#otherwise we'll just plot something else!

[kislnd]

possessive - george clarke~

synopsis: george has to collect a tipsy y/n after a night out with her friends - there he is introduced to one of her old coworkers.

notes: i managed to accidentally post this several times before finishing it lol (pain) 😭 thanks to anon for requesting this plot x

warnings: alcohol & angst (good resolution dw guys)

word count: 2.4k

masterlist

"are you almost ready?" george called out to y/n, who was in the bathroom finishing up her makeup. she knew her friends were here to collect her for their night out and george was just making sure she didn't end up keeping them waiting for too long. "yes, just give me a sec!" she replies, throwing a brush in the general direction of her makeup bag haphazardly.

"all done," she smiles, coming out of the bathroom, finishing touches all complete. "you look gorgeous y/n." george beams, wrapping his arms around her middle. "thank you." she returns the hug and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek before turning to walk towards the front door, with george following behind her. "have fun and be safe," he says, "and when you're ready to be picked up just give me a text." y/n nods, she was always grateful that he was willing to do things like that for her no matter what time of the night it was. "see you later then," she grins, a grin that he couldn't help but reciprocate, and steps outside to join her friends.

the pub that y/n's friends had chosen was a local one, but one that she had walked past countless times without ever giving it a second thought. she wasn't sure what to expect upon entering the establishment, but that didn't make her nervous. she had always thought that trying out new things or places was one of the things that kept life exciting.

once over the threshold, her senses were immediately flooded - loud music blaring from what appeared to be karaoke (something she anticipated she would have to pry her drunk friends away from later in the evening), several conversations, most of which were shouted in a desperate attempt to be heard over the music, and a strong smell of alcohol. at least, y/n thought, the people seemed to be enjoying themselves.

"we can either sit next to the speaker and go deaf or nearer to that group," one of her friends gestured to a fairly large group of rowdy guys near the bar, "and also go deaf." they all laugh at this, although their laughter was short-lived - the options really weren't good. "i vote anything but that," y/n scrunches her nose up thinking about the group - if they were already unpleasant from the safe distance at which she was observing them, god knows how insufferable it would be to spend a few hours practically on top of them.

after some deliberation, y/n and her friends settled on a table closer to the music. with everyone situated and ready for the night, a few of the girls made their way to the bar to grab some drinks.

"is that everything?" y/n questioned, scanning the array of drinks that had been poured for them. "seems about right," her friend shrugged, "we'll figure out if we ordered everyone something when we give them out." y/n nods, she was right. thankfully, enough of them had come to the bar to help out that what would have otherwise been a horrendous balancing act, was actually a swift and tidy transportation of drinks. y/n placed the last few glasses down on the table before turning to one of the girls and saying quietly, "i'm just going to pop to the toilet."

"do you want one of us to come with?" she asked, to which y/n shook her head - the bathroom wasn't far from where they were sitting and she wasn't worried about anything else. they had specifically chosen to sit across the room from the disruptive group of guys so she figured they wouldn't bother her.

either way, y/n decided she would move as quickly as possible, sliding past the few people nearby and into the room. she didn't want to spend more time than she needed to in there - pub toilets were unpleasant at the best of times and she also didn't really want to miss out on anything. nevertheless, she took a moment to freshen up - her makeup was still in position and her hair didn't seem to be so different from when she originally styled it so she simply gave her hands a wash and made for the door.

grabbing the cool metal handle, y/n threw the door open and set off with the intention of walking briskly back in the direction of her friends. instead, her stride was broken by a figure colliding with her as she stepped out of the bathroom. "oh!" she jumped back, her body flush with the door, "i'm so sorry." she exclaimed. the person, whom she had now realised was a man who had just come out of the bathroom himself, smiled warmly down at her. "don't worry, i wasn't really looking where i was going." y/n studied his face for a moment, she could've sworn she recognised him but she couldn't quite put her finger on where from. "sorry," she brushed a stray piece of hair out of her face, "do i know you from somewhere?" she paused, wondering if that had been a strange question, "i just feel like you look familiar," she added.

"you're y/n aren't you?" the man cocked his eyebrow, but didn't wait for a response. "we used to work together." realisation hit y/n, she couldn't believe she had managed to briefly forget him, they had spent almost every day for a number of years side by side. she couldn't even blame this one on alcohol. "of course!" she laughed at her own silliness and also in the hopes of relieving some tension - she was praying she hadn't offended him. "we had some good times." she smiled. much to her relief, he smiled back, "absolutely, i can't believe how much time has passed. i'd love to catch up with you." y/n liked the idea - she had to admit that she had wondered what he was up to and this would be the perfect opportunity to check in. however, she also recognised that she was here with her friends and it would be wrong to abandon them, especially when they were the ones that organised the evening.

"i'm kind of with people at the moment," y/n gave him an apologetic look, she had tried to word it kindly, in a way that didn't seem like a harsh refusal of his offer. "no worries, just whenever you have a free moment later on," he smiles, "drinks on me, of course." y/n returns the smile, "see you later then."

//

y/n could feel her head growing fuzzy and she could tell her friends felt the same, so it had been a collective decision to end the night there. with everyone calling taxis or friends to collect them, y/n decided to drop george a text to come and collect her in around half an hour's time. as promised, she found her way to her ex-coworker's table, telling herself that she could only accept one drink out of politeness and as to not hate herself too much the next morning.

"so what'll it be?" he asks grinning, digging into his pocket to find his wallet. "just whatever you're having," y/n slid into a chair and waited for him to return with the drink. soon enough, the drinks arrived and after getting over some initial awkwardness, they were back to chatting like old friends. y/n was so caught up in conversation that she hadn't realised george had texted her numerous times that he had arrived until he entered the pub himself and informed her.

"i've been trying to get you to come outside for a bit now," george says, approaching the table where they were sitting. he wasn't angry, he was aware that y/n would be caught up with her friends and therefore a little slower to check her phone, but he was confused. who was this guy? he'd met y/n's friends on countless occasions, and she often mentioned them, but this stranger hadn't ever seemed to come up in conversation. "i'm sorry," she looked up at him with flushed cheeks, the alcohol had definitely gotten to her. george was about to open his mouth to ask her who the mystery man was but before he could get there, she interjected, "this is my old coworker, from when i worked at the shop."

suddenly it made sense - maybe y/n had mentioned him in passing, he was sure she'd talked about her time at the shop a couple of times previously. "well nice meeting you," george didn't really feel like engaging in any formalities, all he really wanted was to get y/n home and go to bed. "we'd better get home." he smiled somewhat apologetically, and took y/n by the hand in an attempt to coax her to stand up. "honestly, please join us," the man, who george still didn't know the name of (nor did he really care to find out either), said. "we were only just beginning to catch up." george glanced at y/n, although he wasn't so sure if she was in a good position to be passing judgement.

"that would be nice," she smiled softly, "george?" she looked up at him with big eyes, eyes that he often found very hard to resist. george still wasn't sold on the idea. "are you sure? it's getting quite late now." he questioned, in the hopes that she would agree and they could go. he really was not a fan of how eager this guy was to spend time with her, and it was made worse by the fact that he hardly knew the guy. "please?" y/n tightened her grip on his hand, willing him to just take the seat next to her.

at this point, george obliged. it was clear y/n was enjoying herself and this guy didn't make her uncomfortable. it was not worth ruining her night and mood by forcing her to come with him. "alright." he said flatly, admittedly through gritted teeth. y/n raised an eyebrow at his tone but brushed it off, maybe he was just tired and besides, he absolutely could tolerate sitting down and talking for a short while.

//

the more he talked, the more george was sure he couldn't stand the guy. the way he looked at y/n with such blind adoration in his eyes, the way he kept reaching out to touch her on the arm briefly during the conversation and his body language, completely focused towards y/n as if he wasn't there - it was all far too much.

george made a point of blatantly checking the time and announcing it to the table, "right, i think we should call it a night here?" he turned to y/n, who was obviously more tired than she had been when he first arrived, who solemnly agreed. george stood up first, quickly helping y/n up and wrapping his arm around her shoulder protectively. "thank you, that was a lovely evening," her former coworker smiled, "we should do this again y/n." the fact he had purposely left george out of the conversation, without even having the decency to offer an invite to him (or to any of her friends) confirmed every suspicion.

george's body stiffened, his grip on y/n tightening slightly. "i don't think that would be appropriate." he said calmly, masking how truly infuriating it was for him to be witnessing this behaviour. "we're leaving now." he didn't give y/n a chance to wave goodbye or say thank you to her old friend, and instead took off briskly towards the exit and to the car.

"what was that about?" y/n looked puzzled, to her the night had simply been catching up with someone from her past and nothing more. "could you seriously not tell?" george himself was dumbfounded, it was beyond him how she could be so oblivious. "tell what?" y/n snapped back at him, "all i could tell was that you hated him. your face was sour the entire night."

"well forgive me for not taking a liking to the guy who was practically undressing you with his eyes," george began to raise his voice, he didn't like getting angry and wouldn't ever want to upset y/n but it was impossible to contain his rage in the moment. "he was not!" y/n protested, "he is just an ex-colleague, what has gotten into you?"

"to you maybe," george still felt disgusted, "i mean, did you even notice that he was constantly trying to touch you?" y/n shook her head in disbelief, "i think you're being dramatic. even if he was flirting with me, why would it matter?" silence clung to the air. george stared at the ground helplessly, he knew that no matter the number of ways he tried to explain this to y/n she would just be adamant he wasn't making advances on her. "i like you not him." she reached out to touch him on the arm, "george, i'm not angry at you. i think i was just surprised."

y/n stepped closer to him carefully and slotted herself under his chin, wrapping her arms around him in the most reassuring hug she could muster - he did the same. "i'm sorry." he mumbled into her hair where he had buried his face, "it's hard to not get jealous when you have such a beautiful girlfriend." y/n grinned, "you are silly." she paused, contemplating whether or not to share her thoughts. "and for the record, i do think you are extra hot when you're jealous."

"oh?" george raised his eyebrow, "well, as long as you don't keep meeting up with random co-workers that definitely have a crush on you, i can live with that." he chuckled. "don't worry, you definitely scared him away." y/n laughed, "i am not at risk." george mocked offense, "hilarious y/n," he smiled sarcastically, guiding her towards the car and opening the passenger door for her to climb in before getting in himself.

"i do love you, you know," she stared out of the windscreen in thought. "i know you do, and i love you," george patted her knee, "let's just worry about getting you home now."

[fluff-n-cookies]

more dad dabi head content?! you write it so welllll🥺🥺🥺

*sighs.* It's been a long day for me so im coping by speedrunign this. thanks for requesting, I appreciate you interacting with me more so than the usual like or comment.

Author notes under the cut as well as links

Warnings: FLUFF (mostly, 90%), not proof read, SPOILERS, minor swearing.

reader has blue eyes like Dabi's (she's a toddler, 3-4 years old)

Dabi calls reader bunny, Dabi is addressed as "Daddy"

---

Dabi would be such a good dad you cannot tell me otherwise.

I mean sure, some times he forgets things, that you have school the next morning, and most days he feels like shit for not being able to rent a proper apartment to house you in; forcing you to live in this tiny cupboard of drywall and rotten carpet because he simply can’t afford better. Yeah sure, he sometimes loses his temper and tells you to go wait in your room when he has his "coworkers" over or when the bad man is on TV. But the moment he sees discomfort, prickles of tears in your eyes

He will shut the ever loving fucking up and back away.

But I think what makes him the best dad is his undying will to protect you, usually from himself. He'll lock himself in his own room or take it out on civilians and other villains before even thinking about coming to you in such a god awful state.

however it's also important to note that he'd do just as heinous things if he finds something that's more of a threat then himself. AKA, Endeavor.

(I just realized that by typing the rest of this paragraph, I'd be spoiling the plot of part three, forget I ever said anything.)

So rather than speaking of the devil we'll talk about how much of a worrywart Dabi actually is at heart.

He spends every single waking minute, and every unconscious second, to worry about you. This man lives in constant paranoia. Truly, deep down in his heart he wants to bundle you up in bubble wrap and tuck you under 10 blankets so you'll never be cold. So it's quite unfortunate that he can never quite express these feelings to you or anyone for that matter, trauma and internalized fear of emotional vulnerability and all that.

As a result, he will often express this through odd gestures of- I'm not quite sure what exactly it is.

What he'll do is he'll stare at you for prolonged periods of time, memorize your every schedule, demand to know all your friends, he emails your teachers once a week at least to ask them about your academic and social whereabouts. Everyone thinks he's a helicopter parent, no, he's a fucking psychopath.

he might as well have a GPS tracker on you. of course you barely get a say in this. he's your darling father, he's been like this since you were born, he only does it because he loves you and wants to keep you safe. he doesn't want to hurt you, even if he does, he's always apologized right after.

Dabi is also a cheapskate. the world's greatest in fact. despite the IRS never collecting his taxes he will forever never have enough money, he spends most of his "paycheck" the money stolen from innocent civilians on your college funds. He fully plans on starting a new life in Europe after All For One takes over and enrolling you into a top college so you can get your education (that is if the educational system is still intact.)

this is also why he is a Dumpster Diver and Pro Thriftier on the weekends! Everything, and I mean everything, is probably vintage and from goodwill. I have nothing else to say about that.

However, this did cause you to be heavily bullied and ostracized at school. A school in the pretty subarubs of japan where everyone's parent were either middle class or above, where you, you came from a different district, with the worn down shoes and the badly done hair, so excited to meet your new classmates. And it's quite sad really, never having many friends and all that. Especially if you aren't fully Japanese and were of color. (shout out to all my POC readers!)

and of course this wouldn’t be a proper story without Dabi being a little shit, but that's the thing about Dad Dabi, he is never a little shit in front of his child. never had been and probably never will be. It primarily roots from this need of an acutal father figure that he never had (endeavor was more so a mentor and teacher and, of course, abuser rather rthan an actual father to him).

he's nothing but serious around you, hell, he barely even talks, only ever grunts and hums in response to whatever you're saying so you know that he's listening to you. you may think he doesn't care, but he remembers it all as best he can, scribbles it down in broken grammar on the back of newspapers because he can’t afford a proper phone nor nice clean printerpaper.

Honestly, Dabi's a good father. But he's heavily insecure about it, he truly wants to lock you up in a castle like the princess you are to him and keep you there until the ends of time.

And on a simmilair note, he refuses to let you became a "bad" person.

AKA, someone who doesn't respect others, someone who cusses a lot, someone that doesn't show gratidute when given something good in their life. the reason he does it is because he refuses to see the current version of himself in you, he refuses to even think about you being tainted. Refuses. In his deluded mind that version of you can never exist lest they kill him.

He's genuinely the most strict helicopter parent to ever parent.

I'm talking monitors you 24/7, enrolls you in every after school club with even the tiniest bit of academic advancement (chess club, book club, math team), and he sits down with you every night to work through homework, he only ever buys nutritious meals for you; even though they take up the majority of his budget, and he only eats after you've eaten, drowning himself in the shitty dollar menu fast food.

Of course, he rewards you heavily for your hard work. Every day, he praises you for all that you’ve accomplished,

“Aww, good job honey.”

“A+, very nice.”

“You got a B? Oh, you thought you’d get an A? It’s okay, I know you tried. a B is good too.”

It not the most encouraging thing in the world but he wants your to know that he cares, he’ll takes you out for ice cream at the end of every month and give you an allowance to spend 10 dollars for every A on your report card. (This takes a huge bite out of his budget, but he made you a promise… he can skip out on dinner a couple nights, it’ll be fine.)

so far, you've been doing so well in school, one of the best students in your school, one of the more kind and respectful too. it's just that... you're so shy, you practically cower in fear when you have to talk to your classmates, especially after the incident. (Part 3, anyone?)

Dabi also puts this persona on for you, this persona of a kind man who is just a tad bit odd looking. he puts on the facade of being a normal civilian with a stable job and okay-ish income just so you don't worry. With you, he’s soft and trustworthy and only wants the best for you. Even if he does make you upset, he says sorry afterwards, always. He loves you, at least, that’s what he tells you.

And though it's not something he really worries about now, he dreads the day you become a teenager, then you'll know why he spends his nights out when there's criminals on the lose, who fears the day you'll understand what the news means, the day you'll take the hero's side. He just doesn't have the resources to keep you hidden from the outside world long enough for this wretched war he's fighting to be over. For the mean time, he denies you of much context on what he actually does all day, it's quite easy to do such a thing; he only ever needs to divert your attention to something shiny or pretty, like those little unicorn toys that he bought you for your second birthday, bought them brand new unlike many of the other things he's gotten you over the years. But he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep this up for, you’re smart, incredibly so, it’s only a matter of time until you know who he actually is,

another thing that he fears is of you growing up, caring for a small child is one thing, but he fears the day that you'll become a complex human being capable of properly understanding your emotions and failing to understanding that he truly wants the best for you.

he'll sit in the darkness of the living room some nights, you tucked neatly away on the other side of the couch, fast asleep, you never could finish a movie night without falling asleep half way through. his breathing's heavy as he runs his mind through the thousands upon thousands of theoretical fights you two'll have when you get older. How you’ll want to distance yourself, how you’ll cry yourself to sleep some nights because you think he doesn’t love you. he can't handle it, he won't stand to be your enemy.

because one day, you'll be an adult, you'll want to leave him, and you'll never come back. he can't live with that, he simply won't. he sometimes thinks about killing himself so he won't live to see the day you no longer want him in your life.

