#ftw the follow up is longer than the original

[starry-bi-sky]

I am procrastinating homework and finals studying so I'm making another DPxDC au -- or more accurately, I am making an au of an au. or combining two aus to make a third one, because I am Procastinating And thinking about it.

(the part two for my Danny is Jason Todd au is like,,, half-made and I will get around to finishing it, promiiissse)

So the two aus I had in mind were combining, of course, the two clone aus - the Danny Clone and the Damian Clone au. For folks who haven't seen either posts (or saw one but not the other) here are summaries of both:

Damian Clone Au: The LoA make a clone of Damian Wayne specifically to either kill Damian Wayne and have the clone take his place as the heir to the LoA, or to bring him back. At 6 years old though and through magical teleportation mishaps, Baby Damian ends up in the warehouse district of Amity Park and picked up (and later adopted) by Danny Fenton. They develop a brotherly dynamic with one another.

Danny Clone Au: Danny is straight up a clone of Bruce Wayne, doesn't find out until a year after he has his accident. And, for the fun of it, is also mostly-powerless (he retains his ghost sense and a semblance of a ghost core and signature, but no ghost form). His reasoning for becoming Phantom is because he has walked into the lab watching his parents dissecting ghosts post-portal working more times than he can count. And due to this, changes his beliefs from "ghosts are evil" to "ghosts are sentient and sapient beings who don't deserve this treatment". (masterpost pinned on my blog, its currently incomplete) He is also a little GNC, as a treat. Long-haired Danny ftw. Ellie is a halfa because of the ectoplasm that Vlad used, and also the same age as Danny. They call each other twins and she is viciously protective of him. He uses a baseball bat and brass knuckles that I call 'jawbreakers' to fight ghosts.

Now admittedly, not much probably changes with the combination of these aus other than the potential parallels between Damian and Danny, and Bruce and Damian - and of course, I am always a sucker for parallels. Plus Damian's running off would take Danny finding him much longer, since he can no longer fly, but all the more meaningful because he still took so much time to find him.

(It probably also makes their first meeting different as well - Danny wears a ROTTMNT Casey Jones Jr. esq. mask when he goes out, but Damian would recognize lazarus green anywhere. He'd probably try harder to kill him though once he sees his face, since he knows that its not his father but an imposter.)

It also includes what I consider a hilarious conversation: "Since I'm a clone of Bruce Wayne, does this make me your dad or your brother?" "Don't be an idiot, laeazir." "You didn't answer my question."

The biggest change that comes from this is, of course, the fact that Danny now no longer has a leg to stand on with the "you're a human, I am a ghost" excuse in order to prevent Damian to help him with ghost-fighting, because now Danny is also a squishy, fleshy and fragile human just like Damian. And a human who, arguably, has less combat training than Damian and no powers to make up for it.

Now, Danny in both aus are about 16-17-ish in age, so they've had time to adapt to their new vigilante-hero lifestyle, but its still not the same as Damian's training as an assassin. Damian, unlike in the original clone au, remains insistent on his want to help Danny.

And,,, eventually wears him down after weeks or months of sneaking out after him, helping in fights, interfering, arguing, etc. Danny eventually agrees, exhausted, but he makes Damian promise, promise, that he will be careful and to focus on dodging and distraction. At least until Danny can figure out a safer alternative. He wants him as far removed from the fight as he can, he's a child for ancient's sake, after all.

Which is another issue too - if we follow Damian Clone timeline, then Damian is six years old when this happens. I'll be point blank, I do not see Danny ever actually agreeing to let a literal 6 year old go with him. SO, solution, I bump Damian's age to 7 when he arrives in the Fenton Family, and make him freshly eight years old when he finally gets Danny to agree.

It still SUCKS. He is still very much an itty bitty child, but as someone who has seen the difference between a six year old and an eight year old due to working at a daycare, an eight year old is still... slightly feasible. And an 8 year old assassin even more so (even if he hasn't trained properly in nearly a year or so)

So Danny, reluctantly, agrees to let Damian come with him on patrols.

He ghost-proofs Damian's sword (as he has since learned to do with his bat and jawbreakers), makes him a grappling hook and a Fenton thermos, and reluctantly lets Damian come with in his old LoA uniform that he appeared in (with some tailoring and ghost-proofing, because he has since begun to grow out of the uniform).

(and Danny himself also finally starts looking into alternatives to improve his own "suit" - which is all but a hoodie and reinforced jeans and a hockey mask. He needs to set an example to his little brother, goddammit.)

Then, as they're planning for Damian's eventual (dreaded on Danny's part) debut, they sit in their shared room and brainstorm for what to call Damian. "Ellie already uses the name Spirit." Danny says, sitting criss-cross at his desk with the eraser nub of a pencil chewed between his teeth.

(Behind him he has an investigative corkboard set up -- his accident left him with the ability to see ghosts not capable of being seen on the visible plane. 'Stereotypical' ghosts. Between school work, his social life, and ghost fighting, some of his downtime is spent figuring out ways to help them move on. His most recent is a cold case.)

(Bc with Danny, I loove to have him have some sort of trait that ties him in with his original counterpart. Nature vs Nurture and all that. Investigative work can be part of that.)

"What about Wraith?" Damian suggests from the floor, leaning against the bed frame while he goes over one of his english books. They've been practicing his reading and writing.

Danny furrows his brows. "A ghost seen typically shortly after or before someone's death?"

Damian nods. "Yes, it's of a similar cadence to 'Batman and Robin'."

"What's with you and your thing with Batman and Robin?" Danny asks with a playful half-smile, Damian shrugs and looks at his books. Danny sticks the eraser back between his incisors. "Phantom and Wraith... that works, though."

The first night out together, Danny fusses over Damian, making sure every bit of uniform was secured and in place -- something Damian took mild offense over. His outfit was far more reinforced than the juvenile get-up that his older brother wore.

But he let him fuss anyways. It made him loved.

"Now remember, Wraith--"

Damian interrupts him: "Yes, I know, Dany. Avoid and distract. Stay situationally aware. I fear that is something I should be telling you, however. Mother would have your head if she ever saw what your training was like."

(It was, not for the first time, that Damian wondered how his,,, "mother",,, would react if she ever met Danyal. Not good, he knows.)

Danny's shoulders sag, and he sighs. "I believe that, what with that super-secret spy--"

"Assassin."

Danny sends him a half-hearted chagrined look, "Assassin," he corrects, "organization that made you. I'm sure I'd give your mother an aneurysm." When he's finally okay with whatever make-believe issues he found with his suit, Danny reaches for the nearby side table and carefully slips on a black domino mask over Damian's eyes. It was thin, flexible, and made with some kind of material that Danny reassured was environmentally safe.

("Some kind of matieral that Wayne Industries invented awhile ago, Sam bought it for me." Danny told him when he first showed it to him.)

It was also cold. But the chill was made up for, slightly, with Danny's warmer hands smoothing it out over his skin, and ridding of any ridges that could form. Damian isn't sure entirely what Danyal did to keep it stuck onto his face, but when he touches it with his fingers he feels a very faint seam at the edge, and it doesn't budge against his hands. It felt like a second skin.

"There we go." Danny smiles, pulling his hands back. He still looks nervous. "It's not the same as my hockey mask," which sat atop his head, ready to be pulled down, "but I think a domino mask will work better for you considering your background."

He was right, a hockey mask would only hurt Damian's peripheral vision. This mask was thin enough that it didn't.

"Ready to go, Wraith?"

"After you, Phantom."

+++

Damian has much issue with Danny's suit. He can think of a million ways to make it better. It is one of the things he and Samantha Manson can get along with, and the few times they have spent time together they have brainstormed suit ideas. He knows that since Danny took him on as Wraith, he has started to look into better suit alternatives.

However. They are both aware of the same thing:

Danny is not Batman, nor Superman, nor Wonder Woman, nor Aquaman, or the Flash, or Green Arrow, or Nightwing, or any single hero on the public roster. He is also not rich like Lex Luthor or Vlad Masters or Bruce Wayne himself.

He has no money and no contacts, and thus, no way of properly improving his suit to be something even half as safe as the other supers.

And he refuses to let Samantha Manson help him find a way to fix that - even with all that money, Samantha Manson is on an allowance from her parents, and also, despite her other range of abilities, not capable of getting those materials without putting herself on a list of some sort. They are at a standstill.

Damian knows this, because he has asked.

Until one day when Danny is talking about a case he is working on and telling Damian about old adventures he had in the Ghost Zone, does he see his brother get hit with a lightbulb.

He slaps a hand against his forehead and straightens up from his swivel seat. He huffs a laugh, "Of course! Why didn't I think of it sooner?" And he turns on his heel and hurries to his bookshelf, pulling down a notebook and flipping open to an empty page.

Damian frowns, "Laeazir?"

"I know you don't like my suit, Damian," Danny says, striding over to his desk and snatching a pencil out of a cup. He begins jotting something down on the notebook. "And there's nothing I can really do about it because, well, I'm poor in comparison to my facesake, and I don't have the resources to get my hands on someone who would make me a new suit."

"Yes, we have talked about this..." Damian nods slowly, still frowning, and trying to follow his brother's line of reasoning.

Danny shoots him a megawatt, half-tilt smile, his hair tied up into a half-bun. "But! I was thinking about it from the wrong angle. I don't have the living resources to help me get a suit, but..." he trails off, staring at Damian intently.

It dinged in Damian's brain to where he was going, "But you have the undead resources instead." He says, his eyes widening slowly. Of course, of course! Danyal was ridiculously charismatic by accident, and Damian has seen plenty of times where his heart-of-gold had one or two non-hostile ghosts be incredibly grateful to him.

His brother makes a loud, 'ding-ding-ding!' sound, pointing his pencil at Damian as his smile stretches further across his face. In a few quick strides, he was sat down next to Damian and showing him his notebook. "Correct! When I first started out as Phantom a few years ago, I managed to help a ghost who called herself Taylor, and apparently she was a seamstress both in and out of life."

Damian watches as Danny writes the name at the top of the paper, and creates bullet-points down the page. "She said that in return for saving her, I should come find her in the Ghost Zone if I ever need clothes made for me. It's a one-time thing, but I was thinking that she could perhaps help make me a new suit."

Danny turns a bit pink at the ears, and rubs his neck, "I never thought much of it because I didn't think I'd ever go into the Ghost Zone, or ever need ghost clothes, so I forgot about it up until now."

A scoff forces itself out of Damian's mouth, but he is smiling. "Danyal, you are the smartest idiot I have ever met."

For the next hour, both he and Danny make a bullet point list of what both of their suits would need. Reinforcement in certain areas, gauntlets with reinforced knuckles to replace Danyal's jawbreakers. A different weapon than a bat.... a utility belt, reinforced boots. Anything they could think of.

It was Damian's idea to add a cloak to both of their suits, asymmetrical and torn at the edges for a more 'ghostly' look. They have a theme, after all. It's quite fun.

Then Danyal calls up Sam for help in drafting up design ideas. And while Danyal steps mostly to the side when it comes to the design itself, Damian and Sam fill pages with designs until coming up with one they both agreed on and like.

"What about a lightning bolt on the chest?" "Why are we using my traumatic accident as a symbol of my identity?" "Ghosts do it all the time, Danny. Ember sings about her death." "I'm not dead?" "No that won't work, Manson. Shazam already has a giant lighting bolt emblem." "Okay, but I still want to use it somewhere." "How about this?" "...That could work. Okay, now onto your emblem--"

Last was the hard part: getting into the Ghost Zone without the Fenton parents noticing the disappearance of their precious Fenton Specter Speeder. They employed Jazz's help with that. She would get the Fentons out of the house long enough for him and Danny to get into the ghost zone, hopefully find the seamstress, and cash in that favor.

They went through with their plan that following weekend. Danny tossed Damian a small jumpsuit as they both climbed into the specter speeder, but did not grab his own. He had a small duffle bag on him that he threw under the seat.

"What is this?" Damian asks, nose scrunching up at the gaudy picture of Jack Fenton's face square at the center of the chest. He held it far away from it, as if it had a disease.

"Your hazmat suit." Danny replies, settling himself into the driver's seat as the door hissed shut and he began turning it on. He had some sort of gas mask on in his lap, too small to fit Danny's head, but certainly the right size to fit Damian's. "Normally you wouldn't need it since you'd stay in the speeder, but we're both getting out once we find Taylor. It's to protect you from the ectoplasm."

A scowl forces itself across Damian's face, "You don't have one." He points out, finding seat in the passenger chair next to Danny. His arms cross over his chest, and he was not pouting.

Danny looks at him amusedly, "I have enough ectoplasm in my body that I don't need one, you however, do not." He retorts, poking a finger into Damian's ribcage pointedly. "If you don't put it on now, you'll put it on when we find Taylor."

Damian's scowl deepens, feeling petulant as he sunk into his chair. Danny turns back to the console and flips a few more switches. "I will not, it looks ridiculous." He turns it around to show Danny the Jack Fenton Face.

The Specter Speeder hums to life, and there's a moment of turbulence as it lifts off the ground. While it does, Danny turns back to him blankly, stares at the emblem, and then reaches forward and yanks it off with a scriiiiich of the emblem. He crumples it up with one hand, and throws it into a small bin at his feet.

"There, fixed." He smiles. Then turns back to the controls, taking the yoke with both hands. "And I'm calling Dad Rights; you will put it on when we find Taylor or you'll stay in the speeder."

Damian sputters, sitting up incredulously. "You are not my father." He argues.

"Teeechnically, I am." Danny says, "I'm a clone of your father, and since I am fully his clone, that makes you my son by a technicality." He says cheerfully, pushing the specter speeder forward and into the swirling green portal.

Before Damian can retort, they're passing through the portal. This was his first time going into the Ghost Zone, and for a few seconds there was nothing but bright, swirling green filling his vision. His body felt like it was being twisted and pulled, his up and down reversing and returning. It was painless, but dizzying.

It only lasts for a few seconds, but it feels like a minute, and when they exit out the other side, Damian is holding his head while his vision spots and swims. Internally, he felt like those cartoon characters when their eyeballs rolled around in their head.

The dizziness fades away slowly, and as Damian regains his sight, he notices Danny's hand splayed over his sternum, gently keeping him pressed against his seat. It fell away when Danny saw that he was alright.

"Put your seatbelt on," Danny orders, nodding to his chair. Damian listens absently, before remembering their conversation before they went through the portal.

"That is not how it works." He scowls, and, annoyingly, only gets a challenged eyebrow raise from Danny. He could see the words written on his face without Danyal ever having to say it.

Because, dangit, he was technically right. Damian refuses to say this aloud. He screws his jaw shut, and crosses his arms back across his chest.

Danny chuckles under his breath, and turns his eyes back to the ghost zone. "My point still stands, either you wear the suit, or you don't leave the speeder."

"Fine."

+++

They eventually find where the seamstress is. Through quite a lot of Danny stopping to ask questions with any friendly ghost he came across, they eventually locate an island with a strange, urban city bustling with life on it. Massive, rocky stalagmites grew from the ground, and buildings were built on top of it or around it, with strange, warping architecture.

It was oddly beautiful.

Danny parked the speeder on the side of the street with a two hour parking sign on a nearby post. As he turned off the engine, he flipped a switch on the console that darkened the windows. He unbuckles his seat, and stood up, stretching out his back with a deep groan.

"Alright, put your suit on. The windows are tinted, so nobody should be able to see into the speeder." He orders, pulling out the duffle he brought in earlier and unzipping it. He pulls out his hockey mask and the hoodie he wore out for patrol, and the notebook they'd been using to jot down ideas for their suit.

Danny even had the hindsight to write in their respective heights, and with Tucker's help, some of their measurements. While he did that, Damian sourly pulled on his hazmat suit, irritated by the need to wear it.

Unfortunately, he also had to wear the boots and gloves for 'extra precaution'. Damian nearly bites out a grumpy 'you're as paranoid as father', but holds his tongue. He wasn't going to tell Danyal that secret.

