#its even more interesting seeing how they handle timelines. fascinating

[screechingsandwichhologram]

(fascinated by countryhumans, in like a bug under microscope way)

[mushiemellows]

Regarding your thoughts on Franky being the Strawhat to die, do you think that could potentially lead to the "bad ending"? The one where Franky becomes a full robot before being made into a ship? Maybe someone (potentially Robin) finds what's left of him and tries to bring him back that way? Maybe he comes back wrong as a result? I figure in that state all that would be left is a brain, which was more than Franky ever wanted to lose.

oh my god my friend this is one of those like ideal messages that cracks my brain open and looks right at my inside thoughts. Yes. Yes. This line of thinking is what inspired me to even start obsessively writing franky fic in the first place. I'm so fascinated by The Line with him-- simulacra, ship of theseus type shit. It's the core of what makes him so interesting to me, and it's what makes Kuma such a cool thematic foil for him, too. I've like, fallen DEEP into the Bad Ship Timeline recently, even more so than where I started.

When I say I think he's going to be the Strawhat that dies, I guess I should add the caveat that I DO think they'll take the sort of cop out direction of like, dying and getting rebuilt. Especially with all the other robotics scientists on the field now. But a robot/pascifista type simulacra of Franky would be a hollow revival; he would still be v much dead unless they kept at least a part of him like his brain. The huge horror of Boat Timeline to me would be the process of him doing it to himself (which is the horror of Franky to even BEGIN WITH, right?).

The first fic I ever posted has been looooong deleted, but I wrote it essentially to have a conversation between his genetic clone and his pacifista, trying to square their relationship to each other and to the original person. I wasn't happy with the fic for a number of reasons, which is part of why I deleted it and reworked it. But then that was retooled into What Makes a Man which you are severely tempting me to return to (tho I will warn, this fic reeks of Early Writing. I've learned a LOT since i initially started it). I never finished the second and third acts, which were the whole crux of why I wanted to write the fic to begin with. It would be fun to keep going down this fic line. I LOVE a reanimation story, and I especially love a Came Back Wrong story (uhhhh spoiler for the direction I was planning on taking the fic in, i guess). And ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY when its a lovers come back wrong story OUGHHHH. idk, its strange that the Frankenstein angle isn't explored more in Franky stories?

At the same time, I'd love to figure out how to push the Boat Timeline angle. The other path I wish Oda had the balls to pursue would be a Dark Franky/mechanical possession/reprogramming sub plot, but idk if we have the time for that in Final Saga. But esp given recent teased twist, I'd love to see this happen. and i was hoping it would happen in egghead Like I LOVE the idea of him taking and taking and taking away from himself until he is like literally a brain in a jar left (and the way I write him, 37 isn't actually far from that state. I'm glad I got to touch on that even more in Handle With Care and Showoff). ALSO re: boat timeline, I think it would be very sweet if someone helped to build him that wasn't Robin? Obv I love the lovers angle. But there's so many direction it could go??? Usopp building him back, MADS building him back, Vegapunk building him, Iceburg building him back?? All of Galley-La and his family and Zambai helping turn him into a warship as a final act of love after "death"?? There's SO many ways it could go, it would be so fun to explore wow.

I love love love talking about this, thank you so much and please please feel free to talk more about your thoughts too on robot+ship+brain horror/beauty in the grotesque aaaaahhhh.

[not-poignant]

salut pia!

ive been wondering? how do you handle/change modes when you’re writing across AUs/fics? i mean not only the personality/attribute changes (like role reversal with ef and gwyn) but also change in…oh how do i say this..when a character is a MC in one but side/minor in another? bc they are different devices to different stories, how do you keep an overview of how much you reveal, go into so as to not side track from the main story or change the “flow”. example: whenever theres mentions of gender identity and betas somethin somethin feeling like omegas somethin somethin comes up “casually” sirens go off in my head and then i realise wait faber is NOT the MC in this story this is not about him him but its a little bit about him him. and then i feel like im standing behind a glass wall looking from Utb/Utg to Utr screaming at faber but he is a NPC here so we dont know whats going on in his head. that scene with ef and him eating carrots?…. i would give my right foot and skin tone copic markers to be a fly on the wall in fabers POV (the timelines probably wont align for it to happen but would you ever consider sth like this?? a scene overlapp across stories i mean?)

i’ve mostly read within that universe but ive also read spoils where your characters have completely different..positions? roles? weight? than in rainbow. so yeah how do you keep it all “appropriate” or “fitting” for their roles in different stories. like a puppet master

cheers xx

Hi anon,

So this is going to be not very helpful, but I don't write this stuff down for the most part.

This is the stuff I find so easy that this is why this is my job, in a way. I don't have a list of 'different Efnisiens' to keep track of, or 'different Gwyns.' They become themselves within the story. If I read a chapter of the story I get back into it (actually often I just need to listen to a song or put on the right playlist). Every version of a character is kind of there right now. I know how each would respond to something, and how those things would be the same or vary based on life experiences and the question etc.

I don't do really much at all to change modes. I just...do. There is no overview. It's all in my head. I'd say some of this goes down to how long / how many years I've spent studying character and dialogue overall. But even when I was younger I found this pretty easy, and transplanting characters into different situations to see how they'd react similarly / differently was one of my favourite kinds of exercises even when I was a teenager.

Some of it is knowing focus. Faber's side story is interesting, for those who like Faber and/or Underline the Red, hints about his gender struggles are fascinating, but they can only ever be hints, because I'm mindful that many readers aren't interested in Faber except as a minor character, and haven't read Underline the Red.

The focus is always Efnisien and Gary. Other characters can have their own lives and motivations, but it won't be more than that in the main story. Though I can go into a bit more detail because of the length of the story which is really nice for building out side characters / ensemble cast.

As to crossover perspectives, I don't know! I know we'll see some of Faber's perspective of Efnisien arriving at Hillview in Underline the Red, but obviously things impact characters differently at different times, I don't know what will be most important by the time we get to Faber's side of things. I used to write alternative perspectives as side chapters for Fae Tales though, and that could be a lot of fun.

so yeah how do you keep it all “appropriate” or “fitting” for their roles in different stories.

I saw a video by Hank Green I think once where he said the reason sportspeople are so good at their sports is in part because they're physically often the best at that sport anyway. Like, ballerinas have a certain build, swimmers have a certain build, and any training they do works to support that and make them better, but they were 'built' out for those sports in the first place. Some people have yoga bodies. I have a swimming body and swimming shoulders.

And I feel like this is true sometimes with writing. I don't try to keep it appropriate or fitting, I just know that the ensemble characters can't matter as much as the main characters in the course of the story. That's what a story is. That's what a main character and an ensemble character is. I would say years of experience has made this part of writing mostly easy and fun for me, so I don't have to think or overthink about this stuff anymore. At worst I might think 'was that too much Faber? Eh, it's helping Efnisien, it's still important to the plot and his character arc.'

I'm 'built' for writing big worlds with big ensemble casts where all the characters are important but where the focus is only on a couple of main characters per story. I'm built for character-focused stories and seem to be very built for transplanting characters I love into different worlds (and different roles) to see how that changes things. I started wanting to write these kinds of worlds and characters when I was 10 years old, and had my first sprawling ensemble fantasy series started by the age of 11. By the age of 15 I had a 3 novel fantasy trilogy built out with about 20 significant characters, and it was ridiculous and silly but that was what I wanted to write.

And I guess you could say I haven't really changed, I've just gotten better at it. I hope to keep getting better at it! The challenge now is to figure out how to break down some of these skills so I can share them with others. But...I do think there's an element of 'this is just what I love, it's a special interest, I don't know how to convey that I have 30 years of special interest in reading, writing, and studying this thing across television, manga, manhwa, fanfiction, AUs, and fictional series.' There will be teachable skills in that, but I don't know how much osmosis / absorption / and being obsessed with entangled tapestries of stories makes up what I do.

In some ways it would be 'better' if I was built for more conventional storytelling. My bank account might like that more! BUT, I'm doing okay where I'm at, because I love it, and I try to share that with other people and see if I can tell stories that resonate with them too.

(There are aspects of what I do that are very hard for me - timelines, aspects of worldbuilding, pacing in the first arc, and so on, but the actual characterisation part, and creating multiple versions of the same character is as easy as breathing. I could give you four more different versions of Faber in an hour. Maybe even twenty minutes. It's not hyperbole, it's just...how I daydream, what I think about. And it's fun!)

I'm very very very lucky that other folks are willing to read the same characters across different narratives, because it's a very strange thing to do in writing outside of fanfiction, case in point being that we almost never see any other professional authors doing it with their original works. x.x

[walnutcookie]

CAN I HEAR ABT YOU TSP X COOKIE RUN AU PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEAS

AUAUUAHWOWHAOHDKF THMAKYOU SO MUCHH FOR THIS ASK /GEN YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD IVE BEEN BRAINROTTINF OVER THIS AU .....

i dont know what to talk about specifically so BLEHHH WORD VOMIT TIME💥💥💥 ill try to seperate them into sections so its a liiiittle easier to read ?

sorry if this isnt written the best its late and im tired GZHDJBFF

Storykeeper

SO . The narrator in this au is timekeeper AKA storykeeper since. keeper of the story :]c shes like a mix of the tsp narrator and timekeeper where shes very dedicated to her story and gets worried about stanley sometimes but also she often gets BORED and enjoys to see stanley stray off the path and even encourages him to!!!

The Stanleys

these are the four stanleys

almond, walnut, roquefort, and cappuccino

sk just Plucked them out of a regular timeline and put them in her little story to watch them scurry around like rats in a maze. All of the stanleys are in completely different office buildings but in rare instances they collide and cause anomalies where two or more stanleys encounter each other which can cause a whole lot of confusion!! sk also puts them in the same office building for fun sometimes👍

sk is everywhere all at once so theyre able to monitor each stanley at the same time :] and to clarify just like canon tsp none of the stanleys can actually see her its more like a voice inside their head. The stanleys cannot talk although they can still think!! they cant communicate with storykeeper and she cant read their minds but they can communicate telepathically with each other if close enough

ALSO all of them are just called stanley!!! sk had to give them different colored ties to differentiate them (now they look like tally hall/j). three of them are trans women and one is nonbinary but theyre all just. Misgendered since they are taking the role OF stanley (this is not fun for the stanleys but there is nothing they can do about it)

Almond

i like thinking about how all of the different stanleys act a lot. almond is the more Serious one who tries to follow every direction. Unfortunately after like the third time of getting the standard ending storykeeper gets bored and just Does things to him to try to get him to do something more interesting. This comes in the form of The Bucket when he starts hearing his daughters voice coming from it and becomes instantly very overprotective and attatched to it <3 he would do anything for that bucket.

even kill.

sk tells him that he has to kill cappuccino or else the bucket gets it and he does so Very enthusiastically!!! by choking him and bashing her head in with a dozen coffee mugs

but yeah. He obeys most commands :] sk thinks hes kind of bland but his dedication to that bucket is fascinating to her

Walnut

Walnut is VERY curious. A very interesting one indeed as she both obeys and disobeys sk depending on how appealing the options are to her!!!! literally all she wants to do is explore the offices she is going to check EVERY door handle and look in EVERY nook and cranny and crevice. she is going to examine every paper and sift through every desk. sk is very annoyed by this as it means that she is Slow as hell when actually going through the story but walnut tends to do some very unexpected things which is entertaining sometimes!!! In the end she is naturally drawn toward any sort of mystery so she can be persuaded to give up exploring so that she can solve it faster :]c

although she starts to become a little uneasy wandering through the seemingly endless building without a single other soul in sight and thus she is also given The Bucket!! it reminds her of her mother and she carries it around because she feels protected and not so alone :)

Roquefort

Roquefort is by far the most entertaining to storykeeper. they are absolutely unpredictable and they manage to find every single choice that wasnt intended to be possible!!! sk cant even be upset because she is FASCINATED by them. it gets to a point where she just creates new scenarios for them just to see what theyd do and she is very entertained by how they manage to surprise them every time

roquefort is also offered a bucket though refuses it. and then it appears in the next room. and the next. and Oh god they are TERRIFIED of that bucket because it keeps FOLLOWING them. they cannot stand it. they want it gone

Cappuccino

Cappuccino is basically the opposite of almond! girlie is so pissed that hes being told what to do all the time that she goes out of her way to do almost everything sk tells her NOT to do. storykeeper is infuriated by this at first but then sees the potential in it because it is VERY fun to use cappuccino as her own personal lab rat/stress ball and just! Do awful things to him!!! like have almond beat the shit out of him<3

he also is given a bucket but has the standard Attatchment to it as seen in tsp for no special reason other than its a bucket. Good way to make him do things!

OKAY thats all ill talk about for now but THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK AGAIN!!!!<333 thiz was so fun to type it made me so happy auauaua,,, if anyone has any further questions id be happy to answer ! :3

[illprotectyou-hearteyes]

Much Ado About Nothing: No Good Very Bad Version

Hi hello I'm having my semi-yearly Much Ado fixation. I was going to handle this with an overly long comparative post about productions I've seen, then quickly realized it would be too expansive for even a 'read more' to cover its sins. So instead I'll be spamming the dash with individual rants on productions. Because this is all I can currently talk about.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First up: the worst Shakespeare adaptation I have ever seen.

Much Ado About Nothing (2012), dir. Joss Whedon:

There are no pictures for this one because I simply will not be revisiting this film to find them. Sorry.

It's so rotten ya'll. Yeah it's on me for putting on Joss Whedon's Much Ado, but it's short and my parent's copy of it was right there one day so I put it in. And then kept it in out of morbid fascination.

Full disclosure I watched it maybe a decade ago. But to my memory it's so bad it almost circles round to being an instructive case of How Not To Do Shakespeare.

My understanding is that Whedon basically invited a bunch of friends over for the weekend on a whim to film this, which I knew going in. So I wasn't expecting a polished masterpiece or anything, but one would like to imagine you'd get some fun, playful improv energy from a bunch of friends coming together to create something on a tight timeline like that. You don't

I'm not going to judge the actors' abilities on their performances in this on account of how hastily it was was tossed together. But not since high school have I heard Shakespeare read in a way that made it seem more dead-in-the-water. The lines read as if the actors are reciting from cue cards without having been given 5 minutes to figure the rhythm of the verse or what the fuck their characters are on about. For all I know they might have been.

Actually, my apologies to my high school classmates. We were a small group of theatre and/or literature nerds, and in retrospect we were probably insufferable, but we had an interest in the topic and two weeks to read each text and a great teacher who gave us notes to help us understand and emote the text when we read in class. We sounded better than this.

Okay okay. So by now I can't remember many specific choices this production made, But I sure do recall that instead of leaving Beatrice and Benedick's past to the ambiguous history implied between them by a few key lines of dialogue and the general built-up tension between them, Whedon chose to explain away this history with a flashback. In which the whole complexity of their past is that they slept together one time and Benedick left without saying anything. It's one of the stupidest adaptation choices I've ever seen, because. because. Okay look:

1. The (from what I can recall) two whole lines of vague dialogue about Benedick and Beatrice's history manages to imply so many more interesting potentials than—that. I'll save you the close reading in this already too-long post, but they gesture towards what may well have been the beginnings of a romance between them at one time; a potential fear of commitment on Benedick's part; some action that Beatrice felt as betrayal, and perhaps deception. These suggestions segue into what you see of them in the present: e.g. Benedick's insecurities—his misogynistic obsession with the idea of women's unfaithfulness, which at times topples towards the admission of fear that he's specifically afraid no one would be faithful to him. Further, in the course of the play choosing Beatrice means rejecting the boy's club that has given Benedick companionship, yes, but also protected and cheered on the worst of his behaviours—might he (in presumably less dire circumstances) in the past have been less willing to stand by brash Beatrice in the face of their teasing, and perhaps scorn? Or perhaps it was simply that their inability to 'woo peaceably' made a ruin of matters at a time before they built up sufficient trust in their mutual affection to take the poison out of it. At the end of it, there's no knowing the specifics, but the relationship in the present is tangled and interesting enough to stretch into a complex of potential pasts. Whedon's pat summary of that past in a silent insertion does not contradict those potentials, and could tie in well enough with some, but he put in no work into so tying. Instead he seeks to swallow the might-have-beens into a single, pat event, waving away the feeling of calcified layers of affection and resentment in to explain away their history without deepening it. 2. If he had to try explaining their present dynamic through a single past event, it would have been cool if he'd put at least a gesture at a thought towards selecting an event that would be thematically resonant. Again, it could even have been the exact same event if it tied in with anything at all. If I'm being really very generous despite the nothing he has done to earn my goodwill, I'll admit that owning up to the vulnerability of using words honestly to express their emotions is one of the things the characters need to learn to do, and it's a failure on this point that causes the rift in Whedon's version. But 'communication is good' is such a skin-deep layer-one read of all the play has to say about words, about their pitiful insufficiency and frightening strength, the reality they can lay bare and the terrible viciousness they can disguise. 3. The choice also hobbles the dramatic tension of the accusation of Hero. For as much as the accusation concerns Hero's supposed cheating on Claudio, there is an inescapable emphasis on female 'purity' and chastity. The weight even the most sympathetic characters place on the mindset is quite unbalancing enough to many modern viewers, especially when the production is set in a place such as present-day America, as this one is. Having Benedick and Beatrice sleep together in a sequence that implies all the issue lies with the lack of communication and in no way suggests danger to Beatrice's reputation and future from the act itself results in the 3rd act turn coming even further left of field, and makes the characters' ethical perspectives borderline incoherent. 4. Okay yeah it's starting to feel weird that I've spent that many words ranting about a quick insert of Benedick and Beatrice having sex. You have to understand I have so much pent up rage about this production and this is one of the only concrete details I can recall to direct all that at. To clarify I'd love for them to have all the sex they want and be as conflicted about it as they fancy as long as it is thematically coherent with the narrative. Yeah I'm also not sure that sentence made this any better. Can you tell I'm asexual

Anyhoo that's it for the ranting. This production does have precisely 2 things to recommend it:

Nathan Fillion is good at Shakespeare apparently. I have no particular feelings about him as an actor outside of this, but he is The person in this film who says the lines like he has any clue what words are coming out of his mouth. Also, he plays Dogberry. And I'll be honest—I usually find the Dogberry scenes a bit of a drag. I looked forward to them so hard in this production. They were the only times I laughed. Dogberry suddenly seemed vibrant, alive, the soul of the play. I understood him for the first time. If I was in a dark parallel universe where this was the only Shakespeare I'd watched, I'd remember Dogberry as his greatest creation.

