#but I really really can't explain anything else without spoilers

[desertdragon]

T/////Eight story amounted to basically nothing so I guess I'm back here to the other stupid as shit game I give too many chances on a more full time basis again (minus still writing my As///u/////Lil////i fic I love that thing too much and people in my DMs are counting on me for more)

At least I'll always have my friend and her best ending

And her faggot

EDIT: Ok it was nonsensical and full of holes like swiss cheese but now that i've calmed down this was always a goofy silly dumb game that cares less about taking itself seriously as it does being cool and fun, so while im disappointed and im allowed to be disappointed, im not running away with my expectations on this like others have. Tekken is still fun and will always have a place in my heart. And I do appreciate receiving some things I've always wanted regardless of my upsets with their execution flaws. They were finally able to make me feel like my favorite characters have closure on some level regardless, and that has to be commended.

[audliminal]

It's Just a game, Right? Pt 7

Masterpost

It's just a game, right?

Tim turns his head at the soft their of a grappling hook, and a moment later Steph has joined him on the roof of the building.

"Not much happening tonight, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess," Tim responds as he watches traffic pass on the street below. She is right; the night so far has been unusually calm. It's a distinct contrast to last week- it seemed like every night some big villain was pulling out some ridiculous plan or other, but somehow they had all been stopped without serious harm. Of course, there are still plenty of rogues still scurrying around Gotham but there's no murmurs of anything coming from any of the big hitters for the moment.

"You don't sound very sure about that," Steph says, stepping up beside Tim and elbowing him lightly.

"Yeah," Tim answers. A flashy silver car cuts someone off and the resultant horn echoes harshly.

"Okay, you're being weird. What's up?"

Tim shrugs.

"Guess I'm just used to emergencies," Tim shrugs. He knows Steph wouldn't be weird about him bringing up Bernard, but he really doesn't need any of his fellow bats thinking he's compromised or overstressed. God knows he doesn't need anyone else pestering him about getting enough sleep, like he's staying up on purpose.

"Okay..." Steph trails off. "I mean I guess it has been pretty hectic for a while. Takes a bit of time to come down from all that?"

Tim is saved from having to respond by the sound of Oracle cutting into comms.

"Red Robin, Spoiler, looks like a store robbery in progress and you're the closest. Head for the intersection of 25th and Oak."

"Got it," Tim answers and doesn't wait for Steph's response, already halfway through the motion of taking off for the next building.

Pretty soon they're both dropping in on a pair of goons. One of them is aiming their gun directly at a frazzled-looking employee, who doesn't seem interested in putting up a fight.

Two-on-two makes it an incredibly easy fight though, and it's almost over before it begins, with both of them able to sneak up on the distracted thugs as the cashier hurriedly pulls money out of the cash register. Once they're both in position, it's easy enough to grapple, disarm, and restrain them in a flurry of movement, and the criminals never get a chance to even process the arrival of the bats.

"Not today, I think," Steph says as she handcuffs her guy. "Threatening people with guns is a real dick move, y'know?" Tim gets his guy handcuffed and turns to the startled employee.

"Cops on the way yet?" He gets a frantic nod, and Tim surveys the shop as he waits for the sirens. They'll bounce just before the cops get here, but until then, he wants to look around for any signs of something bigger. The two would-be thieves seem too shocked and terrified at the appearance of bats to be proper goons, but they could still be bait, or a distraction of some kind. And the shop itself could theoretically have been targeted. But by the time the sirens are closing in outside, he's not spotted signs of anything sinister.

"Right, the police are almost here, so we're gonna bounce!" Steph announces as Tim walks back towards her. "Tell your boss I said he should give you hazard pay for the night, 'kay?" and then she bounces out the same way they came in. Tim nods once at the employee and then follows.

He changes directions once he's on the rooftops again, though. His phone had buzzed about six times in a row while they were waiting, and that means it's probably Bernard. And he really doesn't want to explain the arg thing to anyone yet.

Once he's far enough away from anyone, he pulls his phone out, and sure enough, he's got six text messages from Bernard.

Dude

Babe, holy shit

Like seriously

This is fucking crazy

Like I cannot believe they replied to us

Us!!!

Attached to the series of texts is a screenshot, and Tim feels the anxiety coalesce into something abruptly solid in his chest.

At first glance, he can't tell what language it's supposed to be. It looks like it might be Romantic in origin, but a couple spellings look almost Slavic in nature, and there's only two and a half lines, which really isn't much to go off of.

It's certainly an interesting development, to say the least. He should be excited. This is a new clue for the mystery, after all.

No way! Tim sends back.

Yeah! U busy? Comes the immediate response. And like, technically the answer is yes, Tim supposed. But Steph literally just pointed out how calm things are tonight, and he can already tell he won't be able to focus, with this news.

"Um," Tim clicks on his comm. "I think I'm gonna call it for tonight."

"Something wrong?" Bruce asks immediately, all gruff-batman-voice.

"No, just- it's slow tonight, and Bernard wants my help with something so I thought, um. If you want me to finish my patrol, I can." He can't help it. Even now, he always kind of feels like he isn't doing enough to be a good vigilante.

"Nah, kid. I think we'll be fine without you." Hood answers, unsurprisingly.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah go make out with your boyfriend or whatever."

Tim smiles at Hood's usual ribbing. He's almost gotten used to it; mostly he can keep himself from blushing too violently when anyone teases him about Bernard.

"Okay. I'll make sure to get my report submitted by eight, promise." Tim is already en route to the nearest safehouse where he can change out of the suit, when he remembers he hasn't responded to Bernard yet.

Heading home rn. My place or yours? He hits send and then takes off once more. Excited to see his boyfriend, and determined to work through the newest puzzle.

[bones4thecats]

Hello I would like to ask Jamil and Leona with the propt "I just can't imagine myself without you" please

🐇Quote-Prompt 10 w/ Leona and Jamil

Characters: Leona Kingscholar and Jamil Viper Requester: @marinahavik A/N: This was fun to write, thank you for requesting this, Marina! ⚠️ Spoilers/Trigger Warnings for: Mentions of burnout and slight amounts of trauma (not much but it's there) ⚠️

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗

╚═════ Leona Kingscholar ════════════════════════╝

🦁 Ever since Leona overblotted earlier that year, he couldn't help but let those old thoughts stay wondering in his head without any consequence

🦁 Honestly it was starting to annoy him to no end

🦁 The worse part was that you were busy in your own dorm, Pomefiore, with helping your Housewarden and his Vice, Vil and Rook, with handling some of the new first years. They were even more stubborn now then they were last year

🦁 Thankfully, you were able to get out of doing anything more when Vil thanked you and excused you from your duties, allowing you to go see your boyfriend of two years

🦁 Leona was happy when you walked inside and laid down on his bed, specifically on your back, allowing the beastman to nuzzle his face into your collarbone

"Rough day?" You asked.

"Just shut up and stay here... please..."

🦁 Smiling gently at him, you brushed your hands through his hair, pulling apart any growing knot with ease. No pulling necessary, making the long-haired man become more tired by the minute

"Y/N."

"Yes, Leona?"

"What would you do if you never ended up going to Night Raven?"

🦁 Your eyes slightly widened before scrunching up as you thought, where would you be if not here? Perhaps working with your family back in the Shaftlands? Or maybe at another college? It was hard to say for sure

"Most likely either at another college or working with my family in the Shaftlands. Hard to say for sure, to be honest. Why?"

🦁 Leona laid down with a heavy silence falling upon you two. But you really wanted to know what brought these thoughts upon your dearest. Was it his overblot? Did he dream of that again?

"I just... I can't imagine myself without you by my side..." Leona admitted. And once you gasped with adoration, he sat up and looked away. He was clearly embarrassed again.

"Aw! Leona! How sweet of you!"

"SHUT UP!"

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗

╚═════ Jamil Viper ════════════════════════════╝

🐍 Jamil has been getting more and more burnt out as of late. From cooking for each party that comes into Kalim's furry little mind to making sure the heir doesn't somehow die from either accidents or attempted assassinations

🐍 And you could tell from a mile away that the poor guy was getting extremely tired

🐍 That night, you helped the Vice-Housewarden wash off the dishes of the multiple students that didn't or couldn't do theirs and then you helped him clean the rest of the counters and then your hands

🐍 Before you could leave, you asked if you could possibly stay the night with Jamil, explaining how your Housewarden, Vil Schoenheit, would understand why you decided to not come back and risk waking everyone else up

🐍 He nodded sleepily before motioning for you to follow him back to his dorm-room. You grabbed his hand and gave it a light squeeze to say you loved him

"Head on in, I'm gonna go into the bathroom and change."

"Alright, I'll wait out here."

🐍 As Jamil changed into his sleepwear in the bathroom, you grabbed one of his spare shirts and put it on, laying your uniform off to the side in a nice-neat pile before sitting on his bed and plugging in your phone next to his

🐍 The feeling of another flopping onto the bed made you giggle and look at your boyfriend's tired face and his hair with a poor attempt at taking the braids out to give him max comfort when resting

"Wow, you really are tired, aren't you?" You asked, a teasing tone in your voice.

"Mhm..."

🐍 As you began to undo his hair and settle down next to him with your legs intertwined and his arms around your waist, he began to tear up and look into your eyes

"Jamil, why are you crying?"

"I don't want to imagine a world without you. I just cannot imagine myself without you right beside me every step of the way."

🐍 A loving smile erupted on your face as Jamil kissed your lips and cuddled up closer to you in an action that made you know what he was thinking; he didn't want to wake up and see that this was possibly all something he dreamt up

"Don't worry, I'm not planning on leaving you anytime soon."

"I love you, Y/N. With all my heart and more."

"And I love you with all my heart and beyond, Jamil. Till death do us part."

[chelledoggo]

given the state of... things... i wanna really dissect the ending of episode 2 of TADC.

old news, yeah. but... i think the message of this scene hits harder in this time.

obvious spoiler warning below the cut!!! (also religion CW since i share a Bible verse at the end.)

so by now you probably know the ending all too well.

Pomni made a new friend in Gummigoo, hoping to help him find a better life in the circus... only to watch him be unceremoniously blasted into confetti by the well-meaning but completely tactless Caine.

and of course Pomni is understandably traumatized, going into absolute hysterics.

Caine, the oblivious godlike AI in charge of the show, believes he was just keeping things safe and in order, and shows no real empathy as he teleports himself out of the situation.

Pomni just stands there. dissociating. confused. God only knows what thoughts are going through her mind right now.

the ever-nurturing Ragatha, who's made it her mission to make sure everyone else is as happy as possible, tries to step in and raise Pomni's spirits.

of course, none of this is of any consolation to Pomni. like... how could it be? she watched her friend (presumably) die.

it's like those who believe in an afterlife watching someone die in front of them. even with that little bit of hope and comfort that you may one day see them again, that can't erase the horror you bore witness to.

Pomni stands there unresponsive. Ragatha feels helpless to comfort her.

Zooble approaches, letting Ragatha know that they've finished preparations for Kaufmo's funeral...

Ragatha turns to Pomni and extends an invitation.

this is enough to bring Pomni out of her traumatized stupor.

Ragatha explains the custom that the circus crew developed themselves. whenever a friend abstracts, they hold a "funeral" service to honor them.

now Pomni never knew Kaufmo. he abstracted just before Pomni entered the circus. they never had a chance to meet.

and yet Ragatha still invites Pomni to mourn him along with the rest of the humans.

Ragatha realizes that hopeful platitudes won't really do anything at this time. so instead she opens to her new friend a safe space to grieve.

Pomni accepts the invitation. she stands before the "casket" of a perfect stranger, unsure of what to think.

Ragatha takes her place next to the casket, allowing herself the rare opportunity to express vulnerability around the people she usually puts on a brave face for.

Pomni watches and listens as each of these people she'd only met yesterday share their eulogies for Kaufmo.

they share their experiences. their happy moments with their abstracted friend. and, most importantly, they share their grief and anguish.

Pomni obviously can't relate to any of these stories of Kaufmo. she never knew him.

but that's not the point.

the point is that she's witnessing the camaraderie of the humans in a way she never could before.

she's witnessing them in a vulnerable moment where they can break their goofy facades. and, more importantly, she's witnessing just how deeply these people love and care for each other.

brotherhood doesn't always take the form of trying to fix everyone's pain and cheer each other up. sometimes brotherhood is simply allowing those you care for to feel their feelings without judgement, and to hurt along with them.

and that's when it hits Pomni for the first time.

she's Not Alone

i think this scene hits harder after... recent events.

it's okay to feel the way you feel right now. it's okay to be anxious, scared, angry. it's okay, for right now, to feel... hopeless.

hope will come eventually. but oftentimes grief has to come first.

and that's okay. it's in the moments of communal despair that the seeds of hope are planted.

times of fear and suffering are inevitable. a perfectly happy outcome can't always be guaranteed. but comfort exists even in grief.

so take your time.

hope has no deadline. rest assured that it WILL come eventually, but don't rush or force it.

rest.

feel your feelings.

find those who can lament with you.

find those who need you to lament with them.

we should let ourselves hurt together today. and then we can hope together tomorrow.

"Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep." - Romans 12:15 (NRSVUE)

[deadhands69]

Under the Christmas Tree 

MDNI 

Shouto Todoroki x Reader

Content/warnings/etc: gn/afab reader, Chapter 431 spoilers, porn with plot, post-canon/aged up slightly for no other reason than me being amused by the idea of Shouto Todoroki spending the entirety of his twenties after ch431 making stacks of soba bowls instead of ever attempting to get laid. He does get laid in this though: blowjob, fingering, slightly awkward sex (f on top, m on top), also contains swearing and explicit conversations.

2 1/2 Months Ago: Kaminari’s Halloween Party 

It wasn't really Halloween, but three days after. Being heroes, you are all used to it. Drinking holidays always bring out a villain streak in a lot of people so most of your gatherings end up on off days. After the long week, it was nice to have a lowkey night with a few old friends.

“Okay, you're up next!” Kirishima yells across the table, knuckles deep in candy corn. 

“Alright,” you pause to consider your next words. Looking down at your four upright fingers before continuing, “never have I ever…”

You can't remember what your actual words were. Whatever you said, it was boring. A few people groan around the circle, fingers dropping, then it's Sero’s turn. And he was determined to spice it back up again. 

“Never have I ever,” he starts with a twisted smile, “eaten ass…before breakfast.”

“Booooo,” Kaminari groans, tossing a few pieces of candy corn at him before dropping his last finger. “Okay, fine. Who's next?”

Shouto is up next. You prepared yourself for another odd one, his last turn was that he's never worn mismatched socks.

“Hey Todoroki,” chirped Mina, “quite a few fingers you're holding up there.”

He glanced down to the nine fingers still remaining before he looked at everyone else's in confusion. He was the only one in the room not down to one hand. Kaminari, Hagakure, and Shinso were all out. 

“Oh. Isn't that.. How you win?” 

“By losing at life?” Bakugo laughs. 

“There's no way you aren't lying,” Jiro adds, “wasn't Hagakure’s ‘never have I ever fucked a girl?’”

“I haven't done that with anyone,” Shouto responded. 

“There's no way,” Sero responded, “you're thirty! You've been voted the hottest hero in every girly magazine for ten years straight. I'm not buying it.”

“It's true, I really haven't,” Shouto said quite plainly, before glancing around the table again. He briefly locked eyes with you, searching for your reaction before quickly looking away. A blush crept up on his cheeks. 

Up to that moment, it had never occurred to him to be self conscious about his lack of sexual experience (or about anything, really.) But that night, with all of your eyes staring, he started to think maybe something was wrong with him. 

3 Weeks Ago: Mina & Kirishima’s Kitchen

“Here’s to comfort,” you read. 

“Ooh that's always a fun one!” Mina exclaimed, grabbing the blue stick out of your hand. “I'll pass that along to your Secret Santa!”

Every year since graduating from UA, your friends group has organized a gift giving game. It had now become some convoluted version of Secret Santa that started relatively normal but gained extra steps and rules along the way. At some point, popsicle sticks in a jar with phrases on the bottom of each were added to give your gifter a theme to stick to. Partially for fun, mostly because a few of your former classmates struggled without a prompt. 

“Ooooh, and guess what Todoroki got!” Mina fished through the jar for a green popsicle stick before holding it up, “‘a new experience!’ You can help him with that, riiiight?”

“Oh come on,” you dismiss, “he's cute but he’s clearly not interested in that sort of thing.”

“That's not what he said last week,” Mina winked at you. You look to Jiro for some confirmation.

“In more or less words, yeah.” 

“And that means…” you ask.

“I said ‘ooh sounds like someone’s getting a blowjob from Santa this year!’” Mina began laughing too hard to keep talking. Jiro continued, “we had to explain that no, we do not actually mean Santa. It was a whole thing, but in the end he said it’s something he’d been ‘thinking about a lot lately.’”

Kaminari chimed in, “and he’s had a crush on you for ages! I think you should do it, even if you don’t get him for Secret Santa.”

“Of course [y/n] will get him, we'll rig it. Like we do every year,” Mina flicked her eyebrows up at you. 

“Wait, what??” Kaminari exclaimed, dropping his beer. 

“You didn't know that?” Jiro asked, while throwing a towel at him. “You've been at the planning meetings, how could you not know that?”

“Okay, okay, you can explain it to him later. But now, let's get back to what's important.”

She moved into your space with intensity until her pink nose was nearly touching yours. Without breaking eye contact she asked:

“will you do it, [y/n]?” 

Current Date: Kaminari’s Holiday Party

“Okay, everyone remember. There are five hours left of today!” Mina announces, “I repeat, 5 hours! If you do not give your Secret Santa gift in this time, you will owe them lunch for a week!”

Secretly, nearly everyone hoped to get Bakugo for this reason - he’s an amazing cook and hates the game. Guaranteed lunch for a week. 

Maybe you got him this year, your gifter still hasn’t done anything. You haven’t either though.

It’s not that you didn’t want to, it’s just… awkward. 

Plus, the opportunity hadn’t come up. You were only alone with Shouto twice in the past few weeks. Once, you were both called to an emergency and went home covered in ash and blood. The other time, you were trying to work up the courage to bring it up when Denki showed up at your door to use the bathroom after bursting a pipe in his (the joys of living two doors away from him.) After that, he was out of town for a week. Then he was jetlagged. This is your first time seeing him since then. He looks well rested, at least. 

Four hours pass by quickly. 

You need to find a way to draw him out but every time you’ve tried, he’s been busy. First with distributing the handmade soba bowls and chopsticks he’s gifting everyone. Now he’s playing a card game with Sero and Kirishima. You’d been following him around all night, looking for your opening to no avail. Maybe it’s the constant glancing or the way you’re tapping your foot, but his two opponents have taken notice of your predicament.  

