#my drafts are a wasteland but anyway

[prettyinpunk]

the live muse experience is like. "there's no way they can sound That Good live. matt can't really do All That in a live performance, theres no way, he's gotta compensate somewhere......" and then they start playing and OH MY GOD YEAH HE CAN

[tevintersnakes]

Lab tech brain compels me to ramble through my OC

[snorpdawg]

I feel like I owe everyone who sees this post an apology

[thenyoumightaswellwrestleangels]

staring at the hawks fic on my wip list thinking abt how no one cares abt this man anymore

[jeonqkooks]

turns out things can be done if you would just - get this - Do Them! who knew

[bekahdoesnerdshit]

“Hey, Ace?”

“Yeah Cog?” 

Despite having been the one to break the silence, Cog is quiet for several moments. She picks at a loose thread dangling from hem of her shorts, weighs her words carefully, leans over to rest her head on Ace’s shoulder. “I’m gonna fix it,” she promises softly. “Your magic. I don’t know how, not yet, but... I’m gonna make this right. As soon as I’m strong enough.” Her hands curl into fists in her lap, and she turns to look up at him. “I’m close, I can feel it. I just- I need a little more time. But I promise, Ace. I’ll fix this.”

“I don’t know what ‘strong enough’ looks like yet,” she doesn’t say. “I don’t know if that means borrowing more power from Azrael, or waiting until I’m strong enough on my own. I don’t know if it means figuring out how to reverse what they did to you myself, or storming New Alexandria and forcing the Headmaster to fix it. I’d do any of that for you, you know. In a heartbeat. Please, don’t be too stubborn to let me do this for you.”

Ace’s expression is unreadable for several seconds longer than Cog is comfortable with, but when she opens her mouth to stumble her way through an apology or explanation he reaches up to rest a hand on the back of her head, pulls her in tight against his chest, and wraps his other arm around her in a hug so tight she can barely breathe. “...nah. Nah, kid. Don’t waste all that time worrying about me,” he says, resting his chin on top of her head. But his voice is soft, and he’s not letting her pull away, and Cog knows this man almost as well as she knows herself. She knows what that means. “You got a world to save. Don’t add more to your plate on my account,” he says, as though he isn’t her world. As though she wouldn’t leave the Wasteland to fend for itself if he asked her to stay here with him. 

Hidden against Ace’s shirt, Cog’s expression crumples. Even as she’s wrapping her arms around his middle she’s shaking her head well before he finishes speaking. “No. No, I- Let me call it selfish. If you feel like you can’t say yes for yourself, let me call it selfish. I want to be able to talk to you whenever I want, I want to know that I can heal you if you get hurt. I want you to be able to travel with us, so that I can show you everything wonderful about the world you let me see. Ace, I-- I’ve built my magic up so much around being able to use it to help, to protect, and you- I can’t protect you right now. I can’t touch you. If something were to happen, I--” Her voice breaks, and Ace pulls her closer. 

“...that bleeding heart of yours,” he murmurs after a second, shaking his head but leaning down to press a kiss to Cog’s hair. “You gotta be careful that you don’t bleed yourself dry, kid. You’re more than just what you can give people, you know? You matter ‘cause you’re you. Not because you’re chock full of magic.”

Cog doesn’t have an answer for that. She squeezes him tighter instead, and feels Ace return the gesture in kind.

They sit like that for a long time, quiet, together, taking comfort in one another. When Ace finally lets go enough for Cog to sit up and look at him, they’ve both largely regained their composure. “...There’s no point trying to talk you out of this, is there?” Ace asks. When Cog holds his gaze and resolutely shakes her head, he can’t help but smile. “I’ve been a terrible influence. Look at you, you’ve gotten as stubborn as I am, and almost as bad about picking fights without knowing if you’ll win them.”

Cog laughs with him while he says it, but as Ace stands and reaches down to pull her up too there’s a determination in her eyes that says, while Ace may be teasing, she most certainly is not. “I know I’ll win this one.” She says, resolute. “It’s just rewriting a fundamental law of magic. How hard could it be, anyway?”

The deep, belly laugh that earns her has Cog beaming. And, despite the circumstances that brought them here, the world feels just a little bit brighter as she loops her arm through her brother’s. And, despite the odds they’re facing now seeming insurmountable, Cog knows without a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing in this world they can’t face together.

[venussaidso]

I just edited this in my Dominant Venus Themes post but I wanted to make a separate post. I wish this dawned on me while I was still drafting my observations. But anyway. Furiosa is 100% a Venus nakshatra character.

Alyla Browne plays young Furiosa. Much like Anya Taylor Joy and Charlize Theron, she is also a Venus nakshatra native (Purva Ashada Moon).

This younger version of her has grown up in the Green Place. She is then abducted and grows up in the wastelands. This transition greatly echoes Persephone's abduction into the underworld. Persephone is the Goddess of Spring, representing vegetation and flowers. In the film, we see Furiosa surrounded by fruits, endless greens, and clean water. Wow.

Then, Anya Taylor Joy's Furiosa executes her vengeance against the person who murdered her mother. Bharani.

Charlize Theron's Furiosa wants to get back to the Green Place, taking the oppressed class of women with her to build a better hopeful future. Purva Phalguni seeking happiness. She is ferocious and will stop at nothing to getting the Wives to safety and happiness.

Also, I used to be one of those people who thought Furiosa was dominantly a Saturn nakshatra character. How I regretted even thinking that because, Furiosa is literally a fucking FIRE SIGN name. And, Venus nakshatras are also warrior-like. Far more ferocious. Fuck offffff.

[fablesandfragments]

On Writing: The Struggle is Real

But So Worth It.

I don’t know about you, but writing for me is like 70% staring at a blank screen, 20% procrastinating, and maybe 10% actual writing (if I'm lucky).

Some days, the ideas flow like water; other days, my brain feels like a deserted wasteland. Anyone else?

But here’s the thing—I write because I have to. There’s something oddly satisfying about taking a jumbled mess of thoughts and turning them into something tangible.

Even if it’s just one sentence that took hours to get right.It’s tough, though. Some days, the words feel clunky, the characters feel distant, and I just wonder… am I even good at this?

But then, there are those magical moments when a piece clicks, and suddenly, it all feels worth it. It’s messy, it’s chaotic, but it’s a beautiful kind of chaos.

So yeah, if you’re sitting there struggling to get through a draft or questioning whether your writing is any good—same. But let’s keep going, because you never know when you’ll hit that breakthrough moment.Writing may be hard, but we love it anyway, don’t we? 💛

[tinycheesecakedetective]

What about relaxation for Eternal Sugar and Greed for Golden Cheese?

Rambling/Concept Post pt. 2 (OLD)

My first ask! Thanks for asking, by the way, and sorry that this took so long to answer. I've been staring at this draft like the void, and it started to stare back.

Anyways, enough about my procrastination. That sounds good, at least for Eternal Sugar! Greed just feels kinda easy, not to mention that greed is seen as a good thing in her story specifically. Spinning greed back to being a bad trait feels like it dampens a bit of her story. That does give me a different idea for her, though. Golden Cheese Cookie, Beast of Gluttony and Burning Spice Cookie, Ancient Hero of Renewal

So you might be wondering, "Gluttony? Why gluttony, that has to do with food, doesn't it?" To which I say, I will get to it. Abundance is having [something] in excess, and Golden Cheese was drowning in wealth, subjects, and power before it was stripped from her during the Great Flour War. The reason why she was greedy was for the sake of her kingdom and went to great lengths to provide for them and her allies.

Which brings us back to why. Why gluttony? It's because Gluttony doesn't have a reason. It doesn't have a reason why it needs to consume, it just does. It is mindless, driven only by basic instinct and a lust for more because it needs more. Gluttony doesn't care if it deserves it or not, it needs to be fed and it will have what it wants. It is greed without reason. And it's a great fit for an ancient who loses sight of why they were greedy in the first place.

So... What exactly would her kingdom look like? Considering it's completely gone, GC would use the digital world she created as a blueprint. While she has the cheesebirds to help with reconstruction efforts, she lacks the resources needed. So, she begins searching for materials, and that's where the trouble begins. GC looks at the blueprints and decides it's simply not enough, so she begins expanding. And she doesn't stop; the kingdom becomes a tumor across the desert with more and more areas being built. Nowhere is untouched, and trying to explore the place is impossible because there's always new rooms, new entrances, and new things to explore. It's practically a maze with Golden Cheese at the center, always wanting more and never having enough.

Now onto Burning Spice... After beating myself up about how to make destruction a positive trait, I eventually decided on Renewal as their soul jam. Renewal, according to Merriam Webster, means "to make like new", and yes, I know it's close to change, but this was hard okay? Canonically, they give me warrior brute vibes, and I think their kingdom is just a complete wasteland. Like, there isn't anything there but monsters and sand, and maybe some old houses that survived. And technically their resting place, but that barely counts. When your known trait is destruction, it's kinda hard to think of anything to do for it. Maybe in the past they had a more permanent area? Spice seems to have connections with the Mala tribe, especially with Capsaicin Cookie specifically, but again, speculation.

I imagine Spice's (new) territory to be nomadic. Fitting with the theme of Renewal, they don't have any permanent homes and move between Spicy Spider Valley and the area surrounding their tomb in a pilgrimage of sorts. They of course have Burning Spice as ruler, but also a group of advisors that can make calls in their absence. I think the way they get their soul jam is they go on a solo journey through the wilderness to try and find himself or something, I can work out the details later.

Hollyberry Cookie, Beast of Ambition and Eternal Sugar Cookie, Ancient Hero of Serenity

Thankfully, this is way easier. Hollyberry is a boisterous, loving individual and my absolute favorite Ancient. For a while, my favorite update was the Dragon's Valley update, and I adore her interactions with Pitaya Dragon. But enough of my rambling, we're here to talk about her becoming ambition! Now this is pretty straightforward, passion and ambition are similar after all. But the difference between the two is that passion is a feeling, and ambition is a mindset. Taking one's passion and hyper focusing on a specific thing could make it into an ambition. And that's not always a good thing.

Having ambitions is great! Letting those ambitions run wild is ill advised, however. Balance is important to have, and if you don't keep that in mind, your ambitions can make you go to extremes and you might do things you never would've just to reach them. How Hollyberry falls is through her passion for the ones she loves. It starts innocently enough, she gets worried about the well being of her family, so she tries to get strong enough to protect them. She starts with trying to connect with her soul jam more, then finding artifacts that could boost her strength, and then all of a sudden she's trying to unlock the path to divinity. Whoops, how'd that happen? Interestingly enough, the Hollyberry Kingdom would probably end up the least affected by Beast!Hollyberry's actions. All they know is that she said that she would be going on a short trip and she hasn't come back yet, so the kingdom wouldn't change unless Pitaya got tired of their stalemate and made the entire kingdom their playground in the meantime.

Next and last for this post, Eternal Sugar Cookie! Also very easy, her new virtue is serenity! Eternal Sugar gave me HEAVY fallen angel vibes, although interestingly enough she gave me Greek vibes as well. Their territory is definitely some version of the Garden of Eden, what with the paradise name and seraphim wings and all. They feel like Mystic Flour's exact opposite, and while Mystic Flour tries to free everyone from all desires, Eternal Sugar seems like the type to indulgence in ALL of them and encourage pleasure over everything else.

So how do we make them into an ancient hero? Since serenity is a state of peace, perhaps they find it by complete accident. Maybe they start out as their usual slothful self but they don't find satisfaction, so she goes on some quest of self discovery and finds the way to peace or something like that. You know those relaxation gardens that people make in their backyards with the koi fish and the bonsai? Sugar's area feels like it would have that vibe, hidden away from most people.

And I think that's it. The next and probably final post is about everyone's new favorite gay ship! And they're very tricky. Again, sorry this took so long, I was running on empty for a WHILE. Hope you enjoy!

