#they had some organic mechanic backstory

[coma-collection]

okay you know what no I’m still mad at how little Coma was shown in furiosa

[lubrumalis]

ghost character analysis

tw: spoilers from ghost mw2 comics, nsfw, dead dove do not eat, mature content.

this is pretty much a part 2 to ghost headcanons except with more lore and analysis (im still not sure if reboot ghost has the same backstory as the og ghost).

ghost is not a cold, calculated, ruthless man. maybe in a separate au or something, but theres a huge difference between ghost and simon riley. in fact, we need to understand that the reason he even chose ghost as a new name for himself is because of all that's happened to him. his family got killed, he got tortured by roba, and had to eliminate many men on his own. before that he was simon, not ghost. in the comic he literally calls the child hostages he was saving ‘sweetheart’ and ‘love’. hes not that mean and cold yall

we know that PTSD does shit to it's victims, ghost lost his entire family and had no one. think of it as a coping mechanism to have a new name to be known as.

ghost is a ruthless killer. simon is just some guy.

ghost sets himself to an incredibly high standard of discipline. i think it's intuitive that military boys will need to be punctual and organized to some degree, but ghost takes this to a whole other level. considering his father's abusive behavior (explained by his disturbing statements said to simon, is a drug addict, and beats simons mom) his home life was likely chaotic as a child.

in the mw2: ghost comic (issue #3) it specifically stated the following: "discipline, precision, control. these are what riley built his whole life on. break those down and the dark stuff begins to ooze out..." again, this is probably a form of trauma response to his childhood.

so what does this lead to? well firstly, this probably means his room is incredibly tidy and organized (monotone design i know :,c).

would never in his life touch drugs. this is a promise he made to himself.

also kinda proves that ghost aint a reckless guy. he thinks things through before doing it.

ghost isn’t that hypersexual. theres no way of knowing his history with women, but i like to think ghost is not that horny 24/7 and needs a fuckbuddy. in the mw2 comic, he was on a mission and was in an area full of prostitutes (wasn’t actively on duty, but on his way) when they tried to hit on him he politely rejects one of them, and later tells them to fuck off😀 so yea contrary to popular belief i dont think he really enjoys one night stands or the idea of being entertained by random women. in fact, i hc he might actually be a virgin or just have a really low body count.

ghost is a feminist!😁 (misandrist too). ok let me reword that, ghost doesnt like men and respects women. one of the reasons why he doesn’t want to be around prostitutes and do one night stands (his father killed a hooker in front of him, very traumatic) is because he thinks the concept of quick, casual sex is not good for society and dilutes the value of meaningful relationships. but also, remember the discipline, precision, control thing? its apart of his principle. but also, in the comic, sparks (soldier he worked with) knocked out and attempted to rape a woman, ghosts literally looked disgusted and called the police (also why he’d never do that himself, i dont get the hcs that say he does). ghosts seen how his dad treated his mom and absolutely hates abusers. anyways onto misandry—i think ghost internally thinks men are violent and disgusting (ghosts would choose the bear over the man, even though hes a man) mainly because throughout his military career majority of the bad stuff hes seen was done by men, so hes much more relaxed in a room of women vs man. ghost thinks his dad is the epitome of pure evil (canon! he said this to his therapist). this doesn’t mean hes scared or hates all men tho!

ghost isn’t close with tf141… including soap. now before you attack me let me explain. sure, he trusts them to some degree, but i dont think they naturally just hangout when they’re not deployed. in the end we need to understand they are SAS soldiers, they are working a real job that mainly consists of them shooting and dismantling others. considering ghosts betrayal in the past (in the comic, a few soldiers ghost previously worked with killed his entire family 😢) he isn’t gonna just trust his teammates because theyre his teammates. im also pretty sure they all live in different cities while not deployed. tf141 probably all want to separate their job from their personal lives, which includes each other. but onto soap, i dont think him and ghost have a deep brotherly relationship. but i think they care about each other, but exchanging some dad jokes and bantering doesn’t mean they’re suddenly soulmates or brothers. think about it… you and you’re co worker joke around sometimes, never hangout outside of work, and now people are shipping you and calling the two of you besties. makes no sense.

ghost is extremely patriotic. in the comic (i reference this way too much but theres SOOO MUCH LORE i recommend reading it) ghost tells his teammates the reason for joining the military: queen and country, right after 9/11. he also said “the world has changed”. interestingly enough army enlistment did actually skyrocketed after 9/11 attacks, ghost was among them. he probably thought ww3 was about to happen, or that ‘theres no more peace’ or whatever. i hc being obsessed with soccer too lmao and getting mad if english teams dont win. also his playful banter with johnny “get us a tea?”. probably very proud of his british heritage.

ghost doesn’t have much friends. hes a really, reallyyyyy lonely guy. i hc him as an introvert in the first place, but trust issues make this worse. in the comic, he was literally in the newspaper for killing his family and then killing himself (he didnt, he was framed that way tho) so its likely most of his formers friends probably think hes dead. ghost likely got some sort of amnesty or exemption from the military after knowing he didn’t actually kill his family, but whats in the news stays true to the public. even if he does have friends he probably doesn’t share feelings with them or form a long term bond.

ghost is extremely cynical. this is obvious tbh, but i think ghost believes hes going to die in the middle of a battlefield, shot or stabbed, a painful death, body left to rot for weeks, and no one to remember him. just like that. and he accepts that fact too.

ghost isn’t a picky eater. growing up in an abusive household where his parents couldn’t hold a stable job, he had to eat what there was. some days he settles for cheap beans and toast and when people call him out for it, he tells em to fuck off😀

ghost is emotionally fucked up, probably kind of depressed. i mean this guys been through hell: got sa’d, buried alive, had to dig through underground dirt and worms with a jawbone, tortured in horrible ways, had his entire family killed, abusive dad, and the weight of his grey morales because he killed lots of people as a soldier. wow! would you look at that list, itd be more strange if he wasn’t emotionally fucked up after was has happened😅. even when tortured, seeing his family dead, ghost was never shown to have cried in the comic. i hc hes emotionally numb. however, i do think hes emotionally MATURE and able to communicate his emotions, but hes still emotionally fucked. for example a scene where he was talking about his experience with roba (guy who tortured ghost) and ghosts father to a therapist. i think ghosts may be traumatized, but this doesn’t stop him from attempting to get help and communicating how he feels and thinks about this world.

ghost wears a mask... not because hes insecure and traumatized it's to separate ghost from simon riley. first of all he learned the consequences of revealing your identity during deployment, in the comic, he reveals his face in missions before his family got killed. i think he wears a mask because 1) its practical, no one knows who he is, 2) an analogy for himself to remind him simon riley, his original identity, was dead the moment his family was murdered, this SAS soldier with a skull mask is GHOST (yes this is canon, ghost references in the comic!).

in issue #1 while some kids were being held hostage, he starts telling his life story to them to calm them down/distract them from the bad situation. this is his explanation to why he wears a skull mask, word by word: "I bet you're wondering why I wear these bones on my face. It's a tribute to an old friend of mine. He's dead now, but man if he wasn't the baddest motherfucker on the planet."

in issue #6, when ghost was trekking through a jungle in the middle of nowhere attempting to kill roba (a drug lord that started this all, brainwashed soldiers to kill ghosts family), he was never caught. ghost himself, the narrator, says that "even for a single man to get through the jungle, the patrols, the wall, the security... well that man would have to be a ghost."

however, im still a little confused whether or not reboot ghost and 2009 have the same backstories. reboot ghosts mask is more realistic and his look is much more intimidating, his reason for wearing that kind of mask is probably psychological warfare (getting milena the financier to speak up about makarov). i think 2009 ghosts reason to wearing a mask is more personal compared to reboot.

BUT WHAT ABOUT AN S/O???

i think ghost is the guy to not have one in the first place. obviously. but i lowkey think if he had one and really liked them, he would commit. in fact i find it hard to imagine hes a player or isn’t serious about relationships. when his brother tommy got addicted to drugs and fucked up his life, simon quit the military until tommy got 100% better and married. yup. he stayed to help him recover, for years. thats how loving and committed this man is🥹🥹.

ghost would not cheat on his s/o. i can't stress how important this hc is, because it's so out of character for him to do so. sure, guys in the military statistically have higher divorce rates, incidences of infidelity, and much more red flag stuff, but knowing what happened to him, he would never do that. doesn't matter how stressed, lonely, sexually frustrated this man is; he would not cheat on his partner. this guy has been through far more stressful situations and got through it, you think hes gonna cheat because hes stressed because of work?

its not sunshine and rainbows or absolute toxicity being with him. it's not really a mix of both either. ghost isn't that princess treatment, super squishy and cuddly, sweet guy who likes fluffy stuff. he definitely isn't the toxic guy who leaves you with mixed signals either.

hes quite the gentleman when it comes to approaching relationships, hes seen how his dad treated his mom, and ghost wants to do the exact opposite. i believe ghost likes to use the traditional courting methods when dating someone: gifting flowers, paying for dates, holding the door open (ladies first typa guy!!), the old fashioned stuff. idk if i should point it out again but this guy DOES NOT FW modern dating practices, he wouldn't download dating apps, or start 'talking stages'. i dont think he would write love letters just because hes not very good at writing poetry or expressing his feelings in the first place.

theres still downsides to being with him. the long distance, the time being apart (months and months). but i dont think he'd go as far as being emotionally avoidant.

also something really random ive noticed is that 2009 and reboot ghost are very different, personality wise. i like to think that 2009 ghost represents simon riley much better, but the reboot ghost actually gives the essence and character of what a 'ghost' in the military is.

more random headcanons:

simon prefers dogs over cats because dogs are loyal and stay with you until the end (stereotypically)

hates snakes and spiders

probably wouldn’t do 50/50 on dates, he pays!

avoids saying manchester slang when deployed

drinks and smokes. not always. he’s disciplined but he still does that stuff.. hes a british guy in his 30s whos kinda depressed, grew up with adults around him smoking 24/7, whatd you think😀😀 (its canon that most of tf141 smoke anyway)

listens to 80’s rock music. its canon that his mom enjoys the band siouxsie and the banshees :)), he probs does too

shaves his beard

is actually confident hes not bad looking. dude, hes 6’2, in shape with a jawline🙄

i don't enjoy hcs of ghost being the scariest out of tf141 (appearance wise yes). but soap seems much more scary imo, he was the youngest guy to pass SAS selections in the history of the UK military, and was nicknamed soap because of fast and good he is at cleaning up 'messes' (basically killing people).

id arguably say ghost is the most compassionate out of 141, if we're talking about the OG 2009 one.

[skriblee-ksk]

Ki****’s Home

The children brought to the ******* Island during the year **** were named after flowers.

Ki**** was the brightest in her cohort, both in terms of intelligence and personality.

However, that was exactly what made her the worst subject.

Instead of properly participating in the activities meant to measure the children’s abilities, she was always distracted. Always compassionately helping or curiously asking.

Although seeming to hold no malicious intent, she was still a hindrance. An unpredictable, troublesome child.

In fact, she was the Father’s ultimate failure.

Someone who was too valuable to be discarded, yet too disobedient to be contained.

Even punishments seemed to have little effect on her, as she always returned to her natural state a few hours later.

One day, the Father lost his patience. He stepped up instead of the researchers and tried to fix Ki**** on his own.

It worked for the day. Ki**** completed all the activities as she should have been all along. Even if the results were worse than usual, she had been predictable. Obedient.

That day, when the best children were moved to the reward room, the Father handpicked a gift for Ki**** as a reward.

Since he had proved that Ki**** was able to do what they told her to, he expected no less from her.

Unfortunately, the next day, Ki**** had reverted back to her old habits.

She really did try her best to do what was expected. She really wanted to do her best, she did.

One thing all children in the lab hated to hear was that their best was, in fact, not their best. That their greatest efforts were not enough.

In fact, they would have rather died than heard that.

The Father was disappointed.

And that would be Ki****’s last time in the reward room.

Ki’s backstory that no one asked for!!!!!

Her backstory usually doesn’t play a pivotal role on the medias I insert her into, but it does give a few clues on her behavior and personality. Also I just think she’s tragic because she dies so early. My daughter :(

I actually made Ki during like. 5th grade, so the world where she originally resides in is my OC world (the one with Kristal in it (u can find her in refs btw, if you haven’t seen her yet)).

