#have fun guessing which memories actually happened to me!

[trans-leek-cookie]

post. Post-posting clarity where you're like "wtf was I talking about". But also post-posting confusion where you're also like "wtf was I talking about" but it's less about your mental state While Posting and more about "okay. I've written many words. I remember. Approximately 20% of them. What the fuck are the rest of these?"

[beneathsilverstars]

A lot of people headcanon that Siffrin was something around 12-14 when the island disappeared, which does make sense. But it’s common enough fanon that I wanted to go back and figure out what’s actually canon!

Lots of evidence and math under the cut, including various things to consider when creating your own hc timeline, but tl;dr:

If we stick to only textual canon, then Siffrin only needs to have been old enough to row a boat, which I would guess to be 6-8. If we take into account the ranges id5 gave for everyone’s ages during canon, he theoretically could’ve been anywhere from 6-25 when the island disappeared. Or if we adhere to everything id5 has said, then he was a “teen” when it happened, so, 13-19.

Siffrin: I ran away from home once! I just didn't want to eat my veggies. And so I took our boat! Got to the beach, rowed away from the shore a bit. I was going to come back right away, I just wanted to scare my parents a bit! I started to row back towards the shore... And then, I...

People often assumes this means Siffrin was fairly young when they left. However, that relies on two assumptions, which are fairly reasonable, sure, but assumptions nonetheless: that they were young when this happened, and that this is when the island disappeared.

While throwing tantrums over vegetables is a stereotypically childish activity, chafing at strict or even well-meaning rules doesn’t belong exclusively to children. There are parents who continue treating their kids the same way even as they grow into teens and even full adults, before they move out or even just while they visit. Which is very frustrating for the kid! So imo it would make perfect sense for a teenager or even a young adult to go, “I can’t believe my parent is still trying to control what I eat like I’m a blinding 10 year old. If they won’t treat me like an adult at home, maybe I’ll prove my independence by leaving for a bit!”

It’s also possible that the event this dialogue refers to ended with Siffrin returning safely home! It’s fun to say that his story trailed off at the moment that the island was forgotten, but it’s possible he only stopped the retelling there because the curse kicked in, just like it would for any childhood memory. Maybe he didn’t get cut off from the island till he ran away for a second time. Maybe he was just on a regular, fully-sanctioned outing when it happened. Maybe he was even with other people. Who knows! Siffrin sure doesn’t!

(Edit: It’s word of god canon that the veggie event was the island’s disappearance, but it doesn’t necessarily affect our timeline anyway.)

I think the only thing this story proves is that Siffrin didn’t leave the island until after they were old enough to row the family boat. Unfortunately I don’t know for sure how old that would be. I did some research and found a couple posts about 6-7 year olds learning how to row, but one of them was using an inflatable raft, and the other was on a rowing team, so I don’t know how the difficulty compares. Young children really are quite good at picking up their parents’ hobbies, so I think even a 4-5 year old could learn how, but they may not be physically capable of handling an adult-size boat. It really comes down to a question of core strength / endurance. Found some posts saying the weight of the boat doesn’t matter as much as the weight of the oars, though, so maybe old fashioned boat vs modern inflatable raft doesn’t matter that much…? So maybe it would be possible for a child to row a small wooden skiff at around age 6-8. Probably not for long, but that just makes it all the more realistic for them to drift farther than they meant to and then struggle to return to shore.

So: Siffrin was at least 6-8 when they left!

Bonnie: I think my village was really close to it!!! My sister said it was all everyone could talk about for weeks!!!

If we assume “my village” means Bambouche, the island disappearance would have to be after Nille ran away with Bonnie, but still long enough ago that Bonnie doesn’t remember it directly. If we define “preteen” as age 10-12, then the longest ago this could possibly be would be 12 years. On the other side, I think it’s reasonable for a 10 year old to not remember a major (but personally irrelevant) event that happened when they were 6, meaning the closest it could be is 4 years ago.

If we follow WoG (word of god) age ranges, then Siffrin is in their “mid to late 20s”, which I’ll define as 24-29. Subtracting our 4-12 years ago range for the island’s disappearance, Siffrin could’ve been at youngest 12-17 and at oldest 20-25. If we stick to only TC (textual canon), I think one could interpret Siffrin as anywhere from 18-35, which would mean they were at youngest 6-23 and at oldest 14-31.

Of course, “my village” could also mean wherever Bonnie and Nille lived before running away. I think the youngest age at which it’s likely for an adult to remember a personally-irrelevant event from their childhood is maybe 5. Nille’s WoG age range is “late teens to early 20s”, which I would define as 16-23, which means the disappearance could be 11-18 years ago. Combining this with our 4-12 range gives us 4-18, meaning WoG Siffrin could have been at youngest 6-11 and at oldest 20-25.

But if we’re only going off of TC, we can say Nille’s as old as we want, so the disappearance just has to be at least 4 years ago for Bonnie to not directly remember.

Isabeau: This article says there's no record of him anywhere... Up until he appeared out of thin air sometime in his adulthood. Looks like he lived in the city of Corbeaux for a few years before he became the King...

According to the change god statue exposition cutscene, the King started his rampage “almost a year ago now”. The way Isabeau says the bit about Corbeaux kind of implies that the King lived other places before that, but not to the point that it’s unreasonable to say he didn’t. So if we define “a few” as 2-4, then the soonest the king could’ve appeared is 3-5 years ago, meaning the island disappeared at least 3 years ago. We already said it has to be at least 4 years ago, so this doesn’t change our math.

How old were Nille and Bonnie when they ran away? How old was Sif when their home got zapped?

id5: Both were teens.

Womp womp, there it is. WoG says 13-19!

But while we’re here, here’s a summary of everything you might want to consider while creating your timeline:

Siffrin must have been at least old enough to row a boat. I’m not an expert in boats but I think it’s reasonable for a kid to be capable of rowing at age 6+, but a 6-8 year old may struggle to maneuver the oars of an adult-sized boat, and wouldn’t be able to row very hard or for very long. Doesn’t necessarily take much effort to get far enough for waves and currents to take you farther, though.

It’s WoG that the veggie event is the island’s disappearance, but if you’re going off of TC, the disappearance could have happened later instead. And a dramatic disagreement over veggies could theoretically happen at any age! Its causes could also range from rather practical (Siffrin is extremely picky and his parents are worried about his health) to pure power struggle (Siffrin just wants more choice in what he eats but his parents just want him to follow the rules they’ve set).

Since the King lived in Corbeaux for “a few” years before his nearly-a-year-long rampage, the island must have disappeared at least 3 years ago.

Since Bonnie remembers Nille telling them about the gossip surrounding the island’s disappearance, I doubt they would’ve forgotten the gossip itself if it had happened somewhat recently. (I think it must have been at least 4 years ago.)

If Bonnie’s reference to “my village” means Bambouche, the disappearance must have occurred after Nille ran away with them.

If Bonnie’s reference to “my village” means wherever they lived with Nille before running away, then the disappearance could be before Bonnie was born. But it would still have to be when Nille was old enough to pay attention to the gossip and remember it for a while. (I think she must have been at least 5 years old when it happened.)

According to id5, Siffrin is in their mid-to-late twenties during the game, and Nille is in their late teens to early twenties.

According to id5, Siffrin was a teen when the island disappeared, and Nille was a teen when she ran away from home.

You can do whatever you want forever, including contradicting textual canon. ^^

[lilybug-02]

I'm gonna THEORY CRAFT for a second about Animator vs Animation 11. Because there's something SUPER WEIRD I've noticed about the way camera shots are orchestrated in recent animations. Specifically about -

THE LAPTOP SCREEN.

And even more specifically what Alan (and the real world) may look like to the stickmen.

We've known for a while now that 3D space was possible outside of the Laptop since AvA 7 (March 11, 2019).

But the camera angle on the Laptop has always been in 2D space until very recently!

Our first introduction to a 3D environment in Alan's Desktop was Green's Influencer Arc (Uploaded Sept 7, 2024).**

(Look how insanely massive the inside of the laptop looks now.)

But throughout the entire Influencer Arc the camera was NEVER pointed towards the outside of the laptop, to the real world. It is always tilted so that we can't see it.

((And even more weird in this Green's video, is which the left most wall is covered a solid white, whereas, us - the audience - can see through this wall when looking through the screen. wth is happening))

--------------

Our most recent scene of a 3D Laptop space (as of writing this) is in AvA 11, where Victim is drawn and killed.

Again, the outside world, through the screen, is never shown. Although we do get extremely close with Mitsi's Creator. But it's coincidentally obscured by the internet explorer window.

--------------

And last of all- the thing that got me really questioning this camera choice - is something I noticed back in AvA 10 (Nov 4, 2023). When The Chosen One is having his memory scanned, he purposefully causes the screen to blur as he enters Alan's Laptop. (You have to put it in .5 speed to really notice.)

And guess what The Chose One does the second he gets to Alan's laptop. He stares daggers at Alan.

--------------

So what does this mean?

It means the camera is being specifically shot at angles to never address how the Stickfigures see Alan and the rest of the world.

And what does that mean???

I HAVE NO IDEA. But I kinda hope it's leading up to a scene where we DO see the stickfigures addressing it. BECAUSE HOLY HELL THAT WOULD BE SO SICK.

..........

Wait-**

Wait wait wait wait wait-

This ACTUAL SHORT from August 2023 shows the screen??? Are you fricking serious.

I am going to explode now <3. --------

Nah, in all seriousness, I would still LOVE to see the camera angle change for dramatic effect in the "main series". Because it just feels like the hints are leading up to it. ❤️❤️❤️ I'm really enjoying the series either way and was having fun theorizing here :)

_______________________________________________

And don't even get me started on why almost all animations/stickfigures are oblivious to Humans or strait up don't know about them. LIKE- wtf are all these posters

"Are We Being Watched?", "Tiles in the Sky", "What's Beyond Our World?", "Origins of the Stick Figure"

DUDE WHAT THE HELL. Are Alan's stick figures the only ones who've seen humans??? Do any other stickmen know humans created them? Ahhhhhhh

[andhumanslovedstories]

chapter eleven of what feels like the most soap opera ass fic I've ever written and then just a bunch of thoughts about writing it, which contains vague spoilers for my plans:

The inception of the fic basically went like this:

haha lol i'd be fun if sqq got real mad at the state of education

what would need to happen in this fic that doesn't happen in canon to motivate him to do something about it

oh shit he didn't unlock OOC so he has to figure out how to be his coddling indulgent self (which he's in denial about) while also being shen jiu

But the thing that really made the story get so much bigger in scope was when I was reading a fic with yqy coming clean to sj, and sj being like, "GASP. I forgive you." And I was "I simply do not believe that this is how it would happen." And I would have moved on with my life, but then I thought, "but like how would it happen." And more importantly, how could this conversation happen within the canon timeline but still involve Shen Jiu, the person this information affects.

The OOC idea and the need for Shen Jiu to be present in this fight scene came together to be like "what if sqq got sj's memories so he could rules-lawyer his characterization more accurately, and ends up being furious on sj's behalf?"

(This, btw, is why I knew I had to get much fonder of YQY and get a much better understanding of his character. When a pillar of your fic idea is a character getting ripped into for his choices, it is sooooooo easy to for it to come off as the author yelling their personal opinions or for it to be completely flat character bashing. Neither are interesting to read or write! Hence the crash-course in YQY appreciation, so now he gets his own emotional arc too. Everyone gets a goddamn plotline.)

Meanwhile I was also thinking about the implications of downloading another person's life into your head. If you have their memories and their body, are you them? What makes you not them? I didn't know! I sort of just kept writing and posting with the assumption that I'd figure something out, which I've finally nailed down btw. That's a relief! Also kinda the fun of WIPs where you're building the railroad track as you're on the train. I end up fanficing my own fanfic. Once stuff is posted, that's the canon, and I look at it and think, "if this was a book I was reading, what is the way I would extrapolate what's there to make a new but coherent story?"

That's why my outline becomes pretty useless after a while. The big picture doesn't change too much--I know roughly where all the major characters are going to be emotionally by the end of the story--but I discover the path I'm going to take there. Which usually means adding stuff. Liu Qingge wasn't going to get a POV, and now every chapter I'm like "fuck am I building a throuple". Ming Fan will have waaaay more a story line than I originally conceived. Early on, I was like "eh I'm not going to go too far into the brothel stuff," and can you guess what is going to be coming up prominently in the next few chapters? God help me.

Actually, there's only one major part of the outline that I cut: Shang Qinghua. He was originally very prominent early on, but turns out having the literal Word of God in a story about slowly discovering backstory is difficult to reconcile. So sadly, he doesn't get a real role. If you're curious, the original plan for him was that SQQ would realize he's a transmigrator much earlier in the canon, but the System would be like [shen jiu would not tell shang qinghua he is a transmigrator. ooc] which would lead to this series of SQQ trying to figure out how he can communicate around this. SQQ at a peak meeting being like, "do you think these DEMONS are PROUD of having made their WAY to us IMMORTALS?" while SQH is like, "AM I HAVING A STROKE?"

What's some other stuff about this fic? I've got a lot of thoughts bottled up, in part because I'm kinda snobby tbh in how I post. I'm like "*pushes glasses up my nose* the author's takes on the story should not be unavoidably present when reading the text" so I don't like to use ao3's author's notes. It's ridiculous and not a standard I hold anyone else too, but whenever I find myself wanting to address something in the notes, I know I must feel insecure about that part of the story. So either fix it or don't draw attention to it. But this is fine, you have to come here for this. This is DVD commentary.

My favorite part of writing this fic has been balancing Shen Jiu's character. As I'm fleshing out his sad backstory, I've been wary of essentially woobifying him. Reducing him to just someone who greatly suffered is so boring and flat. He NEEDS to suck. Or more accurately, he needs to be a very imperfect victim. Exasperating at his mildest, despicable at his worst. (Truthfully, I do think I can and should make him worse. Luckily this story is nothing but flashbacks to him at his worst so there's plenty of opportunities.)

This whole mental breakdown section has been an interesting balancing act because it's explicitly about how bad Shen Jiu's life was and now how bad Shen Qingqiu's is. It's the point at which I had to decide how torturous his time at the Qiu manor had been (me and Shen Qingqiu really discovered that together). On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the absolute worst saddest brutalist ideas I had for this era in his life, I'd say I settled on about a 7. Most of it is backstage in my head, but once I locked that down, I could start figuring out how much was bleeding through.

Anyway, it's been fun writing the angstfest of the last few chapters, but oh my god am I ready for a tone shift. There's usually jokes in my works, even the saddest bits, but jokes relieve tension which is the opposite of what I was going for. I didn't want any humor in the YQY conversation, then you have to keep not joking for a while to get the point across. There's still a lot of planned emotional shit, but I'm happy to not be wallowing for a while.

AND GOD AS MY WITNESS THIS STORY WILL NOT BE LONGER THAN 20 CHAPTERS. MAYBE IT'LL EVEN BE LESS!! IT IS DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO BE A WHOLE CANON REWRITE. PROBABLY!! IF TIANLANG JUN HAS ANY SIGNIFICANT SCREEN TIME, PLEASE KNOW THAT I HAVE FAILED.