OR, OR, ALTERNATIVELY.

ProHero Dad Dabi.

I have been thinking about Dabi's ProHero Au since forever now. think teenage father Dabi but he got a girl pregnant the moment he's out of high school. (those after graduation parties be crazyyyy) and now he genuinely doesn't know how to balance his home life and his career and his daughter.

and obviously, just obviously, he CANNOT tell his father, he's already worse than Shoto, he's not gonna go lower on the scale.

so despite being the highest climbing amateur Hero in the past 7 years, he takes the longest hiatus of his life just to figure all this father shit out. his first plan was to but the girl up for adoption, and then he realized it would fail the moment the media find out, then he thought maybe he could tell one of his friends to take care of her, one of the ladies who'd fallen head over heels for him back in high school, he'd charm them, marry them, and then make em' into a house wife to take care of his mistake child.

honestly, it was a pretty good idea until he truly did start to love his child. similar to the main timeline, ProHero Dabi realizes he wants to be a better father than the one he grew up with, he decides to keep the child and raise her as his own, etc.

But in this timeline, literally everything is reversed.

Dabi's loaded with that money that the government gives him or fighting off a couple measly thugs, pair that with the brand deals he gets offered every other minute, and the trust fund his daddy gave him to get him through the "rough years" as he called it, he's practically rolling in cash.

oh God, you are going to be such a brat growing up. Life handed to you on a silver spoon is nice. I'm talking luxury clothes, top private schools, an allowance bigger than the gods. and Dabi did It all cuz' he loves you.

and the media goes HAM over a teenage ProHero that already looks like a villain having a daughter with a stranger! the press goes wild over it, but the whole time, Dabi covers your little tiny face with his hand so the flashes of the cameras don't frighten you and calmly explains that he will not be taking any questions. he holds you tight to his chest the whole time.

But you know who as the most furious? ENJI. big guy cussed out Touya for 3 hours straight all while holding you, at first the refused to give his son any right to hold you let alone raise you! In Enji's eyes, his son is the most malicious thing to ever grace this planet, he drinks, he smokes, he has ten thousand tattoos and piercings along his burn marks to match, Dabi's essentially the devil, and he's not going to let him get anywhere close to his first ever grandchild and possible child prodigy that he can turn into his puppet! Rei and Fuyumi had to step in and try and convince Enji to let Dabi have you rather than file to take full custody of you with the promise if Dabi even showed hints of negligence towards you, he can take his son to court.

okay that the end of my rant. and please let me know if you want to know more about pro hero Dabi from me.

---

For those who don't know, this post is related to these

Pt 1, Pt 2

my stuff is right here: Bnha master list, rules for requesting, ask box

Note: YA'LL READ MY RULES FOR REQUESTING DAMN. I GOT 2 ANONS (more than my usual of 0) AND BOTH OF THEM ASKED FOR ROMANTICS (I DO NOT WRITE ROMANTICS)

please, please, read a writers rules, please follow them, and thank you to this anon who decided to be reasonable BECAUSE MAYBE THEY READ THE RULES BEFORE DECIDING TO ASK LIKE YOU"RE SUPPOSED TO THIS HAS HAPPENED NEARLY EVERY TIME I GET AN ASK.

taglist: @blurryperrtymoonlight @harkenizalone @lostiolite @rllytriedrn @mellyxqz @cupkiki @xxnessinessiellexx @dehlieee @frog-fans-unite @rian1023 @aikobabe @double-gs @mitsuki3123 @wolvwa @red4-0

[goodqueenaly]

Do you think we'll ever get to see the widow's law impact succession related plots in asoiaf? Potentially with the freys? I've always been disappointed it was not included in the dance, as a way to lend strength to rhaenyra's faction and show her or her allies as skilled politicians to play up her claim via a popular law championed by a popular queen.

I certainly think it’s possible. I’ve talked before about the Widow’s Law, and I agree that it seems like a creative addition that should have come up in the Dance - say, Lord Beesbury mentioning it in defense of Rhaenyra during that late-night meeting of the green council upon Viserys I’s death, or Grand Maester Orwyle explaining to Rhaenyra why the law should support Aegon II’s accession. GRRM certainly doesn’t have to reintroduce it in the future, but I would not at all be surprised if he does; I will certainly be curious how much of F&B is translated to the main novels (beyond, of course, broad character and narrative parallels).

Of course, it me, so I tend to think (as I mentioned in that original post) that the Widow’s Law was inspired by Maurice Druon’s depiction of the Salic law in The Accursed Kings, specifically The Royal Succession. In that novel, Druon has the soon-to-be King Philip V essentially invent a rule that would support him becoming king over his late elder brother’s daughter, Jeanne. Consequently, I would not be surprised if GRRM brought up the Widow’s Law again at the accession of Viserys II - another capable, intelligent younger brother who, upon the death (in which he may have had a hand) of his late elder brother’s son, crafts a quasi-legal or pseudo-legal argument in favor of his accession over that of his dead elder brother’s daughter. In this case, of course, Viserys II and his supporters might have taken the position not of the character of Philip V and his (paid) scholars but of the slightly mocking author himself: just as Maurice Druon remarked that the basis of the Salic law “contained nothing concerning the transmission of the royal powers” and only briefly mentioned “that the inheritance of land must be by equal division among the male heirs”, so I imagine the soon-to-be King Viserys would argue that the Widow’s Law (should anyone have used it to support the rights of eldest daughter Daena) did not speak to the transmission of royal powers, only the inheritance of “lands, seat, or property”.

Perhaps a more straightforward argument over the Widow’s Law will come in “The She-Wolves of Winterfell” (or whatever its final title may be). Cregan Stark obviously married three times, with a child or children from each marriage, and given the succession disputes among his descendants (which are obviously going to be at the heart of this story), I could see someone bringing up the Widow’s Law to support the rights of one or multiple candidates. Would, say, Serena Stark’s descendants say that Beron Stark had had no right to be lord in the first place, because Serena should have inherited the right of her father Rickon (as the child of the first marriage) to Winterfell? Would, say, Cregan’s daughters by Alysanne Blackwood (to the extent they had children) argue that their claims to Winterfell should also come before those of Cregan’s younger sons and their descendants, since those daughters were born of Cregan’s second marriage? I could very much see that happening.

It’s possible that this law comes up with the Freys as well, although I’m not sure how much we may focus on this. I tend to think we’re going to see a vast number of Freys die - at a second Red Wedding or otherwise - so the point may be something of a moot one. Considering Big Walder is well aware of the order of succession within House Frey (and very ambitious in his own right), perhaps he or someone around him will bring it up with respect to his right of succession; alternately, perhaps it will be the role of the postgame ruler of the Riverlands (whether Edmure or someone else) to sort through such legalities regarding whatever Frey descendants may remain (assuming the Twins themselves still stand).

[dailydegurechaff]

Well, since you've just drawn your mermaid Tanya, I gotta take advantage of the situation and ask what the others are like in this AU.

PS. I've said it once, and I'll say it again. Fantastic, beautiful art as always, my friend.

That is a very good question, what is everyone else up to? I'll try to be brief (failed).

So we know Tanya's a fish, but what about the rest of them? The general rule of thumb I went with for splitting up the characters is that the Staff officers (this includes Tanya) are all merfolk, and the rest of the 203rd are humans. There is one exception, but we’ll get to that.

Starting with the 203rd because they have less complicated things going on. Weiss, Koenig, Neumann, Grantz and Visha are all college students & friends. I haven’t actually decided what their majors are as it’s not the focus of the story, but I am taking suggestions if anyone has any. Otherwise it’s going to be left unspecified.

Grantz is the male lead, obviously. I’ve talked about it vaguely before, but he’s infatuated with Tanya and wants to see her again after she rescues him from drowning.

Grantz's current hobbies during the plot of the story include: Trying to learn Tanya's song (going poorly), Trying to learn to play a shell trumpet (also going poorly), and barely managing to pass his classes because he's too obsessed with the fish that almost got him killed.

As for the others, they're varying degrees of supportive. I don’t think Grantz tells them what happened immediately, but as each of them find out, their reactions range from “concerned for Grantz’s well-being” to “number one wingman”

As for the ones under the water, we'll start with Uger. I struggled a bit to come up with a good fish for him, but then it hit me and I refuse to change my mind now. He’s a sea horse. I don't think I have to explain this choice. He's literally a father. As for the specific species, it's hard to decide but I'm leaning toward the short-snouted seahorse. I'm not sold yet, but I'm considering.

Anyway, Tanya is an orphan in this life too (her parents being tragic losses to The War that occurs before the fic starts). While she was more communally raised by the other merfolk, she was mostly taken care of by Uger and his wife. After Tanya leaves the merfolk-equivalent to The Empire, he and his wife end up having a child.

Onto Lergen. I’m not sure how much it suits him, but the image in my head from the start has always been that he’s an atlantic sailfish. Something about the dark blue sail I think would be very majestic on him.

Similar to canon, he's worried about Tanya being weird, but it's less about how she's a monster, and more that she's A) far too curious about humans B) far too similar to Zettour.

And speaking of Zettour, I have decided he is an eel. I'm not fully set on what exact species, but I'm leaning toward a white ribbon eel.

Zettour doesn't live in The Empire during the time the fic takes place. To cut a long story short, he committed too many fish war crimes before the story starts and got exiled for it.

This is convenient for Tanya who doesn't want to be roped into fighting in one of The Empire's many territory disputes, so when she leaves The Empire, Zettour becomes her guardian, of sorts. (She would prefer to travel the seas alone, but Uger doesn't think she should on her own yet.) (Also, despite being exiled, Zettour is still in contact with at least Lergen and Uger and keeps them updated.)

And last is Rudersdorf. He’s my one exception to the guideline I set earlier. He’s actually human, but still very strongly associated with the sea. He’s former member of the navy, now retired as a sailor/fisherman. He meets Zettour and together they devise a plan to end the Empire’s war. Incidentally, getting humans (Rudersdorf) involved in the conflict is what gets Zettour exiled from the empire.

So that was everyone else, and I'll include a little bit extra about Tanya, despite this ask being about what everyone else is up to.

Tanya is still the reincarnation of the salaryman, but the circumstances of his death are slightly different from the original story. Instead of getting pushed in front of a train, he’s pushed off a bridge and drowns. As a result of this, his reincarnation is a mermaid (a bit of a mean joke for Being X to reincarnate the man who died in water as a creature that lives in water).

Anyway, her fish half is reminiscent of a betta fish (which is technically a freshwater fish, but Tanya lives in the ocean so ignore that), and I officially decided I’m going to disregard that poll I did a while ago. I really do prefer the white/blue color palette bc it fits my Artistic Vision (tm) more than the winning option does.

[lacoscienzadiemme]

In this long ass post I will share my thoughts about the new Rose of Versailles movie. Skip if you don't care, drop it if you don't agree, read it if you have time, idk just don't come at my neck it's not that deep and there are still way worse problem in the world. This post contains spoilers.

The movie is roughly two hours long. Not enough for a story like ROV: long, complex, multi-layered, full of narrative arcs and characters. OF COURSE they had to change something and cut off something else. The result? The first one hour and a half is too fast paced - even for someone like me who fully knows the original story and has been in the fandom for more than 18 years. Everything happens and you don't even realize what, why and when things happen. You're just thrown into a flow of events and expected to understand what is actually taken for granted.

There are huge plot holes. Like, HUGE. For example, Fersen leaves France to come back in Sweden and he's back literally five minutes later (and doesn't even go to war). Some of these plot holes are filled with random (and excessive, in terms of quantity, especially in the first half of the movie) musical numbers. Yes, this movie is basically a combination of the manga (the plot is still closer to the manga than the anime, somehow...), the Takarazuka revue version and even includes something from the anime. Or better, it doesn't have something that the anime doesn't have too but we'll come back to this later. These songs are visually very beautiful music videos that pop up when you least expected and are intended to explain things in a different way. Yet, in the first half there are too many of them, whilst the second half almost only uses songs (not instrumental tracks, literally songs) as OST.

Back to the plot holes, the main ones for me are the following.

We don't really get why and when Oscar falls in love with Fersen. We don't really witness the struggle she lives and what's worse is that the ball scene is super rushed up to make room for a musical number (the umpteenth!) where Marie Antoinette somehow steals the attention. We don't even understand why Oscar runs away from Fersen because there's the freaking queen whining and singing in a nightgown. Did we care? No, we didn't.

Oscar and André's love story is kinda messed up. We somehow get that she has feelings for him (otherwise why rejecting Girodelle's proposal saying you don't want to hurt André's feelings?), but it almost feels it's random. At some point, she doesn't want to get married because of André. Maybe avoiding one (1) musical numer in the first half and keeping at least the My André scene of the manga could have made it clearer. Let's say this is the arch where there is the mix between what happens in the manga and what *doesn't* happen in the anime w/ the timing of the anime that I was saying before. Like, they get together on the night of July 12dn but the scene happens in Oscar's bedroom. A combination of anime and manga, methinks. Now, let me start a little controversy because this place is safer than Twitter. I always read negative opinions regarding the change of setting of their only night together. It was changed because the director, Dezaki (or the crew) said they felt like in the manga it looked like a noble woman seducing a common man (of course it is NOT like this, why? Because they got together twenty days before that night). Neverthless, what happens in the movie? We see a noble woman (who has never really adressed to her feeling towards André as love) asking to a common man to sleep with her. We know they are in love with each other because we already know the story and it is common knowledge they are together but if I were a completely newbie I wouldn't get it. It looks exactly what Dezaki said and what definitely is NOT in the manga - even if it is in good faith, because they had no time to develop it further.

Before starting with the positive side of this movie (yes, there are a lot of good things too), I want to say something more about the timing problem. As already mentioned, ROV is a very long and complex story that requires time. A lot of time. Yet, the production team had only two hours (because, apparently, the movie is a "test" to see if they can invest money in a more accurated animated series in the future) to tell it. So, we ended up with what appears to be a summary of what ROV is. And it's not the production team's fault, but the production company's fault who decided to test waters using the wrong story. You don't lift a car to test the strenght of your muscles.

THIS BEING SAID, let's all focus on the positive side of ROV movie.

The last twenty minutes are exactly what the whole movie should be: intense. They make you forget the speed and lack of things you had in the first hour and a half. They are so incredibly touching, I finally found myself completely in the right mood and surrounded by the right atmosphere. Now, this is ROV. The last twenty minutes are ROV. I was surprised by the final scene and cried a lot. I promise I felt mesmerized by this part. Side note: André's chest if half bare even when he's in heaven - MERCI MERCI MERCI!

The bedroom scene (problems aside) is the engine that turns on the last twenty minutes. It's very well written and animated, the sex scene is exactly what it needs to be and more. I felt very involved in it and I cannot express more how good the job is here.

André's and Oscar's deaths are literally a punch in the stomach (and with the original Italian voices I bet it could have been even more touching, but they're in their seventies so they weren't available lol). Oscar being both desperate and mad always gets me. Even in the anime, that mix of desperation and anger touches something deep in me that destroys me. I love the humanity of her reaction. Plus, I appreciated that they focused a little more on where she is shot at. A woman being shot by men in her stomach/belly has a very precise meaning and I'd like more people would aknowledge it.

Another positive side of this movie are backgrounds, settings and clothes. Everything was designed perfectly even in the slightest detail, there was attention to everything - even the paintings on the walls. I wish I could say the same for the caharacters (they're kinda disproportionated, even compared to the manga original style) and animation but... nope (it's 2025 and we still have to pretend robotic animation is a satisfying result - no, it's not). Neverthless, they used their budget very well to have such incredibly drawn settings and costumes.

So, all in all, the experience of this new movie wasn't really bad as a whole. I just wish people stopped excusing every problem it has with the "time justification" because it wasn't prescribed by the doctor, nobody was forced to do that. Us hardcore fans are patient enough to wait for something better (maybe even a new animated series!) and we should even be fine admitting it's overall an ok job. I've seen far worse things (ehm... the live action... ehm...). But at the end of the day, the last twenty minutes made the difference for me and made me enjoy it.

[polyamorousmood]

Hello! Im poly but not as much in touch with the community so I thought id ask someone more experienced in a way instead of overthinking for weeks lol hope thats no issue since its not rlly a irl thing

Im making a comedy comic and I want there to be a joke where the main cast travels alot and anytime they say "we'll need help In x location" one of the poly characters keeps on saying "don't worry guys I have a girlfriend in there, she'll help us" and through the comic he has like 20+ girlfriends in all these diffrent locations, while its suppoust to be a lil joke i want to make sure it's not going into harmful territory so I thought id ask someone more in the community since while i am poly i also do recognize that im not above making stupid mistakes like that

Ah the overthinking and comedy are a duo i fear ToT

I personally fucking love that.

