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bimbosupreme · 3 years

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mephistopheles love post

the equivalent of a mental breakdown tangent is all going under a read more

yes believe it or not that freaky ass literally not even human clown in fgo gets love, and love from who? me and like 3 other people

first off

ok and with that out of the way,

i’m not even familiar with their lore. Reason why i stopped caring about the lore behind faust and mephistopheles is that an interlude happens that shows that mephistopheles is just some homunculi made by some mage nobody named faust. and even then the interlude doesn’t talk about the lore behind the novel, its just you helping mephy kill faust

that being said though i would hope the developers expand on their origins more and potentially even release a “true” mephistopheles (a girl can dream)

So, they’re not even the real deal demon known as Mephistopheles in the first place, and i can hear u going “well that’s lame” and like, no, we just need to redirect our feelings from appreciating a demon to appreciating a homunculi who has a weird characterization in the fate universe

Design tangent:

Fgo was actually my first gacha, and so when I came across this servant I kinda instantly fell in love with their design, I love the colors used in their final ascension and overall appearance. The hat that has horns but they're not quite horns, theyre these weird colorful pointy twisty things, the large garish butterfly ornament on their chest (which isnt ugly at all and somehow works so well with their everything on them) is cool, the tights are so cool to look at, i mean look -- a checkered pattern with golden lining on the shorts portion, the tits out look like yes we get it youre insane, the gloves??? purple and also cool, plus theyve got this gradient thing going on? and the fingers have this line going through them, thats so cool. actually the only other servant that comes close to this in terms of “out there” colorful designs is probably final ascension kama and qsh ( i love them both). Also, mephy has this scissor weapon?? thats so cool lol i dont see any other servant wielding giant scissors (for the love of god give mephy an animation update i need to see them use the scissors while doing flips) and they also have this bomb obsession going on? cant relate, but the bombs designs are so so cool i mean its a fucking centipede -- no idea if centipedes are a thing in the original faust but thats something Ill have to look up at some point. ALSO mephy is wearing heels oh my god anytime people wear heels is an automatic win. No clue whats going on with the hair but its kinda cute (dont question me on that) and it has curls and the hair colors are cool i mean its like a lavender thing with darker purple highlights? i love colorful things and i love people with wacky personalities so. Oh my god their tail how could i forget that its so cute and dumb i almost forgot it was there, like what is that even a whip? i dont.. but its got these little purple tips to them that are kinda cute/cool but more cool because tails are fucking up there alongside heels in terms of cool stuff on characters. and of course their fluffly cape -- again no idea what the designers were going for i mean look its a mess of a design i have no fucking idea what any of it means and i hope they explain it someday because that hair and the butterfly and the tail and the hat and the fluffy garb and a bomb obsession?? and this got the go ahead - yeah lets add that to the game like what

ALSO LETS TALK ABOUT THEIR EYES

appreciate these with me for a second

god.

oh and the blue lipstick and face paint god thats a cool design ugh

they can be normal too or at least as normal as possible i mean they even trimmed their eyebrow here lol but you can see the not so well hidden insanity/goofiness peaking through with the inside of the suit at the bottom being highlighter purple and a green shirt with gold accents underneath the black coat at the front <3, fuckin hate that hairstyle tho bro we gotta get that middle part hairstyle outta hereeeee--

TAKE A DETOUR AND LOOK AT THIS LINK THOUGH THIS IS THE MOST NORMAL AND BEST IVE SEEN THEM IN FANART. THE POTENTIAL IS THERE. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS AND THEY LOOK GREAT ITS POSSIBLE. I HAVE TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE FROM THAT DRAWING.

anyways this is me going off all about why i like their design! but we haven’t even touched the nitty gritty of it all. their personality! what personality you may ask? havent they always been some weirdo laughing a lot and saying dumb shit all the time? well yes and no

Characterization:

True to their dumb little clown design mephy also acts like one.

Some servants bond 1 lines are like “fuck off” and some actually talk to you, nah this bastard mephistopheles’ just laughing. and for the second bond line it seems to imply theyre fuckin with you more (showing up and dissapearing and saying ‘afterimage’) so thats nice that theyre actually making some effort to mess with you in a way? some servants take a long time to actually interact with you so this shows theyre not afraid of interacting with you and thats just at bond 2. and of course the third bond line implies they were probably trying to betray you, its stated in more than 1 place that mephistopheles (actually isnt this a caster class thing?) will betray you or attempt to do so. So the third bond line seems to imply that their attempts have been stopped by you and that’s what they say after some failed attempts. So after stopping this freak from doing some shit their next bond line is actually doing a confession! a jester being honest who couldve seen that one coming but theyre 100% not lying, they really arent a demon but a homunculi made by faust

speaking of faust we’re going to backtrack a little into their interlude that i brought up at the start of this post, its one of those dream interludes and it starts with mephy asking you to help him plant bombs for their eventual reuinion/showdown with faust -- in the meantime faust keeps sending golems in an attempt to kill both you and mephy

When you track faust down, it’s shown that faust was your typical mage, inhumane and uncaring. It’s also pointed out that this faust killed innocents, but this typical mage behavior is boring to mephy, and they say that boring typical behavior is why they wanted to kill them

so i really cant blame mephistopheles for being the way they are, being raised by this type of guy, even if mephy was always messed up and wacky from the beginning its no reason for faust to attempt to kill him.

Mephistopheles also shows up in salem, cu alter’s interlude, and of course the knk crossover event, and some other things im most likely forgetting but those 3 are ones that i find notable

anytime they show up theyre actually helpful, in salem mephy points out that the nature of the being responsible for the salem epic of remnant is something alien rather than a typical foreign god, mephy also tells you that time is also being sped up and in their weird way they try to cheer you up by spouting some nonsense at the beginning (guda needed some kind of distraction from the grim events that had just transpired at that point in the story), i cant quite remember what mephy did in the knk event but they were a part of your group and were helpful the whole time, actually @/zeravmeta does an amazing analysis of their role in the knk event as well as some extra character analysis here

mephistopheles is kinda cryptic in a weird way though,

like overall i mean theyre a jester homunculi in appearance so yeah its to be expected but come on i love morally gray characters, despite their supposed betrayal hints scattered around here and there

they have this one line that always gets to me

and this line is said with a completely serious face too

the rare serious mephistopheles face! its kinda grim to see that line, no laughs, no nothing, their voice is kinda serious and monotone too. of course this could be just to get you to lower your guard but its still kinda out there that they have this rarely used portrait and that line, so i like to take it as being said to you when youre by yourself and with sincerity

and at least sei (with her wacky outfit and all lol) seems to get along with mephy and thinks theyre nice woohoo

so at the end of the day you have this guy that laughs a lot and gives mixed signals

and they fuck with you

and will most likely try to kill you more than once but hey thats just another tuesday at chaldea

Before I finish last thing I want to point out is this snippet from the fgo source material book which provides more information on servants, and this specific translated bit under mephistopheles

at the core of it all this homunculi....can be your friend! you just need to not go into despair i guess

of course this entire post is an overanalysis into an underwritten character, quarantine + all online college classes have done this to me, i have a douman icon what did you expect

OH...BEFORE I REALLY SIGN OFF AND FINISH THE POST HEY CLOWN LOVERS CHECK OUT THESE FANARTS AND FANARTISTS...

THE FIRST ONE IS HASENDOW YES THE DOUMAN DESIGNER... <3

i cant believe they drew mephy

twice !

and for those of you on twitter check out @cuz_pb and @L0VEYAMA003

#mephistopheles #fgo #i just go off on the various things i like about this clown #a whole lot lol #this started bc someone asked about my thoughts on mephistopheles well..

