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yes-no-maybe-soo · 1 month ago

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Help I feel like the more I play the game, the more confused I get about Sylus' actions when he first appeared in the story, now replaying his first chapters after the new ones 😭 I mean, he has this past with MC and loves her, came to the n109 zone for her, and was the one to save her from the lab where she was essentially being tortured/killed over and over for profit, but when he finally meets his beloved again he treats her terribly? he chokes her, apparently keeps her captive for days trying to force resonate without giving any explanations, threatens her with his evol when she's hesitant to go to meet Philip, all while having the knowledge she was already traumatized before meeting him, grieving the sudden death of 2 loved ones and thinking he was the one behind it?

This isn't hate at all, I LOVE Sylus. But it's like he's a whole different person in that beginning. I was hoping you could help me make sense of it, because it just seems to fall out of line with everything we keep learning about him and seeing how deeply he cares for MC. Was that just the writers playing up the dark romance with big bad criminal trope or something? Or is there actually a good reason, storywise, for his initial treatment of her?

Ok first things first – You're absolutely right. Sylus does treat MC terribly at the start of LAR. You'll never catch me defending or trying to make excuses for his actions there regardless of his reasons. The narrative itself paints his actions as bad. And Sylus too realizes that they were, and that he went too far. And I've said it before and I'll say it here again – MC would have been justified in not forgiving him or in not wanting to have further contact with him. That's why her behavior in subsequent early cards never bothered me or struck me as "too mean". She could've been a lot meaner, actually. And this is coming from someone who broke down in the shower crying earlier over how bad I felt for Sylus and all he'd suffered during his separation from MC. But much as I love Sylus and recognize the selflessness and the purity of his love, I won't justify him when he acts like a red flag (which he does at certain moments in LAR. That's just the truth.).

That being said, I can try to speculate as to the explanation behind his actions. But bear in mind that we are still missing important backstory and lore for SylusMC's past before they got separated in the Deepspace Tunnel. And as such, more than likely missing context for why Sylus acts the way he does with MC. Why he is so rough and... seemingly a bit resentful. However, I do have theories/speculations regarding that that I'll get to in a bit... a long bit because... um... yeah this got... very long ijbol don't ever ask my autistic ass to write posts like this unless you're prepared for essays 😅

But first, I need to clear up an important misconception...

Sylus has never choked MC. Ever.

For one, he just would never do that. It goes against everything we know of him. He'd never lay his hands on MC with the intent of hurting her, much less to choke her out. Sylus himself hates being choked. Him doing that to the person he loves most in the world is inconceivable.

Just look at the way he cradles her whenever she is in small danger or in real danger

He wants to protect MC and make her stronger. Not injure her. Never that.

Then there's also the fact that the scene itself from the main story makes it clear that the choking never happened.

Look at this image here. You can clearly see Sylus' hand. Which wouldn't be possible if he were choking her. Just try wrapping your own hand around your neck, and you'll see what I mean.

MC also speaks and breathes heavily in the scene which she wouldn't be able to do if Sylus was choking her out (let's be real, she'd be dead if he did that).

It's clear that he is grabbing her chin and tilting it upwards to force her to look at him. To jog her memory.

And that is exactly why MC ends up passing out (in combination with having been drugged earlier by Sherman's goon). She is reacting to his eye, to the visions their soulbond causes her (bloodstained hands). If Sylus had choked her out, she wouldn't have been out of it for as long as she was (seemingly in and out for 3 days).

Now as for Sylus' subsequent behavior... it's bad. Plain and simple. And again I am not and never will be defending it. I am just trying to speculate as to why he would be behaving this out of character with what we know re: his treatment of and feelings for MC. Apart from obviously being shocked and hurt that the love of his life that he's exchanged souls with, searched the cosmos for, built his empire for, protected from the sidelines, waited 14 years for, doesn't remember him ofc. And also blames him for the death of her family and says she wants to kill him. So Sylus most definitely wasn't in his prime state of emotional or mental stability, which I do think accounts for some of his behavior. He hadn't expected any of this and for once doesn't really know how to properly handle the situation. Especially since for the vast amount of time they've been separated, he hasn't been used to being soft or gentle. He's been pretty much going from violent encounter to violent encounter. So safe to say he's a lot more rusty at being soft and gentle than memory (as in date card) Sylus is.

Then there is of course the possibility that being rough with each other was part of their past dynamic. They certainly were in the the dragon myth, and might very well have been the case in the nebula and after. So perhaps it just doesn't initially click for Sylus that Linkon MC is not the same hardened individual as she was in the past, and responds a lot differently to rough handling.

Now, I've seen people online that theorize that Sylus bears an active grudge or even hatred for MC. That that's where his rough treatment of her stems from. Granted, we don't know what happened before they were separated or under what terms they were. Maybe something went down between them. Maybe MC was somehow responsible for Sylus' imprisonment (there is merit to this assumption – Child MC threatens to throw Sylus into Tartarus, and adult Sylus does say this line at one point "You are my unforgivable sin in the fabric of eternity. The very thing that has imprisoned me" which is... interesting).

The point is, we have no idea how their separation came about nor Sylus' imprisonment. I will say however that I personally don't think it was violent or dramatic or even hateful, just because of these lines from Sylus "We were like flowers. We were meant to grow together in the same soil. Yet you were quietly moved to another garden in a foreign land. Still, you managed to grow beautifully." Idk to me that beautiful analogy isn't indicative of resentment or angry feelings over their separation, or of MC betraying him, which knowing MC she never would in the first place. She's as fiercely loyal as Sylus is, not to mention the fanbase reaction if "we" were to betray or own LI would not go down well. So I'm not terribly sold on MC actively betraying him... If she were somehow to blame for him landing in prison, I rather believe it to be a case of her perhaps committing a crime and Sylus taking the fall for it to protect her. Which would be in line with how he operates re: her. Idk I'm just yapping trying to say that I don't see MC betraying him or their separation being dramatic.

I have seen people speculate that Sylus went to earth to kill MC. That the fury we read about in the second Timelock Key is not directed at her situation, but at her. But that he changed his mind and let her live, only to wait for her to be stronger so he could kill her fairly.

I personally don't see this at all (again, I can be wrong). Because it doesn't line up with Sylus' emotions when he pinpoints MC's location (he is melancholy, sad. Not angry). And in my mind him wanting to kill MC doesn't line up with anything we know of him or his subsequent actions. Plus, killing MC would play into the hands of fate. And Sylus' whole thing so far has been giving fate a giant middle finger.

And I don't believe that Sylus was even angry at MC in LAR and that he took her to Philip's to make her stronger to get revenge and kill her. Why?

Look at his expression here. Look at his eyes. To me it's plain that he isn't doing this out of malice or feelings of revenge. But out of desperation. A feeeling that he has to do this.

Then there is also this reaction when he learns that MC rejects him, fears him, and is disgusted by him.

If Sylus was intent on killing MC... why would he give a shit? Why would he change his ways for the better?

If Sylus harbors resentment for MC, why does that all seemingly leave here? It shows up nowhere in Death and Rebirth, for instance.

And in the iconic scene in LAR where they dance, he looks at her like this

Mind you this takes place like... one or two days after the incident at Philip's shop?

Hell, he even looks at her with love in his eyes when they first come face to face again

Doesn't look terribly much to me like a man who harbors hatred or anger or a desire to kill, but that's just me and my interpretation.

And then there is his iconic line from Razor's Grip ( a card that takes place very early on in their chronology and well before they begin to date) "You should know very well that I adore you. There is no love purer than mine"

Not the words of a man who would a) choke said object of adoration or b) originally land on earth to kill her, and then plan to kill her for the next 14 years or c) who's love is secretly mingled with hatred and darker feelings. That is not what can be described as as a pure love.

And lastly...

Sylus himself claims that he hasn't ever been genuinely mad at MC. Which if he had wanted revenge or to kill her... he definitely would have been, right?

Anyway this a very longwinded and probably overly detailed way of saying... I don't think that Sylus' actions in LAR were guided by anger or malice.

I believe they were guided by fear and desperation.

By a need for her to grow stronger so that she can both control her latent powers and face off the future threat that is for sure on the horizon.

I mean at the end of Death and Rebirth Sylus even offers to help MC with exactly that. To become stronger.

And to be perfectly honest, I think desperation and fear for her safety and survival best fits his demeanor and just how far he is willing to go in LAR. Remember, he actually overrides his core principles in that part of the story – consent and autonomy (which I believe is part of the reason why he gets so distraught later and why he never again lets desperation take over. He realizes just how badly he fucked up, how far he overstepped). I genuinely cannot see any other scenario where Sylus would do that, apart from one where he's losing his sanity to his dragon instinct or something. He has shown time and time again how much he values MC's freedom of choice and action and consent.

We know that Sylus knows about Gaia. He knows about EVER. He knows about MC. He knows that she is a target for future use and abuse. He knows that her powers can potentially spiral out of control.

And he knows that if she is to survive against future threats, she needs to be stronger. So I think the main reason why he is so forceful and treats MC roughly is a combination of his hurt and surprise and not knowing how to act over the fact that she doesn't remember and distrusts and hates him, and also his desperation to ensure that she both regains her memories and gets stronger. He thinks he's acting for her wellbeing, and at first doesn't mind being rough or forceful if that will ultimately save her. Because in his mind, talking to MC and trying to explain to her wouldn't do any good – in her eyes he is a big evil threatening criminal that killed her family and then forced her to resonate for three days. Why on earth would she listen to him much less believe him?

So, force it is. The ends justifies the means... If the ends is that she will be stronger and able to survive.

Or at least, that's what I think his mindset was at the time. It's really only when Philip both tells Sylus that MC is disgusted by him and that altering MC could potentially damage her for life that Sylus lets go of his plan (and we see him do it with obvious anguish). Then he almost certainly steps out and does some serious self reflecting, realizing that regardless of his intentions and his pain, he went too fucking far. That this has done far more damage than good and that he could have approached things better. After which he noticeably changes.

And that is what is so impactful about Sylus' character to me. The fact that he recognizes just how fucked up his behavior was and course corrects. That takes a lot of maturity. And his development because of it is all the more satisfying to me.

To end off this incredibly long post – I am sure that there are other reasons for Sylus' behavior, and I recognize that my interpretation is not more likely to be correct than most others'. I am just working purely off of the info we have as if right now (which isn't a lot) and what makes most sense personally to me. And again, I am in no way excusing Sylus. He was in the wrong no matter how you spin it. He is flawed, and I won't ever make excuses or pretend as though said flaws don't exist. If I did, it would be a disservice to both MC and to Sylus and to the writers. He is also complex and grey and sometimes... well, sometimes people just do strange and seemingly inexplicable stuff when they're faced with unexpected and stressful situations. Again, no excuse here for his behavior, just an explanation.

But rest assured that Sylus loves MC and always has. His love for her is by his own admission pure. And if there's one thing Sylus never does, it's lie.

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insomniac4000 · 5 months ago

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Chained Together Part 1

Florence Mitchell-Coward has made a name for herself on Tiktok and Instagram. She wishes to move to Youtube and her big break comes when she is invited to a ChrisMD video. She is subsequently invited to a Sidemen video where she is handcuffed to George Clarke for 48 hours, but the pair do not get on.

What happens when they are forced to spend time together?

I am cross posting this on my Wattpad but will post the first couple of chapters here.

Florence Mitchell-Coward, also known as FloMC by her YouTube channel and Social Media. It had been a tough eight years but she was in a good place, had just hit six hundred thousand subscribers on Youtube but she boasted over one and a half million on Tiktok and Instagram where she was more prominent and uploaded more content. She wanted to pivot to YouTube more but she had contracts to fulfil and it was hard to find the time. One idea she had though to increase her YouTube presence and that was to try and collaborate as much as she could to try and get her YouTube channel out there more as for some reason it wasn’t translating over from her other platforms.

“Hello, you must be Florence,” a small man with a perm smiled who was named Chris Dixon or ChrisMD. The second he had posted a call asking for girls to be a part of his new video she jumped at the chance. The winner would receive a date from Chris but Florence was only there for the good vibes and the content and it sounded from the tone of the emails from Chris that was all he wanted to, the dating part of the video was simply a concept and not one he was taking seriously.

“Are you an Arsenal fan? Because I’m Gooner fall head over heels for you,” Flo said confidently while trying to hide her internal cringe. She hated it when men gave her cheesy chat up lines but she just kept telling herself this was for the content.

Chris gave a laugh and looked over to the two friends who were sitting either side of him and Flo recognised both of them. To Chris’s right was his long-term friend ArthurTV and to his left as George Clarke. Flo had never met either of them before, she had seen George before at Tiktok event a few months ago but they had never interacted before. She looked at the trio; Chris was laughing, Arthur also had a smile on his face but George was sat there his arms folded, lips pursed like he was trying to be the Simon Cowell of the panel.

“I think I’d like to put you through,” Chris said as he nodded, George looked at Chris frowning slightly as Florence smiled, thanked the boys and walked away.

Florence’s specialist skill was juggling, she held three balls in her hand nervously.

“I hear you’re an expert at handling balls,” George joked looking at Flo with a slight smirk. She tried to laugh it off but deep down the comment hurt, it wasn’t the words so much but it was how he looked at her, those blue eyes were screaming ‘I know your type’ and the smirk that went with it was almost full of ego, like he was proud of his so called joke. Florence wasn’t someone who was lucky in relationships at all, she went on a lot of dates but for reasons she didn’t like to talk about she struggled to get close to anyone. People didn’t see that though, they saw the dates with different people and made assumptions. Florence simply cleared her throat and turned her attention to the task at hand. She threw a ball to Chris, giving him instructions to throw it to her when she asked. She started with the three balls juggling them with ease and then she gave the instruction, Chris threw the ball and all three boys gasped a little and smiled when she started juggling the four balls with ease. She went through to the next round which was the question and answer portion.

“Florence, hi.” Chris flashed a smile as Florence sat down, tightening her pony tail as she did. She always had a habit of fiddling with something when she was nervous.

“Hi,” she replied, she shivered a little bit as it was a cold day and the rain was starting to pick up. One of Chris’s production crew held an umbrella over the quartet.

“I have to admit I have seen some of your TikTok’s they’re quite good,” Chris admitted.

