#that may end up getting split into multiple chapters and by may i mean it will

[cuz-reasons]

So as you may have heard, I got my computer back. While it was in the shop I was writing fic on my phone notes app cuz I had to put my ideas somewhere

What was supposed to be a fun little self indulging submas wing au did in fact end up having a word count of around 12k when I got it on a word doc

And it's not finished yet so uhhhh

Yea

[forasecondtherewedwon]

seven degrees east - chapter five

Fandom: Masters of the Air Pairings: multiple Rating: T (may change) Chapter: 5 / ? Word Count: 4257

read on tumblr: one | two | three | four

It was just over half an hour from Thorpe Abbotts to Cringleford, and Rosie drove the first car, following the directions Liss had given him. Because the route was a simple one, he could enjoy the passing scenery. This was comprised of fields of tan and green—agricultural land that stretched towards the mature trees acting as windbreaks between plots. He liked the countryside. He found, actually, that it was hard to think of going home again, back to Brooklyn and tall buildings and bridges and noise, when he was out here, driving for miles on quiet backroads. But then, when Rosie went home (as he had, during the last winter break, catching the tail end of Chanukkah and flying out again on New Year’s Day), he felt he was happiest there, a New Yorker for life.

Everything, Rosie felt, was beginnings and endings. That was just where he was at the moment. Would he go, would he stay? Would tonight be another happy yet indistinct memory later on, when the time came to look back at his PhD years, or would it be a turning point? A moment in time he could pin to the map of his life. I remember where I was when it happened. It was what people said about things like the attack on Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the marriage of Charles and Diana. Rosie had never fought in a war, or toppled a symbol of oppression, or sat inside St Paul’s Cathedral, but he was young, and his life felt full of promise and meaning, ripe as whatever green things were growing in the fields he raced by. He would see Liss tonight. He felt like Nash as he stole a glance down at his shirt, tugging to straighten the placket around the pinch of his seatbelt.

For better or worse, Rosie didn’t have Nash sitting in his passenger seat, ready to tell him how he looked. There was a tension within the group that night which only two understood and the rest guessed at. John and Gale, who always rode together, almost always in John’s Wrangler, had emerged from the dorms one after the other but split apart immediately. Gale had made for Rosie’s car, surprising Rosie and prompting him to ask, “You wanna drive?” But Gale had shaken his head and gotten in on the passenger side as if that were what he had always done. Rosie and Nash had exchanged a look. With a shrug, Nash had climbed into the back seat with Curt—another unusual addition to Rosie’s carpool. Rosie had said nothing.

The second vehicle in their procession, the Wrangler, was driven not by its owner but by Crosby. John had abdicated the driver’s seat right before they’d left, tossing the keys high and forcing Crosby to make a scrambling catch. “Wha— Why?” he’d asked, but John had just winked and said, “I trust ya.” He was currently sprawled in the back. Crosby wasn’t sure John had his seatbelt on, but he was wary of insisting because, first, it was John’s jeep, and second, keeping eyes on Rosie up ahead was consuming all of his attention. He had placed total trust in Bubbles, sitting in the passenger seat. Bubbles said he didn’t need it, that the girls’ house wasn’t that far, that it would be difficult to get lost when traffic was negligible and they were following Rosie. Crosby didn’t have Bubbles’ confidence. He was sweating, so he felt for the handle and cranked his window down to let the air rush in.

Though the air was warm, it was welcome. John sighed into the sudden gust. He’d wanted to remove his jeep’s soft top for this little venture, but he’d forgotten, watching Gale and Curt get into Rosie’s car back in the student parking lot. It was probably for the best that they remained covered; as they drove north, it began to look like rain. John wouldn’t have minded driving sopping wet—it would’ve fueled his sour attitude—but his boys in the front didn’t deserve that. He glanced out the window, then checked his watch. He knew their destination couldn’t be much farther, and then he would have to get out, and he would have to be at least somewhat social, or else it would be very hard to keep pretending that it hadn’t bothered him to come. Water off a duck’s back, John, he told himself, but he heard the words in Gale’s voice, and then he pictured Gale’s mouth saying them, then Gale’s mouth mashed against Curt’s. John’s hand flinched closed into a fist and he smacked it into the seat. He caught Bubbles staring at him in the rearview mirror and allowed his own gaze to slink away.

Little navigation was ultimately required to reach the house. Still, Crosby was grateful to shift into park and turn off the motor. He considered it a bad sign when he tried to pass the keys back to John and John waved him off—he had a pretty good feeling it meant John was going to get shitfaced at this party and expected Crosby to drive them all home. Which, now that Crosby knew the route, shouldn’t have been a problem. He didn’t plan to lose John’s keys. He didn’t need to get wasted; he wasn’t some teenage undergrad salivating for his first taste of independence. He certainly didn’t have any intention of spending the night here at this red-brick house set back from the lane. Below the front windows, flowerbeds overflowed their edging, blooms closing up as clouds obscured the sun. Early evening was coming on now, and Crosby reminded himself that he would not be here to see those same flowers open again in the morning light. He grit his teeth as he, John, and Bubbles strode towards the house.

The other four boys had already arrived and decided that waiting on the front lawn for their friends would make them appear afraid to enter this house of barely-known but much-desired women. They had looked at each other, then Rosie had taken hold of Nash’s shoulders and given him a little push, a little momentum to get him going. Following Nash through the front door, they’d felt a bit like zoo animals, though they were the ones entering this enclosure which contained the faces of many strangers. By the time John, Bubbles, and Crosby piled through the door after them, they hadn’t gotten very far.

Before they had to start convincing the other partygoers that they had been invited—really!—a girl who made Rosie’s face light up like the breaking dawn came galloping down the stairs.

“My guests!” she said, and the boys looked quickly from her to another girl who stepped through from the living room wearing a sarcastic smile.

“You’re claiming all of them?” this one said. Her gaze went unsubtly to Crosby, who reddened but stood up straighter.

Rosie laughed.

“Sandra, right? We met at the video store, but…” But I was ogling your friend at the time, and you were ogling mine. This thought passed unspoken, but he understood from the look in Sandra’s eyes that she’d shared it. She clasped the hand he’d extended towards her.

“Ships in the night,” she said. “Rosie, yes?”

“That’s right.” He glanced around him, urging the other boys forward as he named them. “And this is Gale, Curt, Bubbles—don’t ask—John, Nash, and, well, you know Crosby.”

“Not so well I couldn’t stand to know him a little better,” she quipped.

“Yeah, our Croz is one in a million.”

“Jean certainly thinks so,” Bubbles put in. He felt the weight of the pause that cushioned his words from either side. He didn’t look at Crosby, not wanting to know if he appeared annoyed, just smiled at Sandra (so this was Sandra) and clarified, “Croz’s girlfriend.”

Crosby laughed awkwardly and said, “Yeah, yep,” as he lowered his head and moved forward, away from this conversation. Sandra turned to allow him to pass her, then followed after; he felt her pinch his sleeve as he moved. He hoped he wouldn’t have to explain. He didn’t know where he would start. Mainly, he didn’t want Sandra’s immediate impression of his friends—who he would’ve liked to remind were guests in her home—to be that they believed she was a villain, hellbent on coming disastrously between Crosby and Jean.

He wasn’t interested in Sandra like that, he was just… interested. He was interested in the way he assumed nuclear scientists were interested in dangerous substances, tempted to cup that radioactive glow in their bare palms. Tempted—that was all; the detective never really fell for the femme fatale. And who was to say that Sandra was well-represented by either: the radioactive substance or the hard-boiled seductress? Like a solid object in front of a spotlight, Crosby was projecting a dark shadow of who this woman might be and supposing the boys saw the same. They obviously suspected, when they saw Sandra and Crosby together. They guessed at the enticement. Crosby fitted her with these personas, cloaked her like a spy, until it was he who was a stranger to his own blatant and (if he’d realized quite how blatant) pathetically uncomplicated and unsurprising attraction. He was a young man very far from his girlfriend, blindsided by a chance meeting with a beautiful woman. If everything would just slow down a minute, Crosby thought, if everything would just wait, there might be time in which he could figure out how to be Sandra’s friend. He could be. He was, sort of, and if their friendship had continued, of course he would’ve mentioned Jean. She just hadn’t come up yet.

The others bobbed in the wake of this uncomfortable extraction, tossing glances at one another, until Liss threw out the lifeline of a tour of the house. They relaxed as they moved from room to room. Liss introduced them to everyone they passed—boys in t-shirts worn under baggy button-downs and girls whose pastel butterfly clip-adorned hair caught the yellow light of table lamps, all classmates and friends of the girls who lived there. Walking at Liss’s side, Rosie kept catching his breath when his hand bumped hers. It happened again as Liss led them through the kitchen to show them the door to the backyard. When she raised her hand to gesture towards the lawn, he lifted his own fingers to smooth his mustache so his hand wouldn’t dart after hers and press their palms together.

“Smoke anywhere,” she invited, “but if it’s more than cigarettes, try to stay on that side of the yard. Our neighbour on the other side would freak.”

“And you wouldn’t?” Gale checked slyly. “I hear you’re studying law.”

Liss turned towards him, wearing a small smile.

“Laws only stand as they are until someone sets a new precedent.”

“Spoken like a future lawyer.”

“Or as someone determined to never be called by her birthname. ‘Phillis.’ Seriously, what were my parents thinking?”

There was ice in the freezer, beer in the fridge, bottles of harder stuff on the counter. Tour of the main floor complete (“Upstairs is just our bedrooms,” Liss said, a throwaway explanation, though more than one set of eyes lit up at the words.), the boys added what they’d brought to the collection and got themselves drinks. Gale, standing beside Rosie, said, “I like her,” and jerked his chin towards where Liss was talking to Nash. Rosie grinned and nodded his appreciation; Gale’s opinion meant a lot to him.

Nash had barely had a chance to ask Liss where Helen might be hiding when Helen herself walked into the kitchen and gave him a shy wave. Nash’s face split in a ridiculous grin. Helen looked good against every backdrop, he thought: a crowded bar, rows of VHS sleeves, a kitchen filled with all his closest friends. There were so very many words in Nash’s vocabulary, but “subtle” wasn’t one of them. He didn’t have Rosie’s etiquette—or, at least, no patience for it; rather than offering introductions, he just went right to Helen and forgot about everyone else.

“You don’t want me to meet your friends?” she asked wryly.

“Hmm?”

Helen laughed, but she blushed too. Nash was standing close to her, his whole consciousness seemingly fixated on her presence.

“What do you want?” she asked instead, one corner of her lips curling coyly as she tried the question that seemed more likely to get his attention. And it did—something ignited behind Nash’s eyes, something that burned deeper and stronger than his jubilant reaction to merely seeing Helen again.

The thing about Nash was that he would’ve told Helen what he wanted—would’ve told her exactly, and in detail, with his gaze holding hers to see whether he’d gone too far or whether Helen’s thoughts had floated up, like soft clouds, to one of those upstairs bedrooms Liss had mentioned—had Rosie not interrupted.

Mischievously, Rosie felt no compunction about breaking Nash out of his lustful stupor. Liss had suggested she and Rosie talk out on the front step, where it was quieter, and on his way by Nash, beer in one hand, Rosie tapped his shoulder and made a discrete “ok” hand sign with the other that Nash tore his gaze from Helen’s face just long enough to catch, smiling with immense self-satisfaction. Rosie doubted Nash’s total concentration on Helen would be so easily severed again that night. Oh, to be young and in love, he thought with a distance from youthful infatuation he could not claim and did not feel, gathering his courage and slipping his fingers between Liss’s. Rosie felt as if he were being carried down the hall atop his friends’ shoulders rather than walking on feet situated below knees that went a little weak when Liss’s eyelashes fluttered as she turned to look at him. And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes / Of the beautiful Liss Heller, Rosie thought admiringly, adapting Poe into a considerably happier context.

He hoped to bump into Crosby on his way out as well, maybe use his hands to communicate more of a what-the-fuck-are-you-doing message instead of the encouraging sign he’d sent Nash, but though Rosie poked his head into the living room and craned to look up the stairs, Crosby was nowhere to be seen.

This was because Crosby was in the middle of a more thorough tour of the house. It felt as though it had happened naturally, blamelessly, inevitably. Sandra had talked and Crosby had listened, knowing half of what she said was teasing lies simply because the look on his face promised he’d believe whatever she told him. They were renting the house from her uncle, she’d said. They were occupying the house for free, she’d said, because a family had been brutally murdered here. She herself owned the house, she’d said; she was rather wealthy, her family part of the British peerage. Sandra grinned every time Crosby gathered himself enough to vocally doubt her, but even as each illusion of who she might be shattered like a cascading hall of mirrors, he found himself more transfixed. He felt that, if he could count on anything, it would be that Sandra would not save him from himself if he decided to cross a line.

She wasn’t exactly inviting him to cross it, but at some point, she’d brought him up to the second floor, and the ease with which he might—they leaned against the wall opposite Sandra’s open bedroom door—oppressed him. Crosby both badly wished that Bubbles was there and felt franticly, guiltily relieved that he wasn’t.

Bubbles wasn’t there in person, anyway, but he was part of every story Crosby told—and he found he was telling Sandra much more than he usually told people he’d only met twice. There was a patience to her large blue eyes the Hammett hound in him wanted to call serpentinely hypnotic, but common sense said was just Sandra being a good listener. Like Bubbles. Maybe that was why Crosby kept bringing him up. Sandra and Bubbles really hadn’t gotten off on the right foot, and Crosby knew that was his fault, even if he had no clue how to rectify the situation. (Convince Bubbles that Sandra was no threat to Crosby’s relationship with Jean? Convince Sandra that he wasn’t usually the kind of person Bubbles had to worry about like that, interjecting so Sandra’s knowledge of Crosby’s girlfriend would do what Bubbles suspected Crosby’s willpower could not: prevent him from cheating.)

