#idk maybe I'll elaborate more later

[dont-play-with-me-choices]

Being extremely lazy with putting up my caps from the last few chapters but am I alone in thinking the latest LoA 2 chapter was dry as hell 💀 like was that just a me thing lol

[puppetmaster13u]

Meat Marionette #11?

Thinkin about the rogues in this Au, and like, the difference between their relationship with the bats vs this Au. 

 For example, Selina. I’ll admit I take a bit of inspiration from the 2022 movie and mix it with comic depictions along with the different cartoons, which honestly isn’t too different from each other by too much. Now, I don’t think that Catwoman would flirt with this version of Batman, what with his body being a meat puppet that is visibly not human and off putting. There’s also the fact that she would have been an early-ish rogue of his, at least in order of encounters. Which means that she probably encounters the Bat for the first time while Bruce was still getting used to said gifted body, which in turn was probably terrifying. So there’s still a cat and mouse game happening, but it’s more akin to Selina doing her darn best to avoid the Bat no matter what, because to her it isn’t above trying to kill. It’s like seeing a lion where you figure you’re safe at this distance, until it starts moving and you realize that you are definitely not far enough away. 

 Another rogue that I am thinking of is Harvey and Two-Face (Which DC, give Two-Face a proper name :/ he’s his own dude even if they share a body). Harvey was best friends with Bruce, hell they were practically high-school sweethearts in some cases! And Bruce still visits him in Arkham, canonically still talks and interacts with both his friend and TF. Now if anyone is going to notice the changes to Bruce, it’s going to be Harvey. He’s going to be the first to notice how Bruce’s movements are now dangerous and downright predatory, with too much grace even for a dancer or martial artist. There’s something familiar about that movement, and Harvey isn’t an idiot, TF isn’t one either. They know there’s something wrong with Bruce even if he insists he’s fine. In canon Harvey straight up broke down and cried when he found out Bruce was Batman, so I’m wondering what their reaction to this version of the bat would be…

 There’s also rogues like the Riddler and the Joker who are downright obsessed with Batman, but would they still be with this one? I could see Joker slowly becoming obsessed as the creatures continue to thwart him over and over again, but I’m still rotating Riddler. 

 But y’know who would definitely be obsessed with the batclan?

Scarecrow. The man is obsessed with studying fear, with the effects it has and how to cause it. So the bats, who bring terror wherever they go, with something about them continuously tingling at the back of ones’ more instinctive mind that this is something to fear? He would be utterly enthralled, he’d need to know more, he’d need to know Everything. Especially if his fear toxin doesn’t work right on them. After all, how would a gas effect something without lungs? How can you inject something that doesn’t have blood, that’s not quite alive, not in the way that we as humans understand? How can you cause fear of something that has stared into the Tunnels’ heart and lived? Or something like that lol. 

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

AU is a combo of my cryptid batfam and @phoenixcatch7 's Possessed Doll au, go check them out, they're amazing

[summertimemusician]

Linktober Day 9

Deity

*sneezes after downing coffee* Well irl stuff got in the way so I'm way behind my original schedule for these and for Linktober but here we go with another arguably short one, fuelled purely by self indulgence, headcanons, spite against my linguist essays that kept me from keeping to schedule, severe sleep deprivation, a shout out to the Ender Lilies soundtrack and Majora's Mask soundtrack, and Nintendo for not clarifying anything about the lore so I'm snatching what I can and making it my own lol. Look, when you fíxate so much on details the Zelda team doesn't elaborate on you have to fill in the gaps with what you can.

As always can be read as romantic or platonic, technically in a LU context but not explicitly in it by itself.

The Lord of the Mountain liked hearing people sing.

In a way, it wasn’t a surprise, Hylia and the Golden Three each had their ballads and symphonies and minuets, each splendid and with cuts of their divinity in it, Farore was fond of lightning and forest alive minuets, and you could swear Farosh sparked just a bit brighter when one would him the beginnings of the Minuet of the Forest near their spring, Din was fond of boleros, fiery and alive and howling with the echo of flame touching earth that made a shine run through Dinraal’s scales, Nayru, in contrast, was much fonder of blizzard and river quiet serenades, the songs of contemplation at first snow ringing clear when Naydra curled around it’s spring, content to be free of Malice.

And of course Hylia had her ballads and lullabies, perfectly fitting to her display of divinity, of honey days and vast bird like wings, of ambered summers to come and to pass and dazzling solar storms of starlight and sunlight sparking through the human form of her descendants and heroes. So in a way, you weren’t surprised at all that the Lord of the Mountain – Satori, with a familiar touch of londsleite divinity, the hunt of the woodland beasts and diamondscar adoration for the Hero of the Wilds, similar in glory to the Light Spirits petrichor and vermeil fondness for the Hero of the Twilight – liked to listen to people sing. What you were surprised was how it attempted to follow along, it’s head across your lap the second you sat down in the clearing, a gentle hum on back of it’s throat, an owl’s cry and a cicada’s humming and faintly, chirring purring as presses it’s faces into your hands, a gentle request for petting.

It was adorable, even with the faint notes of the chill of clear spring water on winter and the livewire feeling of magic, like holding your hand too close to a flame but not quite touching it.

A low chuckle brushes against the back of your mind, a feeling like biting on ice, the prowl of a wild beast and the build up of lightning and light used to create his blade, the amused affection of a warrior reconvening with their brother in arms, you think you see the bone ivory of the Deity’s hair on the side of your vision, though you know he’s not physically there, ‘He likes you.’

You hum, gently patting behind it’s ears, pushing through the chill, gracefully not mentioning the burning with a smile at the mythic being’s faint chirring, birdsong and the wind through cherry blossoms that sparkle like rose quartz, “Well I quite like him too, I can see where it’s gentleness comes from.”

The ghost of a touch over your hair, the caress of lightning striking over your skin and the hair on the back of your neck pricking up and the crisp cold of winter, the chill of the ending and the flame of a new dawn, of new days, the phantom of magnolias and spring water on your tongue. The fragrance of pine, daffodils and blood soaked lilies on ashen fields on your senses, gentle and careful, marking but not claiming, ‘Only because it’s you, beloved. It’s not something easily given.’

You sigh, shakily composing yourself, you let yourself relax into the phantom sensation. Of hopes and dreams and healed suffering, of the divinity of hunt turned into protection and lightning given form, of tangled timelines and crystalized memories, “I know. It does not change my opinion, either way.”

To be the subject of a god’s care and regard was dangerous, after all. For the human and the deity in question, you know the stories from your world well, of the effects of Hylia on First and Sky, of Twilight and the personification of the Twilight Realm and the spirits of his land, of Wild and clawing from death’s embrace into that of the wilderness.

Knew how the fact the Fierce Deity’s mere proximity causing pain on those who changed him into hunting for hunt’s sake into protection for the sake of someone else cut deeper than even the ever encroaching entropy all beings must one day face. It was no wonder the Song of Healing was his creation, to want to ease the burden.

You gladly grant him some peace, in turn, even if it wasn’t much. It’s the least you can do, for always having his ways of watching over your heroes.

“Join me? We can make a duet.”

You feel more than see him shift, ephemeral, fleeting, gentle against the edges of your existence, as foreign to Hyrule as your own, sparking over your spine as you feel ozone and rust on your teeth. Satori is humming again to match the rumble of thunder in the man’s voice, the heralding of songs of war and elegies for the dead, ‘Of course, though I’m afraid I do not know many songs, besides…’

“It’s alright,”, you smile faintly, there’s a white ocarina in his hands, as he leans, a spectre against your side, “I’ll teach you some of my own, though you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t remember all the lyrics.”

‘It would be my honor to learn.’

You think he smiles, from the fluttering of something ancient and long forgotten against your side.

You sing to Satori and the Chain, a small respite of familiar and forgotten tunes, the Lord of the Mountain hums along. The Fierce Deity’s song cutting through any nightmares that may ail your heroes for another night.

When the dawn of a new day comes, the feeling of divinity against your skin feels just a bit more obvious, sinking into every crack of your being like a shroud, falling over your boys like a veil, reflecting the breath of eternity over Hyrule.

(First gives you a look that’s half exasperation, half understanding. Sky pointedly sticks to your side as Time looks you over, markings deep with vibrant color. You shrug with a helpless smile as you feel the lightest brushes of Hylia’s fond days of gold and starlit summers days against the Lord of the Mountains warm, luminous affection and the Fierce Deity’s smug, but content lonsdaleite smile.)

