#plenty of stuff is just coding and that's what transformative works are for

[an-ruraiocht]

90% of the time when i see reviews and posts saying "this book needed editing" i don't think the reader have any idea what editing actually entails. usually this is actually code for one of several "problems" with the book:

it's too long, or it's slower paced than this reader's preference. they believe "editing" would mean making it shorter

it has a heavily descriptive style, which the reader doesn't like. they believe "editing" means paring every sentence down to hemingway-style prose with no adverbs

it doesn't follow the very rigid "save the cat" style 3-act story structure, disrupting the reader's sense of narrative tension. an editor, they believe, would've made sure it did

there were a few typos or formatting errors, and they believe it's the editor's job to catch these (it's not, it's typically the proofreader and the typesetter who have responsibility for that kind of thing)

and finally, most often:

the author had different narrative priorities than the reader, who thinks an editor would have made the author change their priorities.

the thing is, there are actually issues with editors in trad publishing being overworked to the point where things aren't getting the thorough, thoughtful editing that they need to be the best version of themselves. there are plenty of badly-structured, poorly-researched, and clumsily written books out there. moreover copyediting is typically freelance and perhaps because of that, this is the area where i see the largest number of issues: continuity issues, grammar issues, factual errors etc that someone should've spotted and didn't.

but this is not typically what people's "this needed an editor" reviews are focusing on. most often it just means they didn't like the book and they've decided editing is an all-powerful force that would have transformed it into a book they liked. but that's not how it works. and disproportionately what this comment means is that the book doesn't match what current fashions have decided is The Correct Style to write in

"this book needed an editor" if it's traditionally published, it had one. like. by definition. it was an editor who bought the book. that doesn't mean the editor did a great job but they definitely existed. there were probably at least two (acquiring editor who does the dev edits; copyeditor who does copyedits), and the proofreader, and a bunch of other people besides.

also i think people think editors are the ones who like. implement the changes. but they don't. they give comments and recommendations and ask questions and the author is the one to act on them. the editor will not rewrite the book. they will not fix the problems themselves, they will highlight the problem and the author will figure out a fix for it, or they will decide they don't agree that it's a problem and leave it as it. and a lot of the sentence-level style stuff is entirely on the author so if they don't have an ear for the rhythm then nobody's going to fix that for them. editors do a lot less than people seem to imagine they do, tbh

anyway

for reference—

structural/developmental edits: is this chapter in the right place and does the plot make sense and is the characterisation consistent and effective

line edits: is this sentence in the right place and is it as stylish as it could be

copy edits: is this sentence grammatically correct and consistent/factually correct within the story/its world and do the spellings follow the publisher's stylesheet

proofreading: are there any typos in this sentence and was the formatting preserved correctly when it was typeset

[olderthannetfic]

Are there fandoms where the amount of male fanfiction writers significantly outweighs female writers? I think there was a survey or study that proved that female fandom goers tend to gravitate towards transformative ways of engaging with a work (so fanfic and fanart etc), while male members tend to gravitate towards archival methods (wiki, writing guides, etc). I know for a fact that there are plenty of male fic writers though. The only fandom I can think of where men dominated in fanfic circles is My Little Pony

--

Supposedly, Ranma had a lot back in the day, but I frankly doubt that they were an overwhelming majority.

Men don't all just compile canon wikis or collect action figures. The true difference I've noticed is that cis dudes are socialized to expect to get something for their labor. They, broadly and on average, show up more writing spec scripts or derivative but saleable works.

People researching this tend to be far too focused on the actual fic part, but I think it would be more valuable to look at it in the context of unpaid labor in general. Cis dudes do a lot of unpaid coding labor, but it tends to be stuff that will get very obvious payoffs from their communities, and it's directly relevant to getting jobs. Many of the less prestigious volunteer spaces are dominated by women. It's a whole brew of who expects what, who's underemployed and thus has the wrong kind of free time, who has job prospects beyond unpaid labor in that field, etc.

Anyway, maybe there are some more corners we don't know about, but I would not expect to find all that many fandoms of any real size where the men vastly outnumber the women.

[oneefin]

ec puzzle hunt 2

ecph2 write-up time! spoilers a-plenty - avert your eyes if you care, keep reading if you dare

for those out of the loop: the enchanted castle puzzle hunt, or ecph2, or ecph2024, was a very hard, decently long puzzle hunt featuring 45 puzzles at or near the difficulty of mit mystery hunt. i solved this with my group of friends on huh?, but we merged with a subteam of the mathemagicians for extra firepower (and to see what solving with them was like!). this turned out to be a very good decision

i thoroughly enjoyed this hunt and thought the puzzles were all written very elegantly, although some of them are definitely not for the faint of heart. there was enough tough, grindy, deduction-y, research-y stuff in the hunt for me to say that it's not really small team material, at least at my skill/knowledge level - so i'm glad we tag teamed for this.

what puzzles did i do/like?

anyway, let's talk specifics! here's the list puzzles that i personally made a major contribution to:

artifacts (game id + what to do)

oil and water (logic + extraction)

choose your own permutation (black box behavior)

sauce code (figuring out everything)

dichotomous key (fitting things into the second key)

musical numbers (logic)

ziggurats (coding the whole solution)

no clue matchmaker (first two extractions)

solution: meta bingo (4/5 of the subpuzzles)

music of the spheres (grunt work)

take me home, country roads (logic)

the escape artist (routes for both parts)

the tower meta (mapping + what to do)

chanel (solving for the variables)

quentin (finding the real solution)

escape the castle (this was just a big team effort at the end)

and the puzzles that i specifically admired for how stupidly hard they looked were:

a very long integer (lots of tough steps, esp for the second round)

the library meta (really tricky mechanic for the second round)

musical numbers (really difficult-to-track number theory logic)

on-site only - sorry! (astronomy knowledge check)

take me home, country roads (geoguessr knowledge check)

piece by piece (insane modern tetris logic)

THE BEAST (insane cursed scrabble logic)

there's plenty else i could name for other reasons, but let's just stick with that!

some images from the journey

rainy's taskmaster submission for "transform a work of art in the great hall in the most unexpected manner":

while thinking about the armoury meta, i spent 15 minutes creating a joke while a teammate was availlessly trying to get my attention in vc:

niv made the prisms for duality, which imo look way better than the prisms on the solution page for this puzzle

on piece by piece, david had an incredulity moment from having never seen a t-spin before

we heard teams found lots of ways to map out the tower meta, which took place in hyperbolic geometry, on google sheets - niv and i decided to tackle this by taking an image of the geometry and drawing arrows showing in what direction all the puzzles were. no spreadsheet necessary! this worked great for us

my miscellaneous solving stories

on the armoury navigation, right when we unlocked the ability to submit lists of states, the first thing i randomly tried (for no reason in particular) was sending in all-white followed by all-black in front of the sign that said 0, 63. this serendipitously turned out to be the exact thing you needed to do to solve it. you cannot imagine how i felt upon realizing that after doing it

another thing that happened: i cranked out the work for the first part of the escape artist, but i was having trouble parsing our extracted phrase FOES S WAS B-WARDS. i thought about it for like a full day and then it dawned on me while i was in the shower what this was actually supposed to say and what the second step was. i finished showering asap and we cranked out the second part before i had to leave for work that morning

THE BEAST was luny's biggest win during the hunt. we found some of the part-two answers (most notably STRYCHNINE) fairly early into solving, and we were having a hard time believing that there was a second, less good answer also hiding in there somewhere. we were eventually convinced after figuring out the hidden pawn promotion mechanic, which i can only describe as a monumental team aha effort given that we didn't have the armoury meta solved at the time! it looked like:

luny notices that every board has a p

...and that the p can be removed and the board still works

i notice that STRYCHNINE would work if there was an extra b on the board

i suggest changing the p to one of b/n/q/r, like in chess

david sees that the b spot is vertically above the p

david takes the p on each board, promotes it to the top, and starts finding working alternate solutions

we profit

okay, now about that final meta

this solving story is long enough to get its own header!

i think a lot of teams didn't notice that the answers to the metas in each round could be applied to their corresponding ghost puzzle until they solved everything and unlocked the hunt finale. so there were teams who were stuck on the last puzzle for a while because they essentially had to solve five brand new puzzles to get five brand new answers. we had the fortune to see this early!

for our team, we didn't crack any of the ghosts until quite late in the hunt - so we have a 106 hour solve time on chanel, and a 133 hour solve time on trelawney. the first ghost we managed to solve legit was midway through the fifth round, when we finally took down quentin. immediately after we solved it, david was thinking about all the state and element abbreviations we saw, and made a connection

we didn't know what to do with it yet, but it was obvious that this was related. the other two meta answers we had at the time, ENLIGHTEN ME and LIBRARIAN GETS ZIP, would obviously work for re-interpreting chanel and trelawney specifically - even if we didn't know how to solve those yet.

our first moment of actually getting both solves was on THE BEAST, where as i previously described, we found something that worked (crazily!) as the secret mechanic. we worked out what both answers would be, and we made sure to enter the second one first to see what would happen. sure enough:

unlocking the final puzzle requires all 5 metas and all 5 ghosts solved. the last of these to fall was the tower meta, and by the time we did this, we already had four of the alternate ghost answers written in our sheet - the only one we didn't know was ☄, for which we had just gotten the answer MAXED IT OUT. so we knew that we had a decent shot of completing this meta extremely quickly - we just had to speedrun the alternate ☄ solve, and then figure out what to do next.

luckily, niv knew exactly what to do with this answer, and the final meta we unlocked after locking in all 5 ghosts was straightforward for us. we ended up finishing the whole thing in just over 30 minutes, and when the hunt ended, that was the fastest solve time for the finale!

so we're all pretty happy with how that went, even though the ordinary answers for the ghosts took us such a long time :)

[manyblinkinglights]

Okay I am able to work with my script again after removing it from the project and re-adding it, I am now blocked on "How do I tell it to lock only two of the three axes on this rotation constraint?" since the old syntax doesn't work. Staffers have helpfully told me several times that they weren't aiming for a 1:1 scripting side experience but also there appears to be No documentation anywhere for me to look up what any of the new syntax is. I have literally only ever found staffers on Discord giving befuddled players code snippets, that is the only place I've found example syntax to copy.

I think I'm just like, bad at this, there must be somewhere people go to find this stuff out, like maybe a secret file everyone else knows how to open. A staffer already told me that, I guess, modern code editors can like, fill in the namespaces they're supposed to be using automatically somehow...? I don't know anything about that... I have to type out myself whatever I'm "using," and no, I don't have a list of all the things I need to be "using," I had to search up people on Discord telling each other what they need to put at the top of their scripts.

But anyway. I can at least create all the gameobjects I need, give them names, and parent them together into a correctly-shaped Hierarchy. And I can create prefabs of the phys bone and contact scripts I need, and I can paste them onto the transforms that need them. And I can add the constraints I need, and the sources those constraints need, and the source weights that are necessary. My old code for updating project .anim files with constraint weights set by the user from the script still works. My old code for generating a poseclone still works, or will work with minor updates. That's a LOT I can work on for now. I don't know how to: lock individual axes, or set "free edit" flags so source and constraint weights can go negative. But there's plenty of time before I have to figure that out.

[mythandlaur]

Code: July Day 7 - Sports

Martial arts counts as a sport, right? (Disclaimer, I don't know anything about martial arts. In fact, I'm absolutely on Jeremie's side, here.)

...

"Hey, guys. So...what did you need me here for?"

Ulrich and Yumi are standing in the very center of the unoccupied gym, with a foam mat by their feet. When Jeremie speaks, they both look over at him in such perfect sync that Jeremie finds himself checking their eyes out of paranoia before the logical part of his brain kicks in.

Though, with the way they both simultaneously smirk at each other like cats that have cornered a very unlucky mouse, Jeremie can't help but wonder if whatever they have in mind might be worse.

"Hey, Einstein." Ulrich sidles over with his fists on his hips (probably because he's wearing his tank top and has no available pockets to shove them in). He looks Jeremie up and down, nodding to himself. "Not exactly gym clothes, but it shouldn't matter too much."

Oh no. Jeremie bristles. "I didn't know I was supposed to change--what's this about?"

"Relax, Jeremie, it's nothing scary." Somehow, the reassuring smile Yumi gives him does not make him feel any less growing dread, especially coupled with the glint in her eyes. "Me and Ulrich were just practicing the other day, and when we took a break, we got to talking."

"She said hey, you know Jeremie's been getting clobbered in the laboratory a bunch lately--"

"Okay, I didn't say it like that."

"--and then I said yeah, I wonder if there's anything we can do to help aaaaaand..." Ulrich gives Jeremie a feral grin. "We realized we've both been practicing silat so long that we could probably give you a few pointers."

Yep. It's worse than XANA thrashing him around the gym like a dog's old chew toy. At least he can't disappoint XANA.

Jeremie takes a step back, holding up his hands. "Why didn't you tell me this before I came?"

"Because you wouldn't have shown up," Ulrich deadpans, correctly.

"Now you at least have to hear us out," Yumi adds.

They both look incredibly pleased with themselves over this little entrapment, and in his heart, Jeremie knows he's already lost--the other Lyoko Warriors are the only people he's met so far that are as stubborn as he is. Which is a good thing, because if they weren't, they definitely would've given up on all this by now.

Still. "I don't see how this'll help. You can't stop a spectre by punching it."

"But you can slow it down," Ulrich counters, "I've seen it."

"Plus it's a great boost to your confidence."

"I'm plenty confident!"

"Sure, but when an attack targets you you fold like a wet rag." Jeremie leans back, surprised by Yumi's suddenly sharp tone. She seems to realize how that sentence had come out and winces. "No, I didn't mean it like that--I just..." She shakes her head, letting her sentence trail into nothing.

Ulrich glances at her out of the corner of one eye, clearly concerned. "Uh--maybe it'd help get Jim off your back about not being good at athletics?" he tries to offer.

"I can't. I'm just not cut out for that stuff, I'm not like you guys."

"You don't have to be," Yumi blurts out. "We just want to teach you a couple basics that might help you out. At least try it. Please, Jeremie."

Yumi's eyes are pleading, and Ulrich's brows are still knit in worry, though Jeremie can't tell who exactly the worry is directed at anymore. He really just wishes he could clip through the floor and disappear, but that's not an option.

After a stalemate that feels much longer than it actually is, Jeremie sighs. "Fine. I'll try it. But I'm telling you it's not gonna work."

The two brighten, and assure Jeremie that he won't regret it.

Jeremie regrets it almost immediately.

Even their pre-workout warmup practically wipes Jeremie out. It's true that what they're trying to teach him is pretty basic--just some stances and movement drills--but the two of them just seem to feed on each other's energy until he can't possibly hope to catch up. Yumi's abrupt transformation from caring but aloof friend to perfectionistic taskmaster nitpicking his posture is downright terrifying, and on the other side, Ulrich just keeps getting more amped up and intense, to the point where Jeremie worries Ulrich's actually going to ask him to spar. Their teamwork regarding his training is admittedly impressive--something Jeremie wishes they'd use half of on certain missions instead of turning them into an Olympic-level social gymnastics routine.

Jeremie genuinely does give it his best attempt, but his hands and legs won't coordinate the way he wants them to, he keeps losing his balance and flopping onto the foam mat like a dying fish, and he's fairly certain his hamstrings are about to start a riot in protest. Frustration quickly settles in despite Yumi and Ulrich's encouragement--they keep telling him things he needs to do better or practice more and he's clearly not good at it why should he bother--

He's not sure how long they go for, though it certainly feels like an eternity. However long it lasts, Jeremie eventually wobbles trying to match Ulrich's wide stance, falls over on the mat again, and simply refuses to get up.