[dukeofriven]

To Ravel-Out The Weaved-Up Follies: The Decline and Fall of Homestuck^2

[I first started this essay a few months ago during a strange, brief resurgence of Homestuck^2 discussion that vanished almost as quickly as it began. Because my brain is A Wretchedly Uncooperative Thing this essay has stayed in draft form, being picked at, until—naturally—Homestuck^2 surprised us all by relaunching with a completely new team at its head. I’ve decided to push myself to publish this anyway, because I still think the core of my thesis is correct. So, keeping in mind that this leaves the starting gate slightly later than I would have wished (not knowing I was in a race), let us commence.]

___________________________________________________

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. -Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 “Once upon a time there was a Boojum——" the Professor began, but stopped suddenly. "I forget the rest of the Fable," he said. "And there was a lesson to be learned from it. I'm afraid I forget that, too." -Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, 1893

Several posts about Homestuck^2 have started to crop-up… adjacent to my dash. I'm not attaching myself to those posts because it seems rude, but their points are largely an attempt at revisionism of the fate of Homestuck^2. Understand I'm not using the term ‘revisionist’ pejoratively: it is common, even sensible for artists to look back at failed projects and try to pick up the pieces and derive some value from them. I’ve done it myself, many times. Nobody likes to say "I entirely wasted my time, my passion, and my creative energy for [X] days, months, years.” It is important to look at a failure and see what you did right, treasure the parts that were worth treasuring.

But equally I don't want to go too far in rehabilitating what was, undeniably, a failure. There's a lot of critical theory being brought-up, a lot of talk of Homestuck^2 from a standpoint of post-modernism, or post-post-modernism, trying to engage with what Homestuck^2 was as a platform for ideas. A habitus, if you’ll forgive the jargon, what Bourdieu famously called (in a Hussie-like masterwork of language) “the structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures.”

I get it. I get what the Homestuck^2 team was trying to do intellectually: where their minds were at, the hostility they faced, the vitriol they were harmed by. I get it.

But that's not why Homestuck^2 failed. Homestuck^2 did not fail because it dreamed too big, or was too intellectual. It did not fail because its themes were not worth exploring, or because its lens was too meta: for most of its original run, after all, Homestuck is nothing but an interrogation of Homestuck. Its brains were not why Homestuck^2 failed. The problem was its execution. The problem was its heart.

There's a lot to be said about not giving fans what they think they want. The internet drowns in coffee shop AUs where everything interesting about a franchise's characters has been vulgarly ripped from the text, leaving a drama-less, tension-less pablum where everything is stagnant and unchanging, everyone gets along, all the romances are cute and smooth, and you can burrow in the comforting ooze of artistic and narrative death. Give fans exactly what they want and frequently nothing creatively meaningful will result. Fandoms famously resisted both The Empire Strikes Back and The Wrath of Khan when they first released because they pushed characters to change, and yet they grew to be beloved as fans realized that what they thought they wanted and what it turned out they could enjoy were not as alike s they assumed. There's nothing wrong with showing fans that there can be more to a story that just doing the same thing over again, retrenching into the pablum wastelands of growth-free comfort fics.

But when asking whether Homestuck^2 did or did not gave fans what they wanted or needed, we must first raise an important establishing question: which fans? That is to say: who was its intended audience? Who was Homestuck^2 written for?

At its peak, Homestuck Classic had millions of readers and a million page-hits a day. There was a whole contingent of fandom who came only for the trolls (in some baffling cases actually skipping the first four acts of the story to jump right to into Act 5). There was another contingent who loved the video game parody, there were Problem Sleuth junkies, and in the early acts there were the suggestion box obsessives: all of these were readers who were fans of parts of the story but largely stopped reading Homestuck as the story got more concerned with the complex nature of stories and narrative itself. Homestuck^2 is clearly not for them—as indeed Homestuck Classic itself had not 'been' for them for much of its run. Homestuck^2 is also not for new readers: if you haven't read the Homestuck Epilogues through at least twice, if you don't remember all its major plot points and the plot points of Homestuck Classic, it makes no attempt to onboard you and is, probably in-arguably, outright impenetrable to those not already in the know. It’s not impossible—there were SBaHJ fans who onboarded with the first context-free SBaHJ and went ‘yeah, I can vibe with this’ and never knew or cared that it was a reference work for something else— but it doesn’t seem likely that many people ‘jumped on’ the Homestuck train with Homestuck^2. I think Homestuck^2’s writers would agree that Homestuck^2 expected you to know the lay of the land. So: nobody new was likely going to read Homestuck^2, and (given its density of Homestuck call-backs) neither was it for more casual Homestuck fans. Homestuck^2 was not even for the truly otiose Andrew Hussie diehards: Hussie was only tangentially involved in the project, they weren't writing it, and there's seemingly no references at all to Barty's Brew-Ha-Ha or Inappropriate Time for Ham, so that's a full seventeen readers it also likely turned off (sorry, comrades. One day…)

So who, then, was Homestuck^2 for? Its intended readers seemed to be those who read the Epilogues and loved them. This is a complicated issue: for those who weren’t there, the Epilogues were… controversial. I defended them at the time: I liked them, even admired them, partially because I believed with the fervor of a zealot that there was still something else to come. I called this final entry ‘Pumpkin.’ Homestuck, a story that always rejected binaries, surely was not meant to conclude with over-the-top Candy and/or grim, dour Meat. I knew in my heart that Pumpkin was coming, where John rejected both of these dark and crazy futures and found a third way in which his friends grew up and matured without losing themselves and their friendship: not a story without conflict, but surely the prime timeline as existed in general fandom imagination could not accept Dirk’s grotesque, manipulative suicide, breastfeeding Gamzee, brutal civil wars, and Dirk and Jane becoming so cruel and hateful. Surely that was set-up to pay-off a better future later: after all, like its author, Homestuck abhorred a binary.

But Pumpkin never came, and now I look at the Epilogues and I find lot in it (for lack of a better term) ‘edge lord showboating.’ It feels like reading 90s comics all over again, including the bits with cannibalism. A lot of bleak and miserable things happen in the narrative, and I find myself asking ‘do they happen because they should, or just because they could?’ (And how many times can one franchise treat Jade Harley like absolutely garbage?)

But if the Epilogues had a true and golden virtue, it was their framing as intrinsically being fan-fiction: Meat or Candy, this was not the 'true' continuation of the franchise (as much as that means anything), this was speculative futures, not much different from Doc Scratch’s story of the Vriska/Noir battle. A one-shot, in other terms, an elseworlds: not a definitive statement about What Homestuck Was From Now On, but an experiment in tone and structure. How far can you push Homestuck before it doesn’t feel like Homestuck any more? (Turns out not nearly as far as you might think.) A lot of people didn’t notice, however, or perhaps simply didn’t care: the Epilogues ripped the Homestuck fandom apart. Homestuck Classic often did things in bad-taste as part of its odd charm: Gamzee’s codpiece, Jack playing dress-up after slaughtering a nice couple on a date, Caliborn’s cartoonish misogyny. Some bits land, some don’t, but for fans—I think for many, if not most—the Epilogues crossed a line that they were not comfortable with.

In some quarters the Epilogues are reviled, and I honestly can not fault people who found them off-putting. They are: intentionally so, provocatively so, and it should be okay for people to be put off by them without insisting that the haters ‘just didn’t get it.’ Often they did: they ‘got it,’ they just didn’t like it. It ‘squiked them out’ as we used to say, and the writers had to have known it would: discomfort is the nature and partial purpose of provocative art.

(Sidebar: Epilogue writers, you wrote a plot-line in which 16-year old Homestuck Act 6 protagonist Jane Crocker grows-up to become a racist dictator who has a cuckolding sexual relationship with Gamzee Makarra that involves kin-play involving public breastfeeding.

Sorry Andres Serranos acolytes, that’s not going to go down super-well with the majority of people, not because they are uptight suburban prudes but because they liked Jane Crocker and felt this outcome was not grounded well in the character they knew: only the obtuse would act shocked and try and argue it was due to a lack of sophistication. You took a gamble, you took a risk, you faced the outcome. You fucked around with ICP Hitler breastfeeding cuckoldry and you found out.)

So: who was Homestuck^2 for? It was for people who had read Homestuck multiple times, had read the Epilogues multiple times, and wanted a sequel that involved those Epilogues.

That is… a small audience. A very small audience. I counted myself among them, but had no illusions that its reach was ever going to be very large. Homestuck^2 was never going to be the Second Coming of Homestuck as a sui generis cultural phenomenon: seemingly by design, it was deliberately written for an insular audience who liked a controversial and difficult interpretation of a famous story and wanted more of that interpretation. So the Homestuck^2 team wrote for them: they came to the table with big dreams and big ideas. They came to the table with lots of critical theory under their belts: they knew their Barthes and Baudrillard, they could reference queer theory and the legacy of post-structuralism, they were the sort of people who knew how to situate Homestuck in post-post-modernism and what that meant for the nature of its exploration of stories.

They had an audience, and they had a plan. They were going to give the fans what they wanted.

So after much hype and fanfare, after interviews and the Tumblr equivalent of a press-junket—which saw the new team saying how excited they were to tackle Homestuck’s legacy, how many great ideas they had, how much having a diverse team was going to see Homestuck ‘done right’—Homestuck^2 first published on the 25th of October, 2019, releasing 32 pages.

We start in the glittering majesty of space. The camera swoops in among the stars, barrelling towards a rushing spacecraft (every frame of Homestuck^2 looks great, the visual arts team's work is its unquestioned highlight). We aim at a viewport in the spacecraft’s hull and slowly the Muti-Narratively-Dimensional Ubervillian Dirk Strider comes into view. Fresh from his triumph in the Epilogues, continuing his wicked schemes, he looks right at the camera, and—speaking directly to the audience—he voices the first line of dialogue in Homestuck^2:

"Surprise, bitch."

…

There is…

…

… there is no coming from back that.

There is no saving it.

It is the 25th of October, 2019, and Homestuck^2 launches with its own death-rattle. It stumbles out of the gate like a beautiful racing pony catching its delicate hoof on the sharp, treacherous edge of an unwieldy analogy and tumbling into the indifferent soil of hard reality, shattering all four legs and immediately marking itself for teary euthanasia at the hand of the devastated young girl with the violet eyes who raised it from a foal and dreamed of making Nationals.

We have established that Homestuck^2’s potential audience was small. The people who were most likely to like it were already an insular, distinctive group who had bought-in to what much or all the Epilogues had to offer. Homestuck^2’s opening-day crowd did not need to be sold on the word of the Lord—they already believe it: they came to see their first glimpse of the promised land.

And in its very first conversation with that audience, in its very first words, Homestuck^2 makes the most spectacular miscalculation of tone since 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry—or for those of us of who remember the 90s: ‘Dirk Strider’s about to make you his bitch.’

There's nothing wrong with starting a story with a villain, there's nothing wrong with a villain being a contemptible heel to its audience, but Homestuck^2 spends its opening 32 entries—which, at over 7600 words are longer than the prologue to the Homestuck Epilogues—jumping between Dirk’s smarmy conversations with fellow characters and a monologue to the audience, pages infused with an arrogance and condescension that is downright enervating. The text is frequently dense, so dense it feels like chewing your way through a plank of wood. It is actively tiring to read: I bailed on my first attempt at reading Homestuck^2 when it originally dropped because I just did not have the energy to squint at my screen and read that much orange-on-off-white text.

It is, to be clear, contemptuous. Dirk did much the same in the Epilogues, but the locus has changed. In the Epilogues Dirk taunts the reader with the changes he is making to the story: he knows they object to his manipulations, and he preens as good villains do. But in Homestuck^2, Dirk speaks not of his changes but of the very existence of Homestuck^2 itself. He treats his audience as inherently hostile to the entire existence of the work they have just shown-up to read (or even support via a Patreon), a hostility that culminates when he ‘opens’ a suggestion box and receives the suggestion ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck,’—which he at-once rejects and goes on to monologue some more.

Dirk is talking to an audience who isn’t there. He is speaking to everyone who didn’t like the Epilogues and objects to Homestuck’s 'sequel' directly following them: but that audience isn’t reading Homestuck^2. They bailed in advance, and any who did try and keep an open mind likely jumped ship the moment the comic started by calling them a bitch and implying they’re idiots. The only people likely to read past the fifth page are those who already bought-in to Homestuck^2’s plan: and they are greeted with some 32 pages and 7600 words of the comic’s villain re-litigating and justifying that plan over and over and over again to people who nominally already agreed with him.

