#so it could be a different but parallel world to theirs if left as is

[turtleblogatlast]

I am once again overcome by the sheer magnitude of pranks Mikey and Leo could commit on the world of archaeology through their combined abilities of time and space

With enough time for Mikey in particular to be strong enough to make a small time portal - again within Leo’s portal opened in Someplace, Somewhere - they could plant so much shit just to mess with historians.

Like - Mikey wanted to try painting Greek-style pottery and Leo is like “hey hey wait…”

And now there is newly discovered evidence of Greek depictions of humanoid turtles laying around.

[fabseg-creator]

My review about Miraculous World: Paris, Tales of Shadybug and Claw Noir

This is a (first) review about a Miraculous element (especially an episode form Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir).

This post contains spoilers.

Today, I've watched the Special Episode. I am prepared for the watching. I will reveal my aggregation in the end of the post.

And now, time to read:

Plot:

This happens in the same moment (at the night) as the episode Destruction (5.03). After Monarch has been cataclysmed at the left arm and before he configurates the stolen Miraculouses.

In a parallel world, a Butterfly superhero named Hesperia (Gabriel Agreste/Gabi Grassette) who is helped by Alya, Nino, Max and Markov, leaves his homeworld universe for escape from Shadybug (Toxinelle) and Claw Noire (Griffe Noire), two evil versions of Ladybug and Cat Noir. When the three characters come to the Ladybug and Cat Noir main universe, Hesperia teams up with the two titular heroes for make the ShadyClaw duo into good people. At the other side, the evil counterparts try to steal the Butterfly miraculous to Hesperia (and later to try to combine the Ladybug and Cat powers for make their wishes).

I've learned about news elements in the Miraculous lore by watching the Special:

They exist some billions an infinity of Parallel Worlds in the lore.

Each Parallel World is home to one Tikki and one Plagg (so One Ladybug holder and one Cat holder).

The inconvenients from the Ladybug's and Cat's powers (secondary effects)due to their excessive using. Shadybug and Claw Noire cause their own deterioration in their bodies by using their power for the evil.

The morale about the hope in dark and sad moments (Thanks, Hesperia.)

The parallel world (ShadyClaw/Hesperia's world) is a dystopian world ruled by the Supreme

Hesperia's, Shadybug's and Claw Noir's backstories

What I liked:

The Hesperia opening in the intro (that was WTF but that was fun)

The coming of Shadybug and Claw Noire, their odd relationships

The Claw Noir's lines and moments

The Kamiko (good alternate name to Akuma)

The akumatization forms: Chat Céleste (Cat Noir) and Ubiquity (first Alya and later Ladybug)

Ladyfly (Marinette with Ladybug + Butterfly unification)

The travels across multiple parallel worlds (Hi, Scarabella and Kitty Noire. Hi, Mister Bug and Ladynoire.)

The concept of Re-Verse (the idea of what would Marinette and Adrien have looked like if theirs lives had been different from the Canon)

The thing how Monarch has failed (again) to take the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses when he travelled across parallel worlds.

What I disliked:

The lack of end post-credits scene: I would like to see what happens in the Hesperia's world after the battle (interractions between the reformed Shabybug and Claw Noire, Hesperia, Alya ans Nino about reconciliation ans reorganisation of the Resistance against the Supreme).

The absence of other Miraclass counterparts, Luka, Kagami, Félix, Zoé, Chloé and Lila/Cerise (Only Alya, Nino, Max and Markov from the class appear in the episode as parallel counterparts)

The missing full appearance of the Supreme (his/her appearance from the shadow for reveal himself/herself/themself to spectators could make the cliffhanger effect for a sequel).

What I want to know for the future:

The most intriguing point, for me, is: The Supreme (This hidden character I have just mentioned in this post)

Who is the Supreme ? Human or Deity ? Big Brother (1984, George Orwell) ? How do s/he looks like ?

All I've learned about him/her/them is:

The Supreme is an entity/being who rules the Hesperia's homeworld (possibly the Hesperia's entire universe).

S/He is a tyrant, a dictator (worst than Chloé, possibly more machiavelic and charismatic than Cerise, more dangerous than Monarch) on this Earth (or simply Paris).

S/He hates the Love, the Freedom/Liberty, the Justice, the Happiness, positive emotions and particularly the superheroes.

It's him/her/they who is THE overarching antagonist of the Paris Special (even if s/he is only mentioned many times). S/He's so more antagonistical than Monarch.

S/He makes Hesperia and the Resistance from this world (and by extension Ladybug 2 (former Shadybug) and Cat Noir 2/Paw Noir (former Claw Noir)) as Outlaws.

It's him/her/them who given the Ladybug and Cat miraculous to Emo Marinette and Emo Adrien. Ironical and Ridiculous from the Supreme !

S/He is too powerful, too surnatural and too overcheated: s/he has a great control on the Miraculous Ultimate Absolute Power. S/He has implanted a blockage spell on Tikki and Plagg for prevent anyone to summon Gimmi.

ML theory: I'm thinking the Supreme is probably a evil type of Guardian of Miraculouses. A Fallen Guardian (NOT Master Fu NOR Su-Han). S/He has many knowledges about Miraculouses and their using + the Absolute Power.

My personal aggregation on the Paris Special:

I've enjoyed to see the episode. The narrative is excellent. The idea of Multiverse in the Miraculous lore is well found. The various animations from the episode are fun. Miraculous World: Paris, Tales of Shadybug and Claw Noire is a wonderful episode.

Result: 10/10

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

-The World's most Multiversal DND Party!-

(featuring @danganronpasurvivoraskblog, @a-student-out-of-time, @finalverse and @despair-to-future-arcs)

[MORE INFO UNDER CUT]

//So there were a lot of talks about the main protagonists of mine and three other well-known Danganronpa ask blogs forming a DND part together on Mod Bubbles blogs, and as an artist, and a major DND fan, I could not resist.

//My little autistic cogs in my little autistic brain got turning and I basically made full on character sheets for all four main protags of each of the blogs; Kuripa from Survivor, Hajime from ASooT, Nagi from NWPM, and Aliza-chan from Finalverse

//I won't post the full sheets because I don't know how many people would want to see that, plus it's a shitton of information that I just don't want to bother with. But outside of the character cards above, here's a brief summary of every character in this "AU" shall we say.

Hajime - The party leader. Was once a young boy who never stood out, but gained the gift of a prophecy that showed him a dark future wrought by dark lord Junko Enoshima. Now with the power to reset himself every time he dies, the number of times depicted in his magical left eye, he dedicates his life to the journey of stopping the prophesized dark future. Sometimes he can be a bit cold and distant, always acting like the fate of the world rests squarely on his shoulders despite his teammates by his side, but he is capable, kind and a true leader.

Aliza - Aliza has a power with a similar origin to Hajime, which gravitates her towards him, and eventually is the founding reason she becomes his ally. Unlike him however, power is that to see and explore other universes parallel to theirs, where everything can be different, and she struggles to control it. The goal of her journey is to learn to use her power for good, and to escape the lofty expectations and cruelty of her family. She's a little bit clumsy and inexperienced as a result, with her wild magic sometimes landing her team in deeper trouble than they were originally, but she always means well and if nothing else, serves as the heart of the group.

Kuripa - He was originally a well-known artist and sculptor who lived a quiet life until a rogue in a steel mask raided his village and murdered his sister. For those who frequent this blog, you know how this story goes. He dedicated the rest of his life to hunting down the murderer, learning black magic arts and becoming a blood hunter, willing to sacrifice anything and anyone, including his own body, if it meant achieving his goal. He's a bit of a loose cannon and more violent than his peers when it comes to executing plans, much to Hajime, Aliza and Nagi's chagrin, but it's made up for in the fact that when he gets the job done, he REALLY gets the job done, and it makes them glad that he's an ally and not an enemy.

Nagi - Nagi was an Aasimar who was the guardian of a realm in the sky known as "Neo World" until she was attacked by Junko Enoshima's evil paladin right-hand, Mukuro Ikusaba, who was ordered by Junko to kill her and bring back a part of her body to show that she'd finished the job. After this encounter, Nagi miraculously survived, but Mukuro successfully tore her wings from her body. Nagi joins the party out of revenge, and despite her trauma, is still the most mentally sane member of the group, acting a lot like a team Mom of sorts.

//I'll also but transparent renders of the characters here if that tickles your fancy. Thank you for letting me pour my little nerd heart out.

[wordy-little-witch]

Hiiii stay hydrated:D also i just wanna ask if u can share some shuggy and crossguild headcanons?👉👈

Yeah of course! Thank you for the ask, lovely ♡ isk if you mean generic ones or romantic specific so I'll have both ♡♡♡

Shuggy

• Shanks was taken in on the Oro as a baby. Buggy was taken in a few years later, are 5-7 ish depending on adaptation ((my fanfic is around 7~ but that's Lore Based so whatever)). Regardless, Shanks was the first person Buggy actively showed signs of Trusting, despite his flailing and screaming. Shanks was attached from the get-go, and they very quickly became attached at the hip.

• fun fact: pirate captains had jurisdiction to officiate weddings for the crew. Shanks and Buggy got 'married' when they were about 9, thereabouts. Roger officiated it. It was really cute and simple and the boys both still have their rings from that day safely tucked away.

• Buggy is gender non-conforming, and the Roger Pirates were all really chill about it after the first few teasing events got shot down either by Roger himself or Shanks going nuclear on them. When Red first saw Buggy presenting more femme, he absolutely started blabbering, blushing as bright as his hair, and then proceeded to trip on his own feet, flail, and smashed his face into a wall. Buggy had to take him to Crocus for the nosebleed. He broke his nose. To this day, Buggy still won't let him live it down.

• the breakup in Loguetown goes a little differently because I simply Do Not Subscribe To That. They still had the moment in the rain. They still argued. Buggy still ran off. But Shanks when after him. It was them against the world, a notion hammered home with their sudden forced independence as the remaining adults on the crew left them behind in a town now dyed in their grief and agony.

Buggy could have hidden his presence away so thoroughly that he was but an invisible wisp in the world, but he doesn't. Shanks finds him. Drops to his knees at his back. Wraps him into a hug, face buried in dripping blue locks. There is silence between them.

"Why," Buggy chokes out, a million questions in one.

Shanks clings, breathes deeply, and sobs. "I'm scared." It's an answer to all of them. It's an excuse. It's a cry for help. It's a confession.

Buggy takes his hand, tilts his head back, rain running rivers down his face. He tells himself that's the only thing dripping on his cheeks, denies the burning in his eyes. "I am too."

They sit there together in the rain for what could be minutes, hours, days. They find comfort in each other, their edges raw and jagged but still theirs. The places they used to fit don't mesh as seamlessly anymore, but they're still there, still each other's. New, but not lost. Changed, but not finished.

