#this has sailed so far from original point

[inseparabiles]

Treading the weird line here on like wow all of this is public do I want to be oversharing my whole life out here but yo let's cut

First off? You have no idea how much I admire you for all of that. I know it's not something that you'll do or speak of because wow look at me I'm so good for doing this, and I know it's probably something that's really hard to take credit for or hear about, and because of that, I hope what we already said about Geta above packs a punch because it is so important to also hear that: that what you're doing is admirable, that it is good, and that showing love like that is the single most human thing a person can do. A decade ago, I briefly got to know someone who was very kind and in every way a warm person, but they'd only ever meet us outside their home, and some months into knowing them, they confessed it's because they're afraid of letting people into their house because their brother was autistic in the way that makes people uncomfortable. They worried that having their brother there not communicating or making strange noises or staring or whatever else could have happened would frighten us off, and like, that has never left us. It is so unfair that the world - other people - put that kind of fear into others. Reading your story reminded me of it a lot and I don't know. I also know someone who has a disabled sister too and has talked over the years about how hard it can be to love someone so much and want the best for them but the rages and the violence and the shouting and the inability to reason with someone who's throwing tantrums over meals or clothing is just so hard sometimes.

And it's just. I don't know.

We're not an only child, but our sister never lived with us and there's 14 years between us. For most of our life, we've had to go at this alone, and that's a major part for why we have DID to begin with. Since I already decided it's oversharing hours on THIS post of all fucking things, I'm just going right for it like you know what you signed up for at this point, but being trapped in a household with a working mother and a violent father who took his rages out on us, while also being disabled (undiagnosed and untreated neurodivergency on several levels + a learning disability either due to the forementioned other neurodivergency or because we did try to hang ourselves from the umbilicus at birth and that was a whole thing), we didn't have anybody. Our mum wasn't there because somebody had to feed the household. We didn't really know our sister. Every day coming home from whatever, daycare or school, it was just. That.

And like. Our system's structured in a very strict family dynamic, because that gives us what we didn't have in our actual history: at the top of the hierarchy, we have a patriarch and a matriarch figure, one mainline protector and one mainline caretaker. A notch down we have elder siblings, who are both protectors and protectees in their own ways - dual parts that have very firm connections to their younger siblings, which is the next tier down from them. These aren't necessarily protectors anymore, but you hurt their protectors and they hurt you back, guaranteed. More vulnerable and more unstable but also very loyal to the upper tiers, particularly to their counterparts. And the ones above that tier will do anything for them, would do, and are utterly devoted to them. The older/younger sibling dynamic comes naturally in that setting because that's the allegory the world has offered us for the relationship.

It's like. I don't know. There's a lot in the dynamic between the twins that we desperately missed/miss in our own life and that our psyche is trying so very hard to patch up for, where some parts of us relate to the other and some the other more strongly for their own reasons. When we first watched the film, Geta was immediately the one we attached to, too. Not only for the parts that were present but because in our own life - we've always been protectors. While we have an older sister we barely even know, all our life we've ended up being the sister from another mother to so many younger, even more vulnerable people, and god did we take to that role, fully devoted. But ironically because that activated those parts, our focus immediately shifted to Caracalla, because the drive to protect is so much stronger than the drive to be protected. Giving protection is active, it's an action, and that's a full-time duty.

It's funny and we had a laugh about it to our partner about how like. Yeah went in and immediately chose the favourite twin, it's that guy who's so fucking relatable. Which guy? Uh the guy who - fuck. I think by now we've fully earned ourselves a reputation as a Caracalla stan from hell but that's so much because also of how much we relate to Geta, it's just in the weirdest pretzel of a way.

Geta is both the person we always needed and never had, and the person we had to become, both for ourselves and for every other kid thrown our way. We practically raised one girl until that went to hell in ways that I don't even want to talk about, for 14 years we grew up with her as close as siblings and did our everything to try to protect her from her own circumstances at home and from the people she ended up going with because of those circumstances. The whole story is fucked up but as a sidenote - watching Stranger Things with Eddie is the weirdest experience, because "fucked up" in our case also involved an actual witch hunt because our shitty rural town labeled us a satanist and decided we were luring this girl into evil and abusing her somehow (including an invented child sex trafficking ring her grandmother decided we were taking her to?) and that her other friends were pure and good while we were the bad influence, while these other friends were actively drawing her to drinking, drugs, and sex with older men, and all that blame was laid on us because ??? weird kid who plays World of Warcraft = satanism = such a convenient target to lay the blame on when all the other girls looked so normal.

I kid you not. That was a whole fucking thing. But yeah anyway that's a different Joseph Quinn character we coincidentally relate to for the weirdest reasons, but watching the season was so fucking hard we didn't even connect the dots between Eddie and Geta, just thought why's that fucking guy so familiar looking the whole time on first watch LMAO.

BACK TO GLADIATOR AND OTHER PERSONAL TRAUMA I'm so sorry you have to read this I got going and now I can't stop basically

The whole

it's so odd because it's this sequel movie that has been torn to shreds by fans because it's "absolute horseshit" but it has characters that are so profoundly relatable, unlike any character/characters have ever been before

genuinely, we keep making fun of the dudebro audiences every time we go to the movies because this BOTHERS us. The wrong audience is watching this movie. The dudebros hate it because it's historically inaccurate and the characters are weird and it just isn't giving them the machismo hard enough. What the movie seems to be actually looking for is the traumatised and emotionally baggaged young adult audience who has SIGNIFICANT overlap with their freak cast of characters. We've been through grief, we know the feeling of being all alone, we know what it means to cling onto one another because that's all we have, we know what injustice feels like, we're the ones who are being put down in this current climate, we're the ones who understand the cast of characters they've given us.

I've forced my whole friend group to watch this movie and not a single one of them came out thinking it was horseshit. Everyone found something deeply relatable about it. Because it is so deeply relatable to people like us. And clearly there are enough of us given the actual ratings for the film, but it's like you would not KNOW that if you just looked at random people online talking about it. All they ever say is how it's shit. It's pure coincidence the first time I heard this movie even existed was when a random Redditor was like "yeah just watched it this weekend it was really good imho a good sequel for the first movie" and went "oh yeah fuck I loved that movie back when, gotta check it out" and then didn't look up a single other review because we're that aversed to spoilers - if we had, we would have probably skipped the film.

And like.

I don't know. Fuck I just don't know. Our mum's been exasperated with us for the way we are about this and god I don't blame her but she even said like "I'm paying for your therapy, please use that time for something other than talking about Gladiator every week" but she doesn't understand how deeply intertwined this shit is to everything we absolutely should be talking about in there. Like I cannot emphasis enough how healing this movie has been, and how healing these two specific characters have been, because they are so close to us, both of them, and the way that they are about each other is so... can I say pure? Like do you know what I mean if I say pure? It is selfless. It's undiluted. Their love and care for one another in their world that is so unsafe is everything to us, and that's the line of rope we've been using to climb down into the places that hurt so fucking much to explore. And we need that help to get there, it's not just going to happen on its own.

(Which is also why our therapist is obsessed with us being obsessed. She caught onto this immediately and we've just been exploring everything through the film since, and it's been so like. God the things we're unlocking)

Anyway yeah that was. Our whole life's story sorry about that and also no, I understand - when you're hoping for Geta to give his twin the roughing up that he truly deserves, you're not hoping to beat up your sister, but probably more something along the lines of seeing Geta experience the kind of release and relief that he can in his circumstances afford which is both safe and harmless and they both come out of it knowing they love each other. You can't just go do that to someone you love in real life because if you punt them in the face they'll come out actually hurt for it, but if you sit back and watch Geta pin Cara to the wall by his hair, you know he still loves him, and you also know everything about how Cara feels about that at every moment of it, and come out with the certainty that they both understand.

It's just a safe way to show the extremes of emotion. Which, uh, reminded me of the whole "why do I want to eat my baby" article and now I'm going to leave this massive autobiography at that with a link:

Today's fun research task for Boys and Wolves has involved a lot of extremely depressing case studies of general paresis and dementia, and devolved from there into that guy pinning things at a wall with an insane look on his face meme trying to figure out again what the fuck kind of a disease Caracalla's even trying to have.

Starting to form a solid (as sieves are solid) theory that fits smack in the middle of the historical accuracy of canon. I don't want a PhD in syphilis studies but from all that we've been able to gather there's two prevalent theories of the origin of the disease that then split into rooms of individuals divining tea leaves:

1. it came from the Muricas.

2. it didn't entirely come from the Muricas.

First is simple, there's plenty enough evidence of syphilis existing in the Americas, and the timeline of when it started divine retributioning the European population coincides perfectly. But it wasn't doing that in the Americas, isn't that just fucking weird. There's a lot of talk about how devastating smallpox was to the populations, but nobody ever talks how everyone was already dying en masse from syphilis because that wasn't happening.

Meanwhile, Europeans got exposed to that and suddenly you have a few hundred years of people dying absolutely horribly all over and a whole moral and spiritual panic about it. Reverse theory included in the category of 2: then the Europeans brought it the fuck back to Americas but worse so everyone got to start dying from this version equally. The origins wank is evidently never-ending because when syphilis got out of hand as an epidemic, every single country named it after their least favourite neighbour and blamed them for it.

But then you have archaeological evidence in gravesites of the kinds of bone changes children with congenital syphilis would have from eons before the disease supposedly arrived from the Americas. And you have adult bones with evidence of advanced disease on them. They're rare but they exist and have been found and continue to be found. But if it had been killing people the way it started killing people after the 15th century, you'd think someone would have noticed.

So theories about whether x or y historical figure had syphilis (Caracalla has been theorised, and he definitely had something he was trying to cure by going to every temple he could find on the map to pray for healing, but the only source that illuminates this doesn't care about elaborating on it one bit further and so we don't know) aside due to unproveability, IF they did, was it anything similar to what came to be after the strains mixed with the American ones?

And if not, and we don't know any better, this could be our personal saving grace on the question of how to fix-it a universe where the real last boss encounter is an undefeatable and absolutely horrifying terminal illness hitting one of our mains EXTREMELY too early in full force.

Word of god has said Caracalla has it and that's why he's like that and sure enough, he has the symptoms to back that up. It NOT being syphilis isn't really on the table, and I mean, there's also the direct reference with Geta spilling some truly enlightened beans with the whole "the disease that infects his loins has spread to his brain" like boy do you want like a nobel price for your medical theory because that shit is advanced and you can barely read. (Actually there is no evidence whatsoever to conclusively state that Geta can read, but that's another post.)

Our point being, when it's clear that he has it so in this universe it must then be possible FOR him to have it, if Caracalla's fantasy syphilis was a strain that existed before the disease mixed with the American strain and became the fucking worst thing on earth, then that would conveniently explain his symptoms being all over the place. Guess what else it could do? It'd allow us to draw the convenient conclusion that it isn't nearly as terminal or aggressive as our modern day strain would be, because again if it was, it would be WELL documented in history. Once this thing became mainstream people were fucking horrified and for a good reason because everyone was dying of it left and right. If it had been like that in Roman times, well known for their prolific writers and texts still preserved to date and all the theory and advancements in medicine that originated in that era, you BET it would be recorded.

Is this our Apollo? Can we just whole-hog into inventing our own disease like they clearly did for the movie? That'd be so convenient. So simple. It'd make perfect sense of the whole nonsensical nature of what we were handed to work with in the first place. And it'd allow us to do literally whatever the fuck we want with the timeline, which is the part that is destroying us emotionally at the moment by the sheer graces of being so unforgiving bleak.

I have no idea if any of that made sense because honestly I'm asleep in every sense except the physical, but I think this might be our Apollo.

(Imagine how easy it would be if we weren't autistic in this extremely specific way where everything has to make sense and be realistic and real and backed up by facts or it's a CoNtInUiTy ErRoR or uNrEaLiStIc like bitch you're writing fanfic about a movie where Geta and Caracalla are twink twins who evidently never received any form of training in any subject, don't know what the fuck an Aeneid is, spawned from thin air because their parents aren't even in the timeline, and also are pasty redheads and love each other more than anything. Like if this movie looked at a history book it did not do it to follow the rules. Take a note already holy shit)

[phantomsies]

SACRIFICE + eren j. , chrollo l.

two musical geniuses, a jealous husband vs. an obsessed ex..and the alliance between them that you’d never thought you’d see.

📝: musician x influencer au, (this is an expansion of the original one, an au within an au), black fem reader, smut themes, implied threesome, this is an excerpt and it will make sense once I post the full fic. If nobody is fucking with the concept, we’ll just pretend this never happened 🌚

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

compromise…to settle a dispute by mutual concessions. To sacrifice and even bend for the sake of the greater good. Out of all of the intricate lyrics and enigmatic pieces composed by your husband, it wasn’t a word that had ever found mainstay in his vocabulary! For nothing, no one and especially not for a person whom he’d harbor resentment against. Or rather…hated their fucking guts with a passion! Extreme, but a far more accurate description. Although, you couldn’t blame him too much. After all, this was someone who reminded Eren not only of himself but of the harsh reality, that what once was…could always be again!

“Yeees, that’s it, gorgeous. That’s the pretty face I know..the same one you used to make when I was so deep inside of you..”

eyes trailing to the back of (y/n)‘s skull, those nimble fingers clawing into the dark silk sheets and your back raised from the mattress as your husband’s cock made what felt like permanent residence inside of those warm folds. The constant snapping of his hips with sporadic thrusts and that menacing smirk on his face: a sure fire sign that he had something to prove. He’d always fucked you like a rabid animal when he had a point to get across. When you’d angered him, when he missed you..and now, when your ex fling thought that he could make a return and swoop you out from under him. Too bad for him, that ship has long sailed and it was another man’s last name you were wearing these days. Not to mention the half a million dollar wedding ring. It was also your beloved EJ who couldn’t stop pulling orgasm after orgasm from that beautiful body..making you quiver and writhe in a fit of bliss whilst those delicious juices splattered his abs, the sheets and anything in its vicinity. The man who’d contorted your body until you folded and proceeded to drill that leaking pussy into full blown submission. All but etching his name on your insides to remind you who you belonged to. Hell, at this point, it was more consolation for himself more than anything.

“Don’t listen to that bastard, princess. Eyes on me…I’m the only one you need to focus on. Fuck him.”

but as that third climax neared and his thumb pad rolled around on your clit, Eren couldn’t help but to feel that your body was intertwined with his own but your mind resided somewhere else at the moment. That the other voice in the room had penetrated your psyche while he only held dominion over your flesh. It was a surefire way to piss him off, that was for certain. Because no matter how hard he grasped your hips, regardless of how far that fat, throbbing dick glided into you and stuffed that pretty cunt to the brim..no matter how many times you met his amazing strokes with the clap of that voluptuous ass, crying out to him for more and begging to let you squirt all over him as his rings pressed against your throat whilst tears, as well as a smile plagued your face. Or if he placed a foot on your head and fucked you reminescent of an animal as his new rival glared on. It didn’t make a difference how many times you called him ‘daddy’ or told him that he was making you feel so good; so tight that he felt as if his entire shaft was going to snap in half! Hell, you could shout to the heavens that it was all his. Anything to make him feel better..to console that already shattered ego of his. After all, it had to be pretty damn fragile to even entertain someone else when he was fucking the most beautiful woman either of them had ever laid eyes upon.

“How sad..even now, as our princess is about to come so hard for you..you can’t even grant her your full attention. And you think you’ll convince me that she’s in better hands with a man who’s so utterly selfish?”

because even as you centered his face to your own with a palm on his cheek and pleaded with him to look into your eyes as he stuffed you full of his seed..he too had accepted the fact that you were divided. Feeling defeated even now as you reach euphoria right underneath him. Because the man who had been viewing this salacious display..dark eyes glued to your nude bodies, fist clenched around that cock..stroking back and forth as veins protrude in his hands and precum seeped down the knuckles. His chest exposed as he stimulated those sensitive nipples..something his precious (y/n) had done so many times before. The man who felt more like a conductor to a salacious symphony rather than a helpless third party watching the girl he was once called his be fucked stupid by another guy..wasn’t interested in competing at all! Not when it came to music, awards shows, charts or even a seat at the proverbial table. And most certainly not for you. Even if it was a childish bet that had landed you here in the first place.

“Come now, pretty girl. Don’t hold back..you look as if you want to explode. It’s okay.”

and like that, rising to his feet ever so casually, he’d continue pumping that dick in his palm as he inched closer, snatching your face towards his own so that you could meet gazes like you did that first night you’d encountered one another. Eventually teasing the head against your plump lips and lobbing a trail of spit between them. Almost as if he wasn’t even in the room, as if it wasn’t his cock pleasuring you, (y/n) released at this man’s whim! As if he had trained you previously.

“Chrollo..” “That’s right..I’m here now, darling. Sorry to keep you waiting. Be a good girl for us and come. Don’t make him ask again.”

meanwhile, Eren could only glare as you made a mess of him, pawing at his abs and thanking him furiously for bringing you to ecstasy. But there was no need for ill will or hurt feelings. He wasn’t the enemy whatsoever. More so like an ally to his cause. Chrollo didn’t see the need in bickering when they could both enjoy you to their heart's content. When you desire them equally. A compromise. After all, it was what love and life were all about. And sadly, it didn’t seem he had a choice.

“You see, Eren. It’s what I’ve been telling you all along. If we work together, we can accomplish great things..I know our baby feels the same.”

[system-to-the-madness]

Ice - Zuko x Reader

Word Count: 2 582 Warnings: kidnapping, injury, war Summary: After kidnapping the Avatar at the Northpole, Zuko has an unexpected encounter with the person he was longing to see the most A/N: Can be read as a oneshot; Part Two of the series Perfect (10 times Zuko thought you were perfect and the first time he told you), Part One is here Dividers: original by @thecutestgrotto edit by me (colour only)

Zuko sat on the cold ground of the ice cave, his gaze absentmindedly pointed towards the cave’s exit, where a snowstorm kept raging on.  If it weren’t for that storm, he long could have gotten the Avatar back to the ship, the Avatar, who lay unconscious and tied up on the floor just a few feet away. But instead, he was stuck here, in this ice dessert.

How had people ever thought it would be a good idea to build a life up here, so far North? There was nothing here but freezing cold sea, ice and snow. Sure, he knew the territory of the Fire Nation was not necessarily more inviting; most of it was rough stone and dusty ground.

But it had not always been that way. Hundreds of years ago, there had been blooming gardens and tall forests, thriving on the nutrient rich ash the volcanoes spit out. When Fire Lord Sozin had declared the war, the gardens and fields with flowers had been neglected until everything had died or been paved over. Once beautiful parks had been turned into training centres for soldiers. The forests had been cleared to access the iron in the ground and to use the wood for firing up the engines.

Zuko vividly remembered the images in his schoolbooks about the “sacrifice of meaningless aesthetics for the great cause of uniting the world underneath the banner of the Fire Nation”. It had never seemed quite right to him, but he had known better than to question his ancestors’ decisions. Maybe that was why he enjoyed the trips to Ember Island so much: Because there was still nature there.

The storm outside carried snowflakes past the entrance, and in his slowly but surely sleepy mind, he was certain the white, glimmering crystals arranged themselves to your likeliness. A few weeks ago, the idea that his sleep deprived mind taunted him by recognizing your face in all kinds of unrelated patterns, clouds, stars, waves, had terrified him. Now it was almost comforting, imagining the snowflakes to form that face that had burned itself into his memory.

