#anyway this is just. stream of consciousness

[goodlucktai]

How would Draxum react to Gio being alive and present in the Good Timeline? Does he even remember there being another baby turtle back when the explosion happened during the turtles mutation?

Also! I hope your day has been great!

this also became a happy birthday gio fic <3

x

Draxum sips coffee from a mug that says You Float My Goat and observes the chaos unfolding before him like a land surveyor. 

The turtle lair has become something of a second home to Baron Draxum over the last couple of years. A reluctant, grudging second home—let him make that very clear. He was adopted despite his best efforts, digging in his heels and leaving claw marks behind as he was dragged along by the current. 

Likening the Hamatos to a tidal wave is putting it kindly. They are a catastrophic weather event just waiting to happen. But there was only so long a person could swim against the tide before they either drowned or accepted the new direction their life was going. Draxum half-drowned half a dozen times on the way here. 

He’s fairly certain that no one believes him when he complains about biweekly family dinner. He doesn’t even believe himself half the time. 

It’s hard to believe when he has taken to lingering, well past an acceptable time to make a beleaguered escape—like earlier, when the dessert and coffee came out, and no one asked if he was staying longer, they just poured him a cup. 

The flourless chocolate cake was rich without being overly sweet. Which was probably why one of the servings received a healthy scoop of whipped cream to top off the ganache, and why Giorgio endured a round of good-natured teasing from all sides with a straight face when that plate was set in front of him. 

Draxum is watching him now, the newest addition to their number. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of the den with his hands out in front of him, while Leonardo uses his hands to rewind multiple skeins of yarn into balls. He has said all of six words all evening, but it’s far from a standoffish silence, and it’s absorbed easily into his brother’s general mayhem. He’s watching Leo work like nothing more interesting exists on the planet, at least until Michelangelo plows into the room with a messy armful of his own art project for the purpose of parallel play. 

The tiny spotted turtle that Draxum had not had large hopes for. It was significantly weaker than its counterparts, and prone to sickness. He had even, he recalls with an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach he refuses to acknowledge or name, considered discarding it altogether once or twice. 

He saw the portal open as the lab folded in, he saw the spotted turtle vanish in a sharp cut of light. It was two times a lost cause. Draxum will never admit how many hours he spent searching the wreckage of his life’s work for the hopeless creature anyway.

And here the lost cause sits, broad-shouldered and solid, as if nothing has the power to move him. 

“Ugh,” Leo says abruptly, interrupting Mikey’s stream-of-consciousness chatter to project his voice across the room where the rest of his siblings are sitting around the island, “April, you are such an Aries.”

He almost certainly hasn’t been listening to April’s story, he had just decided she had gone uninterrupted for too long—the prerogative of obnoxious younger siblings, Draxum has learned against his will. Leo is facing the wrong way for anyone in the kitchen to see the little smile on his face that only comes from successfully stirring the pot. It’s a secret just for Mikey and Gio and—incidentally—Draxum.  

Their human sister whirls around to gape at the back of Leonardo’s head as if stunned by the audacity. 

“Coming from a GEMINI of all people,” she starts hotly. 

“Woah now,” Raphael says, lifting his hands, but it’s too late. Donatello has already lowered his phone. 

“What is that supposed to mean,” he says in a tone that suggests there is no right answer. 

“I’m a Pisces,” Mikey pipes up cheerfully, laying on his stomach and kicking his feet and getting glue seemingly everywhere but on the collage he’s making. He lifts a messy hand and pokes a magazine cutting to Gio’s cheek; the residual glue on his finger is enough to make it stick, a crooked pink star damp enough that lettering from the opposite side bleeds faintly through. Mikey giggles, and the sound of it settles neatly in Draxum’s heart like a bird returning to its nest. It must feel similar to Gio, because his face softens the same way. 

“I’m a Cancer,” he replies gamely. 

“What,” Leo says, not a question. “No you’re not,” he goes on, “because if you were a Cancer, your birthday would be, like, next week. We’re not prepared for that.”

Gio blinks at him, face giving nothing away. 

Leo says, “Gigi. Tell me it’s not next week.”

“It’s fine,” Gio says. “It’s not until the fourteenth.”

Mikey lets out a hysterical bark of laughter, quickly smothered by a glitter-covered hand. Because everyone in this family could sniff out a trainwreck three days before it happened, drawn to trouble like bees to honey, the other three have tuned into the conversation occurring on the living room floor, and it’s Raphael who says, “That’s today.”

Gio frowns, unconvinced. “Is it Monday already?”

“Okay, people, focus up,” April says, clapping her hands together, “we have less than four hours to pull off the best last-minute twentieth birthday party this town has ever seen. I need everyone to bring their A-game.”

“Oh, oh, we gotta go to that party store on 8th,” Mikey says, scrambling to free himself of paste and stickers and newspaper pulp. “They’re open till ten and they have piñatas!”

“Loving the energy, Michael,” Donnie says, “but if you touch me before washing your hands I will have no choice but to kill you and then myself and Georgathan’s party will be off to a rough start.”

“Wait, someone has to get Pops,” Raph realizes, as he picks Donnie up by the shell in one hand and Mikey in the other and holds them an arms length apart, “if he misses out on choosing Gio’s birthday cake he’ll never let it go.”

Leo uses Gio to push himself upright, leaning his weight on Gio’s shoulder while he maneuvers his forearm crutch into place. Gio supports him by sitting still and steady, unable to do much else with his hands still wound in blanket yarn. 

The slider points at him, eyes narrow and forbidding, mouth a firm line. 

“I’m forgiving you this once because you genuinely have no concept of time and one of us should have asked before now and added it to the family calendar. But next super important date you keep a secret, we’re fighting.”

“Noted,” Gio says solemnly. 

While his siblings hold court in the kitchen, he patiently works the yarn off his hands and twists it into a hank, setting it neatly out of the way on the pile of finished yarn balls. There’s no salvaging whatever Mikey was dreaming up, but Gio puts lids back on paints and twists glue caps closed. 

Of all the turtles, this one comes the closest to the vision Draxum had of them—soldiers. Powerful and resilient and obedient, doing what needed to be done, never talking out of turn. The runt of the litter, the one he had given up on for the most part, turned success story. 

It makes him unreasonably unhappy. 

“You’re not seriously going to eat more cake, are you?” Draxum says for lack of better thing to say. He doesn’t usually have to fill silence in the turtle lair. Silence is a critically endangered species here. “You had a piece at dinner, and half of Blue’s.”

“Birthday cake is different,” Giorgio says plainly, which means yes, he absolutely will. 

He isn’t wearing his gloves. There are pale scars on his palms, long-healed, that are too neat to be anything but intentional. The marks on his arms and shoulders are easier to look at because they, at least, are randomly-placed and incidental. All of them are little miseries no child should have had to live through. 