It felt a little strange to Crosby to exclude Bubbles by sneaking upstairs with Sandra and then speak of nothing but their shared stories. It made a buffer of Bubbles, a ruler between the bodies of a couple at a high school dance. Bubbles was safety. Bubbles was irreproachability. Bubbles was not flirtation or blurred lines or the cheating he had worried about with embarrassing conspicuousness downstairs. Crosby recognized that he was more upset that Bubbles saw him that way—potentially disloyal—than at the thought of actually committing any indiscretion up here with Sandra. The idea of losing Bubbles’ respect was painful, and the self-conscious acknowledgement of how badly he needed it made Crosby briefly, hotly angry in a way that he very rarely was. He didn’t understand it, so he grit his teeth and focused on Sandra with an intensity that appeared to startle her in the midst of the funny story she had started to tell.

Her hand seemed to dart impulsively forward, closing around his wrist. Crosby looked from her hold to her eyes. They stared at each other, outwardly silent. On the inside, Crosby tried to compel Sandra to just grab a little harder, just tug, show him which of these bedrooms was hers and let him react behind a closed door.

“Your friend Bubbles thinks highly of you,” Sandra said, uncurling her fingers and giving his wrist a disconcerting pat.

“Maybe he shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

But Crosby didn’t have a good answer; he was only being dramatic. He started to feel like a totally undesirable idiot until Sandra, surprising him again, reached up to restyle the front of his carefully gelled hair. She looked him in the eyes and gave a reason for the touch, gave it in such a way that Crosby knew she was, once again, lying. He ducked his head and looked up at her. His smile was trying for devastating.

—

Though the sky was darkening with the deepening evening and the gathering promise of rain, party guests were playing beer pong out behind the house. This was where Bubbles had chosen to keep himself occupied. Light-fingered and good with calculations, he was a natural at this game, and concentrating hard enough made it difficult to wonder where Crosby had gone off to, why he hadn’t seen Sandra since they’d arrived.

Sinking another ball, he beamed as the guy at the other end of the patio table drank and Gale—his partner—gave his shoulder a congratulatory squeeze.

Curt wandered over and watched for a while. He stuck his fingers in his mouth, his shrill whistle at his friends’ continued success cutting through the cranked-up pop hits streaming from the boombox tucked against the exterior wall. Somewhere up the street, a dog started barking, and Gale pinged the next ball at Curt, striking him in the chest.

“Quit it,” he instructed. “Gonna get the whole neighbourhood barking.”

“How ’bout losin’ a little then. Beatin’ strangers ain’t a good way to make friends,” Curt counselled. He slung an arm around the neck of one such stranger-turned-friend; they’d come from the side of the house, where they’d been bonding over the impressive longevity of Van Halen (“Man, if they could get fuckin’ Roth back…”) and a shared joint.

“That’s unfortunate,” Gale said with a grin. “’Cause Bubbles and I don’t know how to lose.”

“Damn right, buddy,” Bubbles agreed.

They weren’t bad winners about it though, graciously conceding the table to the next teams instead of staying on as the defending champions anyone else could only dream to beat. Curt drifted here and there, but Gale and Bubbles were content to stay and watch, drinking and observing the game as well as Nash and Helen, who stood by the back door, poised to canoodle.

“They’re gettin’ along,” Bubbles observed loudly as somebody turned up Take That to mixed cheers and boos. Bubbles smiled as he brought a bottle of beer to his lips.

Gale chuckled and said, “Good for Nash.”

“Seriously. Poor guy’s always been so shy around women.”

Gale laughed louder this time. Bubbles was good company, and always made it easy to feel relaxed. He didn’t talk too much, but he didn’t leave silences that felt demanding either, nothing Gale ever felt pressured to fill. He appreciated that. It struck him as they stood there together that he almost never hung out with Bubbles one-on-one. Their group, all seven of them, had formed a fast and strong bond at the beginning of their time at Thorpe Abbotts (though some had known each other before), but Gale recognized that he and Bubbles both existed as halves of a pair. It had never been him and Bubbles because Crosby was always present if Bubbles was there, and John was eternally at Gale’s side. Unless he was doing something stupid like attempting to climb that damn tower on campus, or something shameless like commanding a karaoke bar with his terrible singing voice and boundless confidence. Sometimes, Gale permitted himself to notice that these were acts designed to impress him. It was certainly always difficult to remember what a good time he could have with a different friend, like Bubbles, when John was up to his antics.

Thinking of John soured the moment for Gale. The easy smile fell from his face. He scanned the faces of the group gathered around the beer pong match even though he already knew John wasn’t there, then glanced toward the side yard and over to the back door. Who was with John now? Crosby, the other half of the pair standing next to Gale? After the way Crosby had slunk off with the British girl, Gale doubted it. Nash was accounted for, Gale hadn’t spotted Rosie walking back through the house after disappearing out the front with Liss, and Curt… well. Gale didn’t think for a moment John was hanging out with him.

“Lookin’ for Bucky?” Bubbles asked.

“Pretty obvious, huh?” Gale said in a tone of gentle self-deprecation. His expression grew serious. “You drove up with him. How’d he seem?”

Bubbles didn’t bother exclaiming, You mean you don’t know? though the boys lived together in the same dorm. Practically inside each other’s skin, Bubbles thought, with how they would often demonstrate a wordless understanding of one another in speech and actions. Even he, at a little distance from them—as everyone was; Gale and John were each other’s complete inner circle—knew something wasn’t right, and that it had begun the other night at the Barracks. It had to be serious, since they still didn’t appear to be speaking. They’d come to the party that night in two different vehicles, after all.

“Quiet,” Bubbles answered honestly. “He sat in the back while Croz drove.”

“Croz drove John’s baby? He must’ve been shitting himself.”

“About that level of confidence, yeah. There’s nothin’ wrong with Croz’s driving. He just doubts himself.”

Gale made a thoughtful noise. Bubbles thought he probably wasn’t thinking about how Crosby had fared behind the wheel of John’s Wrangler so much as trying to shift his own mind into a gear that would align with John’s so that they might understand each other. Bubbles watched his friend sympathetically.

“Maybe that’s what John’s problem is,” Gale observed. It was said softly, but harsh. His gaze was unfocused, no longer following the bounce of the ball across the patio table.

“What’s Bucky doubting himself about, do you think?” Bubbles asked.

“No idea.”

“You think he’s got a reason to? A Bucky who doubts himself doesn’t sound like any version of Bucky I’ve seen. If he is,” Bubbles said cautiously, eyeing Gale’s stern profile, “it must be over something that matters a lot to him.”

Gale didn’t have an immediate response to this, but, as usual, Bubbles didn’t push for one. He was grateful. It gave him time to think. What mattered a lot to John? Well, school did. John took his studies at Thorpe Abbotts seriously; if he played hard, it was because he worked hard too. Another thing that mattered to John was his friends. He was gregarious, trusty, and encouraging. He had helped Rosie replace all the furniture in Nash’s bedroom with inflatable facsimiles while Nash was away for three days at a grad student conference in London the preceding October. Hemingway’s old man would’ve loved to have John aboard when he went all that way out into the sea, Gale imagined. Anyone would’ve. In his estimation, John was pretty well always just the right person to have around.

Up until last week, John had felt the same about Gale—Gale, who he had presumably seen kissing Curt. Gale, who also mattered a lot to him.

Just as Gale decided on a response to Bubbles’ speculation and went to speak, two unmistakeable voices rose above the music, and it wasn’t because they were singing along.

[age-of-moonknight]

Helloo

If im not bothering you too much, may I ask what you know about the cia?

I know it may not be a question related to moon knight, or maybe it could be, but im kinda interested to know the basics at least and you seem to know a lot about it

Btw, i absolutely adore your blog

Hello!!! :D I'm so glad that you enjoy this blog and thanks for stopping by! Although, well,,,,hm,,,maybe it's just my rabid paranoia sinking its claws even deeper into me, but this is one of the more interesting asks I've gotten for this blog, that's for sure. 😅 For perhaps some context, I think anon might be referencing this post I made, gosh, close to two years ago now, where I got....maybe a little too excited talking about the history of the CIA and what Marc's time with The Company could mean for his character hahaha Accordingly, a full rundown on the agency's history, not to mention its many, many facets, is probably a bit outside the purview of this blog, but this is then a good time to state that if anyone ever wants to talk about anything and everything besides Moon Knight, my dms are always open and I'm happy to chat! However,,,I also have an affliction where I am an incorrigible pedant who jumps at the chance to write essays on things that interest me (and intelligence interests me very, very much, unfortunately). As such, while all my instincts are telling me this is absolutely glowing bait on a hook, if anyone wants to read a rambling wall of text about that agency Marc spent some time with, that will be waiting for you under the cut. Again, disclaimer, I'm just some person on the internet and thus can't really be considered a credible source on much of anything (except maybe how many times Moon Knight has teamed up with the Punisher hahaha). All the following info could easily be gathered from OSINT sources (and we're talking, like, Wikipedia, although this gave me the chance to pull out one of my favorite textbooks, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy by Mark Lowenthal (vol. 7). If you're the textbook reading-type and interested in the topic, I'd suggest giving it a shot, particularly chapters 2 and 3 for the CIA and the U.S.' broader intelligence community). I tried to keep this incredibly surface level, as these are all topics that you could write monographs on, so if you want more sources/context, just hit me up! This also got,,,,unreasonably long (I didn't even know tumblr HAD a point where it would stop autosaving, but apparently trying to list all of the CIA's crimes against humanity will get you there), so I ended up having to split this across multiple posts.

Conception I discussed it in my previous post, but I'll give a brief rundown on how the Central Intelligence Agency came to be. So, the United States had intelligence organs pre-World War II, but they would typically only be spun up for however long a conflict lasted and then all of their assets would be reintegrated back into the military, da? But then with the end of WWII ushering in the atomic age and nuclear deterrence pushing out conventional conflict in favor of an espionage-fueled Cold War, the U.S. government deemed it prudent to have a permanent intelligence gathering service. There was just one hiccup, the question of what to do with the U.S.' WWII-era intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Under the leadership of the very descriptively nicknamed Brigadier/Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, OSS officers had been running around conducting sabotage and espionage operations throughout Europe and Asia, doing wild things like working with an underground intelligence network of European Catholic priests and coordinating with the 20 July plot/Operation Valkyrie assassination attempt on Hitler. They were the very definition of irregular, British officials accused them of "playing cowboys," and the U.S.' massive post-war military organization was loathe to have to find some way to force OSS officers into the military's necessary uniformity, so in 1947, after a couple years of bureaucratic shuffling, the OSS apparatus got pasted onto this new intelligence agency that was so far,,,rather bookish and the CIA as we know it was born. This divide, between the incredibly Ivy League analysts and the more martial remnants of the OSS that got folded in was a contributor to the two major branches of the CIA (and their infamous intra-agency rivalry), so this perhaps a good segue into the CIA's different internal departments, its "directorates."

There are the two ogs, the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Analysis, and then the newer Directorates of Digital Innovation, Support, plus Science & Technology. (Note: this is as the agency stands now; there have been some fluctuations in structure and naming conventions over the years).

The Directorate of Operations (DO) needs little introduction, as it's the legacy of the OSS and what most people think of when they hear the word "espionage," the kind of work one individual once described to me as "fast cars, nice suits, and unlimited spending" (hope he's still out there and doing well). They're your politically deniable boots on the ground collecting HUMINT (human intelligence such as handling contacts and the like) and executing covert actions. It contains the ultimate sharp point of the spear, the Special Activity Center (SAC) with its Political Action Group (PAG), which spreads black propaganda, influences elections, and conducts other psychological operations, and the Covert Action Group (CAG), which draws operators from the military's special forces programs to form their own direct action, counter-intel/counter-terror, unconventional warfare, paramilitary group (they have a very diverse set of martial skills). Naturally, most recipients of the U.S. intelligence community's highest honors, the Intelligence Star and Distinguished Intelligence Cross are from the SAC. Most of the stars on the CIA HQ's Wall of Honor, which memorializes officers who died in service of the CIA, represent SAC officers too, however.

The Directorate of Analysis (DA), in contrast, doesn't get enough love, despite making up nearly half of the CIA for decades. Whereas the DO mainly collects the intelligence through various means, the DA has the people who take the raw intel and try to turn it into something digestible for policy makers (whether that means just translating the intel into basic English or proposing whole, wide-sweeping policy strategies has varied across the agency's history depending on its professionalism and the degree of government oversight at the time). They get so overshadowed despite being a key part of the intelligence cycle, it's almost not funny hahaha (I kid you not, the official CIA website not only has a "kids" section with an online coloring book that depicts the various directorates as heroes, but it even went so far as to depict the DO with a rather dashing hat and cape,,,,while they gave the representation of the DA glasses and a briefcase, I weep hahaha). However, if you've ever heard a stereotype of the CIA actually being made up of a bunch of incredibly Ivy League, smart but cliquey, uncomfortably cold (both in manner and strategy) eggheads, that would be because of the DA. That's a very disparaging stereotype,,,,but it got its start from somewhere. It's still the CIA after all, and there have been times in the institution's history where the only thing to distract the DA from its intra-agency pissing contest with the more domineering DO was to shield the CIA from any sort of external government or other agency encroachment on the CIA's "purview."

Probably the next most established division would be the Directorate of Science & Technology (DST). Whereas the DO is predominantly HUMINT and the DA works closest with policy makers, the DST is the one expanding the CIA's technological capacity to deal with CBRN threats (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear), and collect SIGINT (signals intelligence over radio waves and the like), IMINT (image intelligence as from satellites), and GEOINT (geological intelligence monitoring seismographs to, for example, detect if a nation is doing underground nuclear tests). Intel collection is only as good as the tools used and naturally intelligence agencies all around the world are constantly trying to leapfrog each other in capabilities, circumvention, and denial (preventing adversarial interest's collection efforts, that is).

