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eightglass · 8 months ago

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Silly Game Time: The Skeleton King has asked for my hand in marriage ... Again (sigh).

How can I let him down gently enough to not make him an enemy, but firmly enough that he'll stop asking?

My boots knocked against the smooth granite floor, the light growing dimmer as I made my way deeper into the Mountain Hall. Scores of tall, armoured skeletons holding swords and shields lined each side of the entry passage, as unmoving as they had been for centuries, but ready as ever to march for battle at a word from their King.

Ah, their King.

Once a mighty lord of men, his kingdom was subsumed by the Calamity over nine hundred years ago; a business that has long since been taken care of, but he and his subjects never quite found their way back to the living.

So they carved out a place where they could sustain an existence, and over time their labours began to bear fruit; the group of post-mortals had for themselves a small, thriving city under the mountain, and when that started to attract people willing to join them, they struck a treaty with the lords of the living who lived above them: any person who wished to forsake their life and flesh to forever dance and labour and love, underground, as a soul eternally bound to their bones, would be allowed to.

But now, the Great King of the Joyful Dead apparently wanted a more... corporeal connection to the lands of the living: my hand in marriage.

The inner doors opened when I knocked, and I was greeted in a well-lit foyer by a pair of jaunty and well-dressed skeletons, a soft green glow in their eye sockets.

"Greetings, Sir Rosaline of Troasa! Our King has been eagerly awaiting your visit! He asked that amenities for the living be prepared; would you like anything to..." the other skeleton quickly whispered something in their ear, "...consume or imbibe?"

I watched in morbid fascination as another pair of skeletons entered from a side door, wheeling a massive cart, upon which lay a feast's worth of strange and preposterous food items... was that an entire chicken slathered with apple jelly? But it made sense, seeing how rarely they entertained living guests.

"I thank you and your King greatly for your wonderful hospitality," I responded as I made my way over to the cart and picked out a small, triangular loaf of bread and an exquisite wine glass full past the brim with small slices of cheese. "I would however like to meet the King at the earliest opportunity; the journey here took longer than it should have and I am growing quite restless for a chance to speak with him." I tasted the food. The cheese was delicious, obviously purchased from an Above merchant, but the bread, while warm and fantastically soft, was intensely seasoned with an odd mix of spices I wasn't familiar with. I set the bread back down.

"Yes, yes of course! You may follow us to to the royal suite!"

What a shock that had been, receiving a royal letter from the Dead King. Addressed to me, who was thoroughly enjoying a peaceful early (very early) retirement from the infinite bullshit that is royal politics. I'd been out in my field setting up a scarecrow when the courier had arrived.

Walking through the Great City of the Dead was a surreal experience. It wasn't just an endless series of decorated tunnels like I had expected; as soon as we left the entry area, the hallway opened up into an enormous cavern, bright with the light of countless lamps and beams of sunlight that made their way down through openings in the ceiling. I gaped at the great trees that grew from far below the high walkway we were traversing, and the gardens that bloomed on each of the five or six vertical layers of streets lining the edge of the open area. The whole place was bustling with activity; skeletons playing games on the well-kept lawns, tending to the plant life, or watching a performance at an amphitheatre.

A few hundred yards away from us, at the end of the walkway and back of the cavern, stood the impressive facade of the royal palace. The great wooden doors were already open to an impressive foyer. As beautiful as the whole place was, it didn't stop my heart from pounding and stomach from feeling off. I ate another piece of cheese.

When we arrived at the entrance, my guides stopped to talk with an important-looking butler before beckoning me to follow. We ascended a grand staircase and wound our way through a few hallways adorned with some of the most beautiful tapestries and paintings I'd ever laid eyes upon before arriving at a small sitting room decorated in red and gold.

And there, in a soft leather armchair, dressed in exquisite dark blue fabrics, with the surface of his bones white as snow and polished to a gleam, sat the King.

"Ah, Sir Rosaline of Troasa! We are so very glad to finally meet you in person. Would you like to sit? Orson, Leah, thank you kindly for bringing our guest here, would you please fetch some tea?"

As my guides left, I took a tentative seat in an armchair opposite him, and set the glass of cheese on the adjacent side table. Before I had a chance to form a reply, the King continued.

"Sir Rosaline, eldest daughter of Queen Julianne, royal knight and third in line to the throne of Troasa. To you, we have extended an offer of marriage. We are delighted that you came all the way here to this kingdom to discuss our offer, but do you know why we wish for this arrangement?"

This caught me off guard; it seemed obvious. I cleared my throat.

"A royal marriage would stabilise relations between our kingdoms, would it not? We could easier negotiate better mutual trade agreements, and I know your mining experts have expressed interest in what value could be hidden under our hills. Your kingdom does control a sizeable Above territory, and you suspect living subjects up there would be better served by a government of the living, yes? And all that is impossible under the current set of agreements."

The King nodded. It was uncanny, conversing with someone who had no facial expressions, but his body language showed no discomfort.

"Yes, yes, all that is true, but those concerns are secondary. Have you considered why we asked you? You do have other siblings who would be better suited for such an arrangement, if it were only for political matters. Ah, the tea!"

Orson and Leah brought in a tray with a fine... crystal tea set? They poured me a cup, added cream and sugar, and set down the tray. I took a sip, and it was very sweet, but not overly so.

When they left, he continued. "You see, you are not just a princess; you're a knight as well. Royal blood and royal recognition of honour and all that. And there's a very... interesting curse upon us and our kingdom to which your situation could be a solution to."

Now, I'm no wizard, but he explained the problem in a way that I was able to understand, and although he sounded thoughtful and level-headed, it was clear that he was both incredibly excited to have found a solution and dreading the possibility that I might turn him down and dash his hope.

The curse was an old one, from back before the treaty that allowed people to join the postmortal, when the living were trying to wage war upon and eradicate what they took to be malevolent remnants of the Calamity. It was woven by a team of great wizards who wanted to bind the fates of the dead kingdom to a set of paradoxical conditions based on royal bloodlines that could never be met, even if the King did have blood. The curse ultimately failed to serve its purpose, when the dead kingdom was able to successfully defend itself from the invaders and make the great agreement, but even after centuries of picking at the threads of the curse and trying their hardest to get it to unravel, some of the knots still would not budge.

And now they had me. Something about my titles and blood would probably help them to find a solution to this curse that still bound their fates to... something that didn't sound good, I'm not a wizard. Whatever it was, I got the idea that the kingdom would slowly waste away or something if the curse wasn't taken care of.

They had me, who was, unfortunately for them, not interested at all by the prospect of marrying a centuries-old skeleton and being dredged back into the political world I had worked so hard to escape. Fuck this, I just wanted to go back to my farm.

It took me a minute to form a response. How does one refuse to be a saviour to an entire kingdom?

"I-" my voice broke, so I cleared my throat again. "I'm so sorry, but... I don't think I can help you here. Years ago, after the fiasco with the assassins and the coup attempt, I swore to never again get involved in royal politics. I don't think I could stand to be a part of anything like that again... but the aftermath of the coup left several of my other siblings and cousins in similarly unconventional positions, and most of those are quite secret, you won't have heard of what their situations are, maybe they could help, possibly more than I could?"

The King was visibly disappointed, but he also looked like he was thinking over the new possibilities I'd just presented.

Eventually he nodded. "We thank you for coming here our offer, even though you aren't able to help us directly. Please, stay and enjoy our hospitality, for tonight at least, before you depart from our kingdom."

I sighed in relief that he didn't press the issue. As much as I truly did want to help, I just didn't think I could handle being that involved with international royal politics again.

That's something to leave to my cousin Marta, Pending Crown Princess of Troasa, who is simultaneously not-quite-yet-first in line to the throne and a duchess in another kingdom, was supposed to be queen before my mother somehow ended up as Queen after the coup attempt, and has some conditions to meet before she reaches the age of twenty-five. She's a political mastermind to have gotten as far as she has, and if her situation has what the Dead King needs, she'll jump on the opportunity faster than I could blink.

I ate another piece of the cheese.

Yeah. Let's leave this to Marta.

#writing #fantasy

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anaalnathrakhs · 5 months ago

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Have fun!

🌵

🪐

🦷

🌿

🥐

🍅

🪲

omgggg back again w lots of questions i see, tysmmm

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

soooo i'm not really a playlist kinda guy i'll have to give you the only one i ever really made which is... well the songs are nice but i really didn't try towards the sound's cohesiveness so it might be a little disjointed. under the cut w everything else so as not to clog dashes.

🪐 ⇢ name three good things going on in your life right now

uhhh i'll have to sayyyyy...

1. i'm getting more friendly with classmates and they're chill, i really enjoy studying with them and they're such nice personalities

2. reconnected w a friend that i was drifting apart from, we hung out lately and it's still cool

3. i'm slow at it but i'm collecting more and more cultural references and catching up with the canons of the arts it's fucking FANTASTIC i love so so many oldass poems and painting and !!

🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on

eh whenever I play therapist to my friends i always end back up saying something like "it sucks ass, it's fucked that it's happening, but stop biting back you're just gonna make everything suck even more" which is like. not necessarily always very comforting or empathetic, and sometimes inefficient bc emotions need to get out, but like. idk. Avoid, circumvent, check out, etc. Deflect, distract, find other stuff, etc. Wallow, exorcise, bitch about it, etc. i try to practice it too. You can really alienate people by letting your feelings out ON them instead of in their presence and with their support.

not sure that's full healthy i don't know anythingggg

🌿 ⇢ give some advice on writer’s block and low creativity

i am indeed currently stuck so. i guess my number one tactic is discussing stuff with people, not even necessarily my wip but being creative as a silly fun activity that leads to no writing can still warm up the engine mentally and then you can go write some stuff. i guess. it works sometimes.

🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh

i'm sorry it's in french but it kills me

🍅 ⇢ give yourself some constructive criticism on your own writing

I think I often don't take enough care of properly splitting and connecting clauses and sentences together. I can end up following my mental image and not describing crucial in-between frames that clear up events and allow for a smooth reading that doesn't leave the reader confused.

I'm very much a one-shot short form writer, by taste as much as lack of ability to write further, and it's in part because I leave a lot of warranted descriptions and explorations of concepts on the cutting room floor because it's challenging, long, and difficult to sequence and put into words. There's lots of themes that would warrant more exploration in my writing, that would need to be played out simultaneously with plot events, that would need to follow some kind of frame at least, and I forego building this skeleton so my fanfics are thinner than the theme could be.

Also, the crucial problem in everything I do, I know I won't go back to it so I do it LITERALLY one-shot. I tend to edit as I write and correct my formulations on the go A LOT, I don't force myself to that's just how I think whenever I write literally anything even simple as a post-it note, even though I know for creative writing it's bad practice. I'm also (related to that or not) deeply bored by and out of practice with editing and proofreading, so even when I force myself to I can't seem to focus on it and I catch nothing. It's easier to go back a few weeks or a few months later, rereading to refresh my memory and suck my own dick (or be horrified at what the hell i must've been thinking to write this bullshit), and then realize I left abominable errors and typos in important paragraphs.

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

...it will need to be in french, because i may be a WIP serial monogamist but i'm still betrothed to one rn. conclave is living in my brain. and i'm living on the wikipedia page for john paul II's death.

Cette perspective de la protection divine sur la tombe du Saint-Père avait quelque peu réconforté Lawrence. Il y aurait encore une lueur de Sa grâce au chevet de son cher ami. La nature de cette vie de dévotion était telle que sa joie comme sa souffrance s’alourdissaient de la présence des pairs autour de soi, harmonisant leurs prières et leurs confessions. Bientôt, lorsque la nouvelle serait publiée dans un communiqué de presse, la vie de Lawrence, sede vacante, ne serait plus dédiée qu’à l’organisation du Vatican dans la perspective du conclave approchant. C’est après un instant de réflexion, dans les murmures emplissant les couloirs de Sainte-Marthe, qu’il pensât que feu le Saint-Père avait sans doute apporté à ce communiqué sa propre plume, de son vivant.

This is not the full paragraph, as I'm trying to write in proper french formatting and thus without dialogues those paragraphs as chunky as all hell. I started writing today with "de son cher ami" (yeah i had left that sentence hanging, i was clean out of ideas okay). I'm gonna attempt a stylistic calque to translate it in english, which will make it heavy and inelegant (not that it's light in french but yknow. tradition.) sorry abt that

This perspective of the divine protection on the Holy Father's tomb had somewhat comforted Lawrence. There would be, still, a gleam of His grace on his dear friend's bedside. The essence of this life of devotion was such that joy much like sorrow weighted down with the presence of one's peer around him, harmonizing their prayers and their confessions. Soon, when the news would break out in a statement, Lawrence's life, sede vacante, would be dedicated to no more than the organization of the Vatican in the perspective of the coming Conclave. It was after an instant of thought, in the whispers filling the hallways of Santa Marta, that it occurred that the late Holy Father had no doubt put on this press release his own spin, during his lifetime.

Thank you so much for asking that, I finished this paragraph and I'm pretty happy with it. I hope the translation holds some interest, I'm at least having a lot of fun with this WIP in french when I figure out some plot and I can smoothly put words on it.

Well, thank you for asking all of those in general!! tyyyy i hope it's fun to read

#asks #purimpuma #ty again <3333 #conclave #technicallyyyyyy even though most of the post isn't abt that

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technikki · 2 years ago

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watched the promised neverland

what is s2 and why does everyone hate it

OHHHHHH OH YOU WATCHED IT??? LETS FUCKING GOOOOO IHOPE YOU LIKED IT!!!!!!

also thats a quastion with sooooooo many answers i'll try to be brief but. there is so much and i am very passionate abt it <3 heres a general summary of everything i can think of that sucks ass by your best friend skye:

-the biggest one is easily the amount of manga content that is changed/just outright cut altogether. s1 was a wonderful, faithful adaptation of the first 37 chapters of the manga. this manga has 181 chapters and had been finished for a while by the time of s2's release. essentially they tried to squeeze the framework of the remaining 144 chapters into one 11 episode season and it went about as well as you'd expect

-the decision to cut what is easily at least 80% of characters introduced after the escape arc. this includes a character who is, in my opinion, one of the funniest and most well-written characters in the series and a huge fan favorite in general

-the decision to cut literally the entire goldy pond arc, which is widely considered to be the best arc in the manga. every character that comes with it also gets the axe. haha goldy pond reference

-several major plot points and entire chunks of other arcs are also cut out, leaving a messy and frankly sad skeleton of a plot that they try to salvage with original plot points that only serve to make an even bigger mess of this story or to make a setup to what could be a really cool new plot direction and immediately disappoint you. i watched s2 before reading the manga and can count at least 3 separate instances where i went oh youre fucking joking

-i cannot stress how bad this gets. the final episode ends with what is quite literally a glorified powerpoint presentation in an attempt to wrap up an obscene amount of plot before they hit the episode length limit. i said 'this is bullshit' aloud to my sister on my first watch and coming back after reading the manga it was frankly insulting. a character fucking meets god and makes a deal that changes the laws of the world itself and in the anime this is told through a singular still frame that is onscreen for about 8 seconds. it is so bad

-this season fucking gutted pretty much every female character (and every character in general tbh) and turned a series with an amazing emphasis on freedom of expression and defying gender roles into another generic shonen misogyny fest. the significance of emma refusing to wear a skirt after escaping gracefield's oppressive environment is thrown out by putting her back into a skirt by the 3rd or 4th episode, literally every post-escape female character besides 2 are cut, including but not limited to an androgynous girl who kicks ass and is never treated like a joke and a girl who shoots a rich scumbag point-blank in the face to avenge her sister

-i dont see much talk about the racism but god its soo racist. every post-escape character of color is cut with the exception of one, a black guy who is given a 'ooooh hes secretly a villain' cliffhanger at the end of an episode that is entirely non-existent in the manga. they dont even commit to it and he's revealed to Still Be A Good Guy Actually at the start of the next episode, they literally had no reason to do this. at one point they have don tell a terrified 5 year-old not to cry because 'boys don't cry'. don cries more than literally any other guy in the manga and most of the girls as well, and he is never ashamed of this. i am greatly downplaying the amount of rage that line makes me feel

-they cut 4 canonically disabled characters, 2 of which are disabled by the time they're introduced and 2 of which end up disabled after events in the story, all of which are treated with nothing but respect in the manga

i could probably go on but im running out of brain juice so. heres the gist of it <3 in short, season one was for the most part a beautiful adaptation of the first arc and in a lot of aspects i even like it better than the manga, with my only major complaint being the addition of that weird doll krone talks to and the amount of times she's drawn as a caricature even after being toned down compared to the manga. s1 was made with so much love by people who clearly cared abt the story they were adapting, and s2 is a frankly heinous attempt at finishing it up in a very short amount of time. it is so impressively bad that literally no one, from the entire team that worked on the last 2 episodes to THE GODDAMN CREATORS OF THE SERIES wanted to take any credit for those 2 episodes. thank you <3

#skye's ramblings #I DID NOT MEAN FOR IT TO BE THIS LONG BUT UH. I AM VERY PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS. HEART EMOJI #this anime was huge and the release of s2 pretty much singlehandedly destroyed almost the entire fandom. i hate it so much #BUT IN OTHER NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU WATCHED TPN!!!!!!!! JUMPS AROUND #what did you think of it!!!!!!! what did you think of ray. my best friend ray <3 if you have any thoughts id love to hear them #that genuinely makes me soo happy tht you watched it. life is beautiful #bowIetta #shrimps squad #also love this little beast image you have attached. okbye

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onepieceheadcannons · 4 years ago

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So this wasn't requested but I wanted to give some random Headcanons

Now this post definitely isn't for everyone's taste,

Now I know quite a bit about ABO dynamics and I haven't seen any headcanons on what each strawhat would be. Now if you do not like ABO, do not worry this will be my only post with it that isn't requested and I won't be offended if you skip this.

