#incarnate but like. its still so terrible and awful and just not it and not her and!!!!! i fucking despise all of this

[themyscirah]

New suicide squad is fucking horrible yet again (surprise, surprise). No shade specifically on Maines because she could be doing it worse (see anything TT has done w Waller & the squad) but her Waller and everything dc has done with the character the past few years makes me want to bash my head in. Also love how they changed Waller's origin to be exactly opposite to what it was before in a really major way

Absolutely no respect at all. Lovely

[nyaskitten]

The FSM Family is like, BEYOND inherently tragic and heartbreaking...

The FSM was said to be born from the ashes of the Oni/Dragon War, and his whole childhood, possibly even further along the road, he was pursued by Oni and Dragon (well for all we know the Dragons stopped after he left the First Realm, but the Oni were still desperate.) He could never escape suffering, he's fought so many battles in his youth that it hardened him, almost as if it stripped him of all emotion and joy.

The FSM had a son, and another son. Both were forced to bear the pain of a father whose gone through so much its made him a terrible man.

Garmadon, his first son, was bitten at a young age by a serpent created (Idk if the Overlord created her but I decided he did) by the incarnation of evil, which brought his darkness to slowly overwhelm him. For millennia, he fought against it, he held it back. He had a wife, and a son, and he was happy, but the temptations overrid him, and he succumbed to them. He tried to steal the weapons, and in return he was struck down to the Underworld, unable to leave without the power of the weapons. Then, when freed, he continued his dark scheming, and went to a realm wherein he could manifest the ability to wield all of the Golden Weapons. In doing so, he brought himself closer to destiny.

When he got his son back from the Serpentine, he left, because through whatever compelling darkness, he could never truly be good. He left, and eventually, he took the weapons, and eventually he became the Overlord's vessel, and then he was freed, and then his brother turned against him for a period of time, and then he sacrificed himself to save Ninjago, and then he was resurrected as this dark, cold, unfeeling monster. He was only the worst parts of him, and now his son can barely even bear to speak to him! All of this suffering has brought him all too far from his family! The ones he once loved!

Wu... oh Wu... he was the favored, pure son of the FSM. The FSM was awful to both sons, but Wu was certainly favored (as evidenced by Garmadon's line in the Pilots which flatout said Wu was always FSM's favorite, and season 8 telling us that FSM kept a lot of shit from Garmadon and he told it to Wu instead.) Wu was from a young age, just constantly being betrayed and abandoned. Betrayed by a serpent he befriended, betrayed by two brothers which he clearly cared about, abandoned by the odd child he took in, and betrayed AND abandoned by his own brother! He spent a couple decades alone, no family, probably no friends either. His brother was gone, he was alone, he knew his brother wouldn't be gone for good, but that didn't stop it from hurting. Additionally, he had the weight on his shoulders of the Green Ninja Prophecy, and the fear of the chance maybe HE was supposed to be the Green Ninja at one point (Book of Spinjitzu,) as well as knowledge of a catastrophic, world-destroying event known which would cause all the realms to come together, and eventually they'd be destroyed!!

Now Lloyd... he was robbed of his childhood and molded into a destiny he didn't deserve. He lost his father, he was possessed by his uncle's former student/Green Ninja wannabe, he lost his uncle in a magic Time Vortex, he fell for a girl, and she was the secret leader of a biker gang/cult which wanted to resurrect his father, TO KILL HIM!!! He watches as the girl he liked dies, the building she was on crumbling to the damn ground! He fucking dies fighting the Oni! And he doesn't choose to rest even though he SHOULD rest! He's been through so much... he needs to just rest... AND THEN his best friend is killed, or so he assumes! Because turns out his friend is actually in another realm and he committed genocide at one point and he has to live with that!

Then he's in a magic videogame and oh would you look at that? He watches two of his friends sacrifice themselves to help him, Jay, and Nya win a race! AND the girl he likes is now a digital manifestation feeding on his guilt and pain! YAY!!!! THEN, Nya merges with the sea, and he's devastated, he's broken! He quits, not wanting to be responsible for anyone ever again. Then the girl he likes is revealed to have been resurrected by the Overlord, in a council of villains, and he has to tap into his Oni side, a side he fears due to how he can only see it as his father, someone he's TERRIFIED of becoming! And then he like, loses all his friends for approx 5 years and lives in isolation, and has no clue where any of them could possibly be so. YAY!!!!

[mlmxreader]

All I Can Say Is Goodbye | Sam Wilson x m!reader

@satan-incarnate-666 asked: "You're gonna miss me" m!reader x sam wilson

summary: you don’t want him to leave, and he doesn’t want to go either, but you both know that he has to - he has a job to do.

tws: swearing

support your fanfic writers by reblogging what you read & enjoy

You always knew that the day would come when you and Sam would have to part eventually, as he would be called out onto some stupid thing as Captain America, and he would be torn away from you for a while; it was simply the nature of your relationship that, eventually, he would have to say goodbye for a while, and although you wished that he wouldn’t, you knew that he would, and as much as you tried to brave yourself for it, when the day actually came and it was time for him to leave, you found yourself wishing that you could rewind the hours just a little bit - just to spend a few more minutes with him.

Just to be close to him for one last time, to not have to say goodbye, or at least to say goodbye until it was the next day. You knew that it would happen, but that didn’t stop the pain when the clock eventually struck the time, and you knew that you would not see Sam for a good long while.

You tried to be brave about it, you tried to put on a confident face and to act like you weren’t falling apart on the inside, like you weren’t already missing him when he packed his bags and when he kept checking his phone to see when the car was going to pick him up; you tried to be brave, to act like you weren’t slowly crumbling and coming undone.

Chips of china falling to the floor as each minute passed, dread in your stomach and an ache in your chest. You admired Sam for what he did, of course you did, the same as you knew how much being Captain America meant to him and how many people he could help, you wouldn’t ever try to make him back down or to give up the mantle; but you wished that he could have stayed, more than anything in the world, you wished he could have stayed.

You just wanted a few more minutes, even though you knew how selfish it was to want such a thing, to need it and to crave it.

You could hardly eat, hardly bring yourself to do anything except to be near him any way that you could; you felt like you were following a ghost, knowing that he wouldn’t be there the next morning and that he would be long gone.

All the texts, videos, pictures, and calls in the world could not make up or replace actually being with him; he did his best to be in frequent contact with you, of course he did, but that didn’t mean you still wouldn’t miss him so terribly that it left a burning hole in your stomach that traced its way all to your throat and held on with a tight grip.

You wished that you wouldn’t miss him so much that you became so selfish, but you couldn’t help it; being without Sam was weird, you loved having him around even if it was only when he napped on the sofa while you did the housework or when he cuddled into you after coming home late. Being without Sam always felt so weird, like it wasn’t a home anymore but just a place that you lived. It was just a group of walls with some furniture when he wasn’t there. 

But now, he was going over his bags just one last time, and while you sat on the bed, you couldn’t help but to feel that awful burning sensation in your stomach as you watched him; chewing at the inside of your lip and wondering if you should really say anything at all - maybe it was best to keep silent, to not worry him.

“I know something’s wrong,” Sam told you without even looking at you, worrying that his voice would tremble if he did. He always missed you so awfully that it made his stomach freeze over, the ice even creeping up to his throat. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

You shrugged, humming softly as you dared to steal a single glance and meet his gaze. The thing you dreaded most happened, and when you spoke, your voice trembled. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I know,” he whispered, sitting down beside you and gently grasping your hand in his own as he sniffled. “I wish I could take you with me.”

You nodded, biting at your bottom lip as you sniffled and tried not to let your lip tremble. “You’ll stay safe, right?”

“Always,” Sam promised with a curt nod. “I got the most handsome man in the world to come home to… I’ll come back in one piece.”

You swallowed thickly, daring to steal a glance at those big brown eyes that you often found yourself getting lost in. “It’s not the same without you here.”

“You’re gonna miss me, I know,” he said softly, giving your hand a little squeeze. “But I’m gonna miss you more - I won’t have anyone to listen to Marvin Gaye with for a whole two weeks.”

You dared to crack a small smile. “You’ll call?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out, trying to sound as brave as he could. “I’ll call you twice a day, like normal.” 

“I just don’t want you to go,” your voice broke as you pressed your face against his shoulder, sniffling loudly. “And now I feel bad because I’m gonna get snot all over your shirt.”

Laughing softly, Sam shook his head as he dared to let go of your hand, wrapping his arm around you as he held onto you as tightly as he could, no intention of ever letting go. “Don’t feel bad, I can wash it when I get there.”

“I’m still gonna feel bad… I’m a right selfish bastard for not wanting you to go - the, the world needs Cap but…”

“But you need me,” he whispered, nodding and swallowing thickly as he did his best to fight back the budding tears. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”

But all he could say, when he heard the car horn outside, was the one thing that you had dreaded to hear so much for so many hours: goodbye. 

[grosstown]

lets take a stroll down memory lane baby

francis' design (and name) has been the most consistent tbh, its just her hsir texture and colour have changed & her general fashion sense. i dont think she's ever worn skirts in her modern iteration aside from uniform (and especially not tennis/pleated skirts like that) overall her change came from just which type of "alternative" she is, like then it had a very distinct pale grunge omg so teenager aspect to it (hence the flannel and fishnets) but now shes some old school emo who writes her own music on a 4th hand guitar and has a deep appreciation for speedcore & harsh noise

i used to HATEEEEE drawing artëm so fucking much because of his shitty little goatee but i kept it out of some weird sense of obligation. he used to be such a big asahi knock off which is amusing because this is years before i got into haikyuu. he used to take a lot after the ~uwu plant mom soft succulent~ thing that was popular at the time (gag) and his scarred eyebrow used to be on the other side . his old name used to be aster after the plant (or mushroom?) though, which is cute

AWFUL. TERRIBLE . I ALSO HATED DRAWING HIM BUT FOUND HIM COMPELLING AS A CHARACTER SO I DREW HIM CONSTANTLY. i used to really be committed to drawing plaid on every single pic of him which i now ut doesnt even cross my mind even though it is still part of his design. i dont even wanna talk about what his old name was. at some point the glimpse of a black shirt over the course of a few months became completely opened and he was wearing his flannel as a jacket with a band shirt underneath, but i hated that too and buttoned that bitch back up

GO WHITEBOY GOOOO . i remember his design was originally "stolen" from a sketchbook tour doodle off of an artist i followed, but it turns out when i rewatched it they had nothing in common and i misremembered it. he used to have the stars on his face for no reason really, at some point i think he was an actual ~celestial prince~ and his name was actually bubblegum as well. i think he used to be pan too (which is REALLY fucking funny, i didnt even write him liking girls at all) and he used to be the gay best friend trope , . or worse yet in his very very first incarnate francis had a crush on him and it was like omgmgmg.g.. im in love with my best friend..d.r.r. (GAG)

[specter-soltare]

Okay !!! So !!! So many things from my source don’t make any sense scientifically, but I’ll go ahead and mention some of my favorites, some from canon and some not so much from canon.

One time, while with The Doctor’s eleventh incarnation me, him, amy, and rory ended up almost dying (in a dream world ? sorry its a lil wonky) from a cold star!! a star that was burning !! but was freezing ??? which literally makes zero sense, but ive learned not to question too much from source because,,, eh,,, things can be pretty weird

And then of course there was the time with Ten and Rose where we were on a planet that was literally Right Next to a black hole. but it wasnt being sucked in. there was this really amazing view of the thing from where we were.

and then some that im pretty sure are canon-divergent (im not sure actually ive not seen classic who or some of the later seasons of new who) would have to be this planet that the doctor took me to. im not sure on the name, but it was for my birthday. the first birthday i had after we had been reunited in Berlin, he took me to this planet that had two suns, like Gallifrey did. The sky made me feel so close to home. I was (and still am sometimes) always terribly homesick. and i just remember being entirely in awe of seeing a sky so similar to the one back home.

as well as, of course, seeing the untempered schism when i was young. its something i think about often.

I want to talk about space. Space travelers, what's your favorite thing about space travel? What's the weirdest thing you've seen out there in the nothingness in-between worlds?

[ihopesocomic]

Why do you think inside out is terrible? i liked it but i haven't seen it in forever. im a different anon and im not trying to start discourse im legitimately curious cuz I've only ever heard good things about it (feel free to ignore this if you're worried it'll start discourse tho)

Now remember, you asked!

It's boring, annoying, and not funny. This concept has been done countless times before, and better. Like a freaking episode of Fairly Odd Parents did this in like an 11 minute cartoon better than this whole movie. Nothing progressed because the characters did anything, they just got from point A to point B. Were there even jokes in this movie? Was the one joke in this movie that the mom was secretly in an unhappy marriage? Is that what passes as humor for Pixar?

It's literally every Pixar movie where it's a "buddy comedy" of two characters that just "don't get along" get prevented from Doing A Thing, and have to "get back to a place" before This Thing Happens.

Joy is an awful character and is just toxic positivity incarnate.

Sadness isn't funny or endearing because self-deprecating humor and any humor poking fun at depression died while this movie was in production and Pixar was already out of touch anyway so its embarrassing they thought they could pull it off.

Riley is boring and she sucks. Liking her parents and playing hockey aren't personality traits. Also she has no control over anything she does.

The human designs disgust me. Actually every design in this movie is some of Pixar's worst designs. (The emotions were fine, they at least were comprised of fun little particles and were shape-shaped.) But even the emotions, that are non-gendered things, are gendered. "Oh haha the mom's emotions are just the same character models but with mom's hair" - "Oh haha the dad's emotions have mustaches" That's not good character design and it's not a good joke either, so why do that instead of just using the same character models, or even entirely different ones?

The lore of this world is all over the place and doesn't make any sense, like they introduce some sort of memory tube thing right at the beginning and the characters just DON'T USE IT to put the core memories back to headquarters?? Like that's its exact purpose of its existence and the characters just... decide to hold onto the core memories themselves anyway???? Like WHY? they still have to GET BACK THEMSELVES, that's enough of a conflict because two vital emotions are wandering the brain maze. What would happen if they sent the core memories back and the other emotions are forced to touch them so they can be put back where they're supposed to? That seems like a decent enough conflict without the dumb subplot of “losing” core memories. Also why is everything precariously hanging over an open void of doom where things can easily be disappeared? Y'all need a word with your contractors because that is some flawed infrastructure. And its only made worse that the characters were able to achieve their goal by the literal destruction of this character's mental state, like holy crap, that ending was a mess. An absolute clusterfuck.

Diet Koosy Bing-Bong is the worst. He's not only awful to look at but he's got no motivation and added nothing but inconvenient detours for the main characters. Like okay sorry I can't feel sad for a character named fuckin Bing-Bong of all things, but it certainly didn't do him any favors being unfunny, incompetent, and just an overall nuisance. Like everything he did was a liability, that's not enjoyable? And I don't see how it can be? Maybe if he was the villain it would've been at least interesting why he was like that. And Pixar has the nerve to kill him off and think this is gonna be their "big cry" moment that people have just come to expect from Pixar even tho they haven't earned it with this movie? Did I mention his name is Bing-Bong.

Pixar had an opportunity to make a film that actually discussed depression and anxiety in childhood and instead decided to fill a movie with a bunch of nonsense rules and stale humor, and any problems Riley had weren't even really problems in anyone's perspective. Her parents didn't fight, people were uncharacteristically nice towards her while she was crying in the middle of class, she was still able to be in contact with her friends, and her stuff being lost in shipment was something that was inevitably going to be solved in like a week or something. Literally everything Riley does is controlled by other people. EVEN AT THE END, where she feels sad about things, it's supposed to be this big moment "Aww she's finally crying, let it out, girl," but then everyone just comforts her, and it's like okay so instead of her learning how to deal with her emotions in a healthy manner, you're saying that when you're sad you're just gonna have other people around to make you feel better?? I know that wasn't the point they were trying to make, but that's precisely what happened in front of my face???? What was the point of this movie exactly.

Pixar is so pretentious with every movie it makes. They act like everything they touch is gold even tho of their films post-Ratatouille are bland, “safe”, or just not very creative (and in some cases just full-blown cynical). And Inside Out gets all this praise because it’s “slightly different” for a Pixar movie, but when comparing to other movies its just not good. 

Terrible movie. - Cat

[titilationexpress]

StarscreamxReader-Sweet Dreams are made of Screams Ch.1

First ever lemon. Please give your input. Reposting from my Ao3.

You haven’t been able to sleep properly for weeks now. And frankly, you’re wondering if you ever will again in your lifetime.

Yet what caused you to have such a problem with something that once came to you so easily? Ok, maybe not easily. No, scratch that. It was never easy. You had to take some sleeping pills every night to even get a few hours in. Still, how did it happen?

Well, the trouble had started back not long ago. In fact, from what you could recall, it hadn’t even been a full month before your ‘problem’ started. See, you were a fairly average individual. You had your quirks, your habits, the little things that make each person an individual. One particular interest you had though was quite specific, and even more, came from a decade long before you were born.

Transformers.

Oh yes, your beginnings were humble when you first started with the franchise, and you looked with wide, awe-filled eyes. Your starting place was where you first discovered it, the one show that will remain in your heart forever. From that, you got into the characters, the story, the lore of what started as a toyline for young boys (though it was clear now that both sexes had a love for it), all of it. And from there, you went on to past and future generations from your starting point, and now, you were a certified Transformers fan! Hell, one of your favorite sites ever is TFWiki.

With this entrance into the fandom, you took to devouring everything that you could: the cartoons and animes, the books, the movies, fanfiction, fanart, fan comics, doujinshi, anything and everything that you could get your hands on, you did. And not long after, you began contributing yourself, drawing, writing, whatever you could to make your stand and have your place in the community. At first, it worked well enough, you weren’t exactly prolific, yet you were doing well enough. You managed to get a few requests for certain things to be drawn/written, believe it or not, but still, you weren’t overly big.

And then came your discovery of the Reader genre.

What is the Reader genre? Why, as far as you were concerned, only one of the greatest genres ever to be conceived! Well, to be more accurate, the form of writing wasn’t anything new, remembering the ‘Choose Your Adventure’ books. It seemed said genre now spread everywhere, you being very aware of the numerous games and dating sims that ranged from well done and engaging to outright ridiculous and stupid (but those were fun in their unique way). And since you didn’t have any knowledge or time to do that, you settled for writing them yourself. Your first piece was a simple Optimus x Reader with the standard plot and standard outcome, which was a declaration of love and a resulting kiss with the Autobot Leader. You were NOT expecting the overflow of response that it had gotten. You were quite shocked, but at the same time, overjoyed. Soon, you decided to try your luck with another one, this one being of Bumblebee, the scenario being mostly the same, albeit with a bit more cutesy fluff, as in your mind, Bumblebee was always the little guy. This one was just as successful, and you beamed, having finally found your calling.