[eternalera]

i hate when people go "why cant people just be friends :((( why cant we have strong platonic bonds anymore?" to ships

and do you wanna know the reason? like do you really wanna know the reason. okay well here we go ig-

(click read more for an actual analysis of why this doesnt happen)

no one writes strong platonic bonds well anymore.

at least they cant do so without it seeming romantic because of one thing.

shipping and romance.

without a doubt it has taken over our society as a whole and this is for quiet a few reasons, we literally have a holiday about romance, one of the many things moments people experience in high school is taking out their crush to a dance (of course many people take friends and make just as fun if not longer lasting memories), influencers share their lives on the daily, most fans are teens going through puberty so yknow what that means, and hollywood.

the main reason being of course hollywood.

with all of these reasons combined hollywood sees this and basically goes "oh look at all of these opportunities for romance and most importantly drama!!" and then they take it, make a romantic bond, get you attached and then proceed to put you through hell with it getting you addicted to it. but why a romantic bond? why not platonic? because its simple, when tv and stuff started pushing out they wanted to get people heavily attached and they didnt think or care about platonic bonds because why have platonic bonds when you can instantly take it to the much "juicier" step? aka romantic bonds?

now im gonna lump in all of our previous reasons together. its no big surprise that our lives TYPICALLY (most likely not for people on the ace spectrum) are heavily centered around romance and sex and so in order to relate to the MAJORITY (from what large companies can tell) of people they tend to make that platonic bond romantic to get people swooning over it and thinking 'oh thats what i want in a partner'

so we tend to perceive these actions as romantic when in reality... theyre typically not, not unless youre kissing or actively having sex these actions arent all that romantic. even holding hands isnt really that romantic. ive had several friends who desire no romantic relationship with each other hold hands and jokingly press their faces close together as if they were being 'romantic' with each other. ive in fact shared a bed with my friend a few times and found that yeah... theyre just my friend. these actions are not romantic. so why do we think that they are?

hollywood, from our past memories and "experiences" (experiences in quotations because lets be honest... its just movie watching) we see these actions as romantic because theyve been dont with romantic undertones. for example let me put the absolute stupidest thing thats been romanticized.

giving someone your jacket or umbrella when its raining. especially when its friend.

yes. hollywood was romanticized basic human decency towards someone that you care about. im 90% sure that anyone reasing this would gladly give their jacket to their friend if it was raining and they didnt want them to catch a cold, or if they had an extra layer to just simply give them. OR if they had an umbrella they would share.

because thats what you do for someone that you care for

but in hollywood this was romanticized by the enemies to lovers trope or the rivals to lovers or... whatever you want to call it- it was romanticized and soon enough they began doing it with everything. friends to lovers. (i dont know which trope made it romantic first so dont quote me on this the main point is that they made it romantic when the gesture itself is NOT)

point being, like it or not romance is something that was heavily implemented into your mind as a child and will always be there. and its why we cant perceive friends as 'just friends' anymore or whatever youd like to call it. the implication of past experiences with media will always be there and guess what? suck it up. its always going to be there and theres nothing you can do about it.

so yeah. thats why people cant perceive things as just friends and why strong platonic bonds quite literally cant really be written well anymore. unless of course they shove it down your throat with the constant 'oh youre my best friend!' but even then- oops it was romanticized by hollywood...

so thats my take on the whole situation. personally i think you should just let people ship whatever they want as long as its legal lol

[wandixx]

Prompt For Dc-x-Dp With M’gann and Danny M’gann didn't expect to be dealing with Random Lazurus Green Portals forming around mars, but since she's Nearby mars she gets to deal with it... and their's An Alien with snow white hair Fighting A Glowing Vampire who's raving about Fathers and mothers?? Danny Is in such a Mood, He's on mars, which is a plus, but He's Fighting Vlad On Another 'Join me! Let me remove Jack from this plain of Reality!' and Honestly The Portals are throwing him off, Just... Bad memories, And Then, becuase of fucking course Something else happened, Vlad Gets Decked in the face and sent flying. "hey, So im going to guess that The Vampire is The Evil one here?" The Green woman asked, while Looking at Danny. While Vlad is growling and about to Throw A Red Ecto-blast at M’gann Danny gets in the way with a shield and responds. "yeah, arch nemisis and all, how are you even out here? or breathing?" M’gann Just Shrugged and said, "Well Home is home and all." Before flying to go Deck the Vampire and all. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ hope this is enough for you to Work some magic and all. and as for some extra stuff you could use, maybe danny has a Space obsesion, and His Protective stuff is Becuase of the Type of spirit he is half of? And maybe An Ice core Could be fun to go with? Ghost prince territory? with danny not wanting to be ghost king just yet. ideas for ya to use.

It's such a cool concept! I didn’t fit Ghost Prince in, but I hope you'll like what I did

*****

Danny was going to strangle Vlad, all subtleties of ghost powers no withstanding. He needed the brutal power that just wasn't fully there even when using more offensive abilities, like ecto-blasts.

He had been having a good day. Okay, maybe not a good day, it's been a long time since he had an actually good one, but a decent day. One, that seemed to start out calm, with all of his typical rogues stuck in Zone recent enough they shouldn't get out today specifically. It was Saturday, so no school, and for once his homework wasn't swallowing him, so he had a bit of time to breathe. And prepare college applications, because his grades got to an appropriate level again and he actually got a shot in academic career. No chance for scholarship like Jazz, but he could go if he played his cards right.

And then, of course, Vlad had to come into his room to harass him again. This time with the added flair of a portal gun he made for some freaking reason.

This time Danny wasn't even trying to piss Vlad off, in the love of Ancients, he tried to ignore the other halfa even when he showed up in his room, raving about removing Jack Fenton from this plane of reality. Craving to deck the guy right then and there was enormous but Jazz was on him about controlling his ✨️displaced aggression✨️ and his anger in general, so he was trying to tune Vlad out. He carefully didn't even think about transforming into Phantom. Especially since both of his parents were safe, a few states away on some ghost hunting convention that Danny managed to skip by the power of ‘I can't take more days off school, sorry I messed up my attendance early in the year’.

Well, they would be, if Vlad, being the obsessed creep he was, didn't try to follow them with a portal gun.

Danny was still willing to ignore it all, because Vlad was a loser and chances that he made something so complicated work properly were only slightly above chances his parents had. And both of them were tripping hazards in hell.

But then Vlad started blasting around his room to egg him on and hit his Curiosity rover model.

Phantom tackled him before the bastard had time to smirk. They phased through the wall, because otherwise Vlad’s back would smash into Lego Saturn V and boy was not looking forward to even more damage. His white gloved hands pressed Plasmius against the cold floor. It looked promising. Over the years he got to a relatively similar level as Vlad with his fighting abilities so getting advantage so early could in theory mean it would be over soon and he would get back to his applications.

He forgot how to breathe for a moment when he was pushed through a portal. Some most instinctual part of him, deep in his core, fell to the mindless panic because He died this way! He died this way, was he able to survive it again?! Without thinking he lashed out, trying to scratch and bite and blast because he needed to get out, he needed to get away but danger was in front of him and he needed to get rid of the danger before he could escape to safety. And Vlad kept teasing him, like he didn't know fully well what portals did to Phantom, to Danny, like he wasn't breaking the most basic rules of the anarchist ghost society.

So Phantom kept trying to punch and kick and scream, trying to get away from green ovals that just kept appearing around them leading to who knows where.

Powerful blast to the chest sent him flying back, through the portal and down to the ground, which at some point became asphalt instead of wheat field. He was too frazzled to even try stopping his fall, just half heartedly tensed waiting for an impact.

It never came, because he was caught by static. Men in red (Flash he'd realize second too late, Flash) send him a concerned smile and asked about something but Plasmius was trying to duplicate, no doubt to overshadow actual hero and it wasn't the way Phantom wanted to be introduced to the Justice League so he jumped forward, sending both halfas through another portal.

It was easier this time, when he expected it but his hands were still shaking when he put them in fists. He could handle it though. He fought in much worse circumstances.

They spawned through a few more portals, almost threw worried looking Superman off the sky and barely not killed some of Aquaman's dolphins before something changed. Phantom didn't realize it at first, too focused on rapid fire from Plasmius and on the constant lookout for new portals, but something changed.

His next blast hit the target and left charcoal black burn and almost fire in its wake. It wasn't something that happened normally. It wasn't something that happened normally unless Danny's obsessions were being served. He wasn't protecting anyone but himself, which didn't fill the protection obsession, so that left…

Space.

Oh.

He was on Mars. Or well, a bit above.

It was mesmerizing. It was breathtaking. It was everything he wished for ever since he learned about other planets in kindergarten.

Sky was a pinkish red color that on Earth meant a beautiful clear sunset but here was just the middle of the day. He didn't see the sun itself, apparently lucky enough to have his back to it. It wouldn't be brighter than at home, obviously, but it was always nice to not be blinded when admiring the view.

The landscape below them seemed familiar. He probably saw it in some photo, but he couldn't remember which one. He couldn't help but try to remember. He wanted to know where was he, what he'd seen, what he'd touched, later when he was in his room, longing to get out here again.

In his almost trance he just about ignored the blast that flew past his ear like an annoying pest.

He had the name of this rock formation on the tip of his tongue! C'mon, brain, you could do it, you could remem-

Even he couldn't ignore the burning pain of the ecto blast straight to the shoulder.

“Listen to me, Little Badger!” Plasmius yelled before dodging ice javelin. Phantom made sure it evaporated before hitting the ground. He was not letting other planet become collateral damage in whatever mess Vlad wanted to stir this time.

He carefully didn't look around when they teleported next time, aware just enough to know they were still on Mars. It wasn't a good moment to sooth his neglected obsession.

Being mad that this was probably the only chance he got out there helped. It definitely reignited the absolute fury, before muted by the panic and then obsession trance.

Phantom wasn't sure what he was yelling back as Plasmius went on and on about killing Danny's dad and marrying his mom and adopting Danny and how ‘look Little Badger, you and I both see how much better off you'd be if you just joined me and let me teach you’. He just knew there was little other than obscenities, and it was paired with an array of blasts and ice and straight up punches when he got close, which was good enough.

Oh, how he wished he could strangle the pathetic vampire lookalike bastard.

Something green and indigo sent Plasmius crashing into the ground.

“Hey, so I'm going to guess that the vampire is The Evil one here?” Feminine voice asked in clear English. Danny took a moment to just stare, blinking rapidly to make sure he saw what he thought he saw.

Yup, that was certainly The Miss Martian, an alien heroine, whose action figure he displayed at the most honorable place of his room. The Miss Martian he tried to learn everything about when she debuted. The Miss Martian whose powers were so similar he used footage from her fights to learn himself. His biggest inspiration.

Dope.

Wait, she asked him a question, didn't she? It was not the time to be a fanboy, probably.

Yeah, no it was definitely not a time to be a fanboy, he decided, right when he threw a shield in front of her, because Vlad didn't take kindly to being interrupted. It really was the least he deserved.

“Yeah, arch nemesis and all that. If I may ask, what are you doing here, Miss Martian, ma'am? I thought you lived full time on Earth?”

“Well, home is home and all” she just said wistfully and telepathically threw a rock to Vlad's stomach, making it follow until it hit the mark, right before another stone hit him in the unprotected back.

And here Danny thought he got over his celebrity crush back when he was sixteen.

Good thing though, another person in the fight made his protection obsession rear back to life, the fact that she was an alien only helping as his space side zeroed on her too. It was useful to not get distracted by glimpses of the world around them.

Of course Vlad just duplicated to make the chances ‘equal’ once again, so the fight dragged on.

Miss Martian just kept being graceful like a supernova, beautiful and destructive.

Danny hoped he didn’t look as embarrassingly pathetic as he thought he did. What were the chances she didn’t see when he took the blast to the arm because he got distracted by pretty rocks?

Plasmius kept taunting, calling him Daniel because of course secret identities or prefered names don't matter when you have to harass the teenager.

Phantom decked him extra hard for that.

At least he didn’t try to use his portal gun again, too busy with fighting off both of them.

Kick, dodge blast, ice, shield for Miss Martian, ice because how dare he attack an alien, dodge, intangibility.

Was it or was it not a good idea to use Ghost Wail and be done with that.

“I've got an idea, cover for me for a minute, okay?”

“Sure” Did he sound too eager? He wanted to keep it cool at least outwardly, not mess up his first and perhaps last impression.

Wait, shit, Martians can read minds! Miss Martian probably already knows how big of a mess he was.

Shit, shit, shit.

Phantom dutifully shielded heroine as she levitated with her eyes closed, at the same time keeping constant assault on Vlad. It was getting exhausting. At least he could go home fast when the fight ended.

“Do you want me to make him indefinitely indisposed or is it too much for you?” Miss Martian suddenly asked. Danny froze for almost a minute before he choked out.

“What do you mean?”

“I can rip his mind apart, leave his body alive but useless without any thought to lead it, but I know some people find it uncomfortable even when it happens to villains”

For a moment, in the midst of fanboying, he forgot how terrifying set of powers she had.

“Please don't” After all, ghosts are their minds, and despite how despicable things Vlad did, no one deserved fate of completely not existing.

“Alright. Is enhancing his experience of pain okay with your moral code?”

“Yeah, I think”

“Done,” she said with a smile, and despite how terrifying he was of her just a few seconds ago, he had to admit, this smile was gorgeous.

After that, it took, like, three punches before Vlad bailed. Which was good.

What was less good, was the fact that the portal he used to escape closed before Danny could go through it. He just stared for a long moment, blinking quickly. He wanted to scream. Or cry. Or both. Both was good.

“So, Daniel…?”

Danny winced and looked back at Miss Martian.

“Danny. Or Phantom. Nobody calls me Daniel”

She nodded with a friendly smile. Good thing they were flying, because his knees got weak for a hot second.

“Alright. I'm M’gann”

“Should you tell me this?”

“I know your name,” she shrugged. “It's only fair that you know mine. It's not a name I use on Earth anyway”

“Um, sure, okay. It's nice to meet you M’gann” Was this too stiff? He had no idea how he was supposed to interact with heroes who just shared their identity. For no reason too, because c'mon, she didn't know him. Why would she do it?!

“Are you from Earth? You speak English”

“Yeah, USA, Illinois. That bastard teleported us around and of course left me stranded”

“It's your lucky day then, I was about to head back, I can take you with me”

There was no universe in which he wouldn’t agree.

[torialefay]

You Know Whose You Are 👀

hyunjin x gn!reader smut

✨ friends to lovers trope 🔞

✨ request: "Hi!! For your smut prompts can I pls request Hyunjin & 24 (Hyunjin being the jealous one)? Maybe enemies to lovers or friends to lovers scenario? And for the actual p-in-v part can he fck reader holding her up against the wall (like her back against the wall and legs around his waist position)? Sorry if this is a lot, I’m on my period and I’m having many specific thoughts lmao. Thank you!! 🥰🤍" -anon

✨ word count: ~3.5k

✨ warnings: porn with a plot; minors dni!

• you and hyunjin had become close friends quite a while ago.

• he quickly became one of your closest friends after you'd met him in a bookstore after first arriving to korea.

• while keeping your eyes fixated on the rows of books next to you, you accidentally ran straight into his chest.

• after quickly apologizing to him, you both struck up a conversation about your favorite books & authors. you had no clue who he was, and he liked that about you.

• a real friend.

• since that day, you'd messaged back and forth a lot, hung out almost on a routine basis, and made lots of fun memories.

• after a while, you eventually found out he was an idol (it was bound to happen with his weird "work schedule" he always had), but it didn't matter. he was the same hyunjinnie that you'd built a solid friendship with over the past few weeks.

• but that was the problem- you didn't want it to be just a friendship.

• and who could blame you? hyunjin was the most amazing, kind, intelligent person you'd ever met. you had more in common with him than even your very best friend. it was only natural to develop those feelings for him.

• but you knew the feelings weren't reciprocated.

• he'd never made so much as a subtle hint that he was interested in you as more than a friend... and let's be honest, he was basically the most wanted guy in all of korea. how could you compete with all these other beautiful people?

• so you didn't even let your mind wander to that extreme. you accepted the fact that he'd be nothing more than a friend to you, no matter how much you knew it could have worked out.

• "my best friend", you'd learned to teasingly call him. and soon, even you started to believe it. only that.

• one day, you'd gone over to hyunjin's apartment. he mentioned that he wanted to repaint the walls in the living room, so you offered up some of your free time to help him out.

• it wasn't super often that you came to his apartment. only a couple of times. you'd usually only gone out to do things together like go to a new art gallery or to grab coffee and talk about life. cutesy little things.

• you weren't the most familiar with his apartment, but that didn't matter much as you quickly settled in. you placed your phone in the kitchen to blare music, then headed to the living room to help coat the walls with a fresh set of paint.

• it did take a bit longer than you thought, but you didn't mind. when you and hyunjin were together, you always had fun, taking little jabs at each other and laughing to funny stories you had. the time always seemed to melt away.

• after a couple of hours, your playlist turned off. you guessed it had run out of songs.

• "jinnie, could you get a new playlist going on my phone?" you held your hands up, covered in paint. "i think it'd take me a while to do it."

• he laughed, realizing how messy you were compared to him.

• he didn't need to say anything, just got up and walked over to the kitchen, which was only a few steps away.

