#like!!!!!! everything is pointless!!!!!! nothing they do will ever work!!!!!! it was dead from the beginning!!!!!

[itsalwaysforyou]

actually what gets me about d1 is how hyper aware these kids are that their parents don’t love them. in the kitchen scene when they’re absolutely silent after lonnie’s ‘i thought even villains loved their kids’… like there’s no grand realisation. no enlightenment. they are So Aware of the fact their parents don’t love them. even the first line in evie’s rttc verse: ‘so i’ve got some mischief in my blood / can you blame me? i never got no love’.

and yet, we see them desperately trying to please their parents. jay with the lamp. carlos, for a moment, believing cruella wants him to stay bc she’ll miss him. evie with her mother. mal agreeing to go to auradon so she can steal the wand for maleficent.

all of this desperation, some blind belief, which is always going to be futile. their efforts were pointless from the beginning. villains don’t love their kids. and the kids are so, painfully aware of that.

[mesetacadre]

(sorry in advance for the more personal ask, you're the most intelligent person i know of when it comes to these things)

genuinely, how are we supposed to find the strength to go on? it feels like capitalism has won. only a few decades ago my country was openly and proudly socialist, and now we're nothing but an american military base with an economy. everything's been privatised, the unions are broken, the people are starving, and we keep voting for more of this! people are gleefully begging for yet more exploitation! sometimes it feels there's not a drop of class consciousness to be found in the entire country, and that it's pointless to even hope for change. how can i stay sane?

The class struggle is not a team sport which either side can win or lose. It is a historical and economic process, one that's inevitable. As long as capitalism exists, there will be a social majority of workers it must exploit, alienation will still happen, and a portion of these workers will be aware of this fact. The class struggle is also a long process, one that, most of the time, is imperceptible to the individual in physical and time scale. Only sometimes, it accelerates to dizzying speeds and the conditions necessary for taking power are met. We can talk about victories and defeats, but we can't lose sight of the fact that those "only" are points in time, momentaneous advances or retreats in the process that is the class struggle, but they never mean the paralization of this process.

We can only really talk about the bourgeoisie taking power and creating the first properly capitalist states in the late 18th century and early 19th, but the bourgeoisie had lead or taken part in attempts at or glimpes of revolution as far back as the early 16th century. The bourgeoisie never really had an unifying theory of the class struggle, most were never really fully conscious of it. But they still eventually took power, once the development of the national economies advanced so far that it forced the replacement of the feudal mode of production, the bourgeois revolutions became inevitable. Marx and Engels only ever saw one real attempt at the proletariat taking power, in the Paris Commune of 1871, but it only ever lasted a few months. They both were long dead when the first actually (relatively) long-lasting instance of the proletariat in power broke the oppressor classes' veneer of invincibility.

When Marxists talk of inevitability it is not in a conspiratorial manner, or an expression of satisfied optimism, we never mean that "one day the capitalists will get what's coming to them", in a vague way. We mean that, only if communists continue to work towards the revolutionary organization of our class, is a complete overthrow of capitalism inevitable. We should all do an exercise is historical perspective when it comes to analyzing progress, take the Marx and Engels example from the previous paragraph, they never got to see an effective application of their theories. Class consciousness will fluctuate continuously, it always has. The bolshevik party in 1913 had nothing to do with the party that lead the October Revolution, and 8 years after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, I bet many felt like their work was hopeless. My point is that, while the borders of the Communist Party may shrink, grow, or even disappear, and while we might be savagely oppressed, no system of oppression has ever lasted forever.

When it comes to revolutions, there are objective and subjective conditions. The objective we can never control; it's the stability of capitalism, the characteristics of its suprastructure, if there is a crisis or not. The subjective is what's under our control; our own work as communists, the state of the revolutionary party, the degree of influence of communists at the core of the working class. These two sets of conditions interact with one another, with the objective conditions influencing the possibility of development of the subjective conditions much more than the reverse. What makes you hopeless is in part the objective conditions. Capitalism is quite stable right now (though not as much as it ever seems), and, for now, we can't do much about it, because the subjective conditions, the other part of your homelessness, are also very delayed. But these we do have control over, at first very little, but as they improve, the control we have over them also increases. Essentially, friend, all we can do is prepare our class, do our best to gain more workers to our cause, bit by bit, so that once capitalism shows one of its cracks, we can be ready to pry those cracks open and bust the whole system. The Russian soldiers in WW1 were already discontent when the bolsheviks began to agitate up to the trenches, Mao's guerrillas grew to an army taking advantage of the deep fragmentation China suffered throughout the first half of the century, etc.

Once again, class struggle is not a straight line that we move in two directions. It is a complex space. The overthrow of the USSR was a very profound blow to revolutionary organizations all around the world, of course, but the state of communism in general in 1995 was still in a much better position than it was merely 90 years prior. Every defeat also sharpens the tactics and strategies we use. Eastern Europe (where I assume you're from) did use to be socialist, and those worker's states were overthrown. But you are still in a better position than a communist in the interwar period, facing borderline fascistic dictatorship and a future of Nazi-Fascist occupation. They did not have any precedent or much practical experience to learn from, but you do. Every day that we delay work, even in the most hopeless of contexts, is a day more that our grandchildren will have to bear in capitalism, and a day more they're deprived of true freedom and self-government

[bucketsofmonsters]

The Witch's Apprentice - Part 6

cw: demon summoning, prolonged isolation, size difference, body horror, forced transformation, self-inflicted injuries, more tags will be added as the story continues

male demon x afab reader

Word count: 3k

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6  Part 7

He brought you back into your room. Where else would he bring you? Your soundproofed, locked room that you had no way out of. 

You weren’t any less stuck than you were before. 

That wasn’t going to stop you, couldn’t stop you. You needed to get out. You needed to see Eden. 

You knew any attempt to reach her was pointless. She couldn’t hear you. 

It didn’t stop your desperate attempt to get to her in any way possible. You pounded on the door, the noise of your fists against the thick wood echoing in your ears and never reaching hers. 

You're not entirely sure how long you pounded on that door. It was hard to focus on anything. You weren’t seeing the door, you were seeing Eden’s face and her saving you from those god-forsaken woods and then Lucien doubling over again, hearing how his words got frantic as he tried to warn you about something he just couldn’t say and you’d start hitting even harder. 

An earsplitting, pained scream sounded and it took a second to realize it came from you. You hadn’t meant to scream but what harm could it do? It wasn’t like anyone could hear you anyways. 

You kept pounding until massive, gentle hands wrapped around your wrists. 

You looked down to find Lucien holding your now bloodied hands. 

His grip was soft. You could have pulled away if you’d wanted to, kept on trying to fight your way through a solid block of wood. 

You let him stop you. 

As soon as he realized you were done he released your hands and with that you collapsed to the floor, letting your head fall against the door. 

“You tire yourself out yet?” Lucien asked, watching you from above.

You glared up at him as you sucked in air. 

“I need…” Your voice came out nasally and wet. “I need to understand. I need to see her.”

“This is a bad idea.” He sounded resigned, as if he knew nothing he said was going to matter. You had to do this. 

“Says the demon I talk to every day.”

“Don’t do that. Not now. Not after everything.”

“Sorry,” you said with a sniffle. “You weren’t a bad idea. I think summoning you might have been the only good idea I ever had.”

As you spoke you felt something being pushed under the door into your side. You looked down to see a plate of food. Your dinner. 

You shoved it back out. At least that was something Eden could see, somewhere productive your frustration could go. 

You heard a huff through the door and you knew she was projecting her voice through. “Fine, if you want to be that way.”

“Can I talk to you?” you called out, knowing it was never going to work. 

You didn’t know if she’d left yet but it didn't matter. She never lifts it on your end, never tries to hear you. 

A heavy sigh escaped Lucien as he stared at you with sad eyes.

“As long as you’re dead set on this, do you want to do something really stupid?”

You nodded instantly. At this point, you’d agree to just about anything. 

He held his hand out towards you and waited. 

You took a moment to gather yourself as best you could. There wasn’t much you could do at this point to stop looking like a mess but at the very least you could try to slow your breathing and blink some of the tears out of your eyes. 

When you reached out to take his hand, he gave it a gentle squeeze before you were feeling the same sensation you’d felt when he’d whisked you back to his home. This time you appeared a few steps away, right through the wall. 

Eden’s eyes widened in fear the second Lucien appeared in front of her. She hadn’t even noticed you yet, her eyes locked on his imposing figure. 

As she stumbled backward, reaching blindly for something behind her, her eyes fell to you and that fear turned to anger. 

“What did you do?” she hissed out. 

“What did I do? How about I’ll tell you that when you explain the runes that burnt their way into his skin when he tried to warn me about you.”

You watched all the blood drain from her face. “What has he told you?”

“He hasn’t told me anything,” you shouted. “He can’t, you’ve stopped him. So now you’re going to tell me.”

You felt Lucien’s presence behind you, his hand ghosting over your back as a faint reminder that you weren’t here alone. 

Eden stumbled back again, coming up against a table this time. As she did, she grabbed a handful of the rosemary you always made sure she had on hand and threw it at the both of you, murmuring something under her breath as she did. 

You could feel the empty space where he’d stood before as she banished him. 

There was a manic look in her eyes as you watched her strategize, planning out what she was about to say to you. 

“He’s tricked you,” she finally settled on. “You think he’s on your side but he isn’t.”

“I don’t believe you,” you said, and those words seemed to strike almost as much panic in her as seeing Lucien did. 

“You don’t understand. He’s the one who made the forest, he’s the reason you're trapped here at all. I saved you from that, don’t you remember?”

And then everything clicked into place. “Oh my god, you made him do it, didn’t you?”

She didn’t need to confirm it, you could see it written across her face, across the face that you knew so well. 

She floundered and you just watched in horror as your best friend unraveled in front of you. 

“No, no of course not,” she lied. “I wouldn’t do that to you. It would take a monster to do that to you.”

You remembered Lucien’s confusion when you told him you couldn’t leave the woods. “All this time you could have let me through.”

“I did let you through, don’t you see? I let you through to bring you here and I’ve kept you so safe.”

You fought not to glance towards the door, towards the woods. To not give anything away. You could make a break for it and from there, it was his woods. Maybe he could save you before Eden could command him to do anything else. 

“Lucien made it,” you said again and Eden nodded eagerly You knew exactly what she wanted. For you to blame him, to act as if this wasn’t entirely her doing. 

He could save you, you knew he could. You could run and summon him before his creation managed to swallow you whole. 

Tears pricked at Eden’s eyes but they never fell. She would never let them fall. “You will not leave me.” 

She said it the same way she commanded Lucien, with absolute authority

You weren’t falling for it anymore. 

Your cheeks felt wet again and you reached up to find you’d started crying once more without even realizing it. “I would have stayed. If you’d just asked me I would’ve stayed in a heartbeat.”

“Then why does it matter?”

“Why does it… What do you mean why does it matter? You imprisoned me and you lied to me and I trusted you.”

She scoffed. “You know what? I tried so hard to be out here on my own. I conquered so much, escaped every other weak person who was dragging me down. But something was missing, something I couldn’t run from. And then you showed up, all bright-eyed and grateful and you fixed it all. I was weak and I needed people, needed you. I need you. Is that what you want to hear?”

It fully settled that she meant every word. She needed you here, needed you to keep the sickening loneliness that you were intimately familiar with away. 

And never once did it occur to her to think about that feeling in you. 

Why would it? You weren’t a friend to her, a companion, a person. You were a tool to stave off an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her gut. 

Before you could even process the fact that you were running towards the door you were falling. You hit the ground with a thud as Eden watched on from behind you, her shaking hands pointed in your direction. 

She muttered something under her breath and then you weren’t falling anymore. Instead, you were floating slowly but surely upwards. 

It took a few moments to realize that while you might be floating, your body wasn’t coming with you. It was lying below you, cold and so very far away. 

You looked dead. 

You felt dead. 

And then you were being made smaller. Matter was being summoned up where there was none before and you were being forced into a body that you don’t want to be in, one too small for you that felt far too fragile. 

You could feel bones and tendons forming, snapping into place as Eden held you aloft in front of her. 

Skin started to form over your new, unfamiliar frame and then something else. Were they feathers?

As unfamiliar flesh continued to crawl over the bones and muscles were conjured from nothing, you tried to fight, to move, to do anything in your new form. 

You managed to lift what looked like a half-formed wing and the numbness was replaced with searing pain. 

You felt like you’d been skinned and every feather that wormed its way out of you was like a needle through this new skin. 

Eden plucked you out of the air moments before you’d finished forming into this new shape. 

She held you in her hands and you’d never felt smaller. 

“It suits you,” she said as she looked down at you, the wings she’d forced upon you being pressed into your sides by her fingers. “You were always more of a pet than an apprentice anyways.”

Before you can so much as gather your bearings you were being forced inside a silver cage.  

Functioning inside the mind of a bird was impossibly difficult. You couldn’t hold onto thoughts anymore. The closest thing you had was the fear. That much the bird could understand. 

You did your best to make out what was happening outside your cage. It wasn’t that your vision was worse now, if anything it was better. It was like the things you were seeing were losing their context and gaining a new one. 

You saw Eden summon Lucien, saw them look down at your body as Eden said, “This is your fault.” You could see his breath catch in his chest, the way he doubled over on himself.

