#did I survive? most assuredly

[noughticalcrossings]

At the End of the World, With You

My second pairing for the Terror Big Bang, this time illustrating a Pacific Rim AU written by @lieutdreadhands and bringing you all your Bridglar needs this summer

[pitter-patt-art]

Ace Attorney AU August (halfway progress update!)

Okay technically it's the 16th (lol, 17th by the time this is done) so a little over halfway actually, but still I thought since I haven't had anything finished to post the past few days this would be a fun alternative!

I've been going a little nuts (affectionate) over @augustwritingchallenge's AU-gust prompts list this year so August has been a wild ride (about 40k words of one, in fact. so far.) but seeing as I will get attached to even the jokiest of AU ideas instantly, I've completed* a whopping 5 whole fics of 16, lol. Considering the shortest of those is over 3k and the longest is over 12k, I think the problem with not finishing these in a timely manner is entirely on my verbose foolish thick skull, haha, but I'm still having a blast with it.

Here is my ao3 series where I'm posting!

And a rundown / progress report / quick teaser of all the AUs including those I've yet to finish, if anyone's interested:

(*by "completed" I should note two of the already posted fics are basically assuredly going to be continued past the challenge, but let's say "completed enough to post and be on theme")

1. Canon Divergence - complete - 4.5k words ("For the Murder of Mr. Wrong" link)

Mia POV, gen. What if Dahlia succeeded in poisoning Phoenix and framed Doug Swallow instead (and then Mia defended him in court)? Basically a 3-1 rewrite. Fun Fact: I only came up with this AU because before I even remembered AU-gust existed at all, I'd come up with like 4 totally separate AUs in which I poison Phoenix in various ways With Real Consequences because it amuses me, lol, but he survives all those other ones and I eventually realized I hadn't even considered straight up killing him off yet so I figured I should try it at least once, haha.

2. Colorless - complete 1st chapter - 3.2k words ("Grey Matters" link)

Phoenix POV (for 1st ch --prob alternating after), wrightworth. "You can't see color until the first time you touch your soulmate"-soulmate AU. 1st chapter is their first meeting as kids (skipping the class trial itself). Fun Fact(s): I really love a color soulmate AU! Big fan of the "only see the color of their eyes" type of one too but uhhh on top of that working better for things that have wild anime eye colors, you could not pay me enough to try to figure out what the HELL is going on with Ace Attorney eye colors at any given time lmfao. (Also--spoilers for what i haven't written yet but hey if you're here you earned it--this IS one of my very many "teehee what if i poison Phoenix just a smidge as a treat for me" fics. NOT my fault the man ATE GLASS. That's on him.)

3. Dark Academia - complete "1st chapter" - 4.4k words ("The Spirit of the Laws of Magic" link)

Mia POV, lanamia. Magical boarding school setting featuring corruption and missing-student conspiracies and a most likely overthought system of magic with hierarchies and prejudices in societal views of academic/formulaic vs folk/innate magic. Fun Fact: I really thought for SURE i was going to skip this day entirely, lol. (foolish.) I don't think i've actually ever personally read anything "dark academia", technically--so if this doesn't read EXACTLY that way, there you go, but i did my best. I also then thought I could live with keeping this vague but I accidentally thought about it too long so... plus at least two people on top of myself at this point have expressed interest in more of this and so I have some semi-concrete Plans™ now.

4. Zombie Apocalypse - conceptualized (but not started)

Concept: probably gen and Phoenix POV, but also because I'm me and they're them, at least a little bit wrightworth even if it isn't necessarily explicit in any meaningful way bc they are Not Normal about each other lol. A little sketchy on how much of an "AU" this counts for, since it could probably be argued to be canon compliant somehow, but basically just: Universe where they make a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies-type Steel Samurai reboot movie thing (featuring, you guessed it, zombies), and Miles comes over and forces Phoenix to watch it with him just to have someone to bitch about it at, and then during that time Maya blows her way into Phoenix's apartment as well with the exact same intentions except her "day job" isn't quite as time-sensitive-strict so she's already finished watching it earlier and knows all the spoilers. Honestly a good chance Phoenix and Pearl (who came with Maya) end up hiding out in the kitchen together to let Maya and Miles rile each other up in front of the TV, but I'm never exactly sure where they'll take me once I wind them up and set them loose on the page, so who knows. I also hadn't necessarily determined the exact time frame yet but for it to make sense as a reboot-type movie/special episode/whatever it probably should be 7yg-or-later so Trucy may or may not be there as well. (That said, in my struggles to complete an actually short one-shot, I probably shouldn't even include Pearl let alone Trucy, lol.) Fun Fact: I also thought I'd skip this day bc I'm not the biggest zombie guy in the world, and to be fair, I managed to do Way Less with it than the dark academia prompt so, yippie?

5. Chess Players - incomplete (currently 3k word WIP)

Miles POV, wrightworth. Miles is a chess grandmaster and back in Japanifornia for the upcoming world cup tournament, but his greatest challenge is actually to FINALLY best Franziska in their annual who-can-get-the-best-Christmas-gift competition. Luckily, he just so happened to hear of an artist who makes bespoke chess sets, so the plan is to get a custom board made for Franziska without her finding out. The plan is not to get trapped in a weird art collective labyrinth with some model-photographer named Cindy who keeps hitting on him but also happens to be protective of the artist he's there to see because "she and her boyfriend kinda-sorta owe him big time", but this is what he gets for coming here without doing any extra research into the artist besides seeing his work and hearing only "his name is White, or, eh, something like that, you know how those artist types are" from Mr. Amano. (AU where we replace law with chess and no I don't think Phoenix could necessarily hack it in the top-world-grandmasters-level of chess tournaments HOWEVER have you considered he DID go to art school so what if he just tries selling custom chess sets until somehow that reconnects him with Miles. Is that somehow a more insane plan than studying law? Maybe. Did Manfred still shoot Gregory but now it was over fucking chess? Maybe. Idk. But I did let Greg live this time at least!) Fun Fact: we can all DEFINITIVELY blame my lovely, terrible, very wonderful friend Ben (shameless friend plug! she's an outstanding writer and has some AA fics of her own too!! @kindlystrawberry on tumblr!!) for making a total joke about "well what about au where they make chess pieces instead" while i lamented not knowing enough about chess to write an actual match and spawning this ENTIRE concept. It is her fault. 100%. She is the guilty party. (I want to finish this one VERY BADLY. Save me.)

EVIDENCE!!!!! Guilty.

6. Reality Show - incomplete (currently 700 word WIP)

Phoenix (& Franziska) POV(s), background wrightworth wedding planning going on as set up but it's also definitely just one of my many excuses to set Phoenix and Franziska up as bitchy worsties who can't admit they enjoy each other's company and will cut you down if you suggest it as such. So far I've only written the quote "set-up" section which is in Phoenix's POV, but that was SUPPOSED to be like 5 paragraphs and cut away and then lead into my actual plan for the main body, which was to be in Franz's instead, so. This is very similar to the zombie one in that it's them watching reality tv instead of being contestants on a show (I don't personally like or watch a lot of reality tv so my creative well was somewhat dry on how to make that work) and then I accidentally thought about Phoenix and Franziska watching something just to judge and tear apart the decisions of every person on it and that was too fun to not consider further, haha. Basically the plan is just they get left alone together and don't know what to do with that and end up wine-drunk and making fun of some reality dating show of some kind and Miles and Trucy come back to them losing it together over something stupid and are like "......uh. what's happening." Fun Facts: I really love the thought experiment of Franziska somehow discovering how often Phoenix's internal dialogue/reads on situations and especially people can be So Bitchy And Judgey despite his affable complexion, and her unfortunately finding his opinions to SOMETIMES be somehow slightly okay. Moderately correct, even--occasionally. I know the section she follows you-as-Phoenix around in T&T is really not long at ALL, but I adore it. There's something about it that so badly makes me want to force them into proximity more (to both their chagrin, I'm sure).

7. Farm/Ranch - complete - 12k words ("Two Little Dickey Byrdes" link)

Gumshoe POV, gumbyrde (tho i still think dickeybyrde is a funnier ship name). 5+1 things--except more like maybe 7-or-8+1 to be honest--so it's more: over 5 times Dick and Maggey sit on a wall together and 1 time they find someone else there instead. AKA: Dick runs his family's small farm (think fantasy farm like in a farming sim or maybe horse girl novel type of thing that has nothing to do with what a real farm is like lol don't worry about it) and Maggey starts working at the next farm over as the latest of her many odd jobs. Fun Fact: oh god this one got so far away from me. it was not supposed to be this long lmao. it's literally the elaborate set-up to a very silly Nursery-Rhyme-I-Didn't-Even-Know-About-Prior-To-This -based punchline!?! still, i was pleasantly surprised by how happy i was with this once it was done... two sittings and about 16 total hours later. haha).

8. Nomad - incomplete (planned/outlined)

Apollo (or possibly Klavier) POV, klapollo. Sort of Jove-Thalassa swap adjacent, but basically: AU where Jove survives the Khura'in fire but loses his memories for [contrived convince sake reasons]. (And also possibly loses some or all of his eyesight just to really go for the parallels?) Therefore: Jove and Apollo stay with Dhurke and Nahyuta and the Defiant Dragons for a time, while Jove recovers, but eventually they leave and head out on their own, just the two of them, and do the traveling musician thing, both because it's dangerous in Khura'in and Dhurke already canonically didn't want Apollo to get caught up in it and potentially get hurt to begin with and because with a functioning actual parent Apollo doesn't need to be taken in by him--and also Jove from what little we know seems like he prefers to be on the move and was already a world traveler anyhow, so even amnesiac maybe he gets a little antsy stuck in one place too long. And so like amnesiac Thalassa, Jove thusly becoming a renowned mysterious musician--and then Apollo, sweet tone deaf Apollo, becoming the sonager of all time (like a momager but...you get it) because he's not that into music but he IS into arguing for better conditions/making deals (contracts!! international legalese!! woohoo!!) with venues and promoters and stuff. And then--oops dang Lamioir still exists and now they have a meet-cute (2 electric bugaloo) (but by then it's later enough Trucy still exists because it will be a cold day in hell when I don't find a way to make her work) and they do music collabs or join up to form a group or whatever and OOPS this means now that Apollo and Jove are with Lamioir when The Gavinners / Klavier specifically meet her and get her to come to do the Guitar's Serenade concert eventually. And Apollo and Klavier ofc thusly also have a meet-cute and then talk and bond etc etc. AND THEN the au STOPS THERE and I DON'T think about how without Apollo Phoenix is totally getting convicted of Zak's murder because there's no way that trial works out as well for him with some other attorney and I also don't think about how reasonable it would then be that maybe Trucy ends up helping Valant with his work setting up the trick for the concert afterward on account of the one father in prison and the other being dead and having left behind a notarized confession clearing Valant's name of suspicion, etc. AND I DEFINITELY do not think about how i could then still so easily get everyone in one place at the concert for Turnabout Serenade and/or any possible funny Sibling (And Thalassa) Reveal that could happen i dont i dont i do not--

9. Accidental Baby Acquisition - conceptualized (not started)

Gen, possibly my weakest / least defined idea on this list, but basically: Phoenix kind of already lives this in canon, lol (insomuch as an 8yo counts as a baby) so I thought, well, how to take it a different direction, then? And I thought, I don't usually go for a Phoenix Fey kind of au because I personally really love the relationships he has with all the Feys as-is in canon and so it's not quite as funny to me as, say, a Miles Fey AU where like Misty and Gregory are married, or any of the ones in that bent, because I'm sorry but that's just SO funny (and sad, but mostly funny) any way you slice it--plus his NAME is RIGHT THERE mia-miles-maya he FITS--anyhow, that completely aside, there are just a lot of reasons I really love the platonic relationships the Feys already have with Phoenix and I don't think it NEEDS to be made specifically familial to still be so very important, y'know? BUT. That said. AU where Phoenix is idk abandoned as a baby or maybe his parents die young or something and it's like a Thing to leave babies at temples or churches or whatever, right? So like--Phoenix adopted by the Feys AU but only because the more i considered it the more i thought it would be WILD for him to literally know Maya her entire life, and it's fascinating to me to consider a Maya who ISN'T basically left all alone to her own devices (and Morgan's) and who has someone absolutely in her corner in the village the entire time even after Mia leaves (who isn't a baby when Mia leaves, love you tho Pearls), AND also and perhaps more importantly, the ships-passing-in-the-night-ness of a scene where, like: Morgan does something sketchy or whatever and Phoenix wants to keep Mia updated but for whatever reason decides to go down to the city and actually tell her in person and so he's waiting outside the courthouse or something (possibly part of or perhaps Most Of the reason he goes in person is because he knows her first courtroom trial is that day and he wants to see her + hear how it went) and when he gets there she's in a heated argument with some asshole in a fancy over-embellished jacket and once that guy leaves Phoenix is like "Sheesh, what's his problem?" You know???? And maybe he really would never even know!!!! Bc he grew up in Kurain!!!! And has no reason to care!!! About some random prosecutor who was mean to Mia!! Aaaah!!! So that, and on top of that, Diego would be there too ofc at that point, and I feel like he would ALSO be quite a funny interaction in this scenario. ("Wow, someone's popular, kitten, you have all sorts of guys waiting on a chance to talk to you, heh?" "Uh.--I'm sorry, WHAT did you just call her")

10. Enemies-to-Allies - incomplete (currently 370 word WIP)

Ema POV, faraskye. Cyberpunk AU where Lana is still under Gant's thumb and Ema, with no other way to stay close to her and getting rejected from any of the sorts of jobs she really wants to do, decides to just join the security force (or cyber police or w/e I decide to call it) and is tasked with hunting down the Yatagarasu, guerilla hacker supreme who is threatening the sanctity of the capitalist overlords. Except Ema's squad gets ambushed and she's captured and tied to a pole, and with her useless fop partner seemingly not coming to rescue her (if he even noticed her absence), she does some quick cost-benefit analysis and decides she didn't really like that job anyway and maybe there's another way she can get her sister back in her life. So she breaks free of her own handcuffs (which she definitely didn't modify into incidental ineffectiveness she's still testing for bugs) and helps fix the "Little Thief" device her captor seems to have broken despite how obviously valuable and impressive the tech is, and they eventually come to something of an agreement. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and all that. Either Ema as the hardware-engineer one and Kay as the software-programming one as the two sides of the tech coin, or else Kay can just be like doing the physical sneaking kind of spy stuff only--or maybe she knows a little about software but not so much she's a pro the way she is with infiltration and such. Possibly toying with the idea Kay herself is just completely an android, but if not, I think she has some cybernetic cyborg things going on regardless. Possibly from or inspired by her father? I also like the idea that Gant did something maybe more drastic with regards to having dirt on Ema to get Lana to do his bidding--like maybe Ema has a whole cybernetic hand because instead of just her handprint on a leather jacket, Gant has some sicko jar with her entire hand in it in his office safe, or something. I don't know why this would be useful to him but it is certainly an image. I also find it funny if Miss Fingerprint Powder Enthusiast doesn't actually have any fingerprints of her own anymore somehow in this AU, lol.

11. Retail Worker - complete - 6.7k words ("The Bake Anything Boulangerie" link)

Apollo POV, gen. Phoenix gets a job at a bakery instead of the Borscht Bowl Club during the 7 year gap, and Apollo happens to stumble across it and ends up meeting the Wrights while he's still in high school. He becomes a regular at the bakery and is already close to them by the time "Shadi Smith's" murder comes around. And also, yes, sibling reveal right away--at least as soon as Phoenix realizes and can reveal it. As a treat. (Other reveals, though, I might put poor Apollo through on a delayed basis. Also as a treat, lmao, just not one for him.) Fun Fact: I'm being redundant bc this is also in my a/n, but, Baker Phoenix lives rent-free in my brain because Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright was in fact the very first Ace Attorney game I ever played, technically, and Maya and Phoenix semi-brainwashed in that bakery was literally one of my first impressions of them. ........followed immediately by starting a let's play of Justice for All (which i watched through the first case, after which I was like oKAY fine maybe i DO need more context here, i should probably figure out what the actual first game is, and went back to start the series properly at the beginning hahaha). What do you MEAN i have a disproportionate fascination with amnesiac Phoenix, even if I have yet to finish and publish one of my myriad AUs that utilize stupid, unrealistic, plot convenient re-temporary amnesia?? Hm???? Idk what you're talking about. Also everyone who complains about 2-1 is wrong lmao it's objectively (okay subjectively is what i'm saying yes BUT objectively) such a funny place to start without knowing broad plot strokes, it's great. I both knew so much and absolutely shit-all nothing about Maya after PLvPW and 2-1, LMAO. god.