• as he went to tap the screen, a notification popped up... from one of hyunjin's life-long friends.

• the two of you had met a week or so ago when hyunjin invited him to go to a poetry reading with the two of you. his friend, ha-joon, wasn't necessarily as into the activity as the two of you were, but hyunjin felt bad canceling his original plans with him when he'd found out the event was happening and really wanted to go.

• and now... he was texting you?

• he read the message as it splayed across the screen:

Ha-Joon: Excited to see you tomorrow :) What are you doing?

• it's not that you were very enamored by ha-joon when you first met, but he seemed like a nice enough guy. plus he was friends with jinnie, so you figured he couldn't be too bad. when he messaged to ask if you'd be interested in going out with him, you thought you'd give it a shot. it's not like you had any other romantic prospects.

• "what's your password? i'll flip to a different playlist," hyunjin raised his voice, trying to act non-chalant. he silently thanked the fact that he was just out of sight.

• "2-7-4-4-1-2" you said back to him.

• he quickly scrolled through the playlists and chose one, letting the music blast through the speaker once again.

• "i'm gonna get a drink, do you want one?" hyunjin lied, going to open up the messages on your phone.

• "yeah, i'll take a water if that's okay?"

• "sure, i'll get it in just a sec." he started to sound nervous as he clicked to ha-joon's name on your phone. dang, texts going back to the beginning of the week. he quickly scrolled through to find quite a few message exchanged between the two of you. he scrolled back to the conversation that started last night.

Ha-joon: This might be a little bold, but I'd really like to get to know you more. Not just through texting. Would you want to grab a coffee sometime? Just you and me?

Sure! That'd be really fun :)

Ha-joon: Are you free sometime tomorrow?

I'm not really sure yet. I'm going to help Hyunjin paint. How about we just plan for the next day?

Ha-joon: Sounds good to me!

Ha-joon: Hyunjin will be okay with this, right? With us meeting up?

I don't see why not. He'd probably be happy about introducing us!

Ha-joon: Okay, I just didn't know if I should let him know or not is all.

Ahh that's okay. I don't think we need to rope him into any of this unless things go well between us ☺️

Good plan. I'm excited to see you!

Same here :) Text me tomorrow and let me know where you want to meet up.

Will do! Sleep well 😊

• hyunjin felt his heart break. he knew he had no right to. but he couldn't help it.

• of course he harbored feelings for you. how could he not fall for the one girl he ever felt like truly "got" him?

• but he hadn't wanted to tell you. not yet. he didn't want you to think that was the only reason he kept hanging out with you. he genuinely LOVED being around you. he was himself when he was with you. and he was so scared he'd lose that if he told you.

• but he hadn't said anything. so he couldn't be upset.

• he mentally kicked himself for introducing you to ha-joon.

• he thought on it for a bit as he reached into the fridge to grab a bottle of water for you. he quickly exited out of the app as he rested your phone back on the table to play the music.

• the upbeat tunes coming out completely mismatched what he was feeling in the moment.

• he stood for a moment, then walked back to the living room, where he saw you sitting cutely on the floor, knees bent criss-crossed as you painted the bottom of the wall carefully.

• suddenly, he started to think about how lucky he felt with this sight in front of him. and how he didn't want another man to be able to see you like this: hair tied up, sitting contently on the floor, completely covered in paint, looking so happy just to be there while bopping your head to the beat without a worry in the world.

• he wanted that. he wanted you. and suddenly, he saw red.

• he leaned against the door frame, now subconsciously squeezing the bottle of water in his hand.

• "y/n, can you come over here for a minute?" he said, voice now full of authority. his face looked annoyed, as he looked off, not able to focus his eyes on you.

• you looked at him confused for a moment, then carefully stood up, walking over to him wondering what was wrong all of a sudden.

• "what is it?" you asked, looking up at him innocently. you could tell something had him deeply bothered.

• his jaw clicked for a moment before he finally looked at you.

• "why didn't you tell me you were going out with my best friend?"

• the question caught you off guard.

• "were you going through my phone?" you asked. you didn't mean to sound accusatory, but that's how it came out.

• "i didn't mean to, but there it was." he looked down at you, not backing down.

• "i mean, yeah, he invited me to get coffee... is it a big deal? i thought you'd be happy if maybe we started seeing each other."

• "well, i'm not."

• "look jinnie, i'm sorry. maybe i should have told you, but i didn't think you'd care. surely he's a good person if he's your friend. and i'd like to think i'm a good person, so it just-" suddenly, he cut you off.

• "it's not about being a good person, y/n!" he began to raise his voice. "what about me?!"

• "what about you?" you asked, voice full of confusion.

• "i like you, goddamn it! give me a chance, not him!" he was full on yelling now, pressing himself up against you. suddenly, you felt small, but so fucking smitten at the same time. hyunjin actually liked you? this whole time?

• your head started spinning. it was just... it was a lot. you began to slowly move back from him a bit.

• "jinnie... i don't... i don't know what to say."

• he followed your path, pushing his body forward toward yours. you were about to be trapped in against the freshly painted wall behind you. you had no where else to go without ruining the wall.

• "say you'll let me take you out. not him." his eyes were trying to tell you something, but you couldn't quite pinpoint what. you'd never seen him like this.

• "i can't just do that to him... i mean he's your friend and i don't want to make things weird and i didn't know you even thought about me-" you were just rambling at this point before hyunjin cut you off.

• "i don't give a fuck if he's my friend. i wanted you first." he pushed his body right against yours, your front feeling him completely. he aligned his face perfectly in front of yours.

• "for how long?" you asked meekly.

• "since i first saw you." he let his eyes wander down to look at your lips before coming back up to focus on your eyes.

• being so close to you, he lightly closed his eyes, letting his lips linger next to you. "give me a chance first. if you don't like it, you can go to him... but i want you more than he does. i promise you that."

• goose bumps popped up along your skin. you couldn't believe he was actually into you. it was actually such a shock, you almost didn't even let your mind think on it. you'd wanted it so bad and suppressed it for so long. you didn't even know what to think. so you remained quiet, just pondering on what you could say.

• "let me show you," he whispered into your ear, getting too impatient to wait for your response. "let me show you how good i could be to you."

• again, you couldn't muster up words. you were so shell-shocked, you didn't even know where to start.

• he leaned into your ear, his breath hot over top of you.

• seductively, he whispered into you, "just tell me to stop," before planting a slow kiss to the side of your neck, at the sensitive spot right below your ear.

• you let out a slight moan at the unexpected sensation. you felt the hairs on your body start to stand up.

• hyunjin smiled and moved his small kisses along your jaw and cheek, then planting straught onto your lips.

• he wasted no time in deepening the kiss, running his hands through your hair until he was holding the back of your head in one hand and squeezing your jaw with the other. he wanted full control of you.

• he moaned as you slipped your tongue into his mouth, giving him access to enter inside your mouth too.

• as you smiled into him, he walked you back until you were pressed up against the wet wall. to hell with it.

• you continued grappling at each other, shoving tongues down throats like horny teenagers. you couldn't help it. this was all you'r ever wanted.

• until you started feeling hyunjin slightly buck his hips into yours. you felt his bulge grind the tiniest bit against you, turning you on with the gentlest touch.

• he let out a small chuckle as you moaned at the sensation.

• he kept sucking on your tongue, harder and harder as he more fervently grinded himself into you. you could feel him getting rock hard against you. and fuck did it feel so good. you couldn't help but pant, and run your hands along his body, desperate to grapple onto whatever you could.

• you pulled on his collar, pushed your hand up his shirt to run along his abdomen, tugged on his waist band- anything and everything you could cling to in order to feel closer to him.

• and he reciprocated fully. he moved his hand around your jaw to secure your face down against the wall, pinning you back hard. his mouth never disconnected from yours as he used his other hand to run along your body. down your neck, around your boobs, down your stomach, down to wear he ground against you, hoping to make brief contact with you before taking his hand around your waist to grab your ass.

• you moaned loudly as he shoved his tongue deep into your mouth and grabbed a handful of your ass with a harsh squeeze. the slight pain felt too fucking good to not yell out about.

• your noises only agged him on more.

• he pulled his mouth off of yours for a split moment.

• "let me take these off?" he asked hungrily, pulling at the top of your leggings.

• you didn't have to respond, you quickly yanked the fabric down, along with your underwear and ripped them from your feet and to the side.

• he smiled down at the sight, loving how willing you were to give into him.

• he connected his mouth back to yours as he followed suit and hastily unbuttoned and slid down his pants and boxers.

• when he was done, he grunted as he felt himself now unclothed, finally getting some friction against you.

• you couldn't contain yourself as you heard him grunt for you. you quickly pulled your hand up to your mouth, spitting into it quickly before bringing it back down to stroke hyunjin's cock.

• "ah fuck," he let out, letting himself grow harder and harder. this was the hardest he'd ever been.

• a wave of aggression came over him as he started to feel territorial. he brought a hand around your neck to give it a tight squeeze.

• "faster," he instructed. he reached his hand down to toy with you too, slowly working up pace.

• you felt yourself becoming more deprived of oxygen as you pumped your hand along him, going down to his tip. when he wasn't satisfied, he rested his forehead on yours and began thrusting his cock into your hand, throwing out grunts as he went. he kept working at your hole until you were lightheaded and writhing underneath him.

• he smiled and let out a little laugh as he released the pressure from your neck to let you gasp for air. you felt light-headed and needed to come back down. but hyunjin didn't let up.

• "let me fuck you." it was more of a demand than a question, but you didn't fight it. you slowly nodded from underneath him.

• he swiftly rand both hands down to your waist and then around your ass until they were resting behind your thighs.

• "jump," he instructed.

• you weren't sure about this. you'd never done it before. you were scared you'd fall and ruin the moment, but you decided to just put your trust into it. pushing your back against the wall, you threw your legs up as he guided them and secured them in place around his hips. he made sure to support the rest of you by keeping your back pressed tight to the wall.

• he used one hand to guide his dick to your entrance before steadily thrusting himself inside. it took your breath away at the sudden stretch and feeling of him inside of you. he didn't give you very much time to settle into it though as he started to fuck into you. hard and steady.

• his hand came back up to support under your thighs, securing you on top of him and pushing you back so your head was almost slamming into the wall as he pounded into you.

• you felt so good around him. so tight. squeezing onto him for dear life.

• he hungrily brought his mouth to your next as he sent fast, angry strokes into your. he guided his tongue around, planting sloppy kisses and fast, violent bites that made you scream out. he fucking loved it. he wanted to hear you scream. make you forget about any other man.

• "that's right baby, scream for me. you know whose you are," he growled. he was fucking you so hard you thought you'd pass out from the overstimulation of it all.

• you kept moaning for him, not knowing how to do anything else.

• before too long, you felt yourself start to pant harder, feeling hyunjin hit just the right spot. you started to grow warm inside, getting your breath taken away with each pounding.

• "jinnie," you breathed out, finally opening your eyes to see him with his eyes hyper focused on you, like he was ready to attack at any moment.

• you could only breathe heavily before repeating his name again. "jinnie, i'm gonna cum." you felt yourself reach a breaking point. it was coming. now.

• "that's fucking right. you're gonna cum for me right now... it's just me from now on. only me." he growled, fucking himself into you faster. "cum on me right fucking now!" he ordered, ramming into just the right spot to send you over the edge.

• you gasped as you threw your head back, beginning to spasm around his cock.

• "ahhh fuckkkkk, just like that," hyunjin mimicked you, throwing his head back now too. "fuck, fuck, fuck," he breathed out, slamming into you faster than ever.

• "ughhhhhhhhh," he yelled as you felt him release inside of you. you could feel yourself still shaking around him, not being given any sort of break.

• as he finished out his high, you wiped at the few tears that had built up in your eyes from the overstimulation.

• once hyunjin was done, he slowly lowered your legs off of his hips and set them back down on the floor, keeping his cock resting inside of you as he put you down.

• with you both now panting and trying to settle down, he just brought both hands up to cradle the sides of your face. he pushed himself a bit deeper inside of you, just enjoying the feeling of resting within you.

• he smiled down as he planted a soft kiss to your forehead.

• you smiled back up at him, placing your hands on his chest over his heart.

• "i think this is how we're meant to be," hyunjin said in a low voice.

• "i think so too," you grinned.

• he kept planting tiny kisses onto the same spot of your forehead. "tell me you aren't still going with him tomorrow."

• "of course not. i know whose i am." you gave him a quick wink.

-------------------------------------

✨ if you enjoyed, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging <3

✨ head over to my masterlist for more!

[draconicred]

Experiences in the Alterhuman Community (and Beyond) as a Fictive

It's a weird experience being a fictional character, especially dealing with fandom, the fact that your source is fictional, and interactions with people based on that--including some of the dehumanisation that's so common toward fictionfolk. I'm gonna go into that here because I need somwhere to collect my thoughts, so this might get long. I'll be talking about my experiences as a fictive, but this could very well apply to anyone who identifies as a fictional being--fictionkin, fictionlinkers, etc.

So, I see the version of me on the screen as an AU version of me, in short. I mean, I'm me, and I don't think I even looked exactly 1:1 with my canon self--so naturally, even though events line up pretty closely, I see my source as... Almost like a fanfic of my life? Like sure, that's decidedly me, and decidedly a lot of the things that happened to me and my friends, but also not me. I'm not that guy on the screen, he's what represents me.

Even though I fully believe I got here by dying in a literal past life, my source media here is absolutely fictional to me and I just... Don't look at it in really any other way. Which I guess makes sense if you put it into my perspective--what else would it be? It really is like reading a fanfic based on your life though, or reading an article about yourself in the news. A bit of a shock, a bit of "why did they include THAT?" sprinkled in here and there, a bit awkward sometimes, and it does tend to resurface bad feelings. But overall, it's not that personal to me. I'm largely fine with it existing.

On the other hand, what is shocking is that people see me as fictional. I'm a fictional introject, from a fictional source, from the perspectives of a lot of people here. But I look at my source and I go well... Yeah, that's fiction of course, but my life is an actual thing that happened to me. Realistically I know that not everyone has spiritual beliefs and not everyone even accepts fictional identities as something "real", but man is it weird to just... Have it be spun in such a way?

I'm used to being in the media, I'm used to having cameras on me and being in the public eye. I'm used to articles and stories and posts on the internet. I'm used to fans even! But this isn't your regular, run-of-the-mill experience of people wanting to know you because you're a hero. This is people who see your life and experiences as a fun story they saw in a book or on TV, coming up to you with the idea that you're their favourite character, and not... A whole entire person. It's so damn weird.

There's still that level of disrespect that comes from people who are a little parasocial with you, but it almost hits deeper here because a lot of the time, you know they're not seeing a hero or the things you've literally done in your memories. They're seeing that guy on the screen they think is cool, and while he represents you, he's not you. And they're treating you like a celebrity because of that weird fanfic version of you on the TV or in that book.

There's usually little acknowledgement of your life or experiences as "real". When you're presenting as your fictional identity around others, you tend to get put into one of a few camps:

Cool Character from Media who I love and adore and want to talk to (and will probably get fanperson excited about it). I will probably get dispraportionally upset if Character tells me to back off a bit because I don't want my blorbo to be mad at me.

Character from Media I'm in love with and will immediately start asking invasive questions to or outright flirting with. Could get real gross real quick.

Problematic Character or Guy From Problematic Media that I instantly dislike because that's so Problematic how dare you show your face. I'm reporting you for being Character, you should change your identity if you want to exist so bad.

Character from Media who is disabled/queer/mentally ill/has any soft personality trait ever and I will now be treating you like a sweet little babyboy cinnamon roll who could not hurt a fly.

Person who identifies as Character? How interesting! I'm going to really pry and question everything from your actions in-source (to get unique perspectives from Character) and question literally everything else. Because this is Science and I'll get mad if you don't tell me everything, you need to tell me everything or you're rude.

Of course there's nuance and there's absolutely times where you'll be treated as a normal person, but the above are... So damn common. I've been here for a few months and I've already had some weird stuff happen to me simply because I'm Kirishima and people feel entitled to give me cutesy nicknames or whatever. Even without knowing me or my system at all beforehand. It's just.. So different from anything I've experienced before? Being treated like a celebrity is dehumanising enough, but being treated like a character.ai bot or just generally a form of free entertainment and not a person is so perplexing to me.

