#the concept was so cool and i wanted to explore it

[gwemmieee]

Yeah. I have a big bone to pick with women who go out of their way to gatekeep someone out of our club. Most of them are cis and straight, but trans fems who do this unfortunately exist. That instance looks like some disgusting hypocrisy to me, because most baby trans fems really emotionally lean on the willingness of this community to emphasize that you are your gender and you are valid no matter how many steps you've already taken and been successful with. That is a crucial, supportive message, and suppressing it in any way is tantamount to pulling up the ladder behind you. Which, yeah, every community has its assholes who pull up ladders.

It is also a tough line to walk sometimes for women, because most of us have learned that there are certain ways we can't entirely just open up to most masculine folks and let them into our entire lives and every space. Not without a lot of pain. So we are incentivized to wait until someone makes it clear that they're safe, before they're let into our inner lives more. This function has caused me SO much strife, because before I was accepted as a woman, it kept me outside in the cold, alone, really close to an early grave, but now that I am fully living as a woman, and even before I was doing that, my efforts to ignore this function entirely and just let any masculine person into my heart, my inner world, and my safest spaces, have not always gone well, and sometimes those efforts have backfired, made me unsafe, and deeply traumatized me.

These days, the only conclusion I've been able to find is that women need to work on what we recognize as red and green flags, for who is safe. It's pretty easy to see that the average set of red and green flags you see most non-queer white women adhere to are... crap. Truly crap. Delusional, not based in reality, etc. And that sucks because it isolates them more and it gives them more excuse to be really shitty to people, or to gossip about them in ways that really aren't fair to them.

Earlier in my transition, I still had it internalized that I had had so much trouble because I wasn't good enough, because I didn't do enough, and that's why women didn't let me in. But I was literally running around freely saying out loud that I was genderfluid, that I had no concept of manhood and little concept of gender, that I thought it would be cool if I was born as a woman, that I wanted other pronouns to be used on me, that I could be pretty gay/queer, acting pretty gay/queer, openly rejecting most masculine behaviors and modes of thought, constantly openly celebrating femininity, experimenting with gender presentation... I was a very queer little dude. And I've only been able to recognize that in retrospect. Because nobody let me in. Trans fems may have let me in, but they weren't around much in the late 00s and early 10s. I never met one. But I did meet and usually deeply connect with countless fellow eggs, before any of us knew. In situations like mine, trans fems generally didn't even get to find themselves until a bisexual cis woman took it upon herself to date them as a perceived man, and then recognize their queerness and allow them to explore gender with her acceptance and assistance. Because being allowed into womanhood was so rare and taboo that it had to happen behind closed doors as part of a romantic relationship. I was aro/ace, and I unconsciously looked to get the same experience out of a platonic friendship, but all I got was led on. Told I was a close friend but still treated like a stray animal compared to their feminine friends. Not let in.

Meanwhile, cis women, and fem-raised queer folks who at the time universally saw themselves as, yknow proudly not quite men at least, universally treated me like a burly cis man deserving of none of their support or curiosity and all of their suspicion and gossip about how "he's creepy." Consistently. Until I finally came out as a woman in 2022. And that's so 100% on them. They went out of their way to not see me for who I was and just keep me out in the cold. So yeah. The state of gatekeeping of womanhood is *bad*. And in my experience, most of it comes from people who had/have easy access to unquestioned claims of womanhood, whether that's because they're AFAB or because their transition into womanhood was really fast and made them really conventionally attractive.

But what about trans fems? Well, we aren't perfect with our red and green flags, either. It's hard to be. Personally, I've noticed there is a small contingent (VERY small) of trans fems my age who operate more like the old world transsexuals in that they really are truscum gatekeepers, often also ableist, and borderline psychopathic in the level of emotional labor they expect from you as a friend vs. what they're willing to put up with in return. And that is very unfortunate. My early transition saw a lot of them genuinely help me as incredible new friends, but then hurt me badly and burn bridges for no good reason. And I feel that there is a bit of a schism in the trans fem community between elders who usually just want to stealth out--who look down on baby transes and cringe and don't help us, or even if they do talk to us and help, there is still a very clear line denominating their actual friends and community that we never get to cross into--and the rest of us who openly embrace being queer and not assimilating all the way. But, frankly? Most trans fems I've met are the most welcoming and least gatekeeping folks on the planet. Most are that latter, queerer camp. And we operate exactly the way that we should: we let anyone safe into our inner world, even if that safe person happens to be a man. And some of us STILL see that backfire. And so even we can't be completely carefree. But we can always learn and grow and get better and better at what we actually identify as red and green flags.

wait where are all the trans guys

Historical-anthropological research, especially the work taking place before the 21st century or outside the West, tends to focus entirely on transfeminized groups. So when reading these works it’s pretty natural to ask — wait, where are all the trans guys? This is a reasonable question with a few clear answers; this post is something quick I can point people to.

The central condition of transfeminized groups' absorption into feminist activism has been to accept a kind of symmetry with select TME groups through the understanding of trans femininity as "gender variance." Under this framework, transfeminized groups' social position can be understood as a consequence of gender variance and some abstract violation of cis norms; this was proposed by people like Susan Stryker and Emi Koyama [1], among others, and continues to structure trans inclusion today. It also fails when considering several basic aspects of these groups:

Transfeminized groups are associated with hyperspecific labor practices, most frequently sex work, but also hair styling, drag, makeup artistry, acting, and other forms of 'gender work.'

Metropolitan transfeminized groups appear in the archive as highly clustered and active groups connected with, but usually intensely split from, the masculine men they fucked.

Transfeminized groups become a kind of 'third gender' on an epistemic level; they are Known to wider society before and after “coming out” in a way that USAmerican transmasculinity has only recently vaguely approached.

Transfeminized groups are heavily clustered in labor practice, social organization, and epistemic position, although this is not universal -- certain strains of USAmerican transfemininity have become a bit more labor-agnostic in the last two decades, not-so-coincidentally alongside more general currents of gender-labor liberation. The messy strains of trans male identity recovered from the archive and from current practice tend to lack labor, social, and epistemic coherence. As Aaron Devor notes in FTM, his 1997 history of FTM men, trans men in the 20th century tended to transition out of cities and into the countryside, finding low-profile places they could exist in. These practices, and the earlier "female husband" practices described by Jen Manion, relied on the labor-agnostic nature of transitioned manhood in order to disappear from public life. Transfeminized groups, on the other hand, are categorically restricted from the main form of economic life historically available to women -- marriage. Their labor practices are heavily constrained and have almost always revolved around some form of 'gender work:' as Susan Stryker put it, you need to get people to pay you for being a trans woman. Transmasculinity pushes away feminized restrictions on labor; trans femininity is labor.

Because transfeminized identities are so often labor-identities, and because their specific brand of 'gender work' and hormonal/silicone/surgical embodiment usually requires both specialized training and community support, nearly every metropolitan center in the world developed highly centralized transfeminized groups over the course of the 20th century [2]. As Ochoa notes, this visibility is partially due to epistemic visibility (everyone knows what a trans is), partially due to group structure (people work and train each other), and partially due to the selectively visible demands of finding clients. Fledglings come in with a way of being that is always already visible to society, but changing the body to match and learning how to fully enact and slowly contest the third-gender labor-identity they've been given takes a lot of community support.

So as labor-identities, transfeminized groups tend to a level of labor/community/epistemic coherence that has no clear counterpart. The news archives we have of trans men (as seen in Manion) position them as singular and easily absorbed back into the female gestalt; the cisgender feminist/gayguy/AIDS researchers that form the bulk of historical-anthropological work saw them as unnecessary to their grand theories of gender; the communities themselves have been materially fractured and, for the groups that rise out of lesbian-feminist activism, only partially committed to their own existence. The result of all this is that there is no clear equivalent to the "transfeminized groups" of Jules-Gill Peterson; there is no symmetry to trannydom, and while additional work to unearth trans manhood in the archive remains extremely valuable, sometimes the necessary level of label-coherence and social existence just isn't there.

[1] Stryker, "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage," Emi Koyama, "The Transfeminist Manifesto" [2] As seen in Namaste, Invisible Lives, Prieur, "Mema's House, Mexico City," Kulick, "Travesti," Newton, "Mother Camp," Ochoa, "Queen for a Day," Hegarty, "The Made-Up State," and plenty more. Most of these works came out in the late 80s and 90s due to a combination of the feminist "third gender" craze, the burgeoning field of masculinity studies, and AIDS.

[felassan]

David Gaider on Dorian, under a cut for length:

"Now this is a fun one. It's no big secret I have a lot of feelings about Dorian, not least of which because he was my first (and only) gay male companion. There's a lot more to him than that, of course (as there should be), and it was quite a trip. So let's go! Now, DAI is a story all its own, but I'm sticking to the characters. In this case, back at the beginning, the writers were going to try something new: we were going to let the artists take a more active role in the companion creation process. Why? Because not doing so had caused a lot of problems. See, here's the thing: writers and artists speak two different languages. When talking about characters, we talk about their story. Who they are. What they want. We'd write up these briefs, huge and full of information... but it was never the information the artists needed. They wanted visual cues. I don't mean describing their appearance. Sure, we'd usually provide that, especially if there was a story case to be made, but often the artists vetoed us on appearance stuff anyhow so meh. No, I mean they looked for visual language while we tended to only talk about who the characters *were*. What would happen is they'd hone in on something visual in our write-up not intended to be a focus. The first write-up for Anders in DA2, for instance, mentioned he was "haggard" after his journey... and the first concept we got was this pale, shriveled man. "What... is this?" "YOU SAID HAGGARD!" 😅"

"That was the other trick: sometimes when we DID try to be more descriptive, we had to be extra cautious because the words could be interpreted very differently. You encounter this recording VO, too. A VO note says "hysterical" and you *meant* "really upset" but the actor read "scream like a banshee" Thus this caused problems, like I said. The artists would struggle, sometimes conjuring details just to give the character *something* but which would change the character... and, to us, the character was created. Done. We were already invested, probably already writing them. Something had to give. So this time we wrote a bunch of character briefs - but short. One paragraph. We stuck to vibes and the *emotions* we wanted the concepts to evoke. And we didn't name them. They got titles like "Slick Con Man" or "Ice Queen", so we wouldn't get too attached. Then we handed these off to the artists. And it worked nicely. The ones that just weren't inspiring we'd discard, no problem. The others had juice... and the artists felt free to play and offer lots of variations because we weren't set on anything yet. A lot of times, what they produced ended up inspiring US. It was a neat back-and-forth."

