#its just so fun reading magnus moments | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jerreeeeeee · 3 months ago

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i also read the suffering game graphic novel. here's praises and criticisms. this one is also more negatives than positives unfortunately, i tried to be fair and thoughtful but i did not like it very much

things i liked:

-lucretia prologue establishing that she went to wonderland + talking abt missing the crew. fun & mysterious

-hi mavis and mookie :) they are cute

-HI BARRY sometimes i forget he stalked merle’s family outing. i love that freak

-magnus and angus scene!! fisher showing angus the statue drawing!! ango detective subplot!! this is a nice and natural addition since we know he was sleuthing around the BOB

-merle teasing taako about his date is kinda cute actually love seeing them be friends

-thank god they got rid of the chimera. idk if this is a hot take or anything but its probably my least favorite fight in the podcast its so out of place and unnecessary. there are lots of fights that didnt really matter in the beginning like all the gerblins and the slime swamp in rockport but they were still like getting their bearings and the show was more like a real dnd campaign than a typical actual play, but by the time you get to the suffering game there’s more interesting things to do and you're like god why are we still doing random forest encounters just get to wonderland already

-not a positive per se but i’m not that upset about sterling and his party being cut. i feel like an adaptation would’ve had an opportunity to make that little c-plot matter more, and that would’ve been awesome, but as is in the podcast, i never felt particularly strongly about it? not enough to miss it. idk like magnus and merle were already for ‘trust’ even if it were strangers and taako never seems all that regretful about it (which like. fair. he’s the pragmatist and that’s how the prisoner’s dilemma works. he played the game right because he couldn’t afford to lose, knowing they hurt some slightly-less-strangers doesn’t really change that).

-i dont remember which of the boys discovered it in the podcast but merle noticing the smoke thing is good. he actually is competent and especially in an arc that’s meant to make him feel useless that’s a good little reminder

-i do like that the liches say the bell is very powerful & is threatening to destroy them like both keeping in theme with the rest of the relics and an introduction to the idea that sharing an incredible and dangerous power between two people makes it easier to keep your sanity, similar to lichdom

-griffin getting cut off with the hunger is awesome finally we’re taking advantage of the medium. nothing more to say that choice rules

-posts on tumblr hyped me up for taako recognizing barry’s dick but unfortunately that’s not really what happened and now i’m disappointed. but the graphic novels arent canon so i’ll just have to continue with my barry/taako awkward past one night stand agenda despite it all

-i dont quite know how to feel about the umbrastaff leaping to barry to replace the “love barry, trust barry” moment. on the one hand, having lup actually speak to taako wouldn’t work super well in graphic novel form, not to mention the whole band of projected thought thing was kinda convoluted and they are clearly very limited on time, and taako choosing to trust the umbrastaff in this way is a creative way to get that same effect. on the other hand, its so unclear what even happened or why it changes taako’s mind without podcast context. that’s one of my big gripes, you’re expected to be familiar with the story already, but if you’re familiar with the story, the graphic novels are… worse in every way. also, i really really liked the original scene so even though it doesn’t work, i miss it. this isn’t as effective—we don’t find out there’s a person missing from taako’s memory, his heart doesn't swell at the sound of her voice, he doesn’t know with certainty that she’s someone dear to him. it's just like, another instance of the umbrastaff acting weird. maybe you put together that 'LUP' is a person but you don't have any indication until the moment of remembering how important she is. all of that would be really difficult to get across in a visual medium anyway, but still, yknow, it doesn’t hit as hard.

-ango!! his mage hand is coming along so well!! although. why is his wand just like a stick. did he pick it up off the ground. taako needs to take better care of his boy this reflects badly on him as a teacher lmao

-i felt this way about the eleventh hour too but there’s so many little details of taako and merle’s friendship i feel like they have little asides and jokes together a lot and i love that

-the looming dread of the hunger is done pretty well (as well as it can be with such time restraints)

-merle trying to commune with pan and seeing john instead is good. very ominous and intriguing for new readers and exciting for podcast listeners

-really liked the panel of barry in the red robe against the stars and the bond engine’s white ring as he’s remembering. very cool very cinematic

-i actually also really like the framing as taako remembers, filling in the memories we’d seen previously and clearing out the static while he looks so broken, and merle asking him what he’s remembering, and then finally speaking his sister’s name. its framed very powerfully. i wish he and lup didn’t look awful so i could actually feel something at that part. like they are my favorite characters ever their story makes me so emotional and i just. they’re unrecognizable. the character designs are terrible and taako has spent 6 books now being mischaracterized and flattened to hell so i just can’t muster any emotion. maybe i'll redraw that page someday though because the panelling is genuinely very good

-the ending lucretia monologue is good she's the narrator she's the main character she's everything. love the portraits staticking out and mirroring and changing, and ending on the beach painting is great. very cinematic and a natural way to phase into the stolen century

things i didn’t like:

-i dont think taako’s deepest desire is his own brand of fashion forward athleisure wear if i’m being quite honest. these little things irk me

-why is liches get stitches all the way in the beginning… ill portent for how the rest of this book will go

-i think they shouldve introduced the flaming raging poisoning sword of doom way earlier. the payoff isnt nearly as good without the setup of having been magnus’ white whale for like fifty episodes. maybe they did mention it in earlier books and i just forgot though

-^ i hate his stupid ugly oversexualized stereotyped ass so fucking much its unreal

-why are edward and lydia ugly :( —(they're not ugly because they're chubby they're ugly because their color schemes and outfits are fucking awful) (fr though why are all their colors so muted and dingy?? why are their outfits boring?? at least their heart attack looks are fun)

-oh so there’s just no trust or forsake at all. yeah i don’t like that. in the end no great loss since i don't think it really says anything about thb's characters that hasn't already been said, but so much of thb's characters and arcs have been cut from the gns already

-i get that they’re low on time trying to fit in reunion tour but like come on part of the suffering of the suffering game is how long and painful it is cutting it down really just. makes it not matter as much

-magnus looks no different after aging LMAO he gets like 2 gray hairs and that’s it

-edward and lydia’s lich forms are also boring unfortunately

-no tasha’s hideous laughter on the heart attack mannequin? lame. although i have for the first time realized that dnd shows kinda have a thing for characters uninterested in romance being forced by mysterious powers to be haunted by creepy puppet-like “romance partners” huh

-magnus doesn’t forget kalen?? why cut that out? i guess because there was never closure for it in the original story?

-no boss rush?? that was fun :(

-magnus and taako aren’t surprised merle has kids??? did they know???

-dupree looks terrible but i guess props to carey for giving him feathers even though it looks bad

-just axed the liches’ backstory?? that was kind of important?? the fact that they turned to necromancy out of love for their family & powered themselves with positive emotions too? that like, has relevance later…

-NO BAD LUCK FOR ARMS OUTSTRETCHED? COME ON

-the framing of magnus’ soul being removed is so anticlimactic in general like the POINT of a VISUAL adaptation is to have interesting & cinematic VISUALS its just so messy

-all of arms outstretched didnt look very good in general sorry. its just such a big important moment and to make it so mid… a tragedy

-“i guess we still needed each other after all” doesnt work anymore because they removed all of edward and lydia’s backstory and character but it was an interesting line to me that i wish had been kept. hammering in that liches need anchors is, again, pretty relevant later on, getting rid of that foreshadowing sucks, and it also humanizes these villains in an interesting way that really highlights their powerlust as their downfall rather than just, like, cruelty for evil’s sake. like yes they torture people and find it fun because they’re so distanced from their own humanity but they also truly believed it was necessary for their own safety and seemingly only became sadistic after they desensitized themselves. i wrote a post about this a while ago but idk if i’ll ever post it

-not a fan of barry killing lydia either. idk why, its not like he hasn’t killed other people to protect the boys before. but that’s earlier in the show before we know he’s not just a villain and is in fact meant to introduce him as a villain. now he’s a friend so idk if you can just go back to having him murder people? again its not a wrong choice but it feels like messy storytelling. also like i think seeing a lich grieving her anchor and a sister grieving her brother would pull some heartstrings for him. it would maybe remind him of some people he loves and garner some sympathy and give him some pause. and i liked that in the podcast even though lydia was so distanced from the idea of positive anchors, killing edward just immediately undoes her, fits in with the themes and the way we understand liches to work, another powerful example of what bonds can do, and that's kinda lost here

-magnus’ answer to the bell sucks so badddd lmao when these books NEED context they’re devoid of it but when they actually have the necessary plot points/character arc established for the reader to put something together they have to go and spell it out like the audience is stupid. there was something so raw and powerful about magnus’ original “i’d hate it. shut the fuck up.” like just shutting it down and not even considering it. that’s completely lost when he has to be like “recap time! my wife, julia,” eugh just didnt like that. there are so many powerful lines from balance that i don’t hate on principal that they’ve changed, but there was no good reason to change, and so the new version just falls flat and there was no reason not to include the original lines verbatim? i get not wanting to just deliver a podcast highlight reel and have the gns be their own story or w/e but if you’re gonna do that you have to do it well, and they just keep being worse unfortunately

-they don’t get the chance to go off the grid themselves and choose to trust barry?? come the fuck ON that is IMPORTANT to the STORY

-this may or may not be an unpopular opinion but i’m not a fan of barry’s design either. i don’t like the hair and he’s not fat enough. less egregious than others but its still another instance of being like who tf is that

-barry’s little coin monologue was kinda fun and dramatic and i (finally) liked the visuals of him falling from the sky/silhouette of the starblaster against faerun’s single sun. but i wish they’d kept more of the original. add drama that’s fine but the point of it is to humanize him after we’ve spent so long thinking of him as a villain and a ghost and a force of the story and now it turns out he’s barry bluejeans. he’s just a guy. he loves his mom. he’s allergic to dairy. he’s afraid of the dark.