But you also saw predators, looming shapes that you wanted to get far away from. Their voices were too loud, you needed to leave. 

Then a voice sounded not from outside your new cage, but from somewhere inside of you. “You're not dead. I can feel you. Where are you?”

You heard the words perfectly fine, you just couldn’t process them. As soon as the next would come the word preceding it was lost to you. 

They were just sounds. Why were there sounds coming from inside your head? That’s not where they normally came from. 

A panicked attempt to fly away was thwarted by this small metal prison. You couldn’t go anywhere and there were sounds coming from inside you and the creatures in the room just kept getting louder and louder. 

The voice in your head wasn’t as loud as the creatures were, and yet you could hear it so much better. It spoke again and you could feel the voice trying to calm you. “...need you to summon me… can’t get to you…”

You could barely process the words before they left you behind. 

You caught a glimpse of your side. You were gray. You weren’t always gray. Were you? It seemed strange. 

You leaned back to straighten your feathers, preening restlessly as your mind told you to get away when you knew that you couldn’t. 

The panic felt familiar in a way you couldn’t place. You knew this panic. It wrapped around your throat and stole your air with a practiced familiarity. 

You were trapped. 

You remembered this. You understood being trapped. 

The sounds started making sense again, if only for a moment. Lucien and Eden were shouting at each other over your lifeless corpse and his voice sounded in your head, pleading with you. 

“Just summon me, I can’t get out on my own.”

But you couldn’t. You didn’t have long enough, didn’t have enough of yourself left. 

He’d known this would happen, had begged to take you away, for you not to do this. He had tried to save you, was still trying to, and you couldn’t get a hold of your own mind enough to help him do that. 

With your fleeting lucidity, you did the best that you could, praying it would be enough. You focused everything you had and with all your might sent him back one word. 

“Eden.”

It was difficult to parse what happened next. As far as you could tell,  it got very loud and everything moved very fast and then something exploded. 

You couldn’t tell where it came from. It was harder to place than the voices were. It felt like you’d exploded, like your insides had folded back apart just as quickly as they had formed but it just as easily it could have been the room around you, breaking apart as Lucien took revenge in both of your names. 

You probably wouldn’t make it out. You knew that much. You were stuck in an impossible body in an impossible situation in an impossible forest. You just hoped Lucien made it out, at the very least. That you did manage to free him. 

The next thing you knew you were lying in a strange bed in a strange room with Lucien looming nervously over you. 

You flexed your hand, your own hand, without so much as a single feather. It felt like a miracle. 

The first words you sputtered out were, “Eden… is she…”

You didn’t need to finish the question. 

He looked down at you, seeming like he was trying to figure out what answer you wanted. “She’s alive. I’d rather she wasn’t but I figured it should be up to you as much as it is me. Besides, I have her name now, she can’t make me do anything ever again. So I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” you said, a coughing fit overtaking you after you forced the words out. A gray feather escaped your mouth and you almost threw up at the sight. 

He graciously didn't mention it. “I really do.”

You shook your head but you didn’t have the energy to argue with him right now. 

As you did, you took in the room around you. It was somewhere foreign, the walls of the room a dull gray with beat-up wooden furniture scattered about the room. 

“Where am I?” you asked as you tried to peek out the window that sat behind Lucien without straining yourself too hard. 

“An inn. I would’ve taken you back to hell with me but after everything you’ve been through I figured you’d appreciate being clear-headed. And besides, it’s easier to leave this way, in case you want me gone.”

You furrowed your brow. “Why would I want you gone?”

“I’m the reason you’ve been stuck in your own personal hell for years, you literally have nightmares about something I did to you.”

You shook your head again. “No, that’s not right. She made you do it, didn’t she?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t change what happened to you.”

You rolled your eyes. “You pouting about it won’t change anything either. You’re not going anywhere, understood?”

He nodded as a faint smile graced his face. “Understood. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pay for the room. I sort of just poofed us into the nearest inn I could remember as soon as I got a hold of you. You’ll be alright on your own?”

You wouldn’t be. How could you possibly be alright after all of this, after everything you knew had been ripped out from under you? 

You nodded. 

He took you at your word, stepping out the door with a final look in your direction. He closed the door softly behind him as if he was worried if it made too loud of a noise you’d spook. 

You collapsed back into the bed, letting your exhaustion take over you. 

As you fell into a fitful sleep, you couldn’t help but wonder what sort of nightmares you’d have now.

[pinkrose787]

You Can't Spell Apologize Without Lie

Summary: Bill comes into Ford's dream to apologize.

Ao3 Link

Ever since Bill died, Ford has slept a lot easier. No longer does he have to worry about that damn demonic triangle invading his dreams and tormenting him with threats of destroying his dimension.

That was until tonight.   

In tonight’s dream, he is in the Mystery Shack back when it was still his laboratory. It’s vivid in a way that his dreams never are. Except for whenever he dreamt about Bill.

“Hiya, Sixer! Did ya miss me? Admit it, you missed me.” A familiar perky voice comes from behind him.

Ford swivels around. Standing, or more precisely floating, before him is his triangular tormentor. Exactly the same as he was when Ford last saw him. Except for the crack that runs across his face filled with static. Likely a scar from when Stan punched Bill.

His eye has that smile to it. A smile that used to make Ford’s heart flutter with affection for his “muse”. Now, his heart pounds in fear of his manipulator. “Bill! You’re supposed to be dead!”

“But I’m not! I’m here!”

He takes a step back. A pointless action given Bill’s abilities. “Leave my mind this instant!”

Bill puts up his hands like he’s trying to soothe a panicked horse. He floats closer to Ford. “Listen, I will eventually. But I want you to hear me out first. Please.”

That gives Ford pause. In all his years of knowing Bill, never once did he say please. And there’s a genuineness in his voice. A vulnerability to it. But it could all be a trick. That’s what Bill does. He tricks and deceives to get what he wants.

Bill sighs. His eye looks at the ground. “I know you don’t trust me. And I know why. But it’s been so long. I’ve changed.”

“It’s only been 3 years. That’s barely any time to me, and almost nothing to you.”

“Where I’m at time works differently. It’s been 3 years to you and several eons to me.” He floats over to Ford. Puts his arm over his shoulder, the exact same way that he used to when Ford admired him. Likely a trick to get him to trust him. “You’re a smart guy, you get how all this relativity stuff works.”

Ford pushes Bill off of him. This time his tricks aren’t going work on him. “I don’t care where you are or how time works! I want you gone!”

“Look, I’ve spent all this time being ‘dead’,” He uses air quotes when he says dead. “in this asylum that makes Hell look like Disney World. There’s been nothing to do except reflect on my life.”

“It sounds like you’re in a place that you belong.”

“Yeah, I am.”

That’s not the answer Ford was expecting. At least, not said so sincerely. Still, he can’t forget that this is probably a trick. “So, you’re here to escape from there? That’s it, isn’t it?”

“No! No.” Bill shakes his head. “I came here to apologize.”

“You came here to apologize?” Ford heard him correctly. He knows he did. It’s impossible for him to mishear Bill in these dreams. The concept of Bill ever apologizing is so alien to him that mishearing a voice that is psychically projected into his head is more plausible.

“Yes, I did.” Bill takes off his hat. He holds it in his hands. “I realized that I messed up. Badly. You were the best thing to happen to me in a trillion years, and I didn’t see that. I was blinded by my own ambition and after destroying my dimension I was too scared to let anyone get to close. So, I told myself that you were nothing but a tool to me. A means to an end. But you weren’t. You were everything to me. You were the one person who could understand me.”

A tear forms in Bill’s eye. Combined with holding his hat in hands, he looks so vulnerable and pathetic. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“So, you came here for forgiveness. Let me guess, this asylum place will only let you out if  get forgiveness from everyone you’ve ever wronged.” He looks Bill straight in the eye. “Well, you’re not getting it from me.” 

Bill puts his hat back on. It seems like he’s actually hurt by what Ford said? “That’s not it. They actually didn’t want me coming back here. They said it was a bad idea.”

“Well, maybe they were right. You should have never come back here.”

“I know, I just…”

“Just what? Just thought apologizing would undo everything you’ve done?” Ford’s voice starts to rise. “You manipulated me. You tortured me. You tried to kill my family. You damn near destroyed my dimension! I almost lost my brother because of you!”

“No! I…” Bill shouts.

Ford ignores him. “Do you want to know the worst thing you did?”

He looks Bill straight in his eye. Making sure that the demon is listening to his next words. “You made me fall in love with you. Even after every horrible thing you did to me, I still loved you! Even though I knew it was stupid and irrational to love someone who only wanted to hurt me, I still did!”

For once in his life, Bill Cipher doesn’t have anything to say.

“There were even parts of my brain telling me that it wasn’t that bad. That I’m being overdramatic. That being with you is better than being without you. And these thoughts tortured me for years. They haunted me on my coldest nights when I journeyed through the dimensions.”

“I’ve changed! I’m better now! I swear!” Bill cries.

“Well, I don’t care how much better you are! You could be the kindest person in all the dimensions who saves kittens from trees and I wouldn’t give a damn. Because it doesn’t matter how much you’ve changed, it still doesn’t negate all the horrible things you did!”

“I know that. But…”

“But nothing.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought that apologizing would help you heal. Give you closure and all that junk.”  

“You thought it would heal me. Thought it would give me closure.” Ford rolls his eyes. “Well thank you for your consideration, but I was healing fine without you. I had just gotten to the point where I’m able to see a yellow triangle without spiraling into a panic attack. But now that’s in the trash, because of you.”

Bill rubs his arm. Not looking Ford in the eyes. “I really thought it would help.” He says in a low voice. “Honest.”

“Do you want to know how I know you haven’t changed? Every single sentence is about how you feel, what you think, how what you’ve done has affected you. There hasn’t been a single time where you have acknowledged how your actions have hurt me. You haven’t even done the bare minimum of asking how I’ve been doing. Because if you did you’d know that I’ve been doing better than I ever have without you.”

“Well, you haven’t given me an opportunity to. You keep cutting me off.”

“Because every time you open your damn mouth, you manipulate me. Every. Single. Time. But I’m not going let you this time. I’m done with you and your lies.”

Bill sighs. “I’m done with all of that. I promise.”

“Goodbye, Bill. If I never see you again, I want you to know that I hate you. More than I have ever hated anyone. You ruined my life, and for that I’ll never forgive you.”

What seems to be tear forms in Bill Cipher’s eye. “I’m sorry.” His voice fades.

Ford wakes up with a jolt. He’s covered in sweat. His breathing is heavy.

He looks around. He’s no longer in the dream.

Now, he’s back in the cabin of the Stan o’ War II. Stan sleeps on the bunk below him. The sound of his snores fill the cabin. The ship creaks as the waves rock it back and forth.

There’s no chance of him falling back asleep. He doesn’t want to risk seeing Bill again. That and his heart is still pounding in his chest. Looking at his watch, it reads 3 am.

He climbs out of bed, careful not to wake Stan, and heads out onto the deck.

It isn’t much lighter out here, but at least there are the stars. Out here in the Artic, there’s no light pollution. The stars shine brilliantly. Ford can find all the different constellations without needing a map of the sky. Ursa Major, Orion, Gemini.

If there is one thing Ford missed during his travel through the dimensions it was the stars. Sure, there were countless stars in all sorts of dimensions. But none of them equated to the beauty of the ones in this one. Looking at them he’s reminded that he’s back.

He’s home.

Though the stars are a source of comfort, there’s still a deep panic within him. Bill is back. He talked to him. His adrenaline levels are the same as if he was being hunted by a polar bear. Frankly, he’d rather deal with a polar bear than Bill.

He hears the floorboards creak behind him. Seems like Stan woke up. “You’re up early. You trying to map out the stars or something?” Stan says.

“I saw Bill in my dream,” Ford says point-blank. There’s no point in hiding it. Nor does he want to. He doesn’t want to be alone in dealing with Bill anymore. Every single time he’s tried, it’s almost ruined his life.

“Are you sure? You have been having a lot dreams about Bill since Weirdmageddon.” The worry in Stan’s voice is palpable.

Ford sighs. “This dream didn’t resemble any of the others. All of those dreams are strange and disjointed. Jumping from one event to another for seemingly no reason. This was one was as clear as day.”

“So he’s back? How? I killed that little triangle jerk!” Stan exclaims.

“You did. He’s still dead, and he has a scar on his face to prove it. I think he told me that he’s in some sort of prison dimension now?” Ford sighs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What else did he say? Because I swear if that wise guy threatened you-” Stan shakes his fist.

“No, he didn’t threaten me. In fact, he apparently came because he wanted to apologize."

“Apologize? That’s gotta be some sort of trick.”

“That’s what I thought too, but no he seemed genuinely sincere.”

“Eh, I doubt it. I know the likes of him.” Stan leans back against the railing of the boat. “Met plenty of them over the course of my life. And let me tell you their apologies are never sincere.”

Ford rests his arms on the railing. “You may be right.” He sighs. “It just doesn’t make sense to me. I keep thinking I have Bill figured out, then he pulls something like this.”

“You should take what you do know about him, that he’s a lying conniving jerk who wanted to kill you and destroy our dimension, and base your opinion on that. So, he apologized.” Stan shrugs. “That’s just words. Don’t mean nothing.”

“You’re right.”

“Course, I am. I’m always right!”

