#but the specific charge of being inhuman is way more charged than people realize

[imperial-nuisance-rudje]

Pretend I left a frustrated effortpost here about how I strongly suspect that Zenos yae Galvus, most human evil motherfucker in the story, being specifically read as inhuman in spite of the game making active effort to show that he is Like That precisely because he's human draws from a well of ableism given that he's both the only explicitly nd character in the entire game and one of a very small list of mentally ill characters, almost all villains

And like, when the game with a recent expac where 3/3 of the villains are suicidally depressed and the one dude in a wheelchair gets quietly sidelined despite buildup that should have led to an active role in the story is doing better than you, you need to fucking shape up! I don't care if people think it's "reasonable" to read his behavior as inhuman, the fact that those behaviors are read as inhuman in the first place is the fucking problem!

aaaaaaaaaag

[bansheeoftheforest]

Can we get some rambles about some Moreau's Revenge AU? Like more in deoth about how everyone reacts and feels? Maybe some Emma reaction? Jacob? The public? Does feral!Jekyll ever hurt anyone badly? Do he and Zosi play alot? Is Hyde still there, just trapped in the subconscious of Henry's mind? When he's back to himself, does he still maintain some of his feral behaviours? Does he slip into his feral state as a defense mechanism?

Ok i just gotta mention I love it when people come up with aus, thrust them onto me, and then tell me to come up with ideas/the canon for the aus, I'm not even sarcastic, I just love that everyone has collectively decided that I'm an au hoarder and therefore, I should have all the aus and I should also be the one making the content for them. I love my job and I love all my little kitties bringing me dead mice all the time <3

Also! I'm just going to ramble every single fact that my brain comes up with, and this is specifically going to be about the Feral!Branch of the au <3

Henry got kidnapped after walking home from a dinner with a few of his close friends. Moreau stalked him until Henry was alone, to which he knocked him out and dragged him off to his funky hideout.

It takes a whole month before people find Moreau's hideout. By that time Henry has already been severely beaten, his bones are broken and his body is bloody, yet that doesn't stop him from prowling his tiny cage. Much like an abused dog, he completely ignored his wounds or just made them worse by biting on them, or by trying to stand on his legs when the rescuers found him. Instead of cheering and being relieved, he snarled and growled and tried to swat at them with his claws.

The first four that got into the hideout were Brokenshire, the Commissioner, Jenkins, and Wipple. The four of them were already friends with Jekyll and they were the most worried. While the other police arrested Moreau, they took it upon themselves to find Henry.

They found Henry in a small labspace, laying on the floor while whimpering. The moment he saw them he became aggressive. The only indication that he really was not human anymore was his eyes, sharp teeth, claws, and pointier ears. Subtle changes that were enough to tell them that there was no awareness behind those large eyes.

The sound of pain and anger that Henry made when they had to muzzle him is a sound that will forever haunt every single police officer from that day forward. They had to cuff his arms and practically drag him to the police vehicle, despite the muzzle he managed to make his displeasure and pain quite clear.

They brought Henry to the Society immediately, and made sure that no one else saw him. They but a sheet over the cage they kept him in and told anyone who asked that it was a runaway monster that they were going to dump with the Lodgers. They made the Lodgers gather in the foyer before the revealed who actually was in the cage.

The Lodgers were, to say the least, shocked and horrified. Not only was Henry so badly beaten that he could barely stand by himself, but the way he snarled and swatted after them invoked such a... Uncanny feeling within them. It wasn't really until then they realized how serious all of this was, the whole situation with Moreau.

All Lodgers were absolutely disgusted with what Moreau had done to Henry, but Ito, Maijabi, Jasper (plus Rachel and Robert, of course) were the most affected. The police had to physically restrain them from rushing up to the cage because if Henry got close enough he would not hesitate to hurt them. Brokenshire and the Commissioner (God I swear to god I'm THIS close to oc-fying him oh my god) both have scratch marks from trying to get close and calm Jekyll.

The police helped the Lodgers move Henry to an empty lab room where he could be alone. They still kept him in a cage for quite a while, yet the moment that they had gotten him into the room, Robert completely burst out crying. He really could not believe that happened to his best friend, he is unsure if they even can save him, yet he swears to himself that he will make sure that Henry is safe. He was this close to decking an officer who, during a meeting that he attended at the police station with those present during the day of Henry's rescue, suggested that they put Henry in Bethlam.

Robert did not allow anyone to get into Henry's room, mostly for their own safety, and because he wanted to monitor Henry's recovery himself. No one really listened to that. Sometimes a Lodger (or a whole group) would sneak in just to have a look at him, or give him some treats or some kind of toy. Henry often found himself too exhausted and too wounded to try to chase them away, instead panting on the floor of his cage for most of the time while his visitors observed him with pure sorrow.

Ito, Maijabi, Jasper, and Rachel were the ones that visited Henry the most. Ito and Maijabi would often just sit a bit away from the cage and observe him for a bit, maybe try to talk to him, occasionally they would help steal food from the kitchen to give to Henry. Rachel and Jasper were put in charge of feeding him most of the time, and it was only when Rachel and Jasper threw in chicken in his cage that he let himself be distracted from them and stop snarling just so he could eat. All of them left with tears in their eyes most of the time.

All the Lodgers would be worried, all Lodgers would try to visit Henry, but out of them Ito and Maijabi had it worst. Maijabi felt like he was losing his son, Ito-- so often cold and honest-- had never cried so much in her life when seeing her mentor in such a state. They often comfort each other, and do their best to always be available to help Robert with whatever he needs.

Emma route: I imagine that Henry and Emma are already married at that point. She has been worried sick for Henry the entire time, the police stop by her and Henry's house immediately after dropping Henry off at the Society. She rushes to the Society and the Lodgers all seem so... Sad, horrified, she gets more and more scared and suddenly she sees Robert and Rachel and Jasper, all three looking pale and ill. She begs them to tell her where Henry is... Robert can't even get any words out of him. He simply shows her to the room where they are going to keep Henry and shows her Henry's cage. Poor man is still laying bloody on the floor, still in a muzzle, but he barely has any visible sclera from his dilated irises and his hair is wild. He lays like a beaten dog, he doesn't even react as Emma kneels on the floor outside his cage. Emma turns around and demands and explanation from Robert, Robert sits down on the floor next to her and quietly explains everything the police told him, what Moreau did to Henry. Robert hugs Emma as she just starts crying, but both leave quickly to not... Well, bother Henry, who grows impatient and starts rattling against the cage. Not only has she been incredibly scared and worried for her husband the entire month he was gone, now Henry seems so close and yet so far away and he doesn't even recognize her, he is beaten like a dog and thinks he is some sort of animal and it just... It all becomes so much for her. She leaves the Society and the Lodgers don't see her much after that, although she does come and visit almost every day (and whether or not people know that she does it, is an entirely different question) just to see her husband. Sometimes she will bring food (Henry always loved her cooking) or a toy for him, and she ends up being the first person that he actually allows to touch him voluntarily, despite Robert forcing himself on him so he can patch him up.

Jacob route: Jacob would find out because Abberline and or Brokenshire would tell him about the state they found Henry in. Jacob would probably hear the news that Moreau’s lab got busted and immediately make his way to the Scotland Yard and demand that the police tell him where Henry is. They would tell him as much as they are allowed to about the case, then tell him to go and talk to Robert Lanyon in the Society. Of course Jacob doesn’t do that, he just immediately breaks in and searches everywhere for Henry. Eventually Robert spots him parkouring over the rafters and chases him down until Jacob manages to find the room where they keep Henry. Jacob opens the door and immediately finds Henry tearing through an entire turkey leg, although he immediately abandons the food snarl and bark (or, well, the aggressive equivalent of a bark) at him and Robert, reaching his hand out of the cage in an attempt of tearing them to shreds. No recognition at all in his eyes, Jacob can only stare for a while. Henry looks the same yet so inhumane. Robert does his best to explain everything, Jacob can only watch in pure horror as he hears what became of his lover, seeing it right in front of him. He doesn’t even let Robert finish his sentence before he has already stormed out. He does not care what the police planned to do with Moreau, he goes straight to whatever cell they keep him in and murders him in cold blood. He doesn’t go back to the Society afterwards, no, he goes to the train hideout and hastily tells Evie and Green what happened to Henry, he spends the rest of the night drinking. Unlike the Lodgers and Emma, he stays away for quite a bit. He doesn’t return until a few days later when he has managed to pick himself up. He makes sure that the news and/or rumors of what happened to Henry dies down quicker than they can rise, sometimes he actually has the courage to visit him but only every few days. He gets to see first hand how Henry recovers-- physically, at least, and slowly and surely he starts warming up to having people near him. After only a few weeks, Henry allows Jacob to touch him. Something about him (and Emma in her route, of course) feels familiar, calm and protective. Henry puts his head in Jacob’s hand and Jacob quietly swears that he will always protect him, no matter how long this goes on for.

The public (even including the Lanyons and the Carews, and most parts of the Scotland yard) never get to know what actually happened to Henry, as the rescuers made a good job at making sure no news or rumors spread or that anyone saw Henry in the state he was in. As far as they are aware, Henry is currently in a coma, and slowly Robert feeds into the news, updating people around them about Henry’s condition. “He is stable”, he will say, “but I’m afraid it’s hard to know when he will wake up... If he ever will”. It’s safer to make it seem like he is unconscious rather than conscious because Robert knows that people (journalists, Lanyon Sr, Sir. Carew, etc) will demand to visit him. Once Henry is unferal, they let him decide when he wants the news of his “awakening” to be spread.

The worst Henry has hurt someone was either fighting back to Moreau (which didn’t happen often, as he was too scared of him), but I’d also like to imagine that besides scratching the officers, he bit and hurt Robert quite badly, either Robert or one of the Lodgers, because he got overwhelmed and stressed. Robert really does not blame him no matter how badly it hurt or how serious the wound got, he shouldn’t have overwhelmed him but in his defense, cat body language is hard to read on a human. A positive from that was that Henry clearly felt guilty afterwards when he calmed down, which might have been the first ever sign that Henry was “savable”, as he clearly felt bad over what he did rather than trying to finish the job. It was the first time he actually walked up to Robert and touched him-- headbutted him, even, because he felt so bad for what he did because Robert has only been nice to him. Robert was wrapping a bandage around his arm when Henry came up to him, gently chirping and headbutting him, and Robert straight up bawled his eyes out.

Zosi was literally the only living being that Henry allowed close to him for many, many days. Zosi was both undead and also an animal, which was the two things that Henry associated with safety after having found comfort with Moreau’s monstrosities. Zosi was quickly in charge of being the one to give Henry food and medicine since Henry would allow no one else to get close to his cage, and Zosi was in sole charge of keeping Henry entertained and happy and calm while Robert tried to figure out how to proceed with the treatment. Zosi was just happy to have Henry back, and Henry was happy to have a friend.

When Henry got tortured and lost his sense of awareness, Hyde faded away, but only temporarily. He is, as said, trapped in the mindscape for the time being and until Henry gets his awareness back. It’s quite a nightmare for Hyde because he is watching in real time, while also processing the trauma from Moreau, as Henry’s mind crumbles. Gone are the mind people, instead they are replaced by vague primal instincts and animal behaviors. It’s definitely not as serious as Hyde feels it is, as it’s a slow but sure recovery from a steady dip to awareness as soon as Henry is removed from the lab, but it’s still incredibly scary for him. Henry can’t see or hear him anymore, and even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to react or process him.

It takes almost about 1-3 months before Henry has warmed up to everyone, physically healed, and was able to get the therapy he needed to even become aware, yet he never got rid of the feralness in him. Whenever he is stressed, scared, or overwhelmed, he might jump back into pure feralness or get a few of the key characteristics; subtle physical and behavioral appearance, etc. Sometimes it’s hard for him to get out of it, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes all he has to do is calm down and relax, sometimes he has to sleep it off. Regardless, the Lodgers and his friends/love interests all do their best to keep Henry calmed and relaxed, and make sure he never has to endure as much stress as he did before and after what happened with Moreau. 

(Basically, he goes from full feral to what the Feral Au is rn)

The public never really gets to know about Henry’s... Ahem, condition, however, most seem to accept the excuse that Henry has terrible anxiety after his torture, ergo making it easy for his friends or lover/s to help Henry out of a room or a situation when he starts feeling overwhelmed and like he is about to turn feral. They are all calm and patient and loving and protective with him, every single one, and Henry is forever grateful for the patient they bring him.

Some random rambles btw:

Out of everyone that isn’t his lover for the branch, Henry’s favorite persons are Maijabi and Ito. Maijabi because he feels like his dad, Ito because the feral state in Henry sees her as his cub or pup, in some weird way. When Henry is docile, both Maijabi and Ito quickly learn that Henry very much loves attention and grooming his favorite persons.

I got the idea while writing the Emma route that maybe she was already pregnant by the time that Henry got kidnapped and turned feral, although it was early on in the pregnancy. I just love the angst of Emma wondering if she will lose her husband and if Henry will ever get to meet their child, and the thought of feral Henry freely being allowed to get close to Emma (they were all very worried about that) and immediately sniffing and headbutting her belly is just <3 (Also the thought of Henry almost immediately panicking when the kid is born and Emma wants him to hold him, suddenly his eyes dilate and his hair puffs up but it’s like a cat staring at something absolutely wonderful)

Surprisingly, Frankenstein was one of those who often would sneak into Henry’s room just to see him. In this crossover au, I’d imagine she’d be much more sympathetic for him. Maybe she would talk to him and apologize for bringing him into this at all, maybe she would even apologize for what she said and did to him personally.

I refuse to acknowledge a bad au branch for this one where Henry turns permanently feral and they either have to kill him or let him loose in the wild <3

[volturialice]

me: i’m not gonna write any more of the drugged!human alice au

also me:

it has a title now too I guess. posting in a huge rush because I was supposed to be out the door ten minutes ago, so it’s even more unbeta’ed than usual. oh well

2,180 words

warnings: drugs, discussion of date rape, vomiting

rating: T

pairings: jalice

part 1 here

perihelion 2/?

It’s hard to tell visions from dreams. Sometimes, Alice doesn’t know which is which until a vision is coming true right in front of her, and then it’s like, okay, too late to do anything about this now. It means all of her dreams are high stakes—any nightmare could become a life-ruining disaster, any good dream could be made or unmade real by some hidden catalyst she doesn’t know about. She’s pretty sure she almost bombed the PSAT because she didn’t wear the blue top she had on in the dream where she scored a 189.

But her inability to tell the difference was never that big of a deal until Forks—until she started dreaming about the Cullens, and Jasper specifically. She wishes she could tell which of the Jasper dreams are real. They’re just so…well, horny. If Alice knew they were visions, and not her subconscious making a complete, desperate idiot of itself, she could be less embarrassed about the whole thing.

Tonight she dreams of Jasper and Rosalie in a room with green walls and shiny wood floors. They’re different in the dream, somehow—more still. Rosalie doesn’t sit. Jasper doesn’t blink.

Between them, an open doorway gapes into darkness. Just visible in the room beyond is the silhouette of a prone figure on a bed, unmoving. They watch it for an uncomfortable amount of time before Rosalie speaks.

“If she were any other human, I would have hunted you for sport, you know.”

“I know,” says Jasper, sounding impossibly old and tired.

“I would be off absolutely wrecking your shit right now, and then I would take care of the liability, because that’s how it works in this family. But she’s…this.” Rosalie grimaces, gesturing to the figure on the bed. “And why was it you told us you were following her, again? To ‘ensure her silence?’ Right,” she scoffs, evidently too disgusted with Jasper to keep looking at him.

“She hasn’t said anything. She won’t.”

“No, she won’t, because you’ll stop her at all costs, will you?”

Jasper’s face doesn’t betray the slightest twitch, but his eyes harden almost imperceptibly. “Not that way.”

Rosalie whirls back around. “You were supposed to be the one person I could count on to do what’s necessary! And now you’re telling me you won’t? Listen to yourself!”

Jasper throws up his hands. “Why are you here, then, Rose? Why are you helping her?”

“I’m helping you, you jackass! I know you all think I’m this narcissistic bitch, but I’m not…not inhumane, okay?” Rosalie levels a contemptuous glance at him, then looks away. “I don’t want some girl to be date-raped, however dangerous she is. And I’m not about to sit by and watch you make a complete mess of things.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I think that ship may have sailed,” grumbles Jasper.

“I’ll say. I drive up and she’s going on about how you’re stalking her and claiming you’re dating? She should have been killed the moment she figured out what we were, but instead you’re following her around protecting her because of some bizarre psychic connection she claims you have? Make it make sense, Jasper.”

“Edward confirmed her ability is real.”