-especially not a fan of cutting out the “love that defined and redeemed you” and “dull weight in your chest” in barry’s coin monologue. those are important parts of his character. whether you interpret the love and the weight to be for lup or for the whole crew, you need to know that the red robe has lost people, and that everything he does is to try to get them back. he’s the lover and he’s grief personified. his mission is to save the world AND recover his family. thats like. kinda important for his character and role in the story. if you ask me.

-again the “we’ll get em next time” magnus flashback is not BAD but it could’ve looked so much better? carey definitely has strengths as an artist but her fight scenes and character design tends to be very weak so its unfortunate that this is an adaptation of a dnd podcast where those 2 things are like, the most important. idk i feel like i should be articulating what i mean better but i’m not sure how. the fights just are often really cluttered and framed in an odd way that doesn’t look very good or dramatic or dynamic. i don’t want to say carey is a bad artist, i really don’t think she is! but i think she was not the right artist for this project. the magic of a visual medium is, well. the visuals. when they’re mid the whole story suffers.

-taako and merle not just saying magnus is dead is sorta unnecessarily confusing since everyone like assumes he’s dead anyway? idk i don’t understand that choice. kinda fucks with his moment with carey. not a big deal in the end but it does seem unnecessary

-MAGNUS DOESN’T GO SEE FISHER?? the mannequin dies in fantasy costco??? what about johann???

-“you stole half of my fucking heart” i know a lot of people loved this line but it genuinely baffles me. Why Only Half. not only referencing one of the most heartwarming (and heartbreaking) lines in the original show with no context for why its meaningful at all yet—but also minimizing it? why soften that blow? why detract from the raw intensity of that grief? why reduce a very powerful sentiment? an adaptation of balance that doesn’t allow itself to be earnest and wholehearted (ha) about its platonic bonds is not a good adaptation, straight up. maybe its not that deep but it is To Me. maybe it has no real import and i’m just being stupid but like they made that choice to write half instead of just “my heart.” Why, genuinely

-hey what the fuck happened to johann for real though. that was a really important part of the story. hey. hey. what about johann. like are we just ignoring johann. am i insane. how has no one mentioned this. what’s up with johann

so all in all, again, rushed pacing, axing of a lot of very important plot points, shoddy visuals.

it did not make me relive the emotional journey of the suffering game and reunion tour. it inspired a vague nostalgia for the first time i experienced reunion tour, reminded me of how much i love the original show, and made me want to listen to the podcast again. especially reunion tour good god i love reunion tour. and it made me desperately wish for a good adaptation. i would do fucking anything for a good adaptation. the longing is making me sick. at least we always have podcast reunion tour.

the graphic novels are just so empty and soulless compared to the original show. i wouldn’t have an issue with changes, except that the changes, at every turn, gut the emotional core of the story that makes it so special, and ruin the strong themes throughout the story. they fundamentally misunderstand what is so good about balance. and also, like, basic storytelling. they’re poorly designed and poorly written, so they don’t even stand on their own as a different story. i'm not expecting an exact replica, but i am expecting good writing, good changes when necessary, and respect for the original beloved story. without those, the soul is gone, the spark of what makes balance so compelling and emotional.

i am dreading the story and song graphic novel. i don’t think it will be any good. the themes and character arcs and plot of the show have been mangled beyond belief so nothing is really meaningful anymore. can we go back to the johann thing for a moment—

#mine #taz graphic novel #taz graphic novels #taz gns #the suffering game #the adventure zone #taz balance #the adventure zone balance #maybe they're just changing up the order of things wrt johann and maybe it'll all work out in the next book but idk #doesnt look good atm

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alexanderlightweight · 1 year ago

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Can you do some more long haired shadowhunter lore?

Have a Happy Writing Wendsday!

here we go! thank you it's already off to a fun start ^_^

~ lumine

Magnus is absolutely positive that he’s never met the gorgeous shadowhunter he’s led to in his life, even if he apparently has. That is until he realizes who he’s meeting and recalls a vague, unimportant memory of meeting one of the Lightwood’s children on his way out of the Institute.

Magnus remembers hurrying away from the curious child, not wanting to stay in the Institute a moment longer and he regrets that now, leaving what was surely a terrible impression.

It’s with pleasure that Magnus watches Alexander comport himself with the dignity of an Elder and then he — willingly when Magnus asks — turns his back to Magnus to personally lead the way.

His hair flows long and dark behind him. Thick too, with more fluff than shine but the braids are neat and heavily charmed. If he were any less strict with his own manners, Magnus would be tempted to reach out and touch. There is something about Alexander that is intoxicating and calling to Magnus and Magnus wonders just how he’s going to woo such a stoic man.

At least, that is his thought until he’s led down a hall, past several doors brimming with magic to a large room that dips down onto wood that had to come from Idris. It is dark and old and brimming with an old, cold power.

“The wards down here are in stasis.” Magnus murmurs as he runs his hand over the lodestone tying the runes to the room. “They’re powerful but they feed off of ritual energy, which there has been little of here.”

“Okay. So do you want to fight or fuck?” Alexander asks him and Magnus is so surprised that he nearly bites through his tongue.

“Excuse me?”

“We need to charge the lodestone for the wards, right?”

“Yes.” Magnus says, still unsure what exactly is going on and wondering desperately if it means he’s going to get what he wants. “This isn’t a price you’re going to have Clarissa pay, is it?”

Alexander scoffs and shakes his head, charms rattling in his hair. “I have given permission for the ritual to be held since the clave will get information out of it, useless or not. It is my duty to ensure this space is maintained for whatever rituals take place. I owe it to my people and myself to keep them protected from any kind of shockwaves or rituals gone awry.”

Magnus knows that one of the other ritual rooms they passed could do in a snap. Literally, he could snap his fingers and change an array or to and the other room would be just as good.

Magnus specifically does not mention this, at all.

“Well, as much as I enjoy a good fight, I’d rather fuck. Sex magic is much better for protective warding after all.” Magnus is not sure who he is fooling, or if he is fooling anyone at all. He can barely get a read on Alexander being the feral competence that surrounds him like a cloak.

Alexander smiles at him then, something soft and almost tender in his eyes and Magnus’ heart lurches, hammering against the walls surrounding it that are starting to crack.

Then he takes off his vest.

There is no buildup, no shyness.

The rest of his clothes follow into a neat pile until Alexander is standing there, naked and with his hair out of its main braid. It falls in loose waves and braid-crimped curls and smaller, tighter braids that intricately hold up dozens of charms.

Magnus swallows, mouth and throat dry and snaps his fingers, locking the door and sealing it for good measure and before he can help it, his glamour drops as well.

Alexander blinks back at him and then, with the first signs of fluster Magnus has seen on him yet, he licks his lips, pink tinting his cheeks.

It’s the most charming response Magnus has ever seen and he steps forward, confidence returned at seeing Alexander’s response to him. It’s clear that Alexander is as affected as him, but

“It’s going to take quite a bit to charge a lodestone this large.” Magnus teases, partly because he wants to get a reaction and partly because it’s true.

“I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that.” Alexander murmurs and Magnus is about to preen he adds, “ritual sex with a virgin should even out any power deficits it would have.”

Magnus swallows, unable to help how his pupils dilate or how he steps forward, cupping Alexander’s face with his hand.

“We definitely won’t have any problems with that.” Magnus promises and he can’t help how his hand slides down and back, until he’s gripping the nape of Alexander’s neck. His fingers clutch thick, soft hair and Alexander sighs, tilting his head as if to force more pressure. Magnus tugs, clenching his fingers tighter and Alexander groans, contentment in every line of his body as he flutters his eyes open and smiles at Magnus.

There’s an almost wistfulness to Alexander’s eyes as he reaches up and slowly untangles one of the lower braids from behind his ear. It’s slim, perhaps the width of Magnus’ pinky nail and yet it has at least seven strands, tiny almost miniscule mithril hoops woven in.

“Can you cut it, right here?”

Magnus is asked and he’s surprised, but he does as asked without questioning Alexander’s choice.

There is a shudder, a little gasp of what might be pain and Alexander's hands come up to grip Magnus' biceps tightly for a moment.

The remaining length of the braid is still clamped by what was one of three mithril band and Magnus finds the design interesting. Especially when Alexander lets go of his arms and reaches for Magnus’ hand and then wraps the cut braid around his wrist. The two mithril clamps bind together and tiny little runes light up as the bracelet seals into place.

Alexander doesn’t say anything but Magnus has an idea of the significance of the braid around his wrist, both magically and socially. It’s with a croon he can’t help that Magnus pets the braid, sending a little pulse of magic through it and earning himself a wide, wild-eyed look.