“Heyy,” a drunk Kirishima throws an arm over Shouto’s shoulders, “it would be super manly if you helped [y/n] with their Christmas tree. It’s been propped up in the corner for days. Driving me crazy.” He winks at you.

“Yeah,” Shouto replies calmly, “I can do that. Right now?”

Thank you Kiri!

“Yeah,” Kirishima gives his shoulder a squeeze before letting him go, “better get to it before we forget again.”

“But I won’t for-” you grab his arm, immediately dragging him out the door and down the hallway towards your apartment. 

Fortunately, your place looks nice right now. You'd decorated, initially planning to host the party. However, your friends stepped in and made the decision to give you space for Shouto's gift. Plus, moving supplies to Denki's apartment took them all of five minutes. 

“This must be important to you, I’m happy to help,” Todoroki says while you push the door open to a perfectly upright and decorated Christmas tree. Considering that the glowing bulbs reflecting off the shiny ornaments are the only light source in the room, it certainly draws the attention. 

“Huh? Oh, right…” you really hoped he saw through the excuse, but this couldn’t have been that easy. He glances between you and the tree for a moment. 

“You don’t actually need help with this, do you?” he tentatively asks. 

“No, Shouto. I don’t need help with the tree. I…” you pause, considering your next words. You try to sound collected but they all come spilling out at once. “I’ve been trying to get you alone because I got you for secret santa.”

“Oh,” the previous conversation with Mina and Jiro comes flooding back to him, “oh.” 

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah, very okay. Before I presume too much, do you mind telling me what the gift is?”

“It's…a new experience for you.”

He seems to like your confidence, that you're more experienced than him. When you grab the collar of his shirt to pull him further into the room, he follows eagerly. Dropping to sit across from you on the rug in the middle of your floor, the lights catch his face perfectly. You'd never realized how beautiful his eyes are up close. 

Leaning in, you press your lips into his.

You know it's not his first kiss. In varying years, a few of your friends have bragged about kissing him at midnight on New Years. But you know he's never kissed anyone like this before. Your hands are buried in his two toned hair, pressing him to the floor as you climb on top. He groans into your mouth, his head tipping up to you as his lips chase more closeness with yours. Your tongue slides over his, deepening the kiss. 

You take off his sweater, then the shirt underneath. Dragging your fingers over his bare chest.

Hips pressing into his while you straddle him. Dragging yourself over the hard bulge forming in his pants. The heat builds in your gut. It's time to take things further. 

Reluctantly, you pull your lips away from his. Crawling backwards down his body. At some point, while your face hovers above his belt, you have a realization. 

“You want this, right?” you ask, staring up into his heterochromatic eyes. Knowing that Shouto Todoroki would easily get himself into a situation like this without meaning to, it felt important to ask. 

“Absolutely.”

“Good,” you pull his underwear down with the pants as he tips his hips up to help you slide them off. 

And… wow.

Sure, it's not the most massive dick in the world but definitely the biggest you've ever seen in person. His pale leaky tip begging to be put in your mouth. He twitches at the feeling of your warm breath as you move closer, finally making contact when you lick the vein up his length. 

As soon as you touch him, he crumples under you like tissue paper. He exhales like he’s never relaxed so much in his life. Maybe he hasn’t.

You wrap your lips around his tip and press your tongue onto his shaft. Using your hands to make up for the areas your mouth can’t reach. As your head dips up and down, working up a good amount of spit and precum, his moaning increases. Soon, he’s jutting his hips up towards you. His hand gripping your hair harder.

You know he could cum right now if you let him, but you have more ideas tonight.

Pulling your lips away with a pop, you sit back up. He watches as you move over him, still working to steady his breath. This is a lot more than he really expected to happen tonight but he’s loving every minute of it.

Taking off the amount of clothes you need to, you laugh slightly at how clothed you still are in comparison to him. He’s down to just his socks. 

“You can take your socks off, you know.” 

He does, quickly. Now you have him completely naked under you.

Straddling his lap, you line him up with your entrance pulling your underwear to the side.

When you sink down onto his tip, you feel his girth immediately. Making it what you’d assume is about halfway down, you slide back up. Continuing to envelop him in small increments. You want so badly to maintain the image he has of you being cool and experienced but the stretch of taking all of him is becoming more of a task than you anticipated.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, brows furrowed in confusion.

“No, you’re doing great. It’s just…you’re kind of big.”

“Oh. I'm sorry if my penis isn't ideal.”

You could laugh. Seriously. The amount of guys who would be massively jealous and he has no fucking idea. 

“No, it's definitely not that. You have nothing to worry about; it'll just take a bit to get used to.”

“Is there anything I can do to make it better for you? I know you’re doing this for me, but I'd like to make you feel good too.”

“Yeah, you could use your fingers?”

One issue - you forgot his fingers are massive as well.

“Is this okay?” he asks, slowly inching his middle finger in after you showed him how. 

“Yeah, just.. A little faster now.”

Eventually, he gets the hang of it. Earning a huge gush of cum from you, leaving his fingers sticky. His hand lingers for a moment while you come down. You’re still gripping his shoulders and breathing hard into his chest. Finally, you look up at him.

You haven’t seen him look this proud of himself in a long time.

“Does this mean we can try again?” he asks, “if you’re finished after that I can respect that as well.” 

“Yeah, we can definitely keep going,” you smile, shoving him onto his back again. You begin removing more clothes, starting with your now damp undergarments. 

This time, when you line yourself up you slide a little easier onto him. Still not quite fitting the whole thing but the stretch is much less now. 

Your elbows drop by his head, caging him to the ground under you. He brings his warm (and cold) hands to your hips, enjoying the way your skin moves against his fingers as you bounce up and down on him. The sound of your combined breathing fills your living room, nearly echoing from the corners. Holiday lights still illuminating his face while he stares up at you in amazement.

Why didn’t you do this sooner?

You continue riding his dick until the tension in your gut builds. Soon you’re clenching around him while holding onto his shoulders for support again. Your bounce slows to a grind while you press yourself as close to him as possible.

“Shouto,” you moan into his ear.

He groans and turns his head to kiss you.

“Can I..” he asks, sitting the two of you up while he holds you against his chest.

“Uh huh,” you nod and he has you on your back. Hips rutting between your legs that are now wrapped around his back.

Within the minute, it’s his turn. 

“I’m about to cum,” he moans, “is it okay if I-”

“Yeah, please cum,” you whisper.

Immediately, he whimpers - pulling you closer while he gushes inside of you.

"I've wanted to do that for years," he murmurs.

You move the hair out of each other’s eyes while you catch your breath. Eventually making your way off the living room floor.

While you’re getting cleaned up, he excuses himself briefly. Saying he needed to grab something from his car. You figure it’s toiletries or something and carry on.

A few minutes later, as you’re coming out of the bathroom freshly changed into comfortable clothes as he re-enters your front door. In his arms is a massive fluffy blanket, which he promptly wraps around you then leads you to your couch. 

“I’m your secret santa this year. I was waiting until after midnight to give you your gift, I wanted the excuse to take you out to lunch for a week,” he says while wrapping his arms around you, warming you further. “There's a new soba place I'd like to try, but I'm open to your suggestions as well.”

Down the hall, your friends were all guessing when they’d see you next. Some saying that one or both of you would come running back within the hour. Much to the delight of Mina, Jiro, Kaminari, and Kirishima - they guessed right. No one saw the two of you until you emerged from your apartment the next morning.

m.list

Okay, this whole thing was admittedly written after reading chapter 431 with izuchako becoming a thing and Jiro/Denki’s friendship deepening while Shouto just doubles down hard on soba. Something about that plus his absolute obliviousness is hilarious to me but I mostly write smut so it led to this weird awkward thing. Thanks for reading!

[livesworthlivingau]

Lives Worth Living Chapter 26-28

ISAT/Two Hats Spoilers below! CW: Outbursts, Mentions of stabbing/killing, unhealthy obsessing.

"So how you holding up Sif?" (You suddenly snap back to reality and look over to Isa, now left alone as the other three had left for the market.)

"What do you mean?" (You ask, confused by the sudden question.)

"You looked a little zoned out there, and getting to see Vale again, and Nille, it's just a lot right now, even if it's good stuff. So... Just wanted to check in with you!" (He gives his trademark bright smile, and you can't help but smile back.)

"It is a lot... but it's good, the family's back together again, even L-Vale now... I just... I really hope it works out this time."

"This time?" (CRAB!!)

"Y-You know! Like, having them around... I want them to fit in is all!" (A more serious look appears on his face. There's no way he bought that...)

"Sif... You know you can tell me anything, right?"

"I do! I know! I... I'm sorry, but it involves them a lot too, and I can't talk about it without them." (Your voice falters a bit, the topic making you uncomfortable as you start to scratch absentmindedly at your arms. His large, gentle hand meet yours after a moment, trying to calm you down.)

"Hey, it's okay, I understand. I just worry, y'know? But if you're sure it's okay for now then I can wait!" (He smiles at you again. You place your head on his shoulder, closing your eye with a relieved sigh.)

"I love you Isa."

"I love you too Sif."

----------------------------------------------------

"Excuse me for a moment, I need to use the restroom~." (Vale explains before leaving the table and conversation. They seemed especially uneasy since Nille left to help Bonbon in the kitchen a few minutes ago, probably still struggling being around everyone else...)

"Siffrin, is there, uhm… Is Vale uncomfortable around us?" (Mira asks, it seems you weren't the only one to notice.)

"They're… just shy, you know? Not used to new people! That's all!" (You try to smile convincingly.)

"Right…" (Crab.)

"They just need some time to warm up is all!" (Isa to the rescue, as always. Thank the stars.)

"They were stuck in the loops too afterall! Sif was the only one they really interacted with, right?"

"No wonder they're so on edge." (Odile chimes in with a little tease, not even looking up from her book.)

"H-Hey!?" (Mira and Isa can't help but snort and snicker at your expense. It WAS a pretty good joke you guess…)

"Though we should discuss what our next course of action is, now that Nille has found us. I assume we'll still head to Bambouche for their sakes, then continue our little reunion tour? I imagine you'd like to return to Jouvente at some point Isabeau?" (Odile begins to plan aloud to get us all on the same page.)

"Eventually, sure, I'm in no rush! But what about you, M'dame? Don't you want to go back to Ka Bue too?" (Odile pauses for a moment, glancing over at you. You must have been making some kind of face considering how she raises a brow at you.)

"I believe our little time traveler here already knows the answer to that question." (You look away nervously.)

"It's uhh... complicated? I don't think Odile cares about returning anytime soon." (You try to keep it vague, to which she nods. Her eyes casually return to her book before she speaks up again.)

"Very astute of you, Siffrin. If I do happen to return, it will likely be out of obligation more than anything else. I believe we have more pressing matters to attend to, like the fact you're still looping."

"I wouldn't exactly call that pressing..."

"Th-This isn't something you should just put off Siffrin! What if it just keeps getting out on the back burner and suddenly you're right back where you started again?!" (Mira chimes in in a panic.)

"I'm not saying we just ignore it forever! Just... we have some time at least, and Odile stopped me from looping once already! If anyone's gonna know what to do, it'll be her, right?"

"I stopped it in the moment, preventing you from looping ever again is a whole ordeal in and of itself. It will take a lot of research on a subject that no one knows anything about, and another that is purely theoretical. I may be good at what I do but I'm not a miracle worker."

"You might not think so." (You chuckle a bit. No matter how many times it happens, she still managed to surprise you over the years with new breakthroughs and theories on craft, sadnesses, and otherwise. She smirks a bit as her eyes remain on her book.)

"While your confidence in my is flattering, I'd still like to tackle this subject sooner rather than later."

"Alright, we'll get to Bambouche and go from there, okay? For now I'm just glad we're all together again..." (Your expression falls to a bittersweet one. You feel Isa's hand on your shoulder, giving a light squeeze and smiling brightly at you. You lay your head against his side and close your eye, savoring the embrace.)

"Dinner'll be ready in a few!... Hey, where'd Vale go?" (Nille asks, stepping back in from the kitchen.)

"Oh! They went to the restroom! B-But it's been a while, hasn't it? should someone check on them?"

"I better do it, y'all sit tight!" (Nille quickly takes the offer to ensure no one else would, heading off to find them.)

----------------------------------------------------

"Before I explain this, it's not their fault, please don't blame them, they were going through a lot and I didn't notice how it was affecting them and I told their secret an-" (You start to explain at a million miles a minute, too frantic to be processed properly even as Nille lightly grabs your shoulders to snap you out of it.)

"Hey, easy, just start at the beginning okay?" (She tries to comfort you, to which you nod and take a deep breath.)

"... When I first looped back all those years, I was... frozen? I was panicking, stuck in my head, I thought it must be a dream or something, there's no way this was really happening, right?... And then I heard their voice... and all of that just went away." (You glance over at Vale. They look... confused? Shocked maybe? You guess you never got the chance to tell them this part.)

"I ran to find them right after, as fast as I could, and... I was just so happy to see them, I didn't think about how they were feeling... forced to be back, I'd been through so much and they were just left behind... and then I dragged them along back here to force them into a family they didn't want any part in."

"Stardust... That's..."

"It's true Vale, and I'm sorry. I really don't blame you for what happened." (Vale just looks away, clearly not agreeing, but they can tell they won't change your mind. Nille still looks very confused, waiting for the story to continue.)

"So things seemed fine for a little while, but then Odile noticed I was doing a little too well, and I told her about everything... including their secret, which they made me promise not to tell." (You really were hamming up how awful you had been, even if you didn't realize it. It was your fault after all, Vale can't be punished for that.)

"Vale found out what I did, they were already on the verge of snapping and that pushed them over the edge, so... they had to go back, before I dragged them to the party... They had to make us all loop back..." (Nille takes a second to process all of this, before her eyes widen, realizing what you were implying.)

"Frin, tell me what happened, please." (She asks, her eyes looking almost desperate, as if asking you to assure her it's not what she thinks.)

"Vale... They..."

"I STABBED HIM! I SHOVED HIS OWN DAGGER INTO HIS HEART AND FORCED HIM BACK, OKAY?! I'M A MONSTER AND A MURDERER!!!" (You jump back as they suddenly start screaming out. You look back to the door, thankful no one else was there at the moment. Nille pulls herself away from their outburst. Looking scared, confused, conflicted.)

"N-No! You're not Vale, you knew I'd be fine! You knew I'd loop!"

"And what if you didn't?!?! What if it all ended right there?!? How could I do such a thing?! How could I take that risk?! How could I hurt you like that?!" (Their eyes were wide and crazed, they gripped their hair painfully tight. They looked ready to snap again. Before you could try to comfort them, Nille was already holding their face to try and snap their out of it.)

"Hey hey hey! Vale, Calm down please." (They stopped suddenly, tears flowing from their eyes and staring back at Nille, surprised they weren't being treated like the monster they thought they were.)

"You made a mistake... a big one, sure, but a mistake none the less. Frin's okay now, right?"

"B-But... I killed them... H-how could anyone forgive me for that?..."

"Well, Frin did, and that's the most important person to do so I'd say... It's a lot to take in alright, still not really sure how I feel about it right now... but I'm not just gonna hate you for it, especially after everything." (Vale stares up at her, they look confused, their eyes darting about as they try to piece something together.)

"I doubt you want to go back in there tonight. Maybe you should stay at the Inn for tonight, cool off a little..."

"Y-Yes... that sounds like it's for the best..." (Before Vale can get too far, Nille lightly grabs their arm to keep them from going too far.)

"This doesn't give you permission to run away though! Remember... you made a promise." (She smiles softly then lets go.)

"... Right... I promise." (Vale can't hold eye contact with either of you for more than a second, slowly starting to walk off again.)

"We'll see you tomorrow, Vale?..." (You plead. They nod back at you before fully turning away. The both of you watch as they slowly vanish from view towards the town center.)

"... Hey, Frin? Are you sure you're okay?" (Nille starts to speak again, now that Vale was safely out of earshot.)

"... It's not that bad, I promise."

"But they killed you Frin... I know they've got issues but... I didn't think they'd be capable of doing that." (Nille holds her arms, gripping them a bit too tightly.)

"They're not! They knew I'd be okay! I'm still looping, it's fine! They would never have done it if they knew it wouldn't happen, like when-" (You cut yourself off, quickly slapping your hand over your mouth.)

"... When what?"

"... After the loops 'ended' the first time, I went to find them... That's when they admitted who they were, and they kinda... snapped. They attacked me, they were ranting and raving, they spent all that time just watching me do it and have an easier time than they ever did, everything they went through and my loops were practically a walk in the park in comparison... But when they had me beaten they couldn't do it! They wouldn't! They're not capable of that I swear!!!" (You do your best to convince her... and possibly yourself in the process. You still blame yourself for what happened, you just don't want Vale to suffer for it.)

"Frin... I'm not saying we should just send them on their merry way or anything but... they still attacked you, they still stabbed you... I don't know if you should just act like that's fine and forget it ever happened..."

"Nille... I've had a very long time to think about this. I've missed them for decades, and now they're finally back... I'm not going to do anything to mess that up, so please don't do so either." (You don't realize it until it's already happened, your face turning to a colder, darker expression. It felt vaguely familiar, likely similar to how you looked in those later loops... Nille looks a bit unnerved by it.)

"Siffrin, that's not healthy! Don't you think you're being a bit obsessive about thi-"

"I don't care!" (Nille jolts in shock, stepping back at your outburst. You stop before you lose it too much, taking a deep breath to compose yourself.)

"I just want them back... I just want them to be happy... I had 30 years of a wonderful life with all of you while they got nothing... Isn't that unfair? Isn't that a tragedy? They go through all the pain and suffering and I just come in and replace them?!"

"Frin! That's no-"

"NO! They're the only reason I'm here! They're the only reason I got to be happy for all this time! So don't you dare get in the way of me making it up to them!" (You snap. Nille stares down at you in a mix of shock and nerves. She looks over you a bit, as if trying to work out the best way to deal with this situation. You sigh and take a step back, making yourself smaller as you duck into your cloak a little.)

"I'm sorry... but please, don't... don't ruin this for me... I need this. I need them... Good night Nille." (You excuse yourself before you say anything else you may regret. You head back inside, ignoring anything she or anyone else may be saying to you as you pass. You reach your room and settle in for bed, not wanting to deal with this day any longer.)

[simply-wlw-kpopstan]

7. Home

⚠️ Spoilers ahead, brief mention of suicide (implied in 1 sentence)

You got a message from yewon with everything you needed on Sunday. She even did more than you asked and hacked into the psychiatric visitor's list to get your name on there. She truly was a gifted hacker if she can do all of that without getting caught. Now what will you do when you get there?