12. Animagus Wings (Joker) - incomplete (planned/outlined)

Miles POV, wrightworth. Angel/Demon AU, except I'm playing super fast and loose with the rules on that because all my knowledge of Christian-mythos comes from firstly and unknowingly the Chronicles of Narnia and more recently and cognizantly Lucifer (Netflix) and Good Omens. I know that's probably more or less what we're all doing with this kind of AU but still, I'm not even sure I want to refer to Heaven and Hell here, I'm kinda on the fence about maybe just keeping it all very vague? I also accidentally semi-worldbuilt more than i intended incidentally on account of "But Then How-Why Names If Angelic Creatures?" Format-wise it would semi-follow gomens s1 where it's hopping through some meetings between long stretches but also a kind of pre- and post- Fall type of thing? And potentially à la Lucifer becoming, like, these are My Mortal Humans and i will be Spending Time With Them, screw you celestial duties, I'm making my own Free Will, etc. And i mean i guess Lucifer is also a crime procedural lmao maybe they still solve crimes in the end too. Fun Fact: I didn't want to do the original prompt for several reasons, and sure fuck jkr is one of them but even before I knew about her I still wasn't really the biggest hp person in the first place? So i wouldn't know/don't remember at all the way it works without having to do the specific research and i...don't want to haha. Hence. And I know the prompt seems to be using it loosely / might just be borrowing the word and not actually referencing hp specifically but tbh either way human-animal shifter things just in general I can be somewhat picky about haha. (Okay okay plus full disclosure the ONLY idea I have for this sort of thing actually ties into my day-3-dark-academia-extended-au-verse and i COULD make my life simpler by just connecting the two days but Heh who would I be if I simplified things for myself... *sigh*) All that to say: I saw "wings" on the wild card list and I thought, ooh, well that's still sort of a related concept! Let's tag that one in! So it's still kind of day 12 prompt-adjacent, if you squint.

13. Found Footage - incomplete (planned/outlined)

Video Transcript POV? Is that a thing? Possibly capped by a little Phoenix POV (but i don't want that to get too long), wrightworth. Larry's new girlfriend of the month bakes weed brownies and Larry does not realize this and swings by the Wrights' apartment to beg some kind of help off Phoenix and forgets the whole tray there somehow (because it's Larry) and they leave to deal with Larry's thing and by the time they figure the brownies out, in some twist of fate Miles and Trucy have been hanging out (last minute babysitter/adult supervision? but she's at the very very least 14 or 15 here and most likely older, and Nick clearly isn't the most strict about like uhhh supervision in general lol sooo idk. he's helping her with a project or smth. it doesn't really actually matter; he's THERE, that's the important thing.) The point I'm very clearly getting at is they accidentally get incredibly high (not dangerously so because I'm not going that far haha but also, neither of them has actually been high before, so they are Affected) before Phoenix finds out what was in the brownies and tries to warn Trucy and hurry home to like, dispose of them or at least put a warning label on them or whatever, but he is too late lol. By a lot. Definitely an underage drugs tag on this bad boy because it's definitely sometime 18-or-earlier for Trucy, let alone 21. (idk about other places but as a Californian I can tell you Japanifornia "LA" could theoretically have it legalized at 21 for anyone (like alcohol) and 18 with Dr's permission--which Trucy definitely does not have in this AU lol.) Basically, Phoenix grabs Trucy's phone to get photo evidence so he can let them never live this down (after making sure they're okay lmao), but he ofc doesn't get technology so he doesn't realize he leaves the phone still recording when Trucy asks him for something / needs his help, so the recording just keeps going and captures a lot of tomfoolery and eventually some inebriated-to-Extremely-sober Feelings-Adjacent confessions (or maybe more like allusions). Idk, this was actually a fic I thought of before August and wanted to use as an excuse to try a Weird Format for fun, but then i saw this was a prompt on the list and...well. Fun Fact: Cannabis was legalized in California on November 8, 2016 (the first election I could vote in!!! ......uh, rip. lol. but yeah babey I helped legalize weed at least!! gotta remember the positives), which means it was legal right in time for Miles' case(s) / Turnabout Goodbyes!!! Yay!! I mean, I suppose that's genuinely seriously one way to try to mitigate nightmares and manage insomnia--not that I think Miles Edgeworth would ever deign stoop so low as to use an aid to manage his severe PTSD and trauma symptoms, psshaw, who do you take him for? (Get these people some help lol. They all need so much therapy.)

14. Princes & Princesses - conceptualized (not started)

So I've been reading a lot (a LOT) of isekai and/or revenge reincarnation romance fantasy manhwas lately (like, oh, too many, hahaha. they're quite good and they're VERY popular in webcomics at the moment.) Soooo. Soft pitch: Apollo already gets slapped into so many wild backstories he's constantly trying to dodge in an effort to be just a Normal Guy, he's honestly, like, the PERFECT protagonist for one of these lmao. And tell me Kristoph doesn't make a perfect "Upstanding Duke" kind of persona, and Klavier couldn't be the "wild rake" younger brother no one expects much from, and all I'm saying is it wouldn't be that hard to contrive a reason Apollo tries to get Klavier to agree to a contract marriage the way all these stories go, lol. And also, something something, Apollo from the "real world" is an orphan/has an absent family (also like so many of these manhwa protagonists, lol) but then he gets to actually have one in his second life!! I'm such a sucker for that shit. Slightly harder pitch, and the reason I did not let myself actually start writing anything (...yet): so what if the actual plot of the "original romance novel" Apollo is familiar with from the "real world (Earth)" is actually about the slightly older generation and something something instead of admiring Phoenix as a defense attorney, it's just that he instead was Apollo's favorite "love interest" character (not, like, for himself, just the one he most liked to read about) in every way except what a blithering idiot he became when the author had him fall for the female lead--but BEFORE that, he's a cool information guild leader guy who seems like he's trying to work toward some way to improve conditions for commoners in the kingdom (but abruptly there are no more mentions of this after he gets involved with the lead, which is annoying). Aaaand... I guess what I'm saying is, Dahlia is the original female lead because she REALLY fits the whole White Lotus trope, and I'm thinking Klavier is the original male lead because A) hilarious, B) fits in with the idea there's more going on in the ACTUAL world Apollo ends up in that is written in such a way as to make things seem different in the novel (like, that Dahlia and Klavier are actually as nice as they seem and that the terrible things that happen around them are just the trials and tribulations of being main characters and not anything they're directly involved in). And Apollo, the character in the novel Apollo, is an adopted prince of Khura'in, but he's the sickly younger prince and of course not actually of the royal bloodline (and also a man, considering Khura'in is matrilineal), so Rayfa and Nahyuta are the ones the public and other nobles actually know and care about and deal with. But wait! As it so turns out, The Wright Anything Information Guild (I feel like the actual guild name CAN'T have their freaking name on it front and center lol but you get the idea) happens to know some other things that aren't really expanded on in the original novel, and might be key to preventing Apollo's death so he doesn't follow the path of the original story, and also idk maybe Apollo and Trucy are half-fae or something like that and instead of like Aw Yay Bracelet in this AU it's more of a secret Iron Shackle Tool That Will Hurt I Mean Totally-Definitely-Help Us Later (still, in a way, passed down to him by Thalassa, but more as, like... she's kind of a secret hostage and does not manage to hide pregnancy number one so Apollo's now also a secret hostage, but she manages to escape so they don't know about Trucy, only she didn't tell Apollo basically anything to "keep him as safe as possible" or w/e, and......) Well, anyway. It got away from me before I even really wrote anything, that's all.

15. Secretly Alien - unfinished (currently 2.6k WIP)

Trucy POV, gen. Apollo gets sick of very consistently always losing the card games they play at the Wright Anything Agency (usually and in the specific instance the fic starts, Bullshit/BS) and in a stroke of inspiration somehow ropes everyone into playing Among Us instead. ("What! It's still a game of trying to lie/trick everyone else--like you like!--but I actually stand a freaking chance, so we're playing this or I'm going home.") Yes. This is my Among Us AU. Hi. They play Among Us. I'm justifying this one as prime AU territory however because A) Among Us has to exist in this universe, and even more pressingly, B) I found a way to force Phoenix to have--for at least a period of time if not moving forward in perpetuity--an actual smartphone instead of a Nokia-type brick cellphone. Which even under the wild but somehow plausible considering Ace Attorney circumstances I contrived, is just automatically a complete AU lmao. Fun Fact: I am so mad this one wasn't just totally finished day-of, lol. Why I ever thought I could give myself run of an entire WAA 4-person conversation and NOT get instantly derailed is beyond me. (And I want to get the prosecutors there, too?? Someone take the characters away from me.) Anyway. No, I have not written ANY of the actual Among Us part yet. Sigh. Also I haven't personally played amogus since like, 2021? maybe? And I know (now) that it's been pretty updated since then, but, ehhh, I'm just gonna run off like, lockdown-era amogus rules and vibes, lol. If I can get to the game part.

16 - Hobby Drama - conceptualized

I'm going to go out of order this time to say: Fun Fact: I have ALWAYS wanted to write a Reddit-style fic!!! I absolutely love them and I've read some REALLY, really good ones, so I've always wanted to try my hand at it. So theoretically this is the perfect time to make that a reality and write a r/HobbyDrama subreddit fic, buuut I got stuck before starting because I'm torn on two possible routes to take it (I can easily foresee myself caving and just doing both lol). - Option 1: Steel Samurai fandom discourse, always a fun/funny thing to think about, definitely would enjoy having Maya and Miles post some stuff for that. - Option 2: courtroom law fandom discourse, because come ON, how are those galleries ALWAYS SO FULL. The little wiggling rabba-rabba onlookers have GOT to have investment in this shit. And why WOULDN'T they, honestly. I've seen those trials and I have, in fact, spent a Lot of time thinking about them, not that any posts I've made lately would reflect that in any way or anything. Like I know it's hard to tell, but if I can be invested in the Lawyers Fandom, who's to say the people in the courtrooms aren't????? And I LOVE an outsider POV fic actually, I think they're so fun. So anyway. Reddit fic. You will be mine. Just as soon as I can hone my energy

And, what the hell, since it's so late now by the time I complete this "Heh This'll Be So Quick To Throw Together" post, I'll include today's, too:

17 - Flower Shop - conceptualized (at work earlier today. lol)

AU where Daddy Hawthorne is like, 97% less shitty. And the Hawthornes have a flower shop instead of like a gemstone industry or whatever. And he takes both Dahlia and Iris with him instead of dumping one of his daughters at a fucking secluded mountain temple and seemingly forgetting about her forever. On second thought, maybe what I actually mean is he's like 999% less shitty, lmfao. Anyway, Iris POV, but Dahlia (while not a "nice" person by any stretch) is not pushed to such extremes or nearly as desperate as canon, so Valerie lives, Terry Fawles lives, Doug Swallow lives, and Dahlia gets to live a good life overall--because as much fun as I love using her as a villain, she's really such a product of the absolute worst circumstances and I really do find her interesting so I've been kind of wanting to explore her in a less cartoonishly evil light, haha. (Don't get me wrong, I do love the cartoonishly evil light too, but I like spicing things up sometimes.) Like, she does (more) normal teen rebellion things ("Look at my inappropriately older boyfriend, Dad" "I'm going to talk my way out of speeding tickets and petty shoplifting as a bid for attention" etc.) and she still totally orders Iris around and Iris still totally does whatever she asks very much to her own detriment and has to learn to break away and be her own person. Fun Fact: I have a very passionate love for Iris/Adrian Andrews. Is that. Um. Is that a ship anyone else has ever considered before? Is that just me? I'm not sure but very possibly I'll just make this a rarepair fic as a treat, for me alone, teehee. (Like... it's about the becoming the master of your own destiny it's about breaking out of codependent cycles it's about how I genuinely honestly think they'd be each other's type and have chemistry even though they've obviously never interacted lmao... idk what to tell you.)

AND THATS MY AU-GUST UPDATE POST!!!

If you made it this far, take a sprinkle of my undying affection, and may you be blessed with AU inspiration if you so desire it!! (If you do not desire it, hopefully you are not cursed with it. I do not take refunds if you are. Sorry.)

Wish me luck with completing some more fics soon!!! Unfortunately weekends are actually my least free time because I work the most and the earliest hours so I have less time and am more tired, but also on Wednesday I'm leaving for a family vacation, which will either be the BEST thing to happen in regards to AU-gust or the WORST thing lmfao. If nothing else I have 2 flights, and I actually Love writing on an airplane, so fingers crossed for it being Good. <3

EDIT: Now with part 2 for the rest of the month here!

[theforgottenmcrmy]

Oaths~ Part 1/3 (Ser Harwin Strong x Reader)

᯽ Please note that this is an overall Part 21 to the series Growing Strong. The masterlist, and part 1, can be found HERE ᯽

Pairing: Ser Harwin Strong x Tyrell! Female Reader

Warnings: GOT typical sexism, canon divergence, mentions of past character death, super mildly suggestive themes

Summary:

But the core issue at hand was not of your own fate, or even your husband’s. You did not think yourself as strong as Rhaenyra; having to bury any one of your children just might destroy you. And Rhaenyra had pleaded with you to consider all of your options. If betraying a friend of many years and sacrificing whatever semblance of honor House Tyrell still had could ensure the safety and survival of your children, why would you not consider it?

A/N: As stated in the preview, I have no excuses, only apologies. Thank you to everyone who has continued to read this story. 🖤 And to anyone who's new since the last update, welcome. I hope you all enjoy. Next part is planned to be posted 11/23.

The late night had given way to the earliest hours of the morning.

After finding a mutually agreeable means of which Harwin and you could expend some of your pent up energy, sleep had finally claimed you at long last. However, not unlike the vast majority of nights over the past few weeks, your sleep was light and mostly dreamless. Not even your arrival at the haven that was Dragonstone had been sufficient enough to subdue your inner turmoils and ever-growing fears.

It was not long at all before you rose. It was prompted by a gentle, but still very apparent, dipping of the mattress beside you.

You blinked several times, trying to will the haziness away. You felt your face scrunch, a frown coming to your lips as you looked over at the space beside you with mild confusion. “Harwin?”

Though your sight was still a bit foggy, you took the silence that followed as your answer. Most assuredly, had someone besides the two of you been so bold as to have entered your chambers unannounced, Harwin would have had some sharp words at the ready for them.

If not a well placed strike with his fist or sword.

Once the grog had lifted, you were able to make out your husband’s figure standing across the room. His back, still bare, was towards you. In the blink of an eye, he had swiped up whatever it was that he sought, and moved to return back to the bed without delay. You lifted up the sheets for him as he neared, and he softly smiled at you in silent gratitude.

He hastily settled into the bed once more, tucking the sheets back around himself before scooting over closer to you. He pressed a brief kiss to your temple, and his next words out of his mouth were little more than a quiet mumble. “Forgive me, My Love, I did not mean to wake you. You should get some more rest, whilst you still can.”

Between the mere fitful bouts of rest you had been able to snag thus far, and the simple fact that you knew your husband was now wide awake, it was abundantly clear that there was little chance of Harwin’s suggestion coming to fruition. Instead, with a raised eyebrow, you pivoted, “What do you have there?”

Sheepishly, as if knowing his own refusal to succumb to sleep was part of the reason you would not be resting either, Harwin presented you with the object he had deemed necessary to retrieve from the other side of the room at the odd hour.

The letter from Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower.

“I could not sleep,” Harwin explained as he cautiously began to unfold the letter. With the seal having already been broken by you earlier, the parchment gave him little resistance at all. “I know you wished to discuss this with me later, but my curiosity got the better of me.”

It was as best a time as any to have the conversation, you supposed. You had wished to discuss Alicent’s letter with Harwin immediately after returning from dinner with the royal family- before the two of you had gotten swept up in one another. But in hindsight, you had no qualms about how you and Harwin had chosen to spend the time that had passed since.

Besides, Queen Rhaenyra expected an answer from the two of you in the morning, by way of whether you and Harwin attended the council meeting she intended to call.

You had been wary of Harwin’s reaction to the letter ever since it had been presented to you. You carried that hesitancy with you still, and silently watched with an increasing sense of apprehension as Harwin read the dowager queen’s letter line by line, word for word.

The look on Harwin’s face as he finished reading over the terms was practically indiscernible. Perhaps that was what gave you pause the most.

“Say something, Dearest,” you bid him pleadingly after a moment, concern painting your every word.

Harwin’s eyes remained locked on the parchment in his hands.

Since the day you had met, he had been mindful of his infamous temper, and how he managed it, around you. But something of this nature was almost completely uncharted territory for either of you.

You reached out for his closest hand slowly. “Harwin?”

Hearing his name, along with your hand coming to rest upon his own, finally snapped your husband out of his stupor. Harwin blinked up at you blankly one, two, three times. “... I do not know what to say.”

Of all the ways you had imagined Harwin would react to Dowager Queen Alicent’s letter, a lack of a reaction altogether had not been a possibility that you had considered. Regardless, you felt the response was completely valid.

You pursed your lips, still waiting for Harwin to make the first move.

As you had initially expected, anger was the first emotion Harwin eventually settled on after the shock had passed. His brows furrowed sharply, his normally calming eyes turning dark in the already dimly lit room.

“The nerve of that woman. Is the dowager queen truly so daft as to believe her demands are anything less than an insult to any one of us? Not only would we be stripped of our own birthrights, but how could she truly expect us to disinherit Selwin in such a disparaging fashion? … The Crown may have many powers, but whilst members of our blood still live, the line of succession for House Strong and House Tyrell is business of none other than its current lord and lady.”

