#in canon he is doomed. in fandom i am always picking him up and putting him somewhere kinder

[aphel1on]

not sure how to phrase this but something i have been ruminating on recently is that xue yang is strangely fragile. obviously he is also incredibly resilient. he survived, and continues to survive, impossible things. he has a million barriers between himself and the world, but none of this actually matters when it comes to what he feels. everything is personal to him. everything pierces straight through all that armor and goes right to his battered heart, the heart that no one else believes he has. that even he is not fully cognizant of. the world strikes and strikes and strikes and so he strikes and strikes and strikes back, even (especially) when the wound is something other people would not think worthy of retribution.

xue yang would never realize this- would be outraged at the concept of it- but the way everything, everything is something to rally a defense against is in itself a form of fragility. he does not know how to let go of things, or let them pass him by. passivity is death. so he is ruthlessly cruel and violent. he projects himself as a lunatic untouchable by anything you might possibly do to him, and on some level he even believes this. but in actuality he is one raw emotional wound. he never learned to separate himself from his emotions, much less process them. the volatility is not so much insanity as it is the constant lashing out of an animal in a trap, and the trap is the world, and the trap is himself, and he is never going to get out. and like so much else, this pain is just part of the background radiation of his life. it hardly registers. to be able to register the hurt, you would have to be able to register a time in which you were not hurt.

i feel like it is a fragility that could blossom into such tenderness, given exactly the right set of circumstances. how at the very first touch of softness in his life he fell into a domesticity from which he never recovered. how much was there, still, to be salvaged from the cruelty. on some level i am always thinking about the little apple bunnies. about the meal for daozhang and the straw in a-qing's bed.

it was too little, too late. it shattered like glass when the world intruded back in. but the tenderness was there. no one, least of all xue yang, knows what might have happened had it been unearthed in him any sooner.

[thekrazykeke]

Title: We Always Do This

Fandom(s): College Craze

Masterlist: Here.

Pairing(s): Jay x Phy

Summary: An intimate relationship is not only a physical relationship. It is a trusting relationship with another person without fear of rejection. 

Or, alternatively, Phylicity Carr and Jason Choi are on different tracks of life and on the surface, should not mix. Their first run-in with each other is brief, yet still, the universe rippled. They meet once more and contact is moderately established but again denied. Their third encounter (and every other meeting thereafter) is no less fraught with friction, and tension.

Warning(s): Canon typical violence, flirting, underage drinking, pining, misunderstandings, occasional use of the n-word, spoilers for College Craze

This is a self-indulgent, slight comfort piece I’m writing for myself but also for angelduality and alexandria on the College Craze Discord server. We all agreed that Samir needed to be put in his place. 

Thus this 2 am idea was born~

Reblog/like, share it with your friends, and/or comment if you want me to keep writing about this fandom or the adventures of this couple to be going forward. Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

@agehabutterfly @angelduality @summoreknots​ @theyrhymewithorange​

~

Prologue

You’re upset.

Slightly inebriated and head beginning to pound, you rub at your lips. Eugh, you can still taste him there. Or maybe it was just your imagination, he’d long since run off after you’d had to tell him twice to stop and get a little physical, forcefully pushing him away from you.

Rubbing your lips again, you blinked back the sting of frustrated tears, continuing your trek back to your dorm. Or at least that was the plan until you almost bumped into the Dean. It’s on the tip of the tongue to tell the man what you’d gone through, what Samir attempted to do, what he was capable of—

And then you noticed the ring.

Feeling a pit open up in your stomach, you just barely tear your gaze away and only then to question (interrogate) him carefully. Though you’d like to think it wasn’t the Dean who’d taken pictures of you while in the shower on your first day, he was giving you all-around bad vibes. Just what the fuck did he mean he was “ever watchful?” More like mcfucking negligent with how Samir just got to run around unchecked...!

Even after you got back to your dorm and stripped out of the dress you’d been wearing, took a quick shower, moisturized and redressed in clean clothes, reclining lazily in your desk chair, that feeling of doom wouldn’t leave you be.

So you picked up your cellphone and texted the one person who you could always count on when things really mattered.

You rolled your eyes and huffed.

Although Mal is your older cousin, y’all argued like blood siblings 24/7 growing up together and they enjoyed giving you a hard time.

Lovingly, of course, she’d insist.

Before you could get out of the clean clothes (again) and shimmy in bed with just your panties (no Trish and you’d be under the covers, door and window locked 🤷🏽‍♀️), your phone began to ring insistently.

Rolling your eyes heavenward, you answered, clicking the button that set the call to speakerphone, “Hello?” The greeting had more attitude than you intended but it was out there now.

There’s a muffled sound like the person on the other end was shifting around. “L’l miss thing, dontchu be catchin’ an attitude wit me!” Although trying to sound serious and scolding, her voice cracks halfway and she breaks into helpless giggles.

Shaking your head, you can’t help but join in, chuckling a bit. “I’m sorry,” Stretching the final word, you turn it into a bit of a high note or hum. “You got me when I was ‘bout to catch some z’s.”

“‘Catch some z’s?’” The next chuckle created a bit of static over the phone. “Nah, nah, nah. We’re overdue for some quality bonding time.” There’s a moment’s pause. “Plus I already left my second job early. I’m outside yo school, so come on already…”

Exasperation warred with a smidgen of guilt as you popped up from the chair, snagging your book bag and tossed the folder containing your upcoming class papers, and some PJs and toiletries. Lastly, you tied the drawstrings tight, shoving your arms through the straps as you swung the book bag onto your back, snagging your phone off the desk after. “I’m on my way down but you really didn’t have to come if you were at work.”

Clicking their tongue, Mal sighed. “Just pick up the pace, please. The iron wrought gates realllllly give me bougie vibes and remind me of Saccharine Summit.”

The call disconnected before you could inquire about when and why they’d gone there. Just in time too as you twisted the knob of your dorm door, testing to make sure that it was locked before you hustled down the hall. Shoving your cellphone in your pocket, you shouted a distracted, “Sorry!” in the direction of the person you nearly bumped into while in your hurry to leave.

Walking the campus grounds at night, once again, is a bit odd in a way but you did your best to ignore the feeling. This is different than what Dean Monroe does and you’re pretty sure he had more motives than spousal issues as the only reason. Shaking your head, you find yourself breaking into a grin as you caught sight of the person leaning leisurely against the beat-up dark blue SUV parked outside the school gates, left leg propped up against the passenger door, tapping away on their cellphone.

Oblivious to your presence, for now, you take the time to take note of the changes your cousin had undergone during the summer. Much to your exasperation, you see that they’ve once again shot up in height, towering over most people, and definitely taller than yourself; though at this point, it’s just a staple of life. Mal is as tall as a tree and kept climbing while you plateaued at eighth grade and weren’t getting any taller (and boy, oh boy, did you try).

“Malicia!” You called out to her, waving and slipping out the school gates as they looked up at last. Mal beamed, genuine happiness to see you visible in those gray eyes, showing off pearly white teeth and that playful, dimpled smile that screamed mischief. Picking up speed, you managed two more steps before she caught you up in a warm hug, the action familiar and making you feel safe.

“Lookit, you!” After a few minutes, they pulled back to give you a quick once over. “My oh my, what have you been up to over the summer?” With a grin, Mal playfully leered at you, a knowing twinkle to their gaze.

Spluttering with fake indignation and good humor, you lightly slapped a hand against their stomach, rolling your eyes as they clutched at the area in exaggerated hurt. “Dumby, shut up! I’m more interested in what you been up to! Ya been hush-hush all summer about ya whereabouts and secretive on your socials,” You ticked off the reasons on your fingers. “And so has Stephen. Not to mention, is that…” Squinting for a moment, your eyes then widen. “Is that a tattoo!?”

Slapping a hand to the right side of their neck, hiding what looked to be a small flower (?) tattoo, their eyes darted around, uncharacteristically flustered. If it weren’t impossible with their skin tone, they’d definitely be blushing, you bet. “Just get in the car, aight?”

Cheesing now, you watched as Mal practically stomped around to the driver’s side of the car. Pulling on the passenger side door, you got inside and closed your door, tossing your bookbag onto the backseat floor before buckling up. Turning to your cousin, you’re about to pile on the questions but the radio turned on, automatically switching to Spotify and blasting Do We Have a Problem? by Nicki Minaj. The two of you exchanged a glance and then y’all are in sync, singing and laughing, acting a whole goofy mess and without a care in the world, cruising down the darkened lanes of Sugardale.

You’re snapping your fingers and rolling ya neck as the last of the beat tapered off and the next song, an old-school Keyshia Cole banger you ain’t heard in a while, started to play. Mal reached out and pressed the button on the screen to turn the volume down, but before you could complain you saw the police cruiser pulling up in the next lane.

Biting your bottom lip, you kept your gaze pointed forward to the darkened streets, trying to keep calm and collected. You hadn’t realized you’d been tapping repeatedly at the middle console until Mal grasped your hand tight; any other time you’d complain about the pressure but right now it’s comforting. Moments pass and just when you worry that y’all are going to get pulled over, the car drives past, siren blaring, and turns the corner. Exhaling quietly, you tried to calm your racing heart and almost succeeded until you realized exactly where y’all are.

“You live in Toffee Springs?”

Sharply, Mal turned to look at you, just as she pulled up into the driveway of a rundown two-story house. Before the interrogation could truly begin, the front door opened and a familiar figure strode outside and walked down the stairs. The young, tattooed Asian man went to the backside of the car on the driver’s side and you heard the locks disengage. He pulled open the back door and an overhead light came on, right as he began to grab the contents off the backseat.

“Put that on the kitchen table please, Jay. Phylicity, help him out would you? Where is Triggs and, oh, there’s Stephen. Never mind then.”

The stranger, whom you turned down the offer to give you a ride downtown to Honeywood, and the same guy who was nice enough to stick around at the bus stop with you for as long as possible before outside factors made him leave, glanced to the front, where you’re sitting in the passenger seat.

Battling with awkwardness at the weird situation, yet still opting to be courteous, you smiled and lightly waved in his direction as a greeting but he didn’t do much besides continuing on with his task, hefting the contents underneath each arm and stepping backward, letting the car door swing close, heading back to the house.

Well.

Alright then.

Rolling your eyes heavenward, you unbuckle your seatbelt and quickly get out of the car.

“L’l sis!” Stephen’s excited yell nearly ruptures your eardrums as you’re caught up in a one-sided hug. Blinking, you laughed shortly, as for the second time tonight, you find your face squished against a clean white t-shirt smelling of something subtly sweet, probably his cologne.

After a few moments, close to half a minute of one-sided hugging, you patted his stomach, the nonverbal signal to let go which he did after gently pinching your cheek.

Irritated now, you swatted at him which he dodged with insulting ease, darting back to the car, dark green eyes glinting with amusement.

“Go in the house, we got this!”

If Mal is as tall as a tree, Stephen is a skyscraper comparably. He towered over men and women alike without effort and was even taller than Mal themself. The adults back in Bitterby had often joked that he’d sprouted from the womb fully grown and as he stood near the car, gesturing for Triggs to hand over the items in his hold, you could see it.

Shaking your head, you jog up the stone steps, striding across the small expanse, hand outstretched to touch the front doorknob when abruptly, the door swung open again. Standing there in the doorframe, blocking the entrance is Jay. Mouth pulling itself into a small frown, you start to go left, “‘Scuse me,” The phrase is half-assed, gaze darting to the right side of his profile, more interested in catching a peek of the house’s interior and feet already in motion.

Only Jay’s also thinking the same thing apparently, going left as well.

“Ay! Careful…” You’d nearly bumped into him and quickly shuffled backward before you could tread over his shoes. Ever experienced that stupid awkward shuffle thing, where Person A is going in one direction, expecting Person B to go the opposite way?

But they defy expectations and common sense and keep getting in the way?

Yeah, apparently that’s a thing that happens in reality.

The two of y’all are trapped in this hellish cycle for what feels like an eternity but in reality might have been a couple of seconds, before Jay just moves to the right, gesturing you to enter first.

You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and quickly dart inside.

To the right, on the cream-colored walls are hooks for coats, hats, umbrellas, etc. An umbrella stand with at least three umbrellas neatly stacked inside beneath the wall hooks, and a shoe rack sits near the umbrella stand, adjacent to the spiraling wooden staircase leading to the upper level. Giving a quick glance to the left, there’s a door that’s half-opened.

Toeing off your shoes, an ingrained habit keeping you from walking around in outdoor footwear, leaving tracks, you neatly stack them in a spare space. Hearing the others come back up the front steps and not wanting to get in the way, you pushed open the door on the left, hand blindly reaching out for a light switch on the wall, as the room is pitch black, sighing with relief, and entered the room.

And stared.

The walls in this room sport a rich black wallpaper with bulbous bright yellow orbs stamped at random intervals that almost seemed to glow beneath the fluorescent lighting provided by the ceiling fan/light and the tall lamp in the upper left corner of the room. There’s a wooden dining table with a gray tablecloth covering the entirety, the cloth is long, falling over the sides but not onto the floor, and several matching wooden chairs are placed around the table.

Feeling like your head is on a swivel, you walk further into the room, around the table, and up to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase.

Rows upon rows of books line the shelves.

Not just books of one genre or series, but also comics, manga, and manhwa. Hand outstretched, you’re about to take Killing Stalking off the shelf but then you heard the commotion.

It’s slightly muffled but…hm.

Deciding to hold off on getting any recreational reading done, you turn back to the door you came through and peek your head out.

It’s obvious that they’re trying to keep their voices low but you’re nosy. Tiptoeing down the hall, you linger outside the half-closed door which leads to the kitchen area presumably.

There’s a thump.

Biting the inside of your cheek, peering carefully through the crack in the doorway, you hold your breath, waiting.

It didn’t take long.

"Shut.... mannnn, I swear on everything-" There's that familiar aggressive undertone prevalent in Stephen's voice that he's trying to contain. "You goofy ass muhfucka! You was standin' right there, you heard me! I told Phylicity to go in the house. I did, me, so if you got a problem..."

"That's not what he was sayin'," Jay is trying to smooth things over. "That's not what he was sayin' at all. Triggs was just-"

"I said what the fuck I said!" Triggs exploded. Jay pinched the bridge of his nose and threw up his hands in an oh-well way.  "I ain't runnin' a muhfuckin' maid and delivery service but maybe I should wit how y'all got me runnin’ ‘round doin' chores an’ shii like this my spot!”

"Who invited you here? That's what I'm trynna figure out?" Stephen retorted, completely fed up.

"Can y'all supposedly grown-ass adults act y'all age and stop yellin' and screamin' over somethin' so petty?" At last, Mal cut in, sounding completely done. "Phylicity, l’l miss thing, don't linger like that, it’s aight.  I promise, they friends, they just hotheaded."

Busted, you sheepishly pushed open the kitchen door fully and stepped inside.

To your immediate left, there’s an entryway and a door that potentially leads outside, as well as wooden stairs leading to the basement. Turning your attention forward, you see that there’s a table with aluminum pan after pan of food situated smack dab in the middle of the room. The black marble counters to the left are neat and besides the microwave and coffee machine, very little decoration.

“Do we pass inspection, l’l miss thing?”

Trying to control the rush of heat wanting to spread across your face, you poke your bottom lip at Mal who’s smirking lightly.

“You won’t be written up by the landlord at least,” With that cheeky quip and nose in the air, mimicking importance, you sweep your gaze around the room again, taking note of the black fridge and the little magnets stuck to the surface.

The stove is brand new and clean, there are no dishes in the sink.

“Nah, I’m playin’. I really like the aesthetic y’all got goin’ on here!” Gazing back at Mal as you reassured them but from the corner of your eye, you note that Stephen, leaned up against the door behind him, relaxed.

“Aight. ‘Nough o’ all that.” Stephen declared, leaning up and reaching behind him to twist the knob of the door. Opening it to reveal a pantry of sorts with all sorts of canned goods, an assortment of cereal, knock-off and name brands, plastic containers, etc.

He grabbed the bag which held paper food containers.

“Phy, plate us up, please.”

Reaching out, you accepted the food containers and placed them in an empty space on the table. You’re about to wash your hands first.

“Why she gotta plate the food up?” Triggs asked with annoyance. He was sitting at the end of the table in a chair while Jay’s leaning against the deep freezer. “It’s not like she helped bring any of it in and knowing y’all, it’s gon be someshit where she get t’ eat first ‘cause she a girl!”

Knowing Stephen, you can recognize that he’s at his limit and about to clown. Malicia sighed and their shoulders straightened, another person about finally snap.

And you just can’t.

“I was only ‘bout to plate Stephen, Mal, and myself up but go off I guess.” You manage to keep your voice calm and level, monotone even, as you went about your appointed task, filling the containers with food for three people.

Stephen and Mal definitely ate much, much more than most, you’d learned early.

You look Triggs dead in the eye, making sure that he read the truth of it all in your face - that you wasn’t scared of him, Stephen or no Stephen. Mal or no Mal. He could hoop and holler and get as l o u d as he wanted, he didn’t want the smoke if you really popped off.

Knock Out Thursdays were a tradition in Bitterby but apparently, you’d have to start it up again.

“C’mon, Triggs, man. Just chill.” Jay murmured, barely audible. He sounded as exhausted with the situation as anyone else.

There was a visible tick in Triggs’ jaw but he ended up looking away first, letting out a ‘tsk!’ like a cliché anime NPC and grumbled underneath his breath, but whatever he said was too low for you to hear anyway.

Satisfied with the outcome of this whole unnecessary debate as you may be, this debacle, along with everything that had happened tonight, made you less willing to be the proper guest that you’d been raised up to be.

“I’m not that hungry.” It’s a simple statement and only half true. You were a bit hungry, but you weren’t gonna pass out if you missed one meal. You read the protest all over Stephen’s face and held up the first container for him to take. “I’m just gon catch up on a few assignments and go to sleep.”

“Phylicity…” Stephen said lowly, a cajoling note entering his tone.

“I’ll be up in a little bit with a snack then,” Mal stated decisively, ignoring the way Stephen let out a betrayed sputter; he expected to be a united front, obviously. You’re about to reiterate that you’re not hungry but she reached out and grabbed the remaining food container from you, using her free hand to tug lightly at your left ear.

Hissing with agitation, you rub at the abused appendage, prepared to tell your cousin off but their raised eyebrow defeated you without another word uttered. You could almost hear Aunty Tara in the back of your skull, scolding you for having the audacity not to have three full course meals, and a snack, too, at least, if you were doing homework.

Rolling your eyes, you look to the left, conceding. “See you in a bit…” Turning on your heel, you’re about to stride right out of the kitchen.

“Guest room is on the end of the hallway after you get up the stairs. Can’t miss it. And I left ya bookbag at the top of the stairs.” Stephen piped in.

With a faint nod, you left the oppressive atmosphere and area, the kitchen door swinging closed after you. Placing a hand on the stair rail, you ascended the steps quickly, two at a time, until you reach the landing after the 11th step, caught your breath, as you were a bit winded, and saw your bookbag at the very top as promised. Continuing your trek, you bent down and snagged the strap, swinging it up onto its familiar position.

There are not many rooms in this hallway, four at the most.

Pressing lightly at the door of the room behind you, it opened and you see that it’s a bathroom. Nodding to yourself absently, you continue this little habit until you reach your destination at the end of the hall, and enter the room, closing the door after you see that the room, while a bit spartan, has all the required necessities.

Besides the bathroom and guest room, where you’d be sleeping, there’s a storage area, there’s no other word for it, as there are boxes marked MAL, STEPHEN, LINEN, etc, while the locked room is…

Mal’s? Stephen’s? Did they bunk together for space reasons?

Unsure of their dynamic, as in your eyes, it’d always been a little blurry. Sometimes, they acted like “regular” friends, other times, mainly Stephen, looked at Mal with such naked longing, it was pitiful as it was painful. However, sometimes, just sometimes, before the summer and their subsequent hiatus and detour from all social media, you’d caught them looking at Stephen a certain way too, always when he wasn’t looking…

‘Homework time, homework time.’ Deciding to give no more thought to it, you instead tossed your bookbag at the foot of the guest room’s bed. Then took a seat crisscross applesauce on the bed, doing some mild sprawling, twisting, and leaning, as you unzipped your bookbag and pulled out some homework that you’re determined to stay ahead of. As well as your pajamas, quietly cursing yourself for forgetting your phone charger.

Then you got into it and everything became background noise.

Time passed and although some assignments are a bit challenging, in the end, you managed to finish everything. Or mostly everything, there was one question that was getting on your nerves, but you may be overthinking it.

Cracking your knuckles idly, you turn your attention to the door after hearing a knock.

A little unnecessarily, but habitual to when you used to spend nights over the house with her and Aunt, Mal announced herself.

“It’s me and I come bearing gifts.”

Shaking your head slightly at her goofiness, you can’t ignore the little growl your stomach let out. “Come in, dumby.”

The door opened, and Mal entered, dressed in simple gray sweat pants and a sports bra, silk bonnet on her head, her choice of sleepwear showed off practically everything, which included her stretch marks and soft tummy, though it was tryna get some muscles, you guessed. “So mean, and here I thought you’d like your usual strawberry shortcake aaaaand,” Placing the paper plate with a thick slice of strawberry shortcake, as promised, on the bedside table, she pulled her other hand from behind her.

And in her hold….

“Mr. Snuffles!” It was with effort that you kept your voice at a reasonable tone but the sight of the first stuffed animal y’all ever worked on together, made you emotional. Normally that was an ew vibe, but this was a different situation.

Tonight was wild and you deserved to be a little mushy.

Just this once.

“I know you gave it to me when I moved out, but since you here, I just thought that, well…”

You didn’t bother listening to the rest of the sentence. You reached out and gingerly grasped the purple squid/squirrel creature, looking into its bulbous yellow eyes, and nostalgia flooded your body. Then you looked at your cousin and placed Mr. Snuffles in a comfortable position in the bed before reaching out, and Malicia automatically followed your move, wrapping her arms around you.

And oh, oh. There it was, there it was. Safety.

That feeling you’d need tonight.

Nothing could hurt you here, with Mal around.

Safety.

You listened to the slow, steady rhythm of their heartbeat. 

Safety.

“I missed seein’ yo big-headed butt. You gotta come over more often.” Mal’s voice is strained, you can hear the unasked question in her tone but you don’t answer it. You can’t answer that you’re okay because it’d be a lie and they always made the most disappointed face when you lied to them, but you’re getting there.

Repression had always been easy for you.

“Nah, we’d get really tired of seein’ each other all the time. It’d be like nothing changed.” You tried to assure them though.

Mal sighed and leaned back, gaze roving over your face. Whatever they saw only made the furrow in their brow deepen. “...Some things never have to change and your priority is definitely one of them.”

Uh-oh, incoming feels talk.

“Phylicity. I know you hate to hear it because you think I’m baby’ing you, but I…. You can always count on me, day or night, big or small, I’m on your side. More than my cousin, you’re my little sister, and I love you.”

“....I love you too.” The words are a whisper and your face is on fire, but still. Still, you said it.

Mal sighed softly. “I’m tempted to camp out here wit that air mattress I got,” The horror that flashes across your face makes them laugh and they tap your nose before slowly detangling from your embrace. “But I’ma leave you to your very important college homework shenanigans.” Pointing their finger in your face, they shot you a warning glance as they start to stride for the door again. “No later than 2 am, though, and I will be back to check!”

With that last parting remark, you’re left alone with your thoughts, but this time, you have Mr. Snuffles with you and suddenly, you decide to save that last question for the morning, at a reasonable-ish hour. You strip out of your clothes again for the night and get into your pajamas, then slide underneath the covers, cuddling the stuffie close to you.

Sleep comes easier than it would have originally.

[gringolet]

INTRO TO ARTHURIANA MASTERPOST

under the cut for absurd length

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH ARTHURIANA

The Arthuriana fandom is very broad and there's no one piece of media, which can be confusing for people just getting into it! There’s no right way to engage with arthuriana, and no minimum level of knowledge or reading you need to attain to qualify. 

The basis of the Arthurian Legend is a body of hundreds of texts written across the medieval and early Renaissance period in dozens of languages and cultural traditions. Which can seem pretty overwhelming, but there are a lot of modern vernacular translations-- you absolutely don’t have to learn old French or anything. I’ll go more in depth on where to get started with texts further down.

You also don’t have to read texts at all. As I said, there is no minimum basis-- if you prefer to engage with modern adaptations, or want to engage with medieval arthuriana outside of reading texts, that's also cool! 

In terms of modern adaptations there is a wealth of choices, which I am very much not an expert in lol, so I’m afraid I can’t give much in the way of reccs. Books I have heard good things about are, Exiled from Camelot, Idylls of the Queen, The Buried Giant, the Squire's Tale series, and Gawain by Gwen Rowley (warning that this one is apparently erotica? Good for him). I trust @princesslibs  for modern book reccomendations. and if you speak French Kaamelott is purportedly a very good tv show. Frankly no modern adaptation will ever be better than Spamalot to me, but that's just my personal take. 

If you are curious about engaging with texts but (understandably) don’t want to read a ton of dense medieval literature, one really cool resource is Norris J Lacy's New Arthurian Encyclopedia, which you can pick up at most used bookstores for under ten bucks. It’s a very thorough easy to look through reference of characters stories and texts. I know a lot of people like the Nightbringer wiki, though I personally am wary of it because it basically never cites sources. It’s a good quick reference though and a lot of people like it, I’d just take it with a grain of salt. Sparknotes also has a lot of summaries of the major texts like Le Morte D’Arthur and the romances of Chrétien De Troyes. You are not a fake fan for doing this I promise. And of course you’re always welcome to send me an ask <3 

Finally, getting started with texts. Quick glossary of terms:

--Verse Romance

    A verse (poem) story which can vary a great deal in length. These deal with the adventures of individual knights, usually Gawain, and tend to have a great deal of magical elements and the stereotypical monster slaying, questing, damosel rescuing knight adventures.

--Prose Novel or Romance

    A non poetic narrative, more like a modern novel, more likely to deal with the fall of Arthur, sword in the stone, Mordred, fall of Camelot sort of affair. They are usually quite long. Most famous of these are Le Morte D’Arthur and the French Vulgate, but there are a slew of late medieval Prose novels floating around. Eluding Rey.

--Pseudohistory

    I’m gonna b real these are boring I think. These are, as the name suggests, written as accurate depictions of history.  They very much are not, but they claim to be. Most famous of these is Jeffrey of Monmouth, Mr Jeff Mouth himself, and his History of the Kings of Britain, which I haven’t read because it bores me. You can if you want. It’s in Latin. Whatever. These tend to be some of the earliest texts, and include the “lives of saints” stories. Life of Gildas is the only funny one.

--Ballads

    These are only arguably texts, as most of them were written after the time of the “canon” being composed. But I like them. These are songs telling stories, recorded by people like Francis Child and Thomas Percy. They are very short and fun and include stories like The Boy and the Mantle, Kempion, and King Arthur and the King of Cornwall.

--Lai

    A specific type of French verse poem, usually quite short. The most famous collection of lais are those of Marie le France, including things like Bisclavret and Lanval. 

--Traditions

    Since Arthuriana was written all over, there are different literary traditions across time and space. The French tradition is one of the most famous, including works like the vulgate, Chretien and a lot of verse romances. The English tradition is one of the most influential on modern adaptations, including the Morte D’Arthur and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. There are also Welsh, German, Dutch, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, Greek, Belarussian, Scottish, Irish, Breton, and probably even more. There’s a lot. It’s very cool and sexy.

A note that there is also a big tradition of Victorian revival Arthuriana. I wrote a starter guide to that here, it’s all very fun and like, aesthetic. 

Alright, now, which texts do you start with?

If you’re a little intimidated by long texts or medieval lit, starting with short verse romances in modern translation is a great place to start. These include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is very good and gay and well known, Lancelot and the Hart With The White Foot, which is very good and gay and underappreciated, or Lanval, which is homophobic but funny. 

If you want to start with what is considered the oldest King Arthur Story, Culwch and Olwen is short and fun!

If you want to read about the grail quest, you can start where it started with Story of the Grail or Percival, then the four continuations, Essenbachs Parzival, the vulgate version of the Grail quest which you can buy paperback for like 5 bucks (I can also scan my copy for you just shoot me an ask <3)

If you want to read about the fall of camelot, I have the Vulgate death of Arthur section scanned here. There’s also the Alliterative and Stanzaic mortes, which are in middle English. I have scanned Simon Armitage's Alliterative Morte translation here. I’m working on my own translation of the Stanzaic but it’s not done lol. If you want the first third or so DM me lol. King Artus is very short and readable and it’s a Jewish text which is really cool.

If you want to read about Lancelot, Chrétien de Troyes Lancelot is his first text. He also has a whole long vulgate section, the first part is scanned here by val <3, and there's Lanzelet,  Sebile is in it so it’s probably very good. He’s also basically the main character of Le Morte D’Arthur which I might as well talk about here uhm. It’s long and fun in places and boring in others but it does have like the version most modern adaptations take from and tells the whole story of Arthur and Camelot from beginning to end. The Keith Baines version scanned by val is the most readable but it is an abridgement I believe. people who like le morte usually read this version so its probably the best choice lol

If you want to read about Gawain, good news! He’s in basically everything. Even texts that aren’t supposed to be about Gawain are doomed to become The Gawain Show Featuring The Protagonist Of This Text As A Sidekick. Which is so funny of him. The Roman Van Walewein is very funny and long and Gawain™. I also recommend, L’atre Perilous, Diu Krone, Sir Gawain and the Turk, and I could go on but for brevity's sake let's start there. 

If you want to read about Tristan, go shoot an ask to Valentine @lanzelet on tumblr because Tristan scares me. 

