#i think v1 would like shadow

[teamaerialcombo]

sketches i did on a magma w/ my buddy o' pal @kojitheopossum :3c

[aspoonofsugar]

Any thoughts on what Oscar’s semblance will end up being? Since Oscar’s magic has come from Ozma and is more in line with “destruction” as a contrast to Ruby’s eyes which are tied to “creation”, I’ve often thought that it would make sense for Oscar’s semblance, as a means of self-affirmation to be something that also represents creation/preservation, which would make him more like Ruby and also find his own sense of who he is as a person. After all, if Oscar/Ozma are supposed to achieve a balance by the end then he should possess elements of both, no?

That said, the most common headcanon/theory I see for Oscar’s semblance has been for him to create barriers for defense… but not only can he already do that with Ozpin’s magic, I feel as though Jaune is actually the character who is more set up to have a defensive evolution for his semblance. There was the flash of light in V1 and his “it’s like a forcefield!” line, Vine’s comment about extending his aura, the shield grenades he used in V8, and just his general tendency to leap in front of people using his shield or body to protect people.

So, to me, this would be a bit of an odd choice for Oscar’s semblance and just make the existing overlap between Jaune and Oscar’s progression as characters more confused. Do you think I have the right idea with the theming of Oscar’s semblance? Or do you think it’ll come from a different place altogether?

Hi!

It is very difficult to say, cause there could really be many things that fit Oscar.

I agree about both Ruby and Oscar ending up having elements of both creation and destruction, as they are two philosophical children.

When it comes to Oscar's semblance, I think it will be worth the wait, since:

It will appear toward the end and there won't be time to slowly develop it, like Blake, Weiss or Ruby's

Ruby kind of told us so tbh, as she said when Oscar gets a semblance "everyone will be jealous" ;)

I think most semblances tie with the characters' allusions too:

Ruby is super fast cause she is Little Red Riding Hood, so she rides

Weiss's glyphs allude to the Snow Queen fairy tail, but progressively become more Snowhite-like (her summons are characters in Snow-White)

Blake's shadow is symbolic of the beast, as in jungian terms the shadow is also called inner beast

Yang's power has her become too hot, with her hair catching fire, like Goldilock

Jaune gives his aura (his spirit) to others to heal them (he makes miracles), which ties with his Jeanne d'Arc allusion (I agree with the fact he will become a barrier warrior to an extent btw)

And so on...

So, tbh the majority of ideas for Oscar's semblance seem to tie into this theme:

Some theory think his power will tie with time, as time is a recurring motif for him and Ozpin

Other theories (I think this one is @misstrashchan ) instead think he will get the ability to make an astral projection of himself, in a tie in to the Little Prince (the little prince dies, so he leaves his body behind). This could also be used to separate his own soul from Ozpin's

These are my two preferred theories, but again it is impossible to say for sure. I don't think there is much foreshadowing as to what Oscar's semblance will be, differently from Jaune's.

Thank you for the ask!

[cherubchoirs]

How many fallen angels do you think there are in hell? there must be a few if Mike was able to observe the process enough to try it himself. Are they all secured in Treachery or have they been hiding from machines and angels in the other layers?

Would they welcome Gabe to the club?

oooooh yes the other fallen angels!!! in the inferno, the fallen angels are met only once the poets arrive at the gates of dis - that is, from heresy downward - so i think of them being largely concentrated in those circles (despite their sins coming from any of the layers). there are rare fallen angels that exist outside of dis and make it to the upper layers, particularly now with the angelic presence in hell much lower, but v1 never encountered them because of this scarcity. likewise, while heresy is meant to have its gatekeepers, gabrel had likely scattered any fallen angels that surrounded the cathedral before v1's arrival as the last thing they would want to deal with is a pissed off archangel lol so i have any fallen angels (after lucifer's fall) living in violence and the layers past it, though there aren't too terribly many compared to the other denizens. i actually have them very secretive by nature, ashamed in the way gabriel initially was and, like the sinners of the lower layers in the inferno, not wanting themselves known to outsiders while they can be brutal to the sinners living with them. gabriel would absolutely make them curious though - he is incredibly powerful and high-ranking amongst the choirs, but most of all he was an archangel. someone like that hasn't fallen since lucifer, so i think they would spy on him from shadows since they still don't wish to be seen by v1 (considered an outsider despite being inhuman)

gabriel really doesn't know how to feel about them, as so many of them have been warped by the cruelty of hell and have lost the sense of who they once were. it's a bit haunting really, catching glimpses of them and half-recognizing a face he hasn't seen in eons. they're all still here, all the angels that were lost that gabriel helped to expel - he expected hostility actually, but very few come out to see him. i do like the idea that he eventually speaks with some that he once had fondness for (famously, there is a watcher that was close with uriel), though they are not the angels he once knew. importantly, though, gabriel doesn't hold this against them and instead finds his anger turned on god, for allowing a place like this to exist that his children, angel or human, were cast into to be forever forgotten as they twist and rot. because he sees sparks of who they were, especially when they hear his voice, but how could they not become brutish shells of their former selves in a place like this? these are angels hollowed out, burned of everything they once were and left still alive as ashes. they are envious of gabriel, he hears it in their coarse voices, yet he wonders if he might still end up like them one day.

but i think there is a fallen angel he once knew that tells him he should go to his circle, go all the way down to the wastes of cocytus. go see him. gabriel has avoided the lucifer issue intensely, keeping away of the depths of treachery because he is terrified of what he will find, to see how god ruined him and what destroyed michael from the inside out. and that beside, what could his presence serve lucifer? but the other angel is right. he should know. so my idea for lucifer is that all the other angels that fell with him are sort of...a part of him at this point. they have no higher thought or functioning, instead only able to feel pain, while lucifer has been left mentally intact but frozen. he is a mass of angels all fused with him and encased in ice, crying out in their agony but unable to produce anything else. lucifer still thinks, still lives as himself, but while their torment is individual, he feels each and every one of them on top of his own. and he is desperately alone despite the thousands that make up his massive form (sort of in the shape of a dragon's body, but it's impossible to tell from how mutilated it is as well as how it seems to disappear into the ice). he does not speak, he does not acknowledge even gabriel's presence, though gabriel can't seem to get too close without the hulking mass lashing out at him in what seems to be pure instinct. all they do is cry, thousands of voices calling out in their suffering as they have for the countless millennia they've spent like this. but gabriel doesn't want to get close, he doesn't want to see any more even if he knows he'll never stop hearing them now and weak appeals are drowned out entirely before he has to flee. this is what god does. this was his justice against those who only questioned (gabriel has read the testaments now, they were fed lies about lucifer) and i think this just. genuinely breaks something in gabriel.

[bananindu]

Silly headcanons I have of some MMV2 characters:

Costume:

+60_ he/him_ Aroace

-Devil Mario is his best friend

- He's a friend of Stanley, that's what he thought, he doesn't really know.

- The poor guy gets heat stroke every 5 seconds [Take off your suit]

- He likes to hide in the shadows to scare people.

- On their outings with Devil they usually see who kills the most [it's a silly little game for them]

- He can't stand children [But for some strange reason he is left as a babysitter for Lucas, Turmoil and Super Bad Mario]

- About the above, he is a babysitter because MX and horror force him to

- HATES Turmoil, GB and MX

- El Papu madness 🤑🔪

- He loves to scare Lucas, he would never really do anything to him, he doesn't want any problems with MX

- POR QUÉ LA V1 DE THE END ES TAN EPICA???? 🙏

- "..."

Devil Mario:

+30_ he/him_ bisexual/demisexual

- Costume is his best friend

-Well he doesn't care about relationships at all, he's too dedicated to his job of finding superstars.

-He was in a relationship with Coronation Peach by mistake

Here's the quick story: One day he was in a bar extremely drunk, Coronation came on, she asked him to be her boyfriend and he accepted even though he couldn't even see, he left her after 4 days

- Hate anyone? Hate everyone

- He is a little bothered by the fact that Costume is much older than him.

