#describes loops sense of self being back in their own timeline as like. feeling like theyve replaced siffrin with an actor

[eldragon-x]

you think loop ever considers themselves a pale copy of siffrin

[orbital-inclination]

I requested more of the scenario Molt meeting og nightmare

I'm sorry for the wait anon! For a change of pace, you get a one-shot this time! word count: 3411 general content warning for canon typical violence and angst.

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Something grainy, like gravel and sand, crunched under the soles of his boots as he shuffled back a step. One looping tendril made contact with a roughly cut boulder behind him. The height of the stone reached his hip. Clumsily, he ran his phalanges along its surface. He stepped around it and stopped once he stood on the south side, uncertain of how to proceed from there.

It was rare that he found himself in a space so wide open without someone nearby. He’d like to think he was better at navigating now than he had been when he was younger. Yet, regardless of how much time passed, he could never seem to quite outgrow the sudden spike of anxiety he felt whenever he entered a space that seemed... empty.

 He didn’t know what he was walking towards or away from. He could be approaching a canyon for all he knew.

A steady, lonely wind howled above him. It caught the tail of his tunic and the fabric slapped against his side. Something rustled in the distance. 

The wind turned cold. 

Ley lines of magic, negative and positive, wrapped around this world in a vast net of ever-shifting ripe tides. Instinct had directed him to follow the nearest positive swell but now he felt it move again. Bending as though to make way. Just as suddenly as the air had turned cold, a well opened up, and negativity cascaded down the pit and condensed into a single point of black frost. 

A shiver ran down his spine. “Nightmare…?”

Something about Rem’s magic didn’t feel right—

“How unlike you to make the first move. Was it not enough for you to…” his brother’s voice trailed off. “You are not my brother.” 

No... no he was not. Rem’s magic felt cold, but not this cold. Though, the undercurrent of bitterness was painfully familiar. 

“… the sentiment is mutual,” Molt murmured. He steadied himself on the boulder behind him. Silently, he tried to gauge the other’s intent.

An air of suspicion and curiosity rolled underneath the cold. He had the sense he was also being appraised.

“And yet, you are Dream.”

He did not sound—did not feel happy about that.

“If it were not impossible, I would wager you were from a divergent timeline.”

“Our world had only one timeline,” Molt confirmed cautiously. His voice remained low. “… it’s tied to the multiverse itself. No resets. Just the one.”

“Ah, so you are informed,” his brother's voice mocked. “Your presence here suggests a paradox, then. For all my searching, I have never met another iteration of us who could breach the confines of their AU on their own. It seemed there was some law restricting the role of Guardian to Two.”

He nodded because that more or less described the situation back home. With a renewed sense of scrutiny, Nightmare said, “Can I assume then, that instead of your brother, you were the one who bit the apple?”

And Molt stalled. The question was so direct. It felt a bit like a verbal slap to the face. 

Nightmare hummed. “I see. That expression you’re making... It makes sense for my alternative self to have other motives if you are like this yourself.” He heard the grin in his tone, even if he could not see it. “Tell me, Dream. What do you say to adding to that collection of yours?” He— he couldn’t be serious. 

“In this multiverse, you have the opportunity to increase your power. If you collect the last apple from my brother, perhaps we can reach an agreement.”

His mouth felt suddenly dry. He had to consciously still his tentacles to keep them from lashing defensively.

“You… you want me to kill my counterpart.”

He struggled to wrap his mind around that. Less so the threat itself and more so that it was Nightmare who was asking him to do it. He felt sick.

His brother’s alternate rumbled a low laugh. “It would not be difficult for you. You dwarf him in raw power. I’m confident you could easily subdue him... Ah, but I see I cannot convince you. The thought distresses you. A pity.”

Gravel and sand crunched underfoot. The sound came quietly. “ … hmm just as I thought, you are blind.”

“...what are you doing?” 

Nightmare was amused by the question. Dread washed over him. Nightmare had been speaking to him civilly until that point, and while this mirror of his brother gave off an ambient feeling of danger, he had not taken the feeling as seriously as he should have. 

“I am considering what to do with you. Since it seems you are reluctant to cooperate. But you would be of a dull mind not to suspect that already. If you are anything like the thorn I have in my side now, I’m sure you will quickly surmise why I simply cannot let your existence go unchecked.” 

Molt slowly shuffled a step back. 

“… where do you think you will escape to? Are you even aware of what is behind you?”

Molt froze.

He sensed no one behind him but— the subtle rustle of fabric. A step was taken closer and it dawned on him that Nightmare had been trying to distract him.

Molt’s hearing was keen. It had to be. He learned to rely on it when sensing nearby emotions, and the flow of positive and negative wasn’t enough. But his haptic memory was better, and with one tentacle brushing against the boulder behind him, he knew which side he stood on and which direction he originally came from. 

He darted around the boulder, squarely placing it between himself and Nightmare. His brother’s alternate self stood still, contemplative and mildly surprised. 

“Hm. You cannot see, and yet you are able to pinpoint my position. Interesting.” 

Molt didn’t feel like providing a reply.

Nightmare didn’t move for a width of time that felt like years. And then, he vanished. The cold sucked out of the air in a blip of distorted space-time.

Alarm seized him. Given no time to think, he picked direction and distance at random and took a shortcut through. As he felt his bones materialize in reality again, a dense frame of cold magic solidified where he had stood seconds prior.

Displeasure radiated off of Nightmare in waves. “Come now. Don’t run. It’s unbecoming. We can discuss the terms of your departure from this world with maturity.”

Molt shivered. “Don’t. I would return to my reality if I knew how.”

“Then allow me to assist you,” Nightmare said, and the malice in his words sent needles crawling up his spine. He vanished again in a wash of cold. Molt leaped back, grasping at the nearest tide of positivity to carry him away.

He found his feet again on the sand. The sudden incline made him stumble. The seconds it took to catch his balance nearly cost him. A frustrated growl and the sensation of ice to his right was the only warning he had before a sharp object whistled past his skull. He teleported again and Nightmare followed. 

“Enough! Cease this childishness.” The burning cold struck his side. Molt tumbled to the ground. He rolled, gasping in pain, and launched himself to the side. “Stop! I don’t want to fight you.” A loud crack sounded where he’d just been. Gravel pelted his arm. 

“Then what happens next is your own fault,” His brother’s voice snarled.

He took another shortcut. Aiming north of the dense vortex of cold desperately trying to put some distance between himself and his brother’s counterpart. He needed that distance to escape this AU. If he attempted the jump too close to Nightmare he might unintentionally drag him along, or Nightmare would be able to sense where he went and this fight would never end. The temperature plummeted. In a split second, a cold tendril snapped around his middle. And then he was flung. His body hit the ground once, twice, and his skull was knocked against something hard. 

A hiss shuddered through his ribcage. Molt clenched his teeth as the world spun, attempting to swallow back the sound. 

“You brought this on yourself, Dream.” 

Gravel and sand crunched at a steady pace. Malice approached slowly. 

He struggled to push himself upright. The ground beneath him swayed dangerously. His tendrils lashed, writhing in defense of their host. But the ground beneath him lurched, his arms buckled, and the ground swung up to meet the side of his skull again. 

His soul pulsed so fast and hard in his chest, he thought he was going to be sick. 

“Poetic, isn’t it? I wonder... did the same desperation drive you?”

Cold wrapped around him and slammed his back into a hard, stone wall. 

Claws dug into his jaw, roughly pinning his skull to the stone slab behind him. A strained hiss tore from his bared teeth. He found the strength to wrestle one arm free and dug his claws into the wrist pinning his head down. Nightmare’s strength didn’t waver, but an involuntary noise rattled through him, a jolt that was close enough to a flinch to be nothing else. 

Faintly, Molt felt the phantom echo of a hot brand race up Nightmare’s arm, starting from where his claws dug into his wrist.

“W-why are you doing this? I am not from your timeline, so why?”

“The distinction is irrelevant,” the grip on his jaw tightened. “This fate, it’s the least you deserve. For everything you put me through. For every day I was left to defend myself while you selfishly basked in undeserved praise.” 

Exhaustion crept into his limbs. He felt weaker and heavier by the second.

“Would you have always resented me?” Molt gasped out. “If things had been different... If our lives had been better—”

Nightmare barked out a bitter laugh. “Even as you are now, you are naive. No. I cannot imagine a world where I did not hate you. For us, no other outcome was possible.” Molt flinched. “... you doubt me? Do you actually believe my alternate self doesn’t resent you?” 

The knife in his heart gave a sharp lurch. It would make sense... wouldn’t it. For all he hadn’t done, who wouldn’t resent him? 

“N-Night...”

“You neglected your responsibilities, Dream. You were selfish. I’ve always wondered if you had known what I stood to lose that day. If you had known what they had planned to do—” “Nightmare!” Molt snapped. He was terrified, his soul shook, and he was painfully cold. “That was my home too!” Something snapped. He felt the abrupt, quaking shift in Nightmare’s demeanor. Rage colored all rational thought. Molt didn’t know what he intended to do and he didn’t have time to think about it. That rage solidified into a single, sharp tool. Malice soaked the thing so vividly, he could almost see it. A serrated bone dagger.

Molt jerked his head to the side, the claws on his jaw slipped, and something sharp and blisteringly cold scraped the side of his skull.

He might have blacked out for a few seconds. He couldn’t be sure. One moment, his vision was black. Then it was white. He’d yanked a tentacle free in the next. A resounding crack thundered through the stone lab behind him. Nightmare’s grip on his head slipped, caught off guard. Molt kicked his shin, and as Nightmare staggered, snarling, he flash-stepped out of immediate reach. 

A safe distance away he sank to the ground. 

Head swimming, he lifted a shaky hand to the side of his skull. He felt bone. The dry, clean surface of a malar bone. The muddy, blurred shape of his palm swam in and out of focus. 

Nightmare stood very still for a long moment. His emotions felt stunted and Molt could not identify the feeling that had rendered him so still. Moments ago, Nightmare had been content to hurt him in every possible way.

“Get up,” Nightmare said. And he couldn’t identify the emotion behind that command either. It felt like anger but brittle. “I said get up!”

A tremble racked through his body. He felt a forbidden spark of anger ignite in his throat and shakily rose to his feet.

As he slowly lifted his gaze, palm still pressed to the side of his skull, he saw black tar and went still. 

It was one thing to guess the shape of the magic that had tossed him around the field like a rag doll, but it was another thing entirely, to see it.

The ground felt like it was tilting. Nightmare was taking too long to respond. And though he hid it well, he was clearly in pain. Head swimming. Pounding. Red-hot needles. Nausea pricked through his brother’s bones.

Nightmare took one step closer. Molt flinched back, and a bitter smile crawled over his brother’s teeth—

“NOT SO FAST!”

A sharp ping. His vision was eclipsed in hazy blue. Before Molt could blink, he found himself yanked to the side, several feet away.

He was released, gently at that, and stumbled once as gravity resumed its normal weight. The world erupted in a cacophony of noise. With color and light sloshing together, it was difficult to make out shape and form, but the stirring magic immediately in front of him was familiar.

“Blue?” Molt whispered, but like Nightmare his magic felt just slightly off. The hope in his soul withered. He was surrounded by strangers.

“MWEH HEH HEH FEAR NOT STRANGE INTERDIMENSIONAL CITIZEN! WE ARE HERE TO SAVE THE DAY. NIGHTMARE! YOU WILL NOT GET AWAY WITH THIS!”

Whatever his brother’s mirror said in reply it was drowned out by noise.

“Wait.”

But his voice was too low. Too quiet. And his plea went ignored.

Too much happened at once after that. The Swap Sans launched himself into the fight. Light. Movement. A flash of white. Bones summoned then shattered by the furious sweep of a black arm. Nightmare’s strength was weakening. The balance had tipped. And battling three by himself? Nightmare couldn’t keep this up for much longer.

Most of the fight happened too fast for his barely stable eyelight to track.

So he did what he always did when the world around him became too chaotic to follow. He reached for the cold pitch of his brother’s magic. 

He followed the current of cold as it funneled into a singular point. Pushed back, and back again by a burning white star. Hope. Concentration. Concern for the other, yet the courage to see his actions through to the end. The familiarity of the magic here was disconcerting. But his head already ached something awful and he didn't think his nausea could get much worse. The phantom lashes he’d endured at Nightmare’s hand still burned. But... Nightmare. He felt his twin’s exhaustion, felt the unsteady slip to his heel, and his alternate was closing in now and—

The shortcut was rough. Poorly executed. And finding his balance on the balls of his feet was not fun. He raised his arm defensively, anticipating the attack seconds before, and found his hand closing around the pole of a golden staff. It smacked into his palm with a solid clank. It hurt only a little bit. His own magic absorbed the brunt of the blow to feed itself. To lessen some of his own pain. And staring into the wide eyes of his own face was... 

Dizzying. 

Everything was dizzying. 

That startled look melted into one of fear, and it didn’t make sense. His own rib cage hitched, sharing that fear second hand and then it dawned on him how this might look. Oh. He thought. …oh.

He released his counterpart's weapon and yanked his hand back. The other skeleton flash stepped out of reach, his soul pulsing with the rhythm of a terrified rabbit.

Within the pool of frigid cold at his back, he felt a spark of something that felt suspiciously like gratitude. Nightmare struggled to stand for a moment, winded, then laughed. The sound was not pleasant. “Recklessness must be a universal trait.”

“That’s enough,” Molt rasped. “Please. Just stop…”

“You should have taken my offer when you had the chance,” Nightmare sneered, words bitting. But more than anything, they felt defensive. The darkness pinched into a small, black star, and then he was gone.

“I SEE. WAS I MISTAKEN THEN? ARE YOU AND NIGHTMARE ALLIES?” Blue had taken a defensive stance beside his teammate. His weapon was drawn, but he didn’t move yet. His soul hummed with grim focus. The suspicion hurt. 

Molt struggled to speak for several precious seconds. Unsettled. He was reeling from the fight, from everything he had learned about this reality and the cruelty of his brother's words and actions and he was trying ever so hard not to let a tremble snake its way into his voice. It was very hard... to hear someone say those awful things in Rem’s voice.

He shook his head and said softly. “We aren’t.”

Blue’s brow furrowed. “THEN, WHY DID YOU DEFEND HIM? 

The words ‘because he is my brother?’ were on the edge of his teeth but the hostile edge to Blue’s magic and tone made him pause. It was less a question and more of an accusation. And that answer wouldn’t have been exactly true besides. 

The tendril on his back coiled defensively. 

He hadn’t stopped to think before he leapt in front of Nightmare. It hadn’t been a “should I or shouldn’t I” situation in his mind. In that moment he was unable to look past the pain and hurt his brother’s mirror was experiencing. In that moment, the distinction didn’t matter. He had to put a stop to it, that’s all. He couldn’t fight his brother. In any form he took. He just couldn’t do it. It reminded him of too much. And he couldn’t stand to watch that either. 

But how could he possibly explain that? 

A step behind his teammate, Dream was trying to calm down. Blue’s presence helped but he was struggling. Molt took a step back. He was causing someone pain and distress. He didn’t want that. Blue’s stance shifted. Bracing.

That felt like betrayal too. Molt swallowed something bitter behind his teeth and tried not to think of it that way. Ignored that small part of him that hissed and felt a little bit angry. It didn’t make sense. He knew the person in front of him wasn’t his friend.

“FRIEND, I WANT TO GIVE YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT BUT... YOU ARE ACTING SUSPICIOUSLY.”

“I’ll leave,” Molt said. His head was pounding, and the last thing he wanted was to be dragged into another fight. “Wait...” Dream took a breath. “You’re hurt. Stay for a minute, let’s talk.” “DREAM IS RIGHT, POTENTIAL ENEMY OR NOT, IT WOULDN’T BE RIGHT TO LEAVE YOU THIS WAY. NOT TO FEAR HOWEVER, I AM ALWAYS PREPARED!” “It’s okay. I don’t need candy,” Molt said and felt vaguely like he was reading the lines of a script. If Rem or any of the others were here, they’d be calling his bluff. “Then, what do you need?”

“Somewhere calm, with hope. That’s all.”

The two exchanged a look. Surprise, suspicion, resignation, dread. “I SEE. SO YOU ARE LIKE DREAM THEN. BUT SURELY THAT'S NOT ENOUGH. I... I CANNOT SEEM TO CHECK YOU FOR SOME REASON, BUT YOU DO NOT LOOK WELL.”

Blue seemed to ask to Dream something silently. Concern. Suspicion. Acceptance. Dream sighed. “I know somewhere. It’ll be okay. We’ll be keeping an eye on him together, right? The place I’m thinking of is isolated so...”

“IT’S SETTLED THEN.” he finally dismissed his weapon, and Molt felt the tendrils on his back slowly lower. “SO THEN, NEW FRIEND, WHAT DO YOU SAY TO A TRUCE? WILL YOU COME WITH US?”

He gauged their intent for a moment. Rem had sometimes remarked that his empathy made him gullible. But Molt was tired, and sore, and aching. The others weren’t here. And he let them make decisions for him too much anyway. He hated to admit it but Nightmare was right. Dream wasn’t a physical threat to him. He was scared and trying so hard to be brave, and Molt was trying equally hard not to feel rattled.

“Okay,” he said.

Blue made a noise, something between acknowledgment and mild confusion. Dream offered a strained smile. He supposed they had a lot of questions.

[buffysummerslay]

I have watched Lucifer series finale yesterday and I am still reeling from feelings, feelings I need to work through to be able to move on.

Unfortunately, I am late to the party and I have started watching Lucifer (despite the show being on my radar for a few years already) when season 6 came out, and this turned avoiding spoilers about the ending as well as the show itself into an extremely hard task. I have, of course, seen some reactions to the ending and it was obvious that the viewers were divided between "the ending was amazing, they really did the story and the characters justice" and "what the fuck was that". I always take these reactions, especially when they come instantly after the episode has ended, with a grain of salt because, realistically, I haven't been fully satisfied with the way a tv show has ended - any tv show - since, like, 2010. However, I also know that there is a difference between "okay, the ending was anticlimactic/disappointing/etc, however, it is the journey that matters and I am still pretty happy with the show" and HIMYM type of ending where you are like "I want this show wiped from my memory because the final hour has ruined the entire experience for me". So, I took some time to reflect on the events that took place, gather my thoughts, and make my peace with the ending. After doing that, I can comfortably say that I am not fully satisfied with the ending because of one very simple reason - I can make sense of the choices taken by the character at the very end of the show only if I use "Lucifer gave Rory his word" rationale, and not because I believe in the theory they provided or the choices they make. So here are some of my thoughts about the ending of this beloved show, including both the things I liked and disliked. Be warned, there are spoilers ahead so if you haven't seen the show, the final season or the series finale, please stop reading because you don't want to manifest spoilery energy into your life!