“I didn’t know you were a fan,” Flo smiled

“Arthur showed them to me. Now you might kick it at rock climbing but your football skills…” Chris trialled off and Flo laughed.

“Yeah not my best day today. But hey if you ever feel like coming climbing or even on a dance class I’ll be happy to teach you.”

“You know George does climbing,” Arthur mentioned pointing his thumb to his friend. George simply replied with a hum.

“Wow have you been this talkative to all the girls?” Flo had enough of the brunettes attitude towards her. This was his friends video and he was hardly bringing any form of content. George looked down while Chris and Arthur laughed.

“He has a problem talking to women,” Chris explained.

Florence’s journey ended there, with Rose and Ailish making it to the top two. Chris did consider Florence and him and her seemed like they would get on and they had a bit of a laugh but there was something about it he wasn’t sure on and George wasn’t keen on putting her through either so that was that.

Ultimately both Chris and Florence knew it was all for the video and when filming had wrapped up Chris approached Florence and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You did well today, thanks for coming.”

“No problem, thanks for being so sweet to me. Also the amount of cameras has definitely made me think about my set up,” Florence laughed a little awkwardly before giving a small wave to a passing Cressida.

“If you want to you can drop me a line and I’d happily help you out,” Chris offered.

“That would be really nice thank you, I’m just slowly realising how different Youtube videos are to making TikToks and I need to invest in different equipment.” Florence flashed a genuine smile as she was finally relaxing it was just a shame the shoot was over. She glanced over at George who was standing with Arthur about seven feet behind Chris before turning her attention back to the curly haired man.

“Great, I have your number so I’ll text you.”

“Thanks Chris I really appreciate it. I better go, some of the girls are going out for drinks and no doubt will gossip about you so I don’t want to be seen with the enemy,” Florence joked. She bid Chris goodbye before leaving to catch up with the others.

“What did she want?” George asked stuffing his hands in his pockets as he looked over at Florence and they other girls who were now all giggling as they walked across the pitch to the exit.

“Just to chat, she wants to move from Tiktok to more Youtube videos and just wanted some tips. I would send her to you for advice but you’ve not posted in a while,” Chris teased and George rolled his eyes.

“Yeah whatever grandad. I’d rather not post then tell my followers how desperate I am,” George clapped back and Arthur laughed.

“That’s all you say on your pod!” Chris replied as the three boys went to grab a drink themselves.

#george clarke #george clarkey #george clarkeey

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bradshawed · 3 months ago

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NEWTON'S LAWS, Chapter 5

main & series masterlist !

introducing... the lion and his lioness prey pairing: f1!raphael cameron & reporter!reader

An apple fell from a tree and well... you know the rest. Much like Newton's apple, you fell right in his path, the lion's path, and he deemed you his prey. Silly boy. That was his first mistake.

A tale as old as time, Newton & his gravity, faceclaim: HoYeon Jung & various pinterest girls

warnings! fem!reader, use of y/n, mentions of w*rd, f1 terminology

chapter 4, chapter 5...

John B. Routledge just clinches the victory from Rafe Cameron at the Chinese Grand Prix as Cameron storms from P17 on the grid to take P2 ahead of unexpected podium finisher Pierre Gasly.

Rafe Cameron delivered on of the all-time great wet weather drives in the Chinese Grand Prix, going from P17 on the grid to a podium finish, stamping his presence in the title race.

Cameron had been left frustrated after Sunday morning's delayed qualifying session, when a crash for Lance Stroll and subsequent red flag saw him drop out of Q2 along with team mate Cleo Anderson - with Cameron starting a penalised P17 after a five-place grid drop for fitting a new internal combustion engine.

READ MORE: Verstappen P2 at Chinese Grand Prix after stunning recovery from P17 as Alpine score shock podium

But a determined Cameron then overcame a tumultuous and rain-affected Chinese Grand Prix, climbing to P11 on the very first lap before making his way all the way up to P2 behind Ferrari's John B. Routledge when the race was red-flagged on Lap 26 of 56 after Franco Colapinto crashed his Williams - Cameron then handed a free first pit stop by the stoppage.

Routledge then nailed the rolling restart when racing resumed, managing to keep Cameron following the subsequent Lap 43 restart following a Safety Car intervention for Topper Thornton's retirement - Routledge going on to open a gap over Cameron in the remaining laps after a wet weather performance for the ages.

DRIVER OF THE DAY: A Cameron masterclass earns your vote in China

1. John B. Routledge (Ferrari), 2. Rafe Cameron (Red Bull), 3. Pierre Gasly (Alpine)

TRACK INTERVIEWS (Conducted by y/n)

...

Q: Rafe what an incredible race. Yesterday, did you have any thoughts that you might finish on the podium today, with the weather, or it was tough? It was a tough weekend.

Rafe CAMERON: Yeah, I mean, my emotions today have been... a roller coaster, you know, with qualifying being really unlucky with that red flag. You know, starting P17, I knew that it was going to be a very tough race, but we stayed out of trouble. We made the right calls. We stayed calm. And we were flying. So all of these things together, of course, made that result possible. But I mean, we could have done better to win here.

Q: I need to ask you. The first corner, when you went to the inside, you saw there was a lot of grip. And then you started to use that a lot. The overtaking looked fantastic from the outside. Did you know there was a little bit more grip in the inside because you kept on doing fastest laps and using that line?

RC: Yeah, I mean, it's very hard to pass around here with the new tarmac. There’s only one line that you can take. But, yeah, I just knew that I had to go for it. It's, of course, always easy to front lock, just trying to balance that out. And I had confidence on the brakes as well. That helps. And, yeah, Turn 1 is always a great corner to pass.

Q: It was 17 fastest laps, so well done, Rafe. Thank you. You made the crowd stand up all the way.

RC: It wasn't my best performance but I hope they enjoyed it. You don't need to pretend to know a lot about racing, I know what you really want to ask about so go ahead and get it over and done with.

Q: I've got everything I need, thank you. Pierre, it's good to see you. It was nice to see you before the race. Did you look like it could have been on the podium since that moment?

...

If you would like to be added to the taglist, please let me know. And, if you want to remain tagged, you must interact with the posts (credits to Zya).

taglist for f=ma, @dearapril @edwardslvrr @zya8tracks @potatodirectioner @poppysrin @a-beaverhausen @judesgfirl @pogueprincesa @chalametfan

note! credits to zya for her layout xx twitter graphic ft. @judesgfirl and @pogueprincesa! thoughts on rafe? is he under pressure or just an ass?

if there are any f1 girlies which race does this remind u of?

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inkedinfusions · 22 days ago

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── 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐞𝐲 | eren jaeger ⟡ chapter 19

⊱𖣂⊰ | In which you fall into a fictional world with the key to Pandora's box. ── ★ ˙ ̟ . 🗝 .ᐟ.ᐟ masterlist ⊰– prev next–⊱

── 𝟏𝟗 | 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡

⟡ chapter word count: 3.7k

⟡ content warnings: blanket warnings, overall sense of doom but thats just how reader rolls atp

⟡ a/n: Hello everyone! Finally, I get to plant the seeds for many things to come. Can you believe that this talk, eren and reader's talk by the sea and then at the basement were all not in my outline? Never ever have I outlined one of their talks, they always just take the reigns and starts conversing. Anyway, a bit of light angst that was put to a stop by reader, but wasn't completely resolved, so keep an eye out for that ;). On another note, I changed the names of all the chapters!! They were boringgg,,,, I'm specially proud of 'the belly of the beast' and 'cassandra and atlas'. Also new format! what do we think?

Thanks for reading!

𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄 only a few torches left alight in the hall, the earlier atmosphere of calm chatter left behind when everyone retires for the night. You linger in the halls as you so often do, walking amongst the wood lined pathways, gusts of warm air intermittently hitting your face.

Dinner and its subsequent clean up was, as many things in the military are, efficient. With not that many people present it wasn’t that much of a chore to put everything back in place, nor was it too time consuming.

You come upon one of the doors that lead outside, and it opens with a creak when you push it, warm air immediately replaced by a cool breeze. The patch where wood and stone meet earth is marred by dirt, grass all but gone from the path many before you have traversed.

The night is as many others; crisp, serene. It does not care for your woes, for your worries, for your victories. It simply is, a perpetual cycle against the turmoil that awakens every time an unknown variable rises to meet you.

In your pocket lies the lone button Zeke had left for you to find, yours in nothing but name, ties too intangible to mean anything to anyone but yourself. The thread Eren had given you twists and turns around it when you take it out onto your palm, almost swallowing it whole. It is tangled—has been for a few days, but you have done nothing to either unravel it or wind it up further.

You had simply dropped it into your pocket once more, only just unearthed today, when that which runs through your mind is composed more of questions than it is of answers.

A year upon your arrival, there is nothing you cling to more than your name, the only vestige of home. Yet one of your first actions here had been to denounce it on the brief stint where you had declared yourself Ymir before Yelena, only to abandon the notion seconds later.

After that, you had taken the last name of the soldier you pretended to be the daughter of, too insignificant to remember. And besides, with Zeke by your side, it hardly mattered what your fake ties were, as only the Warrior’s was worthy of mention.

When you had tried to recall your true last name before, it had been as if your tongue had become as twisted as the thread around your button, only that your brain became foggy too, and any attempt to further recall it would only trigger mild migraines.

So you stopped, figured it was a coping mechanism unconsciously developed, and moved on to greater things that squiggles on a page. It wasn’t until Jean had asked that you had truly realized just how deep the failed recollection went.

You sigh, leaning against the threshold of the door. You would look quite strange here, if anyone should spot you—standing still on the edge of the door frame, eyes as lost as castaways at sea.

You had panicked before—you had reigned it in, sure, but nothing explained the sudden wave that washed away the splotches covering your last name. You haven’t forgotten it, no, for you have kept rotating it in your mind, spacing out in favor of always keeping it within your sight. There is no need to be so paranoid now, you suppose, as you have two witnesses that can remind you of it should you forget again.

But you don’t want to let it slip through the cracks of your consciousness again. It feels wrong, but weirdly, so does to present yourself with it.

Maybe it's because of the identities you have forged this past year. Maybe it's because of all the lies you have to keep track of, of the people with similar yet fundamentally different truths you have presented them with.

You shiver, this time not because of the evening air, but because of the eyes that watch you just beyond the treeline. A blink and your assessment is wrong—whoever that is, they hold no eyes.

Another and they disappear, leaving behind only the goosebumps beneath your skin, the faint whisper of their presence in the night air. The door creaks again when you return inside, heart stuttering with a faint sense of loss that travels through your veins.

This world does not obey the rules you are accustomed to, for physics, the law of matter, and paradoxes behave differently under the watch of a tempered goddess. And so, with a heavy spirit, you resolve to talk to the one person who could give you the insight you never thought you'd have to request.

You pass by some soldiers that linger on the stairs, surely getting in conversations before curfew starts, and so you speed up your walk, not wanting to be out after hours. It is not long before you stand in front of his door, and you swear the wood itself mocks you when you hesitate to knock.

Why? Well, you choose not to examine it too deeply. Still, you can’t help but think of red when your knuckles rap against the wood.

“Hi,” you say when the door opens, revealing Eren on the other side of the threshold. “Can we talk?”

His eyebrows raise slightly, then furrow. “Sure,” he says, stepping out the side to let you through. “Did something happen?”

You stand in the middle of his room with fidgeting fingers, the placement of his furniture mirroring your own. “You could say that,” you gesture with your head. “I'm not…” you sigh. “Hold on, let me just…think about how I’m going to say this.”

You look down as you speak, mentally separating what you know versus the conjectures you have. Mindless steps take you to the foot of his bed, where you sit while you meditate on the order of points you want to hit.

Five, maybe ten seconds fly past when Eren joins you on the bed, sitting on the head of it. Close enough to talk without having to raise your voice, far enough so that your hands have no chance of meeting, not even by accident. You don’t like how that’s the first thing you notice about his placement.

You turn your head to look at him. “Does the last name L/n mean anything to you?”

Unfortunately—or fortunately, you still haven't decided—his eyes flash with no recognition, only confusion. “No,” he says. “Should it?”

You shake your head. “No. No, that’s why this whole thing is weird.”

“What then?” Eren asks, hair untucking from behind his ears when he leans slightly forwards. “Do we have to talk to this L/n guy? Who even is that?”

“Me,” you put out bluntly, ignoring the sharp thunder of pain and ache and unease that travels along your nerves. “That’s my last name.” Another tug, sharper than the last.

“But you say you didn't—”

“I know,” you interrupt, irritated, but not at him. At yourself? No. Maybe. “I remembered it while we were preparing dinner. It just…there are so many things that don’t make sense, and this just elongates the list of things that aren’t supposed to…supposed to be.”

You massage the bridge of your nose, as the sereneness you had tried to copy from the night begins to unravel. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“What?” you hear Eren say, a hint of betrayal in his voice. “You’re going to give up after remembering your last name?”

“Not—not like that!” you are quick to correct, lowering your voice at the last syllable, when you remember you have probably already broken curfew. “I’m literally not supposed to be here. Like, at all. The story I read? Yeah, well, it never ever mentioned me or a L/n or a finale that didn’t end in tragedy.”

You scoot closer to the wall behind you, letting your head rest against it. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to fit into this.”

There is a brief silence that is only filled with the sound of fluttering trees outside his window, interrupted by creaks of old wood.

“...When you say you are not supposed to be here,” Eren starts tentatively, “does that mean…are you from the future?”

That brings you out of your spiral of unknowns. “If I’m what?”

“From the future,” he repeats. “Wha—Hey, why are you looking at me like that? It makes sense! You said you read stories, right? Well, history books could easily fit into that. And—and you said you are from somewhere I wouldn’t know and that you can’t return to! So the future!”

You look at him dumbfounded, and although his explanation somewhat lessens the weight on your shoulders with how ridiculous it is, you can’t possibly fault the logic behind it. You get it—one would default to time travel before ever considering the possibility of world travel.

“That’s—that's not it,” you say, cracking a small smile. “I can see why you’d think that though.”

“Then?” he questions, beginning to count with his fingers. “So no future, no titan, no visions—maybe some weird Founder Ymir stuff?”

“No,” you shake your head. “Can’t do that, unfortunately.”

“I mean, maybe it's not something you do consciously?”