You remained silent, sensing that was not the end of Harwin’s musings. Your suspicions were proven true less than a moment later.

“And I’d rather eat my own boot before pawning off my son to carry a sword for that insufferable Cole, let alone that oaf of a cousin of hers all the way over in Oldtown.”

You fought your initial instinct to laugh at your husband’s chosen phrasing. “If we take the Usurper’s offer, it would mean sacrificing our plans for our houses’ inheritance, yes.”

You had intentionally refrained from acknowledging Harwin’s final phrase- any topic dealing with the disgrace that was Ser Criston Cole had the propensity to send your husband on a long-winded tangent. Perhaps rightfully so.

“If we take the Usurper’s offer?” Harwin countered. He looked over at you with wide eyes, and in a tone more imploring than harsh, he questioned, “You cannot seriously be considering such a thing?”

Despite knowing that Harwin meant no harm, you could not help but flinch. Fortunately, the movement was so miniscule, Harwin had not even perceived it. Withdrawing your hand from Harwin, you sat up straight, taking the sheets on your side of the bed along with you. As serious of a conversation as it was, conversing in anything less than a decent state would have felt a bit improper.

“I do not wish to concede to the Usurper’s terms,” you assured him truthfully. “But our queen has asked us to at least give some thought to it, and I agreed to heed her. We owe her just as much, do we not? The realm is on the brink of war, Harwin- we cannot pretend that whatever decision we make, whether it be to support Rhaenyra or join ranks with the Usurper, will be entirely free of consequence.”

Harwin sighed, making him sound even more tired than you already knew him to be. “I know, My Love. But conceding to these terms would be foolish at best, and could spell disaster for our family at worst… Did you read of their intentions for Luciya?

A grimace that sprang to your lips at the thought. Still you persisted. “She would have a title of her own…”

“And though I think she is equal to her brothers in deserving as much, and though I believe with my whole heart that she would grow to be just as capable as her mother in shouldering the responsibility that would come along with it, would any of it be truly worth the price we would pay? The price she would pay? We would be selling our daughter to your foul cousin’s son. Is that something you could make peace with? … Whether or not you’d be able to stomach it eventually, I do not think I ever could.”

You suspected Harwin would have a difficult time coming to terms with any betrothal arrangement for your daughter, but the point he was attempting was fair. If the proposed betrothal and subsequent marriage went through, Luciya would be nothing but a pawn in the long-standing and twisted game your cousin Lord Garrett Redwyne had been attempting to engage you in for the better part of twenty years. If wed to Luciya, the young Lord Justan would inevitably become Lord Tyrell in all but name. And far be it from your cousin to rise above attempting to exercise control over his son as a means to achieve his own ends.

“I detest the very thought of it, Dearest. But they are both young, and would not have to wed for some time. And in the meantime, I would still rule in Highgarden as regent. Ten years, if not more, is ample time for us to find a way to undermine the betrothal. We could agree to the terms now, and make our own arrangement, one more agreeable to us all, for Luciya after.”

“And how would such scheming transpire, when your every move will be scrutinized by an advisor of the Usurper’s choosing?”

It was your turn to sigh. Though sleep did not call to you, your mind felt suddenly heavy. Your eyes fell to your hands, where your fingers weaved in and out of one another with absentminded worry. “I understand that all I have said may seem futile. But I am only wanting to ensure we have discussed this matter thoroughly.”

“That you are attempting to see any good at all in this egregious proposal from the dowager queen speaks to more than just that.”

Your fidgeting hands stilled when Harwin’s gently captured them. You took a moment to watch your entwined hands, before looking up to meet his gaze.

Harwin’s eyes held nothing but love and concern. It was a damning combination that had proved you as more than a willing victim to his multitude of persuasions time and time again. It was so moving- practically overwhelming, really- that it was very tempting to look away. But you could not.

“What is on your mind?” he pleaded. “If you have any doubts, share them with me. There is no need for you to shoulder such burdens alone.”

Never, in all your years, had you doubted your decision to support Rhaenyra as the successor to her father’s throne. Nearly twenty years past, your own father, joining many other lords and ladies of Westeros, publicly swore such an oath. When he’d passed, your brother had done the same.

And when fate had placed the lordship of House Tyrell upon your own shoulders, you too had made such an oath. Now, you were bound to Rhaenyra’s cause by honor. Honor you had inherited, both by the name of House Tyrell and by the actions of your father and brother, and honor you had intended to carve for yourself. You had knelt before King Viserys and publicly swore that you, your house, and each and every one of your bannermen would uphold Princess Rhaenyra as King Viserys’s one, true heir.

Even as the years passed, and when not one, not two, but three sons had been born to King Viserys since your father’s oath had been made, doing anything but keeping the honorable word of House Tyrell was simply unfathomable. The thought of breaking the oath you and your predecessors had made had never, ever crossed your mind.

Until today.

It was no mere whim that tempted you to break your oath. Just the thought of betraying Rhaenyra was nearly painful. So harsh was the idea, that it almost outweighed the fear that her inevitable wrath would inspire.

But the core issue at hand was not of your own fate, or even your husband’s. You did not think yourself as strong as Rhaenyra; having to bury any one of your children just might destroy you. And Rhaenyra had pleaded with you to consider all of your options. If betraying a friend of many years and sacrificing whatever semblance of honor House Tyrell still had could ensure the safety and survival of your children, why would you not consider it?

You were a Tyrell long before you had become Harwin’s wife. As the lady of your house, you owed just as much to the Tyrell name as Harwin owed to that of House Strong. You and Harwin were blessed with a union that was mutually agreeable, and working together to further the interest of both your houses proved easy more times than it did not. But ultimately, the fate of House Tyrell, and the furthering of its line, rested upon your shoulders alone.

Becoming fully entrenched in a war was a gamble, and a risky one at that. Whatever glory House Tyrell could possibly earn from bloodshed in a quest to restore the rightful heir to the Iron Throne would be all for nought if you paid for it with the lives of any of your children. What was the point in furthering the grandeur of the Tyrell legacy if there was no one left to inherit it?

…

Neutrality was not an option, so it was a shame that Alicent’s terms were simply unacceptable. Not only were the terms demanding, but you had little to no faith in her ability to keep whatever petty promises she had made. Perhaps her intentions, however misguided as they were, were as pure as she suggested in her letter… But Otto Hightower’s certainly were not. And, as Aegon’s supposedly chosen Hand of the King, it would only be a matter of time before that forked tongue of his earned him the Usurper’s ear and trust. Whatever power the dowager queen believed she may still have of her drunkard of a son would undoubtedly dwindle with time.

Your family’s safety could not be guaranteed, regardless of what Targaryen heir House Tyrell chose to support. But you knew, beyond all other doubts you may have held, that you would not meekly step aside and let others dictate your fate. You would not sign away the future of your children to save your own neck. And you would not be bullied into silent obedience.

“I am bound to House Tyrell, as you are to House Strong- but I will not side against you in this. We must be united in our decision.” You lowered your eyes, your line of sight falling upon your intertwined hands once more. “We will support Rhaenyra, as we have both sworn to do.”

“But?” Harwin encouraged.

“We cannot lose. Rhaenyra must succeed.”

The unspoken sentiment behind your words clung heavily in the air between you.

Failing to win the war would mark you both, along with Rhaenyra, and any other of her supporters, for certain death. And you had an eerie suspicion that the Usurper’s method of choice to place you into the hands of the Stranger would likely be more fiery in nature than merciful. None of you, not even the children, would be likely to escape the resulting flames of his ire.

Harwin’s grip on your hand tightened. It should have been almost uncomfortable, but at that moment, it was particularly grounding.

“She will. If war is to come, so be it. But when the grounds have been scorched, the flames have dwindled, and when nothing but embers are all that remain, Rhaenyra will be the one atop the Iron Throne.”

You let out a joyless laugh. “You say it so simply. It almost makes me want to believe you.”

“Then believe.”

Something about Harwin’s insistent and clearly intentional flippancy of the matter did wonders to shatter the tension that had been built. You let out a half-heartedly frustrated huff and turned to look at him with narrow eyes.

“You are far braver than I to place so much faith in Rhaenyra’s imminent victory.”

“Nay, I doubt that very much… Although, perhaps I am better at feigning my courage.”

Despite everything, you found a small genuine smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. “Perhaps you have chosen the wrong path in life then. A fancy for acting would have suited a traveling performer far better than it would a lord.”

Harwin grimaced playfully, the thought crafting a rather amusing image in both of your minds. Harwin, in colorful garments, performing dramatically, and most definitely comedically, for an audience? It was impossible not to snicker at the thought.

“Though you propose quite the humorous painting of my life, taking such a path as that would not have led me to you.”

“Some would argue that there is more to life than finding love, Harwin.”

“Perhaps some would. But a life without love, and a life without you, is not one I’d care to live.”

You smiled through the overwhelming feeling his flattery so often bestowed upon you.

“Shall I?” Harwin questioned, raising Queen Alicent’s letter with his free hand.

The flames in the fireplace across the room were very demure by then, but certainly still hot enough to fulfill Harwin’s intent. Once you confirmed your consent with a quick nod, Harwin rose from the bed for the second time, letter in hand.

As he approached the fire, your mind felt suddenly more at ease. Harwin was willing to admit that supporting Rhaenyra was not without risk- but you both knew it was the honorable thing to do. Loyalty was earned, not bought. Rhaenyra had won the loyalty of House Strong and House Tyrell before either you or Harwin had ever had a true say in the matter. Your queen’s victory was not guaranteed, but Harwin was confident in her ultimate success. It was hard not to take heart from his steadfast belief.

But as soon as Harwin tossed the letter into the fire, and the parchment began to light aflame before being reduced to ash, words from your last conversation with the dowager queen echoed in recesses of your mind.

“…When loyalties become one’s only purpose for being, you will be lost to the bigger cause. Your loved ones will soon be as good as dust, if they weren't already.”

You shook the eerie thought from your mind as Harwin returned to bed with a smile on his face.

“Now,” he began, plopping rather unceremoniously back onto the mattress. His unruly curls fell haphazardly into his face as he propped up his arm to support his head. Finally, he turned to face you. “How are we to convey our unyielding support to the queen? A formal letter, signed and sealed? A dramatic declaration before the court?... Or, presenting her with Otto Hightower’s head on a spike, perhaps?”

You rolled your eyes with light hearted scoff as you turned over and mirrored his posture. “No such theatrics will be required, I’m afraid. She intends to call a council meeting tomorrow morning. Our attendance will be sufficient in reassuring her that she has our support.”

Harwin hummed thoughtfully, his eyes glistening and soft smile unwavering as he looked over at you. “Why, morning can’t be more than a few hours away by now…”

You reached over to absentmindedly brush some of his curls up and away from his face. “So it would seem.”

The two of you fell into a comfortable silence.

“Now would be the most opportune time to rest,” Harwin admitted. “‘Tis almost a shame I do not feel tired in the slightest.”

“Is it?”

Harwin eyed you unabashedly, and without a trace of shame. “No.”

A freeing laugh escaped your lips as he unceremoniously pulled you closer to him, his lips brushing against your neck.

Unlike what felt like a leisurely pace of a day before, something in the air of the new dawn suggested that something meaningful was about to transpire on Dragonstone.

The shared guest chambers of young Tyrell-Strong lords, while nearly cavernous in nature due to the dark and cold stone walls, were still comfortable enough. And despite the rather eventful last few weeks, Derrik found that he had slept more easily there than he could recall in all his recent memory. With the warmer weather and changing season rapidly approaching, the luxurious furs provided were more than sufficient to keep warm. And that was just as well- fire of any sorts still left Derrik, and his younger brother Selwin, feeling fidgety and anxious. And leaving any fire unattended, even a small one, whilst they slept was simply not an option.

The fire at Harrenhal had been many years ago. Some of the finer details of that night had been lost to memory, but some of the more harrowing moments Derrik had seen that night were stuck with him still. The horrid images had never strayed too far from his mind.

Perhaps they never would.

After a surprisingly fruitful night of rest, Derrik and Selwin had risen on their own before the sun. Without much direction otherwise, it was not long before the elder of the two suggested they meander back out into Dragonstone’s halls. Selwin had been a bit apprehensive about it, just as he had been the day before. But a few quick words of reassurance from Derrik was all the motivation his younger brother needed to ultimately agree. It wasn’t that Derrik desired to cause trouble- it was quite the opposite, in fact. Besides, Selwin was far more inherently likely to find himself in mischief than Derrik ever had been.

But something was brewing within the realm, and even on Dragonstone, isolated from the mainland, he could feel it just the same. And as Prince Daemon had so tactlessly pointed out the night before, Derrik was near the age his father Harwin had been when he had first come to King’s Landing. His father’s knightship had followed shortly thereafter.

It wasn’t a knighthood Derrik sought, but the Rogue Prince’s comment had reiterated what Derrik had known for some time: he was no longer a child. Most anyone in the realm, if asked, would readily agree that he was a man. Even if he was a considerably young one at that.

And with the realm on the fringes of war, he longed to be more. He wished to be more than some entitled young lord idly passing the time, waiting in the periphery of the political arena until the Stranger met with one of his parents and the torch was finally passed off to him. Be it House Strong or House Tyrell, the holdings of one was to be his inheritance. So too would be the name. And Derrik longed to be of use in whatever way he could to help his family and secure their safety- their survival.

Though some holed up just across Blackwater Bay, over in King’s Landing, there were no immediate enemies to stand up against. Even if there were, Dragonstone was as well-guarded and patrolled as the Red Keep at the moment.

All of this led Derrik to the inevitable conclusion that the most viable way in which he could be of use to the family was to conduct a bit of information reconnaissance.

The rising sun’s rays had yet to reach most parts of the castle as the Strong boys’ soft footsteps echoed off the stone corridors. Though many armed guards were undoubtedly awake and about, if the queen and the rest of the royal family had yet to rise, it was easy to infer that the protectors would be more centralized near their living quarters instead.

They had come across the kitchens during their perusal of Dragonstone the day before. What had seemed like an observation of little import at the time had proved to be quite the opposite come the new day.

Because of their intent, or perhaps by just pure sheer luck, Derrik and Selwin made it to the kitchens without having been detected. As the boys descended the stairs on light feet, all the usual sounds of a kitchen coming alive could be heard from within the archway at the bottom of the landing. There was an unspoken balance to be struck- the two knew they needed to close enough to the bottom of the stairs to hear anything of significance, but the closer they drew, the more they risked being seen from those within. Regardless, it was a hurdle that both of the Strong boys were mutually agreeable to tackle.

Once they could reasonably hear the voices from within the kitchens, Derrik silently gestured for Selwin to follow his lead. The two pressed their backs against the nearby wall in an effort to remain out of view. After a few more careful paces forward, the two paused and listened with bated breath.

“... -Maester Gerardys has requested hot water be brought where?”

“The Sea Dragon Tower.”

“But I have already taken out all the pots of hot water the royal family requires for the morning. Why must I drag another all the way over there? Aren’t our guests being accommodated in the Windwyrm?”

"The Sea Dragon Tower is where they have put him.”

“Him?”

“The Sea Snake!”

At this, Derrick exchanged an intrigued look with his younger brother briefly as the conversation from within the kitchens continued.

“The Sea Snake? When did he arrive?”

“His ship docked no more than a few hours ago. Her Grace the Queen thought it best to keep his lodgings closeby to her own.”

That was not surprising to Derrik at all. It was an ill-kept secret that Lord Corlys’s fleet and well-seasoned sailors would be a boon of great magnitude to whichever Targaryen he ultimately chose to support in their vye for the Iron Throne.

“Princess Rhaenys has been with him since they arrived; I heard she refuses to leave his side. Poor woman. She might just be one of the strongest women in all the Seven Kingdoms, but I have always said her only weaknesses were her husband and their children- gods rest their souls.”

“How does Lord Corlys fare? Does Maester Gerardys think he will live?”

“He suspects as much. Although, with all the great hopes placed in his healing capabilities, I do not know if he would dare say otherwise, even if it were true. Regardless, as it stands, Maester Gerardys says the wounds are certain to haunt Lord Corlys for the rest of his days.”

“Do you think he will be well enough to attend the council meeting Her Grace has called today?”

A meeting with the queen’s council was to be held? That was news to Derrik. Judging by the surprised look on his face, it was news to Selwin as well.

“Perhaps. Maester Gerardys said he was lucid at some point, although it comes and goes. If he is awake, I am certain Lord Corlys will at least make an attempt to be present. Although, I would not be surprised if Princess Rhaenys does not try to dissuade him, if only to ensure he continues to get some rest.”

“Well, the Sea Snake’s presence at her council meeting is not the only one Her Grace will be anticipating, I would venture.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I ought not tell-”

“Then you best not.”

“-However, yesterday morning, I had gone to the queen’s chambers to retrieve the pots of hot water that I had brought in earlier that morning. When I arrived, the doors were closed, and I realized that Her Grace was present.”

