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do-not-fearr · 11 months ago

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Arachnophobia - Eevrid the Drider

Pairing: Drider x f!Reader

Wordcount: 4668 words

Tags: Blindfolds, bondage, body worship

Summary: As someone with terrible arachnophobia you decide to try your friends recommendation of "exposure therapy" with an aquaintance of her, who is a Drider.

Ever since you were a child you had debilitating arachnophobia. Every time you'd see the teensiest spider you'd panic, having to ask someone else to get rid of said spider. It was a little pathetic, and now that you were an adult you were ready to get over this fear already.

"I know what you need," a friend said to you one day, after you yelled at a small spider on the table you were sitting at, and multiple eyes had been on you and your friend. "Exposure therapy."

"Exposure therapy." You deadpanned back. As if you hadn't thought of that yet. You were much too scared to be able to try something like that. "You must overestimate me here. Did you already forget what happened just now?"

She took a sip of her drink, nodding sagely. "That's exactly why. The spider just now was tiny, harmless, and you yelled like you just got bit by a snake."

"Yeah, yeah... rub it in." Came your mumble. You were aware that your panic wasn't proportionate and drew attention from others.

"Don't worry so much. I have just the plan."

You rolled your eyes. "And what would that be?"

She leaned forward over the table, and started speaking in a hush hush voice. "I have an acquaintance who could really help you with this sort of thing."

"Oh?"

"He's a Drider."

Fear coursed through you. Though you had never come into contact with the supernatural yourself, you knew of their existence. If there was one being you'd never ever want to come into contact with it was the infamous Drider. "You're insane." She was either joking or crazy. There was no way you would go through with this.

"Well, yes, I'm friends with you!" she joked, and grabbed her phone, looking through it until she found what she was looking for. She turned the screen towards you and you pointedly ignored it. "Just look, it's just his face. No spidery details to be seen. Well... more or less."

Anxiously you managed to take a peek, and she was right. The image did not scare you... as a matter of fact it had quite the opposite effect. On her screen was a picture of a grey skinned man with long white hair and multiple eyes, his mouth was a little strangely shaped, but other than that he was very normal looking. Moreover... he was absolutely breath taking.

"Oh," you said, and she chuckled at your reaction.

"I know! And he's such a sweetheart too! Remember last year when I was lost during cave diving? He's the one that saved me then. We've been friends ever since, and I'm sure he'll agree to curing your fears with a little talking. In your case just being around him will cure you of your arachnophobia in no time flat I'm sure!"

Yeah, you doubted it, but she was right about the fact that something needed to be done about your fear.

"I'll ask him about it and see if he's okay with it. What do you say? Should I give him your number so he can contact you?"

----

It was just a couple of days later that you got your first message. It was a little awkward, both of you having been brought together by your crazy common friend, but he seemed to be down with helping you. His name was Eevrid, and he agreed to the two of you first just talking through text before you'd go into the whole "exposure therapy" as your friend had called it.

"I don't go out much," he said one day when you were talking about hobbies. "Most humans don't take kindly to the supernatural, let alone one with a spider body."

You felt a little bad about it, knowing that you would probably be the first to scream if you'd see a Drider in real life. Your friend was right, you needed to do something about this phobia, if only so that you wouldn't be a dick to him and his race because of something irrational as a fear.

Talking to Eevrid was nice, comforting even. And as you went from texting to calling over the phone you realised you were looking forward to your talks. His voice was soft and soothing, and sometimes you found yourself lost in daydreams thinking about his profile picture. A feeling of wanting to meet him in real life started to grow in you, despite the fear that grew in proportion to your longing. You knew what his face looked like... but his lower body was still a mystery to you. You had looked up pictures of Driders, but found it too difficult to look for long, the images bringing out the same fear as the real thing probably would. The lines between friendship and something more seemed to blur with every message, and with it grew your want to meet him. He hadn't asked you yet, knowing about your troubles, but there were definitely moments where he let it show through his words that he really wanted to meet you as well.

Then again... that's what you started talking for. For you to meet him, to get over your fear... You decided to take the step and asked him over the phone one day, if there was a way you could meet him. He seemed ecstatic as the both of you spoke about where best to meet.

And here you were, on your way to Eevrid, your Drider online friend that was going to help you with your phobia. Although you were worried he was just going to make it worse by... being himself. Despite your fears you had decided to meet at his place, since not many places openly accepted the supernatural so willingly yet. It hurt. Hurt extra when you realised you were probably one of the reasons Driders like Eevrid were shunned from mayor establishments, but you put it in the back of your mind for now. Next time you'd find a place both of you could enjoy together. Or maybe next time would be your place. Whatever the case, right now it was at his place, and you were shaking with anticipation.

Or fear.

Maybe both.

And as you knocked on the door to his house; a surprisingly normal door inside of a cave-like wall straight out of a fantasy your hands shook almost violently. As soon as the last echo of the knock ran out your hands were behind you back, grasped together as if to not show your nerves.

You almost yelped when "I'm coming" came from inside in Eevrid's calming voice, followed by the door opening and a head poking out.

"H-hi," you said, nerves easing slightly at the kind but slightly anxious smile that was shown on his handsome face as he saw you standing there, "I'm here."

His anxious smile vanished, a genuine, warm laugh escaping him at your stuttering, and he replied: "Yes, I'm glad you are. Welcome inside."

You made your way indoors, forcing yourself to look anywhere except Eevrid's lower body. Why was this so hard? You really, genuinely liked Eevrid, and his presence was both soothing and exciting you, and yet- the thought of him being a Drider still absolutely filled you with fear.

If he noticed you not looking at him properly, he didn't let it show, opting instead to give you a small tour of his house. It was small, sparsely decorated, and in your humble opinion could use a woman's touch... which was a train of thought you instantly cut off. Everything about it did felt like him though, and you smiled slightly at all the cosiness of the space.

When the room tour ended in his bedroom both of you just stood there, a little awkwardly. The bed that was in the middle of the room was more like a nest of blankets and pillows and if it was half as comfortable as it looked it had the potential to cure anyone's insomnia.

"Well," he said, and you looked over, feeling like a high school girl seeing the room of her crush. Well, it wasn't far off the mark. Sadly when you looked over to him you finally did what you were avoiding; looking at his lower body, and a small high pitched sound escaped your throat, barely swallowed when you realized you were being extremely rude.

He instantly made himself small, legs curling up under him in an attempt to make you more comfortable, which, ironically, had the opposite effect. Your fists balled tightly, bringing them close to your chest as you managed to remain rooted on the spot without running.

"It's- I'm sorry- I tried to-" you stuttered, adrenaline coursing through you as you tried to keep your breathing to a normal level. He remained in place, almost reaching for you when he saw your reaction, but thankfully realizing in time that would probably make the situation worse.

It hurt, he couldn't deny that, but the both of you were aware of your fear, and your reaction was honestly a lot less intense than he'd feared when he had gone over the day in his mind multiple times.

"Hey, it's okay," he said, and you felt yourself relax a bit as you focused on the sound of his voice and his face. "We knew this would happen, and there's no shame in going about this slowly."

You nodded, slowly feeling your breath even out, and letting your eyes move down his face to his chest, lower... your breath hitched again as you quickly brought your eyes back up to his face where you found him smiling softly.

"How about I get something to drink for you while you calm down, hm? Maybe we can come up with some ideas to keep this fun and light hearted as we sit and talk. And who knows, maybe we'll figure out how to cure your arachnophobia as we go!"

You nodded. You really, really wanted to get over your fear as soon as possible. Eevrid was too nice for you to have a reaction like this to him, it was rude and uncalled for, and you cursed your own cowardice as you saw him leave to make you some tea. Slowly you followed him to the living room where you sat down on a human-sized chair. He told you he had friends over sometimes, that's why some furniture was more catered to you as a human and other more to him as a Drider.

As you heard his soft footfalls you turned towards him and had to stifle your laugh as he had covered his lower body with a blanket. It looked so goofy, as if he was wearing an enormous lumpy wedding dress, and when he said: "It looks stupid doesn't it?" with a slight blush you couldn't help but let out a little chuckle.

"It does," you said honestly, "But I really appreciate the gesture."

It really worked though, and as you sat, drank tea and talked, you realized how comfortable you were with him. It was exactly the same as through text, and as you looked at him you realized he felt the same. Until he stumbled over the wedding dre- no, blanket, and you panicked to see him tumbling trying to not stumble over all 8 of his legs.

"It's not really helping isn't it..." you pondered, and saw him nod apologetically, as if he was the problem and not you. "It's also not helping me get over my fear. How about..." you were quiet a bit, knowing where you wanted to go with this sentence, but feeling a little silly. He looked at you expectantly. Honestly he really wanted to help you with your fear, both for you and for him. He just really wanted to be able to be closer to you without scaring you off... his body yearned for yours, contact with you not only mentally.

You cleared your throat and continued with a small blush on your face. "How about I use a blindfold? That way I can maybe touch you without the visual fear and that way I might easier get over my fear?"

It was said more as a question, it sounded more stupid than you thought the longer the sentence went on, but you saw him nod seriously.

"That might work," he said, willing to try, and instantly grabbing a clean hand towel to use as a makeshift blindfold. You chuckled awkwardly as he fastened it gently, asking a "Is it alright? Not too tight?", and feeling you nod in return.

"Okay," you said, carefully reaching out your hand to him and feeling him grab it in one of his. It was large, strong and slightly cool, but a blush instantly ignited on your face as you felt him squeeze it a bit at your words. "I'm going to touch you now, is that okay?"

You heard nothing for a little bit, and when you tilted your head at him inquisitively you heard him chuckle a little, sounding embarrassed as he said: "I'm sorry, you can't see me nod right now. Yes, I'm okay, do what you want."

His permission made you instantly jolt into motion, one hand still squeezing his' as you other slowly moved upwards to his chest to start your fear conquering path onwards to his 8 legs.

"Tell me if you don't like it, okay?" You mumbled as you hand slowly mapped out his upper, humanlike body. His pecs were hard, but different from a well build human. The skin itself felt tougher to the touch, as far as you could tell through his clothes, and you hummed as you slowly ran your fingers over his abs, stopping short of his crotch. You were really only doing this to get over your fear. Of course...

However now that you had started touching him you felt your blush deepen. What you were doing suddenly hit you like a pile of bricks. You were blindfolded, feeling him up under the guise of getting over your fear. A small sound escaped him.

"I, uh," you removed your hand as if stung.

"I'm sorry," Eevrid said, "Was it too much? Are you scared?"

Scared? Right now you were far from it. Your hand itched to be touching him again, and you replied with a negative. "Can I... can I touch your legs now?" The words came out in a squeak, the concept still scaring you, but you wanted to touch him all over now, and if there was ever a moment you might get over your fear it was under the influence of your arousal that was growing more insistent with every touch you laid on him.

"Of course." He said, his voice sounding a little husky to your ears, and you felt your hand tremble as he slowly took it to put it on one of his many legs. It trembled with you, but only for a second as you let out a small sound of both fear and excitement.

It was slightly coarse, but much softer than you expected, and it felt a lot less scary than it looked. You let your fingers run over the tickly hairs, running a hand up and down the appendage, slowly getting used to the idea that Eevrid had a lower body that was basically a giant spider without the visuals of such. Slowly your hand reached the part where leg met abdomen, and you curiously let your eager fingers glide across, feeling a small shiver go through his body under your ministrations. Another sound left Eevrid, almost imperceptible to your ears had it not been absolutely quiet in the room save for your beating heart and both of your breaths that had picked up significantly. The sound was unmistakable now; it seemed this little game had an effect on both of you, and you couldn't help but smirk as you let your hands wander to what you assumed were less innocent spots.

"Ah, y/n," he warned, "If you go there I don't know if I can stop myself."

It sounded less like a warning to you, and more like a promise. "Stop yourself from what?" You said cheekily as you ran your hand square of the front of his body, where spider met human in a transition of coarse hair to hard exoskeleton to soft skin.

A hand grabbed yours to stop it, a small chuckle coming from Eevrid at your actions as he pulled your hand away.

"I've taken away your sight, should I take away your ability to tease?"

"Oh? Are you going to tie me up then?" came from you, you were giddy with your earlier fear and your current arousal, and so very willing to take this a step further. The blindfold had really helped so far, and if just touching him innocently had worked you up this much you wondered how much better him touching you would make you feel. "I can still tease you verbally though." you chuckled as you felt his fingers run softly over your wrists, still waiting for your permission.

"Not if I do this-" he muttered, much closer than you expected his voice to be. Strange lips pressed against you the next second in a kiss that instantly deepened when you gasped in surprise. A thin tongue invaded your mouth and you moaned as it met yours, tangling in a sensual dance as he pushed your body back with insistent but gentle motions.

"Where are you taking me?" escaped you between passionate kisses, almost stumbling over something on the floor, and he decided to just lift you up and carry you.

"Bed," he replied, nipping your lips one last time before putting you down on a soft surface you realized was the nest of pillows and blankets you'd seen earlier. It was as comfortable as you'd thought and you sighed as you nestled further into it, reaching your arms up to Eevrid who you imagined was above you.

You felt his abdomen again, but before you could reach for what you hoped was his crotch he had grabbed your greedy hands again. He tutted, shaking his head at you though you could not see it.

"I told you what I was planning to do with these naughty hands, didn't I?"

A giggle from you was his reply, and a "Well, what are you waiting for then?"

He muttered something that sounded like "You asked for it", as you felt a silky kind of rope wrap around your wrists, pulling them up over your head, stopping you from moving them. You wondered if it was his webbing, which made the whole ordeal simply more exotic and more intimate to you somehow. You tested the restraints with a harsh pull. They felt deceivingly soft, but they held sturdy.

You felt the bed indent around you, a shadow falling over you which was the only thing you could make out through the blindfold.

"It's time I return the favour," Eevrid said, sounding high above you, but his next words were much closer as you realized he was now hovering right over your prone body. "Where do you want me to touch first?"

A slightly cool hand landed on your legs, and you jolted, feeling him squeeze your thigh through your jeans.

"How about this tiny leg of yours. You might not have many, but they make up for it in squishiness."

You let out a squeak. Realization of your subconscious action of opening your legs to him came a second after and you blushed a scarlet red. You were throbbing in your panties, wishing he'd take your clothes off already and touch your skin directly, but you didn't get to voice this thought before he spoke again.

"It's a bit unfair you got to touch my skin directly and I can't though..." he muttered, fingers running down the length of your legs, squeezing the fat occasionally as you shivered under him. "I think it's time to remove the barrier, hm?"

His teasing words made you groan, and open your legs a little wider. You couldn't see his face, or what he was doing, and your ears strained for any and all sounds that would indicate his actions or the sounds he was making. The occasional sigh that came from his as you felt his hands slowly undo the button to your jeans and sliding them down your legs made your insides throb. Your socks came with it, but he sadly left your panties in place as you wiggled your hips at him.

His fingers were now on your skin without any fabric in between, and he ran one finger from the slope of your belly, over your covered core, over your thighs all the way to your toes, where the tickling feeling made you retreat your foot quickly with a small giggle replacing your earlier moan.

"I've always thought human legs were silly looking, but now that I have your feet uncovered I am completely validated in my opinion. What even are these?" he said teasingly as he grabbed one of your toes to wiggle as you tried to no avail to remove your feet from his tickling fingers.

"Stop," you giggled, trying to get your hands free to push him away, but the webbing held you in place. This teasing only lasted for a second before he started a different kind of teasing. A gentle kiss was placed on the top of your foot as he ran his hands up your calf, moving his lips up to kiss a trail up to your knee only to start on your second leg. This time he slowly moved up your thighs, alternating between the two as he started nipping and licking his way up to your core while you tried to keep your noises and whining to a minimum.

“Eevrid,” you whined, “Stop teasing me…”

A chuckle was your reply as you felt his lips curl in a smile against your stomach now, skipping your core entirely as he moved his way up.

“I can’t help it,” he said, “You’re just too cute.” Your shirt was pulled up over your head, pushed up to your hands that were still bound as he first kissed the skin around your bra before undoing it slowly and finally lavishing your breasts with ample attention. Your back arched as you tried to move yourself closer to him, body shivering under his ministrations as you whined for him to stop teasing and get to the main event.

“Please, I need you inside me,” you gasped as he pulled on a nipple with his teeth, overstimulating the sensitive skin as you weren’t sure if you wanted to pull away or push closer. You wish you could feel him against your core, but he kept himself away from you, only touching you with his hands, lips and tongue. He removed himself from your left breast as he retreated from your upper body. Unsure of his next action you let out a pathetic whine, thrusting your hips up to him as if to invite.

A curse came from above you, as he mumbled. “I wanted to take my time tasting and worshipping you, but I don’t think I have the patience anymore.”