Thank you to rey @gawain-in-green for helping me find links and put this together! They are also a super great resource for stuff and very cool and nice <3 They have a tag on their blog for full text resources so deffo look at that if you want more scans and links, and an info tag and tons of cool shit that is way better organized than my blog lol

Okay finishing this off, if you want content warnings for any texts, feel free to shoot an ask! I know medieval lit can be A Lot and there aren’t a lot of good warning systems, so if I’ve read it or know someone who has I can give you warnings if you want to read something but are understandably wary . <3

In terms of tagging, Arthuriana and Arthurian Legend are the main ones on tumblr. Arthurian Mythology is also used but tbh shouldn’t be. On Ao3, we’re trying to get our own Arthurian Literature tag but <3 its a whole thing. Anyway the tag is Arthurian Mythology, but I’ll b real, it’s kind of flooded with stuff that doesn’t really belong there, because even though it’s a fandom tag other people unknowingly tag stuff as Arthurian Mythology when it’s like, a knight au. Which is not their fault bc it’s confusing but, ah, alas. ANyhow, feel free to drop in my inbox anytime with questions, suggestions, reccs, etc!

Okay godspeed!! Have fun reading, watching, browsing, etc! 

[sometimesrosy]

Thanks for being one of the last blogs left to discuss the show to the end. I understand the hurt and betrayal people feel right now. I feel it too, but as a new fan who binged 1-6 back in March, I keep thinking about the crazy moments that were reversed or resolved at the end of seasons. If it hadn't been for Jason's word of God post or the anon accounts, I would have scoffed at this "death", b/c it seemed like a setup. I may not like JR, but I need to see how he ends this before I criticize.

Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

I think in fandom, we have a hard time adjusting to the immediate storyline, and we forget the long term one. And this DOES seem like the story is not done. Usually when they die, it’s confirmed that they die. A hole in the head. That blank eye. Blown out into space. They die in someone’s arms. We see their last breaths. A dead body or grave. The light goes out. In this, we don’t see that. We see Clarke ripped away from the scene, her last sight the result of what she did.

No conclusion, no resolution, no CONFIRMATION-- in narrative anyway.

On social media we got goodbyes. But I have NEVER used social media as confirmation for canon. I can ONLY accept canon.

And canon is up in the air. It looks bad, I’m not gonna lie. But it isn’t confirmed, resolved, or concluded.

It’s the rumors that give us a “reason” for the lack of conclusion. And I can’t say that the rumors don’t explain it, because they do make sense.

But they’re still not canon. 

Bellamy also died at the end of season 1. But he didn’t die. Clarke died at the end of season 4... we saw her, remember? Covered with radiation sores and falling to the floor, but she survived. Not that B knew. Speaking of season 4, Octavia also died in season 4. We saw her fall from the cliff, stabbed, and B collapsed on finding out. Season 6 Clarke died again. We saw the lights go out that time. No one believed it. Bellamy died at the beginning of season 7 too. No one believed it.  Seems like we stopped believing when they die.

Within the show, they have the capability to save him. Bardo has a high level of tech, including medical tech, a disciple has his hand on Bellamy’s chest in the last scene, and they have immediate access to the medical labs by going through the anomaly. 

The only thing that makes everyone take it for certain is the social media. Even if it looks terribly damning, I can’t take that as evidence. 

STICK TO THE TEXT.

Yes, I am going to watch the next three episodes. I didn’t commit to all this hell to back out now. 

The hardest thing to understand right now, for me, is not that B died. I expected him to die. I think I had him (and Clarke) at a 90% or 95% chance of dying this season. It’s the WAY it happened, with that lack of resolution. And the splitting up of Bellarke. That Clarke did it. 

It seems to ruin the long term narrative of Clarke being the hero, Bellarke saving the world together, Bellamy saving Clarke while Clarke saves humanity, Bellamy’s character development and learning to let those he love make his own choices, Bellamy being a leader, Clarke understanding that some things are not worth it. 

Like, there are TWO options that make sense with all this...

Bellamy isn’t really dead and this is a fake out to raise tension... which makes sense with the narrative and the way the story has been told for 7 years.

OR

Bellamy is dead and JR totally betrayed his narrative, Bellamy, Clarke, Bob, and the audience because he’s a mother fucking egotistical jackass. because even if bob quit for health reasons he didn’t need to tank the story to write him out.

Now, there’s been a fandom narrative of JR being a fucking egotistical jackass who is taking vengeance on fandom and various actors. So that slides very neatly into what the antis believe.

But that narrative never really fit the story on screen. I mean, I think yeah he’s probably an egotistical jackass, but he always put the story before anyone else. It was HIS story and he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him what to write. And he would kill off characters and doom ships and let story lines fade off into oblivion for ONE narrative, and that’s what he just killed, or appeared to kill in the last episode. So why would he now sink it? IDK. it’s weird and it makes no sense.

DID he just give up in the last season because he moved on to the other pilot-- which has no guarantee of being picked up, and seemes to be waiting on how THIS story does? Why would he do that when his name will be based on THIS show. And when we have a glaring example of showrunners who did that with GOT and ended up LOSING huge deals for new shows because of the mess they made. That seems remarkably stupid to not learn the lesson and to go down the exact same path, even to having one love interest kill the other, who was one of the main heroes.

Isn’t that WEIRD? IS JR COMPLETELY STUPID? Despite years of evidence to the contrary where he seems pretty savvy? Could he possibly be using that fandom fear and belief to make everyone believe he killed off Bellamy for no reason? Would he USE a social media account to manipulate viewers into having emotional reactions to the story by lying??? WELL NO. He’s not lying. He says this was Bellamy’s death but he doesn’t say he stays dead, or that Bardo can’t bring him back. Remember season 2? Lincoln died and they brought him back. And when he thanks Bob for his 7 years, that also is not a lie. Bob gave him 7 years. We’ve seen Bellamy’s story for 7 years. Whether it ends here or continues for another three eps. It’s definitely implying that he’s not coming back, but it’s not lying if he does come back.

Well, I don’t know. Maybe JR is completely stupid. I’ll wait to see if he stick the landing, but my faith is low. It’s just all very weird and makes no sense in a story that has always made sense if you follow his storyline. And as a writer I just don’t know why you would tank your long term story three eps before you finish it up. And he DOES love to scare us and make us feel anguished and kill of our  mains and thinking ALL IS LOST before finding out that no indeed, all is not lost and our heroes can and do come back and reach victory.

THAT fits his story. But maybe he’s so desperate for us to believe it’s over that he’ll mislead us IRL to make us believe his plot twist in the narrative.

Can’t say I wouldnt prefer it to be a fake out, but if it is a fake out he’s still a HUGE fucking egotistical asshole. 

I just can’t believe it until I see the canon. I need to see the conclusion, because this seems like a total trashing of the story, and that just makes no sense for what we’ve seen for 7 years. Actually, when I think about all of this, it gives me a little faith in the story back. Not a lot, but a little. BECAUSE IT MAKES NO SENSE. It is PURELY the fandom narrative that JR is an egotistical jackass and doesn’t fit with the canon narrative. 

Listen, I don’t think I’ll ever get involved with a fandom again. it ruins the story. All this gossip and negativity and shipwars and harassment and I don’t even LIKE the behind the scenes tales of who did what to whom. I just want to watch the stories and enjoy what I enjoy. I wish we could talk about it all without creating this huge writhing mass of maggoty decay as so called fandom attempts to take apart everything good about a show we’re supposed to love.

[lambourngb]

Get me out of here - places to go when canon is complicated

It’s Day 3, time to celebrate those stories that I turn to when I can’t deal with canon, or when I don’t have the emotional energy to untangle all the emotions I have for what’s going on in canon. Alternative universes, the safe harbor for us. Below are a mix of rewrites of canon, remixes of canon, or out right not even set in Roswell- to fill every type distance you want from canon- from near to far.

The first story I’m reccing is a long one,- so pardon the very long review below.

my love is a life taker by @jocarthage (267,600) So one day, Jessi popped into discord to share a dream she had about timetravel and being able to save yourself in the past basically, particularly Alex getting to give his baby-self a hug, and we all went, “holy shit that’s a cool fic idea please write it!” and really reality sucks right now with quarantine and whatnot, so what better thing to do than follow a WIP? I can’t tell you how badly I needed to something to look forward to as I was staring down a milestone birthday with all my plans in tatters, and this story filled the void.

Okay- now about the actual story itself, the world building about time travel in this is incredible but easy to absorb. Jessi dumps you straight into the action in chapter 1 with Alex, at 28, assassinating an Iraqi intelligence agent in 2009 that averts a bomb that was planned on US forces. You learn so much about both the story-universe and Alex here- one, that even dressed in mask and killing someone, Alex is kind and uses morphine as an overdose and has arranged for his victim’s family to be compensated, you learn that time agents can only visit places they themselves have visited during that time, and Jesse Manes had dragged his son, who was ‘time aware’ to every place of war and ruin on the planet before he was 18 and that, Alex’s victim, even as he’s dying, recognizes what a shit childhood Alex had but that Alex doesn’t.

The next part is where Alex’s time crystal malfunctions, instead of returning him to 2018, it takes him to 1998 where an 8 year old Michael is getting beaten by his foster dad and Alex, out of his time line mysteriously, visible to only Michael, saves him, but only temporarily. We all know with abusers, until you’re out of the house, it’s just a matter of time before the next beating. However, with one act, Alex at 28 starts putting into action (even though he doesn’t recognize it at the time) the steps to save his own life as he works to save Michael from his childhood. Each mission, each jump through time, Alex meets Michael, always a year apart and only for 1000 seconds, or almost 17 minutes. Jessi takes you through some of the darkest points of US foreign policy, only as Alex takes control of his life, he also starts to change the missions, and change the world. The details of places, people, food, etc are authentic from the author’s experience, if you don’t click on the links at the end of the chapters and disappear down google-rabbit holes about the events in history, well- you’re made of stronger stuff than I am.  There are lots of heavy subjects discussed, but there’s always care and honesty behind the intent. The way Michael grows, the way Alex grows, and of course the journey to the present time when they could be together? It’s like pining on steroids but it’s so wonderful. I wish I could pull out one thing that I loved in particular in this story- but it’s impossible, only to say that I love that I could disappear completely within the confines of ‘my love is a life taker’ knowing that I would be kept safe by the author, that goodness prevails.


when I’m oceans away by @neapeaikea (28,000) this is a post-2008 shed canon-divergent AU where Alex Manes, after the best/worst night of his life bolts from Roswell and leaves Michael behind. 10 years later, on the hunt for a child conceived at Caulfield, Michael walks into a youth home in California and finds Alex. A few things, I love that this author writes an Alex who didn’t join the Air Force but still lost a leg, I don’t really enjoy disability erasure in modern AUs (I’m better at looking past that in historical or sci fi aus) . It’s pretty clear after five minutes that the connection between the two men is still there and strong despite anger, secrets and guilt. The teasing and flirting between them is great but so is the acceptance of baring their vulnerabilities. I loved the care they take with each other, and the tie in to an alien child is just so perfect.

Crucibles (series) @ninswhimsy (9,000)- I’m cheating and naming both here, but obviously nin had her finger on the pulse of fandom, by writing crusade-set queer stories before The Old Guard ever boomed into a fandom from the movie. I was lucky enough to trade DMs over the ideas of holiness and the body, and how Alex would have treated himself, certain of his doomed soul, and how Michael would have responded in turn. It’s no secret I love everything Nin writes, but this series stuck in my mind. I will be drifting off to sleep, and think about Alex walking through the ancient city of Aleppo, ready to be done with his burden and Michael there with soft palms and scented oil, and boom! I reach for my kindle to re-read it.

no regrets if we walk this new road by @andrea-lyn (97,000) This author has written so many amazing AUs, some quite far away from canon events like her Mummy AU or her Avengers AU, but I have to say, I have a very soft-spot for this rewrite of season 1 for a lot of reasons. I mean, it’s 2020, so my appetite for Cop!Max is definitely at an all-time low, so the idea of exchanging his job with Kyle’s was extremely appealing. At least Kyle is a POC holding the badge, not a white man like our canon. Anyway, politics aside, this story is special to me for the scorching good Isobel/Kyle relationship that develops, the way Isobel sharpens herself into a lawyer (not an event planner) and how Michael rounds his own edges off in turn by becoming a teacher (and being secretly married).  Each deviation from canon made complete sense once you alter the way Rosa’s death affects the pod squad, and how they covered it up ripples out toward Liz, Kyle, etc. 


Layer on layer, down on down by @dotsayers (9,440) I love sci-fi tropes, especially time-loops, but they are incredibly hard to write (I know, I abandoned mine a while ago) so this story stands out because of just how well done the execution is and also the angst. Michael in a time loop about Caulfield, like how great/agonizing is that? The plot is so good, how it ties into Caulfield and why it happens in the first place, like wow.  The care, and the hurt, and the fatigue that Michael has in this story, oh you just want to wrap him in a blanket. There’s a tiny throwaway line about how one of the first things Michael learned to do in foster care was to make himself heavy and unmovable- and you instantly picture kid!Michael not wanting to be removed from a house - like my heart broke! The structure of the story, with the background of his just how much he loves Alex but how badly it hurts to see him die, really makes this study of 1x12 special. Along with all the angst, there’s tiny gallows humor lines, so am I weird, that I laughed through a couple of these scenes even as Michael kept dying?

Petty pace by @aewriting (11,600) Aewriting has a couple of stellar AUs, so trying to pick just one was difficult, but I rather feel this story is sadly underappreciated it (mind the tags). It was a remix of @iwontbeyourmedicine ‘s fantastic ‘Freaky Friday’, where the humans and aliens swap roles. Alex in the role of Michael basically was something I had never pictured until Ly wrote that story, and now feel utterly changed by it, especially with this backstory- the idea of Jesse Manes bringing a foster child home? Incredibly well done because there’s an off the charts level of menace in this story. The way Jesse watches Alex, who at first mistakes it for how a pedophile might size up a victim, but then catches on quickly that it’s so much worse in a lot of ways. And Alex is such a loner in the beginning, even as he reconnects with his pod siblings Liz and Maria, he’s still planning on keeping his head down and leaving Roswell far behind. Like freedom is literally the only thing he can conceive of for himself, no real dreams outside of that until Michael slips under his defenses. I probably could have saved this story for angst day- because the second half of the story, if you don’t sob while you read it, then I dunno. It’s helpful to read Ly’s story right afterward as a reminder that things do get better for Alex ten years later. In a lot of ways this story is sadder than canon (though there’s no murder of Rosa/4th alien), I’m comforted that at least Alex has Liz in the aftermath, alike in heartache in a way that Michael didn’t have because of the pact he and Max made about Isobel in canon.

Unexpected tidings by @bestillmyslashyheart (24,800) Another rewrite of canon, that explores a couple of very interesting questions, like what would it look like if Michael never made it back to Roswell as a kid but met Alex by chance in 2008? Imagine the cornerstone of the Lost Decade love affair revolving around the mundane questions of a long distance relationship that wasn’t built on the pain of the shed or Rosa’s death? Marlo writes an amazing take on this, that is both real and deep with the normal couple problems, before introducing that spanner in the works of oh yeah, aliens are real. With Michael on the east coast, and Alex finishing off his service in Roswell, Project Shepherd still entangles Alex with Liz bringing him in on the secret in hopes that with his hacker skills he can track down the third alien child that Max and Iz remember so they can warn him. As interesting as the current plot was, I found myself absolutely revitted the slow piecemeal reveals that Marlo doled out about Alex and Michael’s relationship over time. (I also while rereading this recently got very nostaglic for season 1 Alex who didn’t trust Jesse as far as he could toss him.) 

Don’t Punish Me For What I Feel by @winged-fool (3,600) Tarsus IV AU - another wonderful author with a catalog of great AUs, both sci-fi and dark, and honestly it was difficult to narrow it down to one. This story, well in 2009 I was a hard core Trek movie fan, so when I saw a trek-fusion story appear, I knew I would love it just on that basis. The thing is, this gave me Michael as the Captain, a surprisingly rare role for these space fusions, even though genius level repeat offender Jim Kirk and genius level repeat offender Michael Guerin seems pretty married in my mind as a connection. As a Tarsus-like story, all the tags are well earned by the story that Alex finally shares with Michael. It hit on so many levels, the hurt/comfort level for sure, but also to have a story where Michael is this stalwart protector of Alex was really nice to find. 

this isn’t the ‘holiday best friends championship’ by @usbournejez (6,090) alright to leave this on a lighter note, my final AU rec is this masterpiece by Kieran that was part of Malex Secret Santa gift fics- and what a gift it was to all of us! The way she writes established Malex is first-rate, because she always includes their canon-levels of snark/sharpness but it’s never directed at each other and that’s something I love. Here we have Alex, where we learn in just a few short lines, is a huge control freak but has the extremely big emotional handicap, and that’s his love/fondness/deserve to caretake Michael. Emotional cactus Alex who is soft for Michael? Love it. There are small drops of angsty backstory peppered in this, but really that just fuels just how sweet and wonderful the main theme of the story- which is Alex might hate the whole world at large, he loves, protects and worships Michael (and vice versa). As someone who can bake cookies, but that’s about it, I was still enthralled with the baking details and this story has never failed to encourage me to eat dessert before dinner basically. 

[sanchoyo]

Looks like you’re gonna have to gush some more cuz I meant in general uwu🌸

🌺😌🤟 Always happy to! Okay here’s just some General bnha Thoughts ™ Mostly Lov centric. You asked for them, and you said GUSH about them, so here’s. A Lot! :)

This isn’t a lov one but it’s really funny so I thought I’d put it out there:

-when bnha was first gaining traction on tumblr, it was all art of Tsuyu. I have no idea why. People were talking about the funky frog lesbian superhero anime. Maybe it was just the people I was following, maybe it was a general trend, but I LOVED her design!!! my fav color and frogs r super cute!!! And I already loved superhero media, so I was like. I’ll watch it. For Her. SO. FROPPY IS THE REASON I WATCHED/READ BNHA. I went in thinking she was the protag and I was sooo confused when Izuku was... tbh I still think it’d be more interesting if she was lmaooo aus where? ...seriously if anyone has good aus where this is the case send them LOL

-I don’t actually feel that bad abt what Shigaraki’s doing. I still feel bad for him. I’m this post. yes im an apologist. its not my fault hes sexy and has been running around shirtless. hes a lesbian icon like thor is. I want to touch his hair. hes never done anything wrong in his life. he could kill all might, deku, bakugo, whatever, I’d still be sayin this. I don’t feel bad for gt. like. was anyone genuinely attached to him? lmao

-well u know how spinner’s quirk is just sticking to things? We haven’t seen him use it in canon except like, (1) time iirc?? I think this is probably bc he’s embarrassed about it even in front of the league... I loooove the idea that he gets more comfortable with it around them :”) and also how shigaraki. um. does that falling asleep thing while standing up with his eyes open, canonly? (which I still love lmfao) Imagine someone in the league walking in a dark room, turning on the light n just seeing. Spinner upside down, stuck to the ceiling asleep bc heat rises and its Warmer Up There. (cold blooded thing like tsuyu?? come ON give him a big fuzzy coat and scarf...) and Shigaraki in the center of the room, slouched but still standing, eyes open and motionless. Theyre both sleeping. Whomever sees it just...slowly walks out. LMAO

-Toga roller derby au. No deep thoughts I just think she’d be good at it. 

-Toga 100% is a social butterfly and could befriend anyone if they didn’t just judge the fact she was trying to stab them smh :/ (ok but seriously anytime I see cute friendships with her n the other kids im like :) aw. I feel like her and Camie...would be good friends. Camie feels chill enough to be like ‘ok whatever thats totally fine I forgive you!!’ LMAO we love airheads here)

-HOW DID TOGA GET SO GOOD AT FIGHTING? We know she’s been on the run since middle school or so, but good enough to pin Deku down after he’s been formally trained at a ~hero school~ for a while? (she pinned him TWICE I think, once when his arms were messed up, but, the other time as Camie, so? AND THEN WAS ONE OF THE 100 PEOPLE TO GO THRU TO THE 2ND ROUND OF THAT? even tho she didn’t bc she had to leave) good enough to beat Aizawa in a fight and stab him? A professional hero and teacher for YEARS? Is that seriously just street training??? Can people acknowledge how amazing her combat skills and reflexes are??? More Toga appreciation when?? Also her backstory??? SO subversive and incredible, hate when people reduce her to just a ~typical anime yandere~ :/

-Tomura doing stuff with his hands/fingers to train his quirk!!! And to learn to be careful with it!! obv I’m a Big Fan of him playing piano to do this and video games are prob the canon answer, but like, guitar or any stringed instrument that requires Hands would work too. Or knitting/sewing? EMBROIDERING? ??? Please, let me give you the mental image of him knitting aggressively while mentally scheming, watching a twitch streamer or smth too while doing it. (Doing stuff with your hands is a great way to let your mind come up with creative stuff, that’s how I come up with writing/drawing ideas 70% of the time)

-Tomura actually PREFERS cutesty, relaxing games. I mean, he does fighting and bloody stuff irl, games are a way to relax...he’ll play shooters and gta type games with The Lads, but. on his own?? animal crossing. pokemon. kirby games. mario. zelda. BIG ZELDA FAN (not saying this bc I, personally, am biased, but,) slime rancher, stardew valley, funny simulator games... he really enjoys those :”) God forbid he has a kid bc they’re 100% getting named after a viddy game character unless someone can talk him out of it LOL. Toga and Tomura are that animal crossing /doom meme where she’d be asking for doom and him asking for animal crossing :”)

-Bits and pieces of Before are kinda stuck in Kurogiri’s brain, but like. mostly useless stuff the doctor didn’t care about removing. Like, types of clouds. So Tomura kinda picks up on stuff like that. He can just look at clouds and tell you what type they are because Kurogiri used to take him up to high places in the city and point them out to calm Tomura down from a panic attack when he was younger. He can tell you if the sky looks like it’ll rain with a 80% accuracy rate too. 

-Kurogiri left food out for kitties in the alley beside the bar. They weren’t allowed in for Health Reasons (it IS a bar with sanitation standards!!) And Tomura really wouldn’t stop it or encourage it either way so long as Kurogiri did his job, but occasionally would stand outside with Kurogiri and just watch the kitties from a distance. If any approached he’d go back in (lowkey afraid he’d hurt them by touching them :( ) They kinda kept that between them tho, bc they both Know AFO is a big bag of dicks and no fun

-people have pointed out how similar aizawa and tomura look. this was 100% the intention. tomura has a hatecrush on him. THIS IS SO FUNNY AND HORRIBLY AWKWARD FOR KUROGIRI LMAO

-Sako??? Mr. Dramatic?? Opera fan. Drama kid. Like, obviously, but. Really. He is. I feel like he can speak a dozen languages. I also feel like he used to be an overachiever but got too ambitious. He was def some kind of leader at one point of a diff Group or something that fell apart. I LOVE how creative he is with his quirk and the magician theme??? incredible. I don’t show him enough love but I Love Clowns :o)

-I don’t care what their canon heights are. Spinner and Dabi? short kings. My height hcs are (tallest to shortest) Kurogiri, Twice, Sako (who also has heels on his boots and a tall hat, keep in mind), Tomura, Magne (Tomura and Magne are about the same height imo) Toga, Spinner, Dabi. LISTEN. Dabi has short energy. Sorry. it’s true tho

-This is a semi-popular hc I think bc I KNOW I’ve seen it before, but Dabi having Terrible Vision and needing glasses is so so good. (seriously, with burns THAT close to his eyeballs, how could he not?) 

-he tries to be a tough loner coolguy. you’d think he’d smoke, but I hc his ‘weak constitution’ comes with weak lungs (esp from years of a flame quirk?? inhaling smoke over so much time is SO bad for you, most people who die in fires actually die of smoke inhalation...) so he’s got like, an inhaler, can’t smoke, actually gets carsick, needs glasses, overuses quirk to save friends constantly, likes napping, a little awkward and rude. Tomura put him in charge of the vanguard so he’s smart, and good with strategies too, like a nerd. this is the Dabi I wanna see, not the popular fandom version of him tbh also step on hawks one more time sir :”)

-I wish all the lov fics weren’t?? villain!deku like I said earlier, but also, chatfics? I have nothing against them but most of them are just a bombardment of Memes with NO PLOT!!! Listen. text/chatfics CAN have plot and be an interesting way to tell a story. I almost want to write one just to show what I mean...

I know I’ve said I like spinaraki and blackmagic, but I am a multishipper, so a few ships I don’t talk about that I like that involve the lov in some way:

-toga/any of the 1A girls??? or Camie??? super interesting. ALSO in the radio drama, bakugo’s voice actor said Toga was his favorite girl??? so?? bakugo/toga ?? I WANT TO SEE IT. but specifically my fav dynamic with her is when someone ELSE is the one to like her first, it’s what she deserves.

-Kurogiri/aizawa/mic?? any variety of that is also 👌🏻 I also kinda wanna see kurogiri/all might bc. Dads. COME ON. they bond over ‘well, I raised him, and you want to have a part in his life now?? ok. earn it. prove it. I’ll screen you first’ or something LMAO they’re both genuinely concerned for the boy, and SOOO biased. let them bond.

-WAIT WHERE IS THE MIC/COMPRESS CONTENT. THEYRE BOTH DRAMATIC. ENEMIES TO LOVERS?? HELLO??? SOMEONE?? ANYONE. rarepair hours

-giran/twice is cute. like he was hyping him up so much and so ready to go save him...

-dabi/magne where is the content. when. why not everywhere??? I’ve also seen magne/compress which was cute!! or twice/magne? they’re the big sibs of the lov...

-dabi/spinner?? come ON dabi could get over his learned biases and spend time with him and they could hold hands. I want them to.

-dabihawks. Obviously bc the Drama. yes even still, don’t @ me. (also, shigahawks, seen some REAL interesting fics with it tbh) or spinahawks?? adding hawks to a ship is like adding extra chili powder. makes it SPICY dramatic)

-nine/tomura don’t @ me once again. both kinda afo’s playthings, nine obviously was the test for tomura’s new upgrades...they both love their friends...That Scene in the Flower field </3 hmmm tragicships are fun.

-tomura/mirko. more enemies to lovers. big fan of her and bunnies. remember when he wore bunny ears in bnha smash. (ok its crack but. CUTE.) 

-I’ve also seen shiganatsu and shigafuyu and I’m like. these are cute, but also Dabi’s reaction always makes me cry laugh. so good.

-MOST EVERYONE IN THE LOV IS LGBTQA+!!! heres my personal headcanons:

Toga: pan or bi (CANON BASICALLY)

Magne: transwoman (CANON BABEY) bi, leans towards men. (her crush on dabi in bnha smash... uwu content where)

Shuichi: gets sooooo flustered canonly, I think he’d go for the first person Who Hit On Him (I can see him being the target of those mean pranks where someone says ‘my friend likes you!!’ and the friend is like ‘eww!!’ :(((( ) he’s super hesitant for romance, lots of repressed stuff. gay but takes sooo long to realize it bc he thinks most women are conventionally pretty Aesthethically, feels obligated to Like Them, but has bad self esteem so never goes after them, then only likes (1) guy so hes like?? is this allowed?? is this allowed???? (HES LIKE. IN LOVE WITH SHIGARAKI)

Dabi: bi but rly hasn’t ever gotten to date anyone, so he’s actually more reserved about it and while he’ll tease, he absolutely is absent and kinda oblivious (again, I KNOWWWW bnha smash isnt canon, but. my god. when magne is hitting on him and he Just Doesnt Understand.) also hes ace

Tomura: doesn’t care. (just prob says ‘its whatever’) trans/nonbinary (i’M NOT PROJECTING, BUT. :’/) probably goes with like, the label queer if any but doesn’t care much for labels

Kurogiri: bi??? kind of??? I say kind of bc well, I hc U Know Whom as bi, I feel like thatd carry over but he’d be really avoidant to date anyone bc hes gotta Watch His Kid u know? this is gonna sound surprising but I think he’d be the type to be like ‘ok we can have a one night stand/fling BUT it cant get personal bc I have a Job to Do for my Son so don’t get up in your feelings’ and act a little coldly at first or very ..not personable... depending on who it was he’d prob turn around eventually, esp if that person valued his feelings/job :”)

Sako: that mans Not Straight. I hc him as gay and also trans :3c

Twice: Bi and HAS dated prob more than anyone else in the league imo, super comfortable with his sexuality and supportive of everyone else’s :)

ok that’s about all I can think of atm, come back in 5 minutes and my brain will refill with lov headcanons :3 thank you for asking!!

[celtics534]

Behind the Scenes of Fic Writing: 30 Questions for Authors

This is such a cool tag! Thanks @breaniebree

What was the first fandom and/or pairing that you wrote fic for?

Hinny, all the way! It wasn’t good, but it was Hinny.

Do you participate in any writing events or challenges throughout the year? If so, what do you like about them?

I tend to participate in them semi-often on SIYE. I find them a good way to get some creative juices flowing with a topic or subject I wouldn’t have thought about on my own. 

Do you write fics from start or finish, or jump around?

I go chapter by chapter. I would confuse myself too much if I started writing chapter 5 but then headed over to chapter 12. Also, I kinda don’t plan everything that far ahead. Which I’ll explain more in the next question lol

Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline?

I do a quick overall base of what I want to do, who the enemies are, important moments I really want to happen, but I never do a full outline. A lot of the time I will have something planned for 5 chapters in the future, but no idea how to get there. I let inspiration strike me and go from there. 

What is the perfect environment for you to write in?

A hot cup of tea, music playing softly in the background, and an empty house. It’s perfect when everything is quiet except for my music and my mechanical keyboard.  

If you’re really concentrating, how many words can you write in a day?