This definitely isn't the most detailed it can go but it's like 3 am for me and I just want these HC's outta my mind.

The Strawhats

Luffy;

This man is an Alpha, I mean how else could he become Pirate King.

Now I mean no hate to omegas, I think they should be highly respected. But based on what a society in ABO is like, it makes the most sense for Luffy to be an Alpha.

He is protective and strong, plus conquerors Haki is very similar to pheromones. He would do anything for his crew and he wants them safe.

He wouldn't be appealed to have an Omega, it wouldn't be on his agenda and he'd handle a rut very privately.

He would fight his way to the top fairly and wouldn't discriminate against betas and omegas.

I'm also down to hear anyone's different opinions on any of these.

Zoro;

I can see him in many different ways, I can see him as an Alpha but I can see Omega with insecurities about it, but my most confident answer is Beta.

The reason why is because his undying loyalty to Luffy. He would fulfill the role as a Beta quite well. He would be able to avoid the hormones of others and be quite unbothered by all of it. He would work slightly harder to be the greatest swordsman especially if Mihawk is an Alpha. He wouldn't of presented before his best friend died but if she began showing signs of an Alpha, he would probably feel the extra competitive edge to be better.

He wouldn't care if someone is an Alpha or Omega, why should that shit matter to him.

And he wouldn't really care about what his partner was.

If he was an Omega, he would use suppressants and be damned if anyone knew. He would probably beat himself up over it and would build a high tolerance to pheromones. He would NEVER let someone help through a heat unless a long term relationship. And he would never be caught in an Mpreg situation.

And if he was an Alpha, he would accept Luffy as overall Alpha. He wouldn't feel like fighting it and he has the serious demeanor. He would protect any omegas but refuse to participate in a heat. He would fight himself a shit ton and never let his guard down.

Usopp;

Beta man, there's no way he'd be an Alpha. I mean he would always feel sad about it most likely, wanting to be brave and strong. He would probably have some lingering thoughts about the system, he wouldn't see Omegas as less than but he would probably assume that Omegas and Alphas are meant together and he has to find a Beta.

Until his crush on Kaya, the caring Omega. He would fight himself internally over it but she wouldn't care if he was a Beta. She probably was told she had to find a nice Alpha but that wouldn't affect her, she really cares about Usopp. She even goes to medical school to fix him up.

He would be disturbed by Ruts and Heats, he would get flustered and stay away from whoever was having one at the time.

Sanji;

Just like Zoro I can see any of them,

But I'm leaning Beta/Omega. No offense if you are like 😡 I want an Alpha Sanji don't disrespect my man's like that

Reason why I can see Omega, he is quite loving and I think he'd make a great dad. He loves ladies so much and being an Omega wouldn't stop him. I mean hey, look how much he likes fiesty women. He definitely wouldn't be against a female alpha, as long as he doesn't know about the extra appendage during a rut.

His family storyline would play into this, his dad would've been pissed if all Sanjis siblings are an Alpha but Sanji was a "weak" omega son. He would definitely be an angry and powerful Omega, training his tolerance to pheromones. And oh my god he'd be so angry if Zoro is a Beta/Alpha.

He would avoid Alpha men, I don't see him ever wanting to date one. I think he may be a little fruity but it's so internalized he would never be okay dating any male. He would probably hope for any female, but preferring an Omega/Beta.

If Sanji is a Beta, he'd be right up there with being a supporter of Luffy. He would definitely offer to help Omegas through a heat (and promptly get turned down) . He would be frustrated anytime an Alpha was in a rut and avoid being near them at all costs. It would piss him off especially if they wanted one of the crew.

His preferences would stay the same as if he were an omega.

And as an Alpha, oh my this man would be the most respectful ever. He would be damned before he let himself with an Omega without consent said before the heat was even close. He would protect his Omega at all costs. And he would let them bite his neck back. And he would defend any omegas in a vulnerable position. He definitely has a savior complex about it though. But he definitely would believe he could only have an Omega.

Brook;

He is a skeleton, this wouldn't even affect him.

As a human tho, I could see an Omega with his love of the arts and his love for Laboon and his crew. But I don't have much of detailed one for him. Beta, possibly but that's the easiest to presume someone as.

Chopper;

He is a damn reindeer. I just wanted to include my besties name but yeah he is a reindeer no way in hell would this affect him and he'd just make suppressants for everyone. Even with the human human fruit, that wouldn't add abo to his form.

Franky;

Now there's a chance that now as a cyborg this doesn't affect him. But pre cyborg or if it did, I see him as an Omega.

This man cries his heart out (which I love dearly about him) and he is such a big bro/dad figure.

He wouldn't care what anyone was but as a kid he may have had some trouble with the concept until Tom taught him better. Esp with Ice for Brains, who I could see as an Alpha/Beta so Franky may have felt less than.

Robin;

Alpha or Beta, but she isn't an Omega.

She holds herself up with an air of stoic and dark humor/themes. She would be quite a helpful Beta and she'd protect any Omega friends. She would feel very strongly about Omegas being seen as the same as everyone else. And she would feel very insecure if she was made to submit to anyone unwillingly.

I can see Alpha tho, (esp Frobin <3), she lets Franky let his tears out and she is such a good friend. She would struggle to let her feelings out which would make her line in Enies lobby even more important. She would be experienced and she would probably offer to help an omega she was very close to but she wouldn't settle down unless you are Franky or a very solid partner to her. She wouldn't care if you were another Alpha or Beta though, she'd love you for you.

Jinbe/Jimbei;

Now I don't know if Fish people/men would even be affected but if they were.. he would be...

Alpha, but in a very nonchalant way. He was a warlord, and not just anyone would get that. He wouldn't ever make someone submit and he would fight for rights for everyone esp Omegas in his community. If he did settle down, it wouldn't matter to him. Just as long as he can share his feelings in a safe place.

But beta would work as well, he is quite devoted to his crews and is a loyal person in general and shows alot of care to Luffy during the timeskip.

I also haven't finished Fish man Island yet so I have little to work with.

Nami;

I did save her for last, this is probably the most biased one. I mean as you guys will learn, she's my girlfriend/wife, so I may see her slightly different than someone else would.

Now I feel like as many of the others, she can fit in all three. I mean everyone is going to show traits to each kind which is why I try to explain myself for each.

Alpha, i can see this. She's very fiesty and she sure as hell wouldn't want to submit to anyone. She would be a little embarrassed during a Rut and she would use suppressants. She would be fine with not being top dog but she definitely wants her respect, she's the entire reason they get anywhere.

She isn't looking for romance but she'd be fine with anyone as long as they were worth it. I think an Alpha male would be her least likely pair though, that person would have to be quite honorable and prove themselves to her as good enough.

If she's an Omega, she would be quite angry about it. She wouldn't want to be perceived as weak and sure as hell would use suppressants and she'd be damned if an alpha helped her through a heat. The only way she would, would be after a super solid relationship where there's extreme trust. She would slap the crap out of Sanji if he tried anything or suggested anything, she wouldn't have any patience especially after she had to deal with the bullshit she heard her entire time with Arlong and other crews stealing treasure.

If she was a beta, she'd probably go after another Beta. Keep thing simple. She would eyeroll at any alphas and she would be over the whole alpha/omega bullshit.

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corpsentry · 4 years ago

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january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

#my stuff

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mangoofthesea · 3 years ago

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I was tagged by @abstract-moth to post 10 songs I’ve been obsessed with lately. In no particular order. Thank you so much I was thinking how I haven't done a tag game in ages so this was very fun to think about (you have excellent choice in songs btw I love loads of the ones you mentioned)

1. EXPIRED by jenny nuo

I honestly love this song since I heard it, it has this angry vibe about being tired of a town you moved to where you don't belong and never have and looking forward to moving away which is me this year while I wait for the autumn and its incredibly cathartic. "i think this town has expired on me" "school is just a building where people come and go"

2. The Red Means I Love You by Madds Buckley

I love songs like this that are kind of different and fun and its based on a villain from bnha, Toga, and it just makes me feel cool and evil lol

3. Funkle Phil by Bear Ghost

I heard the beginning of this song on an animatic by an artist i love (Yamz Animatics on youtube go check them out i love their videos) and the vibes oh my gosh i listened to it on repeat for a couple days the other week and has a very hype vibe and excellent electric guitar and drums which i adore. classically rock/punky. "gonna blast off, oh oh ah, and rocking til the day we die"

4. To The Bone by JT Music

Another one like red means i love you that's about the game undertale sung by the two main skeleton characters Sans and Papyrus. I never played undertale but I heard about it from friends. This is the song with the lyrics "I am the mastermind he's my accomplice, you're only still alive because I made a promise" - I heard it the first time on a hq tiktok and something about it just had me obsessed. It was my spotify top song last year and I still like it. (84 plays in 2021)

5. B.O.M.B by emlyn

The chorus is 'I'm back on my bullshit' and about reclaiming your Energy and getting over a breakup. I'm not getting over a breakup but I like the energy of Getting Back Up Again.

6. Made for This by City Wolf

Such a vibe oh man. Another get back up kind of song that always makes me want to bear my teeth and grin. I heard it the first time on a Zuko music video that was overlaid with his words about fighting to survive. "you're stronger now can't hold you down, you were never born to quit, keep on throwing rocks and fists, you gotta stand up, you were made for this" "stand tall head first into danger".

7. Between My Teeth by Orla Garden

First song I found that properly conveyed my feelings towards relationships and my last relationship where I knew I would hurt them if we stayed together cos I didn't want a relationship. "you need me I don't need you" "please don't lean on me cos I don't want your heart between my teeth" "I can't take the pressure of it I can barely breathe" "You deserve someone else".

8. Bored by Tessa Violet

Slightly self explanatory "its 4am again, you'd think that I could sense a trend. I'm staying up too late just so that I can stay awake". Also its a bop and I love it.

9. Merry Go Round by MAN WITH A MISSION

It's the theme of bnha season 5 part 2. I really really love it. Feels like a song about a fight and hypes me up especially when I listen to it while writing.

10. Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos

I heard this first on a beautiful bnha animatic for a fantasy/pirate au and I don't know what it is about it but it makes me want to cry and dance at the same time. Very folky and soft and hopeful then finishes in a brilliant faster fiddle section that sounds like you would dance to around a fire in a field with the biggest smile.

this all made me realise I only pay attention to around 30% of the lyrics in most songs I love lol. Honorable mention to Surface Pressure from Encanto too just cos I love it.

Tagging @apparently-a-robot @r0ckyr04d @ihavenomoralsss @ash-and-starlight and @that-was-anticlimactic but no pressure of any kind do it if you want and if not have a lovely day

#tag game #songs #song recs #music

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archetypal-archivist · 4 years ago

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My Beloved, Penis

Fuck it. I was infected by Penis SMP by @demonboyhalo reblogging a bunch of it and the lack of consistent lore bugged me, so I somehow banged out 2000+ words of fanfic about the Penis SMP and how it got started. Lots of internet humor and classic MInecraft shenanigans in this one folks. *slaps roof* This baby can fit so much crack treated seriously, lol. This is also up on my AO3, Zazibine, if you would prefer to read it there.

_-_-_-_

It was never supposed to get so big. It was just an SMP with a couple friends of his he had met from the Hypixel discord server, where he had logged on simply to trash talk the absolute asshole who had dared to kill him last minute in bedwars, only to stumble upon said asshole- going under the name shittyfartbaby69 of all things- complaining to his girlfriend(?) Milfboss in the voice chat. Thirty minutes later of awkward hellos and the manliest of bitching at each other (with Milf chiming in every once in a while to roast them both), and PenisUnavailable had perhaps his first Minecraft friend in, like, forever.

Then Admiral_Anus had entered chat, bitching about his competitor in ABBA Mining and his bullshit bad luck and the whole process repeated. By the end of the day, Penis had three new friends, a private discord server for the four of them, and a promise to meet up with them in Hypixel next Sunday for the ultimate round of bedwars.

The game went spectacularly. Somehow, Admiral had some of the best bridging skills any of them had ever seen, and between Milfboss' terrifying Scottish screaming and pvp and Shitty with his clutch TNT skills, the three of them almost made up for Penis' awful depth perception. They still lost around forty percent of their games, but that was certainly better than Penis' own abysmal record, not helped with his habit of walking off the edge at inconvenient times.

And it was... fun. Usually bedwars was just him playing in his bedroom alone for an hour before he rage-quit and went back to survival for a bit before he died to fall damage and rage quit that too. But shittyfartbaby69 would crack dirty jokes that he'd never even heard of before, and Milfboss would roast him for looking it up on reddit and Shitty would cuss her out as he tried to prove that no, he was being original- all while Admiral would comment of them as if they were a sideshow display. Then Admiral_Anus would turn around and knock an enemy player off their island with some clever pvp and they would all hoot and holler and swear for a while before going back to their conversation, joking about forgetting the topic and starting up a running gag about something new.

And their accents, mmm. PenisUnavailable would never say it, but he really was as American as white Wonder bread and Milfboss' Scottish brogue, Admiral's smooth British snark, and Shitty's shrieking in Australian, well. Ear candy, you know? Even if he teased them mercilessly for pronouncing shit wrong, like "buhguhr". Ppffttt, it still cracked him up how Milfboss had threatened to murder him after the dictionary app on his phone had proved him right that it was actually "Bur-gur", even if Admiral kept insisting it was pronounced "bruh-girl".

Four hours and twenty-eight wins later, they had agreed to meet up the next day to play again, preferably at an hour that wasn't two am for Shitty again. (It was two am for Shitty again, although that was because they played for six that time.) Eventually, it just became a regular thing, them playing bedwars and competing at ABBA Caving- the one game Penis was unnaturally good at, much to Admiral's annoyance- to the point where they ran out of funny jokes about their competitors and the game itself and started talking personal anecdotes.

Milfboss owned a motorcycle. Admiral, entirely independently, also owned a motorcycle, as that was the only vehicle of reasonable speed and style that could actually handle the London traffic. Shitty couldn't drive at all, something about never passing his driving test. Admiral ate cheese at breakfast. Shitty liked to burn his garbage in a metal oil drum in his backyard. Milfboss posted herself singing covers of shit over on Youtube. And it wasn't just real life stuff either- their minecraft skills were also on the table for them all to collectively roast.

Admiral had never seen a single Minecraft Championship. Milfboss thought a flat cobblestone roof was entirely acceptable. Shitty's favorite block was the flint and steel. (That's not a block, sixty-niner. Shut up, is too. OoOh, real clever, 'shut up'! Uh, how about no? How about I fuckin' make you, ever think 'a that? No nono nonono, I'm on two hearts! I'm on two hearts, stop!) It made him curious, honestly. He wanted to see Milf's builds for himself, get revenge on Shitty, see if Admiral really could beat the Ender Dragon with a knockback stick like he said he could.