He hadn’t seen you since he had broken you and the Avatar out of Zhao’s prison. While he had run into the Avatar’s little gang of run-aways, you never seemed to have been around. Maybe you had split from the group, maybe you had recognized that betraying your Nation by helping their number one enemy was not the best choice in life. And while Zuko wanted to be satisfied with this explanation, he couldn’t help that empty feeling in his chest that told him that he might never see you again. If you had still been traveling with the Avatar, he could have met you again, but if you had left, the chances of finding you were close to zero. Sure, he knew what you looked like and what your name was. But unlike the Avatar, you wouldn’t stir up as much attention, which meant people wouldn’t notice you, the same way he barely had taken notice of you before getting you out of that cell. Which again in turn meant that when people didn’t notice you, nobody would be able to point him towards where you were.

Zuko shook his head. Was he seriously considering searching for you, someone who, without a second thought had betrayed their nation? He had captured the Avatar; his path was set. He only would have to get him onto a ship now and sail back to the Fire Nation. There he would hand over the boy to his father, who would welcome him home with open arms, and make him his right-hand man, as Zuko had always dreamt of being. He would get to sleep in his bed again, cool, silken sheets wrapping around his body and would get to eat all his favourite foods again.

Still, he knew that your face would haunt him forever, the way you had stood over these guards who you had defeated. The same way your cry would always haunt him, when he had burnt you. He hadn’t meant to, and he wished he could tell you that he hadn’t intended to hurt you. But he never had gotten the chance.

After he had been knocked out on the escape from Zhao, he had woken up in a forest, on a pile of leaves. The Avatar had talked to him, about old friends from the Fire Nation, but Zuko’s entire focus had been on you, who had sat curled in on yourself next to the Avatar. A stripe of orange cloth, doubtlessly from the Avatar’s clothing, had been wrapped around your left arm where Zuko had burnt you in his clumsy attempt to save you from the attacking Fire Benders. You hadn’t looked at him, but even from where he had been laying, it had been obvious, that you had been exhausted. Your eyes had seemed sunken in, you had looked sickly, and even from the distance Zuko had been able to see that you were shaking.

When the Avatar’s words had driven rage into Zuko’s blood, and he had tried attacking the boy, the two of you had simply disappeared. The Avatar had grabbed you as if you didn’t weight more than a small child even though you were taller than him, and together you had disappeared in the branches of the tall trees and Zuko had been left to wonder when or if he would ever get to see your eyes again.

When or if he would ever get to see you look at him with anything other than shock, fear or hatred.

Zuko was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of the Avatar struggling against his restraints. So that little bastard was awake. Quickly Zuko jumped to his feet.

“Welcome back,” Zuko said, glaring at the small body wringing on the ground of the ice cave.

“It’s good to be back,” the Avatar responded, and before Zuko knew what had happened, he was thrown backwards against the wall behind him, his back forcefully knocking into the ice, making pain shoot through his skull and stars dance before his eyes.

As quickly as his aching body allowed, Zuko scrambled back to his feet, chasing after the Avatar, who had made it outside already, trying to wriggle across the snow.

“That won't be enough to escape,” Zuko hissed, pulling the Avatar up by his shirt. He wouldn’t let that kid escape again. He was the only way Zuko would ever get to go home; he needed the Avatar.

A familiar sound above him alerted Zuko even before the Avatar exclaimed: “Appa!”

No, no there was no way. He wouldn’t give up this chance. He had learnt from the past run-ins with the Avatar’s friends. They wouldn’t best him this time. Not now, that he finally had the Avatar so tightly in his grasp, not now, that he was so close to finally going home.

The Sky Bison landed a few meters away in the snow, and the Water Tribe girl jumped down from the beast’s back. But for a moment, just a short moment, Zuko’s attention was on something entirely different, someone different. From behind the saddle of the Sky Bison, a familiar pair of eyes stared at him, familiar hair whipping in the wind. So, you had not left the Avatar’s company, you just hadn’t been close by during the other encounters the group had had with Zuko since your escape from Zhao.

Zuko felt a weight fall off his shoulders. You were here, and you were okay. Even just from the short glance he gave you, he could tell that you were in far better shape than the last time he had seen you in that forest. You seemed to have recovered well after the strain of your imprisonment.

His attention focused back on the Water Tribe girl, who was glaring daggers at him in the dark, moon-lit snow desert. Pushing the Avatar aside, Zuko lifted his hands, ready to fight.

“Here for a rematch,” he challenged. There was no way he would make it home with the Avatar without defeating his annoying, little girlfriend and the others first. Even if it meant fighting against and hurting you again, he had to do it. He couldn’t let you – or anyone else – stand in his way, not when he finally would get the chance to go home.

“Trust me Zuko, it's not going to be much of a match.”

He wanted to scuff at the girl’s words, but before he could, he suddenly was lifted into the air. He only had a moment to realise what was happening. They were surrounded by snow; snow was just hard water. He had challenged a Water Bender while she was in her element and he in the one that was furthest from his bending skill. Which, objectively speaking, was an awful idea. But still, how was she so powerful that she could just throw him around like this? Had he lost so much of his skill? And if he lost this match, they would take the Avatar back with them, would take his only way to go home. He couldn’t let them take that from him, not again. Not after all these years he had spent chasing after the Avatar in the desperate hope to finally go-

The next moment he crashed into the ground, and everything turned black.

Zuko crashed into the ground and a moment later Sokka had already reached Aang, cutting his restraints with his boomerang.

“Hey, this is some quality robe,” he shouted, holding up the cut rope to show you, while you and Yue stayed seated on Appa’s back.

“We need to get to the oasis; the spirits are in trouble,” Aang explained while he undid the rope that tied together his ankles, before running over to Appa and floating himself onto his usual position between the Sky Bison’s horns, while Sokka came running back to settle down in the saddle next to Yue.

Concerned, your eyes flickered back to the Fire Nation prince. He was laying motionless in the snow where Katara had dropped him. You sure didn’t like him, and he had tried kidnapping Aang on more occasions than you could remember. The world would certainly be a better place without him in it, trying to chase all of you down the whole time. But he didn’t deserve being left behind in the snow desert like this. He was unconscious, and who knew for how long. You couldn’t just let him freeze out here.

You were about to speak up, when Aang’s voice sounded over the harsh wind.

“Wait,” he said, making you look at him. His eyes were focused on the unconscious boy laying in the snow. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“Sure we can,” Sokka disagreed. “Let's go.”

“No, if we leave him, he'll die,” Aang responded stubbornly.

 “We don’t know how long he’ll be unconscious for,” you added. “He might freeze if we leave him.”

Aang jumped off Appa, and down into the snow, grabbing Zuko and Air Bending them both back onto Appa’s back.

“Yeah, this makes a lot of sense,” Sokka complained sarcastically. “Let's bring the guy who's constantly trying to kill us.”

Appa took off with a slight growl and Aang dropped Zuko right into your lap, startling you.

“Let’s tie his hands at least,” Sokka whined, holding up the rope with which Aang had previously been tied up.

Rolling your eyes, you shifted the unconscious Prince out of your lap. He was kind of pretty, you thought, as you watched Sokka tie him up. The scar that covered half of the left side of his face was the trace of a bad burn, far worse than the handprint he had left behind on your arm, but it did little to lessen his beauty. The truth was, he had a beautiful face, soft features. If his hair hadn’t mostly been shaven, he might look almost gentle.

Quickly you chased the thought away. Sokka was right, Zuko had tried to kill you and your friends on multiple occasions. You shouldn’t be thinking about him as casually as this. But he had also saved yours and Aang’s life, even though if things had gone according to his plan, you probably would not have escaped. And still… you had a feeling there was more to his story than you were aware of at the moment.

Everything was hazy around him, the ground swaying underneath his body, soft, uneven movements. His wrists hurt, he realized, but his body felt too weak to even try to struggle against the rope that bound his hands. Being unable to move at all, he kept his eyes closed, listening to his surroundings instead. There was the rushing of wind, and the distant sound of people talking, of young people talking. Where was he? What had happened to him? The material he was laying on seemed to be leather, and the swaying was too soft to be that of a boat. Was he on an animal’s back? The ground seemed surprisingly even, not bent as it would have been had it been the saddle of an ostrich horse.

A searing pain shot through his head. Maybe thinking wasn’t the best way to solve the question of where he was right now. So instead, he carefully blinked open his eyes. Above him, the night sky opened up with thousands of stars glimmering in the dark, only a few clouds occasionally interrupting the seemingly endless abys of sparkling darkness. The sight was dizzying, making his head spin. And then suddenly someone leant over him. Zuko still felt so out of it, that he didn’t even flinch as the face appeared above him, the face that had kept haunting him in the past weeks as he had tried catching up to the Avatar.

“You better stay down,” you warned him, but the words barely registered in Zuko’s mind that was too preoccupied by processing just how beautiful you looked above him. The light of the moon reflected in your eyes, making them shimmer like a deep lake in which he only would have been all too happy to drown. Night wind whipped through your hair, pulling at your strands and blowing them over your face. A cut ran across your cheek, red and fresh, the blood barely dried.

A wave of anger shot through Zuko. Who had dared touching, dared hurting you? But then your voice pulled his focus away from the small wound again.

“Stay down,” you repeated.

Zuko’s eyes focused on your lips, the way they formed around the words. Soft looking, smooth lips, that made him wonder if you had ever kissed anyone before. Certainly you had. He couldn’t be the first to notice just how beautiful you were. And you weren’t just beautiful. You were a warrior, you knew how to handle yourself in a fight, you didn’t give up easily and pushed through hardship, no matter how exhausted you were. This much he had learnt from the short time he had spent with you during that prison escape. And you were stubborn and clever and if the look in your eyes as you watched him being barely able to keep his eyes open was anything to go by, you were also kind and sensible. You were perfect.

That was his last thought before he fell unconscious again.

Next Chapter (11. Oct. 2024) | Masterlist

Tags (it seems like some of the tags aren't working, sorry...): @ghoststookourlifes @ashcal99 @4acoffee @pxrplewalnxt @toomuchboredd @banished--prince @oddobsessionbutotay @makik0 @joysflower @hamdehlesmis @mitski9328373 @angstylittleb1tch @lovecalll

[askthefamous8]

Even if I haven't been very active lately, 9 years is still pretty significant- happy birthday to the blog!

So like Percy up there I'm gonna do so dome reflecting. This blog's where I've often done that for some reason, but here's the tl'dr for blog related stuff.

• I would like to keep drawing stuff but feeling generally unsure in myself, and I'm wondering if all the years of fandom harrassment have caught up with me • I have one big project in mind, I've been dipping my toe into what I'd need to do it. No spoilers but it was one of the first things I played around with this series, so do with that what you will • If I can keep myself drawing, I want to use more of the original source material since I'm struggling with original ideas. So stuff like redraws, hOpEfULlY even animatics, just like what originally got me so into trains yknow? Because that's fun and sparks joy. And that always goes down a treat with you guys so bonus • As always I appreciate you guys not coming after me for being so inconsistent

The rest of this is me doing what Percy's doing in the drawing and reflecting, as there is indeed much 2 think about. It's also a little sad and venty so, there's your warning there.

.

Ok so obviously a busy year, we moved into our new house that we actually own, I spent most of the year planning our wedding, and then got married. Big stuff. Also! I came off antidepressants in the summer. I've been on them for...basically as long as this blog, 6 months after I started it I think. Which also means I'd been on antidepressants my entire adult life. Feels like a big deal and I guess I'm still adjusting.

Another big thing, but sad, is that my dog died about two weeks ago. If you follow me on twitter you'll have seen her but she did make an appearance here a few Halloweens ago

I got her when she was 13 and had her 8 years after that. So that's been difficult. Unrelated to that (probably), but I just feel...really mediocre. And before you point out the obvious, this has been present even before I came off antidepressants. But yeah just... mediocrity. In myself as a person, how I look, what I draw, my whole life really (barring my marriage thankfully). What have I achieved? I'm 26, I'm not working, I don't feel well, my art isn't good (I don't think so anyway- like yeah it's technically fine I guess but it's not, and has never been, very stand-out or impressive). And lately art doesn't bring me the same joy it once did, and I'm wondering if all the years of harrassment from this fandom (mostly the twitter side, tumblr's been pretty good to me) has finally caught up with me and put me off the whole thing. Or worse, that I just don't have as much of an interest in it anymore. I don't think I'll ever be like "ok yep I'm officially done with this blog" because I'm so stubborn but idk. I want to make things and be creative, I want to make more train art, but it doesn't feel the same. I don't know what's wrong. What do you listen to? What you want vs what you feel? I still enjoy train stuff, I love going to Awdry Ex every year. It's been like this for awhile. It's not even like I have a strong feeling of what I'd rather be doing as far as careers go. And even if I did, oh yeah I'm sure my two degrees in animation will be very relevant in another field (sarcasm). I feel adrift. My sails are open but there is just no wind. Planning my wedding gave me something to do and work on and just, feel useful but now that that's over I feel lost again. Losing my dog, who had become the center of my life because of how vulnerable she had become, hasn't helped.

On the more creative side of things, I also don't really know what to do with this blog's story either. The show's ended as far as most people are concerned, and I kiiinda wrote myself into a corner because once Thomas turns 18 he's going to leave for university, and that sets off this whole arc with James but basically the problem is it involves characters leaving and for some reason that feels like a no-no here. Don't get me started on the timeline lol. But Thomas works on a railway on Sodor, that's how it has to be...right? I guess I'm sort of at a crossroads of, ok do I want this to be close to the source material, and thus easily digestible to newcombers? Or do I want to make it more and more my thing and distanced from the source material? I doubt there's many new people coming since the series ended. And even then, there's a lot more humanization artists around now than when I started, so it's not like I'm filling a niche anymore. Just to be clear it's fine and also good that there's more humanization artists, variety is good, I just don't feel as "needed" anymore (which is 100% in my head and not an actual role that belongs to me or something). I started this blog when I was 17, so my interests and what I relate to have changed obviously. The character designs certainly have. It's never followed a super rigid story plan, but the core of it has always been the central cast doing things on Sodor. I however have always had a scene/project/animatic/whatEver in mind for when this 'series' would '''officially''' ''''end''''. But then what comes after that? I've always tried to run this blog like they are Real People that You interact with. But in real life there is no ending to the story, there's always more stuff to come. You get married, and it's wonderful, and then life goes on. The credits never roll. So maybe that's what I'm having trouble coping with...the progression of time. Ah, my old nemesis. I've always had trouble with letting go of things. There's nothing to say that I couldn't still draw stuff after the series "ends". I guess any story after Thomas leaves could be like... a sequel series or a spin off or something. Spin-off of a spin-off. Famous 8 All Grown Up. Famous 8 Qurter Life Crisis. Who knows. I certainly don't.

I've also been really into an original project unrelated to this but those don't get as much attention and while I'd like to do something with it one day, I don't feel very confident in being able to make that happen right now. But you know... as far my as art not being super spectacular goes... I think my individual talent has always been is my ideas, like the writing side of things. And then brought to life with my art, which normally isn't anything to write home about but is good enough to convey the idea and be not-awful to look at, lifts both of them beyond what they were individually. Maybe that's what I should focus on. Maybe that's wishful thinking.

So....idk. Idk what I'm doing but I'm trying to be gentle on myself and just let myself continue to drift, to heal from this heavy loss, and then in the New Year I'll try and pick myself up. Then there will be no more big once-in-a-lifetime events coming up, no more just-moved-into-a-house-and-oh-no-there's-a-bunch-of-things-that-need-attention-NOW scenarios, and no more big holidays for awhile. I guess we'll see.

If you read all of this I am so sorry but also thank you for reading my ramblings. And thank you for being around, whether that's been for a few months or for several years, but especially if it's been several years

[howling-medic]

I have had no Adderall and too much caffeine, and I have been thinking. A dangerous combination, but a very fun one. I have reached many conclusions about many things, but the thing I have become most convinced of is that almost every single character JRRT has ever written is some form of little shit and/or chaotic gremlin. Here are a few outlined. Please add more:

* Aragorn: *gestures wildly at the entirety of the Prancing Pony chapter* *points emphatically at the houses of healing exchange with Merry* need I say more? The man may be Isildur’s heir, but he is a little shit. I love him for it.

* Gandalf: my man straight up just had no real reason for choosing Bilbo to be the thief for thorin’s company. He could not explain himself even once. Then there’s the whole Beorn debacle. Then there’s the dramatics with how he returned to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. Chaotic gremlin. Little shit.

* Merry and Pippin: they’re getting clumped together. I don’t think I need to explain.

* Sam: he may be the most sane of all of these fuckers. Truly. He’s the most pure hearted and least chaotic. He still was trimming the verge a little late, and he was in cahoots with Merry and Pippin. Chaotic gremlin adjacent

* Bilbo: do I need to explain this one? He used the One Ring to hide from annoying relatives. Little shit and chaotic gremlin are his defining characteristic traits

* Legolas: danced atop the snow while everyone was drowning in it. Declared he would attempt to get the sun to come help them. Let Aragorn listen for horses he could literally see and describe. Built his own boat 120 years after the last one sailed and BROUGHT A DWARF

* Gimli: his entire personality is silver tongued snark with a large side of intelligence and violence. He was going to be mad at Merry and Pippin for dying because of the energy he put into finding them. I’m pretty sure he proposed counting kills to Legolas.

* Frodo: chaos. Thinks he’s going to just venture off into the woods by himself. Little shit. Thinks nobody is going to realize something is up. Love him. He’s bad at both

* Boromir: tries to oppose the wisdom of people literally over 150 times his ago. Kinda little shit energy, but he didn’t do it to be contrarian, so it’s the weakest entry so far

* Faramir: let’s talk about henneth annun. Let’s talk about the way he let Sam freak out only to start laughing. Dude is a little punk, and I love it

* Eomer: declares Aragorn not Strider but Wingfoot. I can’t explain his placement on this list really. He’s just chaos gremlin vibes

* Eowyn: my sweet horse girl. My caged warrior. She is chaos gremlin incarnate as driven by wanderlust and desperation. Truly my kindred spirit. I will die for her. You know she was wonderfully insufferable and a pain in her brother’s ass - in the best way.

* Melkor: literally the original little shit. Everything started going sideways because he was a petulant child and then it got worse the more jealous he got. Because the OG chaos gremlin. It just so happens that there are cosmic level consequences when he acts out

* Denethor: falls more under petty bitch than little shit or chaos gremlin. My man was so threatened by Thorongil that he was glad when he left and turned men against Gandalf because Aragorn counseled that Gandalf should be trusted. Just….fuck Denethor…with a cactus.

* Saruman: the ploy with Radagast to get Gandalf to Isengard was 10/10 chaos gremlin energy. Evil chaos gremlin energy, but chaos gremlin energy nonetheless

Alright, with that, I’m out of ideas. I’m certain I can come up with stuff for Galadriel at the very least, but I lack the requisite focus at the moment.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

So, here are my long thoughts on The Last Voyage of the Demeter because I'm jetlagged and trying to keep myself awake.

I'm going to organize it from my biggest issues to my smallest nitpicks. Because I am aware that some of the things that bother me are nitpicks. Also this movie is old enough that I don't think spoilers are out of line.

Anyway, here are my thoughts:

I don't think I can fairly judge the movie as an adaptation of Dracula. This would be a short review if that was my standard, because it is a bad adaptation. There's a laundry list of reasons why, and I'll get back to one of them because I think it is indicative of how this movie fumbled the story. It takes a very loose approach to the book, and that wouldn't be entirely fair to fixate on. But I will point out where I think the book executed a theme or tone element more effectively.

I fully went into the movie ready to judge it on its own merits as a self-contained horror story. That's why I was surprised that I disliked it so much, because it doesn't hold up as a piece of horror media. I think the core issue is that the screenplay fundamentally was thinking of itself as a movie about people fighting a monster.