Once he was done and Danny has his hockey mask and hoodie on, Danny grabs the gas mask and helps fit it over Damian's face. It was a sleek, simple design, shaped similarly to a regular face mask, with little filters on both sides of the mouth and a clear, protective covering around the eyes and forehead. Danyal improved it from the original his parents made.

He was smarter than he gave himself credit for.

Danny checks, then double checks that it the mask is tight, then smiles. Patting Damian's shoulders before standing up fully. "Taylor's shop should be somewhere nearby." He says, grabbing the notebook and tucking it under his arm.

Damian nods, and follows him out the door and onto the busy streets.

Finding Taylor becomes remarkably quick now that they were inside her city - something that Damian silently wondered was based loosely off NYC. Danny kept a firm arm around Damian's shoulders the entire time they walked down the street, keeping the both of them on the inside sidewalk.

Barely anyone passed them a second glance, spare the few odd looks shot at Damian. Danny whispers to him the first time it happens that it's because he has no ghost core, those more attune to their signatures might've been picking up on it.

They didn't notice Danny, because he had one, albeit a weak one.

Taylor's shop has a big sign on it in logographic writing that Damian has no idea how to read. The text shifts slowly, a jambled squiggle of lines, dots, and connected curves that look like a mix of messy cursive, gibberish, and logographic alphabets. He only knows its Taylor's shop because Danny pulls them towards it, stating that it was the place.

"You can read that?" He asks, incredulous as they draw closer to the door. Danny moves his arm off his shoulder, and wraps his fingers around Damian's instead.

"Yep," He replies, then scrunches his nose up, "sort of. It's - uh--" he stumbles over a word that Damian's ears cannot comprehend, but fills his head with slight static regardless. Danny winces. "It's the written form of ghostspeak, but since I'm not a ghost, I can only read some of it. Like uh, dyslexia."

"...I see." Damian says after a moment of silence, trying to replay the word in his head. His mind can't grasp the sound.

When they enter, the door doesn't ding with the sound of a bell, but rather it makes a low scream. Nobody bats an eye to the sound, keeping to their slow search through the racks of clothes.

At the counter was a woman talking quietly to another woman, one of whom Danny recognizes, as he walks over to her.

He doesn't need to say anything, because the woman behind the counter sees him coming, and her face positively lights up with delight. "Phantom!" She cries, and gestures to come over. "I was wondering when in the high ancients you were going to come see me!"

Danny's face is obscured by his mask, but Damian knows he's smiling sheepishly with the way he tilts his head and the way he tenses his shoulders. "My bad, Miss Taylor," he says, reaching the counter and standing beside the woman she was talking to, "It kinda... slipped my mind."

Taylor waves her hand dismissively, "Well you are here now!" She replies, grinning wide. Then her eyes pop open - literally - and she puts a hand over her chest. "Oh, how rude of me!" She turns and gestures between Phantom and the lady next to him, "Miss Mabam, this is Phantom. I told you about him a couple of years ago. He saved me from humans. Phantom, this is Gigi Mabam, she funds my shop. In return I make clothes for her and her staff."

The 'Gigi' woman turns just as Danny does, and smiles wide at him. Damian narrows his eyes at her, shuffling behind Danny legs as he looked her up and down. She had silvery-white hair and purple skin, and wore a darker purple business suit, a red gem cravat at her collar, and teal cat-eye glasses.

There was a lot of purple.

"So this is the ghost-touched you were telling me about, dear!" The woman, Mabam, said. Her voice was rich and low but she spoke in a whimsical cadence. It made Damian's skin crawl, and his narrowed eyes turned into a glare. "I must thank you for saving my seamstress, it would've been quite a fizzy-wink if she had been lost to those ghosty hunters."

What were those nonsense words? Damian hated it.

"Miss Mabam here runs a five-star hotel nearby," Taylor explains, her body turned to Danny, "she also is in charge of the city's Battle Nexus."

Danny is silent for a moment, and his free hand lifts and places itself on the back of Damian's head, keeping him close. "Battle Nexus...?"

Mabam claps cheerfully, laughing low, "Oh yes! Ghosts from all around the zone come to attend and watch as their fellow haunties are ripped from limbity-limb in a blood-curdling battle!"

Danny is still as stone. "I see." He says, careful. Damian wraps his fingers around his pant leg. "Well, I hate to interrupt your conversation, but I was hoping to cash in that favor, Miss Taylor?"

"Of course! What do you need?"

Danny looks down at Damian, and he looks up at him, locking eyes with the ominous green glowing from the eyeslits of his mask. He nods, and Danny looks back up. "Do you know how to make suits? Of the protective kind?"

+++

The seamstress it turns out, is capable of such a thing. And she ushers the both of them into one of the backrooms, sending off Mabam with a farewell and a promise to continue their conversation soon.

She flips through their design book, and immediately gets to work making their suits. In the end, with the help of her powers, she gets both done over the span of four hours. It's longer than both Danny and Damian want, but neither rush her.

Damian just hopes that Jasmine can keep the Fenton parents distracted for that long. She will have to.

The suits are better in real life than on paper, and Damian preens from the side in his own custom suit as Danny examines his own in front of the three mirrors. They were both dressed in all black, but whatever fabric Taylor used was of a blackest-black, turning Danyal - and Damian's - bodies into a black hole to look at. Both of them were fitted for agility, with reinforced padding around their shoulders and chests, as well as around the joints of their legs. Their boots were reinforced as well.

("It was hard to make your boots shock absorbent," Taylor explains, "since we all fly, but I applied similar stuff to what I did with your shoulders and chestplate.")

On the side of Danyal's legs were raised, black, lichtenberg-like figures that were contained to the seams and disappeared under his boots. There were similar designs going up his sleeves, with spiked gauntlets wrapped around his lower arm and hands. The knuckles were reinforced, just like he wanted.

Damian's favorite parts were their capes, however. Black like the rest of the outfit, but "wrapped" around their shoulders like an apocalyptic shawl with a back that went down to their knees, and at the hems the capes were torn and ripped like a wraith. Danyal's mask had gone through very little change. It was made of a stronger material, and Taylor had gone and made it more skull-like in its shape, with three large grills at the front, and the sides curving inward below the 'cheekbones' of the skull to better fit his face. It was still shock white, the only white part of Danyal's entire costume.

Damian's suit was almost identical. However, rather than having the seams of his suit resemble lichtenberg figures, the seams of his sleeves and upper torso were that of a black skeleton, with bone-y designs over his gauntlets and the fingers an ombre of dark red-to-black. And around his torso were raised lines that looked similar to a ribcage. The edge of his cloak was splatter a dark red as well. And he had a new domino mask that looked similar to the upper half of Danyal's mask, with the outer edges curved downward over his cheekbones. He was briefly allowed to take off the upper part of his gas mask to try on the mask.

The best part however, was that since the suits were made of material native to the ghost zone, they could also be taken off quickly and hidden in a small artifact. It was magic, is what it was. Danyal chose earrings, and Damian chose a ring.

When they got back to the Fenton house, Jazz demands a box of chocolate for her hard work. Damian thinks that's only fair as Danny takes them both out to get candy for Jazz.

+++

But other than vigilante stuff, not else much changes. Danny gets to pull a "Dad By Technicality Rule" card over Damian when he's being a brat. Danny doesn't have his run in with Rift (a ghost who portals him into Gotham) until after he meets Damian/lets Damian join him on patrol and when they get new suits.

My reason? Because I want it to happen after that point in time lol. It also makes the eventual "heyyyyy you have a clone" @ bruce much funnier to me because not only does he have a clone of HIMSELF but also THAT clone has a clone of Damian living with him.

Also when Danny destabilizes for the first time Damian is terrified for his safety. The fentons are surprisingly good at cloning, Danny hasn't had any issues up until this point in time, and that's only because he got hit with a new gun from Skulker that messed up the ectoplasm he had in his dna, which in term fucked with his own DNA.

Danny's destabilization, imo, is not "I cast you with Melt" he's not Ellie, he's not made of 50% ectoplasm. His parents surprisingly knew what they were doing, and he was human. So his destabilization should be unique to himself and different. Thus his destabilization is "I cast you with Compromised Immune System" his body slowly weakens over time as his cells destabilize. He becomes unnaturally frail and sick. Damian calls Ellie for help when Danny doesn't get up after being hit in a fight that he normally, and Ellie helps figure out that he's destabilizing. This is whats gonna happen in OG clone au too, but Ellie is going to be there rather than Damian.

It makes going to Wayne Manor after that slightly more interesting,,,

[doberbutts]

I am now almost finished with my 100 hour initial playthru of FF7 Rebirth and things to note:

Remember how I said Cloud is scared of himself and is terrified that he can't figure out where he ends and where Someone Else begins? Do you know that I fistpumped the air when he said that ALMOST LITERALLY WORD FOR WORD in a bearing of souls with Tifa, in-game? Hey hey, correct character analysis ftw

Not sure if it's just because of the dialogue options I choose but I do think this game is significantly more ClouTi focused than the original, with (so far) less SefiKura. I think that it's narratively telling me that Cloud's "feelings" for Aerith are largely because he's got himself mixed up with Zack, who is more blatantly head-over-heels for Aerith than in the original where it was somewhat ambiguous whether he would have stayed with her If Only everything didn't happen. And that more accurately IF he were to be romantically interested in someone, it would probably be Tifa, if he could figure out how to trust both himself and others again.

This is interesting because the original game left it much more ambiguous on whether he would have at all, and we older fans know that in the series follow-ups he's still single, moody, and refuses to let anyone get close despite having formed a little family with Tifa. It's very QPR in Advent Children- a lot of signals that even when he is home at Seventh Heaven, their relationship is still more that of roommates and old friends than anything else. She's comfortable inviting herself into his space whether to have a heart-to-heart or to rip him a new one, but he is not comfortable staying there long-term. He wants to connect with her, but he stops himself from getting too close. He says it's to protect her from his more volatile moods. She tells him she's survived them thus far.

And it's interesting to see that play out in perspective in Rebirth, especially with the Weapon scene. Also whew Tifa you are the unsung hero of this story. My God girl you are tolerant af almost to a dangerous point. I know I know she's technically doing it right because you're not supposed to try to break the delusion (especially considering how Cloud gets once he figures it out in the OG, and the fact that he's now attacked and threatened her multiple times when she suggests maybe something isn't real), but the amount of "biting her tongue to keep the peace" I keep seeing her do is astounding.

And maybe it's because I was a kid when I played the OG and now I'm an adult with more experience, but... I have friends and friends-of-friends who are in similar... situationships. A friend of mine is good friends with a moderately famous former actor, who no longer acts due to extreme mental illness and disability. Said friend-of-friend has a very similar dynamic with a friend of *his*, and that friend's husband, where he lives with them and is a fairly constant satellite in their marriage despite no actual romance or sexual intimacy going on, and struggles to find a balance of letting them in so he can enjoy social relationships and shutting them out to protect them from when the paranoia and hallucinations turn on panic fight-or-flight mode.

The difference is that this is a real person, and not a video game character, and real people are messier and more nuanced than 200 collective hours of gaming experience. But my point is that knowing what I know now, knowing similar real life situations even by proxy, I can understand why Cloud is characterized the way he is. I see a lot of my friend-in-law in him, which makes me think the story team did extensive research on mental illness and specifically trauma before re-imagining this world.

Girl help antis found out that people ship Sephiroth and Cloud and are being very annoying about it in the fandom tags

[echoghost1]

Where The Lines Overlap

Word Count: 4618

For: @lexiepiper

Summary: Maddie wants to know what her son has been keeping from her and today he finally decides to tell her.

This is a sequel to Parallels! But there's enough overlap that you don't have to read it first if you don't want to.

You can read it on AO3 or down below the cut!

Maddie sat on the bus seat gently stroking her son’s hair as he slept. He fell asleep on her shoulder about ten minutes ago and she finally let her thoughts wander back to what had happened earlier.

Their conversation in the stairwell had been the most honest and eye-opening one they’ve had in a long time. She couldn’t help but smile as he unconsciously hugged her arm. She had a feeling today didn’t go exactly as he had planned either.

She had been so happy when he had asked her to be a chaperon on this trip. Even if he had been hesitant. At first, she thought he was just mentioning it because his teacher told him to, but he was genuinely excited when she said yes.

They both were happy about the prospect of spending time together and it only made her happier.

And then the elevator incident happened.

Finding out that the activation of her life’s work was the source of all her problems was a double-edged sword of her own making.

When he had panicked on the elevator she knew she had to get to the bottom of it. She didn’t want her baby boy to look that scared again.

When she asked him what was wrong he was so evasive. He tried so hard not to answer her questions, to change the subject.

Then he described how stepping inside felt wrong, that it felt like something bad would happen. He had an unexplainable sense of foreboding and that’s when she realized he didn’t know what was going on either.

He wasn’t trying to lie to her, he was just as confused as she was. So she pushed forward. She knew he had an easier time working through his thoughts if he spoke out loud, so she made sure to keep him talking.

“All that metal and the buttons and I just-” he stopped mid-sentence and a slowly dawning look of revelation crossed his features.

Then he abruptly shifted gears and went straight to the stairs. “You know what, I figured it out and I was being dumb. Let’s go!”

She was glad he figured it out but was completely clueless to what his discovery actually meant.

The way he described the elevator. He must have been reminded of something. Something similar to an elevator scared him in the past. Something big enough for him to get inside. Something metal. Mechanical even, if it had buttons.

But what could it be?

Certainly, she would know of something in his life that was that important. That monumental.

Monumental?

Their work was metal. It had buttons.

The only thing big enough for him to fit inside was…

No.

It couldn't be.

Could it?

Her breath caught in her throat at the thought. She really hoped that wasn’t it. She followed after her son and caught him on the landing.

“Is this about your accident?” she asked and really hoped she was wrong.

He stopped dead. She wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

He just stood there, his foot suspended above the next step. One wrong move and he’d fall.

She couldn’t stand it. She had to speak again, “It is, isn’t it?”

After what felt like an eternity he finally placed his foot back onto the landing. His hand slid off the railing as he spoke, “It’s pretty dumb, isn’t it? They aren’t that similar but I guess it’s close enough.”

Her heart broke with the sound of his defeat and his admission. She had never wanted her work to hurt her son. She never wanted it to hurt anyone. She and Jack spent so long making sure their technology wouldn’t hurt humans. Spent so many hours on countless prototypes to make sure no one would be hurt.

Especially after they had hurt Vlad.

After a few moments Danny continued without being prompted, “They’re both big metal things you can stand inside. Both mechanical and,” he chuckled a little before continuing, “they both take you places.”

“And the button?”

“Yeah.” He turned to face her with an expression she couldn’t quite place. “Both have a button on the inside.”

Button? On the inside?

That couldn’t be right.

But he wasn’t lying.

She may not always know why he lies, or know what the full truth is when he does, but she always knows when he lies to her. He has a tell.

He’d be a terrible poker player.

“On the inside? You,” she hesitated as she tried to find the words, tried to find some other explanation. “You never said you went inside.”

“You never asked.”

She couldn’t hide the hurt at his accusation.

He noticed and immediately tried to fix it, “Not that you should have needed to! I should have told you sooner. I just,” he looked away, “I just didn’t know how to tell you. I tried, but things kept getting in the way. I kept getting interrupted. And then one day I just gave up. I thought it would be better if you didn’t know. And then I was worried that” he bit his lip, “I was worried you wouldn’t like me anymore if you knew.”

Why would he think that? “Why wouldn’t I like you?”

“Because I’m different.”

She walked over to him, closed the distance, and lifted his face to look at her. “I don’t know how you survived, but clearly you did.” she placed her other hand on his shoulder both for comfort and to regain his full attention, “I’m sorry for whatever I did that led to your distrust in me.”

“Mom,” he started but she shook her head.

“No, I can’t have you keep blaming yourself for this. This rift between us.” she pulled him into a hug and was so relieved when he relaxed into it.