Since then, you were getting requests left and right for more and more choices, all spanning different universes. From the animated cartoons to the comics, different universes, everything that spanned from the most well-known incarnations to the more obscure. It was through these that you managed to get even more into the Transformers multiverse as a whole and even discovered some truly overlooked gems. You opened yourself up to the people and declared that you would write whatever they requested, but you had some taboos that you wouldn’t touch. But any scenario, character, and universe, all of that was fair game.

You had originally begun working on more mundane, typical stories with expected outcomes (but sweet ones nonetheless), yet over time, the requests and your imagination began getting more creative and crazy. Soon, you were delving into several different areas that you had never touched. Elves, goblins, mermaids, vampires, forbidden love, love triangles, all of these were laid at your feet. And while it took a bit to find your rhythm, all of this having come on you so fast, you eventually got it and soon, you had a wide collection of X Reader stories, ranging from G1 to Prime and IDW’s run.

You mainly did Autobots, for you had to admit that writing for them, while they were still complex characters, came somewhat easier for you. True, each of them had their faults and quirks (both from canon and headcanons people had come up with), yet they were still the good guys, and even those with more questionable morality still came out as heroes in the end. But then one day came where you were asked to write about a Decepticon. This threw you for a loop, as, while the thought had intrigued you, you had been writing for good guys for some time, so a total shift in direction was somewhat off-putting and scary. Possibilities of it being too saccharine or sweet, or getting the characters wrong or out of character scared you a bit, yet still, you wanted to test the waters and see if you could do it. And if you could, this would open up so much more for you.

And judging from the input, you had just struck gold yet again.

Soon, not only were you flooded with requests for Autobots, but now their foes were also available, and, as you found out, people had just as much an attraction for the darkness as they did for the light. Again, the same scenarios were implemented, yet now, they had something of a darker edge to them, which allowed you to explore some subjects you couldn’t touch with the Autobots without toning it back somewhat. In a way, the Decepticons provided you with more freedom. Ironic, seeing as Megatron’s motto was “Peace through Tyranny.”

That said, you went through the list of available characters throughout the generations, and so far, those had been garnering quite a following as well, your Autobot and Decepticon stories neck and neck in popularity. Everything seemed to be going well for you.

Then that one question came.

‘Hey, where’s Starscream?’

Then another.

‘Could you write one about Starscream?’’

Then another.

‘Hey, hate to bother you, yet I think that Starscream could use some love here.’

More and more questions and requests for the particular Decepticon filled your messages, and frankly, you were at a loss on what to do. Truth be told, you and Starscream had something of a complicated history. When you had gotten into Transformers, you had heard of the character, yet at first, you never saw why he had gained such a large fanbase. True, he wasn’t a bad character, yet he wasn’t your favorite. But over time, as you wrote more and more for the Decepticons, as well as read X Reader stories from other people, you slowly began to, as one would say, gain an interest in the winged robot. And soon, you found yourself enamored by the smug jerk as well.

But this only made you reluctant to write for him.

True, when you started writing for the Decepticons, you were allowed to experiment with some more intimate and extreme situations, yet with Starscream...it was different. It was hard to explain, yet whenever you got a request to write for him, your brain seemed to seize up. Thoughts came to your head that you had tried to banish, thoughts that came every time you saw the Seeker’s name. You had no idea what was going on or why this was so difficult, yet it seemed the Silver Snake had taken to making your fingers not touch the keyboard.

You had no idea at all. Or at least, that’s what you told yourself.

And since you had gotten the slew of requests, your sleep problems began. The moment you shut your eyes, the scenario began all over again.

…

You needed no introduction to where you were or what you were seeing, it all quite familiar to you now. Around you were towering walls of a silvery mauve color, the only available light from above sparse and leaving several areas coated in darkness. This place was all too familiar, for you had seen it many times in your watching and reading of Transformers.

You were in Decepticon headquarters.

Your dreams had been filled with the base of the enemy faction of the Autobots, and at first, it had shocked you as to why you were here at all. But over time, night after night, you came here, and soon, you grew accustomed to the sight of it. You took on the form of your Transformers persona/OC or remained in your regular, human form, whatever pleased you as if you had some control over this environment. Yet as you grew more familiar (you were never sure if you’d be comfortable), you began to explore the place, finding that, to your surprise, there was no one here. No signs of any sort of life aboard the ship, and while it took a good while, you traveled everywhere you could think of, and still, nothing. No Megatron, no other Decepticons, no one but you had been aboard.

At least, that was what you believed when you first had this dream. Then, you heard it. The voice. His voice.

“Oooh, I’m the Boogie Man,”

Singing, serenading, just loud enough for you to hear, yet low enough for you to know it was far away. It always started this way.

“The terrible, horrible Boogie Man,”

Your ears/audio receptors registered the voice as it echoed throughout the ship. When the dreams had begun, you knew immediately who was singing, and then you were more surprised at how it sounded. Sure, it had its infamous high pitch, yet it wasn’t bad to listen to. Daresay, it was rather enjoyable in its own way.

“I come in the middle of the night and frighten bad little girls like you.”

The first few times you had this dream, it would almost always startle you, yet it led you to look down the other balls and corridors of the ship. The results were always the same though: no one was aboard. No one but you...and him.

“Beware, better have a care,”

The song changed each and every time you entered the dream, tonight being a track you heard on a video game you played not too long ago (Bioshock 2 you believed). Yet the songs always had the same effect on you.

“I’m going to follow you everywhere.”

Despite your trepidation, you wanted...needed to follow it.

“I crawl through the ceiling and the wall and call on bad little girls like you.”

Walking, then running, you traversed the winding path before you, taking several left and right turns, having no sense of direction but that voice. A voice that, despite its infamous sound, held power to it, a siren’s song in a way. Ironic, you thought. Still, you followed, for you had reached your limit. You knew what would happen if you didn’t find him.

“I’ll torture you and hunt you,”

And never leave.

I’ve got you where I want you,”

And never let you escape this dream.

“A victim of my dark and dirty plot.”

And he knew it too. He knew he had power over you. And you hated it.

“And at the slightest whim, I’ll tear you limb from limb,”

Or…

“In other words, I’ll put you on the spot.”

Did you?

“Oooh, I’m the Boogie Man,”

You were close. So dangerously close.

“The terrible, horrible Boogie Man.”

Just a turn around the corner.

“I come in the middle of the night and frighten…”

He paused, you stopping in your tracks at what you saw. There he was. Situated behind violet bars of energy in a cell, the Decepticon stood there with his arms folded and looking upon you with satisfied, hungry red eyes.

“...bad little girls like you.”

It was him.

Starscream.

Your favorite incarnation of Starscream, those ruby orbs boring into your own eyes/optics. You stepped back from the cell, eyes/optics wide at what was before you. Sure, if you were to go by dream logic, some part of you always knew that it was ‘him’ that awaited you at the end of this journey, but still, to actually see him, standing there so casually when it looked like he was locked up, it chilled you. As if he had absolutely nothing to worry about.

“My, my, so you finally found me,” he said, his voice perfectly matching the incarnation that stood before you. “Or rather, I found you. Whichever way it goes, it doesn’t matter,” he smirked. “For I already know the outcome.”

You blinked a few times, still trying to see if who was before you had truly been there. “St…” you began nervously. “Starscream?”

The Decepticon chuckled and stepped out of the shadows, allowing you to fully see him. “In the mesh,” he said. “And I see that introductions won’t need to be made either, will they, Y/N?” your eyes/optics went wide. “That’s right, pet, I know everything. This IS your mind after all.”

“Wh-What?” you stammered. “I don’t understand.”

Starscream’s grin only grew wider. “You will soon. You will understand EVERYTHING.”

Just what was he talking about? From the looks of it, he seemed to be enjoying your tension and trepidation, very amused. Your mind went into fan mode, recalling every fact you had known of Starscream and his various incarnations, which then led to you going on the defensive. “You…” albeit, it took you a try or two. “You’re the one that’s been doing this to me. Giving me these...these weird dreams.” the Decepticon didn’t answer, yet it was clear that he already knew that the secret was out (even if it wasn’t much of one). “You’re also the one that’s not letting me have one decent night’s sleep without being trapped here!”

“Or me serenading you?” he added in. “How do you like it? I don’t do it often, yet if I wish, I can stretch out my vocal components if I want.”

Your cheeks grew hot. Damn, this bastard was already making you too wound up, and you had only gotten a few words in! “Well...I’m here now,” you said, trying to sound confident, and, ironically enough, trying to channel Megatron’s dominating aura. “So, what do you want?”

This didn’t phase him in the slightest. Despite him being the one locked up, you were the one who felt like his prisoner. “I think you already know that dear Y/N,” he said. “But to put it simply, I’m feeling left out.”

You were confused. “Left out?” You asked. “Left out of…” you paused. Indeed, you knew well what he was talking about. “My...my reader inserts.”

Starscream nodded. “Quite an extensive library you’ve built up over time.” He told you. “Though your choices could be much better.” he scoffed. “Of course goody-good Prime would be on the list, along with the rest of the Auto-dolts.” Then he grimaced. “Yet there are those that actually want to FRAG Megatron? Ugh! No taste at all!” He then looked back at you. “You’ve written for everyone, from either faction, of every series,” he then pouted. “But none for me. Truly, Y/N, I’m hurt.”

You felt quite awkward. True, while you were known online for your stories, it was your username and persona they were seeing. They weren’t someone that was right around the corner that could walk in and see you writing these things. While you loved doing it, the thought of your family or friends discovering you wrote in this genre was a thought you dared not entertain, as you swore that you’d die from embarrassment. Thus, you were very careful whenever you did it, your room completely locked tight so you could focus without fear of someone barging in. The only times you left during your writing periods were for bathroom breaks and/or to eat/drink something. It was a big secret...and thinking about it now, it was a secret no more to the most infamous backstabber in all of Transformers. You had been found out.

“Well...so what? Are you going to keep haunting me until I do?” you asked. “You can’t do that!”

Starscream didn’t seem phased by this at all. That damned smirk of his both frustrated and made you excited, a combination that left you very unsure. “Can’t I?” he asked.

You didn’t like his tone. “What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s consider for a moment, Y/N,” he said. “You believe that I’m merely a figment of your imagination, yes? A stubborn thought that is lodged in your subconscious. Am I right?” you shifted a bit, knowing well what he was saying would lead to something else. Something that probably would flip everything on its head. “Well...who’s to say that I am?”

“I...I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. But what I say might just jog your memory.” he then went on. “In your last X Reader, you spoke of multiple versions of the characters, such as Prime and...yes, even Megatron,” Starscream scoffed. “And how it would’ve been peculiar if they met. Then, one of your readers linked you to a page on the TFWiki.” Starscream then chuckled. “Quite an array of knowledge, I must say. Especially for a primitive species such as yourselves. Anyway, said page spoke of what is labeled as the Transformers Multiverse, which, if I may say, is an excuse for you all to toy with and shape us into what YOU want. But back on track, you did a small amount of research on that, then went on about your business.”

“...and what does this have to do with why you’re here?”

Starscream smirked. “Then, after some time, you went and read the entries of me from various series and incarnations. To get a better feel for what you were thinking of writing. What you wanted to write. Only, you never did.” You were about to speak again, but the seeker spoke again before you could. “There was one detail from my earliest incarnation that spoke of a ‘ghost’, an immortal spark that couldn’t be snuffed out. One that could travel through space and time.” He drew closer to the bars. “And then discovered a way to travel through dimensions. Wherein, I found out all about how so many humans have seen my reality behind a television screen.”

What was he talking about? What did any of what he said mean? It was then that it all clicked for you. Sparks were essentially the ‘soul’ of a Transformer, which Starscream’s was indestructible. You read that he made an appearance in Beast Wars, and had made cameos elsewhere. What was before you right now...mere feet away…” Are you.. “ you stammered. “Are you really…”

The Decepticon nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am, Y/N.”

You were left speechless. No. No, this...this was impossible. It...it couldn’t be him! It couldn’t be the REAL Starscream! He was a cartoon, no, a toy! A damn toy! A toy from the eighties that were made to be marketable to young boys (and the girls that were secretly into it) among several other toys that were made be marketable to young boys (and again, the girls that were secretly into it)! There was NO way he was in your mind right now! He wasn’t real! He wasn’t real! He wasn’t-

“You step out into the chilled air, wrapping your arms around yourself as you do.” the Decepticon suddenly began. “He’s there to pick you up. He’s there to pick you up. You’re both terrified and exhilarated, eager to start the night, but also to make it fly by just enough so nothing embarrassing would happen between the two of you.” your jaw dropped when you heard him say that. How did he- “Know that you recently read over your very first entry? The one that started it all?” he then ‘rolled’ his eyes. “The one that clearly displayed that you had little taste at first?”

Of course, you did! That was from your very first X Reader story! It told of Optimus Prime and you, a human, in a relationship. Odd start, you knew, especially given that Transformer x Human relations was sort of controversial, yet overall, it wasn’t a bad one. Still, the fact he knew that…” No.” you said aloud. “It can’t be.”

He smiled. “I am.”

You stepped back until you hit a wall. “S-Starscream.” you stuttered. “You’re him. You’re the...the real one.” he was quite satisfied with your reaction, you clearly flustered yet cautious at the same time. The sensation drove you mad. But then you remember, this was just a dream! You were just making up all this stuff! You were relieved by this revelation...yet at the same time, you were...curious. Just where would this go if you continued? “Well...well, what are you doing here? What do you want?”

“Exactly as I said before, I feel left out,” Starscream told you. “And considering my popularity in this universe, I’d think me being here should tell you something.”

You knew what he wanted. “You want me to write about you.” it was obvious. “I-I know. I mean, I’ve been wanting to. Really, I have. But...but I...I just…” you sighed. If you knew Starscream (and you had at least a decent enough faith you did), you knew that this could potentially earn you his anger. Yet, to your surprise, he didn’t try to order you around. Instead, he seemed like he already knew you were going to say that.

“You can’t,” he said for you. “Understand, I’m the one in YOUR mind. Thus, you could say, I know everything about you. A perk of being something that, in this universe, started out as a drawing on a piece of paper.” you were confused, this seemed to humor Starscream even more. “Oh, come now. Surely you know that concept art exists, right?”

All of this was so insane for you, yet it was then that you felt the urge to speak up and say something for yourself for once. “Well, if you’re here from the...well, YOUR universe, what are you doing here in the first place?”

“Why, this is one of the few places I win!” Starscream exclaimed. “Of course, when I first came here, I was quite perplexed about how I and many others were known as products from a company called ‘Hasbro’. But overtime, I discovered your version of the internet, and, well, as you flesh bags say, the rest is history.” he then continued, not giving you a chance to speak. “And bring that I am an idea in this universe, I can go freely as I wish, peering into minds,” his red eyes looked upon you. “Become one’s permanent muse or vice versa.”

God, you felt weird. You felt so confused and conflicted. You wanted to sink into the wall to get away, but you also wanted to know more about this. You had to know more. You needed to know more. “So…?”

“So, I’ve come to you, as you’re truly in need of some inspiration,” Starscream said. “As well as some changes in your thinking.”

“Like what? Worshiping the ground you walk on?” you ask, feeling a little bolder.

“Oh, you already do.” he said. “If you didn’t desire me, I wouldn’t be here.” he grinned at your shocked expression. “That’s right, Y/N, I know what truly holds you back from writing about me. Your fears, your anxieties, your loves and lusts.” you had no words. “You fear that you may get me wrong if you will. That I won’t be in character. Or you fear that you won’t be able to satisfy the wants of your readers, as I AM so highly anticipated. Or…” he leaned closer to the bars, the only barrier separating you two. “You fear exploring those more intimate pleasures with me. You’re intimidated and unsure. After all, writing for Autobots is easy, yet us Decepticons are more difficult. But it HAS awakened things in you that you wish to explore on either side. Things that you are dying to let out.”

You had no words, he was completely right. Damn him! The smug bastard knew he had you in the palm of his hand...and yet also probably knew that’s what made you so hot and bothered right now! “So...what? Are you here to force me to write those things with you in them?”

“Dear Y/N, I can’t technically make you do anything,” Starscream told you. “Oh yes, I can stay and torment you night after night until either I pass onto another universe or I grow bored of you, but my reason being here is for both our benefits.”

“How?”

“It’s quite simple,” he said. “We shall go through those scenarios in your head.” his ruby red optics bore into yours/your eyes. “Together.” he then reached out from in between the bars and traced a digit around your jawline. “Believe it or not, I want to help you, Y/N.” his voice was smooth and sultry, something you never expected from a voice like his. “But only you can allow me to do so.” he then stepped back from the bars. “This prison of mine is something you’ve constructed from your fears and insecurities. Allow yourself to embrace what you fear…” he then extended his hand again, yet stepped back as well, sinking into the darkness. “Only then, will you truly be free.”

You were at a standstill. You knew what he wanted, and, to your horror, you were wanting to give it to him. Deny it all you want, this was something that had been in your mind ever since you got the first request for the Seeker. You approached the bars, trying to get some sign that he was still there. Surely he hadn’t left you, had he? No, he hadn’t. He was still there, you could feel him. Watching, waiting, and perhaps, knowing what you would do before you did.

Yet would you do it? Would you bite into that forbidden fruit?

Some while after pondering this question, you looked at the cell, the energy bars vanishing. Why fight it when you could already taste the sweet tartness of said fruit in the back of your throat?

[herenortherenearnorfar]

This Tornado Tolerates And Respects You

A little story about Gothmog and orcs that I’ll probably put on other sites later. But for now, a tumblr exclusive! CW for the terrible reproductive politics of evil (implied reproductive coercion, forced childbearing, light eugenics), orc awfulness, disdain for incarnates, radiation poisoning, chemical weapons, Fingon’s fate, mentions of cannibalism, malnourishment, ear cropping, and all of the above with the implied harm to children.

Orcs, Lord Melkor’s special pet project, a blasphemy first and a strategic asset second, didn’t make the best troops. They could swarm over a target in a useful mass of bodies but they lacked skill and drive. For the Captain of Angband’s own force of fire and shadow, spirits sprung free from the tyranny of the Valar, orcs were a sea of troublesome bodies, cluttering up the field of battle. More flesh to whip through, barbed wire quick, more lungs to choke with lime gas. An annoyance, not an ally.

