#to be such a thorough failure....like he has to be trying

[gongziyus]

there isn't one woman liu chang can make happy

[silverbrides]

you understand that johnny as he is a product of systematic failures and injustices, right? failure, after failure, after failure, thorough his entire life.

johnny never should've been in the military. he was a child. he might've lied about his age, but it was the job of the adults around him to ensure he be barred access; it honestly wouldn't surprise me if they purposefully allowed him through with no regard for his real age because they were more consumed with desire for any and all soldiers they could find than regard for putting a child though hell that even the most well adjusted adults find intolerable.

according to the timeline, johnny was born in 1988, and he was apart of the military in 2003 - additionally, johnny has a late birthday, in november. throughout most of 2003, and likely throughout his time in the military, johnny was just 14 years old. i tend to think about this a lot, because it has got to be one of the most agonizing things possible to really consider for his character. i do not say that lightly. to be a 14 year old boy, barely even a teenager, suffering through some of the worst horrors of the world at an age where you are incredibly vulnerable and just beginning to try to grow into the person you'll become. it puts things into perspective in a way that truly paints a picture of the life he lived from then on, especially knowing he formed his life around identification and the impact and symptoms induced by his cybernetic arm.

as someone who's been through my own fair share of being failed over and over by every kind of system that should have protected me when i was so young myself, i get why he is the way he is. to really consider his life, the way he's lived, the place he's lived, the circles he's been surrounded by; anyone would become exactly like johnny, really, you can even see it in the other characters, too.

night city continuously produces incredibly violent and manipulative people who are fighting tooth and nail just to survive because the cards they were dealt in life were all trash. johnny's tragedy there is not particularly unique, and that's horrifying.

i don't blame him, not one bit.

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for inkwell behind the cut; “Damian gets a Pocket”. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

Then when someone else manifests a Foci from Beloved’s origin point, they will not manifest bruised and dirty and scratched. 

Damian is meticulous in all things; in all ways. He is careful and thorough and precise, and every occasion that he is not is a flaw to be conquered. He does not allow himself failure or error or anything less than the most stringently-practiced perfection that can be achieved; does not allow himself to perform as anything less than that. 

He has to try twice before he can knot the tie of his school uniform to an acceptable standard today. He’s tied that knot dozens upon dozens of times and many others hundreds upon hundreds of times, but today–

The knot is imperfect, today, so Damian must re-tie it. 

Beloved chirps quietly from the desk. Damian looks to him. He is small and swallowed-up by the mass of Ringer’s jacket and Warning’s loose-fitting clothes, the eraser bag hooked over his shoulder by its drawstring like a messenger or duffel bag. 

His face is still bruised, and his knuckles are still scratched. 

Some Pockets are temporary companions only. Ones that do not last. Cannot last. And Damian knows his purpose in his soulmate’s life either way, because there is nothing so obvious as that. 

What else could a soulmate whose innermost self came to him dirty and tattered and bruised need from Robin but saving, after all? 

It makes more sense than any expectation of a relationship that would last, soulmate or not. 

Damian prefers himself this way, but no soulmate ever could. 

.

.

.

Breakfast was entirely uneventful. Father was asleep, as per his usual schedule, and Drake had already left the manor due to some nonsense involving his Pockets’ origin points, or at least one or two of them. Damian did not care to listen to his explanations to Pennyworth, only that Drake’s Pockets insisted on stopping to see Beloved before leaving and Beloved seemed flattered by the attention. 

Drake’s Pockets are ridiculous and annoying, but not as ridiculous and annoying as Drake himself is. 

Though their origin points are unbearable, so at least Drake headed out to meet them rather than being picked up. 

Small mercies, really. 

Damian had made certain that Titus and Alfred the cat were both fed and had fresh water, ate the peculiar experience that Pennyworth served for breakfast while missing shakshuka and congee and wishing Pennyworth were capable of cooking anything with more flavor in it than English cuisine, of all things. Or at least knew how to host a proper tea, if nothing else. Damian has not had any illusion of a decent tea since leaving the League, much less a decent teatime, and is fairly certain that he would release at least Two-Face or Poison Ivy from Arkham for a cup of even mediocre sahlab. Which isn’t even tea, admittedly, but still. 

The food in Gotham is less than satisfactory.

[eluxcastar]

One of Repetition — Prologue

── ୨୧：arlecchino x reader

୨୧﹑synopsis :: your sudden dismissal from your position of harbinger, and the fatui as a whole, marks the end of the largest chapter in your life. you had never known a day without the tsaritsa's guidance, and you are set to never know another with it.

୨୧﹑genre :: angst

୨୧﹑content :: fem reader, reader is a harbinger, reader has a pyro vision, capitano is still not human and I haven't played fontaine or natlan ngl, possible ooc, not proofread but lightly edited

୨୧﹑words :: 6.5k

it only took me forever and a day. it's finally here being rewritten this is gonna take so long updates WILL be slow so you're gonna have to bear with me

CROSSPOSTED ON AO3

Her words left you exasperated, literally at a loss for words, and you struggled to comprehend the reason for it. There was nothing you could think of, no instance that struck you as prominent. Yet, somehow, as one of the Tsaritsa's children, you had become what any parent might refer to simply as a disappointment, their failure—the problem child who never quite ironed out their issues. You had always been faithful to her, hopelessly devoted to the archon and her will. News such as this came out of nowhere and struck you like a hammer to the chest.

Effective immediately, you are to be stripped of your title.

Two of her most mighty children were near and dear to her, and now the other had turned against you as he remains loyal to her. The Jester, who you once held in high regard, has turned against you. It is a bitter pill to swallow, for you must now sever ties with the one man you believed was truly deserving of serving the Tsaritsa. Your mother—your world—turns against you with him, before him, leading the way for him. 

In vain, you draw your bow to strike an arrow between his eyes. You have to prove your strength and power as above your position, above him, even with this weapon that disagrees with your armour, but it means nothing. Your strike is blocked, and the Tsarita's Damselette Columbina moves to detain you. You believe she would not be strong enough, but you don't itch to fight eight other Harbingers or their Director. You understand that even you have a limit, and fighting what are supposed to be the strongest people in the country is not a part of that.

Your honour is on the line, an honour which would tarnish not only Brighella's name but also have a ripple effect on your soldiers, men and women who fight for you and do not deserve the punishment that would result from their actions.

"Think carefully, Brighella." Columbina's warning is not lost on you. "You could remain as a hero or fight, and I will lure the creature you brought from the Abyss and gut him before your eyes."

You do not want that. That creature is not yet loyal to the Tsaritsa but to you, and she will convince him he can save you. He will fall into her trap and die because, for all that you have taught him, he is naïve.

You bite your lip, trying to think of a way to escape and capture him so that you can run off somewhere. He does not deserve to die, but you can't think of anything. Not when you know how thorough these people are. There is not a will, really; there is only a has. He has fallen into her trap and is at the mercy of the Damselette.

It suddenly makes an abundance of sense why your greatsword was missing this morning from where you discarded it on the floor of your chambers. Someone took it. They took it so you would appear before the Tsaritsa without your armour to carry your bow with you, taking advantage of your subordinate's absence to wander around so exposed.

You revealed your every weak point just as you were meant to because you are an arrogant creature of habit.

"What if I am to obey?" You finally ask the question you did not want to, surrendering in a way, though the bite has not left your words.

"I'll leave him be." Her answer is swift. She expected that you would eventually give in and only needed to wait for it to happen.

You shake your head, dissatisfied with only that as your compensation. "Not enough."

The smile on her face does not waver, thin and deceitful as ever, eyes hidden and closed, unseen behind the band of lace. "Mm. I can't bargain anything else." 

"Have him take my place." You lay your condition out firmly. There is only one to meet, and it is not a hard one at that. It would be easy to sway him into it, using whatever they plan to do to you as motivation. His loyalty and affection for you would make him accept it.

She ponders the situation and proposal momentarily, powerless to make the executive decision but undoubtedly keen on the thought of it all. "He believes that you are about to fall in battle to a foe and that he is going to save you."

You grit your teeth, knowing that this is her trap. Lure that creature to a place where he is vulnerable. It was not what you had expected, but it is no less the Damselette's style of acting. There is always a damsel, but perhaps she recognised that she would not suffice this time. She needed a better damsel for him to save; for that to work, it needed to be you. 

She needs your name, reputation, and your relationship with your subordinate. They meld with her lies to write a tale of tragedy, with him as the grief-stricken hero vowing to take his mentor's place.

The thought of him rushing to his death under the guise of saving you spikes your blood cold, chilling you. You're aware of her cruelty and always have been, but to experience it is different than hearing about it from her perspective. You are experiencing it from the perspective of the victim. 

His death was another factor to hold over your head—your penance—the anchor to force your compliance. Your blood boils with rage, but you cannot fight. Despite your anger and frustration, you know that lashing out will only cause further harm and pain.

There is only one thing you can do. You know you must. It's simply that you don't want to. 

But…you must. 

You must for him, that poor creature you tried to give a home to and who would never be in such a position if not for you and your ambition. 

"Then I will fall, and you will use the honour I built into him to persuade him." 

It was an honour meant to humanise him in a way, a being only able to imitate humanity. He had a mentor and something to fight for. Now you're imploring that it be used against him to burden him, but he will do well in your position.

Columbina smiles, that mocking smile like she knows the secrets of this world and more. "Would he really believe that?"

The helmet. You should use the helmet to your advantage. Your subordinate's first exposure to humanity being you, a woman in a metal helmet, seemed to last. He used to think that was what humans looked like, and he admitted as much to you as he had asked you to remove it once he could speak. Your impression left an indelible mark on him that he still treasures. Even if he were to see you in the aftermath, he would not uncover the lie.

"He has never seen my face. He would not recognise me."

Columbina accepts that readily, and her eyes open, pools of black and white visible through the cracks in the lace over her eyes. You've seen them before, inky black sclera and inhuman patterns decorating the borders of her irises, but you can't help the unsettled feeling that makes a home for itself in the pit of your stomach. 

-

By the evening, you are stripped of your honours, titles and coat and dumped to the curb like a bag of rubbish somebody left out. There is no more fight, no more bargaining, no more arguing. Everyone has the things they want, for the most part, so you are all satisfied enough to remain amicable with each other. Without a fight, you allow the Jester to remove the fur-lined overcoat despite the cold that rushes over you once it is gone and discarded in a heap of fur and fabric on the floor with none of its previous value. 

After that comes the slow, deliberate removal of every trinket that denoted you as you. From your delusion, several gifts to your very insignia, the only thing left of you is a lone pyro vision and the clothes on your back. You've never been more thankful to not wear a standard-issue uniform lest you be made to undress and hand that over, too.

That was it. Your everything.

With each piece of regalia taken, a part of yourself disappeared until you were left an empty husk of a person, your entire reason for being for hundreds of years snatched out from under you and spat on. Pierro allowed you the pity of dressing you in your weathered armour one last time to see you off, though he admits he cannot return the sword that goes with it.

The Harbingers were supposed to be the children of the Tsaritsa, and this was your grand disowning. A show of power and influence over her closest children and, by extension, the ability to bring pain to her lesser— to her followers. It was foolish of you to ever think you were special in her eyes for having been by her side since during the Archon War. 

What did it matter when she left you amongst the rest of them?

The years you spent since you had hobbled into her life so tiny and cute were now reduced to a few personal belongings and a set of words that shattered your world to sharp and dangerous pieces that would only hurt you in your haste to reassemble them and string your life back together.

Whatever should remain of yourself is torn away as if those things never belonged to you. Your memories are tossed down the drain by time, and the crown you thought sat firmly atop your head as Snezhnaya's spoiled princess is broken by the hurry to dismantle your power in its entirety.

When you were young, your cuteness may have been your best asset: a small body with endearing quirks and the inability to walk long distances without tumbling. You required your mother for everything because you would only find danger in the harsh Snezhnayan winters. To even acquire your own food was unthinkable, so you were sheltered and provided with ample treats that you could nibble from the palm of her hand if that were what you wished. Anything to keep you happy and content.

Like a little trinket, she cradled you for as many years as it took you to grow, and once you were at an age where you no longer needed to be cradled, she made you her loyal companion, or so you had believed. You thought her affection for you was unwavering. She was the only mother you had ever known; she is the only mother you will remember for all eternity.

Although it may have been an exaggeration, watching the sun's gradual descent below the horizon, you could almost believe eternity would quickly prove to be a very real concept. You watch the sky darken in silence for a time. You roam aimlessly around the city, your presence still striking unease in the people from the threatening demeanour you learned to conduct yourself with as a Harbinger, even without your official attire. The only remnant of your former self is a helmet you consistently wore during every public appearance strapped to your hip. 