With the way he was talking, she was afraid he would have stiffened or even straight-up rejected her.

She knew they had more to talk about but this wasn’t the place for such conversations, “Come on, let’s get back to the others before they send a search party.”

“More like before Lancer starts filling out my next detention slip,” he muttered to himself with a smirk.

She frowned but decided to let him think that she hadn’t heard him. Clearly, they had a lot to talk about.

==============================================

Once they had arrived home Maddie was determined to find out what really happened to Danny. To get to the bottom of what he meant by being different.

It turns out he had a similar plan, “Hey, I know we need to talk about what happened today,” he started as he fidgeted in place, “but could you do me a favor first?”

“Of course.”

“Could you put all the anti-ghost stuff in the basement?” his question was strained and desperate. Almost like asking was a bad thing.

Then she realized that maybe this was why he was so secretive and avoidant. It wasn’t like she didn’t know how their inventions tended to pick him up. How all the trackers refused to locate anything other than him.

She just didn’t think that the weapons worked on him too. It hadn’t even crossed her mind to worry about that.

How could she be so blind?

“Okay.”

She’d make sure to power down the security defense system too.

Danny gave her a nervous smile, “Cool. I’m gonna go get something from upstairs. Meet you in the living room?”

Once she agreed he took off up the stairs. She immediately did a very thorough sweep of the entire living room and collected any and all anti-ghost anything and took it downstairs.

“Hey-ya Madds! You two have fun on the field trip?” Jack asked as he looked up from his work, “Uh, what’s with all the-?” he stopped mid-sentence as something caught his eye. “Hey isn’t that the ecto-gun that I keep in the couch?”

“Yes,” she replied simply as she put everything onto the floor and started to take all her anti-ghost equipment from her person. It wasn’t much, but it was definitely more than nothing.

“Are you okay?” he asked sitting down his screwdriver as he watched her place the final piece onto the pile.

“Danny wants to tell us something. It involves his accident with the portal and he asked me to come unarmed.” she looked up from the equipment, “could you disable the security system?”

Jack was hesitant but complied all the same. They knew each other well enough that if she was asking him to do something like that it wasn’t without reason.

He paused for a second after he deactivated the system. “Should I just change? It’d be easier than taking everything out.”

“Yeah, there should be some clean clothes for you in the laundry room still if you haven’t taken them up yet.”

He chuckled nervously because that was something she had asked him to do while she was out today and of course he forgot all about it. That was probably why he was down here.

He must have come down to do the simple chore and had gotten distracted before he even made it to the laundry room.

She smiled, at least this was still the same.

==============================================

Maddie and Jack sat on the couch and waited. Danny stood in front of them looking very much like a kid who was nervous to give a class presentation.

Only they were his parents.

Jazz sat in the armchair nearest Danny and kept giving him encouraging looks.

Maddie wasn’t sure if that meant she knew what Danny was about to tell them or if that was just her being happy that Danny wasn’t going to be lying anymore. That he was opening up and trusting the people closest to him. Honestly, it could very well be both.

“So, um, I, uh,” Danny couldn’t keep eye contact with anyone in the room as he stammered his way through his unfinished sentence. He sighed with his eyes closed before turning to Jazz, “Why is this so hard?”

“Well you’ve been keeping this a secret for a while now,” Jazz started softly.

“Yeah, but I think she kinda knows?” he turned to Maddie, “Right?”

“I’m not sure I know everything dear.”

Danny sighed, “Well this is just great. Usually, I get caught and then they assume it was the portal, but now I’ve started backward.”

“What do you mean backward?” Jazz asked looking just as confused as Maddie felt.

“You saw me, and just knew what happened. Like you’ve never asked for the details, but you get it right?”

Jazz nodded hesitantly more likely to keep Danny on his train of thought than with any actual understanding as to what he was rambling about.

“Well, Mom knows about the accident but not what it did. You on the other hand are the opposite.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Jazz suggested.

Danny nodded and took a breath to compose himself, “Okay so when you guys first built the portal and it didn’t work, I felt bad. I didn’t think it was fair that something you’ve been working on since forever just didn’t work. And when you guys left it, I don’t know, it was so much worse.”

Jack’s hand slipped into Maddie’s as he gave a reassuring squeeze. It helped distract from the pull on her heartstrings.

“Well, one day I thought I’d take a look. You know, just take a peek to see what it was like. I put on the suit you made me. The black and white one. It fit like a glove.” he smiled fondly at the thought.

Maddie had noticed after his accident the suit disappeared. She didn’t think to connect the two until now.

“It was really dark in there.” he started and his gaze shifted to stare at the wall, or maybe it was an invisible point just in front of it. “I put my hand against the wall for support.” he held his left hand out to his side pantomiming the event and his gaze became more unfocused as he continued, “Felt every bolt and seam as I walked further in.” Danny’s breathing started to come in quicker shallow bursts, “It was so dark. So cold. My boot hit something. I stumbled. I leaned into the wall for support. Something clicked.”

“The button.” Maddie breathed the words out so softly she hardly heard them herself.

Danny just nodded and she realized that Danny’s eyes weren’t vacant and unfocused, they were misty.

“And then you ran out of there?” Jack added, “Just in time? Like an action hero?”

Danny’s lips trembled and he shook his head.

No?

He didn’t make it out? But how?

She had so many questions but she just wanted to hold him in her arms. She wanted to tell him he was safe now, that it was all over.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he shook his head, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” He backed away so smoothly it was like he was gliding on ice.

Jazz was instantly at Danny’s side and either she didn’t notice Danny’s odd movements or didn’t care.

“Danny it’s okay. You’re okay. Just breathe.” Jazz reached out to touch his shoulder but she missed?

“No!” he stumbled backward, tripped, and landed in a sitting position, “Not again. Not again.” He clutched his hair and started rocking back and forth.

Jack gasped, “Shell Shock.”

That was right, Jack’s grandfather was a WWI veteran. He’d seen it first hand as a boy.

Jack knelt down in front of Danny but kept his distance. “Danny? Hey buddy can you hear me? Just nod if you can.”

Danny nodded quickly, still hyperventilating and rocking on his heels.

“You’re having a flashback. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Danny just whimpered and squeezed his eyes even tighter.

Maddie could see the shine of his tears from her spot on the couch. She hated being so far away but she didn’t want to crowd him either. She walked over to Jazz instead and took her to the other side of the chair her daughter had previously occupied to give Danny and Jack more space.

“I know it’s scary buddy. You think you can try and breathe with me?”

“Maybe?”

“Okay let’s give it a try,” Jack said patiently. “Just repeat after me okay? Take one big breath in,” he started before loudly taking in a breath.

Danny did his best to mimic it. It shuddered and wasn’t nearly enough, but he was obviously trying.

Jack let his breath out, “That’s it. Let’s try it again.”

And they did. Over and over until Danny stopped rocking. Until he could take deep full breaths again. Until he opened his eyes.

The green of his eyes reflected off his tearstained face.

Maddie couldn’t stop her gasp in surprise and it caught Danny’s attention.

Those bright green eyes. So full of light and so eerily familiar.

Those weren’t Danny’s eyes.

Maddie took a half step back, but Jazz put a hand on her shoulder and whispered in her ear, “This is what he meant by being different, mom. Please don’t be afraid of him. He really needs your support right now.”

Maddie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Did this mean Jazz did know? Did she know and not tell them?

Why did both her children think this was something they should hide?

Danny blinked and his eyes went back to their normal blue. “Mom?”

Maybe he hadn’t noticed?

“Are you feeling better, Honey?” she asked trying to keep her voice steady.

He nodded and crossed his legs, “Sorry about that. I’ve never freaked out like that before.”

“You don’t have to apologize, bud.” Jack slid his hand across the carpet and hovered just above Danny’s knee, waiting for permission. When Danny didn’t jerk away Jack placed his hand down, “I’m just glad I knew how to help you.”

Danny thought for a moment before looking to Jack, “How did you know?”

“I’ve seen what Shell Shock does to folks. I learned how to help.”

“Dad, it’s not called Shell Shock anymore.” Jazz corrected immediately.

“Oh really? What’s it called now?” Jack asked always curious to learn new things. And always happy to indulge his daughter’s need to know everything.

“PTSD. It stands for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Jazz then toed the carpet self-consciously, “and if I’m remembering what I read correctly, you did everything right, Dad.”

“Well of course I did! This Fenton is a Jack of All Trades!”

Danny chuckled, “Jack of all trades? You really are living up to your name, huh?”

It took about a second for that to click but once it did Jack’s hearty laughter filled the room.

Maddie walked over and held her hand out for Danny, he took it graciously. She held his gaze for a moment. Searching those ocean blue depths for that toxic green.

She must have stared too long because Danny started making a face, “Mom? What are you looking for?”

She sighed and figured they may as well get this over with. “You said the portal did something to you. What did you mean by that?”

Danny looked away, his eyes darting back in forth as he thought before he finally closed his eyes with a sigh. “I got ghost powers.”

“Ghost powers?” That didn’t make any sense. What did that even mean? Ghosts didn’t have powers, they just interacted with the physical world differently than humans or any living thing could.

Which to a teenager, that could seem like superpowers.

“Do you remember when everybody at school got bitten by those ghost mosquitoes and had to be quarantined?”

“Ghost mosquitoes?”

“Did you not-?” Danny stopped midquestion and shook his head, “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, everybody got one ghost power. Sam could float, but she could only go up. Paulina had a ghost sense, which is odd because I’ve never seen anyone else do it…” he seemed to get lost in thought so Jazz pipped up.

“I was just a head in a jar. My whole body just lost its hold on being corporeal. It was super weird.”

“Yeah! Well now just imagine all of that being things I can do! Minus the no body thing. I don’t know that one.”

That was so much to unpack and she had a feeling this was just the tip of the iceberg.

“Ghost sense?” Jack asked first, taking his seat back on the couch.

“Yeah, whenever there’s a ghost nearby I get this cold chill, and my breath fogs up. Kind of like when it’s really cold outside, but the temperature doesn't matter.”

“Is that why you’re always running away suddenly?” she had noticed a correlation between his sudden alertness and occasional shivering to his abrupt exits.

He rubbed the back of his neck, his trademark nervous habit, “Yeah.”

“You’ve got a built-in ghost tracker? Why didn’t you tell us sooner? That would have made catching the spooks so much easier!” Jack’s grin grew with each sentence and normally Maddie would find it contagious.

This time she kept her eyes on her son.

She watched as his shoulders hunched as he curled in on himself. How he coward away from Jack’s words. How he had pulled away from her too.

“Jack honey, hold on a minute. Why don’t we listen to the rest of what Danny has to say before we talk business.”

Jack deflated a little, but when he saw Danny’s worried look he caught on, “Oh, right. Sorry, son. Didn’t mean to steamroll you there.”

“It’s okay. I know what it’s like to get excited about stuff.”

Maddie smiled and couldn’t believe how grown up he was. Empathizing with others? She was so proud of him.

Danny sighed, “Maybe this would just be easier if I showed you.”

“Showed us?” Maddie asked and looked to Jack to see if he had any idea what that could mean.

Her husband didn’t appear to have any theories.

“You might want to sit down for this, mom.”

She wasn’t sure why, but she did what he suggested. Was what he was about to show them going to be that alarming? She certainly hoped it didn’t hurt him to do this. She’d hate for this reveal to lead to another traumatic event for him.

The first was one too many.

He took a breath to center himself. He firmly placed each foot hip-width apart. His fist pulled up with his elbows at a rough 45-degree angle. He looked like he was ready to start a fight.

She had never seen him pose like this. It seemed so foreign. Just like when his eyes were green.

Just how much did she not know about her own son?

He took another big breath. Held it. Then immediately deflated, arms dropped to his sides as he turned to his sister. “I can’t do this. Why did I think this was a good idea?” he made an x with his arms and repeatedly tapped his wrists together, “Reveal party canceled!” He dropped his arms and started pacing, “I’d say let’s all just go home but we’re already here!”

“Danny, Danny, hold on.” Jazz tried to mirror his pacing but gave up and just grabbed his arm, “You can do this.”

He sighed again and stopped moving, “I’m not so sure.”

“Are you still worried about how they��ll react?”

He nodded but couldn’t meet her eyes.

“Well, I think it’s going to be okay. You want to know why?”

He just looked up at her and Maddie couldn’t help to be just as curious.

“Because you asked mom to put the weapons away and she did. The whole living room is clear too.”

He turned to look at her, “really?” he asked both out of curiosity and also a hint of doubt.

“Yes. I’d dismantle everything we’ve ever built if it made you safer.” Maddie confessed, trying to bleed every inch of honesty and her fierce need to protect him.

“You mean it?” his eyes searching hers for any hint of dishonesty any sign that this was just hyperbole.

“I promise.” and she meant it. Even if it meant changing careers after an over twenty-year investment, she’d do it.

“Okay,” he said with the softest smile.

He gave Jazz one final look, to which she gave an encouraging nod, before taking another steadying breath.

“Going ghost.”

Before Maddie could begin to decipher what that could mean a bright ball of light appeared in Danny’s abdomen.

She felt her jaw slowly drop as the light grew then turned into twin rings that travel across his body. Everywhere the light passed Danny changed.

His loose-fitting hoodie and jeans were replaced with a tight formfitting jumpsuit. A very familiar jumpsuit.

The color of his eyes changed from blue to green and his hair lost its pigment completely, leaving it stark white.

In the place where Danny had just been standing, now stood, or actually floated, the ghost boy she’d spent the better part of a year trying to catch.

“Ta-da, I’m Danny Phantom,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

She couldn’t find the words. Her son, her sweet little boy was the same as the overpowered creature that flew about the city fighting the other monsters for fun?

But then maybe it wasn’t for fun. He always said he was trying to help.

He was trying to help just like he was with the portal.

God, how did she miss the similarities? He looked the same. “How did I not see it before?” she asked herself not realizing she had spoken out loud.

Danny shrugged, “It’s not like being half-ghost is super common.” He added, “And I try not to get too close to people who shot at me if I can help it.”

Maddie gasped and covered her mouth. She had been hunting her own son. And he said that so nonchalantly, as if it was okay?

She got up from the couch and pulled him into a hug, “I’m so sorry.”

“Mom, it’s okay. You didn’t know.”

“No. It’s not okay. I should have known. You’re my son. I see you every day! How did I not see you?” it was so jarring to hold him and have him be at eye level with her. It was even weirder to see that he was still breathing, despite being a ghost that was currently defying gravity. He gently bopped like a buoy in calm waters, his hair fluttered slightly in an ethereal breeze she couldn’t feel.

She pushed back his hair, so much softer in this form, and placed a kiss on his forehead. He was so cold and it only made her want to hug him tighter.

Jack came up beside her, wrapping one arm around her and the other around Danny, “I think Danny’s on the right track. We should let bygones be bygones.”

“But Jack,” Maddie started as she turned to her husband. She didn’t think it was possible to just let this drop. There was so much they needed to discuss. So much to understand about just how things affected Danny and what exactly being half-ghost even meant.

“Now, now, Maddie, it’s been a long day. I’m tired. You’re tired. Danny’s probably very tired. Why don’t I order some pizzas, the kids can pick out a movie or two and we can just sit in the living room and enjoy each other’s company.”

“But?” She still had so many questions.

“Maddie, Sweetheart, Darling, Light of my life, I love you, but this can wait.” When she opened her mouth to counter he pushed on, “It can wait. We have the whole rest of our lives to find the answers. We don’t need to do it all tonight.”

After a moment of contemplation, she finally relented. He was right after all. There was no need to do everything now. They both had a habit of putting the cart before the horse and they always made sure to help each other from doing so. “Pizza sounds good.”

Jack pulled them into a quick squeeze before releasing them and making a beeline to the phone, “Alright Fenton’s what are we getting tonight?”

“Hawaiian but with mushrooms and extra olives!” Danny cheered as he shifted back into his human appearance and dropped to the floor with a soft thump.

“Ew, Danny that’s disgusting. Can you order my usual? The small spinach and garlic.”

