#been thinking maybe he has some affiliation with hunters . not sure

[nomagicartz]

Can you tell us more about your MunchingBrotato :O I haven't heard that name in years and now I'm very curious on your interpretation of him

all i got is that this guy's a pathetic fucking loser nerd /aff

i havent gotten much rn , mostly that hes part cat (of course) and that he and seto got a doomed thing going on . forwards beckon rebound thing yknow . Im still tinkering with his lore for sure

[katyspersonal]

What's your interpretation that the left hand of cleric beast is much bigger that the right?🤔

Well, like I've pointed out before, the only explanation I am seeing is blood ministration being done on the left arm!

However, this might get a little more interesting with the Cleric Beasts, because Emilia is also one, yet her arms are symmetrical!

My closest guess to why it happened is because of something Healing Church has been known to do with female bodies. Namely - do some sort of surgery/manipulation/operation on them in order to change their blood type into 'holy blood' one, which they are able to share with the hunters!

English localization team had to use term "groomed" instead of whatever this actually says, and this is definitely going into top 10 of my biggest headaches with mistranslations! As you can see from the Japanese script retranslation ( x ), the meaning is more literal, implying a procedure. I always felt like it would be a surgery on bone marrow, since this is where blood cells are produced, and doctors in Bloodborne could have learned to alter them into having impossible type of blood!

So, as a female cleric, Amelia might have had her first communion with the holy blood as a Blood Saint, instead of generic blood ministration treatment like apparently everyone else has!

I am still not sure why female staff specifically was the Blood Saints, since apparently blood vials are not menstrual blood, as we can learn thanks to Adeline:

Maybe it could have something to do with menstrual cycle, though, because of the whole cycle of moon vs menstrual cycle thing, and Laurence being affiliated with Moon Presence, and then Micolash also stealing his swag and basing his own institution on:

I'd say this is either some sort of deeply rooted superstition within the setting, or in fact, yes, the holy blood links to the Great Ones who put HELLA importance on blood and birth, so being biologically female is crucial for that link to take intended effects.

Ludwig is an interesting case, though! He was SUPPOSED to have blood ministration too, like Laurence or Cleric Beast of the Bridge! Why would not the first Healing Church hunter and the HEAD of their hunters do something so crucial? Especially since Cleric Beast of the Bridge drops the Sword Badge with which you buy Hunter Chief Emblem, implying that this beast is currently what Ludwig used to be? But his left arm is not bigger. In fact, it is even smaller. So I am trying to think of the variants of what had happened here:

1) Ludwig somehow merged with an actual horse, so his anatomy is simply no longer judged through the same lense

2) Ludwig is a leftie, and this is where he holds his Holy Moonlight Sword, so its effect would be a "remedy" for possible arm deformations

3) Ludwig is not a simple beast, but the one with a lot of Kin features, so his anatomy is simply no longer judged through the same lense (+horses are primarily herbivores, and Kin is associated with the flora in the setting, so maybe that's why he went horsegirl mode instead of getting something weak like antlers lol)

4) Ludwig is trans and actually was the first to get Blood Saint treatment rather than regular blood ministration (+we take Adeline's blood from her right arm, and notice that his right arm is a little bigger)

5) Ludwig is a cis man and was the first biological male who attempted to receive Blood Saint treatment instead of regular blood ministration, but that didn't take the intended effect because the gods Be Like That in the setting + his unusual visions and mutation might be the side effect of that and that's why Healing Church stopped doing that with male organisms. Basically, if a male attempts becoming a living factory for the holy blood, it will go "wrong".

6) Combinations of the above points

.....Okay, that went a little unfocused from the initial topic, but you see my points here! Thank you for the ask!

_________________

Bonus ideas:

- Whereas Ludwig is holding the Holy Moonlight Sword in his left hand, Amelia also is grasping the Gold Pendant in her left hand. So maybe nothing was special about her, but holding a special item in the "effected" hand will remedy the asymmetry effect, and had Amelia not been doing that all the time, she'd be asymmetrical too?

- Amelia using recolored model for Bell-Ringing Woman for her appearance might be not accidental, but a fuel for the headcanon that she has Pthumerian blood too, and Pthumerians might simply evolve differently, or traditionally have different way they' go for the blood communition. Off the top of my head, look at Loran Clerics having same sized arms:

Basically, I can answer why Cleric Beasts and the huntsmen have asymmetrical arms, but not why people like Emilia and Ludwig broke the trend despite being the first in line to have blood ministration normally... Because I just have too many ideas, and my preference usually falls towards the most logical ones, but when there are equally logical ideas I become helpless :')

[httyddragonfox]

Huntlow and Wittecouple

So we discover Hunter is Bi and Willow is Pan. Everyone is asking, "Was Caleb Bi too?" We can all assume that maybe Evelyn was, seeing as most of the Boiling isles is on the spectrum of LGBTQA+. In the end though, I don't think it matters what sexuality Caleb was, Huntlow and Wittecouple are similar.

Evelyn was a witch, someone who could be tried as a witch in Puritan times. Of course they were going to make her a woman character, also to parallel her to Eda and hint at the Clawthorne connection. That is why they made her character a girl.

They could have made Hunter a girl, but I don't think Belos would tolerate a Trans person as his "brother." They could've made Caleb a girl, but I don't think it was likely that women were witch hunters. If Belos cloned a sister, that would've been a more messed up reason. Keep it closer to PG-rated. Hence and Caleb and Hunter are boys.

So we won't know what Caleb was into, because like Hunter, he only ever had eyes for one person. This person for both of them, was the one who allowed them a chance to live freely.

Hunter has only known authority, training, and rules. He likes to read, he has a big heart, but he's not allowed to express that freely. He's supposed to be something for somebody else. He meets Willow, Willow impresses him by showing him people deserve second chances and not taking no for an answer. They play Flyer Derby together and he actually has fun with other people. He decides he likes these people, so he reveals his affiliation with the enemy He doesn't want to be apart from these people, and he doesn't want to hurt them...Willow most of all. Realizing what he would be putting them through if they join his group, he let's them go, but he remains in contact with them. Willow realizes he's not the threat he's usually portrayed as, he's actually a good person. They end up bonding over their cute palismen over pentstagram. Hunter falls fast, and after seeing Hunter's sensitive and dorky side, Willow falls too. Hunter eventually joins Willow's group, abandoning the Emperor.

As for Caleb and Evelyn, Evelyn was an outsider to town, disguised as a human. Caleb saw her as someone who deserved a chance to not be outcast, because him and his brother were once outsiders. She seemed to be friendly with birds, like he was. Also a carver? like he was? (Not sure if he started that tradition). They would probably go for nature walks, feed birds, bond over cute cardinals. She probably allowed him to be a little adventurous, and not just fill a societal standard that Gravesfield expected of him. She saw, that despite him being an official witch hunter, he was kind and didn't desire to hurt people. This would lead Evelyn to trust Caleb enough to reveal her status as one of the enemy. He might be shocked at first, but realizes she's not a monster, and allows him to enjoy life without judgement. They communicate with the rebus and see each other in secret. Caleb falls for her hard, as she fell for him, so much so he leaves his group, his family, and goes to be with Evelyn in the Boiling Isles.

So, long story short...both Huntlow and Wittecouple were from opposing sides, but both love stories allowed them to be brought together. One being freed from their life of conformity, ruthlessness and authority, being allowed to be who they wished to be.

P.S They must have also awakened some power in them, Huntlow with Hunter's flashstep, and Wittecouple with glyphs.

[rain-world-positivity-blog]

loved ur age headcanons for the iterators. you got any more like location headcanons or like who knows who or something?

Oooh this is a good one! Apologies if I'm not entirely coherent I've done a 12 hour shift for stocktake at work and I've seen so many numbers today that i feel like I'm going to spit up math XD

So locations for iterators we know the names of but haven't been to hmm...

Well, we know both Hunter and Spearmaster seem to be travelling from the west of Pebbles and Moon. I think that NSH would be not exactly the next iterator along from them but he's decently close, close enough for Hunter to get to Moon with the limited amount of time it has.

Suns however I think is a lot further away, more north-west in terms of direction and I do really like the idea that they're not affiliated with the local group we know of but are part of a different group all together. That's also an excuse I have to make some friends for them hehe~

Personal headcanon that the closest iterator we see from the top of the wall is Innocence! I'm pretty sure there's pearl dialogue or broadcast dialogue somewhere which refers to her as "Pebbles' neighbour" which would imply she's pretty close by!

I like the idea of Wind being further east than Moon, maybe south-east? I know in one of my AUs I had Wind be to the west too but I kinda flipflop onw here Wind should be placed with each AU I make.

And Sliver of Straw for me is on the complete opposite side of the world from what we know as players of the game. I like her haunting the story, a distant name, reduced to nothing but an ideal.

NOW as for who knows who... Moon I reckon would know all of her local group, and Sig being as close to her as it seems would as well. Additionally Sig gives me internet forum troll vibes.

Innocence I feel would have a group of friends but isn't the easiest to get along with so people would avoid. Idk how I feel about the fandom turning her into some kind of gossip girl who's into everyone's shit. I think she might personally just hate Pebbles XD

Pebbles gives me the vibe of a brooding emo teen who has a few buddies but they all sit in their rooms listening to MCR. I don't reckon he has many people he'd consider friends outside of Suns and I get the impression he views the other iterators in the Sliverist groups as merely coworkers.

Suns gives me similar vibes but in the sense that they're just a depressed nerd who somehow managed to make friends with the most social bestie of all (NSH). We do know that Wind and Suns seem familiar with each other as well. I do hold onto the headcanon and they and Sliver actually knew eachother, but the level of that relationship eludes me~

And speaking of Sliver, from one of the broadcasts she seemed to be rather social too! I like the idea of her having loads and loads of friends and being everywhere all the time. Just makes her "dying" all the more impactful.

Wooo this was a long one, thanks for your ask! If anyone has their own interpretations I'd love to hear <3

[ofwrxth]

"Yeah! What was that about? I feel like Eli left some details out," she laughs slightly only because he was okay in the end. If he hadn't been, Nora wouldn't find the situation as amusing. "Jimmy doesn't remember what happened, does he?" She sure as shit hopes not, eyes already scanning the crowd for the familiar wanna-be rock star's head. "Well, if it helps him win, maybe they should try it? Though I don't think I can picture Ryan or Hunter dancing and I thought Elliot doesn't do this stuff?" She's only been affiliated with the Reapers for a few years now through her family but since then she's not seen the youngest Cross around much but has never really asked. Every family has their business.

"Oh yeah," Nora frowns, "that would be hard? Can you just tell him that? Like hey, this is weird for both of us but I'm around if you wanna talk and just get to know each other? Or is that more of a girl thing? He's around twenty you said?" She gives Tammie's hand a small squeeze, "you're a good person, Tams, and a lot of people would find it hard, especially with a baby. Don't overthinking it." Which is probably easier to say since she's not in the situation but she means the words regardless. Nora giggles at Tammie's words, glancing towards wherever the first pair of fighters were getting ready. "I feel like that's some Rocky level shit – ko'd at the same time. Almost worth it if they rigged it like that, but you know JJ would never. At least not if it's Hunter." A Center Hill competition for the ages it seems, with neither winning over multiple Fight Nights.

"Literally, no one does cleaner stitches. Couldn't even tell Eli got whacked in the head by Jimmy. He tell you all about that?" Tammie chuckled, sipping her beer with a grin. She hummed about Wolf, trying to remember if she had ever been to one of his fights before he was carted off to jail and was promptly reminded of one of the first 'dates' with Ryan to watch his brother. "Oh actually, yeah. He is good. He kinda dances 'round the ring, and none of the other Cross boys let up about it." she laughed slightly, eyes scanning her sister quickly. Was it just being a big ol' barn full of reapers that was a little unsettling or was it Taner being in the ring next? Although, she didn't have a doubt in her mind that Nora wouldn't have listened to all of their warnings about him. "Oh, Mason? He's alright, it's getting a little easier I just feel kinda..." she waved her hand at the lack of her words. "I'm not his mom, right? So it's kinda like...how do I let him know I wanna know him without seeming like I wanna be his mom? It's weird. And then I don't wanna seem like I don't care so yeah, weird." she shrugged, mainly wanting to give Ryan and his son space to figure it out. At least it meant less arguments because of a full house. "Watch both of 'em knock each other out at the same time, I'm not surprised that wasn't an option to bet on because we'd be leaving with a whole lotta money."

[astriiformes]

For reasons, I am once again thinking about the ideal TOH Star Wars AU that I might not ever write but lives in my head and haunts me regularly

Can't decide if I would age some of the kids up by a couple years or just continue in the grand Star Wars tradition of harm and too much responsibility to literal children but Luz is a young Force-sensitive human maybe more around 16-18 (still not THAT old) living on a backwater planet who convinces Eda to take her on as an apprentice

Eda is an ex-Jedi who has been on the run since Order 66, now working as a smuggler. I think people are cowards about never interpreting anyone as aliens in Star Wars AUs and think she's a good candidate but haven't narrowed down exactly the species, although the whole Togruta-are-obligate-carnivores thing make them a tempting choice. The Empire has probably been around a little longer than in SW canon to make things line up right and I think she was an older teen during the Clone Wars, and also Bump's padawan before everything fell apart.

King is a small alien of indeterminate species that she found in a mysterious older-than-the-Jedi temple while mucking around the galaxy. Not sure exactly what his deal is but some kind of weird Mortis/the Ones/Force nonsense long since forgotten about by modern Force users feels about right.

Lilith is also a former Jedi (I know by canon Jedi rules they probably wouldn't have had two siblings training at the same time, but also, I can poke at Star Wars canon too), now Head of the Inquisitorius dead-set on tracking her sister down and recruiting her as another Inquisitor. Was probably Belos' padawan and got roped into his own fall to the Dark Side as a result.

