#DEFINITELY a neat workaround!

[obsessedgames505]

heya cookie; three things break my heart, ont is that sweet angel is blind ! , the other is that not so sweet at this moment angel attacked orion out of nowhere and seeing those two covered in blood was awfully sad ! the last is that my sweet corvin is a birdy now , cookie, you making me wanted an AU where he's another but "normal" nyxling =o= BUT , it'a a pretty day two ! i love it and i hope for day 3 !

^.^ oh huh by the way , i don't know if someone told you already so but where we are in the church, our character "said" "I walked through the pews fruitlessly trying to find someone, but it wasn't so bright that i was blind. i could clearly see that NODBOY was here" english is not my first language i must admit but i never heard about "Nodboy" instead of "Nobody" ? so sorry if it wasn't a mistake ^^'

Well so, have a good day/night , may the moon and the sun light your path cookie friend ( ︶ ͜ʖ ︶)

Thanks for the ask!

Don’t worry about Ravi being blind. He’s found his workarounds! He’ll be okay. He definitely shouldn’t not have attacked Orion, but hey, their two species hate each other. It’s a given. I’m a lil surprised that ppl are surprised Corvin is a bird now. I thought it would be neat. Although Corvin the Nyxling is more than possible to keep on existing, 2 characters can share the same name after all!

As for the church scene…yeah that’s just a typo 💀🫠 my bad! It’ll be fixed in a later update. Idk how me or my beta tester missed it.

[meowcats734]

(prompt response) “Depressed? Anxious? Unhappy?” The sign shouted at you, “Why not become an amorphous entity and shirk the confines of time and space? Embrace your Eldritch Nature today!”

The plan was simple, because it had to be. We had little to no idea what kind of countermeasures the Silent Peaks would inflict on people who tried to flee their little paradise, so we cheated. Sansen was still wrung out from the last time he'd gone deep into an oracular trance, but he still agreed to put his mind through the wringer of living through the same three days over and over again for our sake.

So Lucet, Sansen, Meloai, and I all gathered in the safe room's ritual circle, holding hands so that Sansen could draw on our hope. Sansen touched the paintings and carved wooden tokens that Jiaola had made for him, laid in a neat circle around him, and even though I couldn't see the hope coruscating through his soulspace, his straightened back and sharp, clear gaze told me he was ready.

Then he set down a wooden pair of glasses and, without touching them, carefully mimed lifting them to his face.

"What's he doing?" Meloai whispered.

I concentrated on my soulsight, slipping for a moment between realspace and soulspace, and in Sansen's soulspace, I saw him lift the memory of the glasses to his face. It was a technique I'd only seen once before, but intuitively, I knew what he was doing.

"He's using the memory of the glasses to channel the spell," I whispered back. "He doesn't need to open a massive rift into the Plane of Elemental Possibility—he just needs to be able to see the future. It's more energy-efficient to make two tiny rifts over his eyes than a larger one further away."

And as I spoke, I felt Sansen tug at our souls, and the future seemed a little less bright as hope drained from my soulspace. But it was worth it. A dizzying rift into another timeline coalesced and stabilized in the form of two swirling lenses, held firm by the memory of a pair of glasses. Sansen's eyes flickered, darting left and right as future after future sang to him. His brow furrowed into a scowl, and his jaw began to twitch.

"That doesn't look good," Lucet muttered. 

"We're supposed to stay hopeful," Meloai said.

"You can't just force yourself to feel hope," I grumbled. "Come on, just shush and let Sansen do his thing."

As I spoke, I noticed something begin to... change. Sansen flinched, then started whispering something. Over and over again, he murmured beneath his breath, and I couldn't help but lean in to hear him say:

Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll do better next time. I'll keep them safe. I'm so, so sorry.

"Sansen?" I hesitantly asked. "Are you o—"

Sansen jerked back, swearing, and clutched his head, waving away the memory of the glasses and letting the tiny rifts unravel. Lucet yelped in surprise; Meloai blurred with clockwork precision to keep him from falling. I just waited for Sansen to come back from the trance, and though it was a slow, dazed process, come back he eventually did.

"I kept dying," he finally managed to say, "because our future held something so deadly it killed me just by looking at it." He managed a weak smile. "That... that's new, at least."

Meloai frowned. "Wait. If you looked at a future that kills you if you see it... why aren't you dead?"

Sansen tiredly waved a hand at me, so I took over to explain. "In order to look multiple days into the future, you kind of have to cheat. The amount of hope you'd need to directly look three days into the future is obscene; maybe the Peaks could manage it with a specially-trained battlechoir, but our ragtag little band definitely can't."

"But there's a workaround," Sansen said, pushing himself to his feet and giving Meloai a grateful nod. "If I can look five seconds into the future, I can choose to look into a timeline where my future self is also looking five seconds into the future, and telling me what he sees."

"And you can chain that until you reach the point in the future you want," Meloai said, eyes lighting up. 

"Well, the inaccuracies introduced are exponentially compounding with each link in the chain, so I try to make the links as large as possible. But yes, it's a very potent oracular technique. It also provides some insulation from... whatever one of my future selves died looking at."

The four of us traded nervous glances.

"And what would that be?" Meloai finally asked.

Sansen shrugged. "Not a damn clue. But whatever my future self saw through the rift, it must've been horrible. He started vomiting and bleeding and seizing up, and..." He trailed off at our horrified expressions. "What? What is it?"

"Iola," I hissed, and it was more a curse than a name.

###

Class the next day was an awkward, fearful thing. I sat down in Ritual Magic 201, in the same room as the boy who killed us in some timeline that never was, and wondered if firing a frostbolt through his head now would be worth getting mind-wiped if it meant letting Lucet and Meloai and Sansen go free.

"Now, class," Mr. Ganrey said, "I'd like to share an exciting opportunity with you all. Thanks to an exciting new legislation from the Silent Parliament, there are some new opportunities for those of us on the home front to assist with the war. Thanks to our angelic partners, I'm glad to announce a brand-new way for excited young soldiers to become combat-ready in no time."

Mr. Ganrey stepped to the side, and a rift between planes opened, letting a pale-white agglutination of flesh step into the classroom. Somehow, the Angel of Arrogance reminded me of a half-melted candle.

"Thanks to new advancements in our understanding of human soul fragment absorption," the Angel of Arrogance said, "we have discovered that it is now possible to hybridize a soulspace entity and a realspace creature, resulting in a soul capable of feats of witchcraft hitherto unimagined. Preliminary animal trials and oracular divinations have yielded promising data, and we are now looking for human volunteers."

The Angel of Arrogance went on about the possible benefits of joining the Eldritch Initiative, but I had eyes for only one person. One gleeful elf who'd been raring for a chance to join in on the war since the day it had begun.

Iola's soul twitched with corrupted glee, and I knew I had to stop him from joining the Eldritch Initiative before he killed us all.