You can't help your wandering mind. Did your imitation of the Tsaritsa's actions make you weak? Attempting to nurture someone in the same manner she nurtured you? You are not a god, only the former child of one. Maybe you cannot care for him and maintain your objectivity. He may have become your Achilles' heel, as you were forewarned when the Tsaritsa less than subtly suggested you eliminate him.

You cannot live like this.

No matter how many suns you watch set, you will never come to terms with living like this. The world you once knew, which revolved around a singular governing entity and individual, has disappeared without a trace. Without a central axis to anchor it in place, your world spirals chaotically out of control, with each passing second feeling more frenzied than the last.

This purposeless existence where you have no one to create meaning for you feels just as endless as your high on the rush of power once did.

Your head is too muddled, your brain too overwhelmed by your emotions to think objectively of the faults in your time as a Harbinger. Years of your life have been spent that way, burying your thoughts beneath a heavy weight of despair. Your life is over. Even as the woodlands are forced to welcome you, they mark the end of everything, embracing you in what could be your death, as you imagine it is meant to.

The conclusion of those years greets you with nothing but a cold, detached farewell you never expected. The years you spent dutifully carrying out your mother's will should've been concluded by a grand celebration or momentous occasion to mark the end. This is not how these things are supposed to go, but you can't say it's never happened before. Usually, you'd just kill Harbingers your mother no longer approved of. You might have the better side of things, even if your career is at the worst possible end.

You almost want to call those years wasted, but that would be wrong. Without the Tsaritsa, you might've— no, would've died during the Archon War. Perhaps another god would take you in, but it is unlikely that they would have exhibited the same level of compassion and generosity as the Tsaritsa. They would not have coddled you into comfort the way she did. Then again, what if that had been your downfall? Did she ever genuinely want you to stay? Based on this…perhaps you took her kindness for granted and overstayed your welcome.

You had no right to make demands of her in your final moments as her child, acting like a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum. But can you be justified? Can the threat to your subordinate's life negate that? Surely a bit, but not entirely, not if her actions were in response to yours. 

Oh, even if you begged on your knees, she would not take you back now.

Why had you not done that before?

She must be disappointed that your attitude was born from her compassion, the epitome of her failures. You do not deserve to call her your mother. You took her generosity as a guarantee, thought yourself above her other children solely because you were her first, and believed you were her favourite for no reason besides arrogance.

You have failed the only being in Teyvat willing to show pity toward you.

-

The deepest heart of Snezhnayan forest welcomes you readily with open arms and the gnashing jaws of monsters starving for food. The forest seems to come alive with a vicious hunger for flesh. You have only your vision and bow left to aid your defence as you shrug off part of your armour to delegate it to the ties on your hip that secure your helmet.

Your delusion is gone, and your subordinates are nowhere to be found to assist you. The danger is to be braved alone for the first time in what must be forever. Despite this, marking your way with a trail of bodies is easy. It is just an inconvenience to always be on guard, but you are strangely used to it. Your life has been spent that way. Being on guard is what keeps you alive on long expeditions, at night when your lessers slept under your watch, in the depths of the Abyss where it is the only thing stopping the resilient from dropping like flies.

The cold is numbing as the air hits your face, your fingers almost wholly without a sensation of touch and even a tingle in your toes. Your vision emits warmth like a stone of fire seeping into your bones to chase the chill away. It nearly suffocates your fingers each time you press your hand to it, hoping to glean some heat from it.

You spent many missions that way, tensed and expecting violence at any moment, hardly allowing yourself to sleep, let alone relax. Despite so many things changing, you are just as high-strung as you used to be. It feels like nothing has changed in that respect, but you know everything has. You cannot hear the large crackling bonfire or the pattering of footsteps in the snow as your subordinates come to join you, their laughter and chatter and their whispers to each other.

While everything falls apart around you, you freeze as if that is the only thing keeping you together, even knowing that nothing will remain once you finally let go. Breathing is difficult, and so is thinking, but you'd rather not think at all. You want to pretend you'll look across the clearing you wander through and see that creature eagerly waiting, so safe and out of every hand that might harm him.

There is a fragile little balance of land around you that slowly crumbles away piece by piece as it encroaches upon the section that keeps you afloat without regard for where you're supposed to stand when the last of it falls from under your feet. Eventually, you'll have nothing left beneath you.

If there is a time when the only part of what was is yourself, you must protect that no matter what it does to you. You have to maintain the same rigid ways you've always stuck to. Those are the last parts of you made by your mother; those are the last parts of yourself you can trust for as long as you can't trust yourself.

The stark silence is deafening to your ears.

-

On the seventh night, you pass through a village on the outskirts of Snezhnaya, where you first catch wind of the news you had agreed on.

The locals informed you that they had recently halted their work for half a day in honour of your passing, believing that you had been slain in battle, though they are just as unaware as everyone else you've passed that they're talking to the person they believe to be dead. Hearing the story that the Jester spoon-fed the public to explain your disappearance makes it feel a touch more real, the consequences of your obedience stinging in a way you didn't expect. You cannot claim it to be a sick joke when it has had time to reach the smaller villages.

Even when that information would naturally spread like wildfire, the thought that it has come to be known by the nation solidifies the death of Brighella.

In a way, she really is dead.

You're the only one still standing here.

You find what can only be a wayward adventurer not far from the town, engaging a wild boar in combat, brandishing a blade at the beast as it snarls back at him and prepares to rush toward him. He faces it with the heavy hand of experience steadying his grip, ending the boar in a swift movement of his blade that matches the work of his feet to jostle him out of its path.

"Good morning," you greet him after a moment, arms folding over your chest as you watch him poke at the boar with the tip of his sword. "Strike it through the back of its neck. It'll die quickly."

"And painfully," he scoffs back, yet his foot steadies the boar nonetheless, and it is out of its misery by the final stab.

You break away from the spot that had glued you to the ground, approaching the man and his kill to assess the job as if on instinct. "Good work," you tell him without really thinking.

"You think so?" he questions. His eyes focus on you instantly, watching you inspect the boar with a curious gleam. You offer a curt nod. He stares as if waiting to be appraised in precisely the same manner you do a dead animal, weary enough not to sheath his blade. "You really think it's smart to walk around like that?" he asks after a few seconds.

"Why?" you ask, absently poking at the boar. You half expect it will spring back to life and knock the both of you flat on your asses, yet it never does.

He hesitates for the first time since you first saw him, opening his mouth to speak before reconsidering and pressing his lips into a thin line. He catches his breath. "The armour," he begins. "It..."

"It...?" You don't recall ever meeting him before, though it is not uncommon that adventurers know what you look like. You travel so much that it's hardly unusual that people catch glimpses of you, and never forget the Harbinger dressed in the old armour of the guards of Zapolyarny.

It is not unthinkable for a man used to being at odds with Fatui soldiers would recall what might be the most royal pain in his ass.

"A Harbinger was slain," he continues, gaze wandering away. "A Harbinger dressed in armour. I mean, people wear armour all the time, but that set..."

You quirk an eyebrow at such an awkward explanation. It's an accusation he doesn't dare make for its boldness, but he cannot deny it when he considers it for himself. "You recognise it?" you question.

"Something similar. From when Brighella was in Sumeru," he confirms. "I may have been a child, but I recognise it anywhere. Most people have armour custom made to fit them, but yours..."

"Someone else's," you finish for him.

That is technically true regardless. Even as Brighella, the armour was stolen. You vaguely recall the story, but you took it from the stores, assuming it belonged to a guard who no longer had use for it. It should've been the property of a grown man, but you have always accounted for the pinching and awkward proportions. You had to grow into it and didn't grow quite enough.

"You're asking if I killed her," you conclude, though that is an equally bold assumption.

He pauses, weariness in his eyes at the thought, but shakes his head. "That would be a bit presumptuous," he responds. "I just wondered if you really thought it was smart to wander around in armour that looks so much like hers."

"Perhaps not," you admit, swallow your pride to allow that much. "It might be smarter to get some clothes from a market."

"New armour wouldn't hurt," he adds. "You're travelling to...?" he trails off, briefly glancing up as if to seek your appearance for the answer. "Not the heart of Snezhnaya, I hope."

"Fontaine," you answer. "It's the first trail south."

"I'm sure you'll find both of those things there," he says. He offers a slight smile despite the circumstances, an unspoken reliving of the tension you realise lingered on past the point you expected it to.

A part of you knows that he makes that presumptuous assumption. He suspects that you have killed the reigning tyrant but says nothing, perhaps out of relief at the possibility you did. Snezhnaya finds liberation in your slaying. A weight has lifted in your absence that they are not yet allowing themselves to get used to out of fear that you might return. It's as if everyone holds their breath for the news that you resurfaced from the Abyss and were merely lost to a chasm in the world.

You know that news will never come.

Now, the armour that once protected you as a Harbinger will stand as a triumphant emblem of your hard-won victory over Brighella and the end of the Harbinger's tyrannical hold over the land. Even knowing that he is right and it is unwise to wander clad in your old armour, you can't let it go. You are glad it is still yours. Pierro granted it to you, and you didn't care to ask why when it felt as though you were watching your comrades through the eyes of your younger self five hundred years ago. Through danger, you will keep it close, treasuring it always as a tangible reminder of the sacrifices you made to reach this pivotal moment. 

You slayed Brighella. You ended the Harbinger's tyranny.

Brighella is dead.

Though there is no truth to it, you take responsibility for the Harbinger's slaying at the first gasp of a wayward adventurer recognising it. You grasp it as your singular piece of this life—your trophy. It is the first fragment of your new self.

If you didn't know better, you would think you were getting a little too far into it and starting to believe it yourself.

-

By the eleventh night, you find yourself situated in an inn, and the nights only carry on from there all the way up to the twenty-second night since your abrupt dismissal and, to the rest of the world, your supposed demise. The sigh of relief finally sounds, if a tad reserved. Snezhnaya collectively agrees that Brighella is dead enough to think they might have escaped her thumb, even if they aren't wholly convinced that she could really be dead.

The whispers that once revolved around Brighella's defeat now shifted to speculations regarding her successor. The question was not necessarily who, but who could possibly? Her brutal reign as a Harbinger had instilled fear in the hearts of all who crossed her path; in the minds of the people, no one else could measure up to her sheer terror-inducing presence.

Nobody knows what happened once they dared to fight Brighella until now. She was the first of the Tsaritsa's children, and she was the most combat-heavy. No one wished to cross her except for the rumoured contender for her throne, who was spoken of in hushed tones, as nobody was eager to have their reverence for whoever was bold enough to reach the wrong ears.

Your achievements find their place amongst the rumours as people say that Brighella's killer stole her armour and wears it as her trophy.

Despite the slew of gossip that its patrons indulge in, you enjoy the quaintness of this bar made and run by travellers who use it like a pitstop to rest and recuperate. It is a home to them, along with adventurers and merchants who benefit from the atmosphere. The people are strangers, often reserved and eager to keep to themselves, but have an immeasurable wealth of information that spills with a few drinks and a group of acquaintances who are, for only one night of pleasure and indulgence, their lifelong friends.

Among those friends buried in your own tankard of cheap ale, you laugh along with their jokes and entertain their questions like a test of your ability to lie and improvise in this tale you're making for yourself. If they have names, you don't know them. Brighella's death was a glorious battle but isolated to the hills where you were alone.

"Brighella was alone, and they were weakened by prior injury. I don't know what caused it." You mix a dash of the speculations in, downplaying your strength as you're unwilling to expose too much of it. "I'm not one to miss an opportunity. When would it arise again?"

One of your new acquaintances scoffs, amused but no less aware of the dangers of doing such a thing. "And make an enemy of the Fatui?" He is a new graduate of the Sumeru Akademiya who's come to make his way through Snezhnaya for a job offer. Reminds you of someone else, minus the graduating.

"They will not miss her." You are quick to answer—too quick, arguably—as it draws a sliver of attention before dipping back under the radar as a product of your confidence. "Her 'head' makes too cute a decoration on my side to pass up stealing it."

"I wouldn't dare say such a thing. Fatuus comes here sometimes." They are the words of a Snezhnayan native raised to worship the Fatui, though he is somewhat disillusioned by their crimes and cruelty, as you've learned many are.

"Let them hear it!" Your laughter is boisterous and unabashed. "They'll see the armour anyway. They probably despise her like everyone else."

Another one of your new friends, a travelling merchant from Fontaine, interjects your ravings to add only a passing comment. It was as she had done all evening, her secrets locked up tight. "She did not make herself likeable."