Gus is a young (human?) Force-sensitive rebel, as is Willow (although I think she is a green twi'lek); I have not decided exactly how they are affiliated with the Rebellion since they are both YOUNG (although again, maybe more in the 16-18 range, Gus is still the youngest of the kids for sure) but I think having their parents involved might make sense, especially if it's in part an attempt to keep their kids safe from the Purges/Inquisitors. Doing something with the Emerald Entrails as an X-Wing squadron is also very tempting (Emerald Squadron, with Willow as Emerald Leader??)

Raine is in a sort of Bail Organa double agent senator/Rebellion leader style position and YES this means that they and Eda were basically doing a whole "what if Padmé and Anakin were just a tiny bit smarter, but not by much" illicit senator/Jedi romance when they were younger, so I think it would be funny if they were from Naboo. They definitely think Eda died in Order 66 and Eda definitely thinks they, as a member of the Imperial Senate, have bought into the whole "the Jedi were bad, actually" thing which is why the two haven't spoken in decades. Darius and Eberwolf might be Senate colleagues? (Maybe a Fulcrum agent kind of situation?)

Not sure what is going on with the Blights. I think maybe Alador is an Imperial scientist and Amity might end up involved via a not-quite-Rogue-One, but a little inspired by it heist situation just to get her in contact with the rebels. Her parents have worked very hard to keep her Force sensitivity on the down-low. Also I think it's funny that in canon Pantorans can have the same gold eyes/lavender hair look Amity does (just, you know, blue) so while it doesn't work for the whole family I think Alador being a Pantoran and Amity taking more after him than her mother works amusingly well.

Hunter is Belos' Mara Jade-style Emperor's Hand (obviously) but ALSO a clone (obviously) who probably has an Order 66-style chip implanted in him somewhere for maximum angst potential, because this is Hunter and also Star Wars. He was definitely a pet project independent of the clone troopers, probably an attempt to do something weird with the Force to create a perfect Jedi killer. I'm honestly not sure if he's Force-sensitive or not, it could really go either way. Also I would be broadly interpreting all palismen as droids, but Flapjack in particular has to be an old, beat-up little guy he found on a mission and has been tinkering with against his better judgement since.

Belos is probably creating some Force-draining superweapon; a Star Wars AU is interesting for him because making him a Sith makes him one of the weird "magic" folks himself, but obviously the Jedi purges are still a good equivalent to his whole deal in canon. He and his brother were both Jedi and Caleb almost definitely tried to stop his fall to the dark side in a very Mustafar-but-if-Anakin-won situation, just because I think the parallel there is tasty.

[kadeu]

THE DECK; OCTOBER 2024

Sweet breeze! Good riddance summer. Now, usually we adore the summer season, the fashion, the events, the lively shows and all the trouble the socialites get up to. And yes, the fashion was there but eyepatches in the heat are not ideal. Our beloved socialites flocked to the beach and we have enough tales of drunken debauchery yes, and even those who remained in the city with their enchanted blocks of ice and selective guest lists, we still have heard the deeds. But the heat, something about this summer’s heat, made it not as enjoyable.

Speaking of the beach, there is mourning up in the highranked hills of Diamonds. Once Kings, demoted in scandal to Jacks, the Sobongs have met rough waters while enjoying what was supposed to be a calming row out to sea in Umibe. Their staff reported that, “the once peaceful seas suddenly became enraged as if a Tempest beset it and pulled them under.” The Sobong fortune is now up in the air as the only true heir, their son Korain, has long been presumed dead. Korain's only heir is none other than Ace of Diamonds Moon Ara, but sources say the Sobong's will doesn't name their estranged granddaughter at all. 

It is rather fortunate though, inheriting a vast sum, especially when one half of the marital income pool couldn’t even afford box seats at the other’s place of employment. We wonder just how much money is in that estate. Enough to kill for? Only time will tell.

In Hearts, once jeweler to the elite facecards yet now blacklisted from those circles, Lee Hyeonju seems to be looking from Hearts for a way into Diamonds. Formerly disgraced now reinstated Academy Professor Parker Luke, seems to have accepted the advances of Hyeonju and has been spotted every night for two whole weeks within his apartment. Sources close to both men say that Hyeonju has been giving the professor the royal treatment in hopes he sponsors his defection!

Whispers throughout Heart society say that the Ace of Hearts, once an avid patron of Hyeonju’s has refused his service in lieu of newly popular Fae artisans. The Ace’s mood as of late is unreadable on that topic, but sources say Hyeonju has been barred from his presence and that has other highrankers and artisans have been following suit, preferring to not gain the Ace’s disfavor. This has lead to instability in Hyeonju’s prospects in Hearts. No wonder he is looking to flee to Diamonds. 

But he’s not the only one out of favor in Hearts. Ex-courtesan turned restaurant owner, Meesong Nari has been seen without her usual entourage of Zuihuo guards and attendants. Rumor has it she has been kicked from that mansion she was gifted and the Clan favor mark is gone from her arm. Not sure what she did to separate herself from that protection and comfort but we are sure all those bridges she burned ascending in the ranks will happily revisit her. They tell us as kids right? What goes up must come down. Watch your back Nari.

THE TENSION BETWEEN CLUBS AND SPADES;

Amidst the growing tensions between Clubs and Spades, Ace of Clubs Mallick Sai Shah,  held the opening for his Hunter’s Lair. It seems it was mostly a hit, with fights breaking out away from the venue, not in it! One club said, “it’s better to just enjoy things now than wait for whatever comes next,” and we’re considering stitching it on tunics and selling them as aid relief! Business owners suffering from Spade mandated ban through the Joker found it hard to mingle and feast while their own stores suffered. Worse, a gag order was in place against all negative comments on Spades. We sense a lot of fake smiles and grumblings over bread but can’t confirm as we were refused an exclusive invite to report the event!

Still, as an unbiased news source, we gladly accepted the request for a sit down with Ace Shah to address the actions taken in his faction. Our reporter braved the streets of Clubs to give a completely impartial interview. 

How has it been as an Ace? The jump from low ranker to sitting atop the faction must be hard.

Hard? Surprising and unexpected would be the words I would use to describe how this whole situation feels. I used to be a highranker after all and making my way up to even higher ranks before a tragedy struck me, was that an unknown fact?

But you’ve never been Ace? How is that jump?

No, never been. The title itself is not omnipotent, it has its limitations and brings forth unwanted attention that stands in the way of the current progress we wish to bring to the faction. But it's an important role even if only in word, one has to still use it respectably. But the short answer is the jump is still happening. Ask again in a few years when I've landed where it takes me.

How did you think of the Club council? Is it true you were inspired by the Diamond council?

I didn’t think of the Club council, it was a meeting of minds, I wouldn’t have been able to have any council at all if it was only my contribution going into the making of said council. While I have a deep respect for Diamonds and how they tend to go about their politics, I can’t say I was thinking about them when the idea came to be, I was more concerned on how it would affect Clubs in general and how it would be accepted within the faction. But I can now see why they have one, it has its benefits and I applaud them for having the idea to immediately instill it in their system.

How many people really support you as ex-resistance? Can we even believe you’ve left the criminal enterprise?

I can’t possibly begin to tell who truly supports me as ex-resistance or not, but so far I haven’t had anyone personally challenge me in the faction so in this case I think that means even through reticence people might just believe in the good I want for this faction. 

That’s definitely a tough one, all I can say is I was young, hurt and I made mistakes. If I can be forgiven for them then I will be happy, if not I will understand. However, to be judged for the mistakes of your pasts when you’ve recognized them and clearly show that you’ve completely turned away from them, that’s an unfortunate way to see the world or the people around us if you ask me. But yes, to your question, you can believe that I’ve left the criminal enterprise.

I suppose you maintain your innocence in the killing and raid on spade? If you didn’t do it then who is behind such a foul act?

I absolutely do, I had nothing to do with the unfortunate incident even if allegations brought forth the information that some key evidence might link me to it. My hands are clean and I can’t even begin to think of who would be behind this. But whoever it is, the council has decided to lead an investigation into the matter because it’s not just my name and reputation that is on the line, it is also the honor of this faction that will be yet again tarnished. If you find any more clues before we do, I’m certain you’ll pass the message to the rest of the city, won’t you?

Of course! So you suppose you are being framed? Why would anyone frame an already known murderer?

I don’t take lightly to being called a murderer, but if that’s a title I have to wear for ridding the faction of an Ace who cared none for the lives of the people he wanted to lead to an unending civil war and unrest, then there’s not much I can do about it. But yes, I’m being framed, because of the criminal enterprise’s affiliation I had in the past and the label of murderer I have on my back. I mean, wouldn’t you say it’s easier to believe that I would be the one behind someone’s death and demise considering those two demeaning factors? It’s even a little unfair to not see how blatantly obvious they went about it.

You must know, the Academy was attacked a few years ago with your resistance taking ownership. Were you not involved?

The resistance I was part of and that I do not own, you mean? I did hear of it when the incident occurred. I was not involved and I found it disheartening. I'm against attacking innocents and causing the loss of innocent lives.

We’ve heard that your people were harassing Spades in your faction? Our sources say, ‘Urine and feces were tossed on a patron in a popular tavern for saying ‘Spades should be respected.’ Should Spades not be respected?

I’ve had no time to hear these rumors but of course Spades should be respected. Everyone deserves respect for that matter, tossing urine and feces doesn’t seem like a respectful action taken either. But if this rumor is true I can simply apologize for the mistreatment and ask that less impulsive measures are taken in the future because, as you can see, I don’t have any means to control anyone to stop tragedies from occurring. If I did you wouldn’t be here as no shipment would have been ambushed and no lives would have been lost. Unfortunate, isn’t it?

This Ace of Clubs only brings more questions when questions are asked.  He made it clear to our interviewer that the resistance was a mistake he made in youth and he acknowledges them as all as criminals. He even seemed scared to admit the inspiration for the council he created in Clubs. Maybe those on his council are the real danger here. ‘A meeting of minds’ he claims, but it sounds more like he was coerced by darker agents. We’re certain this council is filled with the same resistance criminals he is trying so hard to claim he has separated himself from.

And yet he proclaims his innocence, insists he is being framed. In round about words he points to some conspiracy with no proof of innocence offered. And where is this council if they are unified in their ruling? Should they not have joined this interview to show their unified cause? The future of Clubs is bound to be as blood soaked under this Ace as the last. At least that Ace stood solidly on one point without a questionable background and motive. 

His unwillingness to out other vagrants that would no doubt bring that peace to the faction like he claims to want, make his alleged innocence and investigation a joke. Our own investigation finds King of Clubs, Wainwright Rook, with high suspicion for the fight that broke out in his tavern. There a Spade had feces and urine thrown on them which led to a brawl that left the very foundation of the tavern with a cracked that travelled up the building.  Yet Ace Shah acts ignorant of it. No wonder Spades must do their own investigation.

In Spades, they are increasing drills and the policing of their border. We wonder if an invasion will come soon. Whispers amongst their ranks lean to disdain for the Club Council. Refugees who chose to leave the safety of Spades were met at the border with medical personnel and fighters as if the Club Council thought that Spades were abusing those they rescued during the terror of the war between their last Ace and the new one and his resistance criminals. The council passing suspicion to Spades who have done more for their corner of the city is laughable.

Well, at least the weather is cooling down. Hopefully that eases some of the tensions. The weather is predicted to be far more comfortable though still a bit warmer for the season. We’re calling it a second attempt at summer.  

NOW PLAYING AT THE PALACE;

Fresh from the mind of director Ace Moon Ara, comes a gruesome tale of lost love and revenge. With intense, dark themes, The Palace recommends not bringing children to this production and reminds all of it’s patrons that the theater is NOT responsible for the adverse affects the production may have on younger minds or weak stomachs.

The Fiendish Barber of Kadeu

Evil Judge Turpin (Budrelda Beryl) lusts for the beautiful wife of a simple barber, Benjamin Barker (Adrian!). In order to claim the beautiful woman for herself, Turpin frames the barber, and has him transported to a far away prison for a crime he did not commit. Returning after 15 years and calling himself Sweeney Todd - the new name given to him by the fiend he managed to conscript, the now-mad man vows revenge, applying his razor to unlucky customers and shuttling the bodies down to Mrs. Lovett (played by Ara’s protégé from Wing Theatrics), who uses them in her meat-pie shop. Though many fall to his blade, he will not be satisfied until he slits Turpin's throat.

Its a wonderful start to the fall season, our reporters loved their screening but warn of its hauntingly good effects.

[static-fanatic-1]

Main Four: Escapist S/O with a Three Year Old

This ask disappeared for some reason so I’m really sorry about that. A few other disappeared as well and I don’t know why, luckily I took pictures so I still have them.

Im going to separate them to make it to make it different than the poly relationship ones, I hope you don't mind.

Gon:

• Imagining this baby boy having a baby boy, it's the cutest thing. Not really as a Yandere but you get the point.

• After being gone for four years he became desperate, anyone with any information of you had become important to him. He was patient at first but he can only last so long. He probably went to your family and friends and asked about you. If they know he'll take care of them one way or another.

• Once he finds you he is ecstatic. He sits outside of your apartment, jumping up and down just waiting to walk in and hug you. But when he sees you walking past the slightly open window with something in your arms, he freezes. Gon simply stops and stares at the moving bundle in your arms. At first he might not understand, but once he thinks about what this might mean, he grows furious.

• Lets just say he jumped to the conclusion that it is your but might not be his.

• Gon enters your house by breaking the front door open. You are obviously surprised and jump back from the place near the window, the child in your arms now crying. He storms around the apartment, looking for any sign of another guy in your life. When he finds nothing he storms over to you and demands to know where the baby came from.

• Out of fear of his immense aura, you would be quick to say it's his. Just like that he switches back to his happy, go lucky self.

