#And in order to get THAT we... Need to be homeless for a little bit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

astroboots · 2 years ago

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Every You Every Me | Issue #7

COLLABORATED WITH @thirstworldproblemss

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x female reader

Summary: You finally get some answers out of Miguel about who you are to him.

Word count: 5,700 words.

Series Masterlist | Spiderverse Masterlist | Astroboot’s Masterlist | thirstworldproblemss' Masterlist

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"So let's take it from the top," you tell him, as you sit down and put down the Trenta-sized caramel flavored hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and chocolate syrup in front of the man named Miguel O'Hara.

The two of you are sitting across from each other at a small booth at the nearest Starbucks you were able to find, seeing as you're homeless now, and there's nowhere else you could think of to go.

He's dressed in a large fitted hoodie that drapes down to his thighs. Where he's managed to find something that is oversized in length on him, you don't know because he's not exactly short.

"I'm from a dimension known as Earth-928," Miguel says.

Before he can continue, you raise one hand, and you can see his right eyebrow twitch unhappily at the interruption.

"Yes?"

"Just to clarify, so we don't have another ‘coffee cake’ misunderstanding. When you say Earth-928, do you mean a different version of the Earth we’re on now? Or is this a habitable planet in another galaxy that happens to be partially named Earth?"

"It's a parallel universe characterized by distinct physical parameters and initial conditions, accounting for the diverse manifestations of our observable universe. So still Earth," he says, sweeping his gaze across the café, nose wrinkling the way one does when there's something off-putting in their vicinity. "Just a little bit less primitive."

Of course he would say that, wouldn't be able to resist the jab would he.

You peer up at him across the table. He is very technical and thorough with his explanations. But as grateful as you are for him finally being willing to answer your questions, you hadn't expected those answers to be quite so information dense. You need to pick your questions more carefully or you are going to have to go down the street to buy yourself a notebook in order to keep up.

"How did you end up on this Earth?" you ask.

"Where I'm from, I'm a scientist, a researcher. One of the things I studied was the theory of physical cosmology and the existence of the multiverse. My work was concentrated on the theoretical ability to navigate between distinct universes within a hypothetical multiverse–”

Ah shit, you should've been more narrow in your question. Should have asked him to simplify it a bit more for you. Because now you're sitting here blinking up at him, pretending you understand half of what he's saying.

It makes sense that he’s STEM. He speaks like the type. Smart as hell with none of the social skills to gauge whether the other person is following the conversation.

Listening to him reminds you of that time in college, when you'd walked into the wrong lecture hall, wound up in advanced chemistry instead of your math class, felt too awkward to leave and just sat there drawing doodles with an attentive expression until the class was over.

And he’s still at it, “– employing advanced mechanisms that manipulate or transcend conventional spacetime frameworks, enabling exploration–"

"Okay, wait, hold on a sec," you interrupt, once it becomes obvious he’s not going to stop any time soon on his own. "Can you... simplify, please?"

He stops mid-sentence, taking a deep breath as he looks up at the ceiling and considers your request, with a serious expression as if he's thinking really hard on it. "I’m a scientist. I study the multiverse. I built a parallel universe traversal device, it allows me to visit different dimensions." Your brain feels insulted that it clearly took more mental effort for him to dumb it down for you than to just give the supergenius version.

“So… a machine that allows you to jump between alternative universes?”

“Yes.”

There’s a pause between you as you run through the questions in your mental list you want to tick off now that he’s turned cooperative and talkative. But with everything that’s happened in the last handful of hours, a lot of the questions you previously had seemed outdated. The one question, the most important one, you’ve wanted to ask from the start though remains.

"Who am I to you?"

Miguel takes the large sized drink in his even larger hands and somehow this big paper cup still manages to look tiny in his grip. "You and I were... involved," he says.

You frown. ‘Involved’ is such a vague term. It belongs in the trash with other useless terms to describe relationships: “situationship”, “complicated”, you hate them all.

"So I was your girlfriend?"

"Yeah, something like that," he concede, fidgeting with the thin gold chain looped around his neck, his eyes not quite meeting yours, like he's embarrassed to use the term.

‘Something like that,’ you chew on his answer unhappily, sympathizing with your other dimensional self and how the other you seemed to have snagged a commitment phobe.

Other-you, who isn’t here in this dimension with Miguel. You wonder why that is.

"What happened to me?" you ask.

His eyes are glued to the table, not looking up at you as he answers you in a voice so quiet you can barely hear it. "She died."

"Oh."

The revelation shouldn’t take you by surprise.

Every time Miguel’s brought up your other self, it’s been tinted with earth-shattering sadness. It's not hard to put one and one together and come to the conclusion that whatever happened to you in this other dimension didn't end happily.

Still it's an odd feeling to know that out there, somewhere, a version of you has died. A version of you that was clearly very important to the man in front of you.

"I'm sorry," you tell him.

It feels silly to say. It's bizarre to give your condolences over your own parallel death, but Miguel looks so heartbroken. He’s slumped in his seat, large shoulders rounded until his frame looks so much smaller than you're used to, and you don't know what else to do.

"So what is happening to me now," you start, not sure how to word what the phenomena that you're going through is, "these continuous near-death experiences, is that how she died?"

"Yeah."

"And do you know why that... kept happening to her? Why is it happening to me?"

"I don't, and I don't know how to stop it. Believe me I tried."

He cradles the paper cup in his hands, the grip a little bit tighter now until he's creasing the paper and the caramel liquid oozes and leaks from the top.

"What I do know is that the universe isn’t going to stop trying to kill you, no matter what you do. And with every near death incident you manage to survive, these incidents will escalate in nature, until..." he stops, eyes flickering away from the cup to meet yours, but it's like he loses courage and doesn't want to say the last part.

"Until, what?" you prompt.

"Until your dimension collapses."

The blood freezes in your veins. "Wait, collapses!? What do you mean?"

"I can't guarantee it will happen again. But that's what happened last time. When the other you kept cheating death, the universe eventually started to collapse in on itself."

You slump back in your chair, trying to process what you've just been told. What does that mean? That even if you managed to defy all odds to survive, doing so would doom the rest of this universe as you know it?

"When will that happen?" you ask, and you're surprised you manage to get the words out because there is a hard lump in your throat that makes it hurt to even swallow.

"Judging from the trajectory and escalation of events, you have about three months give or take."

The two of you sit in heavy silence, for the moment you're not sure what else to ask him. Because it feels like you are trapped in a building looking for an exit sign, but all that’s tacked onto the brick wall is your death certificate, waiting to be signed and formalized.

There’s no way out. Nowhere to go.

"Give me your hand," he says, breaking the silence.

You give it to him without hesitation, watching, puzzled, as he takes off his watch and secures it around your wrists.

"Why are you giving me your watch?"

"It's not a watch," he says, then he presses something on the face of it, and an image of a young woman flickers into existence in the space above your wrist, vaguely see-through. A hologram!

"This is Lyla," he introduces.

Wait, wait? Lyla? As in your mom Lyla? You watch the tiny woman floating above your wrist. Short bob-cut, and flashy heart-shaped sunglasses, with a twinkle in her eye.

The hologram looks nothing like your mom. You part your mouth, about to ask about the name but you're interrupted by the energetic buzz of a female voice greeting you.

"Boss-girl! Long time no see. Want me to catch you up on the latest multiversal gossip? I compiled an edit of highlights set to Despacito."

"Lyla," Miguel warns, tersely. "Not now."

"Ruuuuude! You're the one who woke me up you know."

"Lyla, go back to sleep."

The female avatar grumbles, but then her image flickers away and the watch turns back into, as far as you can tell, just an ordinary watch.

"Why did you name the watch Lyla?"

"It's not a– " He cuts himself off, sighing with exasperation. "Lyla is an advanced A.I. she's going to be with you at all times. She's an added layer of security, built to protect you."

He didn't answer your question. Completely sidestepped it as if the two of you are having two different conversations.

Built to protect you, he'd said. Does that mean he still intends to do that?

"So you're not going to leave?" you ask him.

He leans back in his seat, eyes drifting towards the table. "No."

You look up at him, stumped. Not sure you're understanding what he's saying. Because not even a few hours ago, when the two of you were in your apartment, this man was adamant there was nothing to be done to save you. That he was going to leave and you were never going to see him again.

Right now though, his actions seem to be contradictory to that. You can't make heads or tails of him. Hot and cold doesn’t even begin to cover it.

"Why not?" you ask, "I mean, not that I’m not grateful, but you seemed pretty set on the whole ‘I can’t save you’ thing. What changed your mind?"

“You did.” His eyes narrow as he looks down at you, crossing his arms ever his chest, "You told me you wanted to live. Have you changed your mind already?"

“Wha– NO! I just want to know why you changed yours.”

“I–” He hesitates, another wave of sadness passing over his face. “I’m a superhero. I save people… or try to. It’s what I do. I’m not gonna just leave you to die after you tell me you want to live.”

It’s a good answer, even if you don’t buy that it’s the whole truth.

You look down at your wrist, and the shiny chrome of the not-watch he's just gifted you winks back up at you. "Do you think I have a chance of surviving all this?"

"It's pretty hopeless," he says, and there’s no break in his expression as he continues. "Your chances of making it out alive are pretty much mathematically impossible."

It's odd though. Even though he's outlining the futility of your situation, basically telling you to raise the white flag and surrender, there's something contradictory in the tone of his voice.

"What do you want to do?" he asks you.

It’s a challenge, you realize. An encouragement. He has faith in you. It's all of these things rolled into one. As if he's telling you to prove the universe wrong.

"I want to live," you answer. "If the universe collapses in three months, then please stay with me. Give me time to solve this and find a way to stay alive."

His mouth curls into a hint of a smile. The very first you've seen from him since you've met. It's bright and boyish, erasing the harsh lines of his stern expression until it gives way for something much softer underneath that makes your heart leap in your chest with triumph.

You grin, a strange elation of happiness buzzing in you as you stretch out your hand to him, in an invitation for a handshake to seal the deal.

"Deal?"

Miguel leans over the table, clasping your hand in his much larger one as he squeezes it back gently.

"Deal." That small smile from before is still there. "So what's next?" he asks.

The thing you never realized, being an ordinary person bereft of super genes or other superhuman powers is just how convenient commuting can be if you have them.

No longer do you have to brave the Lynchian nightmare that is the NYC subway system. Half-naked manic street preachers giving sermons as you’re held hostage, with nowhere else to go in the carriage. Being chased down by a drunk trumpeting Mariachi band. Instead, all you need to do to get from point A to point B (A: being the Chrysler building and B: the building formerly known as your home) is to hold on tight to Miguel as he swings you both above the city gridlock.

You imagine that this is what paragliding must feel like, except it's so much better because here you don't have to do the safety training beforehand or pay $3,000 for the privilege.

The city skyline is a dark evening blue, dotted with the sparkling lights of office buildings, cab roof lights and street lamps, as the wind ruffles through the fabric of your clothes.

It's such a different sight when you're flying above instead of walking on the streets below, that you don't even clock that you're in your neighborhood, until you see a building with a collapsed wall that's been blocked off, looking like a crash site. Only then do you realize... you're home.

Miguel carefully sets you down on your feet on a small patch of concrete that is clear of the rubble and destruction.

"Why did you want to come back here again?" he asks.

It’s a good question. Now that you're here, standing in the middle of charred debris and cracked bricks, you're not sure either. You had some vague plans of seeing what you could salvage, hoping for some clothes, maybe your electric toothbrush, or really just any of your stuff. Something that’s yours, no matter how small, to hold on to after the events of today have ripped away life as you know it.

But there’s nothing left. The furniture, all your books and knick knacks, and even your dirty laundry piles have been demolished. Your home as you know it is gone. There's only piles and piles of rubble and traces of white fire extinguisher foam on the ground. The fire has been out for hours, but the pungent smell of smoke and sulfur still pervades the air.

"You okay?" Miguel asks.

He's still standing at the outer edges of the apartment, close to where your window would have been if a helicopter hadn't crashed through it.

"Yeah... I guess the silver lining is that I didn't have anything expensive. Though it'd been nice if I could've saved my mom's Le Creuset set or at least the nanny-cam so I could return it and get a refund," you joke glibly.

You nudge aside some concrete rubble with the cap of your shoes. There's nothing under there, no treasured memorabilia that's still miraculously intact. Just more burnt concrete and rubble.

"Why did you have a nanny cam?"

You turn around at his question, to see him hovering close to you, one eyebrow raised with an unhappy set to his jaw.

From the displeased expression on his face, he's probably misunderstanding something here. Probably thinks you're operating a very unlucrative Onlyfans business, when what you've really been doing is spy on him and his nightly visits. You don't know which is worse to confess to, so you don't confess to anything.

"No reason," you say, ignoring the way his already raised eyebrow twitches with irritation at your lack of an answer.

"Come on, let's go," he says, and he waves towards you in a come hither motion like he's commanding a dog.

"Go?" you ask him. "It's past midnight. My place, as you can see, is wrecked. Go where exactly?"

Miguel shoots you a strange look. "A hotel," he says, like it's the most obvious thing, and– okay, he's not completely wrong in that assumption.

Problem is, you didn't have time to pick up your wallet or phone before your impromptu interdimensional visit. They’ve been incinerated along with all the rest of your worldly possessions, which means you don't have any way to pay for a hotel.

Plus Manhattan hotel prices average $400 a night. Even if you still had access to your debit cards, your budget’s pretty tight right now after all the capital you invested in your unhinged quest to trap the superhero before you.

"In the city? I don't have that kind of money and it will take months for any insurance payouts to come in."

You should know. As an insurance claims adjuster, you know you’ll be lucky if your claim is processed before the end of the year. And, ugh, just the thought of the paperwork you’ll have to fill out is enough to give you an anxiety migraine.

"I’ll cover the room," Miguel says casually before holding out a hand to you, "Come on, let’s go."

When Miguel said he’d cover it, you expected a reasonably-priced room at one of the Days Inn across the river or the like. Hopefully a place with no rats or bed bugs, and maybe clean bedding over a somewhat comfortable mattress for you to pass out on if you were lucky.

You didn't expect this.

Standing in front of the Midtown Four Seasons, you find yourself on sleek marble so polished you can see your own reflection. You haven't even stepped a foot inside yet and there are two old fashioned doormen, wearing immaculately fitted suits, with an even more impressive posture opening the majestic double-set doors for you as you approach.

It's swanky as hell, and you can’t help gawking like a tourist, eyes glued to the decadent carved ceilings that must be at least 30 feet tall, soaring above you. Honey-colored limestone that looks like it’s been looted from Ancient Rome.

You feel more than a little bit out of place. This is way outside of your budget. You could probably work your job for a lifetime, and not have enough disposable income to stay the night at a place like this.

"Uhm, Miguel... this place is way too–" you start, turning towards him.

But as you were busy lamenting the state of the housing market, he's already walked away from you (for such a bulky guy, he moves swiftly and silently) and as you whip your head around to find him, he's already standing in front of the receptionist.

Damned antelope legged man, would it kill him to wait up for you once in a while? You run up after him and have to tip-toe in order to see over his shoulder because the giant mammoth is blocking the check-in counter.

And wow, even the receptionist here is of a different caliber than the ones you'd find at Holiday Inn. A fashionable bob-cut with razor sharp edges, looking like a model cut out from a Vogue cover.

"Do you have a reservation, Sir?"

You half-expect him to say no, and that the two of you would have to tuck your tail between your legs and walk out of here to the backdrop of a sad trombone playing.

To your astonishment he says your name. The receptionist tip-taps away at her keyboard and then she nods and smiles gracefully at you both.

"Yes of course. After reviewing your reservation details, I am pleased to inform you that all necessary arrangements have already been made, including advance payment and verification of your identification. Your room is ready for you, we trust you will enjoy your stay."

She flashes you a pearly white smile so shiny it's almost blinding and hands you a hotel key card.

When you turn around, to your confusion Miguel is no longer next to you. How does he keep disappearing like this?

"Cielito," Miguel’s voice calls. The nickname doesn’t register at first. It doesn't even occur to you that he’s referring to you, until he barks it out a second time.

Your head darts up to see him standing by the elevator, tapping his feet impatiently as he waits for you to make it over to him.

"How did you do that?" you whisper loudly to him as you step into the elevator. "Where did you get my ID? How did you make a reservation? How did you--"

He takes your hand, mid-sentence, turning your wrist upwards and taps the watch.

"The computer systems in this universe are child's play for Lyla to manipulate. Reservations, money, ID, she can take care of all of that easily," he explains.

"She can do that?" you ask, and Miguel merely nods at you as the elevator closes behind the two of you.

You tip your head down to inspect your gifted watch. In awe of this technical marvel that would make Siri look like it’s from the stone-ages. You wonder if she can boost your credit scores. She could probably hack any wi-fi password so you'd never have to worry about data throttling again. She could get you table reservations for Libertine! The possibilities are endless!

You turn to Miguel. "Can Lyla get me Beyoncé tickets?" you ask.

He just shakes his head at you with what almost qualifies as an amused smile.

The room upstairs is massive.

It’s easily three times the size of your little studio apartment, and the ceilings are twice as tall, with a hanging glass chandelier that’s sparkling bright enough to blind you. It looks like one of those places featured in Architectural Digest.

Everything is in an art deco style, with expensive looking furniture and even more expensive art hanging on the one spare wall that isn’t covered in floor to ceiling windows. There are large shelves and a sleek looking kitchen, complete with an opulent looking velvet lounge chair of emerald green that looks like something a Roman emperor would be fed grapes on.

