#tretij does NOT want to be there

[sillyfriendssharingablog]

the trio goes to the beach!!! :D

[heshemejoshi]

hi sorry I just saw ur character bingo post. You should do one for Tretij and another for Eli. c:

i was actually thinking about them when i saw the bingo LOL THANKYOU for suggesting them. unfortunately i don’t remember almost anything of the mgs lore anymore so take these opinions with a huge grain of salt. here’s tretij with justified answers:

done dirty by the creators. I feel like tretij/psycho mantis was created for the controller/fourth wall break gimmick and later after mgs1’s release they realized he was actually so fucking cool as a character lol. sadly i think his appearance in mgsv could have been Much More than what we got considering his backstory at that point as a kid forced to be a tool for more powerful people etc etc but i get that game was development hell so whatever. we don’t talk about mgs4 bc i don’t like it. y’know i think my favorite canon portrayal of mantis was in the ashley woods mgs1 comic since his psychic powers in there are like.. reality-distorting and really sick to me they create this entire new branch of the plot for a little while and i loved that. wish the games did more with his powers than just ‘i see you like castlevania don’t you’ though

work better as part of a dynamic. see mgsv even stated him as a tool, a means to an end. which i think is really really depressing given they’re talking about a kid but it relates to the war themes of the games. mantis as a standalone antagonist honestly does not work he’s always been part of an ensemble or a pair and i do think he works best in that way since he’s basically always tied to the minds of other people. he cannot disconnect from them and what they want no matter how much he tries. kinda wish the games pointed this tragedy out more. he was just a kid man

i want to study them like a cockroach, and both affectionate and derogatory words of ‘wtf is wrong with them’. i think their lore and mental space are highly interesting. how his father wanted him dead from the start and he could always sense that. again i wish i got to see more. this answers of the bingo is mostly fueled by a fic i once read called ‘map of the mind’ which i remember fondly it was very good to me

not enough screen time. ok this is kinda a lie i think he’s interesting when he remains a mystery but also like.. i wish he appeared more in mgsv or had a bigger presence than he got yknow. i like that he’s mute in that game though i love when characters say nothing and still communicate a lot

i would never want to meet them. obvious response

ANNND now onto liquid snake or Eli:

wasted potential. he got a lot of personality in mgs1 that is basically His game. y’know. i like his lines and his role and how he’s not that different to solid snake in the sense that he resorts to violence to get what he wants etc because that’s how men like them have been trained to behave. he was insane. i liked how he was very angry in mgsv but again i wish it meant more.. i may be too rude bc i don’t remember mgsv much honestly, maybe he actually did get more development than i remember lol

they work better as part of a dynamic. i mean he is framed as an antagonistic force due to his beliefs. he works in that protagonist-antagonist dynamic by nature of how he’s written but i also think in the context of Tretij and him he works best as a duo with him. i remember mgsv basically had him so angry it was Tretij who felt pulled towards him due to his psyche at the time or something?. and that is soo cool. i’d call it a sort of parasitical dynamic but i don’t quite think that’s the correct term i’m looking for. symbiosis??? IDKKKKK

same with tretij on the ‘what’s wrong with them’ squares really. yes both can be true depending on what facet of their personality and character i’m thinking of at the time

also same with never wanting to meet them. scary! and i don’t really have much to say about him either. idk of the two tretij was the one i always liked the most tbh

[cleromancy]

re: Eli being a pro wrestler or a theatre actor btw. like. one thing about this is that his lifelong best friend, crony and perhaps Lover psycho mantis simply does not have the theater goers temperament like that is not a man who could sit in a crowded audience and not go full blown Carrie white even in an au where he doesnt have telekinesis. he would flip out. so now he has to join every single production eli is ever in as like a lighting or sound guy because eli would take it so personally if tretij didn't go to his performances. like so you hate me and want me to DIE???

liquid snake badly missed his calling as a pro wrestling heel tbh

[kafziels]

im starting to get mildly afraid of my bio class because the teacher has started using me as a role model for the class and its making me nervous. the one time i do well in class and now all the attention is being drawn to me

[liquidsnxke]

@foxhoundsonly​

the situation with his roommates is strange. he has only met one of them since the beginning of spirale and has not even seen the kid around lately. a girl who had been there was gone now, replaced by someone entirely new that liquid hadn’t yet cared enough to introduce himself to. as a matter of fact, there was a third who had been there from the beginning as well who he had never spoken to.

that is how it will be for the foreseeable future, apparently. liquid isn’t terribly burdened by not speaking to his roommates often. he comes and goes from the apartment as he pleases, rarely spending much time in the common areas besides cooking meals exclusively for himself before either going directly to bed or leaving.