In that respect, it does away with something that makes the Captain's log such an effective part of the original book: The mystery.

The original section is an exercise in dramatic irony. You, as the reader, have already seen the thing making the crew vanish, because you read Jonathan's diary and know what is in the boxes (even if you were reading it for the first time and didn't have the cultural osmosis of knowing who Dracula). You know why they are in danger. The captain doesn't. He spends most of the log trying to figure out what is going on and if it is misfortune or something really on board with them. He only sees Dracula at the very end of the log, when there is little he can do except tie himself to the wheel.

The book answers the question of "why don't they make port or throw the boxes overboard?" with saying that the captain doesn't know for sure if it is actually something malicious related to the cargo. The Romanian first mate has to slowly come to the realization that he does know, because he's resisting believing in superstition. Only when the knife passes through Dracula without harming him does he panic because it's undeniable that he's facing a folklore monster.

That build up is entirely absent from The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Anna just tells them within the first half hour of the movie (she's also a very inconsistent character, but I'll get back to that), and within days the crew has literally seen Dracula multiple times. People aren't mysteriously vanishing; they've been killed pretty clearly and there are survivors with bite marks. The deck is littered with body parts at points. It makes the voiceovers about "some doom" being on the ship seem comical, because the captain has seen with his own eyes what is going on.

The only reason given for why they can't make port to deal with the issue is that they're too far away, I guess? Which is also not the case for a ship sailing that route. This isn't an open sea voyage.

While the pacing of a movie and the pacing of a show are different, The Terror did this so much better. You don't get to see the Tuunbaq clearly until quite late in the series. People just vanish or get mauled by...something. That sense of mystery is just gone in The Last Voyage. And it is disappointing because that was a huge opportunity to nail the tone.

If I had to come up with the key elements of what the Demeter section is, it would be: A Horror Story about a ship with a tragic ending.

They didn't nail the horror, but what about the other two?

There's also a puzzling lack of understanding of the dynamics on a ship throughout the movie. One glaring example is that the First Mate and Clemens make the decision to sink the ship without even asking the captain first. I know this is the merchant navy and not the navy, but that is still a galling lack of discipline. The captain is in charge and his duty is to the whole ship and the crew.

The original captain's log makes use of this. Dracula more or less kills his way up the chain of command because he's a sadist. He's forcing the commanding officers to feel more desperation as they fail in their duty to protect their crew.

The Last Voyage makes the captain a very minor character, which at least to me reveals a misunderstanding of how hierarchy works in a ship. While I don't think including new characters is necessarily bad, Clemens and Anna make most of the important decisions, and neither of them particularly have standing with the crew. It undercuts the idea of responsibility and letting people come to harm under your care (which carries through later to Lucy and Mina).

I'll return to other ways the ship setting feels incorrect later, because those are closer to nitpicks.

So, third element: is it a tragedy? Does everyone on board die by the end?

The opening scene may make you think so. But no, actually they don't. Clemens escapes and ends the movie vowing to hunt down Dracula. For one, this is where it is a bad Dracula adaptation because that simply cannot happen and maintain the plot of Dracula. Unless he was rather dense when he read about the Bloofer Lady in the paper and decided that wasn't related. But additionally, the tone of the ending radically changes. It isn't a tragedy where the last act of a brave man is to stay at the wheel, because he isn't the lone survivor left to be battered to death by either the storm or Dracula anymore. In fact most of the crew is still there for the multiple people vs Dracula fight.

This is where the tone really failed for me: the story has a winner, a hero, someone who can make it out alive. And it's the new character. That just did not sit well with me when the original is such a poignant tragedy.

The First Mate, who is the character most primed to come to a realization, hardly has an arc in The Last Voyage.

The insistence that they can fight and maybe even win also makes both Clemens and Anna incredibly inconsistent characters. She especially suffers from this, because she should in theory have the knowledge of how to repel a vampire (the villagers certainly have some idea in the book), but then she says things like "do you think I have the faintest idea how to kill him?" and in the next breath is urging the crew to kill him before he reaches London. She also says Dracula is going to London because "there is no one left in my home country to feed on" but her backstory is that she's on the ship as a deal so Drac can have a snack. So, clearly, he can get people to feed on if he wants.

Clemens is the "too smart and rational" character. But he also never thinks maybe they should expose the boxes to sunlight even after seeing people combust in sunlight after turning. It's all terribly inconsistent.

The decision to not write the story as a tragedy ends up cascading, and that's the root of the issue. They can't win and kill the monster without completely changing the story of the novel, so they are only competent to a point. It makes it a worse horror movie, even disregarding it as an adaptation.

Now for the nitpicks, including quite a few about boats that probably only I noticed:

The aesthetics are all over the place in terms of period. Clemens spends a large part of the movie (which is set in the 1890s) running around in a lace up pirate shirt. No one on this ship owns a period appropriate boat cloak. None of their shirts have remotely the right collars, giving the sense that nautical fashion was sort of vaguely consulted over the long 18th to 19th century-ish.

Please look at this and tell me that it is even remotely late 19th century:

Here's Olek from 1899 for comparison (note the correct high collar and undershirt):

The dialogue suffers from this too. More than one person uses the word "heathen" which just feels wildly out of place in something that is supposed to have rationality and superstition as the key touchpoints (at least if it wants to be like Dracula). It sounds weird coming from a time period 20 years before World War 1. Sailors especially were more likely to be vaguely Christian but mostly superstitious, not zealots using terms like "heathen."

Additional aesthetic nitpick: The ship looks way too old for the period. That is an early to mid 19th century ship sailing in the 1890s without any retrofitting. There's a throwaway line about the captain not wanting a fancy new steamship, but that doesn't account for how antique the captain's quarters are or the lack of metal on the hull. Again, the nautical aesthetics are all skewing too early. If this ship was still a Russian ship like the original, an older sailing vessel might have said something about the lag in Russian shipbuilding, it works less with an English merchant ship.

There's some functional issues about understanding sailing: The ship is way too spacious inside. Really tall men are standing up straight and walking around the hold with no trouble. That may seem like a small point, but imagine what actually exploiting the claustrophobic feeling below decks could have done for the ambiance.

The ship is definitely undercrewed given the number of masts they are showing. That many men would really struggle to reef all of the sails in a timely manner (which would matter in a storm). The writers put a crew of a small fishing vessel on a ship that is much larger and requires more hands. And it is puzzling because more people would mean: more kills and disappearances as well as giving a progression of being unable to raise and lower the sails and also keep someone at the wheel. Which, I will note, the original log does.

My first red flag about this movie was having seemingly no Slavic characters on a ship that was Russian in the original. But now that I've seen it, I'm even more annoyed that the one Russian character exists to: call a woman a slur, call a black man a slur (a rather British one imo), and then immediately be murdered on screen. Can't have nuance in how we portray Slavic people in Western media, huh?

I also get the sense that the screenwriter didn't know the difference between Romanian and Romani, because the first mate is vaguely hinted to be Romani (the kid mentions "Wojchek taught me some words in Romani") and has a Western Slavic first name, not a Romanian one. When in the book he is explicitly Romanian.

Rapid fire ways the movie gets the book wrong on a nitpicky level: Dracula doesn't get more human looking as he nears London, a vampire who prides himself on being aristocratic isn't going to drink from pigs or rats, the vampires in the book can go in sunlight but are weaker, religious artifacts are way more powerful deterrents in the book, and Clemens is way too casual about transfusions. It makes Van Helsing doing it seem less like an act of desperation. Anna gets Mina's ability to sense Dracula without putting in the effort to reverse engineer the connection.

Someone please tell me that Nosferatu is better. This was honestly very frustrating.

[astro-b-o-y-d]

Triangulum - Chapter 1- Return to the Falls

— — — — — — —

“Tree. Tree. Billboard. Gas station. Telephone pole. Tree. Billboar—hey, that one’s got a whale on it!”

The clink of metal to glass echoed through the nearly-empty bus as Mabel pressed her cellphone against the window. “I wonder why they always use whales as mascots for things like car washes?” she inquired. “It’s not like they can actually drive cars or anything! They’re too big to fit through the doors!”

Such a question drew an amused chuckle from the person on the other end of the phone. “I think the thought process there is, like…you use water to clean cars?” they guessed. “And whales live in the water? And then they figure everyone can make the rest of the connection from there.”

From the seat besides Mabel, Dipper looked up from his journal. “Whales are also filter-feeders,” he pointed out. “They filter their food through something called baleen plates, which kinda look like the flappy, hangy-down brushes and sponges in a car wash? Maybe that’s one reason.”

He pointed the tip of his pencil at Mabel. “Also, you know Dev can’t actually see the billboard over the phone, right? …Adding onto that, how are you getting a signal this far out in the woods?”

Mabel moved the phone from the window and pressed it tightly against her chest. “Through the power of love!”

“Yeah, well, I’m almost positive that the ‘power of love’ isn’t gonna make your phone magically grow a video screen and a high-quality internet connection.”

With a scowl, Mabel placed her hands on her hips. “Almost positive isn’t completely positive, Mr. Negative!”

She punctuated her remark with a raspberry, before turning her attention back to her phone. “Sorry, Dev, you know how Dipper is,” she said fondly. “The big dorkus always has to apply logic to everything.”

“He raises a good point, though,” Dev replied. “I wouldn’t’ve made the connection between baleen plates and car wash sponges on my own, so I’m glad he had all that off the top of his head.”

A laugh, before their tone grew more accusatory. “Almost as if someone’s in the middle of researching whales for a certain reason.”

Dipper shifted in his seat, his gaze suddenly and intently focused on a stain of unknown origin on the back of the seat in front of them. “I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“...Diiiiip, you promised we’d look into that story about those sky whales off the coast together!” Dev whined playfully. “We were gonna make a whole night of it once you guys got back, with a red yarn board and everything!”

“I swear I was going to wait!” Dipper insisted. “But, like, listen…we’re gonna be spending all summer with our great-uncles. And they’ve spent the last few months sailing around the world, hunting a bunch of cool, paranormal beings out there on the open seas.”

He pressed a hand to the back of his head. “And I thought…you know—”

“—you thought sky whales might be one of the things your uncles saw out on the ocean, and you wanted to learn as much as you could to look all cool and smart in front of them,” Dev finished for him. “Especially in front of the totally awesome, Multiverse-jumping—studier of all things weird and strange—Stanford Pines?”

A beat. “…The one you promised me you’d get an autograph from and I’m totally not using this as an excuse to remind you about that?”

This earned a laugh out of Dipper. “Subtly noted, but it’s just…they’re gonna have so many stories about the places they’ve been over the past nine months,” he elaborated. “The most exciting story I have is that Phoenix incident, and it wasn’t even a real Phoenix!”

Dev let out a groan. “Ugh, don’t remind me! Whose bright idea was it again to smuggle a chicken into Science class?”

“I guess that’s one mystery we’ll never solve,” Dipper added with a look of disgust. “But what we did learn is that burnt feathers smell like someone lighting their hair on fire in a barn.”

“No kidding! I’m never gonna get the smell of stale hay and dirt outta my nose!”

“This is why pigs are the superior livestock,” Mabel said, punctuating her point with an indignant harrumph. “No stinky feathers!”

Dipper nudged her with his elbow before he set his journal and pencil down on his lap. “Weren’t you complaining a month ago about how Waddles is too big to smuggle into school anymore?”

“That’s not his fault! It’s the fault of society and their inability to stop body shaming everything!” She pressed her hands, phone and all, against her cheeks. ”Especially the most adorable wittle piggy in the entire world and his fat wittle piggy tummy~!”

This earned a laugh from Dev. “They’re just jealous they can’t be him, I bet,” he agreed. “Either way, Dip, it’s no worries about the sky whales thing. Just means I’ve gotta start stocking up on new research material for when you guys get home.”

There was a light tapping sound from the other side of the phone, as if Dev were tapping the speaker with their finger. “And it means that you owe me one!” they insisted. “Which you can easily pay off by spilling all the deets about what went down up there last August!”

The twins exchanged a mirrored look. “Dev—”

“Come on, Dipping Dots, you can’t leave me hanging forever,” Dev begged. “I know it was more than just some weird weather patterns! Just…just give me a hint at least! Was it ghosts? Aliens? …Alien ghosts?”

Dipper shot his sister a look, one that she returned with an understanding nod. “Dipper, stop trying to steal my boyfriend’s attention with your nerdy-nerd talk!” she said, loud enough for Dev to hear. “I wanna get as much talking time as I can with him before we get to town!”

With a smirk, he gave her ribs another nudge with his elbow. “Hey, Dev was a part of the Paranormal/Supernatural Club before you two started going out!” he pointed out. “So technically—aha, stop!”

His words dissolved into laughter as Mabel retaliated by putting as much of her weight on him as she could. “Technically, schmechnically, you can’t do nerdy-nerd stuff with Dev if you’re flat as a pancake!” she said, her body vibrating with giggles as she smushed against him.

“Dev, help, I’m being smothered!” Dipper called to the phone, between bouts of his own laughter. “Tell Mabel she’s cute or something!”

This earned another laugh from Dev in response, one warm and full of affection. “Mabel Syrup, could you please stop trying to kill my best friend and Paranormal/Supernatural Club co-president?”

Smiling wider, Mabel straightened herself upright in the seat and held the phone in her ear. “We~ell, since you’re using that nickname, I guess I can be merciful today!”

With a dramatic gag, Dipper pointed a finger at his throat in disgust. “Ugh, I said call her cute, not break out the pet names.”

“It’s not my fault she’s as sweet as her namesake.”

“It’s not her namesake!”

“Boys, boys,” Mabel interrupted with a giggle. “As fun as it is to both flirt with my boyfriend and annoy my brother at the same time, I do think we should circle back to the point Dip made earlier about my cell reception.” She held the phone back up to her ear. “Since we’re almost at the Falls anyway, you wanna go ahead and hang up before the majestic oaks of Oregon do it for us?”

Dipper raised a finger. “Technically the trees around here are mostly firs and birch trees.”

“Oaks, Oregon…I wanted the words to sound all samey-samey,” Mabel pointed out. “And firs doesn’t start with an O.”

“...Neither does majestic?”

“Yeah, we can hang up for now,” Dev said. “I’m sure you guys probably wanna spend the rest of the day settling in, but if you don’t mind talking later tonight—”

“Uh, of course we can talk tonight~!” Mabel interrupted excitedly. “Not only that, I can introduce you to my Grunkles if they’re finished settling in by that point, too! And I’m sure Soos and Melody will want to say hi—ooh, and of course you can meet Candy and Grenda when we have our inevitable ‘Back In Gravity Falls’ sleepover—”

“Okay, maybe we slowly ease Dev into the weirdness that is Gravity Falls and everyone in it?” Dipper suggested. “Besides, I’d like some time to talk to them over the summer, too!”

“Hey, I take offense to that,” Dev said. “The first thing, not the second. Are you forgetting who sought you out to join your club in the first place? And brought his own research material to the very first meeting?”

Dipper gently pulled the phone towards him. “Are you forgetting who’s actually been to Gravity Falls in the first place?”

“No, but I’m also not forgetting who’s keeping all the juicy details about what happened last summer to themselves,” Dev pointed out in return.

“Okay, okay,” Mabel said, pulling the phone back. “No more nerd talk about nerd things, you’re wasting all my minutes! Use your own minutes for that!”

She returned it to her ear with a wide grin. “But we can figure out a proper talking schedule later,” she said sweetly, then paused. “...After tonight though, because you already said we could talk and no take backs!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dev assured her. “Love you.”

“And I looooove—” Mabel wiggled her finger with a mischievous look before booping it against the screen of her phone. “—you~!”

“...Did you boop the phone?”

“Yeah-huh~!”

“Bye, Dev!” Dipper called as well. “...I know you two are having a moment, but I wanted to say bye, too!”

“Bye to both of you!” Dev replied. “Talk to you tonight!”

There was a click as the call ended and Mabel pressed the phone against her chest. “Ehehe, I love them!”

“So I’ve gathered,” Dipper said with a smile. “What’re you guys at now, seven months?”

“Seven months, and seventeen days~!” Mabel clarified, with a closing slap of her flip phone and a delighted kick of her feet. “Can you believe it? Last year I would’ve gone through at least seventy guys in that amount of time! Now look at me! Miss Lady-In-A-Serious-Relationship-With-One-Of-The-Best-Guys-In-The-World over here~!”

“You know that number’s a wild exaggeration, right?”

“You’re a wild exaggeration,” Mabel retorted, with a nudge to his shoulder. “And I like how you couldn’t even argue the ‘one of the best guys in the world’ thing, because you know it’s true! Well, he’s the best guy whenever he’s actually in guy mode, of course. Otherwise he’s just the best significant other! But right now, he’s the best guy in the world! 

With a wide grin, she snaked an arm around Dipper’s shoulder before once again smushing most of her weight against him. “Except for thiiiiis best guy in the world, of course~!” she said, words slightly muffled from how her cheek was squished against his arm. “Who knows he absolutely doesn’t count when it comes to me talking about the best guys in the world, because it already goes without saying that he’s the best guy in the world!”

She gave him a squished little smile. “He knows that, right?”

With a warm smile of his own, Dipper gently pushed her back to her side of the bus seat. “He knows that. Although ‘best guy in the world’ is starting to sound like a fake sentence.”

“Haha, yeah,” Mabel agreed with a giggle. “I used it a lot, huh?”

An oink beneath their legs turned their attention to the underside of the seat in front of them, where a fat, pink hog peered up at them with a lazy tilt of his head.

With a squeal of utter delight, Mabel reached down and scooped him up in her arms. “Aww, we can’t forget about the other best guy in the world~!” she cooed, cradling him like a baby. “Are you having fun crawling around and eating all the abandoned wrappers and gum stuck to the underside of the seats?”

Waddles let out another oink and contently buried his snout in the bend of her arm, as if he considered himself nothing more than a simple lap dog. Despite his own amusement at the sight, Dipper raised an eyebrow at his sister. “Seriously, you should probably stop letting him do that before the driver gets fed up and makes us walk the rest of the way.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” Mabel insisted. “This bus is probably the cleanest its ever been! If anything, the driver should be thanking Waddles for helping him out!”

After giving Waddles’ body a shake for additional emphasis, she pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Isn’t that right, you big, pink angel? You even missed your chance to say hi to Dev because you were too busy being the most helpful piggy around!”

“Too bad we couldn’t use him as a distraction,” Dipper said, and reached for his journal again. “You know Dev’s as crazy about him as you are.”

Mabel’s smile fell, and she tightened her embrace around Waddles’ body. “Right…”

Dipper’s hand froze less than an inch from the journal, and he gave her a sympathetic look. “The squishing me was a nice touch,” he said with a halfhearted smile of his own. “Really took his mind off the Weirdmageddon topic…”

With a sigh, he flipped it open to the page he’d been writing on and picked up his pencil. “You know, we could just ask Mayor Tyler if we can bend the rules a little bit and tell our buddy back home about what happened last summer.”

Mabel leaned her body back towards the window, her head hitting the glass with a light thump. “What if he doesn’t believe us?”

“Who, Mayor Tyler? I mean, if we promised that Dev wouldn’t go blabbing it to other people and told him about how obsessed he is with the town, he’d probably understand—”

“Dev, Dipper,” Mabel clarified. “What if Dev doesn’t believe us?”

“Have you met the guy?” Dipper asked. “Out of anyone back home, I feel like he’d be the first one to believe us. I mean, are we forgetting that this is the same person who swears up and down that they've kissed an alien before?"

A pause. "Before following that claim up with ‘but I’d rather kiss Mabel before kissing a thousand aliens’ like the hopeless romantic he is?”