The main thing I have a problem with is the time loop. I will begin by saying that I really dislike time travel in general - I think that it is an overly used plot divice that more than often creates holes in the story instead of driving the narrative where it needs to go, unless the concept of time travel is integral to the show, like for example in Timeless and Fringe. However, in this case, I dislike that the major characters have made a major decision (a serious, impactful, life-altering decision) based on a flimsy theory. And since they have told us exactly what will happen in the end, we simply didn't know why and how, I have expected a more bulletproof reasoning instead of a rushed conversation wrapped up in five minutes and sealed by a promise. Lucifer leaves Chloe and Rory and goes back to hell, Rory grows up resenting him and she becomes so angry she travels through time to confront him only to end up being the reason for his departure, therefore creating an unbreakable time loop. She makes her parents give her their word that they won't change a thing in order to make sure that Lucifer discovers his true calling, which is helping souls in Hell break their hell loops and ascend to Heaven. And the reason I am so hesitant to accept this is because of two reasons:

1. Lucifer has made amazing progress through the show when it comes to his character development, finding his worth and making peace with his identity, and yet you are trying to tell me that this is the only way he would discover his true calling, especially now when he has a higher level of understanding himself than ever before? And especially since these thoughts and doubts have already been in his mind aka him postponing to become God long before Rory's arrival into their timeline!

2. The consequences of our actions are the results of the choices we make, not the other way around. And sometimes, different choices can lead to different outcomes and sometimes the array of choices we make lead to the same outcome. It is absolutely possible that if they broke the time loop and made different choices, that their actions would lead them to the same outcome aka Lucifer finding his calling while remaining in their lives. I think that it is fully possible for them to make a timeline B (the timeline that would have been created if they broke the time loop) based on the discoveries from the timeline A (their current timeline). There's no reason for me to believe otherwise.

Apart from the discovery of Lucifer's calling, the only thing that came out of the time loop was pain, suffering and probably a lot of loneliness. Even the good things that came out of the time loop (like Lucifer and Rory bonding) are a consequence of the pain that it caused. Of course, if they broke a time loop and created a completely new timeline, choices they would make there could theoretically end up having worse consequences on their lives. They could also be better, or they could be completely the same. The thing is, we don't know, we can only speculate and that is exactly what bothers me. The main characters made a major decision based on a speculation. I don't necessarily have a problem with the things that have happened, but rather with how they happened and how they were explained. Or better to say, how they weren't. I think that they should have completely dedicated the season to exploring this and reassuring us that this is the right choice to make and the right way to go.

Also, the concept of free will and making one's own choices has been pretty integral to the show. We have watched Lucifer struggle with the concept since the beginning of the show because he was convinced he is only a puppet in his father's grand plans. There were many events in the show reinforcing that belief, like Chloe being the gift from God. It took him seasons to accept that he chose to stay in her life, to be close to her, to be her partner in work as well as in life and in that acceptance he finally found the strength to tell her that he loves her. He chose her and she chose him. And while one can argue that leaving them and going back to hell was Lucifer's choice (since, technically, he could have chosen to break his word to his daughter and change things), it is one he didn't want to make. In the final episode he says that he desires to watch his daughter grow up and before he leaves for Hell he tells Chloe he doesn't want to leave her (she even responds that she doesn't want him to leave either, but that this is the choice that they are making for Rory's sake), making me feel like he is making this choice out of duty, out of fear and not because he wants to. He finally accepted that the choices he makes are his and his only, and the final choice in the show was made for him instead by him - I really don't think that the character deserved this. Lucifer gave Rory his word and we know he always goes by his word - they have turned one of the most essential qualities of his character into a plot device and an instrument that caused pain. Additionally, since Rory asked him not to change anything, it was implied that Lucifer can't come back to Earth in order not to risk changing anything even though it is completely possible for him to balance his work hours in Hell and his family time on Earth, like Amenadiel did. I also found this completely unfair and it felt like Lucifer was "banished" to Hell, not only missing out on being with Chloe and watching Rory grow up, but also staying away from his friends and the life he had built for himself. However, on the brighter side, Lucifer doing this - something he doesn't completely understand, something he doesn't want to do - is incredibly selfless of him and only shows how much he has grown. A character who has been described as selfish and self-serving from the very beginning does something so ultimately selfless, something that doesn't serve him in any way - quite the opposite, it pains him. As I said, I don't necessarily mind how things played out, I mind the lack of guarantee that they had to be this way. The only thing we don't know is if Lucifer and Chloe were in contact over the years since Chloe could have kept in touch with him behind Rory's back - maybe she sent him pictures of Rory, and maybe they exchanged letters. I am very doubtful because this would probably make the whole situation harder on them nor do I think that they would risk it because they wouldn't be able to know if their actions are breaking the time loop or if they are a part of the original timeline but hey, this is the stuff that fan fictions are made of!

And finally, I very much disliked the parallel between Lucifer and God - Lucifer abandoning his child for the sake of doing his job and that child growing up resenting him - if it was their intention to draw such a parallel. I think that God somewhat "redeemed" himself in Lucifer's eyes and that through accepting himself Lucifer also learned how to stop resenting his father for the things that transpired between them, and I don't necessarily believe that Lucifer had to walk in his father's shoes to understand him. So, in my opinion, this was completely unnecessary. Something I did like was Lucifer's calling - I think that it shows nicely the full circle he has made and that the souls he thought he is supposed to torture he is now helping heal. In a way, Hell is also the reflection of who Lucifer is - when he saw himself as broken, as evil, as unworthy and undeserving, Hell was also a place of torture - it was a reflection of him. And now that he accepted himself and that others have accepted him for who he is as well, it is a place of healing. In the end, Hell is his kingdom and he can choose to rule it the way he wants to. He broke his own hell loop and he truly became a lightbringer.

And, of course, Lucifer and Chloe (they are so soft and I am so soft for them). Taking into consideration my very bad OTP track reckord, I kinda expected a much, much worse ending for them - I mean, the Devil falling in love with a human, what could possibly go wrong, right? I knew from the very beginning that they aren't getting a pure, wholeseome, family-like ending. In order for that to happen, she would either have to become immortal (leaving Trixie, losing her detective identity), or he would have to become mortal - both of these scenarios feel cheap and I never would have wanted this for them or the show. Another option was to give them their happy life on Earth but then they would either have to leave a somewhat open ending or deal with the fact that ultimately, as a mortal, Chloe will die. And if they were given their happy ending on Earth, who knows if they would end up together in afterlife. Even if they did, it definitely wouldn't feel as emotional and as gratifying as it does now. The thing is, it is easy to give in to the pain of their separation when we measure it by the pivotal moments of happiness and loss that drive the lives of humans - him not being there when Rory was born or when she grew wings or when she started school - and it is even harder when you know how much she needed him and how much he wanted to be there for her. It is even more painful when you think about Chloe spending her entire lifetime without him, carrying all that pain inside of her, and him spending what had to be centuries alone in Hell. However, this is a fantasy show and many of our characters are immortal, celestial beings who have a different understanding of time, so maybe the idea of what a happy ending is and the rules for measuring happiness aren't the same as they would have been under other circumstances. Chloe became lieutenant and tried to make a difference, and she got to raise her daughters and see them grow up, and Lucifer helped so many souls heal, doing so much good. And now they get to spend the eternity together, solving crimes and kicking ass in the afterlife! Many of their friends and family are immortal, celestial beings too and (I am pretty sure) they can pay a visit to their human friends in Heaven... or see them in Hell, but let's hope not! In the end, what is one lifetime compared to eternity? Of course, none of this makes for the time they have lost, the momories they didn't get to make and the moments he wasn't there for, but now there are so many new memories they will get to make and so many moments to catch up on. It is bittersweet, but I think that's how it was supposed to be - in the end, pain is part of life.

I also have a few (dis)honourable mentions:

1. I am really sad and disappointed Lucifer didn't get to say goodbye to Trixie. She was gone for the majority of the season, but she was also a very important person in his life and he loved her. And we know how much she loved him.

2. I can't get over Rory travelling through time to kill her father because she is angry at him... sis, you kill him before he makes you, you wipe yourself out of existence.

3. I can't believe that they were surprised that Chloe got pregnant after having loads of superhuman sex (without any protection, apparently) after another human already got pregnant with an angel not that long ago.

4. Lucifer saying goodbye to Maze will forever remain one of the most beautiful scenes in the show.

5. The final major scene between Chloe and Lucifer, where they say goodbye before he leaves for hell, lives in my head rent free. I was choking on tears watching that scene, I literally had to pause and rewind three times. Such a beautiful(ly painful) scene. Also, when you have a ship and a person A says to the person B "close your eyes", pain is coming. I swear I travelled back to 1999 when Buffy said the same thing to Angel before sending him to a hell dimension.

6. When Chloe dies and goes to Heaven and Amenadiel greets her and asks her if she's ready to go home and then takes her to Lucifer was so pure. Her Heaven is being in Hell with Lucifer and there's something deeply poetic about that.

7. Hearing hello detective for the last time cleared my skin.

I have really and truly enjoyed the show, and the minor inconsistencies I see in its ending can't change that. I loved the show because it told stories about people and it allowed them to drive the narrative, and I can't say many shows these days do that.

[spookyfbi]

what did cody said about klave?

Omg Anon okay so, twitter user umbrellaacademy invited Cody to do a twitter space with them which they did yesterday (8PM Friday EST) and Cody stayed for OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS answering fan questions and saying SO MANY things about Dave and Klave and I am still so overwhelmed. I have recorded it and I’ve sent the video to the host and they’ve said they’ll release it soon (although the file is massive so I suspect they’ll have a bit of trouble wrangling it like I did so it might take longer). In the meantime, some highlights under the cut:

- Dave’s favourite thing about Klaus is his openness. He’s charismatic because he’s unafraid to be himself. Cody also finds it endearing that Klaus marches to the beat of his own drum.

- He likes the idea that the briefcase brought Klaus to Dave because of fate/destiny. Dave is the missing piece of Klaus, he fills a void in Klaus. He’s as interested as we are to find out if the timeline loops back in season 3

- Dave is soft spoken. There are qualities of Dave that have grounded and soothed Klaus but also Klaus has pulled Dave out of his shell. Klaus’ openness was like an invitation to Dave to open up and be goofy and strange, and this was a vibe Cody got from Robert as well in the bar scene, but then the dynamic shifted later and he felt that Dave was the one who was opening up first.

- Dave would go with Klaus to be with his family. He would want Klaus to take the reigns and would trust Klaus re- what kind of life they could have together post Vietnam. Although there would be no hesitation from Dave about his love for Klaus, there might be hesitation about planning a life together because of the time period they were in. There’s a sense of peace and wanting to settle from Klaus. Cody just basically being solidly on the Klaus bringing Dave back to 2019 to meet his family train.

-  There is a sensitivity and self awareness to Dave, Cody thinks he accepted his sexuality but just was careful about advertising it because of the time period. He also says that his Dave in season 1 didn’t have the experience we saw in season 2 with his uncle and that might have made him more open (I am staring directly at my reverse George McFly theory).

- Dave’s love for Klaus is unconditional, he loves him for exactly who he is. Dave’s unconditional love is a foil for the conditional love Klaus gets from his family. Klaus doesn’t really know what love is and then he gets fired this laser beam of love from Dave.

- Cody that been in a play where his character was in a relationship with a guy but he thinks Rob hadn’t done that before. The director set the tone that the kiss scene was an intimate and tender scene. He feels like there was a reassurance from Dave to Klaus in that moment.

- Dave was holding 4 shot glasses in the scene where he’s holding them with both hands. 

- Cody describing Dave in 4 words - kind, sensitive, empathetic, soft. Dave would describe Klaus as free spirited, open, unfiltered, unexpected (he also put forward chaotic but didn’t stick with it and replaced it with unexpected).

- Dave’s first thought when he woke up and saw Klaus was “Is this a dream... We’re not sleeping much so this could be a dream, I wouldn’t put it past my brain” Also “The dream coming to reality but maybe not necessarily looking like what he thought.”

- He thinks Klaus probably took the dogtags off Dave after he died as a way to remember him rather than them exchanging them

- He wants Klaus and Dave’s storyline to end with love prevailing. He also floats the idea of Dave taking a dark turn and Klaus has to be the redemptive person to bring Dave back.

In preparation for playing Dave he watched the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary series on Netflix and also looked up online about the Vietnam war. He also listened to music he thought Dave would be into from 1965-1968: He mentions Motown and Stones (Cody said he himself likes Motown)

- Cody’s favourite thing about Dave is the quality of how he loves Klaus. He describes it as pure and unconditional and simple and he talks about he thinks people need to love each other fearlessly - not just romantically but in friendships as well, especially with what’s happening now (and this sort of clarifies to me why he was talking about love over fear so passionately in the clever klaus q&a and what he meant by that)

- Cody is a fantasy nerd

- He would love to see Dave giving Klaus some agency

- He thinks that Klaus has some guilt about Dave’s death

- He would like to play a Commission agent (Commission Dave rights!!)

- Robert is very open and unassuming and funny and it was easy to have an immediate rapport with him. Cody also talked with Tom Hopper (about their mutual friend Bradley James). He also briefly met Colm and Robin and he also remembered he met Aidan (who here had a theory about a deleted scene with Aidan in the attic?)

- He doesn’t know how time works in the afterlife or how Klaus’ power works but Dave would have waited 50 years for Klaus

- Calem joined the space and they said that they hadn't interacted before but they had a bit of a chat. Calem said that his filming in season 2 was 4 days but about 1 month apart. Calem’s internet kept cutting out and then he disappeared.

- If Dave was one of the 43 children his power could be the care bear love blast and he could fire hot beams of love out of the hole in his chest. He would give Dave a more passive power to round out the more active powers the other Hargreeves have, like a healer

- The scene in the tent was filmed at the studio. The scene on the bus was shot outside. The scene in the trench was partly shot outside but some of it was shot in the studio as well (I wonder if he’s confusing that trench scene with the hallucination at the Rave though?)

- He said the scenes were beautifully lit (I beg to differ, Cody!)

- Klaus helped unlock that part of him (I think he means Dave’s sexuality) and he also says that Klaus was a very specific target to Dave’s love. Klaus seems like one in a million. When you love someone there’s something specific about them that pulls that out of you.

- Calem returns! He was in his room where the internet crapped out on him but then he went downstairs. Cody asked what it was like for Calem to come in and play an established character. Calem said he purposely didn’t talk with Cody about the character before playing him because he’d done the audition without knowing anything about the character so he didn’t want to risk doing something too different from what he’d done in the audition, but he did watch season 1. He also said he was a bit anxious about what the audience would think of him playing the character, and Cody went into acting mentor mode and said that he doesn’t think the job is about appeasing the fans but about trying to be as true as possible. He also said that Calem did a good job and he shouldn’t be hard on himself but Calem then said that he quickly got over it and he wasn’t thinking about it on set, just afterwards. Calem mentioned that he creeped Cody’s IMDB and he said that his dad was a camera operator on Lizzie Borden Chronicles this Cody guest starred in an episode of.

- Dave loves music like Cody. He mentioned Four Tops as another band and then Motown again. He thinks the bar scene shows Dave’s love of music but he wasn’t thinking about that at the time.

- Dave would be overstimulated at first if he came to the future because we’re bombarded with a lot more stimulus than in the 60s. The internet and iPhones would blow his mind. He let’s a “we’ll see” slip, which he then quickly corrects to “we would see”

- The kiss in the bar was definitely the first kiss and he thinks it happened a couple months into the tour. He thinks the feelings were mutual quite early, but that it would have taken some time to act on them and to be able to gauge if each other were really giving off the signals that they like each other.

- He’s appreciative of the fan love and he tries to make a connection with everyone he can

- Dave is an optimistic force who thinks that love will prevail so he would have wanted to do something to make it work despite the obstacles they faced

- Cody doesn’t know how close to the vest Klaus kept the stuff about his powers and the time travel etc but he did see Klaus appear so he does know there’s something strange about him. Dave trusted Klaus and even if it wasn’t explicitly talked about there was enough trust to go “wherever you go I’ll follow, wherever that leads.” When Klaus conjures Dave, Dave is excited to see him but isn’t really surprised or put off by any of the circumstances that Klaus is in.

- He thinks that Dave is more the listener of the relationship, but he could certainly see Dave telling Klaus about Dune and Klaus indulging him.

- Rob is very genuine, very unassuming, very immediately open, very funny, definitely puts you at ease, incredibly thoughtful, very considerate, good dude (wow it’s the complimenting Rob speed run! 8 in a row!)

- The aspect of Dave that Cody connects to most is his non-judgemental quality

- Dave would connect with Vanya’s softness and Luther’s moral compass (he said Diego’s moral compass in the cleverklaus q&a so not sure if he just mixed them up). He thinks Dave might be a bit too sincere for Five and Ben would appreciate being able to unload Klaus on Dave.

- He thinks Dave is not a tattoo guy but Klaus is impulsive so getting a tattoo really aligns with his personality. He thinks that Dave’s actions speak louder than words written on him

- He connects to the fractured family theme of the show on a personal level

- Dave being jewish was something he only learned about through looking at the dogtags, it wasn’t in the script or anything

- Dave might have studied Philosophy if he’d gone to college instead of joining the military, he feels like there’s a dreamer quality to Dave

- Even though Dave was pressured into joining the military, he thinks that Dave believed he was going the right thing by enlisting

- Colm is a Canadian Hall of Fame actor and Reginald is such an intense character so Cody would love to do a scene with him. He would also love to do a scene with Elliot.

- Cody remembered waiting on set to film the scene in the club and he, Rob and Tom were in an 80s hotel with a heart shaped jacuzzi (??? oh was this the set with the Handler and Agnes maybe?)

