#considering how he fits into pandora as a human. those two things go hand in hand

[dirtytransmasc]

i’ve been wondering how quaritch the sullys or norm & the others scientists would react if spider actually got brain damage from the machine, like a speech problem or chronic illness and he becomes shaky, also how would spider himself deal with not being able to swing through trees safely anymore?

I've played with a disabled spider before, though I never posted it, so here's my idea of a potential symptom list; tremors/numbness in his hands, auditory processing issues, sensitivity to light and movement, focal seizures, a mild stutter, and fibromyalgia (cause we have to project a little). another thing is, he just drops sometimes, his legs give out from beneath him and he ends up in a pile on the floor, otherwise completely fine. he also gets phantom pains of the connection from the machine (from what I understand, that machine would feel like pulling your spinal cord out the base of your neck and plugging it into a car battery). Add that to his PTSD from the event, and you get one fucked up kid.

now we just apply this to his family.

for neytiri it's one hell of a wake up call; her neglect for the child allowed him to be kidnapped and he is no physically affected, seemingly for the rest of his life. spider was always weary of asking for help, but now that poses a massive threat to his wellbeing, and the mother in her aches at the realization that she did that to him, she made him feel unable to ask for help. its also really difficult to watch him go through his focal seizures after what had happened to kiri. she know's its wrong of her to want to care for him now after years of neglect, but she wants to right the wrongs. the only problem is, is the boy is terrified of her.

jake is forced to realize how spider is a lot like him, and then looking back and realizing he was always like him, he was just too blind and dumb see it the whole time. now his kid, if he even has the right to call him that (he doesn't), is struggling just to function, and he'd been the one to say 'he's a tough kid' and move on. he feels sick every time he looks at the boy, and he ends up avoiding him just like the rest of his problems.

kiri would be furious with her family for leaving spider behind when she had begged to look for him, and now because they left him with those people, he's in constant pain and fear, frustrated because he lacks control over so much of his body. she would be one of his biggest caretakers, as she knows how to go about it without being patronizing, though even then, her constant help makes him antsy.

lo'ak would feel... upset, angry, sad, frustrated. he doesn't have one word to describe it. I've talked about this with a few friends, but lo'ak, while he may not actually have these disabilities, feels very adhd and dyslexic coded in the way that his trauma and neglect/abuse present themselves within the narrative. especially in the sense that he was never accommodated for his own "shortcomings" and now he has a disabled brother and he's torn between his internalized "ableism" (loosely using that word to run with the example) that stems from pushing his needs below the surface and therefore expecting other's to do the same, and his want to take care of his best friend and brother. it's not that he wants spider to hurt himself by not hiding his disability, its just that he doesn't know what else he can do, because for so long he's tried to do exactly that with no help. it also really hurts watching spider go through his day to day life like that, especially in the early days when he and the people around him didn't fully understand what was wrong so he sorta had to suffer through trial and error.

tuk is a good kid, she probably accommodates spider best because things don't change unless they have to. she still plays with him, nags him, spends time with him all the same. she just adapts to his way of life. she doesn't treat him like he's fragile or in need of pity, and I could see her inadvertently putting him through some sense of physical therapy as she gets him up and about, using his hands, and such. she makes him smile even when he feels hopeless she's the best little sister he could ask for.

norm and max feel helpless, every time the offer to help him he shoves them off (cause they treat him like he's 5 years old and made of glass). they see him fading away, looking more and more dull by the day, they know he needs help or the injury won't heal and it will only get worse, they know they should have done more when spider went missing, but they can't do anything now and spider hates them (he doesn't he just doesn't like his brian being rummaged around in anymore then it has, he doesn't want to be fixed, he just wants to be. he's tired of everyone pitying themselves for not looking for him, tired of everyone worrying, he just wants things to be normal again.)

quaritch would hate himself, he had brought spider to ardmore, even if he hadn't known what the machine would do to him, he allowed it to happen, he let spider to get hurt, and now he tries to do everything he can to make it up to him. he took care of him in the field, pulled strings to get him under the table medical care back on base, was even willing to give him up to the sully's when it started getting really bad, cause even if they were and parents, spider would have a stable life with medical attention. he doesn't have any ill feelings towards his son or his disabilities as many would assume he would; he just wants his boy to feel ok, no matter what that means ability-wise. he's also one of the few people spider lets faun after him because he knows it's not out of guilt for abusing and neglecting him for years but for making a mistake that spider can't find within himself to blame him for.

(including the tonowari family, because I can, I love them too much to exclude them)

tonowari and ronal would throw a fit when they found out spider had been knowingly left behind with the RDA, especially because he knew what they were capable of doing firsthand, but also because he was clearly a worse father than the man he claimed to be running from (quaritch getting a redemption arc and being 'adopted' by ronal and tonowari is my favorite thing, sorry, I just can't leave it out). spider accepts treatment from her because its na'vi medicine, it feels right to seek the Great Mother's help in fixing what the Demons did to him. this quickly turns into him getting adopted, cause ronal has taken to this small human child, and tonowari just wants to see this boy happy.

ao'nung tries to throw hands with jake. that it, he treats spider like he would any other kid, any other brother, he just tries to kill jake for letting that happen to him.

tsireya is just a gentle soul to keep him company. she is a rock in the storm, always calm and caring, always asking permission to care for him, never assuming he wants her help. she holds him steady when the world around him is chaos.

now for spider himself? he feels even more useless and like a freak then before. he feels weak for being so screwed up by what he only lets himself think of as 'a flashy spinning machine' as if it wasn't created to break him. he would hate having attention on him because why should it have taken being tortured to receive this sort of attention? was being a kid not enough, he just has to suffer first? pair that with the fact that he is so self sacrificial and quick to defend the sully's he's shameful of his own anger. he's an emotional disaster, so many different though processes mixing and fighting with each other. but most of all he's frustrated, so frustrated, in the span of a few hours he lost the one thing he had, which was trust in his body, his physical capabilities that allowed him to survive on pandora and be a 'tough' kid that burdened no one. now he needs help with basic tasks and constant supervision so he doesn't just fall down and die somewhere.

[artdolliewishes]

One thing I honestly disliked about Avatar Way of Water was Lo’ak and how his arc was about how he felt like an outcast and that nobody understood him. Because, while he is kind of the black sheep of his family, there’s another character who more closely fits with the themes of feeling like you don’t belong anywhere:

Spider “too Na’vi to be human, too human to be Na’vi” Socorro.

When you compare the two characters circumstances and what they both went through, it feels extremely hypocritical to say that Lo’ak is the “outcast” character in this film when Spider is literally right there. At least Lo’ak has a family that loves and accepts him as part of their family, no matter what shenanigans he gets himself up to; he’ll never not be their family.

Spider on the other hand…well I don’t think I need to explain how his “family” situation is not quite as pleasant.

But then I started thinking about why Lo’ak feels outcasted, more specifically I started thinking about why Lo’ak sees himself in Payakan and how that takes this arc from “hypocritical plot point” to “clever set up for future conflict and arcs.”

Think about it. Why are Lo’ak and Payakan considered outcasts? It’s because both of them make bad decisions which have drastic consequences.

In the first twenty minutes of the movie, we see Lo’ak go against his father’s direct orders and that leads to him and Neteyam nearly getting killed. Later on he chooses to lead himself, his best friend, and his two sisters into an unknown situation that ends up with them getting held hostage and Spider getting kidnapped. And finally his decision to go back for Spider ended up with Neteyam getting killed.

To be clear, I am NOT saying that Lo’ak is responsible for Neteyam’s death or that he’s a terrible brother or friend, just that things are complicated and he makes mistakes that have immense consequences.

Payakan is the same way. When the RDA killed his pod he made the decision to go after them, which led to the deaths of other Na’vi. I also don’t fully blame Payakan for this either, but it’s undeniable that the movie wants us to understand that there is some kind of tangible connection between someone’s misguided but well intentioned actions and the horrible consequences that come after.

This is different from the reason why Spider is outcasted, because Spider never did anything that earned him a bad reputation or tarnished others trust in him. The only reason why Spider is stuck in between worlds, not fully accepted by either, is because he’s a human on Pandora who grew up with Na’vi culture. He’s too much of either group to really fit in with the other.

However, as discussed before, Spider does end up making a well intentioned but misguided decision at the end of Way of Water: he saves Quaritch, and in the next few movies we will see the fallout of that decision and the consequences it’ll bring.

Now, obviously Lo’ak is going to be upset with Spider for this, I would be shocked if all of the Sullys weren’t upset with him for some time after they learn the truth, but Lo’ak’s arc in Way of Water is great setup for how he in particular will eventually come to understand and forgive Spider.

Remember what he said to Tsieryu about Payakan after their conversation with Tonowari?

“Does he have to pay for it[his sins] for the rest of his life?….He knows what he did was wrong and he would never do it again.”

Lo’ak’s arc about being outcasted isn’t focused on circumstances beyond one’s control outcasting someone unfairly, it’s about how people who make well intentioned mistakes and reap terrible consequences still deserve a chance to be better and earn forgiveness; they do not deserve to bare those sins forever if they understand that they were wrong.

My guess is that Spider is going to understand that he was wrong for saving Quaritch and have to deal with the consequences, and in doing so and trying to do better he will earn Lo’ak’s forgiveness and understanding.

Or at least, I hope they go this route or something similar lest all of this set up be for nothing.

[mindful-of-ideas]

Headcanon: Umbrella Academy

-The Umbrella Academy as Greek Gods (Luther, Diego and Allison)

Part 2, Part 3

Luther as Hephaestus (Ἥφαιστος):

I feel like this one is kind of obvious. Hephaestus is known for his physical strength just like Luther is. Both are rejected and laughed at for the way they look. Hephaestus is rejected and thrown off Olympus by his own mother because of how ugly he is. She resents him yet she’s the one who made him who he is since she had him all by herself. In a similar way, Reginal, who raised Luther alone basically, casts him off by sending him to the moon after he’s been saved by the experimental serum. You can tell his ape-like appearance played a role in him getting sent away.

Still, they both remain very loyal to their so-called family. Hephaestus will go on to make and fabricate multiple things for the gods such as Pandora, Artemis and Apollo’s arrows, Zeus’ aegis and Pelops’s sceptre. In the same way, Luther truly believes in Reginald and it takes him a long time to come around and realize he’s been played.

As much as it feels almost natural to compare Hephaestus and Aphrodite to Luther and Allison, I don’t think it is right to do so. You’ll see why I don’t think Allison is Aphrodite, but I think the most evident difference is that Allison was never forced to be with Luther like Aphrodite was with Hephaestus. Zeus forced her to marry Hephaestus because he believed her beauty would cause jealousy inbetween the gods. But for Luther and Allison, she’s the one asking for the relationship and forcing it into him, not a third individual.

Finally, I’d say that it’s common belief to think the Hephaestus is all muscle and no brain, just like the first impression we get of Luther. He isn’t number one for no reason. But Hephaestus is crafty, he can create godly weapons, things that require extreme precision, but also, in a way, a good understanding of who that weapon is for. When he made Achilles’ armour, it fitted him perfectly, it was made for him and no one else. So Hephaestus possesses a level of skill and understanding of other people. In a similar way, Luther has a certain emotional intelligence that the rest of the Umbrella Academy seems to forget about. He truly believed that being number one meant that he was a leader. He did his best to hold the team together and even if he failed, you can see that he truly did care about his family. So he’s not all muscle either.

Diego as Themis (Θέμις):

Our first Titan! So, Themis is the Titan goddess of divine law and order which I think fits perfectly well with Diego, especially in the first two seasons. Now, let’s just say a few words about Themis first. She is the goddess of divine law, meaning the rules of conduct that have been established by custom. They are the primal laws of morality and justice. These aren’t the common laws, the ones made by humans. They include stuff like piety, hospitality, sacrifices to the gods, etc.

I think that those two parts are important to consider when comparing Diego to her. On one hand, Diego has a strong sense of justice. You can see that he wants to do what’s right a punish the ‘bad guys’. This is literally how he is when we first meet him! And it’s something that stays with him throughout the seasons, stopping JFK from getting killed being the main example. However, he has a complete disregard for actual laws. He gets kicked out of the police academy and becomes a vigilante, clearly, he doesn’t care about the law. So this anti-thesis inside himself, having a strong sense of moral justice while breaking the law, fits really well with Themis.

This is all nice, but Diego also has a soft side. He cares a lot about his siblings, Klaus and Allison in particular, calls Grace ‘mom’, and cares about Lila and Stanley a lot too. How does that fit in with Themis? Well, those primal laws of morality and justice are what keeps the humans alive and the gods happy. It rules, in a way, their relationships. Similarly, Diego, by being kind and open to everyone else’s feelings, is keeping the peace within the family. He gives a way for his siblings to express themselves without the whole family collapsing on itself. Calling Grace ‘mom’ remind them all of what she did for them and allows Grace to get the respect she deserves. Which, to me, sounds a lot like moral justice. And what to say about Stanley. He cared about him, truly. Even after learning he wasn’t his son, because that’s what he believes he should do, guided by his morals.

Finally, this might be a bit of a stretch, but Themis is also known for her divination powers. She’s linked to the Oracle of Delphi as well as the woods of Dodona. Diego’s power, as you know it, is that he can manipulate the trajectory of different objects. In a way, he is at the same time predicting where the object will end up and influencing its fate.

Allison as Demeter (Δημήτηρ):

I feel like this is a less obvious one (like I said, I feel like people associate her with Aphrodite more) but to me, this makes so much more sense. The way I see it, especially considering season 3, Allison cares deeply about her daughter, so much that it becomes the only thing that keeps her alive. This is exactly like Demeter in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which tells us about Kore’s abduction (literally rape as in raptus in Latin, meaning seized). So let me walk you through that hymn.

It starts with the abduction of Kore, witnessed by Helios and heard by Hecate. Now, Allison’s story doesn’t exactly start with that, but as soon as season one, we get how important Claire is to her; she’s her Kore. She’s her whole world. The hymn goes on and we learn about Demeter’s grief. She looks for her daughter for nine days before learning the truth about her abduction. She then exiles herself from Olympus and wanders on Earth, not eating, not talking. She will meet the daughters of King Celeos, who will take her to their mother, the queen. offering her to take care of their infant brother. Her fast will be broken by one of the maids, Iambe, who manages to get Demeter to laugh and drink. Similarly, Allison winds up forced to wander in the 1960s. She will get a job at the Odessa’s salon not unlike Demeter accepting the offer from Celeos’ daughters. But it isn’t until she meets Ray that, in my opinion, she finds some peace of mind. It’s not perfect, and it’s not like being with Claire, but it’s something that makes life worth living for a while, just like Demeter in the hymn.