It is draining. It is annoying. It is boring to read.

There’s so much you could critique about Homestuck^2’s choices: from Rose cheating on Kanaya to impregnate Jade to Jane Crocker going full Trump and keeping kids in cages. Equally there’s arguments to be made that Homestuck^2’s very premature cancellation inhibits any ability to judge the story fairly: like any serialized narrative stopped mid-way, we have no way of knowing what narrative payoffs were supposed to be. Decisions that seemed baffling on page 8 might prove brilliant and bold by page 8000. But we never got to page 8000, because Homestuck^2 made one crucial error:

It started by telling its audience they were fools for not being smart enough to appreciate how brilliant Homestuck^2 was going to be, and then spent a majority of some 7600 words repeating itself like the worst self-pitying incel you’ve ever had the misfortune to be trapped with at a party. If only the ungrateful could realize how smart, handsome, and well-educated I—Homestuck^2—am, the love I deserve will come flowing in. I’ll show them all.

Homestuck^2 never recovered from that first, fatal error. The rest of its choices, good and bad, are almost irrelevant in the face of that opening broadside, that hostility, that tedium. Homestuck Classic earned its walls of text and at least knew how to space them: Hometuck^2 took its audience forbearance as a given and opens with a lecture on its principles and quality like an unusually snide abstract on a sociology paper. Homestuck^2 essentially began by telling its audience to leave unless they were willing to give it carte blanche, to roll over for its brilliance from the first, to accept in advance that its intelligence and virtue were first rate. So the audience did leave and it never came back and eventually the whole thing collapsed via artist infighting that was so rancorous and possibly subsumed by NDAs that to this day no one has ever halfway adequately explained what happened at the end.

But that ending was preordained from the beginning, for the balance was hopelessly incorrect.

So to anyone trying to write a revisionist history of Homestuck^2 in which its downfall was the fault of readers who simply didn’t ‘give it a chance,’ who didn’t appreciate its themes, who couldn’t grasp (or didn’t care to grasp) its intellectual bonafides (not to mention its extraordinary self-assurance that it was going to be queer Homestuck ‘done right,’ which is a whole essay about a priori reasoning in and of itself)... in other words, a history in which Homestuck^2' downfall happened because people just didn’t ‘get it,’ I’d like to sum up my counter-argument succinctly:

People didn’t like Homestuck^2 because you wrote it bad.

[Afterwards:

There is something bitingly funny about the ‘return’ of Homestuck^2 with the announcement that, from what I can gather, seemingly every person involved with the original project was fired (or, as they’d probably insist, refused to come back). Dirk’s preening, overwhelming arrogance, that ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck’ prompt, will forever haunt the original team’s unwieldy vision. “I’d bet you just looove for us not to make Homestuck anymore” the team said, with all the confidence of an entrepreneur dismissing safety regulations before climbing into his homemade submarine, and boy were lessons learned. My problem with the return, however, is that I don’t know who genuinely wants to see the story of Homestuck^2 finished: the remaining cadre of die-hard patrons who still have enough goodwill to want the promise of the story’s finale fulfilled is microscopic. I’d argue there’s more people waiting for the conclusion of Wizardy Herbert, and I’m the only person I know who has ever read it. What I mean is: as a choice to revive a struggling franchise it doesn’t make much sense, and further—if it is not clear—I don’t think this is a story worth finishing. What is to be salvaged? Jane-the-Dictator, Rose’s cheating, Obnoxious BabyVriska, Dirk Strider the monster? The problem with Homestuck^2 is that Pesterquest happened, and those who played it went ‘this—this is the kind of story we were hoping for, not your edge lord showboating.’ And we only got one Pesterquest and Homestuck^2 limped on for another year reviled, ignored, and eventually forgotten. When it died, most people didn’t have any idea, because the drama never crossed their screens: nobody was talking about it any more. As my best friend noted, give us more Paradox Space. Give us more stories with joy and some sense of fun, something not written by people who often felt like they had an ‘End of Evangelion’ style hatred of Homestuck, or at the very least took the old joke that Hussie was ‘trolling’ his audience at face value. (Writing a good story with twists, set-backs, and tragic moments is not trolling, it is just writing a good story.) Homestuck^2 never felt like it understood that: it was rude and iconoclastic for no more compelling reason than it thought that was meaningful. But then I think the legacy of Epilogues has been extremely toxic—part of the positivity towards Pesterquest was that it let the Epilogues go, featuring a triumphant moment where YoungDirk confronts his Epilogues self and goes ‘I don’t have to be a huge wanker, actually, I can stay a character people can stand and even love again.’

Do that, new team. Pesterquest is named-dropped on the new site more than once, and my dream is that its cast arrives and overthrows the corrosive toxicity of the Epilogues, banishes it to the far realm of underbaked elsewhere ‘what-ifs’ along with every DC cannibalism story and that time Peter Parker’s radioactive semen gave MJ cancer.

The Epilogues and Homestuck^2 are, at this point, not worth salvaging—but I’d happily see them formally buried.]

[lemonbitrambles]

Sorry, real life caught up with me for a moment there, anyway If you don’t know what this is it’s a personal cast of forgotten Disney characters I put in wasteland and we’re going through wonderland right now.

This is Ella, who is a special case because she is not from the original wonderland movie drafts nor is she even from the franchise. Ella the elephant is from the scrapped movie called Wild Life (developed in the late 90s, shelved in 2000) The movie followed Ella as diva-pop sensation named kitty, and a club owner named red try to get her to became a singer.

The art from the movie development I used was drawn by Darryl Kidder, Floyd Norman, and Hans Bacher

More art and rambling under cut (I talk about why I added her into wonderland in the first place)

Okay the plots a lot more convoluted than that, Ella gets accidentally electrocuted into thinking she’s a pop star and kitty has a scene where she thinks Red is trying to seduce Ella. The movie was known for its mature edge and odd look. Which leads to the first reason I added her to the wonderland cast. Many believe the movie was shelved for being too weird/“out there” and was consider an unsafe investment for the fear of it trying to appeal to a smaller audience than most Disney movies at the time.

That’s the perfect fuel for a wonderland character in my opinion. I really want to go into why some be if the characters where forgotten and Ella’s actual history has a lot of affect on how I write her. In the original movie, she left stardom, much more comfortable with her life at the zoo. But after being forgotten I imagine she misses the ye old razzle dazzle the night life setting her movie had since all of her previous friends are gone. She finds comfort in wonderland and it’s quirky cast of characters that remind her of home. She’s also seen as a voice of reason in the small village, since she’s one of the few who isn’t that wonderland type of mad.

Another reason I made the caterpillar this random elephant from a scrapped 2000 movie is because I wanted to show how some characters have changed for the better or worse over the time. It was also just a lot more interesting than trying to find a caterpillar and sticking him in there. Perhaps the adventures in wonderland caterpillar would like to read a story to Mickey and Oswald who knows-

Outside of wonderland she also gets along with other characters, such as someoneihaventmentionedyetbutperhapsilltalkabouthimsoonireallywantto-

Ummmm she showed up in Meet the Robinsons along with a few other characters (actually it may only be one I can only identify one)

She wouldn’t say this to anyone because somehow it would start a war,but the wonderland residents she gets along with the best are Mock Turtle and Griffon.

And here’s a picture of her and Chopsuey/621, who was one of the first characters I added but I have no where to put him (he’s one of my favorites though, stitch’s edgy brother with daddy issues, I have so much art of him. Chopsuey enjoying a field of flowers in 4k)

That’s it that’s my gal

[thebardbullseye]

On the Purpose and Appreciation of Compelling Recaps: “Of the Reaching Green” (WWW Episode 10)

From the desk of TheBardBullseye

“Previously on “The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One.” Naram, spirit of the gentle sea, lies bound at the base of the Calabel Nautomantic Apparatus by Guild Mage Morrow of the Scepter’s Chorus. Our heroes stand divided. Having re-established contact with The Citadel, a castigated Suvi now has direct orders to do nothing until Steel arrives in Port Talon three days hence. Eursulon, having returned to the Ace of Wands alone, once again wields Wavebreaker, the sword that legend says belonged to Naram himself, with the power to break the spells and curses of his foes. And Ame, with just such a curse still clouding her mind and concealing crucial memories of Grandmother Wren and her most important lessons, now rushes forth to find her fox familiar, chasing him beyond the walls of Port Talon into the wasteland of witch fire and ash that stand between the city and the wrath of creeping kudzu beyond. We now return to Port Talon in the wee hours, as a tall and tipsy traveler ambles contentedly down a cobblestone street, a gleaming sword swinging at his side. [music swells] (0:00:18-0:01:30)”*

tl;dr below the fold- I’m captivated by the "Previously On" at the start of episode 10, and I wrote a whole damn essay discussing it. The recap is a brilliant piece of writing and a fascinating snapshot showcasing why this particular actual play podcast is So. Damn. Good. They didn’t have to go this hard!

// Spoilers (both direct and indirect) for Arc 1 // (but honestly I think if you don't already listen to this show, then hopefully this essay convinces you to.)

I’ve been relistening to “The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One” (WWW) from the beginning (starting with the Children’s Adventure). My work life has gotten super crazy in the last month (yay promotion!), and I’ve found the first arc (and firesides) to be a great boon during a stressful time. As I already know the story, I’m less concerned about missing something and will listen to it whenever I need to—note that when I listen to a new episode, I allocate free time to listen and do only that (and play solitaire so I don’t scroll social media). Anyways, when I got around to episode 10, I was reminded by how much I loved the “Previously On” recap at the start. I don’t know if it was written separately or improvised, and although I suspect the former, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter (1).

Before I get into it, y’all, this podcast is so fucking good. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it. There have been numerous moments, developments, episodes, etc. that have grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted in my face, “HEY! STUFF IS HAPPENNING! PAY ATTENTION TO THIS! MAKE THE HAPPY BRAIN CHEMICALS!” (in the Fox’s cadence and voice, of course). And sometimes, that voice compels me, perhaps as a Geas, to Do Something creatively (much like what you’re reading now). Early on, this was mostly a ramble to a friend, or word dump in a doc or group chat. Then, I wrote some music and some lyrics and some poetry, and then a full-length academic essay (…5k words long), and then designed a magazine cover, and on and on. (I don’t know why this podcast has my brain in a vice, but also, I sort of do, which is another essay in the drafts.) Regardless, the first instance of Creative Compulsion that manifested in a more structured manner was when episode 10 debuted and is in fact this very essay (that has since been rewritten and fleshed out). I didn’t have a Tumblr at that time, so my thoughts on this recap have just been collecting dust in my documents folder for more than a year. But, upon my relisten, I realized this episode introduction was significant and that there was more I wanted to say and praise, since I haven’t heard another one like it since.

When the episode first aired, I heard the first 90 seconds (2) of “Of the Reaching Green” and instantly replayed it three times before moving on to the rest of the episode because I was so captivated. After I finished the episode, I listened to it again. The episode had just come out, so the transcript was not yet available, and I wanted to see the recap as well as hear it. *Above, you will find my transcript of the recap, preserved as it was on that day, so my apologies for any unintentional spelling or grammar mistakes (3). Then, I stared at it and reread it, and started to piece together my thoughts on why the hell I’m so enamored by this. It’s 90 seconds of an hour and twenty-minute podcast, and not only that, it’s not even technically part of the diegetic episode, since it’s a recap! (What the hell, Brennan?!)