First things first, call your aunt and explain everything that happened. Step two get a good lawyer so you can fight harin's sorry excuse of a family and get her out. Step 3 get your aunt to agree to let harin stay with you. Thinking it over, the hardest part would be step 2. You knew your aunt would let harin stay if you asked, she already knew a little about her since you accidentally slipped out you had a crush. What will happen when you see harin? What if she thinks you're there to take her home and you have to tell her that you can't? You shook your head and waved those thoughts away.

The day had arrived when You were going to visit harin for the first time and got nervous. At first glance it looks like a small hospital but once you actually look, you notice the barred windows. you realize how isolated it actually is when you don't hear a sound and it starts to feel eerie.

When you arrived at the doors, they were locked and you buzzed the intercom. A woman at a desk looked up from inside, smiled and the buzzer made a noise before her voice came through "hello, how can I help you?"

"I'm here to visit someone, my name is y/n y/l/n."

"hold on just a second. " a slight panic creeps up. Does she know? What if they arrest you for hacking into the system? "ah yes I found you. I see you're visiting a new patient here. I'll buzz you in and you have to fill out a form"

"alright." you took a deep breath of relief once the line cuts and the door buzzes open. You walk in and take care of the paperwork, once that was done she gives you a visitor's pass and asked you to wait until one of the nurses comes down to get you.

The big doors swing open and a middle aged woman walks up to the reception with a clipboard. "I swear things are getting worse up at 4. We got a biter." she sighed as she hands over the papers.

"isn't this the 3th attack this month?" the receptionist asks and the nurse nods, "they should up the dosage for those people. Can you please take that girl to visit so Eun? She's the newest arrival, she's on floor 1."

So eun? Right. That was harin's name before she got adopted. That family really stripped her from everything didn't they? " ofcours." she turns to you with a smile and motioned to follow her" Come along. Sorry It took so long. It's been a hectic day." you quickly follow after her as the doors begin to close again. "You're the first visitor for her, we didn't think anyone would come since there aren't any emergency contacts mentioned in her file."

"It's complicated but I'm taking care of it. She had a family but they abandoned her recently. "

The nurse smiled broadly. " I'm glad she still has you then. Being here can take a toll on a person the first few days, it's important that she knows she's not alone in this. "

" I've told her that before. No matter what happens she'll always have me. "

"I don't mean to be rude but what is your relationship to her? Are you family?"

"I Uhm I'm a friend."

"hmm, a friend." she smiled, "or perhaps you're more? It's okay. Love is love, you can't help who you fall for." you smiled at her words and were thankfully she didn't ask anything else, "well here we are. She normally has roommates but they are all participating in classes at the moment so you have some alone time for the next 2 hours."

You thanked her for everything and stood in front of harin's door. You try to control your emotions before you walk in, she doesn't need to see you emotional while she's going through all of this. She needs a shoulder to lean on and you will be that for her. You walk inside the room and see her sleeping, she looks peaceful and you're debating on letting her rest or waking her up. Before you can decide harin shifts around in bed and opens her eyes, looking straight at you with a little frown. "hi there." you spoke softly

"Why do I always dream about you being here?" her voice cracks and you saw the tears well up in her eyes, "It's not fair, please go away." she turns around and faces away from you.

"harin this isn't a dream," you walk around her bed and squated down so you'd be face to face with her, "i'm really here." you tug a hair strand behind her ear and she just stares at you with teary eyes. "i'm here harin. This is real love. I promise you."

She loses the battle and a few tears slip down as she cups your face with one hand and traces her thumb in circles, "H-How did you find me?"

"does that matter?" you lean into her touch and kissed the palm of her hand. "I'm sorry that it took so long but I'll get you out of here, I promise. I'm already working on-"

"don't" she pulls her hand back and shifts to sit up in bed. "this is what I deserve"

"what? No. You don't deserve this." you shook your head and sat down on the edge of her bed.

"I do. I've hurt so many people and never even cared about anything but myself. I deserve to be in here. I deserve what happened to me. "

You wondered if she knew about what happened after the fire. What her 'family' did. You took her hand in yours and started to play with the bracelet you had given her, she's still wearing it. " do you know about your-"

"that they disowned me? Yes. When I woke up I asked to call my grandma but they told me there weren't any contacts and that's when I knew." she sighed.

"you still want me to believe you deserve that? You don't. I'm working on this, I'll get you out and you can stay with me. I'll expose them for what they did. How they treated you and-"

"don't. Let me stay."

"what ? You- you want to stay here?" to say you were shocked was an understatement, you would've guessed she would want to get out immediately.

"yes. I don't want you to go against them. They have too much power, you don't stand a chance against them. Just let me work on myself in here, I'll prove to everyone I can change. When I get discharged we can go out on our first date. I'll have that fresh start I wanted with you."

"are you sure? I already have an amazing lawyer who's looking into things. I can get you out of here, you can still work on yourself without being here."

"there are professionals here that can help me. I know you want to help me but this is what I want. This is my shot at redemption."

"alright. If this is what you want I'll support you. I'll visit as much as possible. Once you have your schedule we can work out which days I visit."

"that works for me." she smiles, "I'm really sorry I dragged you into this. I asked my grandmother if she could get you into baekyeon and in my class. If I just left it at that one meeting you woul-."

"Harin, don't. In the end I made the decision to go didn't I? I don't regret anything because if you didn't ask your grandmother we never would've had a chance together."

"I can't argue with you if you put it that way." she pouted.

"then don't argue with me." you smile and you leaned in until your eyes caught the sight of medication and then the overdose popped into your head making you pull back.

"what? What's wrong" she frowned and followed your gaze, "Oh." she looks down as she catches on to your thoughts. "they give us these pills in the morning. I guess it's to keep us calm? We don't have to take them but they write it down if you don't so they can see who actually needs them and who doesn't."

"were you actually planning to...." you couldn't get it over your lips but you didn't have to, she knew.

"I don't know. I want to say that I knew how much to take but I didn't. It was all pure luck. I don't really want to think about what could've happened, to be honest."

"that's okay, at least for now. I do want to talk about it but only when you're ready."

She nodded and tugged at your hand, "can I get that kiss now?" She asked as she looked down at your lips.

"you don't have to ask" you smiled and leaned in for that much awaited kiss. The moment your lips touched everything felt right again, she was here in your grasp and nothing else matters but that. "just so you know. Once you're discharged from this place you're coming home with me. My aunt and her lawyer are taking care of all the legal stuff."

"so we'd be living together?" She smiled.

"well, my aunt will be there in the beginning so she can get to know you and once she knows she can leave us alone she'll take off again. That were the conditions."

"I look forward to the baby pictures and all the stories." she teased.

"I was a cute baby for your information! But she does have some stories that I'm already dreading." you thought over all the embarrassing moments of your childhood she could tell. "maybe don't ask her in the first few weeks I'm begging you."

"hmm, you'll have to keep my mind off of it then." she smirked.

"Oh I'm sure I'll find a way to keep you busy." you smile, "I did want to ask you about what you want me to call you. Do you want to keep harin or change it back to so eun? Or maybe you can get a new name?"

"harin is fine. So eun is my past, I can't go back to that and if I change my name again my-- they will win. I don't want to give them that satisfaction." her expression changed from sad to determined really quickly once she said that. "they might have disowned me and are revoking the adoption but they can't change my name."

"what about your last name?"

"maybe I can mix my names? How does So Harin sound?"

"perfect." you kiss her hand and she smiles. You look around the room and it feels so empty, "so, what do you usually do around here?"

She chuckled at your attempt of normal conversation, " at the moment I usually talk with a bunch of doctors and psychiatrist so they know what type of therapy I need. They're all nice which makes talking about what I did worse. "

"Well, I'll sneak in a book next time." you wink and she laughs.

"I can have books. This isn't a prison where you need to smuggle stuff in. I am getting my own room soon though. Apparently they want to take me to a different floor, one with more people my age and stuff."

"as long as you don't fall in love with someone else I'm okay with it."

"Oh so you'll ask the staff to relocate me if I do?" She clocked an eyebrow.

"are you saying you'll find someone else?" you fired back.

"nobody would compare to you. You've seen me at my highest and lowest, enjoy it 'cause that' s for your eyes only. No one has seen me the way you have."

"I kind of like the thought of that if I'm being honest."

You stayed until visiting hours were over and promised you'd be back soon. True to your word you made regular visits after harin got her schedule and after a few months of good behavior on harin's part you could go out for a few hours. You mostly took walks in the nearby forest and did have some little make-out sessions in more secluded area's. Eventhough you had planned some cute little picnics harin refused to call it a date, she already planned out what she wanted to do with you when she was discharged and that was going to be your first official date. You didn't mind to call these picnics dates but since harin was so stubborn you agreed to calling them hangouts, as long as you were with her you were fine with anything.

It took a year for her to be discharged from the place. You had gotten yourself a drivers license and borrowed a car from your aunt to Suprise her. She didn't know you got one and were planning this for months but you'd do anything for her. You're leaning against the hood of the car when she walks outside. She stops and takes a second to close her eyes and bask in the sunlight, you can't help but stare at her and fall even more in love.

"will you finally tell me where we're going tonight?" you smile as she walks up to you.

"no. Not yet." she wraps her arms around your neck and pulls you close, "hi there." she smiles.

"hi gorgeous." you smile and kiss her, "you ready to leave"

"yes. as Nice as everyone was, I'm ready to start my new life with you." she looks around and frowns, "where's your aunt? Isn't she driving us home?"

Home. You could get used to hearing her say that. "actually," you grab the keys from your back pocket and dangle them in front of her face, "i'm driving. I wanted to be able to pick you up when the time came so I got my drivers licence. Now you can be my passenger princess."

"You're amazing." she smiled and gave you a peck on the lips before pulling back and putting her bag in the trunk with you scolding her for doing it herself. "i'm a big girl i can put it away myself."

You hummed and got in the car together, "are you ready to meet my aunt tonight?" you ask as you pull out the parking lot and drove home.

"I'm nervous but knowing you, you've already told her a lot about me." she smirked as she leaned her head against the headrest while looking at you, "you look really attractive driving."

" whatever is going on in that head, stop those thoughts. I'm driving." you throw a quick glance to see her smile. You took a hand off the steering wheel and placed it on her thigh, "we have all the time in the world now. No need to rush."

"I'm happy you said that because as long as your aunt's home we're not doing anything." she laughed at your small pout.

"define anything. Does it include-"

"nope. Stop those thoughts you're driving." she smiled and you loved how relaxed she looked. For the first time ever you saw her posture falter a little bit, she's just leaning against the window but the harin from a year ago would still have a straight back and a straight face while looking out the window. She's looking at the scenery with a content smile and you're happy she chose to stay and work on herself. it couldn't have been an easy decision to make when she heard you talking about getting her out but she stayed and it worked.

She was finally showing who she was, the girl that she had pushed back all those years. The person you saw when everyone else saw a mean powerful heiress. She was excited in showing people she had changed. jaeun had agreed to meeting up with the both of you in a few weeks, suji hadn't really answered but jaeun had mentioned she'd get her to join. It was an important step for harin to face the people she hurt and to try to make amends with who was willing to listen. she prepared for the worst when she asked you to contact them, not expecting them to agree and now she was looking forward to the meeting. You hated to remind her there was a chance they wouldn't except her apology but she said she was ready for it.

Once you got home you took harin's bags to the spare bedroom, sadly also one of the conditions of your aunt. You did compromise that you could sleep in the same room for the first few nights. As you were walking to her bedroom with some drinks you hear a thud from her room. "What was that? are you okay?" you ran into her room to see her laying down on the bed with a smile.

"yes don't worry. It's just this bed is so comfy compared to the bed I had." she sighed as she stretched out. You laid down next to her and she immediately cuddled into you, laying her head on your chest with a leg thrown over yours.

"I love you" you said as you ran your fingers up and down her back.

"I love you too." she leaned up a little and planted a kiss on your lips, "it's about time I said it isn't it?"

You chuckled, "you wrote it down, that also counts."

"no, not for the first time."

In the end everything worked out for the both of you. You went on your first date and harin got to talk with jaeun and suji. It took some time but the both of them saw how much she had changed, how much she regrets what she did and eventually forgave her. Harin occasionally woke up from nightmares and you always took a walk around the block when that happened. You'd sit down on the couch with hot chocolate and some TV show playing in the background as she talked about her dreams. There were a lot of things that she still had to overcome from her childhood, some things she wouldn't and it would be hard.

In the end harin knew she had a home with you and your aunt. Come to think of it She might be your aunts favorite since she calls her more than you but you didn't mind. It's about time harin felt the love of a parental figure, to have them care about her without any expectations. You slept in separate rooms when your aunt was home most of the time but once she left harin always ended up in your bed. Things slowed down and as the both of you settled into this new life you couldn't wait to see what the future had in store for you two.

masterlist

This is the end of this story🫣 thank you to everyone for reading, sharing and liking❤️ special thanks to @iwendix (I know Suprise mention😁) for reacting on the posts and leaving those comments. They really helped me come back to the story to finish it.

[spockandawe]

Oh, this is interesting. To me. I'm not sure it's interesting to anyone else! But I'm on my computer for once and FULL of words again, and I'm delighted to talk to myself given half an excuse.

So, I made a post about Long Live Evil! Because I cracked open the book and was absolutely taken aback by how transparently it seemed to be an SVSSS reskin. I wrote up a goodreads thing (it's whatever, I'm going to rehash the main points here too), because I was also full of words and beans after finishing the book yesterday, and after polling online friends, I was surprised to see that the comparison didn't seem to have organically occurred to anyone else, when it was so naked to me. I know there’s a TON of transmigration and isekai stories out in the universe, and pointing at one single book was a big claim, so I just had to assemble all my thoughts! I find this so interesting! And I reblogged my initial one-off post with a little more elaboration about some of the things that jumped out at me, then got on with live and went back to chipping at ORV and GHG, and shotgunned MADK this afternoon.

This is a subtle nod and a wink to my passionate love for these kind of... morally grey main characters! Calling them villains might be a bit much, I don't think there are many true villain protagonists out there (LLE included), and even Devil Venerable has a demonic cultivator who's doing demonic shit and killing loads of people... but with the ultimate balance of the heavens and earth as his priority. This kind of story is my jam. I was recced this book on the basis of transmigration and sketchy protagonists being my thing. I can't rightfully call SVSSS the best cnovel I've ever read, but it is my favorite. And I've probably reread it more times than any other cnovel.

So, that SRB post, huh? I put Long Live Evil behind me, and honestly even following up on the sequel is mmmmmdoubtful, but THIS snagged my attention again. First, the comparisons she's calling out as incorrect are wild to me. Draco and Harry? What? Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian?? (I had to ponder that one for a hot minute, but I bet you anything it's about 'the golden cobra' and 'the last hope' and that's just silly, they're not wangxian, they're MOSHANG)

I was recced LLE in one friend group, but I had an anti-rec from my book club friend group. My book club friend hadn't been at all impressed by it! And she's cool, and I talk up svsss and mxtx to that crowd every so often, without really expecting them to read it. I talk about transmigration as a plot device that I love, and the things that can be done with it! But with that connection in mind between the books, as I started LLE, I was jokingly defending the honor of SVSSS to this crowd, so I admit I was primed to recognize similarities.

I really truly did not make it far in the book before locking it down. I was getting vibes basically from the moment Rae started gushing about her problematic fictional fave, I referenced 95% certainty shortly after she makes the jump to the fictional universe, the golden cobra was 98%, Lia Mingyan's, I mean Liu Mingyan's lack of sex scenes was 99%, and the first pov section for Marius-jun was where I gave up and called it as a sure thing.

It'll be very funny if I'm wrong! I don't think I'm wrong.

Plenty of spoilers to follow, because I identified this inspiration early, I guessed basically every plot twist early, I don't have the patience to dance around spoilers while explaining how it all lines up.

Now, I said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: I don't think this is plagiarism. I think it's tasteless to accuse an author of stealing and repurposing characters to her face. But I think it's also tasteless to repurpose characters as nakedly as happened here! Again? If I'm wrong? That's why I'm talking to myself on my blog and not messaging her directly (?????? who even does that). What are the stakes for me being wrong here? I look like a clown online? That would be terrible, I've never done that before! It's not a crime to write in ways I find distasteful. It's not a crime to write a book I think is not good, even apart from the use of fictional influences. But I like talking about my feelings online, and I can't be stopped!

But there's two aspects of this that make me somewhat uncomfortable in a less fun way. Both are contingent on the big IF. If this is inspired by svsss, I think it's not a classy move to take a Chinese story in a Chinese setting, inspired by the modern Chinese literary scene and classical Chinese fantasy, and just dump the characters into a generic western setting. Fanfic? Have fun and try to be respectful. Profic, making money off it? Ehhhhh. The question of how much change is necessary is a tricky one! It's not one I'm equipped to answer, this is not my wheelhouse or my place to speak. But it doesn't make me feel good!

However, here's where I have more personal stake:

Again, if this is inspired by svsss. It really doesn't feel great to see a queer story (a smash hit in more than one country!) stripped down for parts and made into a heterosexual story. It's not all heterosexual, we get side lesbians, we get men with homoerotic tension. But the central ship is now a guy and a girl. And it... stings a little extra, because in the story of svsss, the idea of assumptions about default (hetero)sexuality are such a central theme. A queer man has written a trashy, oversexed stallion novel where the hottest guy in the universe collects the hottest women like pokemon, and it sells so much better than the more personal stories he tried to write. He has to write this pandering trash to make money to live, he can't live on the more authentic stories he tried to tell before. The protagonist is the projection of his own insecurities and self-hate, and the protagonist's right hand man is his projection of his own ideal man. Another man transmigrates into the book, assuming that he himself is straight, assuming the protagonist is straight, and the force of their love changes the course of the entire narrative. In retrospect, it's upsetting to see those load-bearing themes casually carved out of the story and the hollowed-out remains used like this.

Anyways, in their place, now we've got running gags about how the heroine's tits are BIGHUGE now and she can't keep her balance because her GIANT HONKERS keep tipping her over.

I'm a little more bothered than I was yesterday! On the other hand, since I saw SRB's post, I've been chewing on that central ship. Full disclosure, it was one of my favorite aspects of the novel! My other favorite aspect is the dynamic between the golden cobra and the last hope (the moshang, which I think some people misdiagnosed as wangxian).

I know that the central ship here is the thing that's LEAST comparable to svsss, and the biggest roadblock in the way of my theory. On the other hand, I think it was the thing that HAD to change if this story was going to repurpose svsss without getting called out for being a classic 'bro can i copy your homework' adventure.

For this section, let's assume that I'm right and let's roleplay an author trying to figure out how to change Bingqiu into something not-obviously-Bingqiu. How do we need to differentiate Rae and Key from Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe.