He didn’t have very high expectations of them as a source of soldiers and there were very few individual orcs who he respected. Gorfaunt was one of those rare exceptions.

They’d fought on the same battlefield under the taunting stars, in those blissful days before the heavens changed, and he’d been impressed by the orc commanders ability to marshal troops. Very few in that division ended up trampled beneath Balrog feet. Even the retreat was prompt, almost orderly, without sacrificing that wild spirit which was one of the orcs’ few redeeming qualities.

When it came time to capture the stripling-king of the elves he’d requested Gorfaunt’s orcs in particular. Once again they’d proven their mettle and the commander had become of of the Captain’s favorites. If orcs had to be stationed next to their betters it was preferable that it be Gorfaunt’s orcs, who knew how to comport themselves and could fight near Balrogs without dying in droves.

Now with the latest glorious battle (and another successful collaboration, the Captain still glowed at the memory of the Noldor’s latest king cracking open to spill his red insides over his silver banner) behind them and Lord Melkor demanding Nargothrond and Gondolin, they met once a month to strategize, share intelligence, and complain about everyone else. To an outsider they might have passed as friends. There was less formality between the two of them than another high general of the iron fortress might have demanded, they sat at the same table and spoke freely.

(The Lieutenant still asked commanders to bow before him; that was why even his own troops called him Sauron behind his back. Gothmog was a superior appellation, less insulting, more fearful, but he still didn’t hasten to encourage its use.)

Despite their surface level amicability and the handful of tried-and-true inside jokes—mostly having to do with how enemies had died— they could bat at each other, they knew very little about each other’s lives. Meat and smoke only mixed when making a brisket, trying to relate two such different ways of being seemed impossible.

But when he saw Gorfaunt waddling into their monthly kvetch with a belly round and swollen like a tick’s, the Captain felt driven to say something. He was the marshal of Angband, he couldn’t let his king’s forces go to seed.

“Are you ill? Cursed?”

Gorfaunt managed to pull out a chair, made for a Balrog three times the size of an orc, and hoist themselves into it with rangy arms. “No? Just five months with a baby kicking around in my insides. The little bugger’s finally starting to show itself.”

That took a second to decipher. “You’re having a baby?”

Of course the Captain knew the basics of how incarnates made more of themselves. It was a topic of great fascination in the old days, when Yavanna was first figuring the system out, and of course the Lieutenant would prattle on about warg breeding to anyone who’d listen. They had sex— another thing that did not come naturally to beings of spirits, though some Maiar had made astounding progress in the field, for pleasure was pleasure and even Nienna’s acolytes sought catharsis and comfort—then there was lots of squishy biology on a level invisible to the incarnates themselves, then a little parasite was somehow blessed with Erú’s fire, to be nurtured until it could nurture itself.

He also knew that orcs, like elves and dwarves, had little distinction between men and womenfolk. Useful when it meant you could channel your entire adult population to battle. Startling when you realized that a key ally had been quietly pregnant for months without you, a greater being able to perceive stalactites growing and the scales on insect wings, noticing.

In truth he’d been doing a lot less noticing of late. His senses were dulling. Perhaps it was the light of the cursed gems, which painted everything in blinding, indistinguishable holiness. Or he was just losing his touch.

If he focused now he could see it. It was easiest to sense on the plane of wraiths. There was Gorfaunt, a guttering candle; wheezing, weak. All orcs had that fire, however dim. No one had managed to fully extinguish it though it had been much suppressed. Tucked against her, nearly imperceptible, was a little spark. Not much yet but given tinder and carefully fanned it could grow. “You’re having a baby,” he marveled.

Gorfaunt’s face was… orcs were hard to read at the best of times, bubbling over with noisy pain and anger that obscured their true emotions, prone to skin diseases and horrendous eye infections that muddled their expressions. She didn’t wear her gas mask around him anymore, though most were quick to cover up around any Maia of Morgoth. It helped little, her face was still opaque as the mountain itself. “Yep, Captain.”

“Good?” You congratulated an ally on a new weapon, a new bond, a promotion. Which one was an infant classified as? What was the correct form?

“Hopefully it’ll be over and the little goblin will be in the caves with the old’uns by the time we find either of the cities.” Gorfaunt provided, only barely contextualizing his felicitations. She was chewing on the inside on her cheek; sometimes she would gnaw until she spat black blood. “Terrible time for it. Terrible time. But the high ups are worried about reinforcements down the line, I suppose.”

Orcs came from orcs. It was a fact so simple it barely bore considering. Another department handled it. The new ones just showed up, springy and long limbed, faces still soft and unmarred. “Goblins” he’d heard older orcs call those fresh pale creatures. Barely even monsters, more like stunted, crepuscular versions of the elves and dwarves they fought.

“How much longer?” They had a few good leads on Nargothrond, a promising word about Túrin Turambar. The Captain could not sack that city himself, the honor had already been promised to the sulfurous worm. Apparently they wanted to test the mettle of these dragons. But Gothmog could assign a few good orc commanders to supervise, make sure the worm was not overstepping his bounds.

Dark blood trickled out of the corner of Gorfaunt’s mouth. “Five months, I’m told. Could be more, could be less. Then I have to wait until the thing is independent enough to leave alone, that’s another few months.” She was probably counting months as the orcs had started to, by the moon. Wretched traitor, Tilion, who’d laughed with them at the idea of running away then turned his face when the time came to flee for freedom. They hated it as much as everyone else but in their hatred they were aware of its cycles. They rejoiced when it went dark.

“You’ll still be able to manage your underlings?” Orcs, and freed Maiar, were fractious. They did not respect a leader who lacked the strength to force them to obey. It could be exhausting. And Gorfaunt was already so round. The Captain did not wish to lose her support over one orcling.

“I think so. So far… in old days you’d den up somewhere for a year, avoid everyone prowling for blood, but I don’t want to fight my way up the ranks again. I’ve got an ax and I’m using it.” Despite that she sounded tired.

Long heartbeats stretched between them, that exquisite embarrassment of two coworkers suddenly forced to talk about private affairs.

“This is your first,” the Captain didn’t reach the tone of a question with that one.

“Yes. The recruiters were getting growly so I grabbed a fellow. I’ve been avoiding it for too long.”

“You don’t want a child.” Again, not quite a question. He was feeling it out as he goes along. This is the longest conversation about orc reproduction he’s ever paid attention to, for the Lieutenants diatribes we’re always dull.

It was no matter to him, except that this was the only orc commander he could tolerate working with and she was chewing through her own cheek in discomfort.

“They take something from you,” Gorfaunt admitted. “Dame and sire both, but worse for the dame since she has to carry the clot. You go… stretchy. Bleached like old bone. I’ve seen soldiers and after twenty children they’re not good for anything but shoving onto a line of pikes. Raw meat for the wargs.”

That didn’t make sense to him, but he was never a scholar of flesh or spirit. He knew how a skull split and how a soul fled, how this matter-sprung life withered, how it died. That was all that counted. He also knew how to value a resource.

“There won’t be any after this,” he said firmly. “Not if you don’t want them.” If need be he’d escalate to Lord Melkor, frame it as sapping strength from their command structure and propose making officers off limits from breeding programmes.

“As you command, Captain,” she said with a bowed head, but she looked gratifyingly relieved, and their conversation could finally move on to the latest stories of occupied territories and the search for the hidden cities.

The next few months Gorfaunt somehow managed to get bigger and bigger, until she was no longer able to swing herself into a chair and had to take their meeting standing. Her leather armor no longer fit and with just a thin layer of rags over her distended stomach it was easy to see the squirming creature inside.

Ferocious little animal. It would go so still and then kick out again, as if it could burst free of its creator by force of will alone. The kernel of its mind was forming too, a hazy bubble of sensation and half formed emotion. He could see what had the Lieutenant fascinated. It wasn’t his field but it was morbidly interesting, seeing the shape of something new and moldable come together right in front of you.

But he had not been made a sculptor or a craftsman. He’d been born a wild thing, a tornado, a volcano, every disaster meant to fell cities, and though he had not known the words yet he’d sensed in his core, seen in glimpses in the song, that he was a creature of war. Like many other wild things—Ossë, the simpering coward tied up in Uinen’s tresses, excluded— he’d found his way to Melkor in the end. Oh, he’d idled for a time with Vána, heard Námo’s dolorous call, but it was Melkor who he came back to and Melkor who he picked in the end.

Melkor taught him so many more ways to be. The smoke, the blood, the screaming not in sorrow but in anger. He taught the others who came to him as well. In the Captain’s little squad alone there was one who learned the slaver’s whip and the threat of fire, one who learned the ooze of pus and malodorous air, one who came to appreciate the ravenings of rabid beasts. From the dragons in the treasure-caves to the cat in the kitchen to the vampires in the highest towers, they were all Melkor’s creations.

Gorfaunt, born and raised here in the shadow of his ancient power, was even more Melkor’s than most. This was how the Captain rationalized his continuing fondness for her as she weakened, his interest in her spawn. Works of the same maker might gravitate together. They could see parts of themselves in each other, the way he could once see himself in other Ëalar born of the same bit of song.

When Gorfaunt came in four months after their revelatory meeting with a sagging belly and a bundle nestled against her chest he was excited to finally see what had been made.

It took a bit of coaxing to get her to show him the baby but no orc would outright refuse an order from anyone stronger than them, they knew better than that. The newborn was dutifully unwrapped and presented, though Gorfaunt’s expression suggested that she considered this all a silly waste of time.

It was a rumpled wet creature; mostly skin and bones, with a cranium as big as its rounded torso. Small too, barely bigger than Gorfaunt’s hand, and Gorfaunt was smaller than all elves and many humans; based on overheard complaints failure to grow was an ongoing issue with their kind. When it was unswaddled sticklike limbs flailed out and began batting at the air ineffectually. Despite this wriggling its face remained in a sleepy scowl. It wasn’t until Gothmog moved one cherry-hot finger closer to it that it opened its hazy grey eyes and tried to focus on him. Even then the dismayed frown stayed put.

An unscarred orc was always an interesting sight; for it revealed the scale of their reworking. How much orcishness was self-replicating, as the Lieutenant liked to claim, and how much had to be beaten in? This one had a droopy brow bone and already peeling corpse-grey skin but it did not look much like an orc besides that. It even had hair, which most orcs lacked (aside from a few lank patches). The fine red down covered its whole body, thickest on the head and face and arms.

“It’s supposed to fall out,” Gorfaunt said, “Everyone says it’ll fall out soon. Even the prisoners lose their hair after a while, especially in the deep mines.”

That was probably because of the miasma of decay that emanated from the ores of Angband. Not macro-decay, of skin and bone (that came later) but the infitesimal decay. Every piece of metal— every piece of existence, when you got down to it— was made of little stars. There was a gaseous center of energy and little orbiting specks around that, spinning in probabilistic loops. Like stars some were bigger and some were smaller and some were ready to collapse. Ilmarë loved to speak of supernovas. The yellow and blue metals below the mountain were full of little stars collapsing, reforming, giving off energy in great sums as they did so.

The Captain had noted the negative effects of this energetic output on incarnates some time ago. Elves sickened and humans just died— Lord Melkor had moved the man he hoped would give him the location of Gondolin far from those mines for a reason. A few of the spirits with natures inclined towards metal, salt, and industry had already incorporated the burning energy into their signatures. The Lieutenant doubtless had some wicked little experiment running with it. It was a part of life here, that background hum of a trillion crumbling particles, and the Captain never thought of the effect on orcs, though they were exposed from birth.

Now that he focused he could see the little crumbs of decay glancing off the baby.

Hmm.

It would probably be fine.

It was already rubbing its eyes and going back to sleep, one hand curled next to a crumpled, not-yet-cropped ear.

“Are you recovered?” he asked Gorfaunt.

“I’m fit enough to fight,” she said shortly, defensively, as if afraid he’d snatch her command from her. “I’ll be better soon when this thing is gone.”

The Captain’s huge palm hovered over her infant. He knew better than to touch; his ability to change forms was not what it once was, he could not stop being a bipedal avalanche, to strong, too close, too dangerous. Even just containing the noxious gases— the pustulent yellow and choking green— simmering inside this war shaped body was difficult. If he kept a few feet distance the chaotic heat of his skin faded into the air and the baby wriggled contentedly in the ambient glow, like a little lizard.

“And how long will that be?”

Gorfaunt’s hand twitched. Another few months, till it can manage worm meal and listen to the grands.”

It seemed impossible that anything could be big enough to leave alone in such a short time; but incarnation was not the Captain’s specialty. “And that’s the accepted practice?”

“A little young, but safe now that the master put a stop to the baby eating problem.”

“I wouldn’t want it to be a concern,” the Captain said very seriously, even though his fingers curled slightly around the baby’s limp body. “We can make modifications if the child must stay longer.”

Gorfaunt glanced down at her sprawled offspring. “I don’t— I don’t want this to last any longer. I’d rather have my life go back to normal.”

That, at least, he could understand. It has been a rather troubling experience overall. Revelations are not always useful and though he’s gained some knowledge it’s not very practical stuff.

“One more question, commander, then I’ll drop the matter. What is it named??”

That nascent mind bubble had sharpened with time and experience but was still comprised mostly of sensation. He could not even grasp at a basic sense of self. The child’s mother should know what if calls itself, if anyone did.

(He wanted to remember the name, for forty years from now, when he needed more good orcs. All those rants about the fundamentals of inheritance left him with some ideas about how incarnates develop traits. Another Gorfaunt would be a helpful tool to have on hand.)

The question left Gorfaunt unimpressed. “It doesn’t name itself anything yet, it hasn’t got the common sense. And no one’s given it a name because it hasn’t done anything interesting.”

“It has an interesting look” the Captain pointed out, “Tell them to call it Red Cap,” he slipped into the elf tongue, which had better color words than the one the Lieutenant devised, and in the process accidentally named the child after a former king of the Noldor. “Or something like that.”

Gorfaunt apparently had a better memory for politics than he gave her credit for, or perhaps just a distaste for the elf cant, because she quickly translated it back into Angband’s crackly tongue . “Rotbint.”

“Yes.” A Balrog, even the chief of Balrogs, could not give much to something so soft and incarnadine. A name, incorporeal, existing in the plane the Captain knew best, was the only thing he could offer. “Now, to business?”

Gorfaunt wrapped the little creature away— it woke halfway through the rolling to stare at them once more— then tucked it against her chest.

The Captain was sad to see it go, though he couldn’t say why.

He remembered that he had come to this physical world for a reason once. He had wanted to see all there was to see, to feel and taste everything, chew chunks of Arda up and spit it out new. Disasters hungered as much as anyone. Yet all he’d had lately was war fare; blood-soaked mud and rage-tinged fear.

Deprived of fresh experiences, he clung to the potential, the novelty, of new life.

Perhaps Gondolin would see him out of his funk, he thought. It couldn’t hide forever.

“We’ll find it, Captain,” Gorfaunt assured him stubbornly. “And we’ll tear it down brick by brick, raze their gardens, fill their streets with blood.”

Even with a baby trying to gum her collarbone her firm tone allowed no questions.

Orcs were, as a rule, bothersome, unruly, walking corpses. Fractious, ugly, difficult, bothersome, recklessly stupid. The Maiar serving under the Captain were sometimes stereotyped as simpleminded brutes but at least they were able to perceive the world around them, even if few bothered to use that perception. In comparison orcs were stumbling around in the dark. They were inefficient as well, you needed three of them to take down any decent enemy. But when they were well made they were well made. Those were the ones that made it all worth it.

It had to be worth it. This was freedom, after all.

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: the Shadowlands

This is my “fixing stories” for WoW’s latest expansion, Shadowlands. Due to overwhelming popular demand, by which I mean @shieldfoss and @bhikshu I’ll go into why this is dumb and how they could have done something instead of choosing to do nothing.

I will work under similar constraints to my Heart of the Swarm rework. I magically became Creative Director of WoW just for Shadowlands, so I cannot alter any of the plot of BFA or Legion or anything that came before. The concept art is done and asset creation is proceeding and I can’t change the overall structure or aesthetics of anything, just how the story is implemented. 

Minute one, what you need to do to make this expansion work is sit down and figure out what it’s About. Now, a MMO expansion doesn’t really need a driving central theme, though it can help, and it’s allowed to be “a bunch of stuff that happened” because it needs random-ass side plot bullshit going on. But the tagline is “Brave the Beyond”, this is the AFTERLIFE, this is where we go when we die and the world of the soul -- we need to be dealing with things bigger than us, bigger than the concept of us. Fundamental and About something because they are mythic incarnations of what kind of life you can live and what kind of world exists. 

We’ll still have an About in the traditional sense though. It doesn’t have to unify everything, but it’s good to have a bit of a through-line to define the main conflict. And also, there’s a certain point where characters need to stop saying “The Jailer… speaks true…” and fucking tell us what he says and WoW passed it long ago. Our About is a central question about the Jailer, and the broader notion of Hell represented by the Maw: “Is it possible for someone to do something so horrific that they deserve infinite punishment?”

And it’s funny, you know, you see JJ Abrams talk about the “mystery box”, and when he explains it, it makes perfect sense: a mystery that is central to the story but is never answered because it represents infinite possibility until it is revealed. And told in that way, that makes sense, that can be very good! Except Abrams never does that, he always ends up having to reveal the contents of the mystery box which by his own logic can never end in anything but disappointment. So I can’t say we will have a mystery box, but we will have a central mystery that we know will never be answered: what did the Jailer do to deserve the Maw? All we know is it is incomprehensibly horrible. Like our mortal minds would literally be unable to process it, even trying to understand it would harm us. So this isn’t “nah he’s bad trust us” we need characters who DO know to really, really sell it. Emotional reactions of anger and revulsion and helplessness, and absolutely nobody whether opposed or allied with the Jailer can deny his evil or say it wasn’t that bad. When you ask Devos about it, Devos shudders in fear and disgust, but says it doesn’t matter. If the question was “how bad was the Jailer’s crime” then we’d need to know what it is; if the question is “is it possible to have ANY crime bad enough to warrant his punishment” then we don’t.

Minute two, you need to know how the Shadowlands works. Because they made it just another continent and that doesn’t make any sense at all. What kind of candy-ass warrior afterlife gives you one life and then your soul is destroyed? How does it make sense for characters to call you “mortal” when they die just as hard and in fact you are superior because you haven’t used your extra life yet? Fuck how are necromancers a thing in Maldraxxus, if your soul is obliterated when you die in the Shadowlands WHAT ARE THEY CALLING BACK?