“What frustrates me is that I feel like I’ve gone backwards. Right when I thought I put everything to rest.” Ford hits the railing. “He comes back and ruins it. Now, I feel like I did before Weirdmageddon. Terrified that he’s going to come back and destroy me.”

Stan puts his arm over Ford. “Look, how bout this? Next time, he comes back, I’ll go into your dream and punch him dead again.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Eh, I’m sure you’ll find a way with that smart guy brain of yours.” Stan starts giving ford a noogie.

Ford laughs. “Okay, okay. I’ll find a way to let you into my dreams.” He playfully pushes Stan away.

“Good. Cause there ain’t no way I’m letting that stupid little jerk come back and hurt you again. You hear?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He has a smile on his face. Most of the tension in Ford’s body is gone. Stan always was able to bring Ford back down and out of his own head when they were kids. Frankly, he doesn’t know how he managed without Stan.

But then again, he does know. He didn’t. He got swindled by a demon and became a criminal in multiple dimensions. Not a single part of Ford doubts the idea that if he had let Stan back in a lot earlier, then none of that would have happened.

There’s a moment of silence between the two of them. “Hey, Stan.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

[redux-iterum]

Curiosity question: hypothetically, with any cultural struggles of the time set aside, did/does Bluestar ever regret becoming deputy/leader? Or was leadership always something she had her eye on, so to speak? It seems like life would have been much kinder to her, if she hadn't risen through the ranks and stayed a normal warrior...

Another hypothetical if you feel like answering: at the time, if not Bluedusk, who else would've been a good candidate for the deputyship? (Thistleclaw i assume was the main contender, but did Morningstar consider anyone else?)

Bluestar always had the markings of a leader, even as an apprentice (although it initially came out in the form of bossiness which matured as she did). Her dream to lead the Clan only came about when she was a young warrior and those she loved were dropping like flies, one by one. She was of the mind that those losses were all the more reason to apply herself and take charge, to make her family in StarClan proud of her and to let the cats below her feel safe and in control. She knew very well she was more than competent for the role, but she didn't slack at all due to that knowledge. It was no surprise to anyone that she rose to deputyhood almost as soon as her apprentice (Whitecloud, for those wondering) graduated. Her only real competition was Thistleclaw, who was passed over both for his overly aggressive attitude and for Morningstar's bias towards Bluedusk. No one was surprised she was chosen, though Thistleclaw called bullshit to anyone who would listen (and he wasn't entirely wrong).

Of course, then Bluedusk had her illegitimate kits, and lost everything she had worked so hard for - her standing, her respect, her trust, all of it. No longer could she imagine her family watching her proudly. The dirty looks and scoldings from her Clanmates brought that fantasy to ruin. And when she lost those kits in her desperation to get all of that back, she could only see her family turning their backs on her. All of StarClan, really. The living didn't help with that; they still pinned the blame on her, and she knew that, but guilt and grief stained their hearts, and that she couldn't see. As far as she's concerned, her life was ruined and she had no one to blame, and no one's really forgiven her.

She nearly killed herself fighting to win back at least a shred of respect and loyalty, and in time she got what she wanted, but... I think it was pointless, at least for her. She won't let herself think about them and their father, but, like any grief and trauma in the Clans, they haven't gone away despite her best efforts. She feels the scorn of her Clanmates as fresh as if the kits had been born yesterday, even as most of those cats are dead and the rest are steadfastly loyal to her with no knowledge of her controversy. She's distant with everyone, only speaking on business most of the time, because to get close is to throw everything you have into the bonfire. It's just pain and misery.

I think she refuses to acknowledge it, but she regrets...well, pretty much every aspect of her life. She regrets being deputy because of what it did to her kits, and she regrets her kits because of what she did to get into that rank. If she'd just been content to be a regular warrior, if she'd just prayed hard enough so her mother would survive, if she'd just never looked Oakclaw in the eye and seen his kindness... So many things that she would sell her soul to go back and do over again. I think she won't ever let herself be aware of this, but it haunts her, tiptoeing around in the back of her mind and waiting politely for her to be half-asleep with nothing else to think of, and then it taps its claws on her brain and makes her sleep uneasy.

Really, at this point? You could make a case that her dementia is a blessing in disguise. Maybe one day she won't be able to think of them anymore. Stars willing.

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

i dont know how to explain it but to me udad and hnoc are like opposites of each other. (Under read more, cause it is loooooonnnnng)

With udad the situation everyone is in is bonkers shit. The world they live in is absolutely shithole of a place that exploits everyone but the richest of the rich and the people there cant escape even after their death. Every single one of them is bitter and depressed and wronged and just wants to survive and they'll do anything to survive even if it meant killing the other one. All the natural part of that world is long dead and only thing exists is this cold dark metallic hellscape of a city that swallowed its own planet like a cancer. Almost all the songs are just how everyone was exploited, used, wronged, and discarded they were. Ulysses is a drunk fallen 'hero' completely guilt ridden by their role in Illium's fall. They had lost everyone and everything even before the album began. They spent so much of their throughout album getting their shit beat in. They, Heracles, and Orpheus go to Hades (Ashes) in hopes to be freed whether as a request, through theft, or through a deal. And Ashes all but set them all up to die for their own amusement (which btw very sexy of them <3 but that is besides the point). There seemed to be no hope for them.

And yet, despite everything the ending is so hopeful. We know that Ulysses would die, if it wasnt obvious from the title of the album itself it certainly becomes obvious when we learn how their world works. And yet they died a happier ending, they escaped the curse of their city and died reunited with their love. Ulysses died under an oak tree in a grassy fields, among nature which was thought to be dead since The City's takeover. Ulysses died being warmed by sunlight, a right denied to so many others like them. Ulysses died at dawn.

And then there is hnoc. Hnoc starts heroic. Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere take over Camelot from the corrupt Stone clan through their skills and teamwork. They turn it into a place of safety with all three of them incharge. Their lives are hard and filled with violence and hatred and fear and the world they live is harsh and unforgiving. But they still have each other, and they still care for the people around them. There is nature like scorpions and vultures despite it being a space station. The album has songs about love and being in love, about hope of peace, about power of faith. Everyone wants to survive and they are willing to work together to do it. Arthur is embittered by his "daughter's" death but still has his partners to keep him grounded and is ruler/sheriff of a powerful town with lots of knights working for him. What is more, the tragedy that hardened both Arthur and Gawain can be healed because the person they mourn isnt dead, he is Mordred and he is here to make amends. Arthur, Gawain, and Galahad go to Merlin (Brian) to seek aid, and he gives them advice that truly could have saved them, because Merlin really did wanted to save them and the entire station. There seemed to be hope for them.

And yet in the end it meant nothing. It was all for nothing. Alfred and Gawain did not listen to Brian's advice and ended up sealing theirs and everyone else's fate. Galahad did take Brian's advice and it destroyed him in a self sacrifice that ended up being for nothing. Mordred tried so hard for peace but at the end seeing the hatred and cruelty of his world hardened him to the core. Gawain's hatred turned peace talks into war and turned him into sawage barbaric monster he thought Saxons to be. Arthur's hardened core did not let him hope that his child could ever return to him and ended up not giving Mordred even a chance. What could have saved everyone Fort Gallfridian ended up turning into what destroyed Fort Gallfridian whether it be the GRAIL or Mordred. Almost all of them died a pointless avoidable death. And Arthur? Arthur lost everything. He lost his partners, he lost his chance to embrace his son, he lost his home, he lost his people. He may have survived but at the end he lost everything. High noon over Camelot. We didnt understand what it truly meant (all of them dying in the sun) until it was too late.

Ulysses shoots once, and it led to their happy ending. Gawain shoots once, and it led to everyone's tragedy. 3 shots all for Ulysses and it killed them. 3 shots for Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, and it hurt Arthur but never killed him. Ulysses was the only one who got to die under the sun, Arthur was the only one who didnt die in the sun.

[gretavanfleetposts]

Fire in the Water: Chapter Ten - Part One

Summary: You had thought dating a vampire would be the most complicated thing you'd ever done. But as it turns out, becoming one is even more complicated. The boys are determined to make your transformation as smooth as possible while each fighting to maintain the relationships they once had and those they now lust for. Author's Note: As always, I'd like to thank the lovely @gretasmokerising and @earthlysorrows for everything Content Warnings: swearing, talk of the afterlife, death, talk of dead souls, dead people, skeletons (18+ minors do not interact) Word Count: 5k

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Rebecca had been hard to find.

Jake had searched for her for months alongside his twin, turning up empty time after time, month after month. They would get so close so often but each time, she evaded their grasp. It was like she knew he was looking for her. It was like she was toying with him. He couldn’t even say he was surprised if that was in fact what she was doing. But Jake was running out of time. How long could a body go unlived in?

They spent months going from motel to motel, paying people for information, buying people to get them off their backs. But finally after four long months, Jake darted into the singular room he and Josh had been sharing for several days just outside of New Orleans, just beyond the bustle of nightlife in the heart of the city.

“I found her,” he had said. And his eyes had held a hope that Josh hadn’t seen since their journey began.

That journey had brought them to the warehouse they now found themselves standing in front of: a large, empty structure that looked like it had gone abandoned for the last decade. That was where they had finally pinned Rebecca down.

When they did finally enter, they found her sitting at a large oak desk, the only piece of furniture left in the concrete room. And it was clear she had let them catch up to her.

They crossed the sprawling, utilitarian room to her quickly, nothing but the sound of boot heels clicking on the concrete beneath. Jake led the way, eyeing Rebecca carefully. She sat with her knee-length-clad boots propped up against the edge of the desk, swiveling lazily from side to side in a rusted and hardened green leather office chair with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes doing a dance between the two brothers.

It all felt far too casual for Jake’s taste.

Josh looked on her with softer eyes from behind his brother. The good cop in the situation. Or at least, that was what he had prepped himself to be.

Although they had never spent much time together, Josh recognized her as the woman who had been the first in Jake's vampire life to break his heart. He'd had to do quite a bit of damage control thanks to her. But even so, he understood her to be a bit more nuanced than Jake ever wanted to believe. He knew what she had done to him but he also knew why she had done it in the first place. It was all very complicated. Still, he often wished she had chosen a different vampire to do her dirty work for her.

“Josh,” Rebecca greeted him with easy eyes and a lazy smile when she saw the curly-haired twin that she had always liked a little more than his brother..

“Rebecca,” Josh greeted her back just as amicably.

On the other hand, Jake and Rebecca needed no introductions. It was pointless. Frivolous. They'd never had that kind of relationship, one where they pretended. Or at least, Jake had never thought they'd had that kind of relationship.

And they certainly weren’t ones to play nice when he had tracked her down several times over the years, unbeknownst to his family.

“Is there a reason you've been following me?” she asked, settling back into her chair comfortably as she set her accusatory eyes on Jake. “I thought we were done with this.”

Jake silently hoped Josh never asked questions about that.

“If we were done with it then why did you let me find you?” he asked, his tone just as accusatory.

“You clearly need something,” Rebecca answered. But then her voice went a little softer. “And I guess I still have a soft spot for you.”

Jake wasted no time. Rebecca was slippery and he didn’t like finding himself a slave to the very thing he had thought he’d outgrown when he became immortal. “I found my tie. She died stopping Cassius from killing me. All because I turned her. All because I turned you.”

“Sounds like you should have taken better care of her,” Rebecca quipped.

“It never would have been a problem if you hadn't done what you did,” he argued back just as quickly

Rebecca dropped her boots off the edge of the desk and stood to reprimand him with her tongue.

“Oh Jacob, don't tell me you're still hiding from your responsibilities with that stupid party trick you call a gift and your pretty little face. You very easily could have let her die a natural death the first time.”

Normally he'd fight back, chuckle off the insults, throw a few of his own. But the time Jake had spent without his gifts and grieving his tie had left him exhausted, the type of which sleep couldn't touch, even if he could convince his body to do it. And it had put him on edge, a place he always teetered now. Always so close to losing it.

“Please, Rebecca,” he breathed slowly with closed eyes and clenched fists, “this is the only thing I'll ever ask of you.”

Rebecca could hardly poke fun at him in this state. Actually, she’d never seen him this way before. Jake with a soul tie, it was something she couldn’t imagine. But the way he was now without said tie was something she hoped she'd forget soon after his departure.

“What is it that you want, Jacob?” she asked with a flood of sympathy warming her otherwise cold demeanor.

“You can resurrect her, I know you can.” He nodded to himself as he said it as though he were trying to convince himself of it all the more.

“I'd need the body if I were to do it.”

“Yes, I have her.”

Rebecca was silent for a moment while she thought about what Jake was asking of her.

“Did you bind before she died?”

Jake shook his head, trying not to remember his last night with his tie. It was a night he still couldn't face, not without his gifts. Not unshielded as he was.

“You've lost your gifts then?” she pressed.

Jake clenched his teeth tightly and gave her a tired nod, not so much as uttering a single word that he hardly had the strength for anyway.

Rebecca fell silent again as she contemplated everything she knew about necromancy. Things Jake knew nothing about that he now asked for so easily. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, even harder on the dead than it was on the living. But something told her Jake wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“I'm not sure you understand what you're asking me to do,” she said simply, like she was testing the waters of his resolve. How far he was prepared to go to be reunited with the woman he loved.

“I understand quite well,” was all he said. And the growing tension in his voice and in his body was palpable.