Least of all, Draxum thinks, a child of mine. 

“You know, your brothers have two birthdays each.” He doesn’t realize he’s going to say it until he does. “The birthdays that Splinter chose for them arbitrarily when they were infants, and the accurate dates I had recorded prior to their mutation. They have unilaterally decided their arbitrary birthdays are their real ones, and treat the dates I gave them as freebies. An excuse to make me buy them food and presents more than anything.”

Yoshi cackled when he got wind of the whole thing and encourages the behavior with glee. He calls it seventeen years of back due child support. 

Draxum does not say that he feels some small warmth when turtles show up at his door, uninvited and inconvenient but never unwanted. He wouldn’t hate to see Giorgio adopt the obnoxious tradition, but he doesn’t say that either.

What he does say is, “I can tell you when your second birthday is. I haven’t forgotten.” 

Gio stops what he’s doing, watching Draxum with dark unblinking eyes, totally implacable. 

What would he have been like, if he had been allowed to grow up with the others? Draxum knew him only briefly after his mutation, but he knew Giorgio to be a fussy baby, only ever happy when he could shelter next to his siblings. He cried easily, wanted to be held always. How much of that child would he have outgrown naturally? How much of that child never grew up at all?

What feels like an hour later, Gio says, “If you want.” As if it truly doesn’t matter how many birthdays he’s granted, even if that number is zero.

Give them an inch, and the Hamatos will flood your life with nonsense. You will never know another moment’s peace. You will forget, altogether, what it felt like to spend your days alone. No one is immune to or exempt from their nature. 

And Draxum, for better or worse, has been adopted. 

“Enough,” he says, setting his mug aside and standing at full height. The teenagers all stare at him owlishly. Draxum frowns at them for a moment longer, to be sure he has their attention, and says, “If we are doing this, we are doing it right. No one does fireworks like fire yokai. Michelangelo, April, you’re with me. We’ll pick up the Caseys on our way.”

“Explosion brigade,” April whoops, and bumps fists with Mikey, who is still very much in air jail.

“I think I should be in the explosion brigade?” Donnie interjects. 

“We want NYC to still be standing tomorrow, Tello,” Leo says patiently. He’s studying Draxum with a furrowed brow, gold eyes darting between him and Gio as if he’s looking for evidence of the conversation they had out of his earshot. “All good?” he asks his eldest brother, protective streak a mile wide to those who know what to look for. 

“All good,” Gio says, smiling at him. “You know, Casey Junior is a Leo,” he adds, entirely for the round of gasps he receives. 

“Isn’t that July too?” Mikey shrieks. 

“That little sneak!” April says, whipping her phone out to send a strongly-worded text. “He was sitting right there when we were planning the twins’ party and he said nothing. Gonna try to pull a fast one on me? I don’t think so, pal.”

“Nice try, throwing Junior under the bus, but we’re still getting you a piñata and a birthday cake and all the balloons these bozos can fit in the tank,” Raphael rumbles, nudging Gio’s shoulder with his elbow. 

Gio exhales, his familiar ghost of a laugh, that blink-and-you-miss-it good humor. It’s barely anything, but it always makes his little siblings glow with happiness to hear, like they’ve won something worth bragging about. 

For a brief moment, Gio looks back at Draxum. 

“I’d never turn down free cake,” he says. 

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Well. I did it. I finally read Clementine Book Three.

My in-depth review won't be out for a while since it takes a lot of time to write something like that, but for now, I'll leave some initial, stream of consciousness thoughts I have after my first read through.

Honestly? Not terrible. Not good, but not the worst book in the trilogy.

Where do I even begin? Book Three has such an odd feeling to it compared to the previous two. Also, I needed google translate to read a lot of the dialogue in this, though I don't think doing so enhanced the story or anything.

So... my very plausible prediction that Amos would be revealed as a twist villain.... did not come true. 😭 I know, I know, I was so sure that he was going to come back... and he does, but in flashbacks.

Olivia has the baby, but unfortunately, she does not name the baby Amos Jr. therefore we get no AJ 2.0... yet another disappointment for me.

However, the antagonist in this? The Gardener, Maria? Pretty good! A highlight of the book! At least, by clem comics standards.

She's definitely a step up from Georgia and Morro, like... she's such a manipulative asshole. She and her group of girls act as the protection of this place, they patrol for walkers, they deal with people who don't have the community's best interest at heart, everyone's scared of them, etc.

And the reason Maria is called the Gardener is because of her garden... of walkers. She has walkers buried up to their necks, but that's not all! She forces these girls to plant the walkers in the garden! She gives them some rope and they gotta wrestle these dangerous walkers into these holes and bury them! Why? To prove themselves to her. They have to do often! And they do it because Maria's sunk her claws so deep into them! She isolates them! She recruited them with promises of making the pain go away: "I'll take everything you're feeling, all your grief... and I'll kill it."

One new character we meet, Merkv, has a prosthetic foot.... you wanna guess where she lost her foot? She lost it planting a walker, and yet, she remains loyal to Maria, as do the other girls!

Hell, remember Shu-Fen from Book Two? She also joins their group, and she gets bit when she's planting a walker! They have to cut off her hand!

Like, Maria definitely preys on Clementine when she's at her lowest point after Ricca dies.

Oh yeah, by the way, Ricca dies... at the end of CHAPTER TWO. Put a pin in that.

So Clementine is going through a lot of shit with Olivia having her baby and having a stressful recovery, and watching Ricca die. She's very susceptible to Maria and the others girls beckoning her to join their little group...I mean, Clementine misses Ricca's funeral so that she can plant a walker! And naturally, it bites in her the ass when Maria inevitably turns on her, and has Clementine buried in the garden.

Maria's creepy, she's batshit crazy, she rips the head off a walker with her bare hands like it's nothing. And at this point? Screw it, I'm into that.

Anyway, so... yeah, about Ricca dying.

What the hell was that? Really, Ricca? Just gonna fall over like that? from a headache? and die? Really? That's how we're killing off a prominent character AND love interest to the protagonist?

For those who haven't read it yet, I shit you not... Ricca gets a headache as she and Clementine are walking down the street, then she passes out... and dies. No reason given. Like, the entire point is that it's pointless. No one knows what caused it. It just happens.

I don't think there was any foreshadowing? And if there was, I didn't pick up on it, or I don't remember it from the previous books. I'm planning on rereading the trilogy to write my review for this book, and you best believe that I will be on the hunt for anything that ties into this because what the hell?

I just... was this planned? Or did Tillie decide to kill Ricca off on a whim? I must solve this.