• Shanks and Buggy still get on like cats and dogs, but they keep in touch. They aren't necessarily co-captains like they'd daydreamed in their youth, not enemies as they'd feared in their adolescence. They are allies, their crews parallel and cooperative. The Redhair Pirates are the Brawn. The Buggy Pirates are the Brains. They have their own specializations, their own strengths and weaknesses, but it is never hidden that they are more than allies, sister crews in all but name. The Red Force welcomes Buggy with open arms, and his word is as powerful as Shanks' on the deck and in the winds. Likewise, Shanks has equal authority with Buggy's crew and ship as well. It's a carefully kept secret.

• Marineford occurred and was the first meeting between them for a few years. Buggy, nerves shot, exhausted, half starved, and still impacted from his time as a prisoner in Impel Down, latches to Shanks, so Safety, to Home like a starfish. Of course, most perceive his version of latching as antagonism, but everyone who Knows just knows.

• they curl up together in the captain's cabin, and Shanks has Buggy strip bare so he can look over all the wounds and press kisses and care into pale, freckled flesh. Eventually he wraps Buggy into one of his robes, angles his body to hold the other in his lap, and sits on the bed as a silent sentry. Buggy, finally safe, finally warm, finally able to rest, simply shatters, sobs wracking his body as he clings and wails and panics, finally falling from survival mode and baring the weight of the entirety of his ordeal. Shanks holds him through it all.

• once things die back down, once both are little more functional, a little less clinging in codependency, they have a discussion. The Navy knows. The world is changing. They have options to choose from and choices then to make. They opt to stop hiding their alliance, raising the curtains for the final act as it were. Only nobody makes an explicit announcement, neither are flying each other's flags, and the behaviors remain mostly the same. They "stop hiding" and yet still incredibly few motice any difference - and fewer still put together the pieces. The Marines don't see the forest for the trees.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Cross Guild

• Crocodile decided on that stolen Marine shop, escaping prison, that the Clown was Hiding Something. He was intriguing. So when an opportunity presented for that loan, he accepted.

• Mihawk knew tangentially that there was a "history" between Shanks and the Clown, though he will admit he tuned most of the details out after the fifth drunken ramble about how soft that blue hair was. He could tell the other's Haki was unusual, and the dichotomy of his pedigree to his presentation was Odd to say the least. He was a puzzle, and Mihawk did enjoy a good puzzle in his spare time...

• falling in love with the clown was not on either of their itineraries, and yet between the bleeding of days, their touches flowed from harsh and bruising to softer, encouraging, searching, studying. It is only looking back that they can see how rapid a shift it was between the initial animosity to something cordial and hopeful, a span of less than a month. And Buggy was sharp eyed and sharp tongue through it all.

• apologies were given and forgiveness was earned through effort and dedication. They went from antagonistic opportunists to peaceful cohabitation with surprising ease once the first hurdles were conquered.

• with Buggy's trust came his Trust and friendship, a new experience for both dark haired men. Appreciation bled into affection, into attraction, and they were flustered by it, though neither would admit that.

• it is, ironically, when Shanks comes by Karai Bari that things begin shifting. For one, the argument that ensues is full of affection and comfortable proximity. Buggy's trusted commanders welcome the Redhairs like old friends, like fellows under their flag. Alvida and Beckman specifically gravitate to each other, the older man wordlessly offering her a cigarette while she passes over a bottle without even looking up. Shanks and Buggy meanwhile are smiling as they trade barbs, touches casual and accepted easily.

It culminates into Buggy telling Shanks to shut up, to which the taller gives a demand with a beaming grin. "Make me!"

Buggy huffed at him, rolling his eyes, but yanks the other down to press a charged kiss to his lips, leaving him flushed, a dopey smile enriched by the transferred pigment.

• Mihawk and Crocodile have a brief moment of disappointment at the signals received until Shanks perks up on seeing them. "Oh, Bugs! Are these the guys you told me about? Heya, Hawkeye! Long time no see, still as handsome as ever! And wow. Crocodile, huh? Bug was right, you are hot as fuck."

Buggy proceeds to die on the spot, flailing and screeching, but that has simply opened a floodgate.

The visit is brief, but it leads to further conversation topics, spread carefully across the following days.

Yes, Buggy and Shanks are together. They have been since they were kids.

No, they aren't exclusive. Open relationship.

Yes, they are technically allied. No, not under one or the other flag. Equal allied.

Oh. Um. Yeah, they can... have more than one relationship. Why do you ask...?

• Buggy calls Shanks that night. "Why do I always attract the big burly doms???"

"You're just so submissive and breedable, Bugs. Also hey, I'm a switch :/"

"I know but you get my poi- wait I'm WHAT-??"

• Cross Guild courting is hilarious and also really cute. Mihawk runs on acts of service, Crocodile on gift giving, Buggy is a melting pot of love languages. They mix well enough, but the three of them temper each other as well. It's balanced out perfectly with them as such.

• Mihawk and Shanks as a result also end up falling in together tangentially. Buggy becomes Their balancing agent as well - he can redirect Shanks' endless energy, can curb and correct Mihawk's faux pas. He is bouncy enough to meet Shanks bit for bit, but also calm enough to pull him back some to meet Mihawk's lower energy levels and offer balance between them. It's organic and refreshing.

• Crocodile only has eyes for Mihawk and Buggy, but he is friendly enough with Shanks. Even if the redhead calls him his boyfriend-in-law. It's mildly annoying, but to be fair, Crocodile has since accepted that he apparently LIKES annoyances. Whether that is natural inclination or a result of his life experiences is to be determined. /hj

• Buggy gets treated like a princess, and when either of his boyfriends call him that or give him the royal treatment, he absolutely melts into a clown puddle.

• on that note, down the line, it is brought up to the Guild throuple that Shanks would be fine if they also got married. He gets it, after all. It's a special promise, and he knows Buggy is a catch. They discuss it sometimes, and eventually decide that... yeah. They would like that.

• there's some debate over who would officiate it, and Shanks ultimately decides for them by volunteering as an ally, captain and fellow polycule member. The logistics of marriage is wacky and the group winds up Dividing to conquer.

• Buggy, who makes most of his clothes or sources them to the crew seamstresses and tailors, goes out looking for fabric that will work for what he has in mind.

Who does he run into on that island but that rubber dumbass in a hat who is also apparently God too, how quaint. Luffy is bright and bold and asking a million questions. Buggy answers as best he can, already feigning annoyance and anger but still patient. The boy reminds him so much of Shanks when he was young it's bittersweet.

Eventually Luffy asks what Buggy is doing on this island. And Buggy answers. "I'm shopping for some fabric." Luffy gets excited, asks to help. He's supposed to be on his best behavior, he rambles, Nami said so, but he got distracted and is bored now. Can he help??

Buggy agrees. Luffy wans to know what the fabric is for. So the clown pirate pulls out his sketch, holds it up. "I need something for the bodice and some lace. Maybe some tulle if I can find it for the ruffles."

Luffy studies it closely. "That's a wedding outfit."

"Yeah"

"Is it yours?"

"Mhmm."

"I thought you were married to Shanks?"

"I am. I'm gonna marry my other boyfriends, too. Red's gonna officiate."

"Oh! Congratulations! I think I saw a fabric store over that way!"

The day is actually pretty sweet and fun. Buggy's got a good grasp on working with Luffy's attention span - it isn't all that different from Shanks'. By the end of it, he even treats the kid to some ice cream.

"I wish I could be there," Luffy admits with strawberry syrup on his cheek.

Buggy wipes it away absently with his thumb. "Why?"

"You're my friend! And you're Shanks's wife, he told me so when I was really little. And I like you, Buggy. You're weird but cool and you have a good heart and your sound is nice, too."

Buggy tenses. "My sound...?"

"Mhmm," Luffy continues like he hadn't just shocked the absolute hell out of the clown beside him. "It's like windchimes and this whirring sound but it's also kinda like clouds, too? It's hard to explain. Shanks' sound is weird too, like-"

"-bottles clacking together, lots of voices, and fire."

"Yeah!! How did you know?"

Buggy puts his ice cream down, rubbing his forehead. How does one explain early onset oversensitive observation haki to a teenager?

"Mystery power," he decides on.

Luffy nods. "Ah. Got it."

They go back to their ice cream. After a few moments, Buggy sighs. "You.... ugh. You could, you know?"

"Hm?"

"Come to the wedding."

Luffy beams for all of a moment, eyes tinting red over his irises before he sags with a frown. "But.. Shanks will be there."

"Yeah?"

"I can't, then."

"What? Why not? Thought you loved that ginger dumbass."

"I do! But we promised.. " his hand drifted to The Hat, a woven straw tapestry of trauma and comfort for Buggy. He frowned.

"What was the promise anyway?"

"I'd give the hat back when I was a great pirate."

".... Luffy. Look at me." Blue eyes met blackened maroon unflinchingly. "I'm a trickster, right?" Luffy nodded. "That means I'm good at understanding words and finding loop holes - meaning I can find exceptions to rules that don't even break them." Luffy nodded again, more slowly. "It's not cheating. It's working the system."

"Like Nami."

"Like Nami, yes. You promised to give the hat back when you're a great pirate. I'd say you're already a phenomenal pirate now, but that's just me. Understand?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, cool. So you give the hat back when you're great. Where does it say that you can't SEE him until then?"

"... but-"

"Nope! Taking it literally here, kiddo, work with me. You promised to give the hat back. He never said, and You Never Agreed, to not see him until then. Just to meet him there to give the hat back. You can totally see the idiot, and it isn't even breaking the promise."

"So I can come to your wedding?"

"Sure, kiddo. And wanna hear a secret?"

"Yeah!"

"I think Shanks would love to see you."

".... really?" His voice was softer, quieter, more juvenile than Buggy had ever heard it.

The blue haired man offered a smile, reaching out to ruffle raven locks. "I promise, I think he'd love to see you."

The rest of the day goes by easily, and Buggy writes down the island the wedding is planned for, his denden number, the date, time, and theme.

"Give it to your navigator," he tells the young man with a smile, "you and your crew is welcome. Just try not to cause too much mayhem, okay?"

"Alright! Thanks, mama Bug! I'll see you later!"

Luffy is vanishing into the streets before Buggy can respond, blinking as the other disappears. He sighs, a smile quirking his lips. "Mama, huh...?" He tilts his head up, looks at the sky. He thinks of another dark haired man in a strawhat, one who called him his pirate princess and supported Buggy through all of his experimental years. He huffed a laugh. "Ay, Captain, I hope you can see this shit show. Tides are changing..." He turned his gaze towards the docks, towards a brightly colored and bold, unapologetic, Free ship at the furthest end. ".... and time waits for no man. Or clown, I guess."

Chuckling, Buggy gathers his wares, turns on his heel, and makes his way back.

He'll have to rework the food budget to account for another D., after all.

