#like i imagine its mostly compared to the other gods who are Larger Than Life Big

[bosspigeon]

want 2 talk... about my hades ocs...

[lokiondisneyplus]

A review of “Journey Into Mystery,” the penultimate Loki Season One episode on Disney+, coming up just as soon as I paper cut a giant cloud to death…

Journey Into Mystery was the title of the first Marvel comic to feature either Thor or Loki. It began as an anthology series featuring monsters and aliens, but Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Larry Lieber were so smitten with their adaptation of the characters of Norse myth that the Asgardians gradually took over the whole book, which was renamed after its hammer-wielding hero(*).

(*) The early Journey Into Mystery stories treated Thor’s alter ego, disabled Dr. Donald Blake, as the “real” character, while Thor was just someone Blake could magically transform into, while retaining his memories and personality. It wasn’t even clear whether Asgard itself was meant to exist at first, until Loki turned up on Earth in an early issue, caused trouble, and Blake/Thor somehow knew exactly how to get to Asgard to drop him off. Soon, the lines between Thor and Blake began to blur, and eventually Thor became the real guy, and Blake a fiction invented by Odin to humble his arrogant son. It’s a mark of just how instantly charismatic Loki was that the entire title quickly steered towards him and the other gods.

But once upon a time, anything was possible in Journey Into Mystery, which makes it an apt moniker for an absolutely wonderful episode of Loki where the same holds true. Our title characters are trapped in the Void, a place at the end of time where the TVA’s victims are banished to be devoured by a cloud monster named Alioth. And mostly they are surrounded by the wreckage of many dead timelines. Classic Loki insists that his group’s only goal is survival, and any kind of planning and scheming is doomed to kill the Loki who tries. But this ruined, hopeless world instead feels bursting with imagination and possibility.

There are the many Loki variants we see, with President Loki, among others, joining Classic, Kid, Boastful, and Alligator Loki. There are the metric ton of Easter Eggs just waiting to be screencapped by Marvel obsessives (I discuss a few of them down below), but which still suggest a much larger and weirder MCU even if you don’t immediately scream out “Is that… THROG?!?!?” at the appropriate moment. And all of that stuff is tons of fun, to be sure. But what makes this episode — and, increasingly, this series — feel so special is the way that it explores the untapped potential of Loki himself, in his many, many variations.

This is an episode that owes more than a small stylistic and thematic debt to Lost. It’s not just that Alioth looks and sounds so much like the Smoke Monster(*), that it makes a shared Wizard of Oz reference to “the man behind the curtain” (also the title of one of the very best Lost episodes), or even that the core group of Lokis are hiding in a bunker accessible via a hatch and a ladder that’s filled with recreational equipment (in this case, bowling alley lanes). It’s also that Loki, Sylvie, their counterparts, and Mobius have all been transported to a strange place that has disturbing echoes from their own lives, that operates according to strange new rules they have to learn while fleeing danger, and their presence there allows them to reflect on the many mistakes of their past and consider whether they want to, or can, transcend them.

(*) Yes, Alioth technically predates Smokey by a decade (see the notes below for more), but his look has been tweaked a bit here to seem more like smoke than a cloud, and the sounds he makes when he roars sound a lot like Smokey’s telltale taxi cab meter clicks. Given the other Lost hat tips in the episode, I have to believe Alioth was chosen specifically to evoke Smokey.

Classic Loki is aptly named. He wears the Sixties Jack Kirby costume, and he is a far more powerful magician than either Sylvie or our Loki have allowed themselves to be. He calls our Loki’s knives worthless compared to his sorcery, which feels like the show acknowledging that the movies depowered Loki a fair amount to make him seem cooler. But if Classic Loki can conjure up illusions bigger and more potent than his younger peers, he is a fundamentally weak and defeated man, convinced, like the others, that the only way to win the game into which he was born is not to play. “We cannot change,” he insists. “We’re broken. Every version of ourselves. Forever.” It is not only his sentiment — Kid Loki adds that any Loki who tries to improve inevitably winds up in the Void for their troubles — but it seems to have weighed on him longer and harder than most.

But Classic Loki takes inspiration from Loki and Sylvie to stand and fight rather than turn and run, magicking up a vision of their homeland to distract Alioth at a crucial moment in Sylvie’s plan, and getting eaten for his trouble. He was wrong: Lokis can change. (Though Kid Loki might once again argue that Classic Loki’s death is more evidence that the universe has no interest in any of them doing so.) And both Loki and Sylvie have been changing throughout their time together. Like most Lokis, they seem cursed to a life of loneliness. Sylvie learned as a child that a higher power believed she should not exist, and has spent a lifetime hiding out in places where any friends she might make will soon die in an apocalypse. Our Loki’s past isn’t quite so stark, but the knowledge that his birth father abandoned him, while his adoptive father never much liked him, have left permanent scars that govern a lot of his behavior. The defining element of Classic Loki’s backstory is that he spent a long time alone on a planet, and only got busted by the TVA when he attempted to reconnect with his brother and anyone else he once knew. This is a hard existence, for all of them. And while it does not forgive them their many sins(*), it helps contextualize them, and give them the knowledge to try to be better versions of themselves.

(*) Loki at one point even acknowledges that, for him, it’s probably only been a few days since he led an alien invasion of New York that left many dead, though due to TVA shenanigans, far more time may have passed.

For that matter, Mobius is not the stainless hero he once thought of himself as. While he and Sylvie are tooling around the Void in a pizza delivery car (because of course they are), he admits that he committed a lot of sins by believing that the ends justified the means, and was wrong. He doesn’t know who he is before the TVA stole and factory rebooted him, but he knows that he wants something better for himself and the universe, and takes the stolen TemPad to open up a portal to his own workplace in hopes of tearing down the TVA once and for all. Before he goes, though, he and Loki share a hug that feels a lot more poignant than it should, given that these characters have only spent parts of four episodes of TV together. It’s a testament to Hiddleston, Wilson, Waldron, and company (Tom Kauffman wrote this week’s script) that their friendship felt so alive and important in such a short amount of time.

The same can be said for Loki and Sylvie’s relationship, however we’re choosing to define it. Though they briefly cuddle together under a blanket that Loki conjures, they move no closer to romance than they were already. If anything, Mobius’ accusations of narcissism in last week’s episode seem to have made both of them pull back a bit from where they seemed to be heading back on Lamentis. But the connection between them is real, whatever exactly it is. And their ability to take down Alioth — to tap into the magic that Classic Loki always had, and to fulfill Loki’s belief that “I think we’re stronger than we realize” — by working together is inspiring and joyful. Without all this nuanced and engaging character work, Loki would still be an entertaining ride, but it’s the marriage of wild ideas with the human element that’s made it so great.

Of course, now comes the hard part. Endings have rarely been an MCU strength, give or take something like the climax of Endgame, and the finales of the two previous Disney+ shows were easily their weakest episodes. The strange, glorious, beautiful machine that Waldron and Herron have built doesn’t seem like it’s heading for another generic hero/villain slugfest, but then, neither did WandaVision before we got exactly that. This one feels different so far, though. The command of the story, the characters, and the tone are incredibly strong right now. There is a mystery to be solved about who is in the big castle beyond the Void (another Loki makes the most narrative and thematic sense to me, but we’ll see), and a lot to be resolved about what happens to the TVA and our heroes. And maybe there’s some heavy lifting that has to be done in service to the upcoming Dr. Strange or Ant-Man films.

It’s complicated, but on a show that has handled complexity well. Though even if the finale winds up keeping things simpler, that might work. As Loki notes while discussing his initial plan to take down Alioth, “Just because it’s not complicated doesn’t mean it’s bad.” Though as Kid Loki retorts, “It also doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Please be good, Loki finale. Everything up to this point deserves that.

Some other thoughts:

* Most of this week’s most interesting material happens in the Void. But the scenes back at the TVA clarify a few things. First, Ravonna is not the mastermind of all this, and she was very much suckered in by the Time-Keeper robots. But unlike Mobius or Hunter B-15, she’s so conditioned to the mission that even knowing it’s a lie hasn’t really swayed her from her mission. She has Miss Minutes (who herself is much craftier this week) looking into files about the creation of the TVA, but for the most part comes across as someone very happy with a status quo where she gets to be special and pass judgment on the rest of the multiverse.

* Alioth first appeared in 1993’s Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective, a miniseries (written by Mobius inspiration Mark Gruenwald, and with some extremely kewl Nineties art full of shoulder pads, studded collars, and the like) involving Ravonna, Kang, and the off-brand versions of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor (aka U.S. Agent, War Machine, and Thunderstrike, the latter of whom has yet to appear in the MCU). It’s a sequel to a Nineties crossover event called Citizen Kang. And no, I still don’t buy that Kang will be the one pulling the strings here, if only because it’s really bad storytelling for the big bad of the season to have never appeared or even been mentioned prior to the finale.

* Rather than try to identify every Easter egg visible in the Void’s terrain, I’ll instead highlight three of the most interesting. Right before the Lokis arrive at the hatch, we see a helicopter with Thanos’ name on it. This is a hat tip to an infamous — and often memed — out-of-continuity story where Thanos flies this chopper while trying to steal the Cosmic Cube (aka the Tesseract) from Hellcat. (A little kid gets his hands on it instead and, of course, uses the Cube to conjure up free ice cream.) James Gunn has been agitating for years for the Thanos Copter to be in the MCU. He finally got his wish.

* The other funny one: When the camera pans down the tunnel into Kid Loki’s headquarters, we see Mjolnir buried in the ground, and right below it is a jar containing a very annoyed frog in a Thor costume. This is either Thor himself — whom Loki cursed into amphibianhood in a memorable Walt Simonson storyline — or another character named Simon Walterston (note the backwards tribute to Walt) who later assumed the tiny mantle.

* Also, in one scene you can spot Yellowjacket’s helmet littering the landscape. This might support the theory that the TVA, the Void, etc., all exist in the Quantum Realm, since that’s where the MCU version of Yellowjacket probably went when his suit shorted out and he was crushed to subatomic size. Or it might be more trolling of the fanbase from the company that had WandaVision fans convinced that Mephisto, the X-Men, and/or Reed Richards would be appearing by the season finale.

* Honestly, I would have watched an entire episode that was just Loki, Mobius, and the others arguing about whether Alligator Loki was actually a Loki, or just a gator who ended up with the crown, presumably after eating a real Loki. The suggestion that the gator might be lying — and that this actually supports, rather than undermines, the case for him being a Loki — was just delightful. And hey, if Throg exists in the MCU now, why not Alligator Loki?

* Finally, the MCU films in general are not exactly known for their visual flair, though a few directors like Taika Waititi and Ryan Coogler have been able to craft distinctive images within the franchise’s usual template. Loki, though, is so often wonderful to look at, and particularly when our heroes are stuck in strange environments like Lamentis or the Void. Director Kate Herron and the VFX team work very well together to create dynamic and weird imagery like Sylvie running from Alioth, or the chaotic Loki battle in the bowling alley. Between this show and WandaVision, it appears the Disney+ corner of the MCU has a bit more room to expand its palette. (Falcon and the Winter Soldier, much less so.)

[agent-cupcake]

just curious, what’s your favorite and least favorite character design? my least fav for sure has got to be female byleth for reasons i don’t want to get in to yep ok have a good day 😁

IOops this accidentally became a rant, sorry

Okay so, to preface this all, I’m not a character designer and I’m actually pretty bad at it, but my rule of thumb with really unappealing or fan-service outfits is whether or not it makes sense character-wise and how much it tells the player about the character. For example, I think we can all agree that there’s quite a bit of fan-service elements in Hilda’s design. Boob window. However, it’s not unrealistic to imagine Hilda picking out those clothes for herself. Her costume tells you almost everything you need to know about her character on a visual level. She’s confident, pretty, attention-grabbing, and high maintenance while the gloves and laced girdle give a nod to her Viking-maiden roots.

Taking it to female Byleth, I don’t think that her outfit works on either front. Her design is definitely my least favorite and it’s not helped by the fact that you have to look at her at all times. Whatever. The huge, solid mass of boobs, the buttoned bib, the big eyes, the feather hair, the bellybutton, the ripped tights, the booty shorts. She’s a merc out in life and death situations with an accessible, pale, tacky 2000′s “stab me” stomach cut out and a wedgie. Which could be excusable if, like Hilda, there was reason to believe that that her costume was character choice. But she doesn’t really have much character, and what there is gives the impression of a very stoic, dry, blunt person. I have no idea why they’d have gone that route when the sexual appeal of more “utilitarian” costuming (aka, form fitting armor that at least pretends to be functional) for characters like her is scientifically proven AND would say more about the singular personality trait she possesses. Okay, well, I know why they didn’t do that and I think it’s lame. This dysfunction of “character designer wanted a sexy girl but it’s kinda random and just shoved in the game without any thought” actually reminds me a lot of Xenoblade 2′s leading ladies, Hikari and Pyra. Although considering that their bad designs led to a lot of people hating the game for superficial reasons while accepting female Byleth’s design, I guess I’m just bitter. Jumping to a different comparison, then, look at 2B from Nier Automata. Her design is fine as hell which is kinda hypocritical of me considering that it's explicitly fan-service, but I think it also shows the most damning thing for female Byleth. Her whole look, despite having a dozen different element thrown in, is boring. Maybe it’s the colors (dressing her in all black and white would have been really interesting considering the colors of the three lords are so heavily emphasized as a part of their characters) or maybe it’s just the way the desperate elements come together. But, like I said, I'm not even slightly knowledgeable about character design and I know that despite Three Houses being mostly separate, they had to appeal to a larger aesthetic brand to which I have little experience with. And, ultimately, a lot of people find her cute or sexy which...To each their own, I suppose. I don’t pretend that fan-service doesn’t work on me (2B... Cloud’s arms in the remake... Seph's shirtless Smash skin...) but when it’s this obviously inserted in by the character designers rather than feeling organic in any way AND looks bad I'm just not super interested.

The other worst designs for me would be all four of the Ashen Wolves post timeskip. I don't think it's controversial to say that they didn't try with the clothes, even if I love their designs from the neck up (Yes, even Balthus. He looks like the type of guy that would let you sit on his shoulders at a rock concert so you could see the stage). While there are other designs I think are unappealing, those are for purely aesthetic reasons and so I can't maintain the opinion that they're actively bad or that I even truly dislike them.

As for favorite looks... I actually have a few so sorry you're getting all of them because despite the shit I'm talking, I actually really really love the character designs in Three Houses. 

Ferdinand's post timeskip is one of my favorite designs, if not my favorite. The hair, the coat, the armor, the spurs, the colors. You know exactly who Ferdinand von Aegir is just by looking at him. He’s wealthy, handsome, confident in his appearance, a hero, a princely type character, his battle form is mounted combat which is traditionally aesthetically reserved for nobility and leaders... I love it. The only reason I cannot say he IS my favorite is because of the three Lords. But before them, my honorable mentions include post timeskip Hilda, Dorothea, Lorenz, Felix, and Hubert. Granted, I could make a case for why I like almost all of the student’s post timeskip looks.

For the Lords, I obviously have to start with colors because, weirdly enough, Persona didn’t invent primary colors but are actually used as shorthand. Blue is the color of honor, loyalty, sincerity, sadness, and depression. Something I’ve always found very interesting is that blue is very rarely found in nature. To me, that’s always made it seem more lonely which, at least in this case, is thematically relevant. People call Dimitri boring pre timeskip and while I won’t defend his hairstyle (okay, actually, I probably would because he tucks it behind his ears and idk why but that’s one of the cutest things ever) I really like how unassuming he is. Bland. He’s supposed to be the plain shortbread cookie to caramel deLite Claude and strawberry meringue Edelgard. It is not in his character to draw attention to himself or stand out. To me, he kinda looks like an old Barbie prince, like he should have been named Dominic. Also I love the blue eyes/blonde hair thing and his more angular features. It really helps to sell him as the fakeout chivalrous prince type. Post timeskip, Dimitri's black armor is amazing. I love the fact that it’s a lot more intricate up-close with the different little shell-like pieces and the fact that his boots are furry. I love the big cape and the black and white fur around his shoulders. It’s really cool how they used his costume to change the shape of his in-game model to match the bodily proportions of the character art. It’s easier to see when you change his costume into the DLC ones, but the fur and cape build up his shoulders and chest look more broad while keeping that tiny little waist. The choice to give Dimitri an eyepatch is probably my favorite thing about this design. It’s genuinely inspired. Such a simple detail yet it tells the player everything they need to know about adult Dimitri when they see him post timeskip, in one frame the player can begin to understand the extent of his loss over the past five years. The subtle shadow under his eye in the first few Azure Moon chapters and the messy long-ish hair really help to sell the feral prince aesthetic as well, as it’s from those small cues the player gets that he’s exhausted (in more ways than one) and doesn’t maintain himself. None of these things are intentional choices by Dimtiri, they’re the result of what his character has been through.

Yellow is an intense, energetic color. Mostly, people think of it as being warm and inviting, the color of the sun and positivity. That intensity can be overwhelming, though, too visually demanding when compared to its primary counterparts. Don’t stare at the sun too long. Buuuut, it’s okay to stare at Claude. Claude not wanting to wear tight pants in either of his costumes is not only a mood, it is iconic. Pre timeskip, the softer lines of his silhouette makes him look kinda slouchy, kinda lazy. Like he’s not too concerned with appearances. But those adorably messy curls, the little braid, the clearly tended eyebrows, and earring make it clear that he DOES care about appearances and is very aware of his allure. And that’s before he even starts winking. It is honestly so in character that as many people picked him first on the basis of being thirsty, that feels like an intentionally Claude thing even if it was inserted by the designers. The contrast of his complexion with his seagreen eyes is gorgeous and instantly adds a kind of mystery and intrigue to him considering the setting... but it’s sf funny that nobody looked at bronze god Claude among a sea of white faces and thought something was up. Post timeskip, they used the same trick like they did with Dimitri to change Claude’s in-game model to match his canon appearance. The way they designed his uniform makes him not look as twink-ish, like he’s actually muscular and imposing and has the strength he’d need to shoot a war bow with a 120lbs draw weight. Also like Dimitri, you can instantly tell what Claude’s been up to. Like, he was very pretty pre timeskip but when he shows up in the Goddess Tower after those five years in all that gold, he demands your attention. Like a gentleman general with the excessive aesthetic ideals of the Alliance and details to imply his heritage. The quilted pants are amazing from both an aesthetic and practical standpoint. He’s a mounted unit riding a creature with scales, of course he’d want something on his legs for protection. And the chinstrap. I love that so much, it definitely makes him look more adult. He’s got such a cute soft baby face, it’s fun imagining him experimenting with different styles during the five years to get the most desired physical reaction to him as a leader. 

Frenchfries, meet forehead. No, actually, Edelgard’s design is really fantastic. Claude and Dimitri both have realistically colored eyes and hair and then there’s Edelgard. Dimitri shrugs off attention physically and Claude shirks it with a wink but Edelgard commands the players attention from the very start. Although I’m sure there’s a lot of things to associate with white hair and purple eyes, my first thought was Daenerys from Game of Thrones. Otherworldly beautiful by with an edge. Red, of course, is The power color. Strong emotions, love and hate. Red is also associated strongly with blood, which is very important to Edelgard’s plot. Granted, I think the red and black association is even more powerful than JUST red and red is the cheapest play to make in regards to displaying villainy (I mean, there are some pretty universally recognized associations with red and black and it led to people making some unfair comparisons between Edelgard and a famous dictator) but I think it was effective and well used and I genuinely enjoy its use in her case. Anyway, if I had a major complaint about her design it would be the weird ashy color of her hair whereas Lysithea’s hair is pure white. Which doesn’t even matter with the AMAZING hair horns. Ram horns can actually symbolize quite a few things, but their association with power and strength is pretty universal I think. They’re also used in demonic imagery. I love that THIS was her alternative to a crown. Edelgard views herself as a force of war and power before she thinks of herself as royalty. She also mentions that she isn’t super vain, but she loves to do her hair, so the hair being the most elaborate part of her look is entirely in-character. Edelgard’s ensemble is, like Claude, very militaristic. I love that they kept her in a dress that embraces femininity without showing skin as that wouldn’t really suit her Also, again, Edelgard demands your attention. She’s dressed all in bright bright red waving around a giant axe. She is a symbol as much as she is a combatant, someone to follow. I didn’t really mention their secondary lord costumes, but a girl in sexy armor is literally everything and I love that they had the balls to put their main sexy waifu girl in full body armor.

Okay I’m sorry I realize this was excessive and probably didn’t need explaining and I’m not sure I even articulated my thoughts properly but anyway I love their designs so here is the positivity I’ll put into the world.

[jrwiyuri]

THAT SOUNDS SO COOL OMG

I mean everything you may wanna tell someone I'm interested in listening, the concept is amazing and seeing characters interact with the universe here sounds even more awesome

cool way of connecting different stories and characters :]

Ahhh thank you!!! I plan to properly create a list of different mini adventures they do, each one getting progressively less “haha fun wacky adventuring!” and more “we’ve gotten into something much bigger than we can handle” type shit. I don’t have eveyrthing fully fleshed out but I am very happy with it so far.

To continue talking about actual lore and not just gushing here is what’s going on with the government cause oh boy are they extremely morally gray people!

First of all, individual countries and governments are now controlled by a larger, universal government. They ensure that all countries follow basic human right laws. They literally couldn’t care less about certain individual rights of people being taken away tho. Individual governments can deal with all of the specifics of inequality and shit, they just need to make sure they aren’t like.. torturing people for fun or trying to remove water as a basic human right…

The universal government has given out specific things to make life more controlled through all of these astral planes. Some of these rules are:

Government mandated dolls. Dolls are to be an exact replica of you. Microchips that source its basic location must be placed inside the persons living arrangements and contain traces of the persons dna. These dolls are to properly track individuals easier and make it natural for people to be tracked and surveyed. Dolls made for children are free, and dolls made later in life are often cheap and can even be covered by different things (ex: health plans if you undergo some surgery that changes ur body drastically & have signed up for that kind of insurance)

Irregular government checkups! You don’t know when they start, you don’t ever know exactly when they end. Just look less suspicious! I mean, it’s not like people are doing anything illegal or happen to not be from the plane right? Yeah, thought so! (Checkups happen more often in places where astral planes are bigger or where a particularly disastrous incident has happened) ^_^

Bouncing off of the irregular government checkups, the Universal Government has its own police force! Although it’s mostly for dealing with the weird shit that comes out of those astral portals, it can also deal with any normal crimes they see and report it to said countries police force. Not usually it’s job though and honestly it will let most crimes go even if they see you doing it! Not their job after all. Some petty theft or even mass murder doesn’t compare to what some of these people have probably seen. this isn’t a fun job…

Worldwide emergency announcement broadcasting! They can be tuned into specific areas or used for well, the whole world. Luckily that has never needed to happen, and hopefully never fucking will. Even imagining why they could possibly need to convey a message to the entire world is a terrifying thought to most, and so they try hard to avoid it. Being a government worker is not good on ur health 👍

Oh also the government is run by the actual god of the world who runs the entire world government. Failure to comply with its want WILL cause it to erase human kind for the sake of the overall world. So yknow.. normal government president stuff..

Most government workers do not know the true scope of the organization, and almost none know about the true identities of the president. Except that they are seemingly immortal, or is replaced by an identification.. but honestly that’s not even that weird compared to other shit they’ve had to deal with.

[kendrixtermina]

The “Genocidal Edelgard” Shallowtake

I was not going to make a post about this because it’s most likely futile and not going to convince anyone nor do I believe in dinifying the purity police with attention, but maybe it will let some ppl know that they dont have to let themselves be shamed for liking the wrong video game character

Whatever might have been the case in the distant past when Nemesis was around, by the “present day” the Nabateans are not at all some commonly oppressed stereotyped minority - the setting is chock full of characters that fit that bill a lot better like Dedue or Cyril. Characters that are ordinary humans not magic dragons. 

And even that is more founded on general purpose xenophobia than from the specific, relatively new early modernity construct of racism. (the dedue situation probably comes the closest)

Sure, Seteth and Flays have to hide from their old enemy the Agarthans, I see how some might find that relatable etc. but most of the population isn’t aware that they exist at all. They hold high status positions, are worshipped by the local religion and Rhea all but rules the entire continent (and says so herself to Byleth in that speech about how she was just “ruling this wayward country in your stead”, “you” being Sothis) - though that is mostly Rhea’s doing of which Seteth and Flayn are relatively innocent. 

The interviews pretty much confirmed that the Nabateans constituted the local aristocracy and that many humans genuinely saw the Elites as liberators - though there was definitely also an element of ppl going around killing random Nabateans to gain superpowers, not to speak of Nemesis’ very obvious very unambiguous mass murder. Not wanting to be ruled over by foreign powers is understandable, though obviously killing them all down to the last civilian was just flat out evil - its certainly not a simple situation, we can all agtree Nemesis & the Agarthans were evil but there is no clear defined good guy. 

There are historical conflicts you could compare this to, perhaps some conflicts in Africa or the middle eastwhere different groups took turns being the ruling class after the latest war,  but it’s not at all like the modern USA or early modernity colonialism, and forcing every real or, in this case, imagined scenario inherently dependent of fantasy elements, into this one framework from the present or near past isn’t conductive to understanding at all. 

And in the present day, by the time Edelgard is alive, we are talking about three specific people that she has good reason to dislike individually. Not any sort of group at all. 

She calls Rhea a cruel beast because that’s all she’s ever seen Rhea to be. She’s the shadow tyrant who rules her world, who created the crappy world Edelgard grew up in. It’s no different Cubans thiking badly of the castros after suffering through famines - or, no need for such extreme examples really, ppl call their least favorite politicians monsters all the time. 

She’s wrong to assume that Seteth & Flayn are wholly on board with this, but on the other hand, it’s not at all a far-fetched assumption to make: They hold high positions in the church though they ostensimbly just appreared out of nowhere one day. Do you have to be an evil bigot to assume that the brother and right hand man to the tyrannical god-queen is condoning & supporting her actions?

The truth is of course that underneath her pseudo-parental facade Rhea is sort of a scared girl, very lonely, very afraid, and ashamed, in a shallow, childish way, for “breaking the rules” just because they are rules. She says she can’t trust anyone, that she feels lonely & isolated... and while no one can blame her for distrusting humans after the slaughter of her people, but the reason she can’t trust Seteth is that she’s keeping her bad deeds secret from him. He wasn’t there the whole time, he just showed up a few decades earlier. 

She sees herself only as filling out for Sothis and doesn’t quite grasp that she’s in charge, very much a follower personality bent on stasis & regularity. 

Is Edelgard obliged to try & unravel the complex psychology of the tyrant who rules her home to correctly deduce why she would deceive even her own family? By all intents and purposes, Edelgard is the one getting rid of an oppressive government that doesn’t let ordinary humans let a say at all. A government where ppl of others faiths and nationalities are typically oppressed unless they work directly for the church.

It’s like having a disdain for, say, Ivanka Trump. She holds a high position in her father’s administration despite having no obvious qualifications, she appears to be profiting & making bank from her father’s atrocities, she certainly hasn’t done anything to stop him or disavow him the way that, say, her cousin Mary did - if you suffered under Trump’s regime you’d be very justified in assuming that Invanka is probably a bad person.

Flayn only looks young (She might not if we saw her in other clothes). I mean, Kronya could badly impersonate a schoolgirl. At the very least they’ve supported the regime by refusing to question their own side and they show some however benevolent belief that it is their duty to “guide” the people. Leaving her to the Agarthans is certainly questionable, but no more so than doing it with Rhea herself, under the assumption that she’s guilty and that it’s a sacrifice that will prevent larger chaos. The agarthans had their plan long before they created Edelgard as we know her, and she couldn’t stop their plots all on her own. 

