#posting separately for the moon fans out there

[notllorstel]

[tagidearte-spam-sb]

My space scrapper dca fic, which originally was reader x sun x moon... is slowly starting to turn into platonic reader & sun/moon, where the romantic part is trying to get these stupid robots to admit their feelings for each other.

I am really just slowly turning this story into "please someone intervene so that these space jesters stop behaving like a divorced couple". And I am loving it.

I mean. I still want us to have a romance with them... but this dynamic is sounding really fun now. A full platonic fic with a ship bonus of sun and moon being the romantic endgame, but reader still being their super important bestie? We'll see.

[pluckyredhead]

What the heck is going on in Batman/Gotham War?

I know a lot of people in fandom are confused and/or upset about what's been going on in Gotham War - why is Bruce acting like this, what is Selina doing, why are the Batkids taking sides. So I figured I would fill you all in on what's been happening in Batman and Catwoman since Chip Zdarsky took over with Batman #125, because it has been BONKERS and I have been enjoying the hell out of it.

Below, the quickest summary I can manage while still being comprehensive:

[Content warning: mental illness, abuse, suicide (...ish), LOTS of violence.]

The first arc, "Failsafe," starts with Batman and Robin (Tim, in this case) in pursuit of the Penguin, who is on a killing spree. In the very first issue, Tim gets shot in the neck. Bruce has to take him to the hospital, but first he has to strip him out of his costume and put him in civilian clothes to preserve their secret identities, triggering memories of when he had to do the same to Jason's dead body. There is LITERALLY NO PURPOSE TO ANY OF THIS EXCEPT WHUMP (Tim is back in action with a fucking BAND-AID on his neck very quickly), which is how I knew this was going to be good. Beat Tim up! Make Bruce cry about Jason! I want these men to suffer! (There is also SO much to be said about Tim's own Poor Mental Health Decisions throughout the entirety of Zdarsky's run so far, but that's for a separate meta post.)

Anyway. Bruce leaves Tim in the hospital and goes to confront Penguin, who turns out to be dying of mercury poisoning. He kills himself and makes it look like Batman did it, forcing Bruce to flee. (Penguin actually faked his death and is alive elsewhere under an alias, but that's not important right now.)

In the Batcave, a massive robot called Failsafe emerges. Failsafe attacks Bruce, who usually eats killer robots for breakfast, but he can't seem to get the upper hand on this one. Duke, Cass, Steph, and Dick show up to help, but Failsafe beats them all too, while Tim gets an injured Bruce away and to the Batcave.

In the Batcave, Bruce puts on a weird purple and red Batman costume and a new personality takes over: the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh. Now, Zur has a very complicated history going back to 1958, but for the purposes of this story, all you need to know is that when he was younger, Bruce decided it would be good to hang out in a sensory deprivation chamber until his mind created a secondary personality, Zur, who is essentially Batman without Bruce. Zur is pure efficiency who does not care about anything but the mission. He created Failsafe, for one purpose: to kill Bruce if Bruce ever crossed the line and killed someone. And right now, Failsafe believes that Bruce killed Penguin.

Failsafe nearly kills Tim, which Zur is okay with writing off as an expendable soldier's death, but this causes Bruce to take control of the body back because "Tim isn't my soldier...HE'S MY SON!" (Tim Nation, why are you not ALL OVER this story? It's catnip.)

Babs calls in the JLA (SuperBat fans, you will also want to read Bruce's adoring description of Clark when he shows up), but of course Failsafe has kryptonite, which it stabs Clark with. The League dumps Clark and Bruce into the JLA jet and distracts Failsafe while Tim flies Clark and Bruce to the Fortress of Solitude. Bruce tells Tim he's a good boy and jumps out of the jet and into the ocean so that Tim and Clark will be safe from Failsafe. He's rescued by Arthur, who takes him to Atlantis to heal. THIS HAS ALL ONLY BEEN FOUR ISSUES SO FAR.

Two weeks later, Bruce wakes up to discover that Failsafe has taken over Gotham. He teleports up to the JLA Watchtower on the moon to lure Failsafe there, then blows the Watchtower up, hoping to catch a ride on one of the Javelins. But Failsafe has already destroyed them, so Bruce RIDES A BOOSTER ROCKET BACK TO EARTH, OXYGEN MASK CLAPPED OVER HIS FACE. The whole thing has some powerful Scooty-Puff Jr energy.

The only tricky part is reentry, when Bruce starts to burn up - his costume is fireproof, of course, but his chin is exposed. SO HE TAKES OFF HIS LITTLE BAT-PANTIES AND PUTS THEM OVER HIS HEAD. I swear to god this happened in a real comic book and the entire "Bruce falls off the moon and survives" sequence is utterly delectable goofy nonsense and I truly cannot recall a time I've had more fun reading a comic book.

Anyway, Bruce lands directly outside of the Fortress, BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES, and runs inside to find Clark and Tim. While Clark keeps Failsafe distracted, Bruce and Tim program nanobots to inject compassion into Failsafe. I SWEAR TO GOD. They zap him with the nanobots, but Failsafe pulls a high tech space gun out of the Fortress and shoots Bruce with it anyway, apparently disintegrating him. Tim falls to his knees in the snow, weeping. TIM NATION, WAKE UP, THIS RUN IS CANDY FOR YOU.

But of course Bruce isn't dead! That wasn't a killing gun, it was a "zap you into another dimension" gun!!! THAT was the compassion!

So Bruce finds himself in a dystopian alternate Gotham, and I'll be honest, I didn't love this arc ("The Bat-Man of Gotham") as much as I loved "Failsafe," but it has its moments. In this Gotham, Bruce Wayne is dead, so Regular Bruce is like "Oh boy, time to Batman this place up." Also he's plagued by hallucinations of a skeleton version of Jim Gordon who is still wearing a trench coat AND A MUSTACHE. Like I said, it has its moments.

This Gotham is controlled by Arkham, and anyone who is diagnosed as "crazy" is locked up. A new villain, Red Mask, is in charge, and Selina and a Venomed-up Harvey Dent work for him. Bruce teams up with an orphan kid (of course) named Jewel and goes after Red Mask, who turns out to be some guy named Darwin Halliday and ALSO...the Joker. Well, he's the Joker who hasn't been Jokerized yet. But one time he breathed in some chemicals that let him see into the main reality of the DCU (???) and glimpsed Regular Joker and now he wants to build an interdimensional machine to mentally connect with Regular Joker across universes which he assumes will make him insane, NATURALLY.

Bruce attacks Red Mask, who sics a Venomed-up Ghost Maker on him. Ghost Maker cuts off Bruce's right hand. Bruce cauterizes it with an electroshock machine and ties some spikes on it (SERIOUSLY) and goes after Red Mask again. Meanwhile Red Mask mentally connects with an alternate dimensional Joker...but instead of it driving Red Mask insane, he's what drives the Joker insane. Desperate to become the Joker somehow, anyhow, he jumps into the interdimensional portal, and Morally Dubious Alternate Universe Selina kicks Bruce in after him.

Meanwhile, Tim is in full "I KNOW I SAW HIM DIE BUT HE'S NOT DEAD" mode, which: bless. So he teams up with Jon Kent, which...gosh, what an astonishingly boring duo. I love Jon, I love Tim, they're perfectly nice and normal around each other, I'm falling asleep. Anyway Tim fights Toyman for a while and then makes a VERY stupid costume where the entire torso is a giant light-up R, because "I want him to see that Robin is coming to save him." GET A THERAPY, TIM.

Bruce finds himself first in the Michael Keaton Batman universe, then the Red Rain universe, BTAS, Batman Beyond (yes I know they're the same universe but I guess he goes there twice), Silver Age, Kingdom Come, Gotham by Gaslight, and more. Adam West gives him a utility belt. The Dark Knight Returns Bruce builds him a robot hand.

Finally Bruce and Red Mask reach the end of the multiverse, which is a Gotham asteroid floating in space, surrounded by giant Jokerized sharks. LUCKILY BRUCE HAS BAT-SHARK REPELLANT IN HIS ADAM WEST UTILITY BELT!!! Honestly this whole arc was worth it for that moment.

Bruce knocks Red Mask out, but now he's stuck. He has a device from Batman Beyond Bruce to get home, but it's only good for one person, and he can't leave Red Mask there to die. Of course, that's when Tim shows up in his stupid giant glowing R costume and they hug it out, thereby fulfilling but also compounding all of Tim's issues since 1989.

Anyway things are fine now, right? Sure, Bruce is hallucinating that his family is on fire, and the Zur personality is not going neatly back into the box where it's been all these years, and he still has a robot hand (Damian, hilariously, immediately announces that he wants one too), but he's FINE. He is a little bit mad at Selina, because she broke out of jail (she was in jail because she killed her fuckbuddy because he was trying to kill Bruce), and also because she didn't tell him Penguin was alive and that would have stopped Failsafe, and also because Other Selina kicked into another universe. Selina, very fairly, is like "Well I'm not responsible for Other Selinas and also maybe don't build robots to kill yourself with and not tell anyone about them???"

THEN we got Knight Terrors, the summer event in which a villain called Nightmare caused everyone to fall asleep and, uh, have nightmares. Bruce, specifically, had a nightmare that he met an eight-year-old version of himself that vomited up a man-sized bat with a gun for a head. I laughed SO HARD. Bruce also had his body borrowed by Deadman for the duration of the event, so while he endured the psychological toll of nightmares like everyone else, he also endured the physical toll of everything Deadman was doing PLUS the mental toll of being aware of what was happening in the waking world even though he couldn't control his body. As soon as the event was over, he lapsed into a coma so that his body could get some damn rest.

Okay. Now we're up to Gotham War.

(I know, I know. But for all of you who are like "How could Bruce do this???" about Gotham War...*points up* THAT'S HOW. HE IS NOT WELL.)

Bruce awakens from his coma and IMMEDIATELY decides to Fight A Crime even though Babs is like "Maybe don't?" But he can't find any crime, which is...weird. His kids confirm that Gotham's been super quiet since he's been out.

Selina hears that Bruce is awake and is like okay, time to pay the piper. She calls all of the Bats to a meeting and explains that she's the reason crime has been down. See, villains like Joker and Two-Face always have goons, right? But what if the goon supply dried up because the goons have better jobs? So Selina has trained All The Goons In Gotham to be...cat burglars. No violence, no stealing from anyone who can't afford it. More importantly, no helping Scarecrow or whoever commit mass murder.

All of the Batkids are like "Hmm...I feel uncertain about this, but it's working...I don't know what to think..." except for Jason, who thinks it's hilarious and is instantly Team Selina, and Damian, who is staunchly Team Bruce. Bruce, meanwhile, is like "No! NO! THIS IS CRIMES, AND CRIMES IS BAD!" and Selina's like "I mean, robbing from the rich is basically a victimless crime" and Bruce screams, I swear to god, "MY PARENTS WERE 'RICH'!" Inexplicable scare quotes and all. I laughed so hard.

