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bigskydreaming · 4 months ago

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I actually can not believe I've never posted this X-Men headcanon (that turned into a whole treatment/thesis) here on this blog, but for those few followers who know who Dallas Gibson aka Specter is, or Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, or just anything about Academy X in general.....enjoy!

(Mostly because I don't trust the random PDF hosting site I've got it stored on and I like to keep stuff backed up online and not just in my files so posting it for posterity here anyway.)

Anyway, I give you:

THE GREAT MANIFESTO OF WHAT IF DALLAS GIBSON WAS THE SECRET LOVE CHILD ONE NIGHT STAND CHILD OF BOBBY DRAKE AND LAYNIA PETROVNA: A CRACK FIC THEORY OUTLINE SOMETHING IN THREE PARTS

(Relax. Its actually only about 10,000 words long. That's like, barely ANYTHING when its me. Its a itty bitty teeny tiny nothing of a thing. Hardly even counts).

So, okay. I have approximately 80 different pitches for what to do with Iceman at any given time, but here's one that I know would never in a million years happen purely because the X-Office will never let the 05 be the ages I perceive them as which is mid to late thirties at this point. Like I picture Bobby as around thirty-six or so, though for him it actually makes sense for him to be eternally portrayed as LOOKING like he's in his early 20s, since that was the age he first transmuted to his ice form and so makes sense to be his default template/molecular blueprint his power resets him to every time he has to make a new body from scratch. BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, wildly self-indulgent pitch ahead, which ties into a cracky headcanon I've had since Academy X, includes a couple OCs, and explores his past history with Laynia, long before he was out, as well as his connections to other heroes beyond the X-Men like Laynia and her brother, Black Widow, etc. And then it combines my ideas for giving Bobby an antagonist of his own, more characters to interact with other than major X-Men so his story beats aren't reliant on whatever's going on with other X-Men and who's available, and gives him concrete reasons to want to level up quickly in terms of how much social influence he wields among mutantkind, take more prominent/proactive stances on things, etc. While still leaving room for him to be goofy and always trying to use humor to seem more relatable, less threatening, etc.

So. I'm picturing this as a triptych like Sabretooth, three interlocked minis of five issues each that form a trilogy by the end.

First mini:

ICEMAN AND DARKSTAR: SHADOW GAMES

ISSUE ONE:

First issue opens with Bobby in his apartment in LA, sometime after he's left the most recent X-Men lineup and is back to living off of Krakoa. He's just gotten in and is going through his mail where he comes across a card with no return address. Opening it, he finds its a condolence card that says "Thinking of you on this anniversary of such a tragic day." His internal monologue, conveyed in caption boxes and a key element of this whole mini, shows he's totally confused by this. He has no idea why this date would hold any special significance, or who would have sent the card or why. (The specific date would just be somewhere around the date of publication, in a world where this actually got published, lol. Let's go with April 27th, for instance).

Deciding to just shrug it off as some weird thing, Bobby's basically just being moody for a page or two of reflection before Scott calls. They're trying to do better about keeping in touch even when they're not on the same team. Some generic catching up, and Bobby eventually mentions he's just been in a weird mood all day, to which Scott says he's not surprised. Turns out Scott's noticed that for as long as he can remember now, Bobby's ALWAYS in a shitty mood every time April 27th rolls around. Yes, Scott is anal enough that after years of Bobby being weird around the same time every year, he eventually narrowed it down to its epicenter. This very day. Bobby is both weirded out and touched by Scott's attention to something so specific about Bobby...more attentive than even Bobby himself. When they hang up, he's still clueless about why today would be such a big deal to him, but apparently there's a pattern. That card might not have been so random after all.

Confused & uncomfortable now, Bobby decides to get out of the house & just do hero stuff. That always makes him feel better. He helps put out some fires, divert a tidal wave, gating back and forth across the planet, restless. The whole issue, even as he uses his usual banter to make the people he helps feel at ease in the wake of whatever catastrophe they were just saved from, his internal monologue shows he's second-guessing himself constantly, being his own worst enemy, criticizing every choice he makes about his saves, how he could've done things better, etc. Things come to a head when he intervenes at a protest - I don't have a specific cause in mind but ideally something non mutant related - as a group attacks the protesters until Bobby drops in to protect them.

The protesters thank him but are pretty cynical about the whole thing. They note that this happens constantly and most of those same people will be back stirring up trouble and violence at another event like this down the line. They hope for change for the better but point out that some people never will, because they're not interested in better. They're happy with their hate. Bobby reflects on what they said, and here's where his thoughts start to take a particularly dark turn. He thinks of some of the ways his powers could be used to ensure those ppl never hurt anyone again, how the full potential of his powers include a lot of lethal options, and why shouldn't he use them when its true most of these ppl will just commit heinous acts in the future, and he might not be around to protect their victims next time. He even reflects on how he's used some of those darker options in the past, so its not like it'd be crossing a line he hasn't already....

Disturbed by the fact that the only reason he can think of not to go there is he's a hero and heroes don't do that, he just wants to be anywhere else in a hurry so he skips heading for a gate and does something he does only rarely....turns himself into mist and starts to disperse, to teleport somewhere far away, but as he does he gets the weirdest feeling, like his spread out consciousness is brushing up against someone else's. He's not alone he realizes. And he stops and recoalesces right there and talking to the empty air he demands that someone show themselves. A man appears out of nowhere, laughing.

Stranger: Your observational skills are a lot sharper than they used to be, Drake. Back in the day, you had no idea when I was around.

Bobby: Who are you and why are you talking like I'm supposed to know who you are? I've never seen you before in my life.

Stranger: Wow, it sucks to realize you left way less of an impression on someone than they left on you. I guess it makes sense though. I mean, when you KILLED me almost twenty years ago, this very day - that was obviously a big deal for me, but hey, I've been out of the loop awhile so what do I know? Maybe it was just another Tuesday for you.

Bobby: Are you the one who sent me that card earlier? Who the hell are you and what kind of game are you playing?

Stranger: Same one we were playing all those years ago, Bob. Before you got all pissy and flipped the board before I got a chance to make my next move. But thanks to the wonders of Krakoan resurrection, now we can pick up right where we left off. It really is a miracle, isn't it?

Bobby: Well maybe you should check with the Five and make sure they didn't bring you back with a few screws loose, because I'm pretty sure I'd remember this if it was actually me you were playing this game with.

Stranger: Maybe you just forgot. Or who knows? Maybe someone made you forget.

Bobby: Okay, yeah, I'm bored now. Time to put you on ice.

He starts icing the area around the stranger, intending to trap him in a block of ice, but the stranger just laughs and turns incorporeal, becoming a transparent outline hovering above the street....so to anyone who hadn't been watching their conversation - like the very protesters Bobby had saved earlier - it looked like Bobby was just furiously creating some kind of ice attack that didn't seem to be aimed at anyone...other than them. The now ghost-like stranger zips over to the crowd and starts weaving among them, seeming to whisper in a bunch of peoples' ears....and before long, the crowd that had just been saved from one attack and were primed not to just sit down and take another, were ready to choose fight over flight, becoming a mob headed for Bobby.

He constructs some ice barriers to just keep them at bay, not really worried they'll hurt him and more concerned about not hurting them, when the stranger's ghost form swirls around Bobby, hovering above his shoulder and now whispering in his ear. But there's no dialogue in the stranger's speech bubble....just caption boxes displaying Bobby's internal monologue....and now calling into question every single box earlier in the issue.

Caption box: Isn't it surreal how the right words whispered in the right ears can dramatically change a person's perception of something....or someone? How easy it is to change peoples' courses....even the course of their entire life?

Caption box: And fear, well, fear's one of the best motivators there is. So much easier to get someone to listen to you when they're afraid of something else.

Caption box: But maybe you can't really relate to that. A guy as powerful as you, you're probably not afraid of much these days.

Caption box: That wasn't always true though, was it? This take you back at all? Remind you of when you were just a kid, and there was a mob gunning for you just for the crime of being mutant and vulnerable? I bet you were scared then.

Caption box: Considering what a guy like you could do if he were scared enough, if the right person used the right words as the spark to ignite all that fear....the world's probably pretty lucky that Saint Xavier was there to be the voice you listened to back then, huh. Y'know, instead of someone like Magneto or Apocalypse being the ones to tell traumatized, impressionable little you what to do with all that fear and anger you felt....

Caption box: Do you ever think about that, Drake? Wonder if all that separates you from the worst of the worst is you had the right voice in your ear at the right time? That maybe there's nothing special about you at all, nothing innately noble, heroic.

Caption box: That you were just....lucky?

Caption box: Food for thought. Anyway, I gotta run for now, but I'll be seeing you, Bob.

Caption box: We have so much to catch up on.

Then its just Bobby left keeping the mob at bay with his ice structures, him visibly shutting down, trying not to think too much and just running on instinct, until a hand reaches down from above and snatches him up into the air, until the streets are just a speck below them. Bobby looks up and to his shock its Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, his old friend and teammate from back when he was on the Champions as a teenager. The issue closes with her saying: "Hello, Bobby. I'd say its nice to see you and all the usual pleasantries, but we don't have much time. And we need to talk about our son."

ISSUE TWO

This issue switches to Laynia's POV with her internal monologue in caption boxes, and picks up with them having teleported somewhere secluded via Laynia's powers (she's much more practiced using hers to teleport than Bobby is using his that way). This issue goes back and forth between past and present, as during Laynia's narration of past events they're shown as if they're happening in real time.

Bobby's pointing out that they were never together, and considering she was the one who turned him down, you'd think she'd be aware of that. Laynia responds that no, they were never a couple, but they did sleep together once and once only....she'd been feeling particularly down about her ex-boyfriend Yuri after running into him, it was a rebound thing for her and she never hid that but Bobby took it to mean more than it did anyway and acted a fool about it, aligning with their canon interactions at the very end of their Champions run, before getting on the same page and they went back to just being friends.

Except, Laynia says, then she found out she was pregnant, and he flew to Russia to join her and decide what to do together, while everyone else thought he was still at UCLA. He doesn't remember any of this, because blocks were put in their memories, hiding everything related to this. But it did happen, and they do have a son. She'll explain everything, but they need to keep moving around, as she doesn't want the man who just confronted Bobby to overhear any of this and its very hard to detect when he's around. Their best option is to keep on the move, teleporting frequently and not staying anywhere long enough for him to track where they are.

Bobby: Oh crap. HE'S not our son, is he?

Laynia: Hell no.

Bobby: Phew, I was worried we had a Stryfe situation for a second there. I am barely holding it together as is and I am NOT equipped to handle an evil Bobby Jr. from the future.

Laynia reaffirms that he is definitely not their son, but he is the reason for much of what happened back when they were eighteen. They only ever knew him by his moniker, 'Doubting Thomas' and honestly were never sure when exactly he started watching them and messing with their heads. That's his MO. His power lets him turn from flesh and blood into a form made solely of psychic energy...an astral ghost that's invisible, immaterial and can travel via the astral plane. But his only power to affect the material world in that form lies in telepathy. He can project thoughts into someone's mind and its almost impossible to keep him out or tell his intrusions from ordinary thoughts.

She's not sure how he'd fare against other telepaths, but at least with non-psychics, even the best psychic shielding or anti-telepath technology isn't a guarantee against him. Because doesn't try to break into minds, or even sneak past mental defenses. He just surveils his targets, watching them invisibly, learning all he can about them, and then he looks for cracks in whatever mental shields they have. Tiny gaps here and there that he can just whisper into, slipping a thought in amongst the chaos and chatter generated by someone's own mind.

All of which means they never were sure where their own natural fears and paranoia ended, and his whispering began. They were eighteen, she reminds Bobby, already freaking out about this giant life change neither were sure they were ready for, even if they did keep the baby...and neither of them was an ordinary civilian. They were powerful mutants with lots of enemies....from day one, they were concerned that their child would be born with a target on their back just from that. And then there was the fact that one of the things they'd always bonded over was resentment for how early they felt their childhoods ended.

Laynia and her twin brother Nikolai were taken from their parents at birth, and raised separately with government agents for foster parents. They were always intended to be mutant operatives for their government, their lives scripted out for them, and their training began in their early teens. Laynia didn't even know she had a twin brother until she was in her twenties.

And Bobby had always quietly nursed resentment for being put out into the field at the same time as the rest of the 05, all years older than him and with a lot more focus from the Professor. Scott was his protege, a tactical genius, Jean was his preferred pupil in terms of power development, Hank was a bonafide genius, and Warren was a millionaire playboy, a natural spokesman and inevitable future celebrity. Bobby was just Bobby though, with no awareness of his full potential, and the only one the Professor didn't seem to have any real purpose for or interest in. Like he was tacked on as a spare, his presence more of an afterthought than intentional.

So especially in his late teens, after the 05 went their separate ways, Bobby had always been bothered by the fact that he'd gone through all the same traumas and hardships as the rest on their various missions, but always wondering what he was even doing there when it didn't even seem like there was any reason he was supposed to be. Privately he'd always wanted someone - his parents, the Professor, even the older 05 - to question whether there was really nobody else Xavier could have been sending out to fight Magneto, than a fifteen year old too afraid of being abandoned to say no on his own behalf. After all, the issue was complicated by the fact that when his parents weren't fully on board with Bobby going to the Institute, Xavier mindwiped them into thinking he was just at boarding school, and it was only when Bobby was eighteen that the Professor restored their full awareness of what Bobby had been doing for years.

All of which played into why Bobby and Laynia didn't tell anyone about the pregnancy, even their closest friends. It started out as them just putting it off, wanting to be more sure of their own thoughts on this before someone else tried to make the decision what to do for them, but by the time Laynia gave birth, they'd fully isolated themselves, paranoid that Xavier or the Red Room would take the baby and just make them forget all about it. And problem is, as Laynia put it, they couldn't tell how much of that was Doubting Thomas whispering all the right things to ramp up their anxieties and specific fears.

And obviously someone did mess with their memories anyway, Bobby points out crankily. This all is partly meant to seed two ongoing character arcs for Bobby in the future....the first, his awareness of how often his mind and memories have been messed with over the years, by enemies and allies alike, to the point he's honestly not sure how much of 'him' is really even him, and how much he's just the end result of people just editing his mind whenever he started heading in a direction they didn't want him to. With how long the memories of their time travel trip were hidden, now these missing memories, what other holes could exist in his memories without him ever having a clue?

And the second character arc is his misgivings about Xavier and the role he played in Bobby's childhood. Knowing what he knows now of his omega potential, aware that all the biggest developments and learning curves with his powers happened when Bobby WASN'T Xavier's student, Bobby's increasingly convinced that Xavier never trusted Bobby with his own power, and while he might not have actively stunted his growth, he certainly didn't help or encourage it the way he did his other students. The foundation is there for Bobby to wonder if the only reason Xavier ever even recruited him was to keep him from falling into anyone else's hands and becoming a threat.

As Laynia reminds him of what they were like back then and how they viewed things, things fall into place for Bobby and its very easy for him to see how they could have ended up hiding this from anyone in Xavier's orbit, etc...and this starts to become less abstract for him. It wasn't that he thought she was lying at any point, but its hitting him now....he has a son, and someone made him forget. He's someone who has always yearned for family that won't judge or condemn him, leave him, always been determined to be everything his own father wasn't and nothing like him, and yet he has a son who's grown up without him. Whose name he doesn't even know.

He does know his son though, it turns out. At least somewhat. Its one of Bobby's former students before M-Day. Dallas Gibson aka Specter. He has no idea who he really is, Laynia says, but the parents who died when Dallas was ten were his adoptive parents. But he was born Dallas Drake, as Petrovna wasn't even Laynia's real last name and she had no idea what it originally was. Heir to the merged powersets of both his biological parents, with his father's elemental form but made from his mother's signature Darkforce energies.

As for why Laynia remembers when Bobby doesn't....she didn't originally. But then years ago (during the Morrison run), she was possessed by one of Weapon X's most dangerous creations, the Huntsman. However, thanks to how her powers were designed to let her mind travel through the Darkforce Dimension to do things like teleport, when she was possessed, her mind tried to flee into that dimension. When Fantomex killed her, he only killed her body, and her mental tether to it. The shock and trauma of her physical death broke down the barriers around her memories, and they all came flooding back. Problem was, she only existed as a consciousness drifting aimlessly in the Darkforce Dimension.

But then Dallas started learning more about his powers and growing them during his time at the Academy. And his powerset also includes the ability to make shadow golems similar to the ice golems his father makes. But he didn't realize this as the first time he made one, with Darkforce energy being the clay his golem was sculpted from...Laynia was able to use that as a doorway into the physical world. She inhabited his shadow golem as her vessel, the way a future Iceman's golem once split off from him and became a separate entity. So Dallas never realized his newfound shadow friend started out as something he made unconsciously...he just knew that it seemed to have its own sentience from the jump, was a friend and protector who'd show up whenever he needed them. That friend and protector just happened to be his biological mother, watching over him the only way she could.

Until M-Day. When Dallas was depowered, Laynia lost her connection to the physical world and was stuck again in the Darkforce Dimension....until her brother Nikolai made a bargain with Immortus that led to her full resurrection. Finally she was back, and she remembered everything. But also knew Bobby remembered none of this. And so for the next couple years she just checked in on Dallas periodically but kept her distance, because she not only remembered her son...she also remembered why they were so desperate to hide his connection to them that they covered up their own memories of him ever existing.