“She sacrificed herself for you, yes? Then she is at rest. You will be ripping it from her and it will not be gentle.”

Before Jake could further agree, and rather blindly, at that, Josh interrupted with a concerned look knitting his brows together and tugging down at his lips that never formed such a look very gracefully.

“What exactly does that mean?”

Rebecca breathed deeply before she found a seat propped up on the edge of the desk, like a teacher preparing for a lecture.

“When a person dies and becomes a vampire,” she began, “it isn't like actually dying. Their soul never touches the afterlife. Your tie, however?” she gestured toward Jake, “She's become one with it. Bringing a soul back from that is terribly violent. It's even more unnatural. Even more painful. She'll struggle to feel right in this world.”

“I'll help her,” Jake answered quickly, growing tired of this line of questioning when he was running out of time, a feeling he wasn't used to and didn’t plan to savor.

“Now wait a minute, Jake,” his twin stopped him, “are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

Jake turned on his brother incredulously, his feet slipping so casually off that edge he'd been riding precariously.

“What the fuck are you even saying?” he snapped. “Do you hear yourself right now? Don't you want her back or did you never fucking care about her at all?”

“Of course I fucking care about her, I loved her before you ever laid eyes on her! But we'll be changing her life forever. Again.” Josh fought back with tears in his eyes and strain in his voice that had been sitting just behind the thin veil of strength he’d adorned for his brother.

He couldn't help but feel this was all his fault at the end of the day. He was the one who had sought out the human. He was the one who had invited her into his life. He was the one who had introduced her to the people for whom she'd die.

“How am I supposed to live without her?” Jake croaked, his voice breaking in a way that he hated to put on such visible display for others. But it was unavoidable.

And it rendered Josh silent.

“Why did you come all this way if you were just going to turn against me when we found her?” Jake asked again, this time resentment rearing its ugly head. “You knew what this was. You knew what we were here to ask for.”

Josh shook his head, just as exhausted as his brother if he were to admit it. And he hadn't. His brother needed him; he didn't have time for the self pity he desperately wanted to bathe himself in. But he was exhausted.

“I'm not turning against you,” he said quietly. “I mourn for her too, you know. I do. I ache for her. I…I grieve for her.”

He had been crying for her since long before she had died the second time but he left that part unsaid for his brother’s sake.

“Then let me do this,” Jake insisted.

Josh fell silent again, offering up only a simple nod of his head as he cast his eyes downward and swore himself to silence. And in the wake of the fight, Rebecca braved the aftermath.

“I can't guarantee she'll still be tied to you when she returns. Soul ties are vampire magic, evolved to help the loneliest of creatures cope with their endless existence. When she comes back, she'll no longer be just vampire. You might do all of this, Jacob, all of this, and still lose her in the end. Are you prepared for that?”

Jake gave her an unconvincing nod that caused a sigh to erupt from her chest as she leaned further back onto the solid oak desk behind her.

“How long has she been dead?” she asked.

“Four months.”

Rebecca's eyes went wide. “Four months? Are you out of your mind?”

“Well maybe if you hadn't been so fucking hard to find-” he answered tersely, barely meeting her eyes.

“Jacob, four months?” she continued, “Four fucking months? It’ll be torture, you cannot do this.”

“Oh come on, Rebecca,” Jake finally snapped and stared her down, his impatience and anger showing. “You've done worse.”

“I've done worse to people who deserved worse,” she corrected. “This would be torment for her.”

Jake's teeth clenched harder, threatening to shatter the bones.

“Rebecca,” he spoke slowly to control his anger, “can you do it or not?”

Rebecca found another deep sigh bubbling in her chest. She wasn't exactly morally opposed to much but this just seemed cruel to Jake's lover. Still, she could see just how badly he needed this. He needed his gifts to get by and clearly, he needed her too. And if this was the last thing he'd ever want from her, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

“Yes, I can do it. But there is something else. You didn't bind before she died. If I bring her back and the tie does still exist, it'll be weak. Weak enough to break, if she asks me to. Are you so certain she'll still want you?”

He waved her off with a single hand but she couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn't just doing it to get her off her back, something he'd worry about when she wasn't around.

Rebecca only stared at him, captivating his eyes when he realized she'd gone silent. And Josh, being an onlooker in all this, the things said and the things unsaid, took that as his cue to leave them to whatever fight must have been brewing that he certainly didn't need to be a part of.

“I'll give you two a minute,” he said softly before ducking out of the warehouse with only a single nod to Rebecca and a single nod returned.

When he left, Jake released a heavy sigh. “You don't need to say anything. I hear you, okay? I hear you.”

“I'm not sure you really do but I guess that's your problem to deal with.”

Jake chuckled out a dark laugh and brought his hands to his tired face to wipe at his skin and dig his fingers in to stop the headache before it came.

“If she really hates me that much after it all, you should stick around. Maybe we can rekindle,” he joked.

It earned a hearty scoff from Rebecca.

“Even tied, you're still exactly the same you you were when I left.”

“An opportunist?” he smiled weakly at her.

“Blinded by your own interests,” she corrected.

But his face fell with the weight of what he'd been dealing with for months and Rebecca could see that he'd hardly meant it.

“I can't cope. I feel like I can't even fucking breathe without her.”

“You don't breathe,” Rebecca quipped, earning another dark laugh from Jake whose smile didn't even come close to touching his eyes.

“Don't make me miss you, Rebecca. My heart belongs elsewhere.”

Maybe he was different. That's what Rebecca couldn't help but think as she watched the vampire she had known for so long to be cool and calm and collected practically twitch and wince with visible pain right before her eyes. She might have even felt bad for him if she liked him a little more.

“Well then let's get her back so I can get you out of my hair.”

—

An endless tide on an endless shore. You could reach out your arms in either direction and feel nothing but warm pebbles beneath your skin. You had crawled up and out of the ocean only to sink your body against the warmth. That's where you stayed, unmoving, as clouds danced along the sky and gulls played in the air.

There was no time that bound you. There were no sunsets and sunrises to mark the persistent drum of change. There was only warmth holding your body to the ground as you sunbathed, memories of your life coming to you as gently as the tide grabbed further and further up the shoreline.

You’d felt the presence of your parents alongside you since you’d crossed over from shore to beach, lying on those warm rocks on either side. They had made that beach for you. They had harnessed the sun and let it beat down to warm the spot they had saved for you.

They had walked with you along the beach many times, your mother especially. She practically never left your side.

“My beautiful daughter,” she said often. “Oh how I missed you.”

You let your eyes fall shut at the sound of her voice every time, soft and yet somehow overpowering the sound of waves crashing. It was just as you heard it in your memories, sweet and melodious.

Sometimes you’d stroll alone, taking in the waves as they crashed and the sun which never seemed to set. You couldn’t even remember how you’d gotten there but you remembered the hands that had sent you. You remembered the hands that had given you such peace.

But that was the thing about peace. It could come crumbling down at any moment. And when yours did, it turned to ice first, splintering at the edges and chilling you through, before it rained down like fire.

“Oh,” you had heard the voice of your mother say as she stood on the beach and watched balls of fire fall from the sky. “My dear, I don’t think they want you here.”

When you had turned to seek her face, you found only a pile of bones where she had stood.

“No!” you screamed out as you ran to her, your hands trying to collect her amongst the sand so grotesquely.

You gasped and heaved and sobbed as you turned your eyes toward the sky. The world around you that was once warm and filled with deep blues and stark whites now turned black and red, angry and smokey. You choked on it as you stood to run before it could overtake you.

But you weren't fast enough. The smoke reached you, enveloped you in its angry grip and flung you back out on the other side. And as you went, you felt the hands of a million lost souls scream at you and grab at you, hitching a ride with you as you went tunneling through time, now a lost soul yourself.

You shot upward with a gasp, scanning your scenery for your parents and the birds and the ocean. But what you saw instead was a metallic gray room, cold and lifeless and filled with standing bodies just as similar in state.

“Where am I?” you gasped out, barely even able to speak as your body groaned with stiffness and fatigue and a pain radiating throughout the entirety of it as it woke from a sleep from which it hadn't planned to return.

“You're alive,” the boy closest to you answered with a smile that seemed to signal relief forming on his lips. “We brought you back.”

We brought you back. You didn’t understand.

“No, no, no…” You struggled to your feet, pushing the boy off of you hard when he tried to catch you. “My parents were-they were-” You glanced around the room at the surroundings you didn’t recognize, your body and your lungs fighting through a searing pain while you collapsed not far from the metallic bed you’d been lying on.

“What have you done?” you frantically questioned everyone and no one all at once, your voice all but failing you as you sank against the cool floor and scooted your body ungracefully back and out of the boy’s reach until you hit a wall. “What have you done? What did you do to me?”

But the boy continued to follow you across the room until he came to a kneel before you, raising a hand to stop the movement happening behind him as some of the onlookers seemed to stir.

You glanced about the room again, slowly coming to the realization that you were back in your body, back on Earth, back in your physical form and surrounded by the concerned faces of the people you must have left behind. You blinked hard, trying to urge the fuzzy figures to focus in your field of vision. And eventually, each one turned from a haze to a distinct person with features, some that you recognized, one that you didn't. But to your horror, they weren’t the only ones there. There were shadows and voices, clawing and moaning and whispering. The ones that had grabbed at you on your journey back from the place you had been, beings who could find no rest the way you had.

Your face hardened when it hit you: you'd been torn from the warmth of the beach just to be brought back to this cold, unforgiving place.

You settled your eyes back on the face that now sat crouched close to you. You recognized him, you knew you did. And yet you struggled to put face to name.

“Do you…do you remember us?” he asked softly as you squinted at him.

He looked teary-eyed and worried but like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, a weight you now feared you carried around on yours. But you did remember him. And the longer you stared at him, the clearer the memories of your life together, short as it had been, became.

“I remember you,” you answered in a quiet voice, still not totally sure how to use your voice at all although your body seemed to remember. It quivered and faltered and you did your best to clear it as you tried just as hard to remember your life on Earth. “I-I died for you, I think.”

He nodded quickly, mouthing out a ‘yes’ as his voice failed him and tears began to stream steadily down his face.

“I had to…I had to make it right,” he croaked weakly.

It was peculiar to see such emotion on his face. You hadn't seen anything so messy in ages and your fingers instinctively reached out to touch the water droplets as your brows hunkered down in confusion. But the moment your skin connected to his, you felt a wave of yearning wash over you, like this was a piece of you you had been missing without even realizing it.

It was Jake. Of course it was Jake.

“My soul was yours,” you reminisced in a gasp as your fingers lingered curiously on his skin.

Suddenly, you remembered the last night you had spent with him. You remembered the tie that connected you, running through you both and joining you together. You remembered how hard you had fought it until the day he was in danger. And you remembered dying for him at the hand of another.

But he looked confused at your revelation.

“Was?” he questioned.

“Pieces of it are gone now,” you answered simply, still studying your fingers now wet with his tears.

He shook his head and glanced back at the others around him before turning back to you.

“I don't understand.”

When you dropped your fingers from your field of vision and met those golden brown eyes again, a wave of sadness washed over you. You could tell that he had spent many agonizing days awaiting this very moment. In fact, he almost looked dead himself. The skin on his face sagged downward farther than it seemed to want to stretch. And the bags under his eyes had taken on an almost bruise-like hue. He had kept misery for his company as long as you had been gone; it was plain to see on his face and in the way his shoulders fell so quickly and so far with your mention of a soul now shattered across realms. And even though you could guess why he had done it, you knew he didn't fully understand what exactly it was he had done as the invisible souls lining the edges of the room crept ever closer.

Even now you could hear them, the voices of the dead who weren't yet at rest, some supernatural, some human, many seeming to have attached themselves to the unfamiliar face in the room. You could see them all, hear them all, feel them all. They wished to usher you back down but their hands, greedy and helpless, could no longer get a grip on you.

Your lips fell into a hard, thin line.

“You should have left me dead, Jake.”

You heard a whisper from across the room, urging a large, curly-haired man out the door with a gentle and almost imperceptible, “Come on,” and nudge against his arm. Danny and Adele. The names flooded back to you as you watched them don sympathetic smiles, Danny clapping Jake on the shoulder gently just before they both left the room without another word.

The strange woman on the wall adjacent to you was the next to turn and leave, bringing another boy trailing behind her who looked just as tired as Jake. He was familiar, too. Maybe even more familiar than the others. And as soon as you saw the soft, toothy grin he gave you, the memories flooded back to you.

It was Josh. How could you have forgotten him and your time together?

When the room emptied, your eyes found Jake again and your hand found his as he fumbled to keep his emotions in check.

“I can’t feel you,” he shook his head almost frantically. “I can’t feel anything.”

“How long have I been gone?”

“Four months.”

You inhaled a deep breath at the time you had missed. Of course, time didn't exist wherever you had been and four months had passed as slowly as a lifetime for you. Maybe for Jake too.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t let you stay dead. I couldn’t live without you.”

You rested your hand on his cheek and he leaned into the touch to savor it. He even seemed to lose himself in it. It made you feel all the more guilty knowing that something he now needed so desperately would never bring you the same comfort again.

“I just hope you don’t come to regret it,” you answered softly.

His eyes dropped open again to look at you, confused. “Why would-? I would never regret it, y/n, never,” he insisted.

But you dropped your hand, settling back with another sigh at your lips and letting your eyes quickly dart around at the beings left in the room that he obviously couldn’t see.