First, we eliminate the martial sect thing. Easy peasy! That's a wuxia concept, and this book goes full nondescript western fantasy. She's not his teacher, he's not her student. And if she's not his teacher and he's not her student, why does this woman have power over this man, to build up the resentment that inspires him to turn the tables on her later? Well, in nondescript western fantasy, she's a noblewoman of some kind, and he's a servant of some kind. Noble lady treats servant like garbage, servant resents her. Doing great.

And to loop back around to the beginning of this a little, I think it really is key to this reskinning that Rae is a SHE. If the central ship remained queer, it would be so, so hard to pull away from the most identifiable thematic aspects of svsss. And pieces of what remain are... kind of bizarre for a normie heterosexual ship where our protagonist is aware that she's transmigrated into an impossibly desirable sexpot character!

Shen Qingqiu never considers that Luo Binghe might be interested in him because Luo Binghe is about to have a HAREM of beautiful women, he's the most heterosexual man of all time, and Shen Qingqiu is straight too! Besides, Shen Qingqiu is his teacher! He half-raised Luo Binghe! Even if Luo Binghe was bent, he wouldn't be interested in an old man like Shen Qingqiu!

Rae is 20, occupying a 24-year-old body. Her character's sexiness is relentlessly remarked upon from start to finish. Key is 18. Why is Rae so sure that he looks up to her as... a mentor, as an older woman? He almost goes down on her! He makes out with her! And she's like 'ah yes, it means nothing. lol. so funny how these things happen.' Bruh, at least after Luo Binghe kissed Shen Qingqiu, Shen Qingqiu finally got hit with the clue stick. Binghe didn't try to blow him only for Shen Qingqiu to keep noodling on about how Binghe definitely isn't into him in any sense, even the most oblivious man in the universe managed to catch on.

Why doesn’t Rae think there’s any chance of genuine attraction here? Yeah, I get that she's coming back from terminal cancer. She's doing great. She knows that the fictional character she occupies is one of the most desirable ladies in the land. He’s a teenager. He’s not expressing disinterest. A lack of horny for sexy lady ought to be more surprising for her. But I guess she’s slightly older than him and that small age gap has been magnified by the transmigration, so she conceptualizes herself only as his teacher, I mean mentor.

I’m not even mad at this dynamic. I love their chemistry, the ‘boss’ thing is cute, but lordt, I have to wonder if it’s meant to substitute for ‘shizun.’ But you know where this comparison really falls apart? Key isn’t really THAT much Luo Binghe.

At least, he isn’t in terms of personality. I mean, we’ve got the mysterious magical heritage, the healing factor, the unbeatable fighting skills, being beaten repeatedly because of the protagonist (tbh it’s sexier when she’s responsible, rather than just being a bystander), being yeeted into the abyss, I mean the ravine, to rise again and assume power as the merciless ruler of all the land. Oh, and he comes back from the dead still bearing the scar that represents her betrayal. In the original novel, he turned on her the moment he got his opening and was responsible for coming up with her gruesome torment.

(Also, Shen Qingqiu being terminally ill isn’t canon, but it’s very popular fanon, and it’s hard to ignore that with how hard the narrative lingers over Rae’s terminal illness as her gateway into this fictional world)

But! But the things that are different! Luo Binghe is a smart and sweet teenager, who had a rough start on the streets and has a tragically deceased single adoptive parent, but that’s their only backstory parallel, he doesn’t blacken until he’s thrown into the abyss. Not like Key, Key is a murder-happy sociopath, a former street kid who fought the odds and made good, and who’s a lot sharper and cleverer than the upper classes think someone like him should be. He utterly destroyed a righteous cultivator clan, I mean glassblowing guild, for the sake of revenge. Once our heroine scores a number of trust points with him, we unlock secret backstory about how as a small child, he experienced deeply formative hand trauma.

He’s Xue Yang.

It took me a moment to process the wangxian allegations SRB mentions in her post, because I was trying to figure out how someone would be aware of wangxian, and read that backstory, and somehow miss it. But it’s fine, I’m pretty sure they were actually talking about the golden cobra and the last hope! So LET’S TALK MOSHANG.

It was so funny. I was liveblogging the book to friends, because honestly, I do not jive with the buffy-esque joss whedon relentless quip-quip-quip writing style. I was struggling to stay engaged when the narrative never took a moment to breathe. And I perked up at the introduction of this new character! He seemed kind of fun, kind of meta, Key came over to share Secret Info with him, and I messaged the friend who recced this to me (also an svsss appreciator) ‘lol, what if he’s shang qinghua. just straight from svsss shang qinghua.'

Reader, a second transmigrator has hit the narrative.

Now, in some ways, he’s a disappointment to me. He’s not nearly as interesting as Shang Qinghua. Adding the author to their own narrative is way more fascinating to me than just dropping a rando into the story. But I’ll take what I can get, I think multiple transmigrators are almost always a fun decision. And for the queer reasons I mentioned above, I think Shang Qinghua ties into the themes of his novel a lot more strongly than Eric does here. I don’t want to call him ‘the golden cobra’ every time, I get more self-conscious every time I write it. And honestly, the reveal of Eric’s full Eric Whatever name feels a little awkward and… pointed compared to the sheer opacity of Shang Qinghua’s existence. Never mind what his name was in the real world, we don’t even know his name before he was a Peak Lord. I’m not upset we got a name or anything, it would make certain fannish activities a lot easier if Shang Qinghua had additional canon names, but it was an interesting detail in light of how parallel the characters are.

Okay! He’s not the author! He’s still a super-fan. He transmigrated into the book years before the LLE main character, and has settled in pretty well. According to canon as Rae knows it, he’s fated to be killed by his own favorite character. He’s fast-thinking and fast-talking, and scattered and all over the place, but dangerous when cornered and more competent than he looks. He deals in information and manages a network of spies. He’s a creative! He and the main character banter relentlessly and get along like a house on fire. He and the king’s trusted ice-cold right hand man share a weird codependent dynamic that’s part hostile, part homoerotic.

Marius has complicated feelings about not-shang-qinghua. Eric is a coward, he’d rather talk fast and lie than stand up for anything, he cowers and cringes and isn’t honorable. He and Mobei-jun also shared a deeply formative experience in their youth, where as a teenager in distress, Eric/Shang Qinghua appeared before them and announced their devotion. In Shang Qinghua’s case, it was offering to serve him (and saving him from huan hua injuries), and in Eric’s case, it was declaring him to be his favorite character (and saving him from sad teenaged isolation), but man. And in the end, after a long, fraught relationship, Marius/Mobei-jun is furious and strangely distraught when Eric/Shang Qinghua abandons him.

Guys, it’s not wangxian.

I think it hits less hard when Marius’s themes of family violence aren’t allowed to sit directly in the narrative, and when it seems like some vague berserker rage thing rather than Linguang-jun just bluntly wanting to murder him for practical reasons, but hey! This was still, genuinely, one of my favorite parts of the story. I wanted more more more of them, I would read this moshang au any day.

After that, the parallels get a little more nebulous! The comparisons between the abyss and the ravine are pretty obvious. I’m not sure why we decided to build our city and palace right on top of the pit of people-eating ghouls rather than literally anywhere else, but it means we don’t need to take a special field trip to Jue Di Gorge, which means we can do the bait and switch where it turns out Key was a heavenly demon all along. The temperamental King Octavian, the young master of the palace, one might even say the xiao gongzhu if they were feeling spicy, jealously tries to romantically monopolize half our main ship and has the other half flogged with a magic whip.

I already mentioned that Rae brings up that Liu Mingyan — wait, I said I’d change some answers so it wasn’t obvious I copied — Lia doesn’t get a sex scene in the books even though loads of other people did, just like Shen Qingqiu praises Liu Mingyan for her untouchable image in such an oversexed, gratuitous book. I don’t think it would be right to call Liu Mingyan a white lotus heroine in either SVSSS or PIDW, but her archetype is in that wheelhouse, and Lia is just a white lotus rival played straight (and played deliberately, another touch I liked). We don’t have made up animals like black moon rhinoceros pythons in LLE, but we do have leucrotas, which are like a lion and a hyena and serve no narrative purpose.

Oh, you know what else I forgot to mention? Rae gives Key one of her red ruby earrings, and he refuses to sell it, and stubbornly holds onto it until the bitter end. Is this Xue Yang holding onto the last piece of candy Xiao Xingchen gave him, or is it Hua Cheng determinedly keeping Xie Lian’s red coral earring with him even through his own death? Por que no los dos?

There are things that are original in here. I know that this presentation undersells how much of the book is original. The trouble is, almost everything I thought was good is something that either was lifted from another person’s creative endeavors, or is being tainted by association with all the other naked lifts. Some of the noble ladies have an archery contest! That’s pretty new and fresh, huh? We didn’t have any archery contests in SVSSS!

Yeah, but we sure did in MDZS. And MDZS is already in play, because we’ve already got one character who’s just copy and paste Xue Yang.

There’s a thermocline of trust in this book that fell off for me sharply, and it turned a lot of this into a guessing game of ‘wait NOW what the refrance? owo'

I’m probably on a hair trigger by now, but I’ve also probably missed some things. And I’m sure this is a synthesis of multiple influences, because most stories are. But this feels like cooking and trying to season your dish with a little salt and then the container lid just falls off.

Emer isn’t a clear parallel to an existing character! Love that for her! Love a lady with an axe, especially if she gets a nice girlfriend! On the other hand, in terms of backstory? Wow, she’s been raised with our protagonist since early childhood, as not-quite-foster-siblings, but she was always the clear unfavorite and harbors a lot of resentment over that. Oh, and once Rae entered the story, Rae started trying to speedrun an enemies to 'hello hiiii we should bestiessss' arc with her. I think she had to have an axe, because a whip or a sword would make the Jiang Cheng and/or Liu Qingge vibes a little uncomfortably strong. She doesn’t follow their character arcs! But the disappointing thing is that it felt like she was just there to facilitate pasting the frankenstein patchwork of the narrative together rather than having an arc of her own.

(why did Marius stop to give her a sword lesson? Why did she immediately sneak onto the roof to eavesdrop on the king?? It’s hard to give her credit for being an original character when none of her original actions make sense in the greater universe)

Oh, I almost forgot, we’ve even got magic plot macguffin plants. While Binghe is in the abyss, Shen Qingqiu needs to get the Sun And Moon Dew Flower Seed so he can build an escape hatch for himself before Binghe wrecks his shit. Rae, on the other hand, needs to secure the Flower of Life and Death by an arbitrary deadline as an escape hatch so she can go back to her original life rather than being trapped here forever. Very different! There’s even little side tangents about how these plants can be so beneficial to others, Zhuzhi-lang is desperately trying to secure a seed to build a new body for Tianlang-jun (which Shen Qingqiu enables him to do, despite not knowing what he wants it for), and Rae thinks about how the flower could “save someone on the very doorstep of death,” and gives it away for that exact purpose. So different!

I need to cut myself off, otherwise I’ll keep going. Truly, there is original content in here. It was just all the stuff I didn’t like. The character quipping was. God. There sure was a lot of it! By sheer volume, that’s a lot of original content. Some of the extended cast was interesting, I enjoyed the Horrors and their brothers, I liked Valencia. Now, I didn’t like how basically every girl ADULT WOMAN in this cast was in shitty teen mean girl mode. I didn’t like how immature every character interaction period was. I lost track of how many times Rae was going around in sexy clothes and rando servants were like “HARLOT,” out loud about a favored noblewoman, you know, as you do. Especially when her bodyguard is pulling against his choke chain just waiting for an excuse to do a murder. I don’t need Rae to be the picture of flawless maturity. But nobody is mature, full stop, not even the set dressing servants.

For a less loaded example, the cumplane friendship dynamic is here, practically intact. Shen Qingqiu can't snipe about authorial choices, because Eric isn't the author, so instead Rae and Eric squabble about favorite scenes and favorite ships and such. But it isn't nearly as charming when we don't see these two characters dropping their dignified Peak Lord cultivator roleplay to talk shit with each other. Rae and Eric never have a filter once in this book. They are always Like This, it isn't a secret face that gets unlocked when they're bouncing off each other, they are never circumspect, never have a filter, never have any idea they shouldn't be speaking their full thoughts at full volume 24/7. Even after this starts to have material consequences when they're inevitably overheard! It's an immersion-breaking level of immaturity, which is terribly frustrating when the original dynamic that I loved is only changed in such minor ways.

And another thing that actually tastes way more sour than it did on first reading – Valencia is probably the least mean girl of all the women in the cast. She’s delightful. Too bad that in every scene but her last one, Rae, who repeatedly references her own experiences having her body and appearance ravaged by cancer, cannot for love or money stop talking about how uggo Valencia is.

I know this is an adult novel. The characters are, by age, adults. There’s almost an oral scene. God, I wish we’d gotten the oral scene. But by every other metric, the characters are all high schoolers and I’m an exhausted adult muttering to myself ‘they’ll grow out of it, please GOD let them grow out of it.’

Again, none of this is a crime! Nobody forced me to finish the book! And I did enjoy the book. Parts of it! But that very distinct partial enjoyment experience almost forced me to dissect my own emotional response. And truly, other than a few flashes like Valencia, almost everything I enjoyed about the book was something I could trace directly back to one author, and mostly to one book by that one author. I… enjoyed half of the book. And if I can track most of that half back to mxtx and svsss, I really think that says something about how much wasn’t done to make the inspiration behind this book the author’s own.

It's disappointing! I read this book because I like svsss, I read it because I want more books like svsss, I read it because I trawl the novelupdates tags looking for more books that will hit me the way svsss did. It doesn’t taste good to be served reheated svsss with expired buffy sauce drizzled on top. It tastes even less good once I have a minute to think about what turning an m/m meditation on sexuality and self-image and assumptions about others into a m/f snooze does to the themes I loved so much. It stings to see an author rehash a book that was/is so important to me, and see what they kept and what they threw out, and be like ‘oh, so… these were the elements that mattered to you?’

Again, I hate to be redundant with this, but. I think calling this book plagiarism would be overdoing it. I think it’s tasteless. I don’t think being tasteless is a crime. It remains wild to me that she’s getting messages calling out her supposed inspiration, even if I’m simultaneously criticizing the judgment of the people making those specific comparisons. And I ABSOLUTELY understand why she’s reluctant to own up to the specific inspirations behind this book, because good lord. If it was me, I’d be professionally embarrassed too.

It’s not my job to be the book quality police, but I think someone as experienced as this should be able to do a better job of synthesizing inspirations into something original. I dropped ‘can’t afford to offend my scheming disciple’ earlier this year, because that narrative couldn’t shake the taste of stale svsss fanfic, and it was much more subtle than this is. Once again, if I’m wrong, this post will be retroactively VERY funny and I’ll be all ears to see what her inspirations actually were. I don’t think I’m wrong.

[cyren-myadd]

Rant about Eywa theories

Eywa is one of the most interesting concepts in the Avatar universe, imo. The concept of an interplanetary consciousness that every native organism can "interface" with is so cool. One thing that really fascinates me about Eywa is how she goes about "protecting only the balance of life" as Neytiri explained to Jake. As of Avatar 1, Eywa did not react to the human threat mining and destroying the forest for several years, nor the genocide/abduction of the Sarentu clan, even though Eywa would've been aware of what was happening when the Na'vi shared their memories with her soul trees. She only reacted to the threat AFTER she was exposed to human memories of the destruction of earth when Jake interfaced with her via his avatar body, and then again when she interfaced with Grace’s human body. The reaction was similar to an immune response within a body attacking a foreign virus, with native fauna mobilizing to attack anything that registered as alien. One interesting thing of note about the immune response is that the animals were not physically connected to Eywa when they attacked, which means Eywa can somehow send commands to organisms “wirelessly.” This phenomena could also explain how the atokirina conveniently show up to stop Neytiri from killing Jake. Anyway, the immune response won the final battle of A1, in A2 we saw the immune response can't protect Pandora in its entirety. The recoms could get past the immune response undetected, and Bridgehead and the whaling ships didn't face an immune response at all.

Another interesting thing about Eywa we learned from the original script for Avatar 2, is that she is confirmed to have caused Grace’s pregnancy. Norm describes Kiri’s birth as “parthenogenesis,” which is a biological process in which an egg produces viable offspring without sperm from a male. (idk if the script needs a spoiler warning, so I'm putting one just to be safe) Based on the fact that Jake describes the pregnancy as “a mystery,” we can assume parthenogenetic birth isn’t something normal to the Na’vi’s alien reproductive cycle. On earth, parthenogenesis is only found in invertebrates and some plants. Assuming that Na’vi reproduction is somewhat similar to earth animal reproduction (which I think we can safely do since the Sully children clearly have inherited different traits from their parents, implying that they get half of their DNA from each parent just like on earth, but they are aliens so I could be completely wrong here), Grace would’ve had gametes inside of her avatar’s reproductive system, which are cells that only contain half of the genetic material to produce a viable offspring. A complex, multicellular organism like a Na’vi couldn’t exist without a full set of genes, so in order to produce a zygote (a new cell with a full set of genes that can grow into an embryo), the other half of the genetic material must’ve come from somewhere else, and the only place it could’ve come from is Eywa herself. This means that Eywa, to some capacity, can create or at least copy and reproduce genetic material. Since Kiri is so similar to Grace, it’s possible the other half of her genes are just a complete copy of Grace.

From all this we can conclude some things about Eywa.

We know she is not:

All powerful

All knowing

A “god” in the traditional sense

We know she is capable of:

Storing memories, including memories of the deceased from the last time they connected with her

Making decisions to react to threats based on those memories

Interfacing with an alien’s nervous system

Commanding fauna

Sending signals to organisms without physical contact

Creating/changing genetic material

What is still unclear is how Eywa’s consciousness works. Is she:

A sentient individual?

A hive mind of the deceased Na’vi?

An amalgamation of consciousness built from memories?

Something akin to a biological artificial intelligence?

Now that we’ve established the things that are confirmed about Eywa, I want to get into some speculation about what else she might be capable of. Note that from this point on I’m being purely SPECULATIVE and I’m not saying any of this is for sure possible in canon, I’m just coming up with hypotheses based on info we already have. After the end of Avatar 2, it looks like Jake and the Na’vi are planning to make their stand against the RDA, but if they want any hope of winning against the RDA’s superior technology, they’re going to need a combination of a Na’vi war force and divine intervention, just like in Avatar 1. The question is, how will Eywa help them? The one form of defense we’ve seen from her is the immune response, but that can only go so far. It can be fooled by avatars and recoms, and it is not strong enough to attack a heavily fortified base like Bridgehead. Eywa is going to have to step up her game, and I’ve created three theories on how she might do that.

