#to have my character (who is a reflection of me) interact with the hosts
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bluejaysgonerogue · 4 months ago
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there’s something really healing about writing that isekai self indulgent fic for your childhood favorite show where your character falls in love with your favorite character and they’re happy and love the life you wished you could have.
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calp0sa · 6 months ago
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Favorite Headcanons for airy?
i have like 10 million headcanons for him but i’ll list as many as i can from the top of my head
-hes autistic LIKE ME!!! and is specifically very autistic about music (like meee) i like to think he had a huge collection of vinyls cds cassettes etc and its all stuff from the 60s to the early 90s. no doubt he had a bunch of posters for his favorite bands and musicians too. and hes awesome on the guitar, great rhythm guitarist… its a shame he couldn’t make his talent a profession like he once dreamed of doing. oh well, at least the number 1 perk of trucking is that its peaceful and you dont really have to interact with many people! plus trucks have radios, and cd players, so airy would often bring along a few albums to listen to as he drove those long days and nights.
-hes also got a knack for aquatic creatures (LIKE ME) of course, being a literal fish monster himself (cool fact my airy design is like actually a fish monster he can breathe underwater and everything and his limbs are covered in fish scales) airy loves fish both as friends and food. hes particularly fond of freshwater fish, which makes sense considering the fact he grew up around the swamps of louisiana (yes im making him louisianan Like Me shaddap) hes also fond of those fucked up looking deep sea creatures, just so fascinating. i think airy liked to do a little fishing in his spare time. And hes awesome at cooking em but fair warning for those with a low spice tolerance… he loves spicy food btw (like meeeee)
-when airy was in the forest, he kept a log of his thoughts on the computer, in an attempt to hopefully give himself whatever clarity he could. the notes ranged from all brief, to desperate, to hopeless, to spiraling, to borderline dadaist poetry? to insanity, to denial, to whatever, really i think his mind was obviously all over the place on a daily basis. things must have been pretty loud for him, that cassette player was probably one of the only things keeping him together, before he numbed himself n all, which is around the time he ceased writing these notes as he saw no point in doing so.
-ok enough about him suffering we’ll get back to that later Airy’s favorite drink is ginger ale i mean look at that guy and tell me he doesnt fw ginger ale or dr pepper are you kidding me. he can have dr pepper as a little treat (too much soda is bad for anyone especially if youre an old feller like airy) speaking of little treats i like to think he has an insatiable sweet tooth LIKE MEEEE and his favorite treaaats are pumpkin pie, macarons and practically anything chocolate he loves chocolate (im like allergic to not projecting onto my favorite characters if you couldnt tell) maybe airy knows how to bake a little bit i mean he is an object show host after all
-this is oddly specific but airy is a chronic pain warrior #JUSTLIKEME so when he was in the forest he’d make like home made heating pads by wetting a glob of moss and putting it against his face while he had his flame on (he sometimes put it on a plank over a bonfire if he felt like it) this was a bit tricky when he broke his face but im sure he managed he always manages (kinda) (relatively speaking)
-well anyway we’re back to the forest and i just mentioned his broken face So you know how he disappeared for seven months after he did that lol well what if it was because the pain and shock from that incident evoked the long lost clarity he’d been so stubbornly avoiding in order to cling on to his meaningless, fallacious escapism which triggered him and sent him into a state of agonizing self consciousness, reminding him of his earthly death, how he used to be Someone, and how he essentially let himself rot into what is now an empty shell of who he once was. after so many years, the first reflection he saw of himself was seen in something broken; shards of glass, of which he couldn’t stand to look at… as there is nothing comparable to the pain of revelation, the burden of truth after having been so lost and festered into the stagnant waters that surround you. he felt he had no choice, he disposed of the shards into the nearby stream. those seven months were not just a matter of physically healing, but as a means to losing himself all over again.
-Aaaanyway i think airy had a cat at some point in his life i think we can all agree hes a cat person right!!! he had a tortoiseshell kitty named goose and he loved her very much. idk why he named her goose he probably just thought it was funny to name an animal after a different animal.
-OH YEAH lemme bring amelia into this listen i am such a huge fan of the theory of airy being related to amelia so i like to think hes her uncle!! when amelia was little she’d stay over at airy’s house while her parents were away and he’d teach her stuff like how to fish, how to ward off snakes, how to kayak, all that jazz cuz he was an awesome uncle. she was kinda like an actual daughter to him. and amelia was so fond of sunny weather as a child, one dayy at airy’s house she had to stay inside because it was too rainy, so she occupied herself by drawing a little picture of the way she wished earth was; always sunny, sky always blue, grass always green, huh! the way she drew that grass as individual little triangles is all too familiar is it not…
OK I HAVE SOMEWHERE 2 GO now i’ll probablt add more later But thank u so much for asking this i love love love infodumping about anything airy related i heart airy
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barry-j-blupjeans · 1 year ago
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TAZ 2023 Fic Recs
It is that time of year again! Unfortunately, I don't have as many as last year, mainly because work and Life have been a lot this year. But I am very, very glad to share the fics I have loved this year and I'm looking forward to any other recs!
A Candlenights Barold by @sgrumby - or honestly, all three of the Reaper Squad Candlenights fics! Based off that one liveshow where Merle became Santa Clause. Now it is the job of Barry, Lup, and Kravitz to deliver presents to children every Candlenights! This one is based off A Christmas Carol and is not only hilarious but also super in character.
The Best Version Possible by @thedaisiestdaisy - Taako's experience with past romances, his current one with Kravitz, as well as the aftermath of Story and Song. This is a beautiful, meaningful fic that hits me in the feels every time I read it. It's such a deep, refreshing dive into Taako's character.
a monster might begin to worry by @anistarrose - In short, a Barry-kills-Governer-Kalen AU. In long: Such a good fucking fic. Rose's character voices are top notch and she's so incredibly good at playing with emotions and building up scenes. It's a god-tier Magnus fic, with some fun Magnus-Kravitz interactions and some wonderful hurt/comfort.
Also by Rose and very worth reading:
fill up your lungs, feel better - Barry spies on the BOBs corporate excursion and realizes his family still cares, even if they don't truly know him.
to eat from a poisoned plate - Barry leaves notes in Taako's cookbook.
somewhere over the rainbow (bluebirds fly) - Maureen and Lucretia fall in love. Then, Maureen and Lucretia fall out of love.
midlife crises, laboratory niceties - Barry bulldozes his way into being on the Starblaster crew. Davenport is very concerned <3
colors of space and time - Taako and Lup's relationship with their hair.
Rode Hard And Put Away Wet by @holdmecloser-gandydancer - Band AU!! My beloved!! Lup, Johann, and Kravitz are in a band and it gets. Tough. To put it lightly. Whenever Lup discovers Kravitz and Taako are hooking up. This is a WONDERFUL and super funny fic, that also has it's moments of deep reflections and a lil angst! Plus, Blupjeans! We love that!
Astrology for Horse Jugglers by @noodyl-blasstal - Kravitz and Taako meet at a wedding. This goes badly for everyone except them. This fic is pure chaos and I adore it so, so much.
We Got Boned! - Another one by Noodyl! Barry and Lup write a book for payback, kinda. This one is such a fun, weird turn of events. I cannot describe my love for it.
Revenge Plus One by @ceilingfan5 - Kravitz is invited by his ex (Edward) to go on a cruise. A cruise that will host Edward's wedding. And, to add insult to injury, Edward (rightly) assumes that Kravitz will have no one to bring along. So Kravitz does the responsible adult thing: Invite the gorgeous man who sells bagels in the work cafeteria (Taako) on the cruise with him. There is fake dating! There is tension! There is romance! I love this fic so much, I want to eat it.
a lesson in boy math - Also by Larissa! Speed-dating, Taakitz style. Both Taako and Kravitz are the best shade of weird in this <3
fashion statement by @journalofimprobablethings - Taako takes Lup's robe when he finds her and the umbrella. Lucretia deals with that. This fic? Destroyed me. And I loved it. It's pretty full of angst but the good kind, y'know?? I'm in love.
That's all I got this year!! I hope you all enjoy these fics as much as I did! They're all incredible and I love seeing all the different ideas and takes everyone has :O
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yanderes-galore · 1 year ago
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Hello, May I request a Cod Cold War ask? Specifically for Weaver x reader who’s part of the zombies strike team? I can imagine that they’re quick to figure out things (as you need to be for the Easter eggs) yet tough as they need to be? If not, I guess can I request Bell x reader (Bell may be hard to write for since they’re a player created character but I figured you do something cool with it!)
-MsPlacedHero
Ps, Chase loved the cookie I gave to him saying it was from you!
I'll try Bell as I'm a bit more familiar with them! Happy he liked the cookie even if it was a long time ago. Hope you enjoy :) Bell is referred to as They/Them as you did not specify what kind of Bell you wanted.
This is mostly rambling and may be short but it was me giving my view on the character and their potential. I wanted to explore it a bit so there's no real plot.
Yandere! Bell Concept/Overview
Pairing: Romantic/Platonic
Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Mentioned self-aware behavior but not focused, General Bell thoughts, Stalking, Brainwashing, General yandere behavior, Character death, Dubious companionship.
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Bell can be both interesting yet difficult to write so I will try to keep this rather general.
Bell could be difficult since their character is primarily meant for the player to insert themselves into.
They're meant to be so the player can interact with the story and feel like a part of it.
This would be difficult to try and convey, however, it opens many different possibilities.
Bell would be like a customizable yandere.
In a story you can pick and choose how you'd want Bell to be.
Bell would work even better in a "Self-Aware" story since they'd act as a host for the player and are extremely player dependent.
Your little puppet.
A reflection of you.
Overall Bell could really have any sort of yandere personality traits due to being a blank canvas.
You could see Bell as soft or someone who follows their darling like a puppy.
Maybe you could see them as a worship yandere.
Maybe you could see them as cruel, perhaps even prior to the brainwashing?
As a result, the darling is just as customizable.
You could be a part of the CIA or know Bell prior to the brainwashing.
There's a lot of potential.
The things is, how to write Bell is you'd need to be specific.
That's why I'm mostly just looking over the character.
Honestly my favorite ideas may be the Self-Aware one and Bell with a fellow CIA agent.
The Self-Aware one is self explanatory, I mentioned it before.
But the CIA agent one could also be fun to explore.
You know you shouldn't get attached or involve yourself with Bell.
They've been brainwashed with MK-ULTRA to find out info on Perseus.
That's all, afterwards they may just be tossed away.
For now they just need to be alive until the mission is finished and over.
However, Bell appears to have some sort of adoration for you one way or another.
Maybe somewhere in their memories they seem to recall you being important to them.
It's most likely a fabricated memory to coax more information out of them, but it works.
How Bell deals with such information could vary.
They may follow you around, they may be overly protective/clingy, they could be possessive, they could be any number of things.
They don't understand why you never like being around them.
Truthfully you either don't care or don't want to be attached.
Either way, Bell would want to treat you more than a "comrade".
They either see you as a close friend they "fought alongside" or maybe even a lover.
They have no idea you and Adler just need them for information.
Bell may most likely be "gotten rid of" before they become too much of a problem for you due to their obsession.
If they are a softer and more docile yandere, it feels horrible to know Adler did them in.
If they are rougher and more intense, it may feel like a relief when they're gone.
Player created characters like Bell have potential to be interesting once you have traits decided.
Unfortunately as a result I can't really assign Bell any definitive yandere behavior for them.
They seem like a puppet, a husk, meant to follow orders due to all of the brainwashing.
Regardless... a blank slate character can still have endless potential if you have a plot to work with.
No two Bell stories would be the same, essentially.
Bell is a wild card when it comes to their darling.
Which can mean they're a dangerous yandere if you think about it.
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tenjiiku · 1 year ago
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21 : only
The chime of the shop rings with prominence. You already know who it is without lifting your gaze from your newspaper.
“Darling, love of my life, fire of my heart,” The man sings — an annoying, sickly sweet tone — his volume increasing as he glides his way to the front reception desk, “The machine is broken again.”
You cough, adjusting your newspaper. He is so abnormally tall his hair is all you can see from your periphery. Why he presents himself in such a way you never want to know.
“Then go to another laundromat,” you murmur quickly. You have grown accustomed to dismissing his outlandish behaviour. It is a second instinct at this point.
“Nah. I wouldn’t receive such service anywhere else — you are special, you know? One of a kind.”
You choke a little at his hoax of his compliment, “You make me sick.”
A large hand puts your newspaper down. You allow it, only because you wanted this interaction to end. Even seated on a swivel chair, elevated to its highest position, you have to crane your head a little to meet him in the eye. You see yourself in the reflection of the dark glasses he cunningly chooses to wear inside.
When you scowl he returns it with a cheshire grin.
“Thank you. You’re too sweet.”