At the end of the issue, they arrive at the hideout of the Russian mutant underground, a community of mutants who mistrust Krakoa and its leaders, but aren't on board with Mikhail Rasputin and his faction either. Laynia brought Bobby to the person who originally hid their memories and locked them away - at their own request....Bobby's idea, in fact - Alexi Garnoff aka Blind Faith, a telepath Bobby first met in his X-Factor days. But who was so quick to trust Bobby, because turns out that wasn't actually the first time Alexi remembered meeting him.

As Bobby reels from the reveal that this particular manipulation of his mind had been something he himself asked for, Alexi says he can erase all his work and return his own memories of all this, and Laynia warns him that remembering it all will hurt. Because they have a son, yes, Dallas Gibson aka Dallas Drake aka Specter. But twins run in her family.

And for a brief - too brief - window of time, they had not one son, but two.

ISSUE THREE

This issue returns to Bobby's POV and internal monologue, and takes place almost entirely in the past, or in Bobby's mindscape. He tells Alexi to do his thing, he wants to know, NEEDS to know everything. The walls come down and in his mind, Bobby finds himself standing at the start of a giant labyrinth made of ice. He sees a little boy running through it and gives chase, needing to catch up to him, desperate even as he's aware he's running on autopilot, more instinct than knowledge. He's never seen this boy before - he's not even a real memory himself. But he knows what an older Dallas looks like, at least. And he's sure this is what his mind imagines a Dmitri older than what he actually remembers might look like, and he desperately wants a closer look. But this Dima stays forever just out of range because his mind doesn't actually have a clear image of an older Dmitri to conjure, and up close, the illusion would be too obvious, and the loss all the more real for that.

Following the boy through the labyrinth, he sees memories unveil themselves on the ice walls around them. He remembers Laynia telling him she was pregnant, their agitated debates over the months that followed as they agonized over what to do, how to keep the baby safe - babies, once they found out it was twins. He sees the day the twins were born, relives them deciding to name the elder twin Dallas, after the city where they first met, before Laynia even joined the Champions, and the younger they named Dmitri, or Dima for short....after the only teacher Laynia ever felt actually valued her for herself instead of seeing her as a weapon being honed.

He remembers them leaving the hospital and hiding for a few weeks at a secluded cabin their old teammate the Black Widow found for them....she was the only one they told, figuring nobody could keep a secret better than her, and how they wavered and grew closer to caving and letting their closest friends and teammates help them figure out how to keep the twins safe. Sees flashbacks of him playing with the boys while Laynia watches fondly, and vice versa. Relives as he - still little older than a child himself - puts them in their crib and tells them not to be scared, talks about how his grandfather used to have a saying: "all Drakes are dragons," and making a dragon sculpture that catches the light to act as their nightlight.

And then he relives the day they woke up to find the crib empty and the twins missing. The first time they met Doubting Thomas, who left them an easy trail to follow because he wanted them to find him, wanted a confrontation. Bobby and Laynia had descended on the facility they tracked him to with the full fury of midnight and winter at their most destructive, and once inside they separated as they found the twins had been split up and taken in different directions. Laynia went after Dallas, who she could feel faintly, an early sign of his link to the Darkforce Dimension that she shares - second generation mutants always tend to manifest early - and Bobby went after Dmitri.

Doubting Thomas was waiting though, and the villain backstory reveal unfolded. The Professor, the Hellfire Club, etc....they weren't the only people who went around looking for young mutants to mold, seeing their potential. He grew up under the thumb of a woman even he only knows as Mother Nurture, a sadist with unguessable motivations even to her lackeys that she raised from childhood....to be their worst selves. Apparently she claims to be a precog, who knew what mutant children would grow up to be great heroes or positive influences on the world....which appears to be contrary to her agenda, whatever that is....as she targets kids who COULD grow up to be great forces for change, change for the better, and picks the ones with the brightest potential to stamp out and corrupt, turn to darkness. Her obsession with proving that there are no real heroes, that anyone can be twisted into the villain was apparently a recurring theme of Doubting Thomas' childhood, so when she assigned him the task of abducting the Drake twins when they were still months away from even being born, Thomas fixated on Bobby and Laynia during his surveillance of them, and developed an obsession of his own.

It was the first time he'd ever targeted superhero parents, let alone ones close enough in age to him that he could project onto them, see them as an inverted reflection of his own life. And even as he prepared to take the Drake twins at the earliest opportunity, that was just his assignment. His obsession with Bobby and Laynia was wholly personal, as he clearly became consumed with a need to prove to himself that they weren't better than him, that he could have BEEN them in another life, with better influences....that they would have been no different than he if they'd been in his shoes.

In fact, he was convinced there was such a slim margin of difference between them that he could topple Iceman from his heroic perch with just the slightest push. Bobby refutes this, saying he's nothing like him, but that's when Thomas says he lied. Mother Nurture actually only sent him after one Drake boy. She wasn't expecting two. Apparently, one of them was never destined to live all that long to begin with.

The issue never actually shows Dmitri, just Bobby breaking down, cradling the swaddled figure to his chest. He's dead-eyed when he looks up, frozen tear tracks on his cheeks as one icy drop falls to the ground and shatters.

Bobby: Guess you were right about me. Congrats. You win.

And then over the next two panels, Thomas flash-freezes before he can react, his entire body frozen on a cellular level...and then he shatters.

We only see glimpses of Laynia's horrified reaction when she arrives with Dallas in her arms, as Bobby hurries past those memories, he has them back but he doesn't want to relive those moments at all...and there are more snapshots of barely glimpsed memories of Bobby and Laynia reducing the entire facility to nothing but an empty crater. Bobby arrives at the memory of Laynia and Bobby, fueled by trauma and desperation, panicking about this Mother Nurture sending someone else after Dallas, their original fears reignite, the list of people who might want a baby like Dallas for their own agendas seems endless....culminating in them giving Dallas to Black Widow to place with a family she trusts to raise him safely. But Bobby notes despondently that even with all that, it'd take someone like Xavier or with similar resources all of five minutes to find a powerful mutant that young, if they ever got so much as a hint about him from Bobby or Laynia's minds.

Which is when Bobby decides: "In a world of telepaths, Cerebros and Wolverines, the only foolproof way to keep a secret...is to not even know it yourself.

They both agree, and seek out a telepath unaffiliated with any team or organization: Alexi Garnoff. Which brings us back to the present.

April 27th. The anniversary of the day one son died, and they made the decision to give up the other for his own safety.

ISSUE FOUR

With both of their memories fully restored, they're on the same page about what happens now: They have to find a way to keep the resurrected Doubting Thomas from figuring out who and where Dallas is. If he truly wants revenge, or if he still just feels compelled to fulfill his original assignment, Dallas is his real target. But they're fairly certain the extreme lengths they went to all those years ago at least did their job. Even with Bobby unaware of Thomas' existence, let alone vendetta against him, the latter was able to stalk him ever since his resurrection without finding even a hint of Dallas' location or identity...he would have had better luck stalking Laynia probably, but they assumed his fixation on Bobby for killing him, along with Laynia steering clear of Krakoa (ironically because she was worried about the many telepaths there picking up on her secret), Thomas concentrated his efforts on following Bobby and might not have even realized that unlike him, Laynia DID already know who and where Dallas was.

Thomas must have come out into the open in the way he did specifically to push Bobby to regain his memories, figuring then it would only be a matter of time before Bobby slipped up enough for Thomas to zero in on his target....so now they had to figure out how to keep that from happening, while now having a whole new host of reasons not to want to advertise they had a son. The last thing they want is to keep him out of Thomas' clutches just to put him on Sinister's radar, especially now that they know Bobby's an omega and how 'highly prized' they are as resources....which would no doubt make his offspring of interest to various villains.

Not to mention, Laynia's got her own misgivings about Krakoa. She's FURIOUS about the Crucible - Dallas was among the earliest to sign up and go through it, desperate to get his powers back and return to his place among his former classmates. Not only does she consider it needless trauma of the very sort they sacrificed so much to protect their son from, Laynia is territorial. Dallas' name and powers were pretty much the only thing he got from his biological parents, that they were able to give him as his birthright, the upside to all the downs that came with being their kid, and Laynia's pissed as hell that Bobby's new government had the gall to demand their son EARN BACK what was always his and that losing had ALREADY been a trauma all its own.

This in turn sows the seeds for Bobby's development into a more proactive role in mutant society, as well as future conflict with a lot of the personalities that put the Crucible in place initially, as he's forced to confront why he didn't have more problems with it in the first place, or at least not enough that he wasn't able to justify its existence. Has he gotten so used to assuming others know better than him, that he no longer bothers trying to weigh the morality of things himself? Is he comfortable with what it says about him that it took having a personal stake - his son having gone through it - to make him sit up and think hey, that was fucked up?

Meanwhile, Thomas has not been idle, and is using reports of Bobby seemingly attacking innocent protesters the other day to stir up doubts in him among any influential mutants or X-Men he can whisper suspicions to, without them being aware of his presence/influence. Bobby is 'strongly encouraged' by Xavier to return to Krakoa to clear up the confusion, and when he refuses, that just adds more fuel for Thomas to work with. Plus he uses all the paranoia Beast has drummed up over the past couple years to cast suspicion on Bobby suddenly being inseparable from Laynia, a known Russian operative who has no allegiances to Krakoa, while also stirring mutants in Mikhail's camp to view Laynia's choice of companions as suspicious, which threatens her work with the Russian mutant underground and her efforts to keep them safe and hidden as well.

Finally they decide the best way to deal with Thomas is to lure him in and get Alexi to do to him what he did to Bobby and Laynia years ago. Hide away all Thomas' memories of things related to them and give him a tailored memory of how he died and why.

ISSUE FIVE

Most of this issue is just Thomas, Laynia and Bobby all playing cat and mouse with each other...Thomas having his own schemes even as the other two try to implement theirs, until its hard to tell who is the hunter and who is the hunted. Bobby and Laynia are still teleporting as often as they can, both to keep him from sneaking up on them and poisoning their thoughts or manipulating their plans, as well as to evade various friends and teammates who are now seeking them out, concerned by their behavior and increasingly susceptible to distrusting them as they refuse to give any hints as to what the hell they're doing.

It should be very clear that Bobby and Laynia are NOT acting wholly rationally here, and they're both aware of it. Doubting Thomas is GOOD at what he does, and he's familiar enough with them and their sore spots, from intel he gained long ago still being relevant here and now, particularly with how recently their memories were refocused on those days....that they're sure even the tiniest or briefest amounts of access to them is enough for him to skew their own paranoia in extreme ways. Not to mention.....they're much older now than they were when they made the choice to hide Dallas in the way they did, and they made that decision at the absolute height of their grief, fear and anxiety. They're second-guessing every choice they made back then, as well as the ones they're making now, and they're NOT sure that staying away, doing this on their own, not confiding in anyone or pulling them in....they're not doing all that because they're convinced its the right move.

They're staying the course because they don't have any idea what the right move is, and until they do, doubling down on their previous choices is because there's no take-backs, no undoing things once the secret is out. They can't afford to decide that was the wrong move after they've done it, when that will do them no good.

So they stick to their plan and try to get Thomas in Alexi's range, but with his guard down enough for the other telepath to act. The POV shifts back and forth between Bobby and Laynia's, with a lot of their internal doubts about everything they've done, the thoughts Thomas raised in Bobby back in Issue #1, the ideological battle Thomas imagines exists between him and the heroes he resents so much - this back-and-forth spans most of the issue and keeps these themes front and center, until ultimately Bobby and Thomas face off again.

Bobby surprises Thomas by using his powers in an unexpected way....he makes dozens of golems spread out all over the place and then shuffles his actual consciousness through them one at a time, 'possessing' one golem as his vessel, his ice form before leaping into another one. Thomas can't get a bead on him, keeps chasing his own tail trying to keep up with Bobby's constant shell game in an attempt to find the 'real one,' where Bobby's actually vulnerable.

Finally, Bobby makes it clear he's not going to be playing this game with Thomas anymore, because thing is, the point Thomas is so obsessed with proving, wanting Bobby to know he's no better than him, is capable of terrible things....Bobby flat out just doesn't care.

Bobby: I remember everything now, Thomas. That's what you wanted, right? For me to relive all that, make sure I can't hide from it? That I have to feel every bit of pain I shut away back then because I couldn't deal? Because the truth is, as much as that was to protect my son it was also to protect me from everything I WANTED to forget? I remember. I remember my kids, losing them....I remember killing you. But I also remembered something else, that you probably didn't factor in.

Thomas: And what's that?

Bobby: I remembered that I'm not sorry.

He goes on the attack, just destruction every which way you look so that Thomas is forced to stay on the defensive, keeping himself immaterial and jaunting around because there's no safe space for him to land, so to speak.

Bobby: The Five can bring you back a thousand times and I'll kill you a thousand and one, if that's what it takes to keep my son safe from you. Here's what you never got. The whole hero vs villain, right or wrong, good or evil thing you're so obsessed with? I just don't care, man. That's never been why I do any of this. I know I'm flawed, too flawed to ever be 'truly good' but by the same token, I know there's enough good in me I'm not truly bad either. I've done terrible things before and I'll do them again, because at the end of the day, I'm not trying to be a hero. I'm just trying to save people where I can.

Bobby: Its about priorities, see. Its people that matter to me, if I'm helping or hurting. And I'll hurt someone to help someone I think deserves it more and maybe that's wrong but thing is I'm not making that choice based on if its right or wrong. I'm making it based on who I think needs help and what do I have to do to help them. Let someone else figure out the scorecard, I'm just trying to make sure the person I'm protecting makes it home safe.

Bobby: And you? You don't matter. My son matters to me. That's all that matters here. I choose him, no matter what, every time, and whatever that means, whatever I have to do to choose him, or because I choose him? I'll deal with it. If I make the wrong choices, if they backfire and get him hurt or they're not what he would want - that's the stuff that can keep me up at night. But if choosing him means killing an asshole like you to keep him safe?

Bobby: Don't worry about my virtue. I'll cope.

With that, Thomas makes his retreat, tail between his legs. They weren't able to implement their plan to have Alexi erase his memories, but they don't consider this to be over. He'll be back, they'll have more opportunities to make that happen. At least this time he was the one doing the running.

But as the finale of the issue, Thomas adapts and changes the game. He waits until Bobby's back on Krakoa, meeting with Xavier and other X-Men about recent events and trying to say as little as possible...and then Thomas picks that place and time to make his first public appearance on Krakoa since he was resurrected as just another name on the resurrection queue. Nobody knew who he was then or cared that he didn't seem interested in staying on the island, claiming amnesty and official Krakoan citizenship....but he does that now in the most dramatic way possible....as he turns to Bobby and blatantly advertises they have history.

Thomas: And in the spirit of new beginnings, I just want to say I forgive you for killing me eighteen years ago. Fresh starts for everyone, right?

And with that bombshell - and the fact that one look at Bobby tells everyone present that he's not denying it - he saunters off, leaving Bobby with more questions to answer but no closer to being able to fully disclose what he's keeping hidden....which Thomas can still reveal to anyone at any time. What he did reveal was enough to ensure there was no chance now of changing his memories of their shared past....not after he dragged them both into the spotlight and made sure they were linked so if anything did happen to Thomas or seem awry with him....there'd be no doubt who was Suspect Number One. And that was always going to come with the question of why.

The mini ends with a final page where Bobby's finally done talking w/the QC for now, and he's just standing on the beach far enough away from where a bunch of the Academy X kids are having a bonfire - with Dallas right in the thick of them - that it wouldn't be obvious that his sole reason for being out there was to catch a glimpse of him, even if only from a distance. Elsewhere, Laynia is browsing through a shop and notices a stuffed dragon similar to one flashbacks showed Dmitri cuddling with as a baby. She picks it up, hesitating as if debating whether to purchase it, with the final panel being of her back as she walks out of the shop, the stuffed animal still sitting where she'd found it.

ICEMAN: A HOUSE OF DRAGONS

The second mini of three, this one introduces Dallas as a POV character, still oblivious of everything readers learned in the first mini. It explores his feelings about being depowered on M-Day and his survivor's guilt from having left the Institute and been relatively safe compared to those who stayed, when other depowered mutants like David still stayed and fought for mutants. His best friends, Julian and Brian Cruz, insist that nobody thinks less of him for it and he was a minor, it wasn't like anybody was really consulting him on whether he wanted to stay or go at the time, but he can't shake the feeling he should have done more. Its what drove him to go through the Crucible so early on, and its what drives his determination to make it onto the X-Men team.

Seeds are also planted for later, via some brief scenes that reveal that while depowered and living away from the Institute, Dallas started exploring magic as an alternative to his powers, since there are various arts that access the same Darkforce Dimension his powers connected him to. He's no longer pursuing it as feverishly as he did while depowered, but it remains an interest as he's determined to never be powerless again, whether he has his mutant abilities or not.

He also has several chance encounters with Iceman, who he really only knows as his old math teacher, and no idea they're not so chance encounters at all.

Meanwhile, Bobby and Laynia are meeting more regularly off the island as they argue about whether or not they should tell Dallas the truth - he has a right to know and he's old enough to make his own choices about what he wants or doesn't want done in the name of keeping him safe. Their various rationales are undercut by the underlying awareness that both of them are afraid of his reaction and worried he won't understand why they did it and might even hate them for the choices they made.

At the same time, they're trying to figure out how to even go about resurrecting Dmitri. They know from Joanna Beaubier-Jinadu's example that despite his young age, Dima could still theoretically be resurrected....they just have no idea how to ask the Five or X-Factor to look for him in the Waiting Room without disclosing everything about Dallas at the same time...which brings them back to how do we tell Dallas.