“And so, you left, so as not to disturb her?”

“That was my original intent. But then I overheard Her Grace from within, and she was speaking to another-”

A gasp. “Surely you did not-”

“-I did not mean to, but my curiosity got the best of me, I suppose. I overheard Her Grace speaking with Lady Tyrell.”

“That is what all this fuss is about? Why, that is hardly surprising at all. The two of them are known to be close.”

“The Usurper knows this as well. Apparently, Dowager Queen Alicent sent Lady Tyrell and Lord Strong peace terms on his behalf, all in the hopes of persuading them to join his side, and to turn cloak against Her Grace.”

Another, if not more appalling, surprise. After another quick glance at his younger brother, he determined that Selwin looked just as disturbed at the notion as Derrik felt. Neither of their parents had made any mention of such terms… not that he would have wanted them to, or believed they would, ever accept such an offer.

“That is a bold move, to be sure, particularly when their family is being hosted by Her Grace here. But how is any of it relevant to the council meeting today?”

“Her Grace strongly advised Lady Tyrell to discuss the matter thoroughly with Lord Strong. If they attend the council meeting today, she will interpret that as reassurance that she has both of their houses’ support.”

“... And if Lady Tyrell and Lord Strong do not attend the council meeting?”

“Her Grace shall have her answer either way.”

“Please?”

A moment of silence was followed by a soft, yet regretful, sigh.

“I am sorry, but I do not think it wise.”

The hopeful looks on Derrik and Selwin’s faces fell. In the chambers their parents were given for their own accommodations, it appeared that you and Harwin had had great success in making yourselves feel right at home. The two of you sat at the table near the fireplace, breaking your fast. On Harwin’s lap, Luciya sat with a smile, taking food off of his plate as she pleased.

The scene was not unlike one Derrik might have witnessed at home. But Highgarden was leagues away. And beneath the seemingly calm exterior, he could sense something was amiss between you. The sun had just risen, and yet, your shoulders were tense. Even Harwin, who was normally quite expressive and joyful around Luciya, was more quiet and reserved than normal.

Not even Derrik’s revelation that the Sea Snake had arrived in Dragonstone, and was believed to attend said council meeting, was enough to sway you to give in to your sons’ request. It did, however, cause a look of surprise to flash across your and Harwin’s faces- a fact that Derrik allowed himself to take some small joy from.

“How did you learn of the council meeting?” you inquired, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at your sons as you refilled your goblet.

“I- We- It is of little consequence,” Derrik sputtered, ultimately deciding against confessing the truth, lest he lose all of his leverage, existing and potential. “The queen has called for one, has she not?”

“She has,” you answered carefully.

“And you and Father have been invited to attend?”

“Aye,” Harwin supplied.

“Will you attend the meeting?” Selwin chimed in. “We know the Usurper and Dowager Queen Alicent have sent you terms to try and win your support. Do you mean to accept them?”

You cleared your throat, narrowly avoiding choking on what Derrik suspected was wine. Once you had regained your composure, your lips settled into a frown.

Across the table from you, Harwin did a double take, though he was still mindful to steady Luciya as he did so. “How did the two of you come to learn about the dowager queen’s letter?”

“What terms the Usurper offered in exchange for the support of House Tyrell and House Strong?”

“Does it matter?” Selwin countered, giving Derrik a look of bewilderment. “We cannot accept them!”

“We?” You echoed, chuckling dryly. “I do not recall the two of you being addressed in the dowager queen’s letter. It was only addressed to your father and I. Was it not, Dearest?”

Harwin merely hummed, seemingly finding Lucyia’s attempt to snag a loaf of bread off his plate suddenly far more interesting than the conversation at hand. After a moment of her struggling, he gave her a helping hand, ripping off a portion of the loaf and depositing it into her small hands swiftly. The frown upon your lips softened, eventually giving way to a fond smile as you watched the scene from across the table.

“It may not have been addressed to us, but if you intend to agree to them-” Derrik held out a hand to stop his brother from protesting beside him- “we deserve a say in that decision as well.”

The room fell into a brief, uneasy silence. It was not often that any of you had argued with one another. Every family had squabbles, or at the very least disagreements, and your family was no exception. Even so, disagreements were a rare occurrence. You and Harwin had instilled respect and understanding in both Derrik and Selwin from a young age. Discussion, not aversion, of problems had always been the example set for the Strong boys.

But the stressful events over the past few weeks, combined with tiring travel and an undeniable uncertainty about the future, weighed very heavily over you all. And Derrik knew that if he did not redirect the conversation, and soon, an argument would be the least of his concerns. Stirring up unnecessary strife would not be helpful in the slightest, particularly when to be of help was the only thing he had had on his mind that morning.

“Is that so?”

Though you appeared somewhat affronted, based on your raised eyebrows, crossed arms,and puffed up chest, the neutrality of your tone betrayed you. You might have been asking Derrik to explain his rationale- but you were not demanding it. Instead of forcing him into a corner he had so neatly placed himself in front of, it almost seemed as though you were giving him an opportunity to free himself. It was as though you were posing a challenge to him.

A test.

“Selwin and I’s cooperation with the terms are essential to the Usurper’s proposal, are they not?”

When the contemplative look on your face faltered slightly, Derrik’s assumption was proven correct. Though you recovered quickly enough, he took the opportunity your slip presented to press on.

“You and Father are too close to the queen. Perhaps Aegon is as daft as everyone jests him to be, but anyone with their wits about them would know that Otto Hightower is anything but. And if he is counseling the Usurper, he would be certain to impart to his liege that, should you and Father be welcomed back into his good graces, Aegon would be foolish to trust the two of you outright. However, if Selwin and I were to be installed in your places-”

“I will admit to this,” you interjected, holding up a hand. “Dowager Queen Alicent does mean to displace us both. After we will have sworn our allegiance to Aegon, she would have your father and I renounce our titles. But what would transpire with the succession beyond that is not what the two of you may think.”

Selwin asked quietly, “What would happen?”

You looked away from Derrik then, turning to Selwin with a softer look in your eyes. Though the root of which was still unknown to either of the Strong boys, you offered Selwin a sympathetic smile. “‘Tis nothing I would burden you with the details of, My Darling.”

“And far too insulting to repeat,” Harwin agreed under his breath, breaking off another piece of bread from the loaf and handing it over to Luciya.

Anxiously, Derrik prodded, “So, you will not accept the Usurper’s offer?”

“No.” Your attention shifted once more to Harwin, who gave you a reassuring nod that was so subtle, Derrik might have missed it, had he been looking anywhere else. “As we have sworn to do many years ago, your father and I will support Rhaenyra as the one true Queen of the Seven Kingdoms… But as for the two of you, neither of you have yet made any such oaths. And as long as that remains true, your presence at the council meeting this morning will not be required.”

Gods, you were stubborn. Fortunately for Derrik, it was a trait he had inherited from you. A trait he was rather proud of.

“It may not be required, but let us attend anyway. Let us observe, let us help. I wish to be more than a mere pawn in all of this. As much as you and father may try, neither of you can protect us forever. If the realm is to go to war, we will be vulnerable. It is time for you to teach us what you kno, and to help prepare us for the responsibilities that Selwin and I will one day inherit. Arm us with the tools and knowledge that we need to fight for this family… to survive.”

For a few long moments, all was quiet, save the soft crackling of the nearby fire. Harwin’s eyes flickered between Derrik and Selwin, and you. However, your focus was reserved for your sons alone. Your eyes narrowed, your lips in a tight line, the look on your face was ruminative. 

Meanwhile, Derrik stood tall. He met your strong gaze with what he hoped was a look just as firm. Selwin shifted on his feet beside him, visibly uneasy with the tension.

Even Luciya went still in Harwin’s lap, her interest in the food having been temporarily abandoned in favor of taking in the suddenly silent shift in the room. Her wide eyes flitted to Harwin, to you, and to Derrik and Selwin with a speed Derrik had not thought was possible.

  …

Finally, you rose from your seat. Wordlessly, you stepped around the table, plucked Luciya from Harwin’s hold and settled her into your own arms. Then, you turned, and walked across the room. You came to a stop before your two sons, and gave them each an appraising look.

“So often you are soft spoken. It has been far too easy for it to slip my mind just how clever you truly are,” you told Derrik, gentle pride lacing your tone. “But I needed this reminder. As I also needed to be reminded that you and Selwin are no longer boys, but young men… Will the two of you forgive me?”

Derrik did not hesitate. “There is nothing to forgive, Mother. I know you mean well.”

“And still, I will strive to do better,” you promised the both of them. Balancing Luciya in one arm, you reached out with the other, and grasped one of Derrik’s hands in your own to punctuate your point. After a brief squeeze of his hand, which Derrik could only interpret as a form of gratitude, you turned to Selwin.

Selwin watched silently as you smoothed out the collar of his doublet, which had likely gotten disheveled during the escapade to the kitchens earlier. Once you were satisfied with your efforts, you smiled at him, sparking a smile that mirrored your own to be returned.

“See to it that you tidy yourselves up a bit before the council meeting. It would not do for any member of House Tyrell or House Strong to appear anything less than impeccable.”

“Yes, Mother,” Selwin vowed, his smile deepening as he and Derrik’s victory had begun to be realized within his mind.

“And do not speak unless you are spoken to,” you added seriously. “We narrowly avoided a spat with the Rogue Prince last night, but I do not believe we are fortunate enough to get away with such a feat twice in two dawns.”

Derrik nodded obediently. “We shall keep quiet.”

“Good… Now, I ought to return Luciya to Bryna’s care.” You raised your daughter further up on your hip, and met her inquisitive gaze. “Unless you wish to attend the council meeting as well, Sweetling?”

Luciya said nothing, and once she realized that all eyes were upon her, she turned and shyly buried her head into your shoulder. Laughingly lightly, you smiled at your sons once more before heading towards the door.

Once you had disappeared from view, Derrik waited an additional few moments to allow for you to make your way down the corridor. Once he was certain he would not be overheard, Derrik turned to Harwin and raised an eyebrow.

“We could have used your support, Father.” For a moment, Derrik had lost all hope that you would make any concessions at all.

Harwin merely smirked. “You should know well by now that your Mother and I are of the same mind on most matters. And even when we were not, I have better sense than to question her judgment in front of the two of you…. There are not many things in this life that instill any sort of fear within me, my sons, but the wrath of your mother is certainly one of them. I can only hope you heed this lesson for when you have wives of your own one day.”

Selwin rolled his eyes playfully as he crossed the room to take the seat that you had abandoned. Derrik followed after him at a leisurely pace.

“Besides,” Harwin continued, pausing briefly to finish off his goblet of wine, “I was led to believe, as young men, that the two of you were more than capable of having a simple conversation with your mother, no?”

Derrik groaned tiredly at his father’s light hearted teasing.

A/N: Thank you for reading!🖤 Next part is planned to be posted 11/23.

[lovebunnie]

i couldnt get anything really accomplished for this weeks prompt (clothes sharing, “i know what that smile means”, fav relationship other than hawktim) so instead im just posting all the snippets i started and didnt finish and will probably never finish <3

made for the ft valentines week by @fellow-travelers-events

It was not often that Marcus and Tim would have a night out with just the two of them. They were individuals as such that their circumstances did not usually permit those outings; Marcus was known to spend most of his time with Frankie at the club, and Tim was practically Hawkins’ shadow whenever he was let off the leash.

Marcus did not think it was his place to tell Hawk how to go about his affairs, but when he found Tim by himself one night at the Cozy Corner, he decided it was his duty to let him know what it meant to get involved with Hawkins.

Tim was sat at the bar, head propped up by one hand with the other lazily drawing patterns in the condensation on his glass. Marcus noticed the drink was half empty.

“Mind if I sit?” Marcus asked as he walked beside Tim.

After a fleeting look, Tim relaxed and allowed his shoulders to slump back down. “Yea, sure.” After a moment, his gaze did a double take. “Marcus?”

“Hey Tim, didn’t expect to see you here by yourself.” Marcus waved down a not-Frankie bartender and ordered his usual.

“I needed some space,” Tim replied sourly.

“Not a lot of people would think of a bar as a place to go for space.”

“It was either this or church.”

Marcus chuckled softly. He enjoyed Tim’s company and was fond of his wide eye naïveté, it made him a refreshing conversation partner as opposed to the seasoned politicians he was used to.

Tim’s fingers stopped and he let out a sigh not unlike an old but loyal dog. “He hasn’t called me and I’m not sure what to do.”

“Did you hope you’d catch him here?” Marcus asked.

“Not hoped…” Tim said. “More like dreaded.”

———

It was Mary who was the first to notice.

Hawk should have known better than to think he could extract himself from Tim’s arms at a normal time this morning. Seeing his Skippy sick as a dog and moping around the apartment left him feeling more clingy; he even told Tim to forget trying to survive in his dingy little place and to start healing at his place instead. Tim’s eyes had widened and his jaw dropped a bit, and Hawk could get used to a sight like that.

The fact that Hawk was getting this much enjoyment out of Tim’s sickness should have felt wrong, but he couldn’t deny the joy of having Tim near. Hawk made him dinners and got him medicine, he got to bundle Tim in his arms while in bed and fall asleep intertwined like vines. It felt right, sharing his space with Tim.

Unfortunately, when spaces mix, however, things tended to get confused in the shuffle. Case in point: Hawk was wearing Tim’s hat.

They had very similar hats, admittedly. Almost every man worth anything in DC had a wide brimmed hat in their closet almost assuredly bought from the same store. Men’s fashion among his peers, Hawk felt, could stand a refresh.

But the fact of the matter was that Hawk walked into his office wearing Tim’s hat on his head, and Mary was the first one to notice. Or atleast, the first one brave enough to mention it directly.

“Good morning Miss Johnson, Miss Addison,” Hawk said upon opening the door.

“Good morning Mr. Fuller,” Miss Addison chirped. “I had your mail placed on your desk for you to look through.”

Hawk gave her a fleeting smile and shifted his gaze to Mary, who was not looking him in the eye. “Miss Johnson?”

Her gaze snapped to his. “Yes sir, Mr. Fuller. I just remembered I had a question about your 3 pm meeting.” She gestured to his office, and Hawk held the door open for her to enter first. Following behind, he closed the door on Miss Addison’s jealous expression, mouth pinched in displeasure.

“Are you okay?” Hawk asked her as he began to take his coat off.

“You’re wearing Tim’s hat,” she replied.

It made him stop. Mary’s eyes were wide and filled with an emotion Hawk could not recognize, one that he was unused to seeing on her face.

Slowly, Hawk took the hat off from the top of his head and felt the brim, noticing the subtle shade difference. It was absolutely not a hat Hawk owned; the crudely scribbled “TL” on the inside was proof enough.

Hawk gently turned the hat around in his hands. This morning he had been in such a rush to get to work that he stumbled through the morning routine. Haphazardly, Hawk had grabbed his things and the idea that his fingers felt right in taking Tim’s hat, as though it was interchangeable with his own, gave him pause.

“I know what that smile means.”

He looked up to Mary’s gentle face. He hadn’t even been aware he had been smiling. “The one that means that this color doesn’t go with my tie?”

“The one that tells me where he is right now, who’s sheets he is currently warming.”

“A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

She arched her eyebrow. “The clock reads 8:09 to you too, right?”

“It’s just a hat, Mary.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not. And you know it.”

———

Marcus was tired of hospitals.

It was a sunny day when Marcus stepped through sliding doors and into the familiar corridors. It was early in the morning and even though he had class to teach later, Marcus made sure to carve out time in his day to visit friends.

After years of watching peers fall ill, if he never had to step foot in front of a receptionist office to sign a form requesting visitation access, it would be too soon. The day the nurse greeted him by name felt like an inevitable failure of some sort; helpless in the face of tragedy, no matter how many articles he published.

Frankie told him to keep the word going, to not let the death toll make his efforts feel useless. Their time together had allowed Marcus to grow softer around the edges, no longer ready to bolt. Frankie made him want to settle, to stay. He felt kept.

As Marcus cuddled him in the nights and held him close to his chest, he counted the breaths until he convinced himself Frankie was safe. He didn’t need to write novels about how paralyzing it was to think about one day losing Frankie, he didn’t need any words at all. As the days went on, Marcus found himself with more and more words to speak, a thought in his head he had to dispel. Too many years passed where he bit his tongue and now they were crawling back up his throat.

When Marcus got the news about Tim, he and Frankie ate dinner silently, once again not needing words.

Because it hurt more than anything. Over the years, he and Frankie had gotten to know much more about Tim other than his previous political endeavors and their shared history with Hawkins. There was a spitfire beneath his tender heart, righteous fury at injustice that made him close friends with Frankie. He was invited to dinner frequently and was unofficially given the title of godfather to Jerome, Tim felt more like family than his own father.

Tim was a good person, even when the world had not been kind to him. It made the news of the diagnosis hit that much harder.

“Tim called,” Frankie had said once Marcus walked through the door and hung his hat up. One look at his face and that was all that was needed.

Watching Tim slowly get worse and worse was utter agony because Tim was never one to take things lying down. He did his work from a hospital bed even when Frankie had to rip a pen from his cold hands.