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spiritwinding · 4 years

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for the duration of the classic games, sonic was Incredibly reserved. talked to no one and only used sign language when necessary, had no social life outside of talking to flickies and other woodland creatures, just was Completely isolated from people. he was SUPER close to his parents, and having them die made him essentially swear off of. talking to people. to steal lyrics from wicked:

too long i've been afraid of losing love, i guess I've lost well if that's love it comes at much too high a cost

meeting tails and his relationship with him is what made him talk and start to accept friendship back into his life, that he Needs companionship and can’t get by on his own and that a life alone is a miserable one, but it was a gradual process that spaned the adventure games and sonic heroes, so here’s a rambly post about some of how sonic went from a hermit to the VERY anime friendship guy he is in sonic forces!

sonic is pretty prickly and easily irritated in adventure 1 and is still stuck in his Cool Lone Wolf kinda ways? avoids amy very obviously, openly says shes weird, frustrated with knuckles, very dismissive of tails etc. at the same time when he gets separated from tails when they crash in sa1 he’s genuinely sad and concerned for him, and prioritiizes how chaos would feel if locked in the master emerald while still rampaging. he very clearly cares about people, he’s just. distant and has kinda bad people skills. during sa1 sonic starts to realize he needs to listen to his friends and be more tolerant with them, though (amy stopping him from destroying gamma, how theyw oulda probably noticed birdie had an emerald if sonic hadn’t blown off amy so quickly, everyone bringing the chaos emeralds at the end), and he starts to? get along better with them? calls knuckles buddy in sa2, definitely gets along better with amy, puts a lot of his faith in tails when he gets shot out of the ark, AND fights with shadow at the end, is much less prickly in sa2 and just in general starts to embrace this group theyve kinda scrapped together

speaking of sa2, though: shadow! sonic has always had a short temper depending on the situation, but particularly in sa2 he didnt take kindly to a) being accussed of shit he didnt do and b) excUUse me how dare you copy me? like me?? still, he was definitely intrigued by shadow, and sonic is Painfully curious by nature, not to mention the whole affinity for chaos energy thing. kinda lilke a pull to the stuff. i also think sonic GETS aloof grumpy characters, because even if he wasnt ever grumpy, just short-tempered and kinda irritable, he was definitely aloof, and gets what it’s like to struggle to connect with others when you’re afraid of losing them. throughout the game they both come to respect eachother, and ultimately the fight they have at the end is. the first team fight sonic has? he has to put his trust in someone in the battlefield, really learn how to keep an eye on himself AND whoever hes fighting with, which is different than not hurting civilians for example. they both constantly ask eachother how theyre doing and sonic suggests to shadow that he needs to rest and that he can tag in. like regardless of everything that happenned during the game sonic cares about shadow, and whether by necessity or otherwise, trusts him to fight alongside

so when shadow, someone sonic probably considers somewhat of a friend, who was fighting with him and who sonic wanted to keep a close eye on, dies when he’s right next to him AND super sonic it doesn’t Feel Great. sonic felt responsible for shadow falling, for one, and for two, that’s someone he cares about dying. again. when thats what he wanted to avoid by essentially dissappearing from society: he didn’t want to lose people. of course losing shadow si very different and less painful than losing his parents, but it’s a reminded of what he’d been running away from all this time, and what he’s potentially going to go through again if tails, knuckles or amy die, too.

so he goes on another ‘vacation’ between sa2 and heroes-- distances himself from everyone else again, both to Repress and also to start to start to go back to the lonely nomadic lifestyle. the thing is, after going through what he did with everyone, tails in particular, he misses them. he misses company, now that he got it again, and realizes he doesn’t want to be alone again. being alone sucks, no matter how much you double down on it.

and tails and knuckles Show Up-- like they find HIM rather than the other way around. they come back, like a boomerang, and all three of them go to defeat eggman again, in an Entirely trio-based game, where sonic learns hwo to be a better teammate, and how to depend on others in a fight again. shadow turns out to be okay*, and at the end everyone refuses to let him fight neo on his own, and he’s? kinda overwhelmed? that he’s gathered people who are willing to support him, and that return like boomerangs, too

he wont be alone, because his friends will always be there to have his back, and he can always count on their help!! superpower of teamwork babyyyy. annd at the end, instead of going off on his own, he TAKES tails and knuckles with him!

sonic at the end of the day needs companionship. he leans towards ambivert and needs a Lot of alone time, and loves his personal space, but he needs to know someone is there to have his back ykno? he loves people, and needs people, and hates being alone like... in life. not like running alone or travelling alone, but just. having no one in his life is almost kinda terrifying. he knows what thats like and is aware he doesnt want to go back to having no one know his name except for the local flickies he saved from eggman.

*note: sonic definitely has unresolved shit from Everything That Has Ever Happened, aside from his parents deaths, because he’s so desensitized to all of it and just.. always Has to function, it isnt a question, and shadow ‘dying’ isnt an exception. definitely not as bad as other stuff, like the guilt for everyone who DID die, but he never worked through? much of it? because unless it specifically worms its way to the surface, sonic doesn’t know it’s There, and even if he picks up on somethig he won’t adress it unless it’s Baaaaad, and that’s only a recent thing. repress and move on, thaaaaaaat’s life pal. it doesnt help that sonic is honestly seen as Emotionally Invincible by everyone around him, so who would think he has baggage abt somethign that happenned when he was 13? (btw he was 13 in sa2 which is a Yikes!) he feels he failed shadow, particularly because it was. the ‘death’ that happenned right after he also blamed himself when his mom died in his care. he works through the occasisonal thought about it by just! trying his best! not letting it happen again! but again, never worked thru it, never told anyone. someone write this w/ me somehow blease

#i just wanna talk abt my sa2 Realizations #its v messy but here we are #i started writing this when i finished takin notes on sa2 and Came Back to write this at 3 am i am Not coherent #◜° ★ ▸ where does somebody keep all those gold rings? ╱ ❪ hc ❫

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grotesquegabby · 4 years

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How has everybody been? :3

Lets start with our fav aliens~

Kala is truly happy, and content. Shes gotten used to her surroundings and her new pack. Its fortunate she doesn’t have to worry about predators anymore uwu

Mana is happy, tail wag here tail wag there. Mana runs and bounces everyday \(*w*)/ Mana loves Ula, Mana loves Kala, Mana loves family! Mana loves *sees a pic of Ryder* ..Revolution x3 so hes good

now for babies~

Rory: sneaky little devil~ , already showing an interest in building things with their toys. has built a block castle and put their sister in it x3 surrounded it with spiders. Felt bad cause Clara cried after that so went into the castle and napped with her. She was better after of course uwu So Rory is learning a lot, and even interested in the books they see others reading. So trying to learn to read.

Clara: Cuddling anything and everything thats alive. very sensitive and thats not a bad thing. She is learning wuickly though that tears.....get her...attention! Gasp! So nothing could happen and she’ll just start crying and if someone comes running to her shell reach up and instantly stop. Shes learning too x3 just not the same way. But she is curious about flowers and planets. And wants to climb everything uwu Theres things in those trees that she can cuddle so this is priority number one right now x3

Davey: not so scrunched but still scrunched creature x3 Hes sleeping next to Cordie more often, resting a hand on her face or tummy on occasion. uwu Hes been getting hungrier though and has been hiding in the food cupboards opening things up to snack on. x3 hes also been talking! straight up saying sentences.

Ben: uwu has gotten a taste of frosting, and has rubbed it all over himself x3 like the peanu butter baby. In his hair on his face. x3 Bella took a pic before she cleaned him up so she could show her Honey Bunny. Ben is showing excitement for some things. Its somewhat small at first. It happens when someone in the family is gone for a cinsdirable amount of time. And if they come back adn he sees them, his little legs kick a bit excitedly and his hands though in his lap do little grabbing motions. Stare focused on them x3 its cute

Harper: making ore noises now uwu and wanting Billy and reaching for him. He likes to tug on Billys hair and has tried to steal his floating hat..a lot x3 Hes still got grumpy face even when he is pretty happy uwu and hes chewing, everything owo

Cordelia: doing so well~ look at all these wonderful people she is surrounded by. EVen scrunched creature doesnt seem so bad sometimes. x3 Theyve napped together and he eats the frutis and veggies she doesnt want. So perks. She really likes this whole being carried thing, she could get used to it~ x3

Now for the older kids uwu

Amaranthus: Its so fun being a big sister~ uwu man....she wants more siblings <( owo)/ does she just...ask? Or how does that work x3 Shes happy for Henry and hopes they can go to each others homes more often now. Ama never really saw this happening with her life, and shes glad things are the way they are uwu

Henry: happy to be in a loving home with his new adoptive father Eugene, plus hes making more friends so good things good things uwu he still has to go see the doctors occassionally about the burning feeling and headaches he gets on occasions but they arent often uwu