"This is what led to Dorian, in fact. He came from a short write-up entitled "Rock Star Mage" and it really boiled down to "I'm cool and I know I'm cool, so take that you cretins". And just like that, the first sketches (by Casper Konefal, I think? I bet I'm wrong) were all amazing. Instant fire. Me: "He looks kind of like... Freddie Mercury?" Him: "Is that bad?" Me: "NO ARE YOU KIDDING THIS IS AMAZING" Plus there was a monkey. Sadly, we had to lose the monkey. There were iterations to come, but this was really where Dorian was born: Tevinter mage, noble, savant, and too cool for school."

"When did he become gay? Not right away. Like I said elsewhere, we didn't talk romance and sexuality until after the concepts were more in place. But as we were brainstorming about why this hot shot mage left Tevinter, the idea DID come up that maybe it was because he was gay. Not directly, however. Homophobia isn't really a thing in Thedas, after all, so at first blush I didn't think that could work. "Rich kid gets kicked out of the house for being gay" wasn't a trope I wanted to explore. But, then again, magister families in Tevinter are *obsessed* with the appearance of perfection, so...? Any deviation from the "norm" is considered scandal-worthy. It said weakness. It said you couldn't control your house. Now... THAT had real promise. The writing pit discussed it a lot. So I think it's fair to say that the gay fairy was already circling Dorian even before we got to the romance talk. I think it's also fair to say that the rest of the team realized I low-key wanted to write him, because when everyone started calling dibs, who was left standing for me? (I pick last, remember.) I gleefully snatched him up and got to work... ...about six months later. I was very busy at the time. 😅 That late start meant I had to design and write VERY quickly. And I did. Somehow, though, this one... it came easily. "Catty gay man" isn't digging very deep, no surprise to anyone who knows me, and it had an extra layer of being so fun because Dorian was confident. He sparred verbally. I loved it."

"There was more to it, however. The conflict between Dorian and his father... ugh, how do I say this? Let's be clear: Dorian's story is not MY story, but it's also not far off. I wrote the entire confrontation scene in one go. After I was done, I probably cried harder than I ever have in my life. 🫠 I was unsure whether it was any good, however. I just didn't feel objective. I passed it over to Cori May - my friend but also Dorian's editor - and asked her to please tell me and be honest. She read it. She walked into my office after, tears streaming down her face, and just nodded. "It's good." Here's the thing. Not everyone is going to agree with this, but: I don't think a writer NEEDS to be a minority in order to write a minority. Sometimes those characters should simply exist, and we want them to. But if that character's story is ABOUT their experience as a minority? That's different. Dorian's story didn't need to revolve around his sexuality - and, honestly, it only did so as a tangent to his family issue, but they're so bound together it's probably irrelevant to split them - but my writing him meant it could be. It allowed me to SAY something. That felt good. It felt right. Ramon Tikaram came on board after a lengthy casting process (so many British Indian accents, oh god). I sat in on a few recording sessions... the confrontation scene, though? Ramon: *says line* Me: (curled up on a nearby sofa in fetal position) *shaky thumbs up* Caroline: "Yep. Great work, Ramon!""

"Dorian's sexuality isn't all he's about, but that's certainly how some viewed it. When the character was announced in 2014, his being gay was mentioned as the last of a number of points, and the instant response from some gamers was to act as if we'd called a press conference just to say THAT. 🙄 It was annoying. Still is. Overall, however, the reaction to Dorian was very positive. The number of straight men who said they romanced him still pleases me. The number of fans who privately contacted me who'd been through conversion therapy, some who said Dorian helped them survive? Well. Gosh. 😭 I did write him for Trespasser - though I hear that a late scope cut meant every conversation had been chopped by 1/3rd or more, and that meant a lot of nuance lost. Which is sad, if true, because it sounds like the result of that left some Dorian romancers a bit cold. Such is how game dev rolls. 😔 If you need more proof of how it was hard for me to let go of him, a short story I wrote after Trespasser came out where Dorian has a bit of closure with his dead father: medium.com/@davidgaider... So yeah. He'll always be my boi. And I'll always be thankful Bio gave me this opportunity. ❤️"

[source thread]

User: "I'm not going to lie, it's hard to take my mind off Dorian almost having a monkey." David Gaider: "If by “almost” you mean there was a picture of a monkey that the concept artist put there as a whim, and which would almost certainly have taken more cinematics and modeling time to put in than we could ever afford… then yes. 😉" [source]

[genericpuff]

1. Have you read Circe by Madeline Miller + Song of Achilles ~ if you have what are your thoughts

2. In the original what was your favorite male character drawn out (mine was Hermes only bc I found him hot😓)

3. How long do you think it’ll take you to ‘finish’ your story, like do you have a set date: 2026,2027, even 2030🙈🙈

4. What’s your backstory on tattooing and art, was this your initial plan

5. Fave girl character, (mine is Minthe only bc she reminds me of my younger self since I seemed to only choose realtionships where I get here)

thank youuu

ahaha so many questions! I'll answer them as concisely as I can :>

1.) Song of Achilles is on my shelf, I've been meaning to read it all but I haven't been able to make time for it, I might try and do so before the new year! I've definitely heard great things :>

2.) Hephaestus! He gives me such older brother vibes, he just seems like a really chill and snuggly guy LOL Only complaint about his character design is the fact that he's constantly using running blades (sure they look cool but they're not practical for casual wear, you're supposed to use them for, y'know... running lmao) but that's really it, I think his arc with Aphrodite in S3 was poorly written tbh especially with how rushed it was, but overall not the worst treatment out of the cast.

3.) Definitely don't want it to take until 2030 LMAO It's gonna depend on a few variables, including update schedule (I'd really like to get back to posting once a week again like I used to but I don't think it's gonna be possible for a little while u.u""") and how long the final scripts come out to be. Ideally though I'd like it to be wrapped up within another year or two. This definitely isn't one of those "work on it indefinitely" type projects, I have an end goal in mind and I don't want it to take over half a decade like my last comic project did LOL

4.) Never expected to wind up making Rekindled or in tattooing. I'm kind of a "fall into it" type person, I do what feels right in the moment even if it's not what I initially planned for (within reason, of course! I've learned to sit on new ideas and plans for a bit before pursuing them to ensure I'm actually into them before diving in lol it helps me avoid the impulsive ADHD-fueled decisions 😆). I sort of had a plan for myself back in primary and high school - I wanted to become a video game concept artist, but over time as I got into making comics and after I graduated college, it just never really happened. It's never too late, of course, but right now I'm having a lot of fun tattooing and making comics in my free time ! I think I'd still be making comics even if I ended up in game dev, it satisfies my storytelling side haha

5.) If you mean specifically LO, yeah, Minthe here too. Which is wild because I remember when I was still a huge fan of the comic and was on the "fuck Minthe!" train. Now that I've explored the comic with a more critical eye, I sympathize with her way more and I really hope she had gotten a more satisfying conclusion. Still, she got away from Hades and Persephone's nonsense so that's better than nothing LMAO but I definitely want to explore her side more in Rekindled as the story unfolds, I have some fun plans for her <3

[worldsokayestdragon]

GreedxLing Week Day 2: Crossover

Read on AO3

Ling had been certain that he and Lan Fan were ready to take down a witch.

They'd gotten the other 99 souls required easily, far faster than any other student at the DWMA had ever managed. (Well, anyone besides Maka Albarn, but she was a freakishly intense prodigy so that was hardly a fair comparison. And she'd had to start over anyway so it barely counted.) Their soul resonance was nearly flawless. When they fought together Lan Fan’s blade was like an extension of Ling's arm. Every strike landed precisely and powerfully, and their special attacks never failed.

No witch should have stood a chance against them.

And they hadn't gone into the fight alone. Ed and Al were with them, and the two brothers were nearly as good as Ling and Lan Fan. The weapon meister combination of a giant suit of armor and a guy way too small to wear it was unconventional, and Ling was pretty sure Ed having his friend make him an oversized prosthetic arm so he could wear one of everything from the pauldron down, then and having Al fight beside him only counted  “wielding a weapon” on the barest technicality, but they made it work. Ed was very good at punching things until they stopped getting back up, and Al stepped in perfectly to watch his back.

And Professor Hawkeye and her meister, Mustang, had accompanied them on this mission, so really they were as safe as could be.

Okay, maybe the adults had less accompanied them and more failed to notice the students sneaking along on a mission they'd been explicitly told to sit out because it was too dangerous. Something something ancient and powerful witch, blah blah dark soul magic, yadda yadda artificially created weapons who could operate autonomously, achieve soul resonance within themselves, and perform feats that no human weapon and meister team could hope to match. Whatever. If anything that was all the more reason for them to come along instead of leaving the old people to try and face all of that on their own.

Really, Hawkeye and Mustang should be grateful they were there, considering Mustang got himself critically injured fighting the first enemy they came across; a beautiful woman who could summon spears to her fingertips that grew to whatever length she wanted and apparently could cut through anything. The man did manage to kill her before succumbing to blood loss, though, which Ling could admit was kind of impressive considering how she shook off what should have been mortal wounds and healed almost instantly from any damage. But still, if the rest of them hadn't been there to provide cover and a distraction Hawkeye never would have been able to drag her unconscious meister to safety and call for more backup.

Hawkeye threatening them all with a “serious conversation” when they got back to school and swearing she'd expel them if she found out they'd stayed to fight if there was a chance of running away seemed pretty rude and uncalled for to Ling, but the woman was under a lot of stress.

So they ran deeper into the witch's compound–a confusing warren of underground tunnels that Ling wasn't entirely confident he'd be able to easily find his way back out of even with his normally perfect sense of direction–smashing delicate lab equipment, yelling for any cowards in the place to come face them, and generally just making a commotion to try and draw attention away from their injured companions.

Ed seemed particularly thrilled at all the destruction they were wreaking. Ling thought it was pretty fun too, but the other meister was delighted in a way that was a little concerning, laughing maniacally as he grabbed flasks of some unidentifiable green liquid off a lab table and flung them against a wall where they promptly exploded. 

