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emberwings-last-wish · 8 days ago

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also on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60348928

Joel wakes up, and he can’t breathe, which isn’t supposed to happen to gods.

The sleeping thing, he thinks, technically shouldn’t need to happen. He’s a god. Not, like, a religion type of god – no one really goes around worshiping him, and he doesn’t really have the massive reality-altering powers that some of the old deities do. He’s just strong, and immortal, and awesome, and handsome, and very tall, and strong, and he’s way off topic now. What was he thinking about before?

Right. Waking up.

Anyway, he probably could go without sleep. But there’s a part of him that doesn’t know how to not get tired. It’s an annoyingly mortal part. He knows that there’s, like, a 99% chance that he was a mortal once, before godhood, since that’s how this usually works. He doesn’t remember anything about his hypothetical mortality, but he guesses he used to be… tired. Tired enough that even a thousand years of godhood isn’t enough to keep him from sleeping every now and then.

The problem with sleeping, and the thing that he’s not certain should be happening even if he does sleep, is dreaming. Specifically, the kind of dream that he jolts up from with a cut-off shout, with a searing pain in his chest, with a rush of memories that are gone before he can sort through them.

Tonight was particularly bad, he thinks after a few minutes, when he can think about what just happened instead of tangentially rambling around the subject. He – he’s pretty sure he dreamed about dying. And other people dying. A lot of death, really. And he’s seen death, of course. He’s died a hundred times. But his chest is still seizing every now and then, and his heartbeat is much louder and faster than it should be, and there’s a very uncomfortable wetness in his eyes that is just embarrassing, really.

Honestly. Why would he cry about people dying? Respawn is a thing.

Stratos is beautiful, even at night. It’s a different kind of beauty than in the middle of the day, and Joel doesn’t like it as much – he prefers the brilliance, the way that sunlight highlights the gold and quartz, the way it blazes in the sky like a beacon. It’s more ethereal, under the moonlight; the gold is all but muted, blending eerily into the warped wood and terracotta, and the quartz has an almost ghostlike glow about it. Joel walks the floating islands, restless, and tries to put a name to what he’s feeling.

He finds himself stopping by Peril’s temple. The Sunflower Lady is not a god he’s ever met, so he’s not sure why he looks at the abstract statue inside and can picture her features so clearly. The nearly-full moon reflects around the temple in ways that he’s pretty sure light isn’t supposed to work.

“Sorry,” he says aloud, and then scrubs at his face in an attempt to bring himself back to his senses. Why is he apologizing to a statue for no reason?

He doesn’t feel like anything is watching him, as he walks on. He doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.

Being a god does have its perks. Wings spread behind Joel as he stops at the edge of Stratos, looking out over the quiet lands below. He doesn’t remember ever having to use the mechanical elytra many of the rulers employ, but he’s pretty sure it would be far inferior to having one’s own wings bound to soul and thought.

Flying usually makes him feel better. It doesn’t tonight. He doesn’t know why.

Joel circles toward Tumble Town on a whim, but as soon as its lights come into view, he pulls away sharply. It’s not because his inhumanly keen eyesight has caught the hunched figure of the sheriff sitting on the tavern steps, of course.

(Joel doesn’t want to think about why he really doesn’t want to talk to Jimmy, right now.)

He ends up in Animalia, which is weird. It’s not somewhere he goes often. Not that there’s anything wrong with it; it’s just… well, the Animalians are a bit freaky, even to a thousand-year-old god. And their mayor – well, she wears that mask presumably to make it a bit less weird that you’re talking to an anthropomorphic cat, but it just makes things worse. Why did she have to pick that particular mask? It’s horribly unsettling, and Joel doesn’t even know why because it’s just a fairly normal looking face, pale skin and pink hair and round eyes, but it has to be deeply creepy on an instinctive level because why else would he feel all twisty and weird and achy inside whenever he looked at it?

But he’s here, nonetheless, sitting at the edge of the fountain in the darkness before dawn, feeling all hollow and scooped-out inside for no good reason. And that’s how he is still, a few minutes later, when a door opens across the square and he looks up at none other than the startled mayor herself.

