#well to be fair there’s still not a lot of canon stuff we know about natlan so i can say whatever i want under the guise of theorising

[the-travelling-witch]

me: *making a dumb joke about two unrelated characters*

my friend: give us the au bestie (also clearly joking)

me:

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XXV)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts 💚 (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)

Where we last left off... Tim pulls a fast one on Batman for their mutual benefit. Everybody giggles. Danny goggles.

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

(Additional TW: I think this counts as a panic attack ngl)

On the one hand. The room Danny’s in has a killer view of the earth from the moon.

The wall is basically just one big window. Danny is also apparently permitted to mash his face into the glass and ogle the Earth from Space for as long as he wants until the stinky dad, whoever he is, finally emerges from the depths of the building.

Diana’s the only one beside him today. She looks nice—nicer than usual, in her armor and bright clothing rather than soft scrubs and hair net. She can push his chair without getting tired—she could probably fly and carry him too, if she had to, so. Danny’s maybe counting on her liking him if this stinky dad tries to be mean.

So. Diana (nice lady) and Danny (half-dead ghost boy) are quietly seated in a dim, peaceful board room, absorbing the early morning (?) space radiation when the door hisses open across the room.

In the doorway is a long, dark, shadow of a man.

…And the green guy!!

Okay, if the stinky dad man brought a friend to this meeting the same way Diana’s meant to supervise him, Danny feels like he’s been lawyered up for the sake of some kind of court trial. This is not fair. Danny wasn’t able to review his case with his legal representation before this.

Well. Danny fumes. Whatever. His lawyer is Diana, the most powerful living being he’s seen ever in his life, and she can totally kick the green guy’s ass. Hell, Danny could probably kick the green guy’s ass.

...You know. If he wasn’t. Sick.

The stinky dad guy looks a lot like the blob his kid drew him as. That’s kind of neat—his suit is all black with little to no variation, which sort of just washes out the colors Danny might have been able to see if his eyes were still good. He’s very quiet, which is nice, and he’s very not-trying-to-read-Danny’s-mind, which is even better.

The two sit. Danny’s already in a wheelchair, so he just lets Diana wheel him to the table. The lady sits beside him in the spinny office chair.

Hello, the green guy opens with, already toying with the edges of Danny’s aura.

Danny sends back an abundance of ass-kicking emotions.

…Alright then, the green man capitulates, the barest hint of bemusement quickly stifled.

Good. Danny is mean. He’s awake enough to be mad about other people touching his aura from any end of his personal bubble.

But then the green guy…says stuff to the dad guy? And it’s very? Quiet?

Explanations, the green guy says. The image of a sign language translator at a baseball game floats over to him, and—

…Oh. He’s translating. For Danny.

That’s…nice? Nicer than Danny expected, honestly? Most of the time, people are perfectly happy to misinterpret him. It was kind of the way of the world at this point. Getting blamed for stuff, getting accused of stuff…

Man. If they turn out to be indoctrinating him for secret war purposes, at least they’re going all in. Danny might actually. You know. Like it here. A little.

He squirms in his chair, and tries not to look at anyone in particular. Diana—the lady who’s been nice to him—makes as if to straighten his hair for him, and remembers at the last second that he doesn’t like to be touched.

And sure. Danny doesn’t want to be touched. By bad guys.

…But Diana’s been really nice to him, so. Maybe. He scratches at the back of his neck, and ducks his head down—and remembers to use his words. “Yes,” he consents verbally. He can’t make eye contact. But he can…let her. Brush his hair back. A little.

Diana asks something long and complicated—and the green guy presses an image of Wonder Woman asking permission, being kind, being gentle­—up against the edges of Danny’s awareness.

Danny nods at the floor instead of at the lady. It’s fine. She’s fine. It’s fine.

And her fingers carefully brush through the front end of his fringe, and Danny. Danny is so normal about it. He doesn’t even cry or anything. Not even in front of his friend’s stinky dad.

And she doesn’t do it like Mom did it. And she doesn’t ruffle his hair like Dad did.

But it’s. Nice. And she doesn’t pull.

…And she doesn’t hit.

Danny eventually leans back into his wheelchair. It’s a little bit embarrassing to be halfway in and halfway out, but. Whatever. The scary-looking-dad with the earsies on his helmet has his own teenager. He should understand what it feels like to get emotionally weird with your teen in a public place. If he doesn’t, well...he wouldn’t be a great dad, then, and his opinion would suck anyway.

Based on what Danny knows about the masked kid, Danny isn’t sure the guy would tolerate a bad dad. The teen seems kinda unhinged.

The man says something, and the green guy presses a number of translated feelings against Danny’s awareness: Greetings. Questions about Danny’s wellbeing. Curiosity, but not demanding.

“…Hello,” Danny says back, and. Waves.

The man waves back. He’s got little claws on his gloves.

…Like a cat? Is it to go with his ears? Danny wonders about the possibilities of the guy being cat themed. It’s possible, presumably.

So…they want to know how Danny’s doing? Danny shrugs, and he glances at Diana, since, you know, she could probably fill them in? She does speak their language. And she’s been here the whole time.

The lady leans in close to him, black hair falling out from behind her ear. “What do you want to say?” she whispers into her ear, hand covering her mouth from their watchers.

Uh. It’s up to…Danny?? Somehow??

Danny winces. “…Good?” he tries, unsure if the word he uses means okay or fine or well. “…Not…hungry?”

“Very good,” Diana agrees, a little louder. She looks proud. Being not hungry must mean a lot to her, then. It means a lot to Danny too—he can remember the sensation of his stomach rubbing against itself, friction pulling raw at his insides as acid ate at him.

It was. Bad.

It was bad.

Danny’s glad he’s not there anymore. Anyway, there’s a guy in the room who reads minds, and Danny doesn’t really want to share that memory with anyone ever; especially someone who could turn it back on him.

The stinky dad says something else, but he uses words too thick and long for Danny to understand. The green guy translates, pure conceptual recall brushing against Danny’s outer aura—Needs? Wants?

…Danny frowns.

Danny looks at Diana, who looks back at him. Wants, needs…? What?

“Do you need aniþing?” Diana whispers to him, which. You know. Mostly makes sense.

Does Danny…need anything? He has medical care, he has food, he has water, he has toys and brain teasers, even…he has people to hang out with, he has people who stretch his legs with him so that he can go back to normal…heck, he doesn’t even have to clean his own waste bag. There’s people who do that for him.

Like. What more could Danny ask for?

Danny shrugs. He just wants to heal up and run away. Maybe…maybe, if Diana is real and not just pretending to like him to keep an eye on him, she’d let him visit her later or something. Danny would do what Dani doe—did. What Dani…did. And he’d just go a bunch of places and come back when he wants to.

But. No. There’s nothing he really needs right now.

The pointy-eared guy and the green guy share a look and a couple quiet words. Danny flares his annoyance into the silence, but all he gets is a silent Apology/Apology, which isn’t answers.

Ugh. Danny leans over the arm of his wheelchair. This is kind of super boring; it’s more boring than it is frustrating, even.

The stinky dad guy says something else, and Danny feels the push and pull of something double ended tugging on the outer edge of his aura. Additional/information, giving/take?

Danny really wishes he’d brought a fidget toy or something. His nerves are ramping up but all he can do is contort his fingers together, feeling the strain in and the joints click as he pushes them together and twists them apart. They want…to ask him questions? No, they’re already asking him questions. They want Danny to…give them questions??

…Danny doesn’t really want to. Still, he probably…should.

“The…space station,” he says, using the wrong word for their big space building but not knowing the better one; “Is this…where…why is it?”

The black-caped dad grumbles something vaguely approving. A tablet pops out of the table—spooky—and the guy starts drawing on it, explaining all the way. The green guy simplifies more of the verbally complicated concepts for Danny as they go.

Anyway. So they’re in space because it’s their…job? Danny thinks? They do…fighting stuff. Which Danny knew. Because he’d seen them on the news.

But it looks like they do a lot of things—they clean up after storms, and chase regular bad guys and super-bad-guys instead of just big ones. And they stop bad aliens from hurting people on Earth.

The green guy shifts from a green-looking, pointy-headed, red-eyed form to a warm, brown, human skin tone. And even. Like. Human clothing.

Danny stares.

…And the guy immediately takes back his natural form, his body physically shifting and morphing, which, fair, but holy crap. He’s living, on Earth. He passes as normal, on Earth. No one snitches on him. No one’s selling him to the government for parts. No one’s trapping him in a cage and not feeding him.

This guy works here, and everyone lets him.

Danny shifts in his chair. He…he wants that. He wants that. He wants to pass as human and not have to worry about…about anyone getting rid of him. He wants to go back to school. He wants to hide, and never ever not ever be found by anyone or anything when he does.

“I want that,” Danny says. There’s no inflection. He feels dead. He is dead, but usually he doesn’t feel it. “What do I do for…that.”

Help/Searching/Finding? the green—alien—questions, but there’s nothing for Danny to find. He knows exactly where everyone he loves is—and unless they’re already fully formed in the ghost zone…

…Well. Danny has forever to wait and see if he’ll see his friends and sister again. Maybe he’ll find them again one day, in a world purely green and glowing.

He shakes his head.

The next question comes…softer. Gentler. The mental push feels more like a breeze than a gale. Friends…Home/family?