“Then don’t,” you groaned, “Give in and fuck me already.” You were so ready for him, throbbing and leaking, and if you didn’t feel him inside you anytime soon you were going to scream. Your wish was granted as seemingly out of nowhere you felt weight on your thighs again, the only indication that he was close before something hot and throbbing finally rutted against your wanting pussy. The sound you let out was almost pornographic, and it almost made you miss the groan he let out as he finally ended the sweet torture for himself and you.

“You’re so wet,” he groaned, and you didn’t even reply. Of course you were. You had been soaked for seemingly hours now, desperate for him.

His dick bumped against your clit and you practically growled at him to put it in, words underlined by a sharp thrust upwards that lined him up almost perfectly with your opening. His chuckle at your impatience devolved into a hiss as he finally pushed in, and if you weren’t blindfolded you would’ve seen his eyes roll back as he slid in all the way to the hilt. He was filling you so well, stretching you perfectly as your greedy walls milked him for all he was worth. He slowly pulled out before pushing in again, the rhythm slow but steady as you were almost unable to hear the small groans he let out over your own moans. Everything he did to you was so gentle and filled with love. All earlier fear was completely removed from your brain, no matter what he looked like. And when a slightly rough leg joined his hands in the caress of your body you leaned into it without thoughts, forgetting entirely why you were afraid in the first place if every touch felt so good.

Lips were suddenly against your mouth and you kissed him back with the same desperation that had permeated your actions all day. You had wanted him when you were only just texting and calling, and you realised now that you were finally making love how big that want was exactly.

Your hips snapped against his, legs trying to pull him closer, almost forgetting about his lower body’s width when you tried to wrap them around him. He kissed you again, muttering apologies but for what you weren’t sure. His pace picked up and you shivered in his arms.

You monad his name as if it was a chant, and begged him to remove your blindfold so you could see him.

“Are you sure?” He asked, hands suddenly not so sure as you felt them shiver slightly when they touched the blindfold that was still covering your eyes.

“Yes!” You keened as you felt yourself hurdling towards orgasm with his faster pace. “I want to see all of you! I can handle it.” The words almost made no sense as you tried to speak between your gasps, but he understood either way, removing the cloth quickly as if removing a bandaid.

Your eyes were unfocused, tears in the corners, threatening to fall and for a second Eevrid was afraid it had been too soon, but when he saw no fear or rejection in them, only love and desperation for him he kissed you again, a smile on his face. A hand went down to tease your clit, but the moment he made contact you already exploded, contracting around him so hard he had to stop for a second, groan escaping his gritted teeth. You were so beautiful, so small under him, and he couldn’t hold on either, rutting into you sloppily a couple more times before pulling out and releasing as well. White ropes splattered over your stomach, as your name fell from his lips in such loving desperation you almost orgasmed again from his voice and the visual of his face as he came.

Slowly both of you came down from your heights, Eevrid slowly undoing the webbing around your hands as he kissed the skin under it gently. Your eyes were on him, the way he moved around so gently, making sure not to step on you with his many legs despite his size.

And suddenly you were so glad you took this chance to overcome your phobia. You might still be afraid of an everyday spider, but not of Eevrid. Never of Eevrid. Your newly released arms reached out, pulling him closer to you as you kissed him again, muttering thanks and little nothings to him as he cleaned you with the same reverent gentleness he had displayed all day.

Your heart seemingly grew in size when you realised you had gone from fear to love, and with a content sigh you curled up against him as he pulled a large blanket over the both of you.

#drider x reader #spider creature #monster x reader #terato #monsterfucking #smut #nsft #x y/n #x reader

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lara635kookie · 11 months ago

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I didn't even watch "WISH" yet because in my country it will only be available at january, but people are saying it's a bad cliche so I probably won't watch at the cinema.

The thing is, even though I am a hopeless romantic, not everything has to have romance. There are princess who are perfectly fine without a prince, like Mirabel, Elsa, Merida, Moana and Raya(I do kinda like the idea of Raya with a girl, just not Namaari). But we were so robbed of seeing Asha and the star boy(he is literally a staR so I don't doubt Disney would call him StaN or something like that, so his name is Stan from now on, I am gonna call him like that, is easier than star boy). Asha and Stan had the potential to be the next Tianaveen and Rapunzel&Eugene (I don't know their ship name). The concept arts are the cutest thing I have ever seen. Also "At All Costs" (bop) would have been a love song between the two!!! Them singing it man. The pain I will feel when I don't see them passionately sing it, very "I see the light" coded, in the actual movie. Somehow, now is not feminist for a strong female character to have a male partner by her side. Like...This doesn't make sense! You can be a strong female character and have a man at the same time! Have y'all forgotten Mulan and Shang? Anna and Kristoff? Ariel and Eric? Jasmine and Aladdin? (There are more examples and I could go on all day, but you got what I meant already) I hate Disney for throwing good ideas at the trash and playing safe just for money(like Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk said "it's a metaphor for capitalism"). And as the guy looked blonde with blue/green eyes in the arts I have seen, and Asha is a black latina, they lost the opportunity of having a biracial couple ACTUALLY DONE RIGHT (Pocahontas and John Smith don't count, he is a collonizer with the most common name in the world, she deserves so much better). Like, if the thing is show how inclusive you are by having a black latina female protagonist for little girls to see and feel represented in a good way, you could have increased that feeling by making someone fall in love for her. Little girls would feel like they are beautiful and desired/desireable in a positive way and that they worthy of being loved and love and be with whoever they want to be with, even someone who has a different skin color.

I am also mad because we could have seen Disney's first evil villain COUPLE with King Magnifico and his wife, the queen(still don't know her name, sorry). Can't you guys imagine the HITS, THE FIRST PLACE OF BILLBOARD HOT 100 WORTHY songs, they would proportionate us? Even if only one song, it would be enough for me. But someone thought having a female villain would be anti-feminist and they discarded an original and authentic idea, which is what Disney built its empire on the first place. Come on Disney minorities don't want to be portrayed as those unrealistic superior beings, they want to be portrayed as real human beings with emotions, struggles, qualities and flaws. Having an iconic female villain like you guys always had(like Maleficent, Cruella De Vil, Ursula, Mother Gothel, Lady Tremaine, etc) and set her up with an iconic male villain(like Gaston, Doctor Facilier, Shan Yu, Jafar, Hans, etc) it would have been top notch, god tier. King Magnifico and the queen could have been like the Gomez and Morticia of evil. You could address so many topics by it. Like the kingdom being ruled by evil would have been a great social critic of some politicians out there, for example. And we could have had an iconic final boss battle between Asha and Stan VS Magnifico and the queen.

Anyway, what I mean by this is that if someone has fanarts or just ANY CONTENT, of Asha and Stan, tag me, reblog this or comment, I don't care, just warn me, because they are my new obsession. I will also write a fanfic about this movie with these ideas, but only after I have watched the movie so until them, please feed my hyperfixation in Stasha (Star boy/Stan×Asha), I'm begging y'all

#disney wish #wish 2023 #princess asha #wish asha #king magnifico #asha x star #asha x star boy #asha x stan #asha x star guy

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asfateentertwines · 1 year ago

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The Surprise

Okay so trans pregnancy Spider won my poll - thank you to the one person who told me who should carry lmfao - but it was a close tie. Consider this canon to the little universe but I think I'll try to write the incubator baby headcanons too cause it was really frickin close lmao

TW: Trans pregnancy, mentions of sex, medical stuff

So Ningni was not planned to say the least

Penetrative sex for Spider and Rotxo is...a process to say the least

Rotxo is double Spider's size and lets just say biology is proportionate. Hence, the build up is nothing to rush through and with three kids, it's a luxury they don't get often

Plus, with their differing biology, they never really paid mind to reproduction between them

Sure it was theoretically possible but they didn't linger on it all so much

Rotxo may have thought about a baby of their own biology but it was too much a health risk and he was never sure how Spider would do. He didn't ask, wouldn't, but...maybe he dreamed sometimes

That said...maybe protection wasn't always at the forefront of their minds

Spider finds out he's pregnant after Kiri starts getting an odd sense around him, she eventually visits the ancestors for advice and is informed their brother needs to see a Tsahik immediately

They bring Spider to Tsireya first, not wanting to alert anyone with how precarious the situation might be, and she is the one who affirms Kiri's information

It scares the shit out of him

Tsireya and Kiri keep the information quiet but they won't for long - namely for his own health

Abortion isn't really a thing in Na'vi culture - mating is for life, something that means even unplanned pregnancy or teenage mishaps are between a mated pair. Medical intervention occurs but an unwanted pregnancy is nearly unheard of

Children are a blessing from Ewya - while unplanned or untimely pregnancies may happen, it's not often and it's not like it is on earth. One doesn't have to leave everything behind to be a parent.

Still - come hell or high water, no one will take the choice from Spider

Tsireya takes Anea and the boys that night, Spider pulling Rotxo into the water for a late night ride to tell him

Honestly, Rotxo didn't predict shit, homie got blindsided

Spider cries, a mixture of terrified, hopeful, and sick all coiling in his throat, and tells Rotxo that they might have messed up

He tells him of Kiri's odd feelings, how a woman Kiri didn't know told her that he was blessed, that the next generation is growing, and how Tsireya confirmed he was with child.

Rotxo is thrilled but guiltily so, terrified for what it could mean for Spider and for their family.

It's a long talk about whether or not they have a choice here - Spider hasn't even told Norm or been formally checked out - but they opt that, if it can be done safely, Spider will carry the pregnancy to term

It's not an easy decision - Spider wants the baby, at least, he thinks he does, but carrying the child to term could be a painful experience, dangerous to his body but also his mind. Growing up with intersex being the standard meant that pregnancy wasn't a female thing, but he's human, and he knows the difference

the dysphoria of the coming months will be harsh and he knows it'll bother the limited medical transitions he's been able to make

With Norms help, he's more androgynous than anything by human standards and he's been able to become comfortable in himself - pregnancy will send it reeling back

Then, there's the side of how painful and dangerous a pregnancy might become

He knows how different his body is and he knows that this won't be easy

But...Ewya blessed him

It's what he's wanted his whole life and he won't give it up now

Rotxo will be at his side and so he decides to do it

His pregnancy is the scientific question of the ages that Norm thought he discovered each time one of the Sully kids walked in his lab, but an organic Na'vi and human child is more than a little unexpected

The baby is studied closely, the growth an alarming thing when na'vi size is taken into consideration. Afterall, a newborn Neteyam was about the same size as a one year old Spider

Unfortunately for Spider, this means a good six months of bed rest

Fortunately for him, he has three very excited children

Anea tries to find out everything she can about his pregnancy. Given he has to spend it's duration in the hut, she spends most of her time with him where they can both breathe and she can help

She becomes his little helper - gathering supplies so they can prepare things for the baby, getting him food, books, and entertainment, and helping him get around as the pregnancy continues and movement gets difficult

Wialik patrols the hut, much to Rotxo's amusement, and tries to protect his uncle and sisters. From what, he couldn't say, but Rotxo finds it insanely amusing

Wialik also ends up collecting pieces to make beads, working with surprising patience to start their newest additions songcord with his family. He enlists Astayì, Kiri's oldest, and makes little figures like a child born in the Ash clans would receive. He claims it's to help his knife skills but they all know better

Vipeì writes stories and lullabies for the baby

He's little, only about 6, so Tsireya and Neteyam help him with learning songs and teach him stories to tell

He works with Rotxo too to make clothes, both for Spider and the baby

This being the first baby they had real time to prepare for, Rotxo goes a bit overboard in getting things together

He and Vipeì make Spider clothes to help conceal his chest and make new shawls that knit over his shoulders

They also make a frankly obscene amount of baby clothes and blankets, anything that a human-Na'vi child may need - a bed for the marui and one for the hut, clothes for any sort of temperature intolerance, and toys galore

By 6 months in, Spider is bedbound entirely. He's sick, drained, and craving things he can't even eat. His body is beyond heavy and he relies a lot on his family to help him - it's a lot of time spent with his brothers teasing, Tuk's mischief, Kiri's support, and even Neytiri and Jakes care.

Norm monitors him constantly in the last few months before it's decided that intervention is needed - he'll be in serious danger if they let him continue.

Ningni is born 8 months into Spiders pregnancy, something that was a risky decision on all sides. Quite simply, she was too big for him to carry much longer and her needs were difficult to predict when her species wasn't even something they could guarantee

She's a pale blue, appearing a few shades lighter than Rotxo (something her brothers claim comes from them) with tiny blonde curls. Her hair is starkly human, something Spider fears and Rotxo loves. She combines them in the face in a way they're both proud of, but her eyes are big and brown and neither of their own. Paz had to leave her mark somehow

Ningni is tiny for a Na'vi but frankly appallingly large for human standards

Spider is on bedrest for several months and then on limited action after, but Ningni is thankfully born able to breathe both human and Pandoran air

She's clearly blessed and accepted easier than her family thought she'd be (though most of the clan hopes she's the only of her kind)

Her lungs can breathe both her parents air, her body tolerates food of both cultures, she has the extra fingers of humans, the enhances sense of Na'vi, and the flexibility of humans. Her strength is a bit lesser than a true blooded Na'vi, but she's astonishingly well adapted

As she grows, she's sort of an oddball like her Auntie Kiri was

She's in tune with the world around her but rambunctious and mischievous like both her fathers

She's a bit of a jack of all trades - choosing to do everything and nothing all at once

She's the type of kid that need constant supervision and both Jake and Norm smugly say she is much alike Spider was as a child

Due to Spider being with her near constantly in her younger years, she's very close to him but Rotxo is - very proudly - her hero

#rotxo x spider #spider socorro #rocorro kids #tw: trans pregnancy #minor n$fw ??#mpreg #its seahorse dad time #atwow rotxo #Ningni te Socorro Rotxo'ite #Anea te Socorro Rotxo'ite #Wialik te Socorro Rotxo'itan #Vipeì te Socorro Rotxo'itan

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un-pearable · 3 months ago

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post-spider-man and his amazing friends “a fire-star is born” thoughts: why is iceman the punny one. hi fred scooby doo. incredible levels of wolverine uselessness here. firestar i do think dropping your high school rivals twenty feet into mud is not proportionate to the extremely basic drama they roped you into . MAGNET-O?????

#wolvie’s here for the fruit and unspecific definitely child friendly celebration beverage #spider-man wanted his friends to be nice to him and instead got a building dropped on him and swept the daily baddie #has to do fuckin everything around here goddamn #if you watch one clip from this brief liveblog watch the wolverine ones i’m still laughing my ass off

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meant-to-be-a-hero · 2 years ago

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Current List Of (St)Eddie Fics

Swing My Way - 45/45 - (Steve x Eddie)

Steve Harrington can't turn down a friend in need, so when Nancy Wheeler asks for help breaking into a secret BrenCorp lab, he has no choice but to say yes.

Eddie Munson is BrenCorp’s newest security guard, but as much as he wants to do a good job, he can’t say no to a pretty face. Especially when he’s thought Steve has a pretty face for years.

The Strange Energy Research Lab Eddie is guarding is full of mysteries, and when a hasty exit exposes he and Steve to two of them, their lives are irrevocably changed.

Steve starts literally climbing the walls, with the proportionate strength and speed of a spider and a sixth sense that keeps him safe from danger, while Eddie finds himself sharing his body with an interdimensional creature that can form around him like a second skin.

Adopting the identities of Spider-Man and Venom, the pair set out to unravel BrenCorp's secrets while its shady CEO arrays his dark forces against them to reclaim what he believes is his.

And amidst the chaos of their new superheroic lives, Steve and Eddie find themselves growing closer. Their secrets may at first keep them apart, but they may also be what ultimately draws them together.

A Pack Of Two - 32/32 - (Steve x Eddie)

Legends say that broken hearts will be mended if you spend the night of the full moon atop Heartbreak Hill. When Steve Harrington’s girlfriend dumps him, that sounds like the perfect way to fix his broken heart.

But the following day, Steve’s body starts to change. His senses kick into overdrive, and fangs and claws start appearing where fangs and claws absolutely should not be. The only person who can help him through his newfound transformation is the mysterious Eddie Munson.

As Eddie helps Steve re-take control of his body, Steve also starts to take control of his life. He's tired of living the way other people expect him to – and he's done doing things that don't make him happy. And, as he finds out, Eddie makes him very happy indeed.

With time ticking down to the next full moon, Steve must find a way to master his new abilities, navigate his way through a potential relationship with his werewolf mentor, and perhaps realise that the true enemies aren’t always the ones in front of us.

Or, Steve Harrington and the month that changes his life forever.

His World Inverted - 22/22 (Steve x Eddie)

The Kingdom Of Hawkins has been at peace since the end of the Inverse War, in which Sir Steve of the Harringtons and his companions defeated the Dark Lord Vecna forever.