With Ricca dead, it makes talking about the clemricca romance different now. I have my issues with it, and the book pushing "this is a loss unlike any other that Clementine's faced" is very....... hnngggg. Maybe it's unlike anything COMIC Clementine has faced, but game Clementine's faced plenty of loss like it.

But does this book help clemricca, even though Ricca dies?

No. I still don't ship it, nor do I think it's a good romance. I'll dive deeper into that when I write my review.

Let's see... Clementine herself is fine. She's still a downgrade from game Clementine, but she's an upgrade from the previous books so... that's something? It's what I expected, y'know?

Olivia's probably my favorite character, and I'm so glad she survived. I'm so glad we didn't get the story everyone predicted where Olivia would die so that Clem and Ricca could raise the baby together.

As for the other characters, Shu-Fen is still pretty good. I liked her in the previous book. The other girls we meet from Maria's gang are fine. Everyone else is just kinda there? and they're all fine?

The ending is... okay? I guess? It just ends with Clementine visiting Ricca's grave for the first time, and then she comes home to her new found family gathering for dinner. She's holding the baby, Romi, and says, "Alright, alright, I hear you. Let's go inside. Everyone's waiting." and it's supposed to be bittersweet and touching, but.... ehhhh.

It's no TFS ending, I can tell y'all that.

This book is better than I expected it to be, but it's still not good. I'm just glad that the trilogy is done, and Tillie Walden can move on to better projects. I wish nothing but the best for her after having to deal with the morons in the twdg fandom that won't leave her posts alone.

As usual, I want to end this with the not so gentle reminder to leave Tillie Walden alone. Don't be one of those morons. I don't care how important Clementine or TWDG is to you; Clementine is not real. She's a fictional character and her feelings are not hurt by these comics. Because she's fictional. Tillie Walden, on the other hand, is a real person. Don't be a dick. Complain about the comics all you want, that's fine. Leave Tillie out of it.

[actual-changeling]

i could, y'know.

i could go 'home' and i could lie to my mother and she would lie to me, and we'd play our roles like we always have. we do not talk about our childhoods. we do not talk about him. we do not talk about anything that matters. she doesn't ask me questions about my life anyway, she doesn't care.

i could go and perform and then go back to my flat and nothing will have changed. i really could, if i had to i'd be able to do it flawlessly.

but i don't want to. i won't be like her. i won't just sit in silence, not anymore. she won't understand a single thing i would have to tell her, and in the off chance she does, she'd immediately start guilt tripping me and oh, i am your poor poor mother, you had a great childhood you were always happy.

i know her routines, i had to.

i don't want to because i am so, so tired of it all, and opening pandora's box would only make things worse, but at least something would CHANGE.

[rocketbirdie]

it looks and sounds just like you, but,

[zolo-san]

Some thoughts on Law and his image of himself

Law clearly has a lot of conflict around being seen as "good" or a "good guy" I think he want to be a good person, and he actually is, but he doesn't see himself that way, so he has a hard time accepting when people try to suggest that he is good And I think that there are several reasons for that

Law and Survivors Guilt

Law clearly holds a lot of survivors guilt throughout his life and I think it takes a big toll on him When he was younger, not only did he out live his parents and his whole town, but he "failed" to save his little sister as well We see him go out of his way to try to save her specifically, but in the end, he's still not there when she needed him the most The loss of his family also lead him down a path of which he chose to be angry and violent (ooooo we love the stages of grief lol) and take out his feelings of guilt and resentment on others despite being raised by a family of caretakers As a doctor, his father put everything he had into trying to help the people in their town and I think that Law would have looked up to him and wanted to be just like him, but after everything that happened something really broke in him I can't help but think he would feel bad and like he failed again after he moved past the angry violent reaction - just like I think he later felt quite a bit of guilt over stabbing Corazon after the fact Corazon tried everything to save Law and gave everything to him and I think that that too would add to Law's feeling of guilt, especially because it took him so long to realize that he had been too guarded and untrusting to see that Corazon was genuinely trying to help him Once he was able to accept and recognize that, however, Corazon ended up dying shortly after Obviously, Law has a lot of guilt, specifically survivors guilt, surrounding Cora's death Corazon not only risked his life for Law to live, but Law was unable to use his fruit to save him because he didn't know how, then when Law did try to get Corazon help (against Cora's wishes) he managed to "get help" from the wrong person and put Corazon in more danger, leading to his death

Ironically this is not dissimilar to the way his sister died Law had told her to hide while he get help and not only did he not get help, but when he returned, his sister had been killed

I also think that Corazon's confession to Law about being in the navy as he was about to die adds to Law's guilt because he already knew that to be true and I think it hurt him to realize that someone who cared so deeply for him and was literally dying for him still felt bad and was worried he's disappointed him

There's also something to be said about Corazon dying with a smile and the fact that Luffy is also someone who always has a smile on his face, especially when it comes to helping others I think this very much molds the image that Law has of who a "good person" is

Law lived because he knew it was what Corazon wanted for him It was all Law could do for him (I do wonder if there's also some guilt he feels about dedicating the life Cora gave to him to revenge)

Law and Selfishness

I think Law truly sees himself as selfish for many reasons, one being that he was so driven by revenge, and I think he has a tendency to overlook the good that he does because of this

I think he even sees him saving Luffy at Marineford as a selfish act

I think that seeing the efforts that Luffy was going through to save his brother made Law feel that he had failed his sister all over again He would feel that he never tried that hard And I think that it's partly for that reason that he felt compelled to save Luffy

I can't help but feel that Law, without realizing it, was trying to absolve himself of his own "sin" of not saving his sister by saving Luffy I also think the idea of Luffy, after all his efforts failing to save Ace, really broke Law's heart and he couldn't stand the idea of Luffy having to go through something like he did, especially after all the effort Luffy put in

But because of Law's view of himself and his actions as being selfish, I think that Jinbe thanking him for helping Luffy was already too much for him He didn't see his act as selfless or "kind" he saw it as him acting in self interest and I think that's why he tries to present it as such He claims that he essentially saved Luffy because he thought it would be a shame and a waist to let someone with Luffy's potential die then and there, but I think there's so much more to it and I think a lot of it has to do with Law viewing Luffy as an actual good person and something that he's not Law leaves before Luffy can thank him because he doesn't think he deserves thanks

The next we hear of what Law did during the two years that Luffy was training, we hear about his collecting pirates' hearts and becoming a warlord He does this all as part of a plan to exact revenge on Doflamingo and as part of this plan, he leaves his crew behind with no explanation and fully expecting to never see them again (tho he doesn't tell them this) This brings up an interesting fact that even though Law claims he never intended to fight Doflamingo, he also never expected to live through it