I can't promise no one else could conjure something to make it ✨️Problematique✨️ in their head, of course, but I think it's funny and cute for a comedy comic! I'd say go for it! Couple considerations below the cut that come to mind if you're trying to make "good poly rep", but these aren't hard and fast rules

Okay first thing for "good poly rep" is when we see the girlfriends, I'd show them being cutesy together😍!! They should be excited to see each other! Depending on the woman, maybe have pet names, inside jokes, etc. You don't have to belabor the point by stopping the action for eight pages every time we meet a girlfriend. I can think of several pithy ways that work well for a comedy comic (every time we meet a girlfriend, a shot of him exclaiming increasingly bizarre pet names and running into each other's arms, for example).

Secondly. I think it's fine if you leave the bit as it is, but if I were reading as a poly person, I'd be hoping for some other little indication all these girlfriends actually still matter to the character when they dont matter to the plot. Even just another throw away gag. He's going out Christmas shopping and comes home with an actual pack mule full of presents because he has so many partners to buy for (or vice versa, he has dozens of presents under his Christmas tree that are all covered in hearts and signed by different names. Or both). Or something like that. Maybe we see his phone calendar and it just COVERED in "phone call with Emily" "video chat Monique." He ends upbin the hospital and there's a line out the door for his visitors. Whatever. Even if it was a single-frame thing, I'd LOSE MY MIND. Totally optional, but it's something I would squee about 😁

Basically, it boils down to, make all these girlfriends... girlfriends. Otherwise it feels not super distinct from womanizing.

Hope that helps!! Good luck!! I'd LOVE to see this comic, please shoot me a link!

[arlecchinosswifee]

I don't know what to believe right know

(Its just my angry rant don't take it too seriously 😔)

In the current chapters there's a lot of reliance on luck. The explanations feel like a bad joke and nothing that the characters did matches their usual believes (Like Alice, Elliot,Ron, relaying on luck, Ron not telling Toto his plan, although I kinda "understand" Why he would do that, etc. Etc) and I don't know, maybe it is a bad joke and all of the plot holes that obviously don't make sense are there bc there's a big plot twist approaching and will make me look dumb for even doubting AA

or it's simply bad writing.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE rkdd and the story, it's just that recently it feels rushed and unexplained? not in a "there's a lot of going on so it's chaotic" type of way but a "I don't know how to get to the main plot" way.

Toto has been pushed to the side and acts wayyy dumber then he used to (where's my Toto's improvement in deductions💔) but also his emotions were brought up like two times for a second, sooo does that mean there will be an explanation or we'll just forget about it?? Because otherwise why would AA even acknowledge them?? To actually do something about them or just to make Toto seem more relevant in these arc then he is?

We don't have many information about Toto besides that he's an police officer, he was raised by his grandma and he's in his 20's. There's a lot we are missing, but why would it be a secret? That could mean two things, all of this infirmations will be used in the future in some crazy plot that no one would guess, or Toto is just there to narrate and we "don't need" to know anything else.

Let's pretend it's the first option, that would mean there's a lot of secrets that would require (in my opinion) a lot of chapters to first reveal Toto's past and then have some cases and mysteries or smth like that. Of course there could be the reveal that Alice had, which was conveniently done in the room with everybody who needed to know (yes I'm still mad about that but it could be worse ig) and the manga also feels like it's coming to the end. FOR NOW it looks like Ron won the game so he'll become the head of the M. Family, get his license and that's the end(?) but I'm not really sure bc cruise arc also seemed like the ending so we'll see.

So my very unclearly made point is, will Toto finally have the attention set on him? Will we learn something new,or will he be stuck as Ron's sidekick? Will all the dumb mysteries be explained?

And even simpler terms: will there be a Toto crush out, yes or no?

I just don't know what to believe right now and I desperately need Toto, and old Rontoto's dynamic.

[jq37]

Seeing you describe your opinion on Wish (the movie itself) as "def do have oh boy" just has me curious now. What is it?

OK, so I let this sit in my inbox for a while because I planned to see Wish and I figured that it would be more fair to wait until I had a full picture of what the movie was before I started talking about it and...yeahhhhhhh having seen it my opinion has not changed. It's just intensified. 

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW (lol, this got past 7k words)

And, fair warning, it's pretty critical so if you don't want to read something critical about this movie then this is your exit.

tl;dr: I think the movie Wish fails at basically everything it sets out to do and it's an absolutely awful 100th Anniversary movie for Disney. 

When I say it fails at everything, I mean EVERYTHING*. I'm going to break this into sections for organizational purposes. 

*The one thing I'll give it a slight pass on is the art style which I don't love but also wasn't like make or break for me. I would have preferred true 2D or a better implementation of the blended 2D/3D style, but if the movie was otherwise of the quality of something like Spiderverse or Puss in Boots, the animation wouldn't have bothered me. Like, I watched S1 of The Dragon Prince with no problem. I can forgive janky animation--and it wasn't even super janky. Just odd. What I can't forgive is literally everything else about the movie. 

Characters

How is this movie so full of characters and yet devoid of characters that matter? There are a million characters in this movie and basically only two of them matter: The King and Asha. But neither of them are compelling in any meaningful way.

There's a lot of to do about the last batch of Disney protags being very same-y in a quirky, all fluff and no substance way and I don't really buy into that. I don't think that Raps, Anna, Moana, and Mirabel are palate swapped carbon copies of each other. They have unique backgrounds and struggles and motivations. I feel like they're all quirky, sure. But they all also have an identity BEYOND being quirky. 

I do NOT get that with Asha. I don't feel like I have a good idea of what makes her tick at all. Like, she's kind. She wants her grandpa to get his wish. She wants to be the King's apprentice so she can help people. The queen (we'll get to her) exposits to us that she cares about people. But being kind isn't in itself an entire personality. The way Mulan is kind (defying the law to spare her father the ravages of war in his old age) isn't the same way as the way Cinderella is kind (making clothes for her mouse friends and protecting them from the cat). Asha just has a generalized want to help people, which is an admirable trait, but doesn't give us much to latch onto. It's so telling to me that in a movie called "Wish" our main character's wish is just, "To have more than just this" And yes, Disney princesses wanting "more" is literally their whole thing, but it's always more specific than that. Mirabel wants to prove herself to her family. Rapunzel wants to experience life beyond her tower. Even Snow White--the Disney princess with the flimsiest story--wants to find her true love. That's a concrete motivation! Asha doesn't feel real to me as a character. It feels like the thing that drives her is that the plot needs to happen and that's it. 

The other important character in the movie is King Magnifico who was supposed to be a return to form for Disney in introducing another classic villain but he just fails at that so hard. The idea that he could stand toe to toe with any of the OGs like Lady Tremaine or Scar or even the latest villains like Dr. Facillier or Mother Gothel is laughable. He just doesn't have any gravitas. And his characterization is so odd. You can tell that they were trying to give him a "reasonable man doing unreasonable things for a good reason” backstory (both because of some images in the film and some stuff in interviews I read) but then they just...don't actually give the backstory? Like, they imply that the backstory exists but I don't remember them going into it at all. Which like, he doesn't NEED a tragic backstory. He can just be doing what he's doing because he's evil. Ursula didn't need a reason to want to rule the seas. She's just a boss bitch and she wants power. I don't need to dissect that any further. BUT if you tell me there’s a reason your villain is doing something, I need to see that reason. I don't understand why they would include that in the movie, just to do nothing with it. 

Beyond that, he's written in such a weird way. Like, despite the "maybe he has a point" angle they seem to want to go with, he's very obviously a self-absorbed ruler--like he'll say things like, "Yeah, I am super handsome" to his wife--which immediately dumps him into the camp villain category. But he's doing the controlling things he does in the movie of his own accord to get people to stick to the status quo he set up. Fine. That's a fine thing for a camp villain to be doing. But then, at a certain point in the movie, he just uses a forbidden magic evil book (which he has for some reason) that just fills him with evil, green magic and makes him 100% unhinged all of a sudden. And that's just...boring? Like, anything interesting you might have been able to do before that point about power and control and how sometimes you make a wrong choice with good intentions is just gone at that point. It sucks because there were a lot of right answers here. You could just make him evil because he's evil. That works. You could have him be seriously convinced that what he's doing is right and be willing to do whatever he needs to do to keep things that way. That works. You could say that he started out trying to be morally upright and then slid into enjoying the praise and control just a bit too much--and I think maybe that's what they were going for. But it does not come across that way. He just seems like a dick to the point where you're kinda questioning how he's pulling any of this off. Asha asks him one question and he flies off the handle. How does everyone not know he's an asshole if it takes so little to fluster him?

So I don't like our main hero or villain. But there are still SO MANY CHARACTERS in this movie. 

You've got Asha's SEVEN FRIENDS. Yes, SEVEN. they're based off of the seven dwarves, which is cute enough but do you know what happens when you give the hero seven sidekick characters? None of them get developed at all and you have to treat them like a unit. Only two of them matter at all--Dahlia (her best friend and the one who actually does more than just make dumb jokes or, worse, nothing at all) and Simon (the one who betrays them--more on that later). There is no story reason for them to have shoved in this many sidekicks. Especially since she also has…

Her animal sidekick, Valentino. Who is a very cute goat until he gets sprinkled with stardust and boom. He can talk. Which immediately made me like him less. Flounder he aint. The whole joke with him is that he's a baby goat with a rich, deep, baritone voice. That's it. Almost every joke he makes is either about that or his butt. Boo. 

Then, there's the Queen--Queen Amaya--who is such a NOTHING character. There's no effort made to build up her relationship with the king so that her flipping on him later has an emotional impact. I have no idea what she cares about or desires. When she shows up, she's basically acting like the king's secretary, which is weird. I don't think that's what a queen does. There's a moment during a later song when she joins the "revolution" and it just has zero impact because again, it's like, I don't know who you are in any significant way! She seems nice, and I would love to live somewhere ruled by someone boring and benign, but that makes for an awful movie character. 

I almost wrote "lastly, there's the star" because I totally forgot about Asha's mom and grandpa. They're in this movie too but even though Asha's whole motivation at the start of the movie is getting her grandpa's wish granted, we never get a good idea of what their relationship is. They have like, one quick scene at the top which tells us nothing, then they're in a crowd scene later, then Asha has dinner with them later the same day and that's it. And, again, we get nothing significant. Compared to something like Mulan where you have a good idea of what Mulan's relationship is with every member of her family by the time the military order comes in or Encanto where between the musical number at the top and the first group scene, you get an entire picture, this is really weak. Again, so weak that I completely forgot that they were even in this movie. 

And NOW lastly, there's the star. Who is like, cute enough but he really makes me annoyed because I've seen the original concepts and they would have been so much more interesting! That's the case for the queen too, so I'll talk about both of them together here. 

I am sorry to inform you if you didn't already know but the queen was originally supposed to be evil too.

She was supposed to be a part of an evil power couple with Magnifico and how dope would that have been? We've never gotten that from Disney before. Imagine! Disney Villain Song Duet! A Hot couples costume for next Halloween! An actual relationship that's developed in this movie! But nope. They unflavor-blasted her into the paper thin, placeholder of a character we have in the movie. 

And the Star went through a couple of concepts. One, was the spirit of her dead grandpa, taking a younger form, which isn't my fave one but it at least would give her a relationship with this person who is supposedly an important person in her life, something we don't have in the movie right now. My favorite alternate concept is that originally, the Star was supposed to be her celestial love interest. And listen, anyone who's followed me for long enough knows that I am a big advocate for platonic relationships and FRONTING platonic relationships. I don't think that a story needs a romantic relationship to be compelling and I think forcing one in almost always makes it worse. But there is NO central relationship in this movie to carry it. Asha has too many friends for any one of them to make a serious impact so it's not a friendship story. Her mom and grandpa are nothing characters, so it's not a family story. She interacts with the star a lot, but that's basically just her talking to herself because the start doesn’t talk. So nothing is really there to latch onto. If they'd decided to go with the romance angle, it would have forced them to focus on at least ONE relationship and it would have been a nice way to throwback to classic Disney movies from the past. Much better than just sticking her with SEVEN WHOLE USELESS FRIENDS. Literally, all they provide is backup vocals in the fight song. Special Dishonorable Mention to Gabo. Man I hate that dude. 

So, to recap this section, Asha's personality is only sketched out in the loosest possible way, King Magnifico is entirely half-baked, and there are so many side characters that no one can form meaningful relationships with each other. And it's really a shame because (1) they very easily could have pared down the cast and (2) very recently Disney put out Encanto which handles a large cast beautifully. There are a ton of Madrigals but I can tell you what the deal of each and every one is. This could have been done well and they fumbled so hard. 

Concept

OK, so next up is the general plot and concept. This story takes place in the city of Rosas which is ruled by King Magnifco. It is supposedly a paradise, but much like a YA dystopian novel, it has a twist: When you turn 18, Magnifico takes your wish away from you and puts in in his wish room with the promise that it might be granted at one of the monthly wish granting ceremonies. Once your wish is taken from you, you are "unburdened" and you're "free" from having to pursue it. You don't even remember what it was. 

There's a kernel of something interesting there. A ruler making his subjects docile, placid zombies that won't challenge him by taking away their ambition? That's interesting. People willingly giving away a part of their heart to dull the pain of trying and failing? Interesting. Someone doing this with no ill intent, but rather genuinely thinking that this half-existence is better than the heartbreak of the alternative? Interesting!

But the actual implementation of this idea? Ughhhhhh. 

So first off, just logistically, Magnifico grants one wish a month more or less (Asha says once a month and in his villain song, he said he granted 14 wishes "last year"). So like, realistically, most of these people have to know their wishes will never be granted, right? Because of like...how math works? Asha acts like it's a big shock when she learns that most wishes won't be granted but like girl...math. 

Secondly, there are two moments that are meant to imply that having your wish taken away turns you into a shell of yourself. Asha's friend (who betrays her) Simon is said to be all sleepy and more boring since he turned 18 and had his wish taken. And then, later in the movie, we see two new residents have their wishes taken, and they look a little disturbed after it happens. But, here's the thing. NO ONE ELSE IN THE MOVIE ACTS LIKE THAT. Asha's mom and grandpa act like normal people. So do all the other characters. It’s not consistent enough to establish that this is what’s on the line. Does taking your wish away make you a robot or not?

And does everyone just have one wish? I know I could fill a full sheet of paper, front and back, with things that matter very dearly to me. If you took away my wish to write for TV someday, that would still leave my wishes to travel the world and get a comic book adaptation of one of my novels and a whole lot of other things! Does taking your main wish away make you lose your ability to form new wishes? Logistically, how does any of this work? And you can't just say, "It's a metaphor. Don't think too hard about it," because there's a scene where the citizens start asking these questions. Like, "What happens if we have a new wish than from when we initially made it?" As if having unnamed side characters ask the questions first will alleviate the need to answer them. It's not lamp shading at that point. You're just being lazy. 

Also, this is more a me thinking about the implications too hard than an actual plot problem but if he's taking the wishes at 18 I feel like a lot of peoples' greatest desire at that stage in their life is, "I want a romantic partner." And if the central conceit of this premise is that once your wish is taken, you stop wanting to pursue it then the city of Rosas is gonna have a population Collapse problem very soon. 

The characters--especially Asha--get so emotional about wishes. It's like they're giving a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic speech every time they talk about it (except MLP has MUCH better writing). It's bizarre to see Asha's mom get her wish back and be like, "Oh my wish. My precious wish!" when she doesn't act any differently than a normal person before or after she has it back (Sidenote: She says this and she's holding the wish ball but we never see what that wish is and that's maddening. Why do I know what the dream of every patron in the Snuggly Duckling is, but they didn't show that? Ridic.) It almost is like, being in contact with a wish ball is a quasi-religious experience that drives the characters’ actions (Asha and the King are both totally enraptured while singing together in the Wish Room), but because we, the audience, are very much not in contact with the wish balls, we're not getting ANY of that. 

Anyway, to recap this section: the central premise of how wishes work and how taking them affects people is not treated consistently or explained well, which makes the stakes feel very undefined and sloppy. 

Pacing

This has to be its own section, because it's the thing that baffled me most when I watched this movie. So, here's the setup. Asha is going to interview for the internship with the king. She wants to help people and she has the secondary motive of wanting to try and get her 100-year-old grandpa's wish granted because he's not getting any younger. 

Here is the entire sequence: Asha is led into the interview by Queen Amaya. Asha is awkward but makes a good enough first impression that Magnifico is moved to show her the wish room (for some reason). They sing a duet about the wishes where they’re both dazzled by the Wish balls. During the song, Asha finds her Grandpa's wish and after the song, she asks him to grant it. He looks at the wish and says while she has good intentions, it's too dangerous to grant--as are most wishes. She asks why not give them back then and he immediately flies off the handle and starts ranting about how HE decides which wishes get granted and what everyone deserves! 

Their first meeting and him showing his true colors happens in the SAME SCENE. It's like 7-10 minutes and they just RUSH through all of that. And it's like, why? Did they really need to get to that dumbass star song (we'll get to that) faster? 

I know that he isn't a twist villain so we don't need to keep the fact that he’s the bad guy under wraps. And, the way the story is structured, she needs to learn what he's doing before she can rebel against him. But it's not gonna be a big, impactful moment if you're rushing from beat to beat like this is an essay that's due in twenty minutes and you started five minutes ago. 