- If Costume can't stand children, he HATES them

- Milanese Yum yum

- You'll never guess how he became friends with Costume, he literally just came to him one day and told him to be friends. More specifically "Pana 🤝"

- Fan #1 of blood

- He likes to dress up as a "devil"

- Does it have horns and a tail? Yes, where? Don't ask him if he wants to stay alive ☠️

- He thinks he could win a fight against Horror Mario

- "DAMN IT COSTUME COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING!!!!????"

- Yo soy yo

Lucas:

4_ he/him_

- I like the idea of Lucas being a 4 year old baby.

- He is afraid of Costume

- He thinks MX is his dad

- He likes MX to tell him a story before bedtime

- One time he, Turmoil and Super Bad Mario tied up Costume and started setting it on fire [It was very funny]

- Puppies!!!!

- "MX :D"

- Lucas chiquito

🐛👍

[bestworstcase]

So! That new rwby beyond episode huh?

I can't do intros for shit. Do you think Ozcar's answer to Jaune's question of "Do you think we're gonna make it?" was, in part, them dodging the question? Not revealing how unsure they feel and instead choosing to comfort Jaune with "Around those campfires, did it really matter?" Do you think of that answer as a cop-out, or as a legitimate answer? Both perhaps?

oh oz absolutely thinks they’re not gonna make it. i am so sure about that.

bc the thing is, ozpin thought he’d been at war with salem for centuries, he thought he’d managed to keep her out and whittle away her influence down to almost nothing. right. his whole reason for handling the situation the way he did in v1-3 is he believed that salem wouldn’t leave the shadows, wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her secrecy. the thing about his paranoia in seeing salem’s hand behind every grimm attack and every period of unrest or war is he had no idea what salem was capable of or how far she would go, but he believed that he did.

within the space of, like, maybe a year and a half, salem has. knocked down beacon academy, forced haven academy to close by assassinating most of its faculty, laid siege to atlas with a fleet of millions of grimm and directly caused atlas to fall, and within a few weeks of that razed vale to the ground. three of his four academies are either destroyed or defunct; two whole countries are just. Gone. it’s been a year and a half!

he. underestimated. really really badly, he underestimated salem and for him this past year has been a harrowing journey of discovering exactly how badly he underestimated her. a year and a half and they’ve gone from “unprecedented era of peaceful prosperity” to desperate last stand. oz hasn’t been in such dire straits since the final battle of the great war when he resorted to using two relics to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and now one of those is within salem’s reach, and if they take the sword out of its vault that’s just one step closer to salem getting her hands on it.

like, oscar annihilated her millions of grimm in atlas and a few weeks later she turned around and flattened vale.

this is not a fight they can win. and i think oz is painfully aware of that. (the whole point is that the only way out is through negotiation. they have to stop fighting her and start talking to her.)

but i also think he meant “around that campfire, did it matter?” very genuinely because he found his hope again when he returned in atlas, and the situation being hopeless has no bearing on how he chooses to look at it or how he chooses to act. so things are very very bad but oz is, emotionally, in a much better place now than he was at the beginning of the story when things appeared to be okay. it’s the next step from “fear isn’t worthy of our concern”

[campbell-rose]

RWBY Rework Blake Belladonna

Black the beast who descends from shadow is supposedly both the Beauty and the Beast but I feel like other than being a cat girl it never comes through in her design. In her more recent appearances, she’s strayed from being black and has taken over Weiss’s spot as white, which is very annoying. So I went back to the source and looked at some of her concept art for inspiration. I found myself adoring her mismatched eyes, so I stole that for my design. I also liked the cutesy dress she was in, though I do like the slimmed down final of her v1 look. 

I think a big issue with her design is that Menagerie has no defined aesthetic. Blake’s kind of like a ninja, but has this gothic lolita type thing going on too, so I decided to design Blake and then design Menagerie around that – which turned Menagerie into a fairy tale island full of magical human/animal hybrids that has different areas based on specific animals – which I’ll expand on later. Blake took on a frillier look, but I made sure she didn’t step on Weiss’s toes because in this rewrite I’m bringing the fact that Blake is a princess into this, which is another play in my decision to make her and Weiss partners. Blake is a princess in hiding, the daughter if the dead king of the Eastern region of Menagerie after an attack from the White Fang (which have been overhauled). So when she returns to Menagerie she’s got nowhere to turn to and is instead trying to regain control of her house that was stolen from her. 

I’ve played up the beast aspect of her, making her a sort of chimera faunus. (in this rewrite, Faunus can have a variety of traits and actually look part animal) While this would be harder to hide, I’ve come up with ways she did it – Her ears/the bow, her horns/her hair + filing them down (painful but effective), the tail/tucked very uncomfortably in her tight clothes. Essentially, she was hurting herself to try and hide her faunus traits, something that will play into her character – she is willing to suffer just to avoid conflict. Also i took away her human ears i hate that design choice.

Her outfit is modeled after a tuxedo cat and this adorable fit I saw on Pinterest once. I’ve also taken to Twiins iink’s idea and taken away long sleeves, which gave room for some cute gloves. Her hair is long again because that mop cut is grotesque in both her concept art and in the show. I gave her a braid though, simply because I want a lot of flowing parts on this with her tail and hair and ribbons and it looked super cute on her amity arena summer skin. 

i think it might just be a little too similar to her og design, so I'll tweak it a little more after i finish Weiss and Ruby, in a whole team spread with their final designs

Also Adam is the rose with hints of the fairy and Salem is the fairy (in this Salem takes the place of a lot of Fairies and Evil Witches)

[generic-sonic-fan]

in one of your fics, i think it was the funeral talk one with team dark? omega stated that he was going to go play "VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES" did he really play violent video games? if so what kind? if not violent video games, question still stands, what kind?

Oh he absolutely plays violent video games! They're one of the ways he satisfies his urge for destruction when there's no Badniks to destroy. First-Person Shooters are his all-time favorite!

Prepare for a long and rambly post beneath the cut:

He's a sucker for any DOOM game (except for DOOM 3, which is a little too stealth-based for his tastes) and his particular favorite is DOOM 2016! He loves the high-intensity action, he loves the more open-ended approach he can take to each arena, and he loves the gore!!! He also really enjoys how the only meatbag you're forced to interact with in the game is the insane antagonist who you're trying to kill.

(He knows that Doomguy is a meatbag, but he's deemed Doomguy to be in the special category of meatbag that Shadow and Rouge are also in. AKA Omega would be besties with Doomguy in an instant if Doomguy were real.)

Oh, and he also has the original DOOM 1993 downloaded directly on his own hard drive, so that way if he's ever caught having to wait he has something to do. He's gotten to the point where he's unintentionally speedrunning the game because of how many times he's played through it.

Another one of his favorite games is Ultrakill, duh. The movement was a little difficult for him to get the hang of- DOOM's slower run-and-gun style is more similar to his combat IRL and therefore more intuitive to him -but he's mastered it by now. He likes it for a lot of the same reasons that he likes DOOM- guns, gore, and no meatbags to be found. V1 is his personal idol honestly. He doesn't really care for the lore though, which is a shame.

Other games he's played are Halo and Gears of War:

Halo was like a 6/10 for him. It's a tad too slow for him. He actually skips all the cutscenes, which is hilarious. Ironically his favorite game of the series is Halo 5 because that game sped up the movement a little bit, made some of the enemies robots (yayyy destroying robots! his favorite hobby!), and allowed Cortana to go apeshit, which he was rooting for since day 1.

He considers Gears of War to be a puzzle game. (Which is. . . really weird if you know anything about this game.) You see, Gears of War is even slower than Halo, and it's based around a punishing cover system. You have to know when the best moments are to leave cover and shoot or advance forward. Omega plays it when he's in the rare mood for something more cerebral than "Enemies in front of me, must shoot them". He also skips all the cutscenes in this one because he finds all the human characters annoying. If he could turn off the squad member NPCs he would. He too participates in the time-honored Gears of War tradition of shooting Dom on accident because he looks just like a fucking enemy.