I think that Law feels incredibly guilty about leaving his crew behind because he does really care about his crew and I think that lying to them knowing full well he's going on a suicide mission hurts him a lot But I think that despite his choice being fueled by a want to protect his crew, he would feel that it's a selfish choice When he's on Punk Hazard, Law is fully in the throws of pretending to be this other person that he isn't at heart He's trying to be that cold, selfish person he sees himself as, but I don't think he can really do it So I think for this all these reasons, Luffy's mater-of-fact declaration that he is "a good guy" would make Law incredibly uncomfortable I think he sees Luffy as the type of caring, honest, and straight forward person he wishes he could be When he thinks of a good person, he thinks of someone like Luffy - someone like Corazon - who doesn't hesitate to help others at his own risk and would die for his crew and the people he cares about

Luffy obviously shares a lot of traits with Corazon and I don't think that's lost on Law So having someone like that imply that Law is the same as him is something Law can't handle

In addition to this, I think that Luffy's willingness to fight for Law at every turn and his inherent trust in him only adds to Law's feeling of inadequacy next to Luffy And I think that his survivors guilt and the fact that he feels that he's nowhere near as good a person as Luffy are all contributing factors as to why he decides that if Luffy dies fighting for him then he has to die to

I genuinely think that the idea of surviving someone so good like Luffy (and Corazon) again is something that Law cannot handle and cannot allow to happen This is also why I can't help but think that we will see a point where Law attempts to kill himself via his fruit to save Luffy I think Law would rather he die knowing that he insured Luffy's survival than to outlive someone so kind and good Though I think there would be a lot of guilt and conflict here as well I think that whenever we get to this point, it will be abundantly clear to Law that choosing to kill himself for Luffy would also be a selfish act that Luffy would never forgive him for How could he curse Luffy to eternal life knowing that Law died to give it to him?

But regardless of Law's own self image, we see repeated examples of him actually being a good and kind person He has a strong sense of right and wrong and cannot abide injustice, especially the mistreatment of innocent, good people And even if he didn't go about things the best way when he was a kid, this feeling of right and wrong and a need for justice (not in terms of the law but more in terms of karmic, moral justice) was something that was instilled in him at a young age He was taught by his family to care for others in need and to put others before himself And he tries desperately to do so when his town is being erraticated He reaches out to Luffy at Saboady when he sees, in Luffy, the same moral values and the same demand for moral justice and fair treatment of others (something I think is very important to Law given the treatment he faces for his condition as a child) Law then saves Luffy out of compassion for him, whether he's willing to admit that out loud or not He goes out of his way to try to make sure his crew is safe when he goes on his suicide mission to take down Doflamingo and even tries to assure them that everything is fine to ease their concerns When in Dressrosa while he was obviously focused very much on Doflamingo, his plan also helped benefit so many other people in Dressrosa and the world who were suffering because of Doflamingo He also refuses, at every second, to leave Luffy's side and nearly kills himself several times in the process (not to mention taking a beaten and battered Luffy into his care for the second time at his own risk) When they get to Zou, he leaves to get to his crew fairly quickly because he want's to be sure their okay and he accepts their love and happiness at his return with no argument And when Luffy asks him about altering the plan so he can go get Sanji, Law's first thought is of the people of Zou

I think this is partly because he can't stand the injustice of what happened to them, but also because he knows that insuring their saftey is something very important to Bepo since it is his home country and his people (even if he didn't really grow up there)

The people of Zou thank Law for this and he immediately shrugs it off because he doesn't see himself as someone worth thanking (especailly not after he heard of all the good the strawhats did - how could he compare?) Despite it all tho, Law makes room for Luffy - he accommodates Luffy's request because he knows how important it is to him to get Sanji back And again, he does this all selflessly and at his own risk, tho he doesn't see it as such, Law changes his plan to help Luffy and he does so without really any hesitation

There are other examples of Law going out of his way to do good and be a good person despite the image he has of himself (I'm just currently only just finishing up Zou so I haven't gotten there yet, I just know things~)

But in short, Law clearly doesn't see himself as "good," tho he desperately want to be a good person, but regardless of how Law views himself, he is clearly "a good guy"

[basket-of-radiants]

[dramatic-dolphin]

elwing, elwing, elwing

you never had the luxury of safety. you are three years old when your father tells you to run. he puts the jewel around your neck because your hands are too small to hold it, and you try to cover its light so no one can see. your legs are too short; you get tired too soon. but you keep running.

your parents are dead. your kingdom is gone. your brothers are dead – they were just a head taller than you, they liked climbing trees and calling each other crown prince, and they are dead. you hold the hopes of a scattered people in your hand (around your throat, it shines so bright) as destruction draws ever closer. the land beyond your borders chokes in ash and drowns in poison. it will reach you too.

you don't have the luxury of safety. you don't even have the hope of the lands undying that await you beyond death. your father is dead, your brothers are dead, where are their spirits? are they lost to you? will you be lost to them forever? you don't know when you'll die. you don't know where you'll go when you do. (there is only one person alive who could ever hope to understand, and he is within reach. perhaps it was inevitable.)

you are just over thirty, barely grown, when death comes again, clad in red. it holds you at swordpoint and you look into the eyes of your mother's killer. your boys are the same age as your brothers once were, and there was no mercy to be found for them. how could you ever think there was hope? how could you think anything but death would await you? it was always there, dogging your steps from the very start. you throw yourself into the sea, wishing for the jagged cliffs–

and

you

soar.

your husband is here, the sea murmurs. your sons live. your mother waits for you. your prayers have been heard. the world will be set right.

you've never known safety. but if you choose the life of immortals, in the hallowed and peaceful lands beyond the sea, you'll have an eternity to learn it.

[myokk]

✨🌚MY HEADCANONS ABOUT THE BLACK FAMILY🌝✨

Being this close to her mother, Eloise was struck by their physical similarities. As a young girl, it had been impossible to see, but now that she was a young woman they were striking. She felt as if she were looking in a mirror, but a twisted mirror: everything that was warm about her appearance was turned cold in her mother: hazel eyes to a frigid silver, unruly brown hair to straight black; her mother's skin was somehow even more pale than Eloise's, as if she were cut from marble. Everything soft about Eloise was made sharp in her mother, and Eloise wondered what had made her this way. She was terrified that in twenty years' time, the two of them would be indistinguishable. Had Elladora Black always been like this? Eloise couldn't imagine any time when her mother might have smiled, or even huffed in quiet laughter. No moments where she had been caught staring at her husband with love and warmth in her eyes. Eloise had only ever known her as an ambitious woman who was always striving towards some goal, even if it was known only to her. Someone couldn't spend their whole life like that, could they?

or: how I imagine Elladora Black's life and how she became the evil, complicated woman that I love so much​🥺​ ft Phineas Nigellus Black, Sirius, Apollonia, pureblood society headcanons I just make up, tragic romance, complicated female characters and SO MUCH MORE🫶

this post is dedicated to the sweet amazing @elliecutte my favorite Elladora lover/sweetest person EVER & the only person I dedicate posts to🤭

This might be kind of disjointed, because I don't have names or anything for the people in her life really. It's just what is kind of in the back of my mind as I write Elladora, but very much going off of vibes more than anything.