Hmmm. I’ve never tested myself but I think the most I’ve ever done is 10,000 in one day. I wrote two chapters of “Only the Best” in one day and I aimed to make every chapter in that story at least 5,000 words. So I’d guess around 10,000. 

Which part of writing do you struggle with most?

Editing. I hate re-reading my work only looking for flaws. If I were to re-read my work I’d want it to be for enjoyment and nostalgia, but alas in order to find enjoyment in the writing it needs to be edited well lol. 

Do you listen to music while you write? If so, share a song that’s been inspiring you lately.

There is this live version of Can’t Go on Without You by KALEO that I love. Actually I’m listening to it right now. I listen to it at least once when I’m writing. 

Do you prefer to write AUs, canon divergence, or canon-compliant fic?

AU”s all the way! I love taking a different world than the original and trying to fit everything into this different situation. I love Muggle AU’s the best for some reason.  

Do you enjoy writing dialogue, exposition, or plot the most?

Dialogue is so much fun. Trying to come up with a witty comeback or heartwrenching final line is so intense and interesting. 

If you could only write angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your life, which would it be?

I love me some fluff. Like sometimes I go out with every intention on making things angst, and then they turn int fluff lol.

Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

I don’t think I’ve done a “forced to share a bed” fic and that could be fun

Is there a trope you wouldn’t write if it was the last trope on earth?

Does slow burn count as a trope? I just can’t handle waiting so long for my ship together lol

If you were stuck on a desert island with only two characters, which would you pick?

Ginny Weasley and Hermione. Hermione because she could get us off the island somehow, and Ginny because she and I would have a great time cracking jokes while we helped Hermione. 

A Hollywood producer tells you that they want to film just one of your fics. Which fic would you want it to be?

Hmmm. I think I would dig a film of Doom Days or Covert Love. Both have everything needed for a movie. Action, romance, and twists you don’t see coming lol.

What is your most underrated fic?

I wouldn’t say I have any underrated fics because they always are so much better received than I ever intend… that being said, I would love if more people read Doom Days

What fic are you most proud of?

This goes back to the last question. I spent so long planning and plotting Doom Days and I am extremely happy with the way it’s come out. 

What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

Well because I don’t want to give to much away I’ll show off this once part. 

His lips curled with forced levity. 

I love the word levity and I really wanted to use it and then I thought about how when I’m making a bad joke in a bad moment I always smile to make people understand how I truly feel. Such a simple sentence brought me so much pride.

Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why?

I find that I struggle with Hermione. She’s so much more… straight edge than I tend to focus on, so I have a hard time adding her into stories because I’m afraid I won’t do her justice. 

What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

Right now it’s Prue from Covert Love. She is my own created character and I’ve had so much fun crafting this backstory that revolves around.... Things I wouldn’t talk about here ;)

What is the one fic that got away?

It hasn’t gotten away yet! I can still write it…. But when I was on a volcano in Spain I saw an adorable meet-cute and I really wanna make it a Hinny meet-cute. I just need to dedicate time… which I never seem to have lol  

Have you cried while writing a fic?

Ummm…. I don’t think there have ever been tears but I was hit hard while writing the argument between Harry and Ginny in Covert Love. 

If you had to remix one of your own fics, which would it be and how would you remix it?

Hmmm. I think I would have to say Only the Best because I would have liked to add more hints towards who was the culprit. I don’t think I put out enough clues so the reader could have had a chance to figure it out on their own. 

How did you come up with title for Covert Love?

I knew I was going to be focusing a lot on the undercover element in this story but the love aspect was also going to be huge so I looked up words that meant undercover and really liked Covert. And it’s also a play on words because Harry and Ginny need to keep their love covert from everyone so Harry doesn’t get in trouble ;)

Which idea came to you first in Covert Love?

It was literally just the general idea of Harry being undercover and falling in love with Ginny. The idea to have her be under his protection started to form as I explored ways for them to meet. And when I decided to have him be unable to tell her about his job… I knew I had something I would love creating and working on. I knew I would have drama and so many intense moments I would be so proud of the story, which is always my goal. 

Which part of Covert Love was the hardest to write?

The moment where Harry and Ginny fight because he didn’t tell her about his job. I knew the discovery scene was going to be vital and it always hurts to write Ginny and Harry fighting. So it felt like a lot of pressure and I think overall it came out really well!

If you were ever to do a sequel to Covert Love, what do you think might happen in it?

Hmmm… well I don’t have any plans on doing a sequel at this time, but that’s because I haven’t finished writing the first one yet :P

In Covert Love, what is a happy, post-fic headcanon you have about Hinny?

Harry and Ginny getting to stay together when everything is said and done… maybe a kid or two that love quidditch as much as their mom 

A word that describes my WIP

Strive. Everyone is striving for something, even the bad guy. It all comes back to the person and their goals and how much effort they are willing to put into getting what they want/need. 

Tell us an idea for a long fic you want to write in the future.

Well… I haven’t started it at all and the research will take a while, but I wanna do a Muggle AU treasure hunter fic. Harry is a treasure hunter who is out searching for a famous lost treasure. While out on an adventure, he runs into a wild red head who is somehow roped into helping Harry. They hate each other at first but fall in love with each other as the adventure goes on. Also, there is another hunter out for the glory of finding this treasure and they have to deal with that crazy bloke and his men. If you’ve played the Uncharted games you’ve seen the format and I’d love to do something with it! Let me know what you guys think!

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 4, Part 2: Flight of the Paradox Groans

BRIGHT: Remember Spades Slick being bizarrely aware he was in a comic, back in the Intermission? Buckle up, things are about to get even more fourth-wall-breaking. Appropriately, this starts by the comic focusing on an actual fourth wall, which activates to show...Andrew Hussie.

Hussie’s MS Paint avatar notices the audience watching him, laments that his side of the wall doesn’t have an off switch, and then recaps the first year of Homestuck.

Now, in all fairness: The recap is thorough, full of links, and explains things fairly well. It’s quite long, but given how much territory it has to cover I’m not sure it could be any shorter. So it does its job well, and it’s a boon if you’re getting lost with the plot.

As for the author insertion...on this occasion I don’t mind it. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek, but framed more as the author talking to the reader than as the author inserting himself into the narrative. It’s definitely very Homestuck.

Anyway, AH gets back to work, and after a couple of false starts we return to John!

John is still flying around with his jet pack. GC trolls him to offer him a world map of LOWAS and tell him she feels awful about killing him, although in literally the next line she tells him that technically he never even died so she doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. John understandably finds this disturbing. They have a brief nonsensical discussion about Jesus/Jegus, and then John agrees to go take a look at what’s on the other side of his Second Gate. Yes, on the advice of someone whose previous advice got him killed.

CHEL: Almost a shame we didn’t set up a Too Dumb To Live count, but then to be fair that was a separate timeline and he’s probably not thinking of it as something that “really” happened. This is supported by his later dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: The word Jegus is really popular in the Homestuck fandom, used far more often than it is in the canon. Gets quite annoying, in my opinion. Actually, a rather Jesus-like figure does appear, but he’s not called “Jegus”.

CHEL: Yeah, I think only Terezi, John, and Dave ever use the term, but it somehow became latched onto as an actual term used by trolls in general, even though in canon it isn’t.

BRIGHT: Fortunately, this time GC appears to be playing nice. John flies though the Second Gate and emerges...into LOLAR?

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie does an amusing trick where he has what looks like a loading screen for a flash but it’s actually a still image eternally at 2%.

BRIGHT: Yes, it’s LOLAR. John promptly crashes into Rose’s house, smashing through a wall and into her bedroom, where Rose is still snoozing in her knitting pile. Apart from briefly being stuck upside down, he does not appear injured by this collision.

Rose has somehow slept through the commotion. John decides to let her rest and borrows her computer to talk to Dave.

The first one he talks to is actually Davesprite, who points out how moronic John was to listen to GC again. No arguments here! Then he explains how the Gate system works: Odd-numbered Gates, above players’ houses, lead to somewhere on their planets. Even-numbered Gates lead to other players’ planets, exiting over their houses. Normally they aren’t meant to go through even-numbered Gates until the houses are built up, so they don’t fall to their deaths, but fortunately John has a jetpack workaround. So far Davesprite is living up to his promise of being straightforward.

John realises he’s talking to Future Dave, and asks “do you think i could talk to the real dave for a second?”

...ouch, John.

Davesprite goes off on a tear, ranting that he is a real Dave — arguably the realest Dave, since he’s been running around LOHAC for months trying to get enough information to save everyone. John apologises sincerely.

CHEL: This won’t be the last we hear of this theme, though.

EB: i think i pissed off your future self. TG: what did you do EB: i said he wasn't the real dave. TG: ahahahahaha EB: i think i might have really hurt his feelings though! TG: pff TG: dont worry about it EB: why not? TG: cause i wouldnt give a shit TG: and hes me

BRIGHT: Not a hundred percent sure I believe Dave, there.

CHEL: Dave uses John to snoop around Rose’s room and get the captcha code for her journals. Classy, Dave. Not a SLAMMER point, however, as this does come back to bite him very soon.

Rose’s dreamself has awoken on Derse, the purple planet, and flies across to the opposite tower. Dave’s dreamself appears to be awake, sitting upright in his computer chair; the room is entirely an unsettling bloody red colour apart from the SBaHJ cartoons on the walls, and… oh shit, there’s Lil Cal again, now in a long purple nightdress and hopping around the room on his own. If Rose was having nightmares because of dreamself issues, I can only imagine how Dave’s nightmares must look. Rose throws a ball of yarn at Dave’s dreamself, alerting him, and causing the awake Dave to pass out.

Back in Rose’s room, it seems that Charles Barkley quote was not misattributed:

FAILURE ARTIST: Another SBaHJ reference in the book quote. Is that where Dave got it?

Still, I don’t recall this book ever coming up again. Just another item that seems like a Chekhov's Gun but isn’t.

CHEL: John feels guilty about opening his birthday gift from Rose, but reasons that it’s technically now his anyway, so he does, finding another bunny, this one black and filthy-looking except for the pristine knitted purple patches repairing it, though its shape is eerily familiar.

The gift in this box is a resurrection. I used your present to thread life anew into a tattered heirloom. As long as I can remember, its black, greasy appendages have been tethered limply to its ratty, porous carriage. Too delicate to wash, too dear to discard. I used to love this rabbit. Now he's yours. I trust you'll find this to be adequately sentimental. Happy birthday.

Oh my gosh, awwwwww. Even if you don’t ship them romantically how can you not love their interactions? Definitely one of the comic’s strong points. Also I need to go hug my childhood teddy bear.

John puts the bunny back in the box again and the box in his sylladex, freeing Casey the salamander while he’s at it. And let’s just take a minute to feel utter horror because dead John still had Casey in his sylladex, so the best option is that she died too, and the worst is that we have an And I Must Scream situation on for a baby salamander. Gah.

FAILURE ARTIST: Thanks, I’d never thought of that and I never want to again.

You aren't actually sure if she is a girl though. You don't even know if salamanders can be girls. Aren't they hermaphrodites or something?

CHEL: No, for the record. Though some frogs can switch from one to the other.

FAILURE ARTIST: Casey is very popular as a name for an OC child of John (often having Rose as the mother).

CHEL: John answers Rose’s Pesterchum, upon which GA is half-heartedly sending antagonistic messages. John answers on Rose’s account, saying that Rose is asleep, which GA takes for Human Sarcasm, prompting John to pretend to be Rose.

GA: I Should Figure Out How The Viewport Feature Of This Application Works GA: So I Can See What Such A Primitive Creature Looks Like TT: haha, well i know what you guys look like. TT: you look kind of like... TT: howie mandel from little monsters.

Wait, how does he know? Am I forgetting a point at which he saw them?

BRIGHT: I always assumed that he was just goofing around and his guess happened to land in the right ballpark, but thinking about it, I’m not sure the kids ever express surprise at the trolls’ appearance.

CHEL: John, pretending to be Rose, talks about how awesome John is.

GA: He Is Either The Leader Of Your Party Or You Hold Whatever The Human Equivalent Of Mating Fondness For Him Is

CHEL: Both. Both is good!

FAILURE ARTIST: Knowing what we do of troll culture later this is an odd statement. Heck, it’s just an odd statement. Maybe this is why people think trolls don’t do friendship.

CHEL: John apparently confuses GA by saying it’s because Rose is thoughtful and John appreciates his gift, and suggests GA talk to John.

TT: why don't you pick the time that will make the most complicated mess out of everything imaginable?

GA sounds very annoyed, and leaves, intending to have the conversation with John that she had previously. We see her, GC, and the horns of AT and an unknown troll in the grey room, now revealed to be a computer laboratory. For some reason she chats via Pesterchum with another troll instead of just walking over to talk to them. This new troll is twinArmageddons, an appropriate name for the circumstances, who type2 iin yellow text liike thii2; he is, as it turns out, the hacker guy GC mentioned earlier. TA is busy setting up the network and seems irritable in general, and is not willing to help GA work her viewport.

TA: iif ii 2ee one more 2narl of wiire2. TA: kiind of juttiing out and beiing tangled or whatever. TA: ii am goiing two perform 2ome 2ort of athletiic fuckiing 2omer2ault off the deep end and get a call from the pre2iident or 2ome 2hiit.

Nice callback, but trolls, as we’ll later find out, don’t have presidents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 14

GA wonders why TA doesn’t want to talk to her, and TA complains that he knew in advance the trolls were doomed and no one believed him. He refuses to troll the humans himself but is setting up the system so the others can in order to get them to leave him alone. GA asks again for help, to no avail.

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. TA: kiind of liike wiith regii2tered 2ex offender2 and 2chool2. TA: iif you move two a new town you have two go up two your neiighbor2 door and warn them about how 2tupiid you are. TA: and giive them a chance two hiide all theiir iinnocent technology. TA: and vandaliize your hou2e.

Ooh, a threefer plus one! Tacky simile for the Problematykks. As for WSP, we’ll later find out that 1) trolls kill all their criminals, 2) trolls don’t give a shit about the welfare of their children, and 3) trolls don’t appear to actually go to school. These two counts are neck and neck in the lead now!

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 17

BRIGHT: As with much of Homestuck, the trolls give the impression of being made up as Hussie went along. That’s not entirely a bad thing -- it certainly makes the comic pretty unique -- but it does lead to some out-of-place slip-ups.

Anyway, GA chucks her F1 key at TA’s head and then starts poking him. We also see CG in the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think I recall GA/TA were a popular ship before we learned more about GA. It does seem like they have a Rose & Dave dynamic going on.

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Rose and Dave have a dance party to Dave’s music while accompanied by some crows and Lil Cal, who keeps teleporting around the room. Rose eventually gets tired of Cal’s shenanigans and hurls him out of the window, to the relief of many.

FAILURE ARTIST: The flash originally included music by Bill Bolin. In fact, it was his unfinished music being included here that caused all the drama in the first place.

BRIGHT: Time for some random interludes! First up is Maplehoof the pony, who is following Rose’s mother through a large cave which, judging by the grist lying around, recently contained very dangerous monsters.

FAILURE ARTIST: Apparently pets can collect grist for their masters...and know what grist is despite being a normal(?) animal.

BRIGHT: First Mom, and then Maplehoof, stand on a transportaliser platform and disappear. Second is Dad, who has just acquired a replacement shoe and hat (which showed up in the walkaround game, way back at the beginning of the Act), when he encounters a familiar-looking stranger with a Colonel Sassacre book, who leads him to another transportalizer platform. Both of these interludes do become relevant later, but at the time they seem a tad unnecessary.

Meanwhile, John uses Rose’s alchemiter and a code Davesprite gave him mid-rant to produce a truly epic hammer called FEAR NO ANVIL. It’s far too big for John to wield, but fortunately he can use the scaling upgrade on the alchemiter to reduce it to a more useable size. ...wait. When did Rose’s alchemiter get a scaling upgrade? Dave and Jade added a lot of modifications to his, but Rose’s should be the original edition. Sigh.

EB: so what is this? EB: the thing the code made... TG: really powerful hammer EB: how do you know? EB: i thought you couldn't use hammers. TG: i cant TG: better be though TG: got it from hephaestus EB: who's that? TG: really tough to kill dude EB: you killed him for it? TG: nope EB: how'd you get it then? TG: shenanigans EB: ok.

...and we’re back to sprite evasiveness. Davesprite is being less than forthcoming here, although it’s less obvious than with Nannasprite because it superficially imitates John and Dave’s bantering.

CHEL: Now, this would be a good way of keeping us interested if we were eventually going to see how he did it, and also they have a time limit, so not going off into a long anecdote would be understandable. However, we’ll see how his evasiveness level proceeds in the future.

BRIGHT: Dream Rose and Dave see John using Rose’s alchemiter on Dream Dave’s computer. Rose wakes up.

FAILURE ARTIST: It is interesting how early Homestuck avoided having characters have face-to-face conversations. Would have been unique if it kept up throughout the entire comic.

BRIGHT: Back in the meteor, GA hassles TA into opening the viewport on her computer. This turns out to be as simple as clicking on the point in Rose’s timeline that she wants to see. No wonder TA was frustrated!

Of course, by this point, the only one left in the room is Rose, now awake, and the young salamander. Rose hurries to catch up with John, but he blasts off to explore before she can reach him, taking her mutated kitten with him.

CHEL: John renames Vodka Mutini to Dr Meowgon Spengler, and Rose renames Casey to Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer. Interesting link to the themes of identities which are starting to crop up, though it’s not really a direct analogue. The animals are the same animals with different names; the alternate timeline characters have the same names and superficially the same identities, but are they really the same people after their new experiences?

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Lil Cal inexplicably lands on a stray rocket board, catching the attention of AR.

You're not sure which laws are being broken, but it is probably a lot.

AR follows Cal to yet another transportaliser, and they both dematerialise.

We jump back to John, who spies a boat on one of the islands dotting LOLAR and lands to investigate. He follows hoofprints in the sand into a subterranean hallway filled with monsters. Fortunately his new hammer has time powers, which stun the monsters long enough for John to kill them. Further on, he finds the transportaliser Mom used. John, naturally, stands on it, and is transported to a meteor in the Veil.

Actually, it’s not just a meteor; it’s one of the laboratories where the Skaian troops are produced. John, along with the cat and Maplehoof, finds a bunch of chess guys being grown in glass jars on a giant podium. Most of them are the standard carapaces we’re familiar with, but there are also a few larger pieces, apparently based on knights and rooks. He also finds a JUNIOR ECTOBIOLOGIST’S LAB SUIT, and another of those strange house-shaped sets of monitors.

On Prospit, PM is preparing to board a shuttle to Skaia when a COURTYARD DROLL sneaks up behind her. Unaccountably, she fails to notice him, despite the fact that he’s wearing a hat larger than he is. CD successfully pickpockets the White Queen’s ring, and PM departs for Skaia, none the wiser.

CD radios the DRACONIAN DIGNITARY to report mission success, and is told that he doesn’t need to keep wearing his ridiculous outfit, per orders from Jack Noir, who is now going by the SOVEREIGN SLAYER. CD says he’d rather keep wearing the outfit. Apart from the sword-through-the-chest part, it is a very nice outfit, so I’m with CD on this one.

Catastrophe is averted by Jade delivering a flying kick to CD’s head and following up with a very efficient smackdown. Her robot body replicates this back on Earth, beating the stuffing out of her mummified grandfather. Jade retrieves the ring, and puts it on her fingers to remind herself to give it back to PM later. Unfortunately, this doesn’t cause Jade to sprout wings and tentacles. Seems the rings don’t work on humans like that.

Meanwhile, in a Timeless Expanse, a WARWEARY VILLEIN is getting tired of the battle between Derse and Prospit. The next animation is called “WV?: Rise Up” and it’s one of my favorites! When I first read Homestuck I had to watch it a few times before I understood what was going on, but it is a very neat video.

Watch on YouTube

The Battlefield has been prototyped three times, and is now spherical. The forces of Derse and Prospit meet. The usual carapaces with swords are backed up by larger pieces -- some of them very strange -- and by battleships clashing in the sky. In the chaos, WV, who is farming peacefully on Skaia, has his home and farm burned down. He raises a flag and addresses the troops of both armies. Elsewhere, Jack Noir appears, flying over the Battlefield in search of the Black King.

WV rallies the armies and tells them that their real enemies are the monarchs, who are responsible for the war. Encouraged, the Dersite and Prospitan troops band together and march on the Black King.

Meanwhile, PM has reached the White King and discovers that she no longer has the White Queen’s ring. The White King listens to her and hands over his scepter, which seems to represent Skaia and serves a similar function to the Queens’ rings. Behind a nearby hill, the Hegemonic Brute radios somebody to report the transfer.

As WV and the united armies reach the Black King, Jack arrives and slices the Black King’s scepter in half, nullifying its powers and turning the Black King back into a normal carapace. PM is attacked by HB, who knocks the White King’s scepter out of her hand; it falls down a waterfall. Jack Noir beheads the Black King and turns to WV, and the animation ends.

...okay, much as I love it, I have to admit there’s a glaring question here: Namely, the kids started playing the Game less than a day ago and Dave’s kernelsprite has been prototyped for a few hours max. The second prototyping made the Battlefield more complex and the third took it into its current form. That’s a very short time to instigate a cross-faction revolution, organise the troops, and march on a monarch. For that matter, how long has WV been a farmer? The inhabitants of Derse and Prospit have obviously been doing their thing all the kids’ lives, but the Battlefield was supposedly a static, rudimentary space until John entered the Medium, so what gives?

Then again, the timeline in the Medium is supposed to be distinct from the timeline on Earth, so maybe that explains it?

CHEL: An interesting point is also raised by WV’s revolution. Namely, Derse is presented as a kingdom of darkness and evil by the game, while Prospit is presented as good. However, while PM is good, WV and AR are demonstrably not bad people either. In this animation, we see carapaces of both sides apparently don’t want to be involved in the war and are willing to rise up against the Black King. The rank-and-file carapaces on both sides, it seems, are decent people who are just following orders. (Not to mention very cute.) Jack Noir and his gang are nasty pieces of work, except CD who’s also just kind of going along with it, but there’s nothing saying white carapaces couldn’t also be… And is that a Problematykks point, presenting the black-coloured people as bad and the white-coloured ones as good? I know they’re chess pieces, but still.

This raises the question, however, what’s Derse’s motive? Are its rulers and archagents simply destroying for the evulz? I wonder. I also wonder how much Skaia itself is involved in this and how aware it is. Skaia is called the crucible of creation, and it’s responsible for the creation of the carapaces too. References are made to it “seeing” and “knowing”; it’s quite possibly sentient, though maybe not sapient. On top of that, SBurb is specifically a game, and a game needs an objective, and an adventure-type game needs enemies. Derse, it seems likely, was created and presented the way it is in order to give the players something to battle against even if its people don’t want to be their enemies. No wonder WV’s pissed!

BRIGHT: Yup. Hmm, thinking about it...the imps and other enemies we saw attacking John’s house early on were obviously Dersite, but the ones we’ve seen in Rose’s seem to be Prospitian, if anything? The colour scheme looks that way, at least. But Nanna said earlier that Derse was the enemy, nothing about Prospit.

Perhaps it has something to do with Rose being a Derse dreamer, while John is a Prospit dreamer? But in that case I’d have expected it to come up in the text. Instead it just goes unremarked.

Rose goes on a massive alchemising spree and ends up creating the Thorns of Oglogoth, a pair of wands.

The needles seem to shiver with the dark desires of THE DEEP ONE. Any sane adventurer would cast these instruments of the occult into the FURTHEST RING and forget they ever existed.

Instead of throwing the wands away, Rose takes on the enemies camping all over her house, with style.

Meanwhile, Dave goes on another, less visibly productive alchemising spree.

GET ON WITH IT!: 18

FAILURE ARTIST: The SBaHJifier could be considered productive in that it provides foreshadowing cartoons. Wish Dave’s Brain in a Jar came up again.

BRIGHT: Once he’s done creating smuppet variations to disturb the monsters encroaching on his house, he sits down to take a look at those two journals he copied from Rose earlier. One of them is called ‘MEOW’, and is literally just those same four letters, repeated over and over in different orders. The second is ‘Complacency of the Learned’.

There is no way to adequately recap the beauty of ‘Complacency of the Learned’, so we’re just going to show the whole thing:

Frigglish bothered his beard, as if unkinking a hitch in a long silk windsock. A more pedestrian audience would parse the exhibit as nervous compulsion. Behavior to petition contempt among the reasonable. He was however not surrounded by the reasonable, but the wise, a distinction in men that would forever be the difference in history's garland of treasured follies. As a matter of fact, his cadre of fellow wizards were all putting similar moves on their beards as well. The practice would evince thoughtfulness - sagacity, even - if they didn't do it all the time. Standing in line at the bank. Shooing squirrels from bird feeders. Few occasions were safe. Zazzerpan inspected the clue. A single piece of evidence cradled in his coriaceous old man palms. It was a human bone, not striking in the tale it told alone so much as that told by the thousands like it festooning the marshy soil of the mass grave. The grisly expanse bore the texture of a decadent dessert, like one of Smarny's formidable custard trifles wobbled out on wheels for the holidays, to the dismay of a small nation. "You're certain of this?" asked Frigglish. Despite what he was doing with his beard, he was, in fact, immersed in meaningful contemplation. "I am afraid I am becoming more so with each terrible tick groused by that gaudy timepiece slung around your neck." In case it wasn't clear, Frigglish wore a clock Zazzerpan didn't care for. It was magic. "The massacre of Syrs Gnelph was not as written." "What has you convinced it was the hand of our disciples in this blackness?" Executus chimed in. "I believe... I..." a fat face stammered, eyes darting with the guilt of a thief in the throes of an unraveling alibi. "I can summon a... more pressing line of inquiry..." No, Smarny. Nobody was in the mood for a sticky bundt loaf just now. Zazzerpan's ears fell insubstantial to any line of inquiry, pastry-oriented or otherwise. His abstruse contour carved a pondering shape in the fog carpeting centuries-dead. His eleven contemporaries too embraced the muted consternation of their great Predicant Scholar. Few wizards kept sharper adumbratives or read them with such lucidity. When Zazzerpan treated men with silence it was seldom unrepaid by the wise and reasonable alike. It was harrowing to entertain. Zazzerpan the Learned's storied Complacency of Wizards was marked for grander descendence. Disciples hand-picked, vetted by Ockite the Bonafide and tested by Gastrell the Munificent. The twelve sweetest, most studious children a pair of elderly eyes could give their sparkle. Not the ragged guttersnipe so oft-harvested by the common Obscenity, those vituperative little beggars with hearts to corrupt as dropped bananas brown. That these chosen youngsters would turn was not merely unthinkable, but something of a roundhouse to the temporal bones of the Upper Indifference's high chamber of Softskulled Prophets. His wisdom-savaged brow pruned further with recount of his many lessons to wouldbe successors. Lessons to advance humanity's elucidation and prosperity, an outcome this bleak trail now painfully obviated. There were few puzzles The Learned could not suspend and dissect in the recondite manifold beneath his extremely expensive pointy hat. Daring to pitch his cherished pupils in with the foul melange of history's rogues, the heretofore abstract scourge that built up civilizations with ungodly magic and tore them down with joyful malice, would prove an intellectual trespass to make his calcium-deficient bones quake. And more daring yet was the only question that now mattered. Could a bunch of bearded, scraggly old men in preposterous outfits hunt them down? He didn't have an answer. Only a simple observation so blunt and uncharacteristically jejune for the lauded sage it was breathtaking in its selfevidency. "We're going to need more wands." (Wow. Think of something better.)

Wow.

Dave is understandably intimidated by this, and decides to stop reading for now. He puts his copy of the SBURB Beta in the notebook to act as a bookmark, and leaves both books in his room for later.

Then he checks in on Rose, who is burning her version of the MEOW book.

CHEL: Dave inquires about the wizard story.

TG: i thought you hated wizards TG: whats the deal with that TT: I like wizards. TT: What I don't like is my mother's obsession with feigning interest in them to antagonize me. TG: oh man thats so messed up TG: that you think that TG: she probably digs wizards for real just like you and youre blowing shit out of proportion like pretty much always

Once again, we see exactly how fucked-up Rose’s relationship with her mother is. Mom Lalonde has somehow managed to raise a child in such a way that Rose interprets everything her mother does as an attempt to mock and provoke her.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 16

TIER: The Lalondes are pretty damn dysfunctional as a family unit, and considering the zany nature of early Homestuck and its world's weird logic that is saying something indeed.

CHEL: As for the MEOW book, it turns out the gods from the Furthest Ring informed Rose while she was sleeping that the book’s contents are highly dangerous and must be destroyed. Said gods dwell in the sky above Derse; Dave’s never heard or seen them, but Rose points out his dreamself is always wearing shades, listening to music, and distracted by Cal.

TT: You're the prince of the moon. TG: ........ TT: I'm sure they've been meaning to seek a royal audience. TG: ..........................

Davesprite chats to Rose next. She protests at being spied on by two people, but Davesprite asks her why she burned the codebook. She didn’t need to in the future, but according to her future memories of the gods absorbed from her future dreamself, Davesprite appeared to make it relevant by traveling to the past. A sinister and familiar face watches through Dave’s window, soon proving to be the Draconian Dignitary, while Dave and Davesprite awkwardly spout elaborate mixed metaphors about how safe they are, until Dave, embarrassed, says "so i guess ill go back down and burn that book".

As any savvy reader could guess, he’s too late. The prompt suggests that he should go back in time to stop the books from being stolen, but, well...

It looks like you already tried that. GORE GALORE: 10

Dave looks completely undisturbed, but whether he is undisturbed is a different matter. He flings the corpse out the window into the lava, claiming it would freak Jade out.