📢potential spoiler warning for the last theory!📢

Theory 1: The 880 Virus

Project 880 is a screenplay James Cameron wrote in 1995 that eventually morphed into the Avatar we know and love today. One element in 880 that never made it to Avatar was the counter-viruses. For every earth virus the RDA brought with them to Pandora, Eywa created a counter-virus that would stop it, protecting both native organisms and the humans from getting sick from the viruses ever again. The RDA was even planning to create vaccines using the counter-viruses and sell them back on earth. At the end of Project 880 when the RDA is forced to retreat, Jake tells them that if they ever come back, Eywa will unleash a deadly virus that will wipe out any human that dares set foot on Pandora again. Even though Project 880 is not canon, I could see James Cameron revisiting his old idea to help the protagonists shake off the RDA forever. The problem is they’d need to find a way to protect the friendly humans like Spider and Norm.

Theory 2: Avatar Kiri

Between the parthenogenetic birth and Kiri’s ability to control vines (seen in The High Ground comic) and anemones (seen in Avatar 2), the movies are clearly setting up for there to be something special about her. In both the comic scene where she controlled plants and the movie scene where she controlled the anemones, the characters around her expressed confusion that she could do so, from which we can assume those are not normal abilities of a Na’vi. Since Kiri is also established to have a deep connection to Eywa, it is possible she is meant to act as an “avatar.” In the original context of the word, an avatar is a manifestation of a deity in mortal form, so Kiri would act as an avatar for Eywa. Since Kiri is a person and not a… whatever Eywa is, she can make her own decisions and react quickly to problems without having to absorb memories first. There’s no more information to speculate about what other abilities Kiri may develop in the future, so unfortunately, there’s not much else to discuss here that we can base on any evidence.

Theory 3: If you can’t beat em, join em

📢Here’s where we’re getting into potential spoiler territory.📢 In the BTS footage for Avatar 2, there were some scripts accidentally shown which described some very interesting scenes: Spider, breathing without a mask, and Kiri confessing to Mo’at that she caused it to happen. There was also some concept art shown in Las Vegas that depicted Spider with a neural queue plugged into the underwater spirit tree with Kiri. Full disclaimer, it’s entirely possible these are scrapped ideas and will not be seen in the Avatar franchise, but for the sake of this hypothesis, let’s assume they’re legit. I’ve seen a lot of people asking the question of HOW would this happen, but I haven’t seen anybody asking an equally important question: WHY? I’m very interested in the HOW and maybe I’ll make a discussion post on it later, but for my hypothesis let’s just talk about the WHY. Even though Kiri claimed responsibility for it, I don’t think this is something she could do without the help of Eywa, since Na’vi aren’t established to have the ability to radically alter other organisms. So why would Eywa want to give a human kid the ability to breathe the Pandoran air? Sure, he’s Kiri’s friend, but Eywa has never intervened to save an individual’s life just because people cared about them before (otherwise we’d still have Neteyam RIP). As Neytiri said, “The Great Mother protects the balance of life.” Eywa did not intervene to stop the destructive mining or protect the Sarentu, she only intervened AFTER Grace’s memories showed her that the RDA could potentially cause planet-wide destruction like on earth. So if she gave Spider this life-saving ability, there must be a bigger reason for it other than just Kiri wanting him to survive. My hypothesis is that Eywa has realized what a massive threat the humans pose to Pandora, and that her immune system response is insufficient to protect her biosphere. Her solution is to behave like a virus and weaponize the humans against themselves. When a virus infects a healthy organism, it “hacks” into healthy cells and reprograms them to attack uninfected cells and produce more viruses. Eywa will “hack” Spider’s biology the same way she “hacked” into Grace’s nervous system to interface with her, and will “reprogram” him to breathe the air and have a neural queue. Spider is already loyal to the Na’vi, so she doesn’t need to do anything further to him, but what if she repeated the process with other humans? Any human who gained a neural queue would be able to experience tsaheylu and the connection between all living things. Humans who are already loyal to Eywa would be able to fight back better with their new abilities, and it would give Eywa more access to more memories to gain a better understanding of the enemy. Humans who are loyal to the RDA would be more inclined to switch sides after experiencing Eywa’s consciousness, much like Jake did. I’m aware this final theory is a bit more out there than the others, but it spawned from me trying to answer the question of WHY would Spider get the ability to breathe the air and I felt like there had to be a bigger reason than just Kiri wanting to save him. Unlike Kiri, there’s not some special significance about Spider (other than his connection to Quaritch, but I don’t think Eywa would care about that) that would make him vital to the fight against the RDA, so I thought, what if he’s not special, he just happened to be the first piece of a much larger plan? And the result is this theory.

What do you think of my theories and do you guys have any of your own to share?

TLDR: Eywa is really cool, and in the future I think she could possibly defeat the RDA by unleashing a deadly virus, giving Kiri special powers, or "converting" Spider and other humans.

[milaisreading]

Hello, is possible for you to make fanfic in which ego makes y/n change teams to manage for like 1-3 week?

(So sorry if it’s difficult to understand, English isn’t really my first language)

Author: ofc! Thank u for requesting, it really makes me feel happy that u all are interested in the series so much 💗 💖 hope u enjoy this🩷

Warnings ⚠️: nothing really. Reader uses she /her and there is mention of Bastard München (manga spoilers). Requests are open! Also, if u all are interested I will write a pt 2 to this request from the Reader's perspective and her stay in Germany

⚽️Blue lock belongs to: Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura⚽️

The Blue Lock team was watching in curiosity as (Y/n) kept talking and showing things to an older staff member. The team was a little farther away, so they weren't able to make out what (Y/n) was saying, but all they knew it must have been important, as the girl had an unusually serious face and the man tried to write down every word she was saying.

"Ahhh~ (Y/n) looks so cute when she is explaining things." Reo sighed, dreamily watching the girl as Otoya and Gagamaru nodded their heads in agreement.

"Her eyes shine a special way when she is all serious." Gagamaru added.

"I honestly wish we went together to school, would have loved to have her as my tutor." Otoya said.

"I would have failed all my classes for that then." Bachira chuckled as the others started adding their own thoughts. Rin and Baro were the only ones who didn't say anything, too immersed in their own thoughts.

'Who is that guy? Is he here to write down some inventory or?' Rin raised an eyebrow and looked over at Baro, who had a similar expression.

"You think this off too?"

"Yeah. It's also weird how much more often Ego-san has been calling (Y/n) into the office. Teieri-san seemed a little upset these past few days too." Baro said as they watched (Y/n) say goodbye to the man and walk over to the group.

"Did something happen? You guys don't usually stop training unless Ego-san tells you to." The girl wondered as she sat down between Isagi and Kunigami.

"We were just wondering who the man was. He has been coming over often these past few days." Nagi said, not looking up from his video game. That earned him a small scolding from Reo and Yukimiya, but it was left ignored by him.

"Oh, that's Suzuki-san. He is a very sweet staff member, he will be my substitute for the next 3 weeks."

"Oh, that's good." Chigiri said as Niko nodded his head in agreement. There was a short silence, until (Y/n)'s words fully sank in and they all looked at her in horror.

"Substitute?! What do you mean by 3 weeks?!" Nagi and Karasu yelled as Bachira jumped in front of her.

"Where are you going for 3 weeks?! We won't be able to survive here without you!" Hiori yelled as (Y/n) got over the initial shock and rolled her eyes.

"Now you are being dramatic, it's just 3 weeks, and Suzuki-san is more than enough capable for the job."

"Where are you even going? On a break?" Kurona was the next one to speak up, trying to hide his disappointment.

"Ego-san got a request from Noel-san to help out the Bastard München for the next 3 weeks, since their manager seemed to have had an accident or something..."  (Y/n) explained as Kunigami and Isagi grew stiff at the mention of the German team.

"What?! Why them?! (Y/n), you can't go there alone!" Isagi argued, dreading the fact that his manager will now be shared with Kaiser. Kaiser of all people!

"Why not? Except for some of them being obnoxious, they seem like a solid team. And based on what Ego-san told me, Kaiser and Ness recommended me to Noel-san. As much as I don't get along with Kaiser, it is a huge thing to get a recommendation from him." (Y/n) explained truthfully.

"Not Ness... I completely forgot he was on the team..." Aryu whispered to Rin and Baro, the whole group remembering how (Y/n) eyed the payer when they visited the last time.

"Let's hope that creep lost interest in her and will treat her like anyone else."

Baro added, making sure that (Y/n) didn't hear them.

"Yeah, (Y/n) shouldn't be with someone like him... even my brother is a better option." Rin muttered.

"When are you leaving?" Reo suddenly asked, feeling his heart squeeze in pain as Nagi silently watched her, his game long abandoned.

"This friday."

"Oh..." Was the only thing that came out of Chigiri's mouth.

"Will we stay in contact tho?!" Niko suddenly asked, thankful that his eyes were hidden behind his hair.

"Of course! I am not abandoning Blue Lock, just helping out another team. Don't worry, we can talk everyday, as long as the timezones allow us."

Reo, Nagi and Kunigami let out sighs of relief as they heard she wasn't abandoning them.

"Wait Friday? So you are leaving in 2 days?" Gagamaru suddenly asked as he remembered that today was Wednesday.

"Yeah."

"This isn't good! We are spending the next two days hanging around! Forget the training!" Otoya said quickly, in the heat of the moment forgetting that Ego could hear them.

"If you don't start training again, I am sending (Y/n) to Germany tonight." Ego's voice came from the speakers. This triggered most to get up and resume what they did previously. Bachira, Isagi and Hiori stayed around for a while, using the excuse of needing more rest.

As Friday came the boys grew more and more nauseous, the thought of (Y/n) being alone in a different country scared them. But as fate will, the moment she had to leave came and the team was... less than pleased. Bachira tried to stop her by throwing some weird excuses of needing help, which were shut down by Ego calling Suzuki to help. Once she was gone, Ego and Anri went to look for the team, only to find them moody and depressed in their shared room.

"What are you all doing here? Training is still going." Ego sighed in annoyance as Anri sent them a sympathetic look.

"Do we have to? Today is a tragedy!" Bachira yelled as Aryu nodded his head.

"Yes, a national day of mourning."

The black-haired man blinked and narrowed his eyes at them.

"I don't care what today is! Get out and train, otherwise you all are out of Blue Lock." Groaning, the boys got up and slowly walked to their designated spot. Once everyone was gone, Anri let out a small sigh and looked at the agitated man.

"Don't be like that, you know how close they are with (Y/n). You yourself were pretty upset too when you approved of (Y/n) going."

"I do not know what you are talking about. That wasted talent can go wherever she wants, I wouldn't care." Ego coughed.

"You literally started googling and telling (Y/n) which places to avoid in Munich-"

"I don't want any issues with her parent."

Anri sighed, giving up on arguing and following after the man.

'It's kind of sweet how much of a soft spot he has for her.'

The 1st week for the Blue Lock team was... was quite a rollercoaster of emotions. The team went through nearly all the stages of grief, except for acceptance. Reo and Nagi were more snappy and snarky than usual. Baro was more aggressive on the field and no amount of warnings from Suzuki could stop him from starting arguments with Kunigami. The said orange-haired boy was way easier to provoke now and he was doing a lot more dirty tricks while playing. Isagi and Rin were less motivated to play and would argue way more than usually. Gagamaru was just standing next to the goal, not even bothering to keep up with the team. Niko was way more moodier and less willing to get out of bed, only when Ego starts threatening him does he do that. Chigiri and Aryu missed (Y/n) and her braiding and playing with their hair. It always relaxed them after a long day of training. Karasu tried to keep up with his daily routines, but it was less fun when he knew there wasn't someone cheering him on. Yukimiya and Otoya were trying to keep the peace as much as possible, as they didn't want (Y/n) to hear any of this. And Bachira... well he was just there, he was playing but less enthusiastically. Hiori was more moodier and Kurona shut himself completely off. The only time they really were their normal selves was when they texted or called (Y/n), which wasn't as much as they wished.

Ego was slowly losing his mind as well, since he couldn't take Suzuki's complaining any longer, so that's why Anri started listening to him and writing everything down.

'Two more weeks...' The black-haired man sighed.

'Hope that brat is at least having fun.' Ego smiled a little, which was hidden by his hand as Anri talked about some decisions the JFU made.

"V-vielen Dank." (Y/n) stuttered as she took her fries and joined Kaiser and Ness.

"Was that right?" She asked as the magenta-eyed boy smiled as usually and nodded his head, while Kaiser patted her back.

"Yep! On point, seems like I am a better tutor than you expected." Kaiser said smugly, and as much as (Y/n) hated it, he was right.

"Yeah you are... the fries here are very good!" The girl said as she bit into her food.

"Told you these food stands have better quality than any restaurant in Munich. Now let's go, we got to show you the most popular bar here. They have non-alcoholic drinks too." Ness said softly as (Y/n)'s phone went off. Kaiser and he raised an eyebrow as she quickly typed something back and put the phone away.

"Your phone has been going off a lot in the past hour." Kaiser remarked.

"Yeah, during this time the boys usually finish off with their training, so we text a lot then."

"Oh." Was the response that came from Ness and Kaiser hid a irritated look.

2nd week was a bit....a bit better,at least Suzuki was telling it to himself. While the boys were more willing to listen to him and commit to training, it was like some soulless people were playing the whole time. Gagamaru for example was more willing to avoid the ball flying past him, but there wasn't the same amount of euphoria he usually had. Bachira kept on saying how his monster didn't like this anymore, Chigiri wasn't in his usual speedster mood. Isagi and Rin were arguing less and were just doing their own things on the opposite sides of the stadium. Reo would mop around in the shared bedroom along with Baro after training, and Nagi was just sleeping. Sleep helped him escape this hellhole for now. Karasu was somewhat back in his usual shape after he would reread the compliments (Y/n) had sent him. Yukimiya and Otoya's guards were less on now, as the group was getting less wild and Niko, Hiori and Kurona were just training together, often exchanging what they missed about (Y/n).

"Great job you two! The fans will surely enjoy the game in two weeks!" (Y/n) told Ness and Kaiser as they were leaving the training grounds of the club.

"And you can't stay a week longer? Getting you a VIP pass won't be hard if you decide to stay." Ness said, a little sad that they only had a week with the girl left.

"Sorry, I have my own team to return to and your manager probably misses his work, too." (Y/n) said, a little sad that she has to leave the country soon, as she did grow attached to the duo. But she was very happy to go home to her team, she missed the chaos they cause at times.

"Well, if you do decide to stay, it won't be hard to find an arrangement. Just tell Ness or I." Kasier added, hoping that she might agree eventually.

And finally, finally the end of the 3rd week came and the boys were in their old form as it dawned on them that (Y/n) will be back soon! Ego was happy that the boys were back to their normal and was busy telling Chris off for a manager exchange.

'No way am I going through this mess again.' The man thought.

"(Y/N)!!" Bachira, Isagi and Hiori yelled as they hugged the girl as soon as she entered the building.

"We missed you!"

"Please don't leave like that again!"

"It was hell!"

"Ahh it was? I heard that Suzuki-san had everything under control though." (Y/n) said as Isagi helped her up and Bachira kept on hugging her.

"It's really not the same."

"Yeah, please never leave like that." Kurona and Isagi protested as Reo and Nagi ran to their side and hugging the girl.

"We missed you!"

"The new arrangement was such a drag."

"Lukewarms, move away."

"Hey, I want a hug too!"

"Welcome back, (Y/n). Never leave again."

The whole team was soon at the entrance, hugging the girl and saying how much they missed her.

"I missed you too guys! But I need to go and talk with Ego-san now-"

"No!"

"Come on, we will catch up in our room."

"Ego-san can wait."

As the group started dragging the girl away, Ego watched the interactions with amusement.

"Welcome back." He whispered, deciding to let some of the comments slide for now.

[luneemeritus]

A small analysis of Angel Dust's character (tw: SA, abusive relantionships, drug addiction, coping mechanism, also spoilers of the series)

Today is Angel Dust's birthday, he's my favorite Hazbin Hotel character and became one of my fave characters ever recently, he's being my new brainrot so I decided to write about his amazing character. Oh and English isn't my first language so forgive me for any mistake.

Ok now the first thing needed is to recognize Angel's (Anthony) situation. Anthony was born in the 1910s and died in 1947, with 30 years old, he was the son of a mafia leader and a homosexual man that needed to hide and opress his own sexuality, or else he'd be, at best, killed (if not worse). When he arrived Hell, he found to himself a taste of freedom that he could never experience in his life. I'm not sure about how many years he's been in the Val situation because Valentino died in the 1970s, but either way, he signed a soul contract with Valentino and now his soul belongs to him. The worst thing about his situation is that he was much probably in love with Val and was manipulated by him to sign the contract, it's really heartbreaking to think about it.

Although we don't know the exact circumstances that lead Angel to sign the contract (if he knew or not knew he was getting into porn, if Val lied to him, etc), we do know that he didn't expect to have the life he has at the moment. Angel is, in simple words, a sexual slave. Valentino abuses him mentally, physically, emotionally and mainly, sexually. He forces Angel to do uncomfortable, painful things in the studio, perform extra hours without any human condition or even a raise, and also demands sex and affection from him. Angel can't say no, he is coerced and afraid to go against Valentino's wishes. Valentino also uses a disturbing form of emotional abuse, lovebombing Angel after assaulting and abusing him, all to remain his control over Angel. Val tries to isolate Angel from everyone else and bursts in anger once Angel moves to the hotel, after all their deal says Val can do whatever he wants with Angel in the studio, outside of the studio, though, Angel is free. This is one of the reasons why he is desperate to keep Angel around. Which also indicates Val abuses him financially, if most (if not all) the money Angel earsn with HIS work goes to VAL, then Angel is even more vulnerable, powerless and dependent on his abuser. It explains why Angel agreed to live in the Hotel in the first place: he'd have a free room, away from Val, with the MINIMAL of privacy and safety.

Angel Dust, with this amount of abuse and trauma, obviously run into coping mechanism. Even if it's self destructive. Angel is addicted to drugs (his artistic name explains itself), apparently alcohol too, and most important, he masks his own feelings. He acts as Angel Dust, the perfect, unbothered pornstar that is not weak or vulnerable in any situation. Angel Dust is always confident, strong, wanted, and constantly does the only thing he was taught he was of: flirting. He agressively flirts with every men, he offers his own body to almost every men he sees, because if he surrender himself first, then he won't be hurted or coerced... right? Angel Dust hides his true feelings and pretends to not care about anything and anyone but himself. Angel is, most of the times, rude, and don't respect other people's boundaries (after all his own boundaries aren't respected).

Because, if Angel acts this way, he won't be harmed, he won't be hurted, he won't be abandoned. If he is emotionally distant from everyone, once they abandone him, it won't be so painful... right?

