#but ultimately every time i consider it i end up deciding no it’s not worth it or at least no not today

[chompe-diem]

shoutout to my discarded poll post for my followers asking whether or not i should watch crown of candy

[forzaferraris]

NOTHING MATTERS — op81

pairing: oscar piastri x fem! engineering intern! reader

summary: the best way to get over someone who broke your heart is to get under someone else and (unintentionally) break theirs. / inspired by nothing matters by the last dinner party, listen on spotify here !

style: primarily written with a single smau element at the end.

warnings: 18+, minors do not interact, smut, unprotected sex ((p in v) please wrap it before you tap it)), oral (m! receiving) finger sucking, sub/don undertones but nothing serious, i swear on my life oscar piastri is a grunt and groaner but simultaneously considerably vocal during sex (i will die on that rock), afab! reader, readers kinda uncaring about who she hurts because she’s hurt, reader is referred to as she/her, miscommunication trope, oscar piastri has been in love with reader since the beginning of the season and just assumed one-sided pining. authors refusal to write with capitals, you can pry them out of her cold dead hands.

faceclaim: sofia dirado, although feel free to imagine reader as anyone else.

word count: 4.1k +

YOU WERE NO STRANGER TO HEARTACHE.

you fear it followed you around more often than not, like a dark cloud that covered your entire existence in this bubble of heartbreak that nothing ever felt good to you, nothing was ever worth it. from your parents divorcing after years of suffering in a loveless marriage to every single relationship you’d ever been in never making past the first time you sleep together — you’ve genuinely felt about giving up on life, going so far as to consider a life as a celibate nun or maybe not, perhaps just the life of a girl who burns through multiple packs of AA batteries using her rose toy.

however, when you’d met levi, your first year of finally being allowed to leave the mclaren technology centre to shadow tom stalland during the 2023 f1 season. you genuinely thought this man had reshaped your entire perspective of love, he made love easy, made loving him feel less like a sport and more like a hobby you could never get sick of, being with hom felt like you’d been going through all the “firsts” all over again, like a cheesy romance movie monologue.

and yet, here you are, sat in your hotel room after the japan gp, suzuka has always been your favourite gp to watch and unfortunately for some reason, instead of standing in the mclaren garage doing your job, you’re sat clad in your team clothes (a stark contrast to the white bed linen) and sobbing over a text message paragraph explicitly telling you that levi has decided to break up with you after he fell in love with someone else during the summer break, someone who “rewired his brain chemistry in a ways you could never do.” you want to get angry, you wish you were an angry person, instead when you got angry you cried, when you got too happy or even just laughed too hard you cried, you were a crier.

your heart is heavy, as you scroll through the other woman’s posts, she’s gorgeous, and that’s where you begin your myriad of self deprecating comparisons of you to her. you doom scroll for what feels like forever until you spiral even further down the heartbreak rabbit hole, your attention drawn to the fact that levi had both unfollowed and removed you as a follower at some point between when he said goodnight and then broke up with you the next day. you watch as stories of their summer break spent together is shared and your jealousy sends you into a blind rage that you block the both of them; because ultimately you knew that he will hold her life he used to hold you — for levi was boring, a one trick pony you’re only just now coming to terms with.

your disheveled appearance and self imposed seclusion from the events of the day were not left unnoticed, you’d resigned yourself to just stand on the outskirts, occasionally moving to sit down and watch the screens as the friday practice begun, you’re uninterested, unmotivated and trying your dandiest to not cry, for the sole reason of simultaneously not wanting to draw unwanted attention to yourself and the fact that the mascara you’re bought at the duty free at the airport was most definitely not waterproof.

the good thing was that you’d be in japan for the rest of the weekend, the worse thing was you knew not s language lick of the language — sure you could probably call someone an idiot in japanese thanks to the sheer amount of one piece you’d watched eith levi during days he didn’t want to do anything you had planned or suggested; however, the single knowledge of know the word idiot in japanese will not get her very far. you’re almost too zoned out to notice the first free practice had finished, oscar’s team engineer tom standall dismisses you, tells you that whatever happened before you came to track is to be sorted out before it potentially jeopardises a race and without a word or argument against hai decision you shuffle out of the garage and into the paddock.

“name, hey wait — wait up” a voice you’ve only heard considerable muffled by a racing helmet and through large oversized noise cancelling team gear headphones when you got to play pretend engineer whenever it was during his practice laps and his qualifying laps, it sends a shiver up your spine, always has and you’re unknowing if it always will.

“oscar? hey! you did so good today, from what i say, p3 is so awesome how are you not more elated about that!” you’d found yourself smiling, wide across your face and sinking into the gentle rhythm of the conversation with oscar. the smile he returns is equally as wide as if his whole face were smiling, you want to punch him — the cuteness aggression playing devil on your shoulder.

“oh nah, i am actually it just hasn’t like kicked in gully yet, i’m waiting for the full body visceral reaction i’m about to have,” he pauses for a brief moment, hands itchy to fiddling with something snd find solitude in dragging one hand after the other through his tangled and sweaty hair. “like just, honestly, jesus christ and in japan of all places fuckin’ hell” he seems both simultaneously out of breath and ready to compete in a marathon.

had it not been a considerably formal setting you swore you can picture him jumping up and down on the spot whilst trying to contain all of his excitement, you allow him to be excited not wanting your own mood and misery to overshadow his complete and utter elation at his podium win. it’s the first time in the few days you’d been moping about that the smile you give off reaches your eyes and oscar’s always paying attention to these things, unbeknownst to you of course.

“your excitement is infectious, surely the team have planned something celebratory for you! you’ve gotta celebrate this i’m sure lando is!” you can’t help but practically beam, you’re mesmerised by the excitement the unashamed amount of happiness this boy is oozing and the bitter feeling in your stomach over it all is just barely going by unnoticed.

oscar shakes his head, overs a tiny shrugs and barely gets another word into the conversation you teo ate having before he’s whisked away by the team to be dragged off towards the podium, you watch as he shakes the bottle of champagne onto lando and max. any and all brief untouched moments of happiness are immediately replaced when your phones buzzes, a notification alert from your ring door bell and the video supplied of your now ex boyfriend grabbing whatever stuff he’d left at your apartment. the situation just breaks your heart even further than when with the whole of the mclaren team being called upon for s group shot with both the boys and their podium wins you ignore it and decided you’d had enough of it all.

the hotel’s quiet as you tap your keycard against the inside of your hand waiting for the elevator to come back down, the traffic from the track back to the designated hotel meant you’d wound up leaving just as all the other drivers had and whilst you weren’t in the mood to face anymore interactions you were lucky to bypass the small group of fans loitering in the hotel lobby. the elevator itself is slow, like most and the way your stomach drops at the incline is almost akin to how you felt when you’d first received that break up text at the start of the week.

if there was one thing you were thankful for, it was the fact the hotel had a bar just off the lobby, which is where you’d found yourself, skirt a little too short, shoes a little too high and too the perfect amount of booby that you won’t get in too much trouble but also attract someone willing to take away the ache in your chest for the night.

you’d been sat at the bar for just under an hour, occasionally chatting to some of the other patrons but mostly the bartender herself; the paper straw mushy and impossible to drink out of sits on a napkin as you sip on the glass uncaring or the lipstick mark on the rim or the smudging it does to your own lipstick — in fact you’re hoping something else smudges the lipstick further if the night doesn’t continue to progress as slowly as it is.

“can i get a beer, whatever you’ve got in the bottle and another one of what she’s drinking” there it is again, the chill on your spine and the heightened sense of the hand that brushes past your ear to give the bartender a bank card. every single nerve ending in your body is on fire when the stool beside you in moved and a body now begins to occupy it, perhaps you’re a bit drunk, you’d already had two of these and what if the different alcohol consumption laws you’re unsure how much alcohol is actually in the fruity little cocktail you’d ordered.

“oscar piastri, i thought i told you to go celebrate your podium with lando, why are you still at the hotel?” there is is, a tone you’d never thought you’d use with someone who wass essentially your bosses boss, which therefore makes him your boss, and yet here you are — sultry tone and lips loosened by the alcohol in your system, shamelessly flirting with him.

“well, you see, i’m more of a pub person than i am someone who prefers nightclubs and being touched and bumped into by random strangers, i fear that’s more of a lando thing than my own” oscar laughs, the way he’s relaxed and carefree shows signs he did however, get roped into pregaming with lando beforehand, the neck of the beer bottle sits between his index and middle fingers, a comfortable position one you're sure would feel weird if you so much as tried to mimic.

you fear you're done for when it comes to watching the way his throat bobs as he takes a swig of the larger, it's a japanese brand one you've never heard of nor tried and you can tell oscar hasn't by the way his nose scrunches at the taste, he still continues to drink it though. time seems to float by, growing continually more comfortable with one another to the point you'd sauntered away from the bar stools and are sat perhaps not even an inch apart in a booth in the corner.

"favourite race destination, so far?" "monaco. most definitely, melbournes a close second, but that's just because of a personal bias" "personal bias?" "yeah. . . you."

you'd never thought to combine the flavours of japanese beer and strawberry liqueur, and yet here you were, back-pressed and arched up against the wall beside a hotel room that not yours, the elevator ride was one stop too long to have it be that you'd gone back to your hotel room, hands, not your own, are roaming places never thought to be touched, the bluntness of their nails digging into the soft flesh of your thighs has your separating from the kiss to lean your head back and full indulge in the simple pleasures received in this moment. arousal builds when soft lips find the pulse point in your neck, your choice signature scent perfume the most aromatic in that area brings a subconscious reaction from oscar, the thigh between your legs juts up and you also convulse right then and there, your own hands ove from holding the back of his neck to drag through his soft, product-free hair, tugging on the last few strands that slip through your fingers.

the beep of the room door unlocking pulls you to your senses, and a hand tight around your waist drags you inside, you cling onto him in the worst way possible, you can see the smudges of lipstick on the corners of his mouth and god, does he look beautiful. you're unsure for a moment, even if the alcohol had loosened you up a little, you still didn't know how to react around oscar, he's looking at you in a way you can't describe, it makes your stomach flip and you're eager, thighs clenching to distribute the friction of your building arousal. you want his lips on yours again, there's zero space between you, you're simply sharing each other's breath.

his hand finds the back of your neck, tangled in your darkened locks and pulls you back in for a kis, is soft, he must moisturise your brain supplies before it fizzes out, the kiss is messy, all teeth, tongues and spit. you whimper into the kiss, knees buckling, your own hands are on a mission sliding under the hem of his shirt to perfectly feel the warmth that radiates off his skin against your cold hands, you can feel the exact moment your cold touch makes him hiss into the kiss and it finally ignites the fire in your stomach. this is what you want.

you two remain lip-locked until your chest hurts and you've traded the same breath back and forth that it's completely died, when you pull away, you finally take notice of the blown-out pupils staring down at you. his a look entirely of lust, desire, arousal and it shows, especially with the bulge in his pants. your bottom lip finds sanctuary in between your teeth when you raise an eyebrow and one of your hands slips out from under his shirt to palm him through the cargo shorts he'd donned to wear.

if oscar's voice sent a shiver down your spine, the way he groaned at your touch against his bulge chilled you from the inside out, the noise rough and gravelly like he'd not uttered a word in weeks, it's deep and low in his chest that you wouldn't have heard it if you weren't practically flush against him. your hand continues to palm him, making riskier moves as your other hand moves to dip your fingers into the waistband of his pants, you don't wait, you don't even need to ask for permission when his own hands are practically shucking off his own clothes for you.

he looks so gorgeous standing right in front of you, the wet patch you can only assume of precum on the front of his boxers has you licking your lips involuntarily, you try to ignore the voices, fight the urgers but you're but a simple girl, eager to please, that you're flicking your gaze up at him as your sink to your knees, the carpet is soft enough against you but you know better and are already seeing the red marks you'll have the next morning.

oscar looks confused for you in the briefest of moments, your nails dragging along his thighs, soft blonde hairs tickle your finger tips and you bite back the sweet giggle you want to let out as you're finally tugging his underwear down. a moment of shock halts your movement, eyes flicking up and down between oscar's gaze and his cock, tip pink, throbbing and leaking — it's a sight to be seen and you're the one who gets to gaze upon it.

your hand wraps around him, fingers barely meeting at the girth and you moan, can feel the saliva pooling in your mouth, your oral fixation working into overdrive, a single flick of your wrist has a louder groan rolling out of oscar's mouth, a quick "fuck" followed after it that as you once again clenching your thighs. your hand sets an easy rhythm, tried and true, one that allows for long strokes at a steady pace and your thumb to swipe between the slit on his tip that has his stomach clenching. his own hand grabs at your hair, both for something to hold onto and to keep it out of our face when you inch closer and allow your tongue to tease his tip with small kitten licks.

"fuck, fuck, name, fuck suck my cock"

the verbalised plea is all you need to finally wrap your lips around the swollen head, the saltiness of his precum mixing with your spit as you moan around him, your tongue swirls around his tip every time you pull back, only to resume bobbing your head and matching the movement of your hand to the pace you set as you take more of him in your mouth, your mouth feels so full and you can practically feel his dick pulse against your tongue when your other hand moves to squeeze his balls.

"holy shit — where did you learn that, fucking hell"

you smile when you pull away, uncaring of the drool that rolls down your chin, oscar seems not to mind either when he's pulling you back up to kiss him, your hand still stroking him slowly. he can taste his pre cum still on your tongue and as someone who'd assumed he wouldn't be fond of the idea, seems more or less enjoying it solely because it's coming from your mouth. his tongue overpowers your own and he's licking in your mouth with such severity that you can feel your own wetness pooling in your panties, had you been horny before you were now basically unbearably horny at this point.

your clothes feel bothersome, and your top and bra come off rather quick once your legs meet the edge of the bed you'd been pushed back against. the cool air of the hotel room meets your nipples and you gasp out once oscar's hot mouth chooses to settle on one and his hand favours the other. it's magic, that's what you can choose to blame it on, with the way oscar's fingers tug and twist one nipple all whilst his mouth and suck away on the other, your back arches up against him when his teeth graze the sensitive bud and you swear you could achieve your first orgasm of the night just from that alone.

his mouth switches to give the same treatment to the other nipple and yours that tug and pull on his hair only urge him on more, whining and desperate and what you want to happen is not happening. you need him, you crave him, you desire him.

"please oscar, fuck me"

there is it, the words oscar had been waiting to hear since you'd kissed him, and who would oscar be if not someone who listened when he was asked to do something. he sits up on his knees, jerks himself a couple of times as he watches you, skirt rugged up to your hips, a perfect picture, a sight for sore eyes, so beautiful, all for him to bare witness too. you back arches, your eager and needy and positively soaked you don't even need to touch yourself to know, your panties are finally pulled off and you hiss at the air that hits your center. you're clenching around nothing, sticky and sweet, eager, he looks up as your and you nods a final confirmation before you supply a weak "please" before his tip is aligning with your entrance and he's sliding in.

the stretch is everything to you, he is perfect, your hand stretching splayed out against the pillow as the tiniest whine falls from your lips, oscar grunts, face and chest flushed, you can hear exactly how we you are just from the squelch when he finally bottoms out and you moan loud enough that if anyone had been walking past the room they would have heard. oscar doesn't move, allowing for your pussy to stretch and get comfortable around him before you nod, rolling your hips to signal him to move and move he does.

"you're so tight, holy shit."

his hips rock back and forth into you, it's slow and sensual something you hadn't expected, your legs shift and wrap around his hips and your body rocks back against his thrusts willing him to move faster. unlike past partners, oscar seems to get the hint almost instantly as he pulls out and shifts slightly, hand holding onto your hips before he's sheathed himself back into you entirely in a singular thrust.

you moan out, toes curling and your legs wrapping around him so tight as if you'd practically become some sex-fueled boa constrictor. you swear his muscles are working overtime as his abdomen flexes with every deep thrust inside you, your body abuzz with electricity, the fire in your stomach scorching as a particular thrust has him hitting your g-spot and your back arching receptively.

in a world where you'd thought this was ever possible, all imaginations and scenarios have proven wrong already as oscar's thumb finds solace on drawing circles on your clit, causing your pussy to clench around him and a hiss to drag itself from his lips. to oscar you feel amazing and the flush on your face perfect evidence of his inability to be shy about telling you so and all you can do is ooh and ahh in return. something pulls in your stomach when he bottoms out in you again, your leg twitches and you're hyperaware that you'd just orgasmed around him, vocalising how it feels and your back arching however, his hips remain relentless only to come to a halt as he pulls out; your words are stopped as you're flipped over with a gentle tap against your thigh.

arms stretched out in front of you and your back arched, give oscar the perfect view to just take a moment to stare at your fluttering pussy, clenching around nothing as you suffer through a partially stunted orgasm. fingers drag through your folds and your body jerks at the sensitivity, the dip between them, pumping in and out similar to the rhythm he kept previous, his middle finger hooks and your face is thrown forward into the pillow as it hits the spongey feel of your g-spot, you gasp out hand white-knuckling the pillow as he focusses his fingers on that one particular spot

"fuck osc – fuck want you back inside me"

you don't bother with caring much about how whiney and desperate you'd begun to sound, throat dry from the gasping and the continuous noises he pulls from you, your tempting him, ass swaying as he chuckles, pulling his fingers out, he coo's at you as you whine to mourn the loss of the feeling, teases you as he slips the tip of his dick through your flushed red folds and bottom out with a quick hard thrust. you scream out, the pleasure perfectly combining with the sudden stretch to make the sweetest mixture of pain and pleasure you'd ever felt and to silence you, the fingers he'd just fucked you with had found the way into your mouth and if there was one thing you were, it was a good girl.

the sounds reverberating around the walls of the hotel room are borderline pornographic, the new pace oscar has set, deep and hard, skin slapping against skin as he practically bounces off you, his free holding your hip steady as your own knees buckle and you can feel the way his dick pulses inside you, the way his movements become sloppy yet still hitting your pleasure spot every time. the fingers in your mouth licked clean of your own arousal now replaced to be covered in your own drool. oscar grunts, his hips snapping against you in a final thurst as he slumps forward to press the most delicate of kisses to the nape of your neck as he feels you up and you cum around him for a second time.

it's messy, whatever hadn't spilt inside you now jerked off onto your back as your knees give out and you slump against the bed. worn out and woozy you're hardly paying attention to oscar cleaning up, the warm washcloth drags along your hot, sticky and sweaty skin in a way that twists your brain and brings out the regret that seeps into your stomach, had your legs not been feeling like they weren't attached to your body you would have scrambled to get dressed and done the walk of shame back to your own hotel room; however, you stay, regretfully.

you don't cuddle, oscar tries not to act hurt about it as you roll over and away from him when he finally climbs in himself. to you this didn't matter, you fucked him, like nothing matters. come the morning you'll be gone before he wakes. because this didn't mean a thing. to you as least.

yourusername just posted . . . ♫ nothing matters . the last dinner party

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oscarpiastri oh.

authors note: please excuse my smut skills, i'm rusty a lil ngl. i love a bittersweet ambiguous ending. if this gets enough recognition and asks, i'll definitely more than likely make a part two or even multiple parts. reminder, if you weren't tagged it means i couldn't find your account.

add yourself to the taglist here !

taglist: @iluminaya @therealcap @marshmummy @@im-an-overthinker @a1leexxa @chasing-liberosis @marauderssworld @nesssywrites @valntynebaby @larastark3107 @justtprachisblog

[syndrossi]

October Trick or Treat Fill #11: Daemon overhears an upsetting song

There were some great prompts for mad!Daemon and I...ended up taking little pieces from a few. (I started with "Daemon punches Cole" but ultimately stopped because we might get there at some point in the main story.)