John, in the lab, presses a button, causing the first monitor to depict his town, shortly before his birth. There is a Betty Crocker factory and a shopping mall, neither of which are in the town now. Zooming in locks a target over Nanna Egbert, who is taking a stroll with Dad. A meteor looms; this looks like it’s going to go very badly, considering the target lock, but it hits the factory instead. When John presses the glowing blue button, a PARADOX GHOST IMPRINT of Nanna is created; refer back to Rose’s experimentation in the lab and the green slime blobs. This time, the slime is sucked into a tube.

The next monitor does something similar with Grandpa Harley on his ship, and the next the same with Bro Strider, who stands over a meteor crater on an unseasonably warm day; something of an understatement, as the sky is the same lurid red and the sun the same glowing spiral that they were during the Strider bros’ battle even though it’s December. Bro is, regardless, prepared for the occasion with a small pair of outrageously awesome shades. What he needs these for will soon be revealed.

The fourth monitor goes back to John’s home town, a gigantic crater where the factory once was. In the shopping mall, Dad Egbert stands outside a joke shop, while Nanna apparently remains inside, busying herself with a tall bookshelf, a ladder, and a rather hefty unabridged joke book.

Mom Lalonde, clutching the infant Rose and wearing a rather snazzy long Jaspersprite-pink scarf, has come to town to study the meteor impact at the request of Grandpa Harley while he explores elsewhere. Unfortunately, now is the time a meteor chooses to strike Nanna’s location, destroying the shop.

An old mother lost today, but a new son gained.

Wait for it.

Mom Lalonde flees, dropping her scarf, which Dad Egbert picks up and slightly creepily sniffs. The monitor continues tracking her, and John captures her paradox imprint too, starting the machines whirring away...

Four babies abruptly appear on the pad, already diapered and bespectacled and old enough to sit up unaided. Convenient, no?

When the kitten jumps on a green button, the slime is blended in pairs; Nanna’s and Grandpa’s, and Mom’s and Bro’s. More blinking lights ensue, and another four extremely familiar-looking babies appear.

BRIGHT: I will say this: These kids are adorable.

While babies clamber over him, John vaults up his echeladder to the rank of Ectobiolobabysitter, acquiring one million Boondollars in the process. This automatically converts itself to a Boonbuck, the weight of which smashes his Porkhollow.

Finding out just what is going on here will have to wait, as the comic takes a brief detour to a battleship navigating the Medium nearby. There’s someone very familiar at the wheel…

An old man has much to do before he returns to Earth, dies, gets stuffed by his adopted-yet-biological daughter-slash-grand-daughter, and stuck in front of a fireplace.

Also aboard the ship are Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde. Dad returns Mom’s scarf, and the two of them hold hands as Grandpa Harley pilots the ship towards Skaia.

We return to the lab, where John has his hands full with the babies. One of them has managed to break one of the paradox slime jars from earlier, but appears uninjured. Also, CG’s trolling him again.

CHEL: CG makes mention of the ULTIMATE RIDDLE, but John is confused because CG hasn’t told him about that yet. He uses an ableist description in explaining.

CG: SEE I KIND OF PAINTED MYSELF INTO A CORNER. CG: I STARTED TROLLING YOU AT THE END, JUST BEFORE THE RIFT. CG: AND THEN JUMPED BACK A LITTLE. CG: AND NOW I GUESS I'VE BECOME RAILROADED INTO WORKING BACKWARDS HERE. CG: UNLESS I WANT TO DO THE SORT OF DUMB SCHIZOPHRENIC HOPPING AROUND LIKE THE OTHERS. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 18

… why wouldn’t you just hop right back to the start and work in a linear fashion from there?

TIER: Because CG excels at making things complicated for himself and is fundamentally rather stubborn and set in his ways/actions. Like he's made his bed, he's gonna lie in it.

CHEL: Anyway, CG banters with John for a bit, and then informs him that he (John) has arrived in the Veil and created infant versions of the players and their guardians.

EB: so they are like cloned copies of us? CG: NO. CG: THEY ARE LITERALLY YOU AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PARADOX CLONES.

A paradox clone, we are informed, is A CORRECTLY CLONED DUPLICATE THAT WILL INEVITABLY GO BACK IN TIME AND BECOME THE ORIGINAL TARGET THAT WAS CLONED. The game worlds contain many clues hinting at the ultimate destiny of the players to create their own selves through the game, and the only way things could possibly go involved the players creating themselves, or else the game session would never happen.

CG: WHICH IS ESPECIALLY PATHETIC SINCE PARADOX SPACE APPARENTLY WENT TO ALL THIS TROUBLE TO MAKE YOU JUST TO HAVE YOU FAIL AND DIE. CG: REALLY THERE'S NOTHING MORE TRAGIC THAN THESE NULL SESSIONS FULL OF KIDS ENTERING THE GAME AND FULFILLING SOME COSMIC DESTINY SHIT JUST TO GET WIPED OUT AND LEAVE BEHIND AN EMPTY POINTLESS INCIPISPHERE FOR ALL ETERNITY.

Tragic and completely unnecessary, when there are millions of perfectly good humans already in existence who could just as easily create winning game sessions without this aspect of it. Here we see another aspect of Homestuck which hasn’t come up quite so clearly before; an extremely weird take on determinism. I’m not sure if this is meant as a parody of Chosen One plotlines or if Hussie just thought it sounded cool, but it’s uncomfortable. As it turns out, only clones created by SBurb have a hope in hell of winning the game, and even they fail most of the time. Regular people who enter the game to save themselves from the destruction of the planet will fail and die there, which honestly is not really selling this game as a good thing, since it’s what causes the destruction of the planet in the first place. I’ve had actual, legitimate, honest-to-God nightmares about this aspect of SBurb, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think many fans wish to play SBurb. There’s lots of fan sessions and fake GameFAQs and custom Lands. Yet in reality SBurb is not a fun time. This is cosmic horror. I think Hussie is sometimes playing it for horror and sometimes he ignores the implications.

Then again, some people want to live on the troll planet, which is straight-up dystopia.

CHEL: Again, it isn’t really clear what he’s going for. Is it supposed to be terrifying or did he just think it would be clever? Does even Hussie know what he was going for? While it’s not exactly a joke, I think it’s worth another point here:

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 17

It might be a joke. As I said, I could see it as a parody of or playing with the Chosen One narrative. In this case, literally only the chosen ones have any hope, for reasons that are not down to any merit of their own. But if it is, there isn’t really much made of it.

Of course, the reasons people want to live on the troll planet are reasonable when taken alone, but a) contradicted every alternate scene and b) not a fair trade for everything else that’s going on there. But we’ll get to that when we actually see it. And I admit, SBurb powers would be fun, but not worth the loss of my entire species.

TIER: To me at least it's fun in the same way wondering how I'd fare as a wizard during Harry Potter's years at Hogwarts, or a ninja in Naruto is. Fundamentally you'd rather want to never encounter this sorta stuff even if you get some swanky I guess powers, but the mental exercise of it is quite honestly, really fun. The game has quite a lot of interesting things to poke around with, from lands to quests to what your co-players are up to. And I'm def guilty of playing trollsona games, because the world presented is just really fascinating in its gruesome glory.

Never want to have to actually go through it, Lord knows I'd be dead within the first ten minutes if I'm super lucky, but stories about it are pretty neat.

CHEL: That’s true, but the paradox clones thing seems almost to be taunting us for having that mentality. We can pretend we’d be the super-smart strong competent ones who make it, but in this universe if we demonstrably have parents we’re doomed to die for nothing and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BRIGHT: Another fun thing about this is that it fundamentally isolates the players from the rest of humanity. If you think about it, unless they have children with a non-player, they are completely unrelated to anyone else on Earth.

CHEL: And they can’t have kids with a non-player unless something thoroughly horrible happened, because as is stated later SBurb specifically takes its players away and destroys their planet around the point of their puberty.

BRIGHT: Although I think John is actually related to Dad — as far as we’re told, Dad is in fact Nanna’s biological son, which makes him genetically John’s half-brother.

They also miss out on (going by how active the babies are) the first couple of years of life. Those two years are crucial in terms of brain development. SBURB probably controls for that, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were negative consequences.

Oh, and if you’re a player, your existence means your civilisation is doomed. Lovely!

CHEL: And do the players ever feel any guilt or conflict over this? Do they hell. It doesn’t even occur to them, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t occur to Hussie either.

TIER: Welcome to the hell game that is SBURB; it's fundamentally pretty fucked up! It runs on a hellish scale of "things have already been predetermined" and I am Big Fear™.

CHEL: That’ll come up later, too, but there it’s obviously intentional nightmare fuel, and not at all a bad use of time travel as a story device.

CG, meanwhile, explains that he was the one to create his session’s players. With twelve of them it was a bit more complicated, but troll lineages are complicated anyway, and we’ll find out how later.

The babies are still getting all over the lab. Note that they're repeatedly referred to as "little pink monkeys". Then again, calling a non-white child a monkey really wouldn't be good.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 18

John’s infant self has latched onto the Sassacre book, while his infant Nanna is sitting in Dad Egbert’s old hat. Baby Bro is napping in the lap of Lil Cal; that baby’s braver than I am, I can tell you that. Baby Dave is sitting on Maplehoof, and baby Grandpa has found a pair of pistols. John does not take them away from him, or even seem to notice he has them.

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 7

BRIGHT: Earlier baby Bro broke one of the paradox slime cylinders and was sitting in it. John is pretty astoundingly bad at keeping babies away from obvious hazards.

TIER: That or the equipment is probably not sturdy enough to make it past an inspection into faulty management.

CHEL: But then he’s distracted by CG trolling him again, at least this time moving forward in time from the last conversation.

CG, like GA, apparently fails to grasp sarcasm...

EB: we had this great dare going. EB: to see who could be the least helpful and informative. EB: and you totally lost, dude! EB: you were hella helpful. CG: I WAS OBVIOUSLY JUST SPITING YOUR STUPID POINTLESS HUMAN DARE. [...] CG: ANYWAY, HOW COULD WE HAVE MADE A DARE IF I'M MOVING BACKWARDS ON YOUR TIMELINE.

… which is weird because moments later he uses it himself.

EB: do you even have elves? CG: YES, LET'S COMPARE WHICH FANTASY CREATURES THAT DON'T EXIST WE BOTH DO OR DON'T NOT HAVE. CG: WHAT A GREAT FUCKING IDEA, JOHN!

Hussie seems to waver back and forth a lot on whether trolls get sarcasm or not, in general. Since he’s contradicting himself with troll worldbuilding, that’s a point.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19

Banter aside, he informs John that the babies are sent to Earth via meteors during the Reckoning.

BRIGHT: How do they survive the impact? Some of those meteor strikes destroy buildings. Those are some ridiculously resilient kids.

CHEL: Cut to AR, who is still having fun on the rocketboard, until he runs into a frog temple atop a meteor. This is apparently horrifying and illegal by his standards.

You are going to throw whoever is responsible into the slammer. You always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry at crimes.

Inside, he finds an empty time capsule, like Jade’s, some complicated machinery, and a monitor screen showing a greyscale house with a very familiar bespectacled female infant and dirty old hat in it. The year depicted, says the monitor, is 1910. Enter none other than Colonel Sassacre himself.

Eight days prior, the orphan girl was taken in by an aristocratic southern colonel and legendary humorist. He recovered the young lady from a crater where a bakery once stood, operated by the man's wife, a notable baked goods baroness.

An explosion outside leads them both to a crater, where once stood the doghouse of the colonel’s pet, Halley, but before the Colonel can investigate further he’s shot through the heart.

This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

BRIGHT: I remain baffled as to how Baby Grandpa can even lift those things, let alone pull the triggers.

CHEL: Baby Grandpa crawls from the crater, and Halley the dog turns out to be alive.

The young boy has difficulty pronouncing the name though. Sounds more like "Harley" when he says it.

How does he know it? The colonel died before he even noticed the baby was there. Is baby Nanna speaking well enough to tell him yet? I guess he could be told later, as Sassacre wasn’t in fact their only sapient guardian...

Thirteen years later, the boy develops a taste for adventure. He and his guardian bid farewell. His sister is sad. She will be left all alone with the wicked pastry baroness. She can handle it, he tells her. He believes in her.

It isn’t clear why she didn’t go with him, or leave under her own power. They don’t seem to be imprisoned, as the panel depicts them outside on grass with no restraints or guards over them, so it’s not a matter of only one of them being able to get out. That’s a point for Nanna not trying and a point for Grandpa not bringing her:

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 9

That dog is also remarkably lively, considering it, unlike Bec, is an entirely normal dog, it was an adult thirteen years previously, and it’s somehow supporting the weight of an entire teenager on its back (again, please don’t try this at home, you can break the dog’s spine that way).

FAILURE ARTIST: As we’ve said, Colonel Sassacre is a thinly-veiled Mark Twain expy. The real Mark Twain died in 1910 at the same time Halley’s Comet was in the sky. It’s a cute historical gag having him be literally killed by a comet but it does muck up the timeline. Nanna must have been a senior citizen when Dad was born. Perhaps he’s adopted?

CHEL: The other option is that Dad is a senior citizen now, but surely John would have wondered why his dad is so ridiculously old. I think it’s just that thing in mainstream comics and cartoons where adults are split into Old and Not Old, and the parents are normal ages for parents but the grandparents would have to be in their hundreds going by the gags. See how Scrooge McDuck in the DuckTales reboot is over a hundred and forty years old yet his sister’s son is still a youngish adult.

AR notes that the appearifier is centred over Halley the dog, but hears someone coming. It proves to be the Draconian Dignitary. AR hides and watches, noting that DD is carrying Rose’s notebooks and Dave’s beta envelopes. DD keeps the MEOW book, but throws away the other items. Complacency of the Learned lands on the floor, and the envelopes land in the time capsule, which sets to bloom in four hundred and thirteen million years.

Meanwhile, John talks to CG while infant Mom Lalonde pets the mutant kitten. John asks if there’s any way to delay the Reckoning, but nope; CG warns him that the smallest meteors will start going in only a few minutes.

EB: ok, well you keep saying how doomed we are and how all this bad stuff happens sooner, but you never say why! EB: what happens in our game that's different from yours that makes things go so badly? CG: JACK NOIR.

The Jack Noir from the trolls’ game session allied with them and helped them dethrone and exile the Black Queen, while the one from the humans’ session, as you may recall, killed the Black Monarchs and gained their powers, and is currently rampaging through the Incipisphere. John asks if it’s the same Jack Noir, but CG explains.

CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES. CG: OUR JACK TRUMPED THE QUEEN, BUT GOT NO FURTHER. CG: YOUR JACK GOT THE BEST OF BOTH OF THEM, AND IS NOW SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING… EB: like an ace? CG: SURE OK.

The trolls don’t know what went so differently to cause the two Jacks to behave so differently, but CG doesn’t think it matters by now. John interrupts him, deciding to do yet another Con Air ending re-enactment.

Watch on YouTube

Recap: montage of Con Air posters and images to the tune of “How Do I Live Without You”. John hands the thoroughly disgusting Con Air bunny to the protesting baby Rose, while CG watches huffily on his monitor. Jade demands a toy too, so John hands her the bunny he received from Rose in an excessively dramatic fashion. CG frustratedly hits himself in the head. In scribbly crayon-like drawings, Casey the salamander performs a drum solo with glowing blue mushrooms for drums and the Con Air plane crashes. More Con Air imagery, John embraces baby Jade and the baby Lalondes while sobbing; GC points and laughs at him over CG’s shoulder and they have a slapfight. John imagines himself in Nic Cage’s iconic wifebeater and mullet and performs an air guitar solo.

TIER: Lemme tell ya, as someone who's only experience with this darn movie is whatever pops up courtesy of John this sequence is just a trip and a half. Possibly a higher number.

CHEL: Cut to end-of-act curtains; they open on the next page, declaring a PSYCHE; there are more pages to go.

Cut to Dave’s hands, covered in the dead Dave’s blood. I… guess he’s supposed to be staring at them in shock? It’s impossible to tell through his shades. For all I know he could be worried about the cleanup. GC trolls him and they banter creepily, with her demanding to know what his blood smells like and him taunting her about her blindness.

TG: just him and me TG: havin a see party TG: like a couple of eagle eyed bros peepin shit up into the wee hours GC: D4V3 GC: C4N 1 COM3 TO YOUR S33 P4RTY? TG: i guess but youll have to be careful not to stumble around bumping into all the gorgeous masterpieces hanging around everywhere TG: god so beautiful to look at with my perfect eyesight GC: C4N 1 L1CK TH3 P41NT1NGS? TG: yeah thats fine

Neither of them seems to take it particularly hard. If there was narrative around the dialogue, I think we’d get a better grasp of how Dave feels. Lacking much body language or punctuation, tone is a bit tricky to get.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a character later who gets a lot of grief for insulting her blindness but reading what John, Dave, and CG say I don’t know how that character could be worse.

CHEL: AT, meanwhile, is trolling Jade, rather politely. He even takes time to ask if she’s having a good nap. She’s worried about John’s dreamself not waking, and AT scrolls into his view of the future timeline, but can’t find John awake, nor see into his dreams. Jade, however, will wake up soon, and she thanks him for this report. Unfortunately, when Jade wakes up she will be in danger, and AT can’t see any further. He tells her CG wants to talk to her about her exploding robot. He can’t see whether it exploded or not because there are a lot of explosions, but asking future Jade shows it did, and that she declared CG to be a pretty nice guy, which surprises AT since he doesn’t think CG is particularly nice. Jade says she thinks AT is nice too, and asks why he’s the only one who talks to her while she’s asleep.

AT: bECAUSE YOU HAVE A ROBOT, tO LET YOU SAY THINGS THAT HAPPEN, oN PROSPIT, AT: aND i'M CURIOUS, AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP, AT: bUT NOW ALL OUR DREAM SELVES ARE DEAD, AT: }:'(

AT happily remembers his own time on Prospit, and we cut back to Rose, being trolled by GA despite the fact that Rose is obviously in the middle of an epic magic battle. The conversation is understandably chilly, and GA still hasn’t figured out that “Dumb Rose” as opposed to “Smart Rose” was John rather than a bizarre roleplaying scenario.

GC continues trolling Dave. He asks her how she operates a computer without sight.

GC: 1M SORRY D4V3 TH4T YOU W1LL N3V3R 3XP3R13NC3 TH3 S3NSORY BOUQU3T TH4T 1 3NJOY 3V3RY D4Y GC: TH4T 1 3NSCONC3 MYS3LF 1N L1K3 4 W4RM 4ND COMFY B4THROB3 M4D3 OF FL4VOR 4ND M3LODY TG: oh ok TG: so the dumbest and most far fetched explanation imaginable ok got it

Yes, pretty much. This brings me to a Problematykks point; GC is supposed to be blind, but it really doesn’t seem to affect her in any way at all. Its workaround is ridiculously convenient and effective, and while I’m not blind myself, I know many people with physical disabilities hate it when fiction does this. I know I would be pissed off if a piece of fiction showed an easy and convenient way to not have autism anymore. (Horrible, horrible memories of someone back in the days of Livejournal’s Fanficrants of a fic in which autism was somehow cured by having a foursome. I don’t remember how that was supposed to work.) “She’s a space alien” only goes so far in explaining it. Why even bother making her blind if it’s not going to affect her in any way?

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s the least blind blind person in media. Characters like Daredevil from Marvel Comics and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender have a Disability Superpower but at the end of the day they still can’t do things like read printed text. GC has no disadvantages.

BRIGHT: She can apparently smell and taste photons.

Which raises the question why none of the other trolls ever show a heightened sense of smell or taste. If GC can learn to interpret smells as colours, her sense of smell must have been that strong all along, and there’s no indication in the text that she’s biologically more sensitive than her companions. Trolls must be better at following a trail than bloodhounds.

CHEL: Synaesthesia which makes one strongly associate colours with smells is a thing, and synaesthesia is generally the word the fandom uses to explain Terezi’s ability, but you still have to actually see the colours for that to work. If she was only mostly blind and was picking up blurry colour patches, I could buy it (and that is how the fandom tends to do it with human AUs), but not if she’s supposed to be completely blind, and she still wouldn’t be able to read text that way.

BRIGHT: Time for another animation, and for a hop back into the recent past.

Watch on YouTube

As the meteor locked onto Dave’s house approaches, Dave climbs up the tower to retrieve his cruxite egg from the nest his sprite made. Unfortunately the sprite attacks him, knocking him and the egg off the tower. Bro Strider appears on top of the approaching meteor and slices it in half with his katana; the two halves are diverted by the blow and strike different areas of the city. Dave’s fall is broken by a rocket board, which is presumably how Bro got up to the meteor in the first place. (How did he manage to aim it to intercept Dave’s fall? Wouldn’t it take longer to get from the meteor to Dave than it takes for Dave to fall from the top of the tower to the roof of the building? We shall never know.) The egg hatches, and Dave is transported into the Medium. There’s no sign of what happens to Bro.

CHEL: Yet more cartoon physics around the Strider bros.

BRIGHT: I don’t know if we mentioned this earlier, but although Dave and Bro live in an apartment block that presumably housed multiple people, only Dave’s apartment gets transported into the Medium. Everyone else in the complex is left to die on Earth. SBURB is sociopathic.

Elsewhere in the Medium, back in the present, Grandpa’s ship is approaching Skaia, with Mom Lalonde and Dad Egbert on board.

Down on Skaia, Jack Noir draws his sword and slaughters the army WV raised to march on the Black King. WV cowers, but Jack leaves him alive. He then uses the Black Queen’s ring to send some sort of giant red tentacle attack through Skaia, slaughtering Dersite and Prospitian forces indiscriminately.

CHEL: Are they tentacles? I always thought of them as some sort of lightning lasers.

BRIGHT: That makes a lot more sense!

In the ectobiology lab, as the clock ticks down to the Reckoning, the babies are teleported to asteroids around the lab. There must be an air supply in this asteroid belt — characters are consistently shown as being able to survive outside.

CHEL: Maybe it’s just the players’ natural badassery. Batman Can Breathe In Space.

BRIGHT: On Skaia, CD makes his way through Jack’s slaughter fest, which has now ravaged a sizeable chunk of planet, and hands him the White King’s sceptre. Jack raises the sceptre and initiates the Reckoning. The meteorites start to vanish into Skaia’s defence portals. In the frog temple, DD somehow combines the MEOW genetic code with a paradox clone of Halley, creating Jade’s guardian Bec. Bec’s creation damages the laboratory equipment in the temple.

Cut to Jade, who is snoozing peacefully while her dream self explores Prospit. She looks up at Skaia, to see Jack’s shadow passing in front of it. Jack launches his tentacle attack on Prospit, slaughtering the inhabitants, then severs the chain attaching Prospit’s moon to the planet. The moon begins falling towards Skaia.

Jack then flies to LOHAC, where he encounters Bro Strider on one of the turntable mesas. Unexpectedly, Bro is able to give Jack an even fight. After a few exchanges, he drives his katana into the mesa; some sort of golden light emanates from the crack, and Bro absconds.

Wait, how did Bro get onto LOHAC? How did he survive the meteor impacts?

TIER: The ol' "rule of cool". As long as something is sufficiently "absolutely kickass!!" the rules of reality and physics can go sit on the bleachers twiddling their thumbs for all they fucking matter. There's a reason early fandom pinned down Bro as an unorthodox but immensely cool older brother type guy for so long. Because with what little information was available before we got bludgeoned with "No actually he was the absolute fucking worst thing to happen to Dave and fucked him up for life" that was the general impression he gave off.

CHEL: This and the meteor splitting are yet more reason not to take Bro’s treatment of Dave seriously; this is a world in which ludicrous animesque badassery rules the day, and physically impossible feats of battle occur every five minutes. Forcing a child to go through extensive and excessive sword training in brutal heat in a precarious place, possibly every day, ought by rights to be normal there, and I can’t believe he was physically hurt by swordfighting when he survived a meteor collision as an infant. Besides, training that extensive quite possibly could be the only thing that would keep Dave alive in these circumstances.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18

BRIGHT: There’s a random Squiddles interlude, and then we return to Skaia.

John’s unconscious dream self has fallen out of Prospit’s moon as it plummets towards Skaia. Jade tries shaking him awake, and then slaps him, but to no avail. At the last moment, she throws him out of the path of the moon, and her dream self is then killed when it lands on her. Back on Earth, her dreambot overloads and explodes.

CHEL: Taking her tower room with it; Jade’s sleeping body plummets towards the earth.

BRIGHT: The moon leaves a gigantic crater in Skaia. John’s now-conscious dreamself hovers above it.

The babies vanish through the defence portals to Earth.

CHEL: Each takes an item with them. John takes the Sassacre book, Rose the first Con Air bunny, Dave rides Maplehoof, Jade takes the bunny Rose gave to John (which is in fact the Con Air bunny plus several years and repairs), Nanna sits inside Dad’s old hat, Mom takes the mutant kitten, Bro sleeps in the lap of Li’l Cal, and Grandpa dual wields the flintlock pistols he should not be allowed.

BRIGHT: Dave and Rose reach the Gates above their houses and set out to explore their Lands. We close on an eerie shot of Bec outside the frog temple on Jade’s island at night.

CHEL: Jade’s tower room is blown to bits, and a truly enormous meteor hovers over the scene.

Curtains close. End of Act 4. Before Act 5, we receive a message from Rose, via her GameFAQ.

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress. This is my final entry. My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to play this game the right way.

Really? You haven’t been in the game for more than a couple of hours and Jade still isn’t in at all! Maybe consider that the fact that not all your players are in the game yet when you wonder why it isn’t working?

I have been meticulous in documenting the process to help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I believe them now. I just blew up my first gate. I’m not sure why I did it, really. I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can’t be repaired. We’ve come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God’s sake.

I can see her point. The game is horrible and should be stopped. On the other hand, I’d at least attempt to spend more than one day investigating it before trying to break it. Randomly destroying shit is more likely to make things much worse than anything else.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth’s decaying network, and sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia’s malevolent tendrils. In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real. Pardon my egress. You’re on your own now.

This note is signed with a glowing multicoloured “RL” and revealed to be emitted from a purple box with an aerial, floating in space. It seems that’s how their internet’s still working.

FAILURE ARTIST: The internet seems to be a magical dimension in Homestuck and not something that’s part of physical infrastructure.

CHEL: Hours in the future, WV lands in the desert remains of Earth, wrapped up in John’s old ghost-patterned bedsheet, which is still white. A villein becomes a vagabond. In his memory, he tears up an effigy of Jack Noir… where’d he get it? Did the game create it for some reason? Anyway, John’s blanket falls on him from the sky as Prospit plummets; WV calls it a RAG OF SOULS. Adorably melodramatic.

John’s awoken dreamself gazes sadly at Jade’s deceased one, which for some reason isn’t actually under the rubble of Prospit and appears to still be three-dimensional. There’s no excessive blood splatter like with the dead Dave, which is good, not too over the top. He retrieves the Queen’s ring from her hand. Was he told at any point that it’s important? Because if he doesn’t know, I’m not sure robbing the dead is very heroic. He sees an image of himself flying over the battlefield in a large cloud above him; in the vision he’s near a castle, so he goes to seek it out.

On Earth, PM wraps herself up in an old Prospit banner. A mistress becomes a mendicant. In her memories, she has beheaded the Hegemonic Brute and is arranging a meeting with Jack Noir. He arrives and she presents the crowns; smirking evilly, he honours their bargain, and the Courtyard Droll brings her the green parcel. She brings it to the castle from John’s vision as he arrives there, hands over the box, and angrily walks away.

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s Honor Before Reason (maybe she’s programmed that way) but she has the right reaction. This is a lot to go through to deliver a package.

CHEL: Inside the box is a letter from Jade’s unknown pen pal, who writes in dark green and a distinctive jolly-hockey-sticks dialect, with a tendency to ramble off on tangents about movies and wrestling.

Anyway you should listen to jade from here on out john because she sure seems to know whats best for you. Whatever your adventure throws at you im sure shell tell you you can handle it. She believes in you.

And another letter from Jade.

even though its super late and you probably went through a lot of trouble to get it, i really hope this present cheers you up! you looked so sad while you were reading my letter. um... which is to say, the one you are reading now.

She explains that in her dreams she goes to Prospit and John’s sleeping dream self is there, and that’s where she gets her visions. She hopes he likes his present, and says her penpal is fun…

john i am REALLY looking forward to seeing you when you wake up!!!!! its been nice playing with my prospitian friends and all, but also kind of lonely knowing you were in the other tower sleeping and having lousy dreams. :( im not sure where i am when you are reading this but im sure ill make it down to where you are soon! (jeez how did you get down there??? oh well ill find out) i cant wait to fly around the moon with you and show you all my favorite places. itll be so much fun!!!!!!!!! :D <3 jade

Ow. I think this is the only time John cries in the entire comic.

A Single Tear(™) is a bit of an understated reaction to the death of one of your best friends who you just recently learned is also your twin sister, but to be fair, John isn’t left with very much time to react, as next panel Jack Noir’s sword is pointed at his face.

BRIGHT: John knows about dream selves and waking selves by now, I think?

CHEL: He knows they’re a thing but I don’t think he knows they count as backup lives. AT told Jade dream selves can die separately from regular selves but I don’t think anyone told John.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jack Noir wants the ring, but then he’s stopped by Jade’s gift: a robotic bunny wielding multiple weapons.

They line up for a fight.

Hours in the future, on a destroyed planet, AR wraps police tape around himself and becomes a Aimless Renegade. Before the disaster, he went to the Veil, where he found a sleeping John. He saves John by putting him on a rocket board.

