up my mind. I am so down to date you.” The grin that broke out on her face could have left a permanent scar, her heart jumping in her chest. “I just… I need some time for my races. And maybe to warn my mom.” 

“You’re really cool with this.” It was kind of unbelievable. It was kind of amazing. 

“Should I not be?” 

“No, I’m just… surprised, I guess. But, pleasantly.”

“Would you believe me if I said that the hot girl I was seeing turning out to be a princess isn’t the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me?”

She paused. Because not really, no. And then Piper’s words came wiggling into the back of her mind.

“So, I have to ask,” she finally said, hating every word that was about to come out of her mouth. “Are you a secret prince?”

“...Am I what?”

“Like, maybe of some dynasty that lost its power in the wake of one of the world wars? Or maybe in the German Unification?” 

There was a long moment of silence. 

“Is…” He didn’t seem sure how to respond. “Um… is that a thing that happens?”

“Not in my experience,” she admitted, “no.” But stranger things had happened. 

“I mean… there’s a family legend that my mom’s mom’s family was descended from the Byzantine emperors,” he said. “But other than that… probably not.” 

“Probably?”

“Anything’s possible, right? But really, no. I promise, I am just a Connecticut Yankee in Princess Annabeth’s Court.”

“That’s so fucking cute,” she said. “I hate that.” 

“Thank you. I try very hard.”

“I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Definitely, princess.” 

She shuddered. “Annabeth.” 

“What?”

“Please, just… call me Annabeth. All the time, but especially if you’re just talking to me.” Beneath her blanket, she curled her legs up, tensing her toes against the soft fabric.“I can do that, Annabeth,” he promised, and she felt like she could breathe again. “I can do that.”

[spacerangersam]

I have a lot of thoughts about my ghost swap au and nothing to do with them, so here:

• The Butchers are cryptids to the people living in the town near Button House. Like, they appear out of nowhere claiming ownership of this giant abandoned manor, one fucking dies, is revived, decides to keep living at the place where he died, is known to stare blankly into space or wave and laugh at nothing, and the other has a mysterious past he never talks about and no one can even figure out what his name is

• Pat thinks it's hilarious. Ted claims to find it annoying, but also still refuses to give his name...

• Outside of the scouts, Pat is a host at the local radio station, and also has his own podcast, Conversations wih a Ghost where he records him and Kitty (talking through a spirit box) just chatting about random things. No one knows if this is just a gimmick, if he's being serious or if it's a narrative podcast. Pat refuses to say

• Ted is a ww2 historian and works from home, writing books/textbooks about the period, making the occasional guest appearance on tv or in unis for a talk

• Every V-Day they throw a themed party/event in the manor and invite all the towns people. Same with Pride

• The ghosts only cause slight chaos every time. Regardless, they're still known for being amazing events

• Before their first pride at the house, Pat made the ghosts a presentation explaining it/all the sexualities and genders. There were a lot of realisations that day

• They have a cat called Cadet and she seems to see the ghosts, though no one's entirely sure

• Every time Daley comes over, he insists on having a sleepover with Jemima where they watch musical movies and sing along together. It's very cute (unless you're Ted, watching your step-son sing Let It Go while a disembodied voice of a dead child sings along. Then it's a little unsettling)

• Pat tries to make a habit of visiting the plague ghosts at least once a week to chat (ie gossip about everyone upstairs). He does have to wear sunglasses to somewhat hide the body horror, but no one takes it personally

• After some time Daley starts calling all the ghosts uncles/aunts. It happens to Julian first after he helps Daley something, and he has a crisis for the rest of the day

• No one is allowed to bring up the ghosts to Carol or Morris. No one.

• Pat told his sister and her family though. Bill claims he can also see ghosts, so immediately believes him, and the others follow suit

• Pat loves Britney Spears.

• When Pat and Ted first met they didn't get on. Ted confused his initial attraction to Pat for hatred so acted out, and Pat followed accordingly. It took them getting into a massive fight and Pat actually punching Ted so hard that he fell to the ground for Ted to realise Oh! I like him don't I?

• Ted immediately blurted out that he loved Pat, who was, understandably, very confused

• But after a coffee and a chat they sorted themselves out and went on a date, and the rest is history

• To this day Pat still doesn't understand how a punch was what made Ted realise the truth though

• Ted adores the Sherlock Holmes stories and is on a constant quest to find a gay version of it (it hasn't been going well)

• He's actually very good at poetry and likes writing little poems for Pat

• Speaking of poetry, Pat writes down and posts Thomas' poetry on a blog Pat made for him.

• Ted gives feedback on evey poem and Thomas hates it (though he does usually take on the advice, albeit very reluctantly)

• They throw an unofficial wedding for Mike and Alison a year after they move in. It's very strange, but the Coopers insist it's the best night of their deaths

• Ted hosts a weekly soldiers support group

• Pat paints (or hires someone to paint, either works) a massive painting of everyone living in the house, dead and alive, and hangs it where the portrait of Mr Button used to be

• Stephanie frequently helps them with any money problems, and Daley with his maths homework

• Ted is very quiet at parties, unless you bring up his husband, son, or a wrong historical fact. Then he will not shut

• Pat makes the mistake of introducing Thomas to Mitski. The word nobody is banned two days in

• Thomas and Alison did actually go on a date once, about a week after Alison died. It was very awkward. They've agreed to never talk about it

• Pat figures out very quickly that Julian was the one to push him and absolutely holds it over his head when Julian's getting too cocky

• After discovering that Kitty can use the spirit box, Ted makes a habit of keeping it turned on and in his pocket so that Kitty can come up and talk to him whenever she likes

• Pat gets along best with Alison and Humphrey, though if you ask he'd of course say he doesn't have favourites

• If Pat finds a ghost while out and about, he tries to stop long enough to at least say hi, and has been known to accidentally help a few pass on just by answering a question or two

• Kitty loves playing Just Dance with them, and whoever's not playing makes up her scores. She always wins when Ted's in charge of that, funnily enough

• Pat starts wearing the brightest/weirdest socks he can find just so Humphrey has something interesting to look at on days he's stuck on the floor

• Pat is strong enough to pick Ted up, at least for a few moments.

• Ted is the one who usually goes a bit overboard during anniversaries and valentine's Day, but it always turns out well in the end

• Date nights with the Butchers, Coopers, and Kitty and Mary!

• Daley is big into space so he and Robyn watch a lot of documentaries/movies together about it.

• Daley caries a small string of battery-powered fairy lights around the house that Robin (after a lesson from Pat) can use to talk through Morse code

• He also occasionally does it with the big lights in the house when he wants Ted's attention