"C'mon, Jeremie!" Ulrich's practically bouncing on his heels. "One more set!"

Thankfully Yumi, though her criticisms had been many, comes to Jeremie's rescue. "Actually, I think that's probably enough for right now."

Jeremie makes a strangled noise that he hopes adequately conveys his relief, rolling over onto his back and throwing his arms out to his sides as if trying to make a snow angel out of the sticky blue plastic. Ulrich looks vaguely disappointed, but nods, stretching his arms over his head. Yumi sits down next to Jeremie, also stretching out to touch her toes. It's probably some fell post-workout ritual, but Jeremie's not particularly interested in moving any more. He's already going to need to wash his sweat-stained shirt.

They sit in silence for a few seconds while Jeremie tries to catch his break, angling his face towards the gym lights to trace the smears all over his glasses. His hair's definitely unsalvageable, sticking to his forehead in messy clumps, and he can feel his own heartbeat in his arms.

He hears the door to the gymnasium open and tilts his head back, worried about a classmate (or worse, Jim) seeing him like this. The blurry shape he catches out of the corner of his eye is a familiar shade of pink.

"Aelita!" Jeremie quickly turns onto his stomach and tries to push himself up--his arms promptly give out and he crumples back onto the mat, groaning. "Bury me with my hard drives."

Aelita clamps both hands over her mouth, though it does nothing to stifle her loud snort. "I was wondering why you weren't answering your phone--no reason, don't worry." She looks up at Ulrich with a raised eyebrow. "What did you two do to him?"

"We were just trying to teach him some self-defense basics."

"Oh boy. I know you guys are coming from a good place, but I feel like you two doing that is like one of us teaching you computer science basics."

So is this what they feel like when he starts talking about math? Jeremie would really like to argue that it can't possibly be the same because at least his rambling isn't physically grueling, but he honestly doesn't have the energy.

"She's right," he says instead, looking over at Yumi. "I appreciate you trying to help, but I'll never be able to."

"We wouldn't have asked you if we didn't think you could do it," Yumi says, somewhat pained.

"Yeah, you've definitely got the stamina for it. Didn't you swim like half the waterways under the factory once?"

"What? When did I do that?"

Ulrich scratches his head. "Um, I swear I remember Odd saying that..."

"No, I remember it too," Aelita hums, putting a finger to her chin. "Because Odd had to bring him all the way back to the factory to run the Return to the Past and neither of them looked very good. It was one of the really early attacks, something about a gas that got into the factory..."

Ulrich snaps his fingers. "The laughing gas attack, that was it."

Yumi grimaces, rolling her eyes. "Ugh. Talk about simpler times."

"Okay, first of all, that was two years ago. Second, it was adrenaline because my life depended on it--which, might I add, would also cover any other athletic feats you might be thinking about as examples. Third, that was swimming, it's totally different!" That was probably the only somewhat-physical thing Jeremie wasn't terrible at. "It still got me, anyway."

"Still..." Yumi trails off again, chewing on her lip as if she wants to say something else. "...This might've been a little...intense. Sorry, Jeremie. How about you get something sweet from the vending machine on the way back, my treat."

The prospect of candy in the near future is just energizing enough to get Jeremie to push himself into a proper sitting position. Aelita laughs quietly behind a hand, though he can't tell if it's at him or not.

"...m'sorry, too," Jeremie mumbles. "Guess I should stick to the computer, huh..."

"Hey, it was your first time. You can't be good at everything right off the bat."

Jeremie bites his tongue.

He drags himself back onto his feet with help from Aelita and Yumi, straightening his glasses and sweaty clothes. "At least you tried it?" Aelita offers.

"True," Jeremie replies with a shrug, rubbing his aching elbow. "But I think I'm gonna keep letting you guys do the fighting, if that's okay with you."

[roosterbox]

Fic Rec Friday 4/7/23

Title: A List Checked Twice

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category: M/M

Fandom: Hannibal (TV)

Relationship: Nigel (Charlie Countryman)/Adam Raki

Characters: Nigel (Charlie Countryman), Adam Raki, Chiyoh (Hannibal), Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter

Additional Tags: Fluff, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, pure undiluted fluff guys, Marriage Proposal, cousin!Hannibal Lecter, Married Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Wedding Rings, Gift Giving

Summary: Long before he met Nigel, Adam made a list of things he wanted to experience with someone else, one day. As years spent single passed by, he forgot about the list... that is, until Nigel finds it. Plenty of fluffy surprises ensue.

———

Today’s rec comes to us from the varied and interesting world of the HEU - the Hannibal Extended/Expanded Universe, lol. More specifically, this is the ship known as Spacedogs. Honestly I didn’t expect to love this ship as much as I did, but wow. They are amazing. Also, it’s nice to have a character that is explicitly, canonically, 100% unequivocally autistic. Not coded as such, but textually referred to as so. It’s one of the concepts of Adam as a movie. Which is great. Idk how well they represent it in the movie (haven’t seen it!) but hey. You know what they say about the thought and how it counts.

Now about the fic.

This is some sappy ass stuff, my dudes. So sweet and lovely. They just *clenches fist* love each other so much, it’s ridiculous. And one reason I think this pair is so nice together - for all their differences in personality, despite one being neurotypical and one not, they understand each other. And like in any good relationship, they bring out the best in each other. In 95% of all Spacedogs fics, my man Nigel is WHIPPED but good for his Star, and he’s especially so in this one. He’s determined to show Adam that he loves all of his little quirks and idiosyncrasies. Even the ones that others looked down on. Also, no spoilers, but this fic features one of my favorite ridiculously sappy and romantic tropes in any romance story ever. Like it’s silly, but I can’t help but melt any time I read it.

And that ending, man. Bringing in the Hannigram for a cameo? The final cherry on top?? *chef’s kiss* That’s one bit that comes up every now and then in Spacedogs stuff: having either Nigel or Adam (or both!) be related somehow to Hannibal or Will. It’s not always a guarantee, but I love it when it happens, lol.

Call your dentist after this one, guys.

———

Next Week: *rubs hands together with evil glee* Oh man, time to get serious. It’s time for y’all to join me in rarepair hell. You might say that Spacedogs is rare, but here is their AO3 page:

And here is next week’s ship:

Yep. I’m bringing the pain. You may be wondering which ship it is? Your homework, if you want to prepare yourselves, is to watch the movie Welcome to the Punch and, after lamenting about what a terrible movie it is, please come join me in the abyss that is this pairing. This sailboat of a ship. That’s right, we getting Jacob/Max all up in this bitch.

Catch you on the flippy flop!

[mmx-code-crimpphire]

Headcanon - Delta Nano Development Part 2 - Code Expansion

Okay, so you know about the code expansion explanation in the last headcanon I wrote that was based around how Robot Masters were experiencing things, including Rock, Night Man, and especially Blues?

Well I did also say that Blues' Independence development was a big part in the development for X's free will AI. That is way more advanced than Blues', not for the fact that it can just evolve faster. That wouldn't be possible without the data collected on code expansion on Robot Master's experiences themselves, and studying what the properties of the Roboenza can do on Robotics itself and developing the technology to prevent any viruses from corrupting X's data.

NEW CHAPTER ON AO3!!

Reading @oofitsbethi's "Fallen Savior" fanfic, I thought that was definitely an interesting concept, and it definitely made the most sense. Since, to my knowledge, I do not think X's AI was ever explained in canon, and I hardly ever think of stuff like this on a dime. I usually ask other friends for help on stuff unless I know everything about the lore itself and how it works in canon. What I can do to change it slightly but still make it work.

I had my fair share of doing stuff like that in the Transformers fandom (albeit, I was still a beginner writer back in the day- any of you guys remember what fanfic I wrote, whaddup), so I had plenty to work with, and there was a lot to go off of in terms of terminology and mechanics, technology, hardware and software wise in terms of how machines and the Cybertronians themselves worked.

Here, for the Megaman fandom, from my understanding, we get the basics of how the Robot Masters work and what they do, and that's it. We get a few tidbits here and there for actual mechanics, but that's about it. We barely get an understanding of how X's AI even works. And it's based on variations of how it does, based on what version of the X series you're looking at.

All of those variations make sense if we put them all together and make it a less cohesive and complicated AI on what it can do. Since it's supposed to be forming what leads to X's potential. Same thing for his free will and how fast the code expands internally and doing whatever the fuck he wants.

Of course, some explanations of this coding needs specifics as well, such as the expanding code preventing viral infections as mentioned previously.

This is an explanation of more than just the "magic" element to Delta Nano, now, isn't it? Well, I don't blame you, since it does touch upon the technicalities of technology and the energies behind certain powers.

Now, I'll also go into a brief tangent that Delta Nano isn't equipped with chips officially. Hoooo nononono. They are installed into the Reploid's system once they're tweaked to their liking, and it's been tested multiple times. Axl and Lumine's cases are exceptions to this rule- sort of.

See, they have crystals they still use, the first four being prototypes, so they're unstable, and the other four are perfected, so they're controlled better by their owner aka Lumine. It doesn't have to be strictly connected to crystals, per say, but they do have the option to use crystals, and it's usually used up to four or less. Mostly one or two, since most reploids who want to use it don't know if they'll feel well controlled to use up to four, which is an understandable reason. It’s a breeze for both Axl and Lumine, but that doesn’t mean it’s a breeze for any other Reploid.

Would X want to have Delta Nano, is the next question. And to answer said question, no he wouldn’t necessarily want it. Now, his armors do come with them overtime, though they still aren’t utilized within his regular everyday armor. As he doesn’t use his armors very much to begin with, except with the moment for them to be presented and that's pretty much it. The exception being the Blue Jay Armor, but we'll also have to get into that another time.

He doesn’t feel he needs them. Except, he didn't realize he had it all this time, except it’s not brought out to its full potential. The Blue Jay armor harbored his Blue Jay wings he obtained, and his own code expanded to keep them after realizing he could, especially after Zero had acquired his own wings, them being Phoenix wings.

What about Zero's dark powers, you also may be asking? Well, that just staves off from the evil energy and maverick virus he master carries. Along with the experiences and memories he gained since being found after gaining amnesia. I'll probably make a part two to that as well. Maybe.

But that's all I'll input unless I make more development on Delta Nano again.

[taken-universe]

There's never been really a "me"

I've never existed.

I thought all along I was going to transform into something that I could call "me".

The fact is, after all of the things I've experienced washed away my sense of some kind of self, I was expecting to find a raw diamond, something that I could really take into my hands and to forge into whatever I saw fit. A kind of root code, that I could finally work on.

I thought I meant to be something. And I thought that this something, this project, this "new me" was going to present itself the moment the process was over. Silly me.

It turns out , this so called "me" is a series of little "I's" that I experience everyday, moment by moment, and these little "I's'" represent a tiny frame, each of the overall "me" that I'm meant to experience and be at that given moment. This sense of self can vary tremendously depending on wich interaction and objective I'm working on that moment. And what & who defines these objetives right now are mainly people that I could call much more strong "I am's" than me. And that doesn't feel as good as it used to feel when I was a person who could identify with a more well established Ego, preferences, likes and such. But I doesn't feel as bad as I used to either, when I could shut myself down for days and weeks of pure despair and self-pity, when something I planned, hoped for and nurtured so bad would or could not happen, just to discover later that nobody besides me would really care about it.

I feel empty right now, as an expression a friend invented last week, like a flying plastic bag, wandering around like time never existed, cause it has no function but only to be a certain thing with a certain use, on a given moment, and then be forgotten. I could float on the bubble of right now, in the timeless, emptiest and holiest space of Nothing, just to discover then, and never discover now, such thing as a sense of "I" ever existed. And if the concepts of "Time" and "I am" are equal, I should experience the creepiest existence of being nothing, at the same time I'm Everything, cause I'm here writing these meaningless stuff because of the sum of all the moments that led me here that are equal to a sense of "I am" divided by all the tiny frames that I lived. And this "I" is experiencing the flow of time, and the birth and decay of the most beloved things, just to see them fade away and be replaced by other beloved things that are going to rot and decay, just as the same of myself.

But I'm finding comfort in nothingness, and I'm learning to make peace with it. All my life I tried to be something really meaninful, something my inner child would be proud of. But it won't happen, cause I simply don't know how to be and how to build anything. I have plenty of qualities, but they do not include a strong sense of Self, much less coming along with these impecable & infallible set of values.

And now with the current state of things I must discover a reason to continue to experience these brief frame moments that I can call myself something other than Nothing. I have no such thing as courage, and I'm so tired from life now that I could sleep on the verge of an event horizon. However, for some reason, I now ended up living near this cluster of raw psychic power with some really weird and powerful people conceptually floating in it, and passing by me, and I happen to be married to one of them, and strangely enough he happens to love me more than I love myself. If I could describe the feeling of this realization, I would use the term "unexpected".

So let's see what happens next.

[quaranmine]

AO3 link and notes below the cut:

PEARL HAS APPEARED IN THE FIC!! Y’all, there were NOT supposed to be other characters than Scar and Grian (and briefly Mumbo) in this fic but she just snuck in. Also, my recommendation? Do not show up at anybody’s house uninvited for a vacation, it’s really rude to put that on someone else last minute. Like in some situations surprise visits are fun but I think a lot of the time…it’s just so stressful on the “host.” Pearl knows Grian well though, and she’s super worried about him, so her reasoning was that if she arranged it ahead of time he would have plenty of time to perfectly clean up his life and pretend nothing was wrong. Part of the reason she wanted to visit him was because she knew something was wrong. I think Grian’s friends and family, most of them in England but Pearl in Australia, have been worried for quite some time about how he’s doing, but living on a different continent is a great way to self-isolate. 

Also I shouldn’t have to say this but don’t read anyone’s mail, even if it’s out. Pearl is allowed to be a little dysfunctional, as a treat…. hashtag god forbid women do anything. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for friends to ask for financial help from friends, or for friends to take it on themself to help out where possible and maybe slip you something. but girl there’s a time and place for it!!! LOL anyway you know that the woman who created a whole cleaning service in HC S9 would be happy to help Grian declutter in this situation too haha

As for architecture, there’s a bunch of different programs but the one I’ve been using as reference for this fic is a 5 year degree with around 2-3 years of apprenticeship/internship/field training. It is generally a pretty intense job to get. Grian did his whole degree in England plus part of the training, but finished the rest and got his license while in Colorado. He did not have his license very long at all in the beginning of the fic, which is partly why he was so resistant to taking off work to go with Mumbo–he was brand new and had to prove himself! Also, architecture work often includes compliance related things in addition to designs (from what I have read.) Grian got demoted after his stunt in the last chapter, so he mostly does things like “contact the electrical company to get power to this person’s house” or “call the county to get information about the local building codes” and so on.  Mumbo is a mechanical engineer. 

Did you know it actually didn’t snow til really late in the season in Denver in 1988? It’s an interesting juxtaposition for how early the snow was in Yellowstone that year. I’m not from Colorado but from what I googled most ski resorts have at least limited runs open by Thanksgiving so I think it’s reasonable for them to go together. Higher elevation places in the mountains likely did get snow by late November. Anyway, I like skiing. I went twice as a kid and it was a lot of fun but unfortunately now i'm cursed with knees that like to dislocate so i don’t dare go again and risk injury

Also yeah I’m not gonna list out specific numbers but the long distance (especially international) rates WERE atrocious then, and grian is just not getting paid as much as he used to on top of having to cover all the stuff Mumbo used to. It’s not sustainable in the long run, both financially and in that it’s far too easy for him to isolate from everyone who cares about him. 