“Alright one large Hawaiian with mushrooms and extra olives, did you want black or green olive?”

“Black. Can we get garlic bread too? I’m really hungry.”

Maddie sighed, of course, he was hungry. He barely ate his lunch because it was after the whole elevator situation. He must have been so anxious about keeping his secret for so long. She hoped that wasn’t the reason he was so skinny.

“Don’t just fill up on bread!” Jazz scolded.

“But it’s so good!” Danny protested playfully as he looked through the family movie collection.

“How about we get a salad to share,” Maddie suggested, finding it easier to just go with the flow and set all her worry and doubts aside as Jack had suggested.

“Great plan Mads,” Jack said as he dialed the pizza place’s phone number.

Maddie walked into the kitchen to fetch paper plates and cups. For as unbelievable as the day turned out to be, she couldn’t be happier.

She walked back into the kitchen and caught Danny silently consider something before shrugging and floating upward so he could see the topmost shelf better.

She was glad he was being honest with them now, but that casual display of power, while he looked so human, was certainly going to take some getting used to.

[fmdrorinarchive]

━━━━━━  𝖆 𝖓𝖊𝖜 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖘… 💋 〈  Below the cut is an intro for Michelle Chae of Chroma // Please 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖕𝖔𝖘𝖙 to plot, and thanks for reading !!  〉

𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖋-𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓.

Hi again, friends !! This is Boone ( 19+ / MDT / HE & HIM ) and you may recognize me as the typist behind Vive’s maknae, Yoo Rioh. I’ve decided to bring in another muse! Like Rioh, Michelle’s just starting out in her career and I can’t wait to see her grow. ♡ To find out more, please read onwards !! I can’t wait until she gets to meet all of your muses !! Oh, here are a few trigger warnings to look out for if you continue to read: mentions of drug addiction and parental abandonment; mentions of slut-shaming and misogyny.

𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖈𝖐 𝖋𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖘.

MICHELLE RORIN CHAE,  b. 19990620

BORN & RAISED IN VALLEY GLEN, CA

FORMER COMPETITIVE FIGURE SKATER

BC ENT / CHROMA & CHROMA EMBER

SUB VOCALIST, SUB RAPPER, VISUAL

𝖋𝖚𝖗𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖎𝖓𝖋𝖔.

RESEMBLES KIM MINJEONG ( WINTER ) OF ÆSPA

SHE STANDS AT A MODERATE 163 CM ( 5 FT, 3 IN )

CISGENDER FEMALE, USES SHE / HER PRONOUNS

GEMINI CANCER CUSP, YEAR OF EARTH RABBIT

HETEROFLEXIBLE, KINSEY SCALE #2, CURIOUS

𝖉𝖊𝖊𝖕 𝖉𝖎𝖛𝖊.

TRAJECTORY /  Michelle was born in Valley Glen, CA to David and Heesun Chae—the owners of a struggling restaurant in their neck of the woods. As a kid, she trained to become a figure skater, but when her father bailed on her and her mother because of a drug addiction, she couldn’t afford the expenses for coaching, etc. so she retired from it for now.  /  Instead of being able to truly enjoy her youth, she had to pick-up after school jobs in order to help her mom with bills, and for awhile, her only source of comfort was spent with guys that showed her affection. Her relationships with boys grossly gave her the title of a “whore” to her peers, so she sadly didn’t have many friends to lean on in high school.  /  Originally traveled to Korea to earn a nursing degree from SNU, but got scouted by BCE on her first day—prompting her to drop out of school to focus primarily on training. This enraged her mother as the plan was for her to become a nurse so they no longer had to worry about money.  /  After only a few months of training, she’s selected to debut as a member of Chroma. OTHER FACTS /  Not mentioned in her biography is the fact that she grew up in a fairly religious family. Mom and dad were raised Christian, so they raised their daughter the same. She was never into church, though. She always felt as though she was being judged harshly by the others in attendance. Hell, she even thought that of her mother quite often. Her style was never as pristine as her mom would’ve liked and no one understood her interests in the occult, in anime, in video games, and so forth. By the time she was eighteen, she stopped showing up to service altogether—which her mom didn’t like, but respected nevertheless.  /  She still likes to skate in her spare time... but she doesn’t really have any nowadays. You’d think that she’d be in the dance line due to her past in performance, but since she stopped skating, she’s lost a lot of her flexibility and power. She hopes to improve though!  /  She’s never had many close female friends, so she looks forward to hopefully bonding with her members as they grow closer. This is something she wants to change about herself a lot. INSPIRATION /  For Michelle, I pulled a lot of inspiration from a few different characters from television series, mainly Cassie Howard from Euphoria; Manuella “Manny” Santos from Degrassi: The Next Generation; Tessa Campanelli from Degrassi JH / High; and Britney Orton from We Are Who We Are, among others!

𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖞.

01.  On the surface, Michelle’s reasonably pleasant to be around. She has a deep interest in people, especially those she’s close to, so if you’re a friend of her’s, she genuinely wants to know all about you and deeply cares about how you’re feeling / doing. Some might perceive this high level of intrigue as romantic, and she’s... not ever really going to confirm or deny those types of feelings. She’s a huuuge believer in love and doesn’t want to end up like her parents, but also has no idea what she’s doing when it comes down to it. She didn’t have the best example to look up to, so you know. 02.  Michelle’s really talkative, and she’s witty, and she knows how to charm the pants off of most people, and while that’s loud and present in her character, she also has many faults. For one, her emotions are really strong and her mood is easily affected by others and events that occur in day-to-day life, so she has a tendency of being moody. That, and she also isn’t the best “rule follower” either. Does she care that there’s a dating ban in place for she and Chroma? Absolutely not. Did she experiment with drugs and alcohol in high school when they were forbidden to her? Yes. She’s not the best at making decisions, but she believes that taking risks shape better people... even if that belief’s a little skewed. 03.  Some people say that she might be a little too “sweet” for her own good sometimes and she’s prone to getting her heart stomped on, but she’s not all that innocent. While she’s a huge believer in love, she’s not exactly good at it. She enters in and out of relationships all the time, and she loves the honeymoon phase, but whenever it starts to get too “real,” she gets nervous and bails. Abandonment issues FTW? A very strong possibility. 04.  She’s also empathic to a fault on occasion. It’s easy for her to pick up on the emotions of others and it’s hard for her not to carry them on her shoulders. She’s had a difficult time learning that boundary for herself, and well, at this point, she doesn’t even realize that it’s a thing. Mother taught her how to be kind and nurturing towards loved ones, but she can take it to a degree that isn’t healthy for anyone—especially if love / romance is involved. 05.  Her chattiness can sometimes land her in trouble, but that’s because she has a hard time filtering what she says. Her mind runs a mile a minute and her speaking patterns are similar, so sadly, she can’t control what comes out of her mouth sometimes... pray for her.

𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉-𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘.

01.  If I were to make any sort of “claim” on what I imagine her voice sounding like, it’d be a lot like J from STAYC, maybe with a little mix of fromis_9′s Seoyeon. There’s a delicate husk there, and it’s a little lower than the others, but it’s extremely recognizable and unique. That is her biggest asset as a singer and rapper. She’s not had enough time to truly make drastic improvements to either skill given her short stint as a trainee, but she’s working really hard to get better and doesn’t want to be seen as just a pretty face forever. 02.  Dance-wise, she’s actually pretty strong—just nowhere near as trained as Chroma’s dance line. Due to her extensive background in figure skating ( and a little bit of ballet ), she’s got a really natural gracefulness to all of her moves; a fluidity that allows for strong body rolls, etc. Additionally, she focuses on clarity and sharpness, angles, as that’s what she’s most familiar with. Michelle also has great control of her hip-area and often adds variations to moves using her hips. If I were to select a reference, I’d say Oh My Girl’s Arin and TWICE’s Mina. Some of her faults are that her movements are often too light and soft, so whenever power is needed, she lacks strength there. She also has a tendency of making choreography look a little “sensual” without necessarily intending to. 03.  Loooves when people call her Mish or Chelle/Shell. Honestly, she adores nicknames—both giving and receiving them. She’s also a heavy user of pet names in conversation, but tries her best to stop if people are uncomfortable with it. 04.  Michelle’s typically not afraid of making her affections known, even early on. She’s the type that’ll definitely hit on you if she thinks you’re handsome / attractive, and goes with the flow if the person responds positively. If she gets really cozy with you, she can come off as clingy in the beginning, but that typically subsides with time. That’s applicable to both her friendships and her romantic relationships. 05.  Her public image is similar to that of Alice in Wonderland and Snow White—beauties with fair skin and wide eyes; imaginative and curious; trapped in purity and sweetness; soft, feminine, and delicate—but with a slight “edge” because of her rapping and quick wit. It’s hard for her to keep up with it all the time—especially when she’s a bit different personally—and she’s barely starting in her career. She hopes it evolves over time. 06.  She’s decided to go by her Korean name as an idol because it made the most sense, to be honest. Though, a few other stage names tossed around were: Chelle, Wooah, Hayan, Rozy, and Baekseol. In the end, she’s happy she’s just Rorin or Michelle to everyone.

𝖕𝖑𝖔𝖙-𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖘.

This section will be updated when her plots page is complete. Please look forward to it !! I’m getting it done as fast as I can. In the meantime, I’m happy to brainstorm and look over your muses’ plots pages too !! ♡

[darkpoisonouslove]

2021 Projects

It’s a new year and since my writing kinda slowed in the last couple of months (more like for over half a year now), I thought it would be motivating for me and informative for anyone who’s interested to lay out my ideas for my work during 2021. Now I do not call these plans because I do not want to jinx anything but I am excited about these projects and I hope that I will manage to fit them in throughout this year.

- Fix-It Series - a series of fics that deals mostly with the plot holes in the first three seasons of Winx. I have already written two works that would be part of that series once it is officially launched - Ice Is Stronger with Some Lightning and Darkness Mixed in; Left to Heritage - and have started work on several others. Now this isn’t so much a rewrite as much as it is me being petty enough to go “this could be fixed while still keeping the original sequence of events (on a grand scale) and I will prove it if the writers couldn’t be bothered to do so”. I am also confining this to the first three seasons because the rest would need complete rewrites (though, tbh I am not sure whether season 3 doesn’t fit into that mold as well).

- Season 2 CT arc - Now I already said that I would be writing fix-it fics but this one I feel deserves its own mention because I have taken it a bit far already. I am basically writing an entire curriculum about dark magic because I was getting annoyed by the fact that they never really learned much and I have taken the liberty to do some worldbuilding and mention a lot of other things that were never actually addressed. So now it will probably clock out on tens of thousands of words and it will need to be regarded as a separate thing. I am thrilled about all the things I have come up with, however, and hope this will be received well because I have really put my heart into it (and my mental energy) and have invested too much attention in detail.

- Speaking of rewrites, I have already started work on the season 6 rewrite thanks to an ask I got. I have outlined a big part of it and made all the changes to the overall structure of the season that I felt necessary. Currently, everything it needs is to map out each episode separately before I can write them out. I will be doing this in more of a script format because a full-on fic will take too much time that I really want to devote to some of my other projects from the endless pile. I am thrilled about the changes I have made and the arcs I have given the characters and I am really looking forward to actually producing the final form of this one.

- Fae creature AU - This is a story actually inspired by my rage over Fate: The Winx Saga. Or rather by the fact that they do not look like fairies at all in there so I actually took the liberty to reimagine the plot of the cartoon a slightly different way. The main gist is that Bloom never meets Stella on that summer day in the park. They meet years later after Bloom has already settled and has a family on Earth only for all of that to be shaken to the ground by the reveal that she is a fae creature with a long, long life ahead of her. The two of them need to adjust to the reality that they are some of the last of their kind and having a future becomes harder, the longer that future is. I have mapped out the most part of the plot of this but I am still staggering with my approach to the execution. I am currently betting on a long one-shot (something of 20-30k+ words) but we will see how that goes once I have a clearer idea about the actual structure.

- Bloom/Sky childhood... rivals AU - This one was totally born while I was making my Bloom/Sky Kerosene video. It deals with the way things would be happening if Bloom had been raised on Domino by her real parents and her and Sky had known each other all along. I have more concepts for this one than an actual, concrete plot but I have already done some work on the relationships that I want this to focus on. Bloom and Sky getting to actually develop as people alongside each other is the focus of this, of course, but there is a lot more that I would like to explore. Their relationship with their own parents (mostly their mothers) and responsibilities is something that I feel would have a big impact on them considering their titles. And of course, the best friends are also there - Brandon and Stella ftw! Plus, the other main characters will be getting in on this as well. However, due to the span of time this will have to cover and the lack of any plot or structure for it, this one will probably have a longer time to sit in the drawer until I can manage to solidify this as a story.

- 31-Day Fic Collection - I have already started this as a sort of writing exercise to keep me in the flow of things during January and February while I am dealing with finals and other uni stuff. I am planning on keeping this confined only to one couple (that you’ll never guess) but we’ll see. The prompts I have picked would require a certain dose of creativity that I usually get around exams when I am too busy to keep my eyes open, let alone write. I am planning on posting these during March in order to open that month for other writing but we’ll see how that will go since I am really behind on all of it (3/31). Anyway, I just wanted to announce this so that, hopefully. I will commit to it now that it is out in the open.

- 200-Followers Celebration - I still haven’t done that and it is the reason why I want to have March as a free month in my schedule in order to host this celebration. I was hoping I could post the ready works while I am working on completing any and all requests from the celebration. I am also pretty close to 300 followers but not quite there yet so it is possible that I will have the two celebrations together but only time will tell. I have not exactly figured out what to do with the celebrations but I have a couple options and will make sure to choose from them by the time this can be kicked into motion. In the meantime, I am open to ideas if you have any.

- Old requests - I have several old requests sitting in my inbox that I have neither forgotten about, nor abandoned. I just hit a roadblock with all of them but I am actually hoping to finish them by the time the follower celebrations are finished. Now these include a handful of requests for the Sparks of Life verse that are about to get a year-old at this point, the leftover requests about the Domme AU and two other requests from a random prompt list I reblogged around June last year. To be fair the SoL ones are the least thought out so far but I will get to all of them... at some point.

- Sparks of Life - now that I mentioned that, I have several works... in the works for this verse. I have announced all of them already but have not made much progress because I was just not feeling any kind of writing impulses lately. I am still excited about all of these stories but I just haven’t managed to find the right direction for them yet. I believe that stories get completed when they are ready to be completed but I will still do my best to actually put in the effort to finish all of these and finally share them because I have been hyped about them for so long and I have been posting random excerpts from them all and getting people on here hyped as well.

- Season 1 Re-rewatch - I will probably have to rewatch all of the seasons if I am fixing things in them but for this one, I might actually redo my “reviews” because I didn’t write my thoughts on it in-depth the first time around. Besides, it turns out to be the most solid season so taking it apart could help me immensely with all of my writing projects and that makes it worth the effort (besides, it’s not like I don’t rewatch random episodes whenever I feel like it).

- World of Winx Thoughts - I have actually started watching and reviewing this but I had to stop thanks to my uni workload and other things that needed to be done (honestly, everything is such a mess right now). I liked what I saw but, of course, I only got through the first episode so we’ll see how this goes.

- Fate: The Winx Saga Thoughts - I will be writing out my opinions on this as well but I have no idea when I’ll manage to get to that (either free time or making myself sit down and watch it). Not much of a project, really, but I thought I’d mention it.

[kittymsmithwritesstuff]

From the writer ask game: 📒 any fics planned to write?

📒 any fics planned?

I have a lot of fics planned and half planned and want to plan and half-written and you're going to regret asking this question, though I appreciate it and anyone else that asks! This is pretty fun.

Big Fics:

HorizonxBloodhound/Horizonhound, Working Title: Lovestruck, about 58k words in with probably another 20ish before completion. I've talked about it a lot here so if you've followed me for a bit you know about it. Not gonna say much, but for ze first time I'll post the first few lines of BH being a goddamn simp:

She made them feel like they held the very dawn caged in their hands, the crimson of a new morning shining between the spaces of their fingers, too bright to be contained.