Al heaved a long suffering sigh at his brother, but didn't try to stop the rampage, and also shoved over an entire shelf of the exploding potions as they left the room they'd found them in and giggled to himself about it because he was only “the normal brother” in the sense that anyone would seem sane and rational standing next to Edward Elric.

They succeeded in calling attention to themselves.

They didn’t draw out the actual witch, at least not yet, but the two minions who came after them were terrifying enough on their own.

One was a short fat man, who partially transformed into a…meat grinder? Some sort of construction equipment maybe? It wasn’t anything Ling would call a weapon in the traditional sense, but the sight of the man’s abdomen splitting open to reveal rows of spinning metal teeth was more alarming than any blade or hammer or gun could hope to be. Luckily he didn’t seem very smart, and kept stopping to look around and call for someone named Lust who never showed up, so it wasn’t too hard to dodge his attempts at pulverizing them.

The other person was more of a problem. They were taller and much more agile, and clearly knew their way around the witch’s headquarters, which made evading them in the tight corridors a challenge. And they never seemed to run out of ways to transform their body. Ling would dive back to avoid the swing of an arm that had become a blade only to immediately have to roll to the side when that same arm turned into a cannon aimed right at his head. 

They also never shut up. Every attack was followed up with a comment about how “You pathetic humans never should have come here,” or “You’ll never make it out of here alive, you worms!”

And of course, Ed also didn’t know how to shut up.

“I’d rather be a pathetic human worm than an ugly freak like you and your buddy!”

“Who are you calling ugly, you tiny little pest?” 

Their hand turned into some sort of glowing gun that fired a laser at Ed. Frankly, Ling thought turning into a sci-fi bullshit weapon was cheating.

Al just managed to yank his brother out of the way and hold him back from rushing in for an attack.

“Tiny?! We’ll see who’s tiny after I rip your legs off!”

“Oh, I’d love to see you try and–Gluttony, would you focus?”

The fat man, Gluttony apparently, turned back from where he’d been starting to wander away down a cross hall.

“But Envy, I need to go look for Lust. I don’t know where she is.”

Envy shook their head. “We can look for her after we crush these intruders, alright? You don’t need to worry about Lust, she can take care of herself.”

“But–”

“Ling, we should try and get out of here while they’re distracted,” Lan Fan said, speaking into Ling’s mind as she always did in her sword form and drowning out the argument in front of him.

“Right,” Ling whispered back, trying not to draw attention back to them. They were at the junction of two hallways, and there was just enough room that they could slip around their pursuers and go back the way they’d come if they were quick about it.

“Ed, Al, let’s get out of here,” he added only slightly louder. Both Elric brothers nodded their understanding.

Ling led the way, moving as quickly and quietly as he could along the far side of the hall from Envy and Gluttony to rush back past them.

Something slammed into the wall inches in front of Ling’s nose, and he barely stopped in time to avoid running into a giant mess of metal and wires and tubing that was shaped like a crude, nightmarish hand, reaching nearly from floor to ceiling and completely blocking his path.

The hand connected to an equally haphazard mechanical arm that shrank as it got further from the wrist, all the way down to Envy’s human looking shoulder. They’d stopped talking to Gluttony, their focus entirely fixed on Ling and his friends.

“I didn’t say you could leave,” they hissed.

“New plan,” Ling gasped, backpedaling a few steps away from where Envy’s hand was slowly pulling away from the new crater it had left in the solid stone wall. “We run away as fast as we can and worry about finding an exit later.”

“I like that plan!” Al said, already turning back up the hall and dragging Ed with him.

“Very sensible,” Lan Fan agreed.

The following chase was a blur of sprinting over uneven floors and taking corners at speed while ducking out of the way of blades and gunfire and giant mechanical hands, as well as the occasional attempt to grind them into a paste. (Gluttony referred to this as “eating them,” which, bad!) Ling completely gave up trying to keep track of where they were or the direction they were going, just concentrating on staying alive and hopefully losing the monsters on their tails.

It was a surprise when, after darting around another corner and through an archway, they found themselves out of the claustrophobic hallways and in a cavernous room. Tubes wrapped and tangled around each other up the walls and across the ceiling, coming together in the center of the room and trailing down to connect to a large throne, its occupant shrouded in shadows so deep Ling couldn’t make out a single detail of his face. A sense of creeping evil permeated the entire space, and Ling realized that this must be the witch’s inner sanctum.

There was no other door but the one they’d entered through.

The only other occupant of the room was an older man standing next to the throne, unremarkable other than the eyepatch over one eye. He strode forward with a glare as Envy and Gluttony burst into the room behind Ling and the others.

“What is the meaning of you fools allowing these humans to make their way here? You’ve disturbed Father’s work.”

“Hey, these little insects are fast,” Envy protested. “And I didn’t see you helping stop them, Wrath! Or Sloth and Pride for that matter.”

“Our brothers are away on an errand for Father,” Wrath said dismissively. “You shouldn’t need their help to squash a few bugs anyway. Or mine, but I’ll go ahead and lend it to you since it seems to be the only way anything gets done around here.” 

Envy growled, and the growl deepened and distorted as they transformed. 

In the open space of this room they were able to change more than just their arm. Their whole body stretched and twisted as they grew into a giant robotic thing. It looked a bit like a mech suit from an anime, if that mech suit had been welded together from a thousand disparate parts by a madman into a body horror nightmare amalgamation, bristling with every weapon imaginable. They dropped down onto all fours–their new form no longer bipedal–and the impact shook the room so badly Ling nearly lost his footing.

“Fine,” Envy said, in a voice like grating metal. “You take care of the one with the sword, that seems more your speed. I’ll take the armor and the runt.”

For once in his life, Ed didn’t immediately freak out about being called a runt. Maybe even he recognized they were in serious enough danger to let something like that slide. Instead he said, “Actually, I think I’m just gonna leave.” and darted toward Envy’s flank, maybe trying to use their large size against them to slip by them and back out the door before they could twist around for the attack.

Ling wasn’t able to watch and see how that tactic worked out for his friend because, faster than seemed possible, Wrath was no longer across the room but right in front of him, swinging a sword toward his neck. Only Lan Fan calling out a warning allowed Ling to react in time to block the attack, and the force of the blow sent him stumbling back.

Ling could hear Ed and Al fighting Envy, and it sounded like they were struggling (it also sounded like Ed had landed at least one blow because he yelled “that’s for calling me a runt!” So much for letting things go in a dangerous situation), but he couldn’t go to help them or even spare a glance in their direction. It took all his energy to match Wrath, and he spent more time blocking and dodging than making his own attacks, unable to find an opening. 

He didn’t know if the man was one of the witch’s created weapons. He must have been, from the weird name and how unnaturally fast he moved, but he didn’t appear to transform his body in any way. 

But he could pull seemingly infinite swords from somewhere, rearming himself instantly the one time Ling managed to disarm him, and throwing them with as much deadly accuracy as he wielded them when Ling tried to retreat and put some distance between them.

Gluttony, apparently unable to decide who he should be attacking without explicit instructions, just took a swipe at whatever intruder happened to be in range of him at any given time as the fight took them around the room. It was better than having to fight two at once, but the added need to keep track of distance from him wasn’t something Ling appreciated.

He tried to keep circling to Wrath’s left, to put himself in the blind spot created by the eyepatch. His success was limited, but the strategy was letting him keep his head attached so far, and he didn’t see any better options so he kept to it. 

The witch eventually grew impatient with the fight. 

“Enough,” he said, not yelling but somehow projecting his voice across the room and over the sound of fighting. 

Ling didn’t look over, refusing to be distracted.

But then Al asked: “Dad?” 

At the same time Ed snarled: “Hohenheim!” 

That got Ling’s attention.

“Your dad’s a witch?” That was the type of thing he’d hope his friends would tell him before it came up mid-battle.

The witch did look a lot like Ed, an old man with graying blond hair that had probably once been the same shade as Ed’s braid, and eyes the same distinctive golden color.

Whether the Elrics were going to answer him, or keep yelling at the witch that was maybe their dad, Ling never found out. Envy took advantage of the distraction and slammed one giant hand down into Ed and the other into Al, pinning them both to the floor.

“Ling!” Lan Fan yelled, and he jumped back away from Wrath’s sword.

He just barely got out of the way, a stinging cut opening on his cheek instead of the intended decapitation.

Wrath followed up by throwing his sword, and the thin blade slotted cleanly into the loop at the back of Lan Fan’s hilt, ripping her out of Ling’s hand. The sword continued on its path, and buried itself deeply into the wall.

Ling dashed over and yanked on the sword, but it didn’t budge.

“Duck!” Lan Fan shouted, and Ling dropped to the floor right as the blade of yet another sword hit the wall where his head had been with enough force to shatter the tempered steel.

Ling rolled to the side and sprung back to his feet. He and Wrath circled each other again, but this time Ling tried not to let himself be moved too far from Lan Fan.

“Ling, just go,” Lan Fan cried. Her voice, already faded in Ling’s mind from a few feet of distance, sounded desperate in a way he’d never heard her before. “Get out of here, please!”

“I’m not leaving you,” Ling snapped. He wouldn’t leave any of them. There had to be a way to–

Something slammed into Ling’s side, tackling him to the ground. Too late, he realized he’d forgotten to keep track of Gluttony.

As he struggled beneath Gluttony’s weight, watching the grinding teeth of whatever his weapon form was inch closer and closer, Ling really wished he’d been a little less confident in his abilities and chosen not to come here. 

“Wait,” the witch called. 

Gluttony stopped a second short of turning Ling into mince meat.

The Witch walked slowly towards Ed and Al.

“You two are Van Hohenheim’s children?” he asked.

“What’s it to you, you bastard?” Ed growled.

“Yes, we are,” Al, ever more diplomatic, rushed to answer. “You–um well– you look a lot like him.”

“Yes, I suppose I do,” The man muttered. Then, louder, he added, “We’ll be keeping these ones alive, Envy, so do try not to crush them too much if you haven’t already.”

“Um, alright,” Envy said, shifting to put less weight on the Elrics.

“As for the others,” the witch turned back to look at Ling. “We don’t need them. You can go ahead and eat that one, Gluttony.”

“No!” Ed yelled. “No, please, they're our friends!”

“But I have no use for them. A measly two souls aren’t even enough to use in my experiments. Although…” He tilted his head, regarding Ling with a more considering eye. “I suppose it might be time to give Greed another chance.”