[finnm]

AU where Martin gets zapped away at the last moment somehow. Maybe to the Time Room. Maybe to Ooo. And he finds out that was his son! And sort of his daughter! He finds the Fionna & Cake book and decides to make his own story about them, give them a happy ending

[the-n3w3st-g1rl-g1rl]

monster food is already different to human food (does not pass through a monster's whole body, does not spoil, etc.)

but then there's also ghost food (like the ghost sandwich blooky offers you). so like I guess there's sub-categories of monster food for different monster types sometimes?

humans are capable of eating some monster foods (Frisk can use consumable items and Chara lived underground for a while so they had to be eating something). but no one other than incorporeal ghosts can eat ghost food (even if they were a ghost but they now have a body)

ghosts might be able to eat other types of monster food (didn't Napstablook have a flier for the spider bake sale? so maybe they can eat that)

just wondering if there are other types of monster food and what sort of properties they might have…

[cryiling]

this is probably the most delusional I've been but hear me out ok,

imagine modern revalink in the movie all the president's men, with link as bob woodward and revali as carl bernstein 😊 specifically from the movie, not the actual ppl from watergate!!! 😭 idk the actual guys but in the movie idc their dynamic fits revalink perfectly and the potential chemistry should be explored

first of all here's a picture of the two guys

the one with blond hair is woodword (aka link) and the one with brown hair is bernstein (aka revali)

ough revali and link as "rival" reporters at the hyrule post, and there's this emerging mystery/scandal about.. um,, uhh... some guy, idk it doesn't really matter, but they both want to investigate to uncover and report on the truth, but they're sort of competing to be the reporter who works on the story, and revali is critiquing the way link is presenting the facts in his draft while link is just trying to keep to himself and do his job

then their manager zelda is like, "if you're both going to be so obsessed with this case then you should just work on it together. I'm assigning you both to the story"

revali and link are like ???? they do not want to work together (well, link doesn't really care. revali is v pissed.) and things are turbulent at first. they both have different aspects they want the story to focus on, they have different methods for finding + interviewing sources.. it's a mess

but one day link makes a call to someone which ends up giving them a lead in the story, and revali makes a follow up call to confirm their suspicions, and they're so relieved they finally made progress!

from there they're able to collaborate better, they under each other's different strengths in reporting so they divide up the tasks a little more, revali is really good with words so he takes the lead in drafting their articles, while link is able to get more information out of people they talk to, so he spends more time contacting sources and interviewing ppl

there's this one scene in all the president's men where they both go to the library of congress and sort through all the check-out cards from the past several years because they're trying to find evidence to support their suspicions, and they're sitting at one desk in the library, literally leaning right against each other, and I'm like hm that's a little suspicious 📸

so yeah imagine revali and link in that kind of scenario, just sitting so close to each other, no noise except the sound of their breathing and the flipping through catalog cards 🙏 peak homoerotic tension

uh anyways it's actually been a while since I've seen all the president's men, this idea has been sitting in my drafts for a while so I can't really remember all the things I wanted to say about this au, but yeah it was a good idea and idc if my irl friend thought I was delusional for this ✋

[duck-in-a-spaceship]

Just finished up the Dead Poets Society book so here are my many thoughts<3

Overall... I liked it? It is pretty much just a retelling, but I like Dead Poet's Society so I like seeing it retold. I will say I was a little bit disappointed in the author's writing style, though? It's incredibly barebones and minimalistic in a way; she describes what is happening as it's happening and that's mostly it. Honestly, for a book about poetry and art and beauty, I expected a little more from the prose.

As for the changes that were made, most of them were pretty slight. Several of the deleted scenes were added in which I really enjoyed seeing bcs they are canon to me<3 There were some small dialogue changes and some scenes that were shortened which I was like :/ why did you do that they were fine??? But one of the changes I did like was the addition of the cave scene with Keating after the play. That felt really impactful, and I loooove the scene where Todd reads his poem, top tier shit. (side note i do think it was weird he didn't sign but im not gonna go INTO that right now it's a fine choice ig)

With Chris and Knox... I was hoping a book retelling would improve the creepier aspects of this storyline? Especially with a female author?? But she made them worse :((( Like,,, Knox has way more weird dialogue about her, the party scene is wayyy worse, and it all ends with a kiss at the end. Don't like that! I know it's part of the movie I just... why did we have to add to it??

Anywayyyy overall I was a little disappointed but the book had a lot of really good aspects too! The beginning and end were my favorite parts, I feel like they focused on Neil and Todd the most. The beginning was very true to the movie and showed the characters of the poets well, while the ending actually changed a lot but still portrayed the characters well and told the story in a very interesting way. I loved seeing all the extra bits of Neil and Todd's relationship and the extra scenes in Keating's classroom.

I feel too conflicted to give a nice x/10 or 5 star rating, but I did enjoy reading it :D

[wonton4rang]

This or that ¡!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

pairing: bnd x reader.

warnings: basically none but there are mentions of smut in the mtl part (only for the legal line ofc)

summary: bnd using alternative apps + who's most likely to pull an all nighter to binge watch a serie or just movies w you as their s/o.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

APPs:

yt music vs spotify

sungho; he literally uses yt music irl so i don't have to elaborate.

riwoo; spotify fr fr. i just feel it, it's like he likes that green icon idk.

jaehyun; i feel like he wanted to be part of the crew by using spotify but got convinced by sungho to use yt music :'(

taesan; we all know he would go to soundcloud but i'll give him spotify even though he might go to yt music because he finds it more "esthetically" pleasant.

leehan; any or neither? like he doesn't really care. so i'll just randomly give him spotify because it's the most famous one.

woonhak; spotify 100%, you know those kids that want to use the trendy or more used stuff because he wants to be part of the mass? yes, that's woonhak.

google translate vs papago

they all use papago 👍 the only one i feel like would try to use google translator is jaehyun but he will give up two seconds later.

netflix vs crunchyroll

sungho; he has the vibe that he'll watch anime but with the amount of kdrama quotes he knows, he LIVES in netflix wbk.

riwoo; probably kinda cliché but crunchyroll 😔 he is so watching anime with his glasses on while he sips that can of soda and eats some ramen.

jaehyun; netflix, same as sungho, they would actually watch dramas together just so they can talk about it later on when they have breaks during practice. even re-enacting random scenes to the rest of the members.

taesan; idk wow, i'll go for... crunchyroll? idk, it's just that i don't think taesan enjoys that much to sit down and watch something on tv but i'll go for crunchyroll because he likes to have free imagination. he definitely watches some famous or trendy dramas on netflix tho.

leehan; i think he would go with whatever the member next to him is watching and he is 99% of the time with riwoo, the other 1% he is with taesan what leaves us with the fact that he is watching crunchyroll while eating gummies and asking dumb questions.

woonhak; netflix too, he, jaehyun and sungho actually start to watch series together but woonhak misses a day due to homework and it's over for him because the other two binge watched 7 episodes without him so he ends up dropping off a lot of series 😔

star+ vs disney+

sungho; disney+, he ain't that serious to be watching some criminal minds or Grey's anatomy but you can definitely find him watching some big hero 6 and frozen !!

riwoo; i think that it'll depend on his mood but i can see him very into criminal series?? idk, it's just a thought, like it's something you wouldn't expect but i just feel it. plus he watches dance movies fr.

jaehyun; definitely disney+, again... he's watching it w sungho 😔

taesan; i'll go for disney+ because i feel like he would like the classics but i do think that he would be really into criminal stuff just because it makes him think to find out what happened or who's the killer.

leehan; def disney+, he's watching the little mermaid and cinderella everyday for sure. although, like taesan, he also finds appealing the criminal cases so they might watch some of them together.

woonhak; idk tbh, maybe disney+ because of his age but he is CRAVING to go on star+ and watching some marvel and dc stuff.

most to least to pull an all nighter:

sungho; i can see the picture, he has a routine and usually sleeps on time so it wouldn't happen very often but if you ask him nicely enough, given him a few kisses that might turn into something else, he would give in really fast because you're just too cute and pretty for him to say no to you :(

riwoo; definitely says yes and even has the idea himself one day only to fall asleep first and excuse himself the next morning by saying that he works and dances a lot. pls forgive his soul.