In this colossal space of a room, there is only one bed. One colossal, plush-mattress-topped, goose down duvet and probably 1,000,000,000 thread count sheet covered bed.

You tense up, not sure what the arrangements Miguel had in mind. Did he want the two of you to sleep in the same bed?

Miguel did pay for the room, so you’re not going to start voicing objections. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time in the short time span that you two have known each other to do that. This bed is also a lot wider than your tiny double bed, so it wouldn’t be the cramped disaster it was last night. You’d just have to make sure to use the bathroom before bed this time so he doesn’t jab your full bladder in the morning again.

Without saying anything, Miguel strides across the length of the room with impatient and determined steps. His hand reaches for the balcony doors and slides them open.

"Wait wait, where are you going?" you ask him as you run up to the middle of the room.

“I’m sleeping outside,” he says over his shoulder, and your mind boggles with that.

“Why? Isn’t it better for you to stay here?”

"This is the 62nd floor. That’s about as safe as you’re going to get. I’ll keep a lookout to make sure no more helicopters come crashing in.”

You’re not sure if he means the last part as a joke or not, but as you watch his broad back retreating as he walks away from you, a sickening sort of the deja vu twists through your chest.

I can’t save you, he’d said back in your apartment, Nothing can.

The feeling clawing at your chest feels alarmingly like panic. It screams that he’s leaving you. That he’s never coming back. That you’ll never see him again.

You’re being irrational, and you know it. You remind yourself that he wouldn’t have done this much for you only to bail in the middle of the night, but that doesn’t stop the fear that’s festering, sharp and urgent, under your skin, or the way your heart races, your whole body flashing hot and cold at the same time.

You want him to stay.

“Miguel,” you call out, and he immediately stops and turns to look back at you, one eyebrow raised in a skeptical question.

Please stay.

You open your mouth, but the words won’t come out. You can’t ask this man—this big, sarcastic, rude hulk of a man—to have a sleepover with you because you’re scared to be alone in the dark. He would laugh you out of the hotel room.

“Uhm… thank you,” you say instead, but it’s no less sincere, “For everything.”

His eyes soften, the sharp narrowness of them easing up. “It’s fine,” he mumbles, and despite the cold chill of the evening, you think you can see a faint flush blooming in his cheeks, before he quickly ducks his face from you. “I’ll be right outside if something happens.”

He turns back around and walks out, closing the patio doors with a gentle click behind him, leaving you by yourself.

It’s quiet.

You survey the empty room you’re in. Without Miguel’s large frame taking up space, it seems even bigger than it did before.

It’s a beautiful room. Something that you’re pretty sure you’ve seen in a movie set. You don’t know why you’re not as excited as you were before. This is you living your Pretty Woman moment. You should be filling up the big jacuzzi tub you saw with bubbles. Heck, maybe ask Lyla to order you a bottle of champagne from room service.

Instead, your eyes linger on the glass patio doors leading to the balcony terrace. You walk over to the bed, perching yourself down on the edge of the mattress, then flop down.

Might as well try to sleep, you think to yourself as you climb under the covers and switch off the light. The best thing you can do right now is catch yourself some rest so you’ll be alert while trying to figure out your next steps tomorrow.

3 months… That’s what Miguel told you.

That’s all the time you have left.

That means you don’t have time to waste, but you also have no idea where to start. The local library doesn’t exactly carry any resources on how to stop the universe from trying to kill you.

The Universe.

An infinite cosmos, grander than any human being can possibly comprehend. This vast space containing all the galaxies with its billions of stars and planets, where an individual being does not even register as a speck, and it wants you dead. How can you possibly fight against those odds?

You lie wide-eyed and awake staring into the dark of the room, and the feeling of dread gnaws into you.

You don’t want to be alone right now. Turning in the bed, your eyes find their way back to the blank slate of the pitched night outside the balcony doors.

You really wished he had stayed with you.

Sitting upright in the bed, you consider your options. You can lie back down. Suffer insomnia and the existential horror of knowing the universe is trying to murder you. Or you can man up, swallow down whatever tiny morsel of your pride you have left and ask Miguel to come back inside and stay with you.

Flinging the duvet from your body, you get up to walk over to the balcony. You hesitate for a moment before tapping the window pane the way you might knock on a door, giving a polite head's up before you slide the balcony patio open. But when you poke your head out, turning your head left and right, Miguel's nowhere to be found.

Okay, that’s weird. He said he’d be right outside if you needed him. You walk up to the ledge of the balcony terrace, leaning over the rail and peer down to see him dangling upside down, from the ledge of your balcony. The sight nearly makes you scream.

"Miguel!”

At you calling his name, he pulls himself up, one clawed hand gripping at the concrete wall as he climbs his way up and over to you. He makes it look easy, as if gravity does not exist for him, and it’s only a moment until he’s perched on the ledge of the balcony, facing you.

“What’s wrong?” he demands, eyes concerned, and you’re suddenly aware of how very close he is. His face mere inches from yours, your noses nearly touching.

“What’s wrong? You’re hanging upside down from the 62nd floor! What are you, a bat?!"

“Why did you come out here?” he clarifies, and his words give you pause. You try to gather your thoughts after the bizarre sight you just walked into and remember what you came out here for.

He’s still looking at you with his full and intense concentration that makes your skin prickle with warmth.

God, it’s embarrassing to ask. You feel like you’re five years old, asking your parents to turn the nightlight on, even though you know you’re a big girl now and aren’t supposed to be afraid of monsters hiding under your bed any more.

You look down on your hands, where you’re wringing them together, then back up at him, and make yourself spit it out, "Could you… maybe… stay with me tonight?"

His eyes widen at your question, but he doesn’t actually answer you and gives you no physical indication one way or the other.

"I feel safer when you're with me,” you admit.

“I am with you out here,” he counters, because of course he can’t make this easy for you.

“I can’t see you out here.”

The line of his shoulder eases, and he ducks his head down with a resigned sigh. "Fine. Get back inside, Cielito. You're going to catch a cold like this."

You shuffle back inside to your bed, watching out of the corner of your eye as he follows you inside and settles himself on the lounge sofa. He’s so tall that his feet are sticking out over the armrests, like a long-legged stork.

Hiding a smile, you climb back into bed, wrapping the bedding all around yourself.

“Good night,” you call out, and he makes a grumpy noise of acknowledgment.

Your head drops back onto the soft pillow, and you close your eyes, ready to sleep. It’s such a nice bed. The sheets are cool and soft against your skin and smell of fresh eucalyptus. The mattress is the most comfortable you ever remember resting on, firm but somehow soft at the same time. You feel like you’re sleeping on a cloud.

Moments go by, and you revel in the sumptuous bed, waiting for the best sleep of your life to claim you.

Except it doesn’t.

Somehow… you still can’t fall asleep. Is it… too soft maybe? You turn in the bed, twisting your torso to get into a position you can comfortably sink into, but something doesn’t feel right. There’s no lumpiness like at home, but that should be a good thing.

Except… despite the decadent softness of the bed. Despite the fact that the sheets probably have a thread count with more zeros than your checking and savings accounts combined. Despite all of the luxury that surrounds you, you still find yourself tossing and turning and wide fucking awake.

The bed is too big. You don’t know what to do with all this space. Your body is not accustomed to this sort of decadence. What if you suffocate sinking into this soft fluffy pillow in your sleep? What if you toss and turn until you fall off this massive bed and break your neck? Maybe that’s how out of all of the universe’s attempts to kill you, you end up dying?

Fuck!

You can’t sleep.

You turn to your side and stare into the velvet lounge chaise on the opposite side of your room, where Miguel is.

Quietly, you pad up to his still form until you’re standing in front of him and hunch over, trying to decide how rude it would be to wake him up again when there's nothing he can do about your stupid insomnia anyway.

In the dim light, you spot something glinting at you. Looking closer, you notice that the thin chain looped around his neck has escaped his shirt to pool on the fabric of the sofa cushion under him. You gently drag the loose end of the necklace toward you, and find a smooth golden band threaded onto it.

Picking it up cautiously, you flip it in your hand and find that there's something engraved on the inside. It's hard to see in the darkness, but when you lean closer and squint your eyes, you can just make out what it says.

'MO'—undeniably the initials of one Miguel O'Hara.

Twisting the ring slightly, you find a tiny plus sign followed by your own initials, and your heart drops into the pit of your stomach.

Oh.

The memory of sitting across Miguel at Starbucks returns to you, when you had asked him who you were to him. You think of the avoidant gaze and how he couldn't look you in the eye.

‘Something like that,’ huh?

Guess the other you wasn't just his girlfriend after all, you think, chest drawn so tight it’s painful.

Holding the wedding band in the palm of your hand, you slide down to sit down on the floor with your back pressed against the chaise lounge.

Your heart aches for the man in front of you and everything he's lost. You really, really hope you're not going to end up as just another regret on his list.

~ Next Issue

Dedication & Credits: As always to my best friend @thirstworldproblemss I am half asleep and running on fumes. I'm wording things poorly but I just want you to know that I am very happy I have you. Thank you for being my friend and for the time we get to spend together. I have the most fun when I'm with you.

Also to @guruan who is my muse, my source of inspiration. This chapter is dedicated to her because have you seen this beautiful piece of artwork she did for EYEM?!

#miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara fic #miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara fanfic #miguel o'hara fanfiction #spiderverse #oscar isaac #across the spiderverse #marvel #spiderverse fanfiction #miguel ohara x reader #miguel ohara #miguel ohara x you #marvel mcu

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thornsent · 1 year ago

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my partner and I are in the middle of a huge shitstorm rn and we really need help!!!!

Vmo @/alumirust PyPl [email protected] CshPp $doppelgougar

tldr I'm trying to find an apartment for the two of us while dealing with housing instability myself, my girlfriend is being kicked out by her transphobic and horrifically abusive family and we need help getting her up here so that she is not homeless in the rural southern US as a trans woman. my partner's deadline is the end of april. I need to find a place by july or my voucher gets taken away. it's a mess

I'm still struggling to find housing with a government subsidy in order to be able to get back on my feet after years of homelessness & instability because of fleeing an abusive relationship when I was 19. if you've been following me you know the absolute nightmare my situation has been leading up to this. I'm able to stay somewhere relatively stable for the time being, blessedly, and they're able to take in my partner as well.

My close friend and lovely girlfriend has been unable to escape her severely abusive family for her whole life. the shit she's told me they do to her is the stuff of genuine nightmares, and now they're kicking her out at the end of the month. she had made plans, but they've since fallen through, and she needs help repairing her car.

the biggest, most pressing issue with her car is the rack and pinion probably need to be replaced. we're working on getting an estimate for that but she's having to take it somewhere else because the initial mechanic she brought it to couldn't help her with it :( I'll update this post with a dollar amount when we have it!!

her deadline is the end of april. if she's unable to get her car repaired on time, we're looking into having the car delivered, her flying in via plane, and mailing some of her belongings (she really doesn't have a lot, though) and then worrying about the repairs once she's up here. the car is technically operable, but the issues with it mean it's NOT safe for a 17+ hour drive in its current state. but she also absolutely has to be out by the end of the month. it's a fucking mess like I said!! she has SOME savings to work off of, but not very much. she had to shell out $750 for repairs not including the rack and pinion.

any little bit at all is appreciated, even small amounts add up. if all my followers helped with just one dollar we'd be really close to being able to afford the delivery outright!! even if you're unable to help please share this, I really really want to ensure my girlfriend is able to get out of there safely. thank you all for your help so far <3

#mad scrawl

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doberbutts · 1 year ago

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We have a little free pantry in our front yard (toothbrushes, tampons, shelf-stable snacks bottled water, etc.), and I read a lot about people's experiences having one online before we put ours up re: expectations about potential interactions with people using it, but nothing prepared me for how weirdly aggro *other* people sometimes get about us having it as a form of "activism" as opposed to some other, more nebulous idea of broader social change. "Don't you think it'd be better to volunteer at or donate money to a homeless shelter, so those people can get the actual help they need?" "Shouldn't you focus more on trying to campaign for policy changes that will help more people than one street corner if you care about this problem?" "Isn't doing that a waste of time?" "Aren't you just encouraging people not to get help?" I do that other stuff when I can. This is something small I can do - in addition to raising awareness and fighting for bigger change, when I have the time and money and spoons - and at least, when I don't. It's crazy to me to approach social justice issues with such an all-or-nothing mindset as some people seem to. I've met enough of the individuals who utilize it to know it makes a difference in a very tangible way for the people directly around me.

No, I agree entirely.

Corny and dated as it is, there's a reason the saying is "be the change you want to see". If no one within the community puts in the work to fix the community's problems, even in little bits and pieces, then how will anything change? Raising awareness only goes so far. What happens when all anyone is, is aware? Aware, and still doing nothing, waiting for someone else to put in the work.

Sometimes, that someone is going to need to be you. You can't just wait around and wait for someone else to do it for you.

If I see someone digging through the trash for food, I wave them over and offer them food from my house or fresh food from a store or take them to a restaurant where they can order whatever they want. If I'm getting groceries and I see someone very obviously homeless struggling to pay for their food, I tell the cashier to add it to my bill. No one starves in front of me. Ever since I stopped needing to rely on food stamps, no one starves in front of me.

This past summer I saw someone splayed out on the sidewalk in 95F weather in direct sunlight. I couldn't tell if he was unconscious from drugs or passed out from the heat or just simply had fallen asleep in the shade and then the sun moved. I was getting groceries so I added a bunch of hot chicken to my order plus several bottles of refrigerated water. I went over to him and woke him and explained that I was worried he needed medical attention. He'd passed out because he was tired, he told me. I offered him the hot food and the water and he thanked me, telling me he'd run out of water the night before and food the day before that and didn't have any money to get any more.

Everyone else had been walking around him like he was just an obstacle on the sidewalk. No one had thought to offer any help. When I walked away, some folks who saw me told me that that was very nice of me. I don't think it was nice of me. I think that's just what you should do if you see someone obviously in distress. They agreed that he seemed like he needed the help. They didn't act. They agreed that the compassionate and right thing to do was to offer assistance and make sure he was okay. But they didn't do it. They waited for someone else to do it.

I've mentioned in passing that I volunteer for the local teen LGBT club, helping lost gay kids find their way and maybe not kill themselves about it. It's not much. I mostly just text back and forth with whatever kids get my number from the adults that run the thing. Sometimes I give them tips and advice. Sometimes I'm just the cool gay uncle they tell about their latest school drama. Once or twice I've served one of them lunch on my couch while my dogs smother them with affection and they cry about their latest heartbreak. I don't do speeches or history lessons or anything like that. I don't think I'm qualified for it, in honesty. But if even one of them doesn't commit suicide, if even one of them doesn't self-harm, if even one of them no longer feels all alone in the world because I'm there when they reach out to me, that's enough.

Today on my commute to work, the guy in front of me had a major wipeout on his motorcycle. I stopped my car in a position that none of the other cars could hit him, and asked if he was okay, and waited until his friend (also on a motorcycle) had circled back around to help him off the road and check him over. I left once his friend waved me away. I offered to call an ambulance but he refused.

A couple weeks ago, also on my commute, a woman was stopped on the side of the road, waving her arms at drivers, shouting for help. I stopped. The other drivers didn't. Her car had died, she was new to town, and she was somewhere that notoriously doesn't get cell service. I helped her call a tow truck. It wasn't a trap. She didn't want to hitchhike. She just was stuck and panicked about it.

I stop and help animals get off the road. I've lost count on how many turtles I've carried to the other side. I helped my neighbor search for a dog he saw get hit by a car so he could take it to the vet. I shoveled my elderly neighbor's driveway for her, and talked my boss into giving her a major discount for her little dog's dental in which pretty much every tooth needed extraction or he would die. When I still lived in that rental with my roommates, we were surrounded by kids. Every kid on the block knew we were a safe house to go to. If they needed food or water, if they needed entertainment, if they needed just somewhere to be, they could be at our place. When covid started, I did a "reverse halloween" since Halloween was canceled, and I put bags of candy on every doorstep that I knew had kids inside. I've done a "neighborhood santa" putting a small toy plus a small gift card for the parents on every doorstep that has kids, for as long as I've lived around kids.

When I say activism requires action, I don't mean that every single person is required to save a thousand lives. The honest answer is, unless you have a lot of disposable time and money, you probably won't. But you can still make a difference. To one. To ten. To twenty.

And you know what? I'm not saying black people specifically came up with this- but how can you be surprised to know this is how I live my life when I say over and over that I was raised by black activists who lived during MLK Jr and Malcolm X and knew community action would have the longest-lasting effects? Of course I do all this. That's what being part of a community *is*.

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edelgard-more-like-baedelgard · 20 days ago

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Different anon to the one asking about your pfp but is it alright to ask about who Mei is? This whole thing about her and her relationship with Kiana is so fascinating but I don’t have the time (or storage) to play a gacha game. Also is it okay to ask for any fic recs about these two?

Anon I would never turn down the chance to talk about my girl Raiden Mei. Once again, I hope u are prepared for the massive response you are about to recieve. This will probably go into a little more detail because I'm not trying to cover 3 characters at once.

Alright, so we've talked about Kiana, lets talk about the woman she calls "The most special part of all the beautiful things in the world".

(I'm not kidding, lesbians can never just say "I love you." Especially when in games that get censored lmao)

Early Game Mei And KiaMei

Enter: Raiden Mei

Look at how adorable she is.