Generally, Ki**** was a girl who talked with and helped her cohort, even at the cost of being labeled disobedient. She prioritized helping the rest of the children than acing her ability tests (even though she had no reason to. Like she wasn’t even older than them, the cohorts are separated by birth date year).

She placed high on pop quizzes testing intelligence every time, but otherwise if someone else seemed to struggle, she would flat out NOT do any of the work and instead would help them or ask questions in their stead or even just give up on the work to do something else, so they could never measure her correctly. This made it impossible to figure out if she’d be of any help with the Father’s research (which I will not disclose as of now).

Yeah, that’s generally it!

Now, an answer to a few (nonexistent) questions!

1. Why does the Father include the word “the”?

It has “the” in the same way you’d call a creature under your bed “the” Monster.

2. Is Ki’s purple ribbon the gift the Father chose and would she still wear it if she found out about her past?

Yes

Yes :(

3. What are some similarities and differences between Ki**** and Kiyuu?

Similarities: Obsessive organization abilities, intelligence, and they’re both searching for home.

Oh and they both love the scent of the sea and cream puffs, and general things like that.

Differences: Kiyuu develops to become, in a sense, less “helpful”? She finds out most people at NRC like to be seen as someone who can handle things themselves if they wish to, and it’s really just awkward if Kiyuu keeps eagerly volunteering for anything. Like, at first it’s nice, but then it just becomes like, “does she think I’m helpless or something?” Anyway. Yeah. Kiyuu here gains some snark too, just as a defense mechanism. She needs to spit back once in a while.

Taglist (ask to be added!!): @kathxrat-01 @distant-velleity @scint1llat3 @elenauaurs @boopshoops @lumdays @venaue @jewelulu @thehollowwriter

[laurelsofhighever]

Unpopular opinion time: I really don’t care for the Titans as a concept. Or rather, I don’t like the way they fit into the worldbuilding of Thedas. It’s a symptom of this ongoing problem BioWare has where everything has to have some grand, shocking twist and an intricate backstory that connects with the intricate backstory of everything else. It’s like a slow power creep to the lore that honestly reminds me most of Supernatural in how desperate it is to outdo itself.

The Dalish Creators aren’t apocryphal characters used to impart moral lessons or explain natural phenomena – they were real, and they weren’t really gods, just super powerful mages who enslaved a bunch of people and used them to build statues!

The Fade isn’t just another, natural layer of existence that only a few can tap into – it was created by Some Guy who decided to fight the Actually Real Elvhen Gods and then had a nap about it for several thousand years!

Lyrium isn’t just a toxic mineral that causes neurological degradation but also happens to enhance magical ability – it’s actually the crystalised blood of an ancient race of giant beings that were hunted to extinction by the Actually Real Elvhen Gods!

The dwarves don’t have Stone Sense because of their specific cultural identity and because their society that’s based underground needs to know how to navigate without the sun – they were literally created by an ancient race of giant beings who decided to make them to the same vague shape as other bipedal mammals for some reason!

(these aren’t the only examples, they do it with everything from character backstories to religious schisms)

It’s like they don’t trust the player to suspend their disbelief in a fantasy world where magic and dragons are real, and the ironic thing is that by dissecting everything instead of just letting these story elements just be, it makes everything about Thedas feel smaller, and less like an intricate, organic world.

In DAO, we’re introduced to many gods – Avvar, Elvhen, Andrastian, as well as the dwarven concept of “the Stone” – and they exist in the role that gods fill in the real world: cultural artifacts that create a shared sense of identity. It makes sense for there to be similarities between the Elvhen Creators and the Avvar pantheon, given the amount of interaction between the two groups before they became isolated by persecution. Similarly, it makes sense that dwarves would have an entirely different theology structured around the material that literally encases them their whole lives and marks them as distinct from the surface-dwelling races. to reduce these belief systems to single, quantifiable truths makes as much sense as trying to claim the Real Zeus was [specific guy] from [specific time period]. It also does such disrespect to the individuals who make up these cultures, and who would have, through history, changed it simply by being part of it.

With the Titans specifically, they weren’t needed. We already had a concept of dwarves that worked well as a framework for the stories being told in the games: insular, rigid caste system, hub of the lyrium trade, collective PTSD from a millennia of fighting darkspawn. It’s cultural background radiation that adds motive and flavour for character actions, and that’s all it needs to be.

We don’t need to know precisely how Stone Sense works, just that it does. We don’t need to know where dwarves – or elves, or qunari, or humans – really come from, it’s enough for the story that they exist within a collective cultural identity. We don’t need to know what lyrium is, we just need to know that bad things happen when characters play with it.

It's fantasy. A wizard did it. The wizard shouldn’t feel the need to pull back his own curtain and then also rip the casing off the mechanism, just to prove how clever he is.

[prezaki]

Foundations of Mendel - Durandal in Context of His Biography and World

The goal of this write-up is figuring out how Durandal's disparate backstory bits fit in with both each other and the chronology of the Cosmic Era as a whole. It's my attempt at taking the retcons presented in Freedom and turning them back into a coherent narrative. (As a side effect, I also recap a lot of important lore that was not directly mentioned on the show.)

I begin far before Durandal was even born, because I think the tumultuous context of the Cosmic Era is fundamental to the emotional development of the show's adult cast. I'm basing everything here on the official timeline, which was initially published around 2004 (in MSV, for example) and reprinted as recently as 2012 in "Gundam SEED Mechanics and The World". The timeline is translated on the Gundam Wiki here, but I'll recap everything I deem important.

Lore that is not taken directly from the timeline or the anime itself will be marked either with its source or clearly labeled as speculation.

~*~

In the year CE 15 George Glenn releases the blueprint for how to make Coordinators. Initially, the practice is outlawed. The first generation of Coordinators is born in secret, mostly to wealthy parents who can afford both the treatment and the secrecy required. Siegel Clyne, Patrick Zala and Aura Maha Khyber all belong to this generation. They grow up on Earth, hiding their genetic type from their peers.

The public view on Coordinators doesn't change until CE 29, when George Glenn brings back Evidence 01, the space whale fossil. Confronted with the knowledge that intelligent alien life exists for certain, religious organizations lose influence on public ethics, thus resulting in their objections towards 'violation of the natural order' being rejected. Fueled by the thought that humanity would have to compete with a much wider universe, the creation of Coordinators booms and becomes commonplace.

This is also where space station Mendel marks its beginnings. It's a research hub centered around genetics, one of the facilities where parents would turn in order to have their children modified. The first secretly born Coordinators are all between 5 and 14 years old by this point, and for the first time more of their kind are created outside of covert efforts. None have reached adulthood yet.

And it won't be until around CE 40 that a significant enough number of the earliest Coordinators enters the workforce and begin having children. This shifts public opinion and puts a damper on the wide-spread enthusiasm. It becomes apparent that the adult Coordinators have a significant skill gap that sets them apart from their Natural peers. The fears and anxieties caused by this observed reality sees to it that Blue Cosmos once again finds mainstream appeal

It's now, in the year CE 41. Gilbert Durandal is born. I think this makes it very likely that his parents were some of the first Coordinators, still born in hiding. While it's still possible that he is first generation and made by Natural parents around this time by sheer coincidence, I think the fact that Aura finds his genetics fascinating enough to want to study them also speaks for him being second generation rather than directly modified.

Then in CE 44, when Durandal is 3 years old, the first set of PLANT colonies (Aprilius) is completed. The PLANTs are named as such because they were intended as manufacturing plants that should help the Earth by outsourcing a lot of production to space. They wind up being pretty much exclusively staffed by Coordinators since their abilities make it easier for them to effectively work in space. They're forbidden from producing their own food, thus keeping the workers totally dependent on Earth.

I think it's interesting to keep in mind that colony living as a wide-spread phenomenon is incredibly young in the Cosmic Era, even as opposed to the Universal Century which already had millions of people living in space in UC 20.

While there are around 10 million Coordinators by CE 45, a sizeable amount of them still lives on Earth. Hatred against Coordinators continues rising and terror attacks on the PLANTs are common. This is the social climate Aura experiences during her formative teenage years.

At the same time, dissatisfaction with the Coordination process is very commonplace as well. The (rich) people who shell out for designer babies are unhappy about even the slightest variation in their orders (let alone actual emergencies as they may occur in any pregnancies). The researchers at Mendel are at theirs wits end.

Trying to solve this perceived "problem", Ulen Hibiki works on the artificial womb. But he lacks funding, leading him to accept Al da Flaga's request to make a clone of himself in exchange for more money for his research.

Thus, in CE 46, Rau le Creuset is born.

As mentioned, at this point the seclusion of Coordinators living in the PLANTs is by circumstance rather than design. The founding of an actual organization of Coordinators is not until CE 50, when Siegel Clyne and Patrick Zala found the Zodiac Alliance. In its conception the Zodiac Alliance is a movement for autonomy of the PLANTs, including a right to make their own food. It is not well-received by the powers that be and driven underground pretty much immediately.

With that, we arrive at CE 53. Exactly 20 years prior to the events of Destiny, all the key players we know have moved to their starting positions and the plot threads we are familiar with begin unraveling.

The scene is Mendel. Ulen Hibiki, one of its best researchers. Aura Maha Khyber, also on Mendel although presumably working for a different company. She is engaged in a fierce rivalry with Hibiki. (Freedom Novel) 8 year old Rau, undergoing a secluded and strict education to become Da Flaga's heir. (SEED Novel) And Gilbert Durandal, 12 years old... also on Mendel, about to meet Aura Maha and change both their lives. (I am guessing on the year number - technically this could have also happened a year later, when Durandal is 13.)

Why Durandal came to Mendel is a mystery. Did his parents work there? Was he specifically coming there as a test subject? Or was his genius intellect big enough that he was coming there to work? Either way, his intellect is noticed by Aura and found to be exceptional. She begins studying his genes. (Freedom Novel)

Having grown up in these troubled times, Durandal was already trying to think of ways to use science to improve the world and bring about peace. The Destiny Plan is born here, as the naive dream of a tween. And "maybe we can use our newfound genetic expertise to give everyone a life that makes them happy" is perfectly reasonable as the dream of a kid who has immense intelligence but not yet attained true emotional maturity. And maybe it would have remained as such a dream, if not for Aura. Aura, at this point 29 years old, decides that actually the tween is CORRECT and we should absolutely structure the world around the tween's ideals! (Freedom Novel)

Maybe Aura is inspired in her fervor by the precarious point in history that they are in. George Glenn is assassinated either briefly before or briefly after Aura and Durandal meet. Making matters worse, Earth is faced with a pandemic of a new strain of influenza, which kills Naturals left and right but to which Coordinators are immune. Rumors spread that Coordinators engineered the illness, further escalating tensions. With things turning upside down this way, Aura may well have felt that she was on the cusp of a new era and given her the resolve to try and shape that era for what she felt is the better. We can only speculate.

Either way, the end result is that in CE 54, Aura actually convinces a whole team of researchers of her and Durandal's idea and begins creating a mediator master race for the new world they envision: the Accords.

Aura, just like Hibiki, is hurting for funding. Where Hibiki took money from the earth elite Da Flaga, Aura seeks her money from the Coordinators living on PLANT. She works on devising an anti-aging treatment as it is becoming increasingly apparent that the second generation of Coordinators is incredibly infertile and thus concerns are rising about the aging workforce. (Freedom Novel) (While this is the reason we are given in the text, the oldest Coordinators would only be around 40 at this point and the second generation around 20. The realization of second generation infertility would be very very recent.) Further, Aura's relative, the Emperor Mihar Khyber from Earth, is sending significant support to her project. (Freedom Novel) (My personal conclusion is that these circumstances led to Aura's labs being far better off financially than Hibiki's at this point, further worsening relations between the two.)

Then, in CE 55, Mendel sees its own little baby boom.

Via Hibiki gives birth to Cagalli. The first successful artificial womb gives birth to Kira. Lacusmama gives birth to Lacus. Aura gives birth to Orphee. An unknown researcher gives birth to Ingrid. (There is also a white haired baby in the movie screenshot, but Shura is two years too young to be the baby depicted. Mysterious!)

This is where I want to once again reiterate my belief that the Accords were carried to term rather than born from artificial wombs. Rau goes through great pains to tell us that an incredible amount of fetuses died in the attempt to get even a single live birth out of the artificial womb. It's absolutely nuts to think that Aura, two labs over, had successfully made three live births from artificial wombs just a few months before Kira was born.