"She was not meant to be likeable but a fearsome warrior." Again, the Snezhnayan man rebuts the criticism against her as he had been doing all evening.

"You don't have to get so far up her ass, Brighella's not gonna crawl out of her grave and thank you for it."

"You're so vulgar."

You plant your tankard firmly on the table between the four of you, leaning over it to close the distance between you and the man. "I'm not meant to be likeable either."

Forget being only a little too into the role. You're revelling in the freedom of this new identity of yours.

Quick to disperse the tension, your graduate friend changes the topic without a hint of hesitance in his voice. "They left an underling people believe will take their place. It's a surprise to think Brighella had someone who followed them with such…devotion."

It seems they finally figured out who might take Brighella's place in the grand scheme of things, and the rumours say there is only one candidate.

The creature wearing the face of a man she brought home from the Abyss.

"It's strange but not impossible." The merchant from Fontaine again, contributing nothing you weren't all already thinking.

"Could she have had a sentimental side?"

"Who cares if she had a sentimental side?"

"Upset the attention isn't on you anymore?"

Anger crosses your face, but you stifle it as quickly as it appears. You wish their attention was off of you, really. The former you, maybe, but you nonetheless. You want to know about your subordinate. What happened to your second in command? You don't care to hear their speculation as to whether you were or were not particularly emotional with your underlings. You know the answers to all of those questions and more without their guessing games.

"Regardless of the reason, they say the underlying is much easier to swallow than she is, so maybe the position of First Harbinger will change drastically if he takes it." 

"Would he really change its purpose if he was so loyal?"

"Unintentionally, perhaps."

Gods, these people are so dull. Just by listening to them, you can tell they know nothing about the ways of the Fatui. Harbingers are not individual job positions with specific parameters. Each role is its own, and they are moulded by the person who assumes them like a character in a play, enchanting and unsettling in a horrific mix of theatrics and violence. It is what they stand for. One does not assume the role and become an actor with a script. They must improvise and act on a whim to the beat of the Tsaritsaʼs drum, their life no longer their own.

They are not whatever these ramblings and poor excuses for speculations make them out to be.

"Terribly misinformed, aren't they?" In your ear is the low voice of the Snezhnayan man holding in his laughter at the two as the scholar and the merchant go back and forth. You watch them with a sharp gaze that almost borders a glare, bored of their squabbles and misconceptions.

You glance to your left, where he has leaned closer to you. You eye the way he tilts in his seat, his hand resting on the table. "Repulsively," you respond curtly.

He has a faint glint of satisfaction in his eye as you seem to have confirmed something. "I thought you might've been from Snezhnaya." 

Your eyes narrow at his conclusion, though it is the truth. You don't trust the gleam in his eyes or the way his gaze fixes between you and the helmet secured to your hip. "So what if I am?" you question lowly.

"It was only an observation."

In the background, the main conversation continues, just as clumsy as before you had tuned it out in favour of drinking some more. "Does this mean he will also be named Brighella?"

Straightening back in his seat, the man swiftly interjected their back-and-forth responses to explain to them. "They receive a unique title upon their promotion, and nobody knows what it is until then." A simple enough concept to understand.

"In other words, anything but Brighella."

"It hasn't been long enough to know yet."

"It's strange. Nobody knows his name even now."

That would probably be because you never gave him one.

You considered it in the years you spent with him but couldn't find one you liked. His name was inhuman, not for your ears and not for your tongue, rendering it useless to you and everyone else who would hear it. The night you found him was spent crowded around a bonfire listing off every suggestion you and your subordinates could think of to no avail, as he only sat quietly by your side and said little about any of these choices, finding no familiarity in any of them. That's only natural, you suppose. 

You still haven't chosen a name for yourself that isn't Brighella, either. Your old one is well and truly forgotten, with the years eroding your memories. It had been centuries since you had been called anything else. Evidently, picking names is not your forte. 

"As far as I've heard, nobody knows what it is."

You find the mention of your subordinate has completely ruined your mood. You are grateful the creature is alive but worried the knowledge you're snooping around to find out when he will be promoted could land you in trouble. It's troubling enough to wonder if he has heard your tales through the grapevine about how you had supposedly 'killed' Brighella—his mistress and mentor—which he would not be happy about.

Though you did not fear the creature before, now that you've personally trained him to understand human combat, you're not so sure you'd want to fight him. It would be a hassle. Unlike many, you do not fear the inhumanity of the Doctor or the stone wall called the Jester. Even the cunning Damselette struggles to do more than unsettle you, but you respect that creature's raw strength and understand that no matter what you do, it doesn't matter. You are confined to a human form, and he is not.

You lied when he said he wouldn't recognise you, however. You don't actually know if he would.

You don't know the extent to which his eyes can pick out the details in your appearance that aren't physical. Had he memorised your relative build? Your height? The way you carry yourself and your mannerisms? The thought unnerves you, but so does everything else about him.

"I'm turning in for the night," you declare to the table with a knock of your cup as you slam it down.

Without regard for the ongoing conversation, you announce your intentions and abruptly shut down whatever is being said at the time without much care for it. Whatever it is, it isn't important. Your unfinished drink is left behind as you make your way to your quarters.

In retrospect, you understand their eagerness to merely cover up the circumstances of your dismissal. For a Harbinger as feared as Brighella, it is easier to halt work for a mere half-day rather than attempt to contain the resulting fallout of admitting one of their own was inadequate while simultaneously preserving their tenuous hold on power.

You drop to your bed with far too much faith in it and already regret the potent scent of alcohol on your breath that addles your mind and forces you to wander back to your betrayal. There's not much else you can call it.

Even as you try to squeeze your eyes shut and vanish the image from your tired mind, the confusion lingers against your will. You thought you were your mother's lucky charm. You had been so since the Archon War, to your knowledge, but you lost many of your fragile memories to the sands of time. Something changed while you weren't looking, and her gaze shifted from you to her goals.

Nobody won.

Nobody won...

You have always wondered what she met. You thought it was because the people were at a point of unrest you feared they wouldn't return from, but no one is left to remember the old gods now. You are instead struck by the ghost of your own blindness. You had ventured to the Abyss so many times and lived for so many years that you fell out of touch with her in a way. Even as you did everything to preserve her love for you, it disappeared.

It couldn't have happened in an instant.

You just don't know when it started or at what point it ended, both of which gnaw at your mind incessantly like a parasite that threatens to consume you whole. You dwell on what may never be answered in an attempt to understand something that cannot be understood. You have never been good at avoiding the bad habits of chasing ghosts, even if you fooled yourself into believing otherwise.

Each passing day forces you to wonder if it has anything to do with the many people who died under your command or were distorted by the Abyss during your expeditions. You struggle to imagine it has anything to do with anyone but yourself. You thought you were exactly who she wanted you to be, but perhaps you weren't. Whatever the reason, it escapes you.

You pile your armour off and leave it beside the bed with a touch more respect than you've ever had for it; your helmet carefully stands on the nightstand where you hope it does not fall and collapse back into the bed, eager to escape such vision of before.

You have no desire to remember the days when your hands were smaller, and you could barely reach the handles on the palace doors or fit your suit of armour. Those were the days you never once doubted her affection, though you feared she was pulling away. You looked into the eyes of a weathered old man and saw competition where he mourned his fallen nation as he was forced to linger in a world ruled by the very gods that had caused it to crumble.

You never understood his weakness. By then, though small, you had forgotten what it felt like to be an ant on the mountain where gods battled.

[your-neighbourhood-antisocial]

I think Dumbledore left Harry with the Dursleys for three reasons (besides the blood protection magic thingie).

1) Like I said before, Dumbledore is very forgiving and very in favor of letting people make the right choice/prodding people into making the right choice. I rather think he genuinely thinks Petunia will accept baby Harry as part of her family! Of course, he’s hugely underestimating how deep Petunia’s resentment runs, which is a thing he does a couple times in the books. (He does this twice with Snape, actually!)

2) He’s a wizard, he doesn’t think physical harm and neglect are a very big deal. He’s also a wizard in the 1980s/1990s; mental health services were not as big back then as they are now, and from what we see of magical England they’re basically nonexistent in the society Dumbledore lives in. He does grasp that Riddle living in an orphanage had a negative impact on him, so he makes sure Harry goes a) to a blood relative b) who knows about magic and c) won’t let him get too arrogant about his heritage, which from his perspective ought to sort that problem out.

3) He thinks he’s being compassionate to Petunia and giving her a chance to reconnect with the magical world the way she wanted when she was little. And he’s of course dead wrong about that! But, again, he’s not omniscient and, more pressingly, doesn’t know Petunia beyond remembering a little girl who wrote him a letter 20 years before.

And then Harry arrives at Hogwarts and he’s generally fine. Some trust issues, sure, and he’s grouchy about being sent back to the muggle world, but he’s not exhibiting any major Riddle-esque behaviors so surely it all worked out! [ObamaGivingHimselfAMedal.meme] (I’m poking fun a little, but Harry’s really remarkably well-adjusted for someone in his circumstances, which causes a running theme of adults like Dumbledore and Lupin completely not getting how bad his situation actually is!)

As for Snape… I do actually like him! He's one of my favorite characters, though I think having him as a teacher would've made me cry. I think he’s an absolute jerk to his students and probably shouldn’t be teaching at all, let alone teaching middle schoolers, let’s get that out of the way. But he’s also very much a hero as far as actions go — he’s constantly trying to protect people to the point of endangering his own life and cover story, and he’s one of the few teachers who seems to care about the physical safety of his students, he’s just mean about it the whole way and insisting he will totally poison everyone and their little toads too. I think that makes him a fun character!

I think he’s also a good depiction of the long-term effects of trauma, systemic failures, cycles of abuse, and radicalization. There’s an essay that can be written (and has been written multiple times) about that, so I’ll be brief and say it’s a fairly normal human impulse to want to protect yourself even at the expense of others, and that’s I think where most of Snape’s more villainous backstory actions stem from including handing over the prophecy. (Which doesn’t make his choices less bad, but it does make it make sense why he does them.) And it’s neat that going over to the good guys didn’t and doesn’t resolve literally any of Snape’s issues! He is mean and vindictive and unstable and severely traumatized and he never gets help and he never really gets better and still does his level best with what he’s got and gives everything he has to make the world better and protect the people who hate him. And that makes him a genuinely interesting and layered character. (And a compellingly-written one, since we’re all arguing about him in the year 2025! I am holding myself back from writing like 8+ paragraphs of Snape Takes in the year 2025!)

Phew! That was some in-depth analysis, anyway your thoughts on Dumbledore is super thorough, but I still think that he should've done something about the cupboard under the stairs. But, overall I think he is a good character, not the greatest but good.

About snape though, he was an absolute jerk to everyone but ig being a double spy does that to you. But, in the books he never protected the trio from remus, it was Sirius, snape was knocked out. And he was truly disappointed that Sirius didn't get kissed, I get that him being a bully and all but he also threatened to get remus kissed which was just plain bad. But, overall he is an interesting character and I have a love-hate relationship with him

[somestorythoughts]

Phineas and Ferb Prompt Pt 2:

I wish I'd thought of a title for this the other day instead it's just "prompt pt 2" but in my defense, I didn't think I'd be writing more of it.

Edit: Prompt, Next.

........

The being that calls himself Heinz Doofenshmirtz is very familiar with failure.

He's a god of crafts. The forge especially, things of metal shine and bend under his hands. Failure is a part invention. So few things work right the first time, and if they do, the odds are you won't be able to replicate it the next. Not without practice.

If he's has someone to listen, he'll happily regale them with some of his more interesting failures. Of his inventions sure, but also of the times he's gotten a bit too ambitious, or felt like causing trouble, and promptly got into a fight with the other gods about it. Probably for the best he never won, he doesn't know what he'd do if he did, but it was always entertaining.

He's getting off topic. People had prayed to him for inspiration and laughed at stories of his failure in equal measure, and yet, it's been a long time since failure has rankled this badly.

Months in hiding, staying ahead of hunters who couldn't even be bothered to create an interesting name for their group. Years spent trying to understand what had happened to the rest of the pantheon, trying to find them, trying to create a machine to fix it. But it's hard to solve the last problem without knowing the details of the first, and even though he's finally found them he can't get any of them to STAY STILL long enough for him to get a good look at them!

At least he found a way to regularly interact with some of them. Becoming an evil scientist hadn't been his plan, he'd been making wheelchairs and considering prosthetics before he figured out the best way to get OWCA's attention without revealing what he was. But it's certainly entertaining. And it's given him insight into the organization, even if he doesn't have the information he needs. So what does he know?