Now, Steve has returned to Hawkins and resumed his age-old quest – trying to find a girlfriend. But why is finding someone so much harder than fighting monsters ever was?

When a new quest arises, sending Steve, Nancy, and Robin out into the kingdom to try and rescue their missing friends, a familiar face reappears – Eddie Munson, who Steve and the others had thought lost during the War. But Eddie's different now – Inverted, possessing a strange, warped appearance and new abilities. And just as Steve and the others begin to adjust to their friend's return, tragedy strikes.

Now, with his senses, his body, his very mind warped and changed, Steve must contend with his new state of being even while the fate of the kingdom still rests on his shoulders.

Will Steve and his companions be able to save the kingdom, and their friends? And in the process, will Steve be able to complete his other quest, and find someone who sees him for who he truly is?

Love & Monsters - 31/31 (Steve x Eddie)

Vecna is gone, destroyed in a final confrontation between his forces of darkness and the protectors of Hawkins. But his final act of revenge has unleashed a multitude of monsters across the country, all pulled from the collective unconscious.

Now, it's up to Steve, Eddie, and their friends to head out and take all of these creatures down.

As they face off against myths and legends made real, monsters from movies and their deepest, darkest fears, Eddie and Steve will learn about themselves, about their relationship, and the true depths of their feelings for one another.

Can they clean up Vecna's final mess and make it home in one piece? And what will their relationship look like when they return?

Little Bites Of Happiness - 15/15 (Steve x Eddie)

Vecna has been defeated, and Hawkins is safe once again. The battle is over, and the danger has passed at last. There’s just one problem: Eddie Munson is still dead, and for Steve Harrington, that’s unacceptable.

Steve’s not sure why he cares so much. What he does know is that he has to bring Eddie back, no matter the cost.

And hey, if psychic powers and other dimensions exist, then surely magic isn’t far behind?

But what he and Robin bring back isn’t Eddie. At least, not entirely. It’s something darker, something deadlier, and something hungry.

With Robin at his side, Steve sets out to rescue Eddie and purge the darkness that has tainted his resurrection. But to do that, Steve might have to face his own secrets, and finally come to terms with feelings he has long been denying.

[Set after the events of Stranger Things Season 4, with vague allusions to some version of Season 5]

The Music's No Good Without You - 14/14 (Eddie x Reader)

Leaving Hawkins to chase your dreams in New York feels like the best decision you’ve ever made. At least until you get there, and realise that chasing your dreams is actually a lot harder than you thought it’d be. Feeling creatively suffocated, you decide to join a band so that you’ve got somewhere to sing when the rest of the city seems to want you to do anything but.

The band in question however turns out to be made up of very familiar faces – Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley and...Eddie Munson, the man you’ve had a crush on since high school. There’s only one problem: Eddie doesn’t date – he’s too focused on achieving his dream of superstardom for that. But maybe you can show him that achieving his dream doesn’t have to mean closing off his heart in the process.

It’s not going to be easy, especially when an old flame returns to make your life, and the lives of your bandmates, miserable. Together though, you can overcome anything. You’ll win Eddie’s heart, and achieve both of your dreams, no matter what it takes.

[Rock Band AU - doesn't reference the events of the show]

Come Back To Me - 12/12 (Eddie x Reader)

You’ve had about enough of Hawkins. Between the disappearances, the murders, and now an earthquake, it’s about time for you to relocate to some place a little safer. But those plans fall apart, literally, when you find yourself plummeting through a fissure in the ground and into a hellish dimension beyond.

Trapped in a terrifying reflection of Hawkins and stalked by dangerous creatures, things take a turn for the worse when Eddie Munson makes the scene. As you spend time with Eddie though, you come to realise that perhaps you shouldn’t believe everything you’ve heard on the news about him. Logic and reason have always been your go-to, but when it comes to Eddie, maybe this time you’ll have to think with your heart instead of your head. If you don’t lose them both first.

As the shadow of Vecna threatens to drown Eddie in darkness, the pair of you fight to uncover the secret behind his resurrection so that you can both forge a path out of the Upside Down and back to the surface. And maybe, you might just forge something else along the way. A bond strong enough that even Vecna’s evil can’t break it. A bond of friendship, and maybe even...love.

[Set after the events of Stranger Things Season 4]

Go Your Own Way - 10/10 (Eddie x Reader)

After a year of tragedy you didn't think you'd ever smile again until you joined the Hawkins High Hellfire Club. The fact that Eddie Munson, your Dungeon Master, is perhaps the hottest person you've ever met doesn't hurt matters, either. When you're around him, things feel bright again, and you begin to feel as though your life might finally be getting back on track.

But when Eddie finds himself at the centre of a police investigation, you're drawn into a mysterious conspiracy involving otherworldly monsters, dark alternate dimensions, and a terrifying curse. It'll take everything you have, as well as the assistance of the most unlikely of allies, to clear Eddie's name and save the entire world (and yourself!) from the demon known as Vecna.

And then there's the matter of your heart. With the world going insane around you, the only thing that doesn't seem in question are your feelings for Eddie. Is it even possible that he might feel the same way about you, or is your love life destined to be a critical fail?

[Set during the events of Stranger Things Season 4]

#Stranger Things #Steve Harrington #Eddie Munson #Steddie #Steve Harrington x Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson x Reader

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spookyscarycreepydollgirl · 2 years ago

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Warning: The following snippet contains; Minor mentions of blood and gore, some body horror, lots of arachnophobia triggers. Size difference. A shady fae creature on their best behaviour. Unspecified bargains with said shady fae creature. Some very dead monsters.

The face was familiar, though the size of it was not, nor was the number of eyes, the chelicerae protruding from his jawline, the sharpness of his canines or the number of arms. Speaking of his arms and indeed his limbs in general not only were they larger but proportionately they had elongated to the border of grotesque but merely the border as if Bastion were fighting to maintain some semblance of the illusion of humanity in her presence. That illusion was already well and truly lost, because the being before her was not merely huge and grotesquely proportioned but it’s movements were more like a spider than a man.

“Do not run Ida.” The creature cautioned, in that all too familiar, ever gentle voice, albeit this time with the disturbing addition of distorted reverberations, as though the same voice were overlapping with itself, just slightly out of sync and speaking at both higher and lower frequencies at intervals.

“If you run, I will most definitely chase you and I fear even with our agreement, I will not be able to control myself”

“Are you going to eat me Bastion?” She asked carefully, after all, when dealing with inhumanity, it never hurt to clarify, for all she knew he was simply warning her away from a more painful death, not warning her away from the prospect of death in its entirety, in which case, she was in fact going to have to run.

He laughed and despite the distortion there was something quite deprecating about it. “As much as I would love to, in this particular instance I am in fact trying to behave myself, come here Ida.”

Naturally she stayed where she was. He huffed at her. “Yes I realise it seems counterproductive, but please come to me” There was a note of desperation in his voice and after taking the correct amount of time to assess if this was a ploy, Ida took pity on him, moving towards the hulking thing before her, though even she wasn’t quite sure how she managed to cross the distance.

Multiple arms wrapped around her, the embrace was warm and oddly gentle but there was an undercurrent of strength to it and Ida held no illusions about her chances of breaking free should he not want her to. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and sighed. Honestly at this size he was a little heavy but the way he seemed to sag with relief as he held her, made her feel obliged to weather through it with dignity.

“Apologies Ida, I did not think they would be so brazen as to attack you while you were under my protection. It was terribly rude and I am quite upset with them.”

As she patted one of his arms in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. Ida thought about the numerous dead monsters presently leaking blood and viscera onto the forest floor and concluded that The Spider Prince had a remarkable talent for understatement.

#protective pred #monster/human #humanoid abomination #size difference #unspecified bargains with shady fae folk do not try at home #This isn’t even his final form #Bastion also has a more magazine friendly Demi-human form but who wants to see that?#This snippet brought to you by Noh Face and the Huntsman Spider.

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vazelbeak · 2 years ago

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Whos your least vs favorite character in HH and HB and why?

Hm, now this I'd say takes some thought, both because of how we don't have Hazbin out right now to entirely judge (how much they change from the pilot to the show like designs can very quite a bit Not just because of more or different writers but because of generally more resources provided like time and money, but that varies studio to studio.) But also because it depends on criteria, which if up to me, I find a lot of Vivs characters are good in certain areas but unfortunately lack components in others needed to give them well rounded personalities, motivations, backgrounds, ect.

Hazbin

Least favorite: This likely isnt too shocking as I find Angel Dust is for a lot of people is kinda both a least and most favorite simultaneously. He has a very distinct character design workable for a silhouette test which I can easily give credit to! However He doesn't appear to look much like a spider in those as much as a general insect. My mind immediately goes to a stick bug not because of the legs but just proportionally he doesnt really have any spider proportions and even non silhouette speaking if the spots under his eyes were his other eyes, my problem with that is the both only look like spots, and don't act like eyes. I also find myself not a fan of how his design thus far hasnt tied into his capabilities. Personally I'm a fan of zoology, I loved catching bugs and lizards as a kid and my grandpa worked in pest control so he actually did at times teach me about insects. So when I see Angel dust, a spider next to someone like Val (who ive heard a varied cockroach and moth) my immediate thought goes to "Angel youre a spider, youre arguably the most capable of taking him out".

Looking it up the animals that are largely immune to spider venom are hedgehogs, skunks, ground squirrels, and pigs (points for his pig I will presume it intentional!) While the idea perhaps he has gold teeth replaced his canines that could be used for that, it also brings to question why didn't Angel use them prior? Or did he and somehow fail like not using enough? How did Val get the upper hand when to my knowledge Angel had 40 more years in hell than him? What was angel even doing before Val even arrived? Overall I find him to have interesting bits to him, but he has the development reminiscent of OCs I made in highschool where they were largely based upon aesthetics, but the substance that ties those pieces together is largely lacking. I'd also enjoy his character more if the whole "sinners being based on animals and objects" wasn't aesthetic (hell if they actually meant something symbolism wise, like Angel being a spider bc he himself for lack of a better term in life was toxic. He got by in life by weaving nice webs of lies and false promises, and the moment someone fell for it and got caught, he would poison them and turn them into Husks.

And maybe thats part of what weirdly works for him and Husk to become close. Be it Husk is already an aftermath of what Angel turned people into, making him almost redeem himself by helping someone that represents all the things he did wrong to people, or maybe its just Angel is put in a place of for once needing to see someone not for what they can do for him, but for who they are, because he never had to face anyone in the aftermath of what he did to them.

Most favorite: It may just be the personal family stuff, and it may just be my love of animals, but Husk has to be a favorite. Its very possible and likely because unlike the others we haven't had as much of Husk shown or given to us to really dislike. He comes off as your grumpy older dude who even just seeing the basic details of characters before watching the Pilot, I could see him playing a father figure role to someone like Crymini (or Crimini? I don't see enough of her to remember the spelling.) a rebellious teen which iirc was part of the original idea, and seems to semi carry into the show now if the leaks gave any idea since he was listed as a shoulder to cry on. And that bit is good! We should be able to see that pose and expression on his face and read that! Overall unlike Angel his personality reads as more charming by contrast to Angels constant jokes and being mean. (Unfortunately for Angel hes given traits that for some people like me, that gets grating fast when theres nobody he's going back and forth with and theres direct consequences to his actions that only appear to hurt others. This is funny when theres acknowledgement of a character having tried their best or theyre a jerk but there is a invaluable ability that makes their behavior a sort of price to pay for which also makes said character come off as despite the behavior having good intentions or at least good for helping the people we're supposed to root for) but Husk while he can come off as a jerk as a grumpy character has it balanced by having other characters provoke it and appear unbothered by his annoyance. It makes him a jerk to the audience, but not to the other characters that would make him hard to like. His design id say while not the worst, also doesnt entirely make the most sense I know he was apparently made by Viv's sibling so I'm not gonna look to style, but I am like angel gonna look at the function. With a magic and slot machine themes I'm left wondering why he's a cat mixed with a bird and not a dove mixed with a lion (two animals associated with magic and even vegas wheres slot machines are associated with) or even just a dragon theme in general as theyre seen as magical creatures. Looking at his design it does leave a lot to be desired, but hes meant to be a cat with wings and looks like one. I will say I'm not a fan of his outfit as it stands. Both because it doesn't really read as a ba tender outfit, and because his lack of shirt just immediately makes me think "theres gonna be so much hair in those drinks" which is specifically an issue because a bartender outfit would help remedy this to a degree. I think as it stands Husk is a favorite for me because what little of his character we have is relatively consistent, we don't know enough about his backstory for it to drastically contrast with his current life in hell yet, and his design tells us his personality, but only in pose and expression. I also wish his design meant something such as if he's essentially a sorry excuse for a dragon because a Husk implies he's a shell of what he once was and so instead of looking much more like mythical creature he's reduced to looking like a cat with bird wings. Wings that based. Being dark on the inside would either be fake or poorly maintained to the point he's incapable of flying. Itd be cool if his appearance tied into a theme of someone who's somewhat lost sight of all the magic in the world/become desensitized to it all (and therefore good in the world). He is one of the last people next to Vaggie to fall for tricks that rely on you being overly trusting of people. He does however fall for stuff that feeds into his need to be the smarter person it makes him feel validated because you have to be smart to pull off magic tricks and not being smart makes him feel like he has nothing. Imply he won't take a card because he can't read it and he'll snatch it out of your hands to prove you wrong. But he really likes seeing peoples eyes light up at a slight of hand trick.

I would like to think bc Husk has stopped seeing good in the world its the ways others like Charlie and Vaggie try and fail at things that almost force Husk to care because despite him being that way, he can't stand other people going down the same path. So he may not say anything when you fail at something and get upset over it. But the next morning after a night of complaining youll see whatever it is completed. I really hope they manage to make his character work i think it could be done really easily with what we already have.

Helluva

Least: I think as much as I would like to say Millie for how under utilized and how much potential she could hold as someone who grew up on a farm and became an assassin, it doesn't compare to the shift from concept to final product that Blitzø had as well as his constant screen time that doesn't help. Starting visually Blitzø doesn't really look like a clown turned assassin and the spikes on his back give an iguana esque look to him as an Imp. I like the stylized head shape that a 3/4s angle can give his head a heart shape, however i find his forehead marking both overly complex and that it doesn't appear to serve much of a purpose to where it would benefit being simplified. Naturally I think it would be cool to see how Blitzo's iguana traits tie into his design such as not being very aware of social ques because iguanas often communicate visually. However my biggest problem with Blitzø is how he seemed to work much better conceptually. Which is to say Blitzø is a jerk.

Now, jerk characters have to be handled well. The more of a jerk they are and the more it touches upon real life forms of unpleasant behavior the more you need to work to make their behavior palatable enough to keep the audience engaged. We're supposed to root for Blitzø after all! But when Blitzø calls Moxxie the r slur, he sexually harasses his employees, those are very real things that are not very funny IRL (having experienced some of these things, it especially makes them all the more grating which is something that should be somewhat accounted for in making jerk characters by balancing their traits). And luckily there are ways these jerk traits can be remedied. Ill keep it to three I type long enough and my talking tends to be worse.

Jerk characters are very case by case due to the varied nature in which theyre a jerk. However there are general balancing methods.

-Karmatic repercussions. Karmatic repercussions are often the use of am almost cosmic force punishing a jerk character for their actions. It often is more employed in kids cartoons but the idea is to make fun of them for how they act or make them. A good example id point to is Squidward who is often an annoyed grumpy jerk who refuses to engage with the fun of spongebobs antics but this is remedied by often having a sort of punishment that is funny. Its funny for Squidward to be run over by giant rock because he naturally doesn't believe spongebob can ride a rock, as well as being comically squished in the sand.

- Heart of gold where is counts. I am under the impression this was the goal for Angeldust but functionally this is where your jerk character frequently is a jerk however will show their kinder side after things go too far or to prevent things from going too far. Usually youll see this is persistent for villains who team up with the protagonist against another far more evil forces but sometimes its out of remorse for a protagonist. A workable example id point to would be Cotton from King of The Hill who's a jerk, but when Peggy loses her teaching license he does help her get it back despite largely being a unpleasant person. He's unpleasant but when it counts he helped her. (I dont have a good gif for this one so this will have to do)

-Who cares he's a loser. This one is fairly simple and utilized in a lot of cartoons. CodeName: Kids Next Door, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Pokemon, Invader Zim, ect. Where a character is a jerk but theyre a loser which both downgrades the seriousness of what they do and makes us take what they say less impactful. A decent example I point to is Jack Spicer from Xaolin Showdown. He's a bad guy but we take his evil actions less seriously and are able to believe him becoming a good guy because we don't take those evil actions seriously.