You could say that it’s callous, distasteful or a deal breaker - as the death knight is her direct subordinate & she makes a personal appearance in mask, I would argue that she definitely knew & sanctioned the kidnapping - but she’s no more callous towards Flayn than towards anybody else. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re evil, or that they deserve to die.... and Edelgard would agree with me.  She doing all this to prevent death – flipping the lever on the trolley problem so it crushes one person instead of five so to speak. She always gives her enemies the chance to surrender, unwilling allies the chance to leave, and jails enemies whenever leaving them alive wouldn‘t lead to further death… even the ones she has the most personal reason to hate, like the PM.

As servants of the church who have chosed to back her enemies, she’ll certainly kill them if she has to, but not any more than any other enemy. At no point anywhere in the story does she say anything like that they need to die on principle. Nowhere at all. Indeed there is much evidence to the contrary.

The church paints her as being completely against the religion or even wanting to set herself up as a satanic godess cause it‘s good politics & they don‘t get what she‘s doing – to an extent her own credibility & messaging is compromised by her secretive and at times unscrupulous actions, no one said she was perfect. In truth all she wants is to have the church out of politics, you know, what we have in nearly every modern country outside the vatican and saudi arabia.

You can absolutely let Flayn & Seteth go on CF and there is no word, no fuss about it anywhere. No „make sure to kill em all“ which would certainly be there if the narrative wanted to portray Edelgard that way. It requires the mediation of Byleth as someone they would talk to & not immediately assume the worst of, but, they see the church as the embodymet of all that is good & fighting its enemies as their sacred duty so of course it wouldn‘t be possible for just anyone to talk them down. It‘s framed as Flayn letting Byleth go cause they saved her life once, even if we know from behind the screen that she wasn‘t going to survive a fight to the death against the player-controlled faction.

Heck, even when it comes to Rhea, the one most guilty that Edelgard has the most reason to loathe, she‘s ultimately surprisingly gracious. She gives her the option to surrender – and this is not a lie, she discusses this with Byleth in a lecture question, and seriously ponders the possibility. Here Byleth gets a range of options like „stab her in the back“ and „keep the church under imperial control“ but you know which one nets you the support points? „Strip her of her authority so she can‘t interfere in politics“. She wasn‘t gonna mess with the religious folks & their religion at all, just make it so it‘s separate from government. Rhea could even keep being pope, if she could be satisfied without having complete supreme authority (and ripping her precious artifact out of Byleth‘s chest) – even when she puts her down she‘s not 100% without pity, telling her that „Your duty is done“ (the translators mucked this up)

Couldn‘t be any further from „lets kill them all on principle“.

What really annoys me is how ppl go and twist everything Edelgard says out of context to ascribe a motive to her that just isn’t there.

Common examples:

„If you have Flayn or Seteth fight her she‘ll say they need to die because they‘re nabateans“

Actually what she says is this: „You are a child of the godess. You must not have power over the people!“ Not getting to be privileges rulers anymore =/= being opressed. Stay out of politics =/= Diediedie. Also, this is from the VW/SS boss fight, where they have literally come to get her in her own capital.

„Linhard & Leonie don‘t tell her & hubert about Indech, probably cause he expects that she‘ll go & kill him„

What he actually says is: „Lake Teutates is a place that concerns the saints of the Church of Seiros. It may become bothersome should the two of them find out...“

„It may be bothersome“ as in, „we might get in trouble“, for doing the possibly very inadvisable thing of waltzing into what could possibly be an enemy location to satisfy personal curiosity. If it‘s something related to her agenda she might take over and Linny wouldn‘t get to investigate as he pleases – at very most you might construe it as Linny fearing that they‘ll be accused of consorting with the enemy, but „bothersome“ suggest possible annoyance not imminent murder.

The whole scene ends with Linhard telling Byleth to fill her in later. Doesn‘t sound at all like he expects her to go back with a harpoon.

„She said Claude isn‘t fit to be a ruler cause he‘s a foreigner“

What she actually says: „I understand your ideals are not so far removed from my own. But without knowledge of Fodlan‘s history, I cannot entrust its rule to you“

Now without the additional contexts that Claude won‘t get until after the fight, it might easily feel a bit like the former with the raw spots he‘d have from his backstory, but what she means is that he‘s ignorant of the Agarthan threat – which he is. Edelgard is all for making peace with Almyra and sees fostering isolationism & prejudice as one of the many faults of the church.

Once Claude basically kills Edelgard for information, he winds up having to take care of the storm she had been holding back. But to his credit, he DID „finish the job“ and get the info. But he didn‘t have it at that point.

And I don‘t mean any of this in the least bit as a diss of Claude - He is the smartest character, so there would be no plot if he got easy access to the info.  At this point, they both think they can probably do better, and more importantly, both their backstories have made them so that they won‘t let down their guard far enough to cooperate in this scenario.

That‘s also why the outcome in CF is contingent on Byleth‘s choice. - You‘d sort of have to trust that he will also act so as to minimize casualties.

Very disingenious since many players wouldn‘t necessarily trigger these dialogues.

I guess because Adrestia got a vaguely central-european aesthetic (partially; all the countries are hodgepodge mashups and there’s more than enough spanish or ancient roman vibes there) and central europe existed only for those 12 years of tyranny I guess, even though many other places have had similar BS happening, including the US that delights in making craptons of movies about their faraway victory because their governments haven’t added much of value to the planet as of late. -.- 

Faerghus (vaguely french/ russian - not at all places where nothing bad happened ever) has actually annexed some territory from their northern neighbors in the recent past, not to speak of the whole Duscur atrocity - but no one seems to go around laying that at Dimitri’s feet, because it would be nonsensical - he was a child at the time and as an individual he is super against it and champions a policy of reconcilliation if he gets to rule. after all, there wouldn’t be much of a plot if the characters inherited three perfect faultless problem free countries. 

Edelgard, too, is completely against the previous administration under Duke Aegir (which was in charge during the Bridgid war). She deposed him and is plotting to do the same with Arundel once she can politically afford to do so. For all that one can understand why she would chose the other path  (depending on how much she knows about what Edelgard’s doing and why) it makes all the sense in the world for Petra to support her on CF or if not recruited, because again, she got rid of that previous administration. 

[kronecker-delta]

Farscape Nier crossover and ideas

Snippet (from 2017) Farscape/Nier: Automata --- Her room was a mess. Scattered parts of her uniform and other clothes piled along along the sides, kicked there when she came and went. Her personal books disarrayed, off the shelf and toppled over by her bed. She'd been putting off cleaning again and with the recent arrivals none of the operators could be spared to make up for her bad habits. None of that mattered at the moment. White sat in her chair, staring out into the void. A souvenir of her old days in the ground based resistance held in her hands. The framed picture of pair of androids seated on the still smoldering bulk of the ruined machine behemoth a memory of a simpler, happier time. A knock on her door brought her attention away from melancholy remembrance. Before she could compose herself and more sternly tell whoever had interrupted her what she had meant by 'Only bother me if there's an emergency' another knock issued forth. Followed by a voice. "Hey White? You in there?" She froze. She had so desperately hoped that it wouldn't be him. *** "I've never been here before," White said apologetically as their transport ship came down beside the small lunar outpost. A tiny thing, compared to the bunker. Even given the greater volume underground for secured data storage and backup generators. "No problem. First time I've been on the moon," he said, giving her a reassuring smile that didn't quite manage to look entirely honest. His frown returning as they stepped out of the transport, the boots of his pressured suit crunching into the light dusting of lunar sand that had covered part of the landing pad. "Feels like I should say something... 'Great leap for mankind and all that' you know. Hey, is the Apollo site still around?" "It is. If you want we could visit there Commander Crichton." "Just John... or Crichton. Being called Commander all the time feels weird," John Crichton said. "I know I'm the last human but..." "I-I understand," White answered. Keeping her own emotions deeply locked down as they passed into the fortified complex of the moon server. Past the scant few technicians and guards and into a dark room, nearly empty save for a single console located in the center. A black void engulfed the walls, impenetrable shadows, as the terminals and screens had long laid dormant. "So now what?" His voice echoed in the room, which must have been far larger than they had at first thought. Low clicks and whirs came from the bulk of the machine, the long slumbering physical access port awakening. Lights flashed along the walls and beyond them, racks upon racks of computer systems networked together awakening. A great screen before them coming on and displaying a stylized picture of a tree, long dark roots stretching out from its base. OVERSIGHT AND RECORDING SYSTEM VER. 2.01 SLEEPING BEAUTY ONLINE. CONFIRM USER PERMISSIONS NOW. "Commander White, YoRHa access S-Class security," White said. Looking to her side and adding, "As well as a guest." CONFIRM GUEST'S IDENTITY. "John Crichton, Commander in the IASA," John said. "Born... 1969. June 6th. If that helps any." The computer sat in silence for a long moment, not responding, the screen frozen as the loading bar seemed stuck in time. They shared a look of confusion, both android and human wondering if the ancient archive might have crashed and who was going to have to go out and ask the few technicians to help reboot it. Then the room came alight, a dozen more monitors online, the totality of it awake for the first time in forever. HUMAN IDENTITY CONFIRMED BASED ON HISTORICAL RECORDS. YoRHA S-CLASS SECURITY CLEARANCE SUBSTITUTED FOR UNRESTRICTED SYSTEM ACCESS. S-CLASS, SS-CLASS, AND HAMELIN ORGANIZATION FILES NOW UNLOCKED. GREETINGS COMMANDER JOHN CRICHTON. HOW MAY THIS SYSTEM AID YOU TODAY? "What... what's 'SS-Class?' There shouldn't be a level of security above mine." NEGATIVE. THERE ARE TWO. SS-CLASS, CONTAINING SENSITIVE FILES DEEMED TOO DANGEROUS TO BE KNOWN OUTSIDE OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL. AS WELL AS FILES REGARDING THE HAMELIN ORGANIZATION, WHICH WERE TO BE SEALED UNTIL SUCH A TIME AS A HUMAN USER ACCESSED THIS SYSTEM. "We do this so that the future generations will have the opportunity to judge us for our sins." "Who the hell was that?" John asked, shocked by the computer suddenly vocalizing. Producing the sound of some long dead man. Old and ill, his voice straining to make the words clear into the recording. DR. EUGENE ADLER, HAMELIN RESEARCHER IN DEMONIC ELEMENT MANIPULATION EXPERIMENTS. BY HIS RECOMMENDATION AND THE UN SPECIAL SECURITY COUNCIL'S AUTHORITY IT WAS FELT THAT KNOWLEDGE OF THE HAMELIN ORGANIZATION'S INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE DEMONIC ELEMENT AND THE 6-12 INCIDENT COULD NOT BE PUBLICLY REVEALED UNTIL THE CRISIS HAD PASSED. John looked to White, hoping she might be able to explain something, anything of what the computer had just told them. But she looked just as confused as he did. "Ah... Computer?" YES JOHN CRICHTON? "Define 'demonic element' please." DEMONIC ELEMENT: QUANTUM OBSERVATION REACTING PARTICLES BROUGHT OVER BY THE ENTITIES INVOLVED IN THE 6-12 INCIDENT. TWO VARIETIES WERE DETERMINED UPON FURTHER RESEARCH. TYPE I, WHICH CAME FROM THE ENTITY CLASSIFIED 'QUEEN OF THE GROTESQUE' AMONG NUMEROUS OTHER NAMES ACQUIRED FROM OBSERVATION DATA OF LEGION FORCES AND PRE-SUBLIMATION MEMETIC CORRUPTION OF WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME PATIENTS. TYPE I MATERIAL HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THIS UNIVERSE FOR THE LAST EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS FOLLOWING THE COMPLETE PURGING OF IT FROM THE EARTH'S ENVIRONMENT. TYPE II CAME FROM THE OTHER ENTITY, CLASSIFIED AS 'A DRAGON' NO OTHER NAME OR IDENTITY DETERMINED. WHILE HIGHLY REACTIVE AND DANGEROUS IN LARGE DOSES IT WAS FOUND TO BE STABLE IN SMALL AMOUNTS AND TO LACK THE MALEVOLENT EFFECT ON INTELLIGENT LIFE THAT TYPE I MATERIAL EXHIBITED. EVENTUAL CONTROLLED EXPOSURE AND SYNTHESIS EXPERIMENTS LED TO THE CREATION OF FOCUSED MAGIC ENERGY EFFECTS AND SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FIELDS OF NEUROLOGY AND META-COGNITION AS WELL AS NUMEROUS OTHERS. PROJECT GESTALT AND ANDROID CONSCIOUSNESS ARE BOTH LONG TERM SUCCESSES OF THIS RESEARCH. HIGH ENERGY MAGIC WEAPONS WERE ALSO ATTEMPTED BUT LATER SHELVED FOR BEING UNRELIABLE. AS OF THIS DATE THE AMOUNT OF TYPE II MATERIAL PRESENT IN THIS UNIVERSE IS ESTIMATED TO BE 63 METRIC TONS, OVER A HUNDRED FOLD INCREASE IN MASS FROM THAT OF THE ORIGINAL ENTITY BROUGHT ABOUT BY CONTINUAL SYNTHESIS AND ITS NECESSITY IN THE CREATION OF NEW ANDROIDS AND ALL CURRENT GENERATION MAGICAL DEVICES. THE ANDROID WHITE HAS 6 GRAMS OF IT AS PART OF THEIR INTERNAL SYSTEMS, MOSTLY RELEGATED TO META-COGNITIVE PROCESSES. "Wait... wait!" John yelled out, grabbing onto the unused console as he stared at the enormous amount of text that had just been displayed. More and more appearing on other monitors, going into greater detail about all sorts of absurd things. "What do you mean by magic? And dragons? What the hell happened to Earth?" THE 6-12 INCIDENT. PLAYING ARCHIVED DATA NOW... *** Crichton sat on the edge of her bed. Looking down at his hands, fingers intertwined. He hadn't spoken since White had stepped aside and ushered him in. Neither had she. She had wanted to be alone, and had hoped that Crichton would choose to spend some time with his alien friends. Or his semi-human lover... "You know, it's kind of funny," he said at last, a low chuckle that surprised White. He truly did sound amused by the dark comedy of his situation. "What?" "Well, when I first realized you were lying about something... after I got over the whole 'android' deal anyway," Crichton said, looking up from his hands to look into White's eyes. "I was so certain that the deep dark secret you were keeping from me was that you all went Terminator on the humans and than got ashamed about it." White found herself smiling despite it all. "I guess I can imagine why you would think that. Even if we don't all look like Central European bodybuilders from the Old World." His expression collapsed, going from amusement to a shock so profound it looked like a stiff breeze would have knocked him over. White found herself confused and then very worried. Had she said something wrong? Then he started to laugh, slow at first, but building into something that bordered on mania. Rolling onto his back and shaking in the hysterics. "Haha... oh god... you have no idea, no goddamn idea how long I've wanted someone to get one of my dumb references," Crichton sat up looking far happier than he had a moment ago, the levity of their absurd connection dispelling the melancholy cloud that had hung over them since their return from the lunar server. "Like I love those idiots on Moya, but being around aliens on the other side of the galaxy for a few years really makes you long for some normal human conversation." "I... I think I can understand. Somewhat. It must have been very lonely out there." "Lonely, terrifying, insane... beautiful too. Space is crazy like that. Full of contrasts so sharp it's stunning. I-I wanted to bring that back you know? Not just to get home, but to show what I had found out there," he said, pointing to the stars outside White's window. "I guess it's too late for that now." "I'm sorry," White said. Noting the strange look that Crichton was giving her now she hesitated before continuing. "I'm sorry we failed." "Failed? Failed at what? Stopping a magic apocalypse that had already started before the first androids came online? Which reminds me, we're going to need to do something about them later. Those twin models that someone had the bright idea to shoulder with some fucked up version of android collective punishment." Crichton leaned forward, massaging his forehead as he did so. "That's probably only the tip of the bullshit you're dealing with and here I come with a whole new mess of problems. Maybe it would have been better if I had never found Earth." "No! Crichton you-we can fix things. I know we can. Not just your presence here or for getting access to sealed archives in the server. The technology you brought with you. It very well might represent a turning point in the war with the machines." "And what about the Sebaceans... the Peacekeepers? The Scarren Empire? Or hell, even the Nebari Establishment? Better gravity control systems and two hundred year old ship scale energy shields won't stop a fleet if it comes knocking at our door." "We'll do what we always have. Try and protect Earth and mankind's legacy from any aggressor. Whether distant cousins that no longer remember their home-world like the Sebaceans... or these Scarrens you've mentioned so much. We won't- we cannot retreat from this fight. Not now." White clenched her fist tightly, the glove creaking as she set a firm expression on her face. "I promise you Crichton, even if the past is lost, we will make a future worth fighting for." Ideas: I've been thinking over the ideas of a Farscape/Nier crossover some more, coming up with elements, themes, and specific scenes that would be fun to explore and write. These are some of the ideas I've had in no particular order. 1. Androids in relation to the Last Human (Crichton). Crichton is a self-admitted sci-fi geek, not surprising for a second generation astronaut that grew up wanting to explore the stars. He straight up makes comparisons to how he attempts to handle alien encounters to be inspired from watching Star Trek. Given that I think his relation to the androids would develop in a certain direction. Once the initial shock of a) the amount of time passed and b) that these people he thought were human aren't passes, he wouldn't feel comfortable having an intelligent race acting subordinate to him. I can see multiple incidents where some variety of complex philosophical quandary or just plain relationship question from 6O results in him telling them that humans really didn't have a better answer. Long term this would likely take the form of a very serious conversation where he points out that Earth, and what of its culture and history still lives, isn't in just human, whether the dead ones or genetically altered human descended Sebaceans. Or even in any hypothetical offspring that he might have. Basically, 'Mankind' includes them, as they're what's keeping the memory of it all alive. Aside from some bonding scenes between various androids and Crichton as they go over bits of alien tech, one idea I have in particular is that he takes a tour of moon landing sites, including the one his father visited. Effectively the only place he will ever see any lasting evidence of that man in particular. And the reaction of his android guide (White perhaps?) as well as the Apollo 11 plaque cements his decision to change the way the androids view their relation with humans, at least in so much as he can. 2. 2B and 9S (and others perhaps). I think there's a lot of fun to be had in placing the androids into weird situations with the aliens, and even more so if for some reason they have to head off away from Earth for a period of time. Since I can easily see the plan being for them to lie constantly. Lie about being human, lie about the 'Glorious Terran Federation' which is totally a military power that we didn't just make up, lie about what they're capable of, lies upon lies as they try and deceive the Scarrens and the Peacekeepers and keep Earth safe from either side those aggressive powers. In general I think 'Androids pretend to be human to deceive aliens' is a good plot for lots of stories, and could easily be turned into a rather long plot. Since the androids wouldn't want to let Crichton head off to parley with these alien aggressors on his own. And he could really use all the help he can get for whatever crazy ass plot he comes up with next. 3. Aliens would want Android tech. Probably just Scorpius, but others too if they find out more about Earth. I hadn't realized it at the time, but there was a period of the show where the hybrid Scarren-Sebacean was working with Crichton, and that would be the perfect opportunity for him to learn something about the androids and Earth history. And being him, he would look at all this extra-dimensional BS and android super soldiers and see potential weapons. He'd probably be disappointed that the Queen's Maso wasn't around anymore and that Hamelin Organization stopped human testing after Emil, since it would mean he'd be working from scratch if he could just get back into the good graces of the Peacekeepers and do so with enough of the demonic element to set up another research base. Hell, he'd probably try to directly convince Crichton get the androids to agree to serve the Peacekeepers, since that would technically put them back into contact with 'humans' if genetically engineered ones. Arguing that he could get the entire remaining population of Earth a ticket off world (to a nice Peacekeeper controlled colony where the can serve their new military overlords) if destroying the machine lifefroms proved to difficult even with a few starships to blast them from orbit. 4. The Terminals. The central intelligence of the machine lifeforms would likely reconsider its direction of evolution far earlier with a living human to observe, especially one that tries so hard to avoid aggressive resolutions. Even if that doesn't work, Crichton's crew and allies proves that he has managed to connect and form lasting bonds with entirely alien beings over and over. A direct repudiation of what the machine network had thus far found to be the fastest way to accelerate its own growth. Whether this would lead to a quicker conclusion that it needs to escape Earth and find its own destiny, likely expedited by FTL tech it took from the androids once Crichton revealed it to them, or an attempt at some kind of allegiance against the various hostile powers of the greater galaxy is unknown. While I can easily see Pascal and various pacifistic or non-hostile machine lifeforms being taken into account as potential allies the actions of the terminals past and potentially present would form a barrier to attempted cooperation. 5. Allying with the Worm Hole Ancients. The aliens that gave John Crichton knowledge about worm holes in the first place did so because they were running from an unstated catastrophe that had destroyed their home world. They originally decided against direct contact with Earth because it was likely to be divided and hostile. 21st century Earth that doesn't exist outside of Crichton's memories. It would be very interesting to see how they might react to finding out the new status quo. I've got a couple ideas that might be fun with them. One being that their dimension/time traveling tech lead to them accidentally creating their own personal Watcher related incident and the subsequent self-inflicted annihilation of their home world to stop it from spreading to the greater portion of the galaxy. Creating a situation where despite their far greater technological adeptness they find a reason to deeply respect humans/androids for facing down and defeating what they truthfully could not, reclaiming their world instead of burning it and running. (Though I'm iffy on that alteration/crossover expansion as it sort of makes them more like the Stargate's Asgard.)

[ganymedesclock]

Who’s emperor pachyclast in heartfelt?

The Greater Southern Pachyclast is one of many biomechanical life forms found on The Sphere, and they’re a bit more uncommon, dwelling in herds on the slopes of active volcanoes. Very few predators tussle with them because of their fearsome means of self-defense- even if their trunk-projected lava sprays miss, cracking open their thermal-shielded bodies at all exposes you to more heat than you’d know what to do with. As a result, they mostly die of old age, and are consumed by scavengers. For the bold hunter, their flesh can be sampled if allowed to cool, and parts of their body are valuable for heat-resistant materials or folk medicine.

While they were originally synthesized by WORLD as specialized drones for terraforming and managing volcanoes, like almost every specimen on the planet, they’ve had plenty of time to go rogue, and, in the marvelous and unpredictable nature of bioengineering, pick up their oddities. The unchallenged position of the pachyclast and the formerly plentiful food of the southern volcanic tundra now known as the Silence led to some specimens growing to great size.

The Emperor Pachyclast is a ruler not in deed, thought, or contract, but in sheer mass- a truly colossal monster that even dragons have balked before. Unfortunately, this behemoth of behemoths was born into a declining age- and what’s worse, responded to dwindling food by developing a bullying nature to others of its species, dominating and agitating the sundered mountain that is its home- leaving the peak near eruption in a way it hasn’t for thousands of years.

In the course of the story, this pachyderm piece of work causes quite a bit of trouble for Chalice, as she needs to get past its territory to reach the City of the Old Gods, and it’s not exactly interested in quieting the mountain just to let one would-be pilgrim make it through. She’s going to have to make some very scary allies of her own to topple this tyrant.

In a meta sense, as Heartfelt is inspired heavily by metroidvania games, the Emperor Pachyclast can be thought of as the game’s “first boss”, and, fitting of the genre, a sort of gate latch that keeps her in the Silence until she’s able to find a way to conquer it and gain access to the opening in the Wall that it guards. In terms of actual ‘character’ it’s basically just a big nasty animal, not really something that operates with willful malice, but I did think it’d be funny to imagine Chalice having serious questions about why the ostensibly omniscient WORLD would create something that seems so unhelpful and dangerous.

The, less memeworthy, but honest answer is that WORLD’s objective is to maintain a stable ecosystem, in which chaos that will occasionally produce such creatures is highly necessary- and in a world where everything down to the equivalent of a bunny is cloaked naturally in space age hyper-resilient materials, the great and powerful stay ahead of the curve by bringing to bear equally space age weaponry. While it’s very hard to not feel a little spited by the heavens if you’re being hunted down by a giant lava-shooting elephant, practically speaking it’s ridiculous to imagine something with an entire superplanet many times larger than Earth on its mind constantly would be willing or even able to make adjustments to its parameters based on one mortal entity’s comparatively brief perspective.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG174!

- I absolutely ADORED how the sound effects were telling a story by themselves, giving a graduating sense of dread, with variations and quieter moments. With the wind blowing and occasionally howling, getting stronger, almost covering Jon’s voice at some points, it really felt like the sounds were competing with the words to give The Vast’s statement? (And in my mind, it felt like the team of editors competing against Jonny! It was so nice!)

I also loved how the steps of the colossus were adding a bit of pressure and gravitas, both to the statement and to the conversation: the distant low-pitched impact right after Martin’s “Do it.”, asking Jon to smite Simon? It was an easy trick, but it worked SO WELL to highlight the “Oh SHIT” moment! It was more subtle at other points of the arguments, but still reinforcing the feeling, that ideas were violent by themselves while the words were hammered in.

- I reaaaaally liked the tone Jon used in the statement, too, because it was very soft and rhythmic? There wasn’t the edge of cruelty that we had heard in other statements + combined with the fact that the focus wasn’t much on victims-hurting-other-victims-because-forced-by-the-Fear-system this time around, the statement felt more existentialist and overall a bit of a breather, which, ha. Fitting for The Vast, I guess. (Still people suffering, still people in pain, but one of the less upsetting statements this season, for me?)

- A bit surprised that Simon didn’t go for a space-related domain, but this one also made sense given what he had told Martin in season 4:

(MAG151) SIMON: I’ve actually been toying with the idea of trying to do something with the scale of humanity itself; you know, emphasise all that “overpopulation” nonsense, but… honestly, it just… doesn’t ring true for me. We’re all just so tiny and pointless, you see; it’s hard to really get past it. […] Do you know when the last ritual I attempted was? MARTIN: I… I don’t know, that space station? SIMON: Oh goodness no, that’s the future my boy!

Was this domain Ex Altiora made a reality, or it’s “just” that The Vast tends to be a bit less creative – big thing, too big for the human mind to compute, threatening you?

(MAG046, Herbert Knox) “It told the tale of a small, unnamed town high on a clifftop that sees a monstrous creature about to approach. The poem is unclear on whether it is a beast, a demon or a god, as it uses the words interchangeably. It is seen far-off, its head and body lost amongst the clouds. The majority of the story details the villagers’ attempts to prepare to do battle against this creature, but each time they devise a counter-measure, the thing gets closer and is shown to be far larger than previously suspected, rendering their preparation insignificant. At last, when it is almost upon them, its impossible vastness undeniable, the villagers surrendered to despairs, and hurled themselves off the clifftops onto the rocks far below.”

Still laughing a lot that Simon called this one “Junior” (I mean, he was proud of naming his last ritual “The Awful Deep”…).

- It was interesting how both statements dealt with the same situation from different perspectives, and how each related to The Vast? Edward was part of the colossus, Mehreen was watching it approach and threaten to crush her.