jaehyun; had the idea, it's not sleeping until sunrise, and will definitely not let you fall asleep either. i feel like an all nighter with jaehyun would be so fun and noisy like i can't explain it, it's just that jaehyun vibe/ energy that makes me feel like that idk. plus, he's definitely kissing you between movies/ episodes and y'all having to rewind it because you missed over 10 minutes of it.

taesan; well... i hope you don't like all nighters if you are dating this one because he ain't loosing precious sleep time over some business proposal and pizza. next question. now, if he did agreed to do it, he would only make it up until 3am-ish but fair enough !!

leehan; he is fucking you. i'm sorry. there's basically no way you pull an all nighter ALONE with leehan and he doesn't end up engaging with you in a sexual interaction of any type. like be so fr. he is watching whatever you want him to watch and you can just know he is laughing with that innocent smile of his when you tell him what you wanna do.

woonhak; i think he might say yes right away and then backup because he's actually very tired and falls asleep easily and he doesn't wanna leave you alone :( so he might just recommend to cuddle while lovingly talking about your day and falling asleep on each other's arms </3

so the list goes:

MOST.

jaehyun. again, he is so excited and actually wants to watch various movies or just binge watch a short serie (5-8 episodes)

leehan. don't get him wrong, he loves to watch stuff with you but when it's an all nighter he knows that you give in and start feeling hot after the 1:30am mark so he gets excited too.

woonhak. he loves the idea but his body betrays him, probably cause he wakes up earlier to go to school and actually does a lot of stuff during the day so yeah.

riwoo. basically same as woonhak but he ain't that excited, he might even think "why an all nighter when we could just take a day off and do it during the day?" but yeah.

sungho. again, he doesn't dislike the idea, but he has a routine, he really cares about his health, his hours of sleep, the food he eats, the exercise he does, and so on. so staying awake all night ain't his favorite hobbie.

taesan. i do believe he dislikes it, and he'll say so. he will explain that it doesn't make sense to him and he would rather not to. but there's a day that he gives in, giving it a chance because is you and he loves you so much :(

LEAST.

[clare-with-no-i]

theogony part 1 behind the scenes

**SPOILERS ahead for theogony and mild spoilers for Outlander!**

this is just going to be a long infodump of all of the things I pondered while writing theog (specifically part 1, part 2 will come later) but never talked about! I'll try to go chapter by chapter, and maybe I'll end up adding more later on, but for now I just think it'd be fun to chitchat and reminisce on some of my favorite tidbits. this story is really my baby idk :")

Prologue - Alalá

one thing that I wanted to establish in the prologue, other than the obvious James-Sirius dynamic, is the presence of otherworldly or spiritual premonitions in this universe. it was always important to me that the first person who actually made any sort of prophetic declaration was James.

so much of the story relies on Lily's status as an oracle, but this little tidbit here helped build the world for me so much; we can't be sure if James's various dreams and premonitions are wishful thinking, or really the Gods speaking to him, or something else entirely. of course, this story deals with time travel, so there's an inherent supernatural element. but Lily and James's conflicting – and sometimes competing – conceptions of God felt like such a necessary tension for me to explore. it was such an incredible shorthand for the tension between modern and ancient sensibilities. and we never get a definitive answer to those looming questions, which I knew I wanted to do from the outset. did the Gods bring Lily back to the past? did James? did she do it herself? does God/the Gods even exist?

also: there are probably moments where I failed to do this, but I tried to capitalize Gods in all of the James chapters but not in Lily's, unless she was referring to the Abrahamic Capital G God. that is, until the last chapter, which I'll elaborate upon later :)

also: i wrote the prologue first, then the epilogue, and then i posted the prologue pretty immediately after. I had the entire story roughly outlined but I absolutely jumped the gun when it came to posting the prologue LMAO I didn't even really announce the story, I just joked about writing it and then posted the prologue, which you can see from the beginning note. i remember Suze was about to go to sleep and she started messaging me like wtf Clare what do you MEAN?

and the rest was history (pun completely intended)!

Chapter One: Ouroboros

the narrative brushes past the other statues in this section pretty quickly, but I always imagined that the first bust is Philoctetes, James's father. I think the consensus on this one tends to oscillate between Philoctetes and Aristides, which is another great interpretation.

The reason I wrote it this way and imagined it to be Philoctetes is because I thought it would have been nice to let Lily 'meet' James's father (in a sense), even before she 'meets' him. when I read this chapter back after I first finished the story, I had a very soft moment where I close-read my own fic (lol) and thought that maybe it was Philoctetes who sent Lily back to the past. maybe he sensed something about her and knew she'd be right for James and for antiquity.

sooo many people forgot about this! which i was hoping for!!!!! I was hoping everyone would forget about James's statue holding something until the Big Reveal. fun fact is I wrote the reveal right after this. I liked the idea that, no, he was never going to actually be holding anything. he'd be reaching for Lily. the choice to accept his hand was always going to be hers.

a fun fact about this chapter is that I had to pull from a bit more Outlander lore than I originally thought. and no I don't mean the 'Jesus H Roosevelt Christ' part lol. It was always hilarious to me how Outlander set up Claire to be the objectively perfect person to go back in time. she was a combat nurse who happened to develop an interest in medicinal botany and Scottish-English history. she also happened to spend her formative years with her adventurous archaeologist uncle after her only living relatives died. like girl. lol.

so I had to really toss up which traits I thought it would be appropriate for Lily to have as she traveled back in time. the biggest one, obviously, is her field of study, which was necessary given the language barrier and the completely foreign nature of social norms in Classical Athens. I toyed around with the idea of making her mum a nurse so as to give her some base medical knowledge, but that felt a) unnecessary given the circumstances of the story, and b) far-fetched that she would have gleaned enough transferable skills to apply in 479 BCE.

it was also fun to give her more reason to go back to the future; she has a sister who, while they aren't in contact, is a significant emotional attachment; she has academic goals; she has a best friend (however toxic we know him to be). it added a layer of conflict that I enjoyed playing up, even if I definitely could have explored her modern life more fully.

Chapter Two: Kinesis

soooo much exposition and worldbuilding in this chapter. oml. it was so much fun to play around with the reasons why James would be in Tatoi in the first place; I can't remember quite how I landed on the Persian auxiliary soldier thing, it might have been from my initial (admittedly extensive) research on the months leading up to Plataea; it may have just been the fact that I KID YOU NOT this story used to take up all of my fucking brainspace. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd be doing work for my research fellowship and just daydream about theogony. the initial idea came to me AS A JOKE!!!!! when i was idly pondering before going to sleep (as one does), and then it just wouldn't leave me alone. i kept imagining what it might look like. I thought about how the time travel might work. I thought about James's Greek equivalent. I ranted to my sister and her dog (he did not care) about what the statue might look like and mean (sorry bestie love u).

one narrative decision that has given me a bit of strife was the Dimitrios-James name change. I've had a number of people ask me if I'd ever try to pubilsh theog – and this is one of the (many) reasons why that would be pretty categorically impossible. using James's English name in his internal narration, instead of the name I give him as a Greek man, is something that only translates to fic. it makes pretty much no sense at all if you consider these original characters lol.

honestly putting the word 'practicum' in here caused me SO much pain. in James's chapters I tried really hard to use words which had Greek roots and not Latin roots, even if they're in modern English today. in most of his chapters, I'd try and find synonyms for big/complex words so I could use ones that came from Greek. it just helped me stick to his narrative voice a bit more.

I forgot how much STUFF went on in this chapter. oh my god SO much happens?? we get the lack of the Parthenon as the time marker (felt very clever doing that), Lily processing the fact that she's time traveled (lazy writing on my part to not have this happen in a Lily POV chapter but I'll take that on the chin), the Plataea reveal. OML. tired just thinking about it. lily sweetie i am so sorry

guys, the amount of time I spent wondering if I should Greek-ify Sirius's name is insane. For so long I thought about making him Seirios, which is the original Greek version of Sirius. But I felt like I had already messed with their names too much, and so I left it. but honestly I'm still torn. looking back, maybe it would have been the right move to make him Seirios and have Lily give him the name Sirius, but I guess we'll never know!

one of my favorite Sirius moments, and something that, essentially, sets up the rest of the story. but I wanted there to be a little ambiguity throughout the story about how much of this Sirius actually believes.

we know that James has just confessed to Sirius and Pétros that he was hoping they'd desert the Athenian army. we know that he thinks he's going to die, and he's adopted this sort of fatalist view of his future. and then here you have Sirius, who could never abide such a thing, pretty much leaning into the idea that Lily can tell the future – which would allow him to challenge James's prediction. I always wanted to leave it up to interpretation, and I know it comes up in later chapters (at the komos especially), Sirius's skepticism about Lily's origins. but it's such a fun question to ask: does he really believe that she's the Oracle that James prayed for, or does he just need that to be true so he can try and influence the future himself?