[betweengenesisfrogs]

The Triumph of the Marginalia

Marginalia, n.:

1 : notes or embellishments in the margins (as in a book)

2 : nonessential items

-Troll OED

Is it just me, or is Nepeta and Equius’s arc the most slept-upon piece of brilliance in all of Homestuck?

A brilliance, might I add, that culminates in possibly the most triumphant, fulfilling emotional moment in the entire work:

https://www.homestuck.com/story/7928

*stands back and beholds its majesty while from the background comes the sound of James Roach brutally murdering ska*

No, but actually, I mean this 100% unironically, and by the end of this post, I think you’ll agree with me.

By now, I think we all understand the Act 6 double metaphor: the series of temporal loops and universes that Lord English commands is paralleled with, and in fact totally identical to, the narrative of Homestuck. Our characters’ lives exist within this context. They struggle to escape it, and are defined both by it and by the rejection of it.

Enter Nepeta.

The metaphorical meaning of Nepeta in Homestuck is irrelevance, and that’s why she’s the most relevant character in any discussion.

Nepeta was one of the characters killed off during the Murderstuck arc. Hussie argued that she was perfect for this role. In fact, I believe he said something like “Nepeta is sweet, but if you look up the dictionary definition of ‘expendable character,’ you’ll see a picture of Nepeta playing with a ball of yarn and looking very cute.” She’s an endearing combination of shipper girl and apex predator, but not one of your Vriskas or Terezis in being a driver of the plot. Hussie, it seems, created her just to round out the troll cast. He described one of his purposes in Murderstuck as being to axe some of the less necessary trolls to reduce the scope of his character list.

Except that didn’t really happen, did it?

Like a cat with nine lives, Nepeta just keeps coming back.

Equius is another addition to the troll cast who gets pushed away from the main action. He was a character-writing challenge: how do you make someone who’s gross, uncomfortable, and racist kind of likable anyway? I’d argue Hussie succeeded, in large part because of Equius’s relationship with Nepeta. By the time you finish with Hivebent, you’ll probably have a little fondness for their moraillegiance. And if that doesn’t do it, the conversation that serves as their swansong in Equius: Seek the Highblood will tear your heartstrings to shreds.

Because Equius dies, tragically clownmurdered. There was, at the time, some stink over this from Equius fans. Would he have really let himself be killed so easily? Hussie countered: yes, and it was the most in-character thing he could have done. He died doing what he loved: being asphyxiated erotically and horrifically by a superior. Truly, there could be no more fitting end to his character than that.

And yet.

No sooner did Hussie complete his self-appointed story cleanup challenge than he immediately began to undo his own work. It’s almost as if, in declaring his intention to own those who preferred more characters to narrative economy, he immediately had to own himself??

By the time we get even a little way into Act 6, we’re deep in the dreambubble landscape, meeting dead characters left and right. And who should show up there but Equius and Nepeta? Equius attempting to get it on with a bunch of Aradias, who dump him. And Nepeta, living out her romantic dreams as a representative of a timeline where she got together with Karkat. They both appear as symbols of this deadness, this irrelevance. Except that that brings them back into the story, into the spotlight – the opposite of where they’re supposed to be!

Like many bits of commentary, Hussie continues to incorporate the metaphor Nepeta=Irrelevance into Homestuck. Karkat’s remark on their journey that he would love to meet “FIFTY FUCKING NEPETAS” and embark on “NEPETAQUEST” alludes to formspring remarks to the effect that, no, Homestuck was not going to have much time for the minor characters. Except it clearly did.

Why couldn’t the narrative let the meowrails go? Was it that despite the economy of Murderstuck, something was still incomplete? After all, one of Equius’s charms was that he appeared to be growing into a less repressed, kinder person. In Seek the Highblood, we see him letting his guard down enough to roleplay with Nepeta for a change. Their love for each other: wasn’t that ultimately what could redeem Equius in our eyes? So his dying and thus failing to protect her–isn’t that something that should be addressed?

You could imagine many a Nepeta and Equius fan saying this to Hussie back in 2011.

But Hussie was already saying it to himself.

The duo come roaring back into the story in the Trickster mode arc, mid Act 6, thanks to Gamzee’s ridiculous resurrections. True, Nepeta is still reduced as part of Fefeta, the character formed from killed-off girls who never speaks onscreen. But doesn’t using that fact as a running gag kind of draw our attention to it? Doesn’t the fact that Fefeta talks to Roxy constantly offscreen inform us that once we get outside the frame of the narrative, Nepeta has a rich inner life and countless stories to tell?

And it’s here that Equius gets something he never got in his original “arc:” the chance to apologize to Nepeta. You’d be forgiven for missing it since there’s so much else going on at the time, but he does, while fused with AR. Here’s what you’d miss, though: he’s grown as a person in the afterlife. He’s come to regret that moment of weakness, where his fetish kept him from protecting his moirail. Impossible as it seems, he’s continuing his character arc.

The scene ends with Fefeta exploding (she’s also, after all, dealing with Eridan), but it leaves us with a tantalizing question:

Will Nepeta forgive Equius? Is there even a plausible time and space in that story when she could respond to his words?

Do you see what’s happening here? Instead of being erased, Nepeta and Equius are starting to slip the bounds of the story that killed them. They leap in and out of the frame, half-mythical figures. Marginalized, they write their own stories in the margins. They exist in complete defiance of the original logic of Homestuck.

Lord English is an alt-Author figure, a dark, brutal reflection of narrative control and narrative necessity. His world, in which horrible choices are necessary, in which the alpha timeline is a ticking clock leading inexorably to his manifestation, is one that beats down people not deemed important enough by his narrative. Which makes it identical to the one we’re reading. Throw all the unnecessary characters in the trash. Kill them off, if it suits my purposes. The world doesn’t need Nepeta.

Which is precisely why it does. Because isn’t defying Lord English the entire point? Isn’t it what Homestuck reveals as truly heroic?

What might Nepeta be capable of?

Let’s talk about two other victims of English’s forces of marginalization. Davesprite might be the most quintessential example. He teaches us what the alpha timeline is and how it works, by going back to fix a doomed timeline and submitting to being doomed himself. Except he merges with a bird and avoids that fate. Okay, but he clearly gets killed off fighting Jack in Jade: Enter. Except he comes back and hangs out with Jadesprite. Okay, but he dies in the planetsplode in the Retcon. Nope, he comes back from that, too. Huh. He keeps slipping the fate decreed for him by – who else? Lord English.

But it’s a struggle, clearly. He’s caught up in various cycles of guilt and shame. Over being “not the real Dave.” Over his feeling that he has to be a hero in the sense Bro demanded he be. Hussie describes Davesprite as fitting the “way of the unbroken sword:” his experiences have led him to believe in being strong and capable at the expense of all else, in contrast with the other Dave, whose belief in Bros’ toxic ideas is beginning to slip – the “way of the broken sword.” And where did Bro get his toxic ideas from? At least in part, the whispering voice of the soul of Lord English.

Now we turn to Dirk. Like Dave, Dirk has a marginalized, “less important” splinter self but it’s more of a pressing concern. AR shows Dirk’s darker side: exhibiting manipulative tendencies that human Dirk is trying to move away from. He’s also a copy removed from humanity, who feels an understandable amount of disillusionment about being removed from physical existence and his own identity. But as much as Dirk may splinter, like his dumb anime sword, he never breaks. What this means in the symbolic language of Homestuck is that Dirk lives fully, instinctually, in the way of the sword. He believe in a world of hard choices, masculine heroism, and necessity. Ultimately, this, too, is part of what makes Bro so harmful to Dave. In AR and Davesprite, we have a strange parallel: two splinter selves, both of whom are enmeshed in the logic of LE.

Except AR, unlike Davesprite…kind of is LE.

What is Lord English composed of? Well, there’s Caliborn, the most unrepentant shithead of all time. There’s Gamzee, embodiment of horrifying clownery. And then there’s AR, a version of Dirk even more removed from the person he wants to be.

And…Equius?

Allow me a moment to get really indulgent and take a big puff on my Homestuck scholar’s pipe.

The metaphorical meaning of Equius in Homestuck is: sort of growing out of being a creepy racist.

Or maybe let’s say: the opportunity to do that. We said that Equius was on the verge of being redeemed (even had been, in the eyes of many readers). What does it mean to stick him in with Lord English’s souls? It means two things:

1) Equius is a product of his society, which was shaped by Doc Scratch, aka by Lord English, both of whom are kind of him, but Scratch picks up on his traits especially. This is a recognition of that fact: the part of him that sucks is, itself, Lord English in a dizzying loop.

2) Equius’s story is a tragedy. It is the story of a kid who started to escape his society’s tendencies, but was sucked back in by the evil force behind them.

Although…maybe that’s not the whole story.

Because both Equius and AR aren’t really that bad. AR’s pretty understandable, and by no means beyond the possibility of goodness. And the combination of the two? Honestly, pretty harmless. They counter each other’s worst tendencies by devolving into a weird goofball. In fact, AR even says he wants to do something heroic: to sacrifice himself for something really important. He does, kind of, mustering a last-ditch robohorse assault on Caliborn. But at the same time, this is the substance of his tragedy. A hero whose defeat of a great evil forces him to become the substance of that evil. Which could not be a more fitting summary of how these characters function in their story.

But maybe that’s still not the whole story.

Enter Davepeta.

At first glance, the creation of Davepeta seems like Hussie’s most batshit troll move yet. I feel pretty confident in saying that even those who predicted either of these characters returning didn’t see that one coming. However, a few pages of Davepeta’s presence reveals a fundamental truth:

Davepeta is fucking amazing.

In them, Davesprite’s depressive moods are buoyed up by Nepeta’s upbeat optimism. Nepeta’s reclusive shyness is balanced by Dave’s tendency toward brash banter. Both of them gain confidence from being the new person they are. They quickly let go of ideas inherited from the world that kept them from self-knowledge and happiness. Dave, his toxic masculinity; Nepeta, her fear.

A great point I’ve seen made is how much Jasprose and Davepeta resemble fantasy selves for Rose and Dave: indulgent, technicolor manifestations of people they could be if they let go of inhibitions and limitations. But I think Davepeta is the most unambiguously positive of the two.

The metaphorical meaning of Davepeta in Homestuck?

Growth.

Not giving a fuck about what the world thinks. The world, aka Lord English. Because Lord English could never have predicted that his machinations would also spawn a confident, powerful fusion of two beings he had discarded as totally irrelevant.

They’re also a multicolored non-binary furry, so that’s even more points in the pissing off shitheads column.

They are someone Lord English never conceived of, never could have conceived of, but which lay as potential within his domain all along.

And if Lord English is a reflection of the author, of what Hussie feels one has to destroy or sacrifice, than Davepeta is an indulgence existing in defiance of all that.

And this makes Davepeta the most powerful person of all.

They are the light at the end of the tunnel. They are the person you could be, if you could get past your mental shackles and just grow. It may not be possible to ever get there as a mortal human, may only be for a godlike sprite, but striving to be like them matters, is purpose and fulfilment enough.

And they love ARquius.

Nepeta believed in Equius, believed he could grow, and was growing. So as much as ARquius traps himself in a Lord English loop of his own making – grown, perhaps, out of Dirk’s belief that there should be a loop, that importance is admirable—Davepeta pulls from him, in his last scene, his finest qualities. His love.

Equius asks forgiveness again, and this time, Nepeta’s able to give it. Davepeta easily accepts ARquius’s apology, an apology which never could have existed within the confines of a normal narrative. A reconciliation that both of them fought for by defying their narrative, by existing outside it. By being not the trolls who lived and died, but their broader, conceptual selves, who exist beyond lifetimes. Beyond the comic page. And they consummate that reconciliation with that most cherished and loving of gestures:

A hug.

And even as this is Equius and Nepeta’s reconciliation, it’s also Dirk and Dave’s. Which, I should mention, is also taking place, simultaneously and circumstantially simultaneously, just below. It’s a more difficult one, certainly, especially as filtered through the splinters of Davesprite and AR. Here forgiveness is not quite the right word. But – knowledge, and recognition, and a kind of peace. It’s Davesprite’s chance to reunite with the part of his brother he loved, while also being a person who’s grown beyond him. And it’s AR’s chance to be loved.

Oh, sure, the art is ridiculous, the pose absurd. But that’s what makes it sublime.

I mean, what did you think that Sbahj comic was really about?

A boy distancing himself from his feelings through irony, never acknowledging that the story he’s telling is about two bros who desperately want to hug each other, but don’t know how.

Here’s the hug.

I want to dip into Epilogues territory for a moment, but it’s territory which is fairly well implied by Davepeta’s statements and role in Collide. The Meat Epilogue, I think, only illuminates what was already there.

Lord English is uniquely vulnerable to Davepeta.

And why shouldn’t he be? They, like so much else in Homestuck, are a consequence of his actions spiraling far beyond his control. But it’s more than that. Davepeta is finally able to lay the unbroken sword to rest by following the “prophecy” about Dave defeating Lord English. On the one hand, that’s kind of what happened. But it’s also completely different from what English intended, antithetical to his desires and goals. Which makes the victory all the sweeter. But at the end of the day, Davepeta doesn’t fight for the reasons Davesprite did. They’re free of that, now. Instead, they fight from a place of genuine compassion. Because Davesprite, like Dave, knows the true meaning of being a hero: caring about one’s friends.

But the most important thing about Davepeta is that they know Lord English, on a level that perhaps neither he nor they recognize. Both AR and Equius are in there, and both are capable of redemption. It’s only Gamzee and Caliborn who are truly beyond it.

How does Davepeta defeat Lord English?

With a hug.

They wrap their claws around him, and carry him into the sun like a piece of garbage. It’s an aggressive hold, but it’s also effectively an embrace.

And I have to wonder: in those final moments, did they sense a connection there? Did Equius and Dirk stir somewhere within Lord English? Did they give him a moment’s pause? Resist him? Make it just the tiniest bit easier for Davepeta to do their work?

If so, then that, too, is heroism.

At the very least, it’s circumstantially simultaneous with the hug we see in Act 6, and so it carries the same message:

Redemption.

Not for the shitheads, but for those who wanted to be better.

And if this isn’t enough, there’s a third reconciliation here, too: between author and reader, or to put it in other terms, author and character.

If Lord English is a shadow of the author, what part of the author can be redeemed? Maybe not the destructive, antagonistic urges. But the part that plans and designs and philosophizes as Dirk does. That part of Hussie wanted Davepeta to be there, to strike that final blow, and made it happen.

Because, when you get right down to it, as much as Hussie pretends to be antagonistic toward his readers and the characters they enjoy, it’s the fans, the shippers, the furries, those whose hearts go out to a cute, shy cat girl that he most celebrates.

Hussie fucking loves Nepeta.

Nepeta and Equius are, sneakily, the best characters in Homestuck, because they understand its fundamental message: that to succeed in Homestuck is to defy Homestuck. They defy everything it throws at them, and somehow, improbably, come out on top.

All of this is there on that page, a whole edifice of storytelling culminating in that singular, grand, supremely indulgent expression, a feast of looping leitmotif and color and imagery and meme and sound. It’s all there, if you know where to look.

Nepeta and Equius love each other, and that’s pretty fucking great.

See? I told you.

<> Ari

[sebastianshaw]

☕️ (House of M. More specifically his relationship to his teammates out of the field. Like Marrow)