The much less lorebreaking explanation is simply that Aura and Hibiki just had wholly different goals and priorities to start with. (Fukuda himself has stated at a live event that Aura's claims of Kira being a 'failed Accord' are nonsense, as Hibiki was never aiming to make an Accord at all.) Where Hibiki was trying to create a Coordinator that is 100% accurate to the genetic settings input by himself, Aura was much more focused on creating babies that had psychic abilities. It stands to reason that mild variations caused by natural pregnancy weren't a big obstacle.

In the same year, genetic modification is once again banned on Earth. From here on out, the only new Coordinators would be second and third generation Coordinators born to Coordinator parents. The creation of new Coordinators seems to have basically stopped entirely - if some secret births are happening, they do not impact canon significantly enough to ever be brought up.

Unfortunately neither the ban on making new Coordinators nor Mendel's scientists successfully developing a vaccine for the pandemic satisfy Blue Cosmos. They launch a terror attack on Mendel, as it is the epicenter of genetic research. Ulen Hibiki loses his life in the attack. Aura gets exposed to an overdose of her own anti-aging drug prototype and begins a painful months-long process of gradually aging in reverse until her body turns into that of a child. (Freedom Novel) Kira, Cagalli and Lacus are all brought away to their respective families. Durandal, now 14 years old, seemingly gets through the attack with no lasting injuries and decides to remain on Mendel, making more Accords with the now tiny Aura.

Around this time (presumably by CE 57), things start heating up for the Da Flaga family. Rau is introduced to the Da Flaga main house (and Mu) as the new heir. It is implied that it is then that Da Flaga finds out that Rau suffers from short telomeres. (SEED Novel) This essentially means that his cells are the same age as Al's cells - middle-aged. Rau will die around the same time as Al, making him completely useless as a successor. It's possible that this prompts Al to call up Mendel labs to order a second clone - if Rey is born around this year that would make him around 16 by the time of Destiny, matching the timeline pretty well. Before Al can find out whether or not Rey suffers from the same defect as Rau, he is burned alive within his mansion. Rau has decided to do a little righteous arson in retribution for having been discarded.

With Rey now born, he winds up living a sad shadow existence on Mendel. In one lab, there's Rey, growing up isolated and alone. In another, Aura and Durandal merrily keep making siblings for Orphee and Ingrid and raising them all carefully (as specimens and tools). Knowing they were only separated by a few buildings sure is a terrible irony....

The last Accord (Redelard) is born in CE 60, when Durandal is 19 years old (and Aura is 35 going on 11). I feel like it puts a great amount of context to Durandal's messiah complex to consider how much his teenage years were fully dominated by Aura and her reinforcement. An idea for creating a simple utopia is something you might grow out of as you learn more nuance, but it's hard to learn that nuance when you have an accomplished older researcher constantly telling you you're right and literally making designer humans for you. I believe that at this point, Durandal is still fully convinced of the Destiny Plan (Masterrace Edition).

The Destiny novelizations feature a scene from when he and Talia were still dating, in which he gets all starry-eyed telling her about how he truly believes science will save the world and everyone in it. With the retconned-in knowledge that at that point he's hiding half a dozen of genetically-engineered children from Talia, the scene takes on an even more sinister tone... And yet his enthusiasm and desire to do good are sincere. The scene should take place sometime around this time. We don't know when Durandal and Talia started dating, but I imagine it's a year or two after Redelard is born. After all, Durandal and Talia already break up in CE 63 - when Durandal is 22 and Talia is 18. (Omake Quarters)

At the time of this scene, there are 7 children who think of Durandal as their father - but he doesn't think of them as his children, both because they were made when he was too young to be a father and because they are not genetically 'his'. It's such bitter, bitter irony. Aura certainly created a mess for everyone involved when she decided that making custom babies for a 13 year old boy was a reasonable thing to be doing.

I tend to think of CE 63 as the big turning point year for Durandal's life another way as well. In my opinion, it is the year in which Aura and the Accords move to Earth.

This picture appears to have been taken in a colony, so it must have been while all of them were still on Mendel. The Accord's sterile-looking outfits support that assumption. If you ask me, Redelard looks about 3, while Orphee and Ingrid could feasibly be 8. Durandal could easily be 22. Going with those ages would place the image squarely into CE 63. In my interpretation, this picture is a commemorative goodbye photo, taken specifically as a keepsake.

(Since the picture shows Durandal wearing his chairman outfit (that he shouldn't be wearing until a decade later), it's hard to take the clothes Aura and Durandal wearing seriously as indicators of timeline. They appear to have been chosen solely for being their most iconic looks. However, I'm still choosing to interpret the fact that Aura donned her queen garb here as supporting evidence towards this headcanon.)

My more relevant reasoning for Aura moving to Earth at this point is that it solves a major timeline conundrum: it gives an explanation for why Rau doesn't know about the Accords (as confirmed by Fukuda at a live talk session). If Aura and the Accords had still been living on Mendel while Durandal befriended Rau, it'd have been odd for Rau to not find out about them. But if Aura has already left for Earth, then Durandal has a much easier time lying by omission.

Besides, Aura has good reason to want to hide out on Earth. Due to her connections to a royal family, she's guaranteed to have a safe and comfortable living - and it gives her opportunity to amass more power and influence. Once the Mendel labs ceased being needed (for producing more Accords), why wouldn't she leave them behind to try and advance her plans elsewhere?

I think that Rau and Durandal met shortly after Aura left. The exact year is hard to pin-point, but I assume it's been the same year (CE 63) and CE 65. This would make Rau between 17 and 19 years of age, matching his appearance in the flashbacks.

Why would Rau return to Mendel at this point? Funnily enough, Freedom provides a plausible answer to this!

With Aura gone, Durandal is presumably the new head of her previous research team. This also leaves him as the person in charge of whatever is left from her anti-aging program. Rau, who is literally dying of accelerated aging, has every reason to try and check out this research. It's plausible that the pills Durandal custom-makes for Rau are roughly based on the same medication that de-aged Aura. The de-aging itself is likely not an option for Rau as a) it seems to have left Aura incapable of ever going back to becoming an adult and b) it is unknown whether or not her physical transformation actually extended her lifespan at all. Further supporting this idea is the fact that Rey only goes symptomatic during the events of Destiny (Destiny Novel), when he is approximately ~16 years old. Being genetically identical, Rau might not have experienced any seizures or migraines until he was a teenager. His symptoms would make it necessary to seek out treatment in order to be able to continue his career unhindered.

Over their time as doctor and patient, Durandal goes intrigued with Rau. And how could he not? Rau is the shadow-side of everything that Durandal had venerated. Durandal had been creating designer babies with good intentions, but now one such created child is staring at him with hatred in his eyes. For the first time removed from Aura's direct influence and confronted with a person entirely unlike anything he'd seen before, Durandal can mature for the first time.

Seeing Rau teaches him about the unhappy byproducts of ambitions, and it also shows him that Coordinator supremacy is a load of bullshit. Rau is a Natural, a terminally ill one at that, but he's blending in with Coordinator society without issue. Between that and the first-hand knowledge that Naturals like Ulen Hibiki were also able to keep up with Durandal and Aura just fine, Durandal's view shifts more strongly. Coordinators may be all-rounder talents, but a Natural (when doing what they have aptitude for) would not lose to them. Unlike Aura, who is stewing in anti-Natural sentiments, Durandal is open to seeing the talents of others and adjusting his ideas accordingly. The rift forms.

Sometime into Durandal and Rau's friendship, they find Rey who's still been isolated in a different laboratory. Rey would be between 6 and 10 years old at the time. Testament to the trust between them, Rau leaves raising Rey to Durandal. Durandal, now well into his 20s, is now actually of an age to be having children and also actually loves the person the child is tied to. It makes Rey fundamentally different from Orphee.

Then in CE 68, Mendel has to close down due to a bio-hazardous incident. (I am fond of the theory that Rau is the cause of that incident and that's why he told Durandal to take Rey and move to the PLANTs beforehand.)

In CE 69, the existence of a ZAFT military is made public knowledge. Some of the Junius colonies are converted for food productions as PLANT takes real steps towards autonomy. By then, most Coordinators have fled Earth to the PLANTs.

The first PLANT-Alliance war begins CE 70. It continues into CE 71, the year Gundam SEED is set. Rey, then 13 years old, enters the military academy to follow in Rau's footsteps.

Meanwhile Aura is plotting on Earth, still believing Durandal to be fully on her side. She seems to be sorely mistaken.

When Durandal tries to enact his new version of the Destiny Plan (notable not featuring a masterrace) in CE 73, he never once calls on Aura for assistance. It stands to reason that he has emotionally and materially abandoned Aura and the Accords after meeting Rau. Fukuda himself has questioned whether Durandal was truly on Aura's side. (Live Talk Event) Further, fandom friend made the pretty salient point that Durandal personally handpicked Shinn as his ace. Shinn is a super-pilot notable for fighting purely on instinct and thus being impossible to defeat with psychic abilities. He's the perfect anti-Accord weapon. Had Durandal won, would he have had Shinn wipe out Aura and her children? We cannot know, but it's definitely possible.

The Durandal we see on the show earnestly believes that the Destiny Plan will be an equalizer between Naturals and Coordinators, bringing out Naturals' full abilities and allowing them to compete fairly. He does not seem to hold any specific Coordinator-supremacist view. Some of the most important people in his personal life (Rau and Rey) are Naturals. This is fundamentally at odds with the picture of him that Aura tries to paint. Durandal on the show wishes for Kira's death so no 'Ultimate' remains to imitate. By the same reasoning, he would want to get rid of the Accords so they cannot inspire greed and jealousy that would lead to more suffering like Rau's.

That's why I say that taking what Aura says about him at face value wholly destroys the character as had been established prior.

But laying out the backstory like this, I think we can peace it all back together into a consistent character. Was this the intended read? I do not know. It's the read I am going with anyway.

Despite being a nihilistic murderous maniac, Rau le Creuset did manage to change one man for the better. Even if 'better' only means 'slightly less deranged' in this case, I appreciate it on a thematic layer. Even a man who thinks of himself as wholly unlovable, as destruction incarnate, can bring about positive change simply by existing and being loved in spite of it all.

[insult-2-injury]

A Worthy Distraction

Header by my wonderful and talented friend @drawlypsy. Please go check out their work, they're fucking amazing.

AO3 Link NSFW Dottore/femReader, murder couple, dirty talk, fingering, questionable coping mechanisms, over the pants feelies, villains will be villains, trauma

[This is a Genshin OC one-shot I wrote for friends and then rewrote into a reader insert. Some tenses and stuff may be a little wonky here and there, but I think I caught most of it. It is only a tad OC-centric, as reader does have a backstory, but it's minor and shouldn't make a difference. Idk. There's smut.]