He knows the other gods are bound to animal shape, though he isn't certain if there was a reason for each specific animal. Perry The Platypus is the only one he's spent enough time with to be certain of who's under the fur since the binding makes it difficult to know who he's dealing with aside from fellow-divine-same-but-different. He knows they can't speak but that they remain far more capable than regular animals. The Dr. Feelbetter incident was helpful in gaining an idea of what some of the others looked like, so he has that.

He doesn't think they know what they are. At the very least The Platypus hasn't tried to communicate with him aside from eyerolls (which is certainly a sign that some things HAVEN'T changed).

What he really needs is a way of getting a close look at the magic that binds them and it'd be nice if there was a way to do it without tipping off OWCA like one of those airport security scanners but secret- he's an idiot.

.........

The fact that the scan-inator is fairly easy to make just reinforces his idiocy. He keeps Perry The Platypus in place long enough for a thorough scan by singing a particularly long song about pharmacists that give you the run around (Charlene has vented extensively about this), then takes his beating and reviews the scan-inator's findings.

Shit.

Okay. He can work with this. He's going to need to do more shopping than he hoped considering the effort he put into having magical materials on hand and it's going to be a pain in the ass to make it portable (since going to them is easier than trying to lure all of them to his apartment), but he can work with this.

He rolls his neck, cracks metal hands he engineered to make that familiar popping sound, and gets to work.

.........

"Perry the Platypus!" A title, not his but still a title, spoke with emotion, Heinz's attempt to give an old friend a little of the worship that was once their norm. "You are too late!"

Heinz aimed. The Platypus lunged. The Divine-inator fired.

Something indescribable, teal and slick and soft, twisted and warped in midair. Something chatter-creaked a sound like breaking branches and chittering creatures overlapping and twisting like water. Flashes of fiery orange writhed in pain and tore the fedora to charred shreds.

Changing shape shouldn't hurt, but they've been confined to one physical shape for years. He isn't surprised it's had an effect.

"Better?" He asks hesitantly, when it seems like his fellow god has calmed down. A creaking snarl answered him.

"I am feeling exceptionally vengeful" the other rasped, opening doors and blade on stone. "I'm going to show them what an angry guardian looks like."

It's what Perry had been, what he was. A guardian god of house and home, a liminal creature that stood guard at the thresholds and watched over people, especially during times of change. A protector.

Protector deities are swords and shields. Sometimes humans focus too much on the shields, and forgot about the swords.

"As glad as I am to see one of you again, I'd really like to see more of you first." Heinz replied. "It took ages to make this Divine-inator, and if we both get caught, I don't know who's going to make another. We can start with Seattle, I'm pretty sure I know who Peter the Panda is."

The teal and fire mass in front of him condenses into a shape that mostly resembles a short human man, dressed in loose clothes without shoes. His expression is unhappy. "They put most of us with families. They didn't want us all together, so they put us with people we'd care about. I don't know what will happen if they find out."

Heinz reaches out carefully, wraps the other god into a hug and leans his forehead against his. Loose waves of teal and shimmering silver gleam in the air. "We need backup." He murmured. "I've been scrambling their footage every time you came. We don't have a lot of time, but we do have some, and Peter the Panda is the only one who's location I know. I have a way to get there quickly, I promise."

Perry took a deep breath he didn't need. "Go. Quickly." His hands tightened around Heinz's metal arms. "Before you go I, no one's said my name in years. Could you?"

Heinz says a name that echoes across the room with sounds that cannot be made in a human throat. Perry sags in relief, eyes closing, and returns the favor.

[evita-shelby]

A Dull Party

Aka Eva/reader gets invited to the russian orgy and tommy gets pegged fic

Tommy x Eva/reader x Tatiana Petrovna

Cw: smut, nudity, unhealthy lifestyles, debauchery, a threesome, male receiving anal, pegging

Mdni/ 🔞

When he confessed to having considered sleeping with May, he should’ve known you wouldn’t just deny him sex until you felt better about it.

Tommy had seen the new lingerie and assumed you’d add salt to the wound by prancing around in it to remind him of your one rule.

If you fuck a whore, I will fuck a man before I leave. You hurt me, I will hurt you worse, Thomas Shelby.

This you had vowed with your hands wrapped around his prick to get your point across.

You promised him the world at a very low price, monogamy.

Easy, he’d been monogamous before. Greta had been the only woman he’d ever been loyal to until he met you.

And until he found himself alone with May lying about his marital status when she assumed he was unmarried, Tommy had never considered betraying you like that.

He hadn’t done it; he’d almost done it before you called telling him Arthur and Michael had been arrested and framed for Billy Kitchen’s murder.

You hadn’t known until you got it out of him when Tatiana Petrovna set her sights on you.

“The Duchess invited me to the orgy you neglected to tell me about, honey.” Your falsely sweet tone tells him he’s going to sleep in a guest room tonight. “Imagine my fucking surprise when I learned it from the Russian twat, dear husband of mine.”

“And have them leer at you and paw at you all night, I’m there for business, not pleasure, Evie.” He responds reminding you he doesn’t share either.

“So, am I, do you think you’re the only one of us involved in this mess?”

It’s not the end of the trouble, it is merely the beginning.

All the jokes die when the Russians demand you undress just as John and Arthur had.

Tommy’s this close to taking the offered vodka and making a poor man’s bomb out of it when she kneels and takes the knives in your garters sensually.

You keep your eyes on him with a wicked red smile as the Duchess continued her show, thinking you have a boring sex life.

The sapphire always looks better nestled between your bare tits, something he knows better than the affluent people here. If they knew the sort of games the two of you play, they’d throw a better party.

“Such beauty, you cannot even tell she gave him two children already.” The duchess caressed you, playing with your nipples and forcing everyone to see how she turned you on with the finesse of a maestro.

“These may stay on for now.” The mad woman reached the too short knickers made entirely with see through tulle and lace. “She won’t need them later, right, Mr. Shelby?”

Temptation in the flesh, so tempting Tommy briefly considers fratricide when his brothers are forced to see what only belongs to him.

They’re only half-joking, he’d told Arthur. This was a test of his commitment to the cause, a fucking cause he knows isn’t worth the money they’re getting.

“Your orgy would have been a failure if I didn’t lose every stitch of clothing, your grace. The last orgy I attended left me in such a state I left with one of my conquest’s underwear.” You answer for him driving the Russians’ attention back to you, you love being naked, a thing he only enjoys when it’s just for him.

Tommy has no idea if you are shitting with him, or you were as crazy as these fuckers are.

Both, your smile says, always both, darling.

You have not seen this sort of debauchery since you hosted a drug and alcohol fueled orgy during the summer solstice of 1918 to celebrate the Xochipilli and Xochiquetzal.

Of course, yours was much more tasteful and none were coerced, underpaid, and mistreated servants. No wonder the Communists were so thorough in their takeover.

The people stare and try to get your attention, but Tommy stakes his claim on you by refusing to let you wander away no matter what Tatiana tries.

“Once you marry a Shelby, you belong to them until you die.” Tommy said and the duchess believes him.

“The more the merrier then.” She said with that mad look in her eyes and allows you to dress again.

You’ve met people like her, drunk on their power and money until they die in a crash of pretty glass and blood on the cobblestone below a high balcony. In fact, you had aspired to be the beautiful and tragic creature dead on the ground.

But now your eyes have opened and the dense fog in your head has cleared.

And now that you’ve arrived at the stronghold with the jewels, you are even less impressed by these parasites with worthless titles.

“Couldn’t trust me to be professional, eh, Shelby? Had to bring your posh wife too?” Alfie is more interesting than the phony jewels they’ll offer.

“Oh, Mr. Solomons, can’t call it a party unless I am here, and I won’t be leaving until I get another Fabergé egg for my collection and have a good fuck in this dull party.” You bare your teeth through your smile, already tasting their fear in the air as they present you with paste instead of stone.

They just had to ask, didn’t they?

“It’s quite dull, much like the jewels, I am afraid. My husband won’t let me fuck anyone but him and now perhaps I shall punish him to be bored with me, dearest Tatiana.” You say lounging in only your tiny drawers and the sapphire now accompanied by a gaudy paste thing they tried to pass off as real.

“Might make an exception to share him with you, if you show me something that will make it worth the new lingerie.” You are resting your naked legs on your husband’s lap as you eye Tatiana, knowing exactly how you will get the night you came here for.

She wants to fuck your husband; all people want to. You don’t share, your selfish and spoiled ways from before the war have never left and you don’t plan to leave them now.

Now you were shown the only good place for an orgy in this old shell of a house.

The private chapel in all its glory.

Nothing gets you wet like mocking the god in whom you do not believe.

“Better?” the unhinged Russian noblewoman says as she shut the door behind the three of you.

And it was.

“Haven’t fucked a woman since ’18, and my dear husband refuses my offer of adding one to the mix, you know. Thinks I might leave him for her if he does.” A lie, Tommy just thinks it’s a test of his loyalty.

“And would you?” Tatiana asks, dark eyes glittering in the candlelight as you take the initiative and show your husband this is a one-time offer only.

One night to give into their fantasies with the Russian twat and leave him in a state where he will be glad you don’t share.

“Women are too wet for me; men are so nice and dry.” You giggle and pull her into a kiss relishing the way your husband looks on to this sordid entertainment.

Been so long since you’ve tasted lipstick and felt the softness of a woman against you. If the night ends better than it began, you might consider letting Tommy add May or even whichever woman crosses his path next have one taste of heaven before you send them to hell.

“Have you ever fucked a man like man fucks a woman, Mrs. Shelby?” the story of the priest in Tsibli forgotten in her need to appear much more interesting than you, who are nothing more than another dime a dozen wife.

Oh, how wrong she is, but you let her interest you as she reaches for a box holding the most beautiful set of dilators, carved to look like the real thing and one even resembled Tommy’s cock.

Even better it came with the harness you’d tried in Mexico, the one that let a woman fuck another with the wooden cock. A thrilling thing, the reversal of power where you are given the position of a man.

Something you have been dying to try out with Tommy after you discovered you were not the first to explore his asshole.

There is a clear no in Tommy’s eyes, but if this business were to go without a hitch, especially now that Tatiana wanted to change things up for the thrill of it, they must go along with it.

“I’ll be gentle, I promise.” You say repeating the words he told you when he convinced you to let him fuck your ass. You had enjoyed it, you were far more adventurous in bed than him, and those few times he wanted to do something different were never disappointing. “You can even fuck her to your heart’s content in exchange for this one little measly gift, my love.”

He nods as if he ever had a chance to say no.

Maybe if you hadn’t opened your wicked mouth the two of you would be pretending erotic asphyxiation was new and exotic. But you had and now you feel your toes curl at just the sight of Tommy fucking Tatiana against the prie-dieu and his most sacred hole exposed to your devilry.

Nothing you’ve done before can ever match up to this, you think as you fuck your husband as he rails the woman no longer speaking English at the merciless pace you’ve set.

A religious experience in every sense of the word.

“We’re never doing this again.” Tommy vows in Romani as you leave the place wearing someone else’s dress and the mink coat Tatiana gave you in exchange for your diamond encrusted knives.

“And we won’t, I promise.” You say knowing you’ll receive a perfect replica of Tommy’s cock and a harness tailored to your measurements once the Duchess leaves for Austria with her cut of the money.

[dr-futbol-blog]

Coup d'État, Pt. 9

We get a close-up of Ladon drawing a needle out of Sheppard's neck that he had undoubtedly just plunged into it, having injected Sheppard with an unknown substance that we are to understand is an antidote to the gas that had taken down his whole team. Sheppard's last thought had been about McKay, using his last remaining strength in trying to get closer to him, and now he comes to, possibly still in the same warehouse, tied up to a chair. It is obvious that something has happened while he has been out, something has been done to him without his knowledge or consent, and let us not skip over what a massive violation of his bodily integrity this is even though there does not appear to be anything sexual about it. Ladon, who we are to understand is something like the McKay of the Genii, has probably designed both the gas and the antidote, and as he now asks Sheppard how he feels, his question is probably motivated by curiosity rather than concern for Sheppard, as Ladon has no particular reason to care about his well-being whatsoever.

Ladon: How do you feel? Sheppard: Like I've been gassed.

There are no other Genii around as of yet, so we may assume that Ladon has been working on Sheppard alone so far, or else had some help lifting him up on a chair and his men are now taking Sheppard's men to a holding cell. Regardless, the two of them are very much alone in the warehouse as Sheppard regains consciousness.