Joel’s chest aches for a moment when he sees her. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“Joel?” Lizzie says, and damn it, her voice is making him feel even weirder, why is this happening? “What are…”

“I don’t know,” he says, looking away. He wants… he wants her to leave, he wants her to stay, he wants to ask her something but he doesn’t know what. He hates this.

She crosses to the fountain, and sits beside him. He’s human size tonight, not even six feet tall, but she’s still very small next to him. It feels wrong in ways he doesn’t want to focus on.

“I had a bad dream,” she murmurs, into the quiet air. “I… don’t remember what it was about. Not exactly. But it was bad.”

Joel opens his mouth to say that gods don’t dream, but what came out is, “Yeah. Me too.”

“I knew you’d be here.” Lizzie says, hugging herself. Her voice is small, and oddly cracked along the edges. “I – I knew you’d be here, but I don’t know why.”

“Sorry,” Joel says. He feels stupid for saying it, and at the same time he knows it’s not enough. He doesn’t know what that means.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she murmurs, eyes oddly hazy.

Joel’s breath catches for a moment, on a wave of cresting guilt, and the words are pulled out of him without conscious thought. “It was,” he says, “you shouldn’t have died, I told you to do-”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeats dully. “Wasn’t even Scott’s fault. Just mine.”

The sane part of Joel’s brain is busy having an aneurysm, leaving whatever irrational dream-bit of Joel brain that is piloting to say, “Jimmy laughed, you know. And then he died. And Mumbo died. And you – I lost all of you, and no one seemed to care, and Jimmy laughed and then you were all dead-”

“No one ever cares,” Lizzie says, her words wobbly, and Joel knows she is crying even though he barely knows her, shouldn’t know that she always has that higher pitch to her voice whenever she is trying to pretend there aren’t tears on her cheeks. “I just – no one ever cares.”

“I cared,” Joel says, fierce, because for some reason nothing is more important right now than making sure that Lizzie knows that he mourned. “I blumin’ cared. I cared too much. You know how much it hurt knowing you were dead? That my best friend laughed and celebrated that you died, and then he died too, and my other friend I was only learning to trust died, and then I had to keep going?”

Lizzie is silent, for a long moment. “Who won?” she asks, dully. “I don’t remember.”

“Me neither,” Joel says quietly. “Wasn’t me.”

Another long silence, in which the weird dream bits of Joel’s consciousness start to fade again, and he slowly realizes just how insane their conversation had been. What were they even talking about? Dying? Winning? Jimmy dying, apparently, and Lizzie, and for some reason that was a really big deal despite both of them clearly being alive, and, you know, Joel really not caring that much?

“Um,” Lizzie finally says. She sounds a lot less upset, and a lot more awkward. “I. I don’t. Um. Sorry, I – I don’t know what that was? I think I’m still a bit asleep, actually.”

“Yeah,” Joel says. He doesn’t know how to respond to what is, apparently, a collective exhaustion-induced hallucination of past experiences that clearly never happened. “I, uh. Sorry for waking you up, or whatever.”

“Oh, you didn’t,” she says, “I just, woke up on my own. It was a dream. A dream, and I woke up.”

“Yeah,” he says again.

The sky is starting to lighten; dawn is coming. A light flickers on in a window a few buildings down. The city is starting to wake up. It’ll be full dawn by the time Joel makes it back to Stratos, even if he leaves right now.

Lizzie is staring out across the square again. Joel looks at her out of the corner of his eye, and can almost imagine that the calico fur and pointy ears aren’t there, that the pink yarn and smooth birch are real. The splashing of the fountain is a nice backdrop, he thinks, but crashing waves would fit much better.

Lizzie turns her head suddenly, eyes meeting his, and for a moment that feels like eternity, Joel swears all he can see is the ocean.

“I’d better go,” she says, breaking whatever bizarre spell has fallen over Joel. “Things to do, you know. Might even get another few minutes of sleep.”

“Okay,” he says, standing. His wings flare behind him, gold-tipped white feathers spreading to catch the faint breeze drifting through the square. Through the eyeholes of the mask, her blue eyes track the wings as if she’s surprised to see them.