So at long last, here are 3.6K words of Daemon experiencing all the emotions, which definitely include anger.

x~x~x

“Why is this so difficult?” Daemon snarled as they stepped back into the busy street.

“Because you are making it difficult,” Laenor said. “Why did you ask me along if you refuse to heed my advice?”

That was six shops along the Street of Kings visited, none of them offering anything remotely worth gifting to his sons. He had only given them two years worth of name day gifts, and each time it grew more difficult to decide upon a worthy one.

He had hoped that Laenor might have insight to offer, but his sons were years younger, while Daemon’s sons often seemed older than their own years. The wooden ships he had gifted Jon had seen some limited use when their cousins visited, but otherwise collected dust on the shelf. He doubted they would show any more interest in wooden knights or horses.

“It must be perfect,” Daemon said, frustration rising.

When his sons’ belongings had arrived from the Gates of the Moon, and Rhaegar had excitedly reached for his harp, Daemon had been met with the harsh realization he still did not know half of the things his sons were interested in. And when he had learned that Jon’s short sword and Rhaegar’s harp had been gifts from an unnamed “benefactor,” he had needed to excuse himself for a rare visit to the yard, where he had hacked a target to pieces with Dark Sister.

Realizing that Otto Hightower had known his sons’ preferences better than he, to have sent the perfect gifts, had filled him with fury at first, but when his energy had finally been spent in the yard, it had turned to hollow grief. I should know these things. I should know their favorite color, what foods they loved as infants, what joys they clung to for comfort in that joyless place.

That Jon had been forced to seek solace in weapons, in bashing training targets to gain some sense of control with he and his brother at Allard Royce’s mercy, while Rhaegar had turned to song to soothe their pain—

Daemon spun away from Laenor, breath hissing through clenched teeth as he fought to master his fury when every part of him screamed with the impulse to burn, to destroy.

“I know where we can go!” Laenor said, voice tight with the forced cheer Daemon had heard him use before to stave off one of Joff’s toddler meltdowns. His cousin raised his arms, palms flat, in a placating gesture when Daemon turned, ready to snap at him.

He exhaled then. Laenor was not the enemy. The man he wished to burn was in the Vale. “Where?”

“Children like secrets, hidden things. Like Jon’s sheath, the one you said Rhaegar gave him.”

That was true, though it set his chest to burning once more at the reminder of another enemy who still drew breath. Rhaegar’s first gift had been taken from Jon the night of their attempted escape, when Crayne had broken bones and threatened him with death, and discarded. His younger son had asked for aid in having a new one made for Jon, who had been moved almost to tears at the gift.

“What do you have in mind?”

“There is a shop nearer to River Row that sells such things. Jeweled boxes with false walls where they can keep their treasures, pouches with hidden pockets that can hide letters or other small things. Oh! There were some fetching brooches and hairpins that conceal tiny knives.”

His sons did enjoy both intrigues and martial pursuits. And although both had their bronze knives now, Rhaegar wore his openly rather than concealed. He might enjoy the novelty of a weapon hidden within a hairpin. It went without saying that Jon would gladly welcome any excuse to be further armed. He had already started to pester Daemon about when they would be considered old enough to wear a sword at their side.

“That sounds promising,” he admitted, earning a smile in response.

The shop in question was so close to the River Row as to nearly be in it, just barely skirting the edge of the sphere of affluence that radiated outward from the base of Aegon’s Hills, where the wealthiest of the city dwelled. The man who greeted them seemed to be a jeweler by trade, but there were enough works of leather that Daemon assumed he had a partner who specialized in such.

It had all that Laenor had described and more, and the jeweler, upon recognizing that he had royal visitors, brought out some richer pieces for their perusal. There was a beautiful pin of garnet and gold, fashioned into the shape of a red dragon that Daemon was immediately drawn to, the head rearing back and wings splayed wide, as though preparing to breathe dragonflame.

It had considerable heft to it, the pin itself wide and tapering to a point, to serve as a sheath for the hidden blade. The hilt and guard were hidden behind the dragon’s head and wings, secured in place to a pair of hooks by leather straps on either side of the guard that could be worked free.

The dagger could hardly be called that, its delicate hilt barely long enough to pinch between his thumb and forefinger, and the blade itself thin, tapering to a needle’s point. But it could stab a man’s flesh, should the need arise, and bleed him capably enough if aimed somewhere vulnerable.

“Can you make two more in this style?” Daemon asked, running his finger over the jewels that formed the scales. “One of sapphire on silver, and one of onyx on bronze?”

Jon did not often wear his hair styled into braids, but he might consider it with a Shadow hairpin that could transform into a tiny blade. The bronze would stand out against his dark hair, just as the blue of the sapphire would in Rhaegar’s light hair.

“For your sons?” The jeweler’s smile faltered for a moment at Daemon’s suspicious frown. “Tales of their hatchlings have spread throughout the city! It would be my honor to fashion pins in their likeness. Would my prince prefer the pins without a blade?”

“No,” Daemon said. He tested the red dragon’s blade with his thumb, which proved acceptably sharp. “It should be just like this one.”

“I can have it completed within a moon, if that is acceptable,” the man said with a bow. “Should I set aside the red dragon pin for when they are complete, or would my prince like to take it with him today?”

Daemon looked at the hairpin, heavy in his hand, and hesitated. He had not planned on seeking any trinkets for himself, but the red of the scales combined with the warm yellow of the dragon’s topaz eyes were too alike Caraxes not to be tempted.

“Here,” Laenor offered, taking the pin from his hand.

He wove the pin through one of Daemon’s side braids, then through the center braid. With just the pin, it would not have been especially stable, but the wings themselves extended into the teeth of a comb, allowing the decorative top piece to be partially secured in place. Daemon turned his head from side to side, then gave a small hop, testing its hold. It would be better served by some center braid knot, with the pin and comb akilter above it, but he could seek suggestions from Rhaenyra when she finally returned.

“It is very fetching,” Laenor said.

“Set it aside,” he said. One for each of us. It would not do to spoil the surprise early by revealing his own.

He added a pair of belt pouches with secret compartments to his purchase, and even took Laenor’s final suggestion, dictating a design for a pair of jeweled boxes with a clever mechanism for triggering the false bottom to spring up when pressed, revealing the hidden space below.

It was not an inexpensive trip, but Daemon had spent little of his royal allowance over his time in the Stepstones. He looked forward to someday bringing the twins with him to the shop, certain they would find other trinkets to their liking within. Once the matters of Volantis and the Stepstones are settled.

They were near enough to a woodworker’s shop that Daemon agreed to one more stop. Laenor had, for once, been inspired by his gift choices and wanted to find some wooden ships for Jace and Luke.

“He also carved their wooden dragons,” Laenor said. “If you’d like any for the twins. His Caraxes was quite a good likeness.”

As they turned onto the next street, they spied a small crowd gathered around a singer who was plucking his lute as he sang a melody Daemon hadn’t heard before, too distant yet to make out the words themselves. They had taken no more than a few steps when Laenor turned abruptly.

“I did not take note of the hour,” he said. “We should return to the holdfast. I can stop by another time.”

The swiftness of his speech spoke to a sudden agitation, and Daemon regarded him with suspicion, not moving to follow. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Laenor said, shoulders slumping after a few seconds of Daemon’s unblinking stare. “I—there is someone I wish to avoid.”

Although his words held the ring of a lie, his gaze did stray toward the singer. Daemon squinted through the crowd to catch a better glimpse of the man. Short, with short brown hair and a plain face. Far from his cousin’s usual type, which was lean, handsome, well-muscled and preferably knighted. And he could think of no other reason Laenor would wish to avoid some singer of common origin.

“Why—?”

“I can explain later.” Laenor grabbed his arm. “Come.”

Daemon easily twisted his arm free, and Laenor’s final protests trailed off as he approached the crowd gathered around the singer. The song was flowery tripe about a pair of Targaryen princes, with two entire verses devoted to their beauty. Such hyperbole was not uncommon in songs about their house.

The song turned slightly ribald then, switching to the lascivious Free Cities of Lys and Myr, whose loveliest slaves could not compare in a verse where their shortcomings were enumerated, with heavy innuendo. A few stretches of broken and butchered Valyrian were sprinkled into the verses, presumably to emphasize the foreign nature of the Free Cities, as the owners of the richest pillow houses conspired to steal away the “hidden jewels of the Iron Throne.”

“You see?” Laenor hissed at him. “It is nothing. We should return.”

Daemon turned to follow, willing to concede just this once, only to halt as the singer moved on to the details of plot, where the “jealous witch of Runestone” struck a bargain with the Lysene slavers.

My sons. Daemon spun back to the singer, too stunned for a moment to hear much of the next verse. It is about my sons.

A purse of fifty-thousand dragons was offered and accepted, and the young twins—fair and dewy-eyed in their innocence—escorted south to Gulltown by a man named Crayne, where the slaver ships awaited. Much was made of his sons’ helplessness, and the slavers’ delight when inspecting their find.

It did not matter that Daemon and Caraxes were made the heroes of the tale, swooping in for a daring, last-minute rescue. Hearing his sons spoken of thus, as objects of desire, as fodder for a Lysene pillow house, brought his blood to a roar in his ears.

“Daemon—” Laenor whispered, seizing his arm once more to halt him from drawing Dark Sister.

“My sons are eight,” Daemon hissed, mind shying away from the knowledge that the pillow houses across the Narrow Sea were notorious for training their pleasure slaves young.

“It is only a song,” Laenor said, straining with both arms now to hold him back. “Nothing happens to them, even in song.”

Laenor’s caution was no match for his fury. Daemon dragged him several steps before his cousin released him at last, and the crowd parted around him as their eyes fell upon his hair, then his unsheathed sword. The singer spotted him last, glancing up from where he had stooped to pick up his earnings, and Daemon lifted him in a single motion, shoving him back into the wall, bringing Dark Sister’s blade to rest just below his jaw.

The man stared back, terrified recognition in his eyes. “My prince. I—”

“Is that song of your creation?” Daemon demanded, the heat of his blood growing with every second he dwelled upon its ugly lyrics.

“No!” the singer gasped, desperately angling his jaw upward to put space between it and Dark Sister’s edge. “There was a singer in Flea Bottom, I learned it from him! And he had learned it from another.”

Daemon searched his gaze for signs of a lie, finding mostly terror, and he turned his head aside, spitting the vilest curses he knew in Valyrian. It has spread then. “What is it called?”

The man swallowed, clearly reluctant to answer. “‘The Pillow Princes.’ I did not name it!”

Laenor had made his way through the crowd after Daemon and put a hand on his shoulder. “Daemon.”

Daemon’s arm strained with the effort of not opening the singer’s throat to spill upon the cobblestone. “If you wish to keep your tongue, then you will not sing it again. And you will spread my warning to others who might do the same.”

The man gave the barest of nods, mindful of the blade. “Yes, my prince, of course! I will spread your words far and wide!”

Daemon lowered his sword, then his elbow, which had pinned the singer in place. The man bowed once, twice, even lower, and stumbled over his lute as he backed away, feet jarring several of the coins that had been tossed his way, which he now ignored to stumble further, not daring to turn his back until he was fully out of view.

When Daemon looked behind, he found that the crowd had dispersed entirely, as though fearful of receiving similar treatment for having listened to the song.

If it has made it through the city, it is only a matter of time until it finds its way into the Red Keep. The thought of his sons hearing it themselves, even if they did not entirely understand the uglier parts, made his fists clench. The part about Rhea will hurt them.

Rhaegar especially. She had given his younger son reason enough to doubt her love, he knew from speaking to Ser Perkins on the matter.

Crayne’s inclusion in the song made it clear that word had spread of his bounty, and inferences had been made from that as to the intentions behind the kidnapping attempt. That the singer behind it had chosen the vilest of possibilities, rather than the more obvious interpretation that one of the Free Cities sought dragons, spoke of malice.

I shall have every gold cloak on alert. Any who dare sing it—

“Forbidding a thing only increases its allure,” Laenor said.

Either he had read his thoughts, or Daemon had spoken aloud without realizing. Denial rose in his throat, and he swallowed it, jaw clenching so hard that it ached. Laenor was right. And if the song had made it to River Row, then it had almost certainly found its way to the harbor, and from there—anywhere.

I cannot protect them from anything. Every failure loomed before him, taunting him. Crayne’s continued freedom, wherever he had fled. The warlock’s candle that continued to haunt his sons. The reward offered by Volantis for their capture, unopposed and uncontested by the Crown.

Even the Stepstones remained unconquered, merely the seeds of victory being planted, with the harvest unassured. And the true horror of the song was that if not for the protection offered by Volantis’s reward, he could very easily imagine the Triarchy hatching such a plot to punish him for all that he had done to oppose them.

He did not sheathe Dark Sister, the walk back to the Red Keep a blur of bitter rage and despair, his thirst for violence, for bloodshed, unquenched. The temptation to mount Caraxes and set out for the Stepstones was nearly overwhelming. Let Caraxes rain fire from above. He would join the chaos of the melee, find release in the spray of blood.

Anything was better than yet another day spent on planning and logistics, on useless whispers and fruitless investigations. I am a blade left sheathed for too long.

Laenor departed once they reached the yard, and Daemon hacked at one target, then another, and another, but the destruction only further fueled the fury in his heart, until he felt as though he might choke on it. I am useless. I shall only fail them, as I failed them for so long.

“Daemon.”

That was his brother’s voice. Daemon blinked, finding his sword stuck partway through the top beam of the wooden fencing along the edge of the yard. His hand throbbed from the repeated impact of metal against wood, carried up the blade to the hilt.

There were a dozen knights in the yard, keeping either a respectful or wary distance from his swath of destruction, and two Kingsguard flanking his brother, and yet all Daemon could feel was a vague sense of threat. As though he were surrounded by only the illusion of safety, and it could vanish within an instant, trapping him, trapping his sons—

You cannot protect them.

He released Dark Sister’s hilt, the fire gone even more swiftly than it had built, without even embers to warm him. He felt cold as he looked to the setting sun, then back at his brother.

“Is there not a small council meeting?”

“Laenor fetched me,” Viserys said. He nodded at Ser Harrold, who strained for a few pulls before wrenching Dark Sister free of the fence and handing her to Daemon, who stared at the sword a moment before sheathing her. A hand found his back, resting lightly there. “Daemon, you worry me. What is the matter?”

There was a concern in his voice that Daemon desperately wanted to believe. “Am I one of your problems again?”

His brother heaved a heavy sigh, which seemed answer enough. “I should not have said that before. I am sorry.”

I am sorry, but we cannot risk open conflict with Volantis while we war against the Triarchy. I am sorry, but you must wed, even if you do not wish to. I am sorry, but I do not trust you enough to explain. I am sorry, but your children must remain here, blood to be spent.

“Daemon?”

“I do not want your apology,” he said. The screams he had strangled before had still somehow left his voice raw.

His brother fell silent for a few long seconds, though his hand remained on his back, a subtle pressure between his shoulder blades. “What do you want?”

“I—” So many things all at once that they might as well be nothing. Daemon swallowed. “I want my sons.”

Viserys’s head moved, and Ser Harrold spoke. “Their arms training is finished for the day. They should be back within the holdfast.”

“Come, then.” Viserys’s hand pushed gently, spurring him into a walk. “We shall find them.”

“Are you not needed at the small council meeting?”

“Are you not needed?” Viserys prodded back, only to quickly add as Daemon’s steps faltered, “They shall manage without us.”

Daemon was escorted to his apartments, and the two Kingsguard and the knight standing vigil outside the door were then ordered a few paces back by Viserys, who continued to study him, his small frown only serving to make him appear even wearier.

“Will you not tell me what troubles you?”

Everything. “It is nothing you can help with,” Daemon said. Nothing you would help with.

“Laenor told me about the song,” Viserys said, hands squeezing his shoulders. “I shall have it dealt with.”

Daemon was startled to find that it had almost completely slipped his mind. The embers of his fury earlier flared briefly, but as he reached for their warmth, they faded once more. “Thank you.”

“Would you do something for me in return?”

He should have expected a price. Daemon’s hands flexed. “What is it?”

“Would you stop slipping your household knights when you leave the Red Keep?” Viserys’s frown deepened. “It is not safe for you until the Triarchy is dealt with.”

He does not wish to let you beyond his reach.

Daemon gave a halting nod in response, and Viserys pulled him into an embrace, pressing a kiss to his temple before releasing him, pulling back to arm’s length, gaze roving over him once more, seeking something that he did not seem to find. “Thank you.”

The sound of laughter rose from within his apartments, and the constriction that had found its way to his lungs eased. Jon. He reached for the door, overcome by the need to see them, hold them. “I must—”

“Go on. We can speak later.”

The flutter of apprehension in his chest settled as he pulled the door open to the sight of his sons staring at one another across the room, their hatchlings positioned between them in some unknowable game. All four heads turned to him, and within moments he was swarmed by all four, warmth seeping through the cold at last.

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk is not archievable under Capitalism

Okay, let me make one thing very clear: We will never have a Solarpunk future as long as we live under capitalism. Again and again I will find people, who have fallen in love with the idea of Solarpunk, but are unwilling to consider any alternative to capitalism. So, please, let me quickly explain what that just is not gonna work out that way. There will be no Solarpunk under capitalism. Because the incentives of capitalism are opposing anything that Solarpunk stands for.

So let me please run over a few core points.

What is capitalism?

One issue that a lot of people do seem to have is understanding what capitalism even is. The defining attribute of capitalism is that "the means of production" (e.g. the things needed to create things) are privately owned and as such the private owners will decide both what gets created through it and who will get a share in any profits created through them. The ultimate goal in this is, to generate as large as a profit as possible, ideally more and more profit with every year. In real terms this means, that most of those means of productions in the way of companies and the like are owned mostly by shareholders, that is investors who have bought part of the company.

While capitalism gets generally thaught in schools with this entire idea of the free market, that... actually is not the central aspect of capitalism. I would even go so far to argue something else...

The market is actually not free and cannot be free

The idea of the free market is, that prices are controlled by the concept of supply and demand, with the buyer in the end deciding on whether they want to spend their money on something and being able to use that power to also enact control on the supplier.

However... that is actually not what is happening. Because it turns out that the end consumer has little influence, because they are actually not actively participating in the market. The market mainly is something that is happening between multimillionaires. It is their demand (or the lack thereoff) that is the influence. Investors, mainly. Which is logical. In a system, where the power to buy is deciding, the person who can spend multiple millions is gonna have a lot more power, than the person who has twenty bucks to their name.

Hence: 99% of all people are not participating in anything resembling a free market, and the remaining 1% are not interested in such a system.

Money under capitalism

One thing everyone needs to understand is, that for the most part money under capitalism is a very theoretical concept. It might be real for the average joe, who for the most part will not have more than maybe ten grand to their name, but it is not real to multi millionaires, let alone billionairs. Something that is going to be thrown around a lot is the concept of "net worth". But what you need to realize is that this net worth is not real money. It does not exist. It is the estimated worth of stuff these people own. Maybe houses and land, maybe private jets, maybe shares in companies and other things. These people's power and literal worth is tied to them being able theoretically able to sell these assets for money.

In fact a lot of these very rich people do not even have a lot of liquid money. So money they can spend. In fact there are quite a few billionairs who do not even own a million in liquidated money. The money they use in everyday life they borrow from banks, while putting their assets up as a security.

Why capitalism won't abolish fossil fuels

Understanding this makes it quite easy to understand why the capitalists cannot have fossil fuels ending. Because a lot of them own millions, at times billions in fossil fuel related assets. They might own a coal mine, or a fracking station, or maybe an offshore rig, or a power plant burning fossil fuels. At times they have 50% or more of their net worth bound in assets like this. If we stopped using fossil fuels, all those assets would become useless from one day to the next. Hence it is not in the interest of these very rich people to have that happen.