So, Demeter starts taking care of Demophon, the queen’s son, and puts him in fire because, apparently, that’s how you become immortal. The queen sees her doing that and stops her which revives Demeter’s anger. She shows her true self to the queen, her godly self, and goes back to crying Kore. Allison does something similar when she takes part in the sit-in at the dinner. At first, it is a failure, but she decides to use her power, show what she can really do to the world, but mostly to Ray, someone who trusted her. He calls her out, just like the queen did, and rightfully so. After that, she is ready to say goodbye to him and go back to her own timeline, the one where she can be with Claire. Just like Demeter in the hymn goes back to her grieving now more angered than ever, Allison, not able to reunite with Claire as they get back to 2019, gives in to her pain and anger.

Demeter, still mad will then go on to cause a famine. Humans won’t be able to eat, but mostly, won’t be able to sacrifice to the gods. Zeus, seeing he won’t get any sacrifices, sends Hermes to get Kore back. Since she did eat some pomegranate, she will be forced to spend one-third of the year with Hades. The two goddesses reunite, the famine ends and Demeter tells her secrets to a few selected people. The same pattern can be seen with Allison. Back in 2019 but without Claire, suffering from PTSD, she becomes more and more angry. She starts misusing her power, hurting, torturing the Sparrows and betraying her own family. Since Reginald is the only person that can get her what she wants, she follows him blindly. Ultimately, she will, just like Demeter, get to reunite with Claire (or maybe not, I guess we’ll have to wait and see…)

[ruby-whistler]

Srry but i noticed in one of ur dream posts u Referred to tommy's cat as hope. I must correct u, that cat was born pussbou and died pussboi. /lh Also tommy killing that cat was nothing compared to dream killing mushroom henry in exile btw just wanna say Also for ur posts about dreams trauma or wilbur manipulating him can u provide links to vods or other proof? Srry if i seem rude i mean that in a "genuinely curious way"

Aaa sorry if my ask came off as rude im just genuinely curious :(((

hi! dw, you don't seem rude at all, and i'm extremely happy someone with a different perspective has found my blog! i really appreciate that sort of attitude and am happy to answer :]

/dsmp /rp

the cat was called pussboy by tommy, but dream only called it "the cat" and then said that "it was hope", which is why it sort of became a symbol (his hope is dead, basically) - that's why i kind of made its name capitalized, because it was more of a metaphor than anything.

most c!dream fans call the cat hope because it's just really nice and really symbolic, and also really sad when you think about it. that's why the name was used in the essay, just to clear up the confusion!

tommy killing that cat was nothing compared to dream killing mushroom henry in exile

i don't really think so? mooshroom henry was entertainment more than anything, and even if it was bad, when watching the stream i don't remember seeing him mourn that much - on the other hand, dream was very quickly and very obviously attached to the cat, with it being his only companion in months of isolation, along with the hope that even when tommy left it would keep him company.

keep in mind c!dream has been deprived of stimuli and human contact for so long it's officially classified as psychological torture at that point.

i don't mean to compare trauma or even compare deaths - because honestly, what c!dream and c!tommy have gone through individually is incomparable and i think neither should be diminished in favor of the other since they're both terrible situations.

that's why i disagree that it "was nothing compared to" - it had an obvious effect on c!dream, and was still c!tommy killing an animal specifically to hurt him, no matter what reasons he had.

when i'm talking about effects people's actions have had on c!dream, i'm not talking about those people. i'm talking about him. :) /lh

as for the trauma, a lot of people agree that a lot of the things he says or does are trauma responses, and hence it's very possible that he's had trauma before he went into prison!

this includes being repeatedly called a tyrant via propaganda by about half of your friends who decided to betray you, trying to keep peace and being pushed deeper into villainy instead, repeatedly being put in between a rock and a hard place in order to make sure the people you care about don't start killing each other, then being betrayed by your closest friends after merely trying to keep peace (sapnap & george) and just in general having no control over your life or image and grasping at straws to gain it back.

i know a lot of people with trauma who heavily relate to certain trauma responses, which aren't always just shaky breaths and flashbacks, but trauma often also manifests itself in extremely ugly and destructive ways, both inwardly and outwardly.

trying to control the people around you is also very often a response to going through trauma, as well as emotional repression which is... rather evident on c!dream during season two. it only seems to get worse with repeated abandonment.

in the end, during the vault scene, the way he acts really just isn't at all the way a healthy person would act, and a lot of his really bad mindsets come from the way he was taught by the world around him.

the character is very reserved however, and since we don't have his pov we can't really say for certain - a lot of people claim it in good faith because they have a lot of evidence for it, and i think they're certainly valid in that.

that is just before the prison, however. from what happened during the prison arc? there is no denying he's traumatized at this point.

he's been emotionally and physically abused by c!sam since the very beginning of being imprisoned, and being in solitary confinement for over two weeks is generally considered psychological (and maybe also physical?) torture. that alone shows up in a lot of symptoms of his mental deterioration while in pandora's during people's visits, and quackity's "sessions" just absolutely drove the point home.

what he's gone through during this arc is absolutely incomparable to anything others charactes have faced before, and it's just plain suffering being endured by someone who is, despite everything, still a human being.

as for the wilbur manipulation thing!! it's talking about the whole vassal scene (though even beforehand a lot of their interactions are pretty iffy), and here's a post about that :]

I also have a small question about the analysis u last reblogged cus it says "why dream needed lmanburg gone rightfully" and like. The house analogy is poor because for one cus the land is infinite. And 2 cus punz's yard was literally larger then lmanburg. And also stuff about dream being a mediator? Can u provide examples?

i wouldn't say it was poor. dream's said a lot of times that he didn't care in the slightest about the land - a lot of his problems with l'manberg arose with the fact that wilbur basically built it on lies and tried to disallow half of the server to come there. c!dream was mad about the division and the fact that wilbur wanted "freedom" to have authority in his lands - over others, as can be seen in this post also.

the table analogy was fitting not because dream was some overlord, but because these were literally friends he invited to hang out and live in a place he wanted to call home. claiming a part of it for yourself and saying people of a certain nationality can't come in is directly opposing those goals.

in the early days of the smp, dream's always been a mediator between his friends - sapnap and george, who would often get into fights and go around killing each other! he would always do his best to stop the conflict, which continued after tommy joined when he took him to court and then later tried to mediate conflicts he was a part of, which resulted in tommy killing him unprovoked, stealing his gear, and starting the disc wars when dream was trying to get his stuff back. later, during pogtopia, he is also most concerned with peace over everything, and this seems to continue indefinitely after.

Today i was thinking about how messed up the final control room was. Like. Dream arranged the betrayal and punz and sapnap killed tommy and tubbo who like. Were literal children and their pals (because the author, wilbur soot, is dead/j but srsly if u take the streamers words tommy said he was 9 during the revolution sooo)

Sorry im gonna ramble about how dumb canon ages are for a second cus like. Streamers can say the characters are one way or another (wilbur saying he is mentally 30-something, etc.) But in the end the characters act like they(or at least their streaming personas) do.

i... honestly don't find it that bad? they were in a war, and the final control room was basically just supposed to end it quicker. the l'manbergians made it clear they were going to fight to the death, so they really left c!dream no other choice. and it's not like he didn't give them chances to give up.

also yeah the 9 year old thing was retconned, because in that case c!dream would've been 14 and i don't think that's true.

c!tommy and c!dream were both young and once again, in a war. the final control room was an attempt to assure victory, which both sides would've taken if possible, but only c!dream saw he had the option.

i do agree the whole child soldier thing was bad but... complain about that to c!wilbur, methinks. he talked naive kids into fighting for his personal power. however, the age argument isn't really valid either way. they had enough agency to sign up for it, and whether or not c!wilbur pushing the intense nationalism onto them had something to do with that is another debate entirely.

Bacl to final control room cus like??? Also fun fact punz took 2 of wilbur's canon lives. And like that probably is what started wilbur's paranoia which later lead to his spiral and i. Many thoughts full of lmanburg today.

i'm pretty sure cc!wilbur said what lead to c!wilbur's spiral was a "dark, twister view of possessions" and "disregard for his fellow citizen whom he claimed to love so much", but i really wouldn't say it was the control room; if anything the sudden loss of power after the elections seems to me like the trigger for his spiral.

I watched the exile arc live and. I feel dirty almost for feeling little to no sympathy for c!dream (srry ive been forgetting to add that aa) because of his actions toward c!tommy and like. The whole probation was so humiliating and unfair and c!dream was planning to frame him for the crimes he and puffy did under the the guise of "pranks" and c!quackity was planning to seize the vice president role.

i mean... to be fair, if you didn't watch the prison arc much yet or only watch tommy's perspective i understand not feeling that sympathetic - however, i encourage you to maybe watch a few prison visits, since they could help you see the whole picture better!

i also watched it live, and i also thought it was terrible, but i share very much the same sentiment for the prison arc because. absolutely no one should have to go through either of those things, you know?

i don't think probation was that humiliating? he was just. being asked to not start conflict with the other factions for two weeks. of course, what happened as a result is in no way justified, but i don't think probation itself would've been bad at all. either way yeah the framing and c!quackity's behaviour was. very yikes, i agree.

Also c!tommy antis are dumb because they say "he deserved exile angry emoji" i dont see u saying that about ranboo. Just say you hate cc!tommy and go. Also people say c!tommy was just as toxic to c!dream and i??? No. One is the victim and one is the abuser and like. :/// man. This part is rambly srry

i wouldn't say they hate cc!tommy? cc!tommy has a persona who people think is annoying at first ( but then they subscribe because he is super entertaining big man! ) but a lot of c!tommy's actions are straight up toxic to certain characters, such as c!funndy and c!jack. he has a very dismissive attitude towards others and their trauma and it does affect the people around them very negatively.

examples; his repeated bullying and behavior towards fundy:

Tommy: “Fundy, I’m just here to kinda let you know that I – if you weren’t Wilbur’s son, you would be out of L’manburg, alright? Just remember – you need to keep that relationship with your father. I saw how asshole-y and bratty you were acting in the courtroom the other night. You need to pull your shit together young man.”

......

Fundy: “I’m wearing glasses…are you making fun of my eyesight?!”

Tommy: “Yes.”

Sapnap: “Your father would be very disappointed.”

Fundy: “Wh – disappointed for wearing glasses?!”

Tommy: “You got glasses, like what are you wearing…”

Fundy: “What do you mean?”

Tommy: “Sapnap, Sapnap, over here. Fundy, Fundy, Fundy, I’m really sorry to say this – I’m just here to publicly denounce you.”

Fundy: “…What?”

( credit for transcript: @/findingjoynweirdstuff )

he's also responsible for a big chunk of c!jack's trauma, both with actions and words, and that's why i think certain people might dislike the character, and i don't think that's wrong of them. anyone can dislike any character they want if they don't attack people for liking them, in my opinion.

also c!tommy was most definitely toxic against c!dream in the cell. it's of course understandable but that doesn't change the fact he was constantly hitting and insulting him (without dream doing anything back for a long while until he snapped) which is toxic behaviour.

i wouldn't say he was "just as" though, so i agree with you on that. they're different and they behave differently.

i made a dream blob keychain today. Is it possible to send images if u wanna see? Idk cus i havent used tumblr before. I think that's all for now. Thx for letting me talk :D peepoShy -curious anon (but fr a connoreatspants c!dream redemption arc would be cool)

yooo that's cool! i don't really,,, know if it's possible to send images? try it out and if it isn't i'll try find a way to turn it on.

also, no problem! just please remember this is a c!dream sympathetic blog, and me as well as my followers are uhh,, oftentimes emotionally attached / personally relate to the character, so if you could avoid sending hate on the character (not that you have or that i expect you to, just a friendly reminder) in the asks that would be great! we already see a lot of it unwillingly so, i'd rather not see more, but as long as the discussion is civil i'm absolutely ok with you asking more and with me answering more questions if you'd want to! :)

if anyone else would like to reblog this and add some things i might've missed with my answers, feel free to, just go easy on her (she uses she/her pronouns!) and keep it factual.

i hope u had a good or at least ok time at school today :D

thanks! i gtg now because exam tomorrow but i'm going to try write the redemption essay tomorrow as well because ohhh boy i have a lot of ideas about what all i could write around the concept.

also sorry this was long, i can't keep my tongue on the leash :[

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Also Nekrotefeyo was criminally underused for the legendary Eridian homeworld like I was expecting like a big abandoned city or a completely decimated apocalyptic place, not a dried up ocean bed (Are they maybe more crustaceans instead (?) of bugs???) with like 2 Eridian buildings on it and also Maliwan for... Some... Reason. Seriously. Dark Maliwan was so clearly cut content and I wanna know wtf that was all about. Also we got Promethea so it isn't like they weren't capable of making a big city area, like the restrictions of the engine wouldn't allow it, they just didn't... Feel like it? Maybe didn't have time to flesh it out given how late nekro is in the game? Seriously it feels empty as fuck, I love exploring the planets, but even as a certified lore lover I just can't bring myself to explore that place more than I have to for quests. It's really empty and boring

Also, I am bet that the big glowing thing we see coming out of the planet as it fragments is related either to the Machine and the souls sacrificed to make it work, or the Guardian soul main storage thingie. Mainly because ghosts and such are real in the bl universe and they're all that same glowing green sort of deal. It also reminds me of Krieg's mind planet projection thing which does add credence to that. That is potentially why Minos Prime 'hatched', it could have been a storage place for other, maybe reject(?) Guardian souls and that's where all the Eridian and Guardian stuff randomly came from that Tannis keeps goddamn repeating every time u play the takedown. FE Minos Prime was a testing site for prototype Guardians and the souls (I don't want to call them mind cores because the mind core we got from the Vault of the Destroyer was solid and not green and don't even get me STARTED on that whole situation because there was cut Overseer dialogue from when you take that thing out of the Vault and why WAS it even in the VAULT OF THE DESTROYER and Hhhhh) were stored in Minos Prime until whoops they got out. And I'm guessing they sacrificed the people of Minos Prime to the Machine (we literally left nobody guarding it sooo) bc Tannis says they just vanished without a trace. Which ALSO adds bonus points to my theory that the Eridians aren't dead and are just chilling elsewhere laughing at us right now.

I still think Lilith brought Elpis to the Eridian Rift on the map Typhon and Leda wrote all over and she's vibing there, too. Maybe it's a sort of stasis place where time doesn't pass so the people of Elpis don't die. Idk how Lilith would know about that but then again given the chest in her room I would honestly not bet against my whole 'Lilith had help from the Watcher and/or the Eridians during/before Bl3 and refused to tell us' which is why she just vanishes at the end of the game and takes Elpis with her.

And also why Sanctuary-III randomly exists when we have never heard of the company that made it before (seriously what is supamax mfg), it's somehow in good enough condition that Moxxi and Ellie could fix it up with their scarce resources, and they found it before any other people did (can probably chalk this one up to Tannis if there were cameras or it was hooked up to the ECHOnet of Pandora, but the other two points stand). I would've been okay with it if it were an Atlas ship Rhys sent over or smth, if it were an old Hyperion ship, if the branding of supamax mfg was Moxxi and Ellie's team effort of making a spaceship company in honor of Scooter- literally if any of these things were explained in-game, but they're NOT. So I am left to go 'what the hell where did this come from what is Supamax MFG' and like, a random company we've never heard of existing is totally fine, we're introduced to the Obsidian Black Block and Hephestus United as well, but it just feels weird that this random supply (?) ship just happened to go to Pandora for some reason and then also crash or was abandoned for some reason. If we could just get a scrap of info on Supamax MFG and why this ship was on Pandora I'd be happy. Their branding is Ships Made Quick so clearly they build ships which is fine.