Perhaps that was a little dramatic.

Miragehound, "Moonstruck", this post made me go check and last I worked on it, I was about 45k in. It literally started because @translocatingbamboozler made a joke about Artur saying, "you're gonna learn how to read you little shit" to BH when they were a kid. I really loved working on it, don't know if I'll ever pick it up again since the lore is about a year out of date now, but I was really in love with the plot and characterizations I had in there and it was a lot more serious than some of my other work. Since I have the plot outlined pretty well, whether or not I finish/publish it is up in the air. Here's an excerpt, all from Mirage's perspective:

"I don't rec-recogni-know you," he said.

"Not my face, no," they said, words coated thickly in an accent that made his heart drop to the pit of his stomach, fully expecting to die.

"Oh my God."

"Lock the door." Lock the door? Sure, sure I'll lock the door, don't want anyone to walk in on your slatra, never!

In a weird moment of roboticsm, he went and locked the door, then returned to his doom. But they just turned back to looking out the window while he stood there like a stoner waiting for his pizza pocket to cook in an unplugged microwave.

HorizonxBangalore/Horizonlore, Title Undetermined. This is one I haven't actually started, but me and @translocatingbamboozler are huge into Horizonlore. Got into it right after Horizonhound. I've made notes and written some paragraphs, but I'm trying to keep myself focused on finishing the Horizonhound when it comes to big fics.

Surprise, ElsaxHoneymaren from Frozen, no title, started early 2020 for my friends and never completed because I'm an idiot AND an asshole. First chapter was fire too. Damn I need to finish this. Er, write it.

Smaller stuff:

-Little 3 chapter lobahound thing IDK if I'll ever finish

-I've got like, literally half a dozen miragehound oneshots sitting in limbo, including one from Bloodhound's first person perspective that I'd really like to finish up but I'm fucking stupid.

-Cryptaith one-shot, very sleepy, in Crypto's apartment in Gaea. I fucking love these two so much. By the way is anyone else...can someone else please write something for this? I've read my own one-shot over an embarrassing amount of times. I'd love to do a bigger fic on them, but I don't know where to start or end. It might just be a collection of vaguely connected oneshots? IDK. Fuck I love them. CryptoxWraith ftw.

-A bigger Miragehound mermaid AU but that's literally turned into my project for my writing class and also possibly an original novel so I'm stopping the details there.

-Also wrote a Moicy (MercyxMoira, Overwatch) one-shot because I fucking hate myself but love these fucking. Idiots. Moira has a secret and Mercy is like "yeah I'm finna do whatever to find it lets-a go"

-Couple Horizonlore oneshots, two were published, another one is a bit longer and IDK if I'll ever finish it

-RevenantxAsh thing from S5 that was heaps of Revenant being a grumpy, belligerant sass-bucket and Ash having fun making him do things like find out her name. I actually went back and read this and it's pretty goddamn funny so who knows, might actually finish it up

-This isn't anything I'm planning, but you made me remember I used to write Sherlock fanfiction and I have mixed feelings about that, lmao.

TLDR: Horizonhound full story, enough Miragehound to choke a horse, Horizonlore because I'm gay, soft Cryptaith

[danwhobrowses]

General Discussions: All Elite Wrestling (AEW)

So with All Out happening tonight (or well, tomorrow morning for me) I’m in the mood to get a lot of AEW talk off my chest. The difference between this and previous talks ‘In (Slight) Defense of AEW’s Women’s Division’ and ‘Are AEW Planning a Second Show?’ - the latter of which seems to have been confirmed - I don’t want to talk about one sole thing, I have multiple things I wanna talk about: Criticisms, Hindsight, Signing Suggestions, Predictions and whatnot. I’m also gonna split this into two at least, we’re gonna start with some critiques (positive and negative criticism) and some hindsight talk.

Critiques So AEW has been running officially since May 2019. Meaning that half of their lifespan has happened during COVID 19′s pandemic, before I go into positive and negative criticisms I’d like this point to at least commend AEW on their action and sustainability during this time; several other brands have had to sadly close or cease programming for a long time, with ROH only just returning. AEW has done a stellar job being safe as well, only one confirmed case in QT Marshall (Moxley quarantining because of Renee’s positive case), frequent tests and having small amount of fans in the arena, this is on top of the fact that Jacksonville is also a hotspot, so currently well done on that. But AEW is far from a perfect company, no company can be. However, not all criticism is fair and I wanna vent some of that. Fair Criticism towards AEW First I wanna point out that there are things even I don’t like about AEW, because I know people will paint me as an apologist, I’d also wanna preface that there are parts of WWE I like too, and parts I don’t like. On AEW’s part though I think the fairest criticism for it is that a lot of talent slip through the cracks, COVID doesn’t help of course but talent had been kept away from the main show or not getting their due; Santana and Ortiz and the Lucha Bros should be tag champions by now, Scorpio Sky would’ve been a great TNT champion, Jurassic Express despite their popularity often seem to be on the losing end of feuds, Private Party have fell into the undercard of the tag division, Joey Janela and Sonny Kiss are sadly purposeless and Lance Archer is just floating around, Nyla and Vickie’s partnership hasn’t really gone anywhere either as of yet and Abadon has been kept from the title picture. There’s also the flip-flop booking of Shawn Spears, Jake Hager, Mel, Luther, Penelope Ford, TH2 and others. While I am gonna track back on the Women’s Division complaint it would bode better for AEW if they had more storylines, and their title was better. I mean the design is fine, it just needs to be bigger. The Picture with Shida and Cody swapping belts really sells that. Belt designs have been very up and down too, the TNT title is not good, the FTW title is a bit iffy but even that is a better design. So far only ‘Big Platinum’ and the Tag Titles are original designs without complaints. Unfair Criticism towards AEW Since a lot of people compare AEW to WWE, there will be times where people will treat them as the same, and that’s not really too fair. Case in point, big one out of the way, The Women’s Division. Wanting more from the women is fair but as I detailed they are pretty handicapped right now since many of their wrestlers are overseas, but when they make moves in a positive light they’re still criticised. Thunder Rosa (fka Kobra Moon of Lucha Underground) is great and we have a much hyped match for that. The criticisms reared its head more with the Deadly Draw and the Tooth and Nail match being in the Buy In. I’ve already discussed the benefits of the Deadly Draw in a prior post so I’m gonna focus on Swole/Baker. Now on the Main Card anyway thanks to fan response, it shouldn’t have been treated like AEW pre-shows are like WWE’s, there’s a Number 1 Contendership Battle Royale on that same Buy In, Khan has been clear that he wants people invested enough to ‘Buy in to the PPV’ so it shouldn’t be treated as a disservice.

I’d also like to segue this into a WWE comparison, because whenever AEW is on you have people tracking how many women’s segments there are. So let me run down WWE for a bit

Smackdown had 3 Women’s Bits last night (4th Sept): the Tag Match that led to FINALLY the Banks/Bayley schism, a cryptic hint towards a woman returning (rumors of Eva Marie I hope are false, maybe it’s Carmella?) and a small backstage segment between Bliss and Bayley

NXT on ‘Super Tuesday Part 1′ had 1 very short match building to the Candice/Tegan feud and a package for Ripley vs Mercedes

Raw had 2 matches and 3 segments which included a Payback rematch

Payback had 2 matches, one on the Pre-Show, both of these matches would later be rematched in the following week

Summerslam had 3 matches, only one of them not a title match and one of them being rematched on the following Raw

NXT TakeOver 30 had 1 match, a title match, including the Pre-Show

For all the criticism AEW gets for having 2-3 bits on Dynamite (which is an hour less than Raw might I add and Dark hosts consistently 3 women’s bits that nobody acknowledges simply because the matches are squashes) I never see WWE criticised in that same vein, and that’s unfair, criticise both. The main difference is that AEW do not have the ‘seasoned big star’ because they’re not that old, Mickie James, Asuka, Bliss and the Four Horsewomen didn’t just get this popular overnight, they spent years honing this craft to this audience. Would it be great for AEW to have a megastar type? Sure but business is not all that easy, who do you take? Tessa’s attitude isn’t exactly positive for business, time is what they need and it’s something people are not giving. Of the other unfair criticisms the quick and easy one is the ‘AEW is TNA 2.0′ - newsflash, most wrestlers will go through the WWE machine in some shape or form, if you complain that AEW lacks female stars because nobody is well known but criticise the men’s division for using well-known ex-WWE talent then you have to see the contradiction. Moxley has been great, Jericho has been great, Brodie has been great, it’s not like AEW aren’t promoting others either. And also the ‘VP is becoming like the McMahons’ - people think that because a wrestler is a booker that they’ll only book themselves strong, but Cody let himself get squashed by Brodie, Kenny passed out to PAC and lost to Moxley, the Bucks haven’t been tag champions and Brandi hasn’t inserted herself in any title match. Just because we’re burned by WWE doesn’t mean that AEW are the same. I am all for constructive criticism with the brand because there are certainly places where it can improve, but it keeps circling around to the fact that we put WWE as the negative standard we compare AEW to, as if WWE are literally the Simpsons of Wrestling, there’s not gonna be much they haven’t done. Hindsight Talk So with the critiques out of the way now we can talk about some missed opportunities, since it kinda pairs together with that. Nearly a year and a half and AEW is still quite different to how it started, there are some things though we could still look back in regret. The easy one is doing a more thorough background check. The SpeakingOut movement affected all of wrestling and led to the departure of Jimmy Havoc, likewise it also led to the Elite cutting ties with Joey Ryan and distancing from Marty Scurll, of course until people spoke out it would’ve been impossible to know but knowing now does make parts of All In and AEW’s history come with a sense of bitterness. A further stressing of variety would’ve helped AEW, there’s a lot of criticism when people don’t understand that things are different for a reason, comedy has a place in Wrestling, we just need a reminder. The ranking system and tag rules could still be clearer. There’s also the sooner dropping of aspects like the Nightmare Family faction with Mel and Luther with Brandi, as well as some other dropped plots like Brandi’s mental break, Allie’s affiliation with the Butcher and Blade (the latter being her irl husband) as ‘the Bunny’, Christopher Daniels’ feuds with Pentagon and the Dark Order, the initial presentation of the Dark Order, not debuting Sadie Gibbs earlier and maybe pushing Intergender wrestling a bit sooner. AEW were reluctant and a Kip/Penelope vs Kenny/Riho feud was in the works to some solid appeal, but it sadly went nowhere. The Deadly Draw could’ve been longer, but I stand by the decision to put it on Youtube. I think the TNT title tournament could’ve been longer too. The bigger regrets I personally wished from AEW are that the Lucha Bros didn’t win the tag titles first, SCU are great but Lucha Bros are next level wrestlers who are monstrously talented, given Hangman and Kenny’s blockbuster match with the Lucha Bros, it’s a shame that we didn’t have a bigger feud where the Lucha Bros took their Young Bucks feud momentum to win the whole tournament. Not signing Mercedes Martinez, Deonna Purrazo or pushing a Kong vs Kong match would also be a missed opportunity too. Hindsight is of course 2020 so we can’t be too hard on AEW, as we’ll move onto in Part 2, when we’ll talk about All Out Predictions and positive hopes for AEW’s future

[gerbiloftriumph]

So you wanna be a king (pt2)

(or at least cosplay one.)

Continuing the cosplay creation saga for anyone interested, here’s how I put together my King Graham cosplay:

Part 2: Jerkin 

Disclaimer: I’m totally novice at cosplay and only do it for like one event per year if that, so take what you will or throw it all away.

Also this is not really a step by step tutorial post because this is several years ago and the details are hazy.

If you’re following along, then you should have a cloak and cowl (click for sort-of-instructions-here). 

Step one: Pull out those reference screencaps you made in the first part and stare at them. Repeat that you still love this character and that you’re committed to this nonsense. Ready? Let’s go.

The long sleeved purple undershirt I just happened to find at Goodwill. Please try to find something lightweight--this costume is warm. 

But you won’t be so lucky to find a jerkin at Goodwill too. You’ll have to make it, or at least modify something.

Still, it’s just an elaborate brown tank top, more or less. You don’t even have to worry about attaching sleeves! Surely this is an eas--wait, what are those lace things? Could you even bend down to pick up inventory items with laces that thick and close together? How can I translate that into something semi-practical I can wear without wanting to eat my adventuring hat? 

It’s a great design, but I’m mortal, not digital. If you can determine a simple way to get that lacing to look accurate while still being comfortably wearable, let me, novice cosplayer that I am, know. (maybe if they were just made separately, flat, and sewn on, like a decal thing?)

I had planned on building this out of fake leather/suede-ish material, but then I remembered I wanted to also wear this as my new RenFest costume, and I didn’t want to die in July. 

So I went to my local Joann’s and picked up a considerably lighter, thinner, and satisfactorily rich looking brown fabric (I think it was this stuff: https://www.joann.com/kona-cotton-solid-quilt-fabric/1378397.html) for both jerkin and bracers. I’ve lost the original receipt, so I’m not sure how much I bought. Too much, because my storage bin is full of leftovers. I’m sure 3 yards is more than plenty, but measure to be sure. 

Tunic time!

This is the point where the “How To Graham” tutorial breaks down and becomes especially fuzzy and experimental, because I kept none of my in-process notes. High five, Gerbil, very helpful indeed. You might just want to glance at this for ideas before doing your own thing. 

I laugh in the face of patterns, hahahaha. (bad idea, don’t be me.)

I got my favorite fitted t-shirt (Disney Afternoon ftw), paper, a ruler, and old scrap fabric to maul as practice. I pinned my shirt flat to paper and traced both the front and back separately (folded the sleeves in so my tracework was sleeveless). The front had a deeper neckline but was otherwise nearly identical to its back partner. Once both sides were traced, I added a half inch margin around them, cut them out, and started working on fake jerkins, so I could sculpt the right fit before I got out the nice fabric. I wanted the jerkin to be pretty form fitting as Graham’s is, so I curved the sides in a bit deeper. 

I made at least two fake jerkins, fyi.

Since I went pattern-less (hahahaarrgh), tests were crucial, especially regarding the neck hole. The t-shirt is elastic, but my fabric is not. I personally require at least 22″ around the neck to get the thing over my nose, and it’s barely enough clearance. (I’m fairly certain I measured some other shirts with my fabric ruler for a loose size to aim for, then did edits on the junk fabric til I had a size that worked.)

Tests also showed that the back piece needed an additional two and a half inches of fabric on the bottom thanks to how it sits on my shoulders. In the above image, you can see the green fabric is higher, but I wanted the piece to look balanced from the side. 

It’s a touch hard to see as it’s usually hidden by the cloak, but I find a balanced jerkin is a happy jerkin. 

And here’s that additional fabric without a human in it. (ack don’t look at my uneven stitches)

By now, you should have a belt (in my method it doesn’t matter how it clasps, so pick any belt you please as you’ll be wearing it backward) so you can determine how long the flappy things on the front and back should be. Where your belt sits comfortably is where your side laces will stop and your trim on the flap things will start--the belt hides the transition. 

Graham’s belt sits low on his (fantastically defined) hips. I prefer it on my waist so it doesn’t slide up when I’m walking, so my flap things are longer than his. For reference, my flap things...no, wait, there must be a technical term....Google says it’s a peplum. My peplum (??) are 8″ish long, though his look like they’re about half that. 

For reference, as a 5′6″ person, from hanger to hem my jerkin’s back piece is approximately 28″ long. The most important things here are how long it is overall, and if the neck hole is big enough to fit over your head: nearly everything else can be altered when wearing it via the lacework I have planned.

Look, at this point, you might want to give up on me and find a real shirt pattern, fitted or not. I understand. I’ll wait. This isn’t actually a step by step tutorial so much as a vague What I Did And It’s Probably Wrong. 