Ultimately, they wait too long and Thomas takes the choice out of their hands. While Dallas is in the Mojoverse along with various other Academy X kids who have been regular presences there while taking advantage of the treaty between Krakoa and Mojo to try and get some Krakoan media entertainment off the ground,

It turns out that while Bobby was worried about Doubting Thomas approaching Sinister, Shaw or one of the other notorious mutants on Krakoa as part of his schemes, he went a different direction entirely. He approached Mojo with his proposal for a must-see show that would have all of Krakoa glued to the nearest TV screen.

And so what was supposed to be just a random trip to the Mojoverse leads to Dallas being trapped as the very confused and unwilling star of what Mojo describes as the ultimate reality show: DALLAS GIBSON, THIS IS YOUR LIFE.

The show proceeds to take viewers - and Dallas - through a recreation of his entire life, including all the parts he didn’t know about. Starting before his birth even, with Krakoans flocking to their TVs just as Thomas promised, as soon the bombshell claim of who his biological parents are drops and word spreads throughout the island. Even X-Men close to Bobby have no idea what to make of this at first and they start trying to figure out how to shut it down and figure things out from there, but it’s a futile effort, honestly.

Even if they could get Mojo to shut it down right away, the damage was already done - and its clear that nobody is more interested in seeing what comes next than Dallas himself. Seemingly having forgotten that everyone is watching this, he’s half in denial, half captivated by what he’s watching. It seems impossible but that doesn’t stop him from having a lot of confused and conflicting feelings as he watches literal surveillance footage Thomas had installed to spy on the much younger Bobby and Laynia as they interacted with their newborn sons.

Much of this is used to flesh out flashback scenes from the first mini, where Bobby and Laynia’s POVs of these early days were shown, stringing together a timeline without reproducing the same scenes exactly. In contrast, some of these scenes do directly recreate scenes seen previously in Bobby and Laynia’s memories….but now reproduced for Dallas’ viewing by objective technology devoid of the emotions layered around his parents’ actual memories of that time.

The video retelling includes footage from security cameras at the facility Thomas had retreated to for their final fateful confrontation years ago, similarly providing a stark and explicit view of Bobby and Laynia’s rampage through the facility and Bobby’s unapologetic killing of Thomas. It’s a side of Bobby few had ever seen before and raises more than a few eyebrows while answering the questions many of them had had ever since Thomas made his dramatic entrance to Krakoan society at the end of the first mini.

Bobby meanwhile started racing for Mojoworld the second Rogue called him and told him to get there fast and laid out what was going on. But it still took long enough for him to navigate Mojoworld’s confusing layout that he only smashed his way onto the ‘set’ Dallas was trapped on in time to see his eighteen year old self hand an infant Dallas over to the Black Widow onscreen.

One look at Bobby, not hiding behind his ice form and with pain and remorse writ large all over his face, told Dallas (and everyone else) everything they needed to know about how true or not all this was.

But before Bobby can even attempt to figure out what to say, Mojo calls everyone’s attention back to the screens, as he announces there’s a plot twist featuring never-before-seen-footage from that first tragic April 27th.

The screen jumps to more security camera footage from Thomas’ facility….but the time stamp puts this at just before Bobby & Laynia’s arrival. Bobby (and Laynia who has arrived on Krakoa for the first time, as soon as she learned what was happening) watch in shock as Thomas hands Dmitri off to a lackey and instructs him to get offsite before the two arrive. Onscreen, Thomas says if he’s there’s one thing he’s figured out about Bobby & Laynia, its that they’ll never stop searching for one of their babies so long as they’re still alive….so if they’re convinced this one is dead and the other one is taken to Mother Nurture as she instructed him, they’ll focus all their efforts on trying to reclaim that one. Let her deal with that Thomas sniffs derisively. I have different plans for this one.

Of course, those plans never came to fruition, Mojo narrates. He underestimated just how….fatally Bobby would react to the simulacrum he believed to be his now dead son. He was never able to follow up with the lackey who took the real Dmitri, and his hired hand - who had not signed up for any of this and was freaking out once he saw what was left of the facility he’d last seen his boss in - well, he basically said fuck this and anonymously dropped Dmitri off at the nearest hospital.

Given the lengths Bobby & Laynia had gone to make sure their kids’ information WASN’T readily available anywhere when they were born, there was no indication of Dmitri’s real identity or where he came from, so he went into the system where he grew up in a series of homes that left him not especially traumatized, but at least distrustful of authority. Then Thomas revealed that when he’d first been resurrected, he’d tracked down Dmitri by finding his lackey and figuring out where he’d left the baby, retracing Dmitri’s path from there. Unlike Dallas, Thomas had always known exactly where to find Dmitri….but felt that particular reveal really needed the RIGHT moment.

And that moment apparently was now. Taking over narrator duties from Mojo, Thomas now speaks into the cameras, directly addressing Bobby and Laynia as he tells them Dmitri too manifested powers early and has had years to learn to make the most of his powerset. He apparently can access a mirror dimension that lets him teleport via reflective surfaces, use them as scrying portals by which he can see anything within visual range of that surface….and there’s one particularly interesting twist to his power. When Dmitri’s in the mirror dimension and watching events play out in the real world via a mirror or other surface….those events don’t just have to be in the present.

Time is wonky in the mirror dimension, as is often true of extradimensional spaces. Dmitri has limited precognitive abilities as he can use the mirror dimension to peer out of mirrors and watch what’ll happen in view of them at some point in various possible future timelines.

Apparently its tricky and unreliable, but its at least effective enough that Dmitri counts as a precog by anyone’s standard. And in the early days of Krakoa, when deciding whether to go there himself, he apparently glimpsed enough clandestine conversations to know that at that point, at least…..Krakoa was not a safe place to be a precog.

Onscreen, Thomas claps his hands energetically and addresses the entire audience now:

Thomas: So, to recap, somewhere out there is the teleporting precog son of an omega level mutant who’s already proven he’s willing to cross just about any line for this son’s sake. Said son is also primed to be extremely distrustful of Krakoa….and anyone who might be seen as an emissary of it. Like, oh say, X-Men. And to top it all off….he has absolutely no idea where he comes from nor does he have any reason to believe anyone who comes out of nowhere claiming to be his longlost parents or friends of theirs.

Thomas: Now I don’t know about all of you, but I think whomever were to find him first, and gain his trust, well - they could probably figure out any number of ways those combined factors could be useful.

The screen flashes to a generic street camera view of a Dmitri Drake that looks a lot like his brother, just with brown hair instead of blond. There’s little to distinguish either his surroundings or Dmitri himself, but its clearly being presented as a starting point for potential searchers.

The final pages show an array of panels showing notorious mutant villains all leaning forward and studying the screen with interest. Sinister, Shaw, Selene (if she’s back yet), Abigail Brand, MLF members, Stryfe, Mystique and Destiny, the Fenris twins, etc.

The second mini concludes with Doubting Thomas winking into the camera, essentially staring straight at the reader.

Thomas: May the best influence win!

DARKSTAR: SONS OF SNOW AND SHADOW

Subtitled: “Run, Dima, Run!”

The third and final mini of the triptych is a chaotic free for all as basically everyone is hunting for Dmitri Drake, who has absolutely no idea why people are suddenly coming out of the woodwork looking for him but quickly decides he doesn’t want to be found.

Dallas is aggressively putting off dealing with how he feels about any of this and flat out shuts down any attempts Bobby or Laynia make to approach him. He’s totally fixated on being the one to find basically the only person in the universe who could understand how he’s feeling right now, and they can figure it out together then. He’s blatantly underestimating how much his longlost twin actually might NOT be able to relate to his specific perspective here, and vice versa. Something his friends and Academy X classmates try to caution him about while helping him on his search.

Surge: Oh shut up, dumbass. I don’t have to like you for you to be one of us, and any twin of yours is basically a two-for-one deal, so of course we’re going to do whatever it takes to keep your longlost brother from being exploited and used by adults who suck. I would include your parents in that but I actually think them hiding you from that musty bald bitch Xavier was probably the smartest thing any X-parent has done for their kid so I’m fighting down the impulse to be impressed.

Dallas: …thank you? I think?

Thus the Academy X kids actually take one of the most prominent roles in the mini as Dallas and his classmates’ search is heavily prioritized. There’s a strong focus on various kids who have history being exploited by older mutants and are now projecting heavily. Brian and Julian are of course Dallas’ closest confidantes through this, maybe Brian a little more than Julian as the latter flip-flops back and forth between calling Dallas a legacy and a nepo baby at different intervals. He can’t seem to decide if he thinks it’s something to be envied or not. Anole is unrepentant about ranking Dallas’ dad’s most infamous costumes and how hot or not he looked in each of them. He and Dallas never got along in school. Icarus absently notes that he’s pretty sure his brother and Dallas’ dad had a thing going on at one point.

They’re not quite all as helpful as they could be, is the takeaway. But they do feel the stakes and if any generation of mutants is prone to embracing gallows humor to cope, it’s the Academy X kids.

Elsewhere Bobby is conducting his own search with the help of numerous X-Men and friends, who are all trying to process everything they just learned and saw. Most of them are supportive and understanding, though a few are more abrasive about the sheer amount of stuff they didn’t know about him or even suspect.

Xavier tries to lecture Bobby about how they wouldn’t be in this situation if he had trusted them with this at any point in the past. Bobby shuts that down with gusto, emphasizing that Xavier was one of the people they were most concerned about hiding the twins from - and a good thing too, he points out, given what could have happened to Dallas if Onslaught had known about him when Dallas was still just a kid.

But then he gets downright chilly and makes it clear how and why his dynamic with many of them will be at least somewhat different from this point on…..Xavier especially.

He brings attention back to the not so minor detail of Xavier, Moira and Magneto apparently originally declaring Krakoa to be for all mutants….except for precogs.

Bobby: You keep saying this place is the culmination of everything we’ve fought for from the first day we put on an X-Men uniform, so I just wanna know, Professor. Why the HELL did I spend my whole life fighting for you to create your own personal vision of paradise….which apparently was meant to exclude one of my children, just because of what freaking power he was born with?

Xavier: Compromises had to be made in order to -

Bobby: Y’know, you’ve been using that line since I was fifteen and its tired, X. Every time we asked why you couldn’t just use your powers in ways you insisted would ethically compromise you - except for whenever you decided it was okay because it made things more convenient for you specifically.

Bobby: From day one you’ve kept your secrets from us, for a lot shadier reasons than I’ve ever had for keeping one, so you don’t need to be telling me I’m not entitled to my secrets. You have all these contingencies for if any of us go bad, while telling us nobody’s beyond redemption except for those times you decide Magneto is, or the Shadow King is.

Bobby: You know what the real problem with your dream has always been, Professor? It asks for a leap of faith that you’ve never been prepared to make yourself. You’re always asking us to line up and put it all on the line for the chance at a better world, no matter how realistic it is….but you’ve never actually put down your own cynicism or pragmatism or whatever you want to call it….and just….dreamed. How does that even work, huh?

Bobby: Just….what the hell would you have even done, Professor, if I had raised my kids at the mansion all this time? What spin would you have given me when you finally embarked on this grand Krakoan experiment you’ve been planning for years….and needed to tell me one of my sons wasn’t allowed to come with? That if he died, you had no intention of resurrecting him and his politically inconvenient power?

Xavier: *keeps silent*

Bobby: Yeah, y’know what, on second thought I don’t think I actually want to know the answer to that. Stay away from me and my kids, X. You and I are done.

Finally, last but not least, Laynia will be running her own search for Dima with the help of her brother, the Black Widow, and Warren, who wanted to make sure she knew that he’s her friend too, not just Bobby’s. Despite the lack of detail here, she’d actually have the most prominent role in this mini - being associated publicly with Krakoa is actually an obstacle for Bobby gaining Dmitri’s trust. Laynia’s lack of affiliation with it or Russia’s government or any other organization, is what lets her convince Dmitri to give her a chance and hear her out when she does find him.

(Something she’s ultimately able to do by going to Arakko and asking Storm if she can get her an audience with Lactuca, who should know exactly where to find him. In exchange, Lactuca will ask a favor of Laynia at some point in the future, which plants some seeds to bring Laynia more into X-books without just being an extension of Bobby).

There will be a final reckoning between Laynia and Thomas this time, and the mini will end with things still messy as hell, as the newfound family of four (plus Uncle Nikolai, standing awkwardly off to the side) basically stand there staring at each other and wondering what next. But even with them all as relative strangers now, there’s a wealth of possibilities now that everything’s out in the open.

This mysterious Mother Nurture still lingers offscreen as a potential future threat, especially as they still don’t know what they intended with Dallas - if he was even the twin she was after in the first place. Iceman’s poised to be launched in any number of directions as he’s now essentially reinventing himself while everyone is paying more attention to him than ever before, all while he’s trying to fall back on comfortable, familiar habits of joking and pranks to try and bond with the sons who are grown up and don’t really know what - if any - dynamic they even need or want with him. Laynia’s reluctantly taken Krakoan citizenship to be closer to her sons, but finds she prefers staying on Arakko and grows closer to mutants she meets there, with Dima joining her more often than not, as he’ll never be fully comfortable with Krakoa even if precogs are ‘allowed’ now. Dallas is more determined than ever to be an X-Man but he’s worried that now he’ll never make it on his own merits and it’ll always be more about him being a legacy, a founding X-Man’s kid.

Etc, etc.

#X-Men: Academy X #academy x #new xmen #Bobby Drake #Iceman

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glitxhwayventeen · 3 years ago

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Lonely Hearts Club

Seokmin: Chapter 3 (I Wanna Know)

Characters: Seokmin x female reader

Genre/Warnings: multi-member au (different scenarios), werewolf au, fantasy, angst, fluff, genocide mentions, runaways, mental illness (depression implied), sexual mentions, crying, mentions of death, mentions of violence. Any others will be put as warnings when future chapters are thought up/written.

Author’s Note: Your girl is in some serious fucking pain but she managed to get another chapter out because she couldn’t sleep! So low and behold, I give you a decent chapter for DK

Please remember that all of these chapters and the content within them are a work of fiction! They’re just for fun/entertainment!

Bold= Dialogue Italics= Thoughts

🥀 & ☁️

Lonely Hearts Club Master List

Chapter 3: I Wanna Know

You were in heat for a few more days. Seokmin stayed with you the whole time and took care of… your every need. Though he looked worn out, he didn’t complain once. He liked that you let him help you. And he was hoping now that your heat was over, you’d let him in a bit more.

Your legs felt like jello, your hair looked like a birds nest, your skin was covered in variously healed bruises. You were a mess. But it was still time to go back to the pack. You made a promise and you always followed through with your promises, even if you were in a horny induced daze when you made it. You were just hoping they wouldn’t know, or at least, wouldn’t make a big deal out of what had happened.

Seokmin helped get you back to your feet and get dressed, putting your arms through your tank top and putting you in your shorts one leg at a time. He had already managed to get himself together as he had woken up earlier than you had. He figured you’d be in worse shape than him after everything… everything you’d been through and he wanted to be sure you were as okay as possible before you started your journey back home.

“There we go, all done!” He chirped after finally buttoning the last button on your jean shorts.

He took a step back to look at you. Aside from the bruises, you physically looked pretty normal now that he had helped you tame your ridiculously tangled hair. But he knew the pack was gonna smell you. You smelled like him from the week of animalistic sex sessions you two had been having due to your heat. It was unavoidable. He knew they’d all know you two slept together the second you walked through the door. He just wasn’t sure how you’d react to their inevitable and unavoidable teasing.

You quickly looked down after you had seen your reflection in one of your buckets of water, “I look like a walking disaster.” You muttered.

“It’s not THAT bad…,” He failed miserably at reassuring you, “But it doesn’t matter anyways, we’re mates. It doesn’t matter if we slept together or not. We would have eventually anyways” Seokmin tried to reason, bringing himself to walk up to you and hold your small hands in his large ones hesitantly.

“They’re all gonna make fun of me.” You pouted at him, looking down at your feet and smiling a bit in embarrassment.

You had never really taken the time to look at him before your whole mating fiasco happened. You had done literally everything in your power to avoid him at all costs so you wouldn’t catch feelings for him. But now that you had spent a good portion of time alone with him, you realized just how much bigger than you Seokmin was. He always seemed so… subservient around the pack that you never really gave his physical appearance much thought when it came to size. He must’ve been almost a foot taller than you, and now that you had seen him shirtless and naked, you also knew just how much muscle he actually had. He was MUCH larger than you had thought. Even his feet looked like they could crush yours with one fast stomp.

He held back a giggle at your cuteness before he spoke up, “They won’t make fun of yoooou. Especially because you could EASILY beat most of them to a bloody pulp with your special wolfie powers and all.”

“Aya! They’re not special ‘wolfie powers.’ They’re just my normal powers. And it’s not my fault you guys are more diluted forms than me.” You chuckled, playfully smacking his toned chest with your hand.

He cocked his head to the side at your statement, “Is that how it works? The longer the line the less of a wolf you are?” He asked curiously while bringing the back of your hand up to his lips and giving it a chaste kiss.

You almost laughed out loud at his question before you remembered that he didn’t grow up with other werewolves. He was a bitten wolf, not genetically a wolf. You remembered that Seungcheol had told you that no one in his family had ever been a wolf before him. He probably had no clue how it all worked, especially since his pack wasn’t always the best help when it came to educating each other on important matters. You felt a little guilty for thinking he was just being sort of dumb. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know anything about it. So you held back your little outburst and nodded instead.

“Yeah basically. I mean, most genetic lines now can still obviously transform, but they’re still not…” You tapped your chin with your index finger for a moment while thinking of the correct words to explain what you meant, “As much of a wolf as me.” You decided.