“What do you want, Satoru?” You do not use his last name or any honorific to address him despite his age. He was older than you by a few years — but certainly did not act the part — so you do not think he deserves your respect. Your host father told you he does — something about his being from a prominent private school as an educator, which you cannot possibly fathom being the truth. But only in front of you is Satoru Gojo an inane, odd man with a need for clean, dry-cleaned clothes that, for some strange reason he has conjectured in his equally baffling mind, only you can provide.
“You.”
The wrinkle that had formed between your brows drops in less than a second. This was the typical routine. You would get annoyed — and he would get a sick kick from that. You refused to be his entertainment, so, for once you decide to be the bigger person.
“My friend is a police officer. He is five minutes away,” you retort, not being the bigger person. Though actions did speak louder than words.
Satoru places his elbow on the desk. He has to bend his back in an uncomfortable manner to do so — and he leans his face on his palm which only makes the position and his stature appear more cretinous and acute.
“You’re pretty when you’re angry, do you know?”
“Go die.” (You are being a bigger person today only through your actions. Not your words, you quickly decide.)
“Can you let me buy you a coffee? Put me out of my misery?”
“Leave me alone. I will scream for A-chan.” (Your dog, sleeping peacefully somewhere in a corner near the dryers.)
“Awh,” he coos, tilting his head only more. You wonder if he has back problems. “That’s vulgar. I thought you were a good girl.”
At this, you flounder. Fisting your hands together, you rub at your forehead. Satoru possessed the putrid ability to irk you like no other. You look down at your textbook — you were on chapter five, studying deadlock before he came — and it was certainly fitting given his arrival.
“I am. For people I can tolerate.” You retort, monotone to not please his sadism.
He smiles anyways and leans forward, gazing towards where you look — a few sheets of loose-leaf paper with your begrimed writing. You can catch a glimpse of his azure coloured eyes through his lashes from this angle. At first they scared you. It was an utter oddity to you — you had seen nothing as strange from all your years tending to this run-down laundromat. People who came and went were not as nearly as fascinating as Satoru Gojo’s eye colour, unfortunately, but that was not to say they were not as interesting. Odd characters entered every now and then considering your laundromat being less than 5 metres away from a graveyard — which only begged the existence of Satoru all together.
Perhaps he was visiting someone every time he came. You liked to make stories of customers who you would encounter. That was Satoru’s because you could not think of anything else.
You never asked, he never said. This was how it went.
“What’s all this?” He questions, his tone softer than usual. You feel his eyes travel to your right shoulder, making you self-conscious.
For a second you think he knows of the pain you have been feeling there.
You shake your head of the plausibility.
“Homework,” you reply, curt and straight, adjusting your posture in your seat as a sudden wave of bashfulness has overcome you.
“For what?”
“My operating systems class.”
Satoru coos — treating you like you are some sort of stray cat when he is the one encroaching on your property. “Sounds hard. You’re real smart, then?”
You look up, mouth falling into a line as you mumble a small, “Yeah.”
You want this conversation to come to an end. But Satoru liked to season his prey and you were not an exception. You remember encountering one of his students once — you think their name was Megumi — who had told you to steer clear of Satoru if you wanted your sanity to remain intact. It was solid advice, the only possibility it did not cover was Satoru forcing himself in front of you no matter what turn you took.
“You have to give me something to work with here,” he moans dramatically.
You take some money from the tip jar and hold it out in front of him as an incentive.
“I’ll pay you ¥800 to leave me alone?”
Satoru takes the money, but he doesn’t leave.
“You’re a tough one, aren’t you?” He sneers at you. You crack your shoulders and decide to get started on the problem at hand because at this rate you will never finish your homework.
Walking towards the washers, you start speaking, not looking behind you to see if he is following because you already know he is.
“I don’t have time for this. Which machine isn’t operating?”
For once in his life, maybe out of the glory that overcame him from getting the upper hand on you once again, he complies.
“Third washer on the left, near the door.”
You walk towards it. Satoru stands next to you. His clothes float in a puddle that has formed within the washer — a drainage problem. Taking his clothes out of it, you rinse the soaked water in the sink and place them in another washer. If he chose to use half his brain he could have solved this himself. But after observing his smiles from your periphery and through the reflection of the glass door you come to realize he is enjoying himself.
An hour comes and go. Satoru talks your ear off at the reception even as others come and go. He puts his wet clothes in the dryer and folds them when they are finished, into a duffel bag.
When he stands in front of you, silent for the first time since his arrival, you know he is about to leave. You always give him a nice goodbye.
“Time for your weekly departure? Please do not bring clothes stained with blood to be dry cleaned next time. Mother almost fainted last week and is growing suspicious.”
Satoru smiles at you which lets you know that he understands your joke. He is handsome but he is nothing of your world, you realize. He only ever exists within the four wall of your parent’s laundromat and will only ever smell of floral detergent. It was better this way, you think.
“Awh. You’re worried for me?”
Your lips lay flat and you look down at your textbook.
“Have a nice day as well,” he murmurs, low. It catches you by surprise. When you lift your head up, he is already gone.
The pain on your right shoulder has stopped when the chime of the door opening and closing rings.
You pretend to ignore it — the feeling of his eyes and the growing aches surfacing within you — and go back to studying.
.
Satoru waits five minutes after he has left you to acknowledge his student following him. He stops near the abandoned phone booth he had found you sulking in two weeks prior — curled up with your legs tucked to your chest — pondering on about nonsensical things.
It was not the worst of the side effects you possessed after leaving your clan years ago and starting a new life with the Kobayashi’s at their laundromat.
“Megumi-chan, care to join me?”
He smiles when he sees his student scowl at him and he only continues to walk as he catches up.
“Why do you insist on pestering her? You know she will never remember. Yaga-san will be mad,” his student asserts after meeting his shoulders
Satoru does not answer right away. He recalls a fragment of a memory from his childhood. He had been doted on since his birth. You were a refreshing rarity, always hoping for a life greater than the one you were subjugated to — the daughter of a lowly maid, a normal girl for all purposes yet never treated as such. He remembers a small conversation you shared for less than a minute when he was only eight years old and you were five — how one day you wanted to be able to go to Hokkaido for the ice sculpture festival during the Winter. It was such a naive thing to aspire for. A cruel irony, really, that you still remained the same after so many years.
A snowflake falls towards Satoru’s shoe, but never quite graces its body.
Slinging an arm around his student, he answers brazenly, “I don’t know. I suppose I’m bored these days. Entertain me.”
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uncommon-alterhuman · 6 months ago
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I cannot relate to anyone else in the fictionkind community. Everyone "kins" someone or a character is "their kin" or they have "fictotypes" or a "fictionself" and a "canon" and it makes me want to fucking cry. There is no one else like me. I have never met someone else like me who just IS a fictional character. I know that is what fictionkin means, but the current popular language used does not reflect that. And I cannot interact with my own space because I KNOW others will use that language on me (they already do) and it makes me ridiculously dysphoric. Like mental hospital levels of dysphoric. I don't know what to do. (Sorry it got venty)
We understand what you mean! Both in something like this and as a system. We have introjects who ARE their source (though they are trying to source separate in a healthy way on their own time) but I (the host) know what you mean. With some of my therio/kintypes I am quite literally that. This is a safe space here where that language, while although used often, won’t be forced on you. Don’t ever be sorry for venting, this is a safe space to do so. We do hope that one day you can find others like you if that’s something you wish!
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thekindblacksmith · 7 months ago
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The Kind Blacksmith - Introductory
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Welcome to the Kind Blacksmith Development blog!
The Kind Blacksmith is a branching narrative horror game - set in a medieval fantasy Kingdom - with queer characters and themes at its core.
This game is inspired by Titles like Pathologic, Pentiment and the Spirit Hunter Series.
~~~
You are the Blacksmith. Your Kingdom, once rich and flourishing, has been ravaged not only by war, but by an alien parasite. The parasite latched onto the jewelry of your neighbours. Their armor. Their tools. Unseen until the infected metals got into the chosen host's bloodstream. Slowly eating them up from inside, changing them.
You avoided infection, realizing early on that metal on bare skin was the culprit for the quick spread.
Now you are alone. Fending for yourself in the village you grew up in. Sometimes, wandering refugees pass your village. Sharing news of the war. Of the invaders in golden armor, pillaging and killing, making their way inland from to shore. You worry not. They too, would be ravaged by the parasite before they could come knock on your door.
To your surprise, there eventually is a knock on your door. A dark and tall Knight in beautiful golden armor, at least what is left of it, stumbling inside. Alone. Begging you to help him. You've seen the progression of the parasite before. You know he has not much time left. You could kick him out, let the sickness take its course. Or end his misery right there. But something in you takes pity. Maybe it's his pathetic crying. Maybe it's because you are lonely. Or maybe it's how the light reflects in his amber eyes.
Maybe you could fix him.
~~~
The goal is simpel. You have 6 days to homebrew remedies and heal the Knight. You gather ingredients and make cures to fix his four humors. You are not a doctor. You don't fully know what you are doing. But at least you have the journal of your late mother, who was a herbalist, to help you on your task.
While you try to find a cure, you will get the opportunity to interact and talk with the Knight. Depending on your choices, your relationship and story paths will change.
And there is always an option to end his suffering...
The game will be mostly presented in a Visual Novel Style, while the gathering section acts as a Top Down mini game to break the monotony.
I set up this blog to reflect and update on my development process along the line. I would love for you to join me!
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camellia-thea · 6 months ago
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I cannot brain properly but I have GOT to know more about amara and dove. tell me anything - @pretend-pretend-vampire
hello!! thank you for the ask! i will ramble about them <3
dove and amara are from a recent vtm 5e game, set in aotearoa. dove is my pc, and amara is a tzimisce spc played by the amazing @balthazarslostlibrary, our storyteller. we're currently on break for life reasons, but i look forward to when we get to play again. this is a (very) long ramble about character choices, meta, and a little bit of narrative.
a little context for dove! she spent sixteen years as a ghoul to a ventrue named rochefort, before being poached from him by an as of yet unknown lasombra. she was abandoned him, but due to having the with a blood bond to him, by way of having both the long bond, and the bond slave flaws. it took several months for the bond to drop away, and so now that's she's finally in her right mind -- after almost 17 years of being bound to someone -- the chronicle began.
dove and amara first met at elysium; dove's first. they wandered the museum hosting the elysium and ended up in the deep sea exhibit! (this is, by the way, a real exhibit in the museum te papa, a part of the exhibit te taiao. it has a colossal squid!) i just think it's super fun that they wandered around with a whole load of wet specimen from the deep. amara invited dove out to its haven, a tattoo parlour.
dove then made a visit on her own, and as a gift, gave amara a set of her ribs.
mechanically, amara is dove's mawla, and i love them a lot.
i think a lot for me that rests about their relationship is how the pair interact with interpersonal relationships.
tzimisce have so much about possession; they are built to have really fucked up views of people and ownership. mechanically, their bane is grounded -- they must rest in a place (be that concrete or more abstract) with things they own and deem theirs. then their compulsion is covetousness. i love that conceptually, beyond dove and amara. vampires leaning into the inhuman way they view their surroundings because of their immortality, their power, their everything.
i didn't intentionally make dove to play off of amara, or tzimisce in general, but i've always had a thing around perception of freedom and identity (look at taralin, my primary d&d pc--it's a theme!), and i wanted to play with the concept of someone who had finally gained a significant amount of power and freedom, and have them struggle to find their feet, and make bad decisions as they figure out who they are. dove was the culmination of a whole load of ideas that i really enjoy playing with. with the lasombra technology issues, her past as someone good with computers isolated her from her skills. an absentee sire, and someone who held a grudge isolated her socially. in addition, making her as a character designed to experience blood bonds, one drink to triple the length of the bond? delicious, and i really wanted to play a character who desperately was grappling for control over her own life while being built to not be in control.
having amara present? a tzimisce on side? honestly made the choice for me; there was never ever going to be a way for that to go smoothly in any capacity, simply because of both character's designs.
someone who never wants to be owned again and a character who cannot help but claim ownership over anything close to it? i wanted to have dove grapple with that.
there's another aspect of it i touch on in anatomy too, which is a character with the ability to entirely remake themselves in whatever image they wish and another who cannot perceive themself at all. dove's loss of identity through being a ghoul, and then that manifesting as someone who cannot ever see herself again? amara has the capacity to gift her control over her body, her reflection, as it were.
i think it also comes down to the fact that dove doesn't know how to not be owned by someone entirely. i don't think she'll ever be able to separate herself from that past.
i think vampires often get stuck in who they were right before they turned. it's the idea of being frozen in time and unable to move past that traumatic event; you died. how could you ever get past that?
and i think that's an aspect of dove too. the feeling that you'll never get past your trauma and for her, it might genuinely be true. but that also might be her own perspective stopping her, i don't think i know, nor do i necessarily think i need to know yet. and dove spent 16 years knowing that she'd die a ghoul, or become a vampire. there was never going to be a different end for her. and so, that's had a massive effect on her decision making.