Similarly, the most recent division is the Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI), which is similar to the DST, but the DDI is focused almost entirely on cyberwarfare/espionage. They also seem to be doing a lot with OSINT ("open-source" intelligence, AKA any information you can access without a security clearance). OSINT used to be a bit of a joke in the intelligence community ("so, it's just what you read in the paper this morning??? That puts it one step above LAVINT: intelligence collected by overhearing conversations in the lavatory"), but with the explosion of information made available by the modern internet landscape and social media, you can go far with OSINT. (If you too salivate over the potential OSINT, maybe checkout Bellingcat if you haven't already)

Lastly but not least, there's the Directorate of Support, who are all the people who keep The Company running smoothly, managing logistics, comms, security at CIA sites, and overseeing officer training.

So yeah, I've alluded to the DA's and DO's rivalry, so maybe I should talk about inter- and intra-agency competition and the hot water those things have got the CIA in over the years. Maintaining an effective intelligence community is a tricky thing, particularly in a nation trying its best to be democratic and at least nominally respect human rights. You want officers to be able to collect intelligence, but you can't let them have so much free rein they rough up the nation's own citizens with impunity (as that's a bad look and can lead to civilian push back that could not only hurt the regime but handicap intelligence gathering in the future) and you definitely don't want an intelligence agency getting so much power it feels like it can start dictating a nation's policy instead of just advising on it. (Plus, the absolute nightmare scenario of an agency that's gone completely off the rails and no longer bothers much with consulting on politics at all, but just operates completely independently). Thus, to prevent the intelligence community from getting too big for its own good, a little competition, a little checks-and-balances from within the intelligence community can be beneficial. The drive by one intel group to outperform another (and consequently get more recognition/funding/etc.) can lead to a mutual improvement of the products that end up on a policy maker's desk. Having said that, I hope I explained it in such a way where you might see the issue with the CIA being the U.S.' singular, domineering force in the federal intelligence community for decades. The DA and DO had their marked cultural divide, but the CIA had very little competition from other agencies and, for example, had their ultimate weapon: the President's Daily (intel) Brief. The CIA, due to its vast capabilities, for years had the privilege of providing the president with (what the CIA deemed to be) the most important intel topics of the day. Accordingly, particularly during the Cold War before government oversight of the CIA really kicked up, this allowed the CIA to sway the government towards some at best politically questionable and more critically ethically deplorable policy choices.

Yeah, having gotten this far, I don't think I've made it clear that, for as much as I am fascinated by and spent,,,,a lot of resources studying subjects such as intelligence and terrorism, I am fully cognizant and never quite cease to be outraged by the injustice that permeates those fields. The CIA for sure, with its vast resources and the outsized role the United States played in meddling in international affairs during the Cold War and on, is a chief and, now, well-documented offender. I'm sure CIA intelligence collection and guidance has prevented many attacks we'll never know about, but you can't talk about the CIA without discussing the actions that directly resulted in thousands dead. Let's go over some of their greatest hits, shall we? (And that takes me so long I have to put it in a whole other post).

[sibillascribbles08]

Okay ramble that will probably not get anywhere but I will put it here anyway because I saw yet another post about people struggling to get any writing done. And someone in the comments made a good point. You write/draw so much more as a kid because you're less practiced and ergo less worried about the imperfections that may arise from just gunning it.

And this is true! And this is why I want to tell you if you are struggling to write much, learn to write like a kid again.

You know how with a lot of art you see processes and it always starts with really shitty thumbnails that have silly faces or just blobs of color? Then you have an actual sketch (during which the artist likely moves a lot of shit around on a digital canvas) and then possibly the inking phase or just painting which is more blobs that slowly get sharper and sharper the more the images is rendered.

Yeah uh, do that with writing. Going under the cut because long

Writing as a process is something that is unique to an individual, just like there's 800 ways to slap paint on a canvas. If you look at guide books for writing and none of it is sticking it's not cause you're a failure that technique is just not gelling for you.

And as such I can only speak from MY experience with it but like, here's how I generally stay on top of projects

A) Sketch phase! It's outline time baby! "Ughh but outlines suck" listen I know school made the outline phase of an essay the worst fucking thing ever but hear me out on this. Sure some people CAN write by the seat of their pants but in terms of long projects this does not work out for me. I'm inevitably gonna hit a point where idk where to go from there and it's so hard to map all that out in long form

Listen, outlines are not there to be formal. They're not even there to be fancy. This is time to get down the bare bones and if you have to make it only a paragraph long and then extend that paragraph into multiple then DO it.

Like hell, NONE of my outlines are formatted the same! Some are a paragraph per chapter. Others are just endless bullet points that I split up later. I'm sure in one book due to all the plotlines I'm just going to have a storyline for each character laid out in columns so I can draw lines between them. Whatever works.

And again, do not have to be formal, like here is a legit line in one of my outlines

As for the ruined building… Hypno will cover the damages……….. Right? : )

Go crazy.

B) Now that you have your baselines start working on the actual story. Do you like writing shit out of order? Do it, because with an outline you still have your baselines to reference for any important details you don't wanna forget "Remember [character] is supposed to get a scar in chapter five!" Or write shit in order, and every time you hit a lull consult those baselines to say "oh yeah that's where this chapter was going"

And hey, keep writing it like a kid if that's what it takes to get this crap down. Hit a fight scene you don't wanna write? Slap down some brackets. [Insert a fight scene here where [character] gets his head smashed in so he ends up with this concussion later like a dumbass]. Boom, done, worry about it later.

Worried the dialogue isn't flowing well? Slap open another document or grab some paper and write it out in a play format to keep it moving. Add in all the beats, expressions, and details after.

Not sure if this detail you're putting in is historically accurate? Leave an easy to search symbol in the doc so you can go back to it to research later.

Write the sappy shit. Write with poor grammar (but still like, comprehensible you know what I mean). Slip in adverbs to swap out with strong verbs later. Use a run on sentence.

"But it's gonna sound bad" Who cares who tf cares that's what editing is for ! You go back and refine that shit and clean up sentences and add in all the extra research and pull out the repetitive words.

You gotta quit treating writing like you're supposed to just swing your brush on the canvas and suddenly you have some beautiful scenery. There's layers. There's blobs that turn into refined shapes. There's blending and shading. There's fine lines and thick lines. And sometimes there's mistakes that you have to wait until it dries to go back over it again.

It is a process! Let yourself have FUN with the process.

Okay rant over.

[linkspooky]

Your Choujin X writeups are great, it's a shame the fandom is so small that they get relatively few notes. I'm glad you appear to have a more sympathetic view of Azuma than most CX readers I've seen. I think I remember you predicting before the time skip that Azuma would be the one to leave Yamato Mori, but recent chapters look more like Tokio will diverge from them - any predictions for the how our main trio may be split up?

This is a great question anon, and my answer is... I dunno. By which I mean to me it could go either way at this point. Me and my friend have actually debated on this, which one is more likely to side Sora and which one is going to stay with Yamato Mori. I'm still leaning towards Azuma leaving Yamato Mori, but there's evidence for both sides of either Azuma or Tokio leaving. Predictions about the Azuma and Tokio breakup underneath the cut.

Evidence of Azuma Leaving

The first piece of evidence is that Azuma is pretty clearly headed for a negative character arc, to parallel with Tokio's growth. While Tokio grows more self-confident and independent, Azuma in turn starts to feel inferior and resentful. Azuma states it pretty clearly at the end of their first fight, he's no longer Tokio's hero, the relationship they had in the past where he was the one who Tokio looked up to is gone now. Azuma can't really handle the shifting power dynamic because he was as dependent on Tokio as Tokio was on him.

Instead of bridging the gap in their relationship, Tokio leaving has made Azuma even more distant from him. Azuma isn't even on speaking terms with Tokio right now. When he's introduced to Tokio, the first thing he learns is that Tokio freed an entire province from a dictator while Azuma just a few days ago failed to stop a plane crash resulting in the deaths of so many people.

It's not like Azuma wasn't training while Tokio was gone, and yet from Azuma's perspective it seems like Tokio is still leaps and bounds ahead of him. Which could push him to conclude that Yamato Mori is not enough, either out of a desire to be stronger, or personal resentment for Tokio.

Evidence number two, Tokio and Azuma are a clear parallel to Sandek and Batista. The two of them trained alongside each other to be heroes, probably all their lives, only for one of them to betray the other. Batista is the one who either left Yamori, or fled after his brother attempted to kill him. Azuma is the Batista in that parallel, he has the ability that's less powerful than Tokio's, and Batista has multiple times took a vested interest in him even asking Zora if she could hand off Azuma to him.

Azuma also made Tokio promise to kill him if he ever went rogue, which is another parallel to Sendak being commanded by their profit to kill Batista.

Why go so far to make this continued parallel throughout the story, unless Batista was planning on inviting Azuma to their side?

The third is more recent and may just be me going out on a limb here, but Azuma met this clearly supsicious girl searching for corpses on the beach, and didn't really investigate into her any further. Noh Mask met with her shortly after this scene and dragged her into a bigger conspiracy with The Tower / Zora's followers, so she's going to be plot relevant and the fact she ran into Azuma isn't a coincidence. After all, every single detail that happens in a story is purposefully put there by the author to mean something. IE, if they ran into each other once it's likely they'll run into each other again.

One more important detail is, Azuma's not dumb. He found her right next to a washed up corpse, and even the girl thought she was done before at that point. Only for Azuma to quickly change his tune and act totally oblivious. This is the face he makes, before he smiles and offers her crabs instead. It's likely he actually knew what she was doing there, but for some reason decided to let her go, maybe to investigate her further instead of blowing his cover right there.

While Tokio is the one who is more curious right now about hearing what Zora has to say, he's also steadily growing and gaining influence in Yamato Mori.

It's Tokio of all people who spoke up against the Opium mission, and Tokio who convinced the higher ups to listen to his plan instead. He's once again the one gaining more strength and confidence, while Azuma's position in Yamato is stagnating. Sato even makes a comment along the lines of Yamato's soldiers not being what they once were.

If Azuma isn't making progress with the Yamato Mori, if he's stagnating and not getting any better that's even more reason for him to want to leave.

Evidence of Tokio Leaving

The first and most obvious is that Zora is pretty desperate to choose Tokio as her successor. Tokio is also the one who seemed to have inherited the most power from Zora, as she comments that being an iron choujin makes Azuma unworthy of the mark. In the parallel between the big three Choujin X of the past, Tokio is clearly the parallel to Zora, he uses the same wings and scythe swords she did. Azuma is the parallel to Queem because they both use recurring tank and gun imagery in association with their characters, and Azuma's choujin power seems to have come about because of his obsession with war, weapons, the military, etc...

Tokio is also the only one who's spoken in favor of listening to Zora about her prophecy. Azuma's been keeping his head down the entire time just listening to orders in Yamato Mori, Ely even points out that Azuma didn't speak up when he disagreed with Tokio. It's Tokio who's questioning authority and speaking up directly in front of them.

Tokio is also the first person who sympathizes with Zora, when the whole of Yamato Mori who are the ones who cast her out seem only intent on hunting her down. He's expressed a clear interest in talking to her.

Tokio also has been diagnosed with a clear case of Kaneki Ken SyndromeTM! By which I mean Ishida Sui reuses ideas from previous works all the time, and in Tokyo Ghoul his last manga he had the hero defect from Anteiku when he became too afraid that he lacked the strength to protect his friends. Tokio seems to suffer from a similiar fear of losing people. He even resolves to strike Zora down if the danger becomes too much and just ignore her prophecy.

Tokio has also already left once, leaving both Ely and Azuma without a word because he feels he'd become too dependent on them if he stayed. His growth was also jumpstarted when after the island arc he wasn't able to contribute a single thing in the battle because he wasn't strong enough. He could leave for a similiar reason, if Yamato Mori isn't enough to protect his friends he could try to go off on his own and work from the outside instead.

The last piece of evidence is that we still have Tokio's prophetic dream to worry about. Considering Tokio shares so many of Zora's powers, he might have even inherited some of her future seeing.

Tokio hasa dream of a ruined Yamato, and an Azuma who turns around to face him and declares that the disaster is all his fault. Tokio defecting / siding with Zora could start the chain of events which leads to this. In a version where Tokio defects, we could see an arc of Tokio joining with Zora, only for Azuma to hunt him down while working with Yamato Mori.

It still fits the general pattern I outlined before of their positive and negative charater arcs, if Azuma stayed with Yamato Mori he might become more like a blind servant to justice, hunting down Tokio no matter what the cost without listening to his friend. Especially if Tokio really is the cause of a disaster.

To mention Ishida's previous work again, Tokio shares a lot of parallels to Arima Kishou, to the point of even wearing glasses like him and having worsening eyesight. The fact that Arima for most of his life was a blind follower of the CCG is not a good thing and led to his tragic ending as a character. So Azuma's character could follow the same general pattern if he chooses to stay with Yamato Mori and hunt down Tokio after he defects.

There's plenty of evidence for either side of the argument, so we may just have to wait and see how it plays out. Considering it's Ishida though, it'll probably be painful when the boys finally do break up.

[slickchickchocolatier]

Yes I can see that Heethan is popular here on your blog, i mean we can’t blame them can we I suppose? Lol, the way you write and portray him have people hooked even managing to look past the blaring red flags haha. And yes if I have any more questions I will be sure to ask! I have an interest in psychology so I like that bit of extra information to satisfy that curious itch; why is Heeseung is the way he is? What happened, Was he always like this or did something trigger the split? Did he have an iffy upbringing or was there always a darkness in him? But I suppose we will find out in future chapters so I’m happy to wait for the explanation I know the rest of the series will be great as always!!