There's also that if you're from a popular source, you see stuff about yourself everywhere. Posters, plushies, advertisements, posts on social media--all of it. Some of that I'm used to already, but it's kind of weird when you're mentally aware that this is all for that twisted-mirror version of yourself and not you. And if you get a little uncomfortable at some fanart showing up out of the blue, or someone making a source related joke... You're kind of just expected to brush it off. Which yeah, I get it! It's about the source, not me, but it's still just... A weird feeling. A feeling of not being allowed to be upset because it's about the source and not literal you.

I think there needs to be a line, maybe. Not saying that fictives should be putting a stop to any media or fandom ever, just.. That maybe respect toward us for being uncomfortable with fan content due to being a fictive or fictionkin should be more normalised. It should be more okay to say "hey, I'm Character, please don't joke like that" to a friend, or "don't send me fanart of this thing, I'm Character and that's weird"--which it normally is! But there does tend to be a sort of layer of "Oh, it's because you're Character. You know that's not you, right? You shouldn't be upset, you need to source separate more."--when if most other people were to set a boundary like that, it would usually be respected. Source separation can be great, but if someone hasn't separated or doesn't want to, why is it okay to still send them material they're uncomfortable with--or at least, why do people tend to argue that the fictive should "just separate from source" instead? It... Just boils down to alterhumisia toward fictionfolk, honestly. It sucks.

There's a lot of problems with basic respect toward fictionfolk of all kinds--hell, even in the alterhuman community where it's meant to be safe. I don't know if this rant is entirely coherent or not, I don't know if there's anything noteworthy to take from it--but if you do take something from it, let it be that fictionfolk want to be treated like people. Source separated, not source separated, canon divergent or compliant, hearted, linker, 'kin or 'tive--we're people. Don't let our identities change the way you instinctually treat us. Let us be openly us, and treat us as you would anyone else.

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

the babbit masterpost

HELLO welcome to the Babbit's Blog masterpost!!! On this post you'll find some fun facts about yours allegedly (me <33), some ref's for my different 'sona's, and a couple links to my fics and whatnot! Are you ready? No?? Excellent neither am i let's do this

Meet the Babbits!: the self-inserts/personas

the first ref is for my general/most commonly used persona, Babbit! They aren't really an anthro/furry as much as they are a humanoid with the head of a rabbit. I like to think of this one as the 'me' that's in my head- the purest form of my thoughts and feelings, but not the solid real-life me. The second ref is my self-insert persona, Rabbit, the one i picture using most often when i'm reading a fic or imagining a self-insert scenario lol. This one is like the me that people see and meet and speak to in real actual life, if that makes sense. It's the way I come across to people and all of the things I wish I could iron out of my crumpled up real-self <3 The third is a much more specific 'sona, Hazel, who started off as a FNaF:SB animatronic self-insert. She does have a backstory and lore now, which i think makes her more of an OC than a self-insert, but a lot of her is still me and a lot of what she experiences in her backstory is from my life/instills the same feelings that were taken away from things that happened to me, so I think she kinda counts enough to put a ref for her here sdkjfsdhfj (Why the different names?: makes things a little easier, and they hold meaning to me symbolically, I guess!)

Content!: Here's a short list of my various fics that will get updated as I create more! (it was, in reality, not fine.): FNaF Sun/Moon x Reader fanfic, gender neutral, for general audiences, fluff-fest, idiots to lovers "You're the new tech/repairman at the Fazbear Mega Pizzaplex, unfortunately. Your first task? To make the Daycare Attendant into two separate animatronics. It's an amazing opportunity, really, and there is nothing you love more than getting a chance to really work with such tech! The only bad part is that you don't know how to tell anyone that you just might be in over your head. (You are extremely in over your head.)" After Everything Was Fixed (but you were still broken): AU FNaF Sun/Moon x (Animatronic) Reader, gender neutral, read with caution, angst, harm to sentient robots, traumatized main character, hurt/comfort slow burn, romance slow burn "The virus was gone. Everyone was fixed. You had been put back together. It's a time for a new beginning, to do things right this time, to wash away the past and paint a better future. Their memories of the infection had- mercifully- been taken away from them. Yours had not. He doesn't understand why you try to avoid him. Even if you could tell him, you're not sure you would. You want to be his friend, but it's difficult; every time you see him, you remember the hundreds of times he killed you." A fic where you are a repairman-themed STAFFbot, taking place post-virus. In the past, Moon, infected by the virus, took delight in attacking and dismantling the reader during the night. Now, in the present, you find yourself burdened by the memories of the past while everyone around you has no recollection of the events. It gets more complicated as Sun and Moon, both now cleared of the virus, grow curious of you. This fic will follow a series of arcs, presently on arc one. For anyone curious, feel free to send an ask about the arcs in 'After Everything Was Fixed'! The Sun, the Moon, and the Blazing Comet (title subject to change): AU FNaF Sun/Moon/Eclipse x Reader, gender neutral, teen and up audiences, travel/journey, betrayal, hurt/comfort slowburn, reconciling, themes of breaking the mold, found family (TBA) Hold My Broken Hands (title subject to change): AU FNaF Sun/Moon x Reader, gender neutral, mature audiences, dark romance, dark comedy, severe bodily harm, mutilation, murder, obsessive behavior, possessive behavior, lovesick (TBA)

My AU's!: i'm going to make a Babbit-AUs-Masterpost and then put the link here i swear, i just have so many im sorry jdfhsjdfhs (like more than twenty)

Fandoms!: I enjoy, have been in, made or make content for: Pokemon Undertale FNaF Creepypasta (YEAH I KNOW LET ME LIVE OKAY) My Little Pony (I KNOW OKAY LEAVE ME ALONE) Steven Universe Star Trek Warrior Cats i'm sure theres more but i just forgot everything i have ever liked wheeeeeze

Whomst the hell?: HI I'm Rabbit! Or Bones! Or Babbit! Or Avarice/Ava, if you want to go for a more legitimate-sounding name. I'm 24 years old, prefer to use they/them pronouns, and so, so incredibly ace. I've been drawing as long as I've had the ability to hold a pen, writing since I was in grade school, and being a plague to the ones around me since the beginning of time! If you've seen my art, its probably from the absolute mountain of fluffy-wuffy love-dovey (y/n) x Sundrop/Moondrop/Eclipse doodles I've been sharing for several years now sdfjhsdj. If you've heard of my fics, it was probably the one I made just for fun that's now turned into an actual fanfiction that I enjoy writing, the silly-lovey-fluff incarnate (it was, in reality, not fine.) !

Likes n Dislikes!: I'm a sucker for sap, fluff, and lots and lots of love-dovey bullshit! I also like stories about finding oneself and monsters being befriended or loved. I like space, aliens, robots, the odd and strange, injecting humanity into things not human, monsters, creatures, animals, the fae, concepts of spirits and karma and the afterlife, and more! I dislike 'fanservice', most anime tbh LOL it's not personal I just don't enjoy it im srry, FLY BABIES i know they have an actual name but i hate that word too pls just dont i will scream, sexually aggressive/forceful content/characters, being made to feel small, dumb, or trapped,

Other!: I have a pretty high gross-out tolerance! I also have a pretty high 'wow that's messed up huh' tolerance, in that sometimes I will just say stuff that's super grim or dark or messed up and not realize it lmao. I am full of random facts and anecdotes, especially weird or gross ones! sometimes i get on tangents that can go for actual hours so pls forgive that lol

WARNINGS: THIS BLOG MAY FEATURE CONTENT BASED ON/RELATED TO THEMES OF GUILT, CHILDHOOD LOSS, GRIEF, SELF HATRED, DISCONNECTION FROM REALITY/SELF, TRAUMA, AND SEVERE DEPRESSION/ANXIETY. YES I AM GETTING HELP. YES I AM OKAY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND UNDERSTANDING.

bonus persona: crybaby

[thewayhouse]

'A Slight Miscommunication'

Castiel x Reader

-> Gender neutral reader -> Slightly susggestive - kissing -> Miscommunication trope -> 1.5K words -> Author's note at the end

'A Slight Miscommunication'

The rain pitter-pattered on the motel roof, thunder raging in the distance. You watched the raindrops on the window race each other to the bottom, silently rooting for one. It won. Smiling at your small achievement, you took a sip from your glass, whiskey burning your throat in a mild sensation. 

You, Sam, Dean, and Castiel had been on this hunt for two weeks now and it was beginning to weigh on you all. It was some vampire sightings that Dean was positive were real, we didn’t believe him but begrudgingly went along with it due to lack of any other cases. Now Dean was starting to question whether they were real or not. He wasn’t singing along to the songs on the radio anymore, and Sam was barely touching any of his books. Cas was mostly the same, but there was no one to balance out his usual monotone behaviour, so things were starting to get drab. Even you, one who wasn’t one to give up on a case so easily, was starting to rethink that self-proclaimed title. 

“Hello”, a monotone voice from behind you spoke, making you jump in your seat and whip your head around. “Cas, you’ve gotta make more noise man,” I took a deep breath, calming down my heart from the sudden high, “you’re gonna give someone a heart attack sneaking up like that.” “My apologies, I didn’t mean to startle you”, he walked around and sat down on the chair opposite you, “I just wanted to talk about something that happened earlier.” “Oh?” “At the diner, with the waitress.” He said, trying to jog your memory, and it worked. Earlier, the group had gone to a local diner to get some lunch, a little break from our searching. You and Cas walked in and sat down at a booth first; Dean couldn’t find a parking spot in the carpark of the diner, and Sam wanted to make sure he got one with shade covering Baby. So the brothers drove off bickering after dropping off you and Cas. When the waitress came round to get your orders, she had said something along the lines of “So, what can I get you two love birds today?” To which Cas had said nothing, and told her that you were waiting on others. “Oooh, double dates are always fun. I’ll come back later” she’d responded. Before she left however, you corrected her “we’re just friends actually. And we’re waiting on two other friends, who are brothers, so…” She apologised and went to go serve another table. When you had looked back at Cas, he seemed off, but you couldn’t press further, Sam and Dean had arrived. “Oh, yeah, that.” you took another sip of whiskey, the ice clinking together, before you continued. “Yeah, what was that about Cas? You looked off, but I didn’t want to pry-” “No. I want to talk about you. Why did you say that to the waitress?” He looked genuinely confused, even a bit hurt. “What do you mean? I corrected her because we aren’t dating.” You looked equally as confused as him, both staring at each other. “What made you think that?” he scooched forward on his chair, the old frame creaking slightly beneath him, “of course we’re dating. We have been for months now.” “What?” “Did- did you not know?” You both sat there, staring at each other for what felt like hours, both as baffled as the other. The deafening silence finally broke at Cas’ words. “I courted you, you accepted, we’re dating. Is that not how that works with humans?” “No- no that’s how it works, I guess. But when did you court me?” you began stuttering over your words out of both bewilderment, but also out of embarrassment. Maybe flustered is the better word. Either way, you were beginning to feel a heat spread across your cheeks, one that said everything you were thinking, and had been for months now. Yes, you had had a crush on Castiel for a while now, almost a year now, longer even. Through that time, you had assumed that angels did not have those kinds of feelings. Even if they did, you didn’t think Cas was one of them; until now of course. “I have cooked you your favourite food on multiple occasions, I asked you to dance with me and you accepted, and I have defended your safety countless times - of course I would protect anyone, but it felt different with you” Castiel answered. Those things didn’t really sound like romantic things to you, in fact they’re pretty standard platonic actions, which made you press further. “Okay… but you said I accepted?” “Do you remember when I first showed you my wings?” You did remember.

He had asked if you wanted to see them, to which you had excitedly responded. Neither Sam nor Dean had seen Cas’ wings, one of the few aspects of his true form that humans were able to see in moderation without dire consequences; so naturally, you felt honoured and a little aloof with the fact that Cas let you see them and no one else. He had ushered you into the bathroom at the motel you were all staying at and locked the door so no one would walk in on the display. You remembered that he had seemed nervous to show you, but you’d assumed it was nerves relating to your safety, hoping it wouldn’t be too much for you. When he did show you, after the initial shock, he’d asked if you would clean them for him. Actually, the word he used was ‘preen’, but it was basically the same thing, right? “Yeah, I remember. You had me clean them because it was too difficult to do it yourself.” “Exactly, you preened my wings,” Castiel took a breath, shaking his head, baffled that he had to explain this to me. “Did you not know that that is a common courting method for those with wings?” He continued, “you accepting and preening my wings for me was you reciprocating the courtship.” Shuffling in his seat, he finished with “I thought it did anyway.” You sat there for a moment, taking this all in, face flushed, gripping your whiskey. “I…” unsure what to say, or how to look at Cas in the eye after hearing how oblivious you’d been, you stood up. Placing your now empty glass on the windowsill beside you, you anxiously tidied your crinkled shirt and cleared your throat. One, two, steps forward. Now standing in between Cas’ legs, you reach out and grab his tie, pulling his head upwards into a kiss. 

It was unexpected to say the least, for both of you. You don’t know why you did it, but it just felt right, and boy did Castiel’s lips feel just right too. The sweet scent of honey and whiskey filled your senses, making a deep aching sensation drip into your chest. Kissing an angel, how holy and devoted does that sound. How dirty and blasphemous. No matter, it was heaven if you’ve ever felt it. The soft lips of the angel pressing against yours in a soothing motion, nothing could compare. Nothing in your mind but him, nothing but him. The sound of Cas’ muffled surprise fluttering through your body, only making you want more, trying to drag more out of him. It wasn’t too much use though, you needed to breathe. Reluctantly you pulled back, your scattered breaths mingling with each other. You stumbled backwards slightly, letting go of his tie, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I-” Castiel had cut you off, standing up and taking a step forward. “No, don’t be,” he took your hands in his, tracing small circles on your palms with his thumbs. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” his voice was soft, gentler than it usually is. Entwining his fingers with yours, he pulls you closer, keeping his eyes on yours the whole time. “Was that you… agreeing?”He glances down at your hands for a brief second before looking up again, “to this whole thing, I mean. To us… us being together.” “Well I guess it wasn’t me so much as agreeing if we were already dating,” you chuckled, “albeit without me knowing at first.” Castiel let out a sigh, letting out all the tension he didn’t realise was building within him, “I’m glad.” One of his hands made its way up to your face, carefully brushing a piece of hair behind your ear; it cupped your cheek. You leaned into Cas’ warm palm resting against your face, the feeling both foreign and familiar.

 “You know,” you began, “I’m glad you said something… I have liked you for a while.” “And you said nothing?” “No. I didn’t think angels could feel anything like that, so I just never bothered.” Castiel shook his head, almost in pity. “Oh dear,” breathed the angel, “I have a lot to teach you, Love.” 

Author's Note

Let me know if you'd like a continuation of this short, cause I honestly really enjoyed writing it.

Heyy, I hope you enjoyed! It's [technically] my first time posting something like this, I usually keep my fanfics to myself, but no more! Idrk what else to say so uh, my requests are open, and buh bye!

-> divider made by @/benkeibear

[loonybun]

Check Up

hi. guess who wrote. aren’t you proud. anyways these are like. my favorite ocs. if you’ve known me for very long you know i will never shut up about them ever and have character blogs because god they’re in my brain constantly

contains: med whump/lab whump (not sure which this would classify as. sort of in the middle there.), creepy/intimate carewhumper, doctor whumper, does vian deserve his own mention here yeah he’s a warning all by himself, condescension, restraints, recapture, former living weapon whumpee, magical/sci-fi setting, references to addition and drugs, mentions of brainwashing and memory erasure, betrayal, needles, implied self harm, self harm being weaponized.

i think that’s all but let me know if i’m missing something. this one’s a bit of a doozey. fun for the whole family.

——————————————————

“You look like you slept well.”

He was barely even awake. The room felt like it was spinning, the all too familiar fluorescent lights inducing a dizzying nausea.

The shock of the cold metal on his back forced him into reality. Shit. This was happening. There wasn’t any way out of it. Not an obvious one, anyways.