Sheppard can probably immediately tell that he has had his weapons stripped from him, including his tac vest and thigh holster, but what is even more disturbing is that his jacket has been pulled open. This means that someone, probably Ladon, has done a very thorough check for concealed weapons and has therefore touched Sheppard all over. Just by the state of him Sheppard can tell that he has been touched by someone far more intimately than he would like, and while his concern for his men and his puzzlement as to what is going on have to be at the top of his mind, somewhere in the back of it there is the understanding that he has essentially been roofied. And with the long history of suffering sexualized violence and unwanted touches particularly, although not necessarily solely, by women, this may not even be the first time that he has experienced something like this. As a matter of fact, even on the actual show in Sanctuary (S01E14) Sheppard seemed to suffer the effects of being roofied.

Sheppard's response is the tiniest bit flippant but mostly he seems to be aiming for neutral because he does not want for his own actions and responses to make the situation worse for any of his men until he knows what is going on. But he is feeling so goddamn awful about his whole day that he cannot entirely keep his upset out of his tone. Sheppard seems initially groggy but we do not know what physical symptoms he is suffering, whether he also has a headache like Ladon tells him that people who wake up from the gas naturally have. But much more than any physical symptom, it is his absolute and utter failure that is causing Sheppard to feel morose, it is the fear that he cannot allow himself to feel that is twisting his gut.

Sheppard: How come it didn't affect you? Ladon: I was injected with what I just gave you. Sheppard: Where are my men? Ladon: Oh, they'll wake up in an hour or so with a pretty big headache, but they're fine.

We know that Sheppard's main concern is his men even though he does not ask about them first but second. It is his way of disguising the importance of getting to know what had happened to them because he knows that the more desperate he seems to the enemy, the better they will be able to use it against him. This is also why he makes himself seem as nonchalant as possible as he takes a look behind him, looks to both sides of him before asking about them. And this is why he asks about his men, in general, instead of asking the real question that is gnawing at him -- where McKay is in particular. He cares about his men but he cares about McKay on a whole other level, regardless of how you read their relationship. In addition to this, McKay is an asset to Atlantis and his safety on what was his very first raid had very much been Sheppard's responsibility, so it is safe to say that he is extra concerned for McKay's safety and well-being.

What is more, he had just been injected with God knows what and he does not know what gas this was that the Genii had used in knocking them out. It might have been something known by Earth scientists or something completely alien and never used on Earth humans before, and given that he knows of McKay's allergies and his recent over-exposure to wraith enzyme in The Hive (S02E11), he has to be extra concerned for McKay even if he did not have a personal reason for worrying about him. He wants to know about McKay but like always, he couches it in general terms, not wanting his enemy to know anything more about him and the things he holds dear than they already do. But with the Genii, he can at least trust the fact that they seem to want to keep McKay alive for that "big old brain" of his, knows that the Genii have uses for McKay that will keep them from killing him needlessly. But Ladon does not actually answer Sheppard's question, he only answers his concern. His men might be knocked out expecting to wake up to a headache, but he does not know where they are.

But given that Sheppard's jacket has so very obviously been ripped open and his undershirt is not only exposed but is clearly on display, we have got to ask a few questions about his attire here. The Genii dress in shades of grey and the Atlantis teams wear grey fatigues on the field where the colour of the strips of fabric on their chest shows their designation of either military (black), science corps (blue) or civilian (red). Sheppard usually wears a black shirt underneath, either with long or short sleeves. In this scene, he seems to be wearing a t-shirt. But because of the lighting of the scene, it is extremely difficult to determine whether his shirt is black or dark grey. And what is even more interesting is that they clearly want us to see that the shirt he is wearing is loose in the middle. What he is wearing here, it is not his usual tight-fitting t-shirt. It more resembles the t-shirt he had under his tunic in the final scenes of Epiphany (S02E12). It resembles McKay's t-shirt.

What is more, we were shown rather pointedly earlier on in the episode that McKay's t-shirt was tight in the middle. For some reason, we were shown McKay wearing a t-shirt that was tight for him around the middle and we see Sheppard wearing a t-shirt that is loose in the middle for him, and it is extremely difficult to make out whether it is black or dark grey, whether it is grey because of a trick of the light or because it is the self-same shirt that McKay had been wearing earlier in the episode. Sheppard himself had been wearing his own black shirt with his tactical vest during that scene. And it is the looseness even more than the colour that is striking here. Yes, he is leaning backwards which flattens his tummy but there seems to be more than a little looseness in the fabric, and because his shirt has looseness where McKay's shirt has tightness, it is not impossible for McKay to have worn Sheppard's shirts at some point, especially to have worn this particular shirt so recently as for it to not have been washed since.

I am not suggesting that Sheppard is wearing McKay's shirt here, or even that the shirt seeming grey is not just a trick of the light. However, they seem to have had recreational time in McKay's room, closer to the central tower, in recent times and it would be much easier for McKay to pick up a new shirt in his own quarters than for Sheppard to pick up one from his. We also definitely had some missing time earlier. As for whether they would have been in the mood? Walking out of the Genii home world unscathed since they didn't try to kill them even once, they might more than well have been in the mood. Something to take the edge off before the raid. Sheppard certainly seemed to be in much better spirits when we found the two of them walking down the stairs after Weir. But what ever had happened, he is not that any more.

Ladon: Just like you. Sheppard: I'm a lot of things right now -- fine isn't one of them. Ladon: We stumbled across the dead ZPM in our archives. One of our operatives found it hundreds of years ago, didn't know what it was, filed it away.

This is a rare instance of John "I'm fine" Sheppard admitting that he is not fine. We frequently see him try to claim that he is fine when it is obvious that he is not fine, beginning from attempts at ignoring physical injuries to concealing the impact of just having learned that his father had died. Sheppard is always fine. The difference is that he usually says that he is fine as an answer to the question "How are you?" or "How are you feeling?" and the question has been spoken by someone that actually cares about the answer, hence his attempt at concealing his hurt, his upset, his many conflicting emotions. Here, he is fully aware that the Genii does not care how he or his men are feeling, Ladon is merely giving him assurance that they have not killed his men yet. And while Sheppard is having that Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, his intention here is not to unburden himself to the Genii but to give him a flippant rejoinder, now that he seems to have confirmation that his men (and McKay) are still alive.

However, it is probably true. Sheppard has to be feeling many things, all of them negative. Hurt, anger, fear, pain, nausea, disgust, sorrow, anxiety and many other things, none of them good. He is not in touch with his emotions at the best of times so all of this probably coalesces into a lump called "bad." He is upset, that much is obvious. But it is not his intention of letting the Genii know that he is upset, merely to communicate to him through his nonchalant tone and relaxed posture that he may be at their mercy but he is not defeated. And he is making promises with his calm and collected demeanour that when he gets free, and he will, he is going to take all of that out on Ladon and his people. And Ladon seems like an intelligent sort, he may well understand what Sheppard is intending here.

Ladon then begins what seems like a classic villain monologue, answering some of the questions that he is sure Sheppard is wondering about -- or at least would be wondering about if he had any bandwidth left to be curious about how the Genii had pulled this off. We may note that Sheppard is not looking up at Ladon's face when he starts telling him about the ZPM but keeps his eyes fixed somewhere low and vaguely behind him, his gaze unfocused as though he could not be bothered even listening, like he does not care where they had gotten their hands on a ZPM if it had not been the Quindosim, whether the ZPM was functional or not. This is information that concerns them and may well be something that McKay would want to know, so he is filing the information away for later even if he is projecting nonchalance, is pretending like he could care less. They got them good, he has to admit. They had found the perfect worm to put on the hook to entice them. Besides, as long as Ladon was talking, he was not doing whatever he had woken Sheppard up and tied him down on the chair for -- which probably was not anything pleasant.

Ladon: I'm sure he had no idea how valuable it would eventually be. Sheppard: That was your plan: lure us here, take our weapons, trade us for some more, arm your rebellion. Is that about it? Ladon: Couldn't be more wrong. Cowen: There is no rebellion, Colonel Sheppard. Ladon here has only the best interests of the Genii at heart.

Sheppard sounds both bored with their whole evil scheme and slightly inebriated as he summarizes to Ladon what he thinks they have been up to, and we may note that he is squinting his eyes like he has some trouble focusing his gaze, like he is suffering the after-effects of the gas -- and this may either be genuine or Sheppard is hamming it up because he wants Ladon to think he is more disoriented than he seems, to lull him into a false sense of surrender from him.

In reality, Sheppard's mind is probably feverishly trying to find some way that he could free himself and get to his men, to check up on them himself. And we see that Sheppard is beginning to use the one weapon he always has with him when he is tied down and incapacitated -- the gift of the gab. He is not trying to use his charm on Ladon here, not exactly. But he thinks that he has Ladon figured out -- that he prides himself on his intelligence, and that he is someone who can be negotiated with. He is not a sociopath like Kolya so it is only a matter of finding what Ladon wants, to figure out what is important to him and then to apply pressure. Ladon may be smart but Sheppard does not think he is smarter than him, and if he is open for dialogue, as he seems to be, then Sheppard only has to work him over.

Only, the plot twist is then revealed and Cowen walks in, and it suddenly dawns on Sheppard that the Genii have been playing them from the get-go. He is kicking himself, blaming himself for not having seen this coming because he knows the Genii are double-crossing no good sons of bitches, and they never should have made deals with them. He should have trusted his gut about this but they had all wanted it to be real so much. They all needed that "W" so bad. With what had happened to Lorne and his team, Sheppard was feeling so bad that he had at least wanted to give McKay something that would make him feel good. But the universe -- or at least this galaxy -- seemed insistent on piling it on him, to see when his back would break. And it was getting near that point, he could feel it. We see Sheppard look up at Ladon and Cowen almost with the eyes of a child. He has no rage or indignation left in him, he just feels tired. He is spent.

Sheppard: What the hell is going on here? Cowen: I want to talk with Doctor Weir. Sheppard: The gate has to be active. Cowen: It already is. Sheppard: Yeah, well...

Sheppard makes what seems like a perfunctory question of what is going on, and whether he really is still fighting off the effects of the gas or is making it seem like he is still affected by it, he has the demeanour of a man coming out of sleep. He does not manage to dig up sufficient ire for how much the situation actually should both be puzzling and pissing him off, it is more that he thinks that the question is expected of him. Colour him surprised.

Cowen wants to talk to Atlantis, and Sheppard mentions that the gate has to be active for them to be able to establish a connection. He seems somewhat surprised when Cowen informs them that they have already established a connection, and this may be an indication that they had tried to fool to Genii into thinking that Atlantis had a different gate address, that they had been making the gate teams use intermediary addresses ever since they started spreading the rumour that Atlantis had been destroyed, and they had both visited the Genii home world and brought in Ladon using some waystation planet. However, it seems like the Genii are not so easily fooled and are well-aware that Atlantis is still reachable by using the gate address that they have had at least ever since Kolya and his strike team made their raid on Atlantis. He nods at the radio, indicating that he thinks they should be able to figure it out, and so Ladon does.

But make note of the fact that Sheppard does not seem to have any particular feelings regarding the Genii wanting to talk with Weir. Sheppard had allowed Weir to walk into the Genii home world alone to negotiate for the bombs, Weir's dealings with them are a peripheral concern for Sheppard. His main concern is for his men. Right now Sheppard is just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And so he merely listens in to Cowen's exchange with Weir, does not even attempt to communicate anything to her. He is not making any kind of a move that might jeopardize his men further. Negotiations are her arena, anyway.

Cowen: Doctor Weir, this is Commander Cowen, leader of the Genii. Weir: Where is Colonel Sheppard? Cowen: He's right here with me, along with the men you sent to storm this complex. Some would view that as an act of war. Weir: We were just trying to quell your rebellion before it started. Cowen: I think we both know what your intentions were, Doctor. And now it's time you became aware of mine. I will release your men, but I expect something in return. Weir: We have twelve of your own: how about a straight trade? Cowen: The Genii you've imagined as your potential hostages are terminally ill. They volunteered for the mission. They knew they were never coming back from the moment they heard of my plan. Weir: Why are you doing this?

It seems like the Genii have been planning this for a while and seem to be well-prepared, having anticipated the moves of the Lanteans. It is an interesting question whether Weir is speaking here as a representative of Atlantis, the US government or the IOA because it influences the mandate with which she can operate. The US government has a policy never to negotiate with terrorists but although Ladon could have been interpreted as such, Cowen is an official representative of the Genii government -- who of course are not an entity recognized by any Earth government. This both gives her some leeway in negotiation but also ties up her hands pretty soundly. Sheppard's face betrays none of his thoughts as he listens in on them even though he has to be severely kicking his own ass in his mind for having fallen for this shake-down. It is almost too cliché to be taken seriously, only it is very real. He and his men are being held hostage.