• You'll be shaken up by this of course, but he won't pay any mind when he rips the child from your arms and holds it in his. He will shush it and calm it down easily while dotting both you and them for doing such a good job.

• Gon will grab your hand and drag you to the couch or bedside, whatever is closer, and hold the both of you close. By now the toddler won't be crying anymore and instead laughing and playing with their dad. They may not have been outright told who their dad was or what they look like, but the baby will know.

• Speaking of the toddler, this thing would be beyond adorable. Big round eyes and a button nose, chubby cheeks and spiky blackish-green hair, they will be adorable.

• I don't think Gon will ask why you left, instead he will just take you two somewhere safe and make sure you can't leave again. You or the child.

Killua:

• Luckily Killua doesn't have a baby thing like Illumi or Kurapika, but he'd still be proud to be a father.

• When he finds you he is beyond surprised that you were able to evade him for such a long time. Sadly the little chase must come to an end, and it ends now.

• You've been gone for so long that anyone who had or as an affiliation with you is dead, pretty much no questions asked. Because you have been running off for so long you probably would not know this, the only way you would be able to escape for so long is because you left everything behind. It's sad but that is how it would have to be.

• When he finds you he will be beyond pissed off, I mean you left him for four years. That won't ever happen again and he'll make sure of it. Still, he won't show how pissed he is, instead it will be covered by an eerily calm and dull mask.

• He would enter the home you've been staying in at night, carefully maneuvering in the dark to get to you. Killua will start to notice some strange things, kids toys? Small baby bottles? He would instantly know why you left, and in return he would understand your fear, but that won't stop him.

• Instead of going to your room he will find out where the toddler is. Killua would sneak in undetected and loom over the crib/small bed, his child resting inside. The assassin would instantly know it's his, his chest swelling with a sense of pride. The fluffy white hair and pale skin are a huge indication as to who is the father.

• Carefully and gently he would wake up the kid, calmly whispering sweet nothings and how his daddy is home. The toddler would instantly understand, and will excitingly jump up and out of bed to tell you.

• You will wake up by being roughly shaken by your kid, a small questioning 'what' slipping past your lips. Why the hell you they be so excited at this hour? But when your sleepy gaze pulls them in, and your eyes settle on the dark figure looming in the doorway, you know what's wrong. Killua would calmly watch before stepping forward into the moonlight.

• You would be afraid, your child would be happy and tapping about how daddy's home, and Killua would have a smug look across his features.

• That will be that, Killua would use the kid as a hostage of sorts, as insurance to keep you with him. The bouncing baby would be a target to his family, but nothing will happen to the kid or you for as long as he lives.

Kurapika:

• Oh dear, one of the scarier yanderes of the Hunter x Hunter universe. At least for me.

• This guy is already unhinged because of you leaving, being gon for so long, without anyone to keep him in check, everyone would be killed.

• Do you guys remember the Kurapika having an S/O who just vanishes? Yeah, he would give up after six or so years, depending on how long it takes to slaughter anyone who might have a vendetta against him.

• When four years hits he is hunting down the Phantom Troupe, at least starting to hunt them down. He will be wondering the rooftops trying to find the Troupe, maybe he is currently trailing a few of them.

• If like to imagine you accidentally bump paths with them on your way to wherever you are going. Like your walking through the streets with your son/daughter and you accidentally bump shoulders with them. You would apologize (like a decent human being) and move on your merry way. (I might actually turn this into a short story because it sounds fun;))

• If That happens Kurapika would be holding his breath, because you have been found and you were too close to the enemy.

• Weare talking about Kurapika so obviously he would be angry you have left, but seeing you happy and with his child... he's beyond relieved. I mean just look at the kid! Cute blonde hair and round, brown eyes with a round face and gleeful smile.

• I can see Kurapika being very calm about the situation, which would be terrifying since he's a bit emotional. He would meet you at your house with a blank expression.

• When you two meet again he will have mixed emotions. Should he be angry, disappointed, relieved, happy? Honestly he doesn't know.

• But he knows one thing, you won't escape again. He will act like the nice guy to your kid and try to paint you as a damsel in distress. He will manipulate your kid to start being as protective as himself, and he will do this with all of your kids. Kurapika wants more children, he wants a big family, and he'll make sure he has one.

• He will trap you and lock you up, making sure your kids learn to be like him. The kids will also be a bargaining chip, you won't want to leave them but they won't want to leave their dad.

• He might not be as angry as usual, but his manipulation will surely compensate.

Leorio:

• This guy would be deathly irritated at everything if you left him for so long. He would snap at pretty much everyone for the smallest of things. But finally, after devoting so much time in finding you he has finally done it.

• Leorio would simply find you in the street and try and pluck you to the side to give you a piece of his mind. Though before he can do that you are met with some other girls, instantly he would be both curious and more irritated.

• He would take his time brooding in the dark alleyways as your group walks to a daycare. The black haired guy would furrow his brows as he watched you smile and pick up a small kid. The two of you would be laughing.

• Leorio's mood is ever changing from irritated to super happy. This would be one of those moments. He would immediately smile to himself and calmly follow you on your way home.

• When you make it home you see a man standing near your doorway, you are nervous about this man but he doesn't seem threatening. That is until you realize who it is.

• Simple 'Hey babe' exchanges will be given, your son/daughter asking who the man is. Your too frozen to answer.

• So he does for you. He'll answer with his name and then his affiliation with you, this will make your child's day. They had a dad?! That crazy!

• They'll jump into Leorio's arms and start talking about random things. Leorio would act as if nothing happened, as if he was just gone on a business trip or something. And that's what the toddler will be told too, he was gone for a really long business trip.

• You on the other hand will know, and despite him not outright using the kid to threaten you, you probably won't even try. His firework like temper would be enough to scare you into submission.

[transdemigod]

The Final Ritual and the other 13 Entities

So I’ve been thinking, since the only ritual to succeed in bringing in all the fears was still controlled by the Eye, what would it have looked like if it were one of the others in charge? The end result would have to be the same, since all 14 have to come into the world or else none of them will stay, but there are a lot of elements to the ritual itself and even how the new world works that seemed to be exclusive to the Eye. Here’s what I think would have to be the same: obviously the Archivist position is important, so I think each of the Entities would have to come up with their own “center”. A person, or something else, who has in some way been marked or touched by all the other fears, but still embodies their main patron. Also, since the original Watcher’s Crown was still present in the main ritual with the Panopticon being another center of power, I think the Final Ritual would still be based on the original ritual attempt, or at least take some ideas from it. The whole thing would probably vary based on who does it, but those are the elements that I think are important. So here’s my ideas of what that might look like for the other Entities.

The Buried’s ritual was the Sunken Sky, and they basically just threw a whole town into a pit. Gertrude’s idea to counteract it by throwing in someone touched by void could actually be used to enhance the power of the ritual, I think. Instead of just the Vast, the person thrown in could be marked by every fear, and would have a role in the new world as the center of power. The new world would be completely underground, with maybe only Vast domains in the sky above, and the center of power would stay in a chamber at the center of the Earth, roots reaching out to pockets of space where other domains exist and drawing in sustenance. The Center might even be a good name for the role, evoking the image of them being surrounded and crushed.

The Corruption didn’t really have a ritual, but it’s implied that it was trying to crawl through a door made by Prentiss’ worms. Maybe it would instead crawl in through a person? The focus of power, marked as usual by every fear, would spend some time festering in rot and preparing themselves to be a perfect home for the Corruption, until it bursts out of them. The new world would probably be covered in bugs and mold and other agents of the Corruption that go around feeding on the fear harvested by the others. The focus of power could maybe function a bit like a Hive, connected to every being of Filth that lives in and feeds them.

The Dark attempted to make a world of the Extinguished Sun, using a literal dark sun they made in space. I think it would be present in the new world, but probably not the main focus of power since it doesn’t have a way to include all the others. This one would probably be similar to the Eye’s, with someone marked by all the fears performing a simple ritual to bring darkness and fear to the world. Instead of the sky being covered in eyes, there would be no light anywhere except for the domains, where people need to see what they’re afraid of. The world might even change to be like the empty darkness of space, with the dark sun and the focus in the center and the domains orbiting around it. I think the focus of power would end up blind, maybe even performing the act as part of the ritual, and be able to sense and feed on fear without their sight.

The Desolation’s cult probably had the right idea making a Messiah for their version of the Scorched Earth. That is essentially what the Archivist was for the Eye, except they didn’t know that she had to be marked by all the fears. So, Agnes Montague would be the focus. It’s implied that the goal was to eventually destroy Agnes and release her power, since she prevented the ritual in canon by dying in a less destructive way. I think this would probably still happen in the main ritual, using the power of Desolation to destroy her body and release the power of all the fears. She would probably still rule the new world as a form of energy, like a massive flame that burns with the force of all the fear being fed to her. Like a flame, I think the world ruled by Desolation would burn out quickly. Sure, all the fears would be there for a while doing their thing, but Desolation would want to consume faster and faster and would likely run out of living beings fairly quickly, leaving them all to starve.

The End doesn’t need a ritual, since it eventually gets everything. I think it wouldn’t bother trying to bring in all the fears, but let’s say for the sake of argument that it wants more, and decides to kill its siblings. That would probably be the whole ritual, just ending everything in the world. It would feed for a little while as everything dies, then fade away like the rest of them. A world ruled by the End would be nothing, essentially, but it’s nature as an eldritch being means it would have to have something to feed on, so those two things don’t really work together. It would probably create a kind of Death God, marked by all the fears, to bring them all together only to be killed. Which is probably why it doesn’t want a ritual at all, it wouldn’t be very interesting.

The Eye, of course, had the Watcher’s Crown, brought by the Archivist who was marked by all 14, and drinking in fear from all the others through its Panopticon. It’s possible that since the Archivist wasn’t originally the one in the center watching everything, there could be more than one center of power. But he also said that the Eye wanted him there in the Panopticon, so I think it’s natural for the one who is marked to also end up in the center.

The Flesh had The Last Feast, a ritual where they just threw a bunch of meat in a pit. Not very creative, but I think the pit was supposed to represent a mouth. Maybe it was supposed to end with the Flesh consuming it all and coming into power, but it never got to finish since Gertrude blew it up. In order to work and bring together all the fears, the pit would have to consume some element of all of them. The simplest way to do this would probably be to prepare sacrifices that have been marked by all the fears; throw in someone that was consumed by bugs, someone who fell off a building, someone who anticipated their death their whole life, etc. The pit itself would probably be the focus in the new world, perhaps coming into being as some sort of creature. Or else the ritual could be altered and a person or animal consumes the flesh marked by fear, and that one would be the ruler of the new world. Whatever form it takes, the being of flesh would be fed fear in its physical form, consuming until it all runs out.

The Hunt was never able to complete the Everchase, because they didn’t want the hunt to end. Simply catching its prey probably wouldn’t be enough power for the ritual anyway, so the hunt would have to involve all the fears and coalesce into some great event that changes the world, then starts the chase all over again in the new world. The focus of power could be someone who is hunted by some aspect of each fear, then in turn hunts them. Maybe it takes the form of an arena of some kind, where 14 avatars are thrown in to kill each other, with the goal of the Hunter winning the fight. It would probably take a few tries, but the victor of the hunt would get to continue their chase once every fear enters the world. They could have their pick of victims, much like Daisy who traveled between domains, killing whoever she pleased.

The Lonely ritual involved isolating a bunch of people, with the goal of eventually cutting them off completely and leaving them the stew in their own fear. I think whoever the focus of power is, they would have to be alone right from the beginning of the ritual. They would go around and face each of the fears, being marked by them, all without any human contact except the avatars who hurt them. This would be difficult to orchestrate unless the person was willing, but their isolation would bring the fears together with the Lonely in charge. They would rule over the new world by themselves, of course, never interacting directly with any of their victims but still benefiting from their fear. The world itself would probably be very spread out, with most of the people being fed on having to face their fears alone, except for where being around others is involved in their fear.

The Slaughter ritual began and ended with World War II, called the Risen War. It’s implied that it failed because the ship it took place on wasn’t blown up in the end, but I think people deciding to end the war had something to do with it as well. I think the ritual could only succeed if the people involved fully commit to the fighting, and of course if it is able to involve the other fears as well. This would probably involve something similar to my idea for the Hunt; a massive fight involving avatars of all 14 fears. The Hunt’s fighting would play out a little differently, with the main focus being tracking down and killing their prey, but the Slaughter’s ritual would just be an all out bloodbath. The focus of the ritual, which will be called the Soldier, would have to fight and be injured by all 14 fears, but emerge victorious and bring them all into the world. The Soldier would have the power to kill anyone with ease, although the domains would probably bring back its victims to be killed over and over again. The new world could even be structured like a war, with the Soldier leading the fight against anyone and everyone, fears fighting amongst themselves for more power.

The Spiral attempted to create a world that didn’t make sense in the Great Twisting. I think the construction itself could have included all the other fears, like 14 monuments to each of them. I can’t imagine marking a single person to be very powerful, because to be closely affiliated with the Spiral, their mind would be changed in a way that would probably make them process fear differently. It could work, but I think focusing the power on the ritual itself would be more effective. Maybe the sacrifices they brought could be avatars of other fears, each thrown into the Distortion’s hallways and absorbed into its being. The ruler of the new world would be something not quite a person, not quite a structure. Victims would be thrown around different domains to disorient them, and the laws of physics probably wouldn’t work right. Imagine a scary funhouse with different fears there to scare you, and that’s probably what being in the fearpocalypse ruled by the Spiral is like.

