#and then years later her planet would be destroyed by that very husband she had once loved so dearly

[noperopesaredope]

Me watching the prequel movies: "Padme's alright, but she's kind of boring and I don't care for her that much."

Me watching Clone Wars: "Padme Amidala could dropkick me, step on my neck, and spit in my face, and I would thank her. She is so cool and smart and I want to be her and also maybe be her assistant. She's a savvy politician who believes in peace but is not afraid to shoot a bitch if needed. Revenge of the Sith Anakin doesn't deserve her."

[velvet-vox]

The dark side of Steampunk: Nox (Part 2)

Milien spent the entire night obsessively analysing the artifact, instead of sleeping with his wife, and in the morning, he was forced to face the consequences.

Fully immersed by the possibilities given to him by the Cube, Milien is already at work to capitalise on them in order to get out of the vicious cycle he's gotten into by borrowing money to keep himself afloat.

Here's where the milk gets finally spilled and the truth starts to knock on the door. Milien's ego, up to this point, was only the fruit of an inferiority complex set by the inability of his inventions to catch popularity; but now, it's finally revealed that Nox's obsession for the cube and it's constant need for validation from his family is also a result of Milien's antisocial behaviour probably rooted from a societal lack of care for individuality and creativity.

Ironic, since, by this very statement, Nox undermines other people's individuality and creativity to place his own higher. This is a major extreme of Steampunk, when either the society or the industry reigns over the other, the outcome can only be disastrous, as true balance can only be found when the two sides support and complement each other.

This isn't too much of a major flaw for Milien, as long as it gets addressed, it's pretty common for his archetype and it's often overcome by the end of the story.

Ah. S##t. He doesn't overcome it.

These GIFs speak for themselves; the ego boost given to him by the artifact allows for the insanity to take place, even his wife, who he has been shown capable of repressing his negative traits for, can't calm him down anymore; the next time she visits him, Galanthe tries to get Milien to throw away the Cube and go back to his family, but in response, Nox shuts her out of the door, since what she is suggesting would rekindle his inferiority complex and bring him back to square one.

Briefly touching on this particular moment, Noximilien knows the Cube's real name, despite the fact that he apparently shouldn't know what it was right until his confrontation with Grougaloragran 200 years later.

It could just be a continuity error, but I want to give tot the benefit of the doubt this time and assume it's instead intentional; back when we had only season 1, the Eliacube was this mysterious, corrupting entity whose origins were never made fully clear. So, for us to not be able to find any sense behind this discovery of his, leads us to be unnerved by the eldritch horror vibes that were originally backed into the Eliacube's concept.

As time goes by, Galanthe decides to take away her family from her husband, in hope that this will force him to get rid of the Eliacube and go back to them.

And for a brief moment, her plan almost works. Milien is taking the situation seriously, and it's about to abandon everything to go join his wife, but then... Nox doesn't.

I don't really know the meaning behind that owl shot with one weird eye, but by judging the fact that the very next shot is Noximilien's laboratory emitting smog into the air, I'll interpret it as a metaphor for pollution brought by the industrialization of Nox's operation, mindlessly destroying the planet without a person's notice.

I really like how the ticking sound of clocks gets faster before turning into knocks at the door, it makes it feel like an unfathomable amount of time has passed.

As for the reason why the beggar decides to check up on Nox and inform him of his family, I've actually come up with a way better explanation than just simply "the beggar was actually a good person, just a little short tempered and grumpy", which works well enough, but it could be much more compelling;

You see, in the previous part I've said that the beggar is the representation of the strict Victorian society and Milien the freeing Industrial revolution, their clash and tension is what gives Steampunk its meaning and charm; so here, it's almost like the beggar is saying "Bro, WTF? Shouldn't we clash against each other? I haven't seen you in months? What happened?" since, if the clockmaker doesn't want to free himself from the claustrophobic expectations of society, then... what is his purpose in the narrative?

As the rage, regret, and madness of the ensuing moment unfolds, the Steampunk narrative is completely shattered:

No longer Noxy wants to advance society to the next level of evolution; now, he just wants to bring everything back to how it was.

No longer Nox is going to use his inventions to bring wonder and joy to the world; now, he's going to use them to destroy lives in order to restore his own.

Steampunk is dead, and its rotting corpse is now being used as a vessel for the Eldritch Horror narrative that is about to ensure.

Milien is dead; a legend is born.

A terror is born.

NOX.

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[winterpinetrees]

Mid-Year's Night (The Gap Years part 13)

June 20th 2019

A nice cliff in the elven world

In spite of everything, the Mercurali are a family. Their world is built on extreme violence, but it is not only violence.

.........

Mid-Year’s Night is a holiday in the same way that “high noble” is an identity: technically correct, lacking detail, and really only ever used to avoid arguments. The official laws made by Leda Sondaica four thousand one hundred and twenty-one years ago say Mid-Year’s Night only because calling it the Summer Solstice would exclude half the planet. It’s one of three truly global holidays, but what elves actually do is up to them. 

As a Voyager along the Storm Coast, Ryn called it the Brightest Night. They’d cover the trees with nets of glowing filament and catch the fireflies that got confused by all the lights. For Amedi, the end of June was also the start of the rainy season in the highlands, and a storm rolling in on the solstice was very good luck. (Ryn and Amedi have been bonding over that. Sooner or later there will be a Pacific hurricane and Ishtar does not want to wrangle both of them at once). The nobles of Genus Kotija had their own celebrations and Arjuna carried the ones he could with him to the palace. It’s a different night for the farmers in the shadow of the rocky mountains, and for the nomads in the Arctic circle, and for the wildblood humans who brought traditions from another world. 

Ishtar had nothing. She was the last daughter of Gens Mercuralis after an unspeakably brutal coup, and four thousand years of conflict had left her family with little culture but violence. She was raised by her last cousin (who was only half-grown himself), and the two of them were too traumatized to bother reenacting holidays they barely knew. Ishtar remembers decades of just waiting to grow old enough to earn some scrap of vengeance or power with her almost-human strength and devastatingly powerful magic. Then she met Ryn, and he showed her that there were fireflies in the grass around the Conservatory. The Storm Army gave her power and prestige, but it was also something to be a part of. There were traditions and stereotypes and all the little things she’d never gotten a chance to enjoy. She spent six years in that little world. They didn’t all make it out alive, but Ishtar did. 

Needless to say, her three children have been raised with a culture. It’s her violence and Ryn’s curiosity and Arjuna’s grace, but it’s something. It’s too cutthroat for the Voyagers and too rustic for the nobility, but it’s theirs. Someday the kids will attend the Conservatory and face the same Trial as their parents, but they will have a meaningful childhood before it and meaningful lives after. Ishtar has also taken it upon herself to help her newest councilor. Their name is Amedi Kebero, and like her, they won a major war game at the Conservatory. Unlike Ishtar, they’re having a bit of trouble figuring out what to do after. It’s really quite common. Most victors burn out. It’s the secret final test. Did you find some way to live afterward, or will you destroy yourself like Lazarus once he had nothing left to conquer? 

Ishtar found a way. It’s been one hundred and fifty years, after all, and she’s still alive. She stands on a steep rocky incline as the last purples and reds of the sunset fade over the cloudy horizon. With her stand nine others. Her husband, Arjuna, the quiet elf who she married after decades of wrestling with her official betrothal. Ryn, the commoner with dusty brown hair and stormson tattoos who saved her life. Her three children, all older now than she was during the coup that took away her childhood (To a human observer, they look ten, eight, and seven, but they were actually all born a decade apart. The nobility age slowly). And Amedi, her youngest and scrappiest councilor. Their three seneschals, Alyse, Callum, and Esther, are also present. The group are all wearing fluorescent paint on their faces and arms, a tradition that Ryn brought from home, but Amedi thought was familiar. 

Twilight is long on Mid-Year’s Night, but it’s finally dark. Arjuna pulls a bundle of thin metal rods from a bag. He is slender and graceful even by high noble standards, and his long hair flows in the wind behind him. His eyes flare lavender as he lights two sticks with his magic. They burn white and gold -sparklers, a simple invention that both humans and elves have made. The paint on his face and arms is geometric, with elaborate florals on his wrists. Genus Kotija designs from his family. He holds a sparkler in one painted hand and passes the other to Fen, her younger son. The boy is just barely starting to use his magic, but fire is beyond him. 

“Esther needs one too!” He points a small hand at a short red-haired woman. 

Esther is Amedi’s young seneschal. She is human, of course, but the yellow-green smudge of paint makes it almost look like her eyes are glowing. She must have forgotten she was wearing face paint. Ishtar suggested Amedi choose a calmer seneschal, but they didn’t listen. She takes the sparkler and smiles, but there’s fear in her eyes. Her own seneschal, who has been dealing with this for decades, goes over to help. Aren’t humans so nice when they aren’t trying to kill each other?

The sparklers are distributed. Suen proudly lights hers, as well as ones for the other two humans. Ryn insists on setting a fire himself. He’s barely strong enough to spark a flame, but he can manage. That’s the origin of the term “spark”, after all. The glowing paint on his bare arms looks like waves or wind patterns. Amedi has copied it along with spirals of lightning and a line over their eyes. The sparkler part is entirely new to them though. They seem to like it. 

“I hope Mav can be here next year!” says Chandra, her oldest son. He’s a sensitive boy, the sort of sensitive that can’t exist in high nobility without being corrupted. He mostly takes after his father in appearance, just with a broader build. Of course, he’s still just a little kid.

Ishtar smiles. “Me too, Chandra, but his family have been our enemies for a long time, even if Devana is our friend. Would you want to celebrate with the old Apex and the Sondaicas?”

He hesitates, but then shakes his head. Ishtar has been trying to end the ancient war between the two clans of high genera, and part of that has meant encouraging the children of her allies to meet the elves they’d always thought would become their enemies. Of course, most of those children are currently furious, grieving, and under the magic-suppressing gaze of a Betrayed arbiter until they calm down. 

Mav is a young boy from the core of Genus Marolak, and Devana is his aunt. He’s pale with wolf-blue eyes and is almost exactly the same age as her son. They’ll attend the Conservatory together. In another life, they’d be enemies like she and Kavec Adust were. Somehow, miraculously, her son has started to befriend him instead. Her daughter, by contrast, has refused to go anywhere near one of the Betrayed. It’s understandable. Ishtar wouldn’t either when she was her age. Bad memories. 

Despite their new friendship with her son, the three imprisoned children who viewed Devana as their cool aunt (even if the Councillor is technically the mother of one of them) are too volatile to be released. They have a sister at large, and their father was killed last week. No matter the optimism of little boys, these things take a long time to bury. Ishtar is supposed to say that things take a long time to heal, not bury, and she does say that out loud. In her mind though, she knows that some things are only ever handled. All that buried trauma is why Amedi nearly sets the field on fire when a shadow dashes past the group. It’s nothing, but the new councilor hasn't learned that yet. She smiles at Arjuna. 

Arjuna is an illusionist, and a very skilled one at that. It’s common knowledge that illusionists eventually suffer from hallucinations… and that their skillset can make those hallucinations a public issue. However, they’ve hit Arjuna early and they’ve hit him hard. He blames his job as an assassin. He spent so many decades looking for dangers around every corner that his magic (perfectly honed to create distractions and notice threats) began to make problems where there were none. He’s retired now. 

The whole family, humans and elves, go through a mental list. Is anyone else around? Did they hear anything or just see it? And of course, who would be stupid enough to attack them here? They all reach the only reasonable conclusion: sometimes, magic is just a pain. Arjuna pats Amedi on the back and they quietly laugh.

They’re used to it though. They’re all used to reaching for weapons they don’t carry, or drawing ones that they do. They’re used to scaring away birds with eyes that glow at loud noises and to constantly checking what the other world looks like in case they need to run. No matter what she wants, this is the world that is. Her children will attend the Conservatory, and the odds are that at least one of them will kill. Even conquering the human world won’t be enough to change that. Still, Mid-Year’s Night is a time to dream. 

The sparklers burn out and they all sit down on the rocks. Ryn’s old white-haired seneschal, Callum, looks up and identifies a bat in the dark sky. Six months ago, she was the Adversary, and Emer Sondaica was the Apex. She and her council and her family were half a year away from a coup decades in the making, praying to fate or nature or some commoner's god that no one would turn traitor. Ishtar asks her family about their hopes for the next six months. It’s a painfully boring tradition, but it’s all she can offer. 

Amedi hopes that they find the missing heirs quickly. Despite the failed attack in Vya, their spell is working after all, and they now know that the heirs of Sondaica and Adust are both in Las Vegas.

They raise their painted hands in exasperation. “It’s a void-cursed desert, honestly. What kind of idiot civilization sets off a thousand nuclear bombs without being able to metabolize radiation?” 

Ryn explains that the elven world did its fair share of stupid stuff, mostly heating the atmosphere a few degrees when they were already at the natural end of an ice age. He hopes that their conquest goes smoothly, and to start looking for a new seneschal. 

Callum approves of that. He turned sixty this past year, and he does not want to deal with a second planet’s worth of paperwork. 

Esther wants to become more at home in the palace. The staff don’t respect her yet, but half the world’s bureaucracy reports to her one way or another. The other two humans say something in their shared language. They’ve probably all felt that way. 

Alyse, her own seneschal, hopes to find the heirs as well. She always dodges questions.

Arjuna agrees with Ryn. They’ve lost enough friends this year, but hopefully their plan to take over the human world won’t cause any more grief.

The children have smaller goals. They want to see Rise of Skywalker in a human theater. Fen says that it actually releases on the new year, and doesn’t count as a Mid-Year’s hope, but they ignore him. Chandra wants Suen to meet his new friends, and Suen wants that Gens Tiercel boy to teach her more flight magic. Ishtar should probably stop that. 

What does she want? Well, the high nobility don’t believe in anything after this life, but some of Ishtar and Ryn’s old friends in the Storm Army did. Sometimes Ishtar sees a little brown-spotted raptor watching her and wonders if it’s proud of what she’s done. A hundred children still die every year at the Conservatory. One of her soldiers killed a Sondaica girl during the coup. Some nights Ryn sits her down in the Problem Room once Devana, Gullin, and Amedi have gone. He puts his head in his rope-burned hands and talks about typhus on sailing ships and what plague actually looks like because no one in the elven world has ever seen it. 

Other nights it’s Gullin Eburos who talks, and he tells her about what life is actually like for the Betrayed who monitor their prisons and voidports. He tells her about his youngest child, a little boy with ivory hair and sharp teeth who would be about her age by now if he hadn’t been Betrayed, and if that life hadn’t driven him to throw himself into the sea. And still Gullin (who holds hundreds of wildborn humans captive in laboratories across the world) codes genomes to design a pandemic that will kill billions, and Ryn (who would do anything, anything, for his children - for her children) speaks to convince commoners to hold their Betrayed to the same standards as nobleborn ones.

What does the Apex hope? Well, Apex Emer Sondaica seemed happy at the end, right before Ishtar crushed her heart with a war hammer. Not happy to die a glorious death either…just happy it was over. Ishtar is pretty certain that she’ll still be alive in six months, but if Emer’s son comes back to kill her, she hopes that it won’t be a relief. 

.............

Chandra’s fits the noble naming style and the Voyager one! He is named after a god of the moon, but also after Dr Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a real-life astrophysicist who defined so much of what we currently know about massive stars and what happens after they die.  

little picrews of Suen, Chandra, and Fedran. They're 10, 8, and 7, but actually like 36, 25 and 18 (those are rough numbers)

[cereusdepths]

★ Pinned for Reference ★

•Warhammer 40k OC rp blog

• Disclaimer: This man is a massive bitch, & if I’m a bitch to you in RP when playing him, please do not take it personally

Who is Kranar Pare?

Kranar Pare (Pronounced: Kyeh-Ra-Nhar Peh-Ah-Reh) is a high ranking member of the Elotein Witch Guard. Born in one of the few big cities on Elotelma, he was primarily raised by his father who instilled strict moral values in him.

Kranar’s mother, like he later would end up becoming, was a Warden in the Elotein Witch Guard. Unfortunately, she ended up dying in battle. This sparked a sort of religious awakening in both Kranar & his father—, Leading them to turn to the ‘light of the God Emperor’ for guidance.

He coped with the loss of his mother by constantly reminding himself that her death was in service of ‘something greater’. Thus, Kranar ended up going down a path of religious zealotry.

Around this time, he had his first encounter with Ripley Lun’amir, an abhuman refugee from Elotelma’s now destroyed sister planet, Ilunna. The two didn’t get along, and Kranar bullied the boy for his strange, cat-like appearance. Little did either know at the time that they would cross paths once more.

When Kranar became a Warden, Ripley, who had also joined the Guard, was assigned as his Witch. Deciding to use this as an opportunity to have someone who would listen to him regardless of the order, Kranar began a long term plan to manipulate Ripley; Starting with his heritage, and destroyed home-world. If Ripley didn’t do as he said, he would tell everyone of his secret—, that he and his people were marked for death by the inquisition.

This worked very well, and over the next few decades the two fell into a toxic friendship, relationship, and eventually marriage (it’s not uncommon for Wardens to marry their Witch, and vice versa).

Kranar and Ripley eventually reached very high ranking Positions in the Witch Guard, and things where looking up. He had a husband, a stable job, as much power and reverence as he could ever want.

But then, it happened. His husband had tried to kill him.

Ripley left Kranar for dead, he had been barely clinging onto a thin threat of life, but by some miracle, he made it. He was furious, and as a furious man with power does, he began to talk.

Vengeance.