The first time we meet Mei in Honkai Impact 3rd is right after Kiana had her lesbian moment counting down the seconds until she sees Mei again. At this point, she's in much the same position as Kiana. She's training as a Schicksal Valkyrie, the anti-Honkai organisation I mentioned in the Kiana post, and Kiana, Mei, and Bronya form a squad together that are sent out as superhuman soldiers to combat Honkai beasts.

She's a kindhearted person who puts her loved ones before herself, even if its to her own detriment. Seeing Kiana yelling about how much she loves Mei and jumping on her and hugging her etc. you might think Kiana is the clingy one in the relationship. But it's actually Raiden Mei. The woman is obsessively clingy with Kiana she became Mei's only friend and the one who saved her life and brought her out of the darkness she had fallen into, and it's this completely unrestricted and obsessive need to give everything for Kiana and to protect Kiana that eventually helps lead to the conflict between them.

Now one of the first things we learn about Raiden Mei in-game, before we even know really anything about the honkai, is that Raiden Mei is the 3rd Herrscher, and uses her Herrscher powers to protect Kiana when a Honkai beast injures her like 5 minutes into Chapter 1.

And this becomes an essential part of Mei's early character: The struggle between her considering the Honkai and Herrschers as evil, and the Herrscher persona inside her who wants her to embrace her power and fully become a Herrscher.

Like Kiana, Mei's story starts before the events of the game, though the important events of her life don't go quite as far back as the Second Eruption, instead her story starts in the worst place possible: High School. Specifically a Japanese school called Chiba Academy in a city called Nagazora. And we need to go over exactly what happened at Chiba Academy in order to understand the relationship not just between Kiana and Mei, but Kiana, Mei, and the Herrscher of Thunder. Mei and the Herrscher of Thunder's frenemies type deal occurs half off screen in manga and half on screen, and is quite important to setting up Mei's early character arc in-game up to Thunders over Nagazora, the chapter I mentioned in the Kiana post where Mei joins the enemy in the hopes of stopping Kiana from sacrificing herself.

Unlike the orphaned and homeless Kiana, at this point Mei was the daughter of a rich CEO widower father, Ryoma Raiden. Her mother suffered a terminal case of Dead Anime Mom and we only ever see her once when we see a brief glimpse of her and little Mei in Second Eruption. Ryoma sent Mei to Chiba Academy where she became very popular because her dad was rich as a extremely smart, beautiful, tall, all around good and kind person/student. Even before she became the Herrscher of Thunder she had been jokingly called the Thunder Queen for coldly rejecting the hordes of men trying to court her.

Her school life remained relatively happy like this, until her father was framed for economic fraud by Bronya's ex-Spetznatz adoptive mother, which is a WHOOLLEE other deal.

Now Mei was a bit of your classic sheltered rich girl and a bit naive, so until this point she had not realised that the other students and teachers at this elite high school were simply trying to curry favor with her because of her family fortune. Which of course she realised very quickly when her father was imprisoned and she lost access to his fortune and now everyone in school had turned cold and scorned her now that they couldn't use her.

And now here's where KiaMei begins!

Kiana used the Kaslana name to bribe her way into Chiba Academy, which is how her and Mei first meet. Kiana takes an interest in Miss Tall Dark And Handsome, to which Mei first reacts coldly, assuming she's like all the other students that have turned on her. However, Kiana's straightfoward earnestness in her interactions with Mei began to win her over, with Mei learning to cook specifically so she could start making lunches for Kiana (as the girl was liable to steal Mei's food). Kiana for her part, got to see past the cold front Mei had learned to put up in the face of the scorn from everyone around her and was much more likely to get into a fight than let anyone's snide remarks about Mei pass unhindered. She could see Mei for the kind and loving girl she was underneath the mask.

However, even with the light Kiana brought into her world, it didn't fully heal the depression and betrayal Mei felt, and after her and Kiana had known each other for several months she began hearing the whispers of the Will of Honkai in her mind.

When the pain of her ostracization grew too much Mei gave in and she triggered her own Honkai Eruption in Nagazora, though it was limited to the city and not nearly as devastating as Sirin's Second Eruption. However, instead of fully embracing her identity as the Herrscher of Thunder as her full self like Sirin, Mei had a Herrscher persona form in her mind and take over her body, which we see in a flashback in one of the several manga Mihoyo published for early Honkai Impact.

As she says in the firt panel there, the Herrscher of Thunder proceeded to wipe out everyone in Chiba Academy and the Honkai outbreak in the city basically guranteed even more people would die/zombify. However, of course, there was one girl she wasn't able to kill. A certain Kiana Kaslana, who met Mei on the rooftop of the school and instead of insisting Mei had to die for what she'd done, instead offered her a hand and insisted she would save Mei. Despite the Herrscher of Thunder attempting to kill her several times, this never changed, and Kiana found ways to get the Herrscher to talk about what was going through her mind, and never wavered on saving Mei instead of killing her. This kindness affected the Herrscher DEEPLY.

I think I mentioned before that KiaMei kinda really got started when Kiana saved Mei's life? Well it was right here:

The Herrscher of Thunder lets herself fall from the roof of the school, only for Kiana to catch her hand at the last second, still determined to save Mei no matter what. And so Kiana managed to get Mei AND her new angry headmate to fall in love with her, with the Herrscher of Thunder admitting how much this had affected her later in the manga, calling Kiana her "Silver-haired weakness".

Needless to say, these girls are Really Fucking Gay. Now after the Herrscher of Thunder gave Mei control back and retreated into her mind, the duo spend a week attempting to escape Nagazora together and meet Bronya in the process. I'm gonna kinda gloss over Bronya's part in this for now because otherwise I'll have to explain A Lot More, but needless to say, this time trying to escape the city forms the start of both KiaMei as well as both of their's deep friendship with Bronya. Eventually they escape and are taken to St. Freya to train as Valkyries after Kiana gets the deal to become an A-Rank Valkyrie to learn her dad's location, as well as Schicksal wanting to keep Mei where they could see her due to being the mostly dormant 3rd Herrscher, with Mei even agreeing to go so far as have a heart bomb implanted in her that would go off five minutes after detecting the large amounts of Honkai energy in her body associated with the Herrscher awakening. So as you can see, Mei herself wasn't too happy about what she had done as the Herrscher of Thunder and was ready to die instead of allowing herself to give in to the Herrscher again.

And now this brings us back to what happens in the game itself.

With their time in St. Freya we see how Mei has adopted a kind of older sister/caretaker role, cooking for everyone, making sure Kiana and Bronya are always taken care of to the best of her abilities, and never asking for anything in return. I'm sure you can see where this might be a bit unhealthy on her part and partially her trying to atone for the damage she caused and act in defiance of the Herrscher's destructive nature by selflessly taking care of everyone around her even at her own detriment. Like I said in the Kiana post, this time in KiaMei's relationship is very sweet, they obviously care about each other very much, but it's not exactly the healthiest relationship ever. Mei NEEDS Kiana, she NEEDS that stability holding tight to Kiana provides, and eventually this clingy obsession pushes her to the brink (no thanks to Kiana's own issues, ofc).

Now when Sirin awakens within Kiana (no thanks to that bastard Otto Apocalypse), Mei is the first to jump at any chance to try and save Kiana just like Kiana did for her back in Nagazora. While Mei does her best to not utilise her Herrscher abilities, just like at the beginning of chapter 1 both her and the Herrscher persona have come to a bit of a natural understanding when it comes to working together to protect Kiana. So prepared is Mei to do this, that before they move to try and save Kiana she asks for the heart bomb restricitng how long the Herrscher can be active to be removed.

(Enjoy the old version of the dialogue graphic lmao)

This is the beginning of Mei's downward spiral into what we see in Thunders over Nagazora. As you might have guessed from my brief touching upon in the Kiana post, Mei and co. are unsuccessful in saving Kiana from Sirin, with Mei and the Herrscher of Thunder attempting to duel Sirin only to be beaten rather handily and for Sirin to rip Mei's Herrscher core from her body to enhance her own powers (she already saw the core as hers since Sirin had previously used the core of Thunder during second eruption). However, to add to the lesbian headmate situationship thing going on between KiaMei and their Herrscher personas, Sirin does this in an extremely Yuriful way because she keeps calling Mei "My other half".

This failure to protect Kiana devastates Mei and was only deepened by Himeko's sacrifice. When Kiana regains control and goes on the run, Mei spends that time desperately trying to grow stronger despite her new lack of a Herrscher Core before painfully being brought back down to earth when she fails to defeat Rita Rossweiss, Durandal's partner. Mei eventually does find Kiana in this arc, and despite trying to help her, ends up having to watch helplessly as Kiana taps into her Herrscher powers to save the city from a Honkai energy bomb on her own. Mei once again fails to save her when Durandal personally shows up to capture a now unconscious Kiana for Schicksal and curbstomps Mei within seconds.

Needless to say, Mei is Not Having A Great Time.

Lament of The Fallen and World Serpent

And now after Kiana escapes from Schicksal once more we arrive back at Thunders Over Nagazora.

So here Mei is, finally reunited with Kiana with no one to get in the way this time. A girl desperate to protect her loved one like she had been protected, yet forced to confront the fact that she simply wasn't strong enough time and time again, only saving a weak and dying Kiana from an assassin through sheer her determination triggering her lightning powers despite her lack of a Herrscher core and startling the woman into giving Kiana up, unable to actually win the fight. Helpless to do anything as she eavesdrops on a conversation between Kiana and a doctor revealing that Kiana knew she was dying from the multiple cores Sirin had acquired corrupting her body, yet was still trying to hide this fact from Mei due to her lonely hero complex.

So we have two lovers, both hiding exactly how much they know about the situation, both acting protective of the other but Kiana's self-sacrificial "I need to personally save everything myself, I need to Be The Shield" posturing now suffocating as Mei once again finds herself helpless to do anything but watch as Kiana is taken further and further away from her. The fact that she cannot convince Kiana otherwise, as shown in that convo I posted pics of in the Kiana post where Kiana finally says she doesn't care if what she's doing is killing herself faster, is what leads to Mei finally accepting an extreme option to protect Kiana.

Now ever since Kiana saved Arc City from the Honkai bomb, there has been a third faction besides Schicksal and Anti-Entropy. And here's where I have to get into more lore because of these people. I glossed over World Serpent in my Kiana posting because this faction is specifically relevant to Mei's side of the story. This is a faction that works behind the scenes just like the other two, but they are considered to be much more of a terrorist organisation (like when Kiana stopped them from detonating the bomb and irradiating an entire city for an experiment). But specifically what we need to talk about for this moment in Mei's life is Kevin Kaslana, my most beloathed.

In Honkai Impact, there was already a high tech human civilisation 50,000 years before the game that is referred to as simply the "Previous Era", and the game events as ocurring in the "Current Era". Kevin Kaslana is the first Kaslana as far as Honkai Impact 3rd lore is concerned, and became the strongest warrior at humanity's disposal in their war against the Honkai and its Herrschers. Needless to say, he is still here because the Previous Era failed spectacularly, with every major city being wiped out and Kevin and his allies failing to do anything to the 13th and final Herrscher besides stun her for 12 hours with their ultimate weapon. The few supersoldier surviviors like Kevin go into cryo sleep to enact contigency plans when they wake up. And so that's how he is still alive in the Current Era and running World Serpent, and is also how he is able to meet with Mei and offer her a way to save Kiana, something nobody else has been able to offer her.

Now, I'm gonna need to go on a small rant for a minute here. Kevin Kaslana comes up a lot when it comes to Raiden Mei because the writers saw Mei, a character who has been a lesbian in love with Kiana throughout multiple timelines and every appearance ever since Mihoyo's previous game Honkai Gakuen 2 or Gun Girls Z. Kevin also appeared there as a genderbend of Kiana that shows up to harrass her. However in Honkai Impact they decide that Kevin and Previous Era Mei (which the game displays as an all caps MEI or Dr. MEI, so if you see that I'm talking about PE Mei) are going to be a thing, and so Kevin and MEI have many flashback scenes together of their romantic relationship.

Now, my dear anon, I must ask you this: What do we call it when a character who has so far been a lesbian and shown no attraction to or straight up rejects all romantic attention from men in every appearance up to this point including in the VERY SAME GAME is then put into a romantic relationship with a man when there is quite literally an existing PE character design that looks just like Herrscher of the End Kiana from GGZ that the writers conveniently shove to the side and never expand on so they can give us Heterosexual KiaMei instead?

If you said "Lesbophobia" you would be correct.

If you said "Bisexual Rep Raiden Mei" I'm going to kill you with hammers.

Okay rant over, just know that I fucking hate Kevin Kaslana and KevMEI and the head writer for these parts seems to love finding ways to fuck with the previously established lesbian relationships, but that is a whole 'nother rant.

Back to the game. World Serpent's goal is to complete something they call "Project Stigma" which, to make a very complicated lore topic short, is (at this point in the game) a plan to activate special genes implanted in people's genomes in the previous era that will give a small percentage of humanity extreme Honkai resistance and the ability to utilise Honkai energy to some degree, which would lead to the ability for Humanity to co-exist with the Honkai.

He offers this up to Mei, that project stigma would mean Kiana will no longer have to fight and will no longer feel the need to sacrifice herself. The only condition being that she would need to join World Serpent and help them succeed. As a way to convince her, he informs Mei that she can use the Honkai energy still present in the city from her original eruption to once again become the Herrscher of Thunder, causing the core in Kiana's body to dissipate and reappear inside Mei instead, which would give Kiana more time to live.

Of course, Mei does not hesitate to accept, and thus for the first time Mei fully embraces her identity as a Herrscher, regaining her Core and her Herrscher persona fading away as she fully relinqueshes control to Mei as she becomes a true, fully powered Herrscher.

She then proceeds to beat Kiana unconcious when she tries to stop Mei from leaving and joins the enemy, along with her iconic quote:

Of course, the irony is that Mei is doing exactly what Kiana was doing: Going off and fighting alone in an effort to protect her loved ones from getting hurt. A fundamental flaw in her actions that Mei recognizes later in the story.

Mei's arc in World Serpent and fighting the Herrscher of Ice and Kiana's subsequent arcs going through fighting the Herrscher of Sentience and Herrscher of Domination are both nice and necessary from a story perspective. Up to this point, Mei's character had very much revolved around Kiana and she had not had much room to grow as her own character like that. And so with this seperation, we get to see the couple grow as characters on their own. We see Mei go from a timid girl angry and distraught at her own inability to save Kiana, to a cold and closed off Herrscher, resigned to doing whatever is necessary to create a world where Kiana is safe and finally having the power to do so. She is not in World Serpent to be happy or make friends, a fact she makes abundantly clear to anyone she is sent on missions with.

My only gripe with this arc is that as soon as Mei joins World Serpent they stop doing bad things like blowing up cities to activate a few people's stigmata for project stigma, so Mei never actually has to do anything morally bad for joining the bad guys which I think is kinda a missed opportunity. Instead she almost immediately teams up with Durandal and Rita to kill the Herrscher of Ice before disappearing into the Elysian Realm.

Which leads me to the biggest part of Mei's solo arc while Kiana is off learning to win through the power of friendship!

Elysian Realm

Within World Serpent's HQ is a hidden chamber that contains what is called the Elysian Realm. ER is a rogue-like side mode in-game that allows you to play and learn this side of the story while the main campaign focuses on Kiana and co. Lore-wise it is a massive machine that contains the memories of Kevin and his 12 companions in the form of digital simulations embodying them from the last time they synched with the machine (though iirc while it is presented as a machine it's hinted that there might be something more to it with how the sims are able to interact physically with Mei in this hidden chamber and due to the Morally Dubious (to put it lightly) nature of the scientist that helped create it). Kevin sends trusted agents to ER to learn of the Previous Era and their struggle against the Honkai from these 13 sims of the most important characters of the previous era, the 13 Flame-Chasers. Kevin allows Mei access after she reveals that after killing the Herrscher of Ice she had a vision of the Will of Honkai.

While all the Flame-Chasers effect Mei's character arc here, by far the most important one is a woman named Elysia.

Self-proclaimed Second-in-command of the Flame-chasers Elysia is straightforward, extremely flirty and teasing (towards women), and the main one that tries to guide anyone Kevin says through meeting the others and learning from entering the digital world of the Elysian Realm proper. There is of course, immediate contrast between Elysia's carefree flirtatious nature and the fact that Mei is now a cold, no nonsense, depressed lesbian who spends half their interactions rebuffing Elysia's advances.

It's through the Elysian Realm that both Mei and us as the player learn of the Honkai of the Previous Era. The first thing that stands out is that in the PE there were NO Herrschers that aided humanity. Every single Herrscher became sadistic and genocidal and some even tricked their killers into letting down their guard by pretending to come back to their senses before surprise attacking them. This is where the 13 Flame-chasers came in.

Each one of them was someone augmented by an experimental procedure that fused them with Honkai beast DNA to transform them into super soldiers called a MANTIS with the hope that they would be humanity's trump card against the Herrschers.

Now I'm not gonna get TOO deep into PE lore but each entry you unlock really just does its best to hammer home how absolutely fucked the Previous Era was. Sirin alone nearly wiped out humanity in the Current Era. The PE had to deal with that happening 12 times before the final Herrscher succeeded in wiping out their civilisation, as well as the fact that halfway through, the Will of Honkai began tailoring Herrschers as a counter-response to whatever humanity had done to defeat the previous Herrscher.

Mei was hoping that by immersing herself in this ancient history she would find answers about the Will of Honkai and nature of Herrschers. However not all the Flame-chaser sims liked seeing a Herrscher waltz in and some didn't even like Elysia, and so Mei would have to work around or appease the various characters in an effort to get as much info as possible from them.