###

"Hi, I'm here to inquire about the Eldritch Initiative?" I asked, tentatively sidling into the... distressingly organic clinic in the center of the Silent City. Pulses of power languorously pumped across its skin—its walls, I told myself, buildings have walls—and the amorphous blob of pale white flesh that served as its receptionist.

"Wonderful, wonderful! We could use every hand, tentacle, and other grasping appendage we can get. May I start by asking how you heard about it?"

"OH THAT WAS ME," the sign from outside shrieked. Its fleshy, bulbous lips looked like they were going to pop, and for a heartbeat, I had an insane urge to take a pin to them. "I SHOUTED AT THEM LIKE YOU TOLD ME TO SHOUT AND FOR SOME REASON INSTEAD OF RUNNING AWAY THIS ONE CAME HERE."

"Er, yeah, I have a... a 'friend' who came here earlier. I was wondering if—"

"Well, hold your horses, thestrals, Bearers of the Apocalypse, or other metaphysical equestrian-equivalents!" I got a distinct impression that the blob at the desk was trying to smile. "You can't leave—"

"What?" I burst out.

"—without hearing about the wide array of possible benefits that the Eldritch Initiative can have for you. Ask your doctor if becoming a demon from outside realspace is right for you," the receptionist finished smoothly, as if I hadn't said anything.

"WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP INTERRUPTING AT THAT PART?" The sign screamed. I still wasn't sure how its locomotion worked, to be honest, but it had managed to find a way to wriggle closer to me while I wasn't looking.

"Use your inside-spacetime voice, A." Ugh, all the soulspace entities around here had such bizarre names. This one was pronounced 'Albin,' too. Like that wasn't going to get confusing. "You see, we here at the Eldritch Initiative don't just offer suppression of undesirable emotions and enhancement of Academic emotions. We actually offer an entirely original broadening of your emotional spectrum!"

Uh... what? "Like... as in... uh... no, honestly, I have no idea what that's like."

"We have a helpful procedure to explain." The receptionist elongated their body—or maybe contracted spacetime—and pulled over a cup of what I hoped was water. "This, here, represents the spectrum of all humanly possible emotions." Then they drank the water, gulping it down, satisfied. "And that represents the scope of the emotions you'll have after your partnership with the Eldritch Initiative. Any questions?"

"Yes," I said slowly. "What... what on Earth does that mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything on Earth! You have to transcend realspace in order to have access to most of these emotions, after all. In addition to normal human feelings such as happiness, relief, awambuk, and ikstuarpok, we offer expanded emotions, normally inaccessible to single sapient minds, such as: Humber. Nage. Dorcelessness. Kindness. Ponnish. Harfam. Loric..."

The receptionist just kept going, and I found my vision swimming. I tried to stand, but the receptionist's droning voice and the pulsating heat of the room blended together, and I found myself tipping over—

"Andric. Varination. Kyne."

"UH. HEY. THE HUMAN DOESN'T SEEM SO GOOD."

"Trantiveness. Teluge." The receptionist paused. "Oh, dear. Was that too much for—"

And I blacked out, squelching on the tongue of the building's mouth.

###

"I'm scared," I admitted. "No, scratch that—I'm fucking terrified."

"They wouldn't let me stop him," Lucet admitted. She'd tried after I'd—somewhat embarrassingly—fainted with fear as the receptionist rattled off the monstrosities that Iola would have access to now that he'd gone from human to elf to eldritch fusion. "Maybe... maybe we can't leave. Maybe we just have to hunker down and try to survive."

"Yeah, and maybe the Silent Peaks are going to stop mind-wiping us, harvesting our emotions for war, and getting increasingly close to letting Iola murder us on principle," Meloai said.

Nobody really had anything to say in response to that.

"Iola's got it out for me," I admitted, "and it's pretty fucking clear that the administration no longer cares if their golden boy decides to do some vigilante justice on the troublemaking Redlander. I'm done for if I stay."

"Being a Fell witch isn't much more popular around here, either," Lucet said. "And... I don't want to think about what Iola would do if he got his hands on me again."

"According to your school's terminology, I'm technically a demon," Meloai added. "Iola's going to, ah, 'disassemble' me if I don't get out of here as quickly as possible."

"People have been giving Jiaola and I a blind eye ever since the Redlanders became the city's newest punching bag," Sansen said, "but I'm no fool. I've seen this before. Once they've ran out of newcomers to hate, they'll fall back on old prejudices. It's certain death if I stay; at least there's a chance if we make a break for it while we still can."

"I can take us through the Plane of Elemental Falsehood," I said. Of the planes I had access to, it was the only one that was remotely close to being safe for us to traverse. "Unless Iola's got an attunement to insecurity, he shouldn't be able to follow us there."

Meloai grimaced. "We'll have to deal with the mimics if we route through Falsehood."

"We'd already get our asses killed dealing with Iola Classic. I don't want to try our luck against Iola, Eldritch Edition. We can handle mimics."

"I'll scan the future to see how true that is," Sansen said, wearily getting to his feet. I grimaced—it was obvious that seeing his death over and over was taking a toll on the old man—but we had no choice. If we were to flee the Silent Peaks, we needed every edge we could get.

"You've packed everything you need?" I asked Lucet. I was pretty sure Meloai didn't have any belongings, anyway. 

Lucet nodded and was about to speak when Sansen, pale-faced, burst up from the safe room, swearing under his breath. That... that was not what you wanted to see from an oracle.

"He knows," Sansen said, panting for breath. "He's already coming. Iola's already here."

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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[lomappreciationblog]

I was going to make a collection of posts regarding some interesting characters you can meet in the Underworld, but before that, I think I have to talk about Pokiehl's explanation of it in the Diddle's Had It! quest.

This might seem a bit weird because the optional meeting you can have with Pokiehl in Lumina, he asks this:

And you have three responses:

If you choose yes....

So it seems contradictory that in Diddle's Had It, Pokiehl says the Underworld is for souls who cling to life, instead. (I'm not sure what Pokiehl say to the other two responses, I'll see in another playthrough!)

But Diddle's Had It! kind of explains the two things he says.

Yes, the Underworld is no place for the living because if you do go there without the proper steps, you will turn into a Shadole, amd will no longer be able to return to your previous form, effectively erasing your existence.

At the same time, the Underworld isn't the end place for souls - it seems to be indicated in some dialogues that in Fa'Diel, souls can get reborn, and the only non-Shadole characters in the Underworld are souls who, for some reason or another, are clinging to life.

Rather neatly, this also explains characters who appear....and don't appear in the Underworld.

So, some speculation and thoughts about this below, but warning: major spoilers for all three major story arcs! I will discuss characters who die in the Jumi Arc and the Star-Crossed Lovers Arc!

The most obvious example of this "souls clinging to life" is in the Dragon Arc, what with Larc and Drakonis chilling out in the Underworld needing their unfinished business to be done lol.