Okay, you’ve traced your favorite shirt (or bought a real pattern like a good person). Your tests have shown that your peplum sit at the same height on your leg, and you like the shape and feel of it when you wear your scrap fabric test (I recommend using safety pins to replicate the laces during the early size test phase). You’ve cut out the front and back shirt shaped pieces of brown fabric (with that half inch hem margin all around), and now they’re sitting on your floor, mocking you. 

The actual construction part!

The only attachment you’ll give these pieces is via the shoulders. If you’re new to this Making Your Own Clothes thing and your fabric has a nice side and a not nice side, put the nice sides against each other and sew along the not nice side so when you turn it over your hem is inside. 

I seam-ripped a collar from a shirt I loved but was too worn to wear otherwise--no math or sewing your own collar from scratch if you swipe it from another shirt. No one will ever see it since your cowl tucks into it, so it doesn’t matter how it looks, though natural colors are better than, say, blue, in case your cowl slips a bit. There are lots of lovely videos about attaching collars: this one seems nice, if you skip ahead to the actual sewing-on part at 4:50. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k31FWDp1s5I

At this point, since you’ve fitted it and trimmed it and done all that you want to it to get the shape you like, you’ll want to hem your shirt by that half inch margin all around so it’s clean and easy for the next part. It only looks vaguely shirt-like now since it’s held together just by the shoulders. 

Now, let’s get medieval on it. 

Time for lacing!

I used a blond suede leather rope to mimic the lighter color on Graham’s sides (check the beading or leather working section of the craft stores, and make sure it’s thick enough that it won’t snap under light strain, and thin enough it’ll fit through the grommet size you select). I already happened to own an anvil (...why?), so I just needed grommets. Mine appear to be 12mm--I got them in Ancient Copper. You’ll use them in the bracers later, too, so leftovers are a good thing for once. Hobby Lobby or Michaels can hook you up with supplies, but Etsy and eBay have more diverse color choices. 

Every inch from where the armpit opening stops to where the trim of the peplums begins (the height of which was established earlier when I decided to how to wear the belt), I made a mark for a grommet, and marked its corresponding partner. For reference, I have 9 holes down each hem, for 18 total holes per side, and a grand total 36 grommets in the tunic. I jammed an awl through the holes marked and applied the grommets as per the packet’s instruction. 

Like making a metal and fabric sandwich. With a hammer. 

It’s totally therapeutic. I can see why Amaya’s into this stuff. 

(It’s not a Looney Toons anvil, by the by: like this, instead.)

Unspool the suede rope and thread it through the grommets. To try and mimic the game, I use a ladder shoelace tie, starting with the grommet pair beneath the arms and running down until I tie a bow in the last pair. I tuck the loose ends into the waistband of the trousers. So, this: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ladderlacing.htm

Finally, I made (because I couldn’t find to buy) my own trim about 1/2″ wide from some scrap light brown suede in the Joann Scrap Bin, and attached it to the peplum (is this truly a better word than flap, vote now).

And that, friend, is a jerkin that would make any real medieval person flinch but should be cool for cosplay. You should try it with your cloak and cowl. If you’re following my method, you get to layer up, lucky you: anchor shirt, long-sleeved-purple-undershirt, jerkin, cloak (snaps through the jerkin’s collar onto the anchor shirt), cowl (to cover your shoulders so you don’t see the cloak tugging at your jerkin collar). 

Yeah, it’s warm. Sorry.

Drink some water.

When you’re done sweating in it (eww, I know it’s awful, sorry), handwash it. Strip the rope out of the grommets, use handwashing detergent in a (clean!) bathroom sink, then hang it over a bathtub to dry before relacing it using that ladder shoelace technique and storing it on a hanger. I always have it laced, and pull it on over my head with it laced, too.

And with that, you’ve got about half of your entire cosplay done. Congrats! Take some time to relaaaax. You’re gonna be a king. 

(is this helpful at all to anyone? should i keep going?)

(peplum?? really????)

[ofravensandgenesis]

♡ Tag 9 people you would like to get to know better ♡

Thank you to @amistrio for tagging me! :D ♥

Top Three Ships:

Oh boy that’s tough. I haven’t really got canon ships I was or am super into that I can think of off the top of my head that aren’t like friends’ OCs or such. Do friend-ships count, or like shipping the char with happiness/therapy? x’D

Either Zevran and the Warden or Morrigan and the Warden from Dragon Age: Origins, presuming everyone lives and it’s as happy an ending as you can get in Thedas. You can’t make me pick between the two, I love ‘em both and since they’re both from the same game they get one slot. x’D

If the above ships don’t quite count bc of the Warden being a variable main char/OC of sorts, then Wade and Herren, also from Dragon Age: Origins.

[Spends about thirty minutes wracking my brains for a second answer. Ends up having to google series, movies, etc from the past decade to get inspiration to recall. x’D OTL]

Sophie and Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle. Classic Ghibli and amazing animation, as expected. I always found the story beautifully poetic and fun too.

Yuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov from Yuri!!! On Ice. I haven’t actually seen the entirety of this series, but I’ve seen enough of the early episodes and know enough of the general gist of the plot otherwise that I think those two dorks are adorable.

Lipstick or Chapstick:  Neither these days, I’ve discovered the joys of proper hydration from drinking lots more water than I had ever thought to drink before on a regular basis. Chapstick is a rarity if ever these days, mostly just if the air’s particularly dry out. Used to need it all the time because my lips were dry enough to crack painfully if left without chapstick for long, but now I know I wasn’t drinking enough water. Education ftw. x’D

Last Song: “Promise (Reprise)” from the Silent Hill 2 OST. If we’re talking songs with lyrics, “Hello My Old Heart” by The Oh Hellos.

Last Movie: Blake Edward’s The Great Race, featuring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Natalie Wood. Fantastic movie, has the largest pie fight ever filmed in it, amazing costumes and sets for days, wonderful acting, an entertaining story, and a great cast. I highly recommend watching it!! :D ♥

On Amazon Prime: N/A, never been on Amazon Prime to watch stuff.

On Cable: Have not watched cable television in years that I can recall.

Last Book: Does fanfiction count? I feel it should honestly, in which case it was the recently published Cookies and Clouds by Amistrio here on tumblr. :D ♥ It’s a cute and good read, super heartwarming with the lovely Matthew Rook and Grant Lyons, belonging to Amistrio and Sharky-Broshaw respectively. If we’re talking a longer written piece, that would be the english novel translation of Mo Dao Zu Shi, otherwise known as Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. I really enjoyed the fantasy-historic-chinese mishmash setting, the story itself, the characters, and the romance arc. Felt like a solid read to me, would recommend if that’s one’s cup of tea. Forewarning: does contain adult content and quite dark elements at times.

Tagging: Oh nerts, who hasn’t been tagged yet? x’D This is probably going to end up with duplicates, pardon that. I’m also gonna err on the side of caution with tagging people whom I’m at least mutually following just in case there’s an unspoken etiquette rule of “thou shalt not tag in ask games those who don’t follow you” in case that’s like uncomfy for them or such. No shade or such intended, I’m just not real familiar with tumblr culture. x’D @undead-gearhead, @englass, @seedlingsinner, @softseeds, @chyrstis, @red-nightskies

No pressure of course if you’d rather not play! Hello though!! :D Hope you’re all having a nice day!! ♥

[cromulentbookreview]

Every Heart Among Bones Beneath Sugar In An Absent Dream

Have I mentioned how much I love Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series? I think I might have but still: I really fucking love this series. 

In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire!

BE SURE.

Rule One: Ask for Nothing

Rule Two: Names Have Power

Rule Three: Always Give Fair Value

Rule Four: Take what is offered and be grateful.

Rule Five: Remember the Curfew.

In An Absent Dream is the story of Katherine (never Katie, Kitty or Kathy, but Katherine, goddamn it!) Lundy, a bookish, serious and very logical young girl. In 1964, Katherine, on her sixth birthday, comes to the realization that, if other people don’t like her, she’s not going to bother changing herself to become likable to others. If they don’t like her the way she is, then they’re not worth her time. (If only I’d had that realization at six and actually stuck to it -  instead, it hit me when I was 14 and rather than going it alone I spent the next decade desperately trying to mold myself into someone people would like. Being a girl with autism sure is fun!). As a serious logical bookworm and the daughter of the school principal, Katherine isn’t exactly miss popular, but when none of the other kids come to her birthday party, she decides “fuck it.” 

And so Katherine grows up being the dedicated rule-follower, like a miniature Amy Santiago. Occasionally she looks for loopholes to exploit, like all good rule-following children who know that sometimes you have to stretch things a bit to your advantage, but for the most part, Katherine is the perfect mid-1960s definition of a “good girl” - minus any friends. When Katherine is eight years old, she doesn’t want to leave her classroom at the end of the last day of school - she wants to finish her book, damn it. Her teacher just wants to clean up and go home. Unable to find a suitable excuse to stick around longer, Katherine heads home, dreading being pressed into babysitting her younger sister. As she walks the all-too-familiar route home, she does something curious: at one point, rather than turning right, she turns left instead. If Doctor Who taught me anything, it’s that turning left never ends well. 

How are you so pretty, David Tennant?

Ahem.

Anyway. Turning left! Katherine’s left turn doesn’t end in nuclear Armageddon, though. Instead, she ends up at a tree. A really strange tree that seems to be the product of extensive chip grafting, like one of them Tree of Many Fruits, but moving on: this tree has a door. And on this door it says: BE SURE.

Katherine isn’t sure what this is referring to - she is sure that she is Katherine Lundy, though, so she goes through the door, through a hallway with the cross-stitched rules hanging on the walls, and out into the Goblin Market.

Unlike the whimsical tastes-like-diabetes world in Beneath the Sugar Sky or the Hammer Horror world of Down Among the Sticks and Bones, the world of the Goblin Market is one of extreme logic. The Goblin Market is only about 10% whimsy, 90% following-the-rules. Everything is acquired via the barter system of fair value. You want something? You’ve got to give “fair value” for it, and fair value varies wildly depending on your age, strength, skills, etc. It’s not as much fun to read about as Candyland, Hammer-Horror-land or the Underworld, but it represents the logical end of the World Compass. But still, if you’re not into economics and would rather your fantasy stories avoid the debate over what constitutes “fair value”, you might be turned off a bit by the Goblin Market. I hated having to parcel out what was “fair value” when studying economics in college (nothing says “torture” like reading Karl Marx in the original German), and would much rather use the “shut up and take my money” approach to exchanges in the open market. 

As a fantasy world, though, I found the Goblin Market to be a bit terrifying – the Market gives off this impression that everything is fair and good and wonderful, but at the same time, when people don’t give fair value and go into “debt”, the Market causes some hard-core body-horror-type stuff to happen to you. McGuire does an awesome job making sure that we never forget this underlying sinister side to that world.

That sinister feeling that we get goes over Katherine’s head at first - to be fair, she is eight. At first, Katherine, who goes by Lundy in the Goblin Market, is delighted to find a world where everyone must follow the rules and where everyone gets fair value. She considers the Goblin Market to be her true home. But as Lundy gets older, she comes up against Rule Five: the curfew. At 18, she must choose between the Goblin Market or her home world. One or the other. She can’t have both. At first, the choice seems obvious: Goblin Market, FTW. But when Lundy goes home to her own world and sees her family again, things get muddy. How can Lundy have both her family and the Goblin Market, while still following the rules? Can it be done? 

It goes without saying that McGuire has knocked the ball straight out of the park again with the fourth installment of the Wayward Children series.  It’s possible to finish In An Absent Dream in an hour or a single sitting, the same way it’s perfectly possible to eat an entire box of chocolates, but once you’re done...well, now you’re out of chocolate, and you won’t be getting any more until 2020. I took my time with In An Absent Dream because I am a slow reader and because I wanted to savor it. Some of the scenes from Katherine’s childhood hit me so hard for a moment I wondered if Seanan McGuire followed me around when I was a kid and took notes. No kids at the birthday party? Got along better with adults than peers? Loved books more than people? Yes. 1000% yes. Katherine’s dream of becoming a librarian because “she couldn’t imagine knowing there was a job that was all about books and not wanting to do it”? 

That’s precisely why I got my Masters in Library and Information Science. That, and all the best jobs required it. But now that I have the degree, though, all of those jobs have disappeared. Because of course. 

Again, the worst thing about this series is just how long we have to wait between each installment. These books are oh so good, but so, so short. I do not recommend binging it all in a day - take it in slowly, preferably with the first three books on hand so you can see how all the stories are woven together. Make it last because I swear to God 2018 has felt like it’s lasted for twenty years and it’s still not over. The wait for 2020 is going to feel like an eternity. If the world is even still around by then. Fingers crossed!

RECOMMENDED FOR: Everyone. Just. Everyone needs to read the Wayward Children books. 

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: People who don’t read fantasy, people who are the worst, people who definitely bullied other people in middle school...

RELEASE DATE: January 8, 2019

RATING: 5/5

TOTALLY UNBIASED FANGIRL RATING: 5,000,000,000,000/5

TREE RATING: Sequoia sempervirens

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES: Olympus Mons

[ghostmartyr]

Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke [Part 11]

The quest continues to beat this game using standard Nuzlocke rules and the added rule of no battling outside of Trainers. Grinding is strictly forbidden. In round I-don’t-even-know of this adventure, we head to Nugget Bridge!

Yee. haw.

-many minutes later-

Well, that’s done with. Now time to go beat up on all the Trainers hanging out near Bill’s house. Also I guess time to free Bill from the Detective Pikachu nonsense he done did to himself.

This is all going to be things we’ve done before, with me nonchalantly hoping Acorn (Pikachu) makes it up to a usable level by the end.

In the spirit of mixing it up a little, I’m going to see if Acorn can handle some of the pre-Misty trainers in her Gym. Totally not because there’s a level 17 Slowpoke up there that I want him to be able to knock flat.

First trainer beat without a fuss, Acorn grows to level 16, blah blah blah, ah. The second trainer has a Goldeen, so we’ll just come back later once we’re done with the Route 24 people. ...25?

Hell, I don’t know. I barely care at this point.

It’s 25. I do not care.

I CARE A LITTLE ACORN DON’T DIE.

Acorn does not die.

I think a piece of me does.

I’m gonna take a break from battles and catch my 24/25 stuff.

Oddish for 25 ftw!

Caught it!

Its name is Oak.

Route 24 wants us to have Weedle. As penance for missing one in Viridian Forest, I assume.

...

Acorn killed it.

Am I ever going to get both a Route 24 and a Route 25 pokemon?

[doubt]

Note how the Clefairy just disappears. Detective Pikachu’s take on this is much less dark.

Alrighty. All trainers up by Bill have been dealt with, meaning that it’s time to go forth and deal with the rest of Misty’s Gym. Acorn is level 17, Oak is level 25. Oak will take on the Goldeen the remaining trainer has. Then Acorn will have a chance against Staryu, but Oak will take on Starmie.

Acorn gets an Oran Berry, Oak gets a Persim. That Starmie’s confusion rate is the worst thing about this entire Gym.

My policy is that I have four sacrificial token pokemon in my party to spare my real team members pain. I think I’m canonically a monster.

Oki doki. The Staryu is level 18, so I think Acorn should be okay against it.

Yes! Acorn survives without a scratch.

But you are not fighting the Starmie. We do not gamble with Gym battles.

-flashbacks to Brock-

...We do not gamble with. most. Gym battles.

Oak, now level 26, against a level 21 Starmie. AKA An Abomination.

Wow.

Heeeeeeeeey, second badge get!

Time to wander down to Route 5 and catch a thing.

The thing is going to be a Meowth. Its name is Oak.

This is so much easier to do when you’re not typing down every single little thing you’re doing. I’m incredibly grateful for my past self’s logs, but I’m even more grateful that they did them so I don’t have to. Going through and not bothering with anything except the highlights is a lot more pleasant.

Not replaying Route 1 is, too.

This Butterfree Supersonicing everything in sight is less fun. The Stun Spore isn’t great either. But like everything eventually, it dies.