Finally, a  lot of the little bits of day to day lookout information I have comes from the book Fire Season by Philip Connors, that I’ve been slowly reading while writing this fic. I think I’m around 160 pages into it? It’s a very interesting book, I recommend it. You will also get a lot of information about forest fire history and wildland firefighting in general. So much of my information about when fires are left to burn, when they’re suppressed, when they’re monitored, helicopters and smoke jumpers, Grian’s work schedules and days off, etc all comes from that book. 

Oh, I finally mentioned Grian’s age in this. He’s 28, turning 29 in a few months.. That’s why he says he’s floundering on the cusp of his 30s. To be clear, I do not think there is anything terrible about being in your 30s. I do not think he is old. I do think, however, that he’s looking at a couple of fresh 21 year-olds doing a summer job in between semesters and thinking about how thoroughly he’s torched his own career and life (and how life has hurt him first) to end up where he is right now. 

Cicadas! Yes, England does not have them (as far as I could tell through research.) This is shocking as a Texan, given they have been the staple summer background noise of my entire life. I would not know what to do without them doing their little calls nonstop. Also, I lied a bit in that second sentence–England DOES have a species of cicada, but it’s so endangered it hasn’t been seen for over a decade and only lives in a specific forest. RIP. 

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Six)

Someone’s worried about Grian, and the Forest Service comes to collect Mumbo’s bike.

Chapter Six: 8,724

<< Chapter Five | Masterpost | Chapter Seven >>

The other half of the fifth chapter! I hope you enjoy this 1988 sequence especially, I was looking forward to it a lot (and it single handedly made the chapter so long it had to be split in two!)

No real CWs this time. I personally think that if you have made it this far then I don’t really have to warn you about the themes of loss and grief anymore, but just in case: yep, still very present.

November 20, 1988

It’s about noon on a Sunday, and Grian is…not doing much, actually. He has a thousand things he needs to do, ranging from cleaning out the refrigerator to trying to change his car’s oil to looking into a part-time second job, but instead he’s lying on the couch trying to watch TV.  Somewhere along the way he tuned out of the program and started staring at the ceiling instead, mentally tracing out the patterns in the spackle. 

The man on the drones on and on in the background, until he’s just part of it. Grian can feel himself starting to drift to sleep. 

Then the phone rings. 

Grian startles awake and sits up, scowling at it in the kitchen. He hasn’t the faintest idea who is calling him, other than maybe a telemarketer, but do those people work on Sunday? Well, perhaps they do. Everyone is home then, afterall. 

It rings twice more, so he gets up and answers the phone. “Hello?” he says. 

“Griba!” shouts a voice on the other end of the line. 

And–it’s a very familiar voice. 

“Pearl?” Grian says, just the slightest bit baffled. “Is that you?”

“Hi!” she says. “How are you doing? Are you busy?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “How are you? What do you need?”

“Can’t I just call to say hi?” Pearl asks. 

“Of course, but–”

“But the international rates?” Pearl says. Then she laughs. “Oh, shush, I know you were thinking about it.”

“Oh noooo,” Grian says. “I don’t care about that at all, we can talk as long as you like.”

 It’s a lie. He was definitely thinking about the international rates, and then immediately feeling bad about it because Pearl is a friend. He puts friends before money, of course, it’s just…well, it was expensive. But worth it! Pearl is Pearl. But every minute on the phone eats into his checkbook, and it’s hard not to think about. 

Pearl laughs again. “Well, I’m glad you don’t worry about that. Not that it matters anyway; this call is local.”

Local. Local?

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you were right Griba, I did need something when I called,” Pearl says. “Can you pick me up from the airport?”

Grian’s head is spinning. “You’re at the airport?” he says incredulously. “Like, in Colorado? In Denver? Right now?”

“Yep,” Pearl says. “And I need a ride. Well, I could go get a taxi somewhere. But I figured I’d ask my friend first. Are you busy?”

Yeah, busy falling asleep to daytime TV on the couch. “Um, no,” he says. 

“Great! I’ll see you there!” Pearl says. “Wait, how long will it take? I don’t know where you live, actually. Ooh, this is exciting! I’ll finally get to see your place.”

“Um, give me like half an hour and I’ll be there,” Grian says slowly. 

He and Pearl say their goodbyes for now, and after she hangs up he finds himself staring at the phone for several moments. What just happened? First of all, Pearl’s in Denver, apparently. Second of all, he did not know this was happening. Thirdly, his afternoon just got way more interesting.

He grabs his keys off the counter and makes his way downstairs. 

»»———-　　———-««

When he arrives at the airport, in the long line of cars waiting to pick people up and drop them off at the terminal, he does not expect to see Pearl waiting outside for him. Yet he picks her out instantly, a familiar face in a crowd of strangers. 

She’s bundled up in a black hoodie. The hood is up over her head, but he can see the long wavy tendrils of brown hair peeking out from behind it. Her hands are shoved in the hoodie’s pocket, and her nose is pink from the cold. When she exhales, he can see the faintest cloud of her breath. 

He can hardly remember being so happy to see someone before. The second he sees her face, any doubt or mild annoyance at her unexpected stay just melts away. 

He pulls his car up as close as he can to her, and throws it in park. She doesn’t know what car he’s driving, of course–she’s never visited him here. He leaps out and calls her name. 

“Pearl!” he shouts. 

She spins around and a grin breaks out on her face the moment she spots him. He races up to her on the curb and she throws her arms around him in a hug immediately. They cling to each other for a moment, before letting go. 

“Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you!” Pearl says.

“Oh, yeah,” Grian says. “A few years, right? Not since I’ve been here.”

“Ah!” Pearl squeaks. “I can’t wait to see it. I should’ve come for a visit so much sooner.”

Grian breathes a sigh, not of any annoyance or tiredness, but perhaps–of relief? Relief from what, he doesn’t quite know, but he’s so happy to see Pearl it’s like he can hardly speak. His breath clouds in front of him. 

“Let’s get you in the car,” he says. “It’s so cold out here, why weren’t you waiting inside?”

“Well, it might be cold out here,” Pearl says, attempting to pick up her bag. Grian steals it out from under her grasp before she can, though, so she just trails after him to the car. “But it certainly isn’t cold at home. It’s kind of nice, actually. Anyway, I wasn’t out here waiting the entire time, I just walked out a few minutes before you came.”

“Well, don’t freeze on me before you even get here,” Grian says. He loads her things in the car, and they hop in. He starts to navigate out of the airport traffic. “How long was that flight?” he asks. “I mean, I assume you flew in from Sydney.”

“Ugh, it was never ending!” Pearl says. “It was like 12 or 13 hours, and that only got me to Los Angeles. Then I had a connection here.” She glances at the clock on his dashboard. “Did you know it’s almost the same time I left?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. I left around noon on the 20th. Then I landed and now it’s around noon on the 20th again.”

“Wow.”

“It feels like I got put in a time vortex or something and they zapped a whole day from me. And then I woke up and I’m repeating the day again.”

Grian side eyes her in the passenger seat. “Are you, perhaps, a little tired?”

“Exhausted.”

He smiles just a little. “I bet you’re hungry too,” he says. “Let’s get lunch on our way back to my apartment.”

»»———-　　———-««

They get lunch, and it’s great. They talk about various, mostly mundane things about their lives over the past few years. They’ve kept in touch ever since graduating university together, even as their lives diverged on totally different paths on totally different continents. But that was mostly just letters and phone calls. It’s entirely different to be face to face again. It’s so much better to be face to face again.

Grian asks about her career in Australia. “So, have you designed the next Sydney Opera House yet?” he teases. 

Pearl gasps in fake horror. “Of course not! There can’t be a ‘next’ Opera House, it’s iconic!”

“Eh,” Grian says. “I think you could come up with a cooler one.”

She rolls her eyes affectionately. “Alright, stop it.”

“I’m dead serious. I think you could make a better one.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “Seriously though, I mostly just do office buildings.”

“Hm, well that’s boring,” Grian says and takes a sip of his water. “We for sure don’t need any more of those.”

“That’s what most of the work is,” she says. “Lots of new development to work on! So what have you been up to? Any interesting projects lately?”

Grian hesitates a bit in replying. The answer is no, of course. Pearl’s aware of his job from some of their previous communication in the past three years, but now that they’re sitting here face to face she clearly wants to hear all about it without the constraints of a phone call or letter. 

He just, well, has nothing to say. He hasn't even really received projects lately. 

He and Mumbo came to Colorado a little over two years ago after Mumbo was offered an engineering job in Denver. Grian had figured he might as well dust off his completely unused dual citizenship and follow him here–it’s not like it was even a difficult process for him. It was the perfect sort of adventure to follow up five years of intense schooling, and an interesting place to put his new skills to test. 

It had been that which enticed him to go with Mumbo. That, and the way his stomach had twisted when he thought about saying goodbye. They’d been inseparable for over a decade and Grian refused to accept a reality where his best friend lived so far away. Truthfully, Mumbo was a little apprehensive about moving to an entirely new country alone, so this had worked out perfectly. 

Grian would go with him. They’d split an apartment and get settled in for a while and experience life in a new country. Grian would finish the rest of his architecture field training in Colorado and finally get his license. Mumbo would work on creating machines and learn about computers. 

It was fine. It was fun. They had a good time–there were endless things to do, from skiing to hiking to rafting to biking. 

Then Mumbo went missing, and Grian was just…still here, but missing everything that was worthwhile. He was struggling. Not showing up to work. Getting demoted.

“I haven’t really had anything interesting to work on,” he says finally. “There was this one house–way too massive, really, and the owner could never really decide what he wanted but he wasn’t so bad. But then I had to leave to…” 

He trails off. Pearl glances at him and opens her mouth, but she rethinks it after a moment and shuts it again. She’s smart, and part of that intelligence is knowing when to not poke around. 

“Mostly they just have me working on codes and compliance right now,” he finishes quietly. 

It’s still an important part of the process, making sure that all of the projects are in alignment with local building codes. Sometimes it’s even frustrating, when he has to figure out things like getting a water line from whichever locality is closest for someone���s house perched high on a mountainside. 

But he doesn’t have any of his own clients anymore. He does work for his coworker’s projects. He doesn’t do any drafting. He doesn’t touch any blueprints. He doesn’t design anything. 

It’s not really the update that he wants to give Pearl. They met each other in university because they studied in the same architecture program. They spent long nights in the library together. He’s seen her rip up her papers in frustration when things weren’t working quite right, and she’s seen him start crying on the floor of her dorm room the night before a particularly major test. They graduated together. 

It just doesn’t look good. Of course, he knows Pearl very well. She isn’t going to think anything less of him. It’s more, well, himself that he has to worry about. 

Pearl purses her lips, and moves on. “Well,” she says, “that’s all very important. God knows we studied it enough. Don’t worry about projects, you’ll find some cool work soon.”

“As cool as office buildings?”

“With any luck, even better,” she says. 

“How long are you staying?” he asks, realizing he still doesn’t know. 

“Little over a week,” she responds. “I’m leaving next Monday.”

He frowns. “I probably have work, but maybe I can take off a morning to take you back to the airport–”

“I can survive in a taxi,” Pearl says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, you asked me to pick you up this time.”

“Mm, well, I wanted to see you,” she says, “and I had a feeling you weren’t going to be busy.”

He hates that she’s right, but only just a little. He’s sort of glad he wasn’t busy so that he could see her, since she’s apparently decided to drop this entire trip on him with no notice whatsoever. It does not miss him that she could have done this basically any weekend in the last several months and landed on a day where he wasn’t busy. 

“What are your plans for this week?” he asks.

“I want to see everything!” Pearl says, and stretches her arms wide to accommodate the words. She has to pull her arm back in quick, since she nearly smacks a waitress walking by. They both descend into laughter. 

“Pearl,” Grian hisses, “we’re in public!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she whispers. “I’m just so excited! I want to sightsee!”

Grian leans back in his chair and regards her with a critical eye. He’s smiling. “I don’t know if a week is enough to see everything,” he says. 

“I am going to do my best,” she says, mock-serious. 

It suddenly hits Grian. “Wait,” he groans. “I seriously have to work tomorrow. And Tuesday. I could ask off, but…” He winces as he trails off. “I kind of have a track record with my boss and I don’t think he really appreciates me calling out last minute.”

“That’s fine,” Pearl says. “What? I know I came here without telling you but it’s not like I wasn’t prepared to take care of myself. I’ll just see some things on my own.”

Grian nods. “I have a half-day on Wednesday,” he says, “but I think he’d be more amenable to letting me have that as a full day. Then Thursday’s off for Thanksgiving, and Friday too. Then of course the weekend.”

Pearl looks self-satisfied. “Good. I meant to plan it that way so you’d have a little time off.”

“So what do you want to do?” he asks. “One of them, I guess, since everything’s on the table.”

Pearl leans closer to him across the table. “Please,” she says. “I want to go skiing. I’ve never been skiing. Can we please go skiing? Please?”

Grian laughs again at the face she’s making. She’s so dead serious in her begging. “I’ll call around and see if any places are open. As you can see, we don’t have any snow around here right now. But further up into the actual mountains probably does.”

“Eee!” Pearl squeaks in excitement. “I’m so ready.”

“Oh?” Grian says. “I will literally bet you on how many times you fall.”

“I’ll take your money,” she says. “I’ll be the greatest first-time skier there ever was.”

“You will fall on your butt no less than a dozen times,” he shoots back. 

They continue talking for a while, back and forth. Pearl tells him about various stories and adventures from Australia. She begs him to come visit–she came here, so now it’s his turn to come to her. Maybe next summer, when it’ll be cooler in Australia and hotter down here. 

She’s obviously prepared for their trip and seeing him again, because she’s also brought photos to share with him. He looks through a few photos of what her house looks like, what a few buildings she’s worked on looks like, a picture of her by the ocean (she says he can keep that one, as long as she gets to go home with a photo of him), and even the two cats she has adopted. 

They get the check–Grian pays for the whole thing without blinking–and head back to his apartment.

They’re discussing sleeping arrangements as they walk up Grian’s stairwell. He has his keys out already, and they clang a little step-by-step. 

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he declares. “End of story.”

“But,” she says, “I’ll feel so bad taking your bed from you.”

“You’re a guest!” he says. “I’m not letting you sleep for a week on the couch! You can take my bed.”

Neither of them mention that there’s a third option. Or really a fourth, because Pearl could always get a hotel room if it didn't work out, but she had asked to stay with him. She must have spent so much on flights already, it was the least he could do. 

So there’s really only three options, and only two are being discussed. The apartment is a two bedroom. Mumbo’s room has sat empty for five months now, completely untouched. But that room isn’t up for grabs–it’s a time capsule, frozen from the moment he left it. Grian doesn’t mention it. Pearl is smart enough to not ask about it. 

“Ugh, fine,” Pearl says, rolling her eyes. “I guess I’ll take your room. If you make me. I still feel like it’s weird though.”

Grian freezes on the top step, and Pearl nearly bumps into him. “Oh no,” he mumbles. “My apartment is–Pearl, listen, I didn’t know you were coming, so I didn’t really take a chance to clean up anything, so it’s definitely a little messy in here, and–”

She cuts him off, voice bright. “So what I’m hearing is the couch might be better than your room?”

