#interesting characters with complicated things going on for them!

[purple-plum-petals]

Hello!! I see your requests for Homicipher are open and I got giddy :D (starving for more content) May I request fluff drabble for Mr Silviar? Maybe his s/o teaching him how to say "I love you" in human language? Thank you!

⊱ Those Three Words ⊰ || Mr. Silvair X Reader

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮   Character(s): Mr. Silvair (Homicipher/文字化化) Reader Type: Human (Gender-Neutral Pronouns) Warning(s): Spoilers for Homicipher (specifically Route End: Mr. Silver Hair 1), Canon-typical Mentions of Violence (and Horror-Elements), Cultural Barriers (Mr. Silvair Doesn’t Fully Comprehend Certain Emotions). Anything spoken in the other world’s language will be bolded. Genre: Drabble, Fluff, Slight Angst, Pre-Established Romantic Relationship (It’s Complicated, honestly). Word Count: ~3,280 Request: “Hello!! I see your requests for Homicipher are open and I got giddy :D (starving for more content) May I request fluff drabble for Mr Silviar? Maybe his s/o teaching him how to say "I love you" in human language? Thank you!” Author’s Note: Mr. Silvair!!! He’s genuinely so pretty, y’all – it’s not fair. 😔 I find his overall character to be quite fascinating, and a part of me is really hoping the game gets a DLC or something to further expand on each of the character’s lore (and more moments with the MC, of course). Like game, what do you mean that some of the monsters may have been humans while others probably never were?? I desperately need more food… I headcanon that Mr. Silvair was either 1. never human, or 2. has been in the other world for a very long time, resulting in the loss of his memory as a human which could be why he’s so interested in researching them/maintaining the MC’s humanity. 🤔 But that’s just a theory – a game theory! Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

→ If you enjoyed my work, please reblog it if you can! Exposure on Tumblr is based on reblogging content rather than liking it, so your support would be much appreciated!  ♡ ╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

Even after everything that had happened between you and this world’s resident human-enjoyer, you surprisingly still felt at ease with Mr. Silvair. That comfortability, though, made you think hard about your sanity. After all, it probably wasn’t normal to be comfortable around someone who enjoyed taking you apart and watching your body put itself back together over and over again. Yet, you did, and you didn’t mind your current arrangement as much as you probably would have in the past. 

Mr. Silvair’s home was destroyed in a fiery explosion (courtesy of himself), so you had offered to help him find a new one. You managed to locate a large room, one that he deemed satisfactory enough to call his base, and you had been staying with him indefinitely since then. As long as you had a comfy bed to lay in and someone else to keep you company, you were happy. 

Your other friends(?) frequently stopped by as well to say hello, the most common ones being Mr. Crawling and Mr. Chopped. While you were occasionally hit with a feeling of loneliness, it was hard to feel that way with so many friendly faces around. Well… maybe their faces weren’t that friendly, but they were kind and gentle with you, and that’s what truly mattered. 

You hear the sound of Mr. Silvair moving around in the room adjacent to the one you typically stayed in, and you wonder to yourself what his plans for today are. The tall, long-haired man spent most of his time engaged in research. You didn’t see him as frequently as one would expect despite the fact you two were practically roommates. All you could do was hope he wasn’t messing around with and subsequently angering any more terrifying, violent ghosts. You enjoyed your current home, and going out to look for another one wasn’t very high on your list of things to do. 

The Rubik’s Cube in your hand was still as scattered as ever, and it seemed like, no matter how long you spent trying to solve it, you were only able to successfully complete one side. Mr. Masque was kind enough to give it to you (he apparently had a whole stash of the things somewhere), and his gift was something you were immensely grateful for. Attempting to figure out the puzzle helped you pass the time wherever you were alone (and it most likely helped you keep your head on straight). 

You’re currently lying flat on your back atop the plush bed in the relatively empty living space, looking up at the gray concrete ceiling with a blank stare. Once you decide you’ve loafed around for long enough, you stand up slowly from the bed, placing the cube gently on the covers of the cot. You stretch your arms above your head, a strangled noise coming from your throat at the movement of your stiff muscles, and you begin to make your way to the other room where your… 

What even was Mr. Silvair to you? While yes, you were fond of him – hell, you’d go as far as to say you loved him – you knew he didn’t feel the same. You remember the moment he told you “I not understand like”, and that he didn’t want to save you from your condition, no… he found you entertaining to keep around, and that’s why he did what he did. 

It was complicated, you thought, trying to have a relationship with a being who didn’t grasp what the concept of love was. Deep down, though, you knew you wouldn’t change it for the world. He enjoyed your presence, and that was all you could ask for. 

You walk over to the metal door and knock, waiting for a response. After a moment, you hear Mr. Silvair’s voice echo, “Enter.”

The door opens with a slight creak as you twist the knob, peeking your head inside the somewhat grimy space. The room, still fairly new, didn’t have as much blood or gore as his old one did. There were fresh stains on the floor and wall, you noted, and you couldn’t help but wonder who or what they were from exactly. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, though, so you didn’t bother asking. 

You grin up at the taller man and give him a small wave, saying softly, “Hello. I not bother?”

He returns your smile, placing the scalpel in his hand on the stainless steel tray that held a variety of medical tools. It looked like he was in the process of cleaning the many, typically blood-stained, pieces of equipment. Mr. Silvair turns to face you and replies gently, “Hello. You not bother. Enter.”

Tilting his head to one side, his long, silver locks move when he does, cascading down his head and slipping off his shoulder at the movement. His smile drops slightly before he asks, “Feeling unwell? Injured? Need cure?”

“No, no cure.” You quickly say, not quite in the mood to be dissected or taken apart right now (honestly, though, you never really were, even if you did understand why it needed to be done). You pause by the door before finally shutting it behind you, the both of you now alone in the private and secluded space. 

Ugh – why was it so hard to say what was on your mind??

After taking a moment to build up your confidence, you tell Mr. Silvair while fidgeting with the rubber of the clear raincoat you wore, “I want see you. Communicate.”

He hums and smiles at your admission, walking over to you before placing a calloused hand on your face. Your eyes close on instinct, and your breathing shutters when he rubs his thumb across your cheek. A part of you wanted to be annoyed with him since he had to be aware of the effect he had on you, yet you didn’t want to run the risk of him removing his cool palm from your skin, so you kept your mouth shut. 

It had taken quite some time for Mr. Silvair to get to this point of physical affection with you (something he began doing more often after he saw how much you enjoyed getting head-pats from Mr. Crawling), so you didn’t want to ruin any progress you two had made in your complicated and unconventional relationship. 

“Okay,” Mr. Silvar starts, removing his hand from your face as he gestures to one of the two chairs in the room. He smiles down at you before saying, “Sit. We communicate.”

You do as you’re told without speaking another word, your hands folded in your lap after you sit down, watching Mr. Silvair take a seat on the chair across from you. You talk with him for quite some time, doing your best to update him on your current progress with the puzzle since that was pretty much the only thing you had going on in your life. While it wasn’t satisfying to speak in the other world’s language because it tended to miss most of the nuances of speech, it was the only way the two of you could communicate. 

Mr. Silvair seemed to pick up on your frustration, seeing you were growing annoyed at the lack of words in your arsenal – the term you were looking for wasn't coming to mind. In response, he tilts his head to the side and asks you, “You upset. Why?”

“Not right words.” You reply, brows furrowed when you look up at him, your gaze landing on the bloody bandages wrapped around his eyes. You turn your head to look down at the floor, the somewhat fresh pool of blood perfectly matching the color of the Rubik’s Cube. You point to the puddle and turn to ask Mr. Silvair, “What’s this called in your language? Can you tell me how to say this color?”

“Blood.” Mr. Silvair responds, not understanding what you wanted him to explain. 

“No, no.” You quickly reply, shaking your head. You continue to glance between him and the blood, enunciating your words even though he didn’t understand your language the same way you were able to understand his. You didn’t back down or give up, though, saying again, “The color – I want to know what color blood is.”

He pauses, one hand under his chin as he seemingly takes a moment to figure out what you are asking him. After a few beats, Mr. Silvair replies with a word you haven’t heard anyone speak before, “???”

You visibly brighten at the new word, and the expression on your face causes Mr. Silvair to let out a light chuckle before he crosses one of his legs over the other. You take a breath before telling him, “Okay. Thank you.” 

After another pause, you continue to speak, “So… One part object done, red part. Other parts hard – not finish.”

Mr. Silvair had been leaning forward in his chair, his elbow digging into his knee while his hand rested under his chin, holding his head up as he stared at you with an unwavering gaze. He always listened to you with rapt interest, and you would be lying if you said the constant attention didn’t make your heart stutter in your chest. However, he suddenly speaks, pointing to the pool of blood you had been gesturing toward moments before, “What you call that?”

“Huh?” You ask, pausing your story to look at him. Mr. Silvair doesn’t say anything else, though, giving you a moment to comprehend what he has asked you. You perk up when your brain finally registers what Mr. Silvair had said, replying to him happily, “Oh, that’s the color red. So, blood is typically red – blood red.” 

“R-ehd?” He echos, and the sound of his voice speaking a word that you were able to understand without having to flip through your mental dictionary had your breath hitching. It sounded so strange but so nice coming from his lips. 

“Yeah, red! Blood is red!” You say, sounding excited and oh-so happy. Mr. Silvair would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t find the look on your face and the tone of your voice endearing. Then, your expression shifts slightly as you lean forward in your chair, saying enthusiastically, “Oh my god – I just got an idea! Me teach you me language!”

“...You language?” Mr. Silvair asks after a moment, shifting in his seat slightly. 

“Yes! Me teach you!” You reply, gesturing to both him and you with your hands. Your mind remembers the way Mr. Silvair and Mr. Chopped helped you shortly after you first arrived, teaching you directions to walk, facial expressions, and more. They had helped you expand your knowledge of this world’s language, and they were probably responsible for your survival in so many of those early interactions. So, you smile at him as you say, “We same.”

He returns a smile, nodding his head and replying with a simple, “Okay.”

“Alright, so, let me think here…” You hum to yourself, leaning back in your chair and closing your eyes while you consider what you should start with. Body parts seemed to be the first thing that popped into your head, so that’s eventually what you decided to start with. Sitting up in the chair, you point toward your hand with the other, tapping a finger to your palm as you speak, “Okay, so, this is my hand – hand. Can you say hand?”

