#these guys are very much a work in Progress. Please bare with me if lore changes Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[tomfool-tabbycat]

slowly gonna be Putting my descendant ocs out there lol: characters created: 7/12 characters introduced: 1/7

well start from the toP and work our way down [since i have all of the highbloods done lol] and that makes us start with Selkie Pexies!

[Please note: Picture on left is meant to solely be used for color reference and is not an actual reflection of my art skill rn lol]

name origin: selkies, irish myth of PeoPle with a seal skin that, while wearing the skin, become seals themselves. i had it on my list of Potential names because 1: similar "ee" sound the Peixes all have ["Fefer-ee" and "M-ee-nah'], 2: it has water connotations that, again, both Pexies share, 3: i already was aware of the myth of selkies and had a likin for em and 4: my siblings friends also Picked it out.

tyPing quirk: replaces "h" with "][", ends all sentences with "man" [and by association, would Probably have a weird surfer accent..], normal capitalization and punctuation. all the letters examPle: "T][e quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, man."

Selkie is sPoiled and she knows that. it doesnt do much about being sPoiled, but is aware! so theres that at least. she doesnt look forward to having to kill its ancestor and Plans on running away or feigning her death to avoid it, hide with Dan if she still is down, wait out a while. [and Selkie is also rather underdeveloPed Past here but know she is That kinda highblood </3]

[mari-lair]

I promised to share all my abandoned wips so...

Do you all remember 'lover boy, this is a dead end?'. Here is some loose ideas for when I had planned to write a second chapter.

ship: natsukane (one sided), sakuhiko, aoikane

warning: idk...? unreliable narrator?? Does not try to follow canon lore??

Does flowers still work? Would he be offended? Personally, Natsuhiko would love to get flowers but maybe Akane is a chocolate kind of guy.

…Bitter chocolate may be to his liking? He is sweet at heart but grumpy at everything else, so maybe...?

There must be one he likes, everyone likes chocolate right?

“What kind of chocolate would he like?” Natsu mumbled, usually getting clues but his favorite drink is literally water. That’s a dead end if he ever saw one.

And sure he can give him a raspberry shake but… He doesn’t want him to be happy thinking of Aoi, it needs to be something that makes Akane swoon, makes him sigh dreamily while thinking of Natsuhiko

“Nanamine-senpai doesn’t like chocolate” Mitsuba said

oh

oh no

His lady!

.

“My lady!” Natsuhiko whaled, grabbing her hand with both of his “I have betrayed you,” He could feel his vision blurry as he cried “Please forgive me!”

Sakura slapped him with no mercy “Don’t touch me.” 

So cold!

 “Yes ma’m” 

She frowned, uncomfortable by the way he was still crying and apologizing for betraying her and reassuring he still loves her very much“...What happened?”

“I fell in love with Akane-kun”

Sakura paused, her eyes barely widening, but her surprise palpable. She didn’t say anything for a moment, blinking slowly “Akane…kun?” She put a delicate finger on her lips, the peak of elegance “Your friend of the student council, wasn’t he? I was not aware you like boys.”

Natsu sniffed at her strange stare, abruptly remembering she is an old soul, wandering the near shore a hundred years ago, when it was openly frowned opun to be attracted to the same sex, so she probably hates him-

“Is… Fine” She said slowly, awkwardly placing a hand on his shoulder “You don’t owe me anything. I…I am not bothered.”

“I do still love you”

Her tense shoulders slumped, that weird look replaced by familiar exasperation “Stop.”

.

“Akane kun” He sing sang, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“What?” Akane seemed almost resigned, putting his arm off his shoulders.

(He didn’t slap his hand away this time! And it wasn’t an immediate rejection! That’s progress, in no time Akane will lean into his touch. He is sure of it!)

“I got you some water!” He smirked, giving him a bottle.

He caught it with a weird look “Why?”

“For working so hard~”

Akane accepted, more curious than anything “Do you gift drinks to everyone?”

“Only people I like”

Akane must have taken his ‘I only flirt with girls’ declaration to heart, cause he didn’t bat an eye, mumbling a casual ‘thanks’.

.

“You need to style up!”

“Aoi-chan doesn’t care about appearances.” 

“That can’t be true, everyone loves seeing effort.” Natsuhiko smiled with confidence, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, leaning some of his height on him “Come on, we already know your current outfit isn’t working.” His smile got a sharp edge at Akane’s glare, knowing he was right “It’s worth a try, A-ka-ne-kuuun~”

Akane frowned, looking at him weirdly “No” He made a disgusted face at his choker, which was very mean, Natsuhiko looks amazing in it! And proceeded to look just as displeased by everything else. “I am not wearing any of these.”

Natsuhiko’s eyes crinkled, sure his dry tone was his default at this point.

"Sure you won’t! I can’t have you stealing my thunder, Akane-kun~" He ruffled his hair, endeared by the way his nose wrinkled when he was displeased “We’ll need to find your own style, I’m sure if you go the extra mile you’ll make her heart flutter,” Akane paused, something in his words catching his attention. 

Oh? Interesting.

Natsu’s smile sharpened, whispering on his ear to make sure his words stick “Girls love surprises, you can’t catch her off guard if you don’t change it up, Akane-kun.”

Akane seemed unsure, but all the rejections must have gotten to his head, since for once, he didn’t immediately dismiss his words, thinking about it “...Aoi-chan did like it when I gave her sunflower seeds for her garden.”

“Cause you thought of her.” Natsu smiled innocently “Come on!”

"Fine,” Akane said, blushing a bit “I’ll try it, but you’ll leave me alone after”

“Fine by me!” Natsu lied.

.

He knocked on the first year’s door, happy to have so many pretty ladies surrounding him, but not in a particularly playful mood “I got my sights on a special someone today, we can play later~”

A cute girl blushed when he winked at her, but she was not his target, getting to the point “Is Akane-kun here?”

“What do you want?” Akane frowned.

“We didn’t mark a time and place for our date~” Natsuhiko hummed “Can I get your contact?”

“Call it a date again and I’ll follow my gut and never talk to you again,” Akane said with such casual brutality Natsu was inclined to believe him, but it was hard to feel bad when he was given Akane’s phone, going to the new contact page to add his number.

His lady didn’t have a phone, so the excitement of having his crush’s number felt novel.

He could feel eyes on him, it was a bit weird, so Natsuhiko did a quick look around, noticing some girls admire his handsome looks and sparing them a irresistible wink, but lingering on Aoi, who was smiling cutely at him, something about her expression was strange. 

She didn’t say anything, her smile turning even cuter when she noticed he was looking at her, putting a hand on her chin, and closing her pretty eyes.

“Stop staring at Ao-chan” Akane gave him a warning look, shoving his phone back. “I’ll meet you at the B entrance of Kagome Mall at 6 pm.”

.

Akane showed up five minutes before the agreed time with a plain black shirt, crisscross pants, and no glasses.

He looks more tired without them, still unfairly cute for a guy, but less dorky.

“Looking fresh!” Natsuhiko gave him a thumbs up, walking ahead with a small skip in his steps. “Wearing contacts today?”

“I only need glasses in school.”

Ah, they must be reading glasses. 

“You study so much, don’t go blind Akane-kun”

Akane hummed, not really listening “So, what’s the plan?”

So cold, always going straight to the point.

“What does your lady like? Give me something to work with.”

“Flowers. Flowy dresses. Baggy shirts. Bugs” Oh, he did not take Aoi for a bug girl “Cats. Dogs. Short shorts…” Akane sweated “But I don’t know what she is attracted to, when she calls someone handsome or cute she doesn’t elaborate what about it.”

“That’s tough” Natsuhiko gave him a sympathetic smile, patting his shoulder and resisting the urge to try to get him on frilly clothes.“But no worries, Natsuhiko senpai is here to solve your problems! I know all the good stores, just follow me.”

Akane seemed skeptical but did as asked, letting Natsuhiko ramble “Some things just look good, we need to find something made for you.no matter her preferences, it will make Aoi-chan unable to get off her head.”

“Right.” Akane said slowly, seemingly mixed between hopeful and regretting all the decisions that lead him here. 

.

“You can try something cute” Natsuhiko suggested, feeling like icarus as he tested his luck. It would be cute, very cute if he wore those adorable sweaters “If you know she likes it, is worth a shot..”

“She likes it on herself.” Akane shut him down, “If she wanted me in it she would have shared her ribbons when we were kids.”

“Maybe she is shy, I think you would look good.” Natsu defended, but at his unimpressed glare, he awkwardly put the cute sweater back on its shelf, inwardly mourning the loss, but understanding that if he can’t use Aoi’s taste as an excuse, Akane is never going to wear it.

.

Surprisingly, he managed to make Akane try out a few sweaters that made him adorable, just unfairly cuddly. Even sneaked a leather jacket that brought out his sharp edges, handsome in a way that made Natsuhiko feel gayer than he have ever felt in his life.

(He will now stop think about Akane riding a motorbike into the sunset and hugging him from the back, no matter how nice the mental image seems)

As he rated the clothes, offering comments that must be making Akane swoon on the inside, he even found Akane smiling playfully at him. He could not get Akane to wear cute short shorts, in fact, he got a stare that could freeze hell at the idea, but he got him to wear a cat hoodie.

‘Be still my foolish heart’ He thought when Akane let him throw his arm around his shoulder, already used to his clingyness.

Natsuhiko blushed brightly, having never gotten this from his lady.

If you think about it, this was a shopping date, right?

“Oi” Akane seemed exasperated, shoving him off “don't just lean on me, do you want me to fall, Hyuuga-senpai?”

.

"Why the change?" Aoi asked, truly not looking impressed, if anything, there was a slight edge to her cute smile

Akane blushed all the way to his ears, it was adorable "I want to look good for you" He smiled so sweetly, adjusting the scarf "Do you like it?"

"Thats nice!" She seemed to relax, though it was hard to say if she was pleased "I like green <3" 

She stared at him for a moment, her voice still soft and healing but not cherry. It felt oddly nicer  "You look better with blue.”

“I’ll change!” Akane said right away.

Ah…

Shame.

(Natsuhiko likes his jacket better)

.

Aoi stared at him, tensing up at the way he practically trapped Akane in the wall.

“I told you to greet me like a normal person” Akane said, already used to his attitude, the way he didn’t even push him away anymore when he trapped him in a kabedom making his heart skip a beat.

‘You already won, why are you so insecure?’ Natsuhiko thought, not sure how Aoi was able to sink her nails so deep into Akane, possessive like a crazy ex from the teen dramas he watch, while putting such a big distance between them.

.

“He is No.1” Sakura said.

“He is certainly a charmer but I can’t put him above you, my lady,” Natsuhiko said with a troubled expression “But saying he is number two does not feel right either…” He clenched his chest “Let’s just stick with the No.1 boy-”

“School Mystery” Sakura sighed “He is the keeper of the present”

oh

“But he can’t see the runt” 

“His glasses are enchanted, I’m assuming is the oldest Minamoto’s doing.”

oh

His lady is so smart.

[blackcherrykiss]

BLOOD BOUNDARIES - Enhypen OT7 Fanfic (ch.5)

[CH.1] [CH.2] [CH.3] [CH.4]  previous chapters

[CH.6] next chapter (now available!)

genre: vampire au, romance, drama, mystery, thriller

note: written inspired by enhypen's storyline, given-taken lyrics & teasers. please keep in mind all members are apart of this fanfic and the main theme is mystery/drama!