one of the first things she did was to give herself over to mother russo (the lasombra primogen) and agree to join the cam. her logic was, this gives me protection, this keeps me safe. strength in numbers, and if something goes wrong i'll have allies. but i don't think she wanted to. she wanted to remain autarkis, but she didn't know how to exist without some sort of external direction. being given a task gave her so much relief, even as it made her feel resentment. it's funny, because i as a player hate that dove is cam. i think it's going to completely fuck her over and i think it was the worse option for her. but for her? completely correct and i think it's going to hit hard when she realises she's locked herself back into being at the bottom rung.
i think amara in equal respects represents everything dove desperately wants, and everything she despises. amara has the control dove wants, the respect of the wider community, in as much as it can control its own life and isn't (visibly) beholden to anyone. but, dove knows what amara is. knows what the tzimisce are, and is terrified of that too.
but i also think dove views amara as the closest kindred to trustworthy as she can get. there's a lot of paradoxical thinking in my girl. i, the player, was given the option to have mother russo as my mawla instead of amara, and i hummed and hawed about it a lot before going with my initial instinct (which was definitely motivated in part by my love for tzimisce). but despite how willingly i flung dove at the cam, she felt far more vulnerable with mother russo, (despite being willing to let amara at her rib cage) and she hated that. amara treated dove as a person. that was the real deciding thing on dove's thought process. there was a collection of meta things too (such as wanting to play with possessiveness and dove's control issues.) dove knows what to expect from amara. she knows what it is, and while there are certainly hidden depths, dove thinks that she can at least trust amara to be genuine with the push-pull of a quid pro quo relationship.
and i think part of the really fun thing is at present, dove is completely disenchanted by her coterie. she doesn't want to be there, but they've got a job to complete for the cam. she's a bitch, she looks down on them, and that's driving her to the only person she really thinks is capable, amara. and i think dove will grow to like and respect her coterie, but unfortunately two very well placed frenzies on our gangrel's part has completely lost any potential respect she has for the others. and i think there's a whole load of potential fun things there for dove siding with amara over the coterie, or a push pull situation of dove being places between what the coterie wants and what amara wants. we'll see when we pick up again.
if you want to read more about amara, there is another (much much longer) piece that features him! Te whakawhitiwhiti: The Transformation was written by my storyteller about amara and two of their ghouls. this is set before dove and amara's first meeting, and primarily focuses on one of amara's ghouls, hine, coming into her own, with a lot of fun vampire stuff alongside.
if you have any follow ups, feel free to ask! it's been super fun to ramble about them both here
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pmpmyread · 8 days ago
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2024 in Two Half Steps: Thoughts from a new writer on Tumblr
An end-of-year reflection on the pmpmyread x Tumblr experiment thus far, in the form of some yapping absolutely no one asked for, "for posterity".
While the creation of this Tumblr blog predates June 29, when I published my first JJK fic, I consider today to more or less mark six months since I joined the platform in earnest, as a writer.
A few days after sharing that first fic, once the high began tapering off, I vowed to make the conscious effort to refuse to play the engagement numbers game, judging it to be too slippery of a slope for the little it would yield, particularly for someone who is prone to slipping into the mindset of a mentally exhausting day job ruled by OKRs and KPIs as a measure of success.
"Watch number go up" would certainly not be the energy I'd bring to this endeavor.
Having said that, I did quietly hit a few neat milestones over the last few weeks, both on here and on AO3, and these little quantifications of how people received some of my writing over the last six months, modest as they may be, are only incredibly encouraging to me. Even after the recent cleanup I conducted on my followers list for what appeared to be bots/ageless blogs, I was surprised by the number of people I was left with on my tiny island of the internet.
If you follow me, if you’ve ever commented on, interacted with, or even just took the time to read something I wrote, thank you! I appreciate it more than words could ever convey.
Now, here’s a numbers game I'm willing to play, as someone who was struggling to get anything down on paper this time last year:
25-30 is the number of original/non-reblogged posts I shared this year. I didn’t know how to tag when I first started and I don’t really have it in me to hunt them lol. They were likely yap anyway. 17 of those were fanfics, 3 were meta posts/character analysis 11 Nanami fics (rookie numbers tbh lol), 2 Gojo fics, 2 Geto fics, 1 Nobara-centric story, and 1 Yuji and Sukuna-centric thing 5 gifted written works total, 3 of which I haven’t shared here. The presence of this metric is mind-blowing in and of itself because there was a time in a not so distant past when I would not dream of being confident enough to gift anything I wrote to someone. 6 Destiny fics, 5 of which were re-shares and 1 that I actually wrote this year. This is also an achievement on its own considering the terrible writer’s block and general dissatisfaction I’ve had with this game this year. I’m grateful for this small but mighty fandom and its talented artists that keeping it alive, in spite of everything. $17.15 is the yearly hosting fee for the OC writing blog I registered a couple of years ago. Now that I’ve finally found my spark to write OC again, thanks largely to my fanfic endeavors, I can finally justify its expense LMFAO.
If you’re a writer or really just any kind of creator on here, I encourage you to take a short trip down the soon-to-be memory lane that is the year 2024 and take stock of what you’ve created this year. Zooming out to view your broader personal progress and accomplishments is crucial for maintaining motivation, reminding yourself of the “why” and of the passion behind your efforts. We truly only do this for the love of the game!
If you’re a reader and you’ve made it this far (here’s a medal lol), thanks again for being here, I hope this can serve as a small glimpse into the journey behind this account. I admittedly run this blog a bit like my social life lol; long periods consisting largely of keeping to myself, punctuated by short bursts of high social energy. That said, I’d definitely like to get to know you more in 2025!
Finally, if you’re someone who sits in between these two categories, here’s some food for thought: In the initial six months of 2024, I was only silently reading the wonderful works others bravely posted on here, hovering in that awkward area between a desire to share my writing again and an aversion to being perceived.
It was exactly halfway through the year that I took a chance to post something for the first time, and though I was nervous in the moment, it was the most freeing thing. Mainly because I did it and I didn’t die lol.
If you feel that nagging from an idea you have, and that flame of creativity, if you’ve been eyeing that half-completed outline, or even just have some scenes replaying like a movie in your mind, I hope you know that you already are a creator.
At the risk of sounding corny, I’d invite you to consider this upcoming new year to be a blank page and try putting pen to paper for some of your ideas, and see where it goes. If you’re so inclined, create a post, tag it and send it off to the world, whether here on Tumblr or elsewhere. It may feel daunting or even a bit scary, but I promise you’ll feel accomplished and relieved to have finally tried it. And when you do it once, it’s always easier to do it again.
Just please do remember to do this for yourself and for your enjoyment first and foremost, to find your own voice and style and to resist the urge to compare your journey to others’. The best way to dismantle the thief of joy is to prevent it from sneaking onto the premises in the first place. The rest will follow. 🩵
As for 2025, I do have some aspirations for this blog, though I refuse to label them as resolutions LOL. I want to explore some more ideas for JJK and D2, I want to incorporate my underrepresented identities into my stories, I want to start cross-posting my original content over on another dedicated Tumblr page, I want, I want, I want...
I don’t know how much I’ll realistically get to, because life is life and I am also looking to make some rather big moves next year. Tumblr is only a small piece of my writing journey which itself is only a small part of my busy day to day, but all in all, I am so pleased to have re-engaged with this hobby on this platform.
For all of its flaws, Tumblr has a distinct flavor in its interactive element that I have yet to see elsewhere, it’s connected me with wonderful people, provided a much-needed creative outlet, exposed me to wonderful works, and helped to keep me grounded during what was an otherwise pretty hectic year.
Thanks for reading, and I wish you a safe, healthy and very happy New Year!
(I listened to the Comic Bakery Title song while writing this. My future self will get the reference hashtag posterity)
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lserver362reviews · 1 year ago
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What a show, what a journey, what a town! I started watching Northern Exposure during the week between starting the job of my dreams and leaving a really bad workplace (one that I was desperate to go to because I was fleeing a REALLY bad workplace) in March of 2022. I finished the series tonight, the eve of my departure for my adventure from Twin Peaks to Cicely. I have followed along with the Northern OverExposure Podcast (catch me on their episode on Season 6 Episode 4 The Letter) over this year plus and have had a wonderful time live tweeting my thoughts and interacting with Northern Exposure fans and the hosts of that show, Charles and Lee. I've lost track of how many people have responded to me watching the show, irl, with, "Oh I loved that show!!" My parents (My dad said, "you don't remember when we watched that?" and I had to remind him I wasn't alive yet), my boss (who "stopped watching when Joel left"-spoiler!), my coworkers (and their siblings), my friends (who are accompanying me to the Informal Moosefest this weekend in Roslyn). I've also been able to share the show with my loved ones (showing it to my step-sisters in Montreal and showing it to my sister- the episode where Maggie turns 30 (season 4 episode 1)-a month before my sister turned 30). The Thanksgiving episode (season 4 episode 8) will be a yearly rewatch for me and my family now (my aunt was willing to watch it twice this past year). This show is never ever predictable, but always self reflective, and incredibly quirky (dream sequences or a gimmick abound). The characters are beautiful and the storylines range from profound to bonkers. The representation for Native people, gay people, hypochondriacs, strong women, hip girlies, manic pixie dream boys, and wise, as well as unwise, adults, was crucial for the time it aired on TV (maybe not all of those archetypes really needed the representation but once I started thinking about this ensemble cast I couldn't stop). I will always love the Zydeco style theme for something set so far away from the home of that music, but that's what the show is about. Finding joy in a place that maybe isn't your home. I haven't even gotten to my ideal man, love of my life, absolute smart cute sweetie boy himself, Chris Stevens. I was already a John Corbett fan but his monologues as Chris sent me over the moon. Where can I get me one of those? And if I'm getting into character specifics I also need to mention Ruth-Anne and Ed's relationship. Ed interacting with anybody (whether on a spiritual plane (One Who Waits) or a physical person (Shelly)), is a great time, but him and Ruth-Anne just have such a beautiful connection. I'm looking forward to dancing on Ruth-Anne's grave this weekend. Also I loved Mike Monroe (sue me, HE'S A LAWYER!). This show did so much with what seemed like so little. It's a straight forward premise, as it's known to Spanish speakers, "Doctor en Alaska", but what unfolded to me was much much bigger. I can't say too much about the short comings of season 6, but I never hated it. Characters acted a little more strange than usual and things felt different, maybe sometimes a little stale, but it's still the same town. It's funny to me how a fictional place, so far away, can remind me of my own hometown and state. There really is something universal in the particular. I have loved (mostly) every minute of watching this show (Maurice took the longest to grow on me) and shouting my reaction to it into the void only to have others respond (thoughtfully and with enthusiasm). It's really indicative of where I'm at in my life and I feel incredibly lucky. So thank you, everyone involved in the making of Northern Exposure, the Northern OverExposure Podcast, and anyone who lets this town into their heart. You'll find me, and many others, there. Happy Moosefest everyone, antlers up! <3
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bigskydreaming · 6 months ago
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I actually can not believe I've never posted this X-Men headcanon (that turned into a whole treatment/thesis) here on this blog, but for those few followers who know who Dallas Gibson aka Specter is, or Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, or just anything about Academy X in general.....enjoy!
(Mostly because I don't trust the random PDF hosting site I've got it stored on and I like to keep stuff backed up online and not just in my files so posting it for posterity here anyway.)
Anyway, I give you:
THE GREAT MANIFESTO OF WHAT IF DALLAS GIBSON WAS THE SECRET LOVE CHILD ONE NIGHT STAND CHILD OF BOBBY DRAKE AND LAYNIA PETROVNA: A CRACK FIC THEORY OUTLINE SOMETHING IN THREE PARTS
(Relax. Its actually only about 10,000 words long. That's like, barely ANYTHING when its me. Its a itty bitty teeny tiny nothing of a thing. Hardly even counts).
So, okay. I have approximately 80 different pitches for what to do with Iceman at any given time, but here's one that I know would never in a million years happen purely because the X-Office will never let the 05 be the ages I perceive them as which is mid to late thirties at this point. Like I picture Bobby as around thirty-six or so, though for him it actually makes sense for him to be eternally portrayed as LOOKING like he's in his early 20s, since that was the age he first transmuted to his ice form and so makes sense to be his default template/molecular blueprint his power resets him to every time he has to make a new body from scratch. BUT I DIGRESS.
Anyway, wildly self-indulgent pitch ahead, which ties into a cracky headcanon I've had since Academy X, includes a couple OCs, and explores his past history with Laynia, long before he was out, as well as his connections to other heroes beyond the X-Men like Laynia and her brother, Black Widow, etc. And then it combines my ideas for giving Bobby an antagonist of his own, more characters to interact with other than major X-Men so his story beats aren't reliant on whatever's going on with other X-Men and who's available, and gives him concrete reasons to want to level up quickly in terms of how much social influence he wields among mutantkind, take more prominent/proactive stances on things, etc. While still leaving room for him to be goofy and always trying to use humor to seem more relatable, less threatening, etc.