A small smile tugged at the corners of Mabel’s mouth, but disappeared just as quickly as it threatened to appear. “I mean, he does say that all the time. But…”

“But?”

Mabel let out an uncertain hum, but any further response was cut off by the sound of faint crackling from the bus’s loudspeaker. “Attention, passengers, we are approaching the city limits of Gravity Falls, and will be arriving within the town itself in a matter of minutes,” the driver’s voice rang out cheerfully. “Just in case anyone was interested in peering out their window as we passed by the welcome sign, for sentimental reasons.”

The twins shared a mirrored look before quickly scooting over to the window, just in time to see the familiar sign that marked the town’s border whiz past the bus.

It was a fleeting sight; one that came and went within seconds. But their silence continued for a just a bit longer after it passed, even as the endless line of trees finally began to melt into familiar homes and buildings.

Still keeping her attention fixed on the view outside, Mabel’s hand instinctively found her brother’s and gave it a light squeeze. “We’re back…”

Dipper nodded, squeezing her hand in return. “We’re back.”

They remained still, letting themselves be lost in the thrill of finally being back in that old, familiar town for just a few minutes longer, before the realization that they needed to be ready to exit the bus finally motivated them to start gathering up their belongings. “Okay, since we’re now officially back in town,” Mabel began, setting Waddles aside so she could pull her bag to her lap. “What’re you looking forward to the most this summer?”

“Hmm, hard to say,” Dipper said, reaching for his own. “I mean, last year I spent most of the summer trying to uncover the mysteries behind the journal’s author, then spent the remaining time after that with the author himself!”

He unzipped the front and stuffed his journal inside. “Guess I’m just looking forward to spending more time with Grunkle Ford again, now that he doesn’t have to stay down in the basement and deal with all that Bill stuff,” he said. “I know I wanna tell him all about the stuff me and Dev have studied together, and—ooh, I really wanna introduce him to that DDnmD podcast we've been listening to recently—”

“Hey, that was what I was looking forward to, too!” Mabel said delightedly. “Well, not the nerd stuff but the ‘spending time with Grunkle Ford’ stuff! You got to spend so much time with him last year, and I barely got to see him at all! I know we got to cover Bill's dumb grave with all that unicorn hair together, but that's BARELY a blip on the Niece-and-Great-Uncle-Bonding Time scale! So this year I’m determined to spend as much time with him as I possibly can! You know a guy who puts that much effort into his journals has to be a pro at scrapbooking!”

She reached into her bag and pulled something out with a wide grin, before holding it up for Dipper to see. “I even made him a personalized sweater, so he has another one to wear besides his red one!” she explained, pointing to a smiling picture of Ford on the front. “See? I knitted a happy little picture of him—” She moved her finger to the next one. “—and this one’s of the six-fingered hand that was on his journals—”

And finally her finger landed on the stitched writing at the bottom. “—and this part says ‘A-FORD-able! Not like ‘affordable’, but like ‘adorable with Ford!’’ …I was already halfway done when I remembered ‘affordable’ was already a word, so I just added that last part instead of undoing everything.”

While she stuffed the sweater back into her bag, Dipper added: “I think I’m also looking forward to just spending time with Grunkle Stan in general, too. I mean, sure, we got to spend a lot of time with him last year.”

He waved his hands. “But he was hiding such a big secret, one he had to deal with by himself. This year, he’s got nothing to hide!”

Mabel held up both pointer fingers. “Right! Because the something he had to hide is gonna be right there next to him! And the thing that was hiding no longer has to hide in any way!” She smushed them together with silly little noises for emphasis. “And since Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford are getting along now, it means we can all spend time together like one big happy family!” 

Satisfied with her own amateur pantomime, she dropped her hands and returned to her belongings. “Speaking of which, who did Grunkle Stan say was going to be greeting us at the bus stop?” she asked. “I know Soos and Grunkle Ford will be there, but I really hope Candy and Grenda can make it!”

She beamed widely. “Grenda said in her last letter that she’s been taking up wrestling, and that she learned a move that could possibly snap me in half! Although Candy discredited this claim with the fact that she only got a fractured disc when Grenda tried it on her, but you know what they say: practice makes perfect!”

Dipper raised an eyebrow. “You guys can’t just hug each other?”

“We can hug as she’s breaking my spine in two!”

With a shrug, Dipper slung his bag over his shoulder. “Well, to answer your original question; yeah, Ford and Soos are gonna be there. Other than that, I’m not sure. Your friends being there is something you’d know more than I would, and I can’t think of anyone else who would come.”

He tapped a hand to his chin as he thought hard for a moment. “I know Soos and Melody wanted to throw that welcome-back party for us tomorrow, though. So maybe they’ll only have a small group of people at the bus stop today. You know, to give us time to get settled in without being bombarded by a billion people?”

Mabel stuck out her lip and gave the seat in front of them a defiant slam with her fists. “Boooooo, I want to be bombarded by people! I wanna be able to give out at least three-dozen hugs before Grenda snaps me in half like a twig!”

“I once again ask why you guys can’t just hug each each other.”

“Bombardment!” Mabel chanted, slamming her fist in rhythm. “Bombardment!”

There was another crackle of the loudspeakers over their heads as the driver spoke again: “Attention, passengers; this is a follow-up to the previous announcement, but there might be a bit of a delay in getting you to the next stop.”

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a curious look, before Dipper cupped his hands around his mouth and called: “Why?”

“Has the traffic here gotten that bad in nine months?” Mabel added.

Another crackle from the intercom. “See for yourselves, kids.”

At the driver’s suggestion, the twins scooted out of their seats and into the aisleway, remaining bags in hand and Waddles at their heels as they made their way to the front of the bus. As they came to a stop near the bus driver’s seat, their eyes grew wide at the sight that awaited them in the street below.

To the eyes of an unknown tourist, it would look like nothing more than a dozen garden gnomes stacked atop each other before a collection of golf balls spilled all over the road. 

To anyone who’d spent enough time in Gravity Falls, however—

“For the last time, Franz; either you cross the street quickly or we’re letting a car run you over.”

At the front of the collection of golfballs—or more accurately, small persons by the name of Lilliputtians who happened to strongly resemble golfballs—a blue ball crossed their arms with a sour look towards the gnome at the top of the pile. “And we’re telling you for the last time, Jeff, we’re going as fast as we can!” he argued in return. “It’s not like we can just stack ourselves on top of each other like you gnomes can!”

“You’re golf balls!” The gnome, Jeff, pointed out irritably. “You can roll!”

Franz scoffed and placed his hands on his hips. “Oh, so just because we happen to look like golf balls, you think we can roll everywhere?” he asked. “What about you gnomes, huh? Without linking up to each other, I’ll bet you couldn’t go more than a few feet without getting winded!”

Jeff crossed his own arms with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, well, you’ve never seen Shmebulock run after six nosefuls of mushroom spores.”

His point was emphasized by an enthusiastic “Shmebulock!” from one of the gnomes at the bottom of the snack.

From the bus, the twins shared a knowing look before Mabel turned to the bus driver. “You know what? You can just let us off here, we can walk the rest of the way.”

“And we’ll see what we can do about clearing the road for you,” Dipper added.

With a shrug, the driver opened the doors to the bus and the two headed down the stairs; Mabel bounded out the door and onto the sidewalk with a delighted laugh while Dipper followed behind with more reserved steps. 

Despite their different methods of stair descension, their smiles were equally bright as they looked to the smaller beings still crowded in the middle of the road. “So, what do you think’s going on?” Dipper asked.

Mabel turned back to the bus steps and reached out to grab Waddles, who had slowly and piggishly ambled down the steps after them. “Not sure, but isn’t it wild to see both groups just…out in the middle of the street like this?”

“Right?!” Dipper said with enthusiastic agreement. “It’s like—not even five minutes back in town and we’re already getting a taste of peak Gravity Falls weirdness!”

After setting Waddles down to the sidewalk, Mabel clapped her hands together with just as much gusto. “I know, isn’t it great?”

“I’m warning you for the last time, Jeff: get out of our way before we knock your bearded butts down like rolling pins!” Franz insisted firmly. “You wanna see how fast we can actually roll? Keep pushing my buttons and you’ll find out!”

The twins exchanged a look. “Right, we should probably do the thing we got off the bus early to do,” Dipper said. “Otherwise we just made getting to the shack harder for ourselves for no reason.”

“Well, at the very least you can add ‘breaking up a fight between golf ball people and gnomes’ to the list of cool stories to tell Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford,” Mabel pointed out. “I’m almost positive they haven’t had a chance to do that yet!”

Dipper let out a laugh. “Weren’t you just saying a little bit ago that almost positive isn’t completely positive?”

With a laugh of her own, Mabel pushed a lighthearted fist to his arm before turning her gaze to the groups bickering in the road. “So how are we doing this?”

A shrug. “I mean, smartest method would just be to ask them why they’re fighting.”

“Very true!” Mabel said. “And who knows? Maybe if we know why they’re fighting, we can help them work it out peacefully.”

“Or we can at least distract them long enough to get them outta the road,” Dipper pointed out. “Then if they wanna continue the fight on the sidewalk, we just start heading for the shack.”

“That is also something we can do~!” 

She cupped her hands around her mouth and called loudly: “Hey, boys! What’s with all the commotion and bus blocking?”

“Yeah, none of you are more than two feet tall, and you should probably get out of the road before cars realize they can just run over you,” Dipper added helpfully.

From his spot in the road, Jeff let out a scoff. “Maybe on our own, but we gnomes could always just—”

He fell silent, the delayed realization of whom he was speaking to finally settling in as he looked to Dipper and Mabel with wide eyes. And he was not the only one; the attention of both gnomes and Lilliputtians alike were now focused solely on Dipper and Mabel.

“Well, shiver me timbers, amongst other pirate-y exclamations of surprise!” One of the pirates piped up. “The Saviors of the Falls be returned to us at last!”

“The Hugelings are back!” A knight Lilliputtian added excitedly.

The rest of the group (both gnome and golfball alike) let out similar exclamations of delight, their crosswalk argument momentarily forgotten as they all hurried to the sidewalk to greet the twins. 

And once the bus driver took advantage of the cleared road to continue onwards, the commotion was enough to also draw the attention of other nearby townsfolk. Townsfolk who—Dipper and Mabel observed as they got a good look around—were not quite as human as they had been the year prior.

A fair number of them were still clearly human; Tad Strange could be seen purchasing a loaf of bread through the window of a nearby store, while the man known as the ‘Free Pizza’ guy was taking a leisurely stroll just a short distance up the road.

But there was also no mistaking the mermaid in a small, mobile tank at an outside table for the nearby bistro, pulling her attention from her waterproof phone long enough to look their way.  Or the Abominable Bro-man stepping out of a nearby Jeep, the remaining three Bro-men still seated in the vehicle and pumping their fists in the air as they chanted his name with fraternal unity. A chant that quickly melted into the twins' names when the original Bro-man pointed them out with a look of pure, righteous elation.

And there was certainly no missing the flock of Eye-Bats resting comfortably on the nearby powerlines alongside a group of ordinary woodpeckers, or the Woodpecker-peckers that had taken up residence upon the original birds’ backs. While the peckers and pecker-peckers showed little interest in the kids, one Eye-Bat shifted its attention down towards them with mild curiosity, before turning to the nearest Woodpecker-pecker and shooting a burst of energy from its cornea. In a flash, the miniature bird had been transformed into solid stone, the extra weight causing the powerline to sag beneath the original—but otherwise unbothered—Woodpecker.

As more townsfolk—human and supernatural alike—also turned their attention towards the kids, Dipper cast an amused look to his sister. “You still in the mood to get bombarded by a bunch of people?”

Mabel giggled in response, and carefully picked up one of the Lilliputtians for a hug. “I don’t know what point you’re trying to prove, this is awesome! It’s like our own little welcome parade!”

“Well, if this isn’t a delightful delight of a sight~!”

At the sound of another voice, both turned their attention towards a thin man approaching them from further down the sidewalk. His overall demeanor was riddled with giddiness and a cartoonish banner that read ‘Mayor’ was displayed prominently across his chest. “Dipper and Mabel Pines! I was wondering when you two would finally get back to town!”

He waggled a finger at them. “And here I thought I’d have to wait until tomorrow night to say hello to you kids again!”

“Hi, Mayor Tyler,” Mabel said, giving him a wave with the arm that wasn't wrapped around the Lilliputtian, before using it to gesture to the rest of them. “I see someone’s been having a busy nine months~!”

Dipper nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it’s so cool to see the gnomes and everyone else just…wandering around the town like this!”

From where the gnomes were gathered, Jeff let out a smug little chuckle. “Hear that, Franz? We got a personal shoutout and everything.”

Franz turned to glare at him. “You know he was only using you pointy-hatted jerks as an example!”

“I’ll make an example outta you, you round son of a—”

Their heated exchange from before returned in full swing as the two groups began to argue again, the Lilliputtian in Mabel’s arms leaping back down to join the fight with balled fists and a collection of gnome-targeted obscenities.

In response, Mabel’s gestured arm shifted to a pointing finger. “Oh, right, they were fighting in the middle of the street and blocked our bus.”

With a sigh, Tyler pressed a hand to his forehead. "Again?"

Near his foot, a French Lilliputtian piped up with a mighty: "Sacré bleu!"— one that likely translated out to "Again!"—before he hurled his body at the nearest gnome.

While they watched this unfold, Dipper looked back to Tyler. “So is this, like…normal for them?”

“I’m afraid so,” Tyler replied wearily. "They simply cannot stop butting heads no matter how I try to clear the air—oh, hold on, I worry they might start biting if I don’t do something—”

He moved towards the center of the combined groups, carefully tiptoeing between the small golf balls with an ease that implied he had done this countless times before, and came to a stop near both Franz and Jeff. “Now, boys, you know we’ve talked about this no less than a week ago!”

Franz pointed a finger at Jeff, eyebrows furrowed. “He was trying to rush us again—”

“—and I was pointing out how, again, they can just roll across the crosswalk!” Jeff argued in retaliation. “I just don’t understand how they’ve got the ability to move that fast, but then get mad at people for pointing out they have it!”

Franz shook a fist at him. “Oh, I’ll show you fast, with how fast I can ram my hand up your—”

“Okay, gentleman,” Tyler interrupted quickly, and took a knee so he could be closer to them. “Jeff, you know what I’ve said about antagonizing the Lilliputtians. If you and your boys can’t play nice, I might have to resort to—well, looking elsewhere for a crossing guard!”

“Wh—aw, come on!” Jeff protested. “That’ll be the fifth job we’ve lost in a month! Do you know how hard it is to nab the attention of a potential queen if we go back to being a bunch of unemployed chumps?”

Franz rolled his eyes. “Yeah, pretty sure it’s not the lack of a job they hate about you.”

“Why, you little—”

Jeff launched his entire body at Franz as the two of them began to squabble again, and Tyler reached out to grab them both by the back of their shirts. “Hey, come on now! I’m a fan of a good fight as much as the next guy, but you’re setting a bad example in front of our special guests—”

This earned a shrug from the twins. “I mean, we really don’t care,” Dipper said.

“One of them tried to kill us, the other tried to marry me,” Mabel added. “We’ve kinda already seen both of them at their worst already.”

“Need some help?”

A familiar voice from behind—followed by a massive shadow enveloping both of them in shade—turned both twins around, only for them to be greeted by the sight of a tall Manotaur towering high above them. But what really grabbed their attention was the teenager seated on his left shoulder, smile wide as she hopped down to the sidewalk in front of them. Her hair was much shorter than the last time they had seen her, just barely peeking out from beneath the faded hat that she had swapped with Dipper for her own. And her original green flannel shirt had been exchanged for an unbuttoned red one over a white tank top. 

Despite the differences in her appearance, however, there was no mistaking who she was—and her old hiking boots had barely touched the pavement before the twins rushed to embrace her in a joint hug. “Wendy!”

With a laugh, Wendy slunk an arm around each of their shoulders to hug them in return. “And here I thought you squirts would beat me up to the Shack,” she said, moving her hands to playfully noogie the tops of their heads. “What’re you doing all the way down here?”

Mabel gestured to the small crowd before them. “Well, our bus had to stop because—”

“Oh, for the love of—” Wendy interrupted with a sigh, before looking over to Tyler. “Are they fighting again?”

From where he stood—desperately holding the two leaders at arm’s length to prevent more blood from being drawn—Tyler’s expression melted into a look of relief. “Wendy! Thank goodness you’re here!” he said. “Uh, would you and Chutzpar mind—”

She crossed her arms with a miffed look. “You know, people are going to think it’s unprofessional that the mayor has to keep getting help from outside sources to solve the town’s issues—”

“Wendy, please?”

Wendy rolled her eyes, and looked up towards the Manotaur beside her. “Whaddaya think, Big Guy?”

“Many months ago, I would’ve encouraged the idea of using violence to solve one’s problems,” Chutzpar said stoically. “And I still would, were it not an inconvenience to Mayor Tyler.”

He held up a finger. “Punching out your feelings is not inherently a bad way to solve some issues, but there is a time and place for it,” he continued. “And right in the middle of town where people are looking to enjoy their day isn’t the right time nor the right place! So KNOCK IT OFF or I’ll knock YOU OFF!”

He punctuated the last sentence with a warning stomp of his left hoof, one strong enough to rumble the sidewalk beneath everyone’s feet. And once he was finished, he looked to Wendy hopefully—as if he were expecting her to praise him for his answer—and she gave an approving nod before looking to the crowd: “You guys chill now, or does he need to do that again?”

Thankfully the fighting had immediately ceased at Chutzpar’s warning stomp, both gnome and Lilliputtians alike trembling in shock. “H-hey, that’s a really rude way to get someone to stop doing something, you know!” Franz said irritably.

“Yeah,” Jeff piped up in agreement. “You can’t just use your Manotaur buddy to push us around like that!”

“Yeah, well, maybe next time you’ll stop fighting when Tyler asks you to stop first,” Wendy said. “Besides, it worked, didn’t it? You guys are actually agreeing on something and have chilled out a little bit, right?”

Franz and Jeff exchanged a skeptical look, before they both turned away in disgust with halfhearted mutters of “I guess so.” and “Whatever.” in unison.

“Guys...”

Jeff crossed his arms. “Fine, I guess it doesn’t really matter how long they take to get across the street," he said defeatedly. "Besides, the longer we man the cross work, the more chances we get to snag attention from potential queen candidates who'd be impressed by the fact that we're employed."

“And I guess we could speed up a bit when we walk,” Franz added. “We’ll probably have to now, if we wanna make it to the sticker store and back to the golf course before our lunch break is over.”

Tyler clasped his hands together. “There, you see? Problem-solving!” he said delightedly. “Now, let’s clear off the sidewalk and give Dipper and Mabel some breathing room, okay?”

With only a small handful of grumbling, the gnomes and Lilliputtians shuffled back towards the crosswalk. Once they had properly dispersed, Tyler stood up to full height again and clasped his hands together. “Thank you so much, Wendy, you are an angel in lumberjack’s clothing~!”

Wendy crossed her arms again, expression souring at his compliment. “I meant what I said; you’ve really gotta get a handle on doing stuff like this by yourself,” he said. “The town’s not gonna take a guy who can’t even break up a fight between some gnomes and sentient golf balls seriously.”

Tyler chuckled nervously and once again pressed a hand to his forehead. “Well, regardless, your help is always appreciated!” he said, with a look to Chutzpar. “And thank you once again for all your help, big fella. I’m actually glad I caught you, I was actually on my way over to the lumbermill to discuss Thursday’s plans with Dan—”

This earned him an annoyed scoff from Wendy, while Chutzpar simply nodded. “Yes, that is the reason we were on our way to see you—”

“I was on my way to the Mystery Shack.”