It was kind of cute, strangely enough, seeing Mr. Slivair take the time to repeat the word you spoke over and over in his mind, trying to match the movement of your mouth with his own. Your languages were quite different in sounds, syllables, and the like, so he was practicing what to say before actually speaking. After a few moments of contemplation, he replies, “...H-ah-nd.”

“Hey, that was pretty good! Not bad for your first try, Mr. Silvair, even if the pronunciation is a bit off.” You say with a wide smile, clapping your hands together as you applaud him on his efforts. He chuckles again, finding your way of teaching to be… sweet. 

Then, you speak again, once again grabbing his attention. You tap the pad of your finger under the skin of your eye, asking him, “Do you remember what this is called? I think I’ve told you before.”

Mr. Silvair is quicker in his response this time, having heard you ask him about his own eyes before as he smoothly says, “Eye.” 

“Yes! Good job!” You praise once more, giving him a thumbs up in response. Then, he stands up from his seat, walking over to you while his once-white lab coat flows behind him. You crane your head back to look up at him from where you were still sitting, a simple and stupid, “...Huh?” leaving your mouth. 

Mr. Silvair reaches a hand to your face, cupping your chin gently in his hand. You feel his thumb resting on your bottom lip, and he begins to move his finger back and forth along the slightly chapped flesh, tugging at it slightly. He tilts his head to the side, asking you seriously, “What this called?”

“Oh, uh…” You know your face is probably flushed beyond belief at this point if the heat cascading through your head is anything to go by, and your mind and heart are completely caught off-guard by his sudden touch and question. You avert your gaze to the side, swallowing harshly before you finally reply, “They’re my lips – they’re, umm… similar to mouth. Lips, mouth, same.”

“...Lips?” Mr. Silvair asks again for clarification, his voice having an almost husky tone to it that has a shiver travel down your spine. 

You nod in response, muttering a barely audible, “Yes…” 

Mr. Silvair hums at your response, a small smile gracing his lips. He leans down, face so close to yours, before he inquires with an almost teasing tone to his voice, “You want touch?”

“Y-Yes.” You answer at an almost embarrassingly fast speed. 

The man who you had grown so fond of chuckles at your enthusiasm before leaning forward, pressing his lips softly to yours while he holds your face between his palms. Kisses weren’t a common thing between the two of you, and they were really only something Mr. Silvair initiated when he felt like it. You could feel the intensity at which your heart was beasting due to his sudden affections, and there was a part of you that was worried it would burst out of your chest right then and there. 

Your eyes flutter shut and you tilt your head to the side, your hands coming up to rest atop his – his hands that were holding your cheeks so, so gently. It was almost sickening the way he was holding you like you could break at any moment. 

Then, almost as quickly as it began, the kiss ended before you even realized it did. Mr. Silvair’s forehead was now pressed against yours, and he doesn’t make any move to remove his hands from your face. Your lips were no longer touching, and yet he still lingered.  

Mr. Silvair didn’t play fair, you thought, yet you couldn’t help but wonder why he wanted to kiss you so suddenly, so randomly. You close your eyes and your brows furrow at the tightening in your throat, an aching sensation slowly spreading throughout your chest like a disease before you whisper, “...I love you.”

There’s a silence, a stretch of nothingness before Mr. Silvair suddenly asks you, his voice just as soft as yours had been, “Repeat?”

“...No,” Your response is nearly immediate, and you shake your head before repeating once more, “Nothing.”

“...I love you.” The sound of those three words leaving his lips nearly causes your mind to implode. It sounded so sweet, yet it also felt worse than any suffering you had experienced before. The searing and excruciating pain, the feeling of a blade digging itself into the flesh of your torso couldn’t compare to the deep-seated torment you felt right now.

Mr. Silvair hums, tilting his head to the side as his thumbs continue to caress your cheeks, “What mean?”

You knew there was no point, no reason to try and explain your feelings again, but you do. You still do, even though you know it’s pointless to try. You can’t bring yourself to look at him as you speak, finding the concrete floor more interesting, “Mean… mean me like you. Lot like.”

There’s a pause, a moment of contemplation before Mr. Silvair says, “...Not understand.”

“I know.” You reply, nodding your head once in response. 

“You know?” He asks you, sounding somewhat confused, a tone you very rarely heard from the man. Had he forgotten that moment that you couldn’t seem to forget, the memory that you continuously found replaying in your mind like a broken record? It wasn’t fair, you thought, that only you were forced to hold onto such a painful memory. 

“You communicate before.” You clarify, finally willing yourself to look at his face. Mr. Silvair’s expression was tight, his lips drawn into a flat line. 

You needed to get away, to just run from this moment in the hopes he would forget the whole exchange just as he apparently did the last one. You take your hands and grab his wrists, removing his palms from your face before you stand up from the chair. You refuse to look at him as you turn, heading to the door as you utter, “...I’m going to go for a walk, so I’ll be back later. Goodbye.”

Then, you feel something tug at the sleeve of your raincoat. It wasn’t strong, nothing that would actually stop you from moving, but your legs proceeded to hault at the small action. Mr. Silvair says, his tone not demanding in the slightest – if anything, it sounded like a plea as he speaks, “No exit.”

You take a deep breath and turn around to face him, asking in such a small voice that it even caught yourself off-guard, “...Why?”

“I want you here.” Mr. Silvair responds quickly, so quickly it seems to have taken both of you by surprise. The two of you stare at each other for a moment before he asks, finally releasing the material of your jacket from in between his fingers, “Stay… Will you stay?”

You once again find yourself wondering if Mr. Silvair was aware of the effect he had on you as a sigh leaves your mouth. You nod your head lightly and reply, “I will stay.”

“Good.” He says in response, a gentle smile on his face as he says for the second time, “I love you.”

You frown at him and shake your head, saying with a slight edge of frustration in your voice, “No speak. Not true.” 

“True… Believe true.” He says quickly, reaching out to once again place a hand against your cheek. You don’t move, don’t flinch away from his touch – you still relish the way he’s holding you like a fragile piece of glass. Mr. Silvair’s brows are furrowed ever so slightly as he mutters, “Confused.”

“You’re telling me… How do you think I feel?” You say with a huff, your hand holding into his as you find yourself nuzzling your nose into his palm. The painful feeling in your chest was still present, but it wasn’t nearly as excruciating as it had been now. You find it in yourself to smile, gazing up at him as you speak, “...but we’ll get through it together – we together. Right?”

“To-geh-ther…” He repeats, leaning down to press his forehead to yours once more as he says softly, “Yes.”

[sarahreesbrennan]

I think this is a lovely addition and I am so glad you feel that way. I hoped some people would! I knew not everybody would.

Under a cut to spare your dash, friends, some thoughts about villainy…

I don’t know that we differ in substance, though perhaps in style. I’d say that I agree with you… but it’s complicated.

Long Live Evil poses many questions about the nature of villainy, who is assigned villainy and who gets the sympathy and understanding. It’s about the experience of being assigned villainy, but also understanding the assignment.

Rae is absolutely going through something so awful. She is very understandably angry about it. Indeed, most of the main characters of Long Live Evil have been THROUGH it. That’s part of why they’re seen as villains - though this perception also exists on an axis of gender, class, race, sexuality, disability. These things affect how they’re perceived and how they’re treated and how they act, and there is almost no way to disentangle cause and effect.

‘Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.’ - Robert Anton Wilson

This world hurts people. And then it can be very harsh to hurt people. We’re blamed for our wounds.

I agree Rae is a more interesting protagonist to me. That’s why I picked her. But there are very, very popular protagonists in fiction I find absolutely dull as ditchwater. (Not saying I find Alice dull. I love Alice.) I’m still interested in why audiences like them, and as I would like to have many readers too, I think about why things are popular a lot. I learn rules… sometimes simply that I may break them.

You might think Rae’s plight would engender sympathy: and for some it does. For many it doesn’t. And I knew that would be the case. I’ve seen it happen in real life many times.

—Someone in my close circle of friends publicly made fun of me for my ‘terrible anger issues’ at a time I was literally too sick to walk and barely able to breathe. I know that person thinks she’s a good person who was good to me.

—this is a very common thing to happen to chronically ill people. Most of my mentees, especially my younger mentees, have been abandoned by many friends who would all confidently state that this is the patient’s fault for being a bad person.

—one woman I know had her ex accurately recount all her behaviour to his new girlfriend without adding the reason why she ceased intimacy, got irritable and didn’t help around the house.

Sick people are legitimately hard to be around sometimes, and they get blamed for being so because it’s easier to blame a person than a disease. Other people don’t want to be the villain, so they make you the villain.

And the making of a villain is an interesting thing to me.

Rae being sick and Rae being perceived as evil and embracing that perception are inextricable. As a society, we are not truly sympathetic to victims. I knew it would be this way, but I still found myself shocked by the way some readers responded to her - she’s so evil that bitch got Key killed, she’s not even evil enough so she’s something pathetic that can be dismissed, she’s cringe because she uses humour as a coping mechanism, everything is her fault, it’s disgusting how much this formerly emaciated by illness woman talks about her boobs. But then, did Katniss in the Hunger Games get as much sympathy for literally starving as Peeta did for having his feelings hurt? (Note: Peeta also had many legitimate problems and I really like both characters.) And then again, isn’t feeling any kind of way about a character a compliment?

This is one of the reasons Rae is a woman. Society is set up to dismiss women’s pain, and discourage empathy with them. (And yet at the same time, we can’t demand anybody likes any specific character, regardless of gender. We can only observe patterns.)

And listen, I am not equating being a gorgeous talented famous artist with being chronically ill, but there is a phenomenon my friend who’s a psychologist has observed, which is that audiences get tired of famous women after a certain number of years (seven at most) and begin to criticise their looks or say they’re annoying or problematic.

Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence, both relatively inoffensive women, just had to basically go away for a while, until audiences were ready to go ‘wait, is Anne Hathaway talented and beautiful?’ (Yes she has been the whole time.)

The only woman who I’ve seen not have to slink into oblivion for several years when the tide of public opinion turned is, actually, Taylor Swift - there’s a piece online called ‘Darling, Villain, Victor’ which covers this very well. I like Taylor’s songs because a lot of them are narratives. And it was interesting to me to see the way she engaged with the narrative - going ‘okay yes I eat men for breakfast but also they flee from me, I’m drowning in diamonds, I’m covered in snakes, I’m wearing the evil makeup but also the eyeliner is running down my face because I am HYSTERICAL’ - and people looked stupid for saying the thing she’d already said about herself, outsized. Someone who also does this is Dolly Parton. ‘Yes I am everything you say about me. Now what?’