The witch stood up straighter and clapped his hands sharply. “Wrath, Gluttony, bring the boy over here. I have use for him after all.”

Gluttony whined in disappointment, but obediently shifted off of Ling and grabbed one of his arms. Wrath grabbed the other, and the two of them began dragging Ling toward the throne in the middle of the room, ignoring his struggling as if it were nothing.

“No!” Lan Fan screamed. 

Ling twisted to look at her.

She’d taken her human form again. The sword that had been harmlessly hooked through the loop of her pommel was now stabbing her arm just below her right shoulder. There wasn’t much blood, the blade completely filling the wound, but that arm flopped limply as she struggled, reaching toward Ling.

“Let him go! Bring him back!” 

“Lan Fan, stop moving,” Ling yelled. “Your arm! You’ll make it worse if you don’t hold still!”

“I don’t care,” Lan Fan reached up to yank at the hilt of the sword. She managed only the slightest movement of the blade, and blood began oozing more quickly from around it. “Let him go! Take me instead!”

The witch and his weapons ignored her. Ling was dragged in front of the throne and forced to his knees as the witch retrieved a small flask of some viscous red liquid from a table nearby.

Gluttony moved to hold both of Ling’s arms, and Wrath took ahold of his chin, forcibly tilting his head up.

“This may hurt,” the witch said calmly, sounding almost like a doctor about to administer a shot.

“Let him go, you bastards!” Ed snarled.

“Please, stop this!” Al begged.

“Ling!” Lan Fan’s yell sounded more like a sob.

And then the witch tipped the contents of the flask into the cut on Ling’s cheek, and he couldn’t hear anything over his own screaming anymore.

—

Ling’s body twisted and writhed in ways it was never meant to, his bones breaking and rehealing over and over, his insides feeling like they were being boiled. 

It was excruciating. 

It was too much. 

Ling retreated from reality into the place inside himself he accessed for soul resonance training with Lan Fan. Not quite inside his own soul, but not in his body either. A quiet and empty void.

Except it wasn’t quiet or empty now. The pain followed him down, though it wasn’t as strong as it had been, and the space was full of a thousand overlapping screams. 

And there was another soul there.

The soul wasn’t normal. Not in the twisted, evil way the kishin eggs Lan Fan consumed on their missions were. It just looked like it had been put together hurriedly from the pieces of many others, somehow coming together into a cohesive whole. 

It was almost beautiful, in an alien way.

As Ling watched, the soul’s shape changed, until he was looking at a large, shadowy face with jagged teeth and glowing white eyes.

“Well, what do we have here?” The voice came from the face in front of him, though its mouth didn’t move. “Am I supposed to be using your body now?”

“What’s happening to me?” Ling asked.

“They didn’t explain, huh?” the thing asked. “Yeah, they wouldn’t. The names Greed, kid, and if I had to guess, what’s happening is they put me in your bloodstream and now your body’s trying to adapt to my power. Probably doesn’t feel too good.”

Maybe Ling was going crazy, but the floating head sounded a little sympathetic. 

“Look, you should probably just let go. Let yourself fade back into your soul or whatever. Only one person’s ever survived this, as far as I know, and it’s not a pretty way to go. I can keep you from feeling it, but not when you're fighting to stay conscious like this.”

“If I die, will they try again with someone else?”

“Huh?” One of Greed’s eyes got bigger than the other, giving the impression of raising an eyebrow he didn’t have. “Yeah, probably, if there’s anyone else around. Won’t be your problem anymore, though, will it?”

Ling thought of Lan Fan, pinned to a wall with a mangled arm and still fighting to get to him, to help him.

He couldn’t let her go through this.

Ling stood up as straight as he could while floating in a void and glared at Greed.

“I’m not going to die,” Ling willed himself to believe his own words as he spoke. “There are people counting on me. I’m going to save my friends, and I’ll take on all your power to do it if I have to.”

Greed stared at him silently for a moment, somehow looking stunned despite being mostly sharp teeth and empty eyes. Then he burst out laughing.

The laugh sounded more delighted than mocking, which was not what Ling would have expected.

“Oh, I like you,” Greed said when he was done with his laughing fit. “This is gonna be fun. Alright then, you take my power, and we’ll see what we can do for your friends. I got a score to settle with the old bastard myself.”

Greed moved closer to Ling, his mouth finally opening, stretching wide enough to swallow Ling whole. A blinding white light shone from between Greed’s teeth as they rushed toward Ling. The screaming around them crescendoed, growing louder and louder until Ling realized he was screaming along with it. Everything became so overwhelming, he was certain he was about to be ripped apart, and then–

—

Ling’s eyes opened, but he wasn’t the one to open them.

His body was still kneeling on the floor, right where it had been, his arms stretched out to either side of him.

Wrath and the witch stood looming over him. Gluttony had wandered away, not in Ling’s direct sight anymore, though he didn’t dare hope he’d gone far.

The pain faded rapidly, energy crackling around him as his body healed, until he felt fine. Better than fine. Maybe better than he’d ever felt in his life.

Ling’s head raised, his eyes looked around, but once again it wasn’t him behind the movements.

“Ling?” Ed asked. “Are you okay?”

Greed looked over at where Ed was still pressed to the floor by one of Envy’s hands. He smiled, and Ling could feel it pulling at his face in a way his own expressions never did.

“Oh, is that his name?” Greed asked. “Sorry, but Ling can’t come to the phone right now. Greed’s running the show from here on out.”

Hey, that’s one of my friends! Ling protested. You said we would–

Shut up and let me sell this, Greed hissed back inside the shared space between their souls.

“Greed,” The witch said. “Welcome back to the family, my son. Your past transgressions shall be forgiven, if you agree to once more work with us for our common goals.”

Ugh, I hate this guy, Greed muttered.

Out loud, he said: “What else could I do, when you’ve so kindly given me a second chance, Father?” He bowed Ling’s head in what might have been a convincing show of respect to someone who couldn’t hear his thoughts. “I promise, I won’t waste my new life.”

“Very good,” the witch hummed his approval. “Then rise, and tell me, how does the new body feel? And what form does the weapon inside you take now?”

“It feels pretty great,” Greed answered as he stood up. 

He raised both of Ling’s hands to eye level, and instead of the horrible twisting transformation Ling had been halfway bracing himself for, all that happened was a coal black something covering the skin to about halfway up his arms. The nails grew a bit longer and sharper, but nothing as dramatic as the woman Mustang had killed. (who Ling supposed must be the missing Lust)

“Still got my shield,” Greed added. Obviously, don’t know what else the asshole expected to happen.

“How disappointing,” the witch said. “I had hoped that combining your melted essence with a skilled swordsman such as this one would allow you to take a more useful shape, something suited to attacking rather than weak defense. Still, it can’t be helped I suppose. I can still find use for–”

“Monster!” Lan Fan shrieked from her place against the wall. “Give Ling his body back! Get out of him!”

Greed didn’t turn to look at her. 

Ling wished he would, desperate to check on her. 

Ling was grateful he didn’t, not wanting to see the pain he could hear in his best friend’s voice on her face.

“Fraid I can’t do that, sweetheart,” Greed drawled. “Not exactly a thing where I can just jump back out of the body once I’m in it, you understand.”

Don’t talk to her like that! Ling snapped, and was surprised to feel his hands twitch in response to his own emotion. 

Greed couldn’t jump back out, but maybe Ling could still get back in control.

Stop that! Greed admonished. I told you, I have to sell this. Just trust me for a minute, would you?

The witch turned to regard Lan Fan. “I’m afraid you’ve outlived your usefulness,” he said. “Wrath, dispose of her.”

No! Ling thrashed where he was trapped within his own body, but before he could make any progress, Greed moved.

Taking advantage of the witch’s distraction, the moment Wrath stepped away, Greed plunged one of Ling’s hands into the old man’s chest.

Whatever his shield was made of, it punched through flesh and bone as easily as a knife passing through butter.

“Like I said, Dad,�� Greed spat. “I’m not wasting the chance you’ve given me.”

The witch looked very unconcerned for a man with a hand in his chest.

A wave of force slammed into Ling’s body, throwing him and Greed to the floor.

“So disappointing,” the witch sighed. His chest was healing with the same crackling energy that had surrounded Ling’s body moments before. “You do so much for your children, but in the end you can’t prevent them from making the same mistakes again and again. Oh well. Wrath, leave the girl and kill your brother for me.”

Wrath lunged at them, his movements almost too fast to follow. For the second time that day, Ling was in a fight with the ridiculously skilled swordsman, but this time he wasn’t even able to control his body. He had to rely on Greed to dodge and block fast enough, using his shielded hands to deflect blow after blow in a deadly dance.

Can’t you put that shield over more of my body? Ling asked as Wrath managed to cut his face, again. At least this time it healed almost before the pain could register.

That would take too much energy to power it up in the middle of a fight. Greed answered. Still kinda settling into my new body here, you know? This is what we have to work with for now.

Too much energy… 

Ling knew one way to boost a weapon’s power and allow for high energy attacks.

I’m going to try soul resonance. Ling said.

No way, Greed argued, ducking a slash from Wrath’s sword so close Ling was pretty sure it cut an inch off his ponytail. We don’t even know if you can match my wavelength, and if you do it wrong the distraction will get us killed!

We’re going to get killed eventually anyway if we do nothing. You can’t keep this up forever. And anyway, if our souls weren’t at least somewhat compatible my body would have rejected you, right?

Maybe? I don’t actually know how that works.

I can do it, Ling said. He couldn’t lie to someone sharing his body like this. He had to make himself believe it. I know I can. Just–trust me for a minute would you?

…Fine, Greed said. But hurry up, alright? You weren’t lying when you said I couldn’t keep this up forever.

Even as Greed spoke, Wrath got another hit in. This time it was on Ling's left arm above the shield, and felt much deeper. It still healed right away, but it was clear that Greed was losing ground.

Ling forced himself to ignore the fight, instead turning his attention to Greed’s soul.

The soul was unfamiliar, and reaching toward it felt strange. Ling didn’t know if that was because it was artificially constructed, or if he just wasn’t used to resonating with someone who wasn’t Lan Fan. She was the only weapon he’d ever worked with before.