Chapter Three: Peribolos

omg. lol. the chapter three opening academic argument scene. this is a favorite of mine, and something I had so much fun writing. it's actually based on an argument/"spirited discussion" I had with my dad a few years ago about moral absolutism versus moral relativism which forced me to interrogate and expand my knowledge on the subject. I thought it was such a fun way to get into Lily's politics and her character without doing crazy exposition in the ancient world.

it also touches upon one of the touchstone themes of the story: that to study something is, in a way, to detach yourself from it. academia is routintely completely disconnected from its subject matter, and it creates this weird disdain for lived experience versus book knowledge. Lily has spent upwards of ten years studying (in some capacity) the ancient world, but she is so utterly out of her depth when she experiences it herself. as such, she espouses these very revolutionary politics when examining historical conflicts, but she has a blindness to what the real-world realities may have been for the people living in those conditions at the time.

alsooooo, The Return of Martin Guerre is one of my favorite books I read in college, and the easter egg here is that it's about a person of dubious origin entering a community and the politics of how the community might accept or reject them. ha ha!

^^based on something I said in an argument with a Poli Sci major in college and I have to say one of my better moments. was an absolute haymaker. this was very 'author gives main character a zinger' of me and I will not be ashamed of it

this! ladies and gentlemen! this was basically a declaration of love!!!! to be loved is to be remembered!!!

in a very romantic way, the study of history can be such an act of love to those who lived before us. i just adore the idea that, even before Lily developed real romantic feelings for James, she had this itching sort of feeling; AKA, when someone has made such an impression on you, and you know (or in her case, you think) that you'll be leaving them at some point, and you just want to be interesting enough, be impressive enough, that they remember you, that they think of you randomly as time goes on. that is such a giddy hallmark feeling of having a crush, in my book. I liken it to making eye contact with someone or having a brief conversation on a night out, maybe at 3am on your way back from a bar when things are sleepy and dizzy, and you just have this sense that you're being seen in that moment as anyone you want to be. i love this moment so much I feel like I could give it its own meta LMAO

Chapter Four: Hamartia

this chapter really put the pedal to to the metal lol. at the time of writing the story, I generally didn't (and still don't) love fake dating that much as a trope; I don't typically love plotlines predicated on (even harmless) deceptions, it's just a sensitivity of mine that I don't expect anyone to relate to or share. but when I was considering how to structure theog, it just made so much sense for James and Lily's arcs to have them get 'married.' there was no way that Lily was going to be able to navigate Classical Athens as an unsupervised woman alone, and even with the Oracle title offering her some protection, there was nothing really tying her to James. much like Outlander, it really did feel like the last possible resort, which softened me to the idea of using the trope.

fun fact, i got a snarky comment a few months ago complaining that i was trying to pass the story off as historically accurate (lol to the fifteen disclaimers I embedded throughout which addressed that) and one thing they took issue with was that lily wouldn't have been able to own property and the only thing that would have kept her from being a slave would have been marriage.

which! yknow! none of which contradict the story! but anyway I digress.

I was initially nervous about how early on the fake marriage happens; we don't really know the characters that well yet, we're not sure who James is as a potential partner to Lily, or how Lily's feelings for him are starting to bump up against her very rightful and justified desire to get the hell out of dodge. but – we only really see James in canon as a husband and as the father to the main character, so it felt pretty true to the source material to throw him into being a husband pretty early.

I loved writing this scene with Aristides. I've always been partial to his appearances throughout the story, and this one is just so special to me. I think of him as a driving force in humanizing the ancient world in theog, sometimes even more so than the main cast of characters. to elaborate a bit on that: with the Marauders and Lily and the other transplanted HP characters, I think there's this inherent sense that they are already fleshed out people (to some degree) even before they hit the page of the story, because they appear in canon and across Marauder fic verses. no matter how much I make James into Dimitrios and Peter into Pétros and Fleamont into Philoctetes, people know them and love them outside of theogony verse. but not Aristides. he doesn't have a one-to-one HP character. there is some version of him that really existed in 479 BCE (my complex and largely negative feelings on RPF are setting off alarms at this but we proceed) and that's it.

it would have been easy to just give him this very gruff and surly character, to make him a military general who didn't care about anything other than the war. I think that's how we conceptualize historical people sometimes, often without meaning to. but he was a person, and he had likes and dislikes, he probably had a family and maybe he'd fallen in love, and it was such an honor to give him such dimension. not to say that I'm putting that personality upon the actual historical person; but just to really take my time with a character outside of the Marauder canon. in this scene he has this human moment where he reminds James that, yes, love is a worthy pursuit, even to those in positions of incredible power. even when the discussion isn't about romantic love but about James's love for his closest friends. it's this permission that James didn't even know he was seeking but ultimately that changes the course of his and Lily's lives. Aristides is who James might become, in many ways. in the actual Plataea chapter this becomes more and more prevalent. (more on this later!)

overall, I am forever hoping that people come out of reading this story with an appreciation for the humanity of those that came before us. I did a poor job with other characters in this story, and I own that, but I'm proud of how I wrote Aristides.

oh my godddddd I fucking love this part. i am so fucking proud of it. LMAO. achieving wordplay in an ancient language that i have never studied should be on my fucking CV I swear. like this was just perfect I'm sorry I am BUZZING that I pulled this off.

also, a cute way to introduce a phrase to the narrative which will become very important: se filo!

I remember that I wrote this passage, which many people commented on and which I loved writing, in a coffee shop on a sunny day when my cousin was visiting me to introduce me to his girlfriend. there wasn't any wifi in the coffee shop so I was blessedly devoid of distractions and could only focus on the doc, and i was LOCKED IN let me tell you.

when my cousin and his girlfriend arrived I told them I was sending an important email and edited the last sentence of that paragraph about four different times while they sat in silence and waited for me to finish LMAOOO

Chapter Five: Ascesis

a profoundly insane moment in my personal history was reading excerpts from Eudemian Ethics, Nichomachean Ethics, and Memorabilia just to passively mention them in a flashback in a fic. relied heavily on Foucault for this, I will be so honest. why did i do that tho. like girl take a breath...

but in all seriousness this was just a joy to write. i miss being a history student and having these discussions – law school is great, but history classes will forever hold my heart ngl! also, this passage is in some ways an homage to my grandfather, who is one of my favorite people ever. he taught himself Classical Greek and Latin when he was in his 20s, before he went to medical school (and get his pilot's license for fun, he's seriously the most interesting guy alive). he gifted me his leatherbound Great Books printings of Aristotle's works and of the Iliad and the Odyssey shortly after I started theogony, and I cherish them so much. he spurred my interest in ancient greece when i was young. so this is for him :)

one of the hardest things for me to articulate (and maybe something I could have done better) was the war and the balance between James's inherent goodness and his growing feelings for Lily. i wanted her to have plausible reason to think that he doesn't at all feel romantically towards her, even as she's growing to admire him more and more. I hoped, as I wrote the story, that these little interactions where the reader clues into his feelings (this protective 'peninsula' moment being one of them) still walked that line. as in, i wanted lily to reasonably believe that he's just that good of a guy that he would take issue with anyone being taken advantage of, not just her. she's so destabilized in this moment as well, I think that worked to my advantage. or I hoped it did LOL.

from what I remember of writing this chapter, it just came really quickly and naturally. much more than the later ones. this early period of writing was just an outpouring of the ABSOLUTE BRAINROT I was going through after conjuring up the idea for the story. it just flew. the ending scene where they have their little almost-moment was probably about an hour's worth of writing. it's like I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. not sure i've experienced that since!

also, the now, here, alive line reappears in the last chapter, which is one of my favorite callbacks:

:) :) :)

Chapter Six: Kleos

one thing I used to worry about CONSTANTLY is that I was losing the classic (and necessary!) Marauder goofiness to the more somber setting. so it was a jaunt and a boon to write scenes like the opening one here, where it honestly could be copy-pasted into the Gryffindor Common Room and it'd look a lot like my canon stories.

he's just a dude being hungover and embarrassed about the previous night with his bros!

the first time we get a hint of Pétros disappearing to dubious locations!