What's canon about her is that she's the third child in her family (Sirius and Phineas are her older brothers), and has a younger sister, Iola. (Idk who exactly Apollonia is in relation to their family…maybe a great aunt?) (Iola was burned off the family tree for running away with a muggle, which was always a source of deep shame for the family)

Sirius dies when Elladora is three (he was eight years old). He was the oldest son, and in these types of families, the oldest son inherits EVERYTHING - the land, the house, the heirlooms…basically the whole estate. Subsequent sons would go into some sort of profession (church, army, law etc - my wizarding headcanon is a high position in the Ministry or the Wizengamot or something) and might inherit a smaller estate that's in the family if they're lucky. My guess is that Sirius was prepared from a young age to be the heir, and his death was a freak accident. Maybe he drowned when the family was vacationing by the sea, maybe he caught Dragonpox…

BUT his death was the factor that really drove their mother over the edge and started her own personal journey into the Black Family Madness (because, as we know, there's ALWAYS an inciting incident for the poor cursed women of this family and they will ALWAYS get it) (yes it's a curse, which will be explained LATER​​🤭​). She had been SO proud of giving birth to four healthy, beautiful children, and Sirius was her favorite so it was devastating to lose him. After his death, she grew quite distant from her other children, believing that they were also all going to die and abandon her and she couldn't bear the thought of getting close to and losing another.

Phineas grew insolent and hated the fact that he was going to be the heir - I think his temperament is better suited towards not having the pressure of carrying on the family legacy, anyways. Sirius’s death really affected him as they were quite close (similar to Eloise and Leo’s relationship BEFORE she was banished). His grief manifested in general apathy.

Elladora, on the other hand, CRAVED her mother’s attention and tried doing everything she could to get it. Her magic manifested quite young, and it was apparent to everyone that she had the potential to be quite powerful. No matter how much she tried, however, her mother would just wake up and sit in a fugue state, ignoring everything until the day was over and she would rise and go to bed.

Elladora was raised in the typical fashion of that time: private tutors in magical theory, dancing, how to navigate pureblood society, and learning how to manage a household of her own in the future. She disdained muggle culture and muggleborns, not realizing in her ignorance how much her own society was influenced by muggle customs, and thought of herself as above others in the wizarding world as well due to her family’s status. She always knew it that when she came of age, she would be married to Oberon Babbit and that was that.

The Babbits were an extremely prominent wizarding family; one of the oldest British wizarding families (most had some connections with France, Germany etc but not the Babbits), and known for being quite reclusive and wealthy. Oberon’s mother died in childbirth, and he was quite sought-after due to the fact he would inherit EVERYTHING. The Blacks considered themselves fortunate for being able to secure that connection through Elladora.

When Elladora got to Hogwarts, she was STILL determined to do everything right. She excelled in all of her classes and thought of herself as unstoppable. In the back of her mind, she knew that her duty would be getting married and starting a family after graduation, but she couldn't help but hope for more - probably due to how well she took to her studies; Transfiguration in particular was a favorite subject. She was hot-headed and fiery and opinionated, never letting anyone tell her what to do, and never had a problem telling people when they were wrong. I want to think she was pretty popular amongst the students - not only because she was always impeccably put-together and wearing the highest-quality robes that money could buy, but because there was just something irresistible about her. She drew people to her; she knew how to navigate all of the subtle interactions between the various students and she always came out on top.

Oberon was a few years older than Elladora, but she didn't interact with him much. Maybe it was a bit of self-denial: he didn't seem so interested in her, and she wanted to live a few more years freely before beginning the rest of her dutiful life. She was very carefree - maybe a bit too carefree - and before she knew it, she found herself head-over-heels in love with a Gryffindor (he has no name bc it's not important). Or - and this is what she tells herself in the future - she thought it was love, but it wasn't😤​

He was everything Oberon wasn't, and that's what attracted her in the first place. He wasn't scared to disagree with her, to rile her up, was loud and outgoing and present to his life like nobody else she knew, and he saw her - not just the façade that she put on for everyone else. Even though Elladora knew it was doomed from the start, that it could never last, she couldn't help her feelings and her seventh year at Hogwarts was a whirlwind of emotions. She lived in the moment as only a young girl can do, enjoying those halcyon days...and yet at moments was paralyzed by panic, knowing that it would all be over soon. She soon found herself not even enjoying any time spent with him in secret, living in her present moments as if they were already memories to jealously guard close to her heart for the rest of her life. She had no one to confide in but him - all of the girls she surrounded herself with were just waiting to pounce at the first sign of weakness she showed - and yet to tell him everything was too painful.

So she ended things abruptly, no explanations. Cutting him out completely was the only option she could bear.

(Elladora never did find out that he had saved up a summer's wages, plus his inheritance money, to buy a delicate engagement ring and two tickets to America)

Her first years after graduation were spent in a flurry of balls and courting Oberon and gossip and weekly appearances in the society section of the Daily Prophet. To all outward appearances, she was having a wonderful time, but she felt hollow inside. Before she knew it, that time was over and she was getting married and then she was pregnant with her first child at only twenty-one and she was alone and then she was giving birth alone and then she was holding her tiny son in her arms and crying for some inexplicable reason.

Oberon hadn't come to even see their new son, Leonard - Elladora chose the name and it had meaning only to herself (and one other person, who saw the news a year later, in New York).

Her life was a series of disappointments.

She never could get any indication from her mother that she existed, she never made any true friends, and the only happy moments in her life were relegated to memories she could never bear to take out and examine ever again. Oberon was [redacted] and if she wasn't so strict with anything she would lose everything she had.

It's quite obvious that she and Eloise were doomed to always be at odds - just another disappointment to add to the list. Of course she would give birth to a useless squib daughter and this - along with everything else - spurred on the beginnings of her own version of the madness. Deep, simmering, volatile anger, a desire for everything to be absolutely perfect and to keep up appearances at any cost. Losing control of herself whenever she's lost control of anything, and deeply regretting the outbursts if she ever were to reflect on them, which she doesn't.

Elladora sees too much of herself in her daughter, especially after Eloise is brought back into the family, and that makes her hate Eloise more. (is it really hate though?) Seeing the same mistakes she made so long ago repeated is unbearable, and in her own way, she believes that she's helping Eloise with every decision she makes, such as Eloise’s rushed engagement to Augustus Malfoy.