And thats where Blitzøs concept art comes into play. i think a lot of his unpleasant and jerk traits would've been much more tolerable and able to be put up with if he was meant to be loser. He could insult Moxxie only to trip and fall into a mud puddle and it would work because it takes away any of the gravity of what he says. Quite literally "who cares what Blitzø says about Moxxie hes a loser". But on top of that its the way Blitzø is made a focus that also contributes to him being so grating. Youd think an episode focusing on where Millie grew up would focus on her and tell us a bit about maybe where and why she went from a farm to the assassin business and how she found the job but we got Blitzø and Striker. Youd think an episode that seemed meant to focus on Loona and Octavia based on the thumbnail and implication we'd see Loona's backstory would be about them, but instead it's Blitzø and Stolas on a sitcom set that we've had no indication really had any meaning or purpose to the story beyond Blitzø for some reason having trauma over seeing Loona at the pound. Which in itself was one of the big things that made me dislike his role im the story. Typically when you set up a flashback giving a characters backstory through the eyes of another person its to present a contrast in how they respectively viewed the situation or how that effected the character.

It would make sense if it was about why Blitzø is so over bearing towards Loona, because he's really trying to make her feel like she could do something with her life and that she's not a hopeless cause like she was told. But the way Blitzø is the one traumatized and we don't see how Loona was effected or how this looked through her eyes makes it feel like a last minute jumpstart to get Blitzø and Stolas out of the building after writing them into that situation.

Looking at it on a writing stand point and setting aside how unnecessary it felt to the plot akin to Millie and Moxxie's plot, a set up like that would have been a perfect for Blitzø to confront what happened that made him no longer perform on stage and why it was so significant. It felt like a perfect set up where Blitzø after having a flashback to how he met Loona would disregard the teleprompters and make a grandiose speech about how you can't just replace family the moment they become inconvenient to you. That in choosing to raise them as your own you have to take responsibility for not properly training and teaching them to behave and so he needs

Blitzø would be talking about its not right for him to just replace Loona when he adopted her knowing she had issues and made no efforts to actually correct her behavior. (In which Blitzø being overbearing would make sense as seeing this his responsibility even if Loona's an adult). But to the people on set, their actor just went of script and improvised a touching and impactful speech about the importance of responsibility. And as they end the episode, Blitzø gets the applause and cheer that makes him think he'd should consider becoming an actor as he makes his way to his dressing room until he's handed a paycheck and can't believe he's making so little. What do these guys take him for?! Do they have any idea how exhausting it is go be on camera for that long without commercial breaks?!

From their he and Stolas sneak out of the building while everyone else is preoccupied leaving the check discarded on thr floor of the dressing room and part of the joke is the actor Blitzø was mistaken for is later found dead is mourned for having died after giving the best performance of his life. Maybe someone sees Stolas discard his human form and they think he's the owl man cryptid known for hovering around people or places before tragedy but only conspiracy theorist types believe that.

But the sitcom plot didn't amount to much and the excuse Blitzø has a panic attack over Loona's trauma to a point of on camera claiming to see a kid snorting coke in the dressing room (which let me say with the amount of child actors that have come forward regarding how they were mistreated and knowing they turned to drugs either over stress or over their parents giving it to them, it comes off rather tasteless) doesnt even come off funny as unlike Darla Dimple in Cats Don't Dance, she wasn't mean or rude in a way to make it feel funny as though Blitzø was actually doing some good by revealing she did something horrible.

And because of that it just makes it harder to enjoy because Helluva Boss ends up this big show where Blitzø is the center of attention but he is arguably the least enjoyable character to have on screen. He's overall not a balanced enough character to find engaging on screen but its arguably made worse knowing theres such a massive contrast between who he is on screen vs the conceptual work that made his character feel much more balanced for the role he plays that feels like came to be from self fandomization.

Most: I don't know if this may be the personal connection speaking but to me, my favorite character is Octavia. Visually she doesn't look much like a hybrid between a swan and Owl as much as the crow owl hybrid Stolas is reminiscent of. I think it would be more interesting if her outfits had more variety in which she had royal clothes she has to wear but her outfit we currently see her wear is meant to be causal and comfortable but because she's part of the Goetia that is her only outfit meant to be because she's heavily expected to embrace her royal status and get used to walking around in royal attire. (Perhaps this is even an outfit she made herself and she would love to design clothing if given the chance?). I wish we saw more incorporation of the animals Stolas and Stella were and how Octavia inherits those traits as it could be a means to expand on how whether we like it or not we inherit our parents traits and not just physically. (Also perhaps expand on how Stella may be so against divorce because Swans mate for life meaning if Stolas leaves her she intended to kill the both of them. Meanwhile for Stolas as a tawny owl, while some mate for life its not universal potentially reflecting why divorce is seen as a problem. And in a way its their contrast in mentalities regarding marriage). Id argue she has the most interesting and compelling narrative of having to learn the harsh reality of your parents not being perfect and how to handle that. A struggle that you especially become aware of when your parents split and actively despise one another. My only issue with it is how often her feelings are dismissed or diminished as though an "id never forget about you" erases the times Stolas did ignore her or forget about something important in favor of Blitzø and Stella. (Viv your claim to writing the moments that everyone praises ignores how you as the creator of an indie production greenlight the worst moments too and its shameful to see you throw your fellow writers under the bus like that.) We've never seen anything meant to make these moments outliers or implied such outside of Stolas's insistence he does care for her and often times far too late.

And as much as it can be argued "why would Stolas remember, why didnt Octavia wait until he was done on the phone?" I both admittedly sooner sympathize with a kid who misunderstood their parents over a parent who to my knowledge would face no consequences to hanging up or holding the phone away to quickly ask "what" incase of an emergency as well as find it to be rather bad writing to make such a reach for why Octavia would feel so upset that she'd run away, just to flip it and insist "no actually she doesnt realize how much her dad loves her though". It feels inconsistent especially when we see Stolas in the audience of a sitcom set and not (what i feel wouldve made the focus on him more justified) ditching Blitzø because unlike his assassin boyfriend, Octavia has no means to protect herself and no familiarity with the human world.

To me Octavia would be an interesting figure to give us a sort of parallel or contrast to her and Stolas's upbringing. Did Stolas stay with Stella because in being raised by Paimon he assumed two parents was better than one based on what he wanted? Does Octavia need to produce an heir? Why not?

I think it would be an interesting direction if because Stolas was forced into an arranged marriage he has an aversion to anything that feels more than causal because his only experiences with love as a kid involved being forced into molds chose by other people and by result while he spared Octavia from needing to produce an heir, he's struggled to allow her form much in the way of any relationships outside her immediate family and it makes her likely struggle to understand other people since her interactions have been so limited. Overall I like her as a character, visually her design doesn't really work with what we know but could be expanded on to work if we got more of her character, and I really hope they actually give us more to her than just being "Stolas's sad daughter who just tragically doesn't realize he loves her"

A lot of it boils down to their intended ideas may be interesting and hold a lot of potential, but if you can't balance them out enough to be entertaining on screen and interesting characters both visually and writing wise, its gonna be really hard for me to root for who you want me to.

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radiantmorningstar · 8 days ago

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Tobrin's Chronicle 3

Year 297 AC of the Deer, Seaday 19th of the Month of Hiding

Tobrin wants to put a sizeable distance between him and the elvish picket riders around the village. [Consider this a “forced march” of the sort described in AFF Core Rulebook, 200-201.] He’s able to move two hexes north (instead of one) to the Sulla River, which runs from the massive spring in the center of Redianteris, past Skyhand, and then east to empty in Plentiful Bay. [Make a Stamina check: 2d6 roll = 8, success.] Upon reaching the river, Tobrin is tired and cannot make another forced march for 24 hours; however, he is not incapacitated from his efforts.

A cool breeze comes off Plentiful Bay and waves crack against the cliffs, sending foam high into the air. The sound of the crashing waves and the cries of gulls are nearly constant as the water of the Bay stretches along the eastern horizon. Before him, the Sulla River thrashes over the falls to empty into the water 100 feet (about 30 meters) below. There is no visible bridge or natural way evident that would allow Tobrin to cross the river without getting wet or risking the strong current.

[Roll chance of encounter, 1-2 on 1d6, roll = 6, no encounter.] The Sulla River is deep and Tobrin doesn’t find any crossing points, no matter how carefully he surveys the terrain. But he feels like he won’t be safe from the elf patrols unless he gets to the other side. [Does he try to swim across? Roll: 5, 4 = Yes and {scarce, measure, behave}].

He tries to swim across. [Make a check against skill+swim to see if he can calculate the uncommon proportionality of the river at this location and account for the strength of the current. Roll is 2d6 vs. 10-2 = 10, failure.] Unfortunately, halfway across the river, Tobrin gets caught in the current and is carried over the falls into the Bay. He takes zero damage, since the fall is less than 50 meters into deep water and loses no possessions.

He’s able to swim to an outcropping of cliff rocks and, after catching his breath, notices a steep path that twists up to a cave mouth in the cliff face. Inside, he discovers a hollow cavern containing rough-hewn statues of the Seven Gods of Evil: Slangg, Death, Disease, Decay, Arhallogen, Hmurresh, and Tanit. It looks like this is a small hidden shrine, but also like it hasn’t been used in a long time.

[Does he decide to search the shrine? Roll: 3, 1 = Yes but {late, expand, memory}]. He decides to search the shrine and, in so doing, recognizes the placement of the statues as a tradition from the Order of the Omega, a cult of demonolators, who have lately come into power back in Nemea. [Roll 2d6 under Skill to search, but add World Lore and Religion Lore: Nemea, general for a 6+2 = 8 target. Roll: 11, failure.] Tobrin finds nothing of value in the shrine except dusty clay offering bowls at the feet of the statues, full of what look like dried rose petals and dead spiders.

He finds a narrow stair made from cliff rocks and takes it back up to the top, on the other side of the river. Tobrin spends the rest of the day in thoughtful reading of his grimoire, sitting with his back to a lone cypress tree jutting over the edge of the cliff. He makes a fireless camp that evening and falls asleep to the rhythmic sound of the waves.

Year 297 AC of the Deer, Highday 20th of the Month of Hiding

[Provisions check: 1d4 = 3, no change.] In the morning, Tobrin eats a little of the dried fruit and salted meats from his pack and has a sip from his waterskin. He heads inland, north through the grassland below the town of Vine Crest and notices a herd of horned zebra beyond the heat wobbles in the distance.

Traveling on the dirt footpaths that lead through the vineyards and farms south of Vine Crest, he encounters a travelling pedlar and buys x2 provisions (now d8 again). He also learns a rumor—that the famous adventuring troupe, the “Vigilant Wardens,” has found the legendary map to Jiraal’s Hoard. When Tobrin asks the peddlar what Jiraal’s Hoard is supposed to be, the wizened man in a fool’s cap merely grins and shrugs. “Something to do with a dragon, I suspect.”

Tobrin just nods. As he watches the peddlar head past down the trail, he thinks to himself that the Vigilant Wardens must not be very smart if they’re pursuing a dragon. And anyway, their name sounds pretentious.

To be continued.

#solo rpg #fighting fantasy #ttrpg

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zaptap · 4 months ago

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it's been over a year since atsv came out... which also means it's been over a year since i started reading spider-man comics (well. spider-people comics, since i'm reading about the other ones too)

just made it to 2008--or, in other words, i just read one more day. wow that really was bad huh. you could really tell nobody involved in writing the comics at the time wanted to do that. literally every character telling peter he should let aunt may die. madam web helps him get in contact with may's spirit and even she says to let her die

but noooo, the editorial people are like we can't have peter parker married to a supermodel anymore because kids can't relate to it enough. he needs to go back to being just a normal guy, with the proportionate strength and agility of a spider, who is also single just like our target audience. also we can't simply make him divorced because that would age him too much so we'll have him make a deal with mephisto that retcons his 20-years-of-comics marriage out of existence to save his aunt who probably should have stayed dead after she died in the clone saga. even though we decided using mephisto to end the clone saga wouldn't fit for a spider-man story we're still going to use him here

anyway from what i hear spider-man comics might not ever have been good since this point? at least the ones about peter parker. only a few more years until miles shows up (and i'll get to pick up ultimate spider-man again, after reading up until just after peter died a year ago and deciding to give 616 another shot), and then a few years after that spider-verse will introduce spider-gwen

and the jms run was pretty good, as i'd heard. despite one more day, despite sins past (apparently they retconned that one recently thank god. literally the entire time i read it im like what the FUCK were they thinking who thought this was even remotely a good idea). though these years were still somewhat annoying to get through because i didn't like the secondary spider-titles much

#spider man

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queen-mabs-revenge · 2 years ago

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steve ditko drawing all those fucking weblines every panel like

#and impossible for like 98% of us to replicate by hand ✌️#steve ditko #spider-man #proportionate thoughts of a spider #fr look at the fingers and look at the janky ass weblines

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powdermelonkeg · 3 years ago

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Your space-building headcanons are fascinating - I saw the bit where you said Planet Hyrule wouldn't cater to humans and the first thought I had was "this could be why the humans in TP's Ordon Village went extinct", unless they were never human in the first place and Nintendo has been hiding something from us...

Answering two questions at once here, since they both relate to the atmospheric attempt on the space post.

See, I'm an astrohobbyist. I like building planets and star systems, but I don't have formal study; that being said, precise atmospheric measurements are not my forte, tectonic movements and biology are.

HOWEVER.

We can figure out a bit about Hyrule's atmosphere based on the information we do have!

There's two main factors:

First, Hyrule has a higher level of air pressure. It needs to, in order to have enough air on a smaller planet (which we figured out the approximate dimensions of in this post) for Hyruleans to breathe. This has the added benefit of making Loftwing and Rito flight feasible and, paired with a bit higher levels of water vapor and carbon dioxide, contributing to the greenhouse effect to warm the planet enough to support life.

Second, Hyrule has a MUCH higher oxygen level. How do we know this?

Skulltulas.

See, spiders (and a host of other bugs) are a little weird; their size is proportionate to the amount of oxygen available. Back when Earth was more oxygen-rich, insects grew to be HUGE. So, the fact that we have things like Skulltulas, Gohmalings, and Tektites roaming around suggests a higher O₂ level.

With higher pressure, greenhouse gases, and oxygen, the atmosphere would naturally be thicker. And a thicker atmosphere means less star/galaxy visibility.

So this isn't light pollution, it's atmospheric interference.

Now, about Ordon village; I AM SALTY. We got KOHOLINT and MT CRENEL, but we didn't get Ordon?! Twilight Princess was absolutely neglected in this game.

Also, there should 100% be more humans, if for nothing else than to be diaspora among the Hylians. It was a huge plot point in Wind Waker, and a nice worldbuilding touch in Twilight Princess. Bring them back!

#WE COULD HAVE HAD ORDON RUINS #A WILD SOURCE OF PUMPKINS #Ugh. This and the lack of Snowpeak bother me #loz #zelda #worldbuilding #headcanons #ask bee #spacebuilding?

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rays-animorphs · 3 years ago

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Book 10 Part 4

About bravery and bats being good neighbors and the Animorphs almost dying several times in just a couple chapters.

The problem with fictional pacifists, is that most of them are written by people who are not themselves pacifists and who are not overly invested in depicting them accurately.

We already got some echolocation in the dolphin book. Now we’re going to have a lot more. Very excited about this. Bats are some of the most misunderstood creatures out there.

I don’t see why Erek would betray them or set them up, but my spidey senses are tingling.

How does Ax know directions? huh.

You know, it would be easy to think Marco isn’t brave, because he tends to be the voice of caution or outright second-guessing in the books. But here, instead of aborting the mission or insisting they needed a Plan B, he just dropped an unknown distance to his possible death without hesitation. Marco is extremely brave. I hope to be a tenth that brave.

I also remember some passage about how smaller animals can survive bigger falls — not proportionately bigger, absolutely bigger — than larger, heavier animals. Something about “a horse would break every bone in its body”. I haven’t seen that passage this time around yet.

Anyways, we have a similar concept here.

Anyways, that’s why I was surprised about Visser Three’s morph at the end of the first book. Clearly biomechanics are functional in this world to the extent that small animals can survive big falls, so you’d think biomechanics would also limit how big animals get. Even alien animals.

“Did it occur to you that the furnace might actually come on?” See, Cassie doesn’t just know about animals, she’s smart and sensible in other ways too.

Sometimes they’re in danger from Visser Three morphing into some fire-breathing space hydra, sometimes they’re in danger from… a furnace.

“I thought I’d been moving as fast as I could move. I was wrong. I had a whole extra speed.” So… wolf spiders have adrenaline or something equivalent to it?

They really do almost die in every book.

I guess I wanted life and death stakes on the regular at some point? (In my fiction, not in real life of course.) I actually could live without them now. I guess grown-ups really are boring.