The Stranger would have a bigger version of the Unknowing. The original idea had only a dancer, a choir, and a powerful skin artifact. I think if they wanted to include all the fears, the performance would have to be expanded to include something that represents all of them. They could have a puppet act for the Web, some kind of shooting display for the Slaughter, maybe a gross animal show for the Flesh. I’m imagining a whole carnival of fear, maybe one that goes on for a few days to build up power. Since the dancer is the center of power for that ritual, I think she would have to be the one marked by all the fears as well. Or maybe just their presence in the ritual would be enough, I don’t know. The final result, instead of having an eye watching everything, maybe would have the Dancer in charge, drawing power from every being that feeds on fear.

The Vast tried to throw a bunch of people in a submarine, but even Fairchild said that was probably not well thought out. I usually have this one mirror the Buried though, so let's say the ritual is to throw someone marked by the fears into some kind of vast space. It could be the ocean, the sky, space, whatever is scariest for that person. The new world would probably be very open and not have a lot of ground, but enough for other fear domains to exist.

Finally, the Web also avoids a ritual because it likes the world how it is, but that's not entirely true based on what we learn by the end of the series. It has a hand in completing the Eye's ritual not because it wants all the fears in this world, but because it wants all the fears bound together so it can escape into another world. It knows that in a world with the fears, at least the way the Eye designed it, life and fear is finite, so it wants somewhere that it can always survive. I think if it took the time to plan, it could figure out a ritual that would bring the fears and make it a renewable source of energy. It must be possible, Annabelle even said that she thought the Eye was a bit simple, which makes me wonder why the Web wouldn't just do the ritual itself. It was likely missing some information, or it just wasn't in it's nature to take over like that. But for the sake of this argument, let's say the Web did figure out how to bring the fears into this world and not run out of people. Maybe just let them age and have babies. They would need someone marked by the fears, and would probably be able to do it the fastest if it decided to directly interfere. I could see the ritual itself involving weaving a sort of web, like connecting the strands of consequences together. The focus of power, the Weaver in charge, could pull the strands of the world and keep things running smoothly and efficiently, so that no one goes hungry.

[thebibliomancer]

Tides of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 25

Tides of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because some fire just proclaimed Tavra the true All-Maudra, the Vapra have joined the loosely affiliated resistance, and skekSa has our heroes back against a cliff. Two chapters left, tensions high!

Last times on book: Amri and co are on a quest to unify the Gelfling clans against the Skeksis. They’ve succeeded with the Sifa, the Dousan, and now the Vapra. But they’re cornered by skekSa the Mariner who is feeling a bit sore about the Sifa ditching her and wants to take Naia to use as political capital with the other Skeksis.

Chapter 25

Amri and the others fight to escape the clutches of skekSa, they don’t get out unscathed

skekSa stared, wide-eye, rage saturating her dark eyes and making her look more Skeksis than ever. Amri tried not to let it frighten him. Not now that they’d had their victory lighting the Vapra flame. All that was left was to escape the Mariner’s clutches. Survive, like Tavra had said.

Win condition: get the heck away.

Similar to the first book conclusion, having to escape the Hunter. Different from the second book where they planned to trap the Satirist to keep knowledge of the resistance secret longer.

Beating skekSa in a fight, not even a viable outcome.

For one, her sword is longer than Amri is tall. That’s a bit of a discouraging thing.

skekSa tries being ‘reasonable’ one last time, offering Naia a chance to surrender for the safety of the others but Naia refuses.

[skekSa] charged at Tae, swinging her sword. Even if its edge were not sharp, the sheer power and weight of it would crush a Gelfling if it struck. Tae leaped, wings taking her up so her toes touched the gleaming metal of the blade. She ran along the sword, leaping again and slashing with her dagger.

That’s some more choreography that I’d love to see in puppets.

It’d look silly if not execute well but maybe good silly.

There’s only so many ways you can portray a small individual fighting a much larger one and its not like Yoda’s method of jumping around everywhere like a grasshopper doesn’t look silly if you’re not in the moment.

Naia runs to help Tae hold off the Mariner and Amri runs to take care of Kylan.

Kylan being Kylan, his first concern is to stop skekSa from destroying any more trees after the trees helped send the message but Tavra chides him they have to save themselves first.

Problem being they’re backed up against the cliff, they don’t see Onica’s lantern down in the ocean, and all the fliers are trying to knife fight a behemoth.

skekSa doesn’t give them space to think about it either, she dashes in and tries to split Amri in half. He tries to block with Tavra’s sword but the Skeksis wrenches it from his hand with the hook on her sword.

Not ideal.

Naia and Tae attack her again and do some damage but she just jumps away from Tae and throws Naia off of her. Fighting Skeksis is hard.

Tae tells Tavra to protect the others and keep lighting the fires no matter what happens and then dives against skekSa from the air.

Tae’s dagger bit. skekSa’s sword flipped into the air, and Amri caught his heart in his teeth when he saw that the Skeksis’ severed hand still clutched the hilt as it flew.

skekSa screamed. She grasped the stump where her hand had been.

“How dare you!” she cried, over and over. “HOW DARE YOU!”

Well, uh, plus side is that now she can get a hook hand to add to her piratey aesthetic?

Minus side is the Swimmer just lost a hand too.

Other minus side, Skeksis have four arms. Two usually vestigial but like the Hunter, the Mariner engages in vigorous exercise in the brisk outdoors and hasn’t had arm atrophy.

Amri tries to warn Tae when he sees the movement but is too late.

One of skekSa’s smaller arms slipped out from the Skeksis’ coat. Something flashed, and a BOOM rang through the mountain air. A cloud of smoke exploded from skekSa’s hip, blasting Tae off her feet. She crashed into one of the Waystar trees, leaving a red mark on its glowing white bark where she struck. Then she fell into the snow and did not rise.

The smoke cleared. skekSa coughed and reached into the depths of her coat again, drawing out a leathery, egg-shaped device and holding it in her tiny palm. Her breath rasped in anger and pain, her blood still falling on the white snow. She stumbled to one knee.

“I can’t believe this,” she panted. “Can’t believe it one bit.”

Holy crap! Guns exist? Skeksis have guns??

This is even weirder than the Emperor doing force lightning.

Guns!

And here I was joking about her improving her piratey aesthetic when she had a gun up her sleeve!

A weird, egg-shaped gun.

The tech level of this world sure is unusual.

-rereading- Oh! Its a grenade!

Yeah, that’s more in keeping with what we have/will see. But geez, she hit Tae with a grenade. Poor Tae.

Also, sure she got blown up for it, but props to Tae for taking off an entire hand in one go.

Down below in the bay, Onica’s lantern has finally arrived and Naia says that their best chance is to fly down. Except now they’re down one flier and have two non fliers to convey.

skekSa throws another egg-shaped grenade, which Amri blocks by throwing a branch in its path. The explosion still knocks him on his ass because that’s what explosions DO.

And by the time he recovers, skekSa reaches them.

She had found her sword, held it in the hand that was intact, carelessly bleeding from the other as if it meant nothing.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said slowly, her blade tasting the snow at her feet. Her voice turned hard at the end, wicked as her sword. “I told you we had a deal -- you ungrateful fool.”

Huh.

I can almost believe she means it.

The Mariner takes a swing but she’s blocked by someone with a Vapra sword and then has her sword knocked off the cliff.

skekSa is having a really bad day.

[Amri’s] eyes were still hazy, trying desperately to focus. But even so, he could see how stood between them and skekSa: a Sifa with hair gold as the sun, holding Tavra’s sword. Shining on her neck was a crystal spider, silver and blue as the moon.

The ringing dulled enough that Amri could hear Tavra’s words, stern and commanding in Tae’s voice.

“Get out of here, to the cliff,” she said. “Run! Fly!”

!!

Tavra spidered Tae!

I guess Tae is alive from being exploded? If her body is still capable of being spidered and fighting?

skekSa tries to lunge past TavraTae to get Naia but without weapons and against someone with a sword who knows how to use it, she’s stymied.

The Mariner even grabs a tree branch and tries to use that to swat TavraTae, without success.

Naia follows TavraTae’s advice and grabs Kylan and jumps off the cliff.

And after breaking from the fight with superior mobility, TavraTae grabs Amri and jumps too.

Amri having a lot of trouble reconciling in his mind Tavra and Tae because its Tavra but looks like Tae and plus he might have a concussion.

Naia still is the Drenchen whose wings have only just come in and haven’t been strenuously tested much so she’s having trouble doing more than slowing down her and Kylan’s fall. Its a nice touch that that’s remembered two books later.

But TavraTae glides close so Amri can take Naia’s hand and they can all glide down together.

As soon as they land on the boat, Tae crumples, probably Tavra abandoning controlling her as soon as its not a life or death situation. Because of ethics. And because moving her around when she’s been exploded can’t be good for her explosion wound.

Naia immediately starts trying to heal her, only pausing so they can all move inside the cabin where its warm.

In the end, the glowing eased and Naia put her hand on Tae’s forehead.

“I’ve healed her body,” she said, brow creased with pain. “But she was deeply injured by that explosion. Even though I’ve mended her cuts and broken bones, her mind still sleeps. I cannot even sense her dreams. I don’t know when she will wake... if ever.”

It was hard to imagine. The Sifa merely looked as if she were sleeping.

“I didn’t mean to...,” Tavra began. She rested on Tae’s cheek, glistening like a tiny moon in a cloud of sun-gold hair. Amri sighed and shook his head. The moon had eclipsed the sun during a storm in Ha’rar, after all.

What a weird prophecy.

In the end, it turns out it wasn’t a prophecy of a sweet, sweet romance. But a premonition that Tae would eventually be body-jacked by a spider that was really a cool Vapra.

Goes to show, prophecies aren’t straightforward. Unless they’re incredibly straightforward. Like the one from the movie.

But sometimes they’re poetic because fate doesn’t like you screwing with it.

Amri tells Tavra that this isn’t her fault because she did all the right things and saved the group which is what Tae would have wanted and which she’ll definitely confirm when she wakes up.

Buuuuuut, the plot hasn’t stopped happening just because there’s like four pages left in the book.

You’d think it would and we’d be winding down and figuring out what to do next. But no.

A familiar metallic whistle shrills through the air. A whistle that Amri knows exactly what it foretells.

Amri ran out onto the deck, followed by the others. The ship trembled as the sea shook. He grabbed hold of the rigging on the ship as waves rolled out from the ocean and crashed across the back of an enormous black shell. A deafening moan trembled through the water and echoed against the steep cliff. Terror shot through Amri’s body as a behemoth mouth rose from the depths, water gushing from its enormous hooked-beaked maw.

It gaped, spreading its jaws. The ocean churned, sucked into the black abyss of the creature’s throat. Onica’s ship was caught in a vortex of inescapable currents, and Amri watched the slowly brightening sky disappear as the monster ship closed its jaws, swallowing them into a sea of darkness.

COME ON!

This is where the denouement is supposed to go! And you go and release the kraken on them?

You’re persistent, skekSa! You’re very persistent!

[x-wanderingsouls]

                                           ATTICUS BRAUN (RETIRED)

Age: 38

Species: Werewolf

Affiliation: Wolf Faction

Occupation: Gets paid doing the dirty in the shadows stuffs

Relationship status: Single

Sexuality: Straight 

FC: Alexander Dreymon

About Atticus 

Born in Berlin, Atticus’s parents were killed when he was one by two vampires who were definitely fucking nuts and decided they wanted to have themselves a wee baby. They named him Atticus Braun, not knowing the name his human parents had given him. 

They raised him, bringing him along on their travels and began using him when the boy was five, getting him to lure in humans for their games and drank from the boy whenever they saw fit. The male was especially cruel, didn’t like how his progeny took to the boy and cared for him more. 

Despite the abuse and slavery, they trained him in combat, wanting him to protect them as well and educated him to the best of their abilities while teaching him languages. Atticus is fluent in English,  German, Russian, French and Spanish. 

The vampires were going to turn Atticus at a suitable age, the male vampire relishing in being able to command him and his other progeny forever, though at age twenty, Atticus defended his ‘father’ from a hunter when they family had come to New York as he was compelled to do, triggered his unknown werewolf curse and broke free from the compulsion. Atticus was lost in the newfound rage and everything that had happened and because it took everyone by surprise, he was able to kill his father and the woman who had been somewhat kind to him. 

On his own, Atticus began seeking out vampires to kill them, unable to lift the anger of the past twenty years, though he sought out those that were abused like he had been. Was unaware of the factions, of the numerous species that lived in New York. 

Did this for five years, living off the vampire’s money and killing vampires, continuing to get stronger but without any real purpose. 

Was found by Gray at age twenty-five, the silver haired wolf coming across Atticus when he had bit off more than he could chew with a much older vampire. The pair took it down and Gray introduced himself, telling Atticus of the pack, the life they had built and for some reason, Atticus trusted the man right away; he didn’t know what else to do. 

Has been in the pack for thirteen years and quickly became the man that wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty having lived that life almost since birth and knowing no other way. Didn’t want a ranking in the pack, just wanted to be useful and to make sure no one went through what he did. 

Does the dirty jobs, the one’s Gray, August and Rob shouldn’t be seen doing or one’s they simply don’t want to. Think Tig from SOA for sure. Kills without thought unfortunately. 

Adores pack life, being part of something bigger than himself but just fancies himself a cog in the wheel. 

Doesn’t hate vampires, knows a lot that he killed could have been innocent but won’t take shit from them. 

Has bite marks and scars that cover the entirety of his body from when his ‘parents’ fed from him, abused and trained him but wouldn’t heal him. 

Though seen as a brute at times, is quite intelligent and values that in others. Still practises some of the teachings his parents taught him and makes sure to keep his mind sharp. They were all he knew for twenty years and at times he misses them. 

Connections 

Wolf Pack: Obviously knows all the wolves. Is loyal to Gray and whoever he trusts. 

Friends/Enemies/Lovers all needed/wanted. 

Maybe a conflicted vampire relationship. He does relate to them somewhat at times because of his upbringing and feels comfortable in that world. 

Someone who could have known his parents, or people they met on their travels.

Idk, stuff? Gimme stuff. 