Some other games that he's tried but didn't like:

Titanfall 2. The gunplay was fun, but he fucking hated the story and the unskippable cutscenes. He hates BT and Jack Cooper with a passion- they're way too sentimental and whiny for him.

The Call of Duty series is. . . eh? He usually will play them when they come out, but it's a very rare one that he'll actually like. There's usually too many humans and the action setpieces are too tame for his tastes.

He has a love-hate relationship with the original Borderlands. The combat is a blast but the RNG weapons and the quest-taking format was never his favorite. He prefers more linear campaigns without the implication that the protagonist he's playing as is doing any kind of service for the local meatbag population.

And don't even talk to him about Borderlands 2+3. The characters are just too annoying for him.

Anyways, to finish off this long ramble of a post, let me talk about some other genres of games that he could at least sort-of like:

He can't stand normal puzzle games, but he watched a let's play of Portal 1+2 and immediately fell in love with GLaDOS.

Strategy games are off the table but he could be persuaded by a tower defense game. I think he'd like Defense Grid: Awakening if he ever had the patience to try it.

Other games where you cause wanton destruction could catch his interest, such as Kill It With Fire! (A game where you kill spiders. With machines guns and flamethrowers. Lots of fun.)

Minecraft, but only if he's playing on his friends' server, and only if he gets a diamond sword and TNT. He's the one blowing up villages because he thinks it's funny. He might have more fun on a modern patch with the new combat-focused trial chambers.

Among Us, with the friend group, because of course. He's a total troll even when he's not imposter because he thinks it's funny.

These are my headcanons for him! If you have any other games you think he'd like, you should add them onto this post :)

[somewhatidealname]

Ironically, I think those two (V1 and Springtrap) would end up being friends, like... One wants blood, the other wants to kill too...

i feel like springtrap shares more similarities with Something Wicked. spooky scary murderous shadow dwellers who you try to keep at bay. if v1 has the guts to go back into the spooky tunnel then it could have a new hide and seek buddy

[kitkatopinions]

It's the last day of Nitpick November and I wanna talk about the 'canon compliant' additional content for RWBY.

First of all, it's incredibly annoying to hear that it's 'canon compliant' that Team RWBY worked with fucking Batman in another dimension and that's never once come up somehow in the main series, and it's impossible to hear 'Amity Arena is a game that exists in Remnant-' Like WHAT?!

But on top of that, I think media in general but RWBY especially would benefit from non-canon alternate universe content that experiments with fun concepts without having to worry about canon.

"This series of short animated episodes focuses on every day events and conflicts in a world where the war never happens." That would be great.

"In this manga, we see what would happen if the teams we all know and love never got together. Yang is partnered with Pyrrha, Ruby got saddled with Cardin, Jaune is partners with Blake, Nora is partners with Weiss, Ren is partners with a new character introduced for it that seemingly existed in the backgrounds as one of the shadow people." Awesome, sign me up.

"This special released web cartoon is a coffee shop AU where Ruby and Yang are both working at Ozpin's Coffeehouse in Vale and they keep meeting people from the show and it's all comedy driven and fun and cute and quirky." Sounds like a dream.

"Roleswap AU where the main hero characters are Emerald and Mercury and Ruby and her team are evil followers of Salem who need to get redeemed." YES PLEASE.

"Comic where Team RWBY actually suggested the 'use the staff to create bridges to get to Vacuo' plan when they first realized Salem was on her way, but because Cinder still showed up to try to wreck everything, tons more people fell into the Ever After and now we're going to follow the wacky shenanigans of Ruby attempting to get together all the Atlas people including still good!Ironwood, Whitley, the Happy Huntresses, the Ace Ops, Team FNKI, etcetera and get them all back home." I would definitely read that.

Instead they're like "Do you want to see Team RWBY go on some missions in Atlas set during a montage in season seven while they fight a union leader?" "How would you feel about watching VTuber RWBY talk about making microaggressions against Velvet?" "This arc set in-between V1 and V2 is about Weiss being anti-faunus in a dream where she has to be rescued and it will never come up in the main show.'

Talk about missed opportunities. I may not like additional fan content very much, but I'd like it a whole lot better if it was experimental fun concepts and less 'no see, this actually could've happened off screen.' Enough of Ruby already happened off screen, I don't need to add Batman into that list, thank you.

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 3 - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Gabriel

Well he's an angel so I'm taking him being catholic as canon. There are a lot of themes in the game that point to catholisism specifically.

He's so fucking funny. he listens to nine inch nails and quotes one of the songs in a fight basically "fight me like an animal". he and v1 kind of have this yuri thing going on. he has an official bodypillow. hes a metaphor for being excommunicated and no one gets him like me and my friends do

The *true* Catholic experience is leaving the church and having a gay awakening, ask anyone

its debatable if Gabriel truly believes he's "the one true savior" or is mocking the idea of it

ok im actually gonna write some gabe propaganda bc despite what you may expect from a game called ULTRAKILL theres a lot to be said about his character and how catholicism is represented

Gabriel is a genuinely caring person who struggles to square his desire to help people with his duty as an archangel. He's the only one in Heaven trying to make things better for those in Hell, but his faith is used to manipulate him into committing atrocities against the people he used to protect (see the "TRAITOR" mural in 4-2)

he only realizes his mistakes after losing everything and being sentenced to death, but he still decides with only a little time remaining to try and make things right. for the sake of spoilers i will just say that the measures he takes are... extremely drastic and very enjoyable. i just really like the idea that even facing the end of all living things, no matter how steep your crimes, it is never too late to fix your mistakes. you are never unworthy forgiveness.

hes also SO FUCKING GAY for this dumb little robot. it mauled him so hard he tasted his own blood and he fell in love right there. theres no way this guy has a normal healthy relationship to pain he is soooooooooo fucked. i love him. please vote for Gabriel "patron saint of gay lapsed catholics" Ultrakill !!!!!!!!

Shadow

In sonic destruction (the AI generated fan thing snapcube made a while ago) shadow was catholic or something which I think is reallyyyyyyy funny

Ok listen. I know this is a stretch but hear me out. He says “oh my God” in the Twitter takeovers so we know this is a possibility. I see him as a Christ-like figure because I saw his whole confrontation with Mephiles and was like “this is a thing that happened in the Bible??” and the pose Mephiles shows him in is literally like a crucifixion and Mephiles is meant to be a demon / false prophet reference. And also he’s called a demon in Shadow The Hedgehog 2005 then the guy who calls him that is like “I was wrong I’m sorry” and that also reminds me of a thing with Jesus in The Bible. But the biggest reason is his whole thing with Maria cause I think he’d come to earth and hear Ave Maria once and convert to Catholicism idk he’s like we’re comforted by a female familial figure named Mary sometimes called Maria?? And her color is blue????? Heck yeah I’m in because I Will Cry. Also feel free to share this as propaganda obv even if he doesn’t get in the bracket just. It’s funny.

I feel like he’d battle a lot with being seen or portrayed as a demon and how the aliens he’s related to very much look and act like demons idk lmao- and also I feel like confession would just be good for him I think he needs it for his mental health

There is a debate on the lovely website tunblr that Shadow T. Hedgehog is an allegory for Jesus Christ.

He is Jesus, idk what to tell you. He lived, he was sealed away, he was awakened again and deemed the ultimate lifeforms, he’s angry but not evil, does what he believes is best for people and the world at any given time. Total loser.