“—why we were on our way to see you, before we made our way to the Mystery Shack,” Chutzpar continued, paying no mind to Wendy’s interruption. “I come with a message from him. And a gift.”

He looked to Wendy, who gave him a nod far more halfhearted than his own, before he held out the small object he had been carrying in one of his mighty fists. 

It was a small, wood-carved animal (a bear to be specific), and it was clear that every notch in the wood had been carefully sculpted with care. A care that Tyler recognized with a look that was far less whimsical than his usual demeanor, and more of a genuine tenderness as he took the carving in his hand. “Oh, that darn man really knows how to spoil me rotten, doesn’t he?”

His smile widened as he looked back to Chutzpar. “You said he also had a message for me?”

Chutzpar nodded and reached into his pocket for a small stack of index cards. After taking a moment to shuffle them, he cleared his throat and began to read: “‘I am looking forward to Thursday. I was wondering if you would wear the panther shirt to dinner that I bought you in that two-for-one special. Panthers are powerful, and could tear a puma to—”

He casually flipped to the next index card, before gripping the entire stack tightly with both hands and ripping it in half a powerful yell of: ”—SHREDS!!!!’”

He held his stance for a moment, before slipping back into a more relaxed pose. “He specifically requested that I rip them up when I said ‘shreds’,” he explained. “It was an opportunity to be needlessly loud and violent in a healthy fashion, so I was in full support of the idea.”

“Aww, a show of force and a clever pun?” Tyler said, pressing his hands to his flushed face. “He really does know what I like~!”

He gave Chutzpar a wink. “Well, you be sure to tell Dan that I will certainly be wearing the panther shirt on Thursday!”

“Super,” Wendy said, her tone deadpan. “Can we go to the Shack now?”

“Of course, sorry for holding you up,” Tyler said with a laugh. “I suppose I should be getting back to work as well. This town’s not gonna mayor itself, after all~!”

“It might if you don’t learn how to break up fights without help,” Wendy muttered under her breath.

Tyler gave the group a little wave with the hand that held the wood carving. “Oh, and welcome back to town, Dipper and Mabel~! Can’t wait for the party tomorrow!”

With that, he turned and headed down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the group, leaving Wendy to turn her attention to the twins. “So, you guys need a second to unpack everything that just happened, or are we good to continue on to the Shack?”

Dipper and Mabel shared a look, before Dipper took the initiative: “Yeah, so I have about a dozen questions—”

“What are the gnomes and Lilliputtians and all the other creatures doing walking around town?” Mabel interrupted quickly, with a wide gesture of her arms. “What’re you doing with a Manotaur? And why’s he giving Mayor Tyler gifts from your dad?!”

Dipper pointed to his sister. “Actually yeah, she covered pretty much all the questions I had,” he said, turning his full attention to her. “Except for the last part, because I feel like that’s pretty obvious, Mabel.”

Mabel placed her hands on her hips. “Duh-doy, I know it’s obvious. I just want to know when it started being a thing,” she explained. “I don’t remember hearing about it in any of the letters we got.”

Wendy made a face. “Yeah, it’s…kinda new.”

“They have been dating for four months,” Chutzpar pointed out.

“It’s new,” Wendy said flatly, before giving a shrug to the twins. “Anyway, the other stuff’s pretty easy to answer. Wanna swap stories as we head to the shack?”

“Yeah!” they answered in unison, before Dipper looked further up the road. “Kinda wish we’d asked the bus driver to stick around, though. The walk to the shack from here’s going to take forever.”

Wendy looked up at Chutzpar with a smirk, and he nodded knowingly in return. “Sounds like the two of you require a ride.”

Before either twin could question what he meant by ‘ride’, they suddenly found themselves being scooped up from the sidewalk and settled onto his muscular shoulders.

Wendy watched with a smile as they adjusted themselves. “You two chill up there?”

From the left shoulder, Dipper gave a thumbs up. “All good!”

Doubling over in a fit of giggles, Mabel reached over and grabbed hold of Chutzpar’s horn to steady herself. “Oh, this is way better than taking the bus~!”

Wendy let her gaze fall to the sidewalk below, where Waddles was staring up expectantly. “And while he’s got you, I’ll get—”

She bent down to pick him up, lifting him with just as little issue as his owner, and adjusted him until he was situated comfortably in her arms. “Woah, buddy, you feel a lot heavier than fifteen pounds this year!”

“I’ve fed him only the finest of leftover table scraps,” Mabel said proudly.

“And he used to sneak into my junk food stash at least once a week before I found a way to stop him,” Dipper said, giving Waddles a pointed look.

Waddles gave him a proud snort in response as Wendy took another quick glance at the sidewalk again. “Alright, no bags or any other random pets that you might’ve picked up since last year?”

“Bags are in our arms,” Dipper said, giving his a pat for good measure.

“And sadly no,” Mabel added in a solemn tone. “Mom said owning Waddles is like owning three pets in one. She says it as a compliment, because that just means he’s three times as lovable. But like we said before, he also just eats about as much as three animals so she don’t see any reason to get a fourth.”

This earned another proud snort from Waddles and a laugh from Wendy. “Sounds like an okay to begin walking, then.”

Chutzpar nodded, the sidewalk rumbling with every thunderous step he took as the group began their trek towards the winding trail on the edge of town.

— — — — — — —

“Mr. Pines, there’s no need to be so nervous.”

“What makes you think I’m nervous?”

From beside Soos, Grenda raised her hand. “The fact that you’re pacing in a circle so much, you’re practically digging a new bottomless pit with your feet?”

Candy turned to her, eyes bright with inspiration. “Ooh, if there are two of them, maybe they could be advertised as twin bottomless pits!” she said, holding up a finger on each hand. “Twin pits for twin pairs—“

She brought her fingers together with a smile. “—of twin Pines!”

Grenda let out a loud cackle, and gave her friend's shoulder a hearty slap. “God, Candy, save some of that genius for when Mabel gets here!”

While Candy rubbed her sore shoulder with a wince, Soos gave the two of them a thumbs-up. “But I’m adding that to the list of attraction ideas when we get back to the shack. It’s a good one, dude.”

Stan looked down at the thin dent in the gravel that he’d worn down with his shoes, and crossed his arms with a gruff sigh. A sigh that was interrupted by the familiar sensation of a six-fingered hand on his shoulder.

His mouth curled into a smile as he locked eyes with the hand's owner, a near-identical set of features to his own staring back at him. “They raise a good point, Stanley,” Ford said. “Mostly about the nervousness, not the second bottomless pit idea.”

At that, he gave the girls a thumbs up. “But that is some impeccable wordplay, Candy!”

“My name gives me plenty of chances to make puns in everyday conversation,” Candy informed him with a smile. “It’s second nature to me at this point~!”

Stan tsked at that, although his smile didn’t disappear. “And who’s to say that pit idea a' theirs ain’t exactly what I’m doing?” he said. “Building some kinda new, twin-themed shack attraction with my feet?”

Candy held up another finger. “Shack-traction!”

“I said, stop! You’re gonna use up all the good ones!”

While the girls chattered on, Ford turned his gaze from them to Soos. “Actually, Soos, don’t you and the girls want to go, uh—” A pause. “—discuss that second bottomless pit idea further?”

Grenda ceased her attempt to give Candy a noogie of approval, and raised an eyebrow at him. “Why? He already said we’d—”

“Don’t worry, Dr. Pines!” Soos interrupted quickly, taking each of the girls’ hands in his own. “I’ll keep ‘em busy!”

Ford gave him an appreciative nod, one that Soos returned with a smile as he lead them away; not too far from the bus stop, but far enough to give the older men some space.

Once the three of them were at a distance that would make eavesdropping impossible, Stan playfully nudged his brother’s arm. “Real subtle there, Poindexter.”

“Wasn’t trying to be,” Ford said, as he turned back around to face him. “And even if I was, it’d be a lot more convincing than you’re trying to be about not being nervous.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Hey, I’m the King of Subtlety! Or are you forgetting the New Jersey Lil' Wise Guy Subtlety Competition of 1956, where I took first place?”

“It was 1957,” Ford corrected him. “And I distinctly remember you quite literally taking the first place medal and attempting to pawn it off to one of the customers in the shop. Which failed, because you were three.”

Stan pressed a hand to his forehead. “Was it? Could’ve sworn it was—” With a huff, he waved it away. “Whatever, so maybe I’m a little nervous about seeing my great-niece and nephew again for the first time in nine months,” he said with a halfhearted shrug. “So what?”

“As I’m sure we’ve discussed at least two dozen times on the ride back to town—”

“Three dozen.”

“—there’s no reason to be nervous about seeing Dipper and Mabel again,” Ford finished. “If all the letters they sent to the Mystery Shack are anything to go off, they’re just as excited to see us as we are them.”

Stan waved his hand again, this time with the addition of a scoff. “Oh, I’m not worried about all that,” he explained. “I know the kids love us, and I know as soon as they step off that bus, I’m gonna put on the tough-as-nails, no-nonsense Grunkle act and pretend I wouldn’t erase my own mind for ‘em again if they needed me to—”

“Don’t joke about that.”

A shared look of somberness crossed their faces for a brief instant, before Stan’s gaze fell to the ground again. “It ain’t us I’m worried about,” he repeated. “They headed outta this place only a week after we barely managed to save it from going to heck in a handbasket. Barely managed to save them…”

His gaze returned to Ford. “Just don’t want them comin’ back to a whole boatload of new things to be worried about, you know?”

The hand on Stan’s shoulder moved to Ford’s own hair, which he pushed back with a tired sigh. “Don’t I know it. I’ve had this pit in my stomach for about two weeks now, both from the excitement of getting to spend the full summer with my great-niece and nephew and—”

He paused, before letting his hand fall back to his side with a weak laugh. “Well, I guess it was inevitable that our return to town would be accompanied by some…complicated emotions.”

Forgetting his own nerves for a moment, Stan’s attention immediately snapped to his brother. The shift in Ford’s features was subtle, as it always was whenever the topic of Bill came up in passing. But the pain behind Ford’s eyes, a pain that held the weight of the past thirty-plus years, and the way his entire body tensed from the memories that Stan could only assume made up that weight—

Stan shoved his hands in his pockets with a sigh. “Psh, listen to me gettin’ all worked up over the kids, when I should’ve been asking if you were alright.”

Ford looked to him, eyebrow raised. “Wh—no, that’s not the point. The point is—”

He was cut off by Stan slinging an arm around his shoulders, his knees buckling slightly from the extra weight. “The point is we’re both stressed,” Stan said. “And if we’re both stressed, then the kids are gonna end up stressed as well and that’ll just have the opposite effect of what we want. Like that law. You know, from that one guy?”

With his free hand, he snapped his fingers thoughtfully as he racked his brain for the answer. “Somethin’, somethin’, every action’s got a reaction and it’s opposite?”

An amused smile spread across Ford’s face. “Are you referring to Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of motion?” he asked. “Those laws by that world-renowned philosopher?”

“Hey, you’re the one that finished high school, Smart Guy, you tell me!”

Satisfied with his answer, he shifted the arm around Ford’s shoulder to pull him into a proper headlock. Ford attempted to slink out from beneath his brother’s embrace with a laugh, but unfortunately the past forty years had done little to weaken Stan’s technique and kept him locked as firmly in place as it had during their childhood.

On the other hand, three decades of wandering the Multiverse had provided Ford with a few defensive maneuvers of his own. Combined with spending the past nine months on a fishing boat together, it had taken little time for him to readapt to his brother’s attempts at rough-housing—

His gaze fell to Stan’s exposed ribs, to which he delivered a light—yet firm—jab with his elbow.

—and even less time for him to find the most effective methods of countering them.

Sure enough, Stan released him with a surprised yelp, one that melted into a fit of rough laughter as Ford effortlessly slipped out of his grasp. “Cheap shot.”

“I believe you’re the last person to talk when it comes to fighting dirty, Stanley,” Ford replied with a smug grin.

“Oh, I’ll show ya dirty—”

The laughter doubled as the two of them spent another moment attempting to one-up the other in lighthearted fisticuffs, until the distant, rumbling sound of tires against asphalt pulled them back to reality. And if the sight of the approaching bus alone hadn’t been enough, Grenda’s boisterous cry of “THE BUS IS COMING!” as the rest of the group hurried back to rejoin them would’ve done the trick.

As they straightened themselves out again in preparation to greet the kids, the brothers exchanged another look. One that clearly displayed their shared nervousness that even rough-housing hadn’t completely eliminated.

It was Stan who broke the awkward silence first, mouth curling into a halfhearted smile. “Guess we’d better give that Newton chump a call, huh?”

Ford managed a weak smile in return. “You realize you’ve wildly misinterpreted the laws of motion and their relation to the situation at hand, don’t you?”

“And you realize you’re a giant nerd, right?” Stan countered.

“Well, regardless of misinterpretation, you do raise a good point,” Ford said. “If we’re both stressed, then the kids are bound to pick up on it and get stressed in turn.”

He inhaled slowly, and exhaled slower. “It’s a new summer. A chance for everyone to start over.”

“You know it,” Stan said, lightly touching his knuckles against Ford’s arm. “And hey, uh—that doesn’t stop at summer. We don’t have to do anything alone ever again, right?”

They exchanged a look, silently lingering in their shared understanding for a moment before Ford spoke again: “You’re right, Stanley. We don’t have to do anything alone. Not now, not ever again.”

The two remained still for a moment more, before Stan reached over to give him a nudge. “And y’know, if that doesn’t work, I’m pretty sure I saw some kinda zombie-summoning spell in one of those nerd books of yours.” 

He crossed his arms. “I know we chucked them down into the Bottomless Pit, but I also know for a fact that you’ve got one’a’those smart-guy photographic-memories and could probably recite it off the top of your head.”

“Are you suggesting I use necromancy to summon Sir Isaac Newton?” Ford asked, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement. “To prove his first law that you seem insistent on misinterpreting?”

“I mean, I ain’t telling you to give him a kiss on the cheek or nothin’,” Stan said.

Their smiles widened in amused unison as the bus finally slowed to a stop, the creaking of the brakes echoing loudly through the forest around them. Almost as if they were announcing the long-awaited arrival of the teenagers on board to anything within earshot.

And as the group watched, the older adults with tense shoulders while Soos and the girls all leaned into each other with excited anticipation, the doors of the bus slid open to reveal—

“Are you all looking to get on?”

—nothing more than the bus driver.

Candy blinked in confusion. “Have Dipper and Mabel turned invisible since we last saw then?”

Stan’s brow furrowed, balling one hand into a warning fist as he stared at the driver. “Yeah, pal, what gives?! Where’s our kids?”

“The ones from earlier?” the driver asked. “Oh, they got off somewhere in town. There were a buncha golfballs and gnomes in the road, said they’d take care of it and for me to just go on ahead without ‘em.”

He pressed a hand to his chin. "Good kids, though! The bus floor's practically sparkling thanks to that pet pig of theirs!"

“Did they tell you if they were going to walk the rest of the way or not?” Ford asked.

“I believe that’s what they said,” the driver said. “But seriously, is no one here going to get on?”

A varying chorus of ‘No’s earned the group a closed door, before the bus continued onwards down the road. After it eventually descended down a hill and out of sight, Grenda’s shoulders fell. “Aw, man! I was gonna pile drive Mabel into the ground as soon as she got off the bus! Now our whole ‘Welcome Back To The Falls’ greeting is ruined!”

Candy patted her arm sympathetically. “I am sure she would’ve appreciated the effort regardless.”

“Of course she would!” Grenda lamented, her loud voice booming through the nearby wood. “She’s an angel who appreciates when we go the extra mile!”

“Back in town for five minutes and they’re already getting caught up in some kind of weird shenanigans,” Ford said, swelling with pride. “They’re a couple of Pines, alright.”

Stan slapped a hand over his eyes, and dragged it down the rest of his face. “Yeah, a pair from your side of the family, maybe.” 

It was said in exasperation, but there was an undeniable fondness in his tone. One that transferred to his expression as he turned to the rest of the group. “Alright, on one hand: the kids know the way to the Shack like the backs of their own hands and they’ll probably get here just fine on foot,” he pointed out. “On the other—”

“Getting here could take a while and none of us want to wait that long to see them again, so we go and meet them halfway?” Soos guessed.

“You got it.”

From beside his brother, Ford shot a glance down the road from whence the bus had come. “Looks like halfway might be closer than we think.”

He pointed a finger for emphasis, and the rest of the group followed his gesture to the sight of an approaching Manotaur coming up the road. One that was delightfully conversing with the two thirteen-year-olds seated on each of his shoulders, and the sixteen-year-old walking beside him.

A conversation that had been clearly happening since the four of them had been back in town, Dipper and Mabel’s attention fully fixed on Wendy as she continued to speak: “—and after everyone teamed up during Weirdmageddon, the vibes of the town just kinda shifted. As if a lot of the weird stuff in town suddenly realized: ‘Hey, we’re not much of a mystery anymore so there’s not really a reason to keep hiding’, and the people in town realized they weren’t as weird and terrifying as they originally thought.”

She pressed a finger to her temple. “Combine that with the Society of the Blind Eye going belly up and leaving no one around to go blasting memories out of people’s heads—” Then pressed her hands together and laced her fingers for emphasis. “—everyone and everything just kinda started mushing together over time.”

“Manly Dan caught news of us Manotaurs when we were forced to relocate our Man Cave,” Chutzpar added. “Impressed by our manliness and feats of strength, he offered us jobs in his lumberyard. We told him we’d only accept if the toughest combatants from his family defeated us in battle.”

“And you guys lost to him?” Mabel guessed.

“Not to him.”

Chutzpar cast a gaze down at Wendy, and the twins followed suit in the hopes of further elaboration. “Originally, it was just going to be Dad and my brothers in the fight,” she explained. “Not because Dad didn’t think to ask me; I was at work at the time and happened to come home just as all of them were getting their butts handed to ‘em on a silver platter.”

“It was a mighty battle of strength and determination,” Chutzpar said in a faraway tone. “They fought well, even if their efforts were inevitably in vain.”

“Nearly in vain,” Wendy corrected. “But then I showed up and volunteered to finish the fight.”

“And they let you?”

“Of course not, the big meatheads all laughed at the idea of fighting a girl. But then I punched one of ‘em in the gut, and suplexed another into the ground, where he got stuck by his horns.”

This got a laugh out of her. “Taking down the rest wasn’t too hard, since Dad and the others had already worn most of 'em down. But even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been difficult. Their fighting style was all punch, no technique. Even an amateur could’ve taken all of them down with a few well-placed hits.”

She shrugged with amusement. “That was also why Dad wasn’t able to win against them; he fights the exact same way. It was just lunkhead against lunkhead out there, swinging fists wildly until at least one of ‘em hit something. And unfortunately for my lunkheaded family, they didn’t have as many fists as the Manotaurs to keep swinging around. Until I showed up, at least.”

While the twins giggled at the visual image, Chutzpar gave a stoic nod. “The Manotaurs lost the battle that day, but it was a loss we hold with pride,” he said, with a shift of the arm that held Dipper. “One that taught us that—between her and the things you taught us last year, Destructor—we have plenty to learn about what it means to be men.”

He gave his chest a hearty thump. “And that sometimes that manliest men among us are actually girls!”

Dipper raised a mildly-confused eyebrow at Wendy, who gave another shrug in response. “Eh, they’re still a little confused but it’s better than where they were last year,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Not to mention being called the Manliest Man in Gravity Falls kinda hits in a way I’m not complaining about—”

“Kids!”

At the sound of another voice hailing them from further ahead, Dipper and Mabel turned their gazes forward to see their welcome party hurrying towards them from the opposite direction. Grenda and Candy were bringing up the rear with Soos, while Ford was keeping a steady pace in the middle. 