“I’m not what I was, Jake. I hear them. They're crying out. There are lost souls all around us. Some of them even want to take me but they know I'm not theirs anymore.”

You watched as his eyes followed the trail yours had made, desperately trying to see what it was you could and looking scared that he might. But of course, they saw nothing but the empty room before him.

“I’ll protect you,” he answered quickly as he turned back to you. “I'll help you drown them out.”

He looked equal parts desperate and hopeful, frantic and optimistic. So much dissonance on one beautiful face. So much contradiction for one lonely man. But it was your stoicism that seemed to decimate him most efficiently, your even, calm demeanor even as you said things he didn't want to hear, things he didn’t understand but that hurt him regardless. Even just this way, he could tell you were different. Not so much as a single smile had even graced your lips in the time you'd woken gasping and hurting and desperate for the dead you had left behind. It all threatened to make the tears fall harder from his eyes.

“I can’t feel you,” he whispered through the sea of pain that raged on in his body, pain that was visible even to you. “You have…you have to tell me how you feel."

"I don't know how I feel," you answered flatly as your eyelids drooped and your body sank lower.

He took his own face in his hands to rub at his temples and along the bridge of his nose, inhaling deeply to steady himself. And as he did, you watched him carefully. You watched his hands work over his own skin and thought of the many times he had touched you with purpose.

It was your fault, you suddenly remembered. Your refusal to bind to him had put you both in danger. And for four months he was left alone to cope with the loss, no ounce of his gifts to untangle him from the mess of his own emotions. You weren’t certain you belonged here anymore but you knew you didn’t want him to make his home in grief. Actually, you couldn’t bear to see it.

“I died for you,” you whispered, prompting him to raise his head again so as not to miss even a single word you might speak.

He shook his head quickly, back and forth for a long moment. “It was never supposed to happen that way. It should have been me.”

Of course, it was always supposed to happen that way. But it was hard for mere immortal things so plagued by the illusion of control to understand such things. It was an illusion, the things you had deemed meant to happen, just like your tie, a force that now felt weak and strangled in comparison to how you'd remembered it feeling just before you died.

You had died for Jake, yes, but it was another who had killed you. You knew this. Could almost remember it, too.

All you were left with in the way of memories were the hands, soft and gentle, that had taken your face between them. They had taken you away from it all. They had brought you peace. They weren't here now but they hadn't followed you to where you had gone either.

Hands. An ocean. Deep and dark and all-encompassing. A boy drifting out in front of you…

“Sam was there.” You remembered him in an instant. And suddenly, you remembered how badly your heart throbbed over his absence.

“Do you remember it?” Jake asked, bringing you back to him with his voice.

Now that you had remembered it, it was impossible to expel from your mind.

“I was in the ocean, under the water,” you recalled aloud. “And he was there. It was peaceful.”

Sam was the one you had longed for in the end. You remembered it now.

Jake seemed to wince at the mention of his brother but he said nothing. But even in his silence, you felt a familiar pang of guilt that your vampire form had lived with for months. And you remembered the circle you'd been caught in. An entanglement, someone had once called it.

“I don't…” you trailed off, unable to word the way you felt coming back into your body.

You felt off. Actually, you felt entirely wrong. You weren't supposed to be here. You were supposed to be back on that beach with your parents, lying peacefully under the sun. You weren't supposed to be alive or half-alive or half-dead or whatever it was you were now. And there was an anger that rang familiar in your body, too, but this one felt much more dangerous, the fire not yet lit inside of you to feed it properly, the way it desired and demanded to be. But you felt it. That was the cacophony of emotions you had thought you'd left behind you for good. And now, once more, they plagued you, just like those spirits and demons less than thrilled at your second-or third-opportunity to fuck things up.

You didn't know how to live with it.

“Don't what?” Jake questioned, his brows hunkering down as he braced himself for whatever tragic words you were about to speak.

“I…I don't remember how to be alive.”

It seemed almost a relief to him when you said it and he couldn't help but laugh. And that smile; it suited him much better than the pain. You remembered wanting to protect it if you could.

“I’ll remind you,” he promised with another squeeze to your hand.

You gave him a smile back but in your mind, you already knew the truth. He wasn't the one you needed.

Taglist: @gvfcinema @jakekiszkasbuttsweat @hippievanfleet @crossczeched48 @cassiesgreta @sunfl0wer-power @abby-gvf @joshkiszkasfoot @joshskittytickler @lightsofthe-living-gvf @i-choose-the-road @am-bam @alwaysdaydreamingoffiction @themoreyou-love @bumblebeewrites @coolmedown @sacredthesin @jonch-gvf @justdamnpeachy @fallenstar1708 @vanfleeter @laurengvf8 @allybtj @watching-over-hypegirl @hr33gvf @kaitburb @threadofstars @jennasometimesreads @samiiijones @jakekiszkasmommy @lallisonl @therobynsworld-blog @misshunnybee @sparrowofthedawnsworld @demonrat444 @malany-gvf @myownparadise96 @capturethechaos @st4rdust-ch0rds @montenegroisr @sacredjake @notthedroidz @sinarainbows @kissingthegoat @eraofstardustchords @cherryflo @blacksoul-27 @lyndz2names @earthgrlsreasy @gvfmarge @carlyfleet @thetroublegetssoloud71 @withlovegvf @suzi107 @gracev0609 @objectsinspvce @kissakiszka @amorlizette @stardustcatcher @notsostrangerthing @brokebellsgvf @sweet1squash @imleavingyoufornewyork @lipstickitty @mavvanfleet

[eldritch-spouse]

I have this really corny but oddly cute idea of Daddy Dorem with a mortician s/o, like someone who’s become familiar and comfortable with the whole concept of death and sees it often- but still isn’t sure about what really happens after 👀

[Oh, that's kinda cute.]

Dorem is drawn to the dying, freshly deceased and long dead naturally. It makes sense that he would sometimes, when bored, visit gravesites, cemeteries, thombs, crypts, cremation locations, and especially mortuaries. (Sometimes hospitals, which is a bit creepy, but then, wraiths and all sorts of undead tend to hover there as well.)

It'd be extremely funny if you were just doing a late night shift, alone as you usually are, and venture into one of the halls, maybe leading to the body storage, and just find Dorem casually evaluating the dead.

Naturally, you're in for a massive meltdown or two, but Dorem is wholly unconcerned with your shenanigans, ignoring you entirely aside from a quizzical, tired side-glance that reads "I did not bring enough smokes to deal with this shit.". No, he's a lot more concerned with collecting the stubborn souls that seem reluctant to leave their husks. For some reason, there's a large concentration of them near where you work, it bothers him. Instinctually, if Dorem had to describe it, it's like a persistent notification that keeps pinging him every ten minutes.

Your relationship with the god of Limbo is a bizarre one. Neither of you acknowledged each other much at the start of this. Part of you probably didn't want to believe he was there, especially when it seemed as if your coworkers never saw him. You began to believe that maybe you were having psychological issues which only manifested at your workplace. But life had to go on regardless, so you merely stared at Dorem from afar whenever you spotted him, eventually coming to understand that the strange, dark being wanted nothing to do with you. He didn't desecrate bodies or steal anything, but he did release some type of energy from these corpses, something that had you ever intrigued. This being was connected to the stages between death and rebirth, you were sure of it.

And it was that realization that had you standing closer to him each passing night. Sometimes Dorem would cast more side-glances at you, other times he's physically tug you aside by your clothes so he could access a body. The brief glimpses of eye contact you had with him felt like entire unspoken conversations in their own regard.

You found him smoking sometimes, face torn, which was as ridiculous as it was almost... Understandable. He looks morose all the time, for some reason. Maybe because he's always around the dead? You doubt it's very cheerful.

Everything started to change when, one day, you offered him a cigarette.

The tall, gaunt entity observed you in silence for several anxiety-inducing moments before, finally, taking it from your small hands. It lit up with a burst of greenish-blue flame from his chest, and he put it to his teeth. " Thanks. " He had said, voice shockingly hoarse, deep, and you replied politely.

It felt like a step in the right direction. So you felt brave enough to try to converse with him the following nights, taking breaks in between your work, to watch his. Dorem wasn't very talkative, giving curt responses, or condescendingly implying you're too much of a numbskull to be worrying about certain concepts. He's firm in his belief that you don't need to understand the afterlife.

Outwardly, it appeared as if Dorem was very ambivalent to your presence, but you started to note that he would sometimes stop by even when there were no "remnants" for him to collect, walking around the mortuary while occasionally coming back to you and your "pointless questions". He seemed to seek you out, looking mildly aggravated when you showed up late to work and chiding you to go home past a certain hour. He was warming up to you, you could tell. Although the large, terrifying undead would roll his eye-lights and call you naïve when you subtly jabbed at him liking a little mortal.

At some point, the two of you would just spend your nights talking. As much of a depressed grump as Dorem could be, he also had a very morbid sense of humor, and enjoyed hearing some corny jokes. The first time you heard him laugh was surprising enough to have you staring at him almost slack-jawed. He coughed awkwardly, almost as if he didn't know how to be happy and comfortable anymore.

You knew it was dangerous to touch him, he had told you so himself at one point. But you felt compelled to grab his hand, and speak without words, tell him how much you appreciated making his acquaintance with a gentle hold of his freakishly bony and spidery hand.

Dorem was fixated on the image of your entwined extremities for a long pause.

One time, you wake in the middle of a dead sleep, greeted to the sight of Dorem seated by your side of the bed, staring intently at your figure. Before you could utter a single word, he rasped in the silence.

" Your soul is the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed. "

[gamequoteshowdown]

Thank you everyone for making this happen! Now, without further ado, the match-ups for Round 1!!!

Round 1

"I've been waiting for this!" - Akihiko Sanada, Persona 3 / "You're just a corpse who doesn't know he's dead" - Valter, Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones

"Are you going to be our goddess of victory… or our angel of death? Doesn't sound too bad to bet my life on that." - Keiji Shinogi, Your Turn To Die: Death Game by Majority / "Don't fuck with a witch!" - Bayonetta, Bayonetta

"Teammates!? Friends!? To hell with that! Why am I inferior to you!? I was extremely particular about my life, my grades, my public image! So someone would want me around! I am an ace detective! A celebrity! But you… You're just some criminal trash living in an attic!? So how!? How does someone like you have things I don't!? How can such a worthless piece of trash be more special than me!?" - Goro Akechi, Persona 5 / "I was just gunna ask you to sell a gun to this child." - Starlo, Undertale Yellow

"I want you to live." - Charlotte Wiltshire, Hello Charlotte Series / "Your hair… sunset colored. I like it." - Queequeg, Limbus Company

"The hope to end pointless conflict… The hope to tell your daughter how much you care… It is our mission as apothecaries to ensure that everyone lives long enough for their hopes to become reality. Even if it costs us our own lives." - Castti Florenz, Octopath Traveler II / "Game is clear when 2 zombies hold hands!!" - "How to Play" Narrator, Loving Deads: The House of the Dead EX

"Thanks to you, I am saddled with unnecessary… feelings" - Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "I am so fucking normal right now" - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

“SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN” - Harry du Bois (in the form as a potential mural painting), Disco Elysium / "You pull out your cellphone and access your old Tumblr. You have ten, but you specifically access the Garfield one." - Narrator, Monster Prom

"… Nice meeting you again, you FUCKING WHALE!" - Ishmael, Limbus Company / "My guess is no one's ever loved you before" - Woody, Kingdom Hearts 3

"Take care, [player]. I was lucky to have known you. Though the parting hurts... the rest is in your hands!" - Grovyle, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky / "Far out, man." - Netzach, Limbus Company

"I'll be back once I eliminate that devil called poverty from the world!" - Partitio Yellowil, Octopath Traveler II / "Elder gods from the whole cosmos have awoken to taste your cookies." - Narrator, Cookie Clicker

"Hello! This is the part where I kill you!" - Wheatley, Portal 2 / "Now we come to the question : Do I kill you? Do I tear you apart to my heart's delight? The choices of the beautiful are unbearable. How's a girl to choose?" - Alice Angel, Bendy and the Ink Machine

"I am Ferdinand von Aegir" - Ferdinand von Aegir, Fire Emblem: Three Houses / "Her metabolic processes are of interest only to historians." - Miles Edgeworth, Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

"It ain't a matter of guys or chicks... I'm just scared shitless of being rejected" - Kanji Tatsumi, Persona 4 / "...also Stanley is addicted to drugs and hookers" - Narrator, The Stanley Parable

“You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” - Happy Mask Salesman, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask / "I have no idea what to do with my life, but that's okay! Because I'm still working hard! Even if it's on nothing at all!" - Papyrus, Undertale

"Despite everything, its still you." - Narrator/Chara/Frisk???, Undertale / "In this world, it's kill or be killed." - Flowey, Undertale

“Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves. Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves…” - Voices of the Paranoid, Slay the Princess / "In the quiet glade, across old bark. In the ancient glade, it's always dark." - Gabbro, Outer Wilds

"You take away all their sins, and people aren't people anymore!" - Rokurou Rangetsu, Tales of Berseria / "Do you even get how it feels to have nightmares about doing tango with raw chickens? Eh?" - Heathcliff, Limbus Company

"Life is worth living, even if it hurts you, even if you hurt in it." - Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid / "I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle... and wonder if we'll ever get the chance to kill him." - 2B, Nier: Automata