P.S Niki and Sunoo's roles become bigger in later chapters :) sorry I took 2 weeks to update. School + new enhypen teasers made me alter the story now jesus their lore is confusingly interesting. Didn't proofread half of this chapter LOL. Happy readings <3

"Well now that everyone is here, I'd like to announce we have a new student who just transferred here." Your eyes were immediately drawn to the student's platinum blonde hair. Despite his sharp and charismatic face, his eyes were delicate and innocent. He had an exceptionally small face and a sunkissed skin tone. The new student snapped himself around so that the entire classroom got a good look at him, "Hello, my name is Park Jongseong or Jay, call me whatever you feel." He bowed slightly, his voice having a cool ring that played over in your head.

"Everybody please welcome Jay to our astronomy class. Lend him any of our previous notes because midterms are coming up and I'd appreciate as a teacher if you guys helped him catch up before our long weekend coming up in two weeks." Your teacher gave a warm smile, nodding in such a way that made the rest of the class nod with her.

Without a student saying a word, everyone's eyes followed him as he took a seat at a desk a couple of rows in front of you.

You stared at him tirelessly, barely listening as your teacher rambled off-topic. You noticed Jay often stared out at the crying sky that occasionally flickered with lightning. His eyes focused intently on the woods. You were sure you weren't the only one who was interested in the new boy as you frequently caught other students glancing over at him every few seconds. Jay carried an attractive and dark aura that clearly contrasted from the crowd. Both girls and boys stared at him not because of his pretty face but because he was far different from the new students who had joined your school mid-semester.

The class flew by for you because of Jay until a simple but intriguing question was purposed by the teacher, "Bonus marks today if anyone can guess when the next full moon is." she lifted her eyes off the projector for a few moments, waiting for answers to come sailing.

"Saturday?" Somebody from the front called out, followed by numerous answers that ranged between the second week to the fourth week of the month.

"Come on now. Don't blurt out, give others chances to guess. Jay why don't you guess?" Your teacher questioned welcomingly, expecting no answer from him.

He leaned back in his chair, scraping the non-writing end of his ballpen on his thumb, "November 30." A gentle sound of thunder playing perfectly when he said the answer; like some sort of scene out of a comic.

"Ding ding ding!" Your teacher switched to a PowerPoint slide with the new unit name bolded, "I know this isn't part of the curriculum but I got it approved by the head of the school." She took a breath, giving students time to comprehend what was presented in front of them. "Our next unit will be looking deeper at the moon. More specifically, we'll be looking at both the sciency and non-sciency sides of this topic. And before anyone asks; no, you don't need to believe in astrology or superstitions to understand the non-sciency material. It's just very fascinating because it connects to many cultures." Your attention was now far away from Jay. You were enthusiastic about a topic for once in the class.

"And looks like we're running out of time." Your teacher's wrist clock blocking her eyes. "That's it for today's class everyone! I'll have your projects marked for next class, I promise! Have a good day." She said while shutting off the projector.

You slid all your handouts into your binder, not bothering to align the three-hole punches of the papers to their designated rings.

"Y/N before you go, do you mind helping out Jay? Today or tomorrow?" Your teacher stopped you on your way out.

"Like lend him my notes?"

"Yep! I just forgot to ask but he just left so you might be able to catch up to him. Maybe ask if he's got the notes yet."

You waved your goodbyes and chased the new boy down, his uniquely blonde hair standing out from the hallway of heads. You picked up the pace to catch up with his swift steps when you caught him chatting with Sunghoon and Jaeyun. Your feet froze straight down in their place.

Were they new friends? Or perhaps they were old friends?

You weren't going to bother talking to Jay as you already knew what kind of funny business would come up if you did. You could only watch them swing and lean their arms against each other in a close and friendly way. The picture was becoming more and more clear to you as to what kind of association Jay had with Sunghoon and Jaeyun perhaps even Heeseung, Sunoo or Jungwon.

...

You throw yourself violently over your thick mattress after finishing a long study and homework session at your dorm. The session wasn't productive but the time you spent surrounded by your schoolwork made it feel that way. Your dorm was awfully quiet that afternoon as your dormmates had music rehearsals for their extracurriculars. Nana had told you to come by the music rooms around a quarter past five when their practice was over to go down to the dining hall and have dinner but you couldn't think of a way to kill your remaining hour alone.

Phones were forbidden in your school and you often felt uncontrollably alone and bored with your thoughts during your free time. You could only lay tangled in your bed with your half progressed work in the corner of your eye. You shift on one side to watch your wide-open binder until you got some burst of motivation to finish studying until an idea hits you.

After eyeing your handouts from your astronomy class, you decide to hit the library and do some reading to get a little advanced in the class. Sure you could study for your other class but the sudden idea was far more worth your time in your mind. You quickly twirl out of your room, clearing your desk while you're at it. Excitedly, you hop into your shoes and head straight for the library. You were put in a good mood as you skipped along the long journey to the bookhouse.

The library was moderately packed as you don't bother to recognize any faces there. You get deja vu as you trail the same path you did when Sunghoon and Kyungeun were around. Sliding between the thin space between the bookshelves once again, you search for the section related to the moon, feeling dizzy at the sight of books your school owned. You could've made your life easier by asking the librarian but you were confident you could find it on your own. You move up and down the aisles as you catch a glimpse of theoretical and astrology related books that sit next to a couple of history books.

Backing up, you awkwardly bend your knees forward to get a better look at the small selection of books under the genre. You peel a random book spine out from its tight spot as if it had never been taken out before. You dust off the book a bit, reading the wordless cover and open it to check if it was really related to any sort of astronomy as you find a much stranger subject being discussed.

"Finding everything alright?" The librarian comes by, pushing a kart from the other end of the shelves. "I-I'm looking for books related to the moon." You say, standing up and forgetting you still had the old book in hand.

"The scientific information is just on the other side of this shelf but the section you were just looking at has some interesting stuff that might be related." The librarian stuffed herself in between the shelves to get toward you.

"Yeah, I noticed... This book I just picked up was talking about vampires." You laugh a little as you hold it up.

"Ah, that book..." She paused, snatching the book out of your hands to examine it, "I read this before... It relates to astrology. I think there are some parts of the book that go into detail about the moon, you should give it a read."

"Is this book just theoretical research about vampires though?" You were unconvinced with the idea.

"Yeah, real or not, our school grounds and the neighbouring town are talked about in the book. Apparently many years ago this place used to be a hotspot for vampires."  She looked you dead in the eyes.

"Do you think the information is true?" You questioned with deep curiosity upon her answer.

"Some information in there is haunting. I think vampires did exist." She said with some sort of distress beginning to seep into her face.

Shivers ran down your spine, if she was just trying to sell you the book, it was working damn well on you.

"I'll leave you be, no need to sign out the book, nobody ever takes it out so I trust you'll return it." And with that said, she left you cold with mystery as the book between your fingers stared at you with big round eyes.

You shake back to reality, checking your wrist just to find out your time has vanished. You shift your priorities to getting to the music department, throwing the book into your bag without much thought.

...

The sun was already going down around the afternoon as the days got shorter with autumn blossoming. You're standing between rooms full of beautiful voices and instruments, peering through every window attached to a door in an attempt to find your roommates. The issue was the widows didn't give much of a view as to who was in the rooms. But your ears were drawn to a gentle piano that played a bittersweet melody beneath the louder sounds of people singing in a harmonious glee. As you move in the forward direction of the hallway, the piano gets clearer to your ears. It became clear that the sound was coming out of a room with its door wide open. Your back attached it to the wall in fear of being seen as slide yourself until you meet the spine of the door where you could see into the shadowy room.

Your eyes lit up when they see a familiar platinum blondie behind the keys. The melody was enchanting and was played in such a personal way as the sounds escaped into the noisy environment where it hoped to go unheard. Jay had reached the final notes of his song as he turned his head in your direction. It was as if he knew of your present from the moment you started watching him from the doorway.

[tigerdrop]

Cringe is dead, talk to me about the funny half-life men and their relationship

okay here is my essay. it is titled These Guys Actually Like Each Other, and Gordon Freeman Is Just Kind Of A Dick*

(disclaimer: these are just my 2 cents. dont take me too seriously! im just some guy online who has watched this shit too many times.)

first things first. these guys actually like each other. this is a key aspect of their relationship. benrey, obviously and textually, digs gordon freeman - you dont flirt that heavily with guys you arent into, and so much of what he says and does is geared around making gordon crack up. thats pretty gay.

but the counterpart to this is that gordon freemans pretty fucking gay for benrey, too. you may say, “oh, but word of god says its not requited!” and to you i will say: bull shit. gordon is uniquely obsessed with benrey compared to all the other characters. if gordon didnt like the fucking guy, he wouldnt giggle with him and share in-jokes with him and bring him up every 5 seconds when benreys not around. thats concern, bro. thats worry. thats real shit

but i cant blame people for thinking that gordon freeman genuinely doesnt like benrey. benreys partially responsible for some of the worst things that have happened to him, the Arm Thing among them. and gordons very insistent afterward that he doesnt like benrey. he even goes so far as to try to kill benrey a couple times. to this, i must argue that gordon freeman is just kind of a dick.

lets talk facts here. canon. Lore. from the moment we hop into gordons shoes, we can see that he is a jerk to every npc on his way into black mesa. this is his default: a dude who just runs his mouth and says rude shit. he calls tommy a freak within 5 minutes of meeting him. he infantilizes the guy and barely considers him a real scientist. he doubts that bubby is a real name for like no fuckin reason. in “real life”, this is because its funny, and wayne is trying to make a funny half-life stream. in a textual sense, this is because gordon “hlvrai” freeman is a dick. this is the way he acts, consistently, throughout the series.

(brief aside: this is why the whole “gordon is a nice guy and a great dad” characterization baffles me. the way he actually acts in canon is, in short, bitchy and lacking in self-awareness. and i love that for him, i really do. it makes the moments where he just tries to be a nice guy stand out. but thats the thing: his intermittent moments of decency and kindness are not the whole of his personality! this dude kind of sucks most of the time!)

the way that gordons general asshole attitude extends to benrey is complicated. in fairness, benrey makes it his job to annoy the shit out of gordon as much as possible, and that warrants a negative attitude, but gordons pretty paranoid and ends up blaming benrey for nearly everything that happens to him, regardless of if its warranted. this is a pattern he exhibits both before and after the Arm Thing. its a little bit of a dick move! especially considering that, prior to the whole “betrayal” subplot (which was not exactly planned very far in advance), benrey is no more malicious or annoying than anybody else gordons having to travel with.

(okay, this is kind of a subjective evaluation, but still. my point stands that benrey is not any more of a hindrance to his progress than anybody else in the science crew, and neither is he particularly more violent or murderous. hell, gordon freeman has probably killed more guys than benrey. benrey just tends to get.......special treatment.)

all that said, i am still convinced that gordon really fucking likes benrey. please consider with me the following: it would be remarkably easy for gordon to just ignore him and do what he has to do, but he doesnt. he could stop engaging. he could stop thinking about benrey. he could stop bringing benrey up to the rest of the crew every time benrey leaves to do his own thing for awhile. but he doesnt. and, again, yeah, the extra-textual reason for this is “two guys are doing an improv comedy thing and bouncing off of scorpy is kind of the point”, but within the text it reads to me as gordon not being about to get the dude off his mind.

and this is in addition to all the times we see gordon being genuinely nice and receptive toward benrey! its in the little things: laughing the hardest and longest at benreys jokes. only ever reciprocating that stupid underwater “BBBBB” thing with benrey. trying to catch benrey when he falls, despite his insistence moments earlier that benrey should hop in the wack ass crystal generator and get hypermurdered. fondly remarking that benreys sweet voice sounds beautiful. his sort of flustered responses to most of benreys overt flirting. none of this is the way normal people react to a guy they hate. this is all fuckin gay to me, man.

its this combination of the outward insistence that gordon hates benrey with his inner eagerness to be around him and think about him and engage with him that gives off strong “repression” vibes, to me. for whatever reason - pride, embarrassment, resentment - gordon maintains a front of hating the guy and wanting to kill him for a lot of the series, but it doesnt gel with the way he fucking giggles and plays along half the time that benrey starts fucking with him. its a game, and that game is one of the only ways gordon knows to manifest affection for him.