“No, ugh, I’m just saying I’m sorry that this place looks so bad.” He sighs. 

“I get it,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s not how I wanted it to be,” he says softly, and slots the key into the handle. “Just let me work on it, I’ll get it fixed up.”

They go into the apartment. Really, it isn’t that bad, but he’s embarrassed about it nonetheless. It isn’t filthy or grimy, it’s just cluttered. He’s always been a cluttered person. There’s stuff lying randomly about, like the somewhat muddy shoes by the door, the jackets shed across chairs, or the laundry basket of unfolded clothes sitting on a dining room chair. At least three random empty drinking glasses are sitting on the coffee table in the living room. And, well, he could have probably bothered to do the dishes from the last three days, but there’s only one of him and he doesn’t cook much, so really it isn’t very much even if it looks bad.

Everything in here would be so fast to clean up, but whenever he tries it feels like an insurmountable barrier. He does things a little at a time, so that it never gets too out of hand, but he can’t remember the last time it looked good. It’s just something that’s continually slipping further and further away. It feels like one day he’ll wake up and it will finally be completely out of control. 

Pearl doesn’t say anything. She just walks in and drops her bags–which she had insisted on carrying since he insisted on paying for lunch–on the floor and puts her hands on her hips. “This is a cute place,” she says. “I like the lighting from the windows. And you’ve got a view of the mountains!”

“It’s cute when it’s clean,” he mutters. It’s like he knows how to be ashamed of how the place looks, but not how to do anything about it. He’s got the external motivation of another human being seeing it now though, and he’s itching to work and hide everything here.

Maybe it’s concerning that his main motivation after months on end is just so that he can hide. This thought does not cross his mind, because the sort of people who hide things from others are fantastic at hiding things from themselves, too. 

“I saw your dorm room in university,” she reminds him. “You can’t seriously think I wasn’t prepared for your clutter.”

“This is worse,” Grian groans. 

“Eh, not really,” Pearl says. “I think you’re doing well, all things considered.”

All things considered. Grian bites his lip. It’s nice that she thinks so. He isn’t sure where she got that impression, but if he can spend the rest of the week cultivating it then maybe she’ll stop worrying. 

She walks over to the laundry basket on the chair. “Is this clean?” she asks. 

“Yes, of course,” he responds, and he wants to add “I’m not that bad" to the end of the statement until he remembers the floor of his bedroom, which is exactly “that bad.” 

“Great!” she says. And then she sits down. And starts folding it.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and snatches the basket away from her. “You’re a guest! You’re on vacation! Don’t be doing that?”

Pearl frowns. “Um,” she says. “Just helping?”

“I don’t need you to help,” he says, and it comes out a bit harsher than intended. “Just, like, go relax or something. Take a nap. I know you’re exhausted.”

A brief look of hurt flashes over her face, and vanishes almost as quickly as it arrives. “Grian?” she asks. “What do you think I’m here for?”

“To see me?” he says, confused. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Of course it’s to see you, I missed you. But also to help.”

“I missed you too,” he says automatically, but when the rest of the sentence catches up to him he shakes his head. “I don’t need help.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t? Then why can nobody get a hold of you, Grian? Why does your apartment look like this? Why do you deflect phone calls and make excuses? We’re all worried about you, you know. We don’t know what’s going on.”

“We?” Grian says. “You’re talking about me behind my back? Who’s we?”

“Well, we wouldn’t be talking behind your back if you talked to us,” Pearl replies, matter-of-fact. “And the ‘we’ is your friends. Your family, Grian.”

“I’m fine,” he snaps. “I’m sorry to have you worried but you don’t need to be.”

“You don’t get to try that on me,” Pearl says firmly. “I know you too well.”

“Maybe that’s why I don’t talk to you,” he says. 

Pearl looks back at him, for a long time. He doesn’t return her eye contact, and instead begins to pick up the glasses from the coffee to take them into the kitchen. He knows looking at her will just make him sad. He also knows that he really, really wants to look back at her. 

He misses her so hard it hurts. Mumbo hasn’t come back, but she did. She was never really missing, though–just separated far, far, away by circumstance. 

She takes a deep breath. “Well. Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell you I was coming.”

He says nothing, and turns on the tap. It’ll take a moment for the water to heat up. 

“You always try to hide,” she says. She picks up another item out of the basket and begins to fold it. “But you can’t hide if you didn’t expect me to come.”

She reads him like a book every time. It was a definite contributing factor to their friendship–they’d clicked fast and gotten very close in university. They understood each other well, and shared not only the same area of study but also the same ideas about pulling mischief on campus. There used to be a point in time where her reading him like a book served both of them well, but not today. 

“I told you to stop folding that,” Grian says.

Pearl drops it with a huff. “No,” she says. “I’m not going to stop. You said I was the guest, right? Guests get to do what they want. And maybe I want to help you clean up.”

He finally turns to look at her. Her blue eyes are wide and just the slightest bit watery. He’s done that–he’s been the one to make her that worried. He turns back to the sink. 

“Okay,” he says quietly, words almost lost in the water running into the sink. He says okay because he can’t imagine even trying to fight her on this. “We can work on it together.”

»»———-　　———-««

The cleaning goes well, up until it doesn’t.

“Grian, what is this?” Pearl says from the other room, loudly. She’s finished folding his things and has fortunately just left them all in the basket for him to put up himself, declining to go rifling through his dresser and closet. The next task she has taken upon herself has apparently been working through the clutter in the living room area, which is always a dangerous place.

Grian sticks his head around the corner from the kitchen. He’s finished doing the dishes, and is just drying them off now to put in the cabinet. “Let me see,” he says. 

She turns around and Grian’s heart sinks immediately. She’s standing by his desk, the nice one by the window that he always liked to sit and draft at. She’s holding a few pieces of paper that Grian really didn’t mean to leave out. Because he definitely did leave them out–Pearl is nosy, and she’ll fly all the way across the world to drop in uninvited, but she isn’t the kind of person who goes through drawers. 

But he did just say she was nosy. Nosy enough to read something he left out. 

He drops the dish towel. “Give me those,” he says, and crosses the living room to the corner she’s in. He tries to snatch it out of her hand.

“Nope, not so fast,” she says, and holds them higher, squinting at them so she can read. Grian is, at this moment, extremely annoyed that she is so much taller than he is. He can’t quite grab them out of her hand. 

“Pearl,” he whines. 

“Shh, I’m reading.” Her eyes widen, and she looks back at Grian. He feels the slightest bit locked in her gaze’s intensity. It’s equal parts scrutinizing and empathetic. Like she feels bad for him, but is also a little disappointed. “Are these late notices?”

She files through them one by one. Grian cringes. He’d rather melt into the floor than be here. “Most of them are already paid,” he says feebly. 

“Most of them?” she looks back at him. Her brows are knit up, and it creases her forehead.

“I, uh, get paid this week,” he says. This is another lie. He gets paid at the end of the month, but she doesn’t need to know that.

She doesn’t seem fully convinced, but she hands them back to him and he takes them from her so sharply he almost tears the paper. He puts them in the drawer and slams it shut. It rattles the whole desk.

“The top one was about your credit card payment,” she says slowly, as if she’s halfway between deciding whether to say something and not, but was already saying it before she could finish the debate. 

Grian fixes her with a glare and she wilts under it, immediately looking away. He shoves his hands behind his back, because suddenly they seem shaky. His chest is tight, and his jaw is set, and–he’s angry. He’s so, so angry, and it feels like it’s burning him up, white-hot. 

“Why did you read those?” he demands. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to find it, it was just laying on the desk–”

“You could have ignored it.” 

Pearl crosses her arms. He’s activated her fight mode, and he rarely does well against her when she tries to be stubborn. 

“I’m just worried about you,” she says. 

Grian shakes his head. “I can’t with you right now,” he says. His tone is icy even while his whole body feels hot. “They were laying on the desk because I didn’t expect to have any guests.” 

He turns away from her and walks partway across the living room floor toward the kitchen, and then whirls around again. “You’re just..showing up uninvited, messing with my stuff, reading my mail? Is that where we are now?” his voice cracks a little on the last time. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you in three years and this is where we’re at now?”

Pearl takes a breath. “I just wanted to help,” she says. It falls flat. 

“It isn’t your business.”

“You never said you needed money.”

“Because it isn’t your business.” He enunciates every syllable clearly. 

She runs a hand through her hair in a nervous, agitated gesture. “None of know what’s going on with you, Grian,” she says. “We didn’t know about this, so what else don’t we know about?”

He doesn’t answer. 

“Okay, fine,” she says desperately. “This wasn’t my business. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked at it. But I meant what I said, okay? We don’t know anything about what’s going on with you!”

“There’s the ‘we’ again,” he says. 

She shakes her head, incredulous. “Do I have to literally spell it out for you? Did you forget our names when you moved to America? It’s Jimmy, and Joel, and Martyn, and Netty, and Lizzie. It’s your mom. It’s Mumbo’s parents.” She pauses for just a moment, taking in a short, if slightly hysterical, breath. “It’s me.”

He doesn’t want to hear their names again. He misses them enough already. 

“I’ve talked to them,” he says instead. Simple.

Pearl throws her arms in the air. “For hardly more than five minutes!”

“Well,” he says, with a bitter laugh, “you certainly know I don’t have the money for long-distance calls.”

“I guess I walked into that one,” she says. She stops, but there’s a funny look on her face that keeps Grian quiet. He’s still standing a few feet away from her after he walked off earlier. Her face scrunches up, like she’s trying not to cry, and after another moment she speaks softly: “Mumbo was my friend too, you know.”

It’s soft, but it still hits Grian like a ton of bricks. 

She continues, and doesn’t look him in the eye. “I know he was your friend first, but I cared about him too. We all did.” Suddenly she’s crossing the floor toward him again, closing the distance he had put between them. “But it almost hurts just as bad to know you’re still out here alone. And that you aren’t okay.”

Grian swallows back against the lump that is rapidly forming in his throat. “I’m fine,” he whispers. 

“I don’t believe you,” she says. 

“I’m fine,” he insists. 

“You need to go home to visit,” Pearl says. “Even just for the holidays. Please. Everybody’s worried about you.” She huffs a small little laugh. “They’re all worried and then they’re calling me because they think I know what’s going on. Because I always used to know what was going on with you. And then I have to tell them I don’t know either.”

Grian doesn’t respond.

“They’d be so happy, you know,” Pearl says. “To see you.”

“I’d never come back,” Grian mumbles. “If I went.”

“What?”

“They wouldn’t let me leave,” he says, stronger. “If I went home they wouldn’t let go.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Pearl asks.

Grian shakes his head like he’s breaking free of her request. “I have to stay here, because Mumbo is here.”

Pearl blinks, and then sighs. “Okay. I still think you should visit, though.”

Her eyes drift away from his face and over to the hallway behind him, the one all the bedrooms and bathrooms break off of. She speaks again sharply. “The money problem, it’s because of Mumbo isn’t it? You used to split all of the rent and stuff because he was your roommate. But now it’s all on you.”

“Something like that,” Grian admits, and it feels like he’s speaking around a block sitting in his mouth.

Their apartment is nice. Not luxurious by any means, but still a decent place to live. His neighbor down the hall yells at him sometimes if he comes back home too late and their door used to slam unpredictably until the landlord finally fixed it months later, but isn’t that all just everyday woes of having an apartment? 

The apartment is nice, but it was never meant to be paid for by one person. Well, maybe a well-paid person. It’s not like his landlord wouldn’t have rented it out to a single person if they could pay. But Grian had never planned to pay for it by himself. And while architecture could be a well-paying job, he was very much still at the entry level. He’d only barely gotten his license after years of schooling and on-site training. 

And then he’d gotten demoted for not showing up. The demotion wasn’t in job duties only, as he’d discovered on his very next paycheck. 

So now he does what he can. He pays the major, important things first. Sometimes they’re a little late, depending on if his check has hit his bank account yet, but it gets done. He starts to depend more and more on his credit card for other things. He pays his minimum payment every month but he doesn’t feel good about watching it accrue. 

“I can help you pay it off-” Pearl starts to say. 

“No,” Grian says. “You aren’t doing that.”

“I can help you pay it off,” Pearl repeats stubbornly. “But Griba, if you can’t afford this place by yourself, you need to just move to someplace else. Smaller. Cheaper.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he says. 

She tilts her head, expression gentle in a way that makes him instinctively recoil. “You can’t keep living here if you can’t pay. This is bad.”

“It’s okay,” he says distantly. “It’s only temporary.”

Pearl pauses. She has a horrible look on her face, so Grian looks away from her instead. “Temporary?” she asks. The word is tentative.

“Until Mumbo gets back,” he says. He grabs her hand, and pulls it closer to him, feeling suddenly like it’s very important that she hears him and understands this. “I can’t leave,” he says earnestly. “All of his stuff his here. It’s his home too.”

Pearl’s eyes are wide. “I can help you pack it,” she says. “You don’t even have to mess with it, or look at it, I can do that for you.”

He drops her hand. “No,” he says, baffled. “I’m not moving anything of his out of here. When they find him, he deserves to actually come home. He can’t come back to a strange place!”

Pearl squeezes her eyes shut. “Griba, please,” she says. He notices all at once that she’s brought his nickname out these past few times, which is a fact that should be comforting but instead starts to set off alarm bells in his head. 

“I’m not moving, and that’s final,” he says. “I’m not going to abandon him.”

“You’re not abandoning him, you’re just…”

“Just what?”

“Being smart.”

It hurts Grian. “He deserves to come home,” he bites. “I don’t care if it isn’t the smart thing to do, it’s the right thing to do.”

Pearl backs up. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.” She takes a deep breath and exhales long and slow. “You’ll stay. I’ll just help you then, yeah? Bills, cleaning, everything else…”

She turns away from him, and starts picking up various items once more to organize them. “I’ll just help,” she repeats.

She wanders around the room. She’s not getting much done, but she looks busy, inspecting everything around her for one more easy thing to do. Grian just stands in the middle of the room stock still, and both says and does nothing. 

Pearl continues to busy herself for a few minutes before grinding to a halt again. “Griba?” she asks, and Grian turns to her again as an answer. “You do have other people to talk to, right? People who live here?”

It’s a valid question. It’s a hard question. 

“Of course,” he says. 

“Stop lying to me,” she pleads. “I already told you I know you too well.”

He swallows hard. “I have people,” he defends. “Had people.”

It’s just that–it was difficult, after Mumbo disappeared. The new friends that Grian and Mumbo had made, they had mostly made as a pair. They each knew a few people from work, but nobody to really hang out with. So most of the friends they met were people they met while doing an activity together some weekend or evening after work. 

So the new friends missed Mumbo too, when they heard about what happened. But they didn’t know Grian the way Mumbo did, or the way Jimmy or Joel or Martyn or Netty or Lizzie or Pearl did. They knew Grian as one half of a pair who was missing his other half. And Grian didn’t know how to interact with them alone. He didn’t know how to go to them for help when they’d barely been in his life for a few months or a year or two. 

There’s layers to friendships, everybody knows that. None of the people Grian had met in Colorado had made it to the layer where he could talk to him. They were nice people. They wanted to help. Grian didn’t know how to let them. 

So he withdrew. 

“You had people. But not anymore?” Pearl asks. 