Edward was part of the colossus that we could hear since the very beginning (the impact followed by gusts of whistling wind marking the colossus’s footsteps, which were putting a strain on the bodies, including Edward’s, intertwined all through it): he was part of a whole, lost in the whole, in pain and faced with two alternatives (staying there, suffering and submitted to movements he didn’t control, or falling). It was very odd because it felt almost comforting that the other hands brought him back in when he was expelled from the whole since, at that moment, he feared the fall the most (“He is falling, and he is so small, and so afraid he wonders if he will ever hit the ground. He does not want to die smeared over that flat and hateful wasteland far below, and he flails, limbs throwing themselves violently around, trying to catch a hold of something, anything to save himself.”) – it felt like others were… saving him? Helping him? Still leaving him the choice (“Despite his dread, it takes only a moment for him to make his decision: he reaches out with his other arm, and feels it gripped by a dozen hands as, slowly, inexorably, Edward allows himself to be pulled back into the great, suffering colossus.”)? Though in the grand scheme of things, he was still stuck in an unpleasant, excruciating painful situation, but… compared to previous statements, it was still partially on his terms, instead of something that was absolutely inflicted to him with no way out? Amongst the small things that made me go “!”, the “every body” (“Every muscle in every body tenses all at once”): going back to the original meaning of the phrase, with the fact that “everybody” is, at the core of the word, “every body”. I felt like it was working well with the concept of The Vast: the fact that individuals aggregated together form something larger.

For Mehreen’s part: part of the horror, in her case, was that The Vast played on her sense of her responsibility/duty, not only on what would personally happen to her and her only. She was the only one able to take care of her “family” while they had various reactions to it: the daughter (who is helpless), the husband (who is in denial over what’s happening – this one sure hits differently with the current pandemic), and the mother (who is… only “berating” over wrong decisions). But what interests me the most is how she was dealing with memories: we’ve seen in previous statements that people’s memories are a fuzzy thing, twisted and rewritten to further feed the fears. It was obvious with Mehreen’s family (the fear “gave” her people to have to care for, further isolating and crushing her towards the threat), but I find it very interesting that compared to previous domains, she felt… on the verge of awareness about it?

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: “Next to him, Charlie saw Ryan, who he’d known since childhood – though the other details were hazy. Ryan gave him a thumbs-up and an encouraging smile – before his face exploded inwards to a sniper’s bullet, peppering the boat with shards of bone and gore.”

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: “There was never a time before the disease, no matter what the old bastards tell you. It has always been in the village, always festered in the dark corners where nobody could stomach to check, where good neighbours wouldn’t dream to speculate.”

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: “Its pace remaining as it ever was, it does not care for coming pains as you are torn. Doesn’t it know who you are? No… And soon… neither will you. […] You will be someone again, someday. […] “I’m still Hannah!” you try to scream, but are you? No. Perhaps there’s some Veronica as fragments there, or Julian, or Anya, but… no. You feel the last of names and “who” you might have been be torn away and borne towards new bodies. New pages, blank; determined to be people.”

(MAG166) ARCHIVIST: “When had the crushing pressure in his chest become literal? When had the empty promise of the horizon finally vanished completely, replaced by the pitch darkness of this “forever wall of earth”? Sam did not know. Time had no meaning here. […] His existence was static, and eternal. Immutable. “Sleep” was only a memory, because even the prospect of unconsciousness might have made his present state slightly more bearable. Food as well, he knew, must be a thing, for he could feel the hunger, but his imagination failed to picture it. The only smell he knew was the damp, and the dirt.”

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: “How long as she lived here? How long have these cramped, dingy rooms in the back of this sprawling rundown tenement been the place her heart calls home? She cannot recall, but long enough for her to grow into love for it, to cherish every rusted appliance, every crumbling piece of plasterboard, every – flickering – lightbulb. […] Sabina cannot… picture their faces, but knows that should they wake to see the state of the place… their anger would be blistering. […] What floor was her flat on again? Surely, it can’t be this high. […] Limping and desperate, she turns to see her furniture in flames, the bookshelves full of memories, that she can’t quite place [STATIC RISES] but knows are precious to her, curl and float away as ash. The photos on the wall of her family whose faces seem indistinct but she knows that she loves, begin to blacken, as the glass pops out of the frame.”

(MAG174) ARCHIVIST: “When it had first covered her home, bathing the street beyond her window in unexpected shade, she had thought it an eclipse. There wasn’t supposed to be one then, she is… sure of that – although if pressed, she could not have told you what day it is today. Before the shadow fell, she is sure that the sun was shining brightly – although, if pressed, she could not have pictured it. And the humid heat of a lingering summer had left the world sleepy, and unprepared – although, if pressed, she remembers the heat, but not the season. […] Mehreen cannot quite make out their faces as she bundles them into the car, old and shuddering as it coughs into life. Does she remember having a child? A spouse? Does she remember her mother having such a cruel sneer? It doesn’t matter. They are here now, and she has to save them.”

(+ Martin’s predicament in MAG170, when his memories were escaping him and he was mostly able to remember the painful parts only, or Francis’s “friends and families” being only brought in to deepen their pain. If Martin was any indication: it’s really upon remembering who he truly was and the bits of his life that weren’t unpleasant that he managed to free himself from the house’s influence, enough for Jon to find him and, it seems, give his protection again.)

It’s all very dream-logic: the rules are new, you just accept them as is, and you only go “… Wait” as an afterthought. What is interesting regarding Mehreen is that the interrogations felt like she was on the verge of waking up – or was that Jon, as a narrator, who was able to perceive that these bits of information were falsehoods created by the nightmare? Was that distancing just a special flavour in this domain, or something linked to the fact that they’re getting closer to the Panopticon / to The Eye’s domain?

- … Vast-typical, but I’m still !! that there are apparently domains without ground:

(MAG174) ARCHIVIST: I’m not entirely sure what you were expecting, it’s The Vast. The clue is in the name! MARTIN: Yes, alright…! ARCHIVIST: Just be glad that this is one of the domains that actually has ground to walk on.

Let them fly, Jonny!!

(… Though there are probably also Vast domains with only water. Deep, deep water.)

- NOT A SURPRISE but Everything About Simon This Episode Was Beautiful.

(MAG174) MARTIN: Fine! Fine. How about Simon. How close are we to him? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Hum… Close, [STATIC FADES] but he’s able to move a lot faster than we are in this place. MARTIN: Meaning…? ARCHIVIST: Meaning I know where he is, but… if he doesn’t want us to reach him, I don’t know if we’ll have much of a chance. MARTIN: … So… So what, we’re just going to trust him to… [CHUCKLING] show up to his own execut– [SIMON CRASHES ON THE GROUND] MARTIN: [SURPRISED SCREAM] ARCHIVIST: [TINY CHUCKLES] MARTIN: Jesus! ARCHIVIST: Uh… Apparently! [CLEARING AWAY RUBBLE] SIMON: [STRAINED] … Hello…! [BONES CRACKING] [GROAN] Hello. Dreadfully sorry. [SIGH] I only just noticed you were both here! That’s the problem with having such a big place, you know – [INHALE] you can miss things if you’re not careful.

* Simon was probably NYOOOOOM-ing in the sky until then. I’m only surprised that there wasn’t a direct “Enjoy Sky Blue” reference.

* The fact that Simon crash-landed. What an entrance.

* =D And the self-inflicted prophecy has been fulfilled: Jon met Simon Fairchild. (MAG124: “Fairchild seems to travel far and wide for his victims, with no motivation other than… variety. I do not think I ever wish to meet him.”) Though honestly, Jon took his meeting with the old man faaaar better than I would have thought – I was assuming that he would get on Jon’s nerves much more easily.

* Martin’s prophetic words AND Jon’s “Apparently!”: was it to answer Martin’s comment about Simon showing up, or Martin’s scream of “Jesus!”. (Peter called him a “grubby Jesus” behind his back, Jon is allowed to call other avatars the same!)

* Old man popping back bones and dusting off rubble. Simon, ilu.

* I’m still such a fan of Simon’s breathlessness and intonations! You can hear that he’s a Vast avatar from the way he talks and breathes!

* I am laughing so much:

(MAG174) SIMON: Good to see you again, Martin! And you must be the famous Archivist, Herald of the Ceaseless Watcher, Harbinger of the New Age, etcetera. Lovely to meet you at last. ARCHIVIST: [SHORT EXHALE] SIMON: Simon Fairchild, at your service.

Over that “etcetera”. SIMON…………………… (It was so dismissive while, at the same time, HE chose to give Jon honorifics and nobody had asked.)

Really love how he’s still so funny and amiable while being absolutely awful =D Someone is having a great time.

- That someone wasn’t Martin.

(MAG174) SIMON: And how are you, Martin? Still trying to save the world and all that? MARTIN: … Yes. SIMON: Pity. … Well. Armageddon… it’s not for everyone, I suppose. I’m quite enjoying it, of course. Although… Junior over there can be a little bit of a handful. [DISTANT LOW-PITCHED IMPACT, FOLLOWED BY GUSTS OF WIND] MARTIN: [AGGRAVATED INHALE] I might have guessed you’d be happy living in this nightmare. SIMON: I mean… not that it matters but… yes I am! Honestly, I think you could be too if you set your mind to it. But I’m not one to tell you how to live your eternity. MARTIN: … No. You’re not. Because I’m done listening to you! SIMON: I’m sorry? I’m not sure I follow. MARTIN: All those lies you told me… You helped to do this, you turned the world into your… your playground! SIMON: Hum… Not to be a pedant, but if you recall, I was actually doing a favour for Peter. And if Peter had won, none of this would have happened. Also, not to make excuses but they weren’t exactly lies, just… oversimplifications of complicated truths! And guesses. … A lot of guesses. [FOOTSTEPS] … A–almost all guesses really, now I come to think about it. MARTIN: Shut up! I don’t care.

… I would have loved to hear Simon and Elias interact, because “oversimplifications of complicated truths” as a new way to say “lie” is right up Elias’s alley (purposefully misleading, making guesses and presenting them with more certainty than you hold). It’s horrible that, technically, Peter was probably the most transparent avatar of the lot regarding his convictions? He was genuinely fearing The Extinction, he was genuinely hating Gertrude, he was genuinely trying to get Martin to join The Lonely for his own interests.

- Ooooh, how the tables have turned…

(MAG166) HELEN: Oh, hello! [FOOTSTEPS] In a better mood, are we? Feeling more secure now you’ve learned how to kill~? ARCHIVIST: [SHARP INHALE] Something like that. MARTIN: Will you tell me how he did it? ARCHIVIST: Martin… MARTIN: He just keeps going all vague about it! HELEN: Oh, goodness. You see what you’ve done to the poor boy, Jon? He’s coming to me for clear answers. [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS] ARCHIVIST: Shut up! HELEN: It’s very satisfying though, isn’t it? Teasing out vague information; you see why Elias got a kick out of it. ARCHIVIST: Shut up! MARTIN: Jon…! HELEN: You’re right, Martin. He is tetchy…! MARTIN: I didn’t say he was te– HELEN: So! So! An explanation.

(MAG174) SIMON: Goodness! We’re rather tetchy, aren’t we? ARCHIVIST: We’ve… [CHUCKLING] not been having an easy journey. MARTIN: Jon. ARCHIVIST: What – it’s true, we haven’t.

Jon&Simon vs. Martin, just like Helen&Martin vs. Jon (down to the “tetchy”).

- I’ll be laughing forever over Simon fleeing the heck out of the situation and saving his own life in the process:

(MAG174) MARTIN: That’s enough. Jon? ARCHIVIST: Uh… Yes? MARTIN: … Do it. [DISTANT LOW-PITCHED IMPACT, FOLLOWED BY GUSTS OF WIND] ARCHIVIST: Uh… SIMON: “Do” what? MARTIN: … Kill him. ARCHIVIST: Uh… SIMON: Han–hang on. Can he do that? MARTIN: He can, and he’s going to! [FOOTSTEPS] SIMON: Oh! ARCHIVIST: [STAMMERING] Oh, uh… SIMON: Right, just, hum… Seems a bit rude, to be honest! MARTIN: … Jon? ARCHIVIST: J–just give me a moment, I– SIMON: In fact, yes! You know what? I’ll, I’ll probably just be going, then! I–I–I’d prefer to keep existing, if it’s all the same to you, hum…! MARTIN: J–Jon?! ARCHIVIST: I– SIMON: Been lovely chatting to you! Good to see you guys! MARTIN: [STAMMERING] SIMON: Feel free to pop by again when you’re feeling less, uh. Murdery. MARTIN: Jon!! SIMON: Byeeeee! [SIMON DEPARTING / YEETING HIMSELF OUT] [WIND GENTLY HOWLING] [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [FOOSTEP] MARTIN: You let him go. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah…

SIMON. Some have mentioned that Simon was a cartoon character and, yeah. Absolutely. The sudden stammering and amiability while he was behaving like a coward? The fact he really didn’t want to die despite his Grand Talks about the meaningless of one’s existence in The Vastness Of The Universe?

(MAG151) SIMON: It’s all a matter of perspective, you see. My patron has gifted me with… quite frankly, an absurdly long life. An appropriate gift, and one that serves to provide a certain distance from things. Of course, a paltry few centuries is nothing, really, but it’s more than most get. And even in that brief time, I’ve seen all sorts of ebbs and flows to balance off things. […] MARTIN: Assuming The Extinction doesn’t derail everything…! SIMON: Which is why… I’m happy helping Peter. But! If it does: then I’ll either be dead, which will be fine, or… I’ll adjust. […] Life has continued through dozens of apocalypses already. Ice ages; pandemics; calamities; extinctions… The only reason this one feels special is because, well… it’s happening to you. And that’s the sort of solipsism that tends to come with loneliness – in my experience. So. My feeling is that I’ll help out where I can; but ultimately, if this “Armageddon” comes off, then… so be it. Either billions suffer and life goes on; or billions suffer and life doesn’t. In the grand scheme of things, it’s all… much of a muchness.

Slightly hypocritical, uh? When it comes to himself, he’s ~insignificant~ but still ready to cling to his own life as long as he can enjoy things.

- Jon explained his reasons for stopping the Smiting Avatars quest, and they’re very sound arguments… but it’s still interesting that it confirms that the only avatars he killed (Not!Sasha, Jude, Jared) were the ones who marked him, while Jon was more lenient towards the ones who hadn’t (Arthur Nolan, Oliver, Simon, Helen if we assume that Michael marked Jon first, and that Michael!Distortion and Helen!Distortion are different enough). Helen has not been super threatening this season, but she has tried to upset him on purpose, making fun of him, and yet, Jon didn’t really raise the possibility of eradicating her (he only mentioned that it would hurt them both, but mostly Helen, if he were to use her corridors). I’m reassured that he’s not trying to mindlessly kill avatars but it’s still curious…

(And I still wonder how Jon would react in front of Daisy and Melanie, who marked him for the Hunt and Slaughter…)

- I’m still very curious about Helen trying to push so much for murder?

(MAG174) HELEN: I just wanted to add my vote to the disappointed side. MARTIN: Wait, really? HELEN: I was rather looking forward to watching an old man metaphysically explode. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] HELEN: Honestly, I feel a little bit cheated. The others were exceptional fun. ARCHIVIST: … Y–you were watching? HELEN: [CHUCKLING] Of course! As much fun as the new world is, I am not about to miss a real, honest-to-godless demigod murder spree! [LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] MARTIN: [SIGH] You’re really not helping. HELEN: I’m not trying to! ARCHIVIST: Look, it’s none of your business. Either of you. [DISTANT LOW-PITCHED IMPACT, FOLLOWED BY GUSTS OF WIND] MARTIN: Like hell it isn’t! ARCHIVIST: Martin. MARTIN: Don’t “Martin” me! Sure, he looks like a harmless old man, but if– ARCHIVIST: I know, Martin – I know all the things he’s done. HELEN: Fantastic…! So, rip him up! Pop him! Oh, oh, but, hum, just give me a bit of a head-start so I can find a good spot.

* Helen, absolutely proud that she’s “not helping”.

* … Helen, you REALLY sound like you have a death wish.

* Helen had already watched Not!Sasha’s smiting in MAG165 (since she commented about it in the following episode), and now acknowledged that she watched the others. It’s the third time she’s appeared in front of Jon&Martin. For someone who claimed to be enjoying the new world and be exceptionally busy… Helen has been spending a LOT of time looking at Jon&Martin’s journey. Why…? Is it because their conflicted feelings are feeding her? Is it because she’s monitoring them? Is she hiding someone (Annabelle, or Georgie&Melanie) inside of her corridors…? She had contributed to Jon getting his last mark (it’s still a bit unclear to me, but Peter&Martin were discussing about “the door” at the beginning of MAG158: she might have given Peter the tunnels’ map), but we still don’t know much about her intentions apart from “enjoying the chaos” (which… would be enough considering The Distortion). Why is she so encouraging of Jon’s murder spree, in a way that is so transparent…? Is it a remnant of the original Helen Richardson, trying to feel better about her own choices by having Jon succumb to the temptation of monsterhood like she has…?

* It’s… interesting that Jon couldn’t apparently tell that she had been “watching” when he smote the other avatars. I’d have thought he would be able to tell but, apparently, if he’s not focusing, he can’t know that she’s there.

- When it comes to the episode feeling like a “breather”: technically, it wasn’t hard after last week! But it was significantly less tense, and there was progress regarding Jon’s own boundaries and what he wants to do with his powers, and… cute bantering. Jon being a chirpy little SHIT from the start of the discussion segment:

(MAG174) MARTIN: [SIGH] … [BAG JOSTLING] Is it much further? ARCHIVIST: [SMALL CHUCKLE] Yes. MARTIN: Urgh…! ARCHIVIST: I’m not entirely sure what you were expecting, it’s The Vast. The clue is in the name! MARTIN: Yes, alright…! ARCHIVIST: Just be glad that this is one of the domains that actually has ground to walk on. MARTIN: Whatever. [DISTANT LOW-PITCHED IMPACT, FOLLOWED BY GUSTS OF WIND] S–so how far are we from the other side? And–and don’t say time and space don’t work here, that’s a cop-out and you know it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Fine! Three days. MARTIN: Thank you. [SILENCE] … Wait. Wait, what counts as a day? ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLING] What an excellent question! MARTIN: Oh my go–! You can be infuriating sometimes, you know that? ARCHIVIST: [ANGELIC] … Yes!

… No static =D While on two other occasions, Jon used his powers to “know” about things:

(MAG174) MARTIN: Fine! Fine. How about Simon. How close are we to him? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Hum… Close, [STATIC FADES] but he’s able to move a lot faster than we are in this place. […] MARTIN: … You’re removing evil from the world! ARCHIVIST: I, I’m not, though, am I? [STATIC RISES] The tenement fire is still burning; the mortal garden is growing wild; the carousel i– HELEN: Ugh! [STATIC FADES]

So Jon didn’t even try on that first one. I mean, Martin brought it onto himself – how could Jon describe distances without Objective Time And Space except by “far” and “close” (like in MAG167, where Jon confirmed that they could rest a bit since the next domain was still far from them)? Martin is the little kid on the car backseat, uh.

… But also: Martin closed the last episode saying that the kids from The Dark’s domain would “just need to hang on a little longer”, and that the faster they would reach the Panopticon, the faster they could put a stop to this. No wonder he was impatient to reach the end of this one, since he knows now what the kids’ nightmare looked like.

(I’m still REELING over Jon’s “Yes! :)” over knowing that he’s infuriating sometimes. He knows and he’s proud of it and knows that Martin is dating this infuriating prick =D)

- … So, once again: avatars know about Jon’s status and that the apocalypse happened through him.

(MAG164) HELEN: What would I have to gloat about? Much as I am delighted by this brave new world in which we find ourselves, I can take no credit for it. This was all… you!

(MAG165) NOT!SASHA: Well, of course you want to wallow in my shame like your voyeur master!

(MAG166) HELEN: We’re all here, Martin. The Stranger; The Buried; The Desolation; all of us. But The Eye still rules. All this fear is being performed for its benefit. And so, there are now exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: the watcher, and the watched. Subject, and object. Those who are feared, and those who are afraid. And Jon, well… he is part of The Eye; a very important part.

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “This report is being sent to: The Great Eye, that watches all who linger in terror, and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze! And its Archive, which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself. […] Perhaps once it might have horrified me, or given me some sense of pursuing the ultimate release of the world that you have damned.”

(MAG169) JUDE: Fancy seeing you both here. To what, exactly, do I owe the pleasure, the honour, of being graced by the great and powerful Archivist, harbinger of this new world, and his, uh… valet…? […] Just messing around~! Wouldn’t want to keep you from your oh-so-special business, Your Holiness.

(MAG171) JARED: Mm. … So, is there any way this doesn’t end in me dead? I’m guessing that’s on the docket if you’re here. Unless you’re just here to smell the flowers.

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: “THE SPIDER: Oh, Francis… It’s such a shame, but I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to! The man in the audience saw to that!”

(MAG173) CALLUM: … You’re the Eye guy, right? ARCHIVIST: That’s right. CALLUM: So you’re like… real important. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] I suppose I am!

(MAG174) SIMON: Good to see you again, Martin! And you must be the famous Archivist, Herald of the Ceaseless Watcher, Harbinger of the New Age, etcetera. Lovely to meet you at last. ARCHIVIST: [SHORT EXHALE] SIMON: Simon Fairchild, at your service. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: I know who you are. SIMON: [CHUCKLES] Of course you do! I imagine you know pretty much everything by this point. How is it? How does it feel? [SHUFFLING] ARCHIVIST: … Strange. SIMON: Yes! I can imagine. These gifts can feel very disconcerting at times. I’m sure you’ll get used to it eventually. […] We don’t get many visitors these days, and, well. You might be the closest thing the universe has ever had to an important person! ARCHIVIST: Uh… I, hum… SIMON: I mean, obviously you’re still ultimately finite and all that, but [INHALE] altering the very fabric of reality, that’s… [WHISTLE] That’s pretty good going, all things considered. […] HELEN: [CHUCKLING] Of course! As much fun as the new world is, I am not about to miss a real, honest-to-godless demigod murder spree! [LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] […] I honestly thought that actually ending the world would be enough to stop you whining, but no! You’re the most powerful person, in a world where the worst consequences imaginable have already happened! Absolute power, with zero responsibility! What more can you possibly need to just – enjoy – yourself – a tiny – bit!

So, nothing new, but still eternally laughing that Jon was apparently marked as harbinger-of-the-apocalypse and that nobody cares about Jonah.

- I’m squinting at what Simon said regarding Jon’s powers:

(MAG174) SIMON: Well, in that case, thank you for swinging by to my… huge corner of the apocalypse. We don’t get many visitors these days, and, well. You might be the closest thing the universe has ever had to an important person! ARCHIVIST: Uh… I, hum… SIMON: I mean, obviously you’re still ultimately finite and all that, but [INHALE] altering the very fabric of reality, that’s… [WHISTLE] That’s pretty good going, all things considered.

Because it reminds me of the wording used for Hill Top Road?

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “But it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

(MAG146) HELEN: There is… something wrong, with Hill Top Road. You know it as well as I do. Some strange “scar in reality” at the centre of… whatever it is the Spider is spinning.

(And it’s still interesting regarding Jon’s status: if he is the one who “altered the very fabric of reality”, can he alter it back? Can he alter it in another way again? It still feels like if someone can do anything about the new configuration, it will be him…)

- I’m suuuuuuuuuuuuper glad at Martin’s rant and anger towards Simon, because it’s… coming close to talking about his own feelings regarding the apocalypse – the fact that he was misled all through season 4 to believe that The Extinction was the most urgent threat, and the fact that he was used by Jonah to give Jon his last mark with The Lonely, and the fact that… Martin chose to not kill Jonah Magnus’s body, unaware that it was still playing the game (and making Elias win). Martin hadn’t mentioned his own guilt so far, the fact that he was used by Jonah (and by Peter, and that Simon played with him a bit) and that he could have technically prevented everything if he had just stabbed Jonah in the Panopticon. I wonder if he will talk about that at some point?

It’s also interesting that this episode ended with the awkwardness of Jon inviting Martin to “lead on” before remembering that he’s the one knowing about the direction and correcting himself (“Follow me, then”) while Martin had expressed some anguish over the fact that he was “following, al–always following, never leading; never leading” in MAG170: it feels like there could be some feeling brewing over his own uselessness and powerlessness right now? Or like someone (Annabelle, Helen, Jonah) could definitely try to use it against him – Annabelle already did (“Does he even need you at all?”), which Jon kind of appeased the following episode (“Yes, Martin, you are my reason.”), but it could still come into play.

- Overall I’m not surprised that Martin absolutely wanted Simon dead in these circumstances – and it might be why he embraced the smiting spree so easily, because it could allow him (through Jon) to hurt back the avatars and monsters who had toyed with people? Peter is already dead, and Jonah is still far away. I reaaaally didn’t like the smiting spree, but I can understand how Martin had wanted to embrace it as a short-term solution; that’s the closest thing he could have to get some power back. (Simon admitted that The Extinction and what he had told Martin had mostly been “guesses”, but I also still wonder if it’s not going to be relevant, though not exactly as defined by Adelard… Simon had told Martin, in MAG151, that cataclysms and end-of-the-worlds had technically always been a thing depending of the point of view – it doesn’t mean that everything was bollocks.)

- Once again, what is Martin’s status in the new world? Because Simon’s comment definitely sounded like he was seeing Martin as one-of-the-avatars:

(MAG174) MARTIN: [AGGRAVATED INHALE] I might have guessed you’d be happy living in this nightmare. SIMON: I mean… not that it matters but… yes I am! Honestly, I think you could be too if you set your mind to it. But I’m not one to tell you how to live your eternity.

We haven’t seen Martin use Lonely powers apart from the end of MAG149, and his status was ambiguous in the Lonely house from MAG170, but mmmm…

- I’m laughing so much over Martin still being petty over Jon sparing Simon, because it sounded ONCE AGAIN like jealousy and it makes Martin out to be so over-the-top:

(MAG174) MARTIN: Why did you let him go– ARCHIVIST: Uh… MARTIN: –Jon? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… know, I just–! [SIGH] I didn’t want to kill him. MARTIN: Why not? Because he was nice to you? [FOOTSTEP] Because he was charming, because he was fun? ARCHIVIST: No, I–I–I, I just…

Martin is a bitch and I LOVE HIM. (Also, that sounds like Martin himself found Simon charming&fun.)

I’m able to appreciate his over-the-topness because he also gave genuine reasons, was aware that it was a bit humiliating:

(MAG174) MARTIN: … Good point! [SMALL CHUCKLES] I’ll keep my apology, then. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [BAG JOSTLING] [SMALL CHUCKLES] … I do kind of wish you’d waited until after Fairchild to have your crisis, though. ARCHIVIST: You really want that old man dead…! MARTIN: I mean, su–, yeah, sure, when you say it like that it sounds bad! ARCHIVIST: But what did he do to you? MARTIN: … He threatened to throw me off a rollercoaster. ARCHIVIST: Ah! MARTIN: … Okay, I, I know it sounds like a joke, but– ARCHIVIST: No, obviously, he’s an avatar of The Vast, I understand, it’s a scary threat coming from him. MARTIN: Yeah! ARCHIVIST: It just… doesn’t sound like a scary threat. MARTIN: Thanks for that.

Martin sounds INCREDIBLY PETTY, once again, but it’s also very valid: back in MAG151, I appreciated how his “How do you feel about… rollercoasters?” / “Uh… neutral” answer had protected him from both of the usual outcomes (getting recruited as a Vast avatar or fed to it as a victim), but it’s true that it was still a threat, thrown casually by a powerful avatar who was flexing that he could just kill him if he wanted to. It doesn’t feel good to be spared just because your potential tormentor decided that you were “no fun”.

It was cute of Jon to very awkwardly try to break it down, and kind of make it worse in the process – because yes, it sounded like a ridiculous threat said like this… but also, Simon would have done it, and it was a genuine threat.