“Great, so she’s a bigger freak than us. That makes it all ok,” snaps Rosalie, dripping with sarcasm. “Wonderful to know your abysmal taste in women hasn’t altered after all these years.”

Jasper ignores both the jab and the implication. “Earlier you made it sound like you were on her side.”

“I just think you ought to admit what’s really going on here. You won’t let us kill her—fine. It’s utterly irresponsible and stupid, but I can accept that. But it’s not like we can allow her to keep existing out there as a human, knowing what she knows.”

Jasper barks out a humorless, incredulous laugh. “Are you advocating that we should have Carlisle change her? You, Rosalie Hale, want to ‘take away her humanity?’”

Rosalie shrugs. “I’m not saying she wouldn’t be better off dead. But she’s not a very good human, is she? I gather she’s not exactly thriving. They have to pump her full of drugs just to keep her functional, and her human peers still think she’s insane. Be realistic. Her life was over the moment she learned the truth about us.”

Jasper’s only response is a slow shake of his head, like he still can’t believe what he’s hearing.

Rosalie’s eyes narrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about changing her. Don’t tell me it wasn’t your first thought, when you realized you didn’t want her dead. I may not be the mind reader in the family, but I know that’s a lie.”

It takes Jasper a beat too long to answer. “Of course I’ve thought about it.”

“Not enough, apparently. Right now, we’re in as much danger as she is. If she were one of us…well, her life is already ruined anyway. At least then we’d have her oh-so-special ability on our side.  Surely you can see the strategic advantage,” Rosalie rebukes. “Better Carlisle changes her than the Volturi. Has it occurred to you that if they ever find out she exists, the decision will be taken right out of your hands?”

“It’s not in my hands.”

Rosalie rolls her eyes again. “Hers, then.”

He sighs. “The possibility did occur to me.”

“You think she wants to learn Italian and live in a sewer? Eat tourists?”

“I have no idea what she wants.”

Rosalie laughs. “Right, because she’s playing it so close to the vest. She called you a simp. Do you know what that means?”

“We’re not talking about this.”

“Funny how you never want to confide in anyone, yet here we are.”

Jasper’s look says that isn’t what’s going on here, but he doesn’t respond. They settle back into tense silence.

“What are you going to do about the man? The one who drugged her?” asks Rosalie after a while.

“Eliminate him. Quietly.”

Rosalie nods. “Carlisle won’t like it.”

“He doesn’t have to.”

“Can you actually do it, though? Without slipping?”

Jasper doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself.

“I could do it.” Rosalie’s voice is quiet.

“It’s not your problem.”

“Exactly,” Rosalie insists. “It wouldn’t be a problem for me. If you slip…well, we may not have to move, but you won’t be able to come back to school for months. Going to trust the rest of us to babysit your human?”

“I won’t slip,” says Jasper, but for the first time, he sounds uncertain.

Alice’s dream chooses this moment to blur and shift. Jasper and Rosalie melt away, voices distorting until they’re drowned out by other voices, other sounds and images that crowd in and pull at her, like being tossed around in a rough ocean. They come one after another, too fast to make sense of them—muddy tires, a burst of cut-off music, a slow, dark ooze crawling over pavement, an echoing splash. Familiar red eyes, looking down at her.

Then Alice is awake, and the eyes looking down at her are black. Wait, no. There are no eyes looking down at her. It must have been part of the dream.

She’s lying on something soft—a bed. Above her is a white ceiling. Her head throbs with a confused, cotton-y ache, and her mouth tastes disgusting.

What the hell happened? Alice isn’t great at piecing together chronological sequences at the best of times. She remembers being in Port Angeles…splitting up with Bella in order to meet her friends from the art show at a bar, and then…people talking, her legs sticking to the green leather barstool.  The lights getting blurry around the edges, the cool, slippery feel of condensation from the glass in her hand, and…oh. Oh, shit. Jasper.

Jasper had been there. The last thing she can recall is Jasper approaching, his face twisted in rage so murderous that she’d thought, huh, I guess he really is a vampire.

She rolls over and—speak of the devil—there he is, standing kind of a weird distance away, halfway between the bed and the door. He looks far less murderous than she remembers.

“Good morning,” she croaks, struggling into a sitting position. “Um. Where the hell am I?”

“Port Townsend,” says Jasper, which means absolutely nothing to her. She’s only been in Forks a few months—is she seriously supposed to know Washington geography?

To Alice’s immense relief, she’s still fully clothed. She does a surreptitious check to make sure her boobs aren’t falling out of her shirt, and when she looks back up there’s a glass of water in front of her face. She takes it and chugs the whole thing down in a few gulps. Why does she feel so hungover? She had only had, like, two drinks last night. Certainly not enough to make her black out and forget the whole evening. No, this big, empty gap in her memory feels more like when they used to drug her at the hospital. In fact, it feels exactly like that.

Jasper takes the empty glass from her and hands her another full one. He’s still watching her in a way that makes her want to squirm and fidget. Why had he been so angry last night?

She chugs the second glass of water while her sluggish brain tries to add it all up. Angry Jasper plus no memory plus waking up in a bed in a strange place, equals…yikes. Maybe she shouldn’t be drinking whatever he hands her.

“Uh,” she taps her fingers against the empty glass, “why do I feel like I’ve been roofied?”

“Because you were. Here,” says Jasper, handing her something else. Her own phone, somehow fully charged. One new voicemail, from…herself.

Future Alice, this is Past Alice. You’re probably pretty freaked out right now, but it’s okay! Jasper didn’t drug you. I repeat, Jasper did not drug you. Be nice to Rosalie; she’s there to help. Now put the phone down, you’re about to hurl. Bye!

Alice has just enough time to think, Rosalie? before a violent wave of nausea hits and she’s throwing up into the waste bin that appears in front of her face. “Ugh,” says the person holding it, and sure enough, there’s Rosalie.

There’s something extra humiliating about throwing up in front of two vampires, one of whom she kind of has a thing with and the other of whom is his super-hot sister who hates her. Thankfully, her stomach was empty except for the two glasses of water.

Rosalie blurs out of the room—damn, she’s fast—and reappears without the waste bin. It’s weird being on the bed while Rosalie and Jasper are standing, so Alice gets to her feet, already feeling way better. “Whose house is this?” she asks.

“Mine,” says Rosalie, practically shooting laser beams of resentment from her eyes.

“You wouldn’t let us take you home or to the hospital,” explains Jasper. “This is Rosalie and Emmett’s beach cottage.”

“Cottage” seems like the wrong word for this place, now that Alice gets a look at it. It has eight- or nine-foot ceilings and the view out the window—a vast, gray body of water that might be the ocean or some kind of bay—looks like a default computer desktop.

“Oh. So, then…someone else drugged me last night?” She tries to remember who she was talking to before Jasper came over, but she’d talked to so many people at the bar that they all kind of blur together in her head.

Jasper nods.

“Like we’d ever need to drug you,” says Rosalie. Oh, right. Vampires.

“So you just…watched me sleep?”

“Yeah, it was riveting. I had no idea snoring like a lawnmower was a side effect of rohypnol.”

So Alice was supposed to be nice to Rosalie, huh? Easier said than fucking done.

Something pushes at the back of her mind—Rosalie and Jasper watching her sleep. She, Alice, had watched them watching her sleep—from outside her own body. A vision, then, and not a dream.

She tries to remember the rest of it on the drive back to Forks, staring out the back window of Rosalie’s BMW like a kid with the two vampires up front. There had been something else in the vision, something besides the disjointed set of images. Jasper and Rosalie had talked about her, about whether or not she should be a vampire. She sneaks a glance at Jasper in the car mirror, at his downcast, shadowed eyes. Had he ever actually said whether he wanted Alice to be a vampire or not?

His eyes snap up to meet hers in the mirror, so suddenly she almost jumps. Alice looks away, guilty for no real reason. The vision, think about the vision.

There had been something else in it: a plan. They were going to…something. Something about slipping, something Rosalie thought she could do better than Jasper…

Right. They were going to kill someone.

.

.

rosalie @ human bella: noooo don’t become a vampire you’re so fertile aha

rosalie @ human alice: yeah nobody’s impregnating this little gremlin. bite away

[randomly-talented]

Okay, okay, I'm not really good at making sentences work the way I want them but I'll try to convey my thoughts and emotions over the characters from Bug Fables after completing the game last night at 2:00 ish in the morning (I was weak and there no way I was gonna stop with all the stuff that was going on at the end. I'm the type of player that plays till a good stopping point) that being said there will be spoilers from here on down so you've been warned!

But really it's such a beautiful experience and i highly recommend going in blind to any new player.

Okay, on to the point. I know many people have decided on their favorite of the team and I'm not here to say "oh they're the best and you're wrong!" NOPE I'm not doing that I am trying to say is "they're all the best and you're so right to care for one but let's love them all". Each character has their own ideals and their own goals when we first meet them.

Vi (Violet) a bee who has essentially runaway from home after burning the bridges between her family and her "mother" the queen to become an explorer. An occupation that (based off context clues) is the last thing a bee does for a living. And this is emphasized with all other bugs that explore being not only bigger than her but NOT bees. And biologically...it makes sense! A bee, is to collect pollen and nectar for the hive and produce honey (which Vi use to do with her job at the factory) and biologically bees do avoid fighting since their only way of attacking is with their stinger. But unlike the other black and yellow bugs, a bee's stinger is a one use thing. After it's used, it remains in the creature the bee attacked and from the bee's body it takes their organs with it. (If I remember that correctly. It's been a while since I looked up why bee's die after stinging someone). But you understand the concern that other bees in Vi's life have for her becoming an explorer. But that isn't the only thing the Vi dealt with before becoming and explorer, she had to deal with many of her friends and family badmouth her dreams and guilt her from trying to accomplish them. As Vi said to her sister when they were trying to resolve their fight, "But if I can say something, you were mean to me too! I had dreams and you stomped over them! I'm doing great! I've gone to many places and beat up huge monsters! If...if you had any faith in me I could've done it sooner!" Even her desire of money is so that she can live how she wants without anyone telling her how to live. And it's a strong desire due to the fact that Vi is always trying to strike a deal or not spend their savings on expensive wants, shown through her reluctance to buy the green ranger toy, or her utter shock to the 400 berries flower toy she forked the money for. (Something that shocked Leif and Kabbu due to the fact that Vi just spent 400 berries on a toy for someone else)

Kabbu a beetle (who specific species I don't know) who is the definition of an honorable bug. Going out of his way to help others and if it weren't for Vi he'd do it for free. Which would essentially leave him homeless once that is said and done. Who through the majority of the game he's the voice of reason, passion, and inspiration. (With a skill "Pep Talk" he's able to revive a fainted teammate). And who wishes to create a team of explorers to call his own. I will say that Kabbu was precious. I loved how the only reason Vi and Leif got anything done or didn't do a crime, the chaotic duo that they are, was because of Kabbu and how his hesitance was enough to keep Vi and Leif from upsetting him further. But I do want to say that I found it odd how willing he was to behave that way. When I was playing through the festival I found it so weird how Kabbu was okay with not participating at all. Until I realized that I personally do that too. Kabbu was happy as long as his teammates were having fun. (Until you learn of his old teammates, who were trying to go to bugaria by going through the swamplands and perished to the Beast by holding it off while Kabbu ran away) Kabbu who after surviving the Beast alone had to make more than half of the journey to the Ant Kingdom alone, through a desert filled with monsters, some which he couldn't attack by himself due to their burrow ability, and bandits, with some bandits flying to high for him to do anything but run from. The entire time being alone to fester in the guilt that he essentially "abandoned" his teammates to die at the hands of the beast and how easy the desert would be if his teammates were there to help him. (Not only that but if I remember correctly Kabbu's old teammates were more experienced than Kabbu himself, which added to the guilt "if I was stronger they would still be around") And now the festival wasn't as happy as it was led to appear. Kabbu is okay with letting his teammates have fun because he doesn't "need" to have fun. Vi and Leif are placeholders for his old teammates during this event. If they can have fun one more time, I can truly be happy. I will keep them safe and happy unlike my old teammates. I will do all within my power to make sure my teammates are happy and safe. Because I didn't the first time and I won't make that same mistake. That is why when we collectively reach the grasslands Kabbu comes to the decision that he's strong enough to avenge his fallen teammates by defeating the Beast. Alone if he must.

Leif a moth (with the ability to control ice that they generate within their body) who is found after Kabbu and Vi stumble into the deeps of Snake mouth cave. And when they're awakened from their "nap" Leif has no idea that time has essentially changed. Now the Ant Kingdom has grown, their queen is no longer in charge but their daughter. And things aren't as peaceful as they use to be, the wasps and termites have cut ties with the ant kingdom, there are bandits left and right, and now there is need for a prison when in the past there was no such need. All of the bugs that Leif once knew are no more except Rebecca who is too aged to fully remember them. (If that's her name, I honestly was never too sure...) And it wasn't till later in the story that Leif is shocked to realize that one of the family's in the residential areas looks just like they're wife Muse. And that is when you realize that Leif was stripped from they're family. And thus leads to Leif working harder in finding out what exactly happened in that cave and when we do it's heartbreaking. Apparently Snake mouth cave was home to a civilization of roach scientists who were trying to recreate an equivalent to the eternal sapling by experimenting with cordyceps and bugs that the roaches lured to the cave with the promise of an artifact that would lead to the everlasting sapling. That is why there was a trap door as you open the door to the "treasure" of Snake mouth cave and further beyond that "treasure" was another door were bugs were inhumanely experimented on in some sick experiment as the roaches looked for purpose. (It's only super concerning that the majority of zombified bugs happen to be small ants, bees of the "smaller" variety, and green beetles of the "larger" variety. (Creepily enough they looked like Vi and Kabbu and I really hope that Leif's old teammates weren't some variety of those bugs cuz that would be super upsetting.) There, Leif learns that they were once dead, and that they're not even them, they were a sentient cordyceps that "failed" the roaches test and possessed a dead bug, Leif, who was most likely ambushed with his team and left behind by said team least they all lose their lives. Only for Leif to be subjected to experiments in order to become the next immortal, a purpose for the roaches to live for. And unluckily (luckily??) survived the experiments once a cordyceps housed itself within them in a symbiotic relationship. And with Kabbu and Vi's help, comes to accept that they have always been the same bug from the beginning till now and onwards. Now that they realize that even though they are part cordyceps part moth it doesn't mean they have really changed from the bug they use to be when it came to they're family. Which gave them the courage to meet the present version of their family and be accepted with open arms (it was touching and I cried).

But that's just it. Vi, Kabbu, and Leif; Team Snakemouth are the best team, because they had each other. And even though they each had their own personalities and their pasts that laid heavy within each of their minds. Team Snakemouth supported itself, and was open to itself (some a bit more than others). They keep their secrets within the team, they backed each other up, they tease each other, they beat anyone fight anyone that insults one of them (How dare you insult us! Insult one you insult all!). Because they aren't just one, they are a team, a family, friends. A success, is all their success. A failure, is all their failure. One's happiness, is all their happiness. And ones sadness, is all their sadness. And it was their team that saved Bugaria from the wasp King. And we loved them all.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

Here in Germany we got a 45 minute long chronological Dokumentation on how Trump failed his Covid19 response... It was just published yesterday by one of our tax funded newsstations and pretty good. Does the "average" American even realize how royally Trump fucked up? Atm I think us germans are pretty worried about you

I’m not sure why I’m being asked about this but long story short, yes.

I know that everyone in other countries likes to shit on us, and I know that the United States has screwed every other country over in just about every way possible, and I’m truly sorry for our shitty “we’re better than you” attitude that a lot of us have carried, and I’m sorry for how we’ve meddled in everything we could get our hands on, and I’m especially sorry for our goddamn awful inhumane military industrial complex.

But I am really, really, really tired of everyone acting like we’re unaware and ignorant of how bad our government has fucked us up, and fucked you up, and fucked everyone else up. WE’RE AWARE, PEOPLE. WE DO, IN FACT, GET IT, OKAY?

THE AVERAGE AMERICAN WAS PISSED AT TRUMP BEFORE THIS WHOLE MESS CAME OUT, ALL RIGHT? YEAH, I GET IT, GLAD YOU’RE ALL WORRIED ABOUT US, YOU’VE BEEN WORRIED ABOUT US SINCE 2016 AND POSSIBLY EVEN BEFORE THAT AND YOU DESERVE TO BE.

I am so fucking exhausted with being told by people from other countries how fucked up my country is and how we’ve been screwed over. I’M AWARE OF THIS. FOR FUCK’S SAKE. We’re very much aware of this!

I appreciate your concern, nonny, and I know that you are probably just want to help and want to understand what’s going on over here and want to know how we’re doing. I’m just. So. Fucking. Tired.