Your mate was watching you intensely, listening to every word you said closely, as if he was learning the most important information he’d ever need to know,“I’m honestly probably more wolf than I am human. But most modern day wolves are more human than wolf, that’s why it’s relatively easy for them to assimilate into human societies and blend in.” You informed him, the both of you gathering the rest of your things and making your way out the cave to the path leading back to the forest.

“But hiding our eyes isn’t always easy!” He interjected with enthusiasm you found oddly cute, “If we get too emotional, the potions disintegrate and our real eye color shows. So it’s not really SUPER simple with us.” Seokmin responded, grabbing your hand closest to him and interlocking your fingers.

For a moment, you wanted to pull away from him and push him for initiating the sudden contact. But you also promised him that you’d give him a chance and that you’d try to be the best mate to him that you could be. Plus, the warmth of his hand felt… kind of nice on yours. So you kept your hands together, giving his fingers an involuntary squeeze that made Seokmin’s face light up.

“I suppose you’re right. But really, as long as a wolf can keep their shit together, they can seem very human. When my people were still around, we were very obviously NOT human. We couldn’t be even if we had tried.” You casually let out, skipping over a large rock in your way.

“What were your people like?” He questioned, genuinely wanting to know what your life was like before you lost everything. His pack had tried to ask you before, but you’d always clam up and make up some excuse to leave the conversations. He was hoping with it just being the two of you, you might actually be okay with sharing some more personal information with him.

You waited a moment before you spoke up. What WERE your people like? It had been so long that you hardly even remembered anythings about them. You usually tried to push away all the thoughts of them because remembering all you lost hurt too much. But when he asked you the question, it was like everything came rushing back to you all at once.

Your family, your tribe, your traditions. You remembered how the tribal elders used to let you sit in on council meetings because your father insisted you needed to know everything there was to know about running the tribe. It made you feel so important when he did that, like you were his pride and joy. You thought about all the times you had sat next to your mom as she cooked up potions and remedies in her old stone cauldron for the healer to use on the sick and injured. She always cared so much about everything and everyone around her, you always loved to help her help people. And you could all but see your 11 big goofball brothers running up to you holding their latest hunting prizes with the most giant toothy grins they could muster. Those dumbasses, they always made the most of life. You missed them so fucking much.

Everything started swirling around your head and it made a huge smile appear on your face with watery eyes at the thought of your early life. Seokmin took notice and felt a bit proud of himself that he had made you that happy, you had never beamed a smile that big before in front of him or his pack.

“My people… they were… they were just-” You paused, “They were just the most amazing family a person could ever ask for.” You started, wiping away a sudden tear that had fallen down the side of your face from the memory of them, hopefully before your mate could notice. Of course, he still saw, but he said nothing because he knew it would upset you.

“They were always just sooooo happy. I remember every night was basically like a huge party. We’d all dance and sing around the campfire, there’d be elders telling stories and offering the young words of wisdom while the parents would scold us for interrupting anytime anything got cool or surprising.” You sadly laughed, “We were all just… one big happy family. Even if I wasn’t actually related to all of them. I can’t really explain the connection I felt to them… it was just as strong as the one I had to my biological family.” You sighed, finally reaching the edge of the forest and finding the proper trail for the both of you to set towards home.

He could hear the pain in your voice as you spoke of your past life. You must’ve really missed them. But there were so many questions he still had. What about your actual family? Did you have brothers or sisters? What kind of life did you have? How did you sleep or eat? Where did you come from? But he knew he shouldn’t ask so many at once, he didn’t want to overwhelm you or hound you with his thoughts all at once. So instead, he asked just one question he knew he should probably know the answer to: “What- What happened to them?”

His words made you halt your movements for a second. Remembering that day wasn’t something you liked to do. In fact, you went to great lengths to avoid the memory. It haunted everything you did. Every minute of everyday was plagued with the thought of their demise. You had nightmares every night. You saw their hallowed faces in every person you met. You smelt ash and burnt flesh more than you smelt anything else. Their screams were still stuck to your mind like gum on the bottom of a shoe. It tore you apart to think of it. But still, you knew he deserved to know. You’d want to know if you were him.

“They were… they were massacred.” You sadly shrugged, biting your lip to keep yourself from letting sobs out. He stroked your hand in his in an effort to soothe your sad soul. You took comfort in his small affectionate touch, it grounded you and pulled your tortured mind back down to the conversation you were having.

You took in a deep breath, “It was just any other day, at least, to me it was,” you gulped before you continued, “I was helping my mom with some new herbal remedies for some of our sick warriors when suddenly we heard this loud BANG. My mom wasn’t a wolf, in fact, back then no female was. Well, no female but me that is, but that’s beside the point,” you shook your head and tried to get yourself back on the topic at hand.

“I could feel the vibration under my feet. It was a cannon, but we didn’t know that then. They weren’t really used in our part of the world, they’d freeze in the cold weather and couldn’t always light at the altitude that my village was set on. But somehow, the Cossacks found a way to make them work… they always found a way…” you stated flatly, looking up to the sky out of respect for your fallen family.

“They were upset that my pack had killed some of their soldiers that had hurt a group of women in a neighboring tribe. So they punished us the only way they knew how: by brutally murdering everyone and setting everything they could on fire. Fire’s one of the few ways Icyan wolves can actually be killed. They killed almost everybody. As far as I know, Cyrus and me were the only ones who got out.” You swallowed back the lump stuck in your throat as you and Seokmin continued onward to your destination.

Now this question really worried him, he wasn’t sure if he even wanted answers to it. But he, again, wanted to know more about you and how you got to him. He’d figure it out eventually, might as well try to get it out of you today while he had you going already.

“Can you- can you tell me a bit about him…?” He almost whispered, afraid to say it any louder as he didn’t want to upset you.

“W-What?” You asked for clarification.

“I- I Wanna Know more about… him… Can you tell me about him?” Seokmin stuttered out. He was still unsure if he should’ve said it to begin with, but he couldn’t help it. He had to know more about the man who had you crying constantly over him.

You turned your head to look at him, “About who? Cyrus?” A bit of fear crossed your face as you attempted to confirm what he asked.

“Y-Yeah. He was your mate. And Jun kind of explained what you told him had happened to him the other day, but I don’t know much about him. Like how you two got out. Or why he died…” He looked you in the eyes and say that tears and immense sadness had began to pool in them, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to! I just figured… that it would be better to get it out in the open now…” Seokmin bit his lip as he waited for your reaction/response.

“Cyrus was… Cyrus. He is- was… my best friend.” You sighed defeatedly out loud before you continued, “He always took care of me. He imprinted on me right after I was born, so he was always there for me.” You started, still trying to find the right words to emphasize what he meant to you. But it was hard, you weren’t very touchy feely like Seokmin was. Feelings were all new to you, so you weren’t sure how to share them aloud.

You didn’t want to upset Seokmin by speaking too fondly about your past mate, but you also couldn’t help the pang in your heart you felt Everytime you heard Cyrus’s name. Part of you wanted to never speak of him again, another part of you wanted to never shut up about him. Your mind was full of conflict but your heart was full of sorrow. How could you possibly ever forget Cyrus enough to have a new mate? How could you ever emphasize how important he was to you when Seokmin, your current lover, was holding your hand? How were you supposed to pick and choose such things when your heart was pleading for a break?

“Wait- he imprinted on you right when you were born? I didn’t know that was possible…” he lost steam towards the end of his sentence and started to mumble while rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

“Oh no! It wasn’t like that!” You stopped him before he could get any further, “See, Icyan wolves start to shift really soon after birth, like only a month or two after. So it basically means that we’re able to phase our entire life. Cyrus was only five years older than me. He acted like an older brother to me until I hit 16 ish. But that’s when it all went wrong…” You held back a whimper that was threatening to spill past your lips.

“But the day everyone was killed, my dad and the other wolves came to defend out den. I was hiding in the hut while my mom was trying to do a protection spell. But they had killed most of our warriors already when they tried to save their families. We’re very protective of the ones we love” you sniffled slightly, still trying to hold your emotions back but obviously failing miserably.

“Cyrus came to find me after his family was killed. It was his instinct to protect me first, even though he loved his parents, they had each other still. And I was his mate, that’s how we work, mates and children before anyone else. He came into our home and tried to comfort me. We all thought we were gonna die. They had already killed my brothers by the river bank, it broke my parents. They saw red. But they knew I was still alive. So, before the Russians stormed our hut, my dad told Cyrus to take me and run as far as possible for as long as possible, so he did. After that, we were alone, but we had each other. It was like that for a few years. But then… I turned 16 and everything went to hell.” Your lip trembled and quivered with guilt.

Your current mate whined at your sadness, he wanted to help you, but he knew there was nothing he could say or do to make you feel better. So he just kept rubbing the back of your petite hand and giving you his full undivided attention. You had heard his whine, but you knew it was just because you were upset, so you gave him a small depressed smile before you kept speaking.

“Well you know that he- well that he’s obviously dead. Otherwise we couldn’t have imprinted on each other. But I’m sure you want to know… why he died” you mustered up all the courage you could before finally explaining it all to him, “He saved me. I fucked up. I was spotted by some towns people and he took the fall so they wouldn’t take me instead. Our wolf forms were similar. All Icyan wolves are white, we can just have different patterns to us. The villager that spotted me didn’t see the black spot on my head, he just saw a huge white wolf. They followed me back to our den and they were met with him. He refused to let me go. He was a telepath and he was an alpha. He ordered me to hide and he told me he loved me before he gave himself up to the angry mob.” You stopped walking and let the tears brimming your eyes freely fall.

Seokmin stood in front of you playing with your hair sweetly, trying to give you something to ground yourself and distract you from your heartache. It killed him to see you that way.

“I couldn’t- I couldn’t refuse his order. He was- he was my alpha. So I had to stay and watch them take him back to their town. I left after that to try and find him, he never told me that I couldn’t. But by the time I got there- they- they-” you sobbed out while bringing your shakey hands to your face, “They had already started torturing him. There had been reports of two huge wolves in the area and they thought he would lead them to me if they hurt him enough. But he never did.” Seokmin pulled you into his chest as you cried, barely able to breathe as you convulsed into loud whimpers and wails.

“I- I felt everything. Every cut they made, every punch, every hit. Because I’m of my shaman bloodline, I felt everything he felt, I- I’m an empath. He figured out I was in the crowd and just kept telling me that he loved me telepathically. That it wasn’t my fault. But- But how could it not be- be my fault?” You stuttered as you gripped onto Seokmin’s shirt for dear life, “I got him killed!” You all but screamed, crying into your mate’s chest so hard he was worried you’d pass out.

Seokmin just let you cry. He couldn’t imagine the guilt and pain you must have been feeling. He just held you and shushed you and told you that everything would be okay. But how could you be okay? You lost everyone in the most awful ways possible. No wonder you didn’t want him around before. If he were you, he wouldn’t either. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk losing MORE people.

He knew you thought it was your fault, but it wasn’t. If the roles were reversed, he knew you would’ve done the same thing as Cyrus. Just like he always knew that if push came to shove, he’d do the same exact thing your past mate had done to save you. You were his whole world, he’d never let anything or anybody hurt you if he could help it. He’d defend you with his very last breath if it meant you got even a second longer to live.

After a while, your breathing evened out and your sobs became just tears. Seokmin pulled you back up from his torso to look you in the glistening eyes. He quickly wiped away any water that had streamed down your face in the process. He really wanted to just kiss all your tears away, but now wasn’t the time for that.

“I’m so sorry (Y/N). I wish I could take away your pain. But I can’t. The best I can do is promise you that I’ll always be here for you.” He assured you, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ears.

“Even if I start crying over my dead mate?” You tried to sound sarcastic, but you honestly felt too weak to. It probably came out as more of a whine to him.

“Even if you start crying over him. Or if you miss him. Or even if you just want to talk about him. Or any of them. It’s okay. I understand and I’m here for you, no matter what.” He pecked your nose softly and gave you the most loving eyes you had ever seen.

You couldn’t help but pull him into a sweet, thankful kiss, attempting to show him how grateful you were for him with your actions rather than your words that always seemed to fail you. Once you pulled back, you realized just how tired you were. Seokmin seemed to pick up on it to because, suddenly, you were in his arms being carried through the woods bridal style. You gave him a look of uncertainty, he just nodded at you and gave you a loving smile, signaling that he would be okay to walk back the rest of the way to the house with you in his arms.

You wanted to protest it all for his sake, but your eyelids felt too heavy. So instead, you just snuggled your now swollen face into his chest and let the darkness take over, feeling safe in his arms and knowing he would never let anything bad happen to you. For the first time in a long time, you felt like maybe everything would be okay.

(Updated 9/17)

#seventeen #seventeen angst #seventeen au #seventeen fanfic #seventeen fluff #seventeen smut #svt au #seventeen x reader #svt seokmin #seokmin imagines #seokmin x reader #seokmin angst #seventeen seokmin #dokyeom #svt dk

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alitheamateur · 5 years ago

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The Grind- Chapter 31

A/N: Here we are, my precious jewels. The end of my own little era, but the beginning of a renewed passion. This story brought back a love for story-telling that I had long neglected, and although most don't understand the sentiment, I owe a lot of happiness to these characters. The Grind sprouted during a very dark, confusing, heartbreaking time in my life, and it became such a welcomed distraction from my emotional spiral. This piece of fiction will be held near and dear to my soul for all of eternity, and my heart beats with love for each & every one of you who has shared a kind word.

One last time, The Grind.

I was grateful that even over all the unsteady commotion, the gravel of his familiar voice busted through to my eardrums. The thud of my pulse hammered, already bringing along the gift of a taxing migraine that would only worsen once a pair of fists lashed into my skull. I was dreading the aching road of recovery before Kat and I had even thrown a punch.

Hers came first though. Quick, and robust it met the girlish roundness of my chin, shaking quivers over every hair on my skin. My footing staggered, and I swear to you my very eyeballs rattled. The early stages of pain I felt didn’t talk long to drag back the memo to my brain to protect my face as much as possible as she obsessively stalked to land an even more brutal hit the next time. I swished the blood laced spit around my jaws to wet my tongue, and settled in for war.

She could tell the blow had combusted an inkling of uncertainty in my spirit, and it only fed her desire for violence. With a random bout of bravery, I pointed an attempted swing for her ribs, connecting successfully to the tight ripples of her abdomen. Seeing as she hadn’t foreseen the body shot, it crippled her standing straight stance, and I was able to rock two more fists to the opposite cage of her ribs. Something felt off for a second when I heard her gasp for a breath when I released the wind from her belly. I felt… bad.

Violent nature was foreign to me, and I let myself feel briefly apologetic on the inside watching her suffer for air. Then, the fighting side of me rose to rule. I lobbed a club-foot kick to her chiseled thigh, victoriously capturing her balance. However, I couldn’t completely escape my often clumsy tactics, and I let my own legs tangle with hers as she dropped buoyantly to the mat.

I scurried with fluster to try and reach my standing position before Bex, but unfortunately her quickness outweighed my own. I brought my forearms to my face, doubling them as a shield of armor for my breakable nose. With her every delivery of a fist, my head bounced like a ball on the soft mat below. I prayed for her to tire, or somehow make a careless mistake and allow my escape. I could already feel the tenderness of plum-shaded bruises forming up and down my arms, and I just wanted to cower in Colton’s arms.

Where was his voice? Why couldn’t I hear the assuring yells of he and Tia?

Just as my arms began to weaken in defeat, the squealing of the timekeeper’s bell halted her strike.

Katrina stood to her feet with ease, running for the cool swig of water waiting in her corner, leaving a shaken and hallucinating swirl of stars swimming like a halo around my skull. I tried to assess myself on the mat, still surveying what damage may have been done. Aside from my fractured pride.

“Baby! Get up, c’mon! Get over here, Liv!”

I frenzied to my feet shakily, remembering the very limited seconds I had to steal a second with my coaches in between rounds. Tia tried to masquerade her reaction of pity, but the squinting sickness of her eyes told all the tale I needed. I didn’t feel much pain, other than a tight pressure settling inside my nostrils, so the unknown markings couldn’t have been of much severity, right?

Suddenly, settling on the 3-legged stool for a ticking minute of a break, I caught glimpse of the very sopped, very stained towel that Colt applied to my stuffy nose. He squeezed gently, and his touch seemed to re-apply sensation to my busted snout. I yelped as his massaged as gingerly as his rocky hands would, and plugged the holes with some sort of swabs to drink up the blood-spill.

“You good, Liv? Hey… Look at me, right now. Look in my eyes. Do you wanna keep going?” Colton shook my shoulders, demanding a surefire answer. Bless his soul, there was nothing but devoted protection and the will to be my strong tower in his silver eyes.

“Have a little faith, remember?”

He rehearsed his best fake smile, and slung the ruined rag over his shoulder to scoop up my cushioned seat when the ref tapped a finger to his imaginary watch hurrying us to pick up the pace.

Besides the whelped imprint of my ankle bone on the upper of her thigh, Bex would enter the second round only rested and ready for more. She would go viciously after my obviously very broken nose, so it was my responsibility to protect it like a mother bird to her helpless young.

Two nippy little jabs, but thankfully she had missed. The dodging alone of her efforted hits made my entire face spasm with pain, and I was already daydreaming about the blue-green blossoms of bruise I would wake up to in the morning. If I even made it that far…

“Go after that leg, Liv! She’s tryin’ to baby it, so get after her!”