Larc because he wants to see his sister Sierra again, and Drakonis because he is a dumb dragon wanting to take over the world and also he's obviously evil, lol. In this arc, you kill Akravator, Jajara, and Larc himself, but you don't meet their souls mostly because Drakonis absorbed them, but also because for the duration of The Crimson Dragon quest, the Underworld is temporarily replaced by Drakonis's castle, The Flames. Once Drakonis is defeated, all three are freed, and you can even choose to rematch Akravator at Norn Peaks if you wish.

So why didn't these characters stay dead? Presumably being a Dragon of order gives them loopholes to come back, but also none of these characters wanted to die, so they don't actually belong in the Underworld. Well, except for Larc because of the whole dragon-dragoon curse and even then he seems to have found a workaround.

Now for the Jumi Arc - as this story progresses three Jumi will be killed. Rubens, Esmeralda and Diana will fall to Sandra's hand but...if you chose to go out of your way, you can find all three of them in the Underworld, in separate rooms. Rubens and Esmeralda talk to the player character (which is ouch, bittersweet) while Diana reverted to her statue form, but will make her core gleam and blink if you talk to her.

There's another neat part to this - you will get additional interactions if you bring either Pearl or Elazul along! Developers' foresight is always so cool to see in action. I'll detail their appearances more in a separate post, but again, keep in mind what Pokiehl said. These three characters are definitely dead, but despite the circumstances of their deaths, they still hope for the Jumi to come back and so are clinging to life - and their faith can be rewarded once you finish the Teardrop Crystal!

Now for the Star-Crossed Lovers Arc, and this is where the speculation comes in:

At the end of this arc, Irwin is killed (...by us) and appears in the Underworld, where he and Matilda meet and have one final talk. At the end, Irwin disappears...where he goes we cannot truly know, but he did say he wished to be reborn as a demon again, though my interpretation of this scene is that he wasn't being totally honest....but that's a long, loooooong, discussion for another day of my character analyses for the Star Crossed Lovers Arc.

But this much is clear - considering what Pokiehl said about the Underworld? Irwin accepted his death - he wasn't a soul who clung onto life.

But there is something else...

Depending on who you side with, either Daena or Escad will die at the conclusion of the Star-Crossed Lovers quest. You'll be forced to go with someone here, even if you choose the "I can't pick a side/This doesn't involve me" option, the game will just choose one for you and the fight goes on. Whoever you side with, you have to defeat the other, which presumably kills them - because they will NEVER appear again after this quest.

I always side with Daena because I think she makes the most sense in this whole arc, but I did accidentally pick Escad's side on one playthrough, but it's been a while since it happened.

Oh, and additionally, in the following quest, Heaven's Gate, you finally get to fight Irwin, and the game again provides a choice whether you want to go with Escad or Daena, whoever survived with you in Star-Crossed Lovers. You can choose NOT to accompany them and go by yourself, or go with another companion (Bud, Lisa, etc. - which again, results in an additional interaction, because your companion will react to Irwin! I think I brought Bud once and he went "You're not destroying the world!" or something.)

If you do decide not to accompany Escad/Daena...when you reach the top of Lucemia, you'll get to see them die by Irwin's hand. And I do mean die, I'm pretty sure you will also never see Escad/Daena if you let this happen. But if you did accompany them, once the quest is over you can find the last survivor in Gato and make them come with you like usual.

So why am I bringing this up? Because in any case, whoever dies, Escad or Daena (or both if you chose to not accompany them)...they don't appear in the Underworld. I'm sure I checked this in the HD version - I sided with Daena, again, so it was Escad who died in my playthrough, and I checked through the Underworld to see if he was there, but he isn't.

Also makes sense, because Matilda also won't come looking for whoever died at the conclusion of Heaven's Gate, she just goes to Irwin. And considering Matilda gained something like omniscience/omnipotence, I'm pretty sure the fact that she doesn't mention Escad/Daena meant that whoever died in the previous quests is also absent from the Underworld.

So what I'm thinking it means is this:

If it was Daena who died at Star-Crossed Lovers, she wouldn't stick around the Underworld because she either has been driven to despair by the events of the arc, or she accepted that her wishes for Matilda weren't what Matilda wished for herself. In any case, she doesn't see any reason to stick around.

If it was Escad...things get interesting. Remember, Escad practically grew up in the Underworld - when Irwin stole Matilda's elemental powers (which Matilda wanted), Escad tried to interfere and accidentally got transported to the Underworld for his trouble. There, he spent ten years training with Olbohn to wield a blade. So Escad must know all about Shadoles and souls staying on.

Also, while I do think Escad is a large part of the fault in this arc (not that he was wrong, but again, that's for the character analysis) you get to see why he's such a knight templar in wanting to exterminate demonic/evil creatures, I do think he went a little loopy staying in the Underworld so long. Everyone needs therapy in this arc, really, but anyway - I do find it interesting that if Escad died....he doesn't reappear at the Underworld.

It seems out of character for him to stop fighting Irwin simply because he died, and as the Jumi characters, Larc and Drakonis show, being dead doesn't stop you from clinging onto your unfinished business in Fa'Diel. But Escad does stop fighting - so either he gave in to despair when he gets killed, or he realized that his grudge wasn't worth fighting for, anymore. So perhaps, he also got peace once he died, for real.

[astranauticus]

post mortem for my orv animatic bc i have lots of thoughts and yall are gonna hear all of them (that is a threat)

first is the obligatory special thanks/plagiarism declaration section but a lot of the shots in this are inspired by the original changgwi lyric video which like. please watch it there's a reason this song is a classic animatic song on bilibili like the music is good but the video definitely helped. also speaking of bilibili, special shoutout to this arknights chongyue animatic that introduced me to the song that will haunt the next 8 months of my life!

the original inspiration was the thought that the verse of the spirit telling the story of its own death felt very yjh coded but it took like another week of stewing on it to have the idea of using the final chorus for the dkos arc which was the moment i decided i have to actually make this thing

going strictly by when i started putting pen to paper (pencil to ipad screen? whatever) this took almost exactly 5 months since i created the first drafts in february but the first 3 months ish from february until may were also my school semester so. most of the progress (id say about >60%) was done in the last two months of me working on this every moment i wasnt at work (or playing project sekai, for some reason)

also! funny little detail but counting the drafts and some discarded frames my procreate stack for this thing has exactly 49 artworks in it! neat little easter egg i guess (yeah 51 wouldve been more fitting but whatever)

this fully slipped by both me (at 2am) and my friend whom i sent the finished version to (fighting the flu) but in the final edit i didn't actually include the second half of the last lyric?? it's 'i will take you to the mountain god' i apparently just wrote 'i will take you' and never finished the rest LMAO

speaking of the lyrics i dont speak korean and im not a huge fan of most english translations of this song that exists so on multiple occasions i was so tempted to just use the chinese cover someone on bilibili did because then i'd at least be confident i know where the fucking line breaks were (there's one line at the end where im pretty sure i didn't edit on the line breaks correctly but that was more of an intentional compromise because the timings would've been off otherwise. anyway) tbh the only reason i didnt do that is the atmosphere and delivery of the original song is. really unbeatable like the cover's also pretty good but it doesn't quite achieve the same effect