And ooh seeing that you mentioned it, I briefly read through the first chap of se7en after reading the synopsis and man!! Is that right up my alley! The characters seem very interesting (all one of the seven sins I love that) and I see there’s multiple chapters for all the boys (although I do already know she’s Heeseung’s from the get go haha). I will definitely be indulging in that series too.

Seeing as MT is reaching its peak i will be reading that first so I’m all caught up before it finishes♥️

Its funny you mentioned your interest in psychology because i took quite a bit of classes in my college program, and that somewhat helped me draft up heethan's character. depending on what arc you're in, with MGR being the first arc, MRE the second, and HHP the third and ongoing, if you haven't reached HHP yet, you'll find alot of the questions you have will be answered in that arc 😉 heethan is just a very interesting character, he's actually my favorite to write about because i always find the alter ego aspect so intriguing, the whole Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde effect, where he can switch from gentle to rough in a split second at will. its' very interesting and there's never a boring moment. I think the red flags is what also makes him addicting, because yes, he is sooooooo toxic, obssessive, possessive, and just downright insane, but its all stemming from his insatiable love for his y/n. I didn't have a full understanding of the 'yandere' term when i started the series, but i knew that's where i wanted his character to lead to, so i started him off as a nice guy, then after seeing y/n he became a soft yandere, then it just grew from there and onto the hard yandere he is right now. it's very fitting since he's a dominant and intimidating type. so all of that combined just really makes him a fascinating person. i just love how, despite his flaws....which are very heavy, he loves his y/n to the ends of the earth. its twisted and romantic lol. which i love.

MT and SE7EN are both great series. if you like heethan, you'll love heelel. ofc we love heedam and since MT is at a very good spot right now, i think you all will swoon for heedam lol. but def let me know your thoughts when you finish the SE7EN series bc i love talking about it and the MGR series. Once MT and DT is finished, i know everyone is going to be buzzing about heedam and heebros. omg DT is reaching a climactic spot that may shock alot of the readers. 😉

[sylusheart]

hi there <3 welcome to my blog! :3 i write for shits and giggles and i post all of my works on ao3, you can find the link to my acc here.

but i also post some of my one-shots here on tumblr too (i only post the ones that are 'one part' long directly on tumblr - sometimes i tend to write one-shots that end up getting split into two/three parts because it becomes too long or i just do it for easier access to specific bits of the story) ♡

in my masterlist below you can find the direct links to my fics; if the fic is uploaded on tumblr (meaning if it's a one-shot) the link will take you to the tumblr post for it first but the ao3 link will still be accessible and shown on that page if you'd like to read it on there instead!┊ ˚➶ ｡˚ ☁️

this is my one and only blog because i'm not too used to the idea of having multiple blogs idk that sorta overwhelms me atm lmao (i'm not so familliar with tumblr but hopefully overtime i'll get more comfier on here and how things work...) but usually all my posts are just devil may cry :D though i tend to write/shitpost abt other stuff too such as call of duty, final fantasy vii/xv, resident evil, k-pop, love and deepspace + more! but yeah that's basically me summed up :p

here's a masterlist of my current works and wips for ao3! i've included a key at the bottom of this section with a detailed explanation on the labels i attach to my titles :3

-------˖⁺. ༶ ❤︎ ⋆˙⊹ 𐦍 ˖⁺. ༶ ❤︎ ⋆˙⊹-------

devil may cry

╰┈➤ ❝ serenity (on-going) vergil x fem!reader ❞

╰┈➤ ❝ cowboy like me (2 part one-shot) dante x fem!reader ❞ WIP

╰┈➤ ❝ made for me (one-shot) nico x fem!reader ❞ WIP

╰┈➤ ❝ heavy chain (one-shot) vergil x fem!reader ❞ WIP

╰┈➤ ❝ awakened (on-going) vergil x fem!reader ❞ WIP

love and deepspace

╰┈➤ ❝ candles for caleb (one-shot) caleb x fem!reader ❞ WIP

╰┈➤ ❝ mile high club (one-shot) xavier x fem!reader ❞ WIP

call of duty

╰┈➤ ❝ king of it all (one-shot) könig x fem!reader ❞

╰┈➤ ❝ barracks bunny (2 part one-shot) ghost x fem!reader ❞ WIP

k-pop

╰┈➤ ❝ a little jealousy (one-shot) shownu x fem!reader ❞

╰┈➤ ❝ heartstopper (one-shot) nayeon x fem!reader ❞ WIP

resident evil

╰┈➤ ❝ revival (one-shot) wesker x fem!reader ❞ WIP

╰┈➤ ❝ cabin fever (one-shot) leon kennedy x ashley graham ❞ WIP

vicious/villains duology

╰┈➤ ❝ elevating desires (one-shot) victor vale x eli ever ❞

star wars

╰┈➤ ❝ restless nights (discontinued) anakin x fem!reader ❞

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ key:

(on-going): this means it’s a fic that has depth to it, in other words: a long fic! it's something i'm continously writing and it has a thick enough plot to divide into multiple chapters. i try to update as regularly as i can. you can subscribe to the fic on ao3 so you'll get email updates whenever i post!

(discontinued): this means it's a long fic that i've abandonned and won't ever be going back to. this can be due to multiple reasons but i don't tend to drop my fics if i have a good story lying underneath them, so if you do see a discontinued fic on my page it probably wasn't something i was willing to remaster/extend on in the first place.

(completed): this means it's a long fic that has multiple chapters and has been edited a couple of times but probabably not edited to perfection. you won't have to wait for me to update as the entire story is available.

(one-shot): a quick fic that is only one chapter long, these are usually unedited and raw - they're just undeveloped quick bursts of ideas i try to write down asap, but i don't usually stretch them out into full-blown fics.

(2/3 part one-shot): i aim to make my one-shot fics just one chapter long but sometimes they get a little lengthy; it just feels wiser to just seperate the whole thing into a few parts. i never go over 3 parts, because if i do i would classify that as one of my 'long fics'.

(editing): if one of my fics has 'editing' beside the title that probably means i'm primarily focusing on updating that particular fic and i won't be working on other fics for the time being until i have completed editing, i usually go into an editing phase after every 10 chapters i upload on that specific fic, meaning i don't re-edit my one-shots no matter how many parts they are - my one-shots are always going to be raw first drafts and will most likely have mistakes.

i'm open for requests, if you'd like me to drop some headcannons or if you want to ask me if i could write up any possible fic ideas i will be more than happy to consider your suggestions! just drop me a dm or ask me anonymously <3

anyway thanks for reading this far, i'm super excited to make more works and share them with everyone :3 kudos and comments are so very appreciated (they motivate me fr) and in general i just love interacting with others so please don't hesitate to!

[youkaigakkou-tl]

The Kyoto Arc Analysis Post (Part 2)

(Had to split this into multiple posts because image limit. This whole thing is meant to be read as one continuous thing)

This part covers the chapters in Arashiyama, and the scene where Seimei talks to Haruaki

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

Shatter

We get told that the soul pieces “flew in 5 directions, like a pentagram” but it’s not like a pentagram at all I mean look at this.

The Arashiyama location is fairly easy to pinpoint, even though it’s a mountain, since the bamboo grove is a very specific part of it and is a famous tourist attraction. Not gonna find where exactly in the bamboo grove this happens tho lmao

Speaking of Arashiyama, there’s a lot of updated pages in the volume release, so here’s some comparisons. Look at my meow meow!! Kitty!!!!

This is the heart sutra, a buddhist sutra originally in sanskrit. I was slightly considering transcribing the sanskrit here, but then I realised that was harder than just using the english translation.

Sensei is a genius for giving characters recognizable hands and fully utilizing it. I love how you can see Haruaki’s hand with the bracelet and instantly know it's him. I love how you can see this ring and instantly know “omg wifeguy”. (punches walls)

Also look at this updated page!! My favorite furries!! Also little soul-aki on Tamao’s shoulder!!

Can I just say. Sensei is INSANE and a GENIUS for this, to pose this question to the three who have an entire spinoff dedicated to them and their best friends. This is so evil. Diabolical. I love it.

Look at this updated panel. Rintarou and Haruaki are as important to him as his wife and kids. I’m going insane. (crying sobbing punching walls etc)

This is another one of those scenes that would have killed me if I didn’t phrase it just as well as the original. Good on Hatanaka-sensei for solving a trolley problem like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I think I would have chosen to kill the stranger to save my loved one. But also I don’t have loved ones who I would do that for so maybe I’ll just choose to kill the stranger for fun. Starting to realise I have the moral compass of Takahashi.

Also, the word for “thorn”, and sometimes also “rose”, is “ibara”.

Most Sane Yohaji Enjoyer

(We are now entering nonsense zone. Don't believe anything I say here.)

In case you didn't know/forgot, there seems to be some plot stuff going on with Hatanaka in the spinoff, and I have a crack theory that at some point in the future of the main story he's going to end up back in time to when Yamazaki and Takahashi were in school.

And you see. In the panel that Yamazaki brings this up. Hatanaka's arms are bandaged up.

And guess what happens in chapter 86. His arms are injured and he's hauled off to the hospital. Boom theory proven boom I'm a genius. (jk)

(Also want to show this sane comment on chapter 93: "What if Seimei is actually present day Haruaki who went back in time with all his knowledge now"

Can you Imagine. Insane idea, I want someone to write this fanfic.)

What the hell is up with this imagery

Anyway. Back to chapter 87. And also the inner color page for vol 13 since this seems to be the same place.

Easiest question: What are the pinwheels?

While pinwheels are associated with childhood in general, in Japan, they’re also associated with death, which is why you may see pinwheels on graves, especially children’s graves. This isn’t relevant really other than the death part.

The more interesting association is that in Buddhism, pinwheels also symbolise the cycle of reincarnation. (Notice how pinwheels kinda resemble the manji symbol) (Actually, maybe this is why pinwheels are associated with death in the first place? Nothing online points this out specifically but it seems like an obvious conclusion)

Also note the pinwheels on this vol 13 cover draft. (God I love this cover so much I love the final one too but oughhhh)

The hard question: Where is this?? The moon???

First thing I thought when I saw that scene and the color page was the moon, and also Tsukuyomi (god of the moon) -> Yomi -> ???

Also some stories say Tsukuyomi also rules over Yomi so -> ??? idk what the conclusion here is. word association

Saturn is also a multi layered word-association-pun-thing. The planets from Mercury to Saturn (excluding Earth) are named after the Gogyo (five elements) in Chinese and Japanese, Saturn specifically is named after “earth” (as in like dirt and ground not the planet we’re on).

The kanji for Yomi, 黄泉, is a loanword from the Chinese name for the underworld, and literally translates to “yellow springs”. However, elements in the Gogyo and their representative colors are often used interchangeably, so in this case “yellow” means “earth” since Yomi is thought to be underground.

So of all things, for Saturn to be on that color page makes a lot of sense. Of course, the simple answer is probably that Saturn looks cool as hell.

“Earth” is also the only element not represented in the four gods, since it’s thought to be central, and typically symbolises the emperor. But also, in this context, it being paired with Seimei… yeah this makes sense.

The hardest question: Why the big dipper?

There’s a number of obvious simple answers that jumps to mind: it’s easily recognizable, looks cool, it has spiritual importance in Taoism and by extension Onmyoudou, but I can’t figure out the specific association with Abe no Seimei, let alone why specifically it on this page.

And it does have a specific association to Abe no Seimei, it’s in the stepping stones leading up to the well in the Seimei shrine, and is sometimes featured in the center of his pentagram.

Perhaps this is just one of those things that “it’s just like that, stop asking questions”. Perhaps there’s a simple, straightforward answer in some corner of the internet that I haven’t found yet. You reading this! I implore you! Figure this out! As with all the other stuff I can’t figure out! I’ve given you all the pieces!

Just maybe, death of the author, I get to takeaway anything I want from this panel. The big dipper points to Polaris, and at the end of this scene Seimei points Haruaki to Sano. (????)

Actually, now that I look at it closely, maybe this is the little dipper??? Assuming it’s not a mistake, the handle is bent the wrong way! Then it’s the little dipper! That’s even more nothing! The little dipper isn’t even mentioned in japanese mythos! I need to stop thinking about this I’m going insane.

Anyway. Next page we get to see the name of this bridge. Only “modori-bashi” is written here, but this refers to the Ichijo Modoribashi bridge in Kyoto, first built in the Heian era and has a variety of stories associated with it, as well as specific stories pertaining to Abe no Seimei. The physical bridge itself has been rebuilt in the modern age and is just down the road from the Seimei shrine, but a miniature replica has been built in the shrine itself using the original materials.

“Modoribashi” means “return bridge”, and was used in funeral processions, and has come to be associated with a variety of meanings of “return”, including “return from the afterlife”.

What’s up with this guy’s soul?

First of all, a translation note.

In the raws, Seimei doesn’t say specifically “your” soul here, since japanese can work without possessive nouns, but there wasn’t a good way to phrase that in english without sounding weird.

With that out of the way, what is up with his soul????

Recap for the last time we saw his soul in Miki arc:

It was inanimate until a while after Mikimom ate it, at which point it was Seimei. Same with the flashback when Haruaki was a kid. At no point did the soul actually act like Haruaki. If Seimei could just do that why didn’t he do it from the start? idk

(real reason: it’s so we get to see Haruaki’s hot lifeless body. This is something I realised chatting w my friend: the way to get Haruaki to look hot is to get rid of his soul, get rid of everything that makes him Haruaki (fucked up thing to say lmao). Like, look at Ame and Seimei, they’re hot all the time)

But in this arc, all the split pieces are Haruaki, and at no point does Seimei take over his soul or anything like in Miki arc.