I did find that inspiring. I did want to claim, for my vipers and myself, the beauty and freedom of that ‘Now what?’ Anger is how we survive. We will be blamed for anger and for survival. Okay. Now what?

Another inspiration is the Interview with the Vampire quote ‘evil is a point of view.’ Not one of the Time of Iron characters think of themselves as people who enjoy cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Sure, some glory in justified vengeance, but that’s okay, right…?

To be able to see yourself as the villain in someone else’s story is, in some ways, an act of radical empathy. It’s an early thing Key says that makes him fun to me - that he’s like oh yes, I am evil. He’s very clear-eyed about the fact that, say, many of the people at the glass blowers’ guild (relatively innocent pleasant individuals) were from their point of view flat out murdered by a homicidal maniac for no reason whatsoever. Still when he tells his story, Rae is sympathetic - and it is also the tale of an abused child and a pitilessly corrupt society.

Key isn’t human. And he’s not a sociopath. Key is a god. And actually, it’s considered morally acceptable for gods to raze cities or worlds for sinning, and even to kill their children. But if a god thought he was human and evil, then what? (Was Athena traumatised by her birth?)

Yet another inspiration for me is Congreve. ‘I love her with her faults. Nay, I love her for her faults.’ I did want the vipers to not just be misunderstood darlings but to commit crimes and have serious personality problems.

Does Rae deserve more sympathy than she gets? Sure. At the same time, I really wanted her to have hubris. I refer to Greek plays a lot - where the deus ex machina was invented, art designed for the audience to be rocked and purged by emotion - and it’s this classic failing, to be arrogant and think you can avoid destiny and get this outsize punishment for it. (And people haaate women to be arrogant, and I knew they would find that annoying about her.) Rae doesn’t want Key or Emer to be hurt, but they are both people of a lower class in her employ, whose lives she knows are only saved in the original narrative by another aristocratic woman - and she deliberately sets out to use them and that does put them in harm’s way. Emer is whipped. Key is whipped twice and killed. Rae is not corporally punished in the same way servants are. But then again, when death looms, what choice does she have? Is she the one ultimately responsible for hurting them? No. But does that mean she bears no responsibility at all, when she made a bargain with them? Do we get to hurt others just because we’re hurt? When is lashing out because of trauma okay, never or always? Well…

It’s tricky to discuss personality flaws, because some characters get more sympathy while others’ faults get magnified. I’ve seen Rae discussed as more privileged than Marius - Lord Marius Valerius, second-most powerful man in the kingdom, in possession of literal superpowers, and uh - very arrogant at times himself. (And I love Marius and he has many very legitimate problems!) They are both flawed people. Very few feel villainous to themselves. Very little of what the people we love do to others feels villainous to us. I will miss Octavian so much as an antagonist, because he was such a great one - never for a moment did he consider he was being anything but heroic, and I do think at bottom he was a very ordinary guy, with an absolutely normal capacity for empathy. Yet all that power and privilege and the empty assurance of others and fame ate him right up. He didn’t ever have to look through anyone else’s eyes, and see himself the villain.

But also, can you look at the abyss, and not be changed? Rae at the start of the story would not be capable of tossing a man off the battlements of a tower into a yawning ravine full of flame with a wild, mocking laugh. But she IS that person by the end - and some of us are with her! It’s a villain origin story, emphasis on origin.

So yes it’s wish fulfilment, and yes it’s about villainy, and about having different perceptions of villainy, and which sins and flaws are forgivable in which people... We all have different perceptions. I am posing the questions, but you may have a different answer than I - if either of us find any answers at all.

Still the questions are worth asking. I do believe that.

Truly, thank you for having sympathy with my viper queen.

I remember reading in one of your blog entries (years ago??) that in the new book you were writing, the main character's *sister* had cancer. Does that mean that Alice was originally the main character of Long Live Evil? Was she going to go into the book to save Rae, instead of Rae going in to save herself?

How extremely kind of you to remember!

No, that was actually a YA murder mystery that I wrote while ill, revised while recovering, and sent out into the world where it died on submission. (Which means we sent it out to about 12 editors and the editor either said no, or said yes and took it to acquisitions - a group of people at the publisher including sales and marketing - and acquisitions said no.)

One editor told me she really wanted and really tried to buy it. Another person who worked in publishing (and has since changed jobs, or I wouldn’t share this) said the response at her acquisitions was - if you like this writer, find the next her (implications about health and youth were made).

I was terrified my agent was going to ditch me too, but she said ‘We’ll sell that one day, for now let’s write the next thing.’

I remember another writer telling me she missed my work that wasn’t a tie-in, and I felt ashamed to tell her it wasn’t that I wasn’t writing other things - it was that I couldn’t publish them.

The tie-ins meanwhile were paying the bills (they still are tbh!) and I was and remain so grateful for them. But I also really loved writing them - especially my Sabrina tie-ins, you don’t forget the first, and it reminded me I want to write horror and poly one day - and how they got me to love and sympathise with so many fandoms.

I see the burnout of caregivers all around me, and I wanted to write the story of one. But maybe I also wanted to take a step back from cancer. I didn’t think I did, at the time. I had a whole lot of things I tried writing before Long Live Evil, and I think some of them were really good. One of my critique partners gave me a lipstick with the same name as someone in the murder mystery. There was a romance novel another critique partner said was her favourite thing I’d ever written. But none had someone with cancer at the heart of the story.

And even though Rae isn’t much like me, maybe I had to start there. You can’t make real magic using someone else’s liver. Maybe I had to wait to be brave enough to use my own liver.

I do get requests for advice on how to cope with rejection of your writing, and I always worried I didn’t have anything else to say, but I suppose my example says - if you can, (and I know it’s hard, you feel so terrible at writing and so useless) (and you love the work you’ve done so much and you don’t see a way forward to loving the next thing) (but still, if you possibly can) write the next thing.

Even if the first thing sells, you’ll want the next thing one day. Writing the next thing is more writing practise, so it’ll make you better. Write the next thing.

Ultimately I’m really glad Long Live Evil was my comeback book. I think it needed to be. It took the time it took.

But maybe it was a shade of that past book (where the heroine’s sister with cancer was six, so not much like any of the Time of Iron characters) that made me think of the YA version of this book, which I always had in my mind as something I was intentionally hewing away from - a more straightforward book, a book that might have sold better - in which shy reader Alice was the hero. She’s the one with the suggestive hero name - Alice through the looking glass - the heroine looks, and the more projectable-upon personality. She’d get called annoying less often (though still some, because she’s a girl), partly because she is (with love, Rae knows I’m right) a genuinely less annoying person. Much kinder, much sweeter, and much better at in-depth reading! Her sister being in trouble would’ve been a backstory, a catalyst point, and - you’re totally right - a great motivation for her to get the Flower. Saving a family member is a much more sympathetic and heroic motivation than saving yourself and one I do love (the Hunger Games, Labyrinth, Mahy’s the Changeover, and I write it a lot!). I think Snarky While Tragically Dying Rae would’ve been a pretty popular side character, too. I think it would’ve been a good book! Just not mine.

I love your question because I love thinking about POV, and all the decisions that are the building blocks of a story. To me, the Alice centric Time of Iron is a version that exists. As are several versions of the Lia centric Time of Iron. And versions centring other characters exist to me, too. (Eric, absolutely.)

Speaking of POV musing, I think Rahela the wicked stepsister featured more in the musical than the book. If the Time of Iron series ever became a TV show (and at this point in time I think I’d rather a movie because it wouldn’t… get cancelled…) and I got to write it (don’t know why I would…) I would start with the beginnings for three characters about to go on a journey to somewhere strange to them: Key in the Cauldron, Rae in the hospital, and Vasilisa in the icelands. There are so many possibilities! And I really wanted the sense that there were so many possibilities, too.

But I wanted the chronically ill one to be the centre of the story, and for it to be her villain origin story, and to ask a lot of questions (hence a lot of villains!) about who gets villainised and why. And I thought hers, to my mind, would be the most fun of all the possible stories.

So that’s the one I made. But Long Live Evil has a lot of origins. Thank you for remembering one of them! I don’t think I would’ve dared tell the story, if things hadn’t worked out for me (so far, fingers crossed).

And I also tell it to be clear my publisher was taking a RISK with me and Long Live Evil, and I really appreciate that, and I’m so happy it’s worked out for them (again so far, early days, fingers crossed, etc).

I hope some writers - whether in the process of submission, rejection or making the choices that are the building blocks of story - find this helpful, and some readers find it interesting.

Let this be one of the universes in which your story is told.

[latteenightss]

Hii! Just another rant about obx. I wanna share my predictions about season 5 and what I think they’re gonna do

Chase Stokes (John B) mentioned that season 5 will be their best one, which it could be but I think for a lot of viewers just the fact that JJ won’t be there at all might ruin the season if yk what I mean.

And now to my predictions

1. I think season 5 will be Kiara’s season, with the way season 4 ended it’s obvious she’s gonna lash out and go through a lot. She’s gonna need to deal with grief and her revenge era might be a bit brutal 😊

Also maybe she will be somehow related to the treasure? Or just connected slightly. Like season 1 we had John B, season 2 it was Pope. Season 3 now- idk I guess Sarah but Kie also had a bigger role, like when that dude kidnapped her and then she got sent off to that camp but that’s it, then her plot line was about Jiara, and season 4 was obv JJ.

And since we’re talking about JJ, y’all.. ik it’s hard but he’s not coming back 😭 obx is not supernatural, a wish won’t bring him back to life. Like I don’t think JJ will crawl out of sand.

I generally love the idea of Kie finally having her main character moments and just making her more important to the story.

2. We will get Riara. And I definitely don’t mean that in a romantic way because that’s not happening! Madison (the actress of Kie) hates Riara 😭 but I think we will see them as duo and just get more of those tension scenes that we got so far. I feel like that might be a way the writers will try to “replace” Jiara. Jiara was a huge ad for the show and lately so has been Riara.