Magnus snaps away his own clothes and then, because he’s nothing if not thorough, he backs Alexander up against the altar the lodestone is against.

“Shall we start?”

#lumine writes #writing wednesday #writing wednesdays #my path is set #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters

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carelessflower · 1 year ago

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angel for angel

The music blazed around them, people lost in the feel, in their heartbeats, in others.

"So, spill it." Izzy took another sip of her cocktail. "What's made you suddenly change your mind, dear brother? And to this specific place." She eyed Alec and took in every changing detail on his face. It wasn't that Angel was a bad club, it was quite the opposite. The design took guests from one level of amazement to the other, classy yet sensual, the lights shone like galaxies.

She was very much surprised she hadn't heard of this club before, yet her what-a-party-can't-we-just-stay-home brother did.

"I just feel like changing the air for a while." Alec tugged on his black shirt's sleeve, probably the tightest piece in his closet. He's made an effort in his appearance overall, the black leather pants that were buried deeper than their mom's wine collection were finally brought to use. Izzy would be impressed with her brother if she didn't catch how he constantly looked at some scene behind him.

"Are you gonna go talk to him or continue acting like a creep?" Of fucking course it was Magnus that got her brother possessed and illogical. Who else?

"I can't, Izzy. He didn't want to see me." Alec looked miserable. Izzy hated it. Hated all of this. She hated that it happened. She hated how she couldn't blame it entirely on Magnus for the breakup, or that he broke her brother's heart.

Magnus was dancing with somebody, even from a distance, she could feel the energy radiating from him, that spark no one could resist. He was enjoying himself, at least. It had been half a year or so, there was more in life than one's broken heart, Izzy knew that from experience.

She sighed.

Alec needed a distraction, cornering him into a wall would only lead to him closing off again. At least, not today.

"Look at your face, Alec. Raziel, I thought they banned misery at the club. Tell you what, I'll call Jace here, we're gonna get shit-faced, wake up with a joint headache tomorrow and hear Mom complain for three hours. Deal?"

Alec smiled lightly. It wasn't big, but it was a hopeful start. "Deal."

—

Izzy came back to her brother missing. She was nearly at her breaking point.

"Jace, do you feel Alec is in danger?"

"No?" Jace scrunched his eyebrows. "He is warm...and fuzzy? Not quite drunk either, just really excited."

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She turned it on and read the most recent notification. I'm leaving. You and Jace have a fun night. Don't worry about me.

Well, that was most definitely the best way to make people stop worrying.

"Should we track him?" Jace was already ready with his stele.

"Let him be," Izzy said. Maybe Alec needed more time for himself. "We'll intervene if he gets caught in trouble."

The next morning came, and Alec still hadn't come back. Despite Jace's attempt at assuring her that Alec was absolutely better than fine and probably the happiest he had been in a while, Izzy felt the need to call him for confirmation.

One long pause.

Two long pauses.

"Huh— hello? Izzy? Did something happen?"

"No, everything is fine." She paused for a moment. "Where are you Alec? You totally bailed on us last night."

"Oh shit, I'm so sorry. Something came up and hey—" Alec was ...laughing? What the fuck? "Magnus! Stop it! Control yourself, I'm talking—" On the other line, it sounded like the phone had fallen somewhere. Perhaps Magnus's bed.

She needed some time to take all of this in first.

Alec picked up again, the joy was undeniable in his tone. "Ugh, so sorry for that. My company has no manners." Izzy could practically feel how they were looking at each other right now.

She calmed herself down. "I don't care when you're coming back. I want a detailed report on whatever went down, or else Church might find new chew toys in your closet. Understood?"

"Fine."

"And tell Magnus I say hi."

"I will—" The line cut off.

"What happened?" Jace asked. "And why you're smiling?"

"Fate finds its way somehow." Izzy rolled her eyes but she knew how happy she was. Magnus left Angel with an angel in his arms. They were so ridiculous.

for @malectober day 1 prompt angel

#malec #malectober #alec lightwood #magnus bane #shadowhunters #tmi #tsc #the mortal instruments #the shadowhunter chronicles #anh writes stuff #this take kinda longer than i expected

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khaleesiofalicante · 8 months ago

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"I know ur characters are inspired from the books but I have still always felt like ur magnus was way more tolerant and kinder." the ask which you just posted mentioned this, and i agree, sort of... bc i too feel the same but differently like in book magnus is kind and loving, but not in very outward showing ways like he hides himself with his flaunting, amazing, loud personality being mysterious even with tmi gang, where as your magnus is more outwardly kinder, a diva yes but less flashy , and more mature even with fics where he is a mortal and since 18 he is that mature. so i just felt its like whereas book magnus keeps it hidden which is what alec always notices his little gestures, i mean he also gives advice amazig ones, but those are his only serious moments most of them where he is fully shwoing himself and your interpretation he is more outwardly showing of his kind nature and worrying, and caring nature. i think it could also be because of that particular storyline and his experiences in them but yeah. NOT to say i dont LOVE LOVE your magnus, ofc I do, i just remmber this when i go back to reading the books. in fact i feel your magnus felt a bit similar to TID/TLH magnus who seemed to less unhinged that tmi ver. /ted ver.

No I get what you mean.

I've explored that version of Magnus - the one you described - in fics like Take Me to Church. He's more 'humor is my coping mechanism' dude.

The thing about Magnus (in the books) is that there is no one version of him. It really depends on what book you are reading and you see so many different dimensions of him. Like TID magnus is SOOOO different to TMI Magnus. Bane chronicles Magnus is also different in each story. I like playing with those different dimensions. It's fun.

The same Alec is very different in LMLT than he is another fic.

But at the core, I think they are all the same. Like Magnus feels a lot of love, the only difference is whether he shows it or not and who he shows it to. As a writer, you can play around with the latter, but you can change the first bit (At least i feel that way).

I feel like this new dark magnus reminds me a bit of Circle era magnus also - who called valentine an asshole :))) so it's fun to experiment with different versions of him!

Although I'd admit in the last few fics you do see soft/caring magnus a lot and that's mostly because we see him as a father and i often see magnus as a very caring father and not the kind of father who struggles to show it or hides it behind jokes/sarcasm.

#my fics

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throughtrialbyfire · 1 year ago

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Fic Author Self-Rec!

tagged by the lovely @mareenavee , thank you so much!! <3

tagging @dirty-bosmer @orfeoarte @gilgamish @umbracirrus @totally-not-deacon @v1ctory-or-sovngarde @thequeenofthewinter and YOU!! no pressure to participate, and if you haven't written 5 fics, feel free to just talk about whichever ones you have!!

Rules:

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love!

i'm going to paste each fics summary, and then go on my tangents!

An Inner Sanctity

Two months after attempting to utilize the Eye of Magnus and gain it's power, Ancano wakes up in an unfamiliar cottage, being cared for by the very person he intended to destroy. Navigating their strange and new dynamic, the Thalmor agent finds he may be offered second chance at life, but whether or not he takes it is another story.

this fic is a huge work of exploration into what indoctrination can do to someone who has never known any different, and how that can affect things as broad as worldviews and as personal as one-on-one dynamics with people. it's also partially catharsis-fic, as giving ancano some of my own mental and physical issues and dialing it up to 10000000000% is a hell of a lot of fun. i love seeing that old man suffer and then earn his rise from the ashes. plus, using athenath in a fic where they cant rely on the other two of the trio - as this is in an AU i call the "athenath solo run" - forces me to think of how they would handle situations on his own. spoiler? not too well.

it's on a hiatus at the moment despite having a pretty long backlog, i just don't have the motivation right now to edit and write more for it, but that definitely will change in the future, because i really love exploring ancano's psyche and how he begins to grow and change.

also the fic title comes from the song "Twilight" by Bôa, while that doesnt have anything to do with the fic, i loved the line "you give me an inner sanctity", sooooo <3

The Mark You Left

Two scientists realize, upon losing contact with Dr. Richtofen, that they are truly alone in the aftermath of their actions.

i don't have 5 fics for TES, so have my singular CoD Zombies fic as well! i've had a special interest in the ultimis timeline of CoD Zombies since uhhhh 2011? maybe? sometimes it lays dormant for months and then all of the sudden i think about it daily, especially the dynamics between Dr. Schuster, Dr. Richtofen, and Dr. Groph. so, i wrote this as a bit of a loveletter to a fandom i no longer am part of, but still have a lot of fondness for. it's a quick read that hits on this concept of ultimate betrayal in the aftermath of literally betraying someone else for that person. two people dealing with that, processing that, and what they'll do in the wake of all of this.

the title for this fic comes from the song "Birds" by BENN, who used to make CoD Zombies-based songs before rewriting/redoing them for his own original work!!

Portraits Under Forgotten Suns

A collection of short one-shot fics done for TESFest 2023. A werewolf in his cage, a Bosmer alchemists' first memory, a Dunmer mage's quiet contemplation, a humble keeper's last look at the place he's called home, a sailor's fate at the wreck of the Brinehammer, and an Altmer bard's fond summer memory.

as it says on the tin! its a series of one-shots i initially published to tumblr, then moved to Ao3 to make them more accessible and have a ready archive of them! i loved working on each of these, getting into different perspectives, and figuring out how to convey the narratives of the characters i worked with. i liked writing up details of my dragonborn trio's pasts, too, and the story for "Forgotten/Devotion" was a hell of a lot of fun, getting to pull the wreck of the brinehammer into a fic!