Does the average American even realize... YES. WHATEVER THE QUESTION IS, YES. WE’RE FUCKING. AWARE. OF. IT. THANK YOU.

If everyone could please stop treating us like we don’t know how screwed we are, that would be great. It’s like I’m living in a house with an abusive parent and everyone keeps telling me they’re abusive. No, really? The black eye I was given wasn’t a clue to me, but no, now that you, you kind stranger, have informed me that getting punched by my parent is a bad thing, I see the light!

The reason Trump got elected was because of the screwed electoral college system that gave a minority vote of white (and generally rich) people more power than the majority of the American people. Did you know most people in the South, an area of America often derided for being backwards and ignorant and racist, are actually people of color? You wouldn’t, of course, because most of the people in charge are white and they like to keep a certain image.

Voter suppression, for example of Black people in Florida (where family of mine lived at the time of the 2016 election and kept me informed) is another factor. Yes, there were idiots who didn’t vote, or who voted third party, and most of those people as far as I know of given my research seem to have been white. And don’t kid around and pretend it’s just one man doing all of this! He has an entire political party made up of rich white men interested in doing whatever the hell it takes to keep that wealth and their power and control the rest of us.

A mostly straight, mostly rich, mostly white minority got us Trump, and because of how the system’s skewed, it was easy for them. TRUMP ACTUALLY LOST THE POPULAR VOTE. AKA THE PEOPLE DID NOT WANT TRUMP. THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE, A SYSTEM SPECIFICALLY CREATED TO BENEFIT SLAVE OWNERS AND KEEP POWER IN THE HANDS OF THE RICH WHITE MINORITY, ELECTED TRUMP, OKAY!?

The virus is only the biggest, latest thing in which Trump has failed us.

So yes, nonny. The average American is really fucking aware of what’s going on, and we hate it. We might be a country notorious for thinking we’re the shit and we’re better than everyone else but our heads aren’t quite that far up our asses, okay? Thanks.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 94

Okay, camping trip is over for now... I plan to do another in October, though, so if your story or submission wasn’t included, don’t worry. Still hanging on to it for then.

For now, however, it’s time for Sophia to jump back into her regularly scheduled disaster, with both feet.  Thanks go out to @baelpenrose and @creakingcryptid for their beta-readership on this chapter.

Everyone else? Hang on tight.  This is a steep drop....

Despite my misgivings about Conor and Maverick’s idea to have a camping trip, I was still in a far better mood several days afterward.  The atmosphere was casual enough that I had been able to forget the fact that Grey, Simon, and I were essentially surrounded by armed guards. Instead, it was us, our friends, and respective partners: a nice, normal camping trip, minus the fire and fish. Granted, the last part had been due to a late appearance by a certain mermaid who was very strict about fishing in the artificial lake, but still. Very quiet, very dark, very relaxing… and most of all, very, very normal. 

The side effect of the camping trip was a sense of calm, which trickled into the following week. I was walking to my office, on what I was reasonably certain was Monday, chatting with Xiomara and inviting her to the next campout, when I ran squarely into someone.  My immediate thought was that I needed to really watch where I was going, until the jarring reality of the situation hit me.

I hadn’t received a proximity alert.

I had become so accustomed to them, even with the knowledge that Jokul’s acolytes were disabling them, that I developed a tendency to navigate using them. I know, I know, it was profoundly lazy of me, but after a lifetime of bad eyesight and sketchy hearing, the cranial beeping was far more reliable.  Cautiously turning my gaze to the person I had charged into, I was astonished at what I saw. Medium height and build, light brown hair, hazel eyes… check, check, and check.

“Antoine!?” I gasped in confusion. “I haven’t seen you in months! Are you okay? Crepes, work must be busy…”

“Councillor Reid.” He inclined his head slightly as he intoned his greeting.

I was so… baffled. This was, essentially, my brother in law. Who adored lemon-blueberry cake donuts, atomically spicy etouffee, and Love in the Time of Cholera. Who had investigated the quilt I gifted Tyche with sincere curiosity. Who… was staring coldly at me, right now?

“I - I’m so… sorry…” I trailed off. “Let me get out of your way. I’m sure you’ve got somewhere to be, as busy as I’m sure you’ve been…”

“Coward,” he spat, pain spiking through me like I’d been shot. “Always so subservient, so afraid.” He stood, ramrod straight, hands behind his back in an ‘at rest’ posture. “It’s no wonder you hide behind others.”

I backed up, slamming into Xiomara. “Antoine, I don - “

“Don’t what?” he accused. “Don’t walk around with your minions, expecting them to keep you safe? Expecting Tyche to keep you safe? How dare you?”

I tried to respond, but he soldiered through, ignoring me. “She is your sister. You should be protecting her, but instead you use her as your shield, hiding behind her rage.”

“Look - “

“No, you look,” he demanded. “Your partners, I understand. They are more versed in physical confrontation, no? Your friend Farro, even. But Tyche? That is sheer cowardice. Leave her out of this, you… you monster!” Antoine stepped forward to tower over me. I had never been so aware of the difference in our heights before, but I was suddenly realizing that I was a distinct disadvantage.

However, I was also remarkably angry. “How dare I!? How dare YOU!”  I shouted back. “I specifically asked that Tyche, Conor, Maverick… Grey… Charly… Zach… hell, Derek, Sam, and YOU would be left out of this.” Shoving my hand through my hair, I took a step forward. Now, I was chest-to-chest with a man I never thought I would argue with in my life. “I wanted all of you to be out of this, completely out. I almost died on Level One just for thinking out loud. As soon as I realized something was up, I went to her,” I pointed emphatically at Xiomara, almost taking her eye out by underestimating how close she was, “that none of us want any part of this. That was after Charly took a slap to the face and punch to the ribs that was meant for me. If you can convince my sister to stop putting herself in the line of fire on my behalf, I will do anything.” I took three deep breaths, trying to calm myself and failing. “But don’t you dare,” I bruised my finger stabbing him in the sternum, “Accuse” Stab and bruise. “ME” More bruising, hopefully not just my finger this time. “Of putting Tyche in danger on purpose. That woman is anger wrapped in a hurricane and strapped down with dynamite. She does what she wants, when she wants, and fuck us all if we disagree.” My voice dropped to a whisper, close enough now that there would be no misunderstanding, even with my loss of hearing. “Because do not mistake me, Tyche is never willing to back down when her moral compass points a certain way. It may not make sense in the now, it may not make sense to me, but in the end, she is incapable of backing down from what she believes is right.”

Antoine stepped back, then took half a step back again. “You are choosing to remain hiding behind someone else’s virtue,” he pronounced loudly, still standing at-rest and sneering. “He is correct, you are simply a coward, climbing out of the shadow of greater people to stand on the shoulders of others.”  His eyes bored into mine like he was trying to drill the idea into my head, but it only made me angrier. 

Before I could say anything, he spun on his heel and walked away, hands still gripped tightly behind his back “What the hell?” I asked the air, bewildered.

I turned to Xiomara, but before I could say anything, a woman ran up and grabbed my arm, her dark eyes wide and pleading, nails digging into my skin. “Sophia,” Parvati gasped, trying to catch her breath. “I saw his hands, he was typing to someone.” She stared me down, clearly asking me to understand some piece of information I was missing. When she realized this, she tried again. “While he was speaking to you. The entire time, both his hands were clearly typing, and quickly.”

Realization dawned on me. “Tyche?” I asked, hoping he was standing up for my sister and informing her of the fact rather than asking for permission I knew she wouldn’t have granted.

“I am not sure,” she replied, glancing around. “But I am confident you need to move from here and get to your office. It cannot be safe.”

A sliver of my undying curiosity wanted to glance back at Xiomara’s face, seeing her romantic interest warn me to shelter. However, Parvati dug her nails deeper into my arm, matched only by a blunter set on the other - clearly the women were of an accord on my need to get to a safe location, preventing any excuse to satiate my nosy nature. Instead, I had several yards of keeping my eyes down to prevent motion sickness. Inevitably, I focused on the swishing silks in front of me. “Silver and gold… you look like a statue, Parvati.”

“AH! You really are colorblind,” she laughed, pealing like a bell. No wonder Xiomara was so enamoured. “Turquoise and gold, I believe.”

“Same thing,” I muttered, dismayed that having one eye replaced hadn’t corrected my color-vision. Mental note to have my eyes replaced with Tyche’s in the future, I told myself. There was really no excuse for still being colorblind, especially when several people told me I was missing out on the best part.

“This sari is designed to look like the colors of the ocean, sky, and land,” Parvati continued. I restrained a groan at all I knew I was missing. “Golden sand, and the waters of the tropical seas.”

“Sophia - “ Xiomara interjected from behind me. I briefly felt fingers brush my shirt, and assumed it was her.

“Not now,” Parvati panted, still towing me behind her. “Fifty more yards.”

I glanced around, concerned. “My office is nowhere near here.  It’s on another deck…”

“I am aware,” came the reply. “But we are headed to a safe location. Safer, at least. Ah!” Parvati exclaimed as we arrived at a door I had passed a dozen times but never really looked at. “In here.”  With that, she practically stuffed me into the door, quickly repeated the action on Xiomara,  and finally yanked her sari behind her as she closed the entrance.  I did not miss how she peered through the closing portal, up to the point she could no longer see even a sliver of light through it. “We are safe now.”

“How can you - “

She held one finger to her lips, another canted overhead and to the side. After a moment, she tilted her head. “Do you hear the humming?”

I listened, but couldn’t actually hear anything. Despite that, there was a vibration working its way through my teeth and bones. “I feel it, does that count?”

She nodded once. “That is the gravity generator for this side of the ship. It distorts sound, creates an inhuman level of interference.” Pointing past me, Parvati raised her eyebrows. “If you keep walking in that direction, there should be an intersect between the grav generators, at least theoretically. It will either be the most efficient compactor known to humanity, or a zero gee area the size of a small park. But I haven’t found it yet.”

A throat cleared, calling our attention. Eyes turned to Xiomara, who stood with both hands on her hips. “Care to fill me in on why, exactly, we are here?”

I tried to plead what little I knew. “Antoine - “

“Yes, he confronted you in the hall.” A sleek hand held up to stave off Parvati’s objections. “And yes, he sent a message to someone. But why are we here?”

Parvati scoffed, wagging her head at my fellow Councillor. “Sophia is in danger. Someone very close to her just accused her of using people as protection, while reporting back to an unknown party. At least here, she can attempt to send a signal to her sister to try to understand.”  With that, she started to poke around the space, eventually locating a wire connected to gods know what. “This will let you send a signal without interference, but you will have to type on a flat surface - the motion sensor will be disrupted and will need a very firm stop to know what you are typing. Voice will not work.” I nodded, in shock and awe at her direct delivery and preparedness. As she handed me the plug, I flicked open my data pad.

Only to find a message waiting.

Sophia,

My sincerest apologies for my abrasiveness. I needed to appear real.

Meet me at the Undine at 0100 hours. Come alone. I will advise her where you will be, and you can confirm.

You are my heart’s heart.

Absently, I wiped at a tear making its way down my cheek, not even consciously aware of the action. “He isn’t angry,” I exhaled, a tightness in my chest releasing. “Xio, should I stay away?”

Dark eyes gave me an appraising look. “No. You should go. This could be important, if he’s reaching out to you like this.”

“And I should really go alone?”

“Depends,” she shrugged.  Her casual demeanor was very disconcerting. “Everyone connected to you is well-known to… essentially the whole ship. How well can Farro disguise himself? I’ll give him back his sword if he can do it.”

Glancing at my datapad, I focused on the time. “He has about twelve hours to figure that out.”

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[mwolf0epsilon]

A story of Sammy stumbling upon siren head?

Summary: The studio wasn't the only place hiding the lurking horrors of the world.

---

[[MORE]]

Freedom had come with a lot of existential dread and lingering doubts. It hadn't been the oh so sweet respite that everyone had coveted so much, not when they were still abominable creatures made of cursed ink (and in some cases machinery). Still, for all that they'd worried, Henry had pulled through and prevailed.

He'd not only gifted them their salvation from Joey's nightmarish dream, but also offered them a way to live unafraid in a world they no longer belonged in. He gave them a house, food, clothes, a life worth living.

Never once did he ask for anything in return. A true loyal and kind friend to those who desperately needed such a charitable heart.

"You don't need to repay me. I'm only doing what's right, and besides I got that house after my uncle died... It never really felt right to move out of town with Linda and the girls, and I never knew what I was going to do with it." He'd humbly dismissed any offers to repay his kindness. "You all need a safe place where you can recover and slowly reacquaint with normalcy without anyone judging or fearing you. The location is perfect."

And it was. An isolated corner of a vast forest, with nearly no signs of civilization. Easy for Henry to check up on them since he knew where to go to reach it, but out of the way enough that not even hikers came by often.

It helped that it had a bit of a... Dark reputation. Missing cases, strange sightings, and creepy sounds in the night. A deterrent for sane people with a yellow streak.

For someone like Susie and Allison who looked human enough to pass off as such if provided with an appropriate disguise, it was a bit of a hassle. Grocery shopping (when they were in the mood to be seen by the oblivious folk in the nearest town) took longer due to such a long trek.

For others like Tom and Buddy who were living cartoon characters it was a more comfortable experience. They could go out and feel the sun upon their skin without fear of what may happen if they were spotted.

And then lastly, for beings like Sammy, the Searchers, Butcher Gang, and for Norman, it was both a stark reminder of their inhumanity, and a blissful respite from the crippling dissonant thoughts that made them oh so prone to violent outbursts.

In the woods there was no one they could hurt if they lost their senses (which was not as common a thing as it once was, but still something the Projectionist suffered with on the regular). In the woods there was peaceful silence where they could wade through the madness and regain their footing. In the woods they could almost be their former selves.

Granted this was a double-edged sword on one regard: The Projectionist tended to wander far and not recall how to come back.

If Norman ended up somehow stumbling back into society, there would be trouble. Which is why Sammy was assigned to follow him every time he felt like going for one of his "little walks".

At first the once-music director had scoffed and been incredibly annoyed at being saddled with such a responsibility. He was not in a capacity to look after himself, much less a 7, nearly 8, foot tall half-ink half-machine man that could easily render him into ribbons if he set him off. Norman's transition from coherent sentient thoughts to downright feral and highly aggressive behaviour was too unpredictable for someone who's memories tended to evade him easily.

But then, as pointed out by Allison, Susie wouldn't be able to calm him because she knew neither sign language nor Morse code (which he'd learned specifically from Norman when he was still human just for fun), and Allison herself was not overly close to him so her presence would only distress him further.

When he'd still tried to refuse, Tom had resorted to threats which he'd returned in kind. In the end it was the pleading looks of both Jack and the rest of the band that got him to relent. But not before barking at them to never say he wasn't a charitable and patient man (things he really wasn't, considering his short fuse and unwillingness to socialize when he was in a particularly sour mood).

Once he'd committed to the task, Sammy found that the sounds of nature soothed him. Watching after the Projectionist wasn't too bad either, as he thought the large monstrosity looked quite happy as it wandered aimlessly, occasionally looking up at the expanse of darkening skies. Sunsets seemed to spark something more human in Norman. Got him to sign more and sometimes vocalize his words (as painfully gritting to the ear as that may be). It reminded Sammy of... Of times long past. Ones where he'd consider this brute as a bright and very accommodating (if not a little annoying at times) friend.

A friend he dearly missed even, for no matter how much they tried, Norman would never go back to being who he was before the studio chewed him up and spat him back out as something some would consider a dubiously smart animal.

The peace also sparked something in Sammy himself. It made him feel more grounded, more like himself, to the point where his form would shift accordingly. Because their bodies were reacting to their slow recoveries.

Over time a few Searchers had slowly become Lost Ones, and a few Lost Ones had begun transitioning into human forms. There was always something a little off and cartoonish about them, but it was progress nontheless. People were remembering who they once we're, and that was more than they'd ever accomplished in that hellhole.

Sammy sometimes could see his true face reflected back by a puddle or larger body of water, but it was a fleeting thing.

At times he could even feel his unruly curls brushing against his neck and shoulders, but they weren't the dirty blond he'd remembered. They were an inky black that upset him slightly, but better than the shiny bald head he'd had for so many years. Less saddening than the yellow glow of eyes that should have been a soft hazel, and much less startling than the sharpness of his teeth. Somehow he always got the nose right, which was adding salt to injury considering he couldn't regenerate his pinkies.

The Projectionist's walks were moments of introspection. Ones where he was sure he'd be able to get his true form back, even if slightly altered.

So imagine his annoyance when one such moment was marred by his selfish distraction...