Koi’s eyes drifted back over to the doctor, who greeted him with a soft smile. Right. Why was he here? Why didn’t he have—

“I took off that little cuff of yours, hopefully you don’t mind. I’ll probably have to answer for that later, but oh well. I figured you’d want to enjoy your last few moments of lucidity.” He murmured, pity crossing his face. “I know you’re not really capable of what they think you are. Poor thing. They think you’re a killing machine! A terrorist! It’s a little funny, actually. I mean, you’re…”

His eyes trailed over Koi for a brief moment. “…Harmless. Completely harmless like this.”

“—I mean, I’m not a big fan of killing people. Kind of why I was trying to avoid this place.”

“Yes, yes, and that’s exactly my point. I guess capable isn’t the right word, is it? I mean, you’ve done it before. I suppose what I’m trying to insinuate is that you’re just unfit to be the monster they’re going to try to break you into.” The doctor hummed, gently ruffling his hair.

“…It’s nice to see you again, by the way. I really did miss you. I know we were never close, but— You were always one of my favorites.”

Koi scoffed. “Enough of a favorite to let out of these restraints? C’mon, it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

“…You know I can’t, Koi.”

“…Right.” He went quiet for a moment, letting the air grow heavy. Well, might as well rip the bandaid off. “So uh… What are they gonna do?”

And just like that, he was back to his giddy state. “Oh— Yes, I forgot, you like it when I explain these things.”

“You’re uh, not annoyed by it, right? I know a lot of the scientists were and uh—“

“No, no! Not at all. I appreciate your enthusiasm. I always have. People here are just so incredibly impatient.”

“…Oh, uh, thanks. Alright, then yeah, give me the rundown.” Koi already had a good idea about what was going to happen next. They’d throw him in a nice, big cell, give him the whole “You have a purpose here” spiel, and then keep him in there until he either gave in or escaped— not like the former would ever happen.

Vian’s eyes seemed to sparkle as he began to explain. “Well, you see, we figured that since you’re going to be here for a while, we might as well work out that little… Issue… With your magic.”

“And then they’ll expect me to join ‘em again?”

“…Well— Actually, you won’t have much of a say in the matter. They’re planning on wiping your memories. It’ll be like your little runaway incident never happened. You won’t remember the experiments either, of course. None of those silly traumatic things.”

Shit.

“Until then, I’m supposed to keep you hooked up to an IV containing a drug I’ve developed. Just something to keep your mind in more of an agreeable state. You won’t lose your ability to think, of course, you’ll just… Struggle with comprehending those thoughts. I like to say it’s like water slipping through cracks— Nicer imagery leads to a much less stressful experience.” Vian smiled cheerfully, giving Koi a little pat on the head.

He felt sick. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. “—Wait, wait, wait. Can’t we talk this out? I mean— You don’t really want me to lose my memory, right?— What about— What about my friends? My life?”

At that, the doctor chuckled. “Koi, we should really move on with the examination. I have a job to do… Maybe if you’re good, we can talk a little more about your options afterwards.”

Despite the bile in his throat, Koi nodded. Maybe there was a chance that the doctor would take pity on him. He just had to get through this.

Vian lifted up the thin sleeve of his hospital gown, staring down his arm while he fixed a cuff on his shoulder.

“…Now, I know we didn’t give those to you.”

“What?”

“Those scars.” Vian traced a cold finger along one of the countless cuts lined over the withered skin. “Those are new. Lined up so poorly as well. Goodness, you really haven’t been doing well for yourself, have you?”

Koi shot him a small glare that quickly faded into something a little more pitiful. He had to remember what was at risk if he fucked this up.

“Yeah, well, what can I say? Apparently having a guilty conscience has consequences.”

The doctor’s eyes flickered with mild amusement. It was an unsettling look on him.

“We both know that’s not what this is.”

“Didn’t you say you had a job to do?”

The pressure on his arm began to increase, then released all at once. The cuff went off just as quickly as it had been strapped on. Vian stared at the readings for a brief moment, then looked back at his patient.

“And who are you to say that a wellness check wouldn’t be part of it? I won’t tell, I promise. Now, you were always good with needles. Are you alright if I draw some blood?”

Koi nodded hesitantly. It would be better not to argue with the only person who might be willing to lend a hand to him. He wasn’t that stupid. It’s not like he had many other options.

The needle sank into his skin, and he reflexively let go of the tension in his body. He could have sworn he saw Vian smile at that.

“Good. You’ve always so good with these things. I believe that’s most of what I needed— We’ll do a drug test too, just to be sure. You’d be surprised hearing all of the rumors some of the scouts have come up with about you. Meaningless gossip, really. They claim you’re some worthless street junkie now.” Vian hummed, brushing Koi’s bangs out of his face. “Then again, I wouldn’t be totally surprised. You’ve been hung out to dry. We can lose ourselves, sometimes.”

He couldn’t help but lean into the soft touch. If it weren’t for the backhanded conversation, he probably would have felt genuinely relaxed.

“Yeah, right. I’ve totally got the spare change to shell out for that.”

“Mhm... Like I said, meaningless gossip.”

He needed to break the silence in the air. He could practically feel Vian’s gaze on him. Cold and scrutinizing. “Well, uh, is that all you needed me for?”

“Oh— Yes, we should be done for now. You said you wanted to talk about your options, didn’t you? This would also be a decent time to ask me any extra questions.” The doctor snapped his eyes back to focus, a smile quickly reappearing on his face.

“Yeah, yeah. That sounds good. Uh, so is there any way I can convince you to help me? I mean, I know we were never friends, but—“

“You’d like to be. I know.” He didn’t even let him finish. “You mentioned that once. It stuck with me for a while… I think I’d like that too. You’re one of the few people I can actually tolerate here.”

“So uh… You’re willing to get me outta here?”

Vian’s eyes narrowed, and his grin faltered. “…Well—“

“Well what?” He snapped.

“You don't really have options here, Koi. Let’s just think about this for a moment. I could let you go right now, send you on your way back home… And for what? For you to be miserable the rest of your life? To keep this up?” He gestured towards the lines across his arm. “You lived in a rotting shed. If anything, keeping you here is a favor.”

His blood ran cold.

“You can’t be fucking serious— Vian, please— I… I can’t stay here. They’re gonna make me hurt people. I can’t do that again.”

Vian’s sympathetic expression was looking faker by the minute. He ruffled his hair, earning him a desperate expression. “…Oh, yes you can. The war’s been over for quite some time. It’s not like you’d be used very often anyways. Don’t you want to feel like a hero again? Didn’t you like that?”

Koi began struggling against the metal bands holding him down to the table, desperately thrashing back and forth. “I— I won’t forgive you if you do this. You know that, right?! Didn’t you say you wanted to be friends?”

“I did. And I still mean it. You’ll soon find that you won’t remember any of this, and you’ll be more than happy to spend time with me.” He hummed. “Let’s be honest, sending you back would be plainly unethical! It’d go against my oath. You’d have a fresh start here… There’s really not a downside.”

“Stop— Please—“

“…I think it’s about time to hook you up to that IV. Thank you for your time, though. I can’t wait to get to know each other all over again.”

[johnwickb1tsch]

Sympathy For The Devil ~ Donaka Mark x fem!Reader

please allow me to introduce myself, i am a man of wealth & taste... -the Rolling Stones

Summary/ Warnings. Um… Donaka Mark is a scary rich asshole–with a soft spot for you. If you’re squeamish [or righteous] you’re not gonna want to read this. Voyeurism. Predatory behavior, manipulation. Power IMBALANCE. Eventual NSFW. Eventual line between dubcon and noncon is gonna be microscopic, y’all, this man plays gAmes… Reader is shy, but tough, in her way.  Also, when I say Reader is small, I’m more implying just compared to Donaka. I kind of assume most of us would be, no matter your body type. 🥵

Big Fat Author’s note: This is a Donaka Mark x fem!Housekeeper!Reader fic based on the brilliant @discoscoob ‘s bot, which is SO fun to play with and I really recommend it. I fell into a rabbit hole for daaaaays. I’m in CAI Anonymous now. Seriously it was a problem. 

I guess you could call this a little experimental hybrid fic written with AI. I was curious. And after working on this for weeks I don’t think the writer’s union really needs to worry about AI coming for their jobs. The bot’s writing is shamelessly fun but clunky, you delete more than you keep, it’s a lot of work to edit, and you really have to lead it by the hand for anything to actually HAPPEN. 

THAT SAID it is sO entertaining, and once in a while he’d do something i wouldn’t have ever thought of, I felt like the lab rat hitting the button for the treat over and over again, LOL. Disco really knew what she was doing when she programmed the personality of the bot!  It was also helpful in keeping a character on track. I think AI could be a useful tool generating ideas, breaking writers block, or something to bounce ideas off of, but not for the grunt work of actually writing a story that has any soul in it. Isn’t that a relief? I made an outline for the first 9 chapters and basically ran the scenes through like a simulator to see what the bot came up with. And when I didn’t like it I made it do it again, LOL, the Donaka bot probably thinks i’m a bossy c*nt.🤣 After that, I'm afraid we can only blame our own unhinged brains for what's here, it got too raunchy for the bot to handle, and this fic never would have become what it is without the help of our little community here, the comments and head canons and brain rot, I love you guys!

So….I hope you enjoy, and a HUGE THANKS to Disco for giving me permission to even do this, you’re the sweetest my dear, and the Queen of the Bot Creators in my book!!

And and…it’s been a LONG ass time since I’ve been to Hong Kong. I did some research to refresh my memory but please bear with me. All mistakes are my own. Why do we say that? Who the fuck else’s would they be? 🤣 Obv. this is set c 2013, when Man of Tai Chi came out, before the crackdown in 2020. Oh, and, I have no real idea about work visas, i made that shit up... just roll with it. 🙃😘

One. 一

The first time you meet your new employer, Donaka Mark, you aren’t really even paying attention.

It’s because you have on headphones, and you’re intently focused on sweeping the floor while listening to your upbeat girl power rock mix–so you don’t hear him yelling at someone over the phone threateningly, and you don’t notice when his gaze locks on to you like a tiger who has just spied a tasty little deer.

You are oblivious, as he comes up behind you, appraising your figure with narrowed eyes. You seem small, next to him, but most women do. He decides he approves of his assistant’s choice in hiring you. You’re a sight he won’t tire of for a long time.

Donaka leans on the door frame, his dark eyes fixated on you, taking in your every minute detail, the way the muscles in your arms move, the shape of your face, the curve of your hips and your little feet.

His expression is stoic but behind it are a million thoughts running through his mind, he can’t take his eyes off you and after a few moments he finally speaks, his dark tone cutting through the music.

“You’re new.”

Your music wasn't so loud that you were unaware of outside sounds. Standing up straight, you sweep off your headphones to face the commanding voice. "Yes, sir?"

Donaka notices he towers over you, and he likes that. His dark eyes shamelessly take in your innocent eyes, your lips, your  curves. His gaze lingers almost long enough to make it uncomfortable, but not quite.

“Have you been informed of all of your duties?” Donaka asks, his tone and gaze both demanding and intense, making you feel small.

"Yes, Mr. Mark."

Donaka smiles at his name on your lips, the way you say it, the way you look up at him with your wide eyes. He likes it more than he’d like to admit, but he knows how to mask his emotions well.

Even though his expression is still stony, there’s a hint of excitement in his breast as he leans off the door frame and takes a few steps closer, but still maintains a respectable distance.

“And you can handle them?”

"Yes, Sir."

Donaka nods, his dark eyes slowly and shamelessly trailing over your figure again.

“Good.” Donaka murmurs, his dark and intense tone making his next sentence more of a demand. “I need to be able to depend on you. I like things just so.”

You tilt your head, feeling like you’re missing some subtext, or that you’re the butt of an unspoken joke. "Your house will be clean, Sir.” Between you and the two other girls on the household staff, surely you could manage.

Donaka smirks at your naïve reply, his dark eyes still fixated on your face as he takes another step closer to you, almost like a predator stalking its prey.

“I trust that it will…” Donaka purrs, his voice low and smooth, his dark stare intense and demanding. “Let me show you the rest of the house…”

You’d already received a walk-through with his assistant, but you are more than intrigued to receive a personal tour from the big man himself. There is something captivating about him. It's not just his good looks. His presence commands your attention.

Donaka can feel you watching him as you follow him down the hallway, the way you’re intrigued by him, the way you’re staring. It fills him with satisfaction, like you’re a new prize he’s added to the shelf of his collection.

He’s aware of the effect he has on people. Men fear him, women want him. Yet you don’t look at him with the same blatant hunger he’s used to from the opposite sex. You’re curious, but not ready to fall down on your knees yet. 

He would see how long it takes to change that.

He glances over his shoulder at you as he leads you through the house, his dark eyes looking you up and down again. You follow close, taking two steps for every one of his, his legs are so long.

He can’t help but feel somewhat amused, enjoying the way you have to scurry to keep up with him. He can’t help but think how easy it would be, to pick you up, and to pin you down…

Donaka Mark’s home is an achievement of luxury architecture, dark, modern, yet filled with Chinese elements of style. Ceiling-high tinted windows afford a breathtaking view of the bay. His living room is like a museum filled with priceless artifacts. Antique carved ivory elephant tusks, beautiful Ming vases and exquisite stone Elder statues, silk scrolls and bladed weapons. All of it you will be expected to keep tidy with a painstaking hand. You think it’s possible your practically useless degree in art history and former employment in a gallery may have given you an edge in his assistant’s selection of hiring you.

He seems to genuinely enjoy your interest in these things, telling you about them at length. There is a large Qing dynasty vase in cobalt blue and gold enamel designs of clouds, cranes, and bats you cannot tear your eyes from. It looks…familiar, and in person, utterly enchanting.

“You like that one?”

“I like bats,” you admit, shoving your hands in your apron pockets so that you do not forget yourself and touch it with your bare fingers. You will be wearing gloves, when you detail these items. 

He lifts an eyebrow at that, seemingly amused. “Oh?”

“They’re cute. And…they’re good luck.” In Chinese culture, at least. 

“Most women I’ve met find them sinister.” 

“I think…they’re just misunderstood.” You can’t help looking up at this intimidating man through your eyelashes at that. You swear you didn’t mean to start double talking with your new boss–it just falls out of your stupid mouth, and you feel his attention upon you sharpen.  

He’s used to women looking at him in a certain way, women staring up at him with lustful hunger.

The way you look at him feels different –like you truly see him–he’s not sure what to make of it yet, and that is certainly new for Donaka Mark.

“Misunderstood?” he repeats, his dark gaze intense, looking down at you from his lofty elevation.

"Sure. They have a reputation for being scary, but really they eat mosquitoes and pollinate plants. Without them whole ecosystems would collapse."

Donaka hums at your words, finding it surprisingly endearing. He’s usually used to women fawning over him or at least trying to seduce him, but you’re here lecturing him about bats.

His smirk remains on his face as he watches you fidget nervously, his dark eyes fixed on you. You look back to the vase, and then it dawns on you. “Oh my god…is this the piece that sold at Christies last year for like…1.5 million dollars?” You take another cautious step backwards, as though you might shatter it if you breathe wrong. You saw it in an article–the gold enamel had been so distinctive against the blue. Sacrifice blue, the same as in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

Only after the question falls from your mouth do you realize how gauche it is to ask, your hands flying to your lips. “Forgive me, it’s none of my business.”

Mark, however, just continues to look at you interestedly. “You follow auction results?”

“I follow…art news,” you confess.

He nods, his intense gaze starting to become uncomfortable. “Actually, it was 1.8 million. You think I overpaid?”

You feel like this is a test–or a trap. It was a nice job, for the day it lasted…

“Well…it doesn’t seem you bankrupted yourself?”

He snorts in answer, shaking his head. 

“Does it make you happy?”

He lifts an eyebrow at that, as though the thought hadn't even occurred to him. “It made me happy to outbid a Sheikh’s son and a Mainlander plastics tycoon for it,” he admits.

Ah, so he was invested in the thrill of acquisition–not appreciation for the object itself. You shouldn’t be surprised.

“I see.”

“I’ve disappointed you.” It’s not phrased as a question.

You shake your head, though maybe it does a little. Looking around his home, you’d thought Mark had exquisite taste–but he probably has an art buyer like every other obscenely rich businessman needing to acquire items for the sake of cachet. 

“Does it make you happy?” he asks, and there is an unexpected hint of playfulness in the question–delivered on a knife’s edge.