I feel like almost eveyone loves the tension between those two and the writers know that. Also Rafe breaking up with Sofia- yea they’re definitely building up to some sort of storyline with Kiara and Rafe. The amount of people obsessed with Riara is insane and obv they have to give us something so..

Riara s5 is pretty much guaranteed.

3. I wanna talk about Sarah and John B- obviously a huge plot line will be their child. I don’t know if the child will be born at the end or during season 5. How I see it, I’m leaning more toward the end but we’ll see.

There’s not much else that can really happen with them. John b will also be in a revenge era since his best friend was killed and Sarah will definitely get closer with Rafe, that hug they shared was so cute and needed but otherwise I really don’t know! I doubt they’ll kill them off. I was thinking that the way John B narrates obx maybe that’s him in the future telling his child about their story? That would make sense honestly.

4. Pope and Cleo umm so. I honestly am not as interested in their story line and it’s interesting because I have no idea what they will do with them.

I think Pope might be kind of more cold in season 5- as we know he shot a person right in the head, and he was so scared about that. Also he lost JJ- his best friend and they want to send him to the military. Dude is not doing the best! 💀

Cleo.. I don’t know she’s such a complicated character, she went through a lot in her life but I doubt they’ll really expand her character in season 5.

5. Rafe!!!! His character development this season was insane. In my opinion he should stick with the pogues but I wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow betrayed them. That’s Rafe- he’s not a good person but I wouldn’t say he’s necessarily bad..

Like I already said in obx 5 there will be Rafe and Kie duo, and more of Sarah and Rafe for sure. But maybe he will connect with the other pogues too.

I just don’t want the development to be thrown away, I hope they make him stick with the pogues.

6. And now finally the ending/possible deaths.

The characters who in my opinions are most in danger are: Kiara and Rafe

Especially Kiara.. here’s the thing, since JJ is dead and she already went through the whole group 😭 what can her ending actually be? Like ok she could just end up alone with her friends, her family but in my opinion her death would make sense. She would be with JJ and I think in general it is a good end for her.

Rafe like i mentioned is a complicated character, it would be so easy for the writers to just kill him off at the end. But I would be honestly so mad!!! Like no JJ and no Rafe 😭. Yeah I don’t want them to do that but at the same time, I think there’s definitely a possibility.

Sarah and John B definitely safe in my opinion.

Cleo and Pope- now I don’t know, I think they’re safe. Maybe Cleo.. but still I don’t think so.

Groff- definitely done for! ❤️ I hope Kiara tortures him to death 🥰

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

Ed’s Initial Intentions regarding Stede

Thank you so much for your attention to the poll. The consensus is it’s complicated - and I sort of agree - although I’m swayed towards Fascination alone.

This is my interpretation…

Stede causes Ed to access hidden or denied parts of himself before they’ve even met. And it causes a change in Ed’s behaviour. Ed’s come across many rich or aristocratic folks to rob whom he would see killed without issue; but not someone who’s also a pirate, doing their own original thing, and who seems ambivalent towards Blackbeard’s existence. It’s dopamine to Ed’s novelty-starved brain. It’s not as if Ed carries out a usual raid on the Revenge intending to kill Stede, only to find himself unexpectedly charmed. Ed’s bewitched even before he meets Stede, which means Ed’s entire approach and thought-processes are altered.

Killing Stede and the crew isn’t necessarily off the table should the need arise, but I don’t think it’s actively on in any capacity. There’s no plan, and there’s no ‘uszh’ for once either. Because none of this is uszh. Ed’s engagement with the Revenge is not his normal MO. History’s most brilliant tactician is free-styling. Possibly free-falling.

At the end of 102, Izzy states, ‘Captain says follow that ship.’ And Fang answers ‘Oh really? Why?’ To which Izzy replies, ‘How should I know? The man’s half-insane.’ This conversation shows this isn’t usual strategy. Even Fang asks why - he thought they’d seen the last of those ‘fancyboys’. And Ivan’s sad he didn’t get the chance to murder them, which seems the usual way of things. Plus they’d already had the chance to take or plunder the ship when it ran aground, so this stalking manoeuvre is out of the ordinary. It feels like wasted time and energy.

By the start of episode three, Blackbeard’s ship is a few hundred yards out from the Revenge, and Izzy’s trying to manipulate Ed into usual strategy again by suggesting opening fire, or boarding and throwing the Revenge crew to the sharks. Instead, Ed wants to wait until they make landfall and invite them aboard his ship. Ed’s doing something very different again because he’s unwittingly engaging with an unfamiliar part of himself. And interestingly ‘Go suck eggs in Hell’ appears not to insult, but to somewhat seduce him further. Before meeting Stede, he’s already out of his depth emotionally, and acting out of character, literally.

Despite what Ed would do normally, I just cannot see him landing on the Revenge with the active intent of plundering the ship and / or killing Stede and the crew. His words and actions suggest he’s already through the looking-glass.

So, to The Plan. We have three interesting moments which lead up to its revelation: the clothes swap, ‘careful of your face’ and ‘show me the ways of an aristocrat’.

For me, the three strands, which have no previous connection (other than Ed and Stede playing together), come together in Ed’s mind somewhere between Ed leaving Stede on the lookout, and Ed speaking with Izzy below: a matter of seconds. It reminds me of Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects, pulling together disparate ideas into a cohesive story spontaneously. It’s the mind of a quick-thinker. And it’s in-keeping with Ed’s ability of reacting in the moment to the moment when necessary.

I think Ed also feels forced to perform Blackbeard for Izzy because Izzy’s threatening to leave pushes on that white father-figure emotional bruise. At this stage, Ed doesn’t have enough emotional loyalty to Stede to not voice such a plan; whilst his identity is still too caught in Izzy’s web to let him go - ‘you’re needed here’. For me, the plan to kill Stede is brought about in the moment via an act of psychological coercive control.

But Ed’s also kicking the can down the road. It’s a sort of Faustian bargain. Why not promise Izzy both their souls if it means Ed and Stede can hang out a little longer? Yet on another level Ed’s possibly hoping the debt won’t be called in, such is the complexity of the push and pull here. He’s putting it on the tab, the never-never. He’ll out-manoeuvre it if he decides that’s what he wants. Of course there’s doublethink going on because Ed’s in the middle of an identity crisis.

Ed daren’t admit his real reason for wanting to stay on the Revenge. He can’t comprehend himself even how deep this goes. His look as he turns is one of exhaustion and confusion. Stede Bonnet has him rattled. What started as a trickle of unease and ennui before they’d even met is now a whirlpool of unidentifiable feelings around both Stede, and Ed’s own perception of self.

Ed’s free-falling in liminal space.

[galaxythreads]

hi,

I'm fascinated by ur Loki works, and since I'm currently rereading all my favourites I wanted to ask about your general headcanons for Loki, and your opinions on all the movies and appearances Loki had. Basically, could you please talk about Loki, because i feel like my idea of Loki and your idea of Loki are similar. bye!!

"Do you want to rant at me about your favorite character?" I mean. do you want my first born?

general headcanons:

there's this scene in Loki: Where Mischief Lies where Loki has a throwaway line that talks about how it never matters when Thor hits him even if it gets violent and it rotates around in my head like a microwave all the time. Such an interesting concept that Thor took things too far but Loki never said anything because that's Just What Siblings Do TM

Loki's hair is soft to the touch, not greasy, because I will die mad about loki's hair in ragnarok

loki steals clothing. This is something you can see in all my fics, he's constantly stealing things from everyone.

Loki is ace, never had sex, and isn't interested in changing that. I don't think he's aro, I think he is interested in romantic love to some extent, but I think sex is just mid to him

loki's magic pokes at all five senses. It's something you can see, taste, hear, touch, and smell

loki got "food poisoning" a lot as a kid because his body was made for jotun stuff and like. asgard doesn't have that

Loki has a moral code, and there are lines he won't cross

loki doesn't lie that much, people just gave him the name because he's shifty and it was a rumor that was started by thor that he lies all the time

loki and thor's relationship has only gotten more complicated as they've gotten older and they have the brain chemistry to process things better, look at their childhoods and go, uh, bro, wait a minute

frigga wasn't a very good mom to loki, even though she tried

Loki can cook

loki uses magic less now that he's older, not because he's not good at it, but because he just like. he uses more subtle magic, and he doesn't need to turn his magic into a glowy show when he could just punch you in the face

loki is a man of few words

loki being captured and watching him lose his mind is straw that broke the camel's back for Gamora, who left shortly after he agreed to help thanos

loki wasn't mind controlled per se in the first avengers, the scepter was just affecting his feelings, but not more than anyone else? Loki was just genuinely tortured/coerced into this by thanos and they didn't have to force him to do anything. he was too terrified to say no. scepter was just an added bonus to cement the control

loki absolutely has permanent spinal damage from his time with thanos

I have a bazillion of these i could literally go on for ages.

---

thoughts on movies:

Uh. Okay. um. How do I say this without getting slain? I...do not think, objectively, that any of the Thor movies are good movies. I think they have fantastic concepts, and wonderful characters, and I adore poking at them, but I think one of the reasons that they're so beloved is because of their potential not because of what they are. People love thinking about what could have been and what they wished happened, because there's very little that's actually satisfyingly completed about the films.

Because the Thor movies are not...It. You kind of have to go hunting for outside material for pieces to be connected together and thor 2 has lots of issues that not even thor 1 could have dreamed of, and Thor 1 is just. A disaster, narratively. I think Thor 3 is definetly the most well put together movie, which sucks because it's the one that botched the characters beyond repair. You either have good characters and awful story or fantastic story and terrible characters with no inbetween.

Trying to talk about why I don't think the movies are good - objectively, as movies - has never ended super well for me, but yeah, i just. I don't. I don't think they're very good. I can break it down in more detail if anyone is interested, but there seems to exist two opinions on tumblr: you either think thor 1 - tdw is an untouchable master piece or you don't and there's nothing good to say about them at all.

I have endless praise to give the movies, but that doesn't mean I don't have criticisms, because, good lord, they suck in some places. Loki's character arc is the most baffling mishandle of a character that I have ever witnessed, and yes, I mean this from the get go. Connecting thor 1 - thor 2 takes some mental math.

Thor 1: Interesting set-up for Loki's character, I like how careful they are with setting him up to make sure that his arc was clear and the line between victim and villain was really blurred. They did a good job on making him sympathetic, and revealing an interesting concept with him and Thor, even if I don't think it was executed as well as I wanted.

