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androgynousblackbox · 2 months ago

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The Horror of Our Love. 7 [Appleradio, Radioapple]

A fang or two

"Alright, so… putting aside all of the horrible images I am forever cursed with now, a bunch of stuff has happened.

First, as usual, I did some research to confirm the stuff we saw. I looked into the symbols that Magne was drawing: it's definitely a variant of an old as fuck fertility spell, one that nobody uses anymore because we have better alternatives now. Originally was meant to be fulled by the blood of the father and nothing else, regardless if the father knew about it, wanted it or not. It doesn't take a genius to see why it has gone out of style. But that is when the two parents are human.

The variant that now I am sure Lilith Barkin taught Magne was the one that allowed a vampire ancestor she has to have children with her human partner. Then Magne took that and went ahead to adapt it to his own case. Although I have no idea how much he modified at all. Regardless, that was easy enough to clear.

Moving on the next question. Why does a man would hide the fact that he has a daughter in order to make her pass as a mere magical creature? The most obvious answer is, you presumably killed a bunch of people in order to have that kid in the first place, because I guess you are against adoption or something. You don't want to respond to people asking how did a kid coming from a human has a snake tail, snake tongue and can only speak like a snake, because then you have to talk about the snake father that has killed people for at least 500 years, at least. If people knew that you kill people, they might try to stop you, so you don't tell them anything at all.

Fine, that makes sense, right? But just out of curiosity, I started seeing into interspecies relationships. By themselves, without adding the murder aspect. Apparently the legislation for it has only been permitted in the last 10 years. I was fucking shocked when I find out that. 10 years back, you could be dating someone that for the most part looks like a human, talks like a human, reasons like a human, can consent like a human, but can't get married simply because they aren't human. 10 years ago, nobody thought you could even want to do that, or people actively didn't want it to happen, take your pick, so nobody bothered into making it official. That is just fucking nuts to me.

I am not about to say that I get why anyone would want to marry, I don't know, a centaur or a vampire or whatever. But if someone wants to do it, the fuck do I care? As long everyone is on board, why should it matter? Shit, if it wasn't for all the murder and blood and devouring bodies, Magne could call the giant snake hubby all he wanted. That alone is not hurting anyone. Just don't tell me how you have sex and we could be cool.

All of this meaning that the vampire ancestor of Lilith? Unless she managed to disguise herself as a human, may have never been able to be recognized by law as the mother of her own children. If anything happened to her wizard husband, the kids would be considered orphan and put on adoption. Same case for literally any other hybrid that has ever existed before then. Maybe even now, because that is the thing.

The law already accepted the marriage, but it's a whole fucking mess when it comes to what could result from those unions. In the best case escenario, your kid is deemed human enough and allowed to exist in society with a marker on their identification that says they are a hybrid for the rest of their life. Why? I don't know. In the worst case escenario, your kid is not considered human enough for whatever fucking reason and they are classified as humanoid magical creatures. And then you get into a whole bunch of other bullshit that is magical creatures legislation, that I won't get into. Either way, your kid is not just your kid anymore. They are now a registered creature by the government that they have to regulate to make sure they don't disturb wizard society too much. It doesn't matter that they are very much sentient still.

If Anthony and I decided to have a kid, and that kid inherit his powers, and the kid decides they want to grow extra arms and have an ugly enough face at all times because they just want to? Some fucker can decide based on that alone that they don't deserve to go to school with other kids, they don't deserve to own property, they can't work. Oh, but they might be able to get married still! How about that for some fucking consolation? Fucking bullshit.

The kid of Magne, back then, would have no doubt received that treatment. No wonder even Lucifer got concerned at seeing her tail. Even a fucking snake trapped on a school knew how much shit a hybrid could recieve. Things like hair or skin color can be disguised with potions or what not, you can take care of those, but you can't just give legs to something that never had them in the first place with magic. You also can't fucking ask a kid to never move the inferior part of their body so nobody knows what it is. That is just cruel.

And yes, I know how stupid that sounds talking about the guy who killed a bunch of people. But hey, I am not about to be the one to complain that he didn't make his own kid suffer that particular kind of way. I thought he didn't tell people about it because serial killer secret, but even if they were the most harmless group ever conceived and Magne never harmed a fly, it still would be relatively better to have Charlie as essentially a pet. I can see normal parents making that choice back then. It is fucked up, but at least for once is not a kind of fucked up Magne is entirely responsible for.

So, alright, that goes for the side of giving some conext to all of this. Now we can go back to the whole reason this investigation ever started. Just like I was fearing, the guy Magne killed in the vision he showed us has not been reported missing by anyone on this side of the globe. They did in German, though, where I also don't speak the language and had to use a translator, but understood enough.

Young idiot tourist that just fucks off whenever he wants because he has no estable job. Everyone around him knows this about him and aren't surprised about any of this until it has been months without any news. Only then they start making some tiny noise on the last places he had gone to before. Not Hugsmeade, though. Literally nobody knew that he was going there. I wouldn't blame anyone on that town if they just thought that tourist simply fucked off. Lucifer literally choose the most perfect victim they could ever hope to wish for and it was by complete fucking accident. Unbelievable.

I tried calling one of the people who tried to find this kid. For closure, you know. Obviously skipping the whole blood sacrifice for a human and giant snake hybrid, because I have no clue how could I even begin to explain that one. But the number was down and when I went looking for this person, they were already dead themselves so… end of that story, I guess. No other family that I can find. A car accident, by the way. Wizards are still susceptible to those.

Not gonna lie, that sucked to find out. The guy maybe didn't even talk enough English to understand Magne in his last moment. He tried to do something fun and end up as the last thing he ever did. It's not like he even knew that the house was occupied or something. His name is still going to be included in the written report. I am sure that must not have been the first or last “rat” they killed, just the one they showed us. Anthony for the first time in his life does not want to fuck around and find out about more. I do, though, so I ask to see more. The book just says that I won't like it, which I am sure it's true, based in how I reacted the first time, but to not worry because they never went for anyone they didn't need or didn't provoque them first. So said the soul of a serial killer. Allow me to doubt that.

In any case, around this time period there are some missing reports that keep being blamed as people getting lost in the woods. Never big enough numbers for people to really start worrying, so it went under the radar.

It seemed that our trail was about to go cold, didn't it? But oh, look at that, a mysterious package just happened to arrive at the right time with a note saying it will help us out. This is the thing though: I don't know who the fuck send this. It's a green envelope with my name and address printed on top. The letter was written on a typewriter, but the envelope is where I find it interesting because you don't do that unless you are actively avoiding using any kind of magic that could be traced. Quills detection spells have gotten very good in the last few years. Student of magic schools today are fucked because you can't fake anything or put it down without your professor knowing everything from anything you put down. What model of quill, the mood you were when writing it, if you copied the words from someone else, if that is how you really write or tried to change it to appear as someone else.

But muggle printers are out of the loop for us. I have used them before because of work, but I have no fucking clue of how they work or how would you ever know about any difference between them. For what I could research, there is just no way to do that, not even with magic. I know that the letter was sent from the muggle town next to our city. I know the people on that place were all enchanted to just remember an old lady in a wheelchair leaving that and nothing else, but that is it. I know there was a spell for that, not what they actually saw that day. I could maybe try to probe further, but it might end up turning their brains to mush so not an option.

What was inside the envelope that might as well could come from nowhere? A bracelet made out of fangs of different sizes and instructions in how to see through them. Since it can't make words like a diary or a book or sound like a radio, someone has to use it in order to get any information out of it. Because of course, it is another one of the pieces of Magne. I knew it as soon as I had that thing on my hands. It feels heavier than it should be and it's warm all the time, as if someone just took it out after hours of using it, even if it was in a box in my desk the whole day and it's freezing because someone I won't name, they already got an earful about it, forgot to adjust the temperature while we were away for lunch. Again.

Anthony thinks it could be an anonymous contributor and I won't say that it's impossible. Magne certainly ruined enough lives for someone out there to feel like they should collaborate if there was a real attempt to catch him. They could keep silent about who they are because if Magne found out their involvement, then that would be bad for them. Sure, I can believe that being the case. But this is a piece of the soul of a killer. Obviously valuable information is going to be within it. You already know how to access it. Take it to the authorities. Why would you grab that and deliver it to some random ass PI like us? If your aim is to fuck Magne, why do that? Especially assuming that is the only piece you have. Something we can't know for sure either because the letter doesn't say anything about that.

And is at that point thay Anthony goes well, why don't you send your info to the authorities if you trust them so much. Because this is my fucking case, one, I started it, I get to finish it, two, and three, fuck the authorities, those corrupt pieces of shit. But I get to say that as the guy who was inside of that bullshit factory for a few years before the smell of shit was too much. They are just going to say all of this happened a long time ago and that they are going to keep an eye out in case they see a giant white snake or a wizard too fond of it, before tossing it all to the side and congratulate themselves for a job well done. I know we can do this because I know us. Why would a stranger, though? You trust me to do this for you, but you can't trust me who you are?

My own theory goes in another direction. Magne send it. Why, I don't know. To send me more images of him and his husband fucking. To dangle in my face all the people he has killed and got away with. Because he thinks it's funny and it won't mean any risk for him. The idea he wants to be caught is a fucking joke so we are having none of that. Maybe he is aware on some level of what happens with each of his pieces and has decided to keep stirring the pot to see what happens. It's not like there is a bunch of literature about what happens to a wizard after doing this. It could be.

For now, I have tested the bracelet for any curse or other spells that could be on it. Nothing. Besides those details I already talked about, nobody would think there is anything special about the thing. Which only makes me think even more it came from Magne because who else is going to even know that?

Just in case, I will the one wearing it. Anthony is better with protective and healing spells, so if anything starts to happen he will know what to do better than me. Not that I would let him use it even if he wasn't, but you try to tell that to that guy. He kept insisting that he wanted to see more between the happy couple because his curiosity wasn't satisfied, but I am not risking it.

In the best case escenario, I gain the trust of this piece for it to show me something useful. In and out, we are done. In the worst escenario… Well, there is a reason I updated my will last week. Don't tell Anthony that. The look on Magne's face as he was killing that guy just won't leave me alone, you know? Like the guy was just making dinner, something mundane and normal that just had to be done. The way the knife just kept bouncing off on that man's chest and Magne was amused by it just kept playing in front of my eyes even now. Anthony didn't sleep well once we returned either. We stayed watching movies almost all night.

And speaking of the devil, look who decided to stop by. Do you really need all those charms? If you say so, you are the expert.

According to the instructions, all you need to do is wear it and then pinch yourself with any of the fangs until it penetrates skin. You have to let it touch your blood and you will be inside, like that book showed us they can do. It's the only way to make any sort of communication two ways with it.

Anything that involves blood is powerful magic. Literally any wizard with the most basic education possible knows that already. So… this better be worth it.

Alright, Angel, you ready? Heh, anyone would say that you are going to war with a face like that one. I just think it's cute, that is all.

Well, here we go. How lucky of us this thing is elastic, huh? For my big ass hands. I don't know if it's making any difference which fang I choose, the letter didn't say, so I will grab the smallest one. I will leave this recording just in case something interesting happens here.”

[Note from Husk: The only thing you hear is Angel calling out my name.]

[Note from Anthony: The recording doesn't have anything useful after that.]

It was like being spitted out by an aggressive portal. Not as painful as just disorienting. Husk needed a moment to find his equilibrium again, only to realize he wasn't the only one.

“What the fuck, Angel?” spat out. His partner lifted his head, brushing his pink hair back. “You were supposed to be my backup outside.”

“Well, I have decided instead that I am going to be your backup inside” Angel straightened up, not a single drop of regret or shame as he put his hand on his waist. “If you seriously thought I was going to let you do this alone, then fuck you. You clearly know shit about me. And you are not the boss of me either so shut up. Half of that office is mine.”

Husk felt the tugging of a smile at the side of his mouth that he didn't fight too much. He shook his head and stood up, looking around. They were once again in the classroom of Magne. The man himself was grading papers at the desk, the scratching of his quill writing down notes the only sound. At his side there was a bigger cage containing Charlie sleeping over her back, covered in a blanket full of duckies. Husk got closer to the man as Angel kneeled to see the kid. He moved a hand in front of the professor. No reaction. Another memory.

“She is two here, I think” commented Angel. “I remember she started using her hair in a ponytail in our second year.”

“These are exams from the end of the year” noticed Husk, reading some of the papers Magne was holding. “No wonder he looks done with this.”

Husk threw a glance in her direction. He saw her move her head and then stretch out in her bed as she let out a long yawn. Her mouth extended at an angle that should be impossible for any human, revealing a tiny row of white pointy teeth, before she closed it again and rubbed her face. All without making a single sound. She blinked an eye and then the other, lifting herself up to manage to see Magne still concentrated in his job.

She pulled out her blanket and grabbed her rat plushie nearby, quickly wrapping it on her tail and wrestling it as if it were her prey. But soon she lost interest in that too. Crawling over her hands she moved towards the front of her cage. The door opened up easily as it was unlocked. Smiling to herself, the small toddler managed to get out, dragging her tail as the very tip agitated happily. She was fast over the stone floor.

By the time she disappeared down the hallway, Magne sighed and cranked his neck. He stretched out his arms over his head as he threw a glance toward the cage. Then all color vanished off his face.

“Charlie?” called the man in parsel tongue.

Because they were still in their perspective, they could not only understand him clearly. They could also hear the instant panic of his voice.

“Snakelet, where are you?” He stand up from his desk, looking under it.

All the exams completely forgotten as he kept looking around the classroom. He even searched behind the shelf full with books and cursed objects, before his gaze went over the door and stared. As the possibilities started to sinken in, a single no escaped his lips.

Any parent would already be scared of leaving their toddler alone in an open space. A magic school as big as Hogwarts offered way to many hiding spots, in one hand, and in the other were the students. If that was his kid, the first idea of Husk would be to worry about some asshole kid finding her first. Regardless if that was also the direction of Magne's mind or not, he quickly grabbed his wand off the desk and pronnounced a spell that Anthony recognized. Once he did, he opened up the door and they followed him.

"My mom used that spell all the time to find us" explained Angel. "It's the ultimate parent spell for when your little shit ran off. The closer you are to your kid, your wand will vibrate in your hand and tug you towards them. I remember being 15 and already knowing ways to neutralize it."

"Doubt that is the case for a 2 year old hybrid baby."

Their professor was keeping his hands on his pockets, rushing when the halls were empty, but walking only slightly faster when he saw anyone else in his way. All the time his red slitted eyes behind the darkened glasses were observing everywhere. The more time passed without Magne finding Charlie, his breathing was becoming more agitated even if the rest of his face remained exactly the same. The only reason they could notice it at all that was because the beating of the man came anywhere from there, it was impossible for them to escape it.

They got different glimpses of differentes hallways, none of them lasting more than a few seconds, one going down the stairs. The scene estabilized as Magne came closer to a door they knew was a janitor closet, left ajar. The rest of the are was deserted. Magne's hand quickly opened up the doorknob, lifting his wand with light.

"Well, fuck" let out Anthony as Husk groaned.

Their feet might as well could have been nailed to the floor. Charlie was in fact there. Lifting herself up, giggling, from the abdomen of a dead student. Magne closed the door behind him. Both of them were instantly inside, without moving, to see Magne kneeling. His mouth twitching at the corners as if it didn't know to smile or not yet.

"My snakelet" called softly, reaching over to pet her head. Charlie reached over to him. She was practically swimming inside of that open abdomen, drenched in red. Magne picked her up by the armpits, not fighting his smile anymore. "You had me worried, my dear. Did you do this or you just happened to find it?"

Charlie giggled and opened up her mouth, proudly pointing to her long white fangs that she retracted easily. That was the only point of white left in her face.

"My sweet dear Charlie" Magne brushed the bloodied up, reddened hair out of Charlie's way and kissed her cheek. His smile was too big to be contained on his face as he hugged her. Husk felt sick at noticing that Magne actually had his eyes watering and did not thought for a moment that it was because of the lost of a life. To confirm his suspicions further, Magne let out a hearty laugh. "Were you that hungry, my dear? Or you were just bored? Either way, wait until papa hears about this. Your first kill, all on your own! Dad is so proud of you, my little one" said, kissing her cheeks over and over, as Charlie giggled.

"Holy fuck" Anthony uncovered his mouth. "I just realized who that is."

"Travis Johnson" completely Husk, who already recognized the face of the student as well. An ugly motherfucker from their same house, in his fifth year, that nobody but his groups of friends liked very much. Loud, obnoxious, and from what he heard from other students, liked to chase around classmates even after being told no. On the extended arm of the guy it was easy to see two points, no doubt the ones where Charlie had bitten him. "Remember what they told us at school? He sneaked into the woods and was found mauled, almost entirely eaten."

Anthony stayed in silence for a moment, looking over. Then he swallowed hard and spoke again.

"That is not almost entirely eaten, Husky."

"No, it's not" Husk took a deep breath and looked at the blank stare of the kid. He didn't had a single positive memory of him. But he didn't deserve that. Neither of them say it, but they thought the same thing: that Travis was probably still alive and paralyzed when Charlie started tearing into his skin. "They haven't finished him yet."

"Such a deadly precious little one" cooed Magne, nuzzling the head of Charlie. More traces of fresh blood spread across his face, not that any of them minded. "My little dangerous predator. He must not have seen it coming at all for you to lure him here. You are truly the daughter of your father" The professor kissed her cheeks as Charlie giggled, the very tip of her tail wagging wrapped around his arm. "Want to show papa your first ever prey, dear?"

