#so i get to spread the word of TMA

[ascendingconures]

my Pre-distortion Michael Shelley model... i have put him in VR...

Hanging with my bestie homophobic vase

[fiotrethewey]

TikTok have decided I’m Martin Blackwood (see video below) so I’ve told the Magnus Archives fans that if they help get Holmwood funded I’ll listen to the whole thing (I haven’t so far because I have a deep fear of bugs, but I’ll work my way around it.)

I also promise to do fanart, and @georgiacooked and I will do a couples cosplay as Martin and Jon 🤣

TMA fans: Spread the word? Kickstarter is here

[boombox-fuckboy]

any podcast recommendations for guys Going Through It. im a sucker for whump and i’ve already listened to TMA and Malevolent sooo

Fiction Podcasts: Characters Going Through It / Experiencing the Horrors

Gore warning for most, here's 15 to get you started:

I am in Eskew: (Horror) David Ward is arguably the Guy Going Through It. Stories from a man living in something that very much wants to be a city, and a private investigator who was, in her words, "hired to kill a ghost". Calmly recounted stories set to Eskew's own gentle, persistent rain. The audio quality's a bit naff but the writing is spectacular. If you like the writing, also check out The Silt Verses, which is a brilliant show by the same creators.

VAST Horizon: (Sci-Fi, Horror, Thriller/Suspense Elements) And Dr. Nolira Ek is arguably the Gal Going Through it. An agronomist wakes from cryo to discover the ship she's on is dead in the water, far from their destination, and seemingly empty, barring the ship's malfunctioning AI, and an unclear reading on the monitors. I think you'll like this one. Great sound design, amazing acting, neat worldbuilding, and plenty of awful situations.

Dining in the Void: (Horror, Sci-Fi) So, the initial pacing on this one is a little weird, but stick with it. A collection of notable people are invited to a dinner aboard a space station, and find not only are they trapped there, but they're on a timer until total station destruction: unless they can figure out who's responsible. And there's someone else aboard to run a few games, just to make things more interesting. The games are frequently torturous. If that wasn't clear.

The White Vault: (Horror) By the same creators as VAST Horizon, this one follows a group sent to a remote arctic research base to diagnose and repair a problem. Trapped inside by persistant snow and wind, they discover something very interesting below their feet. Really well made show. The going through it is more spread out but there's a lot of it happening.

Archive 81: (Horror, Weird Fiction, Mystery and Urban Fantasy Elements) A young archivist is commissioned to digitize a series of tapes containing strange housing records from the 1990s. He has an increasingly bad time. Each season is connected but a bit different, so if S1 (relatively short) doesn't catch your ear, hang in for S2. You've got isolation, degredation of relationships, dehumanisation, and a fair amount of gore. And body horror on a sympathetic character is so underdone.

The Harrowing of Minerva Damson: (Fantasy, Horror) In an alternate version of our own world with supernatural monsters and basic magic, an order of women knights dedicated to managing such problems has survived all the way to the world wars, and one of them is doing her best with what she's got in the middle of it all.

SAYER: (Horror, Sci-Fi) How would you like to be the guy going through it? A series of sophisticated AI guide you soothingly through an array of mundane and horrible tasks.

WOE.BEGONE: (Sci-Fi) I don't keep up with this one any more, but I think Mike Walters goes through enough to qualify it. Even if it's frequently his own fault. A guy gets immediately in over his head when he begins to play an augmented reality game of entirely different sort. Or, the time-travel murder game.

Janus Descending: (Sci-Fi, Horror, Tragedy) A xenobiologist and a xenoanthropologist visit a dead city on a distant world, and find something awful. You hear her logs first-to-last, and his last-to-first, which is interesting framing but also makes the whole thing more painful. The audio equivalent of having your heart pulled out and ditched at the nearest wall. Listen to the supercut.

The Blood Crow Stories: (Horror) A different story every season. S1 is aboard a doomed cruise ship set during WWII, S2 is a horror western, S3 is cyberpunk with demons, and S4 is golden age cinema with a ghostly influence.

Mabel: (Supernatural, Horror, Fantasy Elements) The caretaker of a dying woman attempts to contact her granddaughter, leaving a series of increasingly unhinged voicemails. Supernatural history transitioning to poetic fae lesbian body horror.

Jar of Rebuke: (Supernatural) An amnesiac researcher with difficulties staying dead investigates strange creatures, eats tasty food, and even makes a few friends while exploring the town they live in. A character who doesn't stay dead creates a lot of scenarios for dying in interesting ways

The Waystation: (Sci-Fi, Horror) A space station picks up an odd piece of space junk which begins to have a bizzare effect on some of the crew. The rest of it? Doesn't react so well to this spreading strangeness. Some great nailgun-related noises.

Station Blue: (Psychological Horror) A drifting man takes a job as a repair technician and maintenance guy for an antarctic research base, ahead of the staff's arrival. He recounts how he got there, as his time in the base and some bizzare details about it begin to get to him. People tend to either quite like this one or don't really get the point of it, but I found it a fascinating listen.

The Hotel: (Horror) Stories from a "Hotel" which kills people, and the strange entities that make it happen. It's better than I'm making it sound, well-made with creative deaths, great sound work, and a strange staff which suffer as much as the guests. Worth checking out.

[the-sun-falls-like-a-guillotine]

admittedly, I just love feedism content in general, but the reason I love it so much in TMA fanworks is because The Magnus Archives is about hunger.

it's about thirst — bloodthirst (MAG112, MAG176), thirst for knowledge (MAG92, The Eye) — and hunger — hunger for power (Jonah Magnus), statement withdrawal (MAG148), feed your patron or it will feed on you (MAG89, MAG184). Any food and drink mentioned are often corrupted, whether literally, by memories, or by paranoia, like the human teeth apple from the anatomy students in MAG34, or the oolong tea offered by Also Martin in MAG186, or when Martin offers Jon a sandwich and Jon is so suspicious that he actually comes to the canteen to make sure it isn't tampered with (MAG53).

one of the only actual physical descriptors we get of Jon is scrawny (MAG185), so there's something very satisfying to me about relationship weight; about him recovering from years of deprivation and neglect; about a squidgy little belly in the palm of Martin's hand when he spoons in behind him. the thought of Jon and Martin safe and happy and healthy and together delights me, be it curled up on the sofa with tea and a bun, or making soup, or going out for ice cream.

I love the idea of Jon's much-improved appetite still not quite stretching to finishing his plate and he always insists that Martin finishes it without so much as one guilt-tinged word because he looks so ridiculously gorgeous when he's full, one big broad hand resting contentedly on the crest of his belly; or that scene I still have to work in somewhere where Martin catches Jon engrossed in their own reflection, studying the little roll of chub that now swells out over the waistband of their boxers, and Martin begins to panic because when he does that, his mind is loud and swarming with the voices of his mother, of other kids in the school playground, of the shitty men he settled for because he just wanted to be touched: oh, don't wear that top, Patricia, it makes you look fat; my mum has big tummy like you but there's a baby in hers; sorry, I don't think I can go through with this. I don't like girls and your hips are just... too wide. but Jon just turns to him and smiles with sparkling eyes and says I look... loved.

I'm also working on a polychives au where the worm bites across his back and shoulders restrict Tim's movement so working out isn't really an option anymore, and one by one all his coping mechanisms fall through leaving only food. the weight begins to pile on, stretch marks spreading like lightning across his belly, his chest, his hips, and for a time he feels so horribly conflicted about it because it feels good, but it doesn't feel like himself in any way that he's used to. then Sasha tells him in no uncertain terms how much she likes it, and once a miscommunication is sorted with Martin, and Jon begrudgingly agrees to try the four of them being together, he starts to love his swelling belly, his puffy little tits, every bit as much as they do.

I love love LOVE picturing Tim with this big lovedrunk smile, absolutely boneless in a cuddle puddle as he jokes that he should get a ouija board planchette tattooed around his belly button because of how often they each have a hand on his pudgy belly, like they all do now.

just... the softest of soft recovery and comfort against the cruelty of the original work.

[abearinthewoods]

really confusing that you seem to be anti-billionare and anti-police-system, yet you're willing to attempt to ruin another trans person's life through the FBI, which largely exists to defend billionaires and violently suppress minorities, for expressing frustration with the large group of transmascs who are being transmisogynistic (which they can do, just like trans people can be transphobic). having a conversation with transfems about why they feel the way they do would be far more constructive and far less helpful to the people who want to suppress all trans people, not just the trans women you hate

I'm not having conversations with reactionaries anymore.

If you think so strongly that trans men shouldn't use transandrophobia to talk about their oppression that you would post bomb threats with vague but everybody knows exactly what you mean tags, in order to get said trans men to stop using a word to talk about their oppression, than enjoy your jail cell.

It is illegal and immoral to respond with terroristic threats as a tool to try and get trans men to use the word you want them to use to talk about their oppression.

It is doubly so if you than respond to them feeling threaten by reblogging it and encouraging everybody to do the same. This is intentionally trying to spread that fear onto my fucking trans brotheren and I do not plan on giving a fuck about you if you do that.

Class solitary requires trans women let go of this need to make trans men center their oppression about how women have it worse. (tme/tma bullsshit, transemasculation, etc). I will hold my tongue on this in a lot of conversations (because that is also class solitary), but not when it leads to trans men actually feeling fear to talk about their oppression, and from what i've seen on this topic in the past week. some of them legitimately do feel fear.

She has to atone for causing that fear.