The lowdown: reader has anemo vision w/ pyro delusion, has one metal claw hand and PTSD to match

~~~~~~

You lay on your side, sprawled out across an uncomfortable-looking exam table like a cat in a patch of sun, yawning and stretching as you awoke from a short nap. Head twitching to the side, Dottore acknowledged your entry into the waking world with a rigid nod and a tiny quirk of his lips, something that could almost be categorized as a rigid smile, before turning back to the subject on his table. 

You shot him a cheeky grin, unruly tufts of your hair falling across your face as you did so. Your socked foot tapped a rhythm onto the metal beneath, warm now with the prolonged heat of your body. Your head thumped back against the metal… Bored. So bored.

Archons, you were just as ambitious as he when it came to testing out new ideas and just as prone to getting lost for hours in the mental process of it all. But he had been at this experiment for days, barely sleeping, hardly eating. Your best friend Ana was off on some secret Fatui mission, his more tolerable clones were deployed in Sumeru, and chatting up the locals was apparently a non-starter. Besides, it wasn’t your fault anyway that the local creperie burned down. And, unrelated, what kind of creperie ran out of fucking crepes?

You were bored. So completely and utterly bored. You sat up, criss-crossing your legs beneath you in order to better watch the Doctor work.

Dottore was a straight line– seemed perfectly content staying in one spot for an entire day, his mind single tracked and obsessive. You, on the other hand, took the path of a crack of lightning, your interests branching and changing rapidly, new revelations branching into new ideas and new ideas springing into new experiments and it was a wonder you ever finished anything at all. You always did benefit from someone who could help organize the near constant fusillade of inspirations in your head. 

You used to have someone. Now they were the ghost in every corner.

You needed distractions. And a man possessed could provide no such thing. Your fingers twitched and the pyro delusion warmed on your hip. Then burned. You inhaled sharply, your heart rate picking up.

You blinked away at the encroaching visions that threatened to steal you, usher you inside. The disembodied voices and the ghostly feeling… the familiar mourning of the fiercest kind of love expanding in your chest but with no vessel, no discernible memory to hive it away in. So full yet so terribly out of reach and–

“You’re fidgety tonight,” Prime said calmly and you gasped, your eyes shooting open in time to catch the fire blossoming at your fingertips, having singed a small hole through the thin fabric of your shorts. Cursing, you swatted at the smoke as he continued evenly. “Go take a walk outside if you must.”

You allowed the span of a few centering breaths to pass as your gaze fell upon Dottore’s raven mask laying on the counter behind him. Your gaze darted back to his uncovered features and you found yourself drawn in, and not for the first time. It was a recent breakthrough, one he’d made no announcement of despite the shock when he’d removed the thing in front of you; a promising sign of trust from a man who so lauded in the unsettling air of mystery he exuded.

You fiddled with the mask in your own hair as you observed. The ancient scar that crossed the bridge of his nose and extended up to his right temple, eyes untouched, the rest of his face pale, smooth, and unscathed. The scar that he could easily remove with his scientific prowess yet he kept it just the same. You’d always reckoned it was a reminder of something; a tether of sorts.

And Celestia knows a mind without a tether was a dangerous thing. Yes, you thought, Celestia would know, indeed.

You let out a sudden shriek of laughter, unprovoked.

“Ah, shucks. You’re always trying to send me away,” you chided finally, rolling the singed fabric between your thumb and forefinger. “Besides, it’s the middle of the night, bozo.” 

The stiff, weary shake of his head was indicative that he was now only slightly bothered by the plethora of nicknames that you’d coined to get under his skin. Good, you thought with delight, he’d better get used to it.

“I mean, heck,” you continued, throwing up your arms, “who knows what kind of monsters are skulking about out there?”

Dottore’s piercing, crimson eyes latched onto yours and you smiled at the clear meaning within.

Worse than me?

A familiar shock of yearning racked the length of your spine. You gnawed at the inside of your cheek, noting the way his eyes flicked to the motion of your lips before slowly drawing back up, almost expressionless. But you knew his little intricacies by now; the indiscernible twitch of his eyelids when you toed the line with him, the drumming of those long, elegant fingers against any available service whenever he was in deep thought. 

How he studied you when he thought you weren’t paying attention.

You had always been attracted to the dark; where flame cast light upon a brick wall you were drawn to the shadows that slid effortlessly in between, morphing and making their quiet nests within the cracks in mortar. Yes, Dottore was indeed a darkly beautiful thing, you thought, not allowing your gaze to stray from his.

“I was under the impression you could handle yourself,” he said coolly, but the bladed glint in his unflinching stare was bright and calculating, even beneath the eerie shadows cast over his features by the medical lamp above. “Was I wrong to think so?”

Hmph. All work and no play made the Doctor cranky. Your nose twitched and you cocked your head, lips curling coyly.

“I can handle myself just fine,” you said, baring your teeth. “But you’d miss me, wouldn’t you?” You placed your chin in your palm to drum fingers against your cheekbones but didn’t wait for his answer. “So I’ll stay right here. For the good Doctor’s sake, of course.” 

You winked.

“For my sake. Of course,” he murmured, examining your wide, inciting grin and the butterfly flutter of your eyelashes. A tiny quirk of his lips betrayed his forced impassivity before he put a pin in the expanding balloon of tension by turning back to the body on the table silently.

You swallowed down the uncharacteristic dryness in your throat.

There were different routes you could take to get your desired result, one that would ease the ache between your legs and provide you a worthy distraction from the ghosts in every corner. You were used to people winding up putty in your hands, pliable and needy; even the self righteous ones. You just had a gift about you, an impulsive need for control in all senses of the word that people just responded to.

Except him.

To have Prime in your greedy clutches would be nothing short of euphoric. But there was something ancient and omniscient about him that made him effortlessly superior to them all, as if he would slip like sand through the fingers of anyone who tried to hold him. He was patient, unhurried; a lone viper coiled atop its rock, full-bellied and confident in his supremacy, so many leagues above that he had all the time in the world.

Your lips twitched. But, so did you now, didn’t you? Cursed with immortality and ironically bestowed the power to alter time; a power that centuries ago you would have used to pulverize the very forces that had granted them to you in the first place. But time just wasn’t enough for you. You were a creature starved. You wanted to devour and destroy each moment now until nothing remained but the burning foundation. And even that must go.

Your mind strayed again and you fought to ground yourself. All must go.

You hissed between your teeth, leaping off the table to take up space beside Dottore, shoulder pressing into his as you studied his bloody work. You viewed his profile in your periphery; his bladed nose, the soft, steel blue curls that framed his face, the slight, disapproving curl of his lips downward as he was jostled.

“Need any assistance?” you said brightly.

“I do not.” His hands began to move carefully across the corpse, but you knew enough about his craft and were observant enough to see that his focus wasn’t on the experiment before him. 

 “Hm… You want a drink or something?” 

“No,” he said shortly, and then as if remembering himself, “... but thank you.”

“Well, you must be hungry at least.” Your long fingers dared to wrap his elbow, fiddling with the rolled up arms of his blue linen shirt before trailing up to his bicep, squeezing. “Goodness, you���re all skin and bones, crazy you can even hold that scalpel like you are. It’s almost like… like… like holding a flimsy little test tube…”

Dottore’s chin dipped, the slope of his nose tipping down toward your mocking countenance, which faltered slightly when his gaze dropped briefly to the two fingers now trailing over the sharp buckles of his arm bands. You hadn’t touched Prime before besides the occasional brushing of shoulders and on the surface, he didn’t seem the type to enjoy such things. Maybe all it took was the right button.

But Prime only hummed, crimson red eyes rising.

“Your actions suggest you desire to take this man’s place.” His voice was soft but rife with danger. Your tongue darted out to wet your lips and you cocked your head to the side like a mischievous crow. You seemed to share the same steady breath back and forth as you studied each other for a short moment.

“Suit yourself, old man,” you chirped, conjuring a gust of anemo to tousle his loose, hanging locks of unruly hair before releasing his arm abruptly and in a blur of motion swinging around to his other side. “You’re loads of fun, you know that? Have your harbinger friends ever told you what a dream you are?”

Friends. Maybe there was a segment of him that had what one could call a friend but Prime, you had observed, seemed to have no interest in any social dealings that didn’t involve the business of sinister diplomacy. The only person who came around here often enough was Pantalone, and you could hardly call a wallet a friend.

Not that you had many tried and true friendships besides Ana. There was, of course, the pink-haired stick bug that was a package deal with your best friend and he seemed to be warming up to you a bit, but on the whole, people just seemed to tolerate you. Not your fault. Social skills were a fucking bitch.

“Has anyone ever told you how exasperating you really are?” he retorted and then continued, softly mocking, like he was speaking to a child. “This experiment is a particularly sensitive one that requires a certain amount of space and time to complete. Space and time that you seem unwilling to provide.”

“Provide?” You giggled and leaned in close, voice a low purr in his ear. “You get awfully mean when you’re frustrated, Doctor.” And you swung from him, sauntering away.

On a shelf across the room, a little radio sat playing quiet soul music. With one slow stroke of your forefinger across the dial, you turned the volume up, wiggling your hips to the music as you bent across the counter. But when you peeked over your shoulder, he was paying you no mind. Worse, he was turned completely around, vials clanking as he fiddled with something in the depths of his cabinets. Your sly grin turned into a wrathful frown as you glared.

Taking the radio beneath one arm, you spun around to bow comically low, your free arm splayed out like the spread wing of a bird about to take flight. A gust of anemo slammed the cabinet door in his face and he paused, hand still mid air. Then, terribly slow, he turned, eyes hooded and serpentlike but otherwise expressionless. You waited for his full attention with a feral grin on your face before you flicked the volume up another notch and spun out of the stance.

Your socks slid clumsily across the rubber floor as you moved with exaggerated motions, using the radio as a dance partner, swaying to the egregiously loud music. And to add insult to injury, you sang along, too, belting out the words like you were doing all this to save your own life. 

Dottore’s eyes were all that moved as they followed, crimson glowing in your periphery as you twirled. And even if he had raised his voice above the cacophony, you wouldn’t have been able to hear him. But his gaze challenged just the same.

You shrugged, turned the volume up to max and watched his eyelids twitch in contemplation before he started to carefully put the corpse before him away, zipping them into a body bag before rolling the table away and into the walk-in freezer. He returned, surprisingly gloveless fingers casually brushing down the front of his pants.

All the while, you danced closer, singing and laughing with frenzied glee, winding up to perform a full running slide toward him. But a small, abrupt twitch of Dottore’s wrist paired with a warning, devilish tick of his lips had you dropping the radio in order to conjure your polearm, spinning it elegantly above your head. 

The cogs of a clock rotated before your eyes, a secondhand wheeling at an impossible speed. With practiced ease, you whirled it swiftly back, resetting the clock. You slid to a steady halt in front of him.

The giant needle, half the size of you, that would feasibly have torn into your flesh floated innocently now beside his head, gleaming in the fluorescent light. You searched him with razor eyes, a cocked grin on your face as you reached out with the deadly point of a clawed finger to prop under his chin while the other wiggled beneath the center strap of his harness to pull his face closer. “You weren’t actually going to use that little pin trick on me, were you? I was looking for a dance partner, princess,” you tutted, “not a fight.”

And not taking your gaze off his, you stretched out with your free hand to slowly turn the point of the intimidating needle away from yourself. “Ooh, that is sharp, though!” you remarked. “Very impressive, doctor, I should fashion you up a fancy shmancy corkboard to match. Because you know, I’m nice like that. Now, wanna tell me why you’d go and ruin my good fun?”

“Your good fun…” He hummed regretfully. The finger beneath his chin dug in and he chuckled, a dark blaze of interest in his eyes. “You are right, my dear, I may have overreacted. Well, I am sorry, for all that my word is worth. I simply had the strangest inkling you weren’t listening to me. But now…” The corners of his lips twitched just slightly. “Now you must think me quite uncivil.”

You grinned and met him in the middle of the playing field, the claw beneath his chin falling to round his neck. “You did forget your manners there for a second, huh?”

Dottore hummed, leaning unexpectedly forward and into the grip of your unmoving talons. It seemed every segment of the Doctor favored a nice side plate of anguish, and Prime was no different. They really were just flowers plucked from the same garden. 

The talon of your thumb dug into his pulse point and he let out the softest groan, his breath tickling the strands of hair across your forehead. 

One of his hands peeled your hold carefully from round his neck, holding it instead against his chest. You swallowed down a secret, hidden delight born of being held by a being who did not often seek out the pleasures of touch. In this moment, he was yours. Your Prime.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head, Doctor,” you said, “I can think of several ways to atone.” 