"Papa!" Charlie jumped excitedly and Magne chuckled, brushing a strand of hair behind her pointy ear. Apparently that was one of the few words she was able to say confidently, because otherwise her blabbering to Magne was completely incomprehensible. Magne still nodded like he totally got it and congratulated her all the same.

The scene changed again.

Father and daughter were now clean, walking a path in what could only be the Forbidden Forest. Nearby they could hear the sound of twigs and something heavy moving before Lucifer appeared behind a tree, on his full size.

Until then they had only seen Lucifer inside of the home with Magne or heard Magne's description of him, neither of which could prepare them to have an idea of how much bigger he was on his default state. Husk let out a curse under his breath at seeing that white head that was bigger than his entire body alone. That beast could have eaten the both of them in one bite just as easily as they could devour slices of pizza.

The thought that a younger, even smaller Magne ever looked at such a beast and his first thought wasn't to run away from it as far as he could, but rather be attracted to it, was only a testament of how Husk was never going to be able to fully understand their professor.

Lucifer slithered nearby Magne. As a full grown adult, the head of the man was the only thing that appeared over the back of the snake.

"The area is all free now" said Lucifer. "Nobody is going to bother us. What did you want to show me?"

"Today your daughter did something rather reckless" started Magne, kneeling to put Charlie on the ground and she grabbed to the end of his tunic, giggling already. "Scared me half to death too. When I found her, can you imagine what she had done?"

"What?" asked Lucifer, getting his head close enough to Charlie to nudge her with his nose as he shrinked himself, reaching the same size he had on their home.

"Her first ever prey" Magne couldn't contain his smile any longer and opened up the bag he was bringing with him, directing his wand first inside and then to the clear open area in front of them. In a single blink the body of Travis appeared in front of them, no longer bleeding, undoubtly dead.

Lucifer rised up again, coming closer to it. As always, it was difficult to read a snake's expression. Maybe shocked or surprised, Lucifer flickered his tongue over the dead body as Charlie giggled and Magne continue talking.

"She even had the good sense of getting him into a isolated place before delivering the final blow. Of course, she is never getting out of my sight like that again. But isn't wonderful how much she managed to do completely on her own already?"

Lucifer "sniffed" all over with his tongue and over the over stomach before his eyes found his daughter again. Something that could only be described like a smile spread over his face when Charlie started moving over her two short arms towards him. She looked even tinier compared with her father. Lucifer moved to bump his head gently against her, wrapping his tail around her without actually touching her.

"He… how old was he, Al?" Lucifer perked up, his excitement almost making him stutter. "He must have been on his six year or something! He didn't looked particularly weak or anything!"

"Fifth year and indeed, a healthy young man that was a nuisance for everyone around him. A complete idiot, terrible student and overall, no doubt, a dissapointment for his parents" Magne couldn't contain his smile of pride at looking at the curly blonde head. "Charlie might as well do a favor for the entire Wizard world taking that one out."

"Fifth year?" That seemed to be the only piece of information Lucifer cared about and he cooed over Charlie. brusin his mouth over her forehead over and over on his best attempt at kisses he could could do. "So young and so big, but he still couldn't do anything in front of my baby girl! Absolutely nothing! Was the guy bothering you, sweetie, or he just happened to pass by? Can you tell papa everything?"

"Food" said Charlie, happily, and then she moved towards the body, crawling as fast and confidently as before. "Papa, food! Food?" She looked up to him, wagging her tail.

"Do you… do you want to share your first prey with me?" Lucifer sounded absolutely moved by this, his red pupils expanding. "Are you sure you don't want to finish it yourself? You totally earned it, sweetie."

"Papa!" Charlie giggled and dipped her hand on the wound, extending to him a chunk of her treasure.

"Well" Lucifer chuckled, going to the other side, even as he still sounded overwhelmed ", if you insist, snakelet. Thank you, you are so very generous."

Magne sat on the root of a tree protruding from the ground, observing his little family devouring what once was his own student with a pleased grin. Lucifer was clearly taking smaller bites that he could actually have, all to allow Charlie to still have more. It was frankly surprising how much could fit inside of a 2 year old baby. By the time Charlie finally pulled apart, belly full, curling on herself in the ground, many bones of Travis were sticking out.

Angel refused to see, gripping the arm of Husk as he battled against his nausea, as Husk himself kept his focus solely on Magne. Lucifer circled around Charlie to make sure she was indeed sleeping to digest her meal.

"I can finish what is left" whispered Lucifer, reaching over where the professor was. The blood around his mouth was no longer dripping, but still stand out in the dark over the white scales. Under the moon that was their only light, they almost looked like spots of ink. "We can just burn his uniform."

"I was thinking of just leaving it there, as a courtesy to his parents at least" said Magne, taking the chin of the snake to lick him and then his lips, colouring in red too. "There is no shortage of explanations for what could have happened to him here. That way they can have something to bury."

"Are you sure?"

It didn't seemed like Lucifer particularly cared one way or another.

"Positive" Magne nuzzled against the beast, who slithered closer as a result. With a sigh through his nose, the professor opened up his legs to wrap one around the white body with a lazy ankle. It was more a declaration of intentions than an actual invitation. "Seeing you working together with our daughter has given me some ideas."

"What kind of ideas?" Lucifer tilted his head, tail wrapping around the leg of the wizard.

Magne petted the back of Lucifer's head and then the rest of his neck, trailing with his fingers the path of scales over the skin. He turned slightly to kiss the corner of Lucifer's mouth and stay there for a few seconds.

"What do you feel about having another?"

"Babe."

"Why not?" Magne sighed. "We can take care of them, no matter how they come out. It's safe, we know it is."

"And you almost got find out a million times" Lucifer rested his head on Magne's shoulder. "With another baby already to take care of, all it takes is one slip."

"I will obliviate anyone who sees more than necessary. Or kill them, I don't care" said Magne easily. He continue petting Lucifer, but his own eyes looked over the tiny figure of Charlie napping. "Do not think I am saying any of this lightly, love. I am well aware of the consequences."

"It's too risky and there is only so much I can even do" Lucifer came closer, his body pressed against the front of Magne. "I would love to have more. A bunch of snakelets following you around in a row that Charlie can play with. Of course I want that too. But maybe it would be best to wait."

"Wait for what, exactly, dear?"

"Break the curse. Or find another solution. Anything that lets me being more able to defend our family, to give both of you a life outside of here" Lucifer separated just enough to see at the wizard. "Or you don't think you can do it now? I guess it has been a while. Maybe this is the best we are going to get and should resign myself already."

"Shut your filthy mouth" hissed Magne through gritted teeth. Lucifer just looked at him and bumped his head lightly against his shoulder. "I made a promise to you. I plan to fulfill it."

"Do it then" Lucifer added with a teasing note. "And when you do, we can have as big of a family as you want. That can be my promise to you."

"I will hold you to it, you know" said Magne with an arched eyebrow. "As soon I made my part, I will expect yours in return."

"I will be happy to" Lucifer nuzzled him, almost hiding on the neck of the professor. "If anyone is capable of doing it, it's going to be you."

"Took you long enough to realize" huffed Alastor. But the hand that hold Lucifer away to join their foreheads was gentle. "I guess I can use that as more motivation, if anything."

At that, the scene dissolved all around us. No matter how many times they went through the same transition, it never stopped feeling like they too would dissapear if they stopped holding onto each other. The only saving grace is that it was brief and suddenly they were back on the Hall of the castle.

It was a new welcoming feast, another year started. Husk immediately found himself in one of the tables, ruffling the now purple and longer hair of a young Anthony sitting at his side.

"Argh, I don't what I was thinking. That was not my color at all" groaned Angel. "The cut is cute though. Should I try it again?"

Husk shushed him just as the Headmistress was standing up, commanding silence out of the rest of the presents without much effort. As she started with her usual speech, Husk took notice of the other professors at the table. Magne was there, of course, with no Charlie on sight so she had to be with her father. Professor Barking was at his side, the same polite sweet smile that was the usual in her face. All the faces he could recognize, except one.

"That guy" commented to Angel, pointing at the man with square glasses sitting at the end of the table. "Fuck, I forgot his name."

"Don't ask me" Angel shrugged. "We didn't even have him for an entire year."

"Please, give your warmest welcome to your new professor of Potions, Vincent Voxwell!"

As the entire Hall was filled with appluases, the man gave a wide smile as he stand up. But they didn't get to hear his speech before they were transfered to another office. This one wasn't Magne's, but it had still other jars in the shelves alongside heavy books. Behind a luxurious desk that looked out of place, professor Voxwell stand up with a bottle in hand.

"You didn't think we would be having our reunion without something to sweeten our tongue, right, Alastor?" Voxwell chuckled, offering the chair in front of him. "Sit down, sit down. How long has it been? Eight years?"

"Nine" said Magne, squinting his eyes behind his glasses. With that one word, Husk already had the impression that the man would have prefered to be a lot more years than that. "I was under the impression that you wanted to teach at Durmstrang. I was rather shocked when Sera mentioned your name as one of our new colleagues."

"Ah, too cold. I got to teach there a year before I bounced. If you ever thought that Hogwarts is too lax about child safety then you haven't seen anything yet. Kids would swim in the frozen lake literally every day, come out and come to class with their hair still wet. I felt shivers just watching them. No, thank you" Voxwell did shivered, making appear a pair of glasses to start filling them out. "No research program is worth that much."

"I would rather not, Vox…"

"Oh, come on, don't leave me drinking it alone. It's Fire Breath Scotch. I know you liked that one. You got super drunk on that one the day after you got the scores to your last exam, remember? You even sang with the karaoke and dance before crashing into the couch."

Magne's lip twitched slightly. He looked over at the bottle and then the man. Apparently deciding that the bottle was worth it after all, he sat down and immediately brought the glass to him as Voxwell sat down.

"So, Hogwarts!" said Voxwell, making an ample gesture. "Not bad for a first time job, eh, Al? Be honest with me. How much did you messed with Sera's mind to let that happen?" teased with a sharp smile.

"Enough to let you come here, it seems" responded Magne with a shrug, taking the first sip and immediately shook his head. He exhaled deeply. "My, it's not kidding with fire breath! I didn't had one of those in ages."

"You are kidding. What the hell do you do then when you aren't teaching these kids to not blow themselves up?"

"Have a life" Magne looked over at the window. "Speaking of, I shouldn't stay for long."

"Why?" Voxwell smiled wide, sitting on the desk with his legs crossed, swaying his drink inside of the glass. "Do you have someone waiting on you?"

"Yes, indeed."

Magne said it simply, taking another sip. Either not noticing or not caring about the way that one of Voxwell's eyes twitched.

"Woulnd't that happen to be your "darling" you wouldn't shut up about back in college?"

Magne didn't answer immediately, looking down at his hand. He couldn't just take away his glove without revealing how coal black his skin had become, or show the golden ring around his finger.

"The same one" said with a pleased smile, that had nothing to do with the other man. "We got married, actually."

Voxwell straightened up, widening his smile even more. Every tooth in full pure white display.

"Great" said, taking a sip. "Congratulations. I haven't seen him in the welcome party. Does he live in the castle?"

"No, we have our own home" Magne took another sip and smiled into the glass. "I fixed it up just for us. Turned out quite lovely, if I do say so myself."

"Awesome" another sip.

"He totally wants him" commented Angel and Husk nodded.

"Oh, yeah. I didn't even know they were friends."

"Honey, we are friends. This guy could have died in a ditch and our dear professor wouldn't even care to know about it."

"So what have you been doing?" continued on Voxwell, sitting up at his chair and lifting his own feet to the desk. "Besides getting hitched to your highschool sweetheart like some nerd."

Magne direted him a sideglance for the rude gesture, but didn't comment on it.

"Oh, nothing much. I continue to keep myself updated on the latest development for protections against curses. Reading, researching, all that fun stuff."

"Oh, yeah, your personal pet project that you never told anyone so nobody stole the idea. Is that still going too?"

"Unfortunately so. I would also like to reap the rewards already, but alas. I guess there is no hurrying up when it comes to new discoveries" Magne shrugged once again, but Husk saw the way his top lip twitching slightly.

"You know, if you told me, I might even be able to help you out. The libraries of Durmstrang are full of that dark stuff and I still keep in contact with some of my collegues there" Voxwell offered, reclining over his chair to get his chin over his palm. "Just give me a mention on your notes when you publish your work and we are even."

"Hum" Magne tilted his head. "I might consider it."

Voxwell's face light up with a grin, offering a toast to new discoveries. The moment their glasses clinked together, they saw a collection of moments. Voxwell coming to the office of Magne with a new bottle. Voxwell inclining over to Magne to tell him something on his ear and Magne chuckling in response. They did look more like friends then. Over and over, moments of them looking for the other and spending time together. Sometimes professor Barkin was there, but most of the time she wasn't. Until they finally settled on another scene, as Magne was walking through the back door of their home. Lucifer slithered down from the stairs to come to find him and flickered his tongue, lifting his head off the floor.

"You are drunk" commented, with a less than pleased tone.

"I am tipsy" nodded Magne, smiling big as he let his scarf on the hanger of the hallway. "It's the first day of vacations, dear. All the teachers got together to celebrate. Was I supposed to say no?" The man turned to Lucifer and kissed his head. "How is Charlie?"

"She is sleeping now" Lucifer sighed, following as Magne was making his way to their bedroom. Falling with a grace expected from a man who just wanted to rest already, Magne pulled out his hand to take out and put in their place his shoes. "That new guy brought the bottles."

"Yep" Magne sighed and struggled to pull out his tie, before he sighed and just changed his clothes into pajama to let himself lay on the bed. Lucifer came close to wrap himself around the man, his head near Magne's hand that he used to pet him. "I don't even remember what it was, but it didn't taste bad."

"You could just say no."

"Why? It's not like any of us has to work tomorrow. All the students are gone already."

If snakes could frown or pout, that was no doubt the kind of expression that Lucifer would be giving him.

"Nevermind" said with a sigh. Magne opned up his mouth, but he continue on before he could let out any word. "Has he helped you out with the books?"

"He said that sometime this week he should be receiving them" Magne turned to Lucifer and hugged to his body like it were a long pillow, one leg over. "Are you upset?"

"No."

"You sound upset. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Don't be jealous, dear" Magne nuzzled against the portion of Lucifer's neck that has his golden ring.

"I am not jealous" insisted Lucifer with a huff. "You are free to have your friends and have fun. I am not going to stop you from doing that."

"That would be rich considering you were the one insisting I should relate to other people" pointed out Magne, arm wrapping tighter around Lucifer.

"Exactly. That is why I am perfectly okay."

"Not to mention, it would be very, very stupid" said Magne, his words slurring even more as he was quickly getting tired. "Because if you asked me, I would kill him on the blink of an eye."

"Al, come on. I am not doing that."

"No, really" Magne sighed, stroking the neck of the snak up and down. "If he makes you think for a second that you and Charlie aren't everything to me, I will kill him and feed it to you two. I don't" Magne yawned, nuzzling his head on top of the longer body, "care. I will tell him that too if I have to."

"Please, don't" Lucifer sighed, like threats of murder were just the norm around Magne. Most likely it was.

"Mmm, I will prepare him with curry."

"Al."

"With a side of rice."

"I am not indulging this."

"Little bits for Charlie."

Lucifer finally let out a snort and Magne smirked.

"You are awful" commented Lucifer and lifted his tail, patting the back of Magne, the tip slipping over the shoulder of the wizard.

"The fact that you keep being surprised by that is both amusing and baffling" Magne kissed the white scales over the golden line and humme as he relaxed even more. "I love you" said, his word barely legible.

"I love you too" Lucifer sighed and lifted a cover for the two of them.

The change was quick, almost as much as Magne closing his eyes. From laying on his bed with pajamas, he was suddenly standing in the chamber of Lucifer and walking backwards from the entrance.

"Don't even think about doing anything funny" Voxwell walked towards him. With each step of him, Magne moved more. The smile of the wizard was still there, but it was a tight, tensed up one, more similar to the gnarl of a beast than the friendly gesture of a man. As the man got closer to where they were standing, they could see the wand of Magne stand out from his pocket. "I should have known that there was something weird with this whole get up you have now, but I didn't think you would be making sacrifices of dumb tourist in the fucking forest. That one did shock me, I will give you that."

"First of all, it wasn't a sacrifice. It was a hunt because he had tried to invade my space first. Second of all, I don't take kindly recieving judgement from the man who saw that and choose to stay quiet" Magne was still moving even as Voxwell stayed still, reaching the center of the chamber. "Why?"

"Well, obviously, I had to see what you were actually doing. With all those books about ancient curses, now blood being spilled and you showing all the signs of an old curse user, that sounded pretty interesting, don't you think?"

"What signs?"

Voxwell moved his head to a side with a smirk.

"Seriously? Are you playing dumb now? Take off those gloves."

"Which gloves?"

Voxwell smiled wider.

"If you want me to burn them off your skin, I can just do that too. Nobody would even tell me it was wrong."

"No, of course not" Magne pulled out the gloves and showed his blackened hands. "Satisfied?"

"Oh, shit!" Voxwell laughed, still pointing his wand at the man. "That is fucking unbelievable. I heard the tip of the fingers or the palm becoming like that, but the whole hand? How much does it reaches? It's your entire arm like that?"

Magne didn't respond, a low growl being the only sound out of him, and Voxwell laughed.

"Oh, man, you must have done a bunch of really fucked up shit then! Stuff that no doubt people are going to want to investigate" Voxwell crinked his eyes, delighted with this opportunity. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised from the man who so casually talks parsel to his little abomination kid when he thinks nobody is watching. Was she part of the reason why are you like that?"