Avengers 1: adore poking at Loki and Thanos's relationship here. I cannot get enough of it. I like writing with the avengers mostly because of all that didn't happen in the movie that I wished had. There's so many narrative secrets that don't get addressed or glossed over and I just want it picked apart

Thor 2: i enjoy seeing Loki and Thor working together, Loki's deteriorating mental stay in prison is always fascinating, and generally tdw is my favorite movie and portrayal of loki. It's what I usually base all my fics off of is how he acts in this movie. 10/10, will sing praises

thor 3: my loathing for this movie has shriveled considerably since i saw it the first time, but i'd still be hardpressed to say i liked anything they did with loki's character. Loki is self-sabatoging constantly, and his character makes no sense whatsoever. he is the village idiot, and like, i'm not really into that.

Infinity War: Honestly, i'm just gonna say it - i really did like what they did with loki in this movie. Like yeah, I wanted him to help and be an important part of the story, yeah, of course, but I also appreciate from a writing perspective what a powerful move killing him off before the credits was. Loki was the Big Bad of the first avengers and murdering him set the stakes amazingly. It carried Thor's entire arc, and it felt like a shroud that was layered over the movie. I know a lot of people didn't like it, but I appreciated what they did with it, and I like the tragedy.

---

Appearance:

not a single scene in ragnarok with him it it did not make me want to chew off my foot, his character design was awful. I will never understand why everyone was drooling over the black suit, it looked like it was bought from walmart and then the wrinkles smoothed out with a flat iron. His hair is greasy af for no reason, all of his clothing looks cheap and ugly. there's nothing impressive or visually interesting about him. the choice to remove his colors so hela can take them will never not be annoying to me even though hela is my baby child

thor 1 has the best hair, in my opinion, but he also looks stupid as hell in his armor. loki's design, to me, works best when it has long lines and it's flowy and/or soft. visually nice:

and like the reason it's visually nice is because it's soft and doesn't make me notice tom hiddleston's hips. The moment i'm aware of his hips i get irritated as hell about it, because idk man, loki just. he does not look good when you're aware he has hips. tom hiddleston is like fine, somehow? i don't know why it doesn't bother me when he's wearing whatever he wants to - i also just like. do not care - but with loki i'm just like. oh good LORD stop making me aware of your hips.

It's why i can't stand his ragnarok suit but would sing praises over the thor 1 one.

It's something that's just like. confounded me forever, because i don't even know why it bugs me so much, but every time i see his TVA outfit, thor 1 armor, or that stupid ragnarok suit i want to shoot a canon ball into the sun.

Give the man a suit coat or do not put him in a jacket. loki has lots of skills but pulling off a jacket is not one of them.

He needs to look haunted, like, in general. Or like an 18th century tired man. it's integral for his character to me.

things that make galaxy happy:

loki soft hair

loki having suit coat or suit coat equivalent

things that will send her into a ranting, unwanted, nitpicky rage

loki greasy hair

loki dressed in jackets

[parafic]

Mostly it's that I've been reading and absorbing fandom personalities for them (Izuna dramatic and showy, Hikaku The Sane One) for... however many years, and I'm trying to do something a bit different with their personalities, but those standard ones are still ingrained.

So for Izuna, what caught my attention is that apparently he's described in the data book as something that gets translated as 'peace-loving' or 'harmonious' (and probably other things, but those are the ones I've seen). Which is kind of a contrast to the very little we see of him, in which he seems very eager to fight and distrusting of peace.

It could just be that he's in favor of peace generally, but distrusts the Senju specifically and we just don't see his opinion on peace otherwise. But I think, combined with how Madara and the Uchiha fell apart without him, it's also reasonable (and to me, more interesting) to interpret that as a reference to someone who values/is a source of interpersonal harmony. Izuna is the one who notices and redirects a conversation before an argument starts, soothes ruffled feathers, listens to peoples' concerns and persuades them to give Madara's latest strategy a try, finds an excuse to have a celebration when people need to be cheered up, notices if a clan member is being excluded and figures out what's up and how to fix it. He keeps morale up and everyone working together.

But the flip side of that is someone who's really conflict averse (emotionally speaking), and to do all that effectively for a whole clan, he's constantly putting on different personas. So like, that common characterization where he's dramatic and demanding might be how he acts around Madara, because Madara likes having a baby brother, but he doesn't do it around anyone else. And he'll have a bunch of other different ways of acting for when he's around younger shinobi, older shinobi, various groups of elders, kids, parents, etc, based on what they expect of him/like him to be. (Everyone does this to an extent, but I'm thinking Izuna does it a lot more than most.)

And at the same time, when things upset him, he's likely to let them go because he doesn't want to start an argument, people would be upset if he asked them to stop, etc, and if he just ignores it then nobody's upset so no harm done, right? So the end result is an Izuna who's barely (if at all) more aware of his own emotions than Tobirama is, he just has a very different mask.

So from a writing perspective, that is a complicated character to write anyway, and it overlaps enough with the popular characterization I see that sometimes I'm not entirely sure which I'm writing. Also this is a weird and extreme situation that Izuna has no preestablished way of acting for, so in-story he's struggling to figure out how to act to begin with. So it's a lot to balance, basically.

Hikaku is a little simpler! The way I'm characterizing Izuna overlaps some with Hikaku's usual only sane man/The One Who Gets Things Done role, so I want to give Hikaku some other traits so that he doesn't feel redundant. I also think he deserves to get to be Uchiha dramatic sometimes too, but I don't want to just give him a copy of Madara's/Izuna's/Sasuke's usual personality.

So I'm aiming for him being quieter than they are, but without just being calm, and more willing to argue and criticize (or just snark) than Izuna usually will be. But he's also starting out in an extreme situation that has him very off kilter emotionally, so he wouldn't be acting exactly like himself anyway, so I'm trying to figure out like, his baseline personality, and also how that's going to be affected by what's going on at the same time, so it's kind of doing two steps at once. (And is part of why I've been using his POV so much; it helps me work all that out when I can just write out all his thoughts as I go.)

Honestly the tunnel visioning is probably most of what ADHD Tobirama will mean for this fic; it's more that I just looked at how I usually characterize him and went 'yeah that sounds like ADHD'. Though Hikaku mentioning that Tobirama is "even rapidly bouncing his heel against the floor the way he seems to do when deep in concentration" is a bit more deliberate reference to Tobirama showing ADHD symptoms (since fidget toys are not exactly abundant in this setting, and he'd probably consider them too undignified to use himself anyway).

The sensing bloodline limit is all me! One of those headcanons that technically kind of contradicts canon a little but like. I prefer it. (Though @domoz is using a variant in the Hanahaki-adjacent AU!)

Basically the idea is that usually, a person's chakra system is like the circulatory system: it's more or less closed off from anything external, your body produces and uses it, but anything from outside is going through the stomach or lungs or something first.

But in the Senju, chakra is a little more permeable. It's a little more like, say, the water in a bay: it's distinct from the ocean but it's not cut off from the ocean by any means, and there's always some amount of flow back and forth.

So, because they're always having a little bit of chakra flow back and forth with the chakra around them (both natural and other Senjus' chakra), they get passive sensing. Which is not entirely as useful as it sounds; range is based largely on how much chakra a person has (though they can extend it or pull it back with conscious effort) but learning to distinguish chakra signatures and place their location is difficult and much rarer for someone to be good at. Hashirama for example technically has a bigger sensing range than Tobirama, but he can't distinguish signatures or estimate distance well, so it's not much use for him. (Though he will be able to tell that Tobirama is still alive while he's trapped on the island.)

All Senju (with this trait) do have the advantage of being able to feel when another chakra signature is present though, since basically no one else knows this is a sense to hide from. Senju can also read shifts in peoples' chakra the way that other people might read facial expressions, which again other people don't usually learn to control or hide, so the Senju get a nice edge there.

(In this headcanon the sensing jutsu, which Hikaku uses in this fic and is used in canon, was invented in the past to both give allies access to some of the same information the Senju had, and to cover up that what the Senju were doing was not a jutsu. Which is why both exist.)

Senju might also have a bit of an advantage at using elemental and/or sage jutsu, because their chakra is always a little bit bleeding back and forth with natural chakra, so it's more familiar to them. Not a huge advantage though.

The vulnerability is poison. Most poisons target the physical body and very few target chakra itself (with the exception of chakra suppressing poisons, which are more common). But when a Senju is hit by something that turns their chakra toxic, it will spread to every other Senju in their range, and then in all those Senjus' ranges, and....

So best case scenario an entire team gets wiped out. More likely it's several teams in the same area. Worst case scenario someone gets hit with something while Hashirama is alive, it spreads to his chakra, and from him it spreads to every other Senju with the same trait, and that's how the Senju clan disappears.

Tobirama escapes because he happened to be in his lab at the time, which is shielded against chakra going in or out, in case he accidentally invented something chakra toxic. And some Senju, presumably including Tsunade and Nawaki, just don't have the trait to begin with so they survive. But most of the clan falls over dead within about an hour, which Senju generations ago more or less saw coming, which is why they kept the bloodline so secret and tried to breed it out.

(Some non-Senju in allied clans that intermarried would probably also have had the trait and died along with the Senju too, but I have not planned anything detailed about that because that is the bad ending AU and I don't enjoy those.)

a lot more focused on the results of interaction than the often annoyingly intricate path to get there "correctly", except people put a lot of stock on the "correct" path of behavior and WILL react weirdly if you don't follow enough of it.

Yeah! Tobirama is very focused on efficiency and getting things done, and he thinks everyone else ought to be equally focused on practicalities, so he has no interest in wasting time on being indirect.

I do think he can be polite if he has to--he's a clan heir, he's going to get stuck doing politics and diplomacy to some extent, so he doesn't really get a choice about learning this, and he's the type to learn how to be excellent at it because it's important even if he hates it. (And he's aware of appearances, demonstrated by scolding Hashirama about dignity in public and such.) But getting him to use those skills when he's not in an explicitly diplomatic setting (or maybe in disguise) isn't likely.

(Which does again make him kind of the opposite of Izuna; Izuna is compulsively diplomatic, because he sees value in building rapport and connections with as many people as possible. Izuna is building a tightly-knit community while Tobirama runs a well-oiled machine.)