Anyway this is the basis for Gotham War and it is endlessly hilarious to me because everyone in the Batfamily is supposed to be a genius and yet not one single character has pointed out that:

There are jobs the goons could be doing that AREN'T illegal. It's not just violent crime vs. nonviolent crime. There are in fact many other jobs! I am POSITIVE Gotham needs construction workers and hospital orderlies. (Yes, I know it's hard for people with records to get jobs. That isn't addressed.)

Being Batman is SUPER ILLEGAL.

They are all so stupid.

Selina's plan doesn't even work, because one of her thieves gets killed by a rich person defending their home, and Bruce is like "See? This is why crime is bad!" and like...pretty much snaps. He's particularly fixated on Jason, even (rhetorically) threatening to kill him, which is when the other kids jump into the fray on Jason's side, all except for Damian, who like I said is firmly Team Bruce. (This makes complete sense to me, Damian has been dealing with severe trauma and isolation pretty much nonstop since 2018 and he and Bruce have finally made a tenuous peace, so I can understand why he wouldn't want to lose that.)

Also, Vandal Savage buys Wayne Manor. It's so random and SO funny.

OKAY BATMAN #138. Bruce has kidnapped Jason and injected him with a variation on fear toxin which will be triggered whenever Jason's adrenaline spikes, the idea being that Jason is no longer capable of killing - but in practice, Jason is no longer capable of even getting up off the floor, he's so terrified. I want to be really, really clear here: Bruce is like 90% Zur here, and the only reason he goes this route and doesn't kill Jason is because the remaining 10% that's still Bruce loves Jason and is trying to help him. He's just incapable of good or humane help because Zur literally can't do feelings.

Dick knows something is up and is sneaking around Bruce's Secret Other House We've Never Heard Of to figure out what it is. Damian attacks him to protect Bruce. Tim attacks Damian so that Dick can do what he needs to do, and handcuffs Damian to a parking meter:

THERE IS SO MUCH TO UNPACK HERE!!! TIM GO TO THERAPY! DAMIAN GO TO THERAPY! EVERYONE GO TO THERAPY!!!!!

Dick figures out what Bruce did to Jason (it's on the computer, for...some reason?) and absolutely loses his shit on Bruce, beating the crap out of him, which tbh is the only thing that felt off to me in this run because frankly I don't think Dick likes Jason that much. BUT WHATEVER.

Tim pulls Dick off of Bruce. Bruce leaves them both tangled in a net and flees as the cops approach. Zur's like "Good, fuck 'em" in Bruce's head, because the cops will expose Dick, Tim, and Damian's secret identities and Bruce will be free of the dead weight of a family, but the little bit of Bruce still in there throws Dick a batarang so he can free them all in time.

Then Bruce leaves. Damian is devastated.

I WILL NEVER RECOVER FROM THIS PAGE. Damian really thought he could have Bruce's love and loyalty if he turned on everyone else! Tim is going to be a therapy dog to a Wayne even if he has to settle for the one he doesn't like! That unresisting, blank hug made me SCREAM when I turned the page. Incredible. (Also the art fucking S L A P S, god bless you Jorge Jimenez.)

ALSO it turns out that Selina's second in command has been Vandal Savage's daughter Scandal Savage the whole time and they are turning Selina's cat burglar army into their own personal army WHOOPS. (This also feels very OOC for Scandal but at this point I trust Zdarsky with my life so let's see where things go.)

SO THAT'S WHAT'S GOING ON IN GOTHAM WAR. TL;DR:

Bruce is unhinged because he nearly died like 19 times in a week and it unlocked the smaller, meaner purple Batman that lives inside him.

Selina is unaware that you can get money legally.

Tim is going to have a nervous breakdown if he can't fix someone, ANYONE.

Damian needs a hug but ideally from someone he actually likes this time.

Jason is so scared.

THE END.

[dezertvideogames]

The Subnautica of other fears

Subnautica is a game infamous for it's almost all ocean planet, underwater worldbuilding, and deep sea gameplay. It's also the bane of all thalassaphobia peeps.

So here's the subnautica of other phobias

Claustrophobia Fear of Tight/Cramped Spaces - The Forest Series : After a plane crash leaves you stranded in a strange forests, something increasingly becomes... wrong. The caves around don't help.

Scopophobia Fear of being watched or the center of attention - Brighter Day : A weirdcore horror game where something is definitely watching you and definitely following you.

Entomophobia/Arachnophobia - Grounded : You play a group of kids who are stuck in a "honey I shrunk the kids" incident. They are forced to venture across their yard, and survive the various common insects around.

Megalophobia Fear of very very very big things - The Utility Room : An experience. More of an experience then a game and fever dreamish, worth it, and mysterious all the way. It's almost as if the universe accidentally left one strange dev room behind.

Nyctophobia Fear of darkness - Amnesia: The Bunker (from the Amnesia series) : It's a first-person survival horror. You play a French man trapped in a bunker during WW1, while being hunted by something inside its darkness.

Autophobia Fear of being/feeling alone - Firewatch : You work in a national park in order to watch out for fires. Traveling across the Wyoming wilderness takes a complicated turn.

Hemophobia Fear of blood or bleeding - Iron Lung : What awaits you in the deep of a strange moon. Trapped in a submarine you have no choice but to find out.

Amaxophobia Fear of car accidents or being run over - Decimate Drive : After freeing yourself from a kidnapping, the world you wake up to is full of hostile cars.

Final Boss Games:

Lethal Company

Fun with friends :D

Genre: Indie Comedy Horror

Takes place on alien planets in outerspace

It's multiplayer, and very fun, but as soon as it hits the fan the sound design works hard to immerse you in the sudden loneliness. The games sound design is one the major players of Lethal Company's fear. As soon as a friend walks away the proximity chat teaches you just how separated you now are.

Before you know it you have had something unfriendly following behind you, and finally finding the silhouette of a friend in the dark you are betrayed by the creatures of the Lethal Company universe.

Fear of Darkness

Fear of Loneliness

Fear of Being Watched

Fear of Outerspace

The Metro Series

Genre: Survival Horror Shooter

You play the beautiful and amazing Artyom Chynornyj in the post-apocalyptic world of Metro. Developed by Ukrainians and based off the Russian book series + Polish fanon writing community.

The world of Metro is unfair and unforgiving, full of mutated creatures, and the leftover souls that the destruction of humanity left in it's wake. Crawl across the underground of Russian cities, or panic across the even more dangerous world of the destroyed above.

Fear of Darkness

Fear of Wild Animals

Fear of Deep Water

Fear of Ghost/The Supernatural

Fear of Insects/Spider

Fear of Heights

Fear of Dead Bodies

Fear of the Cold

No Man's Sky

The scariest game I've ever played. I don't know why, but this game freaks me out. I know the picture I chose was harmless, but I did that on purpose.

This game is beautiful, but don't let that fool ya. This world will leave you no hesitation lost in the unpredictable randomly generated horrors of space. From planet that are all water, to colossus creatures you see for only a split second, to the infinite colorless expanse of space.

Megalphobes and astrophobes, this is your subnautica

Fear of Outerspace

Fear of Darkness

Fear of Cramped Spaces

Fear of the Unknown

Fear of Very Very Very Big Things

Fear of Deep Water

Fear of Loneliness

Fear of Caves

Fear of the Supernatural

[lactoseintolerentswag]

Donnie Tech Part 1/?

After many moons here are the promised observations of the cartoon shtick logic of Donnie's weapons for season one!! Will link a season two and movie version Eventually, but keep in mind I can't explain in depth how each bit of tech works, rather that I can pinpoint the functions for the visual bit. Keep in mind that Donnie's tech can pretty much do any ridiculous thing you can put your mind to, and that it can also backfire in any ridiculous way you can put your mind to.

Tech Bo:

Collapsible, can become a shorter version of itself easily stored

Shoot a grappling hook AND function as a zip line

Can form a rocket from either end (usually at the same time, resulting in the bo spinning)

Is equipped to be a fire extinguisher

Can shoot out lasers

Has a button that activates the "Shopping Cart Protocol" to lock the Turtle Tank if it goes outside a set perimeter

Top can turn into a rocket powered fist

Turn into a giant drill

Turn into a saw

Turn into a tranquilizer

Turn into a tennis ball shooter

Turn into a selfie stick

Top can turn into a disco ball of "multidimensional reflective orb neutralizer"

Battle Shell:

Has rotary engines (think jet turbine or computer fan) that help him fly around. He calls them "rotors" for short

Can transform into a seat so April can sit on his back

Can split up into a DJ set up in "music mode"

Jet Pack Shell:

His fastest mode of transportation

Not much is shown, but April had a significant difficulty controlling it

Spider Shell:

Has four arms with three fingers

Arms can turn into saws

Has a seemingly endless toolkit inside that includes basic things like hammers and wrenches, but also blowtorches

Goggles:

Has night vision

Can function as binoculars

Is able to summon is tech ("communicates with microwave transceiver with class c encryption protocols")

Read mystic energy signatures after adding the crystal they found in Draxum's lab

Gauntlet:

Has an app that can tap into every security camera in NY

Bug Slapper:

Has a green Mad Dogs sticker on the side

Compacts itself into a metal suitcase and then expand back into a vehicle

So far only uses Big Mama's webbing material as projectiles

Shelldon:

Began as an automated smart lair designed with the intent as a cleaning assistant

Has a "disposal unit" which unlocks several of Donnie's weapons such as: guns, pinchers, drills, and flamethrowers

Can carry at least two turtles (Mikey and Donnie)

Is nicknamed "Cyber Bishop" by Donnie

Uses surfer dude slang: “dude”, “gnarly”, “buzzkill”, “okey dokey”, “dawg”, “you beefed it”, “brohounds"

As a smart lair has clear favoritism towards Donnie until tampered with. As a drone they share more of a familial or pet like relationship, and Shelldon has room to sometimes poke at Donnie's faults as well

In conclusion there's not much to worry about breaking canon, the physics of our reality, or understanding complicated tech and science to write about Donnie's tech. He can do whatever he wants as long as it's silly, overly dramatic, and includes an unnecessary amount of purple guns. His tech bo is especially flexible with breaking the rules even before we get to his ninpo powers.

I'm keeping the Turtle Tank separate, because it also deserves its own post. Happy writing!

