#i have a story about a star who gained a human form to guide people to a soulmate of theirs so they wont be lonely.

[ratgingi]

you guys would love my original oc stories i think

[superfan44]

Why Sora Should be Treated the Same as Superman (An Opinion Piece)

As I get older, I'm able to look at various fictional characters more closely, understanding more about why they're so iconic. A few years ago, I gained a renewed interest in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, seeing why so many people love its story, characters, and of course, its crossover element with Disney and Final Fantasy. I want to take a little look at the franchise's main protagonist, Sora, shed a light on him if you will. I feel you could draw some similarities between him and the DC Comics hero Superman (aka Kal-El, aka Clark Kent).

Now, I know this may seem like an odd comparison to some of you, but personally, I think it does kind of make sense when you think about it. Obviously these two have very different personalities, backstories, powers, and motivations that drive them. However, both are kindhearted, optimistic heroes from humble beginnings, with a strong sense of justice and morality. Not to mention a desire to help others and do the right thing.

Their respective actions certainly speak for themselves on that front, as they each go about it in their own unique way. In the comic book All-Star Superman, one issue sees him fighting a group of lizard men invading from the Earth's core. Then, in another issue, we see him stop a depressed teenage girl from stepping off a building, giving her comfort and support. Yes, he's got super strength and godlike powers, but he's also considerate, compassionate, and gentle enough to offer a helping hand whenever needed. Superman is a hero who inspires the best in all of us. He is, as filmmaker James Gunn once put it, kindness in a world that sees kindness as old fashioned. Even though he lives on a planet he wasn't born on, he still aspires to bring hope to that planet, providing them a light to show the way. Krypton made him the man of steel, but Earth made him human.

There are moments in the Kingdom Hearts series where we see a bit of that kindness mirrored in Sora as well. One minute he would be cutting down Heartless with his keyblade, the next he'll be enjoying good times with his friends, old and new. Whether it's dancing around with Rapunzel in the Kingdom of Corona, visiting Winnie the Pooh and his pals in the 100 Acre Wood, or helping to make Boo laugh in Monstropolis. He protects the world order and fights against the forces of evil, but he's also having fun along the way. There's a playfulness to Sora, a big smile on his face that warms people up inside. He's a brave young man who can easily form connections with anyone he comes across. There are still hardships to face, but he perseveres through it, showing that deep down, there is a light that never goes out. Even when it seems like he's on the verge of giving up, his friends are there to inspire him and lift him back up, just as he had done for them. He follows his heart, which is, and has always been, his guiding key.

You could say that these similarities are due to the fact that Sora and Superman are very much archetypal heroes. Joseph Cambel's hero's journey cycle (which also heavily influenced Star Wars) can be seen in both of their respective journeys. Individuals from humble beginnings who venture out into the wide world ahead of them, encountering various allies, enemies, and obstacles along the way. The journey ultimately leads to the heroes gaining greater powers and becoming more than who they were before.

It's also worth noting that another thing Superman and Sora have in common is that sometimes they are both willing to take great risks in order to save the people that they love. In Superman: The Movie, the man of steel himself flies around the Earth at great speed, turning back time to save Lois Lane from an earthquake. In Kingdom Hearts 3, Sora uses the power of waking to bring back Kairi after her body was destroyed by Xehanort, sacrificing his own life in the process.

So, why do I bring all of this up? Because I believe that this is something that writers should keep in mind when tackling Sora, whether it's for fan fiction, comics, novels, etc. I've noticed this trend on the internet of people deconstructing the psychology of Sora and delving into the negative effects that his adventures have had on him. A few of them have even declared his optimism and playful smile as a form of "toxic positivity". While it does seem like an interesting idea, I feel like it's causing people to forget about why they love him in the first place. In some cases, there are those who end up going too far with that notion.

Not long ago, I stumbled upon a Kingdom Hearts fan fiction story titled Keys to the Kingdom. Basically, it reads as an alternate universe reimagining of the events of Kingdom Hearts 3. Even though it was well written, this version of the story gets extremely dark, depressing, and cynical. Not only that, but it also mistreats Sora in a somewhat disturbing way, portraying him as a tortured and tormented soul. While his arc in this does prove to be compelling at times, it was still very jarring, making for an overall unpleasant experience. The fic seemed to be so focused on beating this character down, so intent on having him suffer throughout, that it ends up losing sight of what makes him so endearing and likable. Or, to borrow a quote from the young keyblade wielder himself:

"You're so caught up in finding the shadows, you forgot about the light that cast them."

This doesn't feel too out of place with the "evil Superman" trend that was around for a period of time. The video game Injustice is a prime example of this, as it depicts Superman as a merciless dictator of a fascist regime, who rules with an iron fist and shows no compassion towards crime or his enemies. Even other creations like Homelander from The Boys and Omni-Man from Invincible are representations of this idea since they are basically evil Superman-types. Admittedly, I do give those two a little more leeway since they were made specifically for the stories they came from. They are not directly related to Superman other than having similar powers. Although this concept can be fun to tackle with an original character, I don't think it feels right to try to do it with the genuine article himself. That's not really who he is.

When making the first Superman movie back in 1978, director Richard Donner took it upon himself to do the big blue boy scout justice. He didn’t want the material to be treated with disrespect, nor to be seen as a joke. There's a word he used to emphasize this as a top priority: "verisimilitude". For those unfamiliar, the basic definition of it is the appearance of being true and real. Not only was that word hung up on the wall above Donner's office (which it was), but it also established the mission statement that many of the great superhero movies made in the years since then have followed:

Be truthful, honor the source material, believe in it, take it seriously.

This is the type of mindset that should be adopted by anyone who adapts any kind of preexisting work, especially when it comes to something like Kingdom Hearts. If you want a good example of how to write Sora in a way that showcases how great he is while also being faithful to who he is, there's another fan fiction story titled Starbound, created by my friend @skygent. An anthology with an overarching narrative mixed in, it uses the setup of Sora's disappearance at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 as a way to examine the impact that he's had on all of his friends and allies. In a deeper, meta sense, it offers an analysis of the connection that fans of the franchise itself have formed with him.

The stuff that has been written so far for this fic is absolutely amazing. In fact, it's what led to my renewed interest in Kingdom Hearts in the first place. It has pretty much what you would want in a story like this one. Balancing a sense of scale, mystery, and adventure, but also quiet reflection. Offering some fun little twists, but still retaining the core essence of what the source material is all about. Through this story, we see various characters (including some not featured in the games) learning of and reacting to Sora's disappearance, remembering their encounters with him in the past. Some of them are even inspired to try and figure out where he is, willing to doing whatever it takes to help find him and bring him back home. Here, they demonstrate just how much he means to them, just as they all do to him.

To be clear, I'm not saying that Sora should stay exactly the same. In a series like Kingdom Hearts, we want to see those characters grow and evolve. With the things that Sora has experienced throughout the series, and with where we will find him at in Kingdom Hearts 4, it'll be interesting to see where he goes next. At the same time though, we also should remind ourselves that people love this character for a reason. As this young hero embarks on his newest adventure, he shouldn't lose what makes him who he is as a person. Instead of pulling him apart, I think Sora is someone who deserves to be celebrated. To be treated with dignity and respect, just as Donner did for the last son of Krypton. In the same way we've celebrated Superman over the years for what he stands for and represents, Sora should also be recognized in an equally similar way. Their respective core values and good morals, all the stuff that makes them heroes. It's these things that turned them into pop culture icons who remain with us to this day. It's why they will continue to be icons in the foreseeable future.

Two beacons, shining bright in the darkness. Never forget that.

[dariuskurwa]

Was searching for get to know my OC meme and discovered this huge 100 (!) questions to your OC post! Sadly no one will ask me cause this blog is currently at 0 followers, so I decided to just reblog it on this page and provide a more or less full guide to my own OC using these prompts (so everyone who wants could get to know him a little bit better). To make it clear, my OC's pronouns are he/him.

1. He usually starts off as a likeable guy, trying to get as close as possible. Just keep in mind that all information, which he would pretend to be getting from you face-to-face, must have been collected in advance.

2. Animals? Ofc, he does!

3. Bro's style varies according to the mood and occasion. What is particular about it is that black is a staple color in his closet.

4. His two primary languages are Spanish and Nahuatl. He also has good command of English.

5. It used to be him, his older brother Hernando Yaotl, his dad Cualli, his mom Guadelupe, his adopted older sister Nenetl and his dad's Xolo dog called Cipactli.

6. Bro is one of the leading antagonists.

7. He might not be the star of a hand-to-hand combat, but his reaction time and shooting skills keep him safe.

8. Disney villain's background type of story.

9. He was given two proper names: Miguel and Tlanextli. Miguel is a Spanish name and has the meaning of "who is like God". Tlanextli translates from Nahuatl as "radiance, splendor".

10. V-13, El Huracán and El Poca are his nicknames within the cartel. When he was younger, he was also called Migui, which is a diminutive form of his proper name used by his family members.

11. Bro is constantly into someone.

12. What doesn't kill him, makes him stronger.

13. He himself is his closest ally.

14. He's hunted by the spirits of the dead in the aftermath.

15. Flexible, charismatic, ethusiastic, playful, brutal.

16. He was among the top 5 characters who started it all, however, didn't have much personality until 2021. In 2021, the universe expanded, and more background data and characters to interact with were added to the plot. Hence his personality evolved.

17. Yes, he does. If the others don't get along with him on the other hand, then it's their problem.

18. Being too handsome, ikr?

19. He messes with a lot of people.

20. Tall, handsome, sus creature with dark, long, curly hair and magnetic look in his eyes.

21. Jewelry making.

22. If I researched this correctly, "a tick" is what makes a person behave in a certain way. So, he might be a bit silly around girls (or boys) he's madly in love with. He also has a thing for mango fruit cups—the whole world's gonna wait until he has one.

23. Ew, nah.

24. Bro loves wildlife, he considers his jaguar female one of the most precious possessions he's ever had.

25. His person of choice would most certainly be the one being too unhinged to have crossed the line, and the prank wouldn't be really a prank, it would be a whole ass homi€ide.

26. Bro has successfully survived until the age of 21, so definitely.

27. He isn't into fiction that much, so street smart. He's pretty good at strategy though.

28. Bro is usually either smart enough or just lucky to have the situation be worked out by his older sibling who's in power.

29. All at once.

30. He enjoyes vibing to cumbia and tejano.

31. With pain. No pain, no gain.

32. He's strong in the moment, but always breaks thereafter.

33. If we're talking magical abilities, then not really, but his night vision is extremely superior to that of an average human.

34. Developed from being a cinnamon bun weirdo to an emo villain sporadically out of control. There's kind of a redemption arc going on, but its authenticity is questionable.

35. There was a very close friend of his whom he treated like shit once. He's now gaslighting himself into believing they're still friends.

36. On hiatus.

37. To some people—absolutely.

38. It depends on the perspective.

39. A lot of them.

40. He is a failed and spoilt person.

41. Pretty cool until the pandemic happened (we're talking cholera back in the 90s) and someone came to destroy his little fairytale world. It just started to fall apart.

42. Bro doesn't need anyone for that, he's perfectly fine to do it himself.

43. Bro is very adaptable, he has mind of a mastermind.

44. Soft spoken around the people he admires, hot-headed around those who are bold to get on his nerves. Can be rather vulgar in pillow talk, by the way.

45. Bruh IS the violence.

46. It's on the 15th of March.

47. He has his icks, but he'll always give a chance to make sure.

48. Probably, how vulnerable he in fact is.

49. Yes, definitely. He's nice around the people he respects, likes and wants to be nice around. He is a bitch is he feels attacked or exposed.

50. He does. His home screams ultimate Pinterest aesthetics boss.

51. He's interested in botanics for the specific reason. He's also keen on linguistics (it's not a science discipline, but needs to be mentioned).

52. He is logical, but gets very emotional real quick.

53. Not in the most healthy way.

54. By crying his poor fate out alone in the room with the lights turned down.

55. Wealth, power and true love.

56. He might have not met a worthy enough person yet.

57. Make everyone around just as happy.

58. As a coin. No matter how nice he is, there has to be the other side to him.

59. He is prone to giving stupid or insulting nicknames and never hesitate to sprinkle with them here and there.

60. Side.

61. The crowd doesn't bother him.

62. By playing videogames with his buddy or by engaging in his hobbies.

63. He's constantly abusing someone verbally. He was also responsible for some horrible acts of violence that still haunt him to this day.

64. The moment great music is turned on, he's unstoppable.

65. His environment is rather hostile to get around so you need at least an off-road vehicle to visit.

66. Thinking too much of oneself. This is how he defines it.

67. Due to partial mydriasis he's impared of sharp vision in the daylight.

68. There's a particular rare species of orchid he is always pleased to get.

69. I don't think so.

70. VERY MUCH.

71. Those who have the audacity to talk back.

72. Divide et impera. Divide and conquer.

73. He has a cut scar crossing his face and another one around his neck left with a metal cord.

74. Once.

75. Losing authority.

76. Could be destroying the existing world and building a new flawless one from scratch.

77. He is very perseverant.

78. It depends on the enemy surpassing him in power.

79. It looks like human life has zero value for him, but there actually exists such person.

80. *don't know how to answer this question*

81. Bro currently doesn't have any.

82. I guess, he's fair at it. Not the most important skill for him.

83. See Q17.

84 Bro is on energy saving mode.

85. He's driven by the question of life and death.

86. Redirecting discontent onto someone else doesn't feel wrong to him.

87. Yes, and he hates recalling that feeling.

88. Artsy messy.

89. He keeps track of everything he considers essential.

90. Cartel boss's younger brother, aspiring to seize the power.

91. Being young and reckless, he doesn't feel much respected within the cartel, as all props go to his brother unconditionally, so he abuses power from time to time to force his people to respect him. Of course, even within such social group there is a club of devoted fans who do believe in his ambitions genuinely.

92. He would cast a portal to go back in time and re-live a precious moment of his childhood in a full family.

93. Violence of a greater scale is his coping mechanism. Neither mentally nor environmentally healthy at all, but it is what it is.

94. 100% dominate type.

95. He used to keep a resplended quetzal named Cualli in honor of his dad and a black jaguar called Aruma.

96. A huge stash of weapons and a decent air vehicle park. His personal weapon is Glock 28.

97. Has lived in his hometown Apan, Hidalgo for 10 years of his life with his family, then moved to the Lacandon jungle in the region of Chiapas, where he's based with his troops.

98. With a nice treat or treatment.

99. Unfortunately, it's his weakness.

100. Night person, but a morning lark.

100 OC Questions

1. How do they present themselves to others? 2. Do they like animals? 3. How do they dress? 4. How many languages do they know? 5. How big is their family? 6. What is their purpose in the story? 7. Do they know how to fight? 8. What is their back story? 9. Why is their name, their name? 10. Do they have any nick names? 11. Do they have a romantic interest? 12. How do they cope with struggles? 13. Do they have anyone they can lean on? 14. How do they react to someone dying? 15. Can you name 5 personality traits they have? 16. How did they become a character? 17. Do they get along with others? 18. What flaws do they have? 19. How do they influence the story? 20. What do they look like? 21. What are their hobbies? 22. What are their ticks? 23. Do they like children? 24. How do they react to being around wild animals? 25. If they were given the task to prank someone, who would it be, what would they do, and would the prank work? 26. Do they have any survival skills? 27. Are they more book smart or street smart? 28. How do they get out of a difficult situation? 29. Do they use their body, mind, personality or force to get what they want? 30. What music do they enjoy? 31. How do they overcome obstacles? 32. When faced with a difficult decision do they get stronger or break? 33. Do they have any special powers? 34. How do they change throughout the story? 35. Do they have any friends? If so, are they close knit? 36. How is their family life? 37. Are they likable? 38. Are they the hero, or anti-hero? 39. Do they make questionable choices? 40. How do they become who they are? 41. How was their childhood? 42. Are they close with anyone who is going to screw them over? 43.How do they adapt to different situations? Do they adapt at all? 44. How do they speak? Examples - Are they soft spoken, hot heated, vulgar 45. Are they opposed to violence? 46. When is their birthday? 47. Are they quick to judge? 48. Do they have anything they are trying to hide from others? 49. Do they act different around different people? 50.Do they enjoy the arts? 51. Do they like science? 52. Are they more emotional or logical? 53. How do they deal with their emotions? 54. How do they cope with sadness? 55. What is something they care about? 56. Would they die for anyone/anything? 57. What do they do when they are happy? 58. How would they come across to other characters? Examples- messy, lazy, childish, caring ect 59. Do they have a phrase they use over and over? 60. In a crowed room are they in the corners, sides, or in the middle? 61. Are they comfortable being in a crowed room? 62. How do they relax? 63. Have they ever harmed anyone and regretted it? Verbally or physically? 64. Do they like to dance? 65. How do they get around their environment? Examples - horses, bike, vehicle 66. What is their pet peeve(s)? 67. Do they have a disability? 68. How do they react to getting flowers? 69. Would they ever wear a flower crown? 70. Do they like themselves? 71. Who do they dislike? 72. What is their motto? 73. Do they have any markings on their body? 74. Have they ever been abused? 75. What is their biggest fear? 76. What are their goals? 77. How do they go about achieving their goals? 78. Do they have a fight or flight response? 79. Is there someone in their life that they care about more than themselves? 80. How would they fair in zombie apocalypse? 81. Do they have any tattoos? If so, are they significant? 82. Are they good at mental math? 83. Do they get along with others? 84 Are they lazy? 85. Are they self motivated? 86. How do they cope with anger? 87. Have they ever been in a situation where they were helpless? 88. Are they organized or messy? 89. Can they remember a lot of information at once? 90. What is their occupation? 91. Do other characters respect your OC, if so, is it out of fear? Or do they respect your OC because they like them? 92. If they were given minutes to live, what would they do? Who would they want to see and say? 93. How do they deal with stress? 94. Do they have a more submissive or dominate personality type? 95. Do they have a pet? 96. Do they have a stash of weapons? 97. Where do they live? Who do they live with? 98. How do they calm themselves down? 99. Are they co-dependent? 100. Are they a day, or night person?

[dragon-wisteria]

A quick guide to my ocs! Story info and tag links below the cut:

The Poppy Court: When Wren is kidnapped by a mysterious fey known as the Poppy Queen, her brother Arrow enters the Poppy Court to save her.