So none of that bullshit. You don’t die in the Shadowlands, at least not without a lot of work. Souls are anima, and the tide of dead souls flowing into the realms of the Shadowlands is a flow of anima, because everything is anima. Anima is the force of significance and permanence.  Anima is what makes up shadow and substance, things and ideas. Anima is the weight of being About something, anything. You don’t die in the Shadowlands by having your body stabbed to death. You will continue to exist, slightly weaker. You die in the Shadowlands when there is nothing left to the concept of “you”. When you are utterly forgotten and what you are is “nothing”. This is how we get those Unraveling Soul Fragments in Torghast: they are souls tortured so much there is no longer a self there, just a concept of misery. That’s extremely, extremely evil. Is it possible to commit a crime so heinous it deserves infinite punishment? If not, is there a crime so awful that it would be unimaginable to inflict it even on its perpetrator?

We also have three major antagonists we need to know.

One of them is Sire Denathrius, who is just fucking perfect the way he is, we love you Denny.

One of them is Sylvanas Windrunner. Sylvanas needs to stay in character: an absolutely remorseless piece of shit with no sense of right and wrong but who does productive things because they benefit her and who is extremely cunning to know how to work an angle to her ends. She’s too smart to get lied to by the Jailer and she’s too smart to go Full Evil but not only is anything less than that completely fair game, she doesn’t get why you have a problem with it. She has allied with the Jailer because there is one thing she absolutely wants to do and only she can do and she can only do with the Jailer: she wants to break him out because in doing so the hold of the Maw is shattered and now anyone can escape. The Maw stops being a prison once the Jailer escapes. And she wants that because she knows she’s got a one-way express ticket to the Maw when she finally runs out of extra lives. She knows she is a selfish, terrible, murderous, monstrous person. Does that warrant infinite punishment? In her heart she is convinced it does, so she’d prefer to make the question irrelevant before she has to find out. She is sympathetic to the pain she is inflicting on others, because it is like the pain she has felt. But she won’t stop. She knew she endured it, so you can take one for the team.

The Jailer is super super super super evil. If we remake him to be obviously in pain and lashing out in fear, he won’t WORK. He needs to be ominous and menacing and say “your soul is mine” and that kind of shit. We will be able to generate sympathy for Sylvanas, we shouldn’t try to do it to the Jailer. He is the victim of the ultimate injustice, but also perpetrator of the ultimate atrocity. He’s not sorry at all. The fact that he has raised a philosophical question about the nature of punishment is just a nice side effect of him saying things to people to get what he wants, which is to break out and inflict tyranny and suffering. Sylvanas is not tricked by him into thinking he only wants freedom, she has a plan that has his true motives in mind. What dimension do we give him so he won’t be flat while still being completely one-dimensionally evil? He resents you. He doesn’t lash out and scream his emotions and say it’s not fair that you have what he was denied freedom. But he resents you. A little ribbon of resentment threaded through his speech to you. He’s subtly insulted by the fact you exist. He doesn’t merely relish your suffering, he relishes your failure, your realization of weakness. He doesn’t pull an Azmodan and say “okay well NOW this trap is inescapable despite you escaping the last twenty!”, he knows you’re probably going to break free of things and escape. But he doesn’t care that this trap didn’t catch you, catching you would just be a bonus. He cares that he hurt you and made you feel inferior and the inevitable doom encroaches just a bit more on you. That is the source of his sinister satisfaction and confidence. He doesn’t announce an ambush and say “now you will never escape and your soul is mine,” he announces it by saying how weak and stupid you are to fall for it.

His victory is inevitable because Death is inevitable. He doesn’t care what temporary victories you earn; he doesn’t bother trying to convince you they are only a setback. He’s going to have you eventually and you’re going to suffer on the way. What a fucking dick.

[nealiios]

The Supernatural 70s: Part I - Corruption of An Innocent

"We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers writers."

-- with apologies to the screenwriter of "Stripes"

Dear reader, I have the darkest of revelations to make to you, a truth when fully and wholly disclosed shall most assuredly chill you to the bone, a tale that shall make you question all that you hold to be true and good and holy about my personal history. While you may have come in search of that narrative designer best known for his works of interactive high fantasy, you should know that he is also a crafter of a darker art, a scribbler of twisted tales filled with ghosts, and ghouls, and gargoyles. I am, dear innocent, a devotee of horrors! Mwahahahaha!

[cue thunderclap, lightning, pipe organ music]

Given the genre of writing for which most of you know me, I forgive you if you think of me principally as a fantasy writer. I don't object to that classification because I do enjoy mucking about with magic and dark woods and mysterious ancient civilizations. But if you are to truly know who I am as a writer, you must realize that the image I hold of myself is principally as a creator of weird tales.

To understand how and why I came to be drawn to this sub-genre of fantastic fiction, you first must understand that I come from peculiar folks. Maybe I don't have the Ipswich look, or I didn't grow up in a castle, but my pedigree for oddity has been there from the start. My mother was declared dead at birth by her doctor, and often heard voices calling to her in the dead of night that no one else could hear. Her mother would periodically ring us up to discuss events in our lives about which she couldn't possibly have known. My father's people still share ghost stories about a family homestead that burned down mysteriously in the 1960s. Even my older brother has outré memories about events he says cannot possibly be true, and as a kid was kicked off the Tulsa city bookmobile for attempting to check out books about UFOs, bigfoot, and ESP. It's fair to say I was doomed - or destined - for weirdness from the start.

If the above listed circumstances had not been enough, I grew up in an area where neighbors whispered stories about a horrifically deformed Bulldog Man who stalked kids who "parked" on the Old North Road near my house. The state in which I was raised was rife with legends of bigfoots, deer women, and devil men. Even in my childhood household there existed a pantheon of mythological entities invented explicitly to keep me in line. If I was a good boy, The Repairman would leave me little gifts of Hot Wheels cars or candy. If I was being terrible, however, my father would dress in a skeleton costume, rise from the basement and threaten to drag me down into everlasting hellfire (evidently there was a secret portal in our basement.) There were monsters, monsters EVERYWHERE I looked in my childhood world. Given that I was told as a fledgling writer to write what I knew, how could anyone have been surprised that the first stories I wrote were filled with the supernatural?

"The Nightmare" by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

My formative years during the late sixties and early seventies took place at a strange juncture in our American cultural history. At the same time that we were loudly proclaiming the supremacy of scientific thought because we'd landed men on the moon, we were also in the midst of a counter cultural explosion of interest in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extra sensory perception, and flying saucers. Occult-related books were flying off the shelves as sales surged by more than 100% between 1966 and 1969. Cultural historians would come to refer to this is as the "occult boom," and its aftershocks would impact popular cultural for decades to come.

My first contact with tales of the supernatural were innocuous, largely sanitized for consumption by children. I vividly remember watching Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read to shreds numerous copies of both Where the Wild Things Are and Gus the Ghost. Likely the most important exposure for me was to the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? cartoon which attempted to inoculate us from our fears of ghosts and aliens by convincing us that ultimately the monster was always just a bad man in a mask. (It's fascinating to me that modern incarnations of Scooby Doo seem to have completely lost this point and instead make all the monsters real.)

ABOVE: Although the original cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran only for one season from 1969 to 1970, it remained in heavy reruns and syndication for decades. It is notable for having been a program that perfectly embodied the conflict between reason and superstition in popular culture, and was originally intended to provide children with critical thinking skills so they would reject the idea of monsters, ghosts, and the like. Ironically, modern takes on Scooby Doo have almost entirely subverted this idea and usually present the culprits of their mysteries as real monsters.

During that same time, television also introduced me to my first onscreen crush in the form of the beautiful and charming Samantha Stevens, a witch who struggles to not to use her powers while married to a frequently intolerant mortal advertising executive in Bewitched. The Munsters and The Addams Family gave me my first taste for "goth" living even before it would become all the rage in the dance clubs of the 1980s. Late night movies on TV would bring all the important horror classics of the past in my living room as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla all became childhood friends. Over time the darkened castles, creaking doors, foggy graveyards, howling wolves, and ever present witches and vampires became so engrained in my psyche that today they remain the "comfort viewing" to which I retreat when I'm sick or in need of other distractions from modern life.

ABOVE: Elizabeth Montgomery starred in Bewitched (1964 - 1972) as Samantha Stephens, a witch who married "mortal" advertising executive Darren Stephens (played for the first five seasons by actor Dick York). Inspired by movies like I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it was a long running series that explored the complex relationship dynamics between those who possess magic and those who don't. Social commentators have referred to it as an allegory both for mixed marriages and also about the challenges faced by minorities, homosexuals, cultural deviants, or generally creative folks in a non heterogeneous community. It was also one of the first American television programs to portray witches not as worshippers of Satan, but simply as a group of people ostracized for their culture and their supernatural skills.

Even before I began elementary school, there was one piece of must-see gothic horror programming that I went out of my way to catch every day. Dark Shadows aired at 3:30 p.m. on our local ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma which usually allowed me to catch most of it if I ran home from school (or even more if my mom or brother picked me up.) In theory it was a soap opera, but the show featured a regular parade of supernatural characters and themes. The lead was a 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins (played by Johnathan Frid), and the show revolved around his timeless pursuit of his lost love, Josette. It was also a program that regularly dealt with reincarnation, precognition, werewolves, time travel, witchcraft, and other occult themes. Though it regularly provoked criticism from religious groups about its content, it ran from June of 1966 until it's final cancellation in April of 1971. (I would discover it in the early 1970s as it ran in syndication.) Dark Shadows would spin off two feature-length movies based on the original, a series of tie-in novels, an excellent reboot series in 1991 (starring Ben Cross as Barnabas), and a positively embarrassingly awful movie directed by Tim Burton in 1991.

ABOVE: Johnathan Frid starred as Barnabas Collins, one of the leading characters of the original Dark Shadows television series. The influence of the series cannot be understated. In many ways Dark Shadows paved the way for the inclusion of supernatural elements in other soap operas of the 1970s and the 1980s, and was largely responsible for the explosion of romance novels featuring supernatural themes over the same time period.

While Dark Shadows was a favorite early television program for me, another show would prove not only to be a borderline obsession, but also a major influence on my career as a storyteller. Night Gallery (1969-1973) was a weekly anthology television show from Rod Serling, better known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone. Like Twilight Zone before it, Night Gallery was a deep and complex commentary on the human condition, but unlike its predecessor the outcomes for the characters almost always skewed towards the horrific and the truly outré. In "The Painted Mirror," an antiques dealer uses a magic painting to trap an enemy in the prehistoric past. Jack Cassidy plots to use astral projection to kill his romantic rival in "The Last Laurel" but accidentally ends up killing himself. In "Eyes" a young Stephen Spielberg directs Joan Crawford in a story about an entitled rich woman who plots to take the sight of a poor man. Week after week it delivered some of the best-written horror television of the early 1970s.

In retrospect I find it surprising that I was allowed to watch Night Gallery at all. I was very young while it was airing, and some of the content was dark and often quite shocking for its time. Nevertheless, I was so attached to the show that I'd throw a literal temper tantrum if I missed a single, solitary episode. If our family needed to go somewhere on an evening that Night Gallery was scheduled, either my parents would either have to wait until after it had aired before we left, or they'd make arrangements in advance with whomever we were visiting to make sure it was okay that I could watch Night Gallery there. I was, in a word, a fanatic.

ABOVE: Every segment of Night Gallery was introduced by series creator Rod Serling standing before a painting created explicitly for the series. Director Guillermo del Toro credits Serling's series as being the most important and influential show on his own work, even more so than the more famous Twilight Zone.

[blahkugo]

Congrats for the 1k!! Wdyt ab hawks in an underground scenario?

thanks anon baby!! i love writing for hawks in general and this au was soooooo much fun to explore!! ♡ i honestly went a little crazy with it & added too much rumi in there lmao

                                  -ˋˏ ༻ 光 ༺ ˎˊ-

「TAKAMI KEIGO / HAWKS」

— underground! au (feat. rumi)

— warnings: 18+, smut, drugs / alcohol mention, kind of scumbag hawks

⤏ keigo’s very devious, in the sense that he can be both the star of everyone’s show and a sneaky bastard. he’s a double agent in the truest definition of the word, and it’s no different in an underground au

⤏ ‘heaven’ is the place to get into; no, no, not god’s pearly white gates, but rather the giant underground nightclub teeming with bar hoppers and thrill seekers on a saturday night.

⤏ the highly illegal establishment is run by none other than keigo takami himself, the eccentric club owner that people only know by name

⤏ no one’s ever actually seen keigo at his own club, nobody even knows what he looks like

⤏ so, rumors fly amongst the regular patrons; some say he’s a cartel boss, others a crooked cop

⤏ a choice few believe that he’s the devil himself. and in his jealousy of god’s perfect eden, he crafted his own slice of heaven, where restraint and inhibition are words with absolutely no meaning

⤏ the reality isn’t far off, if we’re being honest

⤏ ‘heaven’ is keigo’s personal playground, a place where he can be anybody he wants to

⤏ typically, that anybody is pulling pretty little whores into the giant vip room, and pumping them chock full of his favorite pills: angel dust

⤏ when his own high kicks in, the fun begins. and at that point, even keigo thinks he may be the devil incarnate

“Tsk, tsk,” Keigo wags a slender finger in front of your face, snatching the pretty little capsule from your hand. 

Quick, pounding percussion still pulses at your ears, though the VIP room is much quieter than the club floor— cooler as well. Without the mass of compressed, sweaty bodies dancing and grinding, you feel a bit over exposed in your two piece set. For a second, you have the urge to cover your midriff, but the angel in front of you sweeps your attention yet again. 

“How do good girls ask for pills?” He’s teasing you, has been since the moment he approached you spouting some nonsense about being the club owner. While you were initially adamant in your disbelief, only agreeing to follow him for his tempting promise of ‘proper drugs,’ the extravagance of the VIP room sways your opinion now. 

Also, the man swims in luxury, seems to be bathed in an ethereal glow that screams money from the tips of his perfectly tousled hair down to the Givenchy trainers on his feet. The richest men always dress in subtleties; you just have to know where to look. 

Your assumptions were confirmed when he ordered top shelf booze. They were absolutely set in stone when Rumi, the Playboy Bunny turned supermodel, settled into the booth next to him and plopped a kiss on his cheek. 

“The sick bastard will really only give it to you if you say pretty please,” the gorgeous woman chuckles, looking every bit as intimidating as she does on the runways. “Like this,” she clasps her hands together— fingernails sporting a fierce, red manicure— and turns towards the smug blonde. “Please Keigo, a pill.” 

It’s unclear whether her tone is sincere, sickly sweet words dripping with mockery and faux praise. Either way, you refuse to be the butt of their jokes. Begging for drugs? Over your dead body. 

Keigo must feel your hesitation, must sense the subtle shift in your body language, because his eyebrows narrow for a fraction of a second before quickly regaining their place far atop his forehead— practiced nonchalance, seemingly perfected over years.  

He hands the pill to Rumi, and then another, pushing his slender fingers into hers without breaking your mutual gaze.

“Oops,” he feigns apology, “looks like I gave two pills to Rumi.” He slants a quick look at the platinum blonde. “You can just take one from her, sweetheart.” 

When you break your glare to peek at the beautiful woman next to him, she’s giggling. The sound is practically silent, a twinkly little thing that barely reaches your ears and doesn’t rumble through her entirety like laughter truly should. 

“Silly me,” she smirks, piercing eyes scanning over you now, “I didn’t realize.” Though you’re sure the night can’t get any stranger, she lets her tongue loll from between supple lips, painted bright red to match her nails. Low and behold, there are two pills, both dangling enticingly on her curved tongue.

“Aw,” Keigo coos, pout brimming with ridicule. Though you attempt to speak up, entirely fed up with this humiliating charade, he doesn’t miss a beat. “She can still have one though, can’t she Rumi?” 

She simply nods, swaying her tongue once more before curling it back into her mouth. He can’t mean— no, he wouldn’t. But the pair simply stares at you, famishment gleaming in their eyes like a pair of ravenous wolves. 

He wants you to kiss her. 

Every one of your nerves stands on end, willing you with a passion to reject his slimy offer. You’re not a Barbie doll for him to play with, to dress and undress and buy off with a bright pink mansion to boot. 

But then again, the pros do vastly outweigh the cons. When’s the next time you’re going to have the chance to kiss a supermodel? And with someone as beautiful as Keigo watching? You take a deep breath, standing up and bracing your arms against the table to lean over. 

And then, you are kissing her. 

Rumi’s lips taste like whiskey sour and a spice that you can’t quite place. She’s quick to take control, cupping your jaw with slender fingers and nipping at your lip. There’s a slight twinge of pain before each swipe of her tongue across your lip, and it’s a miracle that she keeps the pills nestled under her tongue; she kisses you with such passion, such dizzying ferocity, that you feel your head spin. It’s definitely not the alcohol. 

When her lips bite again, more aggressive this time, you part your own in a low, teasing groan. She swings a knee over the table— pushes closer, pulls you further into her. You’re losing your breath, unable to keep up, but she simply continues her onslaught, as though you’ve stolen her last breath and she’s aching to get it back. 

Only when her tongue slinks across the back of your teeth and makes its home between them, does she offer up the pill from under the wet muscle. 

With a parting smile against your mouth, she pulls away. 

“Hope you like that pill as much as you did the kiss,” she speaks, lips, puffy but still perfectly painted, inches from your own. She stays put, watching the strand of drool still connecting the two of you. 

You wish you could say something, anything, to the goddess of a woman, but you’re left in a haze. If it isn’t for the subtle tap against your throat, you’d forget to swallow the pill you worked so diligently for. As she finally recedes, you make a mental note for later: world-renowned supermodel Rumi smells like cinnamon. 

“Bunny got your tongue?” Keigo chuckles, now standing next to your side of the booth, and slithering a lithe hand across your lower back. You’d almost forgotten the smug bastard was there, but one glance his way and you remember where you are: a public space. 

Sure, the VIP lounge is practically empty, save for a few stragglers here and there, but those people are presumably A-listers. And they just watched you make out with a woman all for drugs and the entertainment of a very wealthy man. 

Still, it probably isn’t the worst image they’ve ever seen. 

Rumi gives you another once over, baring sharp canines that seem to sparkle beneath the low, purple lights. Even after your intimate moment, she somehow seems more intimidating— or perhaps, more ravenous. She makes some comment to Keigo about giving you her number, throws a wink your way, and ends the encounter with another quick peck on his cheek. 