I promise I’ll get to those specific thoughts soon, but I think it’s important to alight briefly on the nature and necessity of recaps. In serialized storytelling mediums, most notably television shows, the audience often requires a recap of the previous events to refresh one’s memory since it’s been a week (or more) since the previous episode (TV Tropes). I think these may have fallen out of favor as of late, especially in the advent of prestige television, DVRs, and streaming—most producers probably assume that their audience is either binge-watching the show, has access to the previous episode, or can just look up a summary. Or if not done well, it may further confuse the viewer if too much or too little information is included (4). Further, recaps are NOT synopses of the previous episode—they serve to highlight the main points of the previous episode/storyline and specifically underscore what the audience needs to know for this episode. Additionally, these don’t necessarily show up before every episode; for some shows, these only happen for mid or end of season finales, when major storylines conclude. These are not just for returning viewers- in the bygone age of broadcast tv (I jest, kind of), people didn’t always catch every episode every week, so recaps also needed to be compelling. They needed give any random channel surfer the general gist so that they could watch the episode and convince them to not change the channel. Recaps don't need to execute on these all of these elements, nor do them perfectly, but a good recap communicates all of these things well in a very short time frame (usually around 1 minute). Essentially, "Previously On" segments say, 'pay attention to this.'

For actual play shows (a catch-all term for recorded or streamed TTRPG games), recaps serve this same purpose of reminding the audience of previous events, but these also do the additional duty of reminding the player characters themselves at time of recording of what is important in the story they’re telling and game they're playing. Often, the GM will recap the previous session so that everyone’s on the same page, and this is often improvised (as most things are). Needless to say these aren’t usually the most compelling part of the episode (though they don't have to be), and often devolve into synopses of the previous session (i.e., “Last time you guys did XYZ, Timmy fell down a well, ok let’s start…”). Or, if the GM does recap the most important points to know, it’s not usually that compelling to listen to—and honestly, why would one spend extra effort on something that insignificant anyway? Moreover, recaps in most actual plays serve the purpose of recapping for the players first and the audience second (5). The GM can remind, and players can ask questions, so the burden of this segment is lessened.

Ok, so back to our regularly scheduled essay about WWW. I mentioned earlier that I thought that the recap in episode 10 was not improvised at the start of the session and instead was written and recorded separately. While (to my knowledge) this hasn't been discussed publicly, there is some evidence in the structure, cadence, and delivery that lends credence to this assertion. On the whole, I don't think it particularly matters whether it was written or improvised; I merely mention it because the choice to script is significant when every other introduction is improvised (just look at much people love the "Fire" introduction for Calamity). This creative choice makes a lot of sense both in narrative and in production.

WWW first debuted in March 2023, releasing biweekly, so episode 10 aired in early July 2023. I would wager that most listeners don’t relisten to each episode in the intervening weeks, so most episodes start with an informal recap or general scene setting. However by this point, the story had just reached its major turning point at the end of episode 9—the recovery of Wavebreaker. This sword is the MacGuffin of the first arc, and each character is connected to it in some way—it breaks curses (one of which Ame is under), Eursulon was the last one with it but parted with it years ago in Port Talon (he also needs a weapon), and Suvi was the one that gave it to him in childhood. The previous episode also focused on Naram, a great spirit trapped in the harbor of Port Talon, who up until then seemed tangential to the protagonists—but then Ame discovered on her own that Wavebreaker originally belonged to Naram. This pivotal moment is what propels the story to the conclusion of the first arc, thus the need arose for a moment to remind the audience of the stakes and current landscape.

From a production standpoint, this podcast has a lot of love and care poured into it, especially with the marriage of masterful improv and immersive sound design. It’s clear (and has been explicitly stated) that this crew prioritizes the quality of the final episode through little details and extra effort. So, whereas with other APs, fewer resources would be allocated to a recap simply because it’s not necessary, Worlds Beyond Number finds the use-case where it becomes necessary to put a little extra mustard on it.

That said, it’s a really good recap, excellent even. It contains everything a good recap should have: it paints the big picture, snapshots the major players, flows perfectly into the opening scene of the episode, and above all, is compelling. To further support the theory that this was written and recorded separately, it also lacks the filler words, pauses, and direct address to the players (i.e., Suvi, you did X, and Ame, you did Y) that are typical of an improvised introduction and recap—and thus it has the tone akin to the opening crawl of Star Wars. It is eloquently written, with so much information communicated by inference in just seven sentences, so let’s analyze line by line:

“Previously on “The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One.” Naram, spirit of the gentle sea, lies bound at the base of the Calabel Nautomantic Apparatus by Guild Mage Morrow of the Scepter’s Chorus. Our heroes stand divided.”

Translation: It all starts with Naram. Naram is a gentle spirit held captive by another wizard and his fancy machine. “Our heroes stand divided”—they had an argument in the last episode about whether or not to free Naram (and how). Needless to say, the situation with Naram is more complicated, but those four words express that succinctly.

NB: Naram is alone.

In the context of the previous episode, the listener is reminded of this quandary—what to do about Naram. But, there is an ingenious double meaning here. That last line not only alludes to the philosophical division amongst the party, but a physical one as well.

“Having re-established contact with The Citadel, a castigated Suvi now has direct orders to do nothing until Steel arrives in Port Talon three days hence.”

Translation: Suvi has been reprimanded by Steel after unintentionally going AWOL (“re-established contact”) and now she has to keep the situation with Naram locked down until Steel arrives. The audience is reminded that Port Talon is remote from The Citadel since it will take three days to get there.

NB: Suvi is alone.

Steel, Suvi’s adoptive mother, is flying by airship because the travelling door is broken, but since this is extraneous information to the immediate situation, it is left unsaid. As Suvi is the party member with the least connection (relatively speaking) to Wavebreaker and Naram, I think it makes sense that Suvi is mentioned first and has the least airtime in the recap.

“Eursulon, having returned to the Ace of Wands alone, once again wields Wavebreaker, the sword that legend says belonged to Naram himself, with the power to break the spells and curses of his foes.”

Translation: Eursulon ran off to see Will Gallows (proprietor of the Ace of Wands) but got his sword back (“once again” wields Wavebreaker), and it is a legendary sword belonging to Naram that can break curses.

NB: Eursulon is alone.

This section is also brief but sets up the pattern for a clever sequence that subtly shows the movement of the sword over time. First, Naram (who owns the sword), Suvi (who gave Eursulon the sword), Eursulon (who got the sword back), and then finally Ame (who needs the sword). The last phrase, “with the power to break the spells and curse of his foes,” neatly sets up the next line.

“And Ame, with just such a curse still clouding her mind and concealing crucial memories of Grandmother Wren and her most important lessons, now rushes forth to find her fox familiar, chasing him beyond the walls of Port Talon into the wasteland of witch fire and ash that stand between the city and the wrath of creeping kudzu beyond.”

Translation: Ame is cursed and because of that, she is lacking crucial knowledge (but the sword can break the curse). Now, she has left Port Talon and is chasing after her fox into the dangerous wasteland choked with smoke and treacherous forest outside the city.

NB: Ame is alone (do you see the through-line?).

Now, with the major characters introduced and with the stakes increasing, the segment concludes as it introduces the present moment and establishes the opening scene:

“We now return to Port Talon in the wee hours, as a tall and tipsy traveler ambles contentedly down a cobblestone street, a gleaming sword swinging at his side.”

Translation: It’s the middle of the night and Eursulon is triumphantly (and drunkenly) wandering the streets of Port Talon.

It’s notable that Eursulon is not mentioned by name at the end but trusts the listener to have been paying attention, though the next spoken word as the recap fades is “Eursulon.” The opening scene transitions seamlessly to him arriving at the Chantry—now we've come full circle. (This is Morrow's HQ, who trapped Naram in the first place).

Thus, it’s clear that this recap is descriptive yet not needlessly verbose or rambling (unlike this essay), due to its well-formed sentences and syntax.

But beyond that, it’s pleasing to the ear. There is ample use of consonance throughout (e.g., “bound at the base,” “wields Wavebreaker,” “curse… clouding… concealing crucial,” “rushes forth to find her fox familiar,” "walls... wasteland... witch fire," "creeping kudzu," and “tall and tipsy traveler ambles contentedly down a cobblestone street, a sword swinging at his side”). There’s also an interesting alternating alliterative and rhythmic pattern of k and s sounds with “contact with the Citadel, a castigated Suvi”. There's just enough to be noticeable but not too much to become annoying, and the brevity certainly helps. It's poetic.

In the sound quality and design, there’s an air and cadence in Brennan’s voice of being read a bedtime story, and he speaks clearly and with purpose. Further, the musical motifs of the chorus signifying the spirit world at the start transitions to a carefree, plucky tune during the last line that embodies Eursulon’s mood and instills it in the listener. As it ends, this musical transition is reminiscent of waking up and slowly starting to hear the ambient noise around.

When analyzing any kind of creative choice in any medium, I tend to remind myself that the creator(s) could have simply chosen to not make that choice, for any number of reasons or limitations (6). The "Previously On" in episode 10 could have been unremarkable, rambling and verbose, it could have had no music or sound effects, it could have been written and structured in an entirely different way, or it could have simply not existed at all. But it does exist, so I look at what is there. Now, this analysis is not intended to be prescriptive for future recaps in WWW or other APs. As is evident, this recap is one-of-a-kind and serves a greater purpose overall in the first arc of the story. In writing this, I spot-checked a handful of other opening moments of WWW, and while those introductions were improvised, Brennan is so adept at it that I would not expect to hear another a written recap unless the narrative and production calls for it again.

These seven sentences are truly brilliant. There are plenty of moments that have stuck with me since WWW started in March 2023, but it speaks volumes that something this insignificant spawned a ~3000-word analytical essay (7). Damn.

Footnotes:

(1) I elaborate on this later in the essay, but I suspect it was written and recorded separately solely because of how concise it is, both in word choice and in delivery (the lack of filler words or pauses), as well as the difference in tenor/tone as it transitions to the opening scene. We’ve also heard plenty a recap from Brennan in WWW and other shows, and I have yet to hear one as crafted and, dare I say, perfect as this one. Not to knock other improvised (or otherwise) recaps of course, as those fulfill their purpose well and fine. I just appreciate the extra mustard on this one (no shit, I just wrote a whole damn essay with footnotes). I suppose I could submit a Fireside question and ask (lol) but I think that (sky)ship has sailed, since we're now on episode 35. (If for some godforsaken reason someone involved with WBN reads this... let me know if I'm right, I guess? If I'm wrong, I don't want to know /j)

(2) I refer to the recap as 90 seconds as shorthand throughout, but it technically just ends at 90 seconds. And I think that’s neat. It's also easier to just say 90 seconds—a nice, distinct chunk of time—than its true length, which is 72 seconds (due to the WBN theme).

(3) Formatting the quote in this way also neatly organizes my analysis of it later in the essay, which is not exactly reflected in the transcript (but that’s because it’s for readability).

(4) Complete tangent to the podcast discussed here is that I’ve seen DougDoug (internet streamer) do a blind reaction to just the “Previously On” recaps for "One Tree Hill" and "24" (without knowing the plot of either show) to hilarious and baffling results. It further demonstrates my point that recaps are not synopses, and you can’t fully grasp the plot of something through these. Because that’s not their purpose—which is to make clear to the audience what they need to know for that next episode-- not necessarily explain what happened in the last episode (and clips can be from earlier episodes as well).

(5) Something that I think is often discussed by WBN et al. (among others) is the distinction between an actual play and a home game. In a home game of D&D, the sole audience is the people playing the game. In actual play, the audience is BOTH the players and the viewer, and (good) actual play has to balance the two—you want to make sure the people playing are having a good time but also that it makes for a good viewing/listening experience. This tension between the two audiences can be balanced for- either in the moment of recording or in post-production, and I think WBN does an excellent job at this balance. However, I make the point that players come first and audience comes second specifically for recaps, because if your players don’t know what’s going on beforehand, then the whole shoot/recording could be in jeopardy, and it may simply not be worth the time, effort, or resources to craft an outstanding recap. So, there’s fundamentally going to be less effort put into the recap from viewer’s perspective in actual plays, and they just don’t matter that much, since players can just ask questions/GM can remind players of things.