[irrealisms]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let's spread the self-love 💞

tagged by: @erstwhilesparrow

the autopsy garland -- dsmp hunger games au about rpf fandom and the horrors of celebrity. parts of it have aged poorly--it's about, in part, both the fandom and hatedom surrounding cc!dream and the dream smp as a whole, and also unrelatedly it's about sexual abuse, and, uh, it was published before the dream situation let alone any of the ones that came after it, i have no clue what it'd look like if i wrote it now but certainly it would look wildly different--but i'm still so fucking proud of it. the epistolary sections. the bits of canon dialogue. threading the line between "this guy did awful awful things" and "holy shit, the stuff happening to him is not okay to do to anyone"

between the moth and the moon -- lifesteal, a gentle moment between vitalasy & zam. i wrote this one bc i needed zam to tell vitalasy i mourned you. it's a missing scene and it's one i needed and it's gentle and soft and bittersweet and i go reread it whenever i'm sad about them (this is often)

i don't have the heart to match -- mdzs, my Trans Woman Jiang Cheng Manifesto. there is something so special in my heart for yunmeng shuangjie and jc's issues about wei wuxian and Duty and jealousy and. and. man

Your Body Is Not A Word -- tma fic about s4 jonathan sims exchanging sex for statements. it's about sexual trauma and it's about starving and it's about being both victim and monster and it's about not really being able to believe in the dialectic there and it's about making choices that hurt yourself because you don't having any good options left and not-doing-anything hurts too.

whatever a moon has always meant -- indis/míriel silmarillion fic which is nominally about LaCE and in practice about Catholic sexual ethics & the Catholic outlook more broadly. it's also about grief and doubt and a lot of other things but it's very very Catholic and struggling with that Catholicism. it gets kind of ... pretentious? overwrought in a very teenage fashion? at times, but the core of it is very important to me. considered doing one of my númenor or maedhros fics here instead, there's some good stuff there as well, but. idk. this one's got a soft spot in my heart and it's less Relentlessly Fucking Depressing lol

tagging: @consumptive-sphinx , @blocksgame , @honeyblockm , @peninkwrites , @crimeboys

[deathbyhertouch]

Kinktober Day 5: Freeuse

(i think if they were to make an adaptation of TMA, Yasmin Finney would be amazing as Sasha/Not Sasha)

Sasha James x afab!reader

warnings: smut (18+, mdni) , freeuse, oral (sasha receiving), public sex, voyeurism, caught in the act, fingering

word count: 832

kinktober masterlist

It was another boring day down in the archives of the Magnus Institute. You were supposed to be helping Sasha and Tim organize some of the older files for Jon to analogue. It was hotter than fuck outside and Elias deemed it ‘not hot enough’ to turn on the air conditioning yet (it was the middle of July). You had all long since abandoned filing the statements, now moving on to fanning yourselves and talking to each other. 

“What’s your wildest fantasy, James?” Tim teased, loving to watch the smaller woman squirm.

“Hmm, probably…. doing it somewhere i’m not supposed to? I-i haven’t thought about it much, Stoker.” She squeaked out, her dark cheeks flushing a rosy pink. You smiled at the image, picturing yourself bending her over the desk you’re all currently melting on. Your little workplace infatuation with the shorter woman grew into a full-fledged crush on her. 

“Y/N? Earth to Y/N? We’ve lost her, Tim.” Her chipper voice pulled you out of the daydream that made you horrible wet. You blinked rapidly, a small smile on your lips.

“Sorry, what?” You asked, spurring the brunette to repeat herself.

“What’s your dirty fantasy?” Sasha asked, placing a hand on your knee, her big brown doe eyes making you weak in the knees. You gasped, the closeness of her face to yours, and her hand touching your sweaty skin. 

“I-I…uhhh….erm, bending a girl over the desk and fucking her while she works.” You rushed, the words spilling out of your mouth in a hushed tone. Sasha chuckled, her eyes twinkling as she shook her head at you.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that. That’s okay, we can change the subject if you’re uncomfortable.” She consoled you, rubbing her thumb across your knee. You were now a sopping puddle, ready to combust if she made any more contact with you.

“Tim, can you run out to that Thai place and get us some takeout? I’ll pay.” Sasha said, turning to the redheaded man, handing him a few bills. Tim nodded, standing up to stretch his legs. 

“Good idea, i’m fucking starving. Be back in 30.” He spoke over his shoulder, halfway to the door already. Sasha thanked him before turning back to you after the door shut behind him. 

“I lied, earlier. I found it really hot, i’ve been waiting so long to get you alone. Now that I’m 99% sure you are as into me as I am you.” She mused, her hand resuming its place on your leg, slowly inching upwards.

“You like me back? Fuck, Sash. C’mere.” You spat, grabbing her hips and pulling her onto your lap before crashing your lips to hers. She moaned into the kiss, before tugging her glasses off her face. You felt her tongue slide across your bottom lip, making you moan into her mouth. She giggled, grinding her hips down on your lap.

“I have an idea, you game?” She asked, breaking the kiss, much to your soft pout. You cocked an eyebrow at her, nodding anyway. She laughed, clamoring off your lap, grabbing your hand and pulling you towards the filing cabinet.

“Okay, I’m going to get back to working on these statements, and I want you to eat me out. I wanna see if you can make me finish before I finish these.” She proposed, making you smirk.

“You’re on, Sash. Now get started.” You grabbed her hips, turning her towards the cabinet. You made quick work of pulling down her pleated skirt and panties. 

You spread her cheeks, before licking a stripe from her clit to her entrance. She moaned, before catching herself and focusing again at the files. You moaned at her taste, slipping your tongue into her entrance. She gasped as you began to fuck her with the muscle. You brought your thumb up to her swollen nub, slowly circling it as your mouth began to build up a fast rhythm. 

Her arousal was leaking out of her pussy, coating your chin as you inhaled her essence. She tasted so sweet and musky, you could die here and be totally fine with it. Her hips were bucking against you, signaling that she was growing close to her orgasm.

You sped up the circles on her clit, pressing your face deeper into her warm, wet cunt. You lapped at her folds, suckling them gently as you smacked her on the ass. She whimpered, the blood rushing to where your hand left it’s mark. You chuckled into her, smacking her again. You spit on her pussy, watching goosebumps creep across her skin.

“Oh fuck, Y/N. I’m so fucking close.” Sasha whined, feeling her reach her breaking point. You slipped two fingers into her pussy, and pulled her clit into your mouth. She cried out, her climax crashing over her in waves. 

“Good girl, Sash. So fucking hot.” You cooed, helping her pull her skirt and panties back on. 

“Well, well, well… what have we here?”

Love, A

[world-of-horrors-au]

Horrors au X TMA - Mere Misunderstandings

'Somewhere else' turns out to be a lot different than Martin could've hoped. Awakening in a strange forest, with Jon nowhere to be found, it's not long to discover he's not as alone as he first thought. Then his kindness gets the better of him. But maybe that's not so bad. Maybe this is a good thing.

Is this the beginning of a happy ending, or the start of a whole new nightmare?

AU shared between me and @whatadandydemise

She breathed, and again, was grateful for it.

Overhead the bleak gray of the sky stretched thin between the dark tree branches, a suggestion of rain, not a promise. Couldn’t take anything at its word in this life. Even the environment could, and would, betray the unwary. Knowing that, and all other evils in their fallen world, Briar smiled at being alive.

As the youngest, the weakest, of the group, none of the guys wanted her to leave their little sanctuary alone. She did it anyway. She’d been pretty damn good at surviving, when she was human - she could handle checking traps, or gathering wild fruit, on her own. And this close to their headquarters, there was only one person that might show up uninvited.

Briar left her bat by the bed and took the old plastic basket instead.

Today, she thought, looking up at the sky, would be a boring day to die.

Good thing she wasn’t going to.

-

Martin gripped the woman’s arm tight and did not look back. The trees muffled their footsteps as they ran, and if they were followed he couldn’t hear it over the crunch of leaves and branches, the pounding of his own, bloody bleeding heart.

“What’s going on?” The woman cried out, but didn’t try to stop. “Where are we going?”

This poor woman. She didn’t understand what he did. What he’d saved her from.

He’d woken up under the trees, the knife still clutched within his fingers, sticky and red with Jon’s blood. Jon wasn’t there with him. Jon should have been with him, in this… what was this place? Was it a Fear Domain, like he’d first thought? But this woman shouldn’t be here. She wasn’t an Avatar. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that.

“Jon?” He called out again. “Jon!”

“Hello?”

That wasn’t Jon.

The woman stepped out from between the trees. Shorter than Jon, somehow, with black hair like Jon’s from before this nightmare started. The resemblance ended there. Her skin was too pale, and her eyes were unguarded. In fact, as she looked between his face, and the knife in his hand, she actually relaxed, and a smile spread over her freckled cheeks.

“That’s a nice knife,” she said.

Martin blinked and looked at the item in question.

“... Thank you?”

She took a step closer.

“I’m Briar,” she said.

“I…” He looked around, hoping Jon would step out into view, or call his name, but the trees around them were still so quiet. “I’m Martin.”

Her smile grew wider. His stomach sunk. No, no, no, he was not sticking around. This woman was not an Avatar, she must have been marked by - by something. Some awful fate waited for her, and he was not going to stick around and find out what it was, and he was not going to get involved.

“I need to go,” he said, “I need to find someone.”

The Lonely wrapped around him and he left, and he did not look back. Even when he returned to reality, he did not. He would not become involved with some stranger when he needed to figure out what happened and find-

She - Briar - cried out in fear. Martin turned on his heels and ran back towards her, cursing himself with every step.

He’d been right. She’d been marked by the Stranger. Martin found her locked in the arms of a stuffed nightmare, a masculine creature with a painted porcelain mask and cloth hands that gripped her tight. He could have just left then. Maybe he should have just… left her there, to be dragged off to the monster’s master.

Instead, he held on to her and ran for both their lives.

… He should have stabbed the thing instead of slamming his head into it. He could still taste the cotton in his mouth where he’d bitten it. What was he thinking?

(He didn’t want to die before he found Jon.)

(He didn’t want to die.)

His lungs gave out before the rest of him. Martin dragged in a desperate breath and released Briar, leaning against a tree for support. Briar didn’t move, her panting softer and controlled.

“Are you alright?” She hurried for her basket, still grasped in her sweat-slicked hands. “Here, I have water-”

Martin laughed. The sound rushed out of him between his gasping breaths, his closed eyes watering.

“Am I… Am I-- He wheezed, he held his chest. “You don’t know.” His shoulders shook, the smile stretched without humor over his face. “You really don’t know.”

“Know?” Briar echoed. Martin straightened, pushed away from the tree and stared at her with his wet eyes. He must look so unnatural, so inhuman, and yet, she looked at him without fear. She still didn’t know she should be afraid.

“You…” Martin struggled to breathe, to speak. “You don’t know what that thing was. You don’t know what it was going to do to you! But I… I do. And I won’t let that happen to you. I won’t let it!”

Briar stared at him, and he must sound completely mad, he knew he must sound mad. Martin dragged in another breath.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “It’s just - I thought I would be dead right now. I’m still trying to understand - I mean, I don’t understand what’s going on but I will. And I promise, I’ll explain everything. Maybe not now, but when we’re safe -”

From the corner of his eye, movement. Martin jolted towards it. The doll-like creature threw itself forward, the porcelain face unmoving as it lunged.