"No, it was already like that before I had her" Magne lowered his head, glaring at the man through his bangs of black hair. "What is that you want?"

"Answers, obviously! I have to tell Sera something concrete, right? Now, we can do this the easy way, with you just spilling everything you have been doing, with that man and others, or I can pull it out of you. I personally don't mind either, but I will leave it up to you."

"Why, Vox, you already know the bigger beats" said Magne calmly. "I am looking into breaking a curse. To break a curse, you need to know how to make a curse first. It's all in the pursuit of knowledge and research, nothing else."

"Yeah, no, bullshit. You did not need to hunt a man for the forest like that and take him hanging in the air with you. Literally no magic needs you to do just that just to kill him."

"Oh no, you are right about that one" Magne lifted his chin, showing off a grin that revealed almost to his gums. "That was just for fun. And not only my own either."

"I guess you are counting the little monster you have in a cage on that."

"No, that was past her bedtime already. Children need their sleep, after all. That was for my darling. A little gift to cheer him up if you will."

"You still on that?" Vox sneered, arching an eyebrow over his square glasses. "I have been paying attention to you and not once have I see this little husband of yours. Nobody but Rosie can tell me shit about him, and Rosie will lie her ass off if it means nothing for her. Not once I have seen you with him, nobody else had, not any of the events at the school. Either you keep him hidden on a cage too like your kid or he is a fucking ghost, which is it? Of course the easy explanation is that you have been lying to everyone for ten years, but I want to believe you wouldn't be as pathetic as that."

Magne's head tilted slightly, as if hearing something in the distance. From his perspective, they could hear it too. Something moving in the water in one of the entrances at his side. The way that Magne's shoulder relaxed could have been a sign of defeat, if one wanted to read it like that.

"Or, a fourth, even easier option" said Magne, his voice almost mocking, "I didn't want you to meet him because I value our privacy and I do not like to mix my personal life with work. You didn't even consider that one, did you?"

"You kinda burned that boat when you put your own daughter in a cage to exhibit during class, Al, sorry to tell you."

"Not my fault that her father is busy and my babysitter has a life of her own."

"Too busy to raise his own kid? You really know how to pick them, huh, buddy?" Voxwell went for a blatantly fake laugh that irked Magne's like someone scratching through ice.

"I won't be discussing my family with you, Vox. If you just give me my wand and start running away, I might even be so generous to give you a ten minute start. You can go very far with that"

"Why would I do that, when I can just deliver you to the Headmistress with everything I have find out already? I wonder under what leash your little girl is going to end up with. As a guard dog, perhaps? Or just to do experiments with to find out how the hell was made?"

Magne's smile spasmed in his face in a way neither of them had ever witnessed before. They had seen their professor angry or mad. They had never seen that level of fury that made his whole body shiver and his muscle tense up with the primal need to break someone's neck. Husk had no doubt that if he haven't heard the water moving around him, he would have done that happily, laughing all the way. Instead, by some miracle, he just stayed there.

"Threatening a toddler, Voxwell?" said with a look that had already stabbed the man in front seventy times. "That is low even for you."

"You want to claim the moral high ground?" Voxwell chuckled. "Really? The murderer who probably used the blood of their victims for his curses?"

"Not just their blood. Their entire lives."

Magne took a step back. Voxwell lifted his wand. At the same time, the water splashed as Lucifer emerged from it, going towards them.

"The fuck is that?!" Voxwell threw a spell that sparkled in blue light, only to bounce off Lucifer's skin.

Over and over, all his spells were useless as Lucifer moved faster over the ground. First around Magne, becoming bigger to cover his entire body, and then smaller, even faster, to reach Voxwell with his mouth fully open. Angel covered up his mouth and Husk swallowed, sure that he was about to witness Lucifer devour a man without leaving anything behind.

Instead of dissapearing right from where he was, however, Voxwell's fell to the floor on his side. Husk thought the man was dead when the eyes kept blinking behind the square glasses. With a flick of his tail, Lucifer pushed away the wand of Voxwell and picked Magne's from his pocket with his mouth, going over to its legitimate owner.

"Are you okay?" asked Lucifer, as soon he could talk again. He started flickering his tongue around Magne, sniffing for any wounds or something that wouldnt be right.

"I am okay, dear" Magne patted the white head and kissed his crown. His whole framme seemed to leave a big part of its tension behind as the snake fretted over checking him over. "He didn't had any opportunity to do anything."

"But was going to!" Lucifer suddenly rised up, glaring at the paralyzed form. "If you didn't give him what he wanted, he would have done something."

"Why didn't you just kill him then?" Magne sounded simply confused by that development.

"You think I don't want to after the bullshit he said? But he is still one of your coleagues and sorta friend of yours, so if he just dissapears…"

"I am going to stop you right there, darling" Magne sighed, pulling his necktie and then taking it out over his head to throw it to a side. "Do you really think I care in the slightest? Not even just about him specifically, but anyone, above you or Charlie?"

"I did not say that at all" Lucifer turned to Magne and stood still as he was pulling out his shoes, leaving them to a side. "What are you doing?"

"Showing you how little that man matters."

Another shift in the scene.

"Oh, come on!" exclaimed Husk, turning away. "Why it's always the sex memories with this man?"

"Technically it's not sex yet. I for one prefer these kind to the gorey ones" Angel sighed, comfortably sitting on the floor. "This looks kinky too."

"Angel, shut up."

Husk groaned, sitting next to him, but giving his back to the scene. He had seen more than enough to understand what was happening anyway.

Voxwell was no longer paralyzed in the floor. But to say that he was standing up would have been kind of a stretch, bound as he was by magic to one of the columns of the chamber, his feet dangling in the air without falling. Magne himself was standing completely nude in front of him, bended over to meet him.

"I am going to give you one last chance" was saying Magne, as calm as could be. The state of his body did not worry him at all. Lucifer kept his tail just in front of the feet of the man, protectively. "If you want to get out of here with just an obliviate spell on, rip your own eyes out now. I let you get control of your arms back just for that. If you insist on keeping your eyes open, my Lucifer will eat you whole" Voxwell opened up his mouth, clearly meaning to say fuck you, but had no sound accompanying it. Magne tilted his head, amused. "I personally don't mind the just getting rid of you, but life is about choices, isn't it? And I guess you did get me those books. Consider this my sign of gratitude towards you. Either way, I have a point to make to my husband and you are a convenient way to do it."

Voxwell lifted two fingers up. The only two fingers he needed to make clear what he thought of the situation, his angry face making the perfect accompaniment to further drive the point. Magne did not seem to mind as he turned to Lucifer, caressing his face with both hands. Angel could see that, despite being ignored, Voxwell was significantly less upset admiring what he had in front.

"The guy is totally checking that ass" commented outloud, only to recieve a half assed shove from Husk. "Alright, alright, I will stop" conceded with a chuckle.

"Fucking thank you."

"You don't have to do this" said Lucifer, bumping his head against Magne's softly.

"Maybe, but I want to" Magne kissed him between the eyes and hold him up to do as well with his closed mouth. "I want you to understand something here" whispered, his hand already slipping towards the point he knew so well to tease the entrance open and slip a finger in. "I want you to understand there is no comepetition between our family and the rest of the world, love. I made my choice already and I will gladly pay the consequences. If someone has to bleed for it, then that is just fun."

"Sometimes I wonder who is the monster between us" Lucifer said it like a sigh, closing his eyes as Magne moved his wrist rythmically.

"Why it has to be one or the other?" Magne hummed near the head. Another finger joined the first and Lucifer looked at him through half close lids. "Why we can't both be monsters, love? There is nothing that great about humans anyway."

"Wasn't the whole idea…" Lucifer took a breath, almost losing his train of thought but grabbing it again "to help me be a human again?"

"You will be my Lucifer no matter what shape you take" That sounded like both a sweet reassurance, a promise and a threat all wrapped into one. "I will take you out of here, one way or another. Always mine, no matter what. But humanity is so overrated. Isn't enough as long we have our family?"

"Would it be?" Lucifer looked at him and Magne took the lounge his tongue against his.

As the two tongue found each other, joining together inside of Magne's mouth, the two dicks sprung under his fingers. The hands of Magne could only rub one at a time, so the other had to join by necessity. Angel already knew that with the tip there was no issue, but once it came down to the base the girth made it impossible to close the circle of finger around it. The way it had bumps around it was no issue anymore for Magne.

Voxwell's lip twitched, revealing a portion of white teeth, but his eyes followed the movement anyway and even lifted his head a little to get a better view. When Magne pulled away from the kiss, a bit of drool was slipping at the corner of his mouth that Lucifer went to lick. A smal pleasant hum came out of the wizard.

"Until you stop asking that question" Magne went on his knees, keeping the eye contact with Lucifer as both his wrist were moving up and down "I will keep proving to you this is not a choice. This is the only choice for me. There is not and there has never been an alternative."

It was then that Angel realized that the same spell that Magne had used between his legs to being able to recieve his husband, he had it applied on his mouth as well. With slow methodical licks, Magne concentrated at the tip of first one dick and took it all in, squeezing the other with his hand. Even with the spell on, Angel could see the shape of Lucifer protruding from the throat of the wizard. Then he made the switch effortlessly as Lucifer's pants filled the ears of the man, as if it was the only sound worth hearing.

"For Merlin, I love you" Magne smiled through having his mouth full with all Lucifer had to offer.

Lucifer moaned low as the wizard moved his head slowly, then fast, his curls following in the air. His work earned him even more sounds that sounded amplified, not because of the chamber, but because Magne was perceiving them that way.

As he pulled out, the two dicks bounced between his face and Lucifer's body. Drops of saliva and other fluids jumped out. One of them landed over the eyebrow of Magne and Lucifer bended to clean it off.

"If you do" purred Magne, licking the tip of the closest dick he had, "then show it to me."

Lucifer let out a growl. His human voice could have never made a sound like that, it was a fully animal one. Not that different from a lion or some other beast used to inspire fear on their prey before going for the kill. That was the only warning before his body quickly moved, wrapping itself around Magne's middle and elevating him on the air as he increased his size to have a better grip. With the rest of his body, of course, the two dicks as well were becoming bigger, thicker than Magne's thighs and larger than his whole torso.

"He is like a doll compared to him. Really hitting that size kink" commented Angel, frankly impressed, and Husk, trying to turn himself into a turtle, knocked a shoulder against his. "Ups, sorry, honey."

Somehow, even after being handled like that, Magne still had his wand in hand. As Lucifer was accomodating him just above the tip of one of his cocks, Magne pronnounced again the spell that Angel already knew to move the two of them, joining them together as if hold together by a giant hand to directly go towards the entrance waiting for them, as if Magne had put on a magnet that only Lucifer was attracted to. His legs elevated in the air and dangled before he could grab his own knees, keeping them apart.

Despite his eyes almost fully turning red, despite the drool escaping the open mouth, the twitching and heat coming off his genitalia needing some release, Lucifer still looked down to the wizard for one last check of his state. Magne's face had no fear whatsoever, mouth already open in anticipation, but when he noticed the look of Lucifer he smiled wider than before.

"Come on, darling" said and wiggled his bottom just the tiniest bit, playfully.

That was the last thread of Lucifer's self control being burned and forgotten about. Lucifer's tail holding Magne brouht him roughly against him and Magne actually screamed, his voice filling the entire chamber, just as his body was being filled. Angel lifted his head further to see a noticeable bulge elevating from Magne's belly as Lucifer moved him. Never fully getting away, but never staying still either.

"Such a tight pussy, babe" The voice of Lucifer was feral like his movements, panting on top of him. The tail around Magne was moving at the same time he thrusted. With each impact, Magne couldn't keep quiet or speak at all. "Such a fine little mate you are for me. I so fucking wish to see you round with all my eggs. Are you going to make good on your promise so I can fill you up, babe?"

Magne made incoherent loud whiny noises that apparently were enough of a answer for Lucifer, who chuckled. When Magne lost the grip of his own legs and didn't had the strenght to keep them up, Lucifer inclined him towards heard first over the floor to let the gravity do the work by holding his shoulders. On that position, it was even easier to see the way that Lucifer's double genitalia was absorbed by the body of the wizard without any resistance. The only evidence of his presence being a buldge on Magne's abdomen, lowering only when Lucifer pulled back. When he did that, his cocks came out coated on the fluids from both of them until it was actually dripping to the floor in thick drops.

Through all of that, at some point Voxwell had already dropped any pretension of disgust or anger and was fully following the action panting. Angel had already seen the man try to touch himself, but the spell that Magne had put on him didn't allowed him to touch anything on himself that wasn't his own face. Something he only ever did in order to readjust his glasses that were slightly foggy by his own elevated body temperature. His dilated pupils readjusted quickly to not lose a single second of the couple in front of him.

Lucifer bite down in the calf of Magne, keeping it up as if to open him up further. The blood of the man crawled down, a hungry tongue lapping at it. The toes expanded to the air and shook, not trying to escape, but trembling all over with the force of the intense orgasm. A high pitch scream couldhave come from someone being tortured in the slowest way possble.

On that angle, it was impossible to miss the way that Magne was arching his hips to rub himself on the snake, quivering in Lucifer's hold until he stayed still with his back arched. It was as if all his nerves have been electrified at once, just the tiniest bit of movement between his legs revealing how his muscles were still twitching. The contractions made to Lucifer to roll his eyes, moving even faster, furiously. The head of Magne bobed in the air with the impulse.

Lucifer lifted his fangs out where they had been and grunted, more blood pouring until some spots reached Magne's face and he licked them pulling his own tongue out. The bigger body slammed against him to his own climax. Magne screamed again. His stomach filled up even more until the eye of the wizard were tearing up and then deflated as Lucifer's cock returned to his body.

Magne's legs twitched as the thick cum was slipping out of him, coming down to join the rest of their evidence. It wasn't difficult to notice that if it wasn't because of Lucifer holding him up, Magne would be a poddle in the floor. For a moment it didn't seemed like anything else mattered to him but to breath as his body took care of everything. Lucifer fixed up the angle slowly and pressed his nose against the bump that Magne still sported. Another moan, more cum escaping him.

Lucifer flickered his tongue around the face of the wizard as he gently hold his head up with the tip of his tail. Magne needed a couple of seconds to regain his composure enough to lift a hand and pat the nose.

"I am… fine" sighed Magne, eyes closed.

"He didn't rip his own eyes, babe" The eyes of Lucifer glared up front.

Voxwell noticed that and tensed up. It seemed like he had completely forgotten he was in front of a beast right until that moment. A shiver ran over the man as he started to sweat in place, trying and failing to get ride of his magical bindings.

"Then you know what to do, love" Magne patted him again.

Lucifer looked down at him and nuzzled against the wizard's temple. As softly as he was capable, Lucifer lowered Magne back to the floor and let him laid down. Magne extended his legs and relaxed. When Lucifer moved quickly towards Voxwell, jaws unhinged, Magne didn't even react with a blink. The spell only allowed Voxwell to not being able to touch himself, but was still vulnreable to be reached by someone else.

Lucifer didn't bother to use his venom. He swallowed him whole as the legs kicked in the air, up until Lucifer lifted his head to the ceiling and all of their professor dissapeared from the world. Angel didn't want to see, but couldn't move his eyes away, no matter how revolting it was.

"Remind me…" said finally, blinking fast. The image was just staying there in front of his retinas, just like it happened with the first kill they saw. "Uh…" He couldn't remember what he was going to add.

"They told us he went to the forest to try to gather some ingredients and never came back or was found" said Husk, reaching a hand to hold his arm. "That was the story they made up."

"Yeah, yeah, you right. How could I forget."

Husk's hand rubbed him, both a reassurance that it was okay and a reaffirmation of how real they were to each other.

"It's okay" said gently, just before they felt the pull taking them away the memory.

When they opened up their eyes again, they were back on the office.

#radioapple #appleradio #duckiedeer #hazbin hotel au #lucifer x alastor #harry potter au

4 notes · View notes

phillipsgraves · 2 years ago

Note

youre gonna hate me for this. all the evens for grazie

on god hoe u are so lucky i love you and them... the rest are under the cut because this, as you can imagine, got long LMFAO

2. How did they get together?

It’d be after Graves and Kelly have their talk and they open their relationship, but there was a lot of fumbling on Graves’ part on trying to convince Apollo that no, he absolutely wasn’t homewrecking and yes, Graves is terribly smitten with him and would he please consider going out with him

4. What’s the relationship like? Smooth? Rocky?

Rocky, at first. Partially because Graves is married and partially because the man is walking in the biggest crystalline glass closet you can imagine and Apollo’s throwing stones at it. But it’s fine. He’s working through his issues… slowly.

6. Who cleans the most? Contrary to that, who is the messiest?

Apollo cleans the most, and it drives Graves crazy because it messes up his whole System. You know the one. “If you’re looking for a paperclip, there’s a black one under the bed” headass

8. Who tends to worry the most?

Graves, but it partially comes with the leadership position. He worries about all his Shadows of course but… he’s especially worried about his decisions getting Apollo killed. Especially after the… y’know. Incident. The one that may or may not have involved the Russians getting a hold of American missiles. I imagine Apollo was there, just managed to sneak away before he was spotted.

10. How do they resolve their arguments?

Silent apologies from Apollo… not so silent ones from Graves. Apollo’s a big fan of the whole silent treatment thing, but he can’t stay far away from him for too long so he ends up making him come back to bed around an hour in… he’s so lame. They also have some nasty, disrespectful sex, but… y’know. After talking about it. Apollo just gets so touchy.