More on Eloteins

Eloteins are a race of tall abhumans from the planet of Elotelma. Their planet, prior to Imperial integration, was of an average, pre-space technology level—, Albeit their cities and settlements are fairly spaced out due to large swaths of daemon-infested swamps.

The non-chaos cultist Eloteins where just barely clinging onto life when the Imperium found them, but since then, the planet has made a major comeback.

Though pretty similar to regular humans, Eloteins are much taller (standing around 7-8 feet tall when fully grown), and posses dark colored eyes and cool-toned hair (blues, pinks, purples, whites, etc). They live about 800 years at maximum.

Account Notes

• You can find my main blog at @idle-skull

• More AU content @wh40k-cat-skull

• This blog will most likely contain suggestive or NSFW content, whether that be of a lewd or violent nature, and is therefore 18+

• Asks & RPs are always open, but please give me time to respond to stuff

• This blog takes place Post-Heresy, but I'm otherwise fairly flexible with time frames and such

[palpameddaislife]

By the way, now that the brainrot is getting sparked again, I have two possible backstory ideas for Mas, how he ended up being so influential, yet such a coward and obedient, plus greedy for power individual.

In the first scenario, Mas grows up in a very rich noble family, and he grows up sheltered, with a very conservative and greedy father, and a docile mother that follows her husband's beliefs. He is not allowed to make friends other than kids his status, or behave outside of the etiquette the rich follow. He does not develop like an average child. He has a phase where he rebels, but gets grounded for it. At a point in his life when he's still young, he gets to know an adviser from Coruscant who becomes his mentor and inspiration to get into politics. He moves to Coruscant, leaving his rather unpleasant past behind him, and starts his journey as a young Senator representing his home planet that voted for him and his justice oriented values. But as time progressed, his unresolved trauma became his shadow and started acting as corrupted as his father was, believing he was right at the end, and decided that the only way to thrive is to leave idealism behind, be cynical and always do what's best for your skin. Around that time, he met Palatine, who looked like his perfect opportunity to get behind a patron, as long as he'd blindly follow him. I had actually started writing this story, you might have come across it, but I would totally do some changes to it, especially the more accurate representation of Champala.

More recently I have had another such scenario in my mind, which is quite opposite of the first. In this one, Mas grows up in a poor neighborhood in Tidros. A rare kind of neighborhood, especially because Champala is such a just planet, but every place has its sewer. His single mother raised him (I'm contemplating whether I should give him siblings or not). She was working as much as she could to ensure they could survive, and as a result, she never spent much time with her son. Mas started spending a lot of time in the streets as soon as he developed his lungs and limbs, and met with the other few street rats of his neighbourhood, creating something like a gang. The more he aged, the more rebellious he turned, spending a lot of nights partying long, getting game due to his tall horns which people loved seeing, vandalising and sabotaging richer people's properties whenever he found the opportunity to do so. At a point he started getting interested in activism and making his voice stand out for the political rights of people his class. To get the attention of the higher ups, he thought of a plan to sabotage the tourism of Tidros and create a viscous cycle of a destroyed economy in the capital city. To achieve that, he gained the trust of some thugs on and off world, to cut out the supplies going to hotels, beach bars, cruise ships, restaurants, or even sabotaging flights to Champala. During that time he was managing most of the operation and it felt good being recognised and a leader, being in control. Which ironically transformed him into the very thing he swore to destroy, a mindless rich man in the later years of his life, when he exploited the power and recognition he gained during his services to justice.

I honestly can't decide which one I like the most

[cvpiidbiites]

Oc Asks - 2 ໒꒰ྀི ´ ˘ ` ꒱ྀིა

CW; Mentions of blood, violence, brief mention of sex, not proof-read </3 my eyes started to sting and get blurry

⊹ When have they been unable to save someone or something no matter how much they tried?

˖ Fia; In one of Fia's last years at the orphanages they had to watch someone that grew very close to them slowly lose to their sickness, a sickness we end up learning much more about in later years called Loneliness Syndrome. Fia without realizing that everything they were trying to do wasn't helping them. They dressed up as knights, and princes, and even made outfits for both of them but it was only getting worse for them.

˖ Vesper; On one of his many travels through the universe he stopped at a small world forgotten by the others, trade was his plan but he found himself under a tree with a few kids laying in the grass. He was reading them a simple fairy tail he found on his many travels. The joyed calm looks on their face made the troubles of traveling feel rewarding if it meant they could listen to a simple story. He recalls this memory every time he reads in Robin's room, tears dripping onto the pages as he sits there alone, knowing he wasn't there to save her.

˖ Dúlamán; Dúlamán came back from grabbing extra supply from town she and her lover stopped at. The closer the got to where their boat was parked the more smoke from the sky grew heavier in the dark blue night sky, each step was getting faster than the last as they prayed her sweet honey bee was alive. Their fast walked became running, and from running they threw down everything in her arms and started sprinting. Her lover's ship ablaze in front of her. "Cebe!? Cebe where are you?!" Dúlamán screamed out as she looked around for any sign of her being alive.

˖ Eve; When "she" awoke on the floor of a house she didn't know and a diary in "her" hand and a cup a spilled Sbiten all over "her" and the hardwood floor. Their eyes drift to the book in their hand reading the note left there, in cursive lettering it read "My name is Е́ва Морозов, and my husband is going to kill me." Flipping back through the all diaries they could find in the house, reading them front to back for hours on end. The fiend Arachne took on the name Е́ва/Eve, taking on the life this body had. "Eve" now waited in the living room as her husband walked through the door, as his eyes trailed up he was visibly worried as his hands shakingly reach for his hunting rifle. As he lifted it up to aim at her he keeled over, a red hair woman standing behind him with a sickly calm smile as Eve ran over and kneeled down trying to save him.

˖ Ambrose; Eir lost their home to the IPC, something they tried hard to help, something they went door to door collecting money to help fund to keep the world form being destroyed. Ambrose went out of their way to start traveling around the comics to sell things they found. On one unfortunate day in the The Xianzhou Luofu after a rather large business deal, Ambrose relaxed in a small cafe for a few moments figuring out their next planet to visit only to hear from some passerbys that a small planet was blown up, the description bone chillingly close to Ambrose's. Ee stood up too fast and collapse on the floor.

⊹ How much death and/or destruction have they wrought?

˖ Lucrezia; During her younger days as a nurse in training a few prisoners were lost by her hands. It eats at her every now and then, being another reason to why she drinks.

˖ Eternal; I would like to think she would cause a lot more death and destruction if she had more knowledge about the family, however for now the only death and destruction she causes are the monsters that inhabit the dreamscape. Oh, and that one guy that tried to get a little too,, handsy with her after a show.

˖ Silviu; A lot more than they would like to admit, the thought of the number rising makes her sick to his stomach.

˖ Dúlamán; Enough to be wanted in serval cities and kingdoms, anything to be the greatest pirate of the Star Seas.

˖ Passion; None and she would like to keep it that way.

⊹ Do they try to prevent unnecessary suffering?

˖ Meringue; Love likes to see herself as a peaceful Aeon, however she was told by the ones who raised her that she was quite violent in her past life. With this knowledge they go out of her way to make sure love doesn't do anything to cause her people suffering.

˖ Eternal; If you truly matter to her she would go out of her way to prevent unnecessary suffering. If you are someone they hardly know or care about she much rather be a simple bystander and watch what happens, only stepping in to boost her reputation around the hotel or if it caused threat to someone she cared about.

˖ Eve; To her all suffering is unnecessary but they way she goes about "fixing" the problem is much different than what you think. She believes that a suffering person will be reborn in a better situation. No matter how small the suffering is Eve's answer to the problem would be a mercy kill.

⊹ How do they feel about sparing women and children if given the choice? Do they value certain lives over others?

˖ Morix; A true southern man who would lay down his life for children and women to be safe. Truly wishes to save all lives if he could. Values lives of those who need help over others regardless of gender but is more soft towards women from growing up in a household full of them.

˖ Ambrose; Can spare a child easily but had far too many run ins with evil women to cause them to be very hesitant with sparing women based on their gender. Does not value one life over another but will try to make sure those who are less fortunate get to safety first.

˖ Silviu; Believes more in sparing children then adults of any gender. Does not fully value any certain lives over others but leans more towards children since they can still grow and change while adults.

˖ Valentines; Women and children first in her heart, sparing them without a second thought. Values both of their lives over men because the thought of a child or mother dying would eat her up from the inside.

⊹ What's their pain tolerance?

˖ Eternal; Physically high pain tolerance and high emotional.

˖ Vesper; Physically decent pain tolerance but low emotional.

˖ Morix; Physically decent pain tolerance but high emotional.

˖ Ambrose; Physically high pain tolerance but low emotional.

⊹ Do they feel glee at the sight of blood?

˖ Silviu; She hates the idea of how her eyes light up, how they lean closer to the one injured. Silviu doesn't feel glee but more a yearning for it. He hates how hazy her eyes look when there's a pool of blood near her. Hunger pains and a dizzy feeling in their head is all they can manage to feel, but never glee. Despite wanting blood it never truly made her happy, voice in his head of his past love ones screaming "monster" over and over again as they crawl closer to the blood.

˖ Dúlamán; Sees it as a stepping stone towards their goal, the more bodies that pile up the less competition there it.

˖ Eve; A true "The red means I love you" woman. She does feel glee when she sees blood, it fills her with joy watching a mess happen convince this is helping them.

˖ Maple; Is quite squeamish! Hates the sight of blood and only gets through seeing it on herself is knowing bun gets to put a colorful band aid on it.

⊹ What do they regret the most?

˖ Morix; Not taking the chance to leave town when he had it. Morix gave up on a opportunity to play in a big city far out but turned it down to help his mother get better and pay rent. He knows its for the best but it still eats him up at night, thinking how it could of been his big break and how he could've sent money home to help them pay rent and upgrade the barn and house, enough so they didn't have to scrape by to survive.

˖ Fia; Leaving without a final goodbye letter when they die, many things they wished to say but feared they didn't have enough time. Like a cat knowing they aren't getting better they did the only thing they could in their eyes, run and hide like a coward till they passed. They wished was to see everyone one last time but they regretted not having that final goodbye dinner.

˖ Passion; An argument that wedge between her and her sibling's relationship. Raising your younger sibling is no easy job but not having your own shoulder to lean on when you're supposed to keep up the perfect act is what caused her to blow up.

˖ Dra; Never telling Passion that they forgive her for the fight, but instead just staying out even more. Dra would get into more reckless acts like skating down hills that were too steep, running across thin ice with her friends, or even the time he and his friends snuck into the observatory during curfew.

˖ Willo; being reckless with her own body in the fight against the kishin, going out of her way to protect others who could easily defend themselves, even her own Meister who Willo willing came out of her weapon form to push her out of the way for Willo could take the blow.

⊹ Do they have the ability to love?

˖ Dra; The only one on this list who can love easily, a simple happy kid with a big heart to give to everyone.

˖ Eve; She believes she is able to love but it is simply a concept she tricked herself in believing she can do. Eve in her core is still just a fiend trying to survive.

˖ Moonstone; Love is an extremely hard thing for them to learn, they're mentor is Jade of all people. If given the chance they had a new profession and had people surrounded by them willing to teach him the concept of loving someone, they would be able to. Loving Moonstone and being loved by them is a extremely slow process that you have to be willing to put in the work to achieve.

˖ Cebe; Love? No never, its not in her to love someone or something. obsess with? Absolutely. She knowns nothing but devotion to her queen and giving out fake love to a certain sea creature to make it easier to bring things back to her queen.

˖ Yenisei; I truthfully don't think Yenisei would ever have the ability to love. Not for a partner, a friend, family, or even a pet. They are nothing but hunger waiting for the next person to come wandering in their woods.

⊹ Do they have empathy? For whom? For what?

˖ Eternal; For Misha and other young people the family has control over, especially if they don't know it. She knew Misha's grandfather before he passed and now she has to watch Misha grow every day wanting to be just like him and go on adventures despite the pain he will have tot suffer, the fears he will have to face.

˖ Silviu; His fellow coworkers. She holds much emotion towards all of them despite the struggle of expressing it to them.

˖ Meringue; Empathy for her people and the suffering hey went through. Love has heard of the pain and suffering she caused in "her past life" before the reincarnation and she's being as sweet as she can be to their people.

˖ Willo; Her Meister. Willo gets so hyper that she doesn't realize how annoying or extra she is till she's laying down at night replaying everything that happened. Her mind wandering around "do they hate me? why am I like this? Why can't I be normal for once" causing her lack of sleep resulting in her being late to waking up and the cycle continues.

⊹ What's their relationship to their body? Self esteem? Self image?

˖ Lucrezia; Luci's self image body wise is fine, she has had a few moments of comparing herself to other but nothing that truly keeps her up at night. Her self esteem to work, to being compared to her brother who seem to be the more favored growing up, to even her partner is where it really plummets. Luci sees herself as second place, the second choice even. Good but you could do better, she knows she's up there in skill and status but not where she wishes to be. She wishes to be seen as equals and not first and second.

˖ Morix; Simple chubby trans cowboy who a would rather die than be seen with any ounce of skin showing.

˖ Eve; Her and this body are two separate things, Eve does not feel anything towards it was it was simply a gift from their rebirth. No true opinions on it or others. A large disconnect when it comes to their self image.

˖ Dra; Its quite hard since it changes day to day but a good 50/50 with their self image. Some days Dra is fine with how they are and how they decorate themself, while other days he compares himself to her sister and how she is so confident in how she looks and acts. Dra's hands are one of their main self imagine problems due to how scuffed up they look from the countless fail tricked they're done. Not only do they look ugly but its also a reminded of how much they are a failure.

⊹ If they could go back in time for 5/10/15 minutes and change something, what would it be?

˖ Fia; If they were able to go back in time as an adult, as a simple bystander they would do anything just to see their mother. To listen to the conversation as to why she left, to see why everything has happened, hell even if it was just 5 minutes just to see their mother and baby them interact. The lost of a mother figure in their life is something that changed them drastically but unknown to them if they were to ever meet Fia would not be the same person as they were today.

˖ Cebe; She would go back before the night of a big heist her and Dúlamán went on, she would only need those few minuets to see where Dúlamán hid the ring, HER ring, when they left. Maybe then she wouldn't have to chase down this sea dweller across the world and be home at her hive to propose to her queen.

˖ Ambrose; Maybe if Ambrose had a few more minuets their planet would still be alive, maybe if they had 15 more minuets they would of been able to scrape more money together and contact the IPC. Too many maybes and no answers, no one to ask and no one to know.

⊹ Are they codependent? Do they have abandonment issues?

˖ Lucrezia; Grew up never leaving her brother's hip but now as an adult she slowly got used to being alone in her office besides the occasionally patients visits and maybe a surprise visit from a special someone. She craves to have someone around her but has gotten too used to being alone so she doesn't see the purpose of asking.

˖ Eve; Codependent on her team/coworkers. Not allowed to be alone or you will hear her sobs and screams haunting you throughout the buildings. After watching "her" husband die in front of her she has extreme abandonment issues. In the most un funny way her scream and sobs sound like ghasts from minecraft but more bone chilling.

˖ Morix; Not codependent at all, not even big abandonment issues. He enjoys his alone time and can deal with being by himself, sure he might get lonely after awhile but he can deal with it till the next time he opens his show at the bar.

˖ Meringue; Extremely codependent, she was raised around many people and continues to live around many people always being watched. If there is a chance she's alone with no eyes on her does she even exist?

⊹ What's their relationship to sex? Modesty?

˖ Cebe; Views it as a sacred act to show you devotion and obedience to someone.

˖ Lumi; Views it as a way to show love to someone in another form.

˖ Moonstone; Views it as a way to gain information.

˖ Passion; Views it as a way of creating a family.

⊹ Do they enjoy the taste of blood?

˖ Vesper; Find the metal taste interesting but would never go out of his way to taste it. Doesn't really like the taste but since he doesn't get to taste it often Vesper just finds it interesting.

˖ Silviu; Do they enjoy the taste? Yes. Are they fine with the fact she enjoys it? Absolutely not. It take Silviu a long time, a deep relationship before they ask if they can feed off of you. Someone who will crave it but rather take himself out than ask someone for help in fear she will lose control.

˖ Willo; Hates hates it! Had a bloody nose dripped into their mouth once and gagged so much you thought they were dying on the floor. Sounded like a cat with the worlds worst hairball.

˖ Moonstone; Not so much but the type to use it as lipstick. A hand caressing the person's face before catching some on his finger and slowly pull out their phone, applying it like lipstick before leaving them to bleed out on the floor.

˖ Dra; Does not know what real blood taste like, only the syrup that runs in the bodies of everyone who lives in the world. Enjoys the cherry tasting syrup.

⊹ Do they enjoy the feel of hot blood on their skin?

˖ Lucrezia; Grew to ignore the feeling, after operating on so many bodies she learned to ignore it. It wasn't until she held her dying lover in her arms, blood soaking her shirt and hands as Lucrezia tried to defibrillate her lover with nothing but her vision and her hands. Ever since that night she refused to work again as the head nurse, no longer able to work in the same place let alone stand in there after what happened.

˖ Willo; Hates it so much, when the she had to deal with black and red blood covering her she broke down screaming and sobbing. She's a kid. She's a kid being trained and taught how to be a weapon, do you really think she would enjoy this?

˖ Lumi; Lumi is very conflicted about it. On one hand she finds the idea gross and horrifying, the fear of how it got there is another story. Though the warmth is quite,, soothing? Patching up her lover too and having her blood on them feel very intimate in a way she doesn't know how to explain.