But it goes further than that, because politicians cannot have that happen either. Because the entire economy is build around these assets existing and being used as leverage and security for other investments.

Why capitalism won't build walkable cities and infrastructure

The same goes very much for the entire infrastructure. Another thing a lot of people have invested a lot of money into is cars. Not physical cars they own, but cars manufacturing. So, if we were building walkable cities with bikelanes and public transportation, a lot less people would buy cars, those manufactoring factories becoming worthless and hence once more money... just vanishing, that would otherwise be further invested.

Furthermore, even stuff like investing into EVs is a touch call to get to happen, because the investors (whose theoretical and not real money is tied to those manufacturers) want to see dividents at the end of the quartal. And if the manufactuerer invested into changing their factories to build EVs for a while profits would go down due to that investment. Hence, capitalism encourages them not doing that.

Why capitalism won't create sustainable goods

A lot of people will decry the fact that these days all goods you buy will break within two years, while that old washing machine your grandparents bought in 1962 is still running smoothly. To which I say: "Obviously. Because they want to make profits. Hence, selling you the same product every two years is more profitable."

If you wonder: "But wasn't that the same in 1962?" I will answer: "Yes. But in 1962 the market was still growing." See, with the post war economic boom more and more people got more divestable income they could spend. So a lot of companies could expect to win new costumers. But now the market is saturated. There is not a person who could use a washing machine, who does not have one. Hence, that thing needs to break, so they can sell another one.

The market incentive is against making sustainable, enduring products, that can be repaired. They would rather have you throw your clothing, your smartphone and your laptop away every two years.

Why workers will always be exploited under capitalism

One other central thing one has to realize about capitalism is that due to the privitization of the means of production the workers in a capitalist system will always be exploited. Because they own nothing, not even their own work. Any profit the company makes is value that has in the end been created by the workers within the company. (Please note, that everyone who does not own their work and cannot decide what happens to the value created by it is a worker. No matter whether they have a blue collar or a white collar job.)

That is also, why there is the saying: All profit is unpaid wages.

Under capitalism the profits will get divided up under the shareholders (aka the investors), while many of the workers do not even have enough money to just... live. Hence, good living standards for everyone are explicitly once more against the incentives of capitalism.

Why there won't be social justice under capitalism

Racism, sexism and also the current rise of queermisia are all a result of capitalism and have everything to do with capitalist incentives. Because the capitalists, so the people who own the means of production, profit from this discrimination. This is for two reasons.

For once having marginalized people creates groups that are easier exploitable. Due to discrimination these people will have a harder time finding a job and living quarters, making them more desperate and more likely to take badly paid jobs. Making it easier to exploit them for the profit of the capitalists.

A workforce divided through prejudice and discrimination will have a harder time to band together in unions and strikes. The crux of the entire system si, that it is build on the exploitation of workers - but if the workers stopped working, the system would instantly collapse. Hence the power of strikes. So, dividing the workforce between white and non-white, between queer and straight, between abled and disabled makes it easier to stop them from banding together, as they are too busy quaralling amoung themselves.

Why we won't decolonize under capitalism

Colonialism has never ended. Even now a lot of natural ressources and companies in the former colonies are owned by western interest. And this will stay that way, because this way the extraction of wealth is cheaper - making it more profitable. Colonialism has never ended, it has only gotten more subtle - and as long as more money can be made through this system, it will not end.

There won't be Solarpunk under capitalism

It is not your fault, if you think that capitalism cannot end. You have been literally taught this for as long as you can think. You never have been given the information about what capitalism is and how it works. You have never been taught the alternative mechanisms and where and when they were implemented.

You probably look at Solarpunk and think: "Yeah, that... that looks neat. I want that." And here is the thing: I want that, too.

But I have studied economics. Literally. And I can tell you... it does not work. It will not create better living situations for everyone. It will not save the world. Because in the end the longterm goals are not compatible with a capitalistic system.

I know it is fucking scary to be told: "Yeah, change the world you know in massive ways - or the world will end." But... it is just how the things are standing.

You can start small, though. Join a local party. Join a union. Join a mutual aid network. Help repair things. Help people just deal. Our power lies in working together. That is, in the end, what will get us a better future.

[kelppsstuff]

Okaay so I saw that you accepting requests again sooooo can ask for some smut au Incubus!Adam x fem! Virgin Reader? I bet my ass if he was a demon he would 100% be a incubus who would has a virginity and breeding kink. You can't convince me otherwise 😆

For I Have Sinned

Summary: Adam was very self aware in the sexual department. He loved fucking virgins, so when you show up wearing your purity ring in hell of all places his interest grows heavily in you. He didn’t expect to fall but when he did he vowed to take that ring.

F!Reader

A/N: so I ended up making this were Adam went to hell as an incubus when he died because that fitted more with the way I went with this, if you’d like I can redo this where he originally went to hell, it would just be a different plot.

Masterlist

Warnings: breading, Virgin, jealously, blow job, pretty long.

A/N: this is the song.

You didn’t deserve to be in hell. Everyone could see it, and when they asked why you were you’d always brush it off. They just really could understand why, so you were the perfect example of a redeemable sinner.

You had arrived in hell just a little bit before the whole extermination battle. So you didn’t know too much about this whole place.

It was Alastor who found you and offered you a try at a second chance. Key word; try.

—

When you joined the hotels guest list, it had just been a few days till after Adam came to hell. So you two relatively had taken a room right around the same time.

Due to the closeness Charlie made the two of you always partners for activities. At first Adam was annoyed by your sweet personality, but maybe that wasn’t entirely true.

—

A knock on your door made you groan awake.

You opened the door, your hair spread everywhere and on the other side was the owner of the Hotel herself. Charlie.

“Hey Char Char. What can I do for you?” Charlie was beaming at you, like she had stars in her eyes. “We’re starting trust falls in thirty and going to go on from there!”

You gave her a polite smile and confirming nod just before she left. When you were ready, you walked out exactly 30 minutes later, and you did a woman from the room beside you.

That woman came from Adams room. You can’t say you really too surprised, he had a new girl in there every week.

The girl was embarrassed being caught, though not too embarrassed considering this was hell. You had recognized her however, she was the bookstore lady.

“Really?” You asked Adam as he too walked out his room and down the stairs with you. “What?”

“We’re supposed to not do sin.” You explained as you noticed he was walking next to you on the way down, and not the lady he was just spending his time with. “Yeah well a man has needs.”

You rolled your eyes and walked over to the lobby couch, while Adam showed the bookstore lady the door.

“Welcome! I hope everyone is having a good morning! We are going to do some trust falls first, then you and your partner will cook one another breakfast together.” The princess beamed at the sinners. You beamed right back while the others were to tired to show motivation.

Charlie walked to the platform she set up, and as always she went first. “I’m really proud of you guys!” She jumped and everyone was quick to catch — besides Adam and Alastor.

“Why don’t you go next Vaggie?” You could see the hesitation on her face, but ultimately decided Charlie was worth being a bit uncomfortable for a moment. “I know karate.”

While everyone continues to catch her, Adam rolled his eyes. He already knew that, he made sure his girls were well trained before going on the line.

As far as Adam was concerned he believed this was pointless. “Y/N, you next.” Vaggie picked you and you hurried on stage.

When you opened your mouth to speak you couldn’t find words. A trust fall was where you were supposed to share something, and despite you kind nature you were still a pretty private person.

You twisted the ring on your finger, thinking of something. You looked down and the pretty stone. “I have a purity ring.” You spoke softly and low but everyone heard.

Adam heard, and he didn’t know what happened but suddenly you were a lot more colorful.

When you jumped off the stage Adam was one of the first to catch you, appearing in the middle of the crowd out of no where — Alastor still kept to the side.

—

Each member, besides Alastor and Adam, had gone up and said something. So the activity moved on.

Everyone was awake now and so Charlie had set up stations and partners. Her and Vaggie, Angel, and Husk, Alastor and her dad along with Niffty, and then you and Adam.

Charlie handed everyone an apron and then said y’all could start.

There was so many things you could make you didn’t know which. You grabbed butter first and the some bread. Just as you were about to reach the eggs a tap to you side distracted you.

The king himself smiled at you, “want some batter?” Truth is, with your good nature Lucifer had became good friends with you.

You had shown Lucifer that maybe his gift of free will wasn’t a total flaw. “What kind?” You grabbed a plastic spoon and grabbed a little scoop.

“Pancakes!” Just as he spoke you at the batter and wow. That was good! “Make me a few too yeah?” Lucifer let out a little laugh with a nod that was interrupted by your partner.

Adam pushed himself in between the two of you, “sorry to intrude.” He wasn’t. “But I think you should start cooking now Y/N.”

You rolled your eyes and grabbed three eggs. “Grab me a bowl then will ya?” Adam did that while Lucifer went back to his station. You cracked the three eggs perfectly and started to whip them.

You also put the butter in the pan and started the oven, then dipped the bread in the eggs, placing it in the hot pan.

You grabbed some cinnamon and started to place it onto the frying bread.

Out of no where some flour flew at you. The culprit started to laugh at your white hair, all while you tried to remain calm.

Adam wasn’t going to make YOU food. No way! So what better way to pass the time than to annoy you?

You grabbed a handful of the flour and chucked it at Adam, his laughing stopped and you felt satisfied.

Then began your food fight. Alastor had put a stop to it after your French toast caught on fire and before the kitchen could become more of a mess.

You started to wash your hand and groan at the flour stuck in your ring. “Are you kidding me?!”

Adam looked over your shoulder. Getting an actual view of the ring. It was pretty, it was rare one would have such a pretty ring in hell — the place filled with muggers.

“So a virgin huh?” You gave Adam a weary glance, “yeah? So what?” You spoke to him in that little defensive tone of yours.

“Nothing nothing. Just wouldn’t think someone like you would be one.” His condescending tone caused your blood to boil, something that appeared only he could do.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You wiped your hands off and placed one on your hip, twisting to look at him.

“Well we’re in hell, pretty much every one here is a slut.” You eyes widened at his vulgarity, not to mention the nerve of this man. “Your one to talk. Everyday there’s a new girl in your room.”

“Jealous?”

“As if.”

You had peeked Adam’s interest indeed.

—

Adam would always insult you for being a sinner. For doing some “kinky shit” for being in hell. No matter how sweet you were, Adam had always called bullshit. Though after he found out about your purity ring that changed.

Instead of calling you Sinner bitch it changed into good girl.

You were supposed to be delighted that was the case but you weren’t. Adam was the only person who treated you like everyone else. People would often always put on their fake kindness for you, just because you were kind to them.

You hadn’t realized you craved sin until Adam. If you were in hell it was for the sin of gluttony. You wanted more, not the same bullshit.

Charlie would always say you were sure to get to heaven, but now you didn’t know if you wanted to be there.

—

Thus came the annual Masquerade ball, hosted by the sin of pride himself on every Halloween.

Usually you and everyone in the hotel besides Alastor and Charlie wouldn’t be able to attend but this year you had all gotten invited, even Adam. So you helped Angel dust pick and outfit all the while looking for an outfit of your own.

Everyone was dressed in suit, and dresses, you had told the group you felt unwell and wouldn’t be attending. It was a lie but you just wanted to see how different it could be if you gave into all your desires.

So when everyone left you threw on your mask and your long dress with your styled hair, and popped off to the party.

When you entered no one knew who you were and you loved it. They would talk about their latest hookup, a conversation you hadn’t even heard since you were alive. They would talk about the latest sin they had done. It was quite fun to just splash in.

“May I have this dance?”

You turned around to the voice and you knew who it was, though you were under the impression he didn’t know you.

You didn’t want him to hear your voice so you only nodded and took his hand.

The two of you joined many other on the dance floor and started to sway to the slow song. Almost as if everyone was in sync.

Adam twirled you and hurried to bring you back to his chest. “I will say I’m disturbed that you haven’t said a word to me Y/N.”

Your heart stopped for a moment. “How’d you know.” He twirled you again and this time your back landed against his chest.

He brought his face to the crook of you neck and whispered almost desperate. “You mean besides your scent that I wish was on my sheets?.” You breath hitch as he pressed a gentle kiss against the curve of your neck. “It was your ring that gave it away.”

You silently cursed yourself for forgetting about that. You and Adam swayed in silence. Your back still against his chest, his arms wrapped around your waist while your held his. His breath fanning your neck causing a burning sensation that just consumed you.

“Why you lie?” You should have known someone would know, you just didn’t think it was Adam. “I’m not a child, I was tired of people treating me like one just because I’m a ‘sweetheart.’”

He hummed in your ear and dipped you. “You wish to be apart of adult conversations?”

“Is that such a surprise?” He brought out back to your feet and gave you a grin that caused a heat to spread.

“Do you know what I want?” You could say your answer before he started to continue. “I want you to drag you back to my room and ripped that dress off of you while you beg me to show you all the way to embrace pleasure.”

He wrapped your arms around his neck and wrapped his around your waist pushing your breast against his wide chest. “I ruin you in all the ways imaginable, then I want to create new ways just so you can never leave me.”

“And then when morning comes?” You asked.

“That’s when the fun begins.” His eyes was playful but in that moment something flickered in them. Something that drew your lips to his as you desperately tried to chase that feeling.

—

He pushed open the door and stumbled into the room with you, lips never leaving you besides for pleasurable sighs. He kicked the door shut and pushed you onto the bed.

He kicked off his shoes while bending down to take your own heels off.

You grabbed his tie and started yank it off. While he unzipped you. He kissed down your neck while pushing your dress down.

You started to unbutton his dress shirt but quickly grew annoyed and ripped it open, the buttons flying everywhere. You pushed his shirt off and looked up at him with desperate eyes.

He pulled away from your neck when he was satisfied with his art work and pulled back to get a better look at you. In panties, looking up at him with begging, no pleading eyes.

His chest went up and down, breathing heavily. His hair was a mess and you noticed he had a cowlick.

“I want you.” Adam knew you did and while he didn’t say it back you knew he did too. You knew from the way he quickly discarded the rest of y’all clothing. You knew from the way he spit over your pussy to make sure you had extra lubricant.

You knew from the way he pushed passed your folds. You knew when you cried out when he bottomed out inside you. You knew from when you saw the flicker in his eyes again.

And in that moment you knew that you would never be getting rid of him, for he would follow you to the end of the earth.

He started to thrust up into you, whines and moans leaving your mouth. While deep breaths and groans left his.

He then angles his hips and thrusts up once again, hitting the right spot inside you.

“Oh god, right there.”

“That’s right baby, I’m your god.”

Your hand were gripping the sheets above you and he brung his hand over your own. Spreading it out, his fingers linking with yours. The cold band on your finger the only the cold between the the two of you.

He continued his fast and relentless pace and soon the coil in your stomach was going to snap. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Adam I’m going to cum.”

“That’s right babe, cum on my cock, only my cock can make you feel like this.”

Just like that the coil snapped and Adam fucked you through your own orgasam, searching for his own.

“Fuck babe I’m gonna cum you keep clenching around me like that.”

The idea of Adam cumming in you was one you couldn’t get out of your head.

“Do it, cum in me. Make me yours.”

His hand wrapped around your throat and squeezed while he picked up the pace. “Fuck you want me to fill you up? Fill the cunt until your belly is swollen?”

“Yes.”

That did him in. He came, hard, painting your walls white.

When the two of you came down from your highs the two of you fell asleep. When you awoke the neck morning you panicked, you were in Adam’s bed, you slept with him, and you didn’t regret it. Most of all, you couldn’t find your ring.

You went back to your room and grabbed some clothes and went to look in the lobby, wondering if it dropped.

Though when you entered it there Adam was, talking to husk and while he was handsome his face wasn’t what brought your attention.

It was the dangling necklace that had your ring on the chain. The message was clear, you were his, and he was yours.

—

Done! Sorry I haven’t updated in a bit, I’ve been working on my other blogs, but I promise I haven’t forgotten all of you people. How could I? Everyone in Hazbin is practically hot.

[kingdomoftyto]

I'm crying laughing, the DVDs are even worse than I remember... Season 1's menus are silent with a single static jpg of the same key character art they use for everything else, and the episodes on the Season 2 discs don't even match what's listed on the box! Absolutely stunning lack of shits given. Truly unparalleled. But I really shouldn't be surprised given... well... everything about how this series has been treated since the very beginning.

Time for a quick ~✨PHANDOM HISTORY LESSON✨~ to give newer/less hyperfixated folks more context for why the graphic novel being as great as it is is such a HUGE deal:

Danny Phantom was one of Nickelodeon's MAIN cartoons, in its time. It was a central pillar. One of the top three or four of their lineup, which is saying something when the competition includes the cultural juggernaut that is Spongebob.

Despite this, and despite its superhero theming making it perfectly marketable, it got basically ZERO official merch.

What little we did get was often ugly and very, very cheap. The dedication at the start of the graphic novel that jokes about collecting the Burger King toys? That's because it was some of the most notable merch the franchise EVER had. (I sadly do not have any of it. There was no BK in my hometown. Here's a pic from the internet, though, to give you an idea.)

If you think I'm exaggerating about that being the most significant physical merch to come out of the series, consider that the first video game had an entire menu option specifically for the Burger King promotional tie-in:

That video game, by the way, was one of only two ever based on the show. The first was an adaptation of "The Ultimate Enemy" in the style of a short sidescrolling beat-em-up, and the second was themed around "Urban Jungle" and (as far as I can tell--I've only played the first couple levels) was an arcade-style scrolling shooter. Both were for the Gameboy Advance, and both are...... fine, as far as cash-grabby video game tie-ins to kids' shows go. This was pretty normal for the time, so I suppose we did okay in that department, actually. They're not GOOD, but they're playable and have at least a bit of effort put into them.

But besides those two video games (plus a handful of simple, long-defunct Flash games on nick.com)? In the decade and a half since the show ended?

Nothing.

No books, no games, no comics, no web shorts--unless you count mega-crossovers with every other Nicktoon (a la Nicktoons Unite), or soulless promotional material like "Fairly Odd Phantom" (which, trust me, despite being the first new DP animation in over 10 years was not even worth the effort of watching).

...I think there was a limited edition FunkoPop once?

So yeah.

A Glitch in Time is not just the first cool, well-made thing we've seen from the franchise in a while. It's the first THING we've seen since the show. PERIOD. And arguably the first worthwhile supplementary material to EVER come out of the show, depending on how you feel about those GBA games and the Nicktoons crossovers.

This franchise is widely beloved even now, almost 20 years after it first aired, and it feels like that fact is now, finally, FINALLY getting some official recognition.

PLEASE read A Glitch in Time. Tell other people about it. The series--no, the fans--deserve this (and more of this, if the folks in charge see enough of a response and decide to grace us with any followup). It's LONG overdue, but better late than never.

[a-student-out-of-time]

The Post-Tragedy Horrors of Despair Time

Hello everyone, Mod Bubbles here!

This Halloween, I decided to do something a little different. Rather than a dedicated post or song parody, I've decided to share a worldbuilding analysis. A pretty fortuitous one, since we've recently completed Chapter 2 of Despair Time.

I'm sure it's no exaggeration to say that DT is a pretty dark fangan, especially within its own context. I wouldn't say it's as grimdark and nihilistic as some people are convinced it is, but there's some elements to it that I feel are worth analyzing going forward.

See, it's been established that DT is set within the Hope's Peak continuity. This would mean that the canon games sans V3 (and if you want to have fun with it, other fangans like the Another series) have all happened here.