Currently being released as a monthly webcomic on Webtoon and Wordpress.

Wolf Cry: Gwen is a princess about to ascend to the throne, but her step-mother Calanthe has other plans.

Caelan is a fey-blood assassin sent to eliminate Gwen, but he instead takes the opportunity to escape his violent past for good.

Their plan to escape into safety is interrupted by the appearance of Sable, who insists that a great evil is approaching - and that Gwen is destined to stop it.

Currently in the plotting stage - planned to eventually become a three-book series of novels.

Blue Butterfly: Over three hundred years after Wolf Cry, humans and fey live together in the city of Unity. Marianne drops out of a prestigious magic school to join Dove, an organisation dedicated to preventing magical crime, and providing a positive outlet for young mages in difficult situations.

Among the members of her team is Adelle, who was raised in Dove and is searching for her fairy mother - the elusive Blue Butterfly.

Planned to be a webcomic, which will start releasing after The Poppy Court has concluded. The main plot is fully outlined.

The Poppy Court, Wolf Cry, and Blue Butterfly share the same setting

Catmint Village: A quiet country village is shaken up by the arrival of Taffy, a mischevious young cat from who-knows-where.

This is a plot-light setting that I use to design cards, prints, and crochet patterns. (available to buy on my store)

Mahou Celestia Project: For generations, an interdimensional rift has floated at the edge of Star City. It's presence grants magical powers to young people in the city, but it also leaks dangerous monsters.

These monsters are held back by the Maidens - girls who can fuse with Celestial creatures to gain incredible powers. The newest generation of Maidens, led by Akira, will have to contend not only with monsters but with rogue Maidens and government secrets in order to defend the city.

I've started telling this story in the form of illustrations and short stories, which will be released in whatever order I happen to feel like making them in. The first arc of the story is fully plotted, and I know the answers to all the major mysteries, but the later plot could go any number of directions.

[imagine-lcorp]

Written In The Stars (One Shot)

Request

Hi! Can I request something like Lena falling in love with an alien reader?

A/N: Hey guys!!! First one shot of the year!!! Let’s hope we can keep the rhythm this time...also I broke my phone so I’ll probably be less active on the app...the writing is still going tho so yaaay! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one and as always, let me know what you think! Love ya beautiful people! 

Lena Luthor x Alien!R//Word Count: 2,204 -------------------------------------------------------

When she was younger, Lena Luthor used to look at the night sky with infinite awe. The map of stars that hung above the Earth had been the place where she could find solace and a sense of peace. The stars were never alone, always needing one another to form their constellations. They reminded her she was also not alone even if it seemed like it.

However, as she grew up most of that wonder translated into scientific interest, which started to diminish as she found herself enthralled by more practical sciences. The sky, as vast as it was, was a mystery she recognized she couldn't unravel in her lifetime. She needed to focus on more earthly things, but she was content to be another curious viewer of such canvas of light.

Being a curious viewer, however, was something that changed abruptly when the existence of extraterrestrial life was proven by no other than Superman. Even more when it was known the Earth had been a refuge for many more aliens than it was possible to believe. The stars had reached the Earth, and they came bearing their own cosmic forms of life.

The population had been divided between those that accepted and welcomed the space travelers and those that rejected the idea, defending their right to their land and planet, fearful of an unstoppable invasion, living with the enemy and whatnot. For a while, Lena found the latter to be a matter of great concern. She wanted people to feel safe and believed they had the right to know who among them was or not an alien.

It wasn't until Kara came to knock that idea off, presenting her with an alternative story and reminding her that those aliens too had a right to their own freedom. She opened her eyes to the reality most of them lived. They were mmigrants of desolated planets, seeking shelter from wars and just like Superman, seeking a new home after their planets had been shattered. There were a few bad seeds, yes, but most of them were only looking for a better life. Wasn't that enough to give them a vote of confidence?

Her alien detection device was then transformed into an image inducer, a new gadget that helped aliens conceal their true appearance if they wished to look physically human. It was great to blend with the crowd, and it was a great success in the alien market.

"Miss Luthor, Kara Danvers is waiting for you in the conference room." Jess told her one day as she arrived to the office.

"Kara?" She found herself surprised by the sudden visit of the journalist. "Does she want another interview?"

"No, she has come along with someone else. She said she only needed a few minutes with you."

"Alright." Lena said leaving her purse on her desk and taking a couple of files from Jess to revise them later. "Let's see what it is."

Lena Luthor entered her conference room to find two figures chatting amicably at the room table. One she could recognize immediately, with her golden locks and bright smile, the other she had no idea who it was but as soon as your eyes were on her she was curious to find out.

"Lena!" Kara said rising from her chair, with you following suit. "Thank you for meeting us in such short notice. We promise not to take too much of your time."

"Kara, of course. How can I help?"

"Well, actually, I would like to introduce you to (Y/N) (Y/L/N)." At the mention of your name, you stepped forward, extending your hand to Lena. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Luthor."  

"Lena, please." She said taking your hand.

"Then, please, call me (Y/N)." You said with a firm grip and a kind smile, something rare for Lena to see during those days.

"(Y/N) is the leader of an alien race residing in National City." Kara continued with a proud stance.

"Is that so?" Lena replied with a raised eyebrow and the hint of a smirk on her lips. "Is (Y/N) your real name?"

Lena's words prompted a chuckle from you, and you decided to clarify before there were any misunderstandings.

"It's my chosen Earth name. I don't think you have enough tongues to be able to pronounce the real one." You said with a playful smile. "Also, I wouldn't go that far. I am what you would call a representative, and it is of a small group only. Miss Danvers here is just too kind."

"She is, indeed." Her smile only grew bigger as she saw Kara fail to conceal a little pout.

"Well, you're still a great representative." Kara said.

"But to what do I own the honor of you visit?" Lena said gesturing to you to take your seats again. Kara smiled at you and moved along with you towards your seats.

"Right." You said pulling a small box from your jacket. "I'm here to deliver this."

Lena took the little box from your extended palm, her curiosity growing as she inspected its contents. Inside she found a little black matte icosahedron, nothing extraordinary by the looks of it.

"What is this?" She finally asked.

"The alien community wanted to thank you for creating the image inducer. It has helped a lot of people, especially those of us that don't exactly fit into the human shape." You started to explain as she inspected it.

After the launch of her device, Lena recalled, the company had received countless letters and e-mails, most of them in gratitude for helping the aliens in National City as they were still fighting for acceptance within the human population. It helped them find jobs, housing and places to be without having to worry about their looks or if other people reacted negatively to them. It helped them feel safe.

Only then Lena understood the impact it had on other's peoples lives and how her work had helped them accomplish that.

"So this is a thank you gift." You moved your hand and placed a finger on one side of the icosahedron.

Lena was startled as the other sides of the new device in her hand started to open. Suddenly the room was filled with a clear colorful light, but it was more than that. It was lines and spheres and points and spirals well defined. It took her a moment to realize what it was but Lena found herself looking around the conference room with a fascination she thought she had long lost. As the conversation followed, you explained Lena the device in her hand was a space chart. It contained information about several planetary systems, their galaxies and stars, and common routes to reach them, you said as if it was nothing but a travel guide.

Lena turned her eyes towards you a few seconds later, ready to declare her own gratitude when she noticed your expression. You were staring at a far corner of the room, not with the usual distant look of a daydreamer or that of someone who has lost interest in the present moment. You were looking with intention and, more than that, with longing in your eyes.

"It's wonderful. Thank you." Lena finally said, pulling you out of your thoughts. You blinked a few times before the smile returned to your face.

"If you ever wish to know a bit more about what's out there, you can always consult it and if you need help navigating it, I'll be more than happy to help."

Lena thought about it for a moment more. While she had long ago left her intentions of unraveling the skies, she saw a chance within those stars. This was the opportunity she had been hoping to find in National City. If she could gain the trust of the alien community, she would be able to expand her work and better help not only them but the whole city. To help put the world back together instead of tearing it apart. She was more grateful then to you, for giving her that chance.

Besides, she thought, it was also a chance to fulfill her curiosity about you.

It wasn't long after that meeting that you were back at her office, teaching her how to use the space chart. Her attention bouncing from the lines of stars and planets to understanding the technology behind the device. While her studies on science and astronomy made it easy for her to identify the structure and functioning of the chart, and the several celestial bodies it showed, she still had to learn how to translate that into terms she knew and relearn the names people used to refer to their own planets and stars. You did your best trying to explain how both things worked, which she highly appreciated.

As days passed, Lena took a new liking to your teachings which turned into more personal reunions. You didn't limit yourself to talking just about stars or planets but about the different cultures that inhabited them. Mentions of your home planet became more regular and you even used it to contrast the big differences between Earth and the rest of worlds you had known. Lena was delighted to indulge in such conversations, taking in as much as it was possible.

The way you talked about your home planet, your country, if such concept even applied, your family, your house, everything, was enough for her to look at you with the same awe she used to look at the stars when she was younger. She knew she wouldn't get to know all the stars in the universe but just knowing you, she thought, made up for it all.

"The sunsets there were hours of golden light washing over the citadel, and the nights were, oh, the night was too beautiful with its waves of light across the sky." You told her one day as you both had finished one of your reunions.

You were leaning against Lena's balcony, both of you observing the sun go down behind the city skyline.

"You know, I don't think you have ever showed me where you're from." Lena said, crossing her arms and taking a step towards you, seizing the opportunity. You had showed Lena at least dozens of planets, especially those closest to Earth's solar system but yours, for everything you talked about it, somehow still remained a mystery.

Lena felt a slight pang in her chest as she saw the smile in your face turn sad.

"No, I suppose I haven't." You said and after a moment, where you seemed to ponder a few options, you moved your head, signaling Lena to follow you back inside her office.

You took the space chart from her desk, activating it and moving your hands again until the hologram in the room moved, showing a single planet in the center of the room. You took a few steps back and gestured to Lena to take a closer to look at it.

"Here it is."

The planet, surrounded by seven moons, was a very Jupiter look-a-like. Lena was instantly enthralled by the colors and the stripes, swirls and waves that formed the planet's atmosphere. The hologram displayed a name in a language Lena certainly didn't know and that made her wonder just how many tongues she would need to pronounce it correctly.

"It's beautiful." Lena said, still looking at it.

"It was." You replied, and she turned to look at you with a confused frown and a question clear in her face.  

You moved the chart once more, reducing the image to show the whole system your planet used to be a part of.

Lena saw other nine planets but only one caught her attention as its name was being displayed in an alphabet she actually recognized.

"Krypton." She whispered, eyes widening in shock.

Everyone already knew the story. How the almighty Kryptonians had traveled to Earth when their own planet had been destroyed. But no one, including her, had thought too much about what it had meant for the rest of their own little universe. Lena imagined it then, an explosion setting a chain reaction. Not only one but several worlds shattered, with their people trying to escape the path of destruction.

Lena's eyes landed on you once more, finally understanding the longing she had once seen in your own eyes. She also knew, in some way, what it was to lose your home. So she approached you, slowly taking your hand and muttering an apology, for whatever little comfort it could give you.

"It's alright." You said looking intently at her with a reassuring smile. "I found a new home."

"And I'm glad you found it here."

You made her feel at home, Lena thought and, as she smiled back at you, she thanked the stars for giving you both the chance to find a home along each other, and hopefully, one day, a home for you both.

[wickedwitchoftheemidwest]

Happy New Year, everybody! I know that Literally no one cares or will read this, but I have to rate and talk about what I’ve read this year and this is my page, so deal with it.

2020 may have been a dumpster fire of a year, but I did read so me pretty good books. I didn’t get to read as many books as I wanted (like always), but that’s life. If you couldn’t tell, I do have a preference for romance novels, and these selections are very... 🌈 and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Here we go:

- Lies we Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley (4/10)

- I think I could write a dissertation about why I have a problem with this book, but I think I can just stop with “a white lady writing an interracial queer romance in the 1960s where the lead white character is literally a racist” should about cover it. Absolutely disappointed.

- Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (10/10)

- Oh my god does Casey McQuiston know how to write a book. Classic enemies to lovers, my favorite trope. This is my comfort novel that I use as a form of escapism, and probably the reason I didn’t read many new books, as I reread it about five times. It’s my comfort novel, and I come back to it every time I need to feel happy. I’ve made three of my friends read this book, and I recommend it to everyone

- These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling (8/10)

- It’s sapphic, it has witches, and it’s adorable; what more could you possibly want? The ending left me wanting more. I was finally able to buy the sequel and I can’t wait to get into it.

- Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan (7/10)

- I think this book is sort of a classic when it comes to gay YA. This was a pretty good book, but it took me awhile to get into it.

- Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins (9/10)

- What did I say about enemies to lovers? HRH was regarded as sapphic Red, White, and Royal Blue, which I think is all you need to know to be interested. This book and short, sweet, and to the point. It’s an easy read (I read it twice, both times in one day). I think there could’ve been some more character building, but it’s so adorable I literally do not care. When I say I want more cute gay romcoms, they should use HRH as the blueprint.

- It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Sugiura (7/10)

- A cute, interracial sapphic love story where no white people are involved (the main character is Japanese American and her love interest is Mexican American). This coming of age story deals with acceptance, cultural differences, racism, and coming out. I think some of the points it was trying to delve into were too much on the nose at some times, but I really enjoyed this book.

- The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee (9/10)

- A fun romp set some time in the 1700s with a chaotic bi as the main lead? Count me in! I read this whole series this year, including the novella (the gentleman’s guide to getting lucky), and I loved every second of it. It’s an adventure series with some romance sprinkled in (a hella slow burn, but definitely worth it). The whole series has gay, bi, lesbian, and ace aro representation, and I was in love the entire time.

- You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson (8/10)

- The black sapphic book I needed. Liz Lighty decides she wants to leave her hometown and go to college, but after losing the financial aid she was counting on, she remembers the scholarship that prom queen gets every year, and decides to run. Sprinkle in a cute love story, and I’m hooked.

- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (10/10)

- I... cannot put into words how this book made me feel. When I finished TSOA, I cried all night trying to recover. Beautifully written, and I still can’t get over Achilles and Patroclus. One of my favorite books this year.

- Sorry Not Sorry by Naya Rivera

- After Naya’s tragic passing in July, I struggled to find her autobiography anywhere. However, I was finally able to get my hands on it, and am so glad that I did. Naya Rivera was just as genuinely funny and carefree as her previous costars have said, and I wish the world could’ve gotten more of her.

Not pictured:

- Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst (9/10)

- Sapphic love story about a princess who has been betrothed to a prince from a nearby country her whole life who instead falls in love with his sister. The main character, Denna, also possesses magical powers, which is forbidden in their land. One of my favorite things about this book is that it’s set in medieval times, but no one cares about queer relationships. The only problem with Denna falling in love with the princess is that she’s betrothed to her brother and nothing else. I recently bought the sequel to this book as well, and I’m excited to read it

- The After Series (books 1-2) by Anna Todd (-400/10)

- I was curious about this series because of how terrible the movies are, and needed to read them myself. I apologize to myself every day that I every even wasted my time on these two books. If I ever see Anna Todd, it’s on sight immediately. Not only is the writing terrible, but the romanticization of abusive relationships is absolutely unacceptable. I think I could take less issue with these books if the author wrote them as a “what to look for in men you should never date” rule book, but it isn’t. I could actually write an essay on why these books are more harmful than entertaining and how I genuinely think this series should have never been published. Also, Harry Styles did not deserve this.

I also discovered WEBTOON this year, and here are some of my favorites that I have read:

- Always Human by creator walkingnorth, a finished WLW story which was absolutely beautiful to look at and delightful to read.

- Lore Olympus by creator Rachel Smythe. I don’t think you can find too many people who haven’t heard of this story, but it’s a retelling of the Hades and Persephone mythology, and I adore it.

- Novae by creators KaixJu. A historical, queer and paranormal romance about a necromancer who falls for an astronomer.

- My Lady Artemisia by creator rimarza. This WEBTOON is a little bit newer with fewer episodes, about a knight tasked with guarding the princess, which starts to prove difficult once she starts to gain feelings for the princess, and an impending threat might cause her to past to come to the surface.

Of course, I’ve also spent a lot of my time on A03. I know I’ve read more, but here are the ones I bookmarked and have come back to this year:

- kiss me (if you mean it) by nerdybutpunk

- Carry On fanfic, short but sweet, absolute fluff

- Camp Llwynywermod by bleedingballroomfloor

- Red, White, and Royal Blue AUwhere Henry and Alex are camp counselors. It’s so good and I find myself waiting every wed and sat for the updates.

I read more this year than I have in a long time, and I enjoyed it most of the time. My goal for 2021 is to read at least two books a month and to expand my horizons to something that isn’t YA and isn’t romance. Also to find Anna Todd and tell her off. Hopefully we can accomplish some of that.

[intermundia]

Mr. Will, I saw that post about the burden of wanting to talk about SW all the time and now I’m curious…please will you tell me your favorite bit of obscure Star Wars lore that someone who hasn’t delved extensively into extra-canonical materials probably doesn’t know?!? 💜

Obscure lore, yes! I would love to talk about that! While reading the Star Wars Archives (1977-1983), I found this page of notes from a story meeting on 11/28/77 in the section 'Bring back Ben' and right before the invention of the role to be filled by Yoda—"Some of the force came from 'Tales of Power', Carlos Castaneda."

And I was like—who the fuck is Carlos Castaneda? Because you hear all the time about all the mythology research Lucas did, all the time with Campbell, etc., but I'd never seen this name anywhere else. So I looked him up. He's a California "anthropologist," a contemporary of Lucas, and oddly fascinating:

Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that purport to describe training in shamanism that he received under the tutelage of a supposed Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named don Juan Matus. Doubts about the veracity of Castaneda's work existed from their original publication. There is belief among many that Castenda's books are works of fiction, and that it is unlikely that don Juan Matus existed. (Wikipedia)

His first person anthropology about time spent with a Mexican shaman reads like fiction, because it is fiction. An excellent survey of his sources is found here:

Lama Govinda's Fringe Tibetan Buddhism

Brinton's Paper On 'Nagualism'

Frank Waters Book of the Hopi

California Indian Anthropology Texts - especially those known to have been reviewed by CC

Wasson's works on Mushrooms

Eliade's works on Shamanism

Furst's works and lectures on Shamanism

Harner's works and lectures on Shamanism

Myerhoff's works on Shamanism and her contacts with Ramon Medina

UCLA Professor Garfinkel

Wittgenstein

So, we have this very California early-mid 70's New Age philosophy cocktail that was being presented as anthropology (I wish it were still so easy to fraud your way into a degree lmao). George Lucas was on UCLA campus as a graduate student making films at approximately the same time Castaneda was faking his way to this anthropology Ph.D., so when I say they are contemporaries, I mean I'm pretty sure they literally could have been walking around campus at the same time.