˖ Moonstone; Yes, a lot in fact. Or really that's what they would tell you if they were asked. Moonstone is quite disturbed by the thought of it, rather destroying worlds with a push of a button than by hand.

⊹ Have they tore someone to shreds with their bare hands? With their teeth?

˖ Fia; Never but if they had to they would not hesitate.

˖ Eternal; No but almost once.

˖ Cebe; Often, in fact she has plans who's the next person will be. Dúlamán being the only person that comes to mind when she thinks of tearing someone up to shred along with anyone who will get in the way of her and what she wants.

˖ Guidance; Would if asked by Guidance's god, anything Guidance's god wants they will get.

˖ Silviu; A few times, in fact it was something the protocol tried to train out of her. A secrete criminal record from when they were a teen was found, it started a week after the First Light happened. Someone close to Silviu found out about her being a radiant and they became quite hostile toward him and her grandmother for hiding Silviu. One thing lead to another and Grandma Vivian is holding Silviu in her chest, gently wiping away his tears and the blood soaked mouth. Soft pleads of forgiveness and promises of never doing it again.

[cssetterock]

Verses!

WREN　 Born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, Wren is the eldest daughter of a second-generation farmer and his disabled wife. She has two younger sisters, one living and one passed, and a younger brother. Her Father was always gone working and helping his parents, while her mother stayed home and did the bare minimum. She ended up raising her sister while her parents went through the loss of their youngest daughter. Her parents did not always get along and spent much of her life fighting among themselves. Sometimes the anger was turned on her, especially since she was the eldest child and was not yet diagnosed with ADHD or any other mental illness. At some point when she was young, she began to keep to herself and hide away to enjoy her interests. She would read, listen to music, and start after-school activities if her parents allowed it. She was diagnosed with ADHD while young and struggled for most of her life due to it.~ ~After losing her youngest sister, the fighting between her parents and her family worsened. They started to get even more overly protective than they first started out. Her parents both entered a depressive state and left Wren to fend for herself. She tried to act out for any sort of attention, but that did not end well. Now bearing the weight of doing almost everything around the house, including raising her sister while going through school. She had no chance to grieve and relied on escapism to distract from the real world at any chance she could get. She began to lose interest in trying for school and let her grades slip. Her parents did not try to understand what was happening to her or even get to the source of why she was slipping in school and instead forced her to work harder. At some point, when her mother got pregnant with her brother, her paternal grandparents took her in and raised her from junior high into high school. Now receiving the love and support she truly needed, her grades improved, and she could graduate high school and get into college to become a major in history. During college, she met a wild girl with blonde hair and pink tips named Candy, that brought her to open up and let her be herself finally. They proceeded to secretly date in fear of both of their families finding out. They dated for a while when Wren discovered Candy flirting with another girl one night out, knowing that Wren hated cheating. Wren was broken seeing that; she had never thought to cheat in return until that moment. She went out herself and ended up sleeping with someone else. They proceeded to tell each other and fought for a while before they called it off. She lives alone with her two cats in her cozy little apartment recovering.~

RAHNE　 Starting out in medieval times, she is a product of reincarnation. Her father is a very wealthy CEO during the time and proceeds to marry her off to another wealthy CEO for money benefits, company merging, etc. Her husband at the time is horrible. More to come with her later

LEE　 She lives with her parents, who are super wealthy due to the technology they designed together to help with food production as the food sources began to deplete steadily. After their technology took off, they had Lee, who was their one and only child. Spoiled from birth, she always got what she wanted and even attended a prestigious private school in her early years. During her high school years, things started to get messy, with countries beginning to fight. One day one of the larger, more militarized countries started a nuclear war that practically destroyed the planet. One of those bombs hit Lee's house and killed her parents. Lee was one of the lucky survivors that managed not to get killed but was in a coma for an extended period. Scientists and doctors managed to get her in time to run tests on her and keep her alive. The main one that helped her recover had more hidden agendas, which caused her to get her *abilities*. Not long after, she finally awoke to a completely different world than when she entered her coma. She panics and returns to her home, only to find it entirely in the rubble. As she dug through the wreckage, she found her parents. She broke down for a while before finally mustering all the energy she could to bury her parents, then went off searching for who was the cause of their deaths.

[virtualtoybox]

okay nobody asked however tho i may be cringe i am also FREE so heres the story beats for dark lady au -

-padme survived, tho is handicapped from injuries sustained during her fight with anakin on mustafar. shes in a leadership position in the rebellion, but stays disguised as a handmaiden to the queen of alderaan as a way to protect here identity from the empire. 

-luke and leia are raised basically co-parented by the organas as well as padme and sabe. luke and padme are extremely close while her relationship with leia remains strained and distant... being a mother to her daughter was harder than was to be one to her son. she saw too much of herself in leia, and it scared her, and i think it scared leia too. a ferocity and need to change the world around her but too young to do anything about it. padme wishes she had done more about it. she tries so hard to make up for hte mistakes of her past, creating a better future for her children based on the foundation she failed to build before. 

- its around 12 years old that the children are found out by vader, and leia is singled out just by being on the wrong planet at the wrong time, just because she happened to by the first he found ina vulnerable enough position. he never planned to take leia; it didnt have to be her. 

- middle middle ive been drinking and smoking, ALL NIGHT, so suck it up you dont get the intensive leia sith training meta. maybe tomorrow. 

- ....okay just a lil. so she is fairly easy to manipulate tbqh considering shes so hunger for more and better and any sort of satisfaction that can ease the burning in her gut for just a second. palpatine offers her that in the form of force training- something her mother forbade. 

- so leia very definitely like. feels like being a sith can get her where she wants to be- where palpatine is. doing better than him. 

- a new hope is different in many ways but the one i will talk at length about is Leias assassination of emperor palpatine. vader is tasked with stopping the hotshot pilot trying to destroy the death star and comes back to give his master the bad news only to find a mangled body and his daughter wuth blood on her hands. she wont tell him what exactly happened- but that she does expect a new title. 

- emperor vader and his daughter; the dark lady arfenia (the devoted) are a very intense hand in unlovable hand fucked up power duo who feed off each other in the worst most unhealthy ways - she hates him so much, knows she needs him alive for now, shaking deep in her bones to finally kill him. he loves and would die for her easily, knows its not yet his time so he  is basically a puppet leader for his extremely disturbed daughter. 

-during this time, padme takes luke to ahsoka for force training- desperate for some form of defense against her ex husband ... against her own daughter.

- leia and han end up meeting when han is taken prisoner by vader to try and lure luke ala esb, though things go quite a bit differently to the point of Han being stuck in the cells on Leias ship. she honestly just curious as to who wouldve grabbed her brothers attention to such an extent that she visits han a bit more often than she should. they only know each other for a month. theyre only together once. its enough. 

-jaina and jacen are born 9 months later. theyre both so strong in the force, leia can already sense the power rolling off her children in waves. but one of them, the boy... hes sick. no matter what she does, she cant get him to stop crying a sickly pathetic wail- something that scared her so so bad. she could only think of one person who might be able to help- her brother, a jedi. a healer in the force. 

-she leaves jacen with luke- hiding him away just close enough for her brother to sense and safe enough to wait until he did. she knows the boy will be safe there- maybe even get to know his father. 

-ive type 1k more words than discord will allow me to send about an au no one could possibly care about besides myself and im not even to the main part of the au. might write more later but for now i thnk im gonna go put myself in niche star wars au jail (timeout in the corner)

[the-ferocious-kittyrose]

Rewriting Haggar/Honerva’s redemption arc

One of the many things that bothered me about VLD S8 is Honerva’s redemption arc. While I was never fully against the idea of Honerva getting a redemption arc, I just didn’t want VLD to do it because I knew that they would fuck it up if they tried. And low and behold, I was right!

But yeah, I wasn’t against the idea of her being redeemed. And I don’t mean “redeemed” as in “all is forgiven and she’s just a good guy now,” but more like a Darth Vader, “the things she did were inexcusable and she would never be able to right all her wrongs but she goes out on one good act to show that there was still good in her deep down and she at least had the potential to change.”

I know a lot of people don’t like the whole, “redemption=death” thing, which I understand, but I personally never had a problem with it.

Ok, so why didn’t Honerva’s redemption work? Well there are a few reasons but the one that baffles me the most is that, instead of trying to make her more sympathetic, season 8 seemed to go out of its way to show her being more evil and vile than ever.

And because I have nothing better to do, I’m gonna go through Honerva’s story in VLD and explain what I would change to make her redemption more believable.

(Keep in mind I am not a writer, this is just me ranting about my favorite character and how I personally would’ve written her.)

1. Realizing she’s Altean

I always thought it’s was weird that when Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” In the S2 finale, Haggar didn’t seem to react at all, she just kept attacking. It’s as if she didn’t care or already knew, which doesn’t make sense considering in the S3 finale and S8E2 it’s established that Haggar has no memory of who she was before she died. And in S4E3 she seems shocked by her Altean face (which also doesn’t make sense because her blue skin isn’t camouflage that’s just how she looks after the rift) so it seems like she didn’t know.

Wouldn’t it have made more sence if after Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” Honerva looked confused/shocked? If she became defensive and said Allura was lying/trying to insult her? There’s def anti-Altean propaganda in the empire so it would be considered an insult.

After that she starts questioning Zarkon. And when she looks into his mind, it’s out of genuine curiosity and desire to know the truth, not because, “the empire needs him” or whatever that meant.

And isn’t it a bit odd that she doesn’t seem betrayed at all when she finds out Zarkon has been keeping all this from her? She’s just like, “oh, you’re my husband? Cool.” Wtf???

2. Her past relationship with Zarkon

Okay, I love Zonerva, but if we’re being honest, Zarkon was not the best husband. He enabled the shit out of Honerva, even when it was obvious that the rift was doing serious damage to her physical and mental health. To me, it seems like Zarkon was so blinded by the power the rift gave him that he didn’t realize/ignored the negative effect it was having on Honerva. In the same way he downplayed the negative impact the rift had on the planet.

I think that should’ve been explored more. Maybe Honerva notices that she’s been acting differently and is worried somethings wrong (think S5 Kuron). And Honerva tries to tell Zarkon that she feels strange and Zarkon just brushes it off.

And later, when Alfor visits Diaibazaal years later. Things are pretty much the same except when we sees Honerva, she is very obviously pregnant and Alfor’s there when Honerva falls and goes into labor (instead of a random quintessence seizure). Alfor and many Galran doctors try their best to save her and the baby but she dies in childbirth.

Zarkon goes ballistic. He’s yelling, throwing doctors across the room, and Alfor turns to the doctor holding Lotor and tells them to get the baby to safely, fearing Zarkon will take his grief out on the baby.

Zarkon turns on Alfor, blaming him for Honerva’s death and accusing him of letting her die so that he could get his way and close the rift. He lunges Alfor and roars at him to leave.

He spends the rest of the night grieving at Honerva’s bedside, when Kova jumps on the bed and starts gnawing on her finger trying to wake her up. This is what gives him the idea to bring her back with quintessence.

3. Her current relationship with Zarkon

I think it’s pretty safe to say that they’re relationship didn’t get better after the war began. Zarkon hid her identity and her child from her for 10,000 years and essentially used her as a tool of war. It’s pretty fucked up.

I know it’s pretty well established that Zarkon treats Haggar with more respect than his other underlings, but I feel like it would be interesting to see that change overtime. We see that after Voltron comes back, Zarkon becomes very obsessed with Voltron/Black, and he and Haggar start disagreeing more and more.

Remember the moment where one of Haggar’s druids told Zarkon Haggar said he needed to rest and Zarkon hit them with his bayard and told them, “remember who your master is”? What if, instead of a random druid, it was Haggar who he hit?

I feel like that would be a good way to show Haggar and the audience just how much Zarkon’s obsession with Voltron is affecting him, and make the audience feel a tiny bit bad for her.

Then later in season 4, when Zarkon wakes up from his coma and finds out Haggar brought Lotor back to take his place he gets pissed. He puts a price on Lotor’s head and has Haggar arrested for treason. She steals a ship, escapes, and later on meets up with Lotor’s generals.

Her and Zarkon are officially broken up and her quest to reclaim her identity and get her son back begins.

4. Oriande

I never liked the concept of chosen/sacred Alteans. The idea that some Alteans are just born more powerful than others just feels iffy. My idea of Oriande is that it’s an Altean holly land, any Altean can enter it just depends on whether or not you can pass the White Lion’s trial. Passing the trial proves that your intentions are pure and and the White Lion will bless you with power.

I didn’t like how Honerva seemed to force her way into Oriande, I think it would be more effective if she had gone through normally because, at this point, her intentions were pure. She was going there to purge herself of the dark magic corrupting her and reclaim her memories so she could go get her son back.

I also like the idea that Oriande is a sorta link to the Altean after life, and you can speak with people you’ve lost. Allura gets to speak with Alfor, and Honerva speaks with her mother.

You could also have her be confronted by the spirits of the Alteans she helped destroy. Have the weight of her past actions bear down on her. An important part of any redemption arc is acknowledging the terrible shit you’ve done in the past, and that was severely lacking in Honerva’s arc.

Another interesting thing you could do is have Honerva talk to her younger self. The one that died 10,000 years ago. This kinda thing actually happened in 80s Voltron, young Haggar appearing in Haggar’s head trying to convince her to be good again.

5. Her relationship with Lotor

Now this is where the redemption arc really falls apart. I forget who, but one of the writers said after S5 that Haggar/Honerva was motivated purely by love for her son, but man did they do a bad job of showing that.

And it would’ve been so easy to fix that problem, just have her not be horrible to him. Have them have actual civil conversations, have her protect and defend him. Don’t have her reject him as a fucking baby!

Imagine if, after Zarkon destroys Lotor’s planet, instead of immediately deciding to

exile him, Zarkon says that this is the final straw and he’s going to have Lotor executed. But Haggar speaks up to defend Him. There’s actually a scene in DOTU where Zarkon tries to kill Lotor and Haggar gets on her knees and begs for him to be spared. (Though the scene was mostly played for laughs.)

she asks for mercy and justifies it by saying it would be unwise to kill his only heir. It’s a weak argument, Lotor’s a half breed and couldn’t realistically take the throne, but Zarkon does concede, he still loves her after all, and has Lotor exiled.

And Haggar isn’t spying on him because she doesn’t trust him, but because she’s concerned for him. When Lotor confronts Haggar about sending her cronies after him, she says she knows he’s hiding something. Lotor asks if she’s threatening him, thinking she’s going to rat him out, but she says no, she’s not threatening him, she’s just trying to warn him against doing anything stupid because, with Zarkon seemingly on his death bed, the empire needs Lotor’s leadership.

At this point in the story, Haggar is questioning her loyalty to Zarkon, so I feel like it would make sense for her to be silently supporting Lotor from the shadows.

Then at the Kral Zera in season 5, It was weird to me how she was helping Lotor through Kuron while also telling him he couldn’t be emperor and trying to put Sendak on the throne. I feel like it would’ve made more sense for Sendak to just show up on his own without Haggar.

Haggar wouldn’t even be at the Kral Zera, she would just watch through Kuron.

And then we get to S6 when she actually reveals to Lotor that she’s his mom. This scene was just so poorly done. She never actually apologizes to him, she’s just like “yeah I forgot you were my kid and I never loved you, but were cool now right?” I remember when I saw S8E2 and it shows her after Lotor rejects her and she looks like she’s about to cry, I was just thinking, “this would be very emotional and sad IF she had actually apologized and made it clear that she genuinely loved him.” But she didn’t and I don’t know why!

And then we get to season 8, and of course everything in S8 is bad but Honerva’s story is particularly bad. She’s supposed to be motivated by love for Lotor yet she doesn’t act like she actually cares about him at all.

She manipulates his corpse and when she sees his gross melted body, she doesn’t even react that much. When a mother sees her child’s mutilated corpse, how do you think she reacts? Screaming? Crying?? Hurling??? But no. She’s just like, “...”

And then when she goes to the alternate reality and meets baby Lotor and he rejects her, her reaction isn’t disappointment or sadness, it’s anger and entitlement. She immediately decides, “ok, fuck this kid. Let’s destroy this reality.”

It just doesn’t make sense! This is the season you’re trying to REDEEM her! Why are you going out of your way to make her so vile?

6. Her S7-S8 plan

(Keep in mind I haven’t watched S7/S8 since they came out and barely even watched S8 to begin with, so I don’t remember some things and I can’t be bothered to rewatch them.)

Okay, starting with S7, she’s not in this season at all but in “The Ruins” the druid dude says that her final order was to hunt and destroy the Blade of Marmora. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense because she saw that it was Keith who brought Lotor’s actions to light, but that whole plot was really pointless in my opinion. (Was anybody really hoping for a rematch between Keith and that one random druid?)

If you want us to forgive Honerva for her crimes, you really shouldn’t keep adding more unnecessary crimes. It’s established that there were a lot of Galra war lords vying for power and pirates looking for money, just have it be that Kolivan got kidnapped by one of them.

Then you have her season 8 plan and I’m gonna be real with y’all, I have no idea how to fix this mess.

I feel like the basics of her plan could work. She tries to get Lotor and Sincline out of the rift but when she gets him he’s a melted corpse so the plan then becomes to use sincline to go to another reality to find a living Lotor, but opening all these rifts causes problems and the paladins have to stop her.

But all the shit with manipulating the colony Alteans, killing the White Lion, desecrating Oriande, and destroying Olkarion and entire realities, it was all so unnecessary.