(Wrath knocked Greed off balance, and Ling distantly felt himself falling. He didn’t let it distract him.)

Greed’s wavelength was much more aggressive than Lan Fan’s. There was a sense of desperately reaching for something to it, whereas Lan Fan felt more grounded and content.

(Greed hit the floor, and before he could try to get back up or even roll away, Wrath was standing over him, one foot on either side of Ling’s torso, trapping them in place. Ling ignored it.)

And yet, Ling discovered that matching this new wavelength wasn’t as difficult as he’d feared. Even as frenetic as it was, there was a clear opening within it. An empty space that Ling found he slotted into nearly perfectly. 

(Wrath’s sword swung down toward their neck.)

Ling’s soul wavelength matched Greeds completely.

The shield spread up from their arms and over their whole body. It reached their neck a millisecond before Wrath’s blade, and the sword snapped on impact.

The shield kept spreading up. Ling felt it cover their head, but he wasn’t thinking about it’s progress anymore.

Wrath stumbled back a step, and they surged to their feet. Ling wasn’t sure who was controlling the body anymore. He didn’t think it even mattered at this point.

This didn’t feel like soul resonance with Lan Fan. 

That always felt powerful in a safe familiar way, a close connection with the best friend he’d known his whole life. They worked together well because they had been close for as long as either of them could remember. It was a comfortable teamwork that Ling treasured.

This was something else entirely. Greed’s soul was unfamiliar, and yet it felt like an expansion of Ling’s own. It was brand new and exciting; a little frightening as Ling felt himself swept along Greed’s wavelength, but exhilarating as he could tell Greed was moving along with him just as much. It was a dance, and a struggle for dominance, and an embrace all at once. Ling didn’t know what they would do–what they could do–together, but the possibilities felt endless.

Wrath backed away as they stepped toward him. He threw more blades as they approached, but Ling couldn’t even feel them when they bounced off the shield.

“Oh what the hell?” Envy yelled from where they were still restraining Ed and Al near the door. 

There was a noise like cannon fire from that direction, and something exploded against Ling and Greed’s back. It didn’t even break their stride.

The clawed tips of their fingers had grown longer than before. Watching Wrath retreat got abruptly boring, and they rushed forward, sticking those sharp claws into Wrath’s abdomen just below the ribs.

“This is for my friends,” they growled. 

Ling didn’t know who’s anger was fueling them more, if they were taking revenge for Lan Fan’s injury or something that had happened in Greed’s past. 

It didn’t matter which it was. 

It was both.

They lifted their arm and flung Wrath over their head. He flew through the air and collided with the back of the throne with a sickening crunch.

They turned to the witch, but before they could take a step in his direction he made some complicated gesture with his hands and an orb of shimmering red force closed around them. 

A soul wavelength painfully disparate from theirs surrounded them on all sides, and the resonance abruptly ended.

They fell to their knees, the impact jarring as the shield retreated to only covering their forearms once again. 

Now Ling could tell it was Greed who clapped their hands over their ears against the onslaught.

“That’s enough of your little tantrum,” the witch said, barely even looking at them. “Gluttony, you can eat him.”

“Thank you father!” Gluttony yelled.

Ling couldn’t move. Couldn’t try to wrestle control back from Greed. Could barely think.

He could only watch as Gluttony leapt toward them, grinning and eager to devour them.

And then a blade passed through Gluttony’s head at the level of his eyes. 

A blow like that must have severed the monster’s brain.

His body fell to the ground, the smile still wide on the lower half of his face.

Lan Fan stood behind him. Her left arm turned into a blade just below the elbow.

Her right arm was gone from the shoulder, nothing but a bloody stump. 

Ling didn’t turn to look, but he was sure the arm was right where it had been, pinned to the wall, and now cut away.

“You will not touch him,” Lan Fan growled. The rage in her voice was like nothing Ling had ever heard.

“Lan Fan,” he gasped out, back in control of his own voice.

“Ling?” Lan Fan’s eyes widened. “You are still in there! Ling, you have to fi–”

“This is completely unacceptable,” the witch said. He was glaring at Lan Fan, showing something other than vague disinterest for the first time since Ling had laid eyes on him. 

Now he looked pissed.

“You break into my home. You ransack my research laboratories. And now you kill one of my children.”

He stalked toward Lan Fan as he spoke. She stood firm, but Ling could see her beginning to sway on her feet, the blood loss no doubt catching up to her.

With his focus on Lan Fan, the sphere of disrupting soul wavelength around Greed and Ling began to dissipate. They struggled to their feet.

“This will not stand!” the witch roared, raising his hands in preparation for some spell.

Lan Fan raised her one remaining arm to block whatever was coming.

Whatever it was, they’d never find out. 

Greed once again punched through his father’s rib cage with one clawed hand. Not willing to leave anything to chance this time, Ling slashed the claws of their other hand across the back of the witch’s neck, cutting through the spinal cord.

His body tumbled to the floor, and it didn’t move again.

A moment of stunned silence. 

Then Envy screamed.

“Greed, you traitor! How dare you side with these worms? I’ll kill you for this!”

They jumped over Ed and Al to rush at Greed.

Before they got there, the wall opposite the door exploded inward, and more teachers from the DWMA poured into the room.

Ling didn’t care to stand and watch the fight that followed. He ran to Lan Fan’s side, just making it in time to catch her as she fell and lower her gently to the floor.

“You idiot,” Ling said, surprised when it came out like a sob. He realized that he was crying. “Why would you cut off your arm for me? You could have died!”

“You could have died,” Lan Fan said. 

Ling pulled off his jacket and pressed it against what remained of her shoulder. She cried out in pain, and Ling felt like scum, but he didn’t let up the pressure.

After a few gasping breaths Lan Fan continued: “And I would have had to watch you die, useless and stuck to the wall. This was the only way.”

Ling shook his head. “Still. Your arm–”

“Well I for one am grateful that you saved my ass!” Greed put in, shoving Ling out of control mid-sentence.

Lan Fan narrowed her eyes. “I was saving Ling, not you.”

Greed shrugged casually, but Ling could tell how careful he was not to let the gesture jostle Lan Fan's shoulder where he was still holding the jacket against it.

“Yeah, well. Same ass, so thanks anyway.”

“I hate you,” Lan Fan said, without much force behind it. “Also, I’m going to pass out now, so don’t let Ling die before I wake up.”

“No!” Ling reclaimed control of their body. “Lan Fan, don’t pass out, okay? You need to try to stay awake.”

“Can’t. Sorry,” Lan Fan murmured, and then her eyes closed and her head lolled limply against the ground.

“Lan Fan!” Ling screamed.

Distantly, he was aware of the sounds of fighting coming to a close, of someone–Professor Stein maybe–trying to tug him away from Lan Fan and saying to let him look, of Greed taking back control to make him obey.

He heard Greed in their head more clearly than the noises around them.

Let the doctor guy look at her, Ling. She’ll be okay. She’s tough, I can already tell.

Ling couldn’t pull their eyes away from Lan Fan. He appreciated Greed trying to comfort him, but he couldn’t answer. 

He wouldn’t believe she’d be okay until he saw her awake again. And until then, nothing else mattered.

—

Lan Fan woke up the next day. 

Ling and Greed were sitting in a chair they’d dragged next to her bed in the infirmary. They’d refused to leave her side since she’d been out of surgery. 

A few times some of the higher ranking meisters and death scythes had tried to draw them away for a debrief, but they’d refused to go.

Surprisingly, Professor Hawkeye had taken their side. Glaring from where she sat in her own chair beside Mustang’s bed, she snapped at the would-be interrogators to have some patience and respect. 

Ling was pretty sure they wouldn’t have been allowed to stay no matter how much he wanted them to if she hadn’t stepped in.

He promised himself to always pay attention in her class from now on, and never let any other students get away with badmouthing her.

Lan Fan woke slowly, and smiled when she saw Ling leaning over her, hovering with indecision between running to get help and staying by her side.

Then the smile fell away, and she looked down at where her arm should be. Where it never would be again.

Ling cleared his throat. “Winry can make you a new one, once you’ve healed. Like Ed’s.”

“Right,” Lan Fan agreed. Her voice sounded hollow.

Greed slid into control of the body, and Ling felt a shit eating grin grow across their face.

“You should have her make you something with spikes and flames and shit. Something real cool, better than the old boring one.”

Lan Fan turned and glared at Greed. “I don’t want your opinion on what I do with my arm.”

She was angry, but Ling thought she might also be glad for the distraction. At the very least there was life in her eyes again.

Greed shrugged. “Fine, do what you want. Get a lame normal prosthetic and waste the chance of a lifetime for badass body modification. See if I–”

“So,” Ling interrupted before Lan Fan could decide to try and strangle Greed one handed. “You’ll never believe what stupid shit I heard Black Star and Kid got up to this time.”

—

They were still talking about nothing important, Ling holding Lan Fan’s hand, a few hours later when the door to the infirmary opened and Stein walked in.

Ling couldn’t say he was a fan of Stein’s bedside manner. The man always gave the impression that he’d rather peel your skin off and look at what was under it than give you a bandaid(not least because he occasionally waxed poetic about the joys of peeling skin off to look at what was under it), but he was the closest thing the school had to medical professional after the former nurse turned out to be a crazy snake witch bent on plunging the world into madness.

And, to be fair, he never actually experimented on any of the students in his care. 

As far as Ling knew.

So he assumed the man was there to check up on Lan Fan or Mustang, and didn’t pay him any mind.

Until Lord Death himself walked in behind him.

It was rare to see their school’s headmaster outside of his office. He only made visits to other areas when something very important came up. And since there wasn’t an imminent threat to existence as they knew it, that could only mean that they were in big trouble.

“Hi, howdy, hello, everyone!” Lord Death greeted them brightly. “I hear you young people have had quite the adventure.”

Ling wished he could take the good mood as a sign he wasn’t about to be expelled, or arrested, or worse, but Lord Death was always like that.

Before Ling could figure out a safe answer, Greed took control again.

“Oh, now what the fuck are you?”

“Shut up!” Ling hissed, shoving Greed back out of the way. “Lord Death, I apologize. He didn’t mean it how it sounded, really! Please forgive–”

“No need for that, Ling,” Lord Death said, waving an oversized hand dismissively. “I know the way I present myself is less than impressive. Don’t want to scare the students, after all! And that little outburst did prove that what the Elrics said was true. You really do have someone else rattling around in that head of yours.”