[peter-pan-hoe]

Old Friends Pt 1

Guess Who’s Back Bitches

(Sorry for calling you bitches im just very excited. I love every single of of yall and Im so happy you guys have stuck around during this ridiculous hiatus and i hope to be posting more soon. I just got off my ass today and was like “Alright ya cow its time to write” and i did. Here is the oldest request ive had waiting in my inbox for literal years im so sorry this took so long. Here is part one of what will hopefully be a new series. I’ve taken it in a different direction to start with but i will be swinging it around to meet the request in later parts. So happy to be back. Ive missed you. I love you. Here we go xx)

“So like maybe Peter, y/n, an all the lost boys are having this huge dinner, hanging out and that, and then somehow, for revenge, The Dark One sends one of Peter’s old lovers to the island. That night Peter sneaks off to greet the girl who is STILL in love with him, maybe she puts him under her spell to forget about the reader and then they like almost do da nasty or something and I guess I can leave you to the rest.”

Requested by @bellakae

Warnings: swearing, legit like one f-bomb

I did my best to make Y/N gender neutral but being a cis female I may have missed some gender identifiers when editing and I apologise 

tag list:  @dina3s @just-meh-and-me-dogs @xcastawayherosx @lexymeg

sorry to anyone i forgot. I couldnt find all the asks or my updated tag list. Comment bellow or dm me if you want to be added to the tag list xx

 Every time there’s a new batch of lost boys, or ever just one, to arrive on the island, we have a welcome feast.

The hunter and forager boys gather as much stuff they can find and the cooks put together a huge meal. Given out of the 47 of us that there’s only 6 cooks, we usually have some extra to help out.

When there’s a big group it’s usually because Peter went to the mainland to find boys and bring them here because they weren’t happy at home.

There was that time that 5 or six boys rocked up because they made their way here together.

But if it’s just the one boy, they’re the believers. The ones who wished their way here.

This time around however was because Peter had gone to the mainland.

He usually seemed very happy whenever he came back.

Well no less happy than usual.

He wasn’t sad or angry or quiet like today.

When he returned early this morning with the latest group of boys, he came into our shared hut and stared out the window until morning.

Usually if it’s a late night he would have woken me up to say he was back.

He hadn’t needed to wake me up this time as him simply entering the room had roused me. But he didn’t even look over at me as he walked passed our bed to his little seat on the window sill.

I figured something must be up so I sat up and pretended I hadn’t heard him come home.

  “Oh hey,” I said, faking a yawn. “When did you get back?”

He looked at me with a forced smile.

  “Just a little while ago,” he hopped down from his perch by the window and came to sit beside me. “Did I wake you?”

He gave me a gentle kiss on the head and the leaned down to untie his boots.

  “No I don’t think so,” I lied and shook my head. “I just woke up and you were there,”

He didn’t say anything as he kicked of his boots and put his feet up on our bed.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked. “You seem a little distracted,”

  “yeah I’m alright,” he sighed. “Just ran into an old friend while I was out getting the new boys,”

  “Okay 2 things,” I started. “First is, how are the boys? And how many? And the second thing, was this old friend still a friend or are you not on good terms?”

  “They boys are good,” he replied with a stifled yawn.

I could tell he was very tired, but not his usual physical exhaustion. He seemed tired in his mind.

  “I brought home 14 boys,” he continued. “The youngest 7 and the oldest 17,”

  “That’s a lot,” I said sadly. “All those boys – a 7 year old – lost and lonely,”

  “Mmm,” he nodded in agreement.

  “So what about your friend?” I pressed carefully.

I don’t want to upset him.

  “I’m not really sure,” he sighed. “We didn’t end on good terms but she seemed happy to see me. She even wanted to come back here with us,”

This answer surprised me.

  “She?” I asked nervously.

  “Yeah,” he looked at me apologetically. “Clara. An old… partner of mine,”

  “Partner as in lover?” I asked. “I don’t mind you talking about your ex’s. I’ve got some too y’know,”

I tried to lighten the solemn mood with a giggle.

  “You mean I’m not your first love?” he feigned shock, gasping dramatically and putting his hand over his heart.

  “Oh but you are the truest,” I collapsed into his chest with a laugh.

He held me tight as he lay back on our bed, so I was leaning back onto him.

  “But yes, to answer your question,” he said as he absentmindedly played with a few strands of my hair. “Clara was my old lover. She was someone I met a long time ago,”

I thought about how things would have been with Peter and this Clara.

  “Did she live here like me?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Like I’d told him, I don’t have an issue with him having past lovers. I mean who doesn’t?

  “No,” he said quietly. “We weren’t really bonded like you and I are,”

  “So how did you see her?” I asked as I reached up to brush some of my hair back.

  “Made more trips to the mainland I guess,” he shrugged. “I still only picked up new boys once a month but I went to see her weekly,”

  “But you two weren’t romantically affiliated?” I questioned.

  “Well I wasn’t,” he admitted with a guilty face. “She was very emotionally invested in our… relationship. Whereas I was not,”

  “Oh Peter…” I sighed. “Did you break her heart?”

  “I guess,” he shrugged again. “She started getting really clingy. She didn’t want to come here. I never really found out why but she insisted that our meeting were to take place on the mainland. She began asking me to stay for longer periods of time. Once to the point that Felix came to find me because Neverland’s weather started to turn to a freezing winter. She’d convinced me to stay for weeks at a time more than once,”

  “But she was the only one romantically invested?” I reiterated.

He gave a solemn nod.

  “That’s fucked,” I lay back in the bed and yawned. “How did the encounter go this time?”

  “She seemed the same,” he said carefully. “Like she didn’t even remember that we ended badly,”

  “How so?” I pressed.

  “I came across her in a town market and she ran to me like she was so happy to see me,” he continued.  “She ran to me and wrapped her arms around me like she used to when we hadn’t seen each other for a time. I’m not sure she even realises how long its been,”

He became quiet, thinking.

  “How long has it been?” I could feel my eyelids getting heavy and my voice came out as almost a whisper.

  “Thirty odd years or so,” he brushed some loose hairs from my face, just touching for the sake of touching. “But she left so quickly this time I didn’t even have a chance to ask her why she seems this to be like this. She just said she had errands to run and had to go. That she would see me soon,”

  “That sounds ominous,” I mumbled.

I was processing as much of this as I could in my tired state. I suppose Peter could sense that I was barely awake.

  “Go back to sleep, love,” he kissed my forehead. “We can talk more about it in the morning. Sleep Y/N, we have a big day of celebration to prepare for tomorrow,”

He didn’t have to tell me twice as id already started to drift off from him gently stroking the side of my face.

[retrocontinuity]

rev, rev, fight the power: thoughts on the first half of chainsaw man

Spoilers through the end of the Bomb Girl Arc.

Devil Hunting in the Age of Fascism

As one of the cohosts of a podcast on Gundam Wing in 2020/2021, I've been thinking a lot about how authoritarian regimes and the concept of societal control is treated in anime. Which is to say: usually in a very limited sense, and based on the actions of a few bad actors, as demonstrated with its effects on a few unfortunate protagonists. It's not that creators don't care about the issue, but rather a sign that the genre (and yes, I do consider manga/anime to be a genre more than just a medium, but that's for another time) and its conventions are not particularly well-suited to showing you those effects.

So, Chainsaw Man. On an individual character level, Fujimoto has some stuff to say about the choice between death and life, and I do want to talk about that and what it says about the characters and what life means in CSM. But it's hard to tell whether or not he meant to create a world with some really fucked up institutions too. 

For instance, the civilian, non-public sector Devil Hunters. These appear to be explicitly authorized by the Japanese government, to the point where it is a crime for the Public Safety division's hunters to kill a devil that a civilian is in the process of capturing. They don't have guns (this is Japan!) and I imagine they are only allowed to kill Devils, but just, like, think about this. What if you kill someone else in the process of trying to kill a Devil? What if you suspect someone is a Fiend but actually they're just acting weird? What if you kill someone, then claim later it's because you thought they were a Devil?

This is likely the American in me talking, but I can’t help thinking about how badly this would be abused and how horrible an idea that would be. And I can’t help but think about how the Devils allow the world of CSM to separate fears from human nature. By which I mean, in the world of CSM, evil is otherized in a very specific way; they’re represented by very individual, very distinct, and very monstrous representations. Here is the fear of scissors, the fear of sharks, the fear of the future, and so on. But in the real world, we know it isn’t just fear itself that is the problem; it’s people, well-meaning or otherwise, animated by those fears that create the most evil, or people harnessing those fears to gain power. This may be unfair—I don’t know what Fujimoto has planned for Makima, whose mythos and power seems very much wrapped up in the idea of using Devils to her own advantage. But there’s an assumption here that all actions taken towards eradication of the Devils, or maybe just one Gun Devil, is a de facto good. And in 2021, that’s a very unnerving position to take.

Death in Chainsaw Man is a sacrifice. In these early arcs of the series, death is a "contract," an expending of activation energy to achieve something else. So Pochita gives Denji life (which is really a contract repaid, for when Denji gave him life), so the Devil Hunters "trade" something in a contract with a Devil for power (like Aki giving away literal years of his life to his curse sword), so Denji dying to the Eternity Devil would have freed the rest of the team. But there are plenty of deaths in the series where nothing is traded, nothing is given. These tend to be nameless victims or, in one harrowing scene, convicted felons who die at the hands of Makima as she chases down Katana Devil. 

What did they gain? What was the contract formed by the deaths of these 雑魚?

Makima says at some point when she's attacking the gangs that are affiliated with the Katana Devil that "the truly necessary evils are always kept collared and controlled by the state." Which I think is at its face about the fiends and Devils kept “collared” by the Public Safety Bureau. But maybe it’s also about the idea of sacrifice, about giving yourself over to the state, in order to control a world thrown into chaos. The contracts formed by the deaths of those ordinary citizens is meant to bring about an eradication of fear. It gives birth to the Public Safety Devil Hunters, to Devil Hunters in general, to the use of whatever means necessary to achieve an end. But whatever those consequences are, we only see them in the fates of Denji, Chainsaw Man, and the impossible characters around him. 

A state under threat, a state that feels like it must collar evil in order to survive, will have ruinous consequences. I just hope we get to see what those are. 

Just A Teenage Dirtbag, (Bomb) Baby

I read some reviews about Denji being the anti-shounen shounen manga hero which I can presume were written by people whose only frame of reference is Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece. Sure, the Big Three were, in their most simplistic forms, feel-good series, and CSM's first half is basically a feel-bad series, but that hardly makes it unusual. It's really not dissimilar from other manga like Homunculus, Freesia, and Oyasumi Punpun. Of course, only old fogies like me, who still remember getting scanlations of these series off of IRC, and query, of course, whether or not those series are shounen at all, or more like seinen. If it were up to me to name the genre, and of course it is not, I would call it “simply another line of stories about fucked up things happen to fucked up people.”

Many fucked up things have happened to Denji. I’d call it traumatic, but I don’t think “trauma” covers what this poor man has been through. The effect, though, has been to make Denji less than human, even in his human form.

Denji and Power's nonchalance towards the fate of their human coworkers who die to Katana Devil and Sawatari is framed by the manga through Denji as a potential sign of callousness. Kishibe notes it as a sign that they are "insane," in other words, "not like other humans," and thus capable of bringing down something like the Gun Devil, which would otherwise drive "normal humans" insane. 

But like, huh? Denji and Power's reactions are, on the contrary, extremely human, because there’s no reason for them to extend feeling towards other humans. Simply put, they’ve never been human to the humans around them. They seem to be bonded most closely to each other, and in fact almost all the Fiends are, because the wider Public Safety employees treat them so poorly. Remember how the Infinity Devil Arc starts? Basically, they're told to be the advance guard, and threatened to be killed if they ever act out. Denji is kept on a short leash, and is so proud (in front of Reze) that he's allowed to go places on his own now.

Which, I'm not saying that that's wrong. Denji is incredibly dumb, holds monstrous power that could easily be tricked into using for horrible purposes, and appears to be the target of a number of Gun Devil's allies. Power is... well. I wouldn't let her out of sight either. But what Makima does that makes Denji feel so loyal, so utterly tied to her, is simply treating him as a human. She convinces him he has a heart, just like any other human. She tells him about all the love experiences he'll have in the future, because he's just a human teenager. And just like Makima, Reze is able to bond with Denji by treating him like an ordinary 16-year-old horny boy. Is it because as a Devil she knows what he wants the most? What he is craving, and never had? It doesn't matter that Denji had been just an ordinary human before fusing with Pochita or before he began his life as a Devil Hunter; as an orphan growing up on the street, unwanted and unloved, he was no more human than a Devil.  

The ending of the Bomb Girl Arc—with Denji asking Reze to run away with him, only to be stood up—reminded me so very much of Aku no Hana. There's the classroom scenes between Reze and Denji, of course, but mostly I think about how Denji—betrayed, injured, manipulated Denji—still asks Reze to run away with him. I'd written about Aku no Hana before, how one of the saddest things about Nakamura is that she cannot imagine a world beyond her current circumstance (and, in fact, the manga ends up dooming her to stagnation). Denji and Reze are Nakamura and Kasuga's perverse mirror. It is because Denji doesn't have the capacity to imagine a larger world beyond his immediate now, three meals a day and a job and this woman who taught him how to swim, that he asks her to do this impossible thing, to run away with him knowing that to do would mean both of them betraying their masters. It is because Reze knows that it is impossible that she does not meet Denji at the cafe. Reze is more human than Denji, because she is capable of dreams, and because she is capable of dreaming, she knows she cannot afford their luxury. She knows too much about the world and its cruelty. And, so, she walks straight into its open maw, and straight into her death.

