#what a bleak little timeline we're in

[clowndensation]

the thing about roman is that he literally tried it out. he tried out being a serious person who gets taken seriously and contributes something to the world, and it didn't work! he went in, he took a swing at it, but in the end he's nothing. he's bullshit. just like he always thought. and now he finally gets to go forward with the certainty that his best really isn't enough, and never will be, so he can stop worrying about whether he'll amount to anything, and just embrace the failure he's always been. the end.

[spacedace]

Got inspired by the below tiktok and the idea of the Rogues killing the Joker in revenge for Jason instead of Bruce and had to write about it.

Here, have probably way too many words (with more to come most likely, this really won't leave me alone) of the Rogue's feelings about Jason's death at the Joker's hands and everything that followed.

(also I know the timeline is a bit screwy, shhh just go with it, we're going on vibes with this one lol)

-

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham.

The city was hard and cruel and she didn’t care about the ages of those that were ground up and spit out in her oily black heart.

A kid could slit your throat as easy as a man grown in a place like their fine city, maybe easier even for those who still fell for the ideal of children being incapable of anything but innocence and sweetness. Children learned from the world around them though, they learned from the savagery that filled their world, the hard scrabble desperate attempts to survive. They learned what dark corners to avoid, which ones were safer to skitter down.

It didn’t mean there weren’t still some rules of decency to be honored though.

Most folks, even those in the circle of the Rogues, largely left kids out of the equation. Crossfire happened of course, hitting busy city centers always meant some kind of collateral. But there wasn’t much that they got out of purposefully hurting kids outside a black mark on their name in most levels of the grungy underbelly of the city and one hell of a big target on their back. Both from the Bat and those criminals in the dark with them that took offense to those kinds of things. They were crooks, but with few exceptions they weren’t complete monsters.

Robin had always held an interesting place in their grungy little ecosystem. Anything to do with the Bat was generally ruled as gloves-off, do what you do without hesitation. And Robin - both of ‘em - had no problem hitting hard and being ruthless. The first one in particular had a feral sort of rage to him that was a terrifying thing to be on the business end of.

But they were still kids.

Defending yourself from any kid swinging on you was fair game, a person had the right to defend themselves. Grabbing up Robin to hold hostage or bait Gotham’s local cryptid, that was all fine and dandy. You could even get away with roughing the kid up a little here and there, so long as you made sure not to go too far and always kept hits to where the kid’s armor was the thickest. No hard and fast written rules, mind, but general rules of thumbs. Lines indistinct due to the shaky ground a child dancing through the night as a vigilante left all of them on, but ones clear enough that you knew when you were at risk of going too far.

Besides, the Robins were good kids. Fucking feral little shits, of course, able to leave you bleeding just as easy from a kick as they were a sharp word. But good kids. Even most the Rogues in the Gallery liked em. It was hard not to be at least a little fond of a gutsy little punk like that.

Though they were all maybe a tad less nervous around Robin II than they were the original.

Robin I had a lot of anger burning in him, a lot of anger in him, but he was still a cheerful boy with a bright attitude that was refreshing in a world so bleak and dark as the one they all lived in. It was up in the air which was scarier about the kid: The smiled he gave when he was about to give a hands on demonstration about how much force a tiny ten year old could put into a kick when they had half a dozen spins shoved into a flip to wind up to 80 miles an hour, or the flash of his teeth when he was demonstrating the knife sharp brilliance of his belief that Batman was only as frightening as Robin was hopeful.

They weren’t sure if he realized that sometimes they felt a helluva lot more hope at the sight of the Bat when the little bird was putting the hurt on them, or if he’d simply folded that fact neatly into his core philosophy without issue.

Robin II on the other hand had this kind of quiet shyness to him - even as he was shouting the most inventive swears ever heard by human ear at someone while he kicked them in the balls hard enough to make ‘em see not just the face of their own god but a few dozen besides. He was just as unhinged as the Robin before him - seemed to be a requirement for the job really - but there was a distinct different in how the two birds flitted about the darkened skyline of the city. Where the first Robin’s smile was as much danger as it was dazzle, a fanged declaration of victory against the dark, Robin II’s was a sunny, stubborn declaration of perseverance. Kid was sassy and smart, and never - ever - flinched away from extending a hand to those he thought in need of it.

Even if the folks he offered that hand to were in the middle of an attack on some fancy Gala or Wayne Enterprises or whatever target of the week it was. Even knowing the offered hand was likely to be slapped away and followed by a right hook. Kid still always tried.

They all knew why.

The Bat was big on offering chances, on rehabilitation rather than damnation. Some of Robin II being the way he was came from the broody cryptid he followed around. But Batman couldn’t claim to be the sole reason for Robin II being the way he was, couldn’t even pretend to be the cause of most of it. Nah, they knew why the little bird was the way he was.

That unmistakable thick accent. That frame that was always a little too thin even as he got older and stronger. That unshakable, headstrong spirit.

Robin II was an Alley Kid.

A true child of Gotham.

Her polluted waters in his veins. Her smoggy air in his lungs. Her shadows clinging to his edges less like a beast looking to swallow a small bird up and more like a protective mother hiding her hatchling. He understood the world most of them came from. The one they all lived in. Knew it in a way anyone who hadn’t been swallowed up by the dark never really could.

Everyone had their favorite, but even those that claimed the first Robin as theirs couldn’t deny that Robin II was someone to be respected. Nor could they deny a fondness for the chain smoking, classic lit referencing, perpetually baby-faced little shit. They’d all had knock out drag out fights with the kid and knew how fucking unhinged the puny motherfucker could be in a fight, but he always tempered it with offers of resources, of a listening ear, of understanding.

He visited them after they’d been arrested sometimes. In Arkham, or Blackgate or wherever else they’d been locked up in after being stopped by the Dynamic Duo. The little bird would make the rounds whenever he had a broken wing or was stuck waiting as the Bat interrogated someone else or for any other reason he wasn’t out flitting about the city skyline at night. He’d bring cookies or snacks and even cigarettes from his own secret stash on the rare occasion, mask unable to hide the furtive glances around to check for the living shadow that was the disapproving Bat.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. And Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of them from time to time. He was a good kid.

But childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham.

Bad things happened to good kids all the time.

And some of the monsters that lurked in the city’s darkest shadows took the black mark of a kid killer as a point of pride.

Robin II disappeared one day. Just after that piece of shit Garzonas took the fast way down from the top of a tall building. There were a lot of Rogues with doctoral degrees to their names but even those Goons that dropped out of school before they learned to spell their own names could do that math.

The big bad Bat had benched the boy after the fierce little bird had done what any decent member of the criminal underbelly would have. There were those that thought maybe it’d been an accident, that the kid was pulled off duty because of being too upset at unintentionally crossing the heavy line the Bat drew in the sand. Those voices were drowned out pretty quick though.

Sure, Robin II was all about second chances, of doing better, of redemption. But Garzonas had chances to spare and only ever spat in the face of those offering them. Doubled down on being a monster in a way very, very few of the Rogues Gallery would. The kid was a sweetheart, but he wasn’t no push over and there were some things so heinous that there was only one way of handling them. Crime Alley had its own kind of justice system, and when faced with a monster that was beyond even Batman’s jurisdiction, Robin II did what he always did: fell back on his roots.

Or so the rumors said, at least.