[sakkiichi]

CRUEL SUMMER.

the summer heat is becoming unbearable, but if you can be with him, you think you’ll survive this unforgiving weather.

ft. Kaedehara Kazuha, Scaramouche/Wanderer, Xiao, Kaveh, Alhaitham, Kaeya x gn! reader.

cw/genre: fluff, romance, a tiny little bit suggestive. reader’s hair is long enough to be put into a ponytail in Kaveh’s.

word count: 1.6k.

decided to try this other layout formatting to make the post more pleasing (hopefully haha), hope you enjoy <3

✧ KAEDEHARA KAZUHA

If you didn’t know him so well, you’d think he’s doing this on purpose.

White short sleeved t-shirt on, Kazuha sits by your living room’s fan.

A strawberry popsicle in his mouth, he looks unfairly good with sweaty strands framing his face, as he reaches to tie his hair up into a high ponytail.

You want to mess it up. You think, cheeks heated, and not because of the weather.

You watch with envy as droplets slide down the vibrant popsicle on your boyfriend’s mouth.

And then, a devilish idea pops into your mind.

“Kazu…” you call him, a mask of innocence over your less demure intentions. “Can I have a taste?”

Sunset eyes set on you, soft pink lips separating from the icy treat.

“Of course, my dove.” He smiles, offering you the ice pop.

With your tongue sticking out the corner of your lips, your hand closes over his.

Your gaze, however, settles for another strawberry hued treat.

You lean in, and Kazuha’s lips taste like frozen sugar. The hold you had on his hand tightens, as his free one reaches up to cup your cheek, your hand on top of his.

You feel cool droplets from the melting ice cream on your skin, the wind from the nearby fan cooling you off.

When you pull away for air, your lips close around the melting sweet, still in Kazuha’s hand, your eyes never leaving his.

“Now I want a taste, hummingbird.” The samurai utters, taking your chin in between his fingers, guiding your kiss to him once more.

✧ SCARAMOUCHE

He won’t admit it, but your whining’s kind of cute.

Your form laying on the bed, splayed out upside down, your legs kicking every now and then for some semblance of air.

He certainly wants to steal the air off your lungs right now.

“Kuniiiii!” You look at him, a pout he wants to kiss off all too enticing on your lips. “It’s so hot…”

He sighs, exasperated. Most of his clothes have been discarded already, the black tank top in stark contrast to his pale skin doing nothing to help lower your temperature.

“How many more times are you gonna say it?” The wanderer huffs, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’m gonna melt into a puddle…” You complain, looking at the night dawning out the window, hoping the sunset brings at least a slight breeze.

“Ugh, you’re insufferable!” Are the words that contradict the spreading pink blooms on your lover’s cheeks. “Give me your hand.”

You stare back at him, tilting your head to the side from your upended position.

“Come on, I’m gonna do something about this heat.” He spats, the fake malice melting off his tone at your sparkly eyed gaze.

Standing up, you rush to your wanderer, putting your hand in his perfectly spotless one.

The air you so desperately craved leaves your lungs momentarily when his other arm hooks under your thighs, starlight kissing your skin the moment he leaps out the open window.

You brace yourself for impact.

“Open your eyes, silly.” You hear, followed by a flick to your forehead.

Galaxy-like eyes regard you, soft, akin to the polarity of a moon against the dusky edges of his smirk. “Didn’t you like the stars? It’s relatively cool here too.” The wandering doll states, landing on a corner of the rooftop.

The scent of nearby wisteria surrounds you when your arms wrap around him, your head nuzzling into his chest.

“Thank you, Scara.” You softly whisper.

“Weren’t you hot?” He retorts at your closeness, tone amused, arms tightening around you.

He never cared for the stars above, and certainly not now that you make constellations shine in the firmaments of his stare.

✧ XIAO

Xiao wonders if you have a fever.

Your skin is all hot, you lay down more than usual, you’re not hungry, and you won’t stop shifting in bed.

He is worried. Is this because of his karma? The yaksha ponders, lower lip caught between his teeth, his spoon picking at the frozen almond tofu he would have otherwise devoured in seconds.

“Xiao?” You ask, sitting by his side, on a shaded area of Wangshu Inn’s balcony. “Is everything okay?”

Sharp golden eyes set on yours. Dark shadows pool under your stare. You didn’t sleep well, again.

“Qingxin…” the conqueror of demons begins. “You look tired… are you sick? Did I do something wrong?” Xiao worries, silk flowers blossoming on his pale cheeks.

You sigh heavily, laying down with your head over his thigh.

“I’m not sick, love…” You tell him, your hand reaching up to cup his face. “It’s just… this heat is a bit too much…” You smile, a little strained.

“I see…” He breathes, relief lacing his tone. Then, you feel something cool against your forehead.

“Xiao, what-“

“This will help.” He mutters, face still a crimson watercolor, as he awkwardly holds the cool almond tofu plate over your temple. “Here, have some too.” He mumbles, busying himself with scooping up some, bringing the spoon to your parched lips.

You swallow the treat, eyes focused on his features, the scorching breeze combing through the dark stands of his hair.

“You’re so cute, Xiao.” You smile up at him.

Now, he’s the one having a heat stroke.

✧ KAVEH

Why did you decide on today of all days to tidy up his study, you might never know.

Droplets of sweat uncomfortably trickle down your neck and back, your shirt sticking to your skin.

You huff, running a hand through your sweat dampened hair.

Now, of all times you just had to forget to bring a hair tie. Sighing, you resign yourself to suffer moving yet another box, strands sticking to your face and the back of your neck.

“My darling,” Your lover delicately calls, his voice honey sweet. “Allow me.” Kaveh’s hands rest on your shoulders, moving up to your hair, gathering it at the back of your head carefully.

“Mmm…” You hum at the sensation, eyelids briefly fluttering closed. “This is nice.” You sing, as you sway against the architect.

He chuckles.

“I can’t let my gorgeous padisarah suffocate in this weather, now, can I?”

You turn around, hair now neatly tied, a golden shimmery scrunchie holding it into a ponytail.

“Well, you could effectively avoid that keeping the room tidy.” You tease, bopping his nose.

“Fair…” Kaveh mumbles, zaytun peach pink painted on his cheeks.

You let out a soft laugh, lips tenderly brushing against his pouty ones.

If you get to spend moments like this with him, you can endure this.

✧ ALHAITHAM

Sometimes, you think there is no way your boyfriend is human.

How can he, in this weather, be reading his book so nonchalantly, completely unbothered by the unforgiving rays of the midday sun?

You rest your cheek on your crossed arms, keeping you afloat on the edge of the swimming pool.

“Are you really not going to come take a bath, Alhaitham?”

The scribe momentarily looks up from the tome, vibrant turquoise leveling you before returning his gaze to the words.

“I’m fine, [Y/n].” Your partner utters, flatly.

You ‘ugh’.

“Rude!” You whine, as you splash a wave in Alhaitham’s direction, soaking his t-shirt, the book on his hands somehow still perfectly dry.

You turn around, your back to him, resting against the pool’s wall.

Suddenly, you feel a strong hand tilting your chin upwards.

Silver and teal flood your vision before your lover kisses the corners of your mouth, tongue swiping over the pretty pink of your moist lips.

You smile into the kiss, but right as you were going to deepen it, the former acting grand sage pulls away.

“Ah- ah.” He tuts, smirk outlined in his handsome features. “I’m afraid not now, sweetheart.”

You whine in response.

“And you’re lucky the book is dry.” Alhaitham answers you, already walking away, that grin still etched on his face. “Let’s talk about it tonight.” Is the scribe’s last statement before immersing himself in his read again.

✧ KAEYA

As enchanting as the Veluriyam Mirage is, you can’t deny the rainforest climate is a bit too warm.

The humidity and high temperature are certainly not helping your state, as Klee urges you to follow her, claiming she wants to ride the choo-choo cart again.

How could you deny her? When her hopeful eyes and bright smile expectantly awaited your answer? When she looks so excited in her new mage costume?

So, you push through, panting as the girl runs along in front of you.

When she stops near Silver Bottle Courtyard to play with some hydro eidolons, however, you are thankful. And you certainly don’t pass up the chance to freshen up and drink some water in the nearby fountain.

“Well, someone looks tired.” A familiar voice speaks.

“Kaeya…” you weakly call, faint smile tugging at your lips.

The swordsman, or rather, bandit now, steps closer to you, sitting himself next to you on the fountain’s stone edge.

“Allow this thief to cool you down a little, darling.” He offers, dipping his fingers ringed in gold on the crystalline waters.

Slipping his hands under your shirt, the water cools at Kaeya’s contact with your skin, eliciting pleased sighs from you.

“I take it this is better?” Your knight teases, dark manicured fingers caressing your nape.

“Much better.” You announce, with a satisfied smile. “If you’re going to do this, you can steal me away any time, my bandit.” You tease.

“Oh, don’t ever doubt it, beautiful.” He flirts back, with a kiss to the side of your neck.

[budbuddnbuddy]

Little obey me headcanons (Pt 1)

(Pt2)

A/n:Just things I think the obey me characters would do/ think/like along with worldbuilding stuff. Nothing too major, but there’s also some suggestive stuff so look out for that. Sorry for not posting in a while school sucks. :(

After seeing all the happy endings in fairytale books and stories or just anything in general, Satan commonly thinks of having a “Happily ever after.” with MC.

While Belphegor, has no ass or tits he does have some cute thighs, when it’s warm in the devildom the chances of you seeing him lounging about the house in booty shorts and thigh highs are up by 70%

The celestial realm and the Devildom are super behind when it comes to technology, while the Devildom is catching up it’s still all over the place, so when MC brings up the moon landings or anything about humans going into space they’re gonna think that you’re joking…..until you show them proof.

“Wow, you really weren’t lying when you said that humans actually made it to the moon.”

“I told you! I’m sure if we get some people who work in NASA down here, we’ll probably be able to go to the moon in the Devildom too.”

“…the fuck is a NASA?”

I’m a firm believer that there is someone out in the human world, wether it be a family member or friend or coworker, SOMEONE was looking for MC when they were first summoned. Argue with me all you want but you will not be able to convince me that one day their boss wasn’t like: “MC hasn’t come into work in like a week.” other people can care about them too >:(

Asmodeus has definitely given some Devildom skincare products to MC. Whether they make you look inhumanly glamorous or burn off half your face is up to you.

There’s BARELY any public transportation in the devildom, no buses, cabs, airplanes or anything like that. You want to get somewhere without driving? Put on some comfortable shoes cause you’re gonna have to WALK.

However Diavolo does send chauffeurs (or carriages if it’s a royal/political event) to nobles and the brothers to get to the castle or if they’re just going somewhere with him. Which is how you guys got to the castle for the 3 day retreat.