If by Sun and Moon I Swore

With the Empire's victory in the Skyrim Civil War, Hadvar has been quietly readjusting to regular life. When an old friend turns up at his door, that quiet he'd hoped for comes to a halt.

i love hadvar/ralof with all my wretched pining heart okay. i cannot deny this pair has a vice grip on me! and working with them, two soldiers touched by war on opposite sides who once had something (in this case, used to be (and still are) in love), can be something both so tragic and so healing. pulling this pair back together, giving them some form of comfort, even if it's brief, is such a joy. i have intentions of writing more for this couple in the future, but that's likely going to be a while. still, i'll be sure to let you guys know if i do get around to it!!

this fics title is from "Like The Dawn" by The Oh Hellos! its my quintessential hadvar/ralof song for sure <3

Cycle of the Serpent

Surviving Helgen by the skin of their teeth, three elves find themselves tossed into the middle of ancient legends, a civil war, and a hell of a lot of problems. They may all have different reasons for being in Skyrim, but if they have any hope of reaching their destinations alive, it lies in learning to trust their strange new companions… no matter what. From the ruins of Helgen to the plains of Whiterun, from the seas of Solitude to the grim frost of Winterhold, and everywhere sprawling beyond, the unlikely trio will find that being chosen by Akatosh is more than they've ever bargained for. And with their own histories crawling back, and secrets slowly spilled, the trio may find that there's little they can do to escape the cycles they've made.

this longfic is… a huge undertaking. "An Inner Sanctity" focuses on two very flawed people coming to love one another. "Cycle of the Serpent" focuses on three very flawed, extremely fucked up people learning to trust one another and face whatever fate awaits them together, even when that trust is tested, even when the world is cruel, even when trauma batters and bruises them in the current and then rises up from the briny depths of the past to tug them back down beneath. it's about sustained and sometimes self-fulfilling cycles of hurt, anger, and sometimes vengeance, and it's about love and joy and companionship and friendship that lives within it all.

in short, this longfic is one of my biggest undertakings in a very long time.

i started this as a bit of a joke. the idea of there being more than one LDB was a fun idea, and then i created three elves, and those three elves gave me their family histories and their childhood friendships and their previous travels and how it changed them all prior to helgen and i went… yeah i can't just not write this and go insane about it. these three and their various methods for dealing with situations, their triumphs and defeats, and how they bounce off one another became so organic and real to me that i feel continuously pulled to keep their narrative going. this story forced me to write my first ever combat scenes (posted the snippet of my second ever real combat scene tonight!) and learn how to navigate keeping it within TES lore, while also breaking out of some of the stale writing in skyrim itself. i have plans to rewrite/overhaul entire questlines and characters to give them more life, and i've got dozens of OCs lined up - at least one of whom is hinted at within the first chapter. i have this story and these characters arcs planned out, and they do get particularly grim at points, but i never want this story to go into "there is no hope" territory. there's always hope, it just lies in learning to break your own cycles, even if it feels like it may kill you.

the title of this fic was taken from the song "Pillar of Na" by Saintseneca, i very heavily envision emeros as the first verse, athenath as the second, wyndrelis as the third, with the fourth being all three of them, and the fifth (the "eternal, eternal, eternity round…") being a sort of ensemble of all the places and people they've touched in their lives.

woooooooooooooooo!! that was long-winded. thank you for listening to me ramble on these, and thank you so much again for tagging me, mareena!! i hope everyone is having a lovely wednesday/thursday!! <3333

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cobalt-knave · 9 months ago

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Whump Fic Recs pt. 1 (& a brief love letter and tagging tutorial)

Ah, whump, my most beloved genre of fanfiction. What is whump? Whump refers to stories prominently featuring injury or sickness and/or the care and recovery thereof. This is most often in the hurt/comfort category or the hurt no comfort category. It is a wonderful opportunity to shake up dynamics and reveal hidden character depths in a high stress situation. What do you do when the strong one is hurt? How does that call into question your feelings towards them? How does that call into question their feelings towards themself and their role? Who will care for the one who always caretakes? It’s a great tonal shift too. Just *chef’s kiss*. Plus, you know what? It’s sometimes just fun to run your favorite characters through the plinko.

How do you tag whump and why should you? The tags on ao3 to use are”

“Whump” (not just “whumptober” or “whumptober 2022″ or other variations),

“hurt/comfort” or “hurt no comfort”

“angst”

“sickfic” if illness is the featured whump

“injury recovery” if such a thing is covered

“torture”, “car accidents”, “broken bones”, “blood and injury”, “blood and violence”, etc as relevant (start typing into the additional tags section to see what the common tag is to use.

“Character Name Whump” or “Hurt Character Name” if in a specific fandom whumping a specific character

all of the previous should be used in addition to the base whump tag.

if relevant, use the archive warning “graphic depictions of violence”

why tag? BECAUSE I WANNA READ IT AND FIND IT AND IT IS WOEFULLY UNDERTAGGED. It is also good to tag if someone wants to avoid it by excluding it from the search.

Alright. On to the recs. Multifandom including The Mechanisms, The Magnus Archives, King Falls AM, The Adventure Zone, Our Flag Means Death, The Murderbot Diaries, and Stargate SG-1. There will be more whump recs to come.

On Account Of The Jonny Doll by NammiKisulora

Fandom: The Mechanisms

Ah, NammiKisulora knows how to make these immortals hurt in such twisted and unique ways.

“Yeah. Get in, will you? I want to get going. Jonny keeps waking up. W-without skin.” “Oh Yes! That Must Be On Account Of The Jonny Doll!”

Jonny is executed, which is a normal enough occurrence. It’s only afterwards things go wrong.

We Still Have the Radio - I. and We Still Have the Radio - II. by luckjustkissedyouhello

Fandom: King Falls AM

luckjustkissedyouhello writes some damn good, damn brutal whump!

The next thing he’s aware of is water against his face, wait no, all of him, where he lays on his left side. Water that is rapidly rising. He lays there dazed. Then a groan above his head has him jerking back into the moment, fear lancing through him, stealing his breath. Ben.

In which Ben and Sammy are in a car accident.

bleeding by Athina_Blaine

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Martin goes and gets himself stabbed. It's inconvenient.

Re-Initialization by CompletelyDifferent

Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries

This Unit: Where is my owner, Dr. Mensah?

Dr. Yuen: Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? SecUnit, where did you last physically interact with Dr. Ayda Mensah?

Information Retrieval: Dr. Ayda Mensah last interacted with This Unit on Preservation Station at 08:27:22 on 4098-09-17 CRST.

This Unit: You do not have permission to access that information.

Dr. Yuen: You’re incorrect, SecUnit. We do. Answer the question.

(When the infamous rogue SecUnit of the Preservation Alliance gets captured, the corporate techs assigned to it expected to be able to get some juicy data, or at least some insights into its cracked governor module. They didn't expect something so... basic.)

trust me by gaysidecharacter

Fandom: The Adventure Zone: Balance

Everyone gets real sick and Lup is having a time.

Not an echo even by Hopeful_Foolx

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

They stop the Unknowing. There is an explosion. And trapped under rubble and panic, Jon wakes up. So does Tim. Three prompts, one story. Starting with Day 4 - Running out of Time

Friends in Strange Places by beesandcats

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death

"Steel in your side for so long was a weird feeling, Stede decided. It had actually been around hour six that he came to the conclusion, if anyone was keeping track. It had been around hour three, when he heard the snores from the other side of the deck, that he realized he should perhaps try to be friends with the steel in his side. Obviously, they were not friends."

A missing scene from Season 1, Episode 6. Stede's been stabbed and stuck to a pole all night. He's gonna need some help when everyone wakes up for the day.

Things Stay the Same by teyla

Fandom: King Falls AM

During blizzard season, Ben and Sammy, each for their own reasons, make an unwise choice. The experience that ensues should be life changing—though is it?

In which there is a snowstorm, an accident, a soaked through jacket, and thoughts of revealing secrets.

Lifestock by NammiKisulora

Fandom: The Mechanisms

"Guys, you get what this means? It means fresh meat, every day for as long as we like." "The fuck are you talking about?" "Just sayin' we could leave his leg attached, tie him up, and bring him along. Carve off what we like at mealtimes instead. We dunno how long we've got to lie low for."

Tim is held captive for food after a battle.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place by Sam Walker

Fandom: Stargate SG-1

To save Daniel’s life, Jack has to do that hardest of all things: talk.

This fic is written from Jack's perspective. Daniel is involved in an accident off-world and the only thing Jack can do to help is talk to Daniel while everyone else works. I love this fic for the interaction between Jack and Daniel, and for the insights into Jack's motivations. Despite being mostly Jack and Daniel, you get a sense of camaraderie about SG1 and you can see just how much Jack cares about his team.

And if you read any of these, be sure to leave kind comments for the authors!

#fic rec #fic recs #the mechanisms #tma #kfam #stargate sg1 #ofmd #taz balance #murderbot #whump

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foodsies4me · 1 year ago

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I’m always here for a good time so if you’re up to it: Alec and the Spiral brotp headcannons 🙃

Oooooh that’s a fun ask!