So he made a minecraft server. And they all joined it. (And stuck PenisUnavailable with the bill, suckaaahhh~!)

Predictably, it all went to Hell in a hand basket pretty quick.

See, it's one thing to play with nutters like his friends in a structured set up like Hypixel games, it's quite another to try and keep a semblance of order in an open world survival server like the Penis SMP. The first five minutes had been him trying to explain the rules and teleporting everyone back to spawn over and over as they tried to "escape the cops," ie, him. The next five minutes was Shitty scream-laughing "scatter!" and other John Mulany references down the mic as everyone ran off to start their houses. Penis, as he was still "god" at that moment, used admin commands to find the closest flower field biome to settle into, hoping for some- ha- peace and quiet.

Shitty, inevitably, ended up trying to settle in the fucking Nether. Like a mad lad, you know, as you do when you are apparently obsessed with all things lava. Milfboss ended up making an oak plank box of a "tree house" in a dark oak forest, while Admiral_Anus picked a nearby swamp for his starter base. Outside of that, they just kinda vibed in discord as they tried to fend off the mobs and get enough resources to try and build up houses that were a bit more than cobblestone towers and wood boxes- er, mostly. Milf kinda just fucked off to go mining, found a skeleton spawner by chance, and made a set of iron gear to stand in the dungeon room with to just chill and kill mobs for a while. She ended up with something like 45 levels and burned her only diamond on an enchanting table so she could buff the Hell out of her iron weapons and armor.

Penis, rather typically, he though to himself, put together a basic sheep farm and started work on a cute little cobblestone cave base. He managed to get a whole twenty by twenty block room done and fully furnished before he noticed the chat full of Shitty's death messages and went to go investigate. After nearly dying in lava twice, he managed to find Shitty's pile of items floating on a basalt pillar about a hundred blocks out from his... base?

It was a soccer ball. Shitty's base was a perfect fucking spherical soccer ball made up of quartz blocks and basalt. Just. What. The Fuck??? Then out popped shittyfartbaby69 and it was PenisUnavailable's turn to misjudge a jump and plummet right into lava. Fifteen minutes and much shrieking later about losing his diamond pick, and it turns out that Shitty didn't really care about his lost items, as he really only had four gold picks, a stack of dark oak, two furnaces, a bucket, and thirteen cooked mutton to his name. Not even a bed, the fucker. He just ran back to his portal from spawn every time he just burned to death, taking the chance to gather resources on the way back each time.

And no, he wasn't following a tutorial for his "football" base. Jerk. (Although Penis did have to admire his determination...)

The day ended on Milfboss, Shitty, and Penis reconvening back at spawn to try and hunt down Admiral_Anus, who they found later having built a thirty block tall castle of all things. Out of cobble stone and the windows weren't quite even, but still, it was pretty impressive. And of course, when presented with a castle, what can what do but siege it? So they lay siege to the castle and Milfboss curb-stomped Admiral in pvp and laid claim to the throne, crowning herself queen before summarily throwing the rest of them out. It was a good day.

And the day after was a good day. They played dodge ball crossed with hide and seek in forest around Penis' house with arrows supplied by Milfboss. And the day after that, too, where they had a building competition using nothing but cobble stone, specifically to spite Milfboss, who had kicked all of their asses the day before. In fact, three wonderful weeks passed of doing normal Minecraft shit and being friends passed by, and every bit of it was great fun.

And then came the fucking role play.

PenisUnavailable would have liked to preface that with he only participated under duress, but really, Milfboss had been queen for too long and nobody wanted to risk TNT cannoning any of Shitty's nice builds, so. Well, the castle was better than his drafty cave, alright? It was cold and wet and didn't have a proper door because aesthetic (and because it usually took him several tries to work an iron pressure plate door), so there were far too many mobs wandering in at night and spawn camping him. He and Shitty had almost the same number of deaths and Shitty lived in the fucking Nether.

So yeah. Castle time, baby! Daddy needs a new home! And Admiral obviously wasn't happy living out of Milf's awful tree house hot box where they all did drugs together on day fifteen and it still smelled of burnt wheat seeds, aka "weed." It was only obvious that they teamed up to try and take back the castle.

The battle itself didn't exactly go great, but it wasn't exactly horrible either. A lot of shouting shit at each other for fifteen minutes, the majority of which he wouldn't remember until it was too late- something about server unity?- only to find out that it wasn't two on one girl boss, it was two on a girl boss and her "baked out of his mind" henchman, also known as Shitty in a squirrel furry skin.

The ears man. Those stupid (cute) ears.

And then they were running for their lives because Milf had somehow gotten her hands on a flame bow with infinity enchants.

It all culminated in a dramatic stand-off in front of Shitty's Nether Soccer ball, Milf on one side, diamond axe in hand, not a bit of armor on because of an unfortunate run in with lava, Penis and Admiral on the other, picks in hand, threatening to tear down shittyfartbaby69's base. Shitty wasn't online just then to comment, but they could all hear him click-clacking away on his keyboard so he obviously hadn't gone to sleep just yet like he said he had. At an impasse, and unable to justify letting her teammate's home be used as collateral, Milfboss stood down and gave up her "crown," an enchanted golden Prot IV helmet she had gotten off a skeleton from her spawner.

Then the great betrayal, the beginning of the end. Shitty came back online. 96-Cam joined the game, not that they noticed in the chaos. Admiral-Anus cackled wildly and PMed Milfboss the message that Shitty had sent him, giving Team Gay Sex permission to tear down his base in the name of winning the war if it came down to it- making Milf's sacrifice worthless in the end. Penis gave another dramatic speech, circling around Shitty, who was acting weirdly apologetic to Milf about betraying her and still wearing that fucking squirrel furry skin.

"You see Milf, there's one thing more powerful than a girl boss, and when it comes down to wars between kingdoms, there's something you need to remember!" Penis got out his golden ax, helpfully labeled 'Piss Off'. "And that's a dilf with something to lose!" An enderpearl in his off hand and he teleported behind Milf, catching on fire from the lava but still landing the last hit needed to finish her off. She puffed into a cloud of EXP, swearing up a storm, and then Admiral and Penis turned their gaze to the cheering Shitty.

"AAAAAYYY, LET'S GO DADDY!" the squirrel man screeched, wild laughter shorting out the discord voice chat, making him go quiet in patches when the volume overloaded the client. Behind him, Admiral quietly started building a chair out of birch fence posts and slabs.

"Not so fast, shit-ty-fart-baaaaa-byyyyy~, this isn't quite over yet!" Penis fucking chirped, barely holding back his laughter. "You're still a fucking traitor and we can't have you backstabbing us too. Get in the chair for Daddy, okay baby?"

Admiral finished the chair just in time for Shitty to turn around and see the completed monstrosity, shrieking dying off immediately. "Oh screw you, that's just mean. The Hell man? That's not a chair, that's illegal. If you want an electric chair or some shit, just ask. That's just sad." Mentally shrugging, Admiral lit up his work with a flint and steel while Penis pillared up above where Shitty was building an electric chair out of iron bars and trap doors. Admiral nudged Shitty into the chair, Penis dumped a bucket of lava over the edge of the pillar so it flowed over him, and Shitty started giving a soliloquy about how betrayal and how his love for his "Daddy" still "burned strong".

Like his dick. Apparently.

By the time the lava finally hit the floor and burned Shitty to death, Penis was crying with laughter, shrieking down the mike and banging on the desk hard enough to make him forget that his was still on the mouse, making him mine the block under him with the bucket and sending him hurtling to his fiery death too.

It was a good day... almost.

Because, as it turned out, shittyfartbaby69 was actually a tiktokker of some renown and his cam account had record everything. And he had uploaded the bit to tiktok, as you do, where it went viral, where it wasn't supposed to. And Milfboss, who had recently been uploading covers of herself singing old classic Minecraft songs, had attracted the Minecraft fandom kids to her twitter, where she had gone to post her rage about the events of her dethroning and Shitty's execution.

Penis SMP had gotten on. Fucking. Trending. And now everyone was demanding the full clip, their names, their Twitch streamer handles, their characters' backstories.

The masses wanted lore.

Penis watched in disbelief, head in his hands and mouth agape as sugar crash played over a clip of him killing Milf on loop.

They were making memes.

...Oh god. They were screwed.

#penismp #penis smp #fanfiction #minecraft #my writing #crack #crack treated seriously #also on ao3 #penisunavailable #milfboss #shittyfartbaby69 #admiral_anus

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 6 years ago

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Humans are Space Orcs, “Karen.”

Sorry guys. I have to post this really quick, sorry for spelling errors. Don’t worry about the Drev translations, they arent important

The civilian transport was very lucky.

In fact it was very lucky for a couple of reasons, the first being that it was only their secondary engine which had malfunctioned, not the warp core, second because at least their life support still worked, and three that they were close enough to an outpost , that their S.O.S was received in under a day by a very bored Tesraki, and an overly-talkative Rundi.

Their last stroke of luck might have been that there just so happened to be a UNSC ship passing by, on their way to the same original destination.

In fact, the civilian transport, piloted by some kind of space cruise company, offering interstellar tours, was attached to the harbinger in under an hour opening the doors and flooding the civilians with fresh cool air.

Krill was waiting with doctor Katie on the loading ramp just in case the civilians were in need of some sort of medical attention. He didn’t exactly have much experience with civilians. The harbinger was crewed, in large part, by military personnel and the occasional government contractor, so most of them were relatively professional, and most, if not all of them , were required to go through extensive training and physical testing before leaving their planet.

As the civilian humans disembarked, Krill got a sudden taste of human tourism.

Some very, very large humans, wearing widely unmatching clothing and strangely patterned shirts toddling through the doors with so much excess weight, he wondered how the human skeleton was capable of supporting such an egregious amount without simply imploding and turning to dust. The health implications were absolutely horrendous, and made him cringe to think about.

And if they weren’t big and colorfully dressed, they were rail thin, with plastic faces and puffy lips, the mark of cosmetic surgery done poorly. And with them they brought a hoard of screaming children, and moody teenagers their heads down glowering at their implanted communication devices, though Krill could hardly blame them from their moodiness.

A few more normal humans were there of course, averaging between the two extremes, and dressed conservatively for travel looking absolutely done with the entire thing and relieved when they stepped onto the cargo deck.

“Well it is about time!”

Krill and Dr. Katie turned their heads just in time to see the last human disembark shoving past the other guests and onto the floor, dragging with her two teenagers, one young child and her apologetic looking husband “It sure did take you long enough. And I swear once I have time I am going to be complaining to customer service. I will be complaining to the travel agency, and to the transport agency and.” She turned to glower at Dr. Katie and Dr. Krill,” And I will be complaining to you, whoever you people are for taking so long to show up.”

Krill glanced up at the woman who was only growing closer and closer, ominously looming over them. From this distance Krill got a better look of her badly maintained A line haircut, and her patchy blonde dye job with layers. She had a look on her face that were to suggest she perpetually had something sour in her mouth

Dr. Katie sighed, “Sorry ma’am. I can’t help you, I am a civilian medical contractor, not a member of the UNSC. I am just here to deal with any medical issues that you may have experienced during the malfunction.”

“Of course you’re UNSC, you work on the ship don’t you?”

Katie tried to remain patient, “Yes, I work on the ship, but like I said before I am a civilian contractor and have no ability to help you with your complaints. Is there any medical issue that I can help you with.”

“I demand a refund at once.”

Dr. katie Sighed, “I am a Dr. and I do not work for your touring company either. I am a private civilian medical contractor.”

“And that was not a medical issue.” Krill added already annoyed.

By this time, the woman hadn’t even semed to notice him, but as soon as he spoke, she turned her eyes down towards him and screamed. She made a big show of falling backwards hand over her heart as if she had been shocked, “What is that!” Dr. Katie frowned, “This is Dr. krill, our OTHER civilian medical contractor.”

“Get it out of here, Immediately! I demand it be removed.” She backed away towards her family, “How dare you do something like this, my daughter has arachnophobia. I demand he be removed immediately”

Dr. Katie was frowning openly now, “I am not going to remove him from the deck. He is our chief medical officer, and not an arachnid. That is very rude, you may not know but it is considered a very offensive slur to call Vrul by those terms.”

“I don’t care, can’t you see what it is doing to my daughter!”

Dr. Katie and Dr. Krill turned to look at the teenage daughter, who, at that very moment looked like she wished to melt through the floor. It seemed that having all blood boiled out her ears in the vacuum of space would be way more preferable to this. Her husband was hiding his face, though no one said anything.

Behind her, the other tourists were looking wildly uncomfortable.

One of the large, colorful gentlemen stepped forward, “Why don’t we all just calm down, they are only trying to do their jobs.”

“Yeah, didn’t you hear them. They are civilian contractors.”

“You mind your own business.” She snapped turning back to the two of them. Behind her, her youngest son had gotten bored of the conversation and had wandered off. As they watched he busied himself with terrorizing the cargo crew darting in front of cargo carriers and screaming at the top of his lungs once he realized he could make his voice echo back to him.

“Ma’am, could you please get your son.” Dr Katie began, but was cut off.

“He can do what he wants. Don’t your bring my baby into this.”

“Mom-” The teenager began.

“Quiet Terrance.”

The boy shut his mouth joining his sister in wanting to melt through the floor.

She jabbed a finger at Krill, “Get that bug out of here NOW before I am forced to call someone.”

Krill watched in detached awe as Dr. katie grew very still. Her lips were drawn into a thing line, and the eyes behind her glasses narrowed sharply brows plunging, “I will not.” He was worried for a moment that Katie was going to flat out deck this woman, but she kept her cool, though her hands were balled into fists.

“I demand to speak with the manager!” The woman began screaming stomping her foot like a toddler.”

“Fine.” Doctor katie growled through clenched teeth, turning to look down at her implant before sending a text.

The woman looked very smug sitting back with her arms crossed as Dr. katie and Krill were finally allowed to begin their work, going around to the other civilians and asking if they were feeling alright. The big colorful man, with the surprisingly pleasant voice whispered an apology to them, “She's been a nightmare the whole trip. My wife and I were just coming out to gamble in some of those Tesraki casinos, you know try the exotic food, but she insisted that her son can’t eat any of that and that it shouldn’t be served on the ship or else he'd have some horrible allergic reaction. Honestly it's probably a load of bullshit.”

His wife placed a hand on his arm, “Herold.” She scolded quietly

“Sorry, dear. Anyway, you two are doing a great job.” Before looking down at Krill, “Watch out, there are some real xenophobes around these parts, and she might just be one of them.”

In the background her kid was still making a mess bringing everything in the hold to a complete standstill.

Krill was appalled and almost impressed at how horrible this all was

There was a clattering towards the end of the room, and the group of them turned to see commander Vir, Sunny and a group of other drev walk into the space..

“Zha dah nee to chatahach nehkasi.”

“Zha janaik.”

“Tsa dee.”

“Geesee zha dee.”

“Nin tsa kasish, Chalan.”

“Zha nehrekazi. Zha lad nee gengi kasat.”

The group of them stopped in their tracks cutting their conversation mid go as the kid ran past them screaming, nearly knocking a pallet of crates off balance as he went.

Commander Vir frowned, “Hey! Knock it off!” The kid paused in his tracks a defiant expression in his eyes, and looked about ready to do something stupid. However a group of three Hulking Drev, and one eyeless human was enough to send him scurrying to his mother, who was not happy.

She marched forward, “how dare you speak to my son like that. Who exactly do you think you are.”

“And who are you?” The commander asked.

“A paying customer.”

The commander looked confused, “Paying for what?”

“Don’t play coy with me. You now what.”

“I can honestly tell you that I don’t know.” He turned his head back to the Drev “Nijeesh”, and motioned them off knowing this was going to take a while

She screeched, “Stop speaking to them in that language, this is a human ship! Speak human!” Krill an the other Drev looked on in confusion, considering that there were a couple of human languages to choose form, making her argument extra stupid.

“I paid for this tour, and now I demand to speak with your manager.”