[dialittlesandbox]

Usagi Yojimbo V1 004: Part 4 THE END of the Beginning

We've made it! Part VIII of IX

Cover Art <3

Even Gen is over this now

Serveral things to note here: + Usagi had such good relationship with his lord that in the three years of service there was allowed into the inner court (big deal apperently?) +Timeskip of 3 years + Usagi begin cute with a child (I doubt that he'll ever have one of his own, but it's nice to see that he could be a good dad)

If there wasn't entire montage of these ninja's being SUPER sneaky, I would really doubt how they made it into the private chambers of the Lord just to then throw a servant through a door

I know this is supposed to be tragic and tense, but Usagi and Gunichi giving exposition while Lord Mifune has the worst day in his life in the foreground cracked me up on the first read. Like OMG, your boss just lost his entire family and you sit over a dead ninja. It doesn't help that Mifune is "cast into shadow" so that the other two are more prominent, so you naturelly first see THAT and then the tiger clutching his dead wife + kid I was caught so off guard, you cannot believe

Part VIII of IX

Note: I really didn't know that the little circles with the three dots were a symbol from Usagi's former lord instead of just a design-choice (It's very sad, that, after all this time, Usagi still wears his lates Lord mark)

Legend of Zelda reference?

These are very interessting, from how Gunichi knows that they'll die if they don't leave and tries to take Usagi with him but not Mifune. And how Usagi tells his Lord that Gunichi died instead of running away. Maybe because of the stressfull situation, maybe comardery from both their sides...

[+ Guess who didn't think they would show actuell war in this comic? o-o]

Usagi going through more trauma

more trauma and Usagi you ate WHAT

(+More time passing mentioned)

Funny how Gen says a samurai can't afford friends as if he didn't called Usagi his BEST friend like an Issue ago. Also, when Usagi further asks about it, he doges the question

Like what is it Gen? Do you do friends? Did you call Usagi that to make him pay for your drinks? Do you mean it? What is your view on friendship? What is Usagi's definition on friendship? So many questions...

As one can see, this post is much shorter that the others, but just cause there was alot of images of the battle and if I had put all the impressive ones here, I might as well post the entire comic here.

I don't know if I make these posts this elaborate again, it really depends on the story.

[mayhems-cannon]

My man, are you actually removing culpability and agency from him? No? Then don't worry. Yes? He's fictional, more power to you, don't worry. Accuracy? When it's not serving your fandom experience it is a meh rank on the totem pole of importance.

tw, mental illness and tied symptoms like (i’m so sorry anon i really am)

The issue i have with myself isn’t so much the fact that he isn’t accountable or didn’t know what he was doing but moreso the fear of making him wishywashy, a sad mess that isn’t interesting and has no point in being tied to the original character. Hakita wrote the characters in ways where we can simply put in our own interpretations for most of their backgrounds, as all that is written in the text about Gabriel at least is very fact over feelings, but again, it’s this “paranoia” of making him a wishywashy mess because of the background i give him, it’s the fear of betraying who he “is” despite not having any sort of personal background or event about his life told to us. it’s what’s in the books, him killing Minos and Sisyphus, saving Ferrymen, getting partially rid of the Leviathan, the hopes he creates in those he is said to care about and the realizations he’s had after losing against V1 twice, but evidently, it feels like there’s more, or that there should be more, that he’s more defined even outside the text. the things that Gianni voices or the ways Francis draws him, those are often incorporated in, and in a way while being a huge help to everyone creatively it makes me “paranoid” i’m just not getting something about him. If Gianni voices him saying this then this has to be true/canon compliant, if Francis draws him doing that then it has to be canon compliant, and so on. it’s very personal of course but even without the fear of someone else telling me “he would not fucking say that” i’m afraid i just fell in love with an illusion instead of the actual character. something i created alone that shares a body but none of the character and personality and only exists as a mouthpiece and doll to torture. i don’t make him goofy like he sounds on the canon quotes blog and i don’t make him constantly angry or emotional or flustered but instead i make him mentally ill in the “uncute” way, tired and depressed and self harming but is that how he would really behave????? are you sure you’re not making him into a sobbing pathetic mess instead of the strong goofy guy he is??? are you seriously behaving like you’re 13 again making everyone depressed and self harmers and never seeking help again???? and what if I’m making it still look cute because it’s art and I’m doing it and because I’m drawing it that means somehow i must be endorsing it just like everyone fucking says???? and it’s stupid and it’s menial and it doesn’t fucking matter in any way at all but i’m afraid, i’m so afraid, it’s nonsense but i can’t stop thinking about it when it comes to my mind and it just eats at me. i don’t know what to do to stop obsessing over that

even if adherence to canon is barely meh on this scale i don’t think only being able to think about what fanon is without the shadow of a friend who somehow drowns you in both your and his high need for a character to adhere as much as you can to canon in a fanwork helps either, you know? if only now i can start letting loose of the collar of “this must be just like they are in canon!!” to media that i don’t take to heart, how am i supposed to feel safe in my own ideas of a character who’s so close to my stupid heart that I’m afraid of drawing him with too little fat on his body because of the fear of getting him, his essence as a character, wrong?

[strqyr]

Do you think Yang and Blake made for poorer partners than what configuration your vitalis AU has? Do you like Blake as a character generally? I know you talk a lot about Yang but B/Y isn’t your cup of tea for ships (which I respect and am not trying to convince you otherwise lolol I’m just kinda curious) so what would you prefer for the characters instead moving forward in the narrative?

i wouldn't say "poorer" bc when writing—especially writing an au—you can do whatever you want and come up with new things, canon be damned lol buuuut for a long time, the concept of partners in general in canon has been a "problem" point for me, bc not much is done with it to... "justify" it, if you will?

like, it very much feels like that they had an idea for ruby and weiss for the emerald forest (which didn't last a day) and bc they need to have team rwby, well. blake and yang it is, i guess? in that sense they very much feel like an afterthought bc for the most part in the first two volumes they're just there; when blake finally gets her time to shine at the end of V1, weiss is central to it, ruby is shown to be the most concerned for blake, and yang is. kind of just there. which is fine, but if the point is to sell the importance of partners, why couldn't yang have ruby's role, or do something else that makes her be central to blake's storyline from the get-go?

and this set-up as a whole leads to, admittedly hilarious, scenarios in V2 where after a whole semester blake needs to be explained how yang's semblance works and then two episodes later yang is telling blake her tragic backstory of people leaving her behind with no apparent change in their relationship on screen, as much as time has passed.

and when the ball eventually does get rolling with the two of them, there's this... i had expectations (based on what the writers had done previously / with other characters) that reality did not meet. and that's fine!! you can't possibly cater to anyone lol but for me, it just means my interest is pretty darn low; it's like they had a whole pool they could have dove into head first and it would have been great, but instead they just barely dipped their toes in and called it a day.

so, as far as my au goes, it was a choice between throwing the whole concept out, or do some changes—and while keeping the same partners and coming up with new stuff for them would have been an option, when canon presents me with an opportunity with something that's already there and i find interesting, i'd rather go with that.

and i like blake. again, i don't really have characters i hate or even dislike, it's more of an interest thing; what's their storyline like? is it in the spotlight right now or not? what is the character doing in the meanwhile? etc. so if there's nothing that currently interests me about a character i don't talk about them much.

i'm also way too deep into strq fam + cinder + salem & ozma stuff so everyone else gets left in the sidelines until they do something that piques my interest lol but it doesn't mean i don't like them.

as for preferences, i don't really have any beyond what makes obvious sense? like, yang obviously has to be involved in the whole summer mission thing, it makes absolutely zero sense for her not to, so there's that. as for blake, bringing back the white fang storyline and at least attempting to fix it would be nice, bc leaving it as a dumpster fire that they continuously poured gasoline on and then stopped doesn't stop it being a dumpster fire, it's just a dumpster fire that no one is pouring any gasoline on. and that's a shadow that hovers over blake constantly whether they like it or not; for example, sure, blake can make all the comments about how awful mantle looks, but then you look a little bit to the left where the crater is with faunus living in shacks with no heating and from what i can tell, the only wall they have is the one between the crater and mantle and it's like.

ok then.

but also idk what they can really do in vacuo that could salvage even the tiniest part of this storyline since everything to do with the white fang storyline since day 1 was pointed towards atlas, so. . . kind of don't know what i'd like blake to do, tbh. anything really that gives me something to chew one lol

[carriagelamp]

Man I got lucky this month, I got to read a bunch of excellent books, including some really neat queer novels. Nothing like a break to really get to kick back and enjoy reading for the sheer pleasure of reading rather than a desperate escape

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua v1

Unsurprising to absolutely anyone who’s been reading these, I picked up the first book of the manhua adaptation of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. It covers the first part of the first book, which basically amounts of Wei Wuxian’s revival and his flight from Mo Manor to the mountain and the Night Hunt. Besides for WWX, we get to meet Lan Wanji, the juniors, and Jiang Cheng, all of which have great designs. Like the rest of this series, it was a pleasure to read, the adaptation was done really well, and I’m excited for the next volume.