I imagine that House of M Shaw is almost all Shaw’s better traits raised to the max, and his worse ones significantly lessened, but he also has flaws that 616 Shaw doesn’t have. For instance, he stopped Sentinel production when he found out he was a mutant, so unlike his 616 counterpart, he does have species loyalty. .  .but that’s not necessarily a good thing. He enforces King Magnus’s rule as director of SHIELD and the Red Guard, but we know that’s a rule which is unfair to humans. So unlike 616 Shaw, this is a Shaw who is loyal to mutantkind even at the expense of humans, but was ready to make anti-mutant death machines when he thought HE was a human. It’s clearly a VERY different mindset than 616 Shaw’s “whatever makes me money” attitude. Which, speaking of, I don’t think he’s greedy, certainly not to the extent his 616 self is. I mean, he stopped Sentinel production and helped Magneto to sabotage many of the Sentinels already on the market, even though these were making him money. And since he’s now working as SHIELD Director, it can be assumed he either gave up being the CEO of Shaw Industries, or is sacrificing a LOT of time in order to be SHIELD Director, and time is money. I’m sure the position pays well, but I very much doubt it’s on par with being the multi-billionaire that being a businessman made him. He’s very. .  .lawful. He literally is the head of law enforcement, the top of the chain of command. Early Shaw in 616 had some Lawful Evil traits, but I prefer to think of House of M Shaw as Lawful Good, since being Lawful Good in itself can be bad so long as that “bad” is what is the law, and I think that fits what I described about him enforcing a system that has unjust aspects. That said, the Good part still provides a lot of contrast to his 616 self. Speaking of---he’s the brave, calm, commanding, very strategic leader that we see him be in The Dark Phoenix Saga and Secret Empire. He’s not the most personable, buddy-buddy boss, but he’s only strict, not cruel, tolerating no nonsense but also looking after his people. He’s very by the book, which can make him seem stiff and like a stick in the mud, but also this means he does follows due process and respects the law even when it benefits the suspects/perpetrators. He keeps his team in line, which includes not letting them use undue force on a target, and if a suspect is cooperative, does not resist, etc., he will note that if he’s asked to testify regarding them. Very strict, very lawful, very fair---when he can be. He can’t mete out the law fairly when it comes to when the young princes causing trouble, for instance. He’s not a “father” to his squad and nor does he try to be, but he treats them with respect and I think Marrow appreciates that. They don’t WANT him trying to be their pal, they don’t WANT someone trying to be close to them, but they lowkey do think of him in a somewhat paternal sense because he is such a strong male authority figure, and they appreciate his fairness towards them, his equal treatment, the fact he does care for his squad’s safety but also doesn’t tolerate insubordination, etc. They can see he has guts and a strong sense of strategy, he gets things done, he keeps things in line, he doesn’t abuse those under him. Marrow respects these things and while they DO get out of line a good bit themselves, Shaw can typically pull them back in because of that respect. Shaw returns that respect. He knows he can count on Marrow and they’re good to have, even if they need a calming influence at times. But that’s fine---he’s got more than one firecracker on this team, after all. He doesn’t show them any favoritism, but I think he might feel just a bit towards them (and Rogue) due to being the youngest on the team. Again, he never oversteps the line into fatherliness, he’s not warm, but he looks out for his team, he looks out for them, while still having high expectations and expecting top performance---as he should, it’s a top team. No kid gloves, but no cruelty either. He appreciates what Marrow brings from a practical standpoint, and treats them like, well, a person, isn’t going to let them burn out or mess themselves up, also isn’t going to let them be overly aggressive with someone when it’s not necessary. He is far less informed about trans stuff than 616 Shaw, so he doesn’t get the they/them thing and thinks that when Marrow says they aren’t a man or woman, means they have some kind of intersex condition. Seeing as that would be impolite to inquire about, he doesn’t ask, and just goes with the pronouns. Marrow can do their job, and that’s all Shaw really is concerned about, not what’s in their pants. I kind of like the idea Shaw might have been the one to pull young Marrow out of the sewers. It might not work timeline wise depending when exactly Magneto took over, but I like the idea. The mutant massacre PROBABLY didn’t happen, but there might well have been SOME kind of SHIELD rescue mission he was involved in. It didn’t result in a deep father/child bond or anything, he’s not Wolverine, he didn’t take them in or raise them as his own, but they do remember him as scooping them up and getting them in a helicopter years ago before they grew up and joined SHIELD themselves, and they’ve never discussed it with him since he’s never brought it up either. In their day to day interactions, Marrow calls him Boss and Chief most of the time in a slightly-jokey way, and will push his limits without ever actually pushing past them. They’re amusing, even if Shaw does a very good job keeping stony-faced, not truly disrespectful, with a knack for getting into trouble. Several of the team have this knack too-- Rogue, Toad, Kurt, probably more---but Marrow’s is very much all their own. They’ve been on the surface for a lot longer if we go with the “pulled out of the sewers/danger by Shaw as a kid” route so they’re better adjusted to things but occasionally stuff still throws them for a loop and it does often fall to Shaw’s shoulders (or Logan’s but why should he get to be the only one?) to Explain the Thing. He has also definitely thrown them at people during combat before and THEY LOVE IT. They don’t interact OUTSIDE of work but that’s because Shaw keeps a very strong divide between work and home, and Marrow feels much the same. They don’t really have a home life to protect like he does, but they do keep people at a distance. They meet him outside the job once, with his family, and it gives them a very weird feeling. Partly is it’s just weird when you encounter people outside the sole role/situation you’re used to them in, like seeing a teacher outside school, because you have no idea what the rules for appropriate interaction are now, but also partly because they very much see Shaw as the leader of their group (which, he is) and seeing him with his family really makes it REAL that he has an entire other ‘group’ that he values and takes care of and it just makes them feel . . . strange, especially given their lack of a bio-family. They give him the cold shoulder for a few weeks after because they just don’t know how to deal, and if he notices, he doesn’t say it (he does, he is just letting it be) They also really like that he DOES bring in snacks for the squad and it’s always really good savory stuff, like authentic pork bao buns from Chinatown with an egg yolk in the middle. Overall they have a bond of mutual respect and while there is a power imbalance/hierarchy it’s one that he does not exploit or abuse, and he takes responsibility for them as much as command. They don’t get any closer than is professional, as befits him being all-business and them being guarded, but do look out for each other and get along well. 

[enfpguy]

BioShock Infinite MBTI and Enneagram — Jeremiah Fink Jeremiah Fink is a major side character who acts as a secondary villain towards the protagonists and the Vox populi faction. Before we analyze him, we'll be taking a brief look into his past. Not much is known about his birth but we know that he is one of The Founders of Columbia. Fink gained his massive empire through “persuasive” monopolization and through his close ties with Zachery Hale Comstock. His wealth knew no bounds, and in no time he had the police force in his pocket. Comstock noticed Fink’s increasing influence and hired him to “accidentally” get rid of the Lutece twins. His reward would be ownership of the Luteces’ patents. We will continue our story within his Dominant Function analysis. Dominant Function: Extroverted Thinking  If you could describe Jeremiah Fink in one word, it would efficient. Jeremiah Fink is what happens when a TE user is extremely unhealthy. His concept of morals doesn't exist, all he cares for is efficiency and monetary gain. Now we’ll return to his story since his TE function will play a huge role in it. He “killed” the Lutece’s by destroying their Lutece Device. He was efficient since this action got rid of them from that timeline, but he wasn’t effective. That action had consequences such as accidentally making the Luteces’ capable of existing across multiple dimensions. This would be his downfall. The problem with Fink is that he wants work done fast and he doesn’t care how it turns out since he’ll replace the workers with other workers who could do it faster and better. Another fascinating example of his TE function can be observed by how he organizes his office and workplace. Every action he takes is timed and he can’t stand when time is wasted because he could be doing something productive. This need to be productive is so extreme that he even has a giant clock that is used to control which rooms open at what times in his private quarters! He’s a complete control freak and sadly, this treatment is also extended to his employees. In a way, Fink is a one-dimensional being who only focuses on one aspect of Extroverted Thinking... Say it with me... EFFICIENCY. Auxiliary Function: Introverted Intuition Fink is the example of an NI user with a rotten core. He uses this function to understand people���s intentions so he may further control them like the puppets he perceives them to be. We can see this within his actions and speeches towards his workers. Fink actively discourages his employees from being self-sufficient and ambitious since being ambitious is too much work, and why would you want to work harder than you’re already working? As Fink says, “Simplicity is beauty“ He purposely manipulates his workers so he may further exploit them, which is his end goal for every worker that works under his establishment. For him, they’re simply tools. One of the best examples of Fink’s NI function can be seen in how he predicts Booker will come for Chen Lin and kills him. But he doesn’t just kill him, he manipulates Booker and Elizabeth into thinking they have a chance of saving Chen Lin even though he was already dead. Since Fink knows Booker needs Chen Lin to get the First Lady airship to escape Columbia to pay his debts, he figures if he removes Chen Lin from the equation Booker will have no choice to work for him and if Elizabeth wasn’t able to make tears into different universes that would be absolutely true. Even Fink’s success can be attributed to his NI function. Fink may be obsessed with efficiency and success as we mentioned in his TE function segment, but he also can think outside the box and often does to achieve his goals. Fink uses tears to look into alternative realities and takes inspiration from them. This results in him making his variations of what he sees. Such as vigors, he used what he saw in a Rapture tear and then observed Yi Suchong using slugs to extract ADAM. Fink copied Suchong’s idea and added a twist to it. But due to Fink’s need for efficient results, his invention of the vigor was much more costly and 10x less effective than Suchong’s plasmids. Speaking of “borrowing” ideas, Fink also made a profit by sending his brother to tears that contained music from the future. They both plagiarized songs such as Everybody Wants to Rule the World from Tears For Fears and Happy Shiny People from R.E.M and tweaked them slightly to match their time-period. This borrowing of ideas and innovation eventually got the attention of Suchong, who started to copy off Fink. They both indirectly collaborated with each-other on the inventions such as the Songbird which was based on the Big Daddy and the idea of imprinting their creations onto desired hosts which was also influenced by the Big Daddy. Fink may have cheated by viewing tears into the future, but he innovated on the ideas he saw and put them to use in Columbia by improving the lives of its citizens and his wallet. Our last NI example links back to our first example, Fink pays his employees in “Fink coins” why Fink coins you ask? Well, of course, it’s for controlling them so they can’t buy any other products at other establishments. This causes the cash-flow to always return to Fink, limiting his losses to almost 0%. Pretty intelligent if you ask me, and equally cutthroat. Tertiary Function: Extroverted Sensing Fink is a unique individual he both uses and neglects his SE function at the same time. His usage of the function can often be seen within a TE-SE loop. Our first example takes place at the Columbia Day Raffle. To celebrate, Jeremiah Fink set up a large carnival for the people filled with attractions based on his company. Such as Fink product trails, Fink’s music, and Vox populi shoot-'em-up games. Fink did all of that because he understood the power of propaganda and his physical appearance. If he makes himself look like a celebrity more people will buy his products is his logic. Our next example can be seen within Fink’s surroundings. He’s obsessed with beauty. This is best seen in his Private office which contains a giant golden clock, gigantic windows, fancy curtains, and 4 other rooms within it. That’s not all. He also has 2 humongous golden statues of himself in his work district. It’s commonly known that SE users are the most sensitive to beauty thus desire the most. Our last example occurs when he’s “interviewing” Booker DeWitt for a new job position of head security of Fink industries! This interview is forced onto Booker, who’s confused to why Fink is doing this. Fink retorts by claiming that Booker needs to kill the other applicants if he wants the job. But in reality, Fink just wants to be entertained by Booker’s ability to kill others. Inferior Function: Introverted Feeling We’re going to be straightforward on this function. Fink only uses the FI functions for 2 things. To spread his ideas about how work is hard and how everyone should work as hard as possible and for his projection of his “strong” values on which humans are worthy of his respect and which ones are tools to be used. This is driven by his white supremacist morals and ideals. Fink only hires non-American white people such as the Irish and minorities of all backgrounds. He does this intending to keep everyone underpaid and overworked. He wants to control their lives since he doesn’t see them as human. It’s pretty bad, but that’s how he functions Jeremiah Fink represents the extreme values of the 1900s America. He also represents a human who has been stripped away of all morality, thus resulting in Fink only caring for his own personal gain and the thrill of crushing his competition or anyone he deems a risk. These traits can be linked to psychopathy. https://youtu.be/FVhDUf-speQ

[elizabethrobertajones]

I was wondering if you could pls describe (or show me some tags if its easier) the traits of some writers of spn..? I usually hear "X writer usually writes more sam" or "this strucutre is usual in X's episodes" but I've never been able to pick on those; the only ones I've been able to pick up are bucklmming and its beacuse they are somehow instantly bad :/ ps. u dont have to like explain EVERY single writer or anything, just general things that you know or notice in their respective episodes

Hiya :D 

Yeah, it’s a thing that’s really, like, aside from Buckleming being bad and coming with a warning notice that we’re all helpless, please don’t burn the fandom down after their episodes, it’s not really more than nerdy interest that means anything about knowing who the writers are, so in that sense you have the toolkit you need to function :P

Buuut from my very very deeply nerdy and writery observations through what is now more than a decade (eep) of watching this bloody thing…

The show starts with a Generic Tone, and most of the original writers have this tone. This is in NO WAY a bad thing, but of all the writers, you have to really delve to connect common themes in their episodes, and for many of the writers who didn’t endure out of seasons 1-5, we don’t really have a clear profile on their habits, for reasons I’ll get to. 

We can see Sera Gamble’s fingerprints a bit more because we get 2 seasons of her as a showrunner, but by and large as one of the original writers, she really sets the tone so her writing IS Supernatural, as much as Kripke or John Shiban or Raelle Tucker or Cathryn Humphries and whoever else wrote multiple episodes seasons 1-5. They have things they might like but dropping into a random early episode doesn’t give much away because they had a much tighter playbook. 

1x13 shows this because despite serious, painful hindsight of all the things they do wrong that we recognise NOW from seasons of their nonsense, Buckleming wrote far more to the brief than they ever do these days; the difference in style has to be almost entirely attributed to being a first season and close creative control and enforced use of a playbook that disguised a ton of their worst habits which go unchecked these days, and @justanotheridijiton has dug up evidence of them cheerfully commenting on writing in such a way into deep history >.> Despite it being technically their best episode, they were fired and given a 6 year writing ban until Kripke left. So I’m guessing it was fairly obvious they had these problems regardless.

Of all these writers in the early seasons, Edlund pops up in season 2, and he is a wild card with a personality, and he does not write ~generic SPN~ and never did: it’s always Edlund SPN and it gels perfectly with the slightly less technicolour SPN, frequently breaking the format and creating the modern version of SPN… If he does comic it’s Bad Day at Black Rock and if he does deep it’s On The Head Of A Pin, and if you look at what he wrote, very very few of his episodes are duds, because he has a brain swirling deep with interesting and bizarre nonsense. He’s also the biggest Cas stan ever. 

Jeremy Carver pre-Carver era helped, which I think is why he gets to be part of Carver Edlund - we have 3 and a half years of his showrunning to know what fascinated him, so I’ll just say, in his very first episode in season 3, he alludes to Cain and Abel for the first time. He’s very big on narrative structure being used in fascinating ways, and his episodes are all very technically accomplished, but the downfall was that by the end he was writing narrative symbolism as a sort of withered husk of his former self with no emotion whatsoever, just hitting storytelling marks. 11x01 is the single most depressing episode to me in terms of “this is the man who wrote Mystery Spot and Changing Channels”

Fortunately, and I’m skipping over a ton of writers to tell this story, but could go back and talk about more of the interesting ones in between, if you watch 11x01 and 11x02 back to back, they work perfectly as a single episode and it’s like after the break all the life and emotion and intrigue is breathed back into the show in a rush of colour and character. Now, Dabb is one of the OG writers in my standards, in the sense that he and Loflin showed up in season 4, and to this day Dabb’s writing to me still shows a touch of writing within the original SPN playbook as a writer who CAN write alongside Kripke, Gamble, etc, and chameleon into the background as not writing Dabbnatural, but writing Supernatural. To me this is a part of his strength when it comes to story and why he and originally Loflin shot up the ranks in Gamble era to the point where they wrote 7x23, and from there Dabb always wrote the second, middle and last episode in a second-in-command writer role, which, now we hit season 14, means that’s half the length of the show he’s been clearly estimated as one of the powerhouses. 

Because he had a co-writer for 4 years, originally you might think that it’s hard to tell what he is and isn’t writing, but he and Loflin split up, I hope just to ease empty seats in the writer room, and we get 2 Loflin episodes which betray a few of his weaknesses when it comes to story/structure/pace, but reveal he was the quippier, funnier, more manic one of the two. Like, I’d say Plucky’s (my no joke favourite episode) is probably something where he would have steered it more than Dabb :P But Dabb meanwhile, writing alone, writes 8x08 which is also funny but in a very sublime way based on situation and framing etc which makes us laugh without breaking up the story for quips so much as coming from character, such as “it’s a shortened version of my name”, “stop smelling the dead guy, Cas,” and ALL the uses of cartoon effects as part of the embedded storytelling. It’s like his resume for considering what he can do as a solo writer and he blows it out of the water.

Dabb is very good at characters who might have brief one off appearances, like, even within a scene, but still have a bunch of unique personality, as well as excellent handling of the main characters, and he can write some killer speeches and emotional pleas and stuff. He’s also absolutely filled with callbacks and repeats and narrative loops, and he started this on a smaller level, either to his own episodes, or dutifully doing his job to foreshadow and build the mytharc, but in Dabb era, this has turned into absolutely exploding the show’s callbacks into a weird fractal of meanings, which I think works wonderfully for supporting a 14 year old show on its own legs, because each callback and loop goes in a different, often wild direction, but still at the same time has an emotional continuity and truth to the story based on the story predecessors. The fact he writes like this is of no surprise to meta writers who’ve been keeping tabs on him far longer than I have. In fact, a combination of all Dabb’s strengths put to work versus his One Weakness, his kryptonite, is a terrible story of Lizzy’s hubris of not paying attention to the show and a hard learned lesson :P 

After 10x21 I was utterly bereft and hated the show for what it had done, but I was gonna keep watching, as sarcastically and eye-rollingly as I could, and 10x22 started to deliver in spades. Dean drove ALL THE WAY down south and back, somehow missing Cas tailing him (without a car, we later learned) and all while Sam was on an urgent timeline to get things done before Dean got back… driving an hour back and forth in the immediate vicinity of the Bunker. The last times we see Sam are Urgent Driving Montages to get there in time while he’s basically coming from up the street, and meanwhile, Dean and Cas have logged like 20 hours of driving plus farting around murdering people, and I was GLEEFULLY tearing this episode to SHREDS for its car continuity, like, HOWLING with laughter. 

Anyway I took a break to get some tea and came back ready to eye-roll through the end of the episode, hit play, and walked smack into the DeanCas confrontation and dramatic speeches about everyone you love could be dead, except me, and accidentally got so tense and enraptured that I spilled an entire mug of scalding tea down my front when Dean attacked Cas and I jumped out of my skin and screamed and then yelled again because OH YEAH I WAS HOLDING TEA, and from that day on I have A: loathed Dabb for his car continuity and B: always kept my eye on that fucker and when it’s his episode and what he’s up to… Once burned etc… 

Dabb’s squad are awesome though. Obviously excluding buckleming, and I think with all the bingos and complaining you know what to look for in their episodes :D 

Berens has been around since season 9, which makes him a veteran in remaining writers terms, just because Carver era had an en masse leaving when contracts were up (no hard feelings, just bad timing and Berens had been newer than all of them at one point :P) Berens is another writer I think can occasionally dip into pretending to be generic SPN on some mytharc episodes but he’s just obviously not been around in ye olde days, and joined in the time when, through Gamble era and then Carver in spades, the MotW writers in particular really fell into a new style of writing the show that I absolutely adore, which is where the individual episodes rather than mytharc stuff were increasingly left to the writers to do whatever they wanted with, and become more and more writing style and structure etc as standalone canvasses for your own skills, personality, etc. Because you CAN’T keep writing the same SPN episode over and over and over, and if one of the season 1 writers came back and wrote a season of season 1 style episodes, they’d be stiflingly boring, in tone and range, compared to what we have now. To keep people interested after so long, quirkiness and the ideas that an individual writer brings to the table as THEMSELVES, becomes increasingly the only way forward to keep the show fresh. Season 4 onwards began to have more of this, and Edlund had been doing it since his first episode anyway, but to me season 6 has very specific feeling tones for the episodes, while season 7 and Robbie Thompson’s arrival in particular start to set the tone for allowing the writers to be adventurous, and to me season 7 is the shift to the style of season we had from then onwards. 