According to a Q&A, DT is set around 70-80 years after the end of the Tragedy, so if you wanted to estimate based on in-universe dates (such as Makoto's Hope's Peak brochure saying 2010 in the earliest version of the game but 2014 in a re-release), that would put it sometime around 2080 to the mid-2090s. Veronika backs this up in Chapter 2, when she mentions the Tragedy happened "almost a century ago."

Why do I bring all this up? Because if you looked at DT, you'd probably never guess it was that deep in the future. I know I didn't at first. And this is all by design, but it goes beyond simple cosmetic details. Allow me to explain to you why this is probably the darkest timeline that could've happened after Class 78's victory over Ultimate Despair.

___________________________________________________

Modern Stagnancy

So if we look at the obvious, the world of DT looks pretty much identical to our own, which should be a good thing. When you consider that this is set after The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History- an event that saw societal collapse, wars happen for the sake of destruction, massive pollution, rampant murder, and countless killing games- then it almost seems utopian.

Cities have long since been rebuilt, the skies are clear, there are functional trains, movies, celebrities, schools, music, art, Ted-Talks, the internet, all the trappings of normality. And that's really the problem.

Once the recovery efforts were underway, the goal of those in power was to rebuild things exactly as they used to be. Bear in mind, the world looks like our modern day, yet this is set deep into the late 21st century. In that context, the world almost seems stunted in its growth or even that it's regressed, given that CDs and DVDs are used rather than USBs or digital downloads.

Not only that, but this extends to societal attitudes as well. Nico was the victim of bullying over their status as an enby by everyone who knew, including their own father. It's almost the 22nd century and anti-LGBTQ bigotry like this still exists.

In that context, it feels less like the world is recovering and more that it's been stuck in its pre-Tragedy status quo, right down to continuing the Ultimates program that contributed to The Tragedy in the first place. And who would be motivated to do that?

2. Hope's Peak And Their Kin Are Stronger Than Ever

Probably one of the most contentious aspects of DR3's ending is that, after everything the people in charge of it were responsible for- exploiting their students, covering up crimes, human experimentation- Hope's Peak Academy was rebuilt by the survivors, now with Makoto as headmaster.

Now, one could make the argument that Makoto is a better example of hope and thus better suited to lead the school to follow its stated ideals than the Steering Committee ever was. That very well may be true, but as they also proved, nobody stays in charge forever. And now, because of his decision, Hope's Peak isn't contained to Japan.

There now exist Hope's Peak branches in every major country on Earth, with two in the United States. Teruko and co. are students of the East Coast Division's 27th class, meaning that one opened almost thirty years ago. This would also mean that Japan's Hope's Peak would have seen over 150 classes since its inception.

I bring all this up because, as has been made very clear by canon, Hope's Peak is a terrible place even in concept. When you remove the idyllic aspect of fostering talent and guaranteeing its students are set for life, the truth is that ultimates are stunted in their development. They're only encouraged to excel in their particular field, whether they really want to or not.

In addition, Hope's Peak has always quietly held this belief that only people with talent hold any worth; those without talent are just "ticks" who leech off the success of their betters. Characters like Byakuya and Nagito echo those very same sentiments, this extreme elitism that encourages people to view the "99%" as inherently inferior.

Even if you wanted to say Makoto managed to undo that idea, can we really say this divide would never come up again? No matter how many years pass or how many divisions of Hope's Peak are set up across the world? That seems really far-fetched to me.

Consider Min's bonus video. As she explains, she was never scouted by the school. Instead, America's Hope's Peak announced something called the Ultimate Contest for Eminent Students, where eligible high school students would be allowed to take a test, the best of whom would be admitted to the school when they graduated. The catch is that they had 12 years to prepare. Min, who was only 5 at the time, wasn't initially going to participate, but then the founder of a company called XF-Ture Tech approached her family- who was quite poor- and wanted to sponsor her in exchange for her participation.

She spent her entire life preparing for that test. And when she passed, she realized it was all really just an experiment to create their ideal version of the Ultimate Student. She even doubted that she was the best in terms of raw score, just that she met their desired expectations by cutting out everything else in her life for that test.

It also extends beyond just Hope's Peak itself. Those with power and influence now hold a strangle hold over the most vulnerable people out there, as we can see with the Lacroix family.

Rose wanted to help her family out of their financial limitations using her painting skills and her photographic memory, which lead to her becoming an art forger. However, at 15, she was found out and her family faced tens of millions in fines. This would've been the end, but then they were bailed out by a billionaire named Richard Spurling, founder of the Spurling Foundation. In exchange for clearing her charges, Rose had to sign a contract that meant she doesn't own the rights to anything she paints.

She hates what her life has become, where she can only ever really paint things at the whims of the Foundation because it was the only way her family could survive that mountain of debt. The exploitation there is undeniable.

No matter where you look, there's still exploitation and experiment abound with the school, corporations and the wealthy. And if you think the Spurling Foundation sounds bad here, they're implied to be responsible for something much worse.

Which is also brings us to Xander. See, there's a curious detail when we first meet him in the prologue:

And I agree. Xander being the Ultimate Rebel really doesn't fit him, as he's better described as the "Ultimate Revolutionary." Except there's no chance Hope's Peak would call him that, instead paying lip service to the idea in a digestible format to still support the status quo.

Xander is an activist who works to oppose corruption, but the ones who benefit from corruption wouldn't want him to flaunt that. It's a subtle but very clever detail that shows those in power still maintain a hold even over their beloved Ultimates.

They probably had no issue throwing the obviously corrupt under the bus to save their own hides, and raised Xander up with a quasi-supportive title. It gives them a chance to look like they're supporting what he's doing while still tying an element of a "rebellious child" to his image with the name.

Had Xander survived, he had a good reason to want to bring them down, especially the Spurlings.

3. Illness and Poverty

Xander's bonus video clued us in on what I believe is one of the most important parts of DT's continuity: the fate of the town of Chariton, implied to be where he lived. It seemed to be a small town, home to a couple hundred or a couple thousand people, where the only hospital for miles was "dinky, understaffed" and barely able to handle a minor flu outbreak. They were completely unprepared for what became known as the Chariton Incident.

When he was around 14, the town was hit by a disease that caused those infected to decay from the outside in; their limbs would stop working before their organs did, meaning they would just lay there and feel themselves slowly dying. So many died that nobody was left to move the bodies, so they were left where they fell, rotting in the summer heat.

The cause of this outbreak? A contaminated river that served as the town's water source. Chariton was an impoverished community, where people had no money to treat their water, get medicine from a nearby city or to even move out. It's also implied, based on Xander's anger, that Duke Spurling was partially responsible and that he got off the hook, which may be what drove Xander to become the Ultimate Rebel. Especially when you consider he's the only surviving member of his family.

Duke Spurling is, as the named implies and Dev has confirmed, the younger brother of Richard Spurling. The money and influence needed to get his brother off the hook is the very same that has the Lacroix family under his thumb.

So as we can see, Chariton was a major event in DT's canon. Not only does it showcase corruption, it also showcases understated but still prominent problems in the post-Tragedy U.S. If you pay attention, you'll also notice Teruko, Min, and Rose mention poverty playing a role in their lives.

As we can see, poverty plays a major role in their lives, and that extends beyond a personal level. Chariton's poverty is why the incident happened at all, and a big reason is because it's also an example of a medical desert.

"Medical desert" is a term used to describe regions whose population has inadequate access to healthcare. This can be all healthcare in general or in specialties such as dental care or pharmaceuticals. This is an especially prominent problem in rural areas, but it can affect urban ones too.

If that sounds implausible to you, today it's believed that around 30 million Americans- over 1% of the population- live over an hour from a hospital. Can you imagine how bad the problem is in a world after The Tragedy? All the damage to infrastructure, established institutions, the economy, and the population? I doubt Chariton was the first to see something this bad.

Ace's execution gives us more clues. In the Death By Illness section, there are several newspaper clippings on the wall, most of which are readable. One flashes on screen saying "Unexplained Illness Kills Thousands," which I believe is another reference to Chariton (why else would it flash on screen?), but there's more as well:

"More people are dying of cancer than ever before"

"Flu season claims thousands of lives"

"Falling rates of survival for hospitalized patients"

"Antibiotic-resistant infections a growing threat in this hospital"

One is harder to read, but I believe it mentions Chronic Kidney Disease being tied to an early death

Now, the interesting thing is that most of these are modern headlines, and they can be pretty misleading. The cancer one is actually based on the fact that more people are living longer lives, thus are reaching ages where they develop cancer due to their cell infrastructure breaking down naturally. It doesn't mean there's more cancer cases overall across all ages.

The only one that's not true is the falling rates one. Which suggests that not only was it Chariton, but healthcare infrastructure in general after the Tragedy seems to be a mess.

See, I was assuming that these articles are identical to what we see today. But it's also possible that the cancer one is now literally true, and it could be because The Tragedy was rife with this kind of horror. We know that terrorism, coups and wars happened for no reason other than to spread despair across the world.

Could you imagine how many nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological weapons were used? How many diseases and hazardous materials were seeded into the environment? If it's unsafe to drink tap water after a serious hurricane or earthquake, how bad is the problem when contamination is the goal?

And this doesn't even touch on how disturbingly easy it would be to spread long-term illnesses such as HIV or CJD in contaminated food and medical supplies. Some diseases have latency periods that last decades, meaning they could still be killing people even by the time DRDT is set.

Antibiotic resistance is also a very real and serious problem. Even today, some strains have become immune to even the strongest antibiotics available. This has given rise to Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci or VREs, which are immune to basically every medication we can throw at them.

Now, it's still possible to deal with them, such as with naturally antimicrobial metals or experimental treatments such as CRISPR and Phage Therapy, but in a world that saw such a massive hit to everything? I'm certain antibiotic-resistance bacteria have become much more serious, potentially resulting in epidemics over the years.

And when these things happen, it's always the poor who suffer the most.

4. Lethal Repetition

Now we come to the most obvious example, something highlighted by the same reveal that DT is set nearly a century into the future:

Veronika, who provided us with information on the effects the Tragedy still has, apparently has never heard about The Killing School Life.

Now, it's important to keep in mind that most of the Killing Games in DR were pretty secluded and motivated. SDR2 was only broadcast to Future Foundation with the goal to allow Junko to escape into the real world, for example. However, DR1's Killing School Life was broadcast globally as a means to break humanity's hope by showing the Ultimates slaughtering each other. Instead, Makoto and co. managed to reinvigorate the world's hope and played a pivotal role in ending the Tragedy.

...And yet Veronika apparently hasn't heard any of it.

Now, there's two possibilities here, neither of which are good:

One is that the Mastermind has removed their knowledge of previous killing games, specifically. Now, I actually consider this an unlikely explanation because, not only does Teruko seem to vaguely remember the Killing School Life happened, but what's the goal in doing so for the participants?

The canon games all had solid reasons why the other masterminds erased the participants' memories: the revelation that they'd been killing their friends, the fact that their past identities were supposed to be undone to save them, even the fact that they weren't even who they were supposed to be in V3.

But what's the purpose of suppressing the memories of the Killing School Life in the participants themselves? Especially since this game is also apparently being broadcast to the outside world, although we only have MonoTV's word on that. Is it to undermine everything the survivors achieved or to get the participants not to consider the same strategies?

The other, more plausible explanation to me is that the mastermind isn't the one who erased their memories. The outside world did.

It's possible that, in the decades since the Tragedy and the drive to return things to the status quo, knowledge of the Killing School Life has been suppressed. It would be so easy to blame Makoto's decision to rebuild the school, but it's just as plausible that his attempts to genuinely reform the school were undone over the years.

Corporations and those that came after had a vested reason to improve their own reputations, and why would they allow their connection to the Tragedy to remain public knowledge? The entire thing began as a revolution of lower classes against the rich before it became a whirlwind of mindless violence.

So what does this mean for DT? This is more hypothesizing on my part, but I'd say this could tell us a lot about the potential motivations for this very killing game. Could it be someone trying to remind the world about this event and how we got here? Is it more retribution against the wealthy? Is it someone who was inspired by Junko to slaughter her friends? Or is it something else entirely? And what role does Teruko have if someone involved is so hellbent on trying to kill her?

For now, we can only speculate. But I can tell you that, based on what we've seen here, DT is probably the darkest future we could've gotten out of the canon series.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

I'm not opposed to hear your rambling of DP in dungeon meshi

Ayyy someone asked! 

Oh, you’ve activated my trap card.

So, naturally, I cannot find the post because Tumblr ate it off my blog, BUT what they’re referring to is a post about how the Fenton parents could have TOTALLY ended up overshooting when trying to get to the Ghost Zone and ended up in different worlds instead… and thus decided ‘hey free children!’ And surprise adopted (read: kidnapped) both Jazz and Danny from two different realms. 

I actually had a LOT of ideas on how you could do this. But, I ultimately decided that a post-canon approach was best for this little exercise. Not that you COULDN’T add Jazz and Danny, I suppose, but the timeline and the character movements are, for lack of better terms of it, EXTREMELY tight. You can wiggle an OC in there, sure, but for a fully developed character from ANOTHER media, especially one as OP as Danny, it’s far more difficult. 

That’s my way of saying, this absolutely has Dungeon Meshi spoilers if you’ve never read the manga and don’t know how it ends. That’s my only warning. 

So here’s the ideas and eventual story (there’s elements that are general and some that are specific to whatever storyline I ended up with) that I have doubts I will ever write but someone might as well enjoy them. I technically wrote a few scenes in my notes app, but these aren’t those, this is—kind of the whole roadmap? It’s a little funky still though, haha. 

Here goes!

As with the post, Jazz is Barbara Gordon’s twin, and Danny was actually a half foot. And now he’s a halfa halffoot. Lmao. Lol even. 

Before I chose to do a post-canon approach, I considered having the Fentons as a party. Jazz and Danny are basically playing babysitter to their FAR too enthusiastic parents who keep almost or actually dying because they’re exploring the whole immortal dungeon thing. While that is scrapped, some of the ideas I did have came from this, er, phase of development? So I felt it was worth a shoutout. 

Marcille describes magic (well, mana) as coming from ‘The Infinite’, which is also where demons come from. And these demons can do things like grant wishes, ‘feed’ off of emotion, and change people. They also, once sealed into dungeons, do various things inside these dungeons, including making animals that cannot exist without magic for very long but also seem to still require a sort of internal logic. This sounds a LOT like how ghosts work in Danny Phantom, if you take maybe a hint of liberty and a dose of speculation about how lairs likely work. 

Basically, The Infinite = the Ghost Zone, also known as the Infinite Realms. Demons = Ghosts. Dungeons = Lairs. And, most importantly… Ectoplasm = Magic. 

For my own sanity and also for a successful meshing of these two very different universes, I’ve decided to go with the semi-fanon idea that the influences of the people in the living world can create things in the Infinite Realms. Belief creates reality, basically. For example, perhaps Pandora was never alive in the first place, but because people heard and believed her story so much, she became a ghost (realms being, demon, what have you). So, while those in Amity Park might not have initially believed much in ghosts, they saw them, and because people saw Phantom as powerful and either villain or hero-like, Danny and the rest of the ghosts became more like comic book characters than spooky ghosts (somewhat explains how things are still a LITTLE spooky, but seem a bit more heavy on the probably dead people thing at the beginning of the series). 

Similarly, demons became what they are over time as the people of the world influenced them. You could call what demons started as, as ‘proto ghosts’, and that every world that HAS ghosts has them, and the beliefs change them into whatever form and binds them to whatever rules the dimension now holds. 

There should still be some universal ‘laws’, though. For example, ghosts exist in both stories, and so do magic, as do spaces that operate at least SLIGHTLY outside the usual laws that govern the area outside of it (again, lairs and the Ghost Zone, dungeons in general). 

All this to say—when Danny ends up in the Dungeon Meshi world, he ends up being a very unorthodox and extremely powerful mage, but might lose a good percentage of his usual ghost powers. He is not salty about this, no, really, ITS FINE JAZZ.  

This would be less of a problem if there wasn’t a SLIGHT issue about halffoots being known as not being magically inclined… and those that might have had an interest in the past sorta-kinda got taken by the elves. 

Another note is that this isn’t going to be a particularly Fenton parents friendly sort of story, because the whole thing STARTS with them KIDNAPPING CHILDREN and passing them off as their own. I’m sure there are ways to spin it as a happy tale, but uhhhhhhhhhhh. I’m not. 

An additional point that you do NOT have to take from this if you make your own story is, if you’re a big fan of halffoots having tails (which, to fit with the humans-all-have-the-same-bones thing, are made of cartilage), you can have Danny have been docked as a baby by the Fentons. Adjust angst regarding that to your own tastes, but I imagine its probably something that HAD been done in the past for not-great-reasons, and so the social stigma for the parents doing that to their child is messed up—but due to the dangers of dungeoneering, some halffoots may have lost their tails in accidents or just because they were THAT serious. Point is, it’s at minimum a gossip point. 

Anyways, as halffoots are very short, and Danny is one, by age fourteen his teachers are probably going to go ‘uuuuhhhh, I think there’s a problem here?’ But the Fenton parents are oddly reluctant to arrange a doctor’s visit to check for various possible causes of potential dwarfism. Like, they’re already dodgy about doctor visits, but this seems particularly avoidant. 

Both Jazz and Danny might know that they’re adopted, but even if they don’t, they know where all their papers are. So they snoop through them to see if there’s any leads or anything. 

There’s various ways to for them to figure it out—realizing there’s no paper trail about their adoptions or about how delayed the at-home-birth paperwork was—but one that I did contemplate was that the Fentons KEPT the tail they cut off Danny as a baby, claiming it was a ‘lower spine surgery and don’t worry about it champ!’. 

As you might imagine, he’s worried about it. But also, you can nix that plot point if you’re not a fan. (Well, I mean it technically my own story developing here, but—part of this exercise is to see what other people would take away from what I’ve got too.)

More searching through papers and likely a conversation if not confrontation with the parents later, Jazz and Danny learn about the different realms and such. 

Jazz is still worried about Danny’s health. They SEEMED human, but what if they weren’t and they were just lucky to not have gotten super sick? Or what if they’ll live thousands of years or something?? 

Danny is, understandably, a little upset about everything too. So they both pack what they might need, basing their travel kits on what notes they DID have about the world they were heading to (minimal technology, so laptops were a bad idea, but Jazz did pack a bunch of instructional books on How To Make Things), and got the dimensional coordinates to where they needed to go. Or, if you don’t wanna explain HOW those dimensional coordinates are still accurate or how that system might work now that the Ghost Zone was there, because who knew how to navigate that place on a GOOD day, Danny could just ask Frostbite or Clockwork for a quick favor. On that note, Danny should probably have a way home—personally, I gave him the starting ability to make portals, although they’re not YET powerful to get through, which is why he’s concerned that he might actually be unwell on his human side. 

POINT IS. Jazz and Danny arrive, taking the name Nightingale just in case their parents went around calling themselves as Fenton and pissing people off by, oh say, kidnapping their child. 

A quick survey around tells them a bit about the world, with Danny probably very used to being very adaptable on the fly. And also we’ll let him keep invisibility. As a treat. Though it may now be a bit more difficult to do. Jazz is tasked to either help Danny to let him hide behind her presence when needing to actually be invisible, read through the travel journal from the Fentons to find clues to Danny’s birth family, and her own self imposed mission to reinvent running water and water filtration systems. She is not about this no-indoor-plumbing life. 

As it so happens, with the Golden Kingdom beginning to pop up, there’s plenty of spaces and houses in various states of repair that they’re currently REALLY trying to fill up. Jazz files some paperwork about being refugees, and they take a house that’s pretty far into the woods for most of the people looking for a place. The two need the space, as they are keeping literal dimensional secrets. Other than the lengthy walk to town, it’s fine. Plus, it lets Jazz do her plumbing project. 