(remember “oh my god, hes got a knife!”? that was the gayest shit i ever seen in my life. tittering like a schoolgirl while benrey chases him around like “im gonna get you haha”. insanity.)

the cool thing about repression is that you can have it manifest in a lot of ways! and this is where things like “headcanons” and “my own personal affection for repressed bisexual men” come in. a lot of how i characterize their relationship is an extrapolation of a lot of things like gordons canonical insecurity issues/anxiety, gordons whole anti-bootboy thing screaming “internet wokeboy who means well but probably has a lot of repressed baggage” to me, etc.

how do you get massive amounts of sexual repression out of what you see in canon, you might ask? well. if wayne would stop having gordon talking about being jerked off by the suit, or talking about chugging a 40-gal drum of potion and having to hold his piss, or worrying about being eaten by benrey the moment he sees benrey at setscale 10, maybe i would have a higher opinion of gordon “hlvrai” freeman and whatever latent psychosexual issues hes got going on. but here we are

i havent even touched yet upon how benrey feels about gordon. this one is helpfully made a little more plain by the fact that benrey very much wants to suck his dick in canon. (i dont even have to go into details. we all know.) but IMO the best part about this ship isnt just that they dig each other, but how. benrey gets overtly flirtatious in the second half of the series, but IMO his preferred method of flirting is just fucking with gordon: chasing him with knives, shoving him around in a bathroom, trying to get scans of his feet. but all in like a slapstick, giggly, fun-and-games sense, you know? at least when it works.

a lot of the time, though, it doesnt work out that way. he clearly just likes doing it whether or not gordon responds positively. which is, you know, Weird. not very nice. but also in line with the way everybody else treats gordon freeman. gordons kind of the universes chew toy in any given universe, and the same holds true here. hes kind of helpless......subjected to 4 demons attempting to make his life as difficult as possible. in a way its cathartic.

sorry. i got sidetracked. anyway, benrey very much likes to mess with him and unnerve him and demean him and i will be perfectly frank with you: that is hot. i have problems and illnesses and one of them is that i am a masochist who goes crazy for that kind of thing. calling gordon a “dirty lil boy” and telling him to “look at the mess [he] made” is some straight up kink scene shit.

i like to imagine that a lot of this behavior isnt caused just by the guy who played him wanting to be funny and antagonistic, but by benrey as a character not really understanding what constitutes “pushing a joke too far”. hes not human, and whatever he is doesnt have a very normative way of understanding the world around him, full of people who actually get hurt for real and die for real. benrey expresses what seems to be genuine surprise and distress after the Arm Thing, as if he didnt know that his actions would have serious consequences. and it doesnt seem to fully sink in afterward, either.

it reads a lot to me like hes used to video game rules and treating people around him like NPCs. if they get hurt, its no big deal, because its not real. he likes jamming random buttons on gordons interface and seeing what comes out. its probably a lot of fun for him, the same way that seeing a streamer or a youtuber suffer for our amusement is fun. its like, you know, in my opinion, gordons very cute when hes frazzled. hes also cute when hes laughing. pushing gordons buttons has a 50/50 chance of either of these things. and this is how he ultimately flirts with gordon: by pulling his pigtails.

but at the same time, benrey does legit care about gordon and knows some boundaries. benreys the one most often shooting at enemies to protect gordon, and he spent most of the last act trying to convince gordon to turn around and not fight him because they were friends (best friends, to be specific). he just lacks a lot of the emotional intelligence it would take to express the feeling of “he digs gordon and likes seeing his face get all red and sweaty regardless of the cause”. and gordon lacks the emotional intelligence it would take to express the fact that he doesnt know if he likes or hates benrey and hes scared as hell that its the former

because, lets be real. unironic benrey-liking is a sign of problems disorder. just look at all these words ive written about it.

can you imagine? this bizarrely powerful, non-human entity that can shrug off gunfire and grow to the size of a building has decided that youre his new plaything. benreys the bored guy booting up skyrim and fucking around in the console, and gordons the hapless favorite follower that hes taken a liking to. its a really fun dynamic IMO

after all this, its safe to say my title is a little misleading. the asterisk stands for * and So Is Benrey, Actually. they are both kind of awful dudes who thrive off of teasing each other and they deserve each other. and i am crazy about it. thank u for coming to my TED talk

[famouskittychild]

Cheeky Mandos - ...and we're off

(Sorry I had a terrible writer’s block in the past 6-ish weeks - I went from reading fanfiction and being inspired by other’s visions to “I’ll never be able to write anything like these and I’m useless” in a single day :( I’m getting back into the groove finally, so I’m hoping to post more soon.)

There will be 18+ content (in the coming chapters soon) so if you are a minor, please don't read further.

Also the characters will be quite open and relaxed about things like gender, attraction, sexual activities, relationships etc, so if you prefer your Din (and their partner) possessive and/or monogamous , this won’t be a good read for you!

***

This pairing is  Din Djarin x gn reader / tall reader.  I’m short (and cis and woman). There’s so many short (and female) reader stuff out there, I wanted to write for people on the other end of the “why is your height not normal” / "definitely female" spectrum. If I make mistakes or you have advice, or ideas you'd like to see, please tell me!

Word count: 4267

Summary: You’re an armourer and some shiny guy just showed up.

First full piece/chapter/course! In which people seem to catch things. Thoughts? Viruses? Dropped facts? Who knows!?? Also contains a dilettante’s attempt at space electronics and some barely-canon-reminiscent Mando world-building. Still no spiciness sorry, marinating is a long process :P

Rating: T for some mentions of heavier topics.

CW: Mentions of mandalorian history, playing somewhat loose with canon lore (as in, my SW knowledge is patchy. sorry.)

Author’s note: I tried to find more info but it seems like the mandalorian alphabet doesn’t have names for the individual letters so I used aurebesh (also I liked the little Dorn(e) meta in there). And sorry for the bad puns. They’ll keep coming.

Prologue

One - ...and we're off

***

You aren’t worried about taking a stranger on board, you’ve done that plenty of times before. You hope he’s willing to put in the effort himself, too, just as he promised at the assembly.

The stranger leaves behind his ship, saying a friend will come to pick it up together with whoever might want to join the cause. You spot him from the cockpit as he walks over with a repulsor pallet in tow. He stops for a moment when your droids surge past him, busy at their pre-flight tasks, before moving on towards the ramp.

All his baggage is a satchel at his hip and a small bag on his shoulder, and two large crates of weaponry. You put him up in the spare cabin, the one that had been Sal’ee’s, your former apprentice, before she went on to be a journeyman. He stands in the middle of the room, staring at the two cots on opposite sides of the room, the lockers, the fresher in the corner.

“All mine? Where will you sleep?”

You don’t understand the surprise in his voice.

“Over there” you show him, pointing at the cabin opposite from his. It’s much more lived in, some of the blankets and trinkets and pillows visible through it’s open door. “There’s a third cabin that I mostly use for storage but has more fold-up bunks in case I need to transport more people. That’s rare though.”

“Ohh.” He nods, then turns to look around his room again. “Okay. I thought all of these rooms were cargo space.”

You smile, and quickly think through your to-do list. You’ll have to rearrange your schedule somewhat but it’s not that big of a bother.

“Come on, I’ll show you around the ship.” Before he gets lost in its cavernous interiors, you might add - but you don’t. If his reaction to a separate cabin and his current ship - an old ARC170 - is any indication, he must be used to very cramped quarters.

***

Your trusty Brick, a beat-up YV 929, is armed to the teeth and ugly, just as you like it. The ship is a scavenged one, gutted from most of its original factory issue armaments, engines, and even wiring. It was perfect for your former master when she found it at a scrap heap: she wanted to rebuild it herself, deliberately piecemeal; panels sourced form here, engines from there, concealments added. She modified the inner workings of the engines so that the power lines could be redirected to a concealed forge.

That forge is your pride and the main reason you haven’t settled at a permanent place yourself. When your master retired from travelling, the ship passed to you, and you continued her mission of offering your knowledge and expertise to those of your people who otherwise had no access to an armourer.

…

The next standard month is spent with adjusting, both for yourself after getting used travelling alone again since Sal’ee left, and for the stranger who found himself a passenger on someone else’s ship. Apparently he used to live a very similar life to yours, with the exception that he was a hunter not a craftsman.

You travel together, share meals, research the places you are directed to. He joins in the effort that is maintaining the ship. Still - he is very taciturn at the beginning, keeping his words to the bare minimum. The first few days it feels as if you are still on your own aside of your droids. By the middle of the month, he progresses from short answers, through sharing information, to willingly starting to tell stories; but you know that chatting will never be his defining feature.

His armour seems to fill the spaces of the Brick’s corridors. You feel as if it’s not him who has the presence, but that set of glinting, perfectly made handwork of an armourer you already admire. Some of the pieces were sourced elsewhere, you can tell by the different shapes and designs; they seem haphazard and mismatched compared to the rest. Most of the set is the work of a single person. On those, there’s not a single uneven line, a broken curve, an edge at the wrong place. The angle of the panes of the metal, the ridges, the simplicity and elegance of them all - you have to hold yourself back from touching them, to admire them. You would give a lot to hold those pieces in your hand, to study them, to analyse them with your eyes and hands and with your tools.

You’re a master, yes. But so much knowledge was lost. So many masters gone, with their knowledge and their workshops. Apprentices became heads of Forges in the absence of the more skilled. The survivors still to this day have to piece together half-remembered lessons and forgotten details, experiment with techniques that were known before but the methods got lost as decades of civil war and occupation and murder kept eroding your heritage.

Sometimes a set of armour comes along that is just made in a way you never had an opportunity to learn. Often the person who forged them is long gone. Not the stranger’s armourer though. As far you can tell, she’s alive. Or at least was, when he last saw her. Not too long ago; though your usual method for guessing forging dates is mostly useless as it is based on the condition of the suit’s paintwork. Which he doesn’t have, so you can only guess from the small amount of scratches. You try to ask once, but whilst he’s forthcoming with general stories, he doesn’t go into details.

It’s a common theme with him. He talks about people and planets and events, and leaves out a lot - and you don’t even notice it first. Only when you try to glean information about his armour do you realize how well he fuzzes over those facts and nuances. It’s only up to the peculiarities of Basic and its use of gendered pronouns that you know his Armourer is a woman, or at least he considers them so. He doesn’t even tells you his own name, and when you ask your Elder in one of your communications, she tells you he didn’t gave it to them either. You keep introducing him as a friend, and that is the end of it for a while.

***

The visits to this first few coverts with him are… interesting. You can see him fidgeting from the corner of your eye. He always follows half a step behind and off to a side, as if not wanting to be in your way. He keeps quiet and doesn’t mix much, and around small children and droids, he is positively withdrawn. He only comes alive when he talks about his mission.