It's made by Joss Whedon, which means I get to be mean about it without feeling bad :) However I offer my sincere condolences to any decent artists who got roped into his vanity trashfire. Except Nathan Fillion, who somehow came off looking better for it. Any warm feelings I have towards the man are for making some minutes of this atrocity bearable.

Fin.

[tealmoth]

also "darkfic au that got out of control" is such a funny description to me 😭 im curious as to why you think so personally i thought it was pretty balanced in heavy and lighthearted moments and considering the themes like the effects of imperialism i dont see why it wouldnt be handled as such. havent watched in a while tho idk

oooohh okay so this’ll be a fun thing to answer because i’ve been desperate to ramble about ‘03 plot points to anyone who will listen all week. so for me, honestly, the darkfic vibes come more from how deeply it dredges into the dark aspects, if that makes any sense?? most of what’s “dark” in ‘03 already exists and is explored in brotherhood, like the imperialism aspects as you mentioned, as well as grief and trauma and everything else that comes prepackaged with fma’s core story. but brotherhood handled these in a very shonen way (which is to be expected, of course). the darkness pushes the characters forward, makes them fight on. even when they’re at the brink, they’re called back by a loved one, or by their own convictions, and it retains an overall positive feel.

meanwhile in ‘03, i get the specific vibe that the writers looked at the story they already had, and asked themselves “how can this be worse??”

(inserting a read more because i’m about to go on a MASSIVE tangent, sorry.)

and so, here are some of the specific darker aspects that stood out the most to me:

the build-up to nina is given far more screentime and its place in the timeline is totally different. not only are the elrics so much younger here, but they’re also essentially a part of the tucker family for the better part of several months iirc. they also witness the direct aftermath of her death at the hands of scar (which is also implied to be FAR more gruesome here), whereas in brotherhood they find out from riza the morning after it happens.

there’s the whole barry ordeal which afaik doesn’t serve much purpose other than it, well, being kinda neat to see pre-armor barry. and i could totally be misremembering here and/or missing something important but the whole episode just stands out to me as “hey, i don’t think that ed’s had enough trauma yet. let’s sprinkle in some attempted murder.”

everything with the laboratory, holy shit. tucker’s reappearance, the attempts at recreating nina, the prisoners, everything with kimblee, the way ed almost activates the array, ALL OF IT is insane in this version.

al’s doubts about his memories and his origins is a longer arc and leads to more conflict with ed in this version.

mustang and winry’s parents. mustang’s suicide attempt. everything with mustang that’s not comic relief (which there’s still plenty of).

as stated in the tags of my first ‘03 post, the utilization of rose’s character is a really intense departure (while interesting!!) that completely took me aback.

the entirely different lore surrounding the homunculi is both incredibly fascinating and a lot to take in, and it leads to them being far more mentally vulnerable and tormented characters than they are in brotherhood. the contrast alone between the development greed gets in brotherhood (using him as an example since he effectively has the most character growth out of the homunculi there) and the development that lust, wrath, and sloth get in ‘03 stands out the most to me.

sloth in general. it’s a wildly fascinating take and, in addition to REALLY hammering in the themes surrounding their mother’s transmutation, also stands to provide even more trauma for the elrics.

and on that subject, the adults are far less present for the boys in this version. that’s not to say that they’re like “parents” or anything in brotherhood, but they’re a lot more openly concerned for them in a personal, affectionate way in that show. whereas here, especially in the early segments, i’m pretty sure that ed could have died in a ditch somewhere and they wouldn’t have noticed for at least a week.

scar’s characterization is more vulnerable here and both his death and the events leading up to it are insane.

and that’s not even getting into everything with dante, which deserves its own post.

with all that said, i’m also not even done with this show yet. i still have four eps left!!

but, all rambling aside, that’s what specifically gave me the darkfic sort of vibe. not to demean the show or reduce it to fanfic terms, or anything; it’s still very interesting and competent writing. but it just gives me so much whiplash when compared to brotherhood’s overarching feelings of hope and the ability to fight back and change the future for the better. it feels soul-nourishing to me, in a way. meanwhile, ‘03 is like a cavalcade of trauma, all provoked by the question “you know what’d be really fucked up??”

[spinjitsuburst]

i honestly can't stand skybound on its own yes i know i havent shut up about it in like a week blame when you think you're all alone and bending but never breaking okay this is not my fault and before skybound i wasn't the biggest fan of jay. and skybound didn't really FIX it per say, jay was still nowhere near my favorite character until i watched prime empire, but the season focusing on jay's character and WHY he acts the way he does and the ways he changes after the fact is so fascinating

yes, the way jay acts with nya at the beginning is So Very Cringe and Bad, but as the season goes on and he talks to nadakhan more, it's kind of clear he doesn't view himself very highly, and is placing his self-worth on the fact that he can't win over nya. he does still care for and love nya (and honestly the writing of their relationship is so bad in the early show you kind of have to grasp at straws to even see that) but it's being hindered by how blind he is towards his attitude

jay's scared of being unlovable and alone. and he ends up BEING alone when he gets captured on nadakhan's ship, and you see the character that was previously thought to be the most selfish and scared of the bunch putting up with actual torture in order to protect his friends and the rest of ninjago. the fandom definitely plays it up for the angst potential, but jay was quite literally beaten on-screen. and if you go back and rewatch some earlier scenes in the show, jay often jumps into action without thinking to protect others. it's clear he's a lot stronger and braver than he puts on, and it's so fascinating to see his normal facade crumble when put in a position without anyone to protect or fight alongside.

and after this season, after everything happens, you can SEE the way jay's attitude shifts. the biggest evidence is the beginning of season 7; jay was terrified of the idea that time was screwing up, probably because he'd JUST erased an entire timeline, that he was desperately trying to get everyone to ignore it and go home, until he heard Wu could be directly in danger. he immediately yells to head to the monastery, jumps off the ship without thinking, trying to get a handle on the situation as quick as possible. it's a trauma response, after everything he's been through, and his protective tendencies about finding wu are put on full display in a way that wasn't as noticeable before

i've always viewed prime empire as the season that kind of reflects jay's growth since skybound. how much he needs the people around him, how he's able to assess the danger of a situation quickly (in the prime empire shorts it takes like two seconds for him to figure out soemthing is deeply wrong with the game), and how much he knows what it's like to be abandoned. like his change since early ninjago is literally the KEY to defeating the villain of the season, without jay unagami would've won

i have no idea if any of this makes sense, i just kind of started rambling but it's just interesting to see the things jay tried to push down and hide about himself in early ninjago start showing after season 6. skybound still sucks overall but jay's character and how it's reflected from those events is so fascinating and i love it. heck, he's accepted himself so much that when asked in season 9 how he can make jokes and laugh in a perilous situation, he says this

i don't think he would've had that level of honesty about his coping mechanisms if season 6 hadn't happened. but that's just me ghjkdfshgkjfhskj

Genuine question for all my Skybound people out there:

(If you know me) I obviously do not like the season very much, but I see a lot of people who do enjoy it saying they do so because of Jay's arc, and his great character development that season.

And as someone who has only ever hated Jay more after watching it, I am genuinely interested in what it is y'all are referring to specifically. Is it just that we got some more character background for him in terms of being adopted? Is it the stuff with him and cole? Is it just the fact that he gets a bunch of screen time? Is it the interactions with nya?

Again, nothing but curious intentions here, I'm just genuinely invested in the fandom perception of the season.

[be-a-snake-stab-your-brother]

Oh ho ho ho prepare thyselves, I have some thoughts about Loki's appearance in the latest What If... episode

Let's jump into this.

Okay. So Loki shows up with an (if not the) entire contingent of Einherjar and the Warriors Three (Four, really), giving the same damn speech he did during Infinity War, minus the "Odinson" portion.

Okay. So Loki shows up with an (if not the) entire contingent of Einherjar and the Warriors Three (Four, really), giving the same damn speech he did during Infinity War, minus the "Odinson" portion.

This isn't a mistake. Loki, at this point, damn well knows who he really is and why. And assuming that events up to this point follow the same trajectory as the "sacred timeline" (does anyone else think the "Watcher" is just Kang hanging out with a bowl of popcorn overlooking the multiverse because that's how I'm reading it...) Anyway, assuming everything we see in the first Thor movie holds true up until Thor's murder...

And that's just the thing, isn't it? It's Thor's murder that is the "nexus event." Loki comes screaming down to Midgard, apparently having secured the loyalty of all of Asgard as its acting King (he's still holding Gungnir, after all) so something must have gone on behind the scenes for everyone to start trusting him. Even when they obviously know he is Jotun.

AGAIN, HE LEADS WITH THE WHOLE JOTUNHEIM THING. Doesn't deny it, proclaims it in front of the entire Asgardian army. This...this is a very different Loki than we saw in the first Thor movie. Whatever shame he held about being Jotun, he's at least come to partial terms with it. And it's not the reason he ends up taking over Midgard/Earth (more on this later).

Loki isn't on Midgard because he wants a kingdom. He's the "rightful" King of Jotunheim, not the actual one. And he's actually quite forward about the fact he's rallied the entire Asgardian army to avenge his adopted brother's death. He loves Thor that much. (As if Asgard would deny him this. Of course not, they'd want their "pound of flesh," or more, just like Loki does.)

Remember the Loki series? When Classic Loki just wanted to see his brother again? This is the same thing.

Now here's what I find really fascinating.

When Loki goes for his show of strength, when he declares he will reduce Midgard to ruins (specifically, "ash and ice") if he doesn't get the "pound of flesh" aka the entire corpse he deserves (and just...the meta of this...the pound of flesh being a reference to Merchant of Venice and Tommy H being a Shakespeare expert is just perfection on every level)

Anyway, Loki goes for the bloody Casket of Ancient Winters.

Again, Loki has Gungnir, which is not only a weapon no one would laugh at, but a symbol of the Asgardian monarchy, and yet he takes them all out with the Jotunheim Casket. I mean, fascinating. And Loki doesn't turn blue while handling it, which I believe (contrary to some internet opinion) means he has mastered the Casket as its wielder. Meaning he's come to terms with his identity. Even if he still hates Odin, who may be dead or alive at this juncture (Frigga is most definitely alive, or else Loki would be having a breakdown). I find this choice utterly fascinating.

So I want to reiterate that through this entire exchange, Loki is on Earth for a single purpose: vengeance. He wants his brother's killer. He shows no signs of desire to take over the planet, to subjugate its people, and he has never met Thanos (in any iteration) because he never let go on the Rainbow Bridge. It's not until later, not until Hank Pym spills some beans regarding Fury, that Loki seems to switch tracks.

So Fury and Loki strike a deal and Loki (illusioned as Fury because that is most definitely one of the powers Loki has) outs Hank Pym as the murderer of the proto-Avengers, who is on a revenge tour due to his daughter's death during her SHIELD days (which was likely an alt-universe Bucky Barnes/aka the Winter Solider seeing as it was in Odessa and that's just an entirely different story to deconstruct).

But here's the interesting part:

Remember, Fury is not Fury here. I doubt the real Nick Fury would ever refer to Thor as a "Prince of Asgard," and so we know this conversation is happening between Loki and Hank (and wow, I a) never thought I'd type that sentence and b) I cannot believe Marvel got bloody Michael Douglas to play this character, holy hell).

But the important thing to remember here is Hank's point of view. The way he casually says Fury would have recruited Thor for his initiative. Hints that if Fury had done so, he would have considered Thor as an expendable hero. Outright says he would prefer Fury's death over Thor's and this is the moment I believe Loki decides to conquer Earth. Because he cannot trust these warring factions and his brother is dead because of it.

And Loki wipes the floor with Hank. Think about it. Hank has managed to kill all of the Avengers minus Steve Rogers (only due to the fact Steve was doing his popsicle impression at the time). He managed to kill Thor.

And Loki destroys him within a few minutes. I mean, what a testament to our deity of mischief.

But has Loki really gotten his pound of flesh? Hank is taken away, not dead. Thor is still gone, forever. And there was enough logic in what Hank said during their confrontation (after all, Loki would know about being used as a weapon, or at the very least a means to an end. He had that conversation with Odin. He will not stand to see it repeated with Thor). There was enough in that exchange with Hank, there was enough in the negotiations with Fury...that Loki directs his army (his legitimate army who does not rebel against him) to take over Earth in what we can only assume is a mostly peaceful coup (minus some frigid temperatures here and there, but you know, we can just say Loki was counteracting global warming at the same time.) No Chitauri, no Thanos, no utter craziness.

Just...retribution on this planet for making Loki lose what was dearest to him.

[kamil-a]

right, okay, even more thoughts. check out how hard i can [ramble] PSHOOOOOO. they may feel disjointed for a number of reasons. also again i did bingeread the entire hoshino manga at once while not feeling my best so i may have skimmed or forgotten information- preemptive "oops" for that if so lol

-blood is so humorless in this manga!! what im thinking about right now is the bath scene where he's just complaining about alice behind her back... in game she was there and they were having a kicking war under the water! she was lying to him and elliot about not being able to handle drinking! she complained he needs to watch his kids and hes like oh no, those are elliot's kids. it was a relaxed and friendly atmosphere! I'm pretty sure we dont get the box in box gift at the beginning either, or alice telling him to stfu about his tea special interest, or alice sizing him up as a second grade bully on a playground...basically he's such a funny comedic character and that is one of his main sources of appeal imo. so that's gone.

-but we ALSO don't go hard on "be my bad boy amv dangerous mama im in love with a criminal romance novel ohhh i shouldnt but it feels so good" sex appeal either? because right at the point where they would've had sex for the first time he swerves into kills you road, and then the story has to be about that instead.

-WAIT HE DOESNT ACT LIKE HE HAS ~A DISEASE~ (FELL IN LOVE) EITHER.... OR "IM SO TIRED I WISH ANYONE NOT TIRED WAS DEAD"..... SO MANY FUNNY MOMENTS....

-so like if he isnt funny and he isnt sexy why are people supposed to care about him as a love interest.... -_-

-i halfway take back my feelings of blood being ooc in that kind of anger at "youre too friendly with every guy" way. i think its a reaction that's possible for him to have because this game enjoys jealousy tropes. he does get extremely jealous of her friendships with particular other guys, and reacts....... in a variety of ways,

-interestingly though not with julius! his reaction to her friendship with julius is more like 😬😬 okay so you dont know it but this is making a political statement you may not want to make.

-twice in manga ive seen him shoot around the tower for julius "taking her away" tho. maybe its a nonstay thing...

-i just dont think he should be acting like that because the situation alice gets into in the manga is one he should never have to react *to* because *it should not be possible for all of these events to happen in one timeline*.

-the half i am NOT rescinding is him accusing her of cheating on her ex/blaming her for that relationship's failure because we SEE him react to that in game and his kneejerk reaction is different.*

*from what i remember, he was like wtf thats gross i cant believe he did that to you, but also like you were in a bad relationship.... without me ;)???**

**that segment makes me feel really nasty so i dont want to return to it just now for posting's sake, along with not wanting to engage with , uh, beloved comfort media, on tisha b'av night. even the part that is uncomfortable.***

*** i debated holding off making this post till tomorrow night but ultimately lost the battle of will.

-it is extremely funny to me that so far like every manga author ive seen do a bloodalice plotline does the "omg are he and vivaldi a secret couple" thing because they clearly don't want to go the "i cant bring myself to tell him out loud i want to have sex in a bed and not a couch" route. i cant blame them but also , IF I WERE COACH, etc etc.