also speaking of things i fucked up im aware i drew sys in the wrong outfit for the dkos fight but like. ok full disclosure my orv reference folder is a complete mess (theres like 400+ images in there. for some reason) so on net ive gotten character outfits wrong while working on this thing like at least 3 times bc id just grab a random webtoon screenshot from my folder and go w it. it's just that by the time i realised i fucked up i'd already finished drawing all of sys's frames and i was too lazy to go back and change all of them LMAO

anyway yeah some other random things i wanted to whinge about:

there's a lot of effects i wanted to do that didn't quite come across due to. lack of skill/time/patience/all of the above but the one im really annoyed about is the yhk postchorus bit with the 3 circles bc. first off i think i drew those while halfway dozing off on the train to school once because uh. yeah

anyway poor drawing aside id really wanted to recreate the sort of. drawn-in effect on the circles and lines that the original lyric video had but i could NOT for the life of me figure out a way to execute that in capcut so. here we are (also you cant put transitions on overlays in capcut so that's why those also looked so bad. youre welcome)

honestly my timeline for this in capcut looks pretty ridiculous bc if you want to do word by word animations/effects you need to pay for the pro version so my workaround was just to have like five thousand text layers with 1-2 words on it each (do not recommend btw)

speaking of the text im a moron so i kinda forgot to account for the text when drawing frames and wow you can tell. yeah next time im just hand writing the text fuck this

and i have some more thoughts that are. mild to moderate webtoon spoilers so past this will be the spoiler warning line

__________________________________________________________

actually my original plan was to upload this the day dkos dies in the webtoon but a. i genuinely did think it was gonna be yesterday like i dont pay for the early access episodes so i was just kinda going off orvtwt LMAO b. i could feel myself burning out on this like the last few frames i drew for this were fucking dogshit so i figured either i finish it soon or i wont finish it at all

i will probably still draw something for dkos' death day though for those who celebrate (basically when i was thumbnailing for one of the frames in this i ended up with one that didnt fit the video aspect ratio at all but still looks pretty good so im promoting it to a full drawing. so look forward to that)

like for an idea of how fucking sick of this shit i was by like. last week pretty much like for the last few frames of the dkos fight i straight up forgot to draw dkos' wings and had to add them in halfway through editing last night. like that's how fucking out of it i was by then lmaoo

looking back its actually kinda funny cuz the whole put this up when dkos dies thing was my plan since february but i had literally no way of knowing when that would be especially since the webtoon stopped going with the novel chapter numbers exactly (i could.. guesstimate but my original estimation was in june so yknow. real useful) but like i can find evidence of me panicking about that deadline since may. why did i do that

given that deadline i knew i cant really include stuff from the novel past the dkos arc but man. the amount of times i wanted to use something from later (ESPECIALLY 1863 arc). i actually have another idea i want to test out thats like full epilogue spoilers partially because working on this for so long made me realise i really want to make more epilogue content <- what

yknow how i mentioned discarded frames yeah i had to draw dkos' death 3 times because the first two compositions just never quite panned out. i mean the current one is also pretty unreadable with the colour scheme but trust me the previous ones were way worse christ alive

[green-thunder1]

More MK was not banished during the dark matter trilogy propaganda (and ways to make the idea that he was more believable) because I have decided to interpret the crap out of these characters and the franchises whole map like I'm possessed by a very livid DS light novel protagonist.

Remember the battleship? Remember the Meta-Knights? The group of guys who named their group after the guy? The group who were each individually named by Meta Knight himself (in the light novels)? The ones who defied orders, not in spite of their loyalty to their leader, but because of it? Even if he told them not to try again, they would've over and over.

Would they not have been exiled if he was? And, more of a personal bias I just have the distinct feeling none would be willing to return. Captain Vul, however, is an enigma among the crew, and of the 2 not named after weapons, is harder for me to understand. That is a mathematical error not even anime Dedede is dumb enough to make, so have you figured a workaround for this? Something like MK refusing to allow them to get further involved in this and being absolutely firm and unwavering on it will resolve this and the previously problem entirely.

Speaking of, now we need to go to Meta Knightmare theory and Dedede's consistent "jerk with a heart of gold" characterization. They go hand in hand in this.

The choice to make Dedede, a character whos been depicted outside of the anime (where he's a parody of Japanese politicians) as a bit of a tsundere, as a complete ass at the beginning clearly means you missed a major part of him as a character. He was still kind despite his stupid decisions. And Meta Knightmare theory says he was willing to exile someone prone to, and even traumatized by nightmares from the one place (that he knows of) where he wouldn't have to deal with that problem. He would not do that. Also the theorists write him flipping on a dime and that's definitely a more Meta Knight trait (again, light novels). If you think I'm about to say "he isn't dumb enough to exile someone for treason when they could just commit treason elsewhere," you're wrong. I absolutely believe Dedede is dumb enough for that at least.

Now Meta Knight himself is a bit complex to understand, even for me, so we'll skip to the part where I explain the map. First, we need to know that maps labeled Popstar and maps labeled Dreamland are intentionally distinct throughout the series. You know what DL3's map says? Popstar! It ain't Dreamland!

Ironically enough, it's the subgame that created this theory that directly contradicts it. It'd be so much more believable if it was just Kirby's Adventure before Amazing Mirror.

At least nobody has grossly misinterpreted Squeak Squad, the blatant Meta Knight helps King Dedede game, yet. At least it can't get any dumber in that regard. Of course, it might even happen by the time this post goes up, which would be hilarious.

Maybe someday someone will figure out a way to make it actually work and fully characterize all the scenes we'd need for it. That'd be neat, I'd really like this theory to work someday.

[mayasaura]

Great question!! And one that does not have a definitive answer in the text, though the mystery is alluded to by Silas making the assumption that there are infants and young children on the Ninth, despite him already knowing about the massacre.

There are two prevailing theories I'm familiar with.

First is very similar to your partner's; that the thanergetic fallout of the ritual used to create Harrow caused all the current inhabitants of the Ninth to become infertile. Thanergetic exposure is why necromancers struggle to reproduce, and the entire Ninth was exposed to a fuckton of thanergy that night.

Second is that there's a missing generation. A whole demographic of people older than Ortus and younger than the Reverend Mother who just.... no longer exist. Or no longer exist on the Ninth.

The first theory seems more likely for its simplicity, and for how neat the cutoff is. The creche massacre marks the end of children on the Ninth, the radiation from the event ending any current pregnancies and making future conception impossible.

The second theory is supported by Ortus' comparative youth standing out as unusual, and Harrow's offhand mention in Harrow the Ninth that by the time she was ten all but two of the womb-possessing population of the Ninth were too old to have children. The youngest members of the Ninth congregation should have been around twenty-nine at that time. So basically.... what the fuck?