He wasn't entirely sure when he'd lost sight of Norman, or for how long he'd spaced out just staring at his reconstituted face on the nearest reflective surface, but the moment he noted just how dark it was Sammy knew he'd fucked up.

They'd been wandering for hours and he'd been so absentmindedly worrying over faded memories that he'd just let the Projectionist wander off to the nearest flower patch to marvel at all the pretty colors (prettier than old sepia and inky tones that had made their horrid existence oh so much duller). He'd gotten so stuck in his own head that he'd never noticed his charge moving off to explore further and further into uncharted territory.

They'd never gotten so close to the mountains, and now? Now Sammy was sure he'd never be able to find the Projectionist again. He'd failed Norman.

Something which he absolutely refused to let happen. If not out of pride, then out of shame. He'd rather die than return to the others without Polk in tow, knowing they'd add it to the list of things that made him a genuinely horrid person (aside from ritualistic murder and allowing Joey to manipulate him to the point of idolizing a false god). That wouldn't do.

Sammy wouldn't be able to live with the scorn. So he trekked further to where he assumed the hulking ink creature had gone.

Henry had told them stories. The ones about the people going missing. Freaky tales that had unseen horrors lurking amidst the trees and skulking in shadows. One such creature he seeked (for the Projectionist had become one of these fabled cryptids just by being an out of place being in the woods), but the others he'd heard of, although fabricated, were mysterious and spooky to him.

Having such shluck looping in the forefront of his mind like a bad film reel was troublesome. It made him hesitant the moment he heard anything that sounded out of place.

Steeling his nerves was hard. Despite being made of ink, his heart was very much still human, so he felt instinctively fearful of the unknown. Those silly stories were genuinely scaring him and he resented Henry for being such a good narrator.

With every step further into the mountainside he hoped to see the light of Norman's lens, and hear the clicking of the projector he had for a head.

He was not expecting to hear... What sounded like an emergency broadcast.

It was so sudden and confusing that it made the ex-music director pause in his tracks. An echoing call that spanned miles, like it was being projected from up high.

Looking around his surroundings he saw nothing out of place. Just rows upon rows of trees and a watch tower in the distance further up north.

Turning his head more slowly yielded the same results. Nothing that could broadcast that loudly in sight... Until he saw it...

At first glance it looked like an old siren. Rough and weathered, rusty looking from a distance. Very strange to be found this far away from civilization. But then he really took the time to stare at it. Noted just how off the towering thing was, and then realized... Those sirens hadn't any speakers. They had teeth.

As soon as his mind picked up on this very fact, he saw everything else. And then, before he could exclaim in terror, he was up in the air held in a massive far-too-human-looking hand, and being pulled closer to said teeth.

Sammy screamed as he felt the pain of being bitten into, upper torso pulled into this nightmarish thing's eager maw, only to then be unceremoniously spat out and tossed on the ground. The shock and pain made him deconstruct into a puddle and, to then aggravate the issue further, the beast stepped down on him as if insulted by the vile taste of ink.

Sammy didn't much care. He lost consciousness soon after.

When Sammy came to, the sun was rising. He was groggy from the pain and confusion of being violently assaulted by something straight out of a Lovecraftian novel, and the intense light washing over his eyes didn't help.

Wait... Light?

Blinking away inky tears, Sammy found Norman staring down at him with a posture that read clearly of concern. The poor thing had likely found Sammy's puddle form and been fretting ever since.

The composer thanked whatever god was out there that the monster that attacked him hadn't found the Projectionist. He wouldn't have had the sense to run.

"H-home. Let's go home..." He whimpered weakly, despite the creature before him being deaf and unable to read his lips properly considering he currently had none. The pitiful look of him must have clued the bigger ink being, however, as Norman scooped him up with ease and began the trek back. Sammy directed him, mostly through pointing when he seemed unsure, all the while keeping an eye for that... Siren-Head thing that thankfully found him too disgusting to consume.

The one perk of his abominable state...

Needless to say, they were never coming back to these parts. Not as long as he allowed it. Some things were better off left undisturbed.

Because, as it turned out, the studio wasn't the only place hiding the lurking horrors of the world...

[mtab2260]

I realized I never actually gave a... I guess— description on what Turbine Addition really is. Then also how I got the idea and built Lukian.

(Warning long essay)

Basically, when I was on my third rewatch of the show since august, I was watching episode 3x10: Maveth and I had a interesting thought after May snuck away from everyone to find Andrew. What if, Lash or Andrew actually spares one inhuman In that compound? It’s not completely unheard of/ unrealistic, he did spare Daisy on multiple occasions. But— obviously, I had to give a reason why this inhuman was spared over the others.

It was a idea that floated in my mind for maybe a month, I wanted to create an Inhuman who was spared by Lash and ends up joining the team from there on. I kept thinking of angles on how I could do it but none of them ever seemed right. Until I watched episode 2x17 with my friend— who I had blackmailed into watching the show. (Yes, I did two rewatches at once.)

For those of you who don’t know by heart each episode by it’s number (I had to look it up)— the title is Melinda, and it’s the episode where we finally learn about Bahrain. When I rewatched that episode the idea just teleported into my brain.

Lash spares an Inhuman because one of them is a child.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Obviously during episode 3x10 Andrew still had some control over Lash and wasn’t fully tainted by him yet. So when Andrew/ Lash saw the kid Andrew definitely fought for every ounce of control he had over the situation. He knew how killing a kid— no matter how much the situation demands it— can destroy a person, because he saw it happen to May.

Then I also kept thinking about the inhuman epidemic and then later— Robin, like how she definitely couldn’t only ever be the only inhuman child during the outbreak, right? It was just highly unlikely. We know Terrigenesis at a young age, or any age really can change a person. Not just physically, or on a cellular level, but mentally. We see it with Andrew and also with Katya, and Robin. Which, all in all is really fitting— Andrew was May’s husband, May killed Katya, and Robin was May’s daughter.

But nonetheless that’s not my point, my point is at Afterlife there was a certain age everyone went through the mist. It was an age where they’re young enough to adapt, but old enough to understand. Now, Katya and Robin were both young when going through Terrigenesis and their gifts were something that were more mental than others. It was contained to their body, it wasn’t an external gift like Daisy’s, Lincon’s, Joey’s, James‘, Kora’s. It was like Jiayang‘s, Gordon’s, Raina’s, Yo-Yo’s, Andrew’s— all of their powers are contained to their person.

So if they didn’t have a mental gift like Katya and Robin, and they were at-least mature enough to understand then having a kid go through Terrigenisis could work. And obviously if you’re gonna create a character that has an external gift, you gotta give them an uncontrollable destructive power like Daisy’s. But the fun thing about Daisy’s power, is that it also has endless creative possibilities.

I wanted a power like that.

After some workshopping and a few completely terrible ideas... I got: air molecule manipulation. Or other words, tornado powers. Before I started thinking on how his powers worked I needed an explicit way to think of how Daisy’s powers worked since I was modeling his power after hers. From my two rewatches at the same time I started making notes on what we knew about her powers and how they feel to her specifically.

She can hear the vibrations of everything around her (but it’s not as noticeable at first glance)

Can amplify the ’sound’ of the vibrations to cause an earthquake, or avalanche

Internalizing her powers improperly caused her arms to fracture

Strong beam of concentrated vibrations for a long period of time can cause her to blackout/ nosebleed

The vibrations don’t only just come out of her arms

Lack of care can also lead to her arms to fracture

Now vibrations and electricity, are both element related powers, but they work differently. Lincoln said after he went through the mist every cell in his body generated a different electronic charge. Basically, the power (pun intended) came from his body without needing an external source. Yes, I know I said Lincoln‘s power was an external one, but it isn’t contained to his mind— or person. I feel Daisy’s vibrational powers are different, mostly because, if she could generate vibrations directly from her cells then her bones wouldn’t be breaking from too much of it. Kinda like how Scorch had those fire pellets in his blood to prevent him from burning himself, Daisy doesn’t have vibrational immunity.

Gordon said everything in the universe was giving off it’s own vibrational frequency, and Daisy could control that. So in order for her to quake Talbot’s ass to the sun she need to obsorb the vibrations around her, store them in her first (the bees under her skin), then send the vibrations out through her palms.

I’m not gonna get into why her bones crack and everything, but it’s an important downside.

Obviously.

As I said I wanted to model my character’s powers as closely as I could to Daisy’s, which I did, but I couldn’t do it exactly for obvious reasons. Yes, you store air like oxygen and carbon dioxide (not for long) in your body temporarily— but your body is going to use it because it needs it. Plus you can’t send air molecules through skin tissue like vibrations can— it’s why we have noses. The skin tissue is too dense for the diffusion of the molecules to take place there. So if I had to say, his power is more of a cross of Daisy’s power and Joey’s power. He needs an external source to wield his power and manipulate the element he can control, but can’t store it in his own body.

So I had a powerful power for my character but I needed a downside. Each incredibly OP power had one: Daisy with her bones, Robin could see the past— present— and future but just didn’t know what went where, Raina became the monster under the bed (or Sonic), Jiayang had to kill someone to heal herself. I thought for a while on this, how can I make a downside for a power like that?

Obviously there’s not many options because oxygen is such a fragile thing to living organisms, and lack of it isn’t exactly ideal. Fitz’s brain damage being a prime example, another example being all those people who died due to hypoxia on the floating ship where the Gravitonium was. So as I said— fragile.

I was going over my notes again of Daisy’s power when the hearing aspect struck a cord. Since their powers are so similar in the aspect of they’re both natural disasters, he was going to need a way to create those tornados around him, like with Daisy and the earthquakes— when the power isn’t concentrated but it’s still triggered. I wanted the sound to be like what you hear when you hear wind over the phone, and when it’s blowing past your ears and it creates that sound. That’s where I got the inspiration from really, static noise and whistling.

So I had that down, and instead of it being like Daisy’s, the sound is much, much more apparent. Mostly because you can hear the wind, like when is passes your ears or if the wind current is just strong enough— but you can’t necessarily hear vibrations. You can when you put your finger on the rim of a water glass and go around the edge, but if you don‘t... you don’t really hear much (I think). And also another thing, sound in general.

The reason why there’s no sound in space is because there’s no air molecules in space, there’s nothing for the sound waves to hitch a ride on. Which leads me to my next point. If he can hear the wind and the air molecules around him and sound passes through the air molecules then he could hear sound through his powers without needing ears. You’re basically adding a third— non-connected to the others— ear.

And people get sensory overload just normally, adding that third ear would be too much. So long story short: the down side to air molecule manipulation powers is... headaches. But like a really bad headache, I don’t know if they’re migraines at that point, I know there’s a difference but I haven’t done my research on that yet. But essentially, headaches. And later on there will be a fix for that.

Just keep in mind chapter seven.

Now the one thing I absolutely love about AoS is despite all the crazy, outlandish stuff they go through— there is always science and reason to back it all up, making it seem ever more realistic. And that’s what I love, the realism of it all (Yes, I‘m well aware they do time-travel, and there’s aliens/ superpowers). So if I was going to make a story, then I needed it to be realistic, otherwise I’d probably hate it myself.

And I’d rather not hate my own fic— thank you very much.

So when I thought about Flint, him being fifteen, with inhuman powers and the team was still hesitant to bring him in because he’s a kid— I knew I had a problem. Especially since my character is thirteen. I needed a realistic answer to why and how the team would actually allow a thirteen year old to join SHIELD.

Being inhuman helps, sure. Especially with a power that could rival Daisy’s (tornadoes are bloody strong). But he’s still a kid. It does help that with how tense season three is with inhumans and Hive they’ll need all the backup they can get, even if it’s an inhuman kid who Hive can control. I have very logical reasons why Lukian stays with the team despite everything, but it hasn’t been revealed yet so I’m gonna keep my trap shut.

I’ll give you a hint though, there’s a reason why he can lie so well.

Now onto the character himself, Lukian. Why I made Lukian the way he is? Well the trauma part is very clear, you can’t have a main character without trauma. That’s just simply unheard of.

For gender, I thought about making him a girl at first because that’s what AoS is all about really— Strong women. But... all the lines I had in mind, just made it seem cheesy and with poor writing. So he became a boy. Sorry.

For his name, Lukian, honestly it’s not much of a story. I just really suck at creating names and thought a kid in my class had a really cool name so I copied it for my character. I know it’s Ukrainian, but that doesn’t mean that’s Lukian’s (my character) ethnicity. Especially since Lukian isn’t apparently his name... cough cough (Kelly Clements) Cough. That specifically will be revealed in the next chapter, if I ever finish it. And when I first thought (copied) it, I didn’t realize how close it would be to Lincoln and how much similar those names look if you read them really fast.

So, my bad on that part.

For Lukian’s (Kelly’s) age it goes back to Terrigenisis warping his mind, and the logic and reason. No matter how kick-ass a seven year old may be, he’s still a seven year old and everyone but May won’t see past that. Plus, school.

For his personality it goes back to that trauma section. Trauma and experiences make us who we are, so obviously that will play a bit part in who Lukian is. And for all the trauma you pick up you will need a coping mechanism to hand all of it. Whether it’s break down right there, bottle it up, run away, hide from it, ignore it— whatever it is, we all have one. And for Lukian his coping mechanism is just pretending that he doesn’t care, that he’s fine— that there’s nothing wrong. It’s not that he’s completely like Simmons who created a horror movie in her locked up tight music box, though in a way it’s simular. A big part is bottling things up, putting on a mask— but another part of it is just simply not caring.

Personally that’s my coping mechanism, it’s terrible and when I become a real adult I’m bloody fucked, but it’s what I do. I have a big test coming up, what do I do? I don’t study and don’t let it stress me out. I just don’t care about it and don’t think about it until when I’m actually taking the test. I still get decent grades too so it’s not a completely bullshit mechanism, but boy, my future is going to die fast. Mostly because I’m in high school and I don’t really know how to study now because of this.

Anyway, back to the story, that’s essentially his coping mechanism. Along with a hint of deflection with humor too. Again, like Daisy. As I go more into the story you’ll find there are many Lukian and Daisy parallels. It’s probably why Daisy has taken such a liking to Lukian in the first place, and why they get along so well despite barely knowing each other for three weeks. Or it’s because I wrote them that way, who knows?

The reason why I had Lukian have an interest in robotics and in engineering goes back to the downside with his powers. As you may know, the kid may have stolen a few things from the lab to help with that headache of his. Plus if he’s good in science and has a usefulness besides fighting, then it’s another reason for him to join. Obviously the team isn’t gonna just let him ditch school, so him actually being smart helps if school isn’t well... at a school.

Now, why did I name this fic the way I did?

The Addition part is very simple and easy, Lukian is an addition to the team. I wanted that to always be in the title, but what I wanted before that was something that related to Lukian. Whether it’s his powers, or personality, it didn’t really matter but nothing really called out to me or fit properly. And again as I said I’m terrible at naming things, currently on chapter ten I’m more than half way done, I still don’t have a bloody name for it. So like my coping mechanism, I forgot about it for a bit.

So I went on to what the team’s connections will be with Lukian, thinking about who each member of the team is to Lukian and how close he is to everyone. Obviously May’s relationship with him will be most strained, not because of May herself and her trauma, but because of his too (I’m not saying anymore). And the closest relationship he’ll have will be with Daisy, because again paralells. And, because she was the one to find him and she is also his transitioner and trainer.

And while I was thinking about all of that, no matter where Mack was on the closest relationship list, there was no way Lukian was getting on the team without a nickname from the nickname king. And since if you’re inhuman basically it’s a rule your nickname will be based off of that I started sorting through air related nicknames. Breezy was my top choice originally but Breezy Addition just didn’t sound as strong as Turbine Addition. But don’t worry Breezy as a nickname from Mack isn’t going to disappear, it’s just going to take a while to get to from a writing standpoint.

And.... this is when I’ve realized I’ve been writing this for the past three hours and now it’s bloody three am. Thanks for coming to my extra long Ted Talk/ fifty paged essay.

And if anyone actually read all of this... holy bloody fuck you have a long attention span.

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 185

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 37 - “Operation Healthy Coco” Date watched: 14 May 2020 Original air date: 21 October 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Sc5B6vA Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

what has been seen cannot be unseen

I might get some crap for this but I don’t particularly like this episode either. I think Bloody just had an absolutely fantastic introduction so everything after it for a while is going to feel a bit lackluster. Not to say it doesn’t have some great moments, but.... well, you’ll see.

The Plot

Coco has been scarfing down the cream puffs lately, and the girls are starting to notice when he struggles to push himself up. He appears very rotund as a fairy, but transforms human and says he’s fine. However, Nuts lifts his friend’s shirt to prove otherwise.

make of that what you will

We are never shown exactly what he looks like, but the girls responses tell us all we need to know. Urara in particular is fairly blunt, saying he had a fat and pudgy stomach. Nozomi is pretty okay with it, but she changes her tune when Karen and Rin point out that the problem is his diet and lack of exercise, not just getting chubby. Milk takes charge and puts him on a diet.