this chapter was one of the most research-heavy. it was a new setting, filled with new characters, and predicated entirely upon planning the Greek front at Plataea. so if I couldn't nail that down (at least to some degree), I was going to have trouble. of course I took liberties, but I spent a lot longer combing through sources for this chapter than some other ones, I'll tell you that for free. it took ages to find any treatises on ancient athenian sword combat, sigh.

yeah I mean i remember thinking that the subtitle for this chapter could have been 'I am going to create an environment that is so toxically masculine' because that's pretty much the whole vibe. James is not immune to that, either, and that was intentional. he feeds off of the violence and the anger of the men surrounding him, and he exhibits some behaviors in this chapter (rushing off to kill Anaxagoras after he grabs Lily's arm, for instance) which are not ideal! but I do think that there's meaningful conversation to be had about Lily's cultural assimilation into an ancient, misogynistic society, and how there was absolutely no way I was going to get out of this story without giving James some sort of period-typical attitude. now again, I took the liberties I deem necessary, because I have no desire to make my main romantic lead into an asshole. that's not my James Potter. not that that's news [gets taken out by a sniper]

i got CLOWNEDDD for referring to this dude as Dion son of Dion but idk what to tell you!! that's how the old documents referred to him!!! i didn't make that shit up I swear to god!!!!

also - that's the actual text of the Oath of Plataea, except (as Lily points out) it should read Athena Areia. is it likey that she'd remember this off the dome? no. is it possible that she just recognized the missing descriptor from context clues? yes. did i care enough to explain this either way? no, no i did not.

the Big Ticket Item of this chapter, though, is the oh.

and it wasn't just an oh, it was an oh followed by this innocuous conclusion that isn't even about Lily. i made myself laugh so hard with that. he's just like 'oh god my friend is going to wave this over my head FOREVER' and you know what? he's right!

as for the previous paragraph in that passage, I pulled a bit of a bait and switch, but not as badly as you might think! it was a risk to even bring up the idea that James could leave Athens, because I know it spurred some people into thinking that he'd go to the future with Lily (sorry babies that was not on the table). but what I intended for this passage (however successful it may or may not have been) was to just…allow him a moment of real, visceral empathy for the sensation of displacement that Lily's experiencing, and as well, introduce the idea that he might leave the life he's cultivated in Athens. his entire upbringing has been himself, the consummate Athenian man, surrounding himself with people from outside of Athens and drawing from their experiences, but never venturing outside of his little realm. in so many ways, the story questions what Lily's relationship with 'home' is (especially later on), but it always felt necessary to me to reckon with how 'home' may change for James as well.

finally:

yeah honestly i just remember the exact moment i thought of this passage. i had been reading the secret history (shoutout Donna Tartt i idolize and fear you) and i was lying down in my local park in the summer. I just thought about the Greek myths I knew, and the kind of cosmic horror that it is to really admit you're falling in love with someone, that they have this power over you that you didn't anticipate. and that closing line of the scene really struck me out of nowhere – I wrote it down in my notebook and just stared at it for a good few minutes. it's still one of my favs of the story :)

ok! if you made it this far, you are just amazing. this has to be a few thousand words at least. TYSM!!!!

see you all later for the part 2 BTS ❤️

[poor-ciceros-voring-again]

Maybe I'll elaborate more on this later when I've worked out more of the details? I just think it's a fun idea. A little Cult au. Rip the town of gravity falls tbh

Hm so like. Instead of the Portal incident ever happening, Ford just goes a long with whatever Bill says. It's defs a gay situation obvs because ofc it is. And Fiddleford realizes and creates the Society of the Blind Eye to try to defeat Bill once he realizes that Ford is Too Far Gone™

Fiddleford ends up calling for Stan's help in the matter because MAYBE family will convince him what's going on??? It doesn't help any and Ford ends up trying to recruit Stan, who is SO unimpressed by bills manipulation tactics cause like. Stan knows those tactics cause he used them for his scams.

And like. There's a long fight between them. The Society grows in popularity a bit via Stan's charisma and Fiddleford's smarts and BillFord are manipulating people to follow their cause in any way they can

Eventually, Ford is called :) to take care of the twins for a summer. Of course he agrees! Who easier to manipulate and use for your own gain than 12 year old children! Nobody would suspect them.

Dipper falls for it so fucking easily. Mabel on the other hand is very... Sus of it all, and kinda realizes something is *off*. And like. Stan finds out about them being here and wants to see them, cause it's his family too! And he's SO concerned about them being around Ford!!! He does manage to find Mabel separated from them all and talks to her about it and asks if they're okay and Mabel ends up staying with Stan and Fiddleford instead of Ford and Dipper etc etc

Yeah Idk I think it'd be neat. Normally I try to do some kind of serial killer type au for things but I think a cult au would do SO much better for them.

Also this image is one of the ones that inspired my brain because I was thinking about what could possibly make Dipper and/or Mabel join the Society of the Blind Eye. I decided on just Mabel to make the split twin tension parallel to Ford and Stan's split.

[soupermarket]

AAAAAHHH!!! Mer au be upon ye

Been working on designs for my fanfic (that I'll probably be rewriting I don't like how I characterized them).... fish archie.

He's based on a Demanson's Cichlid :3 which are. really difficult to draw for some reason

More under the cut!!! Fish rambling and lore stuff. Plus fish maxie that I am currently too lazy to color or otherwise finish

Man I love mer aus. Uhm. FISH BEAM BLAST AUGHHH!!!

Archie is currently 37 years old in this au (unless I change it. LOL)

Him, along with Matt and Shelly (and maybe other members of team aqua in the rewrite. idk), live in the wreckage of a ship fairly deep underwater, choosing to stay as far away from humans as possible. In contrast to this, Maxie and his group take more inspiration from humans in their little settlement thingy, choosing to take scraps of metal and other things to build their home.

Most merfolk live in groups called pods, in the rework of the fanfic I'll elaborate more on this but. I'm lazy right now. Sorry.

Anyways Archie is generally more like??? adventurous and stuff, and him and the other members of his pod are like. really tight-knit. They're also generally more muscular than the members of Maxie's group, choosing to hunt fish & other prey using their own strength and speed, whereas the magmas use traps and stuff.

Also. Maxie has a collection of little human trinkets and stuff. Most of the space in his den/house thing is just like. trinkets. He also has a very unfriendly relationship with dolphins. I admittedly haven't done much with it in the original since it's... y'know... one chapter at the moment... but ill do more in the rewrite i prommy.

ANYWAYS!!!! Fish beam blast MAXIE

He's a common mudskipper. I love common mudskippers and just mudskippers in general really. Top tier fish.

He doesn't have glasses because. reasons involving the fact that he lives in the ocean.

However. I plan on giving him glasses eventually, he'll probably find a pair and think "Oh joy!! A new human invention I have not yet seen! Joyous day!!" and he decides to constantly wear them even though they make his vision like, ten times Worse.

Goodbye for now. I will inevitably post more Fish later. like when i finish the maxie design. LOL!!

(If you would like to read the fanfic even though it's like. ugly at the moment. It's "Sunlight on the Ocean's Like the Scars on Your Skin" on a03. Enjoy.)

[robertfettuccine]

My Post-May the Fourth Bad Batch Thoughts

there's lots of 'em

[spoilers]

To start off, I was So excited for the finale I stayed up to watch it when it came out (1am in my time zone) and idk it didn’t feel worth it to do that during finals week after watching the ep

Maybe I had too high expectations but I figured that to wrap up the entire show we’d at least get an hour? Maybe more? I was hoping for something like the s1 premiere but no 51 minutes and you suffer.

Ok I've decided to put my thoughts into 15 minute increments for Organization Purposes

Part One thoughts:

Ok so right away I feel the "wrecker is gonna die" vibes. "Can you make it?" "Try and stop me." It feels very final it feels like he won't. I def thought my first time around that he wasn't gonna make it

The way Hemlock holds that gloved hand... I thought surely that had to be important somehow. I've been wondering about it since he was introduced.

Echo looks like handsome squidward sorry

The way Omega rewires the droid.. Tech. But the way she starts giving orders to the rest of the kids is so Hunter. She really is her fathers' (plural) daughter.

Sidenote the way her theme combines with a light, string-heavy version of the Bad Batch theme while she and the kids are getting ready to leave the vault... mmmm me when music

Ok back to the Batch and ough.. Wrecker is seriously hurt this had me so nervous they're out of med patches I thought for Sure he was gone

Imagine you're in the military and you get sent to some super secret boring base and your whole job is to stand around and guard a submerged lizard (?) and you're already confused and over it and then you find a bunch of kids in your walls???