You shake your head once more, before your eyes light up with the realization of why he put forward that theory specifically. “Oh right!” you snap your fingers, “I haven’t told you yet! I’m not Eldian.”

“Eh?” he exhales, confused. “...Marleyan?”

“Not that either. I’m…well,” you tilt your head to the side. “Promise not to think I’m crazy.”

Eren slumps against the wall behind him. “I think we are way past that at this point.”

You hum in response. “I’m like, ninety percent sure I’m from another world. Or universe. Timeline maybe? I'm not sure.”

There is almost no overthinking behind your words this time. It's weird, finally admitting to it out loud. The most you had gotten to say was of the ‘story’ you read, both to Zeke and to the Scouts. But now that you’ve crossed off one more lie by omission with someone—well, you can’t deny how at ease it makes you feel. Given all that has and will happen, of course.

Eren recovers from his stupor moments later, and you relish in the way his face creases, a stark contrast to the blank expressions he wears on the day to day. “I think I would’ve liked it better if you were from the future,” he says with a strangled voice.

“If it makes you feel better, I kind of am. From the twenty-first century, to be exact.”

He shifts in his position, quiet. “That’s so weird,” he mumbles.

If you were on the side with the pillow, you think you'd throw one at him. “You can turn into a fifteen meter titan. Hell, titans just up and disappear when they die. You can see past people's memories.”

“...Fair enough. So?” he turns to look at you. “What about your last name had you so freaked out you came to talk to me?”

You ignore the faint heat that rushes to the tip of your ears at the reminder. “Call me paranoid,” you say, “but I’m beginning to think my arrival here was not random at all.”

“How come?”

“If I'm being honest with you? A hunch.”

“A hunch,” he repeats.

“Yes, a hunch.” you straighten up, a smidge defensive. “I wake up in the middle of some ruins back in Marley, no memories of how I got there, somehow I can’t remember my last name, and I keep having weird reactions to random things for no apparent reason! You can’t say it isn't a little odd!”

You take a deep breath, reigning in your feelings once again. It's not his fault, you say to yourself. Nothing good would come out of you blowing up on him when it's not in his control. “Sorry,” you mutter, looking away. “It's not…,” you sigh. “Nothing makes sense. And I don’t like that.”

“I can see that,” Eren mumbles. You shoot him a half hearted glare, and he puts up his hands in a placating motion.

You fish the button from your pocket, running your fingertips across the rough texture of the thread. “This shouldn't be up to us,” you mumble. “Do you really have no other future memories of me? Anything that could help explain this?”

Your eyes are glued to the button, so you only hear how Eren shuffles in place by the tell tale sound of crinkling fabric under his weight.

“...No,” he says after a few seconds. “Nothing that could explain that.”

“Really?” You turn to him. “Because I would’ve thought—”

“Didn’t Zeke tell you anything?” he interrupts. “As much as I don’t trust him—and I still think you shouldn’t have told him—” —you roll your eyes— “he may know why. Or how. Or what. Did he…summon you somehow? From wherever you’re from, I mean.”

“Well, he wasn’t there there for my arrival,” you shrug. “Yelena and Onyankopon were, but I think that's a dead end no matter who I talk to. Yelena won’t tell me anything, assuming she knows something, and I don't think they would trust Onyankopon with the information.”

“That’s the blonde lady, right?” he asks.

You nod. “She’s like, prohibited from meeting you. I think it's a little funny I’m not, even though I see her sometimes.”

“So that’s where you disappear to from time to time then.”

“I guess so,” you say. “She’ll be there when we go to the harbor next time. Niccolo will be there too if I remember correctly.”

“Niccolo?” Eren asks, straightening up.

“A Marleyan chef,” you explain. “Not important in a doomsday kind of way, but this whole thing hinges on people changing their point of view of Eldians. He’s one of the first to change his mind about the whole ‘devil’ thing.”

Eren purses his lips. “Fine.”

“What?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

You raise an eyebrow, confused but not really knowing what to ask in order to get more out of him. With how little you guys have talked in the past few days, it is a miracle at all you are conversing instead of being reigned by the tense silence that followed you from Trost, where you rejected something you dare not name.

“...Sure,” you concede. “But we do need to think about what we are going to do next. Paradis needs to enter the world stage before it's too late.”

“When is ‘too late’?” Eren asks. “When my time is up?”

“No,” you say. “Four years before that. 854.”

He frowns. “But that’s in a little more than two years. No way can the world be swayed in two years.”

“Not by us, no,” you say. “But we have help on the way, do we not?” You tilt your head at him with a small smile, trying to convey whatever hope you can on your face. It is not the best scenario, but any where Eren is talking to you instead of brooding about the so-called inevitable is a win in your books.

“My brother.”

“Yes but also no,” you say. “I wrote him a letter with a message coded into it. I’ll see if the Hizuru envoy can help me deliver it later, when they arrive.” You shift in place. “Zeke is our connection to the world outside the island. I think we should exploit that.”

Eren hums, considering your words, not even batting an eyelash at your casual treason. “Did they help before—or in the story?”

“It wasn’t enough,” you say. “And they have many, many ulterior motives. Namely the resources on the island.”

“So we need to find someone else then,” he says, bringing a hand to his jaw. “Problem is, we have no way of searching or even contacting someone else by ourselves. Should we…leave?”

“Why is your first impulse always defecting?”

He tilts his head. “But I’ve never defected?”

You gesture with your hand. “Not now. Hopefully not ever.”

“I feel like I should read more into what you say,” Eren says, surveying you with a look that you can’t quite place the meaning of. “But I’ve already revised my own memories enough times, and I’ll probably go crazy if I pile up anything else on top of them.”

“Yeah,” you say, resting your head again against the wall. “It's funny, isn’t it?”

“What is?” Eren answers, voice softer than before.

“That I’m missing memories while you have extra.”

He makes something between a grunt and a snort. You lift the corners of your lips. “That’s one way to put it.”

“This whole situation would be hilarious if it was happening to someone else,” you mumble as your eyelid begins to turn heavy. “Or not really, but then I wouldn’t feel this sense of doom every time I’m awake.”

Eren shrugs. “I get nightmares, so sleeping is not much better.”

“I don't really remember my dreams,” you say. “Guess I’m kinda grateful for that—don’t tell Armin, but his titan scared the shit out of me when I first saw it. And the crawling dude halfway across the island made me shiver too.”

“I dunno why they keep it—him alive, honestly,” Eren says, a little too bluntly for your taste. “I think it's because they still hold hope that he could turn human again, like Connie’s mom.” His eyes flit to you again. “Can they?”

“Either someone would need to ask Ymir to turn them back or titan powers would need to cease to exist.”

“I assume that's what happened then.”

You scratch the back of your neck. “The first one is a conjecture, but the second one…well, yeah that's how it ends.”

Eren slumps against the wall, curtain of brown hair once again obscuring his face. You don't need to ask what he's thinking about—you have a pretty good idea of where his train of thoughts is leading him right now.

“...Is it so bad? They leave Paradis alone. Titans no longer exist.”

“Are you asking me if it's bad to slaughter the world?” you say incredulously.

“They’re never going to accept us, Y/n,” he says, roughness in his voice akin to that of uncharted roads. “Look, I'm not saying we resort to that now. But we have to have options.”

Few times have you been at total loss for words. There is always some casual topic at the back of your mind, prepared to aid you when a conversation turns sour. But this—this is not something you want to poke.

“I’m sorry, would you rather follow Zeke’s plan?” he continues. “I don’t even know what it is, but from what I’ve heard, it's probably something equally messed up.”

“No, yeah, it's complete bullshit,” you agree. “Still doesn’t mean we should resort to genocide though.”

“So we should just kneel and let them kill us?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth—”

“Easy for you to say, when you plan to dip the moment an opportunity arises.”

Another slash goes through your heart. It's different from the stinging sensation you've felt before. It's more real, less so melancholic and more centered in the moment you are living now. You can tell the smallest hint of regret light up his eyes when the words leave his mouth, but the damage is done.

But if there is one thing you’ve become a master of is taking things that hurt you and shoving them down, down, down, to a void where they can't come back from.

“You don’t mean that, so I’m going to ignore it,” you say. But for all you preach about not caring, your voice breaks a smidge at the end of your statement. “And I’ll let you know that, if anything, I’m involving myself so you don’t fucking die.”

That serves to shut him up, regret now flooding his face completely, posture slightly hunched on the edge of the bed that now seems so far away from you. You hate to make excuses for him, you really do, but fighting is only going to make things worse. Eren needs to get a grip, fast, and while it's not your responsibility to make him see that, you still don't want to make any unnecessary conflict with your only true ally in the game.

“...I didn’t,” he says. You can only assume that he is referring to what you just said. “But if there’s no other way…”

He trails off, but you can easily complete his statement. Should your own plan, whatever it might evolve into, fail, he is willing to forfeit his own life in what you think will most certainly mirror his original path, only now with you as an unlucky witness.

“There’s always a way,” you say. Although you say it with as much confidence as you can muster, you feel a bit like a liar.

It's strange how Eren’s expression changes with the second when he's with you. More so given the quilt of impassive emotions he wraps around himself.

“Keep saying that,” he says. “And one day I might just believe you.”

Someone else would take those words as the mocking platitude they are on paper. But you see them as hope. Hope which is not so easily kept.

“I will,” you say, standing up. “Good night. We'll talk later.”

He waves bye when you cross his threshold again, and you shut the door slowly to avoid any unnecessary creaking.

No one catches you walking around after hours, and you make it to your room without any unexpected surprises. The letter you had written before is still sitting at your desk, next to the ink and borrowed pen. You meant to return it, but Hange will have to settle for getting it back tomorrow, as you don’t feel like walking to their room without a good reason.

Speaking of Hange—you think while you flop onto bed—you need to tell them about the Hizuru envoy before they arrive. You don’t remember how many trips the important lady from the nation was on. If she came directly to negotiate or if a representative came first to scope the situation.

No matter, you would know soon anyways, as your group is due for another visit at any moment. Still, first on your list of priorities is revealing some more things to Hange. Just like you planned at your trial; you would offer up useful information from time to time to keep your worth, but not enough as to invalidate it.

#the key #ann writes #aot #snk #attack on titan #attack on titan x reader #shingeki no kyojin #aot x reader #eren yaeger x reader #eren jeager x reader #eren #eren x reader #eren yeager #eren jaeger

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charlie-pippin-faraday · 9 months ago

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i've reached the investigation portion of danganronpa v3 chapter 2, which is the last point to which i had watched youtube content and thus everything beyond will be new to me. my chapter 2 commentary thus far:

kaito really just decided that he and shuichi were going to be best friends and shuichi didn't have any choice in the matter lol

nobody needed to tell me that kaito was the one incessantly ringing my doorbell, i knew it was him lol

i have been referring to tenko, himiko, and angie as "the girlies" and i am 100% confident that every single one of them is going to die before this game is over

lmao shuichi asking himiko "how have you survived this long?" same bro i also wonder this about her

kaito threatening to slug kokichi and then kokichi literally bolting out of the room is the realest thing that has happened in this game so far

i've made a habit of clicking on ALL the characters every free time to see if they have any fun dialogue before i choose who i actually spend free time with. on i think the first free time slot in chapter 2 i went to kokichi who said something about being scared that kaito had caught up to him because he was afraid he was gonna slug him (or something along those lines), and then when i talked to kaito he immediately said "you seen kokichi around anywhere?" implying he had indeed been looking for him to deliver said slugging. made me laugh my fucking ASS off

by sheer dumb luck, i had gotten the parasol from the monomono machine in chapter 1, so i was able to talk to tenko before doing the flashback light scene in the gym and unknowingly unlock what i later found out was one of the secret scenes (and let me tell you i was delighted by this development and that it happened naturally). and thus i was able to witness ~the girlies and keebo at the pool~. subsequently, i have SO many questions lol. tenko kind of implied that she kind of wanted just to hang with himiko, and angie was probably there because himiko invited her and tenko can't say no to himiko, but why did tenko invite keebo? lmao tenko you're such a hot mess

during the free time session i was planning on hanging with kaito first, but then i spoke to keebo and he asked so vulnerably "shuichi if you have free time would you like to spend it with me? there's something i want to ask you" and i changed my plans SO fast i would die for you keebo

"maybe someone like miu would appreciate his mechanics" shuichi you're not trying to play matchmaker are you?

lmao there was a stark difference in shuichi's reactions to that day's free time events with keebo and with kaito, both of which involved them talking about their skills/stuff they'd learned. about keebo, shuichi said "okay...he's weird and i don't understand him." about kaito, shuichi said "wow, kaito's incredible!" these were incredibly similar interactions. lol okay tell me how you really feel shuichi. you can't tell me he doesn't have at least a little bit of a crush on kaito

hm a "gyoza in the shape of a face - a dumpling that's modeled after someone you swear you've seen somewhere before." hm gee i wonder who that could be. (definitely doesn't look like makoto naegi or anything. haunting the narrative much?)

the fact that korekiyo was definitely in the top half of most reasonable people i spoke to in this chapter is a sign that the world has been flipped upside down

every one of these games has had one weird, obsessive, one-sided, and likely ill-fated romance, and i knew this time it would be tenko's weird thing for himiko. i can't believe i'm saying this but i feel a little bad for tenko. a little, at least. i get the feeling i won't be feeling bad for her in the future. for whatever reason, i get the sinking feeling that in a future chapter this obsession with himiko and her jealousy over himiko spending time with angie is going to end with tenko snapping and someone ending up dead

actually why is everyone obsessed with himiko? tenko claims to care for her and wants to support her and believe in her magic, and she definitely wants to get in her pants, and angie also wants to be friends with her and has successfully brainwashed her to her atua cult and convinced her to put on a dangerous magic show. and like, why? himiko is not that cool, she's lame and pathetic. she eats termites on accident, can barely go to the bathroom by herself, and is super fucking lazy and uncooperative. i get that she's afraid/sad and is susceptible to brainwashing (she's not the only one here easily manipulated *cough cough* gonta), that part's understandable and i'll give her a pass, but like what is she bringing to the table? i don't get why all the girlies are obsessed with her. i'm with shuichi on the "how did you survive this long?" train of thought. i'm torn between "tenko you deserve better" and "all 3 of you toxic girlies fucking deserve each other"

definitely my favorite event thus far has been miu and da boyz clowning on kaito in the casino. true teenage bonding experience. (and i mean da boyz literally, all the boys who were alive were present except gonta and keebo, who is only debatably a boy.)