That was the thing about Gotham’s seedy underbelly. It was a grimy, wretched nest of vipers and cut-throats, but it was also worse than any beauty parlor when it came to gossip. No one actually knew anything other than that piece of shit motherfucker took a dive while Robin was chasing him and that he’d not been seen on the streets since. But most had a fondness for the kid, and a distaste for the kind of cruelty Garzonas reveled in and there was no proof that Robin hadn’t gone and done the world a favor by drop kicking that barbaric sack of shit off a roof. So as far as most in the Gallery were concerned, the little bird had stepped up and been a hero.

Time passed. Not a lot. But enough. The Bat disappeared too, popping up on an entire other continent in a way that was awfully tempting. Even with other Masks playing baby sitter while the local cryptid was away. Rogues were scrambling to set plans in motion, Goons getting hired en masse, weapons and weird chemicals getting delivered to shady places across Gotham by the truck-full. The criminal underbelly was abuzz with the same excited energy of children the day before a big birthday party.

And then the news came in.

There were people in the dark who made their living finding things out. Knowing things that no one else did or could. Some even specialized, keeping tabs on Batman and Robin better than anyone else in the business were able. And when the information they found wasn’t anything handy to have tucked into a back pocket or a secret they were paid extremely well to keep? They held on to with the same tenacity a sieve clung to water.

Robin II had run off across the globe and ended up in Ethiopia. Something to do with a doctor doing aid work, the same something that had the Bat end up there was the assumption. Kid ran off to handle things himself or was sent on a separate path on purpose for some plan or other the Bat had cooked up on his hunt.

Whatever the reason, the kid crossed paths with the Clown.

Alone.

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham. The city was hard and cruel and she didn’t care about the ages of those that were ground up and spit out in her oily black heart. But Robin II was hers, the child of her heart, an exception to the rule. And besides, most folks - even those in the Rogues Gallery - largely left the purposeful harm of kids out of the equation.

The Joker wasn’t most folks.

And the little bird was a long way away from the protective shadows of his mother city.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. And Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of them from time to time. He was a good kid.

When the news broke, it broke most of them right along with it.

Plans stalled. Schemes ended. Gotham, for an unnervingly quiet stretch of time that neither its civilians or the world at large understood, went still. Crime continued, of course, but the big names weren’t seen. It was only right, by the standards of those that lived their lives in the dark, that they hold off and give the man that fought them all so relentlessly over the past years the time he needed to focus on hunting down the monster that killed his son. He didn’t need the distraction, and they all owed it to Robin II not to interfere while the Bat at last put a final end to the Clown.

And the hellish cryptid would need his full focus on this one. The Joker wasn’t one to take lightly at the best of times, but he’d set himself up neatly in the middle of a nasty bear trap. Ugly and complicated in the way everything with the Clown was. Interference from the CIA, from the UN, from Superman.

Shit went down. People heard about the Bat and the Clown throwing down in a helicopter plummeting from the sky in one hell of a water landing. Big Blue fished Batman out of the drink before he could drown but there’d been no sign of the Joker.

But the Bat would find him.

They all knew the relentless bastard would find him. It was just a matter of time. With the hellish drive of a demon straight from Gotham’s darkest shadows, the Bat would track the grinning, child killing ghoul down and make right the terrible wrong the evil motherfucker had done. Batman would hunt him to the ends of the earth and enact the justice he held up so fiercely. Robin II would have the vengeance the kid so rightly deserved.

It was just a matter of time. So they waited. And waited.

Days.

Weeks.

Months.

The Clown still lived.

The world, impossibly, began to move on. The Bat returned to his lurking in the night, picking off gangs and petty crooks and no-name gangsters as if nothing had happened at all. More vicious, more savage, but failing to turn that rise in brutality into the killing blow against the one figure that so rightly deserved it.

No one knew what was happening. There were rumors and theories, as there always were in the underground. Some thought that it wasn’t the Bat at all back in Gotham but someone else pretending for awhile, looking after his neglected city while he continued his pursuit of the Joker. Other held that it was the Bat but the whole thing was a ploy to draw the Clown out into the open. A pretense at not caring meant to get under the Clown’s skin, make the asshole mad enough to get stupid and sloppy and reveal himself.

That the man simply had given up was beyond comprehension. Beyond what any upstanding Rogue could accept. So it simply couldn’t be true. There was a trick being played. Some brilliant game of 4D chess that none of them had been able to parse out. It’d be revealed in time, and they see the brilliant trap that had been set. The Clown would be lured out, the Bat would put him down for good, and then they’d all at last raise a glass to the little bird that had been shot down far too soon and smoke shitty cigarettes and quote literary masters and mourn the loss one of Gotham’s own true children.

They just had to play along. Stumbling forward back into their usual habits, pretending that it was a choice and not the world just forcibly dragging them along. It’d make sense, eventually. The Bat had a plan. Robin II wasn’t forgotten, his killer not left free to roam and ravage unpunished for what he’d done.

And then one day there was a new bird flitting across the rooftops.

Chasing the Bat’s looming frame like a reverse shadow. Bright flashes of color in contrast to the bleak darkness of Gotham’s grimy nights. Small and thin and young.

Not the first Robin. With his showman bright grin and bloody rage and unwavering belief in the terrifying power of hope. Not the brilliant, vicious little boy that they’d seen grow over the years into the fierce and fearless Nightwing.

Not Robin II either.

Not Gotham’s soft hearted little bruiser with his unshakable belief that people could be better if given the chance, shinning so bright in the dark as he held out a hand that even the Rogues had no choice but to believe right along with him sometimes. Not the tough little songbird they’d never get to see grow up. Unavenged and unhonored. Put in a box and buried in the ground with a name none of them would ever know carved into a stone they’d never be able to visit.

No.

It was a new Robin.

A new child with the R emblazoned upon his chest.

Sharp and quick and young in the way the birds always were when they started flying at the Bat’s side. Every inch of the boy’s tiny frame a tragedy and an insult. One very, very few of Gotham’s vicious underbelly were willing to tolerate.

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham, but there was a damn big difference between holding something sacred and not giving a damn about it at all. There were rules unspoken but understood, a way things were done. Nothing so solid or concrete as a code of conduct, more a collection of time honored traditions. Blood for blood was among the oldest and truest, and the more precious the person taken the more vital and vicious payment was to be made in kind.

The Clown had killed Robin II.

Beaten the kid half to death and then finished the job with a bomb.

Everyone knew he’d done it laughing all the way.

The Bat should have done the same in kind. Done worse. It was justice, it was what was right. You kill a kid you’re marked forever. You kill one so well liked and kill ‘em like that and you’re destined for a cruel and cold death. The Bat had first dibs. It was his kid. It was his right to put an end to that awful laughter and let his son have peace at last.

But he never did.

Nightwing had. For a bit. For a moment.

Robin I, who half the time had scared them all more than the Bat ever could. Dazzling and dizzying and dangerous. Gave back the pain and hurt the Clown had forced upon him with clenched fists and bone shattering hits. They were glad for him, that he was able to beat the monster who had taken his little brother from him to death, that he was able to have such justice.

And then the Bat stepped in.

Revived the fucking Clown.

A slap in the face. The snapping crack of a spine beneath one straw too many. The final, unforgivable insult the man had dared visit upon not just the child taken from him but the entirety of Gotham.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. Respected their ferocity, admired their moxie, marveled at their ability to keep shining in the dark like they did. Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of the city’s dirty criminal underbelly from time to time.

He was a good kid.

He deserved better.