Honey: Doing well, she likes Juno a lot. Plus if it wasn’t for Juno Honey wouldn’t have learned as much as she has about shapeshifting and hunting. She can see why Pierre was keeping her from it at times but still...she recognizes that she was stunted in her learning with him keeping her from it. She can’t be babied forever and she knows that. Her food blog has been going well too~ x3

Brie: Playing animal crossing and enjoying life with her sister and Juno. JUno is basically a big sister to Brie. Sees her as family. uwu Shes also been working out more, gotta get real big muscles. Shes gotta stay strong so she can give good hugs of course

Now for the adults~

Billy: So happy, the happiest hes been in.....a long time. He has the family hes always wanted. His brother is involved and he has a father. Amaranthus is being such a good big sister and Harper is finally reaching out to him uwu And Maggie is a wonderful woman and mother. He adores his Songbird so much. Plus hes an uncle to boot! marvelous, hes always wanted happiness for his brother uwu

Lennie: Feels the same as his brother about his family too. x3 Jelly is amazing, absolute goddess. Ula is such an awesome daughter and big sister, he adores her and his tiny scrunched creature, and his little screecher x3 Man he gets to tell dad jokes everyday if he wishes. Hes an uncle and one day hes sure hell be a grandpa uwu he knows it in his soul

Cecilio: A father to two amazing boys and a grandfather to many uwu a happy life for his kids and their kids is all he ever wanted and hes so happy he got to see it happen for himself too.

Tilde: Shes glad to be a part of a family again, and hoping to make more friends and a life for herself. uwu Still in contact with Roxanne on occasion. Cecilio has been such a help for her to get used to life in the area and learning where things are.

Roxanne: Getting ready to come and visit Tilde and meet the rest of the family. Shes kept out of the familys drama since what happened when they were young so it;ll be interesting.

Calliope: (- uwu-) Content and thrilled to see her children happy, healthy and they are flourishing. Their abilities aren’t out of control.

Belinda: This little one wanting to come out a little sooner. Bella is craving Ham!! no wait.........Pickle chips! no wait.........eyes!! Yes...nno....all three together!!! (9 *0*)9 ahhhh she feels a bit grumpy but is doing her best to distract herself from it. Spending time ith the family seems to help distract her from it uwu

Alex: Hes fantastic! hahahahahah! Peri is so uncomfortable around him it...is...hilarious x3 Magpie has tried to teach him like knitting and stuff but hes not so good at it...unless its with his tentacles x3 Hes loving all the kids, kids are great! He definitely wants to like babysit for everyones kids uwu he doesnt seem like the babysitting type but hes so good with kids heheh

Pierre: ( uwu) hes doing.........bad, but hey hes alive.

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teddy-feathers · 5 years

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look my problem with the au megamind where Roxanne is the alien and megamind is the reporter is i cant stop thinking about what i want out of that and how its probably not what other people want out of that which should mean 'oh shit i gotta write it' but really means 'in the next couple of months im going to rewatch megamind and be extremely frustrated because idk how to write these people as is let alone in an au'

but here are some thoughts

Itd have to take place on megaminds home world so like. have to develop that culture and frame it as the usual and other things as oddities

metroman still shows up at the same time the baby human does

roxan richie and metromans rivalry is less of a game and more of a metroman one up'd her ome to many times so now shes gotta take him out

its fine not because shes incompetent- in fact her death rays and pointy sticks are ingenious and have 0% public property or civilian causalities - but because metroman is not only impossible to kill, he adapts to anything that gets close (anything that doesnt kill him makes him stronger literally)

i guess this means theres a good chunk of the story that is centered around human adaptability vs perfect hero dudes adaptability

Roxanne Ritchie is actually a noted scientist or something at the local research facility - i figure blue people planet is really advanced and everyones at least a little technosmart but while it doesnt come as easily or naturally to Roxanne her way of thinking is really unique n shiz and shes an asset to every team....

but if you see her in a mask with some project from the lab macguivered into a gun trying to kill metroman well, no ones getting hurt and humans need hobbies and everyone respects the mask desptie the fact shes the ONLY human on the planet so its not like its hard to figure out who she is

she does spend a lot of nights having to rebuild projects and apologizing and such but basically everyone plays the plausible deniability card and asks her questions abiut what went wrong and okay so the masked menace failed after you let them steal our project but lets pretend for a moment the goal was to fix crops how would you say this did? and grumply shed revamp the guns weird side effect into an alien pollinating crop duster or whatever

got carried away when REALLY all I WANTED to say was

Whille Roxanne Ritchie is adaptable ingenuity and gets away at the last minute NOT because no ones trying to catch her but shes just that CLEVER and thinks ahead and shiz....

Megamind is the guy trying to interview her in the middle of a fight like he thinks he's cute - i mean he is but shes chasing after metroman and skids to a stop because this jerk stepped in for a comment. or shes lining up the perfect shot but theres a close up of megaminds reporter bag in the way

the thing is that maybe... blue people arent violent. a natural disaster hit recently and theyre coming back from it and if the two adopted alien kids want to play extreme tag well no ones getting hurt and Roxanne Ritchie will grow out of her competitiveness no doubt caused by just how superior EVERYONE on the planet is by finding her own niche and metroman will grow up and stop bating her because maybe he IS still better than everyone else and thats met with "oh very nice we're proud" but it doesnt really validate him or make him feel special because its just treated as a special thing he can do by everyong but Roxanne Ritchie and once he's found something that makes him feel good regardless of the attention or lack of it he'll stop playing too

but megamind? megamind has an imagination that loves drama and blowing things out of proportion and thats part of why his reports are so popular? like yeah everyones treating this super hero showdown with indulgence but megamind is good at framing theatrics so that this news story is actually a compelling narrative? and also everyone can see the tension is going to have one of these three "kids" confessing live someday

and maybe he gets carried away. one of those 'aw well next time you could do x or y' or has some technological creation that accidentally actually makes Metroman flinch during an interview

and Roxanne Ritchie starts paying attentionto him for the first time.

and minion warns him but he doesnt listen. minion is lower class and is afraid of being replaced like a pet like some people do but Roxanne Ritchie Ritchie doesnt have a minion and even if she did theyre Best Friends not like those other blue people minion uperclass people.

and he carelessly says something unforgivable and Roxanne Richie uses his ideas and actually succeeds in killing metroman

so she goes to prison - a place they had to build just for her because this hasnt happened since stars knows when

and somebody else is doing the camera because minion left just is gone and megamind looks defeated but testifies against her and is quiet and subdued and stpps being a reporter for a bit

and.... idk. i feel like we'll have to resolve the whole class system so minon goes underground and finds other minons who are unhappy with the way of things and if theyre ALREADY rebuilding society after that huge natural disaster that DIDNT blow up their planet thanks TO a minion well ehy cant they fix this too?

so theres a rebellion going on and theyve got a secret weapon to make blue people listen and idk but i feel like it's Metroman

and... how do stories like this go ive forgotten

minion wouldnt tell megamind or he would

metroman would break Roxanne Ritchie out of prison during the first riot of the minion revolt?

they talk and compare why they hated eachother and slowly work together and are actually a great team?

and then they need a reporter to make themselves heard as something other than minions going crazy

and so of course they go to megamind for help getting the story out

something something megamind is minions sidekick for this adventure

"Roxanne Ritchie was raised by the planet and turned against it and instigated civil unrest and killed a person who was also the good child etc etc instead of just growing up to face your problems"

"actually im alive and i finally found my place? helping out the real heros?"