Alright I’m going with the Alec and Spiral Brotp of AWG because I think the dynamic could change a lot depending on the universe it’s in but here goes (apologies some of these might veer slightly into crack-territory) :

The Spiral is the first to realize that Alec needs sugar and sweets to replenish his magic when he’s running low.

Building on to that, the Spiral starts summoning all kinds of sweets for him which ends up in an unspoken, unacknowledged war between him and Magnus and Magnus’ magic and a whole mountain of sweets for Alec.

Alec starts to return the favor (or tries) by bringing little gifts for the Spiral. It takes him a while to find something that the Spiral really likes, but things that are drenched in magic that isn’t warlock magic seem to be a hit so Alec brings Seelie flowers, grounding stones, the occasional witchlight, and even a piece of adamas at one point.

This is also how Alec ends up being the first person to get into the Spiral fully armed and not be limited to the training rooms. (He wanted to show his bow and arrow as another gift, lol)

Alec ends up getting permission from the Spiral to take the trainees along on one of his training sessions even though the Elders are kind of against it. (And by permission I mean the Spiral keeps on switching doors and rooms around for over a month until the Elders agree)

If Alec and Magnus fight or are mad at each other while inside the Labyrinth, the Spiral will lock them up in a room until they’re happy again.

The Spiral will summon any book Alec wants rather than have him go look for it (the Elders aren’t jealous, really it’s not like they’ve been trying to get the Spiral to do that for them for centuries now - well except Conan who also holds that privilege and Magnus, but only when he lets the Spiral play with his magic).

Alec does need to know the exact title otherwise he’ll just get a random book on the subject he wanted more information on. That said, some of those random summons are even better than what he was hoping to read.

The first time Ragnor tries to teach Alec how to contain his magic and stop leaking it all over the place the way all other shadowhunters should, the Spiral kicks him out.

It also does so the second and third time at which point he just gives up and lets Alec continue as he is.

The Spiral thinks Alec’s magic is interesting and crunchy.

Alec thinks the Spiral’s magic feels like an old hidden cave in the woods or an abandoned castle that hasn’t lost its charm. It’s a bit like the institute in that regard, except that the institute feels younger and not as present, yet.

These are some of the main ones at the moment, though there will probably come more as I write.😊

#foodsies rambles #answered asks

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dreamofmysoul-tsc · 2 years ago

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Things I loved about Chain of Thorns:

the peace each character feels at the end, how secure they are in themselves and their relationships

the Westminster Abbey battle (specifically James stabbing himself w Cortana, the gasp I gusped omg)

Alastair calling Thomas beautiful (multiple times 😌)

ARI 👏🏻 BRIDGESTOCK 👏🏻 MY BELOVED!!

Matthew slowly realizing he is deserving of happiness + his excitement to travel the world and see all its beauty :)

The portrayal of alcohol withdrawal and how tactfully Cassie handled addiction all throughout this series. My dad has been an alcoholic my whole life and I really can’t express enough how grateful I feel towards this series for portraying addiction in all its harsh realities while also making sure that readers understand addiction almost always stems from shame and self hatred. The kindness and gentleness expressed to Matthew and the sorrow, regret, and anger towards Elias are feelings I understand all too well. I’m rambling at this point but basically, thank you Cassie for portraying alcoholics as more than just deadbeats. Thank you for giving them dignity and humanity and thank you thank you thank you for portraying an addict that is not “fixed” by their love interest or their friends and family, but heals because they want too and because they genuinely believe they deserve it. I can’t explain how much that means to me.

Grace. Was pleasantly surprised by her character arc

JAMES HERONDALE MY BELOVED, IF JAMES HERONDALE HAS 1000 FANS I AM ONE OF THEM, IF JAMES HERONDALE HAS 1 FAN, ITS ME, IF JAMES HERONDALE HAS 0 FANS, I AM DEAD

Every scene with Lilith is always so fun but so terrifying

Alastair calling Thomas “my Thomas” no one speak to me

Belial basically being smote down by God at the end???? Is there a god in this universe?? Will we see him in TWP? Final battle between Heaven and Hell??? Omg

so is Cassie implying that Esme Hardcastle’s family tree she’s working on is the one from CP2? And the reason why it’s so fucked is because she was just making stuff up?? Because if so, that’s hysterical

James pointing his pistol at Lilith and going “try me.” Bitch, the way I just about fainted

JAMES HEALING MATTHEW IN EDOM W IRATZES BASICALLY THROUGH FORCE OF WILL AND SUCCEEDING, LIKE WHAT KIND OF BLACKSTAIRS SHIT IS THIS-

Manifesting a short story collection of Matthew on his voyage

Things I really did not like about Chain of Thorns:

How quick Christopher’s death was and how no one seemed to really feel effected by it?? Like we didn’t even see his parents grieving?? At first I boiled it down to, well, they’re in the heat of battle and Prince of Hell BS so they probably don’t really have time to grieve but even after all that ended, we just kinda…glossed over it? The most sentimental moment we got was Grace hearing his ghost and even then, it seemed mostly for plot

Matthew and James not having their own little moment in the epilogue but that may just be me because honestly I could read a whole book of James and Matthew’s little moments and be completely happy

Lack of Magnus. Also the lack of Magnus walking in on a couple making out. What kinda finale is it without Magnus walking in on a couple in a compromising position??

I love series traditions and I was a bit sad we didn’t get a wedding in the epilogue

As much as I love seeing everyone happy and at peace at the end, it felt so out of place compared to the other series’ epilogues. No foreshadowing to other series aside from Malcolm, no hints for TWP, no hints of what’s to come. I suppose the Coda sort of did that but I don’t know if the Belial we see in the Coda is talking about Jem’s interaction w him in GotSM or if it relates to TWP as well?? Idk, I just felt there were things to be desired

The lack of “Lucie? Lucie, is that you?” or “Cordelia? Cordelia, is that you?” (I know they weren’t parabatai until the next year but still)

I truly adore TLH, but one thing that has always felt disjointed to me is how…domestic? it all seems at first? Like, the actual battles and high stakes moments only happen within the last like 200 pages while the rest of it seems mostly roaming around and talking about feelings/being emotionally constipated (don’t get me wrong, I love both those things but I also love the action)

I wish Cassie would take more risks sometimes. Like as heartbreaking Livvy’s death was in LoS, that was one of the first times I remember thinking “wow, I genuinely don’t know if any of these characters are gonna be ok by the end of this” I’m hoping with TWP, I can also have some of that doubt back, because I like feeling like I don’t 100% know if a character is gonna survive this, you know? The fact that only one person died, a character that (to me) always seemed used as mostly a plot device, was a bit disappointing

Overall, I adore this series. I adore this cast and I honestly can’t believe it’s over ;-; I can’t wait for TWP, as much as I know that goodbye will I hurt even worse 😭

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cuttingpenisblackmetal · 4 months ago

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freshly-kicked-out-of-dethklok magnus encounters preklok toki (read on ao3)

Begging someone for something in his second language has done nothing to improve his migraine. In fact, it seems to be making it worse. Nevertheless, he keeps at it; let nobody say that Magnus Hammersmith is not resilient.

“Just let me talk to her,” he mutters to the library payphone, in slow, clunky Norwegian. “Just one talk.”

Not that it’s achieving much. “No, Magnus,” says his uncle on the other line, “She wants nothing to do with you.”

“She’s my fucking mom. She doesn’t get to cut me off, she’s my mom.”

“She’s not cutting you off. Mind your language.”

“It sure sounds like it!”

“This is for the best, Magnus. We won’t enable your lifestyle.”

Pain: it’s been the only constant in his life. His head hurts like someone’s left a knife behind his dead left eye. “My lifestyle?” Magnus echoes. “This is about me being gay?”

“No, Magnus, this is about the drugs.”

“I’m taking them for a medical reason. I have… uh, what’s the word? Head damage. I told you this.”

“We’ve heard your excuses before.”

“I got hit in the head. You want to talk to my doctor?”

“When you’re ready to get sober, we will happily talk to you.” The way his uncle says it is all business. “Until then, I ask that you please leave her alone. You’ve made her suffer enough.”

“I’ve made her suffer? She’s the one who let her piece-of-shit husband beat her kid up! She’s the one who— who--” The words don’t come in Norwegian, so Magnus switches to English, “She’s the one who abandoned me. Fucking sent me to live with that psychopath! She owes me, for all the shit she put me through! Give me her fucking phone number!”

The line goes dead, and suddenly Magnus is just the lunatic who’s been shouting in a public library. He snarls and slams the phone back into its receiver.

You would think, in Tampa, that the sight of a homeless junkie screaming into a payphone wouldn’t arouse so much attention, even if the homeless junkie in question had half the conversation in Norwegian. The librarian at the front desk is eyeing him suspiciously, and the other homeless who’ve come in to escape the humidity are either gawking or looking ashamedly away. A grubby teenager curled up on a couch is staring at him with big wideset eyes.

Magnus’ head hurts; at that moment he hates every single person looking at him. He has a knife in his belt, and he wonders how long it would take someone to stop him if he just started going around stabbing faces. Could he get two in, three, five? He’ll go for the grubby teenager first. That kid’s eyes are very far apart from each other, it’s kind of unsettling.