[blackcrowing]

Thank you for your answer to my question about prayer, but what could I possibly offer a god that they don't already have?

Oh good question, so I think each polytheistic culture (and maybe even each person?) has their own philosophy on this idea, but we have fundamentally different views on what our deities are... like at their core... than say a Christian.

In Christianity God is omnipresent omniscient omnipotent. That is not how our deities are viewed. If you are familiar with the Catholic flavor of Christianity thinking about saints might be helpful. Many people pray to and leave offerings for saints, some families have personal or familial saints they think have invested interests in them and look out for them especially. (you'll even see that many local deities across the world were 'demoted' to sainthood once Christianity became established in their areas). The big difference here is that saints are able to do what they do BECAUSE the Christian god allows them or endows them (allegedly) but polytheistic deities don't need to borrow someone else's power, it is theirs to use.

This is also not to say in any way that the polytheistic deities are less than the Christian one. I believe the ideas of him being so much MORE was well done propaganda. Early Christian philosophy and writings didn't have him so, he was just a deity to choose from like all the rest, he just stood alone in his pantheon and wanted his people to ONLY follow him. As Christianity spread to more polytheistic areas and the locals asked "yea, but why should I follow your guy when mine do just fine?" they would have needed a convincing answer. To say he is omnipresent omniscient omnipotent, would be a good one.

So back to the original question, I don't know WHY the deities need or want things from us (again I think each culture and maybe each person has their own ideas on this) but it is clear that they DO. So going back to the parallel to saints; food and other small offerings especially those related to the deity left somewhere meant for them is always a soild option. Some people do devotional acts (martial arts is a big one for those following battle related deities or in my case I often offer research I have done). Anything your deity might enjoy, you can offer.

Maybe its like when you hear stories about crows bringing people who regularly feed them gifts? a little shiny item or stick really has no inherent value to us but as a sign of friendship and love from a crow it becomes so valuable we might keep it for the rest of our lives.

[belog-grada-crna-princeza]

[08.08.2024.]

Tonight, I saw two parallel realities almost collide; I saw them split down the middle. We will never know all the things that don't happen, and why some others happen instead. I cried in the same place, as a different scene, in a different but same life, flashed before my eyes. I cried there, knowing everything she didn't, couldn't know then. I wished not that I could change her, but that I could forget what changed me. Everything she hoped for came crashing down and now being so awake, so aware, it hurts too much, when I'm left alone with my mind. Maybe it will never be enough. I can be loved and I will never see it, feel it, believe it. I can't trust love, unless it's an ocean, unless I can drown myself in its currents. I see it in glimpses, flashes, frames I want to freeze. Bottle up all of it and keep it as proof until it's big enough, too big to deny. How can I explain it? You can't live without air, but I've been living without air my whole life and when I'm given oxygen, I turn into flames. For you it's an afterthought, for me, a lifeline. So you go on about your days because there's nothing really missing, nothing really wrong, but you don't see everything around you, the world around you is on fire (and no one could save me but you). What I need, no one can give me now, and I am crazy to refuse to accept it so I pretend those flashes can turn into forever and paint out everything else that ruins my dreamscape. Maybe in another life, the one that was a near miss. So I beg you with everything inside of me, I beg you in my silent screams, my gazes, my meaningless words, to make the world disappear for us, to escape with me into one they can never reach. Forget the technicalities, forget, forget what is expected. You told me I am a ticking time bomb and it's a matter of time before the world disappoints me, before you disappoint me. The first thing has happened, a long time ago, and the second thing can never happen, as long as you choose my side, and not theirs. Don't let them convince us of anything we know isn't so. Please never hurt me like they have, instead protect me from them, from me, from everything, let me believe your power is endless, please don't break my dreams with reality. And if you do so, then teach me to forget all about it, to be someone else, either that or love me as I am and all the illogicality in me. Let me feel for once, a brand new thing.

-Katarina

[concreteburialplot]

VIRALITY // 02

02 - Small Venues

summary/masterlist: here

word count: 1.3k

pairing: noah sebastian x fem!oc / nicholas ruffilo x fem!oc

crossposted on: ao3 & wattpad

a/n: don’t be mean for no reason & let others enjoy things thnx :)

VALLIE

I arrived to the show early, before doors opened to gauge what exactly they were working with as far as merchandise and such. It was a simple place, a small stage at the front of a space that was as big as a diner or sub shop. At the back was a wooden bar covered in colorful stickers and two bathroom doors that were black with random symbols painted in white.

I found that the set-up process for metal band at a small-ish venue was vastly different than giant pop star stadium tours I was used to handling. Since the upgraded venues were for the upcoming tour, this one was still tiny. Most of the work was carried out by the bands and their managers rather than venue workers. There weren't giant merch tables with lengthy lines of people. In fact, there was only about 30 fans waiting outside for a show that was opening in an hour, despite the supposed "viral" status. I walked around slowly, my work iPad in hand, just taking in the atmosphere while people fluttered about. A couple members of the band I recognized from the meeting earlier were helping set up their own merch table that lined the left wall.

The mood shifted once I followed the length of the white pop-up table – it was clear they weren't fond of me there. I trailed my finger along the edge as I looked over their merch selections, which honestly was better than I thought. The designs were different, unique – but could be better; the options and selections were slim, just shirts and posters.

"You didn't have to come if you didn't want to." A smooth voice said from just behind me, the tone snide.

I turned, thinking maybe it was one of the other members of the band, but it was the front man. "Listen, I'm just here to make your managers happy." I sighed, already irritated with his big scary rockstar attitude. If there's one thing I've learned is that the scariest looking ones are the biggest puppies in the game. It's the world-wide sensations that are the vicious wolves of the industry, or even worse, their managers.

This rail-thin tattoo-covered former emo kid was no different. I saw right through him.

"We don't need another manager on our team." He stepped closer and hushed his harsh voice so it was just between us. "We can handle it ourselves. We don't need another stranger coming in and using us."

"Jeez." Stepping back from his intensity, raising my hands up, "You're the next My Chemical Romance, got it." I said with a roll of my eyes.

He scoffed, "That's exactly why we don't need you. You don't get it. Don't you manage Harry Styles or some shit like that?"

My attention returned to the merch, picking up a shirt, lifting it up by the shoulders letting it unravel in front of me. "Hm, no, but somethin' like that." I hummed as I looked over the design, it was a skull wrapped in a cobra. "This design kinda cool, who designed it?" I asked, peaking a brow over to the singer.

His shoulders fell slightly and the strict defense in his face softened, "I did." He replied gently.

Called it - a puppy.

"Hm." Running my tongue between my lips, beginning to fold the shirt back into its original form. "You designed all of these?" I used the newly folded shirt to gesture at the rest of the merch set up before setting it back on the pile.

"No. Well, most of them. The rest of the band designed some too. We all pitch in, this band is as much mine as it is theirs'." His eyes shifted back to me and hardened in defense again.

"Right." I nodded my head with my lips pressed flat, having my fill of the nonsense. I went to walk past him, stopping right when our shoulders – well when my short shoulder – was parallel to his heavily inked arm. "Since we both know I won't be taking you guys on, I wish you luck. Break a leg Pete Wentz." I shoved past him and attempted to hide my proud giddiness of the joke.

It was just to get a rise out of him, which didn't appear to be difficult. Truth was, I wasn't totally a stranger to their genre but playing dumb was more fun. Men were easy to figure out and fun to play with.

As I walked out the doors to get some much-needed fresh air and maybe a coffee, I noticed the line had tripled in length in the 15 mins I spent in there. I took a beat before continuing, the line kept growing, even as I stood there watching it. I thought about it the entire walk to the coffee shop across the street. When I returned, the line was wrapped around the building.

Finally, I was standing at the back of the club, watching the show from afar. Their managers insisted I watch from backstage – the tiny excuse for one anyway – probably to hide the debauchery that took place within the crowd. But I wanted the full experience; the drunken giggly girls hogging the bathroom and all. It was easy to tell who were true fans and who just found them trendy online. The regular fans were laid back, flowed easily with the energy, and their attire looked lived in. The others stuck out like sore thumbs, wearing skimpy outfits that looked like they were fresh off the racks of Hot Topic. They limped around in unbroken-in new Docs, winced every time the music was too loud, and giggled every time Noah smiled. Which in handling a pop star sensation, screaming girls wasn't new to me. But for some reason in this setting, it irked me.

Though, I was in no place to judge, I came in my regular business casual attire. I too stuck out like a sore thumb, but in a much different way. It wasn't my first heavy show, but it had been a while since those days. Midway through college I stopped going to Warped Tour every year and my favorite bands started either breaking up or changing their sound all together. Somewhere along the way I lost my love for it all, and truthfully, I just felt out of place.

The intensity on the stage and in the club was high and I wondered if they were always like that or if they were trying to scare me away. I swirled what I wished was an espresso martini in a plastic cup as I watched the 3 men upfront head-banging with hair as long as mine, and the drummer smoking a joint while his sticks landed on the drums. They weren't anything I ever imagined managing. They were rough, rugged, and unpolished.

Regardless, what I saw was mesmerizing – the way the front man commanded and controlled the crowd, the way they listened to him, respected him and each other – even the newbies. The overly-defensive seemingly insecure man from before was oozing confidence under the spotlights. His vocals buttery smooth even through the heaviest parts and seamlessly flowed between highs and lows. The guitar and bass carrying the songs, completely synced in their movements. And the drums – god the drums were borderline addictive. One of the only songs of theirs I took the time to listen to before the show was the song that landed their viral status, Just Pretend. And the intro drums to that song were something I wanted to inject directly into my veins.

But most importantly, the merch selling steadily and rapidly – almost completely gone by the end of the show.

Maybe they were the next big thing.

And maybe they were my new clients.