"i mean i did try to kill him, but he forgave me and we're kinda working together because planet of moms and dads that raised us? yall actually are the ones who need to grow up and let go of the traditions that dont serve etc etc"

and megamind does a huge public apology to minion

and... uhhhhhhhhh fuck i really dont know how these storyies go

the blue people start making amends

metroman basically becomes a social worker for minion childern because finding their original families is a bit hard and most of these kids are just going to end up being raised by super dad but at least the rebellion minion families are actually geting to be their own family units and in a couple gens thatll be normal

Roxanne Ritchie goes back to being the token human in the lab and hangs up her super suit and is generally dissatisfied with this

until one night a hero breaks into her apartment to make her answer for her crimes and so for a legit hot second theyre fighting and megamind says something and Roxanne apologizes and then fighting stops being an argument and goes into banter flirting

the worss "where theres evil good will rise up to fight it" peob comes up a lot in this fic in different iterations

anyways megamind isnjust basically like hey wanna do this like. for the rest of our lives dramatic battle showdowns like its entertainment but like no theyre doing this for real?

the answer is hell yeah

and its a polyship and sometimes Roxanne is helping with the kids and then Megamind bursts in to "save" the family from her evil clutches and 90% of the time everything is improve

megamind kidnaps Roxanne to make metromind save her and a good half of the conversation is that hes an idiot for coming shes tried to kill him three times this week and hes bitching because do you know how hard it is to find a sitter for 30 odd minion kids this short notice and they better make it up to him

Roxanne is not superdad but the 30 odd minion kids adore when she comes over because they mob the villain so hard until finally mega comes to save her because hes actually very good with the kids

of course this poly ship isnt complete without minion and at some point minion and mega realize theyve actually been married for years and Roxanne and metro tease them shamelessly for it

minion and his race need a real name obviously

when Roxanne was a... graduate her senior project theses thingy was essentially "im going to go back to planet earth itll be great ive figured out were im from and how to go there in a reasonable amout of time" and everyone had to sit her down and explain that unlike metroman they knew where she was from the planet was just destroyed.

they never figured out where metroman was from because his direction sharply changed to follow baby Roxannes course and mirrored her coding despite very obviously how he had originated from elsewhere

this is important because his race is basically coming to conquer the blue people planet soon - the group finds out - and will download all the survival upgrades metroman has gotten to become unkillable and then just come down to the surface and be unstoppable taking the place over and whiping out the planet like theyve done many many times

a good chunk of the time trying to figure out how to stop them when this planet is REALLY against murder war and violence for good reason and even if they WOULD do that its impossible over looks some alone time that leads to megamind and metroman figuring out how to like kill him so when the bad guys show up theyll go "whelp better not fuck with them" and leave but between roxanne and minion they manage to not only stabilize metroman (Roxanne blood transfusions maybe???) but they manage to scare the aliens so bad they tuck tail and leave speading rumors that these are the scariest mfs in space (go minion)

metroman never lets Roxanne live down saving his life

eventually space humans show up to check the place out

megamind loves everything human despite most of the planet thinking theyre primitive and showing it

roxanne is reluctant to meet them at first but then really relates to them?

for a good long while it REALLY seems like megamind and Roxanne are just going to go on space adventures with the humans leaving metroman and minion - who really doesnt like them and also they kinda rub him the wrong way because he's non bipedal and they kinda make fun of him in a 'we totally dont mean anything by it lighten up' sort of way.

they don't go of course but they may have stolen a lot of atar charts n shit and who hasnt wanted to take a road trip through space with 30 odd childern who will need names and personalities and may be chopped down to a slightly more reasonable number by this point?

metroman loves space karaoke and his natural abilites mean he learns languages fast but no he still cant carry a tune

megamind and Roxanne still duke it out on various alien cityscapes

minion usually breaks them out of jail if theyre not to be let out the next day because nothing was actually damaged that didnt belong to them.

one memorable occasion it was metoman in a fight with megamind and they wont say what its about but both look very put out and minion looks smug

it doesn't matter in the end because Roxanne teams up with the childern to propose to them first

apparantly i had a lot more ideas about this then i meant to? i mean its not well thoughout out and despite the drama a good half the fic is just going to be cute relationship building stuff between the four of them

#megamind #megamind au idea #story idea #fanfic idea #my writing #i hope tagging shit makes it findable but x doubt

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lizardswithoutlegs · 7 years

Text

HOOOOOWOWOAH BOY

ART ASKS

when i walk into a building i get to eat everybodys pencils and they cant say no

do it

( also thanks for asking ! )

itd bother me a lot less if everybody came to my apartment and took one of these beautiful eggs

YEAH UNFORTUNATELY IM STILL..... WORKING THROUGH THE SAME WAITLIST but im comparatively REAL CLOSE to being done with it and i should be opening up sometime later in...... the Year

Boy Have I

theres This messy thing from a while back and then also

THIS, from even FURTHER back, when i didnt realize how fucking RED all the outlines on my things were because of the monitor i was using, two for the price of one

why not both

i do Not but it you ever see me walking on the street please throw handfuls of teeth at me theyre the only things my wretched body can digest and im always hungry

OH MAN ok so, an art telephone game is based on, of course, the game telephone, where one person says a phrase and then whispers it to the next person, and so on and on until the person at the very end says whatever they heard and if its done right the final sentence is wildly different than what you started with

an ART telephone game is the same kind of concept, except one person draws out a scene or character, and then other artists draw THEIR interpretation of whats going on, and so forth until the last person can end up with something COMPLETELY different than what the first scene was

youd think thered be less room for error with drawings, but as each person ONLY sees what the person ahead of them has made, they can get PRETTY OUT THERE - im gonna be a part of pythosarts game, and theyve done a couple of em before - for example one round started with THESE as the first two drawings

and then fourteen interpretations later, ended up with these as the final two

its good its real good

I Cant Control Where Bigfoot Goes, I Can Only Take Note Of Where Hes Been

YEAH, sort of ! on the main, iguanamouth, i have a bunch of different tags for art depending on what they are but not really a catchall one, BUT i do have an art only blog where everything gets tossed over !

HONESTLY THE ADVICE i got is basically what all art advice is gonna boil down to eventually - you gotta just. do it. you gotta DO it

absolutely nobody you know who draws things well started out at the level theyre currently at, and putting down the things youre visualizing onto paper is a combination of getting the the technical aspects down as much as getting the idea in your head

and that goes with figuring out anatomy and how bodies are put together ! ive got to use references for a Million things,. especially the dragon hoards - theres absolutely nothing wrong with using references for your drawings ! and being able to create accurate representations of things without looking is something that comes more with drawing something over and over and memorizing the body shape more than just, feeling like you should KNOW how to do something

so dont beat yourself up for needing references. if youre trying to shy away from them a little bit but still cant make something look nice without em, try using several different reference photos to put together an entirely different pose ?

theres ALSO the SHRIMP METHOD, which is great for practicing and getting good at one particular thing - this probably isnt SUPER HELPFUL but good luck !

god i tried. exactly ONCE maybe fourish years ago but it wasnt art, i was trying to stream the lion king movie and i had no idea what i was doing, i didnt realize i needed to wear headphones so the sound wouldnt snowball into a feedback loop of my own voice that never ended but i kept laughing and it kept distorting worse and worse, like the audio version of saving and resaving something as a jpeg

it was just me and my friend ronni in the stream and ONE other person who never left and never said anything and i kept addressing them out loud like WHO ARE YOU and that only compounded the noise problem and eventually i gave up

anyway i havent tried since

i uhhhhh dont think i COULD, really - fear especially is something thats kind of subjective and one persons Big Terror could be neutral or even cute to another person

like for me i used to have a lot of childhood fears about the ocean, and how deep and dark and vast it was, to the point where i couldnt play a lot of water levels in video games, even ( but i had almost drowned several times when i was Very young which probably had, a little somethin to do with that )

maybe sometime ill try to explore things IM afraid of, but its hard to encompass a psychological response in an image !! could be a fun experiment, though ! !

a few PLANT ANIMAL AZKZ, HUH, DONT HAVE A WORKING Z KEY

SHIT DUDE THESE ARE... SO GOOD thats the official name EVEN IF i didnt use. a daffodil as the flower base. it doesnt matter

yes

i got A BUNCH of flower and plant themed suggestions and theyre all REALLY GOOD ( way more than these ) but straight up im taking a break from em for a while - if anybody is else is reading this though you should definitely tackle one of em

WASABI ASKS

Do Not Feed Animals The Paste

i keep going back to read this ask because you could replace wasabi with my name and its the exact same. its the same. i feel like i have to hide somewhere

this was real and this is the award they gave us

there were other awards but the judges refused to give them out. they burned them in front of the other dogs. we won

it depends on the age ! wasabis pretty much an adult, so her sheds are pretty infrequent ( usually once every 7-8 months ) BUT when she was still growing back like 6 years ago, she would do a full-body shed every other month !

wasabi accepts tokens of appreciation in the form of : fruit, green beans. No Exceptions

i would never seperate wasabi from her hands

absolutely..... not. not even a little bit h h hh a this isnt a disney animal companion, i dont even know what “kind of like a dog” means with , a lizard who cant make any vocalizations or get up on their hind legs or NOTHIN sometimes if i hold a piece of fruit on my hand and she reaches for it she gets confused on whats what and tries to bite my fingers instead