(6) Might be a hot take, but I find it counterproductive and uninteresting to engage in editorializing player and DM choice in APs when it is presented as critique or literary analysis (i.e., "they should/could have done this instead" or "XYZ would have made for a more interesting story"). I've noticed this sentiment crop up in AP spaces/fandoms, but there isn't a writer's room to edit and revise the story being told (well there is one, and it's happening in the moment). To me, it's more interesting to look at the story that is being told and the choices made, and ask, why? Which is the point of this whole essay—to look at those seven sentences and go, "why is this here and what does it mean?"

(7) Or I'm just a nerd. Or both. Don't mind me, I'm just over here building my donut house. (I reblogged a post about fandom and donuts recently—it makes sense in context I promise.)

[peiskos-and-apricity]

Fated to Fall ~ Sindri x Reader [PT 6]

Tw: Canon Typical Violence

A/n: This chapter is poorly edited due to my current lack of a computer, so sorry if it's a little wonky! I just wanted to put this out for you guys since it's been so long. I might fix it in the future. Anyway, enjoy!

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The first few moments of your walk were held in complete silence. Not that you didn't feel like talking and, judging by the way he kept glancing at you, not for a lack of his wanting either. But more so out of a hard time to find anything to ask or say in the first place. So it was quiet as you walked through the Yggdrasil and stepped into the frozen wasteland of Midguard.

The cold immediately whipped against any exposed skin as you two trudged through the deep snow towards the cabin, a bitterness you don't think you'll ever grow to love. You quickly opened the door, shoving away the bit of snow that had piled even in your short time away. As you stepped in your eyes were immideatly drawn to the holes in the roof, the draft making them quite obvious. You sneered a little at your inability to escape the cold. You hoped Niðavellir would be warmer.

It was only a second after walking in that you realized you were alone. Turning around you saw Sindri waiting just outside the door, shivering in the freezing cold. Confusion passed your face for a moment before you spoke.

"You can come in. It's too cold to sit in the wind" you called. Even at the invitation he seemed unsure. Yet soon enough he got over his hesitation, be that because of cold or obligation at your invitation you didn't know. Either way he entered, his eyes immediately scanning the place. You turned to busy yourself with grabbing your things.

"Would you mind if I stoked a fire?" He asked, hands rubbing together in hopes to fight away the endless cold. You shook your head.

"Not at all" you allowed. Even if you two would be here a short time you felt that, given his mortality and your shared half of it, you would both probably need it.

You went collecting what you came for; starting with a corner so untouched it had collected dust. You were sure it would have collected webs as well, if the cold hadn't fought the insects away. In it was a variety of small items stored away once, never to be touched again. Old armor pieces and salvaged bits of broken arrows. But past them and the layers more of other rusted and useless pieces, you finally spotted what you were searching for. Pulling it away from the cluttered mess you had made while retrieving it, you opened the old box. Inside laid a greyed cloth that, once you dusted it off, revealed the white fur beneath. You stood with it in hand, the cloth still reaching the floor as you did.

It had been long since you had worn the fur, the surge of sealing magic felt beneath your finger tips. You took a deep breath before placing it over top your layer of worn clothing, making sure to face away from the dwarf to hide the slight shine it emitted once you did so. Immediately the inner seams glew a deep black, a slight sizzling hitting your skin through your clothes with a quiet grimace.

You turned from this always unpleasant experience to see the dwarf had the fire lit and had taken a seat beside it; his attention now engulfed with something near him. You figured it was nothing and went to grab some of your carving tools now that you were able to place your bag back over your shoulder.

"May I ask you something?" Sindri's voice spoke, gaining your attention quickly in the silence and causing you to glance at him again. But his eyes were still transfixed on whatever he had found, so you went back to your own task while you answered.

"You just did" you responded lightheartedly, the words almost natural in the way they slipped your tongue, like they had hundreds of times before. A silly joke, a stupid one really. But it reminded you of better times.

He, however, was thoroughly confused by it, his eyes glancing with his nose slightly scrunched. Luckily it seemed to click a moment later, though he struggled for a response anyway. You let out a half-hearted laugh, a little amused by his expressive features.

"Yes you may" you calmed his minor panic as you reached for an old bow, one clearly worn over years of no upkeep and lack of use. It wasn't the quality you would prefer but it would have to do. Hopefully it would hold better then the other.

"I was wondering how you had come to meet them?- Kratos and Atreus I mean. I didn't know they knew much of anyone else in these realms. Anyone close, anyway" he questioned. For a brief moment your body froze, the question bitter as it reached your ears. It was a short pause that you fixed the moment you noticed it, but a pause nonetheless. One you hoped he hadn't noticed.

"If you feel like saying, of course!" and it seems he did. That or he was impatient. You wished you could convince yourself it was the later of the two.

"We have history. They were close with someone I once knew" you finally spoke, your throat tightening slightly. You knew the answer wasn't what he was looking for.

"Oh..." Was all he could say. There was a question he held back on his tongue, you knew it. But you didn't dare to pull it from him. You preferred to move on.

"May I ask you a question?" You turned to him and his eyes finally caught yours.

"Of course" he answered. He seemed to have little to hide which made you a little more comfortable.

"What were you looking at?" You watched as his eyes widened slightly before he held up what he had picked up from the ground.

In his hand was a warped and strange piece of wood. It was slightly singed to a charcoal black on the left side of it, most of it's features left to ash while the other was cracked and splintered. It hardly held the detail it once had.

"This is...yours?" He asked. Your eyes focused on the small carved wood, a little bit confused as to why he even had it.

"Yes?" Your tone asked him his point and he looked perplexed himself.

"It was in the fire" he reiterated, as if you couldn't see the blackened side of it. You pulled your quiver over your shoulder once more before walking to where he was.

"I can see that" you answered as you began to pull small items from the floor, placing them in your bag. Mostly dried meats and the rare herb that grew in this now desolate land.

"Did you put it in the fire?" He asked, his tone strange in that it seemed shocked.

"Yes" You answered, your attention mostly on finding where in the freezing Hel Atreus had placed your extra set of arrows. That was until a nearly choked sound rang out, your eyes immediately snapping to him

"But the craftsmanship! How could you just throw it away?" He seemed almost offended and given the way he stared you might have even believed you had actually upset him...or perhaps you did believe so. Either way you chose to speak carefully.

"They are wood and it is cold. There's no reason to keep them. They'd just take up needed space" you tried to explain it the best you could, which is to say the way the Kratos always explained it. It had convinced you after all and you were sure he had much better things to be worrying about then some half-singed waste of time...

Right?

Unfortunate for you, it seemed he was anything but convinced. In fact, he might have even been more offended by your explanation.

"But the time this must have taken. It truly doesn't mean anything to you? You don't have any keepsakes?" He was growing increasingly frustrated with you and it was obvious. You didn't really know what you could say that would calm this strange stance he's decided to take, but you figured you might as well indulge him. The last thing you wanted to do was upset someone your brother would call a close friend. If nothing else you can at least say you tried.

"I have no issue making you a new one, if you are so bothered by it" you hoped that your offer would suffice. You didn't have much else to answer him with.

You watched as his indignation melted immediately and replaced itself with eye-widening surprise. He sputtered on his words, somehow baffled that you would offer exactly what he was complaining you ruined.

"Well you don't need to!" He finally managed a sentence.

"Unless you wish you" you mumbled afterword. Despite how quickly this change in demeanor came, or maybe even because of it's speed, you couldn't help the short laugh that left you at his nervous and flip-flopping behavior. On top of that, you managed to find your extra arrows. So you were feeling much better.

"I'd be happy to" your tone was light; amused even. He took your words with a wobbly and crooked smile before standing.

"Well..." He started, looking through the hole in the roof towards where the sun sat in the sky.

"We should really get moving" he suggested before hesitantly turning back. You gave a nod

"Probably" you agreed and he quickly began to walk towards the door. You went to follow, standing from beside the fire when a glint caught your eye. You quickly locked onto the objects, your face silently wincing at the sight.

On the table sat two rings. One made of metal; it's design crossing at the side with the front side flat and a hagalaz letter engraved on to it. The other was a ring made of an unknown wood with a metal streak held in the middle throughout the ring. Engraved on the inside was the word 'light'.

They taunted you as they laid there, the shine of the snow from the now open door turning them colder shades. Their intended purpose burned a sort of distain you never could quite place. Because even though their effect was everything you sought, it somehow felt so innately wrong whenever you had used them. As if they were not built for your hands, for your blood. Yet they were. They were finely crafted and tuned to you by beings you had never known and given to you by the mother you had always believed to want you safe-

"Are you coming?" Sindri's voice quickly caught your attention as your head swiveled to him, his head peaking in from the door.

"Yes, I-...feel like I've forgotten something" you answered, your voice as natural as it had been moments ago.

"Oh. Well whatever it is we can get it later. We're going to be late" he accepted your answer before waving for you to follow as he left once more. You gave another nod before, with the most reluctance, you took the rings into your satchel pocket and followed him into the Yggdrasil.

Another bout of silence ensued, though it felt much more peaceful than before. Or, at least, more comfortable now that the two of you weren't complete strangers. Soon enough you two were walking back out of the ethereal purple scenery and into the warmer but similarly silent place of Niðavellir.

Looking around you saw many buildings, the city sprawling for longer than you could guess. Despite that, and it being the middle of the day, there wasn't a sound to be heard.

"Welcome to Niðavellir!" He exclaimed as he gestured around what you would wager to be his former home. He began to walk and you decided it best to stay beside him. You continued to look around the seemingly abandoned place as you did.

"It's been a while" you spoke, Sindri turning to you with a curious glint.

"You've been here before?" His stare was expectant of an answer.

"Yes. Many winters ago" you answered plainly and to the point. You were somehow unsurprised to find him unsatisfied by it.

"I can assume you were looking to make something? Us dwarfs are known for our superior craftsmanship" He pried further but you were used to it after spending so long with Mimir. Though you supposed the situation was at least a little different, given that you felt a little more inclined to speak with the golden-plated dwarf than your father's confidant.

"My mother brought me. I was young then, Atreus' age I think. We had been looking for someone to make me a...a ring. It didn't work out though" you caught yourself a bit at the end, realizing your sudden slip of the tongue. Hel, the only reason his brother knew was by pure accident. How had you let yourself grow so comfortable?

"It must have been an important ring then, to come all this way" his tone made you uneasy as he spoke. It was a question in disguise, yet you knew you wouldn't be telling him any more than you already had.

"I don't remember it being so quiet" you quickly changed the topic as your eyes continued to look for any sign of life. He finally turned away from you, focusing back on the path.

"I would wager a guess that our companions have already made their way to the city. And, knowing Kratos, they didn't look for a quiet way in" you felt a bit of dread build within you at his words. You had hoped they hadn't attracted too much unwanted attention. Though at this point you probably should have expected it.

Soon the two of you stopped at a small workshop in a corner of the city. After which Sindri got to work setting up shop and you, having nothing better to do, took a seat.

The air was thick here, almost suffocating. Clouds of smoke billowed in a direction but that hardly caught your attention among the other wonders of the city. It had changed quite a lot since your younger years, though it had to be the silence that unnerved you the most.

You tried to distract yourself by sharpening and cleaning your axe while you waited but that only helped for a while. It wasn't long before you turned back to Sindri, your curiosity caught when you notice that he worked with strange magic. Despite not wanting to bother him too much, you figured he wouldn't mind a few questions. After all, you were sure he must too be unsettled by the silence here.

"What are you working on?" You asked with minor caution. His eyes flickered to you before turning back to his work, a green glow showing from the string he held.

"It's a project of mine. I've been looking into the structural sensitivity of sonic vibrations" he explained, placing the string down gently, as if he'd break it if he dropped it too suddenly. When he caught a glance of your utterly lost features, he gave a second shot at explaining it.

"I'm trying to find a way to use sonic vibrations to create a larger scale of destruction to certain sensitive materials" he reiterated and though it wasn't all that different from his initial explanation, you gave it your best shot at understanding him.

"Oh? So...a sound explosion?" his head tilted from side to side to imply that you were almost correct.

"A bit reductive, but sort of. More of an implosion if anything...Or at least that's the theory" he spoke before moving around his little shop, searching for something.