Ling could feel Greed trying to get control again, no doubt to insult Lord Death again, but he held his ground. That surprised Greed enough that he stopped reaching to take over.

What gives, Ling, he complained.

Lord Death is in charge of this school, Ling explained. He can expel me–or throw us both in a cell–if he wants, so please just stay quiet for now.

That’s in charge? Greed asked. This place is even weirder than the old man’s hideout. But fine, whatever, I’ll be good.

Lord Death turned to Stein. “Is there anything that can be done? I hate the thought of leaving the poor Yao boy stuck like this.”

That was marginally insulting.

Stein shook his head. “Unfortunately, no," he intoned, absentmindedly tightening the screw through his cranium. "As far as I’m aware, there’s no way to separate a meister and weapon who have been fused like this. I’ve been looking into it for Crona, and I haven’t been able to make any progress. It doesn’t help that I can’t experiment on them.” At everyone in the room’s concerned looks, he quickly tacked on: “Not that I would. They’ve had enough experimenting in their life, and respect their bodily autonomy. And Marie would kill me if I tried it.”

“Lord Death, Professor Stein, we don’t want to be separated,” Ling said. 

Everyone turned to look at him like he’d grown a second head.

“It’s–I know I didn’t ask for this,” Ling tried to explain. “But Greed and I work well together. We get along. And, especially if trying to break us apart would be dangerous, I’d rather we stay this way.”

You really mean that? Greed asked. Ling could feel the disbelief coming off him in waves.

With a sinking heart, Ling realized he’d never actually talked to Greed about this.

I do, Ling said because it was true. But I guess I shouldn’t speak for both of us. If you want your own body, we can see if Stein–

“You heard him, we’re staying like this,” Greed said like he was daring anyone to argue with him.

Lord Death sighed. “No offense intended, Greed was it? But you are an unknown entity, one we have no experience with, and it would be irresponsible of me to endanger my students by–”

Hawkeye snorted, which was the most undignified and unprofessional thing Ling had ever witnessed her do.

“Endanger how? With all due respect, Lord Death, he’s been here for over 24 hours already and all he’s done is sit by Lan Fan’s bedside and make a few jokes in poor taste. If he meant to pose a threat, surely he’d have done so by now.”

“Professor Hawkeye is right,” Lan Fan spoke up. “Greed has done nothing to hurt any of us. He didn’t choose to be fused with Ling, and Ling would have died–we all would have died–if Greed hadn’t killed Wrath and the witch. If–” Lan Fan paused, her voice suddenly very watery. 

Ling was alarmed to see tears gathering in her eyes.

Lan Fan swallowed heavily before continuing. “If Ling wants Greed to be his new weapon now that I’m crippled, then–”

“No,” Ling interrupted her. “No, no way Lan Fan! I’d never abandon you like that! You’re my best friend. Greed may have helped me kill the witch, but I got those other 99 souls with you. We started this journey together, and that’s how we’ll finish it!”

“But you said–”

“Death the Kid has two weapons. I don’t see why I can’t do the same.” Ling placed a hand on her hair. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. I think the three of us could be a really good team. If that’s okay with the two of you?”

Lan Fan sniffled and nodded.

Greed took back over the body, and smiled in a way Ling didn’t trust.

“Fine by me,” Greed said. “I’m always down for a three way.”

Ling shoved him to the back of their mindscape.

“Ew! Don’t phrase it like that!”

Lan Fan just laughed.

Ling was shocked by that reaction, but also grateful to Greed for making it happen. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh since things started going bad at the witch’s stronghold.

“Alright, you’ve convinced me!” Lord Death said. “Greed can stay, and be enrolled as another student of the DWMA. I always do love giving people a chance. Of course you know, Ling, this means you’ll have to get double the souls of all the other meister students. 99 kishin eggs and one witch apiece.”

Ling nodded. “That’s very fair, Lord Death. I can handle that. After all, Lan Fan and I already got her 99, and Greed and I killed a witch.”

“Well, actually,” Lord Death started, and Ling could already tell he would hate the rest of this sentence. “Since you went after a witch and failed to kill him with Lan Fan’s blade, the two of you will have to start over.”

“What!” Ling and Lan Fan screeched in perfect unison.

“Yes, I know it’s no fun, but them’s the rules!” Lord Death said. “The same applies to the Elric boys. Let that be a lesson for you all about stowing away on missions you’ve been told you’re not ready for!”

“Also, not to kick you when you’re down,” Greed put in. “But everyone keeps talking about me and Ling killing the witch, and he is for sure not dead.”

“Huh? But we stabbed in the heart and cut his spine!”

“Yeah, and did you see a soul?” Greed asked. “He figured out how to siphon most of it off for safekeeping in a different container ages ago. That’s what all the tubes were for. You were kind of checked out, but I saw Envy get away with his body and Wrath. They definitely retrieved the soul before they booked it to another safe house. Oh, Wrath also isn’t dead. His brain was still attached and he wasn’t a pile of ash, so he can heal.”

“Oh god, this is the worst,” Ling groaned, putting his head in his hands. 

Lan Fan patted him on the back, and Greed did the mental equivalent of the same.

“We can handle it,” Lan Fan said.

“Oh yeah, it’ll be no problem,” Greed put in.

Ling supposed that, if he had to start from square one on gathering twice the souls he’d thought he’d ever need and eventually deal with an ancient witch’s inevitable revenge plot, he could at least do so with good company.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Ling said. “We’ve totally got this.”

[ninjaaa-go]

I was just thinking that, if we do actually get amnesiac Jay, him eventually getting his memories back could be really interesting. Because obviously you’ve got all the great memories with his family and the people he loves, but at the same time just— the horrors. The guy has so much trauma piled up from over the years and I feel like that would be A Lot to have dumped on you all at once.

[thefloatingstone]

The older I get and the more terrible takes I see the more in favour I become of gatekeeping

[boyfriendgideon]

as yr favorite local jason todd fan sometimes i get so fed up with the apparent inability of most dc comic writers to write a class conscious narrative about him.

and yes, i know that comics are a very ephemeral and constantly evolving and self-conflicting medium.

and yes, i know they’re a profit-driven art medium created in a capitalistic society, so there are very few times where comics are going to be created solely out of the desire to authentically and carefully and deliberately represent a character and take them from one emotional narrative place to another, because dc cares about profit and sometimes playing it safe is what sells.

and yes, i know comics and other forms of art reflect and recreate the society within which they were conceived as ideas, and so the dominant societal ideas about gender and race and class and so on are going to be recreated within comics (and/or will be responded to, if the writer is particularly societally conscious).

but jesus christ. you (the writer/writers) have a working class character who has been homeless, who has lost multiple parents, who has been in close proximity to someone struggling with addiction, who has had to steal to survive, who may have (depending on your reading of several different moments across different comics created by different people) been a victim of csa, who has clearly (subtextually) struggled with his mental health, who was a victim of a violent murder, and who has an entirely distinct and unique perspective on justice that has evolved based on his lived experiences.

and instead of delving into any of that, or examining the myriad of ways that classism in the writers’ room and the editors’ room and the readers’ heads affected jason’s character to make sure you’re writing him responsibly, or giving him a plotline where his views on what justice looks like are challenged by another working class character, or allowing him to demonstrate actual autonomy and agency in deciding what relationships he wants to have with people who he loves but sees as having failed him in different ways, or thinking carefully about what his having chosen an alias that once belonged to his murderer says about his decision-making and motivations, you keep him stuck in a loop of going by the red hood, addressing crime by occupying a position of relative power that perpetuates crime & harm rather than ever getting at the root causes, and seesawing between a) agreeing with his adoptive family entirely about fighting nonlethally in ways that are often inconsistent with his apparent motivations or b) disagreeing and experiencing unnecessarily brutal and violent reactions from his adoptive father as if that kind of violence isn’t the kind of thing he experienced as a child and something bruce himself is trying to prevent jason from perpetuating. because a comic with red hood, quips, high stakes, and familial drama sells.

it doesn’t matter if it keeps jason trapped, torn between an unanswered moral and philosophical question, a collection of identities that no longer fit him, and a family that accepts him circumstantially. it doesn’t matter if jason’s characterization is so utterly inconsistent that the only way to mesh it together is to piece different aspects of different titles and plotlines together like a jigsaw. it doesn’t matter if you do a disservice to his character, because in the end you don’t want to transform him or even understand him deeply enough to identify what makes him compelling and focus on that.

and i love jason!!!!! i love him. and i think about the stories we could have, if quality and art and doing justice to the character were prioritized as much as selling a title and having a dark and brooding batfam member besides bruce just to be the black sheep character are prioritized. and i just get a little sad.

[tblsomedoodles]

Hey, I was just thinking about something to do with your Seer Twins AU that actually makes a lot of sense. I know that Donnie sees the good in his visions while Leo sees the bad, but what about if they need to connect two partial visions together to make a complete vision or something like that. This is where, what I'm calling the bridge comes into play. This third person, who is also born at or around the same time as the seers, has both the yin and yang marks on them, but can't use that part of their powers on their own and it won't even show up on scanners unless they're near one of the others while they're having or are about to have a vision. That being said, they can help the other 2 when they have waking visions weather by just being there or protecting them with their extremely powerful abilities. I think you know where I'm going with this. I can see that Mikey is the bridge for Donnie and Leo, and they don't realize it because the yin and yang symbols that he has are in his spots that have subtle swirls to them anyway. With this theory, Draxem originally scanned Mikey when one of his brothers either was about to or was having a vision while he was around, but the next time he scanned Mikey that wasn't the case, and Draxem just assumed it was because of his extremely powerful Ninpo. With this theory as well, the counsel doesn't know about the bridge thing, and just thinks some of the visions are extremely vague.

Also I can see Leo and Donnie getting charms of some sort, in the good future timeline, that helps them control their visions better.

First of all, this is very cool. and i like it a lot. Mikey having having a role in this that no one has figured out? And a little symbol that just looks like a spot with a color variation? Fantastic and adorable!

I will like to add some things to this. Like

Mikey wouldn't be able to see the visions he helps with, like at all. He's assisting but is not fully part of it.