But, Eloise will never be able to make herself as hardened as Elladora no matter how much she wishes for it and tries.

I love love love Elladora, she's one of my favorite characters to write, and her scenes with Eloise, and with the Headmaster (her brother), have been some of my favorites to write. There are just SO many layers that go into who she is & all of these little things behind-the-scenes that I think make for very interesting interactions.

I know that this is the Sebastian Sallow fandom & I could do a whole entire post just like this for him and how he grew up, for Solomon, even for Ominis (and I wrote a whole oneshot just for Imelda's history🤭​), but Eloise and her mother have become my favorite women to think about and they are who occupy my mind the most🥺​ I am endlessly grateful that people even like my girl so much & that there is one girl who is as crazy about Elladora as I am🥹​🫶​

And, if any of this is interesting to you, my fic is full of these things. SUPER canon-divergent, it’s been described as a mix of Hereditary and Midsommar and just spooky gothic angst vibes, exploring complicated family dynamics (I’ve ALSO been told I wrote the most realistic description of Sebastian’s relationship with Solomon), Arthurian mythology, LOTS of blood rituals and dark magic and sacrifice and who-even-knows-what and romance🫶🫶🫶

Before It Felt Like A Sin (115775 words) by myok

[madbard]

Thinking about how the Stan twins were both taught from a young age that life is a matter of transactions. How they were valued only for the money they could bring their family, and how this shaped their lives in such different ways.

Ford was the intelligent one, and this made him valuable. He knew what he had to offer. He knew he was important. (He had to be. Experience had shown him that love was conditional. He had to earn it. He had to be enough.) When Bill Cipher approached him, he confirmed everything Ford wanted so desperately to believe about himself. Imagine that sense of excitement, of accomplishment, of pride and power and relief. Imagine having that final, unshakeable source of external validation - that this being that knew everything and could have chosen anyone, chose you. Imagine knowing exactly what you could do to please this being and, with the understanding that love is conditional, knowing that you could fulfill the requirements for that love. Imagine knowing exactly how to ensure you would be loved, not just by that being but by the family you uplifted and the future you created. All you had to do was satisfy your own curiosity… all you had to do was build a portal. Is it any wonder that Ford fell for Bill’s tricks?

Then we have Stan, the failure. If love was transactional, he could never pay the fee. He knew people only helped you if you had something to offer. And he had nothing to offer, so why would anyone ever help him? Why would anyone care? Of course he didn’t fall for Bill. He couldn’t. When Bill promised gifts and power and happiness, how could Stan believe a word he said? In a world without altruism, such promises could never be trusted. There was always a price to be paid - and Stan had never been able to pay it.

And so the end of the world was triggered and then averted, all because one brother thought he could earn the world’s love, while the other knew he would never earn anything good.

A+ parenting, Filbrick. Truly.

[salsedinepicta]

There’s no harm in wanting something beautiful.

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

I'm kind of obsessed with Blackwall's idealized ideas about the Wardens. He was once picked up by a Warden and lulled by the promise of atoning for his crimes and turning his life around, only for that opportunity to slip away when the Warden not only saved him, but sacrificed his own life to do it. This whole experience makes our Blackwall become a Warden in heart, if not in blood, but with his own ideas of what a Grey Warden should be - noble, brave, inspiring, heroic, self-sacrificial. Everything he now wants to embody. He knows well that he's not there, but he wants nothing more than to start from scratch and be that.

In his beliefs, he reminds me a bit of Wynne in Origins who tells the Warden at some point that the Grey Wardens are supposed to be more than killing machines and weapons against the blight.

“There’s more to being a Grey Warden than killing darkspawn and saving the world from the Blight. Ultimately, being a Grey Warden is about serving others, about serving all people, whether elves or dwarves or men. As a Grey Warden, you are a guardian of men. And you guard them because their continued existence is more important than you are.”

However, we know that's not exactly how it works. That's what they want the Wardens to be. The light against darkness. The shield against monsters.

Although it's not entirely wrong, either, I suppose, all things considered. The more darkspawn they obliterate and push back, the more people are protected from them. Of course, sacrificing their lives to fight literal monsters, which means those same monsters don't eat everybody's kids, ultimately is heroic, and it's something that must have been born out of the need to protect the world and its inhabitants (from the Blight). But to have idealized opinions of the Wardens to this degree, you have to ignore all the other shady stuff and the mentality we, as players, also know the Wardens for. The fact that the Wardens are primarily weapons to slay darkspawn, prevent and end Blights, by any means necessary. The last part is important. After all, they are the Grey Wardens, not the White Wardens. They recruit from all walks of life and are famous for taking in criminals. Not to redeem themselves and get a second chance at life, but because they usually have nowhere to go and nothing left to lose. It's not a coincidence that each of the Origins gets chosen by Duncan, not only because he sees them as capable, but also because they are in a situation they can't escape from. Either they join the Wardens, or they're done for.

We know the Wardens from a few games now, but does the public in the setting even know? Does the average person have any idea how far the Wardens are willing to go? Besides grand stories of slaying monsters in the dark and preventing the end of the world? Probably not. The order is very secretive. And it explains a lot. The Wardens end up sounding almost romantic, when being a Warden is anything but. Is it ignorance talking out of these characters? Perhaps.

It once again shows us this aspect of Dragon Age where you can't take everything a character says as a fact, because the setting is full of people who have no idea what they're talking about, but who are absolutely convinced that they do.

And yet, I can't help but also like Wynne's and Blackwall's romantic ideas about what the Wardens are or should be, almost knights in shining armour and all that. They're fairy tales, but they're beautiful fairy tales. And I can't fault the characters for wanting to believe it or even live it. Especially in case of Blackwall, who sees it as a way to make up for the crimes he committed, somewhat. In the end, this might actually be a bigger draw to join the Wardens than, "Got nowhere to go? Come suffer horribly and probably die gruesomely with us!" It all sounds great on paper, though. I can't fault Davrin for trying to find purpose in life by becoming a monster hunter, either.

And maybe a little bit of idealism doesn't hurt. Not only it's good motivation, but in the end, doing things by "any means necessary" doesn't always pay off, either. It led the Wardens into all kinds of trouble, like getting tricked into employing dangerous forms of blood magic and demon summoning, basically into doing their enemy's work for them. In their determination to win at any cost, they helped trigger a cataclysmic event. Maybe having some principles isn't so bad after all.

In the end, I can appreciate that we get to see the clash of the old and new blood in Veilguard, where there's hope for the order to transform into an organization that's less secretive, less exclusive, and hopefully less prone to letting corruption spread through its ranks and make other devastating mistakes. Duncan once said that letting people join the Wardens isn't an "act of charity", and I like how Evka and Antoine go, "Yeah, you know what? Fuck that." And that likely inspires more loyalty. I imagine Blackwall would like that.