I bet this was really fun to write though. “I know, I’ll have them use spider silk to rappel into an air duct. But, the silk won’t be long enough, so then they’ll have to jump. And then I’ll have them almost burn up in a furnace! but why would the try to cross the furnace? I know, I’ll make it so that they’re being chased by a rat.” That’s three lethal threats within the same segment of the book.

Plus a surprise fall.

I wonder if Ax is ever going to end up deciding that his human prince is out of his goddamn mind. Or if he thinks Jake is extremely heroic for taking such huge risks.

#animorphs read through #animorphs book 10 #animorphs the andriod #gonna be really embarrassed if I start spelling animorphs wrong and don't notice it for a few posts

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dungeonecologist · 4 years ago

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So i fired up Suikoden Tierkreis because I remembered liking this game (possibly out of sheer desperation for a Suikoden anything at the time) yet I have like zero recollection of what the enemy designs and layouts were like. Right off the bat we get some fun stuff though, so maybe this is one I can really dig my teeth into. *fingers crossed*

Our first mission with our gaggle of teens is classic RPG pest control intro dungeon. "Laggarts" have taken up residence in a nearby wood and are terrorizing the local inhabitants. A super nice detail is that on our way East toward said animal lair, there is a farm where a (later) recruit corroborates the premise. In the overworld itself we can run into Laggarts already, in teams of 2 or 3, which checks out with the idea that they're forming packs (which, I guess they normally wouldn't?) and encroaching on the human settlement.

Once we get into the Easten Hill dungeon, the Laggarts mostly appear with other monsters; Grass Squirrels and XBees. At a glance this just kinda falls into that typical RPG quirk where nature has conspired against us against all natural orders, but I feel like there's a little bit of potential for headcannon here...

The way the Laggart's appear to me suggests some feeding habits. In the arrangement with 2 Laggarts flanking 1 Grass Squirrel it seems like they could be hunting it in a pack, and in the case of the 2 XBees and long Laggart my first thought is the bees chasing the Laggart away from their hive and its honey. Sadly the enemies don't seem to attack eachother, so those dynamics are purely in my head, but it would've been a clever way to establish that the Laggart are displaying behaviors of an invasive species, overrunning local fauna and overhunting in a way that threatens not only the local human inhabitants but the balance of the local ecosystem overall.

Although I have no idea what these things are... Wolf-like? Rats? Badgers? The scale of the game models does not help this... People are chibi, the Laggarts are proportionally sorta dog sized? But then the squirrel is dog sized(?), the bees are huge(?), or are these all just much smaller than they appear in battle and the countryside has been overrun with large-rat sized things, but also still pretty abnormally large bees?

...so i started typing bits of this up as i was crawling through the dungeon at kind of a snails pace between doing other things... and it just kept going... It's technically a few dungeons nested inside eachother, or like strung together:

We end up in Flesaria Forest, and then in ruins within that, as the pest control quest gets derailed by magical reality warping happenings. Each new area keeps all the old enemies but also adds new ones to the mix;

Thorn Mushrooms and Googly Seeds, as well as Spider Hoppers begin appearing in the Forest, and within the ruins themselves we get Skull Guts. Broadly speaking I guess the roster doesn't make any more or less sense. Mushrooms and carnivorous plant seeds in the thick forests. Spiders, because where aren't there spiders? I do really love this unique take on the familiar man-eating plant type of monster; the little baby sprout with its one snaking head, still carrying around its seed shell, rather than a full grown plant with vine-like tendrils and many flowering heads is a fun way to communicate that these are early game monsters. They babies.

Skull Guts gets to be the fun anomaly because the ruins themselves have only just appeared magically and are otherworldy and alien. It's appearance has the distinct impression of something gone horribly wrong. We won't fully grasp the nature of these phenomena until a little later, but more landscapes will teleport in, each from their own unique parallel worlds, and many with their own inhabitants. The Ruins have no such sentient inhabitants it brings with it, but it could be a cool detail if these were the remains of the people that would've/should've been brought over in the teleportation; like some kind of mangled inside out teleporter accidents.

#Suikoden #suikoden tierkreis #jrpg #nds

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kavikaslana · 3 years ago

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10, 27, and 28 mootie <3

Hi darling 💖❤️

10. Do I have any phobias?

Yeah actually. Spiders is the big one, though I’m better about it, and recently needles became one of my fears. When I got my Covid vaccine, I was shaking because I already knew that the needle was longer, and then she kept showing me it when my friend tried to calm me down.

“It’s like a flu shot Emily, you’re fine”

“Oh it’s not. See this one goes a lot deeper into the muscle-“

I think she would’ve killed the lady if there weren’t witnesses. I literally started crying

27. Something you’re good at?

Redrawing manga panels. They take me a while, and I measure them because it’s a lot easier for me to make things proportionate if I have an exact size frame, but they look really good

^ Hyun Cha from sweet home. I have more but the one under Compress is my favorite

28. Something you wish you were better at?

Probably playing the viola ngl. I used to be in orchestra, but I quit after 2 years because everyone there sucked. I always thought it was fun, but literally everyone there sucked. They were all snobby bitches

Get to know me asks

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bubonickitten · 4 years ago

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Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: AO3 || Tumblr

Chapter 18 full text & content warnings below the cut.

CWs for Chapter 18: discussion of passive suicidal ideation; unintentional self-harm (scratching at arms as a stim, to the point of drawing blood); brief allusion to childhood neglect; internalized ableism (re: ADHD, but not explicitly stated as such); brief acephobia (past experience & internalized); Jon-typical negative self-talk, guilt, & rejection sensitive dysphoria; discussion of past trauma (including having bodily autonomy overridden, canon non-consensual surgery, & stabbing); internalized victim blaming/comparing victim to their abuser; discussion of self-inflicted blinding/eye gouging (past attempts & potential future attempts); brief mention of Mr. Spider/arachnophobia themes; swears. SPOILERS through Season 5.

Chapter 18: Reconciliation

Once Jon opened the door and the Fears rewrote reality, not only was sleep no longer a physiological necessity – it was no longer an option. Much like the Coffin, even a temporary escape via unconsciousness was contrary to a world defined by the ceaseless generation of terror. And just as it did any human in that place, perpetual wakefulness took its toll on Jon’s already ravaged mental health.

The fact that he was no longer plaguing the nightmares of his victims may have been a small consolation, if not for the fact that he was instead witnessing the waking nightmares of billions of new victims: the same scenes looping over and over, layered one on top of the other, an endless soundtrack screaming in the background of his mind. Venting a statement from time to time could only do so much to quell that storm. He’d really had no choice but to learn to compartmentalize on autopilot and dissociate on command.

So when, for the first time since before the world ended, Jon awakens to Martin at his side, his mind cannot immediately reconcile the sight. He might think he was dreaming, if not for the fact that he hasn’t had a pleasant dream of his own since he became the Archivist. And even before then – well, he’d always been more predisposed to nightmares.

Jon feels his heart stutter in his throat when he sets eyes on Martin. Their hands are still clasped together, and despite the sweatiness of their palms and the way Jon’s arm is cramping from the angle, he has no desire to let go. Instead, he lies still, breathing shallow and measured, fearful of any sound or movement that might shatter the almost uncanny peace of the moment.

He really shouldn’t be staring like this, though, should he? Martin has given him permission to stare many times before, but that was in a future where they had Seen each other at their most vulnerable. Being seen, truly seen – as terrifying as it was for the both of them – became a comfort, because of what they had been through together. Here in the past, Martin hasn’t shared that experience. He might not be as keen to put up with Jon’s incessant watching.

Those reservations still aren’t enough to stop him, though.

Martin is still sat in his chair, but bent sideways at the waist to lean halfway on the cot. He’s snoring lightly, his head pillowed on his free arm, glasses askew. The angle is probably hell on his back.

Maybe I should wake him up, Jon thinks idly, one corner of his mouth turning up in a small, fond smile.

He doesn’t. Instead, his eyes remain rapt on Martin, soaking in every detail, as beloved and familiar as always: the length of his eyelashes, the shape of his lips, the spray of freckles across his nose, that particularly stubborn cowlick that always, always stands on end. Jon wants to reach out, sink his fingers into those curls, massage his scalp in that way Martin used to love – but that would be a step beyond staring, wouldn’t it? So he watches: unblinking, aching, adoring, and so overwhelmed that he's at risk of tearing up.

It’s painfully, embarrassingly maudlin of him, he knows, but can he really be faulted for that? Jon surpassed the lifespan of a normal human several times over, bereft and alone in a desolated realm of his own making. He spent much of that time out of his mind with grief, drowning in hopelessness and guilt, cycling between numb dissociation and raw destruction. When he wasn’t wandering aimlessly – near-catatonic, subsumed by the never-ending deluge of fear permeating that world – he was lashing out. Although he couldn’t die, he could still hurt, and so he did, with exacting focus: both himself and all the other monsters going through the motions in that doomed world.

Ending them neither decreased nor increased the net output of fear, but it was the closest Jon could come to some nebulous, fleeting sense of justice. He didn’t enjoy it – in fact, he hated the other Avatars sometimes, bitter that they could attain a release that seemed impossible for him. His first few acts of vengeance in those early days had felt good in the moment, but the high never lasted: just like taking a statement.

Eventually, once the fear began to grow scarcer, it felt more and more like granting mercy – often to monsters who never showed any themselves – rather than meting out justice. A few moments of pain was preferable to slow, torturous starvation. Breekon was the first to request such a favor. He was far from the last.

It made Jon feel monstrous in an all new way, offering escape to predators when he could do nothing to save their victims – at least not without turning them into Avatars themselves, creating more monsters to replace the old. But it also made him feel real – a tangible, active presence interacting with the world, as opposed to a ghost, unseen and unknowable. An undeniable consequence, rather than a detached observer.

Tears start to gather in the corners of his eyes. Jon tries to swallow them back, but his throat has grown thick with emotion. He never expected to escape that place; never expected to see a friendly face or hear a kind word ever again. And now that he has…

This isn’t for you, says an insidious little voice in the back of his head: some twisted chimera comprised of all those who have known him well enough to see him for what he is, to catalogue his failings, to pass judgment. There is no place for you in this world. You don’t belong here. You were made for something greater; eliminate that, and what remains –

A gentle knock-knock at the door startles him out of his thoughts.

“Jon?” Georgie pushes the door open and peers through the gap. “You awake?”

“Yeah.” It comes out as a fractured whisper. He sniffles and rubs his eyes, but Georgie has already noticed his distress.

“Bad dream?”

“No.” Jon clears his throat and props himself up on one elbow. “No, ah – quite the opposite, really.”

“Oh?” Georgie says, probing for an explanation.

Jon's gaze drifts to his hand, still joined with Martin’s. “None of this feels real, and…��

“And?”

“I, uh…” Jon closes his eyes, blinking back tears. “I don’t deserve it.”

“The world doesn’t work that way.”

“Maybe it should.” Jon lets out a wet, clipped laugh.

No one got what they deserved in the world he created, only what hurt them the most. Tempting as it was to find some meaning in it all, to retroactively draw correlations between past actions and current circumstances, Jon Knew from the very beginning that there was no cause-and-effect at play. Not really. Any misery being experienced in that new world was utterly unrelated to the lives people lived before the change. It was indiscriminate. Everyone was afraid and in agony, regardless of any subjective judgment on whether or not they deserved it.

And nothing Jon did changed those material conditions in the slightest. He could shift an individual’s role from subject to object and vice versa, reassign their place on the spectrum of the tortured versus the torturer, but at the end of the day, he was still just facilitating fear, regardless of what shape it took. Despite being one of the most powerful and fearful things roaming that scorched earth, his options were as limited as they’d always been. Every choice led to more or less the same end.

By every measure that could be said to actually matter, he was ultimately powerless.

Would it have been any more tolerable if the suffering was more proportionate? If at least some of the people trapped in the domains could be said to be receiving just punishment for any agony they themselves had inflicted before the end of the world? Maybe. But probably not. Securing vengeance never actually yielded any meaningful catharsis for Jon. Even Jonah Magnus' ultimate fate produced nothing but revulsion. The Archive may feed on such fear, but after all this time, Jon – all the pieces of him that still belong to him – has no desire to behold suffering. He has seen enough for several lifetimes, and he was never once given the option to look away, let alone put an end to it.

Jon shakes his head and begins to fully sit up, slowly and carefully so as not to disturb Martin. He’s hardly expecting Georgie to engage with his newest avenue of brooding, but after a minute, she gives a thoughtful hum and leans against the doorframe.

“Don’t know that I want to see what that would look like,” she says pensively.

“What?”

“A world where ‘deservedness’ was quantifiable – where you could put a precise value on suffering, and every action had a moral price tag on it that stayed the same regardless of the circumstances. Where subjective experiences could be – shoved into neat little categories that everyone could agree on.”

“Like Robert Smirke,” Jon murmurs.

“Sure.” Georgie shrugs. “I don’t know if humanity as we know it could even exist in a world like that. We’d be… unrecognizable.”

“O-oh?”

“Mm. We aren’t equations. Or – well, we are, I guess, at the most basic physical level, if you scale down small enough. Atoms, physics, chemical reactions and all that. But when it comes to the experience of consciousness, personal identity, free will… isn’t the complexity what gives it all meaning? If we could account for every last variable, know the exact effect of every cause, what would that make us?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Life isn’t about the destination, I guess is what I’m saying.” Georgie runs her thumb over her lips as she muses. “We already know the destination. One way or another, everything dies.”

“‘The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one,’” Jon recites, a distant quality to his voice. “There’s no difference between that last moment that ushers us out into oblivion and the one we experience now – everything ends, even the universe, even time. And… that means it has always already ended.”

It takes a moment for Jon to come back to himself, blinking dazedly. It's another few seconds before he realizes what happened – and when he does, a sudden, heavy coldness takes root and blossoms in his chest.

“I’m so– I didn’t – I wasn’t –”

“It’s – fine,” Georgie says, although she sounds a bit rattled. “It was an accident.”

“Still, I’m sorry, I –”

“Apology accepted, Jon. I’m not angry.” When she sees Jon gearing up to belabor the point, she holds up a hand. “You’re forgiven. Let’s just move on, okay?”

Jon bites down on his lower lip, torn between dueling impulses: groveling, berating himself, shutting down, or… simply taking Georgie at her word. With a long, shaky exhale, he settles on trust: Georgie expressed a desire to drop it and move forward. He should respect that, right? Right.

He bites back his protests and nods stiffly. “Okay.”

“Look, what I was trying to get at is – knowing the destination doesn’t invalidate the journey, right? If anything, the inevitability of an ending is what gives meaning to all the rest.”

The End forced Georgie to confront the insignificance of her own birth and death against the backdrop of a vast universe – but rather than allow that realization to immobilize her with despair, she opted to make all the moments in between meaningful. Jon can't help but once again remember the confidence with which Martin countered Simon Fairchild's brand of flippant nihilism: I think our experience of the universe has value, even if it disappears forever.

I might have a type, he thinks to himself, equal parts wry and endeared.

“We all end up in the same place,” Georgie continues, “but that doesn’t have to mean we all follow the same path. What matters is what happens along the way, and – if you could map out every bit of the journey, predict the outcome of every single step you take, then – what else is left?”

“If you already know the answer to every question,” Jon says softly, “what’s the point of being?”

Jon isn’t sure what expression he’s making, but whatever it is, Georgie blanches when she catches his eye.

“Oh, I – Jon, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –”

“No, it’s – it’s alright. You’re not wrong.” Jon chuckles awkwardly. “Is it odd that I find the thought…reassuring? Sort of?”

“We’re getting lost in the weeds, aren't we?” Georgie says with a flustered laugh. “My original point was – this obsession you have with deservedness, and establishing dichotomies, and trying to find simple, objective answers to complicated questions – it’s a skewed way of looking at the world, and it’s eating you alive. You have to stop treating your life like it’s a scorecard. Relentlessly punishing yourself isn’t going to change the past. It’s not healthy, it’s not productive, and it just makes you more likely to sabotage your future.”

“I know. It’s just… the things I’ve done, they’re – unforgivable. I can’t leave it behind, and I can’t take it back.”

Jon used to wonder when the Eye would make him too monstrous to feel shame. It never did, never had to: he abetted it regardless of how he felt about it. For the most part, he can’t even apologize: the people he hurt are either dead or have no memory of what Jon did to warrant it. Besides, some consequences too irrevocable, too catastrophic to cushion with remorse.

Sorry that you died because I failed; sorry that I burned a bridge that could have kept us both safe; sorry that you’re trapped here just because I stood too close to you. Sorry for the invaded privacy, sorry for the mistreatment, sorry for all the hunger and fear and nightmares. Sincerest apologies, everyone, for the eternal torment.