You know those pics from hidden paparazzi or fans of celebrity couples out together on a date or walking around holding hands? There’s like a bunch of them with you and the characters in the Devildom. Most common ones to see with you are: Mammon, Beel ,Belphie, Asmo. The ones on the rarer side are: Lucifer, Satan, Diavolo, Simeon, and Solomon. The ultra rare ones are: Barbatos and Leviathan (but both for very separate different reasons)

There’s been a major skyrocket in human attraction, not just in the Devildom but a bit in the Celestial realm too, I guess Simeon was eyeing and twirling his hair at you a little too much for the angels to contain their curiosity. Hehe.

[knightlycrow]

it's not enough to just block LU tags bc people love not fucking tagging that AU. I'm going to go insane if I see another "EoW Link is the Hero of Legend!" take.

wait.... are people still thinking EoW is an adventure for the Hero of Legend even after playing it????? why.

[youremyheaven]

Mrigashira: Always On The Run

TW: abuse, kidnapping, r*pe, murder, stalking, violence, incest

I have been doing more research on Mrigashira simply because for the last month or so, I have been seeing more Mrigashira like incidents more and more often (synchronicity, I suppose). It's so fascinating to me how literally the themes of this nakshatra manifest in real life.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the mythology of this nakshatra, it goes like this:

Rohini was Brahma's favourite daughter. He loved her to such an extent that he tried to be sexually intimate with her. Traumatized, Rohini decided to leave heaven. She descended down to earth and took the form of a deer (a deer's head is the symbol of Mrigashira and the word "Mrigashira" literally translates to animal's head) so that she can hide away from her creepy father. Deers are animals who spend their lives in fear of danger. Every day it wakes up knowing that it will have to run for its life because its prey to many predators. There is no sense of safety.

In real life this translates to paranoia, stalking (being stalked as well as stalking others), kidnapping, being held hostage, incestual abuse, obsession, being exiled, going into hiding, being deprived of your "freedom", being gaslit/manipulated, stockholm syndrome, having a violent/unsafe home, being on the run, chasing as well as being chased etc

Lindsay Lohan, Mrigashira Rising (she is also Bharani Moon and Venusian women are highly susceptible to abuse, which I'll explore further in a separate post)

Lindsay starred in a movie called I Know Who Killed Me which revolves around a young woman who is abducted and tortured by a sadistic serial killer. After surviving the abduction, she insists that her identity is that of another woman.

I would say both the themes of being abducted and held hostage and also being very confused about your identity are linked to Mrigashira (I won't give away the twist of the movie, but you should watch it, its not as bad as some people say it is). You have to remember that in the mythology, Rohini changed form from a woman to a deer, so changing identities, being confused about who you really are and by extension being susceptible to gaslighting and manipulation and also being paranoid about the same are all Mrigashira themes.

However, its not just victims who have Mrigashira placements, unfortunately, many perpetrators have Mrig in their charts as well.

Boy George- Mrigashira Sun

In 2007, Boy George imprisoned a male escort in his house, chained him to the wall and beat him up. It was apparently a psychotic episode as George was struggling with cocaine addiction at the time. He was convicted and served a 15-month sentence.

Sia- Mrigashira Moon

Sia felt uncomfortable being in the limelight and would suffer from constant anxiety and nervous breakdowns as a result of it in the early phase of her career. So when she made a comeback, she decided to wear wigs that covered her face and basically kept her hidden from view (all of these are Mrigashira themes).

Sia's relationship and obsession with Maddie Ziegler (Saturn in Mrigashira) has been extremely inappropriate. In 2014, at the age of 11, Maddie starred in Chandelier for Sia who was 38yrs old. Sia was a huge fan of Maddie after watching her performances on Dance Moms and reached out to her to star in the video. This began a long series of collaborations and performances.

Sia kept creating projects for Maddie to be in just so that she can keep her close and in her own words "protect her". But she cast Maddie as an autistic teen in a movie called Music for which Maddie received huge backlash and is considered very insulting movie to the autistic community. Maddie didn't even want to be in it but Sia forced her.

For many years, Maddie was the ONLY person that Sia followed on IG (now she's one of the five people she follows lol). Maddie would apparently have sleepovers with Sia and they'd snuggle in bed together? 🤮🤢🤮idk why a teenager has to live and snuggle with some middle aged woman who isn't even related to her?? Sia gets away with all this bc she's a woman, if a man did all this to a teenager he'd be accused of grooming her. Sia even bought Maddie her first car and tried to adopt her?? Sia basically made Maddie codependent on her from her early teens. I hope one day all the truth comes to light because their dynamic is seriously disturbing and Maddie has yet to speak up about it.

I personally find it morbid that a woman who found fame so nerve wracking and damaging as to hide behind wigs for her entire career would put a literal child out there as the "face" of her brand and then claim that she was "protecting" her. What or who exactly is she being protected from lol? if anything she is being exploited by a creepy older woman.

Linda Hamilton, Mrigashira Moon

Linda played the iconic Sarah Connor in the Terminator who is supposed to be executed by a cyborg sent from the future. The entire movie basically features Sarah running for her life. This is a very literal manifestation of a Mrigashira trope.

Bae Doona, Mrigashira Moon

several characters that Doona has played echo Mrigashira-esque themes. In Cloud Atlas, she plays a humanoid clone who has to eat "soap" which is the food that clones eat to remain acquiescent (it takes away their ability to remember or form new thoughts that aren't programmed into them- basically a scifi dystopian version of being gaslit). She eventually breaks free and learns the "truth" about her condition (another Mrigashira theme is "learning the truth" because Rohini escaped heaven after learning the truth behind her father's love).

Ewan McGregor, Mrigashira Moon

Ewan starred in a movie called Big Fish which is about a frustrated son trying to determine the fact from fiction in his dying father's life.

Ewan plays the father in question. The son does eventually learn about the truth but blurring fact and fiction and not being able to distinguish which is which, being overly suspicious of others and their motives etc are all Mrigashira themes.

Liam Neeson, Mrigashira Sun

In The Taken movies, Liam stars as a former CIA operative who must rescue his teenage daughter and her friend who has been abducted by human traffickers for sexual slavery while on a trip to Paris.

Liam is on the run throughout the movie, except he's the one chasing them and he is on a mission to rescue his abducted daughter (extremely on brand Mrigashira trope).

Bear Grylls, Ketu in Mrigashira

speaking of running and chasing, lets talk about surviving in the wild, which also arguably correlates to Mrigashira. Bear Grylls aka the man who made a career out of teaching people how to survive in the wild has his Ketu placement here. i include Ketu placements because Ketu is how we channel our latent creative potential. it represents our imagination and creativity bc its the lowest point of our subconscious.

BTS made their debut on 12th June 2013, so they have Mrigashira Sun atmakaraka & Jupiter (Pushya Moon, Mercury in Punarvasu amatyakaraka)

I have often wondered why Armies are so uniquely obsessive and why BTS seems mutually obsessed with their armies. For the most part it is a wonderful rapport (minus the saesangs) and knowing their Mrigashira connection cements it further.

Amelia Earhart, Venus in Mrigashira atmakaraka

The Mrigashira urge to be an explorer of some kind is very interesting to me, I feel like they're always breaking into new territories and doing unprecedented things but always paying a personal price for it

Amelia was an American aviation pioneer. On July 2, 1937, Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. To this day, no one is quite sure what happened to her.

Mrigashira nak is quite prominent in the charts of many people who have similarly gone exploring and never returned.

Michael Rockefeller, Venus AK in Mrigashira, Mars Amk in Mrigashira

In 1961, he was on an expedition (??) in present day Indonesia (then Dutch New Guinea) when the boat he was in had overturned. He was with the anthropologist Rene Wassing who was rescued the next day but Michael was never seen or heard from again despite intensive searches all over the area. He was declared legally dead in 1964. There have been speculations over the years that he may have been a victim of cannibalism (which was practiced by the local tribes).

Joshua Slocum, Ketu in Mrigashira

He was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world.

In 1909 he set sail from New England in the Spray (the name of his ship) to spend the winter in Grand Cayman and was lost at sea. He was assumed to have been the victim of a collision; he and the Spray were never found, and in 1924 he was declared legally dead.

To go exploring and never be found is tragically Mrigashiracore

Hart Crane, Ketu in Mrigashira

On April 27, 1932, Crane, in an inebriated state, jumped off or fell off the steamship USS Orizaba and into the Gulf of Mexico while the ship was en route to New York. His body was never found.

Glen Miller, Mrigashira Rising

American big band conductor, arranger, composer, trombone player, and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the US Army Air Forces.

Miller went missing in action (MIA) on December 15, 1944, on a flight over the English Channel. In keeping with standard operating procedure for the US military services, Miller was officially declared dead a year and a day later. Nobody is sure as to what exactly happened to him and his body was never recovered.

Jodi Sue Huisentruit, Mars in Mrigashira AmK

She was an American news anchor for KIMT in Mason City, Iowa. She disappeared in the early morning hours of June 27, 1995, soon after telling a colleague that she had overslept and was running late for work. Since there were signs of a struggle outside her apartment, Huisentruit is believed to have been abducted. However, extensive investigations failed to uncover any clues to her disappearance, and Huisentruit was declared legally dead in 2001.

Victor Grayson, Mars in Mrigashira AK, Shravana Moon

He was an English socialist politician of the early 20th century. 

On 28 September 1920, Grayson was out drinking with friends when he received a telephone message. He told his friends that he had to go to the Queen's Hotel in Leicester Square and would be back shortly. He did not return and no one knows what happened to him.

It has been speculated that Grayson was murdered to prevent his revealing evidence of corruption.

Salman Rushdie, Sun & Moon in Mrigashira

After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, a man stabbed Rushdie after rushing onto the stage where the novelist was scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.

After the fatwa was issued, Rushdie took the name of Joseph Anton and lived in hiding under police protection for several years. The theme of Mrigashira running away and trying to hide manifests once again in this unfortunate example.

Vili Fualaau, Uttara Ashadha Moon, Mrigashira Stellium (Mercury, Mars & Rahu)

In the 90s Vili Fualaau's case made major headlines when Mary Kay Letourneau, his teacher was arrested for raping the 6th grader whom she had known since he was in 2nd grade. She was 34 years old and pregnant with 12 year old Vili's baby 🤢🤮🤢and claimed that she did not know that it was a crime to have sex with minors??  While awaiting sentencing, she gave birth to Fualaau's daughter.

Shortly after Letourneau had completed three months in jail, the police caught her in a car with Fualaau. A judge revoked her plea agreement and reinstated the prison sentence for the maximum allowed by law of seven and a half years. Eight months after returning to prison, she gave birth to Fualaau's second child, another daughter. She was imprisoned from 1998 to 2004. Letourneau and Fualaau were married in May 2005, and the marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019. She died from cancer in 2020 and even though they were separated, Fualaau took care of her until she passed away. He publicly claimed that he never saw anything wrong in their relationship.