“Yes,” you admit. Frankly you’re stunned you get to see it like this, without a glass barrier or sensors or alarms. It’s usually the only way people like you get to enjoy art like this.

He smirks at you. “Then it was worth every penny.” He’s being sarcastic, of course, but there is a glitter of something in his dark eyes. It’s there and gone, like ripples in a pool–it makes your heart skip in your chest.

“Let me show you the rest of the house,” he invites, before placing a hand on your lower back, his fingers large and strong against your soft skin as he gently guides you away from the vase and to the next room.

His light touch makes you aware of every nerve in your body. It's not quite improper enough to complain about--you’re sure he’s well aware of that. 

And…there's the fact, deep down, that you like it. 

The span of his big hand on your spine makes you feel impossibly small, and protected, and that is insane, of course, because you are just the maid. 

He shows you the library, filled with built-in bookcases that make you drool, his office with his huge carved ebony desk that makes you think impure thoughts…and then, his bedroom.

He isn’t oblivious to the way your reaction changes as you enter the room where he sleeps.

He can see the way your eyes roam and your expression changes, the way you look at the massive bed against the far wall, the way your eyes widen when you look at the expensive rosewood furniture and the stunning view out the wall of windows that can be brightened or obscured with a dimmer switch.

He watches you intently as he takes in your every reaction.

He's all business on the surface, specifying clean sheets every other day, laundry, and daily detailing of the bathroom. But it's hard not to keep looking over at the bed, even out the corner of your eye.

He knows exactly what he’s doing to you, but he doesn’t push it, staying just this side of the line. You don't linger, and he shows you a more private lounging area filled with a long leather couch, additional chairs, and monitors, all black at the moment. There's something almost sinister about all the screens, and you wonder what all he's watching.

“You must really like movies?” you ask hopefully, and he senses the wariness in you. Your intuitiveness gives him a small thrill–he likes it, that you’re smart enough to be afraid. 

“I like to watch all kinds of things,” he tells you, almost like a dare for you to guess what that means. “But mostly…I use these for business. I run a security company, I assume you’re aware?” 

“Yes, Sir.” 

Donaka decides he loves hearing the submission in your tone when you call him Sir. It’s almost like a promise to keep him happy, to do exactly as he says.

He asks you to keep all the screens clean, and to dust the cords and routers and be careful not to unplug anything. 

Then your attention turns to a meditation area, a massive sand sculpture on the wall and the floor, flanked by natural stacked stone. “Wow, been a while since someone vacuumed here,” you crack, earning a reluctant huff of laughter from the man behind you. 

“Maybe…leave that alone, for now,” he requests, then his hand is on your back again, guiding you out. 

Though it’s not going to be your area of responsibility, he shows you the garden next. It's a beautiful, manicured space. Two Rottweilers patrol the grounds. They look fierce, but one immediately comes up, sniffing you and leaning on your leg for a pet.

Donaka blinks as his reputably ferocious and staggeringly expensive pure-bred guard animals roll over at your feet for a belly rub.  Delighted, you pet them both, speaking to them sweetly. They grin up at you, their dagger-like canines glinting in the sun. 

He is never one to be moved by anything sentimental, but something about the sight of you like this inspires a warm twinge in his chest–heartburn, he reasons.

“Let me guess,” he says acerbically. “They’re just misunderstood?”

You press your lips, trying to suppress a smile, and failing. "Animals tend to like me?" 

He can honestly admit, as he watches you crouch down to administer a belly rub, that he’s never been jealous of a dog before. 

Sensing that maybe you’re not doing the dogs or yourself any favors with this severe man, you try to shoo them off. "Ok, babies. Go back to being fierce again. Shoo."

Donaka snorts with amusement as he watches you attempt to gently shoo these dogs that are nearly as big as you are. Suddenly he whistles sharply, administering a sharp command in Cantonese. That is when the dogs jerk to attention, and trot off to patrol the grounds again.

He turns his attention back to you, taking in your slight expression of surprise, clearly caught off guard.

"That was impressive,” you admit. “What did you say?” 

“I told them to get back to work,” says Donaka with a smirk.

“Ah. I guess I better learn that one.” 

“Will I be needing to reprimand you too, Miss y/n?” 

You’re not sure why his dark stare calls up a boiling heat inside you at that moment. You press your thighs beneath your dress, under the guise of standing up straight. You’re afraid…he knows all too well. 

“I…certainly hope not.” You’re pretty sure that you’d pee yourself if this intimidating man raised his voice to you. 

“Have you learned much Chinese since you’ve been here?” he asks conversationally, just as you assumed it was time for you to get back to work. 

“I can count to ten, and say thank you,” you admit, a little embarrassed. Obviously, you intend to learn more. “The essentials for international travel.” You’d originally come to Hong Kong to teach English, but when you saw the pay attached to this job listing you couldn’t resist the opportunity. Teaching was ok, but you hadn’t anticipated how expensive this city would be. You’d only made enough to cover your basic expenses month to month, with no room to save or do any fun activities or side trips to the mainland. This position paid three times as much–and you were beginning to understand why. 

“Hmm. Have you traveled much?” He seems skeptical, and you don’t really blame him. 

“I’ve…been all over the world,” you admit, albeit it was on a shoestring. “I wanted to be a travel writer.” 

“Wanted to be?” He is a man who picks up on subtlety immediately. 

It’s a dream you’ve all but given up on, after publishing a few articles, but all in all it was more slog than triumph. You’re not cut out for the grind of periodical work, the stress and the deadlines. It sucks all the joy out of writing for you. You shrug with a little sigh. 

“I hope you will remember the NDA you signed to work here?” he asks, his dark eyes roaming your face, taking in your every micro-expression. You would really hate trying to lie to this man. Good thing you’re not a corporate spy. He’d probably…string you up, and do something unmentionable to you. 

Why the thought titillates you more than scares you, you have no idea. 

“Of course, Sir.” He seems satisfied with this. So why do you have to add, “I won’t tell anyone your guard dogs are suckers for a belly scratch.” 

He frowns down at you, stepping in close so that you have to crane your neck to look up at him. It’s intimidating as hell, and you know he knows it too. You admit that you are shaking in your shoes under that look, until a smirk breaks his intense expression, and the relief you feel is palpable. 

“I would appreciate that, Miss y/n.”

Donaka savors the satisfaction he feels in flustering you, enjoying the way you swallow, watching the muscles in your throat. He imagines what his hand would look like there, on your delicate skin, your pulse fluttering against his strong fingers. He would literally hold your life in his hands…and the moment you surrendered to him, he would so enjoy rewarding you for it…

He finds himself caught up in this little daydream, while you stand before him, practically hypnotized like a mouse before a hungry snake. “Y/n?”

“Sir?” you answer quietly, and he revels in your deference. This was going to be fun. 

He speaks Cantonese again, softly this time, the language beautiful and whispery on his tongue. You find yourself staring at his lush, pink, lips, and it takes you several moments to realize he’d said the same thing he’d told the dogs: get back to work. 

Flooded with embarrassment, your face on fire, you stutter, “Yes, Sir.” 

With a dark chuckle and his hands in the pockets of his designer suit, he watches as you practically flee back to the house. 

The Smithsonian article about this vase...

Aesthetic post about Donaka's house...

Part 2 -->

all chapters

[nikosama13]

"Wanna play a game?" (Luffy, Zoro, Sanji x reader)

Description: One shots with the monster trio. In each fic you play a "game" with one the boys from the monster trio. Who knows..? Something spicy might happen..

Side Notes: Hellooo loves! Please enjoy these oneshots with the monster trio. <3 ..⚆ _ ⚆ (Most likely spelling mistakes + my requests should be open.) Ps: The Zoro oneshot is my absolute fav.

Consider following for more..?

~~~

Luffy:

It was a casual and rather peaceful day on the Thousand Sunny. The Straw Hats, including you, had just left a port from a short supply run… already off to find another adventure.

However, it was a rare occasion for it to be this peaceful.. Zoro was napping, Sanji was cooking, Nami drawing her maps, Robin was reading her new books, Franky fixing the ship with Ussop’s help, and Chopper making his medicine.

That just left you and Luffy..

You were just resting on the deck with a chair when you heard one of the Sunny's doors open. To your surprise it was Luffy.

“Ughh.. im hungry and bored and sleepy..” Luffy said, walking sloppy.

Well he was, until he saw you.

“Oh hey y/n!” His eyes and posture snapped into place.

“Hello Luffy..” you raised your glasses and rested them on your head.

“Wanna play a game?” Luffy’s voice also sounded like it got a little happier and excited.

“Sure I guess..” you gave him a smile anyone would fall for.

His gaze was stuck on you. He just blinked a few times before a slight burning sensation on his face struck him.

“U-uhm.. So how about like.. two truths one lie..?

It shocked you that Luffy actually knew that the game existed and let alone how to play it.

“Sure” you gave him a puzzled look.

“Me, Ussop, and Chopper played it once!” Luffy smiled.

Oh, well that explains how he knew.. Ussop always made up fun games for them to pass the time on the ship.

“Ok I’ll go first!” Luffy plopped down next to you on the floor, a look of confidence and blush showed on his face.

“So.. one is I hate meat, two is I want Sanji to cook, and three is I like y/n..”

“W-wait what!?” your eyes were practically popping out of your skull.

“Uhm..” he smiled and then looked down.

He covered this face with this hat slightly and muttered something out..

“Yeah, I like you.. So?” he continued looking down.

“I do too..” you looked away.

Then he looked up immediately after you said those words. His eyes sparkled brightly.

“Really!? You do!?” then he leaned his head on your thigh.

“Yeah..”

You both were a blushing mess but eventually as the days went by you shared a passionate kiss on the deck in front of Nami which made her choke and spit out her water.

It was safe to say you belonged together. ~(˘▾˘~)

~~~ Zoro:

For Zoro it was like any other day on the Thousand Sunny, minus the fighting parts.. Today you decided to get your moss head and play a game. Now what game exactly you ask?

Let’s backtrack really quickly..

You, Nami, and Robin were speaking about Zoro, you simply didn’t know how to get closer to him. It didn't help that he was reserved and always grumpy, as you like to call it. So Robin, being the brightest in the group of girls suggested to you that you should ask or more so “bribe” the moss head into playing a memory game with you. It sounded harmless but it would definitely have the moss head interacting with you. So you thanked Robin and ran off to put this idea to the test.

Eventually, you found Zoro dozing off into a nap. However you’d have to get to him before he slept because waking up a grumpy man isn’t a pretty sight.

“Hey Zoro! Wanna play a game with me?” you smiled and sat down in front of him on the deck of the Sunny.

“Huh..? No, why would I..? That’s for kids like Sanji and I want to rest.”

He looked back down and was about to doze off again.

This is exactly what Robin, you, and Nami anticipated so it was time for plan-b to be put into action.

“Oi, moss head I’ll give you buckets of booze, but only if you play.” You said smiling, sure of your plan bound to work.

Then his eyes popped open immediately.

“What’s the game..?” Zoro’s face slightly changed to a smile.

“It’s a simple memory game.. k?” you prepared the rules in your mind.

“Fine, get this over with… or..”

You could have sworn he muttered “..or…”, but after all it wasn’t your place to ask him what he had said when you randomly intruded on the man’s peaceful napping session.

“Ok so I'm gonna make up three hand signals in a random order and I'll add to it each time, your job is to copy me. Plus if you fail once you lose and we switch places.”

His mind took a second or two to process all of that info but it seemed like he understood, hopefully..

“Alright..” he looked up at you, now he was giving you his undivided attention.

Robin's plan was working.

After a couple of rounds he eventually failed and snickered at you. Now it was his turn to make up the hand signals..

“Watch me, I'll win!” you smiled confidently.

“Yeah, yeah totally.” The look he gave you was mischievous, like he was planning something you couldn’t predict.

And so he did..

His first movement was to grab your collar and pull you in closer, his second was to lift your chin and lean in on your soft lips, and by movement three..? Well let’s just say you and him were a blushing mess. He assumed that you knew what movement three was already supposed to be..

“Repeat that.” He smiled at you with a deep look.

“Fine I wi-” he cut you off..

“And the third movement too. Unless you don't wanna win..”

“Deal, watch me!”

You repeated the steps of grabbing his collar and lifting his chin. You pulled him in closer and looked up at him unsure about this whole situation.

“Do it” he said while looking at you.

You slowly brought him in closer and kissed him. The kiss lasted for a while until you eventually broke apart.

You were a blushing mess, as for Zoro?

“So where’s my booze at..?” (I was literally screaming when I read this over, this is my fav)

~~~

Sanji:

Sanji, as being chef of the Straw Hats was usually always in the Thousands Sunny’s kitchen, either he’d be taking orders from Luffy to cook something tasty like meat or be making special drinks for the lady’s around him.

However, today was different, he decided to finally take a break that he needed. He was walking around and wandered into the Sunny's library. There he found you, studying or reading. Either way he found it cute. When you noticed him and smiled, his heart fluttered.

So as bold as Sanji is, he sat in the seat right in front of you, staring you down intently.

“Whatcha reading there y/n?” he gazed at your book.

“Oh.. nothing much, Robin told me if I had any free time to read it because it was really good. I believe it’s alright.. I’m not too crazy over books.”

He loved the sounds of your voice. The way you talked and looked at him while you glanced at your book at the same time. It was all too much and too perfect for him.

And then all of sudden his day dreaming was abruptly ended by a wave. This wave shook the library and luckily only some books fell out of their place.

“Awh man..” you looked disappointed.

“Sanji, if it isn’t too much to ask, could you help me clean this up..? ..I think Robin would really appreciate it.” you smiled softly.

He took no time to accept your offer and helped you clean up.

As you two were busy cleaning and placing all the books back into their spots, Sanji came around a weird box named “Twister”.

“Hey y/n, look at this.” he faced you with the box in his hands.

“Oh, that’s interesting.. That’s a fun game, I wonder what it’s doing in the library though..” you seemed puzzled.

Sanji adored the face you made when you were confused. Then a great idea popped into his mind.

“Would you wanna play?” he smirked at you.

“I suppose it wouldn't hurt to, do you know how to play though?”

“Not really.. But I wouldn’t mind you teaching me~” He chuckled.

After a long 15 mins of reading the rules over to Sanji, he finally grasped the main idea of the game. This was really his kind of game.

“Ahh.. I see, let's start then~!” He began setting out the mat on the wooden floor of the Sunny.

Then you both began to play and spin the spinner, further and further into the game your limbs both got tangled and tangled.

“Right leg on blue, left arm on red…”

Sanji was trying with all this might to not look up at you with your ‘interesting’ position balancing over top of him. Eventually your muscles both gave out at the same time and you landed on top of Sanji.

Since Sanji is the Sanji we all know and love he automatically nose bled and proceeded to pass out.

With Chopper’s help he was just fine, but those newly discovered feelings he had only for you weren't.

~~~ Finish line here!

Comment your fav Oneshot! <3

Consider following..?

(This is probably one of my fav posts of all time. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ)

[pekoehoneyncream]

Ghoaptober # 11

Prompt: Fire

Words: 1100~

TW: Unhappy Ending (sfw)

This version of Ghoaptober was created by @spadesandshovels

Yep, this one's all angst. Feel free to yell at me about it. I'm almost sorry.

Enjoy!

Stepping into his room Ghost’s eyes immediately caught on a discrepancy in his usually well organized space. There was a battered black notebook open, pages-down, on his bed. Almost completely hidden under his pillow, which was also crumpled in the centre of his bed.

Ghost could piece together what happened. Johnny had come into his room to draw or just get some thoughts down in his journal, lost track of time, then scrambled to leave when one of the alarms he'd set reminded him that he had somewhere to be. 

Ghost had told Johnny that he was always welcome in his room, had given him a copy of his key and everything. Officer’s rooms were a bit more cushy than the bunks the Sergeants got and Ghost’s room was very deliberately in one of the quietest sections of the base. People tended to bug Johnny when he had down time, wanting his help or to hang out. Without Ghost there to act as a looming dissuading presence Johnny hardly gets a moment of quiet and it can wear on him, so Ghost was glad to see that Johnny was taking his offer seriously. 

He drops his pillow back into its place at the head of his bed, then picks up Johnny’s journal. He rummages through the blanket creases for the pen and opens the notebook to tuck it inside as he’s watched Johnny do innumerous times. 