WOw this is really minor but the cut from the kids and the Zillo to Echo and Emerie at 9:46 felt Really awkward. That's all.

the HAND thing again what is With that Hemlock??

Wrecker again with the Dying

REX MENTION!!!!! WTF IS A BAD HELMET PAINT JOB

"Clone Force 99 died with Tech" what a great line. If only it carried emotional weight within the rest of the story. If only the character's actions made that make sense. Hmm.

"If we all go in, we're not all making it out" see this is why I thought I was getting rogue one'd

"Omega needs you both" is sweet and cool, but she doesn't. She's proved this whole season that she's competent on her own. Idk.

Plan 99 namedrop? Also crosshair's self hatred and guilt is so devastating he's constantly trying to atone and it's so.....

Tech namedrop????? And for WHAT??????????

nOO that stormtrooper.. they done squished his ass

Jax is afraid of heights! Just like Wrecker!! Good character moment for everybody.

Part 1 TLDR: The first third of this episode was full of contrast, which was super interesting to watch. Omega and the kids are doing great, the lighting on them is generally softer and.. idk, lighter. They get hopeful music and they succeed. The Batch on the other hand..... everything is so ominous. It feels like somebody's gonna die (and it feels like it's Wrecker). My main gripes: some of the jump cuts feel like the episode was hastily stitched together and they don't make sense, I don't really know what to do with that knowledge. The Plan 99 conversation didn't make any sense within the context of this season (I'll elaborate later). Positives: Omega is really winning this ep, you can see all of her brothers in her and it's beautiful. What they've done with her theme in the music I Love. That moment with Omega and Jax when he says he's afraid of heights is really sweet.

Part Two Thoughts:

Ok starting off strong, Scorch questioning his orders for a bit? He's going to lose brothers? The door closes before we can hear what he says over the comm? I really thought maybe Scorch redemption.

Ok Hemlock is activating the CXs. There's four of them.

They all have different armor.. and different body types.. very similar to the batch....... hmmmmmmm

CX-2!! *clown noises*

Ok close up on the same CXs from before. One of them uses blades. One has.. sci-fi brass knuckles? CX-2 is there. This feels like Evil Bad Batch.

THE CLOSE UP ON CX-2 SPECIFICALLY WHY IS HE IMPORTANT

wrecker dying again uhnnnnnnhnhhhhhhhhhh

The brass knuckles CX just grabbed a panel of Something and used it as a shield. That's Plan 82. That's Wrecker's job.

WHY IS THERE ONE WITH GOGGLES JUST LIKE TECH'S? WHY

Goggles clone duel wields sword-vibroblades. ?

The one with the staff.. Hunter?

Ok Vibro-Sword CX, why toss the Sword to CX-2 so he can cut off Crosshair's hand? Why not just do it yourself? Those things have enough reach that he could have sliced it off himself.

The way CX-2 talks is Just like Crosshair. The inflections are exactly the same.

Ok I get Hemlock's a sadist but why keep the Batch alive at all? Seems like that's more dangerous than experimenting on them is productive

Echo and Omega's reunion is lovely. "Hey kid. And... other kids." he's doing amazing

Using the Chief Scientist's datapad just like last time Omega escaped... nice.

Hemlock's hand again.

Ok so crosshair just gets a hand stump and we move on?? This whole scene felt weird and out of place to me but Especially that.

Yeah!! Clone rebellion. Echo is Fives if he won (and had no melanin)

Maybe Electrostaff CX is Wrecker? He seems taller and has a wider build.

But nvm Brass Knuckles CX plays wrecker's part in the batch and Electrostaff doesn't

GOGGLES AGAIN WITH THE SWORDS?? WhY isn't CX-2 fighting with the rest why is he with Hemlock why does he stand out so much WHY

"My work will always be Kaminoan" yeah Nala Se isn't redeemed for me she's still a supremacist and a eugenicist and she and Rampart both deserved what they got. Satisfying ending for them both though.

Part 2 TLDR: This part had a ton of potential. There were a lot of suspenseful and mysterious shots. The story started getting more intense, even though the kids escaped successfully. There was weight there, and as an audience we could tell how much was on the line. I loved watching this part. My main gripes: Honestly none with this part alone. All of it felt pretty in-character, it had depth, it had weight, and it had meaning in the story. It makes less sense when we get to Part 3 though. Positives: I absolutely loved watching this part of the ep. It had me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out just what was going on with the CXs and who wasn't going to make it out. Giving Echo the chance to continue his brother's mission and free the clones was great. Nala Se and Rampart both got a fitting end, I was very satisfied with that as well.

Part Three Thoughts:

Wrecker is fighting Staff Guy (possibly Evil Wrecker) oh that would've been so cool

And they just STABBED HIM?? JUST LIKE THAT?? What was with the focus on CX-2 throughout the ENTIRE SEASON when he literally Didn't Matter At All???

We're not even gonna talk about the hand then huh. Ok.

Closeup of the Goggles Helmet?? What was the purpose. What was it.

And then they have SOmeone pick up the sword and helmet all ominously and then it's just some guy. We see his face. It kinda looks too small for his body. Like bad photoshop

Ok so echo doesn't have lungs? or like..

There is Such a focus on the Goggles. Like we were never supposed to see his face. Like it was maybe supposed to be suspenseful.

Ok why so ominous if Wrecker is just gonna shove his face into a wall instantly? Why all the suspense and cool shots?

When CX-2's ship blew up I thought for sure it was from Rex or Phee's ship. But no. (can regular DC-15s even Do that?)

HNNNNNHG wet hair Hunter

SCORCH?? Ok so he could have been some random guy and it wouldn't have made a difference. What was the purpose. Why did he have a name? Why bring in a Legends character just to get rid of him in the most anticlimactic way possible?

Hemlock threatening Omega literally doesn't make any sense? It carries Zero weight. Omega even brings it up and Hemlock doesn't respond. Because it doesn't make sense for his character. Why.

Nice little callback with Crosshair's shoulder rest

Crosshair shooting Omega's binders off should be a tense moment but it's not. There's nothing at stake here. We know he won't shoot Omega. What am I supposed to be feeling?

Ok seeing Hemlock just get absolutely Pelted was nice

She hugged Crosshair first. Maybe we can start resolving some of his guilt. If we actually took time to show characters processing their emotions.

We're Still not talking about the hand? That feels notable, is that just me???

Ok and everyone just.. leaves. We just leave. It's done? Where was the climax supposed to be genuine question

Ok so we're namedropping now. Project Stardust with a nice subtle imperial march in the background. Okay?

We are back on Pabu now. The clone kids are there. The clones are there. The kids are there. Emerie is there. Everybody's happy.

Where is Phee?

Echo's ending is actually fine. I went into this ep the first time thinking for Sure he was going to die. Instead he's doing what Fives died trying to do. He's the last Domino but he doesn't have to fall and I think that's ok. But why isn't he with Rex in Rebels?

"With Hemlock gone, and his data destroyed, they're finally safe" - M. Night Shyamalan in the ATLA movie because we must Tell our audience Everything. Seriously why are we telling the audience something they can see? Why does Omega say that out loud? Nobody would say that. It's obvious. That line was just SO out of place

No real goodbyes for Echo though? No sweet character moments? No reactions from anyone?

Nice clones theme though. Fives would be proud.

All the dialogue between Omega and Hunter in this final scene just feels so.. off. Lazy. Show us what's going on, don't tell.

Why do Crosshair and Wrecker feel like such an afterthought here? Why is it so Awkward? Why were they over saying goodbye to Echo and Omega and Hunter weren't? It feels like they weren't supposed to make it out. It feels weird. It feels forced.

Part 3 TLDR: This was the part of the ep that just fell flat for me. It had some cool moments, but it felt really rushed and poorly thought out. It feels very out of place with the previous 30mins. It almost feels to me like it was rewritten, although I may just be delusional. My main gripes: This part of the ep should have had the big emotional moments and also wrapped up all the loose ends introduced in the rest of the season. It did none of that for me. Why cut off Crosshair's hand to have none of the characters really acknowledge his sacrifice? That isn't a resolution to his arc. None of the Things that happened to the Batch this season were processed at all, and everyone except Hunter and Omega was pretty much sidelined towards the end. CX-2, who was built up all season, died in a super unsatisfying way. The dialogue and staging of that final scene felt super off. The cavalry never arrived. Positives: As always, the Kiners killed it. The music was great. I love a happy ending, that rarely happens in Star Wars and I would've absolutely eaten it up under the right circumstances. Watching Hemlock finally get it was super satisfying. Echo's ending as a continuation of the Domino Squad's quest for clone individuality was really fitting actually. That One shot of Tantiss... glorious.