12. Who has the most nightmares and how do they deal with them?

Graves, and he either paces around until the sun comes up or he smokes before heading back to bed. Either way, Apollo’s always there to pick up the pieces

14. Who gets cold the easiest?

Graves again, but mostly because I imagine him to be naturally cold anyways so he’s always bundled up and leeching heat off of both Apollo and Kelly. They’re probably annoyed he keeps putting his cold ass feet on them.

16. Do they enjoy dancing?

It’s absolutely one of their favorite things to do together, whether it’s them swinging along to whatever song is playing on the radio or Graves pulling him in because he wants to do a line dance, they’ll do it

18. Do they ever go swimming together?

When they get a chance to, yes. Definitely prefer pools to beaches and night swimming to day swimming. And if they get a chance to skinny dip? Well, no one needs to know what they get up to in the water.

20. Do they give each other nicknames?

Just the usual pet names. Like I said before, Apollo likes calling him amore and Graves settles for babe or baby. Baby’s a little more private, though.

22. What movies do they enjoy watching most?

Cheesy romcoms, they love laughing at them and questioning stupid plotlines

24. Have they dedicated songs to each other?

Absolutely. Don’t ask me what though I haven’t thought about it yet. But they would. Probably something they heard on their first real date

26. Have any pets? (If not: would they get any?)

Apollo has a sphinx cat! It’s a lil ugly thing and she’s his whole world. Graves doesn’t actually know her name but Apollo calls her his princess all the time so that’s just her name in his head. She also hates him. You said this but Graves in turn has a bloodhound that he got for Kelly early on in their relationship… her name's Betsy and she’s an old sleepy thing now

28. How often are road trips?

Maybe twice a year, summer and winter on their off hours. Apollo prefers flying but Graves insists on driving and stopping by every landmark they can find on the way

30. Do they attend any clubs or formal parties together?

Graves absolutely loathes them, but yes they do. He’s still running a company after all, so formal parties I imagine are a pretty common occurrence. Worth it to see Apollo dressed up, though.

32. What are their morning rituals?

Between Apollo’s 15 step skincare routine and Graves’ 15 step hair care routine… they’re in the bathroom literally all morning.

34. What do they do when the other is stressed?

Small shows of comfort like little backrubs here and there, but sometimes they just listen quietly while the other talks about what was bothering them that day

36. Do they enjoy going camping together?

Apollo’s probably a little too high maintenance for it (but not extremely so, he’s still a soldier, after all) but he does enjoy it every once in a while (especially when Graves is around to make it better… sue him)

38. Thoughts on each other’s friends?

I imagine they’d be relatively in the same circle of friends, so they all get along fairly well. I also think Apollo would have his own friend group within Shadow Company, which Graves doesn’t mind so long as they do their jobs (and that his boys don’t touch what’s his)

40. Thoughts on kids?

Absolutely love the idea of it, but never really thought they’d have the time for them until now. The kids are their whole word

42. Thoughts on each other’s family?

Graves is just surprised (and relieved) that he has in-laws that don’t completely hate his guts. On the other hand, the only family of his that Apollo’s ever met is his sister and it’s going to stay that way. Apollo loves her, though. They embarrass Graves together

44. How are the holidays spent?

No corner is left undecorated and no tradition left undone. Holidays are definitely something they value a lot so they go all out on them every single year

46. What do they like the least about each other?

Graves chews with his mouth open and Apollo’s just the tiniest bit of a control freak in the kitchen

48. What was their most memorable date?

It wasn’t exactly a date because it was during a mission, but they did have to stay at a hotel for a week or so and Graves was absolutely abusing CEO privilege by getting them the most expensive suite to themselves (favoritism, am I right?)

50. Who makes the best flower crown?

Apollo, but Graves would get the hang of it… eventually

52. Who has awful taste in music?

I know you’ll be inclined to disagree with me but… Graves, by Apollo’s standards. For obvious reasons. At least, until Graves pulls him in for a dance and then– okay, it’s not so bad. He guesses.

54. What do others think of them dating?

Ness thinks they’re gross, the other Shadows like poking fun at them about it (especially during the time they showed up wearing each other’s jackets) but don’t really care because I imagine this PMC has not heard of any sort of protocol whatsoever. Borrowing @shellibisshe’s boy Levi real quick to say he also finds it gross and thinks Apollo needs to get some taste… ASAP.

56. How did they get together? 9. Who is more inclined to be jealous or possessive?

Picking number 9 instead because this question shows up twice, but both of them. Graves just seems more inclined towards it because he’s more open about it, full on will do PDA if he feels even a little threatened. Heavy usage of pet names, snaking an arm around Apollo’s waist, things like that. Apollo just silently fumes until Graves gets the message (but he does like the extra attention when he does).

58. Do they have similar taste in movies?

Not in the slightest, but once in a blue moon they’ll find a movie they both like and settle for that until one of them falls asleep. Or someone decides to get touchy. Whichever happens first

60. Who will punch someone out if they are rude to their partner?

Graves, 100%, to Apollo’s embarrassment. He’s a complete guard dog when it comes to him. Some asshole at the bar won’t take no for an answer? Yeah, punches are absolutely flying.

62. What other couple would your otp get along with the best? 13. Who steals the blankets?

Skipping again but it’s Graves more often than not. Like I mentioned before, he just gets so cold easily (and it’s also a ploy to get Apollo to scooch over closer, don’t tell anyone)

64. What would they dress up as? (for Halloween)

Graves goes as the most obvious choice (cowboy, because of course he would) but he’d go all out on it, bolo ties and fringes for days. Apollo doesn’t even know where to begin trying to match him so he just goes as a sexy cat or something

66. Do either of them have a crazy ex?

Definitely not. For one, Graves has been with Kelly straight out of highschool, and Apollo has the emotional intelligence not to date anyone like that

68. What do they do for Valentine's Day?

Nothing too crazy, they’d probably settle for a regular dinner date if they have free time though I imagine Graves goes just a little over the top with it

70. Who is the hopeless romantic?

I imagine they both would be, but Apollo would just be a little bit more of one. Can you blame him? He’s Italian. It’s practically hardwired into him

72. Do either of them want to go skydiving?

Apollo wouldn’t say no to it, but Graves would definitely be more into it than he is. He’s a complete daredevil

74. Is either one confrontational?

Like I mentioned earlier, Graves is completely confrontational and will start a fight at any given opportunity. Apollo’s more subtle about it but he does like inciting fights every now and then if he feels the need to. I feel like this also extends towards each other, but their fights reach a fever pitch fairly quickly and they’re apologizing before it turns into anything ugly.

76. What are their parenting styles?

Typical good cop bad-cop type of parenting! The exception is Graves is only the good cop because he’s terrible about spoiling the kids, so Apollo ends up being the bad cop because no, Kelly said no McDonald’s for dinner.

78. What is their favorite photo of them two together?

It’d be one they took after a pretty tough (but overall successful) mission, I’d imagine. Ness probably felt nice (and annoying) and insisted on taking that photo of them. They’re about ready to go home, Apollo took his shades because the sun’s in his eyes and he just wanted to nap

80. What do they love about each other the most?

Graves is completely obsessed with his laugh and he’ll do absolutely anything to hear it. He’s not above acting like a complete idiot to get it, either. Apollo on the other hand loves his hair and will spend the entire day just petting it if he gets the chance

82. What is an inside joke they have?

Something really dumb. Like along the lines of, “this is my ex-boyfriend, Apollo” “Commander, that’s a terrible way of telling people we’re married”

84. What is their favourite game to play together?

Unironically, Monopoly… but Kelly has to step in before it gets ugly because Apollo had the audacity to put a hotel on Boardwalk.

86. Who’s concert would they go to? 37. Thoughts on PDA?

Skipping again ❤ But they’re the worst offenders of it for sure. They’re completely handsy with each other, and they’re absolutely that couple that makes it obvious they’re talking about you.

88. Who would get up on stage and make a fool of themselves just to make the other laugh?

Do you even need to ask this… it’s Graves… Apollo will say he’s absolutely mortified but Graves would argue that his laughing says otherwise and that it was completely worth it. Apollo would never admit it but it makes him melt every single time.

90. Who is the one that would bring the puppy home?

Graves, absolutely. Apollo can’t judge because he’s exactly the same with kittens.

92. What does their room look like? (If they shared/have share one)

Graves has his minimalist bachelor’s pad whenever they’re on base but back home it’s everything you’d expect in a country bedroom, wallpaper and all

#they drive me up the wall (lovingly)#asks #jendoe #x: apollo & graves #oc: apollo de rossi #also featuring ur girls ness and kel LMFAO #long post #jic

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kamryn1963 · 6 months ago

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So Long, London- Chapter 10

A few weeks had gone by since that day. The day Al moved into his new apartment, alone for the first time in decades.

The day he relapsed after two years of being clean.

Al hadn’t told anyone about that night, or three days later when it happened again. He had started carrying the pocket knife in his work bag again though, but had yet to use it at work. It was too risky especially considering Hank and Trudy knew exactly what to look for.

He assumed Erin did too. As much as Al liked to pretend that Erin, and even Justin and Lexi hadn’t seen and heard anything over the years, he knew it wasn’t true.

But Al still brought it. Just in case. He was also thankful it was still winter so nobody questioned him wearing long sleeves.

Since those couple days at the beginning, Al had been doing okay. Not good, but he wasn’t making himself bleed every night to feel something so that was a bonus.

Then they caught a serial killer case. Gregory Yates. Nadia was killed horrifically and the unit was thrown into grief.

While Alvin hadn’t been that close to Nadia personally, he had liked the girl well enough. She reminded him of Lexi at times, and Al was proud of how far she had come since she first started working at the district.

Al also knew just how close Erin and Trudy had been to her.

Erin had closed herself off pretty quickly after Nadia’s murder.. Of course Bunny had to come and stick her nose in places it didn’t belong now that Erin was in a vulnerable state and Al knew she was slipping into old habits of drugs and alcohol.

Al knew that quite well. Old habits, the familiar comfort of them. Al knew that the others, especially Hank, were trying to reach out and pull Erin back with limited success. Al himself had tried but he also knew, maybe more than everyone else, that you couldn’t force somebody to get help when they didn’t want it and weren't willing to help themselves.

Al was also worried about Trudy. The way she thought she had to be the strong one all the time. He had no doubt that Randall was helping her, but Al would still worry. He had also known her longer, knew things about her that nobody else did.

Al wanted to talk to her but didn’t know how. Especially when his mind was still occupied by thoughts of the Dennis Lee case even a month later. He felt horrible that he was still thinking about that and that it was preventing him from helping his best friend and honorary niece in their times of need because he was so busy with his own struggles.

Even more when Al knew that the others, specifically Hank and Antonio, were still worried about him and they knew exactly what Al was thinking about at all times.

That those girls' faces were still prominent in his brain, that most nights he woke up soaked in sweat, disoriented and the nightmare of finding them still fresh in his mind.

Ultimately it was Hank who confronted the issues of his best friends. He had tried to help Erin but it was clear Bunny had gotten too far in her head. And once she quit and gave him her badge, there wasn’t much Hank could do. He wouldn’t give up, he’d never give up on his daughter, but Hank also knew what he could help with was the current state of Trudy and Alvin.

Alvin had been a mess for weeks. Actually months, well more like years but Hank knew that he wasn’t skilled enough to help Al with all of that. And Al refused to get a therapist unless Hank forced him and Hank really didn’t have the energy to do that right now. So he could only currently address the self blame Al still had after the Dennis Lee case.

Trudy, he had watched slowly fall apart since Nadia died. Hank had been the one to tell her what happened the night they found Nadia’s body. She had been home with Randall, and had answered the door. Trudy had refused to move or let Hank in until Hank told her what had happened. Trudy had collapsed in Hank’s arms a few moments later. He had tried to get her to take some time off after but only managed to get her to take a day before she was right back at the front desk telling Hank that her grief doesn’t mean she gets to stop her job.

So Hank knew he had his work cut out for him. But he was prepared to try. He would do anything for Trudy and Al.

They both arrived at about eight and settled on the couch with a glass of wine Hank had given them when they came in. Hank would offer food but he knew they’d both just refuse it. Hank sat on the armchair in the room and turned to look at them. Al beat him to it though.

“Why exactly are we here?” Al asked with a raised eyebrow.

Hank hadn’t explained in the message just told him to get his ass over here. Al wasn’t necessarily complaining, he got to check on Trudy and Hank saved him from his own mind and the knife that was a comforting weight in his pocket. At least for tonight.

“Because if I’m going to give you guys both a lecture I might as well do it on the same day”. Hank replied as he leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his wine.

“Well I don’t know about Olinsky, but I don’t need a lecture”. Trudy responded and Hank just rolled his eyes as he looked at them again. They both looked like hell.

“Well I’ll start with you then. Trudy, you're allowed to grief, god, I’m not telling you not to, but you need to take time to deal with what happened, to allow yourself time to mourn. Time you deserve. The district and your desk will be here when you're ready again”. Hank said keeping eye contact with Trudy before sighing and turning to Al.

“And Alvin. The self blaming thing you got going on here, has to stop, man. What Dennis Lee did is not your fault at all and nobody blames you for it. Could you have got him the first time? Maybe. But as much as I hate admitting it, Lee was smart. But those girls' deaths are not on you”. Hank stated. He was surprised they both stayed quiet. Al liked to protest and tell him he was wrong a lot.

Neither of them responded. They were both more worried for the other than they were actually listening to Hank and what he was asking of them. Trudy hadn’t known exactly what had happened with the Dennis Lee case and the obvious effect it had on Al. This made sense though.

Al on the other hand was worried about Trudy and hoped she would listen and take some time off but that doesn’t mean he was going to. Hank was all wrong and Al couldn’t believe him. Not when those girls and their parents still haunted him.

“Alvin. It’s not your fault. You keep blaming yourself and I’m going to suspend you”. Hank threatened but there was no heat behind his words. Just worry.

Al wanted to argue, yell that Hank didn’t know what he was talking about. But he was so tired and Trudy needed him and she needed Hank and the least Al could do after all Trudy had done for him was be there for her in her time of need. And if that meant he had to forgive himself, Al could try.

“I’ll try”. Al replied as he looked at Hank and nodded. Hank nodded back and he could tell that Hank knew why he was agreeing but didn’t argue.

“That’s all I can ask”. Hank responded before looking at Trudy again.

“What Olinsky said”. Trudy muttered and Hank leaned back again, happy with himself.

None of them said anything but the tension in the room eased as they all enjoyed each other's company once again. It wouldn’t be an instant fix and would take time, but with Trudy agreeing to taking some time off, and Al working on the whole blaming himself for everything, Hank was pretty confident that things could get better.

At least right now, in this moment, there was some hope and with their line of work that was the best anyone could ask.

#chicago pd #alvin olinsky #trudy platt #hank voight #antonio dawson #lexi olinsky #erin lindsay #chicago pd old timers trio #self h@rm #tw vomit #self hatred tw #hurt/comfort #angst #season 2 #ao3 #fanfiction #you know it's getting bad when Hank has to be the smart one

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ilovelotsofthings · 2 years ago

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I will be posting about my TBP headcanons starting with Griffin

I was going to do one big post with all of the ghosts plus Finney but I just got Griffin done

So I will post them separately and in one big post when all is done

Also if I ever have anymore I will just reblog add them later

===

Griffin

++++

His parents (Perdita "Perry" & Cessair Stagg) had them in their early 20's

Perry's grandparents game from Ireland & Cessair's parents came from Ireland

Neither wanted kids nor were planning to marry

Yet Perry got pregnant so they married quickly so neither could be accused of having sex before marriage

Their parents would disown them and they didn't want that.

They are religious in the sense they believe God exists but they don't really practice unless around their parents.

They do the praying for dinner though.

Anyways Griffin is born to a couple who don't love each other or him

Perry cares but caring isn't enough

She is apathetic which sort of rubbed off on Griffin.

Well I don't believe apathetic is correct but is pretty close

Perdita wanted to love Griffin but she couldn't. She tried.

Griffin is also kinda religious.

Oh btw I think he is the youngest at 10 or 11

Perry was a SAHM and was miserable until he went to school.

She homeschooled him for kindergarten to 2nd grade.

She spent so many hours with her son.

So when he went missing she noticed. Well she noticed when he wasn't home for dinner

Perry was worried about where Griffin was but she quickly gave up about him being alive

Which (I should do general headcanons) since I think The Grabber didn't keep them for longer than a week makes perfect sense.

Also Griffin -who I believe was the first- was killed after only 3 days.

Cessair's life for Griffin's entire life was him working long hours and cheating on Perry.

So basically only the mother raising him.

After the Grabber is killed and they find out Griffin has been dead for awhile they Divorce

They say it is because of grief. Truly both know it is because they were miserable and they got a very messed up Out.

Perry never had any more kids. As much as she felt miserable with Griffin as I said she felt something for him

Cessair could care less. He married one of his Affairs and had 2 daughters years down the line.

Back to Griffin

He is a bookworm and could read books way above his grade level.

He loved gardening. Something he shared with his mom.

He didn't speak until he was around 4.

He never had a single friend. Not even as a baby

He loved to ride his bike. He told his mom every time he was leaving.

The bike was a gift from her.

He had toys that would be considered feminine but he didn't care

He did have "masculine" toys also.

Griffin wanted to learn to play the piano. He never got to.

Griffin was just socially a mess.

If he could he would play kinda cruel jokes.

Oh he knows his grandparents but they are also pretty distant from him.