Since the twins' standard visions are broken up bits of visions kinda scrambled around, if Mikey just being close by helps stabilize them so they can see them more linearly. (the twins don't have to be together at the time either. This is just something he passively does to either of them. Meaning Donnie's blueberry pancake vision was probably quite a bit less jumbled/more clear than he's used to having just b/c Mikey was there.)

I think it would also be cool that if he's actively helping them while they're together that, like what you said, they both get a full image of what's happening. But also like, i think for the twins, it would be more like a lucid dream than a vision. Like, normally they're just watching what's happening with flashes of feelings from whoever they're watching from. But like, if it's assisted like that, they're more aware in said vision and can possibly watch from a third person perspective rather than a first.

I also really like the idea that though that's something this third can do, it's not their main thing. I think this third is there to help if needed, but mostly is there to protect. Since Seers (especially newly come into their powers seers) are quite vulnerable during their visions, they would need someone to watch over them during that time. They're given a giant mystic source with powerful mystic abilities to go with it.

I don't think he'd need a second source like Leo and Donnie, i think his one would just be compatible with the twins enough to augment the twins abilities.

i think it would be kinda neat too if Mikey can't sleep while one of them is having a vision. Like the second one of them slips into a vision he's awake and alert and, especially early on, has no idea why. A few minutes later, he gets tired again and goes right back to sleep. Whether it's limited by distance or not, i'm not sure at the moment. But i do like this since, his job is to protect them during visions so he mystically gets woken up to do that.

Like you said, it's not something the Council would be aware of b/c of the subtlety of it. (plus, even if they did know, I think they wouldn't like the idea. They see themselves as 'protecting' the seers so i don't think they would like the idea that they already had a naturally assigned protector.)

Anyways, that's all i have time to rant about right now. But i do really like this and it's given me quite a bit to think about while i'm at work tonight lol.

Thank you!!

[total-drama-brainrot]

honestly tempted to write a yandere sierra fic, but not in a romanticised way. like, a horror fic about how she relapsed into super unhealthy habits during/after all-stars, until she eventually tries killing either cody himself or the people in his life. or her forcing cameron into acting/dressing like cody in her mania, only to attack/kill him when he doesn't meet her impossibly high expectations.

just. sierra's stalking taken to it's logical extreme, and the consequences thereof.

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[moldygreenblue]

An Account From The Man Over There

(In which I decided to write a Cats musical fanfic where the beginning of the Jellicle Ball is shown from The Man Over There's perspective.)

Thomas did not have a good day today. What makes it worse is that he knows it could have been a good day. And a good final work day would be the perfect start to his days off.

His penultimate appointment of the day was for a new patient; a dear little cat name Euthymia, or Mia for short. Mia has the biggest eyes Thomas has ever seen on a cat before. She was also the sweetest, compliant cat he cared for at the clinic. Mia is very much like her owner in that regards. Mrs. Covey is also kind and sweet. Both of them are a matching pair, and Thomas wishes they were the last appointment of the day.

But they weren’t.

The less Thomas thinks about the final appointment of the day, the better. He doesn’t want to think again about how the pet owner believed a cat could survive a no-meat diet. He doesn’t want to recall how the owner told him shamelessly about switching their cat’s diet without asking a vet about it. He doesn’t want to think about how lost his cool, and how he barely kept his job.

As Thomas slumps down to the floor, his back right up against the door, he sighs. He’s tired and hungry. But he doesn’t want to finish his leftover takeout from yesterday.

Thomas instead decides to go to sleep early.

Thomas stands back up, and goes to his bedroom. He strips out of his clothes, remaining only in his boxer trunks. Picking up his trousers, Thomas reaches into the right pocket and pulls out his keys, setting them on his nightstand. And after setting his alarm for eight-thirty, Thomas flops stomach-side down onto his bed. He can throw his clothes in the hamper tomorrow morning.

Thomas rolls onto his backside, and stares at his ceiling. He stares, and soon eventually finds himself drifting off into sleep.

When Thomas wakes up again, the first thing that he hears is soften sounds of unexpected meowing and screeching from outside his bedroom window, where the nearby junkyard is. While there is the occasional cat or two (or more; Thomas once when sick counted the number of cats there, and counted seven) at the junkyard, the noises never get on his nerves.

Until now. And Thomas is not happy.

I already had a bad day yesterday, thinks Thomas. This isn’t what I need now.

Thomas groans as he gets out of his bed, rubbing both of his eyes. He soon finds himself staring at the racks of shoes near his closet. With an idea flashing into his mind, Thomas walks towards the pile of shoes, and picks up his good boot from the top rack.

Thomas then goes to his bedroom window. He slides open it up, and chucks the boot out.

And there’s nothing. It’s just a beautiful silence.

“MEOWMEOWQUEENMEOWOFTHEOWMENIGHT!”

“Oh for—”

Really? thinks Thomas. They didn’t scatter and leave? Well, that’s just great! Just great! Now I’m missing one boot. Why the hell did I threw my good boot? It wasn’t cheap!

Thomas slams his window close, and quickly goes back to his closet. He grabs one of his pajama bottoms and a knitted pullover, putting them on as fast as he can. Thomas then grabs his keys from the nightstand, slips his feet into a pair of slippers, and rushes out of his bedroom.

Thomas leaves his flat (but not without locking it; he’s not risking anything), and makes a dash to the junkyard. The quicker he finds his boot, the quicker he can go back home and get whatever shut-eye he can get before his alarm rings.

As Thomas approaches the junkyard, he can still hear the screeching and meowing. It’s louder than before, and more in sync, like a choir.

Now, when Thomas bought his flat from Mr. Faber, he was told the junkyard nearby is forbidden. No one can enter, unless they have a key. And Mr. Faber has the only key in existence. However, Thomas over time in his observation discovered that there is a way inside: through a broken fence piece at the entrance gate, located by the street lamp.

Thomas never thought he would enter the junkyard, especially by sneaking in. There’s a first time for everything, perhaps. And upon entering the junkyard —breaking into the junkyard— Thomas couldn’t help but think something is feeling…off.

He only took a few steps, but Thomas thinks that everything gotten bigger. A lot bigger, as if he shrank in size. And he thinks this more and more as he continues walking, realizing that it’s taking longer to walk to the center of the junkyard, where he knows his boot landed.

It’s at this point does Thomas realizes something isn’t right. Something about this night is wrong. The earlier meowing and screeching are gone. Instead, Thomas can now hear a group of people singing. And they’re singing. About cats.

“Romantical cats, Pedantical cats

Critical cats, Parasitical cats

Allegorical cats, Metaphorical cats

Statistical cats and Mystical cats!”

“I don’t think one can be metaphorical, cat or human,” mutters Thomas.

“Political cats, Hypocritical cats

Clerical cats, Hysterical cats

Cynical cats, Rabbinical cats!”

Thomas finally approaches the center of the junkyard. And he stops. He stops and carefully crouches behind something. A hat-box. He’s crouching behind a giant hat-box.

This can’t be real, thinks Thomas. This has to be a dream.

Thomas crouches behind the giant hat-box, and sees it. He sees it, and can’t believe it. It’s impossible, yet he’s witnessing it right before his very eyes.

Right before his eyes, Thomas sees a group of cats dancing and singing. The cats are singing like humans, and they look like humans. They resemble humans in stylize and detail costumes that are feline-like, fitting for a mega musical. The cats are dancing together in sync, their voices in unison. Voices he can understand; Thomas wonders anytime he was tipsy on a near or full moon and heard cats —or rather, one particular cat— speaking wasn’t his imagination.

“Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats

Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats

Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats

Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats

Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats!”

And out of everything to be thinking about in this moment, Thomas wants to know of one thing:

What is a Jellicle cat? Nothing of what I heard earlier actually define it…

Thomas makes the mistake of letting go of his hold of the hat-box. He slips and falls onto the ground of the junkyard. Thomas quickly scurries to hide again. If there’s a chance that one of those cats heard him falling—

A brown-greyish tom cat rushes to the front of the junkyard center. He slightly resembles the frail-looking cat who used to visit The Victoria—Gus. Gus is also incidentally, the cat who Thomas now wonders could speak all this time. But Gus is to use human terms, a senior. The cat up front of the junkyard center, is middle-age. Older than Thomas himself, perhaps.

“There's a man over there with a look of surprise,

As much as to say, ‘Well now how about that!’”

Thomas slowly sulks to the ground. He was not only spotted, he got ratted out, and he got ratted out through song. Thomas likes a good musical. In fact, he even participated in one in his younger years. But Thomas isn’t sure how to feel about being sung to in this particular context…

A younger silver-grey tom cat soon joins the other cat. He looks quite puzzle. And exasperated.

“Do I actually see, with my own very eyes…

A man who's not heard of a Jellicle cat? What’s a Jellicle cat?”

“What's a Jellicle cat? What’s a Jellicle Cat?”

Thomas doesn’t like the smirk on the brown-greyish cat’s face as the question was ask.

Despite being against all sense of logic, Thomas instead of running away from the preoccupied cats and their question, he decides to walk closer to the center of the junkyard. Closer to them. What in the world lead to his current predicament?

Oh right, thinks Thomas, smacking his hand directly onto his forehead. The BOOT. The BOOT that I THREW AT THEM.

Thomas is certain he hears a soft chuckle from one of the cats. It sounds very male. Thomas wouldn’t be surprise if the chuckle came from that cat from before.

The clowder of cats is now in a pyramid formation. They’re all staring him dead in the eye, ready to sing again.

There are so many different cats in the formation. Different colors, different markings, and different patterns, or having no patterns at all…they are so many. One of the cats is on the older side. She has white and golden fur, and a woven collar. The collar looks soft to touch.

The cat looks identical to Anne’s cat, Apricot. Anne could never make Apricot a permanent indoor cat. Anne always said that Apricot comes and goes whenever she felt like it…

“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

It isn’t just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.”

The cats are once again in unison. But they are not singing, not really. They are all speaking low and solemn. The solemness in their voices matches their equally solemn faces. What they’re saying together sounds like a chant. It’s…terrifying.

It’s terrifying to hear this unexpected hush chant. It’s terrifying to hear the chant, feeling the many pairs of eyes on him. It’s terrifying to know that they’re looking at him due to being an outsider, looking inside a world he doesn’t belong to, and should never have learn.

This night is certainly going to be a different night from all others.

“First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,

Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,

Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—

All of them sensible everyday names.”