The question comes tinged with all sorts of sensations that Danny’s suppressed—warmth, security, happiness, oxytocin, fondness, pride and being the source thereof, warmth and love, love, love—

Danny’s sweating. He can’t stop. His hands are shaking faster than usual—he kicks the brakes off his chair with the heels of his palms, and jerks the wheels back, pulling away from the desk—

He’s halfway across the room before he hears the noise. It’s just. Noise. It’s Diana, carefully shushing the loud heartbeat churning in his ears, hands on his hand, trying not to cage him but trying to keep skin on skin contact. Her hand is on the back of his hand, and on his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Diana whispers. Danny’s shaking. His whole body is shaking. “Shhh, sh sh sh. It’s alright, it’s okay.”

It’s not it’s not it’snoit’snotit’sNOT. His sister is dead. His friends are dead. His parents sold his captors the equipment to catch him and they didn’t care if he got hurt doing it and now they’re DEAD. They tore open his hometown down the middle just to catch him, they stole him—they took his dead parent’s things as tools to hurt him—they HURT HIM and there isn’t—he can’t—he can’t—

Something is holding him down, and Danny thrashes. He has arms, but they’re injured—he has legs but he needs a tail and he—and—

He cries into Diana’s arms, sobbing and wailing. It’s a miracle that the building stays together. She holds him tighter, and he cries even harder into her soft under-layers.

He wants to run away. He needs to run away. Someone is holding him, and he can’t even flicker through her the way he wants to; his core is already too strained just from talking.

Danny’s sick. He’s dying. He’s—

“Take a breath,” Diana whispers, calm and sure. She models it for him. Danny gasps in air. “Good. Lete it out slow. As bobbels in a straw.”

He tries to copy her he does and she’ll be so angry if he can’t do it right on the first try but she lets him try, over and over again, until Danny’s able to stop hiccupping and leaking tears and ectoplasm all over her and realize that she’s holding him like a baby. Like. Actually cradling him against his body armor.

…You know what. He’s too tired to even be embarrassed. Screw that. Danny leans all the way over her and goes completely limp. Someone else can deal with his him for a little bit.

She does. Diana just…holds him.

It’s nice. Mom and Dad used to do that for him, when Danny was still…more human, he supposed. More than he is right now.

Something else touches his hand. Danny looks blearily downwards.

The teenager’s dad gets to his knees and takes Danny’s hand—and he doesn’t need the translation to understand.

“I’m sorry,” the man says, over and over again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Danny blinks sleepily. What does his friend’s stinky dad have to be sorry for? He didn’t even do anything to Danny in the first place.

Danny won’t remember, afterwards, being wheeled back to his room for a nap. They must have wheeled him back, though, because the alternative is that Diana tucked him into bed like a baby, and that’s just kind of embarrassing to even think about for too long.

[rexscanonwife]

'Are we allies or enemies?

This will be the death of me

All is fair in love and war but I can't fight with you anymore

This will be the death of me'

I've been wanting to talk more about Crosshair and Brea's relationship for a WHILE now, but I never really found the 'right' time (in my silly brain) I guess you can say they...know each other very well! As you can imagine it's filled with drama, romantic tension, and lots and lots of angst! 0u0 a little more info + textless illustrations under the cut ♡♡♡

Sooooo, I tend to think of this as sort of an AU! If I'm being SUPER duper canon-compliant with my self ship lore it's not really the focus, but if I play around with timeline a little bit I can come up with this. Brea is a newly knighted Jedi, having just passed the trials, and despite holding rank in the Clone Wars she's not a general because she has no battalion. HOWEVER, there is a band of misfits that have been sort of running around doing their own thing, going where needed, sort of the way she does. The idea is what if for a short time she was the BAD BATCH'S Jedi?

In this scenario, the boys are a bit reluctant to take orders from her because they don't believe they NEED a Jedi. They're not really about rules and protocol and mandates...but they soon find out that neither is Brea! She's perfect for them, she matches their energy and allows them to make decisions the way they want. They all become very close...except for Crosshair, who still doesn't trust her. He only trusts his brothers, everyone else is an outsider.

I'll probably talk about it more later, but she does something or other that proves her care for them as individuals and one thing leads to another, Crosshair and Brea are something of an item. Not a couple per se, but FAMILIAR if you know what I mean. However, it's because of Crosshair's emotional constipation that it doesn't really go further than that, and it's ALSO because of his emotional constipation that things start to change between them! And when you bring Brea's new Padawan Kepler into the mix, things go very sour very quickly.

To make a long story short, Crosshair burns his bridge with Brea long before he joins the empire and he didn't even know it. By the time he does, she's moved on and is in love with a certain other clone! All of that is more stuff to talk about another time though ^ 0 ^ if you've read all this thank you so much and ilysm! 🫶🫶🫶

Taglist♡: @me-myself-and-my-fos @tiny-cloud-of-flowers @sunstar-of-the-north @dearly-beeloved @adoredbyalatus @changeling-selfship @crushes-georg @miutonium @cherry-bomb-ships @rosieaurora @rejaytionships @sunflawyer @in-true-blue-love @tropicalgothships @little-miss-selfships @hotrodharts @cupiidzbow @frozenhi-chews @limey-self-inserts @candyheartedchy

[blindmagdalena]

If A-Train was able to get a redemption arc, I don’t see why Homie couldn’t get one (I know he won’t). It’s just so annoying to me when people say Homie is irredeemable. I mean of all the villains of the show, he actually has a reason to be one based on what Vought did to him as a child and then as an adult. Like duh. What did they think would happen?? A-Train on the other hand, didn’t really have a reason to be a villain. He grew up with a loving family. He just turned out to be an asshole but gets a redemption arc. I just really want justice for Homie but it’ll never happen in canon. Thank goodness for fanfic and all the wonderful work you do!!!

so, i feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the redemption arc here. the real reason Homelander is "irredeemable" is because he doesn't seek redemption. he has neither the moral capacity nor the desire.

redemption arcs aren't about who has the saddest backstory or who's more "justified" in their villainy. they're about people who feel genuine remorse for their actions and make the choice to do better. to atone.

Homelander doesn't believe he's in the wrong. he fully believes that he is justified in everything he does, and everyone he hurts. unless that CORE truth of his character changes, no, he cannot have a redemption arc.

A-Train, on the other end, is a perfect example of a well-executed redemption arc. he was absolutely NOT an asshole for no reason. sure, he wasn't raised in a lab, but his life was still FULL of abuse and exploitation. from the moment he was born, his parents pumped him full of an experimental drug. his father died when he was still a baby, and his mother worked two jobs while his young brother raised him. kids can't raise kids. his situation was tragic. i mean, for god's sake, his powers developed when he was a three year old (!!!!!!!!!!) because he was running away from the bullets of a deadly shooting towards his home.

so from the age of three, he became the breadwinner for his family. he was trained and likely performed in all kinds of ways. there's no way he didn't with how poor his family was. once he was old enough, he got picked up into Vought's programming and continued to endure god knows what kind of abuse from them. we know for a FACT that every child star of Vought ends up miserable and ruined in some way from the shit they're put through.

remember why he fell in love with Popclaw? "Here's someone who isn't afraid to be happy."

that's heartbreaking. he worked his ass off his entire life and didn't even know how to be happy because of it. even when he went to GodU, Brink commented that he was "the most driven kid he trained." because he had no choice! he was the one supporting his family out of poverty.

i'm not saying A-Train is perfect. i'm not even saying he wasn't an asshole. he was! but to claim he had no reason to turn out the way he did isn't fair. he did a lot of shitty things, he turned to drugs when his powers started to fail him, and he accidentally killed a woman because he was blitzed out of his mind on V... doing a drug run for Homelander. he's then forced by Homelander to kill the woman he loves. he did a cowardly, vile thing, and he has expressed nothing but anguish over it ever since.

but like... in the grand scheme of things, was he really that bad? he spirals and struggles. he gets mocked, he tries desperately to find his identity. the fact his brother shames him for not being connected to a community he was unplugged from because he was shunted into fame and exploitation at a young age sucks.

Reggie, that sweet little boy, was failed in every conceivable way and he became a dysfunctional adult that did shitty stuff because of it. now he's gained perspective and he's working to make different choices. i've been hugely invested in his arc because it's GOOD character work.

so while i appreciate and agree with the sentiment and wanting better for Homelander, redemption comes to those who seek it. so far, we have not seen any indication Homelander ever will. maybe he'll pull a Darth Vader moment at the eleventh hour for Ryan's sake, who knows!

either way, on his own merit, A-Train deserves the chance to be and do better.

[alpaca-clouds]

Trying to figure out Gortash's backstory

As I said before, I am right now very much inspired to write a redemption story for Gortash. Like post-canon, Gortash lives AU (because I still hate that he dies), and he actually gets a chance to redeem himself. Not only like: He turns good, but he actually does something good enough to be considered a redemption. And he does so without dying.

But... Yeah, that story is going to be from Gortash's POV, which means that I very much need to come up with some fillings for the big ass holes that the game leaves in terms of his backstory.

We don't know how old he is, but I would estimate him to be around his late 30s or early 40s. Which means we kinda have like 20 years to fill up.

While the entire timeline of Raphael "buying" him from his parents and him escaping the hell is very vague, he was probably somewhere between 18 and 20 when he got out of the hells. And the exact stuff what happened in between is vague. Even how he escaped the hells is not quite clear. I mean, was Helsink responsible for that? Or how did he get out?

And then he starts to do illegal weapons trading once he is back in Baldur's Gate. Which is fair. I am going to assume that he is actually going to throw some stuff in there that is of his own making, given that he clearly is a tinkerer.