- I’m absolutely delighted that Jon explained his feelings regarding the smiting – a mix of firmness and getting his points across, and that Martin apologised for pushing him in that direction ;w;

(MAG174) ARCHIVIST: I–I just–! … This whole… “avenging angel” thing, I–I’m not… It doesn’t feel right. MARTIN: … It seemed to feel right when we were avenging all the wrongs done against you! ARCHIVIST: I know. I–I–I know, alright? But, well, th–… [SIGH] That’s kind of the problem, I have all this… power and, and I, I want to use it to try and help, but I… I don’t know, I mean, I do. Uh… I’ve done so much damage, an–and anything that might help to balance that is–! [SOFT SIGH] … But killing other avatars, it, it’s not… I, I don’t think it makes anything better. I think it just makes me worse. MARTIN: … You’re removing evil from the world! ARCHIVIST: I, I’m not, though, am I? [STATIC RISES] The tenement fire is still burning; the mortal garden is growing wild; the carousel i– […] [SIGH] I, I, I… [SIGH] I’m sorry, Martin. After meeting the child, I thought… I’ve been… I really hoped things would be simpler, you know? A nice, straightforward apocalypse. MARTIN: [INHALE] No… [SIGH] No, I’m sorry. Cheerleading you when you’re on a magical murder spree probably… wasn’t a great idea. ARCHIVIST: I started it. MARTIN: … Good point! [SMALL CHUCKLES] I’ll keep my apology, then.

Sentence of the episode for me: “But killing other avatars, it, it’s not… I, I don’t think it makes anything better. I think it just makes me worse.”

I’m glad that Martin was able to keep (some of) his pettiness in check enough to hear him out, though, and that he apologised (I really didn’t hear the “I’ll keep my apology, then” as something serious, but as cute banter between a couple who are back on the same wavelength: Martin had already admitted that he behaved poorly – it’s not something he can exactly take back); and on the other hand, that Jon also explained how it didn’t work. It’s like Martin isolating himself during the statement: they’ve made a mistake, they’re ready to acknowledge it, and they decide to not make it again. (Though, where was Martin during the statement portion this episode? At least in MAG171 and (partially) MAG172, he had stayed close to Jon.)

Right now, the problem with Jon’s powers really isn’t whether he can but whether he should – and the fact that he feels like it might be negatively impacting him is a valid argument (+ the ethical concern, not mentioned, of being judge/jury/executioner all by himself). The season began with The Eye wanting Jon to leave the cabin, wanting for the cabin to be his “chrysalis”, and… that cannot be good.

- I still lovelovelove how, since the reveal in MAG158 that “Elias Bouchard” was actually Jonah Magnus, Jon&Martin… are still mostly sticking to “Elias”.

(MAG158) ARCHIVIST: Uh– yes. And I’d wager that Elias’s body, uh… BASIRA: Gotta be Jonah Magnus, right? ARCHIVIST: I’d say so. BASIRA: [SIGH] And he’s been body-hopping like whatever was in Rayner. […] PETER: … No. No! This isn’t fair, do you have any idea what you’ve done? You knew, he must have– MARTIN: Elias– … Jonah had nothing to do with it.

(MAG160) MARTIN: Are we… … Are we safe here? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Safe as anywhere else. If Elias wanted to find us, I imagine he could, but… I doubt the police will be able to. […] Does she know if they’ve found the old prison yet? The… Panopticon, Elia– … Magnus’s body.

(MAG161) MARTIN: [SIGH] Gloating, Jon. [CREAKING SOUND] Elias won, and there were some tapes he’d kept for himself, and he wanted to gloat. So, he sent them! ARCHIVIST: He’s not… MARTIN: I–I don’t see– ARCHIVIST: … “Elias”. MARTIN: Jonah, then. I don’t know, I find it hard to think of him as… I don’t really like to think of him!

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: No, no, lo–look… I, I–I was listening, and I–I was filled with this… hatred. This anger; I–I wanted to leave, and hunt down Elias, a–and…! MARTIN: W–wow, okay… […] Do you think it’ll do anything? Confronting Elias? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] I… [SIGH] Maybe? MARTIN: No, I’m serious. Do we… [PAUSE IN THE PACKING SOUNDS] Is there a chance that we can undo this?

(MAG164) MARTIN: What about Elias? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: He’s inside the Panopticon; the tower, far above the world. MARTIN: That one? ARCHIVIST: Yes. [PAUSE] MARTIN: How is he? ARCHIVIST: Hard to say. The, the way this works, this… “new sight”, the knowledge is, is… [SIGH] It’s somehow wrapped up in the Panopticon? An eye can’t… see inside itself. MARTIN: Mm. ARCHIVIST: But I can feel him in there. MARTIN: Hm. That sounds… gross. ARCHIVIST: It is! [CHUCKLES]

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: Help us with what? MARTIN: ‘xcuse me? ARCHIVIST: Annabelle, help us with “what”? Our–our, our journey, killing Elias, vanishing the Entities – what?

(MAG174) MARTIN: Thanks for that. … Hang on, you’re still down to kill Elias, right? Uh, oh, Jonah, whatever. ARCHIVIST: I’m still going to confront him. [INHALE] I don’t know if killing him is something I’m even… capable of, but if I can and I have to, I will. MARTIN: Yeeah? ARCHIVIST: Don’t worry. I won’t hesitate.

Because: same. He still doesn’t really register as “Jonah Magnus” to me.

I’m also laughing a lot at Martin, who began the season with “I don’t really like to think of Elias :/” and, since then, has most often been the one to breach the subject of Elias (+ we can add MAG170: “I mean, the interview was weird, I… I don’t really remember the man who talked to me. Just his eyes. They stared at me; th–through me, and… and, I–I knew that he knew what I’d done. God, I…! I was so scared, but… but then he smiled and shook my hand…! What was his name? [CREAKING] He said I “had the job”…! [CHUCKLE] That he “looked forward to working with me”! … I was still so scared I could barely move my arm…! I was so terrified I’d let him down…!” – even when he was losing his memories, still remembering Elias’s eyes, and THIS is how MartinElias can still w–)

I really wonder if they’ll even try to call him “Jonah” when face-to-face with him, or… will still stick to “Elias” out of habit.

- … Well. That is, if Elias still has a face. We know that some part of him still remains in the Panopticon-Institute (MAG164: “He’s inside the Panopticon; the tower, far above the world.”), that Jon can still “feel” him there, but the fact that Jon can’t know more about it (because “an eye can’t see inside itself”) combined with the fact that Jon’s anger towards him was a key point in making them leave the cabin and the confrontation with Elias is still their current goal… keeps making me think that Elias might not be in the same state as he was in MAG158. Stuck in layers and layers of spiderwebs? Merged with the Panopstitute (since his powers relied on Magnus’s body staying in the middle of it)? Stuck inside of his old body? What is the part of Jonah Magnus can feel inside the Panopstitute: is it Jonah Magnus’s body or his consciousness? Is it still both?

- Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Jon.

(MAG174) MARTIN: Hang on, you’re still down to kill Elias, right? Uh, oh, Jonah, whatever. ARCHIVIST: I’m still going to confront him. [INHALE] I don’t know if killing him is something I’m even… capable of, but if I can and I have to, I will. MARTIN: Yeeah? ARCHIVIST: Don’t worry. I won’t hesitate. MARTIN: … Right. [DISTANT LOW-PITCHED IMPACT, FOLLOWED BY GUSTS OF WIND] [INHALE] Right, alright then. Good. … Let’s go, then. We don’t want to keep him waiting!

“I won’t hesitate,” he hesitated, hesitatingly.

Well. Not exactly: Jon’s tone was casually firm, but also felt a bit distracted and, most importantly… why the need to add so many conditions, Jon.

* “if I can”: true that, unlike other avatars until then, Elias is tied to Beholding. Can Beholding’s powers be used against another Beholding avatar? Elias resisted the compulsion in MAG092 (… or so he said, before spilling everything ~on his own terms uwu~ – he, at least, was able to delay the effects), so Jon’s cautiousness is understandable.

* “if I have to”: that one is a bit more unexpected, because that’s… a big condition. In what circumstances would Jon “have to” kill Elias? It’s good, though, because it implies that it’s not about plain revenge anymore, but whether it could help the situation.

Anyway: the shift to “confront Elias” is a good one! … And gives me the feeling that Elias either won’t be in a state to be confronted, either will have further contributions to make.

(- Martin’s “We don’t want to keep him waiting!” also brings to mind that Elias is probably aware that they’re coming, right now. He’s in the middle of the seeing-it-all tower: unless he’s already incapacitated, they won’t be taking him by surprise, and he might be prepared to welcome them.)

- … Welp, I was feeling like we were hitting rock bottom last week, hope-wise, but this episode felt… like a breather (ha)? Not exactly hopeful per se, but definitely lighter (Martin firm about wanting to save the world, Jon finally wording what was bothering him with the smiting, Martin apologising, Jon and Martin reaching an understanding, not playing Helen’s game and thinking about the Elias case). So, #BackToWorryingOverDaisy – Jon didn’t want to kill Simon, doesn’t want to kill avatars just for the sake of it, but there is still Daisy running wild…

(And I would still feel a bit (lot) miffed if Jon were to kill her, given that she’s part of Basira’s story, that Basira promised her and that Basira arguably got the worst of it when it came to being manipulated without achieving/“winning” anything in season 4? I think it’s more likely that Jon could have the power to incapacitate her and give the time for Basira to fulfil her promise, if there is no other way, but I don’t know, I keep hoping that there could be another way with the fact that Jon can change the rules (turning the feared into the afraid, changing the “fabric of reality”) and that Daisy had a connection to The Eye (she signed a contract in season 4)…)

   MAG175’s title is mysterioooous. If MAG174 hadn’t happened, I would have said “Vast” but… Mm. Only Spiral and Hunt left when it comes to domains, so I would wager Spiral, more specifically with digital fuckedupness, reminiscent of MAG065? (But I could also see how it could tie with Hunt if thinking about beginnings, and it could go very well with Extinction too… if this one ends up relevant again). In itself, the title feels perfect for lore about the new reality (tying in with a few meta considerations and comments which have been made by various avatars), so mmmmm: could also be a switch in perspective with Annabelle or Elias, I guess…

[deanie1987]

My thoughts on 10x8 (LONG and SPOILERY)

Hey how about that episode huh? I have a lot of thoughts about it so this may be...uh pretty long. First off, I really liked the episode (at least the Gallavich parts that’s all I’ve seen so far. I am SO happy that I understand where they both are coming from and I don’t have to head canon anything. That in itself makes this episode much better than I thought it would be. Also, I have been vomiting my opinions all over The Internet so I apologize if I’m repeating myself.

First the good stuff: OPEN AFFECTION AND LOVE AND SMILES! The warmth that their happiness gives me could heat my entire house for a year. It is such a wonderful thing to see. From them arm in arm to holding hands in the diner to that incredible kiss at the courthouse (which has now jumped into my top 3 kisses) it truly is making the season for me. I miss the sex scenes and they don’t get enough screentime, but they feel like lovers to me, not roomates or pals. Finally. I also love that it seems like Mickey is 99% comfortable with it, but there is still that 1% of holding back.

IAN. Oh my god Ian!! *Fiona voice* He is trying so hard. He is doing his best to really communicate with Mickey and maintain a healthy relationship. But it’s hard for him and he’s not good at it and he gets really jumbled and nervous when he’s trying to get his thoughts out (god I relate to Ian so hard sadly.) He is initiating so much of the affection and the declarations and wanting Mickey to know that he loves him. We have been waiting for so long to see it and I’m so thankful.

The acting - Noel and Cam are a gift and they give this mediocre material such depth and emotion. No matter how ridiculous the plot, they know their characters and they take them seriously. I can’t imagine caring about this couple even a fraction as much if they weren’t played by them.

The character consistency (which is an extension of the acting) - Puppy Ian has made a triumphant return but that is tempered by his life experiences. He isn’t naive and idealistic anymore. His confidence and self-worth have taken huge blows over the years and it shows in how he approaches the proposal and then of course in his cold feet (and how desperate he is for advice now as compared to before his diagnosis). It seems perfectly in character for Ian to grab onto an impulsive notion with the best of intentions and then second guess himself and fuck it up the second it really matters. I think he is trying to control his impulses and I DO think that he had the best of intentions with the proposal and the marriage idea, but the self doubt crept in at the last moment like it always does. Having said that, they were fighting and rushed and I don’t blame him for wanting to take a step back to figure things out once circumstances changed. Unfortunately, his impulses once again ended up breaking Mickey’s heart and I appreciate just how good Noel is. The script never once referenced anything other than their current situation, but you could read on his face the toll of years of disappointment and humiliation and anger. My god.

Which leads me to the bad:

The last scene - I know that a lot of people hate the punch and think its out of character for Mickey, but I just don’t. Violence isn’t a first resort for either of them anymore, but it is definitely still in their arsenal. They threw punches in season 5 (Ian being the initiator), Mickey drugged Sammi in order to torture her, they shoved and pushed each other in season 7, Mickey tried to start a fight with one of the cartel guys then as well, he stabbed people in prison for pay, he and Ian both stabbed Chester with no qualms and Ian was prepared to do it again, he and Ian physically fought in 10x3 (they each shoved each other pretty hard), Ian threw punches in season 6 and physically threatened a lot of people as Gay Jesus.  They grew up around casual violence. In the first few seasons they both sported cuts and black eyes all the time. They got hit by their parents, by their siblings, by strangers and by each other. It might not be as frequent as it was when they were young, but it is still a form of communication for them both, for better or for worse. Beyond that, Mickey is an abuse survivor who spent the last few years either in jail, on the run or in a Mexican drug cartel. To act as though violence isn’t part of his life anymore just makes no sense to me. He has grown tremendously and I do think that violence against Ian is something that probably horrifies him, but that punch was YEARS in the making. He tried to remove himself from Ian and the situation but when Ian asked him to communicate how he felt about things, you could just see in his face the disbelief and incredulity that after all his words and his grand gestures, that Ian would STILL somehow not know how he felt. So he walked back up the steps, maybe hoping that he could come up with words that would adequately convey the heartbreak, anger, betrayal, loneliness, humiliation and disappointment that he has felt for years where Ian was concerned. But instead he punched him. I don’t like it but I get it. And Ian seemed more annoyed than scared or genuinely angry, and I will be shocked if a big deal is made of it by anyone in the next episode. The falling down the stairs and leg breaking was an accident obviously and necessitated by Cam’s leg, but it wouldn’t shock me if the writers had something like that in the script beforehand. These are damaged guys who grew up and still live in shitty environment full of poverty, ignorance, crime and casual violence. The Gallaghers may be on the edge of upward mobility but they aren’t all there yet and that probably goes double for Mickey. 

All things Terry and the Milkoviches - I appreciate that Mickey is no longer afraid of his father, but that whole scene sat terribly with me. This is one of the areas where Noel’s 5 year absence from the larger Shameless universe really stands out and it’s clear that trying to pick up where they left off really doesn’t work. The new Milkoviches are bland and dumb as well.

Ian’s jabs - I’m really ready for Ian to knock it off with the digs about Mickey to Lip. I’m glad that Mickey challenged him about murdering people (although again, seriously is really THAT much of a stretch to think that Mickey has been involved in something a little seedier, though you would think that Ian would know by now.) I hope it comes up again and Ian apologizes for thinking that way about him.

Episode as a whole - I didn’t watch the rest of the episode yet (maybe more thoughts on that if anything inspires me) but fast forwarding through the other scenes made the lack of character interaction that much more noticeable. It is ridiculous that Ian has had more scenes with Tami than with Carl. I hate it.

One last negative I guess. Every scene that we have gotten with Mickey and Ian together have been nearly perfect, but it isn’t enough and I really wish that they had started this storyline at the very beginning of the season and not rushed so much of it. I still kind of want a season 11 with them in it, because there is so much stuff that we don’t know. For example, I find it really interesting that in some ways, Mickey and Ian are somewhat back to their earlier selves. In season 4 and 5, Ian sort of devolved into drugs, prostitution and various scams (mostly due to his illness of course) while Mickey tried to be at least a little bit more on the up and up. They sort of met in the middle of the criminality spectrum. But now they seem to be more closely aligned with their seasons 1-3 situations. Obviously, Mickey is out and Ian has been diagnosed with bipolar, so their personalities have definitely changed since that time. But in the years that they were separated, Ian sort of pulled himself back into “normal” society for awhile with a legit job and vaguely middle class aspirations (at least until he went off the deep end and stopped taking his meds). In the meantime, Mickey was sent away to a real prison and worked for a Mexican drug cartel. No middle class aspirations there. For as much as they are in love and as much as I believe that they know each other better than anyone else, they have changed a LOT and experienced things apart that are hugely impactful to their development as adults. They are coming together again, but not as the teenage boys that they once were, but the products of their experiences mostly while they were apart and I really wish that that would be explored more. I know that fanfic can fill a lot of holes, but I have been so impressed with the way that Noel and Cam have played everything so far that I want to see them on my screen as these characters for as long as I can.Finally, next week looks interesting. I think that the majority will be played for laughs but judging from the stills, the emotion is going to knock us on our asses. I can’t wait. 

[sciencelings-ocs]

Gold and Silver

This is an oc fic featuring my ocs Rosalia and Artemis who are sisters, Rose has powers. Artie does not. They both work for SHIELD.

Rose was just barely used to her job at SHIELD when Hydra destroyed everything. She was happy with what she was doing. She was helping people and with all of SHEILD’s reach, she could help the people who needed her most. She had the resources to do all the research she desired and was allowed to see classified information from scientists just like her. It was a dream until it wasn’t. 

She was in her lab when it happened. She was studying an Asgardian blood sample and comparing it to a human one. She should’ve been using her time more wisely… Why look at alien blood when the silent clock was counting down. 

She heard the gunfire before she knew what was going on. She grabbed her emergency pistol from under her main desk, she was still a trained SHIELD agent after all. She wasn’t a field agent but she knew the basics and could defend herself if she needed to. It was something her powers wouldn’t help her with. They were useless in this kind of situation. What good was glowy healing hands when she was being shot at. 

Footsteps were getting closer. There was muffled yelling beyond her walls. She didn’t have much time. There was one door, it led to the main hallway where the attackers were coming through. Her best chance was to hide. 

She ran as quietly as she could to the back of the room where some mostly empty cabinets were. She hoped that she was small enough to squeeze inside. Sure, it wasn’t a good vantage point but she was on the index and they would know that she was there and that she could be a target. She didn’t want to go out fighting, there was still so much she could do. She doubted that they would take their time searching every crevice for her, she was still just a healer. It didn’t feel like that was part of Hydra’s gig. 

She had just gotten into position when the main door was kicked in rather violently. There was a main man in the front who ordered the others to search the room. Rose’s heart sank. She cocked her gun in the chaos and prepared to fire and get out of there as swiftly as possible. Her chances of escaping were low. She didn’t have enough ammo to take out the whole room and she wasn’t a perfect shot. Her chances of survival were dwindling. 

The footsteps were getting closer, one by one cabinet doors were being haphazardly ripped open, each getting nearer to her hiding place. She did her best to control her breathing but there was a reason that she didn’t want to be a field agent, she was not good in absolutely terrifying situations. She hated how much her hands shook on her gun. She had to keep her finger off of the trigger to prevent an accidental misfire. 

She took a few deep breaths as the banging of wooden doors got nearer. Time felt like it was going so slowly, though the nearest baddie was only a few cabinets away, it felt like an eternity before they got to hers. She gently rested her finger on the trigger and let herself take a second to see who was going to be on the other side. All she saw was a familiar red badge depicting a skull on top of several tentacles and she knew exactly what was going on. 

After she pulled the trigger, things seemed to get a little crazy. She slid out from her hiding place and used the man she had shot in the shoulder as a kind of human shield. She threw the poor nazi into the closest of his colleagues and shot at the Hydra agents closest to her. 

It didn’t take long for them to react. The room erupted in deafening bangs and yells. Rose rolled behind a metal column and vaguely recognized a painful burning in her thigh. 

“You’re not a fighter Doctor Dawn, this isn’t a fight you can win.” The main guy bellowed from behind her. 

“And what do you expect me to do,” Rose hissed, “Praise the name of hydra and surrender my rights to fascist ideals?” 

“Oh of course not. I just thought I’d try to make it easier. You’re coming with us, whether you’re full of holes or not. You know you’re potential has been wasted here, imagine what you could do without SHIELD’s limitations.” The man purred creepily.

“You don’t know me, I’m not going to do things just because I can. Some people have a hint of moral obligations.” Rose looked around her half of the room, she only had a few bullets left and Hydra wanted her alive, otherwise, they would’ve taken her down easily. She was astoundingly outnumbered. 

“This is your last chance to give yourself up, all in one piece. You know that you have no choice, don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?” 

“Self-preservation isn’t my strong suit…” Rose muttered as she placed her hand on her wound, it had stopped bleeding and was already closing. Soon, standing should be only a little bit painful rather than impossible. She just needed to keep him talking for a tiny bit longer. 

“Why,” She asked, “Why do you guys want me? There are people who can cause natural disasters and turn into any material they touch. I’m just a doctor. Wouldn’t you want to use your evil resources to get them rather than waste a good team getting a defenseless healer? That is if this is a good team and not just a bunch of cowards who were given guns.” 

“You underestimate your value to us. Imagine an unkillable army, soldiers who cannot be damaged by bullets, no need for armor or shields… it’s beautiful isn’t it.” 

Rose laughed. She laughed as she carefully got to her feet, leaning heavily on the metal pillar shielding her. 

“I can’t do that? What do you think I am? A god?” 

“You could be.” 

“There aren’t meant to be gods in this world. Even if it was possible, I don’t want to make an unkillable army, and if you think me a god, you can’t bend a god to you’re twisted will. I think that’s part of the whole omnipotent being bit.” Rose tested a lean on her injured leg and readied her gun.

“You won’t get the luxury of a choice.” the man said grimly. 

Rose stepped out of her hiding place and pointed her gun at the main military man. Before she could let out another word, she was hit with a tiny pinprick, to small to be a bullet. She only had enough time to look at the projectile before all her strength was seeping out of her. Seemed to be an enhanced tranquilizer. She collapsed to the ground and felt a massive collar be locked around her throat before her vision completely blacked out.  

Just like that, it was over. Her freedom was gone in the blink of an eye. She didn’t know if anyone would be willing or even left to attempt to save her. 

***

Artemis was undercover when Hydra made their move. She had just dyed her short hair brown and curled it, painted on more freckles on her cheeks, and hidden several types of weapons in her casual clothes. It was honestly one of her favorite parts of her job. Creating a character, pretending to be someone else, blending in, she liked it more than the whole fighting part. Even if she was pretty damn good at the fighting part. 

When Hydra emerged from their wretched ashes, Artemis was alone. She started the day on a mission but it didn’t take her long to realize that she was being hunted. 

It started with a strange flash from a window from the apartment building across the street. Call her paranoid but she immediately left eyeshot of the window. She took out her own sniper rifle and took off the specialized scope. She used it as a kind of telescope and turned on its x-ray feature and adjustable zoom to identify if someone was after her or if she was just imagining it. 

She was not imagining it. There was a person in a high window with a gun, trying their best to conceal themselves. Artemis put the scope back on her rifle and took out an acid green colored tube of lipstick, of course, it wasn’t actually lipstick. She was a spy. She uncapped it and used it to trace around the concrete on a nearby brick. There was a minute of soft sizzling before she slid out the brick as if it had just been laid. 

She pointed the barrel out of the new hole in the wall and wasted no time as she aimed and fired. The loud streets dampened the sound of the bang and she replaced the brick before getting out of there before anyone had a chance to figure out that something was up. 

It was on the news all day, SHIELD had fallen, they’re secrets exposed, and Hydra was back. Of course, some of that information was passed to her by an old friend but most of it was very much public. 

But Artemis didn’t care about her job, her livelihood, her kill count being on display for anyone to look up on google, no. Her sister was right at the heart of it, and due to her status as a glowy super-human, she was very much in trouble, if not dead. Sure it would be stupid to not keep her alive, but Hydra wasn’t known for their mercy. 

Artemis could disappear, she could get away from Hydra easily, but she wasn’t going to. Not while her sister was in their clutches. 

It took a few Hydra agents but eventually, Artemis found one that knew something that she cared about. Where they were keeping the important prisoners. Their enhanced prisoners. It turned out that they had a prison boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. One heavily equipped to deal with even the Avengers. Bingo. 

Artemis was ready for a rescue mission. 

***

Time was odd in her cell. The lights were always on, there was always a guard outside of the glass, Roses internal clock was the only thing hinting at the time and that had always been a little unreliable. They give her food once a day, if it could be called food, and it’s time always seemed to fluctuate. Every once in a while they would try to convince her to join them. They spoke of a perfect life, of power, of wealth but she would always say no. And she would pay for it. Usually, they would fill her body with voltage or try to brand her, but she would heal before the next day. Rarely even leaving a mark. At most a gunshot would become a scar no larger than the size of a freckle. 

The bulky shock collar had started to become normal. Her hair, which was normally held in a tight bun or a professional ponytail, was wild and untamed falling down her shoulders, some in front of her face. She couldn’t move it, her wrists were cuffed together, only uncuffed for meals or occasional trips to shower. 

Every moment alone, she spent inside her own head. Every moment wasted in a bright blank room when she could be helping people or not being in a cell. She thought about her sister, whose whole life was uprooted at the fall of SHIELD, but Rose was sure she could handle herself, she had never known anyone more capable. Still, she was worried. Their family had been complicated, and accidentally working for the same secret organization had been the most perfect coincidence. It took a few years but they got close again, rejecting childish resentment and competition. 

But Artemis wouldn’t come for her, she had never made a decision based on feelings before and was very unlikely to do so. If she came, it would take weeks at least and a well thought out attack or something of that nature. 

Although since she couldn’t use her powers, they were just building up inside her. Her own healing factor had sped up just by not healing people constantly. Her power had nowhere to go after she had gotten used to using it so much during the day. 

She was filled with energy that had nowhere to go. She was trapped in several ways, none of them very fun. She had to get out, no one was going to save her, they would be stupid to try. 

It turned out someone was stupid enough to try. Someone so wonderfully stupid to care about her. 

Against the odds, her sister was there, silently taking out a guard with ease. Her cheek was bleeding and bruised and she had the most feral look in her eyes, it was kind of scary. Artemis, who was calculating and calm at all times, who put so much thought into every decision she made, had left everything she had left to find her. Rose couldn’t help but smile. 

Artemis took the shock collar remote from the guard and unlocked the cell door with a stollen key card. 

“Hey Rosie, You’ve looked better…” She quipped while taking a moment to figure out which button on the remote took off the collar. 

“And you’ve never looked better. I’ve never been so happy to see you come in and knock someone out.” Rose grinned. 

“Yeah, yeah…” Artemis rolled her eyes and pressed a button that made the collar release a bunch of air. She gently took it off of her sister to see the deep indents that it made around her neck including the two electricity input and output spikes on each side of her throat. “Jesus… that does not look very comfortable.” 

“Imagine having to sleep in it.” Rose ripped her hands from the handcuffs behind her back and gently rubbed the sore parts on her neck. Once the pressure was removed, the bruises started to heal. She raised her hand to her sister’s bloodstained face and had a record-breaking healing session. Even small wounds would take a minute or two but this time it took seconds and it was kind of mesmerizing to see the process. 

“Thanks.” Artemis’ face relaxed as the pain eased. 