Personally I would cut the colony Alteans from the story all together, there are other ways for Lotor to betray the team. It was a lazy way of making Lotor 100% evil and having Honerva manipulate them is unnecessarily cruel, especially in the season you’re trying to redeem her.

Here’s a very basic outline of how I would do this plot.

If we’re going by season 8’s logic that she needs a sacrifice to bring back Sincline, I would’ve had the Galra she killed at the Kral Zera be the sacrifice, not the White Lion. She stands on the pyramid and talks about how the empire stole her life from her and she wants revenge as she absorbs their quintessence into herself and then uses that to bring back Sincline.

Then when she finds Lotor dead she takes Sincline and uses it to go to another reality where she can be with her family.

The danger comes when she opens rifts to the other realities and rift creatures start coming out and causing damage. The paladins fight them and follow her into the rift to stop whatever evil plan she may have. Because the paladins don’t know that Haggar is now Honerva and all this is just to get Lotor back. They think this is all some plan for multiverse domination or some shit.

Meanwhile Honerva has just been rejected by little Lotor and seeing Voltron show up pushes her over the edge and they fight.

But when they find out the real reason she’s doing all this they start trying to appeal to her and convince her to give up and close the rift peacefully. And similarly to how the paladins had to sacrifice the castle to close the rifts created by the fight with Lotor, Honerva has to sacrifice herself to close the rifts.

In the end, I feel like a Honerva redemption arc could’ve worked if the writers were actually competent and actually made an effort to have her be sympathetic, but In canon, her reasoning, “If I can’t indulge in the simple joys of life, why should anybody else?” just doesn’t cut it.

It’s disappointing. VLD had so much potential. I’m thinking of just rewriting the entire series from the beginning. Hopefully putting all my thoughts out into the universe will help me move on.

[im-totally-not-an-alien]

Final Fantasy 7 prompts #75 (FINAL LIST)

1. Iflana does not trust Cloud, not one bit. She can sense the calamity inside him and wants him to leave. Too bad both her husband and daughter seem enraptured by his very existence. Her husband rambling on about his mutated and 'safer' J-cells, as if that thing could ever be considered safe. Then it was her daughter, who seemed to take him in, as though he was no more than an injured bird needing treatment.

This thing would be the death of them. She just knew it.

2. "In my world its pretty rare for monsters to talk."

The large gray rabbit riding on his head paused to consider this, "Maybe they're just stupid?"

"Duh. They're basically wild animals. They're not really like you Loppy."

"Lopmon." The bunny creature corrected. Again.

Aka Cloud wakes up in the digital world as a twelve year old and has to find his friends...with the help of his partner digimon of course.

3. Genesis used to think mermaids were one of the most beautiful creatures in Ancient lore...until he saw a blond one swallow a fish whole. He wasn't so sure after that.

4. Au where Cloud and the remnants are escaped expiraments from a non-Shinra lab. They travel to Midgar and become mercenaries.

One of them winds up being captured, prompting the other three to rescue them, but they're otherwise preoccupied by normal human things they never got to experience. Loz loves donuts and other sweets, Yazoo adores taking long hot bathes, and Kadaj always seems to have headphones on, etc.

The holy trinity are shocked when the four don't recognize Sephiroth. Genesis also nearly has a heart attack when he catches them roasting a doomrat over an open flame. "You're not actually going to eat that, are you?"

5. Hojos alarm was triggered at three in the morning. Usually this wouldn't be an issue, creatures attempted to escape Shinras (and by extention his) clutches on a regular basis. They were usually recaptured or destroyed within the hour.

What was strange was the fact that this was Jenovas alarm. His goddess tended to not move much beyond bobbing up and down in her tank.

Upon checking the security feed, he witnessed something infuriating. A blond man was holding an armful of wildflowers and bossing around three silver haired teens as they dismantled her shrine and stole her away. Jenova herself seemed...interested? Approving? He wasn't sure, but it looked like she was cooing at them. Further analysis was required.

6. Time travel au, but the whole thing is from Hojos perspective and he suffers

7. Cloud and Reeve were having a discussion about Clouds Jenova abilities and why he never used them, which eventually lead Cloud to picking up a pebble and stating, "Its not like a can just force some of my life energy into a rock and make it a planet"

And then he did. Tfw

8. High fantasy, no materia au.

Magic is rarely seen in humans, rather a tool used by monsters. On the day Clouds mother is murdered his abilities awaken, creating a powerful snowstorm that ripped the town of Nebilhiem apart.

Ten years later and the storm rages on, having grown to cover nearly the entirety of the mountain, rendering communication with nearby kingdoms difficult and travel impossible.

The famed General Rhapsodous is sent to slay whatever great beast is causing this catastrophe. When he is faced with a young man living up there in complete isolation, he chooses to stay with the mysterious man until he can locate the monster.

What will become of Cloud once Genesis discovers the truth? After all, a witch is considered a form of monster.

9. "I should have just remained a puppet!"

Genesis mulled over the words as though they alone could unravel the mystery that is Strife.

Some part of the redhead felt a little bad about using the strange man's emotional outburst against him, but things were getting desperate...

10. Time traveler au where Genesis dresses in drag to save this "Tifa" girl from the Don. He then tries to get her to go to Shinra for questioning and is punched for his efforts

11. Cloud is thrown into a world where he never existed and Shinra still reigns supreme. Worse, he has no memory of who he is or how he got there (cause Jenova destroyed them). He only has his bike and his sword and begins traveling to find a purpose, all while avoiding Shinras detection.

He often stops at inns and rest stops and often sees the same group of people. The large man with a gun arm grew suspicious from seeing him everywhere they went.

___________________________

"Go away."

The knocking came again. "I know you're in there blondie." A gruff voice replied.

"I'm not gay."

The man on the other side of the door began sputtering. "Look," another voice began, "We just need to talk."

"Yeah. Sure. Talk." He said flatly. "In the middle of the night." He went over to the door anyway. Opening it revealed the man with a gun arm and another man with wild black hair.

"Zack?" The blond blurted, startled. What was one of Shinras Supreme doing out here?!

"You remember me!" The man beamed, "SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair, at your service! Now the real question!"

The man leaned down a bit to the mysterious blonds level, "Who are you?"

12. "Can you do it?" The softness of Denzels voice seemed to make the situation all the more horrifying. "Can you kill me?" Eerie mako green eyes stared up at where Cloud stood frozen.

Denzel pulled a knife from the block, "Or will your son kill you?"

Aka Seph plays mind games by possessing the kids from Advent Children and using them to torment Cloud and make him look like a lunatic

13. Cloud gets sent back in time/ alternate reality, ect. but gets turned into a white materia. He's careful not to roll around while people are looking, but that doesn't stop people from saying, "Hey, look! A materia! " and picking him up. He has no real power...other than apparently soothing anyone/anything he comes into contact with.

Strangely, he keeps getting slotted into bracers (among other things) regularly. Ya'll, he's so annoyed.

14. There were two of him. Two Sephiroths. The blond began regulating his breathing, desperately trying to ward off an ensuing panic attack. He wouldn't stand a chance if they decided to work together.

Luckily, one insulted the other and thus a catfight of epic proportions began, all while Cloud had a panic attack in some long forgotten closet.

15. Au where child Sephiroth overhears a scientist talking about her 'prayers being answered' and he asks her what that meant. After a brief explanation, he later prays to anyone who can hear him to get him out of the labs and/or away from Hojo.

It works.

Bonus: Cloud and Sephiroth were fighting again in the Midgar desert when Sephiroth slashed the air, creating a portal. He had intended to use it to appear behind his puppet and impale him again, but the blond rushed forward and slashed through the portal with his own sword, expecting the portal to disappear as he sailed through were it once was.

Unfortunately, it was still very much there. Just...different. Cloud wasn't given the chance to properly examine it before the feeling of being plunged into ice water overwhelmed him and he was spat out on the other side.

It was another desert, but not like the one he left. He could feel no life here. No plants, no animals, no...no lifestream. The only thing around is another version of him. One that was used and abandoned by the Sephiroth of this world.

The other blond stared at him in confusion, wielding twin sabers in a defensive position.

[philip-ks-dick]

Philip K. Dick, For Dummies.

I’ve been researching PK.D for a few years now, as he’s my father’s favourite author and I’ve been watching movie and show adaptations of his work for the longest time. I have personally only read the books listed, here’s the order (I think) you should read them in, based on difficulty level and the knowledge you need of the PKD canon to understand the books that follow. This is purely my opinion based on knowledge of the author. by philip-k’s-dick (lol)

Beginner. (These books and stories allow readers to explore Dick’s pet themes and stylistic quirks without falling too far down the rabbit hole)

The Short Stories: Over the course of his life, PKD wrote somewhere in the range of 150 short stories. Naturally, it would be silly of me to dump all of them on you at once, but undeniably, the shorter format allows the big ideas of Dick’s work to come through more clearly, and even the screwier stories conform to relatively coherent shape, making them an excellent jumping off point, especially for an author who wrote almost nonstop throughout his life.

My Favourites:

In The Days of Perky Pat - In this novel, survivors of a global thermonuclear war live in isolated enclaves in California, surviving off what they can scrounge from the wastes and supplies delivered from Mars. The older generation spend their leisure time playing with the eponymous doll in an escapist role-playing game that recalls life before the apocalypse — a way of life that is being quickly forgotten. At the story's climax, a couple from one isolated outpost of humanity plays a game against the dwellers of another outpost (who play the game with a doll similar to Perky Pat dubbed "Connie Companion") in deadly earnest. The survivors' shared enthusiasm for the Perky Pat doll and the creation of her accessories from vital supplies is a sort of mass delusion that prevents meaningful re-building of the shattered society. In stark contrast, the children of the survivors show absolutely no interest in the delusion and have begun adapting to their new life.

(Elements of the story were later incorporated into Dick's novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, written in 1964 and published in 1965, in which a Perky Pat simulation game is induced by drugs and miniature models instead. Palmer Eldritch is not a continuation or sequel however.)

What the Dead Men Say - Death is followed by a period of 'half-life', a short amount of time which can be rationed out over long periods in which the dead can be revived—so that, potentially, they can 'live' on for a long time. When attempts to bring back important businessman Louis Sarapis fail, it's clearly more than mere negligence. Sure enough, Sarapis starts speaking from beyond the grave. From outer space, in fact. Yet no-one seems terribly bothered, other than those directly concerned in the plot mechanics. Eventually entire communications networks (phones, TV, radio) are blocked by Sarapis' broadcasts

(Philip's later novel Ubik is a continuation of What the Dead Men Say)

Autofac - Three men wait outside their settlement for an automated delivery truck. Five years earlier, during the Total Global Conflict, a network of hardened automatic factories ("autofacs") had been set up with cybernetic controls that determine what food and consumer goods to manufacture and deliver. Human input had been lost, and the men planned disruption to try to establish communication and take over control. They destroy the delivery, but the truck radios the autofac and unloads an identical replacement, then prevents them from reloading items. They act out being disgusted with the milk delivery and are given a complaints checklist. In a blank space, they write improvised semantic garble—"the product is thoroughly pizzled". The autofac sends a humanoid data collector that communicates on an oral basis, but is not capable of conceptual thought, and they are unable to persuade the network to shut down before it consumes all resources. Their next strategy sets neighbouring autofacs in competition with each other for rare resources and seemingly succeeds, but there is a hidden level

Beyond Lies The Wub - Peterson, a crew member of a spaceship loading up with food animals on Mars, buys an enormous pig-like creature known as a "wub" from a native just before departure. Franco, his captain, is worried about the extra weight but seems more concerned about its taste, as his ship is short of food. However, after takeoff, the crew realizes that the wub is a very intelligent creature, capable of telepathy and maybe even mind control.

Peterson and the wub spend time discussing mythological figures and the travels of Odysseus. Captain Franco, paranoid after an earlier confrontation with the Wub which left him temporarily paralyzed, bursts in and insists on killing and eating the wub. The crew becomes very much opposed to killing the sensitive creature after it makes a plea for understanding, but Franco still makes a meal out of him. At the dinner table, Captain Franco apologises for the "interruption" and resumes the earlier conversation between Peterson and the Wub - which now has apparently taken over the Captain's body

Human Is - Jill Herrick and her husband Lester are in the middle of an argument. Lester deflects his wife’s claim that he is “hideous” with cold indifference. He tells her that he will not allow their child in the house and will have him removed to government custody because he is interfering with his research. Before the distraught Jill can pass this onto their son Gus, Lester gets news that he will be taking a trip to Rexor IV. Despite Jill’s desire to go there and see the planet, Lester insists that he will go alone.

Later Jill tells her brother Frank and she is going to leave Lester. She explains how happy she has been with Lester gone and how he seems to be getting worse every year of their marriage. More cold and more “ruthless,” not to mention the incessant working.

Lester comes home a very different man. He praises Jill’s cooking and expresses disgust with his work on Rexor IV studying toxins. He says he prefers Terra and being home with his wife.

Jill reports these changes to Frank, while Lester is playing in the room with Gus. Frank has Lester brought to a lab for more studies under the guidance of the Federal Clearance agency. Before long they realize that Lester has had his body taken over by a Rexorian.

The Hanging Stranger - The protagonist, Ed Loyce, is a store owner who is disturbed when he sees a stranger hanging from a lamppost, but finds that other people consider the apparent lynching unremarkable.

He finds evidence that alien insects have taken over, manages to get out of town, talks to the police commissioner, who believes him, and after getting all the information about what Ed knows, explains that the body was hung to see if anyone reacted to it, anyone they didn't have control over. He then takes Ed outside and hangs him from a lamppost.

The Commuter - Ed Jacobson is a railway worker at Woking station. His life takes a turn for the worse when his son, Sam, begins experiencing psychotic episodes. When he is selling rail tickets at work, a young woman named Linda asks for a ticket to a destination called Macon Heights that is not listed on any map.

The Minority Report - In a future society, three mutants foresee all crime before it occurs. Plugged into a great machine, these "precogs" allow a division of the police called Precrime to arrest suspects before they can commit any actual crimes. When the head of Precrime, John Anderton, is himself predicted to murder a man whom he has never met, Anderton is convinced a great conspiracy is afoot

Full Books:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department, is assigned to "retire" (kill) six androids of the new and highly intelligent Nexus-6 model which have recently escaped from Mars and traveled to Earth. These androids are made of organic matter so similar to a human's that only a posthumous "bone marrow analysis" can independently prove the difference, making them almost impossible to distinguish from real people. Deckard hopes this mission will earn him enough bounty money to buy a live animal to replace his lone electric sheep to comfort his depressed wife Iran. Deckard visits the Rosen Association's headquarters in Seattle to confirm the accuracy of the latest empathy test meant to identify incognito androids. Deckard suspects the test may not be capable of distinguishing the latest Nexus-6 models from genuine human beings, and it appears to give a false positive on his host in Seattle, Rachael Rosen, meaning the police have potentially been executing human beings. The Rosen Association attempts to blackmail Deckard to get him to drop the case, but Deckard retests Rachael and determines that Rachael is, indeed, an android, which she ultimately admits.

Clans of the Alphane Moon - War between Earth and insectoid-dominated Alpha III ended over a decade ago. (According to the novel, "Alphane" refers to the nearest star to our own system, Alpha Centauri). Some years after the end of hostilities, Earth intends to secure its now independent colony in the Alphane system, Alpha III M2. As a former satellite-based global psychiatric institution for colonists on other Alphane system worlds unable to cope with the stresses of colonisation, the inhabitants of Alpha III M2 have lived peacefully for years. But, under the pretence of a medical mission, Earth intends to take their colony back.

Against this background, Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife Mary are separating. Although they think they are going their separate ways, they soon find themselves together again on Alpha III M2. Mary travels there through government work, Chuck sees it as a chance to kill Mary using his remote control simulacrum. Along the way he is guided by his Ganymedean slime mould neighbour Lord Running Clam and Mary finds herself manipulated by the Alphane sympathiser, comedian Bunny Hentman.

The Man in the High Castle - In 1962, 15 years after Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany have won World War II, Robert "Bob" Childan owns an Americana antique shop in San Francisco, California (located in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America), which is most commonly frequented by the Japanese, who make a fetish of romanticized American cultural artifacts. Childan is contacted by Nobusuke Tagomi, a high-ranking Japanese trade official, who is seeking a gift to impress a visiting Swedish industrialist named Baynes. Childan's store is stocked in part with counterfeit antiques from the Wyndam-Matson Corporation, a metalworking company. Frank Frink (formerly Fink), a secretly Jewish-American veteran of World War II, has just been fired from the Wyndam-Matson factory, when he agrees to join a former co-worker to begin a handcrafted jewellery business. Meanwhile, Frink's ex-wife, Juliana, works as a judo instructor in Canon City, Colorado (in the neutral buffer zone of Mountain States), where she begins a sexual relationship with an Italian truck driver and ex-soldier, Joe Cinnadella. Throughout the book, many of these characters frequently make important decisions using prophetic messages they interpret from the I Ching, a Chinese cultural import. Many characters are also reading a widely banned yet extremely popular new novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which depicts an alternate history in which the Allies won World War II in 1945, a concept that amazes and intrigues its readers.