The blade in its hand glinted in the dim sunlight.

He couldn’t do anything, it moved too fast. But Briar, behind him, would be safe.

Briar, behind him.

Briar, moving away from him.

Briar, in front of him.

The long black hair, like Jon’s black hair, in front of him. Like Jon in front of him, like he’d done so many times-

Metal met flesh, sliding into meat and scraping against bone.

Briar did not scream but the wet sound that choked from her mouth locked Martin in place.

The doll creature released the blade.

She still breathed. She reached for the handle of the weapon, feeling up from where the cold metal buried into her shoulder.

“Briar!” Martin shouted.

“Briar.”

The hair on the back of Martin’s neck stood up. The doll-creature spoke.

“Briar,” it repeated, a man’s voice. Not the echo of another person’s voice, not a shallow replica of a beloved friend or family member - a living voice, full of living horror.

Her breath, so wet, as she gripped the handle of the blade.

“I think,” she said, “There’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Don’t,” the doll-creature said.

Briar twisted in her spot, facing a tree. Martin understood a moment too late.

“Wait!”

She ripped the blade from her flesh. Blood splattered the dark bark. The young woman stumbled, the handle dropping from her wet fingers into the grass.

The doll-creature caught her before she could fall. Martin stood, hand over his mouth, and couldn’t tear his gaze away. The doll-creature held her so gentle, so tender, the clothed fingers brushing through her hair. It’s eyes looked towards him. Now that the being was closer, Martin could see, it actually did have eyes, still so human, still so alive-

“You’re not one of those creatures!” Martin blurted. “You’re still alive!”

Both turned towards him. Briar’s face, twisted with pain, still managed to smile at him. The doll… the man, actually, held her closer to his body.

“Figured it was something like that,” Briar said, her voice weak. “It’s alright. Masky’s fine. He’s not gonna hurt anyone.”

“He tried to stab me!” Martin said. “He did stab you!”

“I’ve been through worse,” Briar said.

“You attacked me first,” the man said, voice somewhat muffled by the mask.

“I did,” Martin said. “But I thought…”

“It’s fine,” the man grumbled. “Proxies don’t have a great reputation. Guess I should just be glad you didn’t use your knife on me.”

Knife. Martin looked at his own. Looked at the blade on the grass.

“Your shoulder!” He cried, looking at Briar. “We have to stop the bleeding!”

Briar recoiled from the man’s arms.

“Oh shit!” She said. “I got my blood all over you again!”

Masky laughed, his shoulders shaking, eyes closed with amusement.

Martin gaped. She was going to bleed out, why was he laughing? He looked at Briar, still holding her shoulder like she’d bruised it. She looked back. Shifting her fingers, she smiled as she revealed the wound.

The bleeding already stopped.

“I'm not that young a Horror,” she said with a grin. “My healing isn't as fast as my mates’ but it's still pretty good, I'd say.”

Martin stared at the wound. So she was an Avatar? Of what? Did they call themselves Horrors here? She didn't look or act like any he'd ever met before. She just looked like… a sweet, completely normal woman.

None of this added up. He'd gotten too used to how things worked in London.

This wasn't London. This was… someplace else. And if Jon had been taken here too, then… had they somehow been given a second chance?

Briar limped towards a tree, and Martin followed a few steps behind. So did the masked man. It would be hard to ignore the glance the man (Masky? What kind of a name was that?) shot him.

His legs were grateful to sit down beside Briar. Martin leaned against the tree and sighed.

“Sorry about all that,” he said.

“You're fine,” Masky said, sitting down on Briar’s other side with a grunt. “I shouldn't have lost my temper. But when I saw you grab Briar like that…”

Briar patted Masky on the leg. The man's gloved hand found hers and intertwined their fingers together.

Oh, Martin thought. They were… oh. Now he really felt bad.

“Don't feel bad,” Martin said. “I would've been just as upset if I saw someone grabbing my Jon, even though I know he can take care of himself.”

The dark eyes behind the mask looked over Briar's head.

“Jon?”

“Is that who you were looking for?” Briar said.

“Yes,” Martin said. “My boyfriend. Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.”

He said the words and held his breath.

Briar frowned. “I don't think I've heard of anyone named that before…”

Masky shook his head.

“But I bet the others know about him,” Briar said, perking up again. “And if they don't, that's okay too. We've been looking for other Horrors for months now - you're the first new Horror I've seen since I became one myself. We can help you find him!”

Martin paused.

“You… you would help me?”

“Yeah!” She said.

“But - but you just met me,” Martin said. “You don't know what I've done or-”

“It's okay,” Briar said. Her eyes shone with a warmth Martin wasn't used to. “We Horrors have to stick together. My mates won’t care about what you did or didn't do. We'll find your Jon.”

Masky shifted, wrapping an arm around Briar. He sighed as she looked at him.

“I'll… see what I can do about the other proxies,” he grumbled. “I can't promise anything, but if they've heard about your mate, I'll let you know.”

“I…”

This was what they’d wanted, wasn't it? Unconditional support. People who understood. People who got it. They wanted a world without the Fears, without the threat of the end of the world but…

Was this some kind of heaven? They certainly didn't deserve a reward after all they'd done. But looking at these two, these strangers, offering their help.

It's too good to be true, Martin thought.

But what if it is? Martin thought.

I'll do whatever it takes to find Jon, he thought.

“Thank you,” he said.

Briar closed her eyes and rested her head on Masky’s shoulder. Her body heaved with a heavy exhale. Masky sighed as well.

“You're lucky,” he said in a quiet voice.

“What for?” Martin said.

“That it was Briar who found you first.” The eyes behind the mask moved to look at him. “The rest of her pack might not have been as kind as she is.”

Martin swallowed, a chill running through his body.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“I mean you're about to meet some very, very dangerous people,” Masky said. “And because of her, they aren't going to hurt you.”

She'd fallen asleep. Somehow though, she still smiled. Briar shifted against her partner. A rumble came from within her body.

The eyes behind the mask narrowed. Martin couldn't tear his eyes away from Briar, listening to the noise she made.

Purring.

… Avatars didn't purr.

“They won't be able to tell you're not one of them,” Masky said. “But I can. And they'll kill you if they find out.”

Martin didn't say a word.

Masky looked away.

“I wouldn't worry, though.” Masky said. “You're not going to last long as a human.”

His fingers ran through Briar’s hair.

“Everyone is a monster here. You're just gonna need a little more time to prove it.”

This was my first time writing Martin, I apparently did well enough according to my friends. I hope you enjoyed this! Please reblog or share if you did! Or just leave a reply, that's excellent too. I'd love some honest feedback!

[velvetvexations]

Hey velvet, glad to see you’re back. I’m sorry you got powerjacketed by your own sisters and allies— you’re an easy target for exclusionists and crypto-radfems/transradfems because of your discourse alignments. I may not agree with all of your positions, and at times do believe you could be more receptive to other transfems’ points, but you dont deserve to be harassed out of your own safe space.

Please don’t feel the need to put yourself out there for your transmasc siblings. You got off pretty consequence-free this time, but i imagine much more severe hearsay could easily spread about you if you dont prioritize your safety more. being a transfem with an opinion on this site is hard and i wish you the best ❤️

If it helps any, I literally had tears in my eyes recently because I had a really nice conversation with a self-identified TMA for the first time. I'd talked before about how it would be easy for good and rational people to adopt a system that disadvantaged them but it would be more inherently selfish to do so when it advantaged you, but in retrospect maybe that WAS wrong of me to say. Maybe I WAS being a bit transmisogynyistic, because I was still wrapped up in frustration with other transfems at least partly as a group, even if I tried insisting I didn't think it was most of them.

But I was working with the data I had at the time, which is that I was able to come to borderline wholesome agree-to-disagree conclusions with TMEs while TMAs seemed to exclusively be hateful no matter how hard I tried to approach as a civilized being (and have continued to do so, despite declaring I'd give it up awhile ago), or if I did start out confrontational was specifically because they had takes completely unrelated to gender that smashed my berserk button, at which point that eclipsed anything else.

But then I talked to a TMA who made a post I thought was unfair, and they were like "yeah sorry I was just venting if I was talking about this in a way that was actually trying to spread awareness I'd have worded it better because I agree with you that it's a situation where the problem is people trying too hard to be respectful and the best way of actually dealing with that if one was to attempt it isn't getting angry with them".

And like! That very brief interaction wasn't even about TMA/TME, but they just had it listed as an identifier, and that made me completely reconsider the way I'd been viewing transfems, even if only a portion of transfems involved in an extremely specific discourse. Because I'd seen such a range of self-identified TMEs, from asshole pickmes to people who were just genuinely trying to be good allies, but here at last was a TMA I just disagreed with over TMA/TME language.

So I literally cried over that.

I mean, I didn't investigate her blog. Maybe if I looked into it I would indeed find that she believed in really awful things, TMA/TME-related or otherwise, but the actual content of that interaction was emphasizing that kindness is important when one is feeling that "TMEs" are making well-intentioned missteps so it still gave me a measure of faith.

The other thing is that something I had been worried about was my deep lore that made me a bit obsessively paranoid about dragging back up, but I talked about that a little while ago (cw for CSA) and since then I've felt safer about Velvet Nation being understanding and caring since I've already brought up the context of everything that happened.

And, also, as much as I do love people and try to live the Superman quote in my pinned post to the very best of my ability, I also have a bottomless need for attention, so.

[incandescent-creativity]

Week or two after finishing TMA and I have questions that will never be answered but nonetheless I will write them down.

This got very long but if you’ve listened to the podcast all the way through I think you’ll get it so

Mostly I’m thinking about like? How much do people remember? How much was the world twisted in tangible ways that stayed behind after the fears got vacuumed away?

One can imagine the worm-people stuck in the ground were finally able to crawl back up, and the suburbanites were finally able to exit the endless cul-de-sac, but? What about the people stuck in the wellness center? The prison? The kids trapped running in the dark? Hellen’s halls? The places that twisted physics in a way that they couldn’t remain as new landmarks on earth.

Could they? Has the environment changed so drastically that the human garden is still there? The perpetually burning houses no longer burning, but charcoal walls still there? Does London feature a new tower?

How does that change how people move through the world? Did they tear them down? Avoid them? Where do people go after if they’re real places now? Can you reclaim something like that? Would you want to? Would you have another choice?