“Oh? Is that how it is? Yeah, okay, I like you too. Neat! Still going to kill you, but now we can both enjoy a mutual romantic subtext to the murder.” - The Razor, Slay the Princess / "Now it’s Reyn Time!" - Reyn, Xenoblade Chronicles

"You lost the coin toss. We both did." - Catherine Chun, SOMA / "I like to drink blood. . . and smoke the weed!" - Dracula, Space Funeral

"Pick a god and pray!" - Frederick, Fire Emblem: Awakening / "Can you believe it? Dragons! In your own homeland! What are you going to do?" - Florentia Candidius, Elder Scrolls Online

""Did you get the Broom Closet Ending?! The Broom Closet Ending was my favourite!" ...I hope your friends find this concerning." - Narrator, The Stanley Parable / "It’s dangerous to go alone, take this!" - Old Man, Legend of Zelda

“Close your eyes for a sec, will you Chigasaki?” “You mean physically? Or to the criminal acts I’m pretty sure you’re about to commit?” “Both.” - Chikage Utsuki & Itaru Chigasaki, A3! Act! Addict! Actors! / "You are all about to perish, do as you please. I'm sorry." - Meta Knight, Kirby Super Star

"Boy" - Kratos, God of War / "Take care of yourself, kid, cause someone really cares about you." - Sans, Undertale

"Almost Christmas means it wasn't Christmas!" - Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "Dios mío!” (Draw a cross.) “A LIBERAL!" - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

"That's it. I'm not paying one cent of my taxes!" - Ema Skye, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / ""Trust your partner"... And I do. I can't forgive you, but I trust you." - Neku Sakuraba, The World Ends With You/Subarashiki Kono Sekai

"Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." - Ralof, Skyrim / *clap ... clap ... clap ... * "Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing, so at least we have that" - GLaDOS, Portal 2

"hallOO. chikkEN. OKs?" - BOb, Slime Rancher / "Pretty good plan. You could say it was the greatest—" - Charles Calvin, The Henry Stickmin Collection

"Blood comes in four types: A, B, O, and AB. However! No blood test can determine whether a murder was committed… in cold blood!" - Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "You ain't my partner anymore, man. You're my friend! So trus' that, yo!" - Beat (Daisukenojo "Beat" Bito), The World Ends With You/Subarashiki Kono Sekai

"I always come back." - William Afton, FNaF Pizzeria Simulator / "So -- as you can see, I'm a *pretty okay* detective -- and an absolutely GIANT COMMUNIST." - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

"Ears have a nice mouth feel, very chewy!" - Briar, League of Legends / "This is like taking candy from a baby, which is fine by me." - Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005)

"It's a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming... On days like this, kids like you... Should be burning in hell." - Sans, Undertale / "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?" - Steban, the Student Communist, Disco Elysium

“We are a path in the woods. We have no beginning, and we have no end, but something cold and unnatural sits watching us from just beyond our edge.” - The Wild, Slay the Princess / "Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled Trainers should try to win with the Pokémon they love best." - Karen (Elite Four), Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver

[docholligay]

The best thing about this episode is the way it plays out the unique pain of grieving someone you do not love. Or worse maybe even, someone you did love, once but they disappointed you so intensely that all you can feel is rage and despair.

Bojack actually doesn't have to be giving this eulogy at all. That's not a requirement. There's no rule that says you have to have any kind of funeral at all.

But he does. And he keeps going on, even after he says that he has nothing more to say about his mother. Because he does. He has so much more to say, and there is no other place in his life where he will ever just be allowed to talk about his mother and the way he felt about her, outside of the therapy that he is absolutely not going to go to.

Complicated grief is an interesting thing, and for my money it's harder than "normal" grief (if grief is ever really normal) and that's why this is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever, is I'm not sure I've ever seen it dealt with where the emotions are so much more than just sorrow. Sorrow isn't easy, but it is simple.

But, what Bojack goes into, is anger, and disappointment.

It starts with him continuing to joke, with telling his mom to knock once if she's proud of him, and him saying how nice it is to be in a room with his mother and just be able to talk without her telling him to shut up. It's this knife tip, just working its way out of Bojack's mouth, and the jokes keep coming, but they are less funny and more this weaponized humor.

Then even that breaks down, and he starts to realize what the problem was, what the problem has always been. Even while he's realizing that he is perpetuating this same set of problems, he's thinking about the grand gesture. And how Tv convinced him that someday, he would see the one thing that let him know his parents loved him.

But it's the consistency. I love the way here, he basically yells at the coffin.

To love someone who has consistently disappointed you, to be joined with them, and the rage that comes out of that, it's so real. And Bojack can't even look at his parents and say, 'You tried" because they didn't. They didn't try even one day in their lives. Not with him. But there are so many people in our lives we allow to disappoint us over and over again, and when they die, or leave your life completely, you have this realization, that, they were never ever what you needed. You convinced yourself that maybe someday they would be, but they were never going to be, maybe they even couldn't, and then YOU feel like the fucking idiot. For wanting it. For thinking that it could happen. And then we're all Bojack here, yelling at a dead body, and it's worse than pointless, and that is part of the complication of this grief, is, not only is it not going to get any better, but you can't even offload it back onto that person. You have to swallow your role and their role in it all, forever.

And then we come back to that "Knock once." asking her if she loved him and wanted him to know that he made her life a little brighter. He knows she won't knock, he knows she can't respond. It's still a joke but it's a joke he's playing on himself.

This anger, that she was never going to be the mother he needed, comes around at the end in some of the best stuff, and this is the kind of stuff that gets it so right that it causes me physical pain.

The worst part, of someone dying, that you have a difficult relationship with, is that it will never get better. Someone disappoints you, and they disappoint you more, but then someday, they die, and they can never ever get better. They can never turn it around and they can never make it right. "My mother is dead, and everything is worse now, because now I know I will never have a mother who looks at me from across a room and says, “BoJack Horseman, I see you." WHile someone is alive, they could always get better. At one point in my life, I was a selfish, mean-spirited person who spent my days doing whatever I wanted and my nights drunk, and doing whatever I wanted. I didn't do anything that would put me out. I got better, because I lived long enough to pull my head out of my ass.

But when someone doesn't do that. When you wait for them to have some epiphany, and hold out their hand, and do better, and then suddenly, they can't, and, everything is going to be stuck, the way it is. It is the death of possibility that makes this sort of complicated grief so painful. Someone who was wonderful dies, you miss what they were, but someone difficult dies, you miss who they could have been, and that's so impossible to describe to someone that I had never seen it well done, before this episode.

[chloe-caulfield94]

The Last Temptation of Max Caulfield

Max’s nightmare in Episode 5 (by that I mean the sequence of events beginning with Max losing consciousness at the beach and ending with Max’s confrontation with herself in the Two Whales Diner) is in my opinion one of the most thematically important parts of the game.

The nightmare presents a warped version of reality, where everything is backwards, opposite to the truth.

In Mr Jefferson’s classroom, when Max is presented with a set of dialogue choices, she emphatically says she would never say any of those things.

In the hallway, Kate is resentful towards Max for saving her, even though in reality she was grateful.

In the labyrinth, even characters who have been nothing but friendly to Max, like Warren and Samuel, are hunting her down.

In the bathroom, Max has to enter a code reflected in the mirror – a clever bit of visual storytelling, signifying that everything in the nightmare is backwards.

The entire nightmare is designed to prime Max towards sacrificing Chloe.

The nightmare version of Kate scorns Max for using her power to save her, in an effort to convince Max that sitting idly by when a friend is being murdered is the right thing to do. In the real world, Max made a difference. She saved a life. In the nightmare, she is told she did the wrong thing by helping and she changed nothing.

The nightmare version of David says “it’s pretty ironic he ended up being right about everything”, suggesting that Max and her power were irrelevant to solving the mystery of the Dark Room. While David’s help was instrumental in Max’s escape from the Dark Room, David only got there by following the clues found and pieced together by Max. He even expressed respect for Max’s detective skills. In real life, Max used her power to solve the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance and Kate’s abduction. In the nightmare, she is told it was all for naught.

In the warped version of the Two Whales Diner, the townspeople are accusing Max of murder, pleading for their lives. Even when it makes no sense. Why is Nathan, who is already dead at this point, pleading for his life? Why is Joyce pleading with Max to sacrifice Chloe? Would the real Joyce want to survive at the cost of her daughter’s life? Even more puzzlingly, she says that Max is going to take her away from her family. But her family IS Chloe.

Max’s nightmarish reflection is the personification of all her fears and doubts. She's trying to make her doubt everything she’s done and everything she feels. She’s trying to convince her she chose wrong at each turn. That Max is not good enough for people to like her for who she is. That there’s no way Chloe would want to be her friend if she didn’t have some ulterior motive.

Everything in the nightmare is trying to guilt-trip, bully and strong-arm Max into sacrificing Chloe. No part of the nightmare is designed to sway Max towards sacrificing the town. Even the nightmare version of Chloe is working against the real Chloe, mocking and insulting Max. The real Chloe called Max the “smartest, most talented person she has ever met”, a hero, her best friend. She said Max was kind and caring and that nobody could ask for a better friend. She said Max made her feel like she had a reason to stay in Arcadia Bay. In real life, Chloe admires Max. In the nightmare, she is contemptuous towards her.

The nightmare represents the darkest, most repressed, guilt-driven part of Max’s mind. The part of her mind that always tells her she’s not good enough, she’s a loser, everything she does is pointless, nobody will ever genuinely like her, all the people around her are just using her.

It’s also the part of her mind, so battered with the vile things she experienced during the week, that dreamt up Mr Jefferson talking about digging up Rachel’s corpse to engage in necrophilia. It’s not the most rational part of Max’s mind, to say the least.

If Max chooses to sacrifice Chloe, she capitulates before the darkest, most irrational part of her mind. The part that is usually subdued, but reared its ugly head when Max was at her most vulnerable. She admits that all the apparitions wearing her face and the faces of the people she knows were right. Everything she fought for was pointless. She chose wrong every time. So she might as well take it all back. Her fears and doubts will always defeat her. Just like they convinced her to tear up a photograph that would've won the contest, they now convinced her to reject a relationship that could’ve blossomed into something beautiful, no matter if romantic or platonic.

If sacrificing Chloe is, as some players would argue, the obviously more moral (or at least less evil) choice, why does Max need to be tempted, bullied and guilt-tripped into choosing it? Since when does one have to be tempted to do the right thing?

If sacrificing Arcadia Bay is such an evil and selfish choice, why is the darkest part of Max’s mind hell-bent on convincing her not to do it? Shouldn’t it be other way around?

In what story is following what you were told to do in a terrifying, angry nightmare the right thing to do?

In what story a hero confronted with the dark side of their own mind should capitulate to it instead of triumphing over it?

In contrast to the warped vision of the world in Max’s nightmare, her memories of Chloe, which she goes through before waking up at the lighthouse, are pure. Unedited. Just the way they happened. There’s no anger, resentment and guilt when she goes through the memories of Chloe.

It's a memory of Chloe that stops the nightmare. It was Chloe’s touch that pulled Max out of a dark vision she had at the end of Episode 1. When Max crosses the nightmare version of the junkyard, the only safe haven is a portion of Chloe's hideout.

In my mind, Max’s nightmare represents a last challenge for her to overcome. She is being tempted to commit the gravest of all sins. To reject love (once again, doesn’t matter if romantic or platonic; even if Max has a low romance score with Chloe, she writes in her diary that Chloe is like family to her and that she is about to find out if what’s between them is friendship or love).

Max is being tempted to choose fear over love, doubt over hope, inaction over heroism. To take back everything she has fought so hard for.

At that moment, Chloe has no advocate, save for the memories Max has of her. She even absolves Max of killing her, accepting that it would save some greater purpose.

Hardly a fair fight. On one side all the pent-up anger, guilt, fear and doubt, which spawned a terrifying nightmare. On the other – just memories.

Given that the entire nightmare sequence is designed to guilt-trip the player into sacrificing Chloe, that there’s no equivalent sequence designed to pull the player the other way and that Chloe herself okays her own murder, I’m in awe that 47% of LiS players were able to see past the bullshit. Past the dehumanizing view on morality that reduces lives to numbers, to resources that can be spent to achieve goals.

Max’s nightmare is her last temptation. Something terrifying and malicious, be it a portion of her own mind or some external entity, is tempting her to commit the ultimate sin – to reject love.

In one timeline, Max overcomes this temptation. She withstands the barrage of anger, fear, doubt and guilt unleashed upon her.

In another, she is defeated by a demon wearing her face.

Now tell me, which ending is the good one?

The one in which the hero comes face to face with the sum of their fears and doubts but overcomes it?

Or the one in which the hero comes face to face with the worst version of themselves but instead of rejecting it does its bidding?