With Tia’s help, I did begin to notice the awkward teeter to Katrina’s steps. She was hobbling in the slightest, and her leg carried a barely detectable limp of uneasiness. If I could numb that leg enough, and swipe her footing to crash, I knew I could get her. I needed just a cracked window of opportunity, and I wouldn’t let my submission training go to waste.

I fell into rhythm with bizarre fist fakes, confusing her reflexes when taking shot after shot at her leg. With unyielding focus, I beat the tender skin of her thigh with kicks like a well-oiled meat tenderizer, the stretch of my own groin muscle also suffering.

Dribbles from my nose spilled blood down my chest onto the mat, painting a slickness beneath our feet. The metallic flavored goo gurgled in the back of my throat, and I wanted to spit free my mouthguard and guzzle the strongest proof of some sort of dark alcohol to curb its stain on my tongue. I made a mental note that Colt make a liquor run once I settled into the featherbed in our hotel room.

As Katrina and I tiptoed on light feet ‘round the cage, I’d give side glances to Colt. Once finding his foot standing in the seat of my stool with his elbow resting on a knee, his mouth taut behind the hand his rested over his lips. Assessing. Strategizing. Criticizing?

Another moment his forearms interlocked over his beating chest, toes tapping in a wide stance, and even a barely traceable half-smile sitting across his face. Just knowing he was there, close to me, only a few arms-lengths away should danger really arrive, slowed the pace of my overbeating heart. I’d win this for him. For me, of course. But, it was decided nevertheless that Katrina’s very first loss tonight, would ultimately rally a victory for me, my camp, and my Colton.

As the round ended, Bex felt the buff weight of pressure stalking around her. As I turned, this time much more aware, towards my corner for a rushed break between blows, she smashed both palms to the blades of my shoulder, childishly showing me to the ground. Our ref consumed her with a tight embrace, quite firmly chastising into her ear. Thankfully for the much ,much needed backup, I bounced out of the way for Willow to swallow Tia inside a resisting bearhug, as I attempted to handle Colton’s own bursting of incoherent fury.

“Handle your fuckin’ girl, Tyler! You and I both knew we ain’t here for any shit like that!” My rumbling bear growled across the mat to Kat’s fumbling coach. “I see anything like that again, and me ‘n you may have to borrow this damn cage for a short minute.”

“Hey, hey, hey! Colton, hey. Stop, baby. C’mon! Look at me, I’m good, ok?” I purred and hummed into his hot ear. Hoping some sort of soothing spell would lull some calmness back into his raging eyes.

“COLT, STOP. Shit! Take a deep breath, Colton. Don’t ruin this for me, damn it! I’m fine, babe. I promise.” I was rambling to an empty shell. His spirit was climbing the rafters like a demonic spirt lurking above the darkest shadows. “Please…”

With that simplest plea, the pink of his cheeks reappeared, and his lips relaxed. I think his teeth cracked from the tense of his unbreakable jaws.

He shuddered, as if feeling his spirit mold back into his body, and turned away from Bex and her coach. Placing two firm paws atop my shoulders, he hurried me to a seat, kneeling himself to eye level.

“Beat. Her.” A growl buzzed from the back of his raw throat.

He knew her sideshow had embarrassed me, and if I wouldn’t let him intervene in my honor, I best do it myself.

Colton kissed me. Hard. Teetering the stool on its back legs. And if I couldn’t win this fight with that kind of motivation, I never had a chance to begin with.

The referee had taken some extra moments to scold Katrina for the uncalled for, untimely reaction, and began ushering Tia and Colt towards the cage door.

I hissed an engrossed inhale, focusing best I could to even out the pace of my tottering, rambunctious heart.

But my heart would be the only thing I would slow.

Barely registering the ‘ting’ of our timekeepers bell, I lunged forward sighting in on the nose protruding from the middle of her smug face. The girl hadn’t given a single clear peep at her face the entire match, but it seemed in that moment that fate had tied her hands for the upper hand of my fist.

Her eyes wept instantly at the burn of her nasal bone cracking in half. But that didn’t stop me. My humanity switched long flipped with the scent of a wound, and I was only out for blood no matter the cost. With battered knuckles, and uncontrolled swings, the light of defense dulled behind my opponents’ eyes.

A happen-stance shot deep into the mushy socket of her eye obliterated her focus, and the cage rumbled and rattled when her body fell limber at my feet. Until I was torn from her, and the match was called, I wouldn’t stop the invasive assault and risk any odds of a comeback.

Her head bobbled like a bottle cap rolling over the waves of a high tide ocean, and it seemed the way her eyelashes batted in slow motion that they themselves were even too heavy for her to bear. Our official closely observed her behavior, watching for signs of drooping unconsciousness, and any other medical qualifications for calling the match.

With one roll of my knuckles over her chin, her knee buckled at the bend and sent her tumbling. Trying to resist the inevitable admirably, in true fighters’ fashion, Katrina’s feeble, worn down body emptied of any overcoming abilities. Tears began to twine with red leaking down her face when the ring ref signaled to the timekeeper, calling the bout.

TKO.

Colton’s obsessing pride, uncontainable joy, and earnest tears of content dissipated whatever inkling of patience he was born with, and he kicked his lead foot into the cage door, bending loose the hinges to get to me. As my left hand was raised in baffling triumph, he pulled it right back into his own, sliding back into to place the sparkling gemstone on my ring finger.

Colton’s sentimental tears turned loose into an unbroken stream, his chest choking free chuckling sobs as he folded at the knee, and buried his reddening face into the pumping breaths of my belly. I could feel his mumblings vibrate into me, and his mouth movements tickling the bare skin above my waistband. Pulling him free and seeking his face, I combed through his shagged hair with giggling of my own.

“Baby. Hey! What is it, Colt?!”

I adored the way his smile danced with his tears, the odd coupling a beautiful one.

“You are fucking amazing, Liv Elliott! And fuck me for ever thinking you didn’t belong here.”

With an eager, rising fever to kiss his forever gorgeous lips, I cupped his face and willed him into me. His hands wormed under the crook of my arms and suddenly the ground disappeared from beneath my tired feet. No protest present, I hooked the clutches of my legs about his abdomen, and captured him. If I had any breath in me after the battle, he would’ve sucked it clear from my lungs with his smothering display of a kiss. I heard cameras snapping, analysts and fellow writers begging my name for a statement, but all the world might as well have been a foreign, unpopulated wonderland where only my soul and his could survive.

The fusing of his plush-skinned mouth with my own lit my spirit on fire, and I considered dragging him to the courthouse first thing the following day to marry him on the spot, just to be able to pair his own name with the word ‘husband’.

“Do your thing, champ. They wanna hear from you,” Colton plopped me down to meet to ground. “I’ll be right here. Always”

He eased himself backwards, dismissing himself from the sight of cameras and attention, pushing me to bathe in the limelight of the results of my hard work. He may not have been holding my hand in the literal sense, but the glow of his cheery cheeks as he watched me share the rundown from my point-of-view with the newspapers comforted me. I spied Tia even chatting at his side, with some strange sentiment resembling a genuine smile, as my parents weaved through the aisles.

Standing in my own portrayal of center stage, feeling the gratifying weight of his diamond promise on my finger, his last name soon-to-be mine on the wrist of my blood-stained gloves, and the unpredicted win of an MMA bout under my belt, there weren’t enough words in a Webster to define my state. Whether things would never be the same again, I knew all change would be for the better with the treasure of my Colton tucked in my back pocket for cherished keeping. With a determined heart, a driving passion, and maybe a few more callouses on my hands than before, I would strap down and relish in the ride to come. Lots of work, even more play, and back to The Grind.

TAGS: @torialeysha @eap1935 @mollybegger-blog @littleluna98

#Tom Hardy #tomhardy #tomhardyfanfiction #tomhardyfanfic #tommy conlon #Elizabeth Olsen #thegrind

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kawitchii · 6 years ago

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A Witch Watches: Little Witch Academia

A Witch Watches Little Witch Academia | The Witches’ Anime

When I watch Little Witch Academia, I geek out over a lot of things. The animation is fantastic and fluid and at times really, really beautiful. The character designs are adorable, original, and extremely expressive when they need to be. The characters themselves are all dynamic and most are so lovable that you can get attached almost immediately. The fantasy world that’s created is beautiful and imaginative and it makes me want to live in it for real.

But even with all of these technical and typical anime-lover reasons to geek out over Little Witch Academia, nothing gets me more excited in this show than its depiction of magic and witches. As I study more about magick myself, I’ve found more and more real elements of magick in this anime. Everything from the characters to the Shiny Chariot cards to even little background details reminds me of my own practice and the practices of others I’ve seen throughout my time as a witch.

Let’s face it. If a witch were to watch any anime, it would be Little Witch Academia.

*Warning: As always, this post is NOT spoiler free! I’ve done my best to not mention too many specifics, but if you wish to enjoy Little Witch Academia in its purest form with no spoilers at all, even minor ones, read no further!*

The Witchy Details

One of the reasons the world of Little Witch Academia feels so solid is because of how well researched it is. Fey folk and dragons and crystals are all included and so well done that, as a witch who has studied a lot of these subjects, I find myself connecting to the world even more than one would expect from an anime.

Take the constant witch symbolism throughout the show. The triple moon is a common symbol of the witch and in Wicca. A waxing crescent moon, a full moon, and a waning crescent moon are shown together to symbolize the three stages of a witch’s life. In the case of a female witch, whom all the characters of Little Witch Academia are, those stages are the maiden, the mother, and the crone. I could go into more detail, but for now let’s focus on the symbol itself.

Moons are present throughout the background and character designs. They appear as runes in episode 2, which Diana deciphers with flying colors. They also appear on the clothing of the professors at the academy. The Headmistress, the most powerful and important witch at the academy, is the only witch in the show to have the triple moons featured on her hat whereas everyone else has crescents, circles, or interlocking shapes. The triple moon in this case is a testament to the level at which she can cast magic. She is essentially the high priestess in the very large coven which is Luna Nova. There is only one other witch at Luna Nova who has the triple moon symbol featured in her design, and that is Ursula also known as Chariot du Nord or Shiny Chariot. Chariot is one of the most powerful witches who had graduated Luna Nova and was also chosen as the wielder of the Wand of the Seven Stars, so it makes sense that she too would have a triple moon somewhere in her design.

Speaking of triple moon, the goddess of the triple moon makes multiple appearances in the background. Hecate, a goddess commonly depicted with three heads, is commonly referred to as the goddess of witches and her statues are everywhere at Luna Nova! They’re based on a common Greek statue of her.

The witches of the academy also learn actual magick traditions as evidenced by the tree of life in the background of this scene in episode 2. This tree is part of the spiritual Hebrew tradition and marks the paths one takes in life to reach spiritual enlightenment. It can also be used in conjunction with similar spiritual path traditions such as the Major Arcana of the Tarot. And since the Major Arcana tell the story of the witch or magician in training throughout their life, it makes sense that it appears in Little Witch Academia.

Not only is the setting treated with a high detail in terms of real magick, the characters are too. With so many witches in one anime, the way each one stands out is how they approach their own magic.

The Characters and their Diverse Witchcraft

No two characters in Little Witch Academia are the same and that’s one of my favorite things about the show! Because of this diversity in character, there’s a huge diversity in the kinds of witchcraft each character specializes in. It’s all heavily personality based, but it also reflects the real diversity you see in real witchcraft.

Diana, for example, is extremely book smart which allows her to be more of a traditional witch. She practically has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history, the spells, and the lore of witchcraft. Diana is a descendant of witches and comes from a long and famed witch line. With the pressures that followed her throughout childhood, it’s no wonder Diana sticks to tradition, though she’s not afraid to learn from more non-traditional witches around her. I’m not a hereditary witch myself, but I’ve seen this kind of traditional, hereditary witch many times. They’re good for asking questions to and learning information from when they want to and Diana tends to act this way in the show as well.

Then there’s Lotte, a spiritworker with an affinity for fairy-type creatures. She has an incredible talent for working with them, once calming a group of restless spirits with a song in The Enchanted Parade. Another smaller spirit is often seen tagging along with her as well. For someone so small and quiet, she has a confidence with spirits that I’ve only seen in real life a few times. Funny enough, those people had similar personalities to Lotte.

Sucy, who is obsessed with poisons, is a botanical witch. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of mushrooms which likely rivals Diana’s knowledge of just about anything. Because of this, Sucy also can make potions and poisons quickly and easily. Some of her strongest potions in the series have been one that brings objects to life and a mandrake potion to increase magic powers.

Contanze has some of the most original magic within the show that even Akko questions at one point. While putting together potions in class, Contanze uses her special machinery to get the job done in episode 5. Akko exclaims, “Hey! That doesn’t look witchy at all!” This is something a lot of witches who are drawn to machinery and technology hear often. It might not look like traditional magic, but Contanze’s use of technology makes her magic stronger. She’s even able to create a magic powered mech for the Wild Hunt which takes down the dark magical creature that crashes the hunt.

There are many more examples of the characters and how their diverse personalities and talents reflect actual magick and witches, but these are the ones who stick out to me the most. Of course, Akko, the main character, is in a league of her own as a witch both as a student at Lunanova and a character in the show. It’s Akko’s character arc that makes her the most relatable in the show for a variety of reasons, but especially as a young witch.

Akko, the Fool’s Journey, and Staying True to Who You Are

Akko’s story is a familiar underdog kind of tale. She starts out as an overly optimistic dreamer going into a new situation where she may be way in over her head. Over time she learns and grows and becomes a powerful witch in her own right. The best way I can explain Akko’s character arc is through something that appears around the character often: cards.

Akko collects Shiny Chariot trading cards which describe different magical items, spells, happenings, and places. She often lays the cards out almost as if they were a tarot spread and in these cards, Akko seems to find the answers to her problems in the earlier parts of the series. Though Akko isn’t as gifted as Diana when it comes to memorizing and performing magic, Akko’s cards are her own tool for learning magic. It’s because of this, that I can’t help but draw a parallel between the tarot and Akko herself.

The Fool is usually considered the first card of the Major Arcana and marks the beginning of the cycle the Major Arcana depicts. Reckless, bright, and friendly Akko is essentially the definition of The Fool card, and not in the way of her intelligence level (though there is a running joke among fans that Akko is a beautiful, lovable idiot, but I’ll get to that in Little Witch 101). She is happy-go-lucky and overly optimistic when it comes to magic, often forgetting or disregarding the realities of magic around her. What others consider to be a childish fascination with magic for the joy of it, I consider to be an innocence. Akko was not raised in a family of witches and instead decided to become a witch all on her own. Of course Shiny Chariot was a big part of that choice, but Akko wants nothing more than to become a witch who can spread happiness in the same way.

Its Akko’s innocent, optimistic perspective on magic is what I think makes her so relatable for actual witches struggling with their own magick. Most witches I’ve seen have made the choice to be witches on their own rather than being born into the practice. Most are solitary, without covens or elders to teach them what to do. Even more witches go around looking for other witches on the internet to help them because actually meeting other witches in real life is difficult and even then, many witches feel as if they don’t have their own place in the witchcraft community or struggle with magick while on their own. When I see Akko, a young witch struggling to fit into the traditional witchcraft community especially when her own beliefs butt heads with the traditional ones, it reminds me that being a beginner is okay. Akko is able to learn and grow without changing her core beliefs which is something every struggling person in general should be able to look at and be inspired by.

The Fool card is labeled with a 0 for a reason. It is both the beginning and the end of the Major Arcana and life’s cycle. It is also the card with the greatest potential. Even after learning all knowledge The World can give, it is possible to live life as happily and innocently as The Fool. My favorite part of the overall story is that it starts and ends with Akko, The Fool. Though she went through life’s experiences at a rapid pace, and experienced heartbreak as well as ultimate victory, Akko still is the same person she started the series as deep down inside. She has learned how to harness powerful magic, but she doesn’t let that change her. The world around her is different though. This time, she has friends and mentors who love and support her. Akko tries to fly her broom once again, this time with all of her new friends watching. Finally, with their support and her continued belief in herself, Akko is able to float off of the ground. It is because believing in herself really was all that it took to make magic.

#a witch watches #little witch academia #lwa #little witch #mahou shojo #pop culture witchcraft #pc witchcraft

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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His Dark Materials: Secrets of Cittàgazze and the Meaning of Pan’s Different Forms

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The terrible problem of creating sets for film and television, says His Dark Materials production designer Joel Collins, is that the very best work is invisible. “When you build a world that isn’t real but looks real, everyone thinks you didn’t do anything! You must have just stayed at home or popped along to Oxford and dialled it in.”

“Or you just went to Italy,” laughs Framestore VFX Supervisor Russell Dodgson, whose team are responsible for, among many other computer-generated elements, His Dark Materials’ daemons.

To make Cittàgazze, one of season two’s big new locations, the team didn’t just go to Italy. They went everywhere, borrowing styles and inspiration from around the world and bringing it home to a backlot in Cardiff, where the spiralling town was built from scratch.

Cittàgazze Harbour concept art. Copyright: Painting Practice.

“In a lot of world-building fantasy shows, it’s about making the most ridiculous landscape and having big monsters chase everyone around,” says Dodgson. “But a big part of mine and Joel’s jobs are flavouring the story, giving it seasoning rather than smashing you in the face with it. If a daemon can just show a hint of subtext without overpowering the main performance, then we’ve done our job on the VFX side. With Joel’s stuff, it’s very rare that he hits you with a sledgehammer visually.”

It’s about including detail in such a way that viewers don’t stare directly at it, but would sense if it wasn’t there, says Collins. “Without it, things would look cardboardy or fake.”