What happened to the people in the cult that Georgie and Melanie started? What happened to that guy Jon saved from the ants, who became an avatar unwillingly?

For that matter, what happened to all the people who had given statements about things they’d seen before (the ones that didn’t die after giving it)? Did they figure out how their experiences fit into the wider scheme of things, or did such things pale in comparison to such a bad time in the apocalypse that they don’t even register anymore? If the former, did that make it easier to cope, or harder? Is this something they’d tell other survivors about, or not? It would probably depend on the individual, but still. What a choice to have to make.

An tiny bit about all this can be inferred by Melanie’s line at the end of MAG 200:

about “Oh you remember what happened when people found Simon Fairchild” (they like? Tore him apart ig?). She characterizes him as a “some powerless left-behind avatar.”

The confirmation that people did lose any inhuman abilities when the fears left is nice, but that makes logical sense. Suck the fears thru a portal, their connection to this dimension is severed, no more powers.

I get stuck on… People know who the avatars were. They know who was torturing them, which means they must remember what happened to them.

Do people know why? Do they know how? I mean nobody really knows how, but. How much do they understand what an avatar was? They had to have understood it at least a little bit, since they wreaked vengeance upon Fairchild. They had to have a reason for targeting him specifically.

How did the word spread? Not just practically (did they have phone lines post-fears?), but on a global perception level? Who told the public, our main cast? Was there any resistance to the idea, any fight about it, or was it just like “that was so undeniably fucked up that that’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

What did the scientific community think of this new model for the world? How did the study of physics and history change after this? How did philosophy and religion change? How does one person, let alone an entire society, recover from something like this? How do governments even proceed after this? Did they need to enact programs to help tear down the hellscapes left behind?

This interaction:

Implies that there is at least some mundane supplies left, such as from the marketplace hellscape that they used during scavenging runs. Or that people have been able to go back to work and start producing things like batteries and tinned tuna again.

(Speaking of tuna: what happened to the animals when the fears entered the world? We know their fear fueled at least some of the entities, and if I remember correctly the Admiral was acting as an avatar too. How did this work in the ocean. Did the tuna fish get tortured? Were people trapped in perpetual drowning hellscapes?)

(Double side note: grasping at straws but I love the casual inclusion of nightlights and using that word specifically. Not flashlights/torches, not lamps, but nightlights. The things kids use to fight their fears. Potentially, something everybody in the entire world uses now, and everybody understands why)

How does anybody have an interpersonal relationship anymore, when you have found out, without question, both your worst fears and how you act when confronted with them?

The entire show is predicated on “What happens after the world is ended? How do the characters move through this post-apocalypse world?” but good god I can’t stop thinking about the post- post-apocalypse.

[mamahersh]

For whumptober, do y'all think I should post some snippets from a really niche TMA AU I made awhile back? I can't post more than like one or two things, they'll be pretty short, and won't make sense without like an explanation post, and depending what I post might be really graphic gore.

To give a better idea, the AU is that after TMA episode 200, Jon and Martin manage to survive the Panopticon and stay in universe when everything gets remade back to normal. The twist comes in that remember how some of the bigger avatars of the apocalypse got hunted down by angry mobs (Simon mentioned explicitly)? Well, we also know from the tunnel cult that people didn't recognize Jon just from his looks, nor from his name; meaning the Eye didn't like, cosmically project who it's Special Little Boy was during the apocalypse. But we do know that avatars knew who he was, and that anyone who actually could see him walking the apocalypse could vaguely tell he might be able to help, a la Jordan. So, AU officially kicks off with Jon and Martin minding their own business trying to survive in the wreckage of the world post apocalypse and Jon being blinded after the Fears leave (spooky eye man loses sight instead of life), but Jordan Ant-Man is really pissed off that the guy who turned him into a monster during the apocalypse is getting off scott free, and so spreads word around that he knows who kicked off the apocalypse. Of course, many of the other avatars who don't want to die just yet corroborate this to try and get the heat off them, and it works. Cue bad times for Jon, and by virtue of standing up for him, Martin. Basically, my incredibly niche idea is that a show trial happens, and Martin tries his best to prove that Jon was basically innocent of ending the world and in fact had a hand in trying to save it. The end result is the judge (who I'm letting do whatever they want) sentences Jon to 3 years in prison. But, because people are still recovering and need an outlet for their rage, Jon will also be doing "community service" during that time. So long as the people who visit Jon's prison cell say ahead of time what they plan to do, and as long as they dont try to do damage to him that will significantly impact his quality of life outside of prison, its fair game. (Basically, nothing sexual, no taking limbs, nothing that would kill him before a medical professional can see to him).

However not everything in the AU is doom.and gloom! Tim and Sasha are alive in this one! (Tim's a former Desolation avatar who decided to just say "fuck the Institute" after he rose from ashes, and Sasha was just kinda spit out into a Domain after Jon obliterated the not-them during the apocalypse.) I have really sappy Jon&Tim moments already written. They finally have a chance to heal your honors.

Anyways lemme know if that sounds interesting and if I have the time I'll def post something or two for whumptober based on this AU.

[hauntedliz]

Get To Know Me Tag!

I was tagged by @toads-treasures whom I love and adore. Thank you I enjoy talking about myself.

I'll tag @laneofpennies @kingofthebottleshooters and @ghostfilesbirch if y'all would like to. No preasure of course! Also if anyone else sees this and would like to do the tag please consider this me tagging you. I will claim you, promise!

Last Song: Strange by Galaxie 500. I am here to spread the good word about Lisa Frankenstein and the incredible Lisa Frankenstein soundtrack (this song is not on it, but it is in the movie, so I made my own playlist). Anyway listen to the Lisa Frankenstein soundtrack.

Currently Watching: I'm honestly not watching any shows right now. Hermitcraft Season 10, I guess. I am watching all Star Wars media in universe order. I finished Andor recently, so I'm going to start the new season of Bad Batch soon when I can emotionally deal with it.

Three ships: The ships that I am currently the most enamored with all include OCs. Astarion and Lapis, Astarion and Phoebe, Pippa and Rolan, Durgetash in general. I have a worm in my brain, you see. Other than BG3-related ships: Bellarke, Hellcheer, and Michael Shelley and Gerry Keay are three ships that have been very important to me most recently. I have a million Lisa and Creature edits on my fyp so them too. See Lisa Frankenstein.

Favorite Color: Light blue or pink. I do also like green.

Currently Consuming: I'm reading House of Leaves, so I am eating the pages of that book currently. I am listening to the current TAZ campaign and TMA Protocol but I am a little behind on the latter. toad might've spoiled a character appearance and now i am afraid to listen lest my heart burst from my chest

First Ship: I felt very passionately about Sonny and Chad from Sonny with a Chance, but I'm sure there was something before that. Maybe Simba and Nala from Lion King lol

Place of Birth: Hopital

Current Location: The Eastern Timezone.

Relationship Status: 520+ hours in Baldur's Gate 3

Last Movie: All of Us Strangers

Currently Working On: I am very busy thinking about working on things. I am thinking about finishing drawing my friend's Call of Cthulhu character. I am thinking about writing about my Baldur's Gate OCs. It is pretty time consuming business thinking about the Liz and Toad Fanfic Universe (LTFU).

[redsavant]

(CW: Canon-typical discussions of violence, police brutality, blood, death) So this kind of extends from u/Wrigglebuggo’s post on Reddit about TMA as a melancholic walk “amongst ruins”, where most of the people Jon has been reading about and most of the supernatural “community” is dead and gone by the time Jon is Archivist. That, combined with the statement we got in TMA 200, made me realize something about the Fears: they’ve also deteriorated. What the Archivist describes in TMA 200 sounds like a golden age for the Fears. They’re less distinct, less focused, but more in a way that’s hard to describe. Everyone knew them and knew nothing about them. There were no words to explain the fear. Then, people started speaking, they invented language and words, and they started breaking the Fears apart. But we humans have told stories since we had the words to do so, and I can’t imagine how the Fears must have spread over campfires, along long and lonely roads, during watches atop castle walls. The examples the Archivist gives - the Hermit who brings darkness, the Chieftain who breathes decay, the Traveler whose face is a blank - those sound like legends, the kinds of tales that embed themselves in a cultural consciousness and never really go away. "We caught a guy and his creepy cult putting a boy in black water in a warehouse, shot four of them, and arrested the rest" on a police report, as a news story... like, sure, that's disturbing, but 99.99% of people are going to glaze over that in the morning paper while they're busy getting ready for work. But 2500 years ago? A traveling caravan stops by for the night, you trade goods and some stories, and they tell you about the town further to the south that just vanished under a night that didn't end? And then in contrast, we have modern-day society. Like user thevoidcannotbefilled noted, TMA’s heavily shaped by modern capitalist society, from the obvious (Kulbir Shakya “drowning in debt” in TMA 129) to the more subtle (the "Sleep No More” billboard that tormented Lydia Halligan in TMA 79).  But even with elements like debt, the rise of the Flesh as the poster fear for commodification and processing, and so on... The Dark used to be one of the core Fears, and it still informs so many of the others - the unknown, and what could be out there. But the modern-day Dark cultists have to willingly hold their hands over their ears, close their eyes, and go "la la la" to avoid all the things we know. We know so much that they have to try to be ignorant. The Hunt used to be, as the Archivist said, teeth and eyes and fear and blood, an incoherent mess of adrenaline, the chase and being chased, whether that’s for something abstract like El Dorado or for something specific like vampires. But I don’t think it’s coincidence that the most prominent manifestation of the Hunt in TMA is cops - the casual, banal brutality of abusing people who can’t fight back, with interrogation that never ends or with more direct violence. (And I feel like there’s something to be said about the Hunt specifically as a power imbalance Fear, with the direct invocation of conquistadors and the colonizing pillaging of the hunt for El Dorado, but that’s a post for someone else to make). The Slaughter is still around, definitely, with things like drone strikes and improvised explosives - the fear of sudden and terrible violence will never go away. But our perceptions are changing. There are no fifes and drums in war anymore, and the glory has rubbed away, leaving just the capitalist pocketing the soldier’s heart and thanking him for his service. There are plenty of scopophobia-related statements in TMA as well, but how well do those translate to reality? People joke about the FBI agents behind our webcams (thanks Aryashi!), we upload ourselves to Youtube for millions of people to look at, and the Eye itself doesn’t do anything with what it sees - it just stares blankly at the feed, scrolling endlessly, taking momentary pleasure from one tidbit before it’s forgotten and it moves on to the next. Overall, I don’t really know what to draw from this. I won’t go so far as to say the world was better in the past; that’s all kinds of problematic for a whole bunch of reasons.  But there’s also an element of loss to it somehow. The Fears, despite their awful manifestations, despite their (insensate, unknowing) victory, are weakened. There’s less to discover - and while TMA generally lands firmly on the side that it’s better not to get involved in what’s out there, there’s still that feeling that the world is mapped, the mysteries are explained, things are all documented.The monsters started to exist, and then they got named, and then they got shown, and we all know what happens when you show the monster.