You're welcome, I'm glad you like the songbirds! If you haven't read it, you might like @denialcity's hanahaki AU, for adoration grow. Somewhere in there is a scene where Izuna sings for Tobirama and Tobirama discovers that music can make him Feel Things.

(I also have equivalent headcanons for the Senju and Uzumaki collective hobbies, but they're not musical.)

Sparring will lead to yet another culture clash, in which the Uchiha decide the Senju are insane and Tobirama is judgy (after he gets over being freaked out).

The Uchiha aren't having too difficult a time; Kagami isn't old enough to know most sharingan secrets, and Ruri is old enough to know what not to say. Plus there's a general politeness norm among shinobi of not asking about clan secrets when clans are interacting in a polite way, so all the kids generally know not to ask (and probably don't know too many secrets even if they were asked).

Tobirama is having a bit more difficult a time keeping Uzumaki seals hidden, because the Uchiha can copy any seal they see him make and that would be that. But again, the Uzumaki kids are mostly either too young to know seals or old enough to remember not to share them, so Tobirama mostly has to hide his own work. Which is a bit inconvenient, but he can just tell the Uchiha to leave so he can make a seal, and can sense whether anyone is close enough to watch him, so it's workable.

They also don't really care much about other clans' secrets. If a kid from one water country clan gives something away to a kid from another, that is not their problem and they have bigger things to worry about. Rescue your own kids next time if it bothers you. Aside from the Uzumaki the clans here are too distant to be allies to either the Senju or the Uchiha, so they have no obligation to care and are already doing these clans a huge favor by rescuing their kids, keeping them alive, and eventually returning them.

Thank you! The jutsu definition headcanon is mostly Domoz's, although I did adopt it immediately.

And there actually aren't really secrets to worry about in that case! The Uchiha know that if a Senju uses a jutsu, that Senju will probably also know several 'related' jutsu; that's not something the Senju could or have attempted to hide. It's basically a semantic difference; the Senju label something on jutsu and the Uchiha label it a cluster of related jutsu, but everyone's still aware that the options exist.

Izuna specifically has been expecting Tobirama to show up with a 'new' water dragon jutsu for some time, so his reaction is more along the lines of 'of COURSE you can do this now'. Though he WILL be annoyed at Tobirama insisting that they're all one jutsu. Izuna takes pride in how many jutsu Tobirama has invented to fight him with, stop trying to ruin his score!

(It will probably come up very late, though; the most likely prompt for this is Tobirama being introduced to the Uchiha jutsu library, and that is a post-relationship thing motivated maybe by Izuna and Hikaku innocently trying to give him a gift and possibly by hopes of interesting him in the sex jutsu section.)

Tobirama has at minimum collected some hints about Uchiha organization! He's trying to figure out exactly how hierarchy works between Izuna and Hikaku, and who Hikaku is that he seems to sometimes have equal authority to Izuna.

The Senju have basically one hierarchy: Hashirama at the top, Tobirama second, and everyone in charge of various things they've delegated answering to them. War and missions are all built into the same system, and shinobi are sent where their talents are needed, because the down side to having a wide variety of talents is that you often only have one or two people that can do any specific thing. So a Senju who's good at sneaking in and stealing things, for example, will be sent to steal the enemies' battle plans and that valuable vase some lord wants but can't buy.

The Uchiha basically all learn the same style of fighting, the same types of jutsu, etc; obviously there's some variety but nothing compared to the Senju. They also might just have more people in general. So they have basically two hierarchies; the war/battle shinobi (who are led by Madara and Izuna) and the mission shinobi (who Hikaku is in charge of). The two operate in parallel, and shinobi generally only are part of one, not both (other than kids/young shinobi still figuring out where they fit).

(This could also have gone the other way around, and had the clan head running missions primarily and someone else handling the war. But uh, Madara and Izuna are both very war-oriented. In other generations it's been different.)

As a result of that, since they're on a mission, Hikaku is actually officially in charge here. But Izuna is the clan heir (and functional co-clan head) in addition to co-head of the war, so Hikaku is used to deferring to him and Izuna is used to being in charge, and Tobirama's presence is another argument for Izuna to take the lead because Hikaku has no personal experience with Tobirama. So Hikaku and Izuna are kind of unclear on who's in charge here, which is fine because they trust and respect each other and agree on their goals.

So that's what was going on when they're trying to plan how to attack, and Izuna says he's outvoted and makes Hikaku do the negotiating instead; if Izuna was actually in charge of the mission he couldn't be outvoted. And Tobirama doesn't know exactly what's up there but he's sure something is, so he's Observing. (And also why he asked about whether Izuna would follow the plan he and Hikaku made; he expects Izuna to outrank Hikaku the same way Tobirama would outrank any teammates he had on a mission, and Tobirama wouldn’t necessarily be obligated to keep an agreement/follow a plan any other Senju made, so he thinks it’s weird and suspicious that Hikaku is making the plans instead of Izuna.)

He was also fishing for information during the "you deserve to suffer slightly less than bloodline thieves" exchange; he's trying to figure out Izuna's opinions on peace/alliance, since that's a thing Hashirama wants.

(But also yes, he feels very bad about giving away the healing jutsu thing and will try to apologize to Hashirama about it when he gets the chance.)

That works really well for the limits on Hiraishin! It did always seem odd to me that two unrelated people could use it but no one else. (Though for Typhoon Island it's just not invented yet, otherwise Tobirama could teleport off the island and we wouldn't have weeks of pining to inflict on them all.)

...are you trying to show off for the pretty guys, Tobira? >__>

XD Not quite yet! (I mean, he might have been trying with the first fish, but that was general pride + "see I am a Useful Ally, now how about we stop this whole 'war' thing".) With the second fish he's just very sneakily being a little shit, because he thinks them freaking out over An Ordinary Fish is funny. (And unimpressive. But he can judge them AND laugh at them just fine.)

(He won't admit it. But this is the Tobirama version of a prank.)

You're welcome, and thank you! I'm really enjoying getting to talk about all this.

@starstuffduster You are SO right about needing distractions, unfortunately I am working overtime so it will be even later than usual before I can write

(Do send me lots of asks though! I'm off tomorrow so I can write plenty then)

In the meantime, have a couple of incomplete later scenes from Typhoon Island (which will probably get rewritten but they're fun for now)

Hikaku finds Tobirama sitting under the ledge, where the rain is blocked but some light still filters in.  His eyes are closed, and his face is perfectly blank as he traces ink blindly over his face and throat.  A seal, clearly, though what it’s meant to do, Hikaku can’t imagine.

Tobirama is too skilled not to have noticed him, even rapidly bouncing his heel against the floor the way he seems to do when deep in concentration.  How Tobirama managed to train his skills so that he is always aware of the people near him, but has missed sunrise, sunset, food placed beside him, and being rained on, all in the few weeks they’ve been here, Hikaku still hasn’t figured out.  But a surprised shinobi reacts violently, and Tobirama is no exception, as proven by the times a sudden movement has startled him.

So Hikaku knows Tobirama is ignoring him for several minutes.  As Tobirama is currently placing the most intricate seal Hikaku has ever seen on his own face, and doing it blindly, that’s more than reasonable.

Tobirama stops abruptly, his heel landing sharply on the stone.  Hikaku doesn’t glimpse the handseal that pulls rain into a bubble over Tobirama.  The bubble bursts and splashes over Tobirama’s face, blurring most of the seal and drawing the ink in distracting trails down his throat.

Hikaku sets that aside for later.  “Difficulties with the seal?” he asks.

“Obviously,” Tobirama says shortly.  He wipes some of the water off of his throat, smearing the sealwork there further.

Hikaku still doesn’t know whether Tobirama is aware of his own rudeness.  He has learned that ignoring it is usually enough to end it.  “Would a mirror help?”

Hikaku doesn’t have a mirror, and neither does Izuna.  But they could probably work out something adequately reflective, if the seal is important.

“Hmm.  Unlikely,” Tobirama decides.  He unfolds from the rock he was sitting on and starts back toward the main cavern, and he’s still somehow taller than Hikaku remembers.  “The seal is meant to be used in groups, applied to each other.  The difficulty is in applying it backwards.  Seeing it would likely be a distraction.”

Hikaku will never comprehend the Senju mind.  “What sort of seal is it?”

Tobirama hums.  It takes several seconds for him to answer, and they get close enough for Izuna’s voice to reach them, slightly distorted, singing a children’s training song.  Several of the children have joined in, with a much larger range in skill than Hikaku expected children so old to have.

Mostly in the direction of less skill.  Do other clans teach their children nothing except to fight?

“It is a snorkeling seal,” Tobirama says.  “By drawing on the user’s chakra, it draws air from the surface into their lungs, and allows them to remain under water indefinitely.”

An incredibly useful seal, then.  It would be a deeply concerning one as well, except that most of its uses are pointless in Fire Country.  Fire Country has many streams and creeks, but even the Nakano, which is the largest river in the country, is only rarely deep enough for a person to truly hide in its depths.  Mostly, a submerged shinobi would only look like a fool, trying to hide a few feet below the surface of clear water.

But in a place like Water Country, much less these Whirlpool islands… Hikaku is glad that the Uchiha so rarely venture outside of Fire Country.

Still, it gives him an idea.  “If it is not given chakra, does it do anything?”

“No.”

“So it’s safe?”

The question earns a quick flick of Tobirama’s eyes in his direction, before they return to the tunnel ahead.  “Children use it.”

“If you were to draw it on me, then,” Hikaku says, and even having concluded there would be no danger, his heart rate picks up, “Izuna could watch, and draw it on you.”

Tobirama pauses, a fractional delay in his steps as he glances in Hikaku’s direction again, this time longer, almost actually looking.  But he shakes his head.  “It is an Uzumaki seal.”

“I have not yet found a limit on the complexity of what the sharingan can copy,” Hikaku says.

“The Uzumaki are protective of their secrets.”

Ah.  A different issue than Hikaku assumed.  The Uzumaki are Senju allies, but it’s not a seal for war.  “Is it that valuable?  I can’t see it being used often in Fire Country.  I’ve never seen a river or lake large enough to hide in.”

“Fire Country doesn’t have lakes; we only have ponds,” Tobirama says, as if reciting the opinion.  “Every seal is valuable.  If not for its own effect, then for what it will teach about sealing.”

“I see.”