Given Karlach is 30, I do not think he hired her before she was 15, so at max she has worked for him just a couple of years.

I mean, technically those details don't matter. What does matter however is: How does he become a Chosen of Bane, and how does he get into contact with the Dark Urge?

As quite a few people have pointed out: Technically the Dark Urge existing is very confusing given that they have been created by Bhaal and Bhaal was dead for about a hundred years until ten years ago. So unless Durge is ten years old, this does not fully make sense. Sure, technically speaking Durge could be immortal, I guess, but... Well.

See, the issue I see with Gortash is, that I just do not pick him as the religious type. I do not see him going to the Banite church and actually give enough fucks to make himself a name in the church and after some great show of faith getting the status of chosen. I mean, if you talk to him, he just... Ketheric is devoted to Myrkul, sure. And Orin was indoctrinated into the Bhaalist cult from her birth onward. But Gortash? He would follow nearly every god if that god gave him powers. At least that is my reading of him. Sure, the entire tyrant thing plays well with his pompous and kinda narcissistic personality (and I mean this in a neutral way - given how he grew up narcissism in a medical sense is to be expected), but... Like, had Oghma thrown him a boon, he would have served Oghma, right?

So, why is he a chosen?

Usually chosen are either one of two: Either, they are very dedicated to the god and have proofen themselves to them over and over again, or they have something (power, knowledge, influence) that the god is interested in. As I don't see Gortash falling underneath the first umbrella, the second one could be it. Was Bane interested in Gortash maybe, because Gortash had a lot of knowledge about the hells maybe? Was Bane originally interested in the crown or something else that Gortash knew about? That would be one possibility.

Though, there is another one. Because it just so happens that in the lore of Faerûn something happened just 8 years ago, that could have given him chosen status without him doing shit for it. Even though it would also mean, that him being a chosen is almost random. Because 8 years ago the second sundering happened. And during the second sundering for a variety of reasons the gods picked quite a lot of chosen. And yes, that included the Dead Three as well. And a lot of those chosen were in fact not people super dedicated to the gods or anything, but just people who generally aligned with the domain and alignment of the god in question. And I cannot help but wonder: Was Gortash just one of the chosen Bane got from that event?

It would work out fine. Because there is one thing that keeps bothering me: Sure, Gortash kept secrets from Karlach. But she still was his personal bodyguard. And she had no idea that he was aligned with Bane. Which makes me think that indeed he was not a Banite when he sold her off to Zariel.

And yeah, I cannot help myself. The timeline would work out rather well: Gortash becomes a chosen closely prior the events of the second sundering, but after he sold of Karlach. After a bit the Dark Urge (who somehow very much is an adult, because I guess he time travelled or something) finds him. The two hit it off (whether romantically or platonically) and come up with their grand evil scheme. At some point Ketheric joins.

Of course, there is one big hole in that explaination, though: Who are the other people working for Gortash while he just is a black market weapons trader? If he was a Banite it would be easily explainable (other Banites), but like this it leaves open the question: Who are they and what happened to them?

I don't know. I am rambling. But yeah. I like this asshole. And his story is fun to think about.

[cupcakeshakesnake]

Some old writing I did for a Harbor Town AU x canon POTC situation

So like, this is out of the blue, but some time ago I might have thought up a scenario where the canon POTC cast find themselves in the AU world and, well, not get along. Something about canon Beckett wanting to steal modern technology to get the upper hand in his war while the townspeople try to send the scurvy lot back to their time without the government getting involved.

It was mostly a mishmash of broken scenes but I wrote a bit where AU Norrington has to disguise himself as the 18th century version for some intel or other and runs into Beckett (you'll see which one).

(This was written in 2022, just so you know.)

OH AND IN THE MEANTIME here's the document for general AU ideas I had in 2021. It's been three years, I've outgrown shame.

"Lord Beckett, the Admiral is here to see you." As Groves - the other Groves - stepped forward and opened the door, Norrington tugged discreetly at his collar. It was by some miraculous coincidence that he had recently learned the general methods of donning period garb for an educational reenactment, but heck, the stuff was uncomfortable. He hoped that whatever the situation was, it would end quickly; the boots were already hurting his feet, and more importantly, he wasn't sure he could hold the guise very long.

"Let him in," a smooth voice answered. He was led into what he could only vaguely describe as an organized mess of an office. There were furnitures of very expensive-looking wood, and everything was in perfect order, but there were just so many objects - some of which he could not even guess the uses of. He had to steel himself for a moment, reminding himself that 18th century Admiral Norrington of the Royal Navy would not be caught gawking at his superior's belongings. The doors creaked shut behind him, leaving only him and - presumably - Lord Beckett in the room. He spotted a large portrait of a man standing atop a globe, as if he had conquered the world. The outfit was unfamiliar, but the face bore the likeliness of the Cutler Beckett he knew. So their version has more of an ego, he mused. He turned to face the other side of the room where, behind another one of those fancy polished wooden desks, sat the other Cutler Beckett. Which is to say, basically the same man but in a powdered wig and embroidered waistcoat. Norrington bit the inside of his cheek, successfully holding back a laugh. (To be fair, he himself was looking rather like an ice cream sundae at the moment.)

Wait, was he supposed to say something? How would a Navy officer initiate conversation? He was saved the bother by the other man.

"Ah, Admiral," he started. "Just on time. Excellent. We ought to discuss the matters previously mentioned, then?"

Oh god what was he supposed to say, he had no idea-

"But first, there are some things I need to check."

Oh no oh no oh no-

"Admiral," Beckett started again briskly, not paying attention (thank god) to the visibly anxious not-Admiral. "You were to be stationed on the Flying Dutchman before the recent series of events transpired, is that correct?"

"Yes, sir," Norrington answered as dryly as possible, immensely relieved that it happened to be among what little bits of information he had picked up here and there.

"Good," said Beckett, still not looking, "that seems to be in order. Ah- one more thing. I would need your phone number."

"Zero seven-" Norrington stopped.

What?

"-five, one zero one four, and I will not mention the rest," finished Beckett in a low voice, finally looking up. The smooth drawl in his voice was gone.

"Sir, I-" 

But even as Norrington's brain scrambled to come up with a plausible excuse amidst his mounting confusion, he noticed that the shadows under the shorter man's eyes looked all too familiar - and then Beckett whipped off his wig, revealing a sleek brushed-back hairstyle that was definitely not in fashion during the Age of Sail. So this wasn't the other one after all.

"Don't bother," Beckett called as he rose unceremoniously from his seat and bent down to rummage underneath the desk. "I specifically ordered the men to look for James Norrington near the piers and-" he rose back up with a handful of papers - "told them he would most likely have lost his uniform. I see it's been working out so far." He pushed the papers into Norrington's arms.

"Here, take these. They seem to have stolen some documents of mine, and while this is the majority of it there are still several missing."

"What's going on?" he asked, feeling rather stupid all of a sudden.

"I just explained," the not-Lord Beckett gave one of his scathing glances. Then his narrowed eyes softened slightly. "I explained enough. We don't have time for the full story at the moment."

He picked up his wig from the desk and replaced it on his head. "Now go," there was a hint of urgency in his voice. "Tell them you've been sent to join the reconnaissance party. They will lead you out."

"What about you, Lor- I mean Mr. Beckett?" asked Norrington, safely tucking away the papers in one of his frock coat's inner pockets.

"I still need to look for the rest of the documents," Beckett reminded him.

"What of the other... you? The Lord?"

"Oh, I think we'll have several hours before we have to worry about him, don't worry." answered Beckett with a small, rather ominous smile. "Now please take your leave."

As Norrington walked out the doors and headed up the corridor towards the upper deck, he muttered to himself, Oh god he hit him with the McDonald's sprite.

[kitspindles]

I’m in no way bashing on people who have already finished TSatS and say they hate it, are disappointed, etc., because I myself have not gone past chapter seven. My friend let me read some today, but I won’t have my own copy until Thursday, so maybe my opinions will change. I will say, however, that if you read 400+ pages in less than a day, maybe give yourself some time to process the entire plot first?

In any case, I can’t help but wonder how many people went into this book expecting one version of Nico and Will, only to be hit with something else entirely. And I mean like... expecting the fandom’s versions of these two, rather than what canon has previously shown us up until this book.

It’s my personal opinion that the PJO fandom’s worse enemy is their own mischaracterization of the characters at times. And I don’t mean like little head canons and stuff. Everyone has done those at some point. There’s usually no harm in those. I’m talking about people who created their own versions of Nico and Will and have been running with these visions for years through different fan fictions and what-not online.

For years we’ve known basically nothing about Will aside from the fact that he’s sarcastic, likes Star Wars, his mom is a country singer, he can glow in the dark, and he’s better at healing than fighting. (And he has questionable fashion choice at times). Like, that’s all we’ve had since his initial introduction in The Last Olympian over a decade ago. Everything else? Online and fan speculation. And again, there is nothing wrong with that! I just feel like a lot of people went into this book holding onto their own pre-conceived visions of what Will Solace was and ended up disappointed the authors made him... different? But not really different, because he didn’t have a lot of in-depth personality or backstory before this.