Better than the silence and peace he should be granted in death to be marred by the mad cackles of his killer still running around alive and unpunished. Better than his father giving up, returning to the same old routine as if nothing had happened at all. Better than the Bat snatching up a new bird less than a year later.

Gotham and her Rogues had given the Bat time enough to do what needed to be done.

It was their turn.

[ca-suffit]

I read all the post season interviews and I don’t remember Rolin ever saying that the book Loustat reunion is more nihilistic and AMC wouldn’t allow it/intervened. Willing to be proven wrong if there’s a source though…?

different anon but same subject (and thank u for the link btw!)

"here is one interview where jones mentions the ending, but i think there was another one https://ew.com/interview-with-the-vampire-rolin-jones-sam-reid-season-2-finale-season-3-preview-exclusive-8670980"

Then the showrunner wanted Louis and Lestat's reunion to take place during Hurricane Katrina, but the timeline didn't add up. Plus, there were just some aspects to the scene that Jones knew would never "pass muster" at AMC.

"That reunion is wildly nihilistic, so we were going to do something different," he says. "The idea of setting that during a storm, we thought a little bit about King Lear where the storm is happening inside and the storm is happening outside. It's the idea that their relationship had been like a hurricane, and they're finding this moment of forgiveness and quiet and stillness amongst a hurricane, and that seemed like the way to go."

It was important to Jones to anchor the finale with Louis and Lestat's reunion. "It is very clear in the later books that this is not a relationship that gets thrown away," Jones says. "This is actually a very central relationship, so how can you turn it back and start that journey again? We're just beginning to see the glimmer of forgiveness and accountability in that last scene between the two of them."

"But we don't end with them together as a couple," Jones adds. "They had a reconciliation and that, in the novel, is quite bleak, them parting. We went the other way with it, which is we begin to set the journey about how they ultimately, maybe eight seasons down the road, end up together. We just wanted some catharsis. We wanted to earn that hug and earn those quiet words that none of us know. I don't even know what they said to each other."

[swordfright]

I'd love to hear your structural hot takes

I already rambled a lot about this here, but alright okay yes I got more. I am here to talk about bullshit and nonsense after all 😤

If we're still talking about how DSMP is a prime example of New Media, and various frameworks you might use to understand it as an example of New Media, then I think it could be useful to bring up the concept of the violence hub.

Before I get into all that I need to define another term: rhizomatic storytelling, which means a narrative that is decentralized, nonlinear, and intricately networked. Does DSMP fit into this category? I would say so, even though it doesn't necessarily fulfill all criteria. It's definitely decentralized (I've already talking a bit about how it's difficult to pin down the parameters of the "core text" when it comes to MCYTRP) and it's definitely a network of little stories coming together to form a cohesive(ish) narrative. But one thing DSMP isn't is nonlinear. It's a very linear story, in the same way that professional wrestling (which is famously fictionalized) is very linear. It's been pointed out by fans that the storylines in pro wrestling pass at the same rate as time passes in the real world - which is pretty unique! You can't say that about most stories, even most forms of serial fiction! But, interestingly, DSMP is the same: time in the story passes at more or less the same rate as time passes IRL, with the exception of periods spent in limbo. This raises some interesting questions about who determines linearity in a prosumptive (co-created by writers and audiences) piece of media. If you're looking at DSMP from the perspective of the CCs, it's a linear narrative in the ways I've just described. But if you look at it from the perspective of the audience (who are given the option to switch between streams, watch live, watch VODs afterwards, watch VODs out-of-order, or refuse to watch some streams/VODs altogether), then it can be - and often is - a very non linear story. In a straightforward narrative where the creators create and the consumers consume, this isn't even a question. But in the case of something like DSMP, which is a collaboration by creators and audiences, those lines of authority blur and we're left wondering whose timeline we're on.

So let's say, for the sake of this argument, that DSMP is a rhizomatic story. It doesn't check off all the boxes, but I would still say it qualifies for reasons I hope I've outlined above in at least a semi-comprehensible way. Well, there's this framework that's been developed for understanding these types of non-linear, decentralized stories: the violence hub.

The violence hub was proposed as a way of furthering our understanding of these participatory “multithreaded” stories that offer many voices at once without giving any particular one of those voices the final word.

Personally, I think DSMP is sort of the perfect example of a violence hub story, obviously because of the way it's constructed (talked about this a lot already here so I won't rehash it rn) but also because, quite frankly, it is a violent story. DSMP is bleak as fuck. Warfare, conflict, and abuse are core motifs. Like, even in a fandom as divided as this one, it's not controversial to say that DSMP is a story that's fixated on suffering, and that fixation is one of its main selling points. Not all fans are interested in those parts of the story, of course, but I think it's safe to say a lot of fans find DSMP's treatment of suffering pretty compelling. This is why people are insane about Exile and Pandora and Pogtopia and, and, and. You get the picture.

The violence hub is also a useful way of looking at not just how the story is structured, but how it is consumed. When fans talk about a violent incident in the story, whether it's Exile or c!Dream's imprisonment or something else, oftentimes we talk about these events in relation to other characters' perspectives and POVs. What's c!Tubbo up to during c!Tommy's exile? Who does or doesn't try to visit Logstedshire, and at what points in the Exile timeline? What's c!Dream doing during the Exile period when he's not at Logstedshire? This interactivity with the incident (Exile) through various other POVs deepens viewers' understandings of that incident, what it means to the characters involved, what it means in the larger narrative, and most importantly - what it means to us, the viewers. The same thing could be said about any period that qualifies as a "violent incident" described in the article screenshotted above. Take Pandora, for instance: how many times have you heard someone say "You really need to watch c!Sapnap's prison visit to get a sense of what it was like," or "c!Techno's prison podcast is vital to understanding what happens in Pandora," or something else to that effect. We all have specific streams we see as crucial puzzle pieces, but we don't all agree on what those streams are. And, depending on which streams you see as vital, your idea of what went down during a particular violence hub incident may be very different from my perception of that event, and vice-versa. Be that as it may, consuming the story this way, rather than in the form of a traditional linear narrative, allows viewers to come to more nuanced understandings of not just the incident in question, but also why the incident happened, what other events led up to it, the later impacts it had on the story, how character relationships and dynamics may have shifted as a result of the incident, etc. The decentralized nature of this structure enables an understanding of the story that appropriately accounts for its complexity.

Now that all that's out of the way, I want to talk about the structure of the violence hub in relation to audience expectations. When the finale aired, I was pretty confused by a lot of folks' reactions, partly because of how I perceived the DSMP and how I see its structure interacting with its themes. To me, DSMP is a story largely about cyclical violence, so an ending where c!Tommy (a main character, driving force for the narrative, and sometimes the protagonist depending on who you ask) chooses to put an end to that cycle made sense to me. I never saw the finale as being about an abuse victim forgiving his abuser, I saw it as being about an abuse victim purposefully stepping back, seeing the cycle of violence for what it is, and choosing to opt out. This is a fairly unpopular interpretation of the finale, but it's one that I stand by because it's firmly grounded in the text: the dialogue, the scenecraft, the structure. Up until the finale, c!Tommy perceives the DSMP as a linear, centralized story - his own! He acts accordingly, rarely stopping to consider consequences or other characters' perspectives. When he's sent to limbo in the finale, c!Tommy is suddenly able to see into c!Dream's past memories from c!Dream's perspective. In this moment, c!Tommy's experience of the narrative ceases to be linear and centralized; in this moment, he is experiencing the story in the same way that we, the audience have been experiencing the story. c!Tommy, placed in the audience's shoes, is presented with what is essentially a "branch" to the violence hub that is Exile, that is Pandora, that is the aftermath of both of those arcs. Upon seeing that "branch" (the memory), c!Tommy is given context for some of the events that have happened on the server. This newfound context allows him to understand his own story as a part of the stories of the people around him. This newfound context enables him to understand the story in a way that accounts for its complexities. He doesn't forgive c!Dream, but he is able to recognize the cycle of violence and choose not to participate anymore.