The commander folded his arms, “We aren’t part of the tour company, we are part of the UNSC.”

“I don’t care.”

“Ma’am I cannot help you with the tour company. THe UNSC has nothing to do with civilian tours.”

She held up a hand in front of his face, “No, I won’t be talking to you anymore, not until is see a manager.” She snapped her fingers.

A small spark of fire lit in the man’s eyes, “I AM the manager.”

She laughed, barking like a condescending seal, “Don’t lie to me boy, you are too young. Now let me talk to an adult. The REAL manager.”

Commander Vir stared at her mouth open completely nonplussed, “I’m 25.”

“Exactly, clearly not old enough.”

He just held out his hands lost for words for a long moment before, a subtle change appeared in his expression. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, “My apologies, ma’am, we don’t technically have a manager aboard the ship, but this just so happens to be the UNSC Harbinger, so maybe I can get Commander Vir to speak with you.”

Her eyes lit up hungrily at that. And Krill stared on in wonder and fascination.

“yes , I will speak with the commander.”

Her two teenagers looked up from their shame, and Krill could tell by the wide eyed expressions on their faces, they knew exactly who their mother was talking to. Both of their faces went beat red.

Commander Vir turned walked a few steps turned around and walked back standing up straighter, ‘Hello ma’am I am Fleet Commander Vir of the UNSC Harbinger, how may I be of assistance.”

The woman looked livid, “This isn’t funny! Now get me the real commander now!”

“mom/” One of her kids hissed.

She held out a finger.

“Mom!”

She turned to glare angrily at her child, “Not while the adults are speaking terrance.”

“But mom! He IS the commander!”

She turned to glower at her son, who was brandishing his implant with a picture of Adam in uniform, one of the images used for the movie.

It was time for her husband to speak up, “Dear…. He’s the one from that movie…” he trailed off.

She whirled around to face him face red with embarrassment as he stood there with a shit eating grin, but then, in her embarrassment, doubled down even harder, “Well no wonder this place is so poorly run. You’re too young to have the position you do. Is there someone ELSE more experienced I can speak with.”

Commander Vir just stared at her, “Ma’am I am the highest power you are ever going to talk to. Even if I was god's secretary, you wouldn't get past the door. Now shut up get your crotch goblin, under contorl and keep your xenophobic agest ass quiet. I am not going to bother being polite to someone who has openly thrown speciesest slurs at my crew.” He motioned to the other passengers, “The rest of you are welcome onto the crew deck for the time being.” The rest of her family members visibly wilted, “Your two kids and your husband are allowed as well, but until you can learn a little respect, and treat my crew the way they deserve, you and your youngest can stay on the civilian transport alone.”

From where she stood next to Krill, Dr. Katie giggled, “I love it when he gets all righteous indignation.” Krill had to agree with her.

Watching him turn and leave the woman speechless with fury behind him was extremely satisfying.

#humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #humans are spaceoddities #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia

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cntrspll · 5 years ago

Text

this is a love letter to my own fic

hi hello hey, this is an essay about my own fic and the feelings i have about it. fic can be found here.

i am going to try so hard to keep this organized but i don’t know how well that will work soooo let’s go!

on the fic overall:

i just... like magnus. i think he is a fan fave for a reason, but i think there’s a lot of missing discussion of his post-canon situation and the development thereafter. when i finished listening to balance for the first time (in february-ish this year, i think?), i remember being super frustrated with where parts of the fandom had landed their focus. this isn’t an uncommon fandom thing, and i totally get where it comes from. some characters are just super relatable and a lot of fun to write about and have like absolute piles of stuff to unpack, so it’s totally fair that some characters get more focus than others, but where i felt that some of my faves got a lot of fandom focus, others... didn’t.

so this fic was in part an attempt to rectify that, because i wasn’t finding the unpacking of magnus and his emotional / mental state that i wanted. that being said, there are a couple fics that i did draw a little bit of inspiration from, the biggest probably being patterns of migration by goodnicepeople. the depiction of magnus as this big strong dude who also has these quiet vulnerabilities that he doesn’t like admitting to people is like, in part just really accurate to canon, but also something that i really wanted to see explored more, and i didn’t find a whole lot of other fics that fit that, so in part i just wanted to set out to put a little more into that.

also, like, i work in food service, and we are in a pandemic, and i moved in the middle of this year and i started hrt this year and have been dealing with the fallout of coming out and just kind of everything, and this fic was a really good way of just like, distracting myself from everything and sitting down for a little every day and thinking about something else and not so much about everything that was happening around me. so there is a good part of this fic that is just like, me coping with everything and trying to reorient myself a little. and it worked pretty well for that!

on process:

ok first things first, this was never meant to be 133k long. when i first sat down to write this, it was going to be a handful of snapshots set across [undetermined amount of time here] of magnus dealing with isolation and insomnia, and it was only meant to be like, maybe a 20k oneshot? that obviously did not happen. i think my original estimate once i accepted that this was gonna be multichaptered was like 60-70k, but then the chapters started getting longer with each one i finished, and then i wanted to add in an interlude, and then i decided i needed an epilogue, and here we are.

i’ll talk about this in other sections too, but as i wrote, i just kept finding more and more things that i wanted to talk about. i was also in the process of relistening to balance i was writing, and i kept running into little things that happened over the course of the show that i was like... oh shit! and that would inspire another scene or an interaction i wanted to write or something i wanted to focus more on, and the whole thing just kept getting more and more and bigger and bigger.

i’ve said it like 50 thousand times now, but i have never written anything this long before. i tried really hard to be regimented about the way i did it, because from the beginning i knew this was going to be an emotional journey for me to write, but i knew that if i let it slide for a week or so then i would never finish it. so to get through it, i wrote almost every day for a minimum of an hour. the process that i’ve found works best for me when i’m writing is using word sprints, putting on some music, and then forcing myself to tune out of social media and everything else for 25 minutes. i try to do between 750-1k words in that time period, then the site gives you a five minute break, during which i usually check twitter or fact check if i need to, and then i go back in and do another sprint. this works really well for me because i wasn’t trying to hit a specific word goal in any given day, just like... trying to sit down and write. i also tried not to guilt myself too much if i missed a day, or if i only did one sprint instead of two, or anything like that, and that’s kind of what helped me get through the whole monster without instantly dropping it as soon as i had another idea.

on mental health and recovery:

so one of my big personal pet peeves in fiction is the idea that trauma recovery is like, a one time single event deal. like, someone has this big horrible thing happen to them or they have some pressing mental health issue and then someone else walks in and they have one conversation and bam, everything is fine. i was exposed to a lot of [fan]fiction when i was younger that kind of supported this kind of narrative, and i get that there is a certain sort of wish fulfillment thing to that, but it also sucks, being an adult and having Problems(TM) and knowing that it absolutely does not work like that.

so when i set out to write a fic about trauma and mental illness and recovery, i felt kind of a responsibility to not fall into that trap and write it like, okay and then magnus and taako talk about it and taako’s like hey dude you’re depressed but it’s okay and then magnus doesn’t have nightmares anymore. also, because this is taz and the canon of like, historical accuracy is complete bullshit, i can put therapists and psychiatry and psychiatric medications in my fic and no one can tell me i’m wrong and it doesn’t exist. elevators exist, so i can make ssris and anti anxiety pills exist.

but also, magnus as a character is not going to jump into that right away. it is canon fact that he doesn’t like accepting or asking for help with stuff like this, and yes there are a couple big moments where he does, but like i bring up a couple times in the fic, mental health struggles are a big jump from like, a physical fight using swords and axes and shit. and this i think is really accurate to a lot of people’s struggles with mental illness, just taking that first step and admitting that you don’t feel okay, and that you need someone’s help to deal with it. that’s super super scary even to admit to like, your closest friends.

so that’s why magnus kind of shies away a number of times from some of the conversations that people try to start with him about mental health. taako and carey and lucretia and pretty much everyone else approach him at some point about opening up about this stuff, but he pulls away because admitting that kind of vulnerability to someone else is super scary, even if you’ve maybe admitted it to yourself already.

i also wanted to make sure that at the end of the fic, he wasn’t magically better. this is something else that i think people kind of forget, like... trauma and the problems that it causes don’t go away just because of therapy and medication. those things help, they help you reform the ways you think about yourself and about the world, but they don’t change the struggles you’ve been through or the sometimes biological problems that are causing whatever issue you’re having. and i remember reading a lot of fic when i was a kid where someone would be depressed, and then they’d fall in love and get magic dick or something and then they’d never be sad again, which... isn’t great.

but at the same time, i didn’t want it to end on this note like, oh everything is still bad even though he worked so hard to open up and get help, because that sucks, too. so it was really important to me that the fic end on a hopeful note, like, magnus isn’t cured. he still has bad days and bad weeks and sometimes he is just as low as he was before, but he also has like, normal days, which is something that i think you kind of forget can even exist when you’re depressed, or when you’re dealing with any mental illness. but like, i really wanted it to be obvious that things did get better and even if he’s still coping with it and it’s not going away, he’s okay. he’s gonna be all right.

on an unreliable narrator:

this kind of plays into some of the mental health stuff, but one thing that i love about taz that i really wanted to play into with this fic is the idea of limited perspective. griffin does some really cool fucking things with this, specifically in relation to the ipre and the big reveal in the last lunar interlude, with the idea of like... a character can only know the things that they know. like, magnus knows that there is a picture of him depicted as a red robe, and barry knows that they’re all red robes, and taako knows that they found the umbra staff next to a red robed skeleton and that the umbrella spelled out lup at one point, but none of them necessarily know all the things that the other person knew, and none of them know all the things that lucretia knows or that fisher knows or junior knows, etc etc.

unfortunately, just because the pace of the story picks up so much in that last lunar interlude, there isn’t a whole lot of space to explore that like, disconnect between all these facts that they each have as individuals. and given the perspective of mental health and the way that plays into your perceptions of yourself and your perceptions of other people’s perceptions, i really wanted to delve into like… magnus’s misunderstandings.

this is not a strictly straightforward unreliable narrator situation, but i did bring in some elements of that. i really wanted to explore the disconnect between how magnus sees and how everyone else sees him and his issues. there are also a couple moments where he flat out completely misinterprets their intentions, which unfortunately i didn’t delve into as much as i wanted to so they ended up mostly being fun easter eggs for, uh… me? i guess?

one of those moments is the scene in ch 4 where barry and magnus are sitting in the kitchen and barry starts to ask magnus something. magnus assumes it’s going to be about his mental health, and that this is barry stepping up as representative for everyone else to talk to him about it, but it’s really meant to be a precursor to their conversation in ch 6 where they talk about barry and lup and marriage and proposals.

magnus gets a little perspective on this later, i think in ch 7(?) where he’s thinking about how maybe their lives don’t completely revolve around him and he’s missing some of their perspective. but like, they all have their own shit going on, and they all love him and they’re worried about him, but also, barry is thinking about lup. lup is thinking about taako. taako is thinking about lucretia. lucretia is thinking about davenport, and davenport is thinking about his own issues, and so on and so on and they’re not all just like… waiting to pounce on magnus the second he shows weakness.

a lot of that plays into the hypervigilance of ptsd, too. magnus is very aware of any perceived threat, and he sometimes treats the people around him as threats, when all they’re doing in reality is thinking like, man i wish he didn’t live out here by himself all the time.

on a more meta note, i also have a tendency to make every character i write just like, a super good judge of character. i don’t think magnus is that, and i really wanted to lean into that. magnus does not read intention super well, even when that intention is genuinely good.

on the ipre and their relationships:

so i… really don’t write gen fic a lot. even when i do, it is almost always tinged with a little bit of background shipping, and there is some of that in this, but whereas in most fandoms i end up being a multishipper, for some reason with taz i’ve ended up pretty much only caring about the canon ships (sorry…). that being said, the platonic relationships in taz (and especially in balance) are some of the most compelling and important fictional relationships that i’ve ever encountered. like, they are just really well fucking done.

this being the magnus love letter that it is, i really wanted to focus on magnus’s distinct relationships with every member of the ipre crew. i don’t know how obvious this is in the actual narrative, but with the exception of the interlude and the epilogue, the story is broken down into one chapter for each member of the starblaster crew (in order, magnus, taako, merle, davenport, barry, lucretia, lup). i did this specifically because it was really important to me that i dive into all of them and their particular issues. i didn’t quite get the deep dive with merle or davenport that i would’ve liked to, but hopefully in the future i’ll get more time to explore that.

anyway, in case it isn’t obvious, lup is probably my favorite fictional character literally ever in any media created by anyone in the history of time. i say this only because a lot of this fic was set up to build to the conversation between her and magnus in ch 8 out on the mountain where he finally opens up for the first time. there are some really incredible unexplored parallels and relationships in taz (unexplored mainly because like, where would it even fit in canon), and while some of them are super self indulgent (ie, lup and mags, barry and mags), i really really really wanted to dig into those a little more. things like the conversation where taako is talking about everyone brushing over his trauma to rush to forgive lucretia, or lucretia talking about trying to learn to love writing again and recognize happy moments, davenport almost admitting that he’s not completely sure about stepping back into the family in his former role… i could write an entire fic on any of these, really.

but ultimately, this being a magnus fic, i tried to filter those conversations through a perspective of two things: first, how does this affect magnus and his mental health journey, and second, what can magnus do to help this. those scenes where magnus is trying to help someone with something and they’re like, backhandedly helping him are some of my favorite interactions in the fic.

the other thing i really really really wanted to explore that i never see enough of in fic is magnus and carey’s relationship. carey is canonically magnus’s best friend, and yet in fic i feel like she gets pushed to the side a little in favor of the starblaster crew. which i get, they’ve got a hundred and ten years of shared trauma, but also, travis flat out states that carey is magnus’s best friend, so… i mean, there is also a little bit of self indulgence here, because i am also a man who is exclusively best friends with lesbians, but you know.

that being said, i really wanted to emphasize that relationship in particular, which is why carey doesn’t have her own dedicated chapter and instead kind of slides in and out of each one and slowly helps magnus along the way. her personality i also feel is like, the exact kind of thing that magnus needs to push him into accepting / asking for help and moving towards recovery.

on real life parallels:

ok, i swear to god i did not intend to make this a holiday fic posted during the holidays. i started writing this in june, and again, it was only meant to be like 20k and not necessarily entirely set during candlenights. that kind of happened, anyway? candlenights just seemed like the best vessel to get all these characters whose post-canon situations i wanted to explore into the same room, and i finished the first draft around mid october and i wanted to give myself plenty of time for editing, so it honestly just ended up coincidentally aligning with the holidays. go figure.

that being said, isolation ended up featuring pretty heavily in this fic. that i think is to be expected to a certain degree given the nature of mental health and recovery and blah blah blah, but i probably unintentionally ended up leaning into it a little more because like… this year. and the holidays tend to be a time that a lot of us feel really isolated, and this year especially, but one of the big things for me this year is that like, all of my friends live out of state. the closest one to me is still a good 2-3 hour plane ride, which i am absolutely not risking. i had like a hundred plans to go see people and do things this year, and those obviously got cancelled.

probably the biggest one of those things was seeing a friend who i have kind of started a new years tradition of seeing, but we ended up calling that off out of safety considerations, of course. and it sucks! it’s not fun! i also moved out this year and i have my own place and in june i was really hoping that things would be okay by now and i could have all my friends come in from out of town for new years and that didn’t happen. and i wasn’t intending for this fic to be a kind of wish fulfillment of like, here’s my new place post-[saving the universe / coming out and becoming a real person], let me show my found family around my hometown and let’s make new holiday traditions together now that we’re no longer [fighting the apocalypse / literal children] and everything will be fun and happy and good, but that is kind of what happened anyway. [insert joke here that goes like “do you project your real world problems and mental health issues onto fictional characters or are you normal?”]

but yeah, magnus’s mental health struggles did kind of accidentally become a little bit of a pandemic / quarantine life parallel. i did not mean for that to happen, but it did help me tease out a little bit of what it is that i feel like i’m missing and what i want in the future when things are better, and i hope it helped some other people figure that stuff out too, maybe?

and in conclusion:

i said this a little bit in the final notes in the fic, but i am so so so grateful and emotional over the comments i’ve gotten from some of you. i’ve said it already, but this was such an emotional rollercoaster for me to write. i put a decent amount of my own mental health issues into the stuff i wrote into magnus, and it was genuinely therapeutic and like… super helpful and important. it was also a big struggle, and there were some scenes i came out of feeling incredibly drained and like i needed to not write for a week.

so that being said, those of you who have commented things about how this fic helped you deal with your own emotional turmoil or helped put something in perspective for you, i am genuinely so happy to hear that i’ve impacted you in that way like, at all. that is so incredible to me, and not necessarily what i set out to do, but it means so much to hear someone say that and also to know that someone felt comfortable sharing that with a stranger on the internet. thank you so so so much.

again, this fic means so much to me. the fact that it’s impacted even a handful of people in that way is absolutely amazing. some of the things you guys have said have had me seriously choked up. i am so glad that anyone even took the time to read all 133k of this, let alone that it affected people like that.

i don’t know if i’ll be writing more about magnus in this universe. i would love to! but i’m also super happy with where i’ve left his story. i have plans to explore the calen thing in the future, but only kind of tangentially in a side mention and not fully, so who knows? there is more though, a lot with taako and kravitz and lup and barry and hopefully one day i will find the motivation somewhere in me to flesh out everyone else’s situations a little more, too. who knows!

anyway, i just want to say thanks again to everyone for reading, and even more so if you are reading this dumb essay. you’re super cool.