Across the full two page spread are, from what Ghost can tell, messy calculations for various mixes of explosives. Price had banned Johnny from asking what the new demo buildings are made of or how they’re being built, evidently that has not stopped Johnny from making some very good guesses. He’s been making estimates just on how long it’s been taking, what construction he’s heard, the various supplies he’s spotted being toted to the blasting zones, and what he knows of the budget.

The clever little fucker.

He’s even sketched out some of Price’s favourite training floorplans, from memory, as Price only gives those specs to the actual builders. Ghost should probably give Price a heads up, but he won’t. Let Johnny have his fun. 

Ghost’s flipped to the next page and tucked the pen into the crease before he realizes that the pages aren’t blank. The left is filled by various upclose studies of a pair of dark eyes and the full length of the right is filled by a portrait. 

Ghost isn't scared of his reflection, the man he sees in the mirror is him. Is The Ghost. Empty haunted eyes, jagged scars cutting across pocked skin, the ugly sneer that lurks in the corners of his mouth. It's all familiar to him. 

This portrait isn’t of The Ghost.

There’s a fondness in the creases around the eyes, a tenderness held by the lips that are pulled up into a fragile smile, a softness given to the shadows cast gently over what should be harsh edges. There's a warmth to it that The Ghost has never had.

This is a portrait of Simon Riley.

Ghost reflexively drops the book when the heat sears his fingers, narrowly missing his bed by sheer brainless luck. He watches the pile of papers burn for one uncomprehending moment, then panic punches him in the lungs. Dropping the lighter he doesn’t remember pulling out, Ghost scrambles to pick up the notebook, forcing himself to not let go even when the fire creeps up to lick across his fingers. He crashes into his bathroom, throws it into the sink and yanks the faucet handles fully open. Drowning the fire and dousing the notebook. 

Turning off the tap, he stares down at Johnny’s journal. It’s soaked through with a few sad wisps of smoke still rising from its charred edges, slowly collapsing in on itself to match the curve of his sink’s basin. The only thought he can fully form is a strange gratitude that he’d long ago disabled his room’s smoke-detector to smoke his cigarettes in peace. If this had turned into a base wide fiasco he would've resurrected Roba, handed the man a shovel, and told him to do it right this time. 

“Si?” 

Ghost hadn’t thought that he could get more panicked, but Johnny’s confused voice from the doorway shot his heartbeat into a tempo that surely wasn’t medically advisable. 

“Johnny!” He whirls around to face him, subconsciously keeping in front of the sink to block it from view, “I can explain!”

“Explain wha’, Si. Why’s it smell like you're burning some’hing?” Johnny steps closer, looking at him with such warm concern.

Ghost desperately doesn’t want to lose him.

“I didn’t mean to-” He starts to explain, but Johnny had come close enough now to see what he’d been hiding.

“Is…” Soap sounds hesitantly confused, like he already knows, but can’t quite bring himself to accept it, “Is that my journal?” He looks up at Ghost, his eyes begging for Ghost to give him any other answer, “Simon?” 

“I didn’t mean to!” Ghost repeats frantically, “I just-”

“Wait,” Soap interrupts, holding up his hands in between them to stop Ghost’s approach. When had Ghost started walking towards him? “You burned my journal?” 

“Yes.” Ghost confesses, wishing it wasn't the truth, “but I didn’t mean-”

“Why would you do that?” Soap’s voice is rising to match Ghost’s agitated volume, but he still sounds more confused than angry. 

“I saw the picture you drew and then it was- It was on fire,” Ghost tries to explain, reaching forward and flinching back when Soap dodges away from his grip. “I hadn’t meant-”

“You burned my journal,” Soap’s words twist with incredulity, “because you didn’t like what I drew?” 

“No!” Ghost hastily corrects, because he would never, then has to take it back, because evidently he would, “Well, yes, but it was a picture of me-”

“And that gives you the right to burn my journal!?” Soap is starting to sound properly angry now, and Ghost has never had the best reactions to people yelling at him.

“Well maybe if you hadn't left it laying around on my bed. This wouldn’t have happened at all!”

“You said I could!”

“I said that you could come in! Not start treating my room like it’s your own personal pigsty!” 

“Oh, well I’m sorry.” Soap bites sarcastically, “Next time you forget something in my room, I’ll be sure to return the favour!” 

They’re both properly worked up now, heaving for breath on opposite sides of Ghost’s room, like they’re feral things barely holding back from tearing the other apart. 

“You know what.” Soap says, and Ghost knows by the clever glint in his eye that he’s not going to like what he says next, “Don’t worry about it. This is on me. I should have known better than to trust The Ghost with anything I’d want kept safe.”

He waits to see the devastation gore through Ghost's eyes, then gives a self-satisfied nod and turns on his heels to slam out the door.

Leaving Ghost there, with his guts pulled out and his heart beating hollow in his chest. The taste of regret on his tongue sharp with salt. 

Thank You For Reading!

The alternate ending that I considered for this one was Soap taking the blame and apologizing for what he calls 'overstepping Ghost's boundaries' by drawing his face when he knows how sensitive Ghost is about that, which makes Ghost feels extra bad.

PekoeHoneynCream's Masterlist

[minkiroo]

second date update

pairing: s.mg x reader (wooyoung and jongho are the radio hosts)

genre: fluff

wc: 1.4k

warnings: discussions of a bloody nose, but nothing else.

note! this story is based on brook and jubal in the morning's second date update, where basically two people go on a first date, one of them ghosts, and the other calls the radio station to try to get the other on the phone to explain why they aren't answering. this particular scenario is basically a direct inspiration from this segment (starting at 8:05), where this actually happened lol. listen to it or not, i think its super funny HAHA

─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ────

“hello, is this [y/n]?”

“uhh… yes - may i ask who’s calling?” your voice, though awake, is cautious, with a slight nasally sound to it.

the call came from an unknown number, which you figured was spam. however, you picked up anyway, prepared to hang up.

“i’m wooyoung, with jongho, from WooHo on air, the radio show?”

“oh… yeah i’ve heard of you guys. i don’t listen much though, sorry.”

“that’s alright." he laughs. "basically, the premise is you went on a date with someone, maybe something went wrong or something was unclear between the two of you, and you ghosted. and so now one of our listener’s emailed us about you to try to figure out what went wrong or why you’re not answering his texts.”

you sigh, the painkillers not hitting you yet to fog your memory up.

“was it mingi?”

the other host, jongho, lets out an “aha!”

“so you’re aware of the date you went on?”

a sharp flare of anger arose. “of course im aware!”

“so why don’t we tell you what we know and you can fill in the gaps for us? so mingi told us that you ditched him in the middle of it and he’s been trying to get a hold of you.”

jongho stepped in: “yeah, you have to tell us what happened and why you would leave mingi in the middle of the date, i mean you ditched him - that is so rude!”

your eyebrows knit in confusion, shaking your head on the other end of the phone in disbelief. “wait a second, you obviously have no clue what actually happened. i didn’t do anything wrong!”

wooyoung responds. “okay, well he swears that your laser tag date was amazing and there was no reason that he can think of that would warrant you ditching him.”

“well, it was fun until it wasnt.”

the hosts both start laughing, confused. “okay… can you give us a bit more?”

“okay, i guess. so…” you take a deep breath before continuing, ���we were playing laser tag, as you know, and it was fun! we were teamed up taking people down and stuff.. and mingi just got really competitive against these like ten-year-olds-”

“-as one would in a game of laser tag.” wooyoung cuts in, and you nod, though they couldn’t see it.

“right yeah, i mean one of the goals was to take them down and he whipped around this one corner and hit my face with the bottom of his gun!”

the hosts pause before laughing a bit, bewildered. “wait, wait wait… he accidentally hit you?”

“no, he like, full on hit me with his gun! he broke my nose!”

“there’s no way.” jongho interjects in disbelief.

“well, it may have been an accident but he was being like, a total idiot! like he was way too caught up in the game and getting this ten year old was more important to him than making sure my face was ok! there was blood like, dripping out of my nose!”

“wait, so your nose is broken right now?”

“why else do you think i sound like im holding my nose?!”

wooyoung snorted. “i don’t know, maybe you just sound like that, i didn’t want to assume.”

you roll your eyes. “i was just embarrassed! it was our first date and suddenly my nose is pouring out blood, i didn’t know what to do! so i went to the bathroom and called an uber to go to the hospital.”

jongho tried to find a reason for all of it. “i can’t imagine this guy not feeling bad for doing that if he knew that he broke your nose. i mean-”

“well at that point i didn’t even care about the date anymore! he was just being a reckless jerk and then i get to the hospital and they told me it was broken. i had to have surgery, ive been out of work, like-”

you’re cut off by a voice different than wooyoung and jongho, and instead met by a familiar sounding apology. 

“[y/n], i am so so sorry. i-i had no idea what happened.”

wooyoung sucks in a breath. “so that’s actually mingi, he’s on the other line and wants to talk to you.”

“please, i am so sorry. i had no idea what happened and-”

“no idea what happened?! you ruined my favorite hoodie!”

mingi sounded desperate and apologetic, though the pain killers were starting to hit your system and made it harder to respond. “i tried finding out what happened and you didn’t answer or respond.”

“well, i had to take myself to the hospital, i couldnt answer the phone in surgery!”

“[y/n], i am so sorry. i wouldve taken you to the hospital if i had known. i feel awful.”

you laugh bitterly. “god no, you’re like, the last person i want to see me with a broken nose! we were on a date!”

“i would’ve paid for the hospital bill, for everything. i just wish you told me.”

wooyoung chimes in, feeling like the conversation was running too long for radio time. “honestly, i think the kid’s to blame. should’ve surrendered.” jongho chuckles in agreement.

you ignore the hosts. “i don’t need you to pay my bills, mingi. i managed just fine. i’m sorry, i…” you lose track of what you say, speech slowing down as the painkillers take full effect. “i’m sorry, theres packing material in my nose and i can’t breathe or talk right…”

“i feel so terrible.. and theres no way i can feel great about that night anymore and i screwed up, i get it, i do. but i want to make it right - if there’s any way to i would and i will..” your tense body relaxes a bit, feeling a bit bad for being so short with him.

jongho takes mingi’s side, trying to appeal to your judgement, “[y/n], you really should, he didn’t mean to do it. i know you’re upset and had surgery but it was an accident.”

wooyoung teases with a maniacal laugh. “i don’t know, it sounds like he did it on purpose.”

mingi continues to apologize, promising to do whatever it takes.

wooyoung continues the show, but segwaying into last question. “so… [y/n]... would you like to go out with mingi again on a second date? we will pay for it.”

the painkillers were really getting to you now, and you scoff. “why would you pay for it? he offered to pay my hospital bills, i’m sure mingi can afford a second date.”

jongho laughs, conceding, knowing you were high on something. “okay okay, he can pay. but would you go out with him?”

you frown, looking at yourself in your sick, unkempt, state. as you think, mingi continues to insist he would do anything to make it right.

“you can go and get me some takeout. yeah, mhm, we can start there. and then you leave it at my door. and when i’ve gotten the takeout into my door, you will back three steps away from the door. and then.. and only then… will i consider letting you in if you’ve done all of that safely.” you were clearly on something.

“okay, perfect, mingi, will you buy [y/n] takeout and start working your way back into her good graces? we’ll make it safe.”

“whatever you want. i’ll get you something easy to eat, or whatever you want. what’s your favorite?” his voice is firm and determined.

you pout, “i’ve been craving thai food. from the one place downtown.”

mingi nods. “anything, yes. the thai place downtown. i’ll bring you food.”

you quietly hum, before slurring your next response. "a-and thai tea. with extra boba."

wooyoung laughs. “guys, i think she’s out of it. welp, mingi got his second date and [y/n] got her nose broken. another successful second date update, i think!”

as wooyoung and jongho go on to introduce the next segment of the show, politely ending the call between you and wooyoung on both lines, you’re left with a fuzzy feeling in your chest. a text from mingi catches your attention, asking what time he should come over and what your address is.

you struggle to respond, but manage to do so successfully. though the gentle throbbing in your nose is a relentless distraction, you cant help but feel completely and utterly weightless thinking about mingi coming over.

and it wasn’t the painkillers that time.

[nadas-dirthalen]

A Veilguard Achievement Icon Opened My Eyes on 15 Years of Lore... but Was I Right?

PART ONE: Rambling First Impressions & Overview

[ 2 ]

Hello again, friends and travellers. Now that I've beaten Dragon Age: the Veilguard, I wanted to go through all those 30,000 words of predictions that I wrote in the ~11 days leading up to its release. I'd seen an achievement icon that pieced together a lot of Dragon Age lore for me.

But, I hadn't played Veilguard. All I had was the footage from September 19, the achievement list, and anything else BioWare had released.

So... was I right? And if so, how much was I right about?

This is your warning: This post will contain spoilers for the entirety of Dragon Age: the Veilguard, and all Dragon Age content made before Veilguard.

(no, this screenshot isn't a spoiler, I just like it.)

Welcome Back for Round Two. >:)

Stating right off the bat: I have only played Dragon Age: the Veilguard 1.5 times and so this collection is very, very incomplete. There's no way for me to learn every codex before they're even all on the wiki. If I've missed something, let me know!!

I don't know how many parts this is going to have. This has been a very fun, but very sleep-deprived week. Expect no sensible organization here; we're letting the ADHD reign!

That said, here's what I'm going to attempt to do:

A Recap of My Grand Theory: Solas was the Blight's Beginning, and Mythal was Responsible

How I Made My Predictions: A Study in Context and Pattern Recognition

What Did I Actually Get Right? (An Overview, Anyway)

Early Signs Veilguard Added to My Theories

A Recap of My Grand Theory: Solas was the Blight's Beginning, and Mythal was Responsible

I really don't have space to go in depth on what amounted to 30,000 words of theorycrafting (which still boggles my mind, how did I do that and still find time to sleep). Instead, I'll link every post and make a bullet point list of what big guesses I made in each.

Part One: Solas was created from spirit and lyrium, crafted in one of Mythal's lyrium coffins that we see both in the Temple of Solasan and Trespasser. That means that some part of him was part of a Titan, once. There were hints about this across all three preceding games, and these hints re-contextualize those games and their place in the Dragon Age narrative. The Titans are likely the Forgotten Ones, because Fen'Harel walked among both the Forgotten Ones and the Evanuris in his legends.

Part Two: The Mythal lullaby in Trespasser is the story of Solas' creation, specifically. Da'durgen'lin refers to 'little stone boy.' Solas' twice-used phrase Ar dirthan'as ir elgara, ma sula e'var vhenan is him speaking to lyrium itself, which he does both with Sera (ancient elvhen? andruil memory? people go into more depth on this than I ever do) and the Eye of Kethisca. Elven phrases and pieces of writing/song from everywhere point to Solas' backstory and are all possibly written/sung by Solas. The codices in the Temple of Solasan are also referencing his backstory. There is a larger narrative at work happening in the random elven literature we find, and it suggests a lot of things about the world.

Part Three: The Titans are definitely the Forgotten Ones—at least, part of them (more on that later). They have all been sundered. One part remains in the Abyss; the other in the Fade. The Fade, in fact, is every Titan's consciousness, all sundered by Fen'Harel. This is the "leg" that the wolf chewed off to "escape the trap": Solas' connection to ir sa tel'nal, isatunoll. This is why he loves the Fade: he's reconnecting with the consciousness he broke himself apart from. This is also why he has Titan/Stone magic. This is also why lyrium grows both in the Abyss and in the Fade.

• Oh, and spirits seem like they might be the thoughts of Titans.

Part Four: The Chant of Light tells the story of the Evanuris, from their manifestation as spirits to their mining of lyrium and war with the Titans to the Makers' creation of "everyone else." The archdemons and Magisters Sidereal are also explained in its verses. The Chant also suggests the Maker is a Titan whose mind and body are sundered, and that Andraste's hearing the "voice of the Maker" is her hearing the Titan's song.

Part Five: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 1/3: Mythal is known to have mined people from lyrium. Elgar'nan probably sundered spirits, notably Dirthamen and Falon'Din. Falon'Din seems to have wanted to attack Titans that "belonged" to other Evanuris to gain more "worshippers" (lyrium people; slaves) for himself.