So, back to the thing I said about structure and audience expectations. As I mentioned, a lot of fans hated the finale for a lot of reasons. It wasn't to everyone's taste, and that's fine. But I would like to posit that one reason people didn't like the finale was because the rhizomatic structure of the story (which c!Tommy becomes aware of) subverted their own expectations about storytelling in general and this story in particular. I'd argue that a lot of people hated the finale because they were still clinging to the possibility of a non-rhizomatic narrative: one that has a traditional beginning/middle/end, one that has clear heroes and villains, one in which unambiguous good vanquishes unambiguous evil. Which isn't a bad thing to want, it's just...not what DSMP is, or ever was.

[avelera]

1589 - 1689 - My rough timeline for how Hob Gadling went from a knighthood to penniless in "Giving Sanctuary"

So this came up in the Discord I'm in for how exactly did Hob go from, presumably, landed gentry with a knighthood to completely penniless by 1689.

Now, obviously a huge factor in this is, y'know, the bleak depression Hob fell into after losing his family, but I'm talking logistics here because 80 years is still a really long time. I'm clarifying that it's for Giving Sanctuary because, obviously, I can't speak for canon nor do I think this is canonical. Indeed, there are many astoundingly good fics that cover this same period differently than I choose to, such as "waking world" by qqueenofhades, and I designed my own so as to not simply copy that one because it's so damn good as to feel basically authoritative.

Content Warning: It gets rather dark in this timeline, guys, this is Hob in the 1600s. Alcoholism is, by far, the lightest thing discussed below the cut, albeit in abstract terms, but please be mindful of your own experience here.

Anyway, without further adieu, a rough breakdown specific to "Giving Sanctuary" as to how Hob went from Sir Robert Gadlen in the White Horse in 1589 to how we meet him in 1689:

~1587/1588: Hob marries Eleanor and purchases and/or moves into the town where he will reside for 40 years as Sir Robert Gadlen. In the summer of 1588, the Queen sleeps at his house.

Fall, 1588: (Ok I lied, we're going back a little further) - Robyn Gadlen is born. I specifically put his birth in the fall so we can semi-realistically have a portrait of him as a rosy cheeked toddler by June 1589 and be 20 years old in the spring of 1609 for it to be exactly 80 years since Hob's life went to shit.

1599: Eleanor and what would have been their second child die. This is the most arbitrary of the dates I picked, as it's actually a bit unrealistic that Hob's wife at say, ~30 years old died in childbirth after only their second pregnancy (though in theory there could have been other failed pregnancies before). Mostly the idea was that Robyn was around 10 years old, able to remember his mother and keenly feel her loss, and Hob's next century started off not with a bang, but a whimper.

1599-1609: Hob raises Robyn as a single father on the Gadlen Estate and refuses to foster him out to other noble families out of a desire to keep him close to home. During this time, the two grow incredibly close, Robyn knows the truth about his father, and their relationship at times resembles that of a very close elder and younger brother more than father and son due to the fact Hob never ages. At age 20, it was not uncommon for Robyn to invite his father out to drink with him and his friends but, on the occasion of the tavern brawl that ended Robyn's life, Hob refused, in favor of working on the accounts of the Gadlen Estate.

Spring, 1609: Robyn dies in a tavern brawl at age 20. Hob's horrible 80 years begins.

1609 - 1629: Hob doesn't go out much after his son's death. Having already planned to fake his death and move to a new identity as a distant uncle to Robyn's children and his grandchildren no later than 1619, Hob instead loses track of time and, in the mounting hysteria over witchcraft in the first decades of James I's reign, his longevity is noticed and the town turns against him.

1629: After 40 years, roughly, of living in the town where he intended to raise his family, Hob is dragged from his house, put on trial for witchcraft, and sentenced to death by drowning. He's swept downriver and, eventually, manages to free himself after being thoroughly traumatized and left with nothing.

1630-1637: Hob makes his way back to London. He assumes the identity of a Gadlen family offshoot, the usual play when faking his own death, and returns as his own nephew to call upon Hob's rich and powerful connections in London. He pleads that his uncle, who left everything to this nephew in his will, was wrongfully accused of witchcraft and, at the very least, this nephew deserves his inheritance. However, most of Hob's connections in London were dead or disinterested in him by this time, as he did little work at maintaining these connections over the last 20 years of his mourning.

Still, Hob manages to scrounge together a little goodwill and regain some personal items, like Eleanor's portrait, under this guise. The rest of the property has been confiscated but he is invited into the business of some of his connections to help rebuild his wealth. Unfortunately, one of those investments happens to be Tulip Mania, which a still shaken and traumatized Hob sees as his best bet for rebuilding his former wealth in a hurry. By 1537, when the tulip market crashes, he's lost it all again.

1637-1645: While Hob lost the bulk of his money in the tulip crash, he wasn't totally without assets or connections willing to lend him money and he sets about rebuilding once more, this time with fewer associates and less goodwill as the last of his rich friends as Sir Robert Gadlen pass away or lose interest in this newly impoverished nephew. Hob manages to scrounge together a few more risky bets and uses his last ship to deliver a cargo of fine silks on behalf of an associate, in exchange for a huge cut (at his own expense) of the profits. However, an unlucky storm leads to his ship being wrecked, and while the crew survived, the cargo was totally lost.

1645-1655: Debt collectors begin to call on Hob, who had overextended himself in that last gamble. He spends the next decade in and our of debtors prison, a poverty trap where his debts only mount further. He attempts with his final wealthy connections various schemes such as gambling his way out. However, with his instincts shot and his desperation mounting, none of these attempts pay off and indeed, he ends up further in debt until finally, at risk of being imprisoned "for life" in a way that would certainly give away his secret, and already 25 years into this identity, Hob fakes his death and cuts ties entirely with the Gadlen name.

1655 - 1666: Hob's fortunes continue to slide. He makes some last attempts at an honest living under a new, more modest identity, but the stress, PTSD, and depression from his losses continue to compound and he falls deeper into alcoholism to self-medicate, making it difficult to hold down work. He tries his hand at a return to banditry and theft but rusty instincts and substance abuse reduce his effectiveness and he's wary of being imprisoned, limiting such efforts.

What little he manages to scrape together is lost when the Great Fire of London tears through the city, leaving him once again with nothing except a growing sense that the world itself has turned against him.

1666 - 1689: With nothing left and longer living at the margins, Hob goes thoroughly under. The highest point of his fortune is probably when he serves as a guard at a brothel, where they don't mind his drinking nearly so much as more honest businesses, and provide him a bed for those hours during the day when he's not working. This money is padded further when Hob, seeing no reason to refuse, accepts overtures from certain clients of the brothel to offer his own services. However, the misery of this work only compounds his dive into the bottle and before long he can no longer hold down that job either. He has various short stints after that in jail for debts, or public drunkenness, brawling, prostitution, and even a short stay in Bedlam when he tried to tell others the truth of his immortality. Those could be considered the only time he had a steady roof over his head.