Griffin is the person to laugh at their own misery

He really was just biking and got kidnapped

He was quiet the first day.

Next day was his first (and only) attempt where he saw his bike lock on the door before… The Naughty Boy game.

He was also fed that day.

The last day he awoke in pain and just laughed. This 10/11 year old boy just was in so much pain.

One of his arms was broken and an ankle sprained. Bleeding everywhere.

He used his bottle cap and craved the combo in the wall per canon.

He was going to attempt the stairs again when The Grabber came down to kill him. No fun in a broken "toy"

Griffin woke up as a ghost with little to no ability to talk. He cannot talk without the phone.

He never really hung around the others.

He did try to use the phone to call Billy but he didn't hear so Griffin just watched Billy.

Griffin when Billy died tried to bring some comfort

Billy didn't want any and was reasonably pissed but chilled out after a while.

If Griffin lived he would've been an author.

Short of it is that Griffin was as he said invisible

#black phone #the black phone #headcanons #tbp #tbp headcanons #au #my headcanons

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abunnsburrow · 3 years ago

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Wandering Light AU

An AU where Kai gets sent to the Never Realm instead of Zane

The last post I did on this was kind of short so I want to go more in depth into how I think this AU would play out. Keep in mind that I haven't worked out all the details so there may be some stuff I've missed and I still haven't fully thought about the ending of this alternate season.

Zane would still end up beating Aspheera however it takes longer for her to end up shooting Master Wu and thus Master Wu ends up with the staff and Kai pushes Wu out of the way

I don't think canon has a time frame for how long they think Zane was killed so I'm putting it at a week before Wu finds the information and the others get into the Never Realm

Obviously instead of Pixal being the sad one it's Nya and we possibly get a couple flashbacks to Kai and Nya's childhood to enhance the sadness

Meanwhile...

Kai lands in the Never Realm and injures himself in the fall (haven't decided the extent of it, probably a dislocated shoulder or smthing)

Kai messes around with the mech a bit but doesn't succeed and ends up abandoning it since he doesn't have the technical know-how and can't lift it anyway (Maybe he takes a piece of it he thinks could help? Like the tracker or communicator)

Vex doesn't follow him in favor of tinkering with the technology especially since Kai hasn't shown that he's anything special unlike the obvious robot Zane w/ ice superpowers showed

Kai sorta wanders around a bit and ends up in the village w/ Sorla where he gets his powers back

Kai goes to the travelers tree, doesn't befriend the yetis (not endangered yet, though there is a fun moment where he distracts the yetis with his fire since it's 'pretty') and gets a branch

Sorla informs him it's going to take a long time to make the tea he wants since she needs to ferment them so they become potent

This entire time Vex has been gathering an army of outcasts and criminals while using the advanced Ninjago tech to make lasers n' stuff

Vex does a violent coup, becomes the ruler, and starts enslaving the people who can't fight back against the advanced tech

Vex captures all sorts of people including Sorla who he considers as either threats or people he can use

Kai obviously fights back, almost gets captured, and soon becomes a criminal

He goes into hiding and hides his identity, only helping others at night and soon rumor goes around that a mysterious spirit helps those who are lost and fights against injustice

People soon start calling this spirit the "Wandering Light" and Kai leans fully into it covering his visible skin in soot and trying to remain as mysterious as possible

Of course this entire time Kai is having some doubts since he keeps wondering when the others will show up and frustrated that he can't go home

Kai continues trying to sabotage Vex with little to no success and this continues on for YEARS, the legend of the Wandering Spirit becoming well known and Vex becoming a dictator that both brainwashes the people and suppresses them

BIG NOTE, Kai ages at the same rate of Ninjago Time, what that means is while mentally he is going through an entire decade, his body is only aging by a week (Main reason I did this was so that it wouldn't be too jarring)

By the time the others arrive at the Never Realm it's been 10 years for Kai

That's just sort of the basics I have for this AU, sorry if it's a lot to read it's just been on my mind for a little bit. On that note, have some concepts I did of both Kai's outfit and how people depict the Wandering Light:

Notes on his outfit:

He has one arm bare so that way he doesn't burn a sleeve or glove whenever he uses his power (I picked his right hand because I think he's right handed? correct me if I'm wrong though)

The way he sort of keeps the 'mystery' of the Wandering Light is by mostly coming out in the dark, talking pretty much never and creating a fog by making steam using his fire

He also has another alternate identity he uses which is random old fisherman so that way he can get supplies n' stuff, though he tends to be a bit risky with that and gets recognized and having to make a run for it

So yeah, that's all I have for this post, I don't have a too solid idea for how the season plays out mostly just vague "they find the wandering spirit and then beat up vex" so let me know of any ideas/questions! I'm still not sure if this is how I want Vex to play out but I couldn't think of anything better when it comes to how he gets into power.

#ninjago #ninjago au #ninjago fanart #ninjago kai #ninjago s11 #s11 #kai smith #bunns art #nya smith #ninjago vex #wandering light au

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thefools-journey · 4 years ago

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So. Some of you may be wondering why we haven’t written a whole ton about the secondaries or what have you. Here’s the reason: we were waiting for them to end before we really dug into the problems we were noticing. We felt that it was only fair to wait for the routes to finish so that we had an understanding of the writers’ vision. Who knew, we thought, maybe they would see the problems themselves and course correct, maybe they are building to something we can’t quite see yet and these issues will have actual payoff, maybe-

In light of Muriel and Lucio’s endings, and the general mess that has dominated Portia’s route for a year plus now, we are breaking our silence. We are actually going to talk about this shit show.

The fandom at large has talked about a bunch of issues with the secondaries but for me, the cardinal sin, the thing that really all the issues lead back to, is this: the writers lost sight of the tarot themes which so strongly defined and held together the primary routes. Let me explain.

The primary routes each center around three thematic cores:

The Love Interest’s Major Arcana and its Reversed/Upright meanings

The MC’s Fool’s Journey, both how it can go right and how it can go wrong

A question about the MC’s identity and their relationship to said identity

Asra’s route asks: Who was the MC? How does the MC navigate a past they cannot and will not remember? What do they owe a past they cannot remember? How do they handle the revelations of what Asra, Nadia, Julian, etc did? How do you right the past? Can you?

Nadia’s route asks: Who is the MC? The MC has no past. Are they the Fool only? Are they actually the same person they were? How can they tell? Who are they, really? Are they an imposter? No one can answer these questions for them.

Julian’s route asks: Who will the MC become? How does the MC see their future? Is there anything worth fighting for for that future? What will become of them and their loved ones?

Now, if you notice, these themes are expertly woven throughout the primaries. Asra’s past dominates his route, Nadia is also missing memories and trying to construct her identity both with her family and with Vesuvia, and Julian’s fear of the future drives his flailing for control. Asra has to learn to take a broader view of his actions to get his Upright Ending, Nadia has to learn to trust herself and those around her for hers, and Julian has to learn how to let go for his. These lessons are the issues their cards stand for. The primaries are so dang elegant and delicate in their handlings of theme it is honestly awe-inspiring.

Thematically, the secondary routes have completely lost their hearts. First of all, the MC does not have strong, core questions which need to be answered. They just don’t. I suppose the writers did not want to retread old territory (which is weird considering how tightly bound the primaries are; it really tricks you into thinking you’re living the same events but from different angles depending on your route) but they did not replace the old with anything new. Muriel’s route is, on the surface, about discovering and owning his past, the good and the bad. Why not tie MC’s self-discovery to that story? Or they could have taken the angle that Muriel’s route is about convincing him to be present and active in the world while MC builds an identity for themself outside of Asra, the shop, and the memories they cannot retrieve. Why not tie the investigation themes running through Portia’s early route back to MC and their past? Portia has the unique angle of being as in the dark as MC about all of this, why not discover the past together? And for goodness’ sake, Lucio has no future when his route begins, why not tie that to his need for growth, responsibility, and MC’s own future between the Fool, the Devil, or something mortal and in between?

Secondly, the routes lost their tarot backbone. We have a primer on how to get specific endings for each LI and it still holds, but the writers did not follow through on the thematic coherence of each secondary. The Hermit is looking for something, be it perspective, insight, a solution to a problem, whatever. The key here is that the Hermit must find or learn what they are searching for, this thing must change their understanding of the world, and finally, they must bring this lesson back to the world from which they retreated. Can someone please enlighten me as what exactly Muriel learns then teaches the world around him? Nothing Muriel learns from Morga, MC, or even the Hermit ties back into anything. The Devil warns that you are out of control and exerting a lot of manipulative, destructive behavior on the world around you. It asks you to take responsibility for yourself and your actions. So can someone tell me why Lucio’s route actively avoids any interaction or reflection on two of Lucio’s biggest victims: Muriel and Julian? Why does the route only try to make amends with the “easier” of his victims in the cast? The Star is first and foremost the card of clarity, the light at the end of the tunnel. Perseverance, if you will. Yet Portia’s route has been the muddiest of the trio; the writers drop the investigation aspect of her route in favor just handing her and MC information they could have easily found and muddying the waters with Tasya (she blows up the palace but it’s all okay bc she has a secret daughter Julian never thought to bring up or mention) and the complete removal of the Devil as antagonist.

So that leaves just the Fool’s Journey trying to hold this stool up with only one leg. And well...it doesn’t go well. At best, the secondary route books pay the barest surface level homage to the themes of the individual cards. At worst, they ignore the cards completely. Muriel's Moon book has nothing to do with illusions or delusions or lies or even an Alice in the Looking Glass upside down world. Portia's back half is a complete and utter mess, starting with her Temperance book being so badly mangled that Muriel's aftermath book does it better. Lucio's route too bungles the Tower and the Star. There just isn't enough here to carry the routes alone.

Add to the core loss the loss of intertextuality. The primary routes are very good, even great but they too do have their moments and mistakes. What helps strengthen them when the cores stumble is how the trio is woven together. Things you learn in Asra's route can inform the way you play Nadia's, for example. Julian's route informs what is going on in Asra's route and slots some missing puzzle pieces together. Nadia's route tells you of the power struggles she is facing and informs the other two routes' handling of Julian and his trial. On and on, the three routes support each other because they are built out of the same basic plot beats, just tackled in very different ways. Now, the writers are allowed to try and write whatever they want. They apparently wanted to be more experimental and less tied down to an overarching plot with the three secondaries. Okay, fine, they are allowed to do that. The problem is that they sacrificed one of the key strengths of the primary trio and didn't replace said strength with anything else. They also, on some level, harmed the very premise of the game, which is that only the player's choices and route selected change the overall plot. Instead of feeling like legitimate possibilities or offshoots of the same timeline/plot, the secondaries feel almost like Arcana AUs. The secondaries throw out all relations to the primaries and each other as quickly as possible and for what?

It is probably the height of arrogance to suggest fixes for works whose behind the scenes I do not know. At the same time, some small, obvious changes could have salvaged Muriel and maybe Lucio's endings (rip Portia). Instead of having the Hermit appear as a disappointing cameo, why not have him say something cryptic to Muriel, then have MC start trying to seal the Devil. Then let Muriel use his forget me mark to cloak MC and hide them from the Devil's attacks. Protecting MC by hiding them from Lucio, keeping him focused on Muriel, seems to me a simple third solution between Muriel's desire to run and his desire to never fight again. It lets him stand up to Lucio and let him have it while holding onto who Muriel has become. The Reversed End would have MC try to draw Lucio's attention at some point, disrupting the sealing, and eventually leading to Muriel killing the Devil. With Lucio's Upright End, I just have to ask: why doesn't MC fully claim the power of the Fool instead of the Devil? We don't need the other Arcana involved in this fight; we have three routes that demonstrate that. Just have MC pull Scout into the conflict, then have Lucio tell MC he believes in them, then add his power to the mix. You got yourself a full Fool who leaves Scout guarding the realm until they and Lucio's mortal bodies fail and they return to the realm to be together forever. Boom, you're done, you can even add some ambiguous lines so that players can decide how happy their MC is with this arrangement, send me the check.

Here is the bottom line. Our group is full of aroace, and several combinations therein, individuals. We are the last group who should have gotten into a dating sim of all things. But the Arcana did something with the primaries that was special; they wrote a compelling plot with dazzling lore, complex characters, and strong themes wrapped up in a dating sim bow. The writers know better and we know they know better. I do not know what happened with the secondaries, especially around books 10-11, which is where minor issues slowly start spiraling into major ones, but it is clear that Nix Hydra needed some more planning before they released these routes. Hopefully they will learn.

TL;DR: Nix Hydra fired their tarot consultants about eighteen months ago and it has wrecked their secondary routes until they were just embarrassments. They never intended for the secondary routes to even exist and once they had to make them, they scrambled and threw out everything that made the primaries work.

- Mod Telos

#the arcana #The Arcana Game #arcana game #arcana game meta #arcana meta #arcana discourse #the arcana lucio #Lucio route #the arcana muriel #muriel route #the arcana portia #portia route #lucio morgasson #lucio montag #muriel #portia devorak #The Wheel Turns

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dancingstarsbornfromchaos · 3 years ago

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Some random background story headcanons I have for Evil Rick, since there’s really not enough content about his character! (And since I was encouraged to share by a lovely person)

As a young kid, Rick showed all the signs what psychiatry would later label as a Conduct Disorder (which in teenagers is called Antisocial Personality Disorder): complete disregard for social norms, delinquent behaviour (mostly in the form of skipping school, stealing and destruction of property), lack of empathy, cruelty towards animals, intimidating behaviours, open aggression. So, he was damaged goods since the very start, capable of, and very willing to, destroying and twisting everything he touched.

Being as smart as he was just made it worse. He quickly learnt how not to get caught, how to act behind others’ back, how to make sure that he could get away with it, even when everyone was aware of the kind of little monster he was. But no proof, no crime, right?

He even sent several of his classmates to the hospital through his elementary and middle school years, leaving some of them deeply traumatised in the aftermath and a couple physically impaired.

His family never did anything about it. The Sanchez struggled with money and Rick’s mother was far too busy working her three job’s to care for her son...a son she hadn’t wanted to have to start with. As for his father, the man was half an alcoholic and half a criminal and, while absent in his son’s life, he was around more and the only figure Rick could learn something from. And what he learnt was that when you wanted something, the quickest way to go around the issue was to take it, rules and consent be damned.

While his parents never physically abused him, Rick grew up in a state of complete neglect (emotional, but also material), having to fend for himself since an age when he should have been too young to even just be alone in the house.

At every new school he was sent to, he attracted the attention of the local bullies, but it never lasted. Eventually, something really nasty happened to them and everyone learnt to keep their distances, kids and adults alike.

School still felt like a waste of time to him, so he chose to focus on teaching himself what he needed and wanted to learn. And that was were most of his efforts went. While he never felt the need for a connection with other people, unless it involved causing them pain or gaining something out of it, science was the one thing that made him feel more than just anger, frustration, boredom or the need to break everything around him. Where he usually lived following a primal urge for destruction, it gave him a chance to experience what it was like to create.

He left home at 16, and his family never even thought of looking for him. He made money through his inventions and crime, usually never getting fully involved and preferring to stand aside and watch the chaos his schemes and twisted games led to.

Soon, however, all that was no longer enough. Everything he did got dull faster and faster and Earth started to feel like a prison, which lead him to work obsessively on finding a way to leave that ball of dirt behind.

Diane was a convenient opportunity. She was good-looking in a way that society approved, she was easy to fall for his lone wolf act and her will too see good even where there was none made her easy to manipulate. And, more importantly, she had enough normalcy to hide away Rick’s abnormalities too. He never loved her, nor the daughter they had together. He just got her pregnant so he could marry her and use her as a walking hideout while he kept on pursuing his own interests in peace.

The very same day he finished to build his space ship, Rick packed his stuff and left in the middle of the day, while Diane was off to pick up a 5-years-old Beth out of school. He didn’t leave a note, never looked back. And forgot about them both pretty quickly too.

In that bloodied, lawless mess that space turned to be, Rick truly thrived for the first time in his life. He turned himself into a mercenary, working for whoever managed to pique his interest the most and for whoever offered him the best chance to get creative with his work. The Federation was hardly the only one to suffer from his games and whims. Some came to say that Rick Sanchez destroyed civilizations for breakfast, if he woke up in that kind of mood. Or if he had a bit too much to drink the night before.

He met the Squanchy and the Birdperson of his dimensions, but they never became friends. They were just people he had dealt with while he sold weapons to the Rebellion, two faces who stood up just a little more in a sea of a thousands more.

Of course, his lifestyle and disregard for the consequences earned him an endless list of enemy. He was hunted down and captured, tortured in all the conceivable ways. He was almost killed several times, violated in the body and the mind alike. He lost counts of all the substances that were put and that he willingly put into his body, which by now was synthetic and part machine than human. Yet, he always came out on top, covered in blood and with that insane, terrifying tingle in his eyes shining just a bit brighter each time.

Meeting other Ricks and learning about interdimensional traveling marked a new turn in his life. He moved through different realities, took a vague interest in studying the differences in the course or history (and eventually found most of them pathetic and unworthy of his time). He even spent a couple of years living on the Citadel, hidden away in its darkest corners, always under the radar.

One thing stuck with him of all his experiences among his other selves, the same thing that eventually pushed him travel back to his own Earth, something he had never even just considered doing after having left it behind for good. The boy.

Showing up at his estranged daughter’s door, Rick quickly learnt two things: one, he wasn’t welcome but they let him stay anyway because he was bringing resources they didn’t have and, especially, because Beth was smart enough to figure that there was no denying him; secondly, his daughter’s family was no different from the one he had grown up with. A house full of indifference and neglect, where the kids were left to their own devices, no matter the consequences.