[bride-of-hemlock]

I find it kind of funny how anti-AA "media literacy" experts around the fandom claim you can only see Astarion's Ascension as a positive if you "miss the point of the story", and then their "deep analysis" is just the most surface level, shallow, 1:1 equivalency between a fictional story in it's own fantasy world and a "sorta similar" real life equivalent covered up in American therapy speak and parroting hays code-esque logic based primarily off of epitext, route-break consequences, and like, maybe one line of dialogue or whatever.

Not to mention - multi-narrativity? Genres? Literary concepts (catharsis through violence, etc.)? Room for different interpretations of what's romantic (in fiction or otherwise - yes, some people love HEA actually <3 eternal love is beautiful, and so is mutual obsession <3), like a classic vampiric love - unpunished, intense, obsessive, devoted and almost holy - eternal? Themes - like a vampire representing sexual desire, as such - historically - the vampire (or the LI) must be punished - a trope subverted, by letting them be happy together (a reading wholly supported in-text, sorry not sorry-this is what makes AA romance so great too)? Internal world logic? Or the fact that it's DnD, not real life? Naaah who cares, we saw out-of-context tiktoks and a youtube video essay and a discord message from one singular writer with strange opinions on what constitutes a romance, surely we don't even have to 100% the game ourselves!

[The amount of times I've seen someone say "AA is abusive and tragic and can't love!" and then some variation of "I'd never/'ve never let him Ascend" is baffling. Or how they barely pay attention to what's happening... Like honey how do you have an opinion on a text you didn't even read (or pay 100% attention to)?? Please- 💀]

And, tbh the:

"this is a bad in-game choice & will lead him to suffering 100% because [idk, killing The Wrong pixels in a videogame] would be bad irl and [cites epitext] <3 it's the only right interpretation!"

is basically "the curtains are blue because the author felt like it!" except insisting upon itself by using fancy words, but I digress.

xoxo ꨄ︎

[thirdeyeblue]

“Nine would have treated Martha better than Ten did”

I need to talk about this argument that never seems to stop circulating.

Note: Not a venomous/anti post. There’s more than enough of that across fandom spaces as is, and this is supposed to be a place for ✨sweet, blissful escapism✨

When making this argument, people seem to envision a scenario in which Nine never met Rose.

While I can appreciate a good hypothetical, recognizing Rose's significance to the Doctor (Nine and Ten) is essential to understanding why things with Martha played out the way they did in the first place.

In the third series, the Doctor is grieving. This grief is deliberately threaded into nearly every script, whether spoken aloud or not (and these are just a few examples):

He's burning in Rose’s wake the entire time Martha travels with him, which is why it’s so frequently called upon: It’s 100% deliberate in framing his grief. He grieved as Nine too, of course— having been fresh on the heels of the Time War — but then he met Rose, which changed everything.

Back then, he was still a rude, traumatized pain in the ass, but we watch Rose soften more of those jagged edges with every episode as they grow closer; as he lets his guard down and forms a deep connection with her.

He falls in love (against his better judgment) and it's game over.

And yes: provided S1E1 had been titled 'Martha', one can realistically assume things might have unfolded similarly to how they did with Rose. However, it wouldn’t have been that way just because the Doctor was Nine and “Nine was different” — it would be because he wasn’t already in love with someone else. The same can't be said for the start of S3.

Think of it like this: if Rose AND Martha had been in that cellar — if Nine had taken both of them along with him in S1 — we’d eventually be looking at the most melodramatic love triangle ever, what with him living in close quarters with two brilliant, gorgeous, compassionate young women... But Doctor Who is plenty “soap opera” as is with just one woman in the TARDIS.

(I certainly wouldn’t object to reading that fic, though)

Now, regarding the unrequited elephant in the room…

His inability to be romantic with Martha isn’t because he thinks her lesser, nor is it for lack of compatibility. It isn't because Rose is any better than her. It certainly isn’t just because he’s Ten.

It’s really only for one reason, which can't be denied — and now I’m a broken record:

He is still in love with Rose.

(cut from a tenrosedaily gif)

Nine is Ten, and Ten is only such a mess in S3 because he’s just lost the love of his life. Martha merely got caught in the crosshairs of a volatile Time Lord in mourning, and yes — it sucks. Absolutely.

But it also feels dismissive to chalk Ten and Martha’s relationship up to little more than some sort of mindless dance of pining, jealousy, and toxicity.

Ten trusted Martha with his life over and over again — and hers, with him. He constantly praised her brilliance, happily carting her around time and space with no intention of letting her go. In the BBC’s extended universe of novels/comics/cartoons/etc, there’s so much depth to their relationship: love and trust and trauma and sacrifice. They had their own special bond as mates, their own complexities — so it’s a bummer that it's forever overshadowed by the other things.

I’m not denying that there was a lot of stuff that sucked/was for sure toxic about Ten's S3 behavior, but so many of the things I've seen him catching flak for can be directly attributed to being A Clueless Fucking Alien Idiot (not a trait that’s unique to Ten) — as well as his flat-out obliviousness to Martha’s feelings.

So yes, I agree: if Rose never existed, he would have treated Martha differently as Nine. He also would have treated her differently as Ten. Certainly.

But Rose did exist, and when discussing canon, it matters.

“He tells me that he absolutely, 100% loves Rose... He tells me how my daughter; my wonderful, beautiful, clever little girl saved him from himself before… And he says that’s all because of me! I made her into the Rose Tyler that saved him.”

-Jackie Tyler, Flight Into Hull!

Martha got the short end of the stick in S3. She came round at the wrong place and time, but that doesn't mean it was all bad. It doesn't mean the Doctor didn’t adore her. It certainly doesn't mean the time they spent together was wasted or worthless. They were brilliant!

Sure, he could be a twat, but let it be known that he was a twat with Rose as well, both as Nine and Ten. I’m sure Tentoo can be plenty infuriating, too. So while I'll defend Ten (and Tentoo) into the ground forever and ever and ever, I'll concede that he's fucked up.

The Doctor is a certified Pain In The Ass. It’s one of the things I love so much about this character — dynamics.

But never forget that Martha was goddamn tough as nails and overcame every bit of it. She moved on with her life, and the Doctor moved on with his. One can only pray that, when they inevitably drag her back onto the show (which feels inevitable if I'm honest), we see at once that she's been living her best life for all these years.

[randomwriteronline]

He'd never join them afterwards.

What was the point? They wouldn't have welcomed him with open arms either way after all the tribekin and cousins and friends he'd sold to their death. Let them play with their new oversized tin toys if they were so inclined: now that the Skrall were gone and everything was better, there was no reason in trying to figure out for what price his usual clients would have taken such dangerous curiosities.