Then, with hips swaying seductively to the beat, she makes her descent down the stairs to join the thrall of bodies as her high hits, leaving you and the blonde alone. Chancing a glance his way, you decide that’s not a terrible thing. 

That same pompous smirk is plastered across his face, that same insatiable look in his eyes. His blonde locks remain in a state of perfect dishevelment, and when he runs a hand through it, his jewelry— rings upon rings and a watch that probably costs more than your rent— catches the light, shimmering wildly. 

“We’re going to peak soon.”

It’s all he says, before leading you towards the stairs and down, down, down— straight into Heaven. 

-

Wisps of baby pink, streams of bright blue— cotton candy fills the air and washes the man in front of you in a delectable light. It begs you to take a bite, to do more than press your warm, wanton body against him. 

“How do you feel?” Keigo’s teeth graze the shell of your ear, hot breath tickling the side of your face. With his arms wrapped around your waist, he envelops you fully, allowing you to grind and move as you please. The heat radiating off your bodies could rival the sun. 

“Like I’m flying,” you throw your hands into the air; he grazes them with his own. Every touch sends a cacophony of sparks across your flesh, every murmur of praise a chilling tingle down your spine. And when he strains his hips against yours, it heats you further, all throughout your core. You need him— right here, right now, bathed in candied pinks and sugar-filled blues.  

As though he can hear your thoughts, or perhaps you’ve said them aloud, his slender fingers slither further down your body. Down, down, down— dashing under your tight skirt to rub across your soaked slit. When you cry out, a symphony of desire, he simply presses harder, rubs faster. 

Just as you’re about to see stars, to grab at the spun sugar surrounding you and take an overwhelming chomp, he removes his magic fingers. You’re aware you’re crying out, feel as though the entire world’s been ripped away from you, but he simply shushes you with a slick digit against your lips.

“Let’s take this back upstairs, yeah?” The devil pokes at your side. 

You’re already being whisked away, deeper into paradise. 

                          ᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ 光 ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

[jamboreeofsurprises]

fuller thoughts on The Rose of Versailles' ending now that I've finished reading AND watching it

(((SPOILERS)))

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/

/

Okay, i'm having the most mixed feelings - i almost wish I could take the anime's handling of Oscar and Andre's demise and blend it with the manga's handling of the Royal Family's demise. It's so weird. I can say that the anime gave me the thorough emotional catharsis I wanted when Andre died that the manga brushed over so quickly (so much that I kept confusingly turning back a page to be like "wait that's it??"). Dezaki and his team definitely knew where the heart of the story was and gave those two the proper closure they deserved, though Oscar's death maybe felt a little abrupt still. I really think the anime would have benefited from just two more episodes - even one more would have helped the pacing.

When Ikeda started The Rose of Versailles, Marie Antoinette was its designated protagonist and Oscar merely an important secondary character, but Oscar was so popular amongst readers she basically took over the protagonist role as the story progressed. So while her ending felt too quick in the manga as well, the way the story extended past that to give the Royal Family their proper sendoff still climactically made sense, and was very gratifying down to its tragic, thoroughly resolute final page that tied three of our most important characters together in death. While I kind of like Rosalie, Bernard and Alain at the beach reminiscing about the aftermath of the Revolution in the final episode, it also felt VERY "we are pressed for time let's give a quick summary instead" which I feel gives the audience too much emotional distance from Antoinette and Louis XVI. Throughout The Rose of Versailles, we learn to both love and hate the queen, love her for her heart and compassion towards her subjects and hate her for her careless whims that jeopardized the lives of many (even if she wasn't aware of it more often than not). In the manga after Oscar is gone, Antoinette almost becomes the last character we can project our hopes onto even though we know she's headed for the guillotine, so following her through these final tension-filled scenes after her largely diminished role in the story was the right way to do it. In the anime it's a little too "anyway you know what happens". Not to mention the very last minute or so is such a terribly quick rundown of the events to come (with no emotional weight towards their significance) while unfittingly happy music plays. The tonal dissonance is honestly bizarre...then roll credits??

don't take some of my conflicting feelings on the turnout in a negative light at all though, I commend The Rose of Versailles in both its incarnations - I think they complement each other well, and while the manga is more textually rich, the anime is (naturally) more cinematic, and sometimes more concise with its plotting - an example of limitations being a good thing. And the animation and direction is very ahead of its time. I can't fault Ikeda entirely for some of the pacing in her manga knowing what a tight schedule she was on to write and illustrate this massive series; she apparently got hospitalized several times during the course of its publishing from fatigue, and that's awful. She pulled off something phenomenal.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the paper rose thing! I liked it even if I don't know how necessary of an addition it was.

[nonbinarybrainstorm]

Thunderclash Ruins Normal Spike for TFA Roddy

So, by popular demand or at least high interest, I’ve written my tfa!Roddy and ll!Thunders fic idea

Content: size kink, tummy bulge, excessive cum, kindling feelings

Enjoy!

Shots fire over the battlefield with resounding explosions as they make impact on the gray stone around them. Rodimus Prime pushes his back against a low outcropping and checks his bow, cursing as he takes in the damage. It was going to need extensive repairs after this and as it is now, he probably would only be able to get a few more shots in. Well, better make them count. He whips around to aim above his cover, targeting towards the Decepticons charging at him at full speed. Shutting his optics for just a flicker of a moment, thanking Primus that at the very least his team had managed to getaway. He pulls back and is just about to release as a sudden flash of light and a thunderous boom shakes the thin atmosphere, startling him and making his shot fly wide. Everything goes still as the dust begins to settle and a large silhouette lifts from the ground. It’s a mech like none Rodimus has ever seen, large and powerful like a Decepticon but land-bound like an Autobot. All Rodimus can think this mech could be is back up for the Decepticons here but they were far from needing any. What was going on?

Thunderclash looks around, dazed and confused, trying to gather his bearings and make sense of what just happened. Oh, right, Brainstorm happened, his processor finally provides helpfully. He turns to spot some unusual looking transformers emblazoned with the Decepticon insignia making him go on guard immediately. The war may be over but that certainly didn’t seem to stop any Decepticons they’ve met so far from wanting to continue hostilities. Realizing they were already on the attack as he puts his stance wide, he traces their line of attack to find their quarry. His optics land on a small bot, a mini and at that moment Thunderclash recognizes his shape, his colors and realizes he must be in another universe for he’s staring at a small replica of Rodimus Prime. He doesn’t need to spare a moment more to think about it, whatever the current situation, these Decepticons were going down. He wasn’t about to let any incarnation of Rodimus come to harm, not even that one evil one they met.

Rodimus watches in slack-jawed awe as the new arrival swiftly knocks the front-most Decepticon back like he weighed nothing more than an annoying stack of datapads. The mech’s movements were practiced and elegant like he’d been doing this all his life, a true machine of war. It didn’t make any sense in Rodimus’s processor as to why this mech who should be among Megatron’s most elite was defending him and he knew this mech was defending him after seeing that look in his red optics. Before Rodimus can come to any kind of census in his processor, the Decepticons who had been on the verge of bringing him to his end are retreating with heavy wounds of terribly dented armor and rips through their plating leaking energon. The mech turns around now covered with blast marks and scratches that don’t even seem to phase him with the occasional splatter of energon here and there. None of the energon could be his with how there wasn’t a single significant wound on his body. The strange mech smiles down at him and Rodimus can feel his frame heat inexplicably.

Thunderclash slowly walks towards the small Rodimus and kneels down to reach his hand out to him.

“Are you alright?” Thunderclash calls softly to him, not wanting to startle him.

The mech has an Autobot brand on his chest but he’s so tall and big, Rodimus can’t fathom it. Without thinking, Rodimus reaches it out and places his hand on the mech’s outstretched one. Upon the light touch, the mech’s hand wraps around his completely, encasing it gently but firmly in a warm embrace before he’s helped up from kneeling. Rodimus stares up mech and feels very small as he stands to see he only reaches the mech’s spike cover which serves to fill his processor with very unseemly thoughts that make his faceplates heat up. He blames it on the high of battle and pushes the thought roughly away.

“Yes, thank you,” Rodimus keeps his optics firmly trained on his face.

Thunderclash smiles down at this mini Rodimus and then feels his face heat in embarrassment as he realizes he hasn’t even introduced himself yet, “Oh, uh, I’m Thunderclash by the way.”

“Thunderclash,” Rodimus repeats and clears his intake, embarrassed at how dreamy his voice sounds saying this mech’s name.

“You must be Rodimus Prime, the Rodimus Prime of this universe that is,” Thunderclash says and releases his hand when he notices he was still holding it.

Rodimus blinks up in surprise and nods, “Yes, you’re from another universe? Do you know my alternate there?”

“I am,” Thunderclash’s smiles warmly again making Rodimus’s spark stutter, “He’s my captain, the captain of the Lost Light. I’m rather proud of that claim.”

A burst of jealousy that Rodimus knows is completely unreasonable bubbles up in his spark as he puts on a smile for Thunderclash.

“That sounds nice,” Rodimus scratches the back of his helm nervously.

Suddenly, his communicator beeps and he sees the message is coming in from command. He looks up apologetically at Thundeclash who waves him off with understanding. Rodimus nods his thanks and walks a few steps away to answer his communicator.

“Rodimus Prime,” Ultra Magnus’s strong voice pops in with a burst of static, “What is your situation?”

“I remained behind to give my team a chance to escape,” Rodimus reports, chancing a glance at Thunderclash every so often seeing him on his own call, “The Decepticons retreated after I received some aid from…”

Rodimus stalls as the ridiculousness of Thunderclash’s existence crashes over him. He couldn’t just tell Ultra Magnus he’d got help from a giant Autobot from another universe, that would sound insane.

“Rodimus?” Ultra Magnus prompts him, sounding concerned.

Rodimus shakes his head and responds, “I received some aid from a surprisingly adept civilian who helped me beat back the Decepticons.”

“That is… surprising,” Ultra Magnus says over the comm, thankfully sounding more surprised than doubtful, “We will have to give this civilian a commendation. A transport is set to arrive at your destination in two cycles with a Red Alert. We anxiously await your return.”

“Thank you, sir,” and with that the call ends.

Thunderclash walks up to him, “I’ve been told that I’m going to be picked up in just a few hours. So, I guess I’m here until then. You?”

“Transport is on its way,” Rodimus shrugs then tilts his head, “Hours?”

Thunderclash shrugs, “Earth time. It caught on pretty quickly on our ship.”

“Okay…” Rodimus says not sure how else to respond.

They stand there awkwardly for a moment, neither of them quite sure what to say. Thunderclash pats his legs for a moment and looks at an outcropping of rocks, thoughts flitting behind his optics.

“It’s going to be a while until I can get back, until either of us are going to get back,” Thunderclash points to the outcrop and looks back at Rodimus, “I’m going to go sit over there, maybe catch some recharge. Feel free to join me if you wish.”

Thunderclash walks over to the outcropping and slides down its surface so his back is to it and stretches his strong arms out before resting them on his knees. Rodimus watches him, feeling a sudden sense of indecision. There was a real possibility he was never going to see this mech again and Rodimus wanted… He didn’t know what he wanted really or, rather, he wanted to many things. He knew exactly what he wanted what was he kidding himself for? If they’re never going to see each other again after this then there was no harm in testing the waters or even taking the plunge. If he asked the worst that would happen is that he would be embarrassed for two whole cycles and that would be the end of it. Making a decision, Rodimus walks up to Thunderclash and rests a hand on his knee, getting Thunderclash to look up at him with an open expression.

“Uh, I would like to give you my thanks,” Rodimus drums his fingers on Thunderclash’s knee, “for saving me, I mean.”

Thunderclash smiles sweetly at him, genuinely touched, “It was no trouble.”

“No, I know,” Rodimus gets closer, moving his hand to Thunderclash’s shoulder, leaning in closer with his spark spinning a mile a minute, “I saw how you defeated them with barely straining a cable. I just want you to know…”

Thunderclash doesn’t move as Rodimus leans in, optics traveling to his derma and staying stock still, not entirely believing that this was happening. Rodimus leans in close and presses a kiss against his lips which Thunderclash would like to say that he had a bit more self-control and didn’t immediately melt into it but he did. Having this small version of Rodimus in his arms was like a dream. He doesn’t remember when he pulled Rodimus into his lap, but there he was, kneeling and kissing Thunderclash like his life depended on it. Thunderclash trails his hands over Rodimus’s frame, unable to resist the mech in front of him, feeling how small he is with his frame fit perfectly into Thunderclash’s hands. One of Rodimus’s knees rubs Thunderclash’s panel and it snaps open to let his spike pressurize between them. He tries to apologize to Rodimus but his words turn into a gasp as he feels Rodimus grab the head of his spike and run his thumb over it.

“Is this okay?” Rodimus pants out and Thunderclash just nods.

Thunderclash feels his processor practically melt as Rodimus starts stroking his spike, eyeing it with a hungry optic that Thunderclash had never even imagined on the face of his captain. Then, Rodimus uncovers his valve and lowers down in front of Thunderclash’s spike so he can push up against it with his wet valve. Making a choked off sound in his intake, Thunderclash grabs onto what he can of Rodimus as he balances on Thunderclash’s knees and starts grinding against Thunderclash’s spike. Thunderclash just moans and watches as Rodimus’s, this alternate Rodimus’s valve lips hug his spike as Rodimus moves his hips along it, gasping whenever his node rubbed against the head of Thunderclash’s spike. Rodimus’s legs begin to shake so Thunderclash takes him in his arms and moves to his knees so he can keep grinding his spike between the hot folds of Rodimus’s valve. He looks down at Rodimus whose optics are blazing with light and his face is practically split with how wide his smile is, optics firmly locked on Thunderclash’s spike.

Thunderclash moves his hips faster, getting Rodimus to cry out sweetly and pant, hot to the touch in Thunderclash’s hands. Then Rodimus grabs the head of his spike and squeezes, sending a jolt through Thunderclash that makes him stop cold, panting and moaning heavily.

“I want you to overload inside me,” Rodimus leans up and captures Thunderclash’s derma in a slow, gentle kiss before breaking it with a swipe of his glossa over Thunderclash’s lower lip.

“I don’t think…” Thunderclash vents out between pants only to screw his optics shut as Rodimus lines himself up with Thunderclash’s spike.

“Just go slow,” Rodimus trails his hand down Thunderclash’s length with one hand as grips Thunderclash’s arm with the other.

When Thunderclash still hesitates, Rodimus pushes himself down onto his spike some, the head of Thunderclash’s spike already stretching him obscenely so his node rubs against Thunderclash’s spike. Leaning down to steady himself on one hand, Thunderclash pushes in at a painfully slow pace, terrified of hurting this Rodimus. As the spike pushes deep inside of the wet heat of Rodimus’s valve, he relaxes to let more and more in. Rodimus moans as he sees how his plating shifts to let Thunderclash in, a bulge forming on his abdomen where Thunderclash’s spike is. Thunderclash feels himself shaking as he tenses every cable in his body to keep him from simply sinking into Rodimus, his valve impossibly tight around his spike. He can feel heat gather in his array and pressure build in his spike, waiting to be released.

Rodimus grips Thunderclash’s chestplate and tugs him down sharply to look him in the optic, “You’re not allowed to overload yet, not until you’re all the way in then you can.”

Something ignites along Thunderclash’s lines and he bites his derma as he continues to push in slowly, using every ounce of his willpower to hold back which comes harder as more of his spike pushes into Rodimus. Rodimus feels Thunderclash’s spike twitch in his valve as he’s stretched wide and filled so completely his hips twitch and spasm, unable to escape the almost overwhelming sensations. Finally, Thunderclash feels Rodimus’s valve lips press against his pelvic plates and sighs with relief, pausing as he vents heavily, heat and charge clouding his processor. Rodimus runs a hand over his lower plating over the shallow bulge and bites his derma as he writhes on the spike, gasping as the ridges rub against the walls of his valve.

“Well come on,” Rodimus pants excitedly, his optics flaring erraticly, “I know you’re desperate to overload. So, do it, I want to feel you overload inside me.”

Thunderclash chokes off a groan and practically overloading upon Rodimus’s command, filling him with hot transfluid, so that some pushes past his spike to drip onto the gray stone below. Rodimus cries out as he’s filled, overloading on Thunderclash’s spike, his valve unable to tighten anymore around Thunderclash’s spike that’s filling him so completely. They come down from their overloads rapidly rather than gradually and charge immediately begins to build again in Rodimus’s systems and he moves his hips however much he can.

“Keep going,” Rodimus begs, gripping desperately onto Thunderclash, “Please, I need more.”

Thunderclash swallows a moan and pants out, “Say that again.”

Rodimus groans in frustration and all but shouts, “Just frag me! I want you to use that spike of yours to- Ah!”

Thunderclash thrusts and Rodimus digs his fingers into Thunderclash’s arms, unable to form words, barely even able to think as Thunderclash’s spike fills him over and over. Unable to control himself any longer Thunderclash let’s loose, pounding into Rodimus as he keeps him still in one arm, his hand holding Rodimus’s hip tightly. It’s fast and rough, with the obscene sounds of Rodimus’s wet valve being used. Overload takes them both more violently this time, charge licking their frames in broad arches as Thunderclash spills again into Rodimus’s valve, making Rodimus feel warm and heavy in a way he’s never known before. They calm down completely this time and Rodimus winces slightly as Thunderclash’s spike depressurizes out of him, letting cold air hit his valve. Rodimus scrambles to hold onto something as Thunderclash stands up rapidly and walks him over to a taller bolder and sets him down gently. Pulling a clean rag out, Thunderclash begins cleaning him up, muttering under his vents.

Rodimus puts a hand on Thunderclash’s chest, getting him to stop for a moment.

“What is it?” Rodimus asks and Thunderclash looks incredibly chagrined.

“I should’ve had more control, now look at you, you’re all…” Thunderclash rubs his fingers into Rodimus’s abdomen plating soothingly, encouraging them to return to their normal extension.

“Stretched out?” Rodimus offers teasingly but Thunderclash only looks regretfully.

Rodimus pulls Thunderclash’s face down and kisses him again.

“I liked that a lot,” Rodimus smiles up at him, “I hope you did too.”

Thunderclash nods sheepishly and stares down at Rodimus, a faint pang forming in his spark. Wanting every moment he can have of this fantasy, he finishes cleaning them both up then pulls Rodimus to him, to hold him and kiss him sweetly until he gets a notice that just in a few minutes, he’ll be able to go home. The swirling blue vortex appears suddenly in the air and with one last farewell, one last kiss, Thunderclash walks through the hazy portal, returning to his own universe and leaving Rodimus alone.