You had learned early on during your apprenticeship that keeping the helmet on is a safe bet when meeting with unfamiliar mandalorians. That led to later getting in contact with his type of believers too, despite their notorious secrecy even from the rest of the People. When you tell the stranger about that, he immediately showers you with questions, but you can’t give an answer to most of them. You never met with anyone from his particular covert, or heard of it. No name, no description seems familiar. It’s painful to watch his shoulders slump after daring to hope.

During the course of the month spent travelling, he gradually comes to be more social. He starts to stand and walk beside you. He doesn’t withdraw to the background anymore; he can actually be quite chatty if approached the right way. Droids still make him stop, though he warms up to kids in his own way. He’s good with them, at least in your opinion, though you know some would still call him aloof and distant. He isn’t a cuddler, nor does he crouch down to ask cutesy questions. He juts sits nearby them, and in that way of children having a good sense about adults, they know he’s trustworthy. They go up to him to chatter, to hand him a toy to hold, to ask him to fix a latch on their boots; than they go back to play.

He teaches you too, inadvertently at first during everyday conversations and later by his own volition, about his Way. About his Creed. It keeps throwing you off how much it differs from most that you had met before. Not even meeting briefly with people who followed the same Way as him could prepare you for the details that he does share. The degree of strictness, the loyalty, the barest bones Old Tradition beliefs and their willingness to follow them is very rare amongst the People as far as you can tell. Their devotion earns your respect.

At other times, your jaw hangs open and you can’t believe you are talking to an adult roughly around the same age as yourself, who by his own admission had spent three decades living as a follower of the Creed - not knowing about things children are thought through plays and songtime. His ignorance is so staggering, your admiration towards his unknown Armourer wavers. How could she keep so many things hidden from them? Why not talk about your own history? Your greats? Your artefacts?

About the many other who would call them vod’e, siblings?

You are an armourer, a craftsman, a person who makes a living by making things with your hand. You’re not a leader, or a scholar, or someone who decides what to tell your people. You do have a status within the community, but that is a status of service. From what the stranger says, their Armourer was a leader in every aspect: elder and lorekeeper and moral guide and more. All in one. It is something you can see developing from the old songs and histories amongst groups who take tradition more literally.

You are good at observing people, even at copying their habits to make them feel more comfortable with you, but less good at determining their underlying motives. The reason you think of him as “the stranger” even after travelling with him is because it’s so hard to figure out what drives him. There’s a melancholy to him that overrides the more typical mandalorian fight-readiness or aggression. You see how he gazes off to the distance sometimes, turning his head to the side and freezing. How he keeps to himself when he can. But you can’t tell why. Grief? Regrets? Determination to change? Planning something greater and being preoccupied with that?

He doesn’t pick fights to test you. He spars with you when you invite him to, he helps when you ask, and often even without it. He’s polite and considerate; he keeps conversation to practicalities and interesting stories, and doesn’t bother you with anecdotes or insistent questions about trivialities or your private life. He even does the dishes.

He’s deadly boring in his reliableness.

You are used to being on your toes around people all the time. When you meet a new group, it’s all unknown people. With ones you had already visited, the problem is having to remember them. They remember you of course, the ‘wandering armourer’; and surely you remember them too.

What is worse, when people stay the same but you don’t remember them, or when they change and you just can’t place them?

He becomes a good excuse after you’ve been to several coverts together. It’s interesting to notice how your dynamics change even further once you two get into a comfortable routine. You start to retreat to your forge and tools, and let him take all the attention. And he doesn’t just talk about his mission anymore, or lets little ones play around him whilst he’s quiet. He converses with people about news, about their children, about weaponry. You have more time to focus on your work.

Sometimes, people ask you what do you think of his mission. You tell them that you will follow what your clan decides, and that’s mostly true. It is something people don’t often debate, at least.

He quickly becomes a part of your everyday life. You are content with your usually solitary travels. You know that your family, your clan and your friends wait for you at home. They message you and you can find the time that suits you to message back. You don’t miss the constant hubbub of the covert most of the time. But now that you have someone that is not a droid, someone who is your equal in every aspect, on board again, it’s not even lonely anymore.

***

“So what’s up with you and droids?” you ask one day, after you got back from a covert and are safely in hyperspace to the next destination. You tinker with your astromech’s navigational systems. Poor 2-T keeps bumping into walls and crates. Again.

The stranger looks at you and your droid, than over at Mouse who for a change isn’t zooming around at foot level.

“Bad memories.”

“Gunk sat on you?” You tease. You hope it’s just something silly and not him having some sort of snobbish organics-are-better philosophy. He is quiet, and you focus on your work. He’ll talk if he wants to, that much you know already about him.

Inside the body of your astromech, a rivet from stars knows where is stuck between two circuit boards and blocks the access to a short-circuited piece of wire.

“Kriff. Toots, this will take a while, sweetie. Can’t access that kriffing panel.” He chirps back something and you read the translation on the small display. “No, it’s not that. My hand can’t fit in that small space. Let me find those pliers… should be in that other drawer somewhere.”

You search in the chest of tools, and despite your usually good organization, you can’t find them amongst the droids’ tools where their place is.

“Let me help.” The stranger’s voice beside you makes you jump. He can be awfully quiet. “Sorry. I think I might’ve put them back into the wrong drawer. I used them the other day when I fine-tuned that scope.”

He points at another drawer, where you keep your fine electronics stuff. No wonder he mixed them up. He stands beside Tootee a bit awkwardly until you find the tool.

“Here! No problem by the way. “ You turn back to him and to the droid, than have an idea. “Do you mind a bit more help? You can say no if you don’t want to work with the droid, I’ll understand.”

He doesn’t object yet, so you go back to 2-T and show the stranger the area you’re working on. You see him lean closer in your peripheral vision.

“That’s where I need to get that burned piece of wire out and install a new one, but first, I need to get that rivet out of the way.” You point at the root of the problem, than explain your plan, pointing out each part in turn. ”If you could hold those using this, than I could get here, remove this, with that tool, than have to get those bundles out of the way too, so than that wire there could come out. Easy.”

You look up at him, and his helmet is way closer than you expected. You can almost see your reflection in that black visor as it stares back at you for a second, and you almost apologize again, when the stranger starts to speak.

“Just have to hold the wires to the casing, or pull them like…” he moves his hand in the air, showing what he means.

“Hold them to that panel, there, with the pliers, so I have room to access the rest.”

He thinks for a moment, than he starts to tug one of his gloves off.

“You don’t need to take that off, just hold the pliers” you tell him, but he shakes his head.

“No, I can fit my hand in there, I’m pretty sure. If not we can try it with the tool.”

You realize that this is the first time you see his skin. Than it occurs to you that he might very well misunderstand this whole situation. You just asked him to hang his hand inches from yours in an enclosed space; inside a droid nonetheless, just after you basically told him you noticed he has a problem with them. It would be so easy to get caught up in there, to touch his hand, and hush it up as coincidence. Especially now that he took his glove off as well. He might even think that it was a careful plan of yours: have an area to work with were your slightly larger hands don’t fit but his might.

Your fingertips already tingle from knowing you can’t make mistakes. Which means you’ll probably do. He reaches between the panels and gets to the part where you got stuck. He wiggles his fingers a bit and scrapes around.

“Ha, found some wires. Are these the ones you need out of the way?”

You peer down into the quagmire of electronics, trying to find the best angle to see everything.

“Yes, those are the ones. Just hold them like that.” You try to focus on what you are doing, but after those earlier thoughts, your hands are jittery. You somehow manage to remove the obstructing rivet, than find the burned out part and replace it without accident, the stranger patiently holding things out of your way. You direct him here and there, occasionally stumbling as it’s a lot of instructions, or at least a lot of “could you please” and “thank you”. It gets particularly awkward when you stumble over the lack of name spectacularly.

“Could you pull those the other way, so they aren't that taut, please? Thank you, you. I mean thank you.”

“Din. Din Djarin.” Your head snaps up while the rest of your body freezes. “I should have told you my name sooner, but I’m so used to not telling it… and it just became more awkward to bring it up as time passed. I apologize.”

You close your mouth that of course was hanging open in surprise, than shake your head.

“I thought at first that I missed it when you said it so I was ashamed that I didn’t remember.” That did happen before, and it was one of your greatest worries about meeting new people. “I actually asked my elder. Sent her a comm. So when she told me you went nameless, I didn’t wanted to demand it.”

He doesn't answer right away. His voice is softer when he speaks a bit later.

“Thank you. For being considerate.”

You smile and try to wave it off. Which results in your hand slipping and pawing at his, still motionless and stuck in the inside of the astromech.

“Oh shucks, I’m sorry… didn’t meant to.” You withdraw your hand quickly, and start to look for your tools to cover your mistake.

He doesn’t seem bothered, luckily. You calm down, reminding yourself not to behave like you drank one too many glasses of your cousin Ree’s home-made tihaar, and finish the repair.

“You can let those go now, I’ll finish from here. Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome, any time.”

He sits back on a nearby crate and watches you work for a while, ignoring Mouse zooming around the room. You’re surprised a bit: you didn't expected him to stick around. And than he starts to ask about 2-T. How long you had him, is he temperamental, can you install a vocoder on astromechs, and why not. His tone is somewhat cautious, his voice stiff, like someone asking about a dangerous predator. You remember how you asked him about his distance with droids, but don’t want to push that question. He already told you his name today.

…

By the time you finish with the rest of the repairs, clean Tootee up and tidy around your workplace, interrupted by having to leave hyperspace and land at a spaceport, it’s the middle of the night in local time. You planned to have a nap and search out the local covert just before dawn.

You go to the galley to have a bite before turning in, and the stranger - Din, you remember, although his last name is less clear - is cleaning up some dishes. There’s another bowl in the middle of the small table, covered by a plate.

“That’s for you, if you’d like to have it. Used up the last of that spice mix we got” he tells you as you enter. You sit down and stretch your legs out one side. As you take the plate off from the steaming bowl, you think about how nice it is to find warm food on the table and not having to cook your own all the time.

“Thank you.” You pull the bowl close and take the spoon that he put beside it. You swirl the soup - it looks very good: clear broth with lots of veggies and other fillers in it - and gather your thoughts. “So ummm… I want to ask something before it gets awkward again.“

He finishes piling the bowls and cups and sits down on the seat opposite. You blurt the question out before you might change your mind.

“What was your name again? Din, that was clear, but the rest… sorry but it sounded something like “jarring”?”

He chuckles, and it’s a clear sound even with a vocoder, no snort or sigh to distort it.

“It’s Djarin. Dorn-jenth-aurek-resh-isk-nern. Djarin.” You nod, a bit embarrassed, and he continues. “Don’t worry, you aren't the first to ask. Probably not the last either.”

“Thanks for being patient. I’m not the best with names, to be honest.”

He tilts his head.

“Is that why you are always so focused when someone introduces themselves? I can ask them to repeat their names for me too if you want to, than both of us can try to remember them.”

You blink at him.

“That’d be…” Unnecessary, and don’t bother, and it’s not your job, you think - but stop yourself. That would actually help. No shame in accepting it. ”That would be nice. Thanks.” You are good at a few things, like making things with your own two hands. Not gaping when something surprises you, or remembering faces or names, any names, not just people? Nah.

You tuck into your soup, and the two of you sit in companionable silence. You wander if Djarin sits there because he wants to, or if he’s waiting for more questions from you. You asked a lot from him during the last few hours, and he was really kind with all his help and telling you his name and not being bothered when you misremembered it.