“It’s genuinely the least I can do. I’m guessing that if you haven’t been noticed, you just got noticed so uh, can we get out of here?” Rose left the cell and took a gun from the fallen guard. 

“No, I was planning on staying here forever…” Artemis grumbled. “Follow me, we have to get to the top deck.”

They almost made it up two floors before the first group of baddies came running towards them. Rose heard the frantic heavy footsteps on the metal floor before anything else and she cocked her gun. Her sister put her arm in front of her signalling for her to stop and let her deal with the problem. Rose nodded but stayed close anyway, partially because if her sister got hurt she would need to fix it and partially because she didn’t want to feel useless. 

Artemis caught the group by surprise and shot the front few guys before using one of them as a shield to defend herself from the other ones. She pushed them into the chaos and rammed her knee in the crotch of the closest guy. She wasn’t superhuman like her sister but she worked hard and was pretty damn strong. She kicked the gun out the hand of the guy whose nuts she just crushed and shot the hand of the guy who was moments away from shooting her. The fight kept going like that, her being too fast to shoot at and at some point pulling out a knife. 

Rose stayed out of sight and felt her blood run cold when she heard more footsteps. A lot more footsteps. They were going to get overwhelmed very soon. Even Artemis couldn’t take out so many people. 

The noise in the hallway stopped, Artemis finished the fight and looked a little winded. She walked back to her sister. 

“Don’t get tired yet. I heard more coming. I don’t think we can fight our way out.” She said grimly as she waved her glowing hand over the injured parts of her sister. She had taken a few heavy hits. 

“How do you feel about elevators?”   

***

When Artemis mentioned elevators, Rose thought about riding the actual elevator. Not climbing up the shaft with an endless drop at any slight mistake. She guessed that this was why she wasn’t a spy, it would’ve been too nice to just ride the elevator. Everything just had to be hard. 

They froze every time there was a noise and spoke in frustrated hushed tones whenever they had something to say. Like how not fun climbing up an elevator shaft in a massive prison ship was. 

The grumbling stopped when the elevators started to move and the elevator shaft became less of a death pit and more of a death trap. Rose had managed to get on top of one of the moving elevators and kept trying to get Artemis to come with her before it was too late. She was perched on a slight ledge far enough away from the momentarily stopping elevator that it would take a miracle to jump the gap and make it. The window of opportunity was closing fast. 

“Just jump! I’ll catch you!” Rose said frantically as she reached her hand out as far as it could go. 

“The fuck do you think I am? Captain America? Just go without me! I’ll catch up!” 

“I can literally catch you asshole, we don’t have time for you to whine about it!” Rose hissed. Artemis wasted precious moments to roll her eyes and carefully maneuver her body to the adequate leverage to maximize her jumping range. 

Then was the moment of truth. Artemis used all of her strength and flung her body at her sister as best as she could. 

It was so close. For a moment, their fingers just barely touched, enough to grab at the ends. Enough to delay the inevitable for a moment. 

“Go… I’ll meet you upstairs… okay?” 

“No… I can get you up… just hold on…” She said desperately. Artemis was already slipping one finger at a time. Rose had to keep her other hand on the elevator, any moment it would start moving again. 

“It’s okay, let me go.” Rose wouldn’t get the chance. Artemis slipped through her fingers. 

Then she fell. She didn’t even scream, but Rose did. In that moment, something flickered. For the briefest of moments, in the height of pure emotion, something within Rose changed. Her eyes glowed gold, her hair defied gravity and reflected light that wasn’t there, and then it stopped. And she was left alone. She didn’t even notice the moment of glowing potential. 

She was going back for her sister. The long way. 

***

It didn’t take long for Rose to get caught, but that was kind of part of the plan. Kind of. She didn’t have a fully fleshed out plan but she thought she had something at least. It was kind of hard to think after what happened. Artemis could be dead… no it would take more to kill her sister. She had never known anyone more resilient and with more pure will. She was like the John Wick of spies. Someone could break both of her legs and arms and she would still find a way to stand back up and wreck shit. A stupid elevator shaft wouldn’t take her out. Hopefully. 

Rose wandered around the halls. It wasn’t like there was a map of the place. She felt like she was in a daze, time was slow and blurry. Every sound felt far away… in fact… everything felt far away. She couldn’t focus. It could be the lack of food and water catching up to her but she doubted it. 

She was surprised that she managed not to bump into any hydra agents, she had noticed that a bunch of the cameras in the halls had been broken or even completely ripped off. There were still bullet holes and subtle bloodstains on the walls telling her this ship used to be SHIELDs and it was part of the hydra resurgence. Right at the front lines. They didn’t have enough time to fix everything and it was unlikely that some cameras on a prison ship would be a major priority for a reborn nazi organization. They were probably still getting rid of the bodies of the SHIELD agents they murdered. 

Like Artemis, sure it was a little more distantly but if hydra hadn’t emerged from the dark damp hell they came from then none of this would have happened. 

The last thought made her growl audibly, which is not something she just did normally. She doesn’t usually growl like a dog. She tightly balled her fists and decided that she couldn’t just stand there to absorb what just happened, she was still in the nest of the people hunting her. She was likely moments away from being found out and captured or worse. She had to get her shit together before there was a gun to her head. 

“You seem a little lost Rosie.” A deep voice came from somewhere ahead of her, it sounded like it was coming from an old intercom, it echoed eerily in the empty halls. The lights flickered a bit before blotting out sequentially, adding to the horror movie atmosphere. 

“Did you really think that we’d just let you go? No… no. You’re much too useful for us.” The voice continued. Rose didn’t say anything. She followed the voice to a touchscreen lock pad in front of a metal door and she didn’t hesitate to slam her already tight fist into it. It shattered on impact and pieces of plastic and glass littered the floor. 

“Well, someone’s grumpy! At least let me finish my monologue! I worked too hard on it!” The voice continued further away. Rose didn’t like being taunted. She was having a bad enough day as it was. She went to the next touchscreen pad and punched it. She just wanted the voice to stop. 

“We can keep doing this but property damage won’t fix your situation.” The voice grumbled from another further away speaker. 

“What do you want from me!” Rose yelled into the empty halls. 

“We want everything you can give. But we are willing to negotiate. We’ll let your sister go if you  surrender yourself to us.” 

“I thought negotiations required both parties to agree.” She said before she fully realized what had been offered. Her sister was alive, for now. That fact was both incredibly relieving and overwhelmingly anxiety-inducing. 

“That is our offer. Either she dies and we take you the hard way, or she lives and we get what we want. Simple.”

“Where is she!” Rose demanded. 

“Do you accept the deal or not?” 

“Yes, just let me see her, please,” Rose said desperately. 

“Good choice. There are people on their way to escort you to your sister. Thanks for doing business with us.” 

***

Rose was not glad to be back in cuffs and a godforsaken shock collar, but her sister was alive and would stay that way. That had to be something. 

She could feel the cold metal barrels of guns at her back and neck, she was surrounded by heavily armored Hydra agents who had no qualms about handling her roughly. She tried to appear strong and defiant but she was sure that they could see her tremble. One twitch if the trigger finger and she would be dead. Probably, she didn’t quite know the limits of her healing factor and she wasn’t keen on finding out. 

They turned a corner and there she was. Artemis was covered in blood and her left foot was pointing completely the wrong direction, but she was breathing and still had the sharp rage in her eyes. Right next to her was a stereotypical military man with a scar through his eyebrow and piercing his salt and pepper hairline. 

“Artie! You have to let me help her.” Rose ordered at the man who she assumed had been the voice she had heard earlier. 

“That wasn’t part of the deal. We let her go. That’s it. You should be thankful that we brought you to see her at all.” 

“If you don’t let me heal her, you’re going to regret it.” She snarled. The man laughed, it was harsh and mocking and going on for way too long. It made Rose even angrier. 

“What are you going to do? Heal my arthritis? You’re no fighter doc. She’ll be dead before you even lift a finger.” The man spat in Rose’s face, she didn’t wince and most of her energy went to keeping herself from ripping off the handcuffs and throttling the man until he turned blue. Although no one would see, a glow started to grow from the bones inside of her hands, illuminating her veins in a strange golden light. 

“Underestimating me isn’t good for your health, I should know. I’m a doctor.” 

“You know what, I’m sick of your attitude,” The man turned to the agents holding Artemis up, “Kill the sister. Maybe that will make this easier.” There was a click of a gun cocking before Rose reacted.

“No!” She yelled, but it was too late, the gunshot rang out and echoed among the silence and Artemis collapsed in a rapidly growing pool of blood. Rose felt like her bones were on fire, there was a blistering heat that encompassed every cell in her body. She could only hold it in for a couple seconds more. Just long enough for the man to look back at her and react in horror. 

Her bones glowed like they encapsulated all the light from the sun and her eyes glowed with the same light. Her skull and veins were visible through her skin and her messy hair started to defy gravity and reflect the light coming from her skin. The supernova of rage would explode any moment, there was nothing she could do to hold it back, but she didn’t really want to hold it back. 

It was like an explosion was continually off and Rose was in the center of it. There was a blast of bright golden light that blasted the hydra bastards around her to the ground. There were screams, but Rose didn’t hear them. 

There’s that saying of “too much of a good thing” that could apply. Too much healing meant bone where it shouldn’t be, skin where it shouldn’t grow, holes that shouldn’t be cut off. That’s what happened to anyone in the blast zone. The agents around her had shards of bone growing together, winding and twisting as if making an intricate Celtic knot. The bone grew from ribs, skulls, femurs, any large bone grew grotesquely beyond its limits and the small connective bones grew together making a terrifying group of intertwining statues. And that was just the agents around her. 

It took no effort for her to rip the handcuffs off, the shock collar was just as easy. She turned her head towards the uniformed man on the ground, trying to stumble away as his own body attacked him just by being in Roses presence. 

All she could feel was rage towards this man. She was so tired of being restrained. By chains or by her own need to keep her feelings from impacting her work. She was so so tired of it. Her power was connected to her emotions and she had always had to keep them in check, but not now. 

She walked steadily to the man trying to scramble away. His little rectangular glasses were broken and tilted on his nose. There was so much fear in his eyes. It made a strange scary little part of her happy. 

“Just a healer, no good for fighting…” She said, her voice was different, slightly non-human sounding. As if she was speaking as some ancient god, the kind whose voice could make an entire civilization fall to their knees. 

“You are right, this isn’t much of a fight.” She knelt down to look the man in the eyes. “If it was a fight, you would stand a chance.” 

“Stop this!” The man yelled shakily, “I’ll do anything!” He almost sobbed.

“You will not speak,” Rose said as the skin around the man’s mouth began to close in, “You will not see.” She whispered as she made his eyelids grow together. “You will not hear.” She hissed quietly. His ears slowly grew together as she said her last words to him. “You will be lucky to be saved, but you will not know. Actually, you would be lucky to die here. I’m sure you’d never want to run into me again. You should be glad that I didn’t just kill you for what you did to my sister. If anything, be fucking grateful.” 

She stood up, leaving the man on the cold ground. The room was quiet. No more screams. Only heartbeats. She didn’t kill a single person. With enough skill and time, they could all be saved. She planned to send out a distress signal, they would be found. But that was all she could ensure. 

The light faded. The flaming rage began to be replaced with empty sorrow and horror. She observed the room post-rage-explosion. She had never thought she was capable of anything like this. She had never thought that she could cause such… destruction. She breathed in a shaky breath and made herself look at her sister’s body. She gasped when she saw the rise and fall of her sister’s chest. She was breathing. She was still alive. 

 “Artie? Artie!” Rose ran to her sister and looked over her. There was no gunshot wound. Roses blast had healed her completely. Her eyes fluttered open when her sister reached her. 

“Hey… what…” Artemis wheezed, but Rose was already holding her in her arms and sobbing uncontrollably. For a while, they just held each other. Eventually, they were ready to leave. 

Rose was sure that hydra agents were still crawling in the ship but they stayed away from the sisters. There must’ve been some kind of surveillance of the event. They must know what happened somehow. Rose had no idea how but she was too tired, physically and emotionally, to care. 

They left the ship with no problems. They boarded Artemis’ hidden ship, perfect stealth tech that could change from a boat to a fighter jet, only big enough for three people at most if they really squeezed in. 

Rose sat in the co-pilot’s seat, though she wouldn’t be any help. Her sister would be doing all the work. It was silent as they shot off into the sky and hovered above the clouds for seemingly hours. She was using the holoscreen to look at her emails and had just switched to her super-secret SHIELD account. A certain email caught her eye. Its subject line was “Job Opportunity for Former SHIELD Agents” and it was from Stark Industries. Rose smiled a little. Maybe her life wasn’t over after all. 

[rorykillmore]

some desert mansion headcanons?

it’s around hereabouts on the map! not too far from the border. i also made this post to give people an idea of the surrounding area. it’s in a place called diez coronas which is like.... rdr’s version of monument valley, essentially. villanelle really likes it because it’s SO larger than life (and she seems to have a thing for sweeping, breathtaking landscapes) and one of the most isolated areas on denny, really.

3 stories, 9 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, with probable room to convert few rooms into either in the WILD event that it was needed. which... quick tally:  eve and villanelle share a room. bor’ka has one (if cecil apps him). the rwbies are each going be offered their own room but there was a possibility that some of them might double or quadruple up, so i don’t know what the exact count for that would be. but even if they Each had their own bedroom, that’d bring the total to 6. fox, lisa, or nat might be offered one, so that’s...  wow damn imagine if they actually do need more space.

villanelle (enlisting eve’s help) has spent the majority of late july and early august interior decorating. if you look at... any of her living spaces from seasons 1, 2, or 3, it’s pretty clear that she has that specific brand of eccentric-chic style and likes decorating with stuff from all over the world, so i’m sure it’s been an INTERESTING process.

team rwby’s rooms are going to be color themed. of course.

it has two whole pools and a hot tub. the ooc reason is just because the house actually had two pools in its listing. the ic reason is because villanelle was like “wow.... this is a really big piece of property :/ better put one pool on either side of it because having to walk the whole way across sounds boring.”

it’s on several acres of land and gated, and the land inside the gate is very... green, compared to the land outside of it. villanelle cheats by making it rain a bit more often than it’d generally be prone to in the desert.  but she’s got gardens to upkeep! yes, she keeps gardens, but when i say she “keeps gardens” i mean that in the like... most villanelle way possible. ie she’s very sporadic about actually nurturing them and mostly just uses her magic instead, she’s impulsive and gets bored very quickly and sometimes will decide to change the theme on the whim (some days it might be a native desert themed garden, other days it might be a japanese garden, other days it might be a tropical garden, and so on). the only real constant is that she likes to add touches that remind her of the people she loves.

villanelle dedicated One Entire Room SOLELY to being a library, and she’s meaning to give it to blake as a belated birthday present. with all the vampire stuff happening she hasn’t had the chance to show her, though.

villanelle’s bedroom, no matter where she’s living, has always been THE most personal space to her. like. she’s lived with people on denny plenty of times already at this point, and shared space in that capacity, but never in any of those times did she like. casually let people into her bedroom. because it’s kind of the innermost expression of her as a person, just as likely to be full of designer clothes and expensive perfume and girly accessories as it is to be riddled with deadly weaponry and costumes and disguises and things she specifically needs for Her Job. all of this to say that i am absolutely INTRIGUED to imagine what her sharing a bedroom space with eve full time actually looks like. i want someone to break in to snoop around someday and go “oh my god, they’re actually insane.”

there is goat-friendly outdoor space specifically for bartok. villanelle made sure, despite their rivalry.

they have a piano because villanelle wanted to take up playing again.

her favorite space in the whole house may just be her bedroom patio, which opens up onto that ENORMOUS cliff view and at night, gives you an endless view of the stars. one of her favorite little games is making up her own constellations. 

the (massive) kitchen is sure to be the site of many disastrous baking experiments. villanelle can cook, but she can’t bake. also i want her to teach one of her roommates how to make like poisons or sedatives or something from scratch.

there’s a movie theatre room and its default movie is avatar (2009).

villanelle is presently looking at an experimental rift energy signature security system that would potentially even keep out like. doubles and doppelgangers, if not disabled. otherwise, given the givens, she doesn’t feel she needs all that much security.

some day in the future villanelle is going to look back on this and go “wow. i really spent a whole summer building the world’s most giant house because i was depressed. ...........i’m so proud of myself for not being one of those “cool motive, still murder” people who kills more often because i’m sad!”, 

idk that’s all for now, different people will probably add their own headcanons and touches as it fills up

[themockingcrows]

Cult of the Tainted Rose

This fic is Not Safe For Work As Hell

cw: vaginal fingering, anal fingering, oral sex, anal sex, sex pollen, polyamory, Beta ot4, dubious consent, strap ons, pegging, vaginal sex

THIS FIC IS AVAILABLE ON MY AO3!

When Jade and Rose decide to combine a scientifically engineered rose specimen with the best of black magics to see what would happen, they wind up with more than they bargained for.

    “You don’t need to be gentle with it, this isn’t something that’s going to fall apart if you touch it! Promise!” Jade said with a hearty smile as Rose investigated the flower in front of her.

    It was gorgeous really, a supple white rose with subtle blue blush to it, deeper near the stem and softest at the tip. The thorns looked razor sharp and the petals soft as clouds, so Rose still hesitated before she reached out to stroke them. They were solid under her fingers, but just as soft as she’d imagined, leaving her to sigh gratefully when the petals didn’t break off into her hand like she feared they would somehow.

    “See? Told ya,” Jade said proudly, dusting soil off her hands and onto the edges of her jeans before she remembered the smock and rubbed there instead. “It’s my best specimen yet! I’m gonna crossbreed it with a lot of others soon to see what it can bring to the gene pool as far as resilience goes. So far not even bugs have been an issue!”

    “...And that’s why you wanted to run the experiment on this one,” Rose concluded as she poked the tip of a thorn cautiously, sucking on her finger right afterwards when it inevitably stung a droplet of blood from her.

    “Precisely. This is the best science can make so far,” Jade said, coming closer to the pot to stroke the flower like a pet, smile fond. “I wanted to see what the best magic can make with that.”

    “I’d hardly say mine is the best magic, especially compared to others,” Rose said with a smirk. “But I’ll take the compliment.”

    Jade leaned over and kissed Rose on the lips, transplanting some of her dark lipstick onto her own mouth before she pulled back. “You’d better take that compliment! Who else would I trust with one of my precious plants?”

    “I’m not responsible if this goes south and kills this sample,” Rose said with pursed lips as she thought. “It’s possible that the spell could sap everything out of it to fuel itself. ...You do have a spare right?”

    “Of course, I’ve got other samples from it, and I’ve already got more seedlings going in the trays,” Jade said, rubbing her mouth finally when she realized the texture felt different. Ignoring the dark smudge on her arm she gestured to the rest of the greenhouse. “We’re going to be doing this indoors, not out here, by the way. I don’t want the other babies to be affected if something goes wrong.”

    “Of course, of course,” Rose said, already going over in her mind what might work. Letting the magic do as it wished seemed to be the best option… though, with dark magics, that could be a bit risky to say the least. “And you just want to see what will happen anyway. There’s no set goal?”

    “Precisely. I just want to see what happens with the best science rose meets Rose’s magic! It’s like a rose squared in a way, just a lot cooler,” she said, smirking at her own joke when Rose herself rolled her eyes. Apparently John wasn’t the only one with a propensity for shitty jokes in that family tree, how could she keep forgetting.

    “Alright then. I think I know how to get this show on the road, shall we head inside?”

    Jade whooped excitedly before plucking up the carefully tended pot and leading the way out of the greenhouse and into the house. The living room seemed to be the best place for this to take place, being the larger room, and should anything go wrong the wooden floors would be fairly easy to clean. Hopefully. Dark magic was a bit hard to plan around sometimes, she just hoped it wasn’t an inky explosion of some kind, unless Jade was secretly hankering for black flooring all at once.

    The flower was placed front and center with prominence on the coffee table, but its proximity to the many other flowering plants in the living room gave Rose pause as she fished her wands out from her bag. “Remember that whole ‘what if the plant gets killed’ thing? What do I do if it goes after these instead?”

    “These can be replaced, even if I’d be a little sad,” Jade said. “They’re mostly garden variety things, the harder to replace things are in the greenhouse already. If these wither.. Well. It’ll free up pots for some NEW plants! It’s a win/win!”

    Rose shook her head but smiled fondly. This was just one of the reasons they all loved Jade so much. She was the only one of them that could keep things growing and alive, the one who could revive plants from the garbage and make them into prize winners in mere months. Her spice garden was unrivaled, and even her mint was carefully controlled. Everything she touched seemed to turn green and colorful with lush blossoms in no time at all… it was quite the power to witness over time, and it was hard to tell if it was the science, the natural green thumb, or the way she gave daily concerts and readings to all of the plants in her care that made them grow so well.

    Had to be the love.

    With her wands ready, Rose took a few steps back and pondered her target once more, trying to clear her thoughts to commune properly. What would the Old Ones do with a plant… It was kind of a thrilling prospect, the more she considered it. “You might want to step back,” Rose warned, “I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen. I’m going to just lash out at it and see what comes.”

    “Waaaay ahead of you,” Jade said, popping up from behind the sofa to give a thumbs up before ducking back down.

    Wetting her lips, Rose turned and grasped her wands more firmly before closing her eyes and breathing slowly in and out, clearing her mind. Listening… listening for the whispers of the old tongues she’d listened to so closely before for answers and guidance. They came to her eventually, cold and dark but comforting, soothing, a hand stroking down her back like a cat being pet as she returned to something that felt like home.

    The stroking didn’t stop there, though. Her mind wandered a bit, the sensitive patting feeling akin to touching the rose earlier. Thoughts intertwined and flickered before she could control it, yonic imagery of the flower overlapping with herself. Rose squared. Someone touching her as she’d touched the rose, touching her sensitive petals, petals that wouldn’t break if you got a little rough. The hand down her back felt like it flitted between her legs when she finally opened her eyes and cast the magic that had accumulated.

    Was it too soon? Too late? Hard to tell, but it felt good to cast this spell. Better than she’d anticipated it would feel to cast after so long of not just letting the magic do as it pleased. She felt powerful in ways she didn’t normally think possible, dangerous, beautiful beyond compare… and when she came to her senses, that all seemed to have been passed on to the flower. It’s soft blue hue looked electric now, stimulated and further bloomed than it had been before, larger. It glowed softly, as if a black light were shining over it from somewhere out of view, ghostly and unnatural yet sumptuously appealing. She wanted to touch it again, to stroke it, to see if it was still as soft as before. Without a second thought, Rose transferred her right hand’s wand to her left and reached the then empty hand out to stroke the petals ever so gently.

    The flower erupted with a soft puff of barely visible pollen the second she touched it, rising high into the air and spreading with the soothing scent of roses and fresh water. Jade popped up from behind the sofa not a moment later, wanting to see what had happened after the flash of light she’d seen go off like a flashbulb so close by.

    “Rose? Did it work? What’s… oh wow,” she said softly, jumping over the back of the sofa to come get a close look, adjusting her glasses. The smell of roses and fresh water was intense, but not unpleasant. It was like a perfume applied to perfectly washed skin, all encompassing and welcoming to partake of. “I’m going to need to take some samples to look at this under the microscope. Magic under a microscope! Can you imagine?” she said excitedly, looking upt to Rose to see her reaction.

    The reaction she caught was Rose lurching towards her to kiss her full on the mouth as if she were starved for it. Jade squeaked, startled, and it was just enough for Rose’s tongue to part her lips and gouge deep. Their breaths both grew ragged within moments, as one thing became abundantly clear: standing still was not an option. Permeated with the scent of roses, Jade reached up to grab Rose by the shirt before yanking her forwards and back, thudding down on the ground on her own back before rolling to pin the blonde down, waves of her long dark hair covering them both as they kissed like life would stop existing should they stop.

    It was an obvious next step to start shedding layers. The only thoughts in their minds were More, Now, Warm, Wet, and Sex. God, the sex. It seemed so important suddenly. The only important thing in the world was to have sex right then, right there, or surely the world would implode. Off went Rose’s shirt before she pulled back from the kiss and abandoned her wands to the side like common sticks to wrestle the larger girl off her and onto her back instead, hands fussing with the front of her jeans even as her hips rocked against the curve of Jade’s well muscled thighs to get a bit of friction underneath her skirt.

    They fought this way till the layers were all off and each was bare as a newborn, winding up face to face on their knees with their legs spread, each with a hand between the other’s thighs, rubbing at the wet slits they found with greedy fingers. Jade had to bend her back slightly to accomodate a kiss, taller than Rose by a good amount, and it made her breasts hang at such a nice level that Rose couldn’t help but break that kiss to feast instead. She teased a nipple with her tongue, with her teeth till it was hard, peppering Jade’s dark skin with her black lipstick in gaudy smudged lines as she went from one side to the other to suckle till she shivered and shook. The wetness on Rose’s fingers became more pronounced as she rubbed, finally urging her to slip a finger inside. When one proved to be insufficient, she placed two inside up to the middle knuckle, gasping when Jade’s larger fingers did the exact same thing without warning.

    The sounds were lewd and wet as they worked out a tempo, Rose’s hand going quicker when it was apparent that was what Jade wanted and liked most, Jade’s going slower when she noticed how hard Rose liked to grind on her palm when she got close to a certain spot inside of her. They shook, finding it hard to stay still, hard to stay in place. This couldn’t last, they needed to keep moving, needed to do more. Needed more.

    Rose was the one who broke position first, removing her fingers from Jade’s entrance and slipping them between her own dark lips while looking up at her with hazy eyes, tongue swirling till everything was clean to give an idea of what she wanted to do. Jade’s hand withdrawing, though hesitantly, at least seemed to be permission enough. Moving forward to put pressure on Jade’s shoulders, Rose pushed her backwards, back towards the couch till she got the picture and stood to go take a seat, shimmying herself to the edge as Rose crawled closer, a hungry demon in disguise ready to pray at the altar of sweet flesh before her.

    Black kiss marks started at Jade’s navel before peppering lower, barely there outlines as the residue finally disappeared over the top of her pubic hair, lower and lower still till her tongue traced the pink nub of clitoris and began to suckle mercilessly.

    It was intense, too much in fact, but Jade wasn’t about to tell her to stop. Instead, she arched her back and gasped, knees splaying wider reflexively as her toes curled, long legs awkwardly hovering in place before Rose reached up and clasped at either side of her thighs and pulled her close. Squeeze all you want, the touch said. Such a pretty pair of earmuffs should be worn with pride.

    With the teasing over, Rose went lower and traced her tongue over the outer edges of Jade’s labia, flatly lapping over the ridges of her inner lips with a groan to get another taste of what had been on her fingers moments earlier. Unable to help herself, she finally slipped her tongue inside and swirled it about, sampling all she pleased, slowing only when she glanced up to check the beautiful view of Jade’s back arched and her mouth open, white, uneven teeth on full display. The moans were delicious as she was, and Rose went back to her task with gusto, one hand slipping down between her own thighs to stroke and rub at herself needily.

    She needed… more. She needed a bit more for this to feel as good as possible. She’d kill for her toys from home, even if it was just the one with  the suction cup. The idea of impaling herself on something large while making Jade cry out and spasm like this was appealing enough that Rose moaned with want, twitching. She came, hard, and focused through the mind numbing effect just enough to keep edging Jade along towards her own release.

    More ambrosia for the greedy blonde, a thumb rubbing at Jade’s clitoris as she suckled and lapped away at her target, but… it wasn’t enough.

    More.

    Needed more.

    The thought was terribly urgent now, and though neither knew it, the same thoughts were running through each other’s minds, carried on the heavy scent of roses and fresh water and the smell of sex.