And it really makes you wonder, if Asha can blow the whole lid off this conspiracy within ten minutes of meeting this guy, why is this not happening more often? Between how obviously smarmy the King is, how paltry the wish granting system is, and how easily Asha was able to start asking questions and get him to blow his top (something that happens again later when the citizens start asking question–it literally drives him into his villain song) I don't believe that this wouldn't have happened earlier (Sidenote: Finding out that it HAD happened earlier and that Asha is the latest in a line of failed apprentices who questioned him? More interesting premise). 

So to recap: I have no idea why this movie is paced like this but it's not doing it any favors. 

Humor

Humor is very subjective so you can take this with a huge grain of salt but I think this is a deeply unfunny movie. 

The jokes fall into about three main categories:

(1) Quirky Humor: This is like Asha babbling and tripping over her words. The scene in the trailer where she's like, "Is my face drooping?" is a good example. It's not really a joke but it's clearly an attempt at humor that I don't think meets the mark. It's also in the songs with, for instance, the animals or the King saying slang that doesn't match how they talk or you'd expect them to talk at all and it just feels deeply incongruent, not funny. 

(2) Referential Humor: This is probably what bothered me the most because it was just so so very eye-roll inducing. And listen, I love a good reference. Enchanted is my favorite movie of all time. I don’t begrudge them for putting a few references in their 100th Anniversary movie. But ugh. There is a scene after the king's gone crazy where he's destroying wish bubbles for power and he's like, looking at the wishes and making a quip before he crushes them. And for the second one he goes, "Oh you want a nanny for your kids? Definitely  POPPING this one!" And he might as well have looked at the camera and said, "Get it? Get it?" and it took 6 months off my lifespan. (Sidenote: He he does a direct ref with the first two wish bubbles--Peter Pan and Mary Poppins–and then he just makes a general ref to the concept of true love with the last one and it's like, come on at least rule of threes this if you're gonna do it. Commit to your awful bit!)

(3) Kiddie Humor: This is where things get especially subjective because maybe a little kid would find this stuff really funny and they are a part of the target audience so that's valid. But it doesn't add much substance to the movie. This is like the goat being like, "I found a secret passage with my butt" or leading a chicken choir or singing the line, "So that's where all the balls of gas come from" while sticking his butt in the air--a lot of these have to do with the goat and his butt now that I think about it. 

I think I only laughed at one thing in the movie that was meant to be at least partially funny--when the Queen interrupts the fight song and everyone is like "Oh shit, we're busted!" before she starts singing along. 

So to recap: Sometimes a movie has a weak story but it's super funny and that makes up for it. This is not one of those movies.

Music

This is the one thing I already knew before I watched this movie: The music in this movie is bad. 

Like, fullstop, no qualifications bad. Not bad for a Disney movie. Not bad for this story. Just bad.

I was a little confused by the choice to pick a pop artist instead of someone who specializes in musical theater style music for this project, but a more pop-y musical doesn't automatically mean a worse musical. Sure, maybe it's a weird choice to pay homage to the past 100 years of Disney movies, but it could be good. I love Six the Musical.

But that's the problem. The songs aren't just unfitting. They're not just un-Disney. They're fully BAD. They feel so half-baked and God, I've never been so assaulted by slant rhymes in my life. Like, this bothers me to the point where I have to go through the entire tracklist. I can't just make a blanket statement, I have to show you what I mean:

1) Welcome to Rosas: This whole song sounds like someone listened to “Where you Are” from Moana (the "consider the coconut" song), “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast, and “The Family Madrigal” from Encanto and was like, "I could do that". And then they couldn't. It's not really catchy and it's pretty repetitive. Super forgettable. 

Worst Line: Honestly, this song is too boring to have a worst line. 

2) At All Costs: This is the duet that Asha and Magnifico sing. Before I saw the movie, I thought it was going to be Asha singing about a wish and Magnifico singing to his wife to set up the eventual rift between them but that was before I realized that this movie doesn't believe in relationship building. Some of the movie's worst musical sins are on display here. Turns of phrases that seem like they were written by AI and bizarre syntax. 

Like what does, "You pull me in, like some kind of wind" mean? That's not what wind does. Why would anyone ever say, "Felt this? No, I haven't" instead of "I haven't felt this?" That's so awkward. 

Worst Line: "Leave you here, I don't wanna. I wanna [promise as one does]." My feelings about this line could be a whole other essay, but I've been writing this for 2 hours already so I have to move on. 

3) This Wish: This is the big "I Want" song and it fails on several levels. It fails in comparison to all the songs it’s standing in the shadow of--like the last “I Want” song we got is, I believe, “Waiting on a Miracle” and man! How can you not feel for Mirabel after watching her go through everything she goes through at the start of the movie and it getting topped with her being excluded from the family portrait? You see all the build up (including the implied build up from before the movie started) and you see why it's all bubbled up to the point where she has no choice but to sing about it! With Asha, there isn't a whole lifetime of angst that's bubbling up to make her sing this song. Everything that's happened to her has happened over the hour of like eight hours tops. She meets the king, finds out about the king, realizes the whole system is bad, and then gets into an argument with her family who's drunk the Kool-Aid and doesn't wanna hear what she has to say (which makes no impact on us because we have no idea what their relationship is). That's it. It doesn't feel like the movie has earned the song.

And then with “Waiting for a Miracle” the music itself is plaintive and soaring. Like, I just paused writing to listen to it and I couldn't help but sing along and pour a little of my actual IRL "I Want" energy into it. It's a song that feels very real. “This Wish” isn't any of that. And it's not the actresses' fault! She's pouring her whole heart into it and she consistently does all movie. But the song is just, bland. Like I said, "I want to have more than this" is too weak a hook to hang your whole song on–especially when it’s the song that’s supposed to be the thesis of your whole movie.  

Worst Line: "So I look up at the stars to guide me/And throw caution to every warning sign." That's not a thing people say and also it doesn't mean anything. If anything, it sounds like she's saying that she's being extra cautious at the warning signs! You can't just throw words together haphazardly and expect them to retain their meaning!

4) I'm a Star: This is, imo, the worst song on the whole track. A friend of mine described it as sounding like a song from a preschool science show and that's exactly it, but there's more to it than that. 

First of all, a big part of the reason this song exists is to set up the fact that humans are made of stardust because that's a plot point in the climax. But there didn't need to be a song about that. That would be like if Frozen 2 had a song about how water has memory. But like, OK. If the song was a bop, it wouldn't matter that it was superfluous. Haus of Holbein in Six does NOT need to be there, but I enjoy it! I do NOT enjoy this song however. 

This is something I alluded to earlier, but this soundtrack in general and this song specifically sounds like it's trying to do LMM's schtick but poorly. And I know some people don't like his whole style of music (I personally like it) but love him or hate him, his style without his skill? Awful. The presentation of fun facts in the middle of a fun song makes me think of his "Look it Up" in “Shiny” or "That's true" in “A Winter's Ball”. And there's a part where a turtle (we'll get to the talking animals) sings "See we're all just little nebulae in a nursery/From supernovas now we've grown into our history/We're taking whys right out of mystery, closure/Now we're taking in all the star exposure" And it really sounds like someone doing their best to emulate Lin's flow in things like Mirabel's aside to Mariano in “The Family Madrigal” or any number of songs I could name from Hamilton. But it just falls so flat here. It sounds so preschool and cheesy. And not preschool in a fun way. Backyardigans would never. 

Also, this song is sung by a bunch of talking animals (the Star gives them the ability to talk) and I find them so obnoxious. They say stuff like, "Did we just blow your mind?" with the "boom" sound effect and I hate it. Maybe kids will like them, I dunno. I refuse to get into it further. 

Worst Line: This song completely misuses the word allegory, which I hate, and it rhymes it with "excitatory" which I hate more (and I am saying this as someone who has made peace with the fact that Schwartz rhymes "nasty" with "flabbergasty" in Disenchanted) but there is only one line in this song that can be considered the true worst line because it's my least favorite line in the whole movie. A dumbass, stoner-sounding deer named Bambi (boo) sings, "Ooh, I'm a star! Watch out world, here I are"

They rhyme the word star--not a hard word to rhyme at all--with HERE I ARE. 

I firmly believe someone should go to jail for that. 

5) This is The Thanks I Get?!: This is the much anticipated and extremely disappointing villain song. There's just no gravitas and it's not clever enough to be very fun. It's just kinda bopping along which is eh, kind of fun at best, but like everything else in this movie, doesn't leave an impact. A musical number doesn't have to be obviously sinister like “Be Prepared” or, the holy (unholy?) grail, “Hellfire”, to be impactful. “Mother Knows Best” is bright and filled with false cheer but it still works because we can see the manipulation that Gothel is doing and she spins Raps around in mental circles to keep her docile. This is just an egotistical rant--and not even in a fun, Gaston kind of way! (Sidenote: Gaston is a good example of a villain who is preening and pompous and kind fo campy, but who you see why he’s beloved AND he can be menacing when the scene calls for it). 

Also, it's so full of weird slang that Magnifico doesn't use at any other point in the movie. "Peep the name", "Ungrateful much", "Mmm, are you sure you're not the prob?" It's like he suddenly got possessed by Urban Dictionary. It's bizarre. 

It also comes weirdly late in the movie, which isn't a complaint, just an observation. 

Worst Line: I think "peep the name" is my least fave but, because I already said that, the opening lines of this song are, "I can't help it if mirrors love my face. It's genetics! Yeah, I got these genes from outer space" and that's such a weird thing to say. I got these genes from outer space? He wasn't even there for the star song so what the hell does he mean by that?

6) Knowing What I Know Now: I feel like this is the song that had the most potential. But for all its build, it never builds to anything. It starts and ends so abruptly (which is the case for multiple songs on this list). We don't really get to know any of the characters well except for Asha so them joining the revolution has no impact. The Queen turning on Magnifico really doesn't have much impact. 

(There's a line in this song where a character sings, "I was sweet but now I'm something else" which is so funny because we literally know nothing about her except that she surprises people when she's in a room which, lmao, me too. Fully forgot you were in this movie, girl). 

Worst Line: "The good in him, I've watched it melt". There's technically nothing wrong with this line but I hate it because melting with regard to emotion is never, "Oh, his goodness is melting". It just hits the ear so wrong. You can watch the good in him disappear or fade or vanish. Not melt. Hearts melt. 

There's also a reprise and a credits song but I have talked about the music for too long as is so to sum up, there is not a single song on this list that I will ever purposefully listen to for enjoyment ever again and there are a few lines that I feel calls for someone being forced to go to whatever the musical version of the Hague is to explain themselves. 

MISC

This is just a section for things that annoyed me that didn't fit anywhere else. 

There's a moment where Asha sees Star which is a star that has fallen to earth and is shaped like a star and she's not able to put together than he's a star until she looks up at a ball of yarn that's tangled in the trees and sees that the yarn is shaped like a star...which again, Star is ALSO shaped like a star! Baffling. 

Gabo at one point makes a comment to the effect of, "Wishing on a Star? Grow up Asha, this isn't a fairy tale." And it's like, dude shut up. Your king is a sorcerer. This movie isn't funny enough to pull off that kind of wink to the audience. 

The actual funniest part of the movie is when a talking mouse (not a thing that usually exists in this world) runs onto the Queen's shoulder during a big speech in front of a crowd and not only does no one notice, but she has no stronger reaction than if a messenger was telling her that her dinner was ready. And not in an underreaction for the purposes of a joke way. Like, in a they forgot to write in a reaction for her way. It's so unintentionally hilarious. 

They specifically set this in the real world–off the coast of the Iberan Peninsula–but I didn’t get any of that influence in any significant way here. It could have been any generic island town. Rosas sounds like a Spanish name and “Welcome to Rosas” there is some dancing that looks like traditional Spanish dancing. But on a whole, it feels pretty bland. When I think about studying abroad in Spain, one of the big things I think about are all the moments with food–patatas con bravas, pan con tomatae, paella, and so so much coffee. The only food I remember from this movie are the novelty cookies Dahlia is always baking. Which is wild to me because their last big musical was Encanto and you could feel the cultural influences in every scene and it was seamless. This wouldn’t even bother me if that hadn’t made a point to set it in a specific part of the real world and call it out. 

A lot of the dialogue is super expository in a way that both makes me think the writers think we’re stupid and that they realized at certain points that they forgot to establish things but instead of fixing the script they just shoved in a line. Like, to the first point, there’s a part where Magnifico crushes a wish and it’s very clear that he’s getting a high from it. But instead of letting the moment stand he’s like, “Oh yes. Who knew crushing wishes would feel so good? I must continue to crush wishes so I keep feeling this good feeling,” and it’s like…why did you need to say all of that? Old Power Rangers episodes have their villains monologue less than that!

This movie opens on a storybook–just like Snow White–and it has a voice over of Asha narrating the history of Rosas as the pages flip. Not a bad idea–until you push into the scene and realize she’s telling all of this to…her grandpa? Who is 100 years old and lived through all of this? What? Why not have that scene be a kid flashback and the story is being told to her? Or have her be doing the little kid thing of telling a story to an adult? Either way, that would help establish their relationship which is ostensibly very important to this movie. Or, wild thought, just have her be telling this story to kids! Like Mirabel explaining all the Madrigal gifts in Encanto! Like, if you’re gonna take cues from that movie, at least go all the way so your movie makes sense. 

It’s very unclear how Star’s magic works. It seems like he mostly just gives wildlife the ability to talk. I thought he was just granting wishes but he never does that to any of the humans. And I find it hard to believe that the wish of every animal (and mushroom)  in this movie is just to be able to talk.

Easy Fixes

And all of this is compounded by the fact that this isn’t just any random movie or even any random Disney movie. It’s the *100th ANNIVERSARY*. You only get one of those and this is what they wasted it on. My hopes were really high here! I was expecting a lot of love and care to be put into this one, but it just fell absolutely flat. It feels so rote, so by the numbers, so lacking in care. It feels like the shell of an outline of a movie that relies on the fact that we know what a movie of this sort should be and can fill in the blanks. 

And the worst part? The absolute worst part?

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REALLY EASY MOVIE TO FIX. 

Like, I’m serious. If you watch this movie, you will be able to, off the cuff, name tons of things that would have solved problems without breaking a sweat. 

For instance, just cutting her friend group down from seven to two would have helped immensely. If she, Dahlia, and Simon have a Three Musketeers relationship, then when he betrays her to the king, it actually means something now! 

For a bigger but still obvious change, why not have Asha have an existing relationship with Magnifico? So then this story can be about her losing faith in this relationship she’s had for a long time after she’s seen behind the curtain and become jaded over time and not a 7 minute “Don’t Meet Your Heroes” speedrun.

And making it clear what taking a Wish from a person means–and following through with that portrayal all movie–would all be a game changer. Show that Magnifico’s magical wish granting still leaves the people hollow. Show that Asha is a vibrant, bright person amongst a sea of robotic adults. Show me some worldbuilding! 

Also, just hire a musical theater person to do the music. Seriously I can’t believe I have to say this? How is there not a single good song in this movie? There are DCOMs with more bangers than this. Almost every song in High School Musical is a bop. How are you getting outshone by High School Musical?

And these are just changes that preserve the bulk of the story as is. This movie could have been even better if they’d change the direction to go with some of their scrapped ideas!

This is just a movie that absolutely baffles me. I wouldn’t think it would be possible for a movie with this high of a profile to be this bad. You would think that even accidentally they’d have to get SOMETHING right. But they really don’t. I can’t recommend this movie, even for a fun-bad watch. It’s like eating unsalted saltines while you have dry mouth. Just watch a better movie. And here are three movies I think are more in the spirit of Disney’s 100th anniversary than Wish:

(1) The Princess and the Frog does literally everything that this movie is trying to do but better. You’ve got a movie that used a 2D style in the 3D era. You have integration of cultural elements–in this case New Orleans in the 20s. You have a classic princess story with the classic trappings: romance, villain, fairy godmother. You have a rocking villain song. Hell, you even have a wishing star motif! 

(2) Encanto is the latest Disney movie of the modern era to have that classic Disney magic, imo. It sidesteps a lot of the classic Disney tropes–no princess, no serious romance (Delores and Mariano end up together but it’s very much a side thing), no villain beyond generational trauma–but it still feels musical and magical and full of character and life. It shows that you can keep the big emotions that we expect from Disney even with more modern sensibilities. 

(3) Enchanted is my favorite movie of all time so I’m biased, but I still firmly believe that it stands as a better movie in general and tribute to Disney specifically than Wish. THIS is how you do an homage. The whole plot is a loving roast of all the quirks of classic Disney movies, but it’s also a sincere story that stands on its own. It has references to old movies, but they’re integrated very naturally. And it’s funny enough to get away with things like a character mid-musical number being like, “What the hell is happening? Why is everybody singing?” without it feeling like lazy, “Well that just happened” humor. And the music is so good! 

(A quick note on the music btw: Most of the songs in Enchanted are musical theater style songs but there’s one song near the end called “So Close” which is like a pop ballad. And it totally makes sense why they’d depart from the musical theater style in that moment in context but, even if it was jarring and totally unfitting for the movie, it’s still objectively a strong song. Out of context, it would be a great, sad, romantic song. And if the music in Wish was all like that–good but unfitting–this would confuse me less than it does.)