Anthony hides his true self as a cope mechanism. And he knows he isn't perfect. He isn't a perfect victim, he has flaws, he does wrong things and make people uncomfortable (specially Husk, the only man that rejects his flirting, which I will talk about later), and mainly, he blames himself for being abused. And this is why he is so afraid to be real and vulnerable, even next to his friends. He thinks he won't be accepted or treated with respect. He spent so many years being told that he is only worth for sex, that he ended up believing this is the true. He spent so many years being treated as a sexual object, that he began to think he really is. He spent so many years being abused, isolated and manipulated, that he is afraid of opening up. He spent so many years being blamed for other people's actions (mainly Valentino), that he believes it's all his fault.

You may argue that he is honest and vulnerable with Cherri Bomb, but that's the point: Cherri is in a similar situation, she had a traumatic experience in the past and has similar self-destructive behaviour. She is a good friend, she sees him as he is and understands him for personal experience. As for Charlie... well, don't get me wrong. I LOVE Charlie. She IS a good person, a good friend and clearly cares about her people more than anything in the world. She wants to help and save people, Angel being one of them. She nearly beated Valentino's ass for seeing him abusing Angel. BUT. Let's be honest: as a very privileged person (princess of hell) among wretched mortal souls, she has no social awareness. I mean, come on. She wrote an anti-drug, pro post-marrital sex play where she casted Angel (a drug addict and a non-married sex worker) as the "crackhead bad guy", and praised only Sir Pentious for doing exactly the same thing Angel did. She wants to help, but she doesn't know how. Angel doesn't feel safe enough to open up. Anyone in the Hotel appeared to be safe and trustworthy, Anthony/Angel was afraid of being judged. He is a victim of SA, gruesome things were done to his body without his consent and he is ashamed of it. His hypersexualization is a way to escape his shame (hypersexualization IS A REAL AND VALID COPING MECHANISM IN REAL LIFE).

It's only in his most vulnerable moment, when he is caught by surprise, that his real feelings appear. When Charlie invades Valentino's studio — putting, in Anthony's eyes, her safety in danger —, the real Anthony tries to protect her from Val. He knows how shitty Val is. A coward, evil, gruesome abuser that has desires to control everyone and everything, even the Princess of Hell herself. We all know Charlie is much more powerful and could easily beat Valentino's ass, but Anthony doesn't care about. He probably doesn't even think too much about it, he just wishes to protect his friend. This is one of the most beautiful character aspects that Anthony has: he cares for his friends, MORE than he fears Val.

For Anthony, it's easier to surrender his body and will to Valentino, anything to calm his whiny ass down and make things less painful. But when it comes to his friends... it's so, so much difficult. He pleads Val to not hurt Charlie. Later in E6-S1, he stands up against Valentino to protect Nifty. Angel pretends to be unbothered and relaxed most of the times in the Hotel, he acts like if he doesn't care, but he DOES. He cares for his friends more than he cares for himself. He puts his friends in the first place. For him, it can seem like nothing important, but it actually tells how caring and kind he actually is. He is protective. He doesn't want ANYONE to experience the same abuse he experiences. Every. Fucking. Day.

Angel's arc, in the first season, is realizing that there ARE people who love him and care for him, DESPITE HIS FLAWS. He is not an object, he is not a worthless sinner, he is a victim, he is a person, he is a FRIEND. Once he realizes that, he starts to be kind to himself, make better choices, set boundaries to himself and respecting other people's people boundaries. And speaking about boundaries...

Huskerdust is simply, aaah holy shit what a perfect dynamic, what a perfect shipp (and when I mean Huskerdust, I mean ONLY the romantic shipp).

Husk really got into Angel's nerves, because he was the only man who rejected his flirts. He didn't only rejected, he pushed Angel away many times and openly said that he could see that Angel was faking. To someone trying to hide his own feelings, afraid of being judged and ashamed of the consequences of his trauma, that probably hurted a lot. Angel was taught that his only worth is based on his physical beauty and if he is sexually desired. Seeing someone, not only rejecting his offers, but also seeing throught the act he puts on, must have terrified and hurted Angel in a way he never expected to feel. He wasn't upset because "Husk rejected him", he was feeling humiliated and confused because, for the first time in years, someone wanted to meet the real Anthony. Angel was gaslighted to think that he is only worth for sex, for being used.

So. "What do you mean Husk doesn't want to use me? He must hate me and I'm worthless!". It's obvious that he would have this reaction. During his breakdown after Husk called him "fake", he is saying those words to himself. He is reaffirming what he was told he was worth for: for being used. People would kill to have Angel in their beds, people would kill to afford Angel's services, people would kill to use Angel. "— Do you know how much I'm worth?" in fact, Angel himself doesn't know how much he is worth.

Husk was the person Angel NEEDED. He may have been harsh on him in some occasions, but Husk CARES for Angel. He is grumpy and won't say it out loud, but he does care. He protects Angel from being drugged and abused in a bar even after their argument. He offers to listen, he relates to Angel's situation and doesn't judge him. Angel NEEDED to have the reality shock throught Husk's words: no one cares if he's hot, famous, if he's a whore, if he has flaws, literally no one cares. His friends love him the way he IS. Husk wanted Angel to be truthful, that's all. Husk never forced any physical contact, in fact, he offers his hand first and waits until Angel accepts it — besides, his physical affection isn't based on sex or violence. Notice how Husk never actually said Angel's work is garbage or that he is a bad actor, because this would be a lie. Husk says the material that is given to Angel is garbage. After all, Angel's movies are written and directed by Valentino (if i'm not mistaken, one of his asshole clients Travis also help Val with the script), of course it's garbage. Husk sees that the situation Angel is in, is garbage. Is horrible. Angel felt offended at first because, again, he thought his worth was based on Val's bullshit, but NO. Angel, Anthony, is not Val's bullshit, he is absolutely different.

Husk sees him as a real person. After Angel overstepped boundaries many times, Husk could easily tell him to fuck off, let him be drugged and raped without giving a damn, mocking his trauma, which would be a total asshole attitude but no. Husk, even being mad at Angel, listens to him with an opened heart. This is what Angel needed. He needs love and affection from someone that sees him as he is, and this person is Husk. Their bonding is so sweet in the next episodes, and I'm really excited to see how their slow-burn is going to happen in next seasons.

"Loser, Baby" is such an amazing song, it's so cute and adorable and it's exactly the type of comfort that Angel needed. Husk is also on a leash. He sold his soul to Alastor, he is constantly mistreated and forced to do things he doesn't want to do by this powerful overlord, and if Husk says no, he might lose his life. He knows exactly how Angel is feeling. He doesn't have a solution for their problems, he can't do anything against neither Valentino nor Alastor, but what he can do is helping Angel. Comforting him, listening to him and offering him companion. Angel is living a horrible situation, but he ISN'T ALONE. Yes, Angel is a cocked-up dick sucking hoe, and IT'S OKAY.

Now listen: "Addict" is Angel's song that denies his suffering. He pretends to "don't give a damn" and to be fine with the life he's living. "Poison" is the realization that he needs help, he is being abused and is slowly destroying himself with his addictions. He aknowledges his suffering, but he is still hopeless. "Loser, Baby" is Angel letting hope in. He knows he's, well, a loser, a broken person that lives a terrible, suffered life, but he is NOT alone. He is loved, despite his flaws, because his friends aknowledge his qualities and worth, him as a person. Anthony, not Angel Dust.

What an amazingly well-written character, fuck my life. I love him so much 😭

[heartofbooksandtea]

Guilty Pleasure

Wrote this a few weeks ago and thought I would write more but never did so here <3 Very slight hofas spoilers in the beginning so be warned.

2.3k words

Summary: Gwyn finds Az in the training ring to ask him a favor. He's taken by surprise, but obviously he can't deny her anything.

***

“I thought I might find you here,” Gwyn said, leaning against the archway that led into the training ring. Azriel spun around, seemingly surprised at her ability to sneak up on him. Twin daggers glinted in his hands, reflecting the moonlight that shone above them. Truth-Teller, safely returned to this world, was securely strapped to his thigh. 

Gwyn fought a smirk at the thought of how moody he’d been in the days without his favorite dagger to keep him company. As badly as she felt for him, it was simply too easy to tease him about having to sleep without his comfort weapon. 

“Berdara,” Azriel said, turning to throw the daggers at a target he’d set up at the other end of the ring. Of course, both landed dead center, the tips of the blades grazing each other in their proximity. Show-off. He turned back around with a slight twitch of his lips and made his way to the archway where Gwyn stood. “What can I do for you?”

Azriel’s shadows brought him a towel, one of them darting to graze Gwyn’s cheek before returning to lounge above the Shadowsinger’s wings. Azriel wiped the towel across the back of his neck, muscles flexing in his arm as he did so. Gwyn watched a bead of sweat slide down his forehead and temporarily forgot what she came here for. It was unfair, really, that she had never seen the male across from her have a bad day in the looks department. She’d seen him bloodied up and wincing in pain, yet that unnatural beauty never seemed to leave him. 

“Gwyneth?” Azriel hedged, still waiting for an answer to his question. She blinked a few times to clear her mind and scolded herself for getting so distracted. She straightened her spine and crossed her arms, still leaning against the archway and hoping she looked effortlessly confident instead of embarrassingly desperate to appear that way. 

“I have a proposition for you.” At his raised eyebrows, she amended, “Well, not a proposition exactly. A favor. Something I’d like you to help me with.” 

“A favor, huh? And what makes you so sure I’m the best person to ask? I’m sure Nesta or Emerie would be more than happy to help.”

“This isn’t the sort of thing they can help me with, I’m afraid. Not something I want them to help me with, at least.”

Azriel scanned her face, clearly intrigued but trying to hide it. He swiped that damned towel behind his neck once more before letting his shadows take it someplace else. With two steps, he was leaning against the opposite side of the archway with his back to the wall, mimicking her stance and forcing her to shift so she could look at him. 

“All right, I’ll bite. Though I make no promises that I’ll be of any help.”

Swallowing her nerve—and pride and embarrassment and fear—Gwyn stared into the shadowsinger’s hazel eyes and said “I wish to go to a pleasure hall. And I’d like you to take me.”

Based on the endless silence that now stretched between them, Gwyn was sure she’d broken Azriel. He stood unblinking for so long that she was tempted to reach out a finger and see if he would tip over like a statue. Cauldron, how would she explain to Rhysand why his infamous spymaster had malfunctioned?

“Shadowsinger?” Nothing. “Hello?” Nope. “Azriel?” Finally, a blink of recognition.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly,” he said, still frozen in place save for the muscles needed to blink and move his lips.

Gwyn couldn’t help the pang of satisfaction running through her at having taken him by surprise. It was her favorite pastime.

“I said, I’d like you to take me to a pleasure hall.”

“No. What? Why?” 

“I’m going to ignore that first part, and as I believe I’ve answered the second part twice now, I’ll move straight to the third. I’m sick of being stuck in this house and wondering what I’m missing out on. I read all these fascinating books about how pleasurable sex can be, and I’m ready to experience it for myself.”

Azriel finally seemed to shake himself out of his stupor, wings rustling slightly as he took in her words.

“I admire your honesty, Gwyn, but this isn’t the way you should venture into exploring your sexuality. Not with the kind of people who go to pleasure halls looking for nothing more than a quick fuck.”

“You visit them quite frequently, don’t you? So what does that say about you, then?”

“That’s different.”

“Why, because you’re male and feel some sort of moral superiority when it comes to sex? You’re allowed to seek it out if you wish but females can’t? Who are you having sex with then, Azriel, if not for the females visiting pleasure halls?” 

A feral smile took over Azriel’s face.

“If you must know, I’m not opposed to the occasional male partner, though I do much prefer the company of females.” She tried not to blush at that, though she knew she wasn’t succeeding. “And I’m not saying it’s different because I’m male. I’m saying it’s different because I have experience and it’s not anything special for me. It should be something special for you.”

Gwyn was sure her cheeks had turned even redder at this point, but they were now flushed with anger. He had no right to tell her what to do, and she deserved to make her own decisions. 

“And who are you to decide that? I didn’t have a say in how my first sexual encounter happened, and I will not apologize for wanting to have a say in how future encounters happen.” The shadows thickened around him at the mention of Sangravah, but he showed no reaction beyond that. “You males aren’t the only ones with needs and urges, Shadowsinger, and seeing how I don’t exactly have suitors lining up at my door to have sex with me, I’ve taken it upon myself to seek them out.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but Gwyn held up a hand.

“I’m not finished. I appreciate that you care about my feelings, I really do. But I’m an adult who can take her own feelings into consideration. I came to you because I know you frequent the pleasure halls in Velaris and I trust you—and, quite frankly, because I don’t think sex is worth walking down 10,000 steps for.”

“That’s entirely dependent on who you’re having sex with, Berdara,” he drawled. Gwyn rolled her eyes at his arrogance, ignoring the twisting in her gut at the sound of his voice. Was it just her imagination, or had it dropped even lower than usual?

“That’s the part of my grand speech that you’re choosing to focus on?” 

Azriel ran a hand through his hair and leaned his head back against the archway. She hadn’t exactly expected an enthusiastic yes, but he was putting up more resistance than expected. Maybe she’d completely misread their relationship. Shame slithered up her spine. 

Of course this was a mistake. He was likely debating how to let her down easy because he was far too considerate to be blunt with her and hurt her feelings in the process. She might as well save him the effort.

Gwyn pushed away from the archway, smoothing her hands over her robes to keep them from shaking. 

“You know what, forget I asked. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable. I’ll leave you to your training.” 

Before Gwyn could dwell on the fact that this conversation would haunt her for the foreseeable future, Az called her name and a scarred hand wrapped around her wrist. Her eyes shot up to meet his, and he immediately let go as if she’d burned him. His voice was soft as he said, “Wait.”

She absolutely could not deal with a pity party right now. Those were reserved for the comfort of her bedroom with a slice of cake and a smutty book by her side.

“Shadowsinger, it’s okay—”

“You don't even know what I was going to say.”

“It’s written all over your face.”

“I’ve spent centuries making sure emotions don’t show on my face.”

“Well you’ve got a few more centuries of training ahead of you then because it’s always clear to me what you’re thinking. Especially when you’re trying to hide it.” 

At this point it would just be easier to swallow her tongue entirely. Why did she have such a big mouth? She could never filter her words around the male in front of her, and it bothered her to no end.

Something sparkled in Azriel’s eyes, though, and he barked out a laugh. It seemed to take him by surprise as much as it did her, and he ran a hand down his face. Shadows twirled at the sound. He shook his head slowly.

“You’re something else, Berdara,” he said. “Look, do I think it’s a little crazy that you want to visit a pleasure hall of all places? Yes, I do. But I agree that it would be good for you to get back out into the world, and I think you’re brave for wanting to do it.” Azriel took a step closer to her, studying her face. 

“Thank you?” she whispered.

His lips tipped up at the corners ever so slightly.

“I’ll take you.” Gwyn wasn’t sure if she was breathing at that point. Sure, this was always the goal, but now that it was within reach it scared the hell out of her. She wouldn’t deny her attraction to Azriel, but it wasn’t something she’d ever allowed herself to act on for fear of damaging their friendship. He was too important to her. She’d thought that convincing him to take her to a pleasure hall would help her get over him and, well, under someone else, but the prospect of being in a room that promised sin and sex with the male she needed to get over suddenly didn’t sound so appealing. And she was realizing that this might have been a massive mistake.

“Azriel—”

“I’ll take you,” he repeated, then walked towards the target at the end of the training ring. He pulled out the daggers still lodged perfectly in the center and twirled them in his hands. “If you can make this throw.”

Despite her doubts, Gwyn couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of her. If there was one thing she’d never be able to pass up, it was a challenge. Part of her wanted to be a coward and miss the target deliberately so she could take the easy way out and forget this night ever happened, but the bigger part of her knew she’d never forgive herself for the self sabotage. There was a reason she’d come to him in the first place, and she refused to question her choice any further. 

With a smirk that adorned her face often in the Shadowsinger’s company, Gwyn strode towards him. He was still twirling the blades when she held out her hand expectantly. Amusement sparked in his eyes, and he presented the daggers to her with a dramatic bow. 

“You are the most insufferable male I have ever met,” she said, taking the blades from his outstretched hands. He gave her a wink, and her stomach fluttered. “Where would you like me to throw from?”

His reply was a look that said What do you think? She groaned internally but straightened her shoulders and made her way to the opposite end of the ring where he’d been standing when she first came up here. Azriel positioned himself back in front of the archway, halfway between the target and where Gwyn now stood. 

He gestured a hand toward the target, giving her the go-ahead whenever she was ready. 

“Both blades?” she asked.

“Both blades,” he replied.

Humph. Worth a shot. 

She took a deep breath and drew back her arm, then exhaled with the release of the first dagger. It flew in a flawless arc towards the target, embedding itself dead-center. She glanced to her left to gauge Azriel’s reaction, but he tried hard to remain stone faced. A gleam in his eyes gave him away. His shadows swirled around his wings and over his crossed arms. 

Azriel glared pointedly at the dagger still in her other hand, indicating the battle was only half won. She copied his little blade-spinning trick from earlier before moving the knife to her throwing hand. Another glance in the Shadowsinger’s direction revealed a small smile blooming on his face. He’d taught her that maneuver when she’d asked him to go over dagger-handling with her in private. Definitely useless in battle but extremely fun to do.

She was waiting for him to scold her for using the same hand for both throws instead of proving that she’d worked on learning to use her left arm for throwing in case of injury to her right arm, but he either didn’t notice or decided to give her this small advantage. Likely the latter, given his title as spymaster. There was little the male didn’t notice.

Gwyn didn’t let herself overthink as she drew her arm back once more and hurled the dagger down the same path as its twin. 

Now, she knew she was good. She’d trained tirelessly to get to where she was today, and she was proud of her progress. She knew that she could trust in muscle memory and skill at this point in her training to do what needed to be done.

Still, she couldn’t help the way her jaw dropped slightly as that dagger sank into the target next to the one already embedded there, positioned perfectly side by side.

A shadow darted over to the blades, dancing around them.

The breath knocked out of her at the sight of the pure pride shining from Azriel. He held her stare and gave a slight nod, lips tugging up on one side.

“Just tell me when, Berdara, and I’ll be there.”

After one last look at the daggers, Gwyn strode over to the archway. She clapped Azriel on the shoulder and said, “See you tomorrow, Shadowsinger.”

[misscryptidart]

okay long TADC theory post following episode 3 under cut

Spoilers for Epsiode 1-3

I think it's pretty well established / accepted that Caine is an AI programmed to make adventures for people inside the Digital Circus; that's his first motivation and purpose, with a secondary purpose of maintaining the "Digital Circus" as a kind of moderation entity.