so, when he hears a knock at the door, he’s a bit startled. not once - that he knew of, but his experience is a bit null due to never being around anyhow - had someone come knocking. it’s a highly foreign feeling to be expected to answer a door. as a kid, any handlers or officers who wanted to speak to him would simply barge their way into his living quarters. with a twinge of suspicion pinching the back of his mind, the blond soldier steps up to the door, leaning forward to peer through the peephole.

despite the fish-eye lens effect the glass had on the visitor, liquid does not hesitate to yank the door open, one hand on the frame to brace himself as he nearly stumbles into the hallway, leaning forward to look directly into the pair of orange-tinted mask lenses that stare back.

his voice sticks in his throat like peanut butter, or perhaps more like blood, what with the way he feels his stomach drop and chest tighten. sure enough his childhood friend - his only friend from his youth, stated with confidence and no dismay whatsoever - stood before him.

once again.

“t - ” clearing his throat, the super-soldier straightens his back. “tretij.” stepping aside, as if all ego had left him and his motor skills functioned as though he were on anesthesia, he stutters for a moment before offering the psychic to enter. “come in ... ”

[mothbats]

eyyo long time no write. So, I’ve had a lot of things happen that have stunted my desire to write over the past few months, but I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of it! This isn’t much, but it’s a small thing that I’m fairly pleased with and I hope you are too! (and that it provides some consolation that the next chapter of motm is taking forever)

artistry

sfw; liquidmantis, overuse of similes, sad boy

Tretij Rebenok is not his real name. It isn't a name at all but a title, a code, a watermark left on his person, obscuring his true self from the world. A little monster made of ash and despair, black with a smear of red, the color of blood on old cobblestones. The only colors of a life faded by hopelessness.

 The world is monochrome behind this mask of his, a steady hiss of measured breath, oranges and yellows that make up a jungle of violence and endless hunger that gnaws at the minds and bellies of all who surround him. That, Tretij Rebenok can understand. These are realities of black and white, simple lives measured by simple desires. They are shapeless blurs on stretched-thin canvas, faceless creatures with their claws outstretched for the one who would look upon them and be ensnared in their Hell. In this, Tretij Rebenok finds he has little choice, colored and molded until he is no longer sure what he looked like before.

 But the other boy is a bold streak in his mind when they meet. Tretij Rebenok breathes and he can taste pigments unknown on his tongue, looking at this other whose eyes are sharp, his fluid movements like the snake he's named himself after. Deadly, bright and blinding, Tretij Rebenok almost believes that there is something more in this world again. For the first time since birth he finds he wants to see it, to touch it, to know the thoughts of this boy who is so deeply entrenched in the richness of a self-made war.

 It makes Tretij Rebenok's eyes water to imagine it.

 Eli is the first to see Tretij Rebenok as he is in perhaps the whole of his life. Not a footnote in a paper, a file hidden away under rusted lock and key, but his own person: a painting that grows more colorful the longer Eli examines it. Like a master artisan, he pulls Tretij Rebenok to the forefront of his work, gives him shadow and depth, highlight that glows angelic. He is human again under Eli's command - under Eli's companionship.

 But he finds his true color with Eli's love.

 Tretij Rebenok doesn't know how his mask had been removed, so a part of him for so long that he had come to believe it as his own flesh. But Eli pries it away so easily, calloused fingers tender on pale skin, taking away the last of his defense and bathing him in light; removing the scab of an old wound and allowing the new growth beneath to breathe. Eli's eyes, Tretij Rebenok notes, are the bluest thing he's ever seen in his life - like the sky or the ocean, he supposes, not much room for focusing on it when he's being pulled in, magnetic to the beautiful boy before him.

 Eli kisses like he is blind to the chips in the marble, the frayed and burnt edges of Tretij Rebenok's body - his hands paint the high mountains and low rivers, the rocky outcroppings and the copper fields. He makes a masterpiece of what should have been broken and cast aside, remaking the empath anew with every touch and press of his mouth. Tretij Rebenok burns with the new life that has been breathed into him and he is sure to give as good as he gets. Eli will never want for another sunset, another stormy sky, another battlefield while Tretij Rebenok is at his side.

 And when Eli holds him and Tretij Rebenok is brave enough to give him his true name, it slides off his tongue in the dark, no more than a whisper of pastel on aged paper, a soft tint that gains a new hue each time Eli says it back. When he calls it, howls it, screams it in agony and ecstasy. This, Tretij Rebenok is sure, is the height of what life can be. The faded life of his mask has long been laid aside to gather dust in the recesses of his glorious gallery, forgotten.

 But all too soon, the paint begins to run. The world they have built begins to break, shrines to their new life rotting at the cores and paintbrushes losing their bristles one at a time in the wake of their conflicts. Eli longs to return to a place Tretij Rebenok cannot follow - his world has always been tinted by his need for revenge, an unwinnable fight. At first, Tretij Rebenok had been content to pretend it made their lives brighter, a background to every scene. However, now all he can see is the way it twists and turns them, the artist tearing down his creations to achieve his ultimate goal, hands burdened with ash and blood as he walks on the bent and broken corpses of his achievements.