Anyway, I would shell out a LOT of money for a making of documentary for this movie in the style of the Frozen 2 one because as writer and a fan of a lot of Disney’s past stuff, it is completely beyond my comprehension who a team of accomplished people get together to create the 100th Anniversary project with their vast resources and produce this. It just doesn't feel like a movie with any serious care put into it. Which is separate from quality, btw. I don’t like the movie Raya very much but I think it’s obvious a lot of care went into it and I respect this. Wish feels like a movie that was made to fill some kind of contractual obligation and it makes me sad because I really wanted to like it. 

[camellcat]

we got through five episodes in our buffy watch today! that being the initiative, pangs, something blue, hush, and doomed

general consensus is slowly becoming divided between us as the girls are having a great time, but our boy friend has been picking this season apart viciously. it's been a very fun new way to look at things

so far, and this is when everyone is in agreement, nobody is well liked this season except for buffy, xander, and sort of spike. even adding him, spike isn't exactly high on the list, he's just one of the only tolerable/entertaining bits of the season for us

here's the rundown for main opinions now:

we all still miss oz terribly and think his episode was stupid as hell

my friends HATE willow. neither of them can stand her anymore, and I think it's kind of fascinating, because I did not have this same reaction upon my first watch alone. they're sick of how little repercussions she gets, and the way she turns every problem into something about her. they also think she's a terrible friend to everyone around her and I agree

we also all hate riley, but not perhaps for the typical reasons I see online. none of us think he's done anything particularly wrong himself and it's more-so because none of us are enjoying him with buffy. I personally think he has a million times more chemistry with willow, and all of us just find buffy and riley saying lots of words and absolutely nothing to each other all of the time incredibly boring

we're sick of the failed buffy romances being her biggest most important plots recently

harmony is so funny. we don't really want more of her but whenever she is on screen it's a good time

xander is definitely gay why is anya with him lol

also him and buffy are the only good people in this season and it's becoming increasingly annoying having to watch them interact with everyone else

what the hell is giles doing. he's slacking on watcher duties when buffy needs him, and being a pain in the ass otherwise. he should be mentoring willow or at the very least helping her with her magic so she's not just doing whatever she wants to and ruining everyone's lives. we don't like giles anymore

this season is so boring we've just started talking over the episodes as we try to piece together how we would "fix it" instead. it feels like you have to turn off your brain to enjoy these episodes, and none of us like that at all

what even IS the overarching plot rn? the season just feels aimless despite the stuff we've seen and guess will be important

for smaller and more differing opinions between us: us girls love anya and spike and think they're adorable, our boy doesn't mind spike but HATES his plotline and doesn't like anya bc of her inconsistent writing, our boy thinks kathy should've been a reoccurring character as just an proper non-hostile demon they have to coexist around, us girls are excited to see more of spuffy

hopefully we'll have another session next tuesday, so we'll see if our opinions change enough to warrant another update

[tree-obsession]

Gold and Red Text in Penacony

So, for some reason, I have decided to torture myself by creating a theory that will likely have some plot relevance??? but not totally sure. it has popped up a bunch of times and seems to confuse a lot of people, so I'm just putting together what I know! feel free to tell me if I missed something, as I haven't done many of the side quests yet...

Anyway, spoiler warning for 2.0 trailblaze mission and possibly some of the side quests?? idk proceed with caution! I don't read many leaks so I doubt there's spoilers for that but tell me right away if there are any!

Alright, so the first time we see different-colored text in this mission is during Acheron's first meeting with the Trailblazer. According to this twitter thread (credits to user mobnermal, NOT me) Acheron's dialogue will change, depending on the gender of the tb and how we respond to her queries. She also says towards the end of the convo something along the lines of "It feels like multiple different versions of you were talking to me, saying a different thing each time".

So, I'm not entirely sure why she's lying, or even if she's doing it intetionally. It does seem like there's some aspect of "different possibilities within the Dreamscape" happening- almost like the Dreamscape itself is changing the tb's answers/Acheron's questions. But again, we'll get a bit into the dreamscape later.

2. Aventurine's final convo with the tb, and then Black Swan later.

My screenshots were failing me so hard in this quest lol.

Anyway, as far as I know, these two are the only ones in this mission who use gold text. It's mostly used to highlight the word "truth", and according to the wiki and playthroughs I have watched this dialogue doesn't change- only Acheron's red seems inconsistent. I find it interesting Black Swan put quotations around it, and I have no idea what this could imply. I assume she knows something we and Aventurine don't about Robin's death, which seems to be what they were referring to during this part.

As to how that "upends everything"... I don't know what the implications of her death are. It's implied by the npc who raised Robin (can't find any screenshots- I didn't take any, but it's dialogue from an npc in the Golden Hour) and Sunday and Robin's dialogue in the very beginning- the one where they were "shades"- that Robin's voice may have some special quality that could mind-control/ brainwash people to some extent. This is a bit of a tangent, but may point out why the gold test is so important- the new Harmony trace mats match Robin's design very well, and are part of the Order. The Order's- Ena's- symbol is an eyeball, which can be found in a lot of places on Penacony, but most importantly Sunday's clothes. Judging from what we know of Sunday's control-freak-esque personality (sorry dude ):) it's possible he or someone else in The Family is using Robin's potential powers to brainwash the people of different factions. If you choose the alternate ending, everything wraps up a bit too nicely, and nobody seems to want to leave Penacony after that. Tb never finds out about Robin's death in that ending, either. There's a lot of implications there that I don't want to get into for this post, but basically- The Family is orchestrating something, probs pinned the blame on the IPC in the bad ending (since otherwise why would hoyo tell us that?) and then brainwashed everyone to never leave. Why? No idea! But it does explain why Robin's "truth" (in quotations, because Black Swan's dialogue does imply Robin's not dead) is so important to the plot.

That was a bit of a tangent, lol. Going back to the first sc, I find it interesting Aventurine is the one to tell us this, and if we're going with the idea that gold=truth, that just tells us Acheron's most certainly an Emanator, no matter what the Dreamscape does. Why they choose to have Aventurine reveal this, especially with the first instance of golden text- that's still up in the air. However, something I want to throw in is that there was a theory floating around Twitter comparing his eyes to the eye behind Ena in their official art. They are identical- even the gold outline on Ena's eye matches his eyeliner. Since it's implied in his conversation with Sparkle his eyes are a defining feature of his race, Sigonian, and that their civilization has been taken over (I'm not clear on details) or fallen apart somehow- akin to how civilizations under Ena's rule fell apart after their death- there may be some relation. Also, Aventurine was sent to Penacony specifically, which Topaz questioned- this may be why Diamond sent him. It implies a lot of plot relevance for him later, certainly!

3. The really, really ominous text you can get from a side quest.

If you go to the Reverie(Dreamscape) VIP lounge teleport beacon and head to the wall, you find a broken Clockie surrounded by purple bubbles. If you haven't done this quest yet- do it now, I really can't explain all this! search up a guide- there's a couple good ones on youtube. you do get a sticker!

anyway, some screenshots of the tape's text (cw for slight gore, explosions, screams, overall very ominous and vague tour-guidey stuff):

sorry for the text overlap lol, this was very inconveniently sized for screenshots.

anyway, yeah! possibly the most unnerving thing in the game so far (aside from those lost text stickers...). but, as you can tell, I'm gonna focus on the gold and red text. fair warning, I don't really know what to make of this, but I think there's some connection...

first, gold. this is, if we go off what I previously thought, the "truth". My current theory is that this gold is true of within or outside dreamscape- in other words, the dreamscape cannot alter that thing in the gold text. It's there, regardless of how the dreamscape screws other things up. The "truth" in the dreamscape isn't necessarily reliable, since dreamscape seems to fuck with everything, but gold is apparently truth, so we're sticking to that. That means that bloodshed, mind-opening (?), and pressure-releasing (???) is... true? It's kind of interesting- the other things in gold we've seen are statements with meaning, and this... kinda isn't. However, it could imply this is actually what's happening in the Dreamscape. Some kind of deranged, creepy thing that the dreamscape/ the Family is doing while everyone else is on this cool-looking vacation. I have no idea why that line, of all the lines, is gold, but it's certainly not something someone trying to make Penacony look good would say! That's all I know.

Not much I know about why the red one, specifically, is red either. Are the instruments/music fake? That's certainly a recurring motif in Penacony, between bands in the Golden Hour and Robin being a songstress, plus Ena's "Beyond the Sky Choir", their exclusive faction, which fell apart upon their death. Something about Ena being swallowed by XIpe will certainly be brought up later, I'm almost totally sure. It's also interesting it gets cut off by static, without even finishing the statement(I think). I have no idea what to make of these- I just needed to point out the similarities between this tape and the dialogue.

Also, the tape itself is suspicious. According to Woolesley, there are multiple, appearing all over the Reverie (Dreamscape) and sometimes even messing with the Dreamscape.

First of all, why the hell is he telling us this very classified-sounding info? Also, he literally might pop up next to you- it's inevitable that you give him the tape at some point, really showing how The Family is cracking down on these.

Also, who's making these tapes? Why are they leaving them around the Dreamscape if they know it'll be taken? What's with these side effects/corrupting? And what's the relation between the tapes, Acheron, and Aventurine/Black Swan- are those things revealed in the tapes things only those three are aware of, or care to tell tb? It's really weird, especially since they're apparently in Clockie statues? Also, why tapes even- the tapes themselves seem corrupted(or censored?) weirdly, judging from the lines, and also just... why would anyone make these? Someone against the Family presumably wouldn't do rebellion in such a way, and someone within would have no reason to create this at all- is the Dreamscape itself making it? it's the only thing using both red and gold text...

there's probably some connection to Clockie, since that's who is most likely talking in the tape... and that's the statue we found it in too. Clockie is sus in a whole host of ways- don't even get me started, but I'm not sure how they relate to this theory just yet.

I have no idea. The tape is super creepy, but things probably will clear up a bit in 2.1!

tldr/clarification(sry for rambling so much): red text = lie/subjective/ easily changeable, to the dreamscape at least

gold text= "truth", dreamscape is unable to change it(?)

ena probs will have some lore relevance along with Robin, who seems to be the center of this "truth" for the moment

the bizarre tape is very mysterious and questionable, with nothing solid that we know about it- however, it uses both red and gold text, which automatically makes it suspicious even beyond what it's saying directly

what the hell is the family cooking up? i don't know, but it's probably not good! (for us, at least)

thank you for reading this lightly-proofread, very rambling theory/speculation- you are an angel for making it this long!

edit: so number one- I've added a reblog to this post- plz check it out, it has some other details from the Chadwick quest. and also, there's this Youtube video that mentions the red text in the beginning! It has a very similar idea to mine, but the thing it mentions is not an option I made (I accepted Acheron right away lol, so I didn't grab this detail). And the entire vid is pretty cool, so you should see it!

[lesbiansanemi]

for the director's cut ask: it has been well over a year since i first read it and my memory is a bit unclear, but i've always wanted to ask you about last sunrise tbh — in particular i have always wanted to know how you came up with the concept, the shinobu torture scenes, and though this is more of a passing thought, i have wondered about your plot choices that are both adjacent to canon and wildly different, mostly on the subject of tamayo's role and the whole. succeeding at turning demons back. if i am remembering right. <3

Omg yeah yeah yeah yeah! Actually, a lot of these things are very intertwined!

Human and medical experimentation, gore, body horror, and slow, forced transformations are all things I have greatly enjoyed... pretty much since I can remember. Idk what the hell that means about me and my psyche, but we'll choose not to dwell on that right now lmao

So basically, I sat down, and wanted to come up with a fic concept that incorporated these things. And thus the base concept of last sunrise was born, which was Kyojuro goes through a slow demonic transformation, and Shinobu decides to experiment on him

It also gave me the perfect opportunity for something else I had wanted to explore, which was Shinobu's "mad scientist" tendencies, as well as her vitriolic hate for demons, her suicidal desires and tendencies, and her insistence that she is right and correct, and the drastic measures she'll take because of that, and the poor decisions she'll make for the sake of all the above things, even at the detriment of those she cares about

Actually, the fic was originally supposed to end just after Kyojuro manages to escape from Shinobu and Akaza finds him. The original ending was supposed to be very, very open, and was essentially just Akaza's promise to make Kyojuro human again. That's part of why the Shinobu torture scenes feel so much like a climax. They originally were!

But, inevitably I decided that was too open of an ending to be satisfying (both to myself, and readers). So I sat down, and decided to plot up until they at least met Tamayo. That would explain why Kyojuro's transformation was slow (as readers wouldn't have gotten that information otherwise), give renkaza the closure of actually getting together, and give a lot more hope for Kyojuro, and heavily imply he would become human again

And I planned to end it there

BUT THEN I essentially said "oh we're this far, just finish the damn story of canon." And we got the version of last sunrise that is posted!

Tamayo got such a major role partially because I love her character, but also because Tamayo is meant to parallel Shinobu. The first third or so of the fic is focused on Shinobu's scientific study of demons and the harm it causes, while the second third is focused on Tamayo's scientific study of demons, and the good it brought about. The final third of the fic is about their expertise being forced to combine. While it is technically a renkaza fic, it is completely held together by Shinobu and Tamayo, and was plotted with them in mind almost more than Kyojuro and Akaza themselves

Which is also why Shinobu lived but Tamayo still died. They both wanted death and peace. Tamayo was allowed that because she made the "right" decisions and had earned her right to rest. Shinobu... did not do that, so she was forced to survive and better herself

Which that leads to the canon divergence, I mostly swapped around who lived and died during the final battle to a certain degree, and then everything that happens with the cure. The reason I changed the deaths was I tried to factor in the results of Akaza switching sides, which meant not only fighting on the Corps' side, but Giyuu and Tanjiro would not be fighting him. So more characters technically survived! Like Genya, Muichiro, Shinobu. But... I did trade Giyuu for them

The divergence of the cure links back to all the focus on Tamayo and Shinobu. The final cure that Kyojuro, Akaza, Yushiro, and Shinobu all used was imperfect because it was Shinobu who made it, not Tamayo. It was one last point to be made about Shinobu's science vs Tamayo's. While it's true it being imperfect was largely linked to Akaza's blood being so different from Muzan's and that's what Shinobu's cure was based on, had Tamayo been there, it would have made them something FAR closer to human than what it did

But ultimately, that imperfect cure brought about the happiest ending for Akaza and Kyojuro, because despite everything, after all they went through in the fic, I wanted them to end it happy and content. They were at the mercy of Shinobu and Tamayo throughout the entire fic in one way or another, so I thought they deserved to get the happiest end their science could provide after all they went through for the sake of it, which was ultimately more important to me than adhering more closely to canon

Anyways! I hope this answers your questions! Last sunrise is a fic I'm really, really proud of, so I'm always happy to talk about it! Ty for asking! <3 :D

[stellar-constellations]

An Alliance (Part 6)

        Fem! Spy! (Y/N) x Yuri Briar

        Parts: One, two, three, four, five, current part, seven, eight, nine, ten (to be continued when Spy x Family has more Yuri content!)

        (Y/N) is given her own backstory that is important for the story!

        The setting for this story is based off West and East Germany's (because Spy x Family is heavily based off Germany in the 1940-1950) laws (or at least replicated to the best of my abilities since it's unknown what time period Spy x Family is exactly in, we'll go with 1950 for the sake of this story). 

        Historically-accurate women misogyny and mistreatment! Only small comments and historically-accurate laws (replicated to the best of my ability). 

        The story, plot, and settings might not match up to the Spy x Family manga as it's not completed and the manga is still being crafted.

        This series contains spoilers for the manga and anime!

        My dad read the Westalis newspaper where the headline was: “Ostania Threatens Westalis with Nuclear Warfare!” as me and my siblings played outside. He was outside on the porch watching us play in the sun. It was springtime, a nice and warm day where there were lots of clouds in the sky that helped with shade. My mom's nowhere to be seen, she's been gone for a while now. She left us when we were young so we didn't have a two income household, it made it hard to pay bills or cook dinners; but it taught me a lot about the real world, so I'm a glad I can see the bright side of it. 

        I had the rest of the day off from working at the bakery. The lady owning it told me to enjoy myself since things were really starting to look bright for us ever since Westalis and Ostania made that peace pact with us. I agreed, taking my paycheck and running home to go play outside with my siblings.

        My two younger brothers both chased my older sister around, playing tag and enjoying their youth. My older brother sat in the background (he wasn't much for socializing with us).

        My older sister had a pure heart and loved to spoil me as I was her only little sister. My two younger brothers were both troublemakers that very often got away with stuff (somehow nobody ever looked their way when things went south). My older brother never liked to hang out with us much, but I know he cares about us (he's just in his "I'm independent and don't need no family" phase).

        I don’t know why, but I decided to look up at the sky that day. Maybe because I wanted to see how long it'd be until sunset, but I found myself looking at something else. The clouds parted a path for a weird yellow thing in the sky. I gawked at it in amazement, before smiling and running to my dad in uneven zig-zags as any child does when they've not properly mastered balancing.