ANYWAY, so what if the Force is based on some fringe fake-Mexican-shamanism? So what? Well, first and foremost, Castaneda's books were very popular, and he uses the term "Sorcerer" very frequently, so when Ben Kenobi is called that in a New Hope, hip audiences in the 70's might have been clued in about what to expect. The idea of superhuman abilities rooted in flowing energy, the interplay of teacher and apprentice, and the sorcerer as a warrior (sounds pretty Jedi yeah?) —

A Man of Knowledge Was a Warrior: “The existence of a man of knowledge was an unceasing struggle, and the idea that he was a warrior, leading a warrior’s life, provided one with the means for achieving emotional stability. The idea of a man at war encompassed four concepts: (1) a man of knowledge had to have respect; (2) he had to have fear; (3) he had to be wide-awake; (4) he had to be self-confident. Hence, to be a warrior was a form of self-discipline which emphasized individual accomplishment; yet it was a stand in which personal interests were reduced to a minimum, as in most instances personal interest was incompatible with the rigor needed to perform any predetermined, obligatory act” (TDJ, 157).

Like................. it's even got the aspect of reducing personal interests and attachment to gain the rigor of discipline necessary to do what must be done as a sorcerer. But beyond the idea of a Jedi as a sorcerer/warrior, it's the metaphysics that kill me. Let's look further at this famous Yoda quote:

"My ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is." — Listen, "ally" is a term from Castaneda, though he uses it about psychadelic drugs. Audiences in the early 80s would probably know that, too.

“An ally will make you see and understand things about which no human being could possibly enlighten you… It is neither a guardian nor a spirit. It is an aid… a power capable of carrying a man beyond the boundaries of himself. This is how an ally can reveal matters no human being could” (The Teachings of Don Juan 24-25).

“The manipulation of an ally had two aspects: (1) an ally was a vehicle; (2) an ally was a helper. An ally was a vehicle in the sense that it served to transport a sorcerer into the realm of non ordinary reality… To be a helper meant that an ally, after serving a sorcerer as a vehicle, was again usable as an aid or a guide to assist him in achieving whatever goal he had in mind in going to the realm of nonordinary reality” (TDJ 164-65).

"Life creates it and makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter." — The division of the Force into flowing animate and inanimate energy is in Castaneda, as is the concept of luminosity.

“Don Juan said that the energetic fact which was the cornerstone of the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico was that every nuance of the cosmos is an expression of energy. From their plateau of seeing energy directly, those shamans arrived at the energetic fact that the entire cosmos is composed of twin forces which are opposite and complementary to each other at the same time. They called those two forces animate energy and inanimate energy. They saw that inaninmate energy has no awareness. Awareness, for shamans, is a vibrating condition of animate energy.” (TDJ, xv)

“To perceive energy directly allowed the sorcery of don Juan’s lineage to see human beings as conglomerates of energy fields that have the appearance of luminous balls… the entire cosmos is made of luminous filaments that extend themselves infinitely” (TDJ, xvi-xvii).

I could go on and on and discuss all of Castaneda's writings on detachment and the warrior's life and the awareness of death, but I think that would be a whole other thing. Honestly this subject is too much for a tumblr post. I just thought it was interesting. People always give Lucas both grief and credit for bastardizing philosophical traditions himself, but I would say it's more fair to say that he was more working off of a cheat sheet done by others in California in the 70s. There must have been something in the water lmao

[rpgsandbox]

Sapience is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game set in a distant cluster of stars that has been populated by huge sleeper ships fleeing system-wide wars back at Earth. Humans are the dominant species; along with them are the Gorillas, Orangutans, Dolphins, and Octopuses they genetically uplifted to intelligence, plus the only sapient alien species ever encountered (who mysteriously look a lot like old Earth legends of Goblins!)

The cluster has been embroiled in a Cold War very like the American Civil War for more than a century now, between one side who treat the uplift species as servants and slaves, and the other who treat them as equals.

There are many colonisable (and colonised) planets and systems in the Cluster, terraformed by a long vanished species who left behind enigmatic ruins and mysteries, and a very strange plant that only rarely fruits, but those who eat the fruit, well, it changes them...

Characters can involve themselves in the war, in trade or piracy, in treasure hunting and Indiana Jones type escapades, in espionage or politics, in scientific research, or simply explore the cluster and the many cultures that have sprung up since the arrival from Earth.

We believe that the best fiction (and especially science fiction) holds up a mirror, so that we can explore facets of our own lives safe behind the allegory of "make believe".

Star Wars was really about the Vietnam War. Godzilla was about the atom bomb. The Battlestar Galactica remake was an answer to 9/11. And, of course, there’s The Planet of the Apes - its message was about the hubris of man, and how people use science and religion to prop up inequality.

Sapience was designed in-part as a way of exploring the increasingly rampant discrimination, racism, privilege, and inequality in our own society. Throughout much of the setting, non-humans are treated as second-class citizens at best (and often, much worse). The game asks the question "I'm sapient now, shouldn't that mean I have autonomy and the right to self-determinization?". Further complicating this is the very recent development of AI, raising further questions about whether biological sapience is more important than mechanical - should we still own machines if we've allowed them to think?

Of course, these themes wont be for everyone, and there's certainly no rule that says the game must be played that way. Take out the darker aspects, and it's a Space Opera where you can travel through space meeting new emerging cultures, trading and exploring, treasure hunting, solving mysteries, wooing great beasts and battling women. Or should that be the other way around?

Sapience uses a brand new die system known as the Focus Engine. Characters build a die pool with three different colors of D6 dice based on their Mental, Physical, and Social attributes. When a skill check is made, a number of dice equal to the skill level are drawn from the die pool and rolled. The dice then generate two completely different results at the same time - Effort and Focus.

Your Effort is the number of dice that roll 4 or greater, and they determine your level of success (or failure) at your skill check, compared against a static difficulty or an opponents' Effort.

Your Focus is the number of dice you pulled that match the color of the Attribute your skill is keyed to. It is used to modify your skill through what are effectively adverbs - you might use Focus to perform your skill Quietly (making it hard for people to hear you doing it), or Quickly (improving the speed it's performed at) and so on. In combat? Focus adds to damage, because you did it Violently. Various uses of Focus are described in the book, but players and GM's are encouraged to come up with new ways to modify skill usage with Focus.

Wounds add other dice into your die pool. Any wound dice drawn during a skill check don't add to Effort or Focus, so the more wounded you are, the less likely you are to succeed at a skill. Better get some healing to remove those bad dice from your pool!

The Sapience rulebook has all of the rules you need to play the game, including:

Rules for creating and advancing your character, with 6 playable species' and a "guided freeform" method of skill and trait selection and development.

A detailed timeline of the history of the colonization of this new region of space, and all you need to know about the current state of the Cluster, its politics, many of its colony worlds and asteroid settlements, the factions and guilds involved in the cold war, and much much more.

Rules for creating and crewing your own spaceship.

Melee and starship combat

A discussion on the darker themes of the game, how to incorporate them into your own stories and campaigns, and how to not use them when all you want is a fun space opera where you're a talking Ape whose best friend is an Octopus.

A whole bunch of starship battlemaps (which you could even use in other sci-fi games, I don't mind), a Cluster Map, Personal and Starship character sheets, quick guides, and much more. You'll also gain access to a webpage where you can download all of those things in PDF form in color and text-free and printer friendly, to print out and use at the gaming table (and they're high res, so you can use a VTT)

And so much more!

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, July 1 2021 7:00 PM BST

Website: [Sapience RPG] [facebook] [twitter]

[liquidstar]

I'd love to hear some of your recommendations! And I'm good without any content warnings, but since you're posting this for all your followers to see probably best to add them

Alright sure! I’ll be general then and since you’re just starting out this will sort of be bringing up a lot of really popular ones, the really good ones where the general consensus is “you gotta see this!”, but I’ll also try to give ones from different genres so you have a variety of things to pick from, so this isn’t really a list of personal favorites but I’ll throw in a couple of those too lol, but generally think of this as a handy beginners guide with just a little personal bias.

I wrote a lot so I'm gonna put them under the cut here.

Fullmetal Alchemist

Fullmetal Alchemist is a franchise that’s considered a must-watch, it takes place in a world where alchemy is a borderline magical power, but is considered scientific in-universe and follows scientific laws, namely the law of equivalent exchange. Something can’t be made from nothing, to gain something of equal value must be lost. The story follows the story of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who at the ages of 10 and 11 committed alchemy’s one and only unforgivable sin, human transmutation, in an attempt to bring their mother back to life. As a result, one brother lost his arm and leg and the other lost his entire body, leaving his soul bound to a suit of armor. However the brothers are resolute to regain their original bodies, and the older brother, Edward, joins the State Alchemists, a branch of the military, to try to gain access to research materials to help them achieve their goal. But was that really such a good idea?

Fullmetal Alchemist can be a bit confusing to get into due to the fact that there are two series: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009). The latter is a reboot with a different story that follows the original manga. They both have the same beginning, but diverge paths and tell very different stories. My recommendation for how to watch this show is: Watch 2003 first, and Brotherhood second. Everyone has a different opinion about which is better, but everyone agrees that 2003 has better backstory but a contrived ending, and Brotherhood has a rushed beginning (Because it works off the assumption that you’ve seen 2003) with a great and fulfilling ending. If you can’t do both I say just watch Brotherhood because it will leave you more satisfied and you don’t have to watch 03 to get into it.

For both series the biggest trigger warnings are: Parental death, child death, pet death, war, genocide, dismemberment, religious themes, and miscarriage. For brotherhood specifically: on-screen suicide, and for 2003 specifically: rape (not on-screen) and pregnancy from it. The 2003 series is also a lot darker than Brotherhood which has a more optimistic tone, so that’s worth noting too.

Soul Eater

A show I think is incredibly fun, and a good one for an October watch if you wanna save it. It takes place in a world where certain people have the ability to transform into weapons, and they team up with other people who become their meisters. The characters often travel around, but the main setting is Death City, a fictional city in Nevada based off of Las Vegas but with a huge Halloweentown vibe, and a school right at the top of it called the Death Weapon Meister Academy (DWMA) where a bunch of kids that turn into weapons learn how to hunt down witches and kishins (Beings that consume human souls). The school, of course, is run by the grim reaper, Lord Death himself.

Our main characters for the series are a group of 7 students. Our protagonist Maka Albarn and her weapon partner Soul “Eater” Evans, a scythe. A loud mouth assassin named Black✰Star and his weapon partner Tsubaki, who has many weapon forms. And the son of the grim reaper, Death The Kid, and his two weapon partners Liz and Patty Thompson, who are twin pistols. There are also a bunch of really lively colorful background characters and antagonists, and the cast of the show being as insane as it is really makes it, on top of the great atmosphere and of course the plot, which just builds more and more as the series progresses. Also Crona is there and we all love Crona.

Trigger warnings for this show include: Child abuse (Mental and physical), manipulation, snakes and spiders (The motifs of two major villains), some very surreal moments that can verge on unreality. Also, in the dub and most subs: misgendering of a canonically trans character. Crona is a character who is non-binary, but the dub and subs use gendered pronouns for them due to general ignorance about neutral pronouns in 2008, though this isn’t the fault of the original series and falls on the translators hands.

Also it’s important to note: that the first 3 episodes are prologues and they take themselves less seriously, there’s more fanservice in them than there is in the rest of the series (Except for Blair she stays the fanservice character :pensive:)

Zombieland Saga

Idol anime is really prevalent as a genre, the most popular being Love Live, but my personal favorite is Zombieland Saga. It’s an idol anime, but it’s also a comedy about zombie girls who become idols. It sounds ridiculous but there’s an insane amount of heart in it regardless, it wasn’t a show I expected to get emotional at but I did! It also made me laugh a lot too. The series itself can serve as a bit of a subversion on what idols are, not just because they’re literally zombies, but because of who the characters are.

Sakura Minamoto is a character who starts off as a more typical idol, a peppy pure girl, as the series continues her struggle with depression gets highlighted. Saki Nikaido serves as her initial foil, a delinquent girl with a criminal record who subvers the idea of pure perfect idols. Ai Mizuno, a former idol who has since undergone severe trauma (The way she died). Junko Konno who has ideals that seem very different on what idols “should” be due to the time period she died. Lily Hoshikawa, an explicitly transgender idol. Yugiri nolastname, a former high ranking courtesan, subvering the pure image of an idol by being a sex worker. And Tae Yamada, a completely nonverbal idol who’s still treated with the same amount of importance as the rest of the team. The premise here really is just that these girls don’t fit the incredibly rigid mold of what idols should be and yet they still all deserve love and they gain a fanbase by being their earnest selves.

Trigger warnings for this series aren’t incredibly severe but since they’re zombies there’s still talks about death and they way they died (Including motorcycle/car accidents, plane crashes, getting struck by lightning, and a heart attack), there’s also comedic dismemberment, as in their arms just sort of pop on and off and stuff like that. The most notable thing is the deadnaming of Lily, the trans idol, by her father, but it doesn’t appear to be malicious in any way.

Note: this series is in the middle of it’s second season right now, if you want to wait until it’s over it should be 12 episodes long and just aired it’s 3rd, so about 9 more weeks.

Death Note

This is also absolutely another series that gets recommended to people right off the bat, and for good reason, this show is an intricate game of chess between a serial killer and a detective trying to catch him, and it’s incredibly easy to get super invested in the suspense of what happens next. The story begins when a shinigami, a god of death, drops his “Death Note” into the human world out of pure boredom. A Death Note is simply a notebook where if you write someone's name in it… They die! And who better to pick up such a powerful object than Light Yagami, a prodigy praised for his genius and academy accomplishments as well as his charm and popularity, and with a very strong but juvenile black-and-white sense of justice, likely due to being raised by a cop.

So naturally Light begins his power trip as soon as he finds the notebook, he intends to “fix” the world by cleansing it of all the bad people, but truly he intends to become the world’s new god. Or the “God of the new world” as he puts it. But there’s one thing standing in his way, a detective resolute on catching him with the codename L. The series entire crux is a game of cat and mouse between these two, as they try to outsmart each other and the murders continue, Light loses more and more of his humanity, L becomes more resolute on catching him. There are more twists and turns than a cheetah race, and it’s honestly pretty addictive to see what happens next.

Trigger warnings here obviously include a lot of death and murder, including suicide, but in some cases it’s a forced suicide at Light’s hands. Also abuse, as Light loses his humanity he isn’t above manipulating and discarding people who love him. And one instance of near-rape on screen fairly early on, but the purpitrator dies before it happens and the victim escapes.

K-On!

Slice-of-life is an incredibly popular genre, and K-On! is the quintessential example of it. It’s a series that not everyone will like, because not a lot truly happens, and it can be overly saccharine or “moe” for a lot of people, and that’s fine. But I personally think that despite not a lot happening, the story has genuine substance, more than you may gather at first glance. It’s true that not much in the way of big plot really happens, it’s mostly life events, that’s why it's a slice-of-life. But it’s not about nothing. The real theme of the show is the fleeting nature of youth. It’s about how important the friendships you form at that time are, how they’ll stick with you for a lifetime, and how everything comes to an end. It’s sweetness even becomes a little bittersweet because you knew their after school tea time would end come graduation, and as they realize this it breaks their hearts a little, but they continue on, because they’re still After School Tea Time!

The series itself is simply about 5 girls in a band, Yui Hirasawa on lead guitar, Mio Akiyama on the bass, Ritsu Tainaka on the Drums, Tsumugi Kotobuki on the Keyboard, and Azusa Nakano on Rhythm Guitar (Who shows up later). They’re in a club at school called the light music club where they waste a lot of their time just drinking tea and eating cake, but they’re having fun and that’s what counts! The series has a lot of really great direction and expressive animation despite the fact that a lot of it is just sitting around and talking, it’s incredibly visually interesting so you don’t get bored.

I honestly don’t think there are any big trigger warnings I can give for this series, maybe that Sawa-chan can be a little too forceful when she wants to dress up the girls in cute outfits sometimes but it’s usually not presented as too creepy especially after season 1 where they tone it down due to straying from the manga.

Mob Psycho 100

This series is an absolute love letter to the art of animation as a whole, the artstyle itself may not seem like much to look at but the animation is some of the most expressive, fluid, creative, and vibrant out there right now, it’s the type of series that you can tell was made with a real passion for its medium and it’s story. It’s protagonist is Shigeo Kageyama, nicknamed “Mob”, a term that literally means “Background character”. Mob is a middle school kid and an incredibly powerful psychic, like, insanely overpowered, but he’s currently working part time for a shady conman, Reigen Arataka. Though it may seem as if Reigen is just using Mob for his powers, their bond is actually a very sweet one and you can tell they care for each other, it’s a very important one at the heart of the series.

The core themes of the series itself are what really make it shine, it’s message is stated as clearly as possible in the opening songs, “your life is your own” and “if everyone is not special, maybe you can be what you want to be”. Put simply, you’re the protagonist of your own life, but the other important message of the series is that all the supposed background characters are just as important. The friends you make, the connections you have with other people and the way they impact you, they’re what make you strong. No one is born special, everyone is just a normal person, and everyone deserves kindness. It’s a series that I recommend incredibly strongly for just how powerfully it portrays this message.

Trigger warnings for this series include kidnapping, possession, a scene with a “man in a dress” joke, and a racist design for a background character. Also (spoilers) a scene where it seems like a child was murdered and a scene where it seems like Mob’s entire family was murdered.

Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War!