But at the very front of the group, Stan was charging towards them with a speed and passion that couldn’t be matched by anyone else.

Except perhaps by Mabel, who had quickly jumped down from Chutzpar’s shoulder at the sound of his voice and began to sprint towards her great-uncle at Mach speed. “Grunkle Stan!”

It was a miracle that the two of them remained standing, with how hard they crashed into one another in a bone-crushing embrace; Mabel linking her arms around Stan’s neck like a spider monkey while he spun her around with a hearty belly laugh. 

Only for that miracle to shatter when the embrace of two became three as Dipper caught up to them, and all of them tumbled to the ground in a mess of laughter. “What, are you kids tryna kill me before we even get to the Shack?” Stan asked, slinging an arm around Dipper’s body. “I don’t remember the two’a’you being this big last year.”

Mabel let out a little giggle and pressed her hands to his face. “Yeah, well, you weren’t this hairy last year!” she pointed out in return. “I mean you were still really hairy, but now you’ve got a full-grown beard!”

“Sure do!” Stan said brightly, and patted the hair covering his chin. “Ol’ Poindexter and I made a decision early on that if we were spendin’ our days as men of the sea, then we were sure as heck gonna look the part!”

Mabel pressed her own hands to her mouth, stifling a laugh. “You sound like Dipper at Hanukkah! He was soooooo excited to show Grandpa Shermie his beard~!”

The last word was said with clear amusement, and Dipper shrank a bit before slapping his hands over his face. “Mabel, come on, you don’t have t—”

“Oh, didja grow one too?” Stan asked, peering at him. “Come on, Slick, let’s see those Pines genetics at work.”

After a moment of hesitation, Dipper nervously lowered his hands and Stan leaned closer to examine the few, noticeable hairs on his chin. “I-I know it’s not much,” he explained quickly. “But it’s more than I had last year! A-and Mom says that I’m bound to get more as I get older!”

With a proud laugh, Stan reached up to ruffle his hat. “You kidding? That’s more than I had at that age!” he said. “You be proud of those few hairs, and don’t let your sister steal ‘em for her scrapbook.”

“Too late,” Mabel said brightly. “I stole both one from the chin and one from the shin~! He has some there, too!”

Dipper gave her a pointed look, before turning back to Stan with a more confident smile. “I’d be more annoyed at her for that if she wasn’t right,” he said, and held up his leg. “Because look, I got so much on my legs, too!”

“Woa-hoh, get a load of Mister Big Man over here!” Stan said, and brought him closer for a proper noogie. “Those genetics really are kickin’ in early for you, huh?”

“He’s not the only one they’ve kicked in for,” Mabel added. “Or should I say—”

She kicked out one of her own legs with a cheeky grin. “—kicked~!”

There was a moment of pause, before she gave her leg another wiggle. “You get it because—”

“Mabel also got leg hair,” Dipper clarified. “If that wasn’t obvious.”

“I tried shaving it at first, but it just made my legs soooooo itchy,” Mabel said. "So now I just have built-in leg warmers!”

“I’d suggest the fire method, but it’s far more effective at removing facial hair than body hair,” a voice behind them said. “Also something tells me that your parents wouldn’t be too happy if we sent you back home with burns on your legs.”

The trio looked up to see Ford standing before them, a hand outstretched. “Room in the dirt for one more?”

A series of grins were exchanged before three hands reached for Ford’s in unison and pulled him down to the ground with them. “It’s good to see you again, Grunkle Ford!” Dipper said. 

“Especially since we actually know you exist now!” Mabel added. “This time last year, we still thought Grunkle Stan was you! And then when we did find out that you were you and he was him, we only got to spend a little bit of time with you!”

Her arms moved from around Stan’s neck to Ford's, her spider-monkey grip once again unbreakable as she hugged him tight. “But this year, we get to spend aaaaallllllll summer with both our Grunkles!”

Ford’s smile widened and he slinked an arm around her as Stan piped up with: “That’s right, Pumpkin! No more mysteries or weird demons or monsters or anything that’s gonna get in the way of me spendin’ time with you kids and my brother!”

“Well, I mean, a monster here and there’s not a bad thing—” Ford begin, just as Dipper finished with a: “I wouldn’t mind a mystery or two, honestly.”

The four of them doubled over in laughter as the remaining party from both directions finally caught up to them. “Aww, you guys are having a cuddle pile in the dirt without us?” Grenda piped up unhappily.

“Candy adds a dash of sweetness to every cuddle pile!” Candy added.

“Or did the squirts knock you down ‘cause you’re older than the dirt you’re sitting in?” Wendy chimed in, as her and Chutzpar also came to a stop.

“Watch it, Corduroy,” Stan said, pulling his arm out from around Dipper so he could point a finger at her. “Just ‘cause I’m not your boss anymore doesn’t mean I can’t ask Soos to fire you.”

Wendy raised an eyebrow in Soos’ direction. “Would you fire me if he asked?”

“Uh…” Soos shifted uncomfortably in place. “Do I really have to answer that?”

This got a disbelieving “Wow.” out of Wendy and a delighted cackle out of Stan, one that was cut short by a grunt of pain as he shifted in place. “Ow, maybe we should get up outta all this dirt and gravel,” he muttered. “I got rocks in place I don’t wanna mention in front of a bunch of impressionable teenagers, my brother, or Soos.”

Soos offered him a hand. “Maybe we can move the cuddle pile to the Shack, then? Then Melody can join us!”

With a look of disgust, Stan took his hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Pass. Last thing any of us needs is for you two to start making kissy faces at each other.”

“Keep that in mind,” Wendy muttered with a grin.

“Soos does raise an excellent point about making our way the Shack,” Ford said. “The sooner the kids get settled in, the sooner we can exchange...stories.”

He emphasized the last word with a knowing look to his brother, and Stan’s mouth spread into a wide grin as he offered his own hands to the kids. “Hey, yeah! You squirts wanna hear about the time your Grunkles tore the head off a Kraken along the coast of Texas?” he asked with a wink. “‘Cause lemme tell ya: when they say everything’s bigger down there, they mean everything!”

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a unanimous “Yeah!” as they were also pulled to their feet—

“Nope! I said I was giving Mabel a proper ‘Welcome Back’ pile drive, and I’m gonna do it!”

—and Mabel was immediately brought back down to the tampered dirt path by a charging Grenda, any pain from the impact momentarily drowned in a fit of giggles as she hugged her friend. “Oh, it’s just as spine-shattering as I hoped it’d be!”

“Don’t forget Candy, for a dash of sweetness!” Candy piped up, as she flopped over the other two with a laugh. “I made that pun already, but it was so nice, I had to say it twice!”

“Agreed, it was hilarious!” Mabel agreed, arms going around both of them in a tight embrace. “Ugh, I missed you girls sooooo much! I’ve got loads to tell you since my last letter—ooh, also I’ve got a phone now!”

While Mabel attempted to fish her phone out of her pocket, Wendy cast a smirk to the adults. “Anyone wanna bet that we won’t get to the Shack until nightfall?”

Chutzpar looked down at her. “I respect a show of friendly violence, but should I intervene again?”

“You know you don’t have to listen to me,” Wendy said, folding her arms. “I’m not, like, actually in charge of you guys or anything.”

“I’m aware.”

“And I don’t take any bets I know I’ll lose,” Stan said, and snapped his fingers at the girls. “Hey, come on, I know we’re all excited to be seein’ each other again.”

He pointed a finger at Grenda, which shifted between her and Candy. “But I already told you two that I need at least one night without wondering if a family of bats moved into my attic, or if you girls are tryin’ to break the sound barrier with your squeals.”

“Seconding that,” Dipper piped up quickly. “I would also like a buffer between now and the inability to sleep in my own room, please.”

The girls let out a chorus disappointed of ‘Awwwww’s as they untangled themselves and returned to their feet. “But Grunkle Staaaaan, I missed my people!” Mabel argued.

“And her people missed her!” Grenda added, squeezing her close.

“Never said you couldn’t hang out with ‘em after tonight,” Stan pointed out. “Plus there’s that party tomorrow—”

“Oh, yeah!” Grenda said excitedly. “We can catch up at the party!”

“We can catch up on stories while we tear up the dance floor!” Candy added with an excited wiggle, before she raised her fists to the air. “And remind this town who the real party animals are!”

She let her arms fall again. “Plus my parents said that I needed to come home after we said hi to you, anyway,” she explained further, then added as an afterthought: “Hi, Mabel!”

With a giggle, Mabel replied: “Hi, Candy!”

“And I got my pile drive in, so I guess I did everything I wanted to do today,” Grenda added with a shrug.

While Stan leaned close to Ford with a quiet: “I’d point out that it was more of a tackle than a pile drive, but also I don’t wanna be out here longer than we hafta be.” (earning a “Smart call.” from Ford in return), Mabel tightened her grip around the other girls. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess I can wait another day to hang out with my beeeeest friends in the whoooolllllle world~!”

Candy’s gaze moved over to Wendy and Chutzpar. “By the way, we saw that Dipper and Mabel got a Manotaur ride up here,” she said. “Is there an option to catch a Manotaur ride back to town?”

“Ooh, me too! Me too!” Grenda added. “Wendy, make him give us a ride!”

“Once again, I’m not in charge of the Manotaurs,” Wendy pointed out, with another look to Chutzpar. “It’s up to you, pal. You offering rides back to town?”

Chutzpar held out both hands for them to take. “Small girls who greet their friends with violent pile drivers are worthy of a ride,” he said, before raising an eyebrow at Wendy. “But will you be alright getting home?”

“I can always hitch a ride from someone,” Wendy assured him. “Or—”

She reached into her pocket for her phone, and glanced at the screen for a moment. “—yeah, or I can just spend the night at the Shack if I really need to.”

“Aw, what?” Grenda said unhappily from Chutzpar’s shoulder. “How come you get to spend the night and we don’t?”

“Good-bye, girls,” Stan said, and gave Wendy a pointed stare. “Tell the big guy to go.”

“I’m not—” Wendy started to say, then shrugged it off and gave Chutzpar a wave of her hand. “Go ahead.”

Chutzpar gave her a nod in return, and turned back towards the direction of the town. “Let’s make haste, small female children,” he said, and began to walk. ”I have a response from Mayor Tyler to deliver to Manly Dan about their Thursday plans.”

“We are teenagers now, you know,” Grenda pointed out with a mild huff of indignance. “Or at least I am.”

“Ooh, is the response a loooove message~?” Candy added delightedly. “Are the plans a date?”

“Oh, you know it—!”

Chutzpar’s voice echoed through the wood with amusement, the volume only matched in power by Grenda’s laughter as the trio drew further and further away from those who had stayed behind. Eventually though, even their powerful baritones could not be carried such a distance, and the forest around the group fell silent again.

Silent, until—

“So, we’re not gonna question the big man-cow thing?” Stan asked. “We’re just acting like he’s been here the entire time, then?”

Ford shrugged in response. “He was clearly a Manotaur, and one that seemed to be on good terms with Wendy and the kids,” he said. “Didn’t see any reason to question his presence.”

“He’s visited the Shack several times,” Soos chimed in as well. “Also he was staying with us in the Shack during Weirdmageddon.”

“Did he?” Stan said. “Huh, feel like I should remember that.”

“I also met him and the rest of the herd last year,” Dipper added, just as Mabel chimed in with her own: “The Manotaurs work for Wendy now, and also Manly Dan is dating Mayor Tyler!”

Wendy made a twirling motion with her finger. “What they all said, minus the ‘working for me’ thing. They’re part of my dad’s logging crew now, and even if they listen to me when I ask them to do stuff, I don’t want anything to get weird with that.”

“And the part about your dad and Mayor Tyler?” Stan asked, an eyebrow raised.

Wendy’s expression shifted for half a second, before her usual, disinterested grin took its place. “Hey, here’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say: let’s stop standing around and doing nothing, and get to the Shack so I’m not late for my shift!”

Soos raised a hand. “Uh, but Wendy, I’m your boss and it’s your day off—”

“Race you knuckleheads there~!”

Wendy took off like a shot before Soos could finish his point, taking great care to lightly plap a hand against the heads of the younger twins and deliver a loving fist to the arms of the adults as she zipped between them and ran towards the direction of the Mystery Shack.

With a laugh, the younger twins sprinted after her in a rush with cries of: “Wait for us!” and “How are you running that fast with a pig in your arms?”

The adults watched them go for a moment, before Soos turned to the Stans: “...We don’t actually have to run all the way back there, do we?”

Stan, who had been watching Wendy and the kids race ahead, pulled his attention back to Soos. “Absolutely not,” he said flatly, and pressed a hand to his back. “Especially not after the kids knocked me down like that.”

He winced as the three of them began to follow after the kids at a much slower pace. “Gonna be feeling that for at least a few days.”

“Well, at least it’s a sign that we won’t have to give Sir Isaac Newton a call,” Ford pointed out with a smile. “With the way the kids tackled you, there’s zero doubt that they’re thrilled to be back.”

Once again, Stan mirrored his smile with one of his own. “Yeah, well, if they keep on bein’ that thrilled, you’re gonna have to bust out that necromancy spell to talk to me.”

Ford’s expression tensed for a moment at his brother’s joke, but any unease passed just as quickly as it had come when the sight of the familiar old cabin peered into view ahead of them.

[simblorbo-bracket]

Round 1 - Simblr's Saddest, Wettest Meow Meow - Mainline

Rook (@morrigan-sims) VS. Andre St. Fleur (@armoricaroyalty)

(polls are presented left -> right unless stated otherwise)

Who's sadder? Who's wetter? Read on for more information, and vote with your heart!

What is a ‘Meow Meow’?

(taken from tumblr user @/torturelabyrinth) “The thing about a true poor little meow meow is they have to be 1) downtrodden 2) morally questionable at best 3) deeply and pathetically miserable”

Rook

Why a SWMM? I call him my "idiot bastard man", and it's accurate in every sense of those words. Actual literal bastard son of a nobleman. Ran away from home and joined a pirate crew because he was terrified of getting stuck working a dead-end job for the rest of his life (he was 17). Had 6 great years sailing with his captain, who was the first person who was ever nice to him. He even had one (1) real friend!!! But the rest of the crew hated him and thought the captain was showing him favoritism, so he got given a drugged drink during a "birthday celebration" on shore, and given to a rival captain. She kept him and torture him for 2 years until he escaped. He met two good father figures but one of them turned out to be the BBEG (see above), and the other one died 2 days later. The day after that he got kidnapped again. He's been cursed by a demon lord so he has terribly nightmares and barely sleeps. He's convinced that his life has no value, and is self-sacrificial to the point of self-destruction. Keeps telling people who care about him very concerning news (mainly that he died) in really stupid ways. Has died 3 times, and has been pulled back from the brink countless more. Goes down at least once every combat / gets the shit beat out of him constantly. Was reunited with his one (1) friend and she immediately got killed because of his actions. Has no common sense. Extremely impulsive. Got told he was too reckless to be trusted with his own life. Gets bullied by major villains on a regular basis. Has taunted powerful people twice and gotten killed both times. Has no common sense. A capital L Liar, has never told the truth in his life. Hasn't properly buttoned a shirt in ~9 years. Other people knew that his beloved mentor and father figure was actually the BBEG but they didn't tell him. Had to see said mentor figure get brutally "killed" in front of him.

Origin: He's my longest-running Dungeons & Dragons character, and I have literally never been more obsessed with a character in my life. And completely unbeknownst to me I wrote him to be a perfect parallel to the BBEG of the entire campaign. Hence why the DM made said BBEG show up and be Rook's mentor... Fun times!!!

Additional Propaganda: I mean, just look at this shit:

^ that should say "unless", not "in case", I made a typo and didn't realize until later.

Tags from a friend on a post I made about him:

Andre St. Fleur

What makes him a Sad, Wet Meow Meow? Born to royalty but completely temperamentally unsuited for it, Andre is pathetic and sad and weak-willed and a big, giant loser. He's the king of a small and unimportant country, and he simply cannot parent effectively or stop cheating on his wife. Finally forced to decide between his mistress and his wife of nearly 30 years, he became so paralyzed with indecision that he developed a terminal illness instead, saving him from ever having to make up his mind about anything.

Just some additional pictures of Andre moping, crying, and letting his loved ones down </3

I think my boy has the potential to go far, but even if he gets knocked out in the first round...what could be sadder, wetter, or more pathetic than getting immediately eliminated from the "most pathetic" tournament?

[gumnut-logic]

Lego Volcano (Part 7 and The End)

Alexander Sweetapple series | Lego Volcano - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

At this point, it should be remembered that this fic, whcih is now complete at over 11,000 words, originated in a post that devolved into bathing in Lego and how much whumping that would involve :D

This is why fault belongs to @idontknowreallywhy, @sofasurf @womble1 and @sailing-on-a-puddle and other wonderful Thunderfam peeps. it would not exist without them.

@onereyofstarlight has also kindly kept me on the straight and narrow and all improvements belong to her :D

So thank you to all of the above and to all who have encouraged this little fic, that didn't stay little, along the way ::hugs you all::

this bit is very much M/M because Virgil is feeling so much better :D If that isn't your jam, this isn't your bread. There is also buckets of fluff :D

I hope you enjoy :D

-o-o-o-

“Do you think he likes me?”

Virgil frowned down at the man lying in his arms. They had thrown some pillows and a blanket onto a fold up daybed and were whiling away a few hours as the sun was setting across the sea.

The Island was quiet. Grandma and Dad were still on Aotearoa, Gordon and Alan were torturing Scott in the infirmary, and, as always, John was watching over them from far above.

His star would become visible once the sky was dark enough.

“Who?”

“Mr Tracy.”

He had the urge to ask which Mr Tracy, but where Alex was concerned, there was only one Mr Tracy. “Scott likes you fine. Always did.”

Alex fidgeted in his arms. “I feel like a klutz around him.” He looked up at Virgil - something that only happened when they were lying down and Virgil was quite happy about that. “I just know how important he is to you and, well, I don’t want him to feel I’m intruding.”

“You’re not intruding.”

Alex looked away. “I’ve seen you on rescues. All of you are special, but there has always been something extra between you and the Commander. There are rumours.”

Virgil frowned. “About what?”

“That you’re telepathic, that you can read each other’s minds and move as one.”

“You’ve been talking to Gordon.” The Fish had been ribbing them about that for years.

“No…well, yes, but not about that. It’s in the fandom. It’s common knowledge.”

“You’re in the fandom?”

Now Alex was definitely looking away. “Well, yeah, been a fan forever, and there are like-minded people out there.” He looked back up at Virgil and grinned. “You are very nice to watch.”

The arm Virgil had draped around his boyfriend, quite conveniently reached his ribs, which were apparently very ticklish.

The two of them tussled and giggled a moment, Alex finding a few ticklish spots in return. But it was broken up when Virgil’s laugh turned to a cough. Alex caught him and pulled him close.

Virgil cleared his throat and smiled. “So you’re a card carrying fan?”

“You knew that.”

“I did.” He kissed Alex’s messy blond hair. “But then, I’m a fan of you, so we’re even.”

Alex snorted, but sobered. “Seriously, it’s important that I’m not…messing things up with your brother…with any of your brothers.”

Virgil sighed. “Alex, you’re fine. Scott approves, and even if he didn’t, you’re my boyfriend, not his.”

“I know. It’s just I don’t want to mess with the magic.”

Oh, god. “You’re not messing up anything. All my brothers are happy for us. It’s fine.” He pulled Alex in close, kissing his hair again. “Especially for me.”

But even as he said it, he knew his man and this was probably one of those bones his brain would chew on if it wasn’t taken away. “So you like math?”