Me personally? Yeah, I’m not that far into the book yet but I’m loving how Will is portrayed so far. He’s still sarcastic, but he’s shown his fair share of level-headedness as well as frustrations just within the first couple chapters. He is in no way the overly-optimistic sunshine-y boy who only exists to help Nico that the fandom has portrayed him to be all these years. His character arc is already headed in a way deeper direction (more on that when I finish the book). The whole bit where Will had coffee spilled on him and spent the next couple paragraphs in the scene trying to be unbothered while actually giving off “This is fine” fire dog energies? I loved that.

As for Nico, can I just say I adore how he’s written in this book? Aside from his PoV in Blood of Olympus, this is the first time he’s had his own narration. And it’s actually about him and more in-depth than previous times. I’ve heard people say that he’s “out of character,” and while I can see a little of what they’re all saying, I just want to know... what version of Nico have you all been reading? Did I miss something?

Up until this book, what exactly did we know about Nico? That he’s displaced in time, his sister and mother are both dead (and he feels alone), he harbored repressed gay feelings from his upbringing as a Catholic guy in 1940s Italy, and he’s been through the ringer more than once (so, trauma, basically). Oh, and he’s a bit of a nerd (Mythomagic and knowing all kinds of ancient creatures). That’s... about it. Everything has been speculation and projection from fans.

In previous books he’s always been portrayed from first- or third-person point of view (usually from people who don’t know him well and just think he’s “creepy”), leading to the idea that he’s distant and low-empathy based on some interactions he’s had with demigods who weren’t thrilled to be around him, during a time of great pressure. But he’s not exactly uncaring. He’s been shown to care a lot, actually (Bianca, Hestia, Bob, everything he’s done for Percy, his friendship with Reyna, Hazel, etc.)

But what about when he was ten? He was an excitable, curious kid who liked to have fun. And what did we see briefly in Trials of Apollo (before Jason died, at least)? We saw some of that energy return, particularly in The Hidden Oracle.

So, yeah, I’m personally thrilled to see him making cringe-y jokes and have some self-deprecating humor. It’s very “#OnBrand” for a traumatized teenager who’s just trying to cope and live life without any godly wars forcing him this way and that. Can we really say it’s “out of character” if we’ve never seen more than one side of Nico? (The under pressure side, from other character’s PoVs, in books not about him where he’s basically been a side character?) I’m just glad to see him cracking jokes, laughing, and acting more like a normal kid.

Now, is this book different from Rick’s other ones? Uh, yeah. I won’t say it’s not. But it’s not bad. It’s supposed to be different. It has slightly different intentions than the other books (re: explicitly working through trauma and relationship bumps). Also, it’s co-written. Co-written books always read slightly off from the original author’s work, but dam if it isn’t hard to meld writing styles and copy another author’s particular voice. But I think Mark did a very good job at imitating Rick’s style (again, from what I’ve read so far).

Will I change my mind on all this the farther I get into the book? Maybe. There’s a lot to read and take in. All I’m saying is don’t let the negative reviews warp your opinion of the book if you haven’t read it yet and are on the fence if you should or not. Wait for the PDF to drop, or for a library copy, and read and see for yourself.

[etoilesombre]

You know what? People shouldn't feel bad about liking things in fandom, or creating things that make them happy. I'm absolutely vagueposting, but this really isn't about one post, it's about a tone I've noticed popping up again lately from multiple people (including people I follow and generally respect!)

-"They absolutely cannot fuck! So crazy people would think about that and be into it, it would break canon! "

-"Mod AU doesn't work, they're Serious Characters they aren't gonna run a coffee shop its OOC! "

-"Actually, fun fluffy fic about them at all during a certain era doesn't work!"

I get it. I agree with a fair part of it. People post all kinds of asinine shit that I hate actually. But you know where I bitch about it? Privately in group chat.

Let people fucking have fun. I get the sense that many people come to this fandom specifically because it's Serious and Challenging and you want to Do Serious Analysis. I think a lot of folks around these parts either are in school and not having a good time about it, or wish that they had gone into better academia that doesn't really exist, and they're getting that need met here. And that's great! For real!

But you know what else is fine? People who either don't have that need, or are getting it met in other parts of their lives, and come here for stress relief and a fun free hobby.

Of course they can't fuck for real! It's not in the text, they simply don't. But the tension is obviously written in, and playing with possibilities can be fun! Also if you can't see how it could happen and still not fix shit, that's a skill issue. Fic authors aren't stupid, we don't fail to understand canon, but not everything has to be everything all the time. Sometimes you want to do all the work and try to match the level of writing in the show, and sometimes you want to have something nice and easy. The show is REALLY well written and what it needs to be, the point of transformative works is playing with what it's NOT. Some people cope with fluff, or good ending everybody lives AUs, and it might be so totally valid to look down on that, but maybe being publicly correct might be less important than being kind?

Actually, the main thing I want to say is that if YOU reading this are a person who wants to write a cute coffeeshop AU, or be horny on main about your boys kissing, it's actually fine!! At least, it historically has been fine. This is a really small fandom now and not that many people are actively creating, please don't be discouraged by this stuff, because the people who criticize on tumblr are actually not the majority. The REASON they criticize is that, if you go to AO3 and sort by kudos, much of it is this super sweet OOC stuff! It looks like that's most of what there is, because a lot of readers in the wild who watch the show and look up fic like it!

Anyway. Let people have fun, it doesn't cost you anything, and not every thought needs to be public. It actually does discourage people.

[misc-obeyme]

OKAY BARBATOS FIRST WORDS DIRECTED AT MC

"Who're you?" -MC

"...Ah, yes, pardon me. I suppose we haven't met before, have we?"

In Nightbringer:

"Welcome to the Demon Lord's Castle. Though I must say, I don't remember inviting you." - Barbatos to MC AND Mammon, so partly iffy on if this was the first words (Lesson 2-11)

"I'm Solomon's apprentice."/ "Solomon's my boyfriend." -MC options to tell Barbatos

okay but Barbatos, as someone who can see all realities, has he always known MC was his soulmate? Would he pretend to not know?? Imagine he always keeps his wrist covered, not even Diavolo knows what it says. I'm so curious about how Barbatos would react when it came to this stuff, especially in Nightbringer.

Okay I'm done now 🤣 I wanted to find his first words because he's your fave okay byeee

- ✨ anon

Ahh thank you for finding them for me hee hee~

Okay but poor Barbatos! In OG, he ends up with "Who're you?" which isn't great but isn't horrible either. But then in NB what if his wrist says "Solomon's my boyfriend." ?!?!?

LIKE. I feel like this would explain why Barbatos hates Solomon in NB lololol.

But to be fair, I do think Barbatos would already know that MC is his soulmate. You cannot tell me that if those words showed up on his wrist the moment he came into existence that he wouldn't have peeked into his future to find his soulmate back when he was young and reckless.

I think he would hide it. Especially if it was something that demons don't normally have, indicating that his soulmate is a human. Barbatos is very private, so I can't imagine him being okay with other people knowing about the words. And since he's always covered up anyway, it's not exactly an issue for him.

It's tricky because even if he already knows, MC knows, too. The minute he says his first words, they know he's their soulmate. So I think how he reacts depends on how MC reacts. Like in NB, if MC is immediately like omg you're my soulmate and they try to spend more time with him as a result, he'd probably allow it. But you know he'd still keep all his secrety secrets so it'd be kinda weird.

In OG there's less of that, so I think he'd just give in immediately. Still restrained as always, but when he's alone with MC, well, I think he'd fall for them a lot quicker than he does in canon.

But Barbatos is also just... super powerful. I kinda think he'd be able to do all sorts of things if he really didn't want MC to know the truth. This only seems like it'd matter in NB where we're still not sure exactly how he's related to Nightbringer. But I could see him deliberately obscuring things somehow to prevent MC from realizing the truth.

[roo-bastmoon]

IMPORTANT INFO: issues around Jimin’s album

I have an ARMY friend (who shall remain safely anonymous) who works in film production for the music and entertainment industry here in the US. They offered me some valuable insights today into production limitations and possible issues related to Jimin’s solo album.

Below the cut is a transcript of their messages to me. I share this in the hopes it better informs our discussions around fair treatment of BTS members’ releases. It is by no means a definitive account of Jimin’s situation—simply an insider’s ideas on what likely happened around a few things.

I understand there are very big feelings about this topic, especially with the apparent differences around JK’s single, and I appreciate everyone’s viewpoints. However, if you choose to interact with this post, you will be respectful to others (including members) or you will be blocked. You are always welcome to DM me privately if you need to vent—we are all human and we all need a bit of grace, so you’ll always have that with me.

Sending you guys so much love, Roo

Anonymous Insider

Some “light reading” while you’re resting up and recovering, lol. This is all just based on what I’ve been watching and seen. Of course, I don’t have access to their production budget sheet and Korea works very differently than the US when it comes to production, but this what I’ve been seeing when it comes to their videos and particularly the promotions for FACE.

(I’m sending in sections, lol)

Alrighty - I’m still like deep in edit-land (still am two days later 😭) but I started typing this on the train between meetings, ha ha. (And am still on the train doing this, lol.) Also this rambles a bit I’m sorry! So the first thing I did was go back to the interview where Jimin talked about the music videos — it was a Japanese TV show and he’s talking with a host in Korean.

He’s talking about “wanting to do it all,” laughs and says, “I wanted all the music videos” and that “they” (the company assuming) said “무리다” which has its roots in the word 무리 which means a herd, a party, a group — basically “it’s too much,” “it’s unreasonable,” and “it’s impossible” are decent translations as it refers to something or an idea being “too much” — then the host and Jimin burst out laughing and the host goes “서리와 무리다” which I read as “sorry (in konglish) but we can’t” and they continue to laugh. So based on that —it sounds very understandable.