Hey, speaking of amazing animation, Kaguya-Sama is a romantic comedy series centered around the premise of two incredibly arrogant people falling in love. Kaguya Shinomiya and Miyuki Shirogane are the vice president and president of the student council at the prestigious Shuchi'in Academy, they eventually develop feelings for each other but they’re both simultaneously too proud and too insecure to admit it, so the real crux of the series is the 3D chess they play with each other to try and get the other to confess first. Along with the scatterbrained secretary, Chika Fujiawara, the treasurer in desperate need of Prozac Yu Ishigami, the cast is incredibly fun and they all fit into the comedy great. Every single little game of “do you like me?” that they play is written like the most intense thing in the world, the insane animation absolutely adds to it, making it seem almost like a psychological thriller, the comedy comes from the absurdity of just how much they hyperbolize it.

It’s not pure comedy though, due to a lot of the series being set up around mindgames, the characters are actually fairly psychologically complex with a lot of genuine development stemming from their childhood to explain why they are the way they are. The series may be about mindgames, but the actual narrative frames them as a juvenile way to go about relationships, a way to try to protect yourself from getting hurt because you’re afraid to trust. The entire core theme is that communication in relationships of any kind is the most important thing and you cant replace it with clever little tricks, so the main pair only ever make actual progress when they’re actually upfront with each other. Even if it’s scary to be that vulnerable with someone, especially if you’ve been hurt in the past like they have, the relationships you build off of mutual trust and openness will be worth the risk, and they can help heal you. And one of the things I love about the series is that this doesn’t just apply to the main pair, but it places equal emphasis on the importance of friendship. All the characters' relationships with each other are unique and interesting and they all develop the same way, with trust and openness, and they become better because of each other.

Despite being generally a comedy, a lot of the characters deal with some really heavy things too so trigger warning for: child abuse (not on-screen), child abandonment (again not on screen), anxiety and panic attacks, suicidal ideation- initionally played off as a joke but it becomes very obvious the character in question is legitimately suicidal and in the manga he nearly attempts it but is stopped, this plotpoint will most likely be in the anime at some point as it’s also not complete.

Your Lie In April

Alright I gave you a funny show now I’m going to make you cry. In fact it’s hard for me to type this synopsis because I’m an absolute crybaby and thinking about this show gets me, but I think it’s absolutely worth checking out because it’s a very beautiful sadness. Your Lie In April is a series that follows the stress and trauma young musical prodigies face in their lives, as well as the people around them, and it’s a series about the beauty of music and art, and just how much it affects people. The music in the show is absolutely gorgeous, the way that they convey emotion through it is so beautiful and intricate that it just sticks with you. You feel the music, and you understand.

I’m actually going to give the trigger warnings right now instead of at the end because in order to explain the plot I’ll have to talk about them so tw for: Child abuse (phsyical and mental, on-screen), terminal illness, death, in depth depictions of PTSD, vomiting, panic attacks, the works.

The series follows Kousei Arima, a formal piano prodigy who hasn’t performed since the death of his mother two years ago. Kousei's mother was terminally ill, but she was also incredibly abusive. Kousei has incredibly complex feelings about his mother because of this. The trauma she instilled in him is severe, but because he was a child, he still is a child, and he loved his mom a lot, as any child would, and he didn’t want her to die and he blames himself for not being good enough. He wanted to make her happy, and the only way he knew how to do that was to play the piano. So he played and played and practiced until he was perfect, they called him the human metronome. But he would still get severely punished for being anything less than perfect. He had lost all the passion he once had, and after his mother died it was the final nail in the coffin, his trauma manifests now in a way that makes him unable to play. But all that changes one day in April when he meets a violinist named Kaori Miyazono, a girl full of life and passion for music, she’s someone who according to Kousei “Exists in springtime.” and she’s going to help him play again and refined that love for music whether he wants to or not! Teen drama happens of course, but there are much bigger roadblocks ahead.

Assassination Classroom

This series is thankfully generally more lighthearted… Most of the time at least. The premise is pretty simple, but incredibly ridiculous. An incredibly powerful octopus-like creature is the teacher of a classroom of middle school students tasked with the assignment of assassinating him in order to save the world. The series starts off very slice-of-life as it focuses on introducing the very large cast of characters inside of Class E, also known as the “end class”, but it quickly gains traction and gets a lot more intense as time goes on.

The octopus creature in question, Korosensei, is actually a very kind and genuinely good teacher to all his students. The real crux of the series is that it’s sort of a critique on the educational system, the students in the end class are there because they’ve been ostracized from the rest of the campus, far away in the mountains, to be made examples of. Why? Because they’re students that are considered worthless, instead of getting help they’re only pushed back further down in the system and left to struggle within it fruitlessly. They’re given up on, despite being children with so much potential, because they don’t fit a very rigid mold. That’s what Korosensei wants to help them with, and they’re able to grow as people together. As the series progresses you feel such a great sense of unity for the class, they’re like a family, they stick together and it’s very heartwarming. And watching them work as a team of assassins is so fun!

However the series can get heavy at times too, it doesn’t stray from heavier subject matter at all and i found myself incredibly shocked by it a few times, so trigger warning for: Child abuse (on-screen and off), both at the hands of a parent and a teacher and in one case a parent who is also the principal, misgendering of a character, sometimes as a “joke” but other times played dead serious at the hands of his mother, child death- specifically suicide, a successful one as well as 3 assassination attempts that doubled as suicide attempts by the main 3 characters (weird parallel they all got there huh)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Honestly this is a series that is good to go in blind for if you need to tws, it’s a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, but if you don’t want to know more than that you can stop reading here. If you want to know more, it’s a series that starts off very light-hearted and in tune with typical magical girl conventions at first, however by episode 3 it’s made painfully clear that these girls are being led to sign up into something they shouldn’t. It’s heavy, though not incredibly so, but it’s also a lot to explain in a summary. Madoka magica is… It’s Faust with magical girls.

I’ll explain as much as I can without giving too much away. The story begins when Madoka Kaname and her friend Sayaka Miki encounter a creature who calls itself Kyubey, who says it can grant a wish of theirs and in exchange they have to become magical girls and fight witches. Both the girls are hesitant, but Sayaka wants to wish for her childhood friend’s injuries to be cured so he can play violin again, while Madoka is content as she is and can’t think of a wish. Luckily they have a mentor, a magical girl named Mami Tomoe who helps introduce them to everything. However something is stopping Madoka from becoming a magical girl, a mysterious new student who is also one herself, Homura Akemi, is resolute on keeping Madoka from becoming a magical girl by all means possible, for reasons Madoka doesn’t understand. Things get even more complicated when a rival magical girl shows up, Kyoko Sakura, who becomes Sayaka’s new rival. As things get more heated between those two they discover a terrible secret about the nature of magical girls, and what they truly signed up for.

Spoilers ahead but trigger warning for: Child death, parental death (backstory only), decapitation (off-screen), needles, incredibly surreal imagery inside the witch’s labyrinths that may feel unreal, mind control, suicide, depression and despair expressed by young characters. Also don't bother with Magia Record

The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K.

Alright something lighthearted now, there are a lot of comedy anime I enjoy, a lot of series that have made me laugh, but none has made me bust a gut like this series has, it’s absolutely hilarious. It follows the life of a boy named Saiki Kusuo who has psychic powers. His powers are incredibly overpowered, and he absolutely hates them, in his eyes they cause him nothing but trouble. There’s not much in the way of a plot to describe, because there isn’t any, the series is comprised of 5 minute segments surrounding Saiki and an incredibly vast and colorful cast of characters that are just all completely insane, many serve as parodies as types of anime tropes because the series as a whole is very self aware and doesn’t shy from breaking the fourth wall a lot, but the characters surrounding Saiki are what make his life… Disastrous.

Like I said there’s not really a plot to describe but like FMA people may get confused with this one, there are 3 seasons but one of them is titled “The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K: Reawakened” as is a continuation of the first two with just 6 episodes in it. Also for some reason only the second season isn’t dubbed so if you’re planning on watching it that way you’d have to either stop or switch to subs for season 2

The only major tw I can give here is an ongoing joke about a character being into his sister, he’s treated as disgusting for it of course because he’s a parody of that trope but that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable, luckily he doesn’t show up much.

Little Witch Academia

Little Witch Academia is a series I personally just adore, it takes place in a world where witches are common and well-known among the people, but the era of witches is over and magic is dying out. However that doesn’t mean passion of magic doesn’t exist, the protagonist is a young girl named Atsuko Kagari, or Akko for short. She’s resolute on being just like her icon, a witch known as Shiny Chariot, as she attends the same magic school: Luna Nova! Unfortunately Akko isn’t exactly a magical prodigy, in fact she can’t even fly a broom, but that’s not gonna stop her, nothing will. Just like Chariot said, believing in yourself is your magic.

Once at school Akko gets into all types of crazy shenanigans with her with her two roommates, Lotte Yanson and Sucy Manbavaran, and occasionally her rival, Diana Cavendish. Akko still struggles a lot in school, in fact her inability with magic is pretty explicitly handled as a metaphor for a learning disability, and though this makes it harder for her she’s still resolute. Though the series is generally episodic, a concrete plot starts to form by the second core. Along with the help of her guidance counselor, Professor Ursula, Akko learns that she needs to unlock 7 “words” to bring magic back to the world, each time she learns a new one it comes with an important lesson to her and ultimately relates back to each of the core themes of the series

The series is pretty lighthearted so the biggest trigger warning I can give is one for bullying, two characters in particular tend to target Akko for not being a good witch and it can really sting to watch. Other than that none come to mind

[crystaljins]

Gleaming Silver

Characters: Jimin x Reader

Word count: 3.3K

Synopsis:  You love and trust your captain above all. But perhaps he’s not the man- or rather human you thought him to be.

Pirate!Jimin x firstmate!Reader

Notes: Things to do while in quarantine: Write about pirate/merman Jimin, I guess?? (JK i’m not in quarantine don’t stress guys) dedicated to @tuserendipia​, who apparently misses seeing me on their dash ;)

Warnings: Conversations while not maintaining 1.5m social distance, mentions of violence and piracy.

It is the duty and honour of a first mate to know every intimate detail particular to their captain. A captain without a first mate stands alone, useless- for how can they command loyalty of an entire crew if they cannot even have one person whom they could trust unconditionally? And that was who you prided yourself on being when it came to your captain. You had even gained a reputation across the seas- no one had ever seen the back of the Mighty Pirate King Jimin, for it was constantly guarded by his fiercely loyal first mate. From the moment Jimin had recruited you, an orphan, cast out on the streets and forced to pickpocket to feed herself, you have dedicated your entire life to him.

Yet, though you have prided yourself on your loyalty to your Captain, and though you considered yourself to know him better than anyone else, it is, as evidenced by the sight before you, all a farce. No, you do not know your captain in the slightest. Even your most basic assumption about him, that he is the most fearsome human to roam the nine seas of Quiruvea, is apparently incorrect.

For Captain Park Jimin is no mere man. No, you have witnessed it now, beneath the silver moon that paints his skin as if it were smooth marble. The shimmering, iridescent fish tail where his legs were prior to you being knocked overboard proves that you do not know your captain in the slightest. Cold, dizzying, confusing fear grips you at the unfamiliarity of the man- or rather, merman, who sprawls across the sand before you.

“Turn around.” He commands, gazing at you almost lazily. He is surprisingly calm after having exposed such an earth shattering secret, one he has somehow managed to keep from you for years. And your ingrained sense of loyalty has you turning away obediently, blinking rapidly in disbelief. Perhaps you are mistaken- perhaps your time out on the seas and the full, glowing moon above you have finally driven you to the brink of insanity. Or perhaps this is all a dream- perhaps you were never knocked overboard at all. Perhaps you had rolled off your bed in your sleep with a particularly hard rock from your beloved ship and you are actually sleeping peacefully on the hard floor in this exact moment.

The clink of metal as Jimin redoes his belt buckle behind you alerts you to the fact that Jimin is once more fully clothed and the human legs you knew him to possess have returned. You turn your head to face him, only to find the cool blade of a knife pressed against your throat. He lurches forward until he plants his knees on either side of you, pinning your prone form to the sand. Just the slightest pressure from your captain and the wet sand beneath you will be soaking up the remnants of your life. It is a night of betrayal, it seems.

“Will you kill me?” You question, gazing up at Jimin. You are unable to keep the slight wobble from your voice. Though you are brave, having faced many dangers since becoming a pirate, you have never been on the opposite side of Jimin’s blade. And rightfully so- he is your beloved, trustworthy captain. Or at least, you thought he was. But perhaps you are wrong. For to the rest of the world, Jimin is a cold, dangerous man. You have witnessed that many times first hand- to make a living off stealing from the king and adventuring the seas for hidden treasures, one must have a certain degree of ruthlessness to them. People are right to fear him, even if the thought that maybe you should as well has never crossed your mind. But it does now, because never has that sense of danger and ruthlessness been directed towards you in the way that it is now- a heavy, distant gaze that sizes you up like he is measuring your worth. Like he is cold-heartedly weighing up whether it is worth his while to keep you alive.

“That depends.” He rasps, moving in close until he hovers centimetres from you, planting one hand on the side of your head where it rests against the sand. The waves lap at the soles of his boots, and his damp cotton shirt billows outwards in the slight breeze like the sails of a ship, and the heavy material of his overcoat falls around you like a heavy curtain, shrouding your form in darkness. “Will you kill me?”

The question throws you off guard- for why would you ever consider killing your captain? Even after the revelations of tonight, after witnessing his glittering tail, you could never and would never turn your blade against him. At your stunned silence, however, Jimin twists the knife further, just firm enough that you can feel its pressure but not firm enough to cut, and that’s when you detect it. The slight tremor to his wrist, the barely concealed fear in his eyes. To anyone else, even to a member of his crew, Jimin would look like a ruthless killer, ready to murder his loyal first mate for discovering his deepest secret, but suddenly you see the situation clearly for what it is. A terrified man, fearing for his life. Fearing betrayal from his most trusted comrade, a fate that is perhaps worse than death to him. For if people were to know he were such a creature, he would know doubt be sought out. Merpeople were highly prized amongst the rich- they made beautiful additions to their gardens, much the same way a koi fish might adorn the fountain of a frivolous noblewoman, and the scales of their tails have immense abilities. Healing, potions, magic brews being the least of these properties. All it would take to ruin Jimin were to let slip to a passerby that the Mighty Pirate King is merely a lost merman, above the seas instead of below it, and he would never find peace no matter what corner of the seas he sought.

You feel yourself soften at the revelation, and reach trembling fingers upwards to wrap around his wrist.

“Never.” You whisper, a solemn promise. He does not hold the knife to you with any real force- you are able to tug its lethal edge away with no resistance from your captain until it falls useless beside you. He watches your expression as you do so, and when you make no move to fight him, his shoulders slump weakly. His gaze softens with relief as he rolls off you and collapses weakly in the sand.

“Are you hurt?” He asks, gazing listlessly up at the blanket of shimmering stars overhead. It takes a surprising amount of effort to force yourself into an upright position. When you do, you gaze out at the endless wash of black before you. Beneath the night sky, you cannot discern the smooth line of the horizon- only the constellations above guide you on your location. Somewhere far, far east of where your crew members conducted mutiny and tossed you ruthlessly overboard. Just the thought of it has your entire being shaking with rage.

“Not physically.” You respond. He nods, sitting up to gaze at you with gentle eyes. “I... don’t understand what happened tonight, Captain.”

You don’t specify what you don’t understand- there have been a lot of confusing events to unfold this night, beginning with the mutiny of crew mates you had trusted and loved, and ending with the discovery that your captain is a rare, nigh extinct race of mythical creature who followed you overboard without a moment’s hesitation and had obviously dragged your barely conscious body to the first piece of land he had come across. Jimin offers you a thin smile, combing his hand through his hair, which has dried with a slight curl to it, the way hair does when soaked with saltwater. He straightens, pulling off the dark coat that adorns his shoulders and adjusting it so that it falls across your figure, concealing the way your damp cotton shirt has gone translucent. You flush at the realisation and are grateful for the small gesture. It reminds you that despite the events of tonight, the man before you is still your captain, who rescued you from a life of starvation and showed you adventure and freedom, out amongst the dancing waves and endless horizons. The man whom you love and trust with your entire heart. You tug the coat more firmly around you despite the fact that it is heavy and laden with seawater.

“I do owe you an explanation. Perhaps I should start from the beginning.” He tells you, gazing out forlornly across the sea. “Beginning with who I am. I am Park Jimin, Crown Prince of the Eleven Seas of Altanea.” You blink in confusion- according to every map you’ve ever come across, there are only nine seas, and you have never heard of a place called Altanea. But you do not interrupt- instead you allow your captain to confess the words he has kept secret to all but himself for so many years. “Or rather, that’s who I was. For my kingdom was destroyed and its people scattered many years ago, when I was a young child.” He looks at you and his eyes shimmer in the moonlight. Even after so many years, to recount the story brings tears to his eyes. They catch the meagre light and your heart squeezes at the sight of them. “I was raised onland by two merfolk who were clever enough to conceal their true identity and to teach me to do the same. But we are drawn to the sea, for it is our home. And initially I sailed them with a licence- I worked hard and became a well-respected naval officer. And that was how I planned to live my life until the end of my days, until I discovered the truth of what had happened to the remnants of my people.” He says the words darkly, and his fists clench until his knuckles go pale. His eyes flash with cold fury and it is a look you know well- it is the face of the feared pirate king who sits before you. “The king that I had been so loyally serving had them trapped as commodities, ornaments to decorate the gardens of those who pleased him, and as farmed livestock to produce scales to cause his kingdom to prosper. A kingdom built on the blood and pain of an entire race.” You have only seen Jimin tremble and shake with rage the way that he does now once before. It was earlier that night, when your crew mate first announced her intent to mutiny. “Of course, the only way to remain on the sea if I am not a naval officer is piracy. And so I stole the Crimson Voyager and found myself a loyal crew.” He shoots you a furtive glance, and this is the part of the story you know, for you had been amongst the first Jimin recruited when gathering his crew. And you had witnessed each and every member promise their loyalty to Jimin. “My intention had been to gain riches and loyalty until I could stage a revolt and return my people to the seas where they belong, but I foolishly let my guard down around Chaeyoung.”

You stiffen are the mention of her name- the youngest and newest member of your crew, recruited by Jimin under mysterious circumstances despite your protests, and the very crew member who had initiated the mutiny. The first and only time you have questioned your captain’s actions. It seems, in this case, your misgivings were warranted.