"i guess you can't underestimate luck" you did it, you boiled down the entire character of makoto naegi to one sentence

but fr tho every time someone utters the word "luck," "hope," or "despair" in danganronpa games i feel myself suddenly at FULL attention, like those words aren't there by accident, there's always hidden meaning there. and i am once again wondering at the lore/secret behind this particular game, i still don't know what it is

immediately after this casino event is when i finally spent free time with miu. it was the first time i'd approached her as shuichi and she didn't threaten me. and she was even in the casino when i approached her! where we'd already spent time together clowning on kaito! so it was perfect timing

speaking of miu, she needs to get laid SO bad. maybe she'd chill out. like she acts like she's had a bunch of sex but given how much she talks about it there's no fucking way she's gotten laid, she's absolutely projecting her insecurities. someone nail this girl please it's what she needs and tbh it's what we all need. side note: kiyo telling her to stfu in the casino was fucking hilarious lol

question do the friendship fragments not carry over from kaede to shuichi? i had updated report cards from hanging with gonta, keebo, and maki as kaede, but they're not there anymore. do i not get to keep the friendship fragments that i earned from them?

another question, was i just not allowed to hang out with maki in chapter 2? every time i approached her during free time she fucking threatened me. did i the player do something to lock her out or is that simply not allowed?

bro tenko is gonna fucking lose her mind. i approached her in i think the last free time and she was just muttering himiko's name over and over again, big yikes. and then "my saliva makes injuries heal faster can i spit on you" girl what???

i think tenko needs to move on, perhaps to one of the other girls. miu, perhaps? if they could fuck i think this would solve some problems for both of them

in the bug room, kokichi said something about a "mean" difficulty and not being a coward in the killing game and i felt so called out lol, because i have all the trial action set to be as easy as possible lmaooo

keebo my beloved saved the day in the bug room and got the first major non-verbal victory in the keebo vs. kokichi war. i'm proud of him, but this will definitely not be the last of it

i do wonder what "snafu" kokichi was referring to when he was running around that caused him to be late returning to the bug room. they never addressed that, and i hope they get to it during the trial

bro did kokichi get rabies or something???? right before the magic show, gonta said kokichi wasn't there because in the bug room his mouth bubbled and then he passed out lmaooooooooooo

what were kaito and maki up to this entire time? making out? aside from ryoma, they were the only ones who were absent from both the bug room and the magic show. miu and kirumi weren't in the bug room, and kokichi wasn't at the magic show and left the bug room for a portion of time, but those two were nowhere to be seen for any portion of both events. i need some answers

noooo don't use keebo as a battering ram!!! that's so rude!!! kokichi definitely won that particular battle in the keebo vs. kokichi war, and we are nowhere near over. i want to see where this rivalry goes, 'cause tbh i think it's secretly the most tense one here

bro i hate himiko uuuuuugggghhhhh. "we need you to tell us how your trick worked so we can figure out how the culprit killed ryoma." "i can't tell you, i did it with my magic and that's the only answer you're getting" god shut the fuck up you're annoying and unhelpful and you never listen and you're actively getting in the way i want one of these dudes to punch you

i have some HEAVY suspicions about who i think is the culprit. and tbh i've held these suspicions since before i even played the game, back when i just watched some youtube content up to this murder. i don't know what will happen from this point forward, but if i'm right about who i think did it, i am gonna be SO stoked about it

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rewrittenwrongs · 9 months ago

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Whumptober day 6: Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms / Healed Wrong

Read on Ao3 (registered users only) | day 5 | day 7 coming soon | Whumptober masterpost

Inspired by @brucewaynehater101’s Wingless Wing AU | Chapter 2 of 3 | chapter 1 | chapter 3 coming soon

TW: beginnings of a panic attack, phantom pain, chronic pain, mentioned mutilation and organ trafficking, implied child abuse

Ngl I think I’m pushing it a little with this prompt, but I did my best to fit it in with the plot I have in mind. I actually didn’t add the unhealthy coping mechanisms on purpose, I realised it fit as I uploaded this.

Honestly I think I went a bit far with the hybrid instincts and chirping stuff, but I really liked exploring what the in-world relations between different hybrids might look like, and I’m happy enough with this. Though, if I had the time and energy I might’ve edited the ending to be less awkward…

Tim paced while Jason looked around. The Nest looked surprisingly lived in, at least the area they were in: a cozy living room with a half-made pillow fort in the floor, like a 1970’s conversation pit owned by someone with an affinity for soft things. It reminded Jason of the other nest, the one he’s been in before, that was an actual nest.

He ‘busied’ himself with staring at the TV and subsequent collection of games and DVDs. He wanted Tim to talk but also didn’t want to rush him. How was he supposed to start a conversation like this? It was hard to think conversation starters with the memories replaying in the back of his mind. They were one’s he’d really rather avoid thinking about. One of them, he almost couldn’t wait for Tim to disprove.

Jason accepted he couldn’t take any more around the five minute mark, and cleared his throat pointedly. Tim winced and faltered in his back-and-forth pacing.

Tim swallowed. He was pale and shaking. “Um.”

“You… know, the owner of the wings,” Jason prompted softly, hoping ‘know’ was more accurate than ‘are’.

Tim ducked his head. His fists squeezed a few times, before he quietly whispered the last thing Jason wanted to hear: “They’re mine.”

“No.” He was wrong. He had to be wrong. He couldn’t—Tim was a human, he didn’t even have dormant blood, he was as regular as they come. He certainly wasn’t a flier like the rest of them—he didn’t lose his wings, he never had any! “You’re not—they’re not—no, that’s wrong.”

…Right?

Jason didn’t notice when his legs buckled, but he felt the carpet impacting his knees, and felt his wings hit the floor like dead weight. He could still feel them against his back, flexing below his shoulders, feathers flaring, shivering, but he could’ve sworn he was watching Joker examine them with a twisted smile and a satisfied gleam in his eye. Lifting up one limb and then the other, spreading one manually as blood waterfalled onto the ground, before handing it off to a henchman so he could use them to send Batman a message.

He could hear him laughing as he carved away muscles and feathers, hacking at bone; “It’s not the first time I’ve grounded a flier, but I can admit it’s just as satisfying the second time around. Maybe more!”

Jason shuddered all over. He was going to vomit. He was—he was going to cut off Joker’s legs, and fingers, too, see how he enjoyed being on the receiving end because he deserved it for cutting off Jason’s wings but removing Tim’s too?

Suddenly all the short, longing glances he remembered catching glimpses of when he took to the skies made sense. The odd look of fascination and envy when he explained the Pit grew back his wings somehow. His insistence on styling his new gliders after dragons—because he was one.

If Tim did have wings—how long ago were they taken? How could he survive with the pain? How had he ever worked up the physical strength to swing on grapple lines? Did Bruce know? Dick? His parents?

“How can you even stand?” Jason demanded hoarsely, and noticed for the first time Tim was a whole lot closer than he last remembered. He was crouching in front of him, posture small and non-threatening but his eyes blazing with… something. Jason didn’t recognise that emotion.

Tim’s face flickered to a grimace. “I’ve had a long time to practice.”

Jason’s hyperventilating got worse. He hadn’t even noticed he was struggling to breathe. “How long?”

Tim pressed his lips together.

“How long have you been dealing with this alone?”

Something in his gaze shifted. Like he was surprised, almost. “I… Young Justice helps. But I’ve—they’ve been missing since before I was Robin.”

Tim became Robin when he was thirteen.

“What the fuck,” Jason managed, then choked on his next breath.

Tim reached out and placed a hand on Jason’s shoulder. He understood, now, why he flinched when Jason tried to do the same earlier. There were so many muscles and bones connected to the wings, to have them all hacked off…

Jason whined a low, mournful coo, a whisper of I’m-so-sorry and I-can’t-imagine and I-want-to-make-it-better. He leaned into Tim and he adjusted easily, arms curling tightly around him. Jason wrapped his arms around his lower back and moved to hug with his wings as well, only to freeze. If his wings were cut off any sort of pressure there…

Tim huffed and pressed a hand against Jason’s wing, lightly, gently tugging it closer. “You can touch my back. I’m… better, at that stuff, now. Young Justice helped.”

Jason licked his lips and tried to steady his breathing. “Does it hurt?”

Tim stayed silent. That was telling enough.

Jason pulled back his wings. Tim sighed. “It always hurts,” he said, aggrieved. “Light pressure doesn’t make it worse anymore. It even helps, sometimes.” He sighed again, then started getting to his feet, gently tugging Jason along. “Come on. I’m not having this conversation without hot chocolate.”

To his immense surprise, Tim half-guided-half-dragged him toward the nest-adjacent conversation pit. Did dragon hybrids make nests? Jason’s pretty sure they did. He hesitated at the edge of the sunken arrangement of pillows and blankets and cushions, eyeing it—he had a feeling this nest wasn’t exactly communal.

Tim eyed him. He stayed on the outside edge of the nest. “You can come in. Unless you’d rather chill on the floor?”

Declining a direct invitation into someone’s nest was practically sacrilegious.

Jason slid inside, a wing spreading automatically as he slid down the cushioned sides. He landed half on top of a giant pillow and a fluffy black blanket and immediately froze. Jason… had very little experience being invited into private nests. He really hoped he hadn’t already shifted something important, or stepped in the wrong place. He looked to Tim to gauge his reaction.

His expression was complicated. Tired, mostly, from the nature of this interaction, but also quietly pleased in an anxious way. “You okay if I go make drinks?” he asked softly.

Jason hesitated, then nodded jerkily. His limbs were too large and his wings were in the way—and aching—and his breath was still fast, and he was half convinced he’d spiral into a full blown panic attack if Tim was gone for more than five minutes. But it didn’t take kettles that long to boil, right? Not when you were rich, certainly.

He just hoped he was making it from powder, and not with milk and chocolate over the stove the way Alfred did.

Tim nodded. “Yell if you need me.” Then he slid out of his crouch, and now that he was looking for it Jason could see the subtle movement his shoulders did, like wings trying to counterbalance the shifting of weight, and the almost unnoticeable stumble once he was on his feet. He left the room without looking back, and there wasn’t anything noticeably odd about his gait. Maybe a stiffness in his shoulders. Huh, now his tendency to borrow/steal shirts from people bigger than him made even more sense.

Jason wondered if he was using one of those fabled enchanted objects to disguise himself—if he had wings he almost certainly had a tail, too. And dragons usually had hollow bones; unless he’d managed to convince them to keep quiet, Leslie and Bruce and Alfred would know the first time he broke a bone, or did a blood test. Either way they almost certainly knew, they’d have seen the scars the second Tim got a back injury. Unless the enchantments hid scars too?

It was a nice nest. Carefully arranged, but in an organic way, like things had been shifted over time by people finding the comfiest spots. There were shirts from Dick and Bruce and Steph, all of them, and some that were probably from his Titan’s team, arranged in a seemingly random but carefully chosen pattern. A lot of the blankets were fluffy, but none of the pillows. There was a weighted blanket draped over the far edge. Jason folded his wings and tried to find a comfortable position without moving much. Then he remembered he was still wearing shoes, and hurriedly took them off, placing them on the floor outside the nest. At least he’d already changed into civvies.

It was a struggle to stop himself from counting the seconds. He tracked his breath instead, going through the breathing exercises Bruce taught him, not even summoning much annoyance when he realised where he learned them. They helped him feel less lightheaded. His wings still shook lightly, stayed puffed up in agitation. He let himself lean into the pillow, even press his face into the fluffy blanket for a second, enjoying the texture. If he wasn’t careful he could fall asleep like this.

Tim came back less than five minutes later, thankfully, and carried with him two mugs of hot chocolate. They weren’t quite full to the brim. Jason accepted his, leaning up so Tim didn’t have to bend as far, arranged his wings so any spills would land on them rather than the nest, and gently blew on it before taking a sip. It was nice, that perfect level of warmth that made him unable to take more than a sip at a time, with notes of cinnamon and maybe cloves, and the perfect amount of sweetness. How’d he know he liked his hot chocolates with cinnamon?

Tim set his own drink on the ground before toeing off his shoes and sliding into his nest, about a cushion’s length away. He took a slow sip, eyes closing, before leaning his head back and sighing. He opened one eye and stared at Jason. “So. What do you want to know?”

A lot. So much. Everything.

“Who else knows?”

Tim’s lips twitched. “Cass, Kon, Bart, Cassie, Greta, Cissie and Anita. And my parents knew, obviously. And the person that removed them.”

Jason took another sip to fight how dry his throat felt. “How’d you hide it from Bruce? Or Leslie?”

Tim took another sip. He reached for his neck and slipped a short necklace out from beneath his shirt, the one he always wore, even on patrol: thin gold chain and looping, golden pendant with a ruby and two tiny pink diamonds, which Jason always thought looked like eyes. It felt obvious in retrospect. “I think you’ve heard about these?”

“Ah.” Jason abruptly remembered all the times he got too talky, usually when tired or distracted, and rambled to the others, including Tim, of all the cool things about dragon hybrids. He’d been rambling about dragons to a dragon. Is this how fans feel after embarrassing themselves in front of their celebrity idol?

“It’s an illusion, then?” Jason said, taking another sip like that would hide the blush trying to creep up his cheeks.

“Hm, not really. It’s basically shapeshifting. All my dragon features only show up in one form, can only be seen or felt when I’m not wearing this. When I’m injured I can’t do it, I’m stuck in whatever form I was injured in. Scars carry over, and hair growth and aging and all that.”

Jason nodded slowly. “You—you still have the scars on your back, then…?”

Tim grimaced. “Yep. And the chronic pain, for some reason that always carries over. I’m just glad it doesn’t count as an injury.”

It was a struggle not to stare at his back. “How’d you hide them from Bruce?”

His wince deepened. “Did my best not to get injured on my back, and when I did, I hid it. Sometimes I’d have to put on a mask and pay a nurse to do stitches under the counter. Cass clocked me pretty quickly, she helped with injuries once we chatted about it. And once Young Justice learned I started going to them, too.”