“I’ve always liked maths, I’m an engineer.”

“Well, yes, of course, but that wasn’t engineering math.”

Alex shrugged. “It’s just fun stuff. I play with patterns sometimes.”

Virgil stared down at him a moment. “Scott enjoys math.”

A snort. “I noticed. He can run rings around me. He makes some beautiful stuff.”

“He does?”

“Yeah? Didn’t you see that last result - it was like a field of origami flowers.”

Virgil blinked. “Flowers?”

That earned him a frown. “You couldn’t see it?”

“I could see elegant math. Scott writes a good solution.”

“He does, but it is how he does it.”

“Should I be worried?”

“About what?”

Virgil’s lips curled into a smile. “If my brother has caught your eye.”

“Oh, ho, ho, yeah, right. Mr Tracy is straighter than an Australian railway line.” It was Alex’s turn to smile. “Besides, he’s not you.” Alex reached up and caught Virgil’s lips with his own.

Conversation stopped for a while as Alex made it very clear which was his favourite Tracy brother.

The sun finally reached the horizon and lit up the ocean, coating everything in that beautiful gold only Sol could provide. A gentle breeze wafted off the caldera and wrapped around them, clapping palm leaves and pōhutukawa branches alike.

“Thank you for looking after me. It has been a relief having you here.”

“Next time let me know. I don’t want you suffering in silence. People pair up for a reason.” He cleared his throat.

Virgil brushed a strand of hair behind Alex’s ear. “Okay, I’ll make sure to send the Fish earlier next time.”

“So Gordon is your gopher?”

“Uh-huh.” Alex’s skin was a little flushed in the light of the sunset and very distracting.

“Does he know this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You are feeling better, aren’t you.”

“Uh-huh.”

Alex smiled and his dark eyes glittered in the golden air. “C’mere.”

His lips were soft.

Virgil lost more time.

So very, very distracted.

It was getting dark by the time they bothered to check their surroundings again. The breeze was cooler, and Alex shivered as it drifted over them.

Virgil’s stomach was rumbling - a good thing since eating hadn’t been his favourite activity recently.

Since there was no sign of Gordon or Alan, or anyone else for that matter - probably giving him and Alex space - it looked like Virgil was cook tonight. So as they finally climbed off the bed and began packing up, he mentally recalled what was in the fridge, the freezer, and what could be quickest to prepare.

“Where should I put these?” Alex had the pillows in his hands.

“Chuck them on the sunken lounge. If you feel like a movie we can use them later.”

“Sure.” But Alex hesitated, frowning a moment before, turning to walk inside.

“Alex? You okay?” Virgil had his hands full of blanket and folded day bed, but something wasn’t right.

“Um…I don’t…” Alex was stumbling sideways, pillows falling to the floor.

Everything slowed and Virgil was moving, but not fast enough.

Alex struggled to keep his feet, but one bare foot caught in that damned Lego sculpture and then it was all slow motion deja vu.

Lego scattered everywhere, tinkling on the hardwood floor as Virgil slid in to catch Alex. The Lego volcano exploded in all directions as his body collided with it, arms full of lanky, falling engineer.

Time and speed caught up.

“Alex!”

Shocked dark eyes looked up at Virgil. “I don’t feel very good.” His eyelids fluttered closed. “Dizzy.”

“Alex!”

“Uh…” He screwed up his face. “Dizzy.”

Virgil’s heart climbed into his ears thudding away all sound as he lowered Alex gently to the floor, brushing away stray bricks and cushioning his head with one of the dropped pillows.

Scrabbling to his feet, Virgil dashed across the comms room and grabbed the first aid kit, yanking out the medscanner and flashing yellow light across Alex’s prone body.

The machine beeped, and delivered its prognosis.

Oh, hell.

His shoulders dropped.

Alex groaned and tried to roll over.

“Hey, stay put. You’re sick.”

“Wha-?”

“Thunderbird Five?”

John popped into being in the middle of the room. “Tracy Island, what can I- ? Alex? Virgil, report.”

“Please let Māhia know that Alex won’t be returning for at least another week. He has the flu.” Virgil brushed hair out of Alex’s eyes.

“FAB.”

“What? I have- I can’t, I had all my shots.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that.”

“But-“

“Your turn to rest, love.”

“But I have to…goddamnit!”

Virgil couldn’t help but smile through his concern. “You can play math with Scotty in the infirmary.”

Was that a challenged cant to a grumpy eyebrow?

“But I have to-“

“Rest.”

“Viiirgil.” He coughed.

Virgil continued to stroke his hair as both Gordon and Alan came running with a hoverstretcher in tow.

“Not the Lego again?” Alan looked both worried and exasperated at the same time.

As Virgil’s bare foot came down on a very sharp and hard brick while crouching to lift a wriggling Alex onto the hoverstretcher, he only had one solution to that problem. “Yeah, please pack it away this time. I think we’ve had enough Lego this month.” Ouch, he stumbled over another one. “Possibly for decades.”

Alex was muttering something about Erica laughing her ass off and excuses to lengthen his stay on Tracy Island.

Gordon was grinning and agreeing.

Heart still beating just that little too fast, Virgil limped after the hoverstretcher.

New bruises keeping him company.

Damn Lego.

-o-o-o-

FIN

[ruruumin]

meet me in amsterdam.

₊˚ ᗢ alhaitham x gn!reader, modern au.

⤷ based on the song, "meet me in amsterdam" by rini.

"I would sail across the world, row this boat from dusk til dawn."

Al-Haitham glances over at your figure, watching as you skipped rocks against the lake. The two of you abandoned your senior prom in favor of star gazing. He was dressed in a simple black tuxedo, with you wearing a rather fanciful garment. In true Al-Haitham fashion, he keeps a pair of headphones covering his ears. You, on the other hand, were dressed reasonably well tonight.  The jewelry that hangs from your neck shimmered underneath the moon’s light. He resists the urge to reach out with his fingers to tuck your hair behind your ear. 

The two of you originally came with different partners. Al-Haitham had an inkling to ask you to the dance but had been beaten by the Inazuman transfer student. So he ended up settling on taking Nilou. It must have been fate that led to both your partners leaving you to converse with one another. The silver-haired man doesn’t know whether or not he should pump up his fist in satisfaction, or give you sympathy. On one hand, he was glad that your partner walked off to talk to Nilou. On the other hand, he hated the heartbroken look plastered across your face when you were left alone on the dance floor. 

And so here you were. He grabbed you by the hand, ignoring your protests, and dragged you to a place that no other teenager would be on a Saturday night. You joked to him that he might be taking you to a secluded location to murder you, to which he replied with a snarky comment about how no one in this world would consider taking you out. Not because of the low percentages of murder in your hometown, but because he’d be the person protecting you. It’s cheesy, he has to admit. He read a couple of romance novels to prepare himself for a possible relationship with you, so he figured that being that knight in fairy tales might help him come off as heroic or reliable. 

He notes the way your frown turns into a small smile. Did he do something right? He dares to hope so. After knowing you for the majority of high school, he has yet to figure out whether or not you enjoyed his presence. Sure, you might say you tolerate him, but he just wishes that you could just admit it directly. Say that you liked to be with him. Say that you liked going out with him on Wednesdays. Say that you liked walking back home with him. He only wants a few words of appreciation and desire from you. Anything could do. As long as it's from you.

You don’t say much other than a few words about how the stars look bright tonight. You press your lips together, your eyes beginning to brim with tears as you try to tear your thoughts away from the misfortunes of prom. Al-Haitham can see the way you press your hand against the lower half of your face, your lips shivering at the cold weather. 

He nonchalantly takes off his jacket and pulls it over your shoulders. You stare at him with a surprised reaction, something that pulls him closer to you. He holds himself back from doing anything more and sighs under his breath, brushing aside a few strands of his slightly messy hair. You squeeze the edges of his jacket, holding it close to you. Al-Haitham calls your name. He points to a few stars dancing above the clouds, dragging your eyes to where his fingers landed. He takes the time to describe to you a few of the constellations. 

You can see the way his lips curve into a smile as his eyes glimmer at the prospect of sharing new information with you. You try not to laugh in the middle of his explanations. He’s always been so passionate about knowledge. Always digging his nose into books when everyone else would rather party or watch movies. He’s the most exciting friend you had and one that you can’t explain your feelings for. He keeps you grounded. Pulling you back when you start to wander a little too far. 

Slowly easing yourself closer to his figure, you let your pinkies touch. He says nothing when they do. His ears grow slightly hot but he stays focused on talking about the Northstar. Saying nothing more to him, you lean your head against his shoulder, humming in contentment as his voice drowns out the worries in your head. Prom wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be. Perhaps you should have gone with him from the very beginning.

"There ain't no sunshine, no sunshine, where I was before."

Kaveh groans and reaches out to open Al-Haitham’s door, seeing that the room was pitch dark except for the small night light illuminating his restless figure. It was the same night light you’d gifted him when he was a high schooler, believing that it might scare away the restless nightmares that haunted him. It was a childish reason, Al-Haitham claims, he’s not some child that needs light because he’s afraid of the darkness. Yet he uses it every night, even now, when he’s in college. Not that you would know. 

Kaveh scratches the back of his neck, leaning against the frame of the door, complaining about the tossing and turning he could hear from the other room. He wants to scold the younger man, but when he sees the way tears prickle at the edges of his eyes, he can’t seem to say anything. He presses his lips together as the silver-haired man pulls himself together. He’s in an upright sitting position with his back against the headboard, his arm held up in an attempt to shield his tears from the blond. 

This was the first time the older man saw him so defensive. He’s always been high in the clouds, too far out of reach for him to believe that he could love. It’s absurd, he understands. Al-Haitham is human. He’s made of the same components as himself. He has flesh and blood running through him. A heart that beats a little too quickly to be caught. And being human comes with complicated feelings that twist and churn in his stomach.

Kaveh restrains himself from letting out a sigh when Al-Haitham wipes away at the corner of his eye, narrowing his eyes towards his roommate. He tries to snap at him with a snarky comment in an attempt to push him away. However, the blond knows him. Perhaps a little more than Al-Haitham gives him credit for. He pushes through the invisible force that drives him away, his figure resting at the end of his bed as he finally lets go of the breath he’s holding. 

He knows about you through photos. Pictures Al-Haitham left on his phone. He wasn’t one to snoop yet when he saw your glimmering smile on the front of his wallpaper, it screamed to him. His curiosity got the better of him and he wanted to know who this mysterious person was. Don’t blame Kaveh for remembering Al-Haitham’s password. It was a straight line down the keypad: 2580852. Anyone could remember it. And he needs to change it asap if he doesn’t want Kaveh to see anything unnecessary. 

He figures that something occurred between the two of you for him to act so vulnerable. Al-Haitham was the kind of person who would hide his feelings underneath snotty comments and a stoic face. But underneath he can be just as vulnerable as the next person. He has feelings and emotions that he is confused by. It stings and he doesn’t know what he could do to fix it. Reading books about his symptoms only leads him to a path of more confusion and utter nonsense. Had the circumstances been different, Kaveh would have mocked him for being a hopeless romantic. 

Yet now was not the time. Even if he did theoretically hate Al-Haitham for his messy habits around the house, his incapability to clean up after himself, and the way he toss and turned in bed causing Kaveh to wake up in the middle of the night, he couldn’t leave him like this. So he asks him if he’s okay. His eyes eyeing him from the side as Al-Haitham lets out a scoff, shrugging it off. Very typical of him. 

There was a moment of silence between the two. Neither of them talked. They only rested their shoulders, letting them slump over. Al-Haitham turns to the night light, his teal irises flickering from its existence to Kaveh’s. He figures that it was time to tell him about the darkness that plagues his mind. It would be better than clogging it up in every nook and cranny of his mind. And perhaps Kaveh might sympathize a little. Maybe he’d grow a bit more quiet around the house. And stopped nagging him about the books piling up on the coffee table. 

Al-Haitham has long acknowledged his strange feelings for you, his childhood friend. He knows that the quickening beat of his heart was something more than simple jitters. The way you reached out to brush aside his hair left flickers of flames on his pale skin. Your smile that brightens up his day is the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up in the morning. And the lingering stare he has on his toothbrush makes him wonder what it would be like to have yours beside his. 

But at last, it seemed as if you slipped through the cracks of his fingers. His inability to express to you his true feelings was left burning on the tip of his tongue. Even if he was a brutally straightforward man, he had his weaknesses. And one of those was you. 

"Won't you come closer, let it take over."

Al-Haitham stares at you, frozen in his steps. You're at the same late that night of prom. This time at least, you had a few more layers of clothing to keep you warm from tonight's weather. In your hand was a small pebble that you twirled between your fingers. The tips of your nails glide against the rough surface before flicking your wrist, sending it flying a couple of steps.

It's been a while since he last saw you. You had moved away to a different college. He attended one further south, while you left for the north. You started a new life with a different job. Met a couple of new friends from Mondstadt. Your appearance was mainly the same, except for a few loose strands that fell to the sides of your cheeks. 

You've seen each other a couple of times on your feeds. Al-Haitham has the habit of liking whatever you post. He hardly ever comments. If the day seemed right, he would drop a few lines asking about the book you're reading in the corner of the photo. But never something in an attempt to reconnect with you. He figured that you've grown too far out of his reach. And that perhaps it would be better if he allowed you to live your life without you.

It stung him for the majority of college. You and he called frequently in freshman year. However, it quickly diminished as the years went on. Your conversations diverged from asking him about his day to talking about your new coworkers and how you'll contact him when you get your new schedule. He tries to keep a smile on his face and nods to everything you say. He figures that his feelings for you might stay unrequited for a while. Maybe you knew from the start and didn't want to tell him, out of fear that you might embarrass him.

He’s unsure of what he should do at this moment. Should he reach out? Should he sit next to you? Could you still talk like the old days? He wrestles with the thoughts in his head, not noticing the way you turn your head to him, offering him the familiar kind-hearted smile he’s grown too fond of. He nervously sits beside you, his body still as a board while you chuckle. 

He’s grown quite a bit since you last saw him in person. He was a little shorter when he was in high school. Now that you were older, he towered over you. He was always a quiet man, you knew this to be true. Despite being close friends for the majority of high school and a bit beyond, he never shared more than he had to. His face, while stoic, always implied that he was holding back something. His tongue was lodged further back than other people.

But that doesn’t matter now, does it? The two of you are older now. More mature than ever. The past mistakes you’ve created started to shape who you were today. And that person came back to him. 

"I don't need anything, I just want you."

He remembers the feeling of your skin against him. When you pulled him by his fingers, guiding him through the open area of street markets. Older couples would stand outside their vendors, waving to people with the smell of freshly cooked food. Al-Haitham doesn’t say anything as you skipped around. The smile on his face says more than enough. Your eyes sparkled in excitement when you point to the mangos being sold in a cup. You had your signature bright smile, the one that would light up the entire world when it grows dark. It was the same familiar feeling he received whenever he turns on his childish nightlight.

He’s quiet when you notice an older stall, too busy being distracted by the warmth of your hand to make any rational decisions regarding your spending habits. You opened your wallet to pour out a couple of coins, handing it to the street vendor. In a matter of seconds, you hold up a few skewers towards Al-Haitham, gesturing for him to try the food. He drops a couple of snarky words towards you, but it was quickly silenced when you pushed the food against his lips. He lets out a sigh. He reaches out to hold your hand, the same one gripping the skewer, and settles by taking a bite. 

You try to ignore the way your face grows a bit warmer when he chews slowly. His expression which had been neutral, morphed into enjoyment. He comments on the tenderness and how savory it was. You’ve always known that he liked meat but seeing him grow so close to you made you wonder what else you knew. He takes one more bite before pushing it back towards you, his eyes softening as he smiles. “You should try it as well,” he says, taking your other free hand and interlacing your fingers.

For some reason, you start to feel a bit nervous. You don’t say anything when he holds up the stick as you eat. The sparkle in your eyes continues to shine radiantly as you finish the rest of the food. A smile still spread across your face. Now, he’s the one pulling you to another vendor, pointing at a few items and ordering them for the two of you to try. He wants you to experience some of his favorites as well. 

He doesn’t know how to describe this scene in words. Watching you enjoy a meal in front of him, your hands reaching out to feed him on the occasion sent waves of butterflies in his stomach. He questions if this was the start of something new for your relationship. Friends, close friends, distant friends, and back around to friends. Will you see something different in him if he continued to hint at his feelings? Could you feel his pulse whenever you hold his hand? Can you feel how quickly it beats for you? 

He wants to express to you the words that have been lodged in his throat. The same ones that Kaveh wishes so desperately he could spill. Roommate or not, he says that this game of cat and mouse has gone on for too long. It was so blatantly obvious that he was still in love with you. So hopelessly, devoted to you, even when you’re so far out of reach sometimes. 

He understands that he isn’t the first person people think of when it comes to romance. But he wants you to see him for who he was. Someone that could open up the world for you. Someone that would sail the seas just to embrace you underneath the moonlight. Someone who dreams of you every night, hoping that you might catch his lingering touches that sting like an ember. 

He says something to you in another language. I like you, it translates. It causes you to perk up in interest as you lean your head against the palm of your hand. He blinks a few times before clearing his throat, rolling his eyes as you tease him about what he said. You poke and prodded at his cheek, pouting every time he gives you a dry answer. He would eventually shut you up by holding up a fork, shoving the rest of your food in your mouth. 

He ignores your cries and moans, begging him to give you a translation of what he says. He only pushes your head away and squeezes your hand a little tighter. He hopes that you can’t see the way his pale skin reflects the red tint of apples. 

“If there is a next time, meet me in Amsterdam” 

He sucks in a deep breath when he pushes you down onto the sofa. Your eyes stare deep into his as your fingers glide across his skin. He tries not to whimper when you press against his rose-tinted lips. Your presence to him was addicting. It kept pulling him back and forth like an ocean wave. You’ve caught him in your net and he can’t find the power to break himself free. 

Kaveh was out of the house today and the silver-haired man jumped at the opportunity to bring you over. It’s been months since you’ve first reconnected with him. Months spent so generously with the man before you. After spending a week in town, you decided to extend your say just a little bit longer. You wanted to explore this strange flame that had developed in your chest. And it would lead you here. Your back against the soft cushions as Al-Haitham pinned you down. 

Oh, how he longed for this moment. For him to stare deep into your eyes with nothing more but fondness for you. For him to finally share how he feels without having to look over his shoulder. For him to finally tell you that he truly, wholeheartedly, loves you with everything he has. He wants to finally tell you that he’s been waiting since high school to hold your hand like this. Waiting throughout college to kiss you. Dreaming all this time to be yours.

He leans his forehead against yours, breathing in your scent as you smile. Was this the breaking of the dam? The flood that is your relationship, coming to crash against this wall? The tension that had been mimicking the push and pull of a rope was beginning to snap. And he could feel nothing except explosions at the pit of his stomach as he pressed his lips against yours. He holds onto you tightly, scared of losing you one more time. 

But you stay. You bury your fingers in his hair, bringing him closer to you. He rested his weight against your stomach, fingers clutching onto your waist. Kocham Cię, he says when he breaks away from you. Air becomes short when he goes back to snatching your lips. Anh yêu em, he whispers against your skin. Seni seviyorum. He squeezes your waist. Eu te amo. He tilts his head just a little to capture you once more. Ya lyublyu tebya. He pulls away from you with heavy breaths.

He wants you to know how much he loves you. He wants you to see the number of times he’s held back on kissing you each time you smile. You were like the sun to him. So warm and out of reach at times, yet he desired you nonetheless. He waited years for this moment. And he wants nothing more than to indulge. If you would have him, he would give you everything. He would give you everything he is, and so much more. 