“Is she... like you?” You question. It is too baffling to say the words you mean aloud. Jimin watches you curiously, before his lips curl with a faint but fond smile.

“Yes. Though, unlike me, she was born in captivity. She has never seen our home. I know you had your doubts about her, but I could not turn one of mine away.” He says. It is a familiar term of endearment, the way he refers to Chaeyoung as his. He does the same with all his crew- with you. To him, you are all his. His to protect, to trust, to guide. And the thought that Chaeyoung betrayed that has you clenching your teeth in anger. “I am sorry. I wasn’t yet ready to tell you the truth about my past. And it’s clear to me now that I trusted the wrong person. For it seems a life of witnessing the injustice her parents faced has left her bitter and angry with the world. She did not agree with my methods and wanted immediate liberation for our people... and you have witnessed firsthand how exactly she intends to do that. By brute force and pigheadedness.”

You are quiet for a long moment, drawing figures in the sand, and the soft wash of the waves lapping at the shore is the only sound that exists between you.

“How... how did she convince them to betray us?” You ask softly. For that is probably what hurts the most tonight- not the revelation that you know nothing of the man you love, nor the stress of being thrown overboard, but the pain of being betrayed by people you consider family. For just as Jimin fondly refers to the crew as “his”, they are also yours. Your family, your friends, your crew. That they could even consider betraying you goes against everything you know to be true. Jimin bites his lip and you watch the way he worries at the skin for a long moment, before he decides to confess the truth to you.

“We bear the power of persuasion.” He finally confesses. He watches you warily, as if fearing your reaction. “Of course, if someone knows they are being persuaded, they can break it, and so I have just granted you safety from such a power. But it is likely how she was able to stage the mutiny when she became discontent with my methods. And for the record, it is a power I have never used on any of you.”

You nod, feeling relief billow outwards in your chest, warming you to the tips of your chilled fingers. They did not betray you. But then another question fills your mind.

“Then why did she not persuade me?” You ask aloud, in the same moment that Jimin launches himself forward, almost eagerly, until his face hovers mere centimetres from you. You feel each puff of his breath glide over your skin, and your eyes widen at the sudden and unexpected proximity.

“That is precisely what I want to ask you.” He asks, but rather than look grim or angry or puzzled, he just stares at you with a steady, fixed gaze. You would almost call the look in his eyes longing, but surely you are mistaken. “She must have tried to. You are the most valuable and influential member of my crew. You could probably convince them to revolt even without the power of persuasion. How did you resist a spell as powerful as hers? How can your loyalty to me be so strong that even a mermaid’s song cannot sway you?”

His gaze scans curiously, desperately over your features, tracing from your brow to your eyes, your lips, your throat, before settling on the spot where a tarnished silver necklace rests against your collarbone. It had been a gift from him- he had found it amongst the first treasure the two of you had ever discovered, hidden in the depths of a jungle island, and had instantly declared it yours. It is simple- a mere locket, in the shape of a heart. You do not keep anything in it- it is the necklace itself that bears meaning to you, rather than its contents. Jimin reaches up wonderingly to stroke his index finger across the smooth surface, and then following the links of the chain as they fan across your décolletage. The action is intimidating- you feel as though he gazes upon your actual heart, the one that should be hidden safely beneath your ribs. He smiles, like there is a funny joke etched into the metal of your locket.

“Tell me.” He urges you softly. Jimin always becomes very smug whenever he catches a glimpse of the necklace you wear at all times, and he is extremely smug now. Like he knows your answer but wants you to be the one to declare it.

You bite your lip and his gaze tracks the movement, his tongue darting out to moisten his own lips. He is a work of art, up close. Silver moonlight gilds the line of his jaw and the high arc of his cheekbones and he owns a beauty that the most talented sculptors in the world can only dream of replicating.

“And you?” The words come out as a whisper. “Why have you revealed to me your secrets after so many years? Why did you follow me overboard rather than stay behind and save your crew?”

Jimin tilts his head slightly, before gently cupping your face and smoothing the rough pad of his thumb lovingly against your cheek. You must be quite the sight- a complexion darkened by days beneath the sun, hair matted and in disarray thanks to the salt that has dried in it, but he gazes upon you wonderingly like you are the most exquisite piece of treasure he has ever laid eyes upon.

“There are times where our bodies move faster than our minds.” He confesses sweetly. “By the time my mind registered what had happened, I was already in the water with you in my arms.”

You blink in confusion, and he chuckles, dropping his head so that his forehead rests tenderly against your own.

“I believe that happens because our bodies obey our hearts before they obey our minds.” He explains. “And my heart is entirely yours in any way that you want it. Just as this heart is mine.” He says, playfully tapping a finger against the small metal heart that rests against your sternum. You have a feeling that he is not referring to the cold metal heart that sits above your ribs.

You attempt to speak, to respond, you really do. But all that emerges is a confused squeak. And Jimin, brave, terrifying, powerful Jimin, releases a laugh. A full, joyous laugh, the laugh of a carefree young man in love, not the laugh of a terrifying pirate king recently betrayed by his crew. He throws his head back with the force of it, and when he recovers enough to gaze upon you once more, you are glaring at him with the most endearing pout upon your lips. And he is only a man- he cannot resist the urge to place a quick peck upon your lips, and when he pulls away, you stare at him in bewilderment.

“It is ok if you are not ready to say it aloud, yet, my love.” He tells you warmly. His tongue darts out against as if it is chasing the taste of your lips lingering on his. “For I already know the reason why- there is only one other method, other than awareness, to resist the power of a mermaid’s persuasion.” He pulls away, straightening and dusting away the wet sand that clings to his trousers. He takes inventory of his belongings- he had gone overboard as a man, and had removed his pants prior to transforming. It seems in his desperate swim to shore with you unconscious in his arms, he had lost his gun and his favourite knife, but his sword still remains, as well as the old rusted knife he had cast aside earlier. “There will be time for you to tell me in detail how much you love me later. For now, we have a crew to save.”

And he turns to you and extends his hand. And you could protest- you could flounder and deny his declaration that you love him. But such an endeavour would be pointless- for you both know it to be true. So instead, you take his hand and allow him to pull you to your feet. For your Captain is right.

You have a crew to save.

[half-man-half-lime]

SBURB in the Pact/Pale/Otherverse

There’s a series of Reddit threads where people come up with versions of story characters, settings, elements, etc. that fit into the mechanics and style of the Otherverse from Wildbow’s Pact and Pale web serials and Pactdice game. In the last thread someone posted an idea of Sburb as a ritual, and while I was stewing on my own ideas for that, I didn’t want to hijack the comment. I was waiting for another thread to pop up but for now I’ll post it here. Sorry if some of the stuff doesn’t fit the tone or style of Pact and Pale. This is what I’ve come up with:

Nobody remembers the name of the small European colony on the Pacific Ocean where the war between Angels and Demons took place. It was literally wiped off the map, from most people’s memories, and from most records. It’s quite possible that if the humans, Angels, and Demons involved hadn’t taken part in this war, their cooperation would have sustained better relationships between the human and celestial forces, which are distant and oppositional to this day.

By some unknown series of events, only a few hundred years ago, a war sparked between many Greater Angels and Demons. Many Others and practitioners were roped into fighting for both sides. Evangelists, Diabolists, Greater and Lesser Angels and Demons, and greater gods and non-Angelic architects of Space and Time, standing on the same level as the most powerful Angels and Demons. Old grudges and rivalries had come to a head here, and the battle was bloody.

The final escalation happened when the Angelic forces were losing, and the Demonic side elected to deal the finishing blow. One of the Greater Demons called the stars to fall from the sky and crush the enemy. Others and Practitioners mounted defenses, and the arbiters of Time and Space tried to displace some of the stars, but weren’t strong enough to prevent the entirety of the damage, and so a Greater Angel elected to make sure the enemy didn’t survive to advance their agenda, pulling down more stars to destroy the Diabolical forces.

What resulted was a destruction so thorough that most of the island was wiped out, leaving a small sliver of volcanic island in its place. Nobody remembered what happened there, as the destruction was thorough, and brought on by Demons. However, nobody disappeared exactly. The whole country was pulled down, as the stars burned holes in reality, past the known homes of the forgotten, including the Abyss and the Paths. They were pulled down to the void beneath the void beneath the void, far beyond any realms known to Practitioner or Other.

Those pulled into this realm were shredded apart into simple and complex spirits, and larger fragments of beings still not whole enough to live on their own. Spirits and fragments were attracted to things similar to themselves as if by some gravitational pull, and slowly coalesced into whole beings. These beings were massive and godlike, eschewing conventional bodies, becoming a patchwork of flesh and mouths and eyes and tentacles.

The architects of Time and Space re-formed, merging with the remained of what temporal and spatial elements once made up the island colony. The Angels and the ideas they embodied tried to reform, embodying forces of knowledge, fortune, and Light, as well as creation, faith, and Hope. The Demons re-formed as amalgamations of darkness, emptiness, and the Void they found themselves in, and the sin, destruction, and Rage against the flawed structures and conventions of the world they once sought to destroy.

Most people and Others were broken down to their base elements. Their capacity for thought, and the forces of Karma and the laws of the Seal of Solomon, as well as choices, promises, and words, came together and took on a Mind of their own. The Selves of these beings, their feelings and identities grew their own Heart. The cycle of birth and death, and the beings who sought to take the dead to their final resting places, became the overseers of Life and enactors of Doom in this strange new world. The old relationships, connections both natural and Practiced, they came together to embody the ties of Blood between those who lived in this realm.

And, lastly, the one force that had no hand in this war was the air spirits, who only ever sought freedom. When the stars fell from the sky and burned a hole in the ground, sucking everything in, it was the air spirits that coalesced of their own accord, seeking to escape the horrible fate that befell the island, but sadly they weren’t strong enough to escape. The complex air spirits were torn apart, but became whole again long after they drew their last Breath.

These new Horrorterrors who ruled this realm remembered the echoes of their old war, and their old desires to tear down the old world as Demons, and the Angels’ original role as creators, long before they fell into their role as caretakers of the world the humans inherited. As such, the seed of purpose was planted here, to become the seed for the old world to be torn down, and a new universe to be created.

The problem was, this place was empty. There were spirits, fragments of animals, humans, and others, and the broken landmass of the forgotten country, but this wasn’t enough. This place was like the Paths, needing context and ideas in order to become solid. Guided by its new gods, it became hungry for definition and ideas it could use to build its new world, a bare canvas to be painted, a Medium for creation.

It reached out to the world, searching for anything to give it definition. It couldn’t bring in much at first; stories of heroes and adventure, of war and conquest. Games of cards and chess. Study of planets and stars. These things were reminiscent of the war that echoed through the memories of the Horrorterrors, and so the Medium sculpted two new kingdoms, Prospit and Derse, to wage a war like the one it remembered. The kingdoms’ citizens didn’t have enough definition taken from humans, and so they took on bodies more like chess pieces, and organized themselves like card suits. If the Battlefield could ever become ready, they could wage a new war, build a new world. But for now it was just a chessboard, with two kings narrowly avoiding one-another, never ceasing.

This didn’t become a full-fledged Ritual Incarnate for several hundred years. A group of technomancers and programmers in the nineties found the remains of that small volcanic island in the pacific, tended to by an elderly practitioner who had retired from traveling the world, retiring to this place with his young daughter. He showed the technomancers how this place harbored some faint, distant connection to the Medium, and they all worked together to find ways to channel it, and use its hunger for definition in constructive ways. They created a language of new symbols connected to this place to use in diagrams, choosing spirographs, as circles distorted by circles distorted by circles, to signify the circular, self-fulfilling loop of space and time in a void beneath the void beneath the void. These symbols were inextricably tied to Paradox Space.

These practitioners, now calling their group Skaianet, tried to bind the Medium to punch cards, to record the spirits making up an object or being within the Medium, and retrieve or create those objects from anywhere using an associated Hexadecimal code. These Captchalogue Cards were a success.

However, the connection to these technomancers was a potential foothold for the Medium to pull in more ideas from the world. The practitioners became Harbingers for the Horrorterrors without even realizing it, and the horrorterrors used their incredible powers to rewrite these practitioners’ lives, little by little. At first the members of Skaianet were only creating Captchalogue Cards and other associated odds and ends for their own gain. Then, suddenly, they had always been studying the ruins on this island, which had always been there. Then they had always been working on using their experience with text adventure games to build a ritual around the Medium. And then they had always been translating the code in the ruins into a video game that could be mass-produced.

And finally, these practitioners and their children had always been born in the Medium, destined to play the game and create themselves.

The Medium and the Horrorterrors finally had access to enough spirits to build new worlds. Other practitioners were beginning to use Captchalogue Cards to store items and build new ones out of the composite spirits by punching the cards a certain way and writing down the codes. Some could gather information on how a piece of technomancy could grow this powerful this quickly, but few could do anything about it in time for the game’s release. Skaianet’s members communicated through the internet via a chat program, and so the internet and the chat program became more footholds for the Horrorterrors. The game’s beta would go public, and people everywhere would be consigning themselves to doom in sacrifice to the Medium.

The four players (children and grandchildren of three of the members of Skaianet, and one practitioner related to the old man) would enter the game and complete the ritual.

The new structure of the game, a new Ritual Incarnate, would be as follows: The four chosen players would enter the game using the game disc and captchalogue cards. Like other Practitioners who became Harbingers, they were each chosen by Horrorterrors in charge of one of the Twelve Aspects, taking on a Class, a relationship to that aspect based on their personality and the archetypes of old stories and new games. The sacrificed players, their homes, and the objects they deposited into the Kernelsprite, all destroyed by meteors, would provide some definition to the new universe the players would create, and to the Lands they would adventure in.

The players, meanwhile, would deposit objects or beings into the Kernelsprite, and the spirits making up these things would provide definition to the warring kingdoms and their battlefield, allowing the war to properly begin. The pseudo-Lost Others of this realm took on roles as Imps, Ogres, and other, greater enemies, to challenge the players, once there were enough things prototyped to make them whole again. The children would set out on their adventure on their personal lands, completing quests and fighting the emissaries of the Horrorterrors hidden as Denizens deep within this land.

The quests would lead each player, playing out their own coming of age story, to save their Land, fight their Denizen, and assist the Kingdom of Prospit in defeating the Kingdom of Derse, completing the war that had never been fully won by either side in the old war. They would create themselves, fulfilling the time loop the game created, breed frogs (frog breeding was another bit of information the Medium found relatable for some reason) and create a new universe to rule. Everything would tie into itself using the portals utilized in the Reckoning, both protecting Skaia from the summoned meteors, and sending the meteors through time to Earth to fulfill each time loop.

[d-criss-news]

Over the past decade, true crime stories have gone from a niche industry to a part of our pop culture lexicon, thanks to podcasts like Serial and S-Town and shows like Unsolved Mysteries and Making a Murderer. If you can't get enough of the genre - but wish it had an even more supernatural twist - then we might just have your new favorite web series. ComicBook.com can exclusively debut the first trailer for Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye, an upcoming digital series that will span both video episodes and audio podcasts. The series is just the latest project from the Tin Can Brothers, a multimedia comedy trio consisting of Joey Richter, Corey Lubowich, and Brian Rosenthal. The trio first gained fame as members of Team StarKid, the popular musical theatre group that created viral hits with musicals such as A Very Potter Musical and Holy Musical B@man!.

Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye follows Artemis (Mary Kate Wiles) and Paul (Steve Zaragoza), twin siblings who work at a podcast network. After uncovering a secret race of werewolves living among humans in the small town of Connor Creek, Artemis and Paul must decide who to trust and the price they’re willing to pay for a juicy story. The series' narrative will be told across two forms, with the audio podcast representing the in-universe episodes of Wayward Guide that Artemis and Paul produce. Meanwhile, the video episodes will showcase the messy and unexpected truth that the duo stumbled on along the way.

"There were elements, specifically in S-Town, where they would talk about how an interview gets cut off and they're like 'Wait, he told me to get this off the record,'" Richter told ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview. "And we're like, 'Oh, it'd be so fun to see what that is, what that side of the story is.' And then of course for us too, it was like, how do we also put like a high concept spin on this and make this a multiyear genre piece?

"While not losing the sort of quirky, character-driven stuff we like to do with pretty awkward characters," Rosenthal added.

"Being able to have a project to where the ensemble is so big, where we can have all these different people that populate this town and bring in all the talented people we usually work with, and beyond, to create this ensemble was the perfect opportunity," Richter continued. "Because every episode, they can interview six people and talk to all these fun people."

"I think that's the natural heightening of the comedy of it," Rosenthal echoed. "If we're talking about these stories of murder and crime, how do you escalate beyond that? And the answer is werewolves."

Wayward Guide features an all-star ensemble cast, including quite a few Starkid alums. Fans can expect appearances from Glee and American Crime Story star Darren Criss, The Flash star Carlos Valdes, and even Stranger Things' Sean Astin.

What do you think of the first trailer for Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye will debut on YouTube on October 13th, with new episodes being released weekly. Check back with ComicBook.com later for our full chat with the Tin Can Brothers.

[cartoonnonsensegirl]

Justice, Excellence, Defense, Intelligence (J.E.D.I.) Finale a.k.a. the SW Prequel Happy Ending AU

Since I see some people are interested, I’ll share what I’ve got. I’m working on the fanfic, but it’s stuck in the prologue.

First of all, I’ll have you know that this is a real world AU with several key differences. Most of the alien characters are human (except the Wookiees, who are Bigfeet in this version), everyone has more realistic-sounding names, and Palpatine is female in this version. Here’s a guide to the main cast:

Alexis Tano = Ahsoka Tano

Anatole Spacewalker = Anakin Skywalker

Obadiah Kenoly = Obi-Wan Kenobi

Patrice Amaretti = Padmé Amidala

Mace Windham = Mace Windu

Yo Fu Wei = Yoda

Sidonia “Sidney” Palpatine = Palpatine

Major Grievances = General Grievous

Tyrannical Tyrant = Count Dooku

Bail Organic = Bail Organa

Moira Morgan = Mon Mothma

“Jetpack Bo” = Bo-Katan Kryze

Mauling Mauler = Darth Maul

Captain Regis = Rex

There’s a ton of other characters but I won’t list them here; some will probably be in the description. It’s also a pretty lengthy idea; I don’t really know how to condense it anymore than what I’ve written here without just writing the whole fanfic already.