Step 1 of figuring out what to do about Celadon.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Wow, I’m not sure I’ve ever read this entry properly before. This is incredibly mean.

(Its name is Oak.)

And with that, we have our Vermilion City catch, and no longer have to worry about Magikarp belonging to any other route. Awesome. This is much nicer than the first time we caught a thing in this city.

Route 6 is taking too long to catch things in. We’re abandoning the attempt for now.

What we are not abandoning.

Is this insanity.

The reason I bought Repels during Left’s run, and then again during this one.

I think you can catch Diglett up to level 29 here. Oak is level 27. If I put on a Repel, things stronger than him will spawn. That should mean. I can get a ridiculously overleveled Ground pokemon for free. If true, that will help immensely.

Let’s watch as whatever happens is not that.

THERE WE GO!

The risk now is that we won’t catch it, or it will kill Oak.

Bite or Water Gun. Bite or Water Gun.

Bite for first bit.

Okay, Bite does little enough that Water Gun should be safe.

This thing knows Sand Tomb. My other fear about this arrangement is that it will have abandoned Magnitude as a move. I’m hoping I’m wrong, but even if I’m not. Level 29 Dugtrio. That’s not bad, given my options.

One more Bite, then I’ll try to catch.

It also knows Mud Slap.

-worry intensifies-

It uses Dig.

What’s the last move, Dugtrio.

FUCK YEAH.

This is probably the best thing I can currently do for this run. I would very much like for nothing bad to happen, but the fact that I can make this work is already really swell.

Her name is Bark.

Bark, you will replace Oak in the party. Now let’s see.

She’s Serious, and... yeah. No Magnitude. Because Mud Slap and Sand Tomb are so much better.

It’s okay, though. We’ll get through this by being superbly overleveled. Squee. We also now have something to eat Attack IVs up for breakfast, so this is just. There is nothing bad about this.

Route 11, what’ve you got for me?

Drowzee.

It’s caught. Its name is Oak.

Now to beat up the many, many trainers on this route. In hopes of getting Acorn to know Thunderbolt. That’s at level 26. He’s at level 20 right now.

Post-Route 11?

Level 22.

:(

Bike Voucher to drown my sorrows.

Followed by boat ride.

-many minutes later-

Acorn is level 25. Soon. Soon, the day will come. The day of reckoning. Thunderbolt is waiting. Somehow I’m always surprised by how difficult it can be to get an Electric pokemon with Thunderbolt. I think that, more than anything else, has single-handedly killed my general interest in raising Electric pokemon. It’s kind of sad. They were by far my favorite when I was a kid.

Side note unrelated to anything going on right now that might be scaring me.

Rattata with Hyper Fang is scary.

Those tiny things aren’t supposed to be dangerous.

Then.

Suddenly.

Danger.

And just in time for the Rival battle!

They’re going to have a real awkward wedding one day.

This fight is a lot simpler when my lowest level pokemon is level 26. Take notes, future self.

The Ivysaur is very, very annoying, though. Bark turns out to be my best choice for dealing with it. Not what I would call a comfort. ...Heero. I still miss you. So much.

Cut get.

Super happy fun boat trip over now.

We teach Cut to Oak, and go about our business entering the Gym and throwing all the Trainers to the ground. Acorn, Bark. I put my faith in you.

Pokemon fans, what is your least favorite Gym setup, and why is it Surge’s?

Let’s goooooooo.

Acorn will (hopefully) handle the Voltorb and Pikachu, and then leave the Raichu to Bark’s capable. whatevers.

Success on Acorn’s side.

Bark...?

Right.

Yeah, so Double Team?

Do Not Like.

Except when I use it. It’s like Sturdy, in that way.

This fight takes around ten turns for Dig to actually hit and knock the Raichu out in one blow.

Surge’s Gym: The Actual Worst.

We made it to needing Flash! Miracles do exist!

...Wait, what do I have that can learn Flash?

None of the Oaks present. :(

And this time!

This time!

I made it through the damn Diglett cave without needing to kill any for illicit exp.

Back at Cerulean, I’m gonna get my bike, but first I’m going to put Oak in the box so that Oak can come in and learn Cut and Flash.

Heading off to Rock Tunnel like a boss.

Huh, there’s an Aerial Ace TM around these here parts. I’m going to get rid of Sand Tomb on Bark (I hate Sand Tomb and everything remotely like Sand Tomb, so I can’t see myself using it) and teach her Aerial Ace. She is going to be violently fighting Fighting pokemon at some point, and the next Gym coming up is one I have nothing naturally super effective against.

Meanwhile, back in things happening, Route 9 option is a Spearow!

...tfw you don’t know how not to kill something and throwing a poke ball doesn’t work.

But we persevere and catch it!

Its name is Oak.

Route 10 shows us... Voltorb!

.zaft. ;-;

Oh whoops.

Um.

I was spamming the A-button equivalent.

Bye Voltorb, nice not knowing you. Uh. Sorry. +117 illicit exp to Bark and Acorn.

Oops.

Let’s go hide in a cave now and not examine all of that too closely.

Rock Tunnel gives us a Geodude to try not to kill! We are going to answer that call with utmost seriousness, and do whatever possible to not kill the Geodude.

Success!

Its name is Oak.

Now we undertake the long. long. long. journey through the tunnel. It’s exactly like that scene in Lord of the Rings. Just with less fire. And wizards.

This Clefairy near the end of the tunnel is trying my patience. Minimize is the worst. Letting pokemon become immobilized by love is the worst. All of this is the worst. I miss being able to set things on fire so much.

As romantic as it is that love as a status appears to be unending, fucking stop.

Cool. Nice. Great.

Playing this is sapping my struggling will to live, good grief.

Okaay.

So here’s how this plays. I think, if I were given the choice of having everything handed to me, I would go with catching one of the Snorlaxes, and catching a very high level Grimer in Celadon. That would put me at five pokemon. Six would be if I wanted to take the Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan.

I don’t know if I have the resources to make that work.

Truth be told, I still think it was possible for me to beat the Elite Four with my original team. I was overly paranoid about the wrong things, as it turned out, and made a few bad calls. But I don’t think that team was doomed to failure.

Leveling things up so they’re invincible works as a strategy, but I’m also undoubtedly handicapped with Typing. I could drag this current team through the game with no additions, and the leveling could make up for a lot. Maybe even enough to surpass my original team.

Or I could pick some more stuff up.

It’s a hard call. I do really think that throughout the entire game, I only have three realistic options for team additions, and I’m very close to having my hands on any of them. Everywhere else, the leveling is just too much of a negative. A level 25 Lapras was cool and all, but if you look at how much time went into leveling it, I’m not sure I would call having it my best option. Buying a Scyther has already been ruled out here, because it would be level 20. It would resist Fighting and make all Psychic things easier, but it would take too many resources to train.

Grimer, Snorlax, Fighting Gift.

Those are the things I can get that I feel could be a worthwhile investment.

What do I want my final team to look like? What things do I already know are going to cause problems, and how do I want to adjust for them?

Questions I get to ask after three badges. Hell. Why did I think this was a good idea?

I think what I’ll do. Ugh.

See, I think the problem is that the Fighting thing is closest to being gotten, but the Snorlax is what determines if I use it or not. If I can’t have Snorlax, the Fighting thing would be good. But I don’t find out if I’ll get the Snorlax until a bit later and argh.

For now, let’s keep things simple. We’ll go through the tower now, so Acorn and Oak are more experienced as we hit the other sections of the plot. I can’t remember if I get the Super Rod now or later, so we’ll also go down and mess with the fisher people briefly.

Tower and Rival-san first.

...Oh wait. I guess the first thing I want to do is dodge as many trainers as possible and run to Celadon for a Thunderstone for Acorn. Let’s do that.

But if we can get the Super Rod already, it would be best to do that now so we could nab a Grimer when we got there... Sigh.

No Super Rod just yet, sorry me.

Route.... uh. One we’re on while we head towards Celadon gives us a Growlithe to try and catch. ...Bark kills it. More sighing. +195 illicit exp.

Celadon reached, Tea gotten. And...

Yay!

Now to buy a ton of Lemonade.

Then we deal with the tower.

The nicest thing about Heero (that is a lie, all things about Heero were the nicest) was that we didn’t have to deal with this monstrosity.

Ivysaur is still difficult. I don’t have an actual answer to that, yet. It has perfect accuracy with its Sleep Powder so far, adding to the extreme difficulty. We get through it, though, and Oak handles the Kadabra.

Now for the rest of the tower to be taken by Acorn and Oak.

Right. We can’t yet see these, so no catching just yet.

So I lied. Acorn killed everything. Oak did not help. Sorry, Oak. Now I guess we go do the Celadon side of this. So we can then come back to the tower. So we can then figure out if we’re doing a Snorlax or a thingamajig. So we then can get a Grimer.

On and on it goes.

“I don’t sound remotely suspicious at all!”

Sigh. I hate how Levitate is a thing with certain Poison pokemon. Not naming names or anything. I’m just pointing out that my life would be much, much easier if Bark could Dig every single Poison thing in existence.

Look Ma, I made it.

Thanks in advance for giving Oak some exp, Giovanni.

Though Bark is taking the Kangaskhan. Love you Oak, but Dig is better than Water Gun. ...and it still manages to do nothing. That’s mildly scary. I have never missed Allenby so deeply.

Bark finishes it off while still in the green, though. Proving once again that leveling beats everything.

Silph Scope get, so now we can go and finish up the tower.

...I don’t think I actually have any moves that won’t kill this, so if throwing a Poke Ball doesn’t work, we’re running away.

Hm.

It used Curse. Fine, we’ll make an honest try of catching it.

...Why does every sleep-inducing move hit every single fucking time. Why. Why why why.

...

I don’t know how it’s still alive, and I feel like it shouldn’t be.

Whatever.

It’s caught.

Its name is Oak.

Hey, my past self screwed up and didn’t note if I could run away from the Marowak or not. If I can, I have to do that instead of winning extra exp.

Ah. Running away lets me leave the battle, but when I walk back forward the Marowak respawns. Fair. Guess you’ve gotta die, sad ghost.

That done with, time to rescue flute guy. He has a name, but that name is less important than that he has a flute and will determine what our final team will look like once we make use of it.

...I can’t believe I just realized that this is basically Kurt’s plot from gen 2.

We now begin the most difficult trial of the run.

The Snorlax wars.

If catching one looks like it will kill someone, I’m running from it. That goes for both of them. This is a mission of pure luck. Snorlax can kill whatever it wants. The mission is to avoid it killing my team. Accidentally killing it is cool, but if the choices are something dying or running to escape, we are running.

Pictured: Stress.

Let’s get this done with.

...This is not going to work. One Headbutt puts Bark in the orange. If it decides to make a concentrated attack instead of just sleeping, I’m in trouble. Plus, without an Allenby, all I have barely puts a dent in it.

THEN AS I AM TYPING THIS

What the actual fuck.

Welcome to the team, Trunk?

Uh.

Things I did not expect.

Oak, you’re going in the box to make room for Trunk.

Then I guess we’ll. Go get the Super Rod. Fetch Grimer. Then deal with the actual plot of the game. Huh.

Trunk is Quirky, and has Immunity, which as we learned last time, is great for Koga. So uh. What I guess I’m saying is. Nice. This puts us dangerously close to being in a pretty good place.

Lowest level thing that I’m using is level 30. That’s really, really good. So now we’re going to feed all the trainers we didn’t beat on Route 8 to Trunk, and giggle about it as we go.

Righty then, Trunk hits level 32, and we’re going to storm Erika’s Gym now.

...Why does everything put all of my stuff to sleep this round.

I also should find a more workable solution to fighting Grass pokemon at some point. I have an inkling that being overleveled isn’t going to last forever, and it’s my only real defense at the moment.

And I need to stop having Oak in up front. I’m trying to get some Sp. Atk from the Oddishes and things, but really it’s just meaning I forget and have to switch out on things like Bellsprout. EV training fails everywhere.

Seriously though, I’m using Acorn to deal with Grass things. That is not a solution. That is an abomination.

Lesgo.

Including blatant the blatant stupidity of having Acorn fight the Vileplume.

I just want my team to be its best self. Don’t judge.

VINDICATION.

Badge 4, get!

And now we fish for our Grimer. Which. tbh I don’t even know if it’ll make sense to use, but in any case, we will have it. Having things is nice.

According to Serebii, there’s a 1% chance of Grimer here. Mostly this pond just has Magikarp.

We’re going to be here a while. Especially since getting a pokemon on the hook at all is proving mighty difficult. Until a few seconds ago, I was averaging five tries per Magikarp.

-6. hours. later.-

.

.

.

Presenting.

The lowest level Grimer you can catch in this here pond.

Are you fucking kidding me.

-cries in the corner for six more hours-

(Sadly, only one of those descriptions of my actions is fake. Now that really wants to make me cry for six hours.)

Its name.

is.

Sap.

It joins the party. Tree goes in the box.

It is Brave.

Good for it.

Let’s call this a stopping point, shall we?

[bibbleboo]

Could we get some headcanons/more background on Abbey and Doyle’s kids? 🥺👉👈 I love the premise of this AU

YEEEEE (im just gonna ramble a bunch about the backstory i have so far but ill put it in bullets so its easier to follow lol i apologize for it being long as fuck-)

OKAY SO,,, first of all,,, doyle and abbey timeline,,,, [i am looking respectfully]

in this au, they get back together and have a sort of ‘lovers pretending to be enemies’ chaotic on again/off again hookup thing off to the side just between the two of them thru like Most of the final season, they try to keep it a secret (especially doyle who doubts the saturdays would be hAPPY if he was seeing her again) but in the end, saturdays ofc find out, probably are unsure about it at first, but she gains enough of their trust to be there for the big finale battle in the weird world mansion.

when shit goes down and argost becomes the vessel for the two opposing kurs (regular kur, and the anti kur from zak monday) and they like. explode his matter or w/e, i imagine instead of kur just completely disappearing, the ‘anti kur’ gets shot back to its universe, while original kur gets forced into a new vessel in this universe... the closest of which happens to be the unborn child abbeys unknowingly carrying. basically, what if the two kurs just LOOKED like they evaporated but actually did what happens when you try to like tape two same sides of a magnets together and they YEETED-

So thats how we have Parker, their firstborn daughter! and this... also implies ‘Parker Monday’ exists which. 8^) i havent thought about yet so forgive me on that but hoo, 

they dont know parker is kur, they got no idea and rly just assume kur is gone for good. but after they find out abbeys pregnant (which is a huge emotional trip for both of them in its own right) they do eventually sort of agree they dont want their kid exposed to that whole world of mystery. like, ik its a vital thing to the whole family, and ik these two people were probably voted least likely to ‘settle down’ in high school, but i cant imagine they didnt escape the kur/zak situation without a LOT of trauma, so while the saturdays stay in the cryptozoology field, doyle and abbey slowly pull away from the mystery and mercenary stuff, and also instead of going for big dollar lifestyle settle with ‘independently wealthy’ parenting.