-idk im just very fascinated with telling bloodalice' story as a bunch of sex that is, while consensual (heres where i tell QR to shhhhh), bringing up a lot of conflicting and upsetting feelings in alice that she is hurting the relationship and the friendship its based on by Not Talking About. and the double-level of like... a late teen exploring adulthood/sex for the first time while also being a person older than that who is also navigating having sex for the first time because she has never moved past being like 18-9 emotionally.

-not that not having sex in your teens is a requirement of emotional maturity but that i personally headcanon she has never seeked another relationship after her first one. was too hurt and then lorina died and all processes kind of stopped for her.

-BUT THATS JUST ME,

-ANYWAY

-blood does have a "wants to kill her" plotline in game, so the manga does have its roots in that.

- in his route it's the same "i want to go against the belief that outsiders are lovable by killing one". its been a while but im pretty sure that gets settled fairly quickly so we have more time to either like or dislike couches, etc.

-in elliot's route he gets threatening towards her in a "i wonder whos side elliot would take if i killed you?" way towards the middle-end, and then elliot is like Um Hey Boss Can We Talk Privately and the matter is never brought up again. (I wish we got to see that convo. "can you not threaten to kill my girlfriend" "okay youre right sorry, that was rude", lmao)

-ace seems to want to kill her because he realized that it is not in fact the "meeting an outsider" that changes your life for the better, it's something else? which i guess plays down the sort of "youre like meeee haha" depressionsexual angle he takes in game, or maybe this alice just isnt visibly depressed enough for his tastes lmao

-alice in general, as i keep saying, seems to me to be kept a lot more hands-clean and "pure"- she doesnt touch clocks she doesnt drink she doesn't bathe with the guys, she never has a bizzare "murder is okay maybe??" moment (THAT I REMEMBER), etc. i feel like despite That Whole Plotline theres less making out/sex than in the game too?

-does she go on less self hating rants or am i just forgetting....

-if we MUST center this story around people wanting to kill alice for reasons related to her outsideriness i wish we got to heavily play up the "completed love" segment.

-a completed love.... that alice thinks the purest love is the love for a woman who's died. and that she feels she will never achieve being loved in that manner. near death experiences should be a perfect time to meditate on that, right? does she feel like she can achieve it? is she afraid that even in death, blood will ensure her memory is "some flirty girl who kisses up to everyone"- that she will Lose at Being Girl no matter what?

-i dont remember getting that though.... missed opportunities....

-i think positioning blood as an antagonist who wants to counter beliefs about outsiders by killing her couldve worked if he simply did not know her very well and then got to know her later on and was like oh i see. nevermind.

-oh, but the strangling was unrelated to this wasnt it? it was as punishment for walking into him and vivaldi's garden. which i think is a waste of like.... everything blood says about guilt, punishment, etc regarding elliot and that he sees the same in alice. couldve been a ~youve been a bad girl~ sexy scene lmao!!!! but he's apparently not allowed to have any sex appeal in this manga, so :'|

-couldve even tied itself emotionally to alice and lorina- siblings who can find peace in a garden but cant , for whatever reason, carry the story of "two siblings having pleasant conversation" outside of that space (for the dupres because it is dangerous, for the liddells because one of them is dead).

-man it makes me sad that hoshino's blood says she mustve cheated on her ex. dont SAY that to her dont you know what he DID-

-aaaaa AAAA OH NO MANGA ONLY READERS DONT KNOW HOW ROMANTIC AND SWEET HIS BALL SCENE IS IN GAME

-I thought it was adorable, anyway......

-he lies down in a guest bed like alice i am sooooooooooooooooo tired from dancing i wanna kiss you but im too tired you have to come over here and kiss me................

-thats all for now.

-FOR NOW...

[prurientpuddlejumper]

Being Fake Soulmates with Dr. Chilton (Part 6)

<- Part 5

Frederick Chilton x Reader | The Good Place crossover

Final chapter! Warning: The Good Place spoilers, and a timeline that makes perfect sense because Jeremy Bearimy, baby. 

2,800 words

“No way. It’s too dangerous!”

“I thought you said we were in this together?” Chilton quirked a brow, eliciting a petulant grumble. You crossed your arms.

“Or maybe you think I’m expendable, so you’re willing to take risks with my life. Afterlife. Whatever.”

Frederick Chilton, who was not, as originally advertised, your soulmate, nonetheless clasped your hand with gentle tenderness. I would never do anything to hurt you is what a normal person would say in that moment, and perhaps his eyes said it, somewhere deep in their searching pools of green. But Dr. Chilton had a repressed way about him, tending toward overly clinical just stating the facts (or the sarcasm). Anything but genuine, vulnerable, sentimentality.

He guided you by your hand to sit down beside him on the baroque loveseat in one of his many living rooms, studies, and salons. After you settled yourself on the velvet cushion, he leaned his shoulder against yours in that quiet way he showed affection.

“After reviewing the town records,” he said, “I believe we may be the only two humans in the neighborhood. Some of the residents are far too dull—Chidi Anagonye, the moral philosophy professor who spent his life writing a single manuscript, Jianyu the silent monk—while others are too perfect—Glen, that one who is constantly volunteering, Tahani, the philanthropist. Real people have flaws, secrets, hobbies. I can only be certain of myself and you.”

“How’d you figure out I’m real?”

“I didn’t. I simply refuse to accept the alternative,” he said with a sad smile, and you began to think Dr. Chilton was sentimental after all.

***

Their voices were muffled even with your ear pressed to the door of Michael’s office—not that it mattered much what they were talking about. You were just waiting for the signal, and at that moment, it came. Their footsteps and voices grew louder as Frederick and Michael approached, and the door handle clicked.

“—which is why cannibalism loses more good-person points than defenestration but fewer than chewing loudly on a crowded bus.”

“Fascinating. I never thought about it that way,” said Chilton, looking genuinely disturbed.

You flattened yourself against the wall next to the door, thinking thin thoughts as the pair exited the office. A tall houseplant barely disguised your presence, and if Michael had any kind of peripheral vision, he would see you standing there plain as day.

But Dr. Chilton spoke animatedly, fixing him with a challenging laser-stare as he asked a probing follow-up question. Locked in Chilton’s eyes, Michael failed to notice the movement just behind his left shoulder as you slipped through the closing door before it could latch shut.

Safe.

Michael’s office was quiet and filled you with serenity in much the same way a teddy bear is filled with stuffing: forcefully and by no will of your own. Like the welcome room with its happy green plants and happy green words on the wall assuring you everything is fine, the office peeled your defenses away. Cream-colored walls yawned out around the perimeter, punctuated with bright windows, a portrait of Doug Forcett (a stoner from the 1970s who guessed, on a mushroom trip, how the afterlife really worked), and various artifacts of humanity enshrined like museum pieces, despite seeming perfectly mundane.

At the top of the room was a large mahogany desk.

Yesterday, Chilton watched Michael put away files in the desk that he wouldn’t let him look at. Chilton was certain they were the key to unraveling the mystery, so he suggested working together—he would distract Michael while you sneaked in to find the files. It was risky, but it might have been your only chance of discovering what was going on, and if there was a way to escape.

You began poking through the desk and found stacks of papers in an unreadable alphabet. The only thing you could read were lyrics to a genuinely terrible song Michael was writing titled “Love Train to the Cosmos.”

The last drawer wouldn’t budge.

Yanking the handle didn’t work. Banging on the side with your fist failed to unstick it. It was locked. Locked drawers were suspicious. The answers had to be in there.

You eyed a mountain of paperclips lovingly displayed on a pedestal labeled “Human Things.” Snatching two off the top, you unbent and re-bent the stiff metal wire, and inserted it into the lock. Faint clicks sounded as you turned and finessed the paperclip, feeling each pin in the tumbler slide into place. Then you gently turned it, and—pop. The drawer opened.

A single manila folder stamped TOP SECRET in threatening red letters rested inside, as if waiting to be found. You picked it up and opened it, and your breath caught. They were reports on “The Good Place.” The Good Place in quotation marks. Reports about you.

A pleasant bing sounded.

Janet materialized in front of the desk. For once, she was not wearing a cheery smile.

***

Frederick Chilton had always been a selfish man. Any opportunity that could advance his career and put him in the spotlight, he would take it no matter who it hurt. “Unorthodox therapy,” he called it in his private chats with Dr. Lecter. They bonded over their shared interest in unorthodox research before he learned Dr. Lecter was a cannibal. That would have been a clue to anybody else that it was time to change his ways, but Dr. Chilton spent the rest of his years just as selfish and petty—more so, even, as his disfiguring injuries gave him more reason for spite.

He could never accept himself as he was.

By the time he died, Chilton was an intolerable asshole who paid back the world’s cruelty with his chronic foul moods and acerbic sarcasm. He kept everyone at a distance.

And yet, here, in death, he found himself worrying over someone else.

The sun was shining in the ever-blue sky, dappled by lush green foliage before reaching the two men as they strolled the neighborhood below. Michael was built like a sapling with longer legs than he knew what to do with, making Chilton nearly jog to keep pace. He had a warm smile and an outgoing demeanor—always flattering Chilton’s ego and asking for his guidance. But something malignant hid behind those smiling eyes, and Chilton’s mind kept rushing back to you, hoping you were OK.

He hoped that you were safe. Not that the plan was going smoothly. That you were safe.

There was a difference, and Dr. Chilton noticed right away that his twitchy nervousness was not wrought of self-preservation. It was a new type of panic—worse than fear for himself, which he never thought possible considering the amount of terror he had experienced on his own behalf.

To distract himself, Chilton threw himself into the role of Michael’s assistant, focusing on his task of supposedly identifying psychological issues causing problems with the neighborhood.

“Our interviews should go in alphabetical order, under the pretense of a survey—a sort of afterlife census—to avoid suspicion. It should be feasible, with only three hundred residents—”

“We know,” Michael said coolly. His voice dropped from the usual friendly, flattering demeanor, slipping off like a mask.

“You know how you are going to handle the interviews? It is imperative the subjects do not suspect they are being studied.” Chilton swallowed, knowing full well that he was talking to the real Michael for the first time.

“Don’t play dumb.” Michael smiled an entirely different type of smile, twisted and clever with no warmth in it. “We’ve been watching you, Dr. Chilton. We knew you would figure it out eventually. It was only a matter of time before you saw through a psychiatric study.”

Chilton’s interest piqued at the same time his blood went cold. He wet his lips. “Is that what all this is, then?”

The pair came to a stone bridge that arched gracefully over a reflection pool. Michael stopped midway across, leaned one of his long, pointed elbows on the railing, and cocked his head at Chilton.

“You haven’t figured it all out yet? That’s disappointing. You humans really are so dense.” His tone was so mean that Chilton took an unconscious step back. Michael only laughed and told him there was no point in running away. “But I think you’ll want to hear what I have to offer,” he promised.

Most of what you had been told about the afterlife was true, Michael explained. There was a real good place, and there was a real bad place where bad people were tortured for all eternity. But the bad place had a problem: it was boring! Humans get used to physical pain after the first few centuries, no matter how creative the punishment.

“Once you’ve flattened a thousand penises, you’ve flattened them all. I’m trying to do something new here. Innovate!” said Michael with an energetic swoop of his hand. “Emotional torture can cause the same level of discomfort, but in a more sustainable and (more importantly) entertaining way. That’s what this neighborhood is for—to study you humans and find out what makes you miserable.”

And then he offered Dr. Chilton something that grabbed his attention. The opportunity to design bad place neighborhoods.

“You are asking me to help implement psychological torture?” Chilton turned over each word cautiously.

“Oh,” Michael scoffed, “Don’t tell me you’re concerned about the ethics? Doctor, I’ve read your file.”

Chilton winced. He had done truly amoral things in the name of discovery—things it made him sick to be reminded of. Strange, though. In the past, he would have been proud to be treated as a peer by a psychopath. Not ashamed.

“Think of it, the glory, the prestige. You would be designing the afterlife for billions of souls. You will be remembered throughout eternity as the man who reformed the bad place!”

“And my soulmate?”

Chilton blurted it without thinking. It sounded so childish and naive, and sure enough, Michael shook his head and had a long chuckle at his expense.

“There’s no such thing! I thought you knew,” Michael slapped his knee. “I made it up so you would torture each other! But once again, I underestimated the human libido. You people all think with your genitals, it’s—it’s gross. Humans are gross.” He made a face. “That’s why I need your help to design a better system. With your understanding of the human mind, we can make condemned souls miserable for thousands of years.”

Chilton couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for this plan, and Michael frowned.

“If it makes you feel any better, consider this the humane option. The alternative is going back to scooping eyeballs out with melon ballers and replacing them with live bees. What do you say, doctor? Join my team.” Michael extended a hand, and Chilton eyeballed it.

“Can my soulmate—”

“Not a soulmate.”

“—come with me?”

“This offer is only open to you.”

“So they will be tortured? Alone? For eternity? In a system I help design?”

“Nothing you can do will change that. They are going to be tortured—the only person you can save is yourself, if you decide to help me.”

Frederick’s brow knit together. He thought about refusing. He really did. Abandoning you seemed unthinkable, especially after your promise to each other to stick together. But he was a selfish creature, and choosing to be punished wouldn’t protect you. If he was lucky, by teaming up with Michael, he could design a more comfortable torture for you one day.

“Maybe this will help make up your mind,” Michael said. “Hannibal Lecter.”

“Lecter?”

“He’s here. In the bad place. So far, he has been especially resistant to traditional torture. I thought you might have a personal interest in taking a crack at him?”

***

On a floating, room-sized projection screen, Frederick Chilton shook Michael’s hand. Your head fell forward, shoulders slumping. The screen flicked off and dissipated into the office air.

“This is the 764th time he has failed,” said Janet, giving a sympathetic simulation of a sigh. “We were sure he was going to make the right decision this time.”

You shook your head. “Fame and glory? Revenge? He’ll never refuse those. Trust me—he died because of them and still never learned his lesson.”

“That is what we’re afraid of. Some people never pass their tests. Fun fact!” she perked up, “Hannibal Lecter’s test is working at a Burger King where he can only cook Impossible Whoppers, and his 19-year-old manager calls him pee-paw. He gets reset every time he eats a customer. His longest record is twelve hours.”

When Janet found you snooping in Michael’s desk, you expected to be dragged away, never to see Frederick again. Instead, she explained everything to you—the truth.

A long time ago, the bad place was exactly how Michael described it—a place where souls were sent to have their orifices filled with spiders for eternity. Then he decided to try something new. Originally, he paired you with Dr. Chilton hoping you would drive each other crazy. But no matter what happened, you kept falling in love. You kept supporting each other, and taking care of each other. The same happened with his other human test subjects—they kept improving and becoming better people than they were on Earth. Eventually, Michael changed, too.

He redesigned the bad place to be a test—a chance for human souls to earn their way into the good place. At the end of each test, you either pass and go to the good place, or your memories are erased and you start over again.

“So, what happens to me now?”

“You passed. You can go to the good place now, and spend the rest of eternity in paradise. The real one.”

“And Frederick? He’ll be alone?”

Janet nodded.

“Put me back in. Reset me, and make me his soulmate again.”

“Are you sure?” Janet asked.

“I’m not going without him.”

“He would leave you behind. You just saw that.”

“That wasn’t fair. Anyone would accept that deal. I would accept that deal!”

“No. You wouldn’t,” Janet said. “You passed your test a long time ago.”

For a while, a heavy silence fell between you as you processed this. Finally, you thought of the only question worth asking. “How many times have we had this conversation?”

“762.”

“Well then,” you said. “You know what I’m going to say.”

“I do. But you retain a vague sense of your memories from previous tests. At a subconscious level, you might realize you’re tired of this.”

You smiled. A big, genuine one that balled your cheeks and creased the corners of your eyes. “That’s not how I feel at all. I think I love him more every time.”

Janet nodded, but gave one last warning before erasing your memories again. “If he never passes, you could be stuck here forever.”

“Stuck falling in love with that insecure jerk over and over again for thousands of years? Sounds like heaven to me.”

“I thought you might say that.”

***

The first day, you really wanted to punch his pretentious snobby face for thinking he was so much better than you.

The first time you laid eyes on Dr. Frederick Chilton, he was waiting behind a mahogany desk with an ancient hardcover book in his hands. Not reading it—waiting, posed deliberately to be discovered that way, and give the impression of intellectualism.

“This is your soulmate,” said Michael, introducing you.

Chilton took a step back after shaking your hand and looked you up and down critically, as if he were appraising livestock. And right away, you knew there had been a terrible mistake. Who the fork did he think he—

Fork. Fork! Why couldn’t you say fork?!

***

Bright light streamed in through the open bedroom window. The weather was always perfect here, except when some glitch made it rain caviar and jelly beans. Or that time Frederick had a vivid nightmare, and organs began falling from the sky. Every day, something horrible seemed to go wrong in the good place. Things that challenged you and pushed your soulmate to his limits.

But most mornings were like this. Quiet. A time just for the two of you.