Did Lilith contact them? If so, cool, could we get an ECHO log of that? Where did she get the money after Sanctuary-II blew tf up? Did she or Moxxi or Ellie have connections that allowed them to get the ship made for cheap or free? Why did they decide to make the ship out in the open when they knew about the rising CoV threat?? Was the ship stolen? Did the Crimson Raiders just kill a bunch of people to get their hands on it? I doubt it, but this shit isn't explained! So yeah when I write theories like 'Hm well maybe this ship was planted here by the Watcher' its not because I'm driven insane by the Eridians it is because we literally have no other reason to go 'maybe not' and with what little information we do get during the game, it could be fuckin possible!!!

Lilith apparently knew more than she was letting on, she was contacted personally by the Watcher during the end of TPS (brick specially had to ASK what the Watcher said to Lilith), so yeah fuck it the ship and everything that wasn't explicitly explained was given to Lilith by the Watcher to help her in her quest for whatever the Big One is in bl4. Bc you KNOW that Bl3 was just the lead up to get the Destroyer to slip out of its chains thru Tyreen's meddling (literally in nyriads log right before the final boss and its not like ty absorbed an entire planet sized monster and was the size of, like, a shortish tree so you know the Destroyer is still in there as it's further confirmed by Scourge when he says shit like you don't even know what you just did blah blah shut up loser- the only thing pointing to the Destroyer ACTUALLY being dead is that the Vault (????) of the Destroyer (???????????????) opened after Tyreen died but then we can make the Vault of the Architects argument that maybe it considered her part of the Destroyer and her dying confused the Vault into opened, iunno. I don't even know why that Vault was there in the first place wtf was its purpose I thought the Vault of the Destroyer was either the other Pandora one (emergency human feeding port to a monster that doesn't need sustenance) or literally Pandora itself in which case killing Tyreen should have destroyed the whole planet by opening it soooooo I guess that Vault exists to circumvent that extremely specific problem only the Eridians would have guessed could happen idk) and to set the Guardians up as villains cuz fuck them that's why (>:( please gearbox don't, make the Eridians the bad guys if someone has to be evil pretty please the Guardians aren't the bad guys they are literally gaining sentience right now give them a chance they gotta figure themselves out and the Eridians fit the whole 'corporations exploiting their workers' vibe with the Guardians being forced to work even after the Eridians are gone so don't let those parallels slip away with shortsighted storytelling) but then it hurts even worse cuz the story could've been so much simpler and just... Sweeter and better than what we got if that's all they had to do was set those two things up. Bro I hate how every time I go to ask questions abt the game it leads me back here. Because it's true!! And it hurts I just wanna sit down with the lore manager of the game and ask them all these questions because I'm genuinely curious, but I'm afraid of the answers or non-answers I'll get. Again, I get the whole 'things have to happen for plot, not everything should be questioned, give the writers some slack to write a story' argument but when EVERYTHING falls under that category and the story didn't even end up being that great, it gets really frustrating because HONESTLY? if we had gotten good lore and explanations to things and actual world building and details and all that? I wouldn't have minded the main story so much. But unfortunately we got neither good lore (I wanna tell Nyriad she was lied to very badly because it's either the Eridians are evil and liars about a lot, or nobody thought twice the implications of giving the Destroyer a feeding port that explicitly calls humans to it) nor good main story (you know.) and it just. Is annoying. That's all.

[vole-mon-amour]

OTP tag game.

Tagged by @captainjowl. You know for sure than I'm struggling to pick only 10 & fit them in here. But hell, that’s fun, thank you <3

Rules: Choose 10 OTPs BEFORE reading the questions, and then get to answering

1) Harry James Potter & Sirius Orion Black

2) Daniel Le Domas & Grace (Ready or Not 2019)

3) Samuel & Nathan Drake (Uncharted 4)

4) Corvo Attano & The Outsider (+probably Emily Kaldwin; Dishonored series)

5) Steve Grant Rogers & Bucky Buchanan Barnes (Marvel)

6) Tony Edward Stark & Peter Benjamin Parker (Marvel)

7) Handsome Jack & Rhys (Borderlands video game series)

8) Damon Salvatore & Elena Gilbert (TVD Books & a tv show)

9) Batman & Joker (in every universe, really)

10) Adam Jensen x Francis Pritchard (Deus Ex video game series)

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

I believe it didn't hit me before Spider-Man: Homecoming. Civil War was about Steve & Bucky for me, but when I saw that growing up Peter with Tony, their dynamic, chemistry. Tom & Robert are really just like that.

2. Have you ever read a fanfic about 2?

Lmao. I've read like 50% of the tag on AO3, I wrote my own & started a few wips on them. They are amazing. Plus, with that shitty canon? We didn't get enough of them & they deserved better, so it's only logical to save yourself with fanfiction.

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr screen saver?

I was living with The Outsider icon on my twitter & tumblr. That one is still my Google profile picture I believe. Don't remember about having an icon with the two of them. Also had The Outsider as my lockscreen on my smartphone for a while.

4. If 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

Funny how it fits canon, lmao. Rhys literally tried to erase Jack's AI in TFTBL, so I guess another day on Pandora, nothing new. They torture each other, they kiss each other, they kill other people in the process. It'll be fiiine.

5. Why is 1 so important?

I love them since the first time I met them, which was much more than 10 years ago, I don't even remember when. At some point they were the reason I was waking up & forcing myself to eat just to read more fanfiction & feel something. Even if I was drowning in pain (I was extremely depressed), it was still something. I read every fic I could find at that time. The depression that Harry went through, all these feelings, his love for Sirius. I was living through it, I could relate.

I'm currently drowning in these two again, though in a much healthier & happier state. I see their flaws & I know as much as I can. I see them differently as an adult. They saved me, they keep being my number one, I still consider making a tattoo of Padfoot/Sirius or of both Harry & Sirius together. I have many headcanons, ideas, I write fics about them. They are everything, you see? They were my choice when there was nothing, no one. They are HOME.

6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

Both. There goes the dynamic of Jack & Rhys: torture, fighting, flirting, a lot of trauma. I'd definitely say that they are wild and comical sometimes, but they are definitely serious. With the Asylum, the mental health issues. There is so much more to it, the complexity of their relationship. The struggle of loving who you probably shouldn't (but hey, when does it work like that?) Thinking about Tettlate's Batman, about Batman: Europa & how Joker was: "You must be crazy, putting me in charge of the plan, letting me decide. Okay, well..."

Nah, they are entertaining, but this is a serious ship.

7. Out of all the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

Are you kidding me? They are all the definition of CHEMISTRY. I'd say 5, but then go 2, 6, 7, 8. Come on. I'm not choosing. Most of they are WILD.

9. How many times have you read/watched the 10’s fandom?

The fandom itself? Idk. I found one of my favourite artists through this fandom. If it's about the characters themselves, I played the first game with the DLC from start to beginning, looking around every corner. Spent more than 60 hours in there. Watched a second game (my laptop can't run the game) and the DLC (obviously), since Francis is in the DLC & not in the main game. I have a tag for them on tumblr, I read fanfiction, I tried to write my own. I still follow Elias & want a third game. Elias liked my tweets about Adam and Jensen being an actual couple a few times. I'd say I interacted with all of this a lot? Still do, actually.

10. Which ship has lasted the longest?

5. Best friends since childhood, fought & died for each other, still found their way back to each other. "It would break your Captain's heart, to see what they did to you." That only the MENTION of Steve can pull Bucky out of this brain washing(ed?) state, distract him in the middle of a fight. When Steve died in the comics because of Sharon & Tony sent Natasha to take Steve's shield from Bucky because even Tony knew how much Steve means to Bucky. And Bucky was like: "Oh, I see what he did. Not happening!" Fought Natasha (that is his ex in the comics) & kept going for Steve's sake.

Well, you see the point, I can go on and on.

11. How many times, if ever, has 6 broken up?

They're not actually canon so none? They had a few fights: In Civil war (the comics), in Homecoming (the movie).  That only means that they’ve got history & love each other.

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

As fierce Grace is, they wouldn't stand a chance against Damon & Elena. Those two had to deal with worst thing than brainless stupid zombies. On the other hand, if there were no alive humans to drink their blood... It's either an animal diet that Damon hates so much or I don't know? Still, they're faster & more powerful. Their bodies have advantage of healing the wounds as well.

13. Did 7 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

From some people, yeah. Don't tell Athena, don't tell Vaughn, don't tell Fiona. Though Rhys wasn't very subtle about it & Jack just doesn't give a fuck. You will probably end up dead if you disagree or bore him, or if you're useless.

"I can take you to the top, but you gotta know where the top is" & Rhys doesn't tell anybody until Jack makes him the President for like whole 20 minutes lol.

Fiona & Sasha: "This can't be happening." Sure it can, darling.

14. Is 4 still together?

I have a headcanon about The Outsider finding Emily & Corvo after Billie frees him from the Void. He doesn't have anybody & they are his only friends aside from a potential friendship with Billie. And if we don't consider TOTO dlc, they definitely are! The Outsider visits them both when they sleep & takes them to the void sometimes. How could he not?

15. Is 10 canon?

Not really but also sort of? Let's say that they really care about each other in canon, despite Adam pushing Francis away because of his trauma & fear that Megan caused him. :/

16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

Can you imagine wizards fighting extremely powerful vampires? Superheroes with venom in their bodies that make them super strong with people that made a deal with the Devil himself (hi Le Bail)? 5000 y.o. God and his lover that share his powers and an augmented human protecting his tired IT guy? Combine mental health issues to that, Jack and Rhys with Batman and Joker. Corvo & The Outsider would probably slay them all as Corvo and Emily did in both games with entire islands, though it will still be a slaughter anyway.

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 5’s ship?

All the fucking time, lmaooo. I’m not even talking about it.

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

I feel like I already did with Steve & Bucky after many Marvel movies (we're not even mentioning Endg*me, I fucking died & was dead for full 4-5 months).

19. Do you spend hours a day going through 3’s tumblr page?

I used to do that a few years back, but not anymore. There is not much content since the trilogy is finished.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

1 already went through it & fandom lives, so I'd say maybe 7? Rhys will find a way to bring Jack back & they are both so wild. It’s what happened in canon anyway. Jack kidnapped Lilith & forced her to do Angel's job, so I'd like to see that witch try at first. Jack is an immortal bastard. <3

Now that I think about it, Corvo would also deal with her in seconds as she waits to curse them.

As a conclusion: no one breaks up forever, we're killing the witch.

I tag: @ianmillkovichgallagher​ & @aledbr​

Whoever else wants to join the game, please do.

[thehandsomeasshole]

@starttheanarchy from X

"Then why use them for a job they are not meant for, just keep them to their original purpose and make something new that works for what you need. And because quality work will save in the long term with less repairs, replacements, and malfunctions over all. And your welcome." The wide grin could be heard in her last three words. She was raised to have some manners after all. "And DT could probably do it as long as the load weight isn't over hmmm..." She drifts off as fingers tap together, mental math being calculated. "Eight tonne? Maybe less. I'm not exactly sure on that front since I actually haven't tested his limits on that front. Hmm something to test another day." Her eyes drifted over the floating form of her robot as it stayed ever vigilant of her surroundings. She knew it could do some heavy lifting since she had used previous versions to move things in the junk yard.

Eyes roll at yet another reason on why to avoid corporations, and another as he seems to enjoy being a pest.

"Actually last thing I did was fix up several things that were in disrepair in Overlook, since too much of the population of that poor town have the skull-shivers and had no access to the medicine. Something about repair tickets being ignored or something like that. And I didn't come here for the shallow reason of becoming rich, I'm opening the vault to try and prevent a very clearly corrupt corporation from monopolization on something that might be a blessing or a curse." If she had it her way, she would keep it locked forever since no one has a full understanding of the capabilities and issues of Eridium that began to spawn after the first one opened. To many variables and yet everyone wanting to just add more into the chaos.

"Yes, yes. The definition fits, but you seem to think I am on the same level of depravity like the Fleshrippers or the Bloodshots. To which all I can say is, rude and incorrect. And princess? Really?" That got her to shoot a glare back at the space station.

"Not everyone. Yes there are people who still deserve a chance to be treated like a decent human because they are. But you seem to be hard at work for making it so those people are just as dead as the rest. And you are right, no one has used an army of robots to lay siege on a planet in the name of their own ideals. They used armies of people, and all of them were considered like a plague upon humanity in the context of history. Dictators, tyrants, oppressors, authoritarians, monsters. Wonder how will you be written down."

At the laughter, and how it grew as she talked about what started this whole hot mess off for her on planet side, it made her skin itch with irritation. Out of everything on this fucking disaster hellscape, it was Hyperion that tried to kill her first. Sure others might have had to deal with bandits at other stops, but she went from off the inter-space shuttle to the train with no issues.

It was fair to say Jack was the first person to try to actually kill her. Even when escaping Eden-5 they were aiming for capture to make her life a living hell instead of a death sentience. It was one of the reasons she was trying so damn hard to keep surviving at this point, out of spite for the asshole who tried to kill them after using some shitty signs to inform them of their supposed doom.

Hands were clenched into fists and she could feel a chill roll through her body. It was like the ice never left at times.

A deep breath as she turns her face to the sun that burns the landscape, she is fine and alive. And she isn't going to follow his script and get pissed. She isn't going to scream like everyone else on this planet. The Mechromancer is going to do what she always does, go against what is expected.

"How about you tell me something else instead. You worked with the Crimson Raiders? What happened? What is the full story, from beginning to end?" Her voice is calm and even, one that seems to hold no judgment and wanting to listen. And she does, after all there isn't much information on the group. Gaige had no plans to jump ship, but she honestly had as much trust for them as she did for most anyone on this planet that wasn't shooting at her. Eden-5 taught her that the only person she could ever trust was her father and the friends she created with her own two hands.

"No bullshit, no propaganda. Just your side of the story. I have time."

Jack did smile at the little sass she threw his way, despite himself. "Well, empty, those things weigh nearly five tonnes. So, nice try. I guess." He chose to ignore her initial comment about using the loaders for their designed purpose. There was not enough patience in Jack's body to unpack all of that right now.

"Oh, the vaults are definitely a curse. But, once you get the ball rolling around here, there's not really anything anyone can do to stop it." Jack shrugged lightly, scanning through the first four pages while he spoke, "You just… gotta do what you can before another idiot comes along and screws everything up even worse than you did."

"Nah, you're right. Princess made me feel a little icky. How about… I- I'll get back to you, I'll think of something real good." he laughed lightly, beginning to scribble down some notes on the papers before he continued. 