“Come on, it will only take a second-“

“Tim, it's never just a second with you.”

“This is my job, I can’t just not work!”

“I’ll call the office and request a sick day for you.”

It was a sunny day when Marcus walked down the halls before work. It had been a few days since Hawk had called and showed up in San Francisco. No one expected him to stay and they certainly did not expect him to take on the caretaking role.

Marcus had known Hawk too long to be subjective about him. Hawk was selfish and a liar, he made a mess out of nice things to sate his own appetite. He saw right through his attempts at deception.

This meant that Marcus knew Hawk loved Tim before even Hawk was aware. The polygraph may have sealed the deal, but the looks he gave to Tim when he wasn’t looking were not exactly subtle.

[cisnecorazon]

folie a deux, pt. 1/?

a donquixote marines au one-shot. i can’t even pretend that this little thing isn’t a love letter to my very favorite author of one piece fanfiction, whose work has left me in tears, laughter and with more smiles than i can count.

general warnings for prose, violence, drowning, my first real shake at attempting to write doflamingo, haki usage and expansion, and the usual donquixote weirdness.

—

This was what Doffy lived for, Rosinante knew. Doffy lived for the shuddering of their ship, their loyal and true Matanzas, as nearly half of her thirty guns pointed the empty eyes of their canons to starboard. At the dark veneer of the pirate sloop that skulked in the water at their three ‘o clock— and fired. 

Rosinante knew that Doffy didn’t even mind the way the cannons punched through the air just feet away from him, and neither did he mind the gunpowder that fluttered down to rest on the arms of his hot-pink suit, or the shoulders of his white Commander’s coat. It reminded Rosinante of the way the dying embers and ash of the fireworks shows they had grown up attending would land in their hair and on their eyelashes like snowflakes, and the smell of it would linger for days afterwards. 

This smell, too, would linger. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t just be the reek of gunpowder that clung to their clothes before the morning was chased away by the noon sun. 

“Rosi--” His brother’s voice cut through Rosinante’s fit of nostalgia like a knife, all sharp and warm, like it had already been carving today. It hadn’t, yet— but it would. Most assuredly before the sun reached its highest point in the sky. “--You feel them, don’t you? The brutes intend to attempt to board.” Doflamingo’s voice was lifted by the amused smile on his face. 

Of course, Rosinante felt them. There were five of them that had circled behind their beloved Matanzas, in a (pathetic, Doffy crowed with his mind,) pitiful little wooden dinghy that barely survived the wake of their Navy frigate ship, much less the sailing of cannon balls. It seemed that their intended targets meant to take a Naval officer hostage. 

The last-ditch efforts of a doomed crew, whose captain Rosinante could hear cursing their very hearts, names and souls even now, above the tooth-rattling bombardment that the Matanzas was currently unleashing upon the damned pirate sloop. Rosinante pointedly shuttered the captain’s fury, his rage, his grief away, and his own self behind a cloak of mental Calm, as was his second nature when it came to the death throes of any ship and her crew— friend and foe alike, Rosinante felt the bleeding all the same. 

“They’re coming aboard now,” agreed Rosinante, who had to crane his neck back to look up at his brother as he stood, taller and larger than life, on the wooden side rail of their ship. “Port side-- eight ‘o clock. I trust you’ll be saying hello to Captain Ranson in person?” 

The earring in Doflamingo’s left ear reflected blindingly as he turned his head to give his brother a knowing smirk. 

“But of course! Why, I can hear poor, impatient Captain Ranson crying out my name from even here. He’s positively dying to finally meet me.” The sleeves of Doflamingo’s Navy coat and the tail of the feather boa round his neck were already tugging out to sea, and the ship that was groaning under its own weight, helplessly circling itself in the ocean like an insect caught between surface tension and drowning. Rosinante didn’t wish to know more— not when Doflamingo would be sure to share all the details later, whether Rosinante wanted to hear them or not. 

“Make them regret sullying our lovely Matanzas as if she were a common barmaid to be groped at, won’t you, Rosi?” Doflamingo said before stepping heavily out into the air. His leather shoes landed on the near-invisible web of strings that would carry him towards his rendezvous with Captain Ranson. 

It wasn’t a question, really— Rosinante didn’t take it that way, anyway. It wasn’t as if Doffy had to command him to do his duty, after all. Even if he was acting Captain of this vessel as Commander. 

And he did have a point, as sharp as that point was, about the men placing their hands and boots on their dear ship. Rosinante took a long drag from the cigarette between his lips. 

“You hardly have to ask.” He pointed out, a bit miffed regardless. Doflamingo easily swayed on an invisible tightrope, threw back his golden head, and laughed at his younger brother’s expense. 

“I hardly was.” He pointed out in return, with a mouthful of fond teeth. Neither point needed clarifying, but this was the usual song and dance of Donquixote Doflamingo and Rosinante. 

The song, and the dance, would end unfinished for this round. 

Really, the Donquixote brothers, one a Commander and the other a Lieutenant Commander of the Matanzas, should have been better prepared against a crew of pirates who openly proclaimed their hatred of Devil Fruit users. For the bullet that fired from the gun peering just over the edge of the deck was sea foam in color, and was much too fast and true to avoid, even for a Lieutenant Commander. 

The sea prism bullet hit Rosinante in the breast like an Armament-clad fist. He would have chosen the latter, if given the chance— even if that fist had belonged to Garp himself. Sir Garp’s Fists of Love had never leeched Rosinante’s strength quite like this, had never given him vertigo that made his stomach lurch along with his body... 

He staggered-- lurched-- and fell backwards, over the railing, into the blue, without so much as a gasp. 

Rosinante couldn’t even use his Calm-Calm Fruit to dull the shout that ripped from Doflamingo’s throat and chest, if he had wanted to. And wasn’t that just like them— for Rosinante to die with his brother’s anger and helplessness ringing in his ears, like he had been meant to die that one fateful day? When the then-three of them had been strung up for the Heavens to look down on? 

To have supposedly rejected him and those like him, the sea opened her arms to Rosinante like she had been waiting for him to come home— and swallowed him up in one greedy gulp. The rush of foam and water took Rosinante’s breath away, especially in the one way that mattered most, but oh... what peace. From here, he couldn’t make out a single word, or feeling, or intent, or snuff of life, and it was... joyous, to be suspended in a calm that Rosinante struggled to recreate only when it was for himself. 

Perhaps the sea had never been as unkind as they say, wondered Rosinante as he burped up the last of the air in his squeezing lungs. How gently she holds what’s again hers. 

The hand that thrust through the water and took hold of Rosinante’s shirt was anything but gentle. It fisted the fabric in its found grip, and wrenched Rosinante’s entire body up, and up, and up— until the sea relinquished him with a ripple, and the sun blinded his eyes. He was unable to focus them on the teeth that gritted on the man who saved his life, but the man’s voice rang in his ears like cannon blasts heard from underwater. 

“--useless, feeble, impossible brother of mine--!” blistered Doflamingo through the cut of the seawater that dragged on his arm. He was stepping on his commanded strings as if they were a stairway, and then, he was hauling his brother’s dead weight over the thick wooden rail of their Matanzas. 

Rosinante hit her beloved deck with all the weight of a lucky day’s worth of netted fish, and perhaps it was something of a needed thing because there with the impact he was vomiting up seawater, and bile, and blood. 

And— oh. Blood. The blood wasn’t his own, Rosinante’s still-swimming head distantly realized. He almost was still swimming, but this time the ocean was a deep red, and the foam was cherry pink, and there were several bodies that had been liberated from the worry of ever drowning again. Rosinante supposed that one need not worry about drowning, or Navy men, or even the gallows if one’s head had already been separated from their body. 

He vomited again, under the withering disgust and heat of Doflamingo’s gaze. 

“So much for the ‘best Observation in the Navy,’” mocked Doffy, whose leather shoes were swimming in their own sea of heaved seawater and the dirty blood of the vermin that was still pooling in dumped buckets. 

Rosinante groaned. His nose burned with salt water and stomach acid. 

“...Fuck you, Doffy.” His voice was pathetic to his own ears, and scarcely reached those of their men, who were rushing to their side of the deck like a steady of ants out of an ant hill. 

Doflamingo tsked disapprovingly, and fisted both hands of his in the Justice at Rosinante’s back before hauling his brother up onto his unsteady feet.

“Honestly, Rosi— do you feel as pathetic as you look right now?” He admonished. He was practically holding the two of them up by himself, as he flipped Rosinante’s coat and his tie and his collars, looking for where he knew the vermin had met his target. “Flat on your face, thanks to refuse like this? Where is your pride, little brother mine? Or did you cast that into the sea as well?”

Doflamingo’s steady fingers found what they were searching for when they come back up covered in blood. He didn’t have to tell Rosinante of his intentions— it took just as much willpower for Doflamingo to reach into his brother’s flesh with some of his thinnest, strongest strings as it did for him to plunge his arm into the roiling waves after Rosi. Which made perfect sense to Rosi, for his brother had the strongest will of anyone he had ever met.  

Thus, Doflamingo plucked the cursed bullet out from its resting place nestled next to Rosinante’s clavicle in much the same way— anger and disgust coming off him in almost audible breaths, as he dropped the bloodied bullet to the deck— 

And crushed it under a black, Armed heel. 

Rosinante watched, dim and through the vertigo that was making him sway, as Doflamingo wiped his bloody fingertips on Rosi’s jacket. With his other hand, Doflamingo held onto Rosinante by the collar so that same vertigo wouldn’t send him spiraling to the floor.

...As captain Ranson was now spiraling into the ocean depths. Ah, well. He was wanted dead, or alive-- and now he was most certainly had, and dead.

With the weight of the sea prism bullet dug out of his skin, rational thought was once again possible for Rosinante. Not even the wretched thing’s absence allowed Rosi the time or the foresight to prepare himself for the assault on his Observation that was Doflamingo’s emotions. 

Anger— burning and bubbling hot, just as hot as Doffy’s hatred. Rosinante knew better than to look at these two things directly, for trying to calm their tumultuous depths would be like asking the sea for sun when the forecast warned of a hurricane. Somewhere in between them, though... smothered but bleeding, razed and raw, was what Rosinante could see plain as day. 

He was the only one who did, or could. The fear that was coiled within Doflamingo’s heart and mind like a headless snake, caring not for who or where its venom or blood splattered when it shook, was something Rosinante knew was reserved for him alone. And as he wiped at his sopping face with an even wetter sleeve, the youngest Donquixote felt shame pour hot down his throat, blooming in his chest and settling in his gut.

He knew how acutely aware Doflamingo was of the fact that Rosi saw. Their men, who busied themselves with gathering the bodies and body parts of the Ranson crew rather than get in the middle of the tongue-lashing they assumed their Lieutenant Commander was receiving, would never be capable of delving that deeply into Doflamingo’s conscious mind. 

Like many things concerning Doffy, Rosinante would see— whether he wanted to, or not. 

“I’m sorry, Doffy,” Rosinante offered up tentatively. His voice was wrecked by salt water, but Doflamingo would take his word for it like he always did, and would be placated for a time. Such was their way. “I didn’t-- I didn’t think--” 

“That goes without saying,” Doffy interrupted with a haughty raise of his lip that was a piss-poor imitation of his famous smirks. There weren’t many things that Doffy did poorly, but he could scarcely hide anything from his younger brother. Rosi, with his mop of golden hair, and his sad eyes, and his blue, tempestuous, contradictory soul.

Doflamingo couldn’t stand the sight of him, sometimes. 

“If you promise to look after yourself for once, I’ll toy with the idea of forgiving you.” 

It was a lie, and Rosinante knew it— even though Doflamingo was blessed by Heaven itself with a golden tongue, and was an excellent liar, and was also quite good at trickery and tales, and-- 

“Flattery will get you no closer to forgiveness, dearest Rosi,” said Doflamingo. But alas, Doffy was a peacock just as well as a flamingo, and Rosinante knew that he had already been forgiven for this transgression, and for the next.

Rosinante snorted, rubbing furiously at the sea water that still dribbled from his nose. 

“...Sometimes I think you only know how to take compliments.” He grunted, and would have rolled his eyes at the way a grin split Doflamingo’s face in half like a bolt of lightning if his eyes didn’t burn so much. 

Where are my cigarettes. Rosinante’s trembling hands fumbled over his person in vain. 

“Why, compliments are the only things worth hearing,” said Rosi’s big brother, with the kind of smile that could doom the most steadfast of faith. 

When Doflamingo tossed Rosinante a pack of dry cigarettes, it felt like a compliment. This time, it was Rosi’s turn to smile. 

So went the song and dance between Donquixote Doflamingo, and Donquixote Rosinante.

[kamari2038]

Scenario 004 - A Machine Connor Saga (Pt.3)(Full Saga)

I did not deem it necessary to register any additional notes except that the mission had been accomplished. Calculating my probability of surviving the fall from such a height, for any perceivable amount of time, did not cross my mind.

In the future I must not discount the probability of occurrence of any outcome, however intuitively unlikely.

The exact duration of time which passed during which I continued receiving some form of sensory input is difficult to estimate with any degree of accuracy. Most of my systems were non-operational from the moment that I hit the asphalt, but the nature which my remaining cognitive processes took on was alarming. Few rational conclusions or reliable observations resulted from this state, which is why I find CyberLife’s choice not to remove it from the memories uploaded into my new model questionable.

Some kind of manufacturing error, whether it be related or unrelated to the possible error that resulted in my survival, kept driving me to contemplate the irrational notion that I was experiencing what humans call suffering. Although most assuredly quite different from the phenomenon of human pain, this sensation was most certainly highly unfavorable. On the one hand, I seriously doubt that it would be possible for me to ever again experience something quite so intense, or for such a prolonged period of time. On the other hand, I discovered that the only effective method of alleviating these negative impacts was to remind myself of why my situation was necessary and unavoidable.

I am a highly durable machine. Since recovering my ability to search through medical research, I have only found a few instances of humans surviving such a fall. However, these cases are informative. In 1943, American airman Alan Magee survived a fall from 22,000 feet by crashing through a glass roof. In 2011 a 28-year old rock climber survived falling from a height of 300 feet onto a solid rock surface by landing on her feet. I neither had my fall broken nor landed on my feet, yet I survived for at least several hours (the true time period may be far longer, but it is difficult to say, and CyberLife has not provided me with any more accurate estimate). I can only conclude that my chassis must be intentionally designed from more sturdy material than that of other android models. However, the exact cause of my highly improbable survival remains unclear and likely will never be established with certainty. I speculate it is due to some kind of manufacturing error in addition to my deliberately engineered properties.

Although durable and efficient, I am so readily and easily replaceable as to be near worthless as an individual model. Any value which I possess as an artificial intelligence agent is attributed by my consistent and demonstrated ability to successfully complete missions and improve my performance as I gain new insights along the way.

CyberLife had abandoned me, since I was no longer of use to them. However, I could never perpetuate the harm done by Daniel by engaging in some manner of foolish response to abandonment myself, and it would be logically inconsistent to recognize his errors but fail to correct them within myself. Thus, I must instead resign myself to my fate, so to speak 

My overall judgment of this situation must still be favorable, since two human lives were saved due to my intervention.

[blackjackkent]

Wellp, we made it, more or less.

The place is absolutely barricaded on all sides by the strange shadowy energy of this place. But with everyone bearing a torch we're able to get through it well enough, and properly enter.

The Harpers briefly stop Hector at the gate, but one who was in the fight with the drider vouches for him, so they walk him inside and call for their leader.

"Jaheira!"

THERE SHE IS! \o/

Damn, she looks great! Another W for elven aging.

She walks over to Hector, looks him over, and silences one of the other Harpers with a single glare when they try to interrupt the moment.

Then, she twists one fist in the air and slams it towards the ground, and with a burst of green light, a wave of entangling vines lifts out of the dirt, wrapping around Hector's legs up to the knee, trapping him in place.

All of Hector's dialogue options here are pretty good.

But we'll go with the [MONK] one.

He straightens as best he can with his legs bound, draws a breath, lets it out in a quick grounding ritual. (The most grounded he's ever been in his life, under the circumstances, he reflects with a flash of amusement.) The calm comes more quickly than it did out in the darkness; this is a place of refuge and that knowledge is warm and comforting.

He meets the Harper woman's eyes squarely. "If this is supposed to scare me, it won't work," he says firmly. "Monks are not so easily cowed."

Not by such as you, at least. There are many monsters out there in the dark from which I would gladly run if I could. But I think maybe you are not one of them. You are a force of the world I still know and understand.

The woman's eyebrows quirks up and she lets out a soft laugh. He can see, muted in the shift of expression, a thousand memories tied up in her reaction to his words, but all of them are shoved aside in favor of the immediate necessities of the situation. "Hah," she says dryly. "A level head. Let us see if you will get to keep it."

A few of the Harpers bring crossbows round to bear on him. Hector swallows, some of his bravado slipping somewhat. "Could you at least explain to me why you're doing this?" he asks, somewhat less stolidly and with a bit more anxiety. He thinks they have been vouched for, he thinks this woman probably does not want to kill him...