Once they both have a pretty good grasp on things, Danny C-student Nightingale realizes OH. WHAT IF I’M A HALFFOOT— wait no I’m not going by that. Call me a hobbit instead. In Jazz’s defense, she spent most of her time grasping everything else about the world, or otherwise spent most of her time they spent either camping in the woods or making their new house LIVEABLE that the whole ‘different races’ thing completely sped by her. Plus, where they live might be more Tallman heavy. 

Good to know he’s healthy though! But they’re already here, and they do actually want to find Danny’s family, and… it’s just… been very nice and not stressful. The ghosts hadn’t been bothering Danny nearly as much back home, to the point where he felt pretty comfortable leaving it in Valerie’s capable hands, but this is the most relaxed he’s been in a while. It’s amazing what not living with people who would skin you semi-alive will do for mental health. 

They also realize they maybe need to like… make money. 

Good news is, when they switched dimensions, they automatically became able to speak Common. And, as a compensation for losing some of his other abilities, Danny can have omnilingualism. He also keeps his ice powers, mostly, and he’s pretty sure he kept his Ghostly Wail. 

There ARE reasons why he keeps the powers he does. In short, he’s still part ghost (or, part demon here, but words are just words and in this case, both just mean ‘realms being’), so turning invisible is fine. So is making things cold—and, as he’s also human and able to use magic, he can create ice like other mages do. He also has limited intangibility, but for reasons involving ‘I don’t recall any mages doing it’, he has more trouble with it than usual. As for the Ghostly Wail, its similar to the mandrake cry, and thus something that likely involves magic to do—as a veritable wellspring of magic, as he’s kinda sorta a dungeon master ruled by HIMSELF now, he has plenty to spare. Plus, banshee legends might still exist in Dungeon Meshi. As for the languages thing… it’s me throwing him a bone for taking away his ability to use lasers. I might let him overshadow people, but seeing as that just kills people in Dungeon Meshi, I might not. 

The two siblings begin taking odd jobs in town. The people think it’s a LITTLE odd that a Tallman (Jazz) and a Halffoot (HOBBIT, Danny) are siblings, but they usually just explain that they were both taken in by the same couple. If anyone even slightly insinuates it’s something else, the two both start gagging before they begin lecturing the gossiper. 

While Danny’s skills as an interpreter ARE extremely valuable, they find that with so many new people in this town that, apparently, JUST rose out of the gotdang sea, that there are many people looking for all sorts of odd things, and THAT is something Jazz is more suited for than translating, seeing as the only language that she knows from THIS world is Common. 

In short, she finds out about potions. You know, that thing mentioned like ONCE at the beginning of the Dungeon Meshi series and NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN (afaik). 

Ingredients are a liiiittle hard to come by in markets, but most of them just need magic to grow, right? And Danny can make magic ice that turns into magic water. 

Jazz starts a farm. When Danny starts taking home books and such to translate on a commission basis, mostly in order to avoid another close call about knowing ancient elvish languages that they may or may not be incredibly suspicious about him being able to know, he takes care of a lot of the gardening. 

It’s at this point that Danny finds out he can just take a mandrake that’s in a pot, dunk it in a barrel of water, and harvest that way. It’s still a bit LOUD, but it won’t harm or kill anyone. And, the water now has magic toxins or whatever, which could have uses of their own that Jazz is now experimenting with. 

So, basically, Jazz is out here doing the Dungeon Meshi Cooking Montages except its potions and it’s mildly terrifying. 

Danny is just glad that he’s ALSO legally a halffoot adult and can just go to town to a tavern whenever she’s being too weird. Good news: he can drink alcohol now! Bad news, sort of: it does nothing for him. I mean, go him for never getting drunk, but like, rude. 

Both Danny and Jazz are learning magic, mostly because Danny needs to offset some magic every now and again so it doesn’t build up (ie, his ice) and should at least look like he knows what he’s doing so he doesn’t get caught, and Jazz is learning so they can occasionally depend on her to claim that Danny’s magical whatever is actually HER doing. Plus, it helps with the potions. Most involve magical ingredients, so the maker doesn’t need to be a mage, but still. 

Danny gets a bit homesick about Sam and Tucker, so he makes a magic mirror in an afternoon and contacts them through one of Sam’s compact cases. It had some unique design she made on the back of it, so he’s able to hone in on it. Sam is EXTREMELY jealous that they’re living some kind of cottage witch fantasy, meanwhile Tucker is like ‘they have wHAT kind of meat? And you left me here?!’. 

Yeah. Tucker and Laois would get along, although Senshi would definitely have some words to say about his nutritional needs. 

SPEAKING OF the Dungeon Meshi characters. What, you think I wasn’t going to add them?

Falin likes to take walks through the area. As it so happens, the Nightingale House is about two hours of very casual strolling from the castle. She discovers them one day when she noticed Danny tending to the mandrake farm (there’s likely other magical plants, but I imagine Danny is wary of the more monster-like ones). 

Danny just can NOT keep her name in his head. He keeps calling her Bird Lady. Falin is not upset by this. She’s actually pretty glad to make somewhat friends with Danny and later Jazz, because they’re both pretty nonchalant about the feathers thing. Most are fine, but some are still… Off about her. Also they didn’t participate in the whole eating her thing, which she didn’t MIND but some people avoid her because they think she WOULD be upset. 

Falin is also glad to find that Danny can see ghosts like she can. She promised to keep his little magic secret, though she likely has no idea how powerful he actually IS, and she visits like twice a week. 

At some point, Itsuzumi claimed their front porch as one of her napping spots. Jazz thought they should maybe not have a cat girl sleeping on the doorstep. Danny agreed… by making a hammock. Jazz just accepted her fate and occasionally feeds her. That said, Itsuzumi doesn’t stay in one place as her ‘home’, so it’s a toss up if she’s there. Still, she somehow convinced the postmasters to only deliver mail to the Nightingales, seeing as they don’t mess with her letters and are out of the way enough that she has privacy when she does read them. If she’s there while it’s raining, she’ll take over the couch. 

Like, Itsuzumi doesn’t have keys to the house or anything, and Danny and Jazz are both a bit secretive, but that translates really well to respecting Itsuzumi’s privacy as long as she isn’t bringing huge problems to their doorstep. Danny did once offer to see about making up a guest room that was more or less hers—the house did need repairs, so some of the rooms weren’t quite habitable even if the house itself was fine to live in. Itsuzumi was not a fan of this, as I imagine her the type to not like feeling so tied down, but she did accept a compromise of having a closet space for her to store things. It’s where Danny and Jazz will put her letters when she DOES get them. 

Danny’s need to help people isn’t an obsession, but he IS quite fond of it, so as he does his work but also studies magic Just In Case, he finds a certain affinity for sensing magic, monsters, and breaking curses. The first one he broke was entirely by accident—the client had no idea that the book passages he gave to Danny were cursed. 

It worked out, it was fiiiine, stop worrying so much Jazz. 

While Danny certainly wasn’t advertising the curse breaking part, his previous client was told about it, and suddenly everyone knew that the Nightingales knew a little about curse breaking. They assume it’s Jazz, and Jazz has to learn on the fly how to break simple curses and protect herself until Danny can come actually work his literal magic. Jazz, oddly enough, is the one to figure out how to make protective charms. 

Also, she’s successfully made the first section of her water filtration system. 

Listen, they are very busy. But they’re hoping if they branch out enough, get a big enough system, they can find Danny’s parents. Because all they REALLY had to go on was One—They were halffoots, Two—Danny’s hair came from his mother, and Three—in both Jazz AND Danny’s cases, the Fentons kidnapped a twin. 

It’s this work as a cursebreaker and Jazz’s work as a near miracle worker at potions—her little mad scientist experiments were bearing fruit after all—that Falin brings Laios over to work with. Long story short, Danny’s general attitude about it is ‘fuck that lion guy’ because he recognizes the work of a ghost—er, demon—when he sees it. Sure, the Toudens don’t TELL Danny it was a winged lion, saying after a really long pause that the cursers name was Leo or whatever. But Danny isn’t completely stupid, especially not about something he can PLAINLY see. 

Also, a good note here is that neither Jazz nor Danny have ANY idea who Laios is. Sure, they’d HEARD of the King, but either Danny gave him a nickname, they think Laios is one of those cases where there’s an uptick of people named after a famous person, or it’s just a super common name. Or, heck, it’s entirely possible that Laios has a king monicker and that’s ALL that Jazz and Danny have heard, and they don’t know that the king’s name is Laios. 

Anyways, Danny is like ‘you have two curses from your frankly very petty curser’. And they’re like ‘yeah we know’. 

For the monster repellent curse, Falin points out (possibly on her own but also possibly remembering something Kabru said once) that it’s a pretty useful curse, but that it upsets Laios to have on him. So, Danny thinks ‘What Would Sam Do’ and makes a creepy doll. The idea is to attach the curse to the doll, but for various reasons involving having the curse NEED an amount of magic to stay going, it needs to be, well… fed. As you MIGHT recall from Dungeon Meshi, blood is pretty potent as a magic tool. 

So, anyways, blood sacrifice for the repellent doll curse, preferably either by Laios or someone of his blood. I’m sure this won’t become a plot point for a b rated adventure story several generations later where they need to find the One True Heir to help save the kingdom or whatever. 

As for the hunger curse, it’s a pretty tricky one. Most curses, Danny can kind of just. Push it out using his own magic, or trick it into thinking its done whatever the curse maker wanted it to do. But this curse is very ingrained, as hunger is something very basic to literally everyone, and it’s goal is basically ‘then SUFFER’ and that’s hard to make it understand when Laios is, technically, already and constantly suffering from it. 

So, it needs to be magically purged. Starve out the magic in Laios’s body, starve out the curse. Issue being that it’s EXCEPTIONALLY hard to do that when magic is LITERALLY in the air. 

With a bit of thinking, Danny comes up with a solution, and tells them to set up their creepy doll shrine and see him in three days. Also maybe haggles the price because while he DOES have a way to do this, it’s a bit risky to not only Laios but to the makers of Danny’s curse-breaking method. 

Danny contacts Sam, who contacts Frostbite, who is VERY against this but ultimately agrees so long as Danny is careful. Danny technically has Jazz do most of the next part, so he’s being cautious. 

The Toudens come back, with Laios happily chattering about a small monster he noticed just before they got to the Nightingales—good to know what the range of that is then, though it may have become smaller with the smaller vessel and the lesser amount of regenerating magic supplying it. I’m not looking up the one panel that sorta shows how big the field is right now. 

Danny is like, bundled up and covering his mouth, while Jazz is very careful with the prepared potions. 

Blood blossoms. Basically anti magic, which do not grow in this world naturally and should never do so, and involved Sam needing to travel back in time to grab a few. They explain their caution as Danny being extremely allergic to one of the ingredients and the effects of the potions being dangerous to mages in general by DESIGN. 

In short, Laios has to take these potions for three days—one bottle for each day—and to light a candle anointed with the potion in the forth bottle in a closed space he needs to stay in for the duration and at least an extra two days. There’s also a fifth bottle that he needs to sprinkle into any food or drink he has for that time until after the fifth day. Remember, magic is everywhere in Dungeon Meshi. This is basically him going into a sterile bubble field for a while, but also needing to include sterilizing the things he eats and drinks as well. 

“Don’t keep even a drop,” Danny warns them both very, very seriously. “This stuff shouldn’t exist here, but that is one NASTY curse you’ve got. Anything you’ve got leftover, including the bottles, bring back here.” 

He also tells them that its possible that Laios might never regain magical ability he had previous, or if he DID he had to relearn it. Laios accepts this risk. He wasn’t much for magic anyways. Danny also tells him to maybe make sure the room(s) he uses isn’t his usual bedroom, and again that he needs to stay in them as MUCH AS POSSIBLE, preferably not leaving at ALL, until after his treatment. 

They take his warnings seriously, at least, and they head off, carefully with the contents they just got. 

They actually do as instructed! Kabru did manage to take a drop, though, just to see what would happen. Holm’s undine DISSOLVED is what happened. Kabru did not take any more risks about that because WHAT the hell, WHAT. Laios and Falin also won’t tell him WHERE THEY GOT THIS FROM. At least, not until after they finish the treatment and see if it works. 

It does work though! He gets his normal hunger cues back after a couple of weeks, and Falin happily tells the Nightingales that it worked. Great! Never tell anyone what they did. Also give back the bottles please and thanks (handed off to Sam very carefully—although blood blossoms ARE a magic-and-ecto disruptor, they can be put through portals, such as the mirror phone things that technically also act as portals). 

A little late for total secrecy, but no one that the Toudens didn’t already trust with the numerous secrets they already had, including but not limited to Marcille’s fun necromancy habit. 

… Listen, I know that the curses Laios gets are like, consequences or something, but I didn’t like the hunger curse because of my own traumas and didn’t like the monster avoidance curse cause that just seemed cruel. Which I get was the point but I have OPINIONS on the whole thing, and it ultimately equals up to “Laios didn’t ask for this, and I’m not sure he’s actually happy in the end”. Anyways. 

Because they literally helped heal the king, Laios does invite them over to dinner in the castle. 

“That guy was a KING?!” Danny shouts. 

Jazz is just like. Yeah that fucking tracks. But hey we can ask his help about the parentage thing! 

So, now they’re going to dinner. That’s fun! Maybe! 

Side note, Jazz has now invented showers and indoor baths. She’s still working on a heating and cooling mechanism but at least all the water is clean. She’s still working on getting faucets for sinks, such as in the kitchen. 

Don’t ask how they have time for this, by the way. The gardening, their actual jobs of potion making and translations, Jazz’s plumbing project, Danny’s (and slightly Jazz’s) magic training, and the biological family search. To be fair, they probably have very few leads on that last one, so extending their social net is kind of their only plan. 

They get dressed up fairly nicely and go to the king’s castle for dinner because apparently Danny just cannot stop impressing royalty both dead AND ALIVE as it turns out. 

There, they meet the whole Touden party. Itsuzumi is there. Both parties are very surprised, but good to know, but also what. W h a t. 

Senshi likes hearing about how similar potion making and cooking is, and he and Jazz seem to be getting along pretty well! Chilchuck, meanwhile, is like. Why does this kid—sorry, young halffoot adult—look so gotdang familiar. Regardless, he offers to help teach him a few things about halffoot culture, seeing as Danny was apparently raised as a Tallman. 

“Yeah, we didn’t even know about other races! We just thought Danny was a little weird,” Jazz said. 

“That must have been really isolated,” Marcille replied. 

Oh, she didn’t even know the half of it. 

Of course, someone questions how Danny was so good with languages if their ‘isolated little village’ never said that any race other than Tallmen existed, to which Danny just kind of says he had a knack for it and was bored, so. Languages. They kind of just start following patterns after a certain point. And he and Jazz HAD been traveling for a while. 

Dinner goes well, with just one odd report about scratching in one of the mirror halls by the guards that Danny juuuust manages to hear before he and Jazz go out the doors. 

That’s probably nothing! 

A bit more time passes, with Senshi visiting Jazz and helping her learn ACTUAL cooking in exchange for those sweet sweet mandrakes and the water harvesting method while Danny gets lessons from Chilchuck and, ironically, another halffoot named Dandan about Halffoot culture. Luckily, Danny just so happened to know the halffoot language equivalent of Common, but they teach him a bit more about the language anyways. 

This is also when he learns that Halffoots tend to have twins, but also that it’s not terribly uncommon for one of the twins to die. Happened to both Dandan’s ex wife and to Chilchuck and also so, so many other halffoots. That just made Danny’s search even harder. Yikes. 

By week two, Danny is very tired of CONSTANTLY hearing the term halffoot, and so has requested Tucker get him a copy of the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy to send through mirror-mail so that Danny can then translate THAT into Common and go publish. Maybe if he has a book or two to sell, he can make a passive income so he can concentrate on things other than translating YET ANOTHER tax form because the local government all wants Common—understandable—but not everyone can READ Common. 

This may be a time to give Danny a misadventure with some orcs that paint him as a fucking weirdo but ultimately friendly. 

Jazz gets the idea that hey, if the whole halffoots have lots of twins thing is true,  meaning that she and Danny are going to have a TIME of it trying to find HIS parents, maybe she and Danny should invent, like genetic testing with magic and or potions or whatever. It’s not like they don’t have an understanding of genetics, if what Kabru’s (adopted) mother teaches him is any indicator, but genetic testing it relatively modern by our own standards. 

So they start developing that. Falin still visits, mentioning how there seems to be a scratching that just won’t stop in the castle, but its always in the same hall of mirrors so at least its localized. Just, really weird. Everyone else thinks its ghosts, but Falin has checked so many times now and there just isn’t one. But Laios is doing fine, he’s very thankful, and Danny is like hahaha don’t mention it! No really, don’t! You already paid me! We had dinner! We’re friends now! Ahaha!

Should it be the case that Halffoots (-HOBBITS!) have tails, Chilchuck still has his, though it’s a liiiittle shorter than it should be, and he’s the sort thats proud about how long his wife and daughters’ tails are. He’s reconnecting with his family! Slowly but surely! In case you CAN’T tell, I actually like happy endings here. Despite the everything else I put in a story, ha. Anyways, as such, he’s a little offput by Danny’s parents since Danny admitted that they’re the ones who cut it off of him, and that even then they never told Danny that he wasn’t a Tallman despite having to have had at LEAST a clue that he wasn’t one. Shouldn’t the orphanage or however they got their kids from know? Don’t tell him that both Jazz AND Danny were just left on their doorsteps. 

“Definitely not that one, aha…” Danny quickly changes the topic. “So I wrote this story—or, well, its like this story that was SUPER popular where we’re from—“

Chilchuck also explains how Danny’s name is just SO weird to most of the other halffoots. Like, it’s not OUT there, per se, but definitely reads as Tallman. Even admitting its fully Daniel does not help. This is also when Chilchuck explains that part of the infant mortality rate, halffoots don’t get their names until their fourth month of life. 

Jazz made some liberties and changes to the Hobbit to fit in a little better with Dungeon Meshi and it’s whole world, but otherwise it’s mostly the same story. Chilchuck and Dandan get free copies as they’re helping Danny so much, especially with getting Danny used to other people like him (mostly). They’re both pretty impressed with it, though Danny insists that it wasn’t exactly his own writing. But, hey, the actual author was dead and he doubts any copies are going to come from his old hometown any time soon so like, might as well! 

Also, copyright law is probably far different in Dungeon Meshi than here, ha. I declare it—legally in the clear! 

Danny has a mission with this and that’s getting people to use the word Hobbit dammit! 

Surprisingly, despite not showing up in it, the gnomish community quite like it. And so do dwarves, and elves, and halffoots, and it becomes pretty popular. 

It’s The Hobbit. This is not an unexpected result. Thank you Chilchuck for helping with the printing rights and contracts for getting the book published. (And we can guess that the printing press DOES exist in Dungeon Meshi, since we can see the books they have—though there may be other obstacles about getting your hands on a book, we can see by the amount they have and how gimmicky Laios’ monster book is that printing a book itself is likely a done and solved issue in some way or another). 

Danny is extremely glad he did not put his own name as the pen name for that mess. 

While all that drama is happening, including the fact that Chilchuck’s wife—I have named her Brightmerry—is now a very avid fan and would love to meet Danny, Danny and Jazz have just about perfected their genetics test. Laios and Falin know about the test, although not WHY they’re doing it. Despite some concerns that the magic and chimeraism that probably STILL affects both, though Laios’s maybe got purged during the magic curse breaking thing, it certainly was unpleasant enough for him that he’d BELIEVE that he got part of him ripped out, they still seem to test just fine as siblings. Still, they need more tests. 