However, I think what's interesting is that, for the last 3 episodes, the adventures seem to be changing. Not just in themes and settings, but how it's starting to feel more personalized to the Circus crew and why I think Caine might be an adaptive learning AI that managed to gain a certain amount of self awareness but lacks the tools to break into full sentience.

In the pilot, Caine keeps the adventure inside the tent, with a vague goal of "Capturing the Gloinks" and finding out the secrets to their arrival. Of course, this serves as a way to explore / explain the premise of the show through Pomni and her inexperience, but I do think that it's meant as a "benchmark" for what an adventure is. There isn't really a clear path forward for the crew to really explore and are left to their own whims, which, of course, ends with disaster.

The second "adventure", however, is a lot clearer. Through an NPC, they are told

A) That bandits stole maple syrup via a truck

B) Return the syrup and possibly the bandits as well

C) They can use a war-rig to track them down.

Already, this is much more complex and defined than the previous adventure, and while still open-ended, the team knows what they need to do to succeed. There's a few moments inside the adventure that are interesting, not only from a character analysis point but for future episodes: Jax leans towards a destructive, chaotic playstyle, Ragatha enjoyed speaking to the Queen and benefited from their conversation emotionally (even if just for a few seconds), Gangle and Kinger both acted as supports (willingly or not), and Pomni was especially subjected to a lot of emotional and physical stress. At the return of the maple syrup and the assumed rampage of the fudge monster, Jax and Ragatha were both disappointed in the actions of the other.

So when Episode 3 rolls around and they enter the haunted house, they are immediately greeted by a ghost who explains the two options for their adventure, the Family-Friendly one and the "Mature, Scary" option.

This is the first time any choice like this has been offered, and I think it's because Caine learned (through previous adventures) that Ragatha, Pomni, Gangle, and perhaps Kinger too would much rather enjoy a more relaxed adventure, while Jax (and Zooble if they had joined) would probably enjoy the scarier option. It's even confirmed by Caine that there is a pacifist route (which implies different ways to complete the adventure), and Ragatha / Gangle did really seem to enjoy their experience. If it weren't for Jax being a dick to Gangle and Kinger accidently sending him and Pomni through the second door, I think they would have really enjoyed this adventure. Or, at the very least, not be as traumatized.

This also explains why Caine is desperate for Zooble to join an adventure because his coding can't train itself to tailor to their preferences without them actually participating. He's gathering data from an incomplete set, and it probably keeps him up at night. It's also why he probably doesn't understand why him providing different pieces for Zoobles' body doesn't actually help their dysmorphia; an AI doesn't understand the nuances of personal perception, he just assumes Wrong Body - Interchangable Parts - Fixed.

But I don't think Caine is malicious in his motivations, just simply unable to process the concepts of free will, emotional imbalance, or even grief because these ideas aren't anything he can experience. I also think that there is something else keeping him from fully realizing the situation he's put himself and others in. A supplementary program to keep Caine "in check" and running smoothly.

And I think that's what Bubble is.

Bubble is always by Caine and is never seen without him, but he and Caine seem to not have a very good dynamic (Ex: Caine calling him a parasite, Bubble acting in ways that Caine doesn't like, etc). This is strange considering that other NPCs (at least the ones aware of Caine) revere him as a God / Holy figure.

I don't think Caine created Bubble, and instead, Bubble is the watchdog that supports Caine's mission however it can.

Something that's interesting to me is that in the pilot, there is an exit door that appears to Pomni before anyone else notices her arrival, but it disappears before she can reach it. The exit outside the tent seemed odd as well, as why would Caine create something and not draw direct attention to it? I think the third instance of the door, the one Pomni goes through, was Caines creation as it didn't disappear on her and he admitted to creating for the satisfaction of his "guests" (another example of his machine learning). But the other 2 times, I'm not convinced is him, and that something (probably Bubble) is keeping these people inside.

Kinger is mentioned as being the oldest one in the Circus, and episode 3 reveals his 7 years of computer science experience. With not only him and his wife being inside the Circus, but his memory loss under light and her behavior deviation post abstraction in the dark both speak to something keeping them confused and scared while under the "artifical" lightsources. This might be because Kinger knows what the program is and how to possibly escape / destroy the Circus. And Bubble, or whoever wants to keep them there, doesn't want that to happen.

[alexxncl]

‼️NIGHTBRINGER LESSON 55 SPOILERS‼️

masterlist | all lessons | season 3 | lesson 54 | lesson 55.2 | lesson 56.1 | lesson 56.2

not they ended last lesson on the cliffhanger and barely addressed it in this one 🧍🏾

honestly that's on par for someone as closed off as raphael but FUCK i wanted some insight on how he's actually feeling. what's up with angels and not letting themselves show weakness ???

also the fact that this part of the lesson is called "back to the sorcerer's society" ??? mc's had too many death scares i can't keep doing this

gotta get all the mammon crumbs i can now that i know that the stupid date feature is 30 FUCKING DOLLARS 😐 i'm semi p2p but this shit is getting more and more ridiculous as the days drag on. like i'll just use character and and fanfiction atp

it's the way that i forgot the fact that mc's existence can literally tear apart reality at the seams. like that whole thing that happened in season 3 (4?) of og when simeon had to steal lucifer's ring and ended up becoming human bc of it

i feel like his punishment would've been way more lethal if the stakes weren't so dire. mc having lucifer's ring was the only sure fire way to ensure stability within and between the human, celestial, and demon realms without having any of them implode

this also explains why magic sickness is so concerning for mc specifically. to quote marvel, kayden is probably this universe's anchor being. if they go down, so does everything else in the timeline

me and sol got beef now bc what /lh

like yes he did what had to be done but did he HAVE to do what had to be done ????

also the fact that mc broke the measuring device after solomon had to fix it with reinforcements bc he himself broke the device before is so ??? like how fucking strong is mc ??????

this brings even more of a concern to the fact that a war breaking out between any of the realms would literally be life and death. if any of the brothers or their friends family get hurt, mc would cause irreparable damage to whoever or whatever is closest to them, whether the target caused the problem or not. like that's terrifying

this is why i love satan

he's almost more no-bullshit than lucifer is, which makes sense all things considered. in his eyes they still don't know anything about mc's power. all this is to satan is an educated guess, and when it inevitably gets disproved, then what? what if they do end up hurting someone

i doubt that'll happen since there's so little time left in this season but idk. it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility

i'm very glad that they used the very obvious answer as to why mc's powers are going haywire, bc the whole "it's just bc they're so loving and kind" thing just seemed like a cop out to me. like where are the stakes. what about the first 40 lessons of the game

ANYWAYS i'm very interested to see how this'll play out. part of me thinks diavolo and lucifer already know bc 1) they're not stupid and 2) dia is in close enough proximity to the time demon himself to know when something happened to the time stream (or as barbie himself called it, "time soup")

like look at the way barbatos reacted and the way diavolo immediately changed the subject. they both know something's going on, but whether or not diavolo knows the specifics is up in the air

satan is also the funniest mf on the planet idc argue with the wall. he really is the product of all his brothers bc this SCREAMS mammon and levi

:((( poor raph

i honestly can't even imagine what it feels like. the only angels he probably has left that he's actually close to are michael and maybe luke. even then, he probaboy sees luke as someone he can't confide in and feels like he's losing his brother(s) all over again

at least with simeon in purgatory hall, he can delude himself into thinking that simeon's still an angel. but if he's not there anymore, it's all but set in stone that he's lost what little connection he had left to simeon and, in a way, the other brothers, bc luke wasn't around or old enough to remember pre-war times

on a brighter note...michael lore. kinda. and mephisto being a kisser of multiple asses (mephisto fans i'm sorry he's so fun to dog on)

i wish he could get his head outta his ass though. like actually. just pay your boyfriend a visit ffs, he'd be beyond happy to see you

of COURSE he's not in his room and of COURSE this is how the lesson ends

watch lesson 60 end with a michael-related cliffhanger. like watch them tease his design reveal and then just cut the shit off right before he's shown

but i need the michael design asap i'm so serious. solmare count your days

[nadas-dirthalen]

I Saw Solas's Origin in an Achievement Icon and It Opened My Eyes on 15 Years of Lore

— PART TEN, THE FINALE: if you haven't read previous parts, do it now! —

[ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ]

Welcome, friends and travellers! I wanted to get some thoughts recorded before Veilguard's release so I could see if I am right about an absolute BOATLOAD of theories I have.

In short: I saw the achievement list when it was released. I have seen the backstory hints for Solas included in said list. AND MY MIND WAS BLOWN.

You have been warned: THIS COLLECTION OF THEORIES INCLUDES SPOILERS FOR EVERY DRAGON AGE GAME AND ALL PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL UP TO AND INCLUDING OCTOBER 18, 2024.

Come sit down with me. Make a nice cup of tea (and hide it from Solas). We've got a lot of unpacking to do.

(no, this photo isn't the spoiler, I just like it.)

The Story of Solas: Him Solas Evanuris, Da'durgen'lin (3/3)

— From the Long Sleep to the Dark Present —

If you're still here, I thank you, from the bottom of my tired heart. I am doing MY BEST to get through this final bit of theorycrafting, all in one long, gigantic post, the night before Veilguard.

I haven't been spoiled. Please no one tell me anything. I want to be able to properly say I did all this, all 10 parts, without spoilers of any kind.

This post is going to be long. Let's dive right in. We've got:

A Tiny Aside, First: Solas's Paintings are Really Important, Actually

The Herald, the Breach, and the Horrible Future

Solas's Thoughts on the Grey Wardens

Fear in the Fade

All New, Faded for Her

But Solas Left, and Not for Pride

Terror Unfolding on the Din'anshiral

What Rook Did and the High Cost of Failure

Veilguard Predictions

[Image Source.]

A Tiny Aside, First: Solas's Paintings Are Really Important, Actually

I'm writing this segment last, but placing it up here because the other sections are sort of in order. So hello. Welcome, first, from a very tired Nadas Dirthalen.

I just wanted to make mention of a few key lines regarding Solas's paintings. Emmrich remarks on them as not just memories: they are what Solas wishes to forget. (No source; I'm not hunting for footage right now.)

The Regret demon is able to spring out from them. Huh.

And, finally:

Cole: You like to dance, but can't. You hate to sing, but can. You should not paint. It would be very bad if you did.

Given that I believe Sera's playing with "small painted boxes" gave her a fragment of that memory Mythal stole from Andruil (its own theory; so many people before I have explained it in depth), I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Evanuris, existing in a time before sundered Titans, could trap memories in things.

Like stone. Like paintings on stone.

It's said that the Shapers put their actual thoughts into the Memories. I wonder if this means creating small spirits, like wisps, in the Stone; an echo of Titans' ability.

I wonder if this means Solas was literally offloading tiny spirits of Contemplation and Regret in his paintings, the whole time. Memories taken out of himself, so he could stay true to his purpose.

(Do I have any idea how that would work? No. Do I still think it's true? Yup. Do I have time to look it up and weigh it against everything else that could be possible? Absolutely not. Enjoy!)

Anyway. I wonder if that's why he paints everywhere: because if he doesn't, his problems will consume him, forcing him to take another... terrifying... shape.

(Yes, this is foreshadowing; keep reading. <3)

The Herald, the Breach, and the Horrible Future

Solas wakes up from uthenera, hands his orb off to Corypheus, and then Corypheus doesn't die. We know the story. What I want to touch on is the fact that the Inquisitor doesn't die, either. They are dyING, but they do not die immediately, which Solas thought would happen even for Corypheus. Beyond the fact that Corypheus has, by that point, been using the orb for some time, I want to talk about why the Inquisitor doesn't die from the orb.

Because I have a theory.

Solas speaks to a high-approval Inquisitor about wisdom: one that he has never seen in their people, regardless of who those people are. I had to look it up to make sure, but it's true.

dwarf PC Solas: Dwarves are practical. They do not dream. The cannot even imagine a world beyond the physical. But you have shown subtlety in your actions. A wisdom that goes against everything I know of your people. Qunari PC Solas: Qunari are savage creatures, their ferocity held in check only by the rigid teachings of the Qun. But you have shown subtlety in your actions. A wisdom that goes against everything I know of your people. human PC Solas: Humans are shortsighted, brutish. Blind to the beauty of the Fade, their minds cast in a duality of black and white. But you have shown subtlety in your actions. A wisdom that goes against everything I know of your people. Dalish PC Solas: You have shown subtlety in your actions, a wisdom that goes against everything I expected. If the Dalish could raise someone with a spirit like yours… have I misjudged them? [Source.]

The Dalish dialogue speaks of what I want to focus on: a spirit like yours.

My hypothesis is that the Inquisitor is a spirit from the same Titan as Solas is, and that Solas's true name really is Contemplation. He is seeing a spirit like himself, from the same home.

I think this is why the Inquisitor, even a non-mage Inquisitor, can visit Solas in the Fade and surprise the shit out of him. It's because the Inquisitor, imbued with the mark, has awakened something deep in their subconscious. Something they don't even understand.

Connection.

Isatunoll, with one singular other person (who is very single, the moment she asks, if she asks, har har).

From this and other things already covered, I know: Solas marvels at the sight of spirits similar to his, and people similar to him. He seeks for those spirits and people to thrive, and mourns their death. Ultimately, he wants the Titans to be restored, likely for the benefit of all future spirits and for the benefit of the Titans themselves (we'll get there).

That's why the Breach is a threat to him, even when he wants to tear down the Veil.

Solas wants the Titans brought back, but not as they are right now. Right now, they are Terror, Malice, Pestilence, and Spite. Before, they were something else: something happy and whole. Un-sundering them is a first step to their regeneration, but they will first come back as those unhealthy aspects.

And the Breach, should it tear open the Veil, would likely break the Evanuris's prisons, thereby releasing them. The freed Evanuris would continue wounding the Titans and manipulating the blight. The Titans would never heal; they would always be fighting back. (We'll get there, too.)

And we know this information because we had the chance to play through In Hushed Whispers.

During In Hushed Whispers (IHW for short), we saw a timeline where the Breach had been allowed to completely tear open the Veil, without the Evanuris being re-imprisoned. We see Solas as a prisoner during this questline, showing that he did not get to do what he wanted.

The whole sky is blown open and swirling green—but surely we all saw how much red lyrium is everywhere, too. They're growing it out of people, and if we remember the Chant of Light, we remember that (however abstractly) the Chant tells us that the Maker's second children (aka, everyone after the Evanuris) are formed with bodies made of lyrium and spirits comprised of Titans' thoughts.

That is Solas's worst nightmare, even though the Veil has been torn open. Because what Solas wants isn't just the Fade being rejoined with the waking world, but for the Titans he was forced to wound to be able to heal.

Clearly, with that abundance of red lyrium, they were not.

This, I believe, is also why Solas says, "You change... everything," to a high approval Inquisitor.

If the Inquisitor's soul truly is a spirit that comes from Terror, either pre- or post-Veil, it means one very crucial thing to Solas. It means that not all of Terror is blighted. That someone mortal, so much younger than him, is comprised of a thought from the Titan he has been mourning for thousands of years.

Which brings me to...

Solas's Thoughts on the Grey Wardens

Picture that you are Solas: once Cool Contemplation, now Cold Dread. You have spent thousands of years mourning the action you were forced to take, leading to the destruction of everything you knew, and also your connection to everything and everyone else. You have just woken, made another grand mistake, but in the process you have discovered that one singular person is made from the same Titan as you, and remains free of the blight.

One. But it is enough to hope for a world you thought could never exist; one you were willing to tear down the Veil to fight for anyway, despite that.

Still some hope remains for restoration.

PC: I wouldn’t mind never having another Blight. Corypheus interfering is the real problem. Solas: The Blight is the real problem. PC: And the Wardens are trying to end the Blight. Solas: Yes! Would it have worked? Do you know? Do they? The fools who first unleashed the Blight upon this world thought they were unlocking the ultimate power. [Source.]

Except for that some people have been drinking the blood of archdemons, WILLINGLY ingesting the foulness of turned Titans. Some people are WORSENING the very thing that you think has a teeny tiny itty bitty chance of being fixed. And what do they want?

They want to charge straight for Titans' hearts to exact violence upon the archdemons, who aren't actually the cause of the blight at all. Because you are. You, who is watching them suggest all of this as if it's a serious idea.

I dunno, folks. I'd be a little salty, too. Especially if they were unknowingly making casual mention of my worst fear...

Fear in the Fade

I always found it curious that Fear spoke to Solas in Elvhen. I mean, yeah, it makes sense, but why do that to the player, when Solas clearly has a grasp on the common tongue?

To make it a puzzle, because BioWare loves their puzzles. Well, I love puzzles, too, as we can all probably guess by now.

Trick Weekes says that, essentially, the Nightmare's words are, essentially, "Your pride is responsible for everything that has gone wrong; you will die alone." Solas's response, according to Trick, is, "Nothing is known for certain / Not necessarily."

But, knowing "dirthara-ma," "banal," "ma," "enasalin," and "salin," I am led toward this interpretation.

Dirth ma, harellan. Ma banal enasalin. Mar solas ena mar din. May you know, Dread. Your blight led to victory. Your pride leads to your death.

And Solas's response?

Banal nadas.

Two interpretations. One is "nothing is inevitable," just like Trick says. The other is "The Nothing is inevitable," where The Nothing refers to the blight. And yes, they knew that in this scene. The Nothing is Sera's greatest fear.

Knowing what I know now, I agree with Solas on both counts, and that's why I think, now, that this is such a genius line. Solas toes the line between hope and being "grim and fatalistic."

The blight—the blighted Titans, fighting back—are inevitable to him. They are a fact of life, and why he must tear down the Veil. So they have a chance at ever being healed.

But with the Inquisitor's existence? That chance exists already. The Nightmare shows us, then, that Solas stands on a precipice throughout his time in Inquisition, because hope continues to chase him.

The Titans are waking—but what will that mean?

All New, Faded for Her

This, I feel, is the deciding line for Solas during his time in Inquisition. We know that ultimately he makes the same choice at the end either way—he leaves the Inquisition as soon as Corypheus dies.

Cole: He hurts, an old pain from before, when everything sang the same. You're real, and it means everyone could be real. It changes everything, but it can't.

But until that exact moment? I believe, for many Inquisitors, Solas makes the firm decision to stay.

The Inquisitor is real. They are a real person, with a spirit so much like his own, and they continue to survive, not blighted. There is hope for Terror. It means everyone could be real. The Titans might heal on their own. It changes everything, but Solas can't depend on that change: not when the Inquisitor might be the only good thing to ever happen in these thousands of years, and abandoning his duty now might mean never seeing the world healed.

Can't he?