Clawed hand laced beneath his, your free hand trailed down to his lower abdomen, pausing so as to peer up at him through your eyelashes. His breathing remained practiced and steady but there was no mistaking the muscles that twitched and jumped beneath his shirt as your fingers danced innocently from hip to hip. His tongue darted out to wet his lips and his eyes rose to meet yours.

“I shudder to think what punishments a mind such as yours could dream up,” he said lightly. 

Too lightly. Too unbothered. 

“I’d only give as much as you’re able to take, of course.”

“Ah, of course.” 

Dottore huffed out a dark laugh, his free hand rising up to almost tenderly stroke the ticklish outline of your jaw before falling to cup beneath. “I’ve been told I’m long-winded but you don’t give up do you? An admirable trait in some circumstances, I suppose. But you are a horribly impatient thing.” 

His thumb pushed into the plush of your bottom lip, quietly admiring the give of it, the shades of red warping under his shifting pressure. “Although I suppose I have been quite busy, haven’t I?” he crooned and you felt a bright flicker of irritation at the implication that your entire time here had thus far revolved around a one-sided pining for him.

No, no. That wouldn’t do.

You had intended on taking him quick once he showed interest, but something bright and oddly delicate within the depths of your chest had you slowing down. Besides, you supposed a bit of teasing wouldn’t hurt. 

“Being elbow deep in your funny little corpses all day makes you awful ornery. I just think you could use a break.”

Your hand dropped those final fatal inches, brushing along the front of his pants, fingers dragging a slow, lazy rhythm across the twitching hardness beneath. Archons, he was big. And he knew it, too. Had no reservations about pushing his hips forward and into your grip just to watch your eyes widen.

With a centering intent, you located and swiped across the tip, pressing there to savor the bead of precum wetting slowly through. His grip tightened painfully on your jaw and his own thumb jerked forward, sliding between your teeth. His eyes dipped closed almost as if to center himself, his finger resting on the pad of your tongue.

Dottore’s crimson gaze reemerged and fell transfixed upon the digit you pinched between your teeth before releasing. His voice was surprisingly even when he spoke again. “Tell me what you want.”

“You on your knees,” you said candidly, stroking along his length again, so hot against the palm of your flesh hand. “Some begging would be nice.”

His chuckle was a roll of thunder, sinister and foreboding. “Oh? How forward,” he remarked.

“And just a liiiittle bit of your time. Since like you said, you’ve been so busy. Then we can go back to pretending you haven’t wanted this since the very beginning. Is that so much to ask?”

The slow, wicked curl of Dottore’s lips would have sent anyone else running for the hills, but not you, a vicious thread of want unspooling between your thighs at the sight. To have such villainous lips pressing not only to yours but to your legs, your breasts, your everything.

The thought gave you pause, if only for a moment, a lapse that he took full advantage of as he dragged his palms up your sides with the leisure of a man with unlimited patience, his presence hot and solid, thumbs brushing, swooping purposefully along the outside swell of your breasts before trekking back down to settle on your hips. 

“You just want a little bit of my time,” he repeated, nodding, “of course.”

You frowned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. With a sudden, urgent need to unravel him, you yanked his hips closer with a tug of his belt buckle. “Then why don’t you kneel, hm? Or better yet, pet, why don’t you get on all 4’s for me?”

Dottore’s chest rumbled against yours. “You know,” he said gently, “you were right about me.” Something about his tone had your brows knitting with unease, stomach twisting.

“Was I?”

“I do get mean when I’m frustrated.”

With a single toss of his head, three things happened in sequence. 

One, the needle beside Dottore’s head, the one your elemental skill had been holding in place, impaled into the tile behind you with a deafening crack. Two, there was a terrible sound of something whirring to life. And three, a cloud of winged darkness descended upon the two of you.

Ravens. Too many to count. With bright turquoise eyes and mechanical cries. They were jet black with gold stitching; the man couldn’t help but put signature pieces of himself into every one of his creations and these were no different.

A sudden, predatory step forward by Dottore sent you pedaling away, movement stalled by the backs of your legs hitting against the flat head of the embedded needle, too low to sit on, too wide to skirt around. Instinctively, your fingers found a stabling purchase in the center strap of his harness before you could topple backwards as he drove forward still.

In a terribly awkward mimicry of a ballroom dip, you hung off him, head whipping to the side to ward off the flurry of winged creatures that swept viciously past your faces like an ocean riptide. Spinning, they.painted an almost ethereal backdrop of black wings behind him for but a moment before they fell in a swirling formation around the two of you.

A tempestuous wind, one that matched the power and complexity of your frenzied mind, built with a vengeance around your feet as you swung your sharp gaze to his. Your taloned hand gripped into the blue linen of his shirt as you found an awkward balance, teetering backwards still, knuckles digging punishingly into his chest as you glared up at him.

“This isn’t fun for me,” you complained. “I’m not having fun.”

“Pity.” A thick laugh at your expense flowed like a dark lullaby from his chest as he addressed you with a sharp-toothed grin, ignoring the anemo tantrum even as his hair swept wildly across his face.

“Do you like control?”

“Yes,” you wheezed up at him, neck straining from the effort of holding your head up to glare at him. “I do. I really, really, do.”

“As it happens, so do I.”

“Oh well boo you, you absolute bore. You know, I was wondering where you kept that backbone.”

Both time and an unquelled fury had afforded you the capabilities to destroy a village with a single spin of your polearm. You both knew you could level the playing field if you wanted. And quite literally, too. But despite the terrible yearning to pin him into the nearest wall, to see him come apart at your hands, the storm remained strangely controlled. Even as you clung to him while he explored the notches of your spine gently, the movement clashing with that familiar lilt of cruelty with which he spoke.

“What was it you were searching for, hm?” he crooned. “For me to shirk the integrity of my research just for a meaningless dalliance? You seem to quite fancy the notion of vexing me into compliance, seeing how you’ve been trying to get this spine of yours bent over one of my exam tables for how many weeks now? You spoke of punishment earlier, well I’d like to subvert that notion entirely. Of what use are you having around at all if you only seek to meddle in my work?”

“Four,” you said simply and then in the following silence supplied, “four weeks I mean. And you’re in no position to be tossing around death threats. Not with those arms.”

“Aren’t I?”

Punishment came in the form of his fingers withdrawing from your spine, instead languidly dragging around to your lower stomach. Crimson eyes observed your reactions carefully as he slid a wriggling middle finger across the thin fabric of your shorts, mapping out and nestling between the hidden folds there. His eyes darkened with hunger at the intoxicating sound of your breath hitching. He pressed upward with the pad of that finger, carefully avoiding where you needed his touch most, circling your clothed entrance and basking in the heat emanating between your thighs.

“Shall I proceed?”

“Shall I proceed?” you mocked in a gruff voice. “What is this, open heart surgery? Pass me the scalpel, Doctor.”

“That could be arranged,” he responded, voice tight.

A quiet whine loosened from your throat when his arm slid around your lower back to better support his endeavor as he pressed his thumb into your clit. In a launched counterattack, you slashed four thin strips into his shirt with a flick of your wrist, then hoisted yourself up to his ear by wrapping the back of his neck.

“You want to look at my brain, too?” you said breathlessly. “You can finger fuck that, too, if you want.”

The arm around your back tightened painfully. He continued his exploration of the shape of your cunt, picking up a slow rhythm with two fingers circling your clit. The hand on your tailbone dragged up until it tangled into your hair, holding you there in the crook of his neck while he turned to whisper against your cheekbone.

“I wouldn’t put such temptations into my head, pet.”

“Nothing that wasn’t already there.”

“You are dangerously drawn to the profane, I’m afraid. Hm. What to do, what to do… I think the only way to silence such a perverse mind is to deprive it of what it craves most, wouldn’t you agree?” 

He paused in his ministrations.

You were sure the glare you yanked back to sear him with could've taken out a small village. “No. I would not.”

Dottore chuckled low, but the tone was something you’d never heard, so tattered and almost restrained. Your eyes flicked down to the space between them and you smirked when you saw just how restrained he really was. He snatched your jaw and pulled your focus back to him, squeezing into the meat of your cheeks when you bared your teeth at him.

“You’re not incorrect, though, I have weighed the merits of studying such a specimen as you.”

“Ooh,” you grinned. “Intimately?”

He turned your face to the side to examine. “By and large, people are just a complex sum of their parts but you…”

You’re a person of jagged, scattered pieces I haven’t quite figured out yet.

“-You’ve been useful to me thus far. But all things fade and my patience wears thin.”

The murder of ravens dove back toward you with the command of an unseen signal and you closed your eyes and giggled as talons caught in the mask in your hair, knocking it completely off your head. But when the cold strike of metal wings slit into the sleeve of your shirt, slicing a thin crimson line across your shoulder, your eyes narrowed onto his with a deadpan, lethal focus.

“Do you want to know what happens if you keep pushing? Hm?” His fingers retreated until they splayed across your lower stomach instead.

“Do tell.”

“The bite of a single raven is painless when compared to, let’s say the bite of a scalpel against unsuspecting skin,” he murmured and his lips curled into a razor smile in response to the shiver that drove down your spine even as you vowed not to react. 

“But just imagine in that creative head of yours… the onslaught of hundreds of tiny blades clipping away at flesh. Talons tearing into skin, muscle, perhaps even bone, reducing you to nothing but your base components in none but an instant. A deplorable thought, isn’t it.” The birds dive bombed again and you vibrated with the strangest kind of fever, your eyes fluttering shut as you teetered with the adrenaline, the hypnotizing lull of his voice as he spoke of Death.

Death. That big old thing with wings. Shy and sweet - that shadowed creature that flitted just there at the corner of your eye. Always there, gone no matter how swiftly you turned to look. Soft and unforgiving, a small comfort, as light as the feather of a single raven. That’s all they were, just feathers across time. 

“Open your eyes.” You did with a whine, locking onto Dottore with a furrowed brow, your hands trailing up to bury into his shoulders, recentering yourself with reality. “After all, those would go first, I’m sure. Ravens are inclined to burrow, build their nests in high places. Ah, perhaps I’ll put your skull on my bookshelf. What a pretty sight that would be,” he crooned. His thumb swept up and smoothed across your brow almost comfortingly, circling down to rest on the crest of your cheekbone. Your head buzzed and a deadly impatience gnawed at the place his hand rested unmoving on your belly.

“It is a pain beyond the bounds of human comprehension, to die in such a way, at least from what I’ve borne witness to. Is it Death that you crave? I wouldn’t allow a creature such as yourself a tedious end, you know. No, you deserve something more… remarkable.” With an uncharacteristic bout of submission that had his head cocking in satisfaction, you allowed his hand to wrap your neck, the experimental squeeze like a trigger, your hips rolling needily into his. 

“So I’d beg you the question, what comes next?” he asked. “What happens if you continue to push and push?”

Dottore’s erection dug into the soft of your stomach when you pressed forward, your palms rising to cup his face in wonder. Your eyes followed the track of his swallow. 

Such a beautiful distraction he was. 

“Oh, Dottore… Oh, please, Dottore,” you sang out like a damsel in distress before lightning quick, you wrenched his head to the side to hiss in his ear. “So poetic. Romantic, even. Death by a thousand cuts and all that. Listen, I’ll tell you what happens,” you panted, a pyro fervor rising quickly to the surface of your skin. “Birds or no birds, if you don’t make me cum, I’ll call every last scrap of power you so sweetly bestowed upon me just to incinerate this place to nothing but the ashes of your hard work. What a fucking waste that would be, hm? No punishment quite like the consequences of your own actions is there? Oop! Hello karma, let me introduce you to my good friend the Doctor!” You tittered when the muscles of his jaw clenched beneath your grip.

“And then, Doctor, when we’re both standing here in the rubble of this archon forsaken place, I will go out of my way to abuse the laws of time just to make sure you suffer over and over again and then I will burn you, Prime, I will burn you if you don’t move your fucking fingers right now-”

The rest of your sentiment was cut off by a fist clenching into your hair, tearing your lips away from his ear and crushing them against his own. With a shattered groan, he poured his frustration down your throat while he did exactly as you requested, picking up an intensely fast rhythm against your clit that had you clawing at his biceps, startled from the sudden friction, your squeal of surprise swallowed whole by the violence of his kiss.

There was nothing gentle about the way he moved against each you, hips grinding a relentless rhythm, lips bruising yours as he nipped and licked, hand fisting so tightly in your hair you swore he’d take a good bit of it with him if he ever decided to remove himself.

And nothing could have prepared you for the peculiar sensation - an uncharacteristic feeling of being completely unsure of what came next. Of being knocked completely sideways whilst never feeling more balanced. Like there was a pulsing thing in your sternum running parallel to your heart, some melancholy sensation that centered and secured. 

That tethered.

Wind howled around them. Birds cried. And somewhere, somewhere in your addled mind, there was quiet.