Like the Spikit needs to feed itself endlessly, for each head turns almost mad with hunger as soon as the other's meal has reached the intestines, Sahmad had spent the last hundred thousand years biting the misery off of the bones of sapient livestock to fuel the ravenous appetite of his vengeance against the living.

He belonged to the dead. He had belonged to them from the moment his people had become them, and in their stead he'd hated the living as all good dead who die senselessly do.

He remembered it - he'd built the memories himself, cobbled them together in the throes of grief, into something that resembled in shape and composition and imposing sense of scale the marvelous prints his beloved used to mold from graceless raw metal: with the clarity of a survivor he had so clearly seen in his imagination that breathing swarm melt into a brightly colored wall as they left the Iron tribe to die, hands carefully folded near their hearts, appalled and with eyes wide, perfectly still, perfectly quiet; he had seen that mass of healthy flesh staring at them as they tore each other apart in the frenzied fumes of their disease.

Murderers and desecrators, the lot of them. Graverobbers they would have been if there had been graves at all to rob. No, the pretty plates that made their armors sturdy and unbreakable had been ripped from corpses left to rot in the open air as all waste does, for the fauna to feed off of and those soulless little rats to mutilate so horribly for their own gain, because the War was coming, the War for the damned liquid malady that had ripped his whole world from him, and they needed the protection for when they would need to kill each other for the honor and pride of their worthless Lords, you see... He remembered watching from afar the massacres with a gargling feeling stirring in his stomach, drinking deep of their shed blood with his hateful gaze.

He remembered the first one who wandered through the desert with that carapace displayed so proudly to cover their breast. To cover their heart.

He hadn't even sold that one. Just killed.

As furiously and painfully as he could.

And then, he'd ripped each treasure from that corpse with the viciousness of a disgraced heir avenging an offense, and ridden all the way back to the epicenter of the epidemic, and buried that piece of the Fezeri people in Fezeri land and marked it with a rusted stick.

And he'd wondered how many there could have been, out there. How many crumbs of his tribe's body were hanging off of bloodied living meat fancing itself brave enough to traverse the dunes. And while he had already been catching them and throwing them to the best offerer by his own accord (because he needed their anguish to satiate something that food and water could barely mitigate enough to let him live) that was the start of his purposeful hunt.

By the time those beloved shells had disappeared from the ensembles of those unlucky enough to meet him, his collection of graves had grown enough that the center of what had been a village was once more inhabited, only now by dozens, maybe hundreds of rusted metal rods, like fingers of a tentacled beast reaching out through the earth that had swallowed it. A proper, thriving, bustling necropolis - of bits and pieces, of broken shells; but those were once his soul, and even if only in a minimal number they would be allowed some peace once he died properly too.

Not even that thought brought him comfort now.

Everything was better; everything was fixed. It was time to rebuild and restart and return, even slowly, to a better life.

Without the cruelty of a fractured hateful world to spur him, to reward him, to lend him chance after chance to inflict the misery he'd been made a victim of, Sahmad found his hunger wane and slip off of his chest: it leaned left and right, almost confused, moving faster and faster as a sudden anxiety overtook it, but it reacted too late; in a pitiful swirl, like a streak of color in a sputtering stream of water, the endless famine coiled and drained away, and all that was left in the place of its padding was a yawning emptiness sanding him down underneath his shell.

He watched over his rusted forest. Had it been worth it, all this hatred? All this callous ruthlessness and wasted lives for the sake of far too many incomplete burials? Yes. He has no doubt about it. It had all been worth it. But it still made him the last of them in a world far too large for only one.

There had to be others. Out there, away from the invisible confines that had surrounded the former wasteland, into the new budding life sprouting from the melded cracks of the planet. They'd been a very special case, like all warnings from the heavens are - the others must have stopped their mining operations in time before they struck too deep, or abandoned the tunnels in a haste after hearing of their peers' demise. The Lord of Iron had died with them, torn to shreds by the illness, the madness, and the very subjects he had once had command over: the others must have been free to choose to hide away, when the Core War broke out, as they had no one's gluttony to sate but their own, and no hunger would have been enough to lead them to fight for the very thing that had sunk one of their villages in the communal grave of a barren sky.

What colors and patterns would their carapaces have? He'd stuck to a bright rusted orange for so long he barely remembered his own real hue. They would still be digging and welding and melding, and hunting burrowing shrew and grinding who knows what exotic flowers into fragrant paste... He could not remember how it smelled or tasted, neither the dark ground nor the bread he would barely realized he'd eaten when he had plenty of it. No, he could never join them, he could never fit in the mold that had been broken and warped so long ago again: he was the survivor of a plague and a slave trader - two of the many kinds of person everybody feels safer away from; he was part of the dead, and only disaster is bound to follow along when they try to mix with the living.

He remained crouched before Telluris, before the bent and rusted wire marking his grave. That mad fool. He'd found him mangled underneath his skeletonized beast of a machine during his starved wanderings through this new and bountiful world: how he would have wanted to go, most likely, if he'd ever known how to want anything in his endless delirium. Ridiculous, maybe even shameful, to think that he was the only complete corpse in this shoddy cemetery. Better him than Sahmad: the mad do not haunt graveyards, busy as they are enjoying at last some peace of mind. The wrathful seldom find that same idea as soothing.

To curl up in a sunken bed and wait to rejoin his tribe sounded selfish. He'd dragged their grievances along a trail of blood so long as he could feed them; now that his famine had begun ravaging he had nothing to give those grudges but himself, and once that too would have been consumed they would have curled their spindly hands around every bone surrounding him. To die here, brimming with an endless mourning rage, would mean to rattle and anguish his poor kin forevermore in their only time of rest.

If he continued to travel, even though purposeless, he could bring it all someplace else, to haunt unhallowed ground. Or his Spikit, just like him maddened by a fruitless search, would have eaten him first - mauled his flesh off the bone like he'd mauled the fear and resignation from the bodies sold off to a mindless life of pain, until for only a moment its appetite would be calmed.

Sahmad watched the beast grow antsy.

A burial like any other.

[asexualjedi]

Still so iconic of Matt fraction to start his run like anyways off screen Clint and Kate who have met a few times before this run have become besties and are fundamentally now intertwined characters. Like and that’s just canon now. I think more comic writers should be willing to kinda just decide a new status quo like that especially with characters that have been under utilized

[logicpng]

it's been taking me forever to finish these to even this state and then Suddenly i just sketched the expressions and cleaned them up all in one evening

anyway hi i saw a meme and thought it would be good to give a writing test drive to my boys again (urs especially...)

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