Back to the robotic bunny. Jack Noir flies away from the fight. Grandpa’s battleship lands and Grandpa takes away Jade’s body. Mom and Dad disembark the ship and wave goodbye as it leaves. Grandpa cries a Single Tear as he transports Jade’s already taxidermed body. Did he have a machine?

CHEL: For that matter, why isn’t he helping anyone who’s actually still alive while he’s there?

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10

FAILURE ARTIST: Nope, transporting a dead body is more important.

Again going back, White Queen leaves Prospit. On landing, she becomes Windswept Questant and wanders the Earth. We go forward years later. She repairs the laboratory and meets up with AR, WV, and PM. WV’s homemade spear hides the ring.

John watches this scene through the clouds of Skaia. He looks at the ring in his hand. In another cloud, there’s Jade’s laboratory. We close in on it and inside is The Fourth Wall. It isn’t turned on, but we are still lead to Andrew Hussie, banging away on a computer keyboard as he recaps the plot for a second time.

CHEL: Which we shall do as well when we’re done with this section, because it’s insanely hard to keep track of everything.

FAILURE ARTIST: Andrew Hussie says Nanna’s comet landed 99 years before John’s “birth” so he has some clue about the age but still doesn’t see it odd that a woman that age has a son who is probably only in his thirties.

CHEL: As I said, it’s also possible Dad was really old too, but that’s never really suggested. Not to mention, since they were brought into existence as toddlers, shouldn’t the kids be noticeably older than the ages given for them? John should be biologically fourteen to fifteen by now and at that age that can make a visible difference. I know the art style doesn’t really give clues, but no one I’ve seen has ever pointed that out in fanfic either.

FAILURE ARTIST: Newborns aren’t distinctive looking and can’t really do the cute things toddlers do. People in TV and movies regularly give birth to six month old infants so it’s not strange.

CHEL: True, but this isn’t TV, it’s a comic, and they don’t have to use an actual infant as a prop here.

BRIGHT: Possibly it’s intentional. Among other things, we see the newly-created players survive short trips through vacuum, crash-land on Earth without even minor injuries, and handle weapons they shouldn’t be able to lift for another four or five years. This could work if players have superhuman abilities (that is, beyond the classpect system). If that was the intent then it really should be made more explicit, though.

Of course, what it really boils down to is that Homestuck runs off Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny, and occasionally breaks down on examination as a result.

On the whole this is a solid Act, I think! We have a lot of new stuff happening, more characters get introduced, and we find out some more about the trolls. It’s much less rambling than Act 1.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19 GET ON WITH IT!: 18 GORE GALORE: 10 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19 TOTAL: 127

[rawbiredbest]

It’s All in Your Head

Contains: Fluff, Angst, Unconventional Relationships, Telepathy, Demons Fandom: Marvel (comics) Relationships: Stephen Strange/Victor von Doom Characters: Stephen Strange, Victor von Doom, Wong, Boris Word Count: 6103

Out of the blue, Stephen Strange and Victor von Doom find themselves telepathically connected.

No squealing, remember that......

Content warning for canon typical violence, profanity, implied sexual activity, and a single usage of homophobic language by a very bad individual.

Graciously commissioned by @osheets! Wanna do the same? Check my info!

Read here or on AO3!

- - -

The breakthrough comes with rapturous spontaneity. It’s like Victor von Doom has been standing on the shore of a Latverian loch, and in the blink of an eye, the grains of sand have become an orchestra, the surf their masterful conductor, and he the sole audience. He has captured their forms in glass and steel, multiplied ten million fold in the casings of complex machinery, and the entire laboratory sings the path to a bolder, brighter future. In all of his years of experimentation, innovation, desperation, he has never heard this music before. It pours from every screw and bolt, vibrates along every copper wire, thunders out of every piston and valve. The engineers below him, controlling and monitoring the device, are Gods of melody and time. Doom himself has transcended divinity, rising high on sublime notes of praise. He is Emperor, Encapsulated Universe, and his feet do not touch the floor as he glides to the heart of his machine, his veins coursing with silver beauty. Hydrogen atoms dance into the arms of their palladium partners, and their heat is love, love for each other, love for nature, love for him, and it is a primordial force unlocked from decades of ridicule and shame, and he has set it free. Genius. Monarch. Ultimate.

And then it goes. Slowly, a receding tide. It slides from his bones, leaving them aching. He braces himself against a panel, cold sweat sticking to his brow. His heart hammers in his chest, a lone drum holding a marching beat long after the band has departed into the moonless night. The engineers gape at him, oblivious to the miracle that has deafened their ruler.

Doom touches the shielding glass of the operating CMNS reactor, and its vibrations are an idiot hum. He blinks salt from his eyes, breath condensing on the machine.

Four thousand, five hundred and six miles away, a doctor and his best friend leave Madison Square Garden, wearing concert merch, beaming like loons.

- - -

To Stephen, it’s a tsunami.

He’s watching TV. The nightly news. He could tap into the Eye and view the entire world as it turns, but he doesn’t want to. It isn’t very often he feels human, let alone vegetable, so any opportunity to vegetate he takes with gusto. Stretched across his couch, he tugs down the hem of his shirt, leans his head on his hand, and waits to absorb the country’s woes.

He gets a sharp pain on the nape of his neck instead. He swats at the spot, looks at his palm. “Ow.”

Wong looks up from the email he’s writing. “Are you okay?”

Strange frowns, settles back down. “I think there’s a mosquito in here.” They’re talking about the Amazon fires. Stephen’s heart aches for the birds who will drop from the sky, their lungs full of smoke, voices forever silenced.

And then pain rips down his back, like his spine is torn out by an iron hand from his neck to his waist.

He can’t help but yell then, clutching the cushions. A heavy ache lingers in his vertebrae. Gingerly he sits up, breathing hard, eyes clenched shut. Something a bit like petrichor, a bit medicinal, a bit hot fills his nose.

Wong runs to him, but Strange raises a hand. “I’m fine,” he says, though he already braces against the thick lump rising next to his heart. As it crests, it dissipates throughout his body. He forces his eyes open, expecting to see the black trails of tiny spiders beneath his skin. Nothing but unmarked flesh.

“Should I call Doctor Carter?” Wong asks, thumbing toward the antique phone. It’s enchanted to call anywhere, anytime, any-plane.

“No, no.” Stephen leans on his knees, rubbing his temples. The pain is moving, changing. “This isn’t exactly her--”

--forte, he wants to say, but he is cut off by trees. Huge trees. Trees that consume the sky in fractal tangles of evergreen. Primordial, pristine trees, the definition of trees. The little things that crawl beneath and flit between, some carrying light, some with rigid jaws.

It’s a psychic attack. Strange has weathered them before. This one is weird. As he waves for Wong to get the Eye, he endures the spikes of pain that impale his senses to grab a closer look. This entity is lumbering, gigantic in scope yet wet around the edges.

It’s being born, he realizes. It’s waking up.

It hurts, it hurts but he’s curious. He sees New York now, its spires and streets lined up like so much circuitry. He feels the rough brush of concrete, hears the car horn concerto, smells the burn of rubber, and all throughout are rules, parameters, reasons. The thing is learning, feasting on information, and gathering more at an exponential rate. A tidal wave of green descends on the city, picking and plucking at this imaginary world.

And as it eats, thousands and thousands of hungry mouths devouring America, it hates. It hates the excess, the cruelty, the inefficiencies. It roars, barreling down the Sanctum, thousands upon thousands of tons of incomparable loathing.

Wong presses the Eye into Stephen’s hand.

“Pardon my French, dear friend,” Strange says.

The Eye bursts open, and the Sorcerer Supreme throws every ounce of his mystic might at the slavering invader. The living room cascades with dancing whorls of light as he raises his arms, funneling a solar flare, and cries a spell that every New Yorker knows by heart.

“FUCK OFF!”

Utter obliteration. When he opens his eyes, glittering motes trickle from the ceiling. The pain is gone. The TV has gone to commercial.

The phone is ringing.

Wong answers it as Stephen sinks to the couch. He slips the Eye around his neck, and its weight comforts. He thinks he’ll sleep with it tonight.

“It’s for you.”

Strange massages his ear. Vulgarity is embarrassing, but faced with an immaterial infant in the depths of an unholy tantrum doing everything in its power to cram a fork in a magic electrical socket, seemed like a good idea at the time. He takes the phone. “Hello?”

“Doctor! The master -- Victor -- something has happened, I do not know-- I--”

“Boris?” Stephen sits up. “Boris, it’s all right. Slow down. What’s going on?”

Behind the old retainer’s words, a siren wails. “The master--” He hesitates. “His newest Doombot. He turned it on for the first time. All was well, and then it exploded! And now Victor -- he is breathing this flame, this plasma! It burned through his mask! Doctor, what do I do!?”

Strange inhales deep. Counts to three. Lets it go. “He’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure? I do not mean to doubt you, but--”

“It will pass. Give him an ice pack and put him somewhere dark and quiet for a few hours.”

“I trust you, doctor, but please, when you can, come and see him. The violence of it, it scares me.”

“I know. It’s fine. Just something he ate.”

Boris thanks him and hangs up.

Stephen wishes the couch would eat him as he heaves a sigh. “Wong,” he asks, “Is it too late to rescind discovering my bisexuality at the ripe age of however old I am now?”

“I don’t know,” Wong replies, “To both parts of your question. I lost count in the five hundreds.”

Strange curses again.

- - -

“So. We have a telepathic link. Any idea how it got there?”

He may as well be speaking to a wall of granite. Doom, arms folded, sneers at him across the table.

Stephen links his fingers together. “I have nothing. It’s rather disconcerting. I don’t believe it’s malevolent, which is always a plus, but it’s unremarkable, which isn’t. So I’d appreciate any insight, Victor. Whatever you’d like to...you know. Get off your chest.”

Doom’s eyes are cold.

“Anything at all. Need to vent? I know you can get heated.”

The table weighs over three hundred pounds, yet Doom flings it at him like a feather. Strange cuts it in half with a bolt of solid light as Crimson Bands constrict around his other arm. They serpentine and splinter into smaller tendrils, their tips unhinging into fanged blooms, and a thought comes to Stephen as the king charges him: he was born in a forest. It’s nature’s fury that fills his head, a cacophony of hellish noise, the wild hunt calling for his spilled blood. Doom’s rage in concentrated, psychic form, howling down their link.

The Daggers of Denak, blades spinning, do an admirable job trimming the vines, their severed heads still snapping, and Strange summons the Winds of Watoomb to push Doom away. The gale staggers him yet he presses forward, arcane runes flashing a ice blue aegis on his gauntlet. Step by step, forcing him back towards the wall.

He lunges. Strange is ready for it. Doom’s arm comes up, Stephen’s arms fan out. Before the king grasps his throat, he calls a pair of razors into his palms. Victor’s grip is suffocating. Strange holds his head between two guillotine blades. An impasse.

Doom’s voice rasps, thin and scorched. “That. Hurt.”

Stephen sips the tiny breaths he can. Something’s pressing into his belly. Sweat beads on his brow. It’s a gun. It’s the stupid gun Doom carries in the stupid pouch on his stupid belt. Why does he even have it? For shooting idiot sorcerers, he thinks. He swallows hard, knows Doom can feel it through the metal. Not so evenly matched as he thought.

And then he notices it. Hiding deep under the screams is a layer of fire. Reaching through the link, he touches it. Color rushes to his cheeks.

“Seriously?” he ekes out, “This is turning you on?”

Doom’s grip loosens. A minuscule amount, enough for Strange to squeeze a few more words. The fire leaps into his psychic palm, eager, aggressive.

“There’s no shame in it. You’re good at what you do, Victor. Very few people can put me in check. Look at you. You’ve pinned me to a wall like a butterfly. That’s impressive. I--”

The king leans closer. Stephen smells ashes on his breath.

“Hoary hosts.”

The gun is holstered. A steel thumb strokes his cheek.

“Reap what you sow,” Doom mutters.

- - -

The aches and bruises will last for days, but the coolness of Doom’s armor against the carpet burn on his back is soothing. He rests a hand in the king’s own. Anything else feels too strenuous. “Was that your first time having telepathic sex? It’s intense, isn’t it?”

Victor takes in the state of the room. Paintings smashed, furniture so much firewood, stone walls fractured and cratered. How much destruction is his? He has no idea. One or the other had to have held back. The castle is still standing, after all.

Neither man speaks. Stephen ventures a glimpse down their link and gets only an image of black curtains. Doom’s already set up defenses. Though some of his own are raised, he lets some satisfaction flow between them. An olive branch.

A quiet, amused huff. “At times, Strange,” Doom says, and already his voice sounds better, “Your physical merits outweigh the strenuous mental exertions you put me through.”

“I never much cared for the medieval aesthetic myself, yet here we are.” He grunts as he looks over his shoulder, thighs twinging. “How drunk were we that night?”

“Doom was sober.”

“Oh no, your golden goblet saw plenty of refills. You were, at the very least, tipsy.”

“You question Doom’s memory?”

Stephen cups his chin, looks deep into dark brown eyes. “I question, my lord, why you claim to remember, with crystal clarity, a night you could have easily decreed never happened at all.”

Nothing comes. No biting remark, no caustic humiliation. Doom only holds his gaze, and under the black curtains flashes something bright, something strong. It lasts for only half a second before the king gets up, using Strange’s shoulder for support. “This link shall be insufferable. Do your part to get rid of it.”

Stephen frowns, annoyed that his legs work. He wonders if Victor left any of his clothing intact. “Right. Ground rules. Stay out of my head, and I won’t make you cough up another star. Deal?”

“Stay out of Doom’s head, and you shall not know pain unending. You have a deal.”

- - -

This lasts for two months.

- - -

On Day 51, a current of malicious satisfaction slithers through Strange’s mind. Gooseflesh rises up his back. The half-chewed wad of pastrami and egg in his mouth goes sour. He spits it out, bracing himself on the dinner table, and without thinking of thinking, he thinks: what have you done now?

The smirk on Doom’s face reminds him of the crocodiles at the Bronx Zoo. The thing Victor is smiling at reminds him of shop class. He can’t begin to make heads or tails of it. Like many of the king’s devices, it could have come off the set of a sci-fi movie. Sleek and chrome, rigged with multicolored wires, pumps, and gauges, a porthole reveals the heart of the machine, a vile purple light. Stephen’s gut tells him that color would eat him alive if it could, tear into his flesh and drip his blood from its teeth. Stephen trusts his gut.

Strange, Doom replies, smile quickly fading into a scowl, We had an agreement.

You broke first. I felt you. My spidey sense tingled.

Victor’s gauntlets ball into fists, and he sends a wave of serrated anger barreling toward the magician. A chained wolf, barking and snarling. An executioner waiting for the condemned to dig his own grave deeper.

Stephen curses. He didn’t mean to think that out loud. Look. Just tell me what it is and I’ll leave you alone.

The black curtains rustle, then lift like a wing. Swimming in the purple light are mathematical equations, coiling around metal rods. It makes perfect sense to Doom, but to Strange it’s a form of gibberish undecipherable by any eldritch tome.

Then he hears it. It’s not coming from the machine. It’s from Doom. Subvocalized lyrics. A silent song. He could recognize the tune anywhere.

He bought its album at the concert.

This is cold fusion.

Stephen snaps back to attention. Cold fusion. Should I be worried?

Victor folds his arms. That I built a safe, eternal form of energy for myself and my people? Yes, Strange, cower and quake. Your country shall never have it so long as I draw breath.

There are many dangerous rebuttals to that he could say. Names he could drop. Yet Doom promised pain unending. Fifty-one days into their connection, Strange has no leads into its inner workings. Finding out if he could make good on his word is a risk Stephen is unwilling to take.

I don’t like this, the sorcerer thinks, but I have to believe you. Don’t misbehave.

His own mental defense is a never-ending subway express train, its doors and windows a veil of golden thorns. Sighing, he sits back down. What’s left of his sandwich has the appeal of wet newspaper.

Doom was right. The link is awful.

- - -

On Day 60, despite the blazing fire in the hearth, Victor’s feet send ripples through a puddle.

He regards it from his antique armchair throne with indifferent curiosity. Through the filters in his mask, he smells the green, pungent scent of foliage rot and seawater. In the puddle itself swim millions of plankton. A frenzy of eating, fucking, dying, and birthing unfolds beneath his alloy soles.

From the corner of his eye, he watches the puddle extend an arm of water across the floor. Sliding under a wall, a line of slithering damp turns the paint a moldy gray. Moisture fans across the entire side of the room in a pattern like falling stars, like skeletal hands trailing through a river. The scent grows stronger as the puddle expands. He rises before it consumes his chair. The leather sinks until it is a speck of mahogany in the brine. Gloom washes over it and it is gone.

Doom folds his arms. A breeze teases the tail of his cloak. Murmuring a quiet word, he puts out the fire with an arc of a finger, and turns around into another world.

It is eternal night. It has no sun, and what few stars can be seen are lucky glimpses through a lush canopy of branches and black, web-like leaves many hundreds of feet above. The grass under him has a sticky grip, but gentle. If grass could want for anything, it would like to give the king safe passage on his journey. He isn’t the sustenance it’s looking for. That comes on the wind, in the form of tiny shards of detritus falling from forest layers high overhead. It shimmers as it tumbles down, the only source of light in this hadal garden.

He doesn’t need to go far. Half-concealed behind a root far taller than he, Doom watches himself and Stephen Strange on the next mound over.

The magician talks with grand gestures, sweeping an arm over trees as dark as ink. Doom remembers himself speaking little, allowing Strange to tell him the highlights of the world. No recorded examples of predation. Negligible changes in evolution for millennia. A slow world. A place of peace.

Stephen steps into the water. Waist deep, he holds out his arm. His garb drips off him, revealing pale skin. He smiles, bare and inviting.

The other Victor undoes his belt.

“And you complain when I get you out of the house.”

Doom peers at the Stephen Strange sitting in lotus position beside him. “You drag me into your affairs with no concern for my well-being or sanity.”

“Please. The times you dig your heels in are cursory, at best. And then we end up doing things like this.”

Across the mound, the other king’s armor sits in a neat pile, and the two doctors stand in each other’s arms, their lips meeting and parting only to inhale.

Victor kneels on the grass. “Even you are capable of stumbling onto a good idea.”

Stephen’s lip curls upward. “I think about this often. This place is beautiful. This memory pleasant. I took effort not to broadcast this to you. My apologies if I disturbed you.”

Doom looks away. “You did not.”

“Oh? Your Royal Highness, we had an agreement.”

“Am I not allowed to reminisce myself?”

“Ssh. Meditate with me.”

He closes his eyes. Strange’s hand creeps into his own, and he lets it stay.

Perhaps he was wrong. The link isn’t so bad.

- - -

Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!

Stephen rolls molasses slow toward awareness. The bedroom is pitch black, swimming in unholy hour of the morning disorientation.

Your wife is in trouble!

He cracks an eye open, shifting in the sheets. “Clea?”

No! Your big green wife! Get up, right now!

Those aren’t his thoughts. It’s a voice he’s never heard before, coming from inside his head. He holds very still and feels something slither over his brain.

He snaps wide awake.

I’m sorry we have to meet like this, the voice says, but we must hurry. The whole world is at stake!

In any other circumstance, Strange would interrogate the voice within an inch of its life, but its fear is genuine. Swinging out of bed, he yanks some pants on, startles the Cloak of Levitation from of its own sleep, and pulls open a portal to Latveria.

Curse me for a novice! the voice squeaks, That can’t be good!

Enormous rends in reality drape over the castle. Shimmering in the air, some bisect the stone in clean, monomolecular cuts. One vomits a steady stream of magma, causing a massive fire in the castle courtyard. Through each of them Stephen sees other dimensions. Another hole fans out from the keep itself and drops a mass of red crystals that crush an entire rampart.

Please! Hurry!

Stephen slams the portal shut, imagines his destination, and wrenches open a new one directly to Doom’s lab. The room is bathed in sunset colors and thick, acrid smoke. At its heart lies the fusion reactor, which is now anything but cold. The purple light pounds waves of energy, reverberating off its containment and magnifying a new tear in the world.

Victor stands in front of the machine. His motions are jerky, abrupt, a marionette controlled by a mob of children. He lifts a twitching hand and the tear throws itself through the castle to join the others outside.

Sister-Brother! the voice cries, Stop!

Doom’s arms drop, strings cut. The voice that comes from his mind is higher than the other.

No, I don’t think so, it says, I think I’m going to continue. You’re more than welcome to burn.

“You’re the link,” Strange says.

Just figured that out now? Sister-Brother asks, Wow, Brother-Sister. You sure drew the short straw. My host is incredible. I’ve mapped every gyri and sulci in here and it’s gorgeous. I’d stay forever if I could. It’s almost a shame he has to die.

Stephen glares, raising his hands, fingers glowing with magic. “As Sorcerer Supreme, I command you to release Doctor Doom!”

The laugh that echoes down the link is nails on a chalkboard. You have no idea what we are.

“You’re playing with fire. You’re threatening the dimensional stability of all of Doomstadt. And when I find you, you’ll have hell to pay.”

This host has already seen hell, Sister-Brother chides, What better place to grow up than in a body demon-touched? Have you considered that I’m doing him a favor? This is how it plays out. This is fate.

Doom turns around without his mask.

A bloodcurdling shriek ricochets across Strange’s mind, his hand thrusts forward with a will not his own, and a thunderbolt connects with the king’s head. Victor flies against a control panel, smashing it with the weight of his impact. Groaning and creaking, the reactor starts to power down, sprinklers in the ceiling damping the flames.

His face, Brother-Sister whispers, Gods, oh gods, what’s wrong with his face...

Stephen contains his screams until he kneels at Doom’s side, hefting his body into his arms. The scent of burning meat fills his nose. He howls for someone, anyone, to help him, royal blood seeping onto his chest.

- - -

He awakens to the beeping of the heart monitor.

Doom feels like mountainsides have taken residence on his eyelids. Slowly sliding them open, he takes inventory. The room is bright, sterile, no windows. He’s propped up in a bed. His hands are bare yet weigh like continents. He looks to his left.

“Hello,” Stephen says.

The sorcerer looks terrible. Ashen skin, reddened eyes, a frown threatening to rip his mouth off. The clothes he wears belong to any servant of the castle. The hands clasped together between his knees shake worse than Doom has ever seen.

“You’re on a morphine drip. You’ve been unconscious for the past twelve hours. You’re in the castle. We set up a makeshift triage room. For a while...” He takes a deep breath, steeling his voice. “We didn’t know if you would make it.”

Doom thinks, and his head is wonderfully quiet.

“Thank every deity you know that your skull is almost as hard as your armor. You’re going to be in a lot of pain for the next few days, but the alternative...I don’t want to think about. And I got rid of the link.” Strange picks up a jar from a nearby stand. “Meet Brother-Sister and Sister-Brother.”

Floating in cerebrospinal fluid are two worms. One is storm cloud gray bracketed by navy blue. The other is dark yellow-green with flecks of red. Flat as ribbons and only an inch long, they give each other a wide berth.

“Pineal parasites,” Stephen continues, “Stuck to the undercarriage of our minds, learning how to be through our eyes. They talked together through us. Saw magic through us. Deciphered grand machines through us. And now they’re ready to go home. That’s what yours was trying to do. They were looking for a place where nothing changes and nothing happens because all who go there are hijacked and killed. Not such a good idea after all, was it?”

Doom blinks.

Putting the worms down, Strange digs his wrists into his eyes. “Victor, I swear to you on everything I am I had no idea. I thought you’d like it. I thought you could forget being so angry, forget the Four if only for an hour, and be happy. Now you--”

He stares at the door, fist to his mouth. Swallowing his heart, he says, “I’m bringing them back. They’re not at fault. They’re just following their life cycle. Despite what they’ve done, they deserve to live.”

Birds that will choke on ashes, he thinks, Countless trees turned to dust. No more. No more death.

“The best doctors in your kingdom are here for you. I’ll be back.”

“Doom will go with you.”

Victor’s voice is quiet but steady. Stephen shakes his head. “No. You’re in no shape to get out of bed, let alone travel dimensions.”

The monarch shuts his eyes. Heavy footsteps pass through the door. A doppelganger in emerald and steel, the Doombot bows its head to its ruler.

“Doom will go with you,” Victor repeats.

Strange blows a ragged breath. By Doom’s creased brow, that wasn’t easy. “Okay. Rest now. Don’t do anything until I return.”

Victor says nothing. Stephen waits until he drifts to sleep, presses a kiss to rough lips, and departs, robot in tow.

- - -

Q-4301 is indistinguishable from the real deal, from its ramrod straight spine to its folded arms, yet there’s no look of wonder in its lenses, no human, if royally restrained, sense of adventure in its copper and silicon heart. It doesn’t care about the bits and pieces of gold falling from the alien canopy, the grass patting its boots. It stares at Strange, emotionless, and that very lack of feeling gnaws at the pit of the sorcerer’s stomach.

They’re on the same black water island mound as before. He can pick out the tree Victor pressed him against from all the rest. Had the microscopic eggs that birthed the parasite twins been attracted to their sex, or had it been sheer luck? He doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know.

In his hand is a candle made from the blood of priests. “Do you have them?” Stephen asks.

Q-4301 lifts a corner of its cloak. Sewn into the cloth is a glass vial. Brother-Sister and Sister-Brother are inside.

Strange nods. “I don’t know if Doom programmed you to feel fear. Either way, let me do the talking. If all goes well, you won’t have to do anything.”

The Doombot says nothing. Taking a deep breath, Stephen snaps a spark between his fingers and lights the candle.

The world goes silent. The wind ceases, and so does the steady fall of golden bits and bobs. The grass curls into tight nubs. The only indication that time has not stopped entirely is the gleam of flame like an undulating eel on the surface of the water. Stephen’s breath is deafening in his own ears.

The voice that speaks is low and obsidian slick. “Well, well, well. Look what the fags dragged in.”

The demon, descending from the trees, blends perfectly into the dark. Its teeth are yellowed and pitted from a diet of rot. It moves on long, soundless talons. Its eyes are cherry red, pupils like mouths.

“Doctor Strange,” the khat murmurs, “You honor me with your presence. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re a cautionary tale among khat-kind, you know. A warning about too much power in frail, mortal meat. Like stuffing a sun into a stomach, it’s only a matter of time till it bursts.”

Stephen purses his lips. “Cut the shit. I have something for you.”

The khat’s grin splits up to its ears. “A gift? Is it your heart? Your humanity? Your soul? Please tell me it’s your soul. I would so like your soul.”

“Come closer and I’ll show you.”

The demon pads on water, leaving no ripples in its path. “Is it the thing beside you?” Nostrils flaring, it sizes up the Doombot. “Not the usual breed of lost lambs you lead to slaughter. What sort of lies did you tell it to follow you? An offer of redemption, perhaps? Anything desperate enough to flaunt about in a green skirt would listen to you.”

“Desperation is for the weak,” Q-4301 snaps.

Strange swallows the ball of curses on his tongue and hopes it doesn’t show. Doombots fall for bait. Exactly like the original.

The khat stops. “Everything has weaknesses. You were once a babe in your mother’s arms, no? Look at your companion. The Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, can barely keep a friend around, let alone alive. No, no, no, there has to be a reason he wants you here.” It lies on all fours, rests its cheek on its fist. “What sort of gift was it again?”

Stephen starts to speak. Q-4301 beats him. “The only gift a demon like you deserves.”

Red eyes narrow in amusement. “Oh, it’s too much for a single khat to bear! Let me call my brothers. We shall find out together.” Rising into a crouch, it takes a deep breath.

There’s still time to salvage the plan. Strange shouts, “Do it!”

Q-4301 lunges into the water, tears the vial from its cloak, and thrusts its arm out. As predicted, the khat opens its toothy jaws and swallows the punch up to the Doombot’s shoulder. Payload delivered, they need to flee.

The portal spell is halfway done when Stephen spots Q-4301 motionless.

For a second, the khat too is still. Then, beaming around the steel in its mouth, it bites, and tears Q-4301′s arm off.

No robot could replicate the spray of blood and scream in agonized terror.

Strange doesn’t realize he’s also screaming. The khat snatches Q-4301′s shoulder and slams it beneath the surface. The water boils in the struggle. Shadows like hellish stalagmites reach for the leaf-choked sky as the sorcerer calls his magic. Black muck splatters the trees, the grass, Stephen’s legs as he gathers flame in his shaking palms.

The blast turns the water to steam as the garden sees more light than it has in billions of years. He looks for a target, finds nothing but the bare riverbed quickly flooding to fill the void.

The khat geysers up behind him, grabs his leg, and wrenches him into the water. The Cloak of Levitation has enough time to flip him face up before a heavy paw pins it down. Eyes stinging, heart hammering, Strange fends off the khat’s snapping jaws with novas in his palms. It takes all his training to anticipate where the teeth will be, vision obscured by plumes of bubbles, and not lose a limb.

Claws curl in his suit and drag him through the brine. His head connects with a tree root and all of reality goes sideways. His breath whooshes free, and sour liquid fills his throat.

The demon hauls him out, shoves him against a tree. Three blurry khats grin in Stephen’s eyes. Dozens of fangs.

“The gift is all three,” it says, “Your heart, humanity, and soul. Why were we ever warned about you? You’re nothing.”

It opens its mouth.

LEAVE HIM ALONE!

Stephen shakes water and blood from his eyes. The khat is frozen save its eyes, which widen in shock. Two voices erupt from its gullet. One, higher-pitched, screeches an incoherent string of profanity.

By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, the other cries, I demand you let him go!

If he squints, Strange can see two ribbons in the khat’s belly. One yellow-green and red, the other gray and blue.

“What have you done,” the demon barks, “What have you done to me!?”