For proponents of the missing generation theory, it's basically open season to guess at what may have happened to them. Was there a civil war following the massacre that no one ever talks about, and both Harrow and Gideon are too young to remember? If so, is that why everyone left on the Ninth is an obsessive cultist? Was there a mass exodus? Did everyone of recruitment age join the Cohort to gtfo? Was there an attempted mass exodus, and Crux bombed the ships? Who knows! Maybe Tamsyn Muir, but she's not telling!

Edit: Another point in favor of the first theory is that it also works as a Fisher King allegory. The Fisher King, King Pellam, was wounded in the groin and rendered sterile, and his kingdom became a barren wasteland to match. Pelleamena was unable to conceive, and the workaround she developed doomed her kingdom to be without any future children.

so, my partner read gideon the ninth in a single day (which is great and all their takes are correct). among other questions i had disappointing answers to (mostly "no we never learn what's wrong with the eighth house"), there was one i had no answer for: why did no one on the ninth have another kid after the two hundred died to make harrow?

their reasoning: "infants existing suggests that there are at least a few people of childbearing age who could potentially have had at least one other child, unless the gas that killed the kids made everyone infertile, i dunno"

[positiverpgsupport]

I'm making a horror game and since it dosen't use a battle system I've changed the armour slots into what the character is thinking I've also recently changed the skills as well except I turned them into a general character information area I.E Health, height, etc. Thought it was a neat work around

[followthebluebell]

Good luck with Skyrim! The Anniversary Edition update on the Switch isn't actually technically vanilla. It includes a bunch of "official" mods, some maid by well known fan modders like Elianora, Hothtrooper and Trainwiz, others by unknown developers. Neither Survival nor Fishing was actually in the original release back in 2011. I started another character recently on the Switch, the quality of the new content unfortunately seems to be quite varied. Also the update introduced some new bugs that made some quests impossible to start. So far I've only encountered one's completely broken like that on Solstheim, the island of the Dragonborn DLC, and one of them was a very minor quest, but unfortunately the other is the start of a short chain that gets you the only obtainable house on the island. Anyway, long story short, Skyrim definitely lives up to its buggy reputation, even 11 years later. I highly recommend UESP, if there's a workaround possible, that website will explain it

my playthrough was going very poorly and i couldn't figure out why. i didn't remember the game being this difficult. >> but then i learned how to level up and things are going MUCH more smoothly now! c:

and that's pretty neat! I didn't realize unofficial mods were included in the game now. Solstheim DLC was my favorite part of Morrowind and I really liked it the last time I played through Skyrim, so fingers crossed it doesn't glitch out for me.

[blacktobackmesa]

Why SpeedrunStreamer!Bubby?

So, if you’ve read the Streamman series or seen my posts, you’ll know that I decided that after being extracted from the game and starting a new life in a custom program, Bubby starts doing speedrun streams on Twitch. This may seem like a strange character choice, especially when Bubby’s not exactly the character most closely tied to video games. As such, I thought I’d share some details about where this concept came from and how this goes down.

Canon Basis

Bubby may not talk about games and game culture all the time, but he's not completely tech illiterate. He's one of the few characters in HLVRAI who uses the term "pog" in its modern context (though both characters do so incorrectly)

Pertaining to speedrunning: the Rocket Launch scene. We don't know exactly what Bubby sees when he takes the rocket into "outer space", but given the outcome of Coomer clearing the skybox earlier, it can be inferred that Bubby catches a glimpse of what's outside of the map. Unlike Coomer, however, Bubby doesn't respond to this with outward fear. In fact, he's fascinated, and chooses to "go back" for another look. Game breakage does not upset him, it just makes him curious.

"I need to perfect my run."

Extrapolation

After living in the facility for ?? years with a constant schedule and job to do, Bubby's going to need to occupy his time now that he's more or less retired. He loves trains, so he's probably one of those guys with a model railway in his basement, but he's also got a hunger for learning new things and accomplishing great tasks.

One of the ways he's coming to terms with being an AI is by taking advantage of what he can do that someone not living in a computer can't. It doesn't come as naturally to him as it does to Benrey and G-Man, who can more or less warp reality, and he doesn't have the same knack with computers as Darnold.

Then one night when they're all watching shit together Gordon shows them the notorious Super Mario 64 Watch Out for Rolling Rocks 1/2 A-Press explanation video. The flood of technical terms and methods makes Bubby feel like he did when he was on the rocket, and he needs to see more. New Obsession Unlocked

Bubby is used to attention. He doesn't need to be the center of the world all the time (though he definitely did when he was younger) but he's accustomed to being in groups. Now he's living in a neighborhood with a small handful of people. He needs interaction with other people, but there just aren't really other people around. Joining an online community lets him talk to people, and doing so by setting up a twitch channel means he can interact with people on his own terms by showing off doing things he likes.

Gotta make money to buy new games somehow. Plus he wants to feel like he's living independently and making his own living for once

Results

Depending on the game Bubby will do his runs either playing traditionally or by physically inserting himself into the game ACAB Stream-style. Both require very different skillsets and a lot of practice! He gets the best viewership for the physical ones, but they're a lot more taxing on him so he chooses them carefully.

Darnold does producer work for him. Look he's the Computers Guy and it's neat work.

He's set a couple WRs in various categories. Unfortunately, he does not qualify for most leaderboards, as it's up for debate if his runs count as scripted or tool assisted. Since, y'know. He's a program.

"Tool assisted? The fuck did you call me?"

As a workaround he made his own category, Bubby%. This has not been accepted by many leaderboards since competition is nonexistent.

He recognizes that many of his viewers are there for the novelty of watching someone they don't perceive as human play video games. Sadly, he's used to that sort of perception, but at least that means it's not a deal breaker.

For every person who sees him as a curiosity for being an AI, there's at least one other who sees him as a curiosity for being over 65 and playing, like, Super Metroid and Spelunky. And another viewer who thinks he's a vtuber hoax but likes the content.

Not all of his streams are speedruns, he does some casual stuff too. Sometimes he'll fuck around with party games with Coomer or do gmod stuff with Benrey.

He didn't tell Gordon about his channel for several months. Not for any personal reasons, he just likes to have secrets.

His chat has a running joke of speculating when he'll finally stream Half Life. He cracks a lot of jokes about it, but he's never going to do it. That experience is something extremely personal, and he's not going through it for someone's entertainment. Not again.

[bananagrin]

Here are a couple of L&S gremlin-experiment headcanons and ideas that disregard some canon

Stitch and 627 both sink like rocks because of their bone and muscle mass. This is a flaw of their superstrength; the materials they generate to make their bodies so powerful, fast and tough is also quite dense and heavy.