Your fingers lightly stroked his chest, delving into the soft hairs that rose and fell with his steady breathing. You pressed a soft kiss to his skin, then another, tracing a line of them lower, over a jagged, raised line down his abdomen. His scars let you know he was waking up. This was the good place—he didn’t have to let them show. Usually, he chose to appear as a younger version of himself, before all the indelible trauma. But on peaceful mornings like this, he would let them show just so you could soothe them. He never thought he would be that comfortable with anyone. That he could trust anyone so much.

Every day, you both knew you could overcome anything, so long as you were together.

[papers4me]

Fruits Basket Manga Review , ch 102- 106

I thought abt skipping those chapters cuz the difference from the anime are’nt big & there’s hardly any tohru in them which I know where the great difference between anime & manga is. However, I like yuki & I was delighted to see the difference between manga yuki & anime yuki! Really, furuba anime makes so much focus on him & all, yet manages to miss the mark when it comes to his character. Yuki is such a prince “from a fairy tale but with trauma” in the anime which contradicts his vision of himself in canon as he said it IS fake, but in the manga he’s a real character with layers. 

A-Chapters 102 & 103/ se03, ep 3 ( A dynamic Yuki vs a prince):

Not much change in the plot from the anime, se03, ep 3, except few things I’ll highlight here:

MACHI: ch.102 is basically machi’s story that we saw in se03 ep 3 first half before the motoko part. but it’s fascinating how the anime handled it greatly & how the manga had its unique touch. The anime gave machi’s part its own color, mood & focus, while the manga excelled in the facial expressions.

YUKI: In ch. 102 & 103, Yuki in particular had many facial expressions in such a refreshing way different from the anime. In the anime, yuki emoted exclusively with kyo & kakeru in ways that you don’t need to hear his monologue to understand his thoughts, he was also allowed expressiveness with machi in the anime but with maintaining big doses of his princely aesthetics & mannerism cuz we see him from achi’s perspective. Ironic cuz she calls him imperfect but the anime gives him lots of shojo bubbles from her pov. In the manga, yuki is way more expressive with lots of characters!!! Even with the fanclub girls, he had funny expressions, & we see a cute scene of machi trying to cheer him up!

in the manga, yuki & machi both are given expressive features. Machi isn’t silent with her head down 95% of the time & yuki is is not living in his own head & is very dynamic with other characters as well, which makes him feel real.

Also, in the manga, yuki isn’t super skinny like the anime! I love how he fills his school uniform without it looking so baggy. In the manga, yuki looks like a grown teenager boy reaching his 17!!! In the anime, yuki looks the same all seasons.

In the anime, the clear body growth was exclusive to kyo in se02, during beach arc mainly cuz the plot required it as tohru kept commenting on kyo growing up physically & told Kazuma. So, the anime made huge effort to make kyo look grown physically. Also, in the anime, yuki is given a princely aura from se01 to 3 as his physical appearance & aesthetics remained the same minus his interaction with kakeru where you see glimpses of a more firm & free character. A peek into his soul perhaps?

B-Ch 104 -106, Anime, se3, ep 4. (Isuzu’s Arc closed, Akito’s begins!): 

I love the way the page transitioned from Isuzu’s hair at kureno’s feet to Haru’s entering akito’s room!

I love akito in this chapter/ep, not love her as in support her, no. lol. but love how this chapter/ep sheds light into her twisted mind. Great writing! The way Akito was shocked at kureno’s betrayal of saving Isuzu is why Akito’s growth from abuser to feeling guilt & repent is not satisfactory in the anime ( I’m yet to reach this part in the manga, so I’ll wait to see if it was handled differently). Akito was way more self-centered & concerned with her delusions to stop a bit & entertain the thought that isuzu was on the verge of death. This is a huge red flag. This is sth you can’t brush under tohru’s healing words of feeling similar to akito & akito finding “ true friendship” as a healthy replacement to her delusional “ together forever”.

-The core characters that the entire show/ story/ manga is built upon their views are tohru & akito. You can’t spend 2 seasons & a half faintly touching these characters’ pov & trauma, then give quick hasty focus, then hit them with “ healing growth”. Both tohru & akito needed more screen time/ spotlight to dwell into them cuz they’re fascinating characters!

This chapter the focus is on haru & isuzu, however, these two characters arc would pretty much be wrapped after this chapter/ep minus few cleaning here & there. Akito’s descending into darkness truly begins here. This is what should be followed & given much care!

I love how this line connects what seems like a sub-plot story to the main story of the original zodiacs!!! In the original story, the cat refused to be by the Ruler’s side & it was percieved as the cat betraying him & the others. All the rest of the animals must ALWAYS be on the Ruler/Akito side & not copy the Monster/Cat behavior. Excellent foreshadowing & a twist to kyo’s/ akito’s / kureno’s story! The cat was right all along, but it’s not abt right or wrong. It’s abt choosing sides. With us or against us. If you are not with us, you are the barbaric enemy/ monster. ( kinda similar to our real world issues & politics)

Side Notes:

I have nothing to say abt motoko except in a 13 ep core & major final season with thematic & plot focus, she really got her share. Out of all the content to cut. what logic? I can never understand..... Not hating, but truly bewildered & confused. Fan service? Gotta be. Wasting valuable screen time for a character with no effect on plot or characters or anything.. I mean if it was a 26 ep season, then okay... but the nope! lets chop chop core plot & give motoko an epic send off!

Maybe Motoko got pity love from the anime team? She wasnt given yuki’s love, so the decision maker whoever they are, gave her better emotional focus than the actual love interest (machi) has got! XD (again not hating, but amused! XD)

I love how furuba’s writing don’t need over-exaggerated drama at all. All the pain is in the writing. in the characters themselves. The anime only needed to focus on them & get rid of the theatrical display of emotions & forced fast paced & unrealistic timeline. sigh~

Still, I love how ep 4 was directed in the anime starting the 2nd part, it was given its own mood & colors.

I love that Haru didnt just find Isuzu in the streets right wawy but waited few days to meet her. It hammers the importance of pacing time in the manga, but I also understands why the anime needed to go directly to it seeing that as I said haru & isuzu are reaching the end of their arc here & they want to close the door behind their issues once & for all. lol.

Everthing else abt Machi story, haru & isuzu, akito & kureni, I have already said before in my weekly anime reviews when se03 was airing.

I peeked into ch. 107 first two pages!!!!! Tohru’s focus???? Is this the beginning of the weakly directed ep 6? YESS!!! I cant wait to read it next weekend! <3

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

After Each Midnight Begins A New Day

Extra #10 - pre-fic

[Masterpost]

Anelmemi over on Ao3 commented on chapter 4: “If you’re taking requests or prompts, the line about baby!Lan Zhan with all the intensity of first timeline 30 year old Lan Zhan is an image that stuck with me. The conversation where he tells his mom about everything would make for an interesting extra.”

So here it is! Disclaimer: I’ve gone in a sliiiightly different direction (in that this is 7k words long and they don’t even get to the part where Lan Zhan tells her everything) BUT - that being said - I think I’m going to use this prompt as the first chapter/installment of a selection of scenes from the Wangxian side of the fix-it. Like you know how I said I wrote AEM as a ‘sequel’ to a fix-it fic that doesn’t exist? I’m gonna make the fix-it fic exist, at least in bits and pieces. I guess I already have kind of been doing that with the amount of pre-fic extras I’ve written for this universe, but none of them have been from the Wangxian side of things where the actual fix-it mechanics are happening. Might be time to change that. We’ll see! Either way, here’s some baby-not-actually-baby!Lan Zhan scaring the living hell out of his mom for you <3

----

Lan Zhan opens his eyes with a gasp, the blindingly blue flash of his and Wei Ying’s array gone as suddenly as it had flared. He’s in the dark now, kneeling in the middle of the floor of a room that is definitely not the addition to the Jingshi he had built to be Wei Ying’s workroom. It takes a long moment for his eyes to adjust but when they do he blinks and forces himself to take slow, deep breaths in and out.

He has to stay calm. 

They hadn’t been sure if the array would work, or, if it did, exactly what they would be in for. 

Getting separated was, unfortunately, a distinct possibility. 

It is now his reality. 

He has to focus on what he can control or risk sinking into a despair too deep for him to accomplish the task he and Wei Ying have set for themselves, and he will not break a promise to Wei Ying. They have agreed to try again - he will have to try, and trust that he and Wei Ying will not truly have to be separated again in any life. 

Lan Zhan stands slowly to take stock of the situation and immediately becomes disoriented when he rises to his feet only to find that everything is in nearly the same spot in his vision it had been while on his knees. He glances down at himself and holds a hand up in the moonlight and…

Ah. Childhood. 

That’s...less than ideal. 

Of course while writing the array they hadn’t specified a specific time or age to return to (beyond limiting it to their own lifetimes). To be quite honest Lan Zhan hadn’t entirely been able to follow Wei Ying’s logic for most of the components of the array, but he trusted his husband to ensure it wouldn’t kill them or others. Beyond that, their only desire had been a chance to retain their memories and use the wisdom of their years to heal all the rifts they possibly could in their world, to attempt to soothe the pains that they and everyone they love (who is still alive) have all had to learn to live with.

He’s grateful that it worked.

That being said, he doesn’t particularly want to be a child again. He’s awfully short, after all - and Wei Ying isn’t here, which is perhaps the worst offense. 

He reaches up to touch his cheek as he feels something drip down it and his small fingers come away wet with tears; he suppresses a sigh as he tries not to continue crying. It would seem that a toddler’s body is a bit too small and immature to hold the weight of the grief he carries with him in the depths of his soul, and he can already tell by the feeling rising in his chest that trying to contain it will be useless. He dusts his knees off as more tears start to drip down his cheeks and then he turns to walk sedately across the room to his little bed. He crawls into it, buries his face in his pillow, and promptly starts sobbing, the way he hasn’t since the first time he was this age.

When A-Yuan had still been a toddler, there had been some (many) who accused Lan Zhan of being too soft on the boy. He had been prone to crying if left to his own devices for too long, and after the third time he heard of it happening while A-Yuan was supposedly in the care of those who watched the rest of the sect children, Lan Zhan had insisted that the boy remain with him in his seclusion if Lan Xichen needed to be relieved from watching him to attend to business. It meant that A-Yuan had grown up with less socialization amongst his peers as a young boy, but his nature was such that the lack could hardly be seen by the time he had grown out of his fears of separation to join the other children in their classes.

It had also meant that when A-Yuan cried, he was never without a comforting hand in his hair or on his back, soothing him, reminding him that he was not alone, that he would never be left alone again. If his son was spoiled then so be it, but Lan Zhan would not allow his and Wei Ying’s child to grow up bowed under the cold austerity of a rule warning against excessive grief taken to its most extreme interpretation and weaponized against the grief-stricken. Lan Zhan is intimately aware of the products of that rule, and it’s one he refused to enforce - a decision he has never regretted.

Tonight, however, there’s no one to do the same for Lan Zhan. No one is here to pet his hair or talk softly to him about how the rabbits are doing, or tell him a story of the sort he used to tell A-Yuan to distract him. Lan Zhan, unlike his son, is used to it, and so he cries until his head hurts and then he bundles himself up in the tightest ball of blankets he can manage to try to sleep and wait for morning. It’s strange, trying to sleep without Wei Ying crowded into his space, breathing steadily against his neck and muttering under his breath in between soft snores. He eventually manages it when the moon slips behind the mountain again and the room is plunged into the soft almost-black blue of false dawn. In the gentle hum of the world dipping into its deepest hush outside his window he manages to let his exhaustion take over long enough to get a couple more hours of rest.

Lan Zhan wakes at five.

The gong rings through the mountain in exactly the way it always has and he opens his itchy, tired eyes to begin dressing and preparing for the day. His hands are clumsier than they ought to be, his grip weaker than he can ever remember it being and his limbs slightly less cooperative than he would prefer. He manages not to get too frustrated by the dissonance of it, though by the time Lan Xichen comes to fetch him he’s wearing a truly impressive pout (for him) and he watches, disgruntled, as his brother stifles a laugh behind his sleeve.

“Good morning didi,” Lan Xichen greets when he’s done silently laughing at him and Lan Zhan watches in fascination as his brother - still just a child himself, of course - glances both ways up and down the hallway with a mischievous little smile before dropping to one knee and holding his arms out to him. “You look like you had a bad night. Do you want a hug?”

Lan Zhan’s pouting lower lip trembles as he nods and steps forward slowly to tuck himself into Lan Xichen’s chest.

He honestly can’t remember the last time someone besides Wei Ying hugged him (he supposes it must have been A-Yuan, back before he had grown too old to ask for them anymore), but as Lan Xichen wraps him in his arms it feels so entirely natural that he practically melts, going boneless and rubbing his face into the heavy silk on Lan Xichen’s narrow shoulder like a cat seeking affection. Lan Xichen huffs a soft chuckle and squeezes him a little tighter; Lan Zhan wouldn’t be perfectly happy staying like this forever (he misses Wei Ying, and this isn’t helping them find each other again), but he would be perfectly content to stay there for a few days at least, just being held and cared for by his brother while he’s still small enough to reasonably get away with it.

Of course the list of people that Lan Zhan would tolerate such affection from - at any age - is extremely small, limited only to his immediate family - Wei Ying, A-Yuan, Lan Xichen, Lan Qiren (should he ever be the type to offer it). But as Lan Xichen releases him and reaches down to take his hand, as he leads him out of the children’s dormitories and onto the path outside, Lan Zhan realizes that there’s one person he hadn’t even considered as an option but who, especially in his current state, certainly tops the list.

“Mother,” he whispers with tears in his eyes as Madam Lan stands in the open door to the Jingshi, the familiar home still hers.

“Didi?” Lan Xichen asks, startled, as Lan Zhan pulls his hand from his but he doesn’t stop to answer - instead he runs across the courtyard as quickly as his legs can carry him and up the steps to fling himself into his mother’s arms. He likes to imagine that if he were physically the correct age he would be more composed, but he can’t say with complete certainty that that would be the case. His mother has always been special like that. She was the first to ever make him believe that he could be loved and accepted if he revealed the true depth of his feelings - no one else had been able to make him feel that way after her death until Wei Ying.

As it is, though, as young as he is - with all the tumultuous, too-large feelings of childhood despite the age of his soul - he promptly starts crying as he clings to her. Her hands are soft and gentle as she pets his hair and rubs his back precisely as he had done for A-Yuan as a boy, and Lan Zhan hiccups as he presses in closer.

“Zhan-er,” she says warmly above his head and all it does is make him cry a little harder, the tenderness of the greeting and the fact that he hasn’t heard it from a single soul in 32 years hitting him too hard for his little body to handle. “Oh dear,” she says next and he can hear her smiling, he can feel the way she’s suppressing a laugh in the slight shaking of her shoulder under his cheek and he clings. 

“I think he had a nightmare last night,” Lan Xichen supplies apologetically as he approaches at the properly sedate pace.

“A good thing it’s your day to come visit, then,” she replies softly, implacably, and Lan Zhan nods his agreement as he hiccups and tries to compose himself with little success. “Come in, Huan-er, I’ve got breakfast for us. Let’s see if we can cheer your brother up together, hm?”

Lan Zhan’s stomach swoops as he’s scooped up while Madam Lan stands and he lets himself be carried into the house. He finally manages to get himself somewhat under control after a while of sitting in his mother’s lap and letting her dry his cheeks with her sleeves, but he’s still hiccuping and crying fresh tears every now and then.

He can’t help but stare. It’s been so long since he’s seen her face, and she’s just as beautiful as he remembers, maybe even more so. She’s serene and gentle in a way he really never sees in anyone but perhaps Lan Xichen. Even A-Yuan, as sweet as he is, still carries the mischievous streak planted in him by Wei Wuxian and encouraged by a lifetime of friendship with Lan Jingyi. Whatever she’s done in the past, no matter what anyone else thinks of the incident that had led to her imprisonment, the woman she is now is so kind, so tender, that Lan Zhan has never once in his life understood the continuation of her imprisonment for so many years. 

He watches with wide, solemn eyes as she steadily wipes his cheeks clean when fresh tears replace those that have already fallen, a perpetual little smile on her lips as she talks to Lan Xichen over his head to make sure they both get as much of her attention as they can in their limited time with her.

He eventually manages to stop crying entirely and he’s promptly plied with a bowl of rice for breakfast, which he obediently eats, his eyes still on Madam Lan. He doesn’t want to ever stop looking at her. He had never gotten to say a proper goodbye, had never gotten the closure he needed after her death (not that closure would have helped, most likely. If he’s proven anything to himself it’s that the death of those he loves is not something he handles all that well.)

The point is - his mother was ripped away from him with no warning, and now she’s been returned to him and he will never in this new life take her presence for granted.

As the day goes on and he settles, he can’t shake a feeling of deja vu. It isn’t until they’re nearly ready to leave for the evening that it strikes him.

This is their last day with her. He knows this day, when he had been younger he had replayed the events of it over and over in his mind, searching for something in his behavior that had upset Madam Lan to the point where she didn’t want to see him again. Before he had understood that she had died he had been so sure that it was his fault the door wouldn’t open anymore, that she was inside languishing in disappointment in her youngest son.