    More.

    Without a word, Jade stood up like a sleepwalker and wandered nude through her home, up to her bedroom, to rummage for some things while Rose took care of what needed to be done. The caster would be the one to cast this second net. Rose stood up and walked to where her purse lay, her own fluids running down her thighs as she straightened and bent once more, pulling out her phone.

    It’d take two calls.

    No…

    One call.

    One call, and that would be enough.

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

    Dave’s phone rang three times before he answered it. He was lounging on John’s couch at the moment, feet up on John himself as if he were a footstool while he played a video game. Badly, by Dave’s standards, but hey who was keeping track aside from him.

    “Sup,” he said, not even checking to see who was calling. Whoever it was had gotten his number correct enough to make the phone ring, so a conversation they would have whether they wanted one or not. He kind of missed the last spam call he got, it had been a good way to waste an hour, talking them into ever entwining circles.

    “Dave?”

    “Rose,” Dave said once he recognized the voice, less confirming who it was but more mimicking her speech pattern in the moment.

    “Dave… are you busy right now?”

    “Define busy, because if by Busy you mean hecklin’ Egbert while he repeatedly beefs it at Mario Kart, then yeah, I’m busy as fuck.”

    “ Shut up, I’m not doing that bad!” came John’s offended voice, reaching behind him with one arm to swat at Dave’s feet, wanting to make him uncomfortable. Talk shit, get hit.

    “Says the guy who’s catchin’ every goddamn banana peel and shell ever released in the game from the first day of release till now, are you even gettin’ time to drive straight or are you just holdin’ the thing for fun at this point.”

    “Ah, you’re at John’s, perfect,” she said. “We need both of you.”

    “Yeah? What for?” Dave asked, fending off John’s slaps with his feet on his chest as he’d finally had enough to abandon his meager chances at victory to deliver a playful onslaught of his own.

    “We need to feed the plants,” Rose said, before hanging up.

    Blinking, Dave held his phone up to look at it, tempted to dial back but not doing so. “...Well. That was fuckin’ creepy.”

    “What’d she say?” John asked, giving up his assault in favor of leaning heavily on Dave’s legs like a counterweight, letting himself be jiggled in place by the press of his feet.

    “That we were needed. That we need to feed the plants.”

    “Uh. And you said that was Rose, right? Was that Rose-Rose or spooky Rose?” John asked, slightly suspicious. They’d been summoned by stranger things before when she was communing or doing rituals, and some of the horror movie side effects had lasting precautionary measures to John’s psyche. Like trying to remember not to freak out if your friends pupils and irises disappear because startling sounds can cause the shrieks of the damned in response.

    “It sounded like normal Rose. Besides, she was just goin’ to hang at Jade’s today, right?” he asked, gently easing John closer to his body by letting his leg bend to his chest, carefully controlled movements making his muscles burn in a pleasant way. “No need for spooky Rose if she’s just chillin’ there.”

    “Mmm.. yeah I guess… But why would they need us to help feed plants? Doesn’t Jade usually have that on lockdown?”

    “Maybe she’s got some new range of babies that eat raw steak for lunch and need some extra hands that don’t mind gettin’ chewed on a bit to feed’em.”

    “I’d mind getting bit, fuck you!”

    “Aw, poor John, afraid of gettin’ nibbled on by plants with puppy teeth,” Dave crooned, pressing John bodily backwards again with a grunt till he got the picture and stood up on his own power. “C’mon, let’s boogie and see what’s up. I’m curious now.”

    The game chimed with the sound of other players victories, making John sigh and turn his system off. Not like he’d had a chance at that point anyway, but man it still sucked. “Okay, okay, let me just get my keys..,”

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

    Neither was sure what to expect when they went to Jade’s place. The lights were on, but low from the outside, and the air smelled strange. Pleasant, but strange, more flowery than usual. They assumed Jade must have gotten some new plants after all,  or something somewhere was in full bloom out of view, and knocked on the door.

    And again.

    And again.

    With no response, John tried the knob and found the door unlocked, letting himself in. “She won’t mind, especially if Rose called us over,” he reasoned.

    “Yeah I gue- Jesus H Fuckin’ Christ, can you smell that?” asked Dave, giving a soft hoot of disbelief, fanning in front of his face once they stepped inside. “It’s like the place got dipped into the flowery section of Bath’n Body Works.”

    “Yeah, hah. Maybe the smell’s from the plants that need… fed,” John trailed off as they closed the door and wandered inside.

    There were many things that the duo expected to see when they rounded the entryway corner and made it into the living room, but the scene before them was not one of them. Rose and Jade, both nude, were quite busy on the back of the sofa. Rose was bent over the back edge of it, bracing herself, legs spread into a wide stance as Jade fucked her senseless from behind with what looked like one of her larger strap ons. It made for a gorgeous picture really, Jade’s hair wild and unkempt, her hips working like clockwork, breasts bouncing from the force of impact, long legs bent to accommodate Rose’s shorter stature. One hand was pressing the back of her head down, long fingers clenched in her hair to keep her in place, with her free hand held her hip. A sharp slap rang out as she raised it and thwacked the side of Rose’s ass hard enough to leave another red outline of her hand. Beyond them, on the coffee table, sat the most gorgeous flower either of them had seen, and all around in the air the pollen was already starting to work.

    “Should... Should we leave? Are we interrupting?” John asked obliviously, red in the face and gesturing back towards the door with one baffled hand. Dave, beside him, was taking his phone out and snapping a picture to commemorate the moment. It wasn’t a selfie, but it’d join the others from other times they’d all fooled around nonetheless. What a nice album of memories.

    “Nice.”

    “Dave!”

    “What.”

    Groaning quietly, John looked back towards Jade and Rose, only to find them separating and focusing their attention on them. Rose was wobbly on her feet and thoroughly wrecked, but she still had a hungry look in her eyes that made John feel harder than he’d already been when she came closer. Jade, still wearing her good strap, smirked and made a beeline for Dave’s side. Maybe it was just the girls, maybe it was the pollen in the air, but it took little effort for Rose to lead John’s large frame closer to the couch and get his belt off and even less for Jade to grasp Dave beneath the arms and practically carry him over as well.

    Layers were shed with efficiency due to four pairs of hands helping. As the pollen took stronger effect and the scent of roses became overwhelming, Dave found himself tugging John down for a messy kiss between items being tossed this way and that, grunting when he felt Jade slip up behind him and yank his hair to tip his head back. She leaned and kissed him upside down instead, playfully pressing the tip of her dick against the crest of his ass as she pressed her breasts against his shoulders, free hand reaching down to grab him by the cock. A promise of things to come.

    Rose, meanwhile, had slipped behind John and was already working both hands around his dick, stirring it the rest of the way to life. John wasn’t able to stand still. More. Need. Want. Sex. Wet. Now. The same string of thoughts that had been rushing through Rose and Jade’s minds for the last hour and a half was trailing through John and Dave’s thoughts, the plant knowing damn well what it wanted. What all the plants in the living room, now infected, wanted. What Rose had wanted when she cast her spell. Almost frantically, John sat down on the couch and reached for Rose’s waist, lifting her up and setting her down on his lap, groaning when she didn’t waste a second, spreading her legs and sliding down around his cock like a tight fitting glove. Jade had really done a number on her from the feel of it, she was wetter than he’d ever seen her and already starting to bounce in place, hands resting on his shoulders.

    Jade, thankfully, had brought lube with her when she brought the strap downstairs, knowing the boys would need it once they arrived. She made use of it now, steady fingers teasing Dave’s ass open as she leaned him against the back of the sofa where Rose had been minutes before, opposite of where she was now. His hands sought hers on John’s shoulders, fingers lacing as he leaned forwards, trying to catch her lips as she moved, failing to do much more than catch her splotchily marked lips as they passed by. She slowed her rise and fall on John’s lap and rose up onto her knees to kiss him instead, prompting John to grasp her hips and start fucking upwards from below, letting her stay steadier save for fleeting bobs of her breasts and head.

    It was appreciated. At least until Jade finished her fingering and started to gently work the toy into place. It was a size Dave had taken before many times, the familiar toy roughly the size of John’s dick, but it’d been a while since they’d been this desperate for it. Impatient. Needy. Dave shifted his weight from side to side as Jade slowly worked in inch by inch, backing out enough to let the lube spread more before pushing inside further each time. Soon she’d bottomed out and leaned forwards to kiss up Dave’s back, biting the back of his neck ferally when she rocked her hips back and slammed them forwards the first time.

    Jade followed Dave’s moans like directions, angling their bodies this way and that till they found the perfect angle for his prostate, hammering at the internal ridge mercilessly as Rose had attacked her clit earlier. When his legs buckled and tried to give out suddenly, she hefted him back up and braced him in place, one hand stabilizing on the couch and the other gripping his pale hip hard enough it left the imprint of finger marks and soft ridges from the tips of her nails.

    Both blondes were a mess of moans, hair in their eyes, sweat on their brows as their lovers worked them over. ...Yet it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough when Rose forced herself lower as John came, clenching tightly around him as she finished  again. It wasn’t enough when Dave gasped and painted a few patches of the wooden floor white and panted for breath.

    It wasn’t enough, not for the plants. The plants wanted More. Wanted Now. Wanted Sex. Wanted Wet. Wanted Hard. John, Dave, Rose and Jade wanted More, Now, Sex, Wet, Hard.

    More.

    More.

    The pollen wasn’t satisfied.

    Rose peeled herself off John’s lap when Jade pulled out of Dave and let him walk on wobbly legs to the front of the couch, following him with the eyes of a predator as he took over Rose’s position like a changing of the guard, slipping down readily onto John’s still achingly hard cock, still plenty wet from his earlier release and Rose’s fluids. A few bounces was as far as he got before Jade was stopping him and pushing him forwards against John’s chest, trying to fit against him like a puzzle piece. The tip of the toy probed at him, demanding entrance, though he was unsure if it was even possible when something was already within him. Rose crouched behind Jade and helped to steady the cock as it repeatedly attempted to gain purchase, her other hand reaching up to knead at one of her full breasts before trailing touches down her lipstick marked torso and abdomen, the worked up sweat making for a nice texture when she scratched gently with her nails before dipping lower to finger her encouragingly.

    Jade and John traded positions a few times, one entering and pounding away before withdrawing and allowing the other into place, working him open more and more as he relaxed… before finally they were able to, gently, accomplish it. John hissed air when he felt Jade’s toy against his dick, the warm pressure around him almost too intense to handle. Rose had scootched aside and climbed up onto the couch, alternating between kissing John and Dave’s breathless mouths as Jade slowly began to move for the both of them, rubbing sensually against John’s cock every time she pushed inwards, rocking Dave further forwards onto John every time she pulled back. She fingered herself busily and groaned at the sight as Dave shook and shivered, dick already spilling against John’s stomach. The brunette wasn’t far behind, grunting as he came, Jade pulling out to discard the soiled toy and strap. Among the items she’d gathered was a washcloth, and she wasted no time in throwing it onto John’s lap the second it was empty, Dave rising as if in a trance to follow Rose’s lead to the floor.

    The blondes tussled for control of the situation, unsure of who was going where for a hot minute, before Dave finally got Rose on her side and sank his dick into her wetness, hefting one of her legs up to improve the angle till she cried out.

    John, still on the couch and feeling light headed, didn’t get much reprieve between the call of the flower and the beckoning crook of Jade’s finger from the other side of the flower. He washed himself off before rising to follow her call, sinking down to his knees before her when she settled back and parted strap marked legs before him, a goddess in her own right. Her tangled hair fell wildly around her shoulders now, framing her flushed face as she stretched and arched her back showily.

    Not able to resist, John lowered down to get a taste of her as Rose had earlier, nose deep in pubic hair and happy as a clam as he feasted, licking and suckling ways he knew she liked till she tugged his hair and pulled him up.

    Oral was good and fun, but after that long wearing the strap, she needed something substantial to work against to get off again.

    More.

    Now.

    The plants demanded everything they had to give and more.

    Dave and Rose continued to cry out as they writhed on the floor across from them, while John scooted up as Jade demanded and aligned their bodies, finding it easy to slip inside of her. Unlike when playing with the blondes, they were about the same size, making it easier to be a little rough with how they moved with one another. John stayed still for a moment to catch his breath before starting to roll his hips in place, trying to find the best angle he could. When it wasn’t quite feeling right, he pulled back briefly and lifted Jade’s legs, bending her in just such a way that her legs were hooked around his forearms at the knee, deepening the angle substantially and letting him sink in as deeply as possible with each thrust. Jade’s pleasured cry was a good enough indicator for him as he muffled her with a kiss, working his hips like a piston, rocking her against the wooden floor as he braced with his hands.

    The effects of the plant lasted well into the night before finally, blissfully, the magic link was broken and the rose wilted, the taken energy more than enough to fulfill the obligations of the cast spell and then some. So, too, did the rest of the plants in the living room wilt.

    Jade and Rose were a tangle on the floor, Rose with her face against Jade’s breasts and one hand flung out to the side as she panted shallowly. Dave and John were beside them, arms wrapped tight around each other as they panted dazedly.

    “...What… the fuck… was that…” Dave eventually got out when he could think. Well, when he could think of anything aside from the fact his balls must be raisins by now and how walking was going to be off the menu for the day. Maybe the entire weekend. Sorry boss, sick day, can’t walk. Why? Doesn’t matter, mind your business, can’t walk.

    “...I think I made a miscalculation with a spell,” Rose said, not lifting her head, words coming out slurred.

    “The plants’re dead,” Jade confirmed dazedly, squinting. Where had her glasses gone? When had they gone anywhere? Things were cloudy and some details hard to remember. She reached out to pat John on the hip comfortingly. “You alive?”

    “Barely,” he groaned. “Ugh. My head… At least it doesn’t smell like roses anymore.”

    “Yeah,” Rose chuckled.

    “...Now what,” Dave asked, looking up at the ceiling. Weirder things had happened before somewhere surely, best to just take these kinds of things in stride. At least it had happened with people who were already his partners instead of a group of strangers, right?

    “Wanna get pizza?” Jade asked. “I’m starving .”

    “Do I have to move or put on pants,” John asked. “I think my everything is broken.”

    “Rock paper scissors for who answers the door,” Rose suggested with a tired grunt, her own stomach suddenly realizing it was painfully in need of fuel.

    “You’re on,” said Dave. “Prepare to lose.”

    They supposed, all tangled up on the floor, sticky from several different sources and covered in sweat, that this would at least make a funny story someday. For now though, they took solace in one another for the experience, ate too much pizza, and eventually limped their way to the shower in pairs before retiring to Jade’s oversized bed for an impromptu sleepover. Their dreams were deep and blissful, their sleep regenerating, and their bond was stronger than ever before.

[lesbianmonsterlover]

Fem Werewolf x Fem Reader

Tooth rotting fluff and SFW with some implications at the end :)

Your bookstore and the little apartment above it were what you had to show for nearly three decades of life.  You were prepared for the backlash from your parents when you came out as gay, but being totally abandoned by not only your family but the friend group from your small town was not exactly what you had expected.  Moving to the closest large town was better for your mental health, but your previous experiences made it difficult for you to really open up to people.  So you contented yourself with your books and your home.

The larger town was still quite small by most other people’s standards, but you didn’t have to drive an hour each way to get groceries like you did back home so you were happy.  Slowly but surely you got used to the faces around town.  Now into your third year you knew to begin prepping for the summer reading rush, thankful to have talked to the school about letting you know some of the curriculum in advance so you can stock enough copies of the given books.  

Unloading a full box of As I Lay Dying you were in the back when the little bell over the door to the shop chimed, letting you know someone had come in.  “I’ll be with you in a moment!”  You call out to the front, and while you don’t hear an answer back verbally you do get a hum of acknowledgement.  The woman standing and browsing over your small selection of handbound notebooks, ones that you made while you sat behind the desk, was familiar to you.  As always seeing her made a coil of attraction pool in your gut.  She was tall and lithe, corded muscle and sinew, her hair shorn short to show off her angular face.  That face was - well, some would say marred, not you though - but a set of three large slashes cover the left side of her face diagonally across her eye, from brow to lip.  The scars were thick and shiny, showing their age, and you were surprised she didn’t lose sight in that eye as the intensity of the scarring shows it must have been a close call.  Her dark skin almost seems to shimmer in the comfortable soft light of your store as she moves, she cuts an imposing figure, but you’ve always liked that in women.

You’re broken out of your musing as she pins you to the spot with her amber eyes, you feel like prey being stalked.  Your cheeks are flushed and you give her a shy smile, your hands nervously skating over the wood of your counter.  “Hey there Nik, what can I do for you?”  The smile she returns to you makes you weak in the knees, but you try not to show it.  

“Just this for now, bunny…”  Her tone is full of some dark promise, but her eyes are so warm and you’re so lost in their dark honeyed depths that you miss it.  You nod, your cheeks getting warmer, and take the notebook she passed you.  Absentmindedly you ring up the purchase, stealing glances back up at the gorgeous woman whose eyes never left you.  You fumble with her change, goosebumps racing up your arm as you place it in her hand and your fingers brush against hers.  She puts the change in her front pocket, slipping the small notebook into the back one.  With her free hand she grips your chin between her thumb and forefinger, searching your eyes for a moment before deciding she likes what she sees there and giving you a positively wolfish grin, the sharp point of one canine peeking out.  “I’ll see you soon, little bunny.”

When she walks out you turn and slide down your counter, the handles of drawers digging into your back uncomfortably but you’re too flustered to really pay attention.  She started calling you bunny a few months after she first set foot in your shop, maybe because you were simultaneously high energy and terribly skittish.  She never said much, happy to let you chat amiably at her.  Today’s behavior though was positively out of left field.  You had no earthly idea what happened just now, but the ache between your thighs was a familiar companion after she left.  

The rest of the day was a blur, you weren’t quite sure what you did all day but you managed to close up the shop and wander out to the little patch of land out back.  Your store was on the edge of the little town, and butted up against the woods on two sides of its land.  You loved to sit outside in the evenings, drinking tea and reading, or simply watching the woods and the night sky.  There were wolves in the woods, the townspeople all knew, but they said as long as you stay out of the woods at night they won’t bother you.  For all these years they were right, you had heard them before, howling balefully or playfully yipping at one another.  You’d never heard of animal attacks, or killed livestock or pets, you’d never even seen one, so really what was there to worry about?  

Why don’t we rewind a bit.  The town of Fellview had been around for a long time.  Long enough that it had existed in a time when humans and nonhumans lived together freely and peacefully.  It had been a safe spot since then, the town you see was mostly nonhuman, humans usually had to have a specific reason to be here, someone inside who wanted or needed them here.  When the old seer who ran the bookstore before you told the town council of her intent to sell to you they were aghast.  An outsider, who knew nothing of the town or its history, was dangerous.  The woman merely gave them a smile, and said your fated mate was not yet here, but that you must be waiting here for them.  She knew not why, only that the town needed your mate, and if your mate was going to stay here she would need to have a reason.

Nikira had wandered for most of her life.  As a werewolf and an alpha, her pack had abandoned her when she challenged her brother for the right of pack leader and lost.  She knew that was a possibility going in, but she was prepared to die rather than mate the alpha of another pack just for political gain.  That was fifteen years ago.  Eight months ago she stopped in Fellview, knowing it was a safe place for her to rest out the cold months.  Looking for something to occupy herself she wandered around the town and into your little shop.  It was your scent that initially told her something.  She’d heard stories as a pup about true mates, humans would call them soul mates, but with werewolves it was as much about biology as it was natural magic.  

She didn’t know what to do with this information, so she simply wandered over to a shelf by your counter, staring at the books on it like they held the answers to the universe while she took in your scent.  “Hello there, anything I can help you with?”  Gods above and below your voice.  It sounded sweet to her ears, especially compared to the rough gravel that came out of her own throat after years of disuse.  When her eyes met yours she was a goner, the affectionate sparkle of your eyes and gentle smile on your face.  She was sure you were an angel, there was no other explanation for you.  She enjoyed the way your cheeks flushed under her stare.  She knew she could be intimidating, but you didn’t seem scared of her.  She smirked, grabbing one of the notebooks blindly and making the three steps over to you.  She came back regularly, and made arrangements with the local pack of strays like her to stick around.  She built a house inside the woods near your property, more comfortable with the cover of trees and separation from the rest of the townsfolk.  When that was done she finally felt ready for you, she could provide for you, do her duty as your alpha and mate.  It took some getting used to, being domestic instead of just wandering and sleeping outside for most of the year.  She liked it though, the reliability, the steadiness.  

That brings us back to today, when she strolled into your shop, gave you that devastating smile and told you she’ll see you soon.  You were still mulling over your interaction with Nikira, remembering the feeling of her rough fingertips on your chin, when a rustle at the edge of the trees made you startle in your little chair and sit up straight.  The wolf that loped out of the trees was positively huge, you guessed if you were standing its back would be up to your sternum just on all fours.  It trotted towards you, pinning you with its amber eyes, so familiar and warm.  Your heart is hammering out of your chest as the wolf walks right up to you, huffing out something that sounds like a laugh, before nuzzling your cheek with the butt of its jaw.  The stripe it licks up your cheek makes you giggle, and without really thinking you reach up to run your fingers through the dark coarse fur of its neck.  It gives you a low rumble, but before you can pull your hand away the wolf begins covering your neck and chest with long swipes of its tongue.  

It pulls back, panting, and you watch in confusion as it shifts, seeming to stop halfway between human and lupine.  You’re suddenly hammered with awareness, this is a werewolf.  You thought you were going crazy when you imagined some of the townsfolk were magical, like really losing the plot.  But here you were, being proved right.  “Hello there, little bunny.”  You’re torn from your thoughts by the voice, it’s a bit darker, growlier, but you recognize the lilt and the nickname, only one person ever called you that… “N-Nik?”  The wolf grinned, her eyes darkening as her pupils began to overtake the honey of her iris.  

“Oh bunny, I’ve been waiting for so long to find you…”  She nuzzles along your jaw and neck, over your chest, her large hands gripping at your waist and hips.  You don’t protest, you’ve been hers for so long now.  You haven’t thought of anyone else for months, since she first pinned you with those amber eyes, full of adoration and promise.  That was where she first claimed you, under the stars on the grass, where her mark was made on your body and soul, as yours had been the first time she laid eyes on you.

[candyheartharry]

Fall Apart - Part II: Bewitched

Author’s note: Hi dolls! 💘 Sorry it took me forever to get the second part up and ready, it took a while to get some inspiration for it, but of course as soon as I got it, I had it done in one day lol. Once again our series playlist can be found here, and if you’d like to be added to the tag list at the end drop me a message and let me know, feedback is EXTREMELY appreciated, happy reading ✨ PART I

Although you and Calum had shared friends, it wasn’t until the two of you started spending more time together that these two groups began to intertwine, but it was going to be just you while he and the band were all around the world on a small promo tour. You’d kept up with him a little while he was away, receiving occasional texts and snapchat videos from wherever he was, usually either a nice picture of the scenery or a video of him and the other guys doing something funny.

It had been a little while since he was away, and you really weren’t too sure when he was supposed to be back due to a few commitments they hadn’t quite confirmed before they left, so the most he could give you before he left was a two week window on when he might possibly be back home again.

In the meantime, one of your friends who worked for an art museum downtown had invited you to an early preview party for a new temporary exhibition that was opening at the museum, so since you had nothing better to do on a Wednesday evening, you got dressed up enough to try to not look out of place among donors to the museum and fancy people who had memberships. Since she worked there she had to be there early, so you were going to be arriving by yourself and meeting her there. As you made your way through the entrance after presenting your guest pass card to the attendant at the welcome desk, you promptly made your way to the bar to help yourself to your one complimentary drink of the evening.

You had tried texting your friend to let her know you were there, but knew that since this was technically a work event for her it might be a little while before she could respond and come say hello. Until then, you decided to take a look around the exhibit that everyone had come to see. Since it was an early preview, it was obviously packed full of people who you never would’ve imagined yourself at a party with. Many people who were leading discussions in small groups crowded around the ornate frames on the wall gave off the obvious vibes that they were professors of some sort, mostly due to their use of words like “tone”, “depth”, and conversations about color choices. Others seemed like doctors, or lawyers, or stockbrokers, or maybe multi-million dollar luxury real estate agents who had so much money they decided to make very large annual donations to the museum in the name of charitable giving. There were of course others who you could tell were just membership holders out for a nice evening, and now that you think about it, you were a little surprised you hadn’t run into any of your other friends, assuming that you weren’t the only one your friend Cora who worked there had invited.

After a while of doing your best to see what types of painting and small sculptures were in this new exhibit over everyone else crowded closely around them, you still hadn’t heard from your friend, so you decided to take a break from listening to conversations about “what this shade of blue here means versus the other shade of blue in this area” and made your way out of the gallery over to the elevators that brought you upstairs earlier. Once you entered the glass elevator, you decided on going up one level to the contemporary floor. When the doors opened one floor above, there was instantly a difference in the atmosphere, not just because this area felt more spacious and open, and the pieces were much larger and not in ornate gold frames, but the first room of the gallery was completely empty with the exception of two security guards who welcomed you once they realized they were no longer alone.

After admiring a few pieces near the entrance, you followed a distant noise across the first room into the next to see where it was coming from. The only sound in the otherwise quiet gallery came from a massive mountain of speakers stacked from the floor to the ceiling, playing very quietly, but playing slightly ominous music overlapped with a few various sound effects and dialogue from movies and TV shows every now and then. Something about how gigantic and illusive this mountain of speakers was drew you in, and you found yourself wanting to stop and listen rather than explore the rest of the empty gallery. Of course, since the gallery was empty due to everyone else being downstairs, the bench across from this colossal structure was empty as well. You decided to take up a seat across from the speakers and recorded a quick video of the scene for your Instagram story. After posting, you put your phone away in the small clutch purse you brought, and decide to enjoy the peace and quiet compared to the party full of people you don’t know that you had just left.

It was nice in its own way, the quiet accented by the almost white noise coming from the speakers. It should be unsettling, but it was almost calming. Something about it felt like it was putting you in a trance, it was something so monumental, it almost felt like it had a secret that if you watched and waited long enough it would let you in on what it knew.

“Mind if I join you?” a familiar voice interrupts your from your thoughts. You look up to your right to see Calum grinning down at you, dressed in a black and white striped shirt that looked very nice on him, and a drink in his own hand. “Oh my god, Calum, hi!” you exclaimed while you instantly broke into a smile of your own after you realized who it was speaking, and rushed to set your drink down on the bench to your left before turning back to open your arms up to him.

He accepted your invitation into your open arms, starting out for a hug before he was even properly seated yet, both of your arms wrapping around his broad back and he squirmed to set his drink next to yours behind your back so he didn’t spill it on you. Once his hands were free they wrapped carefully around you, pulling you closer into him.

“Oh my god, you’re the last person I ever expected to be here, when did you get back?!” you ask once you both pull apart.

“I got back pretty late yesterday! Did you come with anybody else?” he asks as he leans around behind you for the two drinks, handing yours back to you as he holds onto his own.

“No, it’s just me. I didn’t know anybody downstairs so I just came up here,” you told him. It was still just the two of you in the gallery with the speakers, which have gotten his attention. The backing track its playing almost sounds like music that should be playing in a horror movie when the antagonist is introduced, but the overlapping track is a scene from Pride and Prejudice.

“Damn, what’s the first song you’d want to play on these if you got to pick?” he asks, turning to you before he takes a sip of his drink. You look away from him and back up at the towering mountain of speakers across from you both and think about your answer.