His 10-years-old Morty turned out to be nothing like Rick had been as a child. He was weak, easily scared, too full of stupid hopes and dreams, craving to be nurtured and given the affection that none of the people around him was willing to offer. He was pathetic, even, a crying, shivering mess. And yet, Rick didn’t miss it, the spark of strong willpower and stubbornness that would have allowed the kid to thrive just as Rick himself had done, if properly cultivated.

Useless to say, Rick didn’t hesitate to completely take over Morty’s life. It wasn’t like there was anyone to stop him or to worry or give a damn anyway. He planned on breaking the kid into pieces, literally and figuratively, over and over and over, using his own horrifying experiences as a guide. He would have forced him to accept that there was nothing in his life, in his universe but Rick. Then he would have put him back together, shaped him and molded him into something as resilient as Rick’s own wrecked life had made him. A sharp tool, a deadly weapon, a helpful sidekick. And, perhaps, one day, a partner. Because, whether or not he was willing to admit it, Morty was the first and only person Rick was ever able and ever wished to truly connect with.

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #evil rick #rnm headcanons #ram headcanons #rick and morty headcanons #[ he and Evil Morty are my second fave duo ]#[ I wish there was more content about them ]

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seeker-of-stories19 · 3 years ago

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Found this article about things Ian did wrong in Shameless and I’m not saying he’s perfect but this didn’t even make sense so I’m fixing it. (Part 1)

20/20

Okay so you’re saying it’s messed up that a fifteen year old was sleeping with his married boss? No it’s messed up that a married adult man is having sex with his fifteen year old employee, consensual or not he’s the adult in the situation. Also Ian did think it was wrong and opted out of their weekend together when he was presented with the presence of Kash’s family life. And I’d like to just add that while this was a bad decision He didn’t exactly have many options as far as expressing his sexuality, throughout the show it is clear that the southside isn’t exactly excepting.

19/20

Seriously? You’re not obligated to come out to someone just because you care about each other, sexual and romantic preferences are personal to some people and it’s not something you’re required to share. Not to mention there are plenty of reasons Ian may not have come out to his family, maybe he was scared or maybe he wasn’t ready but that’s his decision it has nothing to do with Lip.

18/20

Mandy reacted well because she’s a good person and she wanted her best friend and her brother, two people she cares about, to be happy. That doesn’t seem weird to me? I mean really it’s not her job to dictate who either of them can date and she doesn’t which is a sign that they have a genuine friendship. Not to mention Ian didn’t tell her because Mickey wanted it to be private which again is his decision.

17/20

First of all I don’t think Ian was indecisive I think it was awkward to tell your gay boss you’ve been sleeping with that you’re not interested in a relationship while he’s trying to impregnate his wife. Also one again Ian is being blamed for something that could be better pinned on either other character, Mickey shouldn’t have antagonized Kash and Kash obviously shouldn’t have shot Mickey because he was jealous (it’s not like he could’ve thought they’d be together forever.) Finally Ian really wouldn’t have helped either of them by going to the cops. Kash was engaging in an illegal affair with a teenager and Mickey probably would have been killed by his father who is a known homophobe if the truth got out.

16/20

Yeah an insane homophobic ex con thinks you got his daughter pregnant when you’re actually sleeping with his son and he was the one who impregnated his own daughter, why would you try to protect the people you care about and save your own life? Also Mandy and Mickey would be pretty relieved that their dad was locked up a while longer.

15/20

Why would Ian tell Jimmy? It’s not like they’re incredibly close and as far as the fact that Ned is married he shouldn’t be dating a teenager. Now I’m not saying this was rational or ethical behavior but I do think that Ian behaves in some questionable ways romantically throughout the beginning of the series but he never had a good role model in this department and he’s really just a kid who makes some stupid decisions and figures it out later on. Finally I’d like to point out that Ian had never had the opportunity to be in a relationship where the other person isn’t ashamed or afraid of being with him and he even confirms that this is why he’s with Ned when Mickey asks, which in my opinion is more sad than anything else.

14/20

He didn’t get tired of waiting to enlist he watched his boyfriend get raped by a Russian prostitute while they were both held at gunpoint and then watched him as he was forced to marry her since she was pregnant with his child. As for the rest of it, being bipolar is hardly something you could blame on Ian.

13/20

Seriously? For starters they didn’t know he was bipolar because he wasn’t there and they weren’t looking for him, even later in the season no one other than Mickey expressed more than basic concern over his behavior. I’d also like to point out that he’s spent his entire childhood watching Monica struggle with this disease. He knows what it does to people so of course he wouldn’t except it instantly. Even under normal circumstances denial in these type of life changing circumstances is normal. As for the rest of it he did care about his family enough to take his meds even though they made him feel so horrible he eventually stopped. And his relationship with Mickey was so sex based for so long that not being able to perform sexually only made him feel more insecure about a disease that he’s already watched ruin his family’s life. As a bonus I’d just like to throw in that all these criticisms are based on the effects of a mental illness he has no control over.

12/20

One again this behavior was caused by a mental illness he didn’t have any control over, and as hard as it was to watch Mickey be so heartbroken they persevered like they always do. Also, you can understand why Ian would feel babied or crazy by Mickey’s sudden careful and loving behavior, he’s not in the right mindset to accept the genuine change in his long time partner as anything other than a response to his bipolar disorder.

11/20

Honestly I’m getting sick of making the same point over and over again. He’s mentally ill, he isn’t thinking clearly, he’s afraid and in denial, and he doesn’t have control over any of it. Seriously the judgement against him for having a mental disease in this article is infuriating. Not to mention the fact that both Ian and Yevgeny are alright which I count as a win considering the circumstances.

Hopefully you enjoyed this or at least found it interesting even if you didn’t agree on the whole thing. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts as I put a lot of time into thinking about these points. Part 2 will be posted soon and will be a continuation of this because I hit the 10 image max. I obviously don’t own the article and it is posted at the bottom to give full credit to the writer. I only own my opinions.

Part 1/2

#shameless #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich #mandy milkovich #gallagher’s #bipolar disorder #mental disorder #mental illness #article #rant post #ranting #my thoughts #gallavich

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angelsunflowers-fanfics · 4 years ago

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"Stuck in the closet" Zer0 x F!reader