Reuben is sturdy, but isn’t indestructible like Stitch. But unlike Stitch, he does have rapid regenerative healing. Jumba marked the healing ability as a failure, and replaced that ability with indestructibility in future versions, for two reasons: the first reason is that the side effect of super-healing is an overactive metabolism - 625 requires massive amounts of nutrition, even when he’s not using the healing factor. The second is that healing does not negate pain, which leads to the experiment avoiding dangerous or strenuous circumstances altogether. (Additionally, Turo, Jumba’s home planet, does not have large bodies of water, and has a weaker gravitational pull, so indestructibility’s side effect of density is less of a hassle compared to regeneration’s metabolism.) Relatedly, Reuben can swim! Definitely not very well, but he can. Even if his superstrength means thicker muscles, he isn’t so heavy that the muscle can’t support itself, unlike his younger cousins. His swimming still looks a lot like flailing though.

The antennae on Stitch and 627 function less like an insect’s antennae and more like a cat’s whiskers, as well as sense heat like a snake and read electromagnetic waves like an eel. (Reuben doesn’t have antennae; instead, the brown-capped “fur” on his head extend into spines.)

Crowds cause the feral programming of the experiments to trigger - they do have minor destructive instincts beforehand, but in cities they’ll rampage. It also causes them to have a disregard for everything outside of this programming, making it impossible to hide them. (I love that Stitch & Ai had Stitch transform like a werewolf when he entered a city? That’s a great idea, but I’d make him more alien and monstrous, rather than just... bigger.) Also, Reuben does has this programming as well, despite his laidback attitude; that snarling when his pod was rehydrated wasn’t for show! He just personally doesn’t care much for it, he doesn’t see the point of Jumba’s objective. Why cause chaos when you can watch TV?

627 has a bunch of cool abilities, both new and old, but the faults of the old design weren’t fixed. 627 was kind of a rush job - “experimental” is the key word - he wasn’t really meant to be the ultimate perfect chaos gremlin, more of a test run for new features. He is bigger than Stitch so as to be more powerful, but it’s also because he has so many extra accessories to fit. More limbs, more organs, more teeth. He was also programmed to find malicious chaos fun rather than just having a feral instinct, in order to avoid another early retirement a la Stitch or Reuben. The hypothesis was that this would provide extra incentive, but this workaround ultimately failed.

Reuben was first activated on Turo, and spent his days being Jumba’s lab assistant - this much is canon. But he also already knows most of Jumba’s experiments, either from browsing Jumba’s files or from first-hand experience. He just doesn’t want to put work into helping Gantu, because again, he doesn’t see a point to it.

Jumba sampled some DNA from alien creatures, some of it was invented, and he even used his own DNA. It’s not a coincidence that the faces of some of the experiments resemble Jumba’s - low squinted eyes, wide mouth and large teeth, exact same nose. (For 628, who will always be purely a fanon character since their pod wasn’t ever activated, it’d be neat if Jumba took cues from some of Earth’s animals, specifically ones found on Kauai.)

Experiments take a while to create, even for a technologically advanced mad scientist. The amount created per year varies, but setting the bar at one experiment per 3 months, that would be 4 experiments per year. 600 experiments divided by 4 = 150 years. That’s probably a loose estimate but either way, Jumba’s gotta be kind of older than anticipated... He is an alien.

[clavissionary-position]

it's much more fun and inmediately-gratifying to write in terms of random scenes instead of consecutive chapters. as a reader though, it is possibly super-confusing 😄

a sort-of workaround is writing a scene that acts as a hub that you network other scenes into. It's a little different from chaining interesting scenes together, but both tactics employed in tandem should ideally be a net-plus.

but the idea is that you're already invested in this one neat scene, so it's easier to dive deeper into the circumstances surrounding it.

so it's really more akin to the snowflake method, but more scene-centric than overarching-plot-centric. definitely more for discovery-writers than outliners I imagine?

im just thinking out loud for what I want to do for my own writing

[solomonish]

My solution to the Asmo jealousy problem you've proposed (if you consider a threesome out of the question):

One thing that's particularly important to Solomon is his role as a protector/guide of humanity as a whole.

It's interesting because a big part of being a teacher is to circumvent mortality - you might not live forever, but your knowledge can outlive you by many times, if you pass it on to another.

Solomon and MC share their humanity, but they could also share a unique mentor/student bond - culminating in MC themselves choosing to become a teacher, to pass on their knowledge as their legacy to their heirs (their own children, students, colleagues - whoever).

This is a uniquely human thing that seems to be a considerable part of Solomon's identity, and it's something he and Asmo just will never ever share.

Asmo cannot be a part of Solomon's life - and, indeed, the greater purpose to which Solomon devotes his life - because he's simply not built that way, it's not who he is.

But you can. You're a human. You can pass on so much to a student; morals, biases, ways of thinking, ways of life, let alone all your knowledge and wisdom.

And as long as your teachings survive, there's something left of you in this world, something Asmo cannot compare to. Something that Solomon would probably actively, and proudly, work to carry on.

I think it's a neat tie into Solomon's roots as an academic, and his whole "mentor/apprentice" thing he has going on. It only works for an MC who's also an academic, but with Solomon as a teacher, he'd definitely be able to find at least one field of research that you could get passionate about.

It doesn't have to be important, it just has to be there. All wisdom is valuable, after all!

Ofc if I'm the one writing I would 100% just make MC immortal LMAO but this felt like a possibly emotionally satisfying workaround for the narrative you were probably going around, hope it makes sense!

this does!! dw!

and yeah that's true! and i do really like this reading, that there's something innately human about living on through things when you physically cannot live on. i do like this interpretation ehehe~

u read on my twitter why i'm like this see I like the idea of MC becoming immortal but I also just want it to be done with angst. Cause like my MC is me and if I were to be immortal I'd have to watch my siblings die and cut myself out of their lives if I were to never age and that HURTS. Not to mention a lot of people ahahah totally not projecting again have like mental illnesses that would make immortality suck ass.

(CW depression talk)

Like I'm kind of morbidly fascinated in how depression (and how it manifests in me) and immortality would work. Not in a way that teaches healthy coping but just. Can you imagine living forever when you didn't see a point in living out your original lifespan? like never wanting to actually die but definitely not wanting to extend what was already so painful? idk i have a lot of extremely personal thoughts about it and part of me wants to write a fic but the other part of me is holding me back bc i do NOT want to spill my guts to the internet lol

[ninbinary]

so coming off anon for this cause i had mainly been worried how youd react lmao. i think kenku would actually learn to speak faster than human kids, since they can just parrot back whatever you say! eventually older kenku would have their own "voice" as they get more skilled at combining vocal clips, but i think the main issue actual kenku would run into is not understanding what theyre repeating at first! the same way a parrot will yell fuck over and over, you have to be really careful about what you say around baby kenku. it would be a definite inconvenience until you had a large bank of words to use, but i imagine you could get someone to like, read out a dictionary for you as a young kenku, and youd be pretty set with vocab and youd just need to worry about tone. also on culture, im making an entire world from creation myth to how dragons breathe fire, and with multiple planets that are earth size im able to diversify pretty well. although i have lumped animal-folk into one big group because holy shit theres so fucking many

Oh my golly, I appreciate the reaching out again, de-cloaked! I'll reply to this in 2 parts:

1) Kenku-a-go-go (gu?): it's definitely pretty weird, in intreguing ways: the "not Grok-ing language" thing is neat, the Parroting is neat -- I'm not sure how it all comes together (in official or ideal head-canon). The best grasp I have on it is, "most Kenku (that are around speaking species) GET language, they just can't MAKE it, they can only grab sounds and play them back". If its a lot more complicated than that (like them not "getting" the concept of sounds being a means of communication) it seems a little hard to try to envision how that can be well-realized in game.