Obviously many victims struggle to form a coherent understanding of what happened to them. Some eroticize their experiences, others romanticize them or normalize them. Its often difficult for Mrig natives to fully comprehend or understand the insanity of the really messed up things they went through. Fualaau was groomed and raped by this woman since he was a child yet he held her in positive regard and remained married to her for nearly two decades and took care of her until she passed away?

Its similar to Brooke Shields, Mrig Moon who always spoke glowingly about the mother who made her do a full frontal nude playboy shoot as a 10yr old child??

Mrigashira being a deva gana nakshatra is quick to forgive and forget, it is also a Mridu or gentle nakshatra and often times, just how ??? sympathetic they are towards people who have abused them baffles me.

Gary DeVore- Jupiter in Mrigashira AmK, Uttaraphalguni Sun

He was a Hollywood screenwriter.

DeVore disappeared in June 1997, while driving at night from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Santa Barbara, California, prompting an extensive search and media speculation. DeVore was working in his office in Santa Fe trying to finish a script. DeVore had recently complained of writer's block, and so had decided to change his environment. When he finally finished the script, DeVore decided to drive home through the Mojave Desert. His wife Wendy was waiting for him at their beachfront house in Carpinteria, California. When she did not hear from him, she decided to call around 1 am (it was later discovered the call had not been recorded by the telephone company). He answered, but was not very specific on his location. This was the last time Wendy spoke with him.

A year later, he and his Ford Explorer were discovered submerged below a bridge over the aqueduct in Palmdale, California. After police had retrieved the vehicle from the water, it was found that his laptop containing the script (titled The Big Steal) was missing, as was his gun. DeVore's hands were missing; hand bones were found nearby but could not be conclusively identified as DeVore's. The discovery of DeVore's vehicle was considered suspicious, as the aqueduct was searched shortly after his disappearance was reported and nothing unusual was discovered. Police concluded that for DeVore to crash his vehicle in this location meant that he would have had to have driven 3 mi (4.8 km) against traffic without being seen. This would have been doubly difficult because the vehicle's lights were not switched on. DeVore's death has not been solved to date.

Patty Hearst, Jupiter in Mrigashira AK, Sun & Venus in Shatabhisha (I had previously explored how Shatabhisha natives often endure abuse)

She first became known for the events following her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found and arrested 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. She was held in custody, and there was speculation before trial that her family's resources would enable her to avoid time in prison.

At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. However, she testified that she had been raped and threatened with death while held captive. At the time of her arrest, Hearst's weight had dropped to 87 pounds (40 kg), and she was described by psychologist Margaret Singer in October 1975 as "a low-IQ, low-affect zombie". Shortly after her arrest, doctors recorded signs of trauma: her IQ was measured as 112, whereas it had previously been 130; there were huge gaps in her memory regarding her pre-SLA life; she was smoking heavily and had nightmares. She is said to have been brainwashed into committing crimes for the SLA

There is a really unfortunate pattern of Mrig natives being brainwashed by others, living in hiding, being on the run and generally feeling unsafe. These are some extreme manifestations of the themes of this nakshatra.

[madlori]

Here's where I am with Buddie.

[CW: I am using the Buddie tag on this post, even though the gist of it is that I'm increasingly doubtful that it'll ever happen. This is NOT an anti-Buddie essay. If you'd rather not read about this topic, please keep scrolling. The bulk of the essay is behind the cut.]

-------

I've thought a lot about this over the weeks since 7x04 aired. It's not a secret that I'm wildly enthusiastic about the BuckTommy pairing (as are many fans) but what does that mean for my thoughts and opinions about Buddie, a pairing I still love and for which I am still writing fic (slowly but surely…)?

It's become increasingly difficult to reconcile hopes for Buddie with dread for a BuckTommy breakup, but if the show managed to pull off a breakup that did not destroy me, I would still be all in for a Buddie endgame.

But more and more, I don't think it's in the cards, and I'm increasingly okay with that.

First off, I know it's a common assumption that Buck and Tommy have an expiration date, and that it cannot last. That may very well be the case, but…the show is not acting like it, nor are they presenting this arc as if it's short-lived. Episodes 4-6, while also being about other things (especially the amazing Madney wedding plot in 6) were also a bit of a trilogy about Buck discovering his sexuality and taking tentative steps into a relationship with another man. It didn't go…particularly smoothly, but the events of 7x06 where they were concerned had a completely different tone. They had a much more settled vibe in the karaoke club scenes, from Tommy's very boyfriendly "check-in" look before he had to leave, to Buck's casual/distracted "Be safe" (as if he's said this before) and just how they spoke to each other and touched each other was much more comfortable than in the coffee meetup. Which makes me think it's been a few weeks and they've seen each other a few times in the interim.

And then that kiss. Putting aside that it was juxtaposed with a literal wedding kiss, there was nothing uncertain or hesitant about it. It felt like a very arc-capping kiss, coupled with the reveal to the rest of Buck's friends and family, and the clear message was "Okay, they're done 'getting together' now, they are together and will be together going forward, even if we don't see Tommy every episode (much as we don't see Karen every episode)." We know Tommy will be around through the end of S8, if not in every remaining episode. After that, we'll see.

A lot of fans have viewed one of the guys coming out as queer to be a first step towards a Buddie future, but I have to say I've never been super comfortable with that logic. I've always thought that if they were going to get together, or both be revealed to be queer, it would have to be at the same time, with each other, via them getting together. The minute they pulled the trigger on Bisexual Buck, I immediately thought that this made Buddie far less likely. Why?

Because it would mean that the writers/showrunners would be making BOTH their "hot younger firefighter" characters queer…separately. In separate storylines. Distinct from each other. And I just don't see that happening. I'm not saying it SHOULDN'T happen. I'd be over the moon. I'm saying I think that's unlikely.

As much as it pains me to say it, I think Eddie will be written as straight and will continue to be written as straight. I don't disagree with the many examples of queer coding we've all seen - the problem is all of them can be just as easily interpreted as arising from a different trauma. Almost everything we've seen from him that could very legitimately be read as breadcrumbs for a queer identity for him could also be rooted in his trauma over Shannon's death, his family trauma, his PTSD, or his general anxiety over being enough for people. He can be read as having sexuality crises. But he can also be read as having other crises with the same results.

I'm not seeing a sexuality crisis for Eddie in the future. I just don't feel like that's where they're taking him. They're taking him somewhere -- he's got storylines coming up -- but I think they're going to have to do with his family, possibly his friendship with Buck, maybe his relationship (I think we can all agree Marisol isn't going to last, she's like the anti-Tommy in that she's been around way longer but has infinitely less of a presence), and Christopher. That's a lot to deal with just right there. If I'm wrong, I will be delighted to be wrong.

But.

I think the show will continue to prioritize and showcase Buck and Eddie's very deep and emotional friendship, which is revolutionary in its own quiet way. Another thing that makes me think they're setting Tommy up to be a long term love interest is that one of the first things they did with him was affirm that he will not come between Buck and Eddie, give him his own relationship with Eddie and Chris, and have him show that he understands and respects the depth of their bond. Not to mention they've integrated him with the firefam. No other of Buck's love interests have gotten this treatment (Taylor had the most contact with the firefam, but I don't think anyone would say she was integrated, LOL). And it shows how committed they are to maintaining Buck and Eddie's friendship as a key emotional element of the show. Tim has also said this, repeatedly.

People often say that there's no explanation for how Buck and Eddie are with each other if it's not romantic - I read a fantastic essay that pointed out that this statement is the reason their platonic friendship IS so important. Men should be able to be vulnerable and loving with each other without it being romantic, as women can be. If we're unable to see a loving friendship without interpreting it as romantic or sexual, what does that say about the kind of male friendships we see everywhere, that makes this one so different?

I know this is an old anti-Buddie argument and I'm not anti-Buddie nor do I mean it's wrong to see it as romantic. I still do. I'm saying if it's not, if it never is, what it is, is already valuable and special, especially when one of them is now openly queer and dating a man.

Anyway. That's where I am with it, and my interpretation of where the show is with it.

[yoredoesmore]

HOSHINA MOON HEADCANON! Highschool AU edition

a/n: fan fiction at the end ^^ i did not plan for this to become so sad this was supposed to be a “shy boyfriend hoshina headcanon” post, chat how did we lose the plot so badly 😭 i don’t choose the angst, the angst chooses me 😔

summary: "the moon needs the sun to shine” / “the sun is alone but still shines.”

genre: romance/angst [wc: 1,3k]

enjoy!

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who first took notice of you when you decided to become the Student Council President for the last year of highschool

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who thought that because he is the (good looking) Vice President, he could easily have you fall for him (he was wrong)

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – who found himself captivated by your kind and sharp-witted personality

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who once saw you get hit on by some jerks and came to your rescue, only to end up frozen in place as he watched you calmly clock them with your words.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who fell in love with you right then and there

“Oh, Vice President. I didn't see you there, is everything alright?” You asked, approaching Hoshina with a friendly smile on your face. Only seconds ago those lips were releasing the most brutal, malicious curses at the two students and now they were kindly greeting him.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who came to you whenever he needed help with some documents or other tasks, even though he was more than capable to work on them on his own, simply to see you more since you were in separate classes

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who admired you for always giving 100% and helping out wherever possible. Yet at the same time it felt like you were miles away from him and never depended on his support.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who made sure to pass by your classroom every opportunity given. He had to go to the bathroom? Instead of using the one closer to his class, he would walk all the way past yours in hopes that he'd randomly meet you in the hallway.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who felt like the moon, admiring the sun

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who, despite having the fattest crush on you, keeps his distance when talking or walking together, since he feels like there is a wall separating your worlds.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who praises you when you do a great job, wanting you to know that none of your efforts are going unnoticed.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – who talks to Mina about his concerns, worries and all the cute interactions you two share

WINGLADY MINA˚⊹ – Who pretends to have an important appointment in the evening and asks you to take care of the leftover paper work by yourself (she had promised to help you a couple days ago). You agree, unable to deny the sweet smile of your friend, and get ready to stay behind alone. But upon entering the small office you see Hoshina waiting for you.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who sits in silence, working on the papers in front of him while trying not to lose his mind. The two of you are sitting right next to each other, working on some details for the summer festival.

MOON HOSHINA˚⊹ – Who wants to confess his love for you so badly but is scared that you will reject him. As you finish up, he quietly packs his bag, ready to go home, when he notices you still being seated.

“Is everything alright?” His voice was laced in a mild layer of concern. Your gaze remained focused on the desk for a little longer, your mind lost in thoughts, before you looked back up at him.

“I’m sorry..I was just thinking about something..” The subtle sound of paper moving and pencils clicking filled the silent room. Something in your presence had changed, Hoshina could feel it, but he wasn't sure what it was. Your movements were slow and delayed, as if they were trying to prevent something..but what?