#txt #fic talk

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bonelyfreak17 · 5 years ago

Photo

Post by saturnwonder

Okay, so after speaking to @canadian-buckbeaver we both thought that something needed to be written for this. It gave us both huge inspirations, so with our ideas combined we bring you the following short! ((sorry if it’s a bit long on your dash!!)). I hope you like it @ccorvuss

Word Count: 1,259

It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. They shouldn’t have fucked around, but they did. He should have known better, but he did it anyway. Now here was Red, shirt up, staring down at the floor trying not to make eye contact. What the fuck were they supposed to do now?

“i want to keep it.”

“do whatever the hell you want. i want nothing to do with it.”

He acted like he didn’t give a shit, avoiding Red at every turn, at every meal, at every get together their brothers had. Sans tried to reason with him that it was bullshit for him to keep ignoring Red like this and that if he claimed to love him as much as he said before then he needed to step up. Stretch only shrugged and took another drag from his cigarette.

Blue and Edge even tried their hand in convincing the un-caring skeleton to at least talk to Red, but he got into a fight with the fell version of himself and pushed away his brother, wincing when he heard his cries and his name from across the yard and towards the forest. Neither of them followed him, which he was glad for.

After walking for what seemed like an hour or so he came across Papyrus. He was humming to himself, calibrating a new puzzle, and would exclaim excitedly when something would connect correctly. He acted as though he didn’t notice Stretch, who flopped onto a stump to walk his alternate move around.

“SO MY LAZY VERSION OF MYSELF, YOU SEEMED TO BE TROUBLED.”

“pretty sure you know what’s going on.”

“AHH YES, THAT SITUATION WITH RED; MY BROTHER TOLD ME HE TRIED DISCUSSING IT WITH YOU AND YOU ANGERLY WALKED AWAY.”

“don’t want to talk about it.”

“AND THAT IS FINE! THE GREAT PAPYRUS WON’T BOTHER YOU FURTHER CONCERNING THIS TOPIC! I’M NOT FOR GETTING INTO THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF OTHER MONSTERS.”

The topic was quickly changed to one of why he couldn’t get a cog inserted into its proper place. He got frustrated and started ‘NYEH’ing around the puzzle, making Stretch chuckle more to himself than out loud. Any noise he did make was quiet enough for the other not to hear. 10 minutes or so goes by and nothing was working, so Stretch got up to glance at the problem.

“you know, if you move that mechanism there you can rotate the pulley to the corner and adjust that larger cod over to completely rule out the need for this one.”

“MY STARS YOU’RE RIGHT! HERE HERE HELP ME MOVE EVERYTHING!”

Several moments later and the puzzles mechanics are up and running, Papyrus’ smile larger than Stretch had ever seen it, though it reminded him of his brothers. They sat back down on the stumps and whipped the sweat from their brows. The slow churn of the puzzle, combined with the hushed calm of the forest, made for a relaxing spot. It was nice not to think of things currently happening at home.

“You know, Blue shared some wonderful news with me the other day. Something along the lines of wanting to try for a souling of his own with Edge,” Stretch only stared at the snow-covered ground as his gaze hardening as Papyrus continued, “Though he did express concern. They’re honestly both scared, even though they are just as amazing as I, the Great Papyrus, and grew up learning from their amazing older brothers.”

“Fear is a dangerous emotion to have, just like anger, but they can both teach us that there are things we need to work on within ourselves. We can get angry for not being as strong as we want to be and scared that we’re not strong enough to protect. They fall hand in hand with each other, which is why we must balance them in ways equal to happiness and sadness. It’s okay to be scared for the future, and angry at the past, as long as we learn from the past to ease the future.”

He silently stood then walked to his puzzle to examine things one last time, turning to look at the frowning skeleton, “I BELIEVE IN THEM THAT THEY CAN OVERCOME THEIR FEAR, AS I DO WITH MY OTHER FRIENDS!” He winked and started walking towards the house, whistling.

~*~*~*~*~

Papyrus had arrived back home in time to prepare supper, glancing out the window into their backyard every now and again. The clock was ticking slowly even though 2 hours had gone by before he noticed Stretch walking through the yard. He smiled and kept to himself when the lanky version of his brother walked in, as Red walked in from the living room. He was heading out back to get a smoke, lighting the cancer stick on his way out. Within seconds of seeing him, Stretch crossed the room and grabbed Red’s wrist, “put it out, red.”

“heh, and what are you going to do if i don’t? going to walk out on me? thought you didn’t give two shits what i did.”

“put. it. out.”

Red pressed his face into Stretch’s, their nose cavities touching, “make. me.”

Papyrus glanced over his shoulder, Stretch’s magic flared brightly in his left socket. Red held the cigarette in his right hand, index finger up in flipping the taller one off, while his left hand rested carefully on his swollen belly. His ecto flesh formed overnight, quick to encase the souling protectively. He watched his doppelgänger reach up and in a fit of panic he twisted around to find Stretch put the smoking stick out with his fingers. Red just looked at him cautiously.

“i fucked up, red. taking care of my brother, raising him, that’s one thing. he was a toddler when we left that place. this… will be a damn newborn. scared is nothing compared to how i really feel, and i should have talked to you. i really fucked up and understand if you don’t want me around.”

*CRACK*

Blue, Edge, and Sans came rushing from around the house and ended in the doorway separating the living room from the kitchen. Red’s hand stung like a bitch. Tears welled in his sockets as he angrily watched the father of his child’s reaction, his expression dark. The other just stood there, eye lights pinpricks that stared off into nothing. He was shocked, his skull already showing signs from the smack. He deserved it, and more, but he was expecting it from Edge, not the shorter fell skeleton.

“you asshole! do you honestly think i’m not scared shitless either?! i was in the same fucking boat as you! i raised my brother on my own, working myself to the bone to make sure he had the childhood i couldn’t! and now look at me! i’m carrying a kid, your fucking kid! i know nothing about raising a baby and yet here i am growing one right now!”

He pulled on the orange hoodie and embraced Stretch, the tears sliding down his cheekbones as he buried his face into the smokey smelling fabric, “if i didn’t want you around i would have told you to fuck off. you idiot…”

Sans walked into the room and up to Papyrus, hugging him tightly before turning back to the others. “heh, i have a feeling you had something to do with this bro.”

“Neyehehe, no brother, I had nothing to do with Stretch coming back. I certainly didn’t tell him what you told me, no siree.”

“of course not.”

#communication #talk it out #honeymustard #skelepreg #mpreg #edgeberry #great work!#undertale fanfic fanart #can't we all just get along #sad times #aaawww #the feelz

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trellanyx · 6 years ago

Text

Aim Your Arrow at the Sky

AO3 LINK

“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”

Time slowed to a crawl without any help from Crowley. Every bit of movement and sound heightened to match his growing panic: the crunch of wet sand under his boot; the waves rolling rhythmically against the shore; the unrhythmic, staccato beating of Crowley’s useless heart; and there, standing on the water, was Gabriel, his long, pristine coat flapping around his ankles like wings in the wind.

“Nice place,” Gabriel continued, unbothered by Crowley’s silence. Hell’s sake, he was probably enjoying it. Gabriel looked around the empty beach, taking in the expanse of shore and sea and sky that Crowley and Aziraphale had claimed as their own. “Open, quiet, private. Dull as shit, but then, you’ve never been one for taste. I mean.” Gabriel laughed like an old friend. “Just look at who you hang out with.”

Crowley turned to face Gabriel openly, stepping to the side until he blocked Gabriel’s line of sight. The cottage was still half a mile away, but Crowley would be blessed and damned if he was going to let Gabriel a single inch closer to the angel inside.

“You get one warning,” he snarled. His eyes flashed poison-gold, pupils thin as a virgin guillotine blade. “Fuck. Off.”

“Tsk. That’s not very nice.”

“We had an agreement.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows rose. “We did?” he asked, with all the shallow grandeur of a carnival conman. “That’s news to me. You sure you’re not thinking of…?” He nodded downward. “I know they’re too cowardly to come after you twice, but you and me? We haven’t spoken since the airfield. Am I right?”

Gabriel grinned, and a thin layer of his joviality slipped away with the tide. Crowley could see a thousand years of bloody crusades, swelling with corpse-rot and worship, living in the curve of Gabriel’s smile.

“Y’know, funny thing happened a few years ago, after you two betrayed the Almighty,” he continued. “We tried to execute Aziraphale, you know, and it didn’t take. Flames wouldn’t touch him. Very unsettling.”

Shut your stupid mouth and die already.

Crowley hissed hate through his sharpening teeth.

“Then we hear from Downstairs that they tried the same thing with you, and you survived holy water.” Gabriel shook his head. “And I’m thinking, nah, that can’t be right. Those two idiots?”

Heat began to boil in Crowley’s veins, blurring the air around him and causing the sand under his feet to steam as the water seeped inside began to evaporate.

Gabriel raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Not quite idiots, though, are you? I’ll give you credit—it was a clever trick.”

“Weird,” Crowley mused, like he was contemplating an unfamiliar menu item, not seething with hatred and panic. “I didn’t think your head was small enough to be pulled back outside your own arse. Is that why you’re here now?” Crowley tsked in fake sympathy. “Did it take that long, Gabe?”

Gabriel’s smile froze, and his stolen eyes became diamond-hard with barely controlled disgust.

“I imagine it’s difficult, being wretched longer than you’ve ever been divine.” Gabriel’s voice was soft, like feathers inside a pillow he was about to smother you with. “Your memory’s fuzzy—I get that. Still, though, I’d think this one would’ve stuck. Aziraphale at least had the decency to be properly afraid of it.”

“Is there a rest stop between now and the fucking point?” snapped Crowley. He jerked back in revulsion at the sound of Gabriel’s laughter.

“Surveillance, dumbass! Every second the earth has existed has a record. We didn’t have a reason to look before, but now, well.” Gabriel spread out his hands with a shrug. The warmth was back in his smile; a spray of blood from a mortal wound, cordiality and cruelty trickling down the grain of the cross.

Bless it, Crowley thought, but he was an idiot. Because he’d known. Gabriel, for all his inanity and pompousness, had never been stupid. No, worse than that—Gabriel was apathetic. He didn’t bother to learn or observe anything outside his own interests, and this made him appear bumbling, full of hot air and nothing substantive.

But when he did decide to pay attention…

Crowley’s wings shattered the barrier of their prison ad cracked the air like a shot. Gabriel watched placidly as they extended to their full height and wingspan. The air around Crowley was already distorting itself as reality broke down, unable to keep the demon’s true form from answering its master’s summons.

“I will kill you,” Crowley promised, his voice echoing with void and devastation. “I don’t care if I go down with you. You’ll face oblivion before you can even step in Aziraphale’s direction.”

“Oh…” Gabriel chuckled. “I know you will, A̸̧̼̦̭͇̞̰͎̙̮͎̒̃̌̚͝m̵͉̦̞̩̗͔̿̔̆̄͗̊̆̈́̀̓͂̀͊r̵̡̗̻͉̪͚̼̹͉̭̒̒̋͐̑̊̃͆̓͂̚̚ỉ̸̛̹͇͓̙͍͚̭̯͈̻̓̃̊̆͝ͅe̷̡̢̧̛̼͈̜̻͙̰̳̾̊͛͐͌̿̓̕͜ͅͅͅl̵̳̞̎̍̅͒̎͒͌͋́͌̾̔̕.”

Crowley screamed from the abrupt shock of divinity lancing through his chest, scattering light between his atoms like shrapnel. A high note, unbearably terrible and beautiful, rang in his ears and splintered his bones, sending Crowley to his knees in an acolyte’s post. He gasped as it passed through him and stared at Gabriel with mounting horror.

The first thing that was burned away from fallen angels was their name. It was the word She used to call them into existence, each letter encrusted like jewels in the crown of Her Glory. To lose their name was to lose themselves. Crowley couldn’t remember his holy name; sometimes, if he tried hard, he could see the shape of it in his mind’s eye, but it was smudged with pain. He’d always assumed the names of the Fallen were taken back into Her essence, no longer fit for creation or memory.

“Surprised?” Gabriel asked. “Oh, A̸̧̼̦̭͇̞̰͎̙̮͎̒̃̌̚͝m̵͉̦̞̩̗͔̿̔̆̄͗̊̆̈́̀̓͂̀͊r̵̡̗̻͉̪͚̼̹͉̭̒̒̋͐̑̊̃͆̓͂̚̚ỉ̸̛̹͇͓̙͍͚̭̯͈̻̓̃̊̆͝ͅe̷̡̢̧̛̼͈̜̻͙̰̳̾̊͛͐͌̿̓̕͜ͅͅͅl̵̳̞̎̍̅͒̎͒͌͋́͌̾̔̕—” Crowley gagged as blood filled his mouth. “—did you really think we’d forgotten you? When a demon’s former celestial name can cause this amount of damage, why the hell would we ever erase them?” Gabriel clucked his tongue. “Poor, stupid A̸̧̼̦̭͇̞̰͎̙̮͎̒̃̌̚͝m̵͉̦̞̩̗͔̿̔̆̄͗̊̆̈́̀̓͂̀͊r̵̡̗̻͉̪͚̼̹͉̭̒̒̋͐̑̊̃͆̓͂̚̚ỉ̸̛̹͇͓̙͍͚̭̯͈̻̓̃̊̆͝ͅe̷̡̢̧̛̼͈̜̻͙̰̳̾̊͛͐͌̿̓̕͜ͅͅͅl̵̳̞̎̍̅͒̎͒͌͋́͌̾̔̕.”

Crowley clutched his chest as the hole where Her Grace used to be was seared with divinity that was no longer his. Stupid indeed. Even the humans knew that names had power; why should the first names in all creation be any exception?

When he raised his head to hiss at Gabriel, black ichor dripped from Crowley’s eyes.

“Enjoying your little party trick? Go ahead.” Crowley staggered to his feet. “Say my name. Say it as much as you fucking want. I want you to.” He smile-snarled at the Archangel. “Let my name be the last thing you ever fucking say before I punt you into a black hole.”

“You still don’t get it.” Gabriel sighed. “Here’s the thing, A̸̧̼̦̭͇̞̰͎̙̮͎̒̃̌̚͝m̵͉̦̞̩̗͔̿̔̆̄͗̊̆̈́̀̓͂̀͊r̵̡̗̻͉̪͚̼̹͉̭̒̒̋͐̑̊̃͆̓͂̚̚ỉ̸̛̹͇͓̙͍͚̭̯͈̻̓̃̊̆͝ͅe̷̡̢̧̛̼͈̜̻͙̰̳̾̊͛͐͌̿̓̕͜ͅͅͅl̵̳̞̎̍̅͒̎͒͌͋́͌̾̔̕—” Crowley flipped his middle finger as he shook with a fresh wave of pain. “I didn’t actually come here to kill you.”

“Bullshit,” Crowley spat.