What is interesting -- and leads us into the next episode where the Lanteans do some extremely questionable things -- is that our heroes are not lily white and innocent but actually made several morally dubious calls that led them here, and are now having to face up with the consequences. Weir cannot deny that they were holding the Genii hostage or that their intention had been to steal the ZPM, no matter what terms they tried to couch it in as. They were not blameless to the situation they now find themselves in. The Genii had set them up but they had walked right into the trap.

Cowen: The Genii people need the Lantean ships you call jumpers. I believe you have ten of them. You have one hour to bring them all here. Weir: And if I don't? Cowen: We will kill one of your team every fifteen minutes until our demands are met. Oh, and we will be starting with Colonel Sheppard.

Sheppard keeps quiet throughout their call but the first time we see him react to anything that is being said is when Cowen mentions the jumpers, the fact that he knows how many they have and that the Genii want them all. We see Sheppard worry his lip in that self-soothing fashion of his and this is likely caused by his realization that everything that is happening here now is ultimately his fault.

All of this harks back to Underground (S01E07), to a mission that had started like any other attempt at negotiation with the locals for food and had ended up with them making what seems now like enemies for life. He is the one that had revealed to the Genii the existence of the jumpers and even though he had tried to convince them that they only possessed one such ship, he had been forced to reveal the fact that they had several to get his team out of the Genii home world alive. It had been on the Genii home world that Sheppard had come to the sudden realization that he was falling for McKay, and that it had been happening for a while and he was not sure he could put a stop to it. Whether that had been for the better or for the worse, he was not sure, but he knew that a lot of suffering had followed from that initial journey to the Genii home world, and all of it had let them to this moment.

Cowen is threatening Weir with killing Sheppard which seems to be an effective driver for her to make quick decisions. However, Cowen is not Kolya in that he is not as shrewd and cunning, does not have Kolya's understanding of human nature and the ability to get inside the head of his enemy. Threatening to kill Sheppard first ties Cowen's hands if he is truly expecting to get something out of this bargain and is not simply looking to kill Sheppard. If we assume Sheppard is the one that Weir cares about the most, and she would hardly be able to mount 10 jumpers from Atlantis without pilots with the ATA gene at hand since they are all held hostage by the Genii, he would be bound to walk away empty handed because Weir would simply be unable to fulfill his request even if she wanted to. But it seems like the Genii value McKay's life above Sheppard's, and Cowen seems to think that killing their commander is only a precursor to the real threat, which is killing McKay.

Cowen does make the threat also on McKay's life but it is unclear whether he would actually have gone through with it, because at least Kolya seemed determined to keep McKay alive for that big old brain of his since the Genii would have use for his talents. It is entirely possible that Cowen believes that threatening McKay's life would motivate Weir more because it would motivate the Genii more -- and from what they know about Kolya's encounters with the Lanteans, dangling McKay as a threat had been a very successful strategy, insofar as they had been dealing with Sheppard. Of course McKay is and an asset to Atlantis, he is a civilian and Weir has known him longer so theoretically McKay should also motivate Weir better than threatening Sheppard's life, but we have seen her develop a personal relationship with Sheppard to an extent that the scales might tip in Sheppard's direction.

And so Cowen's strategy of threatening the most important thing first instead of starting with the less important and working his way up to the thing that the person threatened cannot afford to lose, which had been Kolya's strategy, seems ill-advised and ineffective. Kolya had made Sheppard believe that he had killed Weir and had no trouble doing the same to McKay, who was the one that Sheppard could not afford to lose. If Cowen's strategy here is to tell Weir he had killed Sheppard and that he had no trouble doing the same to McKay, he is making assumptions about McKay's importance that are based on a precedent that Sheppard has set for them. Kolya notwithstanding, the Genii do not seem to know why McKay is important to Sheppard.

Cowen looks right at Sheppard when he makes the threat to kill him and to kill him very soon, and we see that Sheppard looks helpless and lost. He looks down to the ground at nothing and he seems to feel deep sorrow, probably partially because he hates knowing that he has to be the cause of much anguish to Weir at the moment. At the same time, he very much does not want to die. He certainly does not want to die until he knows that he has gotten McKay safely away from here to somewhere where the Genii can never get to him again. He does not want his story to end like this, killed by a space militia on a nameless planet failing to protect the man that he loves and who would probably join him soon after. At the same time, he knows that Atlantis cannot give them what they want. Their hands were just as tied as his are.

Continued in Pt. 10

[skaruresonic]

Being a Cream fan is suffering. The writers aren't hiding that they don't like her. Hello Advanced 2 anyone???

I can imagine.

She's milked for both humor and angst. In most cases, the fact that it's Cream specifically who is suffering/the butt of the joke is the intended takeaway behind the humor or angst.

People try to rationalize such moments as "she's just a child," forgetting that Cream is also her own person and has a personality beyond the expected behavior of children her age. Shunting her into the box of Child(tm) and leaving it at that is like reducing Amy to Girl(tm). Or Shadow to his Black Arms blood. You're not wrong to say those elements factor in, per se, but you are being overreductive by focusing only on those isolated elements of their characters when they're not overall terribly important.

Apologies for the self-indulgence here, but before we proceed to talk about IDW 66 and 67's B-side story, I'd like to bring up Cream's chapter in my visual novel as a counterexample:

In a nutshell: OaS is a slice-of-life where Sonic goes about a normal Sunday, visiting his friends and helping them through their problems, alongside some funny shenanigans. He spends about half the game spending time with Knuckles, Amy, and Cream, respectively.

Chapter three sees his relationship with Cream evolve from friends to Big Bro-Lil Sis(tm) as he endeavors to look out for her the best he can and listen to her little kid problems. Math is hard. :<

You'll notice in the conversation Sonic and Cream have after they sit down to eat their carnival food - about halfway through the video - that "lol Cream's just a dumb kid" is the exact attitude I was trying to avoid.

On the contrary: I wanted to respect her agency while also emphasizing that her status as a child is something worth respect on its own. Just because her problems may seem trivial from an adult perspective don't mean they aren't real to her, and I hope I've portrayed it so that Sonic gives her the respect she deserves.

The gist behind the chapter's more humorous moments isn't to point and laugh at Cream, but rather make light of the awkwardness of Sonic navigating being a big brother figure.

That's why stuff like Cream spouting waterfalls really rubs me the wrong way. Folks will argue "she's a child" while neglecting the important nuance that it's not typical of Cream to wail like a toddler in the games... As well as the other important nuance that if it had been Games!Cream in IDW!Cream's place, Rough and Tumble would be ground into paste before the roast finished.

The only punchline here is "Isn't it funny how Cream tried so hard to do right by her mother and some bully destroyed her work in an instant? LOL and then Vanilla went mama bear on them." When you drill down to the core of the underlying idea, you'll find it's just... meanspirited. The book is making fun of the fact that Cream is suffering what is, in her eyes, a humiliating failure.

It's not humor generated by Cream's personality, or the mood whiplash incurred by beating up bad guys one moment and tending to the roast the next, or inviting the bad guys to dinner after giving them a thorough ass-whooping, or anything like that.

How much better would it have been if, instead, following the food fight, we cut to Vanilla returning home to find an immaculate dinner table and two very twitchy skunk boys playing maid in fear of the goddess of destruction's wrath? Cream cheerily greets her mother while Rough and Tumble trip over themselves putting Vanilla's groceries away. Meanwhile Cheese and Chocola give them the evil eye. Vanilla is confused as G-merl pulls out her chair for her, but in no position to protest.

Imagine how amusing that could have been! Nope. The book has to point and laugh at Cream in a "ha ha bitch you thought" kind of way. Can't join in on the laugh track if we have any love for Cream ourselves.

To borrow the stans' logic, it's actually pretty fucked-up that you're meant to laugh at a child for crying in such a situation. At best, you're made to feel sorry for her, but given how the scene is framed to be absurd, it's probably a safer bet to say you're intended to laugh.

That's before we remember Cream doesn't sob buckets in the games. It took being kidnapped, taken to Eggman's creepy robot depot and watching Emerl gleefully tear Phi robots apart for her to sniffle quietly.

Sniffle. Not wail like a toddler. Because the games have this thing called "a sense of decorum," you see. xP

People contend that Cream's a pacifist based on her refusal to engage in Battle until Emerl gets hurt (and then they conveniently ignore how she stepped up and kicked some ass; rip), which overlooks the context that she was probably sick of fighting after having been forced to spar against Emerl and Amy to the point of exhaustion.

---

P.S. IDW!Vanilla wishes she was half as scary as OaS!Vanilla. Yeah, I said it xP

[betaboks]

Time to yap since I've been posting abt this without fully elaborating. Little profiles for the siblings here and here

tl;dr I just wanted to do a little swap au where the modded siblings r the normal ones now, but I still wanted to keep the fact they're generally not very good siblings to Sanji (with the exception of Reiju) instead of swapping that dynamic as well.

Reiju's mods never really worked on her, even though they were attempted after birth. The boys all got spared by their mother in the womb at the cost of her dying much earlier than she did in canon, except for Sanji, who came out "right". Quickly it was pretty clear he fulfilled the role of a weapon with flying colors, but his emotional mods left him with very little personality and expressiveness, so he wouldn't be any good for actually running Germa when it came down to that.

So, suddenly the failures are deemed necessary. Judge can't get rid of them, even in a way that helps him save face.

It doesn't stop him from reminding them that they're failures that couldn't hope to live up to his expectations, and it also doesn't stop him from trying to "fix" them, even though it hasn't worked. Even though they're royalty, there's an air about them because of how their father talks about them. None of the staff are ever gonna dare treat them poorly but you can tell there's a neon sign over their heads calling them all disappointments. They end up split up as well so there's less solidarity or space to find comfort in each other between them. Niji ends up as a scientist, Yonji as a soldier, Ichiji as the crown prince with all the education and responsibility that entails, and Reiju is sort of in limbo, though she acts as an advisor. It is a bit miserable, though even with all this they do still try to find time together.

Sanji at some point gets told to not let any of his siblings come to harm, and it quickly becomes an order he prioritizes much more than Judge could've predicted he would. He is their protector above all else, and they are important.

At some point whilst Judge is trying to modify his siblings again later in life (likely whilst Yonji was getting his arm replaced, I have smth specific in mind but I'm not sure about it so that'll be sorted later!) Sanji comes to perceive Germa as physically harming his siblings, one of the things he isn't supposed to let happen. So he gathers them all together during a quiet time, splits off some of their snail ships, and leaves with them. Effectively, they've all run away.

That's the setup.

They gain a reputation over time on the Grand Line as the ship with the vicious guard dog. They don't fly a jolly roger, but they get into enough scuffles and subsist off of stealing from other pirates enough that they get treated similarly to pirates regardless, even though they're not usually the aggressors. Sanji is just thorough like that.

Months after all of that happens and they're settled down after the initial chaos of finally getting out of Germa (though still on the run and sailing, they're definitely still being looked for), Niji ends up suggesting that they euthanize Sanji. It comes from a place of care, he thinks it's unfair and inhumane that he has to live with no feelings and only really having orders to follow as motivation for things, and this starts a chain of infighting and arguing between all of his siblings.

Yonji agrees, though he doesn't really care for Sanji. He sees him to some degree as a weapon, and one they'd do well to get rid of because he could be used against them when their father rears his ugly head again. Reiju disagrees just on principle, and is kind of mortified that Niji's solution to their brother being different from them is to just end his life. She's retained what her mother tried instilling in her. Ichiji disagrees, but for practical reasons. He also doesn't much care, but he knows they're on the Grand Line, and that Yonji being a good fighter isn't going to get them out of scuffles unscathed the way having Sanji around as their guard dog does. It is kind of hard to argue against that, all things considered, but it's not the sort of argument that's going to keep anything at bay for too long either. It keeps bubbling back up and strains all of their relationships.

Sanji, of course, hears all of this. None of them consult him on the issue or tell him about it directly. He remains loyal to them all anyway. He is still their guard dog.

Things happen from there obviously but I hope to write a fic so that'll be for a later date if I ever get around to it. Hoping I do. I still wanna just put this out here in case I never do get around to it LOL. Feel free to ask questions and such :] I like engaging with people

[teecupangel]

Hello! New ish follower here with a curious ‘what if question’: what if Edward was training Jenny to be an assassin?