And so when Lan Xichen makes as if to bundle him off into the evening just after supper, Lan Zhan takes a page from A-Yuan’s book and sits down to lock his arms around her leg, every ounce of his considerable determination set in stern lines in his serious little face. 

“Didi, we have to leave,” Lan Xichen prods - gently - as he kneels in front of him.

“No,” he protests, his voice petulant but he doesn’t care. He’s not letting her go. He’s here to fix things on a much larger scale than anyone around him can yet understand, but he’s going to begin with their mother. They will get to grow up with a mother this time, and a father too if he has anything to say about it. He can fix things for their family first and let the effect spread outwards from Cloud Recesses. A stone dropped into the center of a pool will create ripples that reach all the way to the edges, and if he begins with Madam Lan’s survival and perhaps her return to the world from her isolation, there’s no telling just yet how far such an influence will spread.

Even if it goes no further than their little family, he doesn’t care. He can fix this, so he will.

“A-Zhan,” Lan Xichen tries next, reaching out to tug gently on his sleeve and he holds on tighter, buries his face in the skirts of Madam Lan’s robes.

“No!”

“It’s alright, Huan-er,” Madam Lan soothes as she drops a hand down to rest on top of his head. “Go on ahead, I’ll make sure Zhan-er gets returned to his rooms in time for curfew.”

Lan Zhan turns his head enough to open one eye so he can watch Lan Xichen have a bit of an internal debate before he nods and straightens up to accept one last hug before he turns to leave. The pair of them, Madam Lan and Lan Zhan, stay still and watch him until he disappears down the path and only then does Madam Lan bend down to put her hands under his arms and lift him up onto her hip. She offers him an indulgent look as she leans in to press their foreheads together and he relaxes instantly.

“Zhan-er, what’s gotten into you today, hm?” she asks softly as she shuts the door with her foot to carry him back inside, sitting down on the edge of her bed to set him down on her knees. It should feel strange, he supposes, to be treated like a child like this, picked up and carried around wherever someone else wants to take him. But he’s never known anything else in regards to his mother, he’s never gotten a chance to both be older than a toddler and to know her. In his memories, this is how he remembers her, and so it doesn’t feel strange at all to sit in her lap and study her face like he’s doing his best to memorize it.

“What’s wrong, Zhan-er?” she asks again, even more softly, as she brushes a few stray hairs back from his forehead and runs her thumb along the silk of his ribbon - it must be brand new for him at this age.

“You are going to die,” he says, deciding then and there that he doesn’t have the luxury of trying to find a way to fix things on his own while trying to hide that he’s really a fully-grown man with a husband and child of his own, that he carries a full life’s worth of pain and experiences. He and Wei Ying had agreed that no matter what happened with the array they wouldn’t tell anyone what they had done - it would defeat the purpose of fixing things, and there was also no guarantee that it wouldn’t do harm. In any other circumstance he would agree it’s better to be safe than sorry, but he’s so young - there’s not much he can do but talk to Madam Lan directly and allow her to handle the situation in his stead - or at least help him - without blowing his cover.

Madam Lan blinks down at him for a moment, a small furrow between her brows. How had he never noticed as a child that she doesn’t wear a headband?

“Who told you such a silly thing?” she asks with a hint of a smile and a little tap of her fingertip against the tip of his nose. “Is that what your nightmare was last night?”

“Mother,” he says as seriously as he can manage. (It’s very difficult to sound grave, he realizes, when he’s a literal 5-year-old [he even still has a bit of a childish lisp] but he needs her to understand.) “I have lived this before. This is the last day you will see Xiongzhang and myself. You are going to die. No one has ever told me how.”

Madam Lan blanches at that, though whether it’s because of what he said or because her 5-year-old son is speaking like an adult or a combination of both he isn’t sure.

“Zhan-er, what...what are you talking about?”

He takes a deep breath in and clambers down off her lap to straighten his robes and dust himself off before he offers her a deep bow. 

“Mother, please listen to me and trust what I say. I am your son, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, Hanguang-Jun, current Chief Cultivator. I have already lived this life, and have returned to my childhood through the power of an experimental array I created with my husband, Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian of Yunmeng Jiang.”

“Zhan-er,” Madam Lan gasps and he looks up to find her definitely far too pale as he blinks owlishly up at her.

“If I leave tonight without warning you of danger, I fear this will once again be my last memory of you.”

The fear in her eyes makes him feel a bit like squirming with guilt for putting it there, but he holds himself still, watching for a sign that she believes him, that she’s taking him seriously. He knows what he must look like - if A-Yuan had ever suddenly started behaving like he is now he would have been very concerned that he had been possessed. Judging by the look on Madam Lan’s face, it’s entirely possible that that’s exactly what’s on her mind.

“Mother, please, you must believe me. Wei Ying and I wish to right the wrongs done to those around us, to live with no regrets. We have made many painful choices in our lives, as have all of those we care for. We have decided to attempt the impossible and rewrite the past.”

“You..But you....”

Lan Zhan stays still and watches as Madam Lan clearly tries to piece things together. He’s dismayed - though not entirely surprised - when she faints backwards onto the bed, but he supposes it’s better than if she had outright tried to say that he couldn’t possibly be telling the truth. He climbs up onto the bed to sit beside her and make sure she’s otherwise alright before he settles down to wait patiently for her to wake.

It doesn’t take too long, thankfully, and he can’t help but reach out to put the back of one small hand against her forehead to check her temperature when she blinks her eyes open.

“Do you feel alright?” he asks as he watches her face go through a series of interesting emotions in quick succession.

She sits up slowly to look down at him with an expression that seems to have settled on something like incredulity and bemusement. “I think you must see why that question is not easily answered at the moment.”

“Mn. It is a strange situation, I understand,” he agrees solemnly with a nod. Madam Lan raises her sleeve to cover her mouth as she bites back a laugh, the corners of her eyes crinkled with mirth.

“Oh Zhan-er,” she says - and then she’s laughing, truly laughing, one hand over her mouth and the other arm curled around her stomach as she laughs in a way that sounds just this side of manic. Years of being married to Wei Ying and he still doesn’t understand how to handle people who deal with their stress by laughing about it.

“Mother?”

“Oh dear, Zhan-er I’m sorry,” she laughs weakly as she wipes at her eyes. “This is just..Well as you said, this is very strange. And you’ve always been a serious child but this is..I’ve never seen a child behave this way!”

“I am 37.”

“Oh dear. Much too old for hugs, then,” she says with a twinkle in her eyes and Lan Zhan has to think about it for a long, dismayed moment before he realizes he’s being teased. He shakes his head ‘no’ and lets her pull him into her arms again to cradle him close, one arm wrapped around his back and the other over his bent knees to hold him in place. “37, hm?” she asks once they’re settled and Lan Zhan nods. “And married?”

“Yes, mother. I also have a son. He is 24.”

“My own baby, married and with a child, hm? And you said Chief Cultivator?”

“Mn. I do not enjoy such a public position but it is necessary.”

Madam Lan laughs at that, though it’s thankfully less frightening than her laughter at the situation as a whole had been. “I have never heard of such a thing but I can only imagine such a position involves quite a lot of talking to other Sect Leaders, which sounds very unpleasant.”

“Mn.”

They’re both quiet for a few long moments, lost in thought. Lan Zhan is only grateful that Madam Lan seems to believe him, and when she breaks the silence again it becomes clear that that is actually the case.

“You said I am going to die soon,” she murmurs and Lan Zhan can’t resist cuddling closer as the pain of losing her flares too hot, too sharp through him.

“I remember this day,” he replies after a few deep breaths and a chance to gather his thoughts. “It is the last day we were allowed to visit. I do not know when, precisely, you passed away, but by the next appointment we were no longer allowed to visit, and...when I came to kneel anyway every month after, your door never opened for me.”

“And you are telling me all of this now to prevent it happening again.”

“Mm. Wei Ying and I performed the spell last night, I am still becoming accustomed to being a child again. I apologize for my outbursts, it is..difficult to control my emotions while so young.”

“Zhan-er, you never have to apologize to me for your feelings,” Madam Lan chastises gently. “No matter your age. I have never wanted you and Huan-er to be raised so..rigidly.”

“Who is keeping you imprisoned?” Lan Zhan asks softly - a question that’s been on his mind since he had been this age originally, and which no one has ever sufficiently answered for him. “Xiongzhang and I always wished we could be raised by you.”

Madam Lan sighs heavily at that and holds him a little tighter. “Qiren is so strict with you two,” she murmurs thoughtfully. “I’ve tried telling your father that you two are growing up to be so serious, so unhappy, but he won’t hear of it. He’s technically the one keeping me here, though I suspect it’s the clan elders speaking through him.”

Lan Zhan can’t help but glare at the wall when the elders are mentioned. The only other person in the world he wishes to argue with as much as he does the elders is Jiang Wanyin.

“I will fix it,” he vows with grim determination.

“Zhan-er,” Madam Lan instantly chastises and he shakes his head, already intent on arguing whatever point she feels needs to be made.

“I will not lose my mother again. The elders have gone too long without challenge. There are many many good things about the Lan that do not need to change, but there are a great many traditions that have become harmful in their execution at least, if not in nature or original intent. I will fix it.”

“You deserve to have a childhood,” Madam Lan argues right back, equally adamant. “It is your father’s duty to lead the Sect, the elders only advise.”

“Uncle is the acting leader of the Sect,” Lan Zhan retorts with a deepening of his frown, this time in confusion. He leans back to look up at Madam Lan, who’s blinking down at him in something like surprise, if a bit muted. “Father is in seclusion, he never again ran the Sect before his death during my boyhood.”

Lan Zhan stays quiet as he watches Madam Lan think through that, wondering just what exactly she’s thinking. Perhaps comparing what she thought she knew to this new information? 

It seems that may be the case when she quietly murmurs,“Well that..that does change a few things,” after a long while, her eyes distant. “Maybe we should compromise. You can tell me what you know, and perhaps what you plan to do in regards to the elders, and I will do my best to listen and perhaps together we can come up with something that will work. Does that sound alright?”

Compromise. Lan Zhan hates compromise, has hated it with a passion since the day he watched the Sect Leaders of his youth decide that ‘compromise’ meant ‘kill Wei Wuxian’, and he definitely hasn’t grown any fonder of it since it’s become his turn to ‘compromise’ with many of those same Sect Leaders on a near daily basis as the Chief Cultivator. But these are, he will admit, wildly different circumstances, and for a much better purpose than yet another boundary dispute or arguing over who should receive more disciples from the local families.

He nods and opens his mouth to begin the story at the beginning - and yawns so widely his jaw gives a tiny little pop.

“Oh dear,” Madam Lan chuckles as she snuggles him tighter and rocks him slightly back and forth. It’s shocking how heavy his eyelids feel all of the sudden as she does so and he huffs a sigh with an accompanying pout, irritated with his young body that apparently tires far too quickly. “I believe our plan shall have to wait until morning. You’ve had a long day.”

“Being a child is frustrating,” he confesses and Madam Lan laughs her bright, bell-like laugh - hearing it has always been one of his most treasured memories and to hear it now again in the flesh makes him so happy his irritation with his youthful limitations dissipates in an instant.

“I would imagine so. What an interesting puzzle you are, my Zhan-er,” she sighs as she continues rocking him gently, the repetitive swaying motion dragging his eyelids further and further down despite his best attempts to stay awake. “Such an old soul in the body of a child. So wise and self-assured like an adult, and yet quick to fluster, quick to cry, just like a child. I can only imagine how frustrated you must be.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan manages to hum even as he slips further down into her lap to rest his head in the crook of her elbow, getting comfortable.

“Go to sleep, Zhan-er. We’ll figure this out in the morning, alright? You’re not going to lose me again, I’m here.”

Lan Zhan drifts off to sleep in his mother’s arms for the first time in his life that he can remember, and it’s mercifully deep and dreamless.

----

When Lan Zhan wakes in the morning it’s with a gasp and the vague fear that his mother has, despite his best intentions, died inexplicably once again in the middle of the night. He sits up quickly and looks around the Jingshi just as the gong tolls and he only relaxes when he realizes that she had made him a little nest of blankets to rest in on the outer edge of the bed while she had taken the inside beneath the window.

He clambers down out of bed to go about getting ready for the day. He locates his ribbon where Madam Lan had removed it for him and carefully coiled it into a neat loop; he’s moments away from putting it on before he sets it down again to wait. Wei Ying likes to put it on for him these days - or rather, he supposes, in the future (this is going to give him a headache) - and while Wei Ying can’t do it for him right now, he feels it would be equally as special to ask his mother to help him with it instead.

He explores the Jingshi, acquainting himself with how Madam Lan organizes the familiar space. He finds basic food stored near the small hearth the house had contained before he had modified it himself to accommodate cooking for A-Yuan as a boy, and he takes a moment to set out what they’ll need for breakfast before he withdraws again to meditate. Perhaps, he supposes, if he can center himself and calm his energy he’ll be able to avoid further emotional outbursts. If he’s going to tell his mother all the details of his first life while so emotionally volatile, it’s going to be a very long day indeed. He’ll appreciate beginning it more at peace than he had begun the day before.

He settles into the familiar pattern of breathing and being, just..existing, doing his best to feel and let go, to accept that this is his reality now. He’s starting his life over. He can try again. He can not only avert the broad tragedies that had affected the world at large, he can also repair his own life.

The most obvious personal change will be that he can openly love Wei Ying from the moment they see each other again. He can live an entire lifetime with his beloved at his side, his other half, the bright sun to his distant moon.

Perhaps less obvious of a consequence but one that he suddenly realizes he wants just as badly - he can be closer to his family. Raising A-Yuan had taught him much about the sort of family he wanted to have. The closeness, the affection, the warmth present in their home even when he had been outwardly as cool and aloof as ever. He had never let A-Yuan believe for a moment that he wasn’t adored, he had taught him how to see Lan Zhan’s love for him, had taught him that it was boundless, had taught him to turn that love outwards in a way that Lan Zhan had never been allowed to. He had raised their son to be sweet and kind to everyone he met, Wei Ying had taught him to smile and laugh and to understand so he could forgive.

He can do that again, but this time he’ll start with the members of his family he had been too late to understand the first time. He can help guide Lan Xichen through the confusing mires of childhood, attempt to create an even closer relationship between them than in their first life - a relationship in which they’re free to just be brothers and Lan Xichen doesn’t have the weight of being his Sect Leader on his shoulders as well. He can ensure that they get to grow up with a mother to guide them, her gentle affection thawing the cold austerity the Lan push their children into. He can save Father, he can keep Uncle from becoming bitter and overly rigid in his ways. There’s so much time stretching out ahead of them, he’s sure he can repair their fractured little family and help nurture it into something beautiful.

“Zhan-er?” Madam Lan calls some time later and Lan Zhan opens his eyes to find her already ready for the day with his ribbon in her hands, her expression a question.

“My hands are still clumsy with childhood,” he replies solemnly, looking up at her with wide eyes. “Will you tie it for me?”

“Of course,” she agrees with a faint hint of a smile. “May I assume you’re still an adult in there?” she teases gently as she knees behind him to start threading the ribbon through his simple hairstyle and tie it securely.

“Mn. I am making plans.”

“I can’t wait to hear them.”

Lan Zhan hums his acknowledgement just as she finishes tying his ribbon and he can’t help but relax when she puts her hands on his shoulders to smooth out the fabric of his little robes and sweep his hair properly behind his neck. They’re interrupted by a sudden knock at the door and Lan Zhan frowns, though Madam Lan doesn’t seem surprised at all. Rather she stands and crosses the house with graceful steps and after a moment Lan Zhan stands to drift after her silently.

“Lan Qiren,” she greets with ice in her voice as soon as the door opens and Lan Zhan blinks in surprise. Uncle? He had always thought that Lan Qiren never approached the Jingshi while it was still Madam Lan’s residence - he and Lan Xichen had been making the journey to it from the dormitories unaccompanied since the visits began, and he supposes now that he had just..never bothered to wonder who else came to see Madam Lan besides them and the servants who tended to her. She doesn’t sound surprised, though, to have Lan Qiren on her doorstep, so it must not have been entirely outside the realm of possibility.

“Wen Yun.”

Wen Yun? Wen?

Lan Zhan feels like he just got hit with a hammer between the eyes.

He had never known his mother’s name. Perhaps most people would find that strange, but Lan Zhan had never truly questioned it (beyond wishing that he did know it). She was a criminal in the eyes of the Lan Sect after all; certainly no one had ever thought to tell him her given name when he had been a child, and by the time he was old enough to know he hadn’t known who or how to ask. She wasn’t even in the clan records - or in the ancestral shrine - as anything but Madam Lan, reduced to nothing more than her married title that she hadn’t even wanted. The disrespect of it still rankles him to this day. But..

Wen Yun. She’s a Wen. He is a Wen, certainly by blood if never knowingly by name. That’s..an interesting thing to process. Even more interesting that Lan Qiren has known, all this time, and had never breathed a word of it to anyone that Lan Zhan was aware of, even before the Wens’ destruction during the Sunshot Campaign. He hadn’t expected to be quite so caught off guard by anything he could learn by returning to his childhood, considering he had already lived it once, but clearly he’s going to need to rethink that very quickly.