ONCE WHEN SHE was attacking her reflection in a mirror i put my hand in front of her face to break eye contact and she SUNK HER TEETH RIGHT IN THERE but immediately let go like “oh whoops”

lissten . . . wasabi is so sharp, just absolutely everywhere, and these are the sharpest. the grabbers

heres a lil battle damage from earlier today actually

this is pretty tame BUT the long long lines are from claws, and the thinner, closer together ones are from holding her and her scales scraping against the skin. so not even just the Body is completely safe ! this is not an animal youre gonna wanna get your face real close to if theyre in a walkin mood

she doesnt even MEAN to scratch the shit outta me, its just kind of a byproduct of being a big tree lizard. her tail is absolutely the worst thing to get hit by though. the WORST. lucky me she doesnt attack anything that isnt a dog or a vacuum cleaner or her own reflection

ahhh i got her when i was 16 ! and i dont know her exact age but she was somewhere between 3-6 months when i get her - SHES probably closer to 9 years, but ive had her for about 8

LENGTH THOUGH...... the last time i measured her she was just barely under four and a half feet, but that was a few months ago and its possible shes. Just Slightly larger. shes currently sleeping as i type this so i guess we will never know

duel me

too late for coats..... its all tail action now

ROCK ASKS AND ALSO ASKS ABOUT PUTTING ROCKS IN YOUR MOUTH

oh MAN i feel you . . . . . . . . . . i dont think i could actually Bear To Eat any for real but some of em. just. they. i gotta. just. bite on em a LITTLE just a little bit, a tiny bit, a nibble

when i was real young i used to tap things against my teeth to tell what kind of substance they were made of based on the feeling/hardness/density WHATEVER and i still sometimes do it when im checking stuff out and. it uhhhhh sure is interesting finding out not a lot of people did that

a handful of these delicious raw agates, just for you

please stop spying on me

i DO NOT but you may eat this piece of bornite

meet me at the airport and ill cover your bus fair

theres a lotta different ways to figure out what kind of rocks you got but when you have absolutely no clue on where to start your best bet is to search for the biggest distinctive features of it, and try to narrow it down based on the results

like for something like these pieces of chalcedony, you could try “waxy green translucent mineral”, and from the search results find a few candidates that might be what you have on hand, and then look into each one to see if you can get a definite answer

ive got a handful of rock and mineral guide books that i always pick through whenever i snag something im not sure of, and if youre REAL into it those are always something you could start keeping an eye out for

now this is a REAL superficial way to telling what something is and wont be useful for a good chunk of minerals ( as a lot of samples can look really close to something else ) and THIS is a much more in depth way of telling something apart, but its also a lot more time consuming ! so good luck. and good eating.

Just Try And Fucking Stop Me

ANIMAL ASKS THAT ARENT............ ABOUT MY LIZARD

im married to this one actually

fuck. ok. heres. a secret. a In the ask Post secret. wasabi goes through a period that lasts a month every single year where she carries eggs in her gut, and spends that month not eating and digging around in everything, trying to find the right spot to lay these eggs. and. when it happens i never know what to do with them, and i dont want to just THROW THEM AWAY so i. eat them. i eat the eggs. i fuckin eat the eggs dude

Theyre All Goddesses

unless you plan on having your lizard roam around outside whenever they want, the outside environment doesnt really matter much for most reptiles as long as you set their habitat up right ! BUT i do know that australia has bans on certain reptiles ( iguanas are one of them ) and so youre gonna have to look up whats actually available in that area

bearded dragons are native and those are always a good option, but so are a lot of geckos - its really gonna depend on what youre into ( but i dont really recommend anoles if thats an option, because theyre fast as Hell and dont like being handled )

what the fuck is a bee

oh geez im sorry ! i remember going through this with spiders a lot when i was younger to the point where looking at photos of em used to be a fuckin, TRIAL

you could try a really gradual exposure deal, where you start off with getting comfortable with just images, and slowly working your way to dealing with one in a controlled setting ( like a petstore, maybe ? not HANDLING em or anything, but just being near one in a way where its absolutely impossible for them to touch you )

the shitty thing about this kind of phobia is that even if you KNOW its irrational theres sometimes not a lot you can do about it, but if you can stand looking at photos of them you could try learning up about them, and finding out the types of species youre likely to encounter around your house, and seeing how many ( if any ) are ones you should avoid ?

i know some people that have major problems with snakes are because theyre unsure if the ones they find are poisonous or not, and it might go a long way to confirm that the reptiles you meet wont be able to harm you even if they TRIED ( which is gonna be the case with a lotta house geckos, they cant do SHIT youre a GIANT )

very VERY few lizards have venomous bites, and the worst most of em can do is give you a bloody finger if theyre large enough, and even then its usually not much worse than a cat scratch !

still though, if youre really serious about trying to get past this, dont force yourself too quick into what you think you SHOULD be, and take tiny steps outta your comfort level when you can

this probably isnt uhhh SUPER helpful hh hhah but good luck ! shit im going through this post and its like ALL reptile photos. im sorry

i feel about them, with my hands

MMM it shouldnt HURT them unless theres something Really wrong, considering its a natural procession of growth, BUT its definitely itchy as hell, to the point where reptiles trying to remove it will drag their bodies over stones or walls tryin to get it off

sometimes wasabi drags her whole hind foot over her head like a dog to get it off and it is. a Sight

ahhh honestly there arent a lotta reptiles thatre gonna do much more than TOLERATE the touch and not really, enjoy it, like a dog or cat or bird

but speaking from experience with wasabi, youll probably want to avoid most the head and stick with the top of the back near the sides - wasabi doesnt enjoy having her tail messed with much either, but shes ok with her dewlap and feet being touched

the most important thing to keep an eye out for when youre touching one is their body language, because THATS gonna be a dead giveaway for whether you need to back off or not

closing their eyes is a sign of stress, not enjoyment ! same with tilting the head back, but if thats ALL theyre doing then youre probably not gonna face any retaliation

B U T if theyve got an extended dewlap with a raised body or tail off the ground, not a good idea to interact with em ! thats a defensive posture, and you risk getting hit with a tail or even bitten if your hand gets too close

youve got more to risk with males, who are way more territorial and generally larger, but if they seem pretty chill when you approach and dont stand up and stare at you, youre probably in the clear

COCK of the ROCK

I HAVE im so jealous of anybody whos got to see one in person - actually handling one is a level beyond that which i could even comprehend

OTHER THINGS.....

no but i was bit by a pigeon once

this is the only joke i know

i fuckin WISH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ayy im into it - honestly i havent been following the band so much as just kinda, picking up whatever anybody else mentions and so my knowledge on Gorillaz Lore is pretty uhhhh h hh h scattered but im definitely interested in seeing where this goes

i remember watching the first and second season and it being pretty good - some of the episodes and jokes are hit and miss but you absolutely got me with the creature and alien design

havent seen any of the third season yet though !

i mean the fruit ones could be pretty up there

how bout. an abstract concept. who cares about physical forms wheres the dragon of melancholy

why come theres nothing to eat in my apartment but bread. im good otherwise but its all just bread

i havent watched either of em in YEARS and YEARS but i distinctly remember. these lil dancing mushrooms

oh wait FUCK

FUCK !!!!!!!!!

no... NO.... she is not allowed to eat ANYTHING from the plan shelf, try as she MIGHT

im a little mad that this sill isnt bigger because the only other one that gets sun is in my room and wasabi WIll... absolutely eat those. no doubt. a convenient and expensive salad, for my awful gremlin

god im looking at these and its all jade plants isnt it

little golden books taste the best but they can make you sick if you have too many at once. my favorite genre for snacking is sci fi fantasy but anything over 300 pages tends to get a little tough if you dont break it up with smaller chunks. non fictions always a gamble because the taste is wildly different each time but you can usually tell how ripe it is by the cover color

ayy im already a big fan of some of their stuff, ive got a couple songs from them in my music tag - im especially into i miss you and their shut up and bring it here remix