Next Chapter: 03 - Rehearsal

thank you so much if you took the time to read this! i didn’t see many bad omens fics, so i wanted to contribute. lmk if you liked it 🩶

i write for other fandoms so i just used the same format as i do for them 😊

[anagramtransitory]

13. They’d walk me through my relationships with my actual family, and how to not be bitter, and how to accept them even though they can’t accept me. In other words, how to be a bigger and better person, as only a loving parent who understood me could. That I deserved love and support and parenting I didn’t get, and to try to let some of the shame and guilt from my resulting problems with behaving like I was raised by wolves go. Who forgives me first so I can forgive myself second. All problems I have are casualties of attempts to be perfect as quickly as possible. Only a parent very similar to me could understand what that’s about. Who could forgive me for being imperfect in the way I need to be forgiven. No one except that parent could love this mess. Not fully or truly. Who could love my problems. And the process of my growing up and not just the end product(s). So far, no one’s enjoyed any of it, I certainly haven’t. Not the process, not the end products, because I’m still not functional, and thus not worth celebrating/enjoying being. Granted in my real family no one really enjoys anything in a way I understand and can comprehend, just like the way I can’t understand and comprehend the rest of their existences, and they with mine. It’s sad, very sad. We’re just too different, and one side of the table (theirs) is unable and unwilling to talk about the things I don’t understand or comprehend in a way that makes any sense to me, that isn’t composed of accepting shitty answers, which is what I get, which is the reality, which don’t make sense so I never understand their lives of living out the embodiment of shitty answers to deep questions about why they do things or not. Oh well. There’s no one to compare myself to, there’s no one even here at all. I can rant and rave all I want about having to do everything myself, and that’s fair enough. But with this inability to function, the buck stops here. I’d like to think there’s a parallel world where this person, this parent, does exist, and they’re broadcasting their thoughts out to me. Either way, I know who I’ve got to replace. I could say there’s nothing to mourn but there is. My dad lost his mom, my mom was tormented by her dad, I wasn’t parented quite as well as I’d ideally have been, none of it is right or okay, and all of it needs to be taken up with god(s), in death or at the end of the world when those things get resolved cosmically somehow. I’ll put the tickets in. Fill the hole. I have to fill the hole. That’s all there’s left to do. While you work, you tell your parent about your day, they tell you about yours. Infinite possible imaginary interesting conversations with a thought experiment turned component of self on purpose. Why do this? Because I’m able to. I’ve got a big mind. I can fit many people in here. Not that I can’t to. But I’m able to. If I have to. And I’m gonna try to fit everybody in there. All the best parents I’ve had, they’re all going in the soup. And what’s gonna come out is gonna be completely uniquely me. But powered by all the love I’ve ever gotten, in real life, even quite recently, or even still. It doesn’t matter how old I am. It matters what I can bear on my shoulders. And I can say I’m getting just about close to being able to bear near everything on my shoulders. And that’s a lot of things!! And eventually, once I can parent myself, I’ll try to parent other grown ass adults, because “grown ass adults” are systematically denied love and parenting for no reason permanently just because of their age, which is ridiculous and doesn’t help anyone and only hurts people. It seems like no one is able to take care of themselves. Not the ones I’m around my age at least. Not perfectly, not like a perfectly raised adult. If I can be that person at some point, why the hell not be that person towards others? I’ve got enough love and strength. I do, and I should always use everything I’ve got to help people. All that emptiness, all that meaninglessness, that’s a lack of love. They know even less than I do about how to be. In some ways, at least.

[mirceakitsune]

Tales from a spirit that could not be broken

For the most part I've stopped making journals like this. Something happened a few days ago that has been stuck in my mind and kept pushing me to write those thoughts down. Even when I know it addresses an audience alien to myself and beings that are fundamentally different… 99% of people reading this will likely not get close to getting it. And I try not to belittle anyone in saying so, it's just a rational realization in knowing how things stand: It's not to consider myself better, better or worse are subjective terms… I'm just someone that exists in different ways and to serve different purposes. But at least for my own sake and the feeling pushing me since, I will write it.

About a week ago we celebrated the resurrection based on the Romanian Orthodox Easter. It may surprise some to hear this, but I am in fact going to church on occasion at least during the Easter celebrations… now that after years of living under the lies fed by a compromised religion, I better understand who / what God truly is and that he has nothing to do with the caricature painted by this culture. On the night of the resurrection of Christ, what they call the miracle flame comes on in Jerusalem… not gonna debate whether this flame is just another human trick or a breach in the veil that higher beings have allowed to occur, my rational mind is still thorn yet open. The flame is flown to other Orthodox nations by plane which includes churches in Romania, at midnight local priests offer it to people around the church to light their own candles, which then pass it on until everyone lights theirs and goes home with it.

In my case I do this with my mother and some old family friends: After we light our candles we typically go and visit them for a few hours, picking colored eggs to smash against each other then eating them as is done traditionally. We spent a few hours chatting about various things… from normal stuff we all agree on, to friendly arguments on worldly stuff that would get me banned in ghettos like Furaffinity for merely mentioning them again. The fact that me and my mother are from a version of reality parallel to the world some of our friends diverged into isn't what I want to get into right now, at least not in terms of what I'd typically rant about; It's another discussion that emerged from those arguments that relit a fire with me.

At some point my friend told me that in life, you need to go with what you're told and do what you gotta do to put food on the table, how what matters before anything else is having what to eat and drink to survive. I told him I'd happily rather die than live like a robot, that I don't care to survive at any cost, that I will be here as long as existence wants and allows me to then move on. He replied that you have to live as a robot in order to survive and it's foolish to think otherwise, giving me all the serious and rational sounding tropes I've heard so long ago. There was no point in upsetting him, as with most such things we agree to disagree… he's a good being and I'm happy to know him regardless, at this point I'm not even upset at him at all it is who he is; I left it be, yet it's not something I could put behind in my own mind.

This brought back memories from my teen self, back when I once went out with the few friends I ever interacted with: I remembered how instead of even saying "hello" to me, most would introduce themselves by asking "what is your specialty and what will you do in life"… I remembered how alien it felt and how it repulsed me. Our conversation was a reminder of two things: That I don't belong here regardless of the reasons for which I was sent, and that humanity will never change on its own but forever be the life form they are since thousands of years ago. Humans are animals, who at worst live for survival and at best for simple purposes… somewhat domesticated and with complex brain power (far too complex for what they should have) yet choosing to remain mere creatures of this world in making no attempt to surpass the illusion created by their minds. As I said the goal isn't for me to be a butt and get off to belittling others, but to a great extent it's not something I can avoid: It's impossible that I could lie and pretend I don't know it, when merely seeing what they are and feeling its energy is like the soul equivalent of drinking rat poison. It's not something I can use words to explain further; You'd need to experience it to know… I suspect only a handful can get close to truly knowing why I'm saying this, maybe I'm wrong in this assumption and there are others out there but if there's one thing I know it's we're incredibly few. Among the rest I'm well aware most will happily interpret this to convince themselves I'm as crazy as they already believed… and you know what? I think I prefer it that way and it makes it all the more fun!

Know what makes me smile in the face of the misery and tragedy that is your world? The fact that I beat it… I already won. You see… it doesn't matter what your culture, your governments, your police forces may or may not do to me; For at least 20 years you tried your best, yet you could not break me, and in the end you never will. The war was first and foremost for our minds and souls: You tried to shut down open communications so none that is different and could pose an inconvenience would risks remembering themselves… tried to scrub even art off the face of the web hoping I'd forget myself and what I resonate with whenever you felt there's something you couldn't control me over… endlessly echoed the same lies in a hall of mirrors hoping they inevitably become truth with enough voices screaming them… as all that failed and you failed to make me feel guilty just for existing, the last resort was to kick me out of any place I frequent or relied on to eliminate the danger you decided my existence posed. Yet in spite of the worst your evil could throw within the limits of this day and age, I'm still here and never once gave in. The most your crying army could do is making me live in a different time… part of me still in the early 2000's with the creativity and false hope we had back then, another part in a future that may never exist or be decades ahead of the present time… what can I say it's fun to be a time traveler.

The reality is that unlike them, I have seen the light… a light most will go their entire lives without even comprehending, at best they lost the memory the first few years after biological birth. You feared me because the existence I remember disturbs the comfort of the darkness you live in, in a handful of cases the systems of power some rely on to continue playing God with the rest. The most evil are disguised as the kindest of them all, yelling of how they love you and just want to keep you safe as they bite their tongues to hide how badly they want to make you serve them. The sincere but naive think you fought for something great because you glued yourself to a highway to protest the pollution of some oil company… easy to be a hero when you do what your peers are doing and everyone has your back, often after the media rather than your own heart decided on the little momentary cause you're fighting for. You hide those empty lives behind more and more fake complexity, using ever advanced toys or scientific concepts to make the nothingness seem as something extraordinary. So logical and scientific they never bothered to look up something called universal law, the thing observable science is based on and emerges from… among many things it includes something called free will, a rule they've raped to hell and back during the past years thinking there would be no consequences whatsoever. Black is white, up is down, cold is warm… the dinner keeps on going as everyone stuffs their faces with whatever is left, commenting on how good each food tastes and the fancy details behind how it was made, floating in a void where nothing exists beyond the table as the table chairs and everyone attending slowly sink into the chasm of shit.

I don't know what exactly will happen from here on: I don't have access to information about the most likely course of events this world is about to take. What I do know based both on what I see happening in the open and means that never let me down, is that the party's about to be over soon and it's not gonna be pretty; What's coming will be unpleasant for everyone, even I won't escape it either since the approaching trainwreck is global. But it's a necessary step, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Today's world exists in error, a still medieval society possessing modern technology it can't even understand or handle… this is not what 2020 and beyond were meant to be, fundamentals that are decades overdue were kicked down the road till the can can't be kicked any further and the pile comes crashing down.

I'm not going to say more of what I know or think or believe: I've already given enough ammo to certain people… then again me caring what others think has been one of the things I myself had to get past, as such it's all in good practice. But what I did want to say is how happy I am throughout any and all of the depression… that in spite of an entire world that's been not only alien but hostile, I won for both myself and others who come from the same patch of existence as myself: Once this momentary spectacle of an existence is inevitably over, it's what I'm taking with me and going back to… a temporary existence I will also triumph over anyway. I know you have no idea what I actually am, which is logical as for all those years I became an expert in knowing how to stay silent and act like everyone else; I still have fun wondering how various people will react, between the ones who would embrace it and those who'd fight or flee and the ones who simply wouldn't give a damn… as time goes on I care less and less still: Jesus had to deal with far worse when he faced humanity's true nature on the cross, so did priests tortured in Communist prisons even here in my country during the very year I was born… when did they even know how to give up? When you remember you're not the pile of flesh you see in the mirror and your time here is a temporary illusion where things don't happen at random, it's a far more detached view of the horrifying fire raging below when you look down, even when some try to make it so bad it gets to anyone every once in a while.

[your--isgayrights]

Hey! Do you have a theory of why 49%'s last words were "i'm sorry"?

I like your theories, and i love your fanfic! Thank you!

Oh that's such an interesting question...

(this ended up being long so under a read more and also I summarized my points in the tags.)

I think that the avatar of the 49%'s last words were actually "if you're sure this is the story that you want..." The being that says "I'm sorry" is the disappearing child Dokja in the train car that they manage to break through to. In that chapter it's said that him and his avatar were in the car, the avatar then disappears, and what remains is the little kid. This version of Kim Dokja existed as a result of his reckless sacrifices of probability in the zeroeth regression, as we know that his physical form became smaller and smaller.

Ok tw for discussion of suicide from here on out bc I feel like if you've read my meta before then you know that for me Kim Dokja being a suicide survivor is very important to it.

We know that the age the Kim Dokja regresses to is that form the most ancient dream took, around the time that he began to read ways of survival, when he began to "dream."

