#broken horizon

[spearxwind]

The concept of adoption must not be well known

[slate021]

Skies Local Group

[nerdinsandals]

I spent a little too much time than necessary on the Explorers' reflections for my Amethio piece so here's all of them so you can see them better! :>

[ponder-the-orb]

Minutes pass, maybe an eternity, she can’t be sure. When she finally raises her head, his flat smile has returned. “With that I’m afraid my spell is waning. Is there anything else I can do for you before I blink out of existence?”

Ciri stumbles to her feet. “Wait wait wait. Don’t leave, not again— please.” She won’t let go, not of the very last breath of him in this world.

“I apologise, but there’s nothing left on this plane able to maintain this spell.”

She stops directly in front of him, willing the blank mirrors of his eyes to actually look at her. It’s magic borne of Gale’s mind, woven by his hands, something so effortlessly brilliant and naively cruel she can almost feel his fingerprints pressed into light.

“Alright. You’re not him, but he made you, he’s part of you so you must know something. I know I always hated you telling me what to do but, just this once, you can. Please. I’ve tried everything and it’s not enough. I’m not…” she sucks in a breath. It claws its way down, sharp as broken glass. “I’m not you. So go on, tell me how to bring you home, bring you back to me. Because I’m just. So. Tired, Gale.” She reaches out, desperate to touch him, to stroke the warmth of that skin that she can’t recall outside of her dreams.

“Please tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

She passes straight through, the ghost of his cheek swirling like a handful of stars around each finger. She clings to the air, shaking, until he slowly inclines his head down, just enough to finally take all of her in.

“Live, Ciri. Just live,” he whispers, before closing his eyes and shattering into a thousand tiny lights. She stands frozen, watching each one fade into nothing around her.

And then she too finally breaks.

This absolutely STUNNING artwork is by @kalidels for my fic Broken Horizons. I’ve been staring at it for six hours now.

[the-woman-upstairs]

It’s just…so painful to watch Armand readily submit in order to obtain the love he so desperately craves. And while it’s most assuredly a manipulative tactic, it’s still one borne out of fear and desperation. He cannot lose this person he’s come to love and so will become whatever they want, do whatever they want just so they’ll stay with him. But it won’t be enough. No matter how much he acquiesces or seeks to control (himself, others, the environment), he won’t be able to make Louis stay with him in the perfect life, perfect self he built in the hopes of finally being loved. It will all crumble with Armand left alone in the rubble of what he created, the author of his own abandonment.

[i-lavabean]

"I look forward to seeing the Sky Clan's colors in the Arena."

[ruthion]

[laqzuli]

I DEPEND ON YOU

[robo-dino-puppy]

horizon zero dawn (remastered) | devil’s thirst 3/?

[spearxwind]

You make the sky feel less empty ⛅

[slate021]

Broken Horizon

[owlarchivist]

I HOPE EVERYONE'S BEEN HAVING A GREAT PRIDE MONTH...

SHOUT-OUT TO THE GAYS!!!!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Travis Mayweather

By Ames

Our final main crewmember of Enterprise is also the one who gets the most shafted. What even is there to say about Travis Mayweather? Steve Shives calls him the character with the most wasted potential, and it’s not surprising why. Hell, that’s not even him in the banner image of this post! That’s an Organian possessing his body in “Observer Effect,” the episode in which Anthony Montgomery somehow has the most he’s ever had to do, but his actual character is barely even in it.

But the hosts of A Star to Steer Her By wouldn’t be the pros we are if we couldn’t scrape together something to say about the guy. If we could do it for Hoshi, we can do it for him, right? Show off your guns with us today as we highlight the sparse moments from the Enterprise’s pilot below and on this week’s podcast episode (loop-de-loop over to timestamp 1:00:06). Ensign, you have the conn.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Now this is the story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down One of our first impressions from Mayweather that we get in “Broken Bow” is awfully endearing! He shows Trip the sweet spot of a Jeffries Tube where the grav-generator inverts things. It’s super cute to think of this spaceboy sitting on the ceiling, and we’re also treated to a wholly different perspective (literally!) that this character promises for the show.

Officers say they can still hear the echo of his distress call. Beep, Beep. While everyone’s gathered around a campfire in “Strange New World,” Mayweather treats them to a ghost story about the infamous George Webb, another darling detail indicative of the unique backstory that Mayweather provides. It also reminds us that space is scary! Especially at the time that Enterprise takes place, when everything is unexplored and full of monsters.