Frink reveals that the Wyndam-Matson Corporation has been supplying Childan with counterfeit antiques, which works to blackmail Wyndam-Matson for money to finance Frink's new jewelry venture. Tagomi and Baynes meet, but Baynes repeatedly delays any real business as they await an expected third party from Japan. Suddenly, the public receives news of the death of the Chancellor of Germany, Martin Bormann, after a short illness. Childan tentatively, on consignment, takes some of Frink's "authentic" new metalwork and attempts to curry favour with a Japanese client, who surprisingly considers Frink's jewelry immensely spiritually alive. Juliana and Joe take a road trip to Denver, Colorado and Joe impulsively decides they should go on a side-trip to meet the mysterious Hawthorne Abendsen, author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, who supposedly lives in a guarded fortress-like estate called the "High Castle" in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Soon, Joseph Goebbels is announced as the new German Chancellor.

Intermediate. (These are the books to pick up once you have the basics of what makes a PKD novel down. They’re obtuse enough to hit a little heavier, but don’t provide the full dose of surrealism Dick was capable of serving up. This is also good spot to jump in if you’ve experienced weird fiction before.)

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - The novel is set in a dystopian version of 1988, following a Second Civil War which led to the collapse of the United States' democratic institutions. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ("pols") reestablished social order through instituting a dictatorship, with a "Director" at the apex, and police marshals and generals as operational commanders in the field. Resistance to the regime is largely confined to university campuses, where radicalized former university students eke out a desperate existence in subterranean kibbutzim. Recreational drug use is widespread, and the age of consent has been lowered to twelve. The black population has almost been rendered extinct. Most commuting is undertaken by personal aircraft, allowing great distances to be covered in little time.

The novel begins with the protagonist, Jason Taverner, a singer, hosting his weekly TV show which has an audience of 30 million viewers. His special guest is his girlfriend Heather Hart, also a singer. Both Hart and Taverner are "Sixes", members of an elite class of genetically engineered humans. While leaving the studio, Taverner is telephoned by a former lover, who asks him to pay her a visit. When Taverner arrives at her apartment, the former lover attacks him by throwing a parasitic life-form at him. Although he manages to remove most of the life-form, parts of it are left inside him. After being rescued by Hart, he is taken to a medical facility.

Waking up the following day in a seedy hotel with no identification, Taverner becomes worried, as failure to produce identification at one of the numerous police checkpoints would lead to imprisonment in a forced labor camp. Through a succession of phone calls made from the hotel to colleagues and friends who now claim not to know him, Taverner establishes that he is no longer recognized by the outside world. He soon manages to bribe the hotel's clerk into taking him to Kathy Nelson, a forger of government documents. However, Kathy reveals that both she and the clerk are police informants, and that the lobby clerk has placed a microscopic tracking device on him. She promises not to turn Taverner over to the police on the condition that he spend the night with her. Although he attempts to escape, Kathy confronts him again after he has successfully passed a police checkpoint using the forged identity cards. Feeling in her debt, he accompanies Kathy to her apartment block, where Inspector McNulty, Kathy's police handler, is waiting. McNulty has located Taverner via the tracking device the hotel lobby clerk placed on him, and instructs Taverner to come with him to the 469th Precinct police station so that further biometric identity checks can be performed.

Time out of Joint - Ragle Gumm lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper contest called "Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?". Gumm's 1959 has some differences from ours: the Tucker car is in production, AM/FM radios are scarce to non-existent, and Marilyn Monroe is a complete unknown. As the novel opens, strange things begin to happen to Gumm. A soft-drink stand disappears, replaced by a small slip of paper with the words "SOFT-DRINK STAND" printed on it in block letters. Intriguing little pieces of the real 1959 turn up: a magazine article on Marilyn Monroe, a telephone book with non-operational exchanges listed and radios hidden away in someone else's house. People with no apparent connection to Gumm, including military pilots using aircraft transceivers, refer to him by name. Few other characters notice these or experience similar anomalies; the sole exception is Gumm's supposed brother-in-law, Victor "Vic" Nielson, in whom he confides. A neighborhood woman, Mrs. Keitelbein, invites him to a civil defense class where he sees a model of a futuristic underground military factory. He has the unshakeable feeling he's been inside that building many times before.

Confusion gradually mounts for Gumm. His neighbor Bill Black knows far more about these events than he admits, and, observing this, begins worrying: "Suppose Ragle [Gumm] is becoming sane again?" In fact, Gumm does become sane, and the deception surrounding him (erected to protect and exploit him) begins to unravel

Ubik - By the year 1992, humanity has colonized the Moon and psychic powers are common. The protagonist, Joe Chip, is a debt-ridden technician working for Runciter Associates, a "prudence organization" employing "inertials"—people with the ability to negate the powers of telepaths and "precogs"—to enforce the privacy of clients. The company is run by Glen Runciter, assisted by his deceased wife Ella who is kept in a state of "half-life", a form of cryonic suspension that allows the deceased limited consciousness and ability to communicate. While consulting with Ella, Runciter discovers that her consciousness is being invaded by another half-lifer named Jory Miller

Difficult. (This section comes with a caveat: within these novels you will encounter numerous hallucinations, drug trips, an entire trilogy about gnostic spirituality and mental illness, and more than a little unabashed nightmare fuel. It’s normal to get tangled up in what goes on in these books. It’s also normal to be weirded out. But with proper grounding, you’ll make it though with your faculties intact. Probably.)

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - The story begins in a future world where global temperatures have risen so high that in most of the world it is unsafe to be outside without special cooling gear during daylight hours. In a desperate bid to preserve humanity and ease population burdens on Earth, the UN has initiated a "draft" for colonizing the nearby planets, where conditions are so horrific and primitive that the unwilling colonists have fallen prey to a form of escapism involving the use of an illegal drug (Can-D) in concert with "layouts." Layouts are physical props intended to simulate a sort of alternative reality where life is easier than either the grim existence of the colonists in their marginal off-world colonies, or even Earth, where global warming has progressed to the point that Antarctica is prime vacation resort territory. The illegal drug Can-D allows people to "share" their experience of the "Perky Pat" (the name of the main female character in the simulated world) layouts. This "sharing" has caused a pseudo-religious cult or series of cults to grow up around the layouts and the use of the drug.

Up to the point where the novel begins, New York City-based Perky Pat (or P.P.) Layouts, Inc., has held a monopoly on this product, as well as on the illegal trade in the drug Can-D which makes the shared hallucinations possible.

The novel opens shortly after Barney Mayerson, P.P. Layouts' top precog, has received a "draft notice" from the UN for involuntary resettlement as a colonist on Mars. Mayerson is sleeping with his assistant, Roni Fugate, but remains conflicted about the divorce, which he himself initiated, from his first wife Emily, a ceramic pot artist. Meanwhile, Emily's second husband tries to sell her pot designs to P.P. Layouts as possible accessories for the Perky Pat virtual worlds—but Barney, recognizing them as Emily's, rejects them out of spite.

A Scanner Darkly - When performing his work as an undercover agent, Arctor goes by the name "Fred" and wears a "scramble suit" that conceals his identity from other officers. Then he is able to sit in a police facility and observe his housemates through "holo-scanners", audio-visual surveillance devices that are placed throughout the house. Arctor's use of the drug causes the two hemispheres of his brain to function independently or "compete". When Arctor sees himself in the videos saved by the scanners, he does not realize that it is him. Through a series of drug and psychological tests, Arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. They do not know his identity because he wears the scramble suit, but when his police supervisor suggests to him that he might be Bob Arctor, he is confused and thinks it cannot be possible.

Donna takes Arctor to "New-Path", a rehabilitation clinic, just as Arctor begins to experience the symptoms of Substance D withdrawal. It is revealed that Donna has been a narcotics agent all along, working as part of a police operation to infiltrate New-Path and determine its funding source. Without his knowledge, Arctor has been selected to penetrate the organization. As part of the rehab program, Arctor is renamed "Bruce" and forced to participate in cruel group-dynamic games, intended to break the will of the patients

(If this one seems difficult to wrap your mind around, that's because its a fictionalized account of real events, and you may need to read about Philip's life at the time to understand the autobiographical nature of the book.)

The VALIS Trilogy

(Fictionalized account of religious experiences in PKD’s life.)

VALIS - In March, 1974, Horselover Fat (the alter-personality of Philip K. Dick) experiences visions of a pink beam of light that he calls Zebra and interprets as a theophany exposing hidden facts about the reality of our universe, and a group of others join him in researching these matters. One of their theories is that there is some kind of alien space probe in orbit around Earth, and that it is aiding them in their quest; it also aided the United States in disclosing the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon in August, 1974. Kevin turns his friends onto a film called Valis that contains obvious references to revelations identical to those that Horselover Fat has experienced, including what appears to be time dysfunction. The film is itself a fictional account of an alternative-universe version of Nixon ("Ferris F. Fremount") and his fall, engineered by a satellite called valis. (The plot of the fictitious film Valis was that of Dick's then-unpublished novel Radio Free Albemuth.) In seeking the film's makers, Kevin, Phil, Fat, and David—now calling themselves the Rhipidon Society—head to an estate owned by popular musician Eric Lampton and his wife Linda. They decide the goal that they have been led toward is Sophia Lampton, who is two-years old and the Messiah or incarnation of Holy Wisdom (Pistis Sophia) anticipated by some variants of Gnostic Christianity. In addition to healing Phil's schizophrenic personality split, she tells them that their conclusions about valis (which Fat had previously termed "Zebra") and reality are correct, and more importantly, that we should worship, not gods, but humanity. She dies two days later due to a laser accident caused by Brent Mini. Undeterred, Fat (who has now resurged) goes on a global search for the next incarnation of Sophia.

Dick also offers a rationalist explanation of his apparent theophany, acknowledging that it might have been visual and auditory hallucinations from either schizophrenia or drug addiction sequelae.

Characters:

Phil (Philip K. Dick): Narrator (first person), science fiction writer, author of Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Three Stigmata.

Horselover Fat: Narrator (third person), a schizophrenic modality of Phil himself. (Philip in Greek means "fond of horses"; dick is German for "fat".)

Gloria Knudson: Suicidal friend of Fat's who Fat is unable to save.

Kevin: Cynical friend of Fat's whose cat died running across the street, based on K. W. Jeter.

Sherri Solvig: Church-going friend of Fat's, eventually dies from lymphatic cancer.

David: Catholic friend of Fat's, based on Tim Powers.

Eric Lampton: Rock star, screenwriter, actor, a. k. a. "Mother Goose"; a fictionalised version of David Bowie.

Linda Lampton: Actress, wife of Eric Lampton.

Brent Mini: Electronic composer, a fictionalised version of Brian Eno.

Sophia Lampton: Two-year-old child (personalised incarnation of Holy Wisdom within some variants of Gnosticism), said to be the daughter of Linda Lampton and valis and the "Fifth Savior".

The Divine Invasion - After a fatal car accident on Earth, Herb Asher is placed into cryonic suspension as he waits for a spleen replacement. Clinically dead, Herb experiences lucid dreams while in suspended animation and relives the last six years of his life.

In the past, Herb lived as a recluse in an isolated dome on a remote planet in the binary star system, CY30-CY30B. Yah, a local divinity of the planet in exile from Earth, appears to Herb in a vision as a burning flame, and forces him to contact his sick female neighbor, Rybys Rommey, who happens to be terminally ill with multiple sclerosis and pregnant with Yah's child.

With the help of the immortal soul of Elijah, who takes the form of a wild beggar named Elias Tate, Herb agrees to become Rybys's legal husband and father of the unborn "savior". Together they plan to smuggle the six-month pregnant Rybys back to Earth, under the pretext of seeking help for Rybys' medical condition at a medical research facility. After being born in human form, Yah plans to confront the fallen angel Belial, who has ruled the Earth for 2000 years since the fall of Masada in the first century CE. Yah's powers, however, are limited by Belial's dominion on Earth, and the four of them must take extra precautions to avoid being detected by the forces of darkness.

Things do not go as planned. "Big Noodle", Earth's A.I. system, warns the ecclesiastical authorities in the Christian-Islamic church and Scientific Legate about the divine "invasion" and countermeasures are prepared. A number of failed attempts are made to destroy the unborn child, all of them thwarted by Elijah and Yah. After successfully making the interstellar journey back to Earth and narrowly avoiding a forced abortion, Rybys and Herb escape in the nick of time, only to be involved in a fatal taxi crash, probably due to the machinations of Belial. Rybys dies from her injuries sustained in the crash, and her unborn son Emmanuel (Yah in human form) suffers brain damage from the trauma but survives. Herb is critically injured and put into cryonic suspension until a spleen replacement can be found. Baby Emmanuel is placed into a synthetic womb, but Elias Tate manages to sneak Emmanuel out of the hospital before the church is able to kill him.

Six years pass. In a school for special children, Emmanuel meets Zina, a girl who also seems to have similar skills and talents, but acts as a surrogate teacher to Emmanuel. For four years, Zina helps Emmanuel regain his memory (the brain damage caused amnesia) and discover his true identity as Yah, creator of the universe.

When he's ready, Zina shows Emmanuel her own parallel universe. In this peaceful world, organized religion has little influence, Rybys Rommey is still alive and married to Herb Asher, and Belial is only a goat kid living in a petting zoo.

In an act of kindness, Zina and Emmanuel liberate the goat-creature from his cage, momentarily forgetting that the animal is Belial. The goat-creature finds Herb Asher and attempts to retain control of the world by possessing him and convincing him that Yahweh's creation is an ugly thing that should be shown for what it really is. Eventually Herb is saved by Linda Fox, a young singer whom he loves and who is his own personal Savior; she and the goat-creature meet and she kills it, defeating Belial. He finally discovers that this meeting happens over again for everyone in the world, and whether they choose Belial or their Savior decides if they find salvation.

Characters:

Herb Asher: audio engineer

Rybys Rommey: mother of Emmanuel, sick with MS

Yah: Yahweh

Elias Tate: Incarnation of Elijah

Emmanuel (Manny): Yah incarnated in human form

Zina Pallas: Shekhinah

Linda Fox: singer, songwriter, Yetzer Hatov

Belial: Yetzer Hara

Fulton Statler Harms: Chief prelate of the Christian-Islamic Church (C.I.C), Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church

Nicholas Bulkowsky: Communist Party Chairman, Procurator maximus of the Scientific Legate

VALIS: agent of Yahweh, disinhibiting stimulus

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, the story describes the efforts of Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer, who must cope with the theological and philosophical implications of the newly discovered Gnostic Zadokite scroll fragments. The character of Bishop Archer is loosely based on the controversial, iconoclastic Episcopal Bishop James Pike, who in 1969 died of exposure while exploring the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea in the West Bank.

As the novel opens, it is 1980. On the day that John Lennon is shot and killed, Angel Archer visits the houseboat of Edgar Barefoot, (a guru based on Alan Watts), and reflects on the lives of her deceased relatives. During the sixties, she was married to Jeff Archer, son of the Episcopal Bishop of California Timothy Archer. She introduced Kirsten Lundborg, a friend, to her father-in law, and the two began an affair. Kirsten has a son, Bill, from a previous relationship, who has schizophrenia, although he is knowledgeable as an automobile mechanic. Tim is already being investigated for his allegedly heretical views about the Holy Ghost.

Jeff commits suicide due to his romantic obsession with Kirsten. However, after poltergeist activity, he manifests to Tim and Kirsten at a seance, also attended by Angel. Angel is skeptical about the efficacy of astrology, and believes that the unfolding existential situation of Tim and Kirsten is akin to Friedrich Schiller's German Romanticism era masterpiece, the Wallenstein trilogy (insofar as their credulity reflects the loss of rational belief in contemporary consensual reality).

The three are told that Kirsten and Tim will die. As predicted, Kirsten loses her remission from cancer, and also commits suicide after a barbiturate overdose. Tim travels to Israel to investigate whether or not a psychotropic mushroom was associated with the resurrection, but his car stalls, he becomes disoriented, falls from a cliff, and dies in the desert.

On the houseboat, Angel is reunited with Bill, Kirsten's son who has schizophrenia. He claims to have Tim's reincarnated spirit within him, but is soon institutionalized. Angel agrees to care for Bill, in return for a rare record (Koto Music by Kimio Eto) that Edgar offers her.

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is one of Dick's most overtly philosophical and intellectual works. While Dick's novels usually employ multiple narrators or an omniscient perspective, this story is told in the first person by a single narrator: Angel Archer, Bishop Archer's daughter-in-law.

Characters:

Angel Archer: Narrator, manager of a Berkeley record store, widow of Jeff Archer.

Timothy Archer: Bishop of California; father of the late Jeff Archer and father-in-law of Angel. Dies in Israel, searching for psychotropic mushroom connected with Zadokite sect. Based on James Albert Pike, Dick's personal friend, who was an American Episcopalian bishop.

Kirsten Lundborg: Timothy Archer's secretary and lover. Dies from barbiturate overdose after loss of remission from cancer.

Bill Lundborg: Kirsten's son who has schizophrenia, and who is obsessed with cars.

Edgar Barefoot: Houseboat guru, radio personality, lecturer. Based on Alan Watts.

Jeff Archer: Son of Timothy Archer, and deceased husband of Angel. A professional student who was romantically obsessed with Kirsten.

Thank you, if you read all of this. it took me six hours today to write this all 

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Thoughts on the ship Rosalie/Bella?

While it’s a nice thought, sadly, I don’t think either Rosalie or Bella are what the other would ever seek in a partner.

Indeed, I think the other would be too close of a reminder to what they see in the worst of themselves. So, even in better circumstances, I don’t think they’d choose each other.

Let’s break that down.

What is Rosalie Looking For?

Rosalie’s past is one filled with brutal trauma, betrayal, and heartbreak. She has been violated by men in the worst of ways, betrayed by the man she thought would be her husband, and then has the surreal experience of being turned into something that, while alive, is not human.