2) re: Your GM World-Building:

yay, that sounds Supersilmarillionexpialidocious! :)

When you say you're starting with Creation Myth, I don't know if you mean 'in general terms', or if you're Tolkein-ing it up with the idea of "if Species X's Creation isn't mentioned here, they don't exist!". If the latter, that sounds like a lot of heavy lifting! :O :)

but even if you're doing the full "Big-Bang-to-Today" mythology... there's always the workaround of later-born species, which you can hand-wave as "this New species came into existence cuz...

a Dragon did it

a Wizard did it

This citystate's people were (cursed / gifted / etc) and were turned into (this new species)

etc etc etc

:)

[bleachbleachbleach]

Another weekend, another attempt at this godforsaken fanfic. XDD It’s pretty short, too, so I’m not even sure where it’s getting all this combative energy. Usually the claws don’t come in until you at least pass the 3k mark? Or at least something brief but ambitious. This fic is neither long nor ambitious. But then, I find writing Bleach fic of any sort extremely difficult, so maybe that’s just how it all is regardless of length or ambition. I can only name one weekend where that was not the case (THOUGHT WE’D TURNED A CORNER IN OUR RELATIONSHIP, BLEACH FIC. GUESS NOT.)

— One of the things I find difficult about Bleach fic has to do with my relationship to the characters and how much privacy I think they’re due and how that shapes the writing process. I realize that sounds ridiculous lol. They are little make-believe people. They are owned no privacy. (But they areeeeeeee.) Like, I have a fandom where my relationship to the characters is basically like "you know, you’re just gonna have to deal with this. I’ll follow your lead through this scenario, but this is what we’re doing. Suck it." And for my Pixar Cars, our writing relationship is mostly determined by how much I think they can handle. Animated cars are very sensitive. Like, ah, soft bean. Can’t be overstimulating you! But for the Bleach characters I want to write, my hangup is like, the knowledge that they’d probably prefer that anything they do… not be written. XP And who am *I* to push? Even though I think a big part of fanfic is literally to be pushy, and to see what impression that leaves in the wax. Like, maybe that’s the whole point. (Which leads me to the existential question that has followed me since my first go-round with Bleach, which is whether Bleach is a fic fandom for me or not. But I’ve never actually participated in fandom without writing and I  don’t think I  know how to do that, so it’s a dilemma.)

— Anyway, in light of characters and their privacy, I’m finding that a looser third person feels more appropriate than my go-to POV, which is typically a very tight third limited that hedges stream of consciousness. Propriety aside, though, I’m not yet sure how to make a loose third interesting to me? Like, what can this POV do for me? I dunno. (My one true POV love is second person, which imho is bestest in all circumstances, but it is a drug and I need to exercise temperance.)

— Also I’m a dumdum and came up with a premise in this fic that means I now have to refer to a character by a name I don’t personally refer to him by, and every time I type it my brain shouts NO. Self-inflicted pain!! I tried a timey-wimey stylistic workaround for this but it was so convoluted I was like, nah, self, you’re just gonna have to deal. XP

— Something I keep experiencing in this fic is this desire to tie things up. For extended metaphors to come full circle and for characters to get from point A all the way to point B. For there to be a Narrative Arc. I’m not really sure why, because generally speaking I think a lot of what I write outside of Bleach tends to be pretty vignette-y at its finest and underelaborated at its worst. But apparently my line for "this is fine" is different (or thinks it needs to be different) here than it is in other fandoms. XP For this angery fic that hates me I’ve probably cut as much as I’ve written at this point, lines out of paragraphs and multiple second halves. I think it keeps trying to stretch further than the narrator is presently able to take it.

Maybe he’s the one who wants it to be neat, idk? But I think he’s also more responsible about not forcing things than I am, so maybe it’s just me.

— If I had to characterize the process thus far, I think it’d be that teeter-totter between "yo, if this is going to be a story, it needs to be more than just you talking circuitously about mushrooms" (TRAGICALLY I don’t even think there are any mushrooms left in the current draft, even if that’s where this started) and "yo, this is trying to do TOO much, the premise is meant to support less." Like, you need to do the work of finding the meaningful energy here, but you can’t just come back with the kitchen sink of everything these characters could potentially think about. They really can’t do anything with most of that in this moment.

I think cutting aggressively has definitely helped me like it more (in that I like it more right now than I have at any point in its existence to this point), and I think it’s helpful to think that the ending isn’t supposed to exist in the fic itself—it exists in the canon that succeeds it. So the task isn’t to arrive, but to honor canon enough that that connection is strong enough to work.

^ But I also keep trying to do that in really overdetermined ways lmaooo. I think part of that is not having written very much for Bleach and feeling like, gotta practice my scales! Like, the idea is new to me in that I have not written it, but also very un-new—so much so that even I am bored by it. XDD I don’t want to bore myself but I also don’t want to be like, wow, that non-existent march from Point A to Point Z^i sure is...something!

— If you clicked on this cut for some reason and are reading this, you might be thinking, "Wow, B3 is really uh,,, overthinking this,,," Please know that the first half of this writing experience involved almost no thought and mere prayers. That did not work this time; ergo, Plan B! But I like getting nerdy about POVs, too, so Plan B is also fine. Uglyyyyyyy dumpling sssssssss

[llycaons]

overall!

pros

FUN, I was almost always laughing or smiling, it was a great adventure to follow 

fantastic fight scenes and costuming, the music added a lot when used carefully

the slow reveal of the treasure hunt/secret of the HTYS was so rewarding for someone who had no spoilers going in

the romance was really cute :) bi rights

WOMEN!!! especially li jinrong and zf, their relationship was so interesting to me, also ninth madam duan was so endearing, ko dan was sick, and I loved every second with li yan

it was so fucking funny, even characters who didn’t change very much were still funny at the end even though they did the same thing the entire time

the whole thing with poisons was such a neat workaround of the OP protagonist. PKC was a great antagonist, I just wish she was around longer

madame nichang and her troupe of all-female spy martial artists *eight million hearts*

THU MB KISS

the sets were gorgeous, especially zf’s room 

someone slowly dying and their loved one desperately racing the clock to save them/grieving them before they die is SUCH a good story element I’m always a sap for it

the characters were almost all very endearing and I loved to see their relationships with each other and how much they cared