Over in Nightmare, Kawarino offhandedly mentions that Gamao was useless, which disturbs Bunbee because he didn’t realize his last employee had been so carelessly killed. Hadenya tells him to get over it and then sets out.

Coco’s diet is going well, except for all the times he tries to sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night to grab some cream puffs, or sneak some into his lunchbox. He gets outright depressed when he can’t eat some, so the girls conspire with Milk to make him a special meal. It goes about as well as the last time they tried to cook together. One night, Coco sneaks out of his room to the kitchen for some cream puffs, and instead finds the best gag in the episode: the fridge is completely empty except for an exercise wheel.

I just imagine Nuts going through the effort to empty the fridge and store all the food somewhere else, all so he could put this wheel in there when Coco inevitably tried to sneak a bite. So yes, Nuts shows up and says getting exercise is important as well as he demonstrates the use of the wheel. A+ television here.

Another day, Coco is out walking and smells the all-too familiar scent of choux creme. He finds a food truck selling them, and the sweet lady who runs it (who is definitely not Hadenya) offers him free samples!

He almost takes it, but he thinks about the girls, Milk, and even Nuts all working hard to help him eat more healthily, and refuses. Hadenya wolfs down the plate and then turns the food truck into a Kowaina, and throws Coco into the cabin, high enough where he’d hurt himself if he jumped. The girls catch wind of this and show up to fight. They feel their hands are tied because they don’t want to hurt Coco, and Hadenya says she’ll give him back if they give her the Dream Collet. She further taunts them by saying Coco ate cream puffs. However, what is supposed to be a damning claim gets brushed aside because aside from not being true, the girls know Coco has a stronger will than that, and he wouldn’t break his vow like that. Dream persuades Coco to jump so that she can catch him, and then they safely take out the Kowaina.

Back at Natts House, the girls surprise Coco with the fruits of their labor: special vegetarian cream puffs! Coco can see the burns and cuts on their bodies as a sign of how hard they worked so he tries one, and it’s delicious! But then Milk steps in to say he shouldn’t have any more or he’ll relapse on his diet, and tries to eat the rest. Karen points out that Milk has been eating an awful lot lately, and has gotten rather chubby herself. Everyone agrees Milk should get some exercise as well, and the last scene of the episode would be great for the “Inhuman Anime Girl Sounds” Twitter, as Milk lets out a cry.

The Analysis

If you’re not aware, Japan is a very skinny culture, with an obesity rate of about 4% (compare to the US’s 40+%), and in 2008 the federal government enacted the Metabo Law which set a universal maximum acceptable waist measurement for men and women ages 40 to 75, with financial penalties for local governments and companies that had large levels of noncompliance. I couldn’t find a whole lot of information on stigma against overweight people in daily life, but in general the only socially acceptable fat people are sumo wrestlers. All of that is to say that, while they do mostly treat Coco’s weight as the butt of the joke, there is some progressive thinking going on as well, in that their concern is less purely that he’s getting fat as much as it is the fact that he’s not eating a balanced diet. It’s an important distinction to make, and the driving force of the rest of the episode is getting him to eat healthy, not JUST losing weight. It’s not a bad premise but I don’t think they make the most of the idea, the episode is largely comprised of gags about Coco trying to sneak a bite and being told “no”.

Most notably, Nozomi doesn’t seem very bothered by Coco’s weight gain. She takes it in stride, saying a little fat isn’t so bad. It’s only when they mention his unhealthy diet that she says “oh no that’s not okay” and that’s a pretty good way to take it. After all, if he’s chubby, there’s more of him to love, but if he’s not healthy, then he may die an early death. Perspective.

Now, it seems like they writers are trying to drawing a comparison between Coco and Hadenya with her remarks about eating everything, as if eating makes you a bad person, or being fat is evil, but...... it just doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. She’s evil because she takes enjoyment in the suffering of others, Gamao was evil because he didn’t care about the feelings of others and just wanted personal gain, neither of them were evil because of their eating habits. It’s a weird thing to throw in there and it doesn’t tell us anything more about Hadenya except that she’s impulsive, so...... it falls flat. Honestly the most interesting thing she did this episode was try to poison Coco..... at least I think that’s what the goal was? She ate them herself when he refused so maybe they were fine but then what was her goal? just to say “Haha you cheated on your diet and now the Precure won’t be friends with you, and they’ll hand over the Dream Collet”? That doesn’t make ANY sense, even if she planned to trap Coco in the Kowaina. And for that matter how did she even know he was on a diet? I would have assumed she was just tempting him because his love of choux creme is well-known, but when she’s taunting the cures she specifically lies and says he cheated on his diet, so...... it’s just weird. Come to think of it, poisoning him before they got the Dream Collet isn’t the smartest thing either, so it was just a bad plan all around. I applaud the plan if only for how extra she got with it, Hadenya isn’t typically one for disguises.

The highlight of this episode is easily the cooking segment. I would call that the saving grace, even. The comedy is so on point, I want to watch an entire series of these girls’ hijinks in the kitchen. The last time we got this was in episode 15, when they all cook for Nozomi’s ill mother, and well..... some of them have not learned. Karen still screws up portion sizes, Urara’s just kinda clumsy, and Komachi still wants to add youkan to porridge, although this actually works out. But anyway, the comic timing of their kitchen antics is absolutely perfect and I love how they play off of each other, with Rin and now Milk being the lone voices of reason. This is what Kirakira could have been (we’ll talk about that eventually). The payoff to it all is really good, too, the vegetarian choux cremes they make look delicious and if you check the gallery I included their detailed directions for making them. No portion sizes but it’s an idea to try out. Tag me if you do!

And lastly some bookkeeping:

The “dokkoisho” that Coco and later Milk utter when they fall is an old colloquial term, basically like “heave ho”. In general it implies putting strength towards something, and in this case suggests that they’re struggling to push themselves up because they’re heavy. From what I can tell, it originates with Hokkaido fishing villages and was popularized in their sea shanties.

The kowaina’s voice is higher pitched than normal, and I’m not sure why. It seems to be the same actress as usual.

The shot of Milk with the sign is very exploitable and my friend @precurehoroscopes has made a version you can play with:

Next time, man this series is full of ideas that would get explored fully in later shows isn’t it? Milk is rewriting the story of Cinderella with the girls as the characters and it’s..... a trip. Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 2 kettei!

[hecatea]

tma story: but who will chase the hunters?

As Basira follows the beast that was Daisy through London and waits for it to strike, she fails to consider what makes a hunter, what makes prey, and what role she is playing in the Hunt.

There is blood in Basira's mouth when she bites down on her tongue hard enough and that, if nothing else, is a comfort because the blood is hers. She unclenches her jaw only when the great beast before her passes by. The patrol car she’s gotten her hands on sits in the alley with the lights off, hiding in the perpetual twilight, because Basira can never be sure what the beast that was Daisy will do. This is especially true because the beast is not acting as Basira would expect her to.

London is mostly empty now. It is not as bountiful as it was when the world first broke, which may have something to do with this change in behaviour. Daisy is running out of prey in the city; now the beast putters around upturning dumpsters and finding remains that other entities have left behind, as if she’s a scavenger instead of a perfectly constructed killing machine.  

Basira doesn’t understand why Daisy hasn’t left the city in search of new prey. With the Hunt at the reigns, Daisy should want nothing but blood. Basira is so sure that this should be the beast’s next move that she has been taking advantage of London’s height and mostly tracking the beast from rooftops and patios to save the gas she has in the car. But Daisy isn’t leaving. 

She spits out the wad of blood from the car window—disgusting, but hers. Very few things belonged to Basira anymore, anyways. Her prayer mat and Qur’an are in the back of the truck and there’s the clothes on her back, but even the emergency supplies she has technically belong to the Institute. They had been stockpiling, just in case. The patrol car she is living in looks very much like the one that she and Daisy used to share, maybe it’s even one they’ve been assigned before, but Basira has no right to be driving it. She barely had a right to it even when she was still technically an officer of the law. Officer of the law seems like a stretch, given what they’d gotten up to and what they’d pretended not to when they’d had the power and protection of those shiny badges. 

Daisy took that from her—the illusion that Basira could be a cog turning the right way in a broken system, that she could do something good from the inside, that she could help people, that she could tilt the scales of power by doing the right thing. Or maybe Basira had given that illusion to Daisy willingly. When Basira had been a cog her teeth had been hitched to Daisy’s teeth, and they had spun and turned together. Maybe there would have been a way to unlatch the pair of them, but Basira knew she wouldn’t have let it happen. She was Daisy’s and Daisy’s was hers and if they went down, they went down as a pair. For Daisy she was brave and a coward, she was strong and she was weak, she was true and she was a liar. She would be anything for Daisy; she was all too happy to reshape herself as needed and when needed. 

Even this quest, this last request and grim errand, was Daisy’s. But because it was Daisy’s it was Basira’s—and Basira couldn’t for the life of her figure out why Daisy wasn’t acting like the hunter and the predator that Basira knew she should be. She wouldn’t pretend to be an expert, but she had seen Daisy Hunt before—she had seen her blown pupils, her heaving chest, her sharpened teeth, her curled hands. She had seen Daisy in various states of inhumanity and had sat with her and talked her down back to the place where they could be together more than once. The Hunt was never as peaceful and quiet as this and Basira wanted to know why. 

She waited a beat before unlocking the car door and stepping out, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and making sure that her gun was loaded. She left the car where it was and stepped out of the alleyway, hugging the city’s walls as she watched Daisy walk away—down the middle of the street as if to reinstate that London was dead and gone.

Basira bit her lip before stepping into the middle of the street, looking around her for any other signs of life. She hadn’t seen any in weeks—no humans, and no avatars either. It was as if this part of London was very firmly claimed as hunting territory. She saw the Panopticon glowing in the distance but ignored it; that would be a problem for after she kept her promise. She has normalized the ashen grey sky above her. A breeze picked up and it should have carried Basira’s scent down the road and triggered Daisy’s killer instincts, but it didn’t. The beast that had once been Daisy simply walked on.

It gave her hope in an impossible and undoubtedly foolish way. Daisy had wanted to be killed if she slipped into the Hunt and Basira couldn’t help but thinking that maybe, just maybe, Daisy wasn’t so far in. Her teeth were clean. The blood on her snout had dried. She was walking down the street and had seemingly no desire to hunt Basira. Maybe, just maybe, Daisy could be coaxed back home. Basira didn’t have a home, she had Daisy, and Daisy had her. Maybe they could be enough. Basira didn’t know what else could make a Hunter stop. 

Basira follows Daisy, doing her best to synchronize her footsteps with that of the great beast to lose the sound of her own feet. She tries to edge herself on, to make tonight the night that she keeps her promise. She will fire her weapon into the air to attract Daisy’s attention. She will stand where she is as the beast charges towards her. Then, when she is within range, Basira will empty her gun into Daisy. She doesn’t know how many bullets will be enough, but she will try to find out. She tries to reason herself out of her own conscience, the way she reasoned herself out of the Unknowing. It’s harder now. It used to be for Daisy’s sake that she reasoned her way out of terrible things they had done, folding over backwards and pretending that complexity sanctified them. For Daisy, she desperately wants to be right now. She desperately wants to believe that this thing, which is failing to act as a Hunter might, has a tiny part of Daisy still in it. Something left for Basira to coax back to her. She wants it so badly, the pain in her stomach is sharp. 

Then she realizes that she actually is in pain. It’s her lip, she’s bitten herself again. Basira spits out another mouthful of her own blood and her tongue flicks across her teeth as she does and finds something sharp. Sharper than a flat mollar in the back of her mouth ought to be. 

She inhales and it’s like being assaulted by information—by movements and traces and directions and locations and emotions and all kinds of other information that she has never, ever, smelled before.

With her left hand, the right tightening around the gun, she reaches into her mouth. Her teeth are sharper and her mouth is… her mouth is fuller. There are more of them.

She looks up to Daisy, Daisy who is still walking down the street. The wind picks up again and a new wave of information hits Basira, more specifically about the creature she’s watching. Relaxed. Limping on her right—maybe an injury, definitely a weak point. Unaware. Keen hearing. Be quiet. Get her. 

The next breath Basira takes is deeper, more air rushes into her body than there could a second ago. Clarity overwhelms Basira as the world becomes sharp around her. She remembers sitting in a patrol car with Daisy, when Daisy didn’t look like this and when they’d been together—so it felt okay for Basira to do whatever she needed to keep Daisy safe and to keep her curse quiet. They had been sitting in the rain eating chips, and Daisy had tried to steal one of hers.

“Bite me,” Basira had said, curling over her chips protectively. 

“Don’t tempt me,” Daisy had said with a crooked smile.

They had laughed at that, but since then Basira had never quite stopped thinking about how Hunters were made—about what made a Hunter. 

The world had cracked open and an ashen grey sky and a nightmarish landscape had fallen out, and now the Hunt cracked open over Basira’s head and the answer poured over her. One only had to hunt to be a hunter. 

She had never wondered before what happened to those who hunted Hunters. 

Of course, Daisy had tried to keep the Hunt inside. She had weakened and exhausted herself a little more every day, bottling up the Hunter that lived in her—but an entity that lived to chase and pursue and track wouldn’t let its own avatars get away, would it? If the Hunt sensed someone tracking and pursuing one of its own… of course it wouldn’t hold back in creating a chase. If a Hunter was hunted, what made them different from prey? And what was prey without a Hunter? Basira had never wondered before what happened to those who hunted Hunters. 

She wondered if Daisy would count this as freedom. 

Basira fired a warning shot into the air as she had planned this whole time, except she had meant it as a signal when it really was a warning now. Basira saw the beast that had been Daisy turn around and face her with those amber eyes one last time before her own consciousness flickered like a lightbulb burning out. A new light came on as the Hunt burned a fire in Basira so bright and hot that she did not feel the ways in which it tore and reshaped her body into that of a perfect predator.

Daisy ran and the thing that was Basira pursued.   

[dahniwitchoflight]

Homesquared Chapter 1

Alright so, Im back on the homesquared, whoo

also I got the patreon, but am only now realizing that since buying it literally on the last day of the month im getting charged 25 dollars now and another 25 in a couple hours at midnight when it becomes Jan 1 for the month of January. Never had Patreon before so whoops

Probably should have waited a bit on that? But on the other hand I did intend/budgeted to have gotten patreon sooner so same difference really. 

Anyone just gonna focus on Non Patreon Content in this post for obvious reason, so away we go!

Gotta love the immediate comparison to Dirk’s “Plants are a man’s best friend” speech from Jake lol

“Plants, Jake has decided, are really the best sort of chums. They are quiet, friendly, and easy to please. All they need is a little water and fresh earth, and they are perfectly happy to lie there all day in the sun. And they don’t make increasingly inhumane arms deals and appear on talk shows expounding on the dangers of interspecies marriage. They have never, as far as Jake knows, fucked a clown.”

Not as bad as Dirk’s “I like it when people are helpess against me” but still not really a good view either with Jake’s “I like it when people are low maintenance and don’t expect much effort from me”

 I like the brackets being fully established as (Not Important) with the (==>)’s when really when you use them in text to me it always felt more like sidenote: (The Stuff in the brackets isn’t the main focus but still good to know before you continue on)

Theres a lot of Focus on Plants in general and therefore space in all of this speech and text as well, maybe a subtle nod to Calliope being in the text

“ JAKE: It appears that no matter what timeline were inhabiting i can count on you to be absolutely impenetrable! “

Dirk is a top and Jake is a bottom in their relationship, not surprising

Brain Ghost Dirk is hella mean, no idea if that’s more leaning towards that Jake hates himself or Dirk is generally an asshole but considering how BGD said he is both and the alcoholism im gonna go with both

But, the core of it is that BGD is how Jake is manifesting his Hope of something better in a hopeless situation, Hope generally meaning good times and happiness, but also delusions, so is this spy thing a good idea for Jake to do? Jake and (Dirk) certainly think so, but whats the real value in that?

also

Dirk: Your emotions don’t matter

Jake: Alright

nvm this is definitely a splinter of Dirk desperately crawling his way back to relevance through the only means available to him, so starved for attention of any kind at all that he dedicates two panels of himself sparkling and laying over a desk while pouring on about how distracting he is

“DIRK: It’s not because you’re a man. You’re a god.

JAKE: Oh right. That.

DIRK: The world comes first, even at the expense of all your relationships and personal happiness. That’s what being a hero means.