So you think she’d fully commit to becoming one after his death/ her abduction? (I’d love her to meet Anne again ahh 😭)

Hello! Welcome! Sorry for the delay (said in the tone of an old woman who suddenly has visitors) :)

First of all, let’s talk about why Edward wouldn’t want Jenny to become an Assassin and wanted her to get married to someone he considered ‘financially stable’.

Edward isn’t the type of person to be swayed by what was considered to be the norm during his time so I like to believe there’s a deeper reasoning to why he was so adamant of stopping Jenny.

The whole “I want my children to be safe” can’t really be the reason because he was training Haytham to be an Assassin when he was young.

Because of this, my headcanon is that Edward fears Jenny’s death and that’s what stopping him from understanding just how deeply Jenny wishes to be an Assassin.

Although he tries to not favor any of his children, Jenny reminds him of his failures as a husband and a father. The dress Jenny wears in the epilogue of Black Flag is very similar to her late mother’s dress so there’s a possibility that she inherited her mother’s taste of dresses (or maybe she actually picks dresses that reminds her of her late mother).

This only serves to remind Edward of Caroline and the growing fear of losing Jenny as well to a similar sickness that could have been cured had it been treated.

Had Caroline had the money needed for the treatment.

And then…

She started showing interest in being an Assassin.

He sees the growing anger in her eyes as she sees him training Haytham instead of her when Haytham doesn’t even know what all of this training was for.

He sees her and he sees someone he lost in her as well.

He sees an Assassin he cared for and lost.

He sees Mary Read.

The more he tries to push her away from her desires to be an Assassin, the more he tries to keep her safe, the angrier she becomes.

The more she becomes jealous of Haytham.

And so…

We need a change.

Something that would snap Edward from his haze of grief and guilt.

Someone who can tell him how he’s seeing his daughter but not seeing her at the same time.

And that person?

Is Anne Bonny.

For this to work, we need Anne to remain with the Brotherhood and it is hinted on that she became an Assassin in Assassin’s Creed Memories’ card of her having her brandish a Hidden Blade (I kinda hc that it’s Mary’s Hidden Blade) so we can have Anne paying a visit to an old friend of hers, just a simple social call. Tessa is suspicious though since she’s a beautiful woman that, as far as she knows, is unattached.

She has a husband though and her own children are training to be Assassins.

That’s why she can see the anger and jealousy in Jenny’s eyes.

And she can also see the guilt and grief in Edward’s eyes.

So she mediates for the both of them.

It takes a while for her to get the two stubborn Kenway and Scott to meet at the middle.

But in reality, it’s more of Jenny getting more of the upper hand because, not only did she get what she wanted (to be trained as an Assassin) but also a bonus (her father stops trying to get her engaged).

Anne left soon after, knowing her inclusion to the start of Jenny’s training would simply lessen Edward’s authority and recruits need to fully trust their instructor.

But she did promise to visit more often to keep an eye on Edward.

Why Edward?

Because she has to make sure Edward doesn’t slip back to those dark thoughts again (she says this playfully but she’s actually quite worried).

That following morning…

Haytham is surprised to see his older sister joining them.

But she just glared at him so he kept quiet.

And so…

Edward starts training Haytham and Jenny together.

.

Unorganized Notes:

Haytham started learning swordfighting at 6 so that’s around 1713 with Jenny being 18.

Jenny’s inclusion makes Haythan’s training more… thorough. While he does need to focus on increasing his stamina, he tends to try out the freerunning techniques that Jenny is taught while he’s doing his own training because they look ‘fun’ and also he’s a bit peeved that Jenny gets to be taught those while he’s been ordered to just… run.

There’s a bit of rivalry going on here. Haytham is more of a prodigy and some of it can be attributed to Tessa’s genes as he does need to be ‘better’ than most to pass on the Auditore-Kenway genes to Ratonhnhaké:ton (and to Desmond). Because of this, Jenny works harder than the two of them to simply catch up, not realizing that catching up to Haytham means being better than most recruits her age.

Jenny gets the title of the ‘Wild Kenway Girl’ because of this though but she just ignores this. This worries Tessa, mainly because she’s worried no one would marry Jenny and that is a bleak future for a woman as far as Tessa can see. Jenny just shrugs it off and jokes that Haytham would take care of his undesirable sister when she’s old and wrinkly. Haytham takes this seriously much to his parents’ amusement and Jenny’s groaning.

By the time Birch makes his move, Jenny would have already been inducted as an Assassin (22), perhaps a novice or a rank higher.

Since you specify Edward’s death, that means that we’re not saving Edward in this one XD

So we’re left with two main ideas after Edward’s death:

(1) Jenny is captured and, by the time she escaped (with Anne and her children’s help), Haytham had been taken by Birch and has been inducted to the Templar Order, leading us to the Kenway-Scott Abel and Cain setup. In this one, Jenny would be hunting down Haytham and no one is sure if she’s hunting him to try and reason with him or to kill her because he’s a ‘stain’ in the Kenway name. In this one, Jenny would end up being Ratonhnhaké:ton’s secondary mentor who doesn’t always agree with Achilles.

(2) Jenny is able to fend off her attackers and protect Haytham but fails in protecting their father. In this one, Jenny stays with the Kenways and takes over the household after Tessa has a breakdown (calling her and Haytham monsters). Birch is gone in the wind because he knows the Assassins know he’s a Templar and Jenny takes over training Haytham as well. In this one, Haytham becomes an Assassin who has a vendetta over Templars and hunting down Birch (who would now be the one to go to the colonies which will lead to Haytham and Kaniehtí:io meeting because… no matter how much is changed from what is meant to be… the Calculations will always find a way to ensure the birth of Desmond Miles will come to pass)

[disco-elysium-via-polls]

2. "Thanks, I'll pass. I'd just go wild."

CALL ME MAÑANA - "And then we might go wild together, which sounds fun. But I guess I have a strike to watch."

"So, anything else you wanted to discuss, boiadeiro?"

5. "Good talking to you. Gotta run." [Leave.]

BOIADEIRO

Research time: 6h 30m Temporary research bonus: -1 Physical Instrument: Astra country

It has been brought to your attention that there are men who live by the law of the land and the strength of their arms. Sunburnt, rugged, smoking men who explored the great rivery veins of upper-Magritte and tamed the Mundi wilds. Frontiersmen, cow-herders, philosophers -- the *boiadeiros*... with a gun in one hand and an unfiltered cigarette between their lips, these men made their own rules. What would it take for you to become one too?

🎵 Martinaise, Terminal B

CARGO CONTAINER DOOR - You're back before the cargo container. Its draw has not lessened since you were last here. If anything, it seems to have grown slightly.

3. [Rhetoric - Impossible 18] Persuade the door to open.

+1 Erratic, yet thorough. +1 Been in the world for two days. +1 Been in this world for many days. +1 Precarious world. +1 One more door. +1 Icosahedral Dice Set "Sirens"

RHETORIC [Impossible: Success] - Despite the dirt that surrounds and trails you, a beacon of light emerges from deep within you.

"Hello, is there anybody in there?"

CARGO CONTAINER DOOR - The door stands silent.

KIM KITSURAGI - "Satisfied, detective?" A wry smile crosses the lieutenant's face.

RHETORIC - Try again.

"If there's someone in there, I'd like to talk to you."

CARGO CONTAINER DOOR - Just like that, you hear a click. Then a rattle. Some mechanism unlocks itself inside the door.

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - From deep within the container, a voice: "Ahoy! Come on in!"

+5 XP

KIM KITSURAGI - The smile disappears. "You can't be serious."

As we approach the centre of the container.... the amount of real we have increases?

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - The man stands at the far end of the shipping container. It's hard to say anything more about him. You cannot make out any of his details, but you do feel the overwhelming presence of... capital.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Trivial: Success] - The feeling causes all the hairs on your body to stand at attention like soldiers preparing for review.

Squint.

Cover your eyes…

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - Something's amiss. The light beams bend around his face and scatter in a thousand directions. It seems the laws of physics do not apply here. They are suspended, distorted, an echo.

VISUAL CALCULUS [Impossible: Failure] - Trying to visualize the physics at play is liable to give you an aneurysm. Don't think about it too hard!

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - In the general stillness, only your tongue moves, flickering as you utter...

"Hello!"

"What's going on in here?"

"Wow."

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - "Welcome, welcome! Not too much, actually, just pleasantly surprised to have company today."

PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Trivial: Success] - You can't *hear* him, exactly, yet you're able to understand every word he says. It is very strange. An overwhelming hum covers everything -- voice doesn't escape from him.

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - "Now." He claps his hands together. "What can I do for you gentlemen?" What you can see of his body appears composed. In a sharp summer suit. And yacht shoes.

"Who are you?"

"We should get back to our investigation. Thanks for your time." [Leave.]

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - "Who *am* I? Oh, I haven't been asked that question for such a long time." There's genuine surprise in his voice. "I don't meet a lot of people outside my circle these days..."

"Anyhow, my name is Roustame Diodore -- investor, licence holder, and extremely high-net-worth individual. And you are?"

+5 XP

KIM KITSURAGI - "Mr. Diodore, I am Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi of the RCM, and this is my partner..."

"Harrier Du Bois."

"The name's Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau. Most likely."

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - "Pleasure to meet you, Harrier Du Bois," he says warmly. "I must admit, the name suits you very well."

"Who are you?"

"How did you become so rich?"

"What are you doing in this container?"

"You're a rich investor, right? Can I have some money?"

"We should get back to our investigation. Thanks for your time." [Leave.]

KIM KITSURAGI - "Oh, lord, not this again."

"What's the matter, Kim?"

Ignore him.

KIM KITSURAGI - "Oh, nothing. It's just that we've got this *murder* to solve, and yet you go around asking everyone about *money*. And every time I ask, 'Are you sure this is related to the case?', you say, 'Sure, Kim. I think it is'..."

"And yet it never seems to get us any closer to solving the case."

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - The man chuckles. "It's quite alright. I'm used to the question by now. To be blunt, I inherited my fortune from my grandmother, who, herself, was an extremely high-net-worth individual back in Graad..."

"All I did was take her fortune and invest it prudently. Believe it or not, it takes more than a bit of skill not to blow a vast fortune on sailing boats, bad choices, and *unsupervised* state policy."

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Medium: Success] - And blow.

"What's it like being an extremely high-net-worth individual?"

"Cool. But I want to ask you about something else."

MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY - The man exhales with a whistle. "I gotta tell you, at first, being rich is a lot of work. You've got to work hard because everything's so darn expensive. You know, prices increase exponentially at this income level..."

"But then, once you've reached my position, it's nearly impossible for me *not* to make money. My assets are so diversified that I'm bound to come out ahead no matter what..."

"Some of my lower-net-worth friends say to me, 'But doesn't that take all the fun out of it?' and I tell them, 'Not really.'"

[prometheanfolly]

TLDR: reimagining Theo as not part coyote, but part axolotl. I know. I’m weird.

—

Somewhat following from my last post, has anyone ever thought of a Theo who is a chimera of something other than a coyote? When I’m trying to reimagine who Theo could have been, it’s one of the ideas I often come back to.

If we accept at least some of the fairly radical alterations to Theo’s character that I suggest in my last post, might we not think that this is the sort of person to keep his strengths under wraps, and prefer to be underestimated?

I quite like the idea of him being spliced part wolf (I think this part is integral, because the series leaves absolutely no ambiguity that he has wolf in him, and because, well, anything else would just be somewhat off-motif for a show called Teen Wolf) and part axolotl. For anyone who doesn’t know, please google these guys - they’re awesome. In particular, they have astonishing regenerative capabilities.

Might it be fun to imagine that there’s no coyote- Malia just trusted him because he’s a good liar and she’s horny- and he said there was coyote to hide the truth. Imagine that the real reason the doctors keep him is because of his ability to regenerate or heal from almost anything. They don’t keep this failure because he’s special, but rather because he’s the perfect regenerating blank canvass.

When I run with this idea, I think of the axolotl power manifesting as a much slower, but hyper-thorough form of healing. Sure, he won’t heal as fast as a werewolf, but can they regrow arms?

This leads to a few other thoughts: first, it leads to an even more horrifying picture of his time with the doctors. If he is kept for his ability to regenerate, then he will likely have undergone much more severe, and frequent, ‘experimentation’ than we think. Doctor wonders how to vivisection-proof a werewolf? They start by examining what happens when you cut a live shifter in half. Thoroughly. How might this impact his relationship with pain? A sort of resigned disdain? A burning desire that *never again*? Second, I start wondering just how close this power allows him to come to the very edge of life and death. Can he regrow parts of his brain, as axolotls can? If so, how much of it? With or without his previous memories, skills, and personality? What in the Phineas Gage might be going on there? Personally, I like the interesting, though massively implausible, idea of his memories being screwed with whilst the underlying character remains. Third, how might it mess with his view of his own mortality? If you truly don’t believe that, however many fucktons of pain and suffering you may be put through, you’ll ever die, I imagine you’d be pretty damn confident, if in a stunningly warped way.