So. I'm picturing this as a triptych like Sabretooth, three interlocked minis of five issues each that form a trilogy by the end.
First mini:
ICEMAN AND DARKSTAR: SHADOW GAMES
ISSUE ONE:
First issue opens with Bobby in his apartment in LA, sometime after he's left the most recent X-Men lineup and is back to living off of Krakoa. He's just gotten in and is going through his mail where he comes across a card with no return address. Opening it, he finds its a condolence card that says "Thinking of you on this anniversary of such a tragic day." His internal monologue, conveyed in caption boxes and a key element of this whole mini, shows he's totally confused by this. He has no idea why this date would hold any special significance, or who would have sent the card or why. (The specific date would just be somewhere around the date of publication, in a world where this actually got published, lol. Let's go with April 27th, for instance).
Deciding to just shrug it off as some weird thing, Bobby's basically just being moody for a page or two of reflection before Scott calls. They're trying to do better about keeping in touch even when they're not on the same team. Some generic catching up, and Bobby eventually mentions he's just been in a weird mood all day, to which Scott says he's not surprised. Turns out Scott's noticed that for as long as he can remember now, Bobby's ALWAYS in a shitty mood every time April 27th rolls around. Yes, Scott is anal enough that after years of Bobby being weird around the same time every year, he eventually narrowed it down to its epicenter. This very day. Bobby is both weirded out and touched by Scott's attention to something so specific about Bobby...more attentive than even Bobby himself. When they hang up, he's still clueless about why today would be such a big deal to him, but apparently there's a pattern. That card might not have been so random after all.
Confused & uncomfortable now, Bobby decides to get out of the house & just do hero stuff. That always makes him feel better. He helps put out some fires, divert a tidal wave, gating back and forth across the planet, restless. The whole issue, even as he uses his usual banter to make the people he helps feel at ease in the wake of whatever catastrophe they were just saved from, his internal monologue shows he's second-guessing himself constantly, being his own worst enemy, criticizing every choice he makes about his saves, how he could've done things better, etc. Things come to a head when he intervenes at a protest - I don't have a specific cause in mind but ideally something non mutant related - as a group attacks the protesters until Bobby drops in to protect them.
The protesters thank him but are pretty cynical about the whole thing. They note that this happens constantly and most of those same people will be back stirring up trouble and violence at another event like this down the line. They hope for change for the better but point out that some people never will, because they're not interested in better. They're happy with their hate. Bobby reflects on what they said, and here's where his thoughts start to take a particularly dark turn. He thinks of some of the ways his powers could be used to ensure those ppl never hurt anyone again, how the full potential of his powers include a lot of lethal options, and why shouldn't he use them when its true most of these ppl will just commit heinous acts in the future, and he might not be around to protect their victims next time. He even reflects on how he's used some of those darker options in the past, so its not like it'd be crossing a line he hasn't already....
Disturbed by the fact that the only reason he can think of not to go there is he's a hero and heroes don't do that, he just wants to be anywhere else in a hurry so he skips heading for a gate and does something he does only rarely....turns himself into mist and starts to disperse, to teleport somewhere far away, but as he does he gets the weirdest feeling, like his spread out consciousness is brushing up against someone else's. He's not alone he realizes. And he stops and recoalesces right there and talking to the empty air he demands that someone show themselves. A man appears out of nowhere, laughing.
Stranger: Your observational skills are a lot sharper than they used to be, Drake. Back in the day, you had no idea when I was around.
Bobby: Who are you and why are you talking like I'm supposed to know who you are? I've never seen you before in my life.
Stranger: Wow, it sucks to realize you left way less of an impression on someone than they left on you. I guess it makes sense though. I mean, when you KILLED me almost twenty years ago, this very day - that was obviously a big deal for me, but hey, I've been out of the loop awhile so what do I know? Maybe it was just another Tuesday for you.
Bobby: Are you the one who sent me that card earlier? Who the hell are you and what kind of game are you playing?
Stranger: Same one we were playing all those years ago, Bob. Before you got all pissy and flipped the board before I got a chance to make my next move. But thanks to the wonders of Krakoan resurrection, now we can pick up right where we left off. It really is a miracle, isn't it?
Bobby: Well maybe you should check with the Five and make sure they didn't bring you back with a few screws loose, because I'm pretty sure I'd remember this if it was actually me you were playing this game with.
Stranger: Maybe you just forgot. Or who knows? Maybe someone made you forget.
Bobby: Okay, yeah, I'm bored now. Time to put you on ice.
He starts icing the area around the stranger, intending to trap him in a block of ice, but the stranger just laughs and turns incorporeal, becoming a transparent outline hovering above the street....so to anyone who hadn't been watching their conversation - like the very protesters Bobby had saved earlier - it looked like Bobby was just furiously creating some kind of ice attack that didn't seem to be aimed at anyone...other than them. The now ghost-like stranger zips over to the crowd and starts weaving among them, seeming to whisper in a bunch of peoples' ears....and before long, the crowd that had just been saved from one attack and were primed not to just sit down and take another, were ready to choose fight over flight, becoming a mob headed for Bobby.
He constructs some ice barriers to just keep them at bay, not really worried they'll hurt him and more concerned about not hurting them, when the stranger's ghost form swirls around Bobby, hovering above his shoulder and now whispering in his ear. But there's no dialogue in the stranger's speech bubble....just caption boxes displaying Bobby's internal monologue....and now calling into question every single box earlier in the issue.
Caption box: Isn't it surreal how the right words whispered in the right ears can dramatically change a person's perception of something....or someone? How easy it is to change peoples' courses....even the course of their entire life?
Caption box: And fear, well, fear's one of the best motivators there is. So much easier to get someone to listen to you when they're afraid of something else.
Caption box: But maybe you can't really relate to that. A guy as powerful as you, you're probably not afraid of much these days.
Caption box: That wasn't always true though, was it? This take you back at all? Remind you of when you were just a kid, and there was a mob gunning for you just for the crime of being mutant and vulnerable? I bet you were scared then.
Caption box: Considering what a guy like you could do if he were scared enough, if the right person used the right words as the spark to ignite all that fear....the world's probably pretty lucky that Saint Xavier was there to be the voice you listened to back then, huh. Y'know, instead of someone like Magneto or Apocalypse being the ones to tell traumatized, impressionable little you what to do with all that fear and anger you felt....
Caption box: Do you ever think about that, Drake? Wonder if all that separates you from the worst of the worst is you had the right voice in your ear at the right time? That maybe there's nothing special about you at all, nothing innately noble, heroic.
Caption box: That you were just....lucky?
Caption box: Food for thought. Anyway, I gotta run for now, but I'll be seeing you, Bob.
Caption box: We have so much to catch up on.
Then its just Bobby left keeping the mob at bay with his ice structures, him visibly shutting down, trying not to think too much and just running on instinct, until a hand reaches down from above and snatches him up into the air, until the streets are just a speck below them. Bobby looks up and to his shock its Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, his old friend and teammate from back when he was on the Champions as a teenager. The issue closes with her saying: "Hello, Bobby. I'd say its nice to see you and all the usual pleasantries, but we don't have much time. And we need to talk about our son."
ISSUE TWO
This issue switches to Laynia's POV with her internal monologue in caption boxes, and picks up with them having teleported somewhere secluded via Laynia's powers (she's much more practiced using hers to teleport than Bobby is using his that way). This issue goes back and forth between past and present, as during Laynia's narration of past events they're shown as if they're happening in real time.
Bobby's pointing out that they were never together, and considering she was the one who turned him down, you'd think she'd be aware of that. Laynia responds that no, they were never a couple, but they did sleep together once and once only....she'd been feeling particularly down about her ex-boyfriend Yuri after running into him, it was a rebound thing for her and she never hid that but Bobby took it to mean more than it did anyway and acted a fool about it, aligning with their canon interactions at the very end of their Champions run, before getting on the same page and they went back to just being friends.
Except, Laynia says, then she found out she was pregnant, and he flew to Russia to join her and decide what to do together, while everyone else thought he was still at UCLA. He doesn't remember any of this, because blocks were put in their memories, hiding everything related to this. But it did happen, and they do have a son. She'll explain everything, but they need to keep moving around, as she doesn't want the man who just confronted Bobby to overhear any of this and its very hard to detect when he's around. Their best option is to keep on the move, teleporting frequently and not staying anywhere long enough for him to track where they are.
Bobby: Oh crap. HE'S not our son, is he?
Laynia: Hell no.
Bobby: Phew, I was worried we had a Stryfe situation for a second there. I am barely holding it together as is and I am NOT equipped to handle an evil Bobby Jr. from the future.
Laynia reaffirms that he is definitely not their son, but he is the reason for much of what happened back when they were eighteen. They only ever knew him by his moniker, 'Doubting Thomas' and honestly were never sure when exactly he started watching them and messing with their heads. That's his MO. His power lets him turn from flesh and blood into a form made solely of psychic energy...an astral ghost that's invisible, immaterial and can travel via the astral plane. But his only power to affect the material world in that form lies in telepathy. He can project thoughts into someone's mind and its almost impossible to keep him out or tell his intrusions from ordinary thoughts.
She's not sure how he'd fare against other telepaths, but at least with non-psychics, even the best psychic shielding or anti-telepath technology isn't a guarantee against him. Because doesn't try to break into minds, or even sneak past mental defenses. He just surveils his targets, watching them invisibly, learning all he can about them, and then he looks for cracks in whatever mental shields they have. Tiny gaps here and there that he can just whisper into, slipping a thought in amongst the chaos and chatter generated by someone's own mind.
All of which means they never were sure where their own natural fears and paranoia ended, and his whispering began. They were eighteen, she reminds Bobby, already freaking out about this giant life change neither were sure they were ready for, even if they did keep the baby...and neither of them was an ordinary civilian. They were powerful mutants with lots of enemies....from day one, they were concerned that their child would be born with a target on their back just from that. And then there was the fact that one of the things they'd always bonded over was resentment for how early they felt their childhoods ended.
Laynia and her twin brother Nikolai were taken from their parents at birth, and raised separately with government agents for foster parents. They were always intended to be mutant operatives for their government, their lives scripted out for them, and their training began in their early teens. Laynia didn't even know she had a twin brother until she was in her twenties.
And Bobby had always quietly nursed resentment for being put out into the field at the same time as the rest of the 05, all years older than him and with a lot more focus from the Professor. Scott was his protege, a tactical genius, Jean was his preferred pupil in terms of power development, Hank was a bonafide genius, and Warren was a millionaire playboy, a natural spokesman and inevitable future celebrity. Bobby was just Bobby though, with no awareness of his full potential, and the only one the Professor didn't seem to have any real purpose for or interest in. Like he was tacked on as a spare, his presence more of an afterthought than intentional.
So especially in his late teens, after the 05 went their separate ways, Bobby had always been bothered by the fact that he'd gone through all the same traumas and hardships as the rest on their various missions, but always wondering what he was even doing there when it didn't even seem like there was any reason he was supposed to be. Privately he'd always wanted someone - his parents, the Professor, even the older 05 - to question whether there was really nobody else Xavier could have been sending out to fight Magneto, than a fifteen year old too afraid of being abandoned to say no on his own behalf. After all, the issue was complicated by the fact that when his parents weren't fully on board with Bobby going to the Institute, Xavier mindwiped them into thinking he was just at boarding school, and it was only when Bobby was eighteen that the Professor restored their full awareness of what Bobby had been doing for years.
All of which played into why Bobby and Laynia didn't tell anyone about the pregnancy, even their closest friends. It started out as them just putting it off, wanting to be more sure of their own thoughts on this before someone else tried to make the decision what to do for them, but by the time Laynia gave birth, they'd fully isolated themselves, paranoid that Xavier or the Red Room would take the baby and just make them forget all about it. And problem is, as Laynia put it, they couldn't tell how much of that was Doubting Thomas whispering all the right things to ramp up their anxieties and specific fears.
And obviously someone did mess with their memories anyway, Bobby points out crankily. This all is partly meant to seed two ongoing character arcs for Bobby in the future....the first, his awareness of how often his mind and memories have been messed with over the years, by enemies and allies alike, to the point he's honestly not sure how much of 'him' is really even him, and how much he's just the end result of people just editing his mind whenever he started heading in a direction they didn't want him to. With how long the memories of their time travel trip were hidden, now these missing memories, what other holes could exist in his memories without him ever having a clue?
And the second character arc is his misgivings about Xavier and the role he played in Bobby's childhood. Knowing what he knows now of his omega potential, aware that all the biggest developments and learning curves with his powers happened when Bobby WASN'T Xavier's student, Bobby's increasingly convinced that Xavier never trusted Bobby with his own power, and while he might not have actively stunted his growth, he certainly didn't help or encourage it the way he did his other students. The foundation is there for Bobby to wonder if the only reason Xavier ever even recruited him was to keep him from falling into anyone else's hands and becoming a threat.