JAKE: I guess...i never really thought about it like that.“

Yeah, Dirk definitely manipulating Jake for his own ends, which is a shame, because I’d always imagined BGD to be that one sliver of Dirk representing the good in him since he was specifically a splinter created from NOT Dirk but Jake’s flattering impression of him, but a dirk is a dirk is a dirk I guess

“DIRK: Think what you want about Jane, but at least she realizes that none of you can ever be normal, and she never bothered to try. Can it really be a god-complex if you’re actually a god?

DIRK: People like us don’t get happy endings.“

So Dirk thinks because they are all actually Gods, that they would all inevitably fall into God Complexes because why wouldn’t they? And in doing so all becomes Villains because having a God Complex is the same thing as saying “My needs and wants matter and other people’s dont because I’m better than the lesser folks” Superiority train of thought, which is inherently evil way of thinking, and so naturally any act against that person to kill them would be just

But the problem is that’s how Dirk sees it, not how Jake sees it or anyone else, Jake had completely forgotten about his so called god powers and was content to drink and garden and dream for the rest of his life. 

Dirk is incorrect in that having god powers turns a Human into a God, it simply turns a Human into a Human who also has God Powers. Everything inherent to Humans but not to the ideal perfectional state of being that is “Godhood”, every human emotional imperfection and bias and state of being isn’t getting wiped away upon achieving God Hood like I suppose Dirk is believing about himself and the others.

Dirk is just so gosh damned narcissistic, that he believes that because his biases and way of thinking didn’t change when he achieved actual God powers and God Hood means that he was already correct about everything he wanted to believe and the way he is was already his ideal perfection, instead of the truth of the matter which is that nothing about his personality changed upon achieving godhood because it had nothing to do with that

Dirk just already had a God Complex from the beginning so he just didn’t notice any difference.

He thinking God in terms of Gnostic Monad god all knowing perfect personality and bias-less when really god hood in Homestuck is just like, Greek God hood, youre just a human being with fancy powers and abilities and the same ability to be kind or ruthless as it pleases you

[kewltie]

so i have been actively following this super rad manga series called, “Otome Kaijuu Caramelize”, which is about a girl who occasionally turns into a giant ass monster, a kaiju, in the presence of her crush. it’s quirky, weird, and so damn cute so ofc it’s right up my alley. and thanks to that godzilla!bakugou artwork we saw waaaaaay back I COULDN’T GET THIS IDEA OUT OF MY HEAD. 

katsuki is the (next) defender/protector of japan after his mother, the great queen of monsters, had decided she was going to save humanity instead of destroying bc she fell in love with a human call masaru (imagine a giant ass monster WOOING YOU lmao). he’s half kaiju and half human and all temperamental shit, but he gotten good at controlling his transformation which he can now call upon command at will. when he was younger, though, it easily get triggered by any kind of emotional stress/strained but he’s older now and he’s NO NOOB!!! most of the time, katsuki is just a normal high schooler, abit a highly competitive and talented one, but sometimes when there’s a kaiju attacking the coast of japan katsuki transform into his monster alter ego BAKUSHINCHI, a giant firebreathing lizard monster, that protect japan from other giant ass monster!!!!!!

he’s a national secret and is under intense scrutiny so katsuki never had a normal life either by the people who knows who he really is (fear, awe, and nerves are abound in his presence) or his peers who views him as peculiar and odd bc they don’t know how or why but there’s just something strange and inhuman about bakugou. the only exception is his childfriend deku who no matter how much katsuki tried to push him away, izuku always come BACK and is fiercely loyal to katsuki. also,  while most people spurn kaiju and think they’re a nuisance even though they have a KAIJU PROTECTOR IN THE FORM OF KATSUKI AND HIS MOM, izuku kind of um... a fanboy of these kaiju?? e doesn’t seem to fear them at all and even entertain the idea that humans and kaiju can coexist in peace :OOOOO. WHICH had made his childhood rough bc other kids call him the monster’s lover :((((((. it’s actually bc as a child, izuku’s life was save by a kaiju and ever since them he saw them very differently (that kaiju may or may not be katsuki), but also bc he’s a just a good boy at heart and doesn’t see them in all black and white. 

though katsuki and izuku grew up together, izuku was never let in on katsuki’s secret or the true nature of katsuki’s mother. his parents are both scientists who work on the super SECRET lab that study kaiju and as part of that program katsuki was exposed to izuku as a child bc they’re the same age and izuku’s parents thought katsuki needed someone of equal peer so he woudn’t be lonely and have someone to play. izuku had absolutely no clue that the boy he saw in the lab, HIS ONLY FRIEND when he was a child, is the the bakushinchi that fighting for japan against other kaiju right now. 

they got separated around the age of 8 or 10 when a kaiju accidental nearly killed izuku bc izuku and katsuki was allowed to go outside together but under strict surveillance. in this one occasion a kaiju appeared and attacked the place they were at and katsuki wanted to transformed and fight it BUT izuku is right next to him and if he transformed than he was afraid that he would lose izuku and izuku would be terrified of him. his human self couldn’t do much against another kaiju but izuku, who isn’t exactly fearless, with trembling legs stood up and tried to protect katsuki WITH HIS SMALL BODY SOBS. but with a single wave of its hand, the kaiju slapped izuku against a wall and izuku was knocked out. that all it took for katsuki to go berserk and transformed into his kaiju alter ego and fought. they leveled an entire city block with their fighting but he managed to save everyone and izuku. that day cemented his desire to protect everyone, but he couldn’t go through losing izuku again. 

ever since that day, katsuki disappeared from izuku’s life but izuku never stop looking and hoping katsuki would come back even though he fears that it was him that caused katsuki to go away bc he was weak and couldn’t save katsuki in the end. katsuki actually was training with his mom to control his kaiju power so that one day he can take her place as the defender of japan!!!!!! it won’t be until many years later when they’re both 16-17 years old that they meet again and katsuki got his powers locked down. he has been taking his mother’s place to fight other kaiju as the bakushinchi and in one of these battles he meet izuku again bc IZUKU ever since that day when he nearly died and he was saved by the bakushinchi, he has become enamored with kaijus and wanted to be close. He staked out every kaiju’s battles and put himself in the line to record every details and post it on his fansite--which has all the detail and info about a lot of kaiju... but most specifically the bakushinchi who he admits to favoring A LOT. 

katsuki in his kaiju form is fighting some kind of worm with a hundred eyes and he had been worked hard by his mother to get this point where can hold his own against many low-mid tier kaiju and HE HASN’T LOST A BATTLE YET, but the moment he recognized that small form (which is v v v hard bc katsuki is like the size of tokyo tower and everyone kind of look like an ant to him in this form) he got so distracted that he took a tail whipped from the other kaiju and flew into a building. katsuki manages to slap himself sober and put all his focus into the fight so he can yell at izuku later for, like, while everyone was RUNNING AWAY FROM TWO RAMPAGING MONSTERS izuku WAS RUNNING TOWARD THEM INSTEAD bc he’s a reckless idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and that’s how they reunite, right after the battle when everything was cleared out and the SUPER SECRET ORG that in charged of kaiju (and occasionally katsuki when he is deem controllable lol) is there to make sure everything is okay, katsuki had turned back into his human self and kinda let izuku assume that he’s part of the org and not, like, IS THE ORG.

so yea, izuku and katsuki meet again upon the aftermath of the kaiju battle where katsuki yell at izuku a lot for what he did while izuku is just super happy to reunite with his childhood friend who disappeared over five years ago. katsuki worked so hard to finally get to this point where he can fully control his power and be near other ppl safely!! but the moment he meet izuku again, katsuki’s heart races and his cheek flush and he can feel the bones underneath his skin trying to break out of his human flesh!!!!!!!!! he thinks it’s fluke. katsuki battles giant ass monsters, HE IS A GIANT ASS MONSTER, and he even knocked his mom down (once!! before she kick his ass but w/e she’s the queen of the monsters so that’s pretty impressive on his part) so NO HUMAN IS GOING TO FUCK WITH HIM. except izuku does totally fuck with him lmao. 

now that they reunited katsuki got permission to join the human’s world as just another teen boy and enrolled himself into izuku school bc he worked soooo hard to prove himself to everyone that he’s SAFE and he can maintain control of his form!!!!! but the more he exposed to izuku the more he realizes these flash of uncontrolable urge and panic energy around izuku is him HAVING A CRUSH AND FREAKING OUT OVER IT. like, when he was younger it was his emotional outburst that triggered his transformation but he’s older and more mature and can handle his power, yet the moment izuku get too close to him he can himself losing control and scales apart on his arm ;AJSDF;ALSJDF lol. 

but it’s not like the crush just appear out of nowhere!! it was nurture since young bc kaiju mate for life. katsuki didn’t know it yet but all that biting izuku’s cheek when they were little (which izuku thought was kinda weird but just katsuki being katsuki) was katsuki laying claim to izuku as his mate. izuku is diff bc he is strong of heart, good nature, and he just loves people so fiercely and katsuki though has the burden to protect japan and humanity is performing his duty but doesn’t nececesary see the value in humanity in the end bc he protects them but they still treat him as a monster, something to be fear and use, bc he knows that the japanese gov’t does everything to keep him a secret and safe but they do it bc they NEED HIM TO FIGHT. but izuku doens’t need him for anything, he just want to be by katsuki’s side sobs!!!!!!! so how could katsuki ever resist that????

izuku isn’t in love with katsuki though. he loves KATSUKI but not in love so katsuki has to work to get izuku to see him in that light. not that he has to work THAT hard at all lol bc izuku was already kinda crazy in love katsuki’s kaiju form bc izuku never forgot the kaiju that saved him when he was a kid and HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW IT’S KATSUKI!!!! so that save a lot of trouble for katsuki in case he ever reveal his secret, not that katsuki had any idea that izuku is totally ok with A MONSTER BF bc most ppl aren’t lol :P. 

so katsuki takes to wooing his mate as awkwardly as possible bc his frame of ref is literally his mother (whose never let the fact that she’s a kaiju stop her from chasing after his father, HIS VERY TINY FATHER in comparison to her). but the wooing is kinda diffuclt and DANGEROUS, not bc of izuku who is wary of katsuki or anything but of katsuki himself bc everytime izuku touches him katsuki freaks out and his heart just GO DOKIDOKI AND HE CAN FEEL THE URGE TO DESTROY THINGS AND JUST READY TO BREAK SOMEONE FACE IN. everything about izuku is a trigger--the way he smile, his warm laughter, and how he look at izuku with total admiration and it’s all in the way he wears his feelings all over his face. he doesn’t hide how he feels at all and izuku is just full of love for humanity and even KAIJU that katsuki CAN’T HANDLE IT AND JUST WANT TO RAMPAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

so like, dating for them is such a dangerous concept that the japanese org have an entire TEAM full of people prepping and watching izuku and katsuki’s dates, trying to make sure katsuki DOESN’T GO BERSERK over some dumb things like handholding and it’s the most embarrasing, sweet, and hilarious THING EVER. their guardians don’t know whether to laugh or cry that this scary ass monster boy is like so terrified and nervous over this green eyes boy that he transformed into his monster form anytime they touch!!!!!!!!!!!! 

so here are these adults, badass adults themselves who work at a super secret org that deal with giant city destroying monsters, and they’re here surveillance two kids going on a date bc one of them just happen to be the monster boy that is defending their country and the other also happen to be the boy THAT HE IS IN LOVE WITH. it’s all hilarious and ridiculous and they aren’t pay ENOUGH OR THIS SHIT as they watch katsuki try not to freak out at izuku leaning in to close and blow up the entire city block in the process!!!!!!!!!! 

the world is constantly bombard with monsters trying to destroy humanity and here is katsuki one of the last lines of defense and is a BAD ASS MONSTER HIMSELF find himself can’t handle a simple human boy and that’s just a;ja;sjdf;alsjdf;alsdjf;alsdjf the greatest love story on earth.

[racke7]

The storyline of Divinity 2

So I was thinking about how odd the linear nature of Divinity 2 is.

Not in how the leveling-system railroads you into taking a certain path of “this quest before that quest”, or even in the way that certain characters have a clear tendency to survive being both killed and having their corpses exploded, but rather in the frame of the chronological sense of the Main Quest.

(Spoilers ahead)

Like, the story starts out with you (and your fellow heroes) being on a ship destined for Fort Joy as a sort of tutorial. So far so good.

Then you arrive at Fort Joy and get to see the first real glimpse of what Sourcerers are being exposed to under the ruthless and dehumanizing heel of the Magisters. Chief among these being Alexander (the son of the previous Divine, and the one who's rumored to be destined for becoming the next Divine), along with his advisor Dallis (who features heavily when inhumane experiments are mentioned).

In Fort Joy you come to realize that you are in fact the chosen champion of your god for the spot of the next Divine. And there can be only one Divine (which, if you're playing with friends, might cause some shifty eyes to be involved).

Beyond that, you get to see more of the Voidwoken, giving you a better understanding of how very urgent the ascension to Divinity really is.

Then, after a final confrontation with Alexander (where he proves his immersion-breaking immortality when he mysteriously survives being killed), you set off towards Driftwood, where rumors have it that a powerful Sourceror would be willing to teach you how to ascend.

Driftwood then has you traveling the world and seeing more of the horrors that the Magisters are bringing in their wake, but also the many horrors that the Sourcerors bring in theirs, leaving you some room to wonder about which side has the right idea. You grow more powerful, you get some more hints about the Voidwoken, you help out tons of people with a variety of strange quests, and time and again you stumble across references to Arx (the capital city), at least one of which is a desperate urging for you to hurry to Arx immediately in order to prevent a horrific disaster.

Then you go to the Nameless Isles. Literally the only foreshadowing for this is that your god told you to do it, so you did it.

The Nameless Isles is being overrun with both Magisters and Voidwoken (and, more specifically, non-Voidwoken members of the Covenant of the God-King), so you solve a few puzzles and murder a few people, and then you stand before the Well of Ascension.

This entire area honestly feels more like a sprint for the finish-line than a proper world to explore, in no small part due to the extreme lack of quests in comparison to Driftwood (there are a few character-specific ones, but generally the whole are is just a matter of killing everything that moves).

Then, of course, there's a sudden plot-twist as Dallis swoops in and steals the Source in the Well of Ascension with her super-draining-wand (that we've had some references to previously, so fair enough), leaving you to fight your way out of a crumbling ruin and then give chase after her, towards Arx.

Once in Arx, you're back to doing hundreds of small quests for insignificant individuals, and saving the city from that aforementioned disaster, before finally finding the path towards Lucian's Tomb, where Dallis seems to have disappeared to.

And then you find Lucian still alive (there were hints in the Nameless Isles that he wasn't all that he was cracked up to be, but this is definitely unexpected) and he's working with Dallis. Now you get your final battle, where there's some other twists and complications but whatever. You win, you get to decide whether to ascend or not, The End.

Now, if I'd been in charge of the general setting of the story, I would've probably rearranged a lot of things.

For example, Alexander being in Fort Joy? No. Let's leave Alexander as a mysterious figure who will become the next Divine, and continue to leave hints about Dallis being up to no good. But if you want a fight that leads off of Fort Joy, let's just use a no-name Magister who swears that he answers directly to Dallis herself.

Dallis would still take chase after a bunch of escapees, since she wouldn't want word getting out about what's actually going on in Fort Joy, not to mention that we stole Dallis's ship.

Driftwood wouldn't really be any different, but we'd be going straight to Arx, instead of dropping by the Nameless Isles first, in order to keep the same sort of “mood” going.

After all, both Arx and Driftwood are based on this idea that there's tons of quests to do. Ways to help or harm completely insignificant people, and ways to help or harm very important people. They're also both very big on investigation.

So we go from Driftwood (where we caught hints of the Covenant) straight to Arx, where we see a lot of the Covenant's big-shots hidden in scarily powerful positions. All the while, we're pursuing rumors about Alexander, because we really do need to eliminate the competition, and Alexander is the only one with a map to get to the Nameless Isles.

Except, it turns out that Dallis is the one running the show in truth, with Alexander being a useful figure-head. How much of the battle between us can be avoided? Well, that'd be hard to say, but the end-results is us getting a ticket straight to the Nameless Isles, and the worrying knowledge that Dallis will be getting there before we do.

Then the Nameless Isles happen, and we can worry even more about seeing the armies that the Covenant has at its disposal. But our focus is on solving all of the puzzles and reaching the Well of Ascension before Dallis gets her claws in it.

Needless to say, we fail. But, as we continue to pursue her, she takes a path that leads straight to the place where Lucian has been hiding away for all of this time. And then the big reveal is made, and the battle for Divinity is on.

Basically?

Don't make Alexander into the villain of the tutorial-level Fort Joy and the supposed finishing-stretch of the Nameless Isles (especially since you're expected to fight him to the death in both places).