Epilogue Thoughts:

The way the city is set up on Pabu makes it look just like Tantiss in the overhead shot.

Aww the red bandana in Omega's hair

Hunter aged much better than Rex.

"We want to keep you safe" "You're our kid Omega" OK WHERE IS THE WE? WHERE IS THE OUR????

Ha she's taller than him short king Hunter wins

"Keep an eye on Wrecker and Crosshair" you're not gonna say bye? They aren't gonna see you off?? No way Wrecker would be ok with that

The GOGGLES :((((

Omega's lil salute like Tech in S2E4 Faster my heart

Where are Crosshair and Wrecker in the epilogue. It feels like a weird choice to leave them out. They're just as much her dads as Hunter is.

Epilogue TLDR: Honestly I liked that this was their ending. Finally, some Star Wars characters can have peace. With that said, My main gripes: significant lack of Crosshair and Wrecker, who absolutely wouldn't have let omega leave without saying goodbye. Similarly, lack of Phee, who seemed to be becoming a mother figure to Omega. I can't imagine she wouldn't have seen her daughter off. Positives: old Hunter. We don't get to see that many clones age, and Rebels animation, as much as I love it, just didn't quite do it justice. It was great to see some characters get to actually live out full (ish) lives at peace. Also older Omega's character design was peak.

Oooookay so this ended up being a Lot longer than I intended it to be when I started writing it but I just had a lot of thoughts on the finale and needed to put them somewhere. I loved the experience of being a part of the Bad Batch fandom from start to finish, and I made some great memories for sure. While the finale wasn't necessarily what I was hoping for from this show, I loved being delusional with everybody. Plus, this isn't the end. (we know they won't give up the clone wars animation style it makes them too much money)

[summertimemusician]

Linktober Shadow Day 6

Shadow Beast

The Twilight Princess fan in me really came out on this one huh? I blame the sleep deprivation. We never quite addressed the effects of the Twili Magic on Twilight and how it's only sheer force of will and the fact he's so darn kind, Midna's influence and Time teaching him the Song of Healing first being the main factor in making sure he doesn't fall huh? Even more so than the One Cutscene. We also need to talk more about the fact we technically kill Midna's people and how by the end of it all Twi is so changed by the Twilight Realm who's it's own can of worms that, much like Time he can't quite go home as himself me thinks, as a treat to myself

Mostly Twilight x Reader, this goes out to all of the folks who never quite recovered from Twilight Princess and the fact we never got that sequel (I mean it gave us BOTW and TOTK and Wild, but at what cost?), but can be read as Link x Reader either on the platonic or romantic.

Don't think there's any warning this time but might edit later if needed.

Actually yeah there is one warning

TW:

References to body horror typical to Twilight Princess, though I recommend not reading it I'd you're squeamish period.

Even after so long, you and Twilight could still remember the beauty and solemnity of the Twilight Realm, with it’s zircon skies with clouds of trapped fire and rains of viper obsidian.

The silence of the infection upon the realm of light broken only by the echoes of the howling elegy of the Twili and Interlopers who came before creeping over the land like rot and wither over flowers, the lament of the lost spirits of the people and animals of Hyrule falling over your spirit like a shroud, a shared hymm from two worlds reality had been twisted, only both of it’s princess, one filled the luster of empyreal sorrow in her mind and one with the scorch abyssal fury in her heart knowing to see the reflective tragedy befallen to their people. With Link as the one who restored the memory of what once was in both worlds as divinity and calamity sang in his bones and you a witness to the restoration of harmony to the discordant symphony, the two different songs of light and shadow refusing to let go of either of you in an eternal duet.

(Once touched by magic, it shall never leave the one if holds onto Twilight may have been the one with the Beast in his soul, with the howl of a wolf, the bite of shades in his veins and the lament of innocents taking precedence over anything purely because he learned how to silence the whispers of the one’s who made a grab for heaven’s throat and we’re pushed in the cracks of reality for their prideful vánitas even as he could taste it in the back of his tongue, twining around his ribs and overgrowing into his shattered mirror heart like vines, flowering with the divinity and eternal nature of the Hero’s Spirit, already having the hunt of the Fierce Deity in it’s veins and the remains of cursed divinity welcoming the new aspect merrily so he could bear it. The song of the innocent wrongly punished among the sinners rang into your mind, scratched at your skin and dug it’s claws around your throat, chocking you with sorrow and regret, more willing to leave gouges than to let go of someone’s who’s looked into the reverse side of the sacred realm and wept with grief for it’s people and the curse of it’s beauty.

It would never leave you, Link or Zelda, who learned who love the darkness the way Midna did, madness and unsightly delight and all.)

While the people of Hyrule merely became trapped as observers at best, if they were lucky, Midna’s raging grief and resentment quickly became obvious, once she revealed that rotten Zant had done to her and her people, twisted into a new form, distorted in body and trapped in mind like the animals and beasts of Hyrule, their pain driving them in becoming feral attack hounds for the usurper, their howling screams as much sorrow, wailing in an attempt to let their agonized, tortured souls to escape from it’s mouth, a futile attempt to flee from the strain of reality forgetting their true form in favor of Zant’s twisted design, of being used as sentient canvases for cruelty and ruthlessness, of their will being stepped over in favor of corrupting recreation.

Of how it only didn’t quaff down at Midna’s mind because of the nature of her ephemerality, fully beloved by the Realm of Darkness, of how she loathed him for it and wouldn’t wish her fate of that of her people’s on any living or dead soul, once she came to love the Realm of Light through Zelda’s sacrifice.

Which was why, when you saw three of the victims of the telltale twisting from darkness utilized with the intent to drive one insane, a familiar looking plate of stone engraved on the remains of ashes from their identity, the curling of distorted, solid darkness making crooked mishapen manes, bent out of shape from their too long torso and long, long arms adorned with twitching, deformed claws, you feel very justified in way your blood froze, holding onto Wild’s arms and yanking with all you had so his shot will miss, his yelp of surprise swallowed by the bone cracking, blood curdling screech from one of the beasts as a Skyward Strike grazed it’s petrified flesh.

You feel something warm drip down your ears, taste the promise of violence and the cry of lost souls on the back of your tongue and swallow it down as the memory of the Twilight Realm attempted to bite and crack your ribcage to quaff down your heart, to devour it bones and all, calling out in desperation, “Don’t! That’s a person!”

Sky freezes, as still as a statue, Legend curses the heavens crimson in a way you are so glad Wind isn’t around to hear as he retreats Twilight snarls, the wolf in him revolted and disgusted, you wonder if the Twilight is singing in his mind too as he restrains himself from reaching for the crystal as nails just a tad too sharp invite droplets of blood to one hand, grimm as a graveyard “We need to get them together anyway, felling just one won’t be enough.”

You grimace, releasing Wild, keeping your eye on the Shadow Beasts and another on your group, pointedly not mentioning the twitch in Four, amethyst clouding his gaze and the prism of his eyes turning gray with memories you and Twilight both knew all too well, of the grimace in Time’s otherwise stony countenance, you’d wished to avoid bloodshed of whoever was turned against their will, but you and Twilight both knew that might not be possible, death, unfortunately, might be the greatest mercy you can grant these poor souls.

(The Twilight is harmonizing in your ears, jeering, you feel the Interlopers insanity and the Twili’s lament on your teeth. As lovely as it could be cruel, the merry feeling upon meeting, the sorrow at a parting.

If you ever see the Shadow, you might just try indulging the echo by offering it’s blood as tribute. You'd make it hurt. The fact it learned the spell used to deform reality in such a way was cruel and vile.)

“Legend, how is your magic?” shoots Warriors, analyzing, calculating, it snaps the purple back into Four’s gaze, brings his mind back to focus as he reaches into his inventory for his Moon Pearl, Twilight is circling the beasts with single minded purpose, herding them together and prowling as he would as a wolf, Wild thankfully listened to your warning and had switched from the more destructive Flame and Lightning Arrows to ice ones. It doesn’t contain them for long but it gives a few precious seconds to strategize.