While lost in his spontaneous violent fantasy, he’s accidentally let himself glower at the grubby teen for a little too long. The little vermin seems to interpret this as an invitation, for suddenly he springs off of the couch and approaches Magnus, wringing his hands fretfully in front of his chest. He would be well-built if he weren’t emaciated; he has to be at least sixteen, but the way he holds himself, and the badly-fitting filthy clothes he wears, make him seem much younger.

And he greets Magnus, unexpectedly, in Norwegian: “You’re from Norway too?”

Magnus has a migraine. It’s like someone’s shoved a wire in one temple and out the other, and his left eye is throbbing softly. The last thing he wants to do is have a conversation in Norwegian, which made his head hurt even before Nathan gave him literal brain damage, and entertaining a pathetic urchin doesn’t seem like much fun, either. So it’s to his own surprise when he answers, also in Norwegian: “I lived in Bergen for a few years.”

The kid has a very wide mouth, and at the answer this breaks into an impossibly broad grin. “Oh, cool!” he says cheerfully. “I’m from Lillehammer.”

“Cool.” Magnus turns away from him.

“I’ve never met another Norwegian here,” says the kid, completely missing the hint. “I heard you speaking Norwegian on the phone. That’s how I knew you’re from Norway also.”

“Mm.”

“I hate my parents too. My mom’s real mean to me.”

“That sucks.” Magnus is already walking towards the door. “Well, I’ve got to go, so.”

“Oh, wait, I’ll come with you!”

The kid disappears from his side. Magnus has almost made it through the door when he reappears, now with a ridiculous-looking blue cap perched on his overlong tangled hair. He appears to be carrying a (homemade?) guitar case on his back.

It’s like being trailed by a stray dog. When Magnus emerges into the hot Tampa morning, the kid is close on his heels, still chattering away in enthusiastic Norwegian:

“I haven’t gotten to talk to anyone in Norwegian since I’ve been here. I learned English before I moved here, but it’s hard. Like, I never know where to put -s on things. And what’s the difference between am and is? Also, what’s faen in English? Also, I can’t write English. The spelling’s hard. So I just write things down in Norwegian.”

Magnus has parked his truck a few blocks away. Because it seems like he’ll only ditch this kid by driving off, he makes a beeline for it.

The kid remains in hot pursuit. “Can you spell things in English?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, wowee. And you can read it?”

“Sure.”

“Wow-wee. You can be my English teacher! You can teach me all the spellings, like how to spell… spaghetti. S-K-F-O-K-K-A-T-T-Y.”

“Spaghetti is Italian.”

“Oh, faen. Really?”

“Really.”

“What about hamburger? Is that also Italian?”

“German.”

“Helvete. Didn’t know that. I love hamburgers. I thought when I came to America I’d have hamburgers for every single meal. Hamburger for breakfast, hamburger for lunch, hamburger for dinner, and then if I want a snack, I can have a hamburger for my snack, too.”

Magnus glances back at the kid, who is, bafflingly, still following him. They’ve walked two blocks more quickly than anyone with a migraine should be expected to and still this guy remains undeterred. “Why are you here?”

“Oh, I’m going to join a band and become a rockstar.” He says this with the complete confidence that only the truly stupid are capable of. He’s even grinning at Magnus, absolutely thrilled by his bright future. “That’s why I moved to America. I can meet the best ever band here, I just know it.”

Magnus’ question had been more along the lines of, why are you following me, but he’s never been good at expressing himself in Norwegian. The answer is so blithely optimistic that it makes him want to retch. He scowls, snarls, and tries walking a little faster.

“I’ve been going to auditions,” the kid continues. “I play the guitar. I’m really good at guitar. I taught myself mostly everything. Except I had a friend back in Lillehammer who taught me lots, too, all about the black metal stuff, but I like death metal more, so that’s why I came to Tampa. Cause this is where all the good death metal bands come from.”

The best damn death metal bands, Magnus wants to correct him. Prime example: Magnus’ death metal band, the one he’s been so recently and ruthlessly exiled from. He scowls at a pawn shop as they walk past it, and catches a glimpse of them in the reflection of the window: he, with his ghoulish dead eye and his old-beyond-its-years smoker’s complexion and the clothes that get dirtier by the day, and a bizarrely cheerful Norwegian kid who looks like he’s only ever slept in dumpsters.

They reach Magnus’ truck then and it can’t come soon enough. “Hey, well, good luck with all of that, man,” Magnus says, switching to English out of convenience. “It’s a good city to be a musician in. Just uh, keep practicing and all that.” He unlocks the truck and climbs into the passenger seat. Finally, solitude—

“I practices all the times!” the kid says in thickly-accented English as he climbs into the passenger seat.

Into the passenger seat.

“Oh,” comes Magnus’ dumb reply.

“Yep, but it’s hard without de amps what to makes the guitar louder.” He’s still grinning, positioning his guitar carefully between his thin legs. “Wowee, you’ve gots the real cool trucks. Why’s it so talls?”

“It’s lifted—” Magnus breaks himself off, and blinks a couple of times. “What the fuck do you want?”

The kid gives him a blank look.

“Seriously, the fuck are you after, here? Food? Drugs? What’s your fucking angle?”

He grins again. “Oh, foods! Okay, we goes gets some foods.”

It’s Magnus turn to stare blankly.

“How’s about hankburgers? Boy, I really loves hankburgers—”

“Fine. Hamburgers. Alright, let’s go.”

It has to be loneliness, Magnus concludes. From his own time in Norway, Magnus understands the sheer relief that comes from meeting someone who speaks your language in a foreign country. Maybe it’s loneliness, too, that compels Magnus to start his truck and start driving in the direction of the nearest Dimmu Burger; though he’s an unwilling participant in this conversation, it’s already the most attention anyone has shown him in months.

At any rate, he doesn’t seem to be escaping it any time soon. “What’s your name?” the kid asks, switching back to Norwegian.

“Magnus.”

“Magnus.” He repeats it with nothing short of reverence. “That’s a cool name. Sounds like what someone who casts magic spells would be called. My name’s Toki.”

“That’s weird. What is that, Icelandic?”

“I’m named after the Viking my family’s descended from.” Toki says this with a bashful smile, as if it’s something he’s used to impress Americans before. Which is funny, because he doesn’t look remotely ‘viking’—appearance-wise, he’s sitting at the intersection between ‘girl’ and ‘Victorian chimney sweep’. “Toki Víg-tönn. That’s ‘Toki Wartooth’ in English, I translated it.”

“And you want to go into death metal? That’s a black metal name.”

“Faen. Should I get a stage name?” Toki seems genuinely concerned by this. “Maybe I should call myself an American name. Like… Tommy?”

“Nah,” Magnus shakes his head. “That’s lame.”

“How about Magnus!”

“How about you just use your own name?”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll keep being Toki, then.”

The conversation comes to a natural, blessed lull, in which Magnus focuses on driving and trying not to crash his car out of migraine-induced inattention. Unfortunately, Toki proves to be irrepressible, because he’s silent for only a few seconds before he starts up again:

“Where are you staying?”

“Here.”

“In the…” Toki turns his head, looking at the shops around them, “In the mattress store?”

“In my truck. I live in my truck.”

“You must get sore legs a lot. You’re really tall.”

“Yep.”

“I bet sleeping in a mattress store would be nice. You’d have so many beds to choose from. I’d sleep on a different mattress every night.”

“Mm.”

“I sleep in a dumpster.”

Magnus glances at him. “I can tell.”

“What does that mean?”

“You smell bad.”

“Oh, fuck you, you smell like a dog that died.” Toki says this rather cheerfully. He turns his head, taking in the interior of the pick-up that’s been Magnus’ home ever since Dethklok kicked him out: empty cigarette packs and dead lighters, a duffel bag full of clothing, a threadbare blankets, and enshrined in the back—

“That’s a guitar!” Toki gasps, pointing to the space in the back. “You play that?”

“Gibson Les Paul,” Magnus says modestly, “Yeah, I’m pretty good.”

“But it’s kind of a lame guitar. It’s like, if a grandpa’s guitar was electric, it’d be that guitar.”

“Come on, kid.”

“You have an amp for it?”

“In the back, yeah.”

“I want to hear you play. Oh, we can jam out together! I’ve got a Flying V.” Toki pats his homemade guitar case proudly. “What do you like to play?”

For a moment, Magnus debates lying and claiming that he’s a jazz guitarist—he’s starting to worry that if he reveals he and Toki share anything in common, he’ll never get rid of the kid. His ego intervenes, however, and he admits: “Death metal.”

If Toki smiled any wider, his jaw would fall off of his slightly misshapen face. “No way! We both play guitars for death metal and we’re from Norway! We’re gonna be best friends!”

Magnus will sooner throw Toki out of a moving car than make him his best friend. He hasn’t spoken Norwegian for this long since he was a teenager, and his head is protesting violently. He leans over and fumbles around the centre console for a non-empty packet of cigarettes.

“Are you in a band?” Toki fills in the silence.

“I’m, uh, between bands.”