Fandom: Borderlands

Genre: Smut

Linktree

~~~

Zer0 decided that he wanted to take (y/n) out on a mission with him for once, it had been a long time since the two have done a mission together. He wanted it to be like old times.

(y/n) decided to take a break from vault hunting after killing Jack but Zer0 still wanted her by his side throughout Promethea, so it was no surprise this is where she was finding herself now: Trapped in a closet with Zer0 pressed up against all the right places.

Of course, the first time (y/n) went out on a real mission in years, she found herself in this predicament.

All this time, (y/n) wasn't sure what exactly Zer0 was, but she knew that he had something.

(y/n) released a shaky breath as Zer0 leaned closer to her as she was nearest to the door, his head only inches from her own.

"Do not make a sound/the target is right outside/I know it's tempting." Zer0 whispered into her ear.

(y/n) could feel her face warm as Zer0's words caused a shiver to roll down her spine. Zer0 was quick to wrap a hand to cover (y/n)'s mouth as he rolls his lower half into her backside. He knows that their target is nowhere near the closet they're stuck in, he just needed an excuse to finally have this moment with (y/n).

A shiver rolls through his body as he feels the muffled moan of the person under him vibrate through his hand. It fills him with delight and a taste for more.

Though Zer0 would prefer somewhere more private of course.

But the sight of (y/n)'s quivering legs and the warmth radiating off of her body had Zer0 rethinking waiting.

He couldn’t wait, and he wasn’t sure (y/n) would be able to either.

"This can wait until after/ Or are you this impatient?/But I am just as," Zer0 teased.

It was embarrassing to say how much (y/n) missed this: the close touches that were much too intimate to be considered friendly and the flirty haiku. (y/n) never thought she'd miss the haiku of all things.

(y/n) noticed from the corner of her eye as Zer0 tossed one of his gloves

Zer0's free hand slowly trailed (y/n)'s waist, his fingers sat at the top of her waistband, ready to start any pleasurable actions at (y/n)'s consent.

As much as it would be to (y/n)'s utter delight to continue, she knew that they had a mission. They could finish this later, which was what (y/n) thought to herself as she found herself pleading, “Zer0, please...Just--”

With her consent, Zer0 quickly slipped a hand underneath her pants. One of his fingers slowly penetrated (y/n)’s entrance whilst his thumb slowly rubbed her clit in tight circles, almost painfully slowly. (y/n) found herself rocking her hips back and forth to meet the motions of Zer0’s hand. Shallow moans escaped from her lips, but they were prevented from being heard by anyone outside the room by Zer0’s gloved hand. (y/n) reached a hand on the wall to support herself, so she doesn’t fly out of the closet and grabbed onto Zer0’s arm with a vice grip, her nails digging into his skin, but he certainly didn’t mind.

Zer0 watched her in amusement but continued to cover her mouth, as much as it would please him to hear her sounds of pleasure, they couldn’t afford to be heard in such a place; especially not when they weren’t even close to a secure location.

(y/n)’s body shivered as Zer0 added another finger into her without warning. “Mmh, Zer0…” (y/n)’s whispery moan sent a jolt of pleasure to the bottom of Zer0’s stomach which finally made Zer0 fasten his pace to continue hearing her moans.

(y/n) welcomed the faster pace with glee and continued to rock her hips to meet his skilled fingers at the new speed and quickly let out a squeal of surprise as Zer0 started to rock his own hips to the pace he was setting.

Zer0 couldn’t seem to even find the energy to whisper the haiku he'd been thinking of for years into her ear as his fingers moved faster and faster. He followed his instincts as he listened as her moans became breathless and high-pitched as well as her legs shaking with the anticipation of her upcoming orgasm.

Zer0's mind was hazy as he let out his own guttural groans, quickly closing in on an orgasm he wasn’t even trying to be focused on. Though with every groan that escaped from him, (y/n) clenched around his fingers more and more. She did always tell him continuously how much she adored his voice.

Desperate for not only his own release, but (y/n)’s as well, Zer0 rolled his hips into her ass rougher than before as well as curling his fingers once he was sure they were as deep as he could push them. He wanted to brush against that sensitive spot deep inside her pussy with something besides his fingers, to make her cry out his name for everyone to hear. But for now, the almost violent shaking from her legs as she orgasmed is more than enough for Zer0 to as well. Zer0 continued to finger her through the orgasm, making it last just a little longer than she had anticipated.

Zer0 watched (y/n) slowly come out of her orgasm as her shaking slowly decreased, and her breathing became somewhat normal. He pulled his hand away and was quick to pull out a clean cloth to clean (y/n) up as well as himself. (y/n) shuddered as Zer0’s hand quickly cleaned the mess that he made in (y/n)’s pants before quickly cleaning himself up and fixing (y/n)’s clothes as to where it didn’t look like the two were engaging in inappropriate activities in a utility closet.

“I apologize/Our first shouldn’t have been this/You’re too important,” Zer0 apologized.

(y/n) turned around to face Zer0 for the first time in 10 minutes and spoke, “Wh-what do you mean? You didn’t like it?”

An unamused emoticon flashed onto Zer0’s helmet. It was quite obvious from his previous actions that he loved it.

“I clearly love it/Though the setting wasn’t suitable/You deserve better,” Zer0 explained his previous statement more clearly. Zer0’s helmet flashed a winky face before he continued, “I’d like to continue/Later, I’d like to continue/If you so wish to.”

📷

#zer0 #borderlands #zer0 x reader #borderlands x reader #zer0 imagine #borderlands imagine #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #x reader #self insert

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petri808 · 3 years ago

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Nalu Yakuza Au *cover art by @jmoart214 💜

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |

The tit for tat game was well known to both of their top confidants and lieutenants because it had been going on ever since Natsu and Lucy broke up. Plus, it was hard to get around such knowledge considering most of them came from the same neighborhoods. These intrigues ebbed and flowed like waves. Months could pass by without any interactions between the two, at other times they’d go back and forth continuously until one of them finally gave up, and on the odd occasion ended in a huge fight that led to another round of ignoring each other. Up until now, it had been kind of amusing to watch them torture each other because it was better than a drama shows on television. But that didn’t mean Natsu, and Lucy’s friends didn’t worry about one or both being truly hurt one day because of it.

“It’s fine,” Natsu rolled his eyes as Gray chastised him after the soapland incident. The two men were at Natsu’s home after work hours and supposed to be relaxing. But clearly his friend didn’t want to drop the subject. “What’s the big deal?”

“Dude, you let yourself be blindfolded in a public space! Have you forgotten what kind of business we’re in? What if it had been an assassin instead?”

“Oh, that’s just ridiculous. We’re talking about Lucy’s company, and I trust their security measures because she has just as much to lose if a hit took place there.”

“Still, you should be more careful, at least take a bodyguard with you…”

Natsu’s eyebrow twitched in irritation. “And what, so they can watch the show? We got any voyeurs on the payroll? Cause I can’t think of anyone here who’d wanna see another guy getting his balls fondled!”

Gray ran a hand down his face. “So not the mental image I wanted. You’re missing the point.” He sighed. “Natsu you are the head of this clan, and your safety is my top priority.”

“I get it, I get it,” Natsu drawled.

“And frankly,” Gray continued, “you’ve become distracted by her lately.”

“Tch! No, I haven’t!”

“Yeah, you are. You think I haven’t noticed? I know you drive by her place sometimes. I know you’ve followed her to that coffee shop she likes to frequent. But ever since her employee was robbed, things have escalated again.”

“You’re imagining things and apparently spying on me. I’m just keeping an eye on the competition.”

“Watching over you is my job! That’s not spying.” Gray crossed his arms. “And oh, it’s no doubt that you’re keeping an eye on her. That’s why you went to Katsunuma’s party and to soapland too. The problem is you’re getting sloppy and sloppy gets people killed.”

Natsu groaned. “Are you done yet? We’re supposed to be enjoying the baseball game, not psychoanalyzing my life.”

“Almost.” Gray placed a hand on his friends’ knee and leaned in. “Natsu, you’ve been chasing that tail since high school, just lock her down and convince her to work together already.”

Natsu snorted a laugh. “Gray we all grew up together, so what in all these years makes you think that’s a possibility? You know damn well Lucy’s not a woman you can control without her consent.” Natsu knew that, and frankly he loved that part of her. In fact, it made him even more fired up whenever he thought about it, just like a treasure you don’t just find but must win at the end of a game. “I’ll find a way, some day.”

“Well until that day arrives, could you promise me you’ll be more cautious?”

“Fine, fine,” Natsu waved his hand. “I’ll back off of Lucy for now.”

“Good.” Gray relaxed back onto his recliner thinking the drama was over.

“However, there is a new guy I want surveillance placed on.”

“Who?”

“The bartender from the party.”

Gray groaned. “Seriously? Why? He’s just a bartender!”

“I don’t trust him.”

“Was he spiking the drinks or something? Dealing drugs at the party?”

“Maybe.”

Gray huffed. “You really gonna try that? Do I look like an idiot? This is just straight jealousy talking.”

“I don’t care! I want someone to dig up what they can on the guy!”

“No, what you wanna know is if he fucked Lucy that night!”

Natsu jumped up with his fists clenched. “Fuck you!”

“Fuck you too!” Gray stood up and matched his boss’s energy. “Unless you give me a damn good reason to check into him, I’m not wasting my guy’s time! You might be the boss, but don’t you fucking forget who you’re talking to! I’m not some punk off the streets!”

Realizing he was taking things too far, Natsu sat back down. “Sorry.”

Gray sighed and plopped back down too. “I only joined because you asked me to and you’re my best friend, then I helped you build this new empire, so I’m just as invested in protecting it as you are. But Natsu, personal emotions have led to the downfall of many in this business, and as a friend, I’ll check you any time I think you’re going to far.”

“You’re right…” Natsu sighed too. “She just gets me so worked up.”

“Don’t I know it,” Gray laughed, but stopped when Natsu glared at him. “Sorry, it slipped out.”

“But I swear, there’s something suspicious about him. When he saw me, I thought he just reacted because he thought I was Lucy’s boyfriend or something, but the more I think about it, he might have recognized me.”

“Well, that wouldn’t necessarily be suspicious either.”

“True. But the look in his eyes just made me wonder.”

“Alright…” Gray groaned, “if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll have someone do some digging. So, you said he has orange hair and glasses, and the name on his tag was Loke?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s an unusual name, shouldn’t be too hard to check on.”

Over the course of a couple of weeks, Gray sent out feelers for any information on this Loke guy. Katsunuma junior gave them their first small lead that the bartender had worked the party through a local food catering company. That catering company was a legitimate business who had both full-time staff as well as independent contractors brought in per event as needed. Loke had been one of the latter. From there Gray obtained a last name, de Lioncourt.

According to his sources at the local precinct, Loke de Lioncourt had no rap sheet, no prior dealings with police, and for all they knew was an average citizen. The man’s Line blog profile listed him as a 28-year-old, Japanese/French American, model and bartender, and it was filled with pictures from events, parties, as well as many gorgeous women— none of which contained Lucy. But as Gray trolled through the man’s feed, he did come across one person he recognized and passed the information along to Natsu.

“Wow, she’s in a bunch of photos,” Natsu mumbled as he scrolled through the blog.

“Well, considering Cana’s reputation are you surprised. Parties and alcohol are the two things that woman lives for.” Gray laughed. “Now see, this makes sense to me. Lucy and him, not so much.”

“Tch… still pisses me off he even tried.”

“Lucy’s a free woman, she can go out with whoever she wants to.”

“We’ll see about that,” Natsu mumbled low.

“What was that?” Gray asked with a raised brow.

“Nothing.”

“Better be nothing, cause this is a dead end. He’s just a flirty bartender. It’s how they make tips.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine.” Natsu sat back in his chair. “So, back to business. What this I heard about some missing stock?”

“Oh, right. One of the warehouse clerks noticed a shortage, but when I checked with Yura, he said the books were fine. I had him show it to me, and it appears the numbers were just inverted by accident. So, instead of 185 kilos, it’s supposed to be 158 kilos.”

“Did you talk to the clerk again? Does he have any history of messing up like this?”

“Nah, he’s one of our better clerks.”

“Just keep an eye on it.”

“Sure thing, boss. By the way, have you seen Gajeel today?” Gray questioned. “I haven’t seen him.”

“He called me this morning said he wasn’t feeling well, thinks he ate something bad for dinner last night.”

“Tch, seriously? Thought he had an iron stomach?”

Natsu shrugged. “Must’a been some bad sushi or something. We ain’t got much happening today, so it’s fine. Anything else? I got some stuff I need to finish.”

Gray tapped his chin. “Just a reminder you have an appointment with our tech guy dropping by later this week to go over some upgrades on the system.”

“Like I’m supposed to know anything about that stuff, it’s what I pay him for.”

“You still gotta approve it,” Gray shrugged and took his leave.

Once the man was completely out of the office, Natsu opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a nondescript box he’d hidden inside. He grinned to himself. It was time to make another special delivery. Even though he’d told Gray he was backing off the whole Lucy and Loke subject, there was no way he was gonna let it slide. Natsu didn’t care if the man seemed legit, and he wasn’t the first nor would probably be the last that he’d eventually scared away. And besides, being a Yakuza boss had a lot of down times too, easily filled with having a little fun.

Today’s little care package was being sent to Lucy by a courier service and Natsu just had to drop it off to the delivery company. Just a normal company like Kuroneko Yamato so it wouldn’t rouse too many suspicions. It was turning into a fun game for him just coming up with ideas of what he could do to rile Lucy up or irritate this Loke guy. Natsu chuckled to himself. So far, his favorite prank was a box of small sized condoms and a bottle of enhancement pills that he’d had delivered to Loke while on the job at another party. He’d even snuck in to watch it delivered, gaining a good laugh when the man took a peek in the box and frowned at its contents.

It was childish, but Natsu didn’t care. Every day for two weeks now, something new was sent to Loke. Random gifts like children’s candy to a toy gun, a big bottle of lubricant wrapped in a bow, a week’s worth of meals sent for lunch one day, even an empty box with rocks inside it just to drive the man crazy wondering who in the world was sending them. Lucy too wasn’t immune to his pranks, though hers had a different feel to them. Flowers with no note attached. Tickets to a canceled show he made up. A supposed dinner invite from Loke that wasn’t real— okay that was to test her, but she didn’t fall for it. And today’s little care package fit right into his prank scheme.

Natsu dropped off the package at a Kuroneko Yamato office with the address instructions already filled out and paid the company’s employee extra to keep their mouths shut. ‘She’s gonna kill me one day,’ he laughed to himself as he rode back to his office. ‘If it’s suffocation by her boobs it wouldn’t be a bad way to go!’

“Anymore stops sir?” The driver asked Natsu.

“Nope. Back to the office.”

He looked at his watch. The package should be arriving at Lucy’s office within the hour. Give or take another to open it, and by 4pm he would be receiving another phone call. Maybe he won’t answer it. Oh, that would piss her off even more! ‘Well, if she’d just take the hint...’

The afternoon was supposed to be mellow at headquarters that day. No shipments, and no appointments. But when Natsu got back, another general in the organization named Jellal Fernandez came to his office to inform him of a problem. One of the new local restaurants in their territory was refusing to cooperate and he wanted to know how Natsu wanted it handled. They were right in the middle of discussing it, when Natsu’s office door flew open with a loud bang!

In stomped Lucy who immediately threw a box at his head, causing Natsu to duck and Jellal to pull his gun.

“Don’t!” Natsu screamed at his general and motioned for him to stand down, to which the man complied. “Do you have a death wish Lucy!”

“Get. Out.” She snapped at the general. “Get out! This is between me and your boss!”

Jellal looked to Natsu, who nodded his head to scram. “I got this, don’t worry.” The man holstered his gun and left, but Natsu could see he’d stayed right outside of the now closed door.

“I take it you didn’t like the gift,” Natsu pretended to stay calm.

“Gee, me throwing it at you give you that impression? I know it’s you sending all these damn deliveries to me and Loke. That needs to stop now!”

He crossed his arms and scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Play dumb all you want. Just stop! Why are you even doing this?!”

“Take a guess,” he sneered back.

“I could’ve sworn we were adults now, but apparently I’m the only one who grew up. Stay out of my love life Natsu!”

“So, you admit you’re sleeping with the guy!”

“That’s none of your damn business! I can fuck whoever I want!”

“Not as long as I’m alive,” Natsu growled back.

Lucy crossed her arms. “That could be arranged.”

“Is that a threat?!”

“Yes! If you don’t stay out of my love life!”

“A woman shouldn’t be sleepi—”

“Don’t you finish that sentence!” Lucy grabbed a stapler that was within reach and chucked it at Natsu’s head. “Stop trying to control me!”

“Are you crazy?!”

At that moment, Gray barged into the room. He’d heard the screaming from the other side of the office, and when he got close enough to see Jellal standing outside the door, he became alarmed. Why would a general leave Natsu vulnerable! The man told him their boss told him to leave, but as the sounds inside escalated, Gray couldn’t wait anymore.

“Stop it!!” Gray got between them. “What are you two doing! Lucy you shouldn’t be here!”

“Then tell your damn boss to leave me the fuck alone!” Lucy spat back. “Ask him how he’s been harassing Loke and me!”

Gray turned to his boss with a groan. “Natsu, we talked about this!”

“Tell Gray what you been doing!” Lucy pressed. “Show him the stupid packages you send!”

“What packages?” Gray looked to Lucy, then repeated the question as he stared at his boss. “What packages?”

“Tch,” Natsu crossed his arms, “it’s not even that bad.”

Lucy stomped over to where the box fell and picked it up, pulling the contents out. “Bullshit!” She snapped as she held up a very racy, red nightie with flame prints, a pair of fluffy handcuffs, and a large dildo. “See this shit?!” Lucy shook the floppy latex toy at Gray before chucking it to the ground again. “He includes messages too,” then handed the man a folded piece of paper.

Gray read it aloud, “to make up for what playboy lacks. Had it custom made to my size wink wink. Ugh, seriously man,” he tossed the letter.

Natsu shrugged. “I was just having fun.”

“This is the yakuza, not a daycare!” Gray snaps. “I’m not here to babysit the boss so he stops harassing the competition! There’s more important business to worry about!”

“That’s right listen to Gray,” Lucy sneered.

Gray turned to her. “Oh, you ain’t innocent either, so don’t even try it. You both do things to purposely rile the other up and get mad when there’s consequences. Stop it!” He looked back and forth between the two. “Just stop it already!”

Natsu and Lucy looked away from the man with scowls on their faces. Neither wanted to admit he was right.

“Jellal,” Gray called out. When the man entered, he instructed him to escort Lucy out of there. “Next time, just call me instead. It’s best you two just stay away from each other. Got it?!”

“Yeah,” Lucy grumped.

“Got it?!” Gray questioned his boss.

“Yeah,” Natsu mumbled.

“Fucking like high school,” Gray ran a hand down his face in irritation. “You two need therapy.”

#nalu #nalu au #nalu fan fic #nalu fan fiction #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #ch 6 #we'll take back heaven #petri808

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9worldstales · 3 years ago

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MCU Loki: Why I fear they failed to deliver what they promised

At this point I’m kind of confused by who the “Loki” series is trying to reach or which is the goal/message they’re trying to pass along.

They had tried to intrigue assorted audience but, if you ask me, the series has often failed to deliver what it seemed to promise.

Of course I might be wrong. Or maybe I'm not seeing another type of audience the series aimed and managed to reach.

When the series started I wanted to keep a positive mentality and hope whatever seemed not to work would be fixed along the way or have a reason for existing that I just wasn't seeing because I hadn't seen the full story yet.

However, after 5 episodes I'm starting to lose hope the series will make a genuine effort to reach the fans at whom it seemed to aim.

PART 1 – “LOKI” IS NOT FOR THE OLD FANS WHO PRODUCED META SHOWING HOW HIS TRAUMA DAMAGED HIM

"I think it's the struggle with identity, who you are, who you want to be. I'm really drawn to characters who are fighting for control. Certainly you see that with Loki over the first 10 years of movies, he's out of control at pivotal parts of his life, he was adopted and everything and that manifest itself through anger and spite towards his family." [Loki's Struggle With His Identity Confirmed To Be A Focus Of His Disney+ Series]

What was it about Loki as a character that attracted you? He’s just fun, for one. He has a very playful sense of humor about him. I like how he never quite lets you know what he’s thinking. Beyond that, what I connect to about him is the same thing the legions of fans do, which is his humanity and his vulnerability. This is a guy who—yes, on the one hand, he was the prince of Asgard, seems like a nice life—but his father, in fact, killed his actual birth father, adopted him, lied to him about his heritage and parentage his entire life, he was forced to live in the shadow of his oafish older brother who was born to be king. He’s experienced a lot of trauma, and I think that what he’s looking for is just a little bit of control over his life. Which he feels like maybe he’s never quite had. That’s something I think we can all relate with. [From Loki to Doctor Strange and Star Wars, Michael Waldron Is the New Franchise Whisperer]

Let’s be honest, the audience for the “Loki” series is not really meant to be Marvel movies old time fans who enjoyed “Thor” and “The Avengers”, made countless Meta analyzing Loki’s behaviour and who wanted answers about what happened to Loki prior to “The Avengers” or wanted to see Loki’s family terrible dynamics be discussed, or at least to see explored the wrong dynamics of Loki’s interracial adoption (he’s taken away from his planet, the truth is hidden from him, his look is changed to disguise him as an Asgardian, nothing is done against the racial hate for the Jotuns at which Loki is exposed, even witnessing it from his brother) or talk how much in control of himself Loki was during “The Avengers” (okay, the web said the sceptre manipulated Loki, but what about acknowledging that in his own series? It doesn’t have to come from Loki who had no idea he was manipulated but someone could mention ‘think yourself lucky here the stones don’t work, they’ve the nasty tendency to manipulate people’).

The series has avoided digging into all that as much as they could.

Even when Loki talks with Sylvie, the most we get is a small big about how Frigga was awesome in his eyes and taught him magic, but this isn’t meant to explain any of the issues Loki had with his family, it just make Sylvie feel bad because she can’t remember her adoptive mother, as for the D.B. Cooper born out of a bet with Thor, yeah, fun but completely random. What’s meant to be the message about family dynamics here, that it was the bets between Thor and Loki that caused Loki to decide to conquer Earth? Or what about the Sif loop? Is it there to push on Loki the blame of his poor relation with Sif?

No, clearly not.

In regard to Loki the Frigga flashback is there to remark he had a loving and supportive family while the other two are there to have Loki admit he is ‘a mischievous scamp’, ‘a horrible person’ and ‘a narcissist’.

To put it in Classic Loki’s words: ‘Damn it! Animals, animals! We lie and we cheat, we cut the throat of every person who trusts us, and for what? Power. Glorious power. Glorious purpose! We cannot change. We're broken, every version of us. Forever. And whenever one of us dares try to fix themselves, they're sent here to die.’

In short it’s all Loki’s fault if he does bad, nothing happened to him that could have messed him up, he’s just a horrible person… however…

PART 2 – “LOKI” IS NOT FOR THE OLD AND NEW FANS WHO BELIEVED LOKI TO BE A DANGEROUS, EVIL, PSYCHOPATH VILLAIN EITHER

"Loki is an a**, and that makes my life as a writer, easy." ... "Due to the trauma in Loki’s life, I would even [accept a story] in which he is committed to being all bad." [Michael Waldron on Loki: He’s an a**. That makes things easy]

Considering the series is trying to pin SOLELY on Loki his wrongdoing, completely skipping the toxic way in which he was raised you might think they want to paint him as an evil, psychopath who was just born bad.

But no, that’s not the intention, we see it from the start.

Loki is given a quick briefing on how his beloved family loved him despite him hurting them, a briefing that contains false information which would work if we accept the briefing as manipulative but, at this point I’m not so sure that was the author’s intent. The Doylist purpose of the briefing is clearly to show the audience how Loki cares for his family, how he still has feelings, feels pain at the idea Frigga and Odin died and wish to make up with his brother.