(Obviously this makes sense narratively, the point of this arc is that Haruaki is a different person from Seimei, especially after Byakko constantly calling it “Seimei’s soul”, but also what’s the practical reason?)

And now, the big question: How is Seimei in Yomi?

Every other time we’ve seen him makes sense (relatively):

Haruaki’s dream at the start of ch47, or maybe Seimei’s memories?

Manifesting from his/Haruaki’s soul in Miki arc

This scene in ch 82, while similar to the ch87 situation, this is actually a scene from the past so this gets a pass from me.

ch 88 to 90: Byakko’s recreation of the past. This makes sense, but it’s also weird in other ways, like how Seimei is able to see chibi soul-Haruaki. Remember, this isn’t even the actual Seimei, it’s Byakko recreating it. Unless this is what actually happened (Seimei turning to look at Haruaki)???? In which case he was able to see the future where Byakko is recreating the situation he was living through at that moment (????) This guy scares me

If you haven’t caught on to why the ch87 situation is weird to me, it’s because every other time we see him has been a memory or a manifestation of his soul, and this is neither.

For him to be in Yomi, his soul would have to be there or something like that, but clearly his soul is with Haruaki and is currently in pieces around Kyoto. So just what is this Seimei?

I have no doubts that this is Seimei, and that this isn’t Haruaki’s hallucination, for the sole fact that Seimei talks like he has agency to go wherever he wants. Funny enough, I think this is the most genuine we���ve seen him.

Just what is it that makes a person? Haruaki has Seimei’s soul, but is a different person. Obviously, because they’ve had different experiences in life, live in different time periods, etc. But even then, what is it? Is there something more intangible, more inscrutable than a soul?

And does this have to do also, with the idea proposed in the Haruaki student arc, that the true nature of a person isn’t so easily changed? What constitutes a soul?

Maybe one day I’ll have the answer.

The Principal

I’ve already picked apart this next scene in this ask, although that was written before ch93 dropped, I think it holds up pretty well. Take a second and read that if you want 👍

Hit the image limit again, so this continues in part 3.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

[darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght]

Chapter 1- Part 1

By the way- since Tumblr has a limit on how many images someone can put on a single post, I’ll need to be splitting these updates into multiple parts. No worries, though- I’ll make sure to keep all posts corresponding to specific chapters linked up with each other.

So now, let’s boot up the game! If you wanna download it yourself and give it a try, you can find the download on the official website.

I gotta say, just looking at this title screen with my own eyes is getting me excited already. Starting a new game always does that for me- a fresh new experience, new adventure!

Also can I just say this title screen music goes so hecking hard, like this is a jam, holy crud- 

Okay enough waiting around, let’s actually get this started...

And by that I mean mess around with the control scheme for a moment-

Would it have been easier to just leave the controls at their default? Maybe, but I just prefer using WASD to move around, yell at me in the notes for my setup if it satisfies you.

Ah, and here we are at our character selection! I like the ticket styling here, and from the first look the sprites look good. Though- is that the Gen 3 style of spritework? All tiny like that? I probably shoulda expected that when they said it was “Emerald-styled”, actually-

It also doesn’t look like any of them have a set gender at default, I think? It seems like it’s just split between “black hair, blondie, or white anime hair (affectionate)”- either way, everyone here looks GNC has heck and I love that for all of them. 

Still, none of these really match what I really look like, so…I’ll go with the white-haired one at the end, just to see what happens when I pick them-

Ah, you can pick your gender regardless of which avatar you choose! Neat! I’m gonna look edgy and no one can stop me-

Also, as you can see, my character’s name for this playthrough will be “X”- that’s the name I typically choose for myself when naming characters in games like this, and Reborn will be no different.

Also, you guys can’t hear this because it’s just images, but like- I think this ticketmaster is doing all of this on a typewriter?? Because when all that other stuff (ARR, Seat Number, etc.) was being inputted, the audio was typewriter sounds?? I thought the ticket UI was just for the aesthetic, but- is this station actually that old???

Hello??? Sir??? We have technology, you know that, right????

The old fence post that is your workspace apparently-

You know, I’m a little curious about that myself- why are we going to Reborn City? Is the player character gonna have a backstory of some sort? The regular Pokémon protagonists have backstories, even if it’s usually as simple as “you’ve lived in this town your whole life, you turn a certain age, now take this starter and go forth and fight Trainers to become the very best”, but it’s there still. 

What’s this character’s motivation? Is that something I’ll have to come up with for myself? Audience surrogate taken to the max? Because I can do that, I can work with that-

Ambition- is that our true motivation? Or is that merely the perception of the ancient ticketmaster? Questions to be answered later, I'm sure.

AW YEAH, TRAIN SOUNDS (and the background is doing a moving effect too, but again you can’t see it through the screenshot, alas)

Oh honey we viewed them quite closely not too long ago, I think we’re good-

Nice animation with the train we got going here, interesting to see that multi-colored emblem from the title screen on it…again, implications to be answered later.

Oh? Those are the other avatar characters we could have picked. Are they going to be NPCs or something? You know, like in Gen III with Brendan/May or Gen IV with Lucas/Dawn or Legends Arceus with Rei/Akari?

Also, this BGM for being on the train here slaps, the music is pretty good so far.

Man, lots of white-haired folk around here, who’s this now?

Ah, a recruiter- so the others are more Trainers, like us. Again- are they going to be NPCs since they aren’t the player character? They must have canon names or something, but there’s definitely a lot of them- eh, we’ll just have to see.

Next

[internerdionality]

Question game! Tagged by @dragonmuse and @thetardigrape 💕🙏🏻😊

if you're a writer and you see this, consider yourself tagged if you want!

Do you write in order?

Nope. Frequently quite the opposite. I tend to start with the climactic scenes of a fic, the big emotional cruxes, and then figure out how to get the characters there.

There's definitely exceptions, especially when writing more humorous or lighthearted fics, and I've been experimenting more in the last year with posting works-in-progress, which requires writing much more sequentially than I used to!

WDYDWADS and A Fucking Duel, my most popular fics so far, each started with a very cracky premise and I had no clear idea where I was going when I started with them. I had the occasional out of order moment—I've been sitting on the next chapter I'll be posting of WDYDWADS since July, because I wrote it and then realized a bunch of other stuff needed to happen first, and the third chapter of A Fucking Duel was written before the second. But mostly they were written in order and I posted up each chapter before finishing the next.

But my longer fics like Soaked to the Skin and Mutually Beneficial were written much more chaotically. Chapters 17 & 18 of Soaked to the Skin have some of the earliest scenes I wrote for that verse. It's been a bit longer since I wrote Mutually Beneficial, so I don't remember the exact order, but I know that the moment in Chapter 14 where Clark goes to his knees was the first one I envisioned and one of the earliest ones I wrote.

How fully formed does your writing come out the first try?

I tend to think over the scenes first, and then workshop sentences and paragraphs as I'm writing them, so it depends what you mean by "first try." Most of the time, the fic as you would read it after my first fully written draft is pretty close to the final version. It's just fine-tuning after that, unless something isn't working.

However, sometimes something isn't working, and then it can change a lot. For example, the aforementioned Chapters 17 & 18 of Soaked to the Skin were originally one chapter, and all from the Lucius' POV. After I'd written a bunch of the rest of the fic, I realized that we desperately needed to see what Izzy was thinking during it, so I ended up splitting it in two, expanding both parts, and flipping the POV in the second half. That doesn't happen to me very often, but pretty much every longfic I've written has at least one chapter that ended up getting overhauled, sometimes multiple times. The one I tend to remember with agony is Chapter 9 of Welcome to the Mouth of Hell (please mind the tags if you follow that link)—I actually swapped out one of the major characters in that scene twice before finally figuring out how to make it work.

How many drafts do you go through?

Well, that depends on what you consider a draft, lol. The longer and more serious the fic is, the more I tend to pore over it. I also tend to reread and fine-tune earlier chapters of a longfic to get back into the right mindset before writing more, so chapters written earlier may end up getting fiddled with a lot more than later chapters. But it's all a pretty incremental process, so I don't usually have multiple "drafts" of the entire fic in the way I did when turning in assignments in school.

If we're counting every time the text changes as a different draft, though—at least two? At the very least, I'll write out a fic in Google Docs, import it into AO3, and read it over again in the rich text editor, looking for import errors and fine-tuning as I go. I think the most I've ever gone over a chapter before posting it is probably around ten times? I do also reread over my old, posted work sometime (especially the smut, that's why I write smut!), and I'll fix typos and fine-tune sentences even years later if I notice them.

So an old smut like A Private Nightmare... and Fantasy, I've probably gone through three or four "drafts" since it was originally posted. As far as drafts that are substantially different from each other though, the record is three, for that chapter linked above.

Tell me about your process.

Well, I think I covered a lot of it as I blathered on through the previous answers! I tend to seize on something that seems important or interesting (preferably both!) to me, whether it's a dynamic between two people that I couldn't get out of my heard, or a piece of emotional growth that I went through and want to model, or exploring a sexual kink or orientation that resonated with me, just a particular premise that I thought was funny! (Or well, sometimes it's just 'write the smut you want to see in the world'...)

I usually try to have at least the broad strokes of what I'm going to write worked out before I start, although as mentioned previously, there are exceptions! With longer fics, I write outlines—I'll use the heading feature of Google Docs to lay out the main beats, then block out how many chapters I think I'll need, usually with a little summary of what I'm trying to do with each one.

I get somewhat overly married to (what I think are) clever story structures sometimes—for example, the alternating POVs in Soaked to the Skin, or each chapter of A Fucking Duel aligning to a number in The 10 Duel Commandments. I have one outlined WIP that using a four-person rotating POV. We'll, ahh, see how that goes if I ever start actually writing it.

[photoniccyclone]

SFR Update - Making progress

Hey ho! In my last update, I told you I had been outlining a big scene that would be the last one big one in the chapter. While I have yet to finish that scene, I made A LOT of progress on it. If this scene were normal-sized, it would've been done already; the issue is it's REALLY CHONKY. It's probably the longest scene this fic has had by far, so it's taking a lot to get done.

Also, thanks to the scene being so long, the chapter has passed the 16k word limit, so I'll have to see what to do about that. I will probably cut some stuff out or split it into two shorter chapters, as it likely won't be long enough to split into two full-sized chapters. But I know of some... "fluff" that I may be able to cut out to shorten the length, so I'll probably try that first. In the situation where that doesn't end up working, y'all might end up with two 11k word chapters or something because the current word count of the whole chapter is around 18k. And to that we can expect maybe 1k, 2k, or more words to be added to finish the current scene, and then perhaps about 1k or 2k words to hopefully cover the following two scenes combined.

But yeah, hopefully, the scene will be done sometime in the next week or two, and then I can speedrun the last two scenes and get this thing ready for editing, which will require some more time but hopefully as not as long as the rough draft (as always).

Also, I will have to change some things from previous chapters that I want you all to be aware of when the chapter gets uploaded. I'll mention it in the author's notes when it comes out, too, and I'll say exactly what's been changed, so you don't need to go back and read.

Here are the things that will be changing (if you haven't caught up on SFR yet, which, at the time of posting, means read chapters 1-6; don't read through these yet as they may contain some spoilers. Again, I'll put something similar explaining what's been changed in the author's notes of chapter 7, so don't worry).

For cannon compliance, Sol Regem no longer burned down Elarion. Instead, he tried to, but Ziard successfully stopped him, as in the show. This was initially in there because I thought that after Ziard blinded Sol Regem, he flew back to Elarion and burned it down. This belief held by many, including me at the time, seems to have stemmed from the Midnight Star poem. This, however, at least as far as we know right now, is false. Sol Regem did not manage to burn down Elarion, and the more likely explanation is that all of its citizens were kicked out in the judgment of the half-moon. I debated for a while on whether or not to change this in the fic because it is an au, so technically, I can keep it in there and just claim it's one of the things that have been changed, but a future scene is going to need the canon version of events anyway so this is going to have to be changed. It shouldn't be too hard to do. It's only been brought up in the fic twice so far, and one of them is just a change from "burned down Elarion" to "tried burning down Elarion," pretty much. The other occurs earlier in the fic in chapter 1 and may be harder to change because it's one of the things that Zym roasts Sol Regem on in a way that's not so easily changed. So I'm either going to have to come up with something else for Zym to roast Sol Regem on as a replacement or try to still work with the original one and just change it so it talks about him for attempting to burn it down rather than burning it down. I don't know how easy or hard that will be; that's also in the future when this chapter is pretty much done. I just wanted to let you know this will be changing.

2. In chapter 4, during Team Rayla's battle at the Earthblood settlement. Multiple injuries reference arrows "lodged" into limbs. The problem is, I recently did some research and figured out that if an arrow gets "lodged" into a limb, that limb is going to be out of commission for quite some time; it will likely not just be an "ouchie" that will cause you some pain for a while as it's kinda been shown in the fic. I never wanted the injuries sustained during that fight to be too debilitating as it would make some future scenes not work. I planned to make the injuries bad enough to lower morale, but not enough to put limbs completely out of commission. So, this is gonna have to be changed. I plan on changing places where an arrow gets "Lodged" into a limb to places where an arrow "grazes" the limb. So, it grazes the limb instead of implanting itself into it, decreasing the severity. Hopefully, this will make what they experience after the fight more believable, and it shouldn't be too hard to change.

That's all for now; hopefully, I'll see you all in the not-too-distant future!

[autumnalwalker]

Tag Game - This or That

Thank you for the tag, @novel-emma.

Passing the tag to @epnona-the-wisp, @theprissythumbelina, @words-after-midnight, @rainbowbokchoy, and, as always, an open tag for anyone else who may wish to join in.