also, neither of them really . grasp the concept that theyve even started a family, and are ‘together’, and that this is REAL, until around when she gets pregnant with their second daughter, Kendall. and then theyre like. oh nooo wait are we actually like boyfriend and girlfriend EWW-

when kendall is born parker is 3, and the next like 10+ years are pretty smooth sailing. as far as what the kids know/see, they probably know the cryptids when theyre little but. (tw animal death sORRY TO BE DARK I JUST??????) idk,, how long komodo dragons live/how old komodo already is and i definitely dont know Anything about giant prehistoric birds and am not even sure if science knows that lifespan, so. im not sure how long they could really be in each others lives??? i almost imagine parker would have memories of them that she assumes she remembers wrong, like “oh yeah they used to have a lizard and a bird... my imaginative little kid brain thought they were a komodo dragon and a dinosaur”, and as for fisk im still working on it but i . actually kind of imagine he might have a much longer lifespan (since lemurians are like ancient or w/e? and also if hes by dna like a gorilla cat or w/e gorillas at least live long af) and also feel like once he got older and settled down a bit he might live somewhere in the woods, maybe even his old tree? and the saturdays see him ALL the time obviously, but hey zaks gotta go to college eventually, a gorilla cats gotta eat bugs in forest, we all have to grow up and leave the nest sometime,

so idk the last time parker has actually seen fisk and she might assume he was an imaginary friend or smth but, 1. if i do write a fic they absolutely have to meet again, 2. overall the vibe is they know the saturdays are cryptozoologists, like, the same way josh gates does destination truth, seeking answers and studying, they dont really. know that theyre REAL. to them its like, a hypothetical science. (this is also part of why they dont realize parker is kur, she isnt around cryptids and therefore whenever her powers would actually show up they wouldnt be recognized) anyways parker isnt embarrassed or put off by it but just thinks its a little wacky, meanwhile kendall is obsessed with the world of mystery/paranormal/cryptic lol

speaking of the girls personalities;;;

parker is like. not really normie/preppy, even if she seems it at first glance, shes nice and has a good head on her shoulders but also is a teenage girl (inherently unhinged) and shes THEIR teenage girl (+5 feral) so despite her success and charm shes also very witty/crass when she wants to be, and deep down shes closer to the kind of person that would on pure inexplicable instinct put something random in your mouth when you’re yawning so you bite down on it afterwards. or like. that video of the girl singing in the bathroom while her friends curl their hair and she grabs the curler to use as a microphone before realizing its burning hot??? shes. the voice of reason, but the voice is usually shrieking in fear, making a cursed joke, or half the time whatever shes saying is actually smart. she kinda wants to go to college and travel, but struggles with indecisiveness and anxiety, so she has no idea where to go, what to major in, etc. and is again kinda just livin thru the typical teen life in that regard

kendall on the other hand is like. weird kid culture, the kind of kid that believes they are secretly a new supernatural creature each year (mermaid phase, werewolf phase, alien phase, etc), probably completely accidentally starts cults or witch covens at school (didnt realize teaching peers how to become ‘blood brothers’ and ‘make potions’ from puddles and stolen school supplies would be taken so seriously by parents) , very into emo/scene/punk/alt culture but not rly in an overtly dark/edgy way, more of a having fun and expressing self way. she wants answers for everything, really loves mysteries and being open minded, and definitely a rebel/adventurer at heart, even if she gets naive or in over her head sometimes.

the girls get along well! parker is not dismissive of kendall she just. isnt really into the same stuff/is more freaked out by it most of the time, but she would tag along on certain adventures, especially if it was to keep her safe. and kendall definitely directs gentle mockery towards parker a lot but does see her as a good role model and guiding figure, their bond is really strong!

other details !

doyle and abbey prob decide to say fuck it and get married after kendall is born, they probably have a few rough patches but nothing is more important to them than the kids now and in the end they understand each other better than anyone else so . canon tension idk her! family ftw! power couple! they intimidate the teacher during parent teacher conferences together hand in shady little hand !

their parenting style is exactly what one would imagine, 70% fun and sass and controlled chaos where theyre the bigger children than their children, 15% ‘this is how you hack the government and dual wield swords-- i was not supposed to teach you that im sorry’, and 15% actual guidance / emotional depth / etc. flaws might be overcoming their own immaturity for the first few years, and then being lowkey overly protective (while claiming they arent, but just bc you semi jokingly tell parker she should join the football team doesnt mean you dont actually hide 60% of ur life from her and check that her bedroom windows are locked every night and have 24 people listed in her school emergency contacts and used to cut up her food till she was 7 and-)

so abouT THE BABY BOY (Phoenix), 1. his middle name is leonidas bc im gay and i love emotional turmoil babes , 2. fully unironically the idea behind such a late pregnancy is abbey would be mid fourties when hes born right. so like. [has two kids] ‘ok birth control time’ [when theyre teens many years later] ‘ok im old enough to stop taking this’ [the hyperfertility curse that plagues many women rears its ugly head with one last hoo-rah]

and finALLY a very quick elevator pitch of what id write an actual fic to focus on;;; kendall sneaks into the attic to look for old shit bc they BOTH know their parents have been hiding stuff over the years, she finds things like a cryptopedia (now offline), the claw, maybe even a piece of the kur stone, and ropes parker into the long haul of figuring out what all this stuff is. and ofc the second they ever find the naga relic and parker comes face to face with it, [rest in rip] time for mom and dad to find out and all this kur shit to start ALL over again-

[ark-of-eden]

Accidentally drifting away from IDW Transformers?

(R:) I realized recently that I can't remember the last time that I bought, or even really looked forward to buying, any IDW TF comic. I remember a while ago when I was united with other fans who were excitedly posting things like, "Only three more sleeps until release!!" I used to mark release dates on my calendar and sit around on Comixology, refreshing the site until the early hours of the morning so I could get issues right when they came out. My life's been in kind of a shitty place for a while, but IDW TF stuff used to be one of the few things that actually got me excited and that I looked forward to. Now I just kind of...vaguely recall that new issues have been happening when somebody posts a screencap that I haven't seen before. I don't really know what's been happening since I suddenly stopped reading months ago, but since people are barely posting spoilers and big meta analyses anymore (used to be that the day after an issue dropped, screencaps and spoilers were so thick on the digital ground that there was no way to dodge it all unless you filtered everything), I suspect that a lot of other people are feeling this as well? Maybe? :/

When I tried to encapsulate what was causing it, the biggest reason I could think of was that a whole lot of things that were relatable to me or that were interesting just definitively ended all at once. Even though I was following several series, this sort of happened simultaneously in all of them, which caused that sense that IDW TF as a concept wasn't really relevant anymore.

Examples of things that are now gone that were evidently more important to me than I'd originally thought:

* TAAO ended, and it seems up in the air as to who is going to continue it (if they continue it somehow) and what they're going to do with the plotline and main characters despite the dangling story hooks. I admit that I haven't even bought the last issue because hell, there's nothing coming after it, and this way I can at least pretend that it's still ongoing and I just haven't caught up. I was invested in Starscream because his situation mirrored some parts of my actual life, so I wanted him to succeed despite acknowledging his personality failings. Apparently there is good Starscream in that other Vs series that started recently and which I am so invested in that I can't even remember the name of it most days ("Starscream of Gor"?). But that seems to be Starscream chewing up scenery by being classically himself, as opposed to being something related to his TAAO character development.

* Megatron. It's not that his arc was bad or that the ending was bad, but interesting things were being done with him and now that he is gone all those interesting things are over. Previously, he was the Soulless Evil Warlord Who Keeps Being Disturbingly Heroic Sometimes. Then there was the weirdness of Autobot Megatron, which at least provided fuel for interesting philosophical thoughts. (Ravage is also gone, but he was underutilized, IMO, so there's the added tragedy of nothing interesting ever being done with him in the future.) I get that Megatron might be coming back later, but then he'll be...Atheist Jesus Megatron? I felt that there was more mileage left in him as he was, so even if the character comes back, those previous versions of him will still be gone.

* Tailgate. TBH, I think this was the last thing that I was curious about in post-Megatron LL plot country, because it was dealing with the transformation of a powerless person into an overpowered person and how he was changing, his relationships were changing, and it was all very complicated and muddy and fascinating. I'm sure that he'll be rescued eventually, but who knows when. In the meantime, there's a void where that whole plotline used to be.

* Skids, or specifically Dead Skids. Apparently there's a plotline going on where people are trying to resurrect him? And maybe they won't succeed, but the fact that this is even a thing made me realize that I've hit critical mass in my tolerance for people being Surprise Not Actually Dead. JRo has this weird reputation for being a monster who is constantly pawing the Sudden Character Death trigger, but he really doesn't kill main characters all that often. Trailbreaker/cutter and the DJD are the only main, ongoing characters who died and stayed dead, IIRC? Like, I really appreciated the emotional impact of Rewind's death, but a new Rewind showed up quickly and all that emotion went flat. Tailgate was dying dramatically and then got 100% better at the last minute. Pharma was infected with Robo Ebola, got his hands cut off and was left for dead in the middle of nowhere, was implausably rescued and got all better, got his head blown off, and is foreshadowed to be coming back AGAIN. (Don't get me wrong, my warped ass loves Pharma, but seriously??) Cyclonus dramatically shielded Tailgate from a hail of bullets and seemed dead, but showed up later with only cosmetic damage - Accidental Dead Universe No-Sell FTW. The entire cast, including bonus Overlord, got slaughtered, but it was another dimension so it didn't really count for anything (except that replacement Rewind). And Skids dramatically Died For The World's Sins and who knows, they might succeed in bringing him back too. I am actually cashed out on the experience of being emotionally affected by a person's death/dying only for it to un-happen shortly afterward. If you're going to tearjerk by killing people, just fucking kill people.

* The DJD. Tarn was another person who uncomfortably reminds me of me in too many ways, enough so that I at least wanted him to be around for a while so he could fuck up his life and everything around himself in relatable ways that encourage me to drink heavily. (I have a historical weakness for characters like him, so this isn't specifically a Tarn thing - Tarn's just the local incarnation of that type.) Character development for the rest of the guys definitely wouldn't have hurt either. Their deaths made plot sense, but they're gone now and I don't think they'll be easily replaced.

* Deathsaurus and his merry mecha. Sure, they're also still out there and are supposedly going to come back at some point, but they were interesting and now they're gone.

* Most of the interesting things in the Optimus Prime series, particularly now that Prowl is gone. Prowl jumped series and is now on LL Bad Cop Vacation on the moon? For some reason?? It was never clear to me why he got it into his head that he had to go there, but he is no longer pulling strings on half the plot and just seems to be retired. While I'm happy for him, he was a huge part of why I even bothered with that series. There's some interesting stuff going on with Optimus Vs Pyra Magna on the religious front, but LBR, that series is fucking crawling with humans and human concerns and all that crap, so I need a real good reason to spend time in that environment. (I deal with humans every day of my life. I don't need humans in my escapist media.)

* Nick Roche, may his sanctity endure forever, is done making Wreckers series? I think I heard? A portion of the perfect light of mercy has departed this sinful world forever. TTnTT

That's all that's coming to mind at the moment, but that's rather a lot of things that used to be vital to my interest and which are now gone. Mostly I read a whole lot of fanfic and get excited about those plotlines instead of whatever's going on in canon because people are still writing a lot of fic set back in the parts of canon where things were still cool. :/

I dunno. I'm sort of peripherally aware of what's going on, but it keeps slipping my mind to get recent issues and catch up. :( I'm not switching fandoms, so far as I can tell (is there anything besides TF and 40K where you can read an entire book with few or no humans at all? ...True, maybe those various YA series where all the characters are animals...), but maybe I'm just turning into one of those people who ignores current canon and hangs around in the rosy past instead? :/

[ready-jet-go]

Slashdot: Elon Musk Continues To Amuse Himself On Twitter, Sharing Song, Duck Emoji

Elon Musk Continues To Amuse Himself On Twitter, Sharing Song, Duck Emoji Published on March 31, 2019 at 07:34PM Yesterday Billboard magazine reported that Elon Musk had dropped a rap song on SoundCloud -- an auto-tuned song called "RIP Harambe." Posted under the handle Emo G Records, the two-minute track pays tribute to the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was killed in 2016 after a 3-year-old climbed into its living area. It's unclear if Musk stumbled upon the track, which has his name on it, or if he released the track himself... "RIP Harambe" had more than 200,000 plays as of Sunday afternoon. Some Twitter users left bemused replies, like "Dude, sober up by Thursday's contempt hearing." But the song appears to be part of a longer series of tweets. An anonymous reader writes: On Friday Musk had shared a blank tweet containing nothing but an emoji of a duck with his 25.5 million followers. It drew over 24,000 re-tweets, and 4,300 comments -- far more than the Harambe song (which drew only 14,000 retweets and 1,600 comments.) "Duck emoji FTW," Musk tweeted triumphantly on Sunday, following up on his earlier observation that "Duck emoji defeats Emo G Records. Crushing victory." In its comments there was also a joke about X.com (the original online banking site Musk launched in 1999, which was eventually merged into PayPal). In 2017 Musk repurchased the domain because "it has great sentimental value" -- but replaced it with an entirely blank page with one lowercase x. In response to the duck emoji, someone tweeted that next Musk needed to update X.com. Musk promptly replied by tweeting the URL x.com/x -- which (due to the site's error-handling) pulls up a web page with a single lowercase y.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[naamah-beherit]

I’m killing two tags with one stone

11 facts - tagged by @pardonthelitany (who’s awesome? You’re awesome!)

This is tricky, because I can barely think of 11 facts about myself, ha. You know, it’s like reading your own text, when you know it so well that you can’t even spot the typos. Ok, let’s try then.

I’ve been writing since I was 12 years old. It started as a homework assignment to write a fairytale, which I did and in the process found out I actually enjoyed it, so I kept going. That fairytale turned into my first original story - and the only one I have ever finished. (I burnt the notebooks later, because it was abysmal) I tried to pick up that idea two times already, and now I’m at the 4th attempt. It finally looks promising.

I’m considering learning Russian only to be able to read Major Grom in original, rather than wait for its English translation (which is being released slower than a sloth moves)

Besides English, Latin, and Ancient Greek, I also have elementary knowledge of German, Czech, and Italian. I’m planning to learn Norwegian at some point as well. The funny thing with Latin is that I can read and understand the basic context of texts in most modern Romance languages despite not knowing the language itself. Latin FTW.

I also understand the concept behind quantum physics and most of theories regarding it. Unless formulas come into picture - then my brain decides to take a break.

As a matter of fact, I got a good grade in physics during my last year of high school only because I was allowed to write an essay on black holes.

Black holes are cool, by the way (I cried watching Interstellar, because that was the most beautiful black hole EVER). Oh, and galaxy filaments are awesome as well. They’re wonderful and breathtaking, and their existence makes you realise how insignificant you are.

I’d happily trade 30 years of my life for 30 minutes in space.

I’d be delighted to live in a secluded area with just a pack of dogs for company, without ever having to see a human being again. The area in question is either the middle of a forest, or the seaside. There is also a lovely little village in Norway, called Ogna, where a perfect combination of those two exist.

I’m running out of facts. I tend to get too comfortable when I find a routine in something - the longer it lasts, the more difficult it is for me to break it.

I’m a leftie. Leftie and proud.

I lose respect for people at the speed of light, but that’s typical for INTJs.

And another one, courtesy of @acommonanomaly. Thank you, you’re awesome too :D

Name: Justyna Nickname:  Naamah

Reason for url: it’s a name of one of my Star Wars RPG characters that in time became my online pseudonym

Star sign: Leo

Sexual Orientation: straight, but Tricia Helfer and Meghan Ory make me consider the possibility of being bisexual Hogwarts House: uhm... no idea? Although judging from what I know after reading HP series, it would probably be either Slytherin or Ravenclaw Ilvermorny House: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  What is this, I haven’t the slightest idea Favorite color: gold of summer sunsets Cats or dogs: dogs. Definitely dogs Favorite fictional characters:is there a limit for this one? Because I could go for hours, you know? So if I limited myself to only a couple of fandoms, then it would be as follow: Exar Kun (I love this guy, okay? He’s my guilty pleasure), Maglor (somebody better give him a hug, he deserves it), Melkor (he’s only a tad less problematic fav than Exar), Garrus Vakarian (THAT VOICE), 8th, 10th, and 12th Doctor, Susan Sto Helit, Kris Hansen/Deliann, Vala Mal Doran, Todd, Bucky Barnes, Haer’Dalis, Nyarlathotep... and maybe I’ll stop myself at this point Favorite Musical Artist: ISIS. Then Lemolo, Tides From Nebula, and a shitload of others. Classic rock mostly Dream trip: New Zealand. Definitely When this blog was created: uhm... 2011 apparently, at least according to my email archive Number of followers: 277. Probably more than half is already inactive When did this blog reach its peak: next question, please

I’m not tagging anyone this time, but you’re welcome to grab and do it if you feel like it.