Later, his transport arrives right on time with Cliffjumper and Red Alert in tow. He boards it with barely a word, feeling a strange kind of melancholy that he didn’t know how to describe. Red Alert guides him to the small medbay and checks him over. To lost in his own thoughts, he misses the concerned glances of the transport crew and the critical gaze of Cliffjumper. Red Alert smirks and that’s what catches his optic.

“What?” Rodimus asks, his tone reflecting his sour demeanor.

Red Alert just shakes her head, “Usually, mechs are a bit more cheerful after getting fragged to within an inch of their life. Have fun with our hero did we?”

Rodimus splutters and Red Alert waits patiently for him to form coherent words. He has to clear his intake of static, her comment throwing him so off guard.

“How do you mean?” he asks as flatly as he can even though he’s completely on edge now.

She points to his abdomen and explains simply, “Your plating is distended at quarter capacity. That only happens for two reasons and seeing as how I didn’t have to turn you the right way out again, you got fragged.”

Rodimus looks away, faceplate heating to a bright red, “Oh.”

“Oh indeed,” Red Alert chuckles, “I guess your hero got all the commendation they wanted then?”

Rodimus doesn’t say anything at first then very quietly says, “He was… nice.”

Red Alert stops and turns around at that to see the melancholy from before return. She walks over and pulls him into a tight hug.

“Oh, Rodimus, I’m sure, you’ll see him again.”

They journey back to Cybertron and Rodimus tries very hard to forget a mech with kind red optics, and a sweet smile.

[unnecessaryadversaries]

LOVE & DEATH [Alucard | Adrian Tepes X Death] Ch. 8

Summary: Since Trevor and Sypha's departure, Alucard has endured terrible loneliness and grief. Despite becoming known as the "Guardian Angel" — defender of Wallachia, and involving himself with witches, he believes it is his fate to suffer alone forever. One night, his world is turned upside down when the castle is visited by Mistress, the incarnation of Death. Each being the only remnant of what Dracula and Lisa have left behind, Alucard and Mistress Death revisit ghosts of their past, as they try to find solace amongst one another, and face the looming threats ahead.

(A/N: In case you were curious, Alucard is 6'2"; Mistress Death is 6'8"; and Itzhak is 7'3". So we've got a smol, a tol, and a very tol!)

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The kitchen was warm when Alucard walked into it, almost to the point of being stuffy, and the odor of burning wafted through the air. Despite this, his eyes widened slightly in awe as he looked overhead at the many candles hovering in midair, softening the space with a peaceful, orangish glow. Which was accented by the blue moonlight filtering in through the windows. It seemed magical, and he smirked at the gesture, but as enchanting as it looked, it could not distract from the mess made of the kitchen. Pots and pans were stacked haphazardly in the sink, food and other substances decorated the countertops and shelves in splotches, and the once tidy cabinets were open and wildly rummaged throughout.

“What a wonderful surprise,” Alucard muttered under his breath. He rubbed the aggravated knot that was already beginning to form in the back of his neck. The careful organization and storage of recipes, ingredients, and food were dismantled in hours, and it made his eye twitch. However, what caused him to blanch was the whispered sound of Mistress giggling as she spoke with Itzhak. They were observing the handstitched dolls Alucard had placed on a low shelf.

“Don’t look at those,” he blurted out, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“Ah, Adrian, there you are,” Mistress replied as she and Itzhak rose to their full heights to gaze down at him.

Alucard immediately noticed that she was dressed differently: For one, she wore no cloak, and her chained belt was missing but the amulet remained draped around her neck. Her new dress was still long and fitted her form but was off-shoulder and a muted blue color. The neckline dipped into a sweetheart pattern that almost revealed the line of her bust, and the sleeves remained dramatic and medieval-like. Her long, white hair was styled into cornrows at the front of her head that then dispersed into a bouquet of kinky curls starting at the middle. Furthermore, the two braids that hung forward on each side of her head were decorated at the end with silver beads.

He already considered her beautiful. Only now, she looked more welcoming, and maybe even slightly happier. Had it not been for the mess he knew she made, nor the humiliation he felt at having his dolls discovered, he would’ve complimented her.

“Itzhak and I were just admiring your cute, little dolls.” Reaching out, she grabbed them both in her hand. “They look just like Belmont and the Speaker girl. You’re so creative, Adrian. Isn’t that right, Itzhak?”

He nodded. “Yes, Mistress.”

Alucard shook his head. “You really are laying the compliments on thick; these are hardly impressive.”

He suppressed the urge to groan as he saw the way Mistress placed them back on the shelf. They were slouched over sadly and set too far apart from each other for his liking. Therefore, he approached the dolls rather quickly to fix their positions and lamented as he did so. “This castle was a lonesome, unfriendly place when Trevor and Sypha left, and I admittedly went a little mad when they were gone. These are just dolls but most days they were all I had to talk to.”

Once perfect, Alucard stepped back to admire his handiwork, a small smile tugging on his lips when memories of their playful bickering began to resurface.

“That’s pathetic,” Itzhak deadpanned.

An irritated growl ripped its way from Alucard’s throat as his head turned sharply to glare at the creature. His hands itched with the temptation to tear him apart, but if his earlier reaction to losing an arm were anything to go by, it’d hardly faze him in the slightest.

“Well, it needn’t be that way if they hadn’t left,” Alucard exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at the dolls as his forehead wrinkled in frustration. In the awkward silence, little Trevor and little Sypha toppled forward slightly, as if they were bowing in forgiveness. He immediately noticed and grumbled as he moved to fix them in upright positions again.

Itzhak muttered “pathetic” in his alien tongue then looked to Mistress Death for her response…but, she had none. Instead, she stood rigidly and looked upon Alucard with a face etched with sorrow and guilt. Her eyes began to moisten with blood, tinging the white sclera pink and then red, as her bloody tears welled and threatened to spill. It was an intense look Itzhak had not seen since the night of Alucard’s birth, and it caused him to gasp, “My Mistress!” with a voice tainted by some flicker of worry. Slightly alarmed, she perked up and batted her eyes to return them to normal and acknowledged him.

“What is it?”

“The…surprise—”

“Yes,” Alucard interjected, “what is my surprise?” He faced them with his arms crossed after finishing with his task. “Because I am somewhat underwhelmed and quite frankly annoyed. The candles are a nice touch but, I can see that you’ve cleaned yourself up better than my kitchen.”

Mistress rolled her eyes skyward. “Ugh, you are a true Tepes man at heart, so dramatic.”

With that, she snapped her fingers, causing a visible shockwave to surge from them and spread rapidly outward. Consequently, the cabinets and windows rattled somewhat, and the ground shook slightly, but overall the kitchen was no longer in disarray. Alucard lowered the arm he raised to shield his face and gripped his chin as he surveyed the room, humming thoughtfully. Aside from the candles that still hovered overhead, everything seemed cleaned and in its proper place. Even that weird burnt smell was gone.

“There, is that better?”

Alucard arched a brow then brushed past her, headed towards one of his spice cabinets. He had a complex system when it came to the organization of his spices; one that took him days to figure out the best catalog that suited his cooking methods and palate, and he’d be damned if it was all thrown to the wind. He sifted through that cabinet and two others, checking the labels and positions of different spices to make sure everything was indeed in order. Once everything checked out, he released a satisfied sigh and answered, “Yes, much better.”

“Splendid! Now, come sit. Itzhak, pull out a chair for him!”

“Right away, Mistress.”

Alucard nodded his head in thanks when Itzhak pushed him comfortably up to the table. He had a sneaking suspicion of what to expect, and his mouth formed an “o” when it was confirmed. Mistress carefully set a lidded plate and silverware down in front of him, shyly confessing, “I could’ve used magic or simply summoned a chef from the Outerworld, but I wanted to do things myself.”

Alucard’s warm smile soothed any uncertainty she had regarding his surprise, and she felt more confident with her dish. Her body practically buzzed with excitement as she envisioned how pleased he would look as he ate. She became so eager by these thoughts that she almost wished to stuff his mouth full of food herself! However, she silently scolded herself for thinking such things.

Okay, that’s a little too far. What am I, insane? I need to control myself. It’s only food, but —

“How considerate, thank you, Mistress,” Alucard said, picking up his fork and knife. “I can hardly remember the last time someone has cooked for me, so I can’t wait to dig in.”

She beamed. “Perhaps I can do so again if this meal satisfies you?”

He chuckled lightly. “A tempting offer.”

When she finally lifted the lid, Alucard’s glowing face quickly became cast with a shadow of disgust and confusion. He tried to mask his repulsion with delight, but his furrowed brows and tense, awkward grin betrayed his true feelings. Fortunately for him, due to Mistress Death’s initial excitement, she was none-the-wiser to his first impression of her dish. Itzhak, on the other hand, stood beside her, watching the dhampir closely and softly droning as if in thought. Briefly, Alucard wondered how a being without much of a face could appear so judgmental?

“Well,” Mistress clasped her hands together, “what do you think?”

He poked nervously at the food, examining it with a critical eye. Two unevenly sized chicken breasts sat pitifully atop a mucousy mass of some unknown substance. The chicken was wrapped in what Alucard assumed was mozzarella cheese. It was spotted with pools of reddish oil and stretched thin enough to appear transparent in some areas, revealing the pinkish color of the chicken breasts underneath.

“Ah, chicken,” he commented with a shaking voice and wrinkling nose, “one of my favorites.”

He pushed the poultry aside to dig through the reddish-brown, slimy stuff below. It looked like a massive tumor of maggots, and when he tried to separate it, it pulled apart in gooey strands.

Oh Lord, please.

Alucard was never one to pray over his food before, but now he was beginning to consider asking for some divine intervention. The texture of this stuff alone was enough to make him feel sick, so he didn’t want to imagine how it’d taste. For a moment, he gaped wordlessly at it before clearing his throat. “And what might this be?”

“Jewel worms! They’re considered a delicacy amongst the elven folk in the Outerworld. I only hope I prepared them correctly.”

“I see,” he responded, hoping that his dread didn’t seep too far into his tone. “And what are they supposed to taste like?”

To Alucard’s dismay, she shrugged. “Unfortunately, I would not know. I only followed the recipe once Itzhak brought me the ingredients.”

The maggots themselves sat upon a pile of a thick, gray mush freckled with bits of muted colors. Furthermore, the mush rested in a puddle of runny sauce that resembled muddy water.

As if reading his mind, Mistress explained, “those are mashed potatoes.”

He squinted his eyes to peer closer at it. “What are these speckled bits inside of it?”

“Maybe if you try it instead of asking me, you’d soon find out,” she answered with a wink.

He knew she was only teasing, but as vile as the food looked, her words seemed more like a threat. Even before tasting it, Alucard knew that this dish would be the worst thing he’s ever eaten, and yet, he still wanted to try it. While the glee that twinkled in Mistress Death’s eyes wasn’t enough to convince him that what she made was of any good, it was enough for him to know that she genuinely wished to present him with something she thought would make him happy. It was more than he could’ve asked for, and he couldn’t possibly reject her kindness, no matter how wretched her food was. After steeling himself with a deep breath, he gathered a piece of everything onto his fork and ate.

xXx

“You killed him.”

Mistress clicked her tongue. “Hush! I did not kill him,” she hissed, making Itzhak squirm underneath her murderous glare. The seconds ticked by, and her deadly stillness paired with a chilling silence conveyed a level of anger and threat of violence that was enough to wrench a deep, apologetic bow from his body.

“I was careless with my speech,” he quavered, then added in his alien tongue, “Forgive me, my Mistress!”

At his words, Mistress sighed in approval, stepping away from him. “I can hardly fault you, Itzhak —” she placed her hands on either side of Alucard’s head and lifted it from the table “— he does look quite…dead.”

A mess of food dirtied his face, and some jewel worms even managed to tangle themselves in the strands of his golden hair. With a huff, Mistress lazily waved her hand, magically removing the mess from his face and hair. Next, she effortlessly lifted him into her arms bridal style and turned to Itzhak. A pang of sympathy hit him as he awaited instructions from Mistress. Though her happiness earlier was not a façade, it was draining for her to be around the dhampir. The slight tremor of her arms was evidence of how tired she was becoming, and her once bright eyes had faded to a dying glow.

It’s almost as if she’s making herself sick…but why, my Mistress?

“Take him to his chambers. I don’t know when he’ll awaken, but it shouldn’t be that long. My cooking can’t be that bad,” she said bitterly, the realization of her failure beginning to sully her pride.

Once Alucard was carefully placed in his arms, he started to make his way towards the exit. The clinking of dishes led him to believe that Mistress Death was attempting to prepare another course, but when he turned around to acknowledge another command, he was surprised to see a teapot in her hand.

Unable to suppress his curiosity any longer, Itzhak remarked, “I do not wish to see you this way, my Mistress. Why do you endure for the Tepes boy?”

“You should have intimate knowledge as to why I endure this pain for Adrian — I wish to make him happy. It wasn’t too long ago in your life that you’ve also endured for someone you claimed to love,” she ended with a sneer.

Empathy, Mistress Death thought, do I want Itzhak’s just for the sake of being understood, or do I not want to be seen as a fool?

He grunted in remembrance and countered, “Devotion led to my downfall. I am what I am today because I desired to endure for the sake of another.”

She laughed, the pitch of her voice rising in bewilderment. “Is that what this is about, you believe Adrian would betray me?”

Her eyes flashed dangerously when she faced him fully. “I think you’ve forgotten what I am,” she warned, an inhuman growl crisping the edge of her words. A mysterious light breeze began to push against the fire of the candles above.

Despite this, he courageously pressed on. “I have not forgotten, nor do I believe that the dhampir will betray you.”

Mistress snorted and turned her attention to the teapot in front of her. “Then why waste my time with such musings?”

“Because I know you are hurting! Your body shakes with weariness, my Mistress, and your eyes cloud with blood!”

She was rendered silent and lowered her head. The candle flames also started shivering more violently.

“I also wonder…” He glanced down at Alucard’s handsome face then back to her, “…if your desire to make him happy only stems from your guilt?”

Mistress Death’s head whipped towards Itzhak with as much swiftness as the instantaneous snuffing of the candlelight by the mysterious wind. Her eyes were wild and glassy with tears, and her teeth were bared but non-threatening; she looked deranged.

Cry, cry, cry, she urged herself. But, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Instead, she spoke with a cracking voice, “You never lost what I did…you cannot see what I do. I hurt in a way that you do not understand, and because of that, I…I am...”

Alone.

In her distress, she wished that Alucard would awaken because she wanted to talk with someone who understood. Furthermore, at this moment, when her stubbornness and pride were weak, she desired the strength to pour everything in her heart out to him. She realized that this must be the pain of loneliness, and her body started to ache from it.

Is this the real reason why I stay? Because I’m as lonely as Adrian?

Mistress turned her back on Itzhak as she attempted to control her labored breathing. With a quiet but even voice, she said, “Take Adrian to his chambers, then complete the other task which I’ve commanded you.”

He sighed and nodded. “As you wish, Mistress.”

When he left, she tried to bury her feelings once again as she clutched the teapot tightly to her chest. The only thing that kept her from shattering it in her grip was that it once belonged to Lisa.

Alucard’s eyes opened slowly. His mind was hazy, so he kept still and stared above at the wispy, white curtains of his canopy bed, waiting to remember what had happened to him.

Itzhak. Surprise. Mistress. Food — ah, that’s right. I must’ve blacked out after I ate her food.

He shivered at the memory and became nauseated by the lingering taste in his mouth. As he stood and made his way to the door, it didn’t take him long to put two and two together. He knew that either Mistress Death or Itzhak carried him back to bed, and when he opened the door, he was greeted by the latter.

“You are awake,” Itzhak commented in monotone.

“Yes, how long was I unconscious?”

The creature raised a bony finger to his chin and droned. “About an hour from the last time you were awake.”

Alucard’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”

“While I carried you up the stairs, you awoke suddenly and vomited, then passed out again.”

He cringed at that. “My apologies, I didn’t mean to cause you such trouble.”

“I have dealt with worse.”

With Itzhak in close step behind him, Alucard made his way to the bathroom.

He glanced behind himself and rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to follow me.”

“I don’t want to, but Mistress has commanded me to keep watch over you, in case you pass out again.”

“How thoughtful of her,” he mumbled.

Once he made it to the bathroom, he quickly shut the door behind him before Itzhak had a chance to step inside; But, almost jumped out of his skin when he turned around to see him standing in the middle of the room.

He growled, “Does she intend for you to babysit me while I piss as well?”

Itzhak scratched his head. “She didn’t specify—”

“Get out.”

xXx

This time, the kitchen was colder and darker when Alucard stepped into it. The candles were gone, so the only light that illuminated the space was the moonlight that poured in from the windows. Mistress sat at the table stock-still with her hands surrounding a steaming cup of tea, and her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping. Alucard hummed in thought and sat next to her, spotting the cup of tea that was waiting for him. Mistress didn’t notice when he sat down, nor when Itzhak materialized into the kitchen, and it caused the dhampir to worry. Something was amiss with her, and he didn’t like it.

He cupped her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Mistress?”

When she opened her eyes, they were pitch black, and after she blinked, they returned to normal. “Adrian, it’s nice to see that you’re awake. Are you feeling any better?”

“Yes, after brushing the taste from my mouth I do, thank you. Are you alright?”

She merely nodded.

“What were you doing?”

She stirred the tea in her cup distractedly. “Just thinking.”

“Of?”

“Death,” she replied matter-of-factly before taking a sip.

He removed his hand from her shoulder and grimaced. “How very fitting,” he said dryly.

After a few moments, she gestured to his teacup. “I found these neglected at the back of your cabinet.”

Alucard huffed a laugh as he traced the golden rim of the floral teacup with his finger. “I was never much of a tea drinker. I only ever drink it when visiting with witches in Arges — my mother, on the other hand, was a different story.”

At this, her voice grew lively. “Oh, I know. Day and night, Lisa would drink it. She was practically addicted.”

“Indeed, she was,” he laughed.

Fondness sparkled in Mistress’s eyes as she traced the designs on the saucer. “This set was a gift from me for one of Lisa’s wedding anniversaries. We used to drink tea all the time together in the castle garden.”

“Really?”