Now that Cittàgazze has been unveiled on screen, Collins and Dodgson give Den of Geek a closer look at episode one’s behind-the-scenes details and Easter Eggs, from the town to BAMFing witches, and the meaning behind Pan’s new look…

Cittàgazze: the City of Magpies

Behind the Bad Wolf studios in Cardiff, on a patch of land where the cast trailers were stood in season one, Joel Collins and his design team built the streets of Cittàgazze. There was no question of filming the six month shoot on location – no tourist town would allow such a takeover. 120 real locations though, provided inspiration to the design team.

“We went to Morocco and bought huge amounts of windows and doors – the ones we didn’t make,” says Collins. “We went all over Europe buying details. It’s an Italianate town, an intriguing Mediterranean, slightly exotic place.” The town represents a new start for Lyra after the hardships of the North. “We needed to start afresh. Everything she was doing was moving on, so tonally the town needed to feel like a place of intrigue and interest to take her away from everything that’s gone before.”

Cittàgazze buildings, Escher-inspired roof tile design and concept sketch. Copyright: Painting Practice.

The concept for Cittàgazze’s mountainous land and seascapes were inspired by Guilin in China and Hawaii’s Kauai. The VFX team spent six days in Kauai, filming helicopter and ground shots to get coverage not available in Wales. The end result, says Dodgson, was a slightly weird mix of tropical and Mediterranean, which was perfect for the town’s multiple nature as a crossroads between worlds. It’s a magpie city, stealing elements from here, there and everywhere.

“If you walk around that set, every banister has got the knife sculpted into it,” enthuses Dodgson. “The bricks are magpie-shaped. It’s filled with detail and everything is thought about. You can’t just do shots of those things, because there’s no point of view for that, it’s too on-the-nose, as if you’re just watching your own work too much, but when it’s there just seasoning the tone of it, it’s at its best.”

M.C. Escher: a Lost Cittàgazzan?

Cittàgazze’s Escher-inspired steps and concept sketch. Copyright: HBO/BBC and Painting Practice.

When production designer Joel Collins was creating Cittàgazze’s spiralling town, he took inspiration from an old favorite. “I’ve always liked M.C. Escher for the heaven and hell connection in his work, the way he weaves things invisibly, merging from one to the next.” Cittàgazze’s staircase motif and cleverly interlocking tile designs are tributes to the work of Escher, who was famed for his optical illusions.

While researching Escher’s work, Collins developed a fan theory about the Dutch artist and mathematician. “I found that he’d done a huge amount of drawings of Italian mountain towns. and I felt that I’d stumbled across an actual Cittàgazzan, who’d fallen into our world through a window and never made it back!

Escher-inspired interlocking magpie floor tiles. Copyright: Painting Practice.

“If you look at his work, it’s almost as if he’s drawing Cittàgazze in lots of ways. I built this weird story in my head that ultimately, Escher had spent his life stuck in our world, drawing his way out of it, trying to explain to everyone where he was from, and everyone just thought he was bonkers, but there he is constantly drawing these mountain towns and these weird connections going ‘I’m actually not from here!’”

Torre degli Angeli: the Tower of Angels

Tower of Angels concept art. Copyright: Painting Practice.

Look closely at the tower rising up over the spiralling town in this article’s header image and you’ll seen an important design echo. The tower’s spiked roof is twisted to match the base of the Subtle Knife (as glimpsed in the season two trailer here). The original idea, says Collins, was to have the tower topped by the knife. “I stuck the actual knife on top of the tower and it looked like a kid’s toy, it was absurd, it really didn’t work, so that’s how it became the twisted roof.”

It wasn’t easy to get right, notes Dodgson. “The reference to the knife in the design of the tower was the only thing that almost caught us out, but we managed to tweak our way through it. When you view a twist from below, it becomes a weird perspective-bender so me and Joel ended up adjusting it and playing around with a few design things.”

Cittàgazze knife and angel wings balcony detail; knife brick design; magpie balcony. Copyright: Painting Practice.

Each design element in His Dark Materials has a story explanation, even if it’s only for the designers to know. The team devised a centuries-old history for Cittàgazze’s island, which began life as a small mound of rock, says Collins. “We built a story around the fact that the knife was forged on that site 300 years earlier and that forge became the base of the tower. The tower was built up, up, up, all the way up to the skies for the angels to protect the knife at the top and the town grew around the tower. That means the tower fell through the floor deep into the underground and went all the way down to its original forge where the knife was made.”

Reinventing the Witches

Mrs Coulter removing cloud-pine from a captive witch. Copyright: BBC/HBO

One change between His Dark Materials and Philip Pullman’s books fans will have noted in series one is that the TV series witches don’t fly using cloud-pine brooms. “They don’t get onto a broom and fly into the air like a witch does in a standard witchy way,” says Collins, who also serves as executive producer on the series. “We’ve reinvented witches to be what we think witches should be – as if this is what they’ve always been and everyone else got it wrong.”

As explained by a gruesome plot point in the series two opening episode, a witch’s cloud-pine is under their skin. “It’s in their system,” says Collins. “We’ve put the broom inside in the sense that the thing that allows them to fly is within them, within their DNA.”

Bamfing attacks

Ruta Skadi and Katya in His Dark Materials season 2 episode 1. Copyright: BBC/HBO

For the Witches’ fighting style, as demonstrated by Ruta Skadi in her attack on the Magisterium’s submarine, Framestore took inspiration from comic books. “We developed a sort of a riff on the old superhero idea of bamfing, which is disappearing from one place and turning up somewhere else,” explains Dodgson. “We turned it into a rush rather than an apparition. What’s great is that it gives them velocity but also punctuation. You can build a dynamic bam-bam-bam-bam! rhythm very quickly by punctuating them with bamfs.”

“There’s a mystery and a magic and a sensitivity but also an amazing deadliness to the witches, which Russell’s captured really well with the bamfing,” says Collins. “That action scene in the submarine was a complicated one to shoot to give them their sensitivity and viciousness at the same time. They’re quite sedate, lovely, emotional characters who are spiritual but also quite deadly.”

“We would match-animate the stunt double with our Ruta-double, then punctuate in-between so the bit you saw was always the most violent portion,” explains Dodgson. “Then we removed the bit in between so it’s just staccato violence. You can do it in a way that it feels violent, but it isn’t actually too violent for the 8pm time slot.”

Pan’s New Look

Pantalaimon’s new red panda form. Copyright: Framestore.

In Lyra’s world, the form an adult’s daemon takes reflects their nature: soldiers and servants tend to have dogs, while the villainous Magisterium teems with spiders, snakes, lizards and creepy-crawlies. Children’s daemons shift forms as they try on new identities. Those shifts aren’t random, explains Dodgson, but carefully chosen to reflect what’s happening in the story and a character’s emotions at a particular time. Pan’s white ermine form is Lyra’s default comfort daemon, appearing whenever she’s in need of reassurance. His pine marten form comes out on special occasions, when something of real significance is happening in the plot.

“In season one when Lyra goes North – which she’s always dreamed of – Pan becomes an Arctic creature because she’s been inspired by something new,” explains Dodgson. Lyra’s arrival in Cittàgazze sparks a different inspiration that gives Pan a brand new form – the red panda.

The red panda works well with Pan’s traditional forms because they’re sweet, says Dodgson, and they’re part-bear and part-mustelid, just like pine martens. The red panda’s slight adolescent clumsiness works really well to capture the sense of a teenage girl who’s just met an intriguing boy, and they’re exotic, reflecting Lyra’s strange new surroundings.

“There was a really great idea that in the end, fell by the wayside because of editorial pacing,” says Dodgson. “In Cittàgazze there’s a Red Panda brand of soda, and in one of the streets there’s a big mural advertising it. We did originally have a shot of Lyra looking up at the mural, and then later Pan turning into the red panda she’d seen. She’s something new, something more exotic, she’s excited about being around this new boy but she’s not so different that she’s left behind who she is.”

Learn more about Framestore’s His Dark Materials work here.

The post His Dark Materials: Secrets of Cittàgazze and the Meaning of Pan’s Different Forms appeared first on Den of Geek.

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yusenki · 7 years ago

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Interview with Eren’s & Erwin’s VA: Yuki Kaji x Daisuke Ono

[translation: @yusenki | editing: twitter@braunsofsteel | scans: @m-u-m-i ] Note: This interview took place after SNK season 2 episode 10 was aired.

Eren Yeager: A boy who dreams of the world outside the wall. After he graduated from the Training Corps, he joined the Survey Corps, which attempts to advance outside the walls. He has strong motivation, so he tends to be reckless.

Erwin Smith: The Commander of the Survey Corps. Ruthless with excellent leadership, even Levi acknowledges his superiority. Basically, he almost never shows his emotion.

The thrill of the series lies on the fear that your position may crumble at any point in time.

Journalist (J): Finally, after 4 years, SNK season 2 is here!

Kaji (K): Although it seems like in these 4 years I have been constantly involved with SNK recording projects—such as collaboration events, narrations, extra story parodies, with of all those various works, when I finally returned to the main series’ atmosphere, part of me still feels anxiety. We need to go back to that timeline when Eren and co. just learned the shocking truth about Annie’s true form.

Ono (O): It has been a while since I played Erwin. During season 1, I personally didn't grasp the full picture of Erwin and I'd thought, “I want to know more about Erwin. I want to know more about SNK”. The fact that season 2 exists fills me with happiness.

K: Ever since season 1, there are the charms from shocking developments, (character) portrayals, and extravagant battle scenes. However, my impression is that season 2 will be added with the charm of mystery. If I were to say that season 1 was filled with an intense, blazing red flame, the image of season 2 is the core of that flame, a calm blue flame that slowly burns.

J: It feels like the composition has completely changed from fighting against the titans, whose origins are unknown, to the doubt that the truth may be about human vs human.

K: That’s why there is an increase of scenes without titan transformation. Like the scene where Eren was intensely debating with Reiner, Bertolt, and Ymir.

O: It made people think that the enemy is not just mindless beasts that simply attack, but it's like they might be more intelligent… In season 1 Erwin asked Eren, “What do you see?” I felt that question was also directed to us. I feel that it is getting more interesting, not only just the story. At the same time, we can also see deeper into characters’ backgrounds. Sasha’s father, who speaks in Oita *(prefecture in Japan) dialect also made his appearance.

K: When we know the background, we will feel more affection. In season one, the story revolves around the perspective of a group of people with Eren as the center. However, in season 2, there are many occasions where Eren doesn’t make his appearance and other members receive intense spotlight. I can strongly feel that each character is actually alive and it doesn’t feel that they are just part of a flock. That is the reason that every death is heavy…

J: As soon as season 2 starts, it gave such a huge impact with Mike meeting his heroic end.

O: Well… in season 1, most of the strong impression I got was of his olfactory senses.

K: Also his image was of a skilled soldier with a unique habit. Now it has been revealed what he thinks and his commitment.

O: He is someone who upholds the “we haven’t lost as long as we continue fighting” belief and his capabilities are second only to Levi. By all means, it was shocking to see someone like him defeated in one brief second. At the same time, all the things that have been piling up at that moment disappeared, and I finally felt that I have returned to the SNK.

K: I understand. Me too. I also felt the real sensation that this is the SNK world, when I returned to the moment where Oluo & co., the old Levi’s squad were just gone.

O: It is scary because your foothold can suddenly crumble.

J: Ono-san, have you checked out the SNK manga?

O: I have heard about developments afterward from people around me and I ended up checking it up myself because it occupied my thought.

K: On the contrary, because I am playing Eren, I try not to find out future developments. However, I think it is a good idea to know about future developments when you’re performing a character like Erwin.

O: Well, even though I asked Isayama-sensei about Erwin, the answer was unexpected. “Erwin is modelled after Clark Kent.” *laughs* Anyway, the only way is to look at the comic. Unexpectedly, Erwin had a long-standing appearance.

K: When I saw Ono-san at the recording of the first episode of season 1, I was quite bewildered, “Was Erwin actually here in the manga (first chapter)?” *laugh*.

O: The current him is here now because he is one of the SC soldiers during that expedition. Actually, it is inevitable. As my feelings grew deeper along with his appearance, I couldn’t help doubting whether he is actually a bad guy or not. But in fact, due to his pure desire to learn more about this world and titans, I got the philosophy of his behaviour. Because I could finally understand him, I changed my approach on his portrayal this time. For I, who has been blank for these 4 years, this is a positive direction. On the contrary, for Kaji-kun, this may be a bit heavy after 4 years of blankness.

K: The atmosphere after recording was indeed different, there might be some anxiety when you finally returned as the leader back then… Even though we were naturally pulled back when it started. When we gathered at that moment, each of us was trying to grasp what we need to do (we had to work individually to grasp it). There had been a lot of worries.

O: The atmosphere was like when everyone puts their lives on the line.

K: There are a lot of good things, but as a voice actor, this is a role with more hardships. There were almost no fun… That’s why everyone compensates at SNK the Real Game *laugh*.

O: Even people who were supposedly busy also came.

K: I could feel that everyone seriously aimed to complete this series successfully. I feel that this also can be the other way of enjoying the SNK series that delights everyone.

J: Speaking of VA, new cast like the Beast Titan’s VA, Takehito Koyasu and others, have also gained some attention.

O: There are many (recording) takes where Koyasu-san tried to perform in various patterns. It was through trial and error to get the right one.

K: I think that’s the way to achieve the right performance. The current form is the result from the perseverance in finding “how far the Beast Titan could talk”. Even for the staff, they wondered a lot on many things, like what kind of effect should be applied to the voice, how to credit Koyasu-san’s name.

O: It feels like in the midst of darkness where nobody knows the truth. Everyone is fumbling and pursuing for the light. For Erwin, that is the most intriguing subject, but I personally really like Koyasu-san’s performance, so I asked for permission to observe the recording.

J: In season 2, the shocking truth that Reiner and Bertolt can transform into titans, was revealed.

K: When I read the manga, I totally didn’t realize Reiner and Bertolt’s real form. I was just shocked… It was also because the revelation was done in a casual manner, behind the other characters’ conversation, so I was really surprised! *laugh*

O: I was not performing at that scene, but was surprised to hear that an important dialogue was performed like background chatter, just like in the manga.

K: To retain the flowing atmosphere of the scene, I even wanted to perform the scene with a pre-recording method, before the drawings were completed. Moreover, Reiner’s VA, Yoshimasa Hosoya-san, performed the confession in such a natural way at that moment, I was shaken just like Eren…That’s when I felt connected to Eren’s reaction, “You traitors!” Despite the connection through rage, during the recording, I felt not only anger but also the sadness of despair… It’s obvious since he thought that they were comrades, but they turned out to be enemies.

O: To be honest, I can sympathize with how they act based on their own objectives. I don’t know if it’s because I am playing Erwin, but I came to understand that each of us has our own justification.

K: There was also a moment where Reiner even forgot that he was actually lying. He had been deceiving himself for long.

O: My chest hurts when I think that each SNK character is fighting their own conflict during the time not shown in the anime. The next episode with Hannes-san’s big scene makes my heart wrench. When I think about it, there are a lot of people in this world who live, not for themselves, but for others. Yet they don’t talk it and only spit out their real feelings at their deathbed. Because of that, it made me feel like, “you should have said it out earlier…”

K: That’s so SNK. *laughs*

O: Nanaba also left an impression in season 2.

K: Since the manga, her death has left such an impression. The song’s influence was really effective. I thought, “The most impressive part of season 1’s song will be played here, right?”

J: Speaking about drama, the relationship between Christa and Ymir, has been uncovered bit by bit.

O: Honestly, at the beginning, I thought Christa was only cute. I didn’t think that she would have such drama. Sorry about it.

K: I didn’t even know that the Ymir character existed. She didn’t have much presence (in season 1) since her name was displayed as ‘Freckles’. To think that in season 2… *laugh* In summary, all of the characters’ drama is really interlocked in a complicated way. It is more like Eren doesn’t have much presence. Moreover, rather than being the one who saves, he is the one that is being saved *laugh*.

J: Rather than being a hero, he is more of a princess *laugh*.

O: That’s right!

K: This series says that even if you can transform into a titan, it doesn’t mean that you become the strongest, and that includes Eren too.The shonen manga theory does not apply to SNK.

O: It’s not all about if Eren works hard, he can do it. I think from Erwin’s point of view, all of us rely too much on Eren.

K: It’s not impossible, wanting to rely on the obtained titan transformation power.

O: While having that thought, it turned out that the enemies have more people who have that ability, and also there are collisions among comrades…This story is about how far this present situation can deteriorate. However, I am glad to find that each character’s real face was revealed because they didn’t rely on Eren’s power. In season 2, maybe it is about many soldiers’ stories, not about Eren. Although there were painful moments, as long as people witness our way of life without missing any single moment— whether it is Erwin's or mine—we are happy.

K: Despite only knowing this much, I think it is amazing that every week when I am watching the show being aired, I want to know what will happen next. The series is still ongoing. It will become even more interesting and also even more painful. Please enjoy it with resolution. Thank you!

Q: Which character would you want to have as a superior or subordinate?

O: I definitely want Levi to be my subordinate.

K: Are you speaking as Erwin? It will be a serious hardship for someone like Ono-san to deal with Levi.

O: If it’s Ono Daisuke…it’s impossible. No, it’s possible if we worked together on the radio (program)* for 10 years *laugh*.

*T/N: Erwin’s VA & Levi’s VA have a radio program together. The radio program has been on going for 10 years.

K: If you say that, won’t Hiroshi Kamiya (Levi’s VA) get mad at you? Is that alright? *laugh*

O: Seems like this is not alright, let’s end the conversation here. *laugh* Nevertheless, I admire the prowess of Levi being a one-man army, a guy who makes it through to the core by himself. Whether I can manage him is another matter.