The plot of this AU begins in Spring 2057, with Alexis in Hungary with Jetpack Bo, planning their mission to capture the Mauling Mauler and free Satinka (Satine) from prison (she’s alive in this AU). The first half of this story is pretty much the same as ROTS with the added context of the Siege of Mandalore, and goes up to the Sunset Scene™/Ahsoka and Rex on the bridge of the star destroyer before Order 66 happens. There are some added elements, however, in the first half:

Alexis, Anatole, Obadiah, and Patrice all happen to have dreams that seem to symbolize either the good or bad ending of the narrative. The strangest of these is Patrice, since she’s the only one of the main four who isn’t Force-sensitive (or so we think; spoilers under the cut), and she shares dreams with Anatole.

Minor characters such as Bail Organic and Moira Morgan have actually seen the SW Prequels and TCW, and are aware that the events are unfolding like the movies. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to stop it. However, one character does succeed in changing the narrative, and it’s Sheila Ti (Shaak Ti).

It’s at the Sunset Scene where the story changes completely. Actually, a bit before that; Sidonia reveals that she is the “Insidious One” to Anatole, and also reveals that she’s known about his marriage to Patrice. Anatole gets furious and wants to kill Sidonia, but doesn’t as she tells him “Isn’t killing against the J.E.D.I. way?”, to which he replies, “How would you know anything about the J.E.D.I. way if you’re a S.I.T.H. Lady?”, and decides to turn her over to Mace.

Sheila Ti is watching the ROTS Sunset Scene on her laptop, when she senses a disaster about to happen. She goes up to the seemingly vacant Council Room and finds Anatole on his iPhone. She asks him if he misses Alexis and Obadiah, and he replies that he has forgotten about them until she mentioned them. Sheila discusses with Anatole that it’s not good to be sad or afraid, and cites them as the reason that Darth Vader fell in Star Wars (Anatole has never seen the prequels, only the originals). Anatole also mentions that he cut off his toxic friendship with Sidonia. After their conversation, Sheila advises Anatole to leave the Council room and go either supervise some younglings or see some friends and get dinner with them; she’ll cover for him for when Mace returns. Anatole heeds Sheila’s advice and leaves to buy takeout for Patrice, spending the rest of the night with his beloved wife. Meanwhile, Mace and his J.E.D.I. backup assassinate Sidonia, but it appears all too easy. Alexis captures the Mauling Mauler, and she and Regis are on a one-way flight back to NYC after bidding farewell to Jetpack Bo.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Sidonia has been assassinated, but her spirit goes on to make one final attempt to turn Anatole to the Dark Side--by possessing Patrice and threatening to kill her if he doesn’t turn. Anatole sees right through Sidonia’s scheme--she was going to kill Patrice all along for being a roadblock to world domination. Anatole brings Patrice before Mace and Yo Fu to help expel the Insidious One. At the same time, all the J.E.D.I. have returned with their troops since the war is over. Sheila comes to tell Alexis of the terrible tragedy involving Patrice, and rushes to Patrice’s aid at the Academy. Surprisingly, Alexis is strong enough to expel the Insidious One due to her strong light power, but senses an energy in Patrice’s belly assisting her.

Defeated, Sidonia’s spirit influences her Personal Guard Troops to take her body from it’s autopsy room and fly it to Mount Agung, where she zaps the life force of the remaining Separatist leaders to revive herself. And it’s here that she also commands her troops to Execute Order 150: the Final Contingency Order that states that in the event of the Supreme Chancellor’s death, a Giant Mecha shall be deployed over NYC to enforce order.

Meanwhile in New York, everyone lives life as normal. Alexis gets adopted by Anatole and Patrice and is told that she is to become a big sister. Also, Satinka gets married to Obadiah, while Anatole and Patrice renew their vows. Everything is fine in New York, until the Giant Mecha arrives, piloted by the Insidious One and zombified versions of the Separatist leaders. The J.E.D.I. apparently have to deploy their experimental Mecha to combat with the S.I.T.H. Mecha. Patrice apparently remains at the infirmary at the J.E.D.I. Academy (this part is really important!). For the most part, the J.E.D.I. appear to win the battle until the Insidious Mecha finds a weak spot in the J.E.D.I. Mecha. Alexis and several other female J.E.D.I. activate their magical girl transformations to continue fighting, but are barely able to weaken the Insidious Mecha. And that’s when the deus ex machina of the story finally activates.

Back at the Academy, Patrice starts sensing Anatole in danger, and electrical appliances start exploding around her. A J.E.D.I. nurse tells her that she has Gestational ESP; a condition in which a non-Esper mother that is pregnant with an Esper child develops temporary powers of her own, losing them when her child(ren) is born. Most mothers with this condition have low-level powers, but Patrice’s power level is unusually high due to 1) having two buns in the oven, and 2) the paternal DNA being that of the Chosen One. Patrice uses her newfound powers of expectant motherhood to undergo a magical fashion change and creates a flowy, water-themed dress and adorns her hair with flowers. She chooses to manifest her powers as lotus flowers, specifically Nelumbo nucifera lotuses (her favorite flower).

The J.E.D.I. are overlooking the Upper New York Bay, when what appears to be a shooting star falls into the bay, causing a garden of giant lotuses to bloom and a glowing floral design to appear in the water, shooting a beam of light into the sky to finally reveal the super-powered Patrice, who has also gained glowing wings that appear to be resemble lotus petals. She attacks the Insidious Mecha with two glowing lotuses; one blue and one pink (her children are providing her the power), destroying it in the process. However, the Insidious One transforms into a terrifying final form with fire, lightning, and wind storms surrounding her. The J.E.D.I. realize that although Anatole is the Chosen One, he has only half the power required to defeat the Insidious One; the other half of the power is in Patrice. The two, the “Hero with No Fear” and the “Lotus of Florence”, must combine their powers to ultimately defeat the S.I.T.H. Lady forever.

The story ends with many J.E.D.I. and Republic Senators summoned to a hospital, where Alexis is throwing a party to celebrate becoming a big sister.  Anatole is with Patrice in the delivery room. A while later, Alexis, Obadiah, and Regis are called by Anatole to the room Patrice is resting in, where Alexis is introduced to her baby brother and sister. They all take a commemorative photo.

BONUS: Moira Morgan becomes Supreme Chancellor.

[aspenforest732]

Ok posted this in response to an askreddit and was told to post it somewhere so... why not :) these are fanfic ideas I've written in my head. Pretty sure the first I started to write down and that's how it became a series I used to think up (I quickly lose interest once I start writing stories down).

Tw: sex trafficking, genocide for the first story

Ok so we've got my long standing star wars series. A Phoenix (my own creation that is across universes) is brought up by sex slave traders then bought by the sith who had destroyed her homeplanet and through torture made her believe the jedi did it. She gets sent to the Jedi as a spy and eventually discovers they didn't do it and turns on the sith. Since she's the subrace of Phoenix who see through the force and can see all possible timelines, she starts helping the jedi since the sith also have a seer Phoenix guiding them. She isn't at full power, though, since she didn't go to a specific planet during... Phoenix puberty? There's a 1-month window where it's agony if you are unable to go to that planet (the one where the force father and his kids the light and dark side of the force live in Star Wars the Clone Wars), so she can only survive for one minute while on heavy doses of force suppressants, she cannot communicate with other phoenixes telepathically, and she has a cap on how strong she can become. The phoenix council is dead so who's gonna stop her from undoing the harm. Of course the twist is the council transported the planet via ritual into a pocket dimension but the ritual only brings adults. The series comes into play when I keep moving back the timeline of when the planet was "destroyed" and introduce other Phoenix bought or raised by the sith after the first turned. And then a Phoenix with star wars rebels

My current story is based on stormlight archives and takes place between books 3 and 4 and into 4. It's about a dark skinned Listener in nimbleform with minimal marbling named Marle who was going to be the next keeper of songs when Venli largely abandoned her studies for research into forms. Marle realized something was horribly wrong and left before the first everstorm to join the humans in disguise, bonding with a patternspren she named Fractal along the way. She takes up shop as a seamstress and starts experimenting with fashion designs that are multicultural. She reunites with Rlain, who recognizes her despite the makeup covering her marbling but decides not to reveal her. With the arrival of the everstorm, Marle reveals herself to her mentor to protect themselves in a makeshift cellar via soul casting. After he decides not to reveal her (she'd been working with him for a year at that point), she starts experimenting with soul casting in garments, essentially bonding with the spren and using stormlight to have the fabric do strange/interesting things and even change form to go from casual to formal to armor. After a time, they are able to move shop to Urithiru, at which point Marle reveals her designs for lightweavers, claiming it's solely based on observation and stories she's heard. Her side of the business becomes increasingly successful as she works with radiants to create functional designs that can also become fashionable ensembles that appeal to their national/regional ties. She's discovered as a Lightweaver but refuses to join an order. When the invasion of book 4 happens, she gains the attention of Raboniel and easily adapts a havah to her form (it is canon that someone adapted a havah to fit her form and style), as alethi + singer fashion is one of her passions. In the final fight, she joins as Leshwi switches sides and starts doing Jasnah-style badass crowd control, turning the very lightning dancing across stormforms and the air around them into acid. After that reveal, she loses some customers but gains more from the Heavenly Ones switching sides. She becomes an ambassador from her people to the humans and teaches Navani some conversational rhythms for better communication. I'm currently debating whether to have them leave the tower to find the surviving listeners after too many hate crimes and little to no response from the kings and high princes or having the rulers and the singers find peace.

[niftyneffy]

Heart AU - Speak with your Heart

(This AU belongs to @emositecc I only did the writing. This one is a real long one).

Even in the vast darkness of space, there were lights. Stars that orchestrated their luminosity, acting as beacons of beauty while they gleamed in the endless depths of space, secured in a comfortable blanket of the night while waiting for the inevitable admiration from those who took notice of the shining orbs.

Serenity, wonder and elation filled the air for it was a night for celebration! A night for love and peace. Smoothly and slowly, the ocean washed up and down along the beach's shore, repeatedly tucking the sand in a cloak of comfort. Along the light gold sand of the beach, just in front of Steven's house and the colossal temple of the Crystal Gems, there were countless crowds of people, humans and gems, all talking, laughing and dancing as music bounced up and down along the beach.

Sadie Killer and the Suspects were performing like it was their last night, Lars and his crew were telling stories of their adventures in space, but they weren't the only ones. Bismuth couldn't help but share her heroic tales, even Peridot and Lapis were gripped. Greg and Connie along with most of the residents of Beach City were enjoying the performance. Everyone was getting to know each other, humans and gems, all sharing stories, spreading smiles and having the time of their lives.

On the wooden deck of the cosy house that rested below the ancient, gargantuan statue stood the Crystal Gems, admiring the party from the house.

With a smile that shined bright like the sun, Steven rested his hands on his hips and turned to his three friends, his voice layered in happiness, "See, was I right or was I right? A party after this whole misunderstanding is just what Beach City needed."

"A misunderstanding?" Amethyst hiked a brow. "Ya sure you wanna call it that?"

Whirling her head and glaring at the Quartz, Pearl let distaste ride her voice as she gasped, "Amethyst!"

"What?!" She threw her hands up in retaliation. "All I'm saying is that a "misunderstanding" isn't the best way to put it. After all, we were reset, Steven lost his powers and all life on Earth was nearly destroyed."

"But it wasn't," Garnet added. "In the end, everything worked out just fine, we got our happily ever after and gained a new friend. What's past is past, let's enjoy the present while we can." She smiled, wrapping her arms around her friends and bringing them close and successfully breaking the tension between the two.

Caught in the embrace along with his friends, Steven chuckled but quickly glanced down at the sea of people on the beach, "Speaking of which, where is Spinny? As a matter of fact, I haven't seen Spinsy all day either."

"Relax," Garnet spoke softly, keeping her smile intact while disconnecting her arms from her friends. "They're fine. They've been spending the entire day together getting ready."

"Honestly, I haven't seen Spinsy this ecstatic before," Pearl confessed with a sigh. "I'm happy that they're together again."

"Here, here!" Steven agreed, cheering with the raise of his hand. "Now come on, let's join in!"

Looking back down to the joyous crowd of humans and gems, washed in pure delight as the sound of laughter and cheering filled the air, Steven and his friends all shared a smile and casually made their way down from the house's deck to join in. It was shaping up to be a good night.

...

It was unknown to the Crystal Gems but in the homey beach house where the memories of laughter and joy rested, their pink friend was waiting.

In the spacious, warm and comfortable living room, Spinsy eagerly waited with a child-like smile, repeatedly walking from one end of the room to the other with a bounce in each step as her big magenta shoes tapped and squeaked against the floorboards. She couldn't deny it, she had trouble holding in her anticipation, her excitement. With pure joy waiting to burst at the seams, the pink gem began to hum in delight as she occasionally turned her head to the front door, clasping her gloved hands together.

Elation causing a commotion in her bright eyes, hearing the sound of laughter, cheering and music from the party outside, Spinsy fought the urge to break her endless cycle of walking back and forth, but eventually, she stopped dead in her tracks and zoomed over to the window faster than a speeding bullet. Pressing her hands and face against the glass in awe, keeping her smile pinched upwards, she giggled as she watched her friends, the gems and residents of Beach City bathe themselves in celebration.

"Wowee." She breathed. "I can't wait to join in."

Focused on the fun happening outside, Spinsy became unaware of the gem behind her until she spoke with a shaky voice.

"How do I look?"

As the familiar, but nervous voice infiltrated her hearing, Spinsy whirled herself away from the window with her heart-shaped buns styled on her hair softly waving from side to side. Locating the sound of the gem's voice, her eyes widened in admiration, gasping in delight as she stared at her sister.

Spinny, much like her other half, was pink and her magenta hair was styled into a pair of spiky pigtails. Her top contained two colours that were kept separate from each other, white and dark magenta. She wore puffy shorts and a pair of knee-high pointy boots that matched the same colour as her hair along with puffy pointed hot pink sleeves, pink cartoon-like gloves and white stockings.

In the centre of her chest was a gemstone that resembled one half of an upside-down heart, the other half to Spinsy's own.

Anxious and timid, but finding the strength to lift a small smile, Spinny's widened eyes did well to hide the worriment infecting her pupils. Running down on each side of her face, directly under her eyes were three black lines that resembled her ruined mascara.

Six thousand years ago, it would have been like looking into a mirror, but she had changed, she was different. They both were.

Anxious and timid, but finding the strength to lift a small smile, Spinny's widened eyes did well to hide the worriment infecting her pupils. Running down on each side of her face, directly under her eyes were three black lines that resembled her ruined mascara.

As Spinsy absorbed the sight of Spinny, there was one thing her eyes targetted immediately. At first glance, nothing had changed about her appearance, but it was hard to miss the adorable, big red bow tie that had neatly secured its way around the taller gem's neck.

Bringing her hands up to her face and unlocking a squeal of pure elation, the whole of Spinsy's face brightened like a lightbulb, "Awh! You look adorable!"

Embarrassed, Spinny averted her gazed from her sister as she held onto her own arm, setting free a giggle, "Are... Are you sure this is okay?"

"Of course, that bow tie looks great on you!"

"No, no, not that," Spinny softly dismissed with the shake of her head. "I mean this... Party."

Hiking a brow, gloom sitting in her gaze, Spinsy tilted her head in response, "Don't you wanna go?"

"What? No, I do, I really do, it's just..." The newly reformed gem found her words dying on the tip of her tongue, losing the ability to speak as she raised her hand to scratch the back of her head as if she trying to locate the words she was searching for.

With her lips twitching, Spinny finally forced out her words as she looked back at her other half, "It's only been a week since I arrived here and... nearly destroyed all life on this planet. What if I ruin the fun or what if I scare everyone off? What if someone doesn't want me there?"

"Oh, Spinny," Spinsy cooed. "That's not true. I want you there." She reassured with a friendly smile. "There's nothing to be afraid of, all of that is in the past and believe me when I say that the people out there really, really want you to join the fun! I mean, you gotta admit, this week has been an absolute joyride! Haven't you had fun seeing what this planet has to offer? Haven't you had fun reconnecting?"

The look of uncertainty transformed into an expression of happiness as her lips trembled up into a smile, enraptured in her own joy as she breathed, "Yeah. It has been fun. In fact, it's been the best fun I've had in years."

Just then, Spinsy leaned her head in and smirked, "And wouldn't you like to make some new friends?"

Out of her control, Spinny couldn't help but stretch her smile and chortle, "Yeah."

"Well come on then." The smaller gem gently locked her hands onto Spinny's wrists, spreading her enthusiasm. "This is gonna be a night that you won't forget. Ready for the time of your life?" She asked with a glowing grin.

Spinny couldn't help but smile as she found a new form of comfort flowing through her, it sparked inside her like a lighter after being reunited with her sister. Just as she nodded, the taller gem unexpectedly felt herself being pulled forward by her sister who held her hand lightly and guided her to the front door of the beach house. As the door flung open, both of them felt the beautiful night's breeze wash over their face as if it was an ocean's wave.

The sound of cheering, laughing and music became more clear to the twins as they set foot outside. Spinsy was bouncing with joy, squeeing and finally unlocking her excitement as she saw the sea of heads having fun and as for Spinny, she stood still, in awe as her eyes scanned the crowd of people having the time of their lives. It reminded her of the games she used to play back in the garden.

Like a baseball being battered out of a stadium, Spinny's pupils flung to her right as she stared at her sister and chortled, "You know what, you're right! What is there to worry about? Let's go have some fun!"

"See, I knew you'd love it!"

Quickly, Spinsy hopped down the stairs of the beach house's deck like a slinky, but for some reason, Spinny remained hesitant as she looked back to the delightful crowd of people, shaking away her fears as she took a deep breath in and slowly exhaling it out into the fresh air of the graceful night. After reconnecting with her composure, she wore a mask of determination and began to steadily walk down the stairs right after her sister.

"You can do this," Spinny breathed, proceeding to whispered to herself. "You can do this."

...