Jason nodded slowly and tried not to feel horrified. He took another slow sip of his drink. He just—he just hid it? Bruce was literally called the world’s greatest detective, surely it was much harder and complicated than Tim made it seem, or he had to have seen something.

“And Bruce just—didn’t notice?” Jason asked, letting his incredulity seep into his voice.

Tim’s expression was wry and somewhat pained. “He was grieving you, Jay. I forced him to make me Robin. He hated me for months, he barely noticed when I broke bones half the time.”

Jason… would be bringing that up again later. Maybe with Bruce, to yell at him, because what the fuck? Seriously? If Tim was trying to ease his anxiety he had a very skewed perception of the world. “…Alfred?”

“He patched me up.” Tim shrugged. Jason wondered how much it hurt. “But like I said, I avoided injuring my back, and when I did get injured I hid it. Unless it’s an area he can treat without seeing the scars, or taking off my shirt, I would say I wasn’t injured. I just hid it.”

“‘Just hid it’? You just hid all your back injuries.”

“Yup.”

“From the world’s greatest detective and a war veteran butler.”

“Yup.”

Jason’s brows pinched in worry, in sympathy and concern. “Your pain tolerance must be through the roof, even more than mine.”

Tim inclined his head and averted his eyes. “Probably.” He took a somewhat surreptitious sip of his chocolate.

Jason took a sip too. It really was delicious. “…Can dragons actually see in the dark?”

Tim grinned. “A lot of us, yes. And we’re fireproof, too.”

Jason tried not to perk up or be too visibly excited. “Really?”

“Yup. Only in my dragon form, though, like this I’m just as flammable as you.”

“Can lead burn you?”

Tim’s expression went purposefully still. “Yes. In my dragon form. That’s what my wings were cut off with.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“That too, but mostly I’m sorry I didn’t cut off Joker’s legs when I first had the chance.”

Tim froze, mug halfway to his lips. His eyes bore into Jason’s soul. “…How’d you know it was the Joker?”

Jason winced, looking down at his lap. He had to rest his drink against his wings in fear of spilling any from how hard he was shaking. “You just confirmed it. He… when he did it to mine, he made a comment about this being his second time. I always kind of figured he’d been responsible for severing the dragon wings.”

He heard Tim sigh, then the tiny noise of him setting his mug against the carpet floor.

They stayed silent for a long moment, grief palpable in the air.

“Are… are they still in good shape? Do you know?”

Jason looked up, and tried not to notice how close to tears Tim looked. “Yes. Almost a dozen of my men are tasked with keeping track of them. Um. Actually, there’s an auction for them tomorrow.”

Tim’s head snapped towards him. “What?”

“Someone from the Court of Owls has had them for the last seven or so months, they’re setting up an auction tomorrow night with half the crime lords in Gotham. Even some dudes from Blüdhaven are invited.”

Tim’s whole body started shaking.

Jason swallowed. “Is. Is the myth of dragons reattaching their wings real?”

Tim blinked back to the present, and hesitated, grimacing. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it happen. Neither has my mother, but she was adamant it happened to her father. They’ve found loads of carvings telling stories of wings being returned after dismemberment. They were… very attached to the idea of finding mine. For the last year or so before mom’s death, hope seriously dwindled, and dad only brought it up twice after he woke up.”

Jason felt his irritation at the Drake’s swell.

Huh. He just realised how on the nose their last name was. That had to be on purpose.

“I.” Tim hesitated, then steeled himself. “I don’t know how much of it was phantom sensations—“ oh god, phantom pain, Jason hadn’t even considered that—“but sometimes I can swear I feel them pulling me somewhere. I… haven’t felt it in a while.”

Jason saw the anxiety seeping into his expression. “They’re both in one piece, I can assure you. I have some of my best men keeping track of them, if there was any hint of an idea of a plan to destroy or alter them, I’d know, and I would’ve stolen them immediately.”

“Why are you so attached to them? You didn’t even know they were mine half an hour ago.”

“I know what it feels like to have them taken away. Sort of, at least. I’ve always had respect for dragon hybrids. I wanted to give them a proper funeral, and. They hadn’t properly surfaced yet, but there were rumours about them when I first set up shop as Red Hood. They were described as belonging to a kid.”

Tim closed his eyes and visibly took a moment to steady himself. Jason let him, remembered his hot chocolate, and took a long drink. Not quite as warm as he’d want anymore.

Tim bowed his head. “I want to get them back.”

“So do I.”

“Even if reattaching them doesn’t work.”

“Okay. We can do that. Or maybe I can do that. I could go in as Red Hood, claim I wanted to take a look at them and see what all the fuss was about, and either before the auction or before they’re sent off I can steal them.”

Tim opened his eyes. “You’ll need backup.”

“I can call in Roy. Or Huntress, she owes me a favour.”

Tim bit his lip. “I probably won’t be in any condition to help.”

“That’s not true, you can be my tech support.”

“Oracle will want to know what we’re doing.”

“We’ll call it reconnaissance.”

A tense, but not wholly unpleasant silence followed, both of them sipping from their drinks.

“Can I stay over for the night?” Jason asked at last. It was about 3 AM when he swung by the cave. He was feeling the aches and pains from patrol now, of both bruises and excursion. He became annoyingly aware of how heavy his eyelids were.

“Sure.” Tim finished off the last of his drink, then blinked at the ceiling like he’d downed a shot rather than hot chocolate. “Do you want to sleep in here?”

“If you’re okay with that, then yes.” It was a very comfortable nest.

Tim nodded.

“Um. Do you have a tail?” Jason asked, after being unable to think up a decent segue. He really wanted to know, okay?

Tim grinned almost wistfully. “Yes. And horns, too.”

Jason exhaled and tried to imagine what that would look like. Would his tail be red and iridescent like the wings? How long was it? Did he have scales anywhere else? What colour were his horns? Did his eyes change? His hair? His teeth? Were his bones hollow in that form?

Tim huffed a laugh. “Your face looks ridiculous right now.”

Jason scrunched up his nose. “Sorry.”

Tim shook his head. “No, no, you’re alright, I’d be curious too.” He put down his mug and reached for his necklace.

Jason startled. “Wait, you don’t have to—“

Tim beat him to the punch. Even before he set it down, as soon as he opened the necklace’s clasp there was something different about him, an afterimage like the leftovers of a light show or the wavering air caused by heat. Then the necklace left his fingers, pooling against the edge of the floor, and all of a sudden he could actually see the differences, and oh boy was he different.

Tim’s nails were sharper and tinted purple, his ears were pointed, his grin showed off fangs, his eyes had slit pupils and were an unnatural, startling blue like the sky was a metal someone had melted white-hot and trapped inside his irises. There were grey horns protruding from either side of his head, near his temples, several inches long with ends almost pointing to the sky. And. There was now a tail curled around him, tip settled in his lap. Between four and five feet long. Small spikes or ridges following his spine. Dark red, crimson, the largest of the scales smaller than the nail of his pinkie, with purple undertones and a subtle, shimmering golden iridescence.

Jason gaped. It took until Tim hunched forward his shoulders for him to notice his expression was now one of pain. “Tim?”

Tim let out a low sound, inhuman, one of pain and fear and sorrow. But instead of his instincts flaring with protectiveness like he expected, Jason felt his entire nervous system light up in FEAR-DANGER-THREAT-PREDATOR-RUN-FLEE-RUN-AWAY.

Jason had already scrambled almost to the other side of the nest before he noticed he was moving. His wings were shaking too much to fly, but all his instincts screamed DANGER! DANGER! RUN FLY HIDE GET AWAY!! It took every ounce of willpower he had not to bolt for the door. He managed to root himself in place, shivering, wings doing their best imitation of puffballs, but couldn’t even contemplate moving closer.

Tim’s head was facing the floor, hands pressing into the cushions either side of him, hair curtaining his face. His shoulders were hunched and quivering. His tail flexed and shifted. His frame shuddered violently.

Jason’s mind ached with concern, while the rest of him yelled RUN NOW GET OUT WHILE HE’S DISTRACTED. He managed to spare a bit of worry for his hot chocolate. He was almost done, but he’d dropped it in his mad dash. Had he stained his brother’s nest?

Tim let out another low sound, this one much more familiar and less predator. A call for family-flock-brother-concern-where?

Jason had to swallow twice before mustering up the courage for an answering call. He tried to go for brother’s-here-safety-will-protect, but it came out more like fear-desperation-please-don’t-eat-me?

Tim paused, then looked up, and as soon as he caught sight of Jason his pupils thinned and the spines on his tail sat up, and his mouth dropped open with lips bared to show off his teeth in a distinctly threatening and hungry way, all of it making Jason yelp and dart another few feet away, pressing into the nest’s walls. But then Tim’s brow furrowed in both confusion and concern. He closed his mouth and curled the tip of his tail around his leg. He made a quiet rumble of safety-family-safe-no-harm-will-come.

It only minutely lessened Jason’s physical fear. Logically, he knew Tim wasn’t purposefully threatening him. Logically, he knew if either of them should be afraid of the other, Tim should be fearing him. Logically, he knew it was an evolutionary response, to what he perceived as a predator and what Tim perceived as prey. Unfortunately his body was not nearly as logical as the rest of him.

Jason managed to squeak out a hesitant, shaky call of mercy?

Tim’s answering call wasn’t quite like anything he’s heard before. It wasn’t much deeper than Tim’s normal voice but it felt like it was, like it took up the whole room. It rolled off his tongue smoothly and almost like a song, but Tim hesitated before making the sounds, mouth forming the vowels before speaking them. It was… almost scratchy? Definitely not the sounds of a bird hybrid, but kind of adjacent. To Jason’s brain it sounded nice, to his body it sounded like a predator. And to think he was usually the threat in equations like this.

It took Jason a second or two to parse what the warbling call meant, but he’s pretty sure it was mercy-mercy-safety-protection-no-threats-not-with-me.

Some of Jason’s tenseness left, but he still wasn’t able to do anything more than lean forward. Tim let out another call: safety-protection-promise-no-threat-no-danger-you-are-safe-with-me.

Finally, that was enough for Jason’s hindbrain to give him a chance. He scooted forward maybe a foot or so, movements jerky and tense. He tried to move further but his body would pull back at the last second.

Another call: please-I-promise-safety-I-will-protect-you-if-you-let-me.

Jason moved forward a cushion and a half, slowing down the closer he got, finally stopping with a whine of please-mercy-are-you-certain-no-harm?

Tim’s answering rumble was distinctly protective. It screamed there-are-no-threats-with-me-around, I-will-never-hurt-you, I-trust-you-in-return. Jason shuddered and some of his tenseness lessened. Tim quietly chirped, may-I-approach?

Jason squeaked. He was not proud of the sound, but he managed to twist it into something affirmative. His eyes snapped shut when Tim started moving, entire body tensing for the attack he knew wasn’t going to come.

He felt the pillows in front of him dip with weight, then a tail was wrapping around his waist and arms were curling around his shoulders. He whimpered instinctively at feeling a threat so close to his weakest point, head ducking as if to protect his neck, but then he heard—felt—a coo-ing rumble nearby and Tim curled all around him, a little strangely, accomodating for wings that weren’t there. The rumble-hum wasn’t quite a purr and wasn’t quite a growl. It felt like a promise of safety, of protection and warmth and love, but a lot of Jason’s instincts were still screaming THREAT!!

Slowly, the contact combined with the noise calmed him down a bit. Enough that he was able to force himself into relaxing, that he allowed Tim to gently manhandle him onto his side, let a soft, warm blanket be pulled over them both. Tim always had at least one arm around his middle, and his tail stayed in contact with him the entire time. It was strangely comforting. A nice weight, grounding.

Then Tim started lying down beside him only to jerk away and let out a bark of pain! the second his shoulder met the pillows.

Jason frowned. It was still a little hard to think with his instincts so in his face. He saw no reason for pain. He forced out a small coo of threat?

Tim started up the rumble sound again, conveying no-threat-only-safety-we-are-safe-this-pain-cannot-be-helped.

Jason let out a questioning noise. Tim kept up his reassuring purr, but when he finally lay down for real it became strained, laced with barely hidden pain-sorrow-fear-agony.

Jason made a confused distressed noise. He mentioned earlier… phantom pain? Shit.

Tim kept laying on his reassurances of no-threat-no-pain-I-will-stay-I-will-stay.

Jason had to swallow a couple times before he managed to make a chirp of I’m-sorry-you’re-hurt-how-can-I-make-it-better?

The purring paused. Tim’s grip on him tightened, punctuated by a low hum of you-can’t-I’m-sorry-thank-you.

Jason tentatively laid a wing, still half puffed in agitation, over Tim’s side. Tim tensed for a split second before leaning into him, mumbling thank-you-appreciation.

Jason relaxed a bit more. He made a coo of warmth-safety-sleep-no-pain rumble through his throat. Tim’s answering purr matched the sentiment.

Jason became abruptly very aware of how many cushions and pillows they were lying on and how soft the blanket over them was, how warm and soft and tired he felt, and promptly passed out.

#whumptober 2024 #no.6 #unhealthy coping mechanisms #healed wrong #red robin #fan fiction #red hood #jason todd #tim drake #dc comics #batman fanfiction #batman fanfic #dc fanfic #my writing #dual post

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auspicioustidings · 9 months ago

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Hi! I know there are probably a lot of mixed feelings about day 6 of The Kennel but I really really liked today’s installment. Maybe it’s just my insatiable thirst for hurt/comfort, or maybe it’s the dichotomy between Gaz being Price’s most trusted and pushing the line that far. Either way I am very excited to see how Price takes care of us in the next chapter and for Gaz to get on his knees and apologize when we see him next.

Ahem - I mean for your lovely ideas to grace us again in subsequent days. Also thank you for the lore. I know The Kennel is not necessarily plot based but I love Gaz’s perspective on Ghost and Soap’s relationship and a bit more context on what it means to be detained.

Happy kinktober! 🎃

I've been pretty lucky in that nobody has been mean about it, I was just having a super anxiety spiral yesterday so was sure it was truly the worst piece of writing on the internet.

I am so delighted you enjoyed it <3 Please take some lore!

I like to think that Gaz suspicions are right, it was actually Soap that totally fucked a girl up, like he just went into dog mode and nearly fucked her to death before Ghost snapped to his senses and stopped him. Ghost couldn't bear the thought of his boy being caged in by anyone but him so took the fall.