I actually really loved all the flashbacks. it made the story feel grounded in its setting and in the traditions and histories of its characters

li zheng. god, li zheng gets his own bullet point

bisexual subtext. also, mxq. loved him

cons

the cinematography was usually fine but sometimes they used way too much shaky camera and I couldn’t focus on the scene or even felt a headache starting

the editing was a little messy

the plots blur together...some of them were really great and some were kind of meh

yin pei

when not used carefully, the ending song overwhelmed or distracted from emotional scenes

it was a little simplistic for my taste

the characters didn’t develop as much as I would have liked

the xy and zf maturity gap...it gets better but hmm unnecessary

the last ten or so episodes were kind of a mess. they definitely could have tied up these plot ends more neatly and not dragged it on so long

li sheng/chuchu :( they could have just let her wear men’s clothing and not get with li sheng and that would have been enough for me

all in all, I do recommend it if you’re looking for something lighthearted with great fight scenes and more women than you usually see in battle shows. the bi undertones really are only undertones though

[comfy-whumpee]

fever part 3

Even when Mistress wasn’t here, she was. Like a worm burrowed deep into Ty’s brain, he couldn’t shake her presence in his head. The reminders of the rules that made his mind glaze over, the sick feeling of worthlessness that ate at the edges of his thoughts like mould. She was gone, now, and he was safe, but some days he didn’t believe it. Other days, the idea that this space in his head that she’d created was now empty, purposeless, all that suffering for nothing because it was over - that was scary too.

 Strange, that it had taken him so long to realise that was Jim’s space, now.

 Learning new rules was difficult, but Ty had been Mistress’s best cleaner; he knew how to change himself. In the hours while Jim slept through his fever, he found that calm, focused part of him that had helped him survive by taking the new role totally on board. Jim wasn’t as good - as clear as Mistress, and he didn’t punish so Ty was never a hundred percent sure of what he was meant to be doing - but he would figure it out. He loved Jim much more than he’d loved Mistress, so he would definitely, definitely work out how to be good.

The first thing that was different about Jim was that he asked about Ty’s feelings all the time. That made things tricky. Ty wasn’t supposed to be dissatisfied or unhappy, but Jim was very good at noticing. Mistress hadn’t spent enough time around Ty to see that he was, sometimes, not as happy as he should have been. Jim was around him all the time. He couldn’t relax.

 Jim was also bothered when Ty was too obedient. This was very confusing - there was no such thing as too obedient, you either obeyed or you didn’t. But if Jim didn’t like it, Ty couldn’t do it, and he needed a workaround. Jim wanted Ty to be happy, but Ty could at least seem happy, couldn’t he?

Maybe the answer was to act like he wanted to do things. Jim would let him do what he wanted, he was so kind, so generous to Ty, and if it troubled his conscience to see Ty being obedient, Ty would present the part of himself that only wanted to make Jim happy, that wanted it, because he did, he...

 He knew what would make Jim happy. He’d known Jim for years.

 When his husband - owner - finally woke, Ty was relaxed in his arms, head resting against his chest, eyes closed, expression serene, breathing deeply. Jim shifted, so Ty stirred too, raising his head and offering a sleepy smile. Jim looked at him, and for a moment he started to smile too. Then, Ty saw him blink awake, and the shutters went down.

Jim’s smile dropped and he unlocked his arms and he started doing that awful, confusing thing again where he hid what he wanted and only asked about Ty.

“Are you okay?” he said, wide awake now, frown on his forehead.

It made an uncomfortable sick feeling bob in his stomach to see it. There it was, the lying, the hiding - why couldn’t Jim just give him nice, clear orders?

No, bad Ty. Jim was Jim. Ty would have to learn to deal.

Ty kept the smile, which was easier now that Jim’s vice grip had finally gone from his waist. “Morning, sleepyhead,” he said. Jim liked pet names, he remembered that. He liked it when Ty was cute and affectionate.

 “I-I didn’t realise I grabbed you...no, I did know. I’m so sorry, Ty,” Jim was pulling himself upright, and Ty lightly shifted his weight back so that they could separate, “I was so out of it, I didn’t - I forgot, I’m really sorry. Were you here the - the whole night?”

 Ah. Now this was a tricky one. Jim had wanted the hug so Ty had given it, but Jim didn’t want to know that was why. He wanted to think Ty was happy. Because Ty should be happy.

 “It’s okay,” Ty said, keeping his voice sweet and soft and earnest. “It was nice.”

 Jim squinted at him through eyes that were still misty with sleep and sickness. That haze made him forget to be suspicious, forget to question whether Ty was being genuine, thank goodness. “It - it was?”

 Ty smiled, arranging his features into the picture of contentment. “Yeah.”

 “That’s...” For a moment Ty’s heart raced as Jim squinted at him again, clearly doubting him. But it was all for show, really. Jim wanted to believe it. “That’s great, Ty. That’s such a relief. I thought you’d be - I thought I would have really scared you. I’m still sorry for grabbing you, but...really? You’re really okay?”

 “Yes,” Ty said. “You don’t have to be sorry. It was nice.”

 Jim frowned faintly at that. Ty bit the inside of his cheek. Telling him not to apologise, that was rude, he shouldn’t have said that, Jim should do whatever he wanted. He was so bad, so out of practice...

 “Do you need anything?” he said, to show how good he was being, to help Jim forget about that indiscretion, to...distract him, maybe, a little, from the questioning.

 Poor, beautiful Jim, head foggy, was easily led. “Uh, is there still water?”

 Ty smiled, leaning over to pass Jim the still-full second glass. He was so pleased he’d thought of doing that. Of course, originally, it had been so he could spend less time around Jim, when he was sick, but that was over now. That was the Ty of before, the naive, silly thing who’d believed he could do whatever he wanted and that Jim would still be just as happy with his ugly, broken self.

If he had to get dirty to be what Jim wanted, he should. He should bear it, no complaints, even if the grimy feeling of dried sweat on his body was making every thought come out with an edge of panic. He was Jim’s, he stayed at home and took care of him, and he would do anything, he resolved again, anything, to stay here and not go back to the clean room.

 Jim was watching him, so Ty stayed still and neat and smiling. When Jim finished drinking, he said, “I thought it would be hard for you, because I’m ill and probably contagious.”

 Contagious. Ty hated that word, hated that it still made his heart freeze up and his body tense with the need to escape. But no, no, bad Ty. He forced his body to soften again. If Jim wanted him to get sick, Jim was allowed to make him sick. So he shook his head. “I really am okay with it, sweetie. It made me happy.”

 Jim’s frown was still pressing on his brow. He was being questioned so much. He had to be more believable.

 “It was hard at first,” Ty admitted, casting his eyes down. “But then I started to relax. It was nice. I’m glad you did it.”

 That bit, at least, was sincere. Imagine if Jim hadn’t, and Ty had gone on forever not realising how bad he was being, how miserable Jim was becoming. He was...it was wrong, it was twisted, but he was glad...glad that Jim had gotten sick. That he’d finally let Ty see the real Jim, what he really wanted. Now, Ty could be that, he would do it perfectly. He would be a good boy.