You are halfway done with your meal when he stirs. He leans forward with his lower arms on the table, and takes a deep breath. You wonder what his question will be - you commit to answer whatever it might be. He deserves that after today.

“So you asked earlier about me and… droids, right?”

Your hand with the spoon stops in the air. You weren’t expecting this question, at all.

“Yes…” You want to say he didn’t have to answer. But you already told him that. You’re sure he remembers that too - since he brought the topic up again. “Yes, I did.”

He shuffles on his seat a bit, and looks out to the side like he sometimes does. You lower your spoon and eat, letting him gather his thoughts.

“When I was a kid… I don’t know how old you were then, but during the war. The Clone wars.” You nod, understanding what he’s getting at, and he continues. “We were… the place I lived came under attack. Some separatist battle droids. Mandalorians saved me.”

You swallow your soup. That was the shortest possible description of someone having their entire life and probably everyone they knew ripped away from them and finding a new way of life for the decades to come.

“I’m sorry” you say, because really, what else is there to say. He nods, and gazes off again. Than he shrugs his shoulders, as if he wants to shake the weight of the past from them.

He gets up, and walks around the table on his way out. He stops beside you for a moment and hesitates, and you almost turn towards him to ask what he needs when you feel him squeeze your shoulder. Than he straightens and steps away.

It’s warm where he squeezed it, and you remember how long ago it was that someone touched you.

You need to talk to your friends asap, and hug at least some of them. He turns back from the door.

“Get some sleep before dawn, all right? Have to be sharp to remember all those new names.” You don’t see him wink but you’d bet he does behind his visor. You scrunch your nose at him and pout before smiling, and he dips out of the galley.

Your hand is still hovering in the air, holding the spoon, while you listen to his footsteps getting more distant as he walks down the corridor to his cabin.

It’s just your luck that you don’t need your wits the next place. It’s only two people with the same, simple name and you met both of them before.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 6 of 26

Title: The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1) (2012)

Author: N. K. Jemisin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, First-Person, Third-Person, Female Protagonist, LGBT Protagonist, Asexual Protagonist.

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 2/07/2021

Date Finished: 2/13/2021

Peace is sacred in the walled city-state of Gujaareh, and must be maintained at any cost. The Gatherers are a priesthood tasked with maintaining this goal. In the name of Hananja, Goddess of the moon, they walk the city at night and harvest Dreamblood-- the magic of dreams-- from Gujaareh's denizens. They bring the peace of death to those who need it... and to those judged criminal or corrupt.

But something else haunts Gujaareh's streets. A Reaper, a rogue Gatherer driven to endless madness and hunger from Dreamblood, is preying on the innocent, casting their souls into an eternal nightmare. Ehiru, one of the elder Gatherers, finds himself caught in the middle of a political conspiracy between his priesthood, the holy Prince, and the monstrous Reaper. An insidious corruption runs deeper than Ehiru knows-- and it may be too late to stop. 

The Gatherer’s eyes glittered in her memory, so dark, so cold--but compassionate, too. That had been the truly terrifying thing. A killer with no malice in his heart: it was unnatural. With nothing in his heart, really, except the absolute conviction that murder could be right and true and holy. 

Full review, major spoilers, and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Graphic depictions of violence, gore, death, warfare, and murder-- including death of children and mass murder. Discussions of p*dophilia/grooming (nothing graphic). Brief reference to r*pe. One character is a minor infatuated with a much older character-- not reciprocated. Rigid gender and social roles, including slavery. Magic-induced addiction and withdrawal. Loss of sanity/altered mental states/mind control/gaslighting.

Last year I read N. K. Jemisin's short story collection How Long 'Til Black Future Month?  One of my favorite stories was The Narcomancer, which explored a vibrant, ancient Egypt-inspired world with themes of faith, dreams, violence, and duty. I wanted to read more from the universe, and finally got to do so with The Killing Moon, the first book in the Dreamblood duology.

Jemisin's creativity in worldbuilding is, in my opinion, unmatched in the fantasy genre. I thought Gujaareh was super interesting and fleshed out. While the ancient Egypt inspiration is obvious, it's also clearly an original fantasy culture in its own right. Everything from religious practices to social castes to gender roles to the fucking architecture felt methodical and thought out. The base premise of assassin priests compassionately harvesting magic from people is a fascinating idea and totally gripping. The pacing is a little slow, but I didn't mind so much because learning about the world was so fun.

While there's a hefty amount of worldbuilding exposition in the story, Jemisin doles out information gradually. Bits and pieces of Gujaareen law, etc are introduced at the beginning of each chapter, and usually have a thematic connection to the events of the story. Information is sparing at times, meaning that one doesn't have a full picture of how everything ties together until pretty far into the story. Even something as crucial as the dream-based magic system isn't fully realized until near the end. I like the mystery of this approach, and I can appreciate how difficult it must be to keep the reader invested vs frustrating them with a lack of info. Jemisin consistently does a great job with this in everything I've read by her.

I did want a little bit more from the narcomancy aspect of the story, since dream worlds are such a huge part of Gujaareen religion and culture. In The Killing Moon we see just a few dreamscapes, and then only briefly. There's so much potential with narcomancy as a magic system, yet most of what we see is an outside, "real-world" perspective, which isn't terribly unique compared to other kinds of magic. Dreamblood being a narcotic (heh) with some Extra Fantasy Stuff is interesting, but I wanted more. Perhaps The Shadowed Sun expands on this. 

Characterization is the other Big Thing with this book, as it's very much a character-driven story. Overall I'm torn. There's some things I really liked, and others that felt underdeveloped. I'll go over my favorite things first.

Ehiru is probably the strongest of the main cast, and I really enjoyed his character arc. Here's a guy who is completely devoted to his faith, regardless of what others may think of it. Yet he's not a self-righteous dick. He sees Gathering as a loving and holy thing, so when he errs in the line of duty, it totally consumes him. And things just get worse and worse for him as the story progresses. Say what you will about the Gatherers and the belief system of Gujaareh; Ehiru comes off as intensely caring, devoted, and compassionate, and I genuinely felt bad for him throughout the novel. I'm not religious but these kinds of faith narratives are super interesting to me.

Looking at characterization as a whole, I appreciate The Killing Moon's gray morality. No one in the story is wholly good or evil. The Gatherers are an obvious example, considering they murder people in the dead of night in the name of their Goddess-- but do so to help those in need. Despite being a megalomaniacal mass-murderer, the Prince has believable reasons for his horrific actions, and they’re not wholly selfish. Even the Reaper is a clear victim of Dreamblood's addictive and mind-altering nature; it sometimes regresses into the person it used to be, which is sad and disturbing. There's a lot of moral complexity in the characters and the laws and belief systems they follow. This kind of nuanced writing is much more interesting to read than a black and white approach.

Beyond this, though, I struggled to connect with the other leads. Nijiri's utter devotion to Ehiru is basically his whole character, and while the tragedy of that is interesting for its own reasons, I kept wanting more from him. Sunandi is a good "outsider perspective" character but I had a hard time understanding her at times. For example, the two most important people in her life, Kinja and Lin, die in quick succession. Yet besides a brief outburst when Lin dies, this barely seems to affect her. I get people mourn in all kinds of ways but it seems odd. Her sexual tension with Ehiru is also weird and underdeveloped. Perhaps this is meant to be a callback to The Narcomancer, but it doesn't accomplish much in this narrative.

Another issue I had was emotional connection to minor-yet-important characters. Kinja dies offscreen before the story, yet is supposed to be a big part of Sunandi's past (and thus emotional arc). But he's never even in a flashback, so I never felt WHY he mattered to her. Una-une is the big one, though. It's pretty easy to figure out he's the Reaper by process of elimination, but he's barely in the story outside of a few early mentions. There's this part near the end that's clearly meant to be an emotional moment; Ehiru realizes his (apparently beloved) mentor Una-une is the horrific monster, and thus a foil to the situation between himself and Nijiri. But we never saw the relationship between Ehiru and Una-une, and nothing really established this prior... so there's no emotional payoff. It felt at times like this book was part of a much longer story that for whatever reason we never got to see. In some ways that can be useful to make the world and history seem vast, but here it made me feel emotionally distant from several characters. Perhaps flashbacks with these important characters would have helped bridge the gap. 

Credit where it's due, though; it's clear a lot of the dark, often brutal tone and stylistic flair in The Killing Moon was adapted into Jemisin's fantastic Broken Earth trilogy. Probably the most notable are the cryptic interlude chapters told from the perspective of a mysterious character whose identity is unknown until the end. We learn bits and pieces of the beliefs and lore of the world through excerpts of common laws and wisdom. I also liked the occasional stream-of-consciousness writing during tense or surreal moments. The Broken Earth is an improvement overall, but I can appreciate The Killing Moon for establishing some of these techniques early.

I enjoyed this book overall and am planning to read The Shadowed Sun. While I have some criticisms about The Killing Moon, I think it just suffers in comparison to other works I've read by Jemisin. It was still an entertaining and intense read, with a captivating and original world. It's not a story for the faint of heart, though, so please mind the content warnings.  

[n-ugg]

I didn't expect to get tagged but here we are. As you all will be able to tell in a bit, I am a massive Quackity fan

Thank you for tagging me @skeetlehands!

who is your favourite member on the smp?

Look, I love them all but these have a special place in my heart.

Quackity, Slimecicle (I am fully aware he just joined but I still love him), Schlatt, Tubbo, Eret, AweSamdude, and Ponk.

They're just great in and out of character and just have comforting vibes.

when did you first start watching the smp and what made you get into it?

I gotten in during the Pogtopia era since it took me a while to get access to the streams.

I mainly gotten in with the Sad-ist War animatics along with me trying to catch up on Quackity's VODS. Just someone that I was already familiar with being an easier shift into story and learning others through him

what is your favourite part about watching the smp?

Just watching everyone interact with other and just seeing the plot progress in real time. Its literally just dnd but with extra steps but I enjoy it so much

The improv that they all do is amazing and how everyone have different approaches to their characters makes my writer's side so happy with dissecting everything.

What piece of cursed lore is your favourite

That Wilbur canonically fucked a fish and Philza canonically fucked a Samasung fridge and just seeing the fanbase try to change into something that will at least make a bit more sense.

Im included in this, I basically joined the side that has Sally being a mermaid shapeshifting pirate. Mainly because of pirate Fundy

Who is your favorite duo on the smp

Slimecicle and Ranboo: They're the same person but in different fonts, you can convince me otherwise

Schlatt and Quackity: They managed to be super funny together with all of the jokes and balanced with making a very realistic abusive relationship work. It was always fun seeing them flirt with each other for a joke then get hit with whiplash when canon comes in to remind me that this isnt healthy

Tubbo and Tommy: They're two dumbasses who share the same braincell but then they constantly lose it and Tubbo mainly has custody of it

Wilbur and Schlatt: I just enjoy seeing Schlatt messing with Wilbur and occasionally flirts with him to get Wilbur more pissed off

Who are your comfort streamers

Quackity and Slimecicle are comfort streamers

Eret, Fundy, and AweSamdude are my comfort people (meaning I dont watch them as much but I find comfort in their presence. And the other two are also under this category)

Who is your favorite character

Quackity due to how complex his character is and yet how it looks so simple

Schlatt because is just a villian who knows how to play the game without getting caught

Tubbo, watching him trying to be hopeful with everything destroy around him and he just slowly become used to everything going wrong

AweSamdude because he is just trying his best to be a father figure others and I just got family issues

Who do you think the best actor(s) on the smp

Imma skip over the ones that we all already said and get into the ones that dont get enough praise

Quackity: Just how he managed to make his character seem so basic but in reality its really complex. And just seeing the shift from him being a chaotic force of nature to being a serious character that is trying his best to reach something that has been hanging over his head is just *chefs kiss* and he always delivers amazing lines on the spot.