Izuna stops singing the moment they reach the cavern, and most of the children break off after him, uncoordinated.  Kagami continues alone, his voice clear until he finishes the verse.

“Izuna-san is teaching us Uchiha music!” [Uzukid] announces.  Izuna’s face goes strained.

“Is it very similar to Uzumaki music?” Tobirama asks, apparently interested, which sets all the kids off.  Uchiha music isn’t much like Uzumaki music at all; the [idk water bloodline] have some similar music but it’s not [waterkid]’s favorite; the Hyuuga have the same song, with only a few different words.  Tobirama listens with solemn interest.

As soon as every child has shared their comparisons, Tobirama focuses on [Uzutween].  “[Uzutween], are you familiar with the snorkeling seal?”

She nods, looking slightly confused by the question.

“Good,” Tobirama says.  “Come with me; I am going to use it to go fishing, and I am not able to apply it to myself.”

--

“Look!  Abalone!”

[Uzukid] is grinning when Hikaku glances over, holding up a palm-length, brown shell with six holes in a line and oddly triangular spots.  She, of course, is looking at Tobirama, who pauses in his demonstration of prying mussels off the rocks to seriously examine the shell she hands over.

“Very good,” Tobirama says, and hands the shell back to her.  “Your family works with abalone, don’t they?”

“Yeah!”

Tobirama nods again, and turns to include the other children in his explanation.  “We likely won’t find many abalone here, but they’re valuable and harmless, so collect any that you see.  [Uzukid], would you like to explain how to identify them?”

“Yeah!”

The rest of the kids cluster around and [Uzukid] holds up the shell, pointing out the shape, colors, and shiny interior.  The Uzumaki eat the snails, and make the shells into all kinds of jewelry and decoration.

Tobirama listens, but his eyes keep sliding away, scanning the pool and the area nearby.  Izuna glances over, sharingan flicking on to catch the image of the abalone’s shell, and then goes back to hunting through a pool closer to the water.  Hikaku listens while he keeps prying mussels off of stone and tossing them up the beach toward dry land.

The kids spread out again, now mostly ignoring the abundant mussels as they stick their faces in the water and peer under rocks in search of abalone.  [Uzukid] turns rocks over a little more strategically, and keeps chattering.  “An’ when you grind the shells up really good, you mix ‘em in with ink and make star seals!  That’s what my family does, for the whole village!”

“What are star seals, [Uzukid]?” Tobirama asks.

“You’ve seen them!  On the roofs!”

“I have, but not everyone here has,” Tobirama says.  “Kagami, do you know what star seals are?”

“Not yet!” Kagami chirps.

“They’re sparkly!  And bright!”  [Uzukid] gestures, hands flying out in a burst of implied light.  “We put ‘em on the edges of the roofs so the old shinobi don’t fall at night!”

[Uzukid]’s descriptions make it sound as if every day is a festival in Uzushio.  It’s a shame, Hikaku thinks, that he won’t get to see it.  But the Uzumaki have been the Senju’s allies almost as long as the Uchiha have been their enemies.  Hikaku will no more be allowed to see Uzushio than Tobirama’s bedroom.

“What if they’re too bright?” Kagami asks.

“They’re not!” [Uzukid] declares indignantly.  “They’re star seals, not… not sea-glare seals, or something!”

Kagami nods seriously.

“Seals that create a bright light as their primary effect are called flash seals,” Tobirama says.

“Yeah!  They’re not flash seals!”

“But flash seals are one of the primary types of seal which Uchiha encounter,” Tobirama says.  “So it’s reasonable for Kagami to think of them.”

“And fire seals,” Kagami adds.

“Explosive tags,” Tobirama corrects.

“Izuna-sama hates those,” Kagami shares.  “He says fire’s ours so it’s not fair Senju can fake it without learning real jutsu.”

Tobirama smirks, a flicker at the corner of his mouth that vanishes before he raises his voice enough to make it carry.  “Well, next time he says that, you may tell him that Senju use fire jutsu, too; he just hasn’t seen.  And he should know better than to make assumptions like that.”

Kagami grins and nods.  A few other children giggle.

Izuna looks thoroughly annoyed, but he turns away instead of saying anything.  He’ll have plenty to say later, Hikaku is sure, once Tobirama and the kids are out of hearing, but for now he tosses his hair back and peers deliberately into the water.

“Are there lots of kinds of seals, Senju-sensei?” Kagami asks.

“More than I can list at once,” Tobirama says.  “Seals are even more varied than jutsu, only less commonly used.  Now, how many mussels have you found?”

The Uchiha are collectors of jutsu.  Every jutsu that any Uchiha has seen since the beginning of the clan is recorded, both in written form and in memories passed down across the generations.  Many of those jutsu are useless—there are dozens of campfire-lighting jutsu, invented by different clans in different countries and different generations, and the Uchiha only need one.  But they are kept anyway, for any who want to study jutsu creation, or in case an Uchiha needs to disguise themselves as a member of another clan.

Among those jutsu are thousands that have no use at all in war.  Jutsu to make food more flavorful, to shape wood and metal and stone with greater precision than a handheld tool, to send messages, to embellish dance, to amplify music or sensation.  Most Uchiha learn a handful of them.  Jutsu for singing and sex are the most popular, and those that are useful with various crafts.  Hikaku has at least glanced through most sections of the library, looking for interesting options.  Each recorded jutsu also records the source, and every Senju jutsu Hikaku has ever seen is for war.  Hikaku used to be sure that meant the Senju simply didn’t know or use jutsu for anything other than battle, sabotage, and the like.

But once this season is over he’s going to have to go home and add an entire new section to the library for jutsu that heal.  Not merely by shaping a needle out of a broken blade or pulling gravel out of wounds, but actively.  It’s still technically for war, but it’s an entire category of jutsu that the Uchiha didn’t even know were possible, which the Senju seem to have been using for generations, the way Tobirama acted about it.

So maybe, being a Senju, Tobirama doesn’t know the full variety of uses jutsu can have.  Or maybe the Senju are very good at keeping secrets, and seals can do things Hikaku hasn’t even imagined.

It really is a shame that he’ll never see the Uzumaki compound.

Hikaku pries the last mussel worth eating off the rocks, tosses it into the pile with the rest, and straightens.  The children are enthusiastic, but very distracted by all the unfamiliar creatures in the pools, and Tobirama is similarly distracted by watching and teaching them all.

Hikaku and Izuna, then, will have to do most of the foraging.  Which isn’t worrying, really; Hikaku is no longer concerned about starving while they’re trapped on this island.  But he’d rather not eat every meal from the same single fish for a week again, nor would he like to see what bigger fish Tobirama could possibly find. 

[this is followed by Hikaku picking up a blue ringed octopus, and Tobirama being Totally Rational And Calm And Not Panicking in response. As he always is, of course]

[spacepunksupreme]

Thinking about Visiting Hours (1982) still and its feminist themes and how it’s a little sad and ironic that like 90% of the posts I could find for it on tumblr were just thirst gifset of the actor who played the misogynistic serial killer who likes to kill women just for having jobs, and there was not a single post dedicated to either of the two female protagonists :’o) like hm. hmm

[taz-writes]

here's a hot take for today

the narrative function of sex is the same as the narrative function of fight scenes is the same as the narrative function of songs in a musical

no i will not explain

[galactic-rhea]

Thoughts on Padmé x Anakin x Rex?

Padmé and Anakin are so mutually obssesed they would first have to check into that before trying to bring another person to their carefully-balanced-kind-of-damage or something it's going to explode.

Honestly it's a fun ship! But I don't have too many thoughts about them because when I consider them is usually in very low-stakes-fun-AU-scenarios.

And I'm actually a bit of a fan of Rexwalker myself! Athough I tend to like them more as very good buddies, the covering-for-you-dynamic it's so funny for them, lol It's also angsty and complicated because, y'know, the power-imbalance and unchecked trauma? Is funny that the clone that's actually a slave for the republic is the most normal if you bring him into the anidala romance circus.

Also shout out to @phoenixyfriend , she has a lot of rexanidala fics and recs for anyone interested reading this!

[muninnhuginn]

Writers tag game

Prompt: share some writing

Thanks for the tag, @miyamiwu!

So, I'll be honest, I don't actually have any WIPs I'm intending to do anything with, but I have some oldish abandoned stuff I managed to relocate. It's back from 2021 so in my Untamed era and this bit was specifically set during Fatal Journey*:

Nie Huaisang woke blearily, cold seeping into his clothes from the floor. It was dark and it took several seconds to remember where he was. He could hear the muffled sounds of clanging and voices. As he lifted his head off the ground, they slowly resolved themselves into the clash of swords and yelling. [...] He didn't know what to do. What would his brother do? Xichen-ge? San-ge? He had his flute with him– he could try Cleansing. This was what it was for, right? Before he could doubt himself further, he started playing, pouring all the qi he could muster into the tune. He'd practised for hours the night before, long after San-ge had left, but despite that, he hadn't truly thought then that he'd need to play so soon. Was that so naïve of him? As he watched, Da-ge began to slow in his movements and Nie Huaisang felt himself start to relax. He kept his lips to the flute, trying not to let his relief fool him into making mistakes. Still, he knew he only had to play a little longer and then they could all escape. Him, his brother, his cousin. They could flee far away from the darkness that haunted these halls. And then Nie Zonghui's head hit the floor. He stopped playing.

And then I had this other bit:

He'd messed up. He must have played a wrong note. Maybe he'd misremembered the entire thing? And now Nie Zonghui was dead and his brother - what looked like his brother - was stood, Baxia dripping blood to the floor. [...] The sword was pointed at him. He tried to hold himself steady as he looked down the blade. Tried to blink away the tears that kept escaping without his permission. He could tell he was failing, unable to stop the trembling, but he forced himself to meet the eyes at the other end of the sword. He couldn't die here. He refused to die here. After all, he was the only family his brother had left.

*(it was meant to be part of a short time travel fic where post-canon characters went back not long before NMJ died. It would've had flashbacks to Fatal Journey interspersed with the "present" up until the point at which future NHS tipped off past NHS about the poisoned music. I actually got as far as figuring out where I wanted all the characters to be at the end of it, but I ran out of motivation pretty quickly so there's only this WIP stuff and the intro part written in the end.)