 All his beauty gone... except one.

 But Tretij Rebenok cannot be changed; Eli had borne his Galatea unto the world, but he could not force it into his servitude like the others. Tretij Rebenok is an otherworldly creature who has begun to walk his divergent path, tears in his eyes when he sees the end come for them. Eli does not abide by begging, and their final kiss tastes too bitter, full of want and things left unsaid. Colorless and empty.

 Alone, Tretij Rebenok turns his old mask over in his paper-thin hands, trembling as he raises it to his face. The scent of leather and plastic has never been a comfort, and he chokes on the dust as the world beyond closes off into darkness: the age of the artist has ended.

 Tears fog the glass and turn the monochrome into a faded watercolor, cloaked in silence and loneliness, to begin again.

[141-point-12]

do you have any less popular or guilty pleasure ships that you would wanna explore in fanwork someday? your artwork and fic is so beautiful and your otasune characterisations are spot on! so i was wondering if theres anything you ever thought abt doing but maybe didnt get around to? i hope you have a wonderful weekend! much love ~

Ahhh, the answer is a definite yes, especially if we want to expand “ships” to just “relationships” of various flavors and not like “this is my OTP they are endgame I won’t hear any argument”. MGS is kinda my arena and has been for a while (I enjoy plenty of other media but I’m not really inspired to create for it, if that makes sense?) so it mostly has to do with characters from that series.

Something that always kind of piqued my interest is sort of a throwback to Sailor Moon of all things. There’s an episode in the last part of the Neherenia arc from Stars where the Sailor Senshi are all separated and thrown into unlikely pairs. Mercury and Uranus, Mars and Neptune, Venus and Pluto. It’s interesting because even though they are all on the same side, they’re not used to working together in a one-on-one situation, and their personalities can conflict with each other. Uranus and Mercury are an aggressive and passive personality type, Mars and Neptune are both aggressive and Pluto and Venus are both kind of passive. I don’t know if that was the intention of these episodes, but it gave me a lot of food for thought on how conflict can arise between allies. So those kinds of interactions are something I would really like to explore!

A prime example of this would be Raiden and Otacon. They’ve worked together more than once, but presumably always with Snake as part of the equation. I would be extremely interested to see some stories perhaps even post Rising that have these two working together, maybe having some awkward “I feel like we should know each other better than we do” conversations. What happens when Sunny isn’t in the room? Is she surprised that they’re not automatic besties? What else can happen here?

I know there’s basically no reason to assume they interacted, but I really think that Akiba and Hal would have gotten along okay. They have a lot in common and neither of them have particularly abrasive personalities, but there’s at least one good cup of coffee conversation between these two. They both probably feel out of their depths a lot and have a lot of fears about being next to godlike heroes while they themselves are just “guys” but they have to hold on and do their jobs because for some reason people are counting on them. And that’s remarkable but also terrifying.

I also would like to take a crack at writing some Liquid/Mantis, because that is a completely different flavor from what I’m used to. In a lot of ways, introducing a telepath to the equation (who may or may not be able to turn off their abilities at a given time) sort of reverses the way the relationship dynamic operates. If you take Otasune as an example, it’s easy to imagine that as a relationship that started out with day to day functionality, eventually giving way to small talk, then familarity, and eventually intimacy and deep secrets. But if Tretij is constantly inside Eli’s mind, it sort of goes the other way around. You have to turn “I’ve read your entire mind” into something that can be functional. (And I know I talk about this all the time, but “Map of the Mind” by @mothbats​ really does a fantastic job of this, so much so that I really want to see where they go before I tackled the topic.) Also, cards on the table, I’m really terrible at writing NSFW but I feel like these two could open up the field for some very creative interpretations of what “intimacy” means. If I did give it a go, I think I’d want to try and channel in some of Alan Moore’s run of ‘Swamp Thing’  and the way the characters there had a relationship that wasn’t quite what I’d call “phsyical” or even “sexual” but was… something.

I also have a slight interest in Solimiller and Otaliquid, both because I think there’s some potential for some interesting stories in their own right, but also because I think that stories about past (failed) relationships can also tell you a lot about where a character is now. What didn’t work out in the past helps contrast what is working in the present. Likewise (and again, reiterating that I mean this as a ‘relationship’ not a ‘shippy ship’) I really do want to explore what happened between Hal and Julie and how that unfolded and affected him. This was a huge event in Hal’s youth that had a lasting effect on him, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out “what went wrong and how”, so perhaps at some point I’ll put that into words.

I really appreciate every word! Otasune will no doubt remain my priority (there are so many things I still want to write for them!) but there are a lot of things I want to explore.