Even the expression on your face hung low, missing all its colors or enthusiasm.

Did something happen?

Whenever you came to submit your work you would meet the Vice President with a shining smile which displayed your pride. But now none of that joy remained.

At first Hoshina believed it was because of the late hours that were pulling on both your strength but then a thought ripped through his head. As you stood up from your seat you were suddenly met with the male standing right in front of you, his sudden appearance suddenly startling you.

“Is everything al–”

“You really are something, Y/n.” Hoshina said, a smile sitting on his face. His eyes were filled with amaze and admiration, a deep passion directed solely ar you. The way his eyes shone, like the reflection of stars on the calm sea, it made your heart beat uncontrollably.

“I..where is this coming from??” This was the first time Hoshina has experienced you in such a flustered state. Normally it was you who would have this effect on him.

“Let me walk you home.” Was all he said before turning on his heels and opening the door for you, waiting for your stunned body to defrost.

The walk home was calm and warm, yet borderline awkward. Neither of you said anything as you strolled through the dimly lit streets. You had long collected yourself from the shock, yet the surprised feeling still lingered on your heart.

“You really are something, Y/n.”

Those words had come out of nowhere? Hoshina was not the type to say something so sincere out of the blue and that did not sound like a “good job” praise either.

And that look on his face..

Have you ever gazed upon such dreamy eyes? Painted by such soothing colors? It was a view out of a dream.

You were so lost in thoughts that you hadn't even noticed that Hoshina stopped moving a while ago. As you came back to it, there had already been a noticeable distance created between the two of you. Your eyes locked with his, causing the tension from before to reappear.

“Hoshina..?”

“Yer shine is so bright..sometimes I have to take a step back to admire it all.” He spoke softly, not moving from his place.

“Will you allow me to admire you from up close, Y/n?”

Admire you from..up close?

“I'm sorry, please forget what I said..”

Hoshina shut you off before you could say anything, walking right past you as if nothing happened. He always did that, keeping his distance, only allowing you to get close when he felt like it.

An uneasy sensation spread through your chest as you watched him distance himself further and further away from you.

“You keep distancing yourself further and further away from me..” Your hands reached out for his, preventing him from taking another step. Hoshina's eyes widened upon seeing the distraught look on your face, his heart sinking into his gut.

“What is the use of me shining so bright when there is no one to absorb the light?”

An unexplainable tension lingered around your bodies, slowly suffocating you. There were so many things on your mind, thoughts, wishes, worries– an entire collection of emotions– and the same reflected in Hoshina's eyes.

The wind gently pulled on your skin, messing up a few strands of your hair.

You suddenly felt his gentle hands on your cheeks, caressing your face in careful motions.

All came to a temporary still stand as Hoshina looked you deep into the eyes, before capturing your lips in a soft kiss. The sensation felt oddly comforting. You melted in his arms and allowed your heart to rest safely in his embrace. Upon pulling away, you noticed the soft smile that tugged on his lips from before.

“You are my sun. Your light will always reach me, no matter what.”

a/n: ik highschoolers don't talk like that but this is just some silly writing practice (want to improve my skill) and i wanted to go for a different plot setting this time!

for those who don't get it, hoshina feels like he isn't putting enough work into his role as vice president and y/n admits that she's only working so hard because of Hoshina's praise and she wants his recognition

[goldenshrikecomic]

FAQ

Please read these before sending asks! It's also good to check the tags listed on the pinned post to see if it's already answered. Where can I read GS? On Comicfury or DeviantArt. Two pages ahead on both Patreon and Ko-fi.

Who works on this comic? Only me, ratt/doeprince. You can call me either, I usually refer to myself as doeprince when it's more official, otherwise ratt or some secret third thing. I'm an amateur artist and I draw these comics for fun without much ambition to gain greatness. I want to make enough money to be able to keep working on more comics, and buy trinkets.

How can I support what you do? Why thank you for asking! All my income comes from making comics, so the support on either Patreon or Ko-fi is literally making my comic endeavours possible.

Do you have other projects? I work on some secondary comics. Jet and Harley and Honey are currently updating, Corpse is finished. You can find my other art on doe-prince.

How long will Golden Shrike be? I don't know how many pages. I hope it's less than 1000.

What programs do you use? SAI for lineart, CSP for coloring and bubbles, PS for text and backgrounds. Hoooow do you draw the antlers from different perspectives? I've made 3D models for each recurring antlered character.

Is GS going to have physical merch? Will it be printed? Consider this a no, but I won't say never.

Does GS have a map, official wiki or dub or something like that? No. There's a fan wiki out there full of inaccurate information so take everything in there with tons of grains of salt. There's no map. The dub on YT is separate from me, I've had no hand in it.

Can I make a fan character? Can they interact with yours? You can absolutely make a fan character! I just ask you not to make them interact with mine, at least not in any kind of heavy way. It's a slippery slope and I've seen people treat my characters very rudely to make them suit their needs.

Can I make fanart/writing? Yes! All sfw and well-meaning works are welcome. Just tag me so I can see them! Why are the borders black and sometimes white? White borders means it's a flashback.

Deer don't do that!!!!! Or birds!! Or plants! The moon shouldn't be that shape right now. Everything in GS is fictional for this very reason. I shall not be shackled by the chains of realism when there's entire new worlds in my fingertips. I aim to make things believeable in its context, not realistic. Are other animals sentient, can they talk? Sure they are and can, but not outside their own species. A frog can't hold a conversation with a deer, but a deer and antelope could possibly make it work. There's exceptions though.

How old are main characters? They're fawns right? No they are not, they'd all be in their early 20s if they were humans.

What does sire mean? It keeps popping up in different contexts. You can liken this term to 'father', as in your dad but also something like a priest. The priest isn't your dad but "father forgive me for I've sinned". So sire is a) respected stag, b) very formal way to address your father. Dame is the female counterpart. Why are the does so small compared to stags.... are you a freak... do you just hate women..... Listen when I started GS I had been dwelling in a place where monster deer characters had insane size differences and it became some kind of norm to me and of course it found its way into my comic. Now I just have to keep drawing those tiny women to keep up the consistency. I've created bigger ladies nowadays because I too think it's a little silly now.

Please please will this character ever get a mate? Will this pairing be canon? Will you please make this pairing canon? I won't spoil any pairings, I think it'd be the most boring thing to do to my own work! I'll only confirm the ones already established in the comic.

Is this a speck of ember? Is it snow? What is that floating thing, is it relevant to the plot? IT'S JUST MY DUST BRUSH LEAVE ME ALONE.

[diiaf]

Paranatural Theory: It's All Connected

Paranatural fans, how are we feeling?

I’m a bit late to the Peekaboo party, but in light of the latest reveal, I’m taking the opportunity to put my harebrained theory of everything out into the world. The evidence is tenuous, but if I was right about Peekaboo, then maybe there’s something to it–and the confirmation that Peekaboo is (somehow) connected to the wight is just more evidence.

Here’s my theory:

Peekaboo, Sandman, and the Shadow Spirit are all parts of Mayview’s Great Wight that broke apart after Spender [edit: and Davy, see the bottom of the post] shattered it. That Wight... is Boss Leader.

Let me explain.

Part 1: The Connections

this is 7 parts long so I put in a read more, click at your own risk

(I made this image before the latest chapter reveal but I don’t feel like editing it)

Tendrils: As seen in the merch store sticker, Peekaboo seems to have the same tentacle-y powers that Boss Leader does. Spender’s shadow also uses tendrils, albeit the shadows of tendrils. Is this just a hallmark of Wight powers, as suggested by King Catnine, or is there something more? I’ll elaborate on this later.

Black Tears: Peekaboo seems to have the same darkness inside that that shadow spirit does. It’s been pointed out that Peekaboo could fit neatly inside the hole in Spender’s Shadow’s face—maybe Spender’s blast separated the part from the whole. Spender drips this same black ooze from his eyes, as seen after he wakes from the dream where he met Dr. Burger and Sandman. That’s important for later.

Same Pose: Peekaboo and the Shadow are peeking out from behind their medium in the exact same pose. Coincidence? …yeah, maybe. But why does the Shadow have its left eye here? Why is it in the shape of a mask? A crescent moon? A human mask? What moon-shaped creature would want to appear human? I’ll get to that later.

Wrrrrr: Again, I made this image before it was confirmed that Davy somehow had Peekaboo’s powers, but that was obvious, what with their space warping using the same sound effect. However, Dimitri uses Peekaboo to warp himself, whereas Davy warps the space around him (unless maybe he warped his chin? He looks pretty different from his first appearance). So maybe Peekaboo isn’t all that’s in the locker.

Why do Davy and Dimitri have access to different applications of the same power? Peekaboo's spirit trance Halloween decorations resemble the PTA members, which it could see if it were somehow Davy's spirit too. What’s odd to me is that the Burgers' key didn’t seem like it would fit into the locker—did it open up the dream door? Is that door “real?” Real in the spirit world? Maybe that’s why the locker’s padlock has an eye on it: because the real keyhole is kept in Boss Leader’s dream, behind the door that the Witch eventually summons. Lots of unanswered questions here.

Sand: The locker is either buried in sand, or rising up from it. Sandman seems to rise up from the sandpit in the dream in much the same way. Knowing that Peekaboo is the locker spirit is more evidence that there’s a connection between Peekaboo and Sandman.

Moon Motif (there’s no yellow text highlight): Spender’s shadow is shaped like a crescent moon. Sandman’s whole design is crescent moons. This ties into some other things that I’ll explain later.

🏳️‍⚧️: Sandman is Boss Leader. Sandman didn't choose its name. Boss Leader is the name and form she prefers. Do I really have to spell this one out? I'll address this more in part 2.

To recap: Peekaboo, Sandman, and the Shadow all share some important aspects, namely reality-warping powers and design motifs. Peekaboo seems to be the spirit in Davy's locker, a.k.a. the Great Wight, that was also sealed behind the door in the Consortium's dream.

Part 2: Large Subterranean Insect

How many people remember this thing?

It swoops in for ONE PAGE, saves Max from falling off the ghost train, and departs. Paranatural’e biggest unsolved mystery… until now.

Suitsie Zipper: The Large Subterranean Insect appears on chapter, 4 page 105 to save Max. Boss leader shows up for the first time 8 pages later in Max’s dream. The zipper on the insect’s body resembles the zippers on the consortium’s suitsies. Could the insect merely be a consortium agent? Maybe, but it’s a spirit, not a medium, and all the agents are mediums.

Crescents: Look at Sandman’s head. It’s the same shape as the LSI’s spiky legs. Now look at Spender’s spirit’s tendrils! Have we been confusing insect legs for squid tentacles this whole time?

Granted, when the spirit breaks loose and attacks Max and Isabel on page 138 the tendrils are more octopus-like, but Boss Leader’s dream-tendrils are squiddy as well. The spirit is spiky, the powers are squishy? I know this is a stretch.