"You haven't tested it yet?" You asked, your intrigue now much more clear. The question seemed to gain his attention as he paused his movements to fully look at you once more.

"No. No I have. It's been rather...temperamental, to say the least. Working with new magic isn't exactly easy. I'm sure I have it down, but I'm not all that tempted to try it out again after the uh...last incident" he spoke with a more grave tone towards the end. You nod along, finding this to be quite interesting. At least more interesting than sitting in silence as you waited. In fact his words sprouted an idea in your head, one that would hopefully help you pass the time better than weapon maintenance.

"I can test it out, if you'd like" you inquired. The idea gave him pause as he seemed to maul it over a moment.

"Well, I had planned on doing it myself but...if you think you can handle it" he spoke skeptically which, you had to admit, was a bit amusing. It had been too long since you'd met someone who didn't know what you were. It was almost refreshing to have the expectations so low.

"I think I'll handle just fine" your small smile broke which seemed to wean away his previous hesitation. Confidence begets confidence after all.

"Your bow then" he outstretched his hand and you pulled the bow from your back and handed it to him. He began an attempt to take off the right string which you had to say was a little funny to watch. Even more so when you realized he very much wasn't going to ask for any help. But you bit your tongue well enough.

"Do you...need some help?" You spoke up gently, your voice stopping him for a moment.

What you hadn't expected was for him to look at you as if he'd seen some higher being descend upon him. Relief and thanks spread across his face as if you had asked to help him carry the weight on his shoulders. You were a little bewildered by it, the expression one you hadn't ever seen so blatantly on anyone before.

"Yes, yes, that would be great" he accepted with complete gratitude. So you placed you axe down and grabbed the bow. With only a bit of resistance you were able to hold it down for him and he didn't hesitate to take the string off, replacing it with the new one soon after. Once he did he stepped back and your grip loosened. A second passed before you gently picked it up once more, as if any sudden movement might irritate it. Turning it over in your hands showed that it seemed stable enough.

"Doesn't look too dangerous so far" you explained. He gave a cautious nod.

"Yes. However it might be smart for you to test it away from the workshop" he suggested and you quickly agreed. You stood before taking a good few steps away from the shop. When you felt you were a sufficient distance away you raised the bow carefully, as if to aim it, but didn't pull on the string. You instead gave one last look to Sindri who you noticed had ducked under his workbench. However his head quickly popped back up, clearly looking like he had forgotten something.

"Oh and uh- when you shoot! Just say the word, skjálfa!" he ducked back under the bench as you gave a nod.

Turning back to the bow with quite a bit of hesitance now, you brought your hand to the bow string. You watched the string hum with a bit of green light at your fingertips, the power of it evident. Knowing there was no avoiding the inevitable, and that an injury you might receive could be healed quick enough, you finally plucked the string and...

No explosion. Nothing more than a faint flicker of more green magic. You hummed in cautious delight before plucking an arrow from your quiver, swiftly pulling back the string as the glow reappeared. You aimed the arrow in a random direction before Sindri's voice called again.

"The gate! Aim for the gate! Where the green ore is!" He yelled to you, your aim quickly fixated on the target. When you were sure your aim was true you released.

"Skjálfa!" You yelled, watching as it quickly left your hand with a resonating thump of energy before flying into the metal. No familiar clink was heard as instead the metal compacted in on itself, crinkling like paper before falling with a small thud.

"It worked-!"

You didn't get to celebrate long, a skittering sound meeting your ears followed by a loud billow as you realized you must have disturbed a swarm of wretches. Only a glance showed a grim not far behind.

You quickly sprung into action as a group of the tiny creatures charged for you like overgrown bugs. You began to quickly step back as you pulled an arrow from your quiver just in time for one of them to jump at you, impaling itself on the arrow with only a bit of force on your part. That didn't seem to deter the other six as they then all came jumping at you in a thing reminiscent of skin crawling nightmares. You managed to dodge, shoot and stab without so much as a bite when-

"Look out!" Sindri yelled, your body dodging a disgusting green acid-like spit ball flown in your direction before you even really fully registered his words. Afterward your eyes flicked in his direction as he, to your surprise, was throwing an assortment of strange things at the grim that had just tried to boil you in bile. You were almost impressed, surprised to see the dwarf standing his own.

At least until he caught the attention of said grim who, unsurprising, begin to run at him.

"Ah!" You turned and sprinted towards him the moment he yelled and in doing so allowing a wretch to jump and latch on your arm. You hardly felt it as the grim lunged over the bench and at Sindri who had tried continuing an assault of whatever strange things he could pull from his endless bag from behind said bench. However the creature was only successful in knocking him to the ground as you pulled the grim near out of the air, wrapping your bow around its neck and pulling it. The creature yelled in anger and pained fury as you hopped onto it's back to tighten your grip. It clawed at you, ripping your pants a little, before-

Snap

There went your second bow, the creature escaping your grip and throwing you off of it. You hit the ground with a thump and just barely rolled out of the way of it's hands. You were thankful when a slight glance showed your ax now beside you. Without hesitation you reached for it.

You felt fury dare to grip at your throat again, that horrible feeling of thickened blood sinking in once more. However, unlike before when it had shown in glowing eyes that blurred your vision or in the golden flakes that surrounded the movement of your hands, it instead showed in the form of just pure burning. The fur held on you was anything but a comfort now, as it began to sear.

Knowing you didn't have much time before it would truly begin to burn, and driven fully by the panic of that thought, you swiftly grabbed the ax and moved to your feet. With the pumping of your adrenaline you let out a yell before lunging at the creature with as heavy a swing you could manage. You found relief when it's head hit the ground, it's body following shortly after.

Silence fell, a few deep breaths cooling the heat of your skin and the beating of your heart. A feeling so strange for such a common encounter. You hadn't had such a loose grip on it in so long, its signs usually showing only when your blood boiled over in messy golden ichor. But it seemed that over fimbulwinter your grip must have grown weaker. That or it somehow grew stronger in the inhospitable environment.

It wasn't long after you calmed that you registered the wretch that had yet to let go of your arm. You carefully unhooked it's jaw from you before throwing it onto the ground, a heavy stomp killing the pesky thing. You were confident by then that there were no more, though you glanced around just to be sure.

It was then that you met the wide-eyed state of Sindri, his elbows propping him up on the ground he had not stood from quite yet.

"Are you hurt?" You asked as you approached. He remained silent for a moment too long and you began to grow concerned, quickening your pace. Once you stood above him you looked him over, relived to see no bloody injuries.

"Sindri?" You called and, suddenly, the man sprung back to live. He blinked rapidly, adjusting himself into a seated position as he looked over his arms and legs, searching for an injury but thankfully seeing none.

"I'm fine- fine! I'm fine! It's...It's just been a while since I've been attacked like that!" He almost yelled through a nervous laugh, clearly shaken up by the ordeal.

"Well lucky you" you reached down, pulling the dwarf to his feet in an attempt the break his adrenaline. Unfortunately it did quite the opposite as he instead just stared at where you touched him on his arm with what you could only describe as poorly contained disgust.

"Oh, sorry. It slipped my mind" you apologized, pulling your hand very quickly back to your body.

"It's...fine" it was clearly not fine and he hid it poorly. Especially as he turned to the bag on his hip, digging around for a moment before pulling out some sort of cloth and wiping down the armor you had touched. You found the sight a little amusing, considering he had gone up to his shoulders digging through the bag, but you kept that thought to yourself. Instead you quickly went and retrieved the string of your now broken bow before placing it back on the bench with a simple nod from the dwarf. Silence returned for a few rather long moments after, an opportunity you took to get right back to cleaning your now grim covered blade. Then, right when you thought the silence might settle fully, he spoke again.

"Thank you" your eyes turned to him at the suddenly sincere tone in his voice. You questioned if he was joking, as most people who thanked you often were, but his seriousness didn't falter even in the way his eyes stared.

"For keeping that...thing off of me, I mean" You couldn't help the ever so slight smile that pulled at your lips or the slight swell of being acknowledged that grew in your chest.

"Well thank you for not letting me be melted by disgusting acidic mucus" you returned the thanks, his look twisting into one half amused and half horrified.

"Of course" he answered, his tone once again matching his face. You held back a snicker at it.

It was then that voices all too familiar began to echo in the near distance.

|Next Chapter|

[blood-injections]

Came across my sort of headcanon masterdoc for how BLI was started that I all wrote down because I have an au in my drafts that deals with the creation of BLI and the killjoys and danger days universe if the Fab Four were there since the very beginning and how they went from normal teenagers to rebels fighting a war and. holy SHIT guys this shit is genius and I totally forgot about it all. Anyway figured I’d finally post some of it.

As we all know, canon information on the formation of Better Living and how the country became a postapocalyptic, irradiated dead zone is… scarce to say the least. We know that there were the Helium/Atomic wars but don’t know if those are separate wars or two names for the same thing. We know that the great fires happened in 2012 and that they were a possible cause for the rise of Better Living. We know the pig bomb was dropped in 2017 thanks to a Cherri Cola tweet and if I remember correctly it was dropped in Texas(literally can’t remember if that’s canon or part of my shit) and probably related to the wars, which apparently took place not long before the music videos. We know that the further out into the zones you go the more radiation there is and that as of 2019 the zones get acid rain. And we also know that Australia somehow just up and disappeared which is by far the most eldritch canon detail about the dd universe.

But that’s it.

So I have built upon the breadcrumbs of canon and just sweeped some under the rug and done quite the feat of worldbuilding to explain how BLI and the killjoys came to be.

In my mind it all starts in 2012, but it’s probably been in the works for decades. There were conspiracy theories of corrupt governments and secret societies but nobody knew the true extend of it. One second the country was running as normal, the next the government was taken down by people in its own ranks, people that have lied their way to the top and were secretly working together just to take over. In a day the country falls, America attacks itself. Communications are cut off along with everything else that society needs to function. Power is shut off nationwide, satellites are disabled, missiles(non nuclear) shoot into the air just to turn around and attack the very land they hailed from. From the ashes of America rise the corrupt individuals that made it all happen, with the woman that’ll become known as the director at the helm of it all. They form a new government and try to round up the survivors, intent on creating a utopia from the rubble.

I have no idea what’s going on with other countries if they help or if this new government attacked any other countries or just its own or if a world war is essentially started I just figure since canon didn’t touch on it and nobody else ever does I won’t either. Use your imagination I guess.

But it’s 2012, the country is in shambles, the biggest cities have fallen, smoke covers the land. The great fires of 2012 start not a week after the demolition of the USA, beginning as fires from burning cities that cause surrounding land to catch light and later on, its deliberate napalm to shape the path of the fires and drive people out of their shelters, using the destructive powers of Mother Nature to literally herd survivors to certain areas of the country.

The great fires quickly lead to the start of the Helium/Atomic wars, which are two names for what’s the same fight, but different sections of it. The helium wars come first, a rebellion to the new government was quickly formed by what remained of uncorrupt military and control over weapons are essentially split between the two sides. An all out war breaks out and the sides start off evenly matched, the numbers of those loyal to the new government and those remaining images of what fell fairly well matched.

A month after civilization falls the new government drops the first nuke on New York City already demolished by the first missiles, its now doomed to be a nuclear wasteland as well. It seems like this would be called the atomic war, with the use of atomic bombs, but it’s not. This is the true start of the helium war, for it seems both sides are suddenly eyeing the precious resource, for who has control over its production might very well come out on top of this fight, for helium is used in everything from medical technology to space exploration and national defense. It’s used for welding and in rocket fuel and nuclear reactors and yes, nuclear weapons. And it’s already a finite resource, non renewable and already said to be running out. And now in this ruined country there’s more of a demand for it then ever. And guess what? The United States is the biggest producer of helium worldwide, with the largest helium deposit located in Texas.

It’s unclear which side drops the second nuke, but what matters is that it falls smack dab on top of that deposit. It seems desperate times call for desperate measures and the desperate measures were to wipe out the source of advancement for the war completely. It becomes known as the pig bomb.