Mei doens't actually learn much about the Will of Honkai like she originally wanted, but through her time in the Elysian Realm, she forms a deep relationship with all the Flame-chaser sims and her time spent with Elysia brought Mei a new love for the world and shed a new light on sacrifices for her. While Mei originally thought of any sacrifice was a horrible thing to be prevented (due to how it manifested in Kiana), Elysia's story was one of sacrifice, but one that was done working with her companions and for a greater future that could not be achieved without it. A sacrifice that was done willingly and thoughtfully, not the suicidal stubborness she thought of them as.

Mei spends about 3 months in ER I believe. Only leaving once to come to Kiana's aid in the fight against the Herrscher of Domination and finally getting to talk to the woman again since they seperated, reaffirming their trust and belief in one another despite how they seperated while also hearkening back to Chapter 1:

While she didn't learn about the Will of Honkai, she did learn how Elysia was the true first Herrscher. A mistake of the Honkai, a Herrscher that loved humanity instead of hating it. And a Herrscher that sacrificed herself to affect the very Honkai itself to allow the Herrschers of the Current Era to retain their humanity.

When Mei eventually emerges from the Elysian Realm after Elysia self destructs the entire system to kill the Herrscher of Corruption, one of the first things she's told is that she looks much more like her old self again. She's able to smile once more and let that softness come through with the new hope and love for life Elysia helped foster in her. She finally leaves World Serpent and rejoins Kiana and Bronya as they prepare to fight Kevin to end Project Stigma and then the Honkai itself. It's a very sweet moment, though I have yet another problem in that Nobody Talks About The Fact Mei Beat The Shit Out Of Kiana And Betrayed Them All, she just comes back and nobody really mentions she'd been gone, which is like?????? Come on guys, where's the consequences of my yuri angst. This is besides the major problems I have with Elysian Realm's writing and the 2 ending chapters it has in the main story and how they seem to go from Mei's character revolving around Kiana to Mei's character revolving around Elysia, but that's besides the point.

Both Kiana and Mei have grown greatly in their time apart, no longer chafing against each other's overprotective desires, and instead allowing their differences to help them become the dream team lesbian power couple the world needs as the Herrschers of Origin and Finality. Bronya's there as the Herrscher of Truth too and I love her but this essay ain't about her, I'm sorry Bronya.

You know it's serious when they give the lesbians the Yin and Yang pose.

Mei ends up returning to a regular life after Kiana becomes the true Herrscher of Finality and ruler of all Honkai, losing her Herrscher powers as Kiana siphons all Honkai energy on Earth back into herself on the Moon. She decides to follow in Himeko's footsteps and becomes a teacher at St. Freya training new Valkyries.

I adore her very much and there's so many little scenes between her and her Herrscher Persona and her and Kiana that I haven't added to this already long probably vaguely coherent autistic rambling about her character and the story arc she goes through. If nothing else, despite the issues I have with certain writing decisions, she is still an amazing character and playing the game and watching her and Kiana grow and mature and form an absolutely beautiful and loving relationship together hooked me so deeply I'm still completely obsessed with them nearly 3 years after their story ended.

#honkai impact #honkai impact 3rd #kiamei #raiden mei #las's asks

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captain-n-crunchies · 1 year ago

Text

My Perfect

L x Chubby Reader

A.N: ( See even though im like late I STILL POSTED! im on like grind yall but, this man so fine I'm like i must write my deepest soul wrenching words about him)

I'm not perfect.

That's it. I tried every day as a kid to be perfect; pretty hair, small frame, soft voice everything to look desirable to others I tried to be. In high school I needed to be bold, thicker but not too thick, tall but too tall; never speak overly passionate it was a turn off, don't wear too much makeup it's like I'm a slut, and never can venture out and find a comfortable look for me. I never let the girl inside eat.

I wasn't berated though? Yes, I got stares when I wore something sitting and people saw my stomach, like yes mothafucka I got a stomach y'all thought it was a huge ass pot in my shirt? Yes, I did get the ' I'm sO cOnFideNt!' talk when I ate something like fruit, who doesn't like pineapple? When shopping I had looks of could I fit this or that and nobody ever comforted me when I would cry about not fitting jeans.

I was never perfect. But he never cared.

*Back to when Light didn't find the Death Note yet*

" What are you having for lunch?" was asked by my closest coworker, Maria she and I was friends since our college days when cramming information about law, statistics, and for some reason Shakespeare; we were forever. I turned to her in this damn rolling chair that was obviously not made for a girl with that thang back there, I mean why is half my leg practically on the floor? I thought about it for a second.

" I could go for quick burger, what about you?

" That's fine! Also did you finish your report? I didn't even get to..." I just stared at her though my head in space, Maria turned to see what I'm looking at and she saw a strange man walking inside the room.

" Um...I don't think he works here?"

" Is this when we got to fight for our lives? I don't have no weapon."

The man tall, dark unruly hair not curly though it looks like a one of those emo people from the 2000's like my chemical romance vibes, he has a homeless man look on him...its kind of sexy thought but, he doesn't work here?

We watch him while towards us and goes to the head manager cubicle that two rows ahead of us. We look at each other and look down acting like we're working but, we really being nosy. We hear only indicant chatter and the strange man's voice, his name is Riuzaki? Or Rukai? I don't know and our manager asked again, and he ignored the question and started talking about something different. Kind of rude but, with the way our manager is I'd do the same; Maria looks at me and looks at the time and tells me it our lunch break so, we both get up and I make sure to push down my jacket a habit I did as a teen to look slimmer, we walk out and down the little pathway to the front of the office when we get close to the strange man I turn my head down, his eyes immediately traced to me and he stared at me and he turned, kind of weird his eye contact was intense!

We walked over to the company lunch places inside it's a tiny burger spot filled with American dishes; we haven't really eaten there so we decided to try it out since it was also raining. Maria order first, a chicken salad with extra chicken and cheese with a large drink and dessert then it's me, a cheeseburger with fries and a large drink with a cookie; we wait a bit and sat down at a two-seat table and we talk about the sight we just saw.

" I wonder if he's trying to get a job here? "

" For what though? we ain't got nothing available yet."

" What if they fired somebody!? I heard but I didn't hear from department C that somebody was overusing company resources and they got let go."

" Omg, who?" Maria was going to say but we hear a buzz, and our food was ready we grabbed a tray and the person who gave us our orders gives me a look, ya'know the look of ' Breaking that diet huh?' Its common but still is annoying so I mean mug him back and he backs off. Sitting down we talk about our topics of choice like vacations, fashion trends, the latest news when the man from earlier comes down; didn't even see him till he pulled up a chair beside me and stared. Like what?

" Oh, Hello!" I introduced myself and Maria does the same, but how says nothing and stared at me.

" Are you going to eat that?" He points at a strawberry cookie I got, I look and shake my head "no' even though I was saving it I give it to him and smiled. He takes it and thanks me and then turned to Maria and asked how she feels about the company. Now, Maria is a sweet girl but, if she can't say her opinion without lying so she tries to say it's wonderful but, he caught on.

" Don't lie. I'm not going to do anything."

" Oh! but I'm not! really it's a won-"

" Your eyes turned up, when some people lie, they eyes turn up to think of somethings. Your hands turned over into a clasped position saying you're more of nervous than calm when I asked."

She's shocked and so am I, he takes a bite of the cookie and then looks at me to which I look away and he stares at me; deep black eyes pierced into, and I just look away because if I looked back what if he jumps me and I gotta kick and scream like that would be so embarrassing!

" Are you nervous?

" No, never"

" Hm...You look uncomfortable" He continued eating and I looked at Maria with a head tilt.

" So, what's making me uncomfortable."

" Your clothes, your shoes are hurting your feet by the way you walked quickly, and you have the heels of them off" He responded quickly, and I was shocked I mean he didn't lie. I just look and Maria excused her and mouthed ' Whoop his ass' and went to the bathroom, so now it's just us. We look at each other and I just shook my head and began eating again. He just looks at me and then turns his body towards me completely.

" What?"

" Do you like your position here?"

If I had the choice between working here and $20, I would pick $20 and a bag of skittles, it has it benefits from time to time but it not worth the headaches and long hours and I tell him just that. He hums and says nobody ever been that honest and I could care less, I listen and eat when he asked another question.

" If you're really don't like how you look why don't you change it"

It wasn't even a question it was like a statement like he knew, he knew from when he stared at me, he watched me. I look at him shocked and I just chuckled and threw the rest of my food away and left, texting Maria that I got sick. Walking away I see him get up and follow me, so ignored him; he just walked beside me and just looks either at me or around him hunched over like he finna throw up. Like what compells somebody to say that? Did he think I'm the one to try to play around with thing you'll get a good joke ooutta me? I should've shoved that damn drink up his stuck up ugy big headed-

" Your mumbling"

"...ok"

" If what I said made you mad just say it"

" If I did I'll go to jail for man slaughter."

He just chuckled, even though I'm pissed he sounded a little smexyyy but, I'll still beat his ass. I keep walking towards the parking lot, and he grabbed my arm asking can he be honest.

" I mean if back there wasn't honest I don't know what is"

He just stared (he got a staring problem) and began talking about how he meant that he saw me adjusting my jacket a habit he saw a lot of girls do when they want to look slimmer, then he saw the look his manger gave us me when I walked past, he said it was in utter disgust. As he went on all the insecurities from the past came again the girl inside of me just began to show, I looked at him blank, my hands started to sweat, my thoughts ran through me like a train, and I couldn't hold it anymore as a sob slipped through like butter from my mouth. I wiped my face and took a deep breath.

" Being a girl in Japan is hard, being black in Japan is harder, being a fat girl and black in Japan is like a war zone every day in my mind. From stares, to the so called ' complements', to everything inside growing out of me is like a constant war zone. Having men look at me like a 3rd class citizen is the problem, having girls treat me like I'm beneath them was the problem and no one had a problem with it."

" But who could care? It's not like I can change what they say with the attitude they expect from a black girl. I'm not perfect but, they wanted me to be and how am I going to achieve that? Huh?"

I stopped for one second and he just said nothing, all the bottled-up feelings I've had just overwhelmed me and I overshared.

" I think your perfect"

" Lying is a sin ya'know"

" Then good I'm an atheist. Your look is perfect."

How can somebody look perfect? With a body like this, my skin to people in this country are like a permanent plague, and my hair is just a warning to them on its own. I am not perfect, but he thinks I am. He's trying to help me feel better and it's not going to work.

" If this is perfect then-'

" You're not going to believe something if you denie it so much."

This man says that beautiful is different to everyone, like what people grew up with which is skinny, fair skin, and cute people they think it's a standard and everyone that's not all three of those traits are ugly. He said the way I feel is how he felt as a child he was never built manly, he was always so small and skinny people thought he was sick. It never bothered him; he seemed wiser as a kid then the whole world at its years; I couldn't even disagree with any statements I always found how people views change when they see unique things or common things and associate them with ugliness or beauty.

" For a homeless man your very smart"

"...I'm not homeless."

" Oh...then why you dress like you've seen a clothing store in life."

" I have seen a clothing store. I just don't see the appeal of dressing up."

He's an emo hippie. But nevertheless, I just listen and make my own few points. We continued walking and he stops me again.

" What's your name?"

" Reader Last Name, and your?

" Call me L"

' Hello L"

" Hello Reader"

Now we walk in comfortable silence, by the time I'm by the garage L asked for my number, his contact now ' Emo Hippie' and mines?

'My Perfect'

A.N: ( i finshed! I love this one because i feel this irl about my body type but, i got over it and it's kind of hard to write L's dialogue without making him sound rude because he's only nonchalant. But, let me know if you like it!

#black fem reader #x black reader #chubby reader #black reader #x chubby reader #death note #l x reader #body image #cherizzx

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makeste · 2 years ago

Text

BnHA Chapter 407: Wait Why Are You Running Away

Previously on BnHA: Kacchan figured out how to control his quirk upgrade and was totally chill and normal about it. Definitely not terrifying at all. He actually spent the entire chapter smiling and laughing like the wholesome little boy he is. I don’t know why Kid For One is so freaked out about it. He even politely introduced himself using his childhood nickname. Clearly he just wants to be friends with you, KFO!

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “sorry to keep you waiting, here’s the AFO and Yoichi flashback you ordered at long last” and proceeds to serve a nightmarish stew of HUMAN MISERY and RATS and STABBING and CARNAGE and SO MUCH MURDER and THE SINGLE MOST FUCKED-UP CASE OF CODEPENDENCY ANYONE HAS EVER WRITTEN. I was not even remotely prepared for any of this, and if anyone else claims that they were, I will call you a liar to your face. If this chapter had a mouth it would scream. Or just sob, ceaselessly and uncontrollably. I’m really glad Horikoshi is on break next week because that man needs to take a fucking nap. My god.

okay WOW

anyone else read the first two words and just immediately say to themselves, “oh okay, so it’s gonna be one of those chapters”? I mean, I guess we were due for a darker chapter after last week’s Kacchan Comedy Tour. but idk, I just wasn’t expecting “homeless sick prostitute with a drinking problem” levels of dark

AND SHE’S PREGNANT?!

what exactly is this manga rated again? doesn’t this backstory seem just a little bit raw for the impressionable kiddos??

has anyone actually checked in on Horikoshi recently? you know, just to make sure he is okay??

what a fun and wholesome manga this is

the lil baby arm covered in blood with the AFO hole on the palm. lying next to the dead mom hand. what an image to sear into our minds. I guess it’s been a while since he killed any dogs. gotta keep us on our toes somehow

also wasn’t expecting AFO and Yoichi to be twins! that puts an interesting spin on their relationship, because it’s usually a closer bond than even regular siblings. especially with all of that delightful shared trauma from a young age!!

yes, exactly

ohhhh this chapter is gonna hurt me, isn’t it. okay. ooooooookay. let’s do this

OH I’M SORRY, THERE’S MORE?!

Horikoshi my dude. you do realize that their mom dying in childbirth and the two of them just barely surviving and growing up as street orphans would have already been MORE than tragic enough, backstory-wise. you did not have to turn this into a freaking horror show with RATS TRYING TO EAT THEIR NEWBORN SELVES jesus christ

and THAT’S where you chose to put a one year timeskip?!

what the fuck am I reading here, you guys. no please tell me, I am actually desperate to understand

so the narrator is saying that some of the quirks manifested later in life, in “pubescent and pre-pubescent stages”, which is interesting because it’s the first time I can recall hearing about someone actually manifesting a quirk that late. maybe Deku’s old OFA cover story was more plausible than I realized

anyway so eventually it occurred to everyone that they should maybe freaking study this shit, idk. and eventually the researchers concluded that the superpowers came from a new gene that apparently isn’t human. and upon hearing that, society apparently lost its freaking mind. which is fascinating to me because it implies that the turning point wasn’t actually the superpowers themselves, but the realization of what it meant

like, so they were apparently fine with it when they thought it was a “mysterious disease”, but somehow it hit different when they learned it wasn’t actually a sickness at all, but instead the Next Step in Evolution. and it became an “us vs them” thing, as opposed to a “we have to cure these poor people” thing. damn

anyway so now Japan is a dystopia and we’re cutting to a big crowd of merc-looking dudes who are getting ready to attack some “meta freaks”, how lovely

but who is this figure in the shadows

I ask politely, as if it wasn’t already beyond obvious that this is AFO about to wreck some people’s shit

ohhhhh my god lmao

hopefully Katsuki and Deku can take the present day AFO out before he winds up looking like this. because this little fella is clearly demonic and idk if anyone can stop him

you all don’t understand. you need to run the fuck away right now

oh shit it’s already too late for them

it’s too late for any of us. it’s over. it’s all fucking over

((((；゜Д゜)))

AFO I am putting the manga down. I am backing away slowly with my hands in the air. I mean you no harm. please for the love of god have mercy

holy

“you see, we told you he wasn’t human” okay Scientific Research Group, you know what?? you win this round I guess

“HE WAS LITERALLY EVIL FROM BIRTH” HORIKOSHI SERIOUSLY ARE YOU OKAY??

HE WAS BORN AN ARROGANT BABY is literally the most terrifying sentence I have ever read

what the entire fuck

it’s a gorgeous sunny mid-November afternoon outside my window. but no matter how hard it tries, the light cannot reach this place

what kind of moron would throw a can of soda at him. officially the stupidest person we have ever seen in this manga

OH MY GOD OF COURSE IT’S HIM LMAO

(ETA: how come baby Yoichi has clothes that fit him perfectly but baby AFO is just stomping around wearing a tablecloth.)

BABY YOICHI. OH MY GOD. HOW THE HELL DID YOU GROW UP TO BE SANE AND KIND AND GOOD. THAT’S MY QUESTION THAT I NEED ANSWERED RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE LITERALLY A MIRACLE. YOU ARE AN IMPOSSIBILITY, DO YOU KNOW THAT

small and weak, but also so, so cute. all of the cuteness genes went straight to him. no wonder AFO was jealous

(ETA: just want to press pause for a second to speculate about what type of twins AFO and Yoichi are, since it has some relevance to the story, and especially to the OFA/AFO quirk lore. so! at first glance the two of them would appear to be fraternal twins, just based on the fact that they have very different appearances, and also the fact that Yoichi doesn’t have the AFO quirk – no holes in his hands, etc. identical twins are born from the same fertilized egg, so in theory they would both have the same sequence of DNA, which means Yoichi would have had the same quirk as AFO. but that doesn’t appear to be the case. so all of that points to them being fraternal, not identical.

on the other hand, there is one piece of evidence in this chapter that does support them being identical twins, and that’s the fact that per the narration, AFO absorbed most of the nutrients from their mother. a few minutes of google fu informed me that this condition is relatively rare, and only happens in cases where two twins share a placenta, which typically is only the case for identical twins. HOWEVER, for what it’s worth, there have also been rare instances where two fraternal twin placentas fuse together and become a single placenta. AND this apparently also increases the chances of one of the twins gaining more of the nutrients and causing the other twin to have a lower birth weight.

so based on the evidence here, my conclusion is that the two of them are most likely fraternal twins with a case of placental fusion. besides, you can’t tell me that stealing his baby brother’s placenta while the two of them are literally still in the womb doesn’t sound like exactly the type of BS that fetus!AFO would pull, lol.)