The claws pry open. Stephen beats a hasty retreat, flying to the unfinished portal. As he works to complete it, something moves at his feet. The grass scuttles bits and pieces of shattered human along pathways only it knows. He reaches down, grabs a fragment, and rage flows through him hot enough to make his skin glow, heat radiating from him in convection circles.

The khat breaks free of the parasites’ control, smashing its head against the tree for good measure. Screaming, it leaps for him. Strange sidesteps into another world -- home -- closes the portal, and waits until his ears stop ringing.

His anger he keeps. He storms through castle halls, eager to strike while the iron is hot.

- - -

Doom must really try this relaxation thing more often. It isn’t bad. Balcony doors open, letting in sunshine and a floral breeze, he reclines in his seat, sips his tea, and listens to the vinyl spinning on the antique phonograph.

I’m coming down, coming down like a monkey, but it’s all right Like a load on your back that you can’t see, oooh but it’s all right

The song has been in his head for months. It’s nice to hear it in the open. Doom smiles. Stephen has good taste in music.

“Bastard!”

The chair spins around and Doom is confronted by a feral magician. Strange notes the king’s simple garb: no steel in sight, just a cotton shirt and pants. He aims for Victor’s face but his quaking hands botch the throw. It bounces off his chest and lands in his teacup. “You’re not white!”

Doom looks at his tea. The blue eye in the tea looks back. “About time someone noticed,” he deadpans, extracting the orb by its optic nerve and setting it on a napkin.

The chair bucks like a bronco and Victor spills out. Stephen catches him with magic, hangs him in the air. The cup breaks into a thousand pieces and the king’s disappointed frown makes Strange want to throttle him. “Who was in the Doombot?”

“A nuclear engineer working on the CMNS reactor.” Doom sounds bored. “He tweeted about the parasite-induced euphoria I experienced. Called it an episode. Implications of weakness are illegal. Justice -- and the parasites -- were served. Two birds with one stone.”

“You killed a man for a tweet.”

“Whatever creature you encountered in the garden slew him, not I.”

Stephen drops him, relishing Victor’s grunt as a shard of teacup cuts his foot. It’s a slimy pleasure, and his face contracts. “Bastard. There isn’t an ounce of goodness in you.”

The king pulls the porcelain out of his flesh and points the bloodied end of it. “I have my ways just as you have yours. Until you grasp this concept, we shall always be at odds.”

“Be at odds? I saved your life!”

Doom brushes back his hair. Black stitches stretch from one ear across his head to the other. “You scarred me.”

They’re on thin ice. Strange dials back his fury, fists clenched. Monstrous tyrant or not, Victor is recovering from brain surgery. “You had a worm in your head.”

Tossing the shard aside, Doom sinks back in the chair in a position Stephen calls the regal slouch. “The sentence for weakness implications is community service. The engineer served his community. The sentence for injury to the royal person is death.” A scowl darkens his face. “I have half a mind to not let you leave this room alive.”

The sorcerer shuts his eyes.

“However.” Doom thinks, picking his words. “The extraneous circumstances surrounding the crime cannot be ignored. A different punishment is called for. It shall be made at a later time.” He draws a holographic display before him. A tigress pants in her den, lozenges squirming at her belly. “Three cubs were born at the Latverian Zoo this morning.” He looks at Stephen. “I find myself preoccupied with some wildlife conservation of my own.”

The sigh comes from the bottom of his heart. One day Victor will come out and thank him. Today is not that day. It will have to do. Strange rubs his eyes. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Speak.”

“Exile. A break. Another two months, or two years, or two hundred years. I’m not picky. I just don’t want to see you for a while.”

Doom looks back at the panel. “Your suggestion carries weight. So be it. Begone.”

That’s that. Another story concluded. Feeling empty, feeling light, Stephen turns to go.

“Strange.”

Fuck, so close. The sorcerer looks over his shoulder. “What?”

“When next we sojourn, for Doom knows we shall--” Victor’s lip turns up, the smallest hint of a smirk. “--I shall pick our destination.”

[imagitory]

For the fandom ask -- how about Yu-Gi-Oh?

Favorite character: Yugi! Hands-down. He was my very first bishie, and even now he remains one of my favorite protagonists from any series. Unlike a lot of fictional heroes, Yugi is defined as a true hero not by his determination, cleverness, courage, or even talent, but for his gentle, forgiving heart. His strength doesn’t come from punching his way through a problem or outsmarting his opponent, but most regularly in how much compassion he feels for others. It’s enough to transform a rough and tumble bully into the best friend a man could have. It’s enough to inspire friendships so strong that they can defeat ancient magics forged centuries ago. It’s enough to make a ruthless, vengeful spirit of darkness see him as his equal -- his “partner.” And yeah, coming from a world where men are usually defined by how stereotypically masculine they are -- by how stoic, cold, and physically bad-ass they are -- it was so cool to follow a male protagonist who instead embraced heroic traits like kindness and empathy that are more often associated with female characters.

Least favorite character: *sigh* Anzu. I’m sorry to those who enjoy her character, but even now that I’m older and have thankfully leapt off the “Tea-basher�� bandwagon I was on as a kid, I still can’t find myself getting into her, even upon rewatching the series with a kinder eye. She just didn’t have much to do in the series except for rooting Yugi on and being one side of a love triangle between Yugi and Atem, and...I’m really, really sorry, but I just didn’t like anything about that love triangle. In my mind, it only served to make Anzu look really superficial, especially in the manga where there were plot points like Anzu trying to act like she was in danger in the hopes that Atem would take control of Yugi’s body to try to save her. Plus it got irritating whenever the series actually decided to let her duel and yet depicted her as having no clue what she was doing, even if she spent basically the entire series doing nothing but watching other people play Duel Monsters. And screentime-wise, she was the main female character of the show! I’m sorry, but as a female Yu-Gi-Oh fan, it just grated on me that for most of the show, a non-duelist who mostly just served as a love interest in a really awkward love triangle was the main source of representation for my gender. I don’t hate Anzu like I did as a kid, but I still can’t label myself a fan of her at all.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Yugi/Atem (Puzzleshipping), Jounouchi/Kaiba (Violetshipping/puppyshipping), Yugi/Jounouchi, Yugi/Kaiba (Rivalshipping), Jounouchi/Mai

Character I find most attractive: Yugi, Atem, Jounouchi, Kaiba (can I just steal ALL of his outfits? Please?)

Character I would marry: Yugi

Character I would be best friends with: Jounouchi -- he’s the best friend anyone could ever have, period!

A random thought: I really wish that Jounouchi and Kaiba had had the chance to duel alongside each other the way Kaiba and Atem or even Jounouchi and Atem did. Kaiba spent so much of the show putting Jounouchi down, and I dunno, I guess I would’ve liked it if they’d been able to develop to the point where Kaiba could’ve given Jounouchi some begrudging respect for his abilities.

An unpopular opinion: ...I guess I’ve never been into either of the Bakuras as much as everyone else -- I always thought Ryou in particular ended up super underdeveloped, compared to other members of the cast!

My Canon OTP: *frowns* There aren’t that many canon Yu-Gi-Oh ships to begin with, and the ones there are, I don’t really feel passionate love for, honestly.

My Non-canon OTP: I like the Yugi/Atem relationship in all forms: friendship, bromance, romance, whatever.

Most Badass Character: As much as I hate to say this given how overinflated his ego already is...I’m afraid I have to pick Seto Kaiba for this.

Most Epic Villain: Mm...well, memorability-wise, you can’t go wrong with Pegasus...though the villain I hated most was Dartz, largely because he stole my Yugi’s soul GODDAMNYOUDARTZI’LLKILLYOU, but overall, I think the best was Marik.

Pairing I am not a fan of: As mentioned, Yugi/Anzu/Atem

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Oh gosh, there were quite a few that got screwed over! I feel bad for all of the sidelined “cheerleader” characters like Anzu/Tea, Honda/Tristan, Otogi/Duke, and Shizuka/Serenity, as the series’ extreme focus on Duel Monsters almost doomed any non-duelists to remain forever in the background, no matter how interesting they could have been personality-wise. I also gotta put Ryou here too, for the reason I mentioned earlier -- he just gets so little screen time and is given so little agency in the plot that he’s completely overshadowed by his Thief King alter ego.

Favourite Friendship: YUGI AND JOUNOUCHI FOR ALL TIME. BEST. FRIENDSHIP. EVER.

Character I most identify with: *considers carefully* Mm...that’s tough...I guess Mai? I always liked how clever and put-together she was, even if she harbored a lot of self-doubt and loneliness inside of her heart.

Character I wish I could be: I would love being more like Jounouchi. Even though he was dealt a rotten hand in life, he’s just so honest, brave, and true to himself. He loves and fights with all of his heart, and I think that’s super admirable.

Fandom Ask!

[shadowsong26fic]

Because Roommate and I think we’re funny...

...here’s another excerpt from our Epic Crossover RP of DOOM!

For those of you who don’t know, this started life...yeesh, three years ago...anyway, it started life as a Star Wars/Marvel crossover (primarily rooted in MCU, but with a fair amount of comics canon drawn in; and using Precipice for the Star Wars side).

It has been going for, as I said, three years, probably a good 250-300k words long at least, and now includes ten fandoms (though one is mostly in the background and the other has yet to actually appear on page but will fairly soon). It is delightfully cracky and wonderfully self-indulgent, involving a boatload of OCs because Why Not.

This bit is from fairly early on. As a note, neither of us had seen Rebels when we wrote it, which means that some backstories are not necessarily consistent to canon. Also, if this scene seems to end rather abruptly, it’s because it’s about to veer off into Major Spoilers for a future Precipice arc.

And so, without further ado, behind the cut is an excerpt which focuses on certain Avengers meeting Hondo Ohnaka. Enjoy!

   Tony was actually kind of proud of himself that it had only taken about three hours between "my kids are nowhere to be found" and "rescue party assembled and through the portal." Under ordinary circumstances that would have been quite a bit longer than he liked, but he'd been waylaid into believing Emily used "Coruscant" as a code and it took him a couple of hours to realize she was serious. The remaining hour had been been roughly half and half between recruiting helpers and suiting up, and deciphering Addie's handwriting to figure out the coordinates she'd left. But now they were there, ready to go, him and Steve (of course) and Thor (who adored the girls and had since immediately after he met them, it was weird) and Natasha, silent and deadly. Clint and Bruce had agreed to stay behind, stall Fury and Coulson (and Pepper) and take care of anything that popped up in the meantime. So… here they went… he took a deep breath, and launched himself in full armor through the portal.

   They did not land on Coruscant, or in any other city. But they were on what was probably some kind of spaceship--a cluttered, dirty spaceship, with a trio of aliens playing some sort of dice game on a crate.

   Or, that's what they were doing, until Tony and the others came through the portal. Then they jumped up and started shooting.

   Tony didn't feel entirely comfortable repulsoring the shit out of them, so it was probably a good thing that Steve came through next, and took them all out with a single shield throw. Thor actually looked disappointed, which would have been hilarious if he hadn't been so worried about his kids. He picked a random groaning pirate and hoisted him up, shaking him. Where are my kids?"

   "Kids?" the pirate said. "Dunno what the hell you're talking about. We don't got no kids on board." He somehow dragged a holdout blaster from his boot and tried firing it into Tony's abdomen.

   Oh, hey, the armor deflected blasters too. Tony sometimes amazed himself with how good he was. "They're adults," he said. "But they're my kids, so tell me where they are or else."

   "Dunno what the hell you're talking about," the pirate insisted. "We ain't got no hostages on board at all."

   "Well, well, well, what is going on here?" A fourth pirate had joined them, same species, one with dark goggles and a weird sort of monkey-parrot-thing hovering on his shoulder.

   Natasha was behind him. On the off-chance (or, okay, fairly good chance) that he hadn't noticed her, Tony wasn't planning on drawing his attention to her. "My kids came here, they didn't come back, so where the hell are they?" he asked, without dropping the pirate he had. Thor was swinging his hammer and looking sufficiently ominous even without Steve glaring at the guy.

   "Kids?" The pirate tilted his head and tapped his chin. "No, no children here. I haven't kidnapped anyone's children in almost a year, have I? And let me tell you, Hondo Ohnaka is not a man who lies!"

   "Sure," Tony said, then did a double-take. "Wait, the wiseass pirate?"

   Hondo laughed uproariously. "I like you! Come, come, put down my men and I will help you find your children. I am in a generous mood today!"

   "Are you really," Tony said, more than asked, "or are you just angling for a payday? 'Cause don't get me wrong, I'm happy to pay to get my kids back, but I don't think you accept credit cards."

   Behind Hondo, Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

   Hondo waved a hand. "We can work out all those details later. Right now, there are children in danger, and I have just finished a very profitable deal--very profitable indeed!"

   Tony hesitantly put the pirate down, and glanced at Steve, who was frowning, but when wasn't he when the kids were in danger. "Technically they're not children," he said. Emily, after all, was an adult. "Well, Addie is."

   "Ah, yes, but daughters are always children, are they not?" Hondo said. "Come, come. You say your children came here? How do you know? You're the first stowaways on my ship, unless that crazy horned man got to my men again."

   "No, Hondo," the pirate Tony had dropped said, rubbing his neck and glaring not-so-subtly in Tony's direction. "We learned our lesson."

   "So! No stowaways, until you came here. Only me, my men, and my new business partner."

   Whoever that was. "My kids are geniuses," Tony said. Thor nodded, and boomed out an, "Indeed!" Tony ignored him, and continued, "One of them built a portal generator and left me these coordinates, which means they came here."

   Natasha, from behind Hondo, inquired, "Where is here?"

   "Deep space," Hondo said. "You are very lucky, I think, that I was here to catch you!"

   "No," Tony said, "because I thought of that and I was going to go back and keep them from coming through if there wasn't anything here." Which he totally would have done, if he'd thought of it. And judging from Natasha's expression, she knew it. He didn't dare look at Steve.

   "I see, I see." Hondo frowned. "Well, we will just have to try and find which ships passed through here in the--whenever your daughters passed through. We find the right ship, we find your children, everyone goes home happy. I like this plan!"

   "So do I," Tony said.

   "Me too," Steve said. "What do you get out of?" He pinned Hondo with his all-American-gung-ho-GI-man glare.

   "I don't think I like you as much as your shiny metal friend," Hondo said thoughtfully. He then shook his head, and completely and totally did not answer Steve's question. "Come! I will show you my scanners, we will find your mystery ship!"

   "Yeah, you didn't answer my question," Steve said.

   "You're going to want to answer his question," Natasha said, sweetly. Since she was pants-wettingly terrifying when she was sweet, Tony wasn't sure how Hondo could hold it together.

   His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "No, no, I didn't." He sighed, then put back on his carefree persona. "Why must you make things so difficult? Very well, fine. What I get out of it all depends on what ship we find, yes? If they're friends of mine, that's one thing, but if they're not my friends, well. That's something different, isn't it?"

   Which made absolutely no sense to Tony, but Steve's eyes narrowed. "We won't kill anyone for you," he said, flatly.

   "Excuse me," Tony said. "If someone is hurting my kids I absolutely will kill them."

   "Well, yeah," Steve said, momentarily distracted, "but, I mean, that's for the girls, not for him. We're not mercenaries."

   "Technically," Tony started.

   "Tony," Natasha said, still sweetly. "Shut up." He shut up.

   "For me, for them, what does it matter?" Hondo shrugged. "Trust me, my not-friends are very unreasonable people. You won't like them, either."

   "Yeah, you don't seem like the kind of person who'd be friends with the Empire," Tony said. "Wait, are they around yet? When is this?"

   "Ah, the Empire." Hondo tutted and shook his head. "Bad for business, bad for business. Except when they're good for business--more profit, but sadly more risk. This is no game for an old man like me. It's why I'm branching out--new deals, new partners. Legal businesses! Or, well, mostly legal, anyway."

   "Oh," Natasha said, and smiled, sharp and unfairly beautiful. "You two should get along wonderfully, then."

   "Hey, fuck you," Tony said, but not very loudly, in case she heard him. "My business has always been legal. Just not, you know, super ethical sometimes."

   Steve coughed. It sounded like "Stane." Tony gave him the evil eye and said, "I said my business."

   Hondo laughed again. "I knew I liked you, shiny metal man! So, are we going to look at my scanners, or not?"

   Tony wondered if he ought to mention that he wasn't actually metal, and decided that wasn't really an illusion he was interested in dispelling. "Sure, let's go."

   He could hear Steve roll his eyes, but at least Cap got it. "Thor, you're behind Tony. Natasha and I will have the rear. If anyone tries anything, hammer them."

   Thor hefted Mjolnir, and grinned a feral Viking grin at the nearest pirate. "I look forward to any hammering."

   Tony choked at that, but managed to keep his voice steady. "Lead on, weird pirate man."

   The pirates glared back at Thor, and Hondo turned and led them through the cluttered, narrow hallways of his ship.

   They made their way to the bridge without anyone trying anything--Mjolnir seemed to be an effective deterrent.

   On the bridge were another couple Weequay pirates, who Hondo nudged out of the way as they headed to a viewscreen, and someone who looked an awful lot like Lando Calrissian.

   Tony pointed at him and yelled something incoherent. Again, he heard Steve roll his eyes, but screw Steve anyway, he'd seen Empire Strikes Back on opening night and it was formative, all right. "You!"

    Lando blinked, and turned to face the group with one eyebrow raised. "Last I checked, yes. I don't think we've met, though. I'm pretty sure I'd remember the four of you." He flashed a particularly wide grin at Natasha. "Lando Calrissian, at your service."

   Natasha smiled back at him, her unnerving, terrifying smile. "Charmed."

   "Steve Rogers," Steve said, and offered his hand, because Steve was like that. "These are my teammates, Natasha Romanava, Thor, and Tony Stark. We're here looking for our daughters."

   Steve and his "no relationships while in uniform" policy. Ah well.

   At first, Lando had seemed only encouraged by Natasha's terrifying smile--then again, he'd been pretty flirty with Leia at her most antagonistic, so that wasn't all that surprising. But that smile slipped when he heard Steve. He shook his hand firmly. "I'm so sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?"

   "They were in this part of space sometime recently," Hondo called. "I'm finding the ship they may have landed on for my new friends here."

   "They're smart, they're resourceful, and you shouldn't fuck with either one of them," Tony said, "so I know they're fine, they're just having trouble getting home. So I am here to retrieve them." Or so he was going to continue to tell himself, anyway.

   "As far as we can tell,” Steve continued, "they came here about five hours ago."

   "Good, good," Hondo said. "That will make it easier to find the ship, yes?"

   "Hondo, I've got some time. I'd like to stick around and help, if you don't mind my company a little longer," Lando said.

   "Of course, of course," Hondo said. "Anything for my new friends."

   Steve narrowed his eyes again, although Tony wasn't sure why since he'd seen Empire Strikes Back too. "And… no offense. Mr. Calrissian, but what's in it for you?"

   "I don't like it when people hurt kids," he said quietly.

   "Okay," Tony said, "I'm just gonna reiterate that Emily's not a kid. I mean, she's my baby, she'll always be my baby, but she's twenty-five and she can kick you in the face from a standing start."

   "I taught her that," Natasha said, rather smugly. "She could also break a man's neck with her thighs. At least theoretically."

   "See?" Tony gestured at Natasha. "See? Also, Addie will just fuck you up."

   Thor nodded, solemnly. "Indeed, the Miss Starks are intimidating."

   "Still," Lando said. "At least one kid is in danger, even if she can hit back. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a monster. That satisfy you, Rogers?"

   Thor straightened up to his considerable height and glared. "Captain Rogers," he said, "is worthy of being addressed by his title."

   Tony was ninety, ninety-five percent sure that Thor was just fucking with Lando, but he wasn't completely sure, so he was glad when Steve said, "It's fine. And sure, why not."

   "Sorry about that," Lando said, with an apologetic shrug. "I would've used it if I'd known it. Any luck, Hondo?"

   "Three ships came by around the right time," the pirate said. "One at about six hours, one at five, and one at four and a half."

   Thor settled down into a glare, but… no, the corner of his mouth was twitching a little. Yeah, he was fucking with the guy. Anyway, Tony had other things to worry about.

   "What kind of ships?" Tony asked, walking over to the scanners. He didn't know what he was looking at but he could guess. "Who do they belong to?"

   "Well, this first one--they are not my friends. Star Destroyer. The...Chimaera, I think."

   Tony frowned. He knew that name… right, Zahn. "When is this again?" he asked. "What's blown up most recently?"

   "I love that you track timelines through explosions," Steve murmured. Disturbingly, he sounded sincere, but Steve had weird taste in men, obviously.

   "There was a big one out near Yavin earlier," Hondo said. "I don't know what it is yet, I'm hoping my friends will tell me. This second one here--ah, false ID. It may take us some time to identify."

   "I'll work on that," Lando said. "I can at least figure out who made the fake transponder for you."

   The big one near Yavin was probably the Death Star, which meant the Emperor was still around, which meant it probably wasn't Grand Admiral Thrawn or Captain Pellaeon, which meant Tony really hoped his girls weren't on the Star Destroyer. "What kind of ship?" he asked.

   "Midsized freighter," Lando answered. "Looks like it's--"

   "Aha!" Hondo said, jabbing a finger at the third ship. "I know that ship! That is the Waterfall! They are my friends! Or, well, my friend's brother, who is almost my friend."

   Tony snorted. Steve choked. Thor looked vaguely hunted, and even Natasha looked vaguely amused. "Emphasis on almost," he said. "Who's your friend?"

   "Why, Kenobi, of course. I should call him, we haven't spoken in months--"

   "He's been trying to call you for an hour, Captain," one of the other Weequay said. "Our comms haven't been working too well since--"

   "Yes, yes, fine," he said, waving his hand in annoyance.

   "Uh," Tony said, because if Kenobi was who he thought he was… "Maybe you better call him back." Because he was like, 95% sure that Kenobi had died on the Death Star earlier.

   Judging from Steve's expression he'd just figured that out too. Thor just looked blank— Tony made a mental note to pick Star Wars for the next movie night— and Natasha kept her poker face as per usual.

   "He's hailing us again, Captain," the same Weequay said.

   "Kenobi has always had the best timing," Hondo said, and wandered over to the comm system. He pushed a few buttons and a grainy, wavery hologram of a bearded man appeared. He could very well have been Obi-Wan, but it was low-quality and hard to tell. "Kenobi, my friend! It has been too long."

   "Hond--I need--headed to--" There was some kind of interference or bad connection, but that was definitely Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice.

   "Huh," Tony said, intelligently.

   "Huh," Steve agreed, making Tony feel better about himself.

   "Kenobi, Kenobi, I can't hear you," Hondo said, gesturing dramatically at his ears. "Call me later." He hung up. "Anyway. If Kenobi and Skywalker picked up your girls, they're fine. I know those two almost as well as I know my men. The adventures we've had! Twenty years and more of them!"

   Tony stared at him for a moment before he remembered that the faceplate was down and thus it wasn't having the effect he wanted. "So… you didn't ask him if he had my girls because...."

   "I couldn't hear him anyway," Hondo said. "But he said 'need' and 'headed to,' so I think he needs a favor from Hondo, and is coming here. These conversations are much better face to face, yes?"

   "No," Tony said, "they're better when I know if my kids are okay," but there wasn't much he could do about it now. Not yet, anyway. "When's he going to get here?"

   "Hmmm, well..." Hondo glanced at the pirate manning the comm station.

   "Signal didn't come from far," she said. "Looks like he just dropped out of hyperspace. Should be here in a half-hour or so, on the outside. Depending on which ship he borrowed."

   "Fine," Tony said, and because he was a scientist and an impatient bastard, started a clock running inside his HUD because why not. "Half an hour."

   "In the meantime," Natasha said, "may I suggest contingency plans? How might one take down a Star Destroyer, for example?"

   Somehow Tony suspected she wasn't asking out of idle curiosity. It was something to do with the glee on her face.

   "I have never tried," Hondo admitted. "Shame, such a shame. But you can ask Kenobi when he gets here! He's done such things."

   "Are you taking it out from the outside or from inside?" Lando asked absently, still working on the fake ID for the third ship.

   "Either," Natasha said, and moved over to him. "Explain."

   Tony would have been intimidated by her looming, but then, Lando hadn't seen what she could do. Yet. He did anticipate Natasha beating up someone, if only because she was bored and hadn't been able to.

   "From outside, depends on what kind of firepower you're packing, and whether or not you're alone," Lando said. "From inside..." He looked over at her, and quirked a smile. "I'm guessing you're used to infiltration tactics. So, I'd get the specs and then sneak on board in a stolen uniform--you're too short to pass as a stormtrooper, but if you get a low-level army or navy officer uniform, you could probably bluff your way into the engine room and disable the hyperdrive. You'd probably only get to one vital system before you got caught, and that's where you'd want to start. That or the shields, but there are fewer redundancies on the hyperdrive. You'd still need someone on the outside to finish the job, and probably an extraction team, but you could do it. Corporal or something similar would probably be best for your cover. High enough that no one bothers you, low enough that people don't actually look to you for commands."

   Natasha thought about it for a moment. "Clint and I could do it in an hour," she said, after a minute. "Less if we had a lightsaber or repulsors, more if we were working with just his arrows and my knives."

   "A whole hour?" Tony asked, not quite joking. "You're slipping."

   "It's an unfamiliar ship," Natasha said, serenely.

   "Plus, those things are big," Lando said. "And your best infiltration points aren't all that close to the engine room, because the Empire's stupid about some things, but that ain't one of them. And if the rumors about the Super Star Destroyers they're building are true, those'll be even harder."

   "God<i>damn</i> I want one of those," Tony said.

   "No," Steve said, without looking around. He'd been taking lessons from Pepper, clearly.

   "All right," Lando said. "I know the guy who made this ID. He works all over the map, but given they were meeting up with the Waterfall, I'm guessing they're Alliance. Either that, or Skywalker's got an underworld contact that isn't you," he added, nodding to Hondo.

   The pirate looked scandalized. "Such a betrayal! I would never think it of him! But, then again, it is good business. On the other hand, Skywalker has never had a good business sense..."

   "Skywalker?" Steve asked, frowning. "Wait a minute..."

   "No," Tony interrupted, quickly. "I don't care. I don't care yet. Let's find the girls first and then we can care, okay?"

   "Okay," Steve said, "but I will care."

   "Fine," Tony said, waving a hand. "We can absolutely care then."

   Lando shrugged, and turned back to the third ship. "I'll keep working on this, see if I can confirm it's Alliance or not."

   "And if it is, we can make a deal with them!" Hondo said. "I like making deals with the Alliance. Nice people. Not much money, though."

   "Money I got," Tony said. "Money is not really a problem here."

   "Well," Steve said, thoughtfully, but he cut himself off almost immediately. "Hey, what's that?" He gestured at the scopes.

   "Looks like an X-wing," Lando said.

   "Might be Kenobi," Hondo added. "Is he hailing us again?"

   "Trying to, Captain," the pirate monitoring the comms said. "It's all choppy, though."

   Did Obi-Wan Kenobi fly an X-wing? Tony honestly couldn't remember because at that point in the movie he'd been yelling about the problems of fires in space until Emily kicked him in the ankle. "What's wrong with the comms?"

   "Oh, they keep breaking, ever since that mess last year on Ordo Plutonia," Hondo said, waving a hand.

   Gah, it was driving him nuts. Tony got down on his knees and peered under the console for a minute, before he held a hand out and said, "Screwdriver. Did anyone look at this? The wiring's all fucked up and crossways but I can fix it." Something else to think about beside his children, missing… yeah, okay, wiring.

   "Better do it," Steve advised Hondo. "He'll just tear it apart otherwise."

   Hondo paused for a second. "Well, all right then." He clapped his hands twice. "Come, come, get the shiny metal man a screwdriver!"

   One of the pirates complied, dropping one into Tony's outstretched hand.

   "Thanks," Tony said absently, already poking around the wiring. Oh, yeah, some of them were just cross-plugged. It looked like… "Did this get thrown around or something? Because it looks like somebody just plugged these back in any which way."

   "Uh, more or less?" Hondo said. "Why, did we do it wrong?"

   "Way wrong," Tony said. It might have come out really muffled, he wasn't sure. "It's like you screwed up the whole AC/DC circuit except that's not what's going on at all."

   He barely heard Steve tell Hondo, "He's like this. Just nod and smile."

   "Ah, I'm good at that!" Hondo said, then laughed again.

   "X-wing transponder matches Alliance codes," the pirate on comms said. "Odds are good it's Kenobi. Should I let him land, boss?"

   "Yes, yes," Hondo said. "Let him come!"

   Tony tweaked a couple of wires, swapped another pair, screwed one loose nut back into place and then came out again. "Okay, try it now, should be good." He absently stuck the screwdriver in his gauntlet sleeve.

   Hondo pushed a couple of buttons, and a much-clearer hologram appeared. It was definitely Obi-Wan Kenobi--but he looked younger than he should have, if the Death Star just blew, by at least a decade. "Hondo. I'm just coming into your docking bay. Shall we hold off until I can see you face-to-face?"

   Interesting, Tony thought, staring at the hologram. Amazing what twenty years of not being on a desert planet would do to a man.

   "Yes, yes," Hondo said. "I was just making sure the shiny metal man fixed my comms. I will see you soon!"

   "...Hondo--"

   He flipped a switch, cutting the connection.

   "Am I going to be shiny metal man forever?" Tony asked. "I ask purely out of curiosity, since I do have a name and you can use it, weird pirate man."

   "You are as soon as I tell Clint about it," Natasha said, sounding annoyingly pleased. Tony flipped her off and then hid behind Steve.

   "Well, you are a shiny metal man," Hondo said. "And I am a weird pirate man, too!"

   "So everyone is pleased!" boomed Thor. Tony jumped, having either forgotten that Thor was there or lost track of him or SOMETHING. "This is excellent! You may call me mighty lightning man."