“Wangji.” Lan Qiren’s voice is sharp, remonstrative, and Lan Zhan instantly focuses on the present again. He can’t, under any circumstances, let Lan Qiren know that he is who he is, but he also can’t help but feel an all-too-familiar surge of (perhaps slightly petty) rebellion in his chest at that tone of voice, at being scolded like the young child he outwardly appears to be. He looks up at Lan Qiren impassively, his face solemn, as he holds his hand up for Madam Lan to take. As he is intimately aware, there’s no time like the present to begin changing things for the better.

Madam Lan slips her hand into his instantly, giving his fingers a little squeeze, and Lan Zhan sets his jaw stubbornly. He’s got an ally in her, and he’s nearly forty years old. He can face down Lan Qiren, he’s done it plenty of times already for what he thinks is right.

“Wangji, let go. Your time to visit your mother is long over.”

Lan Zhan watches Lan Qiren’s anger with a detached sort of interest, tipping his head slightly to the side and shuffling closer to Madam Lan’s skirts as if to hide in them, though of course he isn’t in the least afraid.

“Staying,” he announces with all the gravity he can muster. He really wishes in that moment that he could sound at least somewhat closer to his actual age rather than having to do his best with the sweet, high voice of childhood, but oh well. It still clearly startles Lan Qiren, that he would talk back, and Lan Wangji meets his gaze evenly.

“Wangji!”

“I will be raising my son from now on,” Madam Lan suddenly declares. “Huan-er as well, if he wants me to.”

Lan Qiren splutters in a way that Lan Zhan finds...kind of funny, actually. He’s only ever known Lan Qiren as stoic (with a small range of other emotions couched within that stoicism) or angry, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen him so...gobsmacked.

“You - the elders -“

“Oh, I didn’t realize the elders had taken over raising them,” Madam Lan replies with ‘innocent’ curiosity. “I was under the impression that they were still your responsibility, Qiren, and that concerns about their upbringing should be brought to your feet.”

Lan Qiren huffs out a frustrated sigh and Lan Zhan tips his head to the other side as he watches, able to study Lan Qiren with all the experience of a full life spent as his ward.

He knows, of course, that Lan Qiren loves him and Lan Xichen as if they’re his own children, and that that affection started when they were handed off to him as mere infants, just old enough to leave the wet nurses. By this point in time, Lan Qiren has had five years to raise Lan Wangji and eight for Lan Xichen - that affection for them is clearly already firmly in place. After all, it’s Lan Qiren who had held them when they were too young to walk on their own yet, who had rocked them to sleep and taught them their first lessons - how to talk, how to eat, how to read, how to count.

But Lan Zhan also knows that Lan Qiren is already a much stricter hand than they really need. He’s spent a lot of time meditating on the peculiarities Lan Qiren had possessed as a parental figure, and while he still can’t conclusively point to the root of his behaviors, he already knows how it will end if allowed to continue - with Lan Zhan himself cold and rigid but for a small handful of people whom he still struggles to show outward affection towards, and with Lan Xichen pouring kindness and gentleness out onto others to soften the blows of the world until he’s left with none to offer himself. 

Lan Zhan knows Lan Qiren loves them, but he also knows that that love could be shown in much healthier ways if they’re all allowed to recover. 

“The elders won’t ever allow this,” Lan Qiren finally snaps, his eyes flickering briefly down to Lan Zhan and then back up to Madam Lan. “And I won’t plead your case.”

“Oh,” she says idly. “Well that’s a shame, then, I would have appreciated the support.” Lan Zhan looks up as his mother looks down at him and he can’t help but feel safe as she offers him a quick wink, out of Lan Qiren’s view. “I guess Zhan-er and I will have to make our case to the elders ourselves.” 

Lan Zhan nods once at that and squeezes her hand to let her know it’s alright with him and Ford into his plans.

“Wangji?” Lan Qiren prompts and Lan Zhan looks up at him, reads the fear behind the indignation, the hurt feelings behind his censure. But with the foresight that Lan Zhan has, he trusts that if they change this, if they give his mother a reason to live again, that everyone in their family will be better for it. Happier. 

A little pain is necessary for growth and change - an old tree must fall to allow the new to grow, the winter snows have to come and melt away again to refresh and awaken the world properly in the spring.

Lan Zhan lets go of Madam Lan’s hand to step forward and wrap his arms around Lan Qiren’s leg, holding onto him tightly and hugging him with all the strength and affection he can muster for the man for a long moment - a goodbye to the man who had raised him, who will soon become a different man than Lan Zhan knows - before he lets go again to take his mother’s hand and lead her back into the Jingshi.

She shuts the door gently with Lan Qiren standing shocked on the other side of it.

They have plans to make, and time is of the essence. 

[kryptsune]

Souly Damned Saturdays!~

🌼 Hello everyone! Welcome to another SD Saturday! Today is going to be another character profile, a timeline, and some info on one of the stories within the world! As always if you are interested in my original work please reach out! I love answering questions about all this work. Let’s get into it! 

~Prince Profile:~

True Name: Saketh Alias Names: Costello Nicknames: N/A (he usually rarely even uses his true name as he prefers Costello far more) Soul Flower Type: Rose in Full bloom          Color Type: Fire Gold mix with Burnt edges Infernal Hierarchy: Crowned Prince of Lust Age Order: 2nd Oldest Familiar Form: (Raven) - A large black feathered bird with eyes and talons of golden fire. True Form Appearance Description:          ~Skeletal in appearance          ~Prominent fangs (spiked teeth in true form)          ~White horns similar to an antelope (more twisted)          ~Fingers with black clawed tips          ~Golden eyes          ~Pointed gold tongue          ~ Stereotypical spaded tail with a black to white gradient          ~ Two sets of wings                          ~White to black gradient and edged with blue fire                     ~When in enraged they are fully engulfed in blue fire

Human Form Physical Description:       ~Hair Color: warm tone Platinum Blonde       ~Hair Style: Short, falls to ears, whip dip       ~Glasses or Contacts: From time to time, more Rectangular frames       ~Eye Color: Fire Gold       ~Skin Tone: Pale       ~Contract symbol mark placement: His left side, junction between neck                                                                        and shoulder.       ~Height -- 6’3”

Special Abilities or Powers --

        ~Mind reading         ~Can pull out deepest desire            ~Dream walking         ~Veritas (forces those under his influence to tell the truth)         ~Trust (will gain the trust of those touched)          ~Mental Suggestion         ~Lust Touch            ~Levitation          ~Teleportation         ~Fire/Dark element         ~Conjuration (more below cut!)

~SD Q AND A (These are all questions from you! Specifically those in my server):~

1. What was Costello like before he became an infernal?

💛 Costello used to be a Celestial of love just like Val. If you split love into two separate entities it would be the passionate romantic side and the side that is all about protection and devotion. These types also reflect in both Costello’s and Val’s Infernal sides. Costello is more about seduction and Val is about possession and obsession. As brothers they tend to work together in their celestial sides. When they fell they split a bit.

2. When he isn't busy what does he do in his spare time?

💛 Oh thats easy! During his time in the Mortal Realm he spent a fair amount of time in the 1920′s era. It is where his style comes from mainly and why the Lust kingdom appears to have that kind of influence within it. He used to be a charismatic bartender during prohibition and that has kind of stuck with him. He enjoys crafting new drinks both for mortals and Infernals (since they can’t get drunk off regular alcohol). He is also an avid reader.

3. What kind of stuff does he read?

💛 Hilariously he enjoys supernatural romance novels because they fascinate him. Why would mortals be interested in a being that could literally end their life easily? As one such being he finds it both amusing and curious. He also reading them to see what mortals are uh... "into". Other than that he likes reading anything supernatural/gothic fantasy based for “research”.

4. Does Costello share the same view on humans as Val?

💛 Val and he at one point help similar enjoyments fo mortal kind. They found that they were were entertaining and rather sweet to observe when falling in love. When they fell all they saw was darkness not just from mortals but also themselves. How lust overwhelms your thoughts and drives you to commit certain acts. Their opinions grew apart when Val was corrupted by their father, Darrius. They only were both brought back due to their brother Nas and the mortal they meet later in time, Evelyn Rodgers. Their nickname for her is Starlight.

5. Does Costello like animals?

💛 Yes he does! He has a specific affinity for the raven. 

6. Does Costello have a favorite drink? Alcoholic and non alcoholic.

💛 He enjoys most drinks but specifically a Galaxy Cocktail but with an Infernal twist. When it comes to non-alcoholic I would say that he is more of a coffee connoisseur so things like Mocha. He enjoys sweet things but not to the level that Val does. (btw that cocktail looks like this)

7. Would Costello be willing to befriend humans?

💛 Before the fall, absolutely but after the Fall and before Eve? No. Humans are just tools for his amusement and entertainment. I should mention that Costello while his father is in power goes off the rails... and is extraordinarily dangerous only when Nas pulls him back from that does he mellow out. During the 1920's he still has a superiority mindset and a master of emotional manipulation. He is however far...FAR more mellowed out at this time which is why he humors Eve the first time they meet.

8. What are Costello’s responsibilities in his kingdom? 💛 It really depends on when in the timeline you are asking about. If we're talking before Nas ascends to the throne of the realm? Then Costello's duties were much less. He assisted Nas who was High Prince of Lust at the time. He studied and learned, ready to take over for Nas if the other needed to leave or otherwise. Now that he is High Prince himself? His duties include the hefty amounts of paperwork ensuring every soul is accounted for. New souls that hold purity to fall under Nas' new ruling, getting where they need to go if they landed in his kingdom. He also handles some punishments for the wicked. He has to run the entirety of Lust kingdom. Valentine... yanno... somewhere... X’D (trust me he probably isn’t the best one to ask)

~Souly Damned Timeline~

Creation of the Realms: The Celestial, Infernal, and First Mortal Realm come into being. The Infernal realm is closed off leaving the Celestials to guide and shape humanity. There are intermittent wars with the Infernal beasts and Imps when they manage to break their gates. The garden of Paradise was also created at this time which houses those most loyal to their “gods”. It is also a fact that the Celestial blooded creatures were created at this time (unicorns are a good example, light fantasy creatures). They were placed in the Garden.  

The Celestial Civil War: Darrius and his sons rebel against the ways of the Silver City only to be stricken to the Infernal Realm. After this event the gates to the Celestial Realm are shut and mortals are forced to fend for themselves. 

The Rise of the 12 Princes: The now fallen Celestials begin to corrupt the souls of the mortals present being known as the Seven Deadly Sins. The mortals are easily swayed by their new rulers dubbing them King and Princes. Each one with its own people and territory to preside over. In this time the Princes begin to succumb more deeply to their darker sides, now shunning their once Celestial blood. 

Blood Moon: A period of time in between the rule of the Princes in the First Mortal Realm where 4 Princes began to experiment cruelly with their own corrupted blood and the mortal soul. The Infernal blooded hybrids come from this part of the timeline such as vampires, werewolves, and the fae.

The Vinculum Infernalis (Witches/Warlocks): With the Celestials gone the mortals were now forced to fend for themselves. In desperation they plead with their Fallen overlords to aid them. A blood binding contract was struck between them giving them magical abilities and a new tie to the Infernal Realm. This was also the creation of the first covens.

Maintaining the Balance (Hunters): Enraged by the tilt of the balance of the universe in Infernal favor the Celestials decide to form a similar bond with mortals creating the first Celestial blooded humans. They would eventually be called the Hunters as their “divine” task was to eradicate the First Mortal Realm of the Infernal Blooded abominations now that the Princes favored the newly created realm.

Long Live the King no more: After millenia of creating havoc and bloodshed without consequences the Princes begin to doubt the leadership of their father. They have slowly changed their mindsets about mortals all together after so much time. Instead of destroying everything in sight and soaking the earth with blood they begin to have an attachment. Their fathers' ways are despotic so in response to this Nasaros, the eldest, usurps his throne.  A second war is waged between those of Infernal and Celestial blood turning the First Mortal Realm into an almost apocalyptic wasteland filled to the brim with monsters and ruins. The Princes lose the war doing substantial damage to the Celestial Realm. It was no longer habitable and so a new balanced realm was created for the mortals to live in peace without fear of Celestial driven war or demonic influences.  

The Locking of the Gates: The gates of the three Realms are shut and locked in the beginning of the birth of the New Mortal Realm. The Princes are forced to make a new Kingdom within the Infernal Realm to which they have been banished. This forms “Hell” in which the decisions of a mortal's life determine where they go. If they revel in the original 7 sins then they are placed in the kingdom in which they over indulged in. The silver City was once again open to those of virtue but only after death. With no direct interference from either side the humans evolved and advanced on their own. This is what we know as the world today while the First Mortal Realm was now labeled as an in between realm. One that would eventually be called Purgatory, the realm of beasts, monsters, and the supernatural.

Bloodswap: A story set after the time frame of Blood Moon and the creation of the Hunters. It is about 2 brothers that become infected with a vampiric blood that is now turning their town to shambles. The gates have been sealed and those forced to live in Purgatory struggling to survive. The mortals have progressed slowly despite being an older realm. They are currently in what we would consider the middle ages with the help of Celestial technology. Once the gates are unsealed for the New Mortal Realm a new world order begins to form. (Crimson would be proud of his new vampiric race that has slowly taken over Purgatory, now more civilized as the rulers).

The New Mortal Realm and Purgatory: Purgatory remains in ruins though there are mortals that live in this apocalyptic wasteland of a world. That also includes monsters and hunters. Over the Centuries cracks within this forgotten realm have released some of its inhabitants into the New Mortal Realm (NMR). The original bloodline of the first covens also were able to make it into this new world fleeing from Purgatory with the help of their Infernal masters. The Mortal Realm is now in the modern day where many of the Infernal or Celestial blooded mortals or beasts hide in plain sight. Even some of the most vicious have adapted to this new apparently “magic-less” world.

Note: The gates are no longer locked indefinitely for either of the two main realms; this is why demons are able to make contracts with foolish mortals. The Celestials have been forbidden from interfering for fear of repeating the past but that does not mean that they do not do so. It is rumored that around the world are organizations created to combat in secret those Infernal blooded that lurk in the dark. Meanwhile the covens are more focused on their own material pursuits having been persecuted for centuries (Salem Witch Trials as an example).

Ossibus Inferni (1920’s; NMR):

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

Main Plot Synopsis: During the era of the 1920’s a young lady named Evelyn Rodgers finds herself thrown into a Hellish Civil War. She is a small PI (Private Investigator) hurting for cash and jobs in a place wrought with problems. In an effort to make a better name for herself she begins to investigate the rise of crime and strange occurrences happening in her city. There are suspicious disappearances, missing persons reports, and extra violence that couldn’t be missed by human eyes, right? It just does not seem to add up. Determined and with nothing to lose she is able to put together a series of connections by using some none to savory contacts. 

She finds out that the potential epicenter of these events are tied to owners of one of the swankiest and popular clubs in town. It is suspected that it is a speakeasy but that is not what has drawn her attention. It would appear that the family running the place have been a mystery to nearly everyone even though they have been around longer than they can recall. No one knows what the owners look like due to usually having their signature fedoras on. Ones that she can place all around the city through various photographs. It could be anyone, right?

Regardless of the information that she has collected she decides to go undercover to the club, Ossibus Ignem (Fire and Bone), in order to confirm her suspicions. She decides that auditioning for one of their most prized gigs is a good way to get into their inner circle and perhaps get a glimpse of her potential employers. Eve wants the truth and nothing but the truth though this plan is incredibly risky. Even if the brothers, as she finds out later, are not the cause of these events they could still be nefarious. No one likes a spy, especially one that’s gained their trust.

As she enters she realizes that it is packed like the rumors have told her. She does not get out much due to her job but she is dressed to the 9s in a beautiful dress of the time ready to put her plan into effect. Instead of waiting around she heads to the bar where she is spotted by the seemingly charismatic bartender which she manages to strike up a conversation with. She tries to pick his brain over a drink that he generously slides her way. It would seem that the establishment is already breaking the laws of Prohibition. That much is already confirmed.

He seems like the friendly sort, platinum blonde hair and a dazzling smile. Eve being a PI calls into question how perfect he actually looks but puts the thought off. She could have sworn his eyes were far more vibrant than what was humanly possible too. When she glances at him again however they appear to be a light brown instead. Things are already strange as she continues to speak with him only to find out that he is in fact one of the brothers that work at the club. It turns out to be a family business. He introduces himself as Costello -. 

Eventually their conversation is cut short by Costello taking her to the back of the house where presumably his brother is waiting for her to do her little gig. She paces back and forth nervously in her dressing room only to not watch where she is going, running into a tall individual. His pinstripe suit, fedora, and bright red tie cause her to pause only to be greeted with a shiny golden toothed smile. The strange thing about it is that it is shaped into a fang/ canine tooth. It is a little off putting but the stranger introduces himself as the younger brother of the group, Valentine -.