"You sure as hell act like 'em, you and your bandit buddies. Just exactly how many things or people have you killed since you got to Pandora? Hey, look, I'll even give wildlife a pass cause- Well, you could kill a hundred skags one day and the next day there'd be two hundred more. Let's just focus on people. Maybe you're not running around screaming about meat bicycles, and maybe it is a little rude of me, but it's also correct. You just don't wanna admit it."

"The people who are still decent in this universe are few and far, kid. In my entire life, I've only met two people who were truly selfless." One's dead and the other’s… worse. "But, you do realise that if it wasn't me up here, it'd just be someone else? Hell, Dahl and Atlas would still be plowing through planets like they're big balls of paper and slaughtering everyone in their way while going off about fighting for those planets' freedoms and peace."

"Ooh, I love tyrant! Has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Always considered myself more notorious, than anything else." The sharp, almost humorous-sounding edge to his voice gave the impression he was teasing her, "Kid, it's nothin' I haven't heard before. You really think I'm gonna be kicking it anytime soon, anyway? Nah. Nope, not happening! I got way too much to do."

Jack's brows knitted together and slowly raised in a mixture of surprise and confusion. Sure, maybe she didn't care, he'd just never had a person who hated him ask for his side of the story before.

He decided not to express his shock.

"So, I'd been working on Helios since it launched, I was, uh-... A- a programming and engineering specialist for Hyperion for ten, fifteen years, maybe. I was in charge of most of the construction, getting together schematic proposals to give to my bosses, all that kinda shit."

"The first time I met Lilith and Roland was when Dahl decided they wanted to massacre all the workers on Helios and take it over. They… They didn't discriminate. If you worked for Hyperion, they'd gun you down without even batting an eye. They killed so many of the workers up here, I knew them all personally. We- we didn't even have a real military then, for God's sake! They shot workers out of the sky when they were trying to evacuate. That was the level of murderous psychopaths we were trying to deal with. We defended as best as we could, but even the freaking loaders weren't weaponised yet, I had like… Six hours to get them into a position to defend themselves, and you bet your ass I did it. I guess that actually answers your earlier question, too. I used them for a job they weren't made for out of necessity, the damn Lost Legion shot at them when they were running away, too. Assholes."

"I managed to get the vault hunter's I'd hired down to Elpis in a moonshot, think you've met a couple of them. They got to Concordia thanks to-" Shit. He hadn't actually thought about Janey in a while. He'd ask Athena how they were both doing, but she'd probably curb stop his head before he could even say hello. "-uh, this mechanic. They asked Lilith and Roland to help cause, y'know, Dahl had stuck a jamming signal somewhere on that moon and I couldn't work Helios's defences until it was shut off. They knew people on Helios were dying, and they said no."

"They only started to help when their lives were in immediate danger and Dahl got control of the moonshot laser and start firing away at Elpis. I really did trust 'em to help us, y'know? Like they promised they would."

"I guess they kinda did. We managed to get control of the laser again and… They blew it up. They nearly took the whole space station down just because they didn't want Hyperion having it. That stupid laser could've saved Pandora, you know. It could've- The blasts were so concentrated we could've wiped out an entire bandit settlement and their nice neighbours next door would've barely felt the ground tremble. I'd worked so hard on that laser. You have any idea how hard it was to make? How much progress they destroyed when they blew that damn thing up? A lot! A whole, freaking lot and-... Sorry. Off topic. Uh…"

He made a small noise, "Oh, yeah. Anyway, after that it was just a rush trying to get to the vault before anyone else did. Dahl was already there, but after what happened with those two I wouldn't have been surprised if they got to the vault first just so we couldn't."

"But, we did. My vault hunters took care of the- The Empyrean Sentinel, I think they called it. Big bastard, more human than the other vault monsters. Freaky stuff."

"So, the Sentinel was dead, and we finally got to the vault relic. It looked like… Nothing. Very underwhelming. Just a weird little floating vault symbol. I decided to touch it and-..." Jack went quiet for a while, his knuckles growing white with how tightly he was gripping the armrests of his chair, "And I saw�� everything."

He felt sick even talking about it. The pit in his stomach growing deeper and he knew if he didn't stop soon he'd fall into a full blown breakdown. So, he took a shaky breath in and continued.

"Wasn't long after that when Lilith made her grand entrance. She destroyed the relic and- blasted the fuck out of my face. You ever had your face branded by some freaky eridian technology? It sucks. Real bad."

He let his head drop back, and he rubbed his eyes, "So, there's my side. Think I can quit my day job and become a professional story teller?" Though he tried to make a joke, the fire in his voice seemed to have dissipated. He just sounded… tired.

[nadziejastar]

Well, first of all I loved his outfit. It’s similar enough to what he wore in BBS to make it feel like Isa, but still felt fresh. It looked like something a fashionable young person would wear. It’s based on a Roen-Gackt collaboration design. Nomura sure loves Gackt, lol. So Isa was considered important enough to get a lot of care put into his new outfit. This collaboration was probably done a long time in advance, like with FFVersus XIII. I’m sure Isa’s backstory was supposed to be WAY more fleshed out so that his character would make a MUCH stronger impression on the player by the end of KH3. So, the outfit was kinda wasted in a way. Isa’s whole character was just wasted potential, though.

In a room made of white marble, a large mirror reflected Demyx as he prepared to leave for the mission. He took particular care with his hairstyle, painstakingly manipulating the brown strands with a comb to make them stand straight up. Saïx observed him from behind with what appeared to be distaste. In stark contrast to Demyx, Saïx left his long blue hair unstyled. The X-shaped scar on his forehead was all the style he needed.

Having an outfit based on a J-pop star might tell us something about how Nomura originally viewed Isa’s personality. He actually seemed like a rather fashionable young man who took pride in his appearance. He even wore stud earrings. His style was different from other kids like Hayner, Pence, or Lea. Saïx didn’t have any interest in his appearance. But Isa certainly seemed like the type to style his hair and then some. For some reason, I picture him ironically spending even MORE time in front of the mirror than Demyx. Especially post-KH3. Isa was already shy. I think he would probably struggle with insecurity over having a scar covering most of his face. So, he would try even harder to compensate with nice clothes and accessories.

The KH3 ending outfit really doesn’t fit someone like Saïx, who had such a harsh and dreary personality. I can’t see Saïx choosing to wear anything like that outfit. Way too youthful and trendy. And definitely not the star and moon accessory, either. He’d throw up at the cute little moon on Isa’s BBS outfit. Isa obviously was supposed to have such a different personality than Saïx. I bet Isa is going to be SUCH an awkward character going forward, because they’ll feel obligated to keep his Saïx personality traits, which will clash so badly with the rest of his character. He’ll be this pseudo-villain/quasi-good guy that just will feel so out of place in a series like this. It breaks my heart.

A great number of Nobodies have lost human form, as have the Heartless. Yet the Nobody born of someone with a strong heart retains its shape, with but the faintest visible changes.

As far as the rest of his design goes, I thought it was pretty lazy. In my opinion, Isa’s character design needed much more of an update than what he got. Kairi looked more different after her haircut than Isa did in the ending. If anyone deserved to look different for KH3, it was him. But…he still looked almost exactly like Saïx to me. He has a bit more color to his hair and face, and his scar is faded. But that’s about it. Which I guess was intentional. Why bother changing his look? It seems like they gave up on whatever plan they originally had for Isa to be his own character who was totally distinct from Saïx. They’re gonna just pretend that he wasn’t Norted and treat him like he was the same as Axel. Which sucks. 

Axel and Riku get along very well somehow. Since Riku has become a figure of Ansem, I don’t speak much with him, but he laughs like a different person when he eats Ice cream with Axel. Axel says he “Laughs to face bad feelings”, but it seems that Riku isn’t a bad person. At that Axel said ‘don’t laugh when you’ve got a gross face’, but Riku didn’t seem all that annoyed.

Also, Axel really liked sea-salt ice cream. You’ve eaten sea salt ice cream ever since you moved to that house. I wonder how you don’t break your stomach! It felt like he ate them to an unthinkable extent. Axel ate so much ice cream that the freezer in the computer room emptied every day.

Now as a villain, Saïx had a very cool design. He was handsome and had long hair, but...he looked mean and scary. He was supposed to. He WAS mean and scary. He was Xemnas’ right-hand man, after all. And if he was Norted, this makes sense. He was envisioned as a sociopathic guy who has bouts of uncontrollable bloodlust when exposed to moonlight. I like Saïx’s design. He was pale and almost vampire-looking? Or maybe Addam’s family. He was created as a bad guy. The whole idea was that he was a scary, unapproachable dude. He was sinister and creepy. Yet ironically his original self was the polar opposite. It made for a pretty cool twist, IMO.

“…Aw, is it good?” Axel teased. “Seriously, you’re like a little kid. Even though you look like a mean old man.” Riku made no response, keeping his gaze fixed on the computer screen. The comment did rub him the wrong way. But mentally, Axel was definitely older than him by at least a little. Not that you could tell from looking.

They were clearly going for a VERY different vibe with Isa. When I first played BBS, I thought that the visual difference between Isa and Saïx was extremely noticable. Isa looked a lot softer, sweeter and more friendly. The idea behind Saïx's design was: harsh and scary. The idea of a cute bunny rabbit representing his personality was supposed to be absurd. Saïx would be utterly disgusted if he was seen as “cute”. But the idea behind Isa's design was: cute and innocent. And Isa was indeed a little cutie. And he was innocent, too.

Saïx: We'll ensure he receives the maximum punishment.

Axel: Okay, since you worked really hard today, you get a reward. 

Saïx’s Casual Gear is called “Dessert Time,” but the localization named it “Just Desserts", and I thought that was very clever. To get one’s just desserts means to receive the appropriate punishment for one's actions. But sea-salt ice cream is supposed to be a treat to reward someone who did a good job.

Saïx gave him a cruel grin. “You will lose everything!” And then the Claymore pierced Axel’s chest.

Saïx rarely smiles because he is cold and cruel. But he would smile when he’s giving Axel his just desserts.

“But sweet!” Lea added, and Isa smiled a bit. That was rare for him. Well, eating ice cream together, talking about silly stuff, laughing together—it was just what friends did.

Isa rarely smiles because he’s shy. But he would smile when he’s eating ice cream with Lea because he has a sweet tooth and loves dessert. It was such a cool idea. I loved it.

dichotomy

1. a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

2. the phase of the moon in which half its disk appears illuminated

Saïx’s Pandora Gear is called “Dichotomy” in the localization. Saïx had weapons called Lunatic, Berserker and Werewolf. The weapon representing his real personality is a bunny rabbit. The HUGE difference between Isa and Saïx was the whole point. My impression was that BBS wanted to emphasize as much as possible that Isa and Saïx were two very different people. And character design was one way they chose to do that. That dichotomy is what made Isa so interesting to me. If you want to make Isa his own character, you should go with a different character design, in my opinion.

“You’re in a pretty good mood,” Axel remarked. Riku glanced up.

“Seeing Sora just made you that happy, huh?”

“I don’t feel like telling you.” A little smile crossed Riku’s lips as he took another bite.

“Y’know, it’s creepy when you smile with that guy’s face,” Axel said dryly, following suit and nibbling on his own ice cream.

Silence fell over the room. He paused in his munching to stare hard at Riku, then finally asked, “What is Sora to you?”

The question caught Riku off guard. He groped for words. On the sofa opposite him, Naminé spoke up instead. “Sora and Riku are best friends.”

Like Terra, Isa was supposed to be cursed. Being Norted is no joke. That’s what a lot of the Beauty and the Beast parallels were about. Axel started teasing Riku for his ugly ass face the same time they were trying to figure out the organization’s next move. They were going to target those with strong hearts, and the Beast was one of those targets. 

Belle nodded and silently walked out of the room. The trio went after her. The Beast was left alone with no company but the moonlight.

“You’re really just going to give up on everything now?” Sora said all at once. But the Beast only stared up at the moon.

Isa was supposed to be just as cursed as Riku was in KH2. And Riku changing his appearance fit perfectly with Lea and Isa’s story. Axel said Riku was creepy when he smiled with that face, and unfortunately that’s kind of how “Isa” made me feel in the KH3 ending. Since they took away the possession angle, I didn’t really see him as Isa. He still felt like Saïx to me. And seeing Saïx play and smile like that was kinda unsettling. And weird.

Axel’s eyes crinkled as he remembered his own best friend—the only friend he’d ever had, in fact.

“If your best friend goes away, you’re sad, and if you get to be with them, you’re happy,” Naminé added. “Isn’t that how it is, Axel?”

“…That’s about the size of it.” Axel nodded and sat down on the remaining empty sofa, staring at the sea-salt ice cream he held.

“So you are capable of sincerity,” said Riku.

Axel only shrugged at the jab and finished his ice cream pop.

Probably for this very reason, I could tell that Nomura wanted to take a different direction with Isa’s character design after he decided to make him a good guy and Lea’s best friend. You can see what Nomura had in mind for an adult Isa based on his illustrations of Saïx for 358/2 Days and KH2FM+. He looks different than he did in his vanilla KH2 concept art. His features lean a lot more heavily toward Isa in BBS. I really wished KH3 went in this direction with his updated character design. He looks much more youthful here, like Axel does. Also, I loved the fact that his scar was gigantic. It went all the way from the top of his forehead to the bottom of his nose. In KH3, they stuck with the old Saïx design, so his scar was a lot smaller. I like the bigger scar because it really shows that he was treated like a human lab rat (of course that idea was scrapped, anyways). 

Beside the Beast, who had once been a handsome prince, stood a man in a black cloak. “It’s time you dealt with the girl. She’s scheming to take everything you have,” said Xaldin, his hood pulled low to hide his face. “Your castle, your treasures…and then your very life.” The Beast hung his head. His castle was a desolate place, ruled by a monster.

“Trust no one. Feed your anger. Only rage will keep you strong!”

“I’ve had enough of strength. There’s only one thing I want…” The Beast gazed, unmoving, at the glass bell jar around a single red rose.

What he wanted was—

“Hah,” Xaldin spat. “To love and be loved in return? Who could ever love a beast?” The Beast whirled again, his cape rippling. He glared and let out a roar of fury.

“Good. Let your anger rise!” With that, Xaldin vanished.

Axel didn’t really see his best friend when he looked at Saïx. He felt like Isa went away and Saïx took his place. His relationship with Saïx was based on his memories of the past. He self-medicated with ice cream to cope. It was heartbreaking. After the scene where Axel was sad about his best friend going away, the chapter about the Beast’s Castle begins, describing him as a formerly handsome prince. So on that basis, I wish there was more visual differentiation between Isa and Saïx. Most of the fandom is just going to see Isa as the same mean old Saïx since there was no attempt to differentiate Isa’s personality from Saïx’s personality and they look exactly the same, too. 

“I don’t trust you,” Saïx replied flatly, the enormous Claymore in his hand.