K: On the contrary, I want to be Erwin’s subordinate, because he is the man that Levi placed his trust in, and that equals the person who we should follow, right? Well, since he is the leader, who gives extreme orders, there must be some complexity in the subordinates’ point of view.

O: In season 1, Armin made a reference to Erwin: “In order to achieve something, they need to leave behind their humanity”. The fast growing Armin has the potential to become Erwin’s successor. He realized that such extreme decisions are necessary in order to lead mankind… My personal thought as Ono Daisuke is that Armin is Erwin’s successor, but I have mixed feelings about it. I also don’t want him to be his successor.

K: You don’t want Armin to end up like him. As Eren, I think so too.

Kaji’s message to Eren: Maybe it's "I understand your sadness, but keep fighting!". As for Reiner and Bertolt, "What was that smile for?!" I personally want to scream it out.

Ono’s message to Erwin: "What can your current self see?" I want to ask him that.

#erwin smith #eren yeager #eren jaeger #ono daisuke #kaji yuki #yusen translate #snk #shingeki no kyojin #snk official #thanks to my sis who helped me to double check the Japanese and do the first editing

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deadsummerdays · 8 years ago

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Let’s Movie Nerd-Out About Identity and Memory in ‘Swiss Army Man’

For a story conceived of as a running gag about the worst possible premise for a film, Swiss Army Man sure raises a lot of deep questions. (Heh, ‘raises.’) At first glance, this movie looks like an overly-sincere indie dramedy in which New Age open-mindedness dismantles antiquated social mores and Daniel Radcliffe farts as far away from the Harry Potter franchise as possible – a combination that works or flounders depending on whether you’re on board with the joke – but there’s a subtler side. Issues of identity and memory (or more broadly, knowledge) crop up everywhere in this love story, and I expect they will be a topic of speculation for many years to come. With a movie this crazy in particular, I want to acknowledge that we can all play the subtext game and wind up with wildly different interpretations, so this is not me painting anyone with an extra-saucy coat of shade. A lot depends on how you value the information a film throws at you, and generically, magical realism likes to force its audience to choose what to believe. So, bearing that in mind, let’s make like Hank and Manny and dive right in. Major spoilers below.

Now that we’re all down at the exclusive Club Spoilers, I should clarify my usage of the word “identity.” There are people who argue that Swiss is secretly a tale of transgenderism, and while I think the ending is open enough that this is possible (we simply don’t spend enough time with the newly-liberated Hank to know), it isn’t my purpose here to argue for or against that conclusion. Rather, I mean to look at Swiss’s theme of identity in a more holistic sense. Hank, Manny, and Sarah exist in a web of imposed and appropriated ‘selves’ which fluctuates over the course of the film, and it is this interlocking of the three characters that I intend to look at.

Some movies go out of their way to provide a full exposition of their main characters in the first several minutes, particularly when they appear to us someplace they wouldn’t normally be, like the middle of goddamn nowhere. Not so in Swiss Army Man, which is coy with a purpose. The less that is confirmed, the more the audience and other characters rely on imagination to fill in the blanks, and the easier it is to blend in magical elements without them feeling jarring; this produces an atmosphere that is conducive hyperbole. Our knowledge of Hank is vague and emotional, that he is a lonely, unfulfilled person driven to infirmity -- but like Manny, in absence of a concrete context, we accept the world of the film on his terms. At the moment that his life fails to flash before his eyes, a strange man appears on the shore, and we get our first memory: Hank on the bus, looking up (as we learn later) in anticipation of Sarah climbing aboard. He “didn’t see much” then, as he explains to the corpse he has resuscitated into only the barest, basest form of reflexive life – but he did see Manny. Cue the violins.

When Hank wakes up again on the coast, his attention shifts to trying to figure out whether Manny is a hallucination, a scientific oddity, or a miracle. It’s a question that is never totally resolved and which creates a fundamental problem in trying to ‘identify’ Manny, that he may be to a greater or lesser extent Hank’s projection. To start with, Hank treats him like a child, or more specifically, as Hank’s father treated him when he was a child. He then tries to stimulate Manny’s memory, but all it establishes is his fondness for music. For all intents and purposes, Manny is a blank slate, and so it falls to Hank to educate him about home and why they should go there. Making use of conveniently-placed garbage, he sets about illustrating life in his society, ostensibly for Manny’s benefit but also to a great extent for his own, using Manny as another tool through which to dramatize and fix his own personal perceptions and traumas. And because Manny has little to no background on what’s going on, like a child looking to his parent, the things Hank says and does become inflated in his mind: Hank humming to himself out of boredom makes singing an essential social activity, for example, and bus rides and e-cards become special rituals. But whereas Manny relies on his friend to indulge him with memories of home, Hank has the opposite problem: he remembers it all well enough, but because he was so unhappy in his old life, he doesn’t want to.

Already we see in the cinematography that mirroring of the two men abounds. This takes on even greater meaning in Swiss because Hank is the one doing the blocking. Since Manny can’t move on his own, Hank positions him, often in a way that either replicates his own posture (seated opposite each other on the beach, propped on their elbows in the cave) or allows Manny to execute a task Hank wants him to do. The implication that Hank is (perhaps unconsciously) imprinting himself on Manny is clear. This is, however, still within the fairly reasonable breadth of identity formation, with some of Hank’s influence rubbing off and much of Manny’s personality asserting itself despite him. Where things get a good deal more complicated is when Hank introduces Sarah into the mix.

The first curiosity with regards to Sarah is why Manny assumes that he knows her in at all. The phone falls in front of his eyes and he’s instantly attracted, but the fact of being attracted didn’t make him think that the magazine belonged to him, too, or that he knew any of the women in it. My best guess is that this is a case of “found it first” thinking: Sarah’s picture is the first object to which Manny develops an attachment independently of Hank’s interference, and so he believes that his connection to it is special and exclusive. Hank’s shame prevents him from correcting this mistake, so he entertains Manny’s illusion to the point of dressing up as Sarah in a fruitless effort to jog his ‘memory.’ Manny’s encouragement surprises Hank and helps him embrace the affect. There’s a change in the wind: armed with a concept, now Manny is making requests to fulfill his own vision of his life, using Hank as his resource. Also of note is how well Manny’s desires align with his friend’s: he isn’t only attracted to Sarah, but fixated on her, just like Hank is. If Manny isn’t a figment of Hank’s mind altogether, he certainly takes after him in an uncannily precise way.

In order to get Manny’s “compass” to work, Hank further develops Sarah into a character. It becomes clear that he looks to her the way Manny looks to him, as a person who sets the terms of how life should be: the bus she rides becomes a mythic space, the café she frequents is remembered in loving detail, and arguably even the racoon of its logo is the basis for her party costume. He and Manny construct sets in which to play out the fantasy, with Manny in the role of an idealized Hank and Hank in the role of an idealized Sarah. Responding to his prompts, Manny is convinced that he fell in love with Sarah on the bus but that he has yet to work up the courage to talk to her, which is exactly Hank’s problem; Hank, on the other hand, smooths over the complications of his real-life association with Sarah by making his version receptive.

This scene creates two severe logic problems, one of which is how Hank could produce the scenario of Manny encountering Sarah on the bus without Manny becoming suspicious. It is most plausible that he cited the fact that she was sitting by a bus window in the photograph as inspiration, but to a greater extent, we have to believe that Manny adopts Hank’s version of things as fact, assimilating his explanations into reality. Time is also a tricky factor here because the pair make no distinction in their plays between memory and destiny: since Hank cannot bring himself to acknowledge the full realm of possibilities, Manny is left with the impression that there is only one track his relationship with Sarah can follow, and so it doesn’t much matter whether he’s only at the beginning or if he’s already won her heart. In absence of his own memories or context, he assumes Hank’s lesson is a simulation of his real meeting with Sarah, making Hank’s characterization of her equally ‘factual.’ Thus, Manny takes up Hank’s role in the drama while Hank, freed from his uncertainties and disappointments, embraces being his own beloved.

Manny is the ‘movie character’ in Swiss Army Man, by which I mean that he has a filmic intelligence; whereas Hank stages his thoughts as interactive ‘sets,’ Manny appears to think in montage. It’s unsurprising that he enjoys movies and looking out of windows, both clear reflexive references: consigned to an existence of removed, immobile observation, he is a perpetual passenger and a perpetual spectator to whom the flow of real life already looks like a film. Manny is also capable of melding his thoughts with Hank’s, or is perhaps even inter-subjective with him (again, filmic), which could also explain their identical interest in Sarah. However, this opens up the second logic problem of the bus scene, which is the biggest one in the whole film: when Manny extracts Sarah’s name from Hank’s mind, why doesn’t it seem to bother Hank at all? It’s puzzling that he reacts to Manny’s intrusions with alarm during the campfire scene and not here, but whatever the reason (if it’s not merely a plot hole), Manny comes away persuaded that the memory is his own, and Hank is either too ashamed to press it or too invested in the fantasy to care. There are indications that Hank is beginning to lose himself in Sarah: her personality and emotions seem genuine rather than affected, and when Manny asks Hank to put his hand on her hand, he does so in her character.

The montage scene is of great consequence for both our heroes. Manny is introduced with much fanfare to cinema itself (complete with popcorn), which becomes important later, when he processes his grief over Sarah’s ‘affair’; Hank, meanwhile, spends more and more time as her until she seems to become a persona, a creative reproduction of Sarah Johnson as she exists in Hank’s mind. The romance that develops between the pair is not just a fiction of Hank and Sarah, then, but an actual relationship between Manny-as-Hank (or, if you assume they are one and same, Hank-as-Manny) and Hank-as-Sarah. Their trek home continues out of inertia, and yet, were it only so simple, they might have turned around. The fundamental rift between them is that Hank realizes the real object of his affection is Manny, whereas Manny believes that Hank-as-Sarah is a simulacrum: he’s aware of the distinction between Hank-as-Sarah and the genuine article, but he still assumes that everything he does with the former is a re-telling of what his relationship with the real Sarah was, is, or will be like. This seems to be an issue that is unique to him.

It’s a state of affairs that can’t last. Their courtship culminates in a party where Hank appears to have a realization about how deep their feelings for each other go, which prompts him to confront the corpse. He never gets to say what he intended to, though, because DanRad is a man with a plan.

After nearly kissing, Hank starts to sulk, ashamed once again of his weird feelings. Worse still, Manny makes it clear that he wants to see Sarah “for real,” putting his friend firmly in his place. Falling into the river, we see a few more shots that seem to be from Manny (or else that are shared) wherein scenes from his romance with Hank-as-Sarah become flooded with water. They’re striking illustrations of how memories contort when they are experienced, altering depending on one’s mood, present circumstances, needs, and so on. The moment Hank grabs Manny’s hand, these flashes become more forceful, warping the images of Manny and Sarah meeting on the bus into a kiss, and Hank’s eyes widen in surprise. Now Manny seems to be the one manipulating memories to fit his desires. However, the duality of Hank and Sarah makes this moment complicated. It seems likely that Manny imagines the kiss as being between him and (Hank-as-)Sarah, whereas Hank, in allowing himself to express his love for Manny, is acknowledging that Sarah and her feelings come from within him rather than from the real Sarah. Put simply, Manny is kissing Sarah, and Hank is kissing him back. The scene doesn’t spell it out clearly, but based on the discrimination with which Manny continues to treat Sarah and Hank, and judging by his ongoing fixation on wooing the former, there are compelling reasons to believe that he’s still misattributing Hank’s love to her. Thus, the identity confusion continues.

When Hank suggests that they stay in the forest instead of going home, it’s clear that his priorities have changed. One wonders how the two would have addressed the Sarah issue had this plan come to fruition, but we don’t get the chance to find out. (As a side note, how does Manny go from lying on the ground to sitting on the rock while Hank is checking his phone? That’s some high-level sorcery.) When Hank returns to the campfire, he’s finally accepted his desire to stay with Manny and decides to come clean, but unfortunately for him, Manny is still stuck on Sarah – and once he realizes that their romance has been a charade from the start, he feels betrayed. He blames Hank for tricking him into falling in love, but he can’t quite make sense of the slight, possibly on account of his demonstrated inability to parse out memories from inventions and experience from fiction when all appear equally filmic to him: still unable to distinguish between his Sarah and the real one, Manny constructs a fantasy of his own in which Hank is having an affair with her. Everything Hank did to reimagine his misery as innocent, childlike bliss reverts into the emotions he was trying to avoid: alienation, loneliness, depression, hopelessness, the feeling of being unloved. And with Hank’s subsequent injury, his and Manny’s role reversal is complete; incapacitated, out of love with Sarah, and fully reliant on his friend, Hank can no longer understand what Manny wants to go home for. He disconnects from his old life – so much so that when Manny forces the issue and brings them to Sarah’s home, Hank adopts his name and tries to cast away his old identity.

The painful disillusionment of meeting Sarah in reality is the last fissure in the Manny-as-Hank-as-Sarah amalgamation that makes it come apart. What love braided together unravels at the revelation that Sarah is leading her life without them, that Hank was only ever Hank, and that Manny is just a dead dude that nobody cared about. Thus divided, everything goes back to how it was in the beginning, and for a moment, Hank is offered the path of least resistance. But he chooses differently, and so, too, does his journey reverse to the shoreline. Bringing to its conclusion the parental dynamic of their relationship, Hank apologizes for screwing Manny up by hiding all the ugly, difficult facts of life from him. He seals their farewell with – what else? – a fart, and with that, Manny jets away. Daniels end the film on a mystery, giving Hank one last line of dialogue to Manny that goes unheard, so the way one interprets the final scene can vary depending on what he might have said. What is clear is that Hank has gained the courage to be himself without shame.

We’re left with lingering questions about Manny that the film echoes without answering: where did he come from, and where did he go? The most popular theory seems to be that he is a part of Hank’s psyche, or that he’s Hank’s soul, and the relationship drama is Hank berating himself for falling in love with a married woman based on his own fantasy of her. Where this seems to break down, though, is the campfire scene, when Hank declares that he doesn’t need Sarah anymore, representing a split between his and Manny’s desires which leads, further, to differences in how they react to meeting her. But the plausibility of one theory versus another depends entirely on whether you see Hank’s travails as magical or merely psychological. If it’s all in his head, then the answer is fairly plain: Manny is a projection and his Sarah guise is an attempt to satisfy impossible yearnings, through which he discovers that the love he attributed to them is displaced from himself. (A bit Freudian, that. It’s not difficult to extent this into a reading of Swiss as a conflict between the ego/Hank, the super-ego/Sarah, and the id/Manny.) There’s also a more meta way of looking at this, which is that Manny is really alive in the logic of the film, but he is a literalized metaphor for Hank’s soul or psyche, both him and not him (my own current theory); the third and similar option is that Manny is fully individual. Transformed into a multipurpose tool guy either by magic, miracles, or something so sci-fi it might as well be either of those, in these cases, his emergent identity confusion is very understandable. Like a child, we watch him both mirror and rebel against his ‘father,’ growing more independent and assertive, setting impossible standards and lofty ideals for his life until everything he thought he knew about the world comes crashing down – and it is only then that Manny is able to see the love that he doesn’t have to embark on some quixotic quest to get: the love that Hank gave him simply for being there, the one that finally sets him free.

#it wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear some wild disagreements with this #nevertheless #let's movie nerd out #swiss army man #daniels #paul dano #daniel radcliffe

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original-character-archives · 8 years ago

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Keira Fuchs

Biography: Keira’s past is a simple one; she’s a soldier in a time of peace within a Galaxy. She cracked a few too many jokes to her superiors and managed to piss one off, so she was relegated to what is probably the most dangerous thing during peacetime for a soldier: Testing of prototype equipment, specifically a Nanite Armor Suit and Jetpack, as well as a Railgun that is connected directly to her suit.

Appearance: The picture shown is actually just partial inspiration for Keira. Her other inspiration is Valkyrie’s in mythological lore.

Keira Fuchs is a tall woman, 6'3", with bright hazel eyes and dirty blonde hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. Her face was a strange sort of beautiful, with a square jaw and strong chin, a heart-shaped face, full lips, and a small, almost button-like nose. In fact, out of everything, her nose stood out the most, as it just didn’t seem to fit the rest of her strong features, even though it was cute. Her large eyes were protected by long, dark eyelashes, expressive thick eyebrows set above. Two strands of her hair framed her face, her small ears barely showing behind them. Her body was amazonian in structure, with hard muscles and little body fat. Seemingly despite the fact that she had an eight pack, and that her thighs were able to crush coconuts, the woman’s breasts were still the size of grapefruit, defying the rest of her body’s lack of body fat. Her arms ended in hands that seemed to loom, with long fingers and a wide spread. Her feet were equally large, though arched highly. She probably needed a lot of arch support. Her calves and thighs were sculpted and long, giving her a majority of her height. Her skin wasn’t without flaws, such as freckles, and a large dark spot across her back, nor was it without piercings or even tattoos; her face alone had three piercings, two in one eyebrow and a third in her right nostril, usually filled with rings for the eyebrow and a stud for the nose. Her ears had three each, all rings. She even had one in her naval, a stud. She only had three tattoos; a butterfly on the side of her stomach, a pair of black wings on her right wrist, and a ring of fire around her neck. None of them would show in her armor or in a uniform, if she wore one. Keira wears a military uniform, which can change based on orders from on high. Casually, she tends to wear whatever she feels like at the moment; whatever personality she used to have in this department was stamped out by the military training. If she’s out to a low-class type place (A bar, for instance), she’ll wear blue jeans and a black v-necked tee to show off her tattoos (A normal tee wouldn’t show her collar tattoo very well). The higher class a place, the more likely she is to wear a dress, unless it’s a wedding, in which case she picks a tuxedo.