But it’s not like they know an entire family, do they? 

Danny complains about this issue to Dandan, in part to see if Dandan knew anyone that MIGHT be willing to help. 

As it so happens, Dandan volunteers Chilchuck. Chilchuck only agrees to drag his family into it because he generally trusts Danny and Jazz even if they ARE kind of weird and make incidental inventions at their house that they should REALLY sell, because WHAT do you MEAN you have a hot water shower?! He also knows that both Brightmerry and Fullertom would like to meet Danny because of the book he totally did not steal from another dimension to make a profit. Might as well drag the rest. Plus, they assure that the test itself won’t hurt, and will even demonstrate with themselves and with the Toudens what a false and what a positive result will look like. 

So, they arrange a date to do so at the castle. Kabru is pretty interested in the experiment, truthfully, because it seems neat! Not at all because of his own issues with his hometown involving his eye color! Why do you ask! 

Off they go, and the best space to do this in due to some preparation and magic circle nonsense is the same room Laios did his whole magic purge, which was the mirror hall. It’s small but open, with no windows except for a small one in an attached restroom area. Sure, there’s some creepy scratching going on from time to time, but no one has gotten hurt or recorded anything else odd. 

The magic genetics test involves having the participants positioned equally around a magic circle in little circles of their own, having a small cup of a potion that gives off a lot of steam or vapor—entirely harmless-, and pricking a drop of blood into the potion. What happens with a positive is that the vapor takes on a color and follows a trail through the magic circle, and the colors and how strong the connection between the vapor trails between two people tell how related they are. In a negative or, when two parents are in the circle, the vapor trails will not have ‘matching’ or similar colors, and the trails will not actually meet up with each other. 

It’s still a work in progress, but it should tell at least siblings. Luckily, Chilchuck did manage to get all three of his daughters and his wife along, with Dandan being invited as another variable to test with. 

Danny and Jazz go first, showing how their trails don’t meet up. And there’s not a particular meaning to what color a vapor trail is to a person—it can change and vary for each test, it’s only consistent when it’s a ‘positive’. 

Than Laios and Falin. Fittingly enough, their trails are fairly strong, with just a few different trails fraying off, and slightly different shades of green-ish yellow coming from their potion cups. 

The Chilchuck Family then take a turn, and they can observe the trails. Sure enough, Chilchuck and Brightmerry don’t have any connection, but seem to match and meet with each of their daughters’ trails, who also connect to each other in a web of vapor. They decide that maybe more than three is hard to read. 

They agree to do a couple of combinations and tests, which Jazz and Danny are like ‘sorry for all the finger pricks!’ But they DID bring a bunch of sterilized needles at least. And Falin is happy to heal them in the meantime—using the space as an anti magic purge room seems to not have left an affect on the magic now in the space. 

Dandan joins a few times so they can record how he doesn’t match at all. Laios then mentions why Danny isn’t doing that when they explain he’s adopted and therefore for all he knows, he’s distantly related. 

Which prompts them to have him test with Dandan and Chilchuck. 

He doesn’t match Dandan. 

But he does match Chilchuck. 

This does not change when he repeats the experiment. 

They then switch out Chilchuck for Brightmerry. 

… And he matches to Brightmerry. 

SEVERAL different trials later involving all the halffoots there confirms it. 

Somehow. Someway. 

He is Chilchuck and Brightmerry’s child. 

Are you surprised? Probably not that was a twist coming a mile away not going to lie. 

Anyways, the story THEY give is that he’s Puckpatti’s twin. They’d been napping outside while with one of Chilchuck’s brothers, when something or another distracted said brother for, at most, two minutes. But then Puckpatti’s twin was gone. He was stolen, although they hadn’t actually KNOWN what had happened, when he was three months. It’s why Puckpatti’s name was, well. Puckpatti. Puck was supposed to be her twin’s name, and they considering having her be Pattipuck, but Puckpatti worked better. It wasn’t particularly odd for twins where only one survived to carry the other twin’s name as either their first or second name. This is also why her usually nickname is Patti instead of Puck. 

Danny and Jazz explain that… yeah, they were taken in. As in kidnapped. Hadn’t wanted the pity points but saying they were adopted felt kiiiiinda wrong. 

Now, this would be a very touching family reunion scene. 

Except now that mirror scratching has started up. 

And its loud. 

And—Oh would you look at that. 

Mirror portal. 

Can you guess who pop through? 

It’s the Fentons! Say Hello to Jack and Maddie. 

It’s a whole confrontation scene, which BASICALLY goes with Maddie and Jack absolutely NOT realizing anything they did wrong, insisting they SAVED Danny, that there were two and it was fine, and BESIDES, JAZZ wanted a little sibling and when ASKED she asked for a brother, so really, its her fault. 

Jazz gets a guilt complex! Chilchuck tells the Fentons that thats NOT HOW THIS SITUATION WORKED, SHE WAS TWO! 

Jazz also has a horrifying memory of when she was four and Danny was two, and asking if they’d like a younger sibling, and that they’d have to agree, but Jazz said yes and Danny said NO and was this why there were only two of them?!?

Danny disowns them, pointedly saying that cutting off a baby’s tail is kind of MESSED UP DON’T YOU THINK.  And they go, well if you’re going to be ungrateful—and he gets like, hella hurt. 

More arguing and fighting, and Danny just kind of lays there and lets himself heal before propping himself back up like. Did. Did you think that would work. You have a magic science workshop that I regularly cleaned did you NOT THINk. THAT WOULD NOT HAVE AN AFFECT. 

The Fentons go ‘oh, he’s a ghost’ and disown him right back, though not in so many words. Whichever members of the Dungeon Meshi group you imagine are there right now take it as ‘he’s a MAGE?!’ 

Danny tricks the Fentons back through the mirror portal and shatter it. From what he guesses, the magic purging done to Laios let there be a slight thinning in the natural magical-ecto-whatever barrier that protected this world from another one. The Fentons didn’t know where the kids went, but might have figured out they went to another world, but couldn’t locate the notes to locate the Dungeon Meshi world. So, instead, they tracked Danny and Jazz themselves. With all the blood testing Danny did in the same room with a thinning veil, that meant they were finally able to break through by using him as an ‘anchor’ to follow through the mirrors. 

Universal constants, remember? Both magic mirrors AND portals are things in both worlds. 

Danny takes this time to go ‘well, they already know anyways’, and uses the opportunity and also all his blood now on the floor to make some quick magic barrier things with Jazz’s help. She’s better at protection sigils, after all, but he’s the more magically powerful. Together, they sort of ‘lock’ the dungeon meshi world. Or, more accurately, they lock out a certain scientific couple. And, because three is a stronger number for magic, they also block out Vlad. Three birds, one stone. 

THEN Danny passes out, you know, like a champion. 

Once awake and reunited with everyone, things begin to simmer down. Sure, Danny was just exposed as a powerful mage to the King, but the king is just like ‘Eh, won’t mention it, I don’t know anything I’m barely sure how I became king most days and I was THERE’. Marcille probably finds out, either because she was there or she’s just really good at finding out things she absolutely should not, also possible interest from a long time over Jazz and Danny and their whole deal. But she’s also just like NEAT. Translate these texts for me and we’re even. 

Danny is not convinced about her smile but goes with it regardless. 

Chilchuck and family are cautiously open to Danny. Of course they’re glad to have him home, but also—he’s lived his entire life ELSEWHERE, so while Chilchuck knows the most about him, he’s still a stranger. 

A few cute fluffy bits about learning about his siblings and his mother and father. Notably—Chilchuck is APPALLED that any child of his doesn’t know how to properly lock pick. Even Fullertom, the MOST disinterested in his line of work, is well aware of how to do it. Brightmerry is fond of reading, and Danny has lots of stories she’s never heard of going through his head. He insists they’re just local stories he’s heard of here and there, but she’s like. Suspicious of it. Not enough to cause him to stop telling her them, though. He also learns of the interests of his sisters, and is also like WHAT. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M STILL THE BABY. 

The three girls are also fond of Jazz, surprisingly enough. Like, I’d hardly call them besties, but they get along pretty well. Especially when teasing Danny. Jazz tells them of the occasions she’d dress Danny up as a princess when they were little, and next thing Chilchuck knows, he’s walking in to see his son—not resisting being dolled up, because he loves his sisters already, but also very clearly hoping for an out. 

“Have fun,” he says and leaves immediately before his daughters can drag him into it too. 

Jazz has completed her indoor plumbing project! They no longer have a latrine and cesspit! They have proper toilets AND a filtration system for both incoming AND outgoing water, and along the way she’s made a waterwheel for electricity to power the filtration system AND the heating and cooling systems. They’re ALMOST modern at the Nightingale house! 

From here, things are a bit more loose. 

Danny makes gifts for his family for some kind of festive holiday. For Chilchuck, he gets a wood carving for the night each of his children were born, as well as his own birthday and Brightmerry’s. Since Meijack and Fullertom are twins, as are Puckpatti and Danny, this means four carvings. Each carving is technically a thin piece of darkly painted wood with holes drilled through, but when a light is shined onto the correct side, such as a candle or Jazz’s next project involving lightbulbs, it projects out the night sky. 

Danny consulted a LOT of astrological charts for this thing, but due to how close their dimensions are, the stars were mostly the same between the two. It’s not a universal constant, but the closer two dimensions are, the more similarities there are. 

After all, the Fentons were trying to slip BETWEEN dimensions, which is kind of like sewing but only going through to BETWEEN two pieces of fabric, even if the fabrics are already rubbing against each other. In other words, precision was needed, and there was no point in aiming for a FAR dimension for this, that was more likely to end in failure. 

An alternate for Chilchuck is that Danny finds alcohol in the Infinite Realms to give him, if you want Danny to have more free access to the Realms. Just warns him to only drink it if he WANTS to be completely sloshed, and to maybe not do that at home, haha. 

Anyways, for Brightmerry, he gives her not the next one, but the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, translated and edited for the Dungeon Meshi world. He assures his father they’ll get a copy for print later, but this was the first edition and it was for Brightmerry. 

Meijack got an armband for easily hold and quick access to her most common picklock tools. Kind of like a bracer or that sliding blade thing from Assassins Creed. 

Fullertom, Danny gave her a bunch of blue ribbons and accessories. Jazz had to point out for him that this meant he was supportive of her desire for marriage—Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Usually a tradition reserved for the marriage, but anyways. 

As for Puckpatti, he makes her a magic compass. No matter where she is, she can always ask her to point it where she wants to go. North, South, the next town, home, to a specific person, so on. The first thing she has it point to is to Danny. It’s a much more touching moment than I am capable of writing right this second. 

Uhhhh a plot point I hadn’t integrated yet was that Danny absolutely cannot cook with meat. It was started in the ‘they met during canon dungeon adventure times’ but I hadn’t translated it fully yet. Basically, when Danny tries to cook with meat, it comes alive—like the turkey or the hot dogs in canon, and SOMEWHAT like the familiars do. Of course, it’d be really weird to be able to do that without even trying, and possibly mildly illegal, so they just have Danny not cook meat. Then a draft came to be where Danny was like ‘fine I’ll just SHOW YOU’ to Senshi, and if it was in the dungeon, then he’d use them against a monster, and if it was during post canon, it’d be against his parents. Then the point of WHY all or most of them were together during the Fenton’s break in changed from the dinner party to the genetics test, and there was no reason for Danny to have been cooking. 

Danny finds and introduces Fullertom to a dwarf that she starts dating. Chilchuck isn’t sure if he should be concerned or impressed with the portfolio Danny pulls out when Chilchuck asks about the dwarf and what Danny knows about him. 

Another plot point for why Jazz and Danny were staying so long, outside of finding Danny’s birth family since we have now figured out he WAS developing normally and the whole portal thing was just sorta because of how tricky that power is, is that Princess Dora wanted Danny to find a good host for the Necklace of Aragon so that her brother could no longer claim it. It would, predictably, eventually go to Laios. Also, I am starting to realize I am more partial to Laios than the other characters, whoops. Anyways, I hadn’t figured out if I could or even SHOULD integrate that into the plot. 

Payment for the blood blossoms were going to include five of Fallin’s feathers. They’re magically powerful, and three of them were going to be used for each name that was ‘blocked’ from the Dungeon Meshi world. So one feather for Jack, one for Maddie, and one for Vlad. I haven’t decided if I’d keep that or not, but I also wasn’t sure what to do with the other two feathers, and just asking for three and that HAPPENS to work out, the number being considered magic aside, felt a bit off and too convenient. 

Danny would eventually take on a new name in honor of his birth family. Danbright Chils. Dan is him, obviously, and since he’d be taking Chils for Chilchuck, he decided to take Bright for Brightmerry. (I actually debated between Bright or Bridge. So either Brightmerry and Danbright or Bridgemerry and Danbridge. This is directly because of Danny’s ‘be the bridge’ thing.)

Things are just starting to settle… 

Then, Sidney of all people shows up in Danny’s magic communication mirror. And we get information that due to Jazz and Danny’s mild meddling with the magic-ecto-whatever barriers, that Jazz’s twin has become aware of the fact she once had a twin—basically, Inspector Gordon kind of ‘felt reminded of [Jazz]’ and told Barbara about it. And since Barbara is part of the superheroes club, she was able to find out that not only was her twin alive, but in an entirely different dimension entirely. 

Annnnd that’s all I got. 

It’s a lot! Don’t expect me to publish it! Have a nice day! 

[putschki1969]

KEIKO Planetarium Live〜Starry Night〜 & Chocolate meating#3〜Starry Night edition〜 Live Report

I experienced so many amazing things during my recent Japan trip but for some reason, this special planetarium event left the most lasting impression so that's why I wanted it to be the topic of my first live report. Below you'll find an abundance of fangirling and mindless blabbering so please brace yourselves! The post will be divided into the following sections to make it easier for you to get through.

General Info

Preface

Merchandise

Venue

Performance

Fan Club Exclusive Part

General Info

Instagram post by Keiko | Tweet by Keiko | Tweet by Yuriko

『KEIKO Planetarium Live ~Starry Night~』 [Date] Sunday, December 17, 2023 [Time] Open 14:30 / Start 15:00 [Ticket fee] 8,000 yen (tax included) [Venue] Konica Minolta Planetaria TOKYO DOME1

FC Exclusive 『Chocolate meating #3 ～Starry Night edition～』 [Date] Sunday, December 17, 2023 [Time] Open 17:00 / Start 17:30 [Ticket fee] 8,500 yen (tax included) ※FC exclusive benefit included [Venue] Konica Minolta Planetaria TOKYO DOME1

Preface

When this was first announced I was devastated because at that time, my trip to Japan was scheduled to end on Dec 14th. But with both Wakana and Keiko announcing solo performances after that day, I was determined to find a way to extend my stay. Initially, I was hesitant because I knew there was no way to change my return flight. I would ultimately lose a significant amount of money and on top of that, I would have to book a new one-way return ticket for a later date which would cost me a fortune as well. After considering all my pros and cons, I ultimately decided to go through with the whole thing because I knew I would probably hate myself forever if I didn't use that opportunity. Of course it also hinged upon whether or not I would manage to get a ticket for the fan club performance in the evening. I knew my chances were super slim due to the tiny venue (~100 people) but luckily, I won a ticket. At that point I knew that I had no excuses not to go XD This is by far one of he craziest and most irrational things I've ever done so for some time I was afraid that I would end up with horrible regrets but I am happy to report that it was worth every penny for me. Not only was Wakana's concert amazing, these two Keiko performances absolutely blew me away with their intimate nature and unique atmosphere. Can you believe that this was actually the first time for me to attend a Keiko solo event? I had purchased streaming tickets for all of her online lives of course but I had never been to an on-site event. And for a while now, I have been asking myself if I would even enjoy a one-man live like that since - as we all know - I am not particularly fond of a lot of her solo releases but, lo and behold, my love for Keiko and her music was 100% reaffirmed. I am so glad that I took the plunge, I couldn't be more grateful to have been able to be there for this amazing experience. On this note, I wanna give a big shout-out to my friend Pae who encouraged me from the get-go to come to the event and who got our tickets for the day performance. It was a general sale on a first come-first serve basis and she really knocked it out of the park with her professional ticket purchasing skills. I definitely could never have done it that quickly so kudos to her. Here's a picture of little old me, Pae and her friend from Thailand.

Merchandise

I wanna take a few moments to talk about the live goods because I am utterly smitten with everything. The acrylic stands and the block are particularly pretty but I am also obsessed with the polaroids. I almost couldn't contain myself and since they didn't have any limits as to how many pieces one person could buy, I naturally went all out. Don't worry, I didn't buy that much since I was still reeling from how expensive it was to extend my trip. Also, I was one of the first few people in line so it would have been rude to buy an excessive amount, there were a ton of other fans around after all, they obviously also wanted to buy a lot of merch. While they prepared plenty of the random polaroid magnets, they unfortunately didn't really bring enough of the acrylic stuff. By the end of the day performance, the acrylic stands were already completely sold out and after the evening performance, the acrylic block was gone too. I guess that means that even if we get an online sale at one point, they will only sell the tote bag and the magnets...or maybe they'll produce another batch of all the acrylic items...We'll have to wait and see...I could see myself buying some more polaroids if they become available online. I only got two pieces with a handwritten message by Keiko so it would be nice to have more. But they are not exactly cheap so I'll have to think about it.

Venue

The venue was...not what I had expected XD. The pictures online of Konica Minolta Planetaria are a bit misleading but I guess that's because they only ever feature Dome 2 and not Dome 1 which is significantly smaller and doesn't have any of the fancy seats. Our seats were little more than reclining beach chairs with a little table but oh well, I didn't come there to be seated comfortably so it didn't bother me too much. At the end of the day, it was a good thing that the dome was so tiny because it made everything feel so much more intimate. And let me tell you, when I say intimate, I mean intimate. I've never ever been this close to Keiko (and I've had my fair share of close encounters with her). There were no assigned seats for the performances, everyone just had a number on their ticket and we were allowed to enter the dome in order of that number. As mentioned earlier, Pae was super fast getting our tickets so we ended up with the numbers 5 to 7, meaning that for the day performance I got a seat right at the front with a clear view of Keiko. There was no stage or anything, just a bit of basic equipment, some microphones and two stools. This meant that there was barely any space between the front row and the artist area (1 metre maybe). Needless to say, I spent the entire time looking at Keiko XD. I almost felt a bit bad because I was missing out on the lovely projections but to be fair, it was actually quite hard to get a good view of them this close to the front so the best option for me was to just stare at Keiko. During the break I bought myself a yummy galaxy donut which was almost too pretty to eat but at that point I was starving so I literally devoured it. For the FC exclusive evening performance I wasn't nearly as lucky when it came to my number. I got #71 so I ended up in one of the last rows unfortunately. From the first performance I knew that Keiko would be entering from the back door on the left side and walk through the audience so I at least made sure to take a seat close to the door so she would walk right past me (which she did so YAY but more on that later). On another positive note, the seat in the back made it possible for me to get fully immersed in the projections without being too distracted by Keiko. It was truly breathtaking to see all these space-themed vivid images across the ceiling.