Don't give us urgings to hurry to Arx immediately in order to prevent a disaster, and then send us off to somewhere completely different (since there'd be no point in going to Arx when you're already Divine, as that would be the end of the game).

Don't suddenly shift the gameplay from “tons of minor quests” to “one quest only” and back to “tons of minor quests”, because that's kind of awkward.

But yeah, even ignoring all of the many problems I have with Divinity 2's gameplay (and the limited EXP and determined levels of encounters, which forces you to deal with them in a specific order every time, as if they were a bucket-list rather than an interesting world to explore), the storyline is... kind of odd in the order they decided to set it up in.

And I wouldn’t mind the Nameless Isles so much if they didn’t feel like such a shoehorned in stopover for the rest of the story-lines.

[maulusque]

here’s an idea

some of the jedi actually have their shit together re: the morality of a slave army.

Namely Aayla Secura and Plo Koon. From the start of the war, they both voiced opposition to taking part, specifically citing the clones’ situation. The Council convinced them to take part as generals anyway, on the basis that at least they could do some good for the clones as generals, whereas if they sat out and let another take their place, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. They feel like hypocrites, like slave owners, but they both vow to do everything in their power to see the clones freed. After the war. And the war just keeps, happening, you know? It seems like there’s always somewhere where they and their troops are needed, innocent civilians to save, and they can prioritize civilian lives over the clones’ lives, right? I mean, at least the clones are trained for this. They both care as much as they can for the men they have, but they still lead them to battle, lead them to their deaths, requisition more troops from Kamino with the same forms they requisition more blasters with.

 Eventually, as the war drags on and on and on, and their best intentions for the clones are stymied by exhaustion, death, and bureaucracy, both Plo and Aayla realize, independently, that they need to take drastic action if they want to be able to consider themselves Jedi, or even good people. Because they haven’t done right by the clones. Whatever their intentions, they have been complicit in slavery, in child abuse, in murder and torture. Making the clones wait until the end of the war for their freedom is cruel and inhumane, and unless they prioritize freedom and justice for their men now, then they are no better than the slave lords of the outer rim, who sit in their massive palaces with fortunes built on slavery. So, they reach out. They talk to their Commanders. Bly and Wolffe put them in touch with Cody, and with each other. Cody and the other Commanders have been talking, in secret. They, too, have realized that the war isn’t going to end anytime soon, and even if it does, what happens to them? 

Cody is reluctant to trust Aayla and Plo, but Bly and Wolffe vouch for them. He asks them, if you are truly willing to help us, you have to realize that this might mean quitting the Jedi Order. This might mean turning against your fellow Jedi. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to, say, kill Mace Windu, or Depa Billaba, or Ahsoka Tano, if it means our freedom? Aayla and Plo say yes, they are. And they are. This had been one of the toughest choices they’ve had to make in their lives, when it should have been one of the easiest. They are Jedi, and they will fight against injustice and slavery wherever it may be, no matter who is perpetrating it. 

So Cody sets them to work. Aayla reaches out to her old master, Quinlan Vos. In this universe, instead of being a racist dickhead, his anti-clone sentiment is born from the fact that he utterly disagrees with the idea of Jedi waging war, and has transformed that into resenting the clones. He’s spent the entire war being literally as far away from it as possible, ignoring the Council as much as he can. Eventually, though, he undergoes a mr. darcy-like transformation, realizes what an asshole he’s been, and when Aayla comes knocking, he’s already been smuggling troopers slated for decomissioning to safe planets.

Plo Koon reaches out to Ahsoka. In the time since she’s left the order, she’s done a lot of growing up. Outside of the stress of constant war, and the influence of the Council and Anakin, she’s done a lot of thinking and also undergone Character Growth, realizing how unfair the clones’ situation is, and how she contributed to it, how she ignored the power differential between them. She jumps at the chance to help. (it does take her a bit to get used to the idea that she’s not a leader here, not a commander- she’s a useful agent, and her input is appreciated, but she and the Jedi with her are not in charge). Ahsoka approaches Rex, he tells her what happened to Fives. Ahsoka does some digging, and uncovers the chips. She takes the info straight to Rex, who, with the other Commanders and the medics, coordinate a massive, secret de-chipping operation under the guise of every trooper needing a vaccine to combat some new disease making the rounds.

Once Cody and the others are fairly sure that the majority of the army has been dechipped, the Commanders make their move, and the entire GAR goes on strike. Every Commander has passed down orders to their captains, and the captains have passed it down to their men, so everyone is briefed on what to do and how to behave. Any troops currently engaged in battle abandon whatever objective they had, fighting only to their extraction point. GAR ships abandon contested space, re-centering around Republic planets and bases. Troopers are ordered to only perform the duties necessary to keep the ships running and keep everyone alive. Food, sanitation, medical, and defense if they are attacked. Many battalions are essentially dead in space, or on whatever planet they were on, because their Jedi leaders won’t relinquish the bridges of their ships, but their troops refuse to fight. So Aayla, Plo, and the other allied Jedi are able to take their troops to these stranded groups, giving them supplies, taking the wounded, helping them defend against separatist forces if they need it.

Cody and the other Commanders have put together a document, and they send two copies. One to the Senate, and one to the Jedi Council. It is a list of grievances, followed by a list of demands.

Needless to say, the Jedi Council are forced into a negotiation pretty damn quick. The Commanders insist that a representative of the Senate, someone with the authority to speak for them, be present too. The clones refuse to send their representatives to Coruscant, because they don’t trust the Jedi Council or the Senate not to execute them. Anakin Skywalker volunteers his ship as a neutral place- sure, the 501st is on strike, but it’s a Jedi ship, so both parties should feel about as equally uncomfortable.

At the negotiations, representing the Clone Troopers: Commander Cody, Commander Wolffe, Commander Bly, and Captain Rex. Plo Koon, Aayla Secura, Quinlan Vos, and Ahsoka Tano are there to, mostly to say what the clones say, but louder and with a Jedi voice, so the council might actually listen. Present on behalf of the Jedi: Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and, ironically enough, Plo Koon, who volunteered when Yoda asked for Council members willing to participate in the negotiations. Present on behalf of the Senate: Senator Bail Organa, Senator Halle Burtoni of Kamino, and Chancellor Palpatine. Anakin is there, too, of course. It’s his ship, after all. Cody starts off by re-listing their grievances, the crimes committed against the Clone Troopers (he’s left the chips off the list- they’re still not 100% sure who’s behind it and don’t want to endanger the troops still chipped). Yoda and Mace try to interrupt him many times, but Cody just keeps talking over them, and Plo Koon keeps going “no let him finish this sounds interesting”. 

When Cody finishes, Halle Burtoni erupts into a rant about “traitors” and “defective products”. Senator Organa thinks Cody has a point. A good one. A lot of good ones, actually. Palpatine is quiet, silently calculating how he can turn this to his advantage. Yoda spouts off with a bunch of Jedi platitudes about perspective, the greater good, blah blah blah. Cody just looks at him and says “sir, you’re full of shit.” Before anyone can get on his case for it, Rex stands and starts reading off their demands. Obi-Wan keeps interrupting, with things like “surely, we can negotiate” or “I agree that you and your men have a right to these things, but in war, certain sacrifices must be made” and “can’t this wait until after we defeat the separatists?” Rex tells him to shut the hell up and listen for once in his goddamn life (quote). Obi-Wan turns to Anakin and says “Anakin, I thought you taught your men more respect than that!” but Anakin says “Actually, Master, I agree with Rex.” Before THAT can blow up, Yoda tries to calm things down with “discuss your requests, we must” but Wolffe’s like “Not requests. Demands. We are not here to negotiate, we are here to tell you what you must do if you want to keep your army.” There’s arguing. There’s yelling. Aayla makes an impassioned speech about freedom. Anakin and Ahsoka have a quick hushed aside, in which it takes Anakin about 30 seconds to decide he’s quitting the Order, too. Yoda and Mace ask Plo to back them up, but he just points at Wolffe and goes “my son”. Cody, Rex, Bly, and Wolffe are doing an excellent job of looking like the only professionals in the room. 

Eventually, Bail Organa asks everyone to calm down. “Commanders, I hear your grievances, and I understand that you have been treated wrongly. I propose that I introduce a bill in the Senate, to legally grant your demands-by the way, can I have a copy of that list?- We might have to do some arm-twisting to get the votes, but if you and your brothers hold steadfast in your strike, I’m sure it won’t take too long for the Senators to come around- especially those whose planets are close to Separatist activity.” Yoda mumbles something about needing to meditate before taking any action. Bail turns to Palpatine, who hasn’t said a word so far. “What do you think, Chancellor? Such a bill would move through the Senate much faster with your backing.” 

Palpatine has been watching the proceedings, and thinking. This could totally work out for him. Anakin and Obi-Wan are on opposite sides of this debate, and he didn’t even have to do anything to drive this wedge between them. Anakin is primed to declare against the Jedi Order. If he plays his ace card soon, the Clone Troopers massacre the Jedi, and, combined with their current strike, is more than enough justification for him to declare them all defective traitors and have them all killed via the chips, leaving Anakin with no one and nothing. Then, it’s a simple matter of unleashing him on the Separatists, having him commit more and more atrocities in the name of victory... unless, of course, Anakin decides to help the clones and participate in Order 66 himself, in which case, his job is done! And he might not even need to kill Padme to do it! At least, not until after the children are born and he can assess whether he wants one of them as an apprentice instead of their father. So Palpatine stands, walks over to Cody, and says, “Commander Cody, the time has come. Execute Order 66.”

And Cody says “Fuck you, Chancellor.” and punches him in the face. In the ensuing shitstorm, a lot of stuff is revealed. Palpatine is a sith lord- the angry Force lightning kind of made it obvious. Anakin has good reflexes, jumping in front of the lightning and absorbing the blast to protect Cody (he’s the most powerful Force-sensitive in a thousand years at least, he’ll be fine). Rex has good aim and good priorities- his pistols are drawn and Palpatine has two smoking holes where his eyes were before Anakin has finished screaming and collapsing dramatically. “Oh my fucking god,” Mace Windu says, realizing that they’ve been living in the pocket of a Sith Lord for a good decade and that he is an idiot. Wolffe is trying to get past Plo Koon, who jumped in front of him the moment Cody punched Palpatine. Aayla and Bly both tried to jump in front of each other (Bly won, because Aayla may be a Jedi but she’s shorter than he is), and Ahsoka, who didn’t get the chance to jump in front of anybody, just goes “yikes”. Obi-Wan, who is currently evaluating all of his life choices and also just how well he really knows his Commander, goes “agreed”. 

Anyway Bail gets the bill passed and is elected chancellor, and immediately enters into negotiations with the Separatists (dooku mysteriously vanished, high-tailing it out of there when his master died, and suddenly the separatist forces are much less blood-thirsty and sentient-rights violating when he’s not leading them). Yoda retires to a swamp planet, Mace decides to de-centralize the Jedi Order, re-write a lot of rules and Jedi philosophy, and moves to a new Temple being built on Hoth or something.

The clones are freed, given citizenship, backpay, and reparations, funded mostly by the Senate taxing the shit out of the Banking Clans and the Trade Federation. They objected strenuously, but couldn’t really do much about it with an entire clone army breathing down their necks. There’s a big search for a home for the clones, and a planet that will agree to host them. This is when the clan leaders of the Mandalorian Houses come forward- not the New Mandalorians, but the Mandalorians of the traditional, warrior culture, kicked out of Mandalore by the new government, living as a diaspora all over the galaxy. They say they will claim the Clones as theirs, accept them as their own clan. Their motives are manifold- one, the Clones were trained by Mandalorians, including Jango Fett, and clone culture borrows a lot from the Mandalorians. Secondly, it’ll really piss off Satine Kryze’s government, Thirdly, the promises made to the clones in Organa’s bill could be leveraged into a win-win for the Mandalorian Clans and the Clones. The Clones get their citizenship, and the Mandalorian Clans get recognized as an independent political entity, separate from New Mandalore, and as such, not subject to their laws, and entitled to a Senator of their own, as well as protection and recognition for their citizens spread throughout the Galaxy. 

Additionally, many planets offer citizenship programs to the clones, especially those whose populations had been decimated by the war. Governments are desperate for able-bodied people to come in and fill in the economic gap left by the war to stave off economic collapse. The Senate further creates programs to make it easier for clones to gain citizenship on planets that might not be so eager for them to live there, and for clones who are disabled and unable to work. So many clones end up with dual citizenship- Mandalorian Clans, and their home planet of choice.

Many choose to stay in the army- it’s familiar, it’s easier than trying to find a job and pay rent (especially when you’ve never heard of a job, salary, or rent growing up), it’s where their brothers are, and hey, they’re getting paid now. Anakin talks to Rex, and together, they take the 501st to the Outer Rim and wreck shit on the Hutts and their slave empire. After fulfilling his childhood dream of liberating Tattooine, Anakin retires to raise his children with his wife. Wolffe spends a few years traveling the galaxy alone, seeing new places and meeting new people. Eventually he returns to Coruscant, and when he leaves, a newly retired Plo Koon goes with him, and together they see as much of the galaxy as they can. Cody and Rex spend a while helping to settle their vod’e, taking the cadets and babies from Kamino and setting up home bases all over the galaxy, where they are raised by their older brothers. Cody discovers that he loves teaching. Rex finds out that he really likes kids. Eventually, Cody and Rex retire, but they still spend a lot of time with the clone children, and with their brothers. Ahsoka drops by every once in a while. Bail spends his career rooting out corruption and establishing requirements that Republic planets must elect their senators by popular vote. Everyone is reasonably content, oh and also Fives didn’t really die, he was wearing a blaster-proof vest and went into hiding, he rescued Echo and they both live the rest of their lives happily together.

[samglyph]

Original Content Ahead

Prologue | Chapter 1 

Note: I will repost chapter one and the prologue with edits on a separate blog because there have been a few changes (the biggest one is that james is ten instead of eight). This is the last chapter that will be posted on this blog, 

please validate me

tw: kidnapping, tiny mention of murder, children being ignored and rude adults in general 

Chapter 2: Stranger Danger

“Pay up.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I won! I got the human! I won our game, so pay up!”

“You got the wrong one, idiot.”

James flicked his eyes back in forth between the two people involved in this exchange. He had been awake for awhile now, though he was starting to suspect the two in front of him either hadn’t noticed or simply didn’t care. He had woken up slowly, his head filled with fog, before everything rushed back to him all at once and he sat straight up.

The first thing he noticed was the lighting. It was weird… it wasn’t candlelight, it was blue, and it definitely wasn’t fluorescent, a word he had been very excited about when dad taught him how to say it.

Oh right. Dad. Tears had started to gather at the corners of his eyes again, but they stopped when the argument began. He hadn’t noticed the pair at first.

It was difficult to make out to many details in the low light, but he recognized his attacker immediately. Their long blond hair, and black eyes, and skin pulled tight over their abnormally long limbs, were all giveaways. The other one was different. They were shorter, and their skin didn’t look… correct. It was almost reflective in how smooth it was, and the color of it shifted when they moved.

“The Queen wanted the other one, Cicrow.”

“Well the other one never comes in the damn woods long enough for me to find him!”

“That’s a bad word.” James interjected before he could stop himself. Two pairs of inhuman eyes turned toward him.

“What?” His kidnapper, Cicrow, asked.

“My dad says that’s a bad word. He says it sometimes when bad things happen but he said it’s bad.” James couldn’t really tell, but he thought he saw their large eyes roll. The pair went back to their conversation, almost as if the boy wasn’t there at all.

“Look, no one caught the other one, he went back to the house before we even got the chance. Besides, I don’t think the queen cares anymore. But I still won.”

“Well, he’s awake now, so what should we do with him?”

“We can still give him to the queen. That’s what we always do, what are you even asking for?”  Cicrow sneered.

“Is asking a question  a sin now?

“Probably.” Cicrow paused and turned fully towards James, who leaned back. Their black eyes widened, and suddenly James’s alertness seeped away, until he felt very, very tired.

James woke up again in a different room, if you could call it that, one that was much less devoid of life than the last one. In fact, as he nervously turned his head to take in his newest surroundings, he could see many creatures, both human-looking and not. There were more people than he’d ever been around. It made him nervous. He sat up on plush grass, and noticed that the walls were made of trees grown so tightly together that there weren’t any gaps. People murmured quietly and glanced down at him, making him shrink a bit under the gazes. Before him on a raised platform sat a woman, and while ten year olds raised in the middle of nowhere don’t have a strong grasp on the standard of beauty, that was the only way to describe her. Beautiful. She sat relaxed on a throne made out of gnarled root, having an air of indifference that made everyone else in the room care more about her. Her long white dress flowed to the ground, and seemed to almost dissolve as it hit the ground. But once again, James realized, while her eyes were a more normal shape and size than Cicrow’s, they were filled with inky blackness. She peered down at him, then looked behind him. He glanced back too, only to jerk a bit when he realized Cicrow was standing right behind him, though he relaxed when he noticed the look on their face. It seemed that they were as terrified as he was.