Do you want to build a snowman? Why are all the early Mayweather moments simply adorable? You can’t help but smile when his and Reed’s first impulse when working on a comet in “Breaking the Ice” is to have a snowball fight and build a snowman. But even cooler than that is that these are the first two humans to walk on a comet! What a nifty achievement for someone who’s only seen snow twice in his life.

Okay, Boomer We actually do get something substantial from Mayweather when we get to “Fortunate Sun.” As a space boomer raised on spaceships instead of on planets, Mayweather finally gets to pay off some of his backstory when he talks down first officer Ryan, who is about to destroy a Nausicaan vessel in a move that will surely backfire on all of his own people.

Any idea about a latrine? Commander Tucker should be thanking the ensign for remembering to convert some storage lockers into toilets in “The Catwalk” or they wouldn’t have had any. Trip admits he didn’t even consider waste removal when tasked with prepping the titular catwalks, but Mayweather shares a story from his youth when they had to take shelter in the ship’s core, so he knows better.

I shake my little tush on the catwalk Speaking of using the catwalks to avoid danger! Somehow everyone forgets about them merely six episodes later when they are trying to avoid the wisps in “The Crossing.” Everyone except Mayweather, that is. He escapes from getting possessed by locking himself in a catwalk and is able to communicate that option to move the remaining un-possessed crew in there.

I’ll send you to Davy Jones’s locker In the second (of two) episodes that explore Mayweather’s upbringing on long-haul space freighters, we get to meet his family on the Horizon in the eponymous episode, “Horizon.” They’re fending off space pirates, as they are wont to do, and Mayweather’s modifications to the ship end up saving the day… even if it’s something we’ll bring up again in the Worst Moments…

Mayweather, with your nose so bright… We gave Sim credit for coming up with the idea to fly the Enterprise out of the muck in “Similitude,” but it’s Mayweather and Reed who actually strap themselves into shuttlepods and give it the old heave-ho. They’re both this close to overheating, but they pull through and tow the ship to safety like a couple of very good sled dogs.

This way to the GUN SHOW Oh look, a rare instance in which “Harbinger” is on the good list! After many instances of seeing terrible moments from that deplorable episode, we at least can share that Mayweather was a grade-A sport about sparring with the MACOs, unlike certain security chiefs I could name. And to show off Anthony Montgomery’s chops and physique is just a bonus!

I think I’ve found reverse Whenever a pilot in Trek does something spectacular, it’s hard to fathom just how impressive it is since it’s so common. So when Mayweather learns to fly the Insectoid shuttle from “Hatchery” through sheer trial and error in “Azati Prime,” it’s a helluva feat! This is a ship built for people with compound eyes, extra limbs, and a thorax, not a squishy human being!

And Travis designed a sensor grid that should extend our range This line is so throw-away you almost miss it. In “United,” when the crew is trying to find the Romulan drone ship that’s been mucking things up for them, it’s Mayweather that comes up with the sensor grid to help detect the damn thing. Later the same episode, he works with Sato to figure out the loophole that gets Archer out of having to kill Shran in their ushaan-tor fight!

I have experience with comets, sir One final commendation for some fancy flying comes in “Terra Prime” when Mayweather has to fly in the icy tail of a comet to avoid detection while approaching Paxton’s verteron array. Now, if the verteron array, which was designed to shoot comets, did the thing it was designed to do, who knows what would have happened, so thank heavens for plot armor!

—

Worst moments

Keep that bench warm, Mayweather A large number of bad moments stems from things Mayweather doesn’t do rather than things he does. Every time we see Mayweather get sidelined, it’s a thorn in our sides. Like in “Broken Bow,” when for some reason Trip flies the Suliban shuttle instead of, ya know, the pilot. Or “Strange New World” or “Storm Front,” which Travis largely spends unconscious. Or in the alternate timeline in “Twilight” when he’s the only one killed in the Xindi attack and we never bring him up again!

I promised my dad I’d see this place someday A more specific moment we see Mayweather get badly sidelined is in “Terra Nova.” He spends the first chunk of the episode geeking out so hard about the Terra Nova expedition, but right after they go down there, he has absolutely no impact on the story. Why does Archer get to save Akary? Why couldn’t it have been Mayweather, especially if this mission was so important to him?

Just because someone isn’t born on Earth doesn’t make him any less human So we may have given credit to Mayweather above when he helped out the crew of the Fortunate in “Fortunate Son,” but it takes him a bit to get there. In fact, he starts out empathizing with the freighter crew and believes they’d be justified in killing Nausicaans for their piracy, and Archer has to give him a grand speech about treating other people like, well, people!