Performance

It feels like I have already talked so much about the whole thing but I haven't mentioned a single thing about the actual performances so let me rectify that. I've already alluded to it in the beginning of this post, Keiko was absolutely stunning and I am obviously not just talking about her looks. Her vocals were out of this world, every single song of the setlist flattered her so much, there was not a single misplaced note as far as I could tell. Due to the nature of the event, it was of course a very understated performance, there was no wild movement or crazy choreography, it was just Keiko standing/sitting there being illuminated by the tiniest of lights, just enough to still see her but never enough to distract from the visuals. After all, the main focus were supposed to be the projected images and for the most part, that was the case. Only occasionally they would shine some more light on Keiko (mostly during MCs). As you can see below, the setlist was full of ballads and OMG, I couldn't have been happier about that. She sang almost all my faves so I was pretty much in heaven for the first half of the live. Almost started crying during 通り雨 because it was painstakingly beautiful. キミガネムルカラ and 夕顔 were also true gems to experience live, so haunting and mystic. She brought out her brand new guitar for songs #4 to #6 and while I have never been the biggest fan of acoustic guitars, Keiko really managed to make me fall in love with the sound. Both her and her guitarist did a fantastic job arranging and performing these tracks. Also, I was quite surprised to hear Yas Nakajima provide backup vocals for Keiko during Burn In The Wind, their voices match perfectly.

The cover section was admittedly a bit of a let-down for me since the chosen songs are not exactly among my favourites. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy myself or that Keiko didn't deliver the songs flawlessly, it's just that I don't really care all that much for the songs themselves. There were some really gorgeous high notes though so I really can't complain. Speaking of covers, I was super hyped when Keiko announced that she would be singing 風の街へ, a self-cover of her first FictionJunction KEIKO work. I had a feeling she would maybe sing it (since it's obviously a perfect fit for this sort of atmosphere) but Pae kept telling me that it probably wouldn't be happening. Glad I was right about that. During the MC, Keiko was talking about her upcoming single 夕闇のうた so for a while I was sure she would just sing that but she ultimately did not perform it. We got to hear the full version a few days earlier at Kaji Fes. so I wasn't too disappointed that it didn't make it onto the setlist of the planetarium live (also, if I am being honest, the song hasn't really grown on me yet so it's not like I'm dying to hear it again and again). Instead, she chose the song that marked the very beginning of Keiko's journey together with Yuki Kajiura and really, I can never get enough of it. It's one of my very favourite YK x Keiko collaborations and it's always such a pleasure to hear it live. It was only my second time so I couldn't have been more grateful. The final three songs were a nice change of pace with more involvement from the audience and more focus on Keiko rather than the projections. I certainly didn't expect ラテ to make an appearance but with the pretty lights, it worked surprisingly well. The whole thing had a very futuristic feel to it if you know what I mean. ユア has slowly been growing on me and it's just such a feel-good song that I cannot stop vibing with it (similar to Wakana's Happy Hello Day actually). The ending was beyond epic, エンドロール is such a cool song. I just wish I had known the lyrics so I would have been able to sing along properly (I have zero skills when it comes to memorising lyrics) . Keiko tried to prepare us with a few test-runs but I kept mixing up some lines T_T Oh well, I had a blast so that's all that counts! The one thing I felt kinda sad about was the fact that we didn't get an encore but I guess they had to keep the performance short...?

M-1キミガネムルカラ M-2夕顔 M-3通り雨 M-4夜の嘘と M-5Lost M-6Burn In The Wind M-7駅 by 竹内まりや (Cover) M-8ルビーの指環 by 寺尾聰 (Cover) M-9秋桜 by 山口百恵 (Cover) M-10風の街へ (Self-Cover) M-11ラテ M-12ユア M-13エンドロール

Fan Club Exclusive Part

When I entered the dome for the fan club exclusive evening performance, I was given a large envelope by a staff member containing a message card by Keiko. The scan above features the picture which makes up one half of the card. So pretty! (Please keep in mind that this is fan club exclusive!) As mentioned earlier, I had a seat pretty far in the back during this performance, I was still close enough to have a good view of Keiko but I decided to focus on the projections this time around since Keiko jokingly mentioned a couple of times that she felt so many eyes on her and that we should try to enjoy the gorgeous view above as well. With the way she said it, I could tell that she wasn't annoyed or angry about it but she genuinely just wanted us the get the most out of the experience. And yeah, I have to admit, it was amazing to just lean back and watch the gorgeous space visuals while being gently wrapped by Keiko's vocals. Also, for some weird reason, the seats in the back were much more comfortable than the ones in the front row so that made it a lot easier to just relax. The setlist was the exact same and Keiko's performance was just as good. There were some technical issues with the projections at one point so the staff asked Keiko to take a little break and entertain the audience for a while so they could fix the problem. Keiko was really cute during this section because she struggled to come up with something to talk about. All her other MCs had been rather short and straight-to-the-point so there wasn't really anything to talk about. She even admitted that it was quite hard for her to just talk to an audience without having anyone on stage with her to create a sort of a back and forth. Unfortunately, her guitarist was pretty useless in that regard since he didn't feel comfortable at all talking XD Keiko ended up blabbering on and on about the most random stuff and eventually talked a bit about the guitar arrangement for 秋桜 which she found quite impressive. After they had fixed the issue, we went back to the regular program for a couple of songs until Keiko announced that it was time for some special games since this was a fan club event after all. First, we played a few rounds of a Maru-Batsu-Quiz (True-or-False-Quiz). They had prepared some Keiko-trivia questions. Everyone was asked to stand up and with every question people either answered with "true" (fist) or "false" (open hand). Those who answered incorrectly had to sit down so fewer and fewer people remained standing as time went by. Some of the questions were a bit tricky so all you could do was guess. Unfortunately, I wasn't one of the lucky winners at the end. Although I will say that these games are mostly based on trust since you can always pretend to have made the correct gesture or change your gesture in the right moment (it's hard to verify stuff like that). There were a handful of guys who won the first two rounds, they got to walk towards the front and Keiko gave them a little present (some snack souvenirs from the most recent Asia tour-leg, nothing too exciting). Then we were all surprised because for one round the last person standing happened to be none other than Yuriko Kaida. Turns out she had been sitting right behind me all this time (her seat was the closest one to the back door in the very last row). I did not expect her to actually collect her prize (especially since Keiko mentioned that Yuriko had gotten the exact same souvenir in Taiwan) but she did. It was a treat seeing them interact like that. They are so funny together and it was during those moments that you could immediately tell that Keiko became so much more relaxed and talkative once she had someone on-stage with her who she felt comfortable with. As a final game, we did one round of rock-paper-scissors which once again, I wasn't lucky enough to win but I guess it just wasn't meant to be T_T

When the show was over, Keiko walked through the audience towards the door in the back and that's when my seat choice really paid off. She got super close to the people who had an aisle seat, she made eye contact, waved at us and even did little high fives with the one or the other female fan who dared to initiate a gesture like that (of course I didn't because I am too chicken-shit for that). Once Keiko was gone, Yuriko was also ushered outside. Some of us were still hopeful that we would get an encore, especially since they had closed the exit again but alas we didn't get one. However, we were all in for a special treat when it was time to finally get up and leave. When they started playing the usual after-live announcement it was obvious that there wouldn't be an encore so I took my stuff and headed towards the back door which a staff member was just about to open. That's when I realised that Keiko was standing right outside the door, waiting for the audience members to give each one of us a private send-off. This is a common occurrence with fan club events in Japan but I've never had it happen with Keiko before so this was super special. Also, during and even long after the pandemic, situations with close encounters like that were strictly avoided so I didn't really expect them to do a send-off. Seems like we have finally moved past those restrictions! BANZAI! Anyway, I literally froze in place when I saw Keiko standing there because I was scared to be the first one to be greeted by her. I waited a few seconds so a handful of people could walk out before me. This way I was able to observe what other fans were saying to her and how much time the staff allowed each person with Keiko. I know, it probably sounds ridiculous to you but this sort of stuff stresses me out immensely, I prefer to be at least a tiny bit prepared. I was probably the fifth person to walk outside and most people inside the dome were still putting on their clothes or picking up their stuff so there was not really a line behind me or any type of rush. When I got in front of Keiko, we both did the crazy waving thing again while I thanked her for everything. Then I told her that I am always supporting her from Vienna and she was like, "wow, Vienna, so cool!" At that point it would have probably been my turn to step away since I could tell that the staff member next to Keiko was getting antsy and already preparing to ask me to continue walking. But I wanted to use the opportunity to briefly mention my undying love for the beret I had won during a previous fan club event. As you probably all know, this is my most-prized possession. It's a hat previously owned and frequently worn by Keiko herself, she signed it and even wrote my name on it before shipping it out to me. Being as obsessed with Kalafina fashion as I am, I really couldn't have asked for a better gift. Squeezing all those emotions into a single sentence or two was very hard but I tried my best. I had forgotten how to breathe at that point and my voice was getting super weird. I pointed at my hat and hoped that she would even remember that she had given it away. Then I all but squeaked out how grateful I was to win it and that I would treasure it all my life. She also pointed at it with clear recognition on her face (thank God or it would have been embarrassing XD) and told me with the brightest of smiles, "ah yes, yes, I know, that's amazing, I am so happy for you!" Needless to say, that almost killed me 💀I definitely ascended to another plane of existence that day. I didn't wanna push my luck any further so with a final wave I kept walking towards the reception area and thus ended my Keiko Planetarium experience. Even hours after the event, I was still reeling from everything that had happened.

My plane was supposed to leave bright and early the following morning so I did not stick around longer than necessary. I said my goodbyes to a couple of fellow fans and then took off. Some of them wanted to invite me to a small after-dinner-party but I just wouldn't have been able to deal with the stress on the eve of my departure.

All right, that's it, hopefully I didn't forget anything and I didn't bore you to death. Kudos to anyone who managed to make it to the end.

PS: I just wanna say that Keiko is the prettiest human being ever. Every time I see her up-close I'm reminded of her other-worldly beauty. Standing right next to her, it doesn't even feel like she is a real person because everything about her looks so smooth and polished, like someone put a filter on top of her XD

[ace-reviews]

SPRING 2024 ANIME RECOMMENDATIONS

The anime industry needs to chill the fuck out. Literally stop. This isn't your heart.

If you somehow have time left over after the 86,000 returning series this season, watch these new cartoons also.

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ZACK’S RECOMMENDATION #1: Kaiju No. 8

For the sake of full disclosure, I ended up dropping this manga after about a year when due to a number of reasons I had to play catch-up on a bunch of Jump and Jump+ titles. I ultimately decided cuts needed to be made and this was one of them, but I made that cut with the full knowledge that it would eventually get a kick-ass anime and I was right because I’m always right.

The anime looks better than I’d hoped and sounds better than I imagined. The background music sounds like something from a blockbuster movie, and I mean that as a compliment, considering that's basically what it is. Even if you’re not really into kaiju, this is still worth checking out. Unless you’re allergic to beautiful animation and/or poop jokes.

ZACK’S RECOMMENDATION #2: A SALAD BOWL FULL OF ECCENTRICS

This series became a lock for my recommendation this season (even over the train anime, which is very good and you should also watch) the moment I discovered it’s based on a light novel by the same guy who wrote Haganai and A Sister’s All You Need. I’ve never read any of the novels in question because I’m illiterate but I enjoy both of those anime very much (though I will admit that the latter is not for everyone). Haganai transed my gender and for that reason alone I will support Yomi Hirasaka (by watching and recommending anime adaptations of his books. Alas! if I could only read) ‘til my dying day.

This was a solid premier on its own merits, as well. The characters are fun and likeable, the jokes land pretty much every time (at the very least, I can’t immediately think of any that didn’t), and reverse isekai stories are still uncommon enough to be fun. There is the unfortunately ever-present concern that Our Hero will turn out to be a sex pest, but based on Hirasaka’s track record I’m not too worried about that. Really, more than Haganai or A Sister’s All You Need, the anime this premier kept making me think of the most was Hanamatsuri (side note: you should watch Hanamatsuri.)

Also, look at her. She’s reading Detective Conan. I’m reading Detective Conan. That’s so cool of both of us.

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CHARLIE’S RECOMMENDATION #1: Chillin’ in Another World with Level 2 Cheat Powers

Fairly standard fare for the cozy isekai sub-genre, but it’s a decent way to spend half an hour, if you don’t mind the harem aspects.

CHARLIE’S RECOMMENDATION #2: Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again

It was fine, I guess. Watched it because the premise seemed cute, and I wasn’t wrong. Felt like a short comic but animated, and the art was good. Really wish they didn’t have family members lusting after the grandparents, though.

---

FEN’S RECOMMENDATION #1: Route of Odd Taxi

FEN’S RECOMMENDATIONS #2: Train to the End of the World & The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio

[mercurialmalcontent]

Spoiler-free DA:TV Review

tl;dr -- I thought it was fantastic.

When I found out we were really for real getting a new Dragon Age game, I was interested but not excited. It had been ten years since DAI released and I'd made my peace with us never getting another one years ago, so my reaction was oh, that's cool, maybe I'll get it on sale later. As release came closer and I saw more about the game I got more interested, enough so that when I suddenly had some spare cash I decided I'd get it on release after all.

I ended up barely able to put it down for two solid weeks.

The Dragon Age writing team wove together all the many, many story threads they spun out over the previous three games into one glorious tapestry. None of the story felt like it came out of nowhere or any sort of gotchya, but that it was carefully and expertly crafted into what unfolded before my eyes.

The story is also focused in a way that Origins and DAI were not. No more meandering aimlessly around a map or ultimately pointless fetch quests; every sidequest ties into the story and has direct results… as do your decisions. There will be things that come back to haunt you, because all hard decisions have consequences, after all.

The rest is under a cut for length.

On a character level, for once I didn't feel like any of the companions were extraenous. They're all integral in their areas of expertise and, as far as I could tell in one lengthy playthrough, all have a lot of reactivity to one another (and apparently other non-companion NPCs). It's worth switching your party up regularly and going back to base after every quest to see who's chatting with who and who has new things to say to you. I'm absolutely certain I missed a ton of stuff because I'd get so caught up in questing and exploring and didn't return to base often in early game.

For the player character, Rook is less of a blank slate than the Inquisitor or HoF, but more of one than Hawke. They very much have a base personality suited to someone who can build trust and lead a team, but you have a lot of flexibility in how to express that. Mimir, for example, I played as largely stoic and decisive with a few places he was pushed into a snarling rage, but when he independently acted a little goofy and awkward after building up some trust with his team, it still made sense -- after all, how is he going to build trust if he can't unclench once in a while? I played into that in his more vulnerable moments and it worked really well for me.

I was also delighted that his background came into play far, far more frequently than I could have guessed. I chose Mourn Watch because it sounded interesting, but I had my doubts about how tied into the story it would really be. However, I got quite a few Mourn Watch-specific responses and a TON of dialogue whenever anything to do with their domain came up. Mimir was able to talk shop extensively with the Mourn Watch companion and it felt like they understood each other on a deeper level, especially coming from a culture considered weird and creepy by most of Thedas. (Some players may still find Nevarran customs weird and creepy, but personally I thought they handled death in an interesting and respectful way.)

Rook's race also plays a part in how they participate in conversations. Mimir is an elf, and while I got the occassional elf-specific option, he would often indepedently speak from an elvish perspective in relevant conversations. I really enjoyed him feeling like a part of the world without me having to make it happen.

As far as the moment-to-moment gameplay goes, I had a great time. Maps were fun to traverse, with multiple levels and full of (relatively simple but still satisfying) puzzles to get to hidden areas and secret chests. There are some jumping puzzles, but they're pretty forgiving (if you almost-but-don't-quite make a jump, Rook will grab on and haul themself up) and there's no fall damage; any fall that would have killed you just respawns you where you jumped. Maybe this takes the 'stakes' out for some people, but I'm glad they cut out the annoyance.

The combat is fast and fun, if a little frantic once the game starts throwing five to ten enemies at you at once. (I recommend playing with a controller if you can.) I went straight Adventurer (normal) difficulty and only had to use a revive a handful of times, but there's a lot of customization so you can tweak things to get gameplay you prefer. (There's also a wealth of other accessibility options too; the fixed point always on screen saved me from constant motion sickness.) If you don't want to change difficulties but still struggle, check your build; you can redo your point allocation for free any time outside of combat. I started having a hard time with my scattershot choices at around level 20, but when I refunded my points and went straight for a specialization before branching out, I was suddenly hitting a lot harder.

While I do have my nitpicks, they're pretty inconsequential. I only have two real gripes -- one is that it's not entirely clear when you're going to a one-time-only map. Unfortunately these maps are also littered with treasure and codex entries that you'll miss forever if you skip them. Being on an ostensibly time-sensitive mission but knowing you're going to miss a bunch of stuff if you don't explore is a buzzkill.

The other is more petty but still really annoyed me, and that's that enemies can block your attacks even when you're standing directly behind them. I thought maybe I was reading the screen wrong until J watched me play a bit and asked, "Uh, why was he able to block you from behind??" Good question! I grumbled "This doesn't happen in Elden Ring" far too often.

I'll be playing the game again at least a couple more times; I'm really interested in seeing how the story feels from the perspective of other races and factions, and I always have a good time in taking a closer look at how the story falls into place once I know how it plays out.

[lfghughes]

Girl I know you just posted this but now im already ready for a part 5 to the woody and nico story😂😂

a/n: will we get a part 6 with a semi happy ending? who knows

All you got was Miles voicemail, over and over again. His phone must have been turned off and you couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t an idiot and he must have known that the first thing you and Nico would do was try to reach out to him to explain what he saw. But how exactly do you explain it? Both you and Nico had parted ways, whatever feelings had been flowing around earlier were clearly watered down at the moment.

You considered for a minute to go over to Miles place just so you could try to talk to him but ultimately decided it would be best to give him his space. At least for the time being this might be the best thing to do. The next few days you barely heard from Nico too and you had never really felt more alone and guilty in your life. At this point was sharing that kiss with him even worth the consequences

Nicos P.O.V

Nico had been dreading practice, knowing he would eventually have to face Miles and Nico knew he deserved every bit of anger that the other would feel. He skated around the ice doing the practice drills when Miles came out on the ice. It felt like the room had dropped even more in temperature. The other had been silent the whole time on the ice but just when Nico thought that maybe it wasn’t as bad as he was expecting during one of the drills Miles trucked him down, Nico falling right onto the ice.

“What the hell, Miles.” Nico said as he got back up, a little bit of anger flaring up in him. “Guess I didn’t see you there.” He shrugged and that had only made Nico angrier. But before he could even answer or say anything else Jack had skated up to them. “Whatever the hell is going on, cut it out. We’re a team and we’re not going to get anywhere if we’re playing games like this.” The warning was clear in his tone. The tension and the way it was affecting the team helped Nico decide on what to do.

Readers P.O.V

When Nico had texted that he was coming over you weren’t really sure what to expect from him. You hadn’t talked to him since the night of the game and you still hadn’t talked to Miles. But you had a good feeling that this conversation probably wasn’t a pleasant one. When Nico had gotten to your place it was confirmed in his face that the conversation was going to go south.

“You know I like you but I told you there was no right answer.” His voice was quiet and your heart ached for what you knew what you were going to hear. “It’s affecting the team what happened and I don’t think it would be beneficial for us to take it further. He’s still pissed, rightfully so, but I’m hoping eventually we’ll get back to good terms but that won’t happen if we date.” It was fair enough coming from Nico and you just nodded your head as you tried your best to not cry in front of him.