[ollieofthebeholder]

to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 113: July 2003

It’s all too rare they have nights like this. Days, sure, they’ve had plenty of days where they can just be teenagers, but unless they’re off doing something for Gerry’s mum, they usually have to be home early—school in the morning, somewhere they need to be, you name it, Aunt Lily always has an excuse. But Gerry’s mother dragged them down to the South Downs hunting a Leitner that, it turns out, was already sold. Gerry’s mother was ready to blow a gasket until Martin put on the stammering, awkward act, threw in a couple words of Polish, and managed to charm the contact information for the man who purchased it out of the old bookseller. She’s so grateful, or acting so grateful anyway, that she gave them the night off…with the strict injunction that they’re to be to Dover by the first train out so they can head across to Calais, but still, a whole night of freedom. Gerry doesn’t think they’ve had that since the Poland trip.

And this is the perfect place for a night off, or near enough to it. The nearest village is small and doesn’t put out a lot of light, and despite this spot apparently being of interest to a certain variety of tourist, nobody hangs around the downs after dark. Gerry finds an open spot, checks to make sure there are no holes or anthills, and shakes out the old tartan picnic blanket he found in a shop earlier in the day.

“Here,” he says, kneeling down and smoothing out the wrinkles. “This is as good a spot as any.”

“Because you’re suddenly an expert on stargazing.” Nonetheless, Melanie flops down on the blanket and tucks her hands under her head.

Gerry looks up at Martin, just visible in the fading light of the day. “C’mon, Martin, take a load off, yeah? You’ve done a lot today. Let’s just relax for tonight.”

Martin smiles. The last rays of sunset catch his hair and make it sparkle like it’s been been spun out of rubies. “Okay, but if we get in trouble, it’s someone else’s turn to be responsible.”

They lie on their backs, heads close to one another, as darkness spreads towards the horizon and the stars begin to come out in a—for once—cloudless sky. A gentle breeze rustles the beech hanger just over the top of the hill and carries with it the faint scents of summer flowers. Martin folds his hands over his chest, and Gerry curls one arm behind his neck and lets the other rest comfortably in the center of the circle. The moon is nearly gone, and the sweep of the Milky Way gradually becomes visible overhead.

“It’s easy to see how religions get started on a night like this,” Melanie says, a bit dreamily. ���That looks like a river you’d expect to see a god sailing on, doesn’t it?”

“Or a road one could walk on,” Gerry agrees. “What do you think, Martin? If you were making a religion, what would you say the Milky Way was?”

Martin hums. “I think…it’s a brush stroke. The first broad, sweeping mark on the canvas of creation. The painting has only just begun, and someday…someday the whole of the firmament will be a complete painting, and when we look at it, we will truly understand what it’s here for.”

“And then what?” Melanie asks, tipping her head back to stare upside-down at her brother.

“And then we find out of the Great Artist brings out a new canvas or wipes this one clean and starts over, I guess.”

“The Age of Turpentine,” Gerry quips.

“Fine, Mr. Rembrandt, how does your religion go?” Martin retorts. “The gods walk the Milk Road…”

“The Starlight Road. No, the Starway,” Gerry corrects himself. “The sun is…a balloon. Yeah, that’s it. Every morning the Lightkeeper selects a new balloon and lets it carry him across the sky while he sleeps, and then he wakes up when it deflates and sets him down. Then he walks the Starway back to the—the balloonery and selects a new one, ready for the next day.”

“Is the reason the nights are longer in winter because it’s cold and takes him longer to walk?” Martin asks.

Gerry sits up briefly, staring at the black line of the horizon. “That’s genius!”

Melanie snickers. “I think the river is…where life comes from. There are two boats that sail along it, the Fisher and the—the Logjammer. The Logjammer is the one responsible for breaking up the clouds and keeping the Heavenly River flowing clear, and when he takes a night off, that’s when it rains. The Fisher is the one who scoops babies out of the stars and takes them to the Night Market, where the storks pick them up and take them to their families.”

Gerry settles back onto the blanket and looks up at the stars again. “Do you think there’s anything out there? Really? Other than the Fears?”

“If there’s not…” Martin somehow shrugs without taking his shoulders off the blanket. “Seems like an awful waste of space.”

“Is the ocean a waste of space, then?”

“There’s life in the ocean,” Martin points out. “Just not human beings.”

“True,” Gerry allows. He sighs contentedly and stares up at the sky. “Hard to imagine people being afraid of something so beautiful, isn’t it?”

“‘I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.’” The surprise is that it’s not Martin that quotes the old poem, but Melanie. They all know it, of course, it’s one of the first ones Martin ever memorized way back when, but still, Melanie’s not usually the one to start quoting.

Still, Gerry has to agree. “If more people lived where they could see how crowded the sky was, I don’t think space would scare them as much.”

“Depends on why, I guess,” Martin says.

Gerry exchanges a frown with Melanie. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Martin waves a hand at the firmament. “What about space scares people? If it’s the big open space, then yeah, that’s the Vast, and maybe seeing it cluttered with stars will make them feel less afraid. But if it’s how dark it is…okay, yeah, the stars and a full moon would probably ward off the Dark too, but all it takes is a big enough cloud, and if you’re actually up there, the stars are so far apart you wouldn’t be able to see. And then there’s what you said, about wondering if there was anything out there…I could see the Lonely having a hand in it, if you’re afraid that there’s nothing else in the universe. Maybe the Stranger if what you’re afraid of is what is. And, you know, you can’t breathe in space, and the pressure is so high, there’s a good argument to be made that it’s the Buried.”

Gerry blinks. “I…I never thought of that.”

“Well, we keep saying, the damn things overlap.” Martin goes quiet for a moment. “Gerry?”

“Mm?”

“Do you really think there are only fourteen Fears?”

Gerry’s not sure how to answer that. Obviously there are more than fourteen things to be afraid of, but he’s always just sort of…gone with the idea that they all more or less slot into the fourteen major categories. Especially since Martin has only ever seen fourteen different colors on Leitners and those touched by the Fears. But it’s somehow never occurred to him before this very minute that the exact same thing might fit into multiple categories at the same time and also one at a time.

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “There’s probably a better way to categorize them than Smirke’s method, but…I’ve never thought about it before.”

“Maybe we can come up with something better,” Melanie suggests. “Like the Dewey Decimal system, or the way they categorize symphonies.”

“I think those might be too specific,” Martin says, a little uncertainly. “Or too restrictive. Or too similar to Smirke’s system, just…breaking it down further. We’d have to come up with something that…allows for overlap, I guess.”

“Hmm.” Gerry taps his thumb against the ground thoughtfully. “I mean. You’re already seeing the colors. Maybe that’s the key to it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like…like there are all different shades, you know? And they sort of…bleed into each other. Like lilac is a shade of purple, but it’s kind of close to pink, too. And how teal has blue and green, but it’s different than blue-green. Maybe we should be thinking of them by color rather than…”

“I don’t think so,” Martin says. “Like I said, there are so many different things in space to fear, and they all filter into the Fourteen differently.”

“Like stars,” Melanie says.

“I—what?” Martin shoots her a puzzled glance.

Melanie waves at the sky herself. “Well, there are all sorts of constellations, right? And sometimes the bigger constellations have smaller ones inside them, or overlap with them, like how the Big Dipper is only part of Ursa Major and we talk about Orion’s Belt separate from Orion. But there are also stars that are special. Like Betelgeuse and Vega and the North Star and all. And they’re part of constellations, too, mostly. But the same star could be in multiple constellations.”

Martin seems to be mulling that over. “I like it,” he says eventually. “Makes more sense than the colors, anyway.”

“Hey,” Gerry says, but without a lot of heat.

“You know what I mean, Ger. You can’t mix but so many colors together or you get a kind of muddy greenish-brown mess. But Melanie’s right, as long as you’re drawing the lines yourself, the same star can be part of so many pictures.”

“Yeah, I know, just giving her a hard time,” Gerry says. “Anyway, what you said—what if that’s the key to it? Like—like maybe the Fourteen are colors, but it’s how they interact that make the actual Fears. It’s all in how you layer the pigment, and what kind of medium you’re using, you know?”

“Like letters,” Martin agrees. “Or sounds. The aah sound can mean so many different things depending on where it goes in a word, or what letters you combine with it, or how long you draw it out.”

“Or like…choreography,” Melanie says slowly. “I mean, there are only so many basic dance steps, but it’s how you combine them that makes the ballet. Or the waltz, or the samba, or…you get the idea.”

Gerry snorts. “Hell, why don’t we divide it up by taxonomy? Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, subspecies…”

“I think that runs back into the same problem as Smirke’s Fourteen.” Melanie sighs. “We’d still have to limit each thing to a single overall category.”

“Yeah, true.”

“Categorizing anything is hard,” Martin says, and there’s an almost bitter tone to it. “Like saying a tomato is a fruit—it is, but it’s also a vegetable, because ‘fruit’ means one thing in botany and another thing in cooking and ‘vegetable’ is a category that only exists in cooking—and people argue all the time about if potatoes count as vegetables. There are four voice types in choral singing but eight in operatic singing, and they’ve all got subcategories. Fish don’t exist in the scientific community because there’s no way to define ‘fish’ that doesn’t either include things we’ve already decided aren’t fish or exclude things we’ve already decided are fish, but everybody knows what ‘fish’ means, except that Eric at school told me that the Catholic church in the eighteenth century declared that beavers were fish for purposes of being allowed to eat them on Fridays during Lent.”

“So what you’re saying is we’d need a classification system that allowed for nuance,” Melanie says thoughtfully. “Like we were saying before. You give each fragment of something a value or a classification, and then mash them together to give a label to the thing.”