“Traitors like you deserve to lose everything,” Saïx said.

Saïx gave him a cruel grin. “You will lose everything!”

They originally wanted Isa to have a distinct personality and appearance from Saïx—a lot more than just a new outfit. Isa was supposed to be a beautiful love interest cursed into being a beast. In the novel you can tell that Xigbar and Xaldin were pressuring Saïx to eliminate Axel. He was reluctant to do so on his own. Xigbar doubted whether he was even looking for Axel. Just like with the Beast, they were manipulating him to think Axel had been plotting to take everything from him. Deep down Saïx probably felt similar to the Beast. Like nobody could ever love him in his condition. I think that’s why he was so furious. Axel grew a heart, and then left him. But the only reason Axel grew a heart was because he remembered his feelings for Isa. It was a really cool idea. It's just a shame it never came to fruition.

[hollowedrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, ROMAN! — You’ve been accepted for the role of Xenophilius Lovegood, with a face claim change to Cody Fern. I was a little worried people would struggle with the vagueness of Xeno’s affliction and how he’s been affected since he was attacked during school, but you wrote it beautifully. I also really enjoyed reading your head canons about his relationship with Pandora, and everything else about Xeno. You really brought his character to life outside of the bio, which is exactly what I’m looking for in an application.

Thank you so much for applying. Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the follow list. Welcome to Hollowed Souls!

ooc.

name: Roman

age: 26

preferred pronouns: they/them

timezone: EST

activity: medium to high; I’m around to answer messages and plot every day, and am usually able to do at least some replies every other day or so depending on how work is going!

are you applying for more than one character?: not at this time!

how do you feel about your character dying?: I would be comfortable with it as long as it’s discussed and I’d have a chance to pick up another character! The possibility of the death is cool to think about; having a grand ending would be satisfying, especially if it was something that was a long time coming, and contributed to the plot in a big way, which I feel it actually could with Xeno. I’m a sucker for a good slow burn with some angst!

anything else?: (questions, concerns, etc.) I did some assuming on some bits about Pandora and Xeno’s relationship that I’m definitely open to changing or revising if accepted! Also, this has nothing to do with the app, but if missing characters make an appearance later on, I would love to express my enthusiastic interest in seeing Ted Tonks!! I wrote Ted in Port Montrose and I’d LOVE to see what he’s like in this other beautiful AU!!!

ic details.

(cw throughout for ableism, vague mental illness discussion)

full name: Xenophilius Prometheus Lovegood

Xenophilius: from the Greek xenos and philia, respectively meaning strange and love; together, the love of the strange. Klaus and Else Lovegood were never going to choose an average sort of name for their child. Believing in many old practices of the wixen world, upon learning they were pregnant, they sought out a Naming Seer to learn the future of their child, and, therefore, what sort of moniker they would fit. They used what little of their savings they had left from the move for the appointment, as it was an important tradition in Else’s family. The Naming Seer projected a strange life for the child, full of wonder and mysticism, a longing for knowledge and a mind open to the belief of the other that most would reject easily. The Naming Seer suggested Edmund, for the prosperity they saw the child could achieve if encouraged, through academic success. The two laughed, thanked them, and left to do their own research. They came across the word xenophile in one of their very old muggle books about cultures of the world and knew immediately that was the name for their child. If they were going to have an open mind, their name was going to let all who heard it know so.

Prometheus: Greek mythological figure, a titan known for creating man from clay, as well as stealing fire from the gods and gifting it to humanity, starting civilization. Xeno’s parents made this choice very soon after landing on his first name. Klaus had a certain fascination with mythology, and what better than to give her child a name to encourage intelligence and creation at any cost?

Lovegood: As it sounds, a combination of the two English words love and good. This was a surname of the Lovegoods’ own creation upon their immigration to the United Kingdom during the muggle’s World War II. They had no shame in their former surnames, but wanted a blank slate to start over with good fortune. They settled on something to show the simple and true quality of their affections, that their intentions, while some might find them strange, were always good.

date of birth: January 20, 1952

Capricorn-Aquarius cusp

The definition of this contrasting cusp, Xeno is a combination of both signs, hardworking and idealistic, with the ability to view the world in strange ways that few others can, and the intention of opening the minds of those around them. The mind is constantly working, creating brilliant, exciting thoughts and ideas, but the constant flow at times makes him come off as distant or uninterested in the ordinary people and things around him. Speaking with someone born on this cusp can be jarring and intimidating, although intriguing, always prepared to discuss the most outlandish of concepts, but rarely able to stop and process the more mundane, often times forgetting about thinking of what others are feeling.

former hogwarts house: Ravenclaw

There was a brief debate, as Xenophilius approached his eleventh birthday, of whether it would be best to send him to Durmstrang, as that was where both Else and Klaus went, and consequently met each other, but that thought was quickly silenced with a visit from Dumbledore himself, offering a place at Hogwarts for the young prodigy. Xeno researched the schools obsessively during the months this debate was going on, and insisted that he had to be at Hogwarts, because he was clearly a Ravenclaw student. Upon his entrance, the hat barely touched his little blonde head before shouting just that, a self-satisfied grin on the child’s face as he joined his new classmates.

sexuality: demisexual panromantic

For all of his youth, he was much too preoccupied with researching anything that was able to hold his attention for longer than a few minutes to worry about things such as dating and sex. People are not what he truly cares about, as harsh as that sounds, and it takes a great deal for him to feel that sort of attraction to someone. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he is fairly certain part of it has to do with what he saw his parents go through as a child. He can’t remember them ever truly seeming to love each other, despite the stories of their own youths they told him. All he remembers is the shouting and the pain they caused each other, all because of the most mundane problems, as if they had forgotten who they truly were once they had a family. That made him wary of that sort of very human connection, not wanting to lose himself more than he already had. Until things changed, of course…

gender/pronouns: agender + any pronouns (primarily he/him & they/them)

He has no great attachment to any gender at large, and therefore feels the label of something closer to nothing, defying any sort of binary or spectrum, fits him better than anything else could. His being feels unexplainable and it’s something he accepted from an early age. As such, though, he doesn’t truly care what anyone calls him. In fact, a lot of the time he’d rather people just wouldn’t refer to him at all, but that has very little to do with gender.

face claim change: Cody Fern, Jason Ralph, Boyd Holbrook  (If for some reason, Cody Fern isn’t approved anymore and I get accepted, I’d love to brainstorm other alternatives with you before settling on one, as Cody is very much how I envision Xeno!)

more.

1. how do you interpret this character’s personality? how will you play them? include two weaknesses & two strengths.

+ determined, idealistic, brilliant

- aloof, selfish, erratic

Perhaps if life had treated him differently, Xenophilius would be considered one of the greatest minds of his time already. If life had not beaten him into the furthest recess of his mind from the moment he was old enough to understand and question what was going on around him, perhaps that person could have existed, already fully formed, by the ripe age of thirty. But life was not so kind, and even now he can say with certainty that it comes as no real surprise, having studied so much of the world obsessively, researching what he can get his hands on of every possibility that the human mind can dream up to understand the world at large.

At an early age, he retreated into his mind as a form of coping with the outside world, even as the thunderous voices, first of his parents, then of the bullies and naysayers at school, then of everyone, tried to infiltrate his thoughts. Single-minded to the core, focused and determined to solve any question proposed, any long lost mystery left unsolved, it is still so easy for him to fall into weeks at a time of researching furiously, even disappearing for days at a time on his quests for knowledge, once an idea comes to him. Because of this, he was never quite as adept as interpersonal relationships as he might’ve been otherwise, and this only worsened after his accident, when the sounds of the voices became nearly deafening in his mind.

He would much rather spend his time researching whatever concept has caught his interest than interact with his peers, causing him to come off as distant and aloof to many. When he does deign to talk to others for an extended period of time, though, his brilliance does become clear, although so does his erraticism. Enchanted with long lost mysteries, and ideas thought only to be legend and rumor, his speech rambles and raves through dozens of topics by the you’ve caught up with the first. If landing on something he truly does care about, he could speak for hours with supreme eloquence on the matter, although what he cares about and believes in rarely lines up with those around him, and thus is often dismissed as nonsense. He believes wholeheartedly, after all, that consciousness creates and therefore nothing the human mind is able to dream up should be ruled as wholly impossible.

People have always been cruel to him, and he has long ago accepted this as a fact of his life, even if he does do his best to spread good in the form of knowledge. When faced with the negativity, the cruelty, he used to do anything he could to defend himself, including the less refined solutions. He still possesses very little respect for traditional authority, but some of his light, some of the mischief has left him in the years since the fight that left him as he is. Now, it is often times easier to accept that others’ minds aren’t nearly as expanded as his, and they do not wish to be, than to try to argue his correctness. An unwilling audience will not learn, no matter how brilliant of a teacher he might be.

Do not mistake that for him thinking the worst of the world, though. Despite it all, he truly does believe in good, and hopes that one day he can bring the hope that he does feel to others as well by expanding their minds beyond the limitations of the mundane. But he’s convinced himself that he won’t be able to do so as he is now, broken and bent, a shadow of what he could be if not plagued with such a curse.

2. how has the war affected this character, emotionally and otherwise?

Upon waking up in the hospital wing all of those years ago, his mind had become a much darker place. The war was never his, never will be, at least fully, thanks in part to his own blood status, but mostly because of how he feels. It took a long, long time until he realized, truly, what was going on, and then it was only thanks to Pandora that he began to grasp the reality, the gravity of the situation surrounding them.

In the beginning, with only whispers and quiet fights taking place as two sides divided over beliefs, he was unaware, too completely wrapped up in his own quests to set them aside and worry about another battle to fight. After all, in the beginning, he was utterly devoted to finding his own cure, whatever it might take. In a way, Xeno’s selfishness kept him blinded to what was happening, or how he might’ve helped for far longer than it should have.

But then he truly met Pandora, and he fell in love as quickly as he had fallen in love with the pursuit of knowledge to calm his mind. Even without a cure, being with her cleared some of the noise, and he could begin to understand the gravity of what was going on around him. He saw how much the carnage of the war hurt her, saw how deeply and thoroughly she cared for all of these people she didn’t even know, and that is what made him begin thinking more deeply on things.

That is when it began to hurt.

The voices seemed only to grow in volume, overlapping each other, begging for his attention at every turn as he watched his wife become more and more entrenched in a fight that should not have been happening in the first place, in his mind. As the war ragged on, and things grew worse, so did his affliction, as if whatever it was that had caused this was somehow tied to the war itself. That explanation made it feel easier, for him, anyway, even if it made everyone believe he was that much further gone, tying himself to something of such importance.

He retreated further and further into himself, his research falling by the wayside, only Pandora allowed into the true depths of his madness, witnesses the oftentimes nonsensical spurts of morbid inspiration burst from the voices of war in his mind. Among it all, there was, and still is, the underlying desire to do what his wife does, to be able to care so deeply about so many others, but his mind makes it so difficult. He cares about Pandora’s safety above all others’, and those she loves, too, now, but widely is still more concerned about the personal matters first. Still, he tries to help her when he can, would do anything in the world for her if it meant she was happy and at peace, just as she tries to do for him. And perhaps, once he finds his cure, he can do the same for others.

But how could he help now, after all, when he’s so far from whole himself?

3. Where does this character currently stand? with those who wish to hide in godric’s hollow until the war ends, with those who wish to rebuild the order and continue fighting the war, or on neither side? why?

This, all of this, it was not a choice of his own.

He could feel Pandora’s desire to fight, even before the question of what came next was out in the world. And just as it came, so did offer of retreat, of refuge. It was never an offer they could have passed up, no matter how it was spun. Pandora wished to help, to do what she could for those suffering, and prevent any more death from blooming in their midst, and he has always wanted what she wants. His own involvement with the Order had been selfish from the start, anyway, and it was clear that retreating with the Order held the most potential for the expansion of knowledge, the potential of finding a cure, even after all of these years, or even just finding a moment of peace. Just as it was clear that the longer they spent out in the world, amongst the hatred and violence, the worse his condition became, descending further and further from reason.

And so it was not a choice in the first place, and now, here they are, without much choice again.

Stuck in a village full of the memory of death, without a say.

With no personal attachment to the war, and as only an affiliate of the Order, it is hard for him to form a true feeling on what is right for all of them. He has very little desire to stay here for an extended period of time, feels trapped and static without access to the world at large for his research, but the thought of rebuilding to fight is one he’s not certain of either, when the war was never his to start and he feels in no way ready to truly help yet.

When it comes down to it, he would do whatever it is that Pandora believes is for the best for both of them, trusting her more than anyone else in the world, especially as the voices become clearer and he feels himself slipping from sense, even if that meant staying until the war ends.

But he doesn’t feel good here.

It stinks of death, of vile hatred, of curses perhaps even worse than his own. And for the first time, he’s afraid.

It’s strange, in a way, that he hasn’t felt fear like this before, after the countless fights, after waking up and learning he was missing weeks of his life, after being changed beyond his own will because of some sinister magic. Not once before has he felt this fear, but it’s settled square between his shoulders now, twisting a terrible knot of tension, keeping him from finding any true peace here. He’s convinced there’s something here that he’s been searching for. But now that he’s closer, he’s terrified of what he might find, that the answer might be there will never be a cure. That maybe he is mad after all.

4. The voices in Xenophilius’ head have only gotten louder since the war began. How are they now that he’s in Godric’s Hollow? Has anything he heard made sense, or is it just a bunch of gibberish?

There were always voices in his mind, although he had never truly considered them anything to worry about until after the that fateful night when they changed. There were always whispers of unknown sources helping him along with his research, encouraging him to expand his thinking, search out new creatures and potions. Those voices helped create new spells, craft potions no one had dreamt up before, study beasts only thought of in fairy tales.

They’re different now, though, darker, jumbled. It’s rarer that there’s anything clear, so many different voices speaking at once, constantly, but when there is, it’s not as it was, inspiring thoughts and breakthroughs. And they’re all familiar; sometimes he’ll hear his parents, sometimes he’ll hear old schoolmates, Order members.

When he became truly aware of the war, something changed. The voices seemed louder, more persistent, as if determined to hold his attention because of what was going on in the world.

Coming to here, Xeno believed that perhaps being in a place of peace would change that, that it may quiet some of the voices, take the constant dull roar down to a whisper once again, allow him to feel more like himself, allow him to focus on searching for a cure. He was wrong, though.

The voices changed upon his entrance into Godric’s Hollow.

There’s something new there, in the corner of his mind, hidden amongst all of the confusion, the hundreds of voices mixed floating around his mind. It used to be so rare to have a moment of clarity, the voices only working to a crescendo so often. It happens often now, one thought or another winning out, coming to the forefront of his mind in complete clarity and bursting forth into a shock of inspiration.

These bursts of inspiration feel almost close to violent since coming to Godric’s Hollow, taking him over completely, frenzied. He finds himself scribbling in notebook upon notebook madly, frantically flipping through pages of the books they’d brought to their tent from home, muttering to himself as if he may lose the thread of inspiration if he cannot get it out into the world fast enough. It’s exhausting, feeling so much, feeling so out of his own control at times, and he’s certain it has to do with this place.