“It’s true! I just came for a chat.” Gabriel jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He came to kill you.”

In the space between heartbeat and thought, Sandalphon slipped out from behind Gabriel like an oil spill. The churning waves died beneath his shoes, becoming glass-smooth to match the patch of ocean Gabriel stood on. His smile didn’t bother with the pretense of friendship that Gabriel’s did; it held only the horrifying truth of belief, the kind that made martyrs out of the unwilling and called it just.

Crowley reared like a hooded cobra, cornered but desperate, and furious enough to attack anything that so much as twitched in its direction.

“Can’t even handle killing a demon on your own, can you, you piece of shit?”

Gabriel hummed like he was actually giving it some thought. “I prefer to think of it as not getting my hands dirty.”

“Hello, Crawley,” Sandalphon simpered. His golden teeth reminded Crowley of long abandoned treasures in a skeleton’s graveyard. Awareness coiled sickly in his gut.

Crowley could take Gabriel, or even Sandalphon, on his own. Whether he’d win was up for debate—an angel’s powers were, by design, made to cancel out a demon’s—but Crowley knew that he could at least cause one of the archangels severe damage. But two of them?

He had to try. If he could stall them even a minute, Aziraphale could—

“But you know what, I’m a sporting angel.” Gabriel clapped his hand on Sandalphon’s shoulder, whose eyes were beginning to glow. “How about I give you a chance to prove me wrong?”

Sandalphon held his hands out in front of him like an offering, and the water immediately began to churn. When he breathed in, the tide drained away from the shore into a growing whirlpool blackening the water beneath his feet. Sandalphon raised his arms in a conductor’s stance, his eyes glowing lightning-bright and salt-white.

The flames under Crowley’s scales froze with horror as a wave grew behind Sandalphon. And grew…and grew…

And then it began to glow.

Gabriel whistled appreciatively at the literal tidal wave rising above their heads—every atom of which was vibrating with celestial blessing. Even the scent of seawater in the air was poisoned with divinity; Crowley felt his right eye start to twitch.

“Survive this, demon,” Gabriel intoned. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Survive this, and I swear by the Grace inside me that I’ll leave you two alone.”

Fragments of ideas and plans rattled around Crowley’s mind like dice, and every one of them came up snake-eyes.

The wave had swelled too large to dodge. He could run, fly, crawl through the sand, but he wasn’t fast enough to get out of range before Sandalphon brought the flood down on his head. It would be the same if he attacked. No amount of hellfire would touch the angels so long as they were surrounded by their watery barrier. Even trying to stop time, as he did in Tadfield, would be useless to him. There was no reality-bending Antichrist to aid him, no angel…

Oh.

Aziraphale.

I’m…I’m about to die, aren’t I?

The roar of water dulled and muffled, suddenly far away, as if it was respecting Crowley’s privacy in his last moments. Realization skinned him raw; if Crowley was gone, who would protect Aziraphale? Who would listen to him read his favorite poetry aloud? Who would groom his wings? Who would take him to dinner, to the theater, to the stars and to bed and everywhere in between?

Who would love him?

I’m fucked. I’m fucked and I can’t stay and I’m going to hurt you, Aziraphale. I’m going to make you cry. I’m sorry. I only ever wanted to love you.

Gabriel waved. “So long!”

I know I said I’d be happy with whatever I could get, and I meant that, I did, I meant it because it was you. But angel, angel, I’m too fucking selfish. It’s not enough, it’ll never be enough, I want more, Aziraphale.

I want more time.

“Farewell,” sneered Sandalphon.

I want to talk with you more, drink with you more, I want more mornings where you’re the first thing I see when I wake up.

The tidal wave rose until it blocked the sun’s light, casting Crowley in a long tombstone-shadow. He should attack them. He should at least try, deny them the satisfaction of striking him down without resistance.

“Auf wiedersehen!”

But Crowley’s mind wasn’t on the beach anymore. It was back in their cottage, curled in Aziraphale’s lap with a deathbed confession.

I want more lunches, more dinners, more desserts, I want more walks and drives and I want to tease you more, kiss and hug and fuck and love you, I want to love you so much more Aziraphale, I want I want I WANT—!

“Goodbye.”

…I don’t want to go.

Sandalphon’s arms surged forward to bring down the wave, and several things happened at once.

A white-gold missile of light slammed into Sandalphon with enough force to send him barreling into Gabriel’s side and shoot them both away from Crowley like a torpedo.

The wave collapsed in on itself and flooded the beach.

Crowley threw his arms in front of his face, hissing as the holy spray connected like a thousand paper cuts in a salt bath.

He only had seconds to register the pain before something grabbed Crowley around the middle and rocketed him above the saturated sand.

Crowley panicked when he felt the heavenly aura surround him, instinctively squirming and kicking until he was flipped onto his back and saw his favorite shade of blue beseeching him to be still.

“It’s me!” Aziraphale shouted over the water. “Crowley, it’s me!”

A gallows moan pulled from Crowley’s chest.

“Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale crushed Crowley to his chest at the same time Crowley’s arms strangled the angel in a python’s grip. Aziraphale stroke-dragged shaking fingers through Crowley’s hair; his desperate whispers of darling darling darling kept rhythm with Crowley’s racing heart. He whined when Aziraphale pulled away to look him over.

“Are you hurt?” Aziraphale demanded. “Did it touch you?” His eyes followed Crowley’s down to the sizzling freckles on his arms, and Aziraphale growled.

“Monsters.”

Belatedly, Crowley registered that Aziraphale was holding him in a bridal carry. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, his vest was unbuttoned, and his bowtie was loose; he’d hadn’t even bothered to miracle his appearance, he’d been too much in a hurry to save Crowley from—

“We have to get out of here!” Crowley scrambled to fly on his own, holding Aziraphale’s hand the whole time. “Angel, we’ve gotta—”

“No.”

Crowley’s neck snapped back to Aziraphale fast enough to give a human a severe case of whiplash. “The fuck you mean no?!”

“They won’t stop,” said Aziraphale. “Not unless we make them.”

Now that he was sure of Crowley’s safety, the abrupt serenity settling around Aziraphale’s shoulders made Crowley bristle with terror.

“Aziraphale, they want to kill you!”

“Oh good.” Aziraphale turned to look over the horizon Gabriel and Sandalphon had been thrown beyond. “It’s always nice to be on the same page.”

His wrist twisted, and Crowley did a double take when he saw that Aziraphale was swinging a fucking umbrella like a broadsword. As it spun, the umbrella came alive with ice-blue fire, licking its way down to Aziraphale’s fingers and sparking like a blacksmith’s forge.

“Aziraphale, what—”

“WHAT THE FUCK?!”

A pillar of seawater erupted into the air. Crowley reeled back, but Aziraphale was already in front of him, the umbrella wide open and shield-wide, causing any stray drops of water to evaporate before the fire.

“Promise me something right now,” muttered Aziraphale.

“What is it?”

Aziraphale closed the umbrella and shifted into a combative posture.

“Do not interfere. Please.”

“Azira–”

“Promise me, Crowley.”

“No!” Crowley ripped his glasses off and threw them into the sand like a gauntlet. “You’re out of your blessed mind if you think I’m gonna let you—”

“My dear, in just a minute quite a lot of ethereal seawater is going to be slung around.” Aziraphale’s warrior eyes softened when they looked at Crowley’s incredulous face. “Please, love. I don’t want you in the crossfire.”

Unable to refute him, but unwilling to back down, Crowley jabbed his finger at Aziraphale’s flaming umbrella. “What are you even going to do with that, anyway?”

“Something I should have done long ago.” Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s cheek, and all protests shriveled in the demon’s throat. “I love you, Crowley. Wait for me.”

Aziraphale floated down to where Gabriel and Sandalphon reappeared on the water, enraged and sporting several extra sets of wings and eyes.

“Y’know what, I am sick of your shit,” Gabriel spat. “I was trying to be nice about this, show a little mercy by not making you watch Sandalphon kill your–”

A shower of water exploded in Gabriel’s face. He swore and sputtered, leaping back…and gaping at what he saw. As did Crowley.

Aziraphale had impaled his umbrella-sword through Sandalphon’s chest. He lifted Sandalphon until only the tips of his loafers skimmed the water. Sandalphon looked too stunned to try to retaliate, even when his wings fell slack and his extra eyes rolled back into nothingness.

Aziraphale radiated contempt as he unceremoniously yanked his weapon out of Sandalphon’s chest and stepped away.

With his face still frozen in a look of utter shock, Sandalphon’s knees splashed into the water. He pitched forward until he was face down in the ocean, bobbing listlessly as he bled out. Moments later, the rest of his mortal vessel sank with the finality of a suicide.

Discorporated.

Aziraphale’s fire was still burning through Sandalphon’s flesh; Crowley could see a pale blue glow under the waves as Aziraphale turned to fully face Gabriel.

“…So that’s how you want to do this, Aziraphale?” All emotion, satiric or sincere, abandoned Gabriel’s face in favor of cold-iron fury. “You cowered before the apocalypse, and now, now you choose to fight? For this infested world? For him?”

Gabriel jerked his chin upward, disgusted by the mere reference of Crowley on his lips.

“There didn’t have to be a war, Gabriel,” said Aziraphale. With his raised head and squared shoulders, he reminded Crowley of a well-fortified bulwark. “Not between Heaven and Hell, nor between us. Crowley and I have only ever asked for peace.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Without the flood, the olive branch has no meaning. You understood that once, Aziraphale.”

“No, I didn’t,” murmured Aziraphale. “I never did. I had only hope that one day, I would. No more.” Aziraphale glanced at Crowley. “I’m done blindly attacking whatever is put in front of me, and I’m done hiding like that’s something shameful.” He pointed his makeshift weapon at Gabriel; its calm, defensive blue a far cry from Aziraphale’s original sword—the weapon that fit so perfectly in the hands of War.

Gabriel spread his wings like he was baring his teeth. “You understand what will happen, don’t you? Attacking a superior?”

Aziraphale mimicked the action. “I answer to two voices in this universe, Gabriel, and yours isn’t one of them. None of you are. Not anymore.”

“You’ll Fall for this.”

Aziraphale’s form shimmered and bled until it was little more than sun and steel covered in a thousand glaring, resolute eyes.

“So be it.”

Aziraphale and Gabriel’s magic slammed against each other before their bodies did. The water crested from the shock waves and began to glow again, completely baptized by the unfiltered celestial energies rippling through its currents.

Crowley’s corporeal form tore from his body as he took off towards the fighting. He was never a soldier before he Fell—Crowley’s purpose was that of creation, of forming the precious galaxy that angels like Aziraphale fought to protect—but one didn’t roost in the bowels of hell for a couple millennia without learning how to fight dirty. Crowley swallowed what remained of earthly light into the hollow maw where Grace once shone, his fangs and claws dripping liquid nightmares. Even the broken shards of his halo were sharp enough to pierce an angel’s skin if Crowley just got close enough—

A geyser of holy water shot up and nearly took out one of his wings. Crowley reared back with a hateful shriek as more bless-bright jets rose around the warring angels like a cage. Crowley circled them agitatedly, trying to find Aziraphale in the fight. They were moving too fast and too bright; even Crowley’s supernatural gaze could only pick up afterimages, like a video with delayed audio. He pushed his consciousness out, seeking Aziraphale’s aura in the midst of the chaos.

All of Gabriel’s heads and wings were out, surging towards Aziraphale’s core to gouge him clean. Aziraphale met him blow for blow with his umbrella, the ludicrous sight at odds with how Gabriel snarled at it every time Aziraphale swung towards him.

What on earth had he done to it? It repelled Gabriel’s magic whenever Aziraphale opened it to use as a shield, and its blue flames greedily clung to Gabriel’s face and feathers whenever Aziraphale landed a hit. It didn’t cause the same amount of damage as hellfire might, but the force with which Aziraphale choreographed his blows was enough to knock Gabriel back, if only for a second.

Lightning shot down from above at Gabriel’s command, crackling through their watery battlefield like spiderweb veins. Aziraphale lost his footing as electricity surrounded his legs like barbed wire, and Gabriel struck, knocking Aziraphale backwards into the water. He reared back, teeth gleaming, and surged towards Aziraphale’s neck. Aziraphale threw up his umbrella with both hands and caught it inside Gabriel’s mouth, inches away from Aziraphale’s nose. The flames flared in Gabriel’s face, covering his head. Gabriel howled, and swung out with his claws.

Aziraphale screamed.

“ANGEL!” Crowley surged forward, water be damned, when—

“STAY BACK!”

Aziraphale staggered to his feet; half of his eyes were lidded or shut, dripping with golden blood. One of his wings was bent out of shape, claw marks breaking up the trail of snowy feathers.

Gabriel covered half of his face, his own lustrous blood spilling through his claws from the lashes Aziraphale’s magic scored across his Grace. Gabriel glanced at Crowley through the fire still licking his face, and Crowley could feel the archangel’s viciousness in the back of his throat, choking him like his tongue was swelling.

That feeling was all the warning Crowley had before the geyser bars exploded like a supernova. Aziraphale’s magic slammed Crowley backwards, burning like acid through Crowley’s teeth and rings, but with enough force to knock him almost entirely back to the other end of the beach, away from the water. Crowley writhed in the air, holding onto Aziraphale’s magic even as it burned, trying to get a sense of its strength from this small sample alone.

Up ahead the angels were clashing again. Starbursts of water rose and exploded like fireworks around them.

Aziraphale was strong, every inch of him exuding the strength and sharpness of an angel entrusted with an entire platoon of soldiers by the Almighty herself. He wielded the umbrella like it was truly steel, parrying and stabbing, smashing his good wings into Gabriel’s face and essence to knock him back. Streaks of golden blood splattered around them like paint, mixing with the shining water. Crowley couldn’t tell whose was whose anymore.

Crowley swelled and spun his rings in terror and tried to keep track of Aziraphale, to pick his essence apart from Gabriel’s own holy energy. It was almost impossible to lock onto thanks to the speed with which it was being thrown around, but after six thousand years and counting, Crowley was finely attuned to Aziraphale’s magic. The difference was faint; Aziraphale’s magic was warmer, shaded with gold. Gabriel, due to his higher rank, had a much brighter aura, a blinding white that hurt Crowley’s infernal eyes when he looked upon it for too long. It was much brighter than Aziraphale’s, pulled from a well of magic deeper and purer than any other angel—

With sickening clarity, Crowley realized what Gabriel was doing.

He was stalling.

By nature, Aziraphale was blessed with less endurance than Gabriel had. Despite how strong and determined his angel was, Crowley knew that Aziraphale’s pool of magic would run dry long before Gabriel’s did. And Gabriel knew that too, because he’d switched to a more defensive style, dodging and blocking, and timing his strikes with a luxury Aziraphale was never created for. Gabriel intended to wait Aziraphale out, to strike him down when Aziraphale’s magical strength abandoned him. Crowley had no doubt Aziraphale could still fight even then—he’d certainly try, anyway—using his muscle memory to attack Gabriel without ethereality, but a Principality with a sword was laughably outclassed by an Archangel with deep reserves of magic left. Aziraphale would lose.

Aziraphale saw it too. His attacks grew more vicious, more aggressive, as he tried to end Gabriel quickly, before his own form betrayed him. But despite the blows that did land against Gabriel, the archangel showed no signs of tiring.

Gabriel swung the clubbed tips of his wings at Aziraphale’s blind side. Aziraphale allowed himself to take the hit so that he could lure Gabriel close enough to smash the handle of his umbrella against Gabriel’s temple, hard enough that even Crowley could hear the sound of crunching bone. Light poured out of the gash on Gabriel’s head as he locked his magic around Aziraphale, beating at him with his expansive wings and causing a swirl of water to cyclone up and around them, obscuring Crowley’s view even further.

Crowley couldn’t stand it anymore; if being drowned in holy water meant the difference between Aziraphale’s victory and death, then it wasn’t even a choice worth thinking about. Crowley wrestled his magic back into his corporeal form and held it tight under his breast. His skin split, and scales flickered up and down his body as his magic frayed the edges of Crowley’s human-shaped form, not meant to be drawn so close and held back in such a way. Crowley grit his teeth with enough force to crack his fangs. He felt on the edge of a seizure, a destruction all his own, but there was nothing for it; Crowley would need to be small for this, lithe and nimble. They only had one shot.