Gerry purses his lips briefly. “You’d need a computer program to keep track of something like that properly, I think.”

They fall silent again. The night gets darker and darker, even as the sky stays lit with stars—not enough to read or see by, but a good deal brighter and clearer than in London. Gerry thinks back to their earlier conversation about religion. With the sky looking like that, he has to admit, it’s hard to concentrate on fear. Easy to believe in things like hope and joy and goodness.

He almost thinks the other two have fallen asleep, and he’s starting to get a bit drowsy himself, when he hears Martin’s voice, so soft it’s almost below their hearing. “What if we’re going in the wrong direction?”

Gerry turns his head to look at Martin. Martin’s eyes are fixed on the sky. There’s something distant in them, though, almost like they’re looking at something beyond the stars…or maybe behind them. They reflect on the lenses of his glasses, and for just a moment, it almost seems like his freckles have turned to stardust. If Gerry didn’t know better, he’d think Martin was getting absorbed by the sky…by the Vast.

But that’s silly. The Vast hasn’t touched him, other than the occasional brush with a Leitner. Martin’s been Marked by the Eye, the Lonely, and the Spiral, but that’s it. He’d know if the Vast had touched him. Surely Martin would tell him.

Wouldn’t he?

He would, a voice whispers in the back of Gerry’s mind. It hasn’t touched him. You’re right. He’s safe from that one so far.

Gerry takes a small, quick breath and tries to refocus on the conversation. “What do you mean, Martin?”

Martin slowly turns his head so that he’s looking at Gerry and Melanie. There’s a faint worry in his eyes. “What if Smirke’s Fourteen are too complicated? I mean…he just liked balance. Everything had to have its opposite, kind of. What if there aren’t fourteen Fears? What if there are fewer?” He blinks a couple times. “What if they’re all just…Fear?”

It’s…an interesting theory, Gerry has to admit, but there’s an obvious flaw in it. “That color thing of yours, remember? You wouldn’t be able to see a difference between them if they were all one thing.”

“If you shine a torch through a prism, and it breaks into different colors, it’s all still light. You’re just seeing different wavelengths.”

“And there’s no way to put them back together,” Melanie says. She rolls over onto her stomach and props herself up on her elbows. “Once light’s gone through a prism, it’s separated into the different colors and that’s the end of it. You can’t mix it back to plain white light. So even if the Fears were all one thing at one point, they sure aren’t now. And there’s no way to mash them back together again.”

“I guess you’re right.” Martin rolls his head to look back up at the sky. “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to understand them. Smarter people than us have tried and failed.”

“Like the Archivist?” Melanie says, lying back down and turning over to look up as well. “Do you think she knows what they’re really about?”

“If she did, I don’t think she’d still be the Archivist,” Gerry says dryly.

Martin sighs. “I don’t think she has a choice. I-I mean, if you live long enough to get a title like the Archivist, you’re probably an Avatar. Like the Twisting Deceit. I don’t think she can get away from it now.”

“Do you think she wants to?” Melanie asks. “Or does she like being…like that?”

“Well, from all the stories we’ve heard, she certainly seems to like fucking with other Fears and blowing things up.” Gerry half sits up, almost convinced he can hear a low, keening, heartbroken moan, but when he listens again, the world is silent save the wind in the beeches. “But I guess…I dunno. I feel like if you’re aware enough to still feel things, even if you’re an Avatar, you aren’t going to enjoy being one. I bet if she had the opportunity to get rid of it, she would.”

“I know I would, if it were me,” Melanie says. “Not that I’m ever going to be that important or, or powerful, you know? But if I was, if I was trapped in something like that and I found out there was a way I could cut the Marks off me? I would.”

“Me, too,” Gerry says. “Nothing’s worth that.”

Martin, surprisingly, doesn’t say anything for a while. Finally, he says slowly, “I’d like to say I would, too, but…I don’t know.”

“You mean you wouldn’t walk away from all this if you could?” Gerry asks, his heart sinking a little. He’ll never abandon Martin and Melanie to this, but there’s a part of him that’s kind of hoped, someday anyway, they might all get out together.

“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Martin says. “If there’s a way to turn our backs on it all and forget about it, I’ll do that in a heartbeat. I’ve kind of got an idea how to, actually. But…I mean, being able to See the Marks and stuff…I don’t know that I’d stop that, even if I could.”

“I guess it’s useful,” Melanie says, a little uncertainly.

“It’s not that. It’s just…it’s part of who I am, you know? It’s been a part of me since I was eight years old. Would I really still be me if I cut off something that was part of me for so long?”

“Yes, of course,” Melanie says stoutly. “You’ll always be you, no matter what. Even if you, if you scoop out your eyes with grapefruit spoons and set them on fire or something.”

Martin chokes on a laugh. “Grapefruit spoons?”

“They’re a real thing! They’re, they’ve got kind of jagged edges to grip really well, but they’re small and skinny, so they’d be perfect for something like that.” Melanie pauses. “Not that I’m saying you should gouge your eyes out or whatever, just—”

“Yeah, no, I get it, I get it. You’re saying my Marks aren’t what make me…me.”

“Exactly.”

Gerry wonders, for just a moment, what he would be like if he wasn’t touched by any of the Fourteen. Whether he would still be the same person or if he’d be something, someone wholly different. If Martin and Melanie would still love him if he was completely free of it all.

Of course they would, the voice in his head murmurs, sounding infinitely sad, but Gerry isn’t sure he believes it. Still, no good in speculating on it now.

Anyway, it’s immaterial. Like Melanie said, none of them are ever going to be important enough—to any of the Fears—to have to make a decision like that. And even if they do, something tells him it still won’t matter. There probably isn’t any way to actually get free of them.

Well. There is. But there is no way in hell Gerry would ever allow that to happen to his siblings. Or do it to them.

He loves them. He won’t lose them, or let them be taken from him. Not without a serious fight.

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

Corrupted, chapter eleven: Swap - a Malevolent x TMA crossover

Tim experiments.

Jon believes.

Hastur wins.

Chapter 11 of Corrupted, a Malevolent x TMA crossover.

AO3

--------------

They step outside into gloom; the sun has long set. Tim winces. “I’m not getting that report to Detective Spooky on time. Oops.”

We shouldn’t need to, if Bouchard is true to his word.

“I’m putting a lot of faith in a couple of old dudes who ignored me to my face,” says Tim.

Hastur huffs. You are putting faith in me. That is all you need to do.

Tim rolls his eyes.

“I’m… sorry, what?” says Jon.

“Pardon,” says Tim. “Talking to my resident bossy ghost.”

Bossy ghost!

“Anyway, I just realized we’re being brilliant! We’ll just go investigate whatever the Eyeball priest wants us to in the dark. This can’t possibly go wrong.”

Jon is still struggling to catch up. “Eyeball priest?”

“Elias. He’s not pretending to be anything else, is he?” Tim stares at the torn-out notebook paper. “Wait a minute, he wants us to go to Cornwall?”

“Cornwall?” says Jon. “That’s hours south.”

“Then he wants us to go to Edinburgh?” says Tim. “Edinburgh?”

“And that’s over three hundred miles north,” Jon says. 

“Am I supposed to be losing them literally instead of with evidence, or something? Jon… can you remember exactly what he said?”

“That these six locations would get the police off your tail.” And Jon visibly tries not to ask, and just as visibly loses that battle. “Why are the police after you?”

“The guy inside me,” says Tim. “Those Fear things want to eat him, and they sent monsters to my house and trashed the place trying to find us. Police know whatever happened there is distinctly off, but I’m not exactly going to tell them ‘oh, you know, madness monsters, same old, same old,’ so they’re looking to pin it on me.”

“That’s terrible.” Jon’s eyes are huge. “Wait. They want to eat the thing inside you? Do these Fears always eat their own?”

“No. He’s not the same as them. He’s apparently some kind of… god?”

‘Some kind?’ Tim. Really.

“You have a god inside you.” And this, of all things, has flipped Jon’s skepticism switch. "A god."

“Yep!” said Tim. “He says he is, anyway.”

Says?

“Hm,” says Jon, putting a word of disbelief into the sound. It’s an amazing sound, absolutely dry and intellectually dismissive and desperately lacking confidence, and Tim wants to wrap him in a blanket and give him an ice cream. 

Apparently, Hastur does not want to do that. I would cause him such pain if I could. While screaming, he would believe me.

“Oh, shit, that escalated quickly,” says Tim. “Look, Elias believes this guy’s a god.”

“Well, Elias believes all of it,” counters Jon.

“All of what?”

“All of it. Do you understand what we do here, Tim?” says Jon.

“Supernatural… stuff?” Tim posits.

“We collect knowledge. Personal testimony in the form of statements, and information on eye-witnessed esoteric events. We then research what we can, finding empirical evidence to back up or disprove any claim. We are not, however, paranormal investigators.” Jon sniffs. “You will not find our research on YouTube, no matter how excellent it is—and it is excellent. The Institute’s motto is, ‘vigilo, opperior, audio,’ which means ‘I watch, I wait, I listen.’ We are a true repository of the arcane, and together with our sister institutes in China and the United States, we preserved knowledge that would otherwise be lost for its sibylline and highly improbable nature.”

“So… supernatural stuff,” says Tim after a moment.

“Fine, yes, I suppose,” says Jon.

He’s an ass, says Hastur.

He’s adorable, Tim thinks. “And Elias believes it all, you say?”

“He insisted to me that everything in the Archives is real.”

Tim stares. “All the stuff that’s spread all over the place down there? That seems a little upsetting.”

Jon’s face twitches. “It is, isn’t it? At least I know the library isn’t all true.”

“That’s where you worked, right?” Tim says. 

“Yes. I dug up background information on the stories there. I would say at least ninety-eight percent of it was complete hogwash.”

“So two percent was true.”

Jon hesitates. Swallows hard. Nods. “Yes. Undeniably. I believe that two percent would stand up in any court of law.”

If you don’t shut him up, Tim, I am going to fucking blast him through you.

“Geez, Hastur, chill,” says Tim. 

“What?” says Jon.

“He’s being scary.” Tim rolls his eyes.

“Hastur?” says Jon.

We are wasting time. Tim, you hardly need to spend hours on a train. We can make a portal to the towns in question.

“Uh, no, we can’t,” says Tim. “I really don’t feel like going and getting all those weird tools again.”

“Did you say Hastur?” repeats Jon.