   "Mighty lightning man?" Hondo asked. "Why are you the mighty lightning man, eh?"

   Thor grinned, and raised Mjolnir, but then apparently thought better of it before anyone said anything. "Alas, I cannot demonstrate in here."

   "He'd fry us all," Tony said. "Well. You all. I'm grounded."

   Steve choked at that, and then said, "No you're not."

   Tony flipped him off too.

   Hondo looked almost as disappointed as Thor did. "Some other time, then, yes?"

   "When we are not surrounded by metal," Thor said, and bowed. "It would be my pleasure, Weird Pirate Man."

   Tony could hear the capitals.

   "I look forward to it, Mighty Lightning Man," Hondo said, with an extravagant bow of his own. His monkey-parrot thing chittered and danced a little bit on his shoulder.

   "Oh, my God," Tony said, to no one in particular. "Thor's made a friend."

[icharchivist]

Kind of a weird curiosity. But I remembers years ago when there was talk over what it'd be like if Allen had been a girl instead (I even read a girl!Allen fic about her time with Cross. It was surprisngly good. Probably because it had no shipping =p). For some reason I just start thinking about that topic again and I wonder how Allen and Lavi's dynamic would be? For the most part I don't see most of Allen's dynamics changing at all (except more (more) fanboys. Lol). But then I remembered Lavi -

2 and I think it's been pointed out Lavi treats females a bit differently. He doesn't seem to prank or tease them as much as the males (not that he's the perfect gentleman either. Komui Talks makes me wonder how innocent he actually is XD). Nor give them nicknames. With this is mind I wonder if Lavi would still act the exact same (chaotic prankster. Touchy feely physically. Retaliating over rough housing) or if he'd tone some things down but do other things more (maybe try to be more like a -

3 big brother initially if he kinda of bases off from Lenalee and Komui, w/o the complex, to get closer to a female Allen?). Lol, Idk. This is kind of more of a Lavi meta question since it's been stated Allen's relationship is utterly crucial to Lavi's character. Again, I'd be curious if a dynamic w/girl Allen would be slightly different or the exact same (in a you're an exception. And people bop him more because 'stop picking on a sweet girl' while Allen cackles menacingly from behind).

Oh my this is... interesting to think about.

I think it’s fair to start with... the fact that Allen was originally a girl. Or more- when Hoshino pinched the idea to Shounen Jump she made a one shot with a main character called Robin. Here you can find it. And Robin... was an akuma. A girl in a boy’s body. Long story short, you can read the one shot if you hadn’t yet - but ye that was originally the character we were going with.It’s to argue that it would make a point for Robin planned as a transwoman in those instances.

According to the Gray Arc however, when the series became serialized, her editors were against the idea, because “No one would care if a girl would be crying”. That’s litterally word for word the reasoning. So Hoshino had to scrap it.

and she mentions quickly that it was one of the reasons she had no idea what to do with Allen to start with. He kinda started with him being a revamp of her character. (What I admire a lot with Hoshino is how much Her Vision can be affected by little things? Like how Lenalee became an entiere different person in her head the moment her editors forced her to have her with long hair.)

There’s also the elephant in the room that considering the timeperiod it was originally written. DGM was originally published with some big name shounen, Shounen Jump had some control over some choices, would react to fan backlashes (Lenalee being forced to have her hair long again is among those btw) ect... I mean like I think people may take for granted that for instance, the Alma arc was a complete anomaly when it came out in 2009/2010. That it had like. Major effects on fanbases. I’ve seen so much dudebros yell at this arc while i was thriving my friend. And tbh before the Alma arc DGM was often lurped in the “basic Shounen” category. A lot of people argued about the tropes it had to follow or not, and if this sort of things had any impact on the writting of the manga earlier? I can see how things wouldn’t go smoothly.(The Alma arc rooted out all the bad dudebros i’ve known of though. I don’t even care what people’s reaction nowadays are to it, to me back then, from the experience i got from fandom, it was revolutionary when it came out.)

I’ve stired away sorry, but Lenalee also works better, bc I know Hoshino fought for the Alma’s arc and that her editors didn’t agree with the direction she was taking. But if you read some of the interviews of the Grey Arc specifically, you see that Hoshino was constantly told how to rewrite Lenalee to fit a male audience sort of. Her editor pushed her to have long hair bc “that’s the kind of idol he found cute”, there was a complete backlash when Hoshino managed to cut her hair, the fans supported the editors, Hoshino talks all about it with such a bummer because “her Lenalee” had short hair. (also during that specific interview her editor calls her a moron. Later on she got called very annoying for sassing her editors after they called her dumb when she had a writter block writting the 14th song, and she sassed them asking for help going “since you’re far more intelligent than me-”. And the editor failled hard, Hoshino didn’t even use his writting, and the editor insulted her for being bossy. Needless to say I’ve since then been filled with anger with how the early days of DGM must have been hard on Hoshino).

I’m forced to make this preface because I truly think it would have affected Allen’s writting had he been a woman. 

If i’m optimistic i would like to think that nothing much would change because Allen’s writting kinda transend genders. But If i’m realistic i know it wouldn’t have happened.

As for Lavi specifically (wouh 7 paragraphs in and i’m finally touching the point of this post) the thing is that he also has a soft spot for women. (I mean i personally would argue he describes Dug as “cute” far too much in his novel to be 100% straight but he at least show his attraction to women more easily in the manga). 

And ye he does tend to treat the women differently but he also doesn’t... have a lot of women to be around to. I mean Lenalee whom he respects (and can be worried Komui will kill him if he tries anything), Miranda that he kinda met at the wrong time? He was always so overly serious around her because he was griefing and we didn’t see him with her at all since he got better. Aside then from his occasional crushes, that he does let himself feel, he didn’t really have an opportunity to spend more time with those women.

My point is just that the women he had met don’t help us set up a patern about how he treats them more casually: in term of pranks for exemple. Like in the day-by-day, we only have Lenalee and Miranda, and pranking Lenalee would be really putting a target on him to be murdered by Komui, while I would argue that Miranda’s anxiety (and the circumstances in which Lavi met her) would make him go softer on her. It doesn’t mean we know for sure he wouldn’t tease a woman in his peer surrounding in others circumstances.

I would love to think he would make an exception for Allen if only because of the timing: He was still handling Dug’s recent death and I think even if Allen was a woman the parallelisms would be there for him to be bitter. 

I want to think that because of that Lavi would still have teased Allen normally like he teases guys. But it’s not impossible that he would have treated Allen differently.

I think eventually like... If Lavi recognizes his soft spot for women (that it is with his strikes and whatever) he might actually be more ready to keep a guard up around them? Like I personally think he has a major soft spot for Lenalee but it took eventually Allen shaking everything up for him to acknowledge this soft spot. That he would have otherwise just protected himself against.

That, the reason our Allen was so effective was that Lavi really, really didn’t expect anything like that. and I think expectations would have been his doom, and I am inclined to think if allen had been a woman, he would have had some expecations.

Regardless: The major plot points that changed Lavi’s mind on Allen were emotionally driven and would still have had the same impact had Allen be a girl, i’m convinced of that. 

So it’s only on how he would treat that Allen more casually. And tbh... considering how vicious Allen can be, I feel like if Lavi treated her “more softly”, Allen’s reactions would probably have ended up with Lavi going “nevermind she’s a prick” and tease her just like he teases our Allen. I mean just taking the Vampire’s arc, with a whole joke about when Allen got bitten and that Lavi was lowkey scared because of that that Allen would turn into a vampire- in the term of, Allen being a danger to him. And Allen therefore sassing him because Lavi was being a moron. I don’t see how the gender would have changed anything, and if Lavi did treat Allen softly “as a girl”, I think this sort of things would have stopped him dead in his track as in “ye no she’s a PRINK where is my sharpy i’m gonna draw on her face.”

But that’s wishful thinking. I honestly don’t know and I think a lot of this post is more how i’m tryng to reason it. 

I’m sure more people would be more able to pinpoint exactly the characters and how it would work. I think i can’t ignore what went down backstage in term of the women’s writtings  so i cannot help but let it affect how I would see the manga as written by Hoshino be affected by it. But also perhaps if Hoshino had managed to keep her female main character, she could have gone more “fuck you” to her editors and manage to flesh her out to a point where half of what i’m worrying about wouldn’t even matter. 

If we divorce the story from the backstage stuff, perhaps there would be a complete different take to have - and it’s cool if people get to explore it. I am just... not the one placed for that.

I used to be good at transformative media, like headcanons and fics, and let those a little take over, but I got kinda insecure of my interpretations so i started to rely on canon a lot more. I already get insecure when I push my interpretations of canon too far. So something that really get me out of my comfort zone is not where you’d find the best answers about that, i’m sorry. 

But hey i hope this ask made sense? If not for the second half, at least for the half where I mention the backstages issues.

Take care!

[lowat-golden-tower]

Hey have you read homestuck? I'm trying to decide godtiers for the sides and thought that maybe you could help?

I have indeed read the Chaos Devil’s spawn of memes. Back in its hey-day I was eyeballs deep in that fandom, and yes, I was actually a source for classpect information at one point. I went and sifted through my old sources (god bless @dahniwitchoflight tbh) and tried to puzzle this one out.

Now note, I am very rusty with all of this and honestly the classpect system can be dissected any number of ways. So this is purely my interpretation.

With that said, shall we get to it?

TL;DR Version (for explanations and thorough analysis, check under Read More):

Thomas - Mage of BloodLogan - Witch of LightPatton - Knight of HopeRoman - Maid of Heart (ha)Virgil - Rogue of DoomDeceit - Sylph of VoidRemy - Heir of Breath (hi john)

So first I went and took a look at possible classes. I decided to include Thomas, Remy and Deceit along with the sides just for the fun of it, and surprisingly only one of them actually lined up with a single class and no other (the rest have many that could work).

Remy is a Breath player. Hands down. Nothing fits the sleepy rebel boi like Breath. Breath players can be disconnected, apathetic and indifferent. They’re detached, obsessed with liberties and freedoms and independence. They seek flexibility. If that isn’t Remy, then I don’t know what is. He shares these qualities with Virgil, actually, but I decided Remy exemplified the class far more.

Now for Remy’s class, I found four to be appropriate, so it was a matter of choosing the best. Heir, Mage, Sylph or Knight; after much deliberation I finally decided on Heir. Mages tend to have a dichotomy with their aspect I don’t see for Remy, Sylphs are too obsessed with pushing their aspect onto others, and Knights tend to use their aspect as a shield for fear of lacking in it. None of these suit Remy like the Heir, true naturals of their aspect who often don’t even need to actively seek it out. Usually they have problems getting stuck on one thing or another, and Remy does seem to have troubles with adapting. (Poor Thomas.)

Remy is an Heir of Breath. (Like John Egbert!)

Let’s go with Deceit next. He has the next lowest number of associated aspects after Remy, with just two: Rage or Void. In the end I found Rage to be too extreme of an aspect for Deceit, at least for the moment, with so little information known about him as a character. Ironically, he shares the Void association with Virgil, but I feel it is definitely more appropriate for Deceit. Void is infinite possibilities, its indifference and confusion, secrets, doubts, irrelevance. All things Deceit either is or does. The other sides would like to see him as irrelevant. He creates doubt and confusion through deceit, hoards secrets, and sees the bigger picture of things which is what prompts him to be deceitful in the first place. Creating something from nothing just because? Sounds like Deceit.

Now class… haha, oh boy. This was not so easy. About two-thirds of the classes for this aspect could apply to Deceit. So I had a lot of comparing to do, to narrow it down. Mage and Bard are two classes that I really struggled with, honestly. I feel like Mage of Void would suit Deceit if he became the truly despicable person we all know he could be, as the embodiment of deceit itself? While Bard of Void would apply more to “sympathetic Deceit,” a reformed Deceit who didn’t want to be the villain but was made out to be. And yet… Sylph of Void. Oh, Sylph of Void just screams Deceit, they are masters at hiding things and will happily do so, and make others do so.

Yeah, this one was really difficult. At the end of the day, I feel Sylph is the happy medium between Mage and Bard. They’re meddlers. They hide things; their actions, their motives, themselves. A Sylph of Void in particular would not be good working with others, making them feel useless, meaningless or insignificant. They’ll talk over others and shut them up. No one ever knows how much they’re hiding, or what they have up their sleeve. It’s all fitting.

Deceit is a Sylph of Void.

Let’s go with Thomas next. He’s tied with Logan for the most associated aspects at three. Space, Heart and Blood. In the end, I went with Blood. Heart just screams Patton to me far more, and Space feels more like Roman (but I’ll decipher those two when I get to them). No, Blood definitely feels like our Thomas. All about bonds, commitments, dependency on others and others onto you, taking responsibility and upholding promises. Our Thomas has an enormously strong bond with his friends, and even with the community he’s created. Not to mention his sides. :)

But now, what class for our creator? I narrowed it down to Mage, Maid or Knight, but in the end settled on Mage. Knight seemed just a little too insecure for Thomas, at least in this stage of his life. And Maid was a little too submissive, a bit too much of a doormat for relationships. No, Mage suits Thomas best. Tied down to his obligations; commitments to fulfill, promises to uphold, connections and bonds to maintain. They try to support the people they’ve bonded with, friends and family alike, and work hard to maintain those bonds.

He’s Mr. Dependable, or tries to be, but he often wonders about giving up a few of those obligations, of getting some more freedom and having fun. He fully feels the strain of all that responsibility. This even applies to his sides, each of whom he cares for and tries to keep stable, including their relationships with each other.

Thomas is a Mage of Blood.

Who next? Let’s go with Logan. Yes, finally digging into the main core of the sides. (He’s also my favorite.) Now due to Thomas taking Blood, that leaves Logan with Light and Mind as his possible aspects. Those of you familiar with Homestuck will understand why, as both are composed of a form of knowledge; having it, seeking it, stealing it, what have you. Now, Light also has a bit to do with luck, but that’s why I’m going to pick apart the threads and dissect them to figure out which suits Logan better.

Now for starters, Mind is the opposite of Heart, which I said suits Patton a lot. Hell, we have an entire video titled “Mind vs Heart” via Thomas, about how Logan and Patton are opposites. Nonetheless! I wanted to look at Light as a legitimate contender. Mind is reasonable decisions, it is logic, it’s rational and driven by pure thought. It can be impersonal, apathetic and indifferent; all things Logan has been, though he’s working on it. He gives equal weight to all options, not favoring any, no matter their moral siding. It is supremely Logan as any aspect goes.

Now Light, those with this aspect are knowledge seekers. They want to understand things. They take multiple sources of information and turn it into something useful, something usable. Scholars and researchers dedicated to knowledge for knowledge’s sake. They go after it with an intensity that might put off others. At their best, they are resourceful and driven. At their worst, fussy, pedantic and insensitive. HOO BOY if all this doesn’t sound like Logan too. And in the end…

Obvious a choice as Mind might be, I think Logan is indeed more Light. Perhaps in the beginning, when he was just Teacher, he could have been Mind. But he’s opened up so much more, revealed to us his quirks and eccentricities. He isn’t cold, unfeeling fact. He’s a rush of enthusiasm and a spark of joy and always thirsty to learn more, more, more to the point he can be blinded by his own desires. Yes, Logan is most definitely a Light player.

Class-wise, it was surprisingly hard. Few of the classes suited Logan all around, with the closest being Witch, Sylph and Heir. Now, we already have the latter two. I was trying to avoid doubles of the classes and aspects. Heirs are already gifted with a huge heaping helping of their aspect, they naturally gravitate to it. Their challenge is to not get stuck on one thing; to learn to change and adapt. Very Logan-like. Sylphs, as I mentioned, are meddlers, which is also very Logan-like. Witches, now… Witches control their aspect. They manipulate it. Think of Jade Harley, Feferi Peixes, Damara Megido; all witches who could utilize and abuse their aspect with a snap of their fingers.

Logan embodies logic, and knowledge; he loathes luck, probability and superstition. There have been times where he used his knowledge to come out on top, to try and expose others’ flaws, and he’s willing to see how some knowledge can be subjective. He often disagrees with the others on what they consider meaningful and important, and replaces it with his own views. He’s a know-it-all, he has an ego, and honestly he’s a little attention seeking. But he can also manipulate the information at his disposal, all the data Thomas has learned, to glean more from it- even if it wasn’t correct, or useful. This has also been shown in canon. Thusly, my conclusion…

Logan is a Witch of Light.

Let’s go with Virgil next. Now, like I said, I’m trying to avoid doubling up here. Remy is far more suited to Breath, and Deceit is more suited to Void. That leaves Virgil with the aspects of Heart, Rage and Doom. (I’m sure all of you saw the latter two coming.)

After reading further into Heart while looking into Thomas, I’ve decided it really doesn’t suit Virgil like I initially thought. Which gives us Doom and Rage to compare. Now Rage is unconditional hate or fear, refusal, rejection, skeptical criticism, doubt, negativity, despair, Getting the ‘Red Light’ or a Hard Stop, just absolutely no. That is Anxiety, and Virgil, to a T. Everything is going to turn out wrong. Don’t be fooled by peace and success, it can all go to Hell in a second. Nothing is “fine,” nothing is “okay.” But it’s not always fierce and lashing out, it also creeps up on you, paralyzing you, ensnaring you in a cage. It’s anxiety.

Doom on the other hand is harming, it’s all about control and limits, negativity, withdrawal, caution, but it’s also acceptance. It’s a little less extreme than Rage, more caution than outright disbelief and denial. Like Deceit with his classes, I get the distinct notion Anxiety was a Rage player, but once he became Virgil he settled firmly into the Doom aspect instead. He suffers, but with that suffering comes wisdom and empathy. He isn’t a healer or a fixer. He’s there to tell you something is wrong, but it’s okay, he’s there to suffer with you. He can be kind, but at his worst he can also be bitter, resentful and fatalistic- traits we saw far more in his earlier appearances.

So, Virgil is a Doom player. For him, I see Heir, Seer, Sylph or Rogue. Yet again, we already find ourselves with an Heir and a Sylph. Virgil sure does have a lot in common with Remy and Deceit, eh? So let’s focus more on Seer and Rogue.

Seers are shown knowledge of their aspect, and need to figure out how to apply that knowledge to the relevant situations. Virgil, seeing all the doom and negative consequences, and attempting to apply them where necessary; as anxiety does. Rogues, on the other hand, have problems coping with their aspect. They often think they can’t handle it, and they give up. Very defeatist. They’re supposed to come to terms with their aspect and own it.

And that, right there, is the key. Virgil initially being embittered by all the bad he saw in the world, the dangers, how no one ever wanted to listen to him or thought he was overreacting. Hyper-focused on if he can handle this job, if he’s really doing the right thing and being effective. Hell, there’s an entire video about Accepting Anxiety and I feel like it’s that video where Virgil would truly start to come into himself as a Rogue of Doom.

Rogues of Doom have trouble coping with rules, limits, obligations and responsibilities. They may think they don’t have the proper structure for it, or that they can’t handle it, or don’t deserve it. These are all doubts and fears Virgil tells to Thomas, as his anxiety. He constantly worries and frets over them not being good enough. He acts like he doesn’t care about not being accepted by the other sides, but in Accepting Anxiety it’s shown he really does. It eats him up inside. He feels repulsive to them, unnecessary and too pessimistic to be helpful or healthy.

Is it really futile to chase this desire? What if you stop, and regret it for the rest of your life? How do you know for sure this is necessary? Is it worth the sacrifice? Anxiety is uncertainty and questioning yourself, and that’s precisely what a Rogue of Doom does. They’re avoidant.

Once Virgil realizes he is important and is needed, he can step up and embrace those doubts and fears. He can use his pessimism and caution more constructively, to help Thomas and guide him, perhaps even pulling burdens and fears from the other sides to help them out as well. He, like all rogues, starts out selfish but has the capacity to become one of the most selfless classes. And through the progression of Sanders Sides, we have witnessed this growth.

Virgil is a Rogue of Doom.

That leaves us with Roman and Patton. I’m going to save Roman for last, because I feel like he’ll be tough. So let’s take a look at Patton!

I’ve already stated Heart suits him very well. However, we proved Logan didn’t fit the obvious, so let’s also look at the other aspects he could be associated with: Life and Hope. Hope and Heart are also aspects which could be associated with Roman.

Hope is unconditional love, confirmation, harmony, acceptance, naive optimism, belief and positivity. Everything is going to be okay, someway, somehow. It’s warm, accepting and open arms, lots of hugs, lots of “I’m here for you’s.” It’s a drive pushing you forward against all odds. Life is also positivity, growth, energy, recklessness and liberation. They’re always concerned for others and are deeply empathetic. They often put others’ needs before their own. At best, they are great caretakers, listeners and nurturers. At worst, they can prove to be passive-aggressive and pushy because they think they know best.

Heart, meanwhile, is irrational impulses, instinct, emotional, feelings, biased opinions, empathy and passion. It’s the soul. It’s who “You” are. It’s irrational and driven by pure feeling. There may be no justification for how they feel, but gosh darn it, they’re gonna feel it a whole lot anyway! Focused on morals, on what they view as “right,” and they show favoritism to options in this way. Very strong moral compass and, well, Patton is Thomas’ Morality.

So… yeah. This is indeed a tough one. I think it’s safe to say Heart and Hope trump Light here, and that Heart can most definitely suit either Patton or Roman. So to solve this, I decided to do a quick check to see if Roman would actually be a Heart player.

I’ve already crossed out Hope for him, as that is most definitely more of a Patton aspect. Fitting as Time is, I crossed that out as well. I feel it’s just a little too focused on the endgame and the “end of things” for Roman. He enjoys the story and the journey as much as the conclusion. Then I looked to Space, which is all about creation- but Space players are also patient. They pick and choose their battles, they take things as they come. That… is not Roman. Thus, in the end, I have decided.

Roman is Heart. Patton is Hope.

I’ll get to Roman’s class later. Let’s get back to Patton, now that we’ve established he is a Hope player. I narrowed down the classes to Knight or Page for him. Knights hide a fear of perceived fundamental failure with their aspect behind a shield of confidence and obvious effort. They’re supposed to learn that they are, indeed, enough and take it down a notch. Thanks to the nostalgia videos, we’ve seen this does, in fact, fit Patton. Pages, on the other hand, start with a lack of their aspect that they try to overcome with obvious overcompensation. They need to keep at it, even through the failures, to become the strongest of all player classes for their respective aspect. This also sort of suits Patton, but…

I’m gonna go with Knight of Hope. I really don’t see Patton lacking the aspect, even if he would try to overcompensate. He aligns more closely to Knight in that way, I find. Good at exploiting his own optimism and positivity, a great motivator and positive force. Great at instilling hope to get things moving along, a fantastic driving force sitting firm in his beliefs, even if occasionally he wonders if its enough. Is he being positive enough? Happy enough? Is he motivating the others the right amount? He piles and piles on the optimism, the joy, the good vibes even when he himself feels low. He welcomes and accepts new people and ideas, though he doesn’t tend to waver on his beliefs and ideas unless shown a “more real” alternative. And when he fails, he feels it intensely, as if he led everyone else astray. The moment he discovers one of his beliefs is false or truly harmful, he’ll drop it like it’s hot.

Patton is a Knight of Hope.

And last but not least, we have Princey. Roman, whom we’ve already determined is a Heart player. So half our work is done. Now to discover his class....

Out of those remaining, Maid or Page would be the most suitable choices. Maids of Heart start out relying on others to tell them what to love or hate. What to feel strongly or passionately about. They may even rely on others for their sense of self. Think a young Roman, a young creativity. Thomas turning to Disney, to Broadway, to his friends and parents and teachers for inspiration. Hell, Roman almost religiously follows Disney, believing all dreams will come true, princes are heroes and villains are irredeemable. I imagine these impressions being made at a young age.

As he grew, Roman would need to start relying on himself for that direction. He would need to look into himself, who he really is, and only take those outside forces as possible influences rather than the end-all, be-all. No one can tell you who you are except you. No one can decide what you love or hate. Roman creates his own sense of self, finds his true passions and then follows them, leading Thomas along this path. He’s an absolute force to be reckoned with when it comes to these passions, i.e. Disney. It’s infectious. Others get caught up in his own enthusiasm and excitement. Very Roman.

Pages of Heart, on the other hand, try to overcompensate for their lack of the thing rather than rely on others to fill the void. They act irrational and impulsive based on their instincts, which often leads to wrong decisions and interpretations. They try to act caring and empathetic to the point it comes off as insincere. Overemotional, open and honest to the point of giving away far too much information. They go overboard, they become obsessed with their passions. Super affectionate, over dramatic in their emotional displays. They blow everything out of proportion. Driven by strong desires, wants and needs. They need to learn how to be balanced.

As you can see, both of these classes suit Roman to a degree. However, I feel Page is a little... too extreme. I don’t believe Roman overcompensates that much, and he certainly doesn’t go to great lengths to be affectionate and caring towards the others. In fact, sometimes those emotions can be stunted, particularly with Virgil or Logan. No, I see Roman as a Maid. I see him as being inspired by the world around him, and then taking that inspiration and owning it.

Roman is (a) Maid of Heart. (Ha.)

[janiedean]

Fandom and politics, that's the topic of this message and a request for your opinion on fandom and politics. In recent days in polish fantasy fandom one of the prominent figures, a writer, asked why can't we all just talk and be fandom and leave politics behind, like in "good old days". And explained how he and the wolę fandom just doesn't like ideology pushed at him in media. (1/2)

(2/2) The problem is, what he calls ideology, is often media not being as racist, sexist or homophobic as usually (i.e. the feminist head of the team of writers of The Witcher netflix show, black Heimdall in "Thor" etc.)Or women in fandom demanding to do sth with t-shirts that was sold at one convention, with a print that goes sth along the lines of "I love burning villages and raping virgins". Because those are the prominent scandals of polish fandom.

hmmm the thing is, I think that fandom shouldn’t meddle with politics when it comes to fans period and when it comes to authors, it should but to a certain point. what I mean is:

when I say fandom shouldn’t be meddling with politics when it comes to fans I mean that whole part where you’re judged as SOMETHING just out of your fandom preferences. I mean, people saying you’re homophobic because you don’t ship the slash ship, people assuming you’re racist because you ship two white guys or the likes, people thinking you’re pro-pedophilia because you ship underaged characters and so on. that imo is a thing that regardless of the media in question should die in a fire because you cannot judge people on their fictional preferences. no one should assume I’m okay with incest in general if I ship thor and loki, no one should assume I’m racist because I like stevebucky better than stevesam and no one should assume I’m homophobic if I ship a m/f ship and so on. especially when it comes to people who ship/like problematic stuff for whichever damned reason and they get told they’re monsters when they just wanna do their thing. like that imo is a thing that has to die in a fire right now especially when it becomes a fandom-wide thing and you get people basically going like ‘if you’re white you can’t engage with a fandom with black/poc characters because you’re gonna be racist anyway’ and then complain when they get zero content. or worse, the star wars lists of problematic people that you need to avoid because they ship rey/lo and are therefore *insert problematic word here* and such things. fandom should be a place where fans are free to do whatever they like and explore whatever subjects they like without being judged for it. obviously if someone fucks up MAJORLY (see: the infamous j2 haiti fic of doom) calling them out should happen, also because it means that if they’re ignorant they’ll learn, and using fandom as a platform to learn stuff about people different from your social/ethnical background is always great, but people shouldn’t be shamed for what they do in fandom as a general rule. that is my general opinion when it comes to fans. you can’t go on and judge someone on whether they like noncon in fiction or not. like. no.

what you’re talking about instead is the media itself being more progressive, and in that case I don’t agree with the *good old days* thing because more diversity is good and honestly if someone’s problem is that heimdall is black in a marvel movie that isn’t even accurate per se because in theory thor and loki aren’t even odin’s sons then like, you need to get over yourself.

and like, one thing is having reservation over a shirt such as what you said and another is telling other women they can’t like kink or m/m porn, so like that is a kind of politics that needs to be discussed and absolutely should, but that’s not what I mean when I say I’d really like politics out of fandom space. one thing is fandom space, one thing is the original content. I’m entirely down for diverse original content of whichever kind, what I don’t think should be done is fans engaging with it just looking at the politics and judging it based on the politics only and not on the plot, and mostly judging it on whether it’s progressive enough or not and judging other people for liking it if they don’t think it’s progressive enough, not fans asking for more diverse stuff in general and/or wanting to feel included in fandom spaces, and I think creators should acknowledge that.

like, the polish fantasy writer obviously doesn’t care for diversity - but no one forces him to. but saying that FANTASY IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS WAS JUST WHITE PEOPLE is also ridiculous bc diverse fantasy has been around for ages like ffs.

what I mean is that we absolutely should have politics - if by that you mean more diversity - in the original media we consume, though I don’t think authors should be forced to do that because you get better things when the author actually wants to write them, and fandom should engage with more diverse media absolutely, but fandom can’t also judge what people in it do all the time based on how *they* engage with the content in case, because everyone will like different things and you can’t force people to engage with that specific thing just because you think it’s woke. and you also can’t trash the author for things you might perceive as problematic but actually aren’t.

examples of what I mean: I, author, write a fantasy story.

not so ideal case of politics in media: I, a white cishet female author, decided to write a fantasy story. I don’t know much stuff outside standard fantasy and I don’t feel like writing people who aren’t what I am. I write your usual standard lotr-ripoff, everyone is white, cis and hetero, there’s one romance, a couple bromances, no social or political hidden commentary. it has a good story. it’s an okay book. the fandom most likely will ship the guys in the bromances. no one feels challenged. tumblr declares me problematic for not writing diverse stuff and then ignores me.

ideal case of politics in media: I, a white cishet female author, decided to write a fantasy story. I don’t want to do the same usual lotr rehash and I know that diversity is important and I want to make a good job. I make my character list. I decide who’s white and who’s not, giving a decent balance. I make some of them non-straight. I don’t see many trans characters in fantasy, so I decide one of them is. I spend months talking to anyone belonging to the aforementioned categories asking them what they think of my approach - ie I find a number of trans people to discuss what I want with the trans character, I talk to a number of black people if I want the character to be black possibly not all from the US and I pick people from all over the place. I write my book. I make sure every character has a meaningful relationship with the others so that all their interactions are interesting. I try as much as possible to not have stereotypes. I get a bunch of betas and I change anything they find improvable. my book gets published. everyone loves it.

now, ideal fallout of the above which is what I mean with healthy fandom consumption: I get a fandom made up by diverse people because I have a diverse book. people enjoy that I gave everyone some space. they might interact with me on twitter and asking me ships headcanons. I tell them that they can ship whatever they like write whatever fic off it they want. every character gets some fic or moodboard and everyone enjoys whatever they like in whichever dynamic. not-trans people who had never run into a trans character in fantasy might go like ‘wow I hadn’t realized that’s how it felt’ and might get informed. if I based it on some specific historical period people might get informed on that. people belonging to the minority categories educate the others in fandom about what they might not know, nicely. everyone writes all the porn in the world. everything is great. if someone asks me why I have black/lgbt+/etc people in my book I reply them that minorities exist so why shouldn’t they be in my book and that’s the most twitter hate I get. life is great. my publisher wants more. that book becomes a series. rinse and repeat.

not so ideal fallout, ie what I mean with fandom shouldn’t be about politics: somehow, there’s a fanon ship that gets most fans for a reason. it happens to be idk, bisexual white guy + gay white guy who are not together in the book. they get more fic than dunno, hetero black woman with hetero asian guy. people start calling the first group problematic because they don’t ship the poc couple and THEY’RE RACIST. the trans character isn’t a stereotype/isn’t *good enough* for fandom standards so they decided that idk, feminine straight guy I put in because feminine straight guys exist is actually the only trans one because HEADCANONS and suddenly all fics with a trans character for that book are about the headcanoned character that’s actually a stereotype if you go for that, not the one I actually spent six months researching, and if you don’t agree you’re suddenly a transphobe. someone sends me a twitter message asking me what I think of HEADCANONS and I answer that I’m okay with HCs but I put canon characters that aren’t white, straight and cis for a reason and suddenly I’m THE MOST PROBLEMATIC AUTHOR EVER and people decide that my efforts aren’t good enough and that as a cis woman writing gay men is problematic and everyone in fandom who writes m/m and is a woman is shit. then people decide that shipping the black cis bisexual guy with anyone white is racist and writing porn where he’s on top is racist but then another side says that if he bottoms it’s racist (guys LOOK AT SW FANDOM I DIDN’T MAKE THIS UP), so no one ends up touching the black character out of fear of being dissed. six months after the book is out, the only thing there’s a fandom following for is a problematic as hell crackship in between two cishet white guys that hate each other and barely interacted because it’s the only fandom space where people don’t get shamed for what they like.