He absolutely has access to Johnny's tracker (because best believe they all have trackers) and is very much still in control of him even when he's not in the Kennel. You are the first person Soap has been allowed to be alone with sexually outside of Ghost since Ghost was detained, he's only permitted sexual encounters on the outside if another person of Ghost's choosing is involved.

There is only one permanent resident who is there voluntarily and we shall get to them! For reference here is the list of all soldiers who are either detained or under observation from the Kennel.

Non-residents - never been detained, can come and go freely Gaz Farah Ale Nik Keegan

Part-time residents - have been detained temporarily at times but otherwise can come and go freely Soap Rudy Alex Nova Calisto

Full-time residents - permanently detained outside of missions Ghost Mace Nikto Konig Velikan Valeria

#mhairianswers

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take-aim · 1 year ago

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My arms belong around you

An ATGB Act 4 tribute piece 😩✊🏼

Been aching to make this illust since my braving times of reading the agonizing yet highly satisfying chapters of ATGB that was the 4th arc --specifically the Labyrinth chapters. This piece was, of course, influenced by a Sleep Token song hahah. Its called "The Offering"- which I discovered the same time I started reading the Act 4 chapters. Soooo of course it became my companion song throughout the feels 😩. That one song I had on loop because what were the odds that it kind of complimented the dreaded-ness/ action-packed/ psychological horror vibes of the chapters but also exuded the yearnings of the focused characters in that arc. The willingness to offer oneself just to get what they want. If there's ONE SONG I could imagine, or suggest, as the opening theme for "season 4", it would be The Offering. Lol.

Anyway

The aforementioned lyric (caption) initially made me recall how Brick desperately held Blossom in Act 3 (if you know it.. yeah you know it 🥲). Then in the subsequent Labyrinth chapters, Blossom was one of the lingering driving forces amidst the haunting confusion where Brick was trapped in. A faint light but consistent, preserving. Behind fears, behind guilt, behind all the.. bothersome things that tried to break him, she was there and Brick looked forward to seeing her. When he whispered "...More than anything", I thought it was the first time he sounded so sure. It spoke volumes of how much he repressed a lot of things, and in that single line-- he let go.

Now I just wanted to see that on paper: that uninhibited embrace he and Blossom longed for.

Further notes: I have two other versions of this illustration but I couldn't choose from them. I asked my friends for their pick and I went for the one where they commented "this seems more intimate" :') sooo ta da!

Lastly: If anyone reads this and wishes to listen to the song, here it is. I suggest using headphones or bass earphones or whatever to savor the glorious drums :D

#powerpuff girls #rowdyruff boys #ppg #rrb #blossom utonium #brick jojo #i'm feeling things again i apologize :'D #Happy Valentines you filthy animals #LOL #blossick #ppg reds #atgb thoughts #atgb carriedreamer #as time goes by ppg #my art #traditional art #colored pencils #as time goes by carriedreamer

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enchantedchocolatebars · 1 year ago

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A Winsome Witch And A Happy Human Chapter 1: (Our Story Begins)

Written by 💕 enchantedchocolatebars 🍫 (me lol).

Chapter 2 here.

Chapter 3 here.

Chapter 4 here.

Commission cover art here.

Cover art poll here.

Chapter titles here.

Chapter 1 snippet here.

Chapter 2 here.

Enjoy ! <3

(The other chapters will be linked here.)

(If you enjoy my shorter works, I highly recommend that you start reading this fic series as it will have twice the amount of words and effort put into it, and will be my main focus going forward. It's a charming tale that is very Disney-like about how Caleb and my wittewife oc, Clara, came together. Although they don't appear in this chapter, they will appear in the subsequent ones. I appreciate any and all feedback if you are interested in sharing or sending any. Being that this is my first ever chapter fic, I'll be promoing and reblogging about it a lot.)

Even though the Titan did enjoy watching his living son from the floating cubes that drifted around in the realm known as the In Between as doing so gave him the opportunity to watch his son grow up, he also liked spending time with his unhatched children.

Tonight was family game night.

“So,” the Titan began, smiling what was a close approximation to a smile down at his three little titan eggs who were sitting in front of him in a pool of shallow water.

Egg number one wore a pink bow, egg number two wore a blue baseball cap, and egg number three wore an egg-sized ‘Bad Girl Coven’ t-shirt, which matched with the one its father wore.

Reaching behind his back, the Titan happily pulled out two board game boxes.

The box in his left hand had a picture of a checkerboard, while the other displayed the image of a black king chess piece.

“What game should we play tonight?” he asked his egglings, not expecting them to give him a verbal answer as he had the ability to comprehend them without verbalization.

He holds up the first option. “Checkers?” He lists off, shaking the box some before bringing it down and lifting up the second option, repeating the process. “Or chess?”

The eggs, of course, stayed silent about the choices, but still communicated to their papa.

“…,”

The Titan couldn’t contain the buoyant laughter that decided to bubble up out of his chest when he heard them.

“Very well,” he said with a second chuckle, stowing the checkers box behind his back once again before using a single beckoning gesture of his finger to raise a table from below the shallow surface of the water.

Once the Titan sets the chess box down on the table, he opens it and takes out the board before laying it out.

“We’ll start with chess first and play checkers afterward. I’ll even throw in an extra game just for the fun of it,” he tells his eggs with a tender smile, placing the black and white chess pieces in their proper places.

He puts the pawns in front, then lines up the other pieces symmetrically with the king and queen in the middle.

Next, the Titan walks over and, with extra care and very gentle claws, picks up his little eggling in the blue baseball cap.

Heading over to its chair, he produces a plump white pillow from thin air onto it and carefully sets it down.

Two more plump pillows are conjured across from the table as the Titan picks up his other two eggs and settles them down on their seats.

They were going to watch their papa play against their sibling in a match.

Upon taking his seat at the table, the Titan casts a sunny smile across his scruffy face as he gazed at his child.

"I know this is your first time playing chess," he began in a kind and understanding voice before continuing.

"So I'll share with you what I know."

"...," went the egg to its father.

Such an innocently childlike response led to the Titan's soft chuckle, his bony smile reaching all the way up to his round, hollow eyes.

"Don't worry," he reassured to his unhatched egg softly.

"I'll explain all the basics to you, and we'll start slowly and take our time while playing."

Chess was a challenging and complex game, he knew that.

The Titan wasn't very fond of the classic board game at first when he first started playing it with a human man with blonde hair and a forelock.

However, as their games progressed and the man taught him the basics, his liking for it increased.

"...?" asked the egg.

The Titan nodded. "Promise," he said as their chess lesson began.

The two most crucial pieces in the game are reached for by clawed hands.

"See these two guys here?" The Titan asked his egg, holding the pieces in his hand before continuing.

"In chess, we call them kings. Each player only gets one, and they're the most important pieces in the game. You want to attack your opponent's king while also keeping your own king safe and protected."

King.

Safe.

Protected.

The Titan's mind was filled with memories of his oldest son.

He sighs of bliss from the memories before continuing with his explanation.

"Once the king is captured, the game ends, so always remember to keep him shielded."

As the Titan lists off the other pieces, he points at them.

"Each player controls 16 pieces: 8 pawns, 2 bishops, 2 knights, 2 rooks, 1 king, and 1 queen."

"...?"

Papa Titan chuckles.

"The knights are the little horse heads, and the rooks are the little castle towers," he told his little one.

"Each chess piece has its own unique way of moving across the board and potentially capturing your opponent's pieces as it goes."

He points at the pawns.

"Pawns have the ability to move one square forward per turn, except for their first turn when they have the ability to move two squares forward. Pawns move diagonally forward by capturing other pieces diagonally. They cannot move backwards."

After explaining the other pieces to his egg in great detail, Papa Titan moves on to the gameplay and strategy.

...

"... And that's the game!" The Titan finishes his final statement with a grin.

Hands are placed on his hips.

"Sounds simple, right?"

"...," the egg said otherwise as a multitude of thoughts swirled inside its shell.

The Titan nodded with complete understanding of the overwhelming feeling.

"It's a lot to take in, but I think you can do it," he gently encouraged with a fatherly smile before continuing.

"Since you're just starting out, focus on always protecting your king, and you'll do just fine."

He gestures for the egg to make the first move.

As soon as he blinks, he observes that a white pawn has moved two spaces forward.

The Titan smiles, doing the same with his black one.

Upon the second blink, his eyes detect an advanced white king on the board, causing him to let out a jolly laugh.

"You're already a natural at this," he complimented, moving his knight.

Blinking, he notices that his child has pushed his king piece up a space.

In response, the Titan opened up a rook by pushing a pawn.

After more pieces are pushed, the Titan blinks again and sees that he's been checkmated.

He gives a playful laugh. "Well, that was certainly fun! You win!"

A hand hovers over the egg, gently patting the top part of its shell. "Good job."

...

After family game night concluded, the three eggs, who were now wearing small night caps that fit them just right, were curled up in bed under a thick comforter together as their father entered their room with a light brown hardcover book tucked under his arm.

"I'm hope you're all ready for tonight's story," he began, his voice so soft and tender as he took a seat in the rocking chair in the middle of the room.

"Because it's one of my favorites," he reveals with a gentle chuckle, showing off the cute cover to his children.

It was adorned with a gold border as scatters of sparkles and hearts were displayed in the background.

A happy human dressed in a pink suit and a winsome witch dressed in a blue gown were in the foreground, their respective palismen on each of their shoulders.

Behind them was another human with a beard, angrily spying on them in a bush with a bird perched on his head.

"It's titled 'A Winsome Witch And A Happy Human'," The Titan read as he opened the book and turned to the first page.

"Our story begins in Bonesborough..."

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blackhazefanblog · 2 months ago

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BH remake ch 15-22

I've missed too many chapters while I was away so imma roll everything into one post to make things easier for everyone

More of the comedy is back yaassssss 🎉

Looks like we did get the chase scene and the part where Rood knocks Chevel off the balcony like everyone wanted!! 🎊

Finally saw Professor Khaaannnn

I would like to note that his outfit seems different from before? He used wear a longer top, but now it seems he sometimes (?) wears a normal shirt. I liked how the old design better presented how he wasn't really built or ready for combat, but the new design makes his gender more clear so that's good (I kid not I was in doubt for quite some time before until I finally checked on the character info post-).

Tess in a ponytail has me deceased with her beauty

If I was in any of her classes I would not be able to concentrate 100% (and given what she teaches I'd probably be dead lol).

I'm personally overjoyed that we FINALLY got the scene of Ruby trio demons HQ... it was so late that I was worried it was removed altogether! But I'm glad we got it, with events going exactly like the old version with Elze trying to act cute for Rubymonter (but the part beforehand where he says "I don't know who'd take her" is absent? Along with Shic not personally smashing Tess into a wall and pulling her up by the hair the new version seems a bit nicer to the girls somehow lol).

I'm so happy we finally got to see Elzeble's design for the remake; he looks mostly the same which is good bc his design was definitely one of the better ones that didn't need much rework.

There seems to be a new line where Elze comments Ruby seems to like the human world (?). I'm not crying thinking of her father I'm not crying thinking of her father I'm not- I feel like in the old version Elze was implied to find humans and their world the most fun so this is certainly new. In the old version in her first appearance Ruby goes out of her way to diss humans, finding books more interesting. But now it seems more like her interest in books is an extension of her interest in human things. (It was already missing but I'd like to mention the lines implying Ruby had discovered books for the first time during their initial appearance also means the subsequent strong foreshadowing that she later introduced them to Gamode for him to like them and become a bookworm too is gone nooo ok so I'm just like them finding books more interesting than people and would prefer to stay indoors reading them is the sole reason I am upset, there is absolutely no plot reason for this rant at all.)

Looking at it now, I see why the author decided to delay the scene with the demons. We saw a lot of Heil clearly being very suspicious if not outright a villain by now, so when we are shown that the demons seem to have an associate in the school we are inclined to think it is him. Even more so, when this demons scene is immediately followed by yet another scene of Heil being a sussy baka.

A major change I'm seeing from the old storyline is Rood's deeper interest in uncovering what went down in the past between Lidusis and Chevel. In the first version Rood was dedicated solely to accomplishing his "mission" which involved him fixing Lidusis' bad life in the present and giving him a brighter future. Whatever happened in Lidusis' past was never a concern for him as Lidusis never mentioned it himself, and so long as the problem was solved Rood presumably didn't see it his place to pry. (Though as a particularly curious person myself, Rood's absolute disinterest in whatever major stuff that turned such childhood friends into worst enemies when he was personally hired to solve that very mess always baffled me lol.) It did eventually grow on me that it was different from other shounens where the main character always seems to be in everyone else's business and needs to know every little detail about all his friends... which wasn't as realistic compared to BH where he helps his friend in the present even if he never knew everything.

But in the remake Rood seems to take it upon himself to find out exactly what happened in Lidusis' past. I think this is to build future set up for him to be more greatly impacted upon eventually finding out what really went down back then and who is truly responsible for causing it all to happen. In which case I approve, but this has arguably been the most significant story change affecting the overall narrative so far. Will be interesting to see where it goes.

Gotta love how unsubtle Master is in this version with wanting Rood to make some friends. "Why don't you make some FRIENDS or get some FRIENDS or maybe find some FRIENDS-" He really do be trying to get Rood everything he didn't have *cries*

I would also like to mention that as of chapter 16, the remake is now one full chapter behind the old version (so the events of new version's chapter 16 correspond to old version's chapter 15)... and counting, as of chapter 22 the remake is 1.5 chapters behind the events of the first version.

#black haze #remake #new bh #comparison #analysis #my post #ch 16 #ch 17 #ch 18 #ch 19 #ch 20 #ch 21 #ch 22 #did anyone miss me with my regular rants?#*crickets*#it's ok I'm sure my own blog did at least #also I can finally get back to drawing fanart of the whole Rubymonter trio like I've been wanting to #I was about to complain about how long we'll go without seeing Elze's remake character design when the new chapter dropped with just that #...so that's how long I've been away

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kirschteinoir · 1 year ago

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[1] you're here, that's the thing.

post-timeskip osamu miya x reader.