She romanticizes the human life she could have had, clinging to it, never acknowledging that circumstances were such that she never would have had it.

Rosalie never was going to get that simple future of being a humble, good, simple man’s wife with beautiful children and a comfortable life. She was raised in society, uncommonly beautiful and charming, and was set to marry the wealthiest man she could. It might not have been Royce, she could have married a good man, but she would have married into this wealthy world and not ended up with someone like Emmett.

I think this is very telling.

For very understandable reasons, Rosalie has never confronted nor truly gotten over her trauma. Oh, she murdered her rapists and murderers, and put their deaths behind her, she married Emmett and has a (fairly) good relationship with him, but she hasn’t taken her full final steps to recovery.

I think this in part shows in her ending up with a guy like Emmett.

Emmett’s not bad, don’t get me wrong, but it’s very telling in what he loves of Rosalie and that Rosalie loves him for it.

He worships her beauty above all other things and is described as a very simple but pleasant and laidback guy. I think Rosalie is at the point where she wants to be worshipped, especially for the quality that was most valued in her human life, her beauty.

She wants to be with someone safe, someone who loves her, and that someone is definitely Emmett.

I think in the short run this works out very well for the pair of them and perhaps even in the long run. I think both could have chosen a better partner.

Rosalie is complicated, she’s not the shallow vain bitch Edward complains she is nor is she what Emmett seems to see her as. Emmett doesn’t really get his wife, or defend her all that much, he’s in love with her beautiful cheerleader persona. Rosalie, similarly, is in love with this man whose greatest attribute is his love of her. I’m sure there are moments she finds Emmett rather boorish and slow on the uptake.

What Do I Think Rosalie Needs?

To be honest, of all the characters where I raise my eyebrow at Meyer putting them with someone of the opposite gender, Rosalie’s one of the ones where they raise the highest.

Even Carlisle, when Rosalie drags in this man’s bleeding carcass, goes, “Oh, is this your cousin?” And has a “Him?!” moment when Rosalie explains this is her new husband.

I always would have expected, especially after her experiences, for Rosalie to be with a woman. That said, I do think her society’s prejudices and expectations would be a huge barrier for her and she’d have to do a lot of character growth before this would ever be possible. And I mean a lot of character growth, as in, Rosalie hasn’t reached this point even post Twilight saga.

Right, regardless of gender, I think Rosalie needs a partner who a) understands her b) does not value her looks c) accepts the good and the bad parts of her.

Like all of us, Rosalie is flawed. She’s a very impressive, down right intimidating, woman who has an iron clad will and gets what she wants. She has a deep love for her family and a great capacity for compassion. However, there are times when she’s the sixteen-year-old girl who has very much not escaped her society’s mindset. She fully advocates Bella Swan’s murder so the family won’t have to move, not realizing until Carlisle points it out that this is a heinous thing to do. Rosalie says vicious, racist, things to Jake likely never realizing exactly what it is she’s saying. She’s stubborn, proud, and as Edward put it a bit pig-headed.

Emmett tends to just go “Yeah, she’s a bitch, but she’s my bitch”. Which... great, thanks Emmett, that’s very helpful.

Bella Swan is Not That Person

Bella per the start of the series is a seventeen-year-old girl with cripplingly low self-esteem, huge parental issues, and a dangerous inclination towards depression.

Bella shows serious interest in women sexually (her relationship with Alice has some serious homoerotic undertones) but she’s also very intimidated by them. Rosalie, especially, makes Bella evaluate and feel worse about herself as she knows she will never be as beautiful as this teenage blonde goddess.

In other words, this Bella is not in a position to be the kind of person Rosalie needs. She’s too caught up in figuring out who she herself is, cares very much about Rosalie’s appearance and using it to compare against her own, and isn’t stable enough to be what Rosalie needs.

And by the end of canon... Well... Bella’s left the planet and will soon join Esme in being a hauntingly strange person entirely divorced from reality.

What if we’re in a slightly AU world?

Well, we’re banking on a lot of character development for Bella that I don’t believe can happen with Edward around. Either Bella shows interest in Edward or, well, he eats her. (No, seriously, this is canon, both Alice and Edward confirm as much.) 

And if the family packs up and leaves during New Moon and never comes back... Well, of all the people Bella might end up with after that, I think Rosalie might just be the least likely (not to mention Rosalie would not be down for hanging around Edward’s stupid human girlfriend).

What is Bella Looking For?

Bella’s looking for validation of her very self. She wants to be loved, more than that, she wants to be worth something.

Bella has such a low opinion of herself that, at this point in her life, she needs this feeling to come from elsewhere. She finds this in both Edward and Jacob.

And it doesn’t matter how scary they are (and both are, indeed, very scary towards her), it doesn’t matter what it is they value, just that they both seem to want her even though she’s a foolish, clumsy, pale, ugly, human, nobody, loser. 

That’s all Bella wants.

Edward’s a perfect storm in that he’s inhumanly perfect, beautiful beyond all comprehension, and completely obsessed with her. In Edward’s eyes, Bella is not just perfect, she’s fascinating.

And then, of course, she’s not and it utterly destroys her. 

Basically, Bella’s is a very sad life.

What Does Bella Need?

Bella needs time to grow up and find out who she is and how to value that.

Bella is your very typical teenage girl. She’s precocious, has a lot of issues growing up with her mom, but she has a lot of issues many teenage girls do have.

I think, before Bella can find a truly good partner, she needs to learn how to value herself.

This will be painful and take a lot of time. In New Moon, I think Jake actually sets her back as she uses him to find value in herself for her (essentially replacing Edward).

Only after Bella discovers who she is, reaffirms why she is important and worthy of love, can she find someone.

What does that person look like?

Well, it sure as fuck isn’t Vampire Patrick Bateman, otherwise known as Edward Cullen. Nor is it Jake Black who sexually assaults her, tells her to kiss him or he’ll kill himself, then tells her that her dying is pointless as it means he and Edward fought over nothing. 

It also isn’t Alice, who treats Bella a lot like she would a life-sized Barbie Doll rather than a friend and a human being.

I’m not sure who it is, to be honest.

Someone who recognizes who Bella is, certainly, the good and the bad. Someone who is able to... reconcile her with the world she truly lives in. Maybe, circumstances changing around a bit, it’s Carlisle Cullen? (Though that would certainly be a dumpster fire of divorce and despair with Edward and Esme) Maybe it’s Jasper (also a dumpster fire of divorce and despair with Edward and Alice)? 

I really have no idea here. Unlike Rosalie, I can’t even tell you what this person would need to be like.

What I do know is...

Rosalie is Not That Person

Just as Bella views Rosalie as a threat, as something to measure herself against and feel unworthy of in every way, Rosalie does the same.

Bella is a pretty human woman who captures Edward’s attention in a way she never can. Rosalie, at the time we start canon, for all her accomplishments and all she’s done is still insecure enough that she needs to be the prettiest woman in the room. 

Just as Bella’s not secure enough to be what Rosalie needs, Rosalie is not secure enough to be what Bella needs.

Rosalie also doesn’t see Bella for what she is. Rosalie sees, at first, a normal boring human teenager and dismisses her. She falls into the typical Cullen trap (for all but Carlisle) that they forget humans are people too. Later, Bella discounts Rosalie’s very earnest advice and Rosalie never forgives her for it. This is understandable, Rosalie lays her soul bare, but she forgets Bella’s a teenage girl and more can’t see what Bella herself is battling with.

Bella thinks being human is worthless because Bella thinks being Bella is worthless. Children and a human future mean nothing to her.

It would take a lot, A LOT, of character development for Rosalie to be someone that Bella needs in this situation and even then... Well, they’d have to deal with the horrifying shit show that is Edward. Because if Edward/Bella isn’t happening...

It’s lunch time.

TL;DR

I’d say pin your hopes on Alice/Bella, except that one’s not happening either for all that they do have their very homoerotic friendship.

[gear-project]

What do you think the "Blood of Juno" actually is?

Based on everything so far and even based on what I've translated from Guilty Gear Begin, I do not believe Aria was ever pregnant with a child from Frederick. (GGStrive even reveals that Frederick hadn't even yet 'popped the question' of Marriage to Aria until late in to their relationship.)

However, Aria was frozen in cryostasis from 2016 to at least 2073, so it's possible someone was able to obtain her D.N.A. during her Gear conversion.

And, what's more, we do NOT know the exact history of what happened between 2175 to 2181 when Dizzy was first discovered.

Based on Lightning the Argent events, we do know that Blackard Company wasn't the only organization or pharmaceutical group to tamper with Command Type Gear development, and this was immediately after Justice was killed in 2180 only to have her body stolen by the Conclave for experimentation.

Even Gig (Guilty Gear Dust Strikers' events) was a potential Command Type Gear in the process of her development, but because she lost her sanity, she was a failed experiment.

That then begs the question, when did someone have the time or place to obtain Sol Badguy's D.N.A.?

Raymond (Guilty Gear Judgement events) seemed to know an awful lot about Sol's past, researching it thoroughly, and he couldn't have been the only one out there trying to reproduce Sol's power... even Crow Kuruwaba was trying to obtain Sol's combat data and reproduce it in simulation (he even had Dizzy fight that simulation at one point).

Based on this information, "something" was in the process of being created from 2170 to 2180 while Justice was still imprisoned.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dizzy was an Artificially Fertilized Embryo at first, based on both Sol Badguy and Justice, so someone had to have known how powerful they both were and were trying to create the ULTIMATE GEAR in the process...

However, because Dizzy was born without the usual traits Gears possess... (she even appeared as a human newborn)... she was likely thrown away without full analysis of her potential.

And possibly, just prior to being 'thrown out' Dizzy was likely programmed with both Sol's and Justice' combat data when they both fought each other during the Crusades, that's why Dizzy stated the combat simulation that Crow put her in felt "nostalgic" even though she had never seen such a warzone in her life previously.

That also explains why Dizzy sensed Eddie was her "natural enemy" as a Kinjuu (Forbidden Beast) when they encountered one another.

So, based on a string of 'pure coincidences' Dizzy was born from the bloodline of both Sol Badguy and Justice and she obtained a trace of the Prime Field Gear Cells or "Bloodline of Juno".

Even Asuka was surprised when Raven first told him of Dizzy's existence (GGXPlus events), so Asuka himself had nothing to do with Dizzy's creation or birth.

Later GGXX games depicted Dizzy as having an ability called "Necro Install", and this move was used whenever Dizzy had Necro take control of her body and transform in to what appeared as an "archer mode" in which she could fire powerful energy projectiles.

Meanwhile, the actual "Scales of Juno" itself was never given to Justice because she rebelled before it could be put in her body... instead it was put inside Jack-O's body as a Valentine.

But, even during Strive's events, it's unclear what happened to the Scales of Juno when Jack-O' 'merged' temporarily with I-No to destabilize her Godlike powers...

Sol pulled Jack-O' out of I-No's body, and after that, I-No stated that the Scales were 'gone'... as if that was a one-time trick... but, that can't actually be the case if Jack-O' was still alive.

In fact we still don't know what Asuka did when he extracted the Flame of Corruption from Sol's body.

Sol wasn't "completely human" even after the extraction, that's how he could still survive the blast from his OutRage being fired.

It's likely that Sol can't use Dragon Install anymore... but he's still "not entirely human" either.

As for Ky, while it can't simply be that he obtained Dizzy's blood by sheer coincidence (since we know that it's a risk for Humans to even ingest Vitae, as that alone could turn a human in to a full Humanoid Gear, like it did with Sheevus).

Given that Ky's eye looks "completely normal" when he's not using that power, I would wager to guess he is using some kind of suppression device that keeps that power from consuming his body, much like how Sol wore a headguard Gear Cell Suppressor to maintain his human form. Perhaps the device is embedded somewhere under his skin or under his eye.

We do know that Sin's eye would go out of control if his eyepatch was removed, so in that regard, Ky would have to be the same as his son in terms of that kind of power. But unlike Sin, Ky likely has a better sense of control of his own power and that power impacts his left arm as well.

Even if what Ky experienced was a mere "transfusion" of Gear Cell information, that alone wouldn't be enough to give him as much power as he obtained, so something else is at play here...

Even Sin, as strong as he is, has never transformed in to anything that resembles Ky's transformation (or even Dizzy in her transformed states). And while Sin's Instant Kill "Raiden" could probably destroy a mountain in terms of sheer power, it's not something Sin is fully incapable of controlling (nor does he transform to use that power).

Rather, I would go so far as to say Ky's power is a chemistry of not just Dizzy's bloodline, or even Sin's power... but is also something Ky himself inherited and made his own.

Ky learned Lightning Magic at an early age... even mastering it at the tender age of 16 years, to say nothing of his mastery of the sword.

Lightning Magic by itself is one of the hardest magics to control... and Ky still managed to control that power anyhow. He diffused that power and turned it in to his own shield (Ride the Lightning), he even turned it in to his own sword: Stun Edge / Durandal.

I would wager to state that Ky is very compatible with Magic now, in terms of his body, and in terms of what he inherited from the bloodline of Gears. The result makes him much stronger than ever.

He even went so far as to inherit Absolute Barrier Felion and used that as a shield against I-No's attacks (even if it was temporary), not just any mage could accomplish that.

Ky learned to suppress his power from the likes of Sol Badguy, someone who had the power of a Dragon and could have unleashed his true powers at any moment but chose not to. Sol had the power to destroy an entire Moon or planet if he so desired, but held back that power. Ky knew this all too well.

Ky also knew Sol was struggling to stay human, something few other humans could understand.

But Ky could understand... because after the War, he struggled to find a place of his own. Even being surrounded by an army of Robo-Ky copies wasn't enough to satisfy Ky's combat ability.

Ky understood he was strong, stronger than most... but he was satisfied when Sol finally bested him.

Ky continued to understand what it meant to "stay human" when he met Dizzy and became her husband. He knew without a shadow of a doubt how strong Dizzy was... Dizzy even defeated him the first time they ever met.

And even when fear of the unknown would've consumed him, Dizzy was still strong enough to become his "chair" and blow away any doubts he had. He had family in his corner (despite all he had lost during the Crusades) and no more reasons to hesitate.

Juno was said to be the wife of Zeus, the God of Thunder... the Mother of all the Gods.

For such Gods to maintain their station, power and trust were necessary, faith in those Gods.

Even before a Mother of Creation (I-No), a man of faith, conviction, and HOPE could still stand DEFIANT.

Some say 'blood is thicker than water', but a bloodline alone doesn't make a man strong... what he believes in, what he's willing to fight for, who will fight for and trust in him... that's what makes a man strong.

[ofstarsandfireflies]

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this movie, but how could I not put it on the list?

Addams Family

A creepy and kooky family get a surprise visitor.

Stephen’s family takes after his last name.

Truly, in every sense of the word.

Peter would seem like the only normal one if he wasn’t climbing on the walls half the time to avoid Harley shooting his potato gun at him, which he often swaps out the potatoes for bombs half the time.

The explosions he can deal with, and the mess they make is quickly cleaned up again.

They’re still kids and he wants them to have as much fun as they possibly can.

They’re just energetic and highly spirited, like their father.

Speaking of Tony...Stephen is just as much head over heels for him today as the first time they met and destroyed a planet together almost twenty years ago.

Sparks literally flew that day, and it was a wonder they even survived it with how they couldn’t keep their eyes off one another.

Stephen proposed that very night and they’d been in wedded bliss ever since.

He would die for him.

He would kill for him.

And every morning he lets Tony sleep in because the man deserves it.

Especially since every night leaves him exhausted.

And sometimes during the day too.

Most time’s during the day.

They can’t get enough of one another.

And Tony is more than happy to deal out just as much as he receives, always kissing Stephen’s hands first and working his way up his arms to his mouth so Stephen knows Tony loves those scars just as much as the man who wears them.

But today, after the kids have gone to school, Stephen can’t help but become distracted.

Today is the anniversary of when the Ancient One left the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme, this Sanctum and all its secrets, to Stephen Strange.

He’s guilt ridden at not being able to save her from that portal that swallowed her up, distracted and angry that he knew so little of his magic back then.

Tony misses her too, for without her, he would never have met Stephen in the first place.

Tony knows he is Stephen’s anchor, every year on this day.

And without Tony, Stephen knows he would have drifted a long time ago.

They get regular visits from Shield agents, just checking in to make sure their little family doesn’t want to rejoin the Avengers, but Tony’s made his decision to leave all that behind and he’s not changing his mind.

However, some of these agents actually work for Hydra, and when Sitwell comes knocking one day, he knows they all have to be crossed off the list.

And exactly how to do it.

That night, a woman looking exactly like his old teacher comes to the Sanctum.

While Tony is a little skeptical about her sudden appearance, and his kids seem to be too, Stephen has gotten out of the slump he’d been in for so long, so Tony decides to take this as a win.

But when everyone’s getting ready for bed, Tony lets himself into her room to warn her.

If she isn’t who she claims to be, and Stephen gets hurt because of it, there won’t be any cave, crevice or crack she can squirm her way into that Tony won’t find.

And once he’s found her, he’ll make sure she’s never found again.

Then he wishes her goodnight and closes the door behind him.

It’s a little rocky at the beginning when Stephen keeps asking questions she doesn’t have the answers to, even agent Sitwell doesn’t have anything satisfactory to say about where she’s been all this time.

But Sitwell can’t let them throw this ‘Ancient One’ out.

She’s a Winter Soldier.

One trained to adapt to its surroundings and gather intel on its targets before killing them.

So he tells them to give her some time to adjust. Maybe after a couple of days or so, she’ll fit right in.