Injury: Why does the LSI have that red mark? The Paranatural wiki claims that it's an eye. Maybe. If you ask me, it looks like a scar. A scar shaped like the sparkles that Spender makes when he uses Lucifer’s light powers. When Spender blasted the Lake Spirit (stripping away a shadowy disguise?) maybe it left a scar…

Reddit user DeadMountainDaughter made the connection between BL and the LSI (and compiled a lot of other information that inspired this theory) in a post on the Paranatural subreddit 5 months ago, so credit to her for that.

We know for sure that Boss Leader isn't human. The tragic backstory that she tells Spender and Mina about being forced into eternal slumber is (probably) complete bunk. As King Catnine discovers, "Boss Leader" is the conjured-up puppet of the Wight known as Sandman. Sandman, however, is not the name it chose. Its preferred form, and name, is that of Boss Leader. Can a spirit have gender dysphoria? The answer seems to be yes. Moreover, Sandman's Wight Wail is "PLEASE DON'T BE SCARED." She wants people to like her! She wants to be human! But she can't have that anymore. Not since...

Part 3: The Incident

Using the evidence we’ve been given so far, here’s my interpretation of the hidden background of Paranatural:

Boss Leader is a Wight with the power to mold reality. Out of a fascination/jealousy/love for humanity, she shapes, protects, and sustains Mayview. To protect humans from dangerous spirits, and to fight powerful spirits like Lucifer and King Catnine, she maintains the Activity Consortium.

Thirteen years before present-day Paranatural, something happens: the "unexplained paranatural event 13 years ago" that everyone keeps referring to. This is the event that earned Spender his reputation as the "strongest spectral," where he "defeated" the strongest spirit with a single burst of light. What else do we know about this event? That it was the day that Lucifer came to claim the Mayview Wight's power.

Lucifer was one of "the others" that coveted the Wight. We know Lucifer can cross through the barrier as pure light—Spender uses their spirit fusion to do just that when facing King Catnine. What if he entered Mayview to face the Wight, and was defeated, hopelessly outmatched. His wisp possesses the nearby Richard Spender. The Wight, donning her shadowy human disguise, reaches for Lucifer, who is now possessing Spender.

Spender and Lucifer, or maybe Lucifer possessing Spender, shoots a blast of light. With that blast, something breaks. The part of Boss Leader that can shape reality and the part of her that can shape dreams are split. The part left in reality, broken by Spender’s blast, possesses Spender as the shadow. The fragment that was blasted free (Peekaboo) possesses Dimitri, who is one year old at the time. Dimitri "first became a spectral as an infant" (ch7 pg144), and Peekaboo seems stuck in a childlike mental state. Peekaboo is a ghost, so it makes itself look like a child's idea of a ghost.

Without the Peekaboo part, the Shadow can’t mold the physical world, only shadows. Cut away from the Shadow, Peekaboo loses its identity, reinventing itself according to Dimitri's childhood imagination. Without the ability to shape the physical world, Boss Leader can only manifest her human “self” in dreams. Her insectoid spirit hides below ground, hiding her true form, unable to show herself to humans without frightening them. She can no longer control the part of herself that shapes the real world, and can no longer wear her disguise: the shadowy mask that now possesses Spender.

The part of Boss Leader that can shapeshift in the real world is still there, but it's out of her control. If woken, it would rampage. She "locked it in nightmares," nursed it as a grudge, but she's missing some piece of the puzzle. Little does she know that part of that missing piece has been in Rick Spender all along...

Also: Peekaboo's floor is literally made of puzzle pieces! I know that's in reference to the foam floor tiles that you put down in a kid's room, but it has to mean something. Coincidence? ...yeah, maybe. But I think Peekaboo is the missing piece from the Shadow's mask.

Part 4: King Catnine

This friggin’ guy.

One person in Mayview knows where the Great Wight is—in fact, he’s known all along. Why did Isaac nearly electrocute Dimitri? Why did Catnine amplify Isaac’s shot towards the Hijack-controlled Spender? Because he recognized the power that they possessed, or rather, that was possessing them: the power of a wight. I'm sure he'll have his moment someday.

Part 5: The Locker

When the locker was first shown, the Paranatural fandom exploded trying to decipher the meaning behind its stickers. Was the ghost Peekaboo? Was the Vampire Davy? Was the "zzz" Sandman? Why was the werewolf there? What about the star- was Starchman involved?

The answer is yes, to everything.

I posit that some of the stickers represent the “paranatural” elements of Mayview. Vampires, werewolves, an “unusually high population of ghosts and spirits” (Valerie Day, ch5 pg144), while the burger and sticky note are more pertinent to the locker spirit’s current situation. The wight shapes reality, and these things are its reality—Mayview’s reality. As I’ve already stated, I think the eye on the padlock represents how the real padlock is hidden away in a dream, literally "locked in nightmares." Boss Leader sure has a lot of eye motifs.

(I don’t actually know about the star. Maybe that reflects how Starchman stars are a real, valued currency in the school? Zack’s master plan continues to elude me)

There's another version of this theory. Davy claims that he once "shared the same prison" as the spirit in the locker. Davy, as far as we know, is the oldest vampire in Mayview, and he wasn't yet a vampire when the Consortium defeated the Great Sphinx. What if Mayview's werewolves and vampires, and even their spirits, all come from the sleeping wight's dream-world? The same place that the Doctors Burger were sent, and where Dave Jones may have been sent on his final mission for the Consortium. The Doctors are still there. Davy, however, cut his way out. I'll get to that in a minute. First, look at this passage from the latest chapter:

Where have we seen a boat before?

Where Doctor Burger is, in the Wight’s dream! The lake is where everything went down thirteen years ago, and it's where the fragment of the sleeping Wight still slumbers. But what does this have to do with Boss Leader, if she's also that big insect?

This paragraph from Chapter 8, page 61 is my smoking gun:

Insects flushed from hiding? Dredged up from the depths to be dissected on sands? Wow, that sounds familiar.

Davy Jones once worked for the Consortium, under Boss Leader. For whatever reason (maybe he tried to usurp her? maybe she just sent him on a mission gone wrong), she "let him go" from the consortium, cut off his hand (now Lefty) and sealed him away in the sleeping Wight's dream. Davy, with Cryptide's help (the grudge he held), cut his way out—and maybe cut off some of the wight's space-warping abilities to keep for himself. That last bit is pure speculation; I still don't know exactly how Davy and Dimitri both have access to Peekaboo, and that's my best guess.

Part 6: LOOK AT ME

I know what you're thinking: "Sandman can't be the Wight! Their wails are different!" I hear you, and I propose an answer.

Firstly, who said that a Wight can only have one wail? On the chapter cover, the wail is preceded by a monologue that culminates in the spiral of pure emotion. Secondly, assuming that Sandman and the Sleeping Wight are two parts of the same spirit, if the Sleeping Wight was the mask that Boss Leader showed to the world, no wonder its basic desire would be to be perceived. Put them back together, and all the Great Wight wants is for people to see it without being scared.

(it's all very biblical angel "BE NOT AFRAID," isn't it?)

Peekaboo, in its childlike state, is left with the basic desire to be looked at, played with, and given attention. Spender's shadow, meanwhile, just flails, lashing out to grab people.

Moreover: IS THAT NOT SANDMAN'S EYE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHAPTER COVER?? BOSS LEADER IS THE WIGHT I SWEAR

Part 7: Maybe I'm Wrong

Maybe Sandman isn't the Great Wight after all. Peekaboo and the Shadow are certainly related, and I'm convinced that Boss Leader is an insect, but maybe all wights can use those monstrous tendrils. In that case, I have two alternate theories:

One: Maybe Boss Leader was just using the Wight, puppeting it, controlling it through its dreams to shape Mayview while it slept. Davy says that he lent his hand to "your dream," i.e. Boss Leader's dream. That could mean the Consortium, it could mean Mayview as the literal dream of the Wight, but it could also mean Boss Leader's dream for Mayview, enacted through the sleeping Wight. Maybe Lucifer woke the Wight, and then Spender blasted it to pieces, putting it back to sleep but severing Boss Leader's control. Either way, it would still make sense for the Mayview Wight to desire the approving attention of others. Now that BL can't control it, it shapes itself, like Davy claims, according to the dreams of Mayview's people. Or maybe that desire to be looked at just jealousy, simmered for years of watching Davy dote on Cryptide.

Two: Maybe Boss Leader was never controlling it! Maybe "Clayview" was a pre-thirteen-years-ago concept, and the Incident that shattered the Wight was what changed the town into Mayview as the town's collective unconscious made it lush and green. Who knows what would happen if the Wight were to wake up, and what would happen to Mayview.

CONCLUSION

I did not intend to make this post so long. It's a testament to Zack's storytelling ability that there are so many possibilities to distill from this webcomic. I might be way off the mark, but I'm just happy to share my speculations. I'm sure I've missed a lot.

Whoever read this whole essay, I hope you're as excited for the next Paranatural update as I am!

this is how boss leader can still win

EDIT:

I got the timeline all mixed up! Davy was a vampire before the Incident—Davy cutting himself free of the dream had to occur before Spender "defeated" the Wight. That means I need to revise some things.

New Theory: Davy severed Boss Leader from the Lake Spirit, Spender then broke that spirit in two, creating Peekaboo and the Shadow.

Davy, with Cryptide's powers, "cut the age of great wights to a close." That must have included Boss Leader! When Davy cut himself out of Boss Leader's dream, he split the Wight's reality-warping powers in two—splitting Mayview's reality in two, between the dream and the real world. Boss Leader could control dreams from out in the waking world and the Lake Spirit could control the waking world from within a dream. That was why Spender could defeat the Lake Spirit: it was only half the Wight it had been before. It's still connected to Boss Leader, like how the Sphinxes are connected to each other. Davy kept a piece of the wight for himself, somehow, and draws power through the locker.

I maintain that the Shadow is somehow Boss Leader's human mask, or human form. That means her insect spirit is... I don't know. There's a bedbug joke to be made somewhere. The Lake Spirit has empty eyes, Peekaboo has empty eyes, Spender has empty eyes... Sandman and Boss Leader are all about eyes. Is Sandman the spirit's eyes? Sandman looks like a half moon, a completed Shadow would look like a full moon, I'm just spitballing here

Everything else about this theory holds, I think.

Thanks to this post by @blacktycoon that made me realize my anachronism. They also put a lot of these pieces together back in May, way before I did lol.

[tenten-shi]

"Moon is a good sister" is a common sentiment in the rain world community. To be honest, i have never seen a single post that talks about her in a critical way. That made me decide to share my observations and thoughts on why i think she is not a good big sister.