Alucard angled his body slightly closer to her as if he’d hang on better to every word she said this way. His heart warmed at the mention of another speaking so tenderly about his mother. And, he hoped that Mistress would continue speaking of her recollections, for both of their sakes.

“Your mother was always polite enough to drink the tea I prepared. No matter how sweet or how bitter it ended up, she at least took a sip. However, I did get better overtime…with her help of course.”

The pleasant smile she flashed him was contagious.

“I took the liberty of having Itzhak retrieve your mother’s favorite tea flavor from the Outerworld — It’s called Rose of Sharon. I prepared it just as she would’ve liked it. Try some.”

The confidence she had in the drink was assuring, so Alucard did not hesitate to bring the cup to his lips. He was delighted by its floral aroma, which enhanced the sweet and fresh taste. Drinking the tea felt somewhat nostalgic since it reminded him of the perfume his mother used to wear. Oddly, the times he used to spend in the garden with his father, studying botany, also flooded his memory.

“Mmm,” he moaned softly after his first sip, licking his lips as he set the cup on the saucer. “That was very good. You’re quite masterful at tea-making, Mistress,” he praised.

She blinked surprisingly at him. “You mean it?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t I?”

“Pfft. Well, after considering your last little —” her eyes squinted suspiciously “— stunt, I took you as someone who enjoyed savoring the moment before crushing one’s misplaced optimism.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “Are you seriously that offended?”

She gave him a side look and drank from her cup.

His eyes narrowed. “Come now, don’t act so childish. While I appreciate your efforts, I won’t deny that what you served me was more akin to poison than anything else.”

“Poison?” she drawled. “Ha! Funny. Maybe the fault lies not in my food but your weak stomach.”

“That’s rich, coming from someone who probably hasn’t even tasted food before. If the state of my kitchen was any indication of the quality of your meal, then it would’ve been wiser for me to pass.”

The tea set jumped with a clank when Mistress slammed her cup on the table. Surprisingly, nothing broke. “Hmph! Be that as it may, there is no better judge in this room than dear Itzhak. He’ll eat practically anything.” As if on cue, he appeared at the far end of the table where Mistress’s abomination still lay.

Alucard arched a brow. “If he’ll eat anything then his judgment would hardly be fair—”

“Nonsense.”

She smiled sweetly at Itzhak. “Go on, take a bite. Tell me how it is.”

He lifted the plate to the mouth that was forming on his face. It opened unnaturally wide to receive everything in one bite. The taste didn’t seem like much of a big deal once he closed his mouth to chew, but after a few moments, he started to retch and cough. When a thick, stringy piece of chicken fat flew out the corner of his mouth, he slurped it back inside, gagging as he did so. Mistress Death’s smile fell more and more with every wet burp and heave Itzhak emitted until her face eventually settled into an angry pout. On the other hand, Alucard was leaning back with his arms crossed, smirking smugly. After struggling to swallow, a shudder ran from the top of Itzhak’s head to the bottom of his feet.

Once his face returned to normal, he gurgled, “It — it’s…good, Mis—”

“Oh, shut up.”

Alucard chuckled, “Well, I think that settles things.” He pushed away from the table and walked towards the door.

Mistress looked at him quizzically. “Where are you going?”

Before leaving the kitchen, he switched on the lights and answered, “Off to retrieve some things. Hopefully, your pride isn’t so wounded that you plan on sitting there, sulking all night.”

Mistress stared at the cutting board, knife in hand. “You must be joking.”

“I most certainly am not,” Alucard replied, setting freshly washed vegetables in front of them. He dried his hands off on a towel and moved beside her.

“You mentioned earlier about possibly cooking for me again, correct? If your offer still stands, then I expect you to do things better the next time. Now, pay attention.”

Mistress raised a brow but couldn’t help to smile. She knew that Alucard wasn’t doing this to belittle her or show off. He was as much of a teacher as his parents, and sharing knowledge seems to be a quality he has similar to his mother. Plus, she had a feeling that he wanted to spend time with her as well, and she found that endearing.

Alucard held up a potato and rotated it to examine. “Potato skin is more nutritious than the potatoes themselves, and I washed them, so there is no need to remove them for this dish.”

Next, he set it on his cutting board and grabbed a knife, explaining, “Hold it crosswise and make sure to maintain it so that it doesn’t roll away while you cut. We’ll need to slice the potatoes like so, making sure each piece is even.”

He demonstrated until the entire potato was sliced. “Now, you try.”

Mistress nodded. “Alright.”

Halfway through cutting a potato, Alucard stopped her, patiently saying, “Your slices are uneven and too thick. Look at mine again, you see? They need to be uniform so that they all cook evenly.”

She tried again, and when he voiced his approval, they cut the rest together.

“You know a lot about cooking, it seems.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to learn here on my own. Some dishes I prepare are ones my mother used to make, and ones that I remember from places the castle traveled to. However, most are a result of experimentation or taken from books.”

She looked up in thought. “Hmm, now that I think about it, I do remember seeing an entire section of Dracula’s library containing nothing but cookbooks. Funny, since he rarely ever cooked.”

“He liked to collect knowledge,” Alucard said with a shrug.

She snorted. “Please, Adrian, call it what it was.”

“What?”

“Hoarding.”

The laughter he barked caused her eyes to crinkle at the corners.

“You must’ve teased my father a lot.”

“Heh heh, yes, more than you know.”

He cleared his throat. “Add these potatoes to the bowl. I already have minced garlic on hand, so let’s chop the spinach and halve these cherry tomatoes.”

She did as instructed and followed along with his guidance. Afterward, they moved everything over to the stove where he had raw chicken breasts waiting.

“Luckily, I had extra chicken stored, so there’s just enough for all three of us.”

From where Itzhak sat at the table, his head perked up. “Three?”

Alucard nodded. “It would be rude of me not to include you, Itzhak.”

The creature droned in response and cocked his head to the side as he watched him teach Mistress how to cook chicken properly. He noticed how her shoulders would sink then quickly raise back up whenever the dhampir looked away then back to her. However, her voice was still full of as much mirth she could express despite her weariness, and she was enjoying his company immensely. However, being around Alucard was a double-edged sword for Mistress, and Itzhak was concerned for the day putting on a brave face would become too arduous a task for her.

He was brought out of these thoughts when a savory aroma triggered his mouth to form, just so it could water.

“You never add more than what the recipe calls for. One cup of heavy cream might not look like enough for this, but it is,” Alucard informed.

“I see. Maybe that’s why my jewel worms came out the way they did.”

“I thought you said you followed the recipe?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Mmm, I may have…added a few things here and there. Don’t look at me like that.”

After combining the other ingredients, they waited for everything to simmer. In the meantime, Mistress set the table while Alucard left to grab some wine. When he returned, it was time to serve the food.

Silverware clinked against the porcelain plates as the trio ate in comforting silence. Given Itzhak’s large hands, he looked like a giant eating with the utensils of a dwarf. Even still, he didn’t let that stop him from enjoying his meal…maybe a little too much.

Mistress huffed exasperatedly. “For the love of — Itzhak, please, you do not have to moan like that after every bite!” She cursed in her alien language then added, “Honestly, are you eating or making love?”

Alucard chuckled, and Itzhak even released a few sounds akin to a laugh.

“It should be a compliment to you, Mistress. He’s only enjoying what you’ve made.”

“What we’ve made. And, you’re right, it is, so thank you, Itzhak. But, don’t be so dramatic about it next time,” she said with mock irritation but cracked a smile at him to signal that she was only teasing.

Light conversation was spoken between the three of them as they finished eating, and when Mistress and Itzhak exchanged a few words to one another in their language, Alucard drank from his wineglass.

As he did so, little Trevor and little Sypha had caught his eye from across the kitchen, and he could almost picture a smile on their faces. The wine tasted much sweeter that night.

A large bubble floated into the air, distorting the reflection of Mistress and Alucard as they stood side by side, washing dishes.

“This was my first time sharing a meal with someone,” she confessed, dunking a plate into the warm water.

“Really? I’m surprised given how much time you’ve spent with my parents.”

“I only ever drank tea with Lisa, and occasionally, wine with Dracula. But, I’ve never shared a meal with them…you’re my first.”

Alucard almost dropped a plate. A light blush stained his cheeks at her choice of words, given how innocently she said them.

“Right —” he hid his face with his hair “— well, did you enjoy it, then?”

He heard her soft laugh and froze when he felt her nails tickle the side of his face as she brushed his hair behind his ear. The motion compelled him to look at her, and despite her actions, he saw neither amusement nor teasing in her eyes, only pure adoration.

“Very,” she answered.

When they finished, Mistress Death’s attire and hair transformed back to the way they originally looked. She stood in the middle of the kitchen with Itzhak by her side.

“There are things I must attend to.”

Alucard looked to the floor. “I understand.”

“Now now, pick your head up. There's no need to look so downhearted and blue.”

Like a nervous boy, he spoke with a quiet voice. “If...if it isn’t too much to ask, may I see you again?” He kept his head bowed, not wanting to glance up for risk of seeing any rejection in her expression.

She lifted his strong chin with her knuckle. Intense, pale eyes were level to his, reflecting his eyes and hair like specks of gold. Her trademarked stillness did not chill nor intimidate Alucard this time. To him, it seemed fragile, as if she’d dart away with any small movement on his behalf, so he kept still too and held his breath as if it’d blow her away if he released it. The longer he studied her face, the more her weariness revealed itself to him. A sadness slowly seeped to the surface of her eyes, then ebbed away and flowed back. It was a push and pull of vulnerability that seemed like she was trying to reveal something to him, and yet, would not — could not?

He itched to know what she was trying to say.

Mistakenly, his lips parted to speak, and he cursed inwardly as she hastily pulled away. But it wasn’t before he caught the pain that had briefly flashed through her eyes. She pulled her hood over her head, concealing most of her face in shadow.

His brow furrowed in concern. “Mistress? What is—”

“I enjoyed my stay very much so I’ll return to you as soon as I can. It won’t be as long of a wait as last time.”

He frowned. One thing Alucard hated was tiptoeing around, but he acquiesced, simply because he didn’t want her to shut him out completely.

She uttered a word to him in her language that sounded lyrical, then explained, “That is my word of promise.”

When he tried repeating it back to her, she giggled at his slight butchering. “You were close.”

Black smoke rose from the ground where Mistress and Itzhak stood and slowly rotated up their forms.

“Until then, Adrian.”

“Until then, Mistress.”

Itzhak waved, and Alucard raised his hand in farewell, seeing the two of them off with a genuine smile.

[universallywriting]

Sword and Shield

Connie didn't understand how gems summoned their weapons. Pearl had explained something very metaphorical about petals. Garnet had said something about being one with the universe. Amethyst had rambled on about going with the flow. Steven had fumbled over words about very intense feelings.

As Stevonnie, she had felt it. Not quite explainable as anything more than a need to protect the ones she loved, the place she called home, and a tiny touch of responsibility and obligation. Steven said it was different when it was him rather than them, but he couldn't quite explain how. She was frustrated with that. She liked to put words and explanation to things.

And then, one day, a quartz was being terrible to Steven.  Not in a mean way, not in a way that she could say anything or fight them. That wouldn't be polite, and the gem was technically being polite. She hated being polite. She hated biting her tongue as the quartz demanded this and that, insisted on a permanent spot in Doctor Steven's office. She couldn't do nothing.

It lashed out of her, her sword in the quartz's face. "Maybe you should be more careful with your gem!"  she cried, and everything in the room was confusingly, breathlessly still.

Because her sword was tucked away in its scabbard on Steven's couch. Her sword was not supposed to be shining pink and white energy, sparkling as it came into existence. Her sword was a tangible thing of hard light and metal. It didn't feel perfectly like an extension of her own arm, her body and soul stretched beyond the tips of her fingers. But that was the sword in her hand, and that was the sword in Jasper H245's face.

She dropped the sword and stumbled away from Steven in shock. The second their connection broke, the sword switched into a shield, Steven snagging it from the air with pure awe. He vanished it. Summoned it. Once more. His eyes slowly met hers. "I can't summon a sword."

His hand reached for hers, fingers timidly twining together. It was so similar to pulling a shield. A need to protect the ones she loved, the place she called home, but this was a tiny touch of... Not refusal. It was active. Rebellion. Not just "No, thank you", but "This will not continue".  And there was a sword, her modus operandi incarnate.

Steven stared for a moment, then looked at his free arm, where his shield appeared. And she almost felt him do it, a vague sensation buzzing at her navel. There they were, sword and shield from the same gem, both completely perplexed. Steven cleared his throat, but it still came out cracked, "Pearl, could Mom-?"

"No," she cut him off eyes wide. "She absolutely could not."

---------

"Let's think of a gem like one of your simple human computers," Peridot began cheerfully.

Connie frowned at that, exchanging a confused look with Steven. “Aren’t gems just really powerful computers?”

She scoffed and shook her head. “Are humans just especially intelligent animals?”

“Uh, yes?”

Peridot stared for a moment, then continued as if Connie hadn’t spoken. “A Diamond, even compared to other gems, is an extremely powerful and expansive data storage tool. However, Pink Diamond wiped all that data clean from her gem. All those instructions on how to run an empire and make more gems gone in an instant, leaving plenty of room for whatever weird human instincts Steven has.”

Steven raised his eyebrow as he plucked the sensor off his gem. Peridot seemed down with her experiment and he didn’t like the tingling “Okay. So what’s that got to do with Connie pulling a sword from my belly?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. Pink Diamond wiped as much as she could, but she couldn’t get everything. You’ve had a few weird dreams, you said? Memories? Just some remnants she missed when she was scraping herself clean.”

Peridot grinned maniacally as she paced, throwing up her arms in her excitement. “I have no idea how she did it, but she… she shared her gem. Like adding a second user to a computer! So there’s her account, which is wiped clean, and your account, which is full of you!”

Connie grasped it first, gasping a little as she figured it out. “I have an account on Steven’s gem?”

“Yes!” she cried, gesturing to her screen as if anyone could understand the data displayed there. “I’ve never seen anything like it! I’ve never seen a gem fuse with a human either. Somehow, Steven’s Diamond has made a slot for you to access, just like his fleshy brain does. As long as you’re in proximity, you have access to his gem.” 

She paused. “Assuming he doesn’t pull access. There seems to be some sort of ranking to users I can’t nail down, but Steven is definitely in charge.”

Connie looked at Steven and found him blushing faintly. His fingers were tracing around his gem, and she could feel something on her own navel - not quite a touch, but the memory of one.  “It’s sort of like we’re Stevonnie all the time, even when we’re not fused. It’s kinda, um…” His eyes flicked to her. “Wh-what do you think? Is it weird?”

“Of course it’s not weird! Steven, you trust me enough to let me share your gem. You’re not even asking to remove me or…” She wiped at her eyes as emotions bubbled up. He hadn’t done it on purpose, so it couldn’t have meant too much, but he hadn’t asked to remove her and that meant something. “Oh, geez, sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He flung his arms around her, squeezing her tight. “You’re my best friend. I trust you more than anyone in the world.”

They clung to each other with happy giggles as they both realized just how happy the other was. It almost felt like fusion again, a faint feeling of knowing how the other person was feeling and almost feeling it themselves. 

And then they were rudely interrupted by Peridot’s excited squeal of, “Which one of you is floating?”

Their faces wore identical blushes as they pulled back slightly, finding themselves hovering a few feet above the ground. At the realization that Steven wasn’t holding Connie up, the giddiness only grew, and they raised a few feet higher while Peridot shrieked questions from below. 

[cateringisalie]

9 years later and we have at last got a new Eva film and the end of the Rebuild project.