But by the very next day, everyone in the Sanctum isn’t so sure this woman is their old friend.

The cloak of Levitation and Wong both seem to be confused as to why her memory is so incomplete.

Surely something would have come back by now?

Even if she can’t remember who they are, she only ever drunk one kind of tea.

Even if she can’t remember all of her training, surely she must remember some of it

But no.

There’s nothing.

Stephen even gives her a sling ring to make a portal with and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

He has half a mind to do what she did to him to make her create one, but he’s too upset to think straight.

He has to come to terms with the knowledge that it might not be his old teacher after all.

Sitwell tries to change his mind, twenty years is a long time to be trapped wherever she was, but Stephen isn’t having it.

That woman is an imposter and he won’t have her in this Sanctum.

Even though she doesn’t feel as welcome as she had been in the beginning, she finds that the kids have really warmed up to her.

They had been brought up on stories about her, and had always refered to her as their aunt.

And she’s never been called aunt before.

But she has a mission.

But she doesn’t want to harm them. Seeing them all, the love that they have for one another (excessive in Stephen and Tony’s case) is unlike anything she’s ever seen before.

And, while she may not remember them completely, she knows their faces, knows they had something to do with her past, and wants to stay to uncover that truth about herself.

She begins drinking the tea she loved.

She begins paying more attention to what she can remember.

And when Stephen hands her a sling ring one last time before he makes his decision, she makes a portal to the very mountain she left him stranded on.

Stephen can’t believe it.

It’s actually her.

So he decides to invite everyone who knew her, everyone who has missed her just as much as he had, to a party at the Sanctum.

But before the big night, Sitwell has had enough of the delay.

He doesn’t know why she hasn’t killed them all yet.

She tells him it’s not time yet, but Sitwell has lost all patience with her.

If she won’t kill them, then he has to move them somewhere where they can be killed easier.

And he knows just how to do it.

This Sanctum would come in very handy training Sorcerers for Hydra, and seeming how he has the Ancient One, the one who rightfully owns this Sanctum, he can move this family of freaks out and deal with them later.

But wrath hath no fury like a Tony scorned, who’s heard everything Sitwell just said.

He’s not going to allow his husband to go through that horrible depression again, and he’s not going to allow his children to live anywhere else but where they’ve called home all their lives.

So he calls Sitwell out on this bs, and Sitwell orders the Ancient One to open a portal.

She doesn’t want to.

She likes living here with this family, but her hands move on their own and they all step through to the Hydra base.

And the cloak sees this and immediately goes to get Stephen.

But the cloak has no idea how to relay this information to him, having no hands to sign and only managing to grab a photo of the family and point erratically to Tony.

Stephen has no clue what it’s trying to say until it takes up his sling ring and begin tapping morse code on the bedside table.

Throwing the cloak over his shoulders, he goes to save his damsel, who is strapped to the very chair where Hydra erase the memories of their Winter Soldiers.

He takes a step to him immediately and freezes when Sitwell emerges from the shadows, pointing a gun at Tony.

He’s going to turn them both into Winter Soldiers to serve Hydra, and then do the same to their kids.

Then he orders the Ancient One to strap Stephen down.

Stephen requests a moment to talk with Tony and Sitwell agrees although he quickly ends it when it becomes disturbingly sexual.

The Ancient One takes Stephen to the next chair, but then notices the cloak.

And takes it from him.

Sitting Stephen down in the chair, she offers him a reassuring smile and sends the cloak at Sitwell, which wraps around him tightly.

Stephen runs to Tony to free him, almost wanting to leave Tony tied up like this, and they get back home safely.

A moment later, the cloak and the Ancient One walk into the Sanctum, quite pleased with how they banished Sitwell to the Dark Dimension.

The day after the party, as Stephen and Tony listen to the explosions almost rocking the Sanctum as if it were classical music, Tony has some good news.

Their adoption papers have finally come through.

They can add a new addition to their family.

Stephen would adopt every single child in the cosmos if it made Tony happy, and Tony expects Stephen to hold that promise.

One child at a time, of course.

Quotes -

“Last night, you were unhinged. You were like some desperate, howling demon. You frightened me...do it again.”

You all know I’m only doing this movie for this quote right here!

“Don’t torture yourself, Gomez. That’s my job.”

Shouldn’t it be They’re kinky and they’re kooky?

“Tish. How long has it been since we’ve waltzed?”

“Hours.”

Tony takes pride in the fact that he and Stephen can waltz anywhere at anytime and they’d both be up for it.

“Morticia. Morticia...what? Slow down! It’s terrible when you stutter! Morticia. In. Danger. Stop. Send. Help. At once. Stop!”

Stephen finally understands what his cloak is trying to tell him.

“Tish. Seeing you like this...my blood boils.”

“As does mine.”

“This wheel of pain...”

“Our wheel.”

“To live without you only that would be torture.”

“A day alone. Only that would be death.”

“Knock it off!”

Your resolved-borderline-obsessed sexual tension is making Sitwell uncomfortable!

“Leather straps...red hot pokers...”

“Later, my dearest.”

Stephen fights against his urges when he sees Tony tied up.

Ancient Lies

Stephen has everything.

A loving husband, two wonderful children, a life where they don’t need to worry about missions and intergalactic threats anymore.

But for as complete as his life, someone is missing from it.

And then she turns up.

Missed a Day? Catch up here!

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10

[unmaskedagain]

Daddy’s Little Villain

So this prompt I think I got months ago. I meant to work on it for quite some time but I never got around to it. I got inspired yesterday so I decided to take a shot. I went completely off memory for this. Its been a while since I watched Young Justice or any of the DC animated shows; apart from the new Harley Quinn one. So sorry about what I got wrong.

A clown with a killer punchline.

A lantern of terror.

The king of Metropolis.

The master of shadows.

A destroyer of worlds.

Different faces, powers, histories but all categorized under one name.

Supervillain.

           Ruthless, intelligent, powerful, charismatic, tempting; villains reflect just how easily and quickly this planet, if not the universe could fall under their might. However, none of them started out evil. None of them were born evil. No one is born to be evil.

           Marinette, however, came very, very close.

           Her biological father was one of the first that came to mind when anyone thought of a Supervillian. He personally had killed thousands, and arranged the deaths of tens of thousands more. He conquered kingdoms, destroyed dynasties, annihilated empires, controlled governments, and used presidents, kings, any old politician as puppets on strings.

           And he was a good dad.

           He made sure Marinette had the best of everything. The best tutors, the best trainers, the best bodyguards (though Marinette had only ever seen them out of the corner of her eye; hiding in the shadows).

He was even okay with Tom Dupain being a father figure to his daughter. Tom had married Sabine when Marinette was four. However, the acceptance of this came after several failed assassination attempts after the first time Marinette called Tom Papa. Sabine hadn’t been happy that to have protect her new husband from assassins sent by her jealous baby daddy.

Marinette spend most of her days pretending to be a normal girl. The rest of the time she was being trained by near unstoppable assassins in every manner of fighting style her body could handle, learning how to speak various different languages ranging from Spanish to whatever the hell Atlantians’ spoke, hacking and computer skills from former spies, and being taught strategy from some of the greatest military minds that could be bought. (And this was one top of her duties as Ladybug because her dad was still a bit of an asshole.)

He just wanted what was best for her. And he made sure Marinette knew she was loved. He sent her presents every week, letters every day, and she woke to fresh roses in her room every morning.

           The presents ranged from diamond tiaras to ancient samurai swords; anything she so much as mildly expressed an interest in was always found at the foot of her bed the next day. The letters were always thoughtful and kind; always wanting to know about her day, and how she was doing. They would appear in her desk sometime during the day. Marinette would leave a reply via email because she was a sane person of the year 2020. She’d wake to red roses every morning to remind her she was special to him. Sometimes she handed them out at school. Other times she gave them away to any pedestrian who looked like they needed a pick me up.

           He was a good dad, even if he was never actually around. They talked on the phone and over video chat as much as they could.

           He was busy. She understood that.

           Trying to take over the world wasn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t the average 9 to 5 job. The Light needed him.

           She forgave him for that; just like she forgave him for all the things he did to… ensure the future he envisioned became a reality. They were distasteful, immoral, and most of the time she didn’t have the stomach to listen to 1/12 of all the things he did or orchestrated.

           Marinette was always fine with staying out of it. Unlike most Supervillian kids, she never had any interest in taking her place in the family business. Or doing the opposite and doing everything she could to take their villainous family down. No, she had better things to do.

           And her father was just fine with that. He could forgive Marinette for wanting a normal life. He just wanted her happy, safe, and well cared for. He kept the Light and Cadmus out of Paris as best as he could.

           He could even forgive his little girl when she adorned a mask and became the Hero Ladybug. Though it did prevent him from recruiting Hawkmoth into the fold; he wouldn’t have been more than cannon fodder but still. As long as Ladybug kept out battle between good and evil that encased the rest of the world, the city of Paris, France could be hers. Hell, he would even give it to his baby girl as a birthday present should her desire for it arise. It would be good preparation should he need someone trustworthy and loyal to rule the rest of Europe.

           Still he was quick to stop any admiration for the heroes of Justice League. Or at least make sure his daughter didn’t put them on a pedestal like the rest of the world did.

“But they’re the good guys,” She remembered her seven-year-old self protesting. At the time Marinette hadn’t really understood that her father was considered one of the ‘Bad Guys.’ “The heroes.”

“I believe the Justice League’s actions leaves humanity weak,” He told her. “However, even if I didn’t find fault in them, they are only people. They make mistakes. There is good and evil in them; few realize just how easily one side could win over the other.”

           Marinette frowned, “You mean go bad. They won’t go bad. They fight for justice and what’s right.”

“What’s right is subjective,” He warned her. “And justice is in the eye of the beholder.”

“But-but they’re superheroes!”

“You know what’s more dangerous that a villain?” He asked her. “Someone who refuses to acknowledge that anyone can become one.”

           He would say more on the subject later until he was sure Marinette understood.

           He loved his daughter with all of his heart. And Marinette returned the favor.

           So when rumors spread, not long after Hawkmoth’s permanent defeat, that the Light’s founder had fallen; was dead, killed in action, murdered by superheroes, Marinette’s heart broke. She always knew the risks of her father’s job, the dangers this world had in it; it was survival of the fittest after all, that was what he taught her.

           Nevertheless, that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt; that it didn’t burn. And for the first time, the darkest part of her, the part of her that was all her father’s daughter, wanted to make the world feel her pain. However, Marinette was better than that. She wouldn’t blame the world for her sorrows.  She refuse to set fire to everyone and everything just because she wanted to vengeance.

           No, she was smarter than that. Her father, had he still lived, would expect better from her.

           Marinette blamed the Justice League; wonder woman, superman, the Green Lantern. She blamed. Artemis. She blamed Aqualad. She blamed Miss Martian. She blamed Superboy. She blamed Kid flash. She blamed all of Young Justice who set up the plan to bring down the light. (Apart from Batman and Robin who been in Gotham because Robin had all but on his death bed after a fight with DeathStroke.). And they would burn for taking her father from her.

           …The only problem was that Marinette wasn’t a killer. She didn’t want to be one unless she had no other choice. So she had to think of another way to get her revenge.

           The plan had started out very simple. Slowly the hero Ladybug would start being seen outside Paris; fighting random villains’ here and there; captain cold one day, the cheetah next. Never seen in the same place twice. Rumors spread that she was looking for someone; her partner, Chat Noir. It helped that Chat Noir had been seen in months.

           It was just a rumor, of course. Chat Noir had been officially retired. All kwami were taken back. Marinette wasn’t using Tikki to power herself up. No, she refused to use them like Hawkmoth had done. Instead, they were put away and were very well cared for; like well pampered, spoiled pets.

           Marinette used her money to buy a replica of her Ladybug suit; better armored though. She used her private plane to travel around wherever she needed to go. The more villains she fought, the more the rumor of the heartbroken Ladybug hunting down the Light to find her partner grew.

           The only downside was that Ladybug was rapidly gaining enemies left and right. It wasn’t long before The Light sent people after her. Ladybug was quick to send their minions back to them all but in a body bag.

           She had been approached multiple times be members of the Justice League; even teamed up with them multiple times to save the day. They never even feel the near microscopic camera she puts in them. It degrades three hours after but it’s plenty of time for Marinette to get the information she needs.

           It took two months for Marinette to learn the identities of nearly every member of the Justice League. She’s quick to destroy any secret identity evidence for anyone who didn’t wrong her. The batfamily was spared. The Green Arrow and his family was spared. (One day soon Oliver Queen would thank his lucky stars that Speedy went solo instead of joining Young Justice. And that Cheshire, who had a thing for the redhead, was an old friend of Marinette’s, whether the older girl remember the bluenette or not.)

           The family of Steal would burn though. As would fastest family alive. The king of ocean and his sidekicks. The “human” identities of the worlds’ favorite Martians. Woman Wonder and her sidekick. The Green Lanterns.

           The Justice League never saw her coming. All they saw was a pretty fourteen-year-old girl with tears in her big blue eyes as she swore it was her duty to right this wrong. She would fight the light on her own. A young hero, they thought, who did realize just how over her head she really was. Pity was always clear in their eyes. Every time Marinette refused their offer of help, said she could handle it herself.

           Marinette was just biding her time. She still needed the identities of Young Justice. When she got that, she would strike. Hard.

           It only took three months, and Cadmus capturing little Miss Martian.

           By the time, Young Justice arrived Ladybug had already been on the scene. Marinette had already freed an injured Miss Martian and they were trying to fight their way out. The bluenette was beaten, battered, and bleeding.  The two girls did their best to fight the bad guys that seemed to come in a never ending storm. It wasn’t long before they were surrounded.

“Go,” She whispered to the green girl. Marinette had always placed the cameras. She didn��t need to alien any longer. “You can fly. Go. I’ll hold them off, okay.”

“I won’t leave you,” Miss Martian shook her adamantly.

           Marinette frown, “You have to. You know what Cadmus. You know what these monster will do to you. You have go before it’s too late.”

“I will not!”

“Don’t be a hero!” Ladybug snapped.

“Why?!” A new voice called. Robin landed in front of them. The rest of the Young Justice was “It’s our job.”

           The fight was epic. And Marinette could admit that the members of Young Justice were skilled. But they had to be to take down her father, so it wasn’t surprising. Still, she managed to put a camera on each and every one of them.

           When it was over, and it was clear more of Cadmus’ henchman were arriving, Young Justice made moves to flee…

           Until they realized Ladybug had no intention of coming with them.

“He’s not in there,” Miss Martian told her gently.

“You don’t know that,” Ladybug murmured.

“I do,” Again the pity was clear in redhead’s eyes.

           Ladybug shook her head. “You don’t understand. I can’t give up. I won’t!”

           Robin put a hand on her shoulder, “Chat Noir isn’t in there.”

“Getting yourself killed will not help him,” Aqualad stated.

           Ladybug nodded, gave them a small smile, and then made a break for the Cadmus lab. Then Marinette felt a sharp pain in the back of her head, and everything went black.

           She woke up in the infirmary of what she guess was the Young Justice headquarters. With a huff, she got up and marched out of the room. It didn’t take her long to find the teen heroes lounging in their living room. “You guys are jerks!” She yelled at them.

           Kid Flash snorted, “We saved you from yourself.”

“Oh you self-righteous little-” Marinette groaned. “I can’t believe you! I can take care of myself” She crossed her arms and stomped her foot.

“Oh yeah because that proves it,” Artemis laughed.

“I’m a hero too, you know?”

           Robin nodded. “Everyone knows about Ladybug. But you’re like thirteen.”

“Fourteen! And a half!” Marinette corrected. “Which is basically fifteen.”

           The older heroes just looked at her, and then burst out laughing.

           Marinette forced herself to think of her most embarrassing memory so that her face would heat up and it would look like she turned red from embarrassment. As if she care what they thought.

           The bluenette grabbed a slice of pizza and asked politely for someone to send her back to Paris. She needed to regroup, she claimed.

           They tried to convince her to stay. Or let Young Justice or the Justice League help her but she refused. Marinette was back in Paris ten minutes later.

           She had the identities of every member of Young Justice an hour after that.

           It was time.

           Ladybug “tracking” down the Light had been an experience. Technically, she knew enough to figure out various locations they used. However, she also knew enough to know that Ladybug just showing up there would get her killed. It was a move of an amateur hero. And Marinette was done thinking like a hero.

           So she put down her mask, ditched her Ladybug gear, and got on a plane. Marinette arrived in Metropolis on a windy Tuesday morning.

           It took her until Friday to hack into Lex Luther’s secretary’s calendar to figure where the King of the Metropolis was scheduled to be and another week to decipher the Light’s next meeting. Hacking into pentagon was easier.

           Marinette waited watched from the shadows of the remote island she found herself on. She watched as villain after villain arrived. Until Lex Luther, surrounded by bodyguards and personal assistants, arrived in his private jet.

“Mr. Luther!” Marinette called as she stepped out of the shadows where she was hiding.

           Guns were immediately pulled on her. The secretary, Mercy, hand suddenly became weaponized. The surprise on their faces were clear. Particularly when they saw the small teen girl standing there.

           Marinette smiled.

“And you are?” Lex asked, only mildly intrigued. He wondered just who the child was that managed to be sneak up his men and possible the rest of the Light.

“My name is Marinette,” She answered. “But you and the Light know me as Ladybug. I mean you no harm.”

           Lex narrowed his eyes at her. He could see the resemblance. Ladybug and Marinette had the same stature, the same eye color, and looked to be the same age. Still, it could be a trick.