We can imagine Jimin sitting down with his team and planning out SMFP2 and LC videos, with the 30 dancers and all the party scene extras, and then Jimin saying he wants to do the music shows with 6 different sets in rented locations so they could have total control. And if Jimin in that process went “what if we made official music videos for all of them?” the team would understandably go “that’s just not reasonable!” 1) because it would give Jimin a budget no other member had gotten and 2) there aren’t that many production houses in Korea. It’s a very small scene — it may just logistically not been possible. There aren’t enough DPs and crew and editors. Sometimes, as a producer, you have to tell your creative talent “I’m sorry, but no.” — I say it every week!

So what about the music videos? Well, here’s what I know from meticulously watching all the behind the scenes for BTS videos over the years. They work with a small team. They likely own a good deal of the gear — they shoot mainly on RED cameras and heavy expensive Cooke lenses (which you can’t get this stuff easily in Korea. I lost a lens cap for a Canon CINÉ Lens in Seoul and it was like this whole big deal because getting gear there is an import challenge but anyways) they use MOVI and Ronin gimbal stabilizers and Jimmy Rigs a lot.

Recently they’ve been using technocranes but I wonder how many technocranes there are in Seoul. As I said, they likely own a lot of this gear which can help with costs. But we’ve also been told — and I’ve heard through my industry friends — that Hybe PAYS. And in Korea there’s no unions in the entertainment world, and often the rates are shit (hence Netflix investing so much there - blerg) their standard work week is also already 12 hours longer than the US. It’s a whole thing. and they spend so much money on sets. It’s incredible.

They rent these huge spaces outside Seoul and BUILD — I mean the build out for SMFP2 was astounding. They easily dropped 1million on that video. The rigging, the build-out, the custom set and the custom camera rigs to achieve the 360 shots - the drone shots. They’re astounding videos. No US label is spending that money on videos these day. Absolutely none of them are — my friend recently produced a video for John Legend. They were trying to pull the whole thing off for $100K which is ridiculous. It’s really almost impossible.  

But on the Big videos they spend a lot of money, but they also produce a lot of other stuff too (and these are often looked at as Performance Videos vs all-caps MUSIC VIDEOS) -— like RM’s video shoot at DIA Beacon… that was a much smaller, fairly single camera shoot — all shot on drones or a MOVI handheld rig. No set, they also didn’t like pay for the set because DIA: Beacon is an art museum — and similar a little bit to Letter for Jimin, which was much smaller set and easy in-house gear.

(And it was also released on Bangtan TV channel vs Hybe Labels Channel, which is a good indicator of how they categorize these shoots.) But the big videos, they go for broke. I mean they spend so much money and again they may own a lot of the equipment but there’s still so much people-power and labor involved. Take the dancers’ rehearsals. You have to pay people for all that — you have to pay them for the weeks of rehearsal, you have to pay them to be in a video. It is so expensive — like, I would not be able to budget that video for under 1 million, that’s how much it costs.  

So then Jimin wanted to do music shows —- and so because he’s Jimin and it’s BTS, Hybe rented larger venues and locations for all of the shoots. None of them use the actual Broadcast spaces or were provided by the broadcast studios. The smaller companies do though — remember when BTS first started out they went to SBS to film on the day? — but they don’t do that anymore. They rent huge facilities so that they could be a mini concerts for ARMYs to visit with Jimin and see him.

They also have to do this kind of outside of the city and they built huge sets because they’re going to want to show off if they’re gonna be on TV but that is so expensive. (I don’t think you were an ARMY then, but when ON was released, at the time it was the “biggest broadcast performance ever” and they keep upping that ante for sure!) It’s possible the broadcast companies spend some money but what BTS is doing is so outside the usual budget and given the tension with the broadcasters and HYBE — they (Hybe) wants control of their products, and so I think they pay for that control.

I can’t imagine they got out of any of those days for under $500K; I mean, there were two different sets, all the crew; they’re paying for all of it. We add it up and they probably spent close to $3-5 million between Jimin’s music videos and his music show performances, and I would be understandably like: “That’s it!” Like, that’s the budget for an EP, you know.

I don’t think Jimin could have it all because that wasn’t the case for the other members. RM got to lead videos and J Hope had pyrotechnics, which definitely costs money and safety and insurance. You know he had visual effects his first video (a lotta visual effects) and again a lot of challenging technocrane work, but I haven’t really seen them build something on the scale of what they built for SMFP2 in a very long time (or ever?).

We heard from the Art Dept that Jimin did not want to shoot on blue screen, so they built the set for him. This cannot be the same label that is shafting him — that allows him to spend that amount of money just because the artist said “I want to shoot in a real space!” because I’m gonna be completely honest— he could’ve done that on a blue screen — I’m glad they built a real world because BTS almost always shoots on Blue/Green Screen. They build him a huge set like that. It’s absolutely incredible.

I was also reminded this morning that people are talking about radio for Like Crazy and not supporting the song — and I just keep thinking that they did exact rollout for Butter, Dynamite, and Permission to Dance. They released Like Crazy. It had both a Korean version and English version. (Obviously that wasn’t the case for the English BTS songs.) They released two additional remixes. Then they kept releasing, like, alternate cover versions — alternate covers of the main remix, alternate cover the other remix. They were trying to maximize the direct-to-consumer store and exact same way they had tried to maximize it with Dynamite and Butter and Permission to Dance.

The way you were buying Like Crazy was the same process I took on Dynamite. They did the exact same playbook. So the fact that they were unable to get the kind of radio play they wanted or maybe they weren’t prioritizing radio because they knew that they were gonna have a better chance at direct to consumer sales... Maybe they didn’t want to fight radio. Maybe Geffen was like “We don’t have the right ‘Ins’ yet!” — I’m not sure, but the fact that they got completely screwed over by Billboard doesn’t mean that they weren’t actually rolling it out in that way, because as soon as they started doing the whole alternate cover thing, I was like: “Well, they clearly want us to try to go for number one!” You know, “They clearly think that they are going to be able to get number one on the hot 100 and we’re gonna use these sales to do that!” And clearly that’s all changed now.

They keep changing the rules on us, so — with JK, they’re obviously trying to, you know, use whatever tools they have available to them at this point.

Finally, when it comes to restocking the digital single CD. There are still albums available in the store. So why would they manufacture and ship more (likely thrown away) plastic that’s just for one song, when those CD singles only serve to raise sales for the charts? All of the other member’s CD singles are out of stock except The Astronaut, which they treated more like a proper album a bit (kinda like the Butter CD releases). Because they still have both versions of his full albums in stock, so if I were Hybe, I’d be like “No,you need to buy the album, we still have albums, we’re not going to sell you a single song when you can buy the album!” That makes more sense to me. The albums cost more.

TL:DR, haha — so I feel like this narrative around Jimin’s release has been ramped up because, from my professional opinion, he’s had the most expensive release so far (by far) and if we want to compare him to, say, Beyoncé — well she owns her own production company (Parkwood Entertainment), so she can funnel her own money into a Visual Album, I don’t know if Jimin has considered that at this point in his career, but in the future, he might!

((Not including costs for Suga’s tour because that’s a whole other thing, and the tour probably made money I would expect to balance out the cost of the tour itself))

Anonymous Insider

This isn’t to say that the other things, the part where he didn’t get the cake celebration, or the posts, the issues with the linking and this general feeling that Jimin was short-changed in these things isn’t valid and understandable. I think Hybe relied too much on D2C sales and I don’t think they leveraged their might as much as could have for JM. They could have risked more for him.

{This is an end of Anonymous Insider’s messages to me. They noted that they are an intermediate non-native Korean speaker so please excuse any translation errors. They translated things themselves using Naver tools that aligned with the video subtitles.}

So, listen, I still don’t think Like Crazy was sent/promoted to radio (which was a mistake and still is a mistake) and I am furious at the shady articles and lack of celebration for Jimin…

But after reading the way the members approach their work in the Beyond the Story book and now hearing from someone who produces these works for a living, I have to wonder if the company was doing everything they knew how to do for Jimin, but the second it didn’t work out because of the western music industry culling streams and sales, they pulled back all their resources and pivoted for Yoongi and JK. (I also wonder if leadership shut up about it all due to liability issues, or not to cause bad blood with the music industry for future releases.)

Again, I’ll never forgive the lack of celebration and the split streams (not without a great explanation), but at least now I think there’s a good chance no one was actively trying to sabotage Jimin on purpose. They seemed to have wanted that #1 and then it all went to shit because Billboard and radio want to get paid. Maybe leadership decided not to put any more resources into Face but instead pivot for all the future music coming out (including PJM2.)

Perhaps I'm a cockeyed optimist. I’m just hoping like hell they never engage in payola. I want all our boys to win, but I want us to win fairly. And even if everyone cannot have the same investment every time on every project, I hope when they come back together in 2025 that everyone feels good about their solo works and each other. This is my prayer. Love, Roo

[chaoticdelinqueerwithglitter]

Shinichiro, stay away from the kids!

(with love)

Okay, first of all, this is not a hating Shinichiro post. I swear it. This is just me having brain riot and thinking in how many times Shin was a questionable example for kids and teens around him and how we seem to forget about it but it's kinda hilarious when you put all of them together (except for Sanzu, that is never funny, my poor lil gremlin 😭)

I know most of this things were because he was also too young, oblivious and reckless. I know that, but it's funny to bully him with affection anyway 🙈

(and in the more serious ones, he was too dissociated and too out of everything, I know that too)

So... Here I go, random Shinichiro moments for all of you!