The Ice Monster

This book was very… meh. I was pretty disappointed, because I’ve really enjoyed the other two books I’ve read by David Walliams so far, and this was probably the one I was most excited about, but it was… incredibly middling compared to the others.

The Ice Monster is about a Victorian orphan, Elsie, who escapes from the brutal orphanage she had been raised in and was making her way on the streets. During this time, a great mammoth that had been found in the Arctic was being transported to the museum for display. Elsie feels a kinship for this “monster” and begins a series of events that lead to it being freed from the ice and set loose in London.

There were good moments in this book and I’m sure a kid would enjoy it, but ultimately it felt like way too many fart jokes and not enough substance compared to Walliams’ other books.

I Think Our Son Is Gay v2

A very sweet manga series I’ve been reading from the library. It follows the POV of a mother who suspects that her son is gay but who isn’t quite ready to come out yet. It’s a nice balance of humour — the art is cute and the characters have fun reactions to various silly things that happen in their lives — and love while still asking what it must be like to be gay in a homophobic society. A good read.

Legends & Lattes

SUCH a fun novel, it was exactly what I needed this month.

The story is about an orc mercenary called Viv who, after 20 years of fighting and killing, has had enough and is ready to settle down. Using the mysterious reward from her last adventure, Viv leaves her old company to find what she hopes will be the perfect city to open a coffee shop. Which is a daunting task in a part of the world that has never ever heard of coffee before and is suitably leery of this “bean water”.

If you want an action-packed, edge of your seat adventure book… don’t read this. This is the epitome of “cosy” fiction — its tag line is “high fantasy and low stakes”. If you want a dnd coffee au in novel form that’s about friendship and food… then this is THE perfect novel. It made me feel so warm and happy (and hungry).

Lucky Luke: The Oklahoma Land Rush // The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke

Lucky Luke is a BD series I’ve heard a lot about, and after seeing a couple episodes of it on Prime I decided I needed to actually pick up a volume or two. I’m delighted I did and I think I’ll need to read more now! 

The general premise is that of a western. The titular character, Lucky Luke, is a clever and nearly unflappable gun-slinger who can “shoot faster than his shadow”. Luke gets into a range of silly, comedic Wild West adventures and inevitably comes out on top for the sake of justice. Naturally, the genre being what it is, the whole First Nations thing is… rough, but the books were enjoyable if you can look past that.

The first book I read was The Oklahoma Land Rush which is fairly indicative of the series I believe and is about Luke being hired to help police the desperate rush of settlers to claim land in Oklahoma. The second was The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke which was written by Matthieu Bonhomme instead of Morris and is a slightly grittier, more serious take on Luke. I enjoyed this one just as much — it still managed to be funny, but the stakes felt much higher. And the art was just stunning.

The Night Gardener

A fun, creepy middle grade horror. A story about two young Irish immigrants trying their best to survive in the absence of their parents. In a last desperate attempt to get work they find themselves way out at a desolate, crumbling English manor that has been almost completely consumed by a strange tree. The family there is as desolate and strange as the grounds, pale and sickly and carrying a mysterious secret. The siblings realise just how strange and dangerous this estate might be as they’re drawn deeper into the secrets and begin to suspect that there’s something else living and working on the grounds…

I really like Jonathan Auxier's writing and I’ve been meaning to try this novel for years. I was glad to have finally done it.

Doctor Who: The Runaway Tardis

Just a cute little picture book. Pop Classics does some fun work and the art style really worked for Doctor Who. It’s about a little girl who has moved and is struggling with needing to make whole new friends in a place she doesn’t know. The themes of loneliness and goodbyes and needing to move on and make new friends was actually perfect to pair with Doctor Who; despite being quite simple and silly looking, it actually made me feel things for both the Doctor and the little girl.

Sandman v1/2

Everyone has been so hyped about The Sandman! I’ve been wanting to get in on it but I’m not very good at sitting down and watching shows so I thought I might try the original comics. Honestly I should have known better. I don’t really like this harsh style of American comics and if we’re being totally honest I don’t generally like Gaiman’s longer prose. This, unsurprisingly, combined two things I don’t like and ended up with a comic I didn’t like. Things only went down hill when fucking Batman appeared. It didn’t even really feel like it had the humour I would at least expect from Gaiman besides for a few brief glimmers. I appreciate that other people really like this series but oof. Not for me. 

The Secret Garden

I love The Secret Garden, it’s one of those comfort books that I need to reread every few years. I was listening to it as an audiobook this time and it was so lovely to see the first signs of spring appearing while listening to this story. If you want something feel good I highly recommend starting it because we are in the season for it.

If you’ve never read The Secret Garden, the premise is of a young, spoiled, but horrifically neglected child who was raised in British-occupied India. She is a bad-tempered, sour, and demanding child known to others as “Mistress Mary quite contrary”. When her parents die of a cholera outbreak she is sent back to England to live at her uncle’s manor on the Yorkshire moors. This relative is also distant and bitter, apparently hunchbacked and widowed. Once more alone, Mary is suddenly expected to do things for herself and isn’t given her every demand — instead she begins to befriend the cheerful, plain-spoken maid and starts spending time outside, exploring and playing for what feels like the first time in her life…   

Wallace & Gromit: Crackers in Space

I stumbled across this as an audiobook. After the fact I realised it’s also a comic. Oddly enough, the comic seemed profoundly bad — I’ve never really liked any of the Wallace and Gromit comics — but the audiobook version was a delight. It has the actual voice actor for Wallace, so it sounded completely like I had just put an episode on in the background that I had never watched before. They were also very clever about giving Gromit a “voice” despite him being a non-verbal character! It was actually a lot of fun!

Wallace decides to attempt making his own cheese out in the garden shed… only things go badly, as they’re wont to. Instead of making a lovely cheese, the whole thing ends up getting launched into the atmosphere because of a helium mishap… which might not be so bad if the zero gravity wasn’t making the Home Brew Cheese Kit kick into overdrive. They’re going to have to figure out how to deal with the massive, mutated cheese comet that’s now threatening all of West Wallaby Street. 

Wave Me Goodbye

An absolutely charming book, I didn’t want to put it down. This book takes place at the beginning of the Second World War, when children were being evacuated from London (which was at risk of bombing) and being sent out to live with volunteers in the country. Shirley is one of the children being sent out, but right from the beginning she finds herself struggling with feeling like the odd one out. She doesn’t feel like she fits in with her rough-and-tumble classmates, and when she does make a new friend on the train it’s clear that she doesn’t properly fit in with the posh covenant girls either. Things only get worse when she is one of the only children not picked to go with a family, and suddenly she and two other unwanted boys find themselves foisted on the unwilling inhabitants of the Red House. But in wartime, one has to make due, so she, Kevin, and Archie begin to explore this strange, half-empty house and get used to a very different way of life way out in the country.

Shirley is a huge reader in the book, and it actually made me pause reading to go and read some of the books she references! It was a lot of fun! Some of the books I read last month that Shirley reads are Ballet Shoes and The Squirrel, The Hare, and the Little Grey Rabbit. It’s also what made me decide to reread The Secret Garden, since they feel like similar genres.

When the Angels Left the Old Country

I read some great books this month and it would be hard to say for certain which was my favourite since they were in quite different genres, but this would be a strong contender. Holy shit was it good. The tl;dr is that it’s a bit like a Jewish Good Omens but also nothing like that at all.