Bridge looks a lot different from here This is a smaller moment but it’s so corny we had to include it. There’s a really dopey scene in “Cold Front” when Mayweather is given the conn for less than a minute (I timed it!) while Reed is out of the room and he and Hoshi make a big thing of sitting in the chair for the first time. I dunno, the other moments from the Best Moments sections were cute, while this one just seems infantilizing.

Sticks and stones may break my bones… A new kind of sidelining of Mayweather comes in “Two Days and Two Nights” when he goes down to Risa for some rock climbing and instead breaks his stupid leg. The worst part isn’t even that he wastes his vacation time, or even that it cuts short Phlox’s hibernation. It’s that it happens offscreen, because nothing interesting that Mayweather does ever gets shown!

Your inquiry was not recognized While I had a lot of fun writing my Repair Station fanfiction for our last “Tales from the Holodeck” installment, Mayweather did not have nearly as good a time with our antagonist from “Dead Stop.” He gets tricked by the computer so easily it’s almost laughable, and it ends up with him kidnapped by the sentient computer and used as fuel for her systems.

You got pranked! Even more of a let down from “Dead Stop,” however, is that the mourning crewmates lament that he’ll never get to play any more of his classic pranks. Um, since when? Never in the show does this come up again! If anyone got to prank anyone this episode, it was the Repair Station! You should’ve seen the look on Mayweather’s face when she utterly tricked him!

We didn’t start the fire We were as shocked as anyone when Mayweather gets to tag along with T’Pol and Archer to go collect the Vulcan defector Menos in “The Seventh.” But it should also come as no surprise that he does literally nothing, especially when he’s left watching Menos, who easily gets away by starting a fire in the pub. Mayweather stands there watching completely uselessly!

I AM my brother’s keeper Dang, even when we initially had a good moment come of it, we still have to clarify things about episodes down here in the Worst Moments. Despite how Mayweather’s modifications in “Horizon” end up saving the day, the way he goes about making them is belittling and rude. He straight up takes over his brother’s ship without asking, and he and Paul have a stupid quarrel about it!

…but names will never hurt me This is the second time in two seasons that we see Mayweather break his damn leg to get him out of the action. While going to find the Denobulan scientists in “The Breach” with Trip and Reed, Mayweather has to stay behind for hours (if not days!) when he snaps a leg spelunking. For someone so into rock climbing, Mayweather seems pretty terrible at rock climbing!

Work it, don’t jerk it There are always bad things to say about that terrible episode “Bound,” so here’s another one. To avoid thinking about how turned on he is by the Orion slave girls, Mayweather turns to exercise. So much exercise. It explains how absolutely RIPPED the guy is if every time he’s aroused, he pumps iron. But my dude, there are healthier ways to confront your feelings.

We never had a problem mixing work and pleasure I take it back, maybe Mayweather has no idea how to behave around girls because he gets so thoroughly tricked by his old flame Gannet Brooks in “Demons” that he looks like an imbecile. This man is led around by his cock to such success that Gannett nearly gets away with whatever nefarious tactics she’s up to until Sato figures things out and throws her in the brig!

— Pranked ya! That’s it for the main cast of Enterprise, but we do have a treat in store for you next week, so make sure you’re following along here for more! We’re also nearly at the end of the first season in our Discovery rewatch, which you’re obviously tracking over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast. Friend us for more banter over on Facebook and Bluesky, and smell my boutonnière. C’mon, smell it!

[ponder-the-orb]

WIP Wednesday: Choose Me

Dragon age hasn't cut into all my editing time so here's a sneak peak at the next interlude of Broken Horizons: ***

‘Even if we were to find another way, perhaps this is the right way. The end that fate wishes for me.’

Gale’s words curdle inside Ciri. She tries to forget them, focussing instead on the sea of light drifting above her. She’d thought the Shadow Curse impenetrable, every glint of her fire eaten by the darkness if it strayed too far from her palm, but tonight she stands unharmed within it, the evil veiled behind a painting of colours and stars– a magic just for her. For them.

‘This might be my last night alive. I wanted to spend it under a canopy of beauty and wonder. And with company to match.’

Her lip bleeds as she bites it. They were such soft words, sweet words, drenched in ardour like he could dull the razor’s edge of his decision if his tone was gentle enough. Perhaps what stings that most is that it worked. Her protest had been lost to the kiss that followed, then again when he’d sunk to his knees in front of her and slowly worked his hands under the edge of her robe.