This is sort of a side tangent, but the existence of the "most ancient dream" is one that I think can be interpreted more literally, because if we accept that the entire universe of the novel is the reflection of the mind of Kim Dokja, then the reason that is the earliest form that it's God takes shows that the world began when he read ways of survival. Because the existence he was before then is one that didn't hold any power.

The regression of Kim Dokja into the position of helpless observer is parallel to his experience of being a child before he began to read ways of survival. Absorbing stories because somewhere on the core of him he equates them with escapism and love, but being unable to change his own physical circumstances or even muster up a conscious will of his own.

This is why Kim Dokja is left hospitalized as a fifteen year old child, parallel to how he was after his first suicide attempt.

So when you think about Kim Dokja's actions throughout the span of the epilogue, what we're essentially watching is that in isolation, at the end of this story, this world, we see what Kim Dokja does with himself. And what he does is extremely parallel to the situation of his younger self.

You have to remember about this part that the laws of the universe are determined by Kim Dokja's subconscious. The rules of probability come from his own internal idealization of sacrifice.

We see in the dream space that Kim Dokja is able to affect the happenings of the zeroeth regression by sacrificing parts of himself in exchange for benefit to his friends. We can see that this is a form of self harm that is a detriment to himself, but because of the way the universe works in his mind, it has a story effect. We could imagine though that before this dream world existed that sacrificing parts of himself=control in situation where he feels helpless and unable to do anything to change his own situation.

So when Kim Dokja is alone he feels helpless to change his situation. It's all out of his control from laws of the universe he doesn't really understand. He chooses to harm himself because it's the only choice he can make that will progress the story, have any affect at all.

But the difference of this lonely Kim Dokja between the circumstances of his first suicide attempt and the dream space that mirrors it is that Kim Dokja has people who care about him. People who are coming for him and want to help him, to save him.

So when Kim Dokja is about to disappear and knows that he is going to disappear, he says that he is sorry to these people because the one thing that gave the actions he took power to himself were that they were his choice entirely, nevermind the circumstances out of his control.

And I think this is a really important moment, because it's all of his friends trying to reach out to him, trying to find out why he is like he is, trying to know why he is doing this.

And this whole scenario is the dream's fucked up way of showing his friends that this is what is at the core of Kim Dokja. This was the struggle that began the dream, the entire universe in the first place.

They're waking up from the dream in that this is the moment where they are really rewinding time, going back to this point that Kim Dokja can't even represent himself as a physical entity anymore.

He's in the hospital bed like he was before the dream started. Was the dream only a distraction from his impending doom? The death that he felt he was always heading for?

But no. We see that surviving in that way, the only way he could, was something that allowed him to make the friends who would tell him how to survive through his apocalypse. The waking up of Kim Dokja from the dream is like finally waking him up from his first attempt, this time giving him a story that is his own. Telling him that this story is his and that he can live for himself now. Because there are people who care about his story the way he had always been caring about theirs.

If we're being specific about the avatar of the 49%'s words... I think like as Kim Dokja he had some inkling of the fact that the wall showed this ugly truth about Kim Dokja's past and current existence. We know that Kim Dokja like. Feels inherently remorseful for 'burdening' others with his sad stuff (like his thing about not wanting to tell too Sangah about his mom) and I feel like "If you're sure this is the story you want" is sort of like an acknowledgement that what they're about to see is going to be bad. But the fact that they're willing to see it at all, to want to know Kim Dokja that much, is important to the stuff that happens later.

TLDR; I think "I'm sorry" is a choice of words that highlights the factor of Kim Dokja's choice in melding into the most ancient dream, but also evokes that feeling that he is burdening others with information about himself.

[trini-trin-trin]

Sharing this from a FB group that I am in. I was very moved by the article and felt affinity with the experiences shared. A really sweet read.

Here is the article if you don't want to click on the link (I know it is a little long, but well worth your time to read!):

The letter I received ten years ago was unsigned and bore no return address. Clearly its author did not expect, much less want, a reply. A message in a bottle, from no one to no one, that letter still remains the most bizarre form of communication. It asks nothing but to be read, promises nothing but to share a few facts and feelings, and, seeing that it must have been dashed off on a lined yellow sheet that seemed hastily torn out of a pad of paper, the author would not be surprised if, after skimming through it, the recipient decided to crumple and lob it into the closest dust bin.

The letter is one page long. One page is enough. The handwriting is uneven, perhaps because the author had lost the habit of writing in longhand and preferred the keyboard. But his grammar is perfect. The man knew what he was doing. I assume he was writing the note by hand because he didn’t want traces of it on his laptop, or because he knew he was never going to send it as an email and risk a reply. Now that I think of it, he probably didn’t care if it even reached its recipient, a local Bay Area reporter who had mentioned my novel about two young men who fall in love one summer in Italy in the mid-1980s. The reporter eventually forwarded it to me, minus its envelope with the postmark. It took no time to see that all the author of the letter was looking for was a chance to blurt out the words he couldn’t dare breathe elsewhere.

My book had spoken to him. His letter spoke to me.

So here it is: dated April 16, 2008.

I came upon Mr. Aciman’s book while on a business trip back East. Not the type of book I am normally able to read, so I bought a copy for the flight home. I think I’m glad I did.

You see, I was Elio. I was 18 and my Oliver was 22. Though the time and place were different, the feelings were remarkably the same. From believing that you are the only person who has these feelings, to the whole “he loves me – he loves me not” scenario, Mr. Aciman got it right. I was particularly impressed with the attention he gave to the morning after Elio’s and Oliver’s first encounter. The guilt, the loathing, the fear. I felt it too much. I had to put the book down for a while.

But in the end I was able to finish the book before we landed at SFO. Which was good, because I couldn’t take the book home. Unlike Elio it was I who married and had children. My Oliver died from AIDS in 1995. I’m still living a parallel life. My name is not important. His name was Dwight.

Instead, I kept the letter. I kept it for ten years.

What moved me was not just its sobering matter-of-factness or its hint of downplayed sorrow, but the associations it provoked in my mind. It reminded me of those short, clipped messages to loved ones, written by people about to be shipped off to the death camps who knew they’d never be heard from again. There is a chilling immediacy about their hurriedly scribbled notes that say everything there is to say in the fewest possible words — there wasn’t enough time for more, no smarmy pieties, no hand-wringing, no treacly hugs and kisses before the tragic end. It also made me think of the moving phone messages left by those who finally realized they were not going to make it out alive from the Twin Towers and that only their family’s answering machine was going to take their call.

“My name is not important,” he writes, almost as an apology for remaining anonymous; yet the author drops quite a number of hints about himself — hints he likely knows will stir his reader’s wistful curiosity to know what made him write the letter in the first place, what he hoped to accomplish, and if writing did indeed help. The letter itself allows us to see that he travels for business. We also sense that he probably lives in the Bay Area and that he travels not infrequently to the East Coast, since, as he writes, he is “back” in the East. And we know one thing more: that he simply needed to come out and tell someone that a man called Dwight had been his lover when the two were young. The rest is a cloud. We’ll never know more. Writing has served its purpose. We write, it seems, to reach out to others. Whether we know them or not doesn’t matter. We write to put out into the real world something extremely private within us, to make real what often feels unreal and ever so elusive about ourselves. We write to give a shape to what would otherwise remain amorphous. This is as true about authors as about those who want to correspond with them. Over the years, many have written to me either after reading or seeing Call Me by Your Name. Some tried to meet me; others confided things they’d never told anyone; and some even managed to call me at the office and, on speaking about my novel, would eventually apologize before bursting out crying. Some were in jail; some were barely adolescents, others old enough to look back at loves seven decades past; and some were priests locked in silence and secrecy. Many were closeted, others totally out; some were widows who felt a resurgence of hope if only by reading about the loves of two young men called Elio and Oliver in Italy; some were very young girls eager to meet their long-awaited Oliver; and some recalled former gay lovers whom they’d occasionally bump into years later but who’d never acknowledge what they’d once shared and done together when both were schoolmates and neither was married. All were keenly aware of living a parallel life. In that parallel life things are as they perhaps should be. Elio and Oliver still live together. And no one has secrets there.

Unlike Dwight’s lover, everyone who took the time to write to me did not withhold their names, but all had, at one point or another, withheld something very primal. They withheld it from themselves, from a relative, from a friend, a classmate, or colleague, or from a beloved who would never have guessed what troubled longings seethed below their averted gaze whenever they crossed paths.

Some readers wrote to tell me they felt that my novel had changed them, and given them new insights into themselves; some felt it was urging them finally to turn a new leaf in their lives. But some couldn’t go so far and, despite their perfect command of language, confessed lacking the words to explain why they were so moved by my novel or why they felt an unresolved longing for things they’d never considered or desired before. They were experiencing an upwell of emotions and of ungraspable might-have-beens that were asking to be reckoned with because they seemed more real than life itself, a sense of themselves that beckoned from an opposite bank they’d never known was there and whose potential loss now was a source of inconsolable grief. Hence their tears, their regrets, and the overpowering sense of being lost in their own lives.

And yet, they said, theirs were not tears of sorrow. They were tears of recognition, as though the novel itself were a mirror for readers to watch their own emotions laid bare before them. These responses made me aware that Call Me by Your Name does not call attention to anything readers didn’t already know, nor does it bring new truths or revelations; all it does is shed new light on things that were long familiar but that they never took the time to consider. It would be so tempting to say that they are reminded of their forgotten first loves; the truth is that all loves, even those that occur late in life, are first loves. There is always fear, shame, reluctance, and not a tiny dose of spite. Desire is agony.

Everyone who’s read Call Me by Your Name understands not only the struggle both to speak and hold back their truth but also the shame that comes whenever we want something from someone. Desire is always cagey, always secretive — we’ll tell everyone we know about the person we crave to hold naked in our arms, but the very last one to know this will be the person we crave. Same-sex desire is even more guarded and watchful, especially in those who are just discovering their sexuality. Awkwardness and desire are strange bedfellows at a young age, but shame and inexperience are just as paralyzing as fear when we watch them tussling with the urge to be bold. You’re torn between the raw horniness that makes you dream scenes you hope to forget as soon as you’re up and the scenes you pray you’ll dream again and again — if dreams are all you’ll have. Silence and solitude exact a cost that leaves us emotionally wrecked. At some point we need to speak.