I don't think we can take Reze at her word that she wanted to be a town mouse, or rather we should say instead that Reze proves that the division between the town mouse and the country mouse is immaterial. The issue is that both, in the end, are only mice, dreaming of a safety they can never achieve. Safety, in the world of CSM, is neither town mouse nor country mouse. It is to not be mice at all. It is to be the dog that digs them out from the cold winter dirt. 

It is, in fact, to be Makima, the person who orders the dogs to kill the mice.

Denji, aim for the top! Transcend the town mouse/country mouse divide! Or else you will constantly be hunted and used!

(Side note: CSM goes at a break-neck pace, and I think the speed through which Fujimoto rushes through these early storylines has made it very difficult for me to actually connect with the characters. Reze and Denji’s relationship is one of the victims to this pacing. Do I believe that Denji could fall for a girl and be willing to risk it all for her after about 3 chapters worth of interaction? Sure, he’s that kind of guy. But does it work for me? Not particularly. We’ve hardly had time to linger with Reze before she swears she’ll protect Denji forever, as long as he’ll run away with her. Though the reader at that point knows there’s something off about Reze, it’s still just not believable. Reze’s actions seem like someone trying to bulldoze her way into Denji’s affections, and though she herself is a bittersweet character, I just really feel like CSM could have spent less time with Bomb Devil vs Chainsaw Man and more time with Reze and Denji.)

No Ethical Women Under Capitalism

The Eternity Devil arc, for all its mini-boss game feel (it wouldn’t be out of place as one of the floors in Tower of God), struck a nerve with me, if only because it felt, however unintentionally, to be a story about working under modern capitalism. A floor you can never leave, that loops endless, where the only way to escape is to destroy it, literally, from the inside, by making it so painful, an eternal feedback loop of destroying ourselves and destroying it, before it opens its heart to us. The Capitalism Devil threatens us, tries to tear us apart. Asks us to sacrifice the strongest, the weakest, anybody among us, as if by climbing over the bodies of our friends and coworkers, we can come out ahead. It makes us suspicious of each other, ready to tear into any weakness for an advantage. 

No wonder this is the chapter where Kobeni lays bare her reasons for joining the Public Safety bureau. She needed to work, to make money. Her options were to be a sex worker or a Devil Hunter. Either way, she was selling her body to the system. Kobeni is a victim of capitalism, which forces her to do what she hates, for goal that are not hers, and then gaslights us into thinking that she’s wrong for being crazy, she’s wrong for losing her shit, for not being able to handle it.

But... that's an asspull for me, even if it's my ass and I'm the one pulling. I'm truly not sure how to feel about Kobeni. Like, what is her deal?! I’m not sure what to make of her appearance in Chapter 20 in her sister’s hand-me-down. Are we supposed to pity her? See ourselves in her? Even in what I think was intended to be a mic-drop-ish line (at least for her), telling Aki that she didn’t quit because she was waiting on her bonus, landed flat for me, too deadpan to be pathetic and not sharp enough to be actually funny. Part of it may be because she is a character very much shaped by her circumstances as opposed to her personality or any interaction/action she does onscreen, but we don’t actually see her family situation in these chapters. We’re left with a painfully shy and cowardly woman who can’t seem to form any human connections with any of the other characters, who in multiple scenes is shown caving to the slightest pressure or threat.

Do the rest of the women fare any better? I’m not sure. Kobeni is unique in that she does not use her gender/sex appeal to manipulate the men around her and/or Denji (even Power lets Denji cop a feel to get her cat back!). Himeno, Makima, and Reze all hide their intentions for Denji behind the veil of his attraction to them (weak or strong) and are either unable or unwilling to be forthright in their desires and ambitions (Himeno to care for Aki; Reze, to accomplish whatever mission Gun Devil had her set out to do; and Makima, for fuck do I know at this point, but she’s up to something!!). Meanwhile, the men are straightforward to a fault. Did Fujimoto intend this? Is this just a subconscious reveal of his own conceptions of gender and Bitches Be Weird? 

I’m not a person who needs to have a strong female narrative in a story, but when you start a story with a protagonist whose life ambition for many chapters was just to feel a boob, you better be careful, you know? CSM doesn’t lack for women; Makima and Power are both formidable characters in their own rights, self-assured and unbeholden to anyone but themselves. But so far almost every arc has featured a woman offering herself to Denji sexually in order to get him to do what they want. It’s getting real old real fast. 

[aangarchy]

The plotholes of book 3

Now I want everyone to hear me out on this one: book 3 is my favorite atla season. I bet it is for a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, far from it actually. This book has some of the biggest plotholes and things that generally do not make sense. My explanation is that this season might have been rushed, but we don’t know that for sure. I’m gonna be talking about these instances and explaining why I think they don’t make sense, and how I think they could have been improved. My opinions, nobody else’s. Feel free to agree or disagree, but do so respectfully. So strap yourselves in, this might be a long post.

1. The war meeting: Zuko joins the gaang right after the invasion happened. Right before this invasion, Ozai held a war meeting because he got intel from Azula about the invasion. There they also discussed what would happen after the invasion and how the comet would come into play. We only found out about what was discussed in this meeting 3 days before the comet, when Zuko chooses to tell the gaang about Ozai’s plan to burn down the world. Zuko however, had known about this for weeks, and only chose to share this information right when Aang decided he would face Ozai after the comet.

Now here’s where this doesn’t make sense to me: why in the hell would he not immediately tell this information as soon as he got to the gaang? Ozai’s plan to burn down the planet is the drop that made the bucket spill for Zuko, it was partially a reason for him to leave, as he didn’t agree with the plans discussed in that meeting. It would have been much easier for the gaang to trust Zuko if only he had opened with “hey I have important intel regarding the firelord’s plans for the comet, maybe it could be useful, also I can teach firebending.” This information is treated like an afterthought when it should have been discussed immediately after.

2. Nobody telling Zuko about the change of plans: this is piggy backing off of the first one. Zuko only told the gaang about Ozai’s plans after Aang and the rest reveal that they’re planning to defeat Ozai after the comet. This is news to Zuko. Why? Let’s say Aang decided he wasn’t ready after the play, seeing his character, although a caricature, die on stage. That must have been jarring for him, especially since everyone in that audience seemed so confident that this would be the outcome. Then we’ll say this play may have been a week, perhaps two weeks before the comet, as they still have time for “time wasting nonsense” to quote Sokka.

So what happened? Did Zuko go to bed immediately after the play and Aang broke the news when Zuko was asleep? Did nobody think “hey the avatar is about to give us important news maybe wake him up”? Did nobody think to tell him after? There’s absolutely no reason as to why Zuko doesn’t know that Aang made this decision, especially since everyone else, including Suki, is aware of it.

3. The southern raiders: this entire episode doesn’t make sense to me. I understand that we needed Katara and Zuko to bond, because Katara still didn’t trust him (with good reason) and in order to win the final battle, trusting each other plays a pretty big part. But going on a rogue mission to get revenge on the man that killed Katara’s mother is a bit of a stretch. First of all Katara and Zuko both act out of character, with Zuko making xenophobic comments towards Aang and Katara basically telling Sokka he didn’t love their mother enough. Second of all, Zuko and Katara basically bring the entire mission in jeopardy by running off and putting themselves in danger. What if they got captured, and now the firenation has the Avatar’s waterbending master AND the traitor prince in custody. What if they got followed back, and the army now knows the location of the Avatar?

Their first move is to invade a watchtower belonging to the fire nation on APPA. The BIGGEST animal you can possibly find. They steal an important map containing information of the positions of the raiders. Then they go to the southern raiders and attack the captain straight on, who even turned out not to be the guy they were looking for, and then they just LEAVE?? It’s not like that captain doesn’t know these people are affiliated with the Avatar, they flew in on APPA for crying out loud, the only flying bison known to exist, which everyone knows belongs to the Avatar. Then they go to a poor town in the firenation and stalk the killer, for Katara then to realise she can’t kill him and they return home, and afterwards they didn’t even apologise to Aang or Sokka for making snide remarks, stealing Appa and running off. Appa isn’t everyone’s pet, he’s Aang’s. They could have at least asked permission, which they didn’t. Aang even called them out on trying to steal Appa. He let them go after, which I still think is a mistake. This episode could have been done in many different ways, and having Katara and Zuko bond could have been done by just letting them TALK to each other. Vigilante justice missions should be the last thing on your mind when you’re about to embark on a mission of which the outcome will change the world forever.

4. Aang’s pacifist agenda: don’t get me wrong, Aang not wanting to kill the firelord makes complete sense, especially because he even refuses to eat animals. That’s not the part that seems off to me. What seems off to me, is that Aang only talked about not being willing to kill like 2 days before the comet. If he only realised he didn’t want to kill right then, what exactly was his plan for the invasion? Why does it seem like he’s prepared to do anything to end the war during the invasion, but right before the comet he gets to his senses and talks about not wanting to kill another human? If the invasion had succeeded, did everyone expect Aang to kill, and did Aang have a completely other plan? Did Aang think they were just gonna capture the firelord and be done with it? I feel like they should have been clearer about the invasion plan and wether or not the intention was to kill or not. “Defeat” the firelord is too vague, because it could mean a bunch of other things before it means kill. It’s not like the word “kill” is too harsh for Nickelodeon, hell they have an entire debate on to kill or not to kill right before the final showdown. So why was this even a debate? And why right before the finale?

5. Combustion man not listening to Zuko: this one’s a short one. Zuko was the one who paid combustion man to kill the Avatar. With that he also demanded this to be in silence, he didn’t want the world to know that Aang was still alive. It’s why combustion man burned down that letter when those two guards saw Aang and tried to warn the firelord by messenger hawk. So now let’s fast foreward to combustion man’s last fight at the Western Airtemple. He’s attacking everyone down below, and Zuko swoops in trying to stop him. Combustion man however, throws Zuko off with ease. Zuko tries to make him stop by telling him he’ll pay double. Combustion man doesn’t listen and even goes as far as to blast Zuko off of the cliff. What exactly is combustion man’s motivation to not listen to Zuko and continue attacking the gaang? Did he get a better offer from someone else, maybe the firelord? Did he find Aang’s wanted poster and realise the payment was more than what Zuko offered? He’s a mercenary, an assassin, he gets paid by other people to do the dirty work, it’s not like the writers established that he’s a bounty hunter. What was combustion man’s reason for ignoring his recruiter? Did he know Zuko was a traitor, and if he did, why did he care?

This is it for now, I know it’s not a scandalous amount, but it’s still a lot considering this is an otherwise very thought out show. Overall I think this book needed more communication in between characters, and more heartfelt scenes. It’s still my favorite season though.

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, leninille!

For @leninille. These are the first three chapters and a complete story within a new storyline I've got several chapter outlines for. All of this came up during development of this Secret Santa Exchange gift, and as more familiar faces are revealed, the tags will be updated accordingly.

Read On AO3

*****

Health Tonics and Love Gardens

Chapter 1 - The Stiles In The Garden

Stiles has been working on this garden for months. It is colorful now, with tiny bushes he'd groomed into shape and the better airflow they get without the other plants strangling the light and air from the garden. He's been restoring this garden to what it might have once been, and tried to keep remembering what his mom told him about the garden back home.

"These flowers may look nice, but they can also cause healing or harm." He thought in his mother's voice.

This specific phrase stuck with him, and usually when he's daydreaming and not paying attention to what he's saying, he'll speak the words and try to recall the exact details of the garden as it was when his mom was caring for it.

"Why?" he again remembers asking, and he says the same thing aloud every time this happens.

The details of the answer vary, probably because his child mind wasn't really any better at staying on target for even half the time his adult brain can do now. That means that his mom's voice answers the questing with different words, and the theme generally was: "Sometimes a little of a plant can help a person heal from an injury. Give them too much, and they will suffer, may come to harm, and could die."

It's the stinging nettle that his mother is indicating to him today. He looks at the plant in the present and gives it side-eye.

"A good cook can turn this nettle into a healthful tea."

Little Stiles can feel himself interrupt her. "I've made tea, mom. It's easy!" He used to be so excited about stuff. He was what... maybe eight years old when this happened?

He favors his mother's memory by having her always say something that humors the younger him.

"Yes! You can make very good tea. And thank you for doing it! But some teas we can make require very good care. A good cook like me knows how to prepare the stems, or the flowers, or pieces of the root all cut up into tiny pieces of any of these plants." She makes tickling fingers at him and he smiles at the recollection.

"What if the cook uses the wrong pieces?"

"Then instead of healing, maybe nothing will happen. But with some plants, you can make someone worse. They can be hurt forever, and might even die."

Little Stiles did not want to make that kind of tea, and he considered not ever being near tea again.

"Promise me, Stiles, that you will not try to make tea from anything that comes from this garden."

That was an easy promise to keep. The Stiles in his 20s, having these memories, appreciates how well his mother understood how he thought. Under her brief guidance, Stiles cultivated a voracious curiosity and analytical mind. He got over the worries about tea, eventually, but it wasn't until after this gardening thing started that he want and tried to learn more about exactly what were these plants in the plot and what kinds of tea could be made with them.

As he found out later, after many hours and days of looking through cookbooks and materials online, he started to feel like this was a medicinal garden instead of an herb garden for actual cooking.

"And never make tea with anything outside the garden without talking to me first, okay?"

Little Stiles nods again. At that age he loved strawberries, and he thought he might not worry so much about tea if he had some of the best tea with his mom right now. "I want to make the strawberry tea!"

"Oh! That sounds good."

Little Stiles helped Claudia put the tools away and gather the strawberries and lemon and sugar from their places in the kitchen. They talked about his day at school, and the memory always fades from there.

It is well more than ten years since that day and it's one of his favorite memories of his mother. Many memories stick because they sucked, or because he thinks about them so much he can't tell if they're real or if he made them up.