She shivers slightly as he cups her bare calf and pulls it free. His fingers work quickly to unlace one boot, then the other, trails of warmth flushing under her skin as they map a path back up her legs. Dozens of times she’d found herself studying those hands of late. She’d made a memory of the way he moulded the weave between his fingers, summoning miracles on the battlefield and in her heart with such deadly precision. Sometimes she’d find herself wondering if it was the same way he would touch a lover. And sometimes, when the shadows grew long and the evenings cold in her tent, she would wonder again and again atop her bedroll until she was coming fast, her wet gasp caught in the palm pressed over her lips.

A hand slides under the bend of her knee and gently urges it forward. He pauses there, his thumb tracing a soft pattern over the skin before his lips follow. Her breath wavers like a hummingbird's wing as he shifts higher, pressing a firmer kiss to the plush of her inner thigh.

Her hands find his head.

There’s nothing rueful about the way his eyes catch hers, no hint of the death warrant all but signed by his goddess as he nips the skin, then rubs there with his cheek until it blooms a rosier pink. She wants nothing more than to lose herself in that look, in the blush dusting his nose and the heat smouldering like burnt almonds in his eyes. She tugs his hair, bathes in the answering gasp but can’t loosen her grip on his words. 

He’s choosing to die. He loves her and he’s choosing to die. She can fight until she’s bloody and burned, until the fire within her has all but withered into ash– and he’s still choosing to die.

***

Yes I have now written that exact romance scene three times. No I don't think it will be the last.

Read the rest of the story here.

Tagging (no obligation but feel free!) @mellybaggins @senualothbrok @alpydk @weaveandwood

[how-much-for-a-whump]

WHUMPTOBER day 10:

Prompt: "Stranded"

Horizon Line (2020)

[frolicksome]

Animal Crossing AU

I was thinking to call this AU "Less of a Nook, Double the Crooks" where the main thing is Tom Nook and Redd's beef never happened and Tom eventually became just like Redd. The two owns a shop in the black market together. Nothing matters to them except for bells and their loyalty to eachother. And yes, the tanuki and the fox still fight like an old married couple.

Due to this, Tom never adopted Timmy and Tommy. The twins were adopted by the Able Sisters instead. (Will be explaining further down below.)

Lyle was still once an insurance scammer who worked with the kitsune and tanuki duo but now owns the Happy Home Academy by himself. Without Tom, there is now a deadline/due day of rent, everyday of each playthrough [the player] needs to pay 15k bells.

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Additional Fun Facts:

⚜️ Sable didn't liked the idea of adopting the two tanukis since they remind her of Tom so much and she knows they'll struggle to feed more mouths in one roof, but Mable kept insisting.

⚜️ Timmy and Tommy would still have the shop called "Nukkling Junction". The spelling is changed because of not being adopted by Tom.

⚜️ Timmy and Tommy, fell asleep on a fruit truck when they were desperate to find food in the city that went into Tom's home town.

⚜️ Redd tried to scam Brewster, failed because of Blathers... And then Tom successfully scammed Blathers (The quote "If a kitsune has 7 tricks, a tanuki has 8" is very much prevalent.)

⚜️ Tom does sell furniture.

➥ The trick here is that occasionally you would receive fake furniture that would be just a pile of leaves. You'd only know if the item is fake by placing it in your house, leave the room where you put it, then go back to see the said pile of leaves.

➥ I still have a few ideas but those are still uncertain.

⚜️ I do headcanon that Joan is Tom's parental figure (I'm a Wild World user lmao). And when Joan saw what Tom had become she was devastated and disappointed! She very much blames Redd on this one

Edit:

⚜️ Pugsly is the one who will replace Tom Nook in the Resident Services. He will be there along side his sister because I want to give him the love that he deserves.

⚜️ Timmy and Tommy are older than their classic counter parts, they're around their teen years so to say. Even though their ages were not specified, their appearance would have some differences like they would be more taller, a little more chubbier since modern depiction of the tanuki yokai are usually fat (but hey, this is my hc for them!), etc.

⚜️ Tom does not know for the life of him to remember which is which with Timmy and Tommy. He kept confusing one over the other.

⚜️ Though, the twins still crave to have a parent figure that's the same species as them, they're still overall grateful for the Able Sisters taking them in

⚜️ Redd and Tom have the biggest beef with Lyle and to me it would just be so funny. Iykyk

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{Note: I don't really know if this AU has already been done with all of these concepts. This is just made for fun but if the name has been taken already, then I'm willing to change it :]]. If there's an AU similar to this, please send it to me because I wanna see it because I'm starving for more AC content. Again, this is just for fun I'd kill myself from cringe if I accidentally mischaracterized them 😭}

{I'll add more info if I remember or thought of!}