So “is it better to speak or die?” asks Elio, the narrator of Call Me by Your Name, quoting words penned by the sixteenth-century Marguerite de Navarre in her collection of tales known as The Heptameron. Marguerite was the sister of King Francis I and the grandmother of Henry IV, himself the grandfather of Louis XIV, hence she was plenty familiar with court intrigue, gossip, and the risks of opening up to someone who may not welcome what’s in our heart and could easily make us pay for it. Not everyone who has written to me has dared to speak their hearts to those they loved. Some have sought silence — slow, lingering droplets of quiet desperation taken every night before bedtime until they realize they’ve been dead and didn’t even know it. Many have written to me with the feeling of having missed their chance when someone tethered his rowboat to their jetty and simply asked them to jump in. “Some sentence or thought on almost every page,” writes a reader, “triggers tears and knots my throat and chest. Tears well up in my eyes on the subway, at my computer at work, walking down the street. Perhaps I am weeping in part because I know that at my age there is virtually no possibility of experiencing anything remotely comparable to what Elio experiences with Oliver.” Someone else writes, “Reading Call Me by Your Name made me feel a love I never had.” A happily married 50-plus colleague took me aside and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this much in love in my whole life.” “I'm 23,” tweeted someone else, “and have never felt such love, until I read Call Me by Your Name. I feel like I lived it.” “Elio and I are essentially the same age,” writes a teenage girl. “I have never really experienced his environment of the Italian summer…My experiences have only taken place halfway between nature and smog, however I have felt the same tension, fear, guilt and overwhelming love that you express perfectly through both Elio and Oliver…Finding myself in Elio was something I never expected and I’m positive that I won’t experience anything quite like it ever again. The first girl I ever loved remains…the only girl I have ever loved and though everything she and I shared…lives now as a secret between two friends.” “I finished reading Call Me by Your Name a couple of days ago,” writes someone else, “and wanted to let you know how much it affected me. It felt like a narration of my thoughts that I had systematically buried long ago.” And finally this from a 72-year-old: “I was fascinated by the idea of parallel lives where would I have been if I had gone with him, where would I be if I traveled alone? Maybe the point is just what do I do with the gift you have given me during the remainder of my life.”

There are at least 500 more such letters and emails.

Some find themselves weeping at the end of the film or the novel, not for what happened long ago or for what did not and might never happen in their own lives but for what has yet to happen, for the terrifying moment when they too will soon have to decide whether to speak or die. This from an 18-year-old: “[Your novel] gives me hope that one day I will meet someone whom I desire so badly that I’ll actually find it in me to make a move, the way Oliver is that someone for Elio. Maybe my Oliver will also turn out to be someone that I realize I love as well as desire.” She was crying for a week, as was this 15-year-old young man: “I stopped reading…because I didn’t want [the book] to end, didn’t want the wounds that you caused me to close, I didn’t want to overcome, for some reason that I have yet to find out. I wanted to stay a wreck, emotionally and mentally fragile….My mother handed me tissues because she had never seen me cry like this. I had finished your book and ‘moved’ is too weak a word to express what your book had done to me. Here a week later and it is literally all I can think about, not my midterms coming up, but…Elio and Oliver and if it is better to speak or die. You answered questions I didn’t even think I had.”

Indeed, the whole novel seems to enable the outing of all manner of feelings, feelings from Elio’s relentless inward journey and obsessive self-examination that readers are invited to identify with. Through Elio’s unfettered introspection they too feel exposed and sliced open like a crustacean without a slough, now forced to look at itself in the mirror. No wonder they are moved. The mask that is torn off their faces is not just the mask that conceals same-sex desires from themselves and from others. Rather, it is the realization, through Elio’s voice, of what they truly feel, who they truly are, what they fear, what bears their signature, and what coy little shenanigans they go through to read others and hope to reach them. Some identified with some effusive sentences in my novel so much that they had them tattooed on their bodies. They even attach photos of these tattoos. People have also tattooed peaches on themselves!

But what moves most people — and this is as true now as it was when the novel first came out — is the father’s speech. Here he not only tells his son to nurse the flame and “don’t snuff it out” after his son’s lover has left Italy, but that he too, the father, envies his son’s relationship with a male lover. This speech tears away the last vestige of a veil between reader and truth and is a moving tribute to the irreducible honesty between father and son.

Most readers have written to me about the scene because the father’s speech rekindles the very difficult moment when they decided to come out to their parents — or, as is often the case with people 60, or 70 or older, it reminds them of the conversation they wished they’d had but never did have with their parents. This is the loss no one forgets and from which no one recovers after seeing Call Me by Your Name. It bears the very essence of that precious and life-defining might-have-been moment that never happened and never will.

Here is the speech:

“Look…[y]ou had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything — what a waste!...

“… {L]et me say one more thing. It will clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”

I received the anonymous letter sometime in early May 2008. At the time, I was staying at my parents’, because my father was suffering from throat and mouth cancer and was already in hospice care. He had refused radiation and chemotherapy, so I knew his days were numbered; though morphine was clouding his mind, he was still lucid enough to bandy a few quips about a host of subjects. He had stopped eating and drinking water because swallowing had become very painful. One afternoon while I was stealing a nap, the phone rang. A reporter I’d met in California had just received a letter, which she wanted to share with me. I told her to read it over the phone. After she’d read it I asked if she felt she could mail it to me. I wanted to show it to my father, I said, and explained he was dying. She felt for me. We talked about my father for a while. I told her I was trying to make it up to him these days, and that he too had been exceptionally easy to be with. How was it growing up with him? she asked. Tense, I replied. Always is, she added. Then the conversation ended, and she promised to mail the letter soon.

After hanging up, I got out of bed and went in to see him. Over the past few days, I had made a point of reading to him, which he liked a great deal, especially now that he was having difficulty focusing. But rather than read to him the memoirs of Chateaubriand, one of his favorite authors, and feeling buoyed by the letter I’d been read on the phone, I asked if he’d like me to read from the French translation of Call Me by Your Name, the galleys of which I had just received from Paris that very morning. Why not, since you wrote it, he said. He was proud of me. So I began to read from the very beginning, and soon enough I knew I was opening up a subject neither he nor I had ever broached before. But I knew he knew what I was reading and why I was reading it to him. This made me happy. Perhaps it made him happy as well. I’ll never know.

That evening, after the rest of us had dinner, he asked if I could continue reading from my novel. I was nervous about arriving at the father’s speech because I didn’t know how he’d react to it, though he was the kind of father who would have given that very same speech himself. But the speech was two hundred pages away still, and that would have taken many, many days. Perhaps I should skip some parts, I thought. But no, I wanted to read him the whole book. My father didn’t last long enough to hear the father’s speech. And when the letter finally arrived from California, he was already gone. His name was Henri, he was 93 years old, and he inspired everything I’ve written.

[abombihoney]

Do you ever think about how all of tmTeam Snakemouth mirrors Hoaxe?

Leif: suddenly has magic & left behind to die

Kabbu: lost everything he ever cared about and wants revenge

Vi: lack of acceptance to the point where it causes major snap decisions that change the fate of the world

They all also want to feel safe. (Team Snakemouth weren't really safe until they were with each other. Kabbu was on a crash course with getting killed for revenge, Vi was a child who ran away from home and didn't really have anyone to turn to, Leif was trapped in the most dangerous place in Bugaria at the mercy of a spider that didn't notice they were still alive. Hoaxe literally says that he wants immortality for the safety it offers.)

If Team Snakemouth never joined forces they could have ended up the villains. They honestly could have become villains until you beat chapter 3 (at that point Vi is invested in the heroic feels of saving people- please note that's about when she gets less agressive about rewards, its still there just less, Venus didn't do that saving peoples lives did- and we all know Kabbu and Leif want Vi to be happy, thats a genuine part of their motivations, I will fight you on this don't think I didnt notice the two of them keep purposely inserting Vi into conversations with small comments when people arent paying attention that is their bee daughter I will die on this hill).

Honestly if they didn't grow together they probaby would have been the villains in another story.

There are nice and cruel ways to get what they went into this whole adventure for.

Hi could have done a whole lotta crimes, too many to list really, for her freedom.

Kabbu could have put up request after request to have the Beast killed for his revenge, never stopping until his revenge was fulfilled.

Leif wanted answers. They (assuming they got out on their own) could possibly have let every monster and Zombified bug out of Snakemouth Den with just a press of magic in the right places to break through the doors (it is in major amounts of disrepair and has been for a while judging by all of the moss on the fallen pillars) and let Bugaria be overrun.

Hoaxe could have easily been just another guy or the hero of the story. If someone had given him some support.

All 4 of them are characters of tragedy.

The only difference is Team Snakemouth grew past theirs.

(I just think about this a lot)

NO I HAVENT THOUGHT OF THAT AT ALL HELLO???????

i never saw those parallels myself but now that you've pointed it out!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAA

oh yeah team snakemouth could have gone morally reprehensible so easily, kabbu blinded by vengence, vi by anger/fear, and leif by greif.

[project-zorthania]

Let’s move on to The Look™ on Levi’s face in ch 137

I’ve seen a few different takes and talked to friends here and there about what that face means and how Levi might carry on from here on out, but until we see it in motion animated or have some sort of acknowledgment about it in conversation from the next chapter, it’s really all up to interpretation at this point.

Was it shock? Disbelief maybe? Did he feel as relieved and accomplished as he thought he would, or is he despairing as he realizes his final tangible link to Erwin has finally been severed? Isayama called him something akin to a floating balloon of sorts, having lost his sense of direction after Erwin’s death. Is this the moment he feels Erwin letting go of the ribbon that grounded him for so long, or is he realizing that Kenny hit a little closer to home than he thought? That he is in fact a ‘slave’ to being a hero and still feels the need to see the worth in all those sacrifices, that it never stopped at just fulfilling his vow? One could argue that not having killed Eren when he went rogue was another order that Levi bungled- is he moving to see that fulfilled?

I think at the very least it’s clear to everyone that Levi was not expecting to have had another opportunity at killing Zeke, but it came to him on a silver platter this time and you can see the raw desperation on his face when he realizes he has the chance to fulfill the very promise that’s been haunting him for the past 4 years.

So what now, especially with how the rumbling has stopped? I know there’s still debate as to whether Eren survived the blast, but let’s assume he died and the last two chapters are leading up to an epilogue or aftermath of what they’ve all managed to miraculously stop.

In the calm, Levi gives out and dies of his battle wounds paralleling his uncle’s passing?

Levi survives and lives his remaining days a handicapped retired vet and dies quietly and alone of old age?

Levi loses all purpose to live having completed his goal and commits suicide?

I’ve crossed that last one out because that’s exactly what I wanted to ramble about here, and I know a lot of people would disagree with me when I say this but Levi is the last person I ever imagine committing suicide.

( @elivra-fanfiction​ and I have talked about this quite a few times and I think we’ve come to terms with the fact that we’ll just have to agree to disagree pffahahah)

I know this is a particularly sensitive topic so if I say anything in my rambles that rubs anyone the wrong way, please feel free to come into my dm’s and have a chat with me. I promise I don’t bite and I’m always willing to learn <3

There are only a handful of people I can imagine taking their own life given what circumstances were thrown at them. Reiner of course goes without saying, perhaps Armin, Erwin I could imagine if he didn’t have the support and warmth of his loved ones as well, but Levi?