Ich liebe dich, he kisses the side of your cheek. Wǒ ài nǐ, he kisses your forehead. Te quiero, he kisses your nose. You let out a few giggles as you attempt to push him away. Wrapping your legs around him, you keep him steady. His body is squished against yours. You begin to melt in his arms, his lips still kissing the surface of your skin. He looks into your eyes with those beautiful teal irises. 

I love you, he finally says. 

And you would reply with, I love you too.

[catcas22]

So I was thinking about that Maedhros in Troy AU you’re talking about, specifically about how Polyphemus and Poseidon might play into their journey. I think that the initial interactions between Polyphemus might go better considering that Epic Polyphemus is somewhat more reasonable than other versions of him, but Maedhros might also be more willing to attack him on the principle of being a giant man-eating monster, and then Poseidon gets involved. Which is its own can of worms, because as much damage as Maedhros can inflict, Poseidon is still the god in control of the ocean that they’re sailing on, and he is definitely going to make it a problem for them

Thanks for writing in, friend!

I could see this being the one point (so far) where Maedhros does markedly worse than Odysseus. He's been at war with Morgoth and his forces for centuries, he's lost family and been tortured horribly, and the closest thing he'd have to compare Polyphemus to would be a troll -- and his only experience with trolls has been either a) actual soldier of Morgoth or b) highly territorial man-eating monster.

Especially given that he has a boatful of fragile humans to defend, I imagine that Maedhros would stab first and ask questions later. He'd likely do significant damage to poor Polyphemus before he realizes that this "troll" isn't acting much like the trolls he's used to... Leading to him leaving Polyphemus alive but maimed.

Hopefully his apology doesn't involve his full name and place of residence.

Poseidon would be a fascinating antagonist for Maedhros. As someone who read the source material (in high school but still), listening to EPIC for the first time and hearing Poseiden go off about how Odysseus is too nice! He's too merciful and honorable! He only fights to save lives! was a bit of a trip. Maedhros might actually be a better subject to play out EPIC's themes than Odysseus himself.

A guy who's willing to murder a baby right out of the gate is an odd choice to learn a lesson about ruthlessness, to say the least. But Maedhros has always walked a fine line of having enough of a conscience to torment him, but not enough to save him.

He protests the burning of the ships and the betrayal of Fingolfin's people, but he doesn't stop it. He tries to save Eluréd and Elurín, but his subsequent guilt isn't enough to stop him from sacking the Havens of Sirion. He does what he can to limit the damage done by the Oath, but he never attempts to turn from it.

Giving up his rightful crown? The Union of Maedhros? What did that get him? Centuries wasted and three dead brothers, that's what. Maybe if he hadn't weakened his forces in this endless war of attrition, maybe if he'd backed Celegorm and Curufin earlier instead of trying to rein them in, maybe if he'd held onto the title of high king, he'd already have a Silmaril by now.

We the readers want to see him commit to a better path and be more than a villain with a conscience. But Poseidon could be a brutally effective devil on his shoulder, encouraging him to embrace ruthlessness and drown his guilt -- what has it ever brought him apart from pain?

Original au by @sweetteaanddragons can be found here.

Thanks for the ask!

[redgoldblue]

so @itwoodbeprefect tagged me in what was originally an ask game due to a chronological series of events and i wanna talk about songs so: shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up.

(the playlist i've listened to most is as it often is my on repeat but i'm taking 'favourite' as leave to go to my next most listened, which is:) springsteen songs that make you gay and/or trans

Racing In The Street - this is inherently a butch cassidy & the sundance kid coded song, which i don't mean in the sense that it's necessarily a ship song for butch/sundance/etta (although far be it from me to say it's not), but that it is fundamentally telling the same story. It's also one of the many songs on here that speaks to my thesis that the overlap between working-class and queer experiences is one of the major reasons Springsteen's discography resonates so much with queer people in its simultaneous disenchantment and hope. Also taking Martha & The Vandellas Dancing In The Street and making it into a melancholic ballad on living in transience and recklessness and the effect it has on your relationships and loved ones is just. there’s something gay about that whole concept. tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea / and wash these sins off our hands

Growin' Up - most of the songs on here I can classify into 'makes you gay', 'makes you lesbian', or 'makes you trans'. this is one of the few that I can only say 'makes you queer'. I do think it's underrated in general as a song, and I also think there's a full low fantasy queer found family story in there. but it's also just something about building a life in private you can't bring yourself to share, until you can. had a jukebox graduate for a first mate / she couldn't sail but she sure could sing

My Lover Man - I mean, i really don't need to say anything about My Lover Man, it says it all itself. it is quite explicitly singing to a male lover who, my interpretation, was trying and failing to perform comphet. come into my arms and fall / my lover man

Thunder Road - this one makes you lesbian. honestly i could just leave it at the Melissa Etheridge video, but the point is. he has songs that are subverting masculinity (Cover Me, also on this playlist, comes to mind, or Because The Night), and he has, somehow, songs that are subverting femininity. this is the latter. (i also wrote a wlw roadtrip romance set to thunder road quite a few years ago. it wasn't good but it is still a vibe). now i'm no hero that's understood / all the redemption i can offer lies beneath this dirty hood

Bobby Jean - oh i love bobby jean's inclusion on this playlist! this also does not fit into the aforementioned three categories, but only because as far as i'm concerned it's very firmly a wlw/mlm solidarity song. just... private but joyful teenage solidarity, and escaping for yourself, and not holding it against someone that they needed to escape for themselves. we liked the same music / we liked the same bands / we liked the same clothes

[teine-mallaichte]

Mwahaha the OC swap game filled me with so much malicious joy, so obviously I am going to tell you what I would do with Storm!

As a human being, obviously I am taking that poor little guy out for ice cream and maybe drinks so that he can have the rant he deserves to have, and maybe get him a pocket-sized nug plushie to take with him on further adventures.

As a writer I would 100% borrow him to send him on an Awful Post Apocalypse Roadtrip with his younger twin siblings with flashbacks to parallel Autumn's adventures fleeing the Blight with Bethany and Carver to draw out the comparison between the two generations of Hawke Siblings.

I feel like you already know so much about Cara, my Hawkeling Nepo Baby, so what would you do with her?

That went from "awww" to "oh no" so fast 😂

For the OC Swap Game

🤔 I really want to FORCE Cara to confront some stuff... for her own good of course, repression has it's place but her's is at an unhealthy level 😂

So as a person I would probably take her sailing, I like sailing, she likes sailing, and give her some subtle therapy 😝

But... as a writer, that's harder because all my initial thoughts are far too similar to the regret prison. My first thought was that fade graveyard in origins, then I considered some sort of memory spell to forced her to relive key points. But, too much like the regret prison. Sticking her in a time loop that can only be easaped by her confronting her past could be fun - but she'd be trapped forever...

So, I think an "It's a Wonderful Life" AU would be interesting. Especially if a blood mage is somehow causing it, maybe it's all a vision and the mage is manipulating it to mean that everyone's life is better without her. Kirkwall never burnt, her parents never separated, her mother never ended up in the fade, etc, etc, etc. Mess with her head, messs with her coping mechanisms, mess with her fears.

[luxudus]

Neurodivergency becomes the Norm

old drawing that was meant to be my final spectember entry for this year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To the people who built the guidestones in orbit of our world. This message is towards you and the rest of your kind

We are the Savunato of the planet Apsis in the Oese system. it may not seem like it, but we believe to be your descendants. You may not remember our ancestors of your kind, who first landed on Apsis. It has been 10 million years since that happened. But we are happy to refresh your memory.

From the knowledge we gathered, catastrophe had struck your home planet. We don't know what happened, but it was bad enough for your kind to lose all hope of mending what was broken.

So you looked to the stars for a second chance. In a last ditch effort to save your kind, you launched the Eos Ark program. Sending 35 colony ships across a sea of stars, looking for any habitable planet to call home.

However those colony ships were flawed, they were made in a rush. And had no way of holding its own plants and animals to start agriculture. And too little gear for the colonists to survive in their current form.

Our colony ship just so happened to land here on Apsis. And we couldn’t have been more thankful for it. Apsis is very much like earth, having her own oceans and life. The flora here are fleshy and adorned with red broad leaves. While the fauna walked on three legs, saw with three eyes, and were protected by a woody exoskeleton.

By our sheer luck, the 6 planets of our system had aligned and gifted us a world we could actually survive on. The native life was digestible and the air was breathable. We had our second chance.

Our ancestors’ ship however, was ill-prepared. Again there were barely any tools to help them survive in their current form. We couldn’t shape the world to our needs.The world shaped us to her needs. We adapted, and we evolved.

Relative to your anatomy and lifestyle. Our arms became hyper-extended and stronger. Meaning we can switch between bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion on the fly. Our ancestral thumbs have become vestigial. In place of this, our Index and pinky fingers have become opposable so we can manipulate our environment once more. Our faces too have elongated, our teeth grew harder to get through the exoskeletons of our prey. And we grew fangs to slice through the trees.

One of the most significant things in our history was a slow but all encompassing change to the way we think of the world. Several mental states spurred on by genetics had spread across our population. Mental conditions you would classify as Autism, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, Anxiety, Depression, and so on. For you, you’d call us neurodivergent, For us it’s simply the norm, It makes us who we are.

Our modern society has been slowly reworked from the ground up. All in order to empower our new mentality. Now revolving around organization and efficiency. Our work ethic is streamlined to the point where we can get all the day’s work done before noon. With our goal being placed on long term results rather than pure production. Extreme emphasis has been put on the care and wellbeing for the developmentally disabled.

We put as much care into texture as they do with colors and patterns. Plenty of our cultures have a wide array of both visual and tactile patterns and a variety of textures to best fit the wearer. And affection through physical contact is revered as a sign of deep trust within many of our cultures.

We have sailed far beyond the reaches of our new cradle. Reaching new heights by reaching the other worlds that orbit our sun. We’ve explored, colonized, and have begun terraforming the most habitable worlds to make them as comfortable as apsis. We have even begun plunging into the interstellar depths to survey our closest neighbors.

One day we found your wayward stones. The plaques made of the spirit of our original homeworld, like the embers of a great fire holding out in the cold quiet night. We found them on the space station that brought you here, that brought our ancestors down to apsis.

I myself, the Savunato writing this, was one of the lucky few to board your station. We found it still orbiting apsis, Everything was still intact and untouched like a day hadn’t passed. Like we were connected from the depths of time.

We looked to the cosmos to find the others. Sending probes out into deep space with our history. And beaming messages to distant stars, All in hopes of finding you or another one of your descendants. No one’s responded so far, We may very well be the last living descendants of your kind.

If any of you are still out there. Let us show you we did it. we did it humanity, we made it. We survived. We made it through the toughest Apsis had to offer. We shared the worst mistakes the both of us have made. We learned for the better. We kept the flame going. May we survive for another 10 million years. May we be your successors.

If any of you are still out there.

I hope we made you proud…

[tree-of-blue-squirrel]

Limbus company Ennagram

reading up on enneagram I find it pretty compelling to slot the sinners into to get their motivations and stuff so let´s go and assign different types of brokenness to them

Three clusters

There are 12 playable sinners, which would neatly split into three subgroups in accordance with enneagram types - I am taking the LocalScriptMan interpretation of Enneagram here, supplementing with information from other sources as needed (at th time of writing this, he has three more types to make videos on).

Head/fear cluster (5,6,7) - issues of existential dread, fear Heart/shame cluster (2,3,4) - issues of love and self worth Body/anger cluster (8,9,1) - issues of handling anger and boundaries

Going off of the Sinners´ vibes, they can be neatly places into three categories:

head cluster - Faust, Ishmael, Don Quixote, Outis

Faust slots into a fear cluster very seamlesly. She is pretty much a stereotypical 5, obsesse with hoarding all th knowledge so she is prepared for anything. The moment she loses it though ? Fear.

Ishmael similalry is very much fear based, to the point it being her kneejerk reaction to goign to the Lake. She does push through and become very angry, but that is basically her response to being put into situation she can´t run away from. Pretty solid 6 if you ask me.

Don is as close to a 7 as one can get. True, she does come close to being an 8 and perhaps her alt form is an 8 but base Don ? She runs away from her true self and her entire arc is most likely about confronting the uncomfortable truth of who and what she is.

Outis, as far as the cluster goes, is the least obvious. I originally had her slotted into a body cluster, but is later became clearer that she is more of a fear type that shoves is all under the rug and pretends to be tough (as evident her reactions in Railway 4 and TkT, which are so far some of the most breakown moments for her that lets her persona slip away, although briefly). Slotting her as a type 5 was not my first choice, however she does share the same sort of fear of being incompetent and in dire situations substitutes it be planning for every possible route, strategising her way out (didn´t work out much in canto 5, because she seems to have more theory than practise with sailing the Lake, being outmatched by Ishmael´s experience very early on in that journey)

heart cluster - Rodion, Hong Lu, Gregor, Meursault

Rodya is a type 4 and I WILL fight anyone on this who is going to disagree. She quite literally takes her shame of being inadequate and builds a shielding persona of unflappability ala Tyrion Lannister. She is obsessed with being original and unique, while disregarding her own actual identity because of it. When stressed, she dips into 2´s complex of being Unlovable (the Unloving is literally the name of her canto for crying out loud).

Compare that to Hong Lu. Poster child of Facade if there ever was one, deluding everyone including himself... but really just himself because his mask is slowly slipping as he talks about how his family treats him. He is frequently speaking of value and worth, in his Liu id even likening himself to a fancy tea. Very thematic, very type 3.

The most expressive of the shame squad as number 2, Gregor literally cannot hide his dislike for his bug arm as much as he tries to. Very obviously hates himself and thinks himself unlikeable because... well, bug arm. That lashes out randomly. He wants to break free from its influence, which is likely why he so often tries to connect to others by cracking jokes and being relatable AF in general.

Speaking of making others like you - there is Gregor, and then there is Meursault who just straight up gave up trying. If you don´t like him as he is, well, that´s that and this is this. Meursault just doesn´t give a flying fuck anymore, or at least tries to present as such. In th single moment of feeling something else than ennui, Meursault´s EGO briefly changes affinity from pride to gloom. Though I am not 100% on this, souns very much like type 2, a Gregor who just gave up trying to be friendly.

body cluster - Heathcliff, Sinclair, Yi Sang, Ryoshu

Heathcliff and angry - the two inseparable things. His ego briefly took on the wrath affinity, the angriest of the affinities. But anger isn´t the only thing he has. As type 1, he deems himself the main problem, to the point of one of his selves going on a killing spree across the multiverse, instead of talking to the woman he loves and face rejection. All because he resents her family and the place they grew up in. Try as he might, all Heathcliffs long for the one perfect timeline where Heathcliff and Cathy are happy together. But they are their own biggest enemy because emotional stability is one thing that pretty much every Heathcliff struggles with.

Sinclair doesn´t look like an anger type at first glance. He is cowardly, fearful wet cat that barely manages to face off against Kromer. That being said, he does have a bit of a psychological break during his canto, resulting in Don literally punching sense back into him. Sinclair´s actions in his canto are likewise motivated by anger, which is why in my eyes he is an 8. Very much vengeance themed canto and hey, Kromer is Lust themed creature, which just so happens to be 8´s biggest vice. Sinclair´s arc also deals wth loss of innocence, which is conveniently the corresponding virtue of type 8. It just fits.

Speaking of fitting, Yi Sang is type 9. Which is sloth on sloth on sloth. Inaction and refusal of self-assertion, striving to be whole again after being broken into pieces... I wonder where I seen that... (FLY BROKEN WINGS, I KNOW YOU ARE STILL WITH MEEEEEE...)

Ryoshu was a tricky one. Mostly because she fits into multiple spots pretty well. Also, we are yet to really see her have an emotional break. That being said, so far, when she expresses any emotion that isn´t her own flavor of masochistic craze, it is anger. And not just surface anger, but anger that runs in parallel with her familial attachments (see MotWe with the lines spoken by Cassetti). However, the boundaries do strike me as something that Ryoshu will have to confront in her canto, because it was her going beyond her own boundaries and following art orders in her source material as the artist who.... let things burn for the sake of art. I don´t actually know whether to slot her as an 8 or 1. Either would work in terms of placement, but personally, an 8 has a bit more kick to it and would mesh nicely with Ryoshu and Sinclair being so much on the same wave. (which also makes her a Wolverine type if LocalScriptMan is anything to go by which I personally think is fun af)

[blackjackkent]

Admittedly I haven't played Lae'zel origin (or any origin) yet so maybe this is already discussed in more detail there, but I am thinking this morning about the period of maybe twenty minutes between her escaping her pod and finding Tav and how absolutely mind-bogglingly terrifying a situation it is for her.

As many other posts have already pointed out - she is literally living out the single scenario she has been taught to fear above ALL others. And given the nature of mind flayer transformation she has no reason to believe that she will find anyone else on the ship in the same situation - as far as she knows, she is completely alone.

More than that, too... there doesn't seem to be a ton of specific information about how she got captured by the nautiloid in the first place, which leaves plenty of room for headcanon, but dialogue DOES make clear (ref. BG3 wiki) that this was her first actual encounter with ghaik; she had fought other monsters alongside others of her clutch but never an actual illithid.

Wyll: "Lae'zel - did you ever fight illithid creatures in your training days?" Lae'zel: "Never. The ghaik aboard the nautiloid was the first I ever witnessed in flesh." Wyll: "Really? I figured you would have joined your fellow gith in a colony raid." Lae'zel: "A young warrior is expected to fight their first ghaik with their cousins - kin hatched from the same clutch. The ones who triumph earn a place in githyanki society. The one's who don't, perish."

By all githyanki measures, it seems reasonable to assume, we are meeting Lae'zel on the heels of a spectacular moment of failure. She (and perhaps the rest of her clutch) made their first attempt at taking on illithids, in the hopes of obtaining heads that would allow them into the midst of githyanki society in the Astral Plane. They failed, for unspecified reasons which might have involved her or been entirely outside her control. The nautiloid sails on, travels to the material plane, begins a rampage of destruction.

But Lae'zel was not even given the comfort of a death in combat; she was captured, left to stew on her failure while being infected by a tadpole in what she assumes is complete isolation. This is not only a nightmare scenario for her people culturally, but for her personally - Lae'zel fears failure and insignificance far more than she fears death. And she is terribly young in spite of her air of absolute confidence; has she ever operated outside of the strict guidance of a superior before? Probably not.

It would be so easy to give up. But of course she doesn't, because she is Lae'zel and she's a fucking badass. But it must be such a dark night of the soul, those twenty minutes or so, believing that her only options are to give up and become ghaik or push on and handle the situation in complete isolation.

Small wonder she seems so (for her) delighted to realize that you are not a thrall but are in fact someone still in control of their faculties also. "Vlaakith blesses me this day. Together we might survive." She is no longer alone in this terrible situation. And small wonder she subtly defers to you, given the option.

It also explains why (to my recollection) her dialogue is never about trying to communicate with the githyanki circling the ship. One would assume that she would consider them allies (given that she seems quite surprised by how wary the Y'llek gith are towards her), but she doesn't even seem to consider it. She only talks about getting back to the material plane and off the ship.

Shame, perhaps? Not wanting her people to see this moment of what she considers ultimate failure?

Lae'zel's strength of character and determination are such a fundamental part of her character, but what really fascinates me is how much fear they must be covering up. Out of everyone in the group, she is the one most out of her depth, suffering the most terrifying change of circumstances imaginable, and yet she still keeps pressing forward no matter what.

TLDR: They should add an option to give Lae'zel a hug right there on the nautiloid bc goddamn does she need one.