TOP FIVE THINGS

this is barely related but once i filled up a bathtub with water and then dumped about ten bags worth of mint tea into it and then just. soaked around in the tea. listen it was really nice. id try the cheese

i dont have any ships but i was on one of those model pirate boats once for a school trip. our boat was named naruto and the other one was named sasuke and the captains shouted “make them kiss” and ran them into each other. everybody on board drowned

youre trying to trick me into googling yoshi without shoes and its not going to work

me reading this message from the safety of my apartment :

nice try, but wrong again ! : )

THIS IS GOOD info, thank you

oh SHIT the other side of paradise, take a slice, life itself, and season 2 episode 3 are all my Big Faves

the way you phrased this makes me think you already have a strong opinion on it

hey uh. coming from a person who was absolutely CONVINCED that theyd be dead in the future when they were 12, a not insignificant part of that was me feeling that there was something irreversibly wrong with me for not behaving or acting in certain ways based on what was going downstairs

and obviously im still HERE but it means i can understand how devastatingly terrible it can feel when youre that young and it seems like the way you behave and feel are flawed, or dirty, and anything that can lessen that feeling and make you comfortable in your own body is huge, can save your life

not that im saying its always a LIFE OR DEATH decision !

i guess if youre viewing it as adults forcing a child into making decisions that you dont think theyre capable of understanding its easy to be hesitant about getting behind it, but nobody is forcing a child to be trans. nobody has tricked them into feeling this way. you cant just walk in and get started on treatment on an immediate whim - some programs require 2 YEARS of concrete evidence before theyll even consider it

i feel like you should try speaking to the parents of trans children before you really put down a concrete opinion on whether this is a good or bad thing, and seeing the difference ( if any ) its made in their lives

people whove detransitioned, or found they had ultimately a different identity than the one they were exploring could also be an avenue to look intto ! i have several acquaintances who, after a period of years, found they werent trans but wouldnt take back the time where they were figuring out if they were, and i know this doesnt invalidate the friends i have who ARE

ultimately this is what it boils down to for me : Its Sure Gotta Beat Being Dead

i WILL give you that ive definitely seen a lot of overreactions to seemingly innocuous topics on this website

but youve also got to keep in mind that everybody who is saying these things MEANS them, and to them theres a completely reasonable explanation to why they feel that way

im not saying you should blindly accept any criticism you get, but to instead try to get a grasp on WHY theyre responding the way they are instead of immediately dismissing it

its because i cant drive and they wont let me sit in the front on account of the smell

NICE THINGS

AHHHH I GOT.. a bunch of other really sweet messages to the point where id feel weird about putting em ALL UP BUT... IF YOU SENT ME SOMETHING i can promise i absolutely saw it and it made my day better and just, holy shit, thank you for taking time out of your life to say anything to me at all

because you didnt have to, even a little bit

youre all beautiful and im kissing you on the mouths all at once. no take backs

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kristie-rp · 6 years

Text

[2018] Michael & Lucas: Origins

When Michael is born, his parents name him Mizushima Miko. He is their second son: his older brother is Mizushima Juuki. Juuki immediately adores Miko; he’s fascinated and spends as much time as he can watching over his little brother. It’s actually a considerable amount of time: he is still too young to go to school, and his parents are too paranoid to trust a sitter – but they are also far too busy to make time to actually look after their children.

Juuki is primarily alive at this point thanks to an aunt that visits at least once a week, a woman who claims to be their mothers sister and who looks absolutely nothing like either of their parents. Tamie, the woman he calls aunt, teaches him everything he can grasp to make baby Miko’s life easier.

It’s enough, in many ways. Miko grows up both easier and harder than Juuki. The youngest boy is not comfortable around his parents, is quiet and watchful whenever possible. He learns young that it is more effective to babble at Juuki after prolonged periods of quiet than it is to cry, because if he cries, one of his parents may come in.

One of Miko’s earliest memories – certainly the first to involve either of his parents – is of his mother leaning down into his crib. She is wearing all black, with a scarf of sorts around her neck, and something protruding from her back, held in place by a strap. In the memory, he stares first at the tail end of a military-issue machine gun that is on his mothers back as she kisses his tiny cheek, and then at her face as she pulls the scarf up to cover everything except for her eyes. “Sleep well, my precious baby,” she says in the memory, and then disappears into the night.

They grow up in a house that is big and empty, surprisingly so considering Aunt Tamie and their parents and their parents co-workers are coming and going all the time. Juuki continues to do everything he can to raise Miko without attracting their parents attention, and they never talk about it. To Miko, this is normal; to Juuki, this is better. Tamie especially expresses her pride in him, over and over again, and tells them in her own gruff way that she is there for them before either of their parents.

It is not until Miko is old enough to be sort-of independent that the two boys are sent away to a boarding school outside the city their parents house is in. Tamie tells them it is an international school, and that it is for the best. Their parents say it is in their own best interests to go without complaint, and Juuki doesn’t complain, because he knows by now that having an armoury as an accepted norm in his childhood is not a good thing, and he’d rather Miko escape it. Miko doesn’t complain because he takes too many cues from Juuki, and doesn’t feel enough attachment to either of his parents to protest. It’s not that they’re negligent (though they are) or distant, exactly; it’s just that Juuki is a better caregiver than them, and his brother is only three years older.

Juuki takes to math and socialising with absolutely anyone who will talk to him. He finds it impossible to be consistent: to his desk partner in math, he is intelligent and quick-witted, to the girl who sits with him at lunch, he is quiet and sarcastic. There are more personalities that he tries on the same way others try on clothes, and the only one that sticks is the caring older brother.

Miko takes to school in general, but he does not get flawless grades. He averages B’s and C’s and to Juuki he seems quietly content, though he worries that his little brother is having trouble interacting with other people. It’s not a baseless concern, it’s a fair one: Miko did not know other people when they lived in their parents house, and was always content to depend on Juuki for whatever company he wanted. That continues as months turn into years at the international school, and for all Juuki wishes Miko would learn to do more, he seems perfectly satisfied with offering shy smiles to whoever Juuki forces him to hang around with.

Juuki resolves to do something to help Miko, because this can’t be healthy – except before anything can change, Tamie appears to pick them up from school. She does not explain to the headmaster or teachers or to Miko and Juuki, instead bundling them into her car. It’s black and inconspicuous. Juuki finds a pistol in the glovebox when he reaches for the gum she used to keep there, and stares at her with wide eyes, weapon limp in his hands. “Auntie?”

“I have some bad news,” she says as lightly as she can.

From the backseat, Miko clears his throat. “Did our parents get executed for betraying Yakuza?”

Juuki whips around to stare at his little brother, wide eyed. He knows his parents aren’t the best people, aren’t necessarily nice, but they aren’t abusive. But Miko sounds so certain, so matter of fact, that he’s inclined to believe it. After all, Miko is the observant one. He’s the one who would know.

Tamie’s hands are white where they grip the steering wheel, and she directs Juuki to dig through the glovebox to find the papers she actually meant for him to find. There is a passport there for each of them, and plane tickets. They are Japanese passports, which makes sense, considering they are Japanese – but the names are written in English characters, not Kanji or Hiragana or Katakana. Juuki squints at it, interpreting the Romanized characters only thanks to the past few years of English classes. “Lucas?” he asks slowly, reading the name from alongside his own face. “And – Michael?”

“Your idiot parents,” Tamie starts. She pauses to clear her throat. “Your brother is correct. Your parents are – were – Yakuza, and they made mistakes. Their superiors found out.” She softens her voice to say, “I’m sorry, Juuki, but your parents are dead.”

He stops for a moment then, processing. “But then – what? I want to see them.”

“No, you don’t,” Miko says quietly. Still in the backseat, he does not move. “It’ll be better if you remember them alive. Then you – we – get to pretend. Right?”

Tamie nods once, sharply – slowly. For all she isn’t really their aunt, at least not biologically, she does care for them. That is part of why she is here now. “I want you both to know that lying to you has been difficult.”

Miko swallows, Juuki rubs at his eyes. He doesn’t want to be sad that his parents are gone – they really, really haven’t ever been that great – but he can’t help it. They were more attentive with him than they were with Miko; that’s just a fact, a consequence of him being an only child for a few years. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Juuki asks. His voice has risen an octave.