He does think it's odd that every week, at least once a week, Stiles is at this old burned house in the Beacon Hills Preserve, working on this garden, talking to himself to review what he's learned about these different plants, and making threats at the plants who he still can't identify or which are giving him troubles that day. He's still just as wary of the nettle, but they've got a grudging agreement not to bother each other. For the rest? He'll unlock their secrets soon enough.

It's fair to say that he lets his guard down at this point. Nobody's ever been around here. He expected there would be graffiti on the house or whatever, but no, it's just been the house and this garden, and Stiles taking care of the latter.

He clips a sprig of lavender and adds it to his bag with the rosemary, adds some heather blossoms, and mutters "Calluna" as he snaps them. It's their genus, and they're in the same family as rhododendrons. There are two of those in the yard, not close to the house.

His thought withers as he turns to the house and takes it in with a slow breath. It always seems like the house is watching him, but not seeing him. It's never felt threatening, just... omnipresent, he thinks.

This house was full of the potential of these many lives. The family suffered, and in his investigation into public records and police records ("Heya, daddio... Can I ask you a question?" being only the most direct route to the files, and not the only one he took), he had learned that the family's absence left some big holes in the town at the time.

Curiously, it was hard to find photos of any of the family members. Even social media didn't have much. The kids weren't in school yearbooks he could get hold of, and he's gone through everything he could find in the school archive, even the old student newsletters.

He had found a photo of Talia Hale. She was the mother and as far as he could tell, the kind of person everyone in town seemed to know and most respected. He had no idea that Talia's spouse looked like, having seen only the name "Blake Hale" and having no idea who that was.

The dusty family obituary Stiles found in the paper printed after the fire listed several dead. But the count doesn't match what the police logged, and that doesn't match the fire inspector's. The insurance company itself gave a third number in a quote taken by a reporter.

The situation didn't make sense to him, and it bothered him that nobody seemed to know what really happened here. How many Hales were impacted by the fire? Did any escape? The body counts ranged from fewer than ten to the low 20s. Nobody knew if there was a party that night because despite all the fresh vehicle tracks at the scene, there were very few vehicles in the driveway. So where did those other visitors go? The firefighters' work destroyed the scene and they couldn't find any tire tracks that might lead them in a useful direction.

And weirdest of all: He's still not found anything that even hints that his mother and the Hales were affiliated. So this garden and the exact matching one at home, which Stiles and his dad have somewhat neglected after many years of close attention, Stiles still doesn't know why he cares so much about this plot at the Hale house.

He'd explored the ruins many times in his months of gardening. The house sits still and aging, creaking wearily in the winds as it always does. The only trespassers seem to be him and the squirrels.

He tugs a threatening vine away from the garden and trims it back. It's probably a volunteer left by some bird.

On his first day here he didn't go in the house, but walked slowly around it, walking his blue bike as he walked the perimeter. It was coming around the back of the house when he caught the scent of a familiar combination of herbs and he discovered his garden out here in the woods.

It is exactly the same layout as at the Stilinski house, but these plants were overgrown and struggling, and the vines were getting close. As he got on his knees and started his first concerted effort at gardening the plot, he started trying to find answers to these two questions: "Why does this garden layout look identical to ours at home?" and, given that the garden does exist in both places, "How did the Hales know his mother?"

Derek doesn't know how to respond. He had never been an alpha, and would never be, so he'd mostly ignored those lessons when his mom and Laura talked about them. His alpha and sister in one being swore to him years ago that no matter how much they'd already lost, they'll always be near each other.

"Are you alright? Did you hear me?" she glances at him and pokes him. She feels the sensation of being mentally stunned, then gives him an annoyed look. "Why is this weird for you?"

He blinked at her. "You don't think it's weird that for years we've not even talked once about Beacon Hills and now you say that you've spent weeks fighting an unidentified and suspicious pull to return home for a few weeks?"

"No, I said a few months. Three or four, maybe. Who cares? It's still a calling."

Derek looked at her and asked the obvious. "Couldn't this be hunters?"

She shook her head. This wasn't aggressive magic, and she wasn't sure how she knew that. It was more than intuition, though... it was certainty. Werewolves are often sensitive to many kinds of magical activities that may happen around them or to them, and her enhanced abilities told her that this just wasn't like any of that. She considered an odd possibility.

"Maybe it's my wolf?"

Derek rolls his eyes. "We are werewolves, Laura. It's a gift of a greater life, not a spiritual possession."

"Hey, I know that there's no separate little spooky spirit inside any of us beyond what most people seem to think they have. But this is like..." She searches the room until her eyes land in the opposite corner. She points at the TV and clarifies, "It's like I'm getting a new channel, and it's focused on the wolfish instincts, not the human side. Can't you feel it, too?"

He shakes his head. There has been zero sensation of compulsion in Derek to return to Beacon Hills. He would be happy to never return. It was once a beautiful place, but that's lost with everything else and he doesn't want to find any of it again.

"Can you check the pack bond and tell me what you see?"

He glares at her, already tired of this conversation. The alpha sees different things in pack bonds than each member sees. Laura likes to learn what Derek sees, and tells herself that it'll come in handy when she's got a bigger pack. They haven't even tried to connect with any werewolves despite there being many free-roaming supernatural family hanging around. The Hales are a duo that nobody can mess with.

She's persistent, so he focuses and listens with his inner senses and finds the same pack bond with her that he's seen for years. It's identical to how it was before. Nothing new, nothing seeming magical beyond the usual. It's hard to believe her about this when he's got no evidence it's happening.

"Damn. I hate this. I wish I had an emissary to ask."

Derek doesn't know what to think about emissaries, and leans toward not-in-favor since theirs failed to protect them from the hunter assault that lead to his family's near-annihilation. This emissary was newer, replacing their former emissary who had died of a normal, terrible cause like brain cancer. Derek met the new guy once and hated how he smelled of animals and cleaning supplies. The man's day job was as head veterinarian at the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic.

Last time they talked about him, Laura recalled that he was mostly a quiet man, didn't like giving full answers, and Talia mostly found him annoying, though useful at times.

Derek stewed on the fresh thoughts of the vet being partly responsible for what happened. Now he's feeling some kind of pull to return, to demand answers, at the very least.

Magic, as far as Derek was concerned, has been far more bother than it's worth.

"I never liked Deaton, but he's all I know." Laura suggested.

"Oh, then all of this was your fault," Derek said in an attempt to lighten the mood. It took a second to realize that he just accused the emissary of letting the family come to harm because he and Laura didn't get along.

"No emissary and no wolf was responsible for what happened, Derek." That left only the implication of the hunter woman he'd let get too close.

With regard to that person, Derek only ever harbors stabbingly angry thoughts about what should happen to her. She'd lied, she'd taken advantage of his life inexperience, and in the end of it all, she failed to murder him with everyone else, and he simmered deep inside from a wound that hadn't healed. His eyes flash.

Laura doesn't look away. He's upset, and he's not great with expressing himself on the best of day. She doesn't flash her eyes back at him. She's not angry, she's sad that he keeps blaming himself.

Derek reads this on her face and understands. "Fuck!" he mumbles a disappointed apology. "It wasn't your fault." He punctuates the air more softly with a mumbled repeat of the exclamation.

"Derek." She has come to a conclusion and in that tone she's warning him to prepare himself for something he is going to dislike. "I think we need to go back. We'll be careful," she says as he gives her an irritated and skeptical. "We'll stay in another town, sneak in as wolves and investigate the Preserve and the house. Maybe check out Beacon Hills and," she said, conspiratorially, "get some donuts before we leave."

"Leave?"

"We don't have to stay. I just need answers."

He considers this. It's not a demand or a request, it's just what she's going to do and she knows he's coming with her. But the confectionary he'd not thought about in years comes back to him. "I forgot about the donuts! And because of you," he glares at her, "now I have to have one."

"Perfect!" she says. He makes a good show at faking indignation, but he's heading into his room and looking around. They weren't likely to come back, so he shoots a message to his boss about a family emergency and he starts packing.

She's looking from the main room at his back as he starts sorting things out. He's always the scaredywolf, and she starts to pull snacks together that they'll want for the long drive.

Chapter 2 - These Wolves Are Here To Play

"Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii've been working on the raaaaaaaaaaailroad!" the man shouts. "All the live-long daaaaaaaaayGAACK!" Choking sputters and spitting follows the interruption. The approaching wolves still and listen.

"What the crap?! I'm working on your stupid habitat here!" A triple spitting sound. "Leave me alone you big dumb m-moth!"

The wolves glance at each other and share a look that says, "This guy's got worse problems than his big, stupid voice."

Laura steps ahead, leading them closer, keeping the shrubs and other undergrowth between them and the person in the distance. This guy doesn't scream "Threat!" to anyone but himself, but even well-meaning people can lead to tragedy. It would be best, of course, if the guy happened to take off before they got near him.

But if he did, she warns herself, that could mean he knows they're coming. That would make him either a super or a magic user. If he stays for too long, they'll need to scare him out of there so they can take a look around.

Derek made a subvocal growl. He's always preferred the hostile approach to any conflict and she nudges him with a low-pitched growl of denial.

Derek huffs. He actually huffs at her.

What a whiny puppy.

"Rodzina," Stiles says to the wolf the second he realizes he's not alone.

And then he slaps his hand over his mouth, uncertain why he's speaking Polish. The wolf regards him, unflinching. "It's Polish for family." This creature is huge! Larger than any dog he's ever met, and it's broad and got a defined mane around its neck. It's a really beautiful and terrifying wolf. Oh, oh god. It's a freaking wolf.

The wolf glances at his chest and tilts its head at him. She seemed to know that word, somehow. How could that even happen? Well, he's happy she hasn't been all growly and dipping her head down and being mean.

"I'm sorry, but there's no food here, and I can't take you home and get you any." With real sorrow, since having a wolf pet would be totally awesome, but a really bad idea, he adds, "You're beautiful, but I can't can't have a pet."

The wolf chuffs at him.

What? A chuff! That's practically falling over with laughter in wolf terms, as far as Stiles is concerned.

"Hey! Don't chuff at me!" He's wiggling a finger at her. It's 10% aggression and 90% cowardice. He focuses on forgetting everything except that 10%. He nervously walks through his thoughts aloud because he can't help his mouth moving of its own accord at this moment.

"Okay, so fine, let's see... I'm gardening here, that's legitimately all I'm doing. No looking for secret treasure at the house or anything. You're coming here passing through or whatever, even though there haven't been wolves in this part of California in decades. I know you understand me, and you're pretending not to. But why don't you talk back?"

He is looking directly into her eyes before consciously realizing he's taking her measure. This is a specific thing he definitely remembers promising himself he'd never do if he were being challenged by a large predator in the wilderness. And yet, he's challenging this alpha wolf—

"You're an alpha wolf? How can there be alpha wolves when the whole scientific hypothesis was proven to be wrong?" He wants to ramble the name of the research article on the subject, and about the way the article was written, but manages to catch hold of his thought trains and redirect. "That's not important right now. It's crazy enough that I somehow know you can understand me clearly."

She's a smart wolf. Human-equivalent intelligence, for sure. She tries not to tilt her head in an approximation of doggy confusion, but it's a projection. Odd how that he's here gardening and along comes this alph—

"WEREWOLF?! You're a werewolf?!"

Stiles describes this later to his father as, "when all hell breaks loose."

The alpha wolf lifts her lips and growls at Stiles, who is immediately cowed. She's joined half a second later by another large wolf, slightly smaller than her as he is a beta, but he's also got very long and sharp and they're massive and this is a very bad place for him to be right now!

"Shit! I'm not delicious! Don't eat me!"

The alpha stops growling again, and seems to be shaking. The other wolf snarls at her. She snarls back.

Of fucking course! "You're siblings?" Okay, that's it, you need to tell me who you are. Between cautiouswolf and hyperprotective wolf," indicating the alpha and the beta in order, "who the hell are you?"

The beta keeps growling but defers reluctantly to the alpha. She studies Stiles, looking at him and not laughing wolfishly anymore. There's no hint of threatening demise, just curiosity.

It would be too far to say it's quite trust, but it's the recognition that the confusion is mutual and that there is no threat.

Stiles also looks at this as another opportunity to try to talk himself out of the situation. He gives explaining himself another try.

"I was here by accident the first time, and then I found the garden," he waves over to it, easily seen from where all three wolves stood. The beta wolf didn't take his eyes off Stiles, but the alpha regarded his handiwork without apparent comment and resumed studying Stiles.

"Keep talking," was the obvious implication. Order. It was definitely an order, and Stiles agreed that he should continue.

"My mom planted a garden exactly like this one at home. So finding such a unique one out here, at the site of," he looks at the house and murmurs, "really bad stuff is just weird." He feels his cheeks tighten and get heavy and a tear slips down his cheeks. "She died before she told me what all the plants are for. As far as I know she didn't even know the family." He turns around, letting embarrassment at his own emotions put his unguarded back at risk of wolfish sneak-attack.

There's a shuffling noise behind him that tugs his attention back and he wipes his face. It's blotchy, and gross, he's sure, but he's looking at the wolves.

Something quiet happened here while he was turned around. The male wolf is looking almost... ashamed in some way, and the alpha turns back to Stiles after a staredown with the beta and seats herself a step closer to Stiles.

He decides not to mention that moving closer is just as terrifying than all of the other scary things they've done because the seated pose is probably just a ruse to get him when he's vulnerable, but...

Thump.

That was a tail. He looks around her sitting form as if trying to find her tail. Her expression reads as, most likely, "You seriously need to chill." Off to the side, the beta just looks mean as ever and ready to chew on his soft and fleshy neck.

He pulls his phone out and texts his dad. He holds up a finger to the wolf who'd risen to her feet again.

"No, just a minute. My dad's expecting me and I need to let him know that I'll be a little late. I'm not telling him about our little one-sided conversation, which you really should join, by the way." The wolves seemed mollified, if not satisfied with the answer. Neither rises to the bait and starts speaking, so the beta keeps his ears rotating around, listening for danger, and the alpha's ears are firmly oriented in his direction.