I think Berens episodes feel quite muted and cleverly restrained, but really really intelligent behind that. He’s written some incredible episodes that turn the season on the head while being standalones, and his run of 14th episode being where things were knocked out of the park but on a small stage, like, conflicts in a storage unit, barn, submarine, the BMoL hq and an abandoned hotel, all have devastating and dramatic emotional consequences while still somehow seeming understated and natural, quiet, almost, in the sense of what they turn on - looks and small agreements and emotional revelations etc. He doesn’t do fun and loud and flashy very often, and he delves very serious themes of suicide and depression, so I read his episodes and quiet, powerful, and very very pointed and driven and well-constructed to get to that point. His back and forth between scenes for dramatic irony is one of the biggest features I enjoy and identify, and that was an overall theme in season 13, on a much bigger level. 13x21 and Sam’s death, and, well, the whole thing really, was a wonderful example of the tension he can hold you in this way. Also: proof he CAN have fun but only when it’s super gay :P

I think Meredith Glynn gels really well with his writing, to the point where they co-wrote an episode within her first year on the show and then she took over the 14th episode slot for the first time since Berens got to the show and wrote an excellent episode that you could have told me was one of his and I’d have believed you, since it was structurally very very similar to any of his episode 14s which I have legit started seeing as a subgenre of the show in my own weird brain sorting way :P She has a great deal more fun though. She accidentally made the Worst Timed Episode Ever In The History Of Anything with 12x05 and I think got off on the wrong foot with fandom, but since then every episode has been an improvement on the last, and she’s had some absolutely wild rides, with 13x08 being I think her masterpiece overall, though Gog and Magog are funnier as an individual set piece :P 

Her writing is playful and fun and shows a deep care for the character histories and how they affect them - 12x11 is hard to believe is someone’s 2nd episode if you don’t think the new writers did their homework, because she absolutely guts Dean, and throws in a Rowena backstory freebie along with, AND handles Sam handling Dean with perfect ups and downs and brotherly affection and horror etc. I also think her Gabriel episode is the best Gabriel episode ever, for him as a character, and in terms of fun, the unholy combination of her writing and Speight directing and acting and also acting was utterly unbelievable. 10/10 would use as the episode to drag friends back to the show if they only saw seasons 1-5... It’s not even comparable with her other episodes, because she seriously levelled up as a writer while doing it. I can’t wait to see what she is up to next season :D

Davy Perez is like the dark side of the coin of Glynn, where he is fun but dark as fuck, and 13x11 has the best example of that with his cheery music-playing serial killers, but it’s an attitude he’s had all along. He does his best with Buckleming characters they do their worst with, so he singlehandedly made me think things for Crowley weren’t going to be as bad as they were in season 12 with 12x12/15 and he absolutely was the only person to give Ketch and Asmodeus anything resembling an interesting dynamic in 13x17. 12x12 was an absolute masterpiece of non-linear writing, which requires a good brain to do and then he made it funny AND all while ripping off tarantino but in SPN and not making it corny and writing Cas and Crowley’s most dramatic love confessions… 12x04 was my personal reassurance that Dabb era was going to care about Sam again after Carver neglected to deal with his shit for 4 years while dumping on him in the narrative, and Davy betrays the old Gamble sam girl traits of doing stuff like tying him up and telling us in the same breath his heart is worth 100x its weight in gold :P 

His episodes are wacky and fun in a way that draws blood and makes you seriously fear for the characters, even ones you think are fine and can’t possibly die in that episode, and his darkness frequently takes what looks like it could have been a Buckleming brief and makes you care about the characters they’ve been mauling all season in their own mis-applied love of writing the villains. You NEED someone who loves writing the villains, and Davy has a real relish to it that doesn’t woobify or jerk off to their evilness, it just makes them raw and scary to the point where you might actually believe Asmodeus is threatening for half a second, or that Crowley could win season 12, or to sell us on Ketch having a glimmer of a soul.

As for Yockey… I don’t know where Dabb found him but thank GOODNESS he did because sometimes you just need to take a random gay playwright with minimal TV experience, throw them into your writers room, and say, here, go nuts. Yockey has written like half a SPN episode and multiple literal excellent stage plays that are somehow on screen with our characters, which got to the point where in 13x19 I wrote like 40k episode notes while openly weeping because my Literature degree was being yanked so hard :P His nonsense often has multiple amazing side characters, like, sometimes a LOT of amazing side characters, and he knows how to make them all work. He literally has rude mechanicals like in 13x19 and the poor drunk angel. Shakespearean tropes. If you’re ever watching a SPN episode and it’s like why is this person writing for us and not a world famous literary darling? then it’s probably a Yockey episode. I am still struggling with how to handle it, and describe what’s going on, and all I can think is of 12x10 where an article about it literally was like, here is every single episode Cas has ever been in, and how this episode pulled on it and turned it into magic gold. Like, now 4x16 and 6x20 are the straw that Yockey turns to gold. I am too emotionally compromised to write something coherent and non-fangirlish about Yockey because he’s like, #writergoals in a totally bananas set the bar as high as the moon kind of way. He’s got that rare once in a generation talent and dammit I think he counts as my generation, so there goes my chance to be that person :P

And he’s writing for fucking Supernatural.

[janiestumb]

Isn't it a pity

My mom was in my dream last night. When she's there, which is rare, or I just never remember, my brain conjures the energy between us and it feels as real as anything. As real as waking touch or scent or sight. It’s not about the accuracy of the look on her face or what she says. It’s the feeling when we’re in each other’s company. We’re in on the joke together. We’re tethered by a force.

I know you don’t believe me. But your ocular system senses waves of various lengths and your brain perceives color. Now tell me. How is that more real than what I’m describing?

Ok so moving on…

In my dream I was unsure what I would do with my life. “But that’s what the year after college graduation is for. I’m supposed to figure it out next year. There’s time.” We agreed.

I woke up comforted by the thought. "I'm supposed to figure it out next year. There’s time.” Then I immediately remembered that I'm not supposed to and there isn’t time. I’m almost 36. So that sucked. Also, the part where I remembered my mom was... yeah.

She died when it was fine for me to not know what to do. It was slightly alarming to her. Terrifying to my dad. But fine.

Here I am and I still don’t know. In fact, I know less. Nothing has made sense regarding any kind of timeline since the day she passed and then he did too and forget it. I’m way more lost now. Way more fatalistic. Then the pandemic and big wake-ups regarding capitalism and the spiritual ills of the people in our country and our generation's fucked-overed-ness and climate change didn't help.

I’m mourning this trip’s end with a little less than a week to go. Could this be the ultimate Portuguese immersive experience, saudade? I'm thinking about time.

Is there enough time left for me?

How did I go all those years without leaving my couch?

Who was I three weeks ago?

Because now I’m stereotypical “back from study abroad girl” with the beret, but the beret is pride and a renewed sense of independent self. We love to dunk on beret girl and how she says "flat" instead of "apartment" after spending a couple months in Europe and haha she thinks cheese is dessert, but travel really changes you if you do it right.

So how will I go back to non-beret old me?

I wish I could go back further. To age 20, but to a quantum version of life where my parents didn't die. I've been fucked from the starting block, even before graduation.

But let's say we could go back two years. That would help, but only if I could do something different. Not sure what. I’m mourning these years as just straight up lost. These were painful years of nothing. Of repetition. Of a bizarre breakup. Of loss of a sense of home and stability. Of heart-wrenching, pathetic loneliness and feeling acutely left behind. Of horrible dates and the sting of being humiliated and devastated by my own hopefulness. Of being touch starved. Of the same old places. Same old pains. Same old anxieties. Same old "these people don't like me. These people think I'm crazy. These people are not interested in me because I'm not hot or successful or talented. Or someone else is easier. Their stuff is lighter to carry. They are more fun and chill and easy and I'm a lot." On a loop, on a loop, on a loop. How about being left to die alone while everyone else had someone. Or entire families of someones too.

All the while, my age crept up and up and my muscles started deteriorating and my eggs apparently started rotting and withering away.

Career wasn’t good either.

So all that's been, like, a lot.

Nothing in my life materially changed this month, but I have so much more now than I did before. Because I’m who I know I am meant to be, moving and learning and experiencing, free of expectation and comparison, just processing the magnitude of this world as seen through a tiny square inch lens of beauty the lord has allowed me to witness.

I’m so lucky that I’ve been able to rediscover the thrill of independence and adventure with a renewed comfort in being alone. To use the hard-earned self-sufficiency that double parental loss and sheer alone-ness will burden you with for good. After doing hard shit alone, the fun shit alone is heaven.

I’m so lucky. I'm so grateful. I'm so happy to be alone.

Now what?

I don’t want to go back.

Back to loneliness and routine and my too-big worries for my too-small life.

Part of me thinks this is the best time of my life and it’s ending. Some people have described this as the "trip of a lifetime."

But I sincerely pray that it's not. I hope I’m physically and financially able to just keep going and going and going from here on out until my little rotting insides can’t rake it anymore… It's like having a kid but not at all.

On to planning the next trip…

Photos from today: A joy ride around Douro scream-singing Fleetwood Mac, "Gypsy," and George Harrison, "Isn't It A Pity" and into northeast Portugal -- and here is where I immediately got lost. The dog Fiona who blocked my path. (Lovely elderly Portuguese ladies tried to get Fiona to move her ass but it was a fun fun time for Fiona and she wouldn’t budge and we love Fiona.) Another trip to another outpost of my favorite gorgeous supermarket with favorite bathroom Continente (and look at this grocery store cafe cappuccino with oat milk. ... insert joke about being incontinente). "The Fig Tree" from S Plath (this is Tumblr after all, even if Yahoo bought it and fucked it up). Reading alone at the pool alone, so happy alone.

[philly-osopher]

C, H, N, P, U! (I hope you're done working for the day cause I don't think this is what "yelling at you if I see you post" looks like tbh.)

C: Which character do you identify with most?

So here’s a thing that may come as a surprise to readers of this blog: it’s not John Laurens, although I love him very much. I am far more pragmatic and less angry than he is, and I self-flagellate much less. I am also not as stupidly reckless– in fact, I think of myself as very cautious. But I admire his idealism and his bravery a lot, even as I can see where the extremes of those traits lead him to tragedy. That sense of such great potential, along with all the details we have on him due to @john-laurens​‘ fantastic and tireless research, is what draws me in.

Okay so I explained it’s not John. I definitely projected a lot of my mannerisms/ quirks, especially anxiety-related ones (memorizing data, making lists, talking to myself, getting really insistent and precise with words) onto Macaroniverse Alex. That said, musical!Alex doesn’t really have those traits. But in terms of his ambition to Be Somebody in his field and his willingness to work really hard to do it, sometimes to the detriment of… uh… everything else in life? The way he likes to plan? The enjoyment he gets from discussing ideas and constructing arguments? Those things definitely speak to me.

H: How would you describe your style?

Versatile! I try to adjust my style to what I’m writing, and I’m pretty proud of my ability to switch because it’s something I’ve worked on a lot. Even between third person Alex and third person John in Macaroniverse, the voices are different; Alex gets longer sentences and more looping/ leaping, while John is very concrete and linear and pretty bad at noticing his own emotions. For example, John:

The plastic bag inside the box slides out and he spills Cheerios all over the floor. Then he can’t work broom and dustpan at the same time, so he ends up picking up all the spilled Cheerios and throwing them in the trash one by one. Then he can’t get the milk carton open. He almost gives up, because Cheerios without milk are just not fucking worth it, but something in him refuses.

Hemingway might approve, if not of the content, then at least the sentence length and structure. (Actually I kind of like the Hemingway comparison because his is the Stoical Manpain voice and John def has a little Stoical Manpain going on in this story, the silly dear).

Versus Alex:

And even though he trusts Herc to be careful with his pins, and not to judge him for the enormous quantity of free dental dams and condoms he steals from the table outside his door, and to help him discriminate between normal-sick and dangerous-sick… he doesn’t trust him with this yet. He should—he really should.

One, Herc owes him for agreeing to serve as his mannequin after his poor sweet Thimbleina was stolen by a bunch of giggling tri-Delts on a scavenger hunt. (Not that Alex minds getting to model Herc’s edgy, sculptural creations every once in awhile. They make him feel badass. Particularly the poison-green women’s blazer currently taking shape on his shoulders.)

Two, Herc’s also first-gen, he was born in Nigeria, he knows what it’s like to stick out like a sore thumb. Alex frowns. Does that metaphor make sense? Why do sore thumbs stick out? Are they swollen or something? What happened to Herc’s poor sore thumb? In this case, was it sore from the hammer-blow of class, racial, and native-born privilege?

See how he likes to make lists? And starts running with sentences and just kinda… keeps going with them? And how he gets distracted and goes off on mental tangents and has to loop back to the topic? He’s not disorganized to himself, he just has a different system. With his stories sometimes I struggle to get in-voice and sometimes I have the opposite problem of keeping everything from exploding into the confetti shower that is Alex’s inner monologue.

For canon-era stuff I try to use a totally different voice, which isn’t authentically 18th-century but has absorbed approximately that flavor from all the Patrick O’Brian I’ve read. From the rivers/ guns sequel I’m working on:

On the mudded-out track through the endless woods and rolling hills of central Pennsylvania there walks a woman—young, clad in widow’s black, the heavy fabric falling round the gentle swell of her belly. Her black hood is cast down to shield her face from the wind; her head is bowed but her back straight. Before her the sky is clear and blue in all the glory of early fall; behind her it is ink-black and uncanny, and uncanniness clings to her skin like the smell of death clings to men off the battlefield. No band of brigands dares accost her; no friendly washerwoman inquires if she is well, if she needs a bite to eat, what business a woman in her state has on the road. The uncanniness holds them back—well, that, and the creature that scuttles along at her heels: low-slung, many-limbed, panting and coughing and drooling ink from its gibbering mouths.

I count three semicolons, one colon, two em-dashes, and 22 adjectives. Hemingway no longer approves. He’s coming for me with a big knife. If you never hear from me again, you know whose ghost to blame.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

Yes, but thank god @herowndeliverance​ is writing it already.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

Here’s what happens, most of the time. I get an idea for a passage of dialogue or a premise or an ending to a fic. I’m nowhere convenient to write (usually walking somewhere or at work) so I write it down in the notes to my phone and then think on it obsessively for the rest of the day, trying to turn it into something story-shaped. I get home and try to capture what I thought of. Inevitably something isn’t working and I have to talk/ appeal to someone to get the idea loose. Mostly I do this by shouting at my friends in messages and then going back and copy-pasting the whole conversation into the document.

So, I think I end up planning quite a lot, even for shorter stories. Even if I don’t deliberately outline, I’ve at least gone through the story several times in my head before I start typing.

For longer stories, like the rivers/ guns sequel excerpted above, I outline before I get started, but inevitably things will change and evolve as I’m going. Sometimes when I garden too much my inner architect has to tear out the gardens I made because they’re in the wrong places or they don’t match the house, which is always a sad process. In fact, as I’m writing I’ll actually tell myself when something isn’t working, like Philip thinking, this is so dumb, why am I acting like this? when I was trying to take a plot shortcut that unfortunately led to Bad Characterization. That’s a sign more planning needs to happen.

U: A pairing you might like to write for, but haven’t tried yet.

I’m not naturally inclined to do much in the way of shipping, and my Lams obsession is actually very out of character for me. But I’d love to do more of Laurens and Lafayette interacting, because whenever you think about their characters, there’s some very clear compare-and-contrast you could do. @your3fundamentaltruths has also convinced me that there’s a lot of potential with stories featuring John and Angelica, although I can’t ship them because I headcanon John as Kinsey 6 100% Gay.

I also haven’t written any Mariliza, even though I think there could be potential there. Obviously not in the canon timeline, because Eliza would probably rather slap canon!Maria than just about anything else, but in an AU where Maria and Eliza meet before Maria and Alex do? You could see Eliza being the Concerned Mom Friend when James Reynolds is being terrible to Maria, and being moved by how hard Maria tries to protect her little girl (maybe Little Eliza and Susan are friends in preschool and Eliza and Maria start talking when they set up a playdate?), and wanting to help her. Actually, you know what, I don’t really ship this but if somebody wants that premise it’s up for grabs :D

[canadian-buckbeaver]

The Dust Brother

@silverryu25​  - I did it! Hopefully you enjoy!  Thank you for the inspiration!

I will be entering this in the Fontcest Contest currently orbiting Tumblr, so please let me know if you guys see anything!

WARNING: Minor gore, cannibalism, depression 

Like what I do?  Buy me a Coffee

Or kudos and comment here!

Hundreds of years ago, humans had fought a strange war.  A war of humankind versus monsters.  These monsters weren’t like those that you can find within the pages of a book or in a horror film.  For what caused this war, I cannot say, although resources and territory has long since assumed to be the cause.  There is very precious little information that can be found on this topic.  History books and scholars do not tell of this war, wishing for it to remain forgotten, buried away except in the ancient words of legends and fairy tales.  Somehow, at long last, humans had won the bloody and dusty war, and had driven the monsters down to the Underground, sealing them away with a powerful barrier with the remains of human magic.  They swore that the monsters shall stay sealed in the Underground for an eternity, or until seven human souls were used to break the magic barrier.  

The years passed slowly for monsterkind, and very rarely did a human fall down the depths of Mount Ebott.  In the years that Asgore ruled, a total of six souls were hidden under his castle, waiting for the seventh soul to fall.  Eventually the seventh did fall, a child with a blood red soul of determination.  Their journey to the castle was one of celebration.  They would be the one to release the monsters.  Soon monsters would be above ground as they once were, free at last!  They would be able to see the sun, to smell the fresh air once again.  No monster was quite as happy as the skeleton monster named Papyrus.  This particular human child was a friend to both him and his brother, Sans.  They had promised to take him to the surface, to let himself see the sun, and Sans the true stars that shone in the night sky.  Sans kept an eye on the child, mostly as a promise to the gatekeeper of the ruins, but also out of his own curiously.  Their history books had depicted humans as cruel, blood-thirsty creatures, jealous of monsterkind’s natural ability to wield magic, and their hunger for more power, resources and land.  

This child seemed to be different though.  Although sometimes scared of the monsters that they met, they never hurt them, not even in their self-defence.  They ever fought, never dusted, though more than a few monsters would have given them reason to.  It was because of this peacefulness that Sans was able to overlook a few… blips.  ‘Deficiencies in time’.

Truthfully, at first he wasn’t sure what was happening.  He had thought to contribute it to perhaps the ketchup he had drank being stronger than usual. He would be walking along, minding his own business or planning some rather terrible puns for his brother’s ears, when suddenly the world would go dark, only for a moment or two, before coming back into the artificial light.  After this darkness, he would be a couple hours back from the ‘current time’, before the darkness had overtook him.  Perhaps he was back at his post, at his favourite spot in Grillby’s, in his bed, so on and so forth.  And it seemed like only he was aware of what was going on.  No one else noticed these changes, and if he brought it up, he was laughed at, mocked, or even told that ‘he must be getting old’.  This wasn’t the first time these time loops had occurred to him.  Years ago he could remember fighting a rather sinister yellow flower, one who was desperate on taking over and destroying the Underground.  Their fights would be long and vicious.  The flower was skilled in the arts of pain and suffering, Sans in the art of war and chaos.  After a while though, these fights eventually disappeared and he had forgotten about them.  Until now.  