And Tamie talks and talks and talks, explaining everything. How their parents are, were, high ranking Yakuza, high enough to be a problem, but not high enough to be on top. About how their home has been a base of operations for much longer than Juuki has been alive, that it has only been a permanent residence for just that long. How their parents are too proud to split custody, about how it took Tamie most of Miko’s life to convince them that it would be best to send them to an international school to learn, to pick up skills and contacts that would make them useful to them in the long run. And she talks about how her name really is Tamie, and no, she isn’t really related to them. She is Japanese-Filipino, which explains why Juuki always believed that she wasn’t their biological aunt, and she was chosen to be one of three undercover Interpol agents infiltrating the Yakuza. It just so happened that Tamie’s in was their parents. She explains in great detail how she has never precisely cared for their parents except in the way you might care for a distant cousin, but that she has always loved Juuki, and always loved Miko, as long as they’ve been alive. This has been her mission for as long as Juuki has been alive, if not a little longer – she is vague on the details – but when the higherups got word that there was a leak within the Yakuza, and investigated enough to pick up the one that existed between Tamie and their parents, well – she is absolutely certain that twisting the arm of her handler until she had a way out of the country for the boys she loves like her own is the right thing to do. And that’s why she did it.

“So,” she finishes awkwardly, “I, um. If you want, they’ve agreed to let me have sole custody of the two of you. But we cannot stay here, or anywhere in Japan – there is too much risk that the Yakuza will track you. Which is why your passports have American names on them.” She pauses and bites her lip, and it’s such an unusual show of uncertainty on her that Juuki almost smiles. “You wouldn’t be able to be Miko and Juuki any more, except when you are absolutely certain you’re in private. And I can’t guarantee your safety forever, but I know – I will do everything in my power to give you normal lives. As much as can be expected.”

Juuki – Lucas, now, he supposes – listens, and he wonders if it would be cruel to point out that she has not given them much of a choice. It is no choice, really, when their options are either to reject her and end up alone in a foreign country where Miko – Michael – does not speak the language, and Lucas can barely read it – or they can accept her offer, and get something like a trusted relative out of this.

It’s no offer at all, really.

“We want whatever you can provide,” Miko says – Michael says. Lucas pinches himself. Michael, Michael, Michael.

He resolves then that he will do anything to keep his little brother out of trouble, no matter what level of his own integrity it challenges. He can do this one thing for him, be there for him in a way their parents never were.

It’s the least he could do, really – or at least as he sees it.

#headcanon #hc #hc. michael #hc. lucas #kristie's writing #kwriting #kwrites #kristie writes #ft. lucas #ft. michael #ft. tamie

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samanthasroberts · 7 years

Text

The Great Dying: Happiness Comes on Day Five

My family has come to Hawaii.

Hawaii, like an aging model, is still gorgeousjust sometimes in a fragile, wasted way.

My parents were here a long time ago; they came on their honeymoon, back in the Old World times. They bought a hotel-and-airfare package to Honolulu. They went scuba diving in the coral reefs and touched real rays and even one dolphin, they said.

Of course thats not an option anymore, but you can snorkel all you like in fiberglass reefs stocked with colorful farmed parrotfish and now and then a robot shark.

I love the parrotfishs bulgy, fat lips.

Lydia Millet

About

Lydia Millet is an American novelist and conservationist. Her third novel, My Happy Life, won the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for fiction, and she has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize as well as a Guggenheim fellow. Her newest novel for young readers, The Bodies of the Ancients, comes out in January. The Great Dying is adapted from her YA book Pills and Starships, published by Akashic.

Back then, they ate at restaurants with views of sparkling aqua-blue bays; they went to luaus and drank fancy drinks with paper umbrellas. (We still have those; some of them have my parents names printed on them, from a honeymoon party that was held for them. robert & sara, says the faded writing, hawaii, may 2068.) They took small trips to the other islands, even the one that used to be a leper colony.

These days Honolulu and most of Oahu are seawall and salty aquifers and long, long blocks of abandoned buildings.

But they wanted Hawaii anyway. They were nostalgic. So this time we came to the Big Island, where were staying in a hotel with a view of Mauna Kea. Ive seen pictures of it from way back when, white at the top and majestic. Theres never snow anymore, even at 14,000 feet, but the volcano still looms.

Its just the four of us: my mother and my father, my little brother, and me. Its the four of us here for our last week.

A week is the period the companies usually suggest, once you finalize dates. Any longer and customers can get morbid, or even, if they decide to refuse their pharma, hysterical. And then the whole thing collapses. Any shorter and theres not enough time for good-byes.

My parents arent even that old. My mother had me in her late sixties, and two years later she had Samand though theyre vigorous and healthy on a physical level, on an emotional level theyve decided theyre done.

This would be harder without the training we did at home, without the pharma regimen they have us on. Even with those tools its still intense and vibrant, and everything seems inflected with meaning. Cursed with meaning, almost. Meaning attaches itself to everyday objectstoothbrushes, swimsuits, dangly earrings. Here in the hotel suite, I look at these normal items and everything seems like it portends something.

We just got here and already were on the brink of tears at times, or at least my mother and I are. My father and Sam are trying to act stoic, though now and then I catch one of their hands or a bottom lip trembling.

Meanwhile the edges of objects glow, blur, and fade as I look at them. They all seem permeable or aliveas though the aliveness of objects is there to compensate for my parents being ready to die.

I dont think its the pharma thats doing it, either. Sam and I arent even on a full pill regimen yet. On Day Four well have the option of a powerful tranquilizing blend: Thats Good-Bye Day. They like the contract holders to have their memories intact to say good-bye, because the fifth days pharmathe last pharmacauses forgetfulness. It brings on a long-term memory loss that wipes all memories associated with trauma, so they go out happy.

Happiness comes on Day Five.

Its early afternoon. My parents and my brother have gone out for a walk, and from the balcony of our suite I can see them strolling, their light clothes flapping in the breeze off the ocean, on a trail along the high jagged bluffs.

They carry umbrellas that protect them from the sun but also hide their faces from me. They could be anyone.

The bluffs were well engineered and have been planted to look wild, in a fake way. There are scrubby bushes from the desert, South American cacti and Chinese beach roses (according to the brochure) and even, now and then, dune grasses and sand. They hide the concrete seawall beneath the artificial bluffs so that you dont have to remember where you are or whenso you can almost forget youre not in Old Hawaii. Forget, in other words, that youre living at the tiny tail end of the fire-breathing dragon of our history.

The company my parents chose is a midsize outfit that likes to boast how it hires locals. So our rep, when it came down to it, was a lady my mother had once played golf with.

My mother isnt the golf type at all, by the way. She barely knows how to play, but one time she competed in a small-golf game for charityits mostly small golf these days, unless you have huge money to throw away on travel to one of the big courses, plus water-use finesand because she had a good sense of humor, at least till recently, she was basically the comic relief, I think.

But that one day was when she first met the rep, Jean.

Jean showed up at our apartment a couple of months ago, in the hour before dinnertime when we usually hang out together and talk about our day and stuff. The four of us were drinking cocktails in the living room. Being 15, Sam doesnt drink that much yet, but my mother had offered him a junior can of wheat beer.

And there she was at the doora compact, middle-aged woman from the 10th floor, frosted hair, braided wedge heels. Id seen her in the elevator once or twice.

This is Jean, said my mother softly. Jean, these are our children, Nat and Sam.

My name is Natalie, but I go by Nat.

The woman smiled and sat down and looked at us with a gentle but still oddly businesslike expression.

Your parents thought it might be good to have me here is how she started in.

Sam looked up right away. Hed been reading off his device.

Youre service, he said flatly.

I do work with a service company, said Jean.

She didnt miss a beat and didnt seem awkward; she had a forthright attitude without being domineering.

Youre the counselor, or whatever they call them, said Sam.

Im coordinating the personal aspect of outreach, conceded Jean.

On the contract we purchased recently, put in my mother, soft-voiced. Mine and your fathers.

Sam picked up his beer and drank most of the rest of it, a flush rising on his skin.

I had been sitting at the bay window, looking out over the garden. Our apartment complex was nice, with trees and water features and little striped chipmunks, because chipmunks always poll higher than squirrels.

Anyway, I liked to drink and take in the view.

But then, without really noticing my own movement, I turned so I was facing the room, my back against the view of the trees. In the pit of my stomach was a heavy new stone. At the same time my arms and legs felt light and liquid, like the bones in them had softened.