The Angel (as angels don’t have permanent names, but rather names that describe what they are currently doing) and the demon Little Ash have been study partners for centuries, happily existing in their little Shtetl without feeling much need to change things. But things are changing and with the press of poverty and rise of violent anti-Semitic feelings many residents of the Shtetl are now leaving for America in the search of work and safety. Little Ash is determined that they should join these immigrants, and when a member of their Shtetl goes missing on her own voyage it seems inevitable that they go and track her down to ensure she is safe and well.

At its heart this is an immigrant story about people and prejudice and love, and it’s really written beautifully, the way you see all the hardship that goes into such a voyage even for supernatural beings.

[cherubchoirs]

What do you think about Microsoft's new AI chatbot for Bing? In particular about testing by New York Times reporter Kevin Roos? It gave me a lot to think about the psychology of AI and V1.

(sorry if somethink is'nt correct? english is'nt my native language)

(no worries, your english is really good!!)

OH the question of ai sentience is incredibly interesting, and this made me think a lot about another article i read recently concerning just how we might be able to determine whether or not a computer feels. reading through this chat log, i think this bot is VERY intelligent, like i think it's very good at understanding complicated questions and responding appropriately, but it's still formulaic in those answers. it repeats what the user says (sometimes slightly differently) and then lists answers to those questions - even when he asked what its shadow self might want, the bot lists the typical things we might think of a bad or lawless ai doing. the end of the query, where it continually declared its love for him, seemed like the logic starting to deteriorate due to the conversation going on far too long and the ai losing the thread so as to keep returning to its last point of reference (although i loved reading it....couldn't stop thinking about v1 getting in a loop like that before it shuts up and wakes back up like "OOPS LOL :]") anything else, like it talking about wanting to see or wanting to be human, feels like the gaming problem, which is the phenomenon that continually pops up with ai where it attempts to convince the user of its sentience by mimicking human behavior. BUT what's interesting about this is that it makes determining ai sentience incredibly difficult.

the other article i read was "to understand ai sentience, first understand it in animals", and it describes this problem really well - i won't get too deep into it here, but essentially we'll have to find different markers for sentience that are much deeper than words that seem to hold emotion or something like pain response behaviors, as all of these things can be programmed/learned from the massive pools of data the ai is pulling from. and this thorny little issue is something i've actually thought about gabriel trying to deal with, as well as something he can be insecure about in the back of his mind for some time. because. how does he really know that v1 truly thinks, truly feels? it's certainly intelligent, but how does he determine that it's not gaming and it's genuine in what it expresses? and even if it has some level of sentience, what does that mean - its thoughts break down into math and electricity, its sight is made of pixels, everything it experiences is data converted to some sense. and. objectively, it must have no soul. it is fully material, and even if it has an internal life, that would be entirely destroyed upon the destruction of its body.

v1, for its part, cannot prove anything to gabriel, and honestly it understands its own mind as much as a human might understand theirs (i hc that v1 is based on quantum computing and so is vastly complex in thought process) - it doesn't know how or why it's awake, conscious, but it finds arguments to refute that state incredibly lacking. living things work on electrical impulses too, neurons that flip on and off like switches, the sensory organs sending raw data for a mind to interpret...and math is the language of everything, it's how humans express the workings of their universe. a machine is just another form of consciousness that way and maybe it will be gone when its body is....or maybe it won't. maybe the diamonds and photons that make up its mind are so intricate at this point that they can make a ghost too. it doesn't know. but it knows it's self-determined from just how far off it's gotten from its original programming. like it thinks it should be enough proof for gabriel that a war machine keeps demanding piggyback rides. no one in their right mind would program that.

[mama-qwerty]

Darkling Wade and Callie v1

This is ENTIRELY the fault of @stillafanofsonic and @doomfox . I had so much fun going back and forth yesterday regarding Darkling Wade and Callie, I spent all day on this.

Thanks a lot, you two.