HEY!?!

okay?!?!?! well to be fair he did throw that soda at him

oh my god this is so fucked up. in like the best and worst way possible

I genuinely couldn’t ask for a better AFO backstory. it’s so incredibly twisted, and you actually do feel sorry for him. or at least I do. but it’s also beyond clear that this kid was FUCKED UP BEYOND ALL REASON right from the get go. zero goodness in him. literally doesn’t see other people as people. sees them as possessions only. things to rule over. not other thinking, feeling human beings. and that includes his own little brother

but. even if it’s not actually what I would call love, there’s still... attachment, there. it’s the closest he can get to actually caring about someone. guh. just, somehow they have both managed to humanize him, and at the same time made him less human than ever. this manga, man. this fucking manga, though

lmao and here we go. Captain Hero

you know, all those times that I made fun of AFO for not knowing how to read, I never suspected that the twist in his backstory would be that he LITERALLY DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO READ dfksjdlfkjslkdf

but seriously though. because Yoichi appears to be self-taught, and I can’t see AFO having the patience for that, and CLEARLY no one else was around to teach him, sooooo...

oh my goodness it’s actually getting wholesome up in here

what a good fucking boy. poor AFO. fuck me, I can’t help it. it’s not your fault you’re the world’s greatest monster you poor bastard

now we’re cutting to THREE YEARS LATER. okay

is he going to declare war on the glowing baby

typical teenager concerned about nothing but likes and view counts. AFO you would be so much happier if you stopped worrying about all of that and just focused on your own growth

oh, lol. well that was quick

(ETA: r.i.p. Damien.)

“this guy had more instagram followers than me. so I killed him” honey. sweetie pie. you need therapy

omfg

all this time I was wondering who AFO’s middle school lit teacher was who had failed so spectacularly at teaching him reading comprehension. and it was YOICHI ALL ALONG. omg

“and, presumably, that’s how it always was and always will be.” dude. can you imagine listening to AFO’s oral book report on A Tale of Two Cities. “ahem. it was the Best of Times. the end” buddy noooooooo

it was at that moment when Yoichi knew, etc. etc.

oh my GOD I scrolled down to the next panel right after this one and I just IMMEDIATELY DIED LAUGHING

“WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID” ffffffffffffffff I fucking can’t omfg

NOW THIS HUSSY IS STEALING HIS BROTHER AWAY FROM HIM NOOOOOOO

HE’S HIS!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!! THAT’S NOT ALLOWED!!!

oh my god the hands. so wait, is this just the standard symbolic BnHA handholding, or are there More Levels To This. when exactly did Yoichi pass OFA on to Kudou. like is that why the sudden close-up and all that? omg

WHAT!!!!

OH THAT’S THE END, HUH? THAT’S THE END RIGHT THERE, AND THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS. I SEE. OKAY THEN. EXCUSE ME WHILE I PUT MY LAPTOP DOWN AND GO INTO THE NEXT ROOM AND SCREAM INTO A PILLOW

oh my god. and break next week too. this is what you guys have been dealing with this entire time huh. I understand your feelings now. godfuckingdammit lmao

#bnha 407 #all for one #shigaraki yoichi #ofa the first #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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centrally-unplanned · 1 month ago

Note

Buffy season 3 thoughts, edited for clarity but presented in the order that I wrote them:

The hell dimension twist in the first episode is great. Again, love that the writers usually do some extra little something: whatever the problem looks like in the front half of the show, it probably won't be that neat by the back half.

Mr. Trick is a great character but I keep hearing "Angel, Angel," and "Spike, Spike," but no "Mr. Trick, Mr. Trick," so I am concerned that he is going to die this season. Edit — : ,,, (

The Mayor is also incredible. I thought he was going to be a secret demon or something and instead he's just Some Guy. Just incredible.

wtf I ship Giles/Joyce now. Edit — !!!!

Lurconis: least problematic demon so far. I mean, he eats babies, not people.

Are all watchers British? Did the Watchers do an imperialism? Are the Watchers why the British did an imperialism?

I love the Mayor.

<3 Spike's romantic reminiscence about him and his gf…killing a homeless man.

The Slayer is really not doing a great job if all these vampires from season 2 were able to survive for – how long has it been? five months? six months? – however long it was between 2x22 and 3x08.

Why does a ""pagan"" magic shop have bottles of holy water? I mean, sure, the Wiccans have "holy water," but this holy water came in bottles with little crosses on them!

the funeral fakeout is incredible <3 <3 <3

how exactly does Spike drive his car in the daytime?

It is really incredibly easy to drive a stake through a vampire's heart. It's as if they don't even have ribs. Must be the lack of calcium in their diet.

I think it's odd that Giles didn't tell Anya that Cordelia had, you know, died because of the wish she made. Destroying the "power center" shouldn't have worked, because it explicitly undoes every wish that Anya granted, which means the world should still be different, just a different kind of different (if they'd wanted to reboot the series a bit, that would have been a valid way to do so, come to think of it, but anyway).

incredibly shocked that cordelia died in the AU episode: I can't think of another show with a similar plot where the canon immigrant dies rather than plays a vital role in setting right what went wrong.

Amy makes an adorable rat. Somebody should have been an animal for a few episodes. I hear that Oz leaves the show later – just say he got caught in full wolf form and let the role of Oz be played by a husky. EDIT — I am delighted that she remains a rat through this season. So silly.

I don't want to sound like a broken record so I'm going to try to keep shut about this, but just know that every time Wicca comes up, I die a little.

The Zeppo was incredible. No notes. I've seen some people hate on this episode, even complain about not being able to see Buffy's entire adventure, and all of the haters are wrong.

I need more of the Mayor and Faith. Where's the Fix Fic where the Mayor contributes to Faith's mental health by being a rock of unconditional support and, wouldn't you know it, faith? Why do we not at least get to see them play mini golf together? I love them.

Xander should have come out as gay.

The bad werewolf costume was understandable, but then the hellhounds!? Why do the Buffy costumers think that canines look like people? Just put some dogs in costumes, or call them something other than hellhounds.

It's funny (and deeply sad) how Faith's relationship with the Mayor was plausibly the healthiest relationship that she's had up. Buffy and others made genuine attempts to connect with her but a healthy relationship takes two to tango and Faith's inability to be vulnerable in Buffy's social circle was a problem.

"We're proud to say that the class of '99 has the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history" lmao lmao forever

There is a criminal shortage of Faith & The Mayor fics.

Boggles my mind that some people think that the Mayor didn't care about Faith.

You finished the Big 3! For a lot of people this is their favorite season - it is the peak of "classic Buffy" as one might say, with the high school settings, plot concepts, and also Angel still being around as opposed to in spin-off Los Angeles. It is a much more polished version of what Season 1 or 2 is trying to do, and engages in a lot more "worldbuilding" - radical for 90's TV.

Agreed; this is funny because it is, partially, absolutely a product of it being serial TV and them just kind of winging it, and having to "stack" twists. But nowadays watching all the "plotted" tv shows that sort of streeeeeetch their clearly-4-episodes-of-story over 8, it is nice how Buffy doesn't do that as much! It does crazy melodrama shit instead! Pick your poison I guess but in Buffy it works.

Mr. Trick is a great character but I keep hearing "Angel, Angel," and "Spike, Spike," but no "Mr. Trick, Mr. Trick," so I am concerned that he is going to die this season. Edit — : ,,, (

Look man this is your fault - you thought a black character could survive in 90's California Suburbia TV Land long enough to get recurring character billing and SAG pay? Fuck no, gotta wait till season 7 for that privilege. But yeah Mr Trick is really fun - vampire blaxpoitation mafia master is a genre we always need more of.

The Mayor is also incredible. I thought he was going to be a secret demon or something and instead he's just Some Guy. Just incredible.

i mean he is also a secret demon. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you’re coming from here but they very much did make him a secret demon.

But no, meme'ing aside the Mayor is amazing - he is one of the few villains who can compete with "villain protagonists" like Angel or Spike. He is total camp but also deep enough to carry his relationship with Faith, very good dual roles. Also so fun whenever him and Principal Synder are just being little gits together <3

wtf I ship Giles/Joyce now. Edit — !!!!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ain't no one stopping these hotties

Are all watchers British? Did the Watchers do an imperialism? Are the Watchers why the British did an imperialism?

The Watchers absolutely did an imperialism, they are a global organization of patriarchy child soldier users, ain't no way they didn't get their hands dirty. But I will grant that, in all likelihood, they are British because "magic" probably got its biggest start in the UK - Merlin, the druidic-wiccan stuff, etc, and they seem to be very politically ignorant of the wider "muggle" world. So I think they were just free-riders on that process, not instigators.

<3 Spike's romantic reminiscence about him and his gf…killing a homeless man.

I was gonna say, the Xander/Willow affair dud is almost worth it because it culminates in the episode where Spike rolls back into town to fix his love life, which is incredible - nothing a little domestic violence can't cure, thanks Buffy!! You can just see how much fun Spike & Drusilla have with their roles.

Why does a ""pagan"" magic shop have bottles of holy water? I mean, sure, the Wiccans have "holy water," but this holy water came in bottles with little crosses on them!

This ties back into the weird "Christian magic gap" - in a world where Christianity is clearly, in some way, "correct", the church seems to be extremely impotent in comparison to some old British librarians. The Wiccans, your mortal enemy, are pretty much running the show.

But I will give that Season 2 (see Jenny Calendar's shop visits) established that a lot of the "pagan" shops are essentially fronts for actual magic stores catering to the spellcaster and demonic communities, and in that part of their business they don't discriminate on denomination. They will stock holy water and omamori out of the same bin.

how exactly does Spike drive his car in the daytime?

Oh, he covers up the glass with heavy padding so light doesn't go in, you can see it in the episode!

Do you mean how does he avoid not smashing into two dozen cars and killing a few pedestrians every block while driving? Oh, that is easy - he doesn't!

It is really incredibly easy to drive a stake through a vampire's heart. It's as if they don't even have ribs. Must be the lack of calcium in their diet.

This is one of those things that was clearly meant to be a "Slayer Power" thing - people even joked that Slayers had the ability to empower anything they held into a magic stake, how she can kill with like a ruler - but then as the show went on you see like fucking Willow do it. So yeah, just no bones on the chest I guess.

I ofc did not watch the episode as recently as you, but I thought Giles didn't retain his memories after the timeline reversion, right? So he couldn't warn anyone. And yes, that comment about all the wishes is honestly just sloppy writing, and this whole amulet deal will be explicitly contradicted in later episodes re: vengeance demons. Still, you can be very charitable and read it as "active" wishes - if you wished someone dead 30 years ago, that isn't a magical alternate reality, they are just dead now, so you can say it's locked in. Most people don't wish for parallel universes, after all.

You are gonna be SO HAPPY about how long she is a rat lmao

The Zeppo was incredible. No notes. I've seen some people hate on this episode, even complain about not being able to see Buffy's entire adventure, and all of the haters are wrong.

Hating The Zeppo because you can't see the whole Buffy adventure is like hating Rosencrantz & Guildenstern because it isn't Hamlet, you can't do that! Go to another play! The Zeppo is exactly why the show needs someone like Xander, because how Hellmouth Sunnydale totally fucks with the regulars is a great source of hijinks only Xander can lean into.

Also hot Faith moments. Not the hottest one with Xander though, that comes later in the season <3

<3 <3 <3 It is like "Daddy issues - but good! Well, not good. Really, really bad. But nice!" I do think that the finale is a bit of a misstep because by making the mayor a gigantic worm thing he can't really have "human" moments anymore, and Faith/Mayor could have used more screentime (I know, she is out of the picture then, but they wrote it that way).

And yeah to pick up on other Faith comments, I just enjoy how committed to the "bit" she is about being evil which very obviously is not her whole self, and cannot be her whole self. She needed someone who "got" that, and Buffy was just way too much of a moral bright light to look at directly for her. There is a very good arc in Angel actually with Faith around this dynamic, if you ever wanna dip into that side of things.

Xander should have come out as gay.

I know the context for this but it's better without. Let them fuck in the shower room!! Don't be afraid, man.

"We're proud to say that the class of '99 has the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history" lmao lmao forever

This was a Very Topical Joke at the time!!!

Boggles my mind that some people think that the Mayor didn't care about Faith.

Yeah that seems like a weak take to me. I do get it, like he is evil and it is all 100% a manipulative front, you can argue that. But his whole character is that he isn't that. He is authentically a folksy mayor, he cares about that stuff, he just cares about being an immortal demon more. As Demon Lord I totally bet he would still have a civic affairs board to plan proper parades of his Torture Legions down Main St, the guy is Lawful Evil for real. In the same way, he totally saw Faith as an adopted daughter for his parody family dynamic. He wasn't gonna compromise his vision for it, but he didn't have to. Win-win.

#As always I read them all I just don't always have anything “fun” to say and gotta choose #buffy buffy buffy

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lulublack90 · 1 year ago

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Prompt 16 - Fake Marriage

@wolfstarmicrofic May 16, word count 812

This is part two of Prompt 4 - Marriage of Convinience. There will be a part three, probably for prompt 26 but I'll see. I'll link everything together when it happens.

Remus settled into his new life relatively quickly. It had taken him a few weeks to get used to sleeping in a bed again. It hadn’t helped that the mattress was super soft, and he felt like he was sleeping on a marshmallow. But as with most things, you adjust.

The other thing he was still getting used to was having an allowance. Sirius hadn’t been kidding when he’d said it would be generous. Remus didn’t even know what to spend that amount of money on. The majority of his purchases came from the little bookshop a few streets over. The owner had always been kind to him. When he’d been homeless, sometimes he’d sneak in there just to smell the books. But now, he felt he could finally enjoy them again.

Sirius chuckled at him when he came flying through the door with his new purchases.

“Remus, I think we maybe need to get you a bookcase.” He’d tutted as he eyed the bulging bags. “Come over here, and we’ll find one you like.” Sirius patted the sofa seat next to him and opened his laptop. Remus quickly put the bags into his room and hung up his coat before going to sit next to Sirius.

He’d been in the flat for a few months now and their friendship had started back up as though there hadn’t been an eight-year gap when they’d lost contact.

Sirius shuffled closer and Remus felt those old butterflies spreading their wings. It was something he’d never told Sirius about and probably something he should have mentioned before agreeing to marry him. But he hadn’t felt anything while they’d been sorting out all the paperwork, it was only when they’d been in the registry office repeating their vows that Remus had realised his old feelings for Sirius were still there. He tried his best to keep everything platonic, but when Sirius was basically sitting in his lap, it was hard to ignore.

“I like the look of these ones. What do you think?” Sirius asked, bringing Remus back down to earth. He hadn’t been paying the least bit of attention. He glanced over at the screen and looked at the bookcases Sirius was talking about. They looked really nice. Dark wood and sturdy.

“It’s your flat, Sirius. Get whatever you like.” He mumbled, hoping that would be the end of it.

“It’s your room.” Sirius patted his knee and Remus tensed. “If you don’t like them, then we won’t get them.” Remus shook his head.

“No, they’re fine. I really like them.” He said as evenly as he could. Sirius grinned at him and started typing in the order details. Remus couldn’t help but follow his fingers and stare at the simple gold band adorning his ring finger on his left hand. He wondered if maybe one day it would be real for them.

He watched Sirius pick up his phone and open one of the many dating apps he had and begin scrolling through it. He sighed, probably not.

Sirius doom scrolled through the people who wanted to match with him and found no one he wanted to waste his energy on. If he was being honest with himself, the only person he wanted to take out was Remus.

He’d been flabbergasted when Remus had told him about Jeremy from marketing. He’d had to grip the table to stop himself from launching himself at the thin man and proclaiming his everlasting love for him. But he’d stopped himself and tried to find a way to help his friend.

He’d never in a million years thought that Remus would agree to marry him and had planned to just buy all the things for himself and rent them to Remus for pennies. But then he’d agreed with very little persuasion, his heart had soared.

He’d nearly called the whole thing off in the middle of the ceremony, when he’d stared into Remus’s eyes as he placed the ring on his finger and his knees had nearly buckled. But he hadn’t, and now they were married and Remus carefully kept his distance.

He sighed thinking about it. Remus had left for his room as soon as Sirius had turned his phone on. He wished he could find a way to tell him how he felt, but now that they were in this fake marriage, he didn’t know if Remus would see it as Sirius trapping him and not just an idiot in love that wanted to help.

He raked his hands though his hair as he tried to figure it out. Maybe Remus would buy so many books he’d have to move into Sirius’s room because he wouldn’t be able to sleep in his own. Sirius shook his head at the absurdity and deleted all the dating apps on his phone. They were useless to him now anyway.