But what if one has a sister and she name her cat after a fruit, thinks Thomas. Apricot is a sensible name, sure. But it’s not exactly a formal name like the ones they just mentioned.

“There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,

Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:

Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—

But all of them sensible everyday names.”

Well, that answers my previous question, thinks Thomas.

“But I tell you a cat needs a name that's particular,”

The collective of cats moves towards him suddenly. Thomas quickly walks backwards, and falls back on the ground. He quickly scrambles backward, hoping to feel something hit his back.

“A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,”

He feels nothing. Just the cold air of the night.

“Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,

Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,

Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,

Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—

Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,

And that is the name that you never will guess;”

The pyramid formation breaks apart. The cats are separating into three sections. But they are still surrounding him. Do they think he’s going to attempt an escape? Thomas doesn’t think he even has a chance to escape at the moment.

“The name that no human research can discover—

But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.”

One of the cats, a pure white cat with the most expensive jeweled collar Thomas have seen before, suddenly leaves her section. She slips away near the back and sits, staring into space.

“When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

The reason, I tell you, is always the same:

His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation

Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:

His ineffable effable—”

The white cat is now on her tiptoes.

“Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular name.”

As the cats continues to whisper ‘name’ they all start to disperse. They disperse, and disappear. It’s now just the white queen and him in the junkyard. She’s standing up, prepare to dance. The spotlight —Thomas isn’t sure where it came from, as well as the music that he hasn’t commented on until now— is all for the cat.

It’s a very interesting dance solo. Thomas isn’t sure why the cat is obsessing with her foot. But Thomas admits that there’s an air of elegance to her dancing. It’s very similar to how a ballerina dances. The grace that she has reminds Thomas of a ballerina friend he had back in his university days.

A cat residing the pipe —he’s a tuxedo cat— soon sprints out. The spotlight gotten bigger and brighter. The tranquil music of the white cat’s solo is now livelier, and jazzy.

“Jellicle Cats come out tonight

Jellicle Cats come one come all:

The Jellicle Moon is shining bright

Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball!”

As the tuxedo cat sings and dances along with the white cat —both of them are smiling, having a nice time together (very much how siblings who are having fun and enjoying the same shared activity), the rest of the clowder reappears.

“Jellicle Cats come out tonight

Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.”

The silver-grey tom cat from before makes his way up to the front. To where Thomas is at.

“Jellicle Cats meet once a year

At the Jellicle Ball where we all rejoice

And the Jellicle leader will soon appear

And make what is known as the Jellicle choice.”

Oh! There is a reason why there’s a clowder of cats at the junkyard tonight, thinks Thomas.

“When Old Deuteronomy just before dawn

Through a silence you feel you could cut with a knife

Announces the cat who can now be reborn

And come back to a different Jellicle life.

For waiting up there is the Heaviside Layer

Full of wonders one Jellicle only will see—”

As the silver-grey cat raises a paw...hand into the air, the rest of the cats —all have been dancing together again, all in the formation of a circle— are looking upward to the night sky. The white cat is in the center, and is also raising her hand into the air.

The silver-grey cat also sticks up his pointer finger, emphasizing that yes, only one Jellicle can go up to this Heaviside Layer. No exception.

“And Jellicles ask because Jellicles dare…

Who will it be?”

“Who will it be?” repeats the rest of the cats.

As Thomas feels the hard stare of the silver-grey cat, he decides on one thing:

He is going to have to embrace the unexpected weirdness of tonight.

He has a feeling that it’s the only way to keep his mind intact.

[fishyartist]

think ive finally figured out a building process i dont despise. still got a LONGGG way to go improvement wise (a whole lifetime even) but the process occurs regardless :3

[dropthecop]

saw a dracula daily post saying it was like a timeloop story the way people were reading it year after year and the characters were going through The Horrors again and again the same way as before, and the post asked which dracula character would be the one who knows about the timeloop and tries to break it, and i would like to submit for consideration that none of them know about it because WE are the ones who know

[phoenixcatch7]

If there's one thing I like more than time travel it's crossover reincarnation, so.

Botk link reincarnated as Damian Wayne.

An incredible weapon master of all types, but especially prodigious with a sword - he was beating knights at the age of 4 and with his memories as intact as they get for him I can see that goalpost moving even further (probably with traps and tricks, a 3yo doesn't exactly have great bodily control).

He's an excellent survivalist, agile, strong, durable, cunning and creative. He can move like a feather in the breeze, strike from behind with ease. His first kill, an animal, did not stir him as it did the other children. With his poise, grace, skills, obedience, he ought to be ra'as' finest assassin in the making, a jewel in the crown of the league.

Except he never speaks a word. Half his targets escape unscathed. He skates by true punishment on the merit of his skills and achievements in other missions. Testing has shown it is not a physical deformity that prevents his speech, but not even talia has been able to coaxe a word from him past his second birthday.

It is a defect ra'as is growing more and more frustrated by, as each attempt to fix these two final flaws ends in resounding failure. Less extreme solutions are running dry.

Talia fears those solutions. Her child does too, she knows. For them, there is a possible solution, more extreme than anything ra'as would tolerate.

She sends him out of the league. To his father.

To Gotham.

[screechingkroh]

I seem to have a horrid habit of focusing on world building instead of the stories! That said, have some facts abt both stories and their worlds!!

A Seer of Secrets

All four celestial monkeys know of each other’s existence (obvs). But the Long-Armed Gibbon and the Red Buttock Baboon have ultimately decided that dealing w Macaque and Wukong is NOT worth it. Good choice LMAO

Demon courting is kind of weird. Female demons tend to be more aggressive with courting

Speaking of courting, kidnapping is part of it but it’s consensual. Well… nowadays it is. But you don’t realize it because they disguise it as an “I’m surprise visiting you… and now we’re going to my house. Pack a week's worth of clothes.”

Seers and Oracles usually have an item or symbol that connects them to divinity. I wonder what Seer’s item is.

Demon food is USUALLY spicy. For some reason, MK and Mei can withstand it but Wukong lowkey struggles? He doesn’t question it much. They're a weird duo.

There's this huge ass under-market for demons. I'm talking multiple districts kind of big. It's based on the five phases of Chinese philosophy. So you've got Fire, Water, Wood, Gold, and Earth. The District levels go in order as the inter-promoting direction... Or generating direction (I wanted to feel fancy). So it goes Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and then Water. But it's in this big circle that spirals upwards. It's pretty cool because the transition from the Water District to the Wood District is by a massive waterfall that has these big rock platforms that act like an elevator. So, it's kind of tapping into the whole "controls" thing of the uhhhh.... inter-regulating part.

Speaking of the districts, there is ONE place that is considered pure neutral territory. And that would be the Earth section. Simply because Earth is meant to represent " patience, thoughtfulness, practicality, hard work, and stability." This is also where demons can find items that can help with healing 'n their abilities! It's where most markets are set up due to the unspoken truce.

The Wood and Fire district tends to get... really heated. Especially in the Fire District. The space between Wood and Fire is highly populated. So a lot of fighting happens and it's considered far enough from the Earth District. This is where demons like to just... bust out the moves and get into nasty fights. So if you can survive running through the Fire District (where there are a lot of fights over territory) and to Earth, consider yourself lucky. And fucked, because the moment you step out of the Earth District, someone is on your ass.

Water isn't exactly where demons live. It's more of a uh... "If I can't be on the surface for a hot moment or so, I can chill here and not be bothered" kind of place. But it's usually for those real big hot-shot guys. So the Demon Bull Family, for example.

You Were Nothing Like Me

You guys don't understand. I have almost 5,000 words on the doc. That's more than ASOS, sadly.

Everyone's names are based on Constellations because I'm unoriginal. The only people who aren't are the brothers... And Queen Astra, who is Outertale Toriel.

The Void? Yes, it's sentient. It lets Gaster be an invisible guiding hand.

It also oddly likes chocolate.

Monsters know ASL. This is because of a bunch of ASL content being found-- why was it in the dumpster? Who knows! But it's benefited the monster community, and it's gotten the favor of the Deaf Community! Because they're more accepting than others.

I made three official holidays for Monsters and pulled the names out of my fucking ass at 3 AM. Gyftmas, of course, exist. It happens on the Third of every December. Monsters originally guessed based on the crystals in Waterfall. Which would dim during the summer and brighten up during the winter. The brightest day just so happens to be the third Wednesday of December without fail. Why do the crystals dim during the summer? Because monster magic, despite being beneath the ground for literal centuries, accommodated the heat by glowing brighter. Why does glowing brighter help? Because why not. It's like when fireflies come out during May and June. Because. Day of Silence is a pretty somber day. It is a-- uh-- a day dedicated to the Royal Family and their lost children. Most monsters take this day off and mourn the fallen prince and child. It's said that you can hear their souls mourning throughout the underground... Said sound gets louder when the fusion of Outertale happens. Yup. Sunset Feast is a really happy one. It's the day the barrier broke! Because woohoo, freedom. Their version of the 4th of July. So, fun fact about this holiday. Frisk broke the barrier the same fucking day it was created. And it, thus, replaced the old holiday Feast of Darkness. Anyways, Sunset Feast is where monsters gather near a large clearing that's by the entrance of Ebott and-- uh-- watch the sunset! Big feast, too. Really fun and loud! Lots of music 'n stuff.

Who named those holidays, you ask? Not Asgore. That's for fucking sure. Not with his shitty naming skills. It was actually Toriel, who named them. I refuse to believe both of them had shitty naming skills. Toriel was good at naming things because I said so.

Typhas, or known as water sausages, have three different forms. You have Snow Typhas, which are commonly closer to Snowdin, and are pretty sweet! They're actually used to making icing or Nice Cream. You also have Spice Typhas, which are closer to HotLands and are used as a spice! The spiciest part of Spice Typhas are the seeds, kind of like peppers!

Depending on where you're at in the underground, you get unique currency. Gold is the overarching one, but sometimes you gotta make some fun unique ones. The Ruins doesn't have currency minus gold. They like to bargain and trade. Snowdin uses Milky Quartz. Waterfall uses Water Opals. HotLand uses Rubies. The Core uses Quartz. The Castle uses Sapphires. And the Court and Royal Family use diamonds... but not a lot of people see them.

I can go on for actual days about YWNLM's world building. I think about this world too much. I-- I just... I love it. It makes me happy.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

hang on are cougars like panthers