As Laynia reminds him of what they were like back then and how they viewed things, things fall into place for Bobby and its very easy for him to see how they could have ended up hiding this from anyone in Xavier's orbit, etc...and this starts to become less abstract for him. It wasn't that he thought she was lying at any point, but its hitting him now....he has a son, and someone made him forget. He's someone who has always yearned for family that won't judge or condemn him, leave him, always been determined to be everything his own father wasn't and nothing like him, and yet he has a son who's grown up without him. Whose name he doesn't even know.
He does know his son though, it turns out. At least somewhat. Its one of Bobby's former students before M-Day. Dallas Gibson aka Specter. He has no idea who he really is, Laynia says, but the parents who died when Dallas was ten were his adoptive parents. But he was born Dallas Drake, as Petrovna wasn't even Laynia's real last name and she had no idea what it originally was. Heir to the merged powersets of both his biological parents, with his father's elemental form but made from his mother's signature Darkforce energies.
As for why Laynia remembers when Bobby doesn't....she didn't originally. But then years ago (during the Morrison run), she was possessed by one of Weapon X's most dangerous creations, the Huntsman. However, thanks to how her powers were designed to let her mind travel through the Darkforce Dimension to do things like teleport, when she was possessed, her mind tried to flee into that dimension. When Fantomex killed her, he only killed her body, and her mental tether to it. The shock and trauma of her physical death broke down the barriers around her memories, and they all came flooding back. Problem was, she only existed as a consciousness drifting aimlessly in the Darkforce Dimension.
But then Dallas started learning more about his powers and growing them during his time at the Academy. And his powerset also includes the ability to make shadow golems similar to the ice golems his father makes. But he didn't realize this as the first time he made one, with Darkforce energy being the clay his golem was sculpted from...Laynia was able to use that as a doorway into the physical world. She inhabited his shadow golem as her vessel, the way a future Iceman's golem once split off from him and became a separate entity. So Dallas never realized his newfound shadow friend started out as something he made unconsciously...he just knew that it seemed to have its own sentience from the jump, was a friend and protector who'd show up whenever he needed them. That friend and protector just happened to be his biological mother, watching over him the only way she could.
Until M-Day. When Dallas was depowered, Laynia lost her connection to the physical world and was stuck again in the Darkforce Dimension....until her brother Nikolai made a bargain with Immortus that led to her full resurrection. Finally she was back, and she remembered everything. But also knew Bobby remembered none of this. And so for the next couple years she just checked in on Dallas periodically but kept her distance, because she not only remembered her son...she also remembered why they were so desperate to hide his connection to them that they covered up their own memories of him ever existing.
At the end of the issue, they arrive at the hideout of the Russian mutant underground, a community of mutants who mistrust Krakoa and its leaders, but aren't on board with Mikhail Rasputin and his faction either. Laynia brought Bobby to the person who originally hid their memories and locked them away - at their own request....Bobby's idea, in fact - Alexi Garnoff aka Blind Faith, a telepath Bobby first met in his X-Factor days. But who was so quick to trust Bobby, because turns out that wasn't actually the first time Alexi remembered meeting him.
As Bobby reels from the reveal that this particular manipulation of his mind had been something he himself asked for, Alexi says he can erase all his work and return his own memories of all this, and Laynia warns him that remembering it all will hurt. Because they have a son, yes, Dallas Gibson aka Dallas Drake aka Specter. But twins run in her family.
And for a brief - too brief - window of time, they had not one son, but two.
ISSUE THREE
This issue returns to Bobby's POV and internal monologue, and takes place almost entirely in the past, or in Bobby's mindscape. He tells Alexi to do his thing, he wants to know, NEEDS to know everything. The walls come down and in his mind, Bobby finds himself standing at the start of a giant labyrinth made of ice. He sees a little boy running through it and gives chase, needing to catch up to him, desperate even as he's aware he's running on autopilot, more instinct than knowledge. He's never seen this boy before - he's not even a real memory himself. But he knows what an older Dallas looks like, at least. And he's sure this is what his mind imagines a Dmitri older than what he actually remembers might look like, and he desperately wants a closer look. But this Dima stays forever just out of range because his mind doesn't actually have a clear image of an older Dmitri to conjure, and up close, the illusion would be too obvious, and the loss all the more real for that.
Following the boy through the labyrinth, he sees memories unveil themselves on the ice walls around them. He remembers Laynia telling him she was pregnant, their agitated debates over the months that followed as they agonized over what to do, how to keep the baby safe - babies, once they found out it was twins. He sees the day the twins were born, relives them deciding to name the elder twin Dallas, after the city where they first met, before Laynia even joined the Champions, and the younger they named Dmitri, or Dima for short....after the only teacher Laynia ever felt actually valued her for herself instead of seeing her as a weapon being honed.
He remembers them leaving the hospital and hiding for a few weeks at a secluded cabin their old teammate the Black Widow found for them....she was the only one they told, figuring nobody could keep a secret better than her, and how they wavered and grew closer to caving and letting their closest friends and teammates help them figure out how to keep the twins safe. Sees flashbacks of him playing with the boys while Laynia watches fondly, and vice versa. Relives as he - still little older than a child himself - puts them in their crib and tells them not to be scared, talks about how his grandfather used to have a saying: "all Drakes are dragons," and making a dragon sculpture that catches the light to act as their nightlight.
And then he relives the day they woke up to find the crib empty and the twins missing. The first time they met Doubting Thomas, who left them an easy trail to follow because he wanted them to find him, wanted a confrontation. Bobby and Laynia had descended on the facility they tracked him to with the full fury of midnight and winter at their most destructive, and once inside they separated as they found the twins had been split up and taken in different directions. Laynia went after Dallas, who she could feel faintly, an early sign of his link to the Darkforce Dimension that she shares - second generation mutants always tend to manifest early - and Bobby went after Dmitri.
Doubting Thomas was waiting though, and the villain backstory reveal unfolded. The Professor, the Hellfire Club, etc....they weren't the only people who went around looking for young mutants to mold, seeing their potential. He grew up under the thumb of a woman even he only knows as Mother Nurture, a sadist with unguessable motivations even to her lackeys that she raised from childhood....to be their worst selves. Apparently she claims to be a precog, who knew what mutant children would grow up to be great heroes or positive influences on the world....which appears to be contrary to her agenda, whatever that is....as she targets kids who COULD grow up to be great forces for change, change for the better, and picks the ones with the brightest potential to stamp out and corrupt, turn to darkness. Her obsession with proving that there are no real heroes, that anyone can be twisted into the villain was apparently a recurring theme of Doubting Thomas' childhood, so when she assigned him the task of abducting the Drake twins when they were still months away from even being born, Thomas fixated on Bobby and Laynia during his surveillance of them, and developed an obsession of his own.
It was the first time he'd ever targeted superhero parents, let alone ones close enough in age to him that he could project onto them, see them as an inverted reflection of his own life. And even as he prepared to take the Drake twins at the earliest opportunity, that was just his assignment. His obsession with Bobby and Laynia was wholly personal, as he clearly became consumed with a need to prove to himself that they weren't better than him, that he could have BEEN them in another life, with better influences....that they would have been no different than he if they'd been in his shoes.
In fact, he was convinced there was such a slim margin of difference between them that he could topple Iceman from his heroic perch with just the slightest push. Bobby refutes this, saying he's nothing like him, but that's when Thomas says he lied. Mother Nurture actually only sent him after one Drake boy. She wasn't expecting two. Apparently, one of them was never destined to live all that long to begin with.
The issue never actually shows Dmitri, just Bobby breaking down, cradling the swaddled figure to his chest. He's dead-eyed when he looks up, frozen tear tracks on his cheeks as one icy drop falls to the ground and shatters.
Bobby: Guess you were right about me. Congrats. You win.
And then over the next two panels, Thomas flash-freezes before he can react, his entire body frozen on a cellular level...and then he shatters.
We only see glimpses of Laynia's horrified reaction when she arrives with Dallas in her arms, as Bobby hurries past those memories, he has them back but he doesn't want to relive those moments at all...and there are more snapshots of barely glimpsed memories of Bobby and Laynia reducing the entire facility to nothing but an empty crater. Bobby arrives at the memory of Laynia and Bobby, fueled by trauma and desperation, panicking about this Mother Nurture sending someone else after Dallas, their original fears reignite, the list of people who might want a baby like Dallas for their own agendas seems endless....culminating in them giving Dallas to Black Widow to place with a family she trusts to raise him safely. But Bobby notes despondently that even with all that, it'd take someone like Xavier or with similar resources all of five minutes to find a powerful mutant that young, if they ever got so much as a hint about him from Bobby or Laynia's minds.
Which is when Bobby decides: "In a world of telepaths, Cerebros and Wolverines, the only foolproof way to keep a secret...is to not even know it yourself.
They both agree, and seek out a telepath unaffiliated with any team or organization: Alexi Garnoff. Which brings us back to the present.
April 27th. The anniversary of the day one son died, and they made the decision to give up the other for his own safety.
ISSUE FOUR
With both of their memories fully restored, they're on the same page about what happens now: They have to find a way to keep the resurrected Doubting Thomas from figuring out who and where Dallas is. If he truly wants revenge, or if he still just feels compelled to fulfill his original assignment, Dallas is his real target. But they're fairly certain the extreme lengths they went to all those years ago at least did their job. Even with Bobby unaware of Thomas' existence, let alone vendetta against him, the latter was able to stalk him ever since his resurrection without finding even a hint of Dallas' location or identity...he would have had better luck stalking Laynia probably, but they assumed his fixation on Bobby for killing him, along with Laynia steering clear of Krakoa (ironically because she was worried about the many telepaths there picking up on her secret), Thomas concentrated his efforts on following Bobby and might not have even realized that unlike him, Laynia DID already know who and where Dallas was.
Thomas must have come out into the open in the way he did specifically to push Bobby to regain his memories, figuring then it would only be a matter of time before Bobby slipped up enough for Thomas to zero in on his target....so now they had to figure out how to keep that from happening, while now having a whole new host of reasons not to want to advertise they had a son. The last thing they want is to keep him out of Thomas' clutches just to put him on Sinister's radar, especially now that they know Bobby's an omega and how 'highly prized' they are as resources....which would no doubt make his offspring of interest to various villains.
Not to mention, Laynia's got her own misgivings about Krakoa. She's FURIOUS about the Crucible - Dallas was among the earliest to sign up and go through it, desperate to get his powers back and return to his place among his former classmates. Not only does she consider it needless trauma of the very sort they sacrificed so much to protect their son from, Laynia is territorial. Dallas' name and powers were pretty much the only thing he got from his biological parents, that they were able to give him as his birthright, the upside to all the downs that came with being their kid, and Laynia's pissed as hell that Bobby's new government had the gall to demand their son EARN BACK what was always his and that losing had ALREADY been a trauma all its own.
This in turn sows the seeds for Bobby's development into a more proactive role in mutant society, as well as future conflict with a lot of the personalities that put the Crucible in place initially, as he's forced to confront why he didn't have more problems with it in the first place, or at least not enough that he wasn't able to justify its existence. Has he gotten so used to assuming others know better than him, that he no longer bothers trying to weigh the morality of things himself? Is he comfortable with what it says about him that it took having a personal stake - his son having gone through it - to make him sit up and think hey, that was fucked up?
Meanwhile, Thomas has not been idle, and is using reports of Bobby seemingly attacking innocent protesters the other day to stir up doubts in him among any influential mutants or X-Men he can whisper suspicions to, without them being aware of his presence/influence. Bobby is 'strongly encouraged' by Xavier to return to Krakoa to clear up the confusion, and when he refuses, that just adds more fuel for Thomas to work with. Plus he uses all the paranoia Beast has drummed up over the past couple years to cast suspicion on Bobby suddenly being inseparable from Laynia, a known Russian operative who has no allegiances to Krakoa, while also stirring mutants in Mikhail's camp to view Laynia's choice of companions as suspicious, which threatens her work with the Russian mutant underground and her efforts to keep them safe and hidden as well.
Finally they decide the best way to deal with Thomas is to lure him in and get Alexi to do to him what he did to Bobby and Laynia years ago. Hide away all Thomas' memories of things related to them and give him a tailored memory of how he died and why.
ISSUE FIVE
Most of this issue is just Thomas, Laynia and Bobby all playing cat and mouse with each other...Thomas having his own schemes even as the other two try to implement theirs, until its hard to tell who is the hunter and who is the hunted. Bobby and Laynia are still teleporting as often as they can, both to keep him from sneaking up on them and poisoning their thoughts or manipulating their plans, as well as to evade various friends and teammates who are now seeking them out, concerned by their behavior and increasingly susceptible to distrusting them as they refuse to give any hints as to what the hell they're doing.