“I didn’t know them very well,” is all he says. 

Her expression breaks again. Grian has to stop doing that. “But you know us and you still don’t talk to us.”

“I just want to be alone,” Grian says. “Please, it isn’t personal. I just want to be alone.”

“I guess you’ll have to suck it up,” Pearl says. “Because I’m staying here for a week. And I will drag you outside to go skiing with me. I’m going to make you leave this house and we’re going to have fun together. Because I think you need that. And so do I.”

He turns and stalks back into the kitchen. He’s flipping between so many emotions that he doesn’t know which to settle on, so he seeks out something to busy his hands with instead: the dishes on the counter that still have to be dried. 

If he stays in the living room, he might start arguing with her more. He might say something that will make her not want to visit again. 

He’s angry at Pearl. Furious, even. Offended. He could look past her coming unannounced to visit, but the whole thing seems like a plot now. She’s got ulterior motives. She’s purposefully trying to catch him unaware and sneak past all his guard walls. She’s snooping through his things–his mail. It makes his spine crawl to think about. She’s literally trying to get him to move, even though she’s barely been in the state of Colorado for three hours, and even though it means Grian would have to disturb Mumbo’s belongings. 

And still there’s another part of him that just really, really wants to go skiing with her. 

Because–he misses her. He cares about her. And he misses even the simplest things, like getting out of the house to go do something with a friend. It’s just the littlest piece of normalcy. 

So he dries the dishes, and she finishes up in the living room. Then he goes to his bedroom and starts working there–without her, because he doesn’t want her in the room until he’s made it look nice. Safe, even. Clear of any items that could incriminate him in anything at all. The sheer irritation of the afternoon fuels him harder than anything in months, and he finishes the task even quicker than expected, his movements stiff and jerky with anger. 

On one of his trips back and forth to put things back where they need to go, he spots her sitting at his desk. She looks a little sad, staring at the pattern of the wood grain instead of the pretty view outside. He ignores her and goes back to work. 

They exist like this in silence, for a little over an hour. 

Then Grian walks back into the living room, picks up the phone book from the shelf, and sits down at the table by the kitchen where the phone is. 

Pearl whirls around and he can feel her watching him with intense eyes. “Griba, I…” she trails off. “I wanted to say I’m sorry again. I shouldn’t have pressed you like that. I shouldn’t have looked at your bills. And I shouldn’t have come here without telling you.”

Grian just nods slightly. “Yeah.” He flips through some more pages. He doesn’t say anything else to her, just continues on his search. 

She cocks her head slightly. “What are you doing?” she asks. 

“Trying to find a ski resort to call,” he says with a weak smile. “Because I still really want you to drag me out skiing with you.”

»»———-　　———-««

June 1989

It’s two days later when a pair of rangers come to collect Mumbo’s bike. 

They ask him if he has everything he needs, or if he has any requests for supplies that they can pass on to the main office. So Grian takes the first opportunity to ask them about the Cloud Lake Trail, and if it was really closed last season. 

It’s then that he realizes that these two probably aren’t actually rangers at all. They may be dressed in uniform, but they’re just a couple kids several years younger than Grian is. They want to be helpful so earnestly, and their disappointment is clear when they can’t answer his question.  

They inform him that it’s their first season working here, so they’re not exactly sure about what the Cloud Lake Trail was like last year, but that it’s open right now if he’s interested in it! Grian realizes that they’re a couple of seasonal workers just like he is, except they’re on summer break from college and Grian’s floundering on the cusp of his 30s. 

They’re friendly. Grian tries his best to match the energy, for the sake of politeness.

He asks them what the plan is about Mumbo’s case, and doesn’t really expect much. Apparently, there’s a bit of gossip about the case around the ranger’s office, so they do know a little. The plan seems to be to conduct a few aerial searches of the area the bike was found in with a helicopter. They also told him he could expect a more detailed phone call soon from the main office. 

That’s a little amusing to Grian, given his tower does not have a phone line. 

He bids them farewell at midday and watches them disappear into the woods. Then, he decides it’s about time for lunch. He takes an hour, locks up the cabin behind him, and heads to a rocky outcropping he knows nearby to the tower. 

It’s a beautiful spot to sit and stay a while, and a good vantage point into a little valley. Grian sits on a boulder and finishes his lunch, and tries to think about things that aren’t so negative for once. 

He’s so used to looking. Looking for fires, looking for helicopters, looking for storms, looking for lightning, looking for Mumbo. It’s what he’s good at, so he tries to challenge himself to look at something else for once. 

A few feet from him, there’s a small stand of light purple flowers with narrow, silvery green leaves growing. They’re snagging their spot in the ground amidst the surrounding rock. One of the features of his tower is a somewhat excessive amount of posters left there from years past, most of which were fire, forest, rock, or plant related. Grian thinks he’s seen this little plant several times before. He’s watched it spread from just a few sprouts in May to coating the meadows in a wash of purple the past few weeks. 

It’s a lupine. Growing alone, but steadily. 

He looks more into the mini valley below. It’s not so much a vast sweeping valley as it is a wide little canyon for the stream that flows at the bottom. It’s fascinating to look at though. To think how long it might have taken for that little body of water to have carved it down like this. There’s some small rocky cliffs along the edges in some places, and he can see the darker parts of the rocks where the water pours off during a storm. 

It’s as quiet as the forest can be. Which, in the summertime, isn’t very quiet at all. There’s cicadas buzzing all around him right now. That was something new for Grian ever since he moved–they didn’t have cicadas in England. But as loud as they are, it’s a pleasant background noise he’s become adjusted to. 

He leans back on the rock and stares into the sky for a bit, watching the handful of clouds that there are today drift along. There’s a hawk or an eagle or something flying high up there too, gliding effortlessly along the air currents. He watches it for a while. 

When Grian’s hour is up, he gathers his things, and walks back to the tower. 

Scar calls him on the way. 

“Are you there, G-man?” he asks. 

Grian pulls out his radio from his pocket. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I am. Some kids came and took Mumbo’s bike away earlier.”

“Yeah?” Scar says. “How was that? What did they say?”

“They didn’t know much,” Grian says. “A couple of seasonal workers. But it’s fine, I guess. I know the main office will be looking into this again. They told me there might be some aerial searches in the future. I just wish it was higher on the priority list, I guess.”

“Well, they have their priorities and we have ours,” Scar declares. “But I think I can shed a little light on it, maybe. I spent most of the morning on the phone.”

It’s kind, what Scar is doing for him. That Scar is helping him like this at all, not even accounting for spending time scouring his notes from the prior season or spending all morning on the phone. Grian needs to thank him, or convey his appreciation somehow, or apologize for snapping at him so much, but instead all he says is: “What did you find?”

“I wish I had better news,” Scar says. 

Grian locks away the part of him that is always stabbed with instant anxiety over statements like that. He takes it, locks it away, and smooths it over. He’s walking on the trail back to the lookout right now, one foot in front of the other. He can handle just another conversation. 

“Well, I seem to always be lacking in good news,” Grian jokes lightly. “So just give me what you got.”

“I talked to a friend in the main office, she’s really sweet. She went to pull the records for me.”

“They’re still on file? Good.”

“Everything’s on file, Grian,” Scar says. “The government will keep an old shoe for a decade if they think it’s a record, let alone anything that relates to an open case.”

Grian grimaces a little. “Well, go on then.”

“She found his backcountry permit information from last year. And…” Scar trails off for a bit. “He’s permitted for Cloud Lake Trail. He even had designated camping spots, she even told me which ones.”

“So the trail was open?” Grian says. 

“Not exactly,” Scar says. “The trail was closed.”

“What?” Grian says. “They permitted him for a closed trail?”

“Apparently?” Scar says. “That’s what I got.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew.”

“What else did she say? Who issued the permit?”

“She didn’t say anything else, so I don’t know. I’ve never worked in the main office. I don’t think she was even supposed to tell me that, honestly, but we’ve always got along pretty good since she started working here.”

“Right,” Grian says. “You’re not an information wizard…”

“I have no more information to give, unfortunately,” Scar says. “I am a wizard, though.”

“You are not a wizard.”

“I’m many things, Grian. You’re just a nonbeliever.”

Grian just shakes his head at that, leaving that thread of the conversation behind. There’s just so many questions that keep coming up. 

“So we can agree he was on Cloud Lake,” Grian says. “Right? Regardless of all that, we can assume this right? He told me he was going there, his car was there, he was permitted for it, and someone said they saw him there. So he was there, right? We searched there, and he was there.”

But…

“It seems likely,” Scar says. “At one point, at least.”

“But then someone found his bike over on Pinnacles. How did it get there? Did he go there for some reason?”

“There isn’t an official trail that connects Cloud Lake and Pinnacles. It’s not a loop or a network or anything. Maybe he could have found a way between them or went on an unofficial side trail. There’s a lot of things that look like they could be a trail that aren’t really trails.”

“No,” Grian says. “He knows better than to take an unmarked trail. He said he was getting maps at the office when he got his permit too, so he would have known where the trails were. He wouldn’t have done that.”

“Grian.” 

Just his name, the weight it holds, and nothing else.

Grian’s face crumples a bit. He doesn’t want to admit it. It hurts to admit it.  “Okay, fine!” he cries. “Maybe he did go off-trail, maybe he did make a mistake, whatever. But it’s not his fault if something bad happened, okay? It isn’t.”

There’s another option to all of this that Grian hasn’t said out loud yet. He’s been thinking it off and on though for a long time, as he tries to fit these pieces into the larger puzzle. Nobody had any reason to think about foul play but him. There’s no evidence. But what other evidence do they have?

He went camping. He went missing. The search failed. Some of his belongings were found in the wrong place. 

And that is, essentially, it. 

“Do you think what happened to him…” he trails off. “Do you think it could have been someone else?”

Maybe Mumbo never did make a mistake. Maybe he was exactly where he was supposed to be, sans closed trail, and there was just something else that got in the way. 

“Someone else?” Scar says, tentatively. 

“Do you think someone out there might have taken him? Hurt him?” Grian is back at the base of his tower now, and he looks up at its spiraling staircase. He begins to take the steps one by one, watching as the horizon slowly inches into view as he climbs above the trees. “Did someone steal his bike? Is that why it’s somewhere else?”

“I…” Scar trails off. “I guess we don’t know if something like that happened. G, there’s a lot of ways someone can get in trouble back here.”

“And one of them could have been someone else,” Grian says. “Doesn’t this connect some of the dots, Scar? So much of this doesn’t make sense, but if someone else was involved, couldn’t that answer some of these questions?”

But the words hang heavier in the air now that he’s spoken to them. 

If Mumbo had just gotten lost, or injured, or something else while alone in the woods, Grian has some hope of saving him. Mumbo is blindingly smart, with an engineer’s eye for designing devices and contraptions. He could be okay. He’s a little lost, but Grian can find him. 

But if Mumbo’s incident was linked to another person, the odds in Grian’s mind plummet. If Mumbo ran into someone bad at some point during his trip, would he have escaped that confrontation? If someone had decided to hurt him, or take him, or rob him, or whatever–then Mumbo’s continued absence just looms more and more ominously. 

Would he make it out of something like that? Would he survive it? 

Grian reaches the top of his tower. If he looks straight through the windows of his cabin and out the other side, he can see Scar’s little cabin far in the distance. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore. Thank you for the new information though.”

He turns his radio off and goes inside. He spends the rest of his work day in silence, watching the smoke twist in the air. 

<< Chapter Five | Masterpost | Chapter Seven >>

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hey sorry to bother you but do you have any ideas on a reimagined Tiamat/Tiamat worship? I've come an inspirational roadblock trying to figure out why anybody would worship a greedy power hungry (and pretty one note) evil dragon lady? Why does Bahamut get all the love?

Monsters Reimagined: Tiamat, Goddess of Primordial Waters.

Alright folks, strap in. This is overhaul has been a long time coming and is one that've I've been thinking about since long before I started this series, or even this blog.

Like most of the evil gods in d&d, worshiping Tiamat is silly. She's a one note god that cares nothing for her followers and has zero actual ideology. She exists solely so that there can be a god of evil dragons, but I'll get into that below the cut. TLDR: Rather than the clunky default version, you should use a riff on the ancient babylonian deity she's based on/steals the name from. The original Tiamat is a water/ocean goddess that's said to also represent the primal chaos from which all things spring. With her consort she gives birth to the first gods, then transforms into a great monster to battle her children when they try to pre kill her lover. From her body the earth itself is created, and are great monsters born. I think this is an amazing foundational myth that you can use for any campaign world, and gives plenty of reason for people within that world to worship Tiamat into the present day.

What's wrong: Right of the bat I'm going to say I never liked how d&d does dragons. Color coding them for our convenience decreases a lot of wonder when it comes to facing off against a such an iconic foe, and the way that their personalities have become codified over time further limits our ability to tell stories about them. I'm going to save my actual gripes about this canonization for a monsters reimagined focusing on dragons, but for the time being, I'm going to say that Tiamat's design looks a little silly and needs an overhaul on optics alone.

Next comes the divinity part: Tiamat isn't just THE mega evil dragon, she's THE GOD of evil dragons, which is silly for a bunch of reasons.

Why would dragons need a god? Dragons are ego given form, and the only worship they engage in is worship of the self.

From a cultural perspective, Gods are also creations of societies, reflecting the elements that society deals with or the ideologies that govern it. Dragons don't have a society or a culture, they're loners and alpha predators that can talk who may on occasion insert themselves into the culture of other civilizations either as a covert agent or by installing themselves at the top.

No mortal would worship Tiamat as she explicitly DOES NOT CARE for her followers, and only shows up if there's something in it for her. Even though she's listed as a goddess of greed, it's not like she embodies some kind of ideology that will enrich her dedicated followers: If you get too rich and worship Tiamat, she's going to show up and TAKE YOUR STUFF FROM YOU.

Lets fix it: We don't talk enough about bronze age cultures in d&d settings. Sure, there'll be remnants of the not!roman empire laying around, and there'll be ancient elvan enclaves or antlantis inspired lost civilizations.. but generally these things are so far off in the distant past that they're disconnected from the campaign's actual chronology. Much like LOTR or GoT, the faux-medieval period is presumed to have gone on forever, sometimes for tens of millennia, with no progress ever being made save for the occasional apocalypse to stagger back from.

In my own writing, I've been playing around with something I call " The Dawn Age" this is a semi-mythic era that served as a sort of trial and error period for the gods, as they made things, gave shape to the world, and figured out how they'd run things from thereon out. Like any alpha test, things go very wrong, very many times, and the gods and other nacient creatures of that time need a few attempt to figure out what works.

Tiamat and the bones of her original Babylonian mythology fit into this idea perfectly: one of the original creator deities that shaped the world out of the astral sea. Collaborating and conflicting with other powerful demiurges as they defined what would and wouldn't be for the plane our heroes would one day trek across. Tiamat eventually came into conflict with a group of semi-divine entities that had arisen from her creation, who wished to stop her chaotic reshaping of reality and institute a more settled and orderly process ( for a myriad of reasons, ranging form self preservation or the appreciation of what might be wiped away in her next revision). These entities would defeat Tiamat and use the power they stole from her to shape reality as they liked it, putting a gradual end to the dawn age and letting reality solidify and progress into the current chronology.

To bring it all Together:

In a way, Tiamat is the world itself, or at least the underlying primal forces that keep it in a cohesive shape. She is worshiped by those cultures with ancient knowledge for her miracle of creation and lifegiving, and remembered by others as a destroyer who would have gladly kept the world in a state of primordial chaos, destroying whole civilizations for the sake of an inspired whim.