#wolfstar #wolfstar microfic #wolfstar fic #wolfstar angst #wolfstar au #part 2 #remus lupin #sirius black #remus john lupin #sirius orion black #mary macdonald #sirius x remus #remus x sirius #sirius and remus #remus and sirius #guys sort it out #remus will always have books #fake marriage

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a-complex-joke · 1 year ago

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The Farmer, The writer, and the Parrot

Farmer x Elliott (x Leo!platonic)

Stardew MASTERLIST

Farmer is nervous to ask Elliott if he would be up to adopting Leo, or any kids in the future. Farmer is also worried about how Leo might react to the offer.

The farmer had been frantic all morning, they had done all their chores for the day.

Yet they had been avoiding even looking at their partner, Elliott the whole time.

For the past week since Leo had moved to town, The Farmer seemed deep in thought and even a bit skittish.

Elliott had indeed taken notice of their behavior, noting the fact that they hadn’t even come home that night, opting to stick by the mines.

Was he worried? Sure. but the farmer often lost track of time and would return later than reasonable, while still waking before himself.

Elliot found it admirable, but Ignoring him was a step too far.

“So where are you going?” Elliott said standing between them and the door.

“I was going to the mines, Clint requested way more Iron than I already had” they smiled not meeting the redhead’s eyes.

“Farmer tell me the truth, have I done something to cause you to grow so distant… is there someone else?”

It broke his heart to admit the insecurities he had been feeling, and on the flip side, it saddened The farmer that they had made him feel so.

“No! There is no one else who could ever compare to you” They put a hand to his cheek.

“Then why have you been ignoring me”

The farmer looked to their feet, mumbling something.

“Darling, you know I can’t hear you when you do that” He lifted their chin.

The farmer took a deep breath before letting it out.

“I know he never really discussed the whole if we wanted kids or not and I know it all of a sudden, but seeing Leo living all alone with no one to take care of him, it just feels like a pin is stabbing my heart. So I've been bringing him meals every day, and last night he was already asleep when I got there but I could tell he was having a nightmare so I just stayed there to comfort him. And what I'm trying to say is I want to adopt Leo, but I was scared of how you’d react”

There was a loud silence in the room as The farmer caught their breath.

“Oh thank Yoba, I thought you were going crazy and acutely doing an order for Clint there for a second, Harvey was on speed dial,” Elliott said releasing a breath himself.

“That’s what you're focusing on, I just spilled that I want us to raise a child together.”

“Hun, I'd love to raise a little army of children if you wanted, honestly the fact that you want to bring Leo into our lives just makes me love you more,” He said embracing his partner.

“But what if that is not what he wants, Linus is perfectly content with being somewhat homeless, and they are close as can be. What if he takes it as an insult” The farmer vented, tears threatening to fall.

“The worst that could happen is that he chooses not to come live with us. Even if we don’t adopt him, he’ll still be in our lives as will we in his. And we’ll care for him no matter what” Elliott said kissing their forehead.

“How did I get so lucky to marry such a caring man”

“It came with the job I guess” He joked.

The two decided to wait till they could commission Robin to build another room, even If Leo rejected the offer they weren’t gonna give up on the prospect of being parents.

To say Robin was ecstatic at the news would have been the biggest understatement since the town ‘learned’ of Mayor Lewis and Manires Affair.

A month had passed before the pair decided they were finally ready to ask Leo. A room decorated with a large window looking out towards the farm, what more could he want?

“Hi Leo, how are you today” Farmer asked sitting down next to him.

“Oh hi, Farmer, I'm good, are you and Mr. Elliott all right, miss Robin said you guys were doing something life-changing, that's why your house was under construction right?”

Oh, Robin and her loud mouth.

“Well, yes we are planning on doing something very different, and it actually why where here. We needed to ask you something really important” Elliot said now getting down to his level.

“Now before we do we want you to know that you can say no, and we won’t hold it against you”

The child nodded.

“We wanted to know if you’d like to come live with us, we want to adopt you. You’d be our child and we’d be your new parents” The farmer was starting to struggle a bit.

“You’d still have the tree house of course but, maybe this could be more of a clubhouse for Jas, Vincnt, and you.”

Leo stayed silent before speaking in a hushed voice

“What if I lose you like I lost my real parents” tears poked out of his eyes.

“Oh hun come here” The farmer pulled Leo onto their lap, ushering Elliott to come closer.

“We don’t plan on going anywhere, and even if we did that won’t be for a long while”

“Will I still be able to visit with the parrots?” Leo questioned.

“As long as they don’t eat all the crop” Elliott tried lightening the mood.

The three sat cuddled in the tree house till Leo had become tired, falling asleep in the arms of the farmer.

“You know I can carry him” Elliott offered as they walked back home.

“no I've got him, he’s really light, we’ve got to fatten him up,” the farmer said a little concerned.

“I'm sure Gus would love to have a taste tester with an exotic pallet”

“Don’t you think we spend enough money there?” “Crab cakes are good, not my fault

They had finally made it home and placed Leo down in his new bed.

“Good night, my little Parrot,” The farmer said kissing him on the forehead

#stardew valley x reader #stardew valley #stardew valley elliott #sdv elliot x reader #sdv leo

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violetsandshrikes · 9 months ago

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how do you help so many different kinds of people? i have noticed you know about lots of different things and meet lots of different people. i want to do that but i cant figure out how? /gen

A little bit of background is probably needed:

I have had people ask me this before, and honestly I had a little bit of a cheat code. While my life has been filled with a lot of trauma and bad shit, I was raised by a mother from an incredibly leftie family who walked the talk when it came to values and doing the work.

She had a lot of ideas imparted on us from a young age: social and community responsibility, ideas of collectivism, eduction. Even as a poor, trapped young mother, she was believed that many people behaved badly based on ignorance outside their very limited bubble, and that when life became difficult economically or socially, people would immediately point fingers at groups they knew little about or saw as distinctively different in order to have a blameable target.

From about 4-5, outside typical schoolwork, my mother also taught us about the world. This included different conflicts and genocides (which may sound horrific to some people, but basic information and explanation was given, and then it got more in depth with age), different countries and cultures (often she would randomly select a country from a world map, and we would spend a set amount of time learning everything we could about the place, culture, people, etc), different religions (I attended many different types of religious institutes at least once, and my mother often found people willing to talk about their belief system with us), volunteering, etc.

I have definitely had a head start and a lot more guidance than many people, which I am incredibly grateful for. It can also make it difficult to advise though.

Realistically:

Honestly, the two best things you can do if you don’t know where to start are: listen and learn. Find any local group, start participating and volunteering. Listen to the stories of people there. Ask questions. Expose yourself to all sorts of different ideas and opinions.

In the last year, I’ve started doing a little throwback to my childhood. I have a schoolbook, and I choose random topics, and spend a few hours every week learning basic things about it. Choose a country, choose a place, a time in history, a religion, a culture, a people. You don’t have to be a scholar. You just have to expand your horizons.

As you get involved with more things, you will begin to narrow down your core values. This is good: you can’t do everything at once. I would say roughly 2-3 core issues or topics you care about is good (this doesn’t mean that you don’t care about things happening outside it - it just means you don’t spread yourself thin). There’s different things people make their focus: LGBTQ+ issues, BIPOC issues, environmental issues, homelessness, disability, refugee issues, etc. Your core focus will be the ones you feel most passionate about, which is good, because it means you will put in genuine work and care, and you will lower the risk of burning out fast and being of help to no one, including yourself.

You also have to get comfortable with the fact you will never be perfect. You will never be up to date with every idea and practice. There is always something you will need to learn or unlearn. Becoming rigid about being correct all the time will make you more of a menace than a help to any reputable movement or group. You might feel uncomfortable when you realise the gap or misunderstanding you had - that’s normal. Be open to learning and expanding your understanding of things vs burying your head in the stand stubbornly. I say things and then months later I realise that actually, I don’t agree with that anymore, or my understanding has deepened, or changed, or pivoted. This tends to make people feel very bad or uncomfortable, but you have to get to the stage where again, you acknowledge that that’s normal.

#learning to be part of your community is very hard! we live in strange times and we are increasingly disconnected from each other!#also being a human is often messy and complicated so it’s hard not to get discouraged but I believe in you!#remember: learn. do.#it’s very hard to go wrong once you start leaning into those two words #katie rambles #long post #sorry for my slightly off topic ramble I was like. hm. some of this is standard practice now and idk how to break it down.#also: from about 15 to 20 I had incredibly bad social anxiety! learning how to talk to strangers and put myself out there was a very long #and uncomfortable learning process. we are always learning. social media is only one aspect you see ❤️

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lipstickchainsaw · 7 months ago

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Sanctuaries and Sacred Places

As I went through the episodes of Arcane's season 2, act 2, I noticed a particular theme in each of those episodes. Characters creating their own little pocket worlds where they get to make the rules and pretend the outside world doesn't exist.

I'll be taking a look at the Black Rose, Viktor and Jinx (and touching on Vi by contrast), and how each of them interact with this particular theme, what their respective pocket worlds mean to them, and how they exist within the wider reality.

Because these characters are also closely related to the wider religious themes this season, I thought calling those pocket worlds 'Sanctuaries and Sacred Places' was fitting, and I will be touching on this theme here and there as well.

The Black Rose

Let's start with the most obvious. The Black Rose has what most of us would recognise as a literal pocket world, one that seems to exist entirely separate from reality, where they control not only the entrance and exit, but are also fully capable of shaping it to their will as suits their purposes. They use this absolute power over their world to psychologically torture their captives in order to transform them, alternating between insidious manipulation and harsh, direct pain and stress.

Their separation from reality, then, marks a separation from judgement, from accountability, from conventional morality, because if they were doing this sort of thing anywhere people could reach, they would surely be stopped. They consider themselves to be a higher power, and this naturally should place them beyond the reach of mortals and their petty ethical hang-ups.

And it is their power that allows the pocket world to persist; they're not exactly afraid to drag other people into it, and a lot of subtlety goes out the window once they've ensnared someone. They rely on their absolute control over the place to keep it alive.

Like the others I will be discussing in a moment, it is also a transitory space, a place of death and rebirth. We see this in Kino, a dead man, being used as a puppet to lower Mel's defenses, and even then he pretends his identity has been eroded away, much as the space they're in tarnishes and dishevels many of the aspects of herself Mel values, presumably in order to reshape her into something more suited to their needs.

But this is a transformation and rebirth for others, rather than for the Black Rose themselves (although they also take on a ton of different identities when Mel smashes Kino's face into the wall, so this 'different selves at war with one another' bit that a lot of characters deal with this season is almost being parodied by them here), and, even more, it is forced upon them.

They're a higher power, after all, they get to do that.

The problem with that absolute confidence that you're in control enough you can drag anyone and anything into your pocket world, however, is that one day you're going to be wrong, and drag in someone protected by a higher power themselves. Once said hypothetical individual manages to call on that protection, a tether of which exists even where you wouldn't want it to, your illusion of complete power over them shatters, your process of shaping them into what you wanted them to be aborted, as they are reborn prematurely.

And you're going to have to deal with that.

Viktor

Viktor's pocket world manages to exist within reality by virtue of it having arisen in a place nobody would bother to look: among the poor and homeless. It's in a place where nobody but the needy and desperate would even think to go, and so he gets to exist separate from all the powers fighting one another out there.

His separation from the wider world, then, marks a separation from its conflicts and inequities, the larger structural and systemic issues that plague the lives of so many. Whether you're Huck or Salo, you leave your place in those structures, in the wider society, behind at the door, much as everyone is meant to leave behind their capacity for violence.

In this, Viktor is asking people to leave behind aspects of their own identity in order to enter his sanctuary. In the process, he already starts people's transformation, before he actually lays his hands on them to facilitate their rebirth.

This buy-in from the people he is transforming allows the place to persist, and the fact that it is only those looking for transformation that even find him allows him to fly under the radar of those with the power to wipe him off the map, but what gives this sanctuary its true strength is that it grew with him.

As he grew within his devotion, so did the community he helped, and his pocket world grew to match it, until it can even enforce some of its rules on the world right outside its doors.

His sanctuary is, naturally, primarily a place of rebirth for others, offering them new identities from their shattered selves (with some of the rougher edges left behind), but he has transformed himself as well, with his work being done by both Viktor and Sky.

The problem with this, of course, is that Viktor is the one powering his world entirely on his own. He is casting his miracles from his own life force, with each rebirth her creates decreasing how long this sanctuary will be able to exist, and the fact that he exists in service to others leaves him without a way to recharge his own battery. Transcendent though his miracles might be, he is fundamentally stuck in the same place he was: this sanctuary is as temporary as his life was before.

It's tough to talk about this without specifying whether I'm talking about Viktor-the-whole, or Viktor-as-aspect-of-the-whole, but this is part of Viktor's embrace of mysticism, of what he calls 'the Paradox of Knowledge' that marks him as a true prophet and herald of his own higher power.

And it's what breaks the bubble of his pocket world, his sanctuary, as well.

This bubble is a little permeable. It can handle Singed and Rictus getting in, and Jinx getting her weapon back to fight them off. The rules Viktor's established are malleable enough to accommodate this intrusion and immune response without popping immediately.

It's only when someone who challenges the very concept of the rebirth he is cultivating, driven by his own higher power, that it fully pops the bubble, removes the protections he was extending to the people inside, and allows Noxus' violence to ravage the place.

Jinx

Unlike with the previous two examples, Jinx' pocket world is a secluded space by virtue of her only allowing a select few influences to even know about it. This is a place for her, and it's a place where she doesn't have to be Powder, and doesn't have to be Jinx, both of which are identities that have well and truly shattered over the course of season 1, and act 1 of this season.

This is a place for her to be happy, and pretend all the misery she's associated with, for herself and others, don't exist. Just as she hides away from those two broken identities, she hides away from the rough and broken reality right out there, living in her little fantasies, as Sevika calls them, and, as Sevika also points out, this pocket world can't last forever either. Reality will come knocking on the door, no matter how much she hides away from it.

(She's up against Caitlyn, and given her investigative skill, it's not unlikely she'd be able to track her down even if she never set foot outside again.)

Secrecy is what keeps this place alive, but notably, for all that this place is created by Jinx for herself, and has existed in that vein since season 1, it now accommodates two people, and both of them have an influence over how it develops. Much as Jinx would like to ignore the world around her and its nasty realities, Isha keeps nudging her to step outside and face it anyway, and it's the fact that she steps outside of it willingly that makes this the only successful sanctuary we've seen.

Because a place where you get to set the rules, and relax and get a reprieve from the harsh realities of the world around you? Where you get to spend some time to figure out who you are and what you want to be? That's nothing unusual. Most of us just call this a home.

So what's it look like when you don't have that? When you don't have a way to shelter yourself from the harsh reality that is your life? Well, then you end up like Vi, rawdogging reality and getting beat down because of it. She didn't want to be Vi here anymore than Jinx wanted to be Jinx, but the new identity as a pit fighter she tried to craft was very much a fake, and washed away easily, because she never had the space to let it take hold: reality was always there to remind her that she was still Vi.

Hell, prison gave her more of an ability to develop herself, even if this meant reasserting herself as Vi by getting the name tattooed on her face.

Here she's just left entirely adrift, looking for purpose after having ruined and lost everything she cared about and fought for, looking for meaning to commit herself to, for someplace to belong, after everything she looked to before has been denied to her. She isn't able to build a new her because she isn't given the space to.

It's telling that Vi was so eager to stay in Viktor's sanctuary. Vi's a character who wants to devote herself to something, to a cause, to a person, whatever, and here's a cause offering itself up for her. Viktor could use a protector, and Vi could use a break from reality.

But Jinx isn't at all enthusiastic. She has already gone through a transformation. She has faced reality, and knows that reality matters. It won't just stay on pause for as long as you want it to, it'll keep going even when you're not looking.

Unlike Vi, Jinx has found a cause worth fighting for, something to believe in. She has people looking up to her now, people relying on her, and she's found that this responsibility, living up to it, is pretty goddamn validating.

So, she remains a skeptic in the face of this machine herald's fervour.

Because, if the murals on the walls hadn't tipped you off yet, she represents a different higher power.

Janna's Herald

When I first brought up this theme, I jokingly cut myself off from getting too deep into literary symbolism and calling this a womb, but it's a symbol that's stuck with me since. Each of these sacred places has been so very closely associated with death and rebirth, with different identities clashing and fusing, merging and growing from there, with immune responses to threats from outside (Singed is poison, after all, and he very much aborted Vander's rebirth when Viktor's protective barrier popped), that I have to look at it this way.

Jinx sacrificed herself on the altar to Janna, but she was not reborn there. She was reborn here. I've been somewhat negative about these pocket worlds so far, but this is what they are at their best. They gave this young woman a place to heal, a place to take the pieces of two broken identities and look at what still worked, and then put those together into a whole.

She did this with support and love from someone close to her, who facilitated and encouraged that growth, in exchange for sharing in the protection of this sanctuary, their own little sacred place, and so forged, with every laugh shared, a new identity from the old.

And when Janna's true herald stepped outside to face reality again, she held up. She held up under the scrutiny of her followers, her father, her sister, because that is what a sanctuary does. It gives you a reprieve, but only for long enough to pick yourself up and get out there again.

Now let's hope this identity can hold up even under its greatest blow.

#arcane #arcane spoilers #very long post #essay writing's back on the menu boys

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tru-makes-quilts · 3 months ago

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Not quilt related.

This is a pep talk I wish I had received in 2008 and 2020. I know the demographics of this webbed site aren’t as young as they used to be, but many of us are still decades away from any hypothetical retirement, and it’s really important that if you’re in a financial position to do any kind of saving for that, you keep your money in the stock market. Even through current chaos.