When they calm again, when he stops from exhaustion, quill drooping in hand, and glances at the pages and pages, it scares him even more. Rarely, now, does what he writes seem to be related to his own research. It seems to be what these voices want, the thoughts made concrete.

He hears them saying names, names of those lost, those gone forever. Hears them telling him to go, then another telling him he must stay, that he is oh, so close to what he needs. He tries his hardest to keep going, but it gets so hard when in the din of voices something so clear rings out, something that seems to mean more.

The most terrifying thing was the first moment he heard Pandora’s voice in his mind, clear as day, the familiar wavering whisper as beautiful as a bird’s song to his ears, one of the first days they had come to Godric’s Hollow. She told him to stay. It shook him to his core, but he hasn’t heard her since, hopes he doesn’t. He hates the thought of his curse touching the most pure thing in his life.

So Xenophilius searches for what they’re trying to lead him to, hoping it is what he needs, that the cure might be at his fingertips, if only he opens his eyes.

extra.

pinterest board!

character tag!

if i were…

if i were a season, i’d be autumn.

if i were a time of day, i’d be dusk.

if i were a place, i’d be a hidden library of forgotten knowledge.

if i were a type of weather, i’d be a thunderstorm.

if i were a scent, i’d be patchouli.

if i were a plant, i’d be a Dirigible plum.

if i were an element, i’d be water.

if i were a color, i’d be bright, warm yellow.

if i were a song, i’d be River by Joni Mitchell

if i were an item of clothing, it’d be a worn, grey duster.

if i were an object, i’d be a moleskin notebook.

if i were one of the seven deadly sins, i’d be pride.

if i were one of the seven heavenly virtues, i’d be diligence.

if i were a god/goddess, i’d be Athena.

on pandora:

He knew. The moment she first treated him in Mungo’s, he knew that he would follow her to the ends of the earth, if she would allow him. It was a strange feeling, not entirely a pleasant one when considering that all his life he had expected never to feel that way about another human being. He wonders how he had missed her at Hogwarts, but then, he had been so entangled in himself, so focused on collecting all the knowledge that he could, that he had hardly made any friends in his own house and year, yet alone others. What mattered is that he had found her now, just in time to keep him from giving up.

After truly meeting Pandora, his single-minded obsession became learning to sign as quickly and proficiently as he could. He wasn’t as fast as he wished he would’ve been, but he learned as best he could, and kept going back to Mungo’s as he learned, an excuse to see her again and talk to her more, especially as he realized that the other healers believed him mad.

She was the first person who truly believed him when he insisted it was the boys’ attack with the dark objects that had caused this, and not a dormant mental illness whose symptoms only appeared after the event. As such, his trust and belief in her was enormous from the beginning, and has not once faltered in the years since.

One of the initial reasons he was so attracted to her was for her pure dedication to a singular cause and the pursuit of knowledge, something he believes in himself. He could see how passionate she was about healing, and how willing she was to do anything to help her patients, not limited to the confines of average healing. He admires her determination and creativity greatly.

The way she cares for people stands in stark contrast to his own ability to do so, which is another reason he loves her so much. He can hardly imagine being so open in caring about others, but he likes to think that she has helped him grow in that regard even slightly. He hopes that she’ll help him grow in that even more, once they’ve found a cure.

If it were not for Pandora, Xeno wholeheartedly believes he would have given up hope of finding a cure, or even peace, years ago. She was able to show him the light in the darkness, and she continues to be that beam of sunlight coming through the clouds of a storm with each passing moment, reminding him that there’s always reason for hope left.

The only times he finds even brief moments of something close to silence is with her. Lying in bed together as they both try to drift into troubled sleep, listening to the steady sound of her breathing, feeling her heat pressed against his, it’s nearly enough to calm the war constantly raging in his mind.

His proposal to her was neither truly romantic or at all dramatic, instead a sort of passing question in the midst of the ever rambling road of his words, his fingers moving just as fast as his lips could, by that time. A question phrased in a way that made it seem more for practicality than it truly was, because he does love her, more greatly than he thought he could ever love one person. A simple it would be easier if we were married, and then the nonchalant production of a ring from his pocket, set on the table in front of her. An amethyst and celestite woven together within a bronze band, charmed to emit a sense of pease and focus, as well as ward off Wrackspurts.

details:

His parents met at Durmstang, and then moved to Berlin, Germany after graduating, working as researchers, of sorts, for a company of like-minded wizards interested in what many would call nontraditional magic. When things began to fall apart in the non-magical world, they made the decision to move to start a family of their own in safety. They settled in London, using up most of their savings to make it there and rent a small flat in Camden.

Despite being a pureblood, Xeno holds none of the beliefs of British pureblood society, in part thanks to be raised by non-British purebloods, but mostly because he can hardly fathom how it is possible to see other humans so darkly. He appreciates what muggles have accomplished without magic, and has even studied much of muggle science and technology out of interest, as well as being interested in proving for them the existence of several of their so-called cryptids.

He has never been able to hold a full time job for long, and stopped trying to do so after years spent in his early twenties trying unsuccessfully in various fields that didn’t truly keep his interest anyway. He would miss days of work without mentioning it, was perpetually late, and rarely actually helped customers with what they actually wanted when in customer service fields. Instead, he earned his money by penning essays and articles sold to various magazines and newspapers on his strange beliefs, as well as selling his research to those who would benefit from it. He dreams of starting his own magazine, if things ever return to normal, if heever finds a cure for his affliction, but right now that task feels impossible given how full his mind is.

He’s started a small garden of strange flora for his and Pandora’s use in Godric’s Hollow. Not much of it is useful to the more ordinary needs of the residents, unless they believe in the oftentimes wild properties Xeno attributes to many of the plants, but he and his wife use many of them for potions and infusions of their own needs, and gladly share if anyone has a desire.

Xenophilius is unable to produce a corporeal Patronus at this time, and has not been able to since waking up in the hospital wing those years ago. Before that, though, his Patronus was an eagle owl.

He didn’t actually seek any healing for what the other students had done to him outside of his own attempts at healing until he was well out of school. As confident as ever, he believed that he could find a cure and do so by himself. When it started interfering not only with his life, but his work, though, he sought out help at Mungo’s. Although most of the healers believed he had gone insane, and most people still do, it was the best decision he made, as it lead him to Pandora.

He hasn’t had any contact with his parents since he graduated from Hogwarts and isn’t certain where they are now, or even if they’re still living. It isn’t that he doesn’t love them, but the childhood that they gave him took too much from him even as they fought to offer him opportunity. He still hears their voices amongst all the others, hears them arguing, only now the anger feels directed at him, not each other.

As well as now being fluent in sign language, Xeno also speaks fluent German, although most of what comes to mind easily now has to do with the cursing that his parents used to do at each other during his childhood.

Not concerned with outward appearances, Xeno very often looks like he rolled directly out of bed and walked into public. While that isn’t usually the case, he could not care less if anyone thinks it is. If he owns a brush for his hair, it has long ago been lost, and many of his clothes are either entirely inappropriate for the occasion at hand, or completely mismatched. There is a method to some of what he wears, of course; the necklaces he always wears, one with a butterbeer cork dangling from it, the other with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.

[canadian-riddler]

The Girlfriend Part Three.  

Synopsis: He probably shouldn’t have done that.  Too late now…

 AO3 || deviantart || fanfiction.net || Wattpad

Being allowed to hang out in GLaDOS’s chamber while she was asleep made him feel a lot better.

She didn’t do anything, obviously; she just hung there sleeping. All he was even doing was the same stuff he did while she was awake, like talk about whatever came to mind or fool around on the ECHONet.  More of the ‘Net, usually.  And she told him every day before she went to sleep not to touch her or else, except for the last eight days.  She had either decided he’d gotten the hint, or there was another hint he wasn’t getting at all.  Because the only time he’d been allowed to touch her in like three weeks now was had been when they were fooling around. Which was weird!  She’d never let him do that before.

The last time had been even weirder.  Not only had he gotten the usual strange sense of relief from her she seemed to have when they did it, but she also kinda just… sat there and let him hug her after.  He didn’t even remember why he was doing that.  And he didn’t wanna ruin this good thing he had going, but still he decided he had to ask,

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Well, that hadn’t told him what was up.  “Look, we uh… we don’t have to keep doing this.  If you don’t want to,” he’d told her, even though the mere thought of holding himself to that offer was like torture.  Seriously!  Having that chassis in front of him all the time and never being able to interface with it would have practically been a crime against robotkind!

“Hm?”

“You always seem kinda… relieved that we’re done.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS had said, as though the thought had never occurred to her.  Which was wild!  “I am. But not because of anything to do with you.”

Encouraging! but not helpful.  “And… the reason is…”

But then she had moved away and said she was going to sleep, and that had been that.  And that had been four days ago.

He really didn’t want to wait another week or however long to be able to touch her again.  Especially since she hadn’t told him not to.  Not recently, at least.  He didn’t wanna take advantage or anything!  Really!  He just wanted to cuddle her as much as possible!  And she didn’t even have to be on! He wasn’t even asking to take up any of her time to do it!  He was cool with just doing it while she was asleep! She probably wouldn’t even notice!

Oh.  Oh, wait.  That was true.  She probably wouldn’t.  She’d never mentioned the fact that he talked to her at night, so she probably wasn’t conscious at all.  Not even a little bit.  It was really hard to tell with admin bots, since their task lists were more of a twenty-four-seven dealie, but she wasn’t the kind of person to keep quiet if he was doing something she didn’t like.  But she couldn’t dislike something she didn’t know was happening!

Would that count as being sneaky, though?  He already knew asking her direct questions was not the way to get an answer of any kind. He just sorta had to ease into things and wait and see if she told him to stop.  Which he wouldn’t have to do for this, since she’d be totally asleep and not know about it at all.

Well, what did he have to lose?  He was just gonna go for it.  She probably wouldn’t even get that mad.  Probably. She might.  Hopefully not mad enough to kick him out, though.  He really liked living here.  Also, he really liked her.  Which was why he just couldn’t bear to keep his hands off her!  And honestly it would be weird if he did want such a thing!  She was so big and so beautiful and it felt so good to just put his arms around her as far as he could reach and just sit there and listen to all the noise her brain made as she went on thinking those smart thoughts of hers.  Ohhhh. He shivered.  Okay, now he was really gonna do it.  He could not go another second without holding her again.  It’d be fine. No big deal.  It was nothing at all to cuddle your girlfriend while she was sleeping even though she hadn’t actually told you it was okay to do that. Probably everyone else did it all the time and he was late to the game.  Which… wasn’t unusual, actually.

“Okay,” he said to himself, looking at her and thinking over how he wanted to do this.  It was gonna have to be from the side, since he couldn’t really move that much from the front and he could never be sure how long he could stay still for.  So he went up to her left side and he very, very carefully put his right arm along the part of her core where the ceramic fit into the rail that let her shift it up and down.  Then he stayed very still and listened as hard as he could.

Nothing.  

Good!  Exactly what he’d been hoping for.  When he thought he’d calmed himself down again he very slowly positioned his chassis as close to her as possible, which also went very well, and then he finally (again very slowly!) put his other arm up against the front of her core.  He did remember she didn’t like having her optic assembly touched at all, so he put his arm up a little higher just in case he stopped paying attention and it slipped.  She would definitely be mad if he punched her in the eye, even if it was by mistake.

He was so nervous about the whole thing that he didn’t really get to enjoy it for the first ten minutes, but after that?  Totally worth it.  

He was never gonna feel lonely at night again.

 //

 Every day he waited about twenty minutes to make sure she’d gone to sleep, and then he’d go up to her and put his arms around her real slow.  Sometimes he wouldn’t talk or watch TV or even do anything, because the feel of her was just so darn nice.  He’d just sit there and think about what it must be like to be a construct like her. Though… he never really came to the conclusion it was a nice life.  She didn’t have any friends and she never really seemed to have fun.  It seemed like being smart enough to be admin just… sucked.  Because then they gave you all this work to do, and if you didn’t have any work you just started going stir-crazy!  Even if he’d been good at it, Claptrap didn’t really like working. It was a lot more fun to just mess around and do what he wanted.  But GLaDOS couldn’t do that.  Well, she could.  But not for very long.  She had too much work to do.

At times where he was thinking stuff like that, he hugged her a little tighter and wished she’d open up to him a little more.  Gosh, he liked her a lot.  It sure would be cool to know if doing this was okay or if he was just being a total asshole.  Claptrap was a pretty nice guy, compared to everybody else on Pandora, but in a world where everyone was kinda a jerk he was also bound to be a jerk like fifty percent of the time.

He did this every day for a week or two and it always seemed to go fine.  He already knew by now when she was waking up by the sound of it – ‘cause it was loud – and he usually got off her with plenty of time to spare. But then there was this time he forgot what he was doing because he was watching a movie about a dog that could play basketball, and it was just so amazing that he didn’t realise he’d lost track of time until he seemed to have gotten a lot warmer and noisier all of a sudden.  That was certainly weird, since he wasn’t, like, thinking or anything, and while he was trying to puzzle that out he suddenly remembered just who he was hanging onto.

Ohhhhh s***.  Oh s*** s*** s***.  How was he gonna explain his way out of this?  He veeeeeery slowly extracted himself from her core, backed away about three feet, and then… nothing.  She didn’t do anything.  She didn’t yell at him, or sigh in annoyance, or even actually move.  He wasn’t sure what to do.  Was he in trouble?  Was she thinking about how much trouble he was in?  Was she gonna kill him?  Or, worse, kick him out?

“Good morning,” he said, in an attempt to be casual, but considering his voice came out kinda high-pitched it was unlikely he was even one percent convincing.  Aw, hell.  

She still didn’t move. Well.  Onto the hard question.

“Are you mad?”

She didn’t say anything, and because he was himself he felt the need to fill the silence with something.  “Look, I know I shouldn’t’ve been doing that.  And I… I’m sorry I didn’t ask first, but I thought you’d say no!  And I mean, you’re my girlfriend!  And I never get to hold you!  That’s kinda a thing I’m supposed to be able to do!  Maybe not all the time, but not never!  So I figured, hey!  She’s asleep, and I’m not asleep, so we can both have what we want!  So yeah!  When you go to sleep at night I come up and cuddle with ya until you get up.  I really like it.  A lot.  I’m not doing anything else, I swear.  I’m really not.  It’s okay if you’re mad.  I shoulda asked first.”  He spread his hands helplessly, since she was giving him literally nothing to work with here.  

“I’m not mad,” GLaDOS said unexpectedly.  “I knew about it the whole time.”

Wait.  What? She’d known the entire time and she’d just… let him?  Without saying or doing anything?  He felt like that had to mean something.  Okay, okay. She’d known about it and instead of telling him to get lost, she’d just let it go on.  And she’d done that because…

Oh.  Oh, wait a minute.