[asexuwales]

i dont know who i am

what is my identity

i like lots of things

i also dont like alot of things and i know what they all are

i appreciate some things but sometimes they dont really hit the same when i actively think about them

like shadows and such

they seem so pointless out of context

idek who im trying to be

well

im trying to be someone with a sense of self

but as a nihilist it doesnt work out too much

people say im not a nihilist because i have a job i want to do and hobbies

nihilists dont just sit around doing nothing we do get bored

but how we would love to

there isnt a point to anything

maybe were big thinkers who see too much outside of the big picture

whats the point in spending so much time earning money when it was just a system set up because we accidentally discovered fire

if you dont comply to the government in anyway the only way is jail

maybe jail is a nihilists endgame

i wouldnt mind being in jail

but other parts of me are relieved that ive finally found somewhere to belong

my insides clash i guess

growing up without a stable base or stable reliable people in my life leads me to want to find a home

but my personality wants to just give up because life is so fucking boring anyways

so why dont i give up its supposed to be the easy way out

but it really isnt

the paperwork

the possesions

the relationships

having to change my stable base again

japan has become the longest stable place ive ever had

which is crazy to think about

the longest ive ever stayed in one place is like 2 years

the dragon was 5 years but i changed house and people like every 2 years

even before i started boarding we didnt stay in a house longer than 2 years

but why do i desire a stable place to stay

was it really that awful

because i didnt notice it was awful

it was just life

idk how it would have affected me

this stupid sense of self affects every part of my life and my work

the problem i have with literally everything stems back to who am i

i really dont know who i am

its messing me up

i dont know how to find out who i am when i already know what i like and what i dont like

what am i missing

i really feel like im missing something

its not as simple as what i like and what i dont like

theres something else

that everyone else seems to have no trouble understanding

i really need help with that

but i dont know how to work around to that because everyone always stops at what i like and what i dont like

what other parts are there to me as a person

what creates a personality

INTP

im introverted i get my energy from being alone

im intuitive i activley search for new things and enjoying changing my opinion and evolving

im a thinker i make decisions logically and analyse things before i feel them

im a perciever im more random and spontaneous

but that doesnt tell me anything i dont already know

if i enjoy learning things why am i a nihilist

who do i think of myself as a nihilist if i constantly want reasons and answers

WHAT THE FUCK AM I MISSING

when i talk about my likes i dont actually like them

but when i see them i like them but i think about how i dont like them when talking about them

that doesnt include my interests

specifically naruto ive never been bored talking about naruto

what music do i like

all music music is better than no music no matter what it is

what movies do i like

dead poets society

which is crazy but its a movie about optimism

i know i dont like romance

unless i do

then i do like romance

a very specific lack of fluff but not toxic kind of romance

i wear tshirts and baggy trousers

i dont wear skinny trousers because theyre uncomfy to sit in

that's probably because they dont fir properly

but i dont have the money for properly fitting skinny trousers

they gotta have a stretch

i lie about alot of things

i paint myself as not a lier

but i really am a chronic lier

lying gives me a sense of security i think

i can control what others perceive me as

but i dont want others perceiving me

do i want control

i know people find me annoying but thats been so oversaturated in my life that i really dgaf anymore

everyone finds me annoying and theres nothing i can do about that

i like the dark

idk how to talk about things deeply

im so surface level

so why do i do therapy

i feel like i have nothing deep to talk about

because im so surface level

so why am i like this

i wish other poeple would try to understand me as much as i understand them

if im surface level why do people not understand me

maybe my worst fear is that im making all this shit to be way bigger than it actually is and that im just a normal person with some sort of victim complex

just sick and tired of life i just wanna lay down and never wake up again

i wont be losing anything when i die

[pinkmarbella2050]

ETN Ramble: Detective Edition

OK, ladies and gentleman! Welcome to my ETN Ramble. This might turn into a series depending on how unhinged I set, but we're just gonna go with it for now.

Today, I'm gonna be rambling about what the hell I think happened to MatPat following the events of Season 3. And it is NOT pretty!

Before we get started, I just wanna say that this idea is partially inspired by @lazarus-harp and their analysis on the Season 3 survivors, especially Mat and Nikita, as well as their takes on the SAE. They're really cool, I love 'em a ton, go check them out!

So, without further ado, let's go!

Let's put this bluntly, first of all; he is NOT OK. Y'know that one meme that's like 'bitches be like "this is my comfort character" and then choose a character that hasn't had a day of comfort in their lives.'? Yeah, this is basically Mat. XD

I feel like, after Everlock, he was just a mess and didn't wanna get close to people in case Ro and Safiya were looking down on him and thinking that he was replacing them, so outside of his Theory work - the one thing he still felt he could trust because its logical and straightforward and nothing like the unpredictability and drama of Everlock - he avoided everyone outside of those he had to work with for Game and Film Theory.

No slander to Steph - I love her, she's amazing, she's an icon, a legend, the moment, ALL OF IT - but I have a feeling that they kinda drifted apart (they didn't get divorced since Steph was still holding out for him and they still loved each other when he first came back) because Mat didn't know what to do. Like, did he act like who he was before he died, after? Does he act like he never died? How does he process this?

Essentially, their relationship broke down because Mat is having a whole-ass identity crisis, as well as a conflict about his next steps.

A conflict that later continues once he joins the SAE for, as I'm dubbing it, Operation Pandora (AKA the code name for Season 4's rescue mission - partly because I am convinced they only did this mission to get Pandora's Box and used Joey as a scapegoat). That happens, Ro and Joey don't come back, we all know this.

Now here's where I think Mat would get REALLY bad. Nikita leaves the SAE after Operation Pandora because, not only has she lost Manny, but Bretman now doesn't like her because she nearly killed him, basically, leaving Mat with Ryu and Jael and everyone else.

Now, Mat and Nikita didn't have the best relationship, we all know this, but I feel like Mat really admired Nikita in some way. Why? Because she had something he didn't; the ability to not get attached. The strength to fight against all odds. Strength, period - which I think would be a major thing he'd look out for, especially considering the way he died. So when Nikita leaves the SAE, wanting to move on from everything, he feels like he's lost everyone from Everlock. As such, he pushes everyone away even further - even those from Game and Film Theory - and devotes himself entirely to the cause of bringing everyone from Everlock back to life.

This... is basically fucking pointless. Nobody (besides Colleen) could ever come back again. Ro's permanently dead and everyone else's souls got freed. Mat knows this, but still fights the good fight, a fight enabled by Jael (maybe not Ryu because I think he's still kinda human) due to her not seeing people as people, a teaching that runs through the SAE; don't get attached to anyone because anyone can die.

Because of all this, I have a good feeling of how Mat would handle the end of the series, assuming the series is going to end with the destruction of the Cursed God:

Obviously, the SAE would disband since the war is over, so why the hell do they have a reason to still work together? Mat would campaign for this not to happen since he knows that only their resources and tomes or whatever are the keys to bringing everyone from Everlock back, but Ryu would have to sit him down and explain that that's not how any of this works.

In the aftermath of the SAE, Mat pushes everyone away and, just as he did during the fight (even if I didn't mention this), he finds everything his group was in and religiously consumes it, to the point that its all he consumes, even when he's meant to be consuming other media for his channel.

When it comes to the idea of group therapy, I do agree with the fan theory I've seen in some spaces that the Season 3 survivors would not get along with any of the other survivors. I'll potentially get into why Nikita wouldn't be easy to get along with in a different ramble, but I have a feeling that Eva, Oli, Andrea and Tyler are willing to admit the flaws of the people in their group (i.e: Matt giving up, Justine not really defending herself, Jesse's libido, Alex's conflict between the group and Lauren, etc) and are also willing to try and move on. Mat... cannot understand this. He assumes they're trying to replace their group and, considering his own experiences with feeling like he's replacing people, he sees this as unforgivable. He also doesn't understand how they can see them as anything other than brave martyrs who died before their time (off topic, but I swear, Mat reminds me so much of Mikami from Death Note because I'm pretty sure Mat would get just as obsessed with religion and God and martyrdom and servitude or whatever as Mikami did with Light, but ANYWAY-). I just have a feeling that Mat might just kill himself. I mean, nobody understands what he went through like he does and he's been shown that there's no way of getting anyone from Everlock back, so... yeah.

He might as well as join the people who watched him die and brought him back to life in death, right?

WELL! That was crazy, but I hope that made a semblance of sense.

Thanks for reading my carnage and I'll see you next time! Bye!

Your Author, Marbella. <3

[beevean]

reverse unpopular opinion meme challenge mode: netflixvania

Bro. 😂

Alright, I ain't no coward, I can do that :P

I like Trevor's character arc in S1. It's short and self-contained, but organic, and with good symbolism of him ditching his thorn cape and revealing the Belmont crest once he shows his great leader skills. He's stereotypical, but sympathetic and compelling, with some of the best lines in the show: "And it's not the dying that frightens us. It's never having stood up and fought for you. I am Trevor Belmont, of the House of Belmont, and dying has never frightened me."

I honestly believe N!Hector in S2 is an interesting take on Hector pre-betrayal, and not as stupid as everyone paints him, both in-universe and in the fandom. Most of his traits reflect how he was written in the mangas, I like his villainy without malice, and furthermore I am genuinely fascinated by his cavalier relationship with death, showcased by how he blithely resurrects dead animals to force them to be his pets. He and N!Trevor are the only characters I actually cared about.

Okay I also like the captain that lols and lmaos at N!Isaac's childish misanthropy and imparts words of wisdom. He's cool without trying too hard.

I like the designs of most of the vampires, especially Raman and most of the Styria Council (big buff Striga is just my type :P). I also like Lenore's "sad winter princess" theme, even though it wasn't a relevant part of her character - I can see how Katie Silva took inspiration from Kojima's way of drawing cute women.

Dracula in the first episode delivered what I consider the summation of his whole character: "Kill everything you see. Kill them all. And once Targoviste has been made into a graveyard for my love, go forth into the country. Go now. Go to all the cities of Wallachia: Arges! Severin! Gresit! Chilia! Enisara! Go now and kill. Kill for my love! Kill for the only true love I ever knew. Kill for the endless lifetime of hate before me." bro this is Dracula to a T, I love it! They understood the assignment! ... I think I should stop here.

Speaking of which, Graham McTavish didn't need to go so hard, yet he did. Bro carried the whole thing. I am positive he's 90% the reason his fans go all "he did nothing wrong", because he just impregnates his voice with poignant emotion at every word.

In a vacuum, Dracula's death is brilliant. Not only because once again, McTavish ate, but something about the cruel monster getting brought down by his very human love for his son, reminiscing of his old life as a father, and suddenly wondering when it all went wrong... yeah. This scene is fondly remembered for understandable reasons.

In a vacuum, Lenore's death is brilliant. I see the subtext of her realizing she's nothing more than a disgusting creature bound to become insane, and she'd rather accept death than live an unnatural, pointless existence - plus, the immortal vampire chooses death while the mortal human who received nothing but pain and misery in his life chooses to live. And man, the concept of a vampire refusing to see the sun in their last moments, because they'd rather look at the only person they care in the world! It's great actually! And I'll stop here :P

Bloody Tears sounds cool. It was the wrong choice for what was supposed to be the climax of Dracula's Curse, but it still works.

[stevetonyweekly]

SteveTony Weekly - August 13

 I’m late today! But I have a nice little list for you. Check out some of these fantastic stories and be sure to leave comment and kudos for the authors you enjoy! 

~*~ 

Comedy of Illusions by ladyshadowdrake 

Thinking that he's been caught out, Tony confesses that he's Iron Man - at least that's what he thinks he's doing. Steve hears something very different. Date night, sexy-fun times, and a jumble of errors as Tony tries to fix his mistake results, all compounded by a mysterious enemy who's been hacking into SI servers.

Falling For You (Hook, Line, and Sinker) by FestiveFerret 

After being thawed, Steve's adrift in the 21st century. There's nothing for him here, just the endless cycle of pre-packaged food, pointless training exercises, and long hours at the gym. But when he takes on a new project, it leads him to a new friend - one who might open up all kinds of new doors, new feelings, new experiences. Or might just break his heart.

The art of longing by itsallAvengers

Steve's used to missing his shot. To being too late, too scared, and losing everything. But he really did think that this time, with Tony, something could work.

Then Tony meets Mark. He's cool and charming, he's a scientist and he's perfect for a man like Tony Stark.

And suddenly Steve...

Well. Steve just doesn't have a place anymore

who could ever leave me (but who could stay?) by frostfall

When Tony Stark's not trying to keep his company from falling apart, he's running heists with the Avengers, a crew of con artists who retrieve illegally-acquired artifacts for their wealthy clients.

Steve Rogers is Tony's crewmate and best friend who has joined him on every heist Tony has been on. This current one is no different.

Too bad Tony had to muck everything up by sleeping with him three months beforehand.

Redame by magicasen

When he finally spits into the trash, he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at. Had he managed to swallow a piece of paper without realizing? It’s wet and disgusting, but curiosity gets the better of him as he picks it up gingerly between his fingers. It’s a flower petal, he realizes abruptly, rubbing it carefully as it rolls up and finally crumples between his fingers.

Like losing half the world wasn't enough, Steve's body also begins to rebel against his love for Tony.

out of nowhere you came by starvels (dinosaur) 

The short story is, Tony comes back from a mission.

The long story is, Tony doesn’t come back from a mission and Steve struggles to figure out which of them he's trying to piece back together, in the aftermath.

Only Paintings in the Building by BladeoftheNebula, ironycap, Neverever

His life would be a lot easier if he could just stick to painting other things. Landscapes for example. Landscapes were nice.

But then again landscapes didn’t have that glint in their eye, or that body that had been built from hard engineering and years of trying to do good. They didn’t have that inherent charm and good looks that won them Sexiest Man of the Year four times.

By comparison, landscapes were a joke.

Steve causes himself a whole heap of trouble when he starts to paint pictures of Tony.