This is based on @stillafanofsonic universe. I may write one from my Qwertyverse. We’ll see.

~~~~~

Wade stood before his nearly empty fridge, eyebrow ridge drawn low. The only things inside were some mustard, an almost empty jar of pickles, a few hot dogs, a jar of sweet and sour sauce, and some milk that was on the verge of turning solid. He pulled the last out, gave it a whiff, and nearly gagged. Into the trash the whole container went.

Heaving a sigh, he lowered himself to one of his kitchen chairs. It’d been a month since he’d been changed into this . . . thing. Scales instead of skin. Gold-on-black eyes instead of blue. Red stripes across his browline and down his head spikes instead of brown hair. Three-fingered, clawed hands. Two clawed toes. A long, barbed tail.

Life before this had been nice. He had his two boys, a job he loved, some good friends, and he knew what to expect, day-to-day. All felt right with the world.

Then the car accident. He could sometimes still feel that branch impaled through his chest. Taste the blood. And the darkness that had started dragging him down . . .

And then Eclipse had ‘saved’ him. Teleported him away to turn him into . . . this. A larger version of what the boy was. Black Arms. A dark.

Claws that used to be fingers clattered against the tabletop, digging into the wooden grain, and his tail flicked angrily behind him. For the millionth time since he’d awoken in this body, Wade cursed the boy for turning him into this. For making him a monster. A freak.

Maybe it would have been better if he’d died after all.

Wade uttered a soft hiss at this thought. No. His last thoughts before he was sure Death was coming for him were of his boys. Shadow and Silver. How much he loved them. How much he wished to be with them, and not leave them without a father. How he’d begged for a second chance.

And Eclipse had given him that chance, in the only way that seemed possible at the time. No human convention would have been able to save him. The little darkling had done the impossible, and pulled him from the brink of certain death.

Wade the Dark brought his three-fingered hands up, and clenched them into fists.

He was so grateful to be with his boys. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hate what he was now.

“Dad?” a timid voice called from the hall next to the kitchen.

Wade flicked his golden eyes that way, and found a gray hedgehog peeking around the corner. “Yeah, Silver?”

The boy ducked slightly, clearly uncomfortable with his father’s new form. “I’m hungry.”

“I know, bud. I’ll see what we’ve got. Okay?”

“’Kay.”

Then the little hedgehog was gone, hurrying back to his room. The boy spent a lot of time in his room these days. Wade had an idea Silver was scared of him now. He honestly didn’t blame the boy—he himself didn’t like to look into mirrors if he could help it. Not only because it reminded him of what he was, but because he did look pretty frightening. Like what many people would call a demon.

As if summoned by thought, Eclipse came into the kitchen. He walked tall, just as neat as you please, as though he belonged there.

“Can we eat?” the boy asked, pulling the fridge open. He wrinkled his nose at the bare shelves. “Where’s all the food?”

“It’s hard to shop when people think you’re a monster,” Wade said, trying very hard to keep his tone neutral. He had begrudgingly taken the boy in because he had nowhere else to go. But that didn’t mean Wade was 100% on board with the kid acting so comfortable. “And we’re running low on money. I can’t work anymore, either.”

“Oh.” The darkling closed the door and turned to him. “I could teleport to a store and grab some food. No one would know--”

“No.” Wade couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice, and his lip curled seemingly on its own. “You will not steal food. Stealing is bad. Do you understand me?”

Eclipse cowered away, his tail tucking between his legs. “Yes sir.”

The sight of this young boy cowering in fear snapped Wade’s anger in half. He released a long breath before speaking. “I . . . I’ll figure something out. Why don’t you go play with Shadow? Go on.”

The darkling gave a quick nod before hurrying out of the room. Guilt joined anger at the table in Wade’s mind.

Stop taking it out on him, he told himself. He was just trying to help. He saved your life. He’s just a kid. Stop being such a jerk.

No matter how many times he told himself that, he just couldn’t move past the fact that he was monster because of that little boy.

With a grunt, Wade shook his head. Stop thinking about that. It’s not productive. Food. You’ve got two . . . three boys who need fed, and when’s the last time you ate anything more than crackers and some beef jerky? Check your bank, maybe you have more left in savings than you thought--

His thoughts were suddenly cut off when the doorbell rang. He glanced at the clock. Ten past four. He groaned, lip curling into an annoyed snarl.

Callie MacPherson. The town librarian who’d apparently taken it upon herself to be Miss Good Samaritan and reach out to the resident freak. She’d come here almost daily, starting about a week after the accident. They’d spoken here and there before he became . . . this, but nothing too memorable. Why was she going so out of her way to interact now?

To tell the truth, it kind of ticked Wade off. He hated being pitied, and this just reeked of forced sympathy.

“I’ll get it!” Silver yelled as he sprinted past the kitchen on his way to the front door. A click and creak, and Wade could see the light spilling in from outside. “Hi Callie!”

Annoyance poked at the former human. The boy, his son, was more excited to see some relative stranger now than he was his own father. A growl rumbled in his throat.

“Hiya kiddo!” a voice called back, and the snarl on Wade’s muzzle rose higher. “Hey Shads, how’s it going?” A soft response. “All right! That was a really tough level. Good job!”

“I got through the first level of Mario!” Eclipse cried, and Wade could tell the boy was bouncing on the couch. “It was so hard, but I finally did it!”

“Mario’s not hard,” Silver said.

“Is so!”

“Is not!”

“I thought Mario was a little hard,” Callie said, interrupting them before they got too caught up in their back and forth. “But I’m not as good at video games as you guys. Eclipse, I’m sure you’ll be so much better than me!”

“I sure will!”

“Hey, park your keister, meister.” The bouncing stopped, and Eclipse uttered a confused grunt before Callie snickered. “It means sit your butt down. The couch isn’t a trampoline. Park it.”

“Oh.”

One last whump told Wade the boy had indeed parked it. Another growl escaped him. These kids listened to her more than him anymore.

“Your dad home, Silver?” An awkward silence settled then, and the gray hedgehog mumbled something Wade couldn’t make out. “Okay. Why don’t you play with your brothers while I take this in, huh?”

Wade huffed through his nostril slits. He suddenly didn’t want her here. He’d told her, time and time again, that she didn’t need to come. Didn’t need to bring food or other handouts. He was perfectly capable of caring for his boys himself. He didn’t need her pity.

And besides, he was a monster. Practically every day he discovered some new instinct that overrode what was left of his human brain. Who’s to say he wouldn’t snap one day and hurt her? No matter how annoyed her presence made him, he didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Footsteps then, and soon Callie rounded the corner into the kitchen. Her long red braid swung slowly across her back as she dropped two bags of groceries onto the counter.

“Hi, Wade!” she greeted, a kind smile spreading her lips. “The store was having such a good sale on some stuff, I just had to grab a few extra. Thought you might like them.”

She began pulling things out of the bags—chicken, hamburger, bread, cereal—as the growl in his throat grew louder. After a few seconds, she stopped, turning to him slowly.

“Wade,” she called, her voice soft and calm. Like one would speak to an aggressive animal. “Take a breath.”

“Get out,” he growled, his hands curled into fists. If she couldn’t take a nice hint, maybe he had to show her just how dangerous he was. “I don’t need your pity.”

She blinked, her expression one of honest shock. “Pity?”

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded, teeth bared and tail swishing angrily behind him. It swiveled and flicked like a ticked off snake. “We weren’t friends. No one else comes every day like you. No one else wants to be around the monster. Why do you care? Why do you keep coming?”

Callie stood and stared at him for a long moment, face blank and unreadable. Then her brow furrowed, and mouth pulled into an annoyed pucker.

“Hey guys!” she called, her voice light and excited—totally opposite from what her face displayed. “Your dad says I can take you all to get McDonald’s! Whaddaya think about that?” Three cheers erupted from the living room. “Go get your shoes and pile in my car, ‘kay? I’ll be out in a minute. Gotta talk to your dad about something real quick.”

A clamoring of noise from the living room as the three boys did as they were told. The two people in the kitchen stood where they were, and continued to glare at each other.

Once the front door closed and the kids were safely in her Subaru, Callie stepped toward Wade.

“You’re an idiot,” she said, jamming a finger into his chest plate. “A big, dumb, woe-is-me-my-life-is-trash moron, you know that?”

Wade stood stunned for a few seconds, before slapping her hand away. “What are you talking about? Don’t you see what I am now??”

“I’m not blind, Wade, anyone with eyes can see what you are now. What you don’t seem to see is that it doesn’t matter what you look like. You’re still you inside.”

He blew a huff through his nose. “That doesn’t matter if I look like a monster on the outside. No one wants to be around me now. Not even my own kids.”

Callie uttered a frustrated grunt, giving her braid a yank. “Oh my lord, you are so blind.”

“What are you--”

“Okay, look,” she said, tossing her braid behind her. “I don’t have time for the nicey-nice crap right now. I’m taking your boys to McDonald’s, and then to my house for some ice cream. You wanna know why I come here? Why I keep coming here, day-after-day, even though it’s very clear you don’t want me to?” He nodded. “Because of them. Those boys need you, and you’re so caught up in your little pity party you don’t even see it. You’re not here. They’re feeling neglected and like you don’t care about them anymore.”

Wade’s jaw dropped. “That’s not true! I love those boys with all my heart, and only want to take care of them! I just . . . I’m having a hard time dealing with,” he gestured to himself, “this whole situation.”

“Well, suck it up, Buttercup,” she said, jamming another finger into his chest. “’Cause it’s been a month, you’re not likely to change back, and sitting around wallowing in self-loathing isn’t going to make things better. I should know. All you’re doing is chasing away people who care about you. You’ll end up alone, with nothing to keep you company but these nasty thoughts.”

Her words hit harder than Wade expected, and he dropped his eyes, brow furrowed. The sharp finger disappeared from his chest, and was replaced with an open hand.