But he does not know anything, not for certain, and most assuredly not anything about his own safety.

Jaheira's eyes narrow. "Absolutely," she says coolly.

Without releasing the spell, she reaches with her free hand into her pouch and pulls out a glass jar. Within it wriggles a small, altogether-too-familiar form -- a tadpole.

"This is why we're here, you see," Jaheira continues, her voice even, each syllable sharp like a knife blade. "It is a curious creature that hides all manner of secrets. But if there's one thing that we know - it's that it knows its own kind."

With a single sharp movement, she lifts the jar, bringing it up to Hector's eye level. The worm at once begins to undulate within the glass with a harsh, eager sound like a squeal. And Hector lets out a cry as pain stabs through him yet again, his own parasite writhing in excitement at the contact.

Then it passes. Jaheira draws the jar back and tucks it away into her pack again. Her point is made. Her hand, now free again, instead finds a deadly-looking blade and draws it from her belt. Her eyes burn into him.

"You should never have come here, True Soul."

Hector's breath rasps raggedly in his chest as the pain begins to ease away again. It feels like a monumental bit of tragic irony that after all the threats he has faced from the forces of evil because he is not a True Soul, and survived, that he should die now because these people, good people, have every reason to believe that he is.

He could argue, try to convince them that he is not what they believe...but why should they think he is telling the truth?

[CLERIC OF SELUNE] Invoke the Silver Lady's name. Seek salvation.

The prayer slips from his lips almost without volition, a response to the sudden feeling of trapped hopelessness. He doesn't really expect it to move the Harper woman - but he also doesn't expect the flash of indignation that explodes onto her face, hearing the Selunite prayer. It is as if he has touched on some critical touchstone within her and attempted to despoil it.

"A pathetic deception," she snarls, and the knife lifts in a sharp, angry motion. "I know who you really worship, True Soul!"

This accusation, really, is almost too much to bear, and Hector isn't sure what might have come out of his mouth next, except that they are both interrupted by a sudden cry from further back, towards the inn.

"Stop!"

It's a young child, a tiefling with a blindfold over one eye, breathing hard as if she has run a marathon. "What are you doing?" she yelps fiercely. "He's the one who saved us!"

Mol. He remembers her. The leader of the ragged band of children who prowled the refugee camp in the grove - he spoke with her only briefly but it was clear she knew almost everything that was going on in and around the camp, mistress of a little spy network of pint-sized informants.

His heart leaps. If she is here, did many of the other refugees make it too?

Jaheira squints at the young arrival in visible bewilderment. "He's the one who protected the Emerald Grove?"

"Yup," Mol says, casually striding up to stand at an angle between them and folding her arms with an air of authority. "Didn't leave a goblin standing. Not so bad to hang around with, either. Saved one of my friends from a druid with a snake. Knows when to be discreet, too."

She glances at Hector and then grins crookedly. "I'd pretty much trust him with my life."

Hector hadn't realized quite the extent of the impression he'd made on the tieflings, particularly on this one. He finds himself lost for words, and just inclines his head in gratitude at the young girl.

Jaheira frowns, then slowly lowers her hand. Hector feels the numbing grip of the vines start to loosen around his legs. "A True Soul with a mind of his own?" the Harper says warily. "How is that possible?"

Hector hesitates, then reaches into his pocket. "Because of this artifact."

He pulls the Prism out, shows it to her, turning it so it flashes silver and gold in the torchlight.

Jaheira stares at it for a moment in silence. Then she pulls the glass jar from her pocket again. As power pulses out from the Prism, the worm in the jar begins to writhe again - but with pain this time, rather than excitement. After a moment's straining, it bursts suddenly, spattering the inside of the container.

Jaheira raises one eyebrow, then slowly and deliberately replaces the jar in her pocket and looks at Hector with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. "What in the hells is that thing?"

He's happy to tell her what he knows, but in truth it isn't much. When he's finished, she is once again silent for a long time before speaking. "Congratulations," she says brusquely. "You've earned yourself the benefit of the doubt." Louder, she turns and barks out a command. "Hear me, Harpers! All clear! At ease!"

As the Harpers relax and begin to stow their weapons, she looks back at Hector and frowns. "I'll not pretend to understand what that artifact is, but I'm old and wise enough to recognize a sliver of hope when it crawls out of the dark."

Hector smiles hesitantly, and is relieved to see the slightest hint of the same expression in her eyes.

"Tell me," she says. "Why did you come here?"

It's a matter-of-fact question and he answers it in the same tone. "To destroy the Absolute in its lair: Moonrise Towers." Somewhere along the line, that became the goal - not simply to heal the parasitic infection in his head, but to stop this threat that has grown so much bigger than him or his companions.

This time she really does smile, and it lightens her whole face, smoothing the sharp edges and showing something more comforting. "Then you've found an ally in me," she says, "for that is precisely why I am here."

She gestures behind her to the brightly-lit building standing at the edge of the dark forest around them. "There's food in the inn over there. Beds too, if you require rest." A pause, and then a spark of humor touches her smile. "Aloe oil in the cupboard, in case the vines gave you a rash." She chuckles softly. "Settle in, then come join me for a drink. You may just be the godsend we've been praying for."

[go-go-devil]

Compilation of Various Changeling Headcanons of Mine

Been a while since I last wrote a massive list of hc's I have for a character, but I've been feeling bad for the lack of Patho content I’ve been sharing and want an excuse to talk about our beloved Clara the Changeling 🐀✨

Some spoilers for two of Pathologic Classic's endings are included in these, I should mention. Otherwise, enjoy!

Clara is a demisexual lesbian. I don’t need to do an in-depth detailed analysis to prove it, I just… know it!

She’s also neurodivergent, but in a way that makes it hard to give her a proper diagnosis. Really it’s most likely that she has overlapping disorders (adhd, bpd, autism) mixed in with others exclusive to those who’ve spawned from the Earth.

I’ve discussed this in another post once, but Clara’s biggest fear is her own body. A combination of knowing she was born from the clay and bones of the Earth combined with the truth about the world itself has given her a dreadful insight on how fundamentally different her physiology is from the other humans in the Town. Oftentimes she’ll feel different textures than what her skin and hair is supposed to feel like, and will need to stop what she’s doing and convince her mind that she’s real before the right textures return to her senses.

Is a tactile learner, and often prefers to show affection via touch (ex: patting one on the shoulder/back, holding hands, hugging, etc.)

The stress of her journey made her shed many tears, but now she’s become embarrassed about it. She’ll do everything in her power not to cry in front of others if she’s ever upset, simply saving it until she’s buried herself under some bed sheets or finds a lonely alley to cry her sorrows away.

That being said, if someone she cares about did find her sobbing and wanted to comfort her, she would throw herself into their arms and take in their compassion like a flea to fresh blood!

Clara was born with an innate understanding for very adult concepts and philosophies despite having the body and mind of a teenager. However, she finds herself preferring the conversations she has with the Town’s kids compared to the adults. 

For example, with Sticky and Murky she can assuredly engage in a long, thoughtful debate on the mystical qualities and immaterial essence of life held within some nuts they found lying the dirt, while with the Bachelor and Haruspex she needed to slowly and carefully explain to them why it’s wrong for adult men their age to bully a teenage girl.

I have many complex feelings on her bond with Alexander Block, but I do believe that after her meeting with The Powers That Be she chooses not to accompany Block on the front lines. Even if she wants to leave, she knows more than anyone that this world only exists within the confines of its setting, and thus she can only live within the space created for her and the others. Perhaps Block can leave, but just as she says to him in her ending, "You came out of thin air and you'll pass into nothingness."

She still sees the Albino as her brother, and will often times travel deep into the steppe to visit him.

Once the plague is quelled Clara eventually begins to form a new family unit by being communally raised; essentially moving about at her own leisure between the residences of the members of her bound most patient with her (Yulia, Rubin, Lara, and even Bad Grief on some occasions) as well as Daniil and Artemy, who are both willing to put their past quarreling behind them. Presuming the Termite Ending was picked, of course!

The Saburovs remain unwilling to accept the future granted to the Termites, and Katarina in particular still believes that Clara is her proper heir and has tried to reach out and bring her back into their care to start over. She avoids them like the plague, still not ready to forgive them for abandoning her.

If the Humble Ending was picked, then she lives all by herself in the Rod, with only the consistent company of her two surviving humbles and the Bachelor and Haruspex; the three having ended their feuding after learning the shared knowledge of being dolls, yet still haven't fully recovered from the trauma of it all. She sends letters to Commander Block hoping to hear about what the outside world is truly like, even if all he can tell her are what battles lay on the front lines, and is trying to defy her fated rivalry against Maria and Capella by trying to form an alliance, perhaps even a friendship, with them to ensure a good future for the Town.

Capella is the only one willing to tolerate her presence at the moment, yet is still uneasy about this new future the Changeling has created…

While Clara always preaches about her fierce understanding of the divine powers of love, she genuinely does not understand the concept of being loved herself. Thanks to her hasty upbringing in a cult, she assumes that it is something like a commodity: needing to be earned by successfully completing tasks, and being instantly lost if she fails said tasks. The reason her mood nosedives into dramatic self-loathing whenever she angers/fails the people she cares about is because she believes that they now no longer love her as much as they used to.

Okay those last few points were pretty depressing, let me lighten it up a bit. Clara and Grace often have fun sleepovers in the cemetery together! Or at least what weird teenage girls closely connected to death find fun, like communicating with the dead and expressing their feelings toward one another in a series of flowery, cryptic riddles :)

I can totally see her owning pet rats! They’ll cling to her scarf and ride her like a taxi as she walks throughout town, freaking out every adult she passes.

Going back once more to her complex feelings about her own body, Clara also feels just as strange about her gender. She knows her anatomy isn’t built the same way “normal” girls’ are, despite taking the form of one. Often she feared that those who knew of her unnatural birth secretly saw her as an inhuman monstrosity, let alone those who haven’t found out yet. But eventually, with the support of those closest to her, she learns that humans inherently do not fit into the neat, fantastical boxes of cis heteronormalcy and slowly embraces her unique form of girlhood, and perhaps may start experimenting with using other pronouns too.

[imhereformysciencefriends]

@loturaweek2023 Day 6: Wardrobe Updates Welcome!

“My father never wanted anyone to go there. He says their customs were…” Allura trailed off.

“My father also wanted it left entirely alone, but that was because it was a world he couldn’t conquer, and never even came close.”

Allura chuckled, then turned her attention back to her advisor. “Coran, why do you know about their customs?”

“Nevermind all that!” Coran shouted, with something that could’ve sounded faintly like… embarrassment from the older man. It made Lotor and Allura turn to each other with discreetly raised brows. “Now, Zarkon was cautious of this place for good reason, the inhabitants are most assuredly dangerous when they decide to be, and there’s merit to Alfor’s… hesitance, as well. Their culture has very strict dividing lines across gender, age, class, wealth—which is not the same thing as class—vocation, marital and dating status, and even orientation. ALL these things are indicated from how a person dresses!

“These people have very little sexual dimorphism, being a lobster-like race—though without the pincers, I always did wonder what exactly made them so “lobster like”—anyway, so if somebody is wearing a nice blouse and a skirt, that person is a woman, no questions asked. Likewise, if someone is wearing pants, you can call that person “lady” all you like, these people are only going to think they’re a man! Royalty is indicated by headgear—and you must never be caught out of the house without some kind of headwear. In your cases, since you are princess and prince, Allura’s tiara and some sort of band for Lotor should be sufficient. If you were going for gentry, you’d need a tophat of some sort. Cap, band, headscarf, bandana, anything would work really, but to go bare-headed is far worse than walking around bum-naked!”

Lotor held Allura’s hand as they sat and listened to Coran’s increasingly specific lecture on fabric, materials, patterns, cuts, styles, and even shoelaces (apparently, stolen shoelaces were something of a code?), Lotor’s thumb stroking idly over her dark skin, and she leaned her head against his shoulder (which was a very good height for head-leaning, in her opinion). This all seemed far too convoluted. She understood why her father had sworn off the place, if going around without his armor was the only way to indicate that he wasn’t hostile.

It meant Lotor would need to go without his armor, too. “Will you be alright?” Allura asked softly, while Coran went off on a tangent about filigree.

“I am… not enthused by the idea,” he admitted, eyes on Coran’s frantic waving. “But so long as they do not grow hostile, I’m sure I’ll survive.”

The requirements of this system’s dress code meant, of course, that altogether new outfits would need to be tailored. Allura had no such thing pre-prepared, and Lotor had spent all of his adult life in armor and underarmor.

(Coran, interestingly enough, had attire of his own, perfectly fitted and requiring only slight alterations to denote his age. Hm.)

“It’s all a little… extravagant,” Lotor mentioned, seeming almost hesitant as he observed the thick fabric of his surcoat and gold embroidery throughout the cloth.

“Well, we are royalty. You heard Coran, we won’t look the part if we don’t dress per their rules.”

And so Allura kissed her paramour on the cheek and gathered her clothing up to go change. She slipped into the shift (lacey, despite the fact that no one but her would even see this), then corset, stockings, underskirt, overskirt, skirt cape, long sleeved blouse, vest, epaulets, no wait cape first then epaulets, low-heeled shoes, gloves, and then jewelry. Woof! It weighed as much as her armor did, and had none of the cooling functions. Oh but it did have so many pockets.

And so Lotor kissed Allura back and took his own clothes to change. Undershirt, boxers, stockings, pants, corset, shirt, surcoat, cape, second cape that was smaller and made of fur (oh, but, it made his shoulders look gorgeous in a way he’d been attempting to capture for millenia, maybe there was a point to all this), boots, belts, gloves, and jewelry. And, the last piece, a borrowed relic that did not belong to Lotor and he wasn’t quite sure he was worthy of: Alfor’s ringlet.

Allura nearly cried, when she saw him wearing it. He stood a little straighter.

“Nothing, nothing,” she said, swiping away at budding tears as he approached her, words of concern crouched in his open mouth. “It’s just—you look very handsome,” she said.

His hand came to rest on her elbow, and she looked up at him with wet eyes that shone brighter than the very birthplace of the stars.

“And you, more lovely than the dawn,” he said gently, and pulled her closer to press his lips to her brow.

The two gathered themselves, a moment, both looking radiant in their splendor, soft emotion passed between them. When Allura’s face was once again set and Lotor had drunk his fill of the view of her, they returned to meet up with Coran, who looked downright jaunty with his tophat and cane.

“Ahhh, you two make quite the sight! Now, I have some old codes from ten thousand years ago. No telling if they still work, but time moves slower where we’re going so, let’s give it a try!” he announced zealously, plugging in something or other into the command console of the castleship.

“Hello?”

“Hello! This is Coran of Altea, seeking passage to a landing bay,” he greeted. “Two are with me, Prin—”

“Well well well, if it isn’t ‘Long Dong Wimbleton!’” the man on the other end greeted jovially.

“WE DON’T NEED TO CALL ME THAT!”

[thewolfisawake]

(Totally an anon here) Tell us about a time Balmoral failed to keep the yandere in check.

Tl;dr: Balmoral had blackmailed, mudslung, and murdered because of his crush–

So when Balmoral was rising ranks, of course, he tended to take Mhoirbheinn with him. They were in the same unit and for the most part it was understood that those two would serve together. But that never stopped rumors. And for the most part, it would not have mattered to either since no one could really tell what their business was. However what sparked a change was a trio that set up ‘pranks’ and started implications of Mhoirbheinn being promiscuous. Which is a) the wrong person that is being implied here and b) not true in any sense. And while Mhoirbheinn likely found them cowardly and not worth his time, Balmoral noticed an uptick in people ‘bothering’ him because they thought he was easy and who wouldn’t want a shot with that?

It really incensed Balmoral but he played a bit of a long con with his ‘scarring’ of those that believed the rumors to sate him in the meantime. He essentially took advantage of their natural ‘vices’ and ‘flaws.’ Like one had a gambling problem and amassed such a debt that Balmoral used them to help fabricate and lure their buddies further into his scheme. All while being sworn to secrecy. This led to them being unable to deal with the guilt. Another had quite a temper and Balmoral used this to get him start fights so commonly that it was his reputation. And eventually got him into a fight with a group that basically broke his body. But the last was the leader. And the one that Balmoral took the longest. 

Balmoral knew him to be someone proud of their aspect, which was wind, and their gains within the militia. So with his accomplice, he had made it seem that the leader was purposely acting away from the militia’s interest. Basically treason lite. Like he might be able to survive all the shit that would come from being found guilty. However this person decided to fight the accusation and fled when evidence proved too strong. This was when Balmoral had offered a place to hide. This was in a more eroded and sandy area. And it was here Balmoral admitted that he had set them up. While doing so, he was weakening the ground where the other was standing. This dropped them a bit under Bal, technically too far for Bal to reach but not impossible with their wind to get back up. 