Crowley drew back his hands as he flew towards the angels, and a growing ball of hellfire and dark energy formed between his palms. The fire had to be strong enough to pass through the holy water without losing its shape or power—power that would be needed to knock Gabriel back and give Aziraphale an opening.

Pain throbbed behind Crowley’s eyes; his pupils were disappeared, leaving behind a glowing sulfur-yellow stare. The water was overcharged with holiness, and there was enough of it flying around that it would take all of Crowley’s reserves to create something infernal enough to pass through it. If he was struck down before then...if he missed...if he hit Aziraphale instead...

It was impossible to avoid the spray; Crowley jerked in flight as hundreds of tiny burns connected with his body, like standing over a pan spitting hot grease. It hurt like Heaven, but not enough to keep him back.

Aziraphale’s magic was flagging under Gabriel’s, making it even harder to untangle from the threads of Gabriel’s power. But he was still there, Crowley’s brave, fierce angel, and it was enough. Wherever Aziraphale was, Crowley would come to him. Always.

Crowley weaved between the ribbons of water whipping through the sky, laser-focused on Aziraphale as he lined up his shot. This needed to be timed just right, or he would lose the element of surprise and Gabriel would destroy them both.

Thankfully, time and Crowley were on friendly terms.

He couldn’t spare the energy to pause time completely, but he could break off the barest sliver to slow the seconds around them. Just enough for him to see the forms previously hidden by light.

It would be up to Aziraphale to take advantage of the split-second Crowley was about to give him, because Crowley would be unable to dodge or block anything Gabriel might throw at him after he recovered. Even twist-sick with terror, he never feared that Aziraphale would miss his chance. Crowley trusted Aziraphale to save them both.

He trusted Aziraphale more than anything in creation.

As Gabriel twitched in his direction, Crowley poured everything he had and was into his attack and blasted the ball of hellfire and dark matter into Gabriel’s side. Gabriel stumbled off balance for a single second, and it was all Aziraphale needed.

With an almighty scream, Aziraphale stabbed Gabriel through the eye with the sharp tip of his umbrella.

The water instantly splashed down, leaving Aziraphale and Gabriel in a pool of luminescence. Gabriel dropped to one knee, then the other, and gripped the umbrella embedded in his skull with both hands. He snarled at Aziraphale who, without breaking eye contact, slowly pushed the umbrella, fire and all, through Gabriel’s eye socket.

“Traitor,” Gabriel spat.

“There are worse things to be,” said Aziraphale. “Deliver my message, Gabriel. To the angels, to the demons, to the Metatron and Beelzebub themselves. Tell them what happened to Sandalphon. Tell them what happened to you.”

Gabriel convulsed as Aziraphale deliberately pushed the umbrella deeper until it broke out the back of Gabriel’s skull.

“And tell them that if they ever threaten us again, I will make them wish for something so sweet as discorporation.”

Bleeding out at Aziraphale’s feet, Gabriel cursed Aziraphale in a language Crowley hadn’t heard since the Beginning. His grip began to slacken on the umbrella, and Crowley dared to relax.

Then, without warning, Gabriel’s left arm threw back in Crowley’s direction to hit him square in the chest with the last of Gabriel’s power. Caught off guard and too depleted to respond quickly enough, Crowley arched through the air and landed square on his back on the now consecrated beach.

Crowley screamed as the holy water soaked up by the sand seeped through his shirt and wings and skull. The last thing he saw before his eyes rolled back was Aziraphale’s horrified face.

The scent of clean linen pulled Crowley from unconsciousness with merciful gentleness. There was no more briny smell of wet sand and saltsea. Nothing of ozone or blood. Just clean cotton and an imprint of Aziraphale’s cologne. Crowley breathed in deep, searching for traces of his angel like an experienced perfumer: saffron and sandalwood, juniper berries and sage, and sometimes, if it was a good night, the warmth of cocoa that Crowley could still taste sweet as cream on Aziraphale’s tongue.

“Sssh.” Aziraphale brushed Crowley’s hair out of his eyes. “Not so sudden. I’ve done all I could, but you’re likely to be sore for a few more days.”

Crowley’s eyes snapped open, seized with desperation to confirm—and there he was.

“Angel,” Crowley breathed, trembling with relief and reverence. He took Aziraphale’s hand and turned it palm-up to run his lips over the lifeline.

“My love,” Aziraphale whispered, sounding as helpless as Crowley felt. He squeezed Crowley’s hand with a strength that would’ve broken mortal bones; Crowley only shuddered and held Aziraphale tighter, grounding himself in his angel’s touch. He kissed each of Aziraphale’s knuckles twice before he could drag his eyes back up.

“Are you okay?”

Aziraphale laughed wetly. “He asks, after half his backside melted away.”

“Hey, I saw a lot of eyes out of commission,” Crowley reminded him.

“You shouldn’t have been close enough to see in the first place!” Aziraphale snapped. His face twisted and broke down, and he bowed over their joined hands like he—Aziraphale!—was seeking penance. “You foolish, wretched—I told you to stay back!”

“You also tell me to drive slower and be nice to my plants.” Crowley’s voice was gentle, but he couldn’t make himself sound apologetic. “You needed the opening, angel. He would’ve worn you down eventually.”

“Don’t you dare spout logic at me, Anthony Crowley. You almost died.”

Every time you took a blow. Every time he came an inch closer to destroying you. Do you think I could ever separate my survival from yours, Aziraphale? Now? Still?

Crowley bit his split tongue and propped himself up on an elbow. He was on his stomach, his wings still out and brushing against the floor. Crowley couldn’t bring himself to look at them yet, to count lost feathers and new scars. He cleared his throat to dislodge the misery choking him with every hitch of Aziraphale’s breath.

“…And Gabriel?”

Aziraphale sniffled. “Gone. Discorporated, I think, or possibly dead.” He raised his head enough to half-heartedly glare at Crowley. “I was a bit too distracted to watch his exit at the time.”

“I’m sorry.” Crowley traced the curve of Aziraphale’s skull, down his neck and across his jaw. When Aziraphale closed his eyes to the touch, Crowley kissed both of his eyelids. What else was left to say? “I’m sorry, angel, I’m so, so sorry—”

“Hush,” whispered Aziraphale. He held Crowley’s palm to his cheek, and ran his thumb in circles atop Crowley’s pulse point. He looked thinner than he’d been before Crowley left him for a morning flight—

(how many mornings ago now? how long had Aziraphale sat in a vigil he was never meant to keep?)

—and bruise-dark circles hung below his eyes. Crowley’s gaze sidestepped reality to see the mantle of magic draped around Aziraphale’s shoulders. Its light was weak and watery, stretched thin as tracing paper over the angel’s essence.

“You look exhausted,” Crowley murmured.

“Battle will do that. Fear will do that.” Aziraphale opened his swimming eyes (Crowley was starting to hate the sight of water). “Crowley, you were so empty when I reached you. I thought—I thought you were—”

The dam broke and Aziraphale bit his free hand, trying to muffle his sobs as tears rolled down his cheeks. He never let go of Crowley, who felt his fingers become slick when Aziraphale nuzzled his palm and smeared tears across the half-scaled flesh.

“C’mere. Aziraphale, hey.” Crowley tugged at Aziraphale’s grip until he could once again see the sky blue of Aziraphale’s eyes. “Come lie beside me.”

Swiping at his tears, Aziraphale shed his clothes and climbed in nude beside Crowley, who immediately shifted until he could rest his ear over Aziraphale’s heart.

“You can’t possibly think I’d let you face any of them alone,” he murmured. “No more than you could abandon me.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” Crowley kissed Aziraphale’s chest, followed by his cheek and salt-tipped lips. “Angels don’t get the monopoly on protection, sweetheart.”

Aziraphale shakily laughed. “Well. That might become a moot point soon, anyway.”

Crowley’s heart plummeted in horror. “You haven’t—”

“No, not yet.” Aziraphale cast a bitter glance at the ceiling. “Gabriel’s always loved to pull rank, but even he doesn’t have the power to make those decisions.”

“They can’t.” Crowley reared backward, onto his knees. “You were defending yourself!”

Aziraphale gave him an odd look, but Crowley was too petrified at the thought of Aziraphale actually Falling for him to appreciate the absurdity of expecting Heaven to actually play fair.

“I was defending you,” Aziraphale corrected. “And there’s still the matter of Head Office finding out we defied them twice—”

“Aziraphale—”

“Vis a vis apocalypses and executions that weren’t, well, executed—”

“Stop sounding so calm about this!”

Crowley’s ears might’ve rung from the sound of his own scream, but he couldn’t hear anything over the drumbeat of his wild heart, panic twisting like a noose around its ventricles and chambers. Aziraphale only looked at him for a moment before shifting to sit upright. His wings were also out, and they wrapped around Crowley’s damaged back, mingling with his feathers.

“Crowley. I meant what I said when I challenged him.” Aziraphale took both of Crowley’s hands and brought them to his lips. “I’ve already disowned them in every way that counts, anyway.”

“You can’t Fall,” Crowley protested.

“I’m not afraid anymore, dearest.”

“I can’t be the reason you Fall, Aziraphale!” Crowley ripped his hands from Aziraphale’s in favor of dragging them across his scalp; his nails, still halfway stormblack and clawed, opened the way for blood to lose itself in his slaughterhouse hair.

“You, you don’t know what it’s like, you don’t know how agonizing it is, to have everything you were broken down and put back together in the wrong order. You don’t know how it feels to have that phantom pain follow you for the rest of eternity. You don’t know how it feels to be worth less than ash. Angel, angel…”

He reached for Aziraphale, aborted the movement, and curled in on himself, irrationally afraid that one more demonic touch would be enough to push Aziraphale over the edge. “I can’t condemn you to that. I could never so much as look you in the eye again.”

The clean scent was gone. All he could smell was burning flesh, burning feathers, burning hair and burning soul and Aziraphale, Aziraphale stinking of brimstone just as Crowley did, his wings turning black as disease and his halo shattering to form something twisted and ugly.

If You’d ever listen, listen to me now. Don’t put him through this. He’s the greatest thing You ever made.

Don’t drag him down to my level.

“Oh Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley shook his head. “I love you. I love you so much. Please.”

Aziraphale’s hands wrapped around Crowley, slowly tugging him back into his embrace; Crowley followed helplessly, but kept his shameful tears buried in the soft white curls across Aziraphale��s chest.

“Crowley. Crowley look at me.” Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s hair. “Please, dearest.”

A golden eye blinked miserably up at him. Aziraphale smiled.

“You’re right. You can’t be the reason I Fall. Because if I do, it will be because I chose to do so. Because I choose this life, here, with you. Because I have never felt so happy, or so good, than I feel when I’m by your side.”

Aziraphale tilted Crowley’s chin up; his kiss stung with gentleness and the miracle of being known. Their wings cocooned around each other, and when Crowley rested his brow against Aziraphale’s his thoughts fell silent, blanketed by the heat of their embrace and the whisper of Aziraphale’s breath against his lips.

“Earlier you said you answered to only two voices in the universe,” Crowley murmured.

“I did.”

“The first is Hers.” Crowley didn’t bother to mask it as a question, but Aziraphale heard one anyway.

“Hers,” he said softly. “Not Heaven’s.”

“And the second?”

Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s nose, giggling when Crowley playfully scrunched his face. “Oh, my love. Does it even need saying?”

This time, when Aziraphale shifted to lay on his back once more, he didn’t need to pull to get Crowley to follow him down.

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #gabriel good omens #my writing #my stuff #vicsfam #trellafam

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eldritchincendiary · 5 years ago

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and now:

the davekat au you didnt know you wanted but im writing anyway

i consider it a crime and an insult that nobody in this fandom has written an Anastasia AU when the potential is RIGHT THERE.

because nobody has done it (that i am aware of) i bit the bullet and wrote it myself (im using that phrase correctly, right?)

but im still workshopping the first draft before even considering posting it, but im so far REALLY happy with chapter 3. it doesnt really have dave or karkat (karkat is mentioned but he has no real presence in the chapter) but it DOES have gamzee and tavros. i know people who really like gamzee will probably hate me for writing him in the role of rasputin but i did it anyway.

just to say, tavros is meant to fill the role of rasputins bat minion Bartok, but i didnt want tavbro to be a bat so hes a gargoyle instead. thats it, enjoy this little glimpse of my newest obsession.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••Tavros had only seen this side of Limbo once, when his old boss died the first time. Selling his soul to get revenge on the royal family, as it turns out, came with some nasty consequences that Gamzee got to see firsthand. It seemed at first glance that he’d kept true to the strange clown aesthetic he’d been so dedicated to in life. A second glance would affirm that his dedication to the clown schtick had only grown worse as his psyche deteriorated in death.

“Who all up and motherfuckin’ disturbs my slumber or what the fuck ever?” Tavros can’t help the shiver that runs through him, discomfort eating away at him like a heavy rain eroding away at limestone. “Don’t you know it’s all kinds of fuckin’ rude to disturb the dead?” Tavros clutches the reliquary to his chest as Gamzee steps into view, tall and gangly, looking more like an animated skeleton than a person with rags that hang from his emaciated frame in blood soaked tatters. His gaze is far away, cold and glassy. If he had not been walking and talking before Tavros’s very eyes, the gargoyle would assume Gamzee was completely dead. His skin is frozen in spots, as cruel of a reminder as it could be of how he died.

“Gamzee you-” Tavros stammers, fumbling the artifact in his grip. “You’re alive?” The cackle, loud and hollow, echoes through the freezing air, shaking Tavros to his core.

“That's a way of puttin’ it, Tavbro. Do I look very fuckin’ alive to you?” Tavros shakes his head hurriedly. “I’ve been a wreck since I got here, stuck in this shithole because that stupid fuckin’ kid got away. And I’m gonna be stuck here until that shit keels over once and for all, which could take who knows how fuckin’ long.” Gamzee huffs, wincing with each movement, joints cracking with every step. “You wanna know how it feels to be literally falling apart? You know what kind of fuckin’ bullshit I’ve been through the past decade?”

“Well, this is Limbo. Aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, attone while you’re here?” Tavros flinches when Gamzee scoffs.

“Attoning is for motherfuckers with souls. In case you’ve forgotten, I don’t fuckin’ have one of those!” Gamzee shouts, forcing himself to erupt into a coughing fit, blood spattering his ashen, frost-bitten skin. The liquid is thick and dark, unnatural and unsettling to see. “Once that bastard dies, it’s straight to hell for me. I’ll be joinin’ that fuckin’ dark carnival down below if you know what I mean.”

“I...I don’t actually.”

“Course you don’t. Nobody ever fuckin’ does. If I hadn’t lost that little bauble I’d gotten from the ancient ones, I’d go back to finish the motherfuckin’ job. Take the expressway to hell so I can get my eternity of suffering over with.” Gamzee’s hands clench into fists, outlining every sharp, gnarled bone resting just beneath his rotting skin.

“That’s a uh… that’s kind of depressing.” Tavros looks down at the smoking reliquary in his hand, and his attention snaps up to the brooding corpse. “By ‘bauble’ do you mean this?”

The artifact gives a hellish screech when Gamzee snatches it, the crazed look in his eyes only growing more and more deranged as he stares down at it, coughing and hacking between his hysterical laughter.

“Where did you all up and motherfuckin’ find this, Tavbro! Ah, ten years of waiting and you still come through, you glorious granite bastard!” Gamzee doesn’t bother to wait for an answer, instead continuing on as though he were talking to a regular, non-living gargoyle. “You know what this means? I can finish the job. I can end that entire fuckin’ bloodline once and for all!”

“Ah… how, how are you gonna do that? You’re kind of stuck here.”

“Oh I won’t be the one going! My motherfuckin’ friends in this wicked lava lamp can get the job done and make it look like a fuckin’ accident too.” Tavros shrinks back as Gamzee’s voice grows louder, more urgent and obsessive.

“You hear that, Vantas, you motherfuckin’ bastard?! I’ll kill you. You’re gonna motherfuckin’ die and it’ll look like a bloody motherfuckin’ accident!”