I have a fair few other ideas about this, particularly relating to how it could be incorporated in a reimagining of the ‘truth’ (if we engage in some pretty serious rewriting) behind the acts we see in the show, but I feel I’ve banged on long enough for now, and shall save them for another time.

Again, I’d be delighted if this idea sparked anything in others, or just if someone picked it up and ran with it, so please do feel free to go nuts!

[brandwhorestarscream]

Reincarnation AU.

I saw the thing about Hot Rod having TFA Roddy as a sickly child and this just popped into my mind: Hot Rod going to mama Prowl to ask how to take care of a sickly baby, since baby Prowl/Lil P was sick a few times (thanks Jazz that one time and maybe sometimes Bumblebee) and Hot Rod has zero clue how to take care of this child, especially with how ill they are.

So just... Prowl and Hot Rod friendship ig. Bonding over cute babies and having to keep an optic on them because sickly babies then watching.

Hot Rod is a mess of nerves cuz his baby's vents constantly have a horrible wheeze and a rattle to them, he's always shaking and breaks out in a fever at least 3 times a decacycle. He has to sanitize everything and anyone that wants to hold the baby has to have a thorough decontamination bath and their vents flushed. The poor sparkling has trouble recharging and always seems to have aches and pains somewhere, discomfort radiating in his little EM field and all he can do is cry. Roddy's at his wits end and has no idea what to do: honestly, he's really not ready to be a parent. He's barely even an adult himself.

He goes to Prowl because he's always taking Lil Pea to the medics, surely he'll have some tips for managing the more stressful at-home parts of having such a sick kid, right?

They both kinda get hit with a surprising realization at the same time--Lil Pea isn’t actually all that sickly. Prowl's overprotective and was rightfully worried cuz bitty's so thin, but in reality? He's pretty healthy. He's nowhere near as frail as Roddy's sparkling, and the much younger mech breaks out in tears when he realizes. He's just so stressed, he's sleep deprived and exhausted and terrified and he has no idea what he's doing. He had so much hope riding on this, that Prowl would be able to help him, but seeing him with his happy healthy baby just... feels like the end of the world. In response to his carrier's distress, baby Rod starts crying too and then they're both crying and it's a whole mess.

Hot Rod's apologizing, desperately trying to wipe his tears and stop blubbering and bounce the baby in one arm but he's so strung out and exhausted and he needs help. Prowl's a first time parent too, but he's considerably older: he doesn't hesitate to scoop the little one out of Hot Rod's arms and tell him to sit. Breathe, try to calm down, it's gonna be ok. His office doesn't have a couch but there's an extra chair: Hot Rod kinda just collapses in it and buries his face in his servos, trying to get ahold of himself. Prowl steps out into the hall, pulling out a bottle and starts carefully bouncing the poor baby and rubbing his back, shushing him. It takes awhile, but eventually they both stop. Hot Rod is still shaking and he looks miserable, but still reaches to take his sparkling back.

"I..." his voice is shattered. Defeated. Broken. "I don't know what to do."

They talk for a really, really long time. Realistically, he's already doing everything he can for his son. He's following all the instructions from the medics, he's off work for the foreseeable future because the baby needs round the clock care and monitoring. Prowl... doesn't really have any experience with having such a frail child. No one does. Hot Rod whispers, tearful and exhausted, that... he's even considered giving him up for adoption. He loves him endlessly, but he doesn't feel like he's taking good enough care of him. Doesn't think he can take good enough care of him. He doesn't want to give him up, but... he'd rather his baby be happy and healthy but away from him than be sickly and unhappy but with him. He hangs his helm lower than Prowl has ever seen, forlornly apologizing and coldly calling himself a failure.

This is honestly outside of Prowl's scope of expertise--says he won't try to talk Hot Rod out of it if that's really what he wants, but will try to help however he can. Resources are extremely limited with the war, but he pulls as many strings as he possibly can and gets the poor mech a series of meetings set up, in person and virtual alike, to explore more options and to help him find his footing. Parenting is hard, especially if your child has subpar health. He thinks Hot Rod just needs some guidance and support: the stress has made him want to give up but it's not the only possible path forward. Some old parenting books and advice columns are really all they have right now, but it's better than nothing. They can get his work stuff figured out, set up a schedule so he can actually rest while someone qualified minds the bitty, they can look into treatments and therapies to help strengthen his little body, if only a little bit.

"It's going to be alright, Hot Rod... you're both going to he alright."

[yourreddancer]

Putin will soon turn his war machine on Britain

THE TELEGRAPH

Comment

Putin will soon turn his war machine on Britain

The Kremlin holds us responsible for its failures and will, at some point, attempt to exact its revenge

Ben Wallace

26 August 2024 • 6:00pm

In October 2022, in the dead of night, specialist troops and officials from Moscow slipped into St Catherine’s Cathedral in Kherson and exhumed the bones of famed 18th-century Russian commander Grigory Potemkin. He was a favourite of Empress Catherine the Great and played a critical role in the annexation of Crimea in 1783.

No one knows where they have gone. Perhaps Moscow or Crimea. But the removal was on the orders of Vladimir Putin. If you have ever wondered what drives the Russian president, this single act should give a strong indication. It is history, and Russia’s place in it.

One of the battles I had with the national security establishment in the years up to February 2022 was to persuade them that, despite the intelligence reports and the “wise heads”, Putin was not driven by logic, nor a passion to turn his country into a modern, outward-looking power. He was motivated by revenge, legacy and romance.

He and his Siloviki (past and present securocrats from the KGB and FSB) do not accept that they were the culprits behind the Soviet Union they inflicted on the Russian people. They believe they were the victims of a Western plot. Were it not for the West’s version of history, Russia would be considered to have won the Second World War single-handedly. The Cold War would never have needed to happen because Eastern Europe, including East Germany and Poland, would have wanted to remain pressed to Moscow’s bosom.

The bizarre essay Putin personally wrote in June 2021, entitled The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II, desperately twists facts, ignores events and casts Russia as the saviour of the world. He claims that the Nazi–Soviet pact that led to the invasion and dismembering of Poland was to the UK’s benefit.

In trying to recast Russia’s role in the Second World War, Putin lays blame squarely with Britain and France, and completely distorts the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. He makes no mention of the massacre of 20,000 Poles at Katyn by the Red Army and secret police in 1940, nor the fact that before the invasion of Poland, Russia trained with the Wehrmacht and sold tanks to them. His essay is worth a read, if only to get a sense of the man.

But don’t expect reality. Expect excuses. Almost a year later, Putin penned another essay: On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukrainians. It reads like a mix of Mein Kampf and a Walter Scott novel: destiny, ethnic nationalism and romance combined into an essay. It would be too easy to discard, but it is an essay that held all the clues about what was to happen next.

How sad that so many “Russian experts” in the Foreign Office, Quai d’Orsay or Foggy Bottom missed it. The aftermath of the Iraq war left intelligence services too cautious to make judgment calls without their product being washed through matrixes and seniors. Often the middle ranking intelligence officer who has lived and breathed the enemy for 20 years is kept so far in the background that ministers don’t get the instinct or judgment they really need.

Sir John Chilcot produced intelligence analysis that was thorough but it also regularly removed the “human factor”. Too often we assess intelligence through a lens that is a reflection of our own motivations and behaviours rather than those of our adversaries.

But it is also the job of politicians to understand people and their motives. Politicians who cannot read a room make lousy politicians. Leaders who cannot “feel” the currents in international relations shouldn’t be leaders.

When I went to Moscow, barely 10 days before the invasion, to meet the Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, I didn’t go to read a script, I went to read my adversaries. I went to see how deep the lies went, how big the egos were, what motivated them and the behaviour of the subordinates around them.

As I left I remember commenting to General Gerasimov that I was struck by how his military doctrine had “swapped mass for readiness and mobilisation”. At that moment another General leaned over to add: “and ruthless intimidation”. The mask had slipped. Most telling of all was the comment from General Gerasimov to me in the hallway. “Never again will we be humiliated. We used to be the fourth army in the world, now we are the first or second. It is us and the Americans.”

These men at the top of Russia see themselves as rewriting history, by correcting the humiliation they felt at the end of the Cold War and settling scores for hundreds of years. While Russia is doing a very good job of, yet again, humiliating itself through its own actions, we should realise that in Putin’s version of history it is Britain, not the US, which is at the heart of Russia’s failures.

In Putin’s warped worldview, we were behind the Crimean war and defeat of the Czars, we were behind the rise of Hitler, we were behind the counter-revolution and our espionage was behind the end of the Soviet Union. Britain is in Putin’s crosshairs. One of the most senior members of the Russian Siloviki recently commented: “We know Britain is behind the invasion of Kursk”. We weren’t. 

Make no mistake, Putin is coming for us. We must be prepared for the inevitable.

Rt Hon Ben Wallace is a former secretary of state for defence

[south-sea]

Ooh, how about "X" for your black arms crew?

i'm including Neutral End in this too yahooo (from this!)

X. What's their biggest fear?

aruna he's been through so much these past 13+ years that he's swung pretty hard into "desensitized" territory. to most, he would seem eerily unfazed and always collected. the exception might be disorientation in relation to waking from particularly nasty nightmares, but those rarely happen, and tend to happen only under specific circumstances, so i'm not counting it.

it's less that he's afraid of traditional tangible things at this point, and more about concepts. the thought of forgetting fills him with so much dread it's hard for him to process. when he starts to get into it, there comes a point where he has to force himself to stop thinking about it or he'll drive himself mad trying to recall what's no longer there, or the sinking feeling that there's something he's already missing.

nearly his entire self-proclaimed purpose in life now, other than to live for himself, is to remember. memories are all he has left to keep his people alive. so for him to forget even the smallest detail is to essentially be a failure who's lost his purpose for living in place of... literally everyone else. the survivor's guilt is real, and it is heavy. it doesn't manifest with sadness. it's simply this.

he likes to think he remembers everything perfectly. time and trauma have seen to it that he does not. he claims his people didn't have songs. he's forgotten black moth knew and sang the last of their kind.

black moth it's a little odd for a "moth", maybe, but bright lights instill an almost primal sense of dread in him. he can't pinpoint any rhyme or reason for it. in most other situations, he'd have the "fight" reaction when adrenaline kicks in, but when it comes to this, he just freezes.

and by bright lights i don't mean just any. it's not as if he's going to freak out if you turn on overhead fluorescent lights or something, even if he's not a fan of those in general. it's if he's already in a dark room and you shine a single beam on him from overhead, or things like extremely bright, large spotlights in the distance.

he assumes it's fear, anyway. maybe it would be more accurate to say it's awe. the last traces of some long-buried memory.

black moth remembers the songs. black doom remembers the illuminated rings their planet had. they've both forgotten pieces of their history they once held dear, and all that's left in those empty places is dread. but maybe it's better to fear this empty unknown than to mourn it.

alt doom defeat or mistakes he can't come back from. he has been beaten and pushed into a corner countless times, but he always comes out on top in some way, or knows when to employ a strategic retreat. this guy is ruthless and thorough in a much more strategic way, or at least the little mishap with gerald taught him to be.

if he knew what aruna had been through to end up with his entire species eradicated, he'd be a) dumbfounded by aruna's "stupidity", and b) horrified by the outcome. alt doom cannot fathom a reason or a route where he himself would get desperate enough for it to end like that. the possibility of losing that badly, and that much, is almost beyond his ability to comprehend.

he's lucky that arrogance hasn't been his undoing. if he were still in existential peril these days, maybe it would be.

neutral end doom he's kind of just aruna give or take some steps, and that's intentional, but by the end he's different enough to have a place on this list. especially since his fear is different: time. he's genuinely just afraid of running out of time, despite staring that fact in the face constantly. past a certain point in his hive, his kind dying and fizzling out is just a known inevitability.

he knows that, and yet he refuses to let it consume him. so he claims. that broken hourglass hangs heavy from his chains.

neutral end shadow honorary black arms. the running trend here is loss. he is keenly aware now-his-kind are going to die. he's seen countless black arms be cut down or wither away. he doesn't want to lose anyone else, least of all black doom or black moth.

it's inevitable, he knows. he's seen the hourglass too. but he'll be thankful for the time they have left until there's no one left to be thankful for.