“Are we choosing loud songs or sad songs?” you ask, needing to narrow down what type of answer he wants to know.

“Well my answer is by Cigarettes After Sex, so pick something different for variety’s sake.”

“Can I be super cliché and go with The Less I Know The Better, Tame Impala. You said your band, but what’s your song?” you ask, shifting your position a little so that you’re facing him a little more.

“Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby,” he replies, and even though it’s just the name of the song, for some reason hearing the way he says ‘baby’ gives you chills.

“So what brings you up to the contemporary floor in the first place? Didn’t want to hang out with all the art critics downstairs?” you ask to change the subject. “Oh, you posted on your Instagram, so I came to find you,” he replies casually, sending your heart into your throat, so you take a sip of your drink to try to calm down. “Plus some of the Picasso’s downstairs looked like they could’ve also been villains on Courage the Cowardly Dog, so,” he adds with a shrug, making you laugh.

Neither of you said anything for a moment, even though there was so much you both wanted to say. He wanted to tell you every detail about his time away: the cities they went to, the people they got to meet, how he spent time with his mother which made him feel the most like himself he had felt in a while, but he probably wouldn’t tell you about how about halfway into the trip he realized he missed you a little more than he normally missed his friends when he was away. You wanted to ask him all about what he saw in the countries he had left, he always had such a more interesting life than you did, but that wasn’t all you wanted to talk about. You wanted to tell him about how mundane your life was here back at home while he was gone, and that the most interesting thing you had done was meet up with an old friend from your hometown who was passing through on a business trip. You wanted to tell him how ever since he had been gone, you had been hearing his new song on the radio nearly every time you started your car, so it almost felt like his way of saying hello even when he wasn’t around. You wanted to tell him how the barista at the coffee shop inside the bookstore you both liked had asked where your friend was the last time you went, and how you realized you actually felt kind of lonely when you told her that he was out of town. Instead you both just sat in the silence for a little while more, and listened to the mountain of speakers play a scene from the 1996 Romeo and Juliet overlapped with organ music that sounds like it could be in a haunted house.

“I missed you,” he admits after a moment’s silence. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice that his left hand is resting on the bench in the space between you two, and when he feels you noticed it he moves his hand ever so slightly closer towards you almost in an invitation that he wants you to take it.

“Sorry, I cant help it that I’m just so charming,” you tease him, nudging him with your shoulder, which makes him laugh and shake his head. When he stops laughing and is just smiling softly at you still, you place your hand on top of his.

“I missed you, too,” you continue more seriously, giving him a soft smile of your own. “The stripes are a nice look, by the way,” you add after not so subtly checking him out. You’d be lying if you said he didn’t look fucking amazing, but telling him that word for word would very likely get to his head.

He slides his hand out from underneath yours to properly hold your hand now, leaning down to place his drink on the floor before he guides you to stand up from the bench you had been seated at. “Do you want do dance with me?” he asks once you both are standing.

“Calum, this is literally a sample of a Pink Floyd song and dialogue from Titanic,” you try to oppose, setting your own now empty glass on the bench where you had been sitting. Instead, he guides you into a twirl while he shrugs his own shoulders.

“I know what I said,” he continues, reaching for your other hand and pulling you in so that you both are standing with your elbows bent and your joined hands are level with his chest, so close that if you were to let go you could reach out and touch him, but you knew better than to give in so you kept them safely joined in his in the space between you both.

In the daytime, the gallery is lit up from the natural lighting that the skylights allow, but in the evening, the darkness casts an inky blue across the room, with just a little light coming from the moon and from the occasional spotlights that illuminate certain pieces of the artwork.

“You’re supposed to say that I look nice too, you know,” you playfully point out as Calum guides you both around in a circle in the empty gallery in front of the speakers. He grins down at you before he extends his arm and lets go of your hand to guide you into a twirl again. After he spins you around he doesn’t join both your hands again, and places his free hand on your waist to pull you just a touch closer than you were standing before.

“You know I always think you look nice,” he replies. ‘Nice’ isn’t the word he wants to use, he wants to use amazing, incredible, entrancing, beautiful, captivating, but just ‘nice’ will have to do for now. Distance must have made you both a little bolder, because this evening there seems to have been an unspoken, but mutually recognized tension between you two. Staring into his eyes is almost too intense, even more so once you catch him looking away to glance at your lips for a moment, so you look away yourself to admire another piece in the gallery across the room.

You notice you’ve been in the gallery for so long now that the track on the speakers has looped back to the beginning, when you hear the same scene from Pride and Prejudice playing again. “You have bewitched me, body and soul,” is the first line you notice has started playing back, and you notice as well that Calum has started to look around the room at the other art. You take the moment to admire how he looks in the shadows of the darkness, searching to see if he’s any different now than when you left him. His hair looks like it was recently cut a little shorter, and he’s gone back to black instead of a silvery blonde. You’ve always thought the contrast of the two reminded you of night and day, and now he’s gone back to night.

“You have bewitched me, body and soul,” repeats again, now mixed over the bridge of a Lana Del Rey song you both like. He notices the song and meets your gaze again. He almost asks why you’re staring, but lets it slide in hopes you’ll return the favor eventually and let him do the same someday without questions. This time he’s the one who notices your gaze down to his lips, seeing if his smile still starts on the same side of his mouth that you remember.

He inches his face just a little closer to yours, embracing the boldness he seems to have found in the time he was gone. “Hey,” he says softly in attempt to get your attention. Your eyes flash back up to his, and he notices how where you’re standing allows you to be lit up perfectly in the moonlight.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it’s unfortunately time to call it a night. Everything wrapped up downstairs a little while ago,” a security guard announces from the archway, causing you to both nearly jump out of your skin in surprise. “Okay, thank you,” Calum nods to the guard. He drops his hand from your waist and takes a few steps back to the bench to pick up your discarded cups. You reach for your clutch purse and hold it in both hands in front of you, following his lead back to the elevators once he asks if you’re ready.

He throws away the cups in a trashcan by the doors after pressing the call button, and shoves his hands into his pockets while you wait. When the doors open, he extends an arm in gesture for you to enter first, and he follows behind before pressing the button for the main floor. In the process, you notice the time on the silver watch on his wrist reads that it’s nearly 11:00 PM, meaning you and him must’ve been up there alone for nearly an hour and a half, and neither of you had realized. You press your back against the glass to try to ground yourself again after whatever that was between you that had just happened back upstairs. He doesn’t turn to you, and instead stays just a step ahead with his back facing you the entire short ride four floors down.

“Did you drive yourself or do you want a ride?” he asks as you two exit the building through the lobby. You both fall in step side by side across the courtyard outside. “Oh, no, it’s fine, I drove myself. Did you park in the deck across the street?” you ask in return.

“Yeah, I’m over in that one, Cora gave me a pass for a reserved spot on the first level with my invite, did she give one to you too?” he replies, referring to your friend who had invited you both in the first place, and ended up never seeing the entire night. You nod in reply as you both make your way to the crossing. You had thought for a moment upstairs he might’ve been about to kiss you or say something at least before you were interrupted, but if he was going to act like everything was normal, so were you.

As you make your way into the parking deck across the street, you notice your cars are both just a few spaces apart from each other. You both stop in the empty spaces between to say goodbye before going your separate ways. “Let me know when you want to get coffee at the bookstore again, it’s been too long since I’ve been able to go,” he says after a moment.

“I’m ready whenever you want to go! The girl who always rings us up was asking about you the last time I was there,” you tell him, which makes him smile. It’s always nice to hear the home misses him just as much as he misses home whenever he’s away.

After you get your keys out of your purse, he holds open his arms to wrap you in a hug before you go, and you step into the space you’ve missed so much while he was gone. You close your eyes as he buries his head against your neck, pulling you in for the most proper hug you’ve had in a long time. You don’t realize it at the time, but the last time you’ve felt so secure and safe while wrapped in someone’s arms was his own the last time you saw him at his house the day before he left for the airport.

“Get home safe,” he requests, rubbing his hand across your shoulders before he lets go. You still feel so electrified from whatever sort of trance you both must’ve fell under in front of the speakers earlier that you can’t let him leave before giving a quick, still friendly and as casual as you can make it kiss to his cheek before you step away from him. You tried to act as if was an old habit between you both, your usual routine whenever you part ways, but you’ve never kissed his cheek before, and you both know it no matter how hard you try to not acknowledge it. Once you’ve stepped back, he doesn’t know what to say, and all he can do is blink at you for a moment.

“Be safe, I’ll see you soon. Let me know once you get home,” he requests again in attempt to snap himself out of it while he takes a step backwards towards his own car. You nod and ask him to do the same, heading around to the driver’s side of your own car in the process. Once you’re both safely in your own cars, you give each other a quick wave from the window before you go your separate ways.

You were all he could think about while he was gone, and now that he’s back it seems that you’ll be all he thinks about while he’s home as well.

tag list: @yessii-i @rexorangecouny @calssunflower @notsooperfect @outofmylimitcal @ayee-style @madbomb

[notafeeling]

Infinitesimal (Part I)

A/N Infinitesimal (originally titled in a haze as “LOGAN IS BARRY BLUEJEANS”) is a Sanders Sides AU set in the world of The Adventure Zone: Balance, a DnD podcast made by the McElroy brothers. If you have not started The Stolen Century arc and don’t want spoilers, do not read.

Pairing: eventual logince (Logan/Roman)

Genre: scifi; slowburn

Warnings: temporary character death; TAZ-canon-typical violence

Word Count: 7.5k

Summary:

Logan had always thought that being a human meant he had to work harder and faster than everyone else to truly make a difference in the world. When his home is consumed by an intergalactic force known as The Hunger and he’s forced to go on the run through space with six others for a century, he realises that that’s not exactly true.

Or, Logan accepts an offer to join the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration and to travel around the mysterious planes that control his planet for a few months, but ends up hopping realities and dying a whole bunch alongside his mismatched crew members, learning how to love somewhere along the way.

-

Logan knows that, as a human, he has certain limitations in this world. For one thing, his 80-year expected lifespan is nothing compared to the centuries-old elves and dwarves who are considered teenagers. For another, it means he can’t rely on magic. He doesn’t have enough time to spend it mastering something he was never meant to have.

He turns to science at a young age.

The stars call him from outside his dirty, cracked window, and he dreams of the day he can fly among them. He wants to touch, he wants to grow, he wants to be something more.

Even at 8, he knows that his world doesn’t have the technology for that, and won’t for a very long time. It doesn’t stop him from yearning, though.

His parents send him to an academy at 15, only because he managed to get a scholarship. He graduates at 17 at the top of his class.

It’s still not enough.

He devotes the next five years of his life to mapping the stars and their constellations. Nothing that hasn’t been done before, but Logan’s determined to do this on his own.

If he won’t be able to live among them, then he’ll commit them to memory. Maybe he’ll travel along the constellation Pneuma Cascade in his dreams.

-

Having two suns is a fact everyone on Phaethon has long since accepted. The early civilisations made entire mythos surrounding those two stars alone, and children of his world are told stories of two lovers who chase each other endlessly. The second is dimmer because of his eternal pining, but he will follow the other to the end of times. When parents are asked why, they reply “because they’re in love,” and that’s all there is to that story.

Logan’s long-since moved on from folklore and the notion of love. Instead, he wants to know how. How can these two massive celestial objects coexist without succumbing to one another's’ gravitational pull? How does his planet, as small as it is, only orbit around the two without being sucked in?

Those questions give Logan purpose.

-

At 30, Logan finally has something to show for all his research.

The problem with examining two suns is that first of all, you shouldn’t look directly at them, and secondly, they’re too far away to properly study.

He devises a tool. It’s mostly cylindrical, and the otherwise hollow interior contains several panes of glass. Originally it was designed to filter out the sunlight, but Logan quickly figures out how to magnify the image he’s seeing.

(It’s kind of embarrassing that it took someone with corrective lenses for his short-sightedness to figure that one out, but all that matters is that it works.)

It takes him a few more years to have a perfected prototype. And he sees something no one else has.

He can see the suns in shocking clarity, but he doesn’t care about them (too much) anymore. Instead, he focuses on the slight rift between them. It’s not exactly a rift, more like… a divide. A shift.

Logan spends countless hours studying this, almost forgetting to breathe at times. This is what it’s all been leading to. There’s more! He can be more, do more!

It doesn’t take him much longer to figure out that the second sun is a double of the first. No, not exactly a double.

The second sun comes from the Ethereal Plane. The existence behind theirs, to put it simply. So it’s not a double, more like… the same one, but ever so slightly behind.

And the divide? It’s a weakened point between his plane - the Material Plane - and the other. Which means-

Holy shit. If there are other weakened points to other planes, then they could travel. He could explore! Not just magic-users who pop into the Ethereal Plane for brief moments, nor necromancers trying to break into the Astral Plane, no. Everyone.

Notes and ideas spill furiously from Logan’s mind, down through his arm and onto a thick, leather-bound journal. He lives off of caffeine and adrenaline as he completes his paper on Interplanar Travel, and not long after, he’s contacted by Thomas Sanders, the leader of the newly established Institute of Planer Research and Exploration (IPRE, for short).

Thomas offers him a position on the team of explorers that will be tasked with travelling across planes and, hopefully, beyond that at some point. He explains that although not too long ago, their world certainly didn’t have the technology, ever since the Light of Creation fell there’s been massive leaps in scientific advancement.

(Logan must have been holed up in his study during that time, as he has to pretend he knows exactly what his future boss is referencing.)

It’s everything Logan’s ever wanted, so of course, he accepts.

-

YEAR 0.

10 months later, and he meets his teammates. He’s already known and worked closely with Thomas (soon to be Captain Sanders) for the past few months, and he’s certainly earned Logan’s respect, but the rest of the team has some… shortcomings.

For one thing, he isn’t sure why they need two wizards who also double as cooks (Roman and Virgil) though he supposes the fact that they’re twins who seem to have done everything together makes them a package deal.

And, okay, he gets why they might need a cleric, but surely Patton could also double as the journalist (a young tiefling named Kalumnia), or vice-versa!

Also, if they have a ship that can withstand the heat of passing between two suns and the extremities of space, then why can’t they add a few weapons? Why do they need a security officer? Can’t the twins do magic?

He doesn’t have much time to convince Thomas to hire more fitting members (why not a maintenance crew?) because he meets all these people right before they’re given matching red robes with IPRE emblazoned on them and are told to walk onstage in front of the largest gathering of humans, elves, orcs, tieflings, dragonborns, etc. that Logan’s ever seen in his life.

He’s more than happy to let his Captain manage the questions from various reporters while he sits back and attempts to get to know his crewmates. After all, he’ll be living with them for a few months, possibly longer if the mission is a success. Might as well get comfortable.

“So,” Logan murmurs to the person he’s seated next to (Roman? Or maybe Virgil?), “why did you sign up for this?”

The high-elf casts a cursory glance in his direction as his twin whispers something in his ear, making him snort. They’re definitely laughing at Logan, which. Okay. He can deal with childish behaviour.

“Look! His ears are going red. You embarrassed him, Ro,” the furthest one says.

“I did not! You’re the one who made me laugh!” Roman retorts.

It’s a relief when Thomas calls him up to the podium.

“Salutations. My name is Logan and I’m the Science Officer of IPRE.” His voice rings out all around him and reporters call his name. He chooses one at random - a young human woman with wild hair.

“Hi, Linda from Phaethon Press here. I read your report on Interplanar Travel and I’ve been blown away with the progress you’ve made since!”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, could you explain what you’re hoping to find or learn from your journey?”

Logan’s struck once more by how much he has to explore and a wide smile spreads over his features. “Well, not much is known about the other planes. The Ethereal Plane is usually only used for short periods of travel because of its ever-changing nature. To stay there too long would leave you clueless about how to get back to the Material Plane. And we all know about the Astral Plane, where the departed souls from our plane go. While we don’t have any concrete goals because of our limited knowledge, we do aim to explore the other 9 planes. We don’t know what we’ll find - maybe new life forms or energy or-”

Roman fakes a cough as he exclaims, none-too-quietly, “Nerd alert!”

Logan clears his throat. “Uh, so, we basically aim to explore and research the planes.”

“You don’t say,” he hears Virgil mutter.

God, he can’t imagine living with these people for the next few months.

-

The night before they leave is spent drinking onboard the newly-christened “Starblaster”. Logan makes a face every time he hears the name, but it was suggested by a drunk, giggly Roman and backed up by the equally intoxicated members of his team.

He wants to put as much distance as possible between himself and the twins, so he joins Patton and Kalumnia, who spends half the conversation listening and the other half writing down everything that’s happening. Logan has to admire her penmanship.

“Goodness, I wonder what other planes there are?” Patton wonders aloud.

Logan’s interest is piqued immediately. “Oh! I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot. We know there’s some sort of Celestial Plane because that’s where clerics draw their power from- though I suppose you already know that.”

“I do, but I don’t mind!” Patton smiles.

This guy is infinitely better than the twins, Logan decides. “So that, the Ethereal and the Astral are the planes that have the most impact on ours, so they must be closer or at least, larger and more prominent than the other planes. Therefore, the other planes aren’t likely to bear any sort of intelligent life, but the magic there could be completely different.” Magic that he might possess.

“That’s so cool!”

Kalumnia nods. Her bright, golden eyes watch Logan as he continues to talk, pointed ears perked. Patton asks questions and his own brilliant blue eyes widen whenever Logan mentions something he previously hadn’t known. Even Missy, the security officer Logan has avoided due to the scowl she wears, wanders over and joins the discussion.

For the first time in his life, Logan’s listened to. He could get used to this.

-

It turns out he could and should get used to it because as they leave Phaethon, a thick, suffocating darkness descends on it. They catch a glimpse of 11 other planes before black tendrils shoot out of their plane and pierce the others, and slowly drag it into its massive, incomprehensible form.

“Head for the rift!” Logan yells as his Captain maneuvers them through space.

Columns shoot out at them but the Starblaster dodges them with ease. Alarms blast, ringing sharp and shrill as they rocket towards the two suns, picking up speed each nanosecond.

He, Kalumnia, Thomas and the twins are huddled at the front, staring straight forward into the divide.

Patton and Missy are the only ones brave enough to watch as everything they’ve ever known, everyone they’ve ever loved, is consumed.

They just have to get to the rift. If they do that, they can break through to another plane. They can survive, they can run. They just have to get through, and they’re almost there, so close-

“Right!” Logan cries. Whatever’s attacking comes through the rift, barrelling straight for them.

Thomas jerks his controls to the right, tilting the ship so far that Logan crashes into the side.

His crewmates scream as they collide with something, sending them spiralling through space. Hungry black surrounds them, reaching out, trying to ensnare them and pull them in, but it only ends up flinging them in another direction.

“Change of plans!” Thomas yells, lifting his controls high, trying to break free.

The monster makes one last desperate grab, colliding with the bottom of their ship with a loud clang!

They’re flipped end over end, further and further from the rift. Further from the other planes. Logan’s head bounces off of hard metal, his body thrown around like a sack of bricks. There’s a snap, and then burning pain shoots through his right arm. His vision fades as the pain magnifies, becoming so intense it's unbearable. The panicked yells of his teammates seem so distant, but he manages to pick out a scream of “Roman!” and Patton making one last, desperate effort to heal them.

Black greets him soon after.

-

YEAR 1.

Pure, white light surrounds him. Threads of light stitch him together, restoring his body, and it’s not long before it unravels and reveals the rest of the IPRE members. Logan watches as its wisps are drawn away and disappear from sight, fading into the night sky. Except… he’s on the Starblaster’s deck. So it’s not the sky, it’s… It’s space.

There’s not a single scratch on any of them - apart from the battlescars Missy shows off proudly, but they had always been there. Nothing shows that they had just survived an attack on their home planet, unless… Unless they didn’t survive? Or Logan dreamt it? Or…

A sob breaks the stunned silence surrounding them. Virgil pushes past Logan as he runs toward Roman, tackling him to the floor.

“You died!” He screams. “You died. You were dead. I saw it; I saw your body in front of me, Ro. How are you- how could you-”

Roman pries his arms out from under Virgil and wraps them around his brother. “Shh, it’s okay, I’m here,” he murmurs, stroking Virgil’s purple hair. His eyebrows are knitted together, trying to remember what happened.

Logan does the same.

“Are we- did we die?” Patton whispers. “Where are we? Where’s Thomas?”

At that, Logan realises that there are only six of them. He bolts towards the cockpit. The rest of the team, barring the twins who seem content to fuss over each other, follow in hot pursuit.

The door slams open as the four of them charge through. There, at the controls, is their Captain.

He bolts out of his chair and spins around, hands raised as he readies a spell. When he sees his crew, his whole body relaxes and he goes limp. Missy rushes forward to steady him.

“You’re- you all disappeared,” Thomas breathes out as he’s lowered to the floor. “You all were taken by this- by this light, and then I was surrounded too! I came to back in this chair and you were all gone. I thought- I thought I was alone.” His voice drops to a whisper at the end there and even Logan has to inhale deeply to stop the panic that rises when he imagines being forever alone in space.

Patton grabs Logan’s wrist, pulling him towards Thomas and Missy, and Logan doesn’t fight it when he’s scooped into a hug.

Patton’s arms may not be able to reach around all of them, but they’re warm and comfy and remind him of his parents. At least they didn’t die at the hands of that… thing.

Logan’s the first to pull away. “We need to take stock of what we know and what we have. Our first priority is to figure out what that being was and if it’s going to attack us again. Then…” His gaze catches sight of a plane. And another. And another! Excitement stirs inside him. “Then we explore.”

-

It takes them around ten minutes to realise that the twelve planes they’re flying around are completely different from theirs. It takes Logan two days to draw the conclusion that by not jumping through the rift and being thrown off course, they somehow managed to enter a new… planar system? Reality? He couldn’t say.

Basically, there’s no going back home - if their world even still exists.

Roman and Virgil are the only ones who don’t seem to care at all.

Logan doesn’t know much about them (other than the fact that they delight in tormenting him) so he doesn’t want to judge, but their carefree attitude is somewhat rude to Patton, Missy and Thomas who are in mourning.

On the third day, they decide to test their luck on this new Material Plane. As Thomas eases the Starblaster into it, they’re greeted with luscious green forests and wide, stretching savannahs and grasslands and mountains-

The likelihood of that is astounding, and Logan spends quite some time with Kalumnia chronicling the biomes of this planet.

But that’s about where the similarities end. There are no oceans, though there are lakes and rivers, so water isn’t a problem. However, the fauna is even more interesting.

The population of this strange place is mostly made up of giant creatures that are up to ten, twenty, thirty times their tiny, Phaethonian frames.

“Now I’m not the only dwarf,” Patton jokes when they first hover above the planet, trying to find a safe place to land. Logan lets out a stunned laugh, but it's more from the joy of a new discovery than anything else.

-

That night, Logan lays on the deck of the Starblaster, admiring the countless new constellations and planes, all his to explore!

It’s so clear, up here on a mountain in an undeveloped world, far from artificial light sources. It’s serene, it’s beautiful, it’s-

“Ro, let him be a nerd in peace.” Virgil’s furious whisper cuts through the pristine air and immediately, Logan has a sour taste in his mouth.

“Hush, brother.”

Logan resolutely keeps gazing up at the stars, ignoring as Roman’s boots clack against the metal. He ignores it when they stop by his head, and he continues to pretend Roman doesn’t exist even when he plonks himself down beside him.

“You’re missing out on a glorious feast, you know,” Roman says at last.

Logan tries to detect the sarcasm or the hidden meaning, but he either needs to brush up on his social skills or there isn’t any. Which, coming from Roman, is impossible.

He slides his eyes to his left. In the starlight, Roman’s usual vibrant red robe and equally crimson hair are paler, softer. Instead of his constant smirk and perfect death stare, he seems almost wistful as he too stares into the sky. Logan tears his gaze away and clears his throat.

“I’m fine with freeze-dried cubes of nutrition.”

Roman laughs, and that too is gentle compared to the harsh delight Logan had committed to memory after only a few days. It’s hard not to memorise it when it’s being directed at you more often than not. “Weren’t you the one talking about rationing? C’mon, Lo, me and Virge went through all that effort to take down one of those beasts! Aren’t you going to at least try it?”

Maybe Roman just has a really annoying whiny-voice or maybe he’s hungrier than he thinks because Logan actually considers it. Then he remembers that they don’t know if the meat on this planet is even edible, let alone feast-worthy. “Who said you could call me Lo?” he replies instead. It comes out harsher than he intends.

Roman scoffs and jumps up on his feet. Logan frowns and looks up at him, only to find a scowl as Roman avoids his eyes. “Fine, whatever. Sorry for trying to include you, I guess.” The clacking of his shoes is considerably louder as Roman stomps back to his twin, who murmurs a quiet “I told you so.”

Logan’s insides squirm uncomfortably. Something in him urges him to apologise, but he fights back the feeling. He didn’t do anything wrong. He just wanted to ensure the food wasn’t going to kill him. What’s so wrong with trying to survive?

(Later that night, he sneaks into the kitchen and finds a plate with a slab of meat and a couple of roots. He throws away the note that reads “You’re welcome -R” and braces himself for the first forkful of his new diet. Instead of the strange, bland flavour Logan expected, when he bites into the mouth-wateringly tender meat, he’s met with an explosion of tastes. He can see why Thomas insisted on tasking both Roman and Virgil with cooking now.)

-

The Light of Creation falls early the next day. Logan misses it (again), but when he wakes up, it’s to Thomas flying the Starblaster at breakneck speed towards where it fell.

“Why has it come here?” Patton asks. No one has an answer.

They find it a few hours later, and already, the surrounding fauna looks… smarter?

There’s a cacophony of sound as a mixture of bleets, honks and moos turn into something singular, cohesive. It’s the sound of language.

“After only this much time?” Logan questions.

“Yeah, well. That’s kind of what happened in our- in Phaethon,” Thomas explains. “When it fell, it didn’t take long for people to start inventing things. You invented your little, uh, cylinder thing-”

“Telescope.”

“Yeah, telescope, when it fell.”

“It was a work in progress!��

“But you only perfected it after the Light, right?”

Logan can’t say for sure, so he stays silent. It’s not like it’s a bad thing to make scientific advancements, it’s just… He wanted it to happen from his own merit. Not because some mythical light suddenly gave him the ability to.

“So,” Virgil pipes up from where he’s leaning against the wall, “should we take it?”

“I really want to steal it,” Roman says.

Logan sighs. “Can we at least see what these animals do with it first?”

“No! I mean, yes, but we shouldn’t steal it,” Patton says, wide-eyed.

“It’s not stealing,” Virgil replies. “It’s not theirs.”

“But it’s not ours either!”

“Not until we take it.” Roman pats Thomas’ shoulder. “C’mon, Cap, let’s get this thing.”

They wait a week and then bring the Light onboard.

-

In the following months, Virgil and Roman rope Patton into learning the new animal language and over dinner, they talk in a series of grunts and honks that make Logan infuriated. He pretends he isn’t trying to figure it out by delving into the food (still as delicious as the first time, if not more) but at some point, Virgil and Roman confront him.

“Want us to teach you?” Roman asks, and Logan, pride be damned, nods.

-

Missy starts building herself a home. She gets Logan to make a saw and then she chops down a tree (and she only needs the one). After a month, she has a nice home that she and Kalumnia often stay in.

Patton studies the flora while Logan studies the fauna, and together they help Kalumnia with her chronicling of this world. Dwarves must have some connection with a nature god because the plants lean into Patton’s gentle touch. Flowers spring up underneath his fingers and he thrives out in the jungle.