There is ample evidence throughout the entire story that depicts that Levi cherishes life, that it as something precious to him. A man who carves the Wings of Freedom from the coats of his fallen soldiers and stores them in memoriam, a man who gives comfort and absolves his comrades in their dying breaths by telling them their efforts were worth something, a man who managed to somehow balance the needs of humanity against his deepest desires to kill that which was responsible for robbing him of his other half, a man who first and foremost prioritizes survival above all else and demands as much from those who would follow him into battle.

How cruel that he who has such a love for life despite everything that was thrown at him would witness everything that he ever touched perish before him. That is his curse, to outlive that which he loves, and he has done it again and again and again.

Levi is strong, he is humanities strongest because he is weighed down by loss and anguish and continues to survive despite it all. He honors the dead vicariously just by breathing, by living the life they were stripped of. He is an archive of their memories, of their spirit, and he very desperately wanted to see all those sacrifices be worth something.

It would feel very out of character for him to take his own life when so many others that he begged to give meaning to were stripped of theirs against their will.

I don’t expect Levi to pack up and travel the world and do the things that the fallen didn’t have the opportunity to, to live whatever remaining days he has left alive to the fullest now that his vow has been fulfilled. I know... he is tired beyond measure, has at last fulfilled his main purpose and the passing years have been harsh on him. Like most eruris I desperately want to see him at peace and reunited with his loved ones, but not by his own hands.

I was hoping that Levi would’ve died in battle as a sacrifice of sorts, not unlike Hange, but with the way this last chapter wrapped up, there seems to still be a chance that he’ll pass away very much like Kenny did. If that happens, I’ll have to write a letter to personally thank Isayama for the rollercoaster of emotions and possibly the gayest relationship to have ever graced this planet.

[princess-of-the-corner]

winx au: what causes each character to gain charmix/enchantix/gloomix/disenchantix? does Stella get her two at the same time or only progress in one? is her witch form always the basic one? does she ever ise it? do the witches and fairies gain the power ups the same way? does riven ever get one? T (sry bout all the questions)

Okay! So!

Yes the powerups are earned the same way for Faeries and Witches. They are parallels of one another.

Stella does use her Witch Form a few times in the first few seasons. In Season 1, it's mostly a "this form is stronger at Night" deal, but she stays in Faerie most often. She uses it a little in Season 2 because her Faerie Magic doesn't do well underground, being literally Light Based. Her Witch Form isn't the best option, but doesn't drain as fast in darkness. By Season 3, her Witch Form is at an actual disadvantage compared to her Faerie Form so she only really uses it once to make a point. She will have to earn each form seperately when she trains her Witch powers.

Riven wasn't intending to get more Forms, but kinda... Gets them accidentally? Like. In the next chapter of that fic, he's starting on actually working at being able to use his Magic. He'll be caught off guard by Charmix in Season 3. And because Enchantix is earned by confronting some personal stuff, as soon as he does some major character momet he gets that. By Season 5 when everyone else is getting Harmonix/Discordix, him and the rest of the guys are helping them with getting all that so he's just like "well since I'm in on this anyway...".

Charmix/Gloomix is earned mostly by making major progress in actually training your Magic. One could use their Base Forms many times, but actually training and honing their skills would lead to earning Charmix/Gloomix. It's not exactly an entirely new form, just a sign that they're ready to earn Enchantix/Disenchantix.

So the "confronting something personal" plot is moved to Enchantix/Disenchantix instead. Because that makes more sense than "sacrifice your life to save someone from your homeworld" for many, many reasons!

As for how everyone gets their forms!

As said, Charmix/Gloomix happens on it's own and is earned by training your Magic. While Echantix/Disenchantix is "character developmemt". The Winx all get theirs in Season 3, and others get them at various times. I'll start with the Winx though!

Bloom:

Bloom's had a hell of a time finding where exactly she belongs. On Earth, she always subconciously knew she didn't "belong" there. Then she learns about a whole ass world of Magic she does belong to. Only to find that her birth family and homeworld were destroyed. So she feels this disconnect.

She tries to connect to the handful of survivors from Domino. But that makes her feel even more like an outsider because theres a whole planet/culture she doesn't remember. And it doesn't help that Valtor is specifically using this feeling to manipulate her.

Eventually, she comes to realize that she doesn't have to "belong" to some place because she already belongs with her friends and family.

Stella:

Stella has a lot of pressure on herself and tends to ignore her problems by pretending she's not bothered because she should be able to handle all this!

She eventually opens up about all that. Just. Admitting that she is stressed and being reminded that she can rely on the people who care about her.

Musa:

So. I bumped up Musa's mother's death to just before she left for Alfea in Season 1.

Musa has been pretty much running away from facing that for the past two years. Not even going home during breaks from school because it hurts too much to be in her home without her mom.

In Season 3 she gets to meet Galatea and the two just talk about their homeworld. Musa misses it. A lot. But going home means facing all that.

Eventually she does. Having a bit of a breakdown but properly processing the grief.

Tecna:

One of Tecna's issues is that she's... Not good at communicating or interpretating emotions. It's partly on her and partly just that Zenith culture is very blunt with emotions. So she won't understand what someone is feeling unless they say it point blank, but also won't always show what she's feeling outside of saying it out loud(which... Doesn't register to others)

She never realized how much of an issue it is until her and Timmy have tension because of it. Nothing bad! Just that their love languages are very different and both begin to feel unappreciated because of the lack of communication on the emotional front.

It's the decision to actually begin learning that has her earning her Enchantix.

Aisha:

Due to her very isolated childhood, Aisha is still new to having such a large friend group. But she quickly fits in with them. However. Right when she got the group, they seem to e drifting apart.

Not in a bad way, of course! But everyone has their own adventures and subplots this season, which leads to the whole group not always being together. And as they plan for the future and what may come, it's likely that they'll have to go their seperate ways.

Aisha is scared that she'll be alone again. And It's only after voicing these fears and being reassured that even if their lives have them seperate, they'll always be ready to come back together and be friends. They're not going away forever.

Flora:

Flora's insecurity comes from feeling like the weakest of the Winx.

She's not, of course! But... Bloom and Aisha are their main powerhouses. Stella is also quite powerful, and uses both Faerie and Witch Forms. Tecna and Musa have much flashier powers. And Flora is over here with her plants.

Plus. One of their main opponents is Icy. Whose powers are naturally very effective against Flora's abilities.

She begins to feel very useless. Like she shouldn't even bother fighting because what difference would it make?

Eventually, she does kind of snap. And realize 1.) She's not weak and 2.) Even if she was, it doesn't mean she shouldn't do what she can to help.

Darcy:

She actually gets her Disenchantix at the end of Season 1(all the Trix start Season 1 on Gloomix because they're in their third year at Cloud Tower).

It's solidifying that she won't break her morals to obtain her goals, even to the point of fighting against people she loves and fixing her mistakes.

Stormy:

Hers happens off screen because she disappears in Season 2 and shows up again in Season 3. But sometime during this she realizes that her current methods of trying to get anything she wants isn't... Really working. She manages to sort that out but I'm still thinking about all that.

Icy:

Oh boy. My girl has a lot of issues. Especially relating to her mom.

99% of people she meets that know who her mom is either judge her, or want her to pick up where her mom failed. And Icy has internalized a lot of that shit. About having to complete her mom's goals because what else is there for her? If she does, she'll have the wonderful life she was promised way back then. She'll be... Worth something.

Sometime in Season 3 she meets some characters who, despite who her mother was and what Icy has done since then, are willing to care about her. And She's also reminded that Darcy and Stormy did care about her, but she pushed them away for her own goals. And that even the Winx gang are willing to help her get away from... All that.

It's a lot of progress and she probably won't really get Disenchantix until Season 4 when she actually feels genuinely loved for who she is and despite everything.

Riven:

Oh boy.

So. I.... I will go into this more after I post the next chapter of that thing. However!

I will say that his Enchantix is either late Season 3 or sometime in Season 4. And It's a very cathartic, facing childhood truama, "god do you have any idea how much that fucked me up?!" Moment.

[certifiedskywalker]

Love to Last - Ben Hargreeves

AN: Yes, I know the title is cheesy! Just go with it! This is based off of a request from maddiepratt and the idea stuck!

You had been close with the Hargreeves siblings for years; despite the wishes and will of Reginald. Without care, you would sneak them out of their training routines for donuts and intertwine the thread of your life with theirs. Though, it was Ben was the one that permanently tied your fate to the Hargreeves. He fell in love with you and you with him. So when he died, you mourned with his siblings, Klaus especially. You followed him, them, as they were your last connection with Ben. Or so you thought.

“Well, that went better than expected.”

“Did it?”

“We’re alive aren’t we?”

“Is that better?”

“Y/N,” Klaus turned and you felt his hand grip yours. “Hey, it will be-”

“He’s still….he’s really gone?” Klaus squeezed his hand and you found the courage to meet his sad eyes. His green eyes studied you with worry and you felt your gut twist with guilt. “Sorry, I just...was hoping for a different answer.” 

Klaus frowned and nudged your shoulder with his. “What song said that if you do things over and expect a different outcome you’re insane? There’s some wisdom in that.”

“I think that was Albert Einstein and that’s not exactly what he said.” Klaus shrugged and gave your hand another tight squeeze.

“Potato, potato! You’ll drive yourself crazy if you keep asking and, Ben, he wouldn’t want that for you. That a selfless bastard.”

“Y-Yeah,” you whispered as you turned your eyes back out to the snow-laden field. You tried to remember the last time you enjoyed the snow. It had to be years back, when you were young and still helping the more rebellious Numbers of the Umbrella Academy sneak out of their prison-like rooms. Distant, hazy memories of snow ball fights and hot chocolate and Ben.

If you closed his eyes you could still see his smile. You could feel his gloved hands clasping yours with warmth and care. Ben was always careful with you. It was almost as if he were scared of breaking or scaring you. He told you once that he would live up to his moniker ‘The Horror’ in the worst ways. Perhaps that was why he was so kind or maybe it was simply the way he was, goodness etched into his bones. 

Whatever the case, you fell for him. There were times that you felt as if the drop would never end. Until, one day, Ben caught you and kissed you like nobody was watching. How sweet it all had been, untainted even by Reginald’s cruelty. Ben made sure his father’s vileness never once chilled the warmth of your shared love. Together, you built and lived in a perfect little world full of hopeful kisses. 

Then Ben died. The Umbrella Academy crumbled, the numbers splitting apart and into their own lives. You stuck with Klaus for selfish and unselfish reasons. Like Ben, you worried about Klaus and his less-than-savory habits. At points after Ben’s death, you even lived with the strange man. You were there for him and he was there for you.

There was the added bonus of Klaus’ power. When he was sober enough, he could act as a sort of middle man for you and Ben. It wasn’t the same as before, but it comforted you in knowing that Ben was still around. At your loneliest, you imagined that you could feel the bed dip as Ben laid by your side, unseen by you but there nonetheless. 