Of course, he didn’t fully understand it himself until after he saw the kid battling Undyne.  The human was pleading for mercy, trying to avoid violence while Undyne threw her magical spears at them.  As Sans watched in horror, the inevitable happened.  Three spears struck the human, one after another, blood dripping slowly from their wounds.  As Undyne cackled in triumph and prepared to take the human’s soul, Sans saw the red soul shatter in thousands of tiny pieces.  The last hope of monsterkind, gone.  That’s when once again he saw the darkness overtake everything, even Undyne fading from view.  All that could be seen was two glowing, white buttons.  His body shivered when he read what was written on the two buttons. ‘Continue’ was one, ‘Reset’ the other.  Sans saw the little heart hover over ‘Continue’, making it yellow…

And then he was back at his Hotlands hot dog stand, like nothing had happened.  Somehow the kid was manipulating time, able to go back to before their death.  And he was the only one that could remember it. The more Sans thought of it the more his skull hurt, and the more he thought of a gaping skull with two perpendicular cracks in his eye sockets.  Sans rubbed at his sockets, groaning.  More questions than answers.  But the kid seemed to be using their power for good, as cliché as that sounds, so Sans let them be.

Sans watched as they befriended monster after monster, as they died hundreds of times, but finally, finally they made it to the castle…

And they managed to take everyone to the Surface.

It was even better than what was described in any book in the Underground.  The sun was warm, the breeze fresh and cool, and already he could see the possibilities that awaited them.  Sans and Papyrus would move into a house and, while Sans worked, that way he could ensure that Papyrus went to school to do whatever he wanted to do.  Probably cooking or perhaps some Drama classes, but the world was their oyster.  Anything was possible.

That first night, as they slept Sans let his worried skull relax into a real smile, his dreams full of the impossibly bright future.  But, in his dream that inky blackness surrounded him and he saw two glowing buttons once again.  This time the heart was hovering over ‘Reset’.  The button glowed yellow and there was a sound of rushing wind and static.

When Sans awoke he was back on his bare and dirty mattress, back in his old room, even with Papyrus pounding on the door, telling him to wake up and report to his Sentry post.  Sans didn’t want to believe it, but knew what the kid had done.

They had reset the timeline, back to before they fell to the Ruins.  

Sans had no plausible reason for this.  Why would the kid do such a thing?  Did the human not consider them friends?  Did they want something else from them or the Underground?  Did they think they possibly missed something?  He decided to keep a closer eye on them, just to see if he could somehow prevent these ‘resets’ from ever occurring again.  Hadn’t monsterkind suffered enough?  Didn’t they finally deserve their happy ending?

What he saw in the next resets made no freaking sense to him.

He lived and observed reset after reset.  Every ending being completely different from the last.  They didn’t always make it to the surface again.  And, every so often, a different monster would go missing.  Sans knew of several timelines where Toriel was forced to take back the throne due to the mysterious disappearance of King Asgore, or endings where he and Papyrus acted as Mettaton’s body guards.  Heck, he even knew of timelines where Papyrus of all monsters took the throne as king.

Sans had learned early on not to complain about the endings.  The human didn’t listen to his pleas.  And such endings were always better than the ones where he came across a red scarf, abandoned in a pile of dust.  His brother, the one who always wanted best for the human, dead.

But things never stayed the same.  The human always reset.  Always resetting everything back to before they fell.  And no one, other than Sans, ever remembered anything. Hundreds or even thousands of resets later, Sans was tired.  So very, very tired.  Between the constant nightmares night after night, and the damn kid resetting, had finally taken their toll on him.  His posture had slipped, his sockets dimmed and were underlined by several bags of bones, his hands always hidden in his pockets, fumbling for his secret ketchup packets.  But even those didn’t help him anymore.

Only his brother.  His sweet, innocent brother always knew how to cheer him up on his darkest of days.  Whether it was talking about the Royal Guards, his constant babbling about everything and anything, or cooking some of his ‘famous spaghetti’ just for him, Papyrus was the only one that could make him smile again.

He wasn’t exactly sure when his feelings for Papyrus changed from brother to that of a lover.  It was more than a few dozen resets back was when he first noticed Papyrus’ tall, lean frame.  From there he had started to notice how Papyrus’ eyelights would sparkle in excitement, and how he took such good care of Sans.  Making sure he ate enough of his spaghetti, tucking him in when he fell asleep on the couch, and even making sure that they never ran out of ketchup, despite how much he claimed to hate Sans drinking it.

As Sans realized his feelings for Papyrus, the more his self-loathing grew.  This was his younger brother for Asgore’s sake!  Just what the hell was he contemplating?

Yet, he couldn’t help himself.  He would lay awake at night, listening to Papyrus snore the next room over as he stared up at the ceiling.  Imagining his dirty thoughts.  Pulling that red scarf from around his neck and sinking his teeth into his vertebrae as his hands would dance through those strong, curved ribs…

He always was disgusted with himself when morning came.  He forced himself to stay away from Papyrus, ignoring his soul’s desperate longing pinging.  As a result, his body became weaker and slower, even his magic beginning to deplete.  Sans lost his appetite, even skipping Grillby’s, the greasy food which he once picked over his brother’s lovingly prepared meals.  He still ignored Muffet’s food out of principle.

The days flowed easily into one another as Sans lost track of time.  The human hadn’t fallen yet and that seemed to be the only marker of time that he cared about.  It was still about a couple of months or so before the human was due to fall and Sans had spent the day actually awake at his post, making small talk with those who walked by.  His disgusting thoughts had begun to plague his sleep during the day so he took care to avoid them.  Surprisingly Undyne passed by his station, though she was slightly shocked that he wasn’t sleeping at the station.  She didn’t talk long, just wanted to check in with him and see if he had seen any humans or Doggo, who wasn’t at his post.  Sans had directed her to Grillby’s, where the mutt would undoubtedly be smoking his beloved dog treats.

Shortly after she left his brother came by.

“SANS! YOU’RE… AWAKE?” he asked, complete with some adorably mild confusion.  

Sans smiled at up his beloved brother.  “of course bro.  Undyne came by already to make sure I wasn’t.  told me that Doggo was doggone.” He winked as Papyrus groaned and rubbed his brows, frustrated with the pun.

“SANS… NOW IS NOT THE TIME AND PLACE FOR YOUR RIDICULOUS PUNS.” He said, looking down at his brother, as if he was debating something.  Without warning he bent and picked Sans up off his stool, and walking off with him in his arms.

Sans yelped and instinctively grabbed onto Papyrus’ shoulder.  Very broad shoulders, he realized, the unconsciously adding it to his mental smut collection for later.  “Paps?” he squeaked out.  “Paps what are you doing?”

“TAKING YOU HOME FOR LUNCH OF COURSE.” Papyrus said, tossing Sans over his shoulder and immediately heading for their house in Snowdin.  He was making great progress too, his long legs effortlessly crunching through the freshly fallen snow.

“Paps you know I can walk, right?  I don’t need to be carried like a baby bones…” he squirmed, ashamed at how he was enjoying the closeness.

“SANS, YOU LOOK LIKE YOU HAVEN’T SLEPT IN A WEEK.” Papyrus informed him, still walking.  Two weeks, Sans mentally corrected him. “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU CAN FALL ASLEEP AT ANY MINUTE.  FOR MY SAKE AND SANITY, LET ME AT LEAST CARRY YOU HOME.”

Sans sighed and gave in.  It was sort of nice being carried around by Papyrus.  He could still remember him as a baby bones, when Sans would do the same to him…

“WE’RE HOME SANS!” Papyrus’ voice echoed through the warm darkness.  Sans’ sockets immediately jolted open.  When had he fallen asleep?

Papyrus placed him gently onto his chair before turning back into the kitchen to retrieve their lunch.  Sans looked down at the table and rubbed at his skull, a common question repeating inside of him ‘what would he do without his brother?’  Here Papyrus had made fresh food for them, and had even carried Sans home so he could catch a quick nap.

“HERE YOU ARE SANS!” Papyrus’ voice was close to him, once again interrupting his thoughts.

Sans jumped and looked down at the dish that Papyrus placed in front of him.  To his surprise it wasn’t spaghetti, or even dinosaur oatmeal.  “stew?” he asked.  “no noodles today, bro?”

To his surprise, Papyrus looked a little awkward, if that was even possible for the tall skeleton.  “WELL… YOU HAVEN’T BEEN LOOKING VERY GOOD LATELY, SO I ASKED DR. ALPHYS WHAT WOULD HELP… SHE SUGGESTED A COUPLE BOOKS TO READ AND THEN A NICE, HEARTY STEW.  THAT WAY YOUR BONES GET ALL THE NUTRIENTS THEY NEED IN A SINGLE DISH.” He said.

Well… if that wasn’t one of the kindest things that anyone had ever done to poor, lazybones Sans.  “heh.  thanks bro.  bone appetite.” Sans said, ignoring Papyrus’ half-hearted groan and stirring the thick broth, bringing up a spoonful to his mouth.  It, wasn’t too bad actually.  Had a little bit of an odd aftertaste but that could just be his years of dosing everything in ketchup, slowly killing his taste buds.  To his surprise, when he looked up, Papyrus hadn’t touched his own bowl.  He was staring at Sans, as if waiting for something.  “it’s good bro.  thanks.”  He said, taking another mouthful of the food.

Papyrus smiled, his shoulders relaxing a smidge.  “GLAD TO HEAR IT BROTHER.” he said, finally taking a spoonful of his own dish.  Together they ate, talked and enjoyed their meal, much like they had before Sans had developed his silly infatuation.

* * * * *

As the weeks passed, Sans began to notice small, odd things.  Monsters were slowly disappearing from Snowdin.  Doggo had never been found, then the Annoying Dog, Jerry, and many others had went missing.  It was as if they just disappeared without a trace, walked off the face of the Earth.

By the time that Toriel disappeared, Sans had long since given up on trying to solve this mystery and Alphys hadn’t made any headway either with her cameras.  He assumed that the human child was behind this, perhaps having fallen earlier than they had before.  They had to know where the cameras were by now and how to avoid them.  Just a new game they had developed to toy with his mind.  Picking off the creatures of the Underground one by one. Perhaps hoping to drive him mad with his drives to protect Papyrus at all costs?  Or were they trying to raise their LV pass 20 in an attempt to beat him in the Judgement Hall?  Well, as long as they didn’t harm Papyrus, Sans didn’t really care.  Papyrus was the only one who ever mattered to Sans.  The other monsters were of no concern for him.

Whatever their motives, he was ready for them, especially with his new-old, more powerful magic.  Sans had already saw incredible improvement in himself within the weeks of eating Papyrus’ cooking.  His energy levels rose, his stamina was higher than before the resets started, and even his magic had re-stabilized itself.  And somehow Papyrus’ cooking had even raised his LV from a measly one, to a more powerful three.  Sans didn’t even know that that was possible just through food.  What would he do without his younger brother?  He was truly incredible.

It was a dark, bleary day in the Underground, not even their artificial sun could burn through the fog and clouds.  Sans was watching the trail leading to Snowdin from his sentry post as per normal, his ears pricked for the sound of approaching footsteps.  Not that it mattered.  There were fewer and fewer monsters that traveled along this trail.  Even Undyne hadn’t checked up on him yet.  Which wasn’t surprising, Sans supposed.  With more of her guards going missing, she and the other members had to pick up the extra work, to ensure that there was no gaps in their patrols.  It was ridiculous to Sans that she wouldn’t just ask Papyrus to join in order to stop overworking her exhausted crew.  But that was Undyne, work harder, not necessarily smarter.

Sans didn’t really mind the odd quiet though.  All it mean that he had the time and opportunity to think.  He had to protect Papyrus from the child at all costs.  He couldn’t let Papyrus be picked off.  The human will not kill him ever again, Sans vowed to himself.  

His phone dinged with a text message from Papyrus.  Perfect timing.  Lunch must be ready.  Without reading it Sans teleported directly to their little house, eager to spend time with his brother.  

However, when he entered the house, lunch was definitely not ready.

Sans’ sockets roamed over the familiar-looking armour that was laid out in the kitchen.  It was covered in terrible scratches and dents, looking like the monster who had worn it had crawled their way out of hell.  It was coated in dust.

The wearer, Sans could feel in his soul, was dead.

He could hear Papyrus whistling as he was chopping what sounded like vegetables in the kitchen while something boiling on the stove.  Swallowing hard he peeked in the kitchen.

His beloved younger brother was surrounded by various ingredients.  Cream, milk, celery, potatoes and carrots, along with containers of various spices.  As Sans silently watched, Papyrus, with his back still towards looked into his pot and nodded with approval and whatever was inside.  Papyrus tossed in his vegetables and stirred them before adding thin flakes of white meat and a pinch of different spices.  That’s when Papyrus did something odd.  Reaching up into his chest cavity he pulled a sealed tube from inside.  Uncorking it, he poured the entire fine, grey contents inside the pot.

Fine, grey powder…?

Wait… was that monster dust?

Sans’ sockets widened in shock.  No… this was Papyrus he was looking at.  His baby brother.  He could still see him cooing at him from the crib.  “Paps?” he asked, listening to himself as if from a million miles away, “what are you cooking?”

The effect was instantaneous.  Papyrus yelped and spun around, careful not to knock the large, bubbling pot over.

His own battle body was covered in dust.  Not his own.

“SANS!  YOU’RE HOME EARLY!” he sputtered.  “I… I TOLD YOU THAT LUNCH WAS GOING TO BE A LITTLE LATE TODAY…”

“sorry Papyrus.  I never opened your message.  I just… just assumed…”  Sans was staring at that damaged armour.  He had seen it somewhere!  But where?  “Papyrus?  please… tell me the truth… have… have you been feeding me monster dust, this entire time?”  There.  He said it.

Papyrus gasped and sputtered before sighing.  When his sockets opened again, they were of a cool, collected monster.  One who had resigned himself to his fate.  “IT WAS IN ONE OF THE BOOKS THAT ALPHYS LENT ME.” he explained.  “I’M SURE THAT THAT PARTICULAR BOOK WAS A MISTAKE, THAT SHE NEVER MEANT FOR ME TO SEE IT.  BUT IT WAS HOW MONSTERS WERE ABLE TO BECOME STRONG, VERY QUICKLY…”

Sans nodded encouragingly at him.  Keep him talking, let him explain himself.

“IT EXPLAINED THE PROPERTIES OF MONSTER DUST.  HOW IT WOULD RAISE A MONSTER’S STATS, PARTICULARLY THOSE OF THEIR EXP AND STAMINA.  AND… AND YOU WEREN’T DOING WELL BROTHER.  YOU WERE FALLING DOWN IN FRONT OF ME.  I COULDN’T LET THAT HAPPEN.  NOT WHILE THERE WAS A CHANCE THAT I COULD SAVE YOU…” a dust covered glove suddenly reached out and grasped Sans’ skull, pulling him up to look Papyrus in the sockets.

“I LOVE YOU SANS.  YOU’RE MY BROTHER.  I WOULD, AND HAVE DONE ANYTHING IN MY POWER TO SAVE YOU, TO STRENGTHEN YOU.” a gentle finger caressed his cheekbone, following the movement in the bone while the light in his eye sockets stared down at him intently.  “AFTER ALL, WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT YOU?”

Sans slowly chuckled, leaning into the touch to fully enjoy it.  His own brother had done all this for him.  To protect him…

He really was the coolest.

Sans gasped as the finger tugged a little more insistently at his chin, raising his skull further.  With a soft clank, his and Papyrus’ teeth were softly pressed together, magic quivering between them.  His sockets widened.  How… how could this be possible?  After all this time, all this lusting, and Papyrus felt the same for him?  His own sockets slipped shut, enjoying the precious moment.

They finally broke the kiss, standing in the kitchen, staring at one another.  The slight hiss of fluid striking the burner broke the moment, causing Papyrus to return to his cooking, turning down the heat before stirring the pot and adding a few, last minute ingredients.

Sans pulled up a chair to watch him cook.  “so what’s for lunch today?” he finally asked, “it smells good.”

Papyrus hummed in satisfaction as he grabbed two bowls from the cupboard.  “JUST ANOTHER RECIPE FROM THE RECIPE BOOK ALPHYS LENT ME.” he said.  “FISH CHOWDER.”

[caitielou-askew]

After careful preparations are made, Sans and Papyrus get their hand plates removed.

BOY that took longer than it should have. Between the insane number of edit markers I had after the first pass of editing, and my own pickiness with how this came together, I am several days later on this than I wanted to be. But here we are! The video’s up there, and here it is on Ao3 if you’d prefer to read it. Links to download the chapters as MP3s or listen on Soundcloud are in the video description on YouTube. And in case you’re lost, here’s where the series started and here’s the first chapter of this part.

Thanks yet again to @hatori1181​ for performing Gaster and Asgore, and to @zarla-s​ for making this wonderful story, and being so generous in letting us fans put in our two cents on how different timelines might go.

As I’ve said before I have a few more ideas on future events for this, but they’ll probably come out as little single-scenes and one-shots rather than big honking things like this. I’ll build up a few before recording them though, lol.

Also, there’s a lot I want to talk about with what’s going on in this chapter, but it’s best that you read or listen before reading that. So it’s under the fold to avoid spoilers. EVEN MORE SELF-INDULGENT RAMBLING AHOY!

Whaddya know, it's a "Gaster survives" timeline! Just look at this big ol' happy screwed-up family. I thought about putting in a line directly pointing out that all 3 of them were now physically scarred by all this, but I couldn't find a good place to fit it in. So I trusted the reader would put that together, lol. Of course this wasn't going to go perfectly, nothing about this situation is ideal. Papyrus's reaction to it came directly from his understated reaction to getting killed in the genocide run, which Zarla has previously discussed. (wow until I found that link just now I didn't realize I copied her use of the word blase in describing that, rofl).