Pleasure recycled from your mouth and into his as he drove you toward a climax that came fast but ferocious in its intensity. The borders of your vision faded until all you could do was wrap your arms around his shoulder and hold on as you shook against him, a high pitched whine spilling from between your lips. And his crimson gaze, glazed and almost desperate, remained open to study the way in which you unraveled; how your eyes screwed shut, your fingers finding purchase in his own hair, tugging it terribly hard to prove some semblance of control over him even as you came apart with nothing but his fingers.

Time, with no assistance, seemed to stand still as you came to, your nose pressed into the soft crook of his neck, arms still wrapping his shoulders. Papers were scattered, tables overturned. Some ravens flew still, riding the leftover anemo current above, while some perched, eyeing the two of them with a cold, mechanical disinterest.

A song played on that little radio somewhere, broken and skipping but still pushing through as he swayed back and forth.

“Are we… dancing?”

“Quiet.”

Soft wings brushed across the hollowness in your chest and you nuzzled further into him without much thought. Holding your breath, you dragged your fingers down his chest, intent to undo him in the same way, his cock still hard and insistent against you, but he swatted your fingers away. Once, twice.

“Hey. You haven’t even-”

“Be quiet.”

“Why do you get the lead?”

Dottore didn’t say a word, but his weary sigh tickled the back of your neck and you fell into the silence that comes with newness.

“Did you know ravens usually work in pairs to acquire their food?” you said suddenly.

There was a long pause. “...I did.”

“Hm.”

You said nothing else, and if he noticed the unsubtle way in which you stole back the lead, he didn’t say a word.

[cozywriter]

After two coffees and several breakdowns, I finally have my BVZ OC!

And because I don’t want to torture you guys with my horrid handwriting, all her info is typed here!

FULL NAME: “Yume Fujiwara”

PREFERRED NAME: “Yume”

NICKNAMES: “Yu” and “Mei Mei”

TITLES AND ALIASES: “The Book Keeper” and “Ms. Dazai”

PRONOUNS: She/Her

CHRONOLOGICAL AGE: 10 Years Old

MENTAL AGE: 24 Years Old

GENDER: Female

SEXUALITY: Asexual

RACE: Poppet

Poppets are mechanical dolls that are designed and manufactured by Puppeteers — people who are licensed to design and create Poppets — who are commissioned by clients to create them for any purpose. Because of this, Poppets can pretty much look, act and sound like anything. However, a dead giveaway are their ball-joints located behind their elbows, wrists, fingers, where their pelvis meets their thighs, behind their knees, ankles and toes. As creations, a Poppet’s personality depends on their programming, however in extremely rare cases, Poppets have been known to break from their pre-programmed self and become sentient. In simpler terms, although extremely unlikely, it is possible for a Poppet to become their own person despite their former programming

ORIGIN: Victoria

BIRTHDAY: Unknown

OCCUPATION: Informant/Bounty Hunter

HEIGHT: 5’1”

WEIGHT: 153 lbs

PERSONALITY: Adventurous, Loyal, Optimistic, Kind, Empathetic, Stubborn at times, Childish, Forgetful and Clumsy

POWERS: Yume has the ability to eject solid steel strings from her fingertips, which she then uses like whips during combat, tools in traversing harsh terrain and sometimes uses them to pick locks when necessary. When she’s especially irritated, she uses her strings to control her opponent by wrapping them around their wrists, knees and feet and make them off themselves. However at the same time, she also uses them to assist in her everyday life, such as using them to grab objects from across the room. All in all, her ability is very versatile, but their maximum length is only 20 feet long.

BACKSTORY: Commissioned by the Mafia, Yume was designed to be one of the first Poppets the organization would utilize to dispatch their targets or anyone who dared cross one of their own. However, after a failed assassination attempt on a high ranking Government Member of Empirica, the Mafia had left her for dead and resorted to using a protocol that forcibly shut her systems down, resulting in her memory banks being wiped. Two months later, she wakes up in a junkyard of some kind due to a lightning strike kickstarting her once more. With no clue who or what she was, she wandered and wandered until she found Sensei’s Temple, in which she trained and studied under him. She continued living her life never knowing of her past and eventually breaks from her programming and developed as her own person with Sensei’s guidance. Later on, she even comes to think of him as a father of some sorts and develops his taste in literature. Fast forward to five years later and she now owns a quaint bookstore, aptly named “Doll House” and makes a living by selling books, information on anyone people pay her to tail and a few bounties here and there.

EXTRAS:

She often forgets the keys to her bookstore at home, so she resorts to lock picking most of the time

the official time line of events is supposed to go something like this: Mafia (2 Years) -> Training with Sensei (5 Years) -> Opens her bookstore -> (1 Year) -> Starts her Bounty Hunting Career (Onwards)

before she broke from her programming, she was aloof, insensitive and lacked empathy. However, after an incident involving a lone, stray pup and one lengthy talk about responsibility from Sensei, she cried for the first time, mumbling about how it was just missing its mama and wanting a home. So with great hesitancy, Sensei let her keep the pup… Until it ran away the next day and Yume was inconsolable for about a week.

since coming to Sensei’s Temple, he had given her a new name based off of a character in one of his novels. “Yume” meaning “Dream” and “Fujiwara” meaning “Wisteria Field”. Her true name from her time in the Mafia remains unknown.

She dislikes modding her own body despite knowing how to

She does best in melee combat even without her strings.

She has a soft spot for children and baby animals, to the point she almost cries in happiness at anything they do.

She likes anything sweet but dislikes anything sour

on the same note, she prefers cold drinks over hot ones, but dislikes cold meals and prefers when they’re piping hot.

She doesn’t know that Sensei had died

She dislikes the zombie outbreak since they drive away her usual customers, but it has given her the time and opportunity to continue reading her own books, so she’s thankful for it to an extent.

[nekole-doodles]

For today's DMSP AU, Imma talk about my Fullmetal Alchemist DSMP AU, one of my many AU mash-ups! Here we go!

Obviously, this is heavily based on Fullmetal Alchemist(The original manga plot and the FMA: Brotherhood series btw) so here are some of the roles the characters have:

Tommy - Edward Elric: They both have similar personalities but one is tall while the other is made fun of for being short which is hilarious in my opinion :) Also, Tommy joined the military when he was 12-14 and he's currently 16.

Ranboo - Alphonse Elric: I had to think about this one a lot since Tommy and Ranboo wouldn't be blood brothers like in the original and Ranboo would not be a suit of armor. Ranboo is the adopted brother of Tommy and they're still really close. Ranboo's soul was transferred into a sort of large organic doll/chimera that was the experiment of Phil(who takes the place of Von Hohenheim, I'll get to him in a bit). It's basically a lot like C! Ranboo's body but it's incredible durable/has tough skin(as in bulletproof), can't digest food(the body will reject and Ranboo would end up having to spit it out), can't sleep, and can't feel anything(he can hear, see, and smell, but not taste, feel pain/feel anything physical). His original body is basically Ranboo in real life but younger. The body Ranboo's soul is in has a lot of complexities to it that will be explained for another time.

Tubbo - Winry: He's an automail mechanic, it suits him. He also won't hesitate to clonk Tommy's head with a wrench if Tommy gets careless with his automail. He's surprisingly strong(as in probably being able to pick Tommy up and throw him) and hates feeling powerless despite always being left powerless.

Phil - Von Hohenheim: Still immortal and still left his family. Tommy doesn't like Phil because he left them but Ranboo feels more neutral about Phil. Basically like in the original FMA. Phil's wife is, of course, Kristin(RIP). He also doesn't have wings. Idk what else to say for Phil, he's really similar to C! Phil and Von Hohenheim.

Wilbur(not related to cc! Wilbur) - Roy Mustang: It just fits so well in my brain. His title is the Dynamite Alchemist and yes, he is sane. He's a lot like L'manberg era Wilbur but much less naive since he's seen what war is. ALSO, his uniform is extremely similar to the L'manberg military uniform in C! DSMP(but without the hat), I just really like that idea :)))) He and Tommy have a similar relationship as Ed and Roy in FMA but if you added more friendship and fondness because I love Crimeboys in AUs and DSMP :]

Techno - Scar: I debated VERY HARD on this one between Techno taking the role of Scar or General Armstrong/Olivier Armstrong because both fit so well for me. In the end, I decided on Scar but with a different backstory. Techno is a piglin hybrid because I added hybrid races to this world. So far, there are Enderians(I'll talk about them more in another post) and Piglins but there might be more. Techno is an anarchist still and he's very strong and good in combat. I still haven't figured out how he'll gain the destructive alchemy ability but I know that at some point, he'll be able to do more reconstruction, even being able to change the physical appearance of a person(that'll be elaborated on later). Techno did not kill Tubbo's parents btw, so Tommy doesn't have as much anger towards him besides the fact he keeps trying to kill state alchemists and succeeding most of the time. When Tommy and Techno had to work together, they had some surprisingly nice joking moments but it still took a while for Tommy to be comfortable around him since, y'know, Techno tried killing him on several occasions. I think he'll still have the voices which will be a major part of his backstory that I'm still piecing together.

Okay, it's late and I'm tired so that's all you're getting right now.

[drstonetrivia]

Chapter 207 Trivia

The Nanami family has about as much backstory as the Ishigami family does at this point… What does this all mean… 🤔

Two half adders make a full adder, which can carry values to the next adder and so on. Eight adders would allows sums up to 8 bits in length, the maximum of which is 11111111, which is equal to 255 in binary.

Xeno's got his gamer chair back, complete with the headset! I bet he's pleased.

Rather than writing E=MC^2 or choosing another scientific option, he chooses… Poop.

This is rather hypocritical of him, as he is now around 5 years older than when he was when he called Taiju immature for doing a similar thing.

The printing paper they make is called thermal paper, as it contains dyes that change color with heat. The paper uses the zinc sulfide from sphalerite as a developer, which is used to improve the color of the dyes.

The fax machine Senku makes is a rudimentary implementation of a rather advanced fax machine, in that the paper and overall design is modern, but lacks the fine details in the final prints that you can get nowadays.

There's several potential issues Senku could be mentioning here depending on how they built the fax machine, but here are 2 likely options:

Mechanical alignment of the two fax machines.

If the sliding of the pin is uneven, you could end up with some lines that are squashed or stretched. It may help to imagine this as pixels on a screen, but some have rows of pixels that are rectangular rather than square.

Data loss.

If the information for a dot is lost, the pin won't move. Instead, it'll print the information for the next dot in its place. This results in the whole image shifting left.

I'm still very impressed by Sai's active ambidexterity, though I'm not sure how he organizes how he writes since he's writing on even lines rather than one being on the odds and the other evens…

Still no update on Joel's arm since the bottom half is hidden, but everyone looks so happy to be in the picture! I wonder if Minami was the one to take it since she's not shown.

The faxed image isn't what it would look like with their setup, since it can only print a black dot or leave it white. In their image, there seems to be several shades of grey.

I altered it so that the dots were more uniformly dark which also brings out the misalignment.

Ryusui goes silent upon seeing the photo, but from the flashback he seems to care more about how Sai feels rather than feeling left out.

What's sad is that Ryusui was missing from the group photo in chp. 99 as well, hopefully not because he feels bad being in one without Sai.

Gen planned on only needing two cups for his casual interrogation of Sai, but then Chelsea happened, so Gen had to go get a third.

Ryusui and Sai are both quite tall, and Ryusui himself is 187 cm. If we take that as the average height of an adult male in the Nanami family, that means that this man here is over 3 meters tall.

Sai & Ryusui weren't born to the matriarch of the Nanami family, meaning they must share a father for them to be brothers. Since Sai looks half Indian and Ryusui doesn't, this likely means they have two different mothers, and that their father has had kids with at least 3 women.

At long last, Sai has formally joined the Kingdom of Science, and team 1 is ready to leave India.

…Or are they? We still haven't seen the "Math city founded!" label, so they may still be traveling around India.

This was a really good chapter. It feels like a classic: we have science, both fun and emotional character interactions, Gen doing important Gen things, poop jokes…

[empydoc]

SOUL EATER AU blake & bestie

check out the masterpost here!

welcome to a redacted soul eater au post! here, i try and discover what it'd be like if you merged the soul eater world and mechanics within the redactedverse. this is the eighth post in the series of posts i'll make regarding the individual characters and their listeners! we've got blake & bestie on the menu. enjoy!

༺♰༻

blake —  soul type: meister strongest meister ability: soul adjust - an advanced meister technique involved in wavelength control. it allows the meister to adjust another person's wavelength as long as the meister is stronger than their target. "compatible" with: bestie

seers have the innate ability of soul perception (being able to see another's soul), which means they are all typically meisters. blake is no exception, however due to an extensive use of training and development, he's also able to use the soul adjust ability. he actively uses it.

blake currently wields bestie, however he's noted to have had several weapon partners before. it's a surprise he kept up with them for so long, though, considering he must've had so many to have perfected the art of being an advanced meister.

making seers all meisters wasn't necessarily my original concept, although it works out in the end because of the fact that seers have a significance towards 'sight'. having seers own the natural ability of perceiving souls- an exclusive meister technique- simply makes sense to me, blake included.

༺♰༻

bestie — soul type: weapon weapon type: saw (blade) compatible with: blake