Much was made at the start of Rebuild of the desire to introduce Eva to a new audience. 1.0 more or less leant into its original goal and restaged episodes 1 to 6 of the TV series with a bigger budget, CGI, some more blunt and early reveals and a few weird alterations for the existing fan base. The Angel numbering was off; everyone knows Lilith is stuck in the basement, Seele just default to their monoliths. Kaworu is actively introduced at the tail-end rather than alluded to in the opening titles. As an intro, its fine (though most would agree the equivalent stage of the TV series isn’t really a struggle to cope with either), though a few stylistic and environmental changes lead many to conclude this was a direct sequel to End of Evangelion. 2.0 seemed content to build off of the intro but steer away from the relevant section of episodes – roughly 8 to 17. Recognisable moments like the falling Angel, the corrupted Unit 03 and the ribbon angel and Unit 01’s impossible reactivation share the screen with altered relationship dynamics. Now we get Mari one of the few wholly new characters who gets to open the second film in a wildly dramatic fashion. The key of Nebuchadnezzar (which does at least re-enter proceedings in the final film, but I am even shakier on what it is or used for – even fandom seem to have struggle to explain this as anything other than a blunt drop-in replacement for the Adam embryo in the TV series). And come the end its time for Third Impact already, Shinji altering the world around him to rescue Rei from the depths of an Angel. Kaworu uses an unfamiliar spear to incapacitate Shinji and the preview hints at a story further from the rails than ever. 3.0 is as promised more or less completely divorced from anything Eva had done before. Just not the off-the rails version 2.0 advertised. Some will be quick to note that none of the Rebuild previews have entirely accurately advertised their subsequent instalment; 1.0’s features at least one key scene that never happened (Mistao slapping Ristuko in a seeming allusion to the Sea of Dirac Angel) while even the sequences of animation that did make it look nothing alike. Which is fair, but even then 2.0’s bears absolutely no resemblance to 3.0 and even 3.0’s very strange preview doesn’t really jibe with 3.0+1.0 ultimately. 3.0 is post-post-apocalypse and with a whole 14 years just evaporated between films. There’s a distinct last third of Nadia feel to it. About the only part similar to a former incarnation is Kaworu and Shinji’s relationship which while not even roughly mapping to episode 24 serves the same function; to make Shinji distraught before the climax of this story. But 3.0 is also the point where that initial premise of the series slams headlong into the drift from familiar territory. Where the film is a quantum leap away from the mystery terms and slow reveals. The oddities and confusions pile up given the glimpsed state of the world, the strange gridded moon, the sea of Eva corpses, the strange state of Lilith in the depths of Nerv. An awful lot happened while Shinji was (for reasons no one has explained or seems to care about except me) IN SPACE and the film only ever alludes to the sequence of events occurring between these two films in the broadest of strokes. Which if done a certain way can be compelling though I did not find it to be the case here in the slightest. It’s a huge struggle to build up even a vague idea of what went down and that’s with heavy deferral back to the TV series again. If you’re new, none of this means much of anything. Even mixed media doesn’t help. The reveal there was a limited run manga of events prior to 3.0 had a potential for answers, but upon reading a synopsis... Nope. Helps not even a tiny amount. Also this mixed media attitude is never to be encouraged. So, I didn’t like film 3 much at all. Film 4 does little to not be based on where it left off. Which is a small mercy that it doesn’t effectively toss everything out again and skip further ahead in time. And 3.0+1.0 does at least make use of some of what 2.0 revealed and setup in the spirit of trying to get this into something cohesive. It fails, but it tried. Maybe the points it touches on were the intended direction of the films. Maybe Anno changed his mind on this one. It’s not like Rebuild’s failure to cohere should be a surprise – the title of the film is simply confusing in sequence. Titled neither 4.0 nor 4.44, instead we have the pretty inexplicable 3.0+1.0 which is just annoying to type. Even thematically this doesn’t feel right given its more like 2.0 mushed into 3.0 but I suppose that’s technically film 5 so... Unless, 1.0 here is supposed to mean the original TV series or EoE, which... End of Evangelion figures unexpectedly largely in the film. Could be that its meant to infer some collection of the Eva cast (the original pilots + Mari? The Ikari family + Mari? The pilots from 1.0 (Shinji and Rei) plus the pilots from 3.0 (Asuka and Mari)?). The other part of course, is that the three prior films had titles in the form of [Thing](Not)]Thing]. 3.0+1.0 decides to dispense with this entirely and instead is titled “Thrice Upon a Time”. Nothing like confusing matters (and instead media library ordering) by not only giving the film a title that puts it before the 3rd film (since prior to this cinema releases are .0 and the home media (excepting the first release of 1.0) are triple digits of their instalment number) but also has another reference to three within it. It might be some kind of holy trinity allusion, some play on Third Impact, or an acknowledgement that this is theoretically the third version of events surrounding the end of the world (if you take TV series as 1, EoE as 2, and Rebuild as 3). Also potentially a literary reference about cyclical time and messages from the future which is all well and good and fits into a whole other essay about how Rebuild and FFVII Remake are operating on the same basis and making many of the same mistakes by both trying to be fan-service for the new fans and draw in new ones and do the big fan-moments similarly but diverge wildly off in others. Good start! The final film starts with bombast as per 2 and 3 (and thus focused on Mari) though the setup and point of the action is possibly more confused and less explicable (which is saying something given 3.0 opened with retrieving Unit 01 from space. No, I will continue to complain about not getting this. Yes it was very exciting but why was Unit 01 in space? In a strange crucifix coffin. Anyone at all?) – and only vaguely connected to anything resembling the plot. At least 2.0 and 3.0 had some immediate and long term stakes with a cover for Kaji stealing something and bringing Shinji into the plot. This film opens with a scrounge for spare parts in a red Paris that the tertiary cast make no longer red while Mari fights off a massed horde of Evas while battleships are puppeteered from orbit. It’s all terrible cool and everything, but given at no point do we even begin to understand what is going on or what the stakes even are. Which is a problem with the latter half of the sequence. 2.0 might have started with an Eva vs Angel fight but while there was ambiguity over the situation it at least seemed to lead into the eventual plot. Here we’re getting Eva spare parts for later and a whole dose of new terminology the film has no interest in explaining. Which is par for the course for prior Eva incarnations but again, I feel there was more explanation setting the weirdness up. Here we are reduced to keywords that sound important. The film proper opens with our familiar trio of Eva pilots winding up at a village with their old classmates (which of course, to follow the proliferations of 3 all the way down and also match to Tokyo-3, is in fact, Village 3. The far future sequel to Resident Evil 8 presumably). Who are necessarily now 14 years older than them. Asuka is naked (in a sequence to contrast to 1.0 and 2.0) or in her underwear for far too much of this sequence (and just as creepy as 2.0 got with this) as Shinji struggles in the aftermath of Kaworu’s death, Ayanami (critically not the Rei of 2.0) learns about life (and visits a library with – I’m not kidding – a poster for Sugar Sugar Rune on display. I like to think not many in the audience caught this slightly odd reference). 30 minutes of the film are taken up with Rei being happy and contented with her life while Shinji slowly recovers and re-enters polite society (sulks, throws up at the sight of the DSS collar, is insulted and force-fed). There’s a good case for this section just being an unnecessary time filler, though you don’t need to fill time in a film that is 2 ½ hours. But if it was cut down, perhaps it would have the same strange feeling as 1.0 had where the aftermath of Shinji’s second Angel fight lead was mostly skipped and left that part of 1.0 feeling strangely hasty and actively (and badly) abridged. Maybe that’s just my familiarity with the source material again. There’s still an edge of weirdness in the air on the film hits the 45 minute mark; even prior to this gigantic sections of the land are missing, and some things just float around now (apparently because). Past this mark is where weirdness creeps in; the barriers keeping the village from suffering the fate of Paris – the structures a curious match to the Cocytus facility at the start of 2.0. There are headless Eva copies who roam the landscape. An indicator on Ayanami’s suit runs down. Shinji is advised to talk to his father before he loses the opportunity forever. This one made me laugh, and even Asuka comments that given who Shinji’s father is and what he’s done don’t really make this plausible (or sensible). Ayanami concludes her pastoral life and this stage of the film by transforming back to her original white plug-suit; her AT Field then dissipates and she bursts in a familiar spill of LCL. For such a previously central character, Rei or Ayanami or Lilith will have exceptionally little bearing on the remainder of the film. The plot now kicks in properly as Gendo decides enough is enough and he’s going to be doing some world ending. Our Eva pilots are ready but not the same; we have Asuka, Mari and Shinji. And standing orders for Shinji to be shot if he tries to pilot anything (but given we’re at the end of the world and basically the original plan fails to stop Nerv bringing about the end of the world, that people still try to shoot him is... a little weird and an almost pointless resolution of factors the quaternary cast brought up in 3.0). The entire rest of the film is even more impenetrable and confusing than Kaworu’s sweeping explanations of what happened between films 2 and 3. If 3.0 fumbled the ball on being newcomer friendly 3.0+1.0 actively doesn’t care. Not that familiarity with series helps since so much new terminology is thrown at the audience. The entire cast – literally the entire cast – are not only caught up on but also understand the varying levels of psychological, biological and religious nonsense that Eva has formerly wielded as something almost coherent. You, as audience member, are not privy to a fraction of this understanding and thus left to flail for the remainder of the film making what you can of the maddening breadcrumb trail of exclamations and partial explanations. Shinji is no help here and infuriatingly asks barely a single question about what is going on (thankfully he does prompt Gendo to explain a few things – presumably where even the staff had gotten lost on what was supposedly going on). For existing fans, you might get a sense of it by application of known quantities from the previous incarnations (I pity newcomers struggling to make sense of this). What the Lance of Cassius is a thing introduced abruptly into the series – and contrasted with the Lance of Longinus you can muddle through to get some idea of what was going on. 3.0+1.0 however, decides that even that grip on its story is too much and adds a bunch more unnamed spears. Some of them formed from Lilith. This is a thing of some import apparently, though ultimately is effectively buzzword name-checking. We know who Lilith is in context from both 1.0 and the TV series but how that relates to spear formation is beyond me. And then there’s the part where one of the flying ships (there were four made according to Seele’s plan. Seele, the former sinister puppet-masters, who died in film 3, and if the flying ships were their idea or this stated at all, I had totally forgotten it in the last 9 years (checking wikia seems to indicate no one else knew this either so I feel vindicated). Seele feel an artefact of the old Eva Anno has no time for – EoE had what equated to three groups vying for control of the process of human instrumentality. Seele are adhering to a prophecy of sorts, Gendo is trying to subvert that process for his own ends, and Misato is trying to stop it. In terms of economical story-telling, the distinction between Seele and Gendo’s goals in causing Third Impact are so slim as to be basically zero (few critical differences though), I suspect Seele were deemed unnecessary and shuffled out of proceedings hastily despite their continued name-checking at this late stage) is turned into another spear because if all the spears are used up, the end of the world can’t be averted. You will have to forgive me for failing to notice how and where most of these spears (save three) wound up or what most of that means or why or how or anything. But we have a budget to squander and why not channel the Gurren Lagann energy for action one last time? And there is some action, this presumably part of what a good section of the audience have waited for with baited breath, that thing the TV series so rapidly lost interest in; that EoE staged for narrative cruelty. Smashy giant robot action time! So we get billions of Eva enemies for Asuka and Mari to cut through without problem. They explode and fall away despite exhaustively overwhelming numbers. There is a palpable lack of threat here. A few hitches but nothing the pilots can’t cope with. It’s just empty fan-service, a boast about how much can be rendered into a single frame. We get Asuka, unable to stab critically important Unit 13 (looking distinctly Unit 01-like just with four arms), and then hooking into an odd leftover thread from 2.0. Her accident in the activation test of Unit 03 has left her with a part of herself now more correctly classified as an Angel. And like 2.0 for surprise value, her Eva has special Angel blood injectors to again overcharge her Eva (which seems to be a thing in the latter three films – turn the Eva safety off and go beserk. As if Unit 01 didn’t do that all on its own in the first and second film). And this too fails. But this too is just another moment of important and pretention. Where the audience is meant to gasp at Eva/Angel hybridisation (not that the dividing line between Angles and Evas is ever completely clear (not least Unit 03)), at Asuka revealing herself to be part Angel (as if Kaworu and Rei weren’t established examples). So her Eva bloated and animalistic is... just another moment. We saw this in 2.0 with Mari releasing her limiters. We saw it in 3.0 in almost the same way. The distinction isn’t meaningfully different to the last few times the Evas were let off the leash and became more brutal. And just like the prior times this escalation of Eva body horror, ferocity, blood and over-indulged violence doesn’t actually help the situation. Asuka fails in her task as the Unit 13 counter-attacks. She’s saved by getting pulled out of reality moments before her end. Of course this being narrative, this being Eva; Gendo, the architect of this situation, is three steps ahead. Misato’s flying ship is badly and perhaps critically damaged so Gendo can retrieve the limbless body of Unit 01 formerly powering the flying ship. Shooting Gendo doesn’t work thanks to the key of Nebuchadnezzar (which did... Uh. Something? Kaji noted it as the lost number kept as a spare in 2.0 which implied Angel or Eva or... No I don’t know nor can I make sense of what it’s done to Gendo. Wikia informs me that while it’s never seen on-screen past the one time, its case is in some shots of 3.0. How amazing) and he leaves. And thus, of course, Shinji must get in the f-ing robot once more. But we’re back to the confident, more certain Shinji who 2.0 birthed as we enter the last (but still very long) final stage of the film – and restage End of Evangelion. Curious of course; EoE by turns can feel like a legitimate replacement for the final two TV series episodes or a bleakly, darkly, disturbing and flippant retort to the low-budget metaphysic version of the TV apocalypse. EoE to some has been not so much the intended ending (though buying a complete set of the old Eva in Japan will always net you the 26 original TV episodes, the four amended episodes and EoE), but more a poisoned chalice for the people who wanted a less introspective version of the end of the world and the process of human instrumentality. Anno was free to do what he wanted and veer off the tracks here – he can’t get away from the end of the world – this is integral to Eva’s base concept. 2.0’s glimpse of Second and the starts of Third Impact depict a process completely unfamiliar from the TV series’s version (reading Wikia explains some of 2.0’s imagery but is still bewildering with reference to 3.0+1.0’s reveals). In Rebuild, the end of the world is staged in the space below the strange aftermath of Second Impact, in an anti-universe where humans cannot venture. And yet, we are still clearly revisiting End of Evangelion. Not exactly the same, but a lot of imagery (the symbols in the sky, the gigantic form of Lilith at multiple points, the crucifix explosions across Earth’s surface) – to say nothing of some actual sections of animation – are taken straight from the 1997 film. Those moments and images were haunting and disturbing (the more overtly sexualised imagery has been completely removed). Clearly no matter what was said at the time or in the interim, EoE is in fact how the ending must play out; this is, or has become, what happens externally and internally when these characters attempt to force a next stage of evolution. The End of Evangelion will always be the end. ...just not quite the same. Not least it is missing most of the infamous moments (Shinji in Asuka’s hospital room is notably completely absent). There’s no moment where Shinji strangles Asuka, Komm Susser Tod is missing entire (in favour of something similar sounding but in Japanese), the live-action sequences of the empty cinema or the world without Evas aren’t utilised (though some live action footage is included), Rei betraying Gendo and beginning Third Impact outside his control etc. It's actively absurd to type this, but Lilith – Lilith! – has less character here. Which is so astonishingly absurd given the only depiction of Lilith we get is effectively Rei/Rei was Lilith the entire time, but those introspective sequences hinting at something more involved with Rei or the points Lilith does talk directly to Shinji are gone too. This shouldn’t be a surprise – we are after all missing a Rei character at the climax. Mostly. 3.0+1.0 almost expects you to remember the last time you saw Eva end the world and contrast it to this new version. The EoE imagery, the footage of Lilith descending from the crucifix, the looming figure of Lilith rising as humanity ends. Even something like the sequence of the backsides of cels running backward is reused – this footage also cribbed from EoE and played out on a wall between two characters. The animation breaks down into scratchy storyboards and later degenerates from finished footage down to outlines, animatics, and storyboard. The end of the world is this time around is more heavily meta. Both EoE and the TV episodes “staged” the process of Instrumentality (or parts of it) for Shinji. It occurs in filming spaces and on sets, there’s lighting equipment and dolls as stand-ins. The strange artificiality of pulling back the curtain on the TV or film production, or else the effect of  setting the camera back further than you should for filming a theatrical experience. But even that’s a false layer given a true pull-back would be to people in front of computers or previously drawing key-frames. Here the staging is more blunt still. It begins with an Eva vs Eva fight between Gendo and Shinji in the anti-universe where their brains make sense of the impossible space with artificially staged areas of familiar locations. A fight in a city has a huge sheet as a backdrop and carboard buildings the Evas kick around. They fight in front of Nerv headquarters and in Misato’s kitchen. A blow knocks over a section of scenery and sprawls Shinji in the studio space surrounding the set. A crossroads of sort where Shinji will move on from Gendo to meet with Rei, Kaworu and Asuka. The major difference to EoE is that the end here is much more concerned with Gendo; we dive into his psyche and his past. His isolation and desire for it. This feels extremely confessional for Anno all things considered given Gendo was always previously kept at arm’s length. This feels revealing about the man behind it all, a reflection of the director. He has admitted during production that at his stage of life he is far closer to Gendo than Shinji – I think this is barely obfuscated here. The flashback is more about understanding Gendo and how Yui changed him than anything about Evas or the end of the world. Gendo’s motivation is revealed to be the same as always; this is how he gets to be with Yui again. Odd details catch as this past plays out. And is that Mari in his memories? Mari, who Fuyustuki calls Mary Iscariot upon meeting her and has prepared something for her. Which feels much more like religious buzz words; there’s an obvious implication coached in that selection of a name, but how it actually relates to the story or the circumstances is really unclear. Nor am I clear on what Fuyutsuki prepared. He explodes into LCL like last time too. The process is so close to EoE but the mood is lighter and the reasoning behind the cast a little different. Asuka is part of a clone series – same as Rei. Just without the physical signifiers that Kaworu and Rei exhibit and the prior short-hand for clones in this universe (as noted, their design is intended to invoke lab rats). Nice consistency there. The beach ending from EoE is re-done under a blue sky; Asuka is saved thanks to Shinji and Mari working in concert. Kaworu’s beach meeting with Shinji is restaged, the newer, confident Shinji discussing the circular system that delivers Kaworu into his place at the end of the world. So Eva has happened before, meta-wise or time-wise or dimensionally. Take it as you will, no interpretation is more valid than another. Only that Kaworu remembers them all. It’s happened before and it’s expected to happen again. But Shinji’s different now, so the end of the world is different. Now it’s time to move on; Kaworu is left with Kaji to tend the earth assured the cycle of Eva productions is at an end – both have been dead all this time. Anno’s attitude to his seeming forever association with this one franchise his and his desire to set it down and move on? EoE finished in space; 3.0+1.0 finishes beneath the Antarctic. The idea of Unit 01 living forever as a testament to humanity is no factor at all Shinji intending (and his parents possibly driving) the final riddance of the Evas from reality – none can be allowed to remain. But now, the film takes an odd turn, and as with EoE, there’s the coda. In EoE this was the beach scene. For Rebuild: The sun shines, the sky is blue. An adult Shinji sits in a train station and meets with Mari. She’s older too now; the pair share a kiss and run from the station hand in hand. So. Uh. Yeah. That happened. There’s Kaworu and Rei seemingly alive and well as adults. And Asuka of course. But Shinji winds up with Mari. Mari who knew everything the whole time and might somehow have been part of Gendo’s group at university and known Yui and no, we are not getting any insight into those peculiarities! (or more plausibly it could be Mari’s mother who looks near identical to Mari but... What are we meant to take from this, really?). Mari who met Shinji in a handful of brief moments and has never spent any actual time with him. Mari won the love-triangle! But this is not some simple alternate reality, a different better take world where the cast existed in something resembling our reality; Shinji still wears the exploding DSS collar given to him before rejoining the giant robot fray. Mari effortlessly removes it from his neck. The film ends with a live-action sequence – this is reportedly Anno’s hometown. The world without Evas; we passed the relevant date while 3.0+1.0 was stalled. Shinji made it to 2014, or more plausibly past it in a world without Second Impact. And he’s happy, well-adjusted, and... Not really recognisable as Shinji. Shinji now exists in the present, not the future as he had for so long in pop-culture. But he’s in a different 2021; a world without the pandemic. And that was Rebuild; a project intended as a new introduction to Evangelion that blatantly had its entire core conceit revised at least twice (the 4th film delayed because of Shin Godzilla and then a struggle to write at all) that increasingly and confusingly leant more and more on its famed initial incarnation even as it veered increasingly and erratically away from the familiar sequences. I liked 3.0+1.0 more than 3.0, but can’t help but still bemoan whatever 3.0 was going to be when 2.0 happened. The alternate other sequence. And despite it all, despite the allusions to a repetition of Eva and of this being the break in the chain, even those working on and involved with the film see even this as a definitive end. Even Anno’s not convinced that’s the last word. Eva will come back all over again; naturally – there’s money to be made here, and what’s yet another alternate take to add to the TV series, the manga, the games, the other manga, EoE, Rebuild and so on. Kaworu apparently is indeed doomed to revisit this forever alongside everyone else and also remember that for once he was gifted a true end. An impossible conclusion for modern pop-culture it feels.