He could have composed a personalized apology for every last person in the world had he wanted – he’d certainly had the time to spare, as well as detailed knowledge of each victim’s plight. But any apology he could possibly make, no matter how eloquent or sincere, would have been insulting in its inadequacy. What reparations can be made to soften the blow of a life lost or a world ended?

“S-so,” he says, eyes downcast, “that just leaves… guilt.”

And fear. Fear enough to cram an Archive full to bursting.

“I know,” Georgie says.

“I’m sorry, I –” Jon breathes a bitter laugh. “I’m a broken record, aren’t I? I fall apart every time I see you.”

“Jon,” George sighs, “you don’t have to apologize. You’ve been through unimaginable trauma. You’ve had barely any chance to start to heal from it. You’re still living it. I don’t expect a few heart-to-heart conversations to close the book on… all of that.”

“Still, it’s – annoying, I imagine.” Jon picks nervously at a loose thread on his trouser leg. “To sit through the same conversation over and over again.”

“I’d be more worried if you went back to just – pretending to be okay, refusing to talk about it. It’s been barely a month since you got out of the hospital. Shit, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you crawled out of that Coffin.” Her eyes narrow slightly, intent and searching. “Speaking of which, I should ask: Are you a danger to yourself right now?”

“What?” The question catches Jon off guard. “No? N-no, I’m – why would you –”

“Just checking in. Which I’m going to keep doing. Regularly. So you may as well make peace with that now.”

“It’s not like I’m going to kill myself,” Jon mumbles – aiming for casually unconcerned and instead landing squarely in transparently uncomfortable territory. “I’m fairly certain I can’t die a mundane human death, anyway.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still hurt yourself. And being suicidal sucks regardless of whether you actually plan on going through with it.” Jon studiously avoids eye contact as Georgie speaks. “Anyway, I know I sound like a broken record, but I’ll say it as many times as you need reminding: You have a second chance. You said you were going to make the best of it, and you can’t do that if you won’t let yourself have some peace.” Her expression softens, as does her voice. “Just… let yourself be, won’t you?”

There’s truth to what Georgie is saying. Even if he wasn’t mired in guilt, though…

“I’m afraid,” Jon whispers. “Of losing him, of losing everyone, of…”

Of dooming everyone. It was so easy. All it took was his voice, an incantation, and this ceaseless, aberrant hunger. He’s seen the consequences of the destiny for which he has unwittingly been prepared. Like it or not, he is the most dangerous thing in this world – a walking hair-trigger, already having overstayed his welcome on this earth by several lifetimes. One misstep, and…

“I should be grateful to have this, to have him – and I am, but every – every time I come close to letting myself feel – safe, hopeful, content, it… it never lasts. It’s always swallowed up by fear – not of if something goes wrong, but when. It just feels like… any choice I make is bound to end in tragedy. Like there’s no way out. Like nothing I do will change anything. I – I’ll mess it up; I always do.”

It’s a pattern that began long before he became entangled in Jonah’s machinations. Jon was a difficult child who grew into an even more difficult adult, always saying and doing all the wrong things because he’s never been able to fully grasp the invisible rules that other people seem to navigate so naturally. At home he could never shake the feeling that he was an odd guest, secretly unwelcome but with nowhere else to keep him; at school he was a menace, asking all the wrong questions at all the wrong times and prone to following his own lesson plans whenever the curriculum failed to hold his interest. Peer relationships typically failed to take root: he’s too guarded, too abrasive, too annoying and tactless and awkward. Whatever friendships managed to blossom tended to wilt before long, for all the same reasons.

Romantic relationships have historically been even more fraught. There are expectations that he will never meet, forms of intimacy that are traditionally assumed to be required rather than optional for such a relationship to qualify as normal, healthy, and sustainable. In his experience, setting those boundaries have usually been a deal-breaker. Georgie was the first to accept that aspect of him unconditionally; Martin was the second – and although Jon no longer believes that it’s a problem to be fixed, those old, long-held insecurities still rear up from time to time.

He had hoped he could at least prove himself capable as a Head Archivist, but, well… he was inexperienced with the duties of a mundane archiving job, unsuited to managing a department, and his preexisting difficulties with establishing rapport were exacerbated by his need to maintain a professional boundary between himself and his assistants. He tried to make up for those shortcomings with effort and dedication and – in retrospect – frankly obscene levels of overwork, but he never did manage to be a good boss or a good coworker.

It’s a cruel joke that of all the roles to finally excel in, it’s as the Archivist – or, specifically, Jonah’s Archivist. He met every expectation, even – perhaps especially – when he didn’t know what those expectations were. Not like Gertrude. She would doubtless be disappointed by her successor: constantly second-guessing himself, resolving indecisiveness with impulsivity, stumbling around in the dark, pointlessly sabotaging himself and those unlucky enough to find themselves in his orbit – ultimately devastating a world that she had made so many ruthless sacrifices to protect.

Jon has spent most of his life fumbling at being a peer, a friend, a partner, a colleague, an ally. If he couldn’t manage to figure it out when he was still human, how is he supposed to play at being a person now, when he’s…

“This – this isn’t for things like me,” Jon says hoarsely. He can feel more tears teeming as he looks down at Martin: kind and good and so, so deserving of happiness, of security, of a peaceful life that Jon fears he will never be able to provide, no matter how fiercely he loves. “I don’t get to” – end the world – “to become – this, and still get a happy ending.”

“Do you Know that?” Georgie asks.

“N-no, I can’t predict the future, but –”

“Then you shouldn’t assume the worst. You don’t have a fixed destiny, no matter what you’ve been led to believe.” She scowls at him. “And stop referring to yourself as a ‘thing’. It really doesn’t matter how human you are or aren’t, you're still you. You’re still a person.”

Jon doesn’t know how to respond to that without either contradicting her or offering lukewarm, disingenuous agreement. Luckily, he doesn’t have to: Martin begins to stir, and Jon hurriedly wipes away any evidence of tears, fighting to regain his composure. With a snuffle and a sleepy groan, Martin opens his eyes, blinking blearily.

“Hey there,” Jon says with a soft smile.

Martin returns a vague grin, muzzy with sleep. With unfocused eyes, he appears to slowly take in his surroundings, gaze lingering briefly on and then skating over his hand, fingers still interlocked with Jon’s. When his attention drifts towards Georgie, he stares at her for a long few seconds, squinting at the influx of light from the hallway. Another slow blink, another extended stare at his and Jon’s linked hands, and then his eyes widen. Color blooms on his cheeks as he abruptly surfaces into full consciousness, glasses tumbling off his face as he jerks upward.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry,” he says, groggy voice at odds with the panicked embarrassment in his eyes. He pulls his hand back, mumbling apologies about clammy palms. As he straightens in his seat, he lets out a pained hiss.

Jon cringes sympathetically. “You should’ve taken the cot.”

Martin ignores the comment, scrubbing at his face now, hiding it in his sleeve. It does nothing to conceal his reddened ears, Jon notes with amused affection.

“Did you sleep alright, otherwise?” Jon asks.

“Mm?” Martin retrieves his glasses and slips them back on before turning his attention to Jon. “Oh, uh – yes. You?”

“Yes, actually.”

His first routine breakdown of the day notwithstanding, Jon did manage to sleep through most of the night, only waking once after a brief foray back into Karolina’s nightmare.

The rest of the dreams were relatively benign. He spent some time with Georgie. Naomi was pleased to see him and eager as ever to regale him with cat anecdotes. Dr. Elliott was less pleased, but he was at least no more afraid of Jon than he had been during the coma. Seeing Jordan Kennedy was as uncomfortable as ever; Jon doubts he’ll ever know what to say to him. Tessa was more difficult to read. She wasn’t exactly happy to see him again, but she didn't seem angry, either.

Should’ve known it wouldn’t last, she’d sighed to herself – and then promptly changed the subject before Jon could stammer out an apology.

“Learned a lot about the right to repair movement,” Jon says absently.

“What?” Martin asks, bewildered.

“Oh, uh – Tessa Winters. Gave a statement in 2016 about a haunted chatbot. It forced her to watch a seventeen-hour-long video of a man eating his computer.”

Georgie perks up at that.

“Oh, is that the, uh – that creepypasta about that guy who mutilated himself trying to upload his mind to his computer?”

“Sergey Ushanka.”

“Yeah! Something about how he tried to crack open his skull and wire his brain to the motherboard?”

“That is one variation of the story, yes.”

“What,” Martin says flatly.

“I was thinking about doing a What the Ghost episode on that one,” Georgie explains, her sheepish smile doing little to conceal her lingering enthusiasm. “Haunted technology is always a popular topic. Didn’t expect that one to be real, though. I wonder –”

Jon answers her question before she can ask it: “I doubt Tessa would be interested in being a guest on the show.”

“Yeah,” Georgie sighs, “I guess not.”

Martin lets out a nervous chuckle. “What, uh – sorry, what does any of this have to do with right to repair?”

“Oh. Right. Tessa’s one of the people whose nightmares I… invade. Perpetuate, I suppose. She’s, ah, not my biggest fan, considering what I’ve put her through, but she says I’m a decent audience.” Martin gives Jon a blank look. “She basically gives me free lectures sometimes? Technology-related subjects, mostly. Fascinating stuff.”

“God, you sound like a grandpa,” Georgie says.

“Yes, yes, Tessa tells me the same.” Jon rolls his eyes. “Anyway, she has some, ah… strong feelings about Apple. Among other things.”

“Right,” Martin says slowly. “Wait, back up – you know what creepypasta is?”

“Yes, Martin,” Jon says with a sigh and an indulgent smile, “I know what creepypasta is.”

“That particular internet rabbit hole was one of his many, many avenues of procrastination in uni, believe it or not,” Georgie says.

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a Luddite. I tried to introduce the Archives to the twenty-first century, remember? It’s not my fault the Beholding has a retro aesthetic.”

“Huh,” Martin says with a bemused smile. Then he yawns. “Sorry. What time is it?”

As soon as the question is posed, the Beholding drops the knowledge into Jon’s head.

“About 10:30,” Georgie answers, just as Jon says, “10:28 and forty-six seconds” – and then, wincing at his own pedantry, “Sorry.”

Georgie looks ready to let loose with a snarky reply, but before she can say anything, Martin is on his feet, the blanket on his lap sliding to the floor.

“10:30? Jon, why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I – I wasn’t really paying attention to the time, I haven’t actually been awake for…”

Jon trails off as the Beholding casually notifies him that he woke up thirty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds ago. He can feel heat pooling in his cheeks as a vague sense of shame sets in. Good lord, was he really just watching Martin sleep for that long?

“I should have been upstairs over an hour ago,” Martin says, frantically scanning the room for –

For his shoes, the Eye informs Jon.

Do you ever mind your goddamn business? Jon shoots back. On impulse, he swats at the air to his side, momentarily forgetting that the ever-present eldritch tagalongs he’d grown accustomed to during the apocalypse are no longer with him. In his dreams, he’d come eye-to-eye with them again for the first time since waking up in the hospital; apparently, that’s all it took to reintroduce this old, reflexive shooing tic to his waking life.

Georgie raises her eyebrows at the gesture, but Martin appears not to notice, preoccupied with his escalating panic.

Jon scrambles for some way to soothe him, but he’s at a loss. In his future, through trial and error and intense observation, he had painstakingly learned how to comfort Martin. Now, though, after so much time spent alone, Jon is out of practice. Moreover, he’s always been more adept at offering comfort through action and touch rather than words – and right now, he’s still uncertain where Martin’s boundaries lie.

So Jon continues to sit there, hands fluttering slightly as his mind rifles through a mountain of inane clichés in search of something, anything that might be able to help. Meanwhile, the Archivist in him is distracted by Martin’s growing anxiety. It isn’t the same as abject fear, per se, but it’s similar enough to pique the Eye’s interest.

Once again, Jon takes a swipe at the empty space beside him – and again ignores Georgie’s amused expression.

“If Peter notices I’m not in the office…” Martin nearly trips over the blanket on the floor as he turns in place to search behind him. “He – he’ll be suspicious –”

That’s when Georgie decides to speak up. Thank god, Jon thinks to himself. She exudes far more confidence than he does in this sort of situation.

“Won’t he already be suspicious?” she says, calm as can be. It’s enough to bring Martin’s fretting to a pause. “It’s not like you can keep this a secret forever, right? Your change in attitude is… pretty noticeable, Martin.”

“I – I – I didn’t really think much further ahead than –” Martin laughs nervously. “I was just – playing along, and it felt right, like if I just kept following the path I’d reach a – a – a conclusion? I don’t know what, but…” His shoulders slump, leaving his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides; he tugs at the hem of his shirt, as if he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “I don’t think I cared much? I figured I could just – gather information and pass it along, and if nothing else I could keep Peter’s attention away from the Archives, and… that was the whole plan, to just keep doing that until… until whatever was going to happen happened, I guess, and now I don’t – I don’t know where to go from here, and…”

“Martin?” Jon says softly.

“Huh?” Martin finally glances up to meet Jon’s eyes.

“Can I take your hand?”

Cautiously, wordlessly, Martin offers his hand. Jon takes it in his, lacing their fingers together loosely.

“It’ll be alright,” he says. “You don’t have to figure it out on your own. Not anymore.”

Martin’s lips move minutely for a few seconds before meekly saying, “That doesn’t feel right.”

“I know.”

“I’m – I’m not saying you’re lying,” Martin says, rushed and anxious to appease, “it’s just…”

“Hearing something isn’t the same as accepting it. Or trusting it.”

“I do trust you, I do, it’s just… I don’t know. It’s like I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

“It’s alright,” Jon says gently. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin whispers, his voice steeped in guilt.

“You don’t need to apologize.” When Martin opens his mouth to protest, Jon reiterates: “You have nothing to be sorry for. I promise.”

“Okay,” Martin says after a pause, still sounding somewhat doubtful. Then he grimaces. “I, uh, still don’t know what to do about Peter, though.”

“That depends on what you want,” Jon says, squeezing Martin’s hand. “I trust you. I’ll follow your lead.”

“O-okay,” Martin repeats. He blinks several times, surprised, before giving a nervous chuckle. “Only… I, uh, don’t really know what I want, to be honest?”

“Break it down into smaller pieces,” Georgie says. Martin flinches slightly – he must have momentarily forgotten she was in the room. “Do you want to go back to the Lonely?”

There’s only a short delay before Martin says, “No. I don’t… it feels different than before. Doesn’t fit right.”

“Do you want to continue working with Peter?”

“I don’t know,” Martin says slowly. “Not really? I mean, I never wanted to in the first place, it just… seemed like the thing to do.”

“Okay, rephrase,” Georgie says. “Do you want to stop working with him now?”

“I think so.” Another pause. Martin’s brow wrinkles as he stares at the floor in thought before glancing back up at Georgie. “Yeah, I – I think I do.”

“But…?” Georgie prompts, sensing Martin’s uncertainty.

“I worry about how he might react. He’ll probably start paying more attention to the Archives, and…” Martin looks at Jon. “What if he takes it out on you? Or – I mean, I don’t want him to hurt anyone, but I…” He looks down at their joined hands, tightening his grip just slightly. “I think you would be his most likely target.”

“Maybe,” Jon admits. He’s witnessed firsthand how vindictive Peter can be. “But I would rather take that risk than have you torture yourself on the off chance he’ll let me be. And… I think we’ll all be safer if we cooperate as a group rather than stay divided.”

“I guess. I’m not sure how to go about it, though.”

“Well,” Georgie says thoughtfully, “it depends on whether you want to quit all at once or ease into it.”

“I don’t know.” Martin looks to Jon again. “If I continue to work for him in some capacity, would it give us an advantage?”

At this point, they know more about the Extinction than Peter does, and Jon has a decent grasp on Peter’s goals and how he operates. So…

“I… don’t think there’s anything to be gained if you keep working closely with him, no,” Jon replies. “And anyway, I – I would rather that not be the deciding factor? It’s your decision, of course, it’s just – your wellbeing is more important.”

“Hypocrite,” Martin mutters, but there’s a tinge of endearment there.

“I know,” Jon sighs. “I’m working on it. But to the point, I worry that working closely with him might drag you back into the Lonely.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m also worried about you confronting him directly to resign. Especially on your own.”

Peter is patient. Moreover, he enjoys a long game. If he sees Martin’s change of heart as a surmountable obstacle, Peter is likely to take a step back and wait for another opening to regain the upper hand. If, on the other hand, he decides that Martin is a lost cause… well, Peter is a sore loser. There’s every chance that he could drop Martin into the Lonely out of spite again.

“Either way,” Jon says, “I don’t think it’s safe for you to be alone with him. Sooner or later, he’ll realize that the Lonely’s starting to lose its hold on you.”

Unthinkingly, Jon tightens his grip on Martin’s hand.

“It’s been slipping for a while now,” Martin says quietly. “I think he’s already noticed.”