1. historical or futuristic

Looking at my bookshelf, it's s close to even split, slightly favoring historical. That is, assuming that pseudo-medieval fantasy counts as "historical". It would be an even more even split if we lumped the third category of "modern day" in with "futuristic."

2. the opening or closing chapter

Giving this one to "the opening," if only because it's usually the two or three chapters before the actual closing chapter that are the real meat of the ending. That said, while I've found closing chapters often have lower lows than openings, they also sometimes have higher highs.

3. light+fluffy or dark+gritty

This one's a close call, as it mostly depends on what I'm in the mood for/in need of at any given time. That said, I'm going to give it to "light+fluffy" because a) I think I've come to be able to enjoy "light+fluffy" that's merely okay while I think I'm a little more demanding of "dark+gritty," and b) I like my "dark+gritty" to have some element of hopefulness that things will get better one day.

4. animal companion or found family

Found family by far, and I'll go the extra step and say that an intelligent talking/psychic bonded animal is really more of a person than an animal and therefore actually falls under found family.

6. hard or soft magic system

Whichever fits the story being told, so long as it's handled well. If you're going with a hard magic system make it an organic part of the worldbuilding and plot that flows as naturally/logically as anything else and keep it internally consistent. If you're going with a soft magic system, please don't abuse it to get lazy with the plot.

7. standalone or series

Both is good. At their best, a standalone can neatly and concisely say what it needs to say without growing bloated, while a series can invest you for a long time, letting you really get to know the characters and world and becoming part of your life. At their worst, a standalone leaves you unsatisfied but knowing that answer/closure/etc. will never come, while a series will leave you cursing your need to see how it all turns out and compulsively keep going long past the point where you've stopped enjoying it.

8. one project at a time or always juggling 2+

I must both consume and be consumed by a thing until nothing is left before I can feel comfortable moving on to the next. That goes for both creative endeavors and leisure activities. I've never understood how some people can read multiple books at a time or start a new game before finishing another while still having the intent to finish both.

9. one award winner or one bestseller

The award winner side of things tends to fit my tastes better. That said, I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive and things do get popular for a reason.

10. fantasy or sci-fi

Again, referring back to my bookshelf, it's a pretty even split; maybe 55:45, with a slight skew toward fantasy and some that blur the line.

11. character or setting description

Do we mean characterization or physical description of characters? The former is typically the far more important to me, but the latter I often have a tendency to forget about/ignore unless it's plot relevant or a big part of their personality, to the point where the way I picture characters in my head while reading tends to have more to do with the general vibes I get off of them than the canonical physical descriptions. So, I suppose Characterization > Setting Description > Character Physical Description. (Caveat: a sufficiently cool world can, on very rare occasions, make up for shortcomings in character or plot.)

12. first or final draft

I write as a fun hobby rather than any serious intent for publishing, so my first draft of anything will generally be my only draft, save perhaps for a few minor spelling/grammar/typo errors that I might happen to catch on a reread. If I'm reading someone else's work, I prefer the final draft, but if the first is all I can get my hands on at the moment for an intriguing story then I'll take it.

13. love triangle in everything or no romantic arcs

I don't tend to be big on romance in general (although in recent years I've found subsets of it that I like better than others), and most love triangles I've personally encountered just feel like frustrating distractions. There are exceptions of course, and the triangle ending in polyamory has the potential for being especially rewarding, so long as it's a matter of everyone actually developing feelings for one another and not a vaguely creepy horny author-insert fantasy of one character getting multiple partners who are just sort of tolerating eachother for the sake of being able to share the protagonist.

14. constant sandstorm or rainstorm

It seems most of my favorite things that I've written happen during the rain. Case in point: Day 140.

[cogdis2-xx]

New Update!

Noticed this should be my 100th post, so screw it, putting out Prerelease 0.6 now, with an EasyRPG fork just to avoid EasyRPG janking out over not booting from a regular title screen

Unfortunately the easyrpg build lacks the attract mode, but it's better than nothing. I'd recommend just using the regular build on windows.

Pre 0.6 Standard build here - Use on windows

Pre 0.6 EasyRPG build here - Use on mobile and literally anything other than windows, though I cant provide a tutorial myself for how to get it working. EasyRPG itself can be found here

Previous builds and changelogs here

This is probably the first build I'd consider a "stable release", just meaning it should be mostly stable for a standard playthough without it being too visibly unfinished.

Changelog for 0.6 below, beware of spoilers!

==[Prerelease 0.6]==

Internal LOOKINTO.txt added for things I should look into to see about tweaking

Blue Eyes White Giegue

Niiue Mouth/Nose placement adjustments

Niiue in mirror may be Dustier than he appears

More music tweaks

7 minute long Boss medley added during a Giygas fight where Niiue has a certain status effect

Remodeled the ship in attract mode to match the current interior layout

Made a certain unused Niiue sprite actually end up being used because I feel like it's too cute in current form to not include lol

Fixed Future Niiue using the wrong sprite in one cutscene

Fixed invisible barrier in cutscene mentioned above that had no reason to be there

Added an 80s carpet (and other changes) to a cutscene map

Fixed a minor oversight where Elmadan would replace the Mr. Saturn in a few cutscenes because I forgot to account for people not letting dan on the ship (Like a meanie :<)

Niiue hair

Reflect Crash prevention implimented; Slightly janks up enemy Flash Omega, though is probably a better solution than crashing. ONLY CURRENTLY WORKS FOR FLASH OMEGA. OTHER MOVES THAT MAY HAVE ISSUES LIKE THIS ARE NOT FIXED.

undefined

Flash Omega reflect fix implimented for Doom Statue, N.K. Saturn, Flashzapbang, Influence inhibitor, surprise box, Foureyes, "Blue Mist", Hard shining jewel, hard Smilin' Sphere, Univese Saguaro, Hard Final Starman, Hard Ullrich, Gargiathan, Hard Voltzer!, Mr. Multiplicity, and Cmd. Deepsea. This should be all enemies with Flash Omega.

Changed a palette on a giegue sprite as to make the shading feel more natural

Tried fixing a bug where sometimes Giygas just doesn't fade in during phase 3, may add a bit of delay to the battle command right before fade in though.

Started working on putting people into the internal credits file

Changed the way the one room looks. the kind of out of place looking one where Niiue talks to you

Reduced scope of ship customization so it'd be a bit less overwhelming to impliment

Fixed some weird item quirks with Larice

Slightly toned down how harsh the Sataene color palette is

Changed Sataene's midi track in Chapter 1: Now split into two tracks

undefined

Elmadan now calls for Lawyer Mooks, which are functionally identical to Lesser mooks, but look like ace attorney lawyers.

Added "Filter goggles" item which can be used to turn on an anti-eyestrain screen filter.

Finished ship customization, items are spread out across planets and chapters.

Tweaked earth dumps to properly utilize some parts of the tileset that were previously unused.

Made it so Dan can talk while on earth.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 301: All My Todorokis

Previously on BnHA: We learned that when a bunch of superpowered villains are suddenly set loose with nobody around to stop them, things get fucked pretty quickly. Old Man Samurai and a bunch of other useless people decided to make “I pretend I do not see it” their new mantra, and resigned. Endeavor had a moment of despair on account of being crushed by the guilt of having ruined the lives of himself, his family, and basically everyone else in the entire world. For various reasons the heretical notion of “person who has done bad things feels sorry for doing them” sent fandom spiraling into a meltdown, so that was fun. The chapter ended with the entire Todoroki clan descending upon Enji’s hospital room to have a dramatic chat about Touya and All That General Fuckery.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “here’s the story of how Baby Touya slowly went insane trying to win his father’s love.” It’s a tale full of subverted expectations and heartbreaking inevitability, and also like twenty panels of the cutest fucking kids who ever existed on planet earth, who are so fucking cute that I can’t stop thinking about their cuteness even with all of the horrifying family tragedy unfolding around them. It is absolutely ridiculous how cute they are. Touya is out here pushing his tiny body past its limits because he inherited the same obsession as his dad and neither of them can put it aside even though it’s destroying them, and yet all I can think about is Baby Shouto’s (。･o･｡) face. Anyways what a chapter.

so I have to confess that even though I managed to avoid being caught off-guard by the early leaks, the number of people reblogging my Endeavor posts from earlier this week and using the tag “bnha 301” kind of gave me an inkling that this chapter will include more Tododrama lol. that said, I don’t know anything else about it, so we’re still good spoiler-wise

AHHHHH FLAHSBAKC AHHHH. omg I know I typoed the shit out of that, but I’m just going to leave it lol I think it’s fitting

holy shit holy fuck. so this is Rei and Enji’s first meeting, then??

yepppp, oh shit

so wait, I know this is not even the slightest bit important, but are they meeting at Enji’s home or Rei’s? because I always figured that Enji was the one with the super-Japanese aesthetic, but maybe that was Rei’s side of the family all along

(ETA: from what I found during my very brief google search, omiai meetings are often held at fancy hotels or restaurants, so maybe that’s what this is.)

there’s such a period drama feel to this setting. like it’s so outrageously formal fff how can anyone stand this kind of atmosphere though seriously

OH THANK GOD

I mean they’re still stiff af but at least they’re not rigidly sitting in seiza and staring at each other unblinkingly anymore lol. Enji’s actually got his hands in his pockets now. why is this somehow almost cute

oh damn it’s the flowers

Rei seems so subdued and it’s so hard to get any idea of what she’s actually thinking. I want to see her side of this dammit

but anyway, so at least from Enji’s perspective it seems like even though the marriage was arranged and he picked her because of her quirk, he still loved his wife and wanted to do right by her. the fact that he was watching her and noticed that she liked the flowers, and remembered that detail for all these years -- there’s a reason why Horikoshi’s showing us this. we know what’s going to happen later on; we know how much fear and violence and breaking of trust is coming up ahead, and while it may seem like this scene is serving to soften Enji’s character further -- which to be fair it is -- it also helps drive home the full impact of his abuse. that it’s so terrible not only because of the trauma of the abuse itself, but also because of the way it retroactively destroys all of the good things as well. this could have potentially been such a sweet scene, but it’s inescapably tainted by the knowledge of what’s to come, at least for me. and that’s just brutal

anyways, shit. is the whole chapter going to be like this?? feel free to toss in something I can actually make a joke about sometime, Horikoshi

oop, back to the present

omfg lol

“are you all right” “NO I’M NOT ALL RIGHT WHAT THE FUCK.” “oh, right, because of all the stuff that’s happened with me abusing you and you having a mental breakdown and being hospitalized for ten years and then our son coming back to life and killing thirty people, right, right. I almost forgot.” whoops

omfg you guys I’m loving this new and improved steely-eyed Rei. I’m loving her a lot

and what do you mean “part one” fkjds how long is this going to be. TOO MUCH DRAMA FOR ONE CHAPTER TO HANDLE

oh, hello

yeah I’ll say you did. didn’t seem to bother you much at the time, though

HMMMMMMMMMMMM

Dabi Is A Noumu intensifies even further. anyways though would you fucking look at this boy lounging on this moth-eaten couch doing his best DRAW ME LIKE YOUR FRENCH GIRLS impression wtf

Dabi what if you actually had killed him??? what would you feel?? satisfaction?? regret?? anything at all?? tell me your secrets goddammit

who are you talking to buddy

Fuyumi-chan, Natsu-kun (is it common for brothers to address each other as -kun?? can’t recall seeing that in many other anime, but hey), and “dot dot dot,,,,,, SHOUTO” lol thank you so much for this bountiful heaping of Tododrama Horikoshi we are blessed

AH, WHAT DID I SAY THE OTHER DAY

ULTIMATE MELODRAMATIC THEATER CHILD. “I’M JUST GOING TO LIE ON THIS COUCH SHIRTLESS AND ALONE AND MAKE SPEECHES TO MY FAMILY MEMBERS WHO AREN’T THERE AND SAY THINGS LIKE ‘WATCH ME IN THE PITS OF HELL’ WITH A STRAIGHT FACE BECAUSE NO ONE’S THERE TO JUDGE ME.” WELL JOKE’S ON YOU MISTER CHATTERBOX BECAUSE I AM IN FACT JUDGING THE SHIT OUT OF YOU LOL

(ETA: and on a more serious note, it’s interesting to see that “look at me”/”watch me” theme being used again though, because we see that same sentiment uttered repeatedly by the younger Touya in the flashback. well kid, you definitely got your wish at last. don’t know what else to say.)

OKAY HORIKOSHI HAS DECIDED THAT’S ENOUGH FUN, TIME FOR MORE FLASHBACKS

oh my sweet precious lord

just as cute as we left him. giving us a child this cute when we all know full well what’s going to happen to him is just unspeakably cruel though

HOMG

I’m fucking speechless. you broke me, congratulations. what am I even supposed to do with this

I can’t get over this. moving forward my life will be split into two distinct parts, B.P. (Before the Pout) and A.P. (After the Pout)

and meanwhile there’s ALL THIS BACKGROUND ANGST BUILDING UP, AND I CAN’T EVEN FOCUS ON IT. Touya’s arm and cheek are covered in bandages (I’m guessing this is shortly after that “ouch!” panel we got some chapters back), and Enji is deliberately avoiding training with him because he doesn’t want him to hurt himself further. I can’t fucking get over the irony that all this time everyone thought Touya had died because Enji pushed him too far in his training, and it turns out that it’s the opposite -- the tragedy ultimately happened because he didn’t want to push him. but I’m jumping ahead of myself though I guess

by the way,

remember this?? just wanted to remind you that it exists just in case you forgot

so now someone is talking and basically saying that Touya is the exact opposite of what Enji was hoping for when he decided to start playing with quirk genetics

-- okay hold up

...lol no, never mind. for a second I thought “holy shit he looks kind of familiar WHAT IF IT’S UJIKO OMG” before I remembered that Enji would have recognized him during the hospital capture mission if that was the case. so NEVER MIND, PROCEED

IMAGINE THAT, ENJI DOESN’T QUITE SEEM SATISFIED WITH THIS SUGGESTION OF QUITTING NOW

(ETA: how the fuck did this man go around saving 62 towns in a single day what even is All Might.)