Do not panic and take it out unless you absolutely need to use some of it in order to avoid homelessness or something. Do not keep your retirement savings in a regular savings account, even a high yield account that might give you 4% or so. You are losing money long term due to inflation. If society truly falls apart into a Mad Max hellscape, your cash isn't any safer in a bank than in the market because our institutions will be gone. The stock market has weathered a century and a half of world wars and great depressions and pandemics. Times are bad, and they definitely can (will?) get worse, but when we keep repeating the word "unprecedented" for the sake of making rhetorical points, we're building unnecessary anxiety for ourselves.

I invest in a 403b and a Roth IRA for retirement. Both of them are down many thousands of dollars right now. But, even though my account is down 5% over the course of several days, which looks (and is!) dramatic, last year I think I was up like 14%? Maybe more? So I'm still significantly better off compared to the cash I've actually deposited over the course of years. Frankly, if you're in a position to put even a little bit more away for retirement right now, it's like shares are on sale. Get 'em while they're cheap. This is not individual financial advice, and this perspective may not apply to someone who is 5-10 years away from retirement instead of the 30ish years that I have. I'm incredibly privileged to be able to save at all for retirement--I did not grow up in a household that was able to do so, partly because my parents put as much as possible toward helping me and my sister make it through college and young adulthood without having to take on massive debt. A number of friends and acquaintances in my personal life have been panicking. I learned from one friend that she does not invest at all for retirement because it feels too risky. She saves, but she keeps it in a high yield savings account. It is far, far riskier for your future not to invest than it is to invest. IDK, I just wish when I was younger someone had taken a moment to say to me, "This does not have to spell disaster for you, and here's why." I didn't start feeling like I understood personal finance until the last 2-3 years. For any younger followers who read this: current events are bad, for a lot of reasons. There's no pretending they're not. But do not give in to nihilism and cynicism, and do not stop taking care of your future, whatever that looks like for you. Tomorrow is never guaranteed, but the odds are that you'll be here for it, and your future self needs your love and support.

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cattimeswithjellie · 1 year ago

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Stream Recap, DocM77, 6-15-24

((In which Doc intends to do an Interior Design on his shop, but instead spends two hours ranting on the tunnel bore and an hour ranting in the shopping district about that doggone sneaky Ore Snatcher! Ren comes along eventually to help him investigate. We get our first look at Doc's Mum.))

9:30 Doc opens the stream in studio view, singing along with the end of his theme song. He greets chat and tells them he is a man suffering from Emotional Stress. There is new information about the ore snatching case that has upended everything he thought he knew, and also his mom has told him that 4k subscribers is “scrub numbers” and she won’t come on his stream for less than 5k. (He is joking about that second part.) His mom is at his house, though, and he hopes she’ll come on-stream later. He thanks subs and donos. He greets the Single Ladies in the house and congratulates a chatter who has become one of Ren’s mods.

12:00 Doc tells Chat that he read the comments on the YouTube video and learned something important. He thought that the Ore Snatcher had been frightened into returning the stolen ore blocks, but in fact the ores were provided by Skizz in order to fulfill a Mission Possible task. ((the mission: Do a good deed for a Hermit without being noticed or taking credit.)) The plot thickens! Whoever the ore snatcher is, they either still have the ore blocks or they are stuck in the mail system. Doc is a homeless swamp dweller, no one can send him things in the mail! He doesn’t want to be part of another prank war, but if he doesn’t nip this in the bud, he’s going to wind up with another exploded tunnel bore. He personally still believes it is Scar despite strong evidence to the contrary. He asks Chat who they think it is.

13:40 Chat is full of ideas. Grian is by far the top suspect, if one counts votes for “ore-stealing snails” as Grian votes. Jevin and Cub are also seen as likely suspects, with votes also coming in for Tango and Big Salmon. Some chatters also believe it’s Scar, though the consensus appears to be that Scar is still traumatized from Season 9 and would not start things again. ((This is the positions Scar has taken with other Hermits out of Doc’s hearing; he doesn’t want to get in another dust-up with Doc after last seasons hiding-in-the-toilet debacle, but he will gleefully watch while Doc fights with other Hermits.)) Chat also points out that Scar already has quite a lot of diamond ore, even after recent theft issues.

15:30 Today Doc wants to use Chat’s creative brain to decorate the front of his shop. He also wants to run the new tunnel borer a little bit because it’s new and he wants to show it off. He brews up some night vision potion so the video quality will be better for chat. A chatter comments on Doc’s sudden jump in subs this month, Doc says it is wonderful but not likely to be sustainable given that it’s large numbers of gift subs that got him this far. He welcomes chatters still trickling in, admitting that it’s very early for a stream, and gets upset because someone has harvested and replanted some of his netherwort. Everyone is stealing these days, for shame!

18:30 Doc is glum because people are stealing and because he is caught in a lawsuit now. Cleo deserved it, tbh. He talks about the Doccy fund and how Karin thinks they need a vacation. Doc never needs a vacation (until he gets sick). Upon reflection, maybe he does need to take vacations, but every time he takes one he gets sick or the weather is bad. Maybe he should just stay home. He is happy in his little room playing Minecraft all day long, but normal people like doing things. His IRL friends complain when he ghosts them, but he has so many internet friends to see! Chat is divided in their encouragement that Doc should get out more and stay inside more. Doc also admits he is very careful with his money because he doesn’t want to do sponsored streams or product placements.

22:30 A chatter asks if Hermitcraft is updating to 1.21. Doc says yes and he assumes relatively soon. Xisuma was talking about a temp upgrade to 1.20.6, but Doc doesn’t know why or if that is going to happen. He would rather just wait for 1.21 for a better and less buggy update experience. Doc says that every time his mom comes for a visit the weather turns bad, but it’s clearing up now and there’s a kids’ festival somewhere so they may go to that in a little while. He confides to Chat that when he empties a shulker and doesn’t know what to do with it, he just throws it into the swamp to despawn. Somewhere, a Hermit paying three diamonds per shulker box probably cries.

25:00 Tomato update: Doc has about 35 plants this year, 60 was too much last year. Things are going well so far despite a little cold and foggy weather. Cold and fog is okay for germination but not so much for growth. Doc claims that the number of plants is due to his unhinged neighbor who wants _lots_ of tomatoes. He jumps down to tunnel bore level and drinks a night vision potion. He is considering updating the tunnel bore to play a little tune as it travels along and explodes everything, but that is the sort of redstone that is too fiddly to do onstream. The new tunnel bore is much slimmer than the old version and easier to harvest from.

27:00 Doc begins running the tunnel bore, one explosion at a time to preserve maximum diamonds. He explains how much more efficient the new bore is than the old one. The old bore is still in position near the other Hermits, ready to unleash 80 wardens on the Ore Snatcher, whoever that is. Doc speaks wistfully on how if he’d known the Magic Mountaineers were going to blow up their mountain, he’d have hidden the 80 wardens in there for them. Chat likes this idea and points out that it’s not too late, since the Magic Mountaineers have yet to do any significant grinding in their new volcano.

29:40 Doc realizes that his night vision potion did not last nearly as long as usual, Chat points out that he neglected to extend them with redstone when he brewed them. Doc complains that he has to do everything in this stream because Chat is lazy and doesn’t warn him about anything. Chat is deeply indignant because they did warn him and he doesn’t pay attention. A chatter makes a $1 dono and asks about Doc’s tattoos. Doc asks if Chat really expects him to strip for a dollar. The chatter points out that Doc has a tattoo on his arm, but Doc would have to take off his pullover and roll up his sleeve. One dollar is not even enough for Doc to take his hat off. A tip of the hat, maybe. It would cost at least a thousand dollars to see Doc’s full arms

32:00 Back to tunnel boring. Chat says Doc would be an expensive date. He says absolutely, equal rights means he gets to expect his date to pay. After being with Karin so long, he doesn’t know how to date anymore and would probably chase off a potential partner by talking about Minecraft for hours.

33:00 A chatter asks who the ore thief is. Doc immediately ramps up into rehashing the details of the ore theft/return-but-not-really. Everything is a mess now, he doesn't know if he should be mad, sad, angry, forgiving, concerned because he killed the pig, etc. It’s very complicated. People ask why he killed the pig and he explains that he cut a lot of Cleo’s dialogue for spite because they were complaining about the length of the video. Much of that lost dialogue was Cleo pointing out that the stolen diamonds were not very valuable and the redstone was not damaged, etc, without acknowledging the terrible AGONY that comes from having one’s redstone touched. Doc decided to teach them a lesson about how it feels to have something you love messed with. Chat points out that trying to teach another grown adult a spiteful lesson is actually a really good way to land yourself in court. Doc admits he might not be entitled to teach Cleo life lessons.

35:10 Doc assesses his overall position regarding the court case as being not particularly great. He’s going to plead emotional distress and diminished capacity and hope he gets a jury trial. He’s not sure about having Joe as his lawyer either, but Joe jumped on the opportunity to practice some law. But the jury trial is his best bet because Hermits do irrational things all the time and that’s pretty much the only shot he has at getting a verdict in his favor. It’s also going to be hard to be respectful to the judge. Chat suggests buttering up the judge by calling him tall probably wouldn’t hurt either. Doc figures that if Trump is still running around free, there’s got to be hope for anyone ((notwithstanding the fact that this is a civil action and Trump has not been doing super-great lately on avoiding massive civil damage judgments)).

37:50 Doc wonders if he could apply some mafia pressure tactics to the jury. He and Chat discuss the merits of various Hermits as jurors. Ren could hang the jury, but he’s but he’s a witness in the case and that’s a conflict of interest. Doc supposes a court case is probably a better outcome for him than the water bucket to the redstone that Cleo was originally contemplating. Etho should definitely not be involved in the case because he is a chaos-loving troll who would probably be a terrible character witness. Chat points out he would also be a bad juror because he’s pretty scared of Cleo. That’s a pervasive problem for potential jurors, actually, lots of Hermits are scared of Cleo.

41:00 Doc faces the possibility that he might simply have to face justice for his pigslaughter. He feels this is unfair because he was terribly provoked, even if the provocation did not, technically, have anything to do with Cleo or her special pig. He tries to cite the “Stand Your Ground” defense, reinforcing the possibility that all of his knowledge of jurisprudence comes from television, but acknowledges that “eye for an eye” refers to repaying value for damage, not actually poking peoples’ eyes out.

43:00 A chatter sends Doc a message about the Jolly Roger as the best pride flag, mentioning it makes sense because many pirates were gay. Doc does not know if this is really a thing, but it seems like it would make sense. They did spend a lot of time out at sea where it was really a sausage-fest, so who knows? Chat has feelings about the term “sausage-fest.”

44:15 A chatter suggests that since Doc can’t deny the act of killing the pig (actus reus), his best defense is a lack of culpable mental state (mens rea). He claims that it was a crime of passion, not premeditated, he was in emotional distress, and anything else he can think of. Doc hears that Bdubs is a strict judge. He talks briefly with chat about the tunnel bore work that has been continuing all this time. He has collected 55 diamond ore blocks and some loose diamonds since the start of the stream. A chatter asks a redstone question about the borer and Doc explains how it works. A discussion begins of possible modifications to the new design. Chat talks trial strategy amongst themselves in the meantime, agreeing that if anyone can plausibly claim insanity, it is Doc.

51:45 Doc mentions that the big sub droppers from the past two weeks do not appear to be around today, so it is time for sub count numbers to return to reality. He’s still going to ask his mom to stop in and greet the stream later. She doesn’t speak English, but it’s all right. For now Doc is going to keep using the tunnel bore and think about new designs for later. Chat suggests that Doc can teach the chat to learn German very quickly to get ready.

54:00 Doc notes the time and realizes how much time he has spent mining and chatting already today. There may not be very much time for interior design today after all. A chatter suggests having Doc’s mom join the server and call it Momcraft. Doc laughs at MomandDadCraft, pointing out that they do have one mom (Stress) and lots of dads (Doc, Keralis, Joe, Impulse, Tango, Bdubs, Skizz). He thinks maybe it should be Dadcraft. Chat points out there is already a streamer called Dadcraft. “Hermitcraft is DILFcraft,” Doc says, sounding as though he is reading from Chat. No one from Chat actually said that, so this is Doc’s own extremely cursed invention. Chat predictably loses their mind. Doc likes DILFcraft better than Dadcraft. But Dad is also a good title.

56:50 Doc tells about taking Doccy to gymnastics yesterday and how loud and agile the small children are. Doccy managed to climb about 12 feet into the air, which gave Doc a little heart attack. Doccy is climbing a lot now. They fell a little way a few days ago and got a bit banged up but nothing major. Kids are like rubber balls, they bounce, within limits. Doccy was fine once they realized they were not bleeding, and went straight back to climbing. Doccy is three now and using a walking bike, but their friend has a real bike and Doccy is jealous. Doc may have to provide the bike sooner than he’d planned, but he worries at how much faster a pedal-bike is than the walking bike. The Doccy fund is currently the “Buy Doccy a Bike” fund.

1:00:00 A chatter asks if the DCP (the informal Doc art collective) is a family, does Doc have a favorite? He says he has favorite art styles but he will not actually say what they are. He accuses the chatter, who is a DCP member, of just wanted to be told that they are the favorite. They’re never going to hear it! Doc thanks a new sub and mentions that it has been a little while. Next week he will probably be back around 2k subs.

1:01 A chatter asks about Doccy’s wish for a bike. Doc says a good parent tries to get their kid things that they want, but kids are impulsive and what they want tends to change very quickly. Getting a kid everything they want is how you end up with a Tiktok-addicted preschooler who doesn’t understand any gratification that is not instant. Chat is distracted by the idea that Doccy wants blue hair. Doc says Doccy will get the bike on a special occasion, the only question is when. Currently nail polish is all the rage at Doccy’s school, and Doccy got Karin to paint every finger a different color. Recent events have made Doc just a little nervous about somebody accusing him of indoctrinating Doccy with rainbows, but they are just having fun. People are crazy.

1:05:00 A child at Doccy’s school also got a temporary tattoo and that became very important to Doccy, so Doc bought a pack of 180 temporary tattoos. Doccy put one on and lost interest, leaving Doc with a lot of temp tattoos. He needs to make sure that the bike is not a similar passing fancy. One of the “single ladies” makes a dono, and Doc reiterates that he is catering to all the single moms with his good looks. Single moms and big donors are the backbone of the Doc economy. Doc clarifies that all the chatters are single moms to him. Chat is still kind of confused, but after three weeks they are getting used to it.

1:06:00 Doc has now obtained more than 100 diamond ore blocks during the stream, plus loose diamonds. He flirts shamelessly with chat and reveals he has no ring on, but promises that Karin doesn’t mind his silly behavior. The single moms in Doc’s chat appear to be mostly pet parents. Doc has learned a lot about Twitch lately. There’s a lot more to Twitch than just turning on the camera and talking crap. A chatter makes a dono “for the girls and the gays.” Doc says he thought once about whether he might be gay, just as an academic point, but he decided he was not attracted at all to the idea of kissing and being romantic with a man. Chat, of course, immediately brings up the Dad-Kisser Doc photo. Doc laughs and shares the story of the photo, which is that the Dad in question was the father of one of Doc’s Minecrack servermates and the kiss was the culmination of an escalating series of jokes between the two of them and the Dad in question. There may have been a Twitter feud involved. Doc is with Karin, Karin identifies as a woman, and she makes Doc very happy.

1:12:11 A chatter makes reference to an old Tweet Doc made about his “size.” Doc plays dumb and agrees that yes, he is very tall. Chat wants Doc to know that they remember the yoga pants. Doc actually does not remember the yoga pants. He thanks subs and tells chat that he is mostly joking about the pushes for big sub gifts, but having kids is pretty expensive. Nobody pushes too hard for cash on Hermitcraft but some of them definitely do product placements and sponsored streams. They’re tastefully done and that’s fine for them, Doc’s not judging anyone. He just doesn’t want to do product placements himself unless he really has to. He agrees that Bdubs does great sponsorship ads. He talks about how tough it is to do merch because it’s hard to find products that are not trash and don’t cost the moon. The TCG releases are the exception that proves the rule, Doc loves those very much. Chat is of the opinion that they would like merch even if it is expensive.

1:20:30 Doc talks about the fan culture on Hermitcraft. The fans want to belong, they want to be entertained, they want to be fascinated by beautiful and interesting things. Art is very important for humans. Once survival needs are covered, then art is the next biggest thing. Chat points out that Earth without art is just Eh.

1:21:30 The European Football Championships have started. Germany is doing well and Doc is moderately excited. He understands that his majority-American audience has no idea what’s going on and everyone in chat is nerds who don’t like sports talk, but that’s fine. Hermitcraft’s biggest audience has always from the USA, followed by a fair-size following in the UK. Doc isn’t as into sports as he used to be when he was actually playing.

1:24:00 A chatter is watching Doc’s stream while weeding the garden. Doc thinks this is valid, he watches streams and videos the same as Chat does, sometimes watching and sometimes just listening. Chat points out that Doc has been using the tunnel borer for an hour, so listening is an extremely valid way to experience the stream. Doc always likes the comments on his videos that say people have anticipated his video and it starts the weekend right for them. The little nice comments and kind gestures makes a content creator’s day. Some CCs don’t read their comments at all because of the negative ones, but on Hermitcraft many of them read their comments.