“In that case… there’s no telling how he’ll react if he decides your allegiance to the Lonely is too tenuous to salvage.”

“Do you – or…” Georgie appears to grapple with wording for a few seconds. “Can you Know what Peter knows?”

“No,” Jon says. The last time he tried to Know something about Peter, not only did it yield nothing of value, it nearly incapacitated Jon – and he didn’t recover until he gave in and fed on a new victim. He can’t afford to repeat the experience. Daisy’s supply of statements is finite; Jon needs to ration them as much as possible. “I do know that Peter can’t spy from a distance, but that doesn’t mean he can’t just turn invisible to eavesdrop. Or that Elias won’t feed him information.”

“Let’s focus on the immediate question, then,” Georgie says. “Do you want to go upstairs and walk into your office two hours late with bedhead” – Martin runs a self-conscious hand through his hair, eliciting an affectionate smile from Jon – “or do you want to no-call/no-show?”

“Well… Peter isn’t actually around much,” Martin says. “Sometimes days go by before he checks in. He might not realize I’m not in my office yet. Maybe I can just – go about my normal routine for now?” He glances at Jon, almost beseeching. “At least until I have an idea of how much he knows?”

Like everyone who has worked in the Archives, Martin has developed a harder edge over the years. Early in his tenure, he seemed unassuming on first impression. He was by no means a pushover, but he was eager to please and preferred to avoid unnecessary confrontation. It made him an all-too-easy target for Jon’s insecurity-fueled ire.

But rather than roll over in the face of criticism, Martin has always been determined to prove his detractors wrong. Whether it’s risking his life for the sake of doing his due diligence – Jon cringes at the memory – or stubbornly caring for people who deemed him incompetent and didn’t appreciate his attentions, Martin is tenacious. It would be admirable – and it is, to an extent – but all too often it leads to self-neglect, bordering on self-harm.

And right now, despite the thicker skin that Martin has been forced to grow through necessity and loss, his demeanor when he looks at Jon is vaguely reminiscent of those early days in the Archives: cowed, cautious, desperate for approval and dreading reproach. With a pang of old guilt and a desire to soothe, Jon forces a smile and kneads the back of Martin’s hand with his thumb.

“I trust you,” Jon says, “and I know you’re more than capable. Just – when the fog starts to creep up on you, try to remember that there are people who care about you. You’re not a burden; you’re not – unseen, unwanted, undeserving, or – or whatever other lies the Lonely wants to tell you. You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

“Right,” Martin says in a breathless whisper. He gives Jon’s hand another squeeze before letting go. “I guess I, uh – I guess should head upstairs.”

“Text or call if you need a reminder,” Jon blurts out as Martin turns to leave. “S-sorry, I don’t mean to – to hover, it’s just… sometimes it helps.”

In Scotland, once Jon was too hungry to safely visit the village, Martin had to go on supply runs alone. Although he had largely left the Lonely behind, it still lurked in the background, waiting for quiet moments in which it could seep back in through the cracks it left behind. It was opportunistic and insidious, passive until it wasn’t, and it could strike unpredictably. And so, he and Jon would check in with one another frequently whenever Martin had to go into town.

In many ways it was an exercise in codependence, but they were doing their best, considering their particular circumstances.

“Thanks,” Martin says, splotches of pink staining his face again. “I – I will.”

“There’s no service in the tunnels,” Georgie reminds them. “Just in case you were planning on going down there today, Jon. Martin, do you have the rest of our numbers?”

“I have Basira’s. And Melanie’s.”

“Give me your phone. I’ll add my number. And Daisy’s.” Martin makes a face at that, but hands his phone over. “If Jon doesn’t answer, text one of the rest of us. We can make sure to always keep someone up here and reachable, just in case.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Martin says stiffly. “I don’t need my hand held every second of the day.”

“No, but you might need your hand held at any second during the day,” Georgie says, entirely unfazed by the shift in attitude, “and there's no shame in that. Sometimes a bad time sneaks up on you. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

“I’ve always taken care of myself. I can handle a few hours alone.”

“I’m sure you can, but that doesn’t mean you have to.” Martin looks ready to object, but Georgie cuts him off. “You’re not going to win this argument; I’ve already heard it all before. I’ve known this one” – she jerks her thumb in Jon’s direction – “for years, and you have near-identical hangups about being an inconvenience or whatever.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Jon mutters.

“Yeah, this is directed at both of you. People want to help you. The world won’t end if you let yourself accept it without berating yourself in the process.” Georgie looks between the two of them as she hands Martin’s phone back, and then chuckles. “Huh. You two have damn-near-identical scowls, too, by the way.”

Simultaneously, Jon and Martin both roll their eyes.

Compared to the last time Jon saw her, Melanie looks… well, better. The wild, furious look in her eyes has subsided and the bags underneath are no longer quite so heavy. Her posture doesn’t look relaxed, exactly, but she doesn’t seem nearly as overwrought. She's still clearly weighed down by ambient tension, but she always has been – and the Archives have a way of making even the most well-adjusted person feel on edge.

She pauses at the bottom of the ladder, watching Jon with an air of distrust and uncertainty. Then Georgie takes her hand and a little more of that stiffness bleeds out of her. She allows Georgie to lead her over to the circle of chairs where Jon waits, and mirrors Georgie when she sits.

The ensuing silence is thoroughly unsettling. When it becomes clear that Georgie isn’t going to break the ice for them, and Melanie likewise keeps her silence, Jon reluctantly takes the initiative.

“Hi,” he says eloquently. He starts to give a little wave, but doesn’t fully commit to the motion, instead allowing his hand to hang awkwardly in the air for a few seconds before lowering his arm again, self-conscious.

“Hey,” Melanie replies – guarded, somewhat flat, but without any outright hostility.

Melanie scuffs one foot against the ground. Jon bounces his leg, chewing the inside of his cheek as he stares at the floor. Neither of them speak.

“So…” Georgie says after a minute, drawing out the vowel. “Do you two want me to, uh… I can leave, if you’d prefer to have this discussion in private?”

“Stay,” Melanie says abruptly, seeking out Georgie’s hand again. Georgie looks at Jon, a question in her eyes.

“I don’t mind. You can stay, Georgie.”

“If you’re sure,” Georgie says. “Just – let me know if that changes, I suppose.”

More silence. When Jon can’t take it anymore, he blurts out: “H-how have you been?”

“Well,” Melanie says sardonically, “I’m essentially trapped in an eldritch fear prison, doing the bidding of an evil voyeur-god, and apparently the only way out of its unfathomable contract is to gouge my eyes out.”

“Right,” Jon says with a hollow laugh. “Stupid question.”

“How are you?” Melanie asks with mock cheeriness.

“Same as you, really. Well. Except for the eye-gouging clause.”

“What, don’t have the stomach for it?”

“No, uh – it… it just won’t work for me, is all.” Staring down at his lap, Jon occupies himself with tracing circles onto one knee with his fingernail. “The Beholding isn’t keen on losing its Archivist.”

“It didn’t mind losing Gertrude.”

“Gertrude… wasn’t as far gone as I am,” Jon says quietly. “She never fully embraced the power the Eye offered. Not to the extent that I did. Blinding herself would have released her from the Eye’s service. She planned on it, actually, but Elias got to her first. And she was still human enough for a gunshot to kill her.”

And wasn’t that a release, in a way? Is it morbid for Jon to envy the fact that Gertrude even had that option available to her?

“Right,” is all Melanie says. She sounds dubious.

“I’m not just speculating a worst-case scenario to give myself an excuse not to go through with it.” Jon can feel himself bristling now. “I know it won’t work. I’ve tried. Multiple times. It hurts like hell, and then I heal. All I got out of it was an onset of chronic cluster headaches – though, who knows,” he adds acidly, “that may have just been the side effect of becoming a linchpin of the apocalypse and having all the world’s terror crammed into my head. I didn’t bother Knowing. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“Jon,” Georgie says gently – and all the fight goes out of him, shoulders slumping.

“Sorry,” he sighs. “Didn’t mean to snap.”

“I wasn’t scolding you. It’s just – you’re scratching.”

Oh. Jon looks down to see long, angry red scratches on his forearms, already fading now.

“Sorry,” he says again. “Didn’t notice.”

“It’s alright.”

Another awkward pause, until Melanie breaks the silence.

“Are you sure blinding will work for the rest of us?” she asks. She no longer sounds suspicious. Simply… curious: reminiscent of how things used to be, back when she was an avid investigator, beholden only to herself.

“Yes.”

“Did I…? Last time?”

“Are you sure you want to know?” Jon waits until Melanie gives a firm nod before he answers the question. “You did.”

“And it worked.”

“It worked.”

Melanie nods again. She’s clenching her teeth, if the subtle movements in her jaw are any indication. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath in, lets it out slowly – and her shoulders relax. By the time she’s opened her eyes, there’s the hint of a smile on her face.

“Good,” she says, equal parts relief and determination.

“S-so, do you think you’ll –” Jon stops himself, shaking his head. “No, sorry, I shouldn’t pry.”

Melanie simply shrugs. “I haven’t made a decision yet. Let’s just say I’m strongly considering it.”

Georgie’s hand tightens on Melanie’s, worry lining her face.

“Tell me what happened last time?” Melanie says. “I’d like to hear the whole story.”

Jon takes a deep breath, rubbing his arms as he orders his thoughts.

“Last time, I didn’t know about the bullet until after I woke up,” he begins. “I, ah, only saw you briefly – you were, um… you were convinced that I wasn’t me anymore. Didn’t want me anywhere near you.”

Thought I should have been the one to die, he doesn’t add. Most days, Jon couldn’t find fault in that assessment. He didn’t want to die – most of the time, anyway – but if he could have traded his life for Tim’s… well, it wouldn’t have been a difficult decision.

“So how did you find out about it, then?”

“I just… Knew it, all of a sudden.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Melanie narrows her eyes suspiciously.

“It’s an Archivist thing. I mean, you're probably already aware – I just… Know things, sometimes, even without compelling anyone. It started before the Unknowing, but it wasn’t as noticeable. Or as often. And it was typically more vague impressions, rather than specific truths. It got worse after I woke up from the coma. More frequent, more detailed, more – intrusive.”

“Fantastic,” Melanie says sourly.

“Yes, I’m not thrilled about it either. Sometimes I can Know things by choice, but the Beholding has a tendency to withhold answers to the questions I actually ask. Mostly it just airdrops information on me unsolicited. Often without me even wondering about a thing. Just… apropos of nothing. I did have much more control over it after the world ended, but, well…” He shrugs, awkward. “Not anymore. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Melanie repeats.

“Last time, I had – still have, I suppose – a tendency to Know things about specific people. Things they wouldn’t normally share with me. I still remember things I Knew back then. Including some things about you.”

The color rises in Melanie’s cheeks. “That’s –”

“An invasion of privacy, I know,” he says, contrite. “I really will try to avoid it, just… sometimes things slip through the cracks when I’m not paying attention.”

“So, what, you can read minds?” Melanie says, an accusation threaded through the question. “Like Elias?”

Jon visibly recoils.

“Melanie,” Georgie begins, but Jon cuts her off.

“No, it’s – it’s a fair question. Elias’ powers come from the same source mine do.” He pauses, nervously flexing his fingers as he composes an explanation. “I can’t see your thoughts verbatim. It’s just… Knowing things. It’s the same with Elias. Sometimes it seems like he can read minds, b-but that’s – that’s just because he’s very – very good at reading people –”

“– finding you when you’re at your lowest point, when you’re your most emotionally vulnerable. And when you’re at that point it’s astounding what can crawl into your heart and start to fester there –“

Jon bites his tongue, applying pressure until the Archive stops its clamoring. Melanie raises her eyebrows in an unspoken question.

“Sorry. Sometimes it just slips out, and…” He laughs and massages his temples. “Well. Still an Archive, in the end.”

His voice cracks and Georgie’s already-concerned expression grows more serious.

“Jon –”

“I’m fine, Georgie,” Jon says, more curtly than intended. “Sorry. I just – I can’t go there right now.”

“We can take a break if you need,” she says.

“No, I… let’s just continue.” He nods at Melanie. “You have more questions.”

Melanie gnaws on the inside of her cheek for a moment, mulling over her words.

“Can you do that…” She wiggles her fingers vaguely. “That thing where you put thoughts in people’s heads?”

“No. Not – not really.”

Not anymore, he corrects privately. During the apocalypse, he was able to make others See and feel things, but… only because he could call upon the Ceaseless Watcher to turn its gaze upon them. Here in the past, the Beholding and all the other Fears remain cloistered behind their door, leeching through the cracks but unable to fully manifest in the world.

“But I, um…” Jon pauses, wetting his lips nervously. “In addition to compelling people to tell me things, sometimes I can compel people to… to do things. Nothing – nothing complex. Simple commands, mostly. ‘Stop,’ ‘leave,’ ‘look,’ ‘don’t look,’ that sort of thing. I haven’t done it often, but the times I have… with a few exceptions, it’s usually been accidental. A sort of – knee-jerk defense mechanism of sorts.”

“Hmm.” Melanie crosses her arms, tapping her foot on the ground.

“I realize that reflects poorly on me.” He swallows, mouth going dry. “It’s… a terrifying prospect, being near someone who can do something like that, and doesn’t have full control over it.”

Jon knows – and Knows via billions of proxies – what it’s like to have something other supplant his will and commandeer his body. Melanie deserves to know the risks of standing too close to him.

“I promise I’ll try to keep it under control, I just – wanted you to be aware of it. I won’t blame you if you’d rather not be around me.”

“Stop being so melodramatic,” Melanie says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m not,” Jon says flatly. “Compelling answers and – and subsisting on a diet of fear has always been more than enough to justify people keeping their distance. Adding more sinister bullshit on top of the pile doesn’t exactly do me credit. I know – Know how people see me.” He laughs, a harsh and humorless thing. “I can’t not Know.”

People tend to naturally give him a wide berth, as if they can sense that there’s something wrong about him, even if they can’t quite discern why. If he’s too careless, if he locks eyes with the wrong person, sometimes they can’t look away – and sometimes he can’t, either, and he’s forced to watch as the terror dawns in their eyes. Just like the nightmares, bleeding into his waking life.

Jon can feel when people are afraid; the Archivist in him relishes it, gravitates towards it like a flower turning to face the sun, soaks it in regardless of whether or not he wants it. And there is always a part of him that does want it, that always wants more – and isn’t that fitting, taking a page from the book of his very first monster? He is, quite literally, a thing of nightmares. Helen is right: he is what he is, and there’s no use denying it.

He’s always been hypersensitive to how other people perceive him. Being able to Know how people really feel about him has historically tended to confirm his customary hostile attribution bias. Vicariously feeling the reality of others’ hatred and fear of him, passively basking in it, being forced to derive sustenance from it – god, it’s like cannibalizing his own vicious self-loathing, a sustainable resource that can be recycled ad infinitum. It takes self-flagellation to a new and perverse extreme.

“I Know when people don’t want to be near me,” he says, unable to suppress the bitterness in his tone. “When someone nearby is afraid, I feel it – as natural as sensing the temperature in a room. I feed on it. It’s an automatic process. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not bask in the knowledge of how much the other people in the room can’t stand breathing the same air as me, if I can avoid it.”

“Jon,” Georgie tries again, “I know how things used to be, but –”

“It’s different now, I know. But the Eye tends to prioritize – well, unpleasant impressions. I know it’s only giving me one side of the story. That there’s more, even if I can’t See it. But fear is loud. Doesn’t leave room for mindfulness.”

Georgie has a reply ready, but Melanie speaks first.

“Okay. I get it.” At Jon’s blank expression, Melanie heaves a sigh – aggravated, but not hostile. “It’s like how anger was for me, okay? Rage has a way of drowning out everything else. Reliable, when nothing else can be trusted. Makes things clearer, simpler. Made me feel more… alive, real.” She hesitates, crossing her arms and shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Nourishing. Sort of. I guess.”

“Yeah,” Jon says, picking aimlessly at his sleeve.

“I’ll just avoid being in the same room as you when I’m… having a day,” she continues. Jon nods. “Or you can just tell me to go away if I’m – I don’t know, giving off rancid vibes, or whatever.”

Jon breathes a surprised, amused huff. “Well. Same goes for you, I suppose.”

He’s even more shocked to see a grin twitch to life on Melanie’s face – very small, but present all the same. Then, appearing to take pity on him, she changes the subject.

“So, you Knew about the bullet.”

“Yes,” Jon says, grateful for the opportunity to move on. “But not until a couple weeks after I got out of the hospital. Didn’t even realize I Knew it until I said it aloud.”

“Meaning it had more time to poison me, where you’re from. Was I… worse?”

“Well, the first time I saw you after I came back, you attacked me on sight, so… maybe? But I don’t really have a point of comparison. That was the only time I saw you up until we removed it, so I don’t know how much you deteriorated in the interim. And this time, I only saw you after the bullet had already been removed.”