Resurrection, Reconstruction & Redemption by Elspethdixon, Seanchai

Doom brings Steve back from the dead. Hijinks ensue, some of which might vaugely be considered plot.

It Had To Be You (Wonderful You) by tinystark616

It Had To Be You (Wonderful You) by tinystark616

Limbo by ArcadeGhostAdventurer

In all reality, Tony could go and buy himself a new house. He could buy himself ten houses. Any house in the world. Yet, he wanted the one with a run-down lab and 34 cases of “work accidents”.

Build it himself? Oh, he could. He would.

Count Your Blessings by emmie796

If there was one thing Natasha Stark and Steve Rogers were trying to do, it was to get pregnant and finally have a child after being married for a few years.

When that happens, let's say that they better count their blessings.

Major Donor by FestiveFerret 

There's a guy at this party that Tony doesn't know, and he knows everyone.

Lessons on how to be Worthwhile

The one where Steve thinks Tony is amazing, and Tony thinks Steve is amazing, but Tony doesn't think Tony is amazing.

Or, Tony has issues with self worth, and Steve wants to fix that.

Got You Under My Skin by BlossomsintheMist

“I’d be happy to show you a good time,” Tony said, smiling a little obscurely, Steve thought, as if to himself, but still with that warm, knowing look, affectionate and oddly fond, “any time you want.”

Steve Rogers goes to Tony Stark's birthday party. Things progress from there, with a lot of flirtiness leading to propositions, and propositions leading to, well, what comes next, and Steve isn't even sure what he wants after that.

soft strange ways by meidui 

Steve and Tony are only gone for five seconds, but when they reappear on the quantum portal in a swirling pinprick of light, their hair is a bit longer, their clothes are rumpled, they’re gripping onto each other’s hands so hard their knuckles are white, and both of them, for the first time in as long as anyone has known them, look like they might be truly, wholly, blindingly happy.

but saving what we love by meidui

Tony remembers every nosedive Steve has taken since he’s known him and he gets flooded with fear after the fact, realising how lucky he is that Steve is still alive. Tony can swoop in and pick Steve out of the air when he freefalls, but sometimes there is no line of fire, no bullet showers, nobody trying to kill Steve except himself and Tony has no idea how to save him from that. He doesn’t know if it’s possible to.

-

Saving Captain America on the field is Iron Man's job. Saving Steve Rogers from himself is not so much Tony's job, but he does it anyway.

only the good die young by meidui

Tony thought he could save Steve. He really did.

hit the lotto by meidui

“I’m a little tired of playing for money,” Tony says, sweeping his chips to one side of the table. He takes off his sunglasses, tinted wine-red, and nods at the other end of the room. “I wanna play for him.”

[typeapollo]

Nihility's Edge Chapter 1

My first shot at a fanficesque type of writing, let's see how it works out

___

The rain poured constantly. There was an endless torrent of it pouring from the gray clouds overcasting the sky. He could feel the water permeate his very body and soul, soaking it completely. It left stains all over him, black marks, ones he could never erase. But he felt nothing from it. Neither the damp, the weight or the stains bothered him anymore. It didn’t mean anything.

As the rain fell, it would leave behind large puddles of water on the ground. The puddles themselves were strange, if one cared to look. They weren’t clear, and you couldn’t see their depths. They were as black as ink, almost reminiscent of the void itself. If you stared long enough into them, it would feel as if your soul was being dragged out and taken into their dark and murky depths. It was dangerous. Those puddles eventually drained out into the gutters of the streets, where it would take your soul into the abyss.

Besides the rain and himself, there was very little that moved on the planet. There was nothing that could. Everything was dead. The world itself had become gray and lifeless.  The sky itself was gray beyond the clouds, lit only by a black sun. The plants had all withered away and died. The trees were empty and broken, standing as wizened husks. An echo of what they once were. The same could be said for the grass, which was gray and bleak, almost in an unpalatable color. Stepping on them, the grass would fall apart like it was made of ash. Even the structures of the planet were lifeless. Buildings lay completely in ruins. They stood as broken husks of shattered concrete and rusted steel. Any wood was rotten and in shambles. world was dead, and he wandered around it endlessly, alone in the rain.

Well, not completely alone. There were always the ghosts, and there were plenty of them everywhere. Ghosts were the only word he knew to call them. These ghosts were beings made of shadow, without any form or substance. They were nothing more than echoes of the living. They spent their time living facsimiles of the lives they once had. They walked the streets that he did, interacted with the other ghosts, did things that those alive would do. But it was only ever temporary. They lived their short fleeting facsimiles and then they would fade away back into the darkness.

He was surrounded by these ghosts. They would come up to him every so often and try to speak to him and interact with him. But the words that they tried to voice were meaningless. There was no substance behind them, and he couldn’t understand what they were trying to say. When they touched him, their form broke apart and they recoiled back. After a while, the ghosts would give up and leave. He couldn’t fault them for leaving. He couldn’t understand them, and they couldn’t understand him.

He had tried to reach out to them initially. Ghosts or not, they existed in this world along with him. There had to be some way he could communicate with them. But it was hopeless. Their forms were barely held together, and their voices were meaningless and incoherent. No matter how hard he tried, he could never understand them. If he touched them, they would break apart. They were all so ephemeral. None of them would last.

He didn’t know when this situation all started. It grew harder and harder to remember with each passing day. It wasn’t always like this. This world was like any other. It had life and color in abundance. But slowly, everything had drained from it. It left nothing more than a broken husk of a world. A world devoid of meaning, much like his own self.

He has always struggled with the meaning of his own existence. The universe was so vast, that it was hard to imagine that any individual thing could hold any meaning. Every single little thing was so insignificant in comparison to the bigger picture. No matter what he would do, it would all be pointless. Nothing he could do would be able to change anything.

He had tried to fight against it. The encroaching darkness could be stopped. But in the end, the struggle was pointless. Nothing he did had any effect. The world lost its color, and he could do nothing to stop it. His actions, his words, his very own name meant absolutely nothing.

He had a name, once. He couldn’t remember what it was. He forgot it a long time ago. Or maybe it had only been a short while. He couldn’t recall. Every single day was the same as the other. He couldn’t even recall where he was. Time and space were both meaningless.

Besides, there was no one left to call his name. He was alone in the world. Surrounded by nothing but ashes and ghosts. And it would never end. Life, death, it was all meaningless. He couldn’t die, because what would be the point. It was all pointless. The universe meant nothing. The Nihility consumes all.

As he walked through the streets, he noticed a weight growing around his neck. At first, he ignored it, unbothered by the additional weight. But it grew heavier and heavier as time passed. It grew to the point where it could bother him. It was the only part of him that felt so weighed down, and he felt unbalanced. He decided to see what it was. He reached for his neck and found a necklace. He unclasped it, took it in hand and stared at it. It was curious. This one necklace was the only thing that held some margin of color left in this world. He could tell it was gold, if only slightly. It was muted, but it was still there.

He remembered that he used to own a necklace a long time ago. Or perhaps it was recent. The memories had blended together. But he also remembered that it had some measure of importance to him. He couldn’t remember why though. That answer was missing in his heart. And it didn’t matter regardless. Nothing did. It was heavy, and it was pointless to carry it around. Looking at it one last time out of some meager sense of curiosity, he dropped it into a puddle, and continued walking. The necklace disappeared into the depths of the water.

After walking for what seemed like an eternity, he found himself standing on top of a small, lonely hill with gray grass covering it. He looked around. He seemed to be in what looked like the remnants of an old park. Surrounding him were rotten trees and further beyond were the broken shells of buildings. He was alone now, not even ghosts were near him anymore. Closing his eyes, he realized that he had done enough walking. There was little point to it anymore.

Thinking it was as good of as any to rest, he laid down and looked up at the bleak gray sky. His eyes met that of the black sun. As he stared into it, he found the void staring back at him. The void didn’t speak to him, but he knew what it was saying. It was saying, it’s time to rest. Close your eyes and let the emptiness take hold. He knew that the void was right.

“There’s no point to any of this anymore. I’m tired of wandering. I’m tired of it all. There’s nothing for me in this broken husk of a world. Let’s go to sleep,” as he muttered his thoughts, he began to feel a wave of sleepiness. The void was embracing him, and he felt no desire to fight it.

As he closed his eyes, he felt the world around him turn to black, as both his consciousness and the world faded into nothingness.

___

The manager knocked on the solid blue doors. There was no response. He turned the knob and found that it moved. Taking that as a signal to enter, he opened the door. Inside the room, he found a singular figure, sitting in a blue, gold and white chair that faced outwards to a window. The chair hid their figure from view. The manager closed the door, and strode to the figure, stopping a respectable distance away. The manager then saluted the figure, placing his right hand above his chest.

“Report,” the figure in the chair said.

“We found the source of the anomaly. It was located on the planet Asphodel”, replied the manager.

“Asphodel. If I recall, didn’t the department recently invest a large sum of credits there? One of the others went personally, if I’m remembering that right.”

“Was? What happened to it?”

“The anomaly has disappeared entirely. Along with the planet itself. Asphodel is gone. With it our investments. There’s nothing there but bits of space rock. It’s as if it disappeared into nothingness.” The manager braced himself for the response, which didn’t come.

The figure in the chair sat silently as the contemplated the news.

“An entire planet disappeared, without warning. An event of that magnitude leaves traces. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. No sign of Destruction indicating it was the Legion?”

“No traces of them. Whoever it was, it wasn’t the Legion. But there was something else, hidden amongst the debris. We stumbled upon it by chance, filtering through the random debris”

“What did you find in there?”

“There was this necklace. It’s strange. It shouldn’t have been out there in empty space. But the color. It’s gold, but it’s muted. Almost as if it’s been sapped of saturation.” The manager hesitated, before continuing.

“It also gives you a strange feeling…. Or rather a lack of one. Holding it, it made me feel empty, as if nothing I did would ever have a point.”

“That’s…. interesting. Pass that over to me.” The figure outstretched their hand to within view. The manager passed along the necklace to the hand, who grasped it and took it to within their view. A few seconds passed as the figure observed the necklace.

“This is unmistakable. It’s faint, but it has remnants of the Nihility on it,” the figure finally responded

“How can you tell sir?”

“A trace of the Nihility is something I would never mistake, not ever.” There was a sense of finality in their voice. The manager knew then that he spoke out of turn, and immediately silenced himself.

“Curious. The Nihility does not act on its own. It’s incapable of it. It views all of existence as meaningless, so there’s no chance it would ever act at all, much less cause an entire planet to disappear.”

The blue figure went silent once more as they contemplated the information they had at hand. Knowing that the information could only lead to one conclusion, they started speaking again.

“So, a self-annihilator then. This is going to be troublesome. It seems an emanator of Nihility was born on that world. We can consider that investment is now lost.” The figure sighed.

“An emanator…. Sir is there anything that we can do against something of that magnitude?” As the question left the manager’s mouth, the figure immediately began to respond.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that. You may leave. Keep everything you’ve heard or seen today to yourself.” The manager knew better than to question their words again. He saluted and left the room, content that his role in the events was over.

But the real events of consequence were only just about to unfold. The figure, alone in the room once again, pondered about the road ahead.

“This new emanator will need to be tracked down before another investment is affected. We’ve lost one investment. We can contain the loss to that one alone. I’ll need to take a more proactive approach towards dealing with this situation.”

An emanator will leave traces of the path they travel on as they cross the universe, the figure thought. They made waves whether they wanted to or not, and it was impossible to hide them. Especially so for a newly born one, coming into their own strength. Tracking them down would take time, but sooner or later the ripples would make their way to them.

An emanator of nihility would be dangerous. In the worst-case scenario they would indiscriminately destroy one world after another and they wouldn’t even notice the destruction. They would lose themselves in their own apathy, unable to distinguish reality with their senses. Aventurine got lucky, they thought. He had fought one with a measure of control over their emptiness. That was rare, most self-annihilators lacked that level of control. An intact cornerstone wouldn’t be enough to deal with this new one, let alone the fractured one that Aventurine held at Penacony.

The sooner that they tracked this emanator down the better, the figure thought. The Nihility had a corrupting influence that must be stopped. They had sworn an oath to stop the Nihility and it would be upheld. Oaths were the only thing that mattered in the long run, especially his oath to Diamond.

“The Nihility will not encroach on more worlds. Not again. No more.” They paused.

“Only an emanator can deal with another emanator. Doubtless this will require Diamond’s personal attention in the end. But that doesn’t mean I can’t contain them.”

The figure stood up and walked to the window, coming into full view. It was a young blue haired male, dressed in blue, gold and white, much like the chair they were previously sitting on.  From the window, which was situated at the top of Pier Point, he stared out into the glittering cosmos. Around each of those stars were planets, many of which were within the Interastral Peace Corporation’s sphere of influence. Within sight was the subspace crystalline barrier, the great wall that the Preservation labored to build to preserve all of creation.

He then took out a large stone in their pocket and placed it in his hand. A large sapphire, twinkling as it reflected the starlight. He stared at the cornerstone for a few seconds, collecting themselves. Releasing a bit of the power within it, he sealed the remnants of the Nihility within the necklace. This would protect the rest of the universe from its influence forevermore. He then took that cornerstone in their right hand and placed it over their chest.

Sapphire then closed his eyes and began to pray.

“All… for the Amber Lord.”