“GLaDOS,” Claptrap said, “do you like it when I hold you?”

She was quiet for so long he thought he wasn’t gonna get an answer out of her, but then she said,

“I don’t know.”

That was when he was suddenly reminded of something he usually forgot about her: that he was kinda the only person she knew.

How would she know if she liked being hugged or not?  It wasn’t like she had arms.  She was also really big.  That wasn’t a problem for him, of course, but it could be a bit of a hitch in the hugs department. And even if she’d known other people, she’d probably had a lot of crappy experiences with people touching her.  He didn’t quite know what they had been, but he didn’t need the deets to know what humans liked to do with robots. Every time they got their hands on one they started –

Ohhhhhh.  Now he got it.  Now he got what aaaaaall of this was about. It had absolutely nothing to do with him at all!  For once.  He was just the first person she was letting touch her in like ten years.  She was very, very slowly giving him her trust.  And he actually seemed to be earning it!  All of this was doing wonders for his self-esteem, actually.  Wait!  He was supposed to be doing something.  What was it again?  Oh yeah! GLaDOS.  He’d asked if she liked being held and she’d said she didn’t know. And then he’d kinda spazzed.  Okay.  Uh… hm. Did he keep talking about it?  She didn’t usually like talking about stuff. Soooooo… subject change!  But what to?  Hm. This was kinda hard…

“Hey, you wanna see some parking fails?”

“Some what?”

So he got out one of his playlists – which he had a lot of, mostly for making himself better when he did something stupid – and that actually did cheer her up.  Awesome!  Even more awesome was the part where she slowly put herself right next to him and he got to hold her again.  But casually.  And nicely. So she’d have lots of time to tell him to piss off.  And when he did back off because she told him she had work to do, she said,

“You seem to like doing that.”

Was that a trick or something?  Of course he did!  “Uh… yeah?”

“You can keep doing it. If you really enjoy it that much.”

Ohhhh.  She was doing that thing where she wanted him to do something, but she was pretending it was because he wanted to do it.  Which he did. But whatever helped her out, right? “I have no problem with that!”

So later that night, after she was done the stuff she did all day, he went back to holding her and she did… whatever she did before sleeping.  He tried to think of just how to keep this whole thing from bothering her. Because he would love to do it every day.  Well, with her wanting him to do it.  It was nicer like that.  She just felt so good to hold like this.  Even if he sometimes wished his arms were a little longer so he could really do it right.

“Sweet dreams, beautiful,” he said, not really in a whisper but sorta quietly, anyway, and after a moment she did this… thing.  He wasn’t sure what to call it.  She kinda pushed her core into him a little bit, like… like a cat did when it wanted your attention, and… well, he liked it.  It was really cute.  It would be really great if she did it again sometime. Like, a lot.  Okay, maybe not too much.  Then it wouldn’t be special anymore.  Or maybe it still would be.  ‘cause she was so special.

Oh geez.  This was getting a little more serious than he’d thought it was gonna be.  

“Goodnight, funnychips,” she said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it because her operations were louder than her voice.  And he almost started jumping up and down, he was so excited to hear that, but he realised that wouldn’t be the best decision and hugged her extra hard for a minute instead.

This was totally getting super serious.  He’d never gotten that far before and if he wasn’t careful it would be way worse to lose something like this than to just be told to get lost off the bat like usual.  He wasn’t sure how to be careful, exactly, but he was gonna try.

[anthropophobicameba]

Dragon Essay Two: Bodily Integration

read on Ao3

previous essay

(This essay was partially adapted from a text conversation with friends. As such, it may flow a little oddly and have some idiosyncratic grammar.)

Warnings: Mentions and discussion of: Dysmorphia, Trauma due to loss of bodily agency, Purposely inflicted loss of agency. If there are warnings missing, please inform me.

Richter set out to simulate a human mind. We don't know his exact methods. We don’t know to what degree he understood what he was doing, and to what degree he was guided by his shard.

I suspect there's a significant chance he didn't even consider bodily awareness.

Generally speaking, humans have a perception of what their body should be like. I don’t know of any decent research done on this in an academic setting, so a lot of what I have to say relies on anecdotal knowledge.

Most humans have a sense of what their body is, what it looks like, what it feels like, how it moves and responds to them, etcetera. When that sense doesn’t match up with reality, a variety of unpleasant symptoms can arise.

If Richter simulated a human mind without adapting for the lack of a human(oid) body, there is a good chance of some heavy dysphoric symptoms.

(I do have some further questions about the way Dragon experiences gender. Was she assigned a gender? Did she discover one on her own? How does she feel the concept, developed by and for humans, relates to her?)

(But that’s probably a topic best addressed in another essay.)

Now, there’s the question of how she relates to her Dragon suits. They are, to some extent, her bodies, but they are also disposable and replaceable. When the Dragonslayers steal her suits the experience is clearly traumatic, though how much of this is because of the loss of the suits specifically and how much is due the manipulation of her restrictions.

Her suits are clearly important to her, and to some extent a part of her, though they are also ultimately disposable, each one is single use. I don’t think it’s necessary, possible, or productive to try to find a human analog.

Her suits are her bodies, temporary bodies, part of her and important to her, but not really central to her. They are tools to serve a specific purpose (what purpose varies depending on the suit), and beyond that they need not continue to exist. She creates them expecting them to be destroyed as soon as she is done using them.

Compare this to her android* body.

One could potentially find reasons for her to need a humanoid form, but there aren’t many applicable to the amount of time and effort she spend building and using the body.

There’s this, in 29.3:

He continued to hold his weapon, though the fight wasn’t about to start. I could imagine his outlook, the security the weapon afforded him, a hundred solutions in his hands.  The ability to defend himself, to defend others, to move out of the way of danger. It made sense. Dragon, conversely… what was her security blanket?

I don't how obvious this is to people who aren't me, but I always assumed her "security blanket" was her body itself. During that scene, for example, she isn't wearing her helmet. There isn't a reason clearly stated for that, but there I suspect she has a few motives. There are two closely related ones that I feel are somewhat self-apparent. The first is somewhat calculating, by wearing and displaying a human-like form she is asserting her personhood to those who only just learned she's an AI. The second, another side of the same coin, is that she currently associates humanity with safety. The things that just happened to her literally could not have happened to a human. Appearing human allows her to feel less at risk, for the time being.

More simply, there's also just the comfort that comes with fitting in and feeling the same as the people around you, Especially in conjunction with her tendencies towards isolation.

There's something else though, something that involves far more conjecture on my part. Dragon was modelled after a human mind. If that included modeling human bodily awareness, the android body could be an intense comfort.

(I would like to reiterate the warnings above here.)

When Teacher released her, he did so with a number of unnecessary theatrics, seemingly designed only to further hurt her.

From 28.x:

Dragon’s body, in turn, was cobbled together from scrap metal. Truck parts, car parts, some rusted. Her head hung low. A dragon, but not a noble one.

His use of this body serves no apparent purpose other than to humiliate her. As Saint forced her to abandon her bodies, Teacher forced her into this one.

By returning to the body she is most comfortable in, she reclaims some degree of agency, her sense of self and self-ownership. Wearing her human form, displaying it, lets her demonstrate in some small way that she is under her own control.

If my speculation on dysmorphia is accurate, the lack or lessening of dysmorphic feedback may also allow her to put a degree of emotional distance between herself and recent events, which could be vitally helpful while she maintains in close proximity to the perpetrators.

*I am aware that in its most literal sense “android” refers only to masculine forms. However, as Dragon/Pandora refers to it as an android body, and as ”gynoid” has highly sexual implications, I am going to use the term “android” whenever referring to her human-like form.

[buildridernews]

[Review] Kamen Rider Build - Episodes 21-24

It’s the middle of the month, so it must be time for me to finally be caught up on last month’s Build episodes! My excuse this time is that I’ve been watching Sentai. I mean hey, it’s good to give all toku some attention. 

This is really neither here nor there, but I gotta say, I am impressed that Blood Stalk still has a voice actor and a proper actor as separate entities. With Wizard it was clearly a case of "Okay, we revealed his true identity, let's ditch the voice actor" but they are dedicated to keeping this guy around. I appreciate that for some reason.

Also highly unrelated to everything in this review... did... did Sawa just establish, 23 episodes in, that there’s a fictitious currency in this show? Like, it’s referred to as a “Doruku” which could be Dork, or Dolk, or Dollark as Over-Time chose to call it. Sure! That falls nicely into my headcanon that Build takes place in the future. 

So, without making jokes, I’ve gotta really start us off with the thing that’s most important in the first half of this month: The Hazard Trigger, and the surprising amount of forms used with it. 

RabbitTank Hazard Form receives an eerie introduction that’s beautifully shot, and not only does he start off punching everyone in sight, but he also does something that I did not expect to be such a major deal: He kills off the Stag Hard Smash; Aoba. 

I’m most certainly going to be wrong because I’m blanking on it, but in all the shows where humans turn into monsters, they never actually die, do they? At least not to the hero. Or if they do, they probably stopped being human along the way. Like in Gaim, for example. Of course I’m not gonna forget Gaim. 

But Gaim involved humans who have been mutated into something inhuman. Here, Sento very clearly killed someone who was still a living, breathing human with thoughts, ambitions, and fears. After so much dedication towards protecting humanity and undoing the deaths caused by his former Katsuragi self, blood was on his hands that he couldn’t wash away. 

This episode really puts an emphasis on that weight as Sento spends much of it in a slump, even when the government has decided to settle things by having a one-on-one battle with Grease VS one of the Riders of Touto. Sento can’t bare to take part because of what he’s done. 

I think the most stunning scene in this episode is when he’s giving his respects to Aoba and is being so haunted by the memory of the incident that he collapses and seems close to vomiting - kudos to the actor. It’s a great and unsettling episode, especially because it’s almost entirely devoid of music. 

This also features a nice contrast as Kazumi shows how he’s coping. Unlike Sento, he’s very collected and tells him how Aoba was knowingly a tool for war - he died knowing the risks. However, since Aoba was his friend, he promises to kick his ass for Aoba once their duel begins. 

Despite the state he’s in, Sento is the one who has to do it for Touto. And I’ve gotta lighten up this review now that the heavier stuff is behind us. 

In order to prepare him for the fight, Soichi dumps a bunch of Fullbottles into Sento’s inventory, among them being the RoseCopter Form pair! This form is not particularly interesting on its own, but it is within the context of what it was originally supposed to be. 

GoldScorpion Form was meant to be released instead according to toy catalog listings, but just before this episode aired, Bandai decided to swap this in. According to CS Toys, Bandai simply said they were going in a different direction. Gonna be honest, they probably found RoseCopter a lot more... easy to come up with a combat style for. RoseCopter does what you expect, it’s got vine whipping and a rotor weapon. I don’t know what you’d do with gold bars. That’s really my only theory. 

In any case, I’m glad Stalk made reference to how many reds and greens Build swapped through. Oh and I guess TurtleWatch Form is technically a show form now, if you wanna get into those semantics. It’s not. It’s a game form. Anyway~ 

What’s interesting about this first episode is that it ends with the implication that some time has passed before the big duel. This is where the YouTube spinoff comes into play, and I am actually gonna talk about that since both parts are out! If you missed it, they were subbed by Genm Corp, who I understand are fine if you can’t wait for a more accurate translation, and I doubt anyone else is gonna sub these. 

So the YouTube spinoffs for Kamen Rider have so far been pretty skippable. Ghost tried making them tie into the show... in a way that still doesn’t make sense even in context, and Ex-Aid’s is pretty fun but also very skippable. This time, they used it to tell some semblance of a story. 

In these episodes, Sento makes use of the Fullbottles he was given to raise his Hazard Level and become stronger. Utsumi helps him, surprisingly, and even fights as Night Rogue (clever clever) to help out. 

This is where we get what I had assumed would be exclusive forms, but PhoenixRobo appeared in the show in January and RoseCopter JUST premiered, so SmaphoWolf Hazard Form is our exclusive I guess. Then in part 2 we get ToraUFO, KirinCyclone and KujiraJet, which were all fun combos. 

I am pretty pleased at how these turned out. They only have enough time to provide some fun fights, but there’s a surprising amount of story as we see Utsumi testing out the Kaiser System (pulling back in a thing from the winter movie), and even a bit of info on how some of these forms work. At least for part 1. 

This is supposed to be a 3 part thing, and much like the last two series, part 3 will be on the DVD release - I hope it’ll at least be worth the wait this time. There’s at least gonna be an exclusive form. 

The duel begins. Build and Grease fight for an entire episode, which is pretty interesting as far as episodes go, though they do try to break it up by including some flashbacks to moments leading up to this. 

Particularly, we learn that Sento is so concerned with claiming another life that he gives Misora the job of detonating his gear if he goes too far, which is pretty unexpected. It... kind of fits him wanting to prevent more deaths I suppose, but I’m glad they saw it fit to send in Ryuga to punch him instead. It’s pretty manly. 

We also learn that Kazumi’s amnesia was actually all a hoax! Which is a nice little twist that isn’t toooo surprising but it adds some nice depth to him. He just wants his bros to do better by being a tsundere. 

Even though Build won the duel against Grease, a wrench has been thrown in their civil plans. Seito has declared war, and they’re doing so with their own weaponized humans: Remocon Bro and Engine Bro. Yes, Bros or Bro’s is the proper spelling but the plural nature of that word is bugging me on a grammatical level. 

These two make a nice pair of badasses, but I hope they matter by the time they eventually get defeated, because as is they are pretty hard to consider as anything but a duo. I mean, I guess the Hard Smash are a trio of a similar nature, but they at least have more distinct personalities. 

Regardless, they cause trouble in Hokuto and Kiba of Kazumi’s gang is trying to stop them, only to get mercilessly trampled. It’s at this point I realize this episode is almost entirely just a Kazumi episode, as we see how he struggles against these bros and how much his own bros are also suffering. Even after a narrow rescue, Kiba dies, bringing us to just one more Hard Smash. 

And then there’s THIS asshole. 

Okay but seriously, can we just... admire how much of an edgelord Gentoku has become as of returning? In what seems like a relatively short time since he left the show, he’s back with a new Rider title, and a badass jacket draped over his shoulders that goes perfectly with his evil facial hair. He really embraced how much of an obvious villain he is. 

I dunno what the fuck happened but I guess that’s a good teaser for the Rogue blu-ray spinoff. Based on what we get to see I kinda wonder how much more of a twisted guy Utsumi is. He got his sweet catharsis here. 

But also as a nice detail I once again did not foresee, Kamen Rider Rogue is actually Namba’s “Make our own Kamen Rider” project, and it’s been made for Seito, which means we now have Riders for each nation. That’s pretty dope, tying that all together. 

It seems that Gentoku has really become a much more interesting and vague person now that he’s become a Rider. He’s putting aside revenge so that he can crush Touto and protect the country... which seems a lil counterproductive but I’m gonna guess he’s not quite right in the head right now, so I’ll give him a pass. 