The fight goes on for two years during which the new government builds ‘safe zones,’ aka walled cities for survivors to head to, just to get trapped in and made to work. The rebellion is diminishing and unfortunately the enemy is winning. Then the third and final nuke is dropped, once again by the new government. It’s discovered that the rebellion was actually the side to drop the pig bomb, but it did pay a crucial blow to the enemy and helium remains scarcer than ever, meaning they must limit what the manufacture and how they build.

The third nuke is dropped northeast of the pig bomb, around Wyoming , and the sick thing is it doesn’t do that much. The country there is already burned flat so it wipes out a good chunk of the rebellion that was hiding in the Midwest but other than that all it does is drive the last of the survivors to the far west, where the ruins of LA and the biggest of the safe zones resides. The placement of the nukes really locks off this to-be battery city and the zones, trapping them in a big irradiated box.

At this point numbers in both sides have dwindled and fighting has died off, not to a standstill, but the last bomb marks the official end of the helium wars as the last survivors trickle into the LA safe zone and the surviving rebels hide just outside it, in the fairly untouched desert and ghost towns that litter the borders. Supplies on both sides are running low and this quiet period of rebuilding and recollecting becomes known as the dust bowl.

The west is pretty much uninhabitable aside from this chunk of land and the rest if the country is all burnt up and cut off and the northeast is a no-go zone to radiation and in fact the entire east coast has essentially fallen into a nuclear winter, fucked up from the trade winds carrying over the radiation and ash clouds from the pig bomb and the great fires and even after two years they sky never seems to clear. The entire eastern half of the united states is a wasteland of dust storms, acid rain, pockets of radiation, and thanks to permanently altered weather patterns due to rapid Atlantic climate change from all the ash and radiation clogging the atmosphere, that means the coast is under attack from a constant barrage of deadly cyclones, meaning even if it wasn’t irradiated, living there is impossible due to the monthly high winds and flooding and all the horrible things cooking up in that ocean.

For anyone that didn’t make it to the LA safe zone, still stuck in survivable pockets of the country in the Midwest or even in the deadly east, none of them are going to last long for sure. Anyone that didn’t head west while they could has to watch out for whoever is left there with them, scrounging for resources. Looting gangs and desperate madmen roam these states and they won’t show mercy. It’s kill or be killed beyond the wall of radiation that now separates the far west from the rest of the country.

That quiet time known as the dust bowl passes slowly and at some point the LA safe zone becomes known as Battery City and the safe areas around it and the small bit of the west coast not ravaged by radiation or fires become known as the zones, numbered one through seven by how risky they are to inhabit, one being the safest, just beyond the city walls, and seven being the most dangerous, with the highest levels of radiation. They’re not perfect circles like the canon maps, since there some small dead pockets of radiation and stretches of ash land(fire ravaged areas) that are deemed inhabitable. The zones are also much larger than canon, stretching out into the edge of Arizona and maybe even Utah and Nevada.

All levels of the zones are desert wastelands, but go north and that’s the ash lands, the giant stretches of land burnt through by the great fires. The fires took months to die out and some are still burning, but the empty areas on the edge of the north zones are a true wasteland, the soil contaminated by the vast amounts of ash that coated it and if you drive through it you just kick it all up, then you can’t get out of your car or you can hardly breathe. Step onto that dead land and it’s completely barren, it feels like another world. Nothing grows, not a sprout is to be seen, just the vast dark, dead, soil. As time passes and the zones get a culture, they say that’s where you go to die, they say it’s filled with ghosts.

But back to Battery city, it’s 2016, the dust bowl period is coming to an end and each side has been rebuilding. The city is shinier then ever and the new government, now calling themselves Better Living Industries, is putting all their resources into medical experiments and technological improvements, working on robots and AI and mind altering medication. With each passing month the citizens seem to become more sated and meanwhile in the desert, the rebels are having some improvements of their own. After the last bomb fell and everyone headed to the zones and the rebellion survivors found each other, they had to spend time figuring out how to survive while avoiding the city and whatever was happening within, but now it’s been a couple years of recuperation, and the rebellion has been planning. They’ve heard of the experiments Better Living has been doing and what’s going on with the citizens and they’ve decided it’s time to stop just surviving and start fighting again, and this marks the start of the Analog Wars, a much smaller scale fight, free of missiles and bombs, it’s just one side against the other with mainly handheld weapons. It’s named for the rebellions reliance on analog equipment like radios and other older devices since there’s no normal communications or electronics available. They use things like morse code and secret messages to communicate via the airwaves and this is where Doctor Death Defying gets his big role. He was a marine turned Helium War survivor and veteran, losing his legs in the fight, and now he may not be able to be on the front lines but he mans the radio and somehow always stays positive, spreading news and hope through the zones. He coins the term Killjoys for the rebellion and this is the time when the zones culture starts blossoming, with Doctor Death coming up with most of the slang, originating as unique code words to let rebels what’s going on and where without BLI figuring out what they’re talking about, and the young folks somehow taking the lead in the fight instead of the few veterans that remain. They’re not trained soldiers, just people fighting for what’s right, and that’s what makes them dangerous. The rebellion gets their hands on some of BLIs weapons, the laser guns, making their fight more equal. The Fab Four pop up around this time and they inspire people across the zones, a team of four friends that found each other in the apocalypse, they’re still pretty much kids but now they’re leading the fight against BLI. They remember how life used to be but as the years pass and they really become soldiers, they start to forget, until all they know is the desert and a life that’s a cycle of violence and hope, life as killjoys.

When 2019 comes around and the events of the music videos may or may not happen, it’s still technically the Analog War but the term isn’t really used anymore, since it’s just life for everyone at this point, having weekly skirmishes with BLI goons, which start turning up as dracs and scarecrows instead of just soldiers in 2017.

But it’s 2019, we’re all caught up, it’s life in the zones as we know it, and that’s all I have for you today.

[darksaiyangoku]

RWBY/Swords of Fate: Arc Kingdom

Chapter 3: New World, New Beacon

Inside a small shack, Jaune sat down, shivering. Ozpin took off his cloak and wrapped it around the young man.

Ozpin: It would seem that you were prepared for everything, except the weather

Jaune: i-I sort of acted on instinct as soon as I heard the cries for help. *nervous chuckle*

Ozpin; Some things never change. Now tell me about why you've come here to this universe.

Jaune: Well it's kind of a long story. Um, we met this, uh, scientist? He's called Dr. Merlin and he said he had a vision about your death.

Ozpin: Hmm. I see.

Jaune: Huh? *blinks twice* That doesn't freak you out?

Ozpin; Not at all. You see, I too had the same vision. Everything around me burning, Salem standing over triumphantly and the Knight of Treachery getting his sword ready to kill me.

Jaune: Oh...

Ozpin: It's a lot to take in, I understand.

Jaune: A bit of an understatement. That's why Merlin sent us here. Me and my team. Merlin said that your death had something to do with the Holy Grail or something? And that we need to destroy it? Agh, this is all so confusing! *buries face in his hands*

Ozpin: It's okay, Jaune. I don't blame you. Merlin didn't exactly give you much to go on besides finding the Holy Grail and destroying it. But I'm afraid you're much too early.

Jaune: *raises his head* ...wait what?

Ozpin: The Holy Grail hasn't materialised yet.

Jaune stared open mouthed. The whole reason that he was sent here was to save Ozpin's life and here he was told that the mission wouldn't even happen until much later.

Jaune: So I came here... for nothing?

Ozpin: *circles rhe top of his emerald* Oh I wouldn't say that. I believe Merlin did the right thing sending you here early. You aren't familiar with this universe. Listen to me, Jaune. *taps fingers on the table* Despite the fact that you'll meet your friends and family here, you can't treat them like they're the same from back home. They all have different histories, sometimes even different personalities.

Jaune: Really?

Ozpin: Yes. The multiverse works in mysterious ways. The more you learn about this world, the better prepared you'll be for the materialisation of the Holy Grail.

Jaune: I guess that makes sense.

Ozpin: However, I would still advise caution. Just because there's no Holy Grail, that doesn't mean that there aren't any threats here. When you saw the village being attacked, did you notice something unusual?

Jaune thought for a moment. During the attack, he was fighting alongside Ruby. The fact that grimm were present didn't seem that out of of the ordinary from his perspective.

Jaune: I'm not sure, Ozpin.

Ozpin: Do you recall seeing anyone else who looked a huntsman or huntress?

Jaune: *shakes head* No. No one else except Ruby.

Ozpin: Exactly. Unfortunately, aside from the Kingdom of Vale, the regions of North Sanus doesn't have any huntsmen or huntresses to protect them. Not anymore anyway.

Jaune: What? No huntsmen or huntresses? But how are people supposed to be protected from the grimm?

Ozpin: *sighs* That's the thing; they're not. The current King of Vale saw to it that any huntsmen or huntress would be drafted into the White Wyrm Army, his personal soldiers.. With no one to protect the regions, North Sanus has become a hostile wasteland where the grimm are free to feast on the civilians.

Jaune: Are you serious? He's just letting innocent people die like this? How can anyone like that call himself a King?

Ozpin: Jaune, please remain calm.

Jaune: Why should I? *clenches fist* My home is being ruled by a tyrant!

Ozpin: *raises his hand* Calm down, son. Listen, things look bad now. But I assure you that the King won't remain in power for long. I've seen to that personally.

Jaune: So... you have a plan then?

Ozpin: I do. But I can't tell you now. You aren't ready.

Jaune: But Ozpin, I-

Ozpin: Do you trust me?

Jaune: I- well... *sighs* Of course I do.

Ozpin: I will explain everything in due time. Throughout this journey of yours, I will guide you and your team. If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask me.

Jaune: Yes sir. *nods*

Ozpin; You'd better head back to your siblings. I'd imagine they'rs worried about you.

Jaune: Yeah, I'm sure they are. Well, thank you Ozpin. *gets up from his chair*

Ozpin: Oh wait. Before you leave, is there anything else you wanted to ask me? Anything at all?

Jaune: Well.... earlier, after the fight with the beowolves, I got this splitting headache and these images kept flashing. They were of this man with spiky black hair and dark eyes. What does that mean?

Ozpin: Hmmmm. It would seem that your counterpart's memories are being merged with yours. More of these will start to happen the longer you remain here. They can be useful in helping you adapt to the world, but it will be painful. Try not to fight it. Make sure you get some rest. You do have school tomorrow, after all.

Jaune: Yes sir. *opens the door and leaves*

[Jaune's Room]

Jaune felt drowsy as soon as he returned home. He stripped out of his clothes and flopped onto the bed. It had been less than a day and Jaune was already feeling homesick. The mission wasn't supposed to happen until much later and his counterpart's home was being ruled by a King who cared more about feeding his own ego than to protect the people. This was going to be harder fhan he thought. His eyes fluttered several times before he finally slept. Tossing and turning, Jaune was bombarded by several images. He could barely make out what they were as they all seemed to go by in a flash. When they finally stopped, the scenery had changed.

Jaune found himself outside a stone courtyard. Standing next to him was the version of Adam Taurus he saw in his head back at Vin Village. He was quite tall and was shirtless, aside from a red sleeve on his left arm and wore a black hakama with charcoal grey kyahan and black sandals. He backed away slightly and took the Kenka Yotsu stance of Judo. Jaune raised his fists, his left hand near his face while his right hand near his chest.

Adam: Show me what you got, kid.

Jaune dashed forward and raised his right hand to punch Adam. Immidiately, he grabbed Jaune's arm and threw him onto the stone floor. The impact made Jaune scream in agony. Even with Aura, he could still feel the pain.

Adam: Hmph. Again.

Jaune: *groans and winces* God damn, that hurt...

Adam: That's the point. Cardin and his team aren't gonna hold back during Combat Class and neither should you.

Jaune: *stands up* But this is supposed to be training and here you are kicking my ass!

Adam: *flicks Jaune's forehead*

Jaune: Ow! What was that for?

Adam: To give you some perspective. I am aware of how brutal these training sessions have been. But if I take it easy on you now, you'll underestimate the next opponent when a real fight happens, whether human or grimm. Now come on. Again.

Jaune charged with a haymaker from his right hand. However, Adam spotted an opening and punched him in the chest.