1:26:00 Doc receives another donation from a “single lady.” He tells a story of back before Doccy, back in the day, when he considered what it would be like to date again in his forties. Would he be a sugar daddy or look for a sugar mommy? Chat can probably guess which one he would have chosen. In the post-Doccy world, he has decided it would be nearly impossible for anything to break up his family. So no sugar mama fantasies for Doc, unless Karin wins the lottery. He lives vicariously now through Chat. Chat is amused and mildly disturbed. Doc points out that while Hermitcraft videos tend to be very family friendly, streams tend to be just a bit more spicy. Doc and chat discuss whether “ass” is a curse word when used in “I have a lawsuit on my ass.”

1:33:00 More dono and sub thanks. Doc discusses his understanding of court procedures, which suggests he believes he needs to be indicted and charged by the Poe Poe before he can be served with a lawsuit. It remains unclear whether the upcoming trial is going to be a civil or criminal action, but it could well begin with Doc getting arrested and end with Cleo getting paid because that’s just how Hermits do. Doc offers relationship advice to all the lonely hearts and single mothers in the chat. Chat offers helpful critique. A chatter activates voice-to-text to make it chant the Single Ladies song. Doc uncovers a spawner and gets shot at by a number of skeletons. He says the best level for tunnel boring is -49.

1:37:30 Chat asks how the diamond ore counter works, it is just a little program that works with Fabric and the OBS overlay to count diamond ore in the inventory. The chatters who devised it were tired of having to count manually on all Doc’s streams. Doc talks about building the rainbow beacon, it’s not something he usually does because he’s not LGBTQ+ himself but he knows it means something to people in the community to be an ally. He lost 500 subscribers and got some angry comments but it was surprising to him that any people in the community are homophobic with LGBTQ+ players on the server who are an integral part of it. Doc doesn’t want to mix politics into Hermitcraft, but this is not a matter of politics to him. He appreciates all the members of the DCP and in the fan community who are LGBTQ+ community and wants them to feel included.

1:45:00 Doc discusses more of his ideas on tolerance, religion and politics. ((To catch all the nuance, it’s better to just watch the stream than to read someone else’s summary.)) During this time he reaches 200 diamond ore blocks collected during the stream.

1:52:30 Doc tells the story of the time at EuroDisney with some other Minecrafters when a bunch of drunk Dutch tourists showed up at the bar they were in and tried to stir up a bunch of trouble. They were using racial slurs on the bartender, throwing their weight around and trying to pick fights, etc. They started to pick on Bdubs, who was visiting Europe for the first time. Bdubs didn’t react to them, which made them mad, and one of them grabbed for him. Doc punched the guy, because nobody attacks his friends. Bdubs probably didn’t even need the help except that there were three very big guys there. Guude and Pyro were also there, but Guude was half-asleep at the bar and Pyro is tiny, so what to do? If you are Doc, the solution is “punch the biggest guy,” which worked in this situation partly because the guys were very drunk. Doc backs up Bdubs claim of being 5’10, but Dutch people tend to be tall and these guys were around 6’4. Chat is skeptical about the height claim but they like the story.

1:57:30 A chatter asks if there is a schematic available for the new tunnel bore yet. There is one on the Redstone Archive discord for a smaller version of the bore, but nothing for this size of a tunnel bore. A chatter wishes Doc happy Father’s Day (tomorrow in the US) but it’s on a different day in Germany. Doc says he’s a father every day. In Germany the tradition for Father’s Day is to go out and get drunk, but Doc does not really do that. It’s been a long time since he last drank. Chat mentions that if they are all single mothers, they do not have to care about Father’s Day either. Doc tells a story about growing up in a poor neighborhood in an apartment building with a drunk and angry neighbor who hurt his own family. It made him not very fond of alcohol and drinking.

2:00:00 A chatter asks why Doc doesn’t use freecam to check for diamonds faster than running back and forth down the tunnel bore. He says the freecam is very resource intensive on the PC, and also that use would be borderline cheaty. Plus he’s not in a hurry on this project. He and chat have a conversation on how growing up around alcohol affects people’s use of it. Doc doesn’t believe straight edge is the best way to be, but some people are more inclined to it. Still, alcohol is a dangerous drug that doesn’t get enough recognition.

2:02:00 Doc hits 250 diamond ore. He is enjoying today’s chatty and chill stream. He talks about his friend Methodzz’s family brewery and drinking that beer at Hivemind meetings. That is very good beer. He keeps trying to convince M to sell online, but they don’t have that kind of manpower. He jokes about starting up a business partnership for GOAT beer, only available in 5-liter kegs. He would do product placement streams for GOAT Beer. (There could be GOAT Champaign Strawberry Punch for the Chat, who are, as established, single ladies.) Chat has opinions on what they want to drink.

2:07:00 A chatter asks if Doc’s mom is going to appear onstream, he says it seems unlikely for now. She is busy with Doccy and they are going places today. Doc planned on doing interior designing today but he got stuck in the tunnel.

2:12:00 Doc gives Methodzz credit for getting witch farms buffed, because apparently he talked to Kingbdogs about it enough that it happened, and to a much greater extent than predicted. Now witch farms are insane. He assures a chatter that they can pretend to be a single mum, they don’t have to kill their husband to become one. Chat likes talking about murder. There are a lot of songs about women killing their husbands, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

2:14:00 Doc advocates for life with a tunnel bore. He’s had a tunnel bore since S7, life without one is not the same. He tells Chat he will be roasting a chicken later, but his mom has already done all the prep work. He likes the way he cooks it better, though. He shares his technique. He talks about his mom’s new weight loss diet.

2:18:10 Doc signs onto his test world to look at a schematic of the tunnel bore. Hivemind member TheWhiteEyes has ripped apart the tunnel bore and rebuilt it with a trigger on each end so he only has to run across the machine half as often. The design is not elegant, but it’s a good proof of concept. Doc says the best way to do the design and still make it compact would be one switch in the middle. He returns to Hermitcraft and resuming boring.

2:22:00 Doc takes his last night vision potion and says he’ll stop when it runs out. A chatter asks whether the borer is more efficient than caving, he says it’s hard to say because he hasn’t been grinding out, just talking and being chill. He jokes with chat about MILF hunting, chat says he is unhinged. Doc points out this is the most chill stream he’s had in ages. A chatter comes in and says hello, Doc scolds them jokingly for being two hours late. He only likes chatters who give up their whole social life to be in chat on time. Unless they are minors, minors are not allowed in his parasocial circles.

2:28:00He tells Chat to touch grass and immediately regrets it. Chat reminds him not to tell Scar to touch grass, he got stuck in tall grass just the other day. Doc laughs and agrees that Scar is the unhinged one. A chatter jokes they are not sure they are allowed to joke about that. Doc says he lost his inhibitions about that when Scar posted his Real Life video and showed himself falling out of his chair and getting picked back up, all set to silly music. Doc no longer feels any compunction about laughing at Scar’s mishaps. Chat thinks Doc must be the only hermit who watches other hermits’ videos. During the server tour, the other hermits were really surprised about what Doc was up to, and complained again about his videos being too long. Doc makes another borderline joke about size and laughs at himself.

2:30:00 Doc reaches 300 diamond ore mined during the stream. He runs out of potions and decides he is done. He assures Chat that the shulker boxes along the wall are not forgotten, he keeps extra potions in them. He returns to the surface and lands at his base. Apparently leaving a shulker box somewhere or dropping something is a great way to farm a bunch of comments from the concerned and observant viewers. Chat is mildly appalled by this revelation. Doc has very close to a full shulker of diamond ore blocks again, He is wealthy again now!

2:34:00 Doc says he has been watching Grian leave and rejoin the server for awhile now. He’d better go to the shop and see if anything is broken. It’s never wise to assume Grian is not up to something. He places down and mines up all his diamond ore miniblocks so they will stack with each other again. Chat agrees, with no evidence at all, that it was Grian. Doc assembles a decorating kit and heads for the shopping district. The buffer at the ghast farm is full so he kills a few of them before they get too squished.

2:37 Doc arrives at the Nether hub. Nobody has taken Scar up on his idea of making their portals are really deadly. Doc thinks it would be funny, but not being able to use the nether hub would actually be pretty inconvenient. The Hivemind has some ideas in reserve and they are eager to help if Doc ever gets into it, though. Doc arrives at the store and realizes he forgot white glass. He discusses his plans for decorating the shop interior. He freecams into the guts of the armor trim machine and all the headphone users suffer for it as he discovers another block of diamond ore has been replaced with deepslate. Doc threatens the “ore snatching bastard” that he will find them and eat their soul. Grian has been sneaking, he is SUSPICIOUS. Chat’s collective ears are still ringing. Doc says he should’ve released the wardens on “Buttcrack Mountain” because nobody truly innocent lives there. Still no sign of snails. Doc admits the block was unpowered but it’s the principle of the thing.

2:42:00 Doc admits he dropped his guard. He’d been planning to build an alarm system that would drop wardens on anyone who broke a block, but relaxed when he’d thought the diamond ore was returned. Turns out they were not returned, they were replaced by Skizzleman, and the ore snatcher was still at large! The ore snatcher is clearly selecting highly visible blocks just to taunt Doc, and it is working. Doc is literally spitting mad and it is not possible to understand everything he says. He needs to catch the Ore Snatcher in the act. Without catching them red handed, there is no proof. He needs a security system.

2:44:00 To Doc, the most annoying thing is having something break and not be 100% how it is supposed to be. Someone is trying to drive the friendly swamp creature INSANE, but why? Because it is funny, probably. He removes the top-level diamond blocks and replaces them with other blocks. He doesn’t bother collecting up the ore blocks that fall. He decides to go talk to Ren. Another pig might be killed today.

2:47:00 Doc flies to Ren’s base and looks for him. He sings “Chocolate Ren,” then looks for Ren’s coords. Ren is not far away but he doesn’t see Doc. Doc pursues him and asks him for help. Ren gets his mic turned on. Doc tells him the Ore Snatcher struck again and needs to be caught. He needs Ren to stay online 24/7 and leave Replay mod on, sticking close to Doc’s shop so he can cover it. Start a project in the shopping district to keep him close to the shop and just grind until the culprit is caught. Ren jokes that this sounds very reasonable, and that he’s like the clerk at the gas station who has to review all the security tapes every night to see if anybody tried anything. Ren says he’ll do it for 120 Euros per hour. Doc tells Chat that he needs subs immediately. A few chatters sub, and Doc offers to pay him 2.50 an hour.

2:52:00 Grian signs on and Doc tells Ren this is the prime suspect. It’s either him or Scar. Ren is not convinced, Grian has not been around much this week. More subs come in and Doc tells Ren the single ladies are going crazy for him. Ren sings the song. Scar was very convincing in talking about his innocence, but he might just be a much better liar than believed. Ren says maybe it was the person he least suspects. They talk about whether it might be XB or Joel. Doc doesn’t want it to be Joel. Joel is completely crazy, and if they get in a war, the server will be destroyed. Joel has no motive, though. Angry Bird or Offroad Guy are the only ones who poke the Goat with no motive.

2:55:00 Ren asks if maybe someone has a residual grudge from things that happened last season. Doc the Sand Baron says that’s ridiculous, who would be so petty as to hold a grudge past the end of the season? Ren laughs. He asks if there were any conflicts while setting up in the shopping district and Doc says no, apparently forgetting Big Salmon entirely for the moment. Usually when someone is pranking Doc, he at least knows why it is happening and whether he deserves it or not. But he’s been chilling lately and now he needs to destroy someone. Ren agrees it is a conundrum. Doc brings up the possibility of reassembling Team Star to get his revenge, but the viewers would hate it because it’s been done before. Chat is actually pretty enthusiastic about the idea.

2:56:00 Doc notices a chatter saying that Ren sounds sus. He considers this possibility. Ren says he has been very focused on his lore. Doc agrees that Ren doesn’t want to be distracted by prank wars. Ren says he and Doc have been through a lot together and he does not stray. He points out that, as promised, he not only didn’t kill False in Demise, he made sure she won. Doc agrees that his husband is loyal. Ren admits that this is starting to sound like a case of the gentleman protesting too much. Doc explains that with his mom around, he couldn’t monitor the server like he wanted to and that how the Ore Snatcher managed to strike. Ren asks to see the evidence.

2:58:00 Doc and Ren go back to the armor trim shop. Ren thinks the shop is looking very good already. Doc wants to hire Cleo to make it look like a cute boutique, but that’s a problem with the whole lawsuit thing. He shows Ren the missing block. Ren notices the loose blocks from earlier, but Doc doesn’t care about those. Doc is wondering now if there were two culprits because the first culprit took a block with powered redstone on it, which is very risky, while the most recent block removals were carefully chosen to be inactive blocks. Doc is now the most annoyed in the history of everything, and he has to admit that it would be really funny except it’s happening to him.

3:03:00 Ren advises Doc that the snatcher be snatching, the snatcher will not be replacing. He suggests that sometimes rich people get additcted to shoplifting from stores, taking things even they don’t need them. Doc asks if he’s suggesting that it actually was Cleo, and that Cleo is a kleptomaniac. He says no, but somebody has an addiction and they can’t go back. Doc says Cleo is definitely a kleptomaniac. Doc points out that people leave Ren alone,, then has to add “aside from the village people,” lest the world collapse under the weight of pranks he’d have to be ignoring from earlier in the season. Ren is too deep in the lore to desert his neighbors now. Doc has now talked himself into believing that the Glitcher is several people. Ren thinks that it feels so incredibly Cub that it probably can’t be Cub. They both pace the store.

3:05:00 Ren wants to know when Doc will get the shop open, because he has been waiting for weeks now for armor trim. Doc protests that he has been very distracted and it’s not his fault. Ren says he spent all the diamonds he had set aside for armor already. That’s fine, Doc tells him, it will only cost him sand. Doc also thinks it’s highly coincidental that once Scar opened a shop in the Shopping District, right in sight of Doc’s shop, that’s when things started disappearing. ((The timeline here is very hinky, but Doc is clearly on a roll.)) If he catches Scar at it, he’s going to chop off his arms. Ren is supportive.

3:06:00 Ren mentions the prank on the Death Scar and seems to be making some kind of point, but they are not in a group and he keeps falling out of range. Ren suggests that this may be an elaborate two-front prank by Jevin. Doc considers this, but he’s pretty sure Jev absolutely exhausted himself placing all that yellow concrete. He’s not sure he’s even seen Jev online since then. Ren says that Doc is sleeping when Jevin is online. Doc protests that there has to be a motive. There was a motive for the Death Emoji prank ((Scar put a creeper in Jevin’s house, in retaliation for Jevin killing a bunch of allays for his head shop)), but there’s no obvious motive for the Ore Snatcher but amusement. Also Jevin was very careful to leave no doubt as to who did the emoji prank, unlike the Ore Snatcher.

3:08:00 Doc muses about the time that he shot Scar out all the way to the world border without telling him he was doing it, then made him kill himself to get home. Surely Scar wouldn’t want revenge for that, would he? Ren suggests maybe Wels, who lives nearby and might have been a little torqued about the enormous goat-headed man statue appearing outside. Doc ruminates that telling him he wouldn’t rap battle with somebody living in a 2012 castle might have been a little harsh. Chat hasn’t seen Wels online lately, and they think Ren is blaming a lot of non-Ren Hermits. Ren thinks this seems especially targeted, to go after the redstone of someone who has made their name and reputation as a redstoner. It’s like going for a footballer’s ankles, he explains. “Or a porn star’s balls,” Doc agrees soberly.

3:09:50 Doc, who has possibly been down a dark hole too long, proceeds to explain his theory that 90% of his chat are single moms. Ren doesn’t even know where to begin parsing this information, especially since it takes him a minute to realize Doc is taking the piss. Now that the sub rush is over, Doc feels like the single ladies are abandoning him. Ren says that’s the story of his life. Doc says it’s difficult with the ladies, being middle-aged gamer nerds. Ren agrees, they had to spend the prime of their youths building their channels and didn’t have a chance to meet that special someone. Doc smugly tells him to speak for himself. Crushed, Ren admits he meant the royal “we.” Fs in the chat for Ren. Doc continues on in this vein, apparently not realizing that he’s being a little mean talking to a single guy about how impossible it is to date in their line of work.

3:13:00 Doc asks what Ren is cooking for dinner, then interrupts himself to point out that some of the single ladies in his chat are actually single ladies. Doc says maybe he should set up a dating service with chat. Ren says this sounds like the start of a 100-Hour Cringe Compilation that he does not want to be a part of. Doc imagines a “Dating Game” style game show where Ren says nothing but innuendos. He thinks that would go over well. Ren thinks it would be entertaining but he would never recover.

3:14:00 Doc’s mum finally appears on the stream! She speaks to him briefly in German and only glances at the stream, then leaves. Apparently she was reminding him that if he wants to cook that roast chicken today he’d better get started, because she is hungry. Doc tells Chat that he wanted to stream till he got to 5k subs again, but Chat was slow and how his mom has told him to get off the computer. He tells Ren to start streaming so he can raid in, but Ren has streamed five days in a row and needs a break. Ren sends Doc off to dinner, Doc reminds him to keep an eye on the shop and make sure nobody is stealing. If Ren catches the thief, he’ll get free armor trims all season long. Ren says if he catches the thief, he wants 500 subs. Doc is aghast. Taxes and children cost money! Ren takes off, Doc thanks the subs and donos, then says goodbye to the stream. He notices at the last minute that the overlay is not working right again, but has to leave. He raids into Martyn (which becomes its own whole thing) and ends his stream.

#hermitcraft #stream recap #docm77 #rendog #tall claims court

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