Flowing up and down like the waves of the ocean, everyone was having the time of their lives. Dancing, laughing, cheering, playing and singing. Joy and glee radiated from each human and gem the twins passed by. Joining in with the rhythm, Spinsy began to bob her shoulders up and down as she walked with a spring in each step, waving and cheering to the residents of Beach City.

But behind her exuberant and optimistic sister, Spinny failed to share the same cheerful and motivational energy. Slowly taking her steps with caution, moving as if she was on a completely different planet, she raised her wrists to her chest and gripped one of them firmly as if she was trying to keep herself stable.

Nervous, spinning her head from left to right, she stretched a smile that looked rather uncomfortable, taking quick glances at the crowd she was now a part of with concerned eyes as wide as saucers. Despite this, it seemed like no one was paying much attention to her which felt like a slight relief but also a pain that felt too familiar to her.

Nevertheless, Spinny kept herself behind Spinsy, following her as a shy child would with its protective mother. Softly, their feet dipped into the sand and left a trail of footprints that would soon be covered up by the bouncing, lively crowd. From one person to another, everyone's delight connected like a chain, joy spreading like wildfire, but why didn't Spinny share this feeling? She tried to lift her spirits, she desperately wanted to feel involved and joyous with everyone else but this feeling of anxiety kept her shackled to an endless pit of fear and worriment.

Lost in her thoughts of doubt, trapped in trepidation, it became unknown to the gem that Spinsy had stopped in her tracks and somehow, through the healing and funky music that danced in the air, her head bobbed upwards from the barren sand as she heard Steven's voice.

"Hey! There you two are!" He exclaimed, painting a smile on his face. "Nice bowtie, Spinny!"

"Hiya, Steven!" Spinsy greeted brightly, hopping to the hybrid boy.

Failing to share her sister's enthusiasm, Spinny lifted her hand and flicked a wave, "Hey..." She mumbled while forcing a crumpled smile upon her face.

As the twins stood beside each other, Steven raised his hands in excitement, gesturing to the crowd they were in, "How are you two enjoying the party?"

In a voice coated in sweetness, the smaller gem cheered in response, "It's amazing! Just look at how much fun everyone's having!"

"Yeah," Spinny awkwardly agreed with the swoop of her arm, still forcing a smile. "It's... It's something alright!"

"Alright! I'm glad you two are having fun. Oh, and Spinny... Thanks for coming, it means a lot."

"It's no biggie." The gem dismissed in a rather fearful manner, averting her gaze from Steven as she clasped her hands together in hopes to preoccupy her thoughts.

"Hey, you know what you two would love!" Steven exclaimed. "There's a dance contest going on in a couple of minutes, I think both of you should totally enter!"

Upon hearing this, the twins offered two completely different reactions.

The whole of Spinsy's face brightened like a star, grinning from cheek to cheek while her eyes widened in fascination. However, Spinny's face dropped in dismay, looking scared as if she was living a nightmare.

Whirling her head to her sister, the grin on Spinsy's face retreated to a smirk as she spoke, "Whaddya say, Spinny? Wanna join in?"

Pressing her fingers together and shaking, trying to contain her agitation, Spinny began to rapidly nod her head while trembling a laugh out, "Haha! You bet!"

"You heard that, Steven?" The exuberant gem shouted, throwing a thumb to her face as she shined confidence. "You can count us in. Now lead the way!"

As if there were explosions of elation going on inside his brain, Steven's happiness grew as he could feel Spinsy's positivity spreading to him, "You got it! I can't wait to see this, you two are going to be great!"

Swiftly, the hybrid boy twirled himself around and began to casually guide his two friends to their destination.

Following him, Steven and Spinsy both shared the optimism and eagerness in the way they walked. Lightly bobbing their head up and down to the flow of music, yet Spinny remained barren to the feeling of contentment.

All the reasons telling her not to do this came flooding in like she had been caught in a tidal wave. Deep down, Spinny cursed herself for not being able to shake away the clutches of doubt that kept creeping up on her. Keeping her hands clasped together, her fingers sealing around her knuckles, there was a wobble in the way she walked. Why couldn't she escape the confines of her anxiety?

While her mind was swatted with unhealthy thoughts and scary scenarios, the worried gem kept her eyes glued to the sand as her legs shudder. Slowly, her spiky pigtails dropped down as if she was a floppy-eared bunny and soon, she stopped dead in her tracks, gripping her eyes shut in frustration.

Disappointed in herself, Spinny lifted her head calmly and breathed, "Spinsy, I'm sorry, but I can't do this. I just-"

Upon looking up, her eyes bulged out of her head in discomfort and distress, feeling overwhelmed with fear as Spinsy and Steven were no longer in front of her. They were gone, vanished without a trace.

"Spinsy..." She called out with confusion riding her voice.

Finally breaking her hands apart from each other, Spinny began to scan her surroundings, frantically looking from left to right in the crowd that swarmed her. The fears that she had locked deep into her subconscious broke from the chains and began to infect the roots of her mind with terror, dread and panic.

"Spinsy... Steven..." She whimpered, barely hearing her own voice through the music and cheers that bombarded her.

All around the frightened gem, pushing her head back and forth, Spinny turned to the many unfamiliar faces that cramped the area. Their laughter felt like they mocking her, the screaming was taunting her and their smiles ridiculed her. That feeling of fear twisted and sunk her nerves to the point where she could feel herself shaking, shivering and shuddering.

With her lips quivering as if she was a child being separated from her parents, eyes erratically growing wider by the second as her pupils bounced from side to side like a tennis ball, Spinny brought her hands up to her arms and gripped them tightly as if she was trying to hold herself together from falling apart.

Attacked by the loud laughter that bombed her thoughts, the sounds of all humans and gems transformed into white noise, infiltrating the gem's conscious. Unable to think properly, Spinny glanced down to the sand, her lip trembling as she sniffled, tears dwelling in her eyes.

"No... Not again... Not again!"

Quickly, her breathing grew frantic, panic battling her system as she felt alone, abandoned, alienated! Through the white noise that plagued her hearing and mind, she heard a voice, her own voice, but she had no control over it. As the cogs in her mind began to rust, she could feel herself malfunctioning, breaking and cracking from reality.

'They left you!'

"No..." Spinny spat, whirling herself from left to right, trying to shake away the spiteful voice.

'Everyone hates you!'

'Who'd want to be friends with you? You're an emotional wreck! A pathetic mess! An unstable freak!'

"Stop it!"

'If these people even knew you they'd leave you too!'

'You're ruining this for everyone!'

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Spinny whimpered, baring her teeth in agitation as she pulled down on her pigtails. "I'm doing the best I can!"

'If you were a good friend, maybe Pink would still be around!'

The confidence that had been gifted to her by Spinsy departed, now, Spinny couldn't help but feel lost. Stupid. Gullible. To think she could actually be a part of this future. She was right to think everyone hated her, even she did.

Wearing a haunted look, petrified in the eyes as she stood on the edge of terror, the erratic gem looked down to bow tie she was wearing and didn't waste another second. Furiously, her anxiety pushing her and controlling her movement, she crushed the tie and pulled it from her neck, harshly throwing it to the ground.

Undone and ruined, the bright red bow tie rested in the sand. Discarded.

A fire whirled inside her, causing ablaze, an eruption of uncertainty, horror and grief. For her, it was becoming difficult to breathe as her own voice played on a loop in her head, saying the same awful things again and again to no end! Her stress was demanding for a fight, her stomach twisting and turning like a hurricane!

Holding up her hands to her face, unable to remove the stains of guilt from them, she began to sob, "I can't do this! I can't do this!"

Clenching her teeth together in a panic, fear washing over her face, her gaze was the perfect example of someone who had been terrified. Swiftly swirling her head, looking for an opening to escape, Spinny didn't let another second go by as she ran into the crowd of people, slipping past everyone as she struggled to maintain her composure.

Although no one paid any attention to the distraught gem, only one had seen her running off until she was away from everyone's sight.

"Spinny?" Spinsy arched a brow, emerging from the dancing crowd.

Looking to the spot her sister had left, she knelt down and swooped up the ruined bow tie from the sand. As it rested in her hand, confusion and concern all rushed into her system.

For a moment, worriment crossing her expression, Spinsy remained calm and looked back up to the preoccupied group of people. Unable to locate Spinny at first glance, she broke away from her position and ran into the crowd of people without a second thought, searching for her sister.

...

After searching for quite a while, time began to melt and with no luck, Spinsy failed to find Spinny anywhere. It was almost as if she had disappeared. By the time she had reached the beach house, the tired gem rested her hands against her knees and regained her breath, spinning her head and surveying the area from the deck of the house.

"Oh come on, this shouldn't be hard. She looks exactly like me! Why can't I find her!" She said in between breaths.

Picking up the sound of footsteps rapidly pressing against the wooden planks of the stairs, Spinsy turned around and watched Steven approach her, looking saddened as he sighed.

"I'm sorry, Spinsy. I've looked just about everywhere and asked everyone, and nothing. Not even Garnet has seen her."

This time, it was her turn to sigh. As she slowly pushed the air from her mouth, the worried gem crossed her arms and turned to the ocean, letting her arms float down to the wooden handrails of the deck, leaning on it for support.

Unable to fight off the sadness contaminating her system, Spinsy's eyes helpless wandered up to the lonely moon that dwindled in the night sky.

"Where are you Spinny?"

Motivation sparking inside Steven, he approached the dejected gem and secured an arm around her shoulder, smiling, "Hey, don't worry. I'm sure she's still around. We'll find her."

"I know we'll find her, it's just..." Spinsy breathed, looking to the son of Rose Quartz with a guilty expression. "I can't help but feel like it's my fault for driving her away. She's been alone for so long, I thought a party would do her good, but clearly not."

"First I abandon her and now I probably made her feel scared or uncomfortable. Way to go me, right?" She mumbled with the roll of her eyes.

"You can't think like that, Spinsy," Steven said. "You organised something great here tonight and you wanted your sister to be a part of it. I know it wasn't your intentions to make her feel uncomfortable and it certainly isn't your fault that she ran off in such a hurry."

"But-"

"But nothing." He quickly interjected. "You've been a terrific friend to me, to Pearl, to Garnet, to Amethyst, to- to everyone! We know Spinny's been through a lot, but we promised we'd been there for her. We'll find her and we'll help her."

"You did all of this just to make a new start for her and if that doesn't scream: "Best Sister Ever!" I don't know what will," Steven chuckled.

Joining in on the laughter, Spinsy broke away from the handrail of the deck and smiled back at her friend, "Thanks, Steven. That really means a lot."

"I'm just speaking the truth." The hybrid gem confessed, scratching the back of his head as a sheepish smile grew.

"I just hope she understands that I wasn't trying to scare her," Spinsy softly spoke. "I mean, I just wanted us to have fun like we did back in the-"

When that one thought crashed down on her, the pink gem's eyes widened as the words on her tongue died. Like a computer, it almost appeared as if she had frozen.

"Spinsy, is everything okay?" Steven asked with a hint of concern.

Curling her hand into a fist and patting it against her hand, valiance dancing in her eyes, determination graced her words as she reclaimed her voice, "I know where she is!"

...

Instantaneously, a cylindrical beam of bright light materialized from the warp pad, producing a harmonic tune that would bathe anyone in comfort. But not Spinny, her tormented mind failed to pick up the sound due to the frightening thoughts exploding inside her head.

As the lustrous beam of light quickly faded, Spinsy had appeared on the crystalline platform. It hurt to set foot on this withering rock of a garden. However, much to her relief, sticking out like a sore thumb, she had found her other half.

In all her life, the troubled gem had never thought for a moment that she would wind up back in the same place she been abandoned.

Pink Diamond's garden.

Once a playground that radiated fun and peace now eroded into a decaying, lonely rock. Here, time had no concept, no meaning. Everything seemed so lifeless, colourless and meaningless. All pillars were crumbling, cracks swarmed the ground and the plants were dying. Here, everything was withering away.

This place brought back so many memories to the lonely gem, some of them were joyful while most of them were a nightmare to remember. Among the stars, who would have thought this joyful little playmate waited for her friends so faithfully. It hurt to remember.

In the centre of the garden, in the exact spot where she had waited for six thousand years, Spinny sat and hugged her knees, curling herself into a ball in hopes to contain the feeling of grief and sorrow that tried to claw free from her system. Inside her felt like a furnace, a fire that danced and tormented her soul for being so broken.

Silently, her puddled eyes dripped with tears, spilling down her face as she buried her head into her arms, desperately wanting to hide from the universe. The static in her head made it hard to think, she felt like a distressed child, an unwanted toy, a stranger to everyone and herself. Trembling, her lips sealed shut but failed to contain the whimpering and sniffling she was making.

How did this happen? Even she couldn't answer that. The walls of her confidence that had been provided by Spinsy, Steven, the Crystal Gems along with all the other friends she had built a connection to simply collapsed. She felt weak, exhausted and depressed.

For the first time, Spinny felt like she belonged here. Away from life. Alone.

Curled up into her own world of misery, putting her back to the warp pad, Spinny didn't hear the gentle footsteps coming from behind her. As if a building was being demolished, she could feel her strength deteriorating by the second. It hurt.

"Spinny."

Bringing her back to reality, the troubled gem snapped out of her state of grief as she heard a gentle, but frail voice reach to her. With a sniffle, she lifted her watery gaze and twisted her head in alarm as her eyes met her other half.

Not saying another word, Spinsy stood still like a statue, holding her own wrist and staring at the distressed gem with fear and sorrow clutching her pupils.

For a moment, the air was deathly still as if silence had just shattered along with everyone else in the garden.

Trying to stop her crying, the grieving gem couldn't help but feel ridiculous as she brought her arm to her face, wiping away the tears that lingered as she sniffled, "Oh, hey. I- I-"

Unable to properly grip her voice, Spinny just closed her mouth and gave up. Seeing this as her chance to help, Spinsy calmly approached the upset gem and let herself float to the ground, sitting next to her.

"Are you okay?" Although her voice was soft as a pillow, her expression screamed fright. "I saw you run off. What happened?"

Nothing but silence, unresponsive and still, Spinny simply let the tears drip from her face, refusing to acknowledge any of the questions that crossed her path.

This time, a sickening thought crossed Spinsy's mind as she dropped her mouth to unleash a gasp, but bringing her hand to secure it. Horrified at the thought, she spoke in a frail whisper as if she was trying to share a secret, "No one- no one hurt you, did they?"

"No," Spinny trembled out. "No one hurt me, I just- I just felt a bit sick, you know? That's all."

"Please don't do that."

At a loss, Spinny raised her head again, arching a brow and wearing only confusion on her expression.

"Please don't lie to me," Spinsy told, but still keeping her voice soft and encouraging.

Slowly, the grieving gem pivoted her head and sulked back into her arms, trying everything in her power to fight off the tears brewing in her eyes. Keeping her lips concealed, it looked as if she was trying to mentally stitch them shut. Her sister could tell it was obvious she didn't want to share whatever feelings enthralled her gem.

"I... I know it's hard to talk about these feelings, but you're not alone anymore. You can tell me."

Haltingly, her breathing began to quicken, a sign that panic and fear was gripping her neck and rattling her breath.

"I want to be there for you so please, talk to me." Her sister said assuringly.

As her spiky pigtails flopped down, unlocking a sigh of exhaustion, Spinny looked to the crumbling and dirty fountain with wide, puddled eyes. It took up all of her strength to open her mouth as if a million cogs began to turn inside her.

With her lip trembling, she finally forced out her words with a shaky voice that was tainted in dejection, "It doesn't feel like I left."

This time, it was Spinsy's turn to hike a brow. But despite her confusion, she remained silent and allowed Spinny to share her worries.

"No matter where I go or where I'm at, it always feels like a part of me is still intact with this place. For six thousand years, I never got used to the silence... I never got used to being so lonely, but now, ever since I've tried fitting in, there are these horrible thoughts that I can't control. Voices telling me I'm worthless, that I'm not good enough. Sometimes, it's my voice and that's when it becomes terrifying."

Pausing herself on and off, eyes welling with tears and stammering interfering with her speech. Brick by brick, the gem was falling apart, unable to contain her grief as her lips began to quiver while her breath trembled.

"I can't get it to stop!"

Watching her sister break down into tears pierced her with sympathy and heartache, Spinsy's face lifted with sorrow. Carrying her voice with a gentle tone, she brought up her gloved hands to ease her other half, murmuring, "Hey, hey, Spinny... It's okay. It's okay."

"No, it's not!" Spinny snapped, her glare forming like daggers and frustration taking control over her shouting. "It's anything but okay!"

Alarmed by her erratic change in emotion, dismay rattling her, Spinsy winced from her sister and proceeded to give her space. However, she watched as her heated glare burnt down into a look of regret and shame.

Sniffling, letting the pear-shaped tears slide down her cheeks, Spinny fought back the pain and whimpered, "I tried to kill Steven, I tried to destroy all life on Earth, I wanted to hurt you, to make you share my pain, hoping you'd suffer like I did and now I'm invited to a party where I have to dance and cheer with the people I nearly killed. It feels like everyone's wearing a mask, like they're trying to force a smile around me as if I did nothing wrong. I should just stay here, this is where they'd want me."

"They're not like that, I assure you," Spinsy assured. "The people of Beach City, they... They're special to us. They've learnt a lot from us and we've learnt a lot from them. They're kind and accepting."

"So they're all like Steven?" Spinny responded with a grumble, rolling her eyes. "Do you wanna know why he infuriates me so much? Why I find it so difficult to talk to him?

As much as she tried to hold it in, the pain in her voice seeped through as she stared back at her other half, "Pink... Whenever I'm near him, I can't get over how much I miss her."

Fighting back the grief that caged her, the hurt gem carried on, regaining her breath with a shudder, "But then I get to remember how she avoided me. How she hated me... How she abandoned me... and then I get to feel the resentment for her. All. Over. Again."

"For six thousand years, I didn't move!" She began to weep, clenching her teeth in aggravation. "I didn't do anything because I trusted her! Because I thought she'd actually come back for me!"

"I just wish I could have found out what was wrong with me sooner before she threw me away. What I could have done better. What I could have done to be more like you," Spinny whispered to herself, wrapping her arms around her knees and sinking back down into a pit of depression.