I worked in as many throwbacks as I could, given this is basically additional vetting to Gaster's horrible deeds. Sans and Papyrus have been slowly sharing with Alphys (and to a lesser extent Asgore) what Gaster did to them, and Alphys has been reading Gaster's notes. The mention of the handrail was by far the latest addition to the story, even after my betas had read it and given their feedback. One of them had been a bit confused that the end was meant to establish that Gaster wasn't going to fall into the core in this timeline. And until that one comic about the core, I really had no way of setting that up without making it stupidly blatant. Now it should be a lot clearer without being clunky (I hope)

Even though the scarf was sort of the unifying element in this one (like the light motifs in Revealed), it was actually the second latest addition to the story. The first ending I wrote had Papyrus asking about Gaster's name, since "W.D. Gaster" is most likely what would have been posted outside his office door. Buuuut I couldn't think of a good origin story for his name, and the whole exchange just didn't feel right. Then I remembered Zarla's adorable sketches of kid Gaster and the hint that Papyrus finds the scarf in the lab after Gaster is erased, and it hit me. So then I had to go back into the first part and retcon it into there, haha.

Also it's kind of funny, Zarla literally just gave a few thoughts on possible "Gaster gets arrested" timelines, saying depending on how it goes it may make him MORE emotionally shut-down inside. I think in this timeline Gaster would definitely prefer that, and actually tried to make that happen in Released. But it all fell apart when Asgore blamed himself and showed mercy instead. So now he tries to be as stoic as possible when it comes to the boys, but between his dad instincts and those pesky brats' shenanigans it's just not a hurdle he can totally clear. He'll never accept forgiveness, but he also can't stop indulging in those paternal thoughts from time to time. So he's stuck in this sort of emotional limbo.

Very similar to the limbo Sans is now trapped in. Another fun thing about doing this was exploring Sans and Papyrus's characters, and showing how they come into their adult selves. They haven't met too many people in the castle at this point, but I figured the chef would have been one of the first. At first they wouldn't really know their likes and dislikes as far as food, and Asgore wouldn't want them to go hungry. So he'd just show them where the kitchens are and introduce them to the chef. Gaster never used food as a punishment, or hurt them while they were eating, so whenever he brought it Papyrus knew instinctively that he wasn’t going to hurt them just then. So naturally, Papyrus quickly became attached to both eating and making food, associating it with mercy. His tastes are still questionable though, probably a side-effect of growing up on junk food, haha.

As far as Sans, I've always loved the almost diametrically opposed ideas of him being this "final judge" the player has to answer to, but also being a sort of apathetic nihilist. In the game it was his awareness of the resets but his inability to do anything about them which (presumably) brought that apathy on. Since Sans is still pretty young here, I thought he’d still have a bit of that fire in him, especially at the beginning when they were first rescued. I think at his core Sans really does have a strong sense of justice, which is why he still shows up in that final corridor every time even though he knows it’s pointless. He knows he can't stop you, but he also knows he's the only one who can speak to you about the timelines "on your level," so to speak. So he throws himself in there to be the last voice of reason, or the last stumbling block, on your journey.

But now in this timeline, Sans is getting worn down by Gaster not getting proper retribution for his crimes. He eventually shuts up about it because he's making no progress, and taking any more drastic measures would make Papyrus unhappy. So he's also stuck in emotional limbo, unhappy with the way things are but powerless to change them. Good thing that's not going to get any worse anytime soon… Oh speaking of that, I chose Snowy for the ending music because it just sounds so bittersweet to me. It was quaint my first time playing the game, but on my second runthrough I couldn’t help but think about the monsters being trapped underground, but also Sans being aware of how they’re doubly trapped in this time loop. So while it’s pretty and nice and an overall benign area of the game (at least on pacifist), it became a bit more melancholy to me.

And PERSONALLY I think the "running around looking like a CLONE of..." line is the greatest thing I have ever written. Not gonna lie, I had the worst shit-eating grin on my face for like an hour after that line hit me. YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, GASTER. You emotionally constipated twig.

Anyway, given Gaster isn't going to disappear, that leaves the future for this story a bit more open. I have a few ideas rolling around in my head for a few more moments as they're growing up in the castle. Also some speculation on how different UT timelines would play out (including a pacifist timeline that's just...MMPH. SO GOOD). But they will all be much shorter than this, so I'll wait until I've got a few written and put them out as little one-shots. Sort of like those short story collections I keep saying I'll get back to, lol. Anyway thanks for reading! If you have questions or want to talk or speculate about stuff my ask box is always open <3 Obviously I am totally down with nerding out about this stuff, lol.

[ubebear]

Avengers Endgame and Time Travel

Okay, I’ve been doing some research and I’ve come to the conclusion that the Russo brothers were using the Block Universe Theory OR Closed Timelike Curves to explain how time itself would work in Endgame. Disclaimer: I am no scientist, just a confused fan trying to figure this shit out.

It’s a long post, so click at your own risk :)

For Block Universe Theory, essentially past, present, and future are all occurring simultaneously. Even with by “traveling to the past” you cannot change it by existing in it, for that would be a contradiction to the already existing “future”. But considering these are all one in the same, your travel to a certain moment in spacetime doesn’t affect relativity of your actions. What is past for you will be the future for you as well, as this occurrence has and always will be in existence.

Confused? Yeah so are most people (myself included) when they try to learn about this theory. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve seen it represented in movies though - another well-known, similar example is Interstellar. The scene where Matthew McConaughey’s character enters a 4th/5th dimension (some argue characteristics applied to our 3rd dimension such as weight or time count as a 4th dimension and thus he is in a 5th dimension but I personally don’t agree) that shows spacetime as represented by “blocks”. This is a good stab at a visual representation for all time events occurring simultaneously across our existence. He is able to speak with his daughter “in the past” while existing “in the future”.

I feel like this representation isn’t 100% accurate since it solely focuses on one point in time (the bookshelf) rather than all moments in time simultaneously, but eh. Semantics.

Okay, so second theory is Closed Timelike Curves (CTC) and honestly I think it’s more likely what the Russos had in mind, although they may have borrowed some from the Universal Block Theory. Not only does this theory deal with quantum mechanics/physics (hello Quantum Realm used for time travel) is uses more accepted theories as relating time travel to the bending of gravity and essentially creating a wormhole. It is notable that this theory shows “paradoxes created by CTCs could be avoided at the quantum scale because of the behavior of fundamental particles, which follow only the fuzzy rules of probability rather than strict determinism.” Listen, if I’m still confusing, the link at the top of this post explains CTC very well - go click that.

Ah, great, so this makes much more sense in Endgame in that we’re going off probability rather than strict causation/reaction science. Just having that, say, scientific wiggle room allows for this line after Rhodey suggest killing baby Thanos said by Banner:

“Time doesn’t work that way. Changing the past doesn’t change the future... if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future. And your former present becomes the past. Which can’t now be changed by your new future.”

Same, Rhodey, same. I... think Banner is just wrong in his explanation? Did he invent time travel? NO. Tony did. So sorry if I don’t take Bruce’s word as law on this. He even says earlier in the movie that “time travel do-over isn’t my area of expertise.” I much prefer the CTC Theory that says basically all of the Avengers existed with a certain degree of probability of going back in time to take the infinity stones and bring them to present day. Nat had a probability of going back in time and dying. These events weren’t certain but their possibility was accounted for upon their particles’ creation in the realm of spacetime. The linked article has a similar example:

“Instead of a human being traversing a CTC to kill her ancestor, imagine that a fundamental particle goes back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it. If the particle flips the switch, the machine emits a particle—the particle—back into the CTC; if the switch isn't flipped, the machine emits nothing. In this scenario there is no a priori deterministic certainty to the particle's emission, only a distribution of probabilities. Deutsch's insight was to postulate self-consistency in the quantum realm, to insist that any particle entering one end of a CTC must emerge at the other end with identical properties. Therefore, a particle emitted by the machine with a probability of one half would enter the CTC and come out the other end to flip the switch with a probability of one half, imbuing itself at birth with a probability of one half of going back to flip the switch. If the particle were a person, she would be born with a one-half probability of killing her grandfather, giving her grandfather a one-half probability of escaping death at her hands—good enough in probabilistic terms to close the causative loop and escape the paradox. Strange though it may be, this solution is in keeping with the known laws of quantum mechanics.”

Alright, if you’ve read this far without mentally telling me, the confused messenger, to fuck off you get a gold star.

So Tony talks about an inverted Mobius Strip as his diagram for accurate time travel and I have to say it would resemble at CTC much more than a Block Universe or a linear timeline. This would show that hey when we travel we aren’t messing with the past or future because our actions have essentially been accounted for already. (I think?) This is why I didn’t like the Supreme Sorceress’ visual of how spacetime works because it looks like a linear timeline/reality which goes against everything else the movie has set up.

I believe you could have rips in spacetime that cause an alternate reality, just like the above CTC shows a tear, but I’m not so sure if it would send you to another reality since your divergence would’ve been accounted for. This explains everything except where Loki may have gone, but he had an infinity stone so that could mean anything.

Alright I’m tired and over talking about time theories. Does any of this even make sense? I NEED SHURI TO EXPLAIN. I think the answer is we don’t know and it all isn’t going to make sense. Why? Cause if you could give me an infallible time travel theory WE WOULD BE TIME TRAVELING IRL.

So just... enjoy cry about the movie or whatevs.

Bonus:

Another time theory is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which “holds that our perception of reality is either altered or determined by the language we speak.” Arrival - the awesome alien movie starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner showcases it. It’s been a while since I’ve watched it, but I believe by speaking to the aliens and understanding their perception of communication, Amy’s character also develops an understanding for time relativity by learning the aliens’ language and “time travels”  to the “future” to affect the decision of another character. This is described as backward causation however, not inherently time travel related, though similar. Instead of Event A occurring first and causing Event B, Event B, occurring second is the causation for Event A. The link explains it with examples.

[realmotionxi-blog]

Pop’s Biggest Stars Can Control Their Own Narratives Like Never Before. Is That a Good Thing?

We have a strange way of experiencing artists’ lives outside of the spotlight. As tours conclude, interviews become repetitive, and singles slide down the charts, a silence sets in. Some artists do essentially vanish once the curtain drops, but this silence can be felt even if an artist remains visible via social media, or music video cameos, or more new music. The silence is the active gulf between what we want to know and what they’re willing to share. It can emerge around topics (“What happened in that elevator?”), rivalries (“Is he dissing Kendrick?”), careers (“Is Portishead ever coming back?”), anything. The less artists divulge, the more we clamor to know. And critically, the longer an artist can elude our prying, the more dramatic the reveal. Artists have long tried to use this perceived importance of the silence to their advantage. The Weeknd’s first big interview, which came two years after his breakout mixtape, was in service of self-development. “Honestly, I want to do interviews now because it’s one thing that I haven’t mastered,” he told Complex in 2013. “Even Prince did interviews. Michael did interviews.” For Whitney Houston, opening up about her marriage to Bobby Brown in a 1993 interview was a matter of setting the record straight. “I read some stuff about myself in the last year—it’s like ‘Who the fuck are they talking about?’” she said. “The media always distorts shit. It’s never, never what I said.” And in a 2002 interview, Eminem, newly on probation, prioritized directing attention away from his antics and toward his music: “Why do I have to sit here and explain myself? Just listen to the fucking songs. They will tell you everything.” Few artists today can claim to be as famous as Whitney Houston in 1993 or as scrutinized as Eminem in 2002, yet the ways in which music’s biggest stars manage their relationships with the public have grown increasingly guarded and tetchy. Through cultivated standoms, tailored apps, and willed bypasses of the press, artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Chance the Rapper are now regulating the silence rather than breaking it. It’s a strange new order, and it’s increasingly unclear who benefits, if anyone at all, from all this obsessive tinkering. TRENDING NOW Digable Planets: Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) It doesn’t feel accurate to describe these maneuvers as standard attempts to control the narrative or direct public relations. Artists have always attempted to exert some level of control over their public appearances, and that’s a practical reality of the business. Decisions as banal as creating a website, or making and selling merch, or just choosing which cities to perform in are all ways of shaping public perception. Even more calculating moves, like choosing which associates can participate in a written profile, is understandable conduct. Access has always been tenuous, negotiated, arranged. But more and more, artists seem to be vying to move the levers themselves. Social media platforms are the go-to scapegoat for this shift from negotiating to making demands, but the artists with the deepest roots in YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter often just prove these platforms’ profound ambivalence. On Twitter, Kanye West recently announced and launched five G.O.O.D. Music releases, then used the reception of his tweets as fuel for his music. It resulted in some of his dullest, most exhausting work. As the projects trickled out then quickly faded from view, it didn’t feel like a coincidence that the series of albums began as a literal timeline. Perhaps in response to the fickleness of social media, the greater power move has become to create or govern platforms rather than just use them. Beyoncé, for instance, recently orchestrated a self-crafted Vogue cover story in which she picked the photographer (Tyler Mitchell) and the photographs, as well as directed the shoot. Forgoing a proper interview, as she did for her 2015 Vogue cover story and routinely does when she covers a magazine, Beyoncé instead presented a handful of topical statements that she told the (excellent) writer Clover Hope. The resulting piece read more disjointed and perhaps more sanctimonious than a typical cover story or Q&A would have. “When I first started, 21 years ago,” Beyoncé said, “I was told that it was hard for me to get onto covers of magazines because black people did not sell. Clearly that has been proven a myth. Not only is an African American on the cover of the most important month for Vogue, this is the first ever Vogue cover shot by an African American photographer.” The shoot certainly marks a breakthrough for the 23-year-old Mitchell and for Vogue, but what does it do for Beyoncé that millions and millions of anthemic records sold worldwide does not? On “APESHIT,” Beyoncé’s summer single with JAY-Z, the rapper sneers at the Super Bowl and the Grammys. Is Vogue not on that list too? Responding to a report that the magazine had contractually agreed to grant “full control” to Beyoncé, Anna Wintour, Vogue editor-in-chief and Condé Nast artistic director, insisted that all cover stories and shoots are “collaborations.” Beyoncé did not comment. In 2017, Taylor Swift “collaborated” with Target to exclusively bundle her album Reputation with two bizarre satirical magazines. In both volumes, Swift sneered at the press in the form of sardonic headlines (“Why She Disappeared!”), snippy poetry (“When she looked around, her skin was spattered with ink/forming the words of a thousand voices”), and uber-glam mock photo spreads. The tone of the literal vanity fair was clearly meant to be flippant, but a palpable sense of betrayal leaked through all the camp. “When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test,” she wrote. “There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation.” The magazines are essentially oversized album booklets, but the form is telling. Taylor doesn’t resent magazines for challenging her reputation; she resents them for being able to challenge it. Which feels counterproductive: Her thinly veiled contempt for the press does nothing to contextualize her album. In fact, it makes her infamous victimization complex feel more exaggerated, which was the precise narrative Reputation set out to challenge. This is what full control looks like. Back in the real publisher’s marketplace, in July Chance the Rapper purchased the defunct site Chicagoist from WNYC (who purchased the site after its last owner shuttered it in response to the staff unionizing). As announced in his recent song “I Might Need Security,” Chance dedicated the acquisition to running racist competitors out of business. “I look forward to re-launching it and bringing the people of Chicago an independent media outlet focused on amplifying diverse voices and content,” he said in a statement. Chance’s acquisition of Chicagoist has no explicit vision beyond that, which is perhaps troubling considering his past record of aggressively disputing the rare example of minor bad press against him. If he tried to get a story unpublished as Chance the Rapper, will he be as hawkish as Chance the publisher? Chance’s precise plans for the publication have yet to be disclosed—particularly his involvement or lack thereof in its editorial operations—but the choice to embed the purchase within a package of new music gave the announcement the optics of a flex. These kinds of muscular moves are paralleled by more shadowy arrangements by other big acts. Earlier this year Nicki Minaj, who maintains frequent contact with her stans, the Barbz, was goaded by them into finding and confronting entertainment blogger Wanna Thompson, who she then sent a churlish DM. After Thompson publicized Minaj’s reaction to her single tweet of criticism, she was fired from her position with Karen Civil’s blog. A social media advisor who boasts Minaj as a client, Civil claimed that the firing and Nicki’s outrage were a coincidence. If so, it wasn’t the only convergence. In her zeal to mobilize them, and enthrall them, and represent them, Nicki has become the Barbz’ avatar in name and deed. Her obsession with being and remaining number one has become so tedious and histrionic, she’s become a metronome of achievements. As she’s excoriated Spotify and Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner and Billboard, she’s begun to sound like a sentient web thread, reams upon reams of validations and cross-checks looping into the void. She’s so tethered to this idea of being a champion that she can’t even enjoy the game. It almost feels inevitable that she’d start treating mild criticism like rebukes: She’s become her own biggest stan. Ultimately, it’s not surprising that artists have begun to test the waters. What we now call the attention economy is really just the emergence of more competitors in a space once artificially filled with celebrities and the outlets covering them. As the outlets dwindle, losing leverage and scope, the celebrities themselves are becoming the shapers of their own stories. The trend mirrors the ways in which social media platforms have seized space over the past decade: It can’t be a coincidence that the subjects of “stories” and “news feeds” are now adopting the same language for their own takeovers. It’s bizarre and silly, and it’s often barely recognizable as journalism, whether you’re a reader, writer, or participant. Yet artists continue to assert themselves in bolder ways, pulling whatever strings they can reach. I hope they’re just as invested if it all unravels. Read the full article

[canadian-buckbeaver]

The Dust Brother

Morning Reblog!

I will be entering this story in the Fontcest Tumblr contest so please let me know if you see anything!

Hundreds of years ago, humans had fought a strange war.  A war of humankind versus monsters.  These monsters weren’t like those that you can find within the pages of a book or in a horror film.  For what caused this war, I cannot say, although resources and territory has long since assumed to be the cause.  There is very precious little information that can be found on this topic.  History books and scholars do not tell of this war, wishing for it to remain forgotten, buried away except in the ancient words of legends and fairy tales.  Somehow, at long last, humans had won the bloody and dusty war, and had driven the monsters down to the Underground, sealing them away with a powerful barrier with the remains of human magic.  They swore that the monsters shall stay sealed in the Underground for an eternity, or until seven human souls were used to break the magic barrier.  