Personality: Keira is laid back in the sort of way that could have been attributed to drugs on most people. Fortunately for her, that was just her normal personality. She has little issue with baring her body, being naked in front of people, or otherwise embarrassing things, simply due to the fact that she no longer cares. Before she joined the military, the opposite was true, but once she went through nearly a hundred showers with people of the opposite sex and couldn’t bring up the effort to care anymore, that was pretty much over. It’s hard to care when you’re exhausted from a thirty hour hike up a mountain to a training ground you have to personally build, and no one cares about anything but scrubbing dirt off. Keira is intelligently kind; she thinks before she acts, but she tends to act in ways that help others. She prefers getting to the root of a problem and tackling the source issue rather than whatever surface problem has shown up. She’s more likely to want to just go to the gym and work out than sit around, but for her, exercise is relaxing, a sort of meditation with rules and limits. She finds video games charmingly boring.

Favourite & Least Favourite things: Keira doesn’t really hate anything, though not because she hasn’t given it thought; she’s actively thought about and mulled over plenty of things she could hate, but the process of doing so eradicated any hate she had for it. Other than that, she likes exercise, the color green, and chocolate ice cream.

Strengths and Weaknesses: Ultimately, Keira’s #1 weakness is that she acts too slowly in times of non-stress (her combat training prevents that issue in times of stress and adrenaline), making her appear unintelligent, though she clearly is not. When people want immediate answers from her, she gets frustrated and is more likely to just tell them to fuck off than anything. Her default laid back nature is also a detriment, as most people see it as disinterest, or even depression; that she almost never gets excited is off-putting to people, and her calm, collected nature has had some of her more erratic associates to accuse her of being a sociopath. It is these same things that give her a lot of strength, however; she almost never panics, and she thinks through her problems and arrives at solutions less obvious to others. Where others live hectic and frenetic lives, she lives one with very little personally created stress. Her jokes keep her relatable to her coworkers, and she finds simple joy in just existing.

Additional notes: Armor: Keira’s armor was no joke; metalic, heavy, impossible to operate without training and being on. It weighed at least a ton, but it wasn’t bulky; instead, it was seemingly made out of layered powered mesh, form fitting and powerful, two large wing shaped anti-gravity pod rocket wings jutting from the back. They merged seamlessly with the suit, and small cables went from the back of her neck to the suit. Her helmet was a full version, with a raisable visor that could keep air in. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much room in the helmet for hair, so, bruises were common for those unused to it, or incapable of putting their hair up in the right way; a tight braid that spread hair out along the entirety of the skull, acting more like layed cornrows than anything. The boots of the Valkyrie suit were high heels, a design malfunction that no one corrected, the ‘mesh’ nearly skintight on the calves and thighs, though it thickened and became less revealing further up, tightening again around the waist. The suit only slightly hid the breasts, forming a more solid plate material in the area, though it was form fitting at the top. Another design ‘malfunction’ that no one bothered to fix. The suit worked with nanites who were permanently interlocked, allowing for both ‘push’ and 'pull’ methods for each tiny machine, in every direction, allowing for anyone to be able to fit into the suit rather easily, as well as enhancing strength and dexterity. It was several inches thick at the thinnest, creating inner joints within itself to allow for free motion, never restricting the user. It’s only trouble was that it required to be hooked up to the nervous system directly, or else it would not be able to respond in time to motions, simply slowing down the user.

Weapon: Keira’s main weapon is a bolt action open rail railgun, generally firing one ounce slugs at about one per second, depending on user. However, it’s rails could spread and fire larger slugs than usual, though it required more power to do so; it could fire slugs as large as a cubic foot in volume, though it would be the only shot for an entire day. Still, such a shot would generally destroy whatever was in it’s path for a mile. Even the one ounce slugs were fairly devastating, though, at close range, it tended to simply puncture through with almost no damage, relatively speaking, than at max range. Due to the nature of the velocity of it'sslugs, it was impossible to dodge without prior knowledge of the shot, even at ranges of up to a mile. It also didn’t tend to move from wind, gravitational pulls, or pretty much anything else, for up to five miles.

Keira’s armor is intentionally fanservicey in-universe. A top scientist more or less designed it that way, and then went about proving that it didn’t do anything but degrade the woman inside, while providing a morale boost to anyone else. While his ethics are certainly flawed, there aren’t any design flaws inherent to the design; the high heels were never meant to touch ground in the first place, since the jetpack is supposed to last for hours on end without refuelling. The nanites can reform around anything, and move to protect the wearer by thickening the armor in any area that needs it (for area’s of impact, not bullets. If the wearer falls, it can spread the damage out over a large area, rather than focusing it into one spot, and in-air impacts can be nearly negated. Where traditional fanservicey platemail fails in that the chestplate would direct any shot inwards if hit, this armor can simply move to prevent that), and it more or less has the same level of thickness no matter where you go on the armor itself.

Keira is also intentionally fanservicey. Mostly because her inspirations were that way, but also because I wanted at least one character who just didn’t give a fuck. She does what she wants, and she’s a badass for it. of course, as I went further along into the design, more and more of that got stripped away for a more military mindset, but that’s okay. Characters evolve. The armor is a great fit for her, since she doesn’t care.

If you want to read some stories about Keira, you can visit my blog!

Fanart would be epically awesome, because nothing on the internet really fits Keira that I can find.

Thank you for reading!

#original #submission #wow you've put sm thought into her!#chaosmagetwin

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unifiedsocialblog · 6 years ago

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5 Industries That Have Strange and Specific Rules for Social Media

Social media can be a great space for boundary-pushing brands to experiment with innovative messaging. But there’s a reason you haven’t seen Family Guy’s bong-toting Brian the dog pop up in your feeds in a sponsored weed-vertisement.

In highly regulated industries, like marijuana, alcohol, and others, marketers need to understand special rules apply to their campaigns. Though some may seem strange (like who wouldn’t allow an ad featuring a canna-smoking canine?) platform operators have been known to crack down on users and brands who violate law or platform policies. In some cases, rule-breaking can mean getting banned, fined—and even sent to jail.

You’ll want to become familiar with guidelines for what is currently acceptable on social media channels. Rules vary across industries, and those rules often change. Below are some examples of what you can and can’t do, with highlights to help keep you out of trouble.

Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.

1. Marijuana: Don’t say what you’re selling.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, advertising and marketing rules in the sin-dustries (tobacco, alcohol, and gambling) are strict—and the rules regarding marijuana marketing are as well.

In Canada, Bill C-45 the Cannabis Act includes strict proposed advertising rules that prohibit brands from promoting:

Information about cannabis price or distribution;

in a way that appeals to minors;

using celebrity testimonials or endorsements;

featuring cartoons or other real or fictional characters;

by associating the brand with “a positive or negative emotion;”

by associating the brand with “a way of life such as one that includes glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk or daring.”

In the U.S., where marijuana is legal in some form (medical, recreational, or both) in 30 states and in the District of Columbia, advertising regulations differ from state to state. Similarly, Canadian provinces may soon follow suit with their own additional ad regulations.

A central difference between promoting beer and boosting bud relates to the use of imagery: marijuana marketers can use very little, despite the efforts of advocates who lobbied for laws regulating its promotion like those applying to alcohol instead of tobacco. Penalties for breaking these laws are heavy, ranging between $1,000 to $5 million fines, and six month to three-year jail terms.

Taking their cue from regulators, operators banned ads on Google and Twitter. On Facebook and Instagram, marijuana advocacy is allowed (or so Facebook claims), but not the sale or use of the drug. There, guidelines state ads are prohibited:

that “promote the sale or use of illegal, prescription, or recreational drugs;”

that depict bongs, rolling papers, vapes and anything else implying recreational and medical marijuana use.

In response, crafty-preneurs are now busy perfecting the art of marketing their brand without actually showcasing their product.

Producer MedReleaf launched its own beer line to advertise its brand while cannabis rules were being finalized. Available in Ontario, their “cannabis-inspired” San Rafael ’71 4:20 Pale Ale contains 4.20 percent alcohol content but no cannabis. The beer brand uses cheeky taglines including “grassfed” and “here today, bong tomorrow” that speaks to the company’s roots and aims.

Similarly, you won’t find any toking in Tweed’s “Hi” campaign, which can be found online, on video and out-of-home. The company launched the tongue in cheek promotion to introduce and entice new audiences to its brand—and eventually, its product.

Some cannabis activists link Health Canada’s regulations to a seeming shift in YouTube’s approach to marijuana-related materials. The platform recently made headlines for clamping down on canna-content. Videos were removed and channels of prominent marijuana vloggers and content creators were shuttered—some of whom had spent years building up a loyal cadre of followers, millions of views, and hundreds of hours of video.

The platform’s community guidelines have been less than helpful for those trying to figure out why content was flagged. The sections on “child safety” and “harmful and dangerous content” may have been the basis, particularly since the latter guide against videos that depict “hard drug use, or other acts where serious injury may result.” But the guidelines also state that videos may be allowed if videos are intended to be “educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic” and aren’t “gratuitously graphic.” – leaving some perplexed.

As a result of YouTube’s enhanced policing, many cannabis content creators have moved their content to friendlier video-sharing platforms like Vimeo—and the recently launched WeedTube.

Puff, puff, press play.

2. Alcohol: All about age-gating

For many people, drinking and socializing go hand-in- hand. So, it makes sense alcohol brands are spending billions to engage their customers on their favorite social networks. And studies show that they’re gaining traction.

The main issue with digital marketing for alcohol brands is ensuring it reaches the right age groups—industry oversight bodies have specified that at least 71.6 percent of the targeted audience should be of legal drinking age in the U.S. and at least 70 percent in Canada.

In the past, such restrictions led alcohol brands away from marketing on digital platforms; now more sophisticated age-gating tools exist on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, allowing them a way in.

The gates work a little differently on each platform:

Twitter restricts access to content based on the birth date provided when a user signs up.

Similarly, Google bases its YouTube restrictions on the age users enter on their Google Plus profile.

On Instagram age-gating is optional. Brands can activate it by contacting platform representatives. Despite these permissive guidelines, beer and spirit brands still have legal obligations to follow, which means many do activate.

Owned by Facebook, Instagram users are able to connect their account with their Facebook account. Facebook requires a birth date when users first set up their accounts. If a user isn’t logged in or connected to their Facebook account, an age gate will appear.

On Facebook you can add age restrictions to your Page so that only visitors that meet the requirements can view it.

In addition to age-gating features, most brands on social media include additional disclaimers in their profiles discouraging under aged users from following or viewing their content, even though this means using up precious few characters available for profile bios.

Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.

Get the free guide right now!

3. Cryptocurrency: Scammers beware

The frenzy around Bitcoin and blockchain-based currencies led to the creation of super strange coinage (RIP Fonziecoin and Pizzacoin) and a rush of advertising on social media designed to drive consumer interest in Initial Coin Offerings. Some suspect ICOs relied on celebrity endorsements (including by Floyd Mayfield, Evander Holyfield and Paris Hilton), and were later tagged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as scams.

Boxing legend and Hall of Famer Evander Holyfield has officially endorsed @AriseBank @BitShares Join the biggest fight in history. #arisebank $BTS #BTS pic.twitter.com/MFNCpZ5OJf

— Evander Holyfield (@holyfield) January 5, 2018

In an effort to curtail manipulative ads for fraudulent ICOs, Facebook, Twitter, and Google banned all cryptocurrency advertising. Twitter also cracked down on cryptocurrency scammers by banning bots and fake accounts.

For instance, using lookalike accounts (ex. @elonmuskik and @VitalikButerjm), scammers impersonating tech star Elon Musk and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, attempted to deceive users by asking them to trade small amounts of Ether for larger amounts they would never receive—prompting Buterin to tweet out his real social media account links.

Here is a VCR (Vitalik Curated Registry) of all of my active social media accounts:https://t.co/oDWViPcy3hhttps://t.co/VRy3MjICIjhttps://t.co/owiClvuf42

There may be a few smaller ones but nothing mainstream. Everything else I either don't use or is a scam.

— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) July 5, 2018

Six months after it initially banned ads, crypto marketers rejoiced when Facebook (sort of) backpedalled on its initial ban. The company released a new policy. Potential advertisers would now have to fill out a “cryptocurrency products and services onboarding request” to get ads approved. Whether that’ll be enough to discourage crypto scammers remains to be seen.

Otherwise, trying to generate legit buzz and attract positive press is a challenge in an increasingly crowded market of crypto startups. Some more credible ways startups are promoting projects include:

Sharing their stories on Medium and Steemit (a blogging platform for crypto enthusiasts)

Paying influencers on platforms like YouTube

Incentivizing users on Telegram (a messaging app for the crypto community).

4. Olympics: Avoid the “O” word

Not just anyone can launch a gold-winning social media campaign during the Olympic Games. Non-sponsoring businesses and brands have to tread carefully to avoid getting sued. Together with the International Olympic Committee, local organizing committees in each host country, control the Olympic brand in their jurisdictions.

The Olympic brand includes words, phrases, logos and designs related to the Olympic Movement. WIthout appropriate consent, don’t even think of trying to use:

Olympic

Olympian/d

Paralympic

Paralympian/d

Pan-American

The symbol of five interlocking rings (no, not even with onion rings)

And in the run up to each Olympics, using turns of phrase that reference the Games, like “the big event,” “let the games begin,” or “go for the gold” can be problematic. Even cute coinings, like “Snow-lympics,” are out too.

Non-sponsoring brands can’t use related branded hashtags like:

#TeamCanada

#TeamUSA

#Tokyo2020

#Beijing2022

In fact, seemingly innocuous gestures like cheering on athletes, posting results, sharing photos from the Games or social media posts from official Olympics accounts (including retweeting) could also result in a first-place headache. Instead, you can leverage on timing—sharing posts and tweeting about an Olympic sporting event when it’s happening is fine. Users can also share and engage with social media posts by Olympic sponsors.

The IOC is aggressive, keeping up with their guidelines is an Olympic-sized challenge—particularly for smaller brands with limited budgets who may be tempted to go rogue. But bending the rules and engaging in ambush marketing is not only frowned upon by IOC, it may also result in the wrong kind of publicity.

Vancouver yoga brand Lululemon Athletica quickly found that out when, ahead of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, it launched a limited clothing line called “Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 & 2011 Edition”. The name not only upset the local organizing committee, but also generated bad press for Lululemon’s allegedly unsportsmanlike marketing efforts.

But athletes themselves have also pushed back against the IOC’s marketing restrictions. Following a Twitter campaign launched by frustrated athletes during the 2012 London Olympics, the IOC relaxed a rule which precluded them from being featured in any kind of advertising by non-official sponsors—including even simple “congratulatory” social media posts—during the Olympic window. Now, these brands can apply for an advance exception, permitting pre-approved advertising during that period.

Gatorade, for example, was able to produce videos featuring tennis star Serena Williams and sprinter Usain Bolt, even though it wasn’t an official Olympic sponsor at the time.

5. Gambling: Know when to fold ‘em

It’s illegal for private companies to host or operate an online gambling business in the U.S. and Canada—and, don’t even think of advertising one.

In 2007, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, then the three largest Internet companies, settled with the U.S. Justice Department for a whopping $31.5 million for accepting illegal online gambling ads between 1997 and 2007.

Canada has similar regulations, but their enforcement is another matter. Though the Criminal Code includes sections prohibiting gambling promotion, enforcing gambling ad standards has largely been left up to provincial efforts. Yet, unlicensed online sports and poker sites reportedly contribute “significant” advertising revenues to Canadian sports broadcasts and online.

In an effort to curtail illegal gambling adverts, the B.C. government recently proposed filing a multi-province complaint against the industry’s self-regulator, The Advertising Standards Council.

Platform rules for advertising on social media are not much clearer. Gambling-related advertising is treated as restricted content: ad policies outlined on Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram state they’ll allow it on a case by case basis. Interested operators must obtain advanced “written permission” or be “certified.” Authorized ads must then only target audiences of legal age residing in approved countries.

In short, it’s a confusing landscape for gambling ad sales.

Still, there are plenty of ways for legal gambling operators to engage audiences on social media. Licensed casino operators are becoming savvier in attracting customers using traditional digital marketing techniques such as video marketing campaigns on YouTube, and providing customer service through Twitter.

Social games are also increasingly popular marketing vehicles. Found on social networking sites like Facebook, they do not involve the gambling of real money, but do allow in-game purchases of tokens and other playing benefits. For gambling operations, developing social games on Facebook not only helps bring in customers but also provides an alternate revenue stream. Worldwide revenues for the social casino market reportedly hit $4.2 billion in 2016.

International Game Technology (IGT) is a major investor in social games. If you’ve ever played a slot-based game or video poker in Canada or the U.S. it was likely created by IGT. It’s app DoubleDown Casino is the world’s largest free-to-play social casino and a top-ranking app on Facebook. The Vegas-style game operates with virtual chips, and provides players with loyalty rewards within the flow of the game; its associated fan page (currently, 7.6 million fans) helps create dialogue to engage customers.Conclusion

As laws and codes regulating regulated industries shift and evolve, social platform operators adapt their own policies in effort to keep up. Brands and social media managers should be prepared to consult guidelines—and in certain cases, legal counsel—before investing in significant campaigns, as rules can vary depending on the country, province or state. Incomplete, or altogether ignored due diligence efforts can be a high stakes gamble.

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