[clicks tongue several times] trouble a’brewin’

MEANWHILE BABY TOUYA HAS UNFORTUNATELY INHERITED HIS DAD’S STUBBORN STREAK

KLDIHWOEIJFL:KSDJ

!!!!!!!!!!!

oh my god. oh my god. what is this chapter. WHAT IS IT

so now Touya is all “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND MY MANLY DESIRE TO BURN MYSELF ALIVE” well you got her there champ

THEY’RE TOO CUTE. OH MY GOD. HIS FURIOUS LITTLE TEARS. HER CHUBBY LIL FACE. HIS STUBBY LIL FISTS. SOMEONE HELP ME

also are they just home alone lol or what. “hey Touya, you’re what, like six now?? do us a favor and look after your baby sister for a couple hours for us would you? make sure not to set yourself on fire or anything.” WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!!

now it’s nighttime and Enji and Rei are arguing, presumably about his decision not to train Touya anymore

whew. okay. so, a couple of things here

1. first of all I think this conclusively shows that Enji really was trying to do the best he could for Touya. he stopped training him as soon as he realized it was hurting him, but Touya was still determined so he tried to make it work anyway, and even visited doctors to try and figure out if there was anything they could do. then, once they were absolutely sure that it wasn’t going to work, he tried multiple times to explain to Touya why they had to stop. he didn’t just abandon him out of the blue, which is really important to note. “no matter how much I tried telling him...”

so yeah, that debunks another common fandom accusation. so by the time he finally makes this decision, which we all know is going to turn out horribly, it’s basically because he’s already tried everything else he could think of. which, by the way, still doesn’t mean he handled this right. but at the very least he was taking Touya’s feelings into account and he was trying, and he didn’t just abruptly toss his son aside (at least not yet)

2. buuuut, then there’s this panel right below all that

which is the other side of it. if he’d just quit like the doctor person advised him to, that would have been the end of it. Touya would still have been upset, but he would have eventually gotten over it and the family would have moved on and possibly even been happy. but what happens next happens because Enji can’t let go. he still has this maddening urge to surpass All Might, and so he and Rei keep having more children, and then Shouto is born, and Enji finally has a kid he can start projecting all of his hysterical ambitions onto once again, and everything starts spiraling out of control soon after

though p.s. none of that is Shouto’s fault though!! he’s one of the few good things to come out of this whole mess and I’m very happy that he exists. the tragedy is that his dad fucking lost his mind over his quirk and fucked everything up. but that’s on him, not Touya or Shouto

anyways, SLKFJLSHGLKJL

I CAN’T FUCKING TAKE THIS YOU GUYS??? LOOK AT THAT LIL BUTTON OF A NOSE??? I’M LOSING IT HERE???

AND TOUYA JUST SEEMS DEVASTATED OMG

because children aren’t stupid, after all. he understands that his dad is still looking to surpass All Might. and so he feels like a failure, and feels like his dad is trying to replace him because he wasn’t good enough. and even now, isn’t that what the adult Touya is trying to prove?? that he was good enough after all?? “I’ll show you what happens when you give up on me, dad”?? “I’ll show you what I can do”?? fuck my life fuck everything

AND YOU CAN SEE THE TOLL THAT IT’S ALL TAKING ON REI GETTING WORSE AND WORSE AS WELL OH GOD

really nice touch here with the panel outlines becoming all shimmery from the heat of Endeavor’s flames (and/or becoming more unstable as the family gets closer and closer to their breaking point). but man, Horikoshi I can’t handle this, please show us more cute kids or something I can’t

GKELKWFJLDKSHFLKL

WITTLE BABE. BEEB. BUBS. SMOL. lkj; oh ouch a piece of my heart just detached and latched onto him huh look at that

TODOROKI “I’M SO SMALL AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON AND I DIDN’T ASK TO BE HERE” SHOUTO AHHHHH

crazy how they all just seem to know right off the bat lol. kid doesn’t even have object permanence yet, let alone a quirk. but do they care?? IT’S THE HAIR, RIGHT. WE’RE ALL THINKING IT, I’M JUST GONNA COME OUT AND SAY IT. they knew the minute they looked at him lol

AND MEANWHILE TOUYA IS OFF HAVING UNSUPERVISED TRAINING/CRYING SESSIONS IN THE MOUNTAINS OR WHATEVER, AND, UH OH

are those blue flames yet?? they seem pretty close

(ETA: this is one of the few cases where the manga being in black and white is infuriating lol.)

OH MY GOD AND STILL

so it’s not like he was so disinterested that he didn’t notice what was happening, and he was still trying to stop it and get through to him. trying to reassure him that it wasn’t the end of the world and there were other things he could do with his life, but this one particular thing just wasn’t going to happen

fucking hell. it’s agonizing seeing how close they actually were to fixing it. if he’d only said the right words, or if he’d realized at this point how destructive his obsession could be to his kids, and backed off from putting that same pressure on Shouto. we came so close to possibly having a happy ending

AND ALSO THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING BUT PLEASE LOOK AT HOW TOUYA IS LIKE THREE AND A HALF FEET TALL AND HIS DAD IS LIKE NINE AND A HALF FEET. Touya barely comes past his knees flkjlkg. the Todoroki household must have been so filled with like plastic stepstools to reach the bathroom sink and all the little baby toothbrushes, and baby gates to keep the kiddos out of the important grown-up rooms and stuff. and also days-old half-empty cups of water and stale crackers and hot wheels and my little ponies strewn everywhere

“BUT EVERYONE AT SCHOOL SAYS THEY’RE GONNA BE HEROES” a wild Deku parallel appears?? how bout that

I know this is like a pivotal moment in the Todo Tragedy and all, but fucking look at this lil dumpling

“sup bro, it’s me, the manifestation of your fears of inadequacy and lack of fatherly affections. a GAAA. ba-baAA-baa [gurgling baby sounds]”

OHHHHH IT’S THE SOUND OF MY HEART BREAKING OH NO

HE WANTS TO BE LIKE YOU ENJI. good lord somebody please just get this family some therapy

“DAD YOU IGNITED IT IN ME” flkjslkj nope, nope. not ready for this pain here

baby Shouto, would you like to weigh in on this affair? “DA!! ba-ga-daaa, [pacifier chewing noises]” oh my, you don’t say. so insightful for one so young

OH MY GODDDDDD

IT’S SO DRAMATIC BUT ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT ARE THE SHOUNEN WOOSH LINES SURROUNDING FOUR-MONTH-OLD SHOUTO LOL HE WAS LIKE THIS FROM BIRTH OH MY GOD I AM DYING HELP

SHOUTO YOU’RE RUINING THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER!?!?!

“yo, the fuck kind of family was I fucking born into” oh, son. if you only knew. IF YOU ONLY KNEW!!

(ETA: lmao I got so distracted by the ridiculous cuteness that I glossed over the fact that Baby Touya seems to possibly be aiming at him?? it’s hard to tell because he’s also super out of it from heatstroke and may just be losing control in his attempt to show off his upgrade.)

ANYWAY THAT’S THE END EXCEPT WHAT’S THIS LAST LINE OMG

ffffff. and we’re in for ANOTHER chapter of this next week?? MORE drama?? MORE BABIES?? MORE OF EIGHT-YEAR-OLD TOUYA’S SLOW DESCENT INTO MADNESS. MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT, BUT ALSO YES PLEASE SIGN ME UP

[zaharya]

Scrivener 3 – Main Tutorial (Part 2)

I hope you find this guide useful! To enable me to make more of these, and make them available for everyone, please consider supporting me via KoFi! I love sharing my stuff freely and don't want to paywall anything, but I also have to eat – every contribution helps and is greatly appreciated!

This is tutorial 2 (part 2) of my neurodivergence-friendly tutorial series for Scrivener 3. It's intended for people who are new to Scrivener, as well as people who are already familiar with it, as it covers the major features in quite a bit of detail.

Important note: All my tutorials are based on Scrivener for MacOS! Though minor, there are some differences between Scrivener 3 for Windows vs for MacOS, so you may notice a few small discrepancies if you use Scrivener with Windows. Further, all tutorials are based on my own personal workflow, and all screenshots are from my personal files, so please don't distribute those elsewhere. My workflow is not universal (duh), and if you use certain features differently that doesn't mean one of us is doing it wrong. You do you! Lastly, this tutorial originated on Discord, which is probably noticeable in how it's written – I am not changing that, since many people have insisted that this was exactly what made it easier to follow than the official Scrivener tutorial.

A continuously updated Masterlist with all my Scrivener 3 tutorials can be found here.

(Part 2 begins below the cut.)

Main Tutorial (Part 2)

[Direct continuation from where Part 1 left off.]

Copyholder

Now I've already talked about layout and the Split modes further up, but that's not the end of our layout options in the Editor. Besides Split mode to show two files/scrivenings, you can also use the Copyholder to display notes, a snapshot (we’ll get to that), another scene – whatever. To do that, you right-click on the file you want and go to Open -> in Copyholder. You can change the position of the Copyholder with a right-click into its frame.

Similarly, if you choose Open -> as Quick Reference, the selected file will open in a small, floating window. Many options to have many things open at once – neat shit.

[There are a couple other options for the Editor (including Typewriter mode, Focus, and Composition mode); they are covered in the Extended Tutorial.]

The Inspector

So, finally, all to the right we have my favourite thing: the Inspector, with five tabs. [Reminder at this point that this is just my personal workflow. Ok? Ok.]

Notes

The first tab (outer left icon) is Notes. With Notes selected, up top you see Synopsis. I use this to roughly outline my scene. Sometimes there's no more than a sentence or two in there, in this case now it's a fairly detailed one.

Under that you see the Notes, and you see that not everything is in the same font. I put many things in the notes, the three main ones of which you see in the first image above:

something that'll potentially go into the author's notes when I eventually post the chapter with that scene in it; aka my thoughts while writing, how i felt, something funny, idk — really whatever, just author's notes

shit I wanna remember without having to think about it every time; here, who's in the scene and the age of the three most important characters

in the serif font you see deleted sentences! meaning sometimes while writing I'm like "nah, i wanna say this differently" but I also am not sure how, so instead of deleting the thing outright I cut-paste it into the side notes and keep it. Sometimes it gets used later, sometimes it won't.

Every now and then I'll clear out the side notes, for which (in some projects) I made a dedicated Deleted Passages root-folder to collect it all in. Whenever the side notes get too full, I cut-paste the whole blurb into the deleted passages file for that scene. Though, admittedly, it's quite rare that I keep multiple and organised files of my deleted passages. Usually it's just one huge thing where I never find anything.

Still, I've legit brought back whole long sections of text from this deleted passages log. Like, sometimes I'd bring back up to 700-1000 words that barely needed edit, it just had to go somewhere else and I wasn’t there yet. And I still do that, even though I by now discovered the Snapshot function. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Bookmarks

Moving on to the next Inspector tab, we're not with Notes anymore but with Bookmarks! So, wtf are Bookmarks, how do they work, why the fuck do we care?

In essence, a Bookmark allows you to open linked files in the Inspector. That’s neat because your Editor can stay where you were and you can continue writing, rather than clicking away from your scene there to check your notes — which then means you have to find your spot again once you return. Nobody likes that. 

(Yes, you could right-click on your desired internal file to open it in the Copyholder. That’s effort though, plus now you can’t use the Copyholder for something else. Anyway, moving on.)

There are two "types" of bookmarks: Project Bookmarks (PB) and Document Bookmarks (DB) -- yes i'm abbreviating those because I'm lazy. You can easily switch between the two like this.

And because Scrivener is amazing, both of these do exactly what it says on the tin.

Project bookmarks are accessible from everywhere and anywhere in the project. No matter which folder, file, or scrivening you're in, PBs are always there for you, like the kind of reliable person that is too mentally stable to be friends with any of us and brings us tea when we’re cold.

"Okay, great, but why do we need that?"

Well, no matter what you’re writing (thesis, novel etc.) there are probably certain things you’re gonna look up more than once (if you’re anything like me and your memory is as sound as sieve at least). General notes, outlines etc. seem like the obvious choices to be linked as PBs — you’ll likely need them over and over, and a PB lets you access the thing(s) from anywhere quickly. Neat shit.

Document bookmarks on the other hand are specific to the file where you created the bookmark (shocking, right? I’d never have guessed that). So if you bookmark a thing for the third scene in chapter 14, the DB won’t show up anywhere else. 

"But V, you just said that we can make things accessible from everywhere, why would we not just do that?"

Right, sure, fair point. Until there’s this side character which is kinda prominent in those two scenes but not really anywhere else and you keep forgetting whether you gave them armour or not, or whether they’re tall or tiny, and where did you say they came from again? Are you sure you want to clog up your project-wide bookmarks with the half-empty character sheet for Obscure-Sidekick #36? Exactly.

Now, though I’m sure it’s already quite obvious from above: What exactly do you actually save as a bookmark?

Internal Bookmarks (IB) are any files from within your Scrivener project that you select over the Binder-menu thingy you see in the image. Those are the notes, the outlines, the character and location sheets, the research you’ve imported — whatever, you could even link another scene that is really closely related to the one you’re working on with a DB.

External Bookmarks (EB) are the logical counterpart of IBs, meaning anything that isn’t in your Scrivener project. Is there this one website you always inevitably open while writing? Bookmark it.