        “Dad! Dad!” I called out. “Is that a shooting star?” I questioned, pointing up to the sky. 

        He looked up at the sky, trying to see what I was talking about before his eyes widened.

        “Oh no.” He muttered, utter fear in his eyes and voice. “Everyone, get inside now!” he shouted.

        I looked at him confused, looking up at the sky in curiosity.

        “Why?” I questioned.

        “That’s a nuke!” he exclaimed, grabbing my arm as everyone ran inside due to his panicked voice.

        I quickly squirmed out of his grasp, scared of his sudden change of attitude. I didn't understand what war was; if anything, I thought it was good! Why else would neighboring kids be running around and playing games such as "cops and robbers" or "army"? Why would kids be playing a game that glamorizes the death and suffering of others? 

        “N-no! I have to make a wish, otherwise it won’t come true! That’s what sissy said.” I spoke, making a dumb excuse.

        “We don’t have time, come here!” he spoke, lunging for my arm. 

        I quickly retracted, turning and running away with the excuse of “at least let me get my chalk!” 

        I was scared and confused of his sudden change of attitude. It won’t hurt me, I’ve never heard of shooting stars crashing into Earth. I was set it was a star, not a nuke (not that I was even aware of what nukes were at the time). Besides, the star will be tiny! When it falls, I can pick it up and keep it in my pocket as a pet. That's how naive I was as a child.

        “(Y/N)!” my father screamed, frustrated.

        I turned around, seeing how the star went from over my to hitting something I couldn’t see from far behind the house. I looked at it, shocked at the sky flashed red for a second, before it returned normal. A blackish gray mushroom cloud appeared behind the house, growing big by the second.

        “Woah.” I spoke, shocked.

        It took a second, staring amazed at it, before I was hit with powerful winds as the sound of glass broke and the sound of trees getting ripped from their weakened roots. I barley heard the screaming of people before I was taken in the powerful wave of wind as my ears started to hurt. My body slammed against a tree, knocking the wind out of me as I hit my head. 

        The wind stopped and I fell to the ground, not defying gravity anymore as I cried, covering my ears. I could barely even hear my own cries, just the sound of a church bell that hurt the headache I was immediately forming. I smelt something awful as I realized my vision was completely gone.

        I held my ears, desperate to hear the ringing stop, and cried, curling myself into a ball from the pain. I don’t know how long I sat there before I tried standing up, swaying side to side as I took a blind step forward, only to trip on something thick and fall onto my knees. I crawled around, desperate to find a sense of familarity, before feeling a sharp pain stab into my hands. I wept louder, not knowing what hurt me as my vision didn't approve. 

        I stayed on the ground longer, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Eventually, I regained my vision from this light, but darkness. It was black and white, I really can't explain it in words. It's just not something you can explain. 

        I looked down at my hands and noticed blood that came from my ears. I ran to go tell my dad, but saw my house crushed, barely standing. I looked around in the rubble, trying to see if my dad or any of my siblings were alright. 

        I saw a hand from the rubble and notice it was my dad’s from the size and skin tone. I tried to move the bricks and debris but couldn’t. I tried to tug his hand but to no avail. I gave up, sitting down on the ground next to the hand and resulted to screaming and crying, hoping somebody would hear and save my family and I.

        I don’t know how long I was there, crying as my ears rang miserably and how my body ached, but I eventually heard shouts and the sounds of heavy tires and machinery, and looked up. People in green and huge, huge tanks came around.

        I realized it was the military and cried, standing up and running to them.

        “Oh, shit. A kid’s alive!” someone shouted. 

        They had a terrifying gas mask on their face as they looked at me.

        “My dad! My family! They’re trapped under the house!” I cried, pointing. "You gotta help them. I can't do it on my own!"

        The man looked over and sighed, kneeling down.

        “I’m sorry, kid, but we can’t save them. You can't be there, the Ostanian army is here.” He spoke as another man came up with a gas mask in his hand and on his face. “Here, wear this. It’ll help you breathe.” He spoke, taking the mask.

        “It’s a miracle we got here when we did. Ten minutes more out here in this radiation and you could’ve died, that, or the Ostanians...” The other man spoke, muttering that last part to himself.

        Even though I was seven at the time, I knew what death was; however, I didn’t know how gruesome it was. I didn’t know how cruel people could be. When I thought of death, I thought of old people with gray hair dying peaceful in bed, not young people robbed of their lives and lying in their childhood home's bricks and their own blood surrounding them.

        “W-what’s gonna happen now?” I questioned. 

        “The military has a shelter going on right now. We’ll bring you there. After that, the state government is gonna take care of you. Probably put you in an orphanage.” The first man spoke.

        And yet, even though I was seven, I had no idea how kids could live without a parental figure. I had no idea how someone could live in a house full of strangers. I had no idea how to accept their death, or my own that would probably be nearby.

        The tank’s hatch opened up, revealing another guy in a gas mask.

        “Then after we’re going to go kill those Ostanian fuckers for this!” he bellowed loudly, obviously angry.

        "Rancher, could you shut the hell up?! A kid is present!” the second man yelled back at the third one.

        A white van pulled up, their windows tinted, iron prison bars covering them as the door opened.

        “Hurry up and get into the van. Keep your gas mask on too while you’re in there for extra safety.” The first man spoke, pushing me into the van. 

        I entered with my head racing and my heart pounding. There wasn’t many survivors they’ve found. Five people out of the sixty seated bus must’ve been here. Some napped while others cried, and some stared outside of the window with disappoint and rage to see their homes and families gone.

        I sat down alone, deciding to be another one of those people who bottle up their emotions and stare out the window as their head bangs against it from the bus’ movements. 

        I’m going to destroy Ostania for everything they’ve done to us. I thought to myself. They'll atone for what they've done.         .         .         It wasn’t long after that nuke dropping that I found myself in a large shelter where alive civilians and the military were huddled down. I saw those guys once and thanked them for saving me, to which they said it was their jobs. 

        I was still mad at losing everything I had in just thirty seconds, so I decided to try and find a way into the military to help Ostanias downfall. Despite my many attempts to get into the military, they declined me each time for being under 18 and for being a girl.

        I slammed my head on the metal table, ignoring the sting on my forehead as a military officer came up to me.

        “Hey, Net.” I sighed, lifting my head.

        “You keep doing that every time you don’t get in you’re gonna kill yourself before even getting your application accepted.” He spoke, taking a bite from his food.

        “It’s no use. I’m a girl” I groaned. 

        “You’re still trying to get in?” he questioned.

        “Not try, I am gonna get in.” I stated defensively.

        “Here.” Net spoke, sliding me a piece of paper.

        “What is it?” I questioned, picking up the paper. 

        I recognized the form instantly from stealing it so many damn times. 

        “Woah. Dude, why are you giving me this? You could be in serious trouble!” I whispered.

        “Instead of remaining calm and peaceful like how you'd normally fill the form out, just fucking obliterate the thing.” Nat spoke.

        “Oh.” I muttered. “Thanks?” 

        “No problem. Hurry up and get to Gerald. But if anyone asks, then you stole it…again.” Nat ordered.

        “Yes, sir!” I chuckled, standing up from my chair and stealing a pen from Nat’s pocket.

        I ran to the military counselor’s tent, sitting down and quickly filling out the form with the most unprofessional and colorful vocabulary I never even dared to utter alone to myself. I reread it proudly, determined to get that position in the Westalis military. I opened the tent and sat down, seeing the military counselor was there with one of the squad captains. 

        "Excuse me, sir and sir." I acknowledged, bowing to show my respect. 

        I handed the paper to the counselor as he groaned, already knowing why I'm here and what this paper meant.

        "Yet again, you show up in my office like the stubborn little brat you are. I told you, children, and especially girls, aren't welcome in the Westalis mil–" Gerald gasped loudly, his face going pale as he stared at the paper with white-shot eyes. 

        He quickly flipped the page, and the next page, rereading the papers over and over again. 

        "Y-you..." he spluttered. "The audacity of you!" he shouted, grabbing a nearby yard stick and slapping my wrist with it.

        "Oi! You fucking wad of earwax!" I yelp, retracting my hand back as his face went even paler.

        "In front of the recruiter too?! Brats like you have no chance into the Westalis military!" Gerald spoke.

        "You bet! I'm done with your fucking shenanigans! You better count all your lucky pennies because if I don't get that position in the military, I'm gonna sneak my way into them tanks and rapid fire your tent to match my hometown!" I shouted, slamming my hands on his desk and taking his yard stick, slapping it against his wrists instead of mine.

        I ripped the paper out of Gerald's hands, giving it to the recruiter instead. 

        "Take it. You read it instead, you're the boss; not this leprechaun." I spat.        

        The recruiter kept a straight face before taking the paper. He read it, unamused and blank faced as I impatiently tapped my foot.

        "Twenty-six times I've entered this tent within two months, and no results. I'm not going to stop until I join your squad." I stated, standing my ground as I stood straight and tall, hoping to seem determined enough to make up for all my weak strength and sour attitude. "I know that I don't look like much, nor do I act it. I'm seven and a quarter. I'm not very strong or tall, and I've barely lived long enough to even be a pre-teen, but I'm smart enough to understand the government and give advice of a seventy-year old, and I swear to whatever God there is that there's no fucker in Ostania that going to want to cross me after they see what I'll do with their soldiers." I spoke. "So if you could give me a chance and prove myself to you, that'd be really fucking fantastic." I spoke, allowing the colorful word to brighten my sentence.

        "You're seven?" the recruiter spoke.

        "And a quarter." I spoke. "I can be useful! I'm fast and stealthy and my size helps me hide good. Ostania would never expect a girl to fight in the military, let alone a kid." I smiled. 

        "You realize you'll most certainly die within two days, maximum?" the recruiter questioned.

        "Sometimes you just gotta jump to know what's there." I replied, determination filling every ounce of my soul and body.

        The recruiter stared at me for a second, before looking at Gerald. 

        "Do you have this kid's other application forms?" he questioned.

        "You're not seriously going to allow this brat? Out of everyone?!" Gerald questioned.

        "Shut the hell up, Gerald." I snapped, slapping his wrist with the ruler. "Ain't nobody gonna join; everyone's too afraid to die or they're suffering from some major PTSD. You aren't gonna find a gal as determined as me to get this job." 

        "Give me her recent form." The recruiter demanded. 

        Gerald mumbled alienated words under his breath as he searched through his desk, pulling out a paper packet I gave him last week. The recruiter scanned through the papers for a good three minutes, before setting the papers down. 

        "You're recruited. Welcome, (Y/N) (L/N), to the Westalis Military." The recruiter spoke, a small smile on his face as he held out his hand. 

        I shook it proudly, cackling as Gerald tried his best not to break down to tears in the background. 

        .

        .

        A month went by with me in the military. It felt longer than it was, and it was absolutely exhausting. Just because I was a kid doesn't mean that the recruiter took any mercy on me. 

        ("You've got the body of a crazy kid, and the mind of an even crazier adult.") The recruiter once told me. ("If you give up now, I'll kill you myself for making me look like a fool to have you join us.")

        I experienced many bombings, tank firings, gunshots, and many comrades die. Nat and Hujo (that second man that helped me when Nat found me in Luwen, Eastern Westalis) both died in combat, their bulletproof vests being false advertising. I saw ####, a boy from my hometown, here. 

        I feel like I should’ve been happy to see someone I know alive, but me and #### never really got along well, even before the war. While he was seven years older and a quiet kid, he was a total pushover and aimed to please people. I was the rowdy and opinionated kid, ready to kick someone in the stomach and shout insults if they decided to pick on me. 

        We both lived in the small poor town of Luwen, the more poorer side of Westalis, but we made it work. And despite our many differences, we both had one common goal: to appease our parents. It amazed me how I never once saw him cry despite everything we've been through. He was older, taller, and stronger than me—something I was extremely envious of—and he became a squad commander after too many deaths, of my damn squad!

        I hated him for being tough. I hated him for being an amazing liar. And I despised that he knew how to keep his emotions to himself, while I frequently lashed out and cried. I was predictable; and he was a closed-book, and it pissed me off beyond belief. 

        Rations were getting smaller and smaller, but it wasn’t too much of a problem for soldiers since they kept falling like dominoes, but it was a problem for the survivors we kept finding. The survivors came with missing fingers, broken limbs, and charred faces, it was almost like Ostania wanted the civilians of Westalis to suffer, and that just pissed us off further. 

        I sighed, resting my head on the cool metal table. My body ached from the training I’m out to before having to be dispatched out for another rescue mission. 

        “You should eat that shit. You’re getting glares.”

        I sighed, lifting my head.

        “Sup, Rancher?” I spoke. 

        Rancher was off-duty for a few days after Nat and Hujo died. Rancher was best friends with the two of them for years, so he really took it to heart when they died. He was the loud and rowdy guy in the tank when Nat and Hujo found me. He looks like total shit too. His tanned skin got paler and his brown eyes seemed dull and darker then before, the death of his two buddies really took a toll on him.

        “You look like shit.” I admitted.

        “Not like you look any better.” He chuckled.

        “I’m still growing, so I have a chance at being tall and pretty; you’re too old to keep growing and you still look like a rat’s ass, just worse.” I laughed.

        “The bigger the bark, the smaller the dog is.” He smiled, causing me to glare at him.

        “Yeah? W-well…the stupider you are…the uglier!” I retorted, having no idea what I said as he laughed.

        “Alright. Well, hurry up eating. I’m going to join the rescue mission before I get kicked out.” Rancher spoke.

        “You sure, dude? I can come up with something for you. Like, something you ate went bad and you have food poisoning or some shit like that.” I suggested.

        “Nah. I figured Hujo would be pissed off and Nat would be scolding me if I stayed in bed any longer.” Rancher smiled sadly.

        “Take it easy, man. I’ll look out for you during the mission.” I spoke, patting his hand on the table before quickly shoveling my food down my throat, ignoring the plain and slightly repulsive taste it had. 

        I took a large sip of water to drown out the taste, then stood up.

        “Rightie-oh!” I spoke, faking a British accent to cheer Rancher up. “Shall we go?”

        “Yeah, sure.” He stood up—stretching and complaining about back problems—and walked out of the shelter’s roof to join the other soldiers. 

        The squad was—unfortunately—led by ####, who took the fake name “Roland” from Luwen to join the military. I was already in a sour mood thanks to #### and we haven’t even left!          .         .         A total fail. That’s what the mission was. Rancher was down, clutching his arm as he looked down at the wound. He had a hole in his chest and another in his forearm. The gun must’ve not been sighted since they missed all vital organs. 

        What an amateur… I thought, stuffing the wound in his chest with gauze.

        “The bullet is stuck deep in there. It’s not something I can remove, but the nurses at camp will get it. Show me your arm.” I demanded. 

        I grabbed his arm, slapping his other hand that tried to stop me.

        “Kid, you gotta get out of here. They’ll find you soon.” Rancher spoke, taking heavy breaths.

        “Shut the hell up, Rancher. You and your big ass mouth. I know they’ll come here!” I snapped. 

        “Then fucking abort the mission. You shouldn’t even be in this whole mess.” Rancher sighed.

        “Don’t try and give me final words like you’re dying; you’re going to live and I’ll make sure of it.” I spoke, determined as I stuff gauze into his arm, causing him to hiss at the pain.

        “You need to live and do whatever you can to complete that goal you decided to join the military for.” Rancher argued.

        I heard a branch snapped and quickly grabbed my gun, listening and shooting into the trees, as someone screamed and fell onto the ground not to far from here. 

        “Shit. I’m low on ammo.” I sighed.

        “Just get out of here.” Rancher ordered.

        “No.” I defied. “If I die, then I die. But I won’t. That mission can be postponed 'cause we’re both going to live. Now stop bitching.” I spoke, wrapping his arm with bandages to hold the gauze. 

        “You’re stubborn.” He growled.

        “You’re stupid.” I retorted. “Can you stand?” I questioned.

        “If I stand, I’ll pass out.” He spoke. 

        I nodded, grabbing his walkie-talkie from his belt and switching it to the channel our military agreed on using.

        “I need medical assistance. Soldier was shot twice and I’m low on ammo. His wounds have been caused and wrapped but he needs professional assistance. Over.” I spoke, repeating the line over and over until I heard a voice.

        “Affirmative. What’s the coordinates? Over.” The voice questioned.

        “Uh. Shit, probably...” I pulled out the map I had, fumbling with it. “Like... like 50°46'46.8" North 10°00'09.1" East? Over.” I spoke into the walkie-talkie.

        (Author note: These are random coordinates I found in Germany and are no means accurate.) 

        “Negative. We can’t send anyone there, over.” He spoke.

        “Well why the fuck not? Over!” I questioned.

        “Enemy territory. Abort the premises with or without the soldier. Over.” They spoke.

        “We’re in enemy territory because you fucking sent us in this mess, fucker! Over!” I hissed.

        The line went silent before speaking: “Abort the mission with or without the solider. Over.” 

        “This is (Y/N) (L/N)! I can’t carry him! Rancher is down, over!” I informed.

        “Oh, shit. You’re the kid? The seven-year-old kid?” the radio spoke, surprised that he didn’t even say “over”.