This is someone that she had no doubt is in all the photographs that she had collected. Ultimately he seems nice enough telling her that if she needs anything to let him know and to take her time with her audition. He does appear to have a mischievous flirty side to him especially with her which she tries to distance herself from. He does not make that easy as she can tell he has already taken a special interest in her. 

She performs and it would seem that she has a pretty singing voice that leaves the entire crowd roaring in applause. This obviously catches the eyes of the brothers and she gets the gig. Other than a few of the accidental slip ups the boys seem fine with her being around them. She doesn’t pose any threat. After all, she is only human. 

Eve begins to enjoy her undercover position but finds herself slipping further and further away from her original objective. The - family puts her up in the loft above the club and treats her well. She learns more about them and more about the family itself. They are pretty open with what they do not even hiding the crime lord status that they are under. Being associated with the brothers is dangerous and therefore they want to make sure she understands what it means to be under the name of -. 

She is surprised by their honesty and immediately they gain her trust and vice versa. That is until she realizes why she is there in the first place. After one of her performances she manages to get into Valentine’s room, snooping around. Only to find something she wasn’t expecting of a bunch of crime mafiosos. Instead she finds arcane symbols, tomes, and various other occult items that would lead her to the conclusion that they are in fact dealing with something far beyond the mortal realm. At least that is what she thinks. 

The concern only grows when she finds a secret room with even more devilish items. One such item is a series of documents showing the various victims she had been investigating. On top of that information she finds even darker dealings then she suspected and papers scrawled with a script she has never seen before. As she turns to leave the room she freezes to hear Valentine’s voice. He is none too thrilled as he interrogates her but she can’t see his face. All she can feel are skeletal like claws at her shoulders. It’s all in her head right?

When he turns her around she is faced with him looking quite human explaining to her the predicament she now finds herself in. As her confusion grows he keeps her cornered only to be given two choices. One is that she binds her soul to him in the form of a contract and the other, death. Obviously she chooses to live. After this event she is able to see the true forms of all the Infernals in the club, having a panic moment seeing them mingling so easily with unsuspecting humans. Valentine, Luciano, and Costello are the most terrifying in form as they are skeleton looking Infernals. From then on she works in the club learning more and more about their true selves.

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[simplicity1511]

Yashahime EPISODE 1 Review

I just finished the first episode of Yashahime and OMFG!!!!!!!

There are so many emotions running through me right now as someone who watched the original series on YTV Bionix. I remember being like 5 and 6 and staying up late to watch it, sometimes even falling asleep before it aired. It’s original air time was 11pm but by the time I was around 8-9 years old, the show started airing at 9pm. 

I remember asking my aunt to wait up until I finished my favorite show before I went to bed because we were going to the airport that night to visit my cousin who had recently given birth to her second kid and I was tagging along. I remember it being the episode Kohoku regains his memories. Good thing I didn’t miss it but I sure do remember being disappointed that I wasn’t seeing InuYasha and the gang that episode.

Speaking of our boy Kohoku, it looks like he has a new weapon (that is correct, ladies and gents, our boy appears in the first episode!!) However, not adult Kohaku, our itty bitty boy from the original series.

For those that didn’t get a chance to read the manga, there's an epilogue chapter that deals with the root demon that our gang ends up fighting in the first episode and it appears to have maybe merged with the Tree of Ages. I suspect this because it shows a hole in the tree in the same location as Kikyo’s arrow had been when she shot InuYasha to it. I’m curious to see what shit this root ends up stirring.

However, the most interesting thing I discovered was not from the episode itself but  from the opening sequence as well as the next episode preview. From the looks of it, it appears as if all three girls have a pearl, Towa’s is Silver, Setsuna’s is Gold and Moroha is Red. Now given the fact that in the original series pearls played a role not once but twice in the series, both in the beginning and end, and they appear multiple times in the opening and ending sequences of the show, we know they're going to play an important role. 

The first time they appear in the original series is when our sexy Sesshomaru was trying to look for Tessaiga. In this case, the pearl was located in InuYasha’s eye and led to the land of the dead which is where we come across the bones of Inu-Pops.

The second time is when they looked for one of the last shards of the jewel which just happened to have been in the possession of the demon who created the pearl who was also located at the grave of our beloved Inu-Pops.

We also know that this demon had a son who was continuing his work at creating pearls as this is how we learn that his father, who had created InuYasha’s pearl, had already died. The most logical conclusion is the son most likely created the pearls for our three ladies. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that in the opening song, you will notice that at some point Towa’s eye starts glowing, and it has a similar appearance as InuYasha’s did when we see the pearl first appear. We know these pearls have strange abilities and for whatever reason each girl was given one. Given the fact that the girls have no knowledge of their parents, it appears that this was most likely hatched by our boys to help their daughters in whatever way possible. Much in the same way Inu-Pops gave his two swords, Tessaiga and Tenseiga to his two sons to protect them and teach them something even if he wasn’t around to do it.

Now speaking of our boys, Sesshomaru is still as sexy as ever and it appears as if he tries to stay close to the village in order to reach Rin as swiftly as possible. That or he has some teleportation ability we don’t know about but with how fast he moves, he might as well have it.

For those of us who grew up with InuYasha being torn between Kagome and Kikyo and the constant conflict that it caused throughout the series, it was kinda refreshing to see it again and see how they both behaved as adults regarding those emotions

I found Kagome’s handling of it really fascinating because by this point she’s already sorted out her feelings for Kikyo, yet InuYasha still thinks that Kikyo causes Kagome pain which in the beginning she did but Kagome has moved past that pain and she knows who she is as a person beyond just being her reincarnation. 

I think it’s further indicated when we first see Kagome and she shows the twins a kikyo root which is supposed to be good for coughs and fevers. When it panels to Sango we can see the surprise on her face as to hearing Kagome mention Kikyo’s name (you know it was an intentional  reference especially if you’ve read the manga and know what kind of demon Miroku and InuYasha  are fighting). Knowing this, still didn’t keep me from being surprised. I feel like just like the plant, Kagome has come to admire Kikyo’s strength as a priestess, something she’s trying to achieve herself as a Priestess in Training.

The original series dealt with a lot of Kagome’s identity being referenced as Kikyo and other characters trying to erase her individuality as just another copy of Kikyo. Something that Naruku did pretty frequently especially using the feelings Kagome had towards InuYasha against them on multiple occasions using Kikyo.

Just like how in the first episode of the original series where InuYasha kept calling Kagome, Kikyo when they first met, Kagome has to tell off the root demon and clarify that she is Ka-go-me, NOT Kikyo. 

I really liked all the symbolism this episode had and the references to the original series especially given that Towa ends up encountering a broken seat from a bike in the Feudal Era and as we know Kagome has had her bike destroyed and replaced, many a times throughout the series. 

The fact that Towa is someone whose been raised in the future by the brother of the woman who travels to the past is very interesting given the fact that she is the daughter of Seshomaru whose InuYasha’s older brother who besides Kagome was the only other person to be able to travel in time.

I’m wondering what makes InuYasha/Sesshomaru’s blood special as it appears as if all three girls were able to travel to the future so if Seshomaru himself had tried going through the bone eaters well, could he too have travelled to the future like InuYasha? 

Kagome was able to travel due to the Jewel of Four Souls and once that was destroyed her connection to the past was severed so I’m curious to see how the past and future end up connecting the three girls together because it was Kagome and InuYasha’s love in the end that reopened the well three years later. However, we know in the current timeline that the well is closed which makes me wonder what kind of fate these three girls share as the Half Demon Princesses (also Princesses of what may I ask?)

On a final note, in both series there are demon birds, the first a carrion crow demon who likes shiny things like the jewel, another an owl who is wise and has knowledge of the past. I suspect that this demon will play a key role in how this story ends up progressing, much in the same way the crow did.

Being a long time fan of the show, I remember being really sad when the series ended and frustrated when they didn’t defeat Naraku by the end of the original anime run. My head would constantly have ideas of what their future would have been like once the pesky fellow was dead and once I had gotten a computer (at age 11) and I discovered manga sites, I finally got an answer to my question.

Then a few years later, teenage me finally got those last chapters animated. I was finally blessed with my ending so I’ll be real frank with you when I say I was not happy this show was coming. While everyone else was freaking out that Seshomaru fucked someone, I was wondering, what could have caused Kagome and InuYasha to abandon their daughter which would be totally out of character for the both of them especially given InuYasha’s childhood. I doubt he would have abandoned his daughter given having lost his mother at such a young age himself and never knowing who his dad was until much later in his life. He would never want his own daughter to experience the loneliness and struggle he did before he met Kagome, Sango and Miroku.

Now having watched the first episode I can’t say my fears are dissipated for this unwanted sequel series as we have yet to know what happened so the possibility that its a shitty reason for why Moroha is alone is still high meaning the possibly my favorite characters are shit on is still there.

This series means a lot given the time I watched InuYasha my family had recently immigrated to Canada and while most people were into Pokemon at my age, which don’t get me wrong, I was too. 

I was far more fascinated by a girl who travelled through time in a fantasy world where she meets a cute dog demon boy and develops strong friendships, a budding romance and never loses herself. To a little girl who was also in a strange new country of her own, she was my role model. 

She’s the reason I wanna learn archery at some point in my life and helped me to grow to be the strong independent woman I am today.

Even at 24 years of age, this is still my favorite series and I love all the symbolism and references to the old series while also having its own fresh perspective that Yashahime provides. It doesn’t mean that my skepticism has been cured.

When I watched InuYasha, I got Kagome, Sango, Kikyo, Kaede and Kagura (her death is still so beautifully tragic) and now a whole new generation of girls are going to get Towa our leader, the calm and cool collected Setsuna and our charge first and ask questions later Moroha (just like her dad :’). I can’t wait to see how they grow and hopefully how their beloved parents grew.

InuYasha for me was my first conceptual understanding of anime and where my love for it came from. I’m looking forward to seeing how this story progresses. But I won’t be afraid of criticizing it regardless of the good first impression I got.

Also, does anyone else get reminded of Miroku’s wind tunnel when they see InuYasha’s Meido Zangetsuha? Just me?

Now time to listen to that opening and ending on repeat.

See You Next Week!

[being-of-rain]

I've been enjoying the Time Lord Victorious series so far, and since I caught up with a lot of it recently and we’re about half-way through it, I thought I'd post a bunch of thoughts on it here together.

I’m fascinated by the idea of a Doctor Who series made up of lots of different interconnected media, which feels like a natural thing to do when you consider how much history the franchise has with so many different formats of storytelling. And it’s wild to me that, contrary to what I first assumed, it was actually conceived before the whole global pandemic thing happened; it felt like almost perfect timing to give Doctor Who fans something to think about during lockdown.

One of the series’ greatest shortcomings was its promotion, which seemed to consist entirely of the title and that one promo visual. The lack of a clear, simple, all-encompassing premise from the start means that I still see fans reacting to TLV with confusion. Using ‘Time Lord Victorious’ as the only promotion also feels a little misleading - I think many people imagined the series being an Evil Ten AU (similar to the timeline glimpsed in the Four Doctors comic), when really most of the content is either building up to that or just tangentially connected to it. On the other hand, the series was clearly lovingly designed for Who fans (who are all about piecing together timelines and consuming a large range of stories) instead of a wider audience, so the unclear promotion feels more like a miscalculation than a fatal error.

Defender of the Daleks: Titan’s comic is easily the weakest link of the series for me- it didn’t have a meaningful part of the series to fill, I was bothered by a lot of the page layouts, and it felt like a lot of it was made only for Dalek superfans. Well, I genuinely hope the Dalek superfans enjoyed it.

Monstrous Beauty: It’s really nice to see BBC give Nine some love in the series, and you can tell writers like Scott Gray and Steve Cole enjoyed writing for him and Rose. The extreme gothic aesthetic for the Dark Times, the Great Vampires, and the coffin ship is lots of fun, even if the story itself is a little straight-forward and meandering. Rassilon turning up felt very unnessecary to me, at this point I wish authors would leave the Time Lords’ founders alone unless they have something genuinely interesting to add. Admittedly, seeing the Cucurbites return and Nine make an explicit reference to the ‘90s Eight comics made my day. Y’all know I’m an Eight comics nerd.

Master Thief/Lesser Evils: Honestly, both of these stories left me a little confused to what actually happened in them, and what the point of them were. The first one didn’t even seem to tie in to TLV at all. Despite that, I’m really happy to see the Delgado Master and Ainley Master get some audios to themselves. Both characters were captured wonderfully by the stories and were a joy to listen to.

He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not: I was really surprised by this just being an out-and-out Western, but I loved it! Brian sticking close to his hostage while the other characters slowly pieced together what was going on and what they should do about it made for a very different kind of tension to the usual Who story. Brian’s explanation about killing with a thought made me properly nervous about him being around any other characters. I’m glad they got to do some non-formulaic stuff with Eight before the Daleks turned up at the end. Overall, the Daleks have a larger part in TLV than I’m happy with, since it makes it feel like the series is split between experimenting with new ideas and retreading old ground.

The Knight, The Fool and The Dead: The novels are definitely the heart of the Time Lord Victorious story, and so I’m very happy with the choice of authors for them. This first one was great. I really liked Ten’s characterisation of being at his limit but trying to continue on as normal and do what’s right.

His temporary companion Brian the Ood Assassin is every bit as fun as the concept sounds. I love how Brian doesn’t (usually) try to hide that he’s a merciless murder, but is still very polite and dresses in a tux. The little descriptions of him commanding a space fleet of mercenaries like a headwaiter running an expensive restaurant are hilarious. I can’t wait for more stories with him.

The villains of the piece, the Kotturuh, are surprisingly and delightfully eldritch, with their tentacles and their symbols in the sky. Not to mention their plans for the universe written on the cave walls of the planet that acts as a gateway between their cosmos and ours, writing which make people who look at it go mad. The Kotturuh, or Kotts, spread the effects of a natural lifespan to every species in the universe, ending an era of immortality for most of them.

This leads me to the heart of the story, and the premise of the series as a whole; is the Doctor doing the right thing by trying to stopping natural death from spreading in the Dark Times? But there’s a problem here. The concept of death being unnatural is one that TLV introduces to the Doctor Who universe without warning or really giving you space to process it. If all death by old age is something artificially added to the universe, and isn’t a natural part of life and change (as has been part of the heart of basically every other Who story), then is it really wrong to oppose that? Surely that would make the Kotts the uncontested biggest mass murderers in the history of everything. It feels like we need to develop a whole new moral compass just to reckon with this. And it doesn’t help that the other side of the argument is about if it’s right to change time, something the Who franchise has never been super consistent about and another thing that we don’t have morality established to deal with in the real world.

It feels like far too complex a set-up to be explored in just two short novels and a collection of tie-ins more interested in Daleks and Ood than the Time Lord Victorious himself. I’m a little worried that the moral question will be boiled down to the ‘killing is inconceivable even in the face of genocide’ stance that the franchise has held before, and practically never handled well. But needless to say, I’m very interested in what will happen in the future stories, especially second novel and series finale All Flesh Is Grass.

[puttingfingerstokeys]

and we danced

I’ve had this one sitting around for a bazillion years. Sequel to Faraday Cage, though I think I started this one first. Oh well, that’s been happening a lot.

Faraday Cage

prevented timeline 

Sunset in Beverly Hills was a time of peaceful winding down for some—very few, of course, but some—and for Johnny Cage in particular, it was a time to sit on his patio, crack a beer, and play with the new turntable Cassie had gotten him to replace the one that had been lost in the move. A few boxes of records stood about like milling party guests and he was going through them, deciding what to listen to first. There were albums of many genres, and not all of them were his. He held a Doors album that had belonged to his late ex-wife, Sonya Blade, and gripped his beer a little harder than was perhaps necessary.

 The sun sank lower, casting red-orange hues over the expanse of his home and yard, staining everything a rust color while the sky ran through shades of pink, lavender and, to the east, blue, Stygian and star-dotted, though only for the moment. As night’s blanket fell, the lights of the city—the brazen neon refusing to relinquish its hold upon the evening—would drown out those points of light, irreverently casting them aside as if they were shards of glass, rather than precious diamonds. A lot of life’s like that, Johnny considered, choosing a record and placing it gently upon the turntable, lowering the needle with relish.

 An almost muffled crack of thunder—how a lightning bolt could be muffled would forever remain a mystery to the aging actor—resounded across the yard just as night took hold and his hanging “fairy” lights came on, activated by the lack of ambient illumination. He looked up to see the protector of Earthrealm, Raiden, striding across the expanse of grass which marked his yard. He was glad his fences were high and his neighbors were, in all likelihood, out on the town.

 “Whoa Raiden—somethin’ wrong?” He was immediately alarmed and set his beer aside to stand and face the deity. In his defense, Raiden walked everywhere with purpose, as if something urgent was happening someplace and it required his attention. Johnny chalked it up to being a god, though perhaps it was simply Raiden’s personality. Some people had a hard time differentiating between Raiden’s duty and personality; they so often coincided that even the god himself seemed helpless in the face of that gap—if indeed gap there was. But Johnny knew better. The gulf was spanned with firm ties, but there was a divide. 