It’s not just they loved him and did nothing wrong toward him, it’s also he who loved them and didn’t mean to harm them. That’s why we’re fed that damn discourse about Loki sending the Dark Elves to kill Frigga, because the series wants to remark that no, Loki didn’t want to kill his family, he loved them.

Tom Hiddleston used to say what Loki is came from a place of pain but the series didn’t explore that place of pain… it just gave him more pain and not just in episode 1. Episode 2 has him discovering Asgard is destroyed, episode 3 has him remembering Frigga, episode 4 shows him believing Sylvie die and watching Mobius being pruned. He doesn’t cry in Ep 5, episode 5 wants us to truly feel bad for Sylvie, not for him, but there’s a lot of bitterness from Classic Loki who commits a heroic suicide so you might say we get a sad Loki anyway.

And this also works as a shock to make him change his mind about his ‘glorious purposes’. Sorta, with Thor reminding us he’s not so bad and Loki explaining his behaviour as “I don't enjoy hurting people. I... I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to, because I've had to. Because it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear.”

Plot-wise, this is completely useless.

The show will prove Sylvie is not Loki and has completely different motivations and Mobius, being an expert in Variants, should know.

What’s more why would Mobius care if Loki enjoys hurting people or not?

His goal is to capture Sylvie with Loki’s help. The most he should care about is how to keep Loki loyal to him, not if Loki has fun hurting people or not which, in fact, is a knowledge that won’t be used in his investigation.

No, this is here for the viewers, to tell them Loki isn’t a sadistic, evil villain, he’s someone weak who tries to scare others so as not to look weak. As Mobius will put in ‘a scared little boy, shivering in the cold’ who has an ‘insecure need for validation’.

What’s more?

The show will try his hardest to establish he’s not even competent.

Let’s talk of him as a fighter.

In the movies Loki is a competent fighter and side material establish he’s pretty strong, definitely much more than a human.

In “The Avengers” we see Captain America needs Iron Man’s help to beat him and, anyway, Loki’s plan was to be captured. Loki manages to walk away on his feet when Coulson hits him with that superspecial weapon and it’ll take him to be Hulk smashed after a fight with Thor and a meeting with an explosive arrow of Hawkeye before he can’t fight any longer.

This doesn’t happen in the “Loki” series.

Loki gets beaten up by various people in 4 episodes, preferably women (B-15, the people possessed by Sylvie, the guards on the train, Sif). You might say in episode 5 he’s not but actually Classic Loki is the one who gets swallowed by Alioth and our Loki instead survives because he has Sylvie supporting him as, on his own he couldn’t even distract Alioth.

Let’s talk of him as a wizard.

He can use magic, impressive magic but… it serves him mostly nothing. In the TVA his magic doesn’t work. Outside of it is mostly useless. It doesn’t help win fights. The Tempad he caused to disappear gets broken. To beat Alioth they needs enchantment, not his own magic. What’s more, when they’ve to go on the train his disguise wouldn’t have worked without Sylvie’s enchantment and, if this wasn’t enough, he got drunk, removed the disguise and wasn’t even able to make tickets appear.

Classic Loki too, with his impressive illusions is ultimately a distraction. Alioth tears easily through his illusions which aren’t even solid.

Let’s talk of him as a planner.

All Loki will accomplish is to escape from the Time theatre for a brief period in episode 1 and figure out Sylvie hides in apocalypses in episode 2. The rest of his plans fails or are not plan or are mocked over and not even put into practice.

Let’s talk about him as a manipulator with a silver tongue.

He can’t even persuade Mobius when he’s telling him the truth, Mobius dismisses it as a lie due to ‘cockroach's survival mechanism’.

And psychologically?

He’s just someone who crave attention because he’s a narcissist scared of being alone. Not a psychopath.

Loki is not meant to be a dangerous, evil, psychopath villain in this series, he’s a not serious man, a clown, a scared little boy in need of attention, a narcissist who needs to be loved.

Welcome to cartoon villain Loki, this Loki isn’t the Variant of “The Avengers” Loki, he’s the Variant of “Avengers Assemble”Loki… only he’s even less competent than him.

PART 3 – “LOKI” IS NOT EVEN HERE FOR GENERAL MARVEL MOVIE FANS

"That's a lot of Infinity Stones. That's true but they are useless there in the TVA, so I don't know. Is that gun loaded or not? We'll see..." [Loki Writer Comments On Whether TVA’s Infinity Stones Will Return In MCU]

“We had to create an insane institutional knowledge of how time travel would work within the TVA so the audience never has to think about it again. It was a lot of drawings of squiggly timelines.” Marvel already made its case for how time travel works in Avengers: Endgame, but that, Waldron points out, “is the way the Avengers understand it.” With a TV show it’s a little different. “I was always very acutely aware of the fact that there’s a week between each of our episodes and these fans are going to do exactly what I would do, which is pick this apart. We wanted to create a time-travel logic that was so airtight it could sustain over six hours. There’s some time-travel sci-fi concepts here that I’m eager for my Rick and Morty colleagues to see.” [How the Man Behind LokiIs Shaping Marvel’s Phase 4 and Beyond]

BC: The TVA is there to clean everybody up? MW: Yeah, Avengers: Endgame… that's how The Avengers understand time travel. 'Loki,' episode one, is how the TVA explains time travel to Loki and we're certainly building on what's come before us. [Loki: Michael Waldron On Gender Fluidity, Mephisto, Time Travel & More]

It’s true “Loki” is focusing on a new corner of the MCU but it interconnects very poorly with the movies before it.

Although Loki escaped with the Tesseract... it just dismisses completely the Infinity Stones.

Despite talking a lot about timelines and creating branching realities it waved away the whole plot of "Avengers: Endgame" as apparently supposed to happen even though it should have created branching realities.

We see Renslayer wave away how the Avengers went in the past causing the Tesseract to end up in Loki’s hands... and all the other things the Avengers did that affected the past goes unmentioned.

Bruce meeting the Ancient, Thor meeting his mother and taking away Thor’s hammer, Rocket being seen as he steals the reality stone from Jane, Tony stealing a suitcase and damaging the place in which the Tesseract was kept then meeting Howard Stark, 4 flacons of Pyn particles missing, an alarm given to the military bases, how Steve managed to bring back the sceptre if that timeline was pruned, how a timeline handled being without Thanos and Co as they went in the future or how they clearly didn’t bring the orb back the second they took it as Nebula remained unconscious there and nobody came and when she woke up Thanos could get her. It didn’t even explain why Steve remaining with Peggy didn’t change anything.

It's not that the audience has all explained... it's that they were told to dismiss it as 'meant to happen' and that was it.

What's more, the TVA apparently didn't list a finger to stop 2014 Thanos from going in the future and causing Tony Stark's death.

As if this wasn't enough, “Loki” just skips any possible connection with the movies, even hands Loki false information about them (he lead the Dark Elves to his mother when Loki had no idea the Kurse was a Dark Elf and they would have found her anyway as they were searching for the Aether which Malekith could sense, he’s born solely to cause pain and suffering and death, overlooks how he saved Jane twice or helped the Asgardian escape Hela) and never discusses them again.

Even with Classic Loki, who’s a Variant of “Avengers: Infinity War” Loki, they don’t talk about what happened after Loki’s supposed dead, apparently hinting it was better if he died, nor explain how Loki knew Thor survived.

PART 4 – “LOKI” IS NOT REALLY OFFERING A GOOD REPRESENTATION FOR FEMALES EVEN THOUGH IT CLEARLY AIMS AT FEMALE AUDIENCE

Let’s make a quick experiment.

Everyone, let’s name all the characters we remember which appeared in more than 1 episode of “Loki” for more than one minute.

We’ve, of course, Loki, Mobius, B-15, Renslayer, Sylvie, C-20 and Miss Minute.

5 females versus 2 males.

What’s more, females are not sexualized, they remains completely dressed, they’re clearly not there to attract male gazes, they’re represented as strong, dangerous, in control, something archived often by showing them beating males either physically or intellectually or in rank.

It seems promising. At first.

Is there someone who’s sexualized?

The “Loki” series takes care to offer us Tom Hiddleston naked.

So since there’s an abundance of females in the cast and Tom Hiddleston is shown naked is it aiming at a female audience?

Very, very likely but… but how’s then handled all this?

When Loki is seen undressed he’s not in a situation of power, like Thor who’s twice shows half naked in his movies but because he’s changing/washing and perfectly comfortable in showing his body and once in a situation which could be a male forbidden fantasy, to have many women massage your naked body, no, he’s shown as he’s powerless while being stripped by a machine. Clearly not a male power fantasy, more like a male nightmare.

And, in a totally not surprising way, pictures of this scene were spread by many female fans because it was aimed at them… though a part of them, was also honestly appalled at seeing this scene in contest, finding the forced stripping humiliating and degrading.

Sure, a naked Tom Hiddleston makes a nice eye-candy but this wasn’t how Loki’s many fans wanted to see Loki naked.

But let’s talk of female representation here, since the show seems to be interested in female audience… only who even though this was the representation women wanted doesn’t understand much of women representation in the first place.

Why?

For start because women here are all the same type of woman.

Strong fighters who’re in control and confident, with no real characterization beyond this to speak of despite the large amount of screen time.

Renslayer is an ex-hunter who can fight one on one against Sylvie and who clearly has the position of power she has because she was good as a hunter and shows her abilities in fighting after that Sylvie had beaten 2 guards at the same time. B-15 is introduced by beating Loki and is the commander of a squad. C-20 is another commander and, albeit possessed, can dispose of a part of her squad members.

Do I need to spend words on how Sylvie is depicted as this awesome fighter who has learnt to fight by herself, can keep at bay more than 1 Minuteman, can use a sword, has learnt enchantment on her own and is feared by all the TVA? Do I?

And it’s awesome to have women who are strong fighters in positions of command/power/control… but why women has to be represented as just that?

Even when they add a female as an one episode cameo, it's Sif, beating the hell out of Loki. And what about the Lady in Lamentis 1 who was too old to be strong but managed to blast away both Loki and Sylvie seeing through their deceptions?

Even the harmless Miss Minute can avoid being hit by Loki and gets she has to pretend to do researches to stall Sylvie and save Renslayer.

Women kick asses here… but that’s all they’re good for.

And so we get to Sylvie, who is the superior Loki Variant… because she’s female.

Kid Loki: You're different. Why? Loki: No, I'm not, you see? I'm the same, really. I'm the same as all of you. Have any of you met a woman Variant of us? Classic Loki: Sounds terrifying. Loki: Oh, she is. But that's kind of what's great about her. She's different. She's not trying to take over the TVA, she's trying to take it down. And she needs me. Now, you said Alioth is what keeps us here. You said it's a living thing. You said it's a shark. Well, if it lives, it dies. So I'm gonna kill the shark. I'm gonna kill Alioth, and I could use all the help I can get.

That’s what Loki preaches to his fellow Lokis who think a woman Loki would be terrific.

I mean, they’ve an alligator Loki, a POC Loki, but the one who has to be different is the female Loki. Because being female is a character trait.

Mobius: Okay. I feel like I'm always looking up to you. I like it. It's appropriate. [Ep 1]

Basically females in the “Loki” series are all representation of the Action girl trope and aren’t even different representation of said trope. I mean, “The Avengers” have 5 actions boy who’re clearly as different as they could be. Girls can be represented as different too, if they really aim at young audience they can take good old “Sailor Moon” as an example. 5 action girls who are strong and determinate AND DIFFERENT, more than just someone who kicks the adversary away.

And it’s not like they don’t know how to characterize people in a different way.

Mobius is an analyst who shows sympathetic traits toward the Variants and a certain level or intelligence. U-92 and D-90 are hunters who are shown to held Variants in little regard (U-92 wanted to attack the boy they found in the church, D-90 mistreated the scared people in the shelter). Casey is an harmless and naïve guy who had never seen a fish. The guy who made Loki sign the papers about what he said seemed emotionless but he clearly loved cats as not only he had one but on his cup there was also the image of a cat. Martin is clearly a bossy daddy’s son, who think too high of himself to the point he can’t respect rules. The boy in the church, despite thinking Sylvie was a demon, accepted and ate food she gave him and remained in the place despite the crime. He’s clearly more brave than he looked like but he’s also naïve as he easily trusted ‘the demon’ and Mobius.

What’s C-20 character trait when she gets described by Sylvie?

Sylvie: Yeah. She was just a regular person on Earth. Loki: A regular person? Sylvie: Loved margaritas.

She’s a regular person who loves margaritas. Liking a drink is not a character trait!

There’s a more diverse female representation in “Thor” than in “Loki”.

In “Thor” we’ve Frigga, queen of Asgard, loving mother and wife who’s powerless to erase Thor’s banishment. We’ve Sif, a dangerous and loyal warrior. We’ve Jane, the amazing scientist with a lot of enthusiasm. We’ve Darcy, who’s funny and who seems focused mostly on herself but who, when the city is attacked, worried to save all the animals at the pet store.

But maybe the one who gets the worst treatment is the supposed heroine, Sylvie, because the poor girl is turned into a Mary Sue.

In case someone isn’t familiar with the term:

“The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye colour, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal. She has some sort of especially close relationship to the author's favourite canon character — their love interest, illegitimate child, never-before-mentioned sister, etc. Other than that, the canon characters are quickly reduced to awestruck cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines as Mary Sue outstrips them in their areas of expertise and solves problems that have stymied them for the entire series.” [tvtropes.org]

So let’s see how she fits this checklist:

1) She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye colour: Sylvie painted her hair blonde even though the Lokis are supposed to be black haired

2) has a similarly cool and exotic name: She is the only Loki Variant who has changed her name from Loki to Sylvie.

3) She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting: Awesome at fighting she can enchant people, an ability the Lokis don’t posses, that she magically learnt on her own and that is necessary in the story. Also she figured out how a Tempad worked BEFOREseeing it in action.

4) She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing: No flaws, all her plans involve fighting and brute force is no substitute for diplomacy and guile, which could be a flaw… if it wasn’t for the fact that the series will prove Sylvie can plan just fine without using fighting and brute strength and also be successful at it.

5) She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story: She was taken by the TVA when she was younger than Kid Loki but managed to escape them and had to live alone and on the run till then.

6) The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting: Loki, who has never loved anyone, falls for her, Mobius saves her and apologizes to her, B-15, who used to look down at Variants, basically asks her what should they do and is shown admiring her, the Lokis don’t criticize her plan, Classic Loki dies to save her, everyone views her as the superior Loki Variant.

7) if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal: Renslayer, the hunter who has arrested her, is currently playing the part of the antagonist who’s fascist and believes in a murderous, lying cult.

8) She has some sort of especially close relationship to the author's favourite canon character — their love interest, illegitimate child, never-before-mentioned sister, etc.: She’s the Variant and love interest of the titular character.

9) Other than that, the canon characters are quickly reduced to awestruck cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines as Mary Sue outstrips them in their areas of expertise and solves problems that have stymied them for the entire series: Loki, the title character, has conveniently been turned into someone who’s a weak fighter and incapable of planning which Sylvie has to save by enchanting guards or giving him her sword or pruning herself or teaching him how to enchant and coming up with all the plans.

Now all she needs in order to be a perfect Mary Sue is to know how to sing well as Mary Sue usually do this as well, though I’m sure she can do it because Loki could so she surely can.

Sylvie is amazing, Loki himself said so:

Loki: No. We may lose. Sometimes painfully. But we don't die. We survive. I mean, you did. You were just a child when the TVA took you, but you nearly took down the organization that claims to govern the order of time. You did it on your own. You ran rings around them. You're amazing!

There’s nothing inherently wrong in having a new female character who’s competent, for whom the hero falls and who changes him… if all this is built around a solid plot.

Think at “Iron Man”.

Tony Stark is, to quote Tony Stark himself a “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist”.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? But the movie shows us why he’s that.

It spends time setting up his pedigree, how he inherited the money and intelligence from his father, how he was supported as he grew and studied becoming always a greater genius. Tony shows himself to be charming before seducing his first woman onscreen so that when he does it makes sense. His philanthropic activities are, at first, just mentioned but seems rooted in how his father was a hero who helped fighting Nazi and then they became his mission. He felt guilty he was a merchant of death and tried to make up for it.

Sylvie too could have a solid plot behind herself.

Instead than magically knowing what a TemPad does and how it works and managing to escape with it, she could have escaped with, let’s say, a hunter that discovered the truth and decided to rebel to the TVA or just had pity of her. Maybe another Mobius Variant who used to work at the TVA prior to Mobius and that, instead than an analyst was a hunter. She might have learnt fighting from him and then he too died and she was left alone.

Enchantment might have been an ability she might have learnt coming in contact with a mind stone. It could have been an occasion also to talk how mind stones can influence people negatively. Or it could have been taught to her by Frigga who, with a female daughter, decided to teach her a different type of magic than Loki.

Her past could have been explored more instead than being tragic for the sake of tragic. We might have seen her fall in love and either be betrayed or have to say goodbye to her loved one because that reality got pruned. We might have seen her being interested in males and females alike as she’s supposed to be interested in both.

She could have had discussions with Loki that weren’t just about Frigga or about how the TVA kidnapped her from Asgard, she escaped and from that point on she was always on the run, or about how love didn’t feel real, but more about how they were, how they felt, what hurt them and what made them happy, what they liked and what they disliked, their ideals and their fears, things that can built up a relation.

Loki basically fall for her because she’s on a mission for revenge instead than power and seems confident. That’s his reasoning.

She falls for Loki… because apparently he’s the person who spend time with her who praised her. That’s not a solid love story, that’s desperation.

SYlvie could have flaws, she could have learnt diplomacy or persuasion from Loki or could have something she lacks and Loki has so that they would complete each other.

And since the purpose was to have Sylvie and Loki fall for each other… they could have let Loki have characteristics that can motivate the exceptional heroine to fall in love for him PRIOR to him falling in love for her. He might be shown good at something, instead than just a clown.

Even if we say the real purpose of this series was to turn Sylvie into the protagonist, the heroine, a good Loki character was still needed to explain why this awesome girl would fall for him.

So okay, there will surely still be women who can see themselves in Sylvie and imagine they got Loki… and it’s not bad really… but I think we deserved more.

Long story short, yes, “Loki” has many females in its cast and this is meant to draw the female audience… but the representation is poor as almost all of the females have no character traits and Sylvie is just a Mary Sue with no realistic characterization.

A good female representation is diverse and solid. Women don't need to be born irrealistically perfect out of nothing to be good, they can inherith and grow and learn to be as such like any human being.

Last but not least…

PART 5 – DOES “LOKI” REALLY OFFERS REPRESENTATION TO THE LGBT COMMUNITY?

BC: There is a lot of talk on social media about Loki being gender fluid. Wouldn't that actually be a natural fit for the character? MW: Yeah, I guess as, with all questions pertaining to that stuff, I think those answers, truly, are best experienced in the watching of the show, as opposed to me trying to answer them. Because it's just watching it and the way that's addressed and everything will just be more fulfilling. BC: Why do you think it's important that Loki is gender fluid? MW: I think that Loki is a character that a lot of fans see representation in. People that haven't felt represented before, and they see themselves in Loki and everything. So we want to do justice to the character, to who the character is in the comics and in Norse mythology as well. And you also … you know you want folks to feel represented, and everything. That's why it's important. It always has been. It comes from everybody on the creative team. [Loki: Michael Waldron On Gender Fluidity, Mephisto, Time Travel & More]

The series hugely spread the info that this Loki would be fluid and Bisexual. The news were welcomed with delight and it’s awesome how the series didn’t hesitate to put it on paper.

Loki being fluid was written for everyone to see, and Loki having male and female interests was spelled out for everyone to hear.

IT’S A GREAT THING!

However…

It’s all we got.

It had no relevance into the plot whatsoever, it’s just a random info we’re given.

Him being fluid was on a paper along with his other data like eye colour and birth planet.

Him being interested in males and females seems to be put there just to imply he tried a large amount of people before deciding love didn’t feel real.

Assuming the other Lokis too were fluid, they actually found terrific the idea of a woman Loki in a not positive way. They weren’t interested or asking for clarifications about what Loki meant.

Loki’s bisexuality doesn’t even get a side story, them sending Fandral to beat Loki instead than Sif because Loki cheated on him or something. I’m not upset Loki ended up with a female, this is one of the possibilities of a Bisexual person. I’m upset that this was used merely to attract the audience but then wasn’t explored. They could have said Asgard was open minded with it, or disapproved it so Loki had to keep it hidden, or it could have been Sylvie who discussed some experience in that regard.

We were told over and over it was a show about identity. We expected it to be explored instead we were just told ‘ah, by the way, Loki is bisexual, let’s move on.’ And that was all.

Having representation from an important Marvel character is always important, especially considering the shortage of representation. But honestly I expected more.

PART 7 – TO SUM IT UP

Many of the people who worked in “Loki” are fantastic actors. They worked hard for this series, I can see they tried their best.

The premises for the “Loki” series are interesting.

We get a Loki who hadn’t experienced most of what happened in the movies yet, we make him confront with someone who knows his life, the one he lived and the one he was meant to live and we also make him confront with Variations of himself.

Loki has the Tesseract and the TVA has plenty of infinity stones, we could explore them.

The TVA itself have a fascist organization that dictates people’s lives and murders whoever tries to do differently, that goes so far as to brainwash the people working in it, which mistreats and belittle the Variants and establish a manipulative cult around the Time-Keeper with elements of police brutality which could be very actual.

Time travelling was the plot of "Avengers: Endgame" they could have tied the movie to the series, esplore the why some time travels were allowed and some weren't or their effects.

There were references to plenty of awesome comics they could take inspiration from.

But unless it redeems itself with the last episode… well, so far it’s failing to deliver what it promised due to a really poor plot which doesn’t give the characters a chance to be themselves or to be characterized as they’ve no real story nor real differences to speak of.

They’re given more time than a movie as they’re a series… but that’s no good excuse for wasting said time.

I’m still hoping the last episode will be spectacular, that it’ll manage to erase the messes of the other 5… but, as of now I’m disappointed.

I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and hope they’ll surprise me.

#mcu loki #loki #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #9 worlds study

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