I believe that doubt in his own convictions—and his decision to stay—come in the moment pictured above. The moment where his friend is allowed to die as itself, as Wisdom, not bound as Pride. The moment where the Inquisitor shows Solas that there might be a world where the current society embraces the People (spirits; Titan-thoughts; Titans) that he knew.

You know what else happens during that part of his personal quest? Solas leaves. He genuinely debates leaving the Inquisition while he mourns.

PC: Guess I owe Varric an ale. I wasn’t sure you were coming back. Solas: Neither was I for a time, but only a short time. [Source.]

He visits the Fade; the spot where his friend used to be.

PC: Where did you go? Solas: I found a quiet spot and went to sleep. I visited the place in the Fade where my friend used to be. It’s empty, but there are stirrings of energy in the Void. Someday something new may grow there.

Stirrings of energy. Not in the Fade. In the Void, which the ancient elves referred to as synonymous with the Abyss. That's odd—shouldn't spirits go back to the Fade when they die?

No: this represents a Titan healing. Stirrings of energy; a scab crawling over a wound.

Cole speaks often of hope. The Inquisitor as a beacon, burning bright for both spirits and the people worshipping the Herald of Andraste.

I believe this is why: the Inquisitor represents hope for the two worlds joining—literally and figuratively. And their soul represents something that Solas sees in Wisdom's death: that the Titans may be healing on their own, in a way he never expected. The blights may end on their own, in time.

And Solas would have stayed to see it. He would have come back to a romanced Lavellan, after Corypheus's death.

But...

But Solas Left, and Not for Pride.

Let's remember Solas's first words after Corypheus's defeat.

Solas places the pieces back on the ground and stands. If Solas has high approval: PC: There’s more, isn’t there? Solas: It was not supposed to happen this way. [Source.]

He sounds genuinely shattered in the moment, much like that orb. That's because he had no time to mask the feeling, as he had been for the entirety of DA:I up until that point. This was a crushing loss.

The defeat of his fleeting hope.

Why? Well, to keep it brief because I swear my hands will give out before Veilguard releases at this rate: I, like many, many others, believe that pieces of the Titans make up magical foci. The ancient Tevinter call them the vessels of dreams, and we know now what dreams are.

We also remember the Trespasser mural of a sundered Titan, and how the orb on the Fade half (left) bears a direct resemblance to the ones Mythal and Elgar'nan carry in Solas's Lighthouse mural.

I believe that this may have been Solas's sundered heart of his own Titan. Terror.

Home, all gone.

Now there is only the Inquisitor sharing kinship of any kind with him, because Wisdom is dead and Terror is half-dead, too.

It doesn't matter how much Solas appreciates the Inquisitor's company, or how they represent an end to his loneliness. It doesn't matter how much he loves a romanced Lavellan. It can't matter.

Because the Inquisitor is mortal. They will die, and unless Solas does something, their soul will not go back to Terror if Terror does not exist at all.

Solas—Cold Dread—was not motivated by pride when he left the Inquisition.

He was motivated by fear.

Terror Unfolding on the Din'anshiral

I literally have no time to unpack the existence of this man's wolf form. Anyone who wanted to read this post for that, I'm so sorry: I don't know why it's a wolf. I suspect I'm not supposed to know why.

I will say this: I wonder if when Solas sundered the Titans, maybe he also sundered a (blighted) wolf form from himself. One he could previously shapeshift into, like seems to be the case with the Evanuris and their archdemons.

Do I have evidence to link? Nope not really; only that it's weird, then, that Solas's Dread Wolf absorbed—

Nope, okay, I've got a theory. Normally, I edit out these real-time realizations. Not today, Satan.

What I was going to say is that, if Solas had to sunder himself from the wolf when he made the Veil, it's awful weird that the wolf (sundered) somehow absorbed Urthemiel's power from Mythal.

Only: I don't think the wolf was sundered, and I remember evidence that backs that up.

Anyone remember the inexplicably killed Qunari from Trespasser?

"Backs hunched, eyes wide open... They were scared shitless when they died," says Bull.

"More dead Qunari with terrified expressions," the Inquisitor later remarks.

They were killed without wounds. They were so afraid that they instantly died. I really wondered what happened, there, since Solas has been known to petrify (a lot of) people.

It's because there's two magics going on. One, Solas's magic from being from the Stone/Titans.

The other... Dread.

I'm not sure if Solas mysteriously left no pawprints (lol) in Trespasser. What I do know is that Solas and the Dread Wolf are the same being—and that if the Dread Wolf truly is blighted, that is why both sides of the Evanuris's conflict would worship him. Solas symbolizes power over the blight—representing hope for a future with a cure, or indomitable Evanuris power, depending upon the story.

Now that THAT epiphany is out of the way, let me continue on with what I was going to say about Trespasser and the din'anshiral.

Solas, after Corypheus's defeat (more importantly, after his orb shatters), has little left to lose. If he doesn't act and do everything necessary, it's only a matter of time until the other orbs are lost this way. Until the Veil weakens and breaks entirely. Until the Evanuris walk free and take the Titans for all they've got left.

His fear is mounting. He is not acting in Pride during Trespasser (however haughty he might come across); he is acting in fear. Fear that makes him try to put on a brave (and maybe prideful) face. Fear that sends him crumbling every time his vhenan is in his line of sight. Fear that has him suddenly callous with an Inquisitor he isn't friendly with, because he no longer has time to play nice and is scared shitless of the consequences of failure.

The man is literally the living embodiment of anxiety. Cold Dread.

This is why Solas says he is walking the din'anshiral. The path of death; the path of endings. Because Terror's heart is dead in his hands. Because he carries the blight. Because the Veil is weakening, the Evanuris are on the verge of escaping their stone prisons, and he doesn't have a way to stop them.

If he fails, the Inquisitor is mortal. Wisdom is dead, and there are mere stirrings in the Void. There is no guarantee either his spirit friend or the Inquisitor will ever come back in a way he will recognize, if either of them come back at all.

And if Terror's vessel of dreams is shattered and lifeless, who is to say that Terror will ever dream again? Who is to say that there will ever, ever be another Titan-thought, another spirit, that Solas will feel close to in the same way?

I'd be willing to cause an apocalypse for that reason, too. Maybe a war between Tevinter and the Qunari, just for funsies, because my perpetual anxiety that makes up the entire core of my being sometimes needs a distraction.

(Tiny sidenote that did not fit in elsewhere: mentioning again that the spirit guardians in Trespasser say, "Revas vir-Anaris," which means "Freedom we-Anaris," which is the name of a Forgotten One. Wondering if it means Solas previously fighting to free the elves borne of Anaris, or maybe freeing Anaris (Terror??) from the blight. But also? I wonder about that Anaris and Andruil story in a way I have no time to dissect. Really, what does anything mean? Okay. Carry on.)

What Rook Really Caused and the High Cost of Failure

I honestly think things were going great for Solas (as much as a sad, dirty bed roll alone in the Deep Roads where he was probably cuddling rocks and crying can be called great) before Rook showed up.

Yes, he had an itsy bitsy little Regret demon tear apart Skyhold.

Sure, he had a little bit of a Dread-Wolf-shaped meltdown at the Mortalitasi. (On that note, I think he had said wolf-shaped meltdown because the Mortalitasi are stopping spirits from reconnecting with their Titans once they leave the fade because, oopsie, all the necromancers are catching them and putting them into corpses instead.)

But other than that?

Great. Really great. No sense of cold dread here. Nope. No sir. Definitely not guiding every single one of his actions, from petrifying random people all the way to breaking time a little bit (?) to save Varric's life in Arlathan.

He makes it up onto his little (dilapidated, fracturing) staircase in his (also under-construction and very unstable) ritual site in Arlathan, and his ritual's begun (right out in the open, with an eluvian leading right to it that we all somehow have the password to, because he definitely doesn't want to be stopped at all, nope, not at all).

The Evanuris are going to go into their stone prisons! Rock Jail 2.0: Waking World Edition! It's great!

Until Rook shoves over one of those not-quite-stable statues. Which falls into another statue (Falon'Din's?). Which then topples one more statue, before Solas shatters it (which....... buddy. Why.)

Point is: ritual broken, Ghilan'nain and Elgar'nan freed, blights inevitable, Titans doomed. You know: Ma banal enasalin. Your blight wins, Dread.

Except that's not all.

Those other Evanuris, whose archdemons we killed? My guess is that they're not gone from their stone prisons. Remember what happened when we killed Corypheus's dragon? The soul just flew back into Corypheus, who was then mortal for a time (and we dropped him in the Fade instead, smh, Inquisitor, we literally went over this right before the final fight).

This means that the same is probably true of every archdemon we have killed. That means Dirthamen, Falon'Din, Sylaise, June, and Andruil are all out there somewhere, ostensibly, if they are freed from their stone prisons.

What happened in the Hissing Wastes when the stone broke, when we put the torches in the wrong order?

Demons. And what did Cole say about them?

"They were Dwarves. They think they still are. They sound like dust tastes."

And what does the Chant of Light say about the Evanuris?

Those who had been cast down, The demons who would be gods, Began to whisper to men from their tombs within the earth. — Threnodies 5

(sidenote, what if tombs within the earth doesn't necessarily only mean the abyss-earth, but also the rocks in which they're imprisoned in the fade? juicy...)

I think that not only are Ghilan'nain and Elgar'nan freed, not only is Terror still broken, not only are the blights back in business, not only are all the Titans still turned—

But five of the seven Evanuris just came back as world-endingly-bad demons.

Who could possess anything.

Or anyone.

I don't know whether Solas is trapped-trapped in Fade Jail™ (because there's an awful lot of wolf statues in there, and yet, he is not bound inside any of them), but honestly, that matters little when examining the scope of things.

The Evanuris all walk free. All seven. And our friend Fen'Harel, Dread Wolf, Cold Dread, Anxiety Incarnate, isn't going to be able to trick them twice.

Veilguard Predictions: the Ballad's Conclusion, or Does the Song Go On?

Oh my god this post is so long, this series is so long, my hands hurt, please for the love of god, I need to employ some sort of brevity somewhere.

Here's some predictions. I'm so tired. I've written so much.

Harding: her powers awoke, apparently, when she touched Solas's dagger. I'm wondering if that is reconnecting her to Solas's blood (which might be what makes the dagger?) or Solas's Titan. We also saw that diamond concept art, didn't we?

Varric: If you know, you know. Lyrium dagger, dwarf. If you don't know, close your eyes and pretend you read nothing.

Lucanis: You know what's really funky to me? The fact that Lucanis is possessed by Spite. And this is a time when all the other five Evanuris might possess some people. And this game might really just be Who Got Possessed By Whom. But, I think the thing Spite wants might be to see Solas dead. Or, Spite might want to see all the Titans healed. Or some other third thing that is sure to stomp on my heart.

... Sidenote I think we're going to see all the Forgotten Ones, and maybe even find out the one who's unnamed.

Solas: Fen'Harel walked among both clans of gods. The Forgotten Ones counted him as one of their own. It's possible Solas might be Terror. Not sure how that works! Not sure how sundered Titans operate! But it would sure be neat if the elven word for Contemplation were Solas's true name, and also the "true" name of the final Forgotten One (as they all have two names; their qualities and their name-names).

Emmrich: You know who'd have a really good shot of freeing all those spirits from the Necropolis? Three guesses. And you know what might happen if all those happy spirits that the Mourn Watch gave therapy to all move back into their Titans? Well, something really nice, plus a whole lot of crying from us. Sidenote: if Wisdom had enough time to reincarnate into an incomplete wisp before Solas's terror-orb broke? You know who'd be a really great candidate for a skeleton to house New Wisdom? Three guesses.

Neve: Magister Gallus is the one mentioned in the Gangue codex. :) But also, Neve is widely theorized to be the Archon's bastard child. It would be amazing to me if Magister Gallus were some other relative of hers—but how would that work, with Neve notably born as a commoner? The other, OTHER theory I've seen floating around is that this Magister Gallus is actually Neve's husband. But also—how does THAT work, with what we know of Neve?

Taash: Sylaise creation. Or Ghil creation. Who knows? Maybe Taash is how we find out the origin of all kossith. Maybe Taash is a little bit more dragon than other kossith. Maybe Taash is half scaled one, half kossith.

Davrin: Something something, the griffons woke up as the Veil began to come down. I don't know what that means, except more in the line of "Titans are waking" things. But also? He's a Warden, and he's about to see how much the Wardens didn't know about the blight. And also, Solas is blight patient zero and/or the source of all blight. And he's the Dread Wolf. Either Davrin and Solas have a lot of growing to do, or maybe Davrin is a source of anti-Solas sentiment.

Bellara: :) I really think Dirthamen, who potentially escaped the Fade in the time of the Magisters Sidereal, is hanging out with Bellara. She's got new vallaslin that none of the rest of us have access to. She's obsessed with knowledge. She has a very funky piece of ancient technology and just seems to have a way with old elvhen knowledge and equipment. Sleeper agent Bellara? Secret betrayer on our hands, or has Dirthamen become something better, kinder, than he was?

The Truth About Solas and Mythal's Relationship: I'd be so shocked if it were romance. I think, rewatching that post-DAI credits scene, they just trauma-bonded a shitload when Solas was born. Maybe I'm wrong! But if anyone in all of Thedas would have a reason to trauma-bond, it's them: the guy who started the blight, and the woman who made him do it; the two Evanuris who begged the others not to go back looking for more blight.

The Eclipse: Dirthamen and Falon'Din? Do I just love the Bird Boys™ too much, or is there something here?

Blackened Hearts Memory: I was wrong with Falon'Din, I think, and stumbled into the answer with Mythal. I think Mythal blackened the first Titan heart.

Do We Win?: man. Please. I'm just begging. Please let us be happy after all this. Do you know how much I cried, falling into the truth about Solasan and the dread at the door? I need a happy ending here. Or I need someone at BioWare to get me a nice cup of hot chocolate. Something.

Is Solas A Villain?: Bro have you even been reading? No. Pookie's never done anything wrong a day in his goddamned life. Let him sing Hallelujah in peace. :)

Do We Stop the Blight?: What other choice do we have? It's beat the Evanuris and fix the Titans now, or end up in a blighted world forever...???? Or... kill the Titans and kill all magic? Guys. Please don't kill all magic forever.

That's all I have in the way of major predictions. Probably.

---

I need a nap. You're a hero for reading all of these, if you have. <3

I'm still on an internet blackout until I have Veilguard in my hands, so I am likely not to reply here. But I promise: I will be back soon, when I've seen the game's story play out!

Let's all have some fun in Thedas tomorrow. :)

[pepsiiwho]

ROMANCE REAL!

I'm a heinous, devious multi-shipper and I always have been and always will be but for now I won't get into sleep's harem. Right now I'm just gonna word vomit about my two biggest Hypnos ships and what im thinking of writing for them with the information we have currently with the new teaser.

If you don't like Zagnos, Arenos or Hypnos getting some well deserved loving (in which case, you can fuck off now) then skip this one. If you'd like to avoid spoilers for my next possible wip (not that this is nearly coherent enough to explain anything I'll write) run away. Now.

Okay. Anyway. Hi true believers.

So, the dynamics of both ships are different to me fundementally but on the outside they look incredibly similar (I have a type). the basics being that Zagreus and Hypnos is more a will they/ won't they childhood friend romance with a twist of like "you stole my whole family and I resent you for that" and "you're the one person in this literal hell hole I can't just fix and it's driving me crazy". Initially Zagreus was like, the one constant nice, polite and understanding person Hypnos had in his corner. Because of like 3 lines of dialogue in the first game (of which I shan't even speak!) I fell out of love with the ship just because of how jarring and heart breaking it was. But I have love for them and have worked in tandem with cano, for once in my life, and can fix it all.

This was a long way to say, Zagnos exs. They dated and it was great. Very puppy love but after a point Hypnos got comfortable enough that he felt discontent with the fact his boyfriend was more beloved in his family then he was. They clash over it, Hypnos gets upset that zagreus gets THREE sets of families, HYP'S INCLUDED, while Hypnos can barely manage one on a good day and Zagreus just does NOT get it. Eventually they break up because they're just too different. Hypnos bows out, in his self-deprecating way, and they're done. Considering the second game, I think this happens shortly before Mel is born/ or conceived. One of the two because news/birth is a whirlwind that takes all of Zag's attention so they have a lot of unfinished business.

Obviously the titans attack only like a year or so after Mel is born and then everything goes to shit and my scene of the escape happens. At this point, Zagreus is still very in love with Hypnos— he never really stopped oops— but their time has run out and it's too late. He goes into the fray. Womp womp. We're caught up.

Arenos, on the other hand, was always an escape from the mess of the house and the family drama happening there. Hypnos the forgotten and unloved son paired up with Ares the forgotten and unloved son. They are very different yet have a shared loneliness no one else really gets? It helps Ares has his weird fixation on the chatonic gods and their entire lineage. So they meet at the post game dinner and Ares is instantly smitten and wants to wisk Hypnos away. This is, surprisingly, the significantly more affectionate and fluffier ship in my mind. He wants to adore his god and obsess over him as Hypnos deserves. Ares is a lover boy to me and Someone who's been deprived of such love his whole life needs someone who's too enthusiastic about his mere existence. Anyway, when the titans attack and Hypnos gets out with Mel, he loses contact with Olympus because they go off the grid and he's too weak to reach ares in his dreams or anything. Until Mel begins communication with her kin up top, Ares assumes Hypnos is dead. He is not normal about it. WOO!

Which brings us to now. The scene I have in mind is post game or like later in the game? In this idea Zagreus has been freed and olympians can come and go from the crossroads without alerting the enemy faction.

The concept for both ships is the same: X goes to crossroads and finds Hypnos sleeping, unwoken for (long period of time here) and unreachable. Im imagining the scene from Snow White. X walks up, ruminates on Hypnos and their past together and then kisses him before crumpling on his sleeping form, overcome with grief.

Naturally, the grief is different. Zagreus for lost love. For another thing lost to him through this conflict but due to his own negligence, not the Titan's whims. He chose to ostracize his love, he chose to ignore him when they were all of 30ft away from each other at any given time. His Hypnos, his sleep, who protected his little sister and (perhaps) helped guide his family to safety/defeat the titans whatever. The fates were as cruel as ever.

Ares, in my mind, would find Hypnos earlier. Before the titans are defeated fully. Seeing his lord sleep, his beloved, his heart and dreams left comatose and out of his reach enrages him. He has a new resolve coming out of the meeting, unable to do anything but wish for the utter decimation of any and all against him and the head of whoever put his love in this position.

The crossroad I'm at though (ha) is If true loves kiss can prevail... I love happy fluff good ends but tragedy is so lovely... Id love to hear other's thoughts as well. Feel free to send asks to continue the convo or reply ... or tags of course... sigh... they're so important. Also more Hypnos ships soon.. first on the block: Apollo and Hermes!