i can't make too many empowered type statements, purely because all we know about bestie's empowerment at the time of posting this is the fact that they are empowered at all. even so, making them a weapon seems to prove pretty safe, considering they aren't said to be any specific species different to a human.

when it comes to souls, though, blake's advanced meister technique comes in. actively, bestie's soul is being warped into compatibility with blake's. this means that they are artificially compatible instead of organically. there are no clear differences from this, but it's only a matter of time before someone notices.

bestie was honestly going to be a typical blade/dagger type weapon to reflect blake's symbol/icon. then i thought, 'these two aren't meant to be compatible. fate hasn't pulled them together, blake has.' and, so, i decided to make them something different.

lite backstory: for every post i make for the characters, i'll add some au backstory to really fill in some details you may be curious about!

blake used to wield bestie much before he stopped talking with them. they had a good connection as friends, as much as some may comment that it was an odd one, and worked well as a pair. unfortunately, since blake went radio silent, bestie hasn't bothered striving to find another meister, purely because they don't want what he did to them - for someone to leave unannounced - to happen again.

when blake eventually returned, they were hesitant to accept him back as a weapon/meister partner. then again, when blake showed them that they were "still compatible", bestie rethought a whole lot and figured their soul was telling them something they couldn't ignore.

they're meant to be close.

[cchr11]

These are some concepts I developed for good ol' Ulrika. (It's all wip)

I forgot to mention: everything previously stated before this post about her and her relationships has been retconned

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Backstory in a nutshell:

2008: The swedish hitman 'Ulrik Bielke I' migrates to Russia wanting to join the Mafia. The Russian Organized Crime tests his loyalty for a whole year before accepting him as a member, foreigners face stricters trials and rules.

2009: Ulrik I is accepted and quickly marries with a russian woman from within the organization. Plans to climb to the top by establishing the Bielke family as the top hitmen in the group.

2010: Ulrik Bielke II is born. During this decade the country stands out as one of the leaders for bioweapons development and human augmentation.

2015: Ulrik II's brutal training and conditioning begins. Within the same year, Ulrik I offers himself for mechanical augmentation to extend his career as the Russian Organized Crime's influence and power gradually creeps higher in the country. They acquire access to human augmentation technology to test it with their men.

2027: Ulrik II's training pays off and becomes one of the top hitmen at 17, accomplishing the first step of his father's plan. The same year, the 'Aug Incident' takes place and Ulrik II along other colleagues are forced to kill Ulrik I. The ensuing battle left all the men severely mutilated, leading to all of them being mechanically augmented. The loss of his father left Ulrik II mentally unstable.

2030: A gradually unstable Ulrik II resolves in continuing his father's wishes and follows his footsteps. Marries with a woman from the Organization and impregnates her. After finding out the baby is a girl, he thinks of forcing an abortion but decides not to as the girls can be married to influential members of the group.

2031: Sara Bielke is born. A few months later he goes through a second succesful augmentation surgery but is rendered infertile. Frustrated, he decides to raise his daughter as if she were a son and changes her name to Ulrika Bielke.

2034: Ulrika Bielke's brutal training and conditioning begins the moment she learns how to walk. The training encompasses more than 'hitman activity' as it aims to turn her into a fullblown field agent, adapting to the evolving nature of the 'members who get dirty', which are becoming more sophisticated.

2042: Ulrik II grows more deranged and forces Ulrika to go through light mechanical augmentation. He's against radical alterations since he's afraid it could render her with long lasting health issues like infertility (But near death training is somehow ok). He concludes the amputation and replacement of her arms is the best lightest choice. Since then til the age of sixteen Ulrika required multiple limb replacement to match her growing body.

2050: Ulrika is chosen among other agents for deployment to Mexico to support the Russo-Mexican Alliance which was just consolidated. Ulrika mades up her mind and uses this opportunity to truly prove her worth, as she grew feeling inadequate for never meeting her father's expectations. It's during this time where a previously sheltered, or rather isolated Ulrika realizes mechanically augmented people are viewed as lower class citizens and are discriminated upon. This adds anger to the indifference she felt towards the world.

2052: A member of the Luminous Path Triad contacts The Russian Organized Crime to hire a 'gweilo gangster' to work as a field agent. This member is Tracer Tong, flexing the reach of his contacts to seek foreign aid that is free of Majestic-12 control. (Paul Denton had been sent back to New York and Tong needed a replacement to investigate Versalife). Ulrika is chosen for the task as she had been nothing short of excelent in the past two years in Mexico. After failing to infiltrate Versalife, Ulrika's whole worldview slowly crumbles when she's exposed to all the conspiracies and meets JC Denton.

Random characterization ideas:

Ulrika, like JC, has been raised her whole life to be a living weapon. Weapons are tools, and tools don't talk, don't think, and don't act without input. They must perform and most importantly, be effective. An ineffective tool is discarded: incompetence is death. Ulrika, however, and unlike JC, was not raised to be a weapon to "protect the weak and punish the evil" (or that's what JC thought he was doing in UNATCO). She hurts others to perpetuate "injustice and evil", although she doesn't view it that way.

Ulrika thirsts for power as her inner desire is to be the best, and she wants so to maker her father proud, to finally deem her worthy. Such ambition has been her life goal since forever, and once she accomplishes this, she thinks, she'll be able to conquer the Organization. This goal changes when she arrives to Hong Kong and meets JC Denton, realizing that all she believed to be important is miniscule in comparison to what she could achieve by sticking around him: true world conquest.

Talking about JC, she views him as what she should've been since the begining, what her father desired her to be. She develops an infatuation for him, although it's all focused on his skills and lethality. In truth, she can't give a damn about his personality or feelings, all that matters is that he's the strongest, most dangerous person in the planet. She'll encourage him to merge with Helios, not to save humanity or fix the state of the world but to gain total control and total power. She'll support the idea of annihilating all dissidents and would 100% erase the organization off the map. (Which is unnataible as Rusia becomes the Omar's birthplace. Ulrik II becomes a member, ceasing to be.)

[herrscherofmagic]

Not sure if this is a hot take, but...

I think Honkai Impact 3rd "Part 2" should have been its own game.

This has been on my mind for a while, and now that a lot of stuff has happened in the Hoyoverse (ending of HI3rd Part 2's first story arc, the end of the Fontaine arc, end of the Penacony arc, and the launch of ZZZ) I think now's a good time to share some of these thoughts.

(warning: MASSIVE wall of text bellow the cut)

I think there was a lot of uncertainty in the community when Part 2 was revealed; there were mixed feelings about the end of Part 1, and I know some folks were worried Part 2 would deviate too far from the core identity of "Honkai Impact 3rd".

However, as we're nearing the end of Part 2's first arc, I think Part 2 has actually done great on delivering a proper "Honkai Impact 3rd" experience. The writing still has much of the characteristic features of Honkai, and I think the character development has been great. It's got an interesting cast, cool setting, and it had a fairly straightforward opening story arc.

And yet, I can't help but feel like it could have been so, so much more if it weren't shackled by the older coding, gameplay, and story of HI3rd.

This isn't meant to trash on HI3rd Part 1, at least not too much. I loved Part 1 and Part 1.5, and I'd still play HI3rd regardless of whether it had Part 2 as we know it now.

But at the same time, every time I play Part 2 and I walk through Oxia, explore Langqiu, fight with the Astral Ring characters, hear the OST, read the in-game texts...

...it makes me think that Part 2 could have been an incredible game if it stood alone and was built from the ground up.

From a story perspective, I think the core themes of Part 2 would exist regardless of Part 1's presence. Since much of the important backstory of Part 2 happened literally millions of years before the events of Part 1, none of that would have to change.

Of course, as we go deeper into Part 2 (as it exists right now), there will be more and more connection with Part 1. But Oxia and Langqiu, the four continents of Luoxing, the story of the Seven Shus, the Astral Ring... these concepts all stand on their own with or without the events of Part 1.

If Part 2 were its own game, it could be set entirely in the past. There'd be no intervention from Earth because Earth would hardly even have multicellular life at this point. As for Venus (known in-game as Purusha by its prior civilization), it'd still have life at this point.

What's more, Helia and Coralie can easily be written as Luoxing natives! To keep the core theme of "two explorers are lost in the Sea of Data and get caught up in an adventure", they can come from a different bubble world instead- a bubble world that hasn't had any contact with Oxia yet.

So a lot of the things that Part 2 does well don't necessarily rely on the events on Earth. We don't need Schicksal or AE or the Herrscher of Finality, since Luoxing had its own civilization and its own organizations and its own... Herrscher? Whatever Sena's origin is, lol

For gameplay, the benefit is obvious: a brand new system.

The Astral Ring system would be its own brand-new thing, and it wouldn't be this meta-shifting chasm between the old and new in HI3rd. It'd be an equivalent to Genshin's elemental reactions, HSR's Break system, and ZZZ's anomalies (shock, corruption, etc.). So it could be more naturally implemented into the game mechanics.

Plus, no more "sorry guys, girls only!" for playable characters because it'd be its own game, so male characters like Baiji could have a chance at being playable. It wouldn't help the HI3rd male cast (Welt, Otto, Siegfried, etc.) become playable, but it at least unlocks the possibility of plenty of future male designs from Luoxing.

For the environment and general player experience, so many systems could be polished and developed far beyond what we have right now. Seeing what ZZZ's accomplished with its world and NPCs, if Part 2 (as a standalone) released after ZZZ, then that dev team could've built up even further on ZZZ's successes.

The UI is already pretty great, and it could just get even more features and fidelity. The navigation could be more interesting, for instance, with a better-developed map system and a similar concept to HSR's astral chart, where you could see locations like Oxia and Langqiu within the Sea of Data.

Oxia City itself could've launched with more locations, and more developed locations. The civic services, stores like Sweet Tooth and Antique Ink, the library, all these places could have more mechanics associated with them. The apartment system (the Part 2 "dorm") could be more flexible and have more variety to it. The Data Research Institute could be its own major location to visit with lots of characters to meet and interact with, too. Even Langqiu could have more locations!

We also could have more unique designs for a lot of the minor and major NPCs. There could be much more fidelity for NPC expressions and designs, and even playable characters would benefit from this too.

And don't even get me started on how great it'd be to explore more of Oxia City! Imagine if the city park we sometimes visit in the story could be its own big open location to visit. Or imagine we could use the light rail system to travel to other buildings and neighborhoods and explore more of the city that way.

Perhaps most importantly, it could develop its own unique style. Just as Genshin has its fairytail/fantasy vibe, HSR has the space opera theme going on, and ZZZ is urban life with a splash of eldritch horrors.

When I look at Oxia City, I kinda see it as the inverse of ZZZ's New Eridu.

New Eridu is similar to Oxia City in that they're both bastions of civilization in a post-apocalyptic scenario. But unlike New Eridu, Oxia City is much more tranquil (at least for now) and it's almost utopian in some ways.

It's got very developed infrastructure and research and it's not burdened by the need to invest heavily in fighting off a constant onslaught of monsters. This could change, but it at least gives a different starting point for the story's vibes.

In ZZZ, the Hollow Investigative Association and White Star Institute are the "establishment" while the Proxies and Hollow Raiders are the "underground" part of society. Since the MCs are Proxies, their behavior and lifestyle is greatly shaped by the clandestine nature of their work.

But in Oxia, it'd be different. Instead of laying low as a Proxy, the main character, Entropy is more like the researcher Ray of the White Star Institute. They wouldn't have to shy away from the authorities because they're fully part of the establishment. They get access to a lot of the resources and funding of the Data Research Institute, so this gives them a drastically different lifestyle than the Proxies of New Eridu.

This doesn't mean Oxia City has to be all prim and proper, though. It just means that we could see an MC with a different twist on the city life theme.

Plus it could have an even more cohesive OST. I already like the HI3rd Part 2 soundtracks, but there's not much of a common theme in them. It's something HI3rd's always suffered from, as it's always a collection of many disconnected pieces of music. It's pretty rare to see consistent use of musical motifs to denote locations, factions, or characters outside of literally a handful of the most important characters.

Furthermore, Part 2 has something unique about it that makes it stand out even more from all the rest of the Hoyoverse. Because most of it's backstory takes place long ago, we could have the same familiar setting of the solar system but drastically changed.

As I mentioned before, Earth would barely have developed life, and Venus/Purusha would have its own ecosystems and maybe even a civilization, a distant predecessor to the final civilization of Purusha. So even Earth itself would have a drastically different appearance due to plate tectonics and the climate. The game might start post-Great Eruption, when Oxia City is already in the Sea of Data, but as we learn about Luoxing's past we'd laso learn about its familiar-yet-unfamiliar neighbors.