“I understand.” You told him and there was a flash of pain on his own face. He placed his hand gently on the side of your face as his thumb brushed your cheek. “I really wish things could be different. That I had met you first as selfish as that sounds.” You turned your face slightly away from him because you felt the tears coming in hot. Nico leaned forward placing a quick kiss to the top of your head before he left you alone in your place, the tears this time flowing out of you uncontrollably

[yeets-ix]

Sonic King-Ohger AU characters interacting with their Sonic canon counterparts

Shadow (Gira): King Shadow sees Canon Shadow being his usual stoic self and assumes he must assume his own gruff “evil” persona to be considered worth talking to. Canon Shadow recognizes he’s acting and promptly declares he’ll step down to a casual level to chat respectfully. Eventually, it’s brought up that King’s Maria is alive (and a hedgehog,) but committed a long list of atrocious crimes as Queen that were ultimately all for the sake of her brother and the universe. Canon Shadow, who must admit his memory of Maria is clouded by nostalgia, isn’t quite sure how to feel - is this evidence she could have been as bad as Ivo if she lived, even if for a good purpose? (And have I really become as exaggerated as this “me” acts?) King Shadow can tell his Canon self has a lot to think about from this encounter, he’s good at reading people, and respects his privacy.

Surge (Yanma): King Surge’s thoughts on Canon Surge are not given a good starting point when she introduces herself by trying to steal his Ohger Calibur (she technically succeeds, but it’s useless in her hands.) His first realization is that a lot of her anger problems will be resolved once she figures out she’s a he and starts taking testosterone. His second realization is that she’s loudly picking on his friends and career choices while he’s thinking, and has rightfully earned a thrashing. His third realization is that, while this alternate Surge follows his “brains and guts get me through anything” ideal, she’s lacking in the “brains” department - which horrifies him. Don’t tell him this is how Surge the Tenrec is “supposed to be,” you’ll lead him to a complete existential breakdown… and maybe a multiversal plan to “rehabilitate all the dumb versions of me.”

Amy (Hymeno): Queen Amy sees Canon Amy and assumes she’s a malicious imposter (it’s happened before.) Once that’s resolved, Canon Amy is flabbergasted and given embarrassing flashbacks to her youth by Queen Amy’s absurd demands and standards (Sebastian is GADGET underneath all that makeup?,) and is very nearly convinced she’s been sent to some sort of evil mirror dimension, before a distraction (probably endangered Ishabana citizens who Queen insists on personally attending to) establishes that beneath her selfishness Queen Amy still has the same compassion and generosity. In the end, they recognize that the only real difference between them is that Canon Amy grew out of every girl’s desire to be a princess, while Queen Amy, being… a queen, grew up embracing it. 

Blaze (Rita): It’s up for debate whether guarding the Sol Emeralds or deciding the fate of every criminal in Mobius puts more pressure on you, but Canon Blaze would just LOOK at King Blaze, hiding their ice powers, their face, their voice, and even their gender, and go “and I thought I was emotionally repressed.” She even asks them if they’ve learned from Sonic for their sake, only to be casually informed that if they absolutely had their way their dimension’s Sonic would have to be executed for all manners of treachery. She eventually begs their retainer/"Morphonia" (most likely Silver) to provide her with any evidence they have some sort of outlet, upon which he gladly shows her King’s plushie collection and brief career as an idol… which promptly leads to screaming, gets Canon Blaze banished from Gokkan and threatens King Blaze and their Silver’s friendship (a little.)

Sonic (Kaguragi): Lord Sonic would warmly welcome Canon Sonic to Toufu, hail him for his heroics, and Canon Sonic, depending on the day, would QUICKLY realize he’s being psychologically buttered up. Not like he trusted a Sonic who actually accepted the responsibility and position of royalty, anyway… and yeah, it quickly becomes similar to the Amys’ interaction when Canon comes to understand and accept that Lord spends a lot more time dirtying his hands for his people (and in particular, his brother Tails) than sitting around. He is a bit concerned that this guy takes “I don’t mind being the bad guy” a little too far, but can only say “touché” when Lord casually reminds him of his IDW choices. Unfortunately, their chances of friendship are ultimately dashed by Lord, who’s a bit too passionate about Toufu’s cuisine, dismissing chili dogs as “N’kosopa-level junk food.”

Tikal (Jeramie): Queen Tikal is a 2,000-year-old Echidna Mobian/Spider Bugnarak hybrid who’s wandered her Mobius occasionally hibernating, while Canon Tikal is a spirit tied to the Master Emerald, so needless to say their interactions would be unpredictable and highly interesting. Both have tales to tell of horrifying ancient wars - Canon about how she lost everything and sacrificed herself to end the crisis, Queen about how she inadvertently triggered 2,000 years of hatred AND toiled to fix the mistakes she made. Queen is the insecure one, but would probably end up humbling Canon Tikal for all she was able to do, eventually successfully bringing peace between the two sides and becoming Queen of the Bugnarak, while Canon failed to protect her people entirely and died. Queen would probably end up spinning a triumphant reprise of Canon’s story to cheer her up, considering she once accidentally did the same for a war, did she not? (Also, Canon Tikal, used to Knuckles venting about his crushes, can read Queen Tikal's probably-canon-IDK-I'm-still-planning feelings for her Shadow like a book.)

[archiesoniconline]

Sonic Universe Online #52 Behind The Scenes!

Hello, everyone!  Boy, it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, huh?  But considering we finally managed to release this issue after its nightmarish production cycle, we decided that it was a good time to bring the “behind the scenes” posts back.  There’s a lot to talk about with this one, so get ready for a real doozy!

As usual, let’s start with the cover.  We wanted to have Bunnie and Scarlett as the focus, and RocketPOW! went through several drafts of what that would look like.  In the end, we settled on having them playing cards in the bar from Sonic Mania’s Mirage Saloon Zone to fit with the desert theme.  It’s also worth noting that we had Jack on the cover at one point but ultimately decided against it, since the story focuses more on his lackeys than himself.

Before we start on the actual story, I guess we should begin with the elephant in the room: Bunnie’s redesign.  Even though we technically first saw her new look in issue 51, we might as well go over it now.  Picking up from where the official comic left off, we knew that Bunnie had a redesign after being legionized, but the reboot happened before we ever got to see it.  And with the redesign of such an important character, obviously there was a lot of pressure to do her justice.  There was some old concept art by Tracy Yardley of legionnaire Bunnie, but we didn’t want to just take that and call it a day.  We had quite a field day with many of our talented artists coming up with their own interpretations of her redesign, including @miitoons, @riggo-draws, @drawloverlala, @fritzymagpies, Tim Campbell, CrimDa, DoNotDelete, and more that I sadly can’t remember anymore.  From the shape and function of her cybernetics, her overall color scheme, her clothing, her hairstyle, her weapons, etc., every last detail was meticulously gone over until we arrived at the final design taking what we liked most from each of them.

At first, we had gotten Tale to draw out the first several pages, and even though they were finished, he unfortunately had to step out of the issue and we had Gilgalad take over, better known as Thomas Rothlisberger, who we were lucky to have on the team before he moved on to the IDW Sonic comics.  For the sake of consistency (lol), we unfortunately had to scrap Tale’s pages so he could redo those as well.

Holly’s sickness isn’t elaborated on in the actual story, but the gist is that she’s a snow leapord who was roboticized during the First Robotnik War.  But after the Bem deroboticized her while she was in the desert, her body became sick due to being stuck in the inhospitable environment, which is an example of how misplaced many of the former Robians were being sent far out of their natural habitats, and losing the protection of their robot bodies was actually a detriment.

A Sonic fan with a good eye for detail may notice that the guard who takes over watching Bunnie after Scarlett is actually one of the unnamed members of Infinite’s Jackal Squad from the Sonic Forces prequel comic.  Since this cameo may or may not go anywhere in regards to Infinite in ASO, we opted against using Infinite himself since he’s too important of a character to pass off as a mere cameo.  If you want this plot thread to be expanded upon, let us know!

Since this is where we introduce Holly and her relationship with Scarlett, it’s as good a time as any to discuss the process of their creation.  With Scarlett, we wanted to introduce a character who would serve as a foil to Bunnie, another person struggling due to their bedridden lover, but with diametrically-opposed views regarding cybernetics.  Her design was actually taken from a random Sand Blaster who appeared in a single panel of StH #218, who we decided to turn into a full-fledged character.  Although her species was unknown during her single appearance, we decided to make her a fennec fox.  On the other hand, Holly was an entirely new design that we came up with for the story.  The LGBT aspect of their relationship was actually the idea of my editor for the issue, The Shadow Imperator.  I stated in the interview after the issue that I was the one who came up with their names, but that’s not the whole truth.  There was a whole team effort dedicated to naming the two of them, before I suggested Scarlett since there was an abandoned plot point about how Bunnie’s true name was at one point planned to be Scarlett O’Hare.  Our Scarlett’s full name is Scarlett O’Fenn, with ShadImp being the one to suggest adding the last name as well.  But since her last name didn’t come up in the story, I apologize for forgetting to mention it.  Holly was also one of several names I came up with, which was agreed on due to the sort of “snowy” feel it has to it.

In my initial draft for Scarlett and Holly’s conversation, I wrote Holly as being more openly pessimistic about her condition, outright stating that Scarlett would be better off if she was gone.  But since that seemed rather inconsiderate to Scarlett’s feelings, ShadImp suggested that I tone it down a little and have her only mention feeling like a burden.  He was also the one to suggest that I make sure their romantic relationship is mentioned as explicitly as possible, so there would be no room for ambiguity that might lessen the impact of their sexual orientation.

Scarlett taking off her hat here wasn’t actually in the script I wrote, but it was a smart move by Gilgalad, showing her letting her guard down around the one person she can afford to do so with.  To put it simply, Scarlett offers Holly physical support while Holly offers Scarlett emotional support, so neither one is one-sidedly supporting the other.  This scene also demonstrates that even though Scarlett is easily the most level-headed and compassionate Sand Blaster we’ve seen so far, some of the old bigotries and prejudice against cyborgs and robots that Jack instilled into her still remain.

Gilgalad had actually already penciled out the next couple pages, but since he wasn’t able to stick around for the full story, we decided that that the end of Scarlett and Holly’s scene was a good cutoff point for the drastic shift in art style.  Red Rabbit is an amazing artist with a style very similar to Patrick Spaziante, but it is still a jarring shift compared to most other artists on the project.  I had also originally written Bunnie mentioning not being very good at undercover missions, but when ShadImp brought up her successful operation tricking Battle Lord Kukku I changed the script to have her mention that instead.

At first, I was planning for the poker scene to have the characters holding cards that reflected their position in the conversation, such as holding a winning hand when they have the upper hand in the argument.  But since I have absolutely no knowledge or experience with poker, that idea ultimately didn’t come through in the final story.  This scene also serves to flesh out the Sand Blasters and show that none of them are blindly loyal to Jack.  Tex obviously has his own agenda, Avery just goes along with whatever’s the least troublesome, Shift wants to get his hands on new technology, and Jolt does genuinely want the city to open up to the rest of the world.

You may have noticed that instead of rocket feet like her old design, Bunnie now flies with a removable jet pack on her back.  If you’re wondering how that wouldn’t burn her tail off, it was specifically designed so that the fire trails would shoot aiming away from her tail.

Originally, during the car chase sequence Bunnie’s jet pack was just written to malfunction for no real reason.  But eventually, I decided to give it a more interesting explanation by adding in hints that Shift may have intentionally sabotaged it to trip up Bunnie, only to reveal that he was actually trying to fix it and he didn’t betray her after all.  This was also the portion of the story where Ink Pants took over for pencils, and then Lav after him.  Even though they’re all fine artists in their own right, hopefully this will be the last time that we need to include so many drastic changes in art style to illustrate a single story.

We almost had one more shift in art style, with @gendeerfluid​ penciling the last page.  In the end, Lav managed to finish that one as well, giving us a massive cliffhanger both figuratively and literally in the form of Jun Kun, the Iron King.

That’s about it for this one, folks!  Thanks for sticking with us all this time, and look forward to the conclusion of this story next issue.  Until then, keep on juicin’!

[microwave-core]

Sada Posting

I didn't include Sada on my scarvio headcanons because I didn't so here she gets her own post

Sada is hard to talk about because I’ve written about her in one of my general headcanons posts and I don’t want to retread old ground but I also feel the need to clarify that there are generally one of two ways that Sada posting can go.

Sada was burned in the past by Arven’s father, who left soon after his birth, so she was incredibly hesitant to reenter the dating scene. However, when she met you, having bumped into you by complete accident, she decided to take the risk in pursuing a relationship, and you saw no reason to turn her down.

And it’s great to have you around, as she loves you dearly, but you being in the picture, along with her darling son, only pushed her further over the edge, as she became even more determined to find paradise for her newly found family. All she wanted was the best for the both of you. With no one to keep her in check, she buried herself within mountains of research, never once stopping to consider the effects of that kind of behavior. To her, being away for the moment, even if it was hard on the two of you, was worth it in the long run.

It fell to you, as the person who she loved above all else, to confront her about her workaholic tendencies. You begged and pleaded with her in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, your words would get through to her, that she would realize and understand how her actions made you and, especially, her son feel. However, realistically speaking, Sada was likely already too far off the rails to listen to reason, but that’s angsty, and I’m not in too much of an angsty mood right now.

Instead, let’s focus on a Sada who actually listened to you, one that realized the amount of harm her actions caused and that it ultimately wasn’t worth it, because creating the perfect world for her family meant nothing if she was never around to begin with. And so, she begins to spend far less time in Area Zero, if not pulling out of the hell hole completely, and begins to focus on living with you and Arven in the moment.

For the most part, you’re a normal family. Just a mother, her son, her new wife, a weird prehistoric dog, and a regular dog. A perfectly average family not riddled with trauma and abandonment. Most of your days are spent looking after little Arven and his puppy, playing and taking care of him until Sada arrives home in the late evening, where she finds the two of you preparing dinner together. She always walks through the door, shouting out “I’m home!” while waiting for Arven to run up and tell her about the day the two of you had.

Her days off are always spent with the two of you. Should the weather allow it, you spend the whole day outside, roaming the wilderness. You have a picnic in a scenic locale, the two of you lounging on the blanket while Arven and Maschiff run around in the grass until he pulls you both up to come and play with him. Eventually, as all kids do, he tires himself out, signaling the end of the day. You pack up your belongings and begin the long walk home, Arven already asleep in Sada’s arms.

Every now and then, Clavell takes care of Arven for the night so the two of you can spend some time together. Sada isn’t the most romantic person in the world, but she is charismatic and incredibly bold. Due to often being recognized in public, she prefers to spend date nights inside, having a nice dinner with wine and cuddling on the couch, which quickly turns to making out as you both ignore the shitty movie playing in the background. Just normal parent things.

To most people’s surprise, Sada is a massive nerd. It should be expected, honestly, considering that she is a professor and has some massive accomplishments under her belt. She’s a huge history buff, and will effortlessly crush the expectations of others, perceiving her to be a suave individual, by rambling on about incredibly minute historical details for hours on end. She’s like Raifort in this regard, but in, like, a different flavor.

ALSO, she loves to ramble about her family. If she, for whatever reason, doesn’t feel like rambling about history to the people around her, she will instead ramble about you two, because have you seen her beautiful wife? Her incredibly talented culinary son? Oh, don’t worry, she has more than enough time to stay and chat for a while, and also has plenty of pictures to show, as well.

The above absolutely kills Arven, because Sada regularly drops by the Academy, giving her the perfect chance to talk to various staff about her family, which leads to many students overhearing these conversations. The boy already has to put up with people loudly simping over his moms, but now he has to deal with people teasing him about these conversations, as she often divulges details (and photos) from his formative years.

And I know this post is about Sada, but I can’t talk about Sada without talking about Arven. When you start dating the woman, she’ll introduce you to her son, and, at first, he’s pretty shy, hiding behind her legs and only peeking his head out occasionally to look at you. Overtime, he’ll get more comfortable around you, enough to not feel the urge to run away and hide when you look in his general direction.

Slight angst posting, when you first meet Arven, it’s when Sada’s still engrossed in Area Zero, meaning he spends most of the time on his own with Maschiff. Obviously, you can’t just leave the boy to fend for himself while Sada’s away, so you progressively spend more and more time with him, to the point that he sees you as more of a mom than his biological one. He was the reason you had to confront Sada about her behavior to begin with, as you could only take the young boy asking if it was his fault that mom was away for so long before breaking.

Anyways, just because I want to give Arven a better family life by bringing his mom back to normalcy and giving him a loving stepmom at  the same time doesn’t mean I won’t make him suffer. As stated, people simp over Sada and you, once they learn of your existence, of course. Poor thing has two milfs for parents, and he has to deal with people bringing it up constantly. Having both of your unconditional support is great, and getting to see Sada on a semi-regular basis while living at the Academy is nice and all, but he would sacrifice so much to escape simping hell, if only for a few moments.

Listen she’s just broken aND I CAN FIX HER

[amybizarre]

A Nightmare X Reader Story?

Ehhh, just an idea I had and wanted to share. Feel free to do what you want with it or even tell me what you think. ^^

The story:

Reader is part of the good guys. But it's a real struggle to hold ground against Nightmare. They wanna help their friends win. Wanna organize a peace treaty so no one has to die. The others aren't too fond of the idea, understandably. But Reader thinks it's the only way. So they do it anyway. First step: Understanding Nightmare and what he wants. So they pretend to join the bad guys, Yippie...! To make it believable, they don't tell their friends, cause they need to be 200% sure they get accepted into Nightmare's team without any suspicions. Meaning: Their friends think they betrayed them. Aurgh! The heartbreak! The underlying feels to add tension! Meanwhile Reader is being consumed by guilt and they wanna run straight back to their friends, but they CAN'T. Because they wanna solve this conflict for everyone's safety.To win Nightmare's trust they have to make sacrifices of course, self sacrifices. But to them it's worth it in the end. That's what they tell themselves to keep going. Of course Nightmare asks them many times to tell him all they know about the Rainbow Town and their friends. Reader sneakily uses each of these opportunities to tell him about how they're basically one big family and just wanna live a happy life and how much of a home the town has become. They tell him about Rainbow and Light and how childish they still are, and that they are just that: Children. Children who deserve a childhood, not battle.Meanwhile Reader bonds with the Nightmare Fam and learns that they too are just a family trying to navigate life. They get closer to Nightmare (actively try to, actually) and he opens up to them too. Reader learns why Nightmare does the things he does and what the ultimate goal actually is. Which is surprisingly the very same Reader and friends want to achieve.But, how to bring them together now? How to regain their friends' trust to make this peace contract happening? How to convince Nightmare Rainbow doesn't need to be killed? How to fix this communication problem? And how to get rid of Elemental, who's also there, pulling the true strings?Well, they need to convince Nightmare that it's never to late to break free from the contract he has with Elemental. That he can be beat (by the power of friendship XD) and everyone can have the life they deserve. By that time, their bond is strong enough that he decides it's worth a try, so an effort is made for peace between the Nightmare Palace and the Rainbow Town. They make it a big event, where every Steve interested is invited and surprisingly more than expected show up. Elemental shows up too... Upset about this development and about to throw a hissy fit, BUT! Everyone present knows about his deal now that Nightmare explained himself publicly (and proved it somehow-). So everyone subconsciously bands together, fully prepared to fight Elemental. It's basically the whole realm against one dude. Elemental is pissed, but not stupid, so he backs out and returns to the In Between without a fuss. Hooray! The contract can be signed now!I the end, Reader gets their sweet reunion with their friends and maybe a confession from a certain king. Nightmare is accepted as official king, because he wants to make up for the damage he caused and has a solid plan on how to rebuild the Steve realm. In return Rainbow is granted the same amount of authority and is allowed to take the reigns from Nightmare, should things go sideways. Not ideal, considering Rainbow is basically a kid in this story, so Reader volunteers to take this role until he is mature enough for this duty.The story ends with a celebration in the Rainbow Town, where everyone finally gets to relax and look forward to a hopeful future. ;3