“Maybe we can join a band together. I’m going to lots of auditions. You can come with me and we’ll be a guitar duo.” Toki gasps, then, his eyes going wide. “Oh, we can start our own band!”

“I’m taking a break from music.”

“Why?”

Magnus has to hesitate over this one. He finds one carton with a stray cigarette in it, grabs it, and pops it in his mouth.

“Cause I’m…”

He searches for the word in Norwegian, fails to find it, and answers in English instead:

“I’m blacklisted from the scene.”

“What means that?” Toki asks in his clunky English.

“Means nobody wants to work with me.”

“How come?”

Here, again, Magnus hesitates. He has one hand shoved in his pocket, searching for his lighter. He still hasn’t come up with a plausible lie to explain to people why he left Dethklok—and then he realises how ridiculous it is, to worry about what this little parasite will think of him.

“… I stabbed the lead singer of my band.” Magnus finally finds his lighter.

“Wowee,” Toki breathes, “Dat’s brutal.”

“Yeah.” He lights his cigarette, inhales deep. The hit of tobacco does nothing to relieve the headache.

“Why you does it?”

“He called me crazy.”

“You sounds crazy. Stabs a guy just what for callings you crazy.”

This doesn’t sound like admonishment at all, but Magnus shoots Toki a glare regardless. Magnus’ withering scowl cows Toki for all of three seconds; he shrinks back in his seat, looks away, and then immediately brightens up again.

“That just makes you the extra brutals metals guitarists,” Toki says confidently. “You’re like Burzums. If they doesn’t sucks. So how comes dey bla… blaskliskted you?”

“Cause Americans are posers, Toki.”

“What means that?”

“It means they’re fake, man. Pretending.” Magnus takes a long drag of his cigarette, savouring this chance to dwell in his own bitterness. “They wouldn’t know real brutality if it stabbed them in the back.”

Toki blows air through his lips as he considers this, sounding rather like a contented horse. “… They must be real nice, though,” he finally says, in a dreamy voice. “Can’t waits to meet them all and be friends…”

It takes Magnus several seconds to identify the pang of emotion in his chest as pity— he’d initially mistaken it for acid reflux. Toki is annoying, and he has the disposition of a particularly aggressive black mold, but he has something that’s terribly rare in this godforsaken country: he seems nice. There’s a glittery optimism about him, and Magnus doesn’t get the sense that it comes from naivete, the way that Nathan’s closely-guarded softness fatally belies a sheltered upbringing. Toki’s a homeless immigrant who’s obviously seen some shit and yet he’s just... plain goddamn nice. That’s almost worse, somehow. There are bands here that will eat him alive.

They pull off of the street and into a strip mall, where one of the less shady Dimmu Burgers sits like an island among an ocean of potholed concrete. Magnus has all of thirty dollars to his name, which was ostensibly supposed to be used for food, but pain and opioid dependence have robbed him of his already modest appetite, and besides, feeding a starving kid might give him a much-needed karmic boost. He pulls up to the menu board and turns to Toki.

“Alright, kid,” he says, in English, “What do you want?”

Toki’s staring at the board with wide eyes, and there’s colour rising to his face, a bit of sweat beading on his brow. He blinks several times, then stammers, “Um.”

Still smoking his cigarette, Magnus waits for several seconds, watching as Toki stares at the board and grows gradually redder, like a ripening tomato.

“Um,” Toki finally says again, voice small, and switches to Norwegian: “Magnus? I can’t read it.”

“Ah.”

“Can you tell me what it says?”

If speaking Norwegian gives him a headache, translating is going to cave his skull in. Magnus gives the board a cursory glance. “Hamburger, hamburger with cheese, uh—potato sticks? Chicken… chicken blobs. And… what’s the vegetable with layers. That as rings. ‘Onion rings’. What do you call that.”

“Oh, yeah, I want all of that.”

“Toki, that’s the menu.”

“Do they have something sweet? Milkshake! Can I have a milkshake? Oh, and how much?” Toki reaches into his pocket, and extracts a handful of change: a few quarters, a dime, a bouncy ball with a plastic horse inside of it. “Is this enough?”

Magnus glances at the handful, then waves it away and pulls up to the speaker.

A few minutes later, Magnus is accepting a paper bag veritably dripping with grease from a cashier that looks like as much of a junkie as he is. He hands it to Toki, who’s gone uncharacteristically quiet, and pulls into a space in the parking lot.

Silence is a weird thing. After prolonged exposure to the chatty, sentient ray of sunshine that is Toki, it feels like an ominous cloud has passed over the sun, offering not a pleasant shadow but a promise of a storm. Magus stares out of the windscreen for a minute, waiting for Toki to speak, and when he doesn’t, he finally turns to look at the kid.

Toki is hugging the bag to his chest, staring down at it bashfully, and—God help them all—he looks like he’s tearing up.

“You good?” Magnus asks against his better judgement, in English.

“This my first foods in two days,” Toki whispers.

“Ah, shit, kid.”

Toki looks up at Magnus with big misty eyes. “Nobody’s ever boughts the hankburgers for Toki before...”

“Oh, God, just eat, man. You’re making this weird.”

Toki doesn’t need to be told twice. He eviscerates the bag, tearing it open in his haste to get to the greasy feast inside. As requested, there’s a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a box of chicken nuggets, fries and onion rings, and a milkshake nestled in on top of that all. He doesn’t stop to ask Magnus whether Magnus wants any of the feast, but sets in without hesitation, shoving greasy food into his mouth as if Magnus might at any moment jerk it away from him.

There’s that indigestion-like pity, again; Toki eats like he’s starving. Magnus himself, despite being tall, has always had his appetite dulled by drugs and the various malfunctions of his brain, but many a time he’s watched Nathan put away five jumbo burritos in a row and still have room for dessert. The metabolism of teenage boys is a force of nature unto itself, and Toki is ridiculously, embarrassingly, teenaged.

After a moment of contemplation, watching him dispatch burgers is too much—Magnus switches on the radio, finds himself another cigarette, and glowers out of the window, as his head is filled with the staticky roar of local death metal and the faint slobbery sounds of a famished kid inhaling junk food.

It really is a shame, he finds himself thinking around a pull of cigarette smoke. Maybe this is the post-concussion syndrome speaking, but the Tampa death metal scene can be rough, and Toki seems so nice. Just a dumb, nice kid—

“You’s a hairy bitch.”

Magnus’ gaze jerks back to Toki. “What?”

“You’s a-bitch-hairy,” Toki says. It sounds like it’s meant to be English, but he has no fewer than six French fries hanging out of his mouth, so it’s a little hard to tell.

“Say that again, you little shit—”

Toki’s eyes widen. “A-bitch-wary?” he utters, before swallowing several French fries whole. “What’s on the car sound thing! You’s—no, they’s—they’s Abitchwary.”

“Obituary?”

“That’s what I says!” Face red, Toki switches to Norwegian: “This band is called Obituary, right? I love them!”

“Yeah—yeah, Obituary.” Magnus presses a hand over his eyes. “Never say that to anyone.”

“Were you in Obituary?”

“Nope.”

“What band were you in?”

“Just finish your fucking food.”

“All the good American bands come from Tampa,” Toki observes wistfully, fishing out the last of his French fries from the greasy packet. “Like Morbid Angel, and… don’t know any others, actually, I don’t listen to American bands.” He looks up at Magnus then, beaming, “But I bet the band you were in was the best band.”

They are—they were. “You’re getting your hopes up. Tampa isn’t all that.” Magnus peeks out from behind his fingers, giving Toki one of his more menacing glares. “People here aren’t nice, Toki.”

The glare does absolutely nothing to deter Toki. “You’re nice,” he rebuts. “You drive me around, and talk Norwegian to me, and you bought me food… you’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met, Magnus.”

Magnus needs an antacid, or to be shot, or to lay off the drugs; his stomach is burning. “Yeah, well,” he says gruffly in English, looking away, “You owe me.”

“Owes you what?”

“Huh?”

“What I owes you?”

Magnus glances back over, “It’s a figure of speech—”

“I don’t gots no moneys,” Toki admits, eyes wide. “Whats to give you. You means—” and he pitches his voice into a whisper, “You wants me to sucks your d—”

“Fuck no.”

“But I don’t gots nothing!”

“Do you know what a figure of speech is?”

“Nopes.”

Magnus, speechless, takes a long drag of his cigarette; Toki looks despondently at his lap for all of two seconds before his indomitable sunny nature triumphs.

“I gots it!” Toki declares. “I gets you a new band!”

Magnus blinks at him. “I don’t want a—”

But Toki’s already pulling a crumpled flyer out of his fanny pack. “This band’s having an audition today,” he says in Norwegian, pushing the colourful scrap of paper towards Magnus. “They’re looking for a new guitarist. You’re a guitarist. You should go audition and be their new guitarist!”

Magnus takes the piece of paper. “Aren’t you trying to become a guitarist?”

“Yeah, and I was going to audition, but I owe you, you just said so. So you should go to this one.” Toki gives him a vague smile, “I have a feeling they’ll like you.”

Magnus’ head hurts. His head hurts, and he’s cursed, or otherwise God really exists and hates him personally. On top of it all, his life is a bad joke, and this is confirmed when he un-crumples the flier:

newly signed crystal mountain records

DETH metal band

DETHKLOK

summons GUITARIST for their DETHLY MISSION

And four faces that used to be familiar suspended below the jagged-font red ink. Below their image, the word ‘AUDITION’ blazes, along with today’s date and the location of their old rehearsal space.