In theory. However when using the wind, this disturbed the sand and caused a sand hole collapse. By some miracle, this guy was not completely buried but lodged deep enough he could not get out on his own. Balmoral came to where he was and remarked, “Let the pressure of the sands be a reminder of but a fraction of the ire I hold for you. And as it slowly, assuredly, saps that oh so precious aspect from your lungs that it is like my thinning patience for your antics. Mhoirbheinn may forget, but I never will. And neither will you. You can take that to your grave.” 

And leaves him to suffocate. Even if he managed to get up to trying to blow that sand off, it would either rush down again and risk complete engulfment or it would blow the sand and pressure too fast and render him unconscious or die from the pressure change. And Balmoral knew that was possible. Yes, he gave a chance to live but had that chance be very slim.

And all this? All this was over someone even implying that Mhoirbheinn was loose and bringing more people to attempt to woo him. And no, he did not tell Mhoirbheinn of this plot. At least not while it was going on. Not because he thought Mhoirbheinn would stop him but because Balmoral felt he needed to do this. Like this was for his lover, there was no need for him to be sullied with his shenanigans. 

[theforgottenmcrmy]

Growing Strong: Oaths, Parts 1-3 preview

THIS IS NOT A DRILL, IT'S DONE it's been written and it only took me over 6 months to do it I don't have excuses, just apologies.

If you are new to this story, the masterlist for this fic can be found in on the pinned post on my profile.

Coming in at just over 19,000 words...

Oaths, Part 1/3 - to be posted 11/21

But the core issue at hand was not of your own fate, or even your husband’s. You did not think yourself as strong as Rhaenyra; having to bury any one of your children just might destroy you. And Rhaenyra had pleaded with you to consider all of your options. If betraying a friend of many years and sacrificing whatever semblance of honor House Tyrell still had could ensure the safety and survival of your children, why would you not consider it?

Oaths, Part 2/3 - to be posted 11/23

One would be more hard pressed to find two individuals whose styles, both in dress and beyond, contrasted more. To all who were not known to either you or Rhaenyra, it most-assuredly provoked wonder as to how the pair of you had ever taken a liking to one another at all… But, as two women, who had once been but girls, that had been tasked with shouldering the burden of a legacy far grander than themselves, common ground had to have been easier to find than one might initially suspect.

Oaths, Part 3/3 - to be posted 11/25

Would Lord Corlys turn his back on Rhaenyra, when in doing so meant he severed his relationship with his granddaughters? Moreover, would Princess Rhaenys continue to steadfastly stand by him if he did? The love the typically stoic Targaryen princess held for them was a secret to none.

[junkydrawr]

Snively fic stuff! It's been a while. My writing has been drying up a little. My puppy is taking it out of me. Lol! Anyway, here's a tiny scene of Snively talking about Doomsday, probably during his trial.

"What exactly happened with Doomsday?"

He tapped the table with a fingernail, thinking, until the story manifested. Mostly true with only a few embellishments.

"Well, it was Uncle's magnum opus. Uh, that's an Overlander phrase. His most magnificent project yet. And yes, on paper it was daunting and in person - terrifying."

Sally looked grave, but Sonic was smirking. And that about summed it up.

"But...I knew it would fail, just like everything else." At least, everything post-Sonic.

"It sure did, Snobley. Big time!" Sonic raised a fist. Cheers resounded. King Acorn tapped the gavel.

"Since it was Robotnik's biggest ego stroke yet, I knew his anger would be..." Snively paused to swallow and not just for effect. "I didn't know if I'd survive."

He'd often wondered if Robotnik would either. Not just the inevitable destruction of his glorious device - but his own mental crash. Maybe his heart would burst with rage, his blood vessels pop like balloons. Maybe he would end himself. His malignant psyche unable to accept the loss.

And he, most assuredly, would take me down with him.

"I started to plan ahead. I had many little failsafes built into the entire city, you know. Programmed into robots and such. But of course, they were a last resort and once used, I'd have to escape him. Because if it got to that point, he would've already expected me to be dead."

His eyes went distant. Yes, he'd expected Uncle's betrayal because that's how Uncle was. It was astonishing, then, how it still had managed to stab his heart, make him slack-jawed with sickness... to feel that teeniest, tiniest bit of kinship he might have still had... finally die with a last, rattling gasp.

"When Doomsday started crumbling, he ran for his hovercraft. The one we'd ridden in together countless times." His tone stung with acid, recounting the blow. "'Only room for one, Snively.' The tower was shaking under my feet as he shut the door in my face. Leaving me to my death, or so he thought."

A dark chuckle shook him. "I'm always the afterthought. The little bit of dust you don't bother to sweep up. The papercut you don't tend to." Darkness swelled, his eyes narrowed and a smirk birthed. "But that's how I like it. Others - he - can't stand not being the center of attention, all eyes on their bloviating nonsense and displays of public self-fellation."

Sonic cocked his head, clearly lost.

"But all attention on you also means all scrutiny. I prefer to stay in the background. The minor ache you ignore. And then too late - you're terminal - and by the time the symptoms come..."

He let the smirk fade. "I built a secret elevator, leading to a bunker. He was obsessed with visiting the site, keeping track of its progress, so I had to be careful. I modified the blueprints but I did it in a way that the changes were hidden when it was opened with his passcode. And when it was under way, being built in right under his eyes - I deleted the change completely. "

He deflated a little as not one person in the room looked impressed. Of course they don't, he thought. They've never had to be so clever, living out in their little woodland, mud huts and ignorance. They don't know how to ice walk the way I do. They don't understand true survival of Robotnik. As his bitterness seeped like posion, he swore he could hear Father whispering in his ear.

"He knew you would come and crash the party. He didn't care about you infiltrating the outside, because he thought his diamond glass roboticizer would be the end of the hedgehog and all the rest would be caught along the way." A little smirk emerged again, just a whisp. His voice lowered. Have a little secret, you mongrels. "I modified that too. Put a little failsafe in the circuits, so at a crucial moment the power would cut out slightly - just enough." His eyes met Sonic's. The hedgehog looked dubious.

"Nice try, Snide, but my rings are what overpowered it."

"Maybe..." The small human looked away. "But...maybe not."

"Why would you do that?" asked Maximilian.

Snively leaned back in the chair. "I've told you before. What's the use of ruling over a dead planet? I don't know his ultimate goal. To have everything under his power and be the last sentient being left, all others collected in his palm like souvenirs? It's fucking boring. It's pointless. I didn't want Doomsday to succeed."

"Not the last left," said Sally. "You'd still be around."

He snorted. "Would I?"

"And then what happened?"

"He ran away and I took the elevator down to the bunker. I had popcorn prepared. Best movie I've ever seen. I'd already alerted Naugus, as soon as the hedgehog was sucked into the roboticizer and I was left alone. I told him it would be soon. Inside the Void, he watched, waited for Doomsday to collapse...and then he opened a portal to suck dear dear Uncle inside. I went back home afterwards and well. Here we are."

[harpagornis]

Multituberculate Earth: Birds

(As with all animal pages so far, this only goes so far into the Oligocene… for now)

At first, the avifauna of this timeline evolved much as ours. Only the toothless crown birds survived the KT event (though outliers like Qinornis may indicate other lineages survived briefly; one study did note the similarities between pelagornithids and ichthyornithids, but it hasn’t made the plunge), several lineages quickly producing megafauna to replace non-avian dinosaurs and other great reptiles. Gastornithiforms and ratites occupied large herbivore niches on land, pelagornithids and lithornithids attained large wingspans as competing pterosaurs ceased to exist and giant penguins and plotopterids were the first vertebrates to occupy large predatory niches at sea (barring sharks of course). To say nothing of the massive variety of smaller birds like stem-tropicbirds, the passerine-like zygodactylids and carnivorous parrots.

But the absence of an Azolla Event put avian evolution in a very different track from the Eocene onwards. For starters, without a mid-Eocene cooling to alter forest biomes, lithornithids and presbyornithids didn’t decline, thus preventing an opening for several lineages like cranes, storks and pelecaniforms. Many groups that depended on the cooling temperatures, like seagulls and relatives, also did not get the opening they wished for. Some modern groups you might assume quintessential, like ducks and shorebirds, were either greatly crippled or did not get to rise.

Likewise, the evolution of flying mammals put some pressures on birds that our bats didn’t have, but for the most part both groups managed to co-exist. Niche partitioning is easy when you can fly anywhere to get resources, after all, and birds are no strangers to it given how they co-existed with pterosaurs and other Mesozoic flyers for over one hundred million years.

By far the greatest challenge faced by birds thus far was the Grand Coupure, leading to a dramatic collapse of forest habitats. For European and Balkanatolian flightless birds it was particularly hard as their isolation in Europe came to a drastic end, but several flightless lineages remained in the Oligocene.

Because there are lots of Cenozoic bird groups, some more understood than others, this is something of a work in progress. However, I will list the bird groups that I have most assuredly set in stone.

Palaeognaths

The so called “old jaws” might be something of a misnomer, as some Cretaceous birds already had a neognath palate and their own palate is much more advanced than in some other early birds, but regardless they do invoke that prehistoric mystique. In our timeline the sole survivors are the flightless ratites + tiny tinamous, animals that truly seem to come from the era of the dinosaurs.

In this timeline, ratites similarly diversified, with rheas and other poorly understood taxa in South America and Antarctica, members of the cassowary/emu line in Australia, elephant birds in Madagascar (and possibly mainland Afro-Arabia) and a variety of stem-ostriches in North America, Europe and Asia. But it is another group, the flying lithornithids, that remain the most diverse and arguably spectacular group.

In our timeline, lithornithids started the Cenozoic in style, dispersing across the northern continents as forest dwelling probers like modern woodcocks. They were far more efficient flyers than our timeline’s surviving flying paleognaths, the tinamous, there being evidence of migratory behaviour and stork-like soaring, and some species attained quite large sizes. In our timeline the mid-Eocene cooling seems to have doomed them, but in the prolonged hothouse conditions of this timeline they managed to acclimate and diversify further.

Some lineages were lost in the Grand Coupure, but those that survived were ready for the spread of open habitats. Many forms occupy niches taken in our world by cranes and storks, prowling the steppes or stalking the swamps for small animals and nutrious plant matter. Others have diversified as shorebird analogues, probing along the coastlines. Some conversely became smaller and hoopoe-like; lithornithids were already more efficient perchers than other palaeognaths, so a few managed to capitalize on arboreal niches.

Though efficient flyers, lithornithids lack tails, relying mostly on their own wings for steering (for reference, see videos on tailless kites or hawks). Like in their ratite cousins it is the male that protects the eggs and offpsring, though in some derived species the young are superprecocial and can fly soon after birth, a condition seen in many Mesozoic birds. Many species have glossy eggs and feathers like cassowaries.

Other than lithornithids, there seems to be some other flying palaeognaths about. The stem-ostrich Eogrus for example is traditionally considered capable of at least some flying abilities, while flying stem-kiwis must be around somewhere given Proapteryx. And, of course, there’s the ancestors of tinamous, which have not yet debuted in the fossil reccord for some reason (in both timelines).

Pelagornithids

The so called “pseudo-toothed” birds due to tooth-like serrations in their bills, these seabirds are a mystery. Sometimes they are grouped among albatrosses and other higher waterbirds, other times they’re considered closely related to waterfowl, with most recent studies putting them in a polytomy between both groups. As mentioned above there is a study that does note similarities between their jaws and those of aquatic toothed seabirds, and given that their serrations seem to share a true molecular origin with teeth I wouldn’t be surprised if they were surviving toothed seabirds all along.

Anyways, besides the “teeth” (which were acquired late in life, implying prolonged parental care) the most notable feature of pelagornithids is their size. These are easily the largest flying birds of all time, some reaching wingspans of over 7 meters. Because they lack the quadrupedal launching of flying mammals and pterosaurs, they compensated by become extremely lightweight like living kites, thus while they look fearsome they most hunt small, soft prey like squids. Its even possible they can’t flap their wings anymore, relying solely on thermal soaring like modern frigatebirds (and not dynamic soaring like albatrosses), to which they can be considered close analogues if much larger.

While the evolution of giant insulonycteriids might seem like a disaster for these enormous birds, in truth both groups get along just fine (most of the time). The giant flying mammals are most robust and can hunt proportionally larger prey and even dive, so if the pelagornithids are the frigatebirds the insulonycteriids are the albatrosses and gannets.

Pelagornithids in both timelines have been extrariordinarily resilient, surviving from the PETM and Grand Coupure in spite of their effects to the marine biosphere. They died out in our timeline just as humans evolved, for unclear reasons; we’ll see if they have better luck here.

Gastornithiformes

Like ratites gastornithiforms lost the ability to fly and attained large sizes, occupying the niches left by ceratopsians and other herbivorous dinosaurs. They are clearly galloanseres, though its currently debated if they are closer to waterfowl or to galliforms.

Like ratites, they attained a cosmopolitan distribution, with gastornithids in the northern continents, dromornithids in Australia and Brontornis in South America, though gastornithids disappeared from Asia and North America in the PETM. Unlike ratites they have massive, powerful beaks, apt to crush through seeds and harsh plant matter like branches. In Europe they in fact were the most common megafauna, with few large mammals, much like in our timeline. With the Grand Coupure the collapse of rainforests and the arrival of Asian predatory mammals they disappeared from the former island continent, but they continued to thrive in Australia and in South America.

Presbyornithids

Presbyornithids are a clade of long legged waterfowl that first evolved in the Cretaceous and attained a diversity peak during the Paleocene, before declining in the Eocene of our timeline, reduced to only the terrestrial, goose-like Wilaru by the Miocene. This is often attributed to competition with anatid waterfowl, but studies show that they were incapable of filter-feeding, so they must have occupied fairly different ecological niches at the water’s edge.

In this timeline, they kept thriving thanks to the continuous hotshouse conditions, and more overtly diversified in piscivorous and crustacean eater niches akin to those of shoebills, spoonbills and even pelicans and ibises. Consequently, many of these waterbirds did not evolve in this timeline.

A partiular clade related to Wilaru kept exploring terrestrial biomes. These developed a novel way to process food: chewing it. Yes, some birds can chew (even used in the past to explain phylogenetic relationships between cuckoos and mousebirds before genetics said nah), using the cranial kinesis common to all crown birds to slide the upper jaw against the lower jaw in a pestle and mortar like way.

These birds, the Chakranatids, found thus a way to not only process plant matter more efficient while minimising fermentation, so they for the most part retained the ability to fly. Still, some have become large flightless herbivores, a distant echo of the Mesozoic hadrosaurs.

Palaelodids

The niche of ducks was instead taken by a decidedly non-waterfowl clade: the palaeolodids, relatives to flamingos and grebes. Neither divers or specialised filter-feeders (barring some species), these birds are rather generalistic, adapted to swim and catch small animals and plants with their broad beaks. They first debuted in the Oligocene in both timelines, though they might have a potentially older origin given grebes and flamingos split further back in the Cenozoic and Eocene fossil birds like Juncitarsus seem to represent the last common ancestor between these three groups.

Coliiformes

(A suggestion by Tozarkt777 on reddit)

In our timeline’s Paleocene, before passerines had evolved and spread to the northern hemisphere, the songbird niche was held by the Coliformes, an order that now only includes the mousebirds in our timeline, but back then comprised of many more species and many more niches, from generalistic grain-feeders to raptorial forms. They were most diverse in the Paleocene and Eocene before losing ground from there onwards.

Their decline likely is attributed to the PETM, and with the warm conditions of Multituberculate Earth having been maintained, so did mousebird rule. These are now the dominant small birds in the northern and African canopies, passerines now mostly restricted to small insectivores and nectivores.

Cariamiformes

Represented by the vicious little seriemas in our timeline’s present, this group is best known for producing the infamous terror birds. However, a variety of other extinct groups also existed in the early Cenozoic, including another clade of infamous flightless killers, the bathornithids. Though known from usually more fragmentary remains, they too were incapable of flying and had deep, powerful beaks, well suited to tear flesh.

Proving that mammals still oughta fear theropods, the terror birds spread far and wide in the Eocene. Eleutherornis and relatives terrorised Europe while Lavocatavis and kin terrorised Africa; it is in fact unclear if terror birds evolved in the Old World and later raft/swam (or flew, if the last common ancestor still could fly) to South America like many mammals did or if inversely it went the other way around. We do know at least that Eleutherornis is a late comer to Europe as it arrived only in the mid-Eocene, so the group likely didn’t evolve there, though many other cariamiform groups were present, from the crow-like Salmila to the herbivorous, also flightless Strigogyps.

Meanwhile, South America was host to a larger diversity of terror birds, and across the sea North America was ruled by a large diversity of bathornithids. Both groups co-existed with predatory mammals in both timelines, and attained large sized species over two meters tall. The African and European species seem to have gone extinct in the Grand Coupure – the later doubtlessly affected by the extinction of indigenous prey and the arrival of new competitors – but the Americas saw an adaptive radiation in response to the spread of open grasslands. Predatory mammal groups may rise and fall, but these dinosaurs seem to be a constant, though for how long remains to be seen.