❝just one summer. just to appease her.❞

when life in the city becomes overwhelming, your grandmother decides to sign you up for a summer in the countryside working at onigiri miya, the best onigiri place this side of hyogo! you're not the biggest fan of the early starts and long hot days at first, but your attractive new boss may change your mind...

wc; 728

chapter masterlist.

𝙋𝘼𝙍𝙏 𝙊𝙉𝙀. 𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙖𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙡 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙬𝙮 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙣.

“i don’t know… i just want to do something new…”

the window frame of your small tokyo apartment digs into your arms as you lean dangerously into the spring breeze that finally started to make itself known after many months of red noses and cracked fingertips. you press the phone harder against your ear with one hand in fear of accidentally dropping it whilst reaching out to grab a falling cherry blossom petal with the other. you miss it, watching as it flutters through your fingertips and you reflexively sigh, hoping your downstairs neighbour may appreciate the beauty of spring too and perhaps succeed where you failed.

“tch, are ya sighin’ at me again?” your mother scolds from the other end of the line, her kansai dialect crackling into the receivers as her emotions got the better of her. you quickly rebut, shaking your head and pointing out of the window as if she were next to you in the cramped space of your 66 x 66 square metre prison cell.

“no ma, i swear! i’ve just been in a weird mood lately,” you admit reluctantly, ashamed that you hadn’t yet found your footing in the working world of modern tokyo. you were always the kind of kid who’d tell everyone that one day you’d be the prime minister, or an astronaut, or a famous celebrity, and everyone should get your autograph right now so they would have something worth millions in the future and the bragging rights that they were your classmate at one point. but it didn’t take long for the tumultuous reality of adulthood and life beyond high school entrance exams to hit you - you were still a hard worker to your core but after completing a bachelor’s degree and being left to your own devices as a fully-fledged adult, the foundations of those wild ambitions you’d grown up clutching close to your chest were maybe not as steady as you’d thought.

“as i was saying,” your mother cut through your thoughts sharply, in that way mother’s do when you’re about to be lectured about your life decisions. “how about visiting grandma for a while? for the summer, at least.”

before you could protest, your mother sensed your reluctance and hastily followed up.

“ya haven’t seen her in ages, when was the last time you went to hyogo? and you’ve been stuck in the city for so long, i can imagine the fresh countryside air would do ya the world of good!”

biting back your whines, you desperately try to think of an appropriate response to your determined mother. while of course you would love to see your grandmother again (she’s probably not had many visitors since your grandfather passed), some part of you rejected your humble beginnings. you’d moved away from a simple life in the countryside at a very young age thanks to your father’s new job in the glittering oasis of tokyo and only ever went back for a week or two during the school summer holidays to see your grandparents. and every summer you’d hated how the dirt never really left the underside of your fingernails or how there was nowhere to hide from the heat, your tiny electric fan about as helpful as a bucket in a flood. eventually your visits ceased altogether and subsequently so did the guilt of missing your grandparents.

“i’ll give grandma a ring as soon as we hang up. she’d love to see her only grandchild again, all grown up!”

ah.

she’d really pulled that card.

despite your initial reluctance, your mother ignores your grumblings and cheers in delight as you finally agree to spend the summer in hyogo with your grandma. just one summer. just to appease her.

it was fast approaching late afternoon by the time you bid your mother goodbye. you’d talked about so much since the initial proposal that you’d half-hoped she would forget her declaration to give her own mother a call; you’d supposed luck had never really been on your side because just as you had convinced her that yes, you had enough groceries for now and yes you were taking your vitamins regularly and definitely drinking plenty of water, she’d brought the subject up one last definitive time.

“i’ll call your grandma now and let you know what she says. bye sweetheart!”

and then the line was dead.

about me.

ao3 link.

#haikyuu #haikyuu fanfic #haikyuu fic #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x reader #hq fanfic #haikyuu fluff #miya osamu #miya osamu x reader #miya osamu x you #miya osamu fluff #osamu x reader #osamu fluff

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dramionediscussion · 9 months ago

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Can I rant about something I read recently:

I read a fic recently. Due to health issues, Hermione can't carry a baby to term. She found herself pregnant and had to make the decision to abort. She grieves for her would-be child and knows that she will never be able to have biological children. Draco is a single parent, and as she dates him she interacts with his kid and of course feels distraught that this will never be her, she won't be a mom. All this happens in a matter of months, so she really hasn't had time to properly process things.

Her parents find out about her health issues and subsequent abortion, and just go off at her. They are horrified that she "killed a baby" (Note: she was like 8 weeks when she found out and had the procedure done).

Draco's wife died giving birth so he understood her decision and respected it. Her father came around but her mom barely acknowledged her. Draco had to be the one to speak to her so that she could really understand why Hermione did what she did.

Anyway, in the end, magic finds a way and Hermione's health problems are cured and she is able to have kids.

Right so here is my rant:

Why did she need to be cured? So many fics are like this, she can't have children, and boom miraculously she gets pregnant. Even after her accepting that this will not be her life and accepting that she can adopt, and Draco being okay with not having biological children with her, authors always find a way to make them a happy family, bouncing baby and all.

Look I know there are so many people out there who want children but can't, and if there was some miracle, they wouldn't hesitate to take it.

But it's okay to portray a female character as not being a biological mother. In this fic, she acts as a mother figure to Draco's child, she goes on and on about how she feels like a mother to him, how she wants him, and how she wants to raise him, she cried when he called her "mummy", she felt like a mom at that moment. Draco told her that they will raise him together and be a family, she tells him that is all she ever wanted, just a little family of her own and she has that with him and his son. Then the author posts an epilogue, a 3 year time jump. Hermione is pregnant, and there is one throwaway line of Draco getting Hermione a cure, no money was spared, they got it and now they are a "true family".

Why would you write an entire fic showing a woman accepting her life and finding love and family and happiness after a tragedy, to just make a final chapter with one "Oh btw, they got a cure" line? It feels like it invalidates everything that came before. Like you just wasted your time empathizing with this character, crying with her, feeling what she is feeling.

And honestly, if the author really wanted to make Hermione have a biological child, why only one line??? Make a few chapters of them going to doctors, doing research, etc. The author did a good job at describing Hermione's pain and her journey and the romance, they could have just written a few more showing her gaining hope, showing her getting the news of the cure, and showing her finding out that she is with a child.

I went to the comment section to see if other people felt the same as me, and well some did, most didn't. Most people were lamenting that Hermione wouldn't get to have an actual child. So I wonder if the author saw this and wrote an epilogue to satisfy their readers?

-Lisa

(PS: Loads of details of the fic were changed so you won't be able to pinpoint the exact fic and the author. I don't want to call out the author, they are not the first to do this, I have read many more where she can't have kids, and accepts it, but then they find a way to have children. And that last part is always rushed and not detailed like the rest of the plot. It is really okay to have her adopt or become a stepmom, that doesn't negate her experience as a mother.)

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bluerosesonata · 1 year ago

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I played and finished Slay the Princess last night while I was puppy sitting. I had such a great time. She’s my scary wife now.

Spoilers + more detailed thoughts below the cut, but without spoilers:

[points at devs] haha horror podcast fans

I’ve always loved Nicole Goodnight from her first appearances on Nosleep. she did so excellent as the Princess.

Very impressive scope, even with the very definitive ending I got, I came away from the game feeling like there were still paths I hadn’t seen.

Just as a general tone setter, I love the opening card/disclaimer that ends with “This Is A Love Story.”

GREAT visual style and art. I’ll get into this in my breakdown below, but with my amateur eye I love how they took a non-traditional approach to way the images/characters are displayed in a renpy game

INCREDIBLE music.

Hard to avoid Disco Elysium comparisons with the aspects of the Self mechanic, which I’m sure is either a received as a high compliment or is a source of annoyance for the devs, lol

Highly recommend it for OELVN fans, horror fans, and lesbians.

First and foremost, I’m genuinely very impressed at the amount of variety to the paths.

On my first playthrough, I got on a loop where I kept the princess locked up, and then she came upstairs and killed me. The next loop, The Paranoid showed up, and when we went into the basement, it was all spooky and distorted. In this one, we had some great banter with The Princess before I ultimately decided to slay her, and trapped me in the basement by warping reality and removing the stairs, forcing me to kill myself to escape that loop. The Cold showed up in chapter 3, and I think that was when I tried to leave the woods.

In subsequent loops, even when choosing all the choices I made to the best of my memory, I couldn’t recreate that first loop at all. It really speaks to the scope of the game in an impressive way.

The first vessel I managed to provide was The Tower. (It was the outcome of being mauled on your first encounter with her, then perceiving her as a dominating, inevitable force.) After discovering my new objective, the endings I saw were The Prisoner (It’s the ending where you just wait for the cell to rot away around you), The Razor (GOATED route, I will be calling her ‘Knife Wife,’), The Damsel, and ended with The Adversary (devil horns), before reaching Awakening.

These are the only routes I can talk about, but I’m certain there were at least 2 I missed/didn’t get to see. It’s an EXTREMELY impressive scope, and fully voiced, to boot, so my hat is off to the devs on that front.

(The next few paragraphs are about the voice acting, if you want my story thoughts, I made a small heading for that bc my VA thoughts got a bit out of hand lol)

Voice Acting

While I’m on the subject of the game being fully voiced: Nicole’s voice acting really shines here, and it’s absolutely essential to making this game what it was. I think a version of this game without it would be very Good, but not nearly as Haunting. The sheer variety of reads on certain lines based on how you first approach the princess is incredibly impressive, as well. (Again— scope!!!)

As far as the narrator VO goes, i can’t deny that Jonathan did a great job, and with his history of being the main narrator for The Magnus Archives, he was a good fit for the tone and audience of the game. I would even posit that, even if there were other people who were considered in the early phases of development, the cross-promotional potential of drawing in even a small section of an audience already primed for cosmic, reality-altering horror via TMA was a very smart business decision, and I applaud them for it. That being said, I think one unintended side effect of his casting may be that people familiar with his TMA character (a…semi-reliable narrator) might immediately come in primed with doubts about the Narrator. They seem to have anticipated this, though, and included skeptical and suspicious dialogue choices with him right off the bat in the first chapter, which is fun.

(A brief aside: If it seems like I am being very measured with my thoughts on the Narrator, it is not because I have anything negative to say about his performance. I am being measured simply because the narrative devices the game employs makes it impossible to not draw comparisons to Big Hitters like The Stanley Parable and Disco Elysium— both incredible games that I personally would be both delighted and terrified to be brought up when discussing a game I created or a role I was playing.

These games did not Create the idea of “a narrator you interact with and who is sometimes rude to you” or “multiple voices with distinct Traits butting in on your current predicament,” but both games are incredibly prolific in how implemented those devices and the vocal performances involved….so it is not a fair comparison.)

Story Thoughts

The subtitle for this section could also be “Faron ranks how hot they find all of the versions of The Princess.” jk.

I am not going to do summaries here I’m just going to assume most people reading this have played the game.

But let’s start again with the sentence at the beginning of the game: “This is a love story.”

Not long ago, there was a big discussion on tumblr about the statement that horror is “about love”, (it might have even been spurred on by TMA, lol) and that lead to a lot of justified (but not always kind) posts from my fellow horror fans being annoyed by that take. I’ll spare you a rehash of all of that. But it is exactly Because of that discourse (and my general gothic preferences) that I like the choice to open with this a whole lot. The phrase “This is a love story,” written in bold, at the end of a disclaimer saying ‘there are no wrong choices, just different paths,’ has an immense power to it. It is a mic drop way to open up a story, as a way to prime the audience to be open to the Princess as more than a monster, and creates the anticipation for a greater relationship to be uncovered between the protagonist and the princess.

It could also be that the phrase hit my brain in a weird way because of Fata Morgana. I don’t think The House in Fata Morgana had a similar line in the actual game— but my roommate who handed me Fata Morgana very specifically told me, “it is a horror game, and it is a tragedy, but at its core, It Is a Love Story.” And that’s always stuck with me. (I digress.)

A Brief Address to Loops and the Popularity of the Looping Narrative

I could sit here all day and talk to you guys about looping metanarrative structure and the different approaches to it, but you’ve probably all played a VN with that before. (If you haven’t, and this is your first time encountering something like this and it blew your mind…Go play Zero Escape: 999. Run, don’t walk.)

I believe very strongly that reviews should be about what a game Is, and how well it accomplished what it aims to be, not about what you wish the game was. But it is an even stronger opinion of mine that loop narratives, especially in visual novels, can sometimes get too bogged down in the details of “why am i in a time loop.”

I am extremely glad that this game (mostly) avoided this, bc it offers an opportunity to say something about the subgenre as a whole.

At the end of the day, looping narratives mainly exist as a metanarrative device in VNs to acknowledge and offer a reason why your character’s behavior (and/or your choices) change. It’s an easy way to create ludonarrative harmony, and to inject some extra drama with little extra effort.

But BECAUSE it’s easy, it can also feel Extremely Overused, and starts to become an expectation.

I won’t go on a soapbox about it, especially because I feel like this game handled it very well, and the looping, metanarrative aspect is suited to the themes and character subject matter of Beings Who Are Concepts, even if they Why doesn’t really satisfy. At the end of the day, this is a love story, and the why matters less than the feelings involved.

Specific Path Thoughts

All versions of the Princess are incredibly strong concepts, and the game is structured in a way that I very much would enjoy seeing how different people’s first loops influence their opinions on her. It’s got IMMENSE “streamability” in that regard.

Someone that encountered The Damsel version of the princess first would have an INCREDIBLY different experience than someone who encountered the Adversary first, which ties very neatly into the subject of the greater love story and can also generate some great post-play discussion.

I think, undoubtedly, the Aspects of the princess that made the biggest impressions on me were The Adversary (demon wife) and The Razor (Knife Wife). Part of this is due to the sheer length of their paths, as both of them take 3+ loops (correct me if I’m wrong) to reach the conclusion of their sections, whereas The Damsel, The Tower, and The Prisoner all only took 2. (See the next section for more on that). Thinking about it, every path was similar in the amount of sheer resources created for them (illustrations, animation), but these two create the illusion of having more than the others simply due to being the longest action sequences and loops in the game.