 “No, Johnny Cage,” said the god of thunder with relief in his voice. “I am sorry to have alarmed you.”

 “I wasn’t alarmed—just… y’know…” Johnny sat back down before realizing he should offer a chair. He stood once more and gestured to his.

 “You were,” the god corrected, “because you rarely refer to me in that way unless you are alarmed.”

 Johnny felt himself go red to the ears as Raiden took the offered seat and he retrieved another from the garden shed which was positioned off to one side of the patio. A push mower and a few lawn grooming implements were also placed therein, but for the time being, he was only interested in a chair. Grasping it with one hand, he lifted it and closed the doors behind himself, returning to the record player, the records, and the literal deity who had settled in his seat.

 “Should’ve known,” Johnny amended, setting his own on the other side of the player so he could still manipulate it. “I mean you’re… not in armor, so I guess shit can’t be that bad.”

 “An astute observation,” responded Raiden, regarding the machine, speakers, and vinyl disks. He touched none of these, knowing that even his presence could upset electronics, but wondering after their purpose. He was certain that the machine itself would be adversely affected by his lightning, even if the discs were not. Raiden was not ignorant of mortal machines or customs, just too busy to become intimately acquainted therewith. No one seemed to hold it against him.

 Rather, they found it endearing. This, for some reason, did not upset him. It delighted the god of thunder to know people found him… approachable. Long ago, he had relinquished the cloak of aloofness, finding mortals and their lives to be far too fascinating and precious to loftily hold himself above them. The irony is in my tardiness; Fujin understood eons ago what it has taken me much longer to learn. I am a fool.

 “So why are you here?” Johnny’s words fled his tongue before he could restrain them and he blushed once more as he reached for the beer he had discarded. “Sorry—not what I meant. What’s… uh… Up?”

 “A desire to commune with a friend,” said Raiden simply but in his usual elaborate fashion that made Johnny wonder if he should also be speaking that way—it was like feeling underdressed at a gala or five-star restaurant, but with words. “I would have called,” Raiden added after a moment, “but…” His hands rose, palms skyward to indicate that he had no means by which to contact Johnny—e.g. no cellphone. Magic amulets, of course, were plentiful if one knew where to look, but there was no need to saddle Johnny Cage with such an implement when he could simply touch down in the man’s back yard and speak with him personally.

 For Johnny’s part, the thought of Raiden texting sent a hysterical thrill through his body and he restrained the urge to laugh aloud. He made a mental note to say something to Cassie later, but for now, it was more important to focus on the fact that Raiden had come back after that weird afternoon a few weeks ago—or had it been months—when he had kissed him! 

 Johnny had been sure that would be the last he would see of the god of thunder, though he had hoped this would not be the case, and he had resigned himself to only hearing peripherally from the guy when Earthrealm was in peril. He had even gone through the “is he avoiding me” phase before the resignation had set in. It was almost thrilling to feel so young and stupid again. Next to him, I guess I am young and stupid.

 “Well, I’m havin’ a beer and listening to old records—and I’m all outta beer. Lemme put this sucker on.” He did just that, gently laying a record on the turntable and placing the needle, standing with what he felt was a thunderous crack of his knees and then straightened. “You want one?”

 “My body is a temple, Johnny Cage; I do not imbibe.”

 “Could be an amusement park, Sparky,” came the reply, but as he had never forced his alcoholic preferences on Liu Kang or any of his other White Lotus or Wu-Shi friends, he did not press and headed inside to grab a second beer and maybe breathe a little. In the background of his retreat, Jim Morrison’s voice filtered through the air and filled his back yard.

 Johnny’s fingers closed on the handle of his refrigerator door and he pulled it open, feeling nothing other than casual affection toward the strange being on his porch. As he reached toward the next beer, however, his mind began racing along, out of control. It felt as if casual affection was morphing. He needed the alcohol and the comfortable haze it promised. 

 His hand closed about the chilly bottle and he stood, regarding the singular illumination provided by his refrigerator and realized that he’d forgotten to turn any lights on. Sunset had come and gone and here he was, standing in his dark kitchen with the god of thunder relaxing on his patio and listening to the Doors. His heart began to pound and he fumbled with the bottle opener magnet. Casual affection was, indeed, quickly giving way to something which scared him.

 When he finally managed to free his bottle of its troublesome top and return to the door, intent on gaining the patio without fumbling anything, Raiden had once more removed his hat and cap and was running his fingers through his hair. Johnny wasn’t sure the guy knew he was standing there, hand poised just above the handle of his slider, watching that silvery-white stuff flow and wave, catching the warm illumination of his yard lights. Once more, he was assailed by the desire to see it spread out upon a pillow beneath him. 

 Johnny shook his head to clear that thought, swallowed hard and tugged the door open. Raiden straightened and shifted, softly glowing eyes turning toward his host. In the back of his mind, the actor wondered if Raiden could read minds. He had never asked, but he certainly hoped this was not the case. 

 “I apologize for arriving unannounced,” Raiden said, inclining his head. His hands had dropped from his hair and were poised almost demurely in his lap. Johnny shrugged and remembered that he was supposed to walk out and join Raiden on the patio, rather than standing in the doorway, frozen by the man’s divine beauty. 

 Fortunately, the possessor of the divine beauty in question did not seem to notice and as Johnny uprooted himself, he turned, politely, and resumed his relaxed position on the seat. Johnny could not help noticing, with offhanded curiosity, that the seat didn’t sink much with the god’s weight as it did with his own. Weird.

 “It’s fine,” Johnny assured him, raising a hand. “Really. It was just gunna be me and this record player.” He reached over and turned the volume dial down so they could converse without difficulty. Raiden’s voice, he had noticed, was firm, but gentle—except when he was pissed. The commanding tone doubled his voice, amplifying it to the point where it seemed to come from everywhere and rattled in Johnny’s ribcage and skull. He was glad this was not the voice he was hearing. “I’m glad you’re here, actually.”

 Once more, Johnny’s words were getting ahead of his brain and, as usual, he could not retract what had been said. It wasn’t a lie, of course, or an exaggeration, but some things were best left unsaid. He lifted the beer to his lips defensively, but the statement was already out there, hovering in the air between them.

 Raiden watched him with a Mona Lisa expression, almost half of a smile, certainly relaxed, and knowing, as ever. Johnny prayed he would not ask why the mortal was glad to see him. He did not have the energy for that explanation, short though it should have been. Just tell him you wanted to see him again because you’ve got a thing for him, simple as that. Liu was right. Better to get it out in one go and see what happens. Worst he can do is vaporize me.

 Johnny decided that was an unkind thought and busied himself digging through his records; better to do that than prolonging the awkwardness of the utter lack of conversation. Fortunately, Johnny was the only one feeling awkward, as Raiden seemed content with the musical quietude and had settled back in the provided chair, inscrutable eyes focused on nothing in particular, and then falling on Johnny’s back as he crouched near a box, having himself a trip through memory lane. A warm wind began to pick up, coming off the ocean and bringing with it the smell of salt.

 “That you, big guy?” Johnny, as usual, broke the silence. Raiden shook his head.

 “No,” he responded. “I am the god of thunder, Johnny Cage, not wind.”

 There was humor in his tone and a levity that Johnny had come to appreciate, even to crave. It was so rare, even now, when everything seemed to be at peace. Shifting from his crouched position to one of kneeling, Johnny clutched a record in one hand and reached for the turntable with the other. Raiden could not see what was on the cover, but even if he could, it would be insignificant. In all his time and travels, he had rarely taken the opportunity to sit and absorb the music of Earthrealm—or any other realm, for that matter.

 “Raiden I—”

 “Johnny Cage—”

 Both men paused as they began simultaneously and then that strange, utterly human embarrassment settled over them like the blanket of night which had tucked itself in for the evening. Johnny turned to face Raiden, still half-crouched. The god of thunder was sitting forward, elbows on his knees, glowing eyes meeting Johnny’s without reservation. There was something in those eyes; right then they were not as inscrutable as they had been in the past. Or maybe I’m just getting better at reading him, Johnny thought, unsure if he was comfortable with this.

 “Please,” ushered Raiden finally, extending a hand toward his mortal companion. Johnny shook his head.

 “Age before beauty,” he insisted, attempting to introduce humor to a situation in which it may not have been appropriate, a very on-brand move for him. His heart was seizing and then hammering and then fluttering, as if there was some kind of small bird within, fighting desperately to escape. Johnny was not even clear within himself just what it was he wanted Raiden to say, or what he himself was attempting to express. He had been content simply allowing his mouth to run away with him, to see where it would take this situation. Now, faced with the reality of what a runaway tongue might cause, he was terrified. To busy his hands, he gingerly switched records as Raiden conceded. 

 “Very well, although I have heard on the breeze that some mortals find me to be… exquisite.” This, too, seemed to be an introduction of humor, so Johnny didn’t feel as silly as he might have done otherwise. Raiden sat back, looking almost impish, and certainly amused.

 “Fujin promised he wouldn’t tell!” Johnny’s tone was jesting, but his heart continued its staccato tattoo. He had not, in fact, spoken with Fujin in quite some time—like Raiden, the man was busy. If he had, it certainly wouldn’t be to confess some kind of high school crush on a celestial being’s equally divine brother. Twins, he reminded himself, they’re twins—Thunder Cat told Cassie and me recently. Weird. 

 They were night and day, Fujin and Raiden, but Johnny assumed that twins among gods did not operate the same as mortal twins. Or perhaps they did and he simply had no firsthand knowledge. The only twins he had ever encountered were a pair of actresses in one of his films—notably not the Ninja Mime franchise. The music began, but it was secondary to the melody of Raiden’s voice as he spoke.

 “He did not have to,” said Raiden, his tone warm, almost inviting—or maybe that invitation was a misinterpretation of Johnny’s fevered mind as he tried to lose himself in a swig of beer and an ‘80s power ballad whose title was lost in the cyan pools of Raiden’s eyes. “I know it is not an appropriate custom,” he continued, “to leave someone for long periods of time with no contact, but the nature of my—of what I am—dictates that I must. Forgive me for that, if you can.”

 “Anything,” Johnny breathed. He realized that he had not yet been able to return to his seat, so enraptured was he in Raiden’s gaze. The soft, warm illumination of his backyard lighting fell upon Raiden’s statuesque face and, rather than making him look ghoulish as it might do to just about anyone else, he became an older Adonis, still painfully handsome—beautiful, even—but no longer pretty in that fleeing way of youth. His face lacked the innocence of a younger man and Johnny realized he had come to appreciate this, craved it too, along with much else.

 “Your kindness does you great credit, Johnny Cage,” Raiden said.

 It ain’t kindness. This is so far beyond that, Johnny thought, his mind losing itself in that strange warm haze of beer, good music, and good company. Without thinking, Johnny shifted once more, moving closer to the god of thunder and reaching out toward him, laying a hand upon his knee. There was a low buzz when he did that, not a sound, but a feeling under his palm and fingers, dancing up his arm. He squeezed, feeling his heart clambering in his throat and wondering if Raiden’s was doing the same—or if he even had a heart. What operated within the body of a being like him? 

 Was it all clockwork, or maybe ethereal light? He had seen Raiden bleed and the blood was red, but when it caught the light, it was clearly shot through with veins of gold, unless his eyes deceived him all those years ago. When it hit the ground, it clattered as if solid. He did not understand this, but all the times he witnessed this, Johnny had been more than a little preoccupied. Gods were not supposed to bleed; it was anathema to their nature. Yet Raiden and Fujin could bleed and, more than that, they chose to bleed for the peace and safety of Earthrealm.

 “You don’t have to say anything,” Johnny advised, speaking low, loud enough to be heard, but not to drown out the music. He was responding to a look on Raiden’s face that suggested he was searching for words. His smile was more tentative now, leaning in the direction of the Mona Lisa, inscrutable and ethereal. He clearly wanted to relax, to allow whatever was happening within him simply to happen. The mortal could almost see the fight in his eyes. It broke Johnny’s heart and he wanted, all of a sudden and more than anything in every realm, to help Raiden move past whatever was slowing him down, whatever strange barrier stood between the god of thunder and his happiness, his own desires. 

 The deity had no trouble being decisive, even vicious, and dropping one whopper of a hammer when the need arose, but that need was never his own; always, it was someone else’s burden, though he would remind Johnny Cage that it was a responsibility he had chosen and for which he would fight to the death—maybe beyond. This scared the actor, sometimes. He didn’t know if he had ever, or COULD ever, dedicate himself to something with such vehemence. Had he expressed this aloud, Raiden might simply have pointed out his daughter, Cassandra Cage. 

 “I do,” rumbled the god of thunder. “My silence has done damage in the past.”

 “Everyone’s has,” Johnny reminded him, moving so he was crouching before Raiden, both hands comfortably on the man’s knees. His connection with the ground seemed to be strong enough that the current was running harmlessly through him. Raiden’s corona of electricity was not arcing or dancing about, seeking to harm him. It simply flowed, rather like water, from the eternal battery that was the thunder god, into Johnny Cage, and down through the earth. Whence beyond that was anyone’s guess. “But this isn’t silence, is it?”

 Raiden reflected that it was not, in fact, silent in that yard. There was music, and there was the two of them, and they were capable of conversation, of healthy discussion, and of much else. He moved with a deliberate purpose that froze Johnny momentarily, both hands finding either side of the actor’s head, a motion he had seen turn healthy muscle, bone, and gray matter into so much electrified pulp. 

 Rather than lightning from Raiden’s fingers, however, he felt the soft press of lips on his own, not urgent, but hardly tentative. This, he realized, was a version of Raiden who knew what he wanted, even if part of him was still unsure he should want it. Johnny would like to flatter himself—it really would be hubris at that point—and think that Raiden had spent all that time away thinking about him, about how to do this. If no one disabused him of that little flight of fancy, he would gladly go on pretending it to be the case. 

 To that end, Johnny returned the gesture, pressing into it and forcing Raiden back into the comfortable seat. The beer spilled somewhere in the grass and its memory was lost in the haze of heat the actor had found between the two unlikely beings—and between Raiden’s thighs. 

 Johnny’s hands were now gripping these, firm and powerful, through the strange material of his pants. He had in the past made a mental note to ask Raiden of what his clothing was made, if it could be manufactured for himself and the SF “kids” (when you were old, everyone was a kid). Right now, that thought was not even in the same galaxy as the rest of his mind. Right now, he only felt that heat; he was a being of pure sensation and would be more than happy to drown in it.

 Slowly, gently, his hands slid upward. His thumbs soon found Raiden's hips through the fabric of what Johnny considered his "habit". His grip tightened briefly, testing the waters. The music hummed on, but Johnny heard nothing. His focus was solely on Raiden, whose grip had shifted to the front of his shirt, grasping the lapels of Johnny's button-down. He seemed content to keep the Hollywood superstar as close as he possibly could. Johnny's hands traced the curve of Raiden's waistline which, though offset by leather and cloth, was pleasantly molded, almost perfectly to Johnny’s grip, like the narrow portion of an hourglass. 

 He heard himself moaning quietly into the kiss while the epiphany of his attraction to the thunder god’s shape washed over him like an ocean wave. His heart's rhythm had regulated itself and was thudding along steadily, if a bit strongly. Blood was rushing to all parts of him and he felt himself break out in a sudden sweat. Maybe he's frying me and doesn't realize it; isn't this what radiation poisoning feels like? He had to remind himself that Raiden was not, in fact, radioactive. 

 “Dance with me,” Johnny heard himself say suddenly, breaking the kiss with plenty of surprise, but no reluctance at all, eager to share this next, utterly unforeseen desire. Raiden, too, seemed more than a little astonished, glowing eyes widening momentarily, before softening. In fact, his entire countenance softened, assuming the look of something more accessible than merely a benevolent deity which, Johnny reflected, he was. He’s seen some rough shit, thought the actor as he stood, hearing his knees crack once more as he did so, pulling Raiden with him. So have I. Now I want some peace and quiet.

 Raiden stood willingly, unsure of what was next. It was a refreshing feeling. In all the eons of his life, he had rarely felt unsure of something and also been very comfortable with it. Lack of information had often led him to make poor decisions. This was not one of those situations, however. He was not really making any decisions, save to follow Johnny’s steps as the mortal pulled him close, wrapping one arm about his waist and taking his other hand.

 Johnny was surprised, as he had been when noticing the lack of weight upon the chair, at how easy it was to heft the god of thunder, so to speak. He was not picking the man up, yet, but even the act of moving him from a seated to a standing position was utterly without strain. It felt natural to draw Raiden to himself, pressing their bodies tightly together, all potential awkwardness draining away in the notes of the song coming from the speakers attached to the turntable. 

 When he held out his hand to receive Raiden’s, the god of thunder offered it with no hesitation or complaint. When Johnny pulled him close, he did not protest. When they began to move to the ebb and flow of the music, it was very much as if they were made for this. When the mortal manipulated the deity’s movements and body into a deep dip, he felt Raiden bend and ride along with the motion. 

 When he kissed the god of thunder, both men held tightly to the lifeline the other had become.