(big manga spoilers because it's Shinichiro)

Leaving Inupi to look out the shop.

Inupi, who looks like a cute potato here and it's deffinetly too young for it. Canon unpayed intern Inupi, yuhuuu! 💜

Him smoking around bikes all the damn time.

In his shop where Inupi was and could blow out the whole block. But also in his garage, where Draken and Mikey used to watch him fix the bikes. Shin, don't, that's dangerous! (I would say "if you wanna kill yourself do it but don't drag others with you", buuuuuut... Yeah, he did it and everyone got drag on that, so why bother to say it? 😑)

Wharever the fuck this was.

Probably just a prank, but.. Really, Shin? You ran away and left Izana there? I know, I know, you're a dumb teen, but c'mon, think for once! The whole interaction makes me laugh and want to smack Shinichiro in general, to be honest.

Oh...I think the not-so-funny ones are about to start. Here we go!

Leaving the Black Dragons to the traumatized orphan that just went out of juvie.

Yeah, that looks like a great idea, I'm sure nothing wrong will come out of this, lalalalalalala! (Shinichiro and his relationship with delinquency and his siblings should be a lot more explored because holy shit)

(Btw, not even pointing the helmets stuff, nops)

Bringing 8 y/o Mikey to gang meetings.

Like... What the fuck? I'm with Takeomi on this one, are you stupid Shinichiro? What are you thinking? Are you thinking? 😒

Love how BenWaka bully him for it too, that's why I left it here, ngl.

Isn't that just how Haruchiyo is, slashing people for Mikey?

Well, yeah, he is, but he wasn't! He shouldn't! Can't you not pretend this is not concerning for a second? Or... Not settle this mindset on Sanzu because it's gonna have big consequences? 🤦🏻

Talking about his inminent suicide with a 13 y/o.

Okay, I thought A LOT about putting this one, because obviously I'm not judging Shin at all, he was in a really dark place and when you're about to kill yourself you can't think clearly. It's just that this exchange... Breaks me. And Haruchiyo is just a kid, this is so not fair for him either 😭

(Sanos, start treating the Akashis like people with feelings that also matter for once, please)

You can still be his friend even if he scarred you for life!

Okay, Shin, I know you're a mix of biased and dissociated but... Really? Please, stop creating Sanzu, stop iiiiit! Let Haruchiyo alone, don't do this! Also... "Right now"? So you're saying he should forgive Mikey but not right now? Is that, Shincihiro? 😒

Trauma dumping to 13 y/o Haruchiyo. Shhh, keep the secret, bye!

Did I say Shinichiro created Sanzu? Yes? I'll say it again, I don't care. Again, I know he was dissociating and all, but, but... It's fine to kill people for Mikey mindset is now installed successfully on Haruchiyo's brain, yuhuuu! 😭

The amount of total disregard for Haruchiyo's mental health here is too much and should be a crime. The "keep the secret" part don't make it better. Specially, specially, when Shinichiro himself is not going to keep it, he's about to say everything to Wakasa. But Haru? Shhh, you should keep the secret, I'm sure this is not a huge burden for a teenager that suddenly have two set of memories!

(Well, not everything, he probably forgot to tell Waka about Haruchiyo remembering it, because in the final battle it didn't look like Sanzu ever talked about it with Wakasa and I wanna think they would if he knew... Look, another Sano forgetting about Sanzu, yuhu! 😑)

(Shin, with all my love, but I hate you for this one even if you gave me the best blorbo to torture on my fics that I ever had)

I'm sure you'll be able to handle it, random kid that I don't even know the name! 👀

YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS ONE SHINICHIRO! I wish you remembered in the final timeline because you own Takemitchy the biggest freaking apology of all your life! What the hell? Go, apologize with Michi now!

Yes, he was able to handle it and to be traumatized infinite times in the way, but that's not the point! Use you brain for once Shin, why are you giving the burden to a kid? Why? What is wrong with you? (so many things actually xD)

But, for real, this sentence is Wakui being hilarious because c'mon, poor Takemichi!

Edit: I didn't put the poorly way Shinichiro handled everything about Izana and Mikey because I consider canon doesn't give us enough info on that. Same with Emma. What happened? Why Izana never met them? I have my hc, of course, but we don't know for sure. So... I can't ramble about how badly he managed that! (Badly, for sure, I just don't know exactly how and how much)

[prince-liest]

i know you didn't mean anything bad by it, but it really discouraged me to see you rb that anti-reader-insert post. i write and enjoy both reader-insert and shipfic (my 2016 baby-in-fandom roots were in shipfic, but i'm pretty active in the reader-insert community as well these days). i really look up to you as both a current med student would to a resident (i'm an m2) and a writer would to a more-experienced/established writer, so i guess seeing you agree with a post that disparages a part of the fanfic community that we both engage in made me feel upset.

i definitely understand where people come from when they complain about xreader fics flooding the tags. i've felt that exasperation and annoyance of scrolling through the tags both on ao3 and tumblr, searching for fanart or shipfics of my favorite characters, only to be inundated with reader-insert works that i'm not in the mood to read. so, i get it.

i guess my point is: i look up to you. i really enjoy your writing. and because of my parasocial connection to you (i.e., enjoyment of your fandom takes and writing), it hurt my feelings that you seem to hold a pretty negative opinion about a side of the fandom writing community that i happen to pour a lot of myself into.

please don't feel pressured to respond to this at all-- residency is hard enough without some random anon on the internet nagging at you about some random reblog that is not nearly as important as patient care or saving lives. i don't even really know what the purpose of telling you this was; i'm not trying to change your opinion about reader-insert or anything like that. i think i just wanted to let you know how i felt seeing your reblog, with no expectations that you do anything with that information /gen. but yeah. i hope you're able to get some rest and take some time for yourself soon, and i look forward to continuing to your fics in the future.

Hey, there anon! First of all, it may make you feel better to know that I actually have absolutely nothing against x reader fics at a baseline. It's not my thing, I don't read it, but I don't have enough of an opinion on it to dislike it. I'm a big proponent of "write what you want" and while I've never written x reader content, I've roleplayed plenty of canon x OC ships back in the day, and write a lot of stuff that needs the dead dove tag. This post, to my understanding and in my intent, was meant to express humorous frustration with the ongoing issue specifically of a lot of x reader fics (particularly in the last several months, I suspect either because of Tiktok or due to Twitter's downward spiral) being tagged with irrelevant tags. I've actually had to ask on multiple posts something like "Why is this tagged with [canon ship]?"

Most people have kindly removed the tag and explained that they thought it was good exposure and didn't realize that wasn't how things work on Tumblr, which is great, but it's still frustrating that it's hard to scroll through a lot of tags without seeing lengthy and explicit x reader fics that are either tagged with unrelated ships/characters/fandoms, or undertagged with blockable x reader tags.

Even if I did dislike x reader, though, I just want to emphasize to you: I really appreciate that you look up to me and I'm really happy that I'm able to provide some encouragement to you in the form of someone with a similar creative hobby on the same career path, but also, my opinions on matters of personal taste really don't matter. I am, at the end of the day, A Random Person On The Internet Who Has A Blog, and I encourage you to look at opinions of mine that grate on you and think: "Eh. Just another random person I don't happen to agree with. Whatever, I guess." and move on, because in the long run this will be more fair to both yourself and me. There are indeed actually popular but harmless parts of fandom that I'm growing to dislike a little bit, and it feels strange to be unable to casually refer to or joke about that without being worried that it will hurt someone's feelings that I don't personally like the same thing they do. This is actually some of why I'm on Tumblr and not Twitter - the parasocial issues tend to be stronger on there! I confess that I don't really know exactly what to do about this problem yet, but I'm going to endeavor to not censor myself (as long as I'm not being a dick, ofc) while also encouraging people to not put me up on too much of a pedestal.

At any rate, I'll clarify in the tags of the post what I meant by my reblog, and I hope this at least offered some reassurance to you!

[coralcatsea]

-Typically sensory seeking. He tends to touch everything so he can feel the textures. He likes a little bit of noise and can be uncomfortable with silence. However, if he's not in control of the noises then sometimes they still bother or distract him.

-Stims. OFTEN. Humming, bouncing, clicking pens, shaking his leg, all sorts of things. Him flapping and waving his hands is just straight up canon.

-I think we all know he's been called childish before.

-He absolutely comes across as someone who info dumps. He just gets so excited and passionate about his interests!

-There are a lot of social cues he disregards because they're inconvenient to him, and I do headcanon him as bisexual and very likely demisexual as well.

-He has ADHD along with the autism. I could see him possibly having anxiety as well since I believe he overthinks a lot. Maybe also depression? Harder to say on that one. It seems plausible a lot of nations would develop it, but I feel I'd need to do more research.

-It is canon Alfred cries a lot, so the difficulty with emotional regulation could be possible.

-He absolutely has an exaggerated, loud way of expressing himself.

-Lacking spacial/body awareness seems to fit with how he doesn't appear to think about others' personal space.

-He often takes things at face value. A very literal guy who doesn't always understand sarcasm – or just isn't sure, so he chooses to react as if it's literal. This doesn't mean he's incapable of ever understanding it, though, and he can even be sarcastic himself.