(It’s mutual. For a moment, he was surprised he had them. Blumin’ heck, Joel hates when his stupid aren’t-supposed-to-exist dreams mess with his head.)

“Well, see you around,” he says, a little awkwardly, and leaps into the air.

Stratos is a blazing beacon of gold and white, when he gets back to it, as early morning sunlight lights up the eastern faces of the floating build. It’s just the way Joel likes it. So he’s not sure why it’s too blinding, for a moment. Too aggravating.

Joel growls a noise of frustration in the back of his throat, and forces himself to grow as he comes in for a landing. He straightens up eleven feet tall, like he should be, and surveys his magnificent home, and pretends things are fine. He’s good at that.

#empiresfic #joel smallishbeans #lizzie ldshadowlady #empires s1 #empires s2 #secret life #thinking about them again #built around my hc that after s1 Lizzie lost her memories and disappeared #s1 Joel went after her #and became a god to try and help her #but lost his own memories in the process #so now they're chilling on empires s2 and neither can remember each other or who they used to be #but the life series makes things... interesting #will never be normal about empires joel/lizzie

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poisonousquinzel · 2 years ago

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sorry but if you actually think Cancel Culture ™ is a thing then you're kinda a dumb fuck. Cancel culture isn't real, holding people accountable for their actions is a thing, but this whole narrative around Canceling that's evolved over the past few years isn't real. It's never been an actual thing. Its just a fear mongering tactic to further vilify the groups who were being harmed in the first place and victimize the person who did something wrong.

Your fav being called out for playing an antisemitic video game that directly gives profits to a hugely influential TERF, who's said openly she sees getting profits / royalty cheques from her franchise as endorsements for her bigotry, is not "cancel culture". It's called the consequences for your actions.

You have every right to do and play whatever the fuck you want, but that goes both ways. If you go out of your way to build up and financially support these people who're openly advocating to take away trans people's rights, then you get to deal with people not trusting you because of it. You get to deal with trans and Jewish folks not feeling safe around you, not wanting to be around you or not wanting to talk to you. Because you have shown that you care more about nostalgia and temporary personal emotional gratification over the wellbeing and safety of those communities in the real world.

People have explained why supporting HL is wrong, people have explained why it's harmful, people have explained in detail the issues with this situation. You. Just. Don't. Care. You don't listen, or read, because in the end, you can't be bothered enough to put in the effort of having 1 moment of critical thinking.

It's not that folks don't have arguments or evidence, it's that it clearly does not matter to you. It's that the value of an antisemitic game full of one horrific thing after another is worth more to you than the real, living breathing people who are going to be, and have been, affected by this.

You come across as a bad person. Not because some person on Twitter determined you must be, but because your actions speak far louder. And they're screaming red flags.

I'm not going to argue with you over your own bad decisions and life choices. You've made your bed and are mad that people are telling you to lie in it.

#not dc #i need to not focus on this but it makes me so annoyed #and like the constant 'well hp has been a comfort thing of mine since childhood!' like bitch do you think Harry Potter was a niche little #thing????#a fucking lot of us had Harry Potter as something important to us growing up #i remember getting all the legos sets for Christmas in 2011. getting the lego video games and i loved them!#but. that. doesn't. matter.#we're not children anymore and she's not on our side.#JKR made it clear that a large portion of her previous fan base are not welcome around her and that frankly #that she would rather them be dead.#she's a horrendous human being who is causing so much pain and anguish for communities that're just trying to exist #and its built upon the empire she crafted. the one full of stereotypes and offensive imagery and tone-deaf themes.#we aren't kids anymore and it's shameful to gloss over what she is actively doing Right Now because You have fond memories of her world.#a lot of people don't get the luxury of pretending like she's not an awful person because they're the ones she's harming #they're the ones she's spreading hateful rhetoric and stereotypes about. the ones that she's pushing to get their rights taken away.#just put down her shitty fuckhng series and read another book.#i promise you there's hundreds upon hundreds of better ones out there with better plots and better world building.#anti harry potter #anti jkr #anti hogwarts legacy #tw transphobia mention #tw antisemitism mention #figure I'll tw tag just in case ya got it filtered 💖

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