In the final decade before his meeting with Dream in 1689, Hob realized he was truly out of options as far as any sort of last, desperate bid to regain his fortune or even stability before Dream arrives, since Hob didn't dare risk leaving London, unsure he'd be able to afford to come back in time, or to risk any sort of grand scheme that could see him imprisoned long term or have him deported as an indentured servant. Forced to live along the margins, out of sight, Hob fell to begging for enough coin to stay properly drunk and to eat, and then, when that failed, simply to eat and then, for long stretches, he could not meet even those needs. On more than one occasion, Hob was forced to defend the little he had by killing his attacker. The last years before 1689 are a blur of starvation and desperation and frequent nightmares until their meeting on June 7th.

[canmom]

post-animation night 177 comments

brief thoughts on kizazi moto (more substantial tomorrow perhaps): visually that was so lush. we're really full post-Arcane/Spiderverse nonphotorealistic stylings here, with a powerful dash of Trigger/Flying Bark-esque Neo Kanada School as well. this was like a cross-section of the current big styles in animation and it kicked ass for that. I'm not entirely sure what the production pipeline looked like - the Irish film board was apparently involved somehow! and maybe some Irish studios so it wasn't a purely African production - but it was an extremely impressive showing all round.

narratively, putting it right beside Fatenah kinda highlighted the places it wasn't willing to go. though I had heard the directors had a lot of freedom, there were some very consistent themes running throughout the anthology - nearly every film involved parent-child relationships, many of them revolving around a kid hoping to prove themselves in the eyes of their society/ancestors. the uglier side of history is touched on lightly: one film shows us a flashy cyberpunk city from an alternate timeline where 'Great Zimbabwe was never colonised', complete with 'the most advanced justice system in the multiverse' (a giant robot bird that chases our protagonists), but doesn't expand on that as more than a colourful backdrop. the last film gets closest, presenting a mother-child pair of two gods who are wounded by extractivism and retreat from the world - I appreciated the understated bleak implication of its ending.

I think while the creators were probably not given too much overt creative restriction, they were surely aware this was to be broadcast in English on Disney's streaming service, and tailored their stories accordingly. so you'd probably avoid "Disney is the face of American imperialism: the movie". Disney money is a bit of a double-edged sword that way.

besides parent/child reconciliation, we had a lot of ancestors and more than a few gods. a few stories centred on coming of age rituals; other had a more or less central focus on social media fame and its corrupting effect. at times it verges into the preachy - characters who stand between two families, or between humans and aliens, and resolve to honour both sets of ancestors - but the presentation is more than engaging enough to make it a compelling watch, regardless.

there's a lot of wonderful lighting, set design and architecture throughout. Mọrémì had a very cool desaturated style with toyetic, colourful 'soul-stealing giants' that put me a little in mind of Absolver.

Stardust had a bit of a Star Wars feel, almost feeling like an extra Visions short, but the injection of Islamic architecture was very effective.

a certain Arcane/Riot influence is very overt in many of the films - not just in the widespread use of paint textures in the CG environments and the approach to light and colour, but also with plot elements like the neon-drenched surfer gang in Surf Sangoma (episode 4) - which was definitely a fantastic-looking episode with the wonderfully out-there premise of a world where you have a squid suck on your face to gain surf skills. (just say no to squids, kids! you don't need 'em! rely on your magic ghost mum instead.) but I think this is something that's true in the animation industry more generally of late - the last few years have really kicked the door open to 2D stylings in 3D (paint textures, reduced framerates etc.). no doubt having a Spiderverse director as exec producer played a role in that too!

all in all I really enjoyed this anthology, and I'm super excited to see what comes next from the studios involved.

Fatenah meanwhile was fantastic, and an absolute gut punch. the fact that the hospital seen in the film has been in the news for being emptied out at gunpoint in the last week gave it a special level of 'oof'. its style may seem disarmingly simple, but the puppet-like styling ends up bestowing a huge degree of weight to the characters. the scenes of the border checkpoint, the monotony of cages and guards, and the concrete environment resembling a Half Life 2 map, were very impactful. highly recommend taking 20 minutes to watch this film.

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 059 - Captain T'Pol and the Quantum Parasites

Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 3 Episode 8 - Twilight

The episode cold opens with Archer waking up to find T'Pol has taken has taken his place as captain. Not only that, but enterprise is being chased by the Xindi weapon and two Xindi ships! Quite an exciting opener. Then: We see the weapon crack open a planet. Next thing we know, Archer's an old man on earth. And for some reason, living with T'Pol in a kind of couple-y situation. I wish the show would stop trying to make Archer x T'Pol work, they have absolutely no chemistry with eachother. Apparently Archer is missing 12 years worth of his memories. Most of the episode was through flashback, with T'Pol explain what happened. According to her, Archer was hit by an anomaly, and has been unable to form any new Long Term memories ever since.

This was a really interesting episode. Normally when a show does Amnesia, they do Retrograde amnesia, so it's nice to see an attempt to tackle Anterograde amnesia for a change. And the episode being from Archer's perspective while he's suffering from it was really interesting.

Also, is this the only time we get to see T'Pol in a normal Starfleet uniform? Because it really does suit her, better than the uniforms she's had so far, at least. While we're on the topic, we later see Trip in the Captain's uniform, and it suits him too. And Malcolm's beard.

Archer's reaction to hearing that Earth and most of Earth's colonies were destroyed is heartbreakingly well performed. It might be the best performance Scott Bakula has given for enterprise so far. However, it was at this point that I started figuring that things weren't exactly as they seemed, and that this was all in Archer's mind. Earth and humanity wouldn't be destroyed off-screen. I also started to notice other small details that were off. T'Pol wouldn't argue that The Vulcans held back Earth's warp program, that was always Archer and Trip's talking point. But, later in the episode I'm proven wrong. This episode actually happened, it's just undone because of the parasites infecting Archer's relationship with Space-Time. Eliminating them now, means they never existed, so curing Archer means that he would never have been infected in the first place

The cure of course is blasting the Parasites out of Archer's head with the Warp reactor. I don't think that's how medicine works, but who am I to argue with Phlox's methods.

I really liked this episode, it had some really good emotional beats, and even despite it's more emotional nature, still managed to squeeze in a couple good action scenes. Enterprise's last stand, with everyone fighting to the absolute end in the faintest hope that Phlox's theory about the parasites was correct was beautiful, and the calm at the end once everything was undone was just really nice.

Plus, a nice Time Travel twist. In a way, it kind of reminded me of the 10th Doctor episode, Turn Left, in that a parasite causes an aberrant timeline where everything just goes wrong. It's not quite as bleak as turn left, and this deals with future events instead of Past Events, but I still loved it.

Comparing my Enjoyment of this Episode with a Doctor Who Universe Story of the Same Title

Doctor Who - Big Finish Monthly Range #23 - Project: Twilight

Project: Twilight was the start of a mini arc that ran through Big Finish's 6th and 7th Doctor Radio Plays, often Called The Forge Arc.

The radio play opens with brilliant opening that makes little sense on the first listening, but when you come back to it, it makes a lot more sense. Specifically, the Project Twilight subject's escape from the Forge in World War One. The audio then jumps forward to the modern day. I like to keep the plot summary stuff short for the Same Title segment, so I'll skip over a lot of the details, but it's initially framed as a strange murder mystery about a spontaneously combusting body, but beautifully unravels into a century long Conspiracy involving a secret government organisation called The Forge, a Vampire-Super-Soldier program from World War One, and how The Doctor, his companion Evelyn, and a random civilian called Cassie end up wrapped up into it.