-Very often feels misunderstood, since people make a ton of assumptions about him. He often feels like he's performing social interactions, having to make sure he does the right thing to come off a certain way.

-He does repeat phrases a lot, I think. Especially movie/TV quotes, if that counts.

-Given he's immortal, it's extremely likely he felt older than any of the human children he might have interacted with. Even with Canada, he seemed older for a while since he developed so differently. Once he became an adult, however, he became perceived as young since he refused to abandon things he enjoyed just because adults have a limited perception of fun.

-Has a strong sense of justice, fairness, is very loyal, and has a hard time lying. I would say all of these are pretty true. He can lie decently sometimes, but if he's not prepared for it, he's not always that convincing. Depends what it is, though.

-He's caring and has shown concern over other characters (e.g. England, Romano), but he doesn't always express it too well and sometimes even comes off as insensitive in the process.

-He forgets to eat properly. Yes, there are times when he eats a bunch, but he has also been shown living off protein bars because he was so busy working. Even Romano was concerned.

-He definitely scripts stuff in his head to prepare. Remember that time he was imagining what he would say when he arrived to the meeting early for once? Of course, that's only one small thing, but I do feel he's the type to script a lot of things out.

-VERY friendly, but yeah...he doesn't have many friends. It's even been stated in his bio that his only friends are England and Japan. Hopefully he's gained a few more since then!

[alpaca-clouds]

Halsin's Kids

Let me talk a bit more Halsin headcanons, because I am babysitting a server (for work - on my weekend) and I am bored. So... In the epilogue Halsin talks about how he has adopted a dozen kids. Which is fair. Like, the man deserves a family, for god's sake. But the question is of course who those kids are.

Mind you, in most of my fanfic writing I do ignore the epilogue. One, because the epilogue came out at a time when I had already written two longer fics for it and did not feel particularly inclined to change much about that. Two, because fuck Karlach's canonical ending. She gets her engine fixed, she is fine, she gets to travel with Wyll and Shadowheart along the Sword Coast.

But I still like most of Halsin's stuff. Him adopting orphans? I love that, gods darn it! I love him creating a new grove by Reithwin, too, where he can be close to Thaniel. Especially given it is fairly clear that this is the area he has grown up in.

Something I still wonder about though: Which kids did he adopt?

I mean, generally speaking everything is fair game, I guess. There are more than enough orphans in the game. I have seen qutie a bit of stuff on him adopting Yenna (in my stuff she gets adopted by Gale, btw, after they bond over cooking). I ended up having him adopt most of the assorted tiefling orphans, including a very, very disgruntled Mol, who does need no parent, thank you very much, and at some point Arabella, too. Which I assume might be interesting, too, because I cannot help the feeling that she is a chosen of Silvanus. Which... sure, gives her a lot of power. But also... She is still nine. Being a chosen does not negate this fact.

In the end I gave Halsin eight of the tiefling kids of those who we know that survive. Partly, too, because Halsin does feel responsible for them. He allowed them in the Emerald Grove, only to go missing, which ended up with them getting endangered, of course. And in the end quite a few of the parents quite obviously died.

I ended up adding up two human kids to the mix as well. I mean, most people living in the city of Baldur's Gate are humans, so there should be quite a few of them orphaned as well.

And... yeah. I really want to write more with him and those kids. Because I love parenting fics. And I already know that once Arabella joins the family, there is going to be a bit of a rivalry between her and Mol.

[ar3s-r4t-qu33n]

Johnny's Bluffing

CW for discussion of potential sexual assault, toxic/unhealthy relationships, stalking, obsession, and, of course, murder and cannibalism. Nothing like, too crazy I think? But especially this one section on sexual assault, it's brief but separated out so it's quite easy to skip if that makes folks uncomfortable.

Hi I am currently in a really bad insomnia cycle and as such haven't slept so I'm sure I'm gonna have missed something that immediately prove me wrong, but here we go:

I don't think that certain members of the Family know that Maria is alive, and especially Nancy. This theory sort of delves into a lot of different stuff, I wrote and rewrote this a fair bit and idk, this is what I ended up with. It's a lot of my personal interpretation of both the written text and the way lines are delivered, as well as my own analyses on characters and how I personally think the timeline of events went (Danny and Virginia dying before the gang even show up in Newt, Maria being the 'Definitive Final Girl' and surviving to the very end, but never getting to escape the Slaughters/Johnny. That isn't to say that she dies, but Sally is the first and only person to escape until Stretch if she is canon to this timeline now that Choptop is on his way) so idk, I hope you like what I've been thinking about I guess?

Nancy and Drayton both have several voice lines that refer to Maria being in the past tense. So does Johnny, but my theory here is that he is playing into this line of thought so they don’t realise that he is still keeping her.

I will source my way of hearing all of the voice lines at the end.

Starting with Nancy, she has several;

‘It didn’t have to be this way, you know? You just had to come looking for that floosy of yours, didn’t you?’

‘Your little friend had it coming. Looking at my Johnny that way- he’s a sweet boy!’

‘You ever hear the saying murder starts in the heart? … I think my Johnny liked that girl…’

The first two are obviously extremely defensive over Johnny and are meant to taunt the other Victims over Maria’s ‘death’. The last one, however, feels almost like a realisation. This line has confused me for a long time, because it sounds like two different once spliced together, but they are, in fact, connected. This is the only time that Nancy ever speaks about Maria in any other way than pure disgust and defensiveness. Another interesting thing about Nancy is that she does not hate her husbands. She murdered all three of them, none of them were able to give her a baby of her own, and yet she defends them from Sissy, she keeps them all in her basement man cave, and even when talking to Hands, she’s apologetic about Harold to him. She still holds a fondness for them, it seems, and I feel like maybe this is what makes her finally realise that Johnny actually, truly loves Maria. For Nancy, she loves people to death, and that type of love extends to Johnny, too. Sure, he’s still alive, and could easily kill her now, but she permanently scarred his face when he tried to leave her. I don’t believe that Nancy isn’t above murdering Johnny to keep him with her, and I think this admittance leads to her realising that Johnny actually did love Maria. Of course, she can’t say ‘love’, that’s a bit too far, but at the very least, she will acknowledge that he likes her, and these days, Johnny doesn’t seem to like anyone, not even her. It’s also interesting to note that she says this after losing sight of a victim she was chasing. She says herself that she hasn’t hunted like this in a while, it seems as if physically chasing people down to kill them is making her reminisce on her feelings about murder and love in a way.

But all of that to say, she believes Maria is dead. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, she’s dead now, and maybe she plans to talk to Johnny about it later, maybe not apologise, but try and make it easier on him now that she’s realised just how much she meant to him.

Then we’ve got Cookie.

‘Look, I’m sorry about your friend… but… I’m afraid you done landed square dab in the shithouse!’

‘We didn’t have much choice! Couldn’t let Johnny spring no lovechild around here. It ain’t personal! Now get back here!’

There is obviously a lot less here, the former being Cook or Drayton’s more humble, car salesman type approach to everything, apologising sincerely that their friend had to die… but now so do they, so how sorry can he be, really?

The second is far more interesting. I’m still sort of working out the kinks with what I think on all this, but it implies not only that the whole family knew about Johnny’s feelings for Maria, but that there was a worry about something more than just his feelings. A genuine attachment, the possibility for a child.

Now, one thing I wanna throw in real quick is that a lot of people think Johnny assaulted Maria once he kidnapped her. And I personally don’t think that that is true. And it’s more than just ‘noooo not my pookie he would never!’, I feel as though Johnny’s feelings for Maria are beyond sexual, or beyond purely sexual. I’m not gonna get super into it because I wanna make a whole post about just their relationship, but in short, Johnny knows he’s hot shit. He knows women love him and men do too, and he uses that all the time to lure people to their deaths. Maybe he fucks them first, then kills them, who knows. But this is a man who is used to being sexualised and uses it to his advantage, like a reverse femme fatale, almost. A lot of his lines are sexually charged and he speaks seductively low at times, even flirting on the odd occasion. However, Maria is in love with Danny and is a sweet girl in the seventies. There is no way she’s heading off to knock boots with the pretty boy at the bar no matter how charming, persistent, helpful… always somehow exactly where she needs him to be… is. She’s kind, she’s sweet, she brings out the best in people, we know this about her. And when there’s no sex, when it’s not about fucking them and killing them… Johnny has no choice but to fall completely head over heels for her. It’s no surprise that the day she’s heading out of town, maybe to go back to see her boyfriend, that is when her car breaks down. Johnny’s oil stained gloves, the fact that he’s designed to look like he helps at a gas station, his friendship with Uncle Hands, the fact he lives in a junk yard? This man knows mechanics. He knows cars. And he is definitely not above tampering with an already busted old car to ensure it stops before she can get away from him. It’s just his luck that she happens to break down by his family’s land. All this to say, I don’t think Johnny assaults Maria once he has her. Not only because that would be a lot, like, in general, for this game to go from goofy cannibals to sexual assault by one of the game’s most beloved characters to one of the game’s most beloved characters, but because I don’t think Johnny is the type. He’s pretty and charming enough that people want him, he doesn’t have to take it, he earns it. And he wants Maria to give it to him, for him to earn it because she wants him. He likely spends his time down there with her trying to get her to fall for him and forget about Danny. He wants her to want him. Or at least, this is my personal interpretation.