“Yeah, Hastur. And no, I can’t make a portal. I’m not going shopping again.”

It would be worth the effort, Tim. We could be in Cornwall in moments.

“Excuse me.” Jon abruptly runs back into the Institute.

Tim blinks after him. “Right, well, guess I drove him off. Oops.”

Tim. Let’s do it. Leave right now.

“We’re waiting. I’m pretty sure he’ll come back.”

We should not wait. He will be nothing but a danger to us. He’ll slow us down.

Tim stretches, pacing a little under the sodium street lights. “What is your problem with him? I like him. He’s a little nerd. And obviously, he can run really fast, at least over short distances, so I don’t think slowing us down is an issue.”

Tim. Portal. Now.

“Buy a guy dinner first, would you?” says Tim. 

Tim.

“You’re the one getting commanding. Just relax. That guy can see threats we didn’t notice, and I’m not leaving without him.”

Fine. It clearly is not fine. Have you been to Cornwall? 

“Yeah?”

Can you clearly picture a location there?

Tim has a bad feeling about this. “Yeeeah?”

If you can see it clearly, then we should be able to do this without an issue once you gather what we need. You will focus on that spot, trying to see it from all angles, if possible, and say, Y' mgahnnn nglui, which means, I open the door.

“This seems really risky, Hastur. What if—”

Jon comes banging back out again, skids to a stop, locks the door behind him, then runs down the stairs. “Ah-HA!” he says, holding up a folder.

Ugh. What’s he doing now?

“He’s got a yellow folder?” says Tim. “Sorry. Hastur can’t see you.”

“Well, this may be relevant to him,” says Jon, and hands it over.

Tim shifts so he can see it more clearly under the street light. “What’s this? It says, ‘Yang, P.: Notes and Recordings.’”

“It’s the transcription of a tape unfortunately lost, though we do have several copies dated within a week of receiving the original. This is the journal of a Peter Parker Yang, private investigator, who lived in Arkham, Massachusetts, in the United States. He experienced vivid hallucinatory dreams about a man who was taken by Hastur, the King in Yellow, and Mister Yang ended up dreaming about what happened to that poor man.”

“Fucking hell, are you serious?”

Jon adjusts his glasses. “Dead serious. I told you—we are serious researchers.”

Tim resists the urge to scratch him under the chin like a cat. “There’s a lot in here.”

“Yang dreamed all this over months of time. He recorded it; we know it’s legitimate because he described places and names he would have had no way to know about, but were confirmed via numerous other eyewitnesses both before and after his time, in multiple cultures.”

An alternate, says Hastur softly. I see. Yang received echoes via etheric resonance. 

“Alternate?” says Tim.

This was the partner of Arthur Lester in my time.

Tim is very still. “Gonna hazard a guess. Was the guy Yang dreamed about named Arthur Lester?”

Jon startles. “Yes. How did you know that? The Institute has the only copies of this.”

“He told me about Arthur. Guy’s dead.”

“Well,” Jon says, paling. “Well, he... I…” He rallies. “Of course he is! He’d be something like a hundred and ten years old by now. I just wish we’d had this Arthur’s side of it. Yang didn’t have very nice things to say about your Hastur, for the record.”

“I’ll bet he didn’t,” Tim says slowly.

Hastur rumbles. You may tell him that if he behaves, I will speak of the things he so wishes to hear. He may regret this desire afterward.

Tim feels a little like a dog-walker, trying to get growling mutts to sniff each other’s butts and get it over with. “Hastur says he’s willing to answer questions about it later.”

“Really?” Jon’s look… changes. It goes hungry, ravenous, not entirely dissimilar to the way Tonner eyed him over her desk.

Tim swallows.

“That would be truly something,” Jon says, reeling it in and adjusting his glasses.

"Sure," says Tim weakly, because what the hell was that?

If you do the portal spell, I'll answer his questions.

“Oh, it’s bribery, is it?” says Tim. “Wait a second. This is dated from the 1930s.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Right. Hastur… you’re going to have to explain the whole three thousand years gap thing.”

Simply done. It is a timeline issue.

“Doesn’t sound so simple?”

Alternate timelines converge in unusual ways. The fact that the Parker Yang of this universe picked up echoes of what happened in my universe thousands of years ago isn’t as strange as you think. When there are doubles of people—or, far rarer, people are reborn—they often pick up echoes of other versions of themselves.

Tim looks at Jon. “It’s Doctor Who rules.”

It is not Doctor Who rules. This is serious.

“Were you serious about the portal?” says Tim.

“I’m sorry,” says Jon. “But I really need to know when you’re talking to him and when you’re talking to me.”

“So you believe me now?”

“Not necessarily about him being a god, though I’m sure he thinks he is,” says Jon (and Hastur growls). “But rather that you knew a name you couldn’t possibly have known—that speaks to a source of knowledge outside the Institute, and quite specific to this case.”

“You’re really wired for this stuff, aren’t you?” says Tim.

“I love it,” says Jon quietly. “If I could do nothing but read and learn and research all day, forgoing all the annoying biological processes, that’s what I would do.”

What he is actually doing is wasting our time.

Tim sighs. “He’s demanding tonight.”

“What is he demanding?”

“He wants me to make a portal.”

“A portal? I don’t understand.”

“Like a wormhole, or something, right to Cornwall.”

“You can do that?” The hunger is back. “You can actually do that?”

“Maybe. I haven’t tried yet. I’m a little scared to. Apparently, I have magic."

Jon makes a face.

"Aw, you don’t have to make the face. I wouldn’t believe it either, except… I’ve done two spells. Successfully.”

Jon stares. “What spells?”

“I got out of some ropes I’d been tied in by exploding them. Then, I used a finding spell to locate a book—Hastur’s book—that’s been taken by… an enemy. They both worked. I didn’t expect them to.”

Jon has the most interesting look, torn between needing this to be true and needing this to be false, and it is making him seem so young. “Why were you roped—never mind that. Prove it.”

Doing some magic ought to make them both happy. “Hastur, give me a small spell. Nothing to hurt anybody. I don’t have any rope to explode, and I’m not doing the finding spell again.”

Fm'latgh, Hastur says smoothly.

“Which is?”

Fire. You can hold flame in your hand.

“Without burning myself, or setting him on fire?” Tim says. “Or anything around here on fire.”

Yes. You will literally hold flame in your hand, cupped, and nothing will burn unless you will it to. The magic responds to you, Tim. It encapsulates and enfleshes your desire. That is why you must know yourself, and be clear in head and heart. I will teach you some meditation techniques.

Tim exhales slowly. “We’re in a weird 80s movie now, I guess. Stand back a little. Gonna try something.”

Jon obediently skips five steps back.

Tim holds out his hand. He tries to imagine a tiny flame, not even match-size, in control and flickering. Focuses on this idea; refuses to let it grow, refuses to let it warm the corners of his mind. “Fm’latgh.”

Of course, the flame is big.

Not too big. It doesn't go out of control, doesn’t leap from Tim to devour Jon’s sweater vest. It is, however, not the small and subtle flame Tim imagined.

He yips and leaps backward.

Jon yips and leaps backward.

Hastur cackles like a mad old witch on testosterone.

And Tim realizes he doesn’t know how to turn it off. “Hastur! The fuck! Cancel! Stop!”

Just will it gone, Tim! You can do it. Picture it: extinguished, air gone, the flame dying out and going to black smoke above your hand, then dispersing in the wind!

Tim has always had a grand imagination, and without meaning to, he imagines snuffing it with his hand.

It goes out with a sizzle—and Tim is burned.

“Fuck!” Tim cries, shaking his hand wildly.

Easy. We can heal it.

“That… you…” Jon approaches, reaches, hesitates.

“Yeah, go ahead and look,” says Tim. “Ow. Gods, that hurts. Always forget how bad a burn hurts until you get another one. Fuck!”

Easy. Imagine your hand being healed, and say, ph'lloig. That means remember. You are telling your hand to be what it was before you burned it.

“I don’t… I mean, I guess I know my hand, but I don’t remember it exactly? Hastur, will this give me a little baby hand, or something?”

Only if you imagine yourself with one.

“Don’t think about an elephant, got it,” says Tim, mad because it hurts.

“You’re really burned,” says Jon, seriously, having apparently satisfied his need to verify a lack of wires or gadgets hidden in Tim’s skin. “Let me get the first aid kit.”

It really, really hurts. "Wait."

Use the spell. Be instantly healed.

Tim stands on a fence, balanced, unsure. 

Magic. Magic. (And his hand hurts.)

Dangerous and not yet fully controlled magic. (And his hand hurts.)

But he’s being chased by god-eaters. And gray-skinned monsters. And crazy Hunt-cops. (And his hand hurts.)

It’s risky, but it seems like learning how to control this might be the option that keeps him alive longest.

Also: magic.

“Tim?” says Jon.

Tim, says Hastur.

Tim know how it feels now: like flexing a muscle in his mind, one he was never aware of before. Except he was. He’s been using it all his life to get people to see him. Hoping they’d like him.

And he has an idea. “Hastur,” he says slowly. “Why are we using that weird language for spells?”

It is my language—the language of gods. As such, its meaning is narrowed, precise. It allows for better control of your power.

“So theoretically, I could use my own language.”

Hastur hesitates. I wouldn't. English is imprecise, relying too much on connotation and context.

“Except I’ve been doing that, haven’t I? Just by instinct,” says Tim.

It isn’t the same as what we discussed earlier. That is vague, not a precise spell; the equivalent of waving a flag, not threading a needle.

But Tim’s instinct is almost never wrong—and it’s telling him this is not what Hastur thinks. He looks at his hand (and his stomach turns because that is really burned). He remembers how his hand feels normally, just his hand, flexing and faithful and strong. Then, he whispers, “Heal.”

And he flexes that muscle.

Jon gasps.

So does Hastur.

His hand tingles, a cool wash that erases the pain, and it's repaired. He gawks at it.

“Impossible,” whispers Jon, holding Tim’s hand so close to his face that his breath tickles. “Right in front of… I saw it. I checked the wound—it was real! I still have blood on my fingertips, and—”  He touches his tongue to it.

“Ew!” says Tim.

“That’s real blood!” says Jon as if he won the lottery.

Tim starts to laugh. "I did it. I did it!"

You did, but there may be a cost.

Tim can't stop laughing. "I fucking... did you see that?"

"I saw," says Jon, and Tim realizes Jon is crying.