This is such a unique concept, and it's a strong advantage. I think it'd be amazing if Part 2 could've been heavily marketed with this concept. There's countless examples of space exploration of the Sol system in sci-fi but very few explore the "what if?" of past life on Earth's neighbors. Part 2 filling that niche in the Hoyoverse would be simply incredible.

Not to mention how cool it is that we have so many allusions to the real life geography (or more specifically, areography). The four continents of Luoxing being based on four regions of Mars, the famous features like Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris being iconic locations in the Luoxing civilization, and so on.

That's already in Part 2 as it is right now but it could be expanded upon even more in a stand-alone game. Just imagine if the Part 2 main screen wasn't the elevator of HI3rd (though I love that elevator with a burning passion, don't get me wrong), but instead the main screen was a view of ancient Luoxing with it's blue oceans and green lands, the aurora, the clouds, the city lights in the night side of the world.

And so many of these locations would be the foundations for places to explore later in the Sea of Data. These Mars bubble worlds would be the Part 2 equivalent of Genshin's 7 nations, the countless worlds connecting by HSR's Star Rail, or the neighborhoods of New Eridu. So places like Langqiu could have more to see, more to do, and more to experience within them.

Despite all this rambling, I still genuinely have hope for the outlook of Part 2 as it exists right now. I think the developers still had a tremendous passion for this story and game, and I'm willing to let them cook as long as they need to.

Yet... Part 2 is burdened by so much of HI3rd's legacy content.

When I first got into ZZZ, I was blown away by how smooth and appealing so much of the player experience was. It all felt so cohesive and polished, and a lot of the activities feel so natural. Walking down Sixth Street, seeing the familiar faces of other store owners, running the video store, all of this just feels right.

I don't get quite the same feeling in Oxia. But I still love Oxia dearly, and I'd even go so far as to say that Oxia City feels more like home to me than St. Freya ever did. I can't say it has the same polish and detail of ZZZ's New Eridu, but when I explore Oxia I feel like the writers and artists and all the other developers are trying their damned hardest to make it work with what they've got.

I just wish Mihoyo could've handed the dev team a big stack of cash, a few years, and said "cook up the game of your dreams" and allowed them to come up with a brand-new experience just like ZZZ.

I don't know why Part 2 had to exist in this form. I doubt it couldn't exist without Part 1's story, but there could be other reasons. Maybe it's a cost issue, maybe they had no other ideas to continue HI3rd (APHO, though?), maybe they didn't have enough developers willing to start a new project, maybe maybe maybe...

I can't put any blame on the actual developers themselves. I don't even know if management is to blame, or if anyone is to blame. But whatever the complex web of causation truly is, the result is that Part 2 is exactly that: Part 2 of "Honkai Impact 3rd". It didn't get its own game with its own development process and its own standalone story.

That just feels like such a missed opportunity.

[dammarchy211]

Despite having finished Psychonauts I don't think the fixation is gonna wear off (time to watch a Rhombus of Ruin playthrough!) so I will be plaguing your askbox/page (/lh+silly)

For an ask about your Psychonauts OCs, what do you think they'd be like in-game, if you could interact with them? Or how do you think they'd be towards Raz? I've seen some of your characters and they make me go silly /pos, so I'm curious about them :3

Hi hi basically all of my ocs are written as if they were in game characters fhfjvk

This includes mental worlds and game mechanics and such!

The curb this post being extremely long and just a run down of Everything about my ocs. I’ll group them up. (Even tho a lot of this will probably still be restating lol)

So the C.R.I.M.E. agents function basically entirely as antagonists for the most part. Given the uh. Villainous nature of the organization lol. They all kind of act Banterly towards the psychonauts and especially Raz. But do not take this as them being bad at their jobs!! The only cringefail villain really is Ant, I can’t play up the “villain but they actually suck XD” trope that much it would get annoying to write lmaoo. I will single out Dexter specifically to note that he was written as a perfect foil/arch nemesis whatever to Raz. The two are also “accidentally friends” because they would 1000% get along well if it weren’t for their circumstance. That being said Dexter is probably just as good, and just as bad, of an agent as Raz. They were written to be comparable. Another note I’ll make is towards Neo Cortez. He’s the founder of CRIME, and probably stands out as a possible “main antagonist”. Hes extremely self serving and ends up garnering the contemp of his own agents along with the psychonauts eventually.

Now Cheri! She was originally made, as my first oc, to be a new mentor for Raz after what happens in the events of pn2 (though I reckon I’ll probably have to change that if a pn3 comes out and they expand on that). She’s an ex-villain, similar to Oleander, but a lot farther back and was “evil” for a bit longer too. She kind of ‘pretends’ to still be evil because she thinks it’s funny, but it’s mostly just cartoonishly dastardly things. Imagine Queen from Deltarune with Kris or Noelle but instead of being Genuine it’s just a bit. She has a loott of baggage she’s just kind of. Holding onto. She got a handle on her mental spiral back when the psychonauts had stopped her previously, but that doesn’t really mean anything was fixed. Anything in game with her mainly circles around helping her with that, but also her helping Raz! She is a mentor after all. She teaches Raz electrokinesis (more specifically how to deflect it) and an alternate form of mental projection

Mirage and KC are more background characters. I still need to post about Mirage. Most of their connections to the canon come from not Raz, so it’s hard to fit them in a game-like narrative. Theoretically you could probably chat with them regardless tho. KC is Dogen’s friend, so after awhile she kinda becomes friends with Raz too :-]

I also have the Donatella headcanon backstory characters, but I don’t think I say anything more about them other than “they’re just the family members I thought up for Donatella because I wanted to write a backstory for her” without sounding like a broken record. They would probably eventually have a reunion with the Aquatos tho! Raz’s favorite Aunt would be Fran (and her wife) :-]

[aarcade]

heyyy so i may be fixating on ur melon shaped guy again (stickade) so do u have anything about them i can spin in my head

oh wtf fr??

yeah that lil creature was from the period I was thinking of getting into Hyun's dojo and stickfight duels in general. it never really happened, because animation is hard, but I had alot of fun thinking through the character. the idea for stickade was a techno-organic-magical frankenstein with a weird body. long text post ahead

their demo animation was about some secret mountaintop lab being raided by unknown purple figures. a large containment tank gets shattered and stickade falls out and experiences their first moments alive with guns pointed at their face.

they break out into a fun fight sequence, and reveal that their body can mechanically shift around to mimic other's weapons. a sword grows out of the hand etc. there's a comedy beat where they mimic an attackers gun, but their body only mimics the shape, not the function. so they have to use their false gun as a club for a few seconds.

as they run through the facility (all synced to some synthwave song) , they end up running across a flexible bridge suspended over a giant spinning fan. it's implied that the purple troops, whoever they are, had broken through from the exterior into this fan room and bridged across to the facility proper. stickade mimics a riot shield and hunkers down in the middle of the bridge as the purple boss appears (some sort of spooky glasses wearing boss who generates magic crystal platforms to step on and walk around the air), and orders heavy sustained fire on them.

the troops advance on them, closing in from both sides of the bridge, when the video highlights their second strength: creativity. they use the edge of their shield to sever the bridge in the middle, riding one half into the wall (and stabbing into the wall with a mimicked sword) as all the purple troops fall into the fan.

the final battle of the demo. the purple boss is walking on magic platforms inches above the spinning blades, firing upwards with an assault rifle, while stickade clings to the wall, with the riot shield on their back. the gunfire starts to break through the shield (which is formed from their body, mind you). they seemingly slip and fall, launching away from the wall, when the video slows down for a second to highlight their third and final strength- magic mimic. they land on an awkwardly generated crystal disk, and the two have a final slick choreographed fight. stickade eventually pushes him down into the fan, and he teleports away moments before his death.

now alone, stickade climbs up the broken bridge to the hole in the wall where the purple group had broken into this lab. they look back for a moment, but the place starts to crumble and collapse. so they jump out onto the snowy mountaintop, sliding down on their riot shield as their birthplace implodes.

the point of all of that is that there are no answers to these mysteries. I have no idea why the lab created stickade or who the purple troops are. it's a backstory that destroys itself, leaving the character as a blank slate. from there, the idea is that they would figure out who they are and create their fighting style through their different opponents, permanently recording one mimicked weapon or spell from each fight, and figuring out their own values as a person. I'd animate them being a real impressionable underdog, losing alot of fights but learning and growing.

if i ever really committed to the character, I even had ideas to eventually give them some sort of lore arc. I have twists in mind for dramatic reinventions of the character. if any of this is of interest to you, I can totally make a follow-up post about the directions I was going to take stickade in.

[lazlolemurs]

hallo Lazlo I had a question ab Klyde!! if its not secret lore I'm sooo curious why his arm is only in its parasitic form sometimes, does it have to do with his warlock or changeling stuff?

Oh not secret lore at all haha! Glad you asked!

The parasitic arm is only a slight manifestation. The parasite is a sentient entity known as Jester! Jester hosts herself in Klyde’s body, able to grant him powers as well as shapeshift at will. Klyde Kaisyrr is actually the name of the corpse that Jester inhabited to make Klyde as he is now. By all means, Klyde should have died a long time ago but Jester keeps her alive using her parasitic nature for personal reasons.

The arm is an attack mechanism Klyde has but she can do it with all parts of her body as well! There’s a reason why I don’t draw him shapeshifting out of that form all that often as well but that more pertains to Jester’s backstory! ;-)

Here’s some pictures of her! I’m always shy showing her on social media because it’s immediately obvious what kind of monster fucker I am but I love her she’s my morally dubious wife <3

first img by thepearlad second by vordicae on af last by me :)

Her af page as well if you’re curious about her backstory :) my af pages are a mess I need to organize them but to summarize it’s like that because It’s essentially a venom (the character) situation :)

[anti-dazai-blog]

This is in regards to that unpopular character post you made - I'm not sure she counts, but I'm obsessed with Yosano. She's got parallels to basically every character, has the potential to be the strongest character in the series considering she can't be killed, has a bunch of unhealthy coping mechanisms no one talks about and is clearly a mess of a person while managing to be competent and mature about it. I really want more focus on her soon because she's a core member of the ADA yet she's gotten like 2 fight scenes and barely any focus.

Also, I think Naomi Tanizaki is such a fun character. People don't like her because of the whole incest thing, but what we see of her beyond her brother is someone who's cunning, manipulative, but also proactive and demonstrates more desire to save people than like anyone else in the Agency lol. I've read the book her character is based on and she could be a strategic character so easily because she's clearly intelligent and if Asagiri stepped away from Fyodor's bullshit to remember she exists I'm convinced she could become a fan favorite.

I think Yosano technically can be killed, since her ability requires conscious activation (as in, it doesn’t just activate on its own when she’s gravely injured—she has to choose to activate it)— so if she were to be killed in a way that kills too quickly to activate it, or if she were unconscious when attacked, then theoretically she can be killed.

That being said, she is very powerful and very underutilized in the series. Credit where credit’s due, I appreciate how Asagiri had her be a part of the combat unite that was sent to accost Chuuya during the Guild arc. Both Chuuya and Kenji are objectively incredibly strong combative (some of the strongest in the series), and I love that Yosano was grouped in with them.

I would count her as relatively not popular, purely on the basis that all the bsd girls have significantly less fandom attention than the guys. While I would say Yosano is the most popular girl (mainly because she’s the one with the most thorough backstory, and one of the few characters to have connections to multiple organizations), that’s really not saying much when you compare her popularity to some of the less popular bsd guy characters.

And onto Naomi—yeah the anime completely destroyed her entire character. When I read the manga, I was surprised by just how interesting of a character she is. You know how there’s this running theory that she’s just an illusion from Tanizaki’s ability? I posted a few months ago (half-jokingly) that she’s actually the one with the ability and Tanizaki is the illusion she’s creating.

That being said, I’d like to change that theory a bit. Both her and Tanizaki are real people, but Naomi is the one with the ability. Every time we see Tanizaki use his ability, it’s actually Naomi creating the illusions, and Tanizaki is just miming being in control of them. In scenes where Tanizaki is doing things when Naomi’s not physically there, Naomi is just overlaying Tanizaki’s image onto herself.

But back to the canon stuff—I wanna see Naomi fight the Port Mafia (or whoever the enemy of the week is next). In all seriousness, I really want to see what Naomi is capable of. The manga demonstrates that to some extent in the Guild arc, but I want her to have at least one significant enough scene in the manga that Bones won’t be able to cut.