"Do you know this place?" The ear flick of the alpha and the glance at the house let him connect some dots. "The Hale family lived here and you knew them."

For the next several minutes, Stiles explains what he has learned of the Hales from his look into the school archives, the police and fire reports, the insurance report he'd acquired through a friend of a friend who shall all remain nameless. He tells of the obituary and the news stories and the details that don't make sense.

He's speculating and journeying down educational, if difficult to follow sidetracks, and mentions one detail that catches the wolves' complete attentions. It was about the catatonic John Doe found a few days later a short walk from the highway.

"Oh? Uhh, I just think maybe there's a connection between that John Doe and the Hale fire. There's too many weird details, things that haven't happened at any other time in this town or probably any town. It's tidy and messy at the same time. I don't trust that."

He's been looking at things on his phone that are pictures or notes or scans of things he's found and looks for the rest of what he discovered about that John Doe.

"Look," he says as he flips the phone toward them. "I found evidence that— Oh, I don't know if you even see in color, or if you can read this in your current shape. Hopefully you're better than other canines about that but you're not answering questions right now, so we'll park that for later.

He reviews the notes and continues.

"I snuck into the hospital and I think this guy really could have been a family member or friend of the Hales. He was scarred badly, as if from a fire, and though he wasn't near the Hale house, the paramedics estimated he'd already suffered two days in the cool air in probably this very state."

The sad whine of them both went unnoticed through the racing thoughts of the human.

"I still think he looks like an age-progressed version of the Beacon Hills basketball team player I found in this picture."

He makes the face as large as he can. It's just a face, and it's blurry.

The first wolf shifts back to human. She says, "Who is this?"

Stiles gasps and then tries to pretend a wolf didn't just shift in front of him to human form and start asking him questions.

"This is a picture of Peter Hale."

She turns to the other wolf. "Derek!" and she motions at him to stand up, but the wolf Derek declines. It wasn't an order, but a move of cautious excitement. Derek's keeping a wary eye in the human's direction even as his sister looms closer to the phone and examines the picture.

"I'm sorry, madam alpha, or whatever is the right title, but you appear to have no clothes on and I am not prepared to um... talk with you in this manner at this time. And stuff."

She looks at him, and then herself, and shakes her head. "When it comes to werewolves, clothing is as optional as it gets."

"Oh, your kind can't transform your clothing when you shift?" Something subconscious snags his attention. "Are you sure about that?"

She looks at him. Her hair is a little wild, and she's strong even in this form. "I know more about werewolves than you do."

He tucks his phone in his pocket.

"Okay, look, fine, you want to talk in the nude. You do you, but I really am just going to need to leave right now and clear my head and then I can... I can come back tomorrow, yeah?" He's not sure why he's excited to return. They did nearly eat him several times in this conversation, based on the number of flashes of teeth he caught in the last several minutes.

"Fine, come back tomorrow, but do not tell anyone we were here."

Stiles nods, distracted, and takes a few tries before he gets all his gardening things stuffed back into his bag and gets himself situated for the ride out of the preserve.

"I'll be here just after five tomorrow, alright? I've got work, but I'll be here, and I'll bring some stuff you can look at. Please try to get some clothes or this is going to be awkward and I am really out of awkward for the day.

"You're really not," the alpha says. Stiles sputters.

"Hey!"

"Hey, family man," she says, referring to his Polish of earlier. "I'm Laura. Who are you?"

"I'm Stiles Stilinski."

The other wolf looks at him and hruffs, almost laughing.

Cripes, these siblings are already annoying him.

"Hey, asshole, it's my name. You'd break yourself trying to pronounce my first name, so be thankful for my gracious manner."

Stiles leaves slowly, trying to go faster, but it takes a while to get his body to let go of the anxiety enough to punish his legs on the pedals and fly as fast as he can without crashing.

Kind of a tall order, some days.

"I cannot believe I just promised I'd come back to chat with those man-eaters!" He gripes at himself. "Do they eat people? How do you even ask someone if they eat people? Especially if they can change shapes and have fangs and sharp pointy parts?" He listens to his intuition. Of course they're not cannibals. Or maybe they are if they're not considered humans. "UGH! They are gonna answer so many questions tomorrow or else!"

Derek has followed him silently for maybe half a mile, listening to the bewildering blitz of self-talk ranging from werewolves to garlic naan bread and Derek just gives up and heads toward the house, where Laura is waiting for him.

Chapter 3 - The Interposing

The sun is low now, shining bright fingers through the shattered window frames and vacant doorways of the shell of this old house. By coincidence of timing and place, Laura stands in a sunny shape on the decrepit porch. Derek listens to her adjusting her stance and watches as her fingers push through a beam of sunlight and trace the crackled texture of the carbonized door frame.

"You didn't stop him and make him tell us where Peter is."

She catches his meaning immediately. "Yeah, there's something at work here keeping me from chasing him away."

"You failed," he says, gesturing broadly at her exposed form. "He can't handle this much woman."

"Well, Derek, I've got the supernatural hookup. We all do. He's going to have to get used to all this." She looks at the smudges on her fingers. "But why didn't you stop him?"

"I don't know. And I only just realized it when I said it." Now Derek looks as confused as she had been. He wasn't even feeling hostile toward the Stiles, and that is the most irritating thing about this.

She shifts her hand through beta shift and to full wolf, then back again. It's a difficult transition, but since she could just focus and do it, Derek just observed as she shifted from human form through partial beta and partial full forms, and then back to full human.

Derek was curious what she was doing, and noticed her smile as he held her fingers up.

Every finger still had dirt.

"I've never thought about how we take dirt and things with us through the shift, but not our clothes."

"Are you suggesting that he can teach us to take clothing or tools into our shift?"

She shrugged her shoulders and grinned. The pack bond resonated with satisfaction, and he rolled his eyes.

"We don't know anything about him."

"I know, but if you could feel it, you'd know that this place needs us, Derek." She looks into the house from across the threshold. "And gardener Stiles is part of whatever is going on here." They were all called here. It's magic that bound them, brought them together, and seems to be managing their introduction.

"Is he the magic user?"

"There is ample potential. Surely you could feel that by the time he left."

"I hate magic," Derek grumbles as he thinks about it. Yes, he could tell Stiles was ignorant of his own potential and that worried Derek more than the fact that this stranger happened to suddenly be part of their lives in a way that captivates his alpha.

Laura snaps her fingers. "Yo, how could you not have heard me?"

Derek raises an eyebrow in defiance. Not his best move, but now it's her turn to roll her eyes and she repeats herself.

"Let's go find Deaton. If he's around, maybe he can help us figure out who this is and what kind of magic is being worked here."

"Can we pass the hospital, too? I'd like to see if we might find uncle Peter."

She nods. That matters a lot to both of them, too. She resolves that before 5pm tomorrow, they'll have gotten at least one answer to the question of what's going on. She leans into a full shift and Derek follows, chasing her as they race into the forest for the long route to the vet's office.

"My dad is going to kill me when he finds out I was talking with werewolves at the Hale house." He nearly skids to a stop and releases his clenched brake. He isn't a Hollywood stunts expert and he would not have recovered well from a solo crash on the pavement. His ego would be only one of his many bruised parts.

He considers 14 different stories that seem plausible enough, dismissed half of them outright as abominations, and spend the next minutes thinking up some 40 more before settling on the best candidate.

He parked his bike along the side of the house and walked quickly to the front, nearly crashing into his patient and curious father on the porch.

"Hello Stiles. You didn't say why you'd be late, but—"

"I was watching the sunset!" he interjected. Dad glances toward the sun now, indicating that the sunset isn't done yet.

"Nope, you weren't. Do you want to tell me what really happened?"

"Yes!" he squeaks, and then rushes his dad inside with a glance over his shoulder that lacks any essence of subtlety. He's checking the few houses in view to see if anyone in a homes or yard or car or suspicious van might be spying on them. He closes the door quietly and pointedly locks it.

"Are you sure this is necessary, Stiles?"

"Dad, my world has been supernaturally rocked tonight, and what I'm about to tell you will do the same for you."

[littleeyesofpallas]

Demon Slayer - Name Games

So ive been kinda getting into kimetsu no yaiba lately and on the one hand it hasn’t really hooked me or anything story-wise just yet, but boy oh boy am i loving the aesthetic and general design sensibilities.  The biggest motifs at work, at least from where I’ve read so far, that I really love are the use of some traditional Japanese fabric patterns and the use of hanafuda card motifs.

I don’t think I’ll get as into this all as I have with Bleach but I wanted to put some of these rambling thoughts somewhere, so here we go...

the most obvious hanafuda reference is in tanjiro’s earrings which are explicitly referenced as looking like hanafuda card.  ironically of all the hanafuda references though, his are actually the only modified ones.  His earrings are based on the Moon card in the suit of Silvergrass/August, and not the sun and crane card from the pine/janurary suit.  In Hanafuda, each of 12 suits has a core plant(usually flowering), an affiliated month, and within each suit 1 ribbon and 1 “animal” card. (although not all the animal cards are actual animals).

The whole Kamado family has an ichimatsu:”checker" pattern motif, although Nezuko also has an asanoha:”hemp leaf” pattern as well.  The checker pattern doesnt really have any overt meaning, as it’s a pretty universal pattern, but it does have associations with heroes and lead actors via kabuki theatre costuming.  The hemp leaf is a symbol of growth and good health, and is often used in baby clothes.

Also as usual i’m a sucker for name games.  Kamado[竈門]: "Hearth Gate" and  Tanjiro[炭治郎]: "Charcoal Regulate Son."  It's an irregular construction, as the name Tanjiro is a real name but the “charcoal” kanji isn’t how you’d normally write the Tan- part. (More conventional writings would probably be [丹治郎], which reads as [丹] "red-earth"/"rust-colored.") Both names play up his family trade as charcoal makers/sellers, if that wasn’t clear, which in turn plays into his overall sun and fire themes.

Nezuko[禰豆子]: "Ancestral-shrine bean child" is a neat name and also a homonym with Nezuko[鼠子]: "Rat child."  I assume the “rat” pun is there to evoke gnawing, as in her demon fang gag.  The bean, as a seed and as food are probably meant to evoke good health and growth, like the asanoha pattern.  

Zenitsu’s associated card is the Thunder card from the Willow/November suit.  The same suit’s animal card has a Sparrow on it.

His fabric pattern is an uroko:”scale,” pattern probably most recognized as the hojo family crest, which in turn is most recognized as being the same as the triforce in legend of zelda.  They are a stylized geometric pattern made to resemble fish or snake or even dragon scales.  They can have some implication of protection or warding, but are also commonly used in theatre costume where it evokes treachery and ambush by association with snakes waiting to strike.  probably meant as a play on his whole hidden sword skill gimmick.

His name reads, Agatsuma[我妻] "My Wife" and Zenitsu[善逸] "Good Evasion."  The latter is obvious but i dont know what to make of that surname.  Maybe a joke about him wanting to take a wife so he won’t die alone.

...

Inosuke’s associated card is the Boar card from the Bushclover/July suit.  His “fabric” is jokingly a non-fabric, as it’s just animal pelts, rather than anything manmade.

Name wise... Hashibira[嘴平] "Flat beak", Inosuke[伊之助] "That, This Assistant."  A pun on the "ino" of inoshishi[猪] meaning "boar," so his name sounds like it would be Inosuke[猪助] "Boar Assistant."  I don’t know what to make of the surname though....

Kanao and the Kocho sisters take their motif from the Butterfly card in the Peony/June suit.  The capes mimicking butterfly wings is pretty obvious but also not really a traditional pattern.  I haven’t gotten too far into their deal yet.

Tsuyuri[栗花落] "chestnut flower drop," Kanao [カナヲ].  I’m not super sure on this one, but chestnuts are probably more iconic for the nut than the flower, and the nut of course falls in its spiny shell.  They are also broadly associated with autumn as seasonal symbols.  I don’t think it was the intention but the use of “chestnut” and “fall/drop” together makes me think of scattering caltrops on the ground to slow pursuers, like a ninja. 

Kocho[胡蝶] is written “Foreign Butterfly” where the character for “foreign” is used in compounds circling around a core idea of “False” or ”Suspicious.”  But historically it can also read as “Barbarian” in reference to a particular time and place in China, but it’s the reason it also means “foreign.”  Either way it means her name can read “Barbarian Butterfly” which is just the coolest mashup of imagery.  Shinobu [しのぶ] is just written phonetically, as was Kanao.

But also Muzan has his motif of western style floral lace in stark juxtaposition to the recognizably japanese styles of most of the hunters.

I do really like the fact that the villain group is numbered according to an old timekeeping method that Japan doesn’t use anymore.  It’s a derivative of the borrowed Chinese time keeping system (which is mirrored by their zodiac cycle) and divides each day into 12 “hours”: 6 of day and 6 of night --a top six and a bottom six, just like Muzan’s 12 demons.

What’s really cool is that these units of time were actually relative to the season and the literal daylight.  So the 6 “hours” were always equal to one another, but the day hours and night hours shifted length inversely to one another during the summer and winter.  When western clocks were introduced via trade with Holland, it didnt take long for the Japanese to develop a unique clock mechanism of their own that let them turn a dial to shift the clock face around according to the season

And speaking of demons.... the fixation on Wisteria also ties back to the April suit in hanafuda, which has a wisteria motif.  There’s a family crest coopted into a design that shows up briefly modified from the Fujiwara family crest.

Anyway, like I said, I’m not super super into the series just yet, but these were just a bunch of little things that jumped out at me as I was going, and that I told myself I’d post about at some point, if i ever managed to hammer out any substantially sized blurbs about it all.  There’s a lot more going on too, even in just the handful of volumes i’ve picked through so far, but not all of it as consistent or reaching across multiple characters as a these were.