Sadness and shock played around with Spinsy's feelings while her eyes shifted downwards for a moment, becoming glazed with a crystal layer of tears. Hearing out all of her sister's troubles upset her deeply, but this is just what she needed to help. To talk.

"No, no, Spinny, there's nothing wrong with you, there was never anything wrong with you to begin with." She cooed.

"But Pink-"

"Look," Spinsy interjected, gently reaching for her sister's hand.

Confused, feeling the warmth of her other half's touch, she watched as Spinsy's gloves wrapped around her own, lightly holding them. Slowly, she watched as her sister began to ascend from the ground and without realising it, she had joined in on the motion. Now on her feet, Spinny didn't squirm or struggle, she allowed her twin to gently hold her hands.

"Pink may have been our Diamond, but that doesn't mean she knew everything, nor did she know what was best. She was foolish to leave you here and I'm no better for blindly following her," Spinsy said, averting her gaze in shame and guilt.

"I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye, I thought that saying nothing would have made it easier for you, but it was wrong and selfish of me to make that call."

It didn't take long for Spinsy to work up the courage to face her again, it sparked in her like a lighter as she continued, "If it's anything, Pink was the one that needed changing, not you. If she couldn't appreciate you for who were then or who you are now, then that was her problem. Not yours."

"Deep down, I know you're gonna do great in Beach City. There are so many people just waiting to be friends with you, even if they don't know it! You're destined for greatness and best of all, I'm gonna be there, by your side! Catching every bit of the joy you'll be spreading!" The smaller gem told, bubbling with delight as she slowly released her grip from Spinny.

Upon releasing her sister hands' Spinsy stared at her with confidence and glee lifting a smile.

Trembling, Spinny's lips began to curl upwards, although, her eyes gleamed with tears. Nochanataly, she took a step forward and wrapped her arms her other half, bringing her into a hug. Spinsy, of course, was caught by surprise, feeling her sister's face plant into her shoulder, softly crying into her.

Growing a small smile, gently dropping her eyes shut, Spinsy returned the embrace and allowed her voice to retreat to its light, airy tone, "Shh... It's okay," She whispered as if she was a mother trying to ease her child. "No one ever said fitting in would be easy, but you've made a perfect start. With me, with Steven, with the Crystal Gems. We're your family now and we always will be. We're never going to leave you, no matter what."

In tears of delight, working up a smile, Spinny unlocked her arms for her sister and stepped back, responding with a sniffle, "I believe you, you know why?"

"Why?" Spinsy tilted her head with the pair of heart-shaped buns styled on her hair following in sync.

"Because... The moment I started telling you how I feel... It's been quiet... No horrible thoughts, no voices. I feel like... Me again."

"See! Things are startin' to look better already!" She cheered. "I know it wasn't easy, but... Thanks for talking to me."

"Thanks for listening," Spinny responded shyly.

Rubbing the back of her head and constructing a smirk, Spinsy rolled her eyes and spoke in a tune, "You know, I'm sure the party still happening back on Earth. Do you wanna join in? I mean, that's if you want to, of course. We can do something else if you'd like-"

Pinching up her smile, Spinny answered, "I think I'd like to join in on that dance. Whadda ya say?"

For a moment, stunned with joy, the smaller gem nodded her head in excitement, "You betcha!" She grinned, but quickly exclaiming, "Oh! Before we go, I need to give you this."

Unexpectedly, Spinny watched as her sister stretched her arms to her neck, gently fastening something around her. Hiking a brow and adjusting her head upwards, the gem's magenta eyes sprung downwards the moment Spinsy's arms retracted back to her side.

Around her neck, she could make out the big red bow tie she had discarded. Elation taking control of her expression, Spinny lightly pressed her hands against the bow tie and regained her smile.

"Thank you."

...

In the crystal-domed conservatory, the cylindrical beam of bright light raced down from the depths of space, producing its angelic tune as the twins teleported back onto the warp pad. Spinsy and Spinny stood next to each other, side by side as if they were looking into a mirror, sharing a smile as they could hear distant music, laughter, cheering and it all felt different to Spinny. She didn't feel frightened by it, it didn't alarm her or anything of the sort. In fact, she shared the same delight her sister did.

"Hey!" A voice called from the entrance of the conservatory.

Whipping their heads to the door, the twins watched as Steven raced towards them, "There you two are! Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine now, Steven," Spinsy eased with the swipe of her hand.

Pushing out a sigh of relief, the hybrid gem rubbed his arm and spoke, "Great! Uh, hey... Spinny. Look, sorry if I pressured you into coming here tonight, I just thought-"

"Ah, you've got nothing to apologise for, Universe," Spinny interjected with the sway of her hand. "Let's just have fun tonight, like friends."

Blinking in response, Steven found himself in awe, he couldn't recall a moment where Spinsy's twin had spoken to him with such ease and confidence. Nevertheless, he chuckled, "Yeah, sounds great. You know, that dance contest is still going on, you two still up for it?"

As Spinsy whirled her head to her sister, she waited for her to answer.

No longer frightened, feeling nothing but serenity fill her system, she spoke softly and answered, "I think I'd like that."

[hollenius]

Talking Heads: Are These Guys Trying To Give Rock A Bad Name?

Having fun trawling the internet for more old interviews and things with different bands & musicians. Here’s a Talking Heads one from 1977.

Talking Heads: Are These Guys Trying To Give Rock A Bad Name?

Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 25 June 1977

TALKING HEADS: it's a term they use up in the high-rise skyscrapers that house all the cogs in the corporate machinery cranking out network television for the American people.

The big-wigs in the boardroom – the William Holdens and Robert Duvalls of Network land – have a name for the lowest common-denominator programme non-personalities – the newscaster, weather-reporters, and other old warhorses who sit head and shoulders directly on camera mouthing out their obligatory tasks. These are the "talking heads" of American TV land; utterly boring, but necessary.

Talking heads with greying hair, dabs of make-up and dandruff removed from the shoulders of their suit-jackets, they sit austerely informing the public of the nation's daily occurences – the rapes and murders, the military campaigns abroad, the latest government manouevres. No opinions, no subjective slant to their reports – they simply precis it down, feed it out to those millions of tubes and when it's over they go away, back to the bar or to the suburban home, wife and kids.

David Byrne, guitarist and singer for the Talking Heads, an American rock group, has a song that he wrote and performs entitled 'Don't Worry About The Government'. It usually gets played early on in the set, with no prefacing explanation – just Byrne's reedy high-pitched voice almost stammering "This next song is called..."

And every time he introduced it to an audience in England, certain factions would snigger or boo or howl derisively because Talking Heads after all are a NEW WAVE group and if you are a New Wave group you must write direct anti-status quo, sloganeering songs of dissent. Just like The Clash or Chelsea or...

But Byrne's song isn't like that at all.

It's about an ordinary man who owns an apartment in some American suburb and who lives a quiet, fairly inconsequential existence, going to work in the morning and returning in the evening, who gains pleasure from life simply through drinking wine with friends or reading a book. There is no hint of moral castigation, no hint of cynicism, Byrne just places himself in his character's psyche and explains himself through his song.

It's a rare talent this, something much closer to the art of the very best short-story writers, a talent that only Ray Davies and Randy Newman before him, out of all the thousands of post-war song-writers, have bothered to identify with and explore perceptively.

"I just thought," said Byrne, "that lyrics could be used to strip down conversations, just normal day-to-day converstions and dialogues, and strip away all the phoney embellishments and posturing right down to essentials so that they would actually say something directly, without having to throw in all the 'Oh yeah, baby' or 'Hey, bitch I'm coming to get ya right now' or...

"Pa-a-arty," chips in Jerry Harrison, the Talking Heads' keyboard player.

Everybody laughs.

NOT AN easy band to write about, these Talking Heads. They mystify arid confuse simply because they so patently lack any dint of the arch brand of mystique that forms a patented cloak for the rock star enigma. Four intelligent, straightforward individuals, the very straightforward nature of their music and their image is somehow unique to the genre they have chosen to work within.

Not that the press haven't attempted time and time again to write about them, almost always in flattering terms.

They emerged as a live attraction in the hot summer of 1975 when Manhattan's CBGB's had suddenly been designated the centre-point of all new-wave rock activity, and were immediately slotted in with the likes of Television, Patti Smith, The Ramones, and Heartbreakers as the pace-setters right there at the vanguard of this brave new scene. Convenient tags like 'punk' and 'art-rock' found themselves strange bed-fellows in numerous articles consummated by the inevitable bandying of the term 'minimalism'.

New York rock critics, having witnessed the ugly death of the New York Dolls brand of gashed-up rock, latched on fast to this new austerely dressed-down form of the music, and the Talking Heads, suddenly caught in the swell, found themselves holding down the cover of the prestigious Village Voice with a photograph taken at only their third gig. Inside was a rave-review of said show with an extensive article.

Since then, coverage has been as extensive as it has been perplexingly unforthcoming in regard to mere bottom line info on what the band were actually all about.

What was disclosed was that the band was a trio then, led by the angular, neurotic-looking Byrne who carried all guitar, vocal and composing chores, while the bass-player was a slight blonde-haired girl called Tina Weymouth whose basic feminist features were undermined by a slightly asexual manner. Drummer Chris Frantz was baby-faced and pleasantly effeminate.

Their music, though, seemed incapable of being pigeon-holed and continually presented reviewers with a daunting problem.

Having witnessed the band on four separate occasions over this last highly successful European tour, it became at once apparent that the care of Talking Heads' repertoire – principally Byrne's songs – is not something that casual acquaintance can unveil. At first, they intrigue as much as they bemuse, but the deeper you dig the more you uncover. Like Television, Talking Heads must be divorced from pigeon-holed surroundings because there is nothing currently existing in the rock context that they can be favourably compared to.

Byrne's melodies are so insidious that they often totally by-pass the conventional quarters that rock music usually attempts to stimulate, instead going deeper, often lodging themselves in your subconscious. One song, after I'd witnessed the band only once at the Rock Garden, somehow kept manifesting itself in my dreams – this strange, utterly disarming descending chord motif would haunt me until I'd wake up desperately trying to recall it. It was only later that I even got to learn the song's title, 'The Book I Read'.

THIS IS how the band's music works – in a way that transcends conventional avenues of 'rock criticism' where parallels to established musical forms become redundant and trite. When one has finally achieved some intimacy and contact with the repertoire, the music alone is overwhelming at times. One song – Byrne's 'I'm Not In Love' – twists and turns, its twined guitar rhythms chattering and spitting like snap-dragons with sudden unsettling changes, its chorus brash and pointedly announced – before it charges off, climaxing in a devastating one chord richochet of sound. Each song takes on a personality of its own as one becomes more and more acquainted – the jagged paranoid thrashings of 'What Is It?' full of technical malevolence, the richly textured abrasive changes of 'No Compassion', that utterly disarming motif to 'The Book I Read'.

Similarly the lyrics make themselves apparent in this same insidious fashion, via sudden dazzling couplets or single lines that grab you as Byrne's introvert-gone-psychotic delivery tortuously builds up and up, eyes reeling like wild horses in a flood, his pitching often totally awry but his sheer intensity galvanising because this man is truly grabbing hold of his songs, each and every utterance, like a drowning man grabbing straws.

Byrne's performance is, in fact, full of the tortured passion and gut-commitment that many of us were hoping for and found so disappointingly lacking in Tom Verlaine's recent shows in Britain. Like Verlaine, Byrne is totally the master of his chosen medium, yet there is an edge to Byrne that is so much more human.

Where Verlaine is oh-so calculatingly distant, Byrne's thrashing desperate need to communicate his songs grants his music a whole other dimension of sheer humanity and warmth a million light years removed from the cold arch-romanticism of Television's guiding light.

OFF-STAGE, sitting with his cohorts in Talking Heads, Byrne exudes all the cooped-up mannerisms of a caged bird. He seems to be suffering from some arch nervous defect that would need a constant ingestion of valium to assuage. Twitching almost, he sits hunched up in a chair, ungainly like a parody of look-alike Tony Perkins. When he talks, his voice is weak and reedy and often his attempts to explain certain facets of his songs – particularly his lyrics – lead him into weird tangential awkward ramblings that cause other members of the band, Tina Weymouth in particular, to open displays of ridicule which make him even more edgy. He looks embarrassed and bows his head slightly.

Observing him, I can't help feeling concerned for his obvious discomfort, as if any form of socializing causes the man to undergo real psychic pain. He later admits to the gross discomfort of what is really just a fairly casual conversation, and claims that performing affords him infinite more relaxation.

"I can express parts of my personality on stage that I would never dare do in any other context."

Byrne's past remains obscured by the haziness of his own recollections. He talks about working in art galleries in the past, though he didn't in fact paint, while he claims his previous vocation while in college was to write up detailed questionnaires, until song-writing became an infinitely more agreeable pastime.

In contrast, the other three members of Talking Heads carry themselves in this social set-up with an ease and general open-ness.

Tina Weymouth appears fairly disinterested at first, more concerned with scanning the pages of the latest Oui, but is suddenly forthcoming when a question is either directed her way or else grabs her attention. Chris Frantz seems perfectly in sync with the whole interview routine, lavishing over most of his answers with great and entertainingly 'camp' detail.

And then there is Jerry Harrison, the newest member in the group, a veteran of only six months or less, but who has already obviously orientated himself into the consortium with great alacrity. Harrison is the most locquacious of the band and, with Frantz, the most forthcoming. His history as a musician is already full of worthy fodder for discourse, since he started his career as an integral founding force with Jonathon Richman in the Modern Lovers, about whom his reminiscences are nothing if not extremely witty.

"Well, you probably know that we started the Modern Lovers as a real cause – y'know, we were anti-drugs for a start, due to the fact that at that time in the States all the kids were just oohing themselves on quaaludes. So we'd go onstage and start our sets with this number called 'I'm Straight' which would immediately cause all the audience to start throwing things – oh, rotten fruit, bottles, cans, anything – at us."

The Lovers' history was short due firstly to their corporate snooty attitude to playing clubs of the ilk of Max's Kansas City – "We didn't want to be associated with the N.Y. Dolls or this or that...so we never played anywhere" – plus the traumas that followed the band being signed by John Cale to Warner Bros, who after financing an album (produced by Cale – it was finally released last year by Beserkley) decided to drop the band, leaving them penniless in Los Angeles.

Even when the album was being made, Harrison claims there were problems.

"Well this was around the time when Jonathan was starting to want to write and sing only happy songs (laughs). So there'd be continual arguments between Cale and him over how we should sing certain numbers. Cale would be saying 'Now, Jonathon, I want you to sing this in a mean way. And Jonathon would just look at him, y'know – 'Mean? I won't sing mean! I don't feel mean!"

"And he (Richman) kept going through changes of direction. Like one time he'd be totally into the Velvet Underground and early Stooges, and then he was suddenly enamoured with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and he'd want to alter his whole style. Also he's a total astrology freak. You know that song, 'Astral Plane'? Well he was always having these visions – or so he said – and writing songs about them. Things like....oh God (he starts laughing again) 'I saw you by, the waterway, the waterway, the waterway' – just on and on. We'd have to tell him to forget it."

After the Modern Lovers broke up, Richman briefly went onstage backed only by a bunch of kids beating rolled-up newspapers in time to his songs, before disappearing altogether for a long spell to (according to John Cale) lock himself in his bedroom.

When Harrison is asked whether he feels more comfortable being in Talking Heads than Richman's motley crew he simply sighs, "Infinitely."

MUCH OF the conversation is taken up with the subject of the British New Wave and how the remarkably civilised T. Heads have found themselves having to cope with the more agressive elements at their concerts, particularly as they've been supporting the head-banger's friend, The Ramones.

Seems the atmosphere has never actually soured and that circumstances have been pretty agreeable all the way along.

From the other new wave bands of this country, T. Heads claim not to have incurred any particular animosity.

"Only Rat Scabies has caused a scene," claims Weymouth. "He appeared backstage at the Greyhound in Croydon and tried to get one of us to fight him. When we showed ourselves to be totally disinterested in that course of action, he contented himself with spitting on the floor and walking out. I felt rather sorry for him."

Meanwhile back in New York, the band have yet to break out of the New York club circuit set-up they've been working in for at least the last two years.

A record deal with Sire (whose head, Seymour Stein, is the only executive to have fully committed himself to the New Wave, having also inked The Ramones, Richard Hell, and now, apparently, The Dead Boys, – a Cleveland pastiche of England's punk excesses) has produced the single 'Love Goes To Building On Fire', an addictive though comparatively slight song from the band's repertoire.

A Talking Heads album however is scheduled for September release produced by Tony Bongiovi and with five backing tracks already in the can. Ten tracks are scheduled – all Byrne originals including 'Pyschokiller', 'The Book I Read', 'No Compassion', 'Happy Day', and 'I'm Not In Love', the only unfortunate matter being the probable exclusion of the band's brilliantly terse rendering of Al Green's 'Take Me To The River'.

The band are still a guaranteed sell-out at C.B.G.B.'s on any given night, a not inconsiderable feat as many other similarly prestigious local bands are unable apparently to do the same – and on their own minor league waterfront they've gauged a strong cult audience.

But then there is something extremely addictive about this band's music – potent enough to make Byrne an object of paranoid fear in the eyes of Tom Verlaine (who according to Weymouth is very nervous of Byrne's status on the New York scene – as perverted a compliment as anything that can be divined from Verlaine's psyche one supposes). Meanwhile Byrne is also considered the most singularly brilliant new songwriter currently in the States by John Cale, and even Lou Reed has lent a sizeable quota of suspiciously paternal advice.

Weymouth: "Yeah, I'd say he was actually genuinely trying to help us. I wouldn't say he was trying to rip us off, for example."

Byrne: "That's not true."

Weymouth: "How can you say that, David? I mean..."

Byrne: "Because he told me he ripped some of my ideas off. Not that I'm angry or anything."

How did the...uh gentleman go about this paternal business then?

"God...he'd invite us round to his apartment and insult us for a solid hour, particularly me. He'd always insult the clothes I was wearing, or my shoes. Then after that, he'd start to be more reasonable and actually have an agreeable conversation with us."

Byrne goes silent for a minute and then, for the first time, he seems calm and relaxed.

"Do you want to know...I'll tell you how much we've come on in the last two years, the real symbol of progress in Talking Heads, Now I can go round to Lou Reed's apartment and I can be rude to him!"