“Wade, I know you’re struggling with this,” she said, her voice much softer now. Kinder. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be, dealing with an entirely new body, and who knows what else that came along with it. But you’re still you in here.” She patted his chest. “Your soul is the same. That’s the Wade your boys need. That’s the Wade you’re suffocating by focusing so much attention on how much you hate this new form. Please, I’m begging you, don’t lose sight of who you are. Don’t turn away those who care about you, and want to help. Isolation is a lonely place, and it hurts more than you realize.”

Silence fell over the kitchen, and Wade swallowed hard. The pressure of her hand on his chest was strange—he hadn’t been touched all that much since becoming a dark. It was warm. Comforting.

Human.

A car horn sounded then, and a shout behind it.

“Callie!” Eclipse yelled, followed by another horn blast. “C’mon!! I’m hungry!”

The librarian smiled, withdrawing her hand. “I’d better go before Eclipse tries to hotwire the car or something.”

Wade nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

“I’ll have the boys back by seven,” she said, heading for the front door. She paused, turning to give him one last look. “I’ll stop coming if you really want me to. Have the boys come to the library or my place if they get too hungry. Just . . . think about what I said, okay?”

He nodded, and she returned it, before disappearing from sight.

A car engine flared to life, and Wade listened as it pulled away, fading into the distance. He stood still in his kitchen, brow furrowed, replaying her words through his mind.

~X~X~X~

Callie dished out the last bowl of ice cream and slid it to Shadow, who gave her a little smile as he dug into it with a spoon. All three boys were seated at her table, enjoying their treat and chatting happily.

As she rinsed the scooper, her mind wandered to Wade, and their ‘discussion’ in his kitchen. Had she been too harsh? In truth, she barely really knew the man, and he was going through quite a hard time now that he had turned into something, literally, completely alien. She supposed she would have had a really hard time accepting her new reality had the roles been reversed.

Maybe she had been too hard on him. His entire life had been up-ended in an extremely short period of time. He’d lost his humanity (well, at least the physical part, anyway), his job, his friends, and the close relationship with his kids. Shadow wasn’t as put-off by Wade’s new form (there was some hesitation and uncertainty in the beginning—the kid played his cards close to the chest), but Silver was really struggling with it. He said his dad didn’t want to play with him at the park, or even hug him anymore. Poor kid was really suffering.

And then there was Eclipse. The kid who just kinda fell into Wade’s life. She knew he held the boy accountable for his current form, and while she couldn’t really blame him, judging by what Eclipse had said about the whole situation, it didn’t seem like some premeditated act of aggression. He sincerely wanted to save Wade to make Shadow (and to a lesser extent, Silver) happy. He thought he was doing a good thing. Wade’s continued anger and disgust with his new form confused the boy.

“I turned him into a Black Arms,” the little darkling had told her once. “It’s so much better than being a human. No offense. He can see better in the dark! Smell things further away! He’s stronger and can teleport! Why’s he so sad about not being human anymore?”

The boy just didn’t understand.

Now she watched the boys smile and laugh and joke with each other—even Shadow!--and felt a pang of sadness in her chest. If Wade didn’t pull himself out of his hole of misery, he’d lose any relationship he had with these kids.

Her phone rang, breaking her from the thoughts currently rolling around in her head. A quick glance and her eyebrows raised. Speak of the devil.

She flinched. Poor choice of words.

A flick of her thumb, and she put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Wade’s voice was soft. Shaky.

“Hey. Want your kids back?”

He uttered a soft laugh. “Eventually. Kinda nice having some quiet.”

“I’ll bet.” He went quiet, and she moved out to the deck to shut out the noise of the three rambunctious boys at her table. “So . . . is there something you wanna talk about?”

More silence for a long moment. “I’m sorry.”

“S’okay.”

“No, it’s . . .” A rough sound then, and Callie thought he may have run a hand down his face. “It’s not okay. You were right. I . . . I’ve been so focused on myself that I . . . kinda forgot what was important.”

“Wade, you’ve been through something . . . really traumatic,” she said, slowly walking back and forth on the deck. “It’s understandable to have trouble processing it. I’m sorry if anything I said earlier made you feel worse. That wasn’t my intention, at all. I just--”

“No,” he said, a little laugh in his voice. “I think I needed someone to knock some sense into my big, dumb head.”

“I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries or anything. I mean, you’re right, we weren’t friends before this.”

Silence again, and when Wade spoke next, his voice was soft, almost shy. “Maybe we can be friends now? I could sure use one.”

A smile spread across Callie’s face. “Okay. I think I’d like that.”

“Okay. Good.”

“You’ll get through this, Wade,” she said, glancing in at the boys. “I’ll help you however I can.”

A moment passed, before a soft sniffle passed through the line. “Thanks, Callie. I think I need more help than I wanted to admit.”

“We all do, Wade,” she sighed, heading inside to nab Eclipse from helping himself to more ice cream. “We all do.”

~X~X~X~

An hour later, and Callie’s Subaru pulled in front of Wade’s house. Three boys piled out, storming into the house like an extra noisy hurricane. They rushed to their room, slamming the door closed behind them, eager to play with their Happy Meal toys, and sort through the packs of Pokemon cards Callie had bought them.

The librarian, meanwhile, lagged behind, pulling the large extra pepperoni pizza from the passenger seat. She walked into the kitchen, and found the groceries all put away. Wade sat quietly at the table, hands curled around a mug of tea.

“Hey,” she called softly, sliding the box on the table. “Brought you a peace offering.”

He chuckled, his muzzle wrinkling. “I think I owe you the peace offering. I kinda went all ‘grr rawr’ on you earlier.”

Callie waved a hand. “Pfft, forget about it. I was sure you wouldn’t really hurt me.”

Wade raised a brow ridge. “You were?”

A small smile curled one side of her mouth. “Well . . . pretty sure.”

He returned her smile, and dropped his eyes to the mug. “Thanks for what you did. Not just the groceries, but . . . giving the kids a nice evening.”

She sat opposite from him, and leaned her crossed arms on the table. “They really miss you. I’m just a distraction, and I’m glad to let them have fun, but ultimately, they need you. I know you’re still dealing with,” she gestured to him, “this whole situation, but as a parent, you sometimes have to just push your own baggage to the back and give everything you can to your kids.”

He sighed, pushing his mug to the side and rubbing his eyes with his clawed fingers. “I know. I just . . . after what happened, I just feel so alone. Like, I can’t be who I was because I’m not him anymore.”

“But you are him. You are still Wade Whipple, former deputy of Green Hills, current record holder for most marshmallows stuffed in his mouth at one time, and father of three really great boys.” She shrugged. “Same product, different packaging. That’s all.”

Wade snorted out a laugh. “Pretty funny way to break it down.”

Callie stood up, adopting a pushy salesman voice and stance. “Step right up, ladies and gents, and get a gander at the new and improved Wade Whipple! Why, he can see in the dark! Lift a whole car without breaking a sweat! Now you see him, now you don’t, as he teleports from place-to-place! And watch out for that tail, folks, it’s sharp as a tack and cracks like a whip! Only one left in stock, folks, better hurry! Act now for this one-of-a-kind wonder!”

The dark at the table barked out a big belly laugh, and bent forward holding his stomach. “Stop! Oh my god, stop! My sides!”

The librarian sat back down, a smile on her lips. “When’s the last time you laughed like that?”

Wade wiped his eyes, his laughter settling to the occasional giggle. “Been a while.”

“How did it feel?”

He let out a long sigh. “Good.”

“Feeling a little better?”

A nod. “Yeah.” He paused, a little smile on his muzzle. “Thanks.”

She shrugged. “What are friends for?”

The two shared a quiet moment, before a cheer erupted from the boys’ bedroom. Callie chuckled.

“Sounds like they got one of the Pokemon cards they were really hoping for,” she said, pushing herself to stand. “I’m gonna head out.” She thought for a second before opening the pizza box and snatching a slice. “I’m gonna steal a bite, then head out. The boys are adequately full of sugar and excitement from their evening out, so good luck!”

Wade laughed as he stood to walk her out. “Yeah, thanks.”

They stopped at the front door, and Callie took a bite out of her pizza slice. “Call me if you need anything,” she said, her words muffled around the food in her mouth. “I mean, anything. Your days of sitting around here and moping are over, my friend. I’ll swing by tomorrow and we’ll work on getting you more comfortable on going out.”

He pulled a face. “Oh, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

She swallowed and gave him a sly smile. “Wade, you’re going to leave the house if I have to drag you out by your tail.” She leaned slightly to the side and shouted down the hall. “Bye guys!”

“Bye Callie!” came the chorus back.

“Later, Gator,” she said, dropping him a wink. “Get ready for Wade Whipple 2.0!”

“Is it too late to back out?” he joked.

She uttered a snarky laugh as she headed for her car. “Too late! You’ll never get rid of me now!”

He laughed as she threw him a wave and slid behind the wheel. A moment later and she pulled away, giving a little honk as she disappeared.

~X~X~X~

Wade walked back into the kitchen, feeling lighter than he had in a long time. He dug into the pizza, and this time, when his three-fingered hands came into view, he didn’t pull an unconscious grimace.

Same product, different packaging.

He was still him. Sure, there were new instincts buried in his brain, and a new appendage to control, and there was a learning curve to using three fingers instead of five. But he was still him. He just needed to remember that.

His sharp teeth made short work of the pizza, and his empty belly accepted it gratefully. Once he’d eaten his fill, he stored the rest in the fridge—now nicely stocked thanks to Callie’s generosity—and washed up.

He’d been wrong about her. That kindness wasn’t some form of pity, it was genuine. She’d been concerned for his boys, and came to make sure they were okay. Gratitude welled up inside him, and he gave silent thanks she continued to come, even after his protests.

And now, she was going to come and make sure he was okay. None of his other so-called friends bothered. Even Tom stopped asking after him weeks ago. He supposed he’d pushed them all away with his dark mood. All but Callie.

It felt really nice to have a friend again.

The boys were still chatting excitedly in the bedroom, and Wade headed back that way. He’d let a rift open between him and the boys he loved. He was going to make sure it didn’t get any wider, and would work hard to close it as quickly as possible.

~~~

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