The Razor has an OUTSTANDING design, and the sequence to slay her would have been an incredible finale in its own right, as we get introduced to EVERY Aspect of ourselves as we die over and over again, even shoving the narrator out of the way so we can just jump to the cabin and fight her again, and the PC reasoning that “if there’s enough of Me, I might be able to overcome her”. For this reason, and because of the big knife skeleton body, I think that the Razor path is more Fun than the Adversary’s.

Flavor-wise, however, I feel like The Adversary is a much stronger character and narrative thread. A princess who doesn’t want to escape— she just wants a good fight. She wants you at your best, and she won’t have any less. That’s exactly the sort of character dynamic that really gets me going. I love single-minded women, and I love a main character who meets them on their level of crazy.

Both of these paths involve the Aspects of Self “The Hunted” and “The Stubborn,” and they are the aspects of the PC that by FAR have the most color to them (besides the lover, who is more of a buffoon.) I think they were my favorites.

That being said, I adored how exhausted the Narrator got during the Damsel path, and I thought there was a very quiet, profound power in the Prisoner version of the Princess. She had an austere, quiet pride to her, tinged with an undeniable sorrow.

I really do appreciate the variety of ways they provide for one to approach your dialogues with the Shifting Mound after every loop. They really create a lot of space for the player to decide how they feel about her. Even if it sort of bothered me that every time there was a choice to tell her you would slay her once it was all over, I appreciate the option being there. (And, again- the sheer amount of dialogue!! Sheesh!)

Lastly, the finale. It was incredible, going through all of the forms, reliving all of the choices you made. But this is the part that the amount of options started to detract from my experience.

Again- I love that they left a lot of space for people to decide how they feel. I like the amount of responses provided, and I get the impression they don’t change the final choice in any way, just the dialogue she says to get to it.

But it bothered me that there was an option to just…opt out of seeing every vessel, either by submitting to her or by killing her. I can’t see a world where anyone playing a finale like this would WANT to cut the big final movement short. It seems silly.

The payoff was worth it, though. It was a beautiful end and one that definitely will stick with me.

(And Obviously I decided to take her hand and remain endless with her! How could I not!)

Mechanical Musings

Note: I am a dabbler in Ren’Py, but I have been a dabbler for over a decade, and I went to college for game design. (You’re allowed to laugh) I’m not GOOD at programming, and I forget the class names for basically everything unless I’m looking at it.

All of this is all to say I am PURELY speculating on how certain parts of the game were accomplished.

UI/Display/Visuals

The choice to omit a typical text box was an objectively correct one for this game, in no small part to how they decided to do the visuals on this game. It kept the game looking clean and drew the eye to the stunning visuals. The right aligned prompt box similarly aided in that respect, and I think that being forced to scroll down to resist during certain tense sequences was a great touch. Makes me wonder if there’s a timed element on those responses.

The choice to eschew using typical talk sprites (outside of The Long Quiet scenes, the sequence with The Damsel, i thiiiiink the confrontation in the basement maze, and the finale) in favor of using scenes/displayed images really aided in the storybook vibes, and the animated loops they had on those images gave the pencil work an amazing kinetic energy for the scenes where the princess is just standing or sitting still. (For the uninitiated- It’s incredibly simple to program animation loops using static images in RPY, but I’m not clear if that the most memory-efficient way to do so; I’m going to assume they did this though)

The menu Ui is what gives it away as Renpy to me, but you know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, lol.

I’m sort of surprised there wasn’t anything like a scene viewer or gallery that unlocked at the end, but I guess that might sort of be immersion breaking.

Gameplay

Just from my hobbyist eye, I can tell there’s a looooott of dialogue flags in this one, where they track previous things you’ve said in the scene. There is absolutely a variable for “Princess hostility,” just based on the fact there’s several like reads of her answering the questions you can ask in chapter one, but since I only did a single run where I didn’t pick up the knife in chapter 1, I can’t be sure if it’s points based or binary “has knife = true.”

My guessssss about how the Aspects are inherited is that it might be a point based system combined with a flag indicating how you died; this would explain how I inherited “the paranoid” in ch2 my first run, but never after that.

I can say with almost complete certainty from the way it completely locked me out of deciding to leave the princess locked up after my choice to leave the woods that there is a true/false variable tracker for each path that stores if you’ve reached the Long Quiet or not, bc no matter what I did I could NOT do that again. Either that or there’s a flag where the narrator will lock you downstairs after seeing that screen once.

There’s also probably some variables tied to your appearance changing in the mirror, but i would need to double check achievements to be sure that text isn’t just set to appear after X vessels being provided.

There’s also a distinct possibility there are different “pools” for the princess’ aspects to be pulled from after each “level” of ascension; this would set it up so that it’s impossible for you to end with an event that is only 1 loop long, and it would be easier to assure story pacing that way.

(Ex: “If Vessels < 2, use Event_Pool_A, Else use Event_Pool_B”, where pool A contains vessels that use less than 2 loops to complete)

All in all, if I ever got the chance to crack the hood open on this, I would. I highly recommend it.

#bluerose txt #slay the princess #game thoughts #bluerose reviews

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greenerteacups · 1 year ago

Note

I’m not sure if you’ve specifically answered this before, but how long did it take you to outline, research, and prepare the foundational meat of Lionheart since it’s such a sprawling saga with threads for so many characters? Did you have it all mapped out before you started writing? What about shorter pieces like The Climb and the latest, delightful The Death Eater Diaries?

The series outline for Lionheart I wrote on one bleary, rabbit-hole of a day in the summer of 2022 when I was definitely supposed to be doing something else, and after that, each book took me between 3 days and 2 weeks to outline completely. The later books have taken longer because of their length and the number of threads — the series has a way of getting wider as well as longer, and for the last two books, I sometimes got a bit grumbly about how many characters pop up in every novel. As for research, most of that will happen before or during the outlining process; I'll have a copy of the book on-hand to check plot details, but for the most part I try to work without flipping back to the text, to avoid copying beats or stylistic choices unless I have a thematic reason to. I also use HP Lexicon and fanwikis while I'm editing for content, though when I'm drafting I make a real effort not to switch out of the tab for any reason, because it breaks flow. I'm sure I have missed some details despite my references, but c'est la vie; JKR had to do continuity edits in subsequent edition releases for several books, so at least I'm not alone.

For The Climb, I wrote the first chapter in the raw, then went through and blocked out the second two in an outline at the bottom of the document. Very very broad strokes there — TC is different from Lionheart because it's a slice-of-life tone piece, so there's not as much plot to be done. It's a novella conceived for the sole purpose of exploring one particular relationship, so the plot came secondary to the things I wanted to highlight about how that dynamic worked. It's a character-forward piece, to borrow culinary terminology, and outlining for character is a lot easier than outlining for plot. (For me.)

The Death Eater Diaries emerged almost fully-formed from a Tumblr post I made joking about the sort of ludicrously awful decade Narcissa experiences. The hardest part of outlining was nailing down canonical dates. Stuff like how old Andromeda was when she got pregnant, when Bellatrix got married, when the members of the previous generation died, all that's unspecified — but it's also all functionally constrained to a narrow window of time, if you take in where the characters are at certain other parts of the story, so you can't just say anything. It was very fun to write, though. Doing so also stressed how hilariously short the timeline on the Black family collapse actually is. Between 1971 and 1981, they go from a two-branch family with an heir, a spare, and three healthy daughters -> completely extinct in the male line, two of its descendants disinherited, two imprisoned, one missing, presumed dead, and Draco Malfoy's mom.

#I didn't even MENTION alphard getting burned off the tree because to be honest i straight up forgot dog existed #but if I had that'd just drive the point home #tfw your uncle disinherits your other uncle from sheer rage for giving money to your cash-poor disinherited cousin #I also like to think — as the fic implies — that the wall is literally not official/magical at all #Orion just gets pissy and writes people out of the will sometimes and then his dramatic wife goes to stab a cigarette in their portrait #which makes it all the funnier that sirius in the movies does this dramatic 'gaze upon my works ye mighty' thing about it

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littleeyesofpallas · 2 years ago

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Not to be a weirdo and go all anime tiddy detective(again...) but I've been seeing my awkwardly salvaged Gigi/Senjumaru post getting notes, and among other issues i have with how that post wound up I do feel like I didn't actually articulate my characterization of Senjumaru's design very clearly.

Kubo's got certain sensibilities about his character design. Usually i get fixated on his love of dramatic "crazy face" and the fandom at large fixates on that one big breasted body type he knows the fans love, but he also has a pretty robust cast of modestly proportioned girls. That being said, he walks a line on that, and is very deliberate in making sure to always remind everyone that his small breasted characters do still have a noticeable chest. It's a little weird but it's pretty specific because you'd think it would be easy enough to let their silhouette flatten out for the sake of simplicity, or speed, or just because sometimes a camera angle won't naturally emphasize the bust, yet time and again he stays consistent on it in a way that predicates intent.

Also worth noting in the context of things here, Isane sort of implicitly binds on account of otherwise conflicting omake details vs her strict canon appearances. Unohana implicitly binds due to her traditional style of dress that fundamentally includes flattening out the chest silhouette. AND YET in the face of those facts they're still drawn to show distinct curvature to the chest line. Rukia, Hinamori, and Shino are all generally infantilized as a part of their design aesthetic, Rukia passing as a 15yo, Hinamori being demure and doll-like(ala her name), and Shino being part of an expressly younger generation than the heroes when she's introduced. They're still drawn with noticeable breasts: moreover there is every opportunity to just entirely lose their silhouettes to the featureless blackness of the shinigami uniform, and Kubo goes back in with the white ink anyway. SuiFeng and Hiyori actually both nearly dodge this by wearing clothes that do actually obscure their body shape, but then Kubo seemingly compensates for that modesty by giving Sui Feng her sideboob outfit when she throws off her haori(and its apparent attached sleeves?), and giving Hiyori almost out of place cleavage(well, that and almost constant midriff shots)

Point again being that these are characters with distinctly small breasts, for whom one should imagine no one would be up in arms about being drawn without some subtle bumps in theri chest line, and yet Kubo still does not miss the detail...

So with that intentionality in mind, the fact that he then went out of his way to... I don't want to call it "cleverly"... but eh... """cleverly""" avoid drawing attention to Giselle's chest by putting her in an oversized top, and even changing its design around the sleeves, and subsequently part of her silhouette(she was slightly curvier, and her outfit was less fluffy in her early appearances?), as her "reveal" chapter got closer, becomes a noticeably meaningful choice. In particular in proximity to the "reveal."

And you know who else he seemed to have taken similar care in how he drew? Shutara Senjumaru. And granted, as i prefaced this whole post with facetiousness, not as insulation but as disclaimer, this is a ridiculous angle of approach. it's a ridiculous premise. the evidence and logic underpinning every step of it is dumb, but in spite of any of that, Shurata's silhouette jumped out and grabbed me from her very first appearance. The line from her neck/shoulder down to her waist is unlike how he's drawn any other flat chested/small breasted shinigami. And that comes in conjunction with the rest of her aesthetic:

She is dressed like something between a Geisha: high class personal entertainer, a Tayu or Oiran: a high class prostitute, or a Kabuki actor who could likely be playing a character styled after or explicitly in the role of either.

Obviously her most striking feature is the bizarre headdress, which appears to be made of kanzashi[簪]: a rather broad category of hair accessories typical of geisha and oiran.

She appears to be wearing two exaugurated pins to create the shape of a crescent moon with what look like they would be the sort of hanging elements of a bira-bira kanzashi; meaning that each of those vertical bars hanging from the underside of the moon would be free to swing back and forth from a connecting link or chain(s).

The radiating golden bars from the top I assume would be a kind of hanagushi hair comb, again with obvious exaguration given its size.

And the under hanging radiance being something like miokuri.

It also gives off super distinct vibes of an art movement that I hate that I cannot for the life of pinpoint right now... I want to say it was Spanish colonial(???) that used to specifically carve halos in this style, not as a round solid disc, but as a series of geometric rays... I hate to say that the thing I always think of is how Death Note borrowed it for its pseudo religious imagery. (although I guess the French did it too a bit during the reign of King Louis the XIV, but i always associate it with the mexican art of catholic saints, but I'm not even sure if I'm thinking of the right thing.)

In any case those are motifs or themes that we never get to see explored. boo...

Shutara is however kind of unexpectedly underdressed for a super powered clothier. Her one exterior cloak thing is as bas I can tell not anything real, even ignoring its defiance of gravity. If she were an oiran you would expect more layers, and the distinctive thing i don't know the name for that they hold in front of them and conceals their hands... She does however have the unmistakable oiran raised shoes.

And finally her makeup is a little vague but with relative consistency she's been depicted as extremely pale, which strongly suggests white makeup, typical of unfortunately all three aesthetic culprits, thus not actually narrowing the reference down at all.

Taken then with her theme of clothes and costuming in proximity of theater, the power of clothes/costume and thus presentation and roleplay, Kubo's super distasteful conflation of Giselle's transgender identity as some kind of "disguise" or "deception," kabuki using onnagata --male actors specifically trained in female role performance and upheld and even coveted at times throughout history as an apex of femininity, even above and beyond that of ciswomen-- the fact that Senjumaru is just straight up a masculine name, etc...

Like i said in the other post about all this, which i'm reluctant to even link back to, without any further elaboration it's impossible to say what this actually means for shutara as a character, and any inworld logic that applies. I don't think she is supposed to be a literal actress, like she has some personal history of professional theater training and performance.

That feels like it should be obvious. But understand that while all of this was a pain in the ass to try and lay out explicitly, it's something that, knowing all these disparate factoids already, I didn't actually have to think about at all when I first saw Shutara. I just clocked her as a queer woman immediately. It felt super obvious.

But now for my due diligence.(i actually totally thought there woudl be more of it at first...) Because as confident as I am in my theory, even I can recognize that it is not without holes. For one, entirely outside this pattern is Liltotto, who is actually very consistently drawn without the otherwise ubiquitous indication of AFAB breasts I point out otherwise. And she is certainly given no particular trans coding the way I associate with Gigi and Shutara.

i was going somewhere with this and i forgot... i think i though there dbe a bigger string of tangents to go off and when there werent my brain just kinda fizzled out without drawing a conclusion...

#no im not tagging this one #no one really needs to see it #its just me griping about my old posts #instead of editing them #because my compulsion is fickle in its methods #okay no i lied #bleach meta #if only so itll actually show up in my archive correctly later

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