BadBoyHalo: He is doing great right now, even though he is a bit rusty with starting he still manages to get into character and stay in character the entire time. When slowly easing in, you can tell its a bit forced but once he finds his footing, he knows how to deliver his lines.

AweSamdude: His entire bit where he was getting rescued from the egg fucking hurt. How he sounded weak from the entire thing and tired to where he just wanted to rest was so well. And I know he can act more energetic when he was accidentally dragged into playing a cop during Quackity's and Bad's date

Fundy: You guys need to give him more praise for his acting because he is fucking amazing at it. The little touches to how he voice when speaks is so good along with his body language in game. He knows what he's fucking doing and I love him for that. And when he snapped, it made complete sense if you payed attention to his character

I didnt add Ranboo because he's automatically at the top section due to him being a dnd player. Same goes to Slimecicle even though he hasnt acted yet. I dont make the rules. You play dnd, you know how to act

What are your favorite quotes

I dont have favorite quotes, just dialog heavy scenes.

Before Doomsday, Quackity going to take his horse far away from L'Manberg, it being the one thing he cares about. It was just so good

The entire Schlatt and Quackity argument in front of the white house

The meeting between Schlatt and Quackity with Schlatt yelling out to him in a taunting way to where Tommy and Quackity are trying to figure out what happened to the tnt. I constantly rewatch it to feel the adrinaline pumping to feel something

Wilbur's slow descend into insanity and talking to Tommy. Just showing his paranoia and fears consuming him, him projecting his fears into Tommy as an attempt of manipulation, and his hero complex shift into villian one

Schlatt's winning speech of him projecting it as something that was bound to happen no matter what. The amount of charisma and confidence that was in his voice as I was watching Tommy hiding underground in fear was just a perfect scene

Tommy's argument with Dream when everyone is protecting Tommy. Its the small details of Tommy taunting Dream to kill him, knowing he wont no matter what. Him telling everyone to protect Tubbo and everyone listening without hesitation.

The debate that Quackity and Dream had for like 11 or 14 minutes. All of that was completely unprompted unscripted, it was just so satisfying seeing someone stand up against Dream for the first time and actually beating him. Sure it was in a verble conflict but it still counts as a defeat

Be honest, who do you simp for? (Ayo if anyone says Tommy or Tubbo I will🗡)

Schlatt, Quackity, and Slimecicle

Its pretty obvious, I dont really try to hide it

Whats your favorite stream

Uhhhh I dont exactly have one so none I guess

Whats your least favorite streams

Im sorry, but all of the Jackbox stream. You need a specific group of people to play together in order to actually make it funny and keeping the energy throughout the entire thing.

After a bit later, everyone has a tendency of pandering to the audience and repeat jokes. They managed to beat jokes to the ground faster than Tiktok AND Twitter.

Dont get me started with DreamTeam being in there. They're funny in thier own rights but the shipping jokes get so unfunny so quick and they dont know how bounce off of others well. The only exception to this is when Quackity, Velvet, and Ant were playing with Sapnap and Dream. And thats because they decided to mess with the straight white guys into accidently saying offensive shit and seeing those two suffer with trying tiptoe around was so amusing

Whats something about the smp fandom thay makes you sad

This doesnt get me sad, just frustrated and its mostly towards dsmptok and dsmptwt but sometimes this fandom doesnt fucking know how to analyze characters. Like when everyone jumped on Tubbo on being the bad guy when he was a kid trying to use old tatics that knows that worked before and stand up for himself

How when one person decides to do something that they believe is right, everyone just throws the term villian arc around

When one person does one good thing the suddenly everyone accepts into them being good and not ever looking into it.

For fucks sakes, I saw people keep saying that Quackity was turning into Dream or Wilbur and I just sat there being confused on how they conntected those dots that were in different books.

Its so frustrating to read through. But here on dsmpblr, you guys actually understand character analysis, are able to critique them and able to love whoever you enjoy.

Another thing is how this fanbase really puts everyone on a pedestal or objectify them. Just completely forgetting that they're human and treat the streamer as a character. Like, yeah they're playing up a persona whenever they're making content but theres a difference and you shouldn't hold them up like that.

You cant use the argument of "They're young, they dont know any better", when I first entered my first fandom (I was like 11/12), I fully understood that theres a boundary between me and the creator. What they are on screen is a persona but they're still human and I should treat them as such. Its just something that bugs me and its unnerving to see whenever people start getting wierd about it

Final bit is just how the twitch chat acts. They all force the streamer to follow the 'main' plot of it being Tommy or Techno or whoever the fandom chooses to have a favorite, completely ignoring the fact that they are their own character. No one wants to meta game because where is the fun in that but the fucking chat gets so annoying when the streamer goes against fanfavorite of the week. It drains the fun of it being multiple pov's and different characters.

When Slimecicle was barely starting stream I saw so many people spam "Go with Ranboo" and not let him even get into lore first. I hated that I knew it was coming but it was still so fucking frustrating seeing them try to boss him around. Please just let people live outside of the 'main' plot, not everything revolves around your favorites. Now shut the fuck up and let them play

What about the smp fandom that makes you happy?

The people that create art, animatics, theories, playlist, or write oneshots

All of you creators are great and deserve so much more respect then what the fandom gives you because jesus fucking christ they're all so fucking rude. You guys are the ones that are carrying this fandom on your backs and I fucking respect yall for that

________________

Time for da spead: @nixavia @dambette404 and @mocha-is-lost yall dont need to join.....unless😳😳😳

[ladyfl4me]

Hi please yell about boyd and stern in TCOS and TMWCIFTC :D!

Anon, THANK YOU for enabling me, you have my fucking life in your hands

I’ll preface all of this by saying that everything in this post is related to my long-form Amnesty works, The Moth who Came In from the Cold and The Children of Sylvain. If you haven’t read those, then you’ll be pretty damn confused, so I guess now is as good of a time to plug them - and the series - as any. A heads up: I started it back in 2018, and everything in TCOS is just… very VERY loosely associated with Amnesty canon at this point. Same root premise, same characters, but back in 2018 even I couldn’t predict where arcs 4 and 5 ended up going. TMWCIFTC was written as the logical progression, in my head, of an alternate arc 4, and everything that happened in TCOS is based off of that progression. It’s got almost no connection to the actual canon at this point. I’ll be recapping some of the more important plot points for context, though.

Here’s hoping the read-more works. This was 7 pages long in the google doc I prepared this in, so I apologize in advance to everyone on my dash if this got fucked up. Spoilers for TMWCIFTC ahead, as well as general vague spoilers for Amnesty.

So everything’s coming up roses. Fantastic. Let’s start with the biggest thing: how the characters of Agent Stern and Boyd Mosche have changed from canon to this AU.

Boyd’s Changes:

We’ll start with Boyd, because this motherfucker is UNRECOGNIZABLE from canon. On god, that is all Griffin’s fault. Pretty much all of Boyd’s character was concentrated in arc 4 of Amnesty, and honestly? He was a fantastic character there. Loved him as a counterpart to Ned. He gave off an air of “the ends justify the means” in almost everything he did - especially how he was willing to do anything, including blackmail Ned to hell and back, to get back to England - which I’ve grafted into my version of him. The angst-loving part of my brain seized on the tragic possibilities of his relationship with Ned and was bumping “No Children” by the Mountain Goats every time they interacted. Great stuff, interesting complexity, was genuinely surprised when he kicked it.

All that happened after I introduced him as a character in TMWCIFTC. My version of him retains the smooth-talking Britishness of him, with the aforementioned “ends justify the means” logic for everything; I’d probably sort him as a chaotic neutral, with basically all of his points in wisdom, charisma and strength with very few in intelligence. I tried to work with that for the start. We knew nothing about Boyd at the time I was writing TMWCIFTC, so my brain wanted to fill in that blank for jokes and giggles and haha funny’s and was like, “Yo what if Boyd was a Sylph this entire time? Wouldn’t that be fucking hilarious?” 

And that’s what I did. What happened to make this version of Boyd was a bit of a random “perfect storm” of influences and choices, which really only got sharpened because of my one-shot The Devil Went Down To Georgia. That one’s the main source of all Boyd lore, even though I barely reference it these days because he’s gone so far off the rails it’s a miracle I can keep him straight. 

I’ve talked about The Devil Went Down To Georgia a lot in relation to Boyd on here. TL;DR, I decided to make him two things: a violinist and a Sylph/cryptid, specifically the Jersey Devil. Yes, he is still British. I chalk it up lore-wise to a few things: the original Jersey Devil is more of a distant relative, Boyd crossed over from Sylvain and ended up in Britain sometime after that, and just willingly chose to keep up the British persona Bastard. I don’t think about it too much. He’s been a criminal from the very beginning; he’d been in prison on Sylvain, went through some shit there that made him steal a crystal and book it, and he continued to do crime on Earth to survive.

The violin thing is mostly me desperately wanting a character to have that background, because I played for seven goddamn years and want to put that knowledge and catharsis somewhere. Boyd probably either picked up a Sylvan instrument that was similar, or learned it in the early 20th century when he came to Earth, and just held onto it. He held onto the skills and got good - good enough that he could have gone professional, and tried in 2007, but that didn’t go super well, as anyone who’s read TMWCIFTC can attest. 

In terms of the type of cryptid he is, I’ve made the Jersey Devils a subspecies on Sylvain that takes cervids (deer, moose, etc.) or bovines (goats, antelopes, cows, etc.), as well as canines/felines of any shape and size, puts them into a gashapon machine with pterodactyl-style wings, awful teeth, and a snake’s tail, and calls it a day. You can get a tiny Jersey Devil that’s a combo of a tiny cat and a dik-dik; you can get a jacked nine-foot-tall terrifying amalgam of a lion and a moose, with a fucked-up mouth of multiple rows of teeth and huge claws.

That last one is Boyd. Don’t call me a monsterfucker for this, I have no defense.

So where does that leave him in relation to the Lodge? Back in 2018, before I started developing the lore that factors into TCOS about Sylph communities outside the Lodge (namely the Manhattan Sylphs that Leo worked with when he was a Chosen One), I figured that it’d be funny if every single cryptid kinda just… knew each other, or hung out near the Lodge. As you know if you’ve read TMWCIFTC, he got into some trouble in 1967, which Barclay, Indrid and Mama “bailed him out of.”

Once they found out he was a fellow Sylvan, though, it became less about “report this guy to the authorities” and more about “we have to make sure we keep an eye on this guy so he doesn’t get himself, or other Sylphs, in trouble” thing. He basically became Mama’s mostly-socialized half-feral cat, slinking through the halls of Amnesty Lodge, eating random food, falling asleep wherever, sitting in rooms where people are doing interesting things and just watching them. And everyone... kind of likes him. Sure, he doesn’t have a sleep schedule, and they have to get soundproof panels installed in his room at the Lodge because he’ll stress-practice violin at 3 in the morning, and he keeps shoplifting stuff from local stores to give to people like a cat bringing back dead mice. But he’s a good man. And he’s getting better every day.

Then he got got by the Ashminder in ‘98. He bolted, completely forgot everything about the Lodge but had the address of a former Lodge resident on his body after his memory was wiped, found a still-alive but memory-wiped fellow Lodge dweller, and fled to that address. Boyd lived there for years, trying to clean up his act and try to anchor himself a bit. Then in 2007, something on his path went wrong, and the stress break he went through after that made him run from that place. That’s when he met Ned, and they had a few years together before Boyd ended up in jail.