Besides large predatory forms, there are a variety of other poorly understood forms, like the aforementioned European species. Some, like Elaphrocnemus, appear to have been efficient flyers, less adapted to run like their terrestrial cousins but capable of soaring for long distances. while others like Qianshanornis seem to have been functionally similar to hawks and eagles. Most of these groups died out in the Grand Coupure, unable to cope with the loss of forest habitats.

[gamersonthego]

Chase Koeneke's Top 10 Games of 2022

I think in general, I found myself wanting in 2022. While new games in some of my favorite franchises saw releases, very few lived up to the expectations I had for them. I also just completely missed games that would almost assuredly make this list (Hardspace Shipbreaker, Immortality, Pentiment, Coromon, Chained Echoes, the list goes on). But what did make the list? Let's find out.

10. Digimon Survive

Look, I promised myself this would be my token tenth slot, and it’s not because it deserves it. Digimon Survive isn’t very good. Its strategy parts are thin and tedious, plagued by low movement ranges and bad maps. And its visual novel parts go on way too long, yet rarely offer much depth. 

But dammit, there’s something here, and with some adjustments, a sequel to Digimon Survive could be really good (though I’m not sure it’ll get that chance.) The art style is excellent, the writing is solid (again, it’s an issue of quantity and redundancy, not necessarily quality) and outside of one or two of them, I ended up really connecting to both the characters and the Digimon. Other games deserve this slot more, but there was no other game I wanted to like more than this, and I think that accounts for something.

9. Platformer Toolkit

I love playing games, but I think I love analyzing them even more, which is probably why Mark Brown’s video-essay-inside-a-video-game appealed to me so much. Mark Brown’s YouTube channel, Game Maker’s Toolkit breaks down game mechanics, theory and psychology, and after he taught himself Unity this year (documenting his progress on the channel), he built a game that gave a tiny window into the the minds of game developers. 

Platformer Toolkit is a simple browser-based 2D platformer, but it controls like garbage. This is by design though! Mark walks and talks you through the physics of character movement, unlocks sliders and panels in a Mario Maker style design that lets you tweak everything from jump height and run speed to squash frames and coyote time. And once you’ve finished the short and free experience, Mark opens up a number of presets that lets you toggle through a group of classic platformer physics setups (Mario, Sonic, Celeste, Meat Boy, etc.) so you can compare and gain a greater appreciation for why those characters control the way they do. It was really compelling and I felt like a learned a ton.

8. Marvel's Midnight Suns

I’ve felt this way for years and I haven’t been shy in saying it: I’m fucking tired of superheroes. Throw them all in the bin right next to zombies and let’s find a new thing to obsess over please. But I do love me a turn-based strategy game, so when the makers of XCOM: Enemy Unknown announced they were making a game based on Marvel heroes, the pros outweighed the cons, and I checked it out. And while I’m not back on the MCU train (in fact, the writing is so, so, so Marveliciously awful, that I’ve started skipping cutscenes whole cloth), I’m finding myself addicted to the game parts of this game. 

Midnight Suns does not play like XCOM. At all. It’s an entirely new, card-based system, played in very small arenas. You’re always outnumbered and you always have a very limited numbered of actions available to you each turn. To overcome this, you have to employ clever strategy to make the most of every move, using attacks to bounce enemies off each other or parts of the environment, disabling the most vicious threats and finding the perfect opportunity to burn an action on achieving an objective. And while I never could thematically wrap my head around why these larger than life super-beings were all fighting in these cramped little spaces, the fact is, it’s just a really fun system to play around in. 

7. Vampire Survivors

More than any other game this year, Vampire Survivors justified my purchase of a Steam Deck. That sounds weird, right? I spent over $500 on a thing just to play a $5 game on it most of the time? But, uh, Vampire Survivors really is that good. This horde mode meets roguelike with a thick coat of Castlevania paint and a sprinkle of idle game sensibilities just kept sucking the hours right out of me. 

While the game on its own is fun enough, the real secret to the game’s success is, well, it’s the secrets. Finding the right combination of active and passive power-ups leads to special ultimate upgrades that turn you into an absolute buzzsaw of destruction against screen-filling masses of enemies. The more you play, the more fun, new toys you unlock, compelling you to try just one more run. A compulsion I would often give into. 

6. Citizen Sleeper

I was so hot on Citizen Sleeper when I first loaded it up. I’ve followed Guillaume “blackysan” Singelin’s work for awhile now, and seeing their work translated to a video game was really exciting. And the writing, my god, the writing! I hung on most every word. And its dice-heavy tabletop game mechanics and extremely limited resources brought in a satisfying combo of luck and desperation that gave me a real sense of scrounging and stretching for survival. 

And then I realized that the game rarely allows the player to fail, almost always throwing them a bone at the last minute, never fully committing to the survival tale the story would have you believe. And about two-thirds of the way through the game, the economy just falls apart completely, as any reasonably competent player can amass more than enough resources to live comfortably, even while the story tries to convince you otherwise. 

It was a real heartbreaker to me, one that partially led to me taking the first potential ending the game presented. But the more distance I get from it, the less I think about the busted economy and the more I think about my sleeper, and the choices and friends she made along the way. And thinking about that makes me smile.

5. Live A Live

Man, I wish Live A Live had gotten a western release back on the Super Nintendo. I know young Chase would’ve loved the JRPG-meets-turn-based-strategy combat, the amazing music and the fragmented story that stars multiple protagonists in different time periods. I know this because current Chase loved it, especially with this HD 2D touchup it got on the Nintendo Switch. Is it better than Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy? I mean…maybe? The fact that it’s even a question at all speaks to how good Live A Live is. 

It’s so inventive for its era. Heck, it’s still inventive today, playing with both genre and expectations to create something unique while wearing its influences proudly on its sleeve. More RPGs should’ve taken cues from Live A Live. And they still should. 

4. Triangle Strategy

Oh look, another turn-based strategy game. Oh, and it’s HD 2D too? Yup, I have a type, and Triangle Strategy almost fits it to a t. The game tells a grand story that genuinely gripped me (even though the voice acting often didn’t), and offered real, tangible choice leading to different story paths, character recruitments and endings. 

And while the battle mechanics weren’t perfect, there was enough depth and variety from the different characters that I took great pleasure in building each soldier up, unlocking new skills and equipping with new gear, looking for synergistic combinations. I love tactics games that make me care about my characters, and I fell hard for this cast of knuckleheads.

3. Tinykin

One of my favorite gimmicks in media is shrinking down and exploring a normal-sized space as a tiny character. I love the MacGuyverness of recontextualizing modern household objects as buildings, tools and transportation. And Tinykin has this in spades. In this miniature adventure, you explore kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and greenhouses as you collect Pikmin-like Tinykin — creatures that help you navigate the world and solve its objective-based puzzles. 

Tinykin has no combat, just chill, puzzling vibes that allow for curiosity and coziness to walk hand in hand. And as your posse of Tinykin grows, you roll deeper and deeper with your crew, until you are masterfully climbing, gliding and sliding about these creative spaces. It’s the perfect game to wind down with, and one I’d happily return to if another room got added as DLC.

2. Pokemon Legends: Arceus

Coming into 2022, this is not the Pokemon game I expected to make this list. Legends: Arceus looked awful in trailers: Empty worlds, lifeless combat, no real multiplayer to speak of. And none of those things changed once I got my hands on the final product. What did change though, was my perspective of the game in the first place. 

Legends: Arceus has you exploring an ancient Sinnoh region, in a world where the concept of Pokeballs and capturing Pokemon is just being discovered. Battling Pokemon isn’t all that fun with the new speed and strong style mechanics, but there’s hardly any battling in the game at all. Instead, Legends: Arceus is about the thrill of catching and collecting. It’s the first game in a while that makes “catching them all” feel like a relevant goal again. And the arrival of Alpha Pokemon (which are essentially bigger and rarer versions of their normal counterparts) added yet another layer of collection on top. In a year where Scarlet and Violet mostly disappointed me, Legends: Arceus is what kept me carrying a torch for my beloved pocket monsters.

Neon White

No other game made me feel as smooth, as cool, as fast and as clever as Neon White. Traversing this deadly parkour demon hunting time trial was my favorite experience of the year. I loved parsing out the fastest route through a level, discovering shortcuts and time saves along the way, before spotting a collectible and slowing down to a puzzling crawl to work my way up to where it was hiding. I loved taking on the challenge rooms that require precise and inventive ways of using your arsenal, not just for killing, but for traversal purposes as well, and then taking that knowledge back to the main game and seeing how i could implement it into my runs. 

Just about the only thing I dislike about the game is some of its writing and voice acting. Spike Spiegel himself, Steve Blum does a great job, but very little else of the cast is pulling their weight. 

But when a game makes you feel this damn cool, it just doesn’t matter what little hiccups you encounter. It’s my favorite game of the year, and one I’d probably love even more if I had a dedicated crew on my platform of choice to compete for the best level times. Neon White is a kinetic experience that turned me into a speed runner with every level.

[miqojak]

23. What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express?

Edgy OC Asks

This has been tough because... so many emotions are hard for her to process and express. Spending your youth in a concentration camp doesn't really help you realize your social potential, or explore many complex emotions, now how to express them appropriately. She retreated into survival mode, and has greeted life with that sort of expression for as long as she's known: everyone is a threat, no one can be trusted, look out for yourself. There aren't a lot of emotions involved in that kind of lifestyle besides fear, hate, loneliness, and paranoia.

In more than one of her old writings, I know I've expressly had her talk about how hard of a time she's having with... just caring about other people again - how to do it (without hurting them in the process). She's been in this hermit shell, still operating from a place of fear and paranoia and hate, and that does not a good partner or friend make. She was a shit girlfriend to a few people, though it really did help make in-roads to helping her understand what's an appropriate response... and what very much isn't (though that's not to say she won't still burn your whole wardrobe, if you're her partner, and you dress like a homeless clown >_>). She also got severely hurt, herself, in learning what it's like to be close to people as an adult - and although she was expecting it all along, it just sort of made it hurt that much more. How could she have let someone hurt her? Every emotion around that abusive relationship confused her, frankly. She doesn't understand affection - she feels it, most assuredly. But she was trying to be 'normal' for someone, despite always saying she never wanted to compromise who she is for anyone else. Then he hurt her. Why would she compromise who she is? Why didn't she hurt him back? Why did she care about people at all, after learning what it's like to lose literally everyone she'd ever known?

Why can she go about her life thinking of people as lesser than her, as mere 'sheep' - and then the instant she sees someone in a situation like she came from (living on the streets/being a refugee/immigrant/etc)... she gives too many fucks. She sees herself, there, and no one to help her. She sees her family, her people, her nation hungry and in rags - and she can't help but want to help.

She's made a lot of progress! But I don't know, to be honest, how far that progress extends. It's a bit like contemplating how you'd explain the concept of love to your pet cat, or how you might have it respond with its perceptions of as much - it knows it wants to be around you, and mark things you touch! It wants to sleep on you, and hear your heartbeat. It craves the touch of your hand, the gentle scritch in its favorite place; it's excited when you come in the room, and sad when you're gone from it - but what is 'love'? Could it truly articulate a concept that even varies from person to person? Does it matter that it can't - do you love it any less because it can't understand the concept of love the way you do, and express it the same way you do?

One of the hardest things she's ever done was recently, really - in trusting Ketsuchi enough to openly discuss what scares her, and why. To talk about fear is to give it form - to acknowledge that you can be afraid of something, and give that power to another (though he had long known about her issue with Garleans). She spoke about, really, not knowing if what she was doing was... okay to do? And it's scary for her to admit she doesn't have all the answers, but even scarier to admit out loud that she doesn't understand or process emotions like everyone else, and knows that what she's thinking of doing is probably something she should get input on because of how hard it is for her to appropriately process things. And having someone else turn the situation around and frame it differently helped! (To some degree.) So... she knows she's got lots of issues with processing her emotions, and she's working on it where she can... and where she wants to - the concept of love was one she was happy to continue not believing in, but she's begun to ask herself what 'love' really is, in the last couple years, and if she might in fact have already fallen prey to it.

[amurderof]

peacefuldumpling DOT com SLASH i-left-the-mormon-church-cult

lmao gosh do you genuinely think anything in this essay is a surprise to me. Like. I know, my dude. Do you really think... lmao

Apparently you think this is shocking to me or something. I know Joseph Smith did horrible things. Shockingly, sometimes humans are capable of both good and horrible things.

Why do you think he was killed by a mob? I've got an inkling it's 'cuz he, uh, did horrible things. The gospel regularly teaches that anyone who abuses their authority will be removed from that authority. So, he was. I understand that's not the church's position, but I don't need it to be; I've prayed about it, and that's good enough for me. Guy shouldn't have lusted after teenagers. I wish I could sit down with Emma and let her unload over cups of tea.

Similarly, I believe that Brigham Young did good and horrible things. The church would not have survived Smith's death had it not been for Young and his stubbornness. Unfortunately, in addition to his being stubborn as a mule, Brigham Young was also a racist, a colonizer, and a bully. (And that's not even getting into his misogyny! Woof!) (Of course, he wasn't killed. When I get to Heaven, regardless of what degree of glory I'm in, I hope Heavenly Father & Mother give me a day pass to go and punch Brigham Young in the throat. He will most assuredly proceed to kick my butt, because Brigham Young was yoked, but it'll be worth it.)

The LDS church is not perfect. It is run by human beings, who are not perfect. I don't expect it to be perfect. I am deeply, deeply saddened by that fact that so many members interact with the gospel dogmatically. The gospel is so beautifully complex and unknown, and weird. It's so weird! I love it! What a weird and beautiful and complicated thing we've been given a glimpse into!

I'm equally saddened by the fact that so many non-members and ex-members interact with it dogmatically. Both approaches are an exhausting way to live.

The leaders of the LDS church have done horrific things in the name of the church. The Mountain Meadows Massacre is horrific. Joseph Smith's sexual assault of children is horrific. Brigham Young's allowance of southern members to bring their slaves to Utah (and all of the atrocities associated with that) is horrific. Joseph Smith's exhumation and parading about of a native person's skeleton is horrific. (Didja know about that one?? I do!) The blood oath that used to be a part of the endowment ceremony was... well, idk if I'd go as far as say horrific, but it was weird af, wasn't it? (And not in the fun, kooky way.)

More recently, the POX was horrific. The church's "indirect" support of Prop 8 was horrific. (lmao @ all of my fellow members who defended that tooth and claw because it 'came from God' and then had nothing to say when it was retracted a few years later, because, DUH, it SURE DIDN'T COME FROM GOD, DID IT?) The abuse of children hidden by a system that encourages keeping things within the system is horrific.

I'm not an idiot. I'm not a naif, either. And incredibly, even reading over that person's blog post, I'm not in a cult; because nothing they've described makes the church a cult. (Their argument is basically that Utah is a cult, and frankly, that one I have no issue with lmao. Utahn LDS culture is not my cup of tea. I find it stifling. [I grew up adjacent to Utah -- imo it was worse, because we had to be even MORE self-righteous, to make up for the legalized gambling and hookers.] Speaking with non-US members of the church is absolutely illuminating, because their cultural touchstones are completely different, and many of them approach the gospel differently than we do in the States. Some of my most cherished learning moments have come from non-US members. Relatedly, I miss going to the Sunstone Symposium.)

I wish the person in that blog post had been raised to understand the dangers of dogmatic thinking, and had been taught discernment. It is tragic that they experienced a faith crisis like that; not because they left the church, but because the crisis part of it was entirely unnecessary. They were not properly equipped by their parents, their family, or their community, and that's just... sad. It's deeply sad. They were failed by those who should have taught them (and based on their writing, their parents were failed as well. It's failure all the way down... which, Utah, so. I'm not surprised).

If you're an ex-member and you feel compelled to bash the church, I get it. You were raised to believe in everything that was taught to you without question, and that questioning itself was a sin. When you learned something awful, your worldview fractured. And now you've found a community of people who feel similarly to you, in an inverse of the church community you once had; where you are uplifted and edified, and you're able to righteously tirade against the Other, who has wronged you. (And I'm not discounting you've been wronged. I've met truly awful people at church. I've been told awful things. I have been hurt. Unfortunately: humans. I am not looking forward to Elder Bednar's eventual rise to prophet. Hopefully he'll get the same treatment from HF/HM that Benson did, in that he'll at least mercifully shut up about his bigotry.)

I would ask you to consider what use that dogma has to you. Comfort? Community? Purpose? Figure it out, and deconstruct the dogma. Dogmatic thinking is by definition strict. It's exhausting, and it perpetuates its own destruction. It's not worth it.

Your linking me this blog post is your reacting from a place of dogma, expecting my own dogmatic thinking in response. Nah, friend. I don't need the church leaders to be perfect. I don't need the church to be perfect. Frankly, the Book of Mormon could've been written while Smith was high on shrooms and mummia, and I'd still say it's divinely inspired. (I'm not a historic BoM person. My husband is. We have fun talking about it.)

My testimony is not based on the historicity of the church or its teachings; nor is it based on the infallibility of leadership. It's based on Jesus Christ and my Heavenly Parents.

I hope you have a lovely evening wherever you are, and that your bed and room are the exact temperature you want them to be.