Why didnt you tell me? was the thing I said.

Were telling you now, sweetheart, said my mother, coming to sit beside me on the ledge. She put one arm around my shoulders. Its all according to schedule. The timing is what they recommend.

They encourage the parents not to get emotive when theyre disclosing. It only makes things worse. So my mother sat there next to me, her arm on my shoulders light, keeping a kind of professional attitude. With her free hand, she shook the cubes in her glass and raised it to drink.

My father stood facing us all with his tumbler of whiskey. His face bore a kind, bemused expression, as it used to when Sam or I would cry and he had no idea how to stop it.

You can still take it back, said Sam, with a kind of hurt urgency. Please, MomDad! Take it back!

Honey, said my mother, we dont want to. Or maybe a better way to say it is that we weve lived for you two ever since the tipping point, sweetheart. Youve been whats kept us going.

The tipping point was when we couldnt do anything more to stop the planets runaway warming. There were feedback loops in the climate system, like the albedo effect and water vapor increase in the atmosphere and plankton die-off in the oceans. So even though wed stopped emitting so much carbon and methane, we couldnt stop the seas or the temperature from rising. At least for a few centuries.

Both of you are practically grown up, said my mother. And when it comes right down to it, you dont really need usnot in the day-to-day sense. You think you do, maybe. But we know deep down that you can take care of yourselves. And you will.

You cant say what were feeling, said Sam, shaking his head. Only what you are.

It helps, for peace of mind, said Jean to Sam, if you keep argumentation for later. During this encounter, this time of disclosure, weve found that what allows for peacefulness is just listening.

Fuck listening! said Sam.

He was bright redlike someone had dealt him two slaps, one on each cheek.

And really, went on Jean calmly, as though he hadnt said anything, theres no rush here. Theres plenty of time. Remember, all contracts are voidable right up until the end. So theres absolutely nothing to make you nervous.

She didnt mention what we all knew: that theres a stiff financial penalty for last-minute cancellations. She didnt need to. My parents knew a couple whod canceled just five hours before their contract was about to start, but at that point it cost like 90 percent of the full price. And they ended up buying a new contract a couple of months later. That meant less money for the survivorsa tainted legacy.

But youre doing so well, begged Sam, turning to my mother.

I felt frozen.

Youre doing really well, youve got your moods well stabilized lately, he added.

No, yeah, son, said my father. Well were not too bad off. Were not personally complaining. We feel so lucky, compared to lots of people. No question. And you knowits not any one big thing. You know? Its not a dramatic situation, theres no particular, exact catalyst here. But we feel like, for one, heywhy not quit while were still ahead? You know, leave while weve got our health. And theres still no impairment. We all saw how Mamie got after she passed 100.

Youll be all right. You have such great resilience, added my mother. Wewe think youre very strong.

Oh please, said Sam.

Try to see it from our point of view, my father said. When we were young, there were still big animals swimming all over the oceans. The rivers and the forests had all this life in them, not just the squirrels and pigeons. You could go anywhere in the worldwe drove a gas-burning car when we were young. We flew on huge airplanes. Whenever we wanted to!

My parents keep thinking, somehow, that one day well hear about how different the world used to be and for the first time well understand them.

But isnt the world always different for the kids than it was for the parents? Sure, maybe its more different now. We get it.

But this is the only world we ever knew.

For Old World people like us, you know, said my mother, weve had as much as we can take of seeing everything go away. And we dont think we can bear towhat happens if, if it keeps going how we think it will.

Of course, we hope and pray it wont, said my father staunchly, tossing back the last of his whiskey. We figure, go early, while everythingswhile theres still hope. You know.

But I knew what he wasnt saying: They couldnt stand to see our future. They couldnt stand to watch us struggle.

Its never an easy decision, put in Jean.

Not helpful, I thought.

But then, the companies put the counselors in the room partly to deflect the family members feelings. Or fears and tears, as they say.

Your mother is so tired, Sam, said my father. He was fiddling with a pile of black and green olives on a tray. The olives were stacked in a pyramid, like in a picture Id once seen of ancient cannonballs. They should have been a tipoff that this was a special occasion, so to speak, because olives arent the kind of food we get every day. We both are, if Im perfectly honest, he added.

We sat there for a while, not knowing what to say.

Eventually Jean suggested we take a walk outside, through the courtyards of the complex. Walks are popular with service companies. Low-cost momentum, I guess, and a natural mood boost.

So we prepared ourselves fresh drinks, mostly in awkward silence, and took them with us into the elevator. We gazed outside as the car descended.

The elevators in our complex are external and made of a shaded glass, so you can see the sky and then the buildings below it, and as you drop, the trees in the courtyard come up to meet you.

Down through the green canopy, down along the tree trunks. Finally we landed facing the rock gardens, the fountains and splashing waterfalls of perfectly reclaimed sewage.

What a nice evening, said my mother, and we looked up dutifully at the fading bands of red and yellow in the western sky.

One thing we do have, in the New World, is beautiful sunsets.

I think what put my parents over the edge was a trip they took a few months ago, a light-rail weekender to the place where my father grew up. It wasnt a coastal town in the strict senseit wasnt right on the beachbut it was on a river delta, maybe 20 miles from where the true coast used to be. When the first storm surges came that couldnt be stopped by seawalls, the town got an influx of coastal refugees. Wave after wave followed, though most of the people didnt stay. Back then they were migrating to places like Ogallala, with fertile land or thick forests. If you look at an old map animation, you can see the masses moving away from the coasts, inward and upward from New York and Florida, from Southern California and the dying cities of the desertLas Vegas and Phoenix, say. The animations look like storms or vast, sky-darkening flocks of birds.

Sometimes, at home, I take a mild mood softener, sit at my screen, and gaze at the animations dreamily. You can customize them to show whatever details you wantthe continent shrinking as the oceans rise plus the massive migrations. I also like to watch the building of the seawalls. You see the swamping of Cape Cod, the swallowing up of the Florida Keys. Islands all over the oceans contract to the size of pinheads, then vanish. You can zoom way out and watch the planet rotate, see the surges of ocean that followed the melting of the ice.

Theres something lovely about it, lovely like Eno or Mozart, thoughespecially without pharmait can be sad.

Anyway, my fathers hometown had been leveled by the waves of refugee camps. Nothing was left of the houses and gardens of his leafy street, the school he walked to holding his younger brothers hand, the swing sets and climbing gyms at the park where he played. All that was gonethe whole town had turned to tent cities and landfills and fields of composting toilets.

My dads baby brother died a while back, a do-it-yourself deal. He hated the service companies. So other than us, my dad has no family left.

For a while after that weekend trip, he and my mother were so quiet that sometimes we forgot they were there.

Before we left for Hawaii, my parents helped Sam and me move to a group facility for survivors who arent old enough to live alone. The two of us will go back there after the trip, to live for a few months till I turn 18.

Then, the morning we left, Sam and I picked them up to catch the boat that brought us here. That was the worst. The apartment where we had lived was bare. Their luggage stood in a neat row against the wall, small cases packed with only bedrolls, some toiletries, and a few clothes. It was a shock to see the sterile whiteness of what used to be home.

Well, said my mother, turning back to cast a glance at the empty living room as we were filing out the front door, good-bye, everything.

Sams coming up the path again toward the hotel building, so close hes almost beneath meI see the circle of his shiny white umbrella. My parents arent with him. I squint: I can still see the two of them, out at the edge of the cliff.

The oceans turning anoxic, scientists say. Its what happened 250 million years ago in the Great Dying, otherwise known as the P-T extinction eventthe biggest mass die-off in Earths history. And now its happening again. The seawaters turned more acid from the carbon its storing, so the ocean food chain has mostly collapsed. Big burps of methane are bubbling out of the water along the continental shelves.

Where there used to be corals and whales and sea lions and seahorses, now theres mostly bacteria and archaea and viruses. The odd school of mutated jellyfish. Plus the garbage vortex and the chemical streams.

But still, Mom and Dad stand at the edge of the bluff, their arms around each others waists, and look out over the faraway waves like anything could be therelike those waves might still be the glittering roof of a marvelous underwater country.

The Fiction Issue

Tales From an Uncertain Future

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/14/the-great-dying-happiness-comes-on-day-five/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/the-great-dying-happiness-comes-on-day-five/

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