Ahh not sure who to tag when it comes to writing stuff. I know @roseofcards90 and @floofiestboy write some stuff? And anyone else who sees this who writes, feel free to consider yourself tagged ^^

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Oh ho ho what a highly interesting question, anon👀

(Answered under the cut because it's a bit long)

ㅤ

Before I give my proper answer, allow me to explain a bit of my interpretation of Tails. I actually see him as a sort of naturally jealous person with some innate possessive tendencies who has grown used to curbing these tendencies of his, which he had to do due to a number of factors.

One major reason is due to Sonic himself. To me Sonic has always had a complicated relationship with different kinds of love or attraction (and I do see him as on the aro/ace spectrum). So, when absolute strangers (or those he doesn't particularly like) obsessively pursue him for clear romance/possessive reasons, he tends to react with strong rejection or indifference, in contrast to how he welcomes ego stroking and praise from those who can be merely categorized as "fans" (or those he does particularly like). To me, Tails' initial admiration and pursuit of joining with and becoming like Sonic very well parallels how Amy Rose began to admire and pursue a romantic relationship with Sonic. Even if we consider that Sonic did save Tails that one time from being bullied (according to Sonic Prime and a new animation for Sonic 2 present in Sonic Origins), his pursuit of trying to work together with his hero (which is detailed a bit more in the jp manual for Sonic 2, and includes Tails going so far as to follow after Sonic everywhere and modify Sonic's plane) really isn't any more "normal" than how Amy begins to pursue a romantic relationship with her hero after Sonic saves her from Metal Sonic. The only real differences here were that Amy was explicitly pursuing romance, and that Sonic rejected Amy's advances but eventually took Tails on as his sidekick/little buddy.

This is also not to mention the implications here and there in what we can find of Sonic and Tails' backstory that Sonic would continue to run away and pretend he did not care, while secretly keeping an eye out for Tails.

And beyond that, as one of Sonic’s oldest friends, Tails gets to spend a lot of time around Sonic, and gets to see firsthand how he reacts to romantic prospects, his complicated relationship with "love" as a concept, and is present as Sonic’s group of friends steadily grows.

With all of that, I at least see Tails learning to deal with his innate jealousy and possessiveness so

Sonic doesn’t reject him

Because he doesn't want to keep Sonic from pursuing relationships with others

And for the sake of one's image/being a good person

If Tails has learned that confessing and making his romantic intentions clear could lead to Sonic rejecting him or it ruining their friendship (since he's seen first hand how Sonic has reacted in certain cases to love confessions or overt romantic affection), it makes sense to me that he would try to hold his feelings back (both those that are not squarely platonic and are explicitly romantic and/or sexual). And when it comes to Sonic, there's a guilt factor and an impossibility factor when it comes to keeping him from other people. Not only would Tails feel at least a little bad for restricting him, but Sonic does not respond well to being controlled. Now of course, how he reacts does depend on the time of his life and who it is, but there is nevertheless a futility in trying to control Sonic "I have no master except the wind that blows free" Hedgehog. And finally, my view on both Sonic and Tails, well... I believe that image and visual alignment is a big thing for these two, and that the two are secretly more...in the gray (or at least, that they're surprisingly immoral so to speak). In their origins to me, Tails is just a kid, minding his business, who does not inherently seek to hurt others (though his faith in those around him does matter), and Sonic is just a kid, free as the wind, who doesn't particularly care about being a good guy, but loves the attention. Essentially, though he does save some people on whim, the idea is that Sonic originally fights Robotnik simply because the Doctor, his machines, and his pollution have such a negative effect on his home. So beyond this point, he fights as a hero both out of interest of having his home intact/being alive, and because (simply put) he likes what comes from being considered a hero (all the praise and perks). And so because Sonic is someone that Tails admires, because Sonic has to uphold a baseline image or reputation so he can still be considered a hero/good guy, Tails becomes accustomed to doing the same. That's a bit of an oversimplification (how I see them and why is the subject of a proper essay about that), but the point is that Tails is also conscious that trying to overtly control or manipulate Sonic would not objectively be considered "hero or good guy behavior", especially if it goes too far.

And so with all of that plus the fact that Sonic has never seemingly accepted anyone's romantic inclinations or dated anyone, Tails curbs his natural inclination towards jealousy and possessiveness so he can be content enough to be at Sonic's side. Perhaps there are more friends Sonic is going to get, people he's going to show an interest in, but Tails can put stock in the fact that it's unlikely that Sonic will date anyone. Plus, even if that somehow does happen, Tails is largely fine as long as he's guaranteed to be by Sonic's side no matter what. So as long as he can be with Sonic forever, no matter their relationship, he's as content as can be.

ㅤ

But then Sonic starts dating Nine, right?

And hahaha don't get me wrong here. Tails is pretty practiced. He's not gonna blow up or anything.

But once he gets past the initial shock of that being true, I think he just feels jealous and conflicted by default. I mean, he's just been accepting that there's no hope of ever being in that kind of relationship with Sonic. And not only has someone gone and done it, it's not just anyone.

It's a version of him.

And if a version of himself managed to do it (a version of himself who once lashed out at and fought against Sonic no less), then what does that mean about him? Does it mean that there's something about Nine Sonic likes better? Does it mean that he's had this entire situation wrong? Does it mean he lost his chance and he'd been so afraid for nothing? Does it mean that he could have had that this whole time?

And that's not to mention navigating this. Even if I believe Sonic is very very capable of having multiple best friends or even partners, it's only natural for Tails to get a little afraid of being replaced (especially if he learns that Sonic also considered/considers Nine as a best friend also)

But Tails is the type to not want to burden Sonic with all of this while becoming increasingly more worried. And although he would naturally have a complicated relationship with Nine, I still think he would generally like him and not want to take out his feelings on him. So with that being said, I think he'd sort of try to hold it in and act normal while really not acting all that normal, because though he could hide his feelings better if he wanted to, he still kind of lets it slip because he kind of does want to talk to Sonic about it or let his feelings be known.

I think that whenever Sonic eventually does see that Tails is acting a bit off he'll eventually talk to him about it or try to get him to, but, honestly, even if Sonic could say things (true things) that would make him feel better, I don't think Tails could be as content as he would be if it was idk... Knuckles or Shadow or what have you. Because if it was anyone else, Tails could be more content knowing that his relationship with Sonic is special and that he'll always be by his side, even if he's dating someone else.

But with the fact that the person that Sonic has chosen to date is another version him—a version of him which Sonic has also kind of clearly developed a similar "best friendship" with? I feel that even if Sonic tries to reassure him, Tails will forever be plagued with bitter and jealous feelings. Even if he'd never force Sonic to stop dating anyone, much less force him to date him, I don't think he can even really feel content here unless Sonic chooses to date him also if that makes any sense.

So, yes. That's my answer. Tails would try to be really good about it, but he's still bitter and annoyed and jealous and wondering if he's enough or has been doing something wrong. He's wondering why it couldn't have been him. And he won't be able to just be content at Sonic's side if he can't also be with Sonic. So while I can't say how long it will take, something will have to give eventually. I think at some point in their future, Sonic will have to tackle his specific feelings for Tails and they'll have to talk about their specific relationship, especially if he's dating Nine right in front of him.

[wesavegotham]

The different parts of Gotham War not lining up at all in terms of plot, character motivation and characterization is bad enough, but now that DC is suddenly trying to explain when other titles like Detective Comics and Batman and Robin are taking place in relation to Gotham War it gets even worse because now all of these storylines make so much less sense too.

[thegreatyin]

🎩

🦑

🐁

these are the only questions that matter

🎩 What would an Exceptional Story featuring this character be about?

In a similar vein to stories like Homecoming, Adornment, and (naturally) Cricket Anyone, the Scoundrel's ES would probably act as a thinly-veiled glimpse into their backstory from the perspective of the player meddling in the affairs of one Mr Cards. Maybe you'd clash against one of its schemes and end up delving far too deep into the affairs of a certain Yearner and how she ended up in this position to begin with?

It'd be very long, very chaotic- and- possibly most importantly- just a little bit sad at its core. As all things with the Scoundrel tend to be, much as they'd like to deny and/or change it.

An ES featuring the Scientist would (ironically) be way more straightforward, and play out a lot more like a classic detective noir of some kind. I'm thinking something akin to Stripes of Wrath, but with slightly more eldritch horrors. Innocent investigative journalism with the Scientist as your buddy except halfway through it turns into pure nightmare fuel and you part ways with him inexorably changed but neither him nor you can quite explain how or why. Completing it would also probably add a card to your deck that vastly reduces suspicion at the cost of nightmares (aka he shows up to kill a cop and repay a favor. He's helping!!)

-

🦑 Would they kiss a Rubbery Man?

Both of them answer yes to this question!

Both of them also refuse to elaborate!

Take of this what you may.

[bumblingbabooshka]

‘tis i, nonbinary transfem tuvok enthusiast and recently i’ve been pondering the dynamic between her and transmasc b’elanna torres…. i love thinking of them having long conversations together about gender and cultural histories and their life paths and mental issues (real)

also tuvok’s quote of “there is nothing wrong in choosing to live” would be such an emotional statement to tell b’elanna who canonically has depression (they just like me fr). anyways these are my thoughts today take care my friend!! <3

I don't personally see Tuvok as being a positive person for B'Elanna to talk to about much of anything personal without like, some sort of change to how they interact with one another since I think he'd both intentionally and unintentionally antagonize her BUT I can absolutely see them looking at each other and feeling the gender envy even before they know what that particular sensation is. Knowing B'Elanna I bet she'd worry she has some kind of weird crush on him hehehe~ Someone starts a group for queer members of the crew to meet but it seems like more of a dating thing and they're all human and no one else is trans so B'Elanna leaves and runs into Tuvok and is like "Oh! I didn't see you in there." because it's common knowledge by this point that Tuvok's trans but Tuvok just does that 'obviously.' look and goes "...No." so B'Elanna leaves her alone but they happen to run into each other next week and the week after and it eventually becomes an unofficial thing and it's a real rollercoaster. It's a real russian roulette of what kind of a time you're gonna have - sometimes it ends in a fight and sometimes it ends in the most insightful realization you'll ever have. Such is life on Voyager... Thank you so much and I hope you have a wonderful day too~!!

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

trick to fun dialogue is just to make it a little hard to understand. maybe thats a cheap trick but i dont care

[tvrningout-a]

i'm creating a whole frikkin fantasy world with a conflict and everything, lord help me