“Changeling,” The queen spoke, and her voice flowed like honey that had lost its sweetness, “What have you brought me?” Cicrow coughed.

“Your majesty, I have brought you the boy who lives in the Woodward house,” Cicrow replied, polite yet clipped. The queen’s dark eyes widened in surprise, but not for long. She looked down at the boy.

“And what is your name?”

“J,” He replied, remembering the rule. Her eyes narrowed as Cicrow’s had, before returning to her casual demeanor.

“How old are you?”

“I’m ten.”

She hummed in response. “And do you know where your father is?”

“I don’t know where I am, ma’am.” He spoke, clearly, as his dad would never want him to be impolite. She clicked her tongue, then turned to face someone standing next to her, who hadn’t been there before.

“Take him to Pieridae. My child could use an attendant.” The woman she was speaking to glanced at James’s frightened face and looked back at the queen, but said nothing. Cicrow felt differently.

“My deepest respect, your majesty, but this is simply a human boy,” They said, “I doubt he could even keep up with your child, much less properly attend to the prince.”

“I am well aware. Would you rather we killed him?” Cicrow and James eyes widened simultaneously. James opened his mouth to speak, no longer feeling very polite, but Cicrow beat him to it.

“Of course not your majesty. That would be a waste of a hunt.”

She sighed, a breathless, trivial thing, “Yes, I guess it would, wouldn’t it? Just,” In all her regality and aloofness, James thought the Queen seemed tired, “Take him to Pieridae,” she ordered to the attendant before whispering, “keep them both out of my sight.”

“Yes, my Queen,” The woman bowed, and began walking towards James, who in panic stood up and backed away, bumping into Cicrow. The woman paused and looked at the queen, as if awaiting a more specific order. The Queen closed her black eyes in what James assumed was exasperation.

“I guess I shouldn’t waste my own,” She said, “Cicrow, you will be in charge of delivering ‘J’,” She said the name with the tiniest hint of malice, “to Pieridae’s court, and in making sure he stays there.” James could feel Cicrow tense of up behind him.

“Of course, my Queen,” They said, obviously disagreeing. They reached up and placed their hands on James’s shoulders, “Right away.”

“You’re dismissed.” She said, and that was the end of the conversation. James could tell that if he attempted to speak now, the response would be negative, if there was even a response at all. So he allowed Cicrow to turn him around and push him out of the room. A doorway had opened between two of the trees when he wasn’t looking, but as they walked out it shifted closed again. James was busy taking in the details of the hallway, the stone arches that looked far to old and the tiny aliens mushrooms that littered the floor, when he heard the scream. He jumped when an animalistic screech left Cicrow, and he turned around to see them absolutely fuming.

“This is ludicrous,” They hissed, “I’m the best gods damned hunter she has and she’s wasting me on, on, what, babysitting?!” James could tell they weren’t talking to him, but he felt the need to add his thoughts anyway. Children raised with very little human contact don’t always understand when opinions are and are not wanted. Children raised with a lot of human contact still don’t.

“It’s sort of your fault, though,” He said, matter of factly. “When my dad isn’t home, he always calls Ms.Lisa over to take care of me. And when we go to the hospital, a nurse has to watch me when my dad isn’t there. And my dad isn’t here now, so now you have to watch me.” They looked down at him with hatred and muttered something angrily. Likely more bad words.

“Let’s go, you little leech.” They finally said, ushering James farther down the hall. It was a long trek, or at least it seemed to be. It was dim in the tunnel, the only light seemingly coming from the mushrooms, and lightning bugs that clung to the ceiling. James thought it was pretty, though there wasn’t much time to enjoy it. Cicrow moved quickly thanks to their height and James had to jog to keep up. Before long the hallway came to a stop before a large set of dark wooden double doors.

“Now, J,” Cicrow said, much more calm than they had been moments ago, “When you meet the Prince, be… better than you were with the Queen.

“What does that-”

“Just don’t be so… human. Be quiet.” James would have responded, said something about how he hadn’t said that much at all, and that he couldn’t very well stop being human, but at that moment the doors swung open, seemingly of their own volition. Cicrow and James entered the room, and James took in the scenery.

While the throne room and the hallway had certainly been fascinating, and far more interesting and intricate than the rooms in the Woodward family house, this one took the cake. James stepped through the doors, and his sneakers sunk into soft sand. The entrance was a small beach, that only went a few feet forward before dipping into calm water. Lily pads and other water flora floated undisturbed, and koi fish and frogs could be seen swimming or hopping near the shore. Stepping stones rose neatly from the water, and they led to a large stone island in the center of the room, if you could call it that. The lake seemed to be the size of the entire hospital parking lot, James rationalized, if it was round. There may have been more accurate descriptions, but that was the largest area that came to James’s mind in that moment. The island in the center was flat, dark gray slate, but appeared to be covered in plush pillows and blankets, and other unnatural trinkets James couldn’t make out. On the far edge, he could make out the form of a small figure curled into pillows with their back turned.

“Come on,” Cicrow called out to James, and began to step gracefully across the stones. James, on the other hand, had more trouble. He was much shorter, and ten year olds aren’t well-known for being graceful. He almost tumbled into the water on multiple occasions, but somehow Cicrow always managed to turn around and grab him before he slipped. Their irritation over having to do this was overwhelmingly obvious.

When the pair finally made it across the stretch of water, James watched as Cicrow knelt and lowered their head, making them roughly the same height as he was.

“Prince Pieridae,” They announced, in a similar tone to the one they had used when addressing the queen, “I have come on request of your Mother, Her majesty High Queen of the Fair Folk, Slayer of the Great Shade, Mistress of the Hunt, Lady of the-”

“Oh gods, would you shut up already!” A high pitched voice rang from where the figure was curled, and James watched as they stretched out and turned to face them, eyes half lidded and features filled with sloth.

Prince Pieridae was interesting to look at. He looked nothing like his mother, to start with, but gave off the same air of indifference and privilege that she did. His black hair was swept back and held in place with a silver tiara that spiked upwards. He was dressed in light green reminiscent of lichen, and black lines spread across the outfit like branches coming out of his middle. He sighed and pushed himself up from the ground and started walking over to the two at the edge of the island, opening his eyes as if to judge them. And that was when James noticed them. His eyes.

James had half been expecting the same black irises that Cicrow and the Queen possessed to adorn the Prince’s face as well, but to his surprise that was not the case. Pieridae’s eyes gleamed yellow in the low light, slitted like the feral cat’s that occasionally visited the Woodward’s porch.

Or perhaps they were snakes eyes, and perhaps the prince had a tongue to match, just like his mother had warned.

🧚🏼‍♀️🧚🏼‍♀️🧚🏼‍♀️🧚🏼‍♀️🧚🏼‍♀️

WHelp thanks for reading. Reblogs > likes but i guess since im gonna repost it doesnt really matter. Pls give me feedback. 

[samgwrites]

Prince

Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter 

Chapter 2: Stranger Danger

“Pay up.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I won! I got the human! I won our game, so pay up!”

“You got the wrong one, idiot.”

James flicked his eyes back in forth between the two people involved in this exchange. He had been awake for awhile now, though he was starting to suspect the two in front of him either hadn’t noticed or simply didn’t care. He had woken up slowly, his head filled with fog, before everything rushed back to him all at once and he sat straight up.

The first thing he noticed was the lighting. It was weird… it wasn’t candlelight, it was blue, and it definitely wasn’t fluorescent, a word he had been very excited about when dad taught him how to say it.

Oh right. Dad. Tears had started to gather at the corners of his eyes again, but they stopped when the argument began. He hadn’t noticed the pair at first.

It was difficult to make out to many details in the low light, but he recognized his attacker immediately. Their long blond hair, and black eyes, and skin pulled tight over their abnormally long limbs, were all giveaways. The other one was different. They were shorter, and their skin didn’t look… correct. It was almost reflective in how smooth it was, and the color of it shifted when they moved.

“The Queen wanted the other one, Cicrow.”

“Well the other one never comes in the damn woods long enough for me to find him!”

“That’s a bad word.” James interjected before he could stop himself. Two pairs of inhuman eyes turned toward him.

“What?” His kidnapper, Cicrow, asked.

“My dad says that’s a bad word. He says it sometimes when bad things happen but he said it’s bad.” James couldn’t really tell, but he thought he saw their large eyes roll. The pair went back to their conversation, almost as if the boy wasn’t there at all.

“Look, no one caught the other one, he went back to the house before we even got the chance. Besides, I don’t think the queen cares anymore. But I still won.”

“Well, he’s awake now, so what should we do with him?”

“We can still give him to the queen. That’s what we always do, what are you even asking for?”  Cicrow sneered.

“Is asking a question a sin now?

“Probably.” Cicrow paused and turned fully towards James, who leaned back. Their black eyes widened, and suddenly James’s alertness seeped away, until he felt very, very tired.

James woke up again in a different room, if you could call it that, one that was much less devoid of life than the last one. In fact, as he nervously turned his head to take in his newest surroundings, he could see many creatures, both human-looking and not. There were more people than he’d ever been around. It made him nervous. He sat up on plush grass, and noticed that the walls were made of trees grown so tightly together that there weren’t any gaps. People murmured quietly and glanced down at him, making him shrink a bit under the gazes. Before him on a raised platform sat a woman, and while ten year olds raised in the middle of nowhere don’t have a strong grasp on the standard of beauty, that was the only way to describe her. Beautiful. She sat relaxed on a throne made out of gnarled root, having an air of indifference that made everyone else in the room care more about her. Her long white dress flowed to the ground, and seemed to almost dissolve as it hit the ground. But once again, James realized, while her eyes were a more normal shape and size than Cicrow’s, they were filled with inky blackness. She peered down at him, then looked behind him. He glanced back too, only to jerk a bit when he realized Cicrow was standing right behind him, though he relaxed when he noticed the look on their face. It seemed that they were as terrified as he was.

“Changeling,” The queen spoke, and her voice flowed like honey that had lost its sweetness, “What have you brought me?” Cicrow coughed.

“Your majesty, I have brought you the boy who lives in the Woodward house,” Cicrow replied, polite yet clipped. The queen’s dark eyes widened in surprise, but not for long. She looked down at the boy.

“And what is your name?”

“J,” He replied, remembering the rule. Her eyes narrowed as Cicrow’s had, before returning to her casual demeanor.

“How old are you?”

“I’m ten.”

She hummed in response. “And do you know where your father is?”

“I don’t know where I am, ma’am.” He spoke, clearly, as his dad would never want him to be impolite. She clicked her tongue, then turned to face someone standing next to her, who hadn’t been there before.

“Take him to Pieridae. My child could use an attendant.” The woman she was speaking to glanced at James’s frightened face and looked back at the queen, but said nothing. Cicrow felt differently.

“My deepest respect, your majesty, but this is simply a human boy,” They said, “I doubt he could even keep up with your child, much less properly attend to the prince.”

“I am well aware. Would you rather we killed him?” Cicrow and James eyes widened simultaneously. James opened his mouth to speak, no longer feeling very polite, but Cicrow beat him too it.

“Of course not, your majesty. That would be a waste of a hunt.”

She sighed, a breathless, trivial thing, “Yes, I guess it would, wouldn’t it? Just,” In all her regality and aloofness, James thought the Queen seemed tired, “Take him to Pieridae,” she ordered to the attendant before whispering, “keep them both out of my sight.”

“Yes, my Queen,” The woman bowed, and began walking towards James, who in panic stood up and backed away, bumping into Cicrow. The woman paused and looked at the queen, as if awaiting a more specific order. The Queen closed her black eyes in what James assumed was exasperation.

“I guess I shouldn’t waste my own,” She said, “Cicrow, you will be in charge of delivering ‘J’,” She said the name with the tiniest hint of malice, “to Pieridae’s court, and in making sure he stays there.” James could feel Cicrow tense of up behind him.

“Of course, my Queen,” They said, obviously disagreeing. They reached up and placed their hands on James’s shoulders, “Right away.”

“You’re dismissed.” She said, and that was the end of the conversation. James could tell that if he attempted to speak now, the response would be negative, if there was even a response at all. So he allowed Cicrow to turn him around and push him out of the room. A doorway had opened between two of the trees when he wasn’t looking, but as they walked out it shifted closed again. James was busy taking in the details of the hallway, the stone arches that looked far to old and the tiny aliens mushrooms that littered the floor, when he heard the scream. He jumped when an animalistic screech left Cicrow, and he turned around to see them absolutely fuming.

“This is ludicrous,” They hissed, “I’m the best gods damned hunter she has and she’s wasting me on, on, what, babysitting?!” James could tell they weren’t talking to him, but he felt the need to add his thoughts anyway. Children raised with very little human contact don’t always understand when opinions are and are not wanted. Children raised with a lot of human contact still don’t.

“It’s sort of your fault, though,” He said, matter of factly. “When my dad isn’t home, he always calls Ms.Lisa over to take care of me. And when we go to the hospital, a nurse has to watch me when my dad isn’t there. And my dad isn’t here now, so now you have to watch me.” They looked down at him with hatred and muttered something angrily. Likely more bad words.

“Let’s go, you little leech.” They finally said, ushering James farther down the hall. It was a long trek, or at least it seemed to be. It was dim in the tunnel, the only light seemingly coming from the mushrooms, and lightning bugs that clung to the ceiling. James thought it was pretty, though there wasn’t much time to enjoy it. Cicrow moved quickly thanks to their height and James had to jog to keep up. Before long the hallway came to a stop before a large set of dark wooden double doors.

“Now, J,” Cicrow said, much more calm then they had been moments ago, “When you meet the Prince, be… better than you were with the Queen.

“What does that-”

“Just don’t be so… human. Be quiet.” James would have responded, said something about how he hadn’t said that much at all, and that he couldn’t very well stop being human, but at that moment the doors swung open, seemingly of their own volition. Cicrow and James entered the room, and James took in the scenery.

While the throne room and the hallway had certainly been fascinating, and far more interesting and intricate than the rooms in the Woodward family house, this one took the cake. James stepped through the doors, and his sneakers sunk into soft sand. The entrance was a small beach, that only went a few feet forward before dipping into calm water. Lily pads and other water flora floated undisturbed, and koi fish and frogs could be seen swimming or hopping near the shore. Stepping stones rose neatly from the water, and they led to a large stone island in the center of the room, if you could call it that. The lake seemed to be the size of the entire hospital parking lot, James rationalized, if it was round. There may have been more accurate descriptions, but that was the largest area that came to James’s mind in that moment. The island in the center was flat, dark gray slate, but appeared to be covered in plush pillows and blankets, and other unnatural trinkets James couldn’t make out. On the far edge, he could make out the form of a small figure curled into pillows with their back turned.

“Come on,” Cicrow called to James, and began to step gracefully across the stones. James, on the other hand, had more trouble. He was much shorter, and ten year olds aren’t well-known for being graceful. He almost tumbled into the water on multiple occasions, but somehow Cicrow always managed to turn around and grab him before he slipped. Their irritation over having to do this was overwhelmingly obvious.

When the pair finally made it across the stretch of water, James watched as Cicrow knelt and lowered their head, making them roughly the same height as he was.

“Prince Pieridae,” They announced, in a similar tone to the one they had used when addressing the queen, “I have come on request of your Mother, Her majesty High Queen of the Fair Folk, Slayer of the Great Shade, Mistress of the Hunt, Lady of the-”

“Oh gods, would you shut up already!” A high pitched voice rang from where the figure was curled, and James watched as they stretched out and turned to face them, eyes half lidded and features filled with sloth.

Prince Pieridae was interesting to look at. He looked nothing like his mother, to start with, but gave off the same air of indifference and privilege that she did. His black hair was swept back and held in place with a silver tiara that spiked upwards. He was dressed in light green reminiscent of lichen, and black lines spread across the outfit like branches coming out of his middle. He sighed and pushed himself up from the ground and started walking over to the two at the edge of the island, opening his eyes as if to judge them. And that was when James noticed them. His eyes.

James had half been expecting the same black irises that Cicrow and the Queen possessed to adorn the Prince’s face as well, but to his surprise that was not the case. Pieridae’s eyes gleamed yellow in the low light, slitted like the feral cat’s that occasionally visited the Woodward’s porch.

Or perhaps they were snakes eyes, and perhaps the prince had a tongue to match, just like his mother had warned.