The story's individual villains of the Project Twilight Vampire vampires are fantastically written, and the story masterfully sets up Nimrod, the main villain of the Forge Arc as a whole.

Project: Twilight is a lot more gruesome than most Doctor Who stories, but it plays it's horror very tactfully and the fact that it's a radio play which leaves the visuals to the imagination really adds to that atmosphere.

Picking whether Enterprise's Twilight or Doctor Who's Project Twilight is better is a hard choice, they both scratch very different itches and fill their roles very well. I am leaning more towards Project: Twilight because I'm in that Halloween Horror mood at the moment, but Enterprise's Twilight was also a really good timey-wimey emotionally driven experience.

[syn4k]

hallo came here to ask. I really liked the little things ya write, the stuff I've read is really really cool n i finally have the time to read some long fics n stuff, so what are some fics of yours that you could recomend? idk where to start n I'd like to hear more abt the stuff ya make :]]

oh my goodness this is actually a really nice ask to receive,, hello anon! glad you're enjoying our shorter works!

we have three long-ish fics that are all up on our ao3 as well as a couple multichapters in progress.

the two finished long(ish) fics of ours that i'd reccomend:

twice. (40,503 words) | Hermitcraft, No Romantic Relationship(s), Teen and Up Audiences, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death

An alternate universe with a fantasy setting, Xisuma and Evil Xisuma-centric. This work follows the journey of one Xisuma Void, King of Hermit's Hollow, and one Xelqua (Exy) Void, his younger brother who came into the world under less than usual circumstances and has picked up a hobby that X isn't too fond of. Misunderstandings occur and spiral. If you're worried about the MCD, it might help to know that they do get better, just not within the timeline of the work!

the younger years (10,557 words) | Empires SMP, No Romantic Relationship(s), General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply

In the desert capital of Pixandria, the king has gone missing without so much as a trace or a warning. A curious young girl slips into his house to poke around and perhaps get some clues, running into another Emperor on the way. About a thousand years later, a tired history major who lives in that same desert unearths a chest while digging a garden, leading him on a journey around the Empires.

[-<:>-]

now, we also have some works in progress that are either already decently long or which we're planning on making longer! both of these are Empires fics because we have a hyperfixation

works in progress of ours that i'd reccomend:

(i'll tend to the flame, you can worship the) ashes (currently 16,572 words) | Empires SMP, No Romantic Relationship(s), Teen and Up Audiences, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings, check the tags on this one for more information

In the aftermath of the Empires S1 apocalypse, Fwhip and his sister Gem are headed towards an obscure corner of the world in which a portal sits. Their plan is to go through this portal to a kinder world, one where they can escape all of the horrors of this one. One night, they touch down in the desert and, almost by accident, come into contact with Pixlriffs, the Copper King, who has been missing for eight years. They decide to bring him with them on their journey, but it becomes clear immediately that something is very wrong with Pix, and he's not talking. The story follows the three as they journey across the world, have arguments over food rations, survive a freak plot-relevant bear attack, and try to navigate both the crushing weight settled on Pixl's shoulders as well as their own. Things do get bleak a lot, but I promise it doesn't have a bad ending.

invisibility (What?) (currently at 3,422 words) | Empires SMP, Jimmy | Solidarity/Scott Major | Smajor1995, General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply

This one started as a oneshot and then we realized that oh hey, it could have a plot! Scott goes out at 3am one Sunday evening to meet up with his lover, but things go wrong when he feeds his horse a diluted invisibility potion. (The horse is fine, don't worry.) A guard at a watchpost nearby notices, and soon the message is out to all the allies of Rivendell that a minion of Xornoth may or may not have been spotted going away from the site. Despite this being an M/M shipfic (from us? The horrors!), the focus is less on Scott and Jimmy's relationship than it is on the political shenanigans that ensue when Scott tries to walk the line between "no, guys, Xornoth isn't coming back" and not outing himself as gay. It's sure to be a ride, both to read and to write.

that's it really hope you enjoy

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Went through your fic tag and saw that you may possibly write a Paul dies instead role reversal AU? It’s interesting because it’s not something I’ve seen really explored in fic. I mean, I think I read 1 in the JHP days and i couldn’t make it through because it was just too much, like the tone was very ~anime~ sort of like how a great deal of the ‘Paul in pain’ fics are on ao3. But you’re a great writer so your take on that would be interesting. What are your thoughts on the subject anyway? I know a lot of people think John would just give up on life but that’s always felt completely unfair to him. Although I do think his grief would look very different from Paul’s but no more or less deep than his.

Hi anon! Thank you for your kind words about my writing :)

I don't wanna give too much away about that story, especially when I've not written anything for it yet.

I can't really say for certain how it would've impacted John but here's some thoughts:

I definitely don't think he would've taken it well at all and I think he was in a generally worse place than Paul in 1980, including the fact he probably suffered from a quite severe depression.

His incessant apparent mentions of Paul in his diary lend credence to the idea he was still in some sense obsessed with him by December 8, so I do think it would take a great toll on his mental health – both as a tragedy in of itself, but also as a culmination of the many deaths he had already experienced.

One important part of the story I plan to tell is how this would impact Paul's as well as John's individual reputations. The question of handling a legacy – as we've been able to watch Paul do in our timeline – is somewhat central. This is also where Linda, who would be in charge of Paul's estate, comes into play: what narrative would she choose for her late husband and how does it impact John's image? And how does John feel about all this privately? How does Linda feel about John's reaction?

My take is certainly rather bleak but I think I know what you mean when you talk about an ~anime~ tone, and hope my story wouldn't be like that. It'll be dark, I think, but John won't be a solely passive actor wallowing – though wallowing will be a part of it, since it is John we're talking about. I also have little interest in writing fics with absolutely tragic endings (and also have little interest in wish-fulfillment stories for that matter) so it would definitely not be a pure exercise in misery.

Also, the planned structure is that it will be about 5 chapters all taking place on the same date, with one to two year time jumps in between, which I think is good because it cuts out a lot of the motionless sadness that might accompany an especially painful grieving period.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

I'm not a horrible stickler for timelines and ages, but for this gunter slow burn fic I needed a few scenes to be nailed down to specific ones (eg, so Xander talking with Gunter early on about prisoner!Corrin wouldn't be too bizarre). here's my headcanon for the ages and scenes, for the curious.

(fully realize some of them are non canon and I don't particularly care :P)

so here's the part that makes my heart hurt: I'm also trying to figure out the rough time that garon torched gunter's village.

let's say gunter was a knight from his teens to something like ... 32; long enough to make a name for himself because the canon line is he was a "well known & respected knight (throughout nohr)". most young men in their prime serve armies worldwide about that age range, and i could see him establishing (essentially) an officer's authority - it'd explain why garon himself trusted him enough to offer him dragon blood.

let's say he was retired/married from 32 to .... 43. long enough to fall deeply in love, have several children, truly settling down and being happy.

(this also raises the point -- what made garon wait until after gunter was married/retired to offer him dragon blood? was garon getting desperate from the concubine wars, and running out of other people he trusted? was he getting jealous of his contemporaries having a happier life than himself? pure spite?)

i'm trying to figure out how, tastefully, gunter handled people knowing about the massacre (if anyone does). what even people know about it. is nohr unstable enough that a random village going up in flames makes most people shrug, or are they straight up oblivious? if one of gunter's old army buddies asks 'how's the wife?' when gunter comes back to nohr's army, how does he respond?