Thomas remains on the ship, but he’s never alone. They meet up for dinner every night (Missy loves climbing a mountain every day, for some weird reason) and they talk about the progress they’re making in this world.

Logan can speak the language too now, and even though he hated it before, more often than not he, Roman, Virgil and Patton are communicating in it.

It’s a nice rhythm they’ve settled into. Logan thinks he could get used to this.

-

Another month passes. Everything goes to shit.

Patton notices it first. The grass is dull; the wind quiet. The sky is darker and the lakes are no longer a clear crystal blue. He tells the others about this and Logan wonders if it’s because of their ship, or their presence, or maybe the Light.

He’s answered a few hours later when the 13th plane arrives.

Its form is bigger this time. Darker. More violent. Shadows pierce down from the sky and form humanoid shapes - some short and stocky, some with pointed ears, some who look human - and Logan’s struck with a terrifying realisation that these shadows are people from Phaethon. Or, he should say, were.

Logan and Patton aren’t far from the ship, and the twins, although they like to explore, have been sticking close by recently. Kalumnia had already been in her study onboard, and Thomas is at the controls when Logan enters. Missy, however…

As Thomas brings the ship up into the sky, the rest of them search desperately for Missy. They know they can’t stay too long. This thing, this beast, it’s stronger. Smarter. They need to escape before one of the shimmering black columns pierces their ship and they’re bound to this plane.

“There!” Virgil cries, his elven eyes picking up Missy’s struggling form.

She’s fighting valiantly, taking out multiple shadows with just one swing of her axe. The animals around her stomp and charge, but it’s not enough.

“I can’t get close enough!” Thomas says, weaving the ship through the black.

“Fine!” Roman shouts, and then he runs out of the cockpit and onto the deck, then flings himself overboard.

Virgil rushes to the edge. “Bro, what the fuck?!” He calls, before he too leaps over the railing.

They see the twins float downwards, blasting off spells as they go, and it’s not long before they’re down there fighting with Missy.

Roman’s body becomes a force of fire, burning bright as he flings massive fireballs into the fray. Virgil summons a massive bolt of lightning and the resulting thunderclap is so loud it hurts Logan’s ears.

“We have to go,” Thomas murmurs. Logan and Patton’s heads whip to him. “We have to go, now!” He says more forcefully this time, and Patton starts arguing with him.

“We can’t leave them behind!”

“If we don’t leave then that’s just more carnage, more bodies for that thing to consume. We’re leaving.”

Logan has never, ever, heard such a cold voice coming from Thomas. But he understands.

“Look, Patton,” he begins, “when we left Phaethon, I died. And so did Roman. But we came back. I don’t know how, and I don’t know if it will keep happening, but we need to leave. Or else there’s no hope for them.”

Patton tries to argue, but Thomas is already flying them away, out of the Plane, then out of the Planar System. He doesn’t react when Patton pulls at his arms, trying to get him to turn around. He’s not cold, he’s calculating. Thomas- Captain Sanders is making an executive decision and Logan knows he can’t change it.

The black follows them, and he sees it withdrawing from the planet in favour of pursuit. The cogs in his head turn as the white threads from a year ago weaves around them again, and Logan manages to cry out “It wants the Light!” before he’s wrapped up entirely.

-

YEAR 2.

Logan wakes up on the deck of the Starblaster, Virgil behind him. Like last time.

He furrows his brows and races back to the cockpit, and sure enough, his captain is there.

When everyone piles in, Logan’s in the middle of theorising.

“Every time we leave a planar system, we’re brought back to our original positions,” Logan says, mostly to himself but Kalumnia starts to transcribe what he’s saying in her journal. “That thing-”

“The Hunger!” Roman supplies.

“Not your most creative name.”

“Got a better one, Virge?”

“Fine, the Hunger wants the Light of Creation. When we left with the Light, it left the planes alone and tried to follow us. When did the Light fall on Phaethon?”

“About a year before the Hunger came,” Kalumnia murmurs.

“And it was about a year after the Light that the Hunger found us on that plane, too!” Logan clasps his hands together and straightens up. “Is there a blackboard on this ship?”

Kalumnia nods and leads them to her study, then wordlessly hands Logan a piece of chalk.

It’s the first time Logan has been in here, and he’s blown away by the countless journals and books from their home planet that remain on the sturdy oak bookshelves. There are also sketches pinned to a corkboard, mostly depicting the strange life they had encountered on the other planet. They’re only sketches, but the extraordinary amount of detail blows him away. How had Kalumnia kept this to herself all this time?

He shakes his head and gets to work. “So, what do we know?” He asks, then divides the board in two. He labels one column “Already Know” and the other “Need to Know”, then scribbles some notes in the former.

“The Hunger’s shadows looked like Phaethonians,” Missy says.

“Yeah, but they could change their form at will. I would blast one with fire and the black would disperse before coming together as a new Phaethonian.”

“It was stronger this time,” Virgil adds, shaking ever so slightly. Roman wraps an arm around him.

Logan nods and continues scrawling. “That means that when it consumes a plane, it adds it to its… collection. Its army.”

“We just left a plane full of massive creatures! How are we supposed to fight that?!” Roman exclaims.

“Well, no. As I said previously, when we left, it followed us. It started to withdraw from the Plane.”

Patton turns to Logan. “You mentioned the Light before we- we reformed. Why would it want that?”

He shrugs. “That’s why we have a Need to Know column,” he answers, then adds that exact question to the board.

“A better question,” Virgil steps forward and takes the chalk from Logan, “is how are we reforming?” He looks around expectantly.

“There’s this light that surrounds us - almost like thread.”

“I think I know what that is,” Captain Sanders says at the same time Kalumnia adds, “It’s the Bond Engine.”

Seeing their blank looks, both of them shake their head.

“We’ve been living on this ship for a year. How do you not know what the Bond Engine is?” Kalumnia has a rare smile on her face as she and the Captain launch into an explanation.

“The Bond Engine doesn’t use any fuel, it runs on bonds.”

“Bonds are what tie us to the Planar System. They’re the experiences and the connections we have to the planes, and it allows us to travel between them without the risk of ending up in a black hole.”

“How come we were able to leave both Phaethon’s System and the other one?” Patton asks.

Kalumnia and Thomas shrug, but Logan’s quick to reply. “It must be the Hunger. We haven’t been able to leave any Planar System until it comes. It must… cut our bonds with the planes. That would mean we don’t have ties to the Astral Plane, so if we die, we don’t go there. Instead, the Bond Engine brings us back onto the ship, in our original positions.”

“So what I’m hearing is,” Roman begins with a grin that he shares with Virgil, “we’re basically immortal, right?”

“No, because we do still die, we just come back-”

“Technicalities, technicalities,” Roman dismisses. “Anyway, this year I’m going to do some wild shit!”

“If you die on me, I’m going to be so fucking pissed,” Virgil threatens, but he also seems excited to be able to do whatever without consequences.

-

The Light falls into an ocean. They’re unable to retrieve it when the Hunger comes and instead, fly away as soon as they see its black pillars descend. Call them cowards, but at least there wasn’t much life on this planet to begin with. If there was any, it’s all gone now.

-

YEAR 5.

Logan hadn’t meant to become friends with the twins. It’s more like that they decided they were going to hang out with him, and he hasn’t been able to shake them since.

He finds he doesn’t mind, which is a feat in and of itself, considering he hasn’t had friends for the roughly four decades he had been alive for.

-

One night, they’re stargazing. Well, Logan is.

Roman and Virgil are wrestling each other next to him and surprisingly, Virgil wins.

“How are you so strong?” Roman whines, flexing his arms to show off his quite impressive muscles.

Virgil shrugs. “I chug my bone juice,” he replies, and Logan decides not to question what he means by that. “Do you give up yet?”

Roman laughs and charges Virgil. His momentum carries him forward and he crashes into his twin, then he swipes his leg out from under him and pins Virgil to the ground. “Take that!”

“Oof, my bones,” he deadpans, and Roman helps him up.

“Are you two done?” Logan asks.

Instead of insulting him, like they would’ve done five years ago, they nod and sit beside him. Logan’s chest flutters when Roman leans into him easily, knee gently bumping his own every now and again.

“So,” Virge begins, and judging by the glint in both his and Roman’s eyes, Logan has a right to be worried.

“We were thinking,” Roman continues, “that we don’t know much about you.”

“And we know everything about each other!”

“So why not tell us about yourself?”

Logan sighs. “What do you want to know?”

Virgil considers this, then asks, “Do you have a last name?”

“No.”

“Cool,” Roman says, “It’s Bluejeans now.”

“What?” Logan splutters. “You can’t just give people last names! And these jeans are comfortable and practical!”

“Whatever you say, Mr Bluejeans, sir,” Virgil mock salutes.

Logan tries to argue with them, but it’s clear he’s getting nowhere. “Fine! Have it your way, Virgil… Purplehoodie.”

Virgil laughs, and okay, it wasn’t his best work, but it’s not like Bluejeans is any better. “So what? Roman and I are twins. Does that make him Roman Purplehoodie? I don’t see a fucking hoodie, nor anything purple. That doesn’t make sense, Lo.”

Logan doesn’t react to the nickname. Instead, he exclaims, “Neither does Bluejeans!”

“You wear blue jeans!” Roman protests.

“And your brother wears a purple hoodie!”

“Not all the time!”

“Almost all the time!”

“Oi, keep it down!” Missy shouts from somewhere inside the ship. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“Don’t worry, we’re just playing card games in here!” Patton tells them.

“They ain’t need to know that!”

Even though Missy was bluffing, they stop arguing.

“Do I get to ask a question now?”

“Fine, shoot Mr Bluejeans.”

“I’m never going to get rid of that name, am I?” Both Virgil and Roman shake their heads. “Alright. Can I ask a question now?”

The twins glance at each other and shrug. “Seems fair.”

Logan ponders for a moment. He doesn’t really have any burning questions, but he supposes there had been one thing he was always curious about. “Are you two identical?”

Virgil’s gaze flashes to Roman, then back at Logan. The movement is so quick he almost misses it.

Roman leans back on his palms and puts on an easy smile. Logan knows that he’s only pretending, but he doesn’t get the chance to backpedal before Roman answers him. “Nope,” he pops the p.

Logan waits a moment, then opens his mouth when no explanation follows, but Roman must have changed his mind about how much he wants to share.

“I’m trans,” he blurts. Logan watches as Virgil’s arm snakes around his brother and studies Logan for his reaction.

He doesn’t miss a beat as he says, “Oh, but you look too alike to not be identical.” It’s awkward and kind of clumsy, but he genuinely means it in an “I thought you were identical twins” way and not a “How can you possibly look so masculine?” way. Virgil and Roman seem to pick up on it, at least.

“Genetics, dumbass,” Virgil replies, and the three of them laugh. “Honestly, the scientist should know this!”

“I’m an astrophysicist, not a biologist.”

“Those words? Fake.”

“You can’t call words fake.”

“All words are fake!” Roman and Virgil retort at the same time.

Logan goes to argue. Then he considers it. And okay, maybe they have a point. Especially their words. He’s not sure if they’ll find another Planar System that speaks Common - or any of Phaethon’s languages, in fact. It doesn’t stop him from wanting to learn the others’ languages though, so he gathers up the courage to ask a second question.

“Would you two mind teaching me Elven?”

-

YEAR 12.

It’s a good thing he’s fluent in Elven now, because this new place is entirely elves. It’s literally called Elfington.

He and the twins have no problem fitting in, and to their surprise, neither does Kalumnia.

She shrugs and with an abashed smile she admits, “I know all of Phaethon’s languages.”

Roman and Virgil share a wide-eyed look. “That’s how you always knew about our pranks!”

“We thought you were a mindreader or something!” Roman adds.

Kalumnia laughs. “I do know that spell, but I wouldn’t invade your privacy like that.”

-

That year, he and the twins almost exclusively talk to each other. Kalumnia joins in on their exploits around town, and Logan notes that she’s much less reclusive than at the beginning of their journey. He supposes over a decade of selective company would result in that.

Wait. Holy shit. Had they really been doing this for a decade?

Logan catches a glimpse of himself in a store window. At fifty, he expects wrinkles around his eyes like the ones Patton’s had since day one, but no. There aren’t creases in his forehead, no grey hairs, nothing. For all intents and purposes, he hasn’t changed one bit.

Maybe Roman and Virgil weren’t too far off when they joked about immortality.

“And they call me vain!” Roman huffs as he comes to stand beside him. Despite his comment, he leans in to fix his hair in the reflection, running his slender fingers through newly-dyed red. It’s like this at the beginning of every cycle, and for the past week they’ve been on Elfington, all Roman has talked about were the hairdressers and the possibility of dye.

Logan’s friend is always excited when they begin a new year just because he gets the colour back in his hair. He suspects Virgil shares the same enthusiasm, but at least he doesn’t talk his ear off about how he should be able to invent dye when it starts to fade. For starters, he’s an astrophysicist, and secondly, he’s busy, thank you very much.

He wants to study the Light. Considering it has such a big impact on both the Starblaster crew and whatever plane it falls on, they need to learn more about it. Maybe one of these cycles, they can find a way to fight off the Hunger.

Logan doesn’t know how that would work, but this new world that’s positively teeming with life renews his motivation. He doesn’t want to see them get destroyed. He doesn’t want them to fall to the Hunger.

They’ve already recovered it so he wastes no time in setting up experiments.

Around the second month, Roman starts popping into the Starblaster to “make sure he isn’t nerding too hard” (his words, not Logan’s). At first, it’s only for a few minutes. Roman asks a few questions about what he’s doing, Logan responds with questions about what he and Virge have been up to, and then Roman goes back to Elfington.

As time passes, Roman grows more and more keen to help. It gets to the point where Roman and Logan do their experiments together. Kalumnia records for them, keeping track of what they’ve found (the Light of Creation emits waves of some form of energy) and what they need to know (what the fuck is that energy). Missy mostly makes sure that the pair eat and drink when necessary, occasionally throwing them over her shoulder and dragging them to bed.

Even Captain Sanders checks in on their progress (and with the two of them working together, it’s truly remarkable)!

The only one who keeps his distance is Virgil.

Logan finds out the reason for this on their tenth month.

It’s a typical afternoon. Logan had visited Elfington for last-minute supplies, and he had been carrying armfuls of metal parts and spell components when he heard low voices around the corner, where his newly-appointed lab was.

He pauses. He quickly figures that one must be Roman (he had told him to go ahead, but he must have wanted to wait) and therefore the other is Virgil. He considers making his presence known, but it sounds like they’re arguing. And the twins never do that.

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, honestly.

“I know why you’re doing this,” Virgil hisses. “You want to stay here.”

“I do not! And even if I did, what’s wrong with that? We haven’t had a home since we were fucking twelve, why can’t you just settle down?”

“This isn’t about that and you know it.” When Virgil continues to speak, his voice loses the anger and instead takes on a much softer tone. “Roman, we have the Light. There’s nothing else we can do for them.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do! In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been doing this thing for over a decade. We either get the Light and some people die, or we don’t and everything gets consumed by the Hunger. We’ve tried fighting it, we’ve died, and honestly, I don’t give a shit about the planes anymore!”

“How can you say that?” Roman murmurs. Logan’s equally surprised by that revelation.

“Look,” Virgil sighs. “We’ve been to like, four planets with life on it. And each time, we decide it’s a grand idea to make friends! Why not build our bonds? But at the end of the year, it’s the same thing. We fly away and we watch those people get torn apart into nothing. They’re dust. We’ve only had each other for so long, and you and the other five people on this ship are the only people I can count on. Everyone else? They’re dust, Roman. If we see them as anything else, we only get our hearts broken. And I can’t take that. Not for however long we’re stuck on this ship, going through the motions.”

Roman’s silent for a long time. Eventually, though, he says, “You’re lying.”

“What?”

“You’re lying,” he repeats, more forcefully. “You can try and pretend like you don’t care, but I’ve seen you with those kids. I know you care about them as much as I do. And I know you’ll fight for them at the end of the year.”

“Because they’re us, Ro!” Virgil’s outburst shocks Logan. He knows he definitely shouldn’t be listening at this point, but he’s frozen in place. “I mean, seriously? Two elven siblings, living on the road? When I see them, all I see is me and you as preteens forcing ourselves to entertain sickos by streetfighting just so we can eat. All I see is you giving me your one jumper because you know I hate the cold even though you were freezing just as much. All I see is us fighting over who should have the last scrap of food, not because we wanted it, but because we wanted the other to eat. So, of course, I’m going to fight for them. But at the end of the day, if it comes to saving you or saving those children, there’s no choice.”

Logan hears Virgil stomp the opposite way and when he’s sure Roman’s alone, he steps into the corridor.

Roman’s back is to him. Logan takes another cautious step forward, then another, and as he gets closer, he can see how he’s shaking. Roman’s fists are clenched at his sides, head hanging low.

“Roman?”

Roman straightens his back and raises one hand to his face. Logan can’t see what he’s doing, but when the hand comes back wet and Roman turns around with red eyes and a watery smile, he can hazard a guess.

“Hey, Lo!” he greets, far too cheery. “Let’s get to work!”

He doesn’t have time to ask what’s wrong because Roman grabs his arm and pulls him into the lab. All day, he interrupts Logan when he goes to offer comfort, and his smile is too wide, too forced. Logan doesn’t understand why he feels sad too.

-

At the end of the year, Roman pulls all-nighters alongside Logan. He and Virgil have long since made up, but his brother still steers clear of the lab. Logan doesn’t blame him - he’s never heard the pair fight before, and he’s sure it’s something they want to avoid.

Roman’s project that he had Logan helping him with is almost complete. It radiates a golden hue and its form almost replicates the Light exactly. It’s far from perfect, but it might just work. At this point, that’s all they can really hope for.

When the Hunger comes, they’re ready. Roman and Logan order Thomas to bring the ship over a mostly empty country (some mountains bordering an ocean) and they fling the fake Light down, watching as it splashes in the water. Immediately, the black smog that was chasing them dives down.

The Starblaster uses this chance to dart away, hurtling through the skies at breakneck speeds and it's not long until they breach Elfington’s atmosphere. The Hunger chases them, having figured out what they’ve done, and it seems angrier, more determined.

Little darts of black break free of its form and head for the ship, determined to bring them down. Thomas banks right, then left, before dipping down low. The other IPRE members have long since learnt their lesson about seatbelts, but they do rub at their necks during this process.

Roman and Logan share a smile. Most of Elfington was saved. Not just some, most.

Maybe they can win.

-

A/N That was the first part of Infinitesimal! If you enjoyed it, feel free to ask questions/scream to me about it because this is possibly one of my favourite concepts and I will take any opportunity to talk about it.

I hope I was clear with the whole Planary System stuff. If not, there’s more of an explanation coming in the following parts as well as some romance and maybe a touch of necromancy! Who knows? ;)

[booksandchainmail]

nanoha vivid liveblog: episode 11

Time for Corona vs. Einhart!

ok, i know wendi is referring to teo, but i did misinterpret at the start as einhart has been nicknamed kitty cat

... still better than most of the other contestants

attacking from the start, before corona can summon. it’s the obvious weakness of anyone who needs prep in the way she does

but shes ready for this it seems, and starts summoning while still in the air, which is pretty cool

oooh, i don’t think anyone else has used the terrain like this. makes you wonder how corona would fare in a larger or varied arena

damn. the goliath packs a punch

Einhart know the first rule of fighting someone with a summoned creature: directly attack the controller

Or in this case, separate her from the golem to where she’s vulnerable

Oh, seems like goliath needs pretty active instructions at all times, which means with corona knocked away, he just kinda stands there and gets hit

the most brutal attack of this match

I think we’ve seen elements in this in how corona started planning from the assumption that einhart could beat her: she’s very level-headed. That extending into combat is valuable, especially in a setting like this where her opponents are also amateurs and likely to falter under pressure. Though einhart might be less vulnerable to that, due to her war memories

her strengths fit her powers well. She literally creates in order to fight, and she needs to be strategic in order to get time and space to summon.

is she gonna stab einhart

This is a very calm match, in comparison to the others we’ve seen. It’s partly that theyre friends, and there’s no grudge driving them, but also just a lot who they are as people. Einhart and corona are both relatively quiet, but also self-assured. They have good understandings of their own abilities, and you can see that here in how calmly they return to the ring, theres no worry about running out of time or how theyre going to continue

flashback time!

I really love the range of motivations and backstories this show gives the contestants. You do have people with tragic backstories, or who want to prove themselves, or have a deep passion for martial arts, but you also have those who just value the connections it brings, or for whom its just an extracurricular. You don’t need to be deeply motivated to do something, it can still be a meaningful part of your life, and you’re not lesser or shallower for it.

I also like the idea (idk if this is canon) that Corona sought out summoning because she recognized that she couldn’t keep up with normal fighting. It’s a unusual thing in a fighting show to have a character who isn’t at the same level as everyone else, and who finds their own style that draws on different strengths.

this is a great summary of everyone’s motivations, but also einhart is hilariously incongruous with the others 

OH SHIT I THOUGHT THE PARTIAL SUMMONING WAS HER NEW TECHNIQUE

HOLY

FUCKING

CHRIST

shes just knocking einhart around effortlessly

ooooooh

This makes a lot of sense for Corona’s character! She’s a clever and observant fighter who’s willing to innovate but not particularly talented, and who takes motivation primarily from her friends. Of course she studies their techniques, and of course she copies them

And no wonder einhart was caught off guard, it’s like she was suddenly fighting a different person

but einhart gets up

she’s spent her life struggling with hundreds of years of guilt and grief, and just keeps on going through all of that

i think klaus may have been defined by his loss, but einhart is defined by the strength it takes to carry that loss

…y’know, you could have rested a little bit before forcing yourself up, there was plenty of time

oh this is tricky. Can corona press an attack, which is definitely outside her normal mode of fighting, or does she give up the advantage she’s won here?

The other question is if corona also learned anything from rio, or from einhart herself, though I think using her own style against her could backfire badly

… if that’s based off vivio, it’s primarily a counter, and using it for a direct attack might not work as well

ducking like that is both well suited to the height difference, and one of vivio’s signature moves

most of how corona’s moving here fits vivio, or any of the more close quarter fighters we’ve seen, but that arm sweep looked new to me, and seems very indicative of corona’s fighting style. Calm, collected, redirecting the opponent.

and in contrast, you can see how panicked einhart looks, which is very unusual for her

Okay, things are looking bad for einhart here. But she’ll have a chance to heal, and I think the next round will go differently. A lot of corona’s success here is she’s brought out completely new techniques and styles, and einhart’s just been reeling most of the bout: all her fighting’s been very basic hand-to-hand, with basically no hegemon style attacks or more elaborate moves. But with a chance to collect herself and replan, I think einhart’s experience will let her adapt to this fairly quickly. Additionally, a lot of corona’s new moves are based off vivio, who einhart has fought (and beat) before.

so she has copied from rio as well

OH

that’s a neat twist. It explains how she was able to pick these moves up so quickly, and how she can handle without any particular skill at martial arts. This also explains why Nove disapproved: I can’t imagine using techniques meant to control large amounts of stone on your own body is particularly safe.

That’s fucking cool. 

And also a massive weakness, because it makes her predictable. If einhart can figure out what triggers one of those moves, then immediately counter based on knowing how corona will respond, she can retaliate very quickly

from your own memories, or klaus’s?

this is the complete opposite of how I’d expected an einhart vs corona fight to play out

yeah, she’s not just copying specific moves, but entire fighting styles. that is honestly incredible, especially when you consider she had to pre-program them all herself

awww, i’m glad to see she’s in there too

Having multiple settings gives corona a lot more flexibility…

...but einhart’s already figuring out the pattern

I can’t help but think this technique would work a lot better on anyone else. Corona has the disadvantage her of her opponent already knowing all the sources of her automated moves, but imagine a fight where one side keeps pulling out new completely unknown styles every couple of hits.

I guess that’s why this isn’t common

Oops

Yeah the other reason einhart can deal with this is she has a completely ridiculous level of knowledge about this one particular style

And corona is starting to fight wildly, while einhart remains calm. This is a complete reversal of the previous round

Holy fuck is that blood

~tempting faaaate~

and yup, automation is weak to feints from people who know the moveset.

Though to be fair, I don’t know if a non-automated fighter would have dealt with that any better

DOES THIS TOURNAMENT FOR CHILDREN HAVE SAFETY STANDARDS

PLEASE DO NOT MAGICALLY PUPPET YOUR OWN ENTIRE BODY

i feel like that would go badly

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

theres some excellent and creepy puppet imagery going on here

And einhart mostly just looks sad here. I’m guessing with memories of actual war, she’s not that happy about her friends pushing themselves this dangerously for a competition?

OR ITS ABOUT OLIVIE AGAIN

because this is einhart, and everything always comes back to olivie

But yeah, the puppet connection would be a bad reminder. And corona’s whole  feeling weak compared to her teammates, and wanting to be able to stand next to them, seems like it connects pretty strongly to olivie’s story 

she just looks so tired and sad here, and i’m remembering how happy she was at the idea of a way to fight without stakes, and she’s just now realizing that even if they aren’t lethal, there are still consequences to these matches

at this point, einhart is pretty in control of the battlefield. she’s brilliant at this kind of fighting, and corona doesn’t have any moves that einhart hasn’t already fought against

I’m starting to think this fight won’t end with an attack, but with corona just collapsing when her magic or body wears out

another connection to olivie with the damaged arms. this must be hell for einhart to have to fight

gods

just, can someone stop this match please? are there any kinds of precautions?

and here’s the hardest part for einhart. Because of her memories, she has a pretty unique first-hand perspective on war. I don’t think mid-childa has had a war, and certainly not recently enough to still have wartime soldiers around. And even with all the pain they cause her, there must be some comfort in the fact that olivie’s dream of peace was achieved, even at the cost of her life. But here, even in this peaceful world, there are still children willing to hurt themselves terribly in order to have the power to fight. And this must feel like such a failure and betrayal of the world to einhart. 

THEN STOP

NO, GIVE UP PLEASE

THAT IS A MAJOR PROBLEM

i want nanoha to show up to stop the match and yell at everybody about techniques that excessively strain your body

THERES MORE?!!!??!!

ok, that’s a fair point. Corona has pulled out some really impressive moves here, but she hasn’t done much in the way of golem stuff. I wonder if in her rush to make up for her weaknesses, she’s discounted her own techniques too much?

finally

corona has amazing terrain manipulation abilities. combine that with her summoning, the automated moves, and even i guess the full body technique, and she’s maybe the most versatile fighter we’ve seen. In a larger area with unfamiliar opponents, or as support for a team, she’d be devastating.

all those anime characters who dramatically slice rocks in half with a sword have nothing compared to einhart

ooh, nice feint using the partial summon as well as the big one. even here at the end, corona continues to fight smart

and now she has a ranged attack as well. no matter the outcome of the tournament, i’m voting corona for mvp

awwwwww

and she uses binding magic as well, because apparently corona reacted to not being as good at punching people as her friends by learning EVERYTHING ELSE

bit of tonal dissonance, but awwwww kitty!

and her golem can reassemble itself.

corona is amazing

but einhart is the martial arts master, and she just stops it stone cold

what a hell of a match. this was definitely my favorite fight so far, and the finale’s gonna have a tough time topping that. The variety of techniques and strategies used, as well as the brilliant character work on corona and einhart, made this incredible to watch. 

it was hard fought, and corona pulled out ten times what anyone expected from her, but in the end einhart managed a victory

but in the aftermath, she just looks defeated

this was a hard match emotionally on all sides

(i count myself as a side)