It should be very clear that Bobby and Laynia are NOT acting wholly rationally here, and they're both aware of it. Doubting Thomas is GOOD at what he does, and he's familiar enough with them and their sore spots, from intel he gained long ago still being relevant here and now, particularly with how recently their memories were refocused on those days....that they're sure even the tiniest or briefest amounts of access to them is enough for him to skew their own paranoia in extreme ways. Not to mention.....they're much older now than they were when they made the choice to hide Dallas in the way they did, and they made that decision at the absolute height of their grief, fear and anxiety. They're second-guessing every choice they made back then, as well as the ones they're making now, and they're NOT sure that staying away, doing this on their own, not confiding in anyone or pulling them in....they're not doing all that because they're convinced its the right move.
They're staying the course because they don't have any idea what the right move is, and until they do, doubling down on their previous choices is because there's no take-backs, no undoing things once the secret is out. They can't afford to decide that was the wrong move after they've done it, when that will do them no good.
So they stick to their plan and try to get Thomas in Alexi's range, but with his guard down enough for the other telepath to act. The POV shifts back and forth between Bobby and Laynia's, with a lot of their internal doubts about everything they've done, the thoughts Thomas raised in Bobby back in Issue #1, the ideological battle Thomas imagines exists between him and the heroes he resents so much - this back-and-forth spans most of the issue and keeps these themes front and center, until ultimately Bobby and Thomas face off again.
Bobby surprises Thomas by using his powers in an unexpected way....he makes dozens of golems spread out all over the place and then shuffles his actual consciousness through them one at a time, 'possessing' one golem as his vessel, his ice form before leaping into another one. Thomas can't get a bead on him, keeps chasing his own tail trying to keep up with Bobby's constant shell game in an attempt to find the 'real one,' where Bobby's actually vulnerable.
Finally, Bobby makes it clear he's not going to be playing this game with Thomas anymore, because thing is, the point Thomas is so obsessed with proving, wanting Bobby to know he's no better than him, is capable of terrible things....Bobby flat out just doesn't care.
Bobby: I remember everything now, Thomas. That's what you wanted, right? For me to relive all that, make sure I can't hide from it? That I have to feel every bit of pain I shut away back then because I couldn't deal? Because the truth is, as much as that was to protect my son it was also to protect me from everything I WANTED to forget? I remember. I remember my kids, losing them....I remember killing you. But I also remembered something else, that you probably didn't factor in.
Thomas: And what's that?
Bobby: I remembered that I'm not sorry.
He goes on the attack, just destruction every which way you look so that Thomas is forced to stay on the defensive, keeping himself immaterial and jaunting around because there's no safe space for him to land, so to speak.
Bobby: The Five can bring you back a thousand times and I'll kill you a thousand and one, if that's what it takes to keep my son safe from you. Here's what you never got. The whole hero vs villain, right or wrong, good or evil thing you're so obsessed with? I just don't care, man. That's never been why I do any of this. I know I'm flawed, too flawed to ever be 'truly good' but by the same token, I know there's enough good in me I'm not truly bad either. I've done terrible things before and I'll do them again, because at the end of the day, I'm not trying to be a hero. I'm just trying to save people where I can.
Bobby: Its about priorities, see. Its people that matter to me, if I'm helping or hurting. And I'll hurt someone to help someone I think deserves it more and maybe that's wrong but thing is I'm not making that choice based on if its right or wrong. I'm making it based on who I think needs help and what do I have to do to help them. Let someone else figure out the scorecard, I'm just trying to make sure the person I'm protecting makes it home safe.
Bobby: And you? You don't matter. My son matters to me. That's all that matters here. I choose him, no matter what, every time, and whatever that means, whatever I have to do to choose him, or because I choose him? I'll deal with it. If I make the wrong choices, if they backfire and get him hurt or they're not what he would want - that's the stuff that can keep me up at night. But if choosing him means killing an asshole like you to keep him safe?
Bobby: Don't worry about my virtue. I'll cope.
With that, Thomas makes his retreat, tail between his legs. They weren't able to implement their plan to have Alexi erase his memories, but they don't consider this to be over. He'll be back, they'll have more opportunities to make that happen. At least this time he was the one doing the running.
But as the finale of the issue, Thomas adapts and changes the game. He waits until Bobby's back on Krakoa, meeting with Xavier and other X-Men about recent events and trying to say as little as possible...and then Thomas picks that place and time to make his first public appearance on Krakoa since he was resurrected as just another name on the resurrection queue. Nobody knew who he was then or cared that he didn't seem interested in staying on the island, claiming amnesty and official Krakoan citizenship....but he does that now in the most dramatic way possible....as he turns to Bobby and blatantly advertises they have history.
Thomas: And in the spirit of new beginnings, I just want to say I forgive you for killing me eighteen years ago. Fresh starts for everyone, right?
And with that bombshell - and the fact that one look at Bobby tells everyone present that he's not denying it - he saunters off, leaving Bobby with more questions to answer but no closer to being able to fully disclose what he's keeping hidden....which Thomas can still reveal to anyone at any time. What he did reveal was enough to ensure there was no chance now of changing his memories of their shared past....not after he dragged them both into the spotlight and made sure they were linked so if anything did happen to Thomas or seem awry with him....there'd be no doubt who was Suspect Number One. And that was always going to come with the question of why.
The mini ends with a final page where Bobby's finally done talking w/the QC for now, and he's just standing on the beach far enough away from where a bunch of the Academy X kids are having a bonfire - with Dallas right in the thick of them - that it wouldn't be obvious that his sole reason for being out there was to catch a glimpse of him, even if only from a distance. Elsewhere, Laynia is browsing through a shop and notices a stuffed dragon similar to one flashbacks showed Dmitri cuddling with as a baby. She picks it up, hesitating as if debating whether to purchase it, with the final panel being of her back as she walks out of the shop, the stuffed animal still sitting where she'd found it.
ICEMAN: A HOUSE OF DRAGONS
The second mini of three, this one introduces Dallas as a POV character, still oblivious of everything readers learned in the first mini. It explores his feelings about being depowered on M-Day and his survivor's guilt from having left the Institute and been relatively safe compared to those who stayed, when other depowered mutants like David still stayed and fought for mutants. His best friends, Julian and Brian Cruz, insist that nobody thinks less of him for it and he was a minor, it wasn't like anybody was really consulting him on whether he wanted to stay or go at the time, but he can't shake the feeling he should have done more. Its what drove him to go through the Crucible so early on, and its what drives his determination to make it onto the X-Men team.
Seeds are also planted for later, via some brief scenes that reveal that while depowered and living away from the Institute, Dallas started exploring magic as an alternative to his powers, since there are various arts that access the same Darkforce Dimension his powers connected him to. He's no longer pursuing it as feverishly as he did while depowered, but it remains an interest as he's determined to never be powerless again, whether he has his mutant abilities or not.
He also has several chance encounters with Iceman, who he really only knows as his old math teacher, and no idea they're not so chance encounters at all.
Meanwhile, Bobby and Laynia are meeting more regularly off the island as they argue about whether or not they should tell Dallas the truth - he has a right to know and he's old enough to make his own choices about what he wants or doesn't want done in the name of keeping him safe. Their various rationales are undercut by the underlying awareness that both of them are afraid of his reaction and worried he won't understand why they did it and might even hate them for the choices they made.
At the same time, they're trying to figure out how to even go about resurrecting Dmitri. They know from Joanna Beaubier-Jinadu's example that despite his young age, Dima could still theoretically be resurrected....they just have no idea how to ask the Five or X-Factor to look for him in the Waiting Room without disclosing everything about Dallas at the same time...which brings them back to how do we tell Dallas.
Ultimately, they wait too long and Thomas takes the choice out of their hands. While Dallas is in the Mojoverse along with various other Academy X kids who have been regular presences there while taking advantage of the treaty between Krakoa and Mojo to try and get some Krakoan media entertainment off the ground,
It turns out that while Bobby was worried about Doubting Thomas approaching Sinister, Shaw or one of the other notorious mutants on Krakoa as part of his schemes, he went a different direction entirely. He approached Mojo with his proposal for a must-see show that would have all of Krakoa glued to the nearest TV screen.
And so what was supposed to be just a random trip to the Mojoverse leads to Dallas being trapped as the very confused and unwilling star of what Mojo describes as the ultimate reality show: DALLAS GIBSON, THIS IS YOUR LIFE.
The show proceeds to take viewers - and Dallas - through a recreation of his entire life, including all the parts he didn’t know about. Starting before his birth even, with Krakoans flocking to their TVs just as Thomas promised, as soon the bombshell claim of who his biological parents are drops and word spreads throughout the island. Even X-Men close to Bobby have no idea what to make of this at first and they start trying to figure out how to shut it down and figure things out from there, but it’s a futile effort, honestly.
Even if they could get Mojo to shut it down right away, the damage was already done - and its clear that nobody is more interested in seeing what comes next than Dallas himself. Seemingly having forgotten that everyone is watching this, he’s half in denial, half captivated by what he’s watching. It seems impossible but that doesn’t stop him from having a lot of confused and conflicting feelings as he watches literal surveillance footage Thomas had installed to spy on the much younger Bobby and Laynia as they interacted with their newborn sons.
Much of this is used to flesh out flashback scenes from the first mini, where Bobby and Laynia’s POVs of these early days were shown, stringing together a timeline without reproducing the same scenes exactly. In contrast, some of these scenes do directly recreate scenes seen previously in Bobby and Laynia’s memories….but now reproduced for Dallas’ viewing by objective technology devoid of the emotions layered around his parents’ actual memories of that time.
The video retelling includes footage from security cameras at the facility Thomas had retreated to for their final fateful confrontation years ago, similarly providing a stark and explicit view of Bobby and Laynia’s rampage through the facility and Bobby’s unapologetic killing of Thomas. It’s a side of Bobby few had ever seen before and raises more than a few eyebrows while answering the questions many of them had had ever since Thomas made his dramatic entrance to Krakoan society at the end of the first mini.
Bobby meanwhile started racing for Mojoworld the second Rogue called him and told him to get there fast and laid out what was going on. But it still took long enough for him to navigate Mojoworld’s confusing layout that he only smashed his way onto the ‘set’ Dallas was trapped on in time to see his eighteen year old self hand an infant Dallas over to the Black Widow onscreen.
One look at Bobby, not hiding behind his ice form and with pain and remorse writ large all over his face, told Dallas (and everyone else) everything they needed to know about how true or not all this was.
But before Bobby can even attempt to figure out what to say, Mojo calls everyone’s attention back to the screens, as he announces there’s a plot twist featuring never-before-seen-footage from that first tragic April 27th.
The screen jumps to more security camera footage from Thomas’ facility….but the time stamp puts this at just before Bobby & Laynia’s arrival. Bobby (and Laynia who has arrived on Krakoa for the first time, as soon as she learned what was happening) watch in shock as Thomas hands Dmitri off to a lackey and instructs him to get offsite before the two arrive. Onscreen, Thomas says if he’s there’s one thing he’s figured out about Bobby & Laynia, its that they’ll never stop searching for one of their babies so long as they’re still alive….so if they’re convinced this one is dead and the other one is taken to Mother Nurture as she instructed him, they’ll focus all their efforts on trying to reclaim that one. Let her deal with that Thomas sniffs derisively. I have different plans for this one.
Of course, those plans never came to fruition, Mojo narrates. He underestimated just how….fatally Bobby would react to the simulacrum he believed to be his now dead son. He was never able to follow up with the lackey who took the real Dmitri, and his hired hand - who had not signed up for any of this and was freaking out once he saw what was left of the facility he’d last seen his boss in - well, he basically said fuck this and anonymously dropped Dmitri off at the nearest hospital.
Given the lengths Bobby & Laynia had gone to make sure their kids’ information WASN’T readily available anywhere when they were born, there was no indication of Dmitri’s real identity or where he came from, so he went into the system where he grew up in a series of homes that left him not especially traumatized, but at least distrustful of authority. Then Thomas revealed that when he’d first been resurrected, he’d tracked down Dmitri by finding his lackey and figuring out where he’d left the baby, retracing Dmitri’s path from there. Unlike Dallas, Thomas had always known exactly where to find Dmitri….but felt that particular reveal really needed the RIGHT moment.
And that moment apparently was now. Taking over narrator duties from Mojo, Thomas now speaks into the cameras, directly addressing Bobby and Laynia as he tells them Dmitri too manifested powers early and has had years to learn to make the most of his powerset. He apparently can access a mirror dimension that lets him teleport via reflective surfaces, use them as scrying portals by which he can see anything within visual range of that surface….and there’s one particularly interesting twist to his power. When Dmitri’s in the mirror dimension and watching events play out in the real world via a mirror or other surface….those events don’t just have to be in the present.
Time is wonky in the mirror dimension, as is often true of extradimensional spaces. Dmitri has limited precognitive abilities as he can use the mirror dimension to peer out of mirrors and watch what’ll happen in view of them at some point in various possible future timelines.
Apparently its tricky and unreliable, but its at least effective enough that Dmitri counts as a precog by anyone’s standard. And in the early days of Krakoa, when deciding whether to go there himself, he apparently glimpsed enough clandestine conversations to know that at that point, at least…..Krakoa was not a safe place to be a precog.