Tiamat's primordial chaos and the way her essence was used to shape the world also explains why it keeps spitting out monsters, strange creatures arising from the wilderness with no explanation in ever more astonishing variations. In a way, she is still creating: seeping in through the cracks that formed since her defeat.

Titles: Spring of Origin, Primordia, Mother Hydra. She who wets the clay. The maker unmade 

Signs: plantlife growing in the shape of animals, verdant springs, scale patterns on rocks,  Her destructive aspects are heralded by tarpits, snakelike creatures with multiple heads, or water acting unnaturally.

Symbols: Entwining serpents, hydras, spiraling pictograms. A Tree with snake-tails for roots. Her destructive aspect is represented by interlocking maws full of fangs, usually in a jagged star pattern. 

Followers: Perhaps one of the first "nature" deities, Tiamat's influence is less an ideology than it is a push towards creation and flow, and works guided by her end up becoming verdant and fruitful. Mystics may seek Tiamat’s influence to invoke a flow of ideas or the “will” of creation, while healers may channel her primal vigor to encourage new growth and stave off old rot.  Those seeking to embody Tiamat’s more destructive aspects often resent the world the way it is, and wish in some way to restart the process of creation and perhaps even usher in a new dawn age. These groups or individuals are often outcasts from civilization, and seek a radical return to nature or opposition to forces that would “tame” the wilds. 

Spaces that that flow and erode are sacred to Tiamat, such as riverbends, swamps, coastlines, deltas, springs, as well as less obvious places such as caves or lavaflows. Creatures and cultures that dwell around or within these areas may feel the mother hydra's influence

Adventure Hooks:

A temple to a more modern deity is famous as a site of pilgrimage for its healing spring, but suffers a dramatic turn of events when their main attraction starts producing poisonous tar instead. Requested by a friendly acolyte of the temple, or  Employed by one seeking healing and looking to force the issue, the party must delve down into a nearby cave system to discover the origin of this blight.  . There they find an ancient altar to Tiamat that was the source of the spring’s healing abilities, which was desecrated by unknown hands. Before the party was able to investigate, strange creatures begin to emerge from the tar, seeking victims.   After teh beasts are dispatched, the party can piece together clues that it was a particularly zealous acolyte in the temple, who scorned the existence of a “heathen” shrine on their patrons holy ground. 

There is a strong connection between Tiamat and the Yuan-Ti ( who some believe directly obtained their flesh reshaping magic by studying Tiamats primordial influence).  Likewise, there is a strong connection her and Pharika, a serpentine goddess who is said to have shaped the world and its monsters with secret knowledge entwined within them. A priestess of this newer goddess of affliction and cure seeks the party’s help in exploring old sites sacred to Mother Hydra, but may run into some fundamentalist snake cultists guarding the ruins. 

Depending on which canons you follow, Moradin Allhammer, god of craft and dwarvenkind, was part of the coalition of beings that rose against Tiamat and her primordial tumult, with his epithet originating in the ability he gained from defeating the Spring of Origin, and the labors he undertook to give shape to reality afterwords. Some religious hardliners have decided to finish what their patron started, and have begun a witchhunt against a local enclave of Tiamat worshipers, claiming them to be an origin of a spreading plague. 

Dragons often nest in long abandoned temples to Tiamat because these sacred spaces are natural laylines, which attract wyrms the way that hot stones attract other reptiles. When an earthquake causes a shift in layline energy, a local dragon begins seeking the expertise of mystics and other scholars to “get the power back on”. Starting out disguised as a socially malajusted noble ( the nobility is a disguise, they have no idea how to talk to people), this dragon is not above returning to its original form and kidnapping a bunch of geomancers and terrified academics to see its mission through.  

[mcalhenwrites]

We're still not ready for the "there are plenty of queer creations out there, and if you supported them, you'd see even more" conversation, are we? Seems like we're not. This extends to f/f content as well. It would involve supporting indie creators more, and the goals are more often "I want my queer or f/f ship to be canon and have lots of fanart" or "I want people to really like the work I make and for everything to center around my ideas of what should exist" and not so much about celebrating queer creations we might enjoy. (And let's face it, we won't always enjoy some of it.) But let's paint it as other people having moral failings or being hateful in some way, right? /sarcasm

I favor m/m in my writing (both original and fic). I'm a trans man and have been out since before I dipped my toes in fandom. I came out as trans in late 2003. I didn't know what yaoi was. I barely had any access to representation, and I latched onto the scraps I could find. Sunday nights, I huddled in front of a muted 13" television screen in a corner of my room, closed captioning on so I knew what was being said, using a blanket hanging from my bunk bed to hide it in case my mom decided to walk in. What was I watching? Queer as Folk. (US version.) It honestly changed my life. Getting online more and more later on introduced me to fandom, and that introduced me to a whole world of queer works. I was thrilled! It didn't matter if I didn't like some of it. I would sift through yaoi and yuri until I found the stuff I did like. But guess which one I spent more time on? I write a lot of BL. It's not really anyone's business, though. It shouldn't be the sole indicator that there's a moral failing here or that I hate f/f. I write too much f/f for that to be true, but I'll go into why saying that doesn't actually matter in a little bit. I have a hard time listening to people who make up excuses for why they never read books or even sometimes other people's fanfiction, but oh hey, here's my writing and it's actual representation, and I wish more fanart of my ships existed! And then they cry that there's nothing out there. And claim the love of BL as the true enemy.

...So fun fact, I own a lot of queer books. A lot of books in general. But lots are queer.

This is a haul of like 90% of the books I got last year:

It'll be tough to see a lot of the titles in this giant pile, but... There are a lot of queer relationships depicted in these books. This is barely a chip in my wishlist of queer books I'd like to read! (Most of these were gifts or secondhand, because I'm pretty broke.) And out of them, wow, some f/f happens to be there! Either as main characters or side characters. As canon ships. (But even if there wasn't any f/f there, you don't know who I've kissed in my life, the people I've loved, the people I wish I could've been with. You don't know my personal values, the improvements I want for the world. You don't know shit about me by finding out I like to read, write, and watch BL. And I don't owe you any of the reasons.) The point of this post and that image, however, is to say that queer creations fucking exist in large numbers. There's hardly a shortage. I'm crying at how little I can keep up with it these days, especially in a scary world with book bannings and little shits wanting the Hays code back. And here's the deal: creators get shafted. Sometimes, they have to quit creating (as much or at all) just to make a living. Some post on AO3 (cough) because fandom is wonderfully transformative and we have some itches to scratch. Being supportive is always better than tearing them down. And when you start uplifting the work you like, instead of yelling about the stuff you don't, suddenly there are publishers and film makers taking note. They're recognizing what's in demand. In many ways, they've already started to. (Although you should probably keep supporting artists and be wary of companies, but sometimes companies uplift important artists and that's cool too.) Your friends and online circles are seeing these titles and characters and ships and might even find themselves intrigued. But when you just yell about stuff that's not going the way you want it to, it's actually satisfactory to deny it to you. I'm not big on giving entitled people the content they crave. I do what I want, and I have been known to keep my work to myself because of demands and complaints. I don't stop creating, but it's not yours to have, it's mine. Some people just get tired of the harassment and sweeping generalizations about the kind of person they are, because innocuous creations are blown out of proportion by people with their own agendas. Some people create more of what you might hate out of spite. Others give up sharing, because while everyone is focusing on all the things they hate, that person's creations that might've been up your alley gets fucking buried. Ignored. And then they don't really see the point in sharing. In a world that is brimming with hate, where some people do using writing to profit on hate (jerkoffrolling), maybe your enemy isn't... people (queer or not, none of your business btw) creating queer art!

[joshslater]

End of Shift

Similar stories and bonus material on my Patreon.

My life is over. I've been playing a high stakes game, and somehow landed on one side of the odds all the time, but my luck was bound to run out sooner or later. I guess I should be happy that it turned out to be later, but it sucks no less. I got sloppy. I was looking through the items near the cashier, as always, trying to mostly use reflective surfaces to see what was going on, as always. I need to be within 15 feet or latency becomes an issue. Some old lady still using the old wallet was buying KokaKola and a pack of Ziffs. This would be easy, as always. I discreetly pressed my watch as she was ready to make the purchase, activating my EM-swiper. I wouldn't take much, a few credits more. She probably wouldn't notice it, or think the store stiffed her, or think she bought two packs of Ziffs and lost one. I'm not stealing to get rich, just to get by.

As the EM-swiper went off a high pitched beeping starts behind me. I barely have time to turn my head enough to see the charging police officer, before he slams me into the side of a KokaKola fridge. Shit, I hadn't done a survey pass through the store as I always do. I could barely register what he was screaming in my ear. "Drop it," I realize, and let go of the magazine. He must have thought I had the EM-swiper in my hand. He told me to put my hands against the wall and performed a pat-down. It's only him, so he must be off duty or not on a real patrol. He empties my pockets on the cashier table. Nothing of value, and certainly not something incriminating. I may not have been fortunate enough to afford academy, but I'm not stupid.

"You are detained under suspicion of committing proximity fraud. Do you understand?" he asks me in that commanding yet bored tone of a laborer having to recite corporate bullshit, only in his case it is in the pretense of justice. "Yes," I answer him. He doesn't have anything on me or he would have arrested me right away. Probably. "Put this on to acknowledge you've read the Citizen Rights Act and agree to an investigation in this matter." He hands me a pair of handcuffs to put on. I hesitate for a second. He is behind me and in the way of the store exit. I can stall for time and tell him to recite the CRA, but that immediately counts against you, as it is your duty to know it. I have no choice but to put them on. It's the latest model. I haven't seen any up close before. Light, thin, all metal, no key hole. Probably opened remotely or only inside a police cell or some shit. I put them on.

"Turn around, pick up your stuff, and exit the store." I do as told, turn around and begin to pick up my stuff and put them back where he took them. It's an older police officer. None of them young, jacked up types. Perhaps he is one of the fair ones. But then I am the criminal, so what good would that do me? There's a small, black duffle bag by his side. So he is on his way home. Perhaps he is tired. Perhaps I can shake him. Have Leo remove the shackles and then stay low for a fucking long time. Or this just doesn't amount to anything more than a slap on the wrist. I walk towards the door, him behind me.

"Nice watch," he says, pointing at my wrist as I reach or the door.

He knows. Unless I can get away now my life is over. All I can think of is the monstrosities the state churn out as punishment. Equal part labor force and sadism. I open the door as little as possible and as soon as I am through I dash down the block. I don't dare look behind me, but I don't hear him in pursuit. Halfway down the block I swerve into the alley that cuts across the building and out on the block on the other side. If I can cross that block and then down south I'm in the park and there are plenty of places to hide there.

My hands are not on fire. This surprises me as I look down on my hands, screaming in pain. There is a high pitched sound coming out of the handcuffs, like capacitors charging, but it is continuous. The pain emanating from my hands is something unlike anything I've ever experienced before. My legs buckle. I know I need to move, somehow, somewhere. It's just so difficult to think of anything but my hands that are not on fire. It would probably be a good idea to not scream my lungs out, but I don't really have a choice in that.

Just as suddenly as it started it stops. I'm still writhing in pain, but my hands are not on fire in a much more comforting way. "The payment proxy is in your watch, is it not?" the policeman asks, standing a few steps away. I'm panting, I realize when I attempt to answer him. Panting and sweaty. I can't manage to speak. I just nod my head.

"The state vs. item RK-220553 finds the defendant guilty to breach of contract with the state, executed by judicial AI 5" he reads off his handheld screen. I'm confused to what just happened. "No trial?" I manage to wheeze out. "You entered into a cooperation contract when you put on the handcuffs, as you are aware of as you claimed to know the Citizens Rights Act. Disobedience at that point allows for immediate trial by AI as long as no forensic work is needed." He sounded like the same bored cop as he was in the store, reciting memorized text for the thousandth time.

I struggle to get up on my feet. Not only am I shaky, but having my hands locked together makes it surprisingly difficult to get up. "You know, this is bad timing," the cop starts. "I was on my way home and don't have all the standard gear. It's supposed to be a swift punishment, for deterrence, but there is really only one thing I can do." Why is he so apologetic? He opens the bag and pulls out a fucking tactical human transformer. I've never even seen one in person before. He turns it on, selects something on the screen, and points the device towards me. "No, I can..."

This time I am on fire, if only so briefly. There is a blinding light, a pulse of heat, and the smell of burnt plastic. As the transient heat subsides it keeps falling colder and colder. I'm naked. All my clothes have been singed from my body. My watch is gone. My shoes are gone. Underwear gone. And, I realize, my hair is gone. The cop keeps punching in selections in the menus of the devices. I manage to get up on my feet. "Stay on the ground," he tells me. Not so much as an order, but as an advice. I sit down again and he trains the device on me.

I don't know how to describe it. It's not pain exactly. There is something about rewriting the code and cellular structure of your body while your brain is engaged that makes it give up in disbelief. "This can't be what's actually happening," it thinks and gives you completely nonsense sensory interpretations. But it also gives up on all other tasks. Time becomes irrelevant. Critical thinking put on hold. When the device stops you are utterly confused for seconds. Possibly by design, but it makes sense that you can't rewire the brain in flight without some glitches.

"I want you to stand up," the cop says in a firm voice. "Who?" I ask, still dazed, just to make sure. "You. Get up on both feet. Take this." He throws an orange bundle to me, and I feebly grasp for it but my one arm yanks the chain to the cuff of the other arm. The bundle brushes by and lands on the ground next to me. He looks disappointed, more at himself for thinking it would work than on me for not catching it.

I look down at my hand and see something orange in my grip, but it is not the orange that interests my but the grip. My arms, thin from lack of food and nimble from grabbing P2 storage modules out of vendor racks. are enormous. Big, well defined muscles with popped veins going up and around them. They look longer than before and even the hands are larger than they used to be. I can see that not only my arms are different. My chest is all lean and strong-looking as well, the legs have these weird lines showing different groups of muscles under the skin, and I can almost bet that the ground is further down than it used to be. Orange! I'm holding something orange in my hand.

"I only have an emergency kit with me, so not very many options for you I'm afraid. If you had come with me I think they would have found some better use for you, but as I said, I didn't have much to chose from beside himbot," the cop said while putting some beat-up looking boots from his bag next to me. He grabs the chain between my cuffs, and both of them pop open instantly, and he folds them up and begins to place them back into the cuff holder in his belt.

There was something he said that was important. Like, really important. I feel cobwebs like I had just been awakened from a deep sleep. "Put on the jock," he tells me, and again I am confused, but of a different kind. It's like I urgently need to know what he means, somehow. "You're holding them in your hand." I again look down at my hand and see the orange piece of cloth, which obviously is what he meant. I flip it around in my hands and finds it to be an orange jockstrap with a generous pouch. Looking down I also see the reason for that, since my dick and balls are large. Much larger than I remember them to be. I don't want to keep him waiting, so as quickly as I can manage, with my balance a bit off, I manage to place one leg in each loop and pull up the jockstrap. It neatly collects everything in front into a large orange ball.

Himbot! That's what he had said. It's like the government robots but human. What was the I and M now again? Wait, those are just mindless sacks of muscles roaming around doing whatever menial task is available.

"Himbot?" I ask him. "Yes, you are a himbot," the cop answered. "Put on the shirt."