Legend catches on, switching to the Ice Rod on one hand and grasping his own Moon Pearl with the other, Sky has another Skyward Strike ready, but doesn’t release it, you switch from your sword to accepting a Magic Rod tossed at you from Wild, “Good enough.”

You breath in shakily, the symphony of the Twilight Realm has quieted, more lament than anthem as it’s Hero steps back, returning to your side, he nods grimly, “... Then, let’s end this quickly.”

You know your will boys will do their best to heal them, and failing that, you hope that they’ll hear the requiem of the Twili rather than the lament once they’re at peace, that they'll find some form of threnody.

It is a horrible thing, to be forced to die as a beast.

[crystallizsch]

hi ian i come bearing angst fuel for the yuusha as twsted elsa (maybe an idea for her possible overblot idk she kinda reads to me as someone whod preemptively isolate in the case she feels...blotty)

(also seeing that art of her playing violin totally didnt fuck me up im still nursing my bruised heart 🥴🥴💕💕)

https://youtu.be/NDldNaEZTt8?si=Wm71pgTltuJLjFvk

^^this is from the frozen musical where they gave a song to elsa to explore her emotional turmoil and it just fleshed out her character so much more than the orig movie (ok i havent seen frozen 2 oops) but just this section here:

Is everyone in danger as long as I'm alive?

Was I a monster from the start?

How did I end up with this frozen heart?

Bringing destruction to the stage

Caught in a war that I was never meant to wage

anyways lmao i jus think the song is neat i think yuushas neat (i wanna see more of her ahehehe i love seeing infodumps abt ur yuus)

-diodellet

(throwback to this “what if yuu had magic” ask where i had a ✨realization✨ and this more recent yuusha lore drop that i gave zero elaboration on 🙃)

very rough ob yuu design??? idk i came up with it on the spot ;;; and it’s kinda based on disney’s concept art of elsa when she was supposed to be the villain.

evil ice queen vibes :3

also i know the ob monster is supposed to be based on the villain— which is elsa in this case— but lowkey. an ice monster is way cooler.

also also i just realized after i drew this i couldve done a grim/yuu tandem overblot ough 🤧🤧 (next time I'll do that instead if i ever go back to this concept)

(read more below because it got SO long)

AAH anyways hi hi dio!!! when i saw your ask i went —

— with this entire post

AAGH HOW MANY MORE UNINTENTIONAL CONNECTIONS ARE GOING TO BE BETWEEN FROZEN AND YUUSHA

i guess watching the movie everyday when it came out when you’re like 9 does something to your brain chemistry (and still haunts you at least a decade later) 💀

but anyways the angst ;;; overblot yuu ;;;;; my brain is rotting and the worms have taken over

also i didn’t even know that there was a frozen broadway musical so im gonna have to check it out later 🏃💨💨💨

(also dont worry frozen 2 is a nice watch for the most part but the way they concluded the characters did not feel 100% satisfying to me 😭 BUT i love some of the songs tho ;;; kristoff’s goofy 80s ballad song is one of them specifically, i need everyone to listen to it)

hfgnnfhfgv anyways thank you so much i’m chugging that angst fuel as i expand more on a possible ob yuusha with another infodump 💪💪💪

⚠️⚠️⚠️ ALSO IM SORRY BUT mentions of taking one’s own life so please proceed with caution ⚠️⚠️⚠️

i had to reread what my initial thoughts about it bc it was months ago??? and after rereading im just like, huh what was i on— (just that feeling when you just cringe at your old posts ;; but idk i think the insanity/cringe sometimes can loop back into being a genius and the cycle just continues)

anyways i’ve been on and off writing yuusha’s bio and overblot yuu was just at the back of my mind chilling but i didn’t really do anything with it.

but now that i have the opportunity,,,, im gonna go on the magicless route this time bc i feel like I've said all what i thought if it was an overblot due to her own magic.

so uh from what i gather overblots are a mix of overuse of magic + intense negative emotion.

since it’s magicless yuu, i guess the one of the general headcanons around the fandom is that they’ve been too exposed to overblots and then intense negative emotions suddenly just triggered their overblot.

uh anyways onto the elsa parts

Is everyone in danger as long as I'm alive? Was I a monster from the start? How did I end up with this frozen heart? Bringing destruction to the stage Caught in a war that I was never meant to wage

THE LYRICS ARE SO GOOD ;;; i really love how some broadway interpretations expand on the source material

and yeah you're right 🤧🤧🤧— yuusha would try to hide and escape, especially as she overblots bc she would try to avoid hurting people (and like elsa, it'd only hurt others more trying to escape bc of probably how she leaves destruction in her wake trying to make others stay away from her 😔)

(this is a small tangent but i remember thinking about an overblot kalim and i imagine him to be similar, like he would not hurt anyone intentionally in his overblot.)

anyways so the way it would go is that i imagine her friends got fatally injured either because a) she feels that she’s too “useless” without magic to help and wasn’t able to do anything OR b) her attempts at helping to try and prove that she can help without magic made everything worse.

and then she just goes into a guilty spiral then boom — overblot.

ALSO in the song, the way elsa briefly contemplated taking her own life but then realizing there’s no guarantee that would solve anything hnghgh (<- another unintentional parallel to my yuusha lore because that’s actually how she ended up in twst except she did NOT have the latter realization)

there’s this “yuu is dead” theory i’m just using and that the black carriage actually just caught yuusha’s soul after she took her own life from all the burden.

also some bonus angst context for that violin post :3

yuusha back in her homeworld is raised and known to be a gifted musician. people can feel the life and soul in her music but when people interact with her, they are usually met with an ice-cold (heh) personality.

the dead family member was the one who taught her music and the only one who was kind to her.

there’s always an expectation from her family to perform well and to keep up appearances as to not be a humiliation since anything she does can reflect on her entire family. (also hi, slight yuusha/jamil parallels maybe???)

the way she presents herself also stemmed from an incident as a child when she went apeshit on another kid bc she was defending a friend.

so from then on she was taught taught to conceal don’t feel those emotions — which just unfortunately extended to any positive ones, not just negative ones like rage.

so when she is brought to twst, there’s no memory of her being forced to hold back her emotions so she’s just unapologetically affectionate and open with everyone bc that’s how she really is.

but every now and then, memories of her breaking down haunt her in her dreams or as subtle reminders in the waking world.

then yuusha just goes on her day like she just wasn't reminded of her past.

(unnecessarily tragic lore my beloved, but anyway—)

another extremely brief tangent and bonus -> the two songs i had on loop while drawing pre-twst yuusha

lindsey stirling my beloved i love her music

the songs are such a vibe

her instrumentals in “lose you now” especially makes me feel some sort of way 😖

[sparklingsora]

Hi hello 2 more Veeswap AU questions- 1; what's the equivalent of Hell's Greatest Dad in this AU? Is there one??? Cuz a musical custody battle between Husk and Adam doesn't really make sense akdkfsmmf(tho it is VERY funny to imagine). Actually Im just curious abt the plotline of this AUs version of Dad Beat Dad in general tbh. 2; Husk and Charlie. What's the dynamic there? Are they rivals? How similar is their dynamic to canon Al and Vox? Do they even know eachother in this AU? What's goin on there-

hello again!! :] 1 - while i think husk and adam dislike each other in the swap au because of clashing personalities, its nowhere near the intensity of lucifer and alastor's rivalry in canon lol. its actually a matter that i havent really figured out yet myself, though i think hell's greatest dad just doesn't happen in the swap au. maybe theres some equivalent husk/adam duet? but idk. as for the general plotline of ep 5 in the swap au, i both dont rly have the energy to describe it rn and i think i'll probably elaborate on it later on through more comics, sooooo stay tuned i think? 2 - husk and charlie dont really have a lot going on in the swap au. it's actually husk and angel who get the radiostatic style rivalry >:D they were initially gonna be married but then i realized that val probably wouldnt vibe with having his shitty boss' husband hanging around the hotel, soooo yeah. huskerdust gets the homoerotic rivalry treatment. as for husk and charlie, i think husk just kinda dislikes her bc he thinks she is a show-off and attention seeker (she is lol), while charlie is fairly ambivalent towards him

[sweetasarsenic]

Hey! I actually managed to do another sketch in the same week, Lol Anyways here's Murderface! I must confess I have a kinda soft spot with him, idk. He was interesting to draw, maybe later I'll do something more elaborate about this silly bastard.

Now I'm wondering, which one of the boys should I draw next?