EBs also include External File Bookmarks which allows you to link a file from your computer to keep it on hand; like the PDF of that one Review article that covers the entire theory for your thesis and you’re tired of going back and forth while trying to paraphrase.

Now those of you who paid attention saw a thing named Matching Text. The way this works is that it’ll compare the text of the doc you’re currently in with the text in all the bookmarks and show you any matching text. I’ll admit I have not yet found a good use for this, except if you’re writing a research paper and wanna check that your paraphrasing holds up. I’m sure there’s a point to it and it’ll reveal itself eventually – until then we'll gloss over this here.

Metadata

Moving on from Bookmarks, we go one further to the right to the little tag icon: There we have General Metadata, Custom Metadata, and Keywords.

General Metadata is literally just that; ordinary metadata. Boring, moving on.

The only preset that I saw for Custom Metadata is “Event Start Date” – I added Event End Date myself by clicking on the three little dots which opens the settings. You can pick your date format (short, long, full, including time, custom etc.) and there are three other types of metadata (Text, Checkbox, List) that I haven’t explored yet. 

I assume if you have something that can either be true or untrue for a scene a checkbox would make sense.

Keywords are really quite simple: To set it up, you either use the menu bar (Project) or click on the three little dots in the Keywords field and choose Show Project Keywords. Now in the beginning that’s obviously empty – so you fill it with ... well, with whatever you want! 

I sorted mine by character and location, but you do what you need for your project. The left little plus is to add a keyword on the same level (sibling), the one to the right of it creates a sub-keyword (child), and the minus to the right of that deletes whatever is selected.

You can shift the keywords around as much as you like, can drag and drop them into each other to make them child-keywords etc. Though personally I’d create it as linearly as possible because then it makes a pretty rainbow by default! Whiii!! Of course you can also change the colours so… ANYWAYS

To add a keyword to a file (folder, scene, whatever), you either open the Project Keywords and drag-and-drop (works with multiple at once!) or you click on the three little dots again and choose your tag you wanna add.

Now why is this cool? It’s cool because a) if you go into the Project Keywords, select one and then click the little magnifying glass (bottom right), it’ll show you all the files/folders that have that Keyword in the Binder (neat shit), and b) COLOURS!

Corkboard view, for example, looks like this:

And Outline view looks like this:

You can also display the actual text of the tags, I chose to have them as colour chips. You can pick and choose what is displayed in the outline; word count, progress, synopsis etc. Further, Outline view also gives you the option to display any Custom Metadata you made.

–––

Due to Tumblr having a maximum limit of 10 images per post, this is the end of Part 2 for the Main Tutorial. Click here for Part 3.

All tutorials, supplementary posts, and what they contain are listed in the Masterlist. Thank you for your attention, I hope it was helpful, and if you have questions send an ask or message me.

Part 1 | Part 3 | Tutorial Masterlist | KoFi

[soldierswar]

Kobik - Chapter I

Bucky x Reader

(Fluff, Angst)

Plot: You and Bucky's relationship is anything but ordinary. Something that you've been used to since day one. But one day when Bucky brings home an unexpected little guest with superpowers, you reluctantly find yourself thrusted into something close to parenthood much sooner than you had ever expected to be.

Notes: I've been obsessed with Kobik and Bucky's father/daughter relationship with her since I read the Thunderbolts comics. Enjoy protective dad!Bucky.

        *Ring* *Ring* *Ring*

           “I’ve got to change that ring tone,” was your first thought after your atrociously loud phone woke you up in the middle of your mid-day nap. But you always felt the need to keep it off silent when Bucky was away from you for emergency use.

           You groggily propped yourself up and picked up the phone.

           “Everything okay?”

           “Let me guess. You just woke up?”

           There were no signs of real distress in his voice. So why the hell was he calling instead of texting?

           “Mmmmm,” you groaned.

           You being an investigative journalist had just finished working on an important writing piece that took over a month and a half to write. A piece that involved multiple trips across the ocean for in-person research. So you were pretty exhausted nowadays.

           “What’s up?” you asked mid-yawn.

           “Y/N…I need you to meet me somewhere as soon as possible. At…our spot.”

           Now you began to get worried.

You and Bucky had a special secluded spot in a nearby building that had been abandoned halfway through its being built years ago. It was safe to assume that it was just another private abandoned project after the blip that was never followed up on. So you and Bucky deemed it your secret place to go to if you needed to talk about something urgent where nobody could hear or see you.

           “Are you in some kind of trouble? Do we need a lawy—”

           “No, Y/N. It doesn’t have anything to do about me…for the most part.”

           “For the most part?”

           You could suddenly hear Sam’s voice echoing in the background again.

           “How worried do I need to be, Barnes?”  

           He hesitated.

Those pauses always made you incredibly anxious, and he knew that.

           “Are you safe? Are we safe?”  

           Another pause as he swallowed nervously.

           “James?”

           “I wouldn’t have called for you to come if I didn’t think that we’d be safe.”

           You shook your head. And although he couldn’t see it, he knew you enough to know that that was exactly what you were doing.

           “You trust me?”

           “Would I have married you if I didn’t?” you sighed lightheartedly.

           “I can be there in 30, okay?”

           And before you could hang up he said those three words that almost never faltered in making you smile, even in the worst of time.

           “I love you.”

…

           Despite the fact that he said that there was nothing really to be truly worried about, you couldn’t help but feel a pulsing anxiety surge through your body. In the years that you had been together, you never really had to use your spot for any type of unexpected emergency.

           You stumbled your way to the building being careful to not fall over the chunks of broken concrete protruding from the dirt before making your way to the door that was almost completely broken off minus two feet of it from the bottom still hinged to the door frame.

           “Hey,” said a familiar voice.

You turned around to see your husband’s beautiful face. You hadn’t seen Bucky in almost a week, so when he wrapped you in his arms you had no choice but to feel nothing but comfort and warmth. But after a two-second tender moment, you snapped out of it.

           “James,” you said.

“What is this about? Why am I here?”

           Before he could say anything, you could hear  Sam’s voice in another area of the house. It sounded almost as though he were giving orders to someone. Which was then followed by the echoes of a little childlike voice…

           You shook your head and reasoned that you were either hearing things, or things were about to get really weird.

           “Bucky,” you said raising your voice and crossing your arms.

           “How bad can it be?”

           Suddenly the only sound in the house was the sound of little footsteps sprinting towards you followed by Sam’s voice.

           “Kobi—”

           And right before your eyes, there was a little girl. A little girl that couldn’t have been older than 4 or 5 years old. She was incredibly pale and had blonde – No, white hair in two high pigtails. But the strangest thing about her was her inhumanly glowing blue eyes.

           “Everything okay Buckaroo?” she asked seeming concerned about him.

           “Shit,” Sam said under his breath as Bucky gave him a death stare.

           “Kobik,” Bucky scolded lightly, crossing his arms.

           “I told you not to come out until I said –”

           “I know,” she said as her little face and shoulders fell.

           “But someone seemed mad at you. Are you okay?”

           She turned her gaze over to you and gave you a once-over as if she were scanning you to see if you were a stranger and potential threat to your own husband.

           Sam finally joined you guys looking somewhat embarrassed.

           “Sorry, I couldn’t stop her.”  

           Now you were staring at Sam giving him the “What the hell is going on?” look.

           He didn’t seem like he wanted to be the one to answer.

Great, now you had two men who didn’t want to answer any questions about the strangest looking child that you had ever seen.  

           “Kobik,” Bucky said.

           “This is my wife, Y/N.”

           Her intense stare immediately softened, which eventually evolved into a big smile, and waved at you.

           “Hi!”

           You were awestruck, and couldn’t even answer. You just turned your stunned gaze away from her and back on to Bucky.

           “Bucky…” you said under your breath.

“I’m gonna ask you again. Why am I here?”

…

           Bucky took you outside next to a pile of large concrete rocks to sit on which you were grateful for because you were feeling pretty dizzy, and even felt a little sick.

Who was she? Did he have a kid that he decided to never tell you about? Did he feel the need to take her for some reason? Those were all logical thoughts that any rational human could think up for this type of situation. Right? And also, why did the poor thing look like…the way that she did?

           But when you finally did get Bucky to talk, everything came out of his mouth exceeded anything that you could ever imagine. In fact, for a moment of time if felt as though you were watching Bucky say a bunch of nonsensical sentences pre-exploding brain aneurism.

           But the longer he continued to speak, you realized that he was serious. This wasn’t some type of psychiatric meltdown or a sick joke.

           You shook your head as he reached over to put a comforting hand on your upper arm.

           “I know it sounds crazy, Y/N but—”

           “Crazy? No,” you shuddered, pulling away.

           “Crazy would be telling me that, I don’t know, you had some kind of accident child with someone during our marriage and you’re just bringing her over to tell me for the first time.”

           He opened his mouth to say something but you shoved your index finger in his face to continue.

           “Crazy would be telling me that you found a literal child with superpowers and you just decided to take her to see what she’ll do. But you’re meaning to tell me that it’s not even a human?”

           “Y/N—”

“You’re meaning to tell me,” you said pointing to the door.

           “That I’m supposed to believe that some extremely powerful force of ‘cosmic energy’ formed itself into a little girl, and you decided to make the impulsive decision of just taking it with you?”  

           “It’s not like that, Y/N,” he replied.

           “I’ve known about her for a little over a year now.”

           You couldn’t lie, that shocked you a little bit.

           “A year?”

           “Listen,” he said.

           “A year and a half ago were investigating a situation in Norway. One thing led to another and we ended up in an underground science lab with two scientists observing some type of glowing anomaly in the shape of a cube that they were carefully monitoring and studying. Sam and I made it our responsibility to keep this hidden and make sure it stays hidden.”  

           “So what does this have to do with—”

           He stopped you from finishing your sentence.

           “Two months later they call us to fly over and it seems that overnight this glowing anomaly somehow formed itself into this little girl that calls herself Kobik.”

           If you didn’t trust him as much as you did, you would be calling bullshit at this point. You didn’t even know that these kinds of things were humanly possible. Granted, you also didn’t think it humanly possible for a bunch of aliens to pretty much destroy New York, or for another batch of aliens to come down and somehow make half of the earth’s—No, the universe’s population disappear. So you continued to listen.

           “A few days ago we get a notice that the lab’s been breached, and by the time we got there, the two scientists are dead. When we get there to check out the scene we find that the five grown men that broke in were also dead. And a minute later we found Kobik shaking all alone in a corner.”  

           Your heart broke for her for a split second. But then you let his words sink in before realizing...

           “Wait,” you said

           “You said the intruders were dead.”

           He nodded.

           “Who killed…”

           He knew that you knew that answer.

           “She had to defend herself,” he shrugged.

           “And how did she do that, Bucky? She’s tiny.”

           And that’s when you realized that there was even more to the story.

           “Once she took form, they made it their focus to study the extent of her powers along with her behaviors. She talks, plays, and overall acts like a child of the age that she took form in…But in the wrong hands she could be used and abused into being a powerful weapon.”

           “So why did you take it?” You asked.

“It obviously can defend itself.”

           He didn’t seem thrilled about you talking about it like it was an inanimate object.

           “We don’t know if it was a fluke or not. She may not know how to properly defend herself and won’t get so lucky the next time. Next thing you know she could end up in the wrong hands. And she was scared, Y/N. I…We couldn’t just leave her.”

           You stressfully ran your fingers against your scalp through your hair.  

           “So what now?” you asked.

“She’s going to just stay here? In this abandoned half build house?”  

“No.”  

“…So is Sam going to keep her somewhere?”

The longer he stared at you the dizzier you started getting, understanding what he was actually asking.

“Y/N,” he said softly.

“I’m the only one she trusts.”

His last words fell into the background as you suddenly leaned over and threw up the entirety of your lunch…maybe even breakfast.

He held your hair back until you finally stopped.

“Bucky, you’re not saying,” you croaked while wiping your mouth.

“Tell me you’re not saying that you want to take her in.”

“Y/N, she’s scared. And I’m the only one she trusts to be around.”

You shot up and involuntarily started shaking your head.

No. This was not happening. He was not bringing a lethal science experiment into our house.

The world began to spin again as you probably got up too quickly, but you were good at playing it off. Why couldn’t he just be normal and bring an abandoned puppy home or something?

Regardless, there was no way that this could happen. There was no way that you could let this happen. You didn’t know who was going to invade your house to try to come to collect it. Much worse, you didn’t know how dangerous this thing was. What it could do to either of you when you least expected. What if it…she got startled in the middle of the night and activated some type of lasers in her eyes and cut you in half?

So you said what you needed to say.  

“No.”    

“Y/N,” he replied sympathetically.

“I know that this may be a lot so suddenly but—”

“No!” you said again putting your foot down.

“We can’t…Not right now. It’s not a good time”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Damn it.

“This isn’t some abandoned puppy that you found across the road, James! You brought home this radioactive weapon that people, might I add, bad people are looking for. And they’re not even the ones that I’m scared of!”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“After all that just came out of your mouth in the past 15 minutes, you really just had the nerve to tell me that I’m the one that’s not making any sense?” you exclaimed.

“What doesn’t make any sense is that your excuse is that this isn’t the right time. What do you mean by it’s not the right time, Y/N?”

“We…I have a lot of serious shit going on right now, okay?”

“I thought you were taking time off of work,” he pointed out.

“I am, okay? It’s just…”  

You paused, you didn’t know what to say or even how to say it.

“Is there something that I need to know? What does timing have to do with anything?”

“I…well…” you stuttered.

“Spit it out, Y/N.”

You sighed in defeat. You didn’t have a choice now.

“Because damnit, Bucky!” you shouted, startling yourself by how loud you were. But there was no stopping now.

“I’m pregnant.”