(i go back and forth as to him just replying back with an empty "we're not in contact anymore." versus "she died". the first is not a lie, but also, misleading enough that people won't ask over, given they're assuming divorce, not death. there's a fuck load of men that throw themselves back into work to avoid thinking about personal life, and i do wonder if he'd be able to outright say those words until decades later.)

(i also wonder if garon also orders gunter to stay silent about the village destruction. all 'oopsies, bandits must have attacked it' being the official story.)

let's say he spends from 43-48 in a very bleak mental space. throws himself back into work in the army, while living on pure hatred. i can see this era being where he gets his "extremely strict" reputation, given he's purely living to be a sword to be used against garon at some point, and is likely near obsessive about arming himself with ways to take him down.

and then 48 is when i headcanon him being ordered to the northern fortress. five years is short enough for the hatred to be still front of mind, but also just enough that he can be faced with corrin as a child, and recognize that she had no part in garon's crimes.

edit: see, now today, i'm leaning towards him saying the "not in contact" line because his kids are dead too - it's a little more of a cover to get people to fuck off, and would ultimately raise less suspicion since everyone likely assumes his wife's taken the kids with her. he's been such a family man i can't help but see some of the old army buddies thinking it's weird he comes back when he's got other reasons to live for. (oof.)

[unboundwanderers]

//THE WAR DOCTOR\\ Intro Variant.

When a Race of Genocidal Mutant Aliens known as 'The Daleks' waged war with The Doctor's people, "The Timelords"- A war across space and time broke out- engulfing the universe in a ball of flame and fire. Amidst this war, The Scarf Doctor tried to hide and flee- but the war caught up with him, and its disastrous effects began to outweigh his allegiance to his moral code. When Friends, Family, and even ENEMIES begged The Doctor to fight- he had no choice but to abide. The LAST GREAT TIME WAR spreads across all of Space and Time, with two races fighting over supremacy over the others- and only one man fighting for the peace of everyone else.

Below are a series of thread prompts for THE WAR DOCTOR. This Doctor is my unbound Time War Incarnation. Taking cues and mannerisms from The McGann Doctor, The War Master, and John Hurt's War Doctor- This Doctor is witty and desperate, fighting for the sanity of everyone else, and choosing to abandon the Name 'The Doctor.' His Stories are bleak, bittersweet stories of war in which your Character will almost certainly encounter THE DALEKS, and experience the anguish of THE TIME WAR. YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN AN ANGST WARNING.

In addition, The Time War is complex, and as such- these stories are complex. Everything is up for discussion. Your Boundaries come before my silly little prompts.

PROMPTS IN WHICH YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THE UNIVERSE THE TIME WAR IS HAPPENING IN. >Prompts for people who want to exist in the same Timeline as My Doctor, and therefore- be more likely to have been affected by The Time War, feeling its full effect- and witnessing its full horror.

>Some threads may or may not establish that The Doctor is already traveling with @kemikorosu's Lumine- as she fights with him in the war, but sometimes- The War Doctor chooses to leave her on Gallifrey (or on a world, he deems safer than Gallifrey) so he can embark on a mission on his own. If you are a Genshin muse, the choice to acknowledge this is within your discretion. I do it mainly for TIMELINE purposes, as Emi's Lumine is one of my main's. If you want to establish the thread we're doing as an ALTERNATE TIMELINE or PARALLEL UNIVERSE in which The Doctor is not a native of your universe, we are free to plot that.

THE SHADOW HARMONY: Gallifrey: Homeworld of The TIMELORDS, and powered by THE EYE OF HARMONY. It Controls all of Gallifrey's central power and is what their civilization is built upon. A frozen black hole- an imploding star, trapped forever in that form. During The Time War, The Eye of Harmony's access is restricted to only The Lord President of Gallifrey. The Daleks want to reverse engineer it- construct their own. ON YOUR CHARACTER'S HOMEWORLD, or a WORLD that is RELEVANT TO THEM- The Daleks are attempting to construct an Eye of Harmony there, by influencing the world's timeline- YOUR CHARACTER is mounting in resistance against them, and on the most important day of the revolt- you encounter THE WAR DOCTOR.

THE NEVERWHEN: The Neverwhen- a plain in which time is always in flux. The Future mixed with The Past, the Past mixed with the Future- and the present muddied into one ball of nothingness. In this realm of nothingness, your character is pulled to be used as a foot soldier by either one of two sides: The Daleks, or The Timelords- in the end, it doesn't matter... because when The War Doctor arrives- all hell breaks loose.

TESTING GROUNDS: IT IS NEARING THE FINAL DAY of THE TIME WAR. Both sides are growing desperate. While races that are not sensitive to time go about their lives unaffected by The Time War, those sensitive to the flow of time feel utter sickness in the air as they view the effects of two desperate, collapsing empires. They say The TImelords are consuming whole planets, others say The Daleks are aging whole worlds to death... it all becomes clear when The Daleks arrive on your world- but YOUR CHARACTER meets one man who might be able to stop them, with a little help...

PROMPTS IN WHICH YOU ARE A PARALLEL UNIVERSE THE TIME WAR IS BLEEDING INTO. >The Time War caused the walls of reality to destabilize in brief lapses. During these lapses, the Time War briefly leaks in- at the end of these threads, all damage will be undone and continuity to the canon your blog follows will be restored- this would be a brief encounter that's easily written off.

RESTORATION OF THE DALEKS: The Time War bleeds into your universe, in the worst way: Narrowly avoiding death by falling into YOUR CHARACTER's universe, DAVROS- Creator of The Daleks, is going to attempt to forge new Daleks... but luckily, a messenger arrives just in time to warn you of the threat...

MIND OVER MATTER: The Daleks and their war have spread into E-Space- a universe comprised of materials opposite of YOUR CHARACTER'S native universe, and as such- pockets of warped reality infect your universe. Through one of the pockets, a stranger arrives- and brings a method of combatting these distortions.

YELLOW BRICK ROAD: Your Character is caught in a time loop. The War has affected your timeline because of the self destruct of a weapon engineered during The War. The Destruction has ripped a hole between realities and the effect manifests as looped time. However, not all is lost- when a man enters the loop, he provides a way to potentially break the loop, however- there are enemies there who may have something to say about that.

[dontcallmecarrie]

Ah! I'm sorry, I was thinking about NHHD. I didn't realise you'd already written about Justin being dusted. But also, I was kinda wondering how Justin would react?

To the snap if he wasn't dusted himself?

I believe it comes up in this hypothetical thought exercise, if not very in-depth.

Long story short: assuming things ever even get that far— because in NHDD, the Avengers are a functional team that actually gets along, and even if they weren't, Cabal would step up to the plate [though there's a certain sort of irony in the League-of-Supposed-to-be-Evil-but-Mostly-Just-Vibing saving the day]— at the end of the day, the only thing Justin Hammer's just some guy, really.

This is a universe with a whole lot of geniuses and rich people running around, superhumans and aliens and magic and who knows what else— the only thing Justin Hammer's got going for them is their emotional intelligence.

...well, that's what he thinks, anyway.

In reality, NHDD!Justin is a character who's unintentionally weaponized their charisma stat, and has made a lot of very interesting friends over the years.

After all, their MO is to aggressively support the people they care about. Nobody in-universe would be able to pinpoint just how much of an influence they've had on the timeline, but if anyone from another universe were to stop by, it'd look like the Twilight Zone.