Magnus must have blanched, because even the remarkably oblivious Toki notices something strange in his expression. "Do you know them?”

Magnus’ finger grazes Nathan’s face, deformed by creases and grainy with cheap ink. He towers like a mushroom-cloud in the centre of that flier, flanked on either side by his band—sans Magnus, who has been conspicuously edited out of this promotion photo. Hell, he remembers taking the photo, now that he thinks about it, and when he looks to Skwisgaar’s side he finds a conspicuous sharp edge of pixels: the place where they edited Magnus out.

“No,” Magnus answers, face stony, “I don’t know them.”

Toki’s brow creases. “Really?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just thought you’d know them. I don’t know why.” A brief cloud of consternation crosses Toki’s face, but then he grins again. “You should audition for them!”

“No.”

“Yeah, you should! I bet they’d like you! I have a feeling they’d like you.”

“No.”

“Oh, I bet you’ve got performance fright. You know what I do when I have performance fright? I bring my deaddy bear and I pretend I’m performing for him.” Toki gasps. “I’ll give you my deaddy bear! Then you won’t be so scared to audition—”

“I SAID FUCKING NO.”

Magnus screams it—the shout echoes around the interior of the truck like a whip-crack.

Toki’s cowering, flattened against the truck door, his blue eyes big and bewildered. That’s right, Magnus thinks, Toki doesn’t yet know that Magnus Hammersmith is crazy, and that shout had come out of nowhere. His broad dumb face is blank, uncomprehending, as if Magnus had just slapped him across the cheeks and then taken a shit in his milkshake. Abrupt cruelty from a man who’s been so unexpectedly kind to him.

Toki’s fear earns him no mercy from Magnus. “I said no,” Magnus repeats himself, in English, through gritted teeth. “I’m not auditioning for those—those dildos.”

“What means that?” Toki asks in a small voice. “Dildos?”

“It’s a bunch of fake plastic dicks.”

“Like whats the lady fucks herself with?”

“Yeah, Toki, like what the ladies fuck themselves with.”

“And the gay guys, too,” Toki contributes, in a terrified whisper.

Magnus thrusts the flier across the car; Toki takes it and puts it on his lap, staring down at the crumpled faces. There’s a ketchup stain on Murderface’s torso—what’s new?—and Skwisgaar’s beautiful blond hair has been amputated at the shoulder by a minor tear in the paper. The flier itself is printed on nice paper, the Crystal Mountain Records premium stationary; without having recorded a single full album, Dethklok is selling out. There’s a bitterness churning in Magnus’ stomach that no drugs or cigarette smoke can quash.

Still visibly rattled, Toki closes his eyes and takes a few timed deep breaths in a way that Magnus can recognise from experience as an attempt to dispel a building panic attack. When he opens his eyes again, his fear has been tempered by determination. He locks gazes with Magnus, undeterred by the bloody colour of Magnus’ dying left eye.

“I auditions for those dildos,” Toki declares.

Magnus blinks. “Alright, bud. Good for you.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Toki glances down at the flier, then sheepishly back up at Magnus. “Can you reads to me the directions to the auditions place?”

Magnus glances down at the address, though he already knows by heart exactly where it is. “I’ll do you one better,” he says, stubbing out his cigarette on the windowsill, “I’ll drop you off there.”

“Really?”

“Sure, it’s not far from here.”

“Thanks, Magnus! You’re the best!”

It’s a blessing in disguise that they’re seated in a truck, because Toki looks like he wants to fly over and tackle Magnus in a greasy, hamburger-scented hug.

Dethklok’s old rehearsal space really isn’t far from here. A mile down the highway and a couple of turns right would have them there in fifteen minutes. Magnus has made the drive a hundred-thousand times before—a pre-rehearsal chicken nugget run, a procrastinatory aimless drive, picking up Nathan from his part-time job, picking up Pickles from a last-minute drug deal, picking up Skwisgaar from his old guitar teacher’s house down the street. Drunken snack-shopping sprees at the nearby strip mall or chaotic, destructive rampages through the neighbouring suburbs; Tampa is his adopted home, by now, he knows these streets like the back of his hand.

Was his adopted home. He’d given years of his life to Dethklok and they’d gone and booted him out of the band just as they were starting to get big. And, looking at Toki, it makes sense: he would be perfect for them, a dumb little doormat they can stamp all over. Magnus is too old, too experienced, too willing to stand up for himself in the face of Pickles’ insubordination and Nathan’s constant criticism. That’s the real reason he’d been kicked to the curb, why Nathan had deliberately pushed his buttons until he’d had an episode and stabbed him—and now he’ll be replaced with a younger, stupider, more Norwegian guitarist. The world is cruel indeed.

As he drives, he watches Toki from the corner of his eye. Toki is slurping down a milkshake, face pressed to the window, grinning stupidly at the passing world. His legs are wrapped around his home-stitched guitar case, his dumb-looking cap sits askew on his badly cut hair. When he catches Magnus staring, he turns around and offers up an enthusiastic smile, face gaping open like a catfish begging for bread.

“Can you comes with me?” Toki asks in English. “I’ll feels better with a good pals like you to hears me play.”

Magnus shakes his head. “You’ll do fine, kid. You don’t need me there.”

“You really thinks so?”

“I knows so.” Magnus takes an exit, makes a left turn, and rolls into a parking lot. “Well, here we are.”

Toki looks out the window and his face falls. “This ams a…” He squints at the sign before them. “Mad…. Dress…”

“It says ‘mattresses’,” Magnus finishes for him.

“They’s auditions in the store for mattresses?”

“Weird, right? But a lot of Americans do it.” Magnus shrugs. “It’s cheap rehearsal space or something. Beats me. But yeah, that’s what it says on the flier.”

“Wowee.” Toki looks at the mattress store, then back at Magnus. There’s the faintest hint of suspicion on his face.

“Tell you what,” Magnus leans back, “I’ll wait out here for you. You go in, do your audition, and then come out and let me know how it goes. Alright?”

The suspicion melts into gooey whole-hearted relief. “Okay,” he agrees, pulling open the door, “I goes auditions and you waits for me. Boy, I feels better knowing my pal Magnus is right heres.”

“Mm.” Magnus looks away, staring pensively at the mattress store as Toki climbs out of the truck. He waits to see Toki skipping his innocent way towards the door—

The driver’s side door of the truck is wrenched open, and suddenly, Magnus is, as he feared, trapped in a greasy, dirty, vaguely hamburger-scented hug.

“You’re the best,” Toki mumbles in Norwegian, voice muffled in Magnus’ shoulder. “I’m gonna do my best guitar playing ever, just for you!”

The aroma coming from Toki leaves no doubt that he has, in fact, been sleeping in a dumpster. “Uh,” Magnus coughs, “Yeah, good luck.”

Toki springs off of him, lands unsteadily on the pavement, and then turns to give Magnus a big, sappy grin. With no further ado, he turns and, as predicted, skips towards the mattress store, his adorable hand-crafted guitar case swinging on his back.

Magnus waits until Toki’s halfway through the door. Then he starts his truck’s engine and goes peeling out of the parking lot with a squeal of rubber. He floors it, shooting around the shopping complex and back towards the highway, shaking his head all the while.

What idiot would believe a death metal holds auditions in a mattress store?

Somewhere, buried deep below the migraine and the drugs and the churning tar-black bitterness, Magnus feels a little pang of guilt. Toki seems like such a sweet, dumb kid, dumb enough to actually trust Magnus. He’ll probably be crushed when he realises that Magnus has betrayed him; and then he’ll learn the lesson that people are never simply nice, and he won’t let himself be fucked around with.

Nice kids like Toki don’t survive long—they need to be hurt, the way you hurt your fingers on guitar strings to build up the callouses, and Magnus is one of the only people with the guts to do the hurting. It’s not malicious, really. It’s just a fact of life, a lesson he’d tried to teach Dethklok, too.

Besides, Magnus reasons, he’s doing Toki a favour. Toki is genuinely sweet, caring, he has an optimism to him; a band like Dethklok would chew him up and spit him out. In the long run, when Dethklok is revealed to be a bunch of selfish, backstabbing, petty, lazy cowards, Toki can look back at this encounter and be glad to know that Magnus had his best interests at heart. Maybe by then the world will know how Magnus has been wronged—yes, he’ll be the benevolent, mysterious saviour of this encounter, intervening to spare another talented guitarist from the musical meat grinder. That’s what friends do, after all; Magnus is kind like that.

But the weird pang of guilt remains, and the migraine is worse than ever.

He’ll find a place to park, take one of his last oxys, try and get a nap; he’ll think once or twice about Toki Wartooth, that incomprehensible niceness and the hug he’d given Magnus. But then he’ll go on to brood about how his band kicked him out and how his bitch mother cut him off and how the rest of the world has so cruelly wronged him, and for the foreseeable future, Toki will be little more than a glimpse of sunshine that failed to interrupt a shitty, overcast life.

#metalocalypse #hello fandom i don't interact with. today i offer you: nice things happening to toki #my fic

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