I immediately grabbed the orange bundle from the ground I assumed to be the shirt. To my delight I was right and with just a few tries I managed to get it on me. It isn't a real shirt, but one of those without arms, whatever they are called. Quite a lot of skin showed. The shoulders were bare, as were the sides and the nipples unless you positioned the strings just right. Stringers! It's called a stringers, or something close to it. I feel so tired thinking of words.

"And the boots"

I grab one of the boots. There is something missing, but I'm not sure what it is. I has something to do with the small holes, I think. Well, the large hole is missing a foot, so I put one in it. Then I put the other foot in the other boot, and looked at the cop to see if he approved. He looks about the same. Good enough I hope.

"Face me and raise your hands" I comply immediately. He is pointing the large gun at me again. I don't like it, but I must do what he says. He presses a few buttons and then there is a sharp headache.

"Who are you?" "Himbot 220553." "What is your assignment?" "Walk along path 228-red responding to requests." "What types of requests?" "Any type of requests."

[sirijanu-redux]

Lark and Rosethorn are textually confirmed in will of the empress! It's in other characters' reactions to Daja learning she herself is a lesbian

switching from leaving comments to sending an ask: yes i believe Daja is a lesbian! i *thiiiink* she has a girlfriend in one of the later books? but i only read the main two quartets and listened to Melting stones so i'm not sure. Lark and Rosethorn were confirmed gay (on twitter i think?) but it's never explicitly said in the books, only heavily hinted at

I've read the majority of Tamora Pierces tortall/circle books so if you ever wanna talk about them :eyes: just lmk

Oh yeah Lark and Rosethorn was the most obvious 'hint' I had back then 🤣 two ladies who live together who use most of their limited 'screen time' on hovering around each other and using polite double speak to describe their relationship? They're lesbians Harold. Okay maybe not lesbians idk if they're bi or something because again, not that far, but definitely picked up what was being put down.

Personally I think I would have liked if Pierce could have flat out stated in the books, but I also understand that she had some trouble getting into certain characters' heads due to lack of lived experience, and she wanted to make sure to do it right if she was going to add representation, and I can respect that. I know she said she really hesitated writing Briar for that reason, she knew how to write little girls growing into women but was afraid she'd do her little boy growing into a man an injustice.

I do really appreciate that she takes the time to listen to fans who gently guide her when/if she does fuck something up, and that she makes the effort to make her books enjoyable for all readers who want to read strong female-led stories.

[ravensmind]

Happy RobRae week 2021! Here's my day 1 prompt fic. There will be an extended smuttier version coming soon. Might only do this prompt this year just due to things I have going on, but I'm still writing! Hope you enjoy this 😃.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13863436/1/Finals-and-a-First

~RavensMind~

RobRae week 2021 

Day 1: Gotham Academy AU

Finals and a First

Finals week. Two simple words that had the power to make anyone quake with anxiety and while he may do a good job of hiding it, Dick Grayson was no exception. Luckily for him, he had a solid group of friends who had each other’s backs. They mostly studied as a group when they were free, unless their class schedule or extracurricular activity demanded they improvise. Gotham Academy was not known for caring about its students' friendships or whether they had free time to study together or not. Dick was on the football team and they did not have practice that day, so he was free, but Victor, Kori, Garfield, and Tara were all at meets or practices or matches or just in class, only Rachel was able to study with him, and that presented a challenge. Dick was enamored with Rachel, infatuated with Rachel, could not stop thinking about Rachel, and she had no idea because he just could. Not. Tell. Her. 

Even though Rachel Roth, the quiet, reserved, sarcastic, smart, violet-haired girl was sitting only inches away from him at the same table in the library, he could not look at her, as he had some paranoid feeling that she knew exactly how he felt when he looked at her. Normally, he would play off of his other friends, but now they were alone. He hid in his textbook, pretending to be very interested in some words located near the spine of the book in some rose colored block of text. Out of frustration with his own inner turmoil, he picked up the noble they’d been assigned to read and chucked it into a nearby bookcase.

“Are you okay?” Rachel asked in a frustrated tone.

“Yeah, I’m fine, why?” Dick returned.

"You’re just not usually this quiet, is all,” she replied.

“Guess I’m just nervous,” he said.

“About our finals?” 

“Yeah,” he said, thanking the universe for that excuse.

“I didn’t think you got nervous over stuff like this, at least I don’t think I’ve seen it. Wait ‘till this gets out, the chill, cool captain of the football team is freaking over his final,” she teased.

“But you wouldn’t tell anyone, right?”

“No. Lucky you, I don’t think anyone would believe me.”

“That the only reason you wouldn’t say anything?”

“No, because I don’t know that I believe you either,” she replied, toying with a strand of her hair with one of her slim, almost pale fingers.

Dick chanced a look at her and was surprised to see a playful smirk on her face and a strange look in her violet eyes that he was not sure he had seen before. He tensed a little when he realized he had slipped up and looked at her. Did she know? Was he screwed? The last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable and get on her bad side. She had enough trouble dealing with the gossip and judgmental teachers for her goth vibe and overall lack of shits to give attitude.

At one point, he heard Rachel had been summoned to the dean’s office for violating the dress code by wearing black knee highs over fishnets and foregoing the standard blue skirt for a black one. Her response was that technically she was in compliance, as there was no rule about a specific color skirt, or that she could not wear anything in addition to the socks on her legs, and she was a model student. Aside from snapping at a teacher or two, she was rarely in trouble, and he knew she had good grades. She still kept that style, even though more teachers voiced their disapproval, but they ultimately could not do anything without changing the dress code and it was not worth it. After he heard about what happened, Dick helped her out by changing the color tie and slacks he wore from blue to black, as his popularity would make her style choice far less controversial. He had mostly done it to help her, but he also liked being seen as more of a rebel. He stuck up for her when she was being picked on and she was always quick to shut down anyone who was bad-mouthing him.They had grown a bit closer as a result, though neither really acknowledged it to the other. 

He swallowed and considered what his options would be if she dug deeper. He hoped that he could talk his way out of whatever accusation she was about to make. He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“Hmm. Well, you’ve never really stressed about tests before. When Gar complains, you calm him down and put together a plan to study, so I’m pretty sure you’re more level-headed,” she replied.

“Doesn’t mean I’m not nervous.”

“No, but I think it’s less likely that it’s about the exams. Now that I think about it… you kind of acted like this last time we hung out. Maybe it’s about one of us,” she thought aloud.

“Like I said, I’m nervous about finals. It’s, uhh, just been a lot for me this time. It’s our last year and I don’t want Bruce to be harder on me if I don’t measure up,” he said, injecting a little truth, desperately hoping it would help sell his lie.

“I suppose that’s fair, but I still don’t think it’s that.”

“Why’s it matter? It’s not like I’m hiding anything that would hurt people. I’m just stressed!”

“You’re hiding plenty, but that’s not the point. It matters,” she hesitated before continuing, “because I don’t like seeing you stressed. It’s like I can feel it and I want to help you. Something’s clearly eating at you and I hate seeing you try and bury it like it’s not there.”

He sighed and looked  down at his book. He stared down at the page as he felt the swelling of emotions that rose from his heart. He wanted to spill everything, but knew that it would not be fair to her, to dump everything at once and give her a massive choice to make about them. He cared about her and she clearly cared about him, so he thought he might be able to at least give her a hint or two. She was dealing with more than enough, she didn’t need his problems too.

“Okay...don’t laugh. It’s about a girl,” he said.

Rachel perked up and tilted her head. Dick swore her eyes lit up, but that may have just been a trick of the light as someone passed by the window near them, book in hand. 

“I’m not going to laugh! What’s making you so nervous? I seriously doubt you’d ever need to be stressing over a girl, plenty throw themselves at you, though I guess that could be tough too.”

“She’s different. I like her, but she’s never really said if she likes me or not. I hang out with her quite a bit and we have fun, or I think we do. I'm just not sure if I want to take a chance and mess up a good thing.”

“You’re being ridiculous.. Clearly she likes you enough to spend time with you, you should have had some kinda obvious sign by now. Some girls tease you or act a certain way around you, others might be more blunt, but you have to know at this point. Though, it would help if you said who she is,” she teased knowingly.

“Hah, yeah, it is a little silly,” he chuckled, “You wouldn’t tell her though?”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m interested, I need to get ready for the big reveal, lots of pyro and speakers to set up,” she replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes, “No, of course not, idiot. You know you can trust me. Why the secrecy, though? Is it... Kori?”

She leaned forward with interest, almost teetering on the edge of her seat.

“No, uh, but you’re kinda close,” he said, anxiously shifting in his chair.

He watched as she went quiet and crossed her legs in her chair, sitting up a bit straighter as she considered the possible remaining options. He hoped she had thought of herself first.

“I admit, I could see why you’d like Tara, she’s pretty easy to talk to and knows what she likes, which isn’t common,” she said, tracing her bottom lip with her finger, “I think she can be a little insecure though, so you may want to keep that in mind.”

He wondered to himself if she was toying with him.

“It’s uhh, it’s not Tara, either,” he admitted, his cheeks turning red.

Rachel’s cheeks also reddened as her mouth formed a coy smile, and she went quiet. Her fingers played with the edge of a page in her textbook as she looked away from Dick toward the door before snapping back so her eyes met his.

“Oh. So, I think if you like her, you really should say something. I’m not sure if I know *exactly* how she feels, but I’d want to hear you say how much you like me. I’d like to know how I made you feel… if I was her,” she teased.

“Are you sure? I uhh, I’d hate if I came on to her too strongly, she’d shut me down and it would mess with the friendship she and I had,” he asked, undoing his tie and opening his school blazer a little. He was feeling very warm all of a sudden.

“I don’t think she would let that happen, Dick,” she replied, leaning closer to him, “You should probably tell me who she is...so I have a better idea.”

He took a deep breath and smiled at her, letting the moment last, enjoying the hopeful, expectant look on her face.

“Her name is Rachel,” he said, edging closer to her.

Dick felt his heart pounding in his chest and he swore his face was burning as they both got closer to each other, until his lips were inches from Rachel’s. Neither looked around to see who else in the library might be watching, and the idea that anyone else even existed was as distant as another planet. Her eyes closed as she pressed her lips to his and he eagerly kissed her back, hardly believing this was happening. Their heated kiss was interrupted by the sound of the librarian reprimanding a classmate of theirs at another table on the other side of a bookcase. Rachel smiled at him, biting her lip while she studied his face for a moment.

“That. Is what you get when you tell the truth,” she said.

[kenyizsuartblog]

Dragon Design Adventures #1 - Hetra 2.0

Now you guys can see some of my more messier sketches. Musings about character design process below, read through if you are interested!

---

So Hetra. My dear sweet Hetra.

She's a tough code to break, not gonna lie.

My first go at her ended with a Western-style design, with some colorful feathers. Functional, nothing ground-breaking. Something felt off about her, so I put her in the background and focused my efforts on another team member, Shirqi. Glad to report, she had been a success. But Hetra kept eluding me, because the root of the problem reaches far earlier than her first design.

Originally, I wanted the final team to have six members, however while I had had plenty ideas for the first four, the last two were just... there, in the "well, they have to be there!!" kind of spirit. You know, six dragon species, plus one human, seven magic number, all that good jazz. I'm very big on stuff like this, I admit. But currently... yeah, I think four is enough. There may come a day, when I get such a good idea for the last two members that I just have to include them. Or there may not come a day. Or I could eventually design the two races, without them being part of the core group. Anything goes.

I have originally intended for each member to reflect one "type" of dragon in their design - Western, Eastern, drake, Wyvern, maybe a wyrm or a full-on sea dragon, some more obscure versions of dragons, you get the picture. I would still like to preserve this line of thinking, even with only four members.

Marada is a tried and true Western dragon with an aquatic spin on it. Amphibian at its finest.

Shirqi is a very "modern" take on dragons, mostly covered in feathers, with some special wings. Very cat-like, more mammal than reptile.

The fourth member will more than likely be based on Hungarian dragons who are vastly different than the usual myths. Partly because I am Hungarian, of course, I'm absolutely shameless about it, sue me. But also Hungarian dragons have certain qualities that can fit well with what I have been planning for Four and his species in the story. So I have actual reason for this decision! (Man, I can't wait to get to him. Hetra comes first, tho.)

But Hetra? With the other two members gone for now, she could be the "Eastern dragon" of the group.  Of course, not a full-blown Chinese dragon god of the Wind, no no no. Too easy. I want something just a bit extra. Something with leather wings - perhaps a harpy eagle kind of structure, broad but short wings for good maneuverability but weak long-distance soaring. Shirqi and Marada have that last part covered anyway. I am truly wondering if a long body can work with a broad wing. In silhouette, it might - a long and graceful creature when the wings are closed, but a surprisingly broad "paper kite"when flying. I must think on this more. Also, not entirely sure where this "butterfly vibe" came from, but I am liking it. She is a regal character who will have to go through a massive transformation in some sense, after all. Let's see if I can keep it.

Do feel free to share your thoughts on the matter. Lord knows, a fresh pair of eyes never hurts! Thank you for reading. Extra thank you, if you share your thoughts!

(Yes, I do draw other things besides Doc Ock. I am just as surprised as you guys are, trust me)

2022.02.05.

[peppersonironi]

Batfam Avengers Crossover Chapter Two: Meeting

Chapter Two, folks! Finally some batfam appearances.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences 

Category: Gen 

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types 

Relationships: Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, Natasha Romanov & Damian Wayne, Clint Barton & Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tim Drake & Duke Thomas, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Dick Grayson/Wally West, Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd, 

Characters: Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Barbara Gordon, Justice League (DCU), Alfred Pennyworth, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Thor (Marvel), Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Alfred the Cat (DCU), Bat-Cow (DCU), Goliath (DCU), Selina Kyle’s Cat Isis, Kate Kane (DCU), Duke Thomas, 

Additional Tags: Batbrothers (DCU), Avengers Meet The Batfam, MCU/Batfam crossover, Crossover, no beta we die like robins, rated T for Jason’s language, I bleeped it out though. Just to be safe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, canon? What’s canon?, Deaf Clint Barton,Deaf Character, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Happy Batfamily (DCU), Birdflash and joyfire are implied/referenced,

Summary: Avengers enter the cave, and meet the batfam!

Notes: In sorry if this chapter is a bit boring, I tried to keep it light. (I know the techie stuff that I glossed over bored even me) But now that I’m done with the first introductory chapters, I can move to some - hopefully - more fun scenarios!

“Woah.” Peter looked around at the giant cavern that the Green Lantern guy had flown them into. His ring had formed some kind of platform to carry them, and Peter was still theorizing how it worked.

They had flown toward the city - named Gotham apparently - following the mysterious “Batman”. Then reached a waterfall, which had a huge mechanical door system that parted the water. They had gone through a long pathway lit up on the edges before emerging in the cave.

It was huge, with multiple platforms built into the rock. Peter first found himself on one that was clearly meant for vehicles, as there were multiple motorcycles parked beside where Batman’s car stopped. There were other levels that held gym equipment, a sparring ring, weapons stations, and some sort of lab. There was weird memorabilia too. Peter spotted a giant penny, dinosaur, and a Joker playing card. A few more levels had cases for suits, not unlike that which Mr. Stark had. Though some of the suits were strange. One was clearly bloody and ripped. One of the most prominent platforms held a huge computer with a dominating black chair.

However, Peter could have sworn it was playing … The Dinosaur Game? That was weird.