All this means that Kazumi and Akaba have no choice but to join the heroes, but it feels like they’ll actually blend in, potentially. I mean, it seems like Kazumi has learned to admire the passion Sento fights with, and even admits to being inferior because of it. So I’m pretty happy to see them working together, as opposed to going “Okay, we’re doing this trope”. 

They need to stick together if they stand a chance against Rogue. Always on the move, Pandora’s Box has made its way to Rogue, and he intends on opening it once he defeats Build. But with how much he overpowers him even with the Hazard Trigger, what’s stopping him?! 

Oh. That’d do it. 

So that’s one hell of a cliffhanger to end this review on. What’s going on with Misora?! I’m not even gonna watch episode previews for this one, I wanna see what the show does firsthand! See you again soon for another Build review! 

[sabraeal]

OH OH, some hakizana jealousy, modern, or not whatever u want. and you can choose which party is jealous. maybe both are. ;)

Haki would like the record to show that despite what some people might say, she was not trying to start trouble.

She’s just so bored.

Introductions have been made (this is Haki, my daughter, he father says with an open gesture, as if she’s one of the Gould up on the wall; you remember my fiancée, Izana drawls, hand warm on the small of her back, right above where the deep vee of her dress ends, Haki), and she’s summarily abandoned at a cocktail table as her father and fiancé work the room. She presumes her purpose must be to spice up that particular corner, which only holds a sad potted plant nearly her height and what she assumes is a modern sculpture, but looks like an uncooked, oversized, marble piece of penne.

She’s not the only one to have been abandoned as table dressing; there’s more than a few women standing around like cosmopolitan-drinking gazelle, left by their much more important dates to go gladhand and make money. She sees Medina’s wife among them, holding court with a bunch of doe-eyed girls that can’t be much more than eighteen and are probably here on visa. She should try to talk to them, she knows; that’s her job, to winnow information from wives and girlfriends, to smile in all the right places, leverage all the right friendships. She knows this. She was raised for this.

But she can’t be that person, not tonight. Makiri’s face keeps surfacing in her mind, hair shorn to a finger’s worth of bristle, his features grainy on the SATphone’s display. He’s happy now, but she remembers when this was a problem that needed fixing, when every phone call was we need to talk about that brother of yours. Tonight he’s just a talking point for when someone asks after the American flag pinned on her father’s lapel.

That’s the thing about Pandora’s Box, isn’t it? Once you let something out, it never fits back in again.

She needs a minute, Haki thinks, catching Izana’s back as he traverses the room, deep in conversation with some of her father’s associates. She just needs to get herself collected.

The bathrooms at the venue are spacious private stalls, complete with well-lit vanities. She wants to splash water on her face, but she spent an hour making her face look photoshop-flawless; its the sort of effort that can’t be recreated in a public bathroom, no matter how nice. Instead she digs into her clutch, pulling out her phone, connecting dots to get through her lock screen.

She’s not supposed to use her phone at these things; it’s been drilled into her since her father bought her a rhinestone-studded Razr for her thirteenth birthday that a girl who drags out her phone at a formal function for entertainment is vapid and petulant – two things that aren’t part of the persona they’ve agreed on. But she’s not a child now, and if she wants to feed small virtual kitties in the privacy of this public stall to retain some of her chill, she’s going to fucking do it.

Or at least, she is until she sees she’s got a missed text.

u gt th thing rt?

Haki blinks, trying to translate garbage into human speak.

YesSorry ObiI meant to send you a thank you emailI can definitely use that

She doesn’t expect an immediate text back; the timestamp places it a few hours ago, and Obi is mercurial in his texting etiquette, but she’s hardly put it down when the phone begins to buzz against the marble.

n e q?

She stares at the text for a moment longer than she has any earthly reason to, and groans.

Only why you text like a garbage person

aesthetics

Your aesthetic is the garbage?

i prefer to think of myself as a performance artist and terrible garbage texting is my medium

It certainly engenders the same feelings as when I view modern art

rage at your own mortality and frustration at the futility of life?

NoNausea

His only response is a line of indecipherable emoji – she thinks half of them are semaphore flags –and she assumes she at least made him laugh.

“Haki.”

She turns at the unfamiliar voice, smile bright on her face even though she just missed the bacon-wrapped scallops again. It’s an older man she’s never spoken to, but she recognizes him from Izana’s notes as one of the men he’s courting for investment capital.

DeLeo, forty-five. He’s into sustainable living close communities.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?” he asks, suddenly unsure. Humility is charming in a man with a nine-digit net worth. “I heard Izana introduce you.”

“It is.” She smiles. Even without the notes, she’s familiar with his work. A fan, even. She’s been trying to get her father to look into his designs for the past year. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

He hurries to put out his hand, wincing when he realizes how firmly he’s gripped hers. “Mark,” he says, “Mark DeLeo. I’m –” His eyes run over her once before he settles on. “I’m an associate of his.”

It’s only training that keeps her mouth from going rigid. “You build sustainable communities, don’t you?”

His eyebrows go up at that, like he’s surprised to see she can do more than stand around and look nice. “I do. Has Izana talked about my work?”

He pitches forward, curious, but she sees the lift at one side of his mouth and – ah, that’s his game. He’s hoping to get information out of the girlfriend. He wants leverage, wants to know how bad Izana needs him.

“No,” she lies smoothly. “I just read about your work in Wired. I liked your idea for recycling water for hydroponics.”

“Oh.” He pulls away, disappointed. “You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”

She feels her smile pull tight. She’s not the one with the money, she reminds herself, there’s no reason for him to want to talk to her.

“Of course,” she says, so cordial.“I think he just ducked onto that balcony.“

Now that she knows there could be a text waiting for her, she feels more of an impulse to check.

She’s stealthy at least, making sure neither Izana or her father are looking when she slips around the corner to the bathroom.

speaking ofdon’t tell me you’re staying in tonightare all your besties at promises?

Haki coughs at that, wishing she hadn’t chosen that moment to try to sneak a drink of water.

Please, no one goes to Promises anymoreIt’s like you don’t even read the gossip column

vile slanderi know all the hot celebrity gossipi even know which olsen twin is which without googlingthat’s why im shidan’s favorite

I didn’t realize he was such a fanI’ll get him an autograph the next time they’re in town

okay but only mary kateshidan says ashley is a hackshe was really phoning it in on it takes two

“Haki,” croons one of the women by the bar. All of them are looking when she turns to them, but it’s Medina’s wife that continues, “Are you all right?”

“Chantel.” She keeps her voice even, almost friendly. Medina is old enough to be her father and Chantel is close enough to her age to be her sister, but that’s not her business. “I’m just fine. Thank you for asking.”

She hopes that’s the end of it, but of course it’s not. You don’t get on a reality show by being the sort of person who doesn’t create conflict.

“I just see you’re going to the bathroom a lot.” She leans in, mouth canted smugly. “And out with that fresh new fiancéof yours.”

Haki can’t help the way her gaze shifts to him, deep in conversation across the room, DeLeo and Medina both gesturing with some passion. What she wouldn’t give to trade place for even a moment.

“Maybe you’ll need to consider letting out the waistline of your dress.,” Medina’s wife presses. “Or maybe buying in an ivory?”

She has been drinking champagne half the evening, but this is what Chantal comes up with? She scans the crowd for cameras – usually there’s paperwork if they’re filming, but there’s no reason to take the chance – and Haki gives her a smile that is all teeth.

“Oh, Chantel don’t worry,” she coos, laying a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’d never wear something that looked so fake as a white dress.”

Haki plucks the cosmo right out of her hands and downs it, handing her the empty glass with a smile. “It looks like we have a good bartender tonight, doesn’t it?”

She’s eyeing her next opportunity for escape when she feels a hand at her back, a warm breath in her ear.

“Are you feeling all right?” Izana asks, sounding as if she could be bleeding on the floor and he would still be flagging down the server for a canape.

“Perfectly,” she purrs back, flashing him a smile. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” His tone very clearly says yes. “It’s only that Chantal was saying she’s seen you taking frequent trips to the lavatory.”

Chantal Medina is not getting a Christmas basket this year. “Oh no. Just a little too much champagne.”

The look he gives her now is earnestly concerned, his hand sliding around to palm her hip soothingly. “If you don’t feel well, we can leave.”

“No, no.” She flashes her teeth at him. “I’ll just switch to water.”

The balcony is the safest place,as long as she stands just beside the doors, obscured by fronds.

And just where are you tonightIf you’re judging me for my plans

under my roommatenot as exciting as you would thinkalso youre at a GALA of course im gonna judge that shit

Under your roommate?If you’re texting me then you’re really good at what you’re doingOr excessively bad

wouldnt u like to know

A picture loads on screen of a red head buried in his side, both of their legs tangled on the couch. Haki’s half tempted to tell Izana to break out the champagne, since his devious plan is well on its way to working.

Not to be crassBut perhaps you should consider waking the girl with your clothes onAnd suggesting she give them back

intriguing ideabut still not interested

Come on, didn’t they teach you how to handle girls in your boyband days?

yeah but all those chastity agreements really harsh the whole player vibe

Just bend down in front of herI’m sure everything will work itself outYou have that Park Jimin ass

how dare u utter the name of my bitter rivalPark Jimin has MY ass

She hesitates.

You two look cute, though

don’tpls

“Ah,” drawls a voice right next to her ear. “Here you are.”

She stiffens guiltily, but the phone is already being lifted from her hands. Izana thumbs off the screen, not even glancing at its content. His smile is wide and fake; he must think someone is watching them.

He slips her phone back into her clutch, palm brushing against her waist. “You don’t want your father catching you with that.”

She shakes her head, watching him with wide eyes. She doesn’t think she’ll ever quite be used to how he talks low like that, how he makes her breath come short.

His fingers band around her wrist, gentle but stern. “I think,” he says, with no humor at all, “That you and I should have a talk. Privately.”

[cybrneti]

( Disclaimer: Some of the stuff is unfinished/undetermined. Mostly because I’m still thinking it over, drawing out refs to make things easier to understand, or the entire AU itself is still in development. )

Heyo! So, obviously this is just a little about post for mostly my reference and your own if you plan on threading with me in this AU in the future! This post contains everything from start to finish, even some things that may or may not be private to other blogs ( such as AUs of the AU - wow, AUception ). 

PRE-ATLAS FALL

Rhys, also known as Errhys , was the first original attempt Atlas made of a vault key, however, in a humanized form. This was complicated, being that the attempt to giving him human attributes and whatnot instead of keeping him mainly robotic eventually caused a glitch or flaw in his system - something uploaded to scramble his coding.

Atlas workers have tried many times to diagnose and pinpoint exactly where and when the malfunction occurred, however, didn’t succeed in finding it. Thus, Rhys’ project soon came to an end as was replaced by The Gortys Project. This being said, it’s highly likely that Rhys wouldn’t get along with a Gortys in this AU, no matter how cute and little she may be.

MID-ATLAS FALL

Atlas’ fall was caused by no one other than Athena herself, the woman with a vendetta against Atlas. Being that Rhys’ project had been long forgotten about and the talk was mostly about the Gortys Project, Rhys had little to no trouble hiding during the slaughter of the employees. The only thing he can recall during this was the screams and cries for help, as well as the sirens blaring that there was an intruder alert.

POST-ATLAS FALL

After the events that lead to the end of Atlas settling, Errhys is known to linger in the run-down facility. What he does in his free time down there? Well, it’s mostly staring at walls all day or using the dead corpses of the Atlas employees to put on some kind of puppet show for his own entertainment. Though, there are days where Rhys finds himself exploring the outside of the facility, however, not wandering off far from home. He’s unsure of everything out there on Pandora - what could kill him and what couldn’t, which is why he doesn’t dare to get lost out there by himself. 

APPEARANCE DETAILS

At a whopping 5′11″, Errhys usually wears his hair pushed back, maybe even messed on the occasion. He wears a black, button-up top that he usually keeps the first two buttons unbuttoned, showing off that blue tattoo of his down his arm. The tattoo holds no significance really, much like the one on his neck. They’re just there to be there, to make him look pretty or - whatever. The bright glowing cyan markings on his body are his supposed “veins”, they tend to grow rather bright, due to the core in his chest that keeps him alive pumping an odd blue substance through his system. He has his usual black slacks, as well as gray shoes with bright cyan straps over the top. On both his shoulders, the sides of his calves, back and head port are his outlets, some of them having yellow wires plugged into them. The wires help him pieced together, as well as keeping him from lagging behind too much.

PERSONALITY DETAILS

If there is one thing to be known about Errhys, its that he isn’t nice to anyone upon the first encounter. There are two possible outcomes upon first meeting someone. Rhys could either be hostile towards that person, throwing threats in their direction if they dare to come closer to him. Or he could have his first encounter scaring your muse out of their skin.  After getting to know your muse for a while, Errhys will consider them some kind of prank puppet - a toy of his own to tamper with. To him, the concept of friendship doesn’t necessarily exist, just the idea of your muse being some kind of plaything. However, there will be times when he can be just a little bit soft, these times being if he makes your muse accidentally cry or gets yelled at for a prank. During these times, he attempts to pretend like he doesn’t care, being that showing concern and regret is showing weakness in his opinion. Rarely, he may mutter an apology of sorts. If Rhys really despises your muse, it’s bad news. This could be one of the many reasons why his violent and erratic behavior is triggered and put into play. When faced with someone that completely irritates and disgusts him, he gets the urge to fight, or even worse - the urge to kill. His emotions go haywire, and he turns into a complete psychopath - a maniac with a unquenchable thirst for bloodshed. 

HEADCANONS

✧ Rhys is known to have sudden violent fits, whether it be over something small or large.  ✧ When moving around, sometimes his pixels lag behind and his image freezes, voice disembodied until his body catches up with itself. ✧ If his wires are pulled on, they send out a shock and cause Rhys’ pixels to go out of control for a short period of time. If removed completely, his pixels will freak out, but won’t fix afterward. ✧ Sometimes even his hands can cause a tiny shock if touched to someone or something. He would usually zap someone on purpose, just because he finds it hilarious. ✧ Like humans, Rhys is able to eat and drink, but is unable to digest food or any liquids. Food is stored in a container in his body, which he must clean out after every meal, though, he usually doesn’t do that and leaves it to pile up. Liquid is stored in a separate container, if not emptied, it could overflow and leak.

VERSES & TAGS

☾ᵍˡ'''ᵗͨʰ? ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵍˡ'ᵗͨͨͨʰ?☽ (v; error au ) - The usual tag used for the verse, whether it be threads, even more headcanons, or art made of Errhys.  ☾ᵗᵃᵏᵉ ᶜᵃʳᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵐᵉ☽ ( v; w/ tourguiide ) - Private verse with @tourguiide. In this verse Mari is Rhys’ caretaker after his project was abandoned by the rest of Atlas. Her job is simple; teach him how to be human and find a way to fix the glitch in his body. However, those plans go out the window as a certain woman named Athena shows and kills every last Atlas Employee in the building, including Mari.