“Hey, uh… whoa, hey,” Tim says, eyes wide.

Jon wipes his face viciously on his shirt sleeve. “It’s real. This is real.”

“Yeah. I, uh. I’m still getting used to it,” says Tim, and laughs again. "I just did fucking magic right in the middle of London! In the year of our lord 2019!"

Jon laughs with him, weakly, and wipes his eyes again. "And I got to see it!”

Timothy, says Hastur slowly. That… means things.

“What does?” says Tim. “That I’m not what you expected?”

More than that. This isn’t gods-damned Merlin. This is something else.

“Yeah?”

“What’s he saying?” Jon is all in. “What’s he saying to you? What does he sound like? How does a god sound?”

“Hey, maybe you could hear him,” says Tim.

He can’t hear me without also hearing other disembodied beings, so I wouldn’t advise trying to perform that little feat.

“Which means you think I can do it,” says Tim.

A beat. Yes.

Jon is still leaking a little. He wipes his eyes again, then rummages and finds a handkerchief in his bag.

“So he sounds… really good, actually,” says Tim.

“Good?”

“It’s a deep voice. Resonant. You can sort of feel it, you know?”

Jon’s eyes are wide. “Feel it? But it sounds human?”

“Sort of? If I hadn’t known all of this, I’d have assumed it was some guy speaking into something. Impressive voice, good elocution—almost an American accent? Not quite? Really bossy, though.”

Tim.

“Really bossy. Like, you wouldn’t even believe.”

Tim. We need to go to Cornwall—and I think we should take the train.

Hastur sounds subdued this time, rather than bossy.

“What? After all of that? Are you feeling all right?" says Tim.

I have a lot to consider.

Jon is looking at Tim as if he glows.

Tim clears his throat. “Right. New thing. Should we, uh. Do this here on the street?”

"Do what?" says Jon.

"A portal," says Tim, because he's feeling reckless, because—

(Because he got mad when he hurt himself doing it Hastur's way, and that isn't necessarily Hastur's fault, but now, Tim's instinct is skewed.)

Tim. Tim, wait.

"He's eager. Been asking me to do it for a while now."

Jon's eyes go even wider. "We're really going to just... travel somewhere else?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Never did it before."

Tim! Don't try this without the tools.

Tim is going to try this without the tools. "Let me concentrate." And he closes his eyes.

Tim!

Nope. Eyes closed, picturing the spot in his mind. That bench, that bush, that bin, probably still overflowing with fast-food wrappers.

Tim! You don't know what you're doing.

Well, maybe Hastur doesn't, either. Tim pictures the lamppost there. The smell and sound of lions. He flexes that muscle.

This time, something in his head hurts—a sharp twinge, like maybe he's straining that unused muscle a bit.

Tim!

“Tim?” Jon squeaks.

Tim opens his eyes to find a hole in the air.

Through it comes the sounds of a zoo at night, the chittering of nocturnal things, the gentle waft of musk and hay and animals. There is no sign of people; the zoo is closed. But just as he'd imagined, there it is: the bench, the lamppost, and the overflowing bin.

“What…” whispers Jon.

“First kiss on that bench,” says Tim, staring. “Right there. Smelled like old ketchup and chips, and I didn’t care.”

Bench? What? What did you do? Tim, tell me!

“Made a portal in the zoo.”

The… the zoo?

“Incredible,” Jon whispers. “I can smell it.”

Tim,  where is this portal? What area of the zoo are you picturing?

“We were watching the lion enclosure,” Tim says.

Hastur makes a low sound. So… did you account for that before placing your portal?

“Account for… wait, what?”

And inevitably, a lion steps into view.

It is walking forward, creeping, curious; it slinks onto the walkway ahead of them as though coming through the portal Tim made, but was definitely not doing so from Chelsea.

"How does that work? Why would it... oh fuck. I made a hole in the enclosure!” Tim whispers.

The lion turns around and looks them in the eye. She's magnificent; low to the ground, muscled, her fur a tawny gold even in the half-light of a zoo closed for the night. And she growls.

Close it!

Jon makes a tiny sound and raises his bag over his head as if to throw it.

Tim wishes the portal closed with all his might, with everything in him, flexing whatever that muscle is as hard as he can.

The opening vanishes.

It's more than a sharp twinge this time. Maybe something in there popped. He doesn't know.

“Shit!” Jon says, and Tim falls down.

#

He wakes on the train.

It’s familiar; the rhythmic, gentle jostling, the sound of the track below. The rare bits of conversation that survived the solitary experience of portable media. He has no memory of getting on the train, but he has another, distinctly larger concern: his left eye has gone dead.

He sits up with a gasp.

Across from him, Jon jumps badly and spills part of his paper cup of tea. “What do you want now?” he snaps.

Tim stares at him, shaking a little. He blinks. Rubs his eyes; no, the left one is black, definitely black. “Jon,” he says. “What happened?”

And Jon’s eyes go very wide. “Tim?”

“Yes?” says Tim, because who else is he supposed to be?

Jon plops the cup into the holder (sloshing more out of it) and comes to him right away, crouching, checking his pulse, peering into his face. “It’s really you?”

“As opposed to fucking what?” says Tim, because he refuses to believe the alternative, because—

Me.

Hastur sounds the same. Not louder, or anything like that. But oh, dear gods… he sounds smug.

[fanartbyherd]

Another one, this is mostly just for it looking nice.

I give up on not making these posts long.

Though this is Michel and Gerry when they are at their largest control and strength of their power.

Some mild spoilers, for tma, and this fic.

So what better time to talk about power scaling.

This isn’t the most clear cut and dry. Power tends to be a a bit fluid and unpredictable

Now there is an entire field of study to what they are and what they do. Though to quote from the fic itself “…one of the most prominent academics in that field before she went off the deep end. A common trend for academics in that field. ….they either died, went missing, went crazy, or became librarians.”

In other words that’s what I would call an occupational hazard. Notably Gerry is somewhat exaggerating.

So before I get into power scales and such I should probably talk about what I have changed in regards to the powers.

First of there’s three of them! But they are also all the same thing. It has a lot to do with what humans call them more than the nature of the power itself.

The line between the knowing and the beholder is so thin it’s mistaken for the other all the time. I think it’s better to think of it as looking at the same thing from different angles.

A bit similar to how it works in TMA proper, the powers individually exist at the same time they do not and are a collective.

So there’s three kinds of powers. They are called pantheons

The dread pantheon, the knowledge pantheon and the adoration pantheon. More on that some other time.

Quick reference:

- Dread: most of the ones we are familiar with.

- Knowing: intellect, and instinct. Awareness of the world around you. It is definitely a power that leans more heavily on humans to feed but is still found in animals (too a greater extent than humans thought before!) this power was heavily favored during the enlightenment.

Includes: the knowing, the dreaming, strategy, the light, the speaker, the crafters,

- Admiration: love and feeling. Though often not just love, it is a lot of other emotions, even some of the ones we are familiar with from tma, the lonely, the web and to some minor extents the corruption, the desolation and even the spiral. Needless to say it’s complicated.

Includes: hope, agape (unconditional love) , stroge (friendship) , philia (familial) , Eros (passion), hatred and envy.

I’ll probably explain this in more detail at some other point.

In the meantime power scale.

For the majority of people this is irrelevant most of the time so they use a rather informal system of ranking. It’s the older one that has been around since slightly before the scientific revolution. (European centric) so was spread around the world by colonialism. Other places had used thier own system prior. Along with thier own names. This actually did change how the powers tended to manifest. For example the craft in Europe is not associated with shapeshifting, but in parts of Africa it is.

No, monsters and entities look and behave a bit differently depending on the circumstances and cultures that manifest them.

So the general system in order from most powerful and rarest to least powerful but most common.

Demi-god, avatar, the named, the aligned, the touched, normal people.

- Demi-gods: the physical embodiment of the power. There have not really been any known demigods since the renaissance. In fact to the point no one knows how a person becomes one or even if they where ever a real thing.

-avatars- these are well documented but rare, there’s different degrees of avatars but they are all deeply tied to their power. For example I state at the beginning of the fic that there’s five distortions in the world. There are normally twenty or less avatars of any power in the world.

- named, here’s where what most people in TMA proper fall into. This also includes things like werewolves or vampires or other such creatures that we have named.

-aligned, when it comes to people with power who know they have it and use it, they are in this group. Generally permanent but can fade or at least go dormant if not attended too.

-touched, often temporary not noticeable in every day life. Everyone has had a touch of something at some time. But can fade away in an hour to a few days or even stick around for a few years, but will fade as time goes on.

This is different for monsters.

Now this is the general layman term for these that have become popular over the centuries (in part thanks to colonialism) but there are other ones, some are religious classifications, but then there is the one that came around during ww1 and was standardized during ww2 (really it became a well known practice in the late 1930s but grew in the 1940)

This is the alphabetical numerical system that is designed to assess how dangerous a creature or thing is. It originated as a way for government to know what entities where attacking troops and civilians the most and what ones could be dealt with and then what ones could be dealt with first.

Messy as it is the ranking system goes something like this:

S - most powerful, it’s essentially the equivalent to an avatar. They don’t have a ranking for demigods equivalent. Mostly due to the before mentioned lack of any demigods for a long time.

A iii. Could destroy an entire city.

A ii. Causes areas and objects they interact with to be touched by a power.

A i. Intelligent and show planning, likely once human,

B ii your average giant beasts, things like sea monsters, giants and such creatures of the vast.

B i. Ranking for well known monsters often have their own groups that deal with them. Things like the vampires, and doppelgängers.

C ii. Lowest ranking given to creatures that where once humans. Because legally if it was human it has to be delt with in a different manner.

C i- your average monster that crawls out of the otherworld.

D -legal limit for ownership of a pet with power with out having a license for it. Also this is what Michel’s “cat” is.

E- what you would find on a normal ghost hunt. In theory dangerous but not life threatening unless something goes really wrong.

F -least powerful. It’s essentially the same as a creature being aligned.

Numerals are rarely added to the rankings and most monsters are simply referred to by the Letters.

This information is not super important for the fic as it’s only brought up a few times. As most of the characters use the less formal system.

Governments in this world tend to try and keep track of who has what powers and such, but that is a whole mess on its own, and it is not well kept track of. This of course depends on the country and stuff. With some barely keeping a regrasty while others are strict about it.

This is all very silly to some extent. But this is what I have written so I guess I will just go with it.