If we're talking about the "this could only be a hypothetical because circumstances in this AU mean nobody'd ever let things get this far" thought exercises, you've probably noticed that Justin is the heart of his friend group. I don't know how else to say it, but...well, he [unintentionally] founded Cabal.

A group of people who, individually, are terrifyingly capable— and are in essence the darker counterpart of the idea of "power of friendship" which, to paraphrase a post I saw a while back but is now vanished into the ether that is Tumblr's tag system, sounds like something ripped straight from a children's cartoon but in practice means that these people have common goals, know how to work together and Get Shit Done™.

Justin's the one who founded Cabal, he's their leader, and if he sees a crisis like the Snap, would absolutely go "you know, this is a problem. Let's do something about it."

No matter what, things are getting fixed.

it's just that with Justin alive, things don't feel quite as bleak in the meantime. It's— I'm not sure how to articulate it, but.

Look, sometimes, people have bad days. Days so exhausting it's a wonder you managed to pull through; maybe you worked long hours, maybe traffic was a shitshow. Maybe your boss yelled at you for something that wasn't your fault, or you failed that one test.

But you have something to look forward to, even during the darkest of times, right?

Maybe it's that chocolate stash, or that game you're playing, or a book you're partway through. A movie you're been meaning to check out, your pet waiting for you at home, a scented candle, something.

Something that gets you through the day, adds just that little bit of motivation to get out of bed in the morning.

This is probably a terrible analogy, but the emotional support Justin provides fits in that same category.

No matter what, things are getting fixed.

It's just that it'd probably go even faster, this way.

[darkhorse-javert]

Stolen Dreams II.

Another riff off this title/idea expansion. This time set in my own AU timeline which I began with 'Invitation'- so very mild spoilers for what's coming soon in the series.

Warning for some language, and background character death/ trauma.

February 1943

"Whiskey, Foyle?"

The question, and the proffered glass as he entered the office caught him sideways. Andrew pointedly didn't look at his watch, but knew it was at least two hours too early to be drinking. In the evening- after flying was fine. Now it was early afternoon. Although if any day called for it, today did.

Bellermy's eyes were deep, yet hollowed out, a tomb of bleakness. Save me from it, something in his gaze said, as he sat at the wooden desk, slumped in the seat.

So Andrew reached out, took the glass of golden liquid, and at a vauge tip of the Wing Commander's head, sat down in the chair opposite.

Bellermy took a sip of his Whiskey, staring vaugely, not at Andrew but away at the wall panel.

"It's all done, Sir." Of course you know that, but it was something to say, to break the heavy weight of silence in the air. If 9nly a little

Bellermy nodded slowly, "Poor begger" he said softly, to kno-one exactly

Andrew nodded with a sigh

"Poor girl," Bellermy continued, breathed heavily then guestured with his glass, "Especially now." He took another long swallow from his whiskey, shook his head bitterly. "Shouldn't get married in War, Andrew, much less the other. Shouldn't even look at women- not fair on them. We live with the death, we know it sits on our shoulder, and may call us at any time. They can't know that feeling, not in quite the same way, even the WAAFs."

Andrew felt himself frowning, a half argument that wasn't properly there bubbling up inside him. I wouldn't be here without Sam, couldn’t be. He blanketedin a sardonic tone, "You're preaching to the damned there Sir."

There was a slant to Bellermy's mouth, some sort of sad amusement as he looked over towards Andrew, leaning slightly back in his chair "I know-I know, I'm a verging heretic myself, with Pippa, loosely pledged as we are." Then his face chilled again, becoming a cool mask, his voice hardening "Bloody Germans!"

Andrew watched as the man took another swallow of whiskey, mouth set into a stiff line that had something to a snarl behind it. And this from Bellermy, always the most easy going of his senior officers to date. Bloody Germans indeed. 'Tot' gone, Ricky wounded, may never fly again, even if he comes out in one piece at the end.

For a moment a room swam in front of his eyes; two beds, side cupboards, all stripped bare, empty entire. A billet-room, like the one he had left just before, having packed up the effects of both inhabitants. And yet, as he looked something was different, glimmer of something, a cufflink left on one side cupboard. And he knew - somehow - that this was his own, one of the pair Uncle Charles had gifted to him before Oxford. His cufflink, his billet room, stripped down as only those of the gone are.

Is this what I've sentenced Sam for? The hover of the same grief I saw in Heather Phillips eyes today?

"It makes me feel old." There was a catch in Bellemy's voice as it broke through Andrew's musings "Sitting, watching you go out - even you Foyle. And loosing you. Poor 'Tot', wasn't even Twenty-one" He shook his head hard, like a dog trying to shed rain. "One child that won't remember him, another who will never know." He hefted another sigh. "That's a rotten portion- no one should be served it."

Bellermy tossed back the last of his drink, set the glass with a clunk onto the wood of the desk and finally- finally sat up, assuming something close to his normal position. His face though, was still shadowed, his eyes marked and pained.

"Squadron chatter tells me your Lady is staying with her parents, at the moment."

"Yes," Andrew nodded "She is."

Bellermy jerked a nod, "Take a 12 hour on Sunday- we're not flying. Go over." He tried to smile, but Andrew saw it falter and break,"Carpe Deim, Carpe Amore, Andrew while it is still there." The Wing-Commander's eyes dropped to a muddle of forms on his desk. Andrew Rose, set down his own glass and waited. When the word came it was distant, distracted, "Off you go, Foyle."

But then, as he turned to leave,Bellermy spoke again "Foyle- Andrew paused "Take the bottle, see it's passed around the mess, won't you. For them, and the others."

He turned back, and lifted the heavy glass bottle from the desk, "Yes, Sir."

Bellermy nodded ever so slightly at that, the barest of acknowledgement.

------

A/N OK this went rather off the rails, focussed more on Bellermy than Andrew.

I would also like to iterate that Bellermy is not, in anyway an alchoholic in my mind- only that this particular incident has knocked everyone rather sideways.

[fracktastic]

Is there a story that you've always wanted to write, but have never plucked up the courage to do? What is it? Who is it? Cus then we can cheerlead you into it haha.

Hah! There are loads floating around in the back of my mind. I don't know if it's primarily a question of courage as much as drive/energy in most cases, though there are definitely a few exceptions. Limiting myself to BSG:

One thing I'll admit I've shied away from is writing/posting straight-up romance or smut. I've written bits and pieces, but always worry it'll come off as too cringey if I post it. Interlacing romantic themes within a larger plot is fine, allusions and angsty fluff are fine, but there's a line somewhere... (fwiw, there are at least three prompts I started responding to that never got finished because they drifted in that direction).

I get really nervous about writing Kara Thrace as a focal character, which is unfortunate, as there are some relationship dynamics I think it'd be interesting to explore. I think we're a little too alike in some ways, and it would feel too confessional?

I've been considering an extended piece focusing on the Kobol arc (since the timeline in the show is pretty vague and I love the mystical elements) and maybe going into an extended version of the whole Admiral Cain situation (because that felt like it got really rushed on the show). It'd also give some room to play with the interactions between Laura and Billy/Starbuck/Lee, which I haven't really gotten to do much of in the stuff I've written.

Another one's a very "Handmaid's Tale-esque" New Caprica AU. I've written chunks of it and actually have something resembling a synopsis drafted out, but it's very dark and uncomfortable (I've taken out some of the worst bits and it's still pretty bleak), and I keep vacillating on whether I'm ever going to take the time to write it out in its entirety or post it.