“I attacked you?” She doesn’t sound surprised, really. More… intrigued.

“In your defense, you didn’t think I was me anymore. Tim died, Daisy was presumed dead, and I was still alive.” He knows that, of the three of them, Melanie wouldn’t have picked Jon to be the survivor. I hope it hurts, she’d said in her testament. Instead, he slept for six months and then woke up wrong. “You were angry, and afraid, and you had a bullet in your leg making it worse. You needed someone to blame, and Elias was beyond your reach.”

So I was the next best thing, he doesn’t say. Bitterness aside, Jon can’t say he blames her.

Melanie narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Then how the hell did you convince me to have it removed?”

“We, uh… we didn’t. I told Basira first. She – didn’t think you would have agreed. So, we…” Jon forces himself to meet Melanie’s eyes as he gives the confession. “We performed some amateur surgery. Without your consent. Basira procured some local anesthetic, and the Eye let me See where the bullet was, how to remove it with… minimal damage. You were using some rather strong sleep aids, at the time, so you slept through most of it. You only woke up once the bullet was out. And you, uh, promptly stabbed me with the scalpel, though I – I probably deserved that.”

“What the fuck, Jon.”

“I – I know, I know. I’m – well, it might be – odd, to apologize for something that never happened from your perspective? But I am sorry. It wasn’t right, for us to do it that way. We should have asked you.”

“I might not have agreed.” Her voice is tightly controlled, but there’s still a quiet sort of fury simmering just under the words.

“No, uh – probably not. You said later that the anger was always there. Motivating you to keep going. Helping you survive. The Slaughter validated that rage. Made it feel like home.” Melanie stares, unblinking. “You told me the bullet stayed because you wanted it, and… we took that choice from you, decided what was in your best interests without asking you how you felt about it.”

Melanie is quiet for a few more moments, glaring at the floor, before her eyes flick back up to meet Jon's. “What would have happened if you didn’t get it out of me?”

“I can’t say for certain, but it’s likely that you would have become a Slaughter Avatar. Reached a point of no return.”

She scoffs. “So it was worth it, in the end?”

“I don’t know. I want to say yes. You saw me as a monster, and I doubt you would have wanted to become like me. Something inhuman, feeding on suffering. But…”

“But?”

“It’s easy to look at how things ultimately worked out for you and use that outcome to justify what we did,” he says, “but I – I’m not fond of the idea that the ends justify the means. I didn’t know at the time that you and Georgie were this close. If I did, maybe I could have asked her to talk to you, except…”

“We weren’t speaking,” Georgie says.

“Yeah. I – honestly don’t know what else we could have done, but… still, the way we went about it was wrong. You were trapped here like the rest of us, and we… we stole the only thing that gave you some semblance of control. What we did was a violation of your autonomy. I know that feeling, I know how it feels to…” Jon shakes his head. “We saved your life, or – your humanity, at least, but in doing so we took away your choice. Subjected you to more trauma, made it so you couldn’t feel safe anywhere. Eventually you quit, and you and Georgie seemed happy together after that, but the fact that you were able to start healing – that doesn’t change the fact that we hurt you in the first place. I’m sorry.”

“This place,” Melanie says with a breathless laugh.

“Yeah. It’s… not known for presenting benign choices. I’m, ah… I’m glad that this time, it was your own choice.”

“And what if I had still said no?”

“I probably would’ve given you the line about becoming a monster like me. I would have told you what happened last time – or, told Georgie and let her tell you, more likely, if only to avoid any, ah… stabbiness.” Melanie huffs, but it sounds amused rather than offended. “And if you still decided to choose the Slaughter after being fully informed… well, it wasn’t my place to take the choice away from you.”

“Even if I wasn’t in my right mind?” she asks.

“Even if you weren’t in your right mind.”

Melanie’s stare is piercing, scanning him for any signs of dishonesty. Eventually, she folds her arms and leads back in her chair with a hmm.

“What?” Jon asks, heart in his throat.

“Just – unexpected. Would’ve expected you to make a unilateral decision.”

Truthfully, Jon doesn’t trust himself to make those kinds of decisions. Last time, he’d let Basira call the shot. Not only did he trust her judgment more than his own – secretly, selfishly, he was relieved to abdicate at least some of the responsibility. He doubts that his conscience would have been able to carry the full burden of that choice.

Later, during the apocalypse, he had made an executive decision on someone else’s behalf: Jordan Kennedy. In that instance, there was no one with whom he could share the blame. Although it was intended as an act of mercy, Jon cannot deny that he created an unwilling Avatar – stripped a man of his humanity and reshaped him into something other, same as had been done to Jon.

The people in that domain would have continued to suffer just the same whether it was controlled by an Avatar or a hivemind of ants. At least this way, one person could be spared the torture. But it didn’t save anyone. It did not even end Jordan’s suffering, only transformed it into a different, hypothetically more endurable but still horrific shape – one that Jon knew all too intimately.

It was done with merciful intentions, and he may have given Jordan the choice to reverse it – a choice that Jon has never been given himself – but making that decision for Jordan in the first place… well, at the end of the day, Jon could never shake the feeling that he’d taken a page out of Jonah’s playbook. It wasn’t the same, but it felt… adjacent, too much so for comfort.

The choice has haunted Jon ever since. It eats away at him every time he sees Jordan in his nightmares, whenever Jordan watches him with the same dread that he does Jane Prentiss. Yet, Jon still cannot say for certain whether he would do anything differently, if faced with Jordan’s agonized pleading a second time.

But as for Melanie’s particular situation…

“I know what it’s like to have someone else decide on your destiny for you,” he says quietly.

Melanie looks thoroughly unimpressed.

“Look, I – I understand why you resent me. Elias used you to further the Archivist’s progress. Same as he used Tim, Sasha, and Martin, and Basira and Daisy, and Helen… even Jane Prentiss, Mike Crew, Jude Perry – and Jared, Manuela, Peter… everyone, everyone who crosses his path is either irrelevant or a stepping stone. Which means that everyone who crosses my path suffers.”

Stop, Jon tells himself, shutting his eyes tight against the first stirrings of panic lapping at the edges of his mind. It’s pathetic, he thinks, how easily he sinks into this headspace. Jon’s mutinous brain does all of Jonah’s work for him – like prodding at a recent wound, just to see if it still hurts, even knowing full well that it only sabotages the healing process. Stupid, pointless. Just stop dwelling on it.

He can’t.

“All of it – all of it was to create the Archive to his specifications –”

“– bound together – I would look at him, and see a grim sort of destiny for myself: trapped here, until I became him; any future I might have had, sacrificed to his –”

“– and I just – I don’t want people to look at me and – and see him. Or the Beholding –”

“– keeping its prisoners ignorant in pursuit of… knowledge –”

“– I've spent enough time being synonymous with the Eye. I don’t want it. I never wanted it, even if I did choose to – to keep looking for answers –”

“– idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing –”

“– I can’t reverse that, but I can still make it difficult for Elias to get any use out of me. But I’m sorry – I’m sorry that I let him do it for so long –”

“– any idiot could have seen it would play out that way –”

“– I’m sorry you got dragged into all this. I wish I could have gone back to the very beginning, back to the day I took the job, and – god, I thanked Elias for the opportunity, and he – he smiled, because he knew, he knew I would be easily manipulated, knew everything about me – knew all about –”

Thankfully, Georgie interrupts his heated muttering and brings that thought train to a jarring halt. Or – no, she's been saying his name, but he's only just now heard it.

“Jon,” she says, loudly but calmly. She's leaning forward in her seat, hand prepared to reach over to him. “You’re scratching again.”

So he is. Badly. As soon as he stops, the scratches along his forearms heal, leaving only drying blood behind: thin, messy streaks painted across his skin and caked under his fingernails. He should probably clip them shorter, at this rate.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling his sleeves down to hide his arms. “I’m just – sorry.”

“Change the subject?” Georgie offers, lowering her arm.

“I think that would be best,” Jon agrees, discomfited and more than a little annoyed with himself. Will he ever be able to spare a thought for Jonah Magnus without completely unraveling in the process? Hell, will he ever be able to go a day without sparing a single thought for Jonah Magnus at all? Okay, no, stop harping, he reprimands himself. “Just – give me a minute.”

Jon forces himself to take several breaths until he can no longer hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears. Once he regathers his composure, he meets Melanie’s eyes again.

“What I mean to say is – I owe you a lot of apologies, Melanie. I was dismissive of you when we first met, and it just sort of – snowballed from there.”

“It was mutual, I think,” Melanie says guardedly.

“Still, I was – unprofessional, at the very least. And unnecessarily cruel. It was my job to be impartial, but I didn’t have to be callous. Most of the statements that come in aren’t real, but they aren’t impossible, either. And even if a story was due to – substance use, or mental illness, or – or even just an overactive imagination… most people who came in still believed that their story was true. Their distress was genuine. They deserved comfort, not ridicule, regardless of whether or not their story actually happened the way they remembered. And beyond that, it was… poor research methodology, really, to refuse to entertain the possibility of a story’s veracity simply because of my first impression of a statement giver.” His voice grows quieter. “Or because of my own baggage.”

“Your own baggage?”

“I, ah…” Jon deliberates for a brief moment on whether to share this part of himself. It seems only fair, given the personal details he knows about the rest of them. And… telling Daisy had felt cathartic in its own way, hadn't it? “I had a supernatural experience of my own once. Before working at the Institute, I mean. I was a child, so of course it was chalked up to an overactive imagination. And then at some point I was too old to still be afraid of monsters.”

Jonathan, this has gotten out of hand, his grandmother had told him with hands on her hips, exasperated after once again finding every door and cupboard in the house thrown open. Ten is too old to be sleeping with the lights on and checking closets for monsters.

And with that, she had closed the closet doors, flicked the light off, and pulled his bedroom door shut on her way out. He had clung desperately to the hope that she would at least leave the hall light on – but moments later the thin strip of light filtering through the crack under the door was snuffed out. When he heard the click of his grandmother's bedroom door down the hall, he'd dissolved into tears. Turning his face into his pillow to muffle his sobs so as not to alert her to yet another of his childish meltdowns, he spent the rest of the night – and countless nights thereafter – sleeping in fitful stops and starts, plagued by phantom knocking and chitinous clicking and creaking doors. He knows now that such sounds were nothing more than hypnopompic hallucinations, the remnants of nightmares chasing him into wakefulness; knows that the web binding him in place and the hulking presence in the room were only symptoms of sleep paralysis; but at the time…

Jon shakes his head.

“The fear doesn’t go away just because people don’t believe it’s based in truth. So, I learned to hide it instead. To stop talking about it, even though I never stopped searching for an answer –”

“– was there when he was taken; he never got over what he saw. Or didn’t see. After much searching and despair, it drove him into the waiting arms of the Institute –”

“– damn,” he hisses, flustered.

“You okay?” Georgie asks.

“Yeah,” he says gruffly. “Just – one moment.”

Pause, breathe, recollect. Listen to the quiet – which really shouldn’t be so difficult, should it? Aren’t archives supposed to be quiet? Why does this library have to be so horrifically noisy? – and breathe, breathe, breathe. Okay.

“What I’m saying is, I coped with it – poorly – with denial. I could never shake the conviction that what I saw was real, no matter how I tried to rationalize it. But I was still afraid that admitting belief in monsters would – draw their attention to me, somehow. Again. And because of that, I was… unsympathetic, to people who were genuinely afraid. The last thing they needed was derisive skepticism. Or projection. I know what it’s like to not be believed. I shouldn’t have put others through the same thing.”

“Huh.” Melanie looks him up and down. “That’s… unusually insightful for you.”

“I had a lot of time alone to obsess during the apocalypse,” Jon says drily. “Some of it even ended up being productive.” Melanie snorts; Jon gives a cautious smile. “I, ah, also should have tried harder to warn you away from India. Or the Institute in general.”

“And I would have told you to fuck off, because I already didn’t like you, and you would have been just one more in a long line of pompous men acting like they knew better than me.”

Jon laughs. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Look, we just – we both treated each other poorly. You were the easiest target to take my anger out on. Martin’s too nice, Basira was basically a hostage, Daisy is Daisy, and Tim… Tim wasn’t around much, and anyway, he would have thrown whatever I gave him right back in my face. You were a prick, but I think I blamed you more than was fair. And I guess… you were – are – trapped as much as the rest of us. So. I’m sorry too.”

“Well, it’s not like I tried to make a good first impression.”

“Neither did I.” She glowers at him, daring him to challenge her. “Accept the apology or don’t, but don’t throw it back in my face.”

“Fine,” Jon sighs. “I accept the apology.”

“There. Was that so hard?”

“Excruciating,” he deadpans.

Georgie snorts. Melanie and Jon both look at her with a combined, “What?”

“Just… watching the two of you. I think I may have a type.”

Another simultaneous, “What?”

“Curious, stubborn, temperamental, cute, short…”

“H-hey,” Melanie protests, “I’m at least a few centimeters taller than he is –”

“One-point-eight, actually,” Jon mutters under his breath – and then cracks a smile, encouraged by Georgie’s bright, surprised laugh. Melanie just glares at him.

“You know,” Melanie says, “you make it very hard to like you sometimes.”

“Sorry.” He’s not sorry at all. Shooting Georgie an indignant glance, he adds: “Also, I’m not cute.”

“I’m sure Martin would beg to differ,” Georgie teases. Jon sighs, arms crossed and face uncomfortably warm. “Well, anyway…” Georgie grins, looking between the two of them. “Does this mean… truce?”

Melanie gives Jon another long, searching look, and Jon forces himself to meet her eyes.

“Yeah, alright,” she says after a moment, then looks down, bouncing her heel against the floor. “Seems the only one who isn’t trapped and miserable is Elias. And you’re not him. Or working with him. So.” She shrugs one shoulder. “That just makes you one of us. I guess.” When Jon doesn’t reply, she glances back up at him. “What’s that face for?”

“That, uh…” Speechless, Jon roots around for something substantial to say. Instead, one corner of his mouth quirks up as he says, with tentative daring: “That might just be one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me, is all.”

“Yeah, well…” Melanie scoffs, but there’s a hint of amusement in it now. “I’m still going to call you out when you’re being a dick, mind.”

“A public service, really,” Jon says, wry and more than a little elated.

An invitation to playful bickering as opposed to scathing antagonism is, as far as he and Melanie are concerned, an undeniable olive branch.

End Notes:

Jon: my type is Aggressively Idealistic Existentialists Who Give Amazing Hugs, apparently Georgie: and my type is Short Nerds With Strong Feelings About Basically Everything ~*mlm/wlw solidarity*~ But seriously though,,, I love the idea of Georgie and Martin meeting the End and the Vast, respectively, and basically going "hey why don't you read some Camus and maybe you'll calm down???" I may or may not be projecting. I need them and Oliver to have a philosophy book club. Actually everyone else can come too. Basira strikes me as the type to have some Strong Opinions about Certain Philosophers and yes sure that dude may have died ages ago and maybe she shouldn't take it so personally but if she found a Leitner that let her temporarily resurrect him for an hour she might just do so if only for the opportunity to debate his pompous ass in a Tesco parking lot. (I, once again, may or may not be projecting. I was a philosophy minor and I WILL pepper in the fact that I hate Kant. You cannot hold this against me.)

____

Citations for Jon's Archive-speak are as follows, in order of appearance: MAG 094; 153; 144/101/111/014; 101.

Martin's "I think our experience of the universe has value, even if it disappears forever" quote is from MAG 151 and yes it IS one of my all time favorite Martin quotes, how could you tell

Disclaimer re: how Jon talks about his ace identity: I'm ace & projecting a bit, like I do with Jon's ADHD/neurodivergence. The way I describe ace stuff is not meant to be reflective of all ace-spec people's experiences.

would you believe me if I said the whole 'deservedness' spiel was written before the latest episode??? bc it was and then I read the newest ep transcript and I was like "oh"

Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out, btw. funny story: I accidentally let the prescription for my ADHD meds expire and I had to go like four days without them before I could go get another paper script bc it's one they can't submit electronically or call in, soooo I got fuck-all done for half of that week and it broke my writing flow :0 hoping to get back into my usual flow from here on out and manage to have the next chapter ready in 2ish weeks, but we shall see. Thanks for sticking with me <3 (I might start shortening chapters again, the last few have been 10k+ compared to the earlier 6-8k and I could probably stand to split them up a bit.)

Speaking of the next chapter - yes, I AM planning on moving the plot forward I swear. I realize the last few chapters have basically taken place within a single week and have been mostly People Talking About Things, RIP.

And as always, thank you for reading, and for all your comments! <3 They're basically 50% of my regular serotonin intake. The other 50% is my cat's motorboat purring.

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