Maybe she does begin to fall or maybe Drayton’s complete lack of any and all sexual knowledge just makes him think they’re already going to pound town, but he was worried about a baby. That’s something I wanna explore in the future, why he’s so worried about Johnny and Maria having a baby, but moving on; again, Drayton is seemingly fully convinced that Maria is dead.

For Johnny I wanna take his lines one at a time, but it is important to note that I think some of these lines are referring to someone else and not Maria, but also some of these are in present tense, he either slips up or sometimes on purpose mentions things that could hint to her being alive to the Victims.

‘You wanna know how your friend died!? … I can show you!’

‘Your little friend put up a better fight than this… come on! Make it interesting, will you!?”

Pure just bluffing to get them angry and scared. It could also be referring to Danny but more on that a different time.

‘That’s what I get for taking it easy on them. Time for them to join that little friend of theirs…’

‘You’re gonna look real nice next to that friend of yours…’

Again, if my belief that Danny not only went to Nancy’s a lot earlier than the others is true and that he has been dead for a good few days before the gang shows up, then this is absolutely about him, not Maria.

‘You kinda remind me of your little friend’

To Ana about Maria, obviously, and comes across as quite flirtatious. He’s figured out that not only does Maria have a sister (if she never told him), but that Ana has no intentions of leaving there without her. I interpret this as Johnny taunting her, making her his new priority to get rid of. I said he loved Maria, I never said he loved her in a healthy way, alight? This is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, not the Notebook (never seen that movie)

‘You should have never came here looking for that girl!’

I don’t need to explain. Pure possessive Johnny in his raw form.

And finally, the infamous;

‘You know… I was actually kinda fond of that girl, I-I didn’t really wanna hurt her… but… family first, you know?’

Johnny is an agitator. Almost all of his lines are trying to fuck with the victims, playing with his food. Egging them on to hit him, teasing them about being too slow, the way he calls after them as he hunts them down, he wants to see them upset and charged, he wants a good fight, he wants to feel something. The main part of this line is just that, I think; he wants them to believe that even though he cared about Maria, he fucking killed her. He wants them to be angry, to fight him, to hurt him. The end is guilty. Incredibly guilty sounding, and I don’t think that’s out of a guilt for killing her, since… well, Maria is alive and kicking. But more a guilt about his family in general. ‘Family first, you know?’ he’s almost saying it so himself, as if that’s what he should think, what he should be doing. But he is actively betraying them and knows that once everything blows over, he’s going to keep on betraying them for every day he keeps Maria alive. And he also knows that even if he feels all of this guilt, he will do it anyway because he loves her, and he can’t let his family have her. She is the only person who is truly his, who represents what life could have given him. I have another analysis I made on TikTok that I’ll repost here soon, but it essentially goes like this; Johnny and Danny really aren’t too different. Scrappy orphans who are good with mechanics. Except Danny got to go to college, travel freely, meet the girl of his dreams, and Johnny is forced to be someone he doesn’t want to be. He isn’t not a killer, but he also could have not been a killer. Maria is everything he has not been allowed to have; naivety, kindness, softness. And now that he has her, and once everyone else is out of the way, he has no intentions of letting that go.

So he is pretending that she is dead. And for now, it is working. I have a feeling in the canon story of the game, the victims stumble upon her somewhere once they’ve already caused enough trouble for the family, and then all bets are off. Once they find out she’s still alive, it’s a new game for Johnny, a choice; does he kill her, make his mother proud and live the only life he knows because even if he leaves, he knows he can’t be any better? Or does he take her away and try, try to be a different man in the softness of her love?

Rush Week could be the result of either of those. Either he kills her, and becomes an even worse, even colder killer, now able to handle a situation like in the game completely on his own, or he takes her away to start a new life and just couldn’t stop the urges; the Bad Man needs to feed. He stays late after work or pretends he has a night shift and gets his fill on blood and chaos before stumbling home, washing it all off, and returning to Maria’s (definitely traumatised at this point from seeing her friends and sister murdered (don’t worry about Danny I’ve got thoughts on him shhh) in front of her and ‘rescued’ by Johnny) arms.

That was a lot... Please tell me what y'all think on this, again, a lot of my personal interpretation on a lot of things, but isn't that what art is for?

Sources for the voice lines:

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Johnny All Voice Lines (youtube.com)

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Black Nancy All Voice Lines - YouTube

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Johnny All Voice Lines (youtube.com)

Promised I'd tag @bloodfeeder when I finished this so here ya go!! :)

[samthecookielord]

(Previous) - (Next)

Congratulations! Romeo is alive but gay

That sets the stage for this part! :)

Jesse, just like in Season 2, takes a stroll around Beacontown with Radar. They encounter various citizens who seem on edge.

(continued + next poll under cut. CW for canon-typical suffocation)

Citizen 1: [jumps, rushes away to hide before realizing their mistake and turning back around] Citizen 1: Sorry Jesse, force of habit. How's it going? Jesse: Heh, don't worry about it.

Jesse: [waves excitedly in greeting] Citizen 2: [looks around wildly, terrified, like they're anticipating something awful is about to happen to them] Jesse: Woah, are you okay? Citizen 2: Oh- sorry, haha! Still a little spooky seeing you. Jesse: Yeah, I get that. Luckily I don't plan on actually turning evil ever, so hopefully it gets better. Citizen 2: Right!

Jesse: [literally just chilling] Citizen 3: [walks up, notices them, then looks frightened and runs in the opposite direction] Radar: Yeesh. Jesse: [sighs] It's fine. I know I'm not Romeo, but they probably still don't totally get what happened. Radar: Not fair that they're gonna be scared of you for something you didn’t even do. Jesse: Not really, but they had it way worse than I do. You can't really blame them for their gut reactions. Radar: Then that's what we work on changing! Jesse: Right!

This takes Jesse to the Underneath via the portal hall, which you can see has had a couple makeovers since it was last shown. Romeo has been staying in a dirt hut near Fred's Keep. Looking through the window, it's actually a pretty homey place. He's got like, framed items and books and stuff in there. Jesse manages to catch him right as he's leaving to go help with the farms.

Jesse: [awkwardly clears throat] Romeo: Ah, Jesse! Fancy seeing you here. Jesse: Hey... whatcha up to down here? Romeo: Well, what's it look like? I'm doing my part to fix things. Jesse, flatly: That's awesome. Romeo: I've gotta say, this whole being a good guy thing is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. Jesse: Cool, cool beans. Actually, um, can I talk to you privately for a second? Romeo: Of course! Anything for a friend. Jesse: Mhm. [pulls him aside] Jesse: Okay, look. I know you're working to redeem yourself and everything, and that's awesome, but... Romeo: ? Jesse: The people of Beacontown, my people, you messed them up really badly. They're still on edge and still get freaked out when they see me, thinking I'm gonna hurt them. Romeo: Yeahhh, in hindsight I wasn't really ready to take on the role of 'Jesse'. Jesse: I was just wondering if, you know, there was a way to put their minds at ease a little more? Romeo: Hmm... Jesse: You could come back up and help rebuild the town, or help with Champion City. Heck, even just explaining everything and letting them know that I'm not secretly a villainous admin in disguise. Romeo: Well, there's still a lot to do down here- Wait, I've got it! Jesse: Yeah? Romeo: If your people are worried about me using admin powers for evil, we can totally get rid of my powers! Jesse: I- wait, I thought we already did that. Romeo: It's true that I can't use them anymore. But it would definitely put their minds at ease knowing admin powers are somewhere else completely! Jesse: I'm not following... Romeo: [scoffs] Obviously, I give you the powers! Finally, the one thing I can still do is being put to good use! Jesse: Woah, woah, wait. That's not what I was getting at. I didn’t even know you could do that! Romeo: It's the simplest solution! The remaining admin powers go to the person who saved the world, nobody has to worry about me being dangerous, and I can stay down here while still fixing stuff up there! [Romeo puts his hand on Jesse's head] Jesse: Romeo, wait! This isn't what- [insert garbled glitchy text] [Jesse falls to their knees, clutching their head.] Romeo: Now, if you'll allow me, I've really got to get back to the whole redemption thing! Man, I'm getting really good at this. Jesse, weakly: Come back! What did you- [Romeo is already gone.]

Upon realizing the power that’s been inflicted upon them, with no idea how to use them, Jesse begins to panic. Instinctively, they teleport into an area they consider to be safer, back in Beacontown. They can now do things just by thinking about it, which leads to muddied thoughts causing unpredictable consequences. 

Desperate for help, the first person they think to call is Radar. Radar gets there as soon as he can, and finds Jesse on the brink of a meltdown. Jesse, in between shaky and rapid breaths, manages to explain that they’ve become the Admin, they don’t know what they’re doing, and this could be really dangerous. Upon realizing his friend, whom he admires deeply, is in the midst of a borderline panic attack, Radar manages to steel his resolve and does his best to help.

He suggests that Jesse, with their new practically limitless power, first and foremost creates a barrier around the two of them. That way, if anything goes awry, it will be limited to a smaller area. Jesse agrees, though they’re still frazzled. After a bit of struggle, Jesse focuses on the creation of a barrier, and manages to create a dome composed of barrier blocks.

However, when they turn around, they realize that Radar is now trapped, suffocating in these blocks. They instantly lose focus in favor of piercing dread, not the least of their concerns being that this isn’t the first time Radar has been suffocated because of them. They try to destroy the block, but it’s unbreakable. They then attempt to delete the block in the same way they spawned it, but the fear and adrenaline make it impossible to focus the same way they did before.