“Two months ago, I broke into one of your building.” Marinette said. “The break in was the news but LexCorp assured that nothing was taken. That wasn’t true. I took the Cuban cigars out of the safe behind the Rembrandt painting. Please. I merely wish to speak with the Light. Somewhere… not even gods among us can hear.”

           Well, that assured the villain that it wasn’t a trick.  However, for the first time in his life, Lex Luther found himself confused. On one day, Ladybug had been a slowly become a thorn in the Light’s side. On the other hand, the hero had just revealed her identity and now just wanted to talk. About what, Lex yearned to know.

           Lex nodded, “Mercy will check you for weapons. Then you will be escorted inside safely. Whether you leave alive will be up for debate.”

           Marinette sighed in relief and raised her hands. Mercy, who the bluenette tried to figure out whether she was a robot or a cyborg, was very thorough. She even scanned Marinette’s phone for any traces of explosives.

           When it was done Marinette found herself escorted inside, and then found herself a cliché Supervillian lair staring down the greatest supervillains in the world. Ra's al Ghul, Black Manta, Queen Bee, Klarion, Deathstroke, Ocean Master, and their operatives Hugo Strange, Bane, Sports Master, and Cheshire all sat at a large round table. There was four pieces of glass hanging from the ceiling in front of them; monitors, Marinette figured.

And it was clear from the anger on the faces that the bad guys had been informed of exactly who Marinette was.

           It was daunting, to say the least.

“You have our attention, Miss Marinette,” Lex said. “Do not waste it.”

           Marinette nodded, “I have information on the Justice League I thought the Light would be very interested in.”

“Why would a hero do such a thing?”  Ra's al Ghul asked. “Hoping to make a deal? Your information for the return of Chat Noir, perhaps?”

           The leader of the League of Shadows didn’t know why the rumor persevered that the Light kidnapped the Parisian hero. He had confirmed himself that it was highly inaccurate.  

           The bluenette giggled, “Chat Noir no longer exists. He was retired at the same time as Hawkmoth. The Light has never had him. Neither did Cadmus. It was just heavily implied.”

“Yet that didn’t stop you from destroying our labs,” Lex glared. “Ruining missions, capturing my associates. Months of research. Millions of dollars. Gone to hell.”

“You were a tool,” Marinette shrugged. “I used to you get to close to the Justice League. It was never personal.”

           Lex felt eye twitch. He should have Mercy shoot her on principle.

“You’re more annoying than Robin,” Deathstroke shook his head at the moxy of the girl.

“It was just business?” She offered. “I needed a way to make them pay.”

“Just… just business,” Lex pinched his nose. He was going to kill her. “What could you possible offer the Light that would stop us from destroying you and everyone you love?”

           Marinette smirked. She pulled out her phone and hacked into the monitors. Once she was done, and played a video. The villains watched on the screens with old mild interest on their faces. Slowly the interest faded as shock and astonished looks overtook it.

           Lex’s felt his entire body shake. The video had shown undeniable proof that Superman was secretly Clark Kent. It was what he dreams were made of. He could barely stop himself from snatching the phone out of Marinette’s hand and playing it the video over and over again.

           Lex forced himself to calm down. He looked at the bluenette hard. A part of him wanted offer to pay as much money as the girl could want for the video. Another part of him realized if Marinette had been a little older he would’ve proposed.

“Superman’s civilian name is Clark Kent.” Marinette smiled, “I have video proof of nearly every member of the Justice League’s secret identities; along with their sidekicks.”

           The statement was met with silence. Each villain contemplating the ramifications of what such information could mean; not just for them, but for the world.”

“I think that’s worth a little forgiveness,” Marinette slyly added. “What’s few million dollars in damages compared to bringing down the Justice League once and for all.”

           Klarion chuckled, “I suppose some things can be overlooked.”

“Why?” Black Manta asked. “That is what we should be asking. Why betray the heroes?”

“Justice,” Marinette shrugged. “Revenge. I blame them for the death of my father.”

“That’s a good a reason as any,” Cheshire said. Her mask still hid her face.

           Sportsmaster gave his daughter a side look, “You never tried to take down any heroes any of the times you thought I died,” He complained.

“Sorry,” Cheshire shrugged. “I was too busy eating ice cream and getting drunk off my ass; it’s how I usually celebrate.”

“Why come to us?” Ra's al Ghul asked still intrigued.

“Why wouldn’t she?” A new voice rang through the room. Marinette stumbled back in shock. She knew that voice. But that wasn’t possible. Right? “The Light is in her blood.”

           Door opened and in walked bane of nearly every hero in the world, the Founder of the light, Vandal Savage. “You’ve done well, daughter.”

           Her father looked exactly the same as she remember. He was tall, with broad shoulder and square jaw; three pale scars across his face. His hair was longer though, much longer, and was pulled back

           Marinette rushed over to him and threw herself into his arms. He hugged her tightly.

“I thought you were dead,” Marinette whispered. Tears stung her eyes. “Everyone said you were dead.”

           Vandal smiled gently at her, “And you decided to bring down the world’s heroes in my name. I’m truly touched,” He said. “I wasn’t dead but I was close. I got better.”

           The bluenette backed away from her father; realization slowly hit her.

“It’s been months,” Marinette ran a hand through her hair. “You have any idea what I’ve gone through, what I did! You suck! Ugh, I’m telling Mom!”

Sabine Cheng would show Vandal Savage a thing or two once she found out. She was the one who had to dry her daughter’s tears day after day once the news of Savage’s death broke. The Asian woman was possibly only one infamous Vandal Savage was afraid of.

           The others villains watched, entranced by the argument between father and daughter.

“You gallivanted around as hero,” Vandal reminded. “To get close the Justice League; leaving me to wonder if in my absence I had lost my daughter to the so-called forces of good. It turned out all my worrying was for naught.”

“You could’ve called!” Marinette complained. “Wrote. Something to tell me you were alive. Anything.”

“At the time it was best decision.”

           Marinette glared, “You seriously for even one second I’d team up with the Justice League? Really? Me?” She glared. “I’m NEVER talking to you again!”

“I’ll make it up to you, sweetheart,” Vandal assured the bluenette. “We can kill Superman together.”

“Actually,” Lex interrupted. “I have dips.”

           Vandal shot him a quick glare.

The teen girl crossed her arms, “Give me one reason I shouldn’t destroy everything I have on the Justice League?” She asked. “And before any of you threatened to kill me. I only brought the Superman video as insurance. I die; you will never get your hands of the rest of them. So again,” She hissed at her father. “Give me one reason I should hand over my Intel to the Light?”

“…Father’s day’s coming up?” Vandal offered.

“Dammit!”

           Marinette stumped over to an empty seat, next to Cheshire, and glared petulantly at the inhabitants of the room. She didn’t care that it made her look like a little kid.

           An awkward silence filled the room.

           Luther took the opportunity to finally start the meeting as it was the reason they were all there. It was long. It dragged on. Even with Marinette’s intelligence on the Justice League. Everything felt like a stuffy board meeting. Nowhere near as exciting as Marinette once imagined it would be.

           The meeting took a short break. Food was brought out. A small buffet. Marinette made herself a plate; she grabbed a fancy steak sandwich, some fruit and chips, and a rather large chocolate cupcake because she freaking deserved it. She thought she was done until her plate was grabbed by her father. He didn’t hesitate to put baked Brussel sprouts provided on her plate.

“Oh come on! No one likes Brussel sprouts,” Marinette complained. “Not even you’re that evil.”

“They’re good for you,” Vandal told his daughter. “And you will eat them.”

“You’re seeing this too, right?” Deathstroke, otherwise known as Slade, asked Bane. “It’s not just me.”

As they ate, the villains shared stories about what they’d been up to. Most just complained about the problems they were having with the Justice League; who fought who, who should they consider for Light membership, and anyone getting on their nerves.

“Some assholes decided to send the wannabe Villain current status moron after me,” Marinette cast a dark look around the room; making it clear she knew they sent the assassin. She didn’t get as much as a single sheepish look. “He kept trying to light me of fire. And then he was accidently pushed off the top of a building, twice.”

Ra's al Ghul nodded at the young girl, “I would like to mention that I have an heir not much younger than you. You would get along quite well, I believe.”

           Marinette narrowed her eyes at Leader of the League of shadows, “Are you seriously trying to get me to date your grandson right now?”

           Al Ghul didn’t answer her.

Marinette took the opportunity to excuse herself from having to come back, “I’m going to explore the island.” And then see if she could escape before her dad caught her.

“I always blew up your boat,” Vandal raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be taking you home myself.”

“You suck!”

“Love you too, sweetpea.”

           Marinette marched out of the room. She’d swim if she had too.

           It turned out she didn’t have to swim. Just hotwire Deathstroke’s ride.

           She got a video call fifteen minutes after taking off.

“Go for Marinette?” She answered cheerfully.

           Vandal Savage’s face appear on the screen, “You stole Slade’s helicopter.”

“Juuussst like you taught me.” Marinette smirked.

[multific]

Wife

General Armitage Hux x Reader

Summary: Kylo Ren and General Hux didn’t like each other. But when Kylo learned something about the General, he didn’t waste much time investigating it.

 Every person who counted in the First Order was invited to a secret planet for a very important meeting.

The Supreme Leader found it to be very important for everyone to meet and to speak on the matter of completely destroying the Republic, since it seemed like that individually all have failed.

So, every commander and general of all the ships were there to attend.

As Snoke’s apprentice, Kylo Ren, and General Hux was put as the two most important people, right after Snoke himself, they had to make sure that everyone who arrived was welcomed.

Kylo was bored and frustrated out of his mind. Hux was just as bored, but he didn’t groan every moment a ship landed. Nevertheless, Kylo sure did. So when the next ship and its occupants arrived, he was all ready for the hundredth welcoming.

“Commander Glung, and General Hvujk. Welcome to Troitih.”

“General Hux. It’s been years since we met, nice to see a familiar face.” explained the commander ignoring Kylo Ren’s welcome.

“The pleasure is mine Commander Glung.”

“How’s your wife lately?” asked the commander. This got Kylo’s attention. He didn’t know Hux was married.

“She’s doing just fine. Thank you.”

“Well, since she is a general like yourself, I assume she will be here too.” said Glung as he walked away.

“You have a wife?” asked Kylo, his helmet deforming his voice.

“I do. The Supreme Leader arranged the marriage about ten years ago.”

“Oh.” of course it was an arranged marriage. “And why isn’t she on the same ship as you?”

“Supreme Leader decided to have her move three years after we got married. She is a commander now. Commander of the ship, Black Swan. There she is.” Hux said pointing at a fully black ship.

Kylo watched a half-droid creature getting off, soon after the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. She was in a very elegant dress, high heels and a long black cape followed her, the only jewellery she wore was a band ring. Kylo watched every move of the woman, he closely examined her face. In his opinion, she was too beautiful to be Hux’s wife. But he came to the conclusion that you must hate your husband.

But oh how wrong he was. Because he saw your eyes lit up with joy when you saw Hux, your lips formed a smile which he envied from the ginger general.

“Commander Hux and General Grieven. Welcome to Troitih.” said Hux after a few seconds of silence from Kylo. The man seemed to be frozen.

“Hello Armi, it’s nice to see you.”

“The pleasure is mine, Y/N.” with that, both you and your general walked away. You didn’t even look at Kylo.

A few hours have passed. All guests have arrived and Kylo was in his room, still shocked from the news he learned earlier that day.

He wanted so bad to find out who you really were. Then he realized that he should ask the only commander who was friendly with Hux besides you, Commander Glung.

It took Kylo two minutes to find him, and the commander was already tipsy when he found him in the common area. Perfect for Kylo’s plan.

Two more drinks later, the commander was speaking freely.

“You seem to know Hux.”

“Yes. The ginger and I were mere kids when we got into this, we grew up on Arkanis. I mean he is quite distinctive with his red hair, you cannot miss him. Then when he got 23, he was forced to marry, Y/N.”

“She grew up with you too?”

“Oh no. Snoke got her from somewhere. Some said he bought her, some said he rescued her. But that’s just gossip. I think he either kidnapped her or something similar. She hates Snoke. She made attempts to kill him even.”

“But why not kill her?”

“Snoke needs her. Apparently, she is force sensitive. And a really strong one at that. A maid once said she saw Y/N stop Snoke’s lightnings. But she wasn’t in full awareness of her powers at that point. So he needed something or someone to keep her under control.”

“Hux? Really? He’s weak.”

“He might be, but it was said that he needed to marry Y/N so she will stop disobeying. Snoke’s plan was to make her fall in love. And after that happened, Snoke had her in a corner.”

Kylo didn’t understand that and the much drunker man answered to his confusion.

“Since she’s in love with Hux, she doesn’t want him to get harmed. So, she’ll do as she’s told if she doesn’t want her husband to get hurt. And it clearly works since she hadn’t been doing any of her shenanigans ever since.”

“Oh.”

Now it was all clear to Kylo. Snoke must have wanted you to be his apprentice but you disobeyed. Even the fact that you were a force user wasn’t really a shock to Kylo he sensed something the moment you got off your ship and why else would the Supreme Leader need you?

In the meantime, you were in your assigned room, waiting for Armitage to arrive. You told him that you needed to see him due to an urgent matter.

And soon, your lover arrived.

“Why did you call for me?” he asked, with his emotionless face.

“I just wanted to see you.” you said as you went to hug him. He hugged back. “I haven’t seen you in a long while, and those hologram calls don’t count.”

“I missed you too.” he finally admitted as he pulled you closer. His voice was so quiet, you barely heard him.

You pulled back from the hug but didn’t waste time and immediately started a make out session with him.

You two were like heated dogs. You shredded the clothes off of him, and he did the same.

You missed him so much, you missed being touched by him, kissed by him and you missed him making love to you.

So, he spent the whole evening with you. But you didn’t sleep much.

Armitage got up first when morning arrived. Collecting his clothes and getting ready for the meetings.

“Darling, you should wake up, the meetings soon start.” he said but you only groaned, turned around and went right back to sleep.

While Armitage got ready he noticed his own clothes in your room. The two of you were given separate ones, but he figured you made them to be moved.

He went along with his day.

Soon arrived to the meeting room, which was rather huge to fit all the attendees in. Armitage saw Kylo Ren walking in.

“General. How was your night with your wife?”

“None of your business.” was all the General’s answer.

Soon the first meeting began. But you were late. The Supreme Leader was in the middle of his big speech about plans when you barged in. Looking flawless, you obviously didn’t care as you sat down. There was awkward silence. Everyone expected Snoke to get angry and punish you, but after a few more minutes passed, he just continued.

Everyone was shocked but no one mentioned it.

The day went on and the meeting came to a break. During the break you and your husband chatted a little while the others either sat in silence or also talked. Kylo seemed to be a very popular but only because you sent everyone away or completely ignored them.

It was also obvious that your General wasn’t a social person. He was only sitting there beside you looking out of his head.

In the meantime you were making plans with your husband. Trying to convince him into taking a day off to visit you or to meet on a planet.

Armitage excused himself and left you at the table. You continued drinking your water while waiting for your husband to arrive back.

While you were waiting for him, you watched as Kylo Ren took the seat right in front of you. You knew that he had the force like you, but you also knew that he was much weaker than you. And you didn’t like speaking to weak people. You felt his intent to talk with you, but you refused. You didn’t like him, you saw him as a danger to your husband and you hated that. You wanted Armitage to be safe at all costs.

Kylo Ren watched as you refused his offer and continued to sit there with a stoic expression. You only smiled when Hux arrived back.

Kylo thought of ways to use that against you, and wondered why others didn’t. But he soon realized.

A man came out of nowhere. You were about to convince Armitage about the little get away that you have planned when the unknown man started talking.

Armitage knew who the man was, at least his name. The man wanted a higher position and talked to Hux to arrange it for him. From what you heard he wanted to work on the First Order’s biggest and strongest ship or the Finalizer. And when Armitage rejected him, he flipped out. Started yelling, calling him names. Everyone was looking at the scene.

Suddenly the man stopped and started chocking. His head became red. The man suffered for a few seconds before Armitage spoke up.

“That’s enough.” he said it with such a calm and collected voice. The man stopped chocking and the droids took him away.

What Kylo found interesting is that you didn’t even move a finger. You didn’t even look at the man, yet still managed to almost kill him.

The meetings went on for the whole week. You loved that you got to spend time with Armitage. The week was too short for you two, but you managed to enjoy being around your husband. Even if you didn’t remember any of Snoke’s speeches or anything he said.

You remember when you went on a long walk in the middle of the evening. Kissed under that beautiful glowing tree. Slow danced next to the small lake and made love every single night.

You couldn’t wait until the next time you will see Armitage.

And just as you arrived, when you were about to leave, your husband and Kylo Ren were there to say goodbye to everyone.

“Commander Hux, and General Grieven, thank you very much for coming. Have a safe flight.” But you didn’t care about Kylo Ren as you pulled Armitage close one last time to leave a kiss on his lips.

“I will be waiting for you.” you said to him as you pulled away and headed back onto your ship.

Armitage could see even with Kylo’s helmet on that he wanted to make a comment, so instead he just left the scene and went back to his room to pack all of his stuff.

While he was in there, all he could think about was you. You were the first person who cared for him. Even if you were forced to marry him, you never blamed him for it. Instead you did the opposite and fell in love with the man.

Armitage couldn’t thank you enough. He fell in love with you shortly after. Your kindness, smile and power amazed him. How can someone be so gorgeous while chocking someone to death at the same time?

This week was something Armitage really cherished and will remember forever.

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