I'll start off saying that i like Moon with all her issues and quirks. If you are a fan of Moon, and consider any post that criticizes her "an attack" on your favorite character, please do not interact with this post. Discussions and additions are welcomed.

The main topic that needs to be addressed is her behavior in the situation with Pebbles (all the way from Spearmaster to Saint). Was Moon a good sister or was it just a facade?

The reason why she calls herself that way

It is stated in the Light Blue Industrial Complex broadcast that Moon chose the name Big Sister Moon because of her seniority status above Five Pebbles.

Evidently, Moon openly presents herself as his older sister both inside the local group, as well as outside of it.

Her attitude towards Five Pebbles

Moon doesn't know a whole lot about Pebbles, aside from his mental state that she learns about through the received neuronflies. The gifts from Pebbles' structure are not something she minds at all, on the contrary this behavior is encouraged.

In Rivulet's campaign, she reassures the slugcat to not make his situation worse by bringing her new neurons.

Still, she continues to accept them without any protest.

For the first time after their long separation Moon sees Pebbles only after the end of Rivulet's campaign. If the player visits him again after finishing the main story, they can see new projections showing the two playing some board game.

It is unknown whether they have talked to each other or not. But If i had to guess, their conversation must've ended shortly, turning into a silent game.

During Saint's campaign Moon doesn't express any interest in Pebbles nor does she try to see his state for herself. Her overseers do not spawn in Silent Construct and his collapsed chamber. The only way for her to discover that he's alive is by bringing his Music Pearl.

Her reaction indicates that she hasn't checked on him for a long time for unspecified reasons.

Was Moon a good big sister for him?

The situation between them can seem complex and confusing. It's hard to tell who's truly right or wrong.

I'll pose an analogy:

Imagine Pebbles getting a hold of a grenade. Moon is standing in close proximity. She doesn't make any attempts to see what he's got in his hands or what his plans are. He pulls the pin out, still holding the safety lever. He keeps slowly loosening his grip on it, putting Moon's life in danger, as well as his own. Moon tries to talk to Pebbles, disrupting his focus. When Pebbles almost lets go off of the lever and tries to throw the explosive away, Moon stops him. The grenade goes off, Pebbles gets heavily injured and Moon ends up in a coma.

Would a responsible older sister beat around the bush for so long in a situation that is threatening to not just her but also her younger brother? Obviously, no.

Moon is not a good sister, she's only trying to present herself as one. She's created a semblance of a great big sis, when in reality she's unsuccessful at that.

She wasn't

Did Moon have her chance to stop him before everything has gotten out of control? Yes. Suns brings up exactly that in one of the broadcasts, pointing out her seniority privilege.

Moon did not care about Pebbles' endeavors or interests. She's noticed the problem only when it had put at risk her own life.

Even after she has acknowledged the deadly danger, she kept on stalling. She wanted to talk to Pebbles and "shake him out of it".

As if what Pebbles is doing does not pose any danger at all. As if Pebbles is some disobedient, naughty puppy, whom, once scolded, is going to settle down. It feels like she looks down on him. She cannot imagine Pebbles doing something serious and important, therefore it must be easy to make him stop whatever it is that he's doing. If Moon legitimately was a good sister, she would've immediately stopped him and only then tried to talk.

Besides, Moon has demonstrated an odd demeanor towards Pebbles in the final Rivulet broadcast. At first her words sounded like something a genuinely good sister could say. But that shifts after Moon, almost jokingly, says how protective she is as his Big Sis. When in reality everything points at her carelessness.

Of course people could say that she's just excessively kind. But even if she was acting out of goodness of her heart, she's made a mistake. Instead of understanding and accepting Pebbles' personhood, she treated him only as her little brother and nothing more.

In conclusion, Moon's attempt to keep the face of a wonderful sister has led to a catastrophe, proving that she has failed as a Big Sister.

[neversetyoufree]

I think Luna, Queen Faustina(naenia) and the shapeless one are wayyy too similar in the way they are drawn, the lines, the eyes. Shapeless one has one red eye and another blue eye, like naenia and the vampire of the blue moon..... am i missing smt or?

You're absolutely right! A lot of this actually gets pointed out by characters in the manga as well, so we know it's all intentional on Mochijun's part.

When Noé sees Luna in Misha's memories, he remarks in confusion that Luna looks extremely similar to Faustina:

Then, when Jeanne sees The Shapeless One for the first time in the amusement park, she observes that his left eye is the exact same color as Vanitas's eyes (and therefore the same color as Luna's eyes).

Teacher's right eye is violet, not crimson like Faustina's, so he's not a perfect combination of the other two, but there's definitely something going on here. Even without the visual link, we know they're connected, as Ruthven says Teacher was the first vampire to serve her (and the one to do so for the longest). He's extremely old, the oldest vampire we know of besides the queen, so he may even have some connection to Babel and Faustina's origins. (I'm personally a fan of the Teacher is Paracelsus theory, but that should really be a separate post).

As for your confusion, I honestly think you're right to be confused! We have all these extremely conspicuous connections and similarities, but no explanations yet. It's all just hints and gestures toward Big Reveals that are yet to come.

That said, I do have theories.

Luna and Faustina are similar-looking enough that I think they have to be related in some way. They could be normal relatives, one could have been artificially made in the image of the other, or it could be something even weirder that I haven't thought of yet, but there's no way their origins aren't connected somehow.

I know some people theorize they're twins, but that would require discounting all of the fairytale version of Luna's story, so I'm not ready to commit to that one quite yet. Faustina is supposed to be the first ever crimson vampire, created during or right after Babel, while Luna was supposedly born under a blue moon and born late enough that there were other vampires around to resent and reject them. Some of that mythos could be wrong! I'm absolutely not trusting that the fairy tale is telling the truth about Luna (or Faustina). But it's enough for now to make me suspect that their connection is something more complex than their simply being twins and/or both born from Babel.

Meanwhile, with Teacher, it seems like Mochijun is hinting to us that Teacher took Luna's left eye. Teacher has a left eye that we're specifically told is Blue Moon blue, and Luna's left eye is constantly hidden from our view under their hair. We also know from the above "most beautiful creature in the world" line, his involvement with both Misha and Noé/Vanitas, and his shapeshifting into them that Teacher seems to have some kind of fixation on Luna. If that fixation didn't drive him to take their actual left eye, then Mr. Shapeshifter may well be turning his own left eye blue on purpose in Luna's image.

I'm not discounting the possibility that the obvious explanation of "eye theft" could be a red herring, but Teacher's left eye's connection to Luna definitely strikes me as something affected rather than a sign of actual relation to the Blue Moon. After all, in that panel I included above, he discusses the beauty of "Blue" in a way that makes it sound like something external he's fascinated with, rather than something he possesses or is part of.

Overall, all three of these characters are obviously interconnected, and they all have equally mysterious origins, but with the information we have now, it's impossible to solve those mysteries. For now all we can do is theorize and wait to see what future chapters might clarify.

[athanasius-symposium-of-writings]

Hi, I saw some of your IDV smut line prompt

If you still taking request from that and write for Wu Chang, can you do ❛ i want to fuck you so badly. ❜ and ❛ i don't care if someone sees us. i need you, now. ❜

More specific for Fan Wujiu/Black Guard just being needyhorny for his S/O ( ╹▽╹ )

I did my best! I like the idea of Wu, Fan, and Xie being three different ppl

Rated: Explicit | Warning: Aphrodisiac

“I want you,” You jerk in surprise, so hyper-focused on decoding you had paid attention to your heart racing alerting you of the hunter's presence. “It hurts how badly I want you.” Wujiu, the black guard, is currently in control. He looks like a mess! You thought it was because of Naib kiting him for so long but he looks actually in pain. “You will help us.” Grabbing you and placing you over his shoulder. 

Wu Chang is the person they make, the souls within him are Xie Bi'an and Fan Wujiu. They are bound by the umbrella they carry, forever together but not able to see one another. During matches, the white guard and black guard are separate but whole, Wu's personality disappearing leaving the original two to hunt. It is very complex and you, the partner originally to only Wu, decided to just go with the flow.

In the manor, only Wu exists. He is a stoic man, very reserved. It took quite a bit of work to try to talk to let alone be in the current relationship you are in with him. Later, you met the pieces of the whole. Bi’an, the white guard, is the calm one who approached you post-match as Wu Chang was very eager to see you.

The eagerness one has when a loved one has been hurt. Your match with Ripper was scary, the map was new and London-based (Soho if you remember correctly). The fog everywhere, the dark alleys, all of it to his advantage. You barely escaped with another teammate.

Thank God that map was a one-time deal!

Wu grew worried and risked punishment crossing to the survivors’ portion of the manor to see you.

“Such love merits our meeting. You are his sun, his moon, the very earth he envies as it holds you up.” 

You… Well, you have never been described so highly.

As introductions are important, Bi'an greets you pleasantly as you are the object of Wu Chang's affection.

Later came Wujiu, well, he bared what he wanted from you very quickly.

You have been intimate with Wu Chang once, it was an emotional moment and intimacy was necessary. You love cuddling, love skin-on-skin contact, but sex never seemed on the table— Rather in other words: it scared you. The trust, the work, and then the fear if you mess up.

Lots of anxiety.

With Wu, it was nice, slow, and you felt at ease and content.

With Fan Wujiu, you discovered so much in two hours!

Being currently in the Chinatown map, he knows exactly where he is going to hide you and him until the ciphers are completed. His victory is already claimed as he chaired two of the survivors before grabbing you.

“I do not care who sees us,” The top floor with the mannequins, “I need you now.”

You nearly scream when literally pounces on you, something you are sure Bi'an will scold him about. You scare easily.

By the time the last cipher is popped (poor Weeping Clown), you are a mess and Wujiu does not seem any better.

“Please, we need– God, I physically can't!” How much more can this man give!?

“You can, you must.” And you do as you bite his shoulder to contain your voice. “Blame. That. Bug woman.” His thrust is erratic, clearly desperate, and you are getting more and more drunk off his cock.

You have no clue what that means but you can guess by the way he smells sweet and weird then her ability must have affected him.

Stay put. I'm coming.

Hunter has detection! Go, I'll take the dungeon.

“Wujiu…” Shit, you might pass out.

He squeezes you in his arms, “Stay awake.”

“Hmm,” Oh, you feel lightheaded. “Tíngzhǐ.”

And he listens, “You took me so well, little bird.” Praising you as he stops immediately, “Are you hurt?”

“Just dizzy. And hot. Fuck.”

“I can't give you the care necessary,” He wants to keep touching you, “My apologies.” You know he means that.

“Widow's peak. There.” You try to get your words out, “Later.” It is a spot where you meet Wu Chang often, a private neutral area.

“Of course.”

He gives you a moment before carrying you to the dungeon.