But now that comfort was gone. Ben had saved you and his siblings, the world, but he was gone. He was truly, really gone.

“You did it though,” Klaus’ voice cut through your thoughts and memories. You turned your gaze away from the snow to look at him. His green eyes were pensive, distant as he looked out at the horizon.

“Did what?”

“You and Ben were the exception to the Hargreeves love rule. You guys, you were strong and if it wasn’t for…you would’ve lasted....”

Klaus trailed off and shook his head. Tears welled up in your eyes when you noticed the frown on his face. You leaned your heavy head on his shoulder and took a shaking breath. When you closed your eyes, you could feel the wet tears fall and run down your cheeks.

“I miss him,” you whimpered. “I don’t know how to do this without him.”

“I know, I know.” Klaus’ voice trembled as he spoke. “We can do it together. We’ve made it this far, the time-traveling, the conspiracy hunting, the…”

You opened your eyes as he struggled to find the words. In the hopes of feeling better you added, “the cult creating?”

Klaus let out a small, breathy laugh, “yes. And the cult creating. He did help with that though. To give him credit.”

“I don’t think he would want credit for that.”

“You’re right, but he helped anyway,” Klaus leaned away from you to look into your eyes. Like yours, his were rimmed red with tears but there was a smile on his face. “You did too, Y/N. I can never thank you enough for being there with me.”

You felt another tear slip down your cheek before throwing your arms over Klaus’ shoulders. “You don’t need to thank me. When I gave Ben my heart, he gave me a family.”

As the sentiment fell from your lips, any tension Klaus was holding fall away. His arms tightened around you, holding you impossibly close. Klaus’ hugs were lingering, almost desperate, but in them there was the same softness Ben held for you. When you pulled away, wiping at your eyes, you heard someone shout in the distance.

You and Klaus looked over to see Five, briefcase in hand, waving the two of you over. With a sigh, Klaus got to his feet and stretched. You spared one last lingering glance at the already melting snow and stood as well. Before you could speak up, Klaus extended a hand to you with a gentle smile.

“You ready to go home?”

You thought of Ben, his old room at the Umbrella Academy. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Oh sweet precious, twenty-nineteen! I will not take you for granted,” Klaus announced, arms stretched up the foyer ceiling in relief. You and the Hargreeves siblings were back, finally, in your time. It had been so long yet the Academy looked as if no time had passed. Any evidence of the first apocalypse that drew you into the mess was gone.

“Careful,” Five warned, “we don’t know if the world is exactly the same as we left it. I landed us hours before Vanya blew up the moon.”

“Either way, we deserve a drink,” Diego quipped, following Klaus into the living quarters. The thought of the bar was appealing and so was the idea of lying down on the couch. Eager to rest, you followed the siblings further inside. 

The scents of old books and flame reached your nose, thrusting you back into sweeter memories. Nights, evenings that felt so long ago now, spent wrapped up with Ben while he read to you. Longing overwhelmed you as you stepped past the shelves of tomes. For a moment, you were so awash in fondness that you nearly ran into Diego’s sturdy frame. 

“Hey,” you said, nudging his shoulder. When he didn’t budge, you looked up to his face. His attention was turned towards the fireplace, mouth open as he took in the scene. As you turned to look as well, you felt Klaus grab your hand.

“Ben?” Your eyes studied the painting hanging against the wall. The man in the portrait looked different, with longer hair and colder eyes; but there was no mistaking it. Captured on canvas and in oil paint was Ben. 

“Five, what hap-”

“And who are you?”

Laced with a cruel chill, the voice was immediately recognizable. You and the Hargreeves siblings turned your eyes to the bar to find Reginald looking at you all, wide eyed. 

“Dad?” As Allison asked, you felt Klaus’ grip on your hand tighten.

“Dad? No. Who are you?” Reginald leaned towards you all and, under his frigid gaze, you felt your chest tighten. Even in this seemingly parallel world, Reginald Hargreeves was still the sort of man that Ben would protect you from.

“Your kids,” Luther chimed in, “and Y/N. We’re the Umbrella Academy. We’re home.”

“No, you’re at the Sparrow Academy.” With a flourish, Reginald lifted a bony hand up to the second level of the living quarters. You followed the movement and found a group of shadowy figures looming like ghosts shrouded in the darkness. One stepped forward with a confidence you once saw in Luther; Reginald had a new Number One. 

However, when the figure’s face was hit with light coming in from a window, you lost all sense of coherent thought. Those features, those eyes once kind. 

“Ben?”

You heart ached at the sight of him. His hair was daringly close to covering his dark eyes but it wasn’t enough to obscure him. That was Ben, just not your Ben. Klaus gripped your hand a bit tighter and you met his wild gaze. This wasn’t what Klaus meant when he said that you and Ben would last. 

But what if it was a second chance?

[sweet-evie]

The Emperor's Wish: My Personal Favorite [Fanfic Commentary #10]

Fanfic AO3

His final judgment is at hand. The price is set and the plan is in motion. But Emperor Lelouch uncovers his lover's secret, and it will haunt him beyond his own death.

[FANFIC COMMENTARY]

Legit, I’m proud of this one. I don’t know why… Probably not the best either. But this was incredibly self-indulgent, and hey, it turned out so well. Would you find it funny if I told you that this fic premise was in my head ever since I wanted to write for CLuCLu? Like, after watching the movie, I was always imagining how it would pan out so differently if Lelouch had a child, and C.C. is left to care for her lover and her son. 

This is my baby and my pride and joy. My only one probably 😅 There are lots of made-up quotes in that fic that I’m really (and I mean, really proud of, and I don’t say that often because my writing is ~Hit or miss~ )

Unlike One Day at a Time, this one took a genuine effort to understand characters and how they would react in this what-if situation I created in my fucked up head. 🤣😂

It was written during the thick of quarantine and lockdown last year (April 2020), and I guess that helped fuel my timeliness and speedy updates. Because I was writing fanfic for the majority of the day, with minimal breaks in-between. Some of the reviewers on FFN can attest to the daily updates I had for The Emperor’s Wish.

It started as a one-shot with the Prologue, as my way of testing the waters. When I felt secure and sure that I could finish it, I went headfirst, never looked back, and came out of the other side, proud of myself for not abandoning a WIP 😅. But that was also because I had so much fun with it. It was nice to imagine a world where Lelouch had proper closure with his friends and family.

My favorite moment from The Emperor’s Wish (aside from the blatant CLuCLu romance) is Lelouch and Suzaku’s relationship. I love how I wrote them there. I love their bromance, as well as the subtle Ned Stark & Robert Baratheon allusion towards Chapter 11: Rewriting the Stars.

Suzaku never had a brother. And Lelouch never truly liked any of his… But even if they weren't bound by blood, theirs was a bond built on so much more.

For you are the brother I chose…

Perchance if some reader is as obsessed and familiar with George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as me, then I bet they would have caught that… Or not. And it was simply self-satisfaction for the writer. Either way, I. Don’t. Regret. It.

And of course, I loved writing it mostly because of the star of that fanfic: Alexander Lamperouge himself. 🤩

He’s now in my Sims 4 universe, as a spellcaster. 😂

My Loves and Regrets

I LOVE how I wrote Nunnally here, honestly. She’s not a character I’d imagine that I could ever pull off flawlessly, and while I don’t think I accomplished the ‘flawless’ part, I think I did a decent job fleshing out her reaction and what a decent conversation with her older brother and C.C. could have gone like, also her reaction to finding out she had a nephew.

I REGRET that I didn’t get to write a lot about Lelouch’s other friends -- Shirley, Milly, & Rivalz, to be honest. It just felt so out of left field for me to force their story somewhere in the fanfic retelling considering the entire story did revolve around the CLuCLu family. In my own way, I tried writing more for the three of them separately, but that didn’t push through, because for some reason my brain doesn’t work. The only one I made a decent attempt at is Shirley, but I didn’t publish the fic either. It was about her meeting with Lelouch again after a year or two. It was set somewhere in Dubai. She was supposed to meet his son, and see C.C. again, and the ending was supposed to have C.C. and Shirley hugging and Shirley tells C.C. to take care of Lelouch. It was a very bittersweet one-shot/drabble/plot idea that was never publicized.

I LOVE my shoddy attempt at drawing parallels between certain scenes in The Emperor’s Wish. One of the readers, Kurosawa Ayumi, actually caught it and mentioned it in a review. It was the scene where Alexander was playing with his Knightmare toys (Lancelot & Gawain), and how Lancelot was cleaved in half from being accidentally thrown or dropped, and then how Jeremiah put him back together again. And then I transitioned to the annals of the prison in Grahlbad where Lelouch and Suzaku were about to confront each other after two years of not speaking and assuming one was dead.

I REGRET that The Emperor’s Wish isn’t longer. Like, I wish I took the plunge to create complicated twists, but it just… didn’t feel right at that time, you know? 😅🤔 Considering how I framed the fanfic as a retelling and reimagination of Re;surrection’s plot from the start, I feel like it would be too far-out to suddenly make things overly complicated than they already are. Also, there literally wasn’t much information available about Shamna, Shalio, and the rest at the time.

I LOVE the scenes I added in the fic, and the ones I put my own fanfic twist on. Re;surrection was a movie, so for obvious reasons, there’s time constraints and not as much time to flesh out characters like in a series. I tried doing that in my own way in this fic, and whether I succeeded at adding believable details to their interactions or not, it’s up to the reader. I’m just relieved that I actually managed to pull it off, given how sucky I am lately.

The Epilogue

The epilogue for The Emperor’s Wish went through a lot of rewrites.

At one point, it was supposed to overtly show the CLuCLu family traveling through Georgia, Lebanon, etc., and about how exhausting and challenging it was to hunt Geass fragments, gather intel, and take care of a baby at the same time. But I scratched it in favor of the first scene in the epilogue that we have now -- which is Suzaku and Nunnally discussing the latest Black Knight report, and the convenience of the entire operation because L.L. and C.C. were involved in some ways.

Hence the lines:

"They were responsible for stopping that criminal, weren't they?" She asked even when she already knew the answer.

"Highly likely. Probably stripped him of his powers before they abandoned him to be caught by the Black Knights."

And then I decided to take the steamy-but-not-really route for the final scene. The vague lovey-dovey between Lelouch and C.C. There was also a slightly vague allusion to them getting married underneath a poplar tree.

Plus, the last line was the cherry on top of my favorite fic so far:

— professing over and over again how fortunate and how blessed he was to have and to hold her for better or for worse…

And not even Death was powerful enough to tear them apart.

And on that note,

It wasn’t the longest fic I would ever write, nor is it the best, but it’s definitely one of my favorites. 😊😍🥰 And I loved every second of writing it. 🥳