Jaune: Ack!

Adam: Again.

Jaune tried to punch his stomach, but had his fist deflected and ended up getting kicked in his ribs.

Jaune: Agggh!!!

Adam: *smirks* Again.

Jaune was starting to get angrier. He started to punch the air wildly. Adam simply dodged all of them, dancing through the punches with fierce elegance. Witnessing another opening, Adam sent three punches in Jaune's way. One hit the stomach, another hit the chsst and the final one hit him square in the nose. Jaune yelped and fell to the floor.

Jaune: *coughs* Damn it.

Adam: Again.

Jaune: *pants* Screw... you... *stands up*

As Jaune walked up to leave, he felt a sharp pain strike his back. He turned around and saw that the Adam was holding a wooden sword.

Adam: You're not leaving here until you land at least one hit.

Before Jaune could object, he was struck again by the wooden sword. Jaune kept fighfing back, but was met by a more focused hit each time. Jaune was on his knees, panting and gasping. Adam raised the wooden sword high in the hair and hurled it back down.

CLAP!!!

Unexpectedly, Jaune caught the blade in his hands and tried to wrestle it out of Adam. The bull-faunus kept his grip tight, refusing to yield. Blue met bronze as their eyes were locked together, filled with determination.

Jaune: AAAAAAAGH!!!! *disarms the Stranger* HAAAAAAAAH!!! *hits the Stranger's leg*

Adam: Hm.

Jaune: *grips sword, gasping*

—7th January 212 Second Age, Fateverse Remnant - Kingdom of Vale, Charlemagne—

Jaune stirred awake with a small, but nagging headache. He remembered vividly about Adam in his dream. Or was it a memory?

Jaune: *groans* I can't believe that was really Adam. Damn, he's brutal. *looks at the window* Welp, no time like the present. Other-Beacon, here I come.

Jaune looked in the mirror as he tried on his clothes. He wore a plain yellow shirt, black trousers, brown boots and hung his sword around his waist. He put on his grey chest plate and headed downstairs and out of the door. He was about to leave for Beacon, thanks to the map he found in his room, when he was tugged on the shoulder by Noir.

Jaune: Agh! *turns around* Huh? What are you doing here, Noir?

Noir: You don't seriously plan on going all the way to all the way to Beacon on an empty stomach, right? I just made toast and eggs.

Jaune: Oh? Well I appreciate the thought, but I can't. I really gotta-

Noir: *grabs Jaune's tunic* Come onnnnnn!!! Pleeeeeeease? *gives puppy eyes*

Jaune: Agh! Fine! You and your puppy eyes. *walks back to the house*

Jaune took a seat in the kitchen as Noir served thw breakfast. He quickly wolfed it down before heading back outside. Jaune thought back to the dream he had last night and remembered an image of a white mare with a blonde mane. He walked to the back of the house and found a stable of horses. In the center was the white mare. He slowly approached her and reached out his hand to gently touch her neck. The horse nodded in approval.

Jaune: So you're my horse? The one in my dreams? *reada name sign below* Andrea. Nice to meet you. Okay, now where's the saddle?

Jaune looked around the outside until he spotted a small, saddle rack near the stable. Picking out the one that was a light-brown, he slowly opened the gate and let Andrea come out. He placed the saddle onto her back and mounted on her. He wobbled a little before finding his grip.

Jaune: Woah... okay then. *gulps* I guess it's time to ride to Beacon. A horse ride should be smooth sailing compared to an airship, right?

[Malbec Town]

Throughout the ride, Jaune screamed so loud that his throat was burning. Andrea was much faster than he originally thought. He tried to grip on as tight as he could and closed his eyes.

Jaune: Woah! Woah there, Andrea!

Finally, Andrea stopped, but Jaune ended up falling off the saddle anyway. While he wasn't hurt, he did feel woozy.

Jaune: Uhhhh.... maybe having that breakfast was a bad idea.

He looked over at Andrea and noticed her eyes were sticky. She was quite thirsty.

Jaune: Don't worry, girl. I'll go fetch some water for you.

Jaune wandered through the streets and searched through the market stalls for a pouch of water. The further the more sad he became. He was expected the town to be filled with crowds of people clamouring adound, the air willed with chattering and laughter. However, Malbec was almost bare and the market stalls didn't have much to offer either. At the the very end, he managed to find a stall that was selling water pouches. He dashed over as quick as he could.

Jaune: *gasps* C-Can I get a-a pouch of water please?

Vendor: Certainly, young man. *hands pouch* That'll cost you 5 lien.

Jaune: Okay, so my money pouch is here. *takes pouch and gives 5 bronze coins* Here you go.

Vendor: Thank you, young man. Now you best get going, I'm closing now.

Jaune: Hold on a minute, mister. What happened to Malbec? There's hardly anyone here and most of the markets have low stock.

Vendor: *sighs* It's the same with the shops as well, son. The King's White Wyrms have been robbing us. Nearly all of our products go towards Vale City, where all the Lords and Ladies gather. Drinking, parties and tournaments. Meanwhile, we're left with nothing.

Jaune: Oh...

Vendor: Hey, don't you worry about me. I've been around long enough to see prosperity emerge from hardship. Things will get better soon. *small smile*

Jaune: ...you sure?

Vendor: Positive. Now run along, lad.

Jaune thanked the vendor and headed back to Andrea, feeding her the water. After a short rest, Jaune climbed back on the saddle and rode towards Beacon Academy.

[Beacon Academy - City of Arcadia]

Andrea trotted near the entrance and Jaune dismounted.

Jaune: Good girl, Andrea. *pats her head*

His jaw almost dropped as he saw Beacon. Jaune couldn't believe his eyes. It was a magnificent grey castle, smooth as marble. The windows were all stained glass, with a variety of pictures from knights to bards and archers. Jaune took a few steps to the entrance gate and inside the courtyard. At the center was a knight mounted on top of a lion. Was this really Beacon?

Jaune: Wow... oh my go- gah!

Jaune yelped as someone hugged him from behind. He glanced back and saw a golden-blonde wave of hair. His face went red he could feel soft breasts pushed up against him.

Jaune: Y-Yang??

Yang: *laughs* Hey Jaune! *hugs tighter* Great to see you again!

Jaune: Y-Yeah. *blushes*

Jaune couldn't help but admire Yang's new look. She wore a red headband, black fingerless gloves with golden-yellow bracers, a firey-orange yukata and black-kyahan.

Jaune: *blinks*

Yang: Jaune? Hey Jaune! *snaps fingers*

Jaune: Huh! Oh, *ahem* sorry, I zoned out there for a second.

Yang: *giggles* I'll say. So, how was your Christmas?

Jaune: Uh... it was pretty good. W-What about yours?

Yang: *smiles* Amazing! Check this out.

From her bracers appeared two short blades, making Jaune jump back in surprise.

Jaune: Woah! That is seriously cool!

Yang: I know! Mom managed to get these bad boys hand-crafted herself from a blacksmith in Xion.

Jaune: Well if you know the name of the blacksmith, can you send my sword over there? I think it's overdue for an upgrade.

Yang: You got it, Vomit Boy.

Jaune: *groans* Not this again.

Yang: Sorry, but that nickname's never going away anytime soon. *squeezes Jaune's cheek* Anyway, I gotta run. My team is inside. See ya. *runs off and waves*

Jaune shook his head in amusement. No matter what world he was in, the name 'Vomit Boy' would always haunt him.

Nora: JAUNE!!!!!!!!

Jaune was knocked over by the full force of Nora's bear hug. His face was turning blue as she squeezed tighter.

Jaune: Nora.... I can't breathe!!!

Nora: Oop! Sorry Jaune! *lets go* I got so caught up in the moment. Oh, the rest of the team is here too.

Jaune looked up and saw Pyrrha and Ren as well. Like himself, they also had new looks to them. Nora had a pink-coloured leather chestplate, white-furred skirt with matching boots and red bracers. Pyrrha wore a gold-coloured leather vest, red-armoured fingerless gloves, light-red pteruges and brown boots. Ren wore a green tunic, with black-coloured pauldrons, magenta fingerless gloves, white trousers and black shoes. Jaune stood up and gave them all a big hug.

Jaune: It's so good to see you guys, again!

Pyrrha: You too! I hope the journey wasn't too rough, Jaune.

Jaune: Well, kind of. It's a long story. I ended up meeting Ruby again. We saved a village near my hometown. All the villagers managed to get out of there okay.

Pyrrha: That's wonderful news, Jaune. I found out that my counterpart's pretty well known in this world as well. *nervous laughter* Argus City have even erected a statue.

Jaune: Some things never change. *chuckles*

Nora: Man, this is so cool!!!! *bounces* Look at us in our fancy outfits, slaying monsters! It's like we're in a video game! *squee*

Ren: *stifles laughter* Aside from the aesthetic change to Old Remnant, it's not much different from back home.

Nora: You always have to be a killjoy. *pouts*

Ren: *shakes head* Let's go inside. We don't want to keep everyone waiting.

[Beacon Grand Hall]

Team JNPR were amazed at the Grand Hall. Hanging from the walls were green banners of Vale's Coat of Arms; an two battle axes surrounded by a wreath. The stained glass windows were more beautiful fhan the ones outside and more elaborate, each one depicting a different event in history. The tables were pushed near the end to allow everyone to stand to attention. Jaune looked around at all the Beacon Students. Next to his Team were the new Team RWBY. He already met up with Ruby and Yang again, but took notice of Weiss and Blake's new looks. Blake was wearing a dark purple hood and mask, black shirt, trousers and boots and a purple corset. Weiss had her hair down and wore an elegant, dark blue battle dress, with white pauldrons and long, brown boots. He could see Blake take a small glance at him before nervously looking away.

Jaune: Huh. That was weird.

Sitting at the podium were the staff at Beacon; Bartholomew Oobleck (History), Peter Port (Grimm Studies), Ann Gable (Weapons Maintenance), Thumbelina Peach (Dust Studies), the new teacher, Adam Taurus (Combat Training) and Glynda Goodwitch (Assistant Headmistress). Standing at the center was Ozpin, staff in hand. He smiled and cleared his throat to speak.

Ozpin: Welcome back, my students. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break. A new year has begun and so has a new semester, you will receive your new timetables with your new classes after this assembly has concluded. For the second year students, you will be undergoing a new kind of mission in 3 weeks: two teams will be required to work together by splitting off into 4 pairs. These will be assigned to you on the day of the missions.

Jaune looked over at Team RWBY and smiled. He hoped that he would be paired up with Ruby for the future mission. Working with her in Vin Village was remarkable. She might not be his Ruby, but she was still Ruby all the same.

Ozpin: Finally, this bit of news doesn't just concern you but all the regions of North Sanus; in the Forests of Forever Fall, I have placed a sacred treasure inside. On the first day of Spring, all students, teachers and other citizens shall gather to forest to find this treasure. I ask that you do not take this lightly, for the very future of Vale shall depend on it. Thank you.

Ren: Well... that sounded ominous.

Pyrrha: What kind of treasure would determine the future of an entire Kingdom?

Nora: I bet it's the Grail! This makes our mission all the more easy to complete.

Jaune said nothing. He thought back to the conversation he had with Ozpin about a so-called plan. Could this treasure have something to do with it?

Jaune: *whispers* Ozpin, what are you up to?

[bekahdoesnerdshit]

When Cog summons her wings, they come to her easy as breathing. The shadows around her gather at her back and unfurl into feather-light, barely corporeal raven wings- black as night and held together by magic. Cog asks for her wings, and they materialize for her.

Acedia's wings rip from her back, tearing open the skin between her shoulder blades and sending rivulets of hot blood running down her spine. Her back hunches, her shoulders jerking, and as the wings unfold it's clear that every moment of it is intensely painful. The wings themselves are a mockery of a willowy tree, once draped with vines and moss, now skeletal branches.

Cog's wings are a gift from a god who grew to love her like a daughter. They're a part of her, just like the rest of her magic.

Acedia's wings are everything she's perverted and betrayed, a pointed reminder of her place from the god she sold her soul to.