I, the author, look at all the hate messages I get on twitter and think fuck it, next time I’m just doing high fidelity 2.0 just with cishet white female protagonists so no one can tell me I did it wrong since I’m white, cishet, female and I hang out in record stores all the damned time or at least I used to when I was younger and they existed. I never write a diverse cast again. I never write a trans character again because that wasn’t what I wanted to do, I just wanted people to have fun and enjoy a more diverse cast of characters without fans murdering each other over it.

like, that’s what I mean with politics shouldn’t be in fandom that much, not that politics shouldn’t be in fandom spaces/in the media we consume period XD ;)

[amandaoftherosemire]

Sing For Me - Chapter Six

Fandom: Marvel Avengers

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X OFC (Sasha)

Characters: Bucky Barnes, OFC Sasha, Wanda Maximoff, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff

Author: @amandaoftherosemire​

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 3.2K

Format: Series (Complete)

Warning: language, slight sexual themes, angst, fluff, slooooow-burn. (Future chapters will be NSFW due to smut)

Summary: Wanda commiserates with Sasha. Steve and Bucky talk things out. Bucky and Sasha (finally) hang out.

A/N: Not consistent with Marvel canon. I just started writing fanfic, please be patient. I’m open to constructive criticism and any help more experienced writers would like to offer. The story is carrying me with it and I’m afraid if I stop it’ll go away. So, I’m going to keep firing chapters at all y’all until it’s done. 😊

Banner by @hellzzzbelle​

Ледян��я королева: ledyanaya koroleva: ice queen;

Sing For Me Masterlist

Chapter Five here

Chapter Six

Wanda walked into the kitchen and found Sasha sitting at the counter with her head pillowed on her arms and her eyes closed. She could sense that Sasha was awake, but exhausted.

"Hey, Sash. Are you okay?" she asked, her soft voice warm.

Sasha groaned and lifted her head. "Yeah," she said, rubbing her eyes, "I’ve already been at it for hours. Tony's pushing on the program for the mission in Washington. I don't think he ever sleeps."

Wanda smiled as she filled the coffee maker with water. "So, Tony's the reason you are not sleeping enough."

Sasha raised an eyebrow and smirked, "I love that you do the same thing I do, Wanda. You ask questions when you already know the answers."

Wanda smiled her sweet smile and placed a hand over Sasha's. She couldn’t help but sense the misery emanating from her friend and knew exactly the cause. "Some people have difficulty with their thoughts or emotions being exposed. There’s nothing you or I can do about that. We cannot change what we are to suit others, nor should we have to."

Sasha looked down. She turned her hand over to grip Wanda's, "You know, you were my first friend here," she said, not raising her head. "When I came, you were the only one who accepted me immediately and without hesitation. I don't think I've thanked you for that. I should have."

"You didn't need to," Wanda replied, her voice warm and affectionate. "I knew."

"Honestly, you’re the first person in my entire life aside from my parents who, when they found out what I could do, didn’t recoil from me." Sasha lifted her gaze to Wanda's, using her power to push the love and gratitude she felt out towards her friend. "It means a lot."

Wanda squeezed Sasha's hand before letting go to turn and fill a cup with fresh coffee. "Well, I’m different, too," she said. She doctored the coffee with cream and sugar just the way Sasha liked it and placed it front of her. "Why don’t you say it out loud? It might make you feel better."

Sasha took a sip of the coffee and hummed. Wanda made it perfect every time. She took a moment to line up her thoughts.

"Every night for the past two weeks, Barnes and I have texted back and forth for hours. Even when he was on that recon mission with Tash. But I can’t get him to have a conversation with me in person to save my life." Sasha dropped her head back down onto her arms. "He's afraid of me," she said finally, her voice muffled.

Wanda smiled a little. She always enjoyed Sasha's flair for the dramatic. "He's not afraid of you," she said quietly.

Sasha's head snapped back up and she gaped at Wanda. "I so desperately want to know what you've seen," she cried, before going on in more subdued tones, "but I wouldn't say anything if the situation was reversed so I won't ask."

"That's an interesting question," Wanda mulled aloud. "I've never asked, can you feel emotions from Vision?"

"No, nothing. It's restful," Sasha replied.

"Isn't it?" Wanda smiled. "Go on."

Sasha stood up to pace. "Ugh! Whenever I manage to be in the same room as Barnes, I can feel him pulling away from me, putting distance between us." She turned to Wanda and said, hopelessly, "Every time I've felt this, Wanda, every time, the friendship is doomed before it starts."

"And is that what you want?" Wanda asked with a raised eyebrow. "Friendship?"

Sasha felt a brush of familiar energy at the edges of her perception. Wanda nodded, silently telling Sasha she felt him, too. When Bucky walked into the kitchen, the two women were sitting across from each other, casually talking about going out to the club that night.

"Ladies."

"Hey Barnes," Sasha said with a grin. "You want to come out drinking and dancing with us tonight?"

Bucky was saved from an answer by F.R.I.D.A.Y.

"Ms. Fredriksen?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. chimed. "Mr. Stark asked me to give you this message."

Tony's voice came out of the speaker, "Get your ass back in here, Al. I've got something."

Sasha sighed a little. "Thank you, F.R.I.D.A.Y. Would you please tell Mr. Stark that I said don't call me Al, fuck off, and I'll be right there."

"Right away, Ms. Fredriksen."

"See you later, Wan. Barnes, think about it. You haven't lived until you've seen me liquored up and feeling the beat," she said with a sassy twitch of her hips as she walked out.

Bucky watched her until she was out of sight. The dame had legs up to her damn ears. Bucky thanked God for leggy women and little shorts. He turned to see Wanda grinning at him with a knowing smirk.

"Shut up," he said, as he walked away to the sound of Wanda's laughter.

Steve stepped back from Bucky and put his fists down. "That’s enough. Out with it."

They were in the sparring ring, and Bucky was barely putting up a fight.

Bucky stepped back, sweat dripping, and scowled. "Out with what?" he demanded. "Hey, we’re not done," he said as Steve started unwrapping his hands.

Steve just looked at Bucky, his eyebrows drawn together. "Yes, we are. You’ve got something balled up in your guts," he replied. "You’ve been broody all afternoon."

Bucky shrugged and started unwrapping his flesh hand. "I have it on good authority that I’m always broody. And scowly, not that that’s a word."

"That sounds like Sasha," Steve said, looking down.

"Who told you?" Bucky demanded. Neither man had noticed when Natasha walked in to the room. She sank back into the shadows as she realized what they were talking about.

"You can at least look me in the eye when you insult me," Steve said, annoyed. "What am I, blind?"

Bucky's eyes popped open. "What? Does everybody know?"

"How could they not? Were you trying to be subtle?" Steve shot back.

Bucky tried to sound dismissive. "Not really, no. I just didn’t expect anyone to pay attention."

"The two of you barely spoke for months and then all of a sudden you’re texting each other all the time.” Steve shook his head in disbelief.

"It was notable," Nat chimed in.

Both men turned and looked toward the sound of her voice. She smiled as she walked into the light and draped her arms over one of the ropes that surrounded the ring.

Bucky made a face at her. "Didn’t ask you."

Steve shook his head at Nat, trying to indicate that he wanted to speak to Bucky alone. She smiled at him but didn't budge. Steve gave up. "So, what’s going on with you two?"

"He asked like he didn’t care." Nat raised her eyebrows at Steve when he frowned at her.

"I’m ignoring you," he said, and looked back to Bucky. Nat's lips twitched.

Bucky was scowling at Steve. "Do you have a thing for Sasha?"

"Of course not."

"Ha!" Nat barked. Both men ignored her this time.

"How can you not?" Bucky asked. "She’s a sweetheart."

"Says the man who won’t spend more than ten minutes in the same room with her," Nat interjected again.

Bucky couldn’t stop himself. "I’ve had about enough of your shit, Romanoff."

Nat just smiled knowingly at him.

"Shut up," he said defensively. "I’m working on it."

Nat started to walk towards the weights. Suddenly, Bucky thought better of ignoring her.

"Nat, wait!"

"I’m not telling you anything," she replied with a laugh. "If you want to know, you ask her."

"But then I’d have to admit I’d been eavesdropping!" he yelled. Natasha gave him a withering stare. "Don’t give me that look, hypocrite."

Natasha paused. "If you heard something about yourself you didn’t like it was your own fault." Without another look, she put her earbuds in and completely ignored them.

"Did you?" Steve asked, ashamed that he hoped the answer was yes.

"No. Well, I did, but that’s not it." Bucky looked down at his hands. "Steve, I think Sasha’s been really sad. And lonely. She's so damn cheerful; it doesn't make sense."

Bucky looked up at Steve again, his face miserable. "Every time I think I've got a handle on all of this, on her, she manages to change it up on me."

Steve chose his words carefully. He couldn't be sure Natasha wasn't still listening and he did NOT want to accidentally insult Sasha. He'd been on the receiving end of Natasha's revenge before and he didn't care to repeat the experience. "Sasha’s abilities are… unnerving," he said carefully, "even to those of us who know and care about her."

"You do have a thing," Bucky said with a sigh. He felt guilty and selfish, but he wasn't going to step aside.

Steve shrugged, "It doesn’t matter if I do or not." His heart hurt a little, but he managed to say with some cheer, "She’s good for you."

"Why do you always gotta be a martyr, Stevie?" Bucky asked wryly.

Steve threw his arm around Bucky's shoulders and ruffled his hair. "Hey, Sasha’s a smart dame. When you strike out, maybe I’ll take my turn at bat."

An hour later, Bucky stepped out of the shower. Dressed in jeans and a blue t-shirt, with his hair pulled back into a messy bun, he walked into his bedroom when something caught his eye.

On the table next to his open balcony door, he saw something pink and frothy and topped with whipped cream in a Starbucks cup. He walked over to the table and picked up the drink as he peeked out the door. Sasha was sitting in one of the chairs basking in the sunlight, those long legs stretched out, feet up on her meditation table. Her head was tipped back and under her sunglasses she had her eyes closed.

Next to the drink was a note:

I'm on the balcony if you want to come tell me what you think.

Bucky took a sip and rolled his eyes a little. She was right; the drink was to die for. He looked down at the note and considered. He was hesitating, and he hated himself for it. How many times could he reject her before she gave up on him? How long could he avoid her before she stopped seeking out his company? How would he feel when she stopped smiling every time he walked into a room?

Bucky realized suddenly that he was more afraid of everything he'd regret if he didn't walk out there than he was of whatever her gift might find in him.  He took a deep breath and stepped out onto the balcony.

When he sat in the chair next to her, Sasha said without opening her eyes, "Crunchberry Frappuccino, am I right?'

"You're right. It's delicious. Thank you."

Sasha tipped down her glasses and gave him a grin and a wink. As she tipped her head back and closed her eyes again, Bucky's gaze drifted down to her legs.

"Your last name is Scandinavian, right? How does someone with a last name like yours tan like that?" he asked before he thought.

Sasha smirked. "I was adopted," she replied airily.

Bucky felt like a dick. "Shit, I’m sorry."

Sasha beamed at him, amused at his discomfort. "I’m not. I was adopted by two of the sweetest men to ever walk the planet. I’m lucky they chose me."

Bucky took a long pull from his drink. "I like that,” he said quietly. "I like that you could give each other a family."

Sasha looked at him over the rim of her glasses again. She smiled sweetly, deeply touched. "That was exactly the right thing to say," she said softly.

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

"So, why does Tony call you Al?" Bucky asked.

Sasha snorted softly. "Two reasons. First, and only of importance to Tony as it relates to reason two, my first name is Alexandra. Second, and of utmost important to Tony, so he can play 'You Can Call Me, Al' when I walk into the lab." Bucky looked confused, so she explained, "It's a song."

Bucky couldn't believe that he hadn't known Sasha's first name. Or that she was adopted. Or that she had two fathers. He was starting to think that he didn't really know the first thing about Sasha. "I didn't know your first name wasn't Sasha," he said. "Most Americans don't use Russian nicknames. Was one of your fathers Russian?"

"No, but my papa was a Russian professor. He loved the sound of the Russian language. I’m fluent by the way," she stated with a sly glance in his direction.

"Shit." Bucky felt a flush creeping up the back of his neck.

“Yeah. I know." Sasha gave him an arch look before bursting into delighted laughter at Bucky's chagrin. "Ледяная королева, my ass."

Bucky spread his arms in a resigned shrug and flashed her the smile that made most women melt a little. "I’m an asshole," he said.

Unlike Nat, Sasha was in no way immune to the full force of Bucky Barnes' roguish smile. That thing should come with a warning label, she thought to herself as she felt her face spread into a reluctant grin. Giving up, she leaned over and patted his knee with a laugh. "Yeah, but at this point, you’re my asshole."

Bucky blushed a little and his grin turned into something sweet and a little shy. Sasha felt her heart flutter a little.

With a raised eyebrow she said, "You wonder why I was a bitch to you? Maybe stop fucking calling me Ice Queen, Barnes."

On the last word, her voice dropped to that flat monotone he despised. He suddenly realized she had done it on purpose. "You know I hate it?!" he asked, astonished.

Sasha pulled off her sunglasses and glared at him with outraged glee beaming out of her big turquoise eyes. "Know you hate it?!" she responded incredulously. "I practiced that shit for days, perfecting it into the most hateable sound on the planet! I’d be offended if you didn’t hate it!"

Bucky gaped at her. The look on his face was priceless. He looked simultaneously infuriated and impressed. Sasha couldn’t stifle it; she threw her head back and laughed. Bucky couldn't stop staring, even as she laughed harder. He had never seen her fully given up to mirth and she was stunning. Her eyes sparkled, and humor had brought a warm flush to her face. He couldn't help but grin at her. When tears started streaming down her face, Bucky gave up and laughed along with her.

Sasha had taken off her sunglasses and was sighing happily as she wiped her face when Bucky asked, "What turned you around? On me, I mean."

Sasha tilted her head and considered her answer. She decided to tell him the truth. "Honestly, the way you and Steve are together. There’s so much genuine, pure affection between the two of you. You gave each other family."

Bucky smiled. "That was exactly right thing to say."

Sasha smiled shyly and dropped her gaze. When Bucky murmured her name, she looked back at him. He was closer, and those unbelievable eyes were looking right into hers. The bright blue reminded her of glacial ice, dazzling her. She felt like she was drowning in an arctic sea, but there was no chill. He was leaning closer and her heart was racing. Her breath caught, and she started to lean forward when a loud bang made her jump.

"Sashenka!" Nat shouted as she threw the door open. "Time to get ready!"

As Natasha moved towards the balcony door, she saw Bucky and Sasha jerk away from each other and mentally cursed herself for interrupting. She leaned against the door jamb and crossed her arms.

"Sorry, Buck," she said, with a half-smile, "I need to steal Sasha for a bit. If I don't do her hair, she'll just keep it in that bun."

"That's okay," he said, standing up. He was flustered and trying to avoid Nat's knowing gaze.

She looked him up and down. "If you're going to wear that tonight, wear your leather jacket with it," she stated authoritatively. Bucky started to protest. "You're coming with us," she said, cutting him off.

Bucky didn't really want to argue; he was merely protesting for form. He hated going clubbing but now that he had spent a little time with Sasha, he didn't want to give her up.

"Fine," he said, trying to sound defeated, "when are we leaving?" Nat wasn't fooled, but she only smiled smugly.

"Two hours. Go eat something so you're not grumpy," she replied.

"Okay, Mom. Anything else?" he asked with a scowl.

While they bantered, Sasha had gotten her balance back. She was still reeling from the almost kiss, but she tamped that giddiness down and chimed in. "I don't know, Tash. He already seems pretty grumpy to me," she joked.

"If all you dames are going to do is rag on me, I'm going to go," he replied with a wink and half grin for Sasha. Nat's secret romantic heart sighed, but all she said was, "Good. Dismissed."

Bucky laughed and held his hand out for Sasha's. With a puzzled smile, she placed her gloved hand in his. He brought it up to his lips and kissed the back of her bare fingers. "See you later, beautiful," he said with something hot in his eyes, something that made Sasha think of shadowed rooms and blazing breath over flushed skin. 

Sasha was grateful she was sitting down. Barnes had never looked at her in that way before and it annihilated her. She felt punch-drunk, her head light on her shoulders. Her heart was leaping in her chest and she felt the low burn of lust radiate through her body. She wasn't sure she could survive flirty Bucky Barnes.

"Oh my god," she muttered under her breath. Bucky merely flashed her that million-watt smile and walked into his rooms and shut the door behind him.

Sasha stood up on unsteady legs and tried to walk into her own rooms, but Natasha refused to move out of the doorway.

"What was that?" Nat asked, her face gleefully expectant.

Sasha pushed her out of the way and walked inside just as a knock sounded at the other door. "What was what?" she asked, deliberately nonchalant as she opened the door to Wanda.

Nat scoffed. "Why would you even try to lie to me? You're never going to get away with it."

Wanda giggled when Sasha responded with a cheeky grin, "Hope springs eternal?"

Natasha fixed her with a stern look. "Spill."

Sasha lit up like a Christmas tree. "Barnes and I were having our first real face-to-face conversation. Like about important stuff. And it went really great." She hugged herself a little. "I think we’re gonna be good."

"Good?" Nat replied, disbelievingly. "He was leaning in. For a kiss. And you were starting to move toward him when I walked in."

Wanda gasped and clapped her hands, delighted, as Sasha just stared at Nat in mock confusion.

"In what universe is that bad?"

Chapter Seven here

Tags:

@marvel-lucy

@cheekygeek05

[goodguyjean]

Could you maybe expand a little on why you think the relationship between the vets is more complicated than people make it out to be? I'm very interested! Thank you :)

Hi anon! I’m putting this ask under the cut because it is a bit lengthy. For context, it is a response to this post from October 1rst … almost two months ago … ^^’

CW: Brief mention of the torture scene. 

Firstoff, my deepest apologies for the very late reply. I would say that I wasmulling, and I was, but also I was just busy and writing has been a little bithard for me since I finished my A exams. I’m also going to apologize for theunpolished state of this answer. Although I stand by my observation that Ithink fandom oversimplifies the relationships between Hange, Levi, and Erwin, Ialways like to be careful and there’s a part of me that feels like an extensivere-reading of the manga and semi-canon materials such as interviews would benecessary to write a full meta about the vets, and I just have not been able tomanage that task at present. I don’t want to leave this ask hanging untilChristmas, however, so consider these my preliminary thoughts that I am happyto revise later :)

Secondly,an acknowledgment. Over the past couple months I have periodically returned tothis ask and discussed it with my good friend @mirandafandomette, and they havehelped me nuance my ideas about Erwin, Levi, and Hange even further. It hasbeen fun and enlightening and I really owe a lot of this answer to them.Thanks, bro!

Here’sa summary of my position on the vets’ relationships with one another. I thinkit runs slightly contrary to majority fandom opinion (as far as I can tell) andeven to some things that Isayama himself has said about his intentions for thecharacters (I haven’t the time at the moment to track down specific interviews,but it’s worth putting up this disclaimer: an author’s opinions and intentionsare an interesting and important part of analysis, but they’re not theend-all-be-all of interpretation). The vets—for our purposes, Levi, Hange, andErwin—all trust each other and are, to a certain extent, loyal to each other,but Erwin uses people, even people he respects and admires, and this propensitycomplicates his relationships with Levi and Hange. However, Levi and Hange areboth very aware that Erwin uses them,and they believe that Erwin is the best shot humanity has of both defeating thetitans and making significant societal changes that will be better for the Walled World overall. They believe this fact even after realizing that Erwin is more motivatedby a very personal goal than general goodwill for humanity.

I thinkthis is the most controversial bit of my analysis: Erwin is so interestingbecause he has this personal goal he’s trying to achieve and he feels guilty about it, but doesn’t give it upuntil the very end of his life. Erwin’s motivation is to be right about the outside world, toconfirm that there are humans beyond the walls. And unlike Armin, who dreamsabout exploring the outside world and reclaiming humanity’s freedom, Erwin hastrouble thinking beyond uncovering the secrets of the Yeager basement andconfirming his theories once and for all.

Chapter 72. He has a basic strategy, but he is putting off future plans until after he gets what’s in the basement. This is not an unsound strategy, obviously–it’s important to know what they’re preparing for before they make a final plan of defense! But we also know by this point that Erwin’s true focus is the basement.

In themanga, Erwin flat out admits to Levi that uncovering this information is moreimportant to him than humanity’s victory.

 Chapter 72.

Chapter 80.

And, toa certain extent, it’s understandable that he would be so invested in thistopic: his questioning of established history led to his father’s abduction andexecution, thereby awakening Erwin to the sheer level of corruption within theWalled World. He’s willing to go to great lengths to get these answers,including pulling off a military coup.

Chapter 55.

Themorality of Erwin is a complicated topic, but one worth addressing beforegetting into the nitty-gritty of his relationships with his closest comrades,Levi and Hange. On the one hand, answers about the outside world are necessaryin order to save the humans within the Walled World, the government is horriblycorrupt and ultimately set upon the doom of its people, and, when push comes toshove, Erwin does put his dreams of knowingfor certain aside in order to make sure that his mission to retake WallMaria succeeds. On the other hand, his methods are sloppy and based on hunches(he constantly refers to himself as a “gambling man”), he risks large numbersof lives for information, and ultimately backs Zackly as a leader for theWalled World: and who is Zackly but another corrupt military official? Theflawed system of the Walled World doesn’t change substantially; sure, there’sno First King anymore, but the military hierarchy remains in place under afifteen year-old queen who, while determined, is not the de facto ruler butmore of a figurehead (although she does seem to make some decisions). So, tosum up, Erwin is not necessarily a good person, but neither is he a terribleperson; I would argue that he is therefore complex and a “good” character.

I bringall of these details up because it’s important to realize that, up until the endof Erwin’s life, everything is secondary to figuring out whether or not thereare humans outside the Walls. He only moves things around in the governmentjust enough so that he can to get to the basement; if his goals were more communallyminded, perhaps he would have been more careful about picking Zackly as apartner. He even says to Zackly that if he really cared about humanity, itmight have been better to let the monarchy stand as it was (reallyquestionable, but I think he’s right to have his doubts that the coup as itplayed out was the best solution).

Chapter 62. 

So,given that Erwin’s priorities are clear, how do these priorities affect his twomost trusted comrades, Hange and Levi? On the one hand, they’re assets: peoplewho have questions about the state of the world and want to change it, peoplewho believe that his strategic mind is a catalyst for that change in order toimprove the lives of humanity. As such, they are loyal to him and he uses theirconviction to further his own ends. On the other hand, he obviously respectsthem and even allows them to “act on their own,” as Zackly reminds him—but thisaction serves Erwin’s main goal of uncovering the truth about the world andproving his father right.

Chapter 62.

However,there’s another twist to this story: Hange and Levi know they’re being used andunderstand it on some level. They see it as necessary. Levi, for instance,talks often of playing “his part”, if it will ultimately help humanity. Andhe’s sided with Erwin, has formed whatever the mystical “Ackerbond” is withErwin, because some part of him believes that Erwin is necessary for his owngoal of saving humankind. Between the two of them, Levi seems to have moreempathy for humans, to be more horrified by their fates, and has only willinglybecome a “monster” for their sakes. In this way he actually contrasts withErwin, whose “monstrosity” stems from a more personal interest.

Chapter 51. The contrast between Erwin and Levi’s reactions to learning that the mindless titans they’ve been killing this time are probably all humans.

Chapter 72. Levi becoming a “monster” to save Erwin and, by extension, humanity.

Chapter 80.  

And, aswe can see above, Levi seems to have some kind of sentimental attachment toErwin, however you want to define it. And perhaps Erwin uses that affection; forexample, it is Levi’s affection that convinces him, against his betterjudgment, to “allow” Erwin to go to the front lines and sacrifice himself toget in the intelligence he’s so desperately desired since he was a child.

Chapter 72. Levi’s response to Erwin saying that being there when they open the Yeagers’ basement is more important to him than humanity’s victory.

In theend, even though he knows that humanity “needs” Erwin to make sense of theinformation from the basement and come up with a strategy to move forward, hedecides that Erwin must be allowed to rest—he should be resurrected to turnhimself into a monster for the sake of others anymore. Regardless of how wemight feel about Levi’s rationale, it is what ultimately informs his decisionabout who will be revived on the rooftops on Shiganshina.

Chapter 84.

Hange,meanwhile, seems caught in the middle. On the one hand, they share Erwin’s wishto know for the sake of knowing, but their desire for such knowledge comes withlimits.

Chapter 83. Hange is surprisingly unwilling to take a chance with Reiner.

Additionally,while they never break rank and remain steadfastly loyal to Erwin, evenadmitting that they believe Levi’s decision during the serumbowl was a mistake,Hange comes under considerable stress carrying out Erwin’s plans, particularlyduring the coup. It seems to me to be another gamble on Erwin’s part to put somuch trust in Hange under these circumstances, and yet it pays off becauseHange’s faith that the coup is the best option for humanity pushes to them takethe lead in Erwin’s absence.

Chapter 55. Hange has doubts after tortuting Sannes for information–uncomfortable with their role as the next “Sannes,” so to speak.

Chapter 57. Erwin leaving the Survey Corps to Hange while he heads off the king and the MP.

Chapter 60. Hange continuing the work of the Survey Corps, and Erwin’s coup, after Erwin has been taken prisoner by the state.

So ifErwin is using Hange and Levi, their faith in him and their affection, doesthat leave no room for reciprocation? I am uncertain. Everything comes secondto his dream until his last desperate charge, and I think we could speculatethat perhaps he holds people at a distance because of his early experience withloss. The lesson he learns when his father disappears is that his curiositycosts lives and that the quest for forbidden knowledge requires sacrifice: andto make it worth it, you have to achieve your end. Erwin probably couldsacrifice Hange and Levi, with great remorse perhaps, if it meant knowing forcertain what was in that basement. It is only in his last moments, when thereis no chance of his personal survival, that he entrusts Levi with his personalquest. And it is true that this is a great display of faith and something thatgives Erwin peace, but it comes only when there are no other options left tohim.

Chapter 80. Levi talks Erwin into the suicide charge.

I’msorry that this explanation of my thoughts is a bit rambling and that I’mtreating the material in a kind of cursory manner—one could and perhaps shouldgo into more detail to break down the relationships between Erwin and Hange andErwin and Levi, but I don’t think I can do that work soon. I also think that anexamination of Levi and Hange’s relationship should be another post unto itself—Iwill say quickly that I believe them to be more equal despite Hange’s superiorrank, and they have trust and affection a plenty between them.

Iappreciate this note anon and I apologize once again for my lateness! I’m alsosorry that I couldn’t do this meta justice >