Part Six: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 2/3: Sylaise probably made the Scaled Ones. June probably is responsible for not just lots of inventions, but the invention of the geas. Dirthamen's "secrets" are "thoughts" (spirits) forced into the bodies of his worshippers... and animals... and trees (AKA, he made a lot of abominations).

Part Seven: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 3/3: the blight seems to be the Titans' defence against repeated attacks. Crucially, all of the Evanuris made the Titans this way... but Mythal made them that way first. The reason the Titans are "forgotten" now is because Mythal tried to erase all memory of them so that none would find the blight again. (She failed. Thanks, Andruil and Ghilan'nain).

Part Eight: The story of Solas, part 1/3: Solas came from an un-sundered world where both "mage magic" and "Stone magic" were the same thing. He was created in the Temple of Solasan, where "icy terror" became the first blighted Titan. Solas' existence was significant to the Evanuris because it suggested that one can survive the blight, and his moniker (the Dread Wolf) comes from the fact that he was a wolf (elven general) that came from the terror Titan (dread).

Part Nine: Since Solas' origin story is the start of the blight, then all of Solas' story from that point is not the story of just him, but the story of the blight. This signifies his place in Dragon Age's entire narrative, and also spells out what the overarching Point™ of the series is. Backed into a proverbial corner where none of the Evanuris would stop the things that angered the Titans, Solas' only choice was to sunder the Titans from their consciousness. He misses the Stone, also.

• He also imprisoned the Evanuris in Stone, something called "gangue" in Hissing Wastes codices.

• His ultimate goal is to return consciousness to the Titans, fixing the "wound" he made when the Veil went up.

Part Ten: The Inquisitor is special because their spirit is from the same Titan as Solas. The Breach is a threat because if the Veil comes down too soon, all the Titans will come back blighted and angry. The Veil disintegrating means all the Titans are waking anyway, little by little. The Dread Wolf shape is actually an aspect of Terror that can kill people with fear. The Evanuris who've been killed before have potentially had their spirits "recycled" and might be reincarnating into mortal people now. Oh, and a bunch of predictions on the companions, Solas/Mythal, etc, that I'll go over again down below.

How I Made My Predictions: A Study in Context and Pattern Recognition

I've had a lot of people ask how I... y'know. Did that. How one person could write 30,000 words of guesses in the week and a half before Veilguard, citing so many sources, and... not be that far off, probably.

Honestly the short version of this is, "I read the Chant of Light as it appears in World of Thedas, not with the canticles out of order like they are on the wiki, has anyone else done that?"

The longer version of this sounds even shorter, at first: I started playing Dragon Age games in March 2024, and I have ADHD.

Oh, and I'm a writer who's always been interested in game development, with dreams of maybe one day working in games or on video game IP. That helps shape my understanding of what games might need to accomplish, narratively, and the mechanisms they might use to accomplish those goals.

I was able to play all three games this summer. In fact, I finished Inquisition for the first time after Veilguard's first trailers this year, on June 26. What that means is that my first real experiences learning the finer lore of Dragon Age were all this year, and had the context of Veilguard's trailers. We knew we were getting a narrative followup to Trespasser, and so where did I center my focus? Trespasser. Everything I learned about Thedas, I tried to make sense in the context of Trespasser. Every piece of lore had to fit with Trespasser. Not just the environment of the Crossroads or the companions' banter, but what Trespasser was trying to teach us.

And most of its codices are about the Evanuris warring with the Titans. The Titans, who we'd just seen in Descent. The storytelling point of Trespasser was to make us question the nature and morality of Fen'Harel by giving us context about the Evanuris and their own history, then letting us ask for Solas' perspective on it.

That's the thing about Dragon Age. Very little of it is there pointlessly. Every level, every DLC, every codex, is there to teach you something. Even the smaller codices, which don't seem to mean anything tremendous, are there to teach you how to parse the voice of all the other codices. So even beyond the games, I asked myself: what is Tevinter Nights trying to teach me about how Thedas works? What is The Masked Empire teaching me? Is it the same? And what about World of Thedas, volumes 1 and 2, written from the perspective of Thedosian historians, deliberately written to misdirect the reader with the historians' biases?

Whatever I found had to work with what was promised in Veilguard: a controversial Solas. New understanding of the Evanuris. Harding's new magic. Regions of Thedas we never explored, and why those places would all matter.

Knowing the three act structure, as a writer, and knowing that ensemble casts all need to bring a puzzle piece of the grander theme into the main plot through their own personal quests, I had a vague skeleton of what I would need to find. The shape of the information I found would have to fit the world and the relationship dynamics advertised in the Veilguard. Origins would have to matter to the Veilguard; same with DA2; same with Inquisition. Despite the series being disconnected by featuring different leads, the worldbuilding is very much connected between instalments, and so Veilguard would have to be one logical step past everything that developed in Inquisition. (Nevermind a whole host of other criteria that honestly deserves its own post).

It's very hard to describe how the pattern recognition in some ADHD brains works. What I will say is... I noticed something. Every mistranslated elven codex where it deliberately says it has been mistranslated is an invitation for you, the player, to try and figure out what is correct. Everywhere that World of Thedas says that something must be preposterous to the historian narrating it is an invitation to ask yourself: could this be possible? How would that work?

Things like the linguistic overlaps between the elves and the dwarves are intentional. Words that are phonetically similar are far more often intentional than simple oversight. Every scrap of lore holds some significance.

Because in Thedas, every perspective is right, to some degree. Including the Chant of Light. Including ancient elvhenan. If you try and make them all reconcile with each other, and you've also done so in the context of the Veilguard, and you've also got ADHD and a near-photographic memory that is strongest with emotional memories and rules/systems? Well... You get me. You get 30,000 words of "one single picture of lyrium-spirit Solas cracked all of Thedas for me in the span of one mind-blown week while I power-read World of Thedas to check all my facts and essentially lived inside the Dragon Age wiki."

(AKA, you get Bellara in human form. Sorry, Bellara. It's rough out here. But now you, reader, know the reason that this blog was renamed nadas-dirthalen in late September—and why I, when I embraced my nonbinary identity, chose the name Lore for myself.)

And what was promised in Inquisition, as well as in Veilguard's marketing? The Evanuris, Titans, and the blight. They would all have to tie together—and they did.

What Did I Actually Get Right? (An Overview, Anyway)

I'm going to try and categorize this. Oh god. These are going to be such disorganized posts, but I want them done before much information comes out, so bear with me.

What I Got Right:

Solas and Mythal: Yep. He caused the blight; she made him do it. He created the Veil and wounded himself. They weren't romantic; they were trauma-bonded. She wasn't a paragon of good. They both tried to stop the blight anyway.

Sundered Spirits: The sweet, sweet vindication of learning that Dirthamen and Falon'Din were sundered all along. Thank you, BioWare. We also learned that this happened to the Titans (more on broader implications in the last category in this section).

Titan Stories In Elven: Bellara sang "Ir sa tel'nal Mythal las ma theneras" and my heart soared. :) My ego swelled. :) That's all the confirmation I need right now that I hit the nail on the head with the elven lullabies and Solas' backstory.

The Chant of Light Told the Story of the Evanuris: The demons that would be gods. We know now that all the Evanuris manifested physically from their original spirit forms. The Chant called it.

Mythal, Andruil, and Ghilan'nain's Roles in the Blight: Mythal created it, but wanted it sealed away; Andruil found it again; Ghilan'nain made it grow and grow.

Taash, a little? I hypothesized that fire-breathers might come from the Scaled Ones or otherwise have been engineered by an Evanuris. I know they were engineered for the purpose of war, but not by whom (I... think. Needs a replay to confirm).

Davrin: Yes! Davrin was the one who connected that Solas feels responsible for specifically the blight and conveyed that to the rest of the team. He questioned the nature of the Grey Wardens and helped to choose a path forward without any archdemons left.

Harding: Yup. Titan connection. Yup, our narrative path to finding out about angered Titans.

"Do We Win?/Do We Stop the Blight?" Well, in Solas' good ending, we do get what I thought we would: the Evanuris all gone, the Titans on a path to restoration.

What I Definitely Did Not Get Right:

VARRIC?!?! When I said, "If you know, you know. Lyrium dagger, dwarf. If you don't know, close your eyes and pretend you read nothing" — GUYS I THOUGHT VARRIC WOULD GET MAGIC HE REALLY HATED AND I CRIED LIKE A BABY WHEN I SAW WHAT HAPPENED :(

Lucanis: I really thought Spite would be a Forgotten One. However, it's stated a few times that Spite is not a run-of-the-mill demon, and Lucanis is not your average abomination. I wonder if there's banter I'm missing, or if something will happen with that in DA5. Poisoned fruit, and all that.

Emmrich: I really thought Emmrich would do world-changing "give all the spirits back to the Titans" stuff. I think my error with most of the companions is that I forgot how much information actually can feasibly fit into a game without it being 300 hours long or melting the brains of its players.

Neve: Nothin' happened with gangue mentions, or Archon mentions! I was way, way off with Neve.

The Eclipse: It did not have anything to do with the Bird Boy Evanuris™ :( But Elgar'nan moving the sun and moon was badass as hell, and I honestly loved Elgar'nan far more than even my highest expectations.

What I Haven't Gotten Right... YET:

Bellara….?????? Guys I thought there was a Dirthamen connection and they put a codex in the game that says specifically that Dirthamen held a fondness for frogs, same as Bellara. And then they gave her a brother who... ya know... was... presumed... dead... AKA, on the other side of the Veil... for a while... And then they gave that brother a sundered piece of Bellara's own vallaslin. John Epler, where are you going with this please I wanna KNOW, the Bird Boys™ occupy my mind at all hours. (But also? Surprise Forgotten One mention with Bellara, and surprise Anaris mention specifically, and I'm going to pat myself on the back for being so oddly focused on Anaris in my predictions.)

Chant of Light Confirmations: I actually have yet to see a single Chant of Light verse in Veilguard. I think they're saving that one for later, keeping it up their sleeves for the next games. The needle didn't move with confirming/denying anything in the Chant except for the Evanuris as spirits that manifested into physical shape and then sought to conquer the Titans.

Titans-as-Forgotten-Ones: For a time, I thought they disproved me on this, showing Anaris as a spirit, the "eighth" while the "sixth and seventh" roamed free. Showing Anaris craving a body to wreak his evil (?) machinations upon the world. But then I got to thinking, and I realized: they never said the Forgotten Ones are spirits, they just showed one being a spirit. What did they say about spirits in general, or the Titans' relation to the Fade in general?

Titans-and-Fade Connection: I theorized that the Titans' consciousness is the Fade, and the Veil is what keeps them all sundered. I theorized that spirits are thoughts, either floating around in the Fade or held in lyrium. For a long time in Veilguard, I thought I was being disproven. Solas' memories don't say that the Veil sundered all Titans, and they don't say that Titans' consciousness is the Fade, either. But, as I went through Veilguard, I realized... they also didn't not say it. And that's when I knew.

I have to go digging again. And after 8.5 days, here's what I think I've got. It's a start, but a promising one.

Early Signs Veilguard Has Added to My Theories

Remember how I said that there are very few in things in Thedas that are there for no reason? Well, Veilguard has given us plenty of tie-ins to previous material already, just with the stuff I remember off-hand from the past week, no wiki entries to go by yet.

(Please bear in mind that I have had this game for 8 days and this is just barely scratching the surface of its content!)

Let me re-examine some of the things I mentioned above:

Titans-as-Forgotten-Ones

The Nadas Dirthalen's very first word is Sulahn'nehn. Remember how I said many things in Thedas are there intentionally, and that World of Thedas is a book made up of invitations to solve puzzles? This is no exception. World of Thedas states that, translated literally, this common word for "rejoice" actually means "sing again."

That word might be a rallying cry for the spirits of Titans who'd, I don't know... lost their song. A promise of plot to come, made a decade ago. Why else would they include that word, instead of anything more frequently used by characters/the fandom?

I also noticed: the Nadas Dirthalen looks to be contained in a lyrium crystal, specifically. We already know that lyrium is used to store memories! It may be that the Nadas Dirthalen, the inevitability of knowledge, was Anaris storing his knowledge and memories in an attempt to pre-empt the creation of the Veil. Nadas Dirthalen might be a promise: a promise that the Forgotten Ones will return to sing again, and that their knowledge and memories will guide them to victory.

But if I was going to hazard a guess that this is the case, I couldn't base my theory on just this line of dialogue.

Titans-and-Fade-Connection

First and foremost: Neve and a couple codices say that Solas' ritual to create the Veil went wrong. We all heard Solas cry out in pain at the moment of its creation!

Second: defeating one of the revenants, whose name is something like "The Slaughtered Pillars," made my ears perk up. I noticed in the combat with the Betrayal of Felassan that the dialogue lines are supposed to be Solas' regrets, given voice.

You wanna know what it says when you fight the Slaughtered Pillars?

"Light and song, stolen."

You wanna know what the Chant of Light refers to the Fade as? Three guesses. C'mon. :)))

That's right! Light! But why would the slaughtered pillars of the earth complain about their light AND song being stolen? Well—I'm guessing that their Light is the Fade; their consciousness. And without their consciousness, their dreams, all concept of isatunoll was lost to them.

When I heard this line, I threw out what I thought I had been told about the Forgotten Ones being spirits, not Titans. Now, I have a new idea (one that still needs verifying and much codex-reading): the Forgotten Ones are those sundered spirits that Solas severed from the Titans. The entire Fade being cut off from Thedas was an unintended consequence that hurt him as badly as it did the Titans he meant to put to sleep.

(We don't even know that he was in uthenera by choice, with how often he talks about being weakened.)

Suddenly, "Sing again," makes total sense as a rallying cry for Anaris and the Titans, both. I very much look forward to digging through the minutiae of every codex to see if I can find anything else that backs this up!

Terror/Horror Mentions

I need to really examine this one, ideally with the help of a wiki that doesn't quite exist yet for this game, to get all the exact lines. But I swear that fear is mentioned almost constantly in Solas' memories, and also a lot in conjunction with Anaris and with Harding's Titan.

I'm not letting go of my "Solas was crafted from Terror/Dread" theory. Not yet. Not yet.

Bellara and the Bird Boys™

I think BioWare's favourite game, at this point, is teasing us with sneaky little mentions of Dirthamen and Falon'Din. In Veilguard, we went to Zazikel's skeleton in the Cauldron. In Arlathan, owls were just... glowing. Everywhere. Why? I don't know! Rook also doesn't seem to know! But they mention it many times over, and that is always a cue for us to pay attention and ascertain why.

I don't know what Bellara's sneaky little connection to Dirthamen and Falon'Din could mean for the two sundered Evanuris. I don't know if it means that I'm right, and that Dirthamen escaped Fade Jail when Corypheus and the Magisters Sidereal entered the Black City. I don't know if it means that, when Dirthamen and Falon'Din died, their spirits fused back together (because... Mythal's didn't?).

I just know that this has worsened how I constantly search for the Bird Boys™ in everything. Something is happening here, I just need to figure out what.

What Do I Think This Means?

I think this means that BioWare are about to make good on their promise shown in the Poisoned Fruit post-credits scene. Dragon Age 5: Something Something Something Forgotten Ones, ooohhhh, spooky, Terror Terror Malice Fear Nightmare Time, Featuring Solas (reluctantly or gladly) Helping Heal the Titans. And did we mention that the Forgotten and the Forbidden Ones have always been more closely linked than most of the fanbase thought?

But I can only guess at that for now, and I've got some serious reading to do before I say anything more specific than that.

-----

As always, if you read this far, you're one of the real ones. This has been a jumbled mess of midnight thoughts, but I promise you this: I'm only just digging into Veilguard's finer workings. I'm only just starting to put its many pieces together.

And like every Dragon Age game, I can tell that there is something big lurking between the lines of every one. I just need to read something like 135 mementos and [redacted] codices from everywhere else several times over in order to figure out what it is.

But this is just Part One. I promise: the second it clicks for me, I'll write it all in a rambling frenzy for you, too.

It's still super up in the air, but I think for the next one, I might try and tackle What Dragon Age: the Veilguard Did Narratively—and What DA5's Story Will Likely Do to Follow. We'll see what happens to me 50, 100, or 200 codices from now. :)