Then, once they killed the Ashminder and the memories it had eaten came back, Voidfish-style, Boyd remembered everything: the people who’d taken care of him, the friends he’d made, the love he’d found, the time and effort he’d put into getting better, the rewards he’d reaped because of it. He remembered fighting monsters and defending them. He got hit with it all at once, and missed them. His parole date was coming up; he could bide his time until he was released, and run down there.

But then, at the start of TCOS, Something Happens that makes all Sylvan disguises and spells shit the fucking bed; his disguise spell, which has been hiding a nine foot-tall jacked demon out of hell, flickers, and the invisibility spell that had been put on his disguise item to hide it failed. Boyd knew he was fucked if the jail folks found out he was a Sylph, so he decided to fucking Kool-aid Man out of there, becoming a wanted man in the entire state of West Virginia and getting a bit roughed up in the process.

But hey. Whatever it takes to get home, right? 

Stern’s Changes:

Stern’s changed too, though, and here’s how. It was relatively simple to tweak him, because so much of him was a blank slate to begin with. First: that name. Garfield Kent Stern is his full name: Garfield for the cat/Deals Warlock, Kent after Kent Mansley, the irritating dipshit FBI agent antagonist from the classic animated movie The Iron Giant. Poor bastard. He started as a walking meme who I was going to kill off; I came up with that name long before we got his real name in canon, and didn’t want to retcon it out. 

I’m a sucker for secret connections and familial ties, too, and back in 2018 the headcanon gashapon gave me “what if Stern was a cousin of Duck’s, but there was family drama that made their parts of the family split when they were kids, so now 30 years later they don’t remember each other?” 

And that’s exactly what I did. Gary is Duck’s first cousin on Duck’s mom’s side; their mothers are sisters. Gary’s uncle Arnie was a Secret Service agent who tangled with an Indrid trying to stop the Kennedy Assassination once, and he keeps telling that story at Christmas, much to everyone’s chagrin. Gary remembered those stories, and even received Indrid’s old disguise glasses - knocked off his face during his uncle Arnie’s chase - and carried them with him for a long time.

He didn’t start off as a baby cop, though; he was more interested in hitting the books, finding out the logic and doing the research to figure things out. I have him become a history major, getting a PhD with a few bits and bobs here and there that I haven’t worked out yet. Whatever the case, he spent a LONG time in academia, from undergrad starting in 1996 to graduation in about 2005. 

Things weren’t as peachy as he thought they’d be, though. Gary wrote and published his thesis, like a good little PhD candidate, but someone was watching him. In his thesis, he’d been trying to cobble together various cryptid-related legends across the word and making connections between them, among other things. He’d managed to link up and explain something that Unexplained Phenomena had been trying to figure out themselves. They immediately intercepted his thesis, kept it from being disseminated anywhere else, erased all copies of it after graduation, and reached out to Gary independently to bring him on.

Make no mistake: he went willingly. Despite the whole thesis coverup, Agent Gary Stern wasn’t coerced into being a government stooge, and he wasn’t blackmailed - he was given an offer to work with the cryptid cops, and he enthusiastically took it. Government benefits were decent, he’d heard; post-grad options were looking slim, especially going into the recession. In his mind, there was a bit of allure to it all, too. A secret government organization looking into suspicious and possibly supernatural things all over the nation? Fantastic. More opportunities to do research. He was in. Gary accepted their offer and started basic FBI training in 2007 - the same year Boyd had that mental break and went AWOL, returning to his life of crime and meeting Ned.

Biggest mistake he’d ever made. But then again, if he didn’t take them up on that, he wouldn’t be here, would he?

So he joins UP, goes up the ranks. They had him researching and charting the Bigfoot case for a while, and he was the only one who was willing to work on it at all because… well, Bigfoot sightings weren’t as sophisticated as some of the other projects that were out there for UP. (See: Area 51. We don’t talk about Area 51. Nobody talks about Area 51. Definitely nothing shady and unethical going on in there, no experiments on anyone or anything, no sir.) 

Gary’s diligent, though, and doesn’t like to back down from a challenge. That’s all hunting Bigfoot was: a challenge. No personal stake, no empathy. It was a job to get done, even though an entire person’s life was at stake.

And he got so caught up in this challenge that, when he went to Kepler, he EASILY got attacked by the Ashminder and destroyed within an inch of his life. He got the very memory of his job and intent in Kepler torn out of his head; once the Ashminder died, and those memories came back, they didn’t feel like his anymore, or like they’d been part of his life plan to begin with. Overcome with confusion and guilt, he decided to clean up his act and try to work against the FBI, with Mama’s blessing. 

His goal? Quit the FBI, get them off the Lodge’s back, and then see what happens next. Maybe he’d go back to academia, or teach, or something - just get as far away from the FBI as possible, as far away as he can be from hurting people. But he’s got to bide his time, because if he bolts now, they’re going to get suspicious and put the Lodge in even more danger. And that’s where he is now.

So why have they changed?

Simple answer? I don’t want to rewrite them to fit with canon. I just don’t. I don’t want to make Boyd human; I don’t want to change Gary’s name to Joseph and make him a Bigfoot groupie. I don’t want to rewrite hundreds of thousands of words of work to fit last-minute decisions made in the end times of Amnesty’s canon. My fic has diverged so much from canon that the canon versions of the characters don’t belong here anymore. Besides, Stern was such a background character in arcs 3 and 4 that he barely mattered, making his reappearance in arc 5 a bit of a clumsy follow-through, and Boyd was a one-act wonder. A little expansion couldn’t hurt. Making Gary something other than a direct antagonist made the narrative load a little easier, too, at least on my end. I hate giving a cop screen time, but it’s easier to justify his existence by rewriting his backstory and making him slog through the hell of a redemption arc. He’s had that coming. 

This leads us to TCOS, though, where the arcs of our player characters turn a bit more towards the plot, as opposed to the emotional fulfillment they got in TMWCIFTC. Characters like Gary, Mama, Boyd, and Alexandra take center stage for emotional and backstory development, while the original player characters take a temporary backseat. Alexandra’s a key linchpin of the story as a whole, both emotionally and narratively; Mama gets lore expansions and has personal things to settle; and Gary and Boyd are… here. So:

How do these two work with each other in TCOS?

It’s great. It’s fantastic. These two are my favorite to write in TCOS because their conflict is just so fucking FUN. On the one hand, you have an almost-ex-FBI agent who’s been taken in by the Lodge, is related to a Pine Guard member, is trying to keep his coworkers off the Lodge’s back as sneakily as possible without drawing suspicion, and is desperate not to screw up this second chance he doesn’t think he deserves. On the other hand, you have an ex-con who got a second chance from the Lodge, sees them as his last best option to be safe as long as nobody reports them, and wants to keep them safe out of a sense of familial obligation he’s reluctant to admit to, even to himself.

That’s two people with questionable morals, with a semi-familial attachment to a place that gave them second chances, each seeing the actions of the other as a threat to their - and everyone else’s - safety. Claws come out almost immediately.

At the start, Boyd and Gary go together like apple juice and toothpaste. Boyd sees a narc who’s threatening the one safe place he has left; Gary sees an impulsive, selfish threat, a domino that - if it falls - threatens, you guessed it, the one safe place he (and other people, sure) has left. Boyd breaking out of jail means the entire state of West Virginia, and probably the whole East Coast, is on high alert looking for him, and if that attention comes anywhere near the Lodge? They’re fucked.

Neither of them believe that the other is capable of change or anything but selfish, malicious harm. Boyd has more of an argument than Gary because Gary is still actively reporting things to the FBI, but in Gary’s defense, the moment that he stops reporting anything to them, they’re going to suspect things and might end up sending more people to the Lodge. The Pine Guard can’t afford that, so Gary has to play by the rules until he’s in a position where he can quit. I’ll pull a specific argument they have from TCOS that I feel really exemplifies this:

"I don't want you to get caught."

Boyd scoffed. "Something tells me you're not worried about me."

"I'm not."

"Well, thanks."

"I'm worried," Gary went on, "about someone seeing you, and connecting you to the Lodge. You just used the hot springs as your personal landing strip, in broad daylight. We're on the upper half of the mountain. And I don't know how big your Sylvan form is, but -"

Boyd grinned. It looked more like a snarl. "Oh, plenty big enough," he said.

Gary ignored that. "Big enough for someone to see you from down the mountain?" he challenged. Boyd's lip curled, and he looked away. "Yeah, that's what I thought. I'm just thinking ahead. What if someone came beating down our door looking for you? What if it was a cryptid hunter? What if it was the cops?”

"Yes, yes, fine, alright," Boyd snapped. He threw his hands up. His eyes were hard and cold. "It'd put us in danger. I get it. But you're still here. I think the damage is already done."

A knot of cold rage formed in Gary's stomach. "I'm trying to keep this place safe, Mr. Mosche," he spat. "I've got a responsibility to keep."

Boyd scoffed. "Oh, you have a responsibility? To Amnesty Lodge? That's fucking rich."

"You've got one, too! It’s about time you started keeping it!"

They’re both very, very set in their ways and their ideologies, and they take a long time to get to middle ground. 

One of my friends described it as middle child syndrome in overdrive. Gary thinks Boyd’s the Lodge golden child, come to replace him in the Lodge inner circle. Boyd thinks Gary’s the Lodge’s new redemption-arc fixer-upper, come to replace him. And both of them feel thrown off by that, because they both thought that the Lodge was accepting them completely into the inner circle. It’s unfamiliar, it’s confusing, and when the Lodge as a whole regards them both with suspicion/unease (Gary) and polite detachment due to the passage of time (Boyd), it makes them both feel on the outside.

And when you’re in the same shitty canoe, you’ve gotta row it or sink. So that’s exactly what they do. 

Ultimately, they get faced down with bigger and worse foes that snap them out of their spat, because their common interest is “keeping the Lodge safe” and uniting will help them get there. When they do start to have each other’s backs, though, that’s when they reluctantly start to get to know each other. Gary feels like something’s off about Boyd and eventually suspects - thanks to some comments from Haynes and some digging of his own - that Boyd had something to do with the fire that burned down Aubrey’s house, but it remains to be seen what he’ll do with that information. (The Gary of November 2018 would have turned Boyd in to the FBI. The Gary of almost six months later, though… a different story. It’ll be interesting.)

The kicker is, they’re both really similar, at the heart of it. Both of them were the Lodge’s fix-em-up pet projects, brought into the fold in an emergency and protected/cared for as long as they swore to clean up their act. They see each other and feel a bit out-of-place, though - something contributed to by the way the Lodge treats them.

Gary’s still held at a distance by many, despite being Duck’s cousin and a mostly-valuable member of the team, because the stench of the FBI is still on him - how he dresses, how he walks and talks, how he acts. And Boyd has just swanned back to the Lodge after 20 years gone, with all his memories of the Lodge from back in ‘98 driven back into his mind - and part of him is expecting the Lodge to be the exact same way it was when he left. But it’s not. You can’t go home again. The Lodge has moved on without him, which he never expected, and coming back to them is… awkward.

It’s simple. They don’t know what to do with a version of Boyd who’s missed the past 20 years of their lives; Boyd doesn’t know what to do with people who have changed from the folks he knew 20 years ago. He’s lost, floating, and alienated, like going to a high school reunion after not having spoken to a living soul since graduation. It sucks for him. And the only wholly unfamiliar face there, other than the main Pine Guard - who he’s mostly fine with, except for Ned - is Gary, and he can’t help but be irritated with him. That changes, though.