Batman got out of his car the way he had before and made his way over toward the Avengers, where they had been set down by Green Lantern. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a very loud voice called out in the cave, startling everyone except the Batman.

“Bruce! Where the F*** is my AK-47?!”

The Hulk, who had since transformed back into Bruce Banner, frowned in confusion.

No one got the chance to question it, however, because a young man in a skin tight black bodysuit swung from another level, and was now hanging upside down from a support beam near Batman. He had a blue bird on his chest, Peter thought it looked a bit like an eagle. He also had on a black domino mask.

“Hey B!” He said cheerily. “ I should probably warn you that Hood is on a rampage ‘cause he can’t find his gun. And also Robin is threatening everyone as per usual. ” The Dark Knight sighed. “What about Red Robin, Spoiler, and Oracle? ”

The new comer grinned. “Dinosaur Game Championship. Oracle is in the lead.”

There was a sudden shout of disapproval from where the apparent game seemed to be held.

“And Signal?”

“Taking weapons stock while muttering about how insane we all are.” He shook his head. “He seems to forget he’s one of us, and therefore crazy by association.”

The Dark Knight sighed once more, this time with his fingers on the bridge of his nose. “Thank you Nightwing. Would you tell Red Hood that his AK-47 is in the Med Bay where he left it when he was doing his stitches? And tell everyone to meet in the conference room in uniform. Code 27G.”

Nightwings eyes - well, lenses - widened. He glanced at the Avengers. “Huh. Sure can do B.”

He swung up from his perch, flipped onto the platform above him - Peter was pretty impressed at how casually he did so - and ran off, seemingly melting into the shadows.

An awkward silence followed, with the Avengers all huddling protectively together. Peter really wanted to explore - that T-Rex looked awesome - but he saw the worried look on Mr. Stark’s face. This was an unfamiliar situation. They must be cautious.

A moment later Peter had had enough of caution. “Excuse me sir, is that a dinosaur?”

The Dark Knight turned toward Peter and glared. Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Mr. Stark tense up. But a split second later the glare softened. “Yes. Animatronic. From one of my early … endeavors.”

Peter grinned under his mask. “Cool!”

Batman lifted his head, and began walking on a path up. “Come, I’ll show you where we can talk.”

*****

They entered a meeting room that was off to the side of the cave. There was already a group present. They were clumped loosely in a corner, boredom and intrigue apparent on their faces. They all stood to attention when Batman walked into the room, all except for Nightwing from earlier. He was currently in a handstand in the center of the conference table, shifting from one hand to the other. He collapsed onto the table at the sight of the arrivals, before quickly jumping to his feet and saluting with an embarrassed grin on his face. Batman rolled his eyes and they all went back to what they were doing, except Nightwing who slumped into a chair.

The group of teeneagers were dressed in more skin-tight suits. Peter was slightly taken aback by how young they were. The smallest seemed to be around ten - perhaps he was this “Robin” mentioned earlier - and the oldest in his early twenties. Most seemed to be about his own age though, in their mid teens. It felt weird to not be the only kid.

The closest was a young man sitting in one of the chairs with his feet on the table. He seemed to be taller than Nightwing, with a broader chest. He wore gray cargo pants, some sort of utility belt, an armored shirt with a red bat on it, a leather jacket, and a red helmet that looked a lot like Tony’s. Peter could already imagine the copyright complaints from their resident billionaire. The man also had gun holsters on each leg, and was stroking a - newly returned - AK-47 in his arms.

The first teenager had black bottoms and red top with a black and gold “X” over his chest, joined by some symbol that looked vaguely like an “R”. He also had a black cape and smooth cowl. He was standing in the corner, leaning against a wall with a tablet and mug of coffee in hand.

A teenage girl stood beside the teen, dressed in a mostly purple with hints-of-black bodysuit and a purple hooded cape. She wore a full black mask over her face, with only white lenses. It was a bit freaky, but she was mostly non-threatening, due to her easygoing posture and laugh, which was directed at the teen with the cowl.

The kid was dressed in black leggings, green boots and gloves, a red and yellow tunic with an “R” on it, black and yellow hooded cape, and green domino mask. Though the strangest thing about him was the huge Katana he was sharpening while sitting at the table. He also had an unimpressed glare on his face. Peter decided that he and Helmet-Guy were the scariest in the room. Aside from Batman.

Another teenaged boy had a tired look on what Peter could see of his face, as he looked slightly disapprovingly at his companions. He stood in more heavily plated bright yellow and black armor with a bat symbol on it. He had a utility belt, and a helmet which looked to be shaped like a bat.

What was with these people and bats?

Peter didn’t get to ask, as at that moment a new person joined the group. Flying down a ramp was a red headed young woman in a wheelchair. She expertly slowed to a stop in front of Batman, who had not yet entered the room. Peter noticed that she had hastily applied a black domino mask, leaving a pair of glasses in her lap, along with a laptop.

“Sorry I’m late B, I forgot where I had put my extra mask. These things keep disappearing!” She said the last part while glaring at the kids.

“It’s fine, Oracle. Now that we’re all here-” He paused, then looked around at the group. “Where’s Black Bat?”

“Handling a Robbery downtown. She’s finishing up. ETA 20 minutes.”

Batman nodded. “Very well, we’ll continue without her, she won’t mind.”

He entered the room, ushering everyone else to do so as well. With a quick glare, all the kids sat down. The Avengers joined them, as there were plenty of seats. The only one who did not sit was Batman.

He spoke once everyone was ready, mainly directing his words to the kids. Peter briefly wondered what it would be like to actually be respected like that, but shook off the thought. Batman quickly and efficiently summarizes the events, including several readings of the energy sources, which only the red and black teen seemed to understand as he nodded along, looking fascinated. Once he was done, Batman turned to the Avengers. “Names. No need to share personal identities if you are uncomfortable. Though since we are from different earths, I doubt it would matter.”

“Everyone already knows our identities on our earth,” Mr. Stark said, receiving several weird looks from the teens. “So it’s not a problem for us.” He removed his face plate. “Tony Stark, I’m Iron man in the suit, which I built myself.” He gestures to Steve Rogers next.

“Captain America, Steve Rogers. Our resident super soldier and senior citizen.” Steve frowned at the last comment.

“Bruce Banner,” Mr. Stark said next, “Alter ego is the Hulk. Anger Issues and Gamma radiation galore.”

Red Robin perked up. “Cool! How did-” He was cut off by a glare from Batman.

“This is Thor Odinson, named… well, Thor. God of lightning, has a hammer. You can call him Sparky Sparky Boom Man.” A pause. “Yeah, maybe just stick with Thor.”

“Clint Barton, codename Hawkeye. Our long distance weapons specialist.” Mr. Stark gestured to Clint’s bow for good measure. The kids giggled and whispered something to each other that sounded like ‘Green Arrow knockoff ’, though Peter didn’t get it.

“Black Widow, Natasha Romanov. Intelligence expert, and ex-assassin.” This got a bunch of whispers from the kids.

Peter was the last to be introduced. He pulled off his mask while Mr. Stark said “The kid’s Peter Parker, our rookie, also known as Siderman ”

“You sure it’s Spiderman,” Helmet-Guy said.

Peter glared. “Yes.”

“Red Hood,” Batman said, frowning. “No antagonizing the interdimensional visitors.”

Red Hood just shrugged and went back to stroking his gun.

The Avengers just sat around awkwardly. The Woman jabbed her elbow into Superman’s ribs, which got him talking.

“Oh… It’s only fair we introduce ourselves, since it isn’t really official earlier.” This time it was Superman who spoke. “I’m Superman, known as Kal-El, a kryptonian. Human name is Clark Kent.”

Huh, he didn’t look like an alien.

“Here we have Wonder Woman, an amazon, demigoddess, and princess. Secret Identity is Diana Prince.” He gestured to the woman, who, despite just being called a princess, looked very threatening indeed.

“Martian Manhunter, a martian known as J’onn J'onzz. Civilian name is John Jones. Yes, quite original.” The Martian nodded in greeting, and Peter was seriously freaking out. A real martian!? Cool!

“Flash, a speedster also known as Barry Allen.” The man pulled back his cowl as Superman spoke.

“S’up?” He asked with a smile.

“And Hal Jordan, one of the Green Lanterns.”

“The best Green Lantern.”

Batman grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “keep telling yourself that.”

Superman turned to Batman, but before he could, the Dark Knight spoke. “I can do it myself Clark.” He lifted his hand and removed his cowl to reveal a handsome man in his early to mid thirties with black hair and blue eyes. “Batman, also known as Bruce Wayne.”

He turned toward the kids. “These are my kids, as well as partners.”

He started with Nightwing. “Nightwing, aka Richard Grayson. My eldest.” Richard grinned and removed his domino mask. He too had blue eyes.

“Call me Dick,” he said.

“Red Hood, aka Jason Todd, my second eldest.” Jason pressed some button or something on his helmet and took it off to reveal… a domino mask. After a quick glare from Bruce, he sighed and took it off. Revealing black hair and blue eyes.

“Red Robin,” there was a soft ‘yum’ that came from the corner, though Peter couldn’t tell who said it. “Aka Tim Drake.” Tim pulled his cowl back and grinned. He had black hair and blue eyes.

“Over there is Signal, aka Duke Thomas, my ward.” The teen took off his helmet, revealing yet another black-haired kid. Though Duke was clearly african american, and had brown eyes.

“Next is Robin aka Damian Wayne, my youngest.” Damian sneered as if he were above everyone around him.

“Spoiler, aka Stephanie Brown, is a family friend.” Stephanie waved.

“I’m also his ex,” Stephanie said, jutting her thumb at Tim.

Tim groaned. “When will you stop introducing yourself like that?”

“When it stops getting under your skin.”

Tim sank back in his chair and flung an arm over his eyes.

Batman sighed once more. “Oracle, aka Barbara Gordan. Also a family friend, and our tech specialist.” Baraba nodded in recognition. “Now that introductions are out of the way, we must discuss how you got here, and how you’ll get back.”

Everyone nodded and began the discussion. Mr. Stark started off the explanation, going over Anagnorisis, the compound, the gun that they got hit with, and how they ended up in the crater.

The other adults - mainly Batman - popped in, talking about the calculations for such an interdimensional jump. Peter listened intently, as he found it utterly fascinating, but didn’t add anything. Then Tim spoke, listing off a series of numbers and variables, that were received with nods. Peter was a bit jealous that he spoke so easily. So Peter decided to add something later on, a small comment about energy sources. When he did, the conversation stopped. Peter thought he was dead meat for interrupting, but then Bruce - Wayne, not Banner - spoke.

“The kid’s smart.”

Mr. Stark smiled proudly.

A moment later the conversation continued. They went on for almost a half hour, and even Peter was getting a bit bored. He could tell the other kids were too. The girls seemed to have gotten back to their Dinosaur Game championship, and there were small cheers and groans coming from their corner every so often. Jason and Damian had yet to set aside their weapons, though they had begun a small conversation too quiet for Peter to hear. The only people who seemed to be paying attention were Dick and Tim, though Dick clearly didn’t understand half the words that were being tossed around.

The adults seemed to be disinterested as well, namely Barry and Hal, who were in the middle of a thumb war. When they inevitably got too loud, Batman sent a glare their way. The other members of the Justice League seemed to only be listening out of courtesy. As were Thor and Clint. Natasha seemed to be focussed more on the kids. She had a small frown on her face, as if something about them bothered her.

Everyone paid attention when Batman spoke next, however. “It should take at least a week to charge up the energy sources and prepare a device to send you home.”

Peter perked up. “That’s not that long. Have you dealt with interdimensional travel in the past?”

Several of the kids groaned. “Don’t remind me,” Stephanie said.

“Worst twenty-six hours of my life!” Dick agreed.

Then Jason spoke, and Peter was speechless.

“It was almost as bad as that time I died. Now that wasn’t a fun evening.”

“You died?” Natasha said, clearly confused and worried.

“I’m better now,” he said as if referring to a common cold. Jason had a small smirk on his face as he shrugged.

“Back to the discussion at hand,” Batman said, glaring at Jason. “Yes, Peter, we have dealt with the multiverse before. It should be fairly simple to locate your dimension and send you back. The only problem is powering the device. It requires Superman flying out to the sun and placing the energy core inside to fuel it. It needs to remain there for over a week.”

“You can fly to the sun?” Mr. Stark asked. “How do you survive?”

Clark shrugged. “I have impenetrable skin, and a very high melting point.”

No one questioned this, though Peter was quite intrigued.

“Where will they stay?” Dick asked, which caused a sudden silence.

“Does the Watchtower have enough rooms available?” Barry asked.

“What’s the Watchtower?” Peter asked.

“Our space station,” Diana answered, much to Peter’s delight, “and no, we have those visiting Green Lanterns, remember? Hal has been grousing about it all this week.”

“I was not!” Hal said, then sighed. “Okay, maybe I was, but that’s beside the point. What about your farmhouse, Clark?”

Clark shook his head. “Under renovation. Speaking of which I need to head over there after this. Lois will have a cow if I’m late.”

There was silence after that, as everyone was thinking. Then Stephanie got a - slightly evil, Peter thought - smile on her face. “What about the Manor? God knows we have enough space.”

“You don’t even live here!” Tim said.

Bruce glared at Stephanie for a bit then sighed. “The Manor would work. Though why anyone would want to stay with you rabble rousers is beyond my understanding.”

Jason snorted. “Says the guy who adopted us all willingingly.”

Batman grumbled, but was saved from replying as a sudden noise came from the door.

The meeting room had a wide glass window next to the exit - which was open - so Peter had a good view of the sleek black motorcycle that entered the cave, upon which rode a figure dressed all in black. The motorcycle was parked and yet another costumed teen - this time a girl - strolled toward the conference room.

She was dressed in head to toe black, in the form of a skin tight suit. She also had a yellow utility belt, and outline of a bat on her chest. She wore a black cape and cowl which had pointed ears and covered her whole face. There seemed to be some form of stitching across her mouth, which was quite creepy.

She walked forward and entered the room quickly. Bruce smiled upon seeing her.

“Ah, Black Bat. How was the robbery?”

She motioned with her hands in a way that Peter didn’t understand. It seemed vaguely like that sign language which he’d seen Clint use.

Whatever it was, Batman seemed to understand. “Very good. These are our visitors. Code 27G. They’ll be staying at the manor till we can send them back.”

Black Bat reached up and took off her cowl revealing an asian girl around eighteen year old with a black bob. “Good,” she said. “Names?”

“We’re allowing them. Over there we have Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor Odinson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker, and Bruce Banner.”

“Bruce?” She asked with a smirk.

Batman sighed. “Yes.” He turned to the group. “This is my Daughter Cassandra Cain. Alias is Black Bat.”

Everyone muttered small hellos, except Jason who said something with the word “favorite” in it. Cassandra didn’t seem bothered by the lack of enthusiasm. She just smiled and walked over to Damian.

“Seat. Mine.” She spoke simply.

Peter thought the kid would just sneer, but instead he quickly moved over. He could have sworn the kid looked scared. Perhaps the kid was all bark and no bite.

“Well, if that’s all, I really should be going,” Clark Kent said as he rose from the table. “Good luck with staying at the manor. See ya kids.”

“Bye Uncle Supes,” The kids chorused

“I should be going as well,” Barry said. I’m needed at the station.”

Soon the rest of the league left, and the Avengers were left alone with the bats and birds.