The years passed slowly for monsterkind, and very rarely did a human fall down the depths of Mount Ebott.  In the years that Asgore ruled, a total of six souls were hidden under his castle, waiting for the seventh soul to fall.  Eventually the seventh did fall, a child with a blood red soul of determination.  Their journey to the castle was one of celebration.  They would be the one to release the monsters.  Soon monsters would be above ground as they once were, free at last!  They would be able to see the sun, to smell the fresh air once again.  No monster was quite as happy as the skeleton monster named Papyrus.  This particular human child was a friend to both him and his brother, Sans.  They had promised to take him to the surface, to let himself see the sun, and Sans the true stars that shone in the night sky.  Sans kept an eye on the child, mostly as a promise to the gatekeeper of the ruins, but also out of his own curiously.  Their history books had depicted humans as cruel, blood-thirsty creatures, jealous of monsterkind’s natural ability to wield magic, and their hunger for more power, resources and land.  

This child seemed to be different though.  Although sometimes scared of the monsters that they met, they never hurt them, not even in their self-defence.  They ever fought, never dusted, though more than a few monsters would have given them reason to.  It was because of this peacefulness that Sans was able to overlook a few… blips.  ‘Deficiencies in time’.

Truthfully, at first he wasn’t sure what was happening.  He had thought to contribute it to perhaps the ketchup he had drank being stronger than usual. He would be walking along, minding his own business or planning some rather terrible puns for his brother’s ears, when suddenly the world would go dark, only for a moment or two, before coming back into the artificial light.  After this darkness, he would be a couple hours back from the ‘current time’, before the darkness had overtook him.  Perhaps he was back at his post, at his favourite spot in Grillby’s, in his bed, so on and so forth.  And it seemed like only he was aware of what was going on.  No one else noticed these changes, and if he brought it up, he was laughed at, mocked, or even told that ‘he must be getting old’.  This wasn’t the first time these time loops had occurred to him.  Years ago he could remember fighting a rather sinister yellow flower, one who was desperate on taking over and destroying the Underground.  Their fights would be long and vicious.  The flower was skilled in the arts of pain and suffering, Sans in the art of war and chaos.  After a while though, these fights eventually disappeared and he had forgotten about them.  Until now.  

Of course, he didn’t fully understand it himself until after he saw the kid battling Undyne.  The human was pleading for mercy, trying to avoid violence while Undyne threw her magical spears at them.  As Sans watched in horror, the inevitable happened.  Three spears struck the human, one after another, blood dripping slowly from their wounds.  As Undyne cackled in triumph and prepared to take the human’s soul, Sans saw the red soul shatter in thousands of tiny pieces.  The last hope of monsterkind, gone.  That’s when once again he saw the darkness overtake everything, even Undyne fading from view.  All that could be seen was two glowing, white buttons.  His body shivered when he read what was written on the two buttons. ‘Continue’ was one, ‘Reset’ the other.  Sans saw the little heart hover over ‘Continue’, making it yellow…

And then he was back at his Hotlands hot dog stand, like nothing had happened.  Somehow the kid was manipulating time, able to go back to before their death.  And he was the only one that could remember it. The more Sans thought of it the more his skull hurt, and the more he thought of a gaping skull with two perpendicular cracks in his eye sockets.  Sans rubbed at his sockets, groaning.  More questions than answers.  But the kid seemed to be using their power for good, as cliché as that sounds, so Sans let them be.

Sans watched as they befriended monster after monster, as they died hundreds of times, but finally, finally they made it to the castle…

And they managed to take everyone to the Surface.

It was even better than what was described in any book in the Underground.  The sun was warm, the breeze fresh and cool, and already he could see the possibilities that awaited them.  Sans and Papyrus would move into a house and, while Sans worked, that way he could ensure that Papyrus went to school to do whatever he wanted to do.  Probably cooking or perhaps some Drama classes, but the world was their oyster.  Anything was possible.

That first night, as they slept Sans let his worried skull relax into a real smile, his dreams full of the impossibly bright future.  But, in his dream that inky blackness surrounded him and he saw two glowing buttons once again.  This time the heart was hovering over ‘Reset’.  The button glowed yellow and there was a sound of rushing wind and static.

When Sans awoke he was back on his bare and dirty mattress, back in his old room, even with Papyrus pounding on the door, telling him to wake up and report to his Sentry post.  Sans didn’t want to believe it, but knew what the kid had done.

They had reset the timeline, back to before they fell to the Ruins.  

Sans had no plausible reason for this.  Why would the kid do such a thing?  Did the human not consider them friends?  Did they want something else from them or the Underground?  Did they think they possibly missed something?  He decided to keep a closer eye on them, just to see if he could somehow prevent these ‘resets’ from ever occurring again.  Hadn’t monsterkind suffered enough?  Didn’t they finally deserve their happy ending?

What he saw in the next resets made no freaking sense to him.

He lived and observed reset after reset.  Every ending being completely different from the last.  They didn’t always make it to the surface again.  And, every so often, a different monster would go missing.  Sans knew of several timelines where Toriel was forced to take back the throne due to the mysterious disappearance of King Asgore, or endings where he and Papyrus acted as Mettaton’s body guards.  Heck, he even knew of timelines where Papyrus of all monsters took the throne as king.

Sans had learned early on not to complain about the endings.  The human didn’t listen to his pleas.  And such endings were always better than the ones where he came across a red scarf, abandoned in a pile of dust.  His brother, the one who always wanted best for the human, dead.

But things never stayed the same.  The human always reset.  Always resetting everything back to before they fell.  And no one, other than Sans, ever remembered anything. Hundreds or even thousands of resets later, Sans was tired.  So very, very tired.  Between the constant nightmares night after night, and the damn kid resetting, had finally taken their toll on him.  His posture had slipped, his sockets dimmed and were underlined by several bags of bones, his hands always hidden in his pockets, fumbling for his secret ketchup packets.  But even those didn’t help him anymore.

Only his brother.  His sweet, innocent brother always knew how to cheer him up on his darkest of days.  Whether it was talking about the Royal Guards, his constant babbling about everything and anything, or cooking some of his ‘famous spaghetti’ just for him, Papyrus was the only one that could make him smile again.

He wasn’t exactly sure when his feelings for Papyrus changed from brother to that of a lover.  It was more than a few dozen resets back was when he first noticed Papyrus’ tall, lean frame.  From there he had started to notice how Papyrus’ eyelights would sparkle in excitement, and how he took such good care of Sans.  Making sure he ate enough of his spaghetti, tucking him in when he fell asleep on the couch, and even making sure that they never ran out of ketchup, despite how much he claimed to hate Sans drinking it.

As Sans realized his feelings for Papyrus, the more his self-loathing grew.  This was his younger brother for Asgore’s sake!  Just what the hell was he contemplating?

Yet, he couldn’t help himself.  He would lay awake at night, listening to Papyrus snore the next room over as he stared up at the ceiling.  Imagining his dirty thoughts.  Pulling that red scarf from around his neck and sinking his teeth into his vertebrae as his hands would dance through those strong, curved ribs…

He always was disgusted with himself when morning came.  He forced himself to stay away from Papyrus, ignoring his soul’s desperate longing pinging.  As a result, his body became weaker and slower, even his magic beginning to deplete.  Sans lost his appetite, even skipping Grillby’s, the greasy food which he once picked over his brother’s lovingly prepared meals.  He still ignored Muffet’s food out of principle.

The days flowed easily into one another as Sans lost track of time.  The human hadn’t fallen yet and that seemed to be the only marker of time that he cared about.  It was still about a couple of months or so before the human was due to fall and Sans had spent the day actually awake at his post, making small talk with those who walked by.  His disgusting thoughts had begun to plague his sleep during the day so he took care to avoid them.  Surprisingly Undyne passed by his station, though she was slightly shocked that he wasn’t sleeping at the station.  She didn’t talk long, just wanted to check in with him and see if he had seen any humans or Doggo, who wasn’t at his post.  Sans had directed her to Grillby’s, where the mutt would undoubtedly be smoking his beloved dog treats.

Shortly after she left his brother came by.

“SANS! YOU’RE… AWAKE?” he asked, complete with some adorably mild confusion.  

Sans smiled at up his beloved brother.  “of course bro.  Undyne came by already to make sure I wasn’t.  told me that Doggo was doggone.” He winked as Papyrus groaned and rubbed his brows, frustrated with the pun.

“SANS… NOW IS NOT THE TIME AND PLACE FOR YOUR RIDICULOUS PUNS.” He said, looking down at his brother, as if he was debating something.  Without warning he bent and picked Sans up off his stool, and walking off with him in his arms.

Sans yelped and instinctively grabbed onto Papyrus’ shoulder.  Very broad shoulders, he realized, the unconsciously adding it to his mental smut collection for later.  “Paps?” he squeaked out.  “Paps what are you doing?”

“TAKING YOU HOME FOR LUNCH OF COURSE.” Papyrus said, tossing Sans over his shoulder and immediately heading for their house in Snowdin.  He was making great progress too, his long legs effortlessly crunching through the freshly fallen snow.

“Paps you know I can walk, right?  I don’t need to be carried like a baby bones…” he squirmed, ashamed at how he was enjoying the closeness.

“SANS, YOU LOOK LIKE YOU HAVEN’T SLEPT IN A WEEK.” Papyrus informed him, still walking.  Two weeks, Sans mentally corrected him. “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU CAN FALL ASLEEP AT ANY MINUTE.  FOR MY SAKE AND SANITY, LET ME AT LEAST CARRY YOU HOME.”

Sans sighed and gave in.  It was sort of nice being carried around by Papyrus.  He could still remember him as a baby bones, when Sans would do the same to him…

“WE’RE HOME SANS!” Papyrus’ voice echoed through the warm darkness.  Sans’ sockets immediately jolted open.  When had he fallen asleep?

Papyrus placed him gently onto his chair before turning back into the kitchen to retrieve their lunch.  Sans looked down at the table and rubbed at his skull, a common question repeating inside of him ‘what would he do without his brother?’  Here Papyrus had made fresh food for them, and had even carried Sans home so he could catch a quick nap.

“HERE YOU ARE SANS!” Papyrus’ voice was close to him, once again interrupting his thoughts.

Sans jumped and looked down at the dish that Papyrus placed in front of him.  To his surprise it wasn’t spaghetti, or even dinosaur oatmeal.  “stew?” he asked.  “no noodles today, bro?”

To his surprise, Papyrus looked a little awkward, if that was even possible for the tall skeleton.  “WELL… YOU HAVEN’T BEEN LOOKING VERY GOOD LATELY, SO I ASKED DR. ALPHYS WHAT WOULD HELP… SHE SUGGESTED A COUPLE BOOKS TO READ AND THEN A NICE, HEARTY STEW.  THAT WAY YOUR BONES GET ALL THE NUTRIENTS THEY NEED IN A SINGLE DISH.” He said.

Well… if that wasn’t one of the kindest things that anyone had ever done to poor, lazybones Sans.  “heh.  thanks bro.  bone appetite.” Sans said, ignoring Papyrus’ half-hearted groan and stirring the thick broth, bringing up a spoonful to his mouth.  It, wasn’t too bad actually.  Had a little bit of an odd aftertaste but that could just be his years of dosing everything in ketchup, slowly killing his taste buds.  To his surprise, when he looked up, Papyrus hadn’t touched his own bowl.  He was staring at Sans, as if waiting for something.  “it’s good bro.  thanks.”  He said, taking another mouthful of the food.

Papyrus smiled, his shoulders relaxing a smidge.  “GLAD TO HEAR IT BROTHER.” he said, finally taking a spoonful of his own dish.  Together they ate, talked and enjoyed their meal, much like they had before Sans had developed his silly infatuation.

* * * * *

As the weeks passed, Sans began to notice small, odd things.  Monsters were slowly disappearing from Snowdin.  Doggo had never been found, then the Annoying Dog, Jerry, and many others had went missing.  It was as if they just disappeared without a trace, walked off the face of the Earth.

By the time that Toriel disappeared, Sans had long since given up on trying to solve this mystery and Alphys hadn’t made any headway either with her cameras.  He assumed that the human child was behind this, perhaps having fallen earlier than they had before.  They had to know where the cameras were by now and how to avoid them.  Just a new game they had developed to toy with his mind.  Picking off the creatures of the Underground one by one. Perhaps hoping to drive him mad with his drives to protect Papyrus at all costs?  Or were they trying to raise their LV pass 20 in an attempt to beat him in the Judgement Hall?  Well, as long as they didn’t harm Papyrus, Sans didn’t really care.  Papyrus was the only one who ever mattered to Sans.  The other monsters were of no concern for him.

Whatever their motives, he was ready for them, especially with his new-old, more powerful magic.  Sans had already saw incredible improvement in himself within the weeks of eating Papyrus’ cooking.  His energy levels rose, his stamina was higher than before the resets started, and even his magic had re-stabilized itself.  And somehow Papyrus’ cooking had even raised his LV from a measly one, to a more powerful three.  Sans didn’t even know that that was possible just through food.  What would he do without his younger brother?  He was truly incredible.

It was a dark, bleary day in the Underground, not even their artificial sun could burn through the fog and clouds.  Sans was watching the trail leading to Snowdin from his sentry post as per normal, his ears pricked for the sound of approaching footsteps.  Not that it mattered.  There were fewer and fewer monsters that traveled along this trail.  Even Undyne hadn’t checked up on him yet.  Which wasn’t surprising, Sans supposed.  With more of her guards going missing, she and the other members had to pick up the extra work, to ensure that there was no gaps in their patrols.  It was ridiculous to Sans that she wouldn’t just ask Papyrus to join in order to stop overworking her exhausted crew.  But that was Undyne, work harder, not necessarily smarter.

Sans didn’t really mind the odd quiet though.  All it mean that he had the time and opportunity to think.  He had to protect Papyrus from the child at all costs.  He couldn’t let Papyrus be picked off.  The human will not kill him ever again, Sans vowed to himself.  

His phone dinged with a text message from Papyrus.  Perfect timing.  Lunch must be ready.  Without reading it Sans teleported directly to their little house, eager to spend time with his brother.  

However, when he entered the house, lunch was definitely not ready.

Sans’ sockets roamed over the familiar-looking armour that was laid out in the kitchen.  It was covered in terrible scratches and dents, looking like the monster who had worn it had crawled their way out of hell.  It was coated in dust.

The wearer, Sans could feel in his soul, was dead.

He could hear Papyrus whistling as he was chopping what sounded like vegetables in the kitchen while something boiling on the stove.  Swallowing hard he peeked in the kitchen.

His beloved younger brother was surrounded by various ingredients.  Cream, milk, celery, potatoes and carrots, along with containers of various spices.  As Sans silently watched, Papyrus, with his back still towards looked into his pot and nodded with approval and whatever was inside.  Papyrus tossed in his vegetables and stirred them before adding thin flakes of white meat and a pinch of different spices.  That’s when Papyrus did something odd.  Reaching up into his chest cavity he pulled a sealed tube from inside.  Uncorking it, he poured the entire fine, grey contents inside the pot.

Fine, grey powder…?

Wait… was that monster dust?

Sans’ sockets widened in shock.  No… this was Papyrus he was looking at.  His baby brother.  He could still see him cooing at him from the crib.  “Paps?” he asked, listening to himself as if from a million miles away, “what are you cooking?”

The effect was instantaneous.  Papyrus yelped and spun around, careful not to knock the large, bubbling pot over.

His own battle body was covered in dust.  Not his own.

“SANS!  YOU’RE HOME EARLY!” he sputtered.  “I… I TOLD YOU THAT LUNCH WAS GOING TO BE A LITTLE LATE TODAY…”

“sorry Papyrus.  I never opened your message.  I just… just assumed…”  Sans was staring at that damaged armour.  He had seen it somewhere!  But where?  “Papyrus?  please… tell me the truth… have… have you been feeding me monster dust, this entire time?”  There.  He said it.

Papyrus gasped and sputtered before sighing.  When his sockets opened again, they were of a cool, collected monster.  One who had resigned himself to his fate.  “IT WAS IN ONE OF THE BOOKS THAT ALPHYS LENT ME.” he explained.  “I’M SURE THAT THAT PARTICULAR BOOK WAS A MISTAKE, THAT SHE NEVER MEANT FOR ME TO SEE IT.  BUT IT WAS HOW MONSTERS WERE ABLE TO BECOME STRONG, VERY QUICKLY…”

Sans nodded encouragingly at him.  Keep him talking, let him explain himself.

“IT EXPLAINED THE PROPERTIES OF MONSTER DUST.  HOW IT WOULD RAISE A MONSTER’S STATS, PARTICULARLY THOSE OF THEIR EXP AND STAMINA.  AND… AND YOU WEREN’T DOING WELL BROTHER.  YOU WERE FALLING DOWN IN FRONT OF ME.  I COULDN’T LET THAT HAPPEN.  NOT WHILE THERE WAS A CHANCE THAT I COULD SAVE YOU…” a dust covered glove suddenly reached out and grasped Sans’ skull, pulling him up to look Papyrus in the sockets.

“I LOVE YOU SANS.  YOU’RE MY BROTHER.  I WOULD, AND HAVE DONE ANYTHING IN MY POWER TO SAVE YOU, TO STRENGTHEN YOU.” a gentle finger caressed his cheekbone, following the movement in the bone while the light in his eye sockets stared down at him intently.  “AFTER ALL, WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT YOU?”

Sans slowly chuckled, leaning into the touch to fully enjoy it.  His own brother had done all this for him.  To protect him…

He really was the coolest.

Sans gasped as the finger tugged a little more insistently at his chin, raising his skull further.  With a soft clank, his and Papyrus’ teeth were softly pressed together, magic quivering between them.  His sockets widened.  How… how could this be possible?  After all this time, all this lusting, and Papyrus felt the same for him?  His own sockets slipped shut, enjoying the precious moment.

They finally broke the kiss, standing in the kitchen, staring at one another.  The slight hiss of fluid striking the burner broke the moment, causing Papyrus to return to his cooking, turning down the heat before stirring the pot and adding a few, last minute ingredients.

Sans pulled up a chair to watch him cook.  “so what’s for lunch today?” he finally asked, “it smells good.”

Papyrus hummed in satisfaction as he grabbed two bowls from the cupboard.  “JUST ANOTHER RECIPE FROM THE RECIPE BOOK ALPHYS LENT ME.” he said.  “FISH CHOWDER.”