        “Yes! And I can’t get Rancher to a safe place with my size and strength. I need either back up or medical assistance! Over.” I hissed.

        “…Leave Rancher and get the hell out of there. War isn’t something a kid like yourself should be in. Over.” The man spoke.

        “I'm sick of everything telling me what I should be doing! I chose this path. And I’m choosing to save Rancher, and I swear to god if you don’t help us I’ll haunt you when I’m dead because mine and Rancher’s blood will be on your hands. Over.” I spat. 

        The line went silent for a bit, before it picked up: “We’ll see what we can do. Over.” 

        I sighed, grabbing my gun and unloading the magazine chamber to check how much ammo I have. 

        Five bullets. As long as I don’t run into any trouble, I can make it. I thought to myself.

        I grabbed Rancher’s gun to see how much ammo he has, not too surprised when I saw he had blew through it all. He's always been unsparing in our resources, whether it was food or ammo.

        “You can leave. They said they’ll probably do something, so I’ll be fine.” Rancher sighed, his face pale as sweat ran down it, whether from the heavy uniform we’re wearing in this heat or the blood loss.

        “Probably." I shrugged. "However, I told you I ain’t leaving. I told you I got your back, man.” 

        There’s no way I can turn back and leave, that’s how Nat and Hujo died. 

        “And do you have an off switch? Can you just shut up before the enemy finds us?” I sighed.

        “Can you not be so stubborn?” Rancher retorted. “And I’m not the one that was yelling in the walkie-talkie two minutes ago.” 

        “And?” I dared, causing Rancher to roll his eyes.

        I heard a branch snap and immediately raised up my gun.

        “Wait! It’s Roland! I’m on your side.” 

        #### stepped out of the bushes, causing me to groan and roll my eyes.

        #### looked like shit. He had a small stubble and had large eyeballs, obviously his sanity has deployed ever since the war officially set off, but so has mine, I supposed.

        “You’re so damn lucky I didn’t shoot you.” I sighed, placing my gun down on the dirt.

        “Yeah…” #### sighed, relieved that I actually didn’t. “Is Rancher okay?” 

        “He got shot twice; in his chest and arm. The bullets are too deep to get by hand, we need medical assistance. I’m afraid if we don’t get help, either he’d die from blood loss.” I sighed. 

        “Smart thinking. Good job.” #### spoke.

        I ignored the praise and the fluffy feeling in my chest, glad to have been seen as useful and smart, but I don’t want to here praise from that prick.

        “Yeah. I know from the med class I had to take to join...” I muttered. 

        Not like you didn’t take that class too. I thought, sarcastic.

        Gun fire broke out nearby as you can hear stomping from not to far off.

        “Crap…” #### muttered.

        “Pick him up and let’s go!” I whispered harshly.

        “I’m not going to be able to carry him with the heavy uniform and run and shoot.” #### stated.

        “Of course you can, you have to save him. That’s why you’re here!” I whispered, ignoring the tears that started to build up in my eyes from the hopeless feeling in my chest. 

        “We have to go.” #### spoke, calm and collected despite the gunfire and steps getting louder.

        “No.” I hissed.

        “(Y/N)!” Rancher hissed. “Fucking go. I would never forgive myself if I’m the cause of your death; not when you have so much left to do.” 

        “B-but… I can’t abandon you…” I whimpered.

        “I want you to listen to me. Leave and go do whatever you want with your life. Please. Do something I’ve never done and continue your legacy.” He chuckled.

        “No….” I muttered, unsure of my words.

        “We have to go!” #### whispered harsh.

        “No!” I hissed back.

        #### stared at me for a good second, our eyes rivaling each other before he swiftly scooping me up, balancing me on his shoulder, and running.

        “Hey! Let go!” I squirmed. “We have to go back and get Rancher.” By now, the panic and hopelessly fully took over, causing the dam in my eyes to break. “Please. We have to go back…” I whispered, my bottom lip trembling as more tears fell.

        “Sorry. I’m sorry.” #### spoke, his voice shaking.

        I could tell it was hard for him to leave Rancher too. Despite not knowing Rancher well, he was ####’s teammate, an ally, an amazing tanker with an amazing sense of humor, and a human. But for me, most importantly, he was my friend, and he reminded me of myself; stubborn and ready to fight no matter what. It��s hard to trade one’s life, even if they asked for it. 

        “I’m sorry, (Y/N).” He repeated. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything for Rancher, or our families. I can’t change the past to where I was stronger or where this war never happened, but I can at least change the present. And I want us to live.” 

        “I hate you.” I whimpered. “I hate how tough you are. How calm you are. And how you always know what to do and say. You stupid pushover and golden goose. I hate how you’re always Hercules.” I whined softly as more tears came down my face as I listened to the gunshots and yelling fading away as #### ran.

        “I’m not as perfect as you think.” He chuckled poorly.

        His tone surprised me, and I turned around to see his face. His blue eyes crying out their own sorrow as he focused his eyes ahead. I focused my attention back to the blurry ground as I allowed myself to cry some more.

        Sometimes. Me and #### are different people; stubborn and smart, strong and weak. Other times, we’re the same person with the same goal; trying to appease our parents, or just trying to survive.

        He stopped, placing me down and catching his breath as I sat on the ground, tears still in my eyes.

        “You’re not injured, right?” he questioned.

        “No.” I muttered. “Why’d you join the military?” I questioned.

        The question came out of nowhere, yes. But I wanted to know why #### joined. What could his reason be? 

        “When Ostania crossed the border. In just 60 seconds, everything I cared about was taken away from me. All that was left, was thing I despised. And that’s more than enough for me to pick up a gun and destroy Ostania.” He admitted.

        “We’re pretty similar…. Same reason I’m here.” I chuckled, wiping the tears out of my eyes.

        “How’d you even get in?” he questioned. "You're too young. I had to fake my age and name."

        “I had to do a lot of pestering and cussing.” I laughed. 

        A shuffle in the bushes was heard, causing me to stand up and #### to draw his gun as someone appeared out of the brushes. It was a man with curly brown hair and circular glasses and a piercing on his left ear. 

        “Bwah! Time-out! Time-out! Stop! Don’t shoot!”

        Did that grown-ass man really just “time out?”

        Surprisingly, #### held his fire, sizing up the man.

        “You’re Ostanian Infantry, yeah?” #### spoke.

        “Gah! Westalis soldiers—is that a kid...?” he muttered the last part confused as he held his hands in the air.

        I glared at him and pulled my own gun out, causing him to begin freaking out again.

        “Where is your gun?” #### asked.

        “I don’t have one! I’m unarmed! I surrender!” he quickly spoke, then sighed. “I… look, I deserted. I just couldn’t take it anymore. But I got lost and have been wandering around in these mountains for two whole days… so please can you give me something to eat?!” he shouted, putting his hands together and begging.

        “I don’t have rations to spare on dead men. Say goodbye.” #### spoke calmly.

        “Wait! Please! I’m begging you! I don’t wanna die having never been with a woman!” he screamed loudly.

        Men are so simple minded… I thought to myself, yet chuckled as #### did.

        “All right. I can give you one cigarette.” #### spoke. 

        “Oh, thanks.” The man spoke, taking a cigarette has #### lit it.

        “I didn’t know you smoked.” I spoke up.

        “There‘a a lot of things I do that you don’t know.” #### commented.

        “Oh, okay, creep. Like that wasn’t weird.” I commented myself.

        “What’s with the kid?” the man asked.

        “Are you the one holding the gun? No? Don’t question it.” I huffed, holding up my gun.

        “Sorry, sorry!” he quickly wailed.

        Soon enough, #### and the man started to click together, a weird combination in this war.

        If I go back now, I wonder if Rancher would still be alive, if unspotted from the Ostanian military, that is. I thought to myself, sighing as I drew my focus back to the conversation.

        “But you know, they actually do some interesting research at that university!” the man spoke. “Like, they got all these test subjects and showed ‘em a film of a guy getting slapped, right? And they showed signs of discomfort ‘cause their brains emphasized with the guy’s pain. And that means its human nature to avoid violence.”

        “But the thing is they ran the experiment again, and this time they told the subjects that the guy gets slapped by his lover because he cheated on her. So what do you think happened? When they watched it, the subjects brains showed signs of pleasure!” he explained.

        I think if I saw someone get slapped, I’d laugh without even knowing the reason. I thought to myself. Maybe if I convince #### to slap this guy, we can see. I thought impulsively.

        “I mean, doesn’t it freak you out? They have no idea if they’re being told the truth, but once the idea’s in their head, they do a complete 180°. Weird, right?” the man spoke.

        I feel like this is going somewhere. But I can understand what he’s saying. I thought to myself. I looked at my gun, feeling the weight in my hands and the heavy burden it was to carry it. 

        It’s be easier to drop it and walk away. I can barely hold this weight on my own. Someone else can; someone stronger and less sensitive. 

        I looked at ####, who seemed slightly frustrated. 

        “Just say what you’re trying to say!” he ordered.

        “I’m just saying, isn’t it stupid? This whole war between East and West, it’s all the result of some diplomatic fiasco. So why is it that all of us worthless peona gotta be the ones to clean us their mess?” he sighed. “They tell us to hate each other. So we fight. And then we die. It’s the most pointless thing in the world.” 

        I didn’t know it at the time, but I was playing as a small cog in the machine—we all were. But the things with machines, is that they’re specially designed and assigned certain tasks. But once a cog is lost, the machine cannot perform its chores unless another cog takes the place of the previous one. It's easy to replace an old, broken cog with a new, naive one.

        To put it in simple terms, the government, the war, needs us in order to win, and when we die, we’re easily replaced by another solider. 

        I’m surprised I’m not dead yet. I thought to myself. I have no major injuries and I still have a comrade with me—I doubt most of our soldiers have that. 

        All of the soldiers sent on this rescue mission are probably dead (with the exception of me and ####). 

        “Yeah, except it’s you Ostanians that started this war.” #### pointed out.

        “In the East, they say it was the West that started it.” The man stated. “They say that first bombing of Luwen was a false flag operation. They’re even rumors Westalis got operatives from some other country to incite the Ostanian Army was doing it.” 

        I turned my head to ####, curious of his reaction.

        I’m an open-minded person when it comes to politics or law as long as it doesn’t go against my moral code. I’d rather research to the ends of the Earth for the truth rather than believe in a simple lie. I’ll take this man’s words and place it on the back burner for when the time is right, to where I can find the truth, whether it’d be today or tomorrow or years from now.

        Some Shakesphere I am, I thought to myself, watching has #### held his gun to the man.

        “That’s just blatant propaganda to get your country off the hook!” #### shouted. 

        “Yeah! Yeah, right, of course it is! I’m just saying, how could a bunch of foot soldiers like us know the truth about anything?” the man immediately spoke, putting his hands in the air to prove no threat as I groaned.

        #### isn’t really all that open-minded, though.

        “That day! That bombing! Those bombs killed every last one of my friends! There’s your truth!” #### spoke.

        “Our families died in that bombing. Whether Westalis or Ostania started it, it’s no way for anyone to die.” I spoke, closely eyeing ####’s finger as he held it on the trigger.

        “Well, I’m in the exact same boat!” he spoke.

        #### gritted his teeth and kicked the man down to the ground, his glasses getting knocked off his face. Just then, gunfire from the bushes danced in the wind, causing me to yelp and duck to the ground, helpless as a I felt a searing pain in my side and leg. A bullet hit ####’s helmet, but luckily it didn’t pierce it.

        “Gah! The Ostanian army squad that’s been chasing me! You just had to try and shoot me and give our position away!” the man complained. “Well, no way in hell I’m letting them catch me! See ya! Thanks for the cigarettes, I guess.” He yelled, running away.

        I crawled to #### using my body to protect his down body. 

        His ears are probably ringing since the metal helmet just got hit. I thought. 

        “If you can run, go away. I’ll be fine.” I spoke through the gunfire.

        #### huffed, getting up on his knees and picking me and his gun up. 

        “I’m not gonna abandon you! Not when I have the power to save you!” #### yelled through the bullets.

        I sighed.

        He’s just as stubborn as me. But he should really let me die. It’s not like there’s anyone alive who’d miss me, and ####’s using me as a replacement for the friends he couldn’t save. So there’s no point for me to live, and all I’ve been is useless and problematic. I couldn’t save any of my friends, family, comrades, or even myself.

        “Thanks for being such a suck-up.” I spoke, wincing at each step he took since it threw my body around like a rag doll, hurting my wounds.

        “Let’s save the tears for when we get back alive.” He gruffed.         .         .

        What am I doing? Getting emotional like this? I hate getting emotional. I thought, snapping out of my thoughts and rubbing the tears from my eyes. I guess that's another reason I quit being a spy. I thought. 

        I don't really like to use violence anymore. I'll fight and shoot if I have to, but I don't like turning to it unless it's necessary. I'm afraid if I pick up a gun again, then all of my anger and sadness would return and control my actions just like it did before.

        ...That's stupid. I can't believe I just lied to myself in my own head.

        The real reason I don't want to fight is because it hurts more than anyone can imagine. When people see war movies or read the books, they always think "yeah, I can do that." But once the first bullet flies, they all follow. When the sky has turn gray from tank smoke and fires from the bombings. When the bullets fall from the sky like rain and you're ordered to engage in battle; you don't want to. Who would want to?

        Nobody wants to actually die. When they're in the face of danger, they're looking for a way to fight or a way to flee. When you're actually experiencing something as stressful and traumatic as that, you realize that every plan you've been brainstorming inside that little head of yours had ran away with your bravery and rationality. The only thing you'll be thinking of is a way out, a way away from the men in guns, a place to hide or a weapon to protect yourself with. Humans are made with fear; it's how we survive. 

        Fear is a human's best friend and worst nemesis. Fear navigates you away from danger, and it also forces you to think unclear. Fear is one of the human's survival instincts, so when you find it hard to breathe or your chest starts racing; don't ignore it.

        I sighed, turning my body to Yuri and observing his face. 

        He's seriously so annoying. He's always so focused on work and how I'll betray him. He's probably always thinking about his sister, I wouldn't be surprised if he was dreaming about her. I thought, reaching my hand up and letting my intrusive thoughts win as I poked his injured forehead lightly, just barley any touch.

        "You. Are. Stupid." I spoke, believing the words I said with every poke. "But..." I paused, thinking of what to say to the unconscious Yuri. "I don't think I'd want to be anyone else's wife." I admitted. "Don't think it's a compliment though, jerk." I huffed, going back to poking his forehead until I got bored. 

        I sighed again, trying to close my eyes and sleep, but the silence and the dark really started to bother me. I could hear the steps of the neighbor's above us, or is there something crawling on the ceiling and watching me. I could hear the air conditioning, or is it a monster breathing? Or the neighbor's opening their doors, or is that our front door?

        The bedroom door creaked open and I froze, my arms immediately latching onto Yuri as I kept quiet, my heart in my throat as I could hear it beat loudly.

        Wait? What the hell am I doing?! I should be protecting Yuri since he's unconscious!

        I gathered my nerves and opened my eyes, almost screaming once I saw a face staring down at me. They quickly covered my mouth, then spoke.

        "Don't scream. It's me." They spoke. 

        I recognized the voice as Twilight's and immediately felt angry and relieved. I carefully got out of the bed, gripping Twilight's sleeve and dragging him out to the living room, delicately closing the door as to not disturb Yuri. 

        "I almost pissed myself, asshole!" I hissed, slapping his arm. 

        "Sorry..." he whispered, then cleared his throat. "I just wanted to know why you're quitting the spy industry." He spoke.

        "Oh ho ho! Is the ever so great Twilight actually caring about me?" I teased, then cleared my own throat. "In actuality. I don't like risking my life all the time. It's not fun to get hurt and worry about if you'll ever see the people you love again." I sighed. 

        "What are you talking about? You don't have a lover—" His eyes widen, voice silently before he looked at me, mouth gaping open and shut like a fish. "Y-you actually love Yuri?! I thought you were kidding!" he questioned.

        "Tsk! Of course not!" I exclaimed, slapping his hand. "I want to be able to live long enough to have a lover, and in this case, Yuri is my 'lover!'" I spoke with quotation marks on my fingers.

        "How'd you meet him?" he questioned.

        "Oh yeah. Some mole ratted me out like a little bitch to the SSS when he got caught, then they caught me after a long chase that lasted a few weeks, next thing you know, I'm being interviewed and signed a contract to work with the SSS in order to keep my life—" the words came out of my mouth before I could think of the consequences from them.

        I started to open and close my mouth like a fish (and like what Twilight did earlier).

        "So, you're leaving because they've got you hostage?" Twilight spoke.

        "No! No!" I quickly shut down the idea. "Well. I mean, I don't want to work with the SSS, and I don't want to work with Westalian Intelligence either. I just want to live a normal life, but then this happened." I sighed. 

        "So there's nothing between you and Yuri?" he questioned.

        "Nope." I spoke, popping the p.

        "And you're sure?" Twilight questioned.

        "Of course I'm sure, why do you care so much?" I questioned.

        "Because he's the enemy!" Twilight hissed. "That, and he's the one killing off our spies. You don't care about that?" he spoke.