What I essentially want to do is set these versions of the characters up as foils. Similar characters, similar pasts, similar situations that got them to this point. All that’s different is how far in their respective arcs they are. So I’m going to have them be friends. Give each other a chance in the face of a bigger threat, open up a little more, have conversations, talk about things with each other because they’re the only ones around to listen. The Lodge gave them second chances when they needed them most. Maybe they can do that for each other.

This is also to say, I would be a massive fucking liar if I say I haven’t considered having that unfold into a rivals-to-lovers arc. Yeah, I said it. I’ve considered it, at length and in serious detail, since I started drafting the arcs for TCOS. In fact, that’s what I’m probably going to do. I’ve gotten too hooked by the possibility to give it up. I outlined hypothetical futures for the whole cast after the final battle in Sylvain and, given the things I want to happen in that battle and the messy post-war fallout, it makes sense that these two would gravitate towards each other.

It makes a lot more sense in context, believe me. They’ve got a long row to hoe before they trust each other enough to become friends, or even push the envelope towards a romantic relationship - they’d have months and even YEARS to wait to pull that off. Whatever I end up doing with them, they are easily my favorite part of TCOS to unravel, mostly because I  - and, honestly, everyone else - probably never saw it coming.

Thanks for the ask, anon. This made my week. So sorry for the long response, but I have so many thoughts on what I’m doing with these idiots, and putting them down on paper was really fun. Any other questions or comments about this? Fire away, I’d be more than willing to answer! 

[jcmorgenstern]

3x12 “review” (aka whining)

Okay so 3x12! First the things I liked, so this doesn’t come off as a gigantic whining list of things I hated. (I feel kind of bad I didn’t do a 3x11 review because I actually really liked that one, but I guess I have more motivation to whine than anything else).

readmore for length and sanity.

So things I liked:

Luke and Jace interaction! Though the pacing was absolutely insane and I absolutely refuse to believe that the Clave has the infrastructure in place to take detailed barometric readings in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE SIBERIA, so detailed that Jace can easily pinpoint exactly where the apartment was. Like I wouldn’t believe they have that kind of detail in rural Iowa, let alone a place that’s colder than balls.

That last point was all whining.The Morgenstern sword!! Y’all have NO idea how long I spent being mad that Valentine didn’t have it in the first two seasons. It now seems a bit odd to introduce it now considering Valentine didn’t in fact ever have it, but whatever. Also Clary being like “fuck Morgenstern weapons” was kind of funny considering her kindjals are waiting at home.

Magnus’ storyline. Though it’s kind of weird and rushed and confused, I’m just glad my man is getting some real focus on him as a person rather than a love interest or idk some overblown “son of Edom” thing.

Cain was, I admit, a really cool and interesting concept, and I already really like Pasha!! I hope he’s continuing to get better after his surgery. Don’t love as much how they’re mainlining Lilith as the Biggest Bad Ever and a Whole Evil B*tch (more on that lovely term of endearment later).

Mirek was really cool, kind of had to laugh at the “demon middle class.” Can’t help but wonder if the “status quo” thing was a deliberate political joke or not. Either way, Jonathan has never met a structure he doesn’t want to overthrow. Does the Clave spark joy? Apparently not.

MELIORN IS BACK!!!!! And wants a threesome, apparently.

Jonathan peevishly being like “I forgive you for trying to kill me, btw” and Clary just rolling her eyes and ignoring him.

Jonathan’s fucking GAAAY. (Or bi. pan. whatever. You do you. All I’m saying is THIS BITCH RAINBOW). I do not care what the intention was, that’s what I’m choosing to get out of it.

Things I didn’t like:

the plot of this episode is pretty much enough material for an entire season. They compressed it so much people are calling it a filler episode. Jace and Luke figure out the secret of the apartment (which is untraceable), go to Siberia, figure out Jonathan is alive, find Clary and rescue her and that’s only about 15 minutes of footage overall. That could be spread out over 15 episodes.

On the Simon side: they find the first fucking vampire, become his new bestie, get the only thing in the world that could rid him of the mark without any sort of price or even really having to ask, they get back into Faerie without any problems, Meliorn takes them right to the Queen despite knowing Simon has a weapon of death on his face, she agrees without argument to unmark him not even knowing if he’ll explode or what, the mark is off in about 14 seconds, the FUCKING DRUG PLOTLINE IS BACK AG A. I N. And then rose petals. That could have been the entire SEASON.

No Maia. (I know she’s in the next ep I just want to complain).

It’s also weird because it seems like Malec is progressing on normal time and the other two story strands are progressing on some extreme kind of fast-forward. It gives you all kinds of whiplash. If there was any kind of thematic overlap or even an attempt to connect the strands thematically it might work to ground the other storylines but it. Does not.

I hate that the apartment is Lilith’s and not Valentine’s, and that apparently it can only go to a few select spots now. NOT. THE. POINT. Point = missed.

And onto the things that bothered me the most: the whole treatment of Jonathan and Clary, and the Sizzy. For which I need an entire section to bitch.

Jonathan and Clary: why god have you abandoned me

* Ok so honestly, I had to go and check to see who wrote 3x11 and 3x12, because  it had to be different people. 3x11 was by Todd and Darren, and 3x12 was by Alex Schemmer. Schemmer has only written one other episode in 3a (3x03), which explains to me why he seems to have missed a fair bit of lore. To me, the huge difference between 3x11 and 12, which basically deal with the same plot line (Clary kidnapped by Jonathan, wary of him, trying to escape) but in hugely different ways and different focus.

In 3x11, the focus is all on Clary. Her initial confusion, her fear, anger, the attempt to escape, the attempt to kill Jonathan. All shot from her point of view. She takes more action than he does—she runs away, she grabs the knife, she stabs him. He is mostly reacting to her, running after her, offering her soup and tea and trying to win her over. Even when he does talk, the scenes where he talks about himself are brief and she shares equal part in the conversation.

This makes sense, as she is the main character.

In 3x12, everything is about Jonathan. From the first shot everything is about him, the camera focusing on him even when Clary is the focus of the scene (i.e., when she’s finding new clothes—and was a shirtless scene necessary? Like we get it, you nearly killed poor Luke in a gym somewhere, thanks for the update). Every time he and Clary talk, it’s just him talking at her. “I forgive you for killing me.” Telling her she’s good at art. Telling her there’s an Institute nearby. Telling her he likes art. She can barely get a word in edgewise from the get-go, and it only gets worse on the hot chocolate “date.”

He says the whole point is to get to know each other better, but he LITERALLY talks about himself the whole time. Clary barely even reacts, just makes eyes at a phone. He doesn’t even seem to notice she’s not listening. Like guys, this is every bad tinder date ever. Then they go to to the antiques store, and even then she’s shuffled off—shoo! Get out of the scene!! Even the French guy interrupts her at every turn and she gets shuffled off like a sack of potatoes *again*.

Like don’t tell me Clary couldn’t kick his ass and then explain things to him when he’s pinned to the ground. It would be faster, safer, and if Jonathan shows up again she can be like “ohh he was threatening us!! Look, I beat him up to keep us safe!” and Jonathan would buy it hook, line, and sinker. Since killing people in broad daylight is ok, clearly the show isn’t worried about the realism of fighting in the streets.

And then she’s shuffled off AGAIN, and although the show clearly understands that being kidnapped and controlled by your dangerously unhappy brother who seriously has the creepy hots for you is a pretty freakin SCARY situation, it still shows all this from Jonathan’s point of view, teasing the “romance” of it all and giving us hehe teehee little slips of it (like the shirtless scene). And then when she finally is able to break free and actually do something, he yells “BITCH” at her and runs off, and she falls into Jace’s arms, completely forgetting to act like a real human being.

The reason why 3x11 works so much more for me is that Clary is at least an equal partner, and is given space to react and actually do things; in 3x12 they seem to take any excuse to bundle her off, keep her out of frame, mute her reactions. Jonathan and his feelings take center stage and suddenly Clary is a side character in her own story. 3x11 is more compelling because Jonathan is legitimately trying to win her over, trying to connect with her, personally. It’s obvious he cares about her opinions as a person and her as a person—you couldn’t replace her with a cardboard cutout and the scene would read the same. They actually interact. In 3x12 he’s just ranting at her about himself while she sits there. On no narrative level is there any sort of connection or interaction.

Like imagine the situation differently. They’re in art store, because lbr the real museums prolly wouldn’t let them shoot there, and Clary is talking to Jonathan about her favorite prints and artists. He’s listening, maybe a little too intently, maybe talks about a piece he likes and what it means to him. She looks unnerved. As they talk, the camera follows her gaze, and we realize she is trying to find someone’s phone to take it. She’s pretending, of course, but there is something charming about Paris. Jonathan keeps offering to buy her souvenirs, very awkwardly, trying to find something to please her. She picks something to make him happy. He returns from the register just before she can make a grab for someone’s phone and bolt for the door. He suggests they go to the cafe across the square. We cut to where they’re sitting down, she’s tearing into a croissant. Jonathan is wearing a “I <3 PARIS” cap, which is a bit jarring and distracting. Clary tells him it looks silly and he takes it off. He mentions in a forcedly offhand way that this is where he met Sebastian Verlac, and seeing her expression, quickly adds that he knows what he did is wrong. She says something along the lines of “do you, tho” and he launches into his monologue. She tells him that she liked Sebastian Verlac, even though she never met the real him. He looks happy at first, then seems to understand what she means, and his expression darkens. He tells her that that’s exactly what Valentine said she would say—that she likes Sebastian, not him. She looks disturbed at the mention of Valentine, and he takes the opportunity to tell her the whole thing about not wanting to hurt anyone and the whole thing being about killing Valentine.

And yada yada yada you get the idea.

Honestly the whole rescue felt very contrived—how convenient Clary has been posthumously pardoned one day before her rescue! And then Jonathan calling her a bitch—haha no thanks. The entitlement is uhh Not Great.

Anyway tldr @ Alex schemmer Clary is not a sofa pls give her some human emotion pls and thanks

Sizzy: why god have you abandoned me, the sequel

Honestly writing that entire wall of text wiped me out but ill try

The drug arc is the bane of my existence

Im so tired

I thought we’d be done in season 2 yet here we are at the end. Drug arc: 1. Actual character development: 0.

Why is this the ONLY plot line the show can remember or keep running for more than 2 episodes. WHY

Why does she even like Simon. They never interact. They don’t even know each other. Everything is just an excuse to get them together. it’s forced and leaden.

Playing her and Raph off as badwrong and her and Simon as rose petal romantic is weird af dude. Izzy has just been the tail end of male characters’ storylines for so long and I’m tired.

If they’d played it off as a sacrifice on her part I might be less mad, like paint her as a hero but it just felt like this was expected of her. It was romantic because there was nothing else to do and OF COURSE she couldn’t refuse!!! Please be realistic, she’s a woman. Think of herself even a little? Impossible!

Never mind she could have easily used her medical training to open a larger artery, pour the blood into his mouth, and iratze herself as soon as Simon was cogent enough to be out of danger. He was already woken up enough to drink the blood she poured from her hand. No biting/venom necessary. Lmao.

Stop treating Izzy like shit just to force a romantic storyline seriously lmao

Aaaaanyway lol that was like 20000000 words but those are my thoughts if you made it to the end you deserve a trophy or smth