Onscreen, Thomas claps his hands energetically and addresses the entire audience now:
Thomas: So, to recap, somewhere out there is the teleporting precog son of an omega level mutant who’s already proven he’s willing to cross just about any line for this son’s sake. Said son is also primed to be extremely distrustful of Krakoa….and anyone who might be seen as an emissary of it. Like, oh say, X-Men. And to top it all off….he has absolutely no idea where he comes from nor does he have any reason to believe anyone who comes out of nowhere claiming to be his longlost parents or friends of theirs.
Thomas: Now I don’t know about all of you, but I think whomever were to find him first, and gain his trust, well - they could probably figure out any number of ways those combined factors could be useful.
The screen flashes to a generic street camera view of a Dmitri Drake that looks a lot like his brother, just with brown hair instead of blond. There’s little to distinguish either his surroundings or Dmitri himself, but its clearly being presented as a starting point for potential searchers.
The final pages show an array of panels showing notorious mutant villains all leaning forward and studying the screen with interest. Sinister, Shaw, Selene (if she’s back yet), Abigail Brand, MLF members, Stryfe, Mystique and Destiny, the Fenris twins, etc.
The second mini concludes with Doubting Thomas winking into the camera, essentially staring straight at the reader.
Thomas: May the best influence win!
DARKSTAR: SONS OF SNOW AND SHADOW
Subtitled: “Run, Dima, Run!”
The third and final mini of the triptych is a chaotic free for all as basically everyone is hunting for Dmitri Drake, who has absolutely no idea why people are suddenly coming out of the woodwork looking for him but quickly decides he doesn’t want to be found.
Dallas is aggressively putting off dealing with how he feels about any of this and flat out shuts down any attempts Bobby or Laynia make to approach him. He’s totally fixated on being the one to find basically the only person in the universe who could understand how he’s feeling right now, and they can figure it out together then. He’s blatantly underestimating how much his longlost twin actually might NOT be able to relate to his specific perspective here, and vice versa. Something his friends and Academy X classmates try to caution him about while helping him on his search.
Surge: Oh shut up, dumbass. I don’t have to like you for you to be one of us, and any twin of yours is basically a two-for-one deal, so of course we’re going to do whatever it takes to keep your longlost brother from being exploited and used by adults who suck. I would include your parents in that but I actually think them hiding you from that musty bald bitch Xavier was probably the smartest thing any X-parent has done for their kid so I’m fighting down the impulse to be impressed.
Dallas: …thank you? I think?
Thus the Academy X kids actually take one of the most prominent roles in the mini as Dallas and his classmates’ search is heavily prioritized. There’s a strong focus on various kids who have history being exploited by older mutants and are now projecting heavily. Brian and Julian are of course Dallas’ closest confidantes through this, maybe Brian a little more than Julian as the latter flip-flops back and forth between calling Dallas a legacy and a nepo baby at different intervals. He can’t seem to decide if he thinks it’s something to be envied or not. Anole is unrepentant about ranking Dallas’ dad’s most infamous costumes and how hot or not he looked in each of them. He and Dallas never got along in school. Icarus absently notes that he’s pretty sure his brother and Dallas’ dad had a thing going on at one point.
They’re not quite all as helpful as they could be, is the takeaway. But they do feel the stakes and if any generation of mutants is prone to embracing gallows humor to cope, it’s the Academy X kids.
Elsewhere Bobby is conducting his own search with the help of numerous X-Men and friends, who are all trying to process everything they just learned and saw. Most of them are supportive and understanding, though a few are more abrasive about the sheer amount of stuff they didn’t know about him or even suspect.
Xavier tries to lecture Bobby about how they wouldn’t be in this situation if he had trusted them with this at any point in the past. Bobby shuts that down with gusto, emphasizing that Xavier was one of the people they were most concerned about hiding the twins from - and a good thing too, he points out, given what could have happened to Dallas if Onslaught had known about him when Dallas was still just a kid.
But then he gets downright chilly and makes it clear how and why his dynamic with many of them will be at least somewhat different from this point on…..Xavier especially.
He brings attention back to the not so minor detail of Xavier, Moira and Magneto apparently originally declaring Krakoa to be for all mutants….except for precogs.
Bobby: You keep saying this place is the culmination of everything we’ve fought for from the first day we put on an X-Men uniform, so I just wanna know, Professor. Why the HELL did I spend my whole life fighting for you to create your own personal vision of paradise….which apparently was meant to exclude one of my children, just because of what freaking power he was born with?
Xavier: Compromises had to be made in order to -
Bobby: Y’know, you’ve been using that line since I was fifteen and its tired, X. Every time we asked why you couldn’t just use your powers in ways you insisted would ethically compromise you - except for whenever you decided it was okay because it made things more convenient for you specifically.
Bobby: From day one you’ve kept your secrets from us, for a lot shadier reasons than I’ve ever had for keeping one, so you don’t need to be telling me I’m not entitled to my secrets. You have all these contingencies for if any of us go bad, while telling us nobody’s beyond redemption except for those times you decide Magneto is, or the Shadow King is.
Bobby: You know what the real problem with your dream has always been, Professor? It asks for a leap of faith that you’ve never been prepared to make yourself. You’re always asking us to line up and put it all on the line for the chance at a better world, no matter how realistic it is….but you’ve never actually put down your own cynicism or pragmatism or whatever you want to call it….and just….dreamed. How does that even work, huh?
Bobby: Just….what the hell would you have even done, Professor, if I had raised my kids at the mansion all this time? What spin would you have given me when you finally embarked on this grand Krakoan experiment you’ve been planning for years….and needed to tell me one of my sons wasn’t allowed to come with? That if he died, you had no intention of resurrecting him and his politically inconvenient power?
Xavier: *keeps silent*
Bobby: Yeah, y’know what, on second thought I don’t think I actually want to know the answer to that. Stay away from me and my kids, X. You and I are done.
Finally, last but not least, Laynia will be running her own search for Dima with the help of her brother, the Black Widow, and Warren, who wanted to make sure she knew that he’s her friend too, not just Bobby’s. Despite the lack of detail here, she’d actually have the most prominent role in this mini - being associated publicly with Krakoa is actually an obstacle for Bobby gaining Dmitri’s trust. Laynia’s lack of affiliation with it or Russia’s government or any other organization, is what lets her convince Dmitri to give her a chance and hear her out when she does find him.
(Something she’s ultimately able to do by going to Arakko and asking Storm if she can get her an audience with Lactuca, who should know exactly where to find him. In exchange, Lactuca will ask a favor of Laynia at some point in the future, which plants some seeds to bring Laynia more into X-books without just being an extension of Bobby).
There will be a final reckoning between Laynia and Thomas this time, and the mini will end with things still messy as hell, as the newfound family of four (plus Uncle Nikolai, standing awkwardly off to the side) basically stand there staring at each other and wondering what next. But even with them all as relative strangers now, there’s a wealth of possibilities now that everything’s out in the open.
This mysterious Mother Nurture still lingers offscreen as a potential future threat, especially as they still don’t know what they intended with Dallas - if he was even the twin she was after in the first place. Iceman’s poised to be launched in any number of directions as he’s now essentially reinventing himself while everyone is paying more attention to him than ever before, all while he’s trying to fall back on comfortable, familiar habits of joking and pranks to try and bond with the sons who are grown up and don’t really know what - if any - dynamic they even need or want with him. Laynia’s reluctantly taken Krakoan citizenship to be closer to her sons, but finds she prefers staying on Arakko and grows closer to mutants she meets there, with Dima joining her more often than not, as he’ll never be fully comfortable with Krakoa even if precogs are ‘allowed’ now. Dallas is more determined than ever to be an X-Man but he’s worried that now he’ll never make it on his own merits and it’ll always be more about him being a legacy, a founding X-Man’s kid.
Etc, etc.
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adriansvetozaroff · 6 months ago
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I have two Star Wars OCs - Lamarr and Sheeku, but I usually call them "Outlanders". These are two men with a complicated relationship and a desire to travel. Their story grew out of two ideas: the first was a reflection on how two representatives of different cultures can interact and gain understanding of each other, and whether sincere feelings can destroy the barriers imposed by society, and the second was more of a joke - what if in a galaxy far, far away there was a travel show, like the Ukrainian show "Orel i Reshka". Actually, these guys do just that - they host a show in almost such a format. They called it "Outlanders", after the club where they met. There was also an element of self-irony in this title: some might find it strange that both hosts speak the Basic language with an accent, albeit not very pronounced, but since they are outlanders, this is forgivable for them. They are very different, each of them has a lot of problems in his head, and yet they are together. Soon I would like to tell more about them, but for now I have collected all the sketches, starting from the very first ones.
1. The first sketch of Lamarr. Initially, he was a tragic character, going through a long mental crisis. The second character was his temporary partner and existed in the story more to reveal this Neimoidian's experiences (the feeling of the gap between him and the rest of the world) than as a full participant. I still have their first dialogue recorded: in the capital, Lamarr tried to pass himself off as a Duros to avoid potential problems or questions about what he had seen and experienced, which he did not want to answer. However, a true Duros would certainly have recognized him as a Neimoidian. "What gave me away?" he asked. "My hands or my accent?". "The eyes," his interlocutor answered. "They are very sad."
2. Sketches of Lamarr's appearance - he has changed a little since then. Here I already outlined the style of his everyday clothes, and his personal protocol droid appeared, who also participates in this story.
3. Sketches of Sheeku's appearance, as well as the logo of the travel show. At some point, Sheeku also got an assistant droid, and for contrast, I chose an astromech. I often call him simply B2.
4. The first rough sketch of Sheeku and Lamarr together, which I turned into a full-fledged art later. I still like it.
5. The process of working on the a sheet with all the information about them, which I will also publish soon.
6. At some point, I had doubts whether I should make story more consistent with the format of the original show, and also to make it such that it would be possible to publish it on more resources, some of which have very inhumane rules, knowing that some of my followers remain there. For a while, doubts even won, but I felt uncomfortable and false in what came out, it just didn’t work for me, and I went back to the original version. I just understood: if those who watched me really valued me, they would find a way to follow me to a place where I was ok being myself. Since then, there remains a character who is now called Sheerua - Sheeku’s younger sister. She masters the profession of a shuttle pilot, assisted by an astromech droid of the same series as B2, but of an updated model.
7. Another sketch, later became a full-fledged art, and before that underwent changes. And also the process of working on the poster of the holodrama, which the characters were watching in this art.
So far, I don’t know whether this idea will turn into a full-fledged work - a series of comics or stories - since I’m afraid to take on another big project. But small sketches with these guys allow me to relax and rejoice. I decided that I am making this story primarily for myself, and it is important to me that it brings pleasure to me. Although, of course, I want to share pleasant emotions with those who will also like it.
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deathinfeathers-a · 2 years ago
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Guidelines
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my humble RP blog! You can call me Cinna (they/them Pronouns please), your friendly neighborhood autism creature who exclusively writes fucked up pieces of flaming garbage! I am in my mid twenties with a solid fifteen-ish years of writing experience under my belt. If spending the brunt of my mortal existence on tumblr has taught me anything it is the importance of curating your online experience to the best of your ability so we are very much private and selective in this neck of the woods! Before you engage with the characters you will find lurking on this blog, please make sure that you are not a child! All children will be corralled into the pit and made to fight to the death for my own, personal amusement! Thank you!
I am exceptionally mentally ill and will run and hide for weeks on end for literally no reason whatsoever! I am sorry I am hard to get a hold of OOC! Being perceived terrifies me but I love you all the same!
Content warnings
On this blog you may find mentions/implications (but no graphic depictions) of the following:
Child exploitation and grooming, CSA, SA, r*pe, suicide
You may find graphic depictions of the following:
Religous themes, systematic religous brainwashing, child soldiers, internalized misogyny, blood, gore, violence, abuse, fetishization of death and murder, cannibalism, torture, toxic and abusive relationships (work/romantic/familial), substance abuse, sexual themes and settings, sex as a coping mechanism, mental illness, PTSD, anxiety and panic attacks, stockholm syndrome, (fictional) hate speech, death, kidnapping, stalking, body horror, religious abuse and torture, cult-ish themes and settings, hard drug use, suicidal ideation, self harm
This blog is, in a big way, dedicated to the in-depth exploration of many uncomfortable topics. Keep this in mind before you follow.
Roleplay etiquette
This should go without saying but please refrain from godmodding/taking control over my character in our interactions, this includes auto hitting in violent/confrontational situations. No info-modding or meta-gaming, your character should not be able to glean information out of any internal dialog unless they can straight up read minds (in which case I would like to be made aware of this power beforehand). Remember that the muse and her values and behaviors are not a reflection of the writer. I do not agree with or condone 90% of the things that she says and does--her actions are not to be glorified or romanticized, Lute is absolutely meant to be viewed as a villain.