        "Of course I care." I snapped, offended that he would think I wouldn't. "But I'm not going to mope about the past and get myself killed. Besides, it's not like the Westalian Intelligence cares about if I ditch or not." I sighed. "But they'll kill me if they know I'm in the SSS, so you better not spill it. I told them absolutely nothing about the people in charge or even you, Twilight. So you better keep your mouth shut because I don't care if we've known each other for years or if you're the greatest spy, you cross me and I'll find a way to make you regret it." I threatened, pointing my nail to his throat.

        "Alright. I understand." Twilight spoke calmly. "But you're sure there's no feelings attached?"

        "Yeah. I don't need to be worrying about that stuff. I'm only here so I can live, and trust me, he doesn't care about if I live or die either." I smiled.

        "I don't know, you two were quite something today." Twilight spoke, causing my face to heat up.

        "W-well, of course! I didn't just work on hacking into databases or gathering information inside forces, you know. So, you're not the only one who can lie and disguise themselves. Remember, I trained alongside you, so I know almost everything you know." I spoke, turning my head away to hide my face. "Besides, he's more of a jerk behind closed doors." 

        I sighed, remembering his douche personality. 

        ("Just so you know, I'm not looking for this to be a real thing. When we're in public and at work, we'll act close—but don't expect anything kind of special treatment behind closed doors. Our 'marriage' is just a piece of paper that can easily be destroyed. The only thing that we have in common is work; nothing else." The second-lieutenant spat harshly as he walked closer to me, standing tall as he looked down at me in more ways than one.) 

        Yeah, he's a mega douche. I thought. I still wanna know his damn problem...

        "Alright. Good." Twilight spoke.

        "What about you and Yor. I don't know about you, but I almost facepalmed eight different times in five minutes. You need to get Yor to work on her acting skills." I pointed out.

        "I know." He sighed. "But she's just so..." he paused, thinking. "She's a little...simple-minded, I guess." 

        "It runs in the Briar family." I laughed. "Now, you should leave before Yuri wakes up and freaks out. He doesn't really like you, if you haven't noticed." 

        "Yeah." He spoke, fixing his coat. "Thanks for your hard work at the Westalian Intelligence. I hope we'll meet again." 

        "Don't think because I'm leaving the force that you're never going to see me again. You've been a close friend of mine for years now, so I consider you my family. Besides, we're in-laws." I teased. "And even if we never see each other, I'll just haunt your ass from beyond the grave." I joked.

        Twilight chuckled. "I wouldn't expect anything less. Goodbye, (Y/N)." He spoke.

        "Bye, ####." I responded.

        He stood there for a second, shocked to hear his birth name after so long of using Twilight, before smiling and parting.

        I'm not too sure why they gave #### the codename "Twilight" but I know they gave me the codename "Vixen" because I usually went undercover, disguising myself in the night and manipulating others to get information out of them (I'm not too fond of it either, but I convinced myself that business is business).

        When we got our codenames, we were told that our old names meant nothing and that our old lives don't matter anymore. I agreed to the terms, but there was no way I was gonna forget my past, not when it's made me the person I am today. 

        Twilight left, closing the front door as I locked it. I looked at the time, noticing it was 1 A.M. 

        Damn. Tonight's been a long one. I thought, sighing as I stretched and walked back to the bedroom.

        Yuri was still dead asleep. I carefully observed his face to make sure he wasn't faking it in case he heard the conversation. I grabbed Flower and dangled it over his head, seeing for a reaction, but none. I poked his cheek, making sure his eyes didn't twitch before concluding he wasn't faking it.

        Good. It must be the alcohol that made him pass out. I thought.

        I crawled back into bed, placing Flower in my arms and lying on my side to face away from Yuri. I concluded I didn't like the position, and switched to facing Yuri. He was still in the same spot as earlier, still facing me. I grabbed his hand and held it, believing that his position was comfortable enough before sleeping. 

        Parts: One, two, three, four, five, current part, seven, eight, nine, ten (to be continued when Spy x Family has more Yuri content!)

        Want more Yuri content? Check out these headcannons and one shots!

        Yuri Briar x Sick! Fem! Reader

        Slightly mean! Yuri Briar x Fem! Reader

Yuri Briar x Fem! Reader headcannons + other fandoms!

        Have any requests? Check my masterlist to see the characters I write for: Masterlist (Please request, I have too much free time and too little fics).

[arctic-space-penguin]

Ao3 down = me sad 😭

here's raph to get my mind off it (it came back up as I'm making this)

tw: major character death, coughing up blood, mention of tuberculosis

oh boy, this one is probably going to be the worst one in terms of way to death 😭. Those who draw Raph skinny are sitting on high thrones here lol. Tuberculosis sucks and unfortunately for plot, Raph is gonna have to be immune to the treatment 😞

---

Leo looked over the log Donnie made one more time.

Month one: Raph showed small signs of healing, but they reversed to be even worse

Month two: Raph is still getting worse. Skinnier, sicker. He has to go to the bathroom so he doesn't leave blood anywhere else. His breathing is getting worse too. No amount of any treatment -- human or otherwise -- is working.

Month three: (empty)

He didn't understand. The standard treatment didn't work, sure, great, they're all immune, but even the custom made treatment not working? What did they ever do to have this happen?

He groaned, sliding a hand down his face, and putting the log to the side. Halfway to the kitchen, Mikey suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Woah, Miguel, where are you going?" Leo asked.

Mikey didn't even spare him a glance before slipping past him to the medbay. Leo turned to watch him disappear. A hand on his shoulder startled him.

Donnie flinched when Leo faced him. "S-sorry. He... knows."

Leo sighed, putting on a brave face and easy smile. "He was bound to find out sooner or later."

Donnie hung his head for a second then raised it back up to stare at Leo's face. "We might have to say goodbye to him tonight."

The slider's smile faltered, but didn't fall. Leo wrapped his arms around Donnie and was surprised when he didn't pull away.

"I don't want to say goodbye, Leo," Donnie hiccuped.

Leo pushed him away to see his eyes. "Even if we do end up having to, we all have each other as comfort. We'll get through this. Together."

Donnie wiped his tears away, murmuring a "Thanks, Leo," before heading to the medbay after Mikey. As soon as Donnie was gone, Leo let his expression and smile fall. All he wanted to do was cry, but he had to be strong for a little longer. Just a little bit...

"--longer," Splinter whispered. "I'm so sorry, Raphael."

Raph opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was coughs and blood. Mikey hid his face from it in Donnie's plastron. Leo barely registered April gripping his hand tighter, eyes focused on the blood and hands itching to clean it away like it was never there. Splinter had gotten that faraway look in his eyes he had when they were all younger.

"I'm the one who should be..." cough. more blood. "...sorry."

Everyone snapped out of their respective stupors at the sound of Raph's shredded voice. They all scrambled to say he had nothing to be sorry for, but he stopped them by raising a hand. A hand that shouldn't look like it did.

Donnie hesitantly, slowly, reached out his hand to take Raph's. They were the same size now. As much as Leo would like to break down at seeing it, he still needed to seem strong. Crying could wait.

Mikey, however, was the complete opposite. The tears streaming from his face could make an ocean. Leo tugged his arm from April's grasp and approached Mikey to offer himself up for a bone-crushing hug. Donnie gave him a thankful yet reproachful smile. Raph tried talking again.

"Raph's sorry for leaving like this..." the snapper rasped, managing not to cough.

"You did not choose this, Red," Splinter reminded him.

Any reply was replaced by coughs, coughs, coughs, blood, blood BLOOD. Leo was barely hanging onto restraint now. When it all finally stopped, Raph's hand that was still in Donnie's slipped free and dangled off the side of the cot the large snapper shouldn't have been able to fit on.

Raph released his final labored breath, light of life draining from his eyes as they slid closed forever. Donnie sobbed, Mikey ran from the room, April hid her face in Raph's plastron, Splinter stared ahead listlessly, and Leo?

Leo fell to his knees and wailed.

[feather-dancer]

February is drawing to a close which means it's time for the round up again. Being a shorter month, continued cold weather and a week getting wiped out it's been sluggish. Still, it's not all bad as I'm happy to report:

As long as there are stars in the sky - Chapter one has been scrubbed

A Heart of Glass - Chapter one has been scrubbed

Focusing on Heart of Glass first, that chapter didn't need all that much fixing up outside the expected paragraph with dialogue issues and run on sentences. The opening had remnants of when it focused exclusively on Douxie meeting Morgana (If via Claire) again so this was cleaned up to flow a lot better. Otherwise it's been slight tweaks in wording, the odd typo, tense changes, removing redundancies and a surprising amount of right sentence, wrong place. There's been a few little additions here and there though nothing too dramatic, more pointing out Archie a smidge sooner as an example.

When these chapters are scrubbed will be putting the pov character in the chapter name just to make it clearer much like the Writing Memes have.

Ended up gaining another half a page and because I was curious, screenshot the before and after word count when it was updated:

Vs.

As long as there are stars in the sky though that was as expected: A slog. This was the third attempt to clean up that chapter and boy did it need it. As well as paragraph fixes, odd typo, removal of so so many redundancies and run on sentences, did a lot of other things as well. Did you know past me never bothered to put Trollish translations IN THE FILE? Well for chapter one they're there now plus some alterations! Sometimes I couldn't figure out a paragraph's original intent so had to strip it down and rebuild the thing. Not too often but Enough. Been some random pov switches that needed correcting which did mean some Archie dialogue was lost though saved it on discord. Quite a bit of dialogue in general has been tweaked to help with flow and just generally make more sense in the context? Smidge more Archie at Zimroc to further push the three of them get on so well given how important that will be. Did find a moment where time was a bit out of whack which has been fixed.

A very minor plot element has also been changed, specifically to put the amulet in the box sooner. Doesn't affect anything whatsoever just meant having to change a bunch of stuff because of it.

Back on the Trollish a moment, the most annoying part is without a doubt the html. If you caught me while doing that throughout the day there would be the updated version of the chapter, Trollish then the old version. It's much easier to put the html around existing text as you can double check it's working correctly... And also doing that as you reach it when scrubbing like this because it's such a pain to refind. If you were someone who did, sorry! Couldn't think of a way round it.

Ended up with bang on two pages with all the changes and here's the before and after word count comparison:

Vs.

Currently the Shame Chart is looking like this:

Please note: These thoughts of you is not included on the above due to being an already posted oneshot but will be scrubbed as well.

As per the polls both Stars and Heart of Glass chapter 2's are my next targets! I may temporarily wander off to chuck words in something else to give me a change from edits given I've been doing it non stop for a smidge over two months now. We'll see.

Also weather please warm up I am fed up of being chilled this is getting silly now.

[patrochillesvibes]

O and I have an other question how do you think Achilles will react once he finds out about the fact that Patroclus had slept Deidameia. Because I do believe Patroclus haven’t to Achilles about it .

<3 <3 <3

Ah, the single plot point in TSoA I disagree with.

🎵How do you solve a problem like Pyrrhus🎶

So if we’re all gonna suck Homer’s dick, then let’s all get on the same page that Deidamia isn’t in the Iliad. Or the Odyssey. You also gotta be careful with any source material mentioning Deidamia as most of this content was part of a smear campaign by the Italians coughDantecough.

Pyrrhus is such a random character if you think about it. Achilles was not married, otherwise Agamemnon wouldn’t keep trying to get him to marry his seemingly endless supply of daughters. Pyrrhus isn’t labeled as a bastard, but what else could he be? Achilles would’ve had to have knocked up some chick.

And isn’t it strange that Achilles would do this? I don’t want to say it’s not in character, but it seems strange compared to his prophecy-focused life. (Also, Patroclus and Achilles don’t have little bastards running around the camp, so do we really believe they’re fucking the slaves? If they’re fucking the slaves, where are the babies? Birth control and abortions were not that good in 1250 BCE. But I’m getting super off topic now.)

This is why I personally believe Achilles found a random baby, adopted it, and had Mother feed him ambrosia.

I’m very passionate about ^this headcanon of mine.

Now back to TSoA…

First off, remember that Patroclus is a LIAR. He is not just full of bologna, he’s made out of bologna. He wants us to believe he’s a feminist? Anti-war? A doctor? Achilles is perfect? Patroclus PLEASE!

But you have to respect the lies because TSoA is essentially an autobiography and lying is like the first law of autobiography writing.

I’d also like to point out the clever literary trick at the end of TSoA. The book ends with Patroclus and Thetis chatting about Achilles. She says “Speak, then” to get Patroclus to share his memories. Thus, the book is not so much an account of his life, but essentially all the memories he had to share with her. He wants to show her how glorious her son was, the side she never got to see, the human nature she shunned, Achilles’ mortality. So of course he’s going to highlight the good, even enhance it as well as downplay or even lie about the bad.

But back to your question…

What happened at Skyros? Patroclus wants us to believe a lot of non-con was going on. I low-key have a very messed up theory about what actually happened and why it happened, but I don’t want to get into it rn a blogger on here might be unhappy bcs of a related ask I coincidentally just sent them. So for simplicity's sake, let’s assume that the non-con did indeed happen. I think he told Achilles a half-truth. Something to the effect of mentioning having comforted Deidamia and given her an official farewell (of the husbandly kind) on his behalf. He used a lot of double-meaning words to allow Achilles to interpret as he pleased.

And how did he interpret what Patroclus told him? First he was relieved that he would not have to deal with her again. Then he was his usual dumb blonde self (Patroclus calls this 'trusting', Pat pls) and took the words at face value. And I wouldn't blame him for it. When traumatic things happen to you, you do what you can to cope.

And please don’t take this as victim blaming or non-con denial, but the last lines of Chapter 13 never sat quite right with me.

Sorry to keep harping on the lying. Part of me thinks the scene with Deidamia was either a hallucination-false memory sequence to reinforce that patrochilles is 2-bodies-1-soul -what happens to Achilles happens to Pat; and part of me thinks this was Pat’s sly way of showing Thetis how she hurt Achilles by enabling the non-con. Sadly, we'll never know the truth, so it's up to you what you want to believe.

I hope this rambling rant answered your question. Thank you for the ask! I LOVE LOVE LOVE The Song of Achilles and am capable of ranting and raving about it for hours at a time 😘

[butterflydm]

The news about Tanchico does confirm that when Rafe said a closer adaptation of TSR, he really meant a close adaptation, because that was definitely the easiest storyline to shift to another city that would appear again later on if he wanted to combine storylines (Perrin's plotline could only happen in the Two Rivers, and Rand's plotline can only happen in the Aiel Waste).

So I think a reread of TSR is in my future, lol, so I can refresh myself on the story beats.

Tanchico means Egeanin, I would guess. Otherwise you'd move their story closer to everyone else's action. So the show likely plans to keep the pressure on re: the Seanchan.

It does make going to White Tower feel even less likely (and I already had the likelihood of it pretty low) because that would be a LOT of ping-ponging for Elayne and Nynaeve, to go from the west coast to the middle of the continent and then back over to the west coast in the space of something like two or three episodes purely dedicated to traveling around. At least for Egwene, the White Tower is kinda 'on the way' to the Waste. The White Tower is definitely NOT on the way to Tanchico from Falme, lol.

The biggest question that I have is how long we'll get before the characters split up into their various plotlines and if any of them come back together again at the end of the season. From what else Rafe said at NYCC, it sounds like they are not dipping very far into TFoH at all, because he talked about focusing on a single book this season. There will definitely be things from books 1-3 in there, because we know Elaida, etc. have been cast and need some kind of introduction, but the main focus will be book 4.

A pretty good chunk of TSR does take place before anyone goes to the Waste, so I wonder how much of that we'll get. I do expect us to get the official final breakup of Rand & Egwene, though I doubt it will be comedic like it is in the books. I feel like they shouldn't rush right into Rand & Elayne afterwards (which is a major reason that I do hope they're planning to reunite Elayne & Nynaeve with Rand's side of the storyline at the end of the season, because that gives some space in between the breakup and then Rand and Elayne having serious emotions about each other), and Rand & Aviendha are built for a slow-burn. Plus I would expect Lan and Nynaeve to get some time together (their only time together in s2 was Nynaeve's vision in the third archway) before they split up (for the rest of the season?).

If Doman is the one who carries Elayne & Nynaeve to Tanchico, then that's the set-up for him to meet Egeanin there. Then Elayne and Nynaeve could potentially take a Sea Folk raker at the end of the season to reunite with Rand's half of the cast? But that really depends on how quickly Rand's side of the story is moving.

I definitely don't remember all the plot beats of Nynaeve & Elayne's side of TSR, so that reread is in order, yeah. But their TFoH plotline of having Nynaeve and Elayne just wandering the continent for most of s4 because Nynaeve can't remember the word 'Salidar' would feel like such a random & pointless sidequest especially since Rand & Elayne and Nynaeve & Lan still need a lot more weight in their romances at this point (and I'm saying that as someone who likes a lot of their circus arc in TFoH).

Even with knowing that they'll be following TSR more closely, I am definitely expecting a lot of surprises in s3. They did a really good job in putting in some elements in this season that I was not expecting but that I really loved (having Mat be the one to give Rand the wound in his side was so galaxy-brained of them; and having Elayne be the one to heal it really tied together her original meeting with Rand into the different way that the show has introduced her).