Interactions
Friends/mains will always take priority when it comes to threads--some of you may find this unfair but RP is a hobby and I reserve the right to engage with it In whatever way is most fun and fulfilling for myself. Don't let this discourage you from approaching if you have a plot in mind or sending in memes/starters. I'm happy to run with all sorts of stories and scenarios granted I'm given an idea to work off of. That being said, I am incredibly disorganized so threads have a tendency to slip through the cracks, don't be afraid to (politely) remind me of our interaction when this happens. I will reblog memes somewhat regularly but OOC plotting is my personal preference. I tend to struggle scrounging up enough motivation for threads with no clear direction. Lute is a character who shines the most when she is acting as an obstacle or an uplifting force to the people around her. She thrives poorly in slice-of-life type of scenarios, please keep this in mind.
Fight scenes
As a general rule, I won't write figh scenes with sinner muses. Lute isn't somebody that mortal souls are meant to be able to fight off—as the first lieutenant of the heavenly host she wouldn't be much of a threat if she sat around their power level. This isn't something I see myself budging on unless you have very solid reasoning for why you think your sinner could take her on. Same goes for the hellborn, lower class angels and humans. That being said, if your muse (sinner/human/anyone weaker than Lute) goes out of their way to taunt or harass her she will respond with violence. Keep this in mind before you go pushing her buttons.
Shipping
Ah, shipping, the magical thing which makes the rpc go 'round! Lute is not easy to ship with, like, at all! I wouldn't call her unshippable necessarily but you must be aware that she is an incredibly twisted and broken individual, ergo, any relationship she finds herself being a part of is at major risk of becoming unbalanced and/or toxic. I am very, very, veryveryvery picky with her romantic candidates as a result. Do not try to force ship with her, that is a surefire to be irrevocably crossed off as a potential partner. Lute has a tendency to develop crushes on a very specific type of people--do not take this as a sign that I'm trying to push a ship on you--it's just a character quirk that she has. Shipping will never take priority over the overarching plot of this blog. Again, Lute isn't a character who does well in domestic situations, tension, action and conflict is where it's at for her.
Smut
I will write smut on rare occasions, mostly on sindays. I exclusively write this type of content with longtime mutuals. Feel free to ask me for a link to my NSFW blog.
Drama
As a rule of thumb: don't. If there's a problematic individual you feel I should be made aware of, address the issue with me OOC. That's all I have to say on the matter. I like to keep my space as drama/discourse free as possible.
Blocking
Please hardblock me when you unfollow! I have a very poor memory so it's not unlikely that I might refollow if you fail to do this. If you happen to find yourself blocked by me, rest assured that it is very rarely a personal matter. Chances are I just don't see us vibing or you're somebody that i decided to unfollow for one reason or another. All the same, block evading is not cool if there's a legit reason behind it (and you will be made aware if there is). Please don't do that!
Thank you for reading my guidelines. This list will be expanded upon as I see fit!
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reimeichan · 2 years ago
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DID Representation and The Crowded Room
So we’ve been watching The Crowded Room. For anyone not in the know, it’s a show currently streaming on Apple TV+ based off of the nonfiction novel The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes. The novel is about a system who is acquitted of a crime due to being diagnosed with DID. The show itself, however, is only loosely based off of the novel by the same name; many details have been changed such that the story itself is effectively quite different from (though still similar enough to) the one in the novel. As you can see, the subject matter itself is a very touchy one.
I began watching the show myself to make my own opinions on how the series may be tackling mental health and DID in particular. Mainly for my own curiosity, but also because I wanted to be able to talk about the DID aspects of the show as someone with DID, and talk about it with both people who are watching the show who don’t have DID, and to talk about it with the DID community who may not wish to support the show in any way. And to talk about it with anyone who has DID and is also watching the show to hear their takes.
Without further ado, my current thoughts so far as of the latest episode (Episode 4). Spoiler alert for anyone who is still planning to watch this show.
First of all, the alters. There’s a lot of online debate about which characters in the show are “real” and which are not, and I think that’s due to how the alters are presented in the show. The different alters are all presented as their own people, with their own unique actors, who exist alongside each other in the same physical space and can seemingly interact with each other and also the world at large. We see Ariana kissing Anabelle, we see Jack paying for breakfast, we see Jonny buying drugs off a dealer, all while Danny and others are still in the scene. For me, this comes off more like the different alters are thus a part of Danny’s imagination/hallucinations/delusions, and not like... however you wish to visualize alters. People sharing a body. Parts of a single self. Something in between, or something that encapsulates both of those, or something else entirely. But alters are not typically externalized in this way, to the point that Danny would associate actions that he’d done to things that another person entirely separate from him had done.
For people with DID, each alter is as real as the other alters in the system. Danny himself is an alter just like the rest of them; he may be the host of the system and thus the one who’s taking care of things day to day, but he is not any more real or fake than the other alters. And the show has not done a great job of showing this so far. Ariana’s reflection is missing from the window in the very first scene, the people around Danny are weirded out by his interactions with seemingly nobody else around him (ex: the time Angelo looked at Danny and asked him, “We?”). Perhaps this is done to show that these other alters may not physically exist in the space around Danny, but it comes off more like Danny has an overactive imagination and less like Danny actually interacting with the other alters he shares a brain with.
However... there are aspects of the show I do appreciate. Rya, the therapist that Danny talks to, will regularly point out incongruities in his story that don’t make sense. At first, we’re led to believe that she thinks he may be lying or hiding something from her; at the very least, that’s how Danny reacts to her questions. At the end of Episode 4, however, we see that wasn’t the case at all; she’s been aware that there’s something else going on with Danny and is trying to get him to see these inconsistencies to piece the puzzle pieces together himself. And some of the things she points out are subtle, too. She questions if he typically has trouble remembering things when he mentions that he forgot he had a date, he just waves it off as something along the lines of most people will forget things from time to time, he just has a slightly worse memory, that’s all. I saw a lot of myself there in that moment with Danny; how many times have I said similarly dismissive things about my own poor memory? It’s not amnesia, I just have short term memory loss, or I’m airheaded, or whatever. And as for the inconsistencies in the story itself, Danny will often also handwave those away with some made-up explanation that makes sense in his head. It’s often too easy for those of us with DID to let ourselves just fill in the gaps for anything that doesn’t seem to just “add up”, as this is often how the disorder will hide itself from us.
Outside of all the DID stuff, though, the story is just a mess. The pacing is awfully slow. There’s 4 episodes out already, each one about 40-45 minutes in length, but really everything could probably be condensed down into one or two episodes. Some of this can just be that Danny’s an unreliable narrator, but the story feels less like a confused young man trying to recount the events leading up to whatever crime he committed, and more like a scatterbrained kid jumping from point to point to point. Which, while potentially realistic, doesn’t really make for good narrative storytelling on the screen. Danny’s constantly acting as a terrified, jittery mess of a person no matter what situation he’s in, like some stereotypical poor traumatized child who’s afraid the entire world is out to get him. Perhaps that’s just the Danny alter, but I have yet to really see much range or nuance to Tom Holland’s acting outside of maybe one or two specific scenes that he has with Amanda Seyfried.
Overall, I’m not really enjoying the series. But I’ll continue to watch it because I’m naively hopeful that there’s a chance it may still pleasantly surprise me with better representation or better writing, or maybe both.
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rickie-the-storyteller · 1 year ago
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Happy WBW! What are the coffee shops like in your world? Or what are the coffee shop equivalents? Are they bustling? Overpriced? Are they decrept or college-kid only territory? If you wanna get into it, feel free to add on your characters' interactions, feelings, or orders!
Here's an interesting one...
My main story (Steph's Crew) is set in a real place (fictional London in 2010), so I suppose the answers here would be similar to real-life coffee places lol.
There was a wide range of coffee shops catering to different tastes and preferences. Let's take a look at some of them, and explore the way my characters might feel about them...
High-End Specialty Cafes:
These spots irl are known for offering a selection of single-origin brews and meticulously crafted drinks. The prices tend to be higher, attracting coffee aficionados and those who appreciate a carefully made cup.
This place would likely be less popular with the crew since they're all pretty young and would prefer to get their coffee from a cheaper spot. They'd probably acknowledge the good quality of the drinks from places like this, though.
Bustling Hipster Joints:
These coffee shops are popular among the younger crowd, typically college students and young professionals. In other words, right up the crew's alley lol.
They have a trendy, rustic vibe with exposed brick walls, cosy seating, and indie music playing in the background. The atmosphere is lively and often bustling with people working on laptops, socialising, or simply enjoying a cup of coffee.
Artistic Bohemian Spots:
These cafes often double as art galleries or performance spaces. They're slightly more offbeat, attracting a creative crowd and hosting open mic nights or art exhibitions. The decor might be eclectic, with mismatched furniture and colourful murals.
Bret would love these lol. He's the creative one in the group, and he has a passion for art. I could see him taking El to places like these...
Quaint Traditional Cafes:
These places exude a more classic charm, attracting a mix of locals and tourists. They might have a more refined or vintage aesthetic, with wooden furniture, soft lighting, and a relaxed ambience. It's a spot where people come to unwind, read, or have casual conversations.
El would be particularly into the vibe of this kind of place. She's into the more simple, straightforward and traditional stuff... probably due to the way she was raised.
Hidden Gems:
There are also tons of fun little hidden gems in the city - small and obscure coffee shops that the group might discover together. These places offered unique coffee blends and were not too expensive, making them perfect for their diverse tastes.
This is a fun one since it is a minor plot point in book 1! Bret and El have this tradition where they walk each other home and get "lost" along the way... discovering new parts of the city and all. That's how they find their favourite spots, including their favourite record shop. It's also how they met Stevie.
Here's what their go-to drink orders might be:
Stephanie:
Vanilla latte - she'd likely enjoy something both sweet and has a strong coffee flavour, reflecting her dynamic personality. The smoothness of the latte with a touch of sweetness matches her charismatic yet layered character. Plus, it's a simple, straightforward order.
A venti iced caramel macchiato with extra caramel drizzle - she loves the indulgence and complexity of this drink. The sweetness of the caramel and the kick of caffeine are just a nice combination, and again, fits her personality quite well.
Caramel Frappuccino - these just look really good to me lol. Never had one myself, but I think Steph would be into them.
Iced Caramel Macchiato - another thing that looks/sounds nice haha.
Bret:
Double shot espresso or a simple black coffee - he would likely prefer a strong, no-nonsense drink that wakes him up and gives him a jolt of energy. He's straightforward and doesn't fuss over elaborate flavours in the same way that Steph likely would.
A black coffee (Americano) - yet another simple but strong choice that suits his vibe quite nicely.
Elise:
Chamomile tea with a dash of honey- she really appreciates simplicity and comfort. Fits her personality, too... calming, soft and sweet all at once.
Plain cappuccino - simple straightforward order that gets the job done.
Chai Latte - these are really nice... I just think El would really like these. It reflects her understated yet warm nature.
Dylan:
Americano - similar to Bret's reasoning before. He's straightforward and doesn't fuss over elaborate drink options. He'd like a strong, no-nonsense drink choice that wakes him up and gives him a jolt of energy.
Flat White - the perfect balance between bold coffee and a hint of sweetness
A large iced mocha with extra whipped cream - something that's both indulgent and energetic, mirroring his outgoing and active nature. The mocha provides a mix of chocolate and coffee, and the whipped cream adds a touch of sweetness!
Alice:
Mocha - she likes the comforting blend of coffee and chocolate for a touch of sweetness.
A flat white with a side of carrot cake - straightforward but still sophisticated, just like her (very all over the place, but still has a touch of class lol). Carrot cake is also a guilty pleasure of hers.
Vanilla Latte - if she's not feeling in the mood for a mocha, she'd likely go for this instead.
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norrussells · 2 years ago
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thank you so much 4 the tag basil @gokartkid !!!!!
name: em/emma!
birthday: dec. 11th
zodiac: sagittarius (best sign)
hobbies: i love to sing and listen to music, go on walks, read poetry, fanfiction and webtoons with compelling themes + interesting plot + attractive characters.
fav colour(s): primary blue, green + baby/hot pink.
favourite book(s): honestly i don't have a favourite but dr jekyll and mr hyde had me under self-existential questioning. so there's that. poetry is a whole different thing altogether for me though
last song you listened to: oblivion by grimes ×××
last film you watched: i think good morning Vietnam. it was one of the big big movies that my national broadcaster (rté) has on every weekend and i ended up watching the whole thing. i have some criticisms but they're just reflective of the general social interactions between soldier and civilian during the war. overall it was a nice watch and conveys the unnecessary bloodshed that capitalism will manufacture for profit through the eyes of a radio host.
something that helps people: hopefully my humour, i hope it doesn't throw people off and actually gives them a laugh. i want to entertain the world and give them something to enjoy but that's just like a pipe dream lol
meaning behind url: it's common practice for max's name to be twisted into jokes so i just took one and made it cool sexy and gothic now. but idk if people will mistake that for me being an mv00 maks stans dni girlie yk??? 😭😭
i tag @karlmarxverstappen @slagbutton @raikkonens @solitaire-enthusiast and literally anyone else who sees this<3
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