#homestuck #tw!gore #i guess???#alternate universe #homestuck au #anastasia au #homestuck gamzee #homestuck tavros #Epsilon writes something

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haec-est-fides · 6 years ago

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Gaius Caligula and Commodus being defeated at the end of Tyrant’s Tomb was high key bullshit and I think we all know it. Disregarding the fact that it’s a “happy ending” and instead looking at the plot? No. It was impossible.

First off, Frank should have died. I love him, and his character arc was fantastic - up until he miraculously showed up in his cape and underwear. The idea of him freeing himself from his curse is nice and all, but made zero sense in context. If burning his kindling didn’t kill him, a tunnel full of Greek fire would. So would being stabbed in the gut. So would the sheer amount of wounds he was suffering from before he challenged the emperors if he didn’t get healed quickly. He was in a bad place, and there was no way he could walk back to Camp in his condition to get medical attention even if we allow him to survive the Caldecott fire, somehow. The way he survives without any kind of plausible explanation also cheapens Gaius’ death. Frank burnt up his life force by sheer strength of will to kill Gaius. But y’know he’s fine or whatever. No biggie.

If anyone should have survived the fire, it was Gaius and Commodus. Theoretically, they shouldn’t be able to die at all, though of course they must for the story. To be fair, I do love how Frank called Gaius out. That’s a stunning moment:

“We are gods.”

“And I’m the son of Mars, praetor of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. I’m not afraid to die. Are you?”

But Gaius is right, he and Commodus are gods. Key trait being immortality. Rick is notoriously bad about continuity in his own books, but the only entities we’ve ever seen truly “die” are faded gods, like Pan and Harpocrates. All of which, if my memory serves, actually faded willingly. The next closest thing would be what happened to Kronos: scattered to the wind like an evil Humpty Dumpty, but not truly dead. The way Rick writes Gaius’ death, that isn’t what happens. I may be wrong, but by the established origins of the Triumvirate and their power, they can’t die because they won’t. As Nero frankly iconically states, “I am immortal on Wikipedia!”

Secondly, Lavinia could not have sabotaged Gaius’ fleet like she did. It was an admirable mission, but let’s look at the facts:

Right off the bat, Kahale, an experienced centurion, and his team of elite commandos (who were most likely a smaller group than Lavinia and the nature spirits / fauns) were caught and killed.

Let’s say that Lavinia’s mission was timed better, missing the bulk of the army. She does say that the ships were running a skeleton crew. (Side note: how cheap of a move to make sure that the protagonists aren't killing a bunch of people. Weak.) However, even with a “skeleton crew” I find it ridiculous to believe that one girl and some nature spirits - with the help of nereids or not - could sneak onto fifty giant cruise ships, locate the artillery, “sabotage” it, escape, and have that artillery be fired in such a way that it takes out every ship with no saboteur casualties.

This irks me, because it just shows that Rick sucks at artillery. I have a bone to pick with Octavian’s death, because onagers just don’t work like that, but I digress. Here, the problem is even worse. How stupid are the Pandai? The only way to “sabotage” the artillery and have it destroy the ships as it did is for the guns to be aimed straight up. Assuming miraculously that none of the guards on any of the ships noticed the saboteurs, there would be pre-fire adjustments and checks regardless. There is no reasonable way to expect that anyone would fire an artillery piece straight up and only then realize that something was wrong. Speaking realistically, it’s also likely that at least one member of the skeleton crew on each ship would be a descendant of Apollo and a projectile weapons expert. Gaius isn’t stupid.

The ONLY way that Lavinia could have succeeded is if she and her friends pulled a Beckendorf and sacrificed themselves to fire the artillery and destroy the ships. Which they didn’t. (I’m sensing a theme here.)

Lastly, the emperors’ army would not have run like that. I- I don’t even know what to say at this point. They had fifty yachts full of soldiers, mostly Germani but also various monsters, demigods, and even human mercenaries, yes? Speaking just for the Germani, they’re a loyal, fearless bunch. If the yachts were really so empty, would they care about the sabotage? Wouldn’t the deaths of their leadership just piss them off? Frank was gone at that point, and there were less than a dozen legionnaires left. No offense to Apollo, but he is not that scary. Actually, full offense. Honestly, Triumvirate Holdings is still a triumvirate even if it’s broken into competing households. The army could (should) have taken the city and contacted Nero. Hell, I’m sure one of the demigods in Gaius’ or Commodus’ household would take charge. This just opens an entire can of worms that will get its own post soon.

This got very long, and I’m sure it’s pretty controversial? Feel free to yell at me. The TL;DR is that the only way the ending could have worked was for Frank and Lavinia & Co. to sacrifice themselves. Even then, we’re left with hundreds of heavily armed troops and a functional leadership structure, whereas New Rome was effectively in ruins and full of zombies.

#rant #rick riordan #tyrants tomb #ttt #trials of apollo #toa #gaius caligula #commodus #frank zhang #lavinia #triumvirate holdings #spoilers #filodox!

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foxtophat · 6 years ago

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here’s chapter 4!!! it’s been about a week and a half, two weeks since John Seed reappeared, and now nick is ready to take his vengence! by... having john do basic tasks to repair the homestead. hey, this isn’t eden’s gate -- what do you expect, skin flaying and long-winded religious diatribes? (weird, that’s exactly what john expects, all the time, from everyone!)

i really love this story and am so thrilled that other people seem to enjoy it too!!! it’s fun to write, and since i know it’s just full on self-indulgent bullshit, i don’t feel guilty for not being ~~realistic~~ about the whole thing. fuck it! nick is a pacifist now!!!

i’ve included today’s chapter under the cut so you don’t have to leave tumblr if you don’t want to. if you’re enjoying this story, please consider reblogging so your friends can also enjoy my hellscape! or, you know, do what makes you happy, it’s not like i can force you to ruin your aesthetics blog on my behalf. stay frosty my dudes, i’ll see you in 2 weeks!

Well, John doesn't die. Despite that being the only good thing the man could possibly do, he manages to hang on through the first night, looking better before the week is out. It's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Nick no longer feels like he's serving a skeleton its last meal; on the other, it means that John is more than likely here to stay. Every time Nick goes to give him food, he finds the room just a little bit more lived in, the tarp turning into a makeshift bed as John struggles to settle in. Just yesterday, Nick had noticed a short series of tally lines scratched in the wall, marking each day of his sentence as though he were confined to solitary.

Nick should probably be happy with how smoothly things are going. He should probably be glad that John is keeping quiet and politely recuperating without so much as a snide remark. It's what he wanted, after all — for John to wave a white flag and agree to an unconditional surrender. And yet Nick can't help but feel short-changed, as if John owes him at least one opportunity to punch him in the face for being an asshole. It used to be something Nick dreamed about doing; he'd fantasized about beating him to a bloody pulp even as John had ripped his skin from his chest. Now, he's not willing to deal with the guilt that would undoubtedly follow.

Nick wishes he could go back to his "fight everyone" thirties. Being a mature adult sucks.

It's bright and early one morning when Nick decides it's past time to do something about the ceiling, which is warped and sagging beneath the nursery. Nick suspects it's a cracked joist, but considering his lack of carpentry skills, he doubts he can do anything to repair it. Right now, all he can do is try to support the weight of the second floor with something other than a wish and a prayer. Thankfully, he saved some of the posts when he dismantled the back porch — now if only Kim weren't going to be busy all day with Carmina, they could actually get some work done.

Except, maybe not!

John has been looking a lot better these past two days, since all he's been doing is resting and regaining his strength. Nick's heard him rummaging around at night, and he's been making himself something of a nest out of the crap left with him. Nick's even heard him talking, although it's anyone's guess who he thinks is listening. Considering how quiet and withdrawn he is when Nick brings him his meals, he doesn't seem interested in what real people have to say.

Honestly, if Nick hadn't been an integral part of John's survival for the past week, he'd think the whole thing was some kind of ploy. Nick's not sure what John would be planning with this act for sympathy, but he isn't going to make the same mistake he did all those years ago and write him off as some rich, coked-out jackass with no thoughts to his name. He's not going to let John sit around and finalize whatever evil machinations he's got brewing in his mind. He's gonna work that sad-sack until the only thing John's thinking about is collapsing from exhaustion.

Nick doesn't reveal his plans until after breakfast. He doesn't want to ruin his favorite meal of the day, not when he can rest aimlessly beside his family around the table, eating ham and eggs while Kim brews coffee. It's the closest they'll ever get to the way life used to be, and Nick can pretend that everything is back to normal as long as he has a cup of coffee in hand. Hell, it's not like watching his eight-year-old daughter methodically clean the family rifle during breakfast is all that weird for Hope County, with or without the apocalypse.

It's probably a good thing that Carmina is distracted. If she realized today was the day John would be seeing sunlight, she'd refuse to go anywhere until her curiosity was satisfied. They've told her as little as they can get away with, given that they're keeping a man prisoner across the hall from them. Mostly that he's a very sick stranger who could make little girls very sick too. She'd bought it for the most part, but Nick's afraid that she won't be able to contain her curiosity for much longer.

"Think I'm gonna get some stuff done while you're gone," he tells Kim, glancing significantly towards the stairs while Carmina isn't looking. "We need to deal with the second floor sooner rather than later."

"Are you sure?" she asks, raising her eyebrows meaningfully back at him. "Is this something you can do on your own?"

"Better to not put it off anymore," Nick replies. "It'll be easier if I have the place to myself, anyway. Less, uh, confusion."

That said, he puts the chore off for almost half an hour after Kim and Carmina head out. He tries to prepare, but there's not much he can do to close off the exits, and it only takes a few minutes to drag all the necessary supplies into place. All he can do at this point is hope that John is only strong enough to help, and not strong enough to run at the first chance he gets. If he does that, Nick's going to have no choice but to shoot him.

Nick does his best to hide his nerves as he unlocks the door. It feels weird to knock so he doesn't, pushing the door open slowly enough for the hinges to creak. John should just be thankful Nick bothers to try giving him any sort of head's up.

John, ungrateful bastard that he is, sleeps through Nick's entrance. He's found the cheap wool guest blanket that Nick would never dream of actually offering to guests, which seems fitting. His shirt is crumpled next to him, leaving Nick with the unfortunate view of his bare torso.

Nick's seen John shirtless a few times now, but that doesn't make it any easier to stomach. His skin is stretched over his jutting shoulder blades, clinging to every sharp, bony angle of his spine. Nick knows there's not much else for it to cling to - he's seen the way John's stomach sags, too much skin with not enough meat to hang on to. It's all been eaten away from months, maybe even years , of malnutrition and inactivity. The only thing left of the man Nick remembers is a goddamn shadow. Looking down at John, Nick's left to wonder how he had survived at all.

Nick nudges John unkindly with his boot, ignoring the grunt of discomfort he gets in return. "Come on," he snaps, "It's morning. If the sun's up, you're up — this isn't the goddamn Hope County Hilton."

John groans, biting his tongue against whatever snide comment might come to mind. That's too bad — Nick would love to start today off with an ethically-sourced beat-down.

Even though he wants to, Nick refuses to look away as John sits up, revealing all of his tattoos and scars. The tattoos are nothing new, and some of the scars look pre-Collapse old, but John obviously didn't let the bunker curb his self-mutilating tendencies. Some of the tattoos have been ritualistically carved out, leaving flat slabs of scar tissue behind. Others have been scratched out less completely, seemingly at random. The worst part is seeing the ten deep, half-moon gouges in his shoulders, leaving behind raw, fresh scars. Nick can only imagine what led to their creation, but he would really rather not.

"Put your shirt on and eat quick," Nick tells him, setting the plate near enough to John before retreating to wait by the door. The more space he has between them, the better. If John is going to pull something, Nick wants to have room to grab his gun, or at least to brace for a fight. And anyway, John still eats like a mongrel and it's uncomfortable to watch.

"Time to put me to work?" John asks skeptically as he drags his shirt over his torso.

"You bet," Nick replies. Should he be a cagey dick about it? Part of him thinks so, out of spite, but realistically he should temper John's expectations. Nick isn't going to be capable of putting John through the kind of torture he's probably expecting. So, he points out the dipping corner and says, "This whole floor is gonna give out if we don't do something about it. Well, I say we , but I mean you ."

John regards the spot with more skepticism. "That's it?"

"You haven't even seen how much of the house you're going to be digging out of the dirt," Nick points out. "Come on, hurry up already, I don't have all day."

——

Despite being sick as a dog, John's strength is still something to be reckoned with. Nick watches uneasily at first as John makes short work of clearing space for the beam to stand, heaving shovelfuls of dirt out the open window without regard to his wasted muscles. If John decides to come at him with that shovel, it's going to be Nick's reflexes that save him, not his brute strength. Nick's reflexes aren't exactly the best these days, so Nick hopes it doesn't come to that.

It doesn't seem like John is interested in fighting, though. Nick sets him to work with the shovel and he takes it up without so much as a snide comment about Nick trying to order him around. He slings dirt silently, practically zoning out over the manual labor as Nick watches from his side of the room. It's almost like he's in a trance or something, and it's only broken when the shovel scrapes against the wooden floorboards. He comes to a sudden stop, staring at the floor in surprise. He looks up and around, fixing a sour glare at the wide-open back porch that Nick is standing guard in front of before finally looking at Nick himself.

"That's it?"

"Hell no, it isn't," Nick sighs, gesturing towards the beam that he'd dragged in from the woodpile outside. It doesn't rain much nowadays, so it hasn't gone to rot, and it should be just about level with the supports in the ceiling. Plus, it's already got the right hardware attached, and most of it even survived the nuclear blast.

"Come on," he tells John, "You're putting this up."

Still no backtalk, not even as Nick gets his own hands dirty and helps John prop the beam up. He remains silent as Nick fastens it in place with the only three-inch bolts left in America. It's a temporary solution, but Nick's proud of it anyway, and he steps back to admire the work. He has to admit, even if John is planning something, at least his plan involves actually being useful.

"That should work for now," he says. He scratches the back of his head as he regards John — what does he do with the guy now? It seems like a waste to just... jam him back up there. He's obviously capable of working, and that's what Nick said he'd do — break his back with manual labor, right?

"Well, now that we're done with that... I guess you can get to work shoveling the rest of this dirt outta here. It's been pretty low on the list, but it's not like you've got anything better to do."

"No, I suppose not."

"Hey now, what happened to just saying yes ?" Nick grins, feeling mean but still pretty funny for it. John scowls, but he's just not the right audience for the joke, so his opinion doesn't count.

" Yes, sir ," John replies. He's probably just being a dick, but the way he says it roils Nick's stomach on impact.

"Hey, none of that shit," Nick snaps, even though he probably should lean into the boss role while he can. "Just — don't be a fucking weirdo about this, okay?"

John frowns and doesn't respond. He doesn't need Nick to instruct him any further, returning to work with the shovel as though he's forgotten he ever stopped. Nick keeps an eye on him as he has lunch, waiting for John to drop the weird, quiet obedience act that he's been putting on. It has to be an act. John's just using their mercy for his own ends, using them for shelter and food while waiting for the opportunity to strike. To take the house and the guns, to take control of everything that he'd felt so obligated to eight years ago.

An hour goes by in silence. John works steadily, almost meditatively shoveling down to the floorboards, dumping shovelfuls of dirt out the nearest window to him. He's lost in his thoughts, so much so that he doesn't seem to notice as he clears out nearly half of the living room, the shovel scraping against wood like the beat of the drum that's distracting the poor motherfucker.

Eventually, Nick can't help but point out, "You don't talk as much as you used to."

John doesn't so much as look at him, which is more irritating than Nick wants to let on. What, is he supposed to shut up now, too? Forget that !

"I mean, you used to never shut the fuck up. Guess even you couldn't stand listening to yourself for eight years solid, huh?"

John grunts in response. He doesn't look so hot; his face is pale and drenched in sweat, and he seems to be relying on the shovel to steady himself. Nick squints, trying to figure out whether or not the guy is trying to pull a fast one on him — it's exactly the kind of thing Nick would do, if he were being held captive — but John doesn't seem to notice Nick's scrutiny at all. He seems miles away from the house, from himself.

Goddamn it. The more Nick watches, the less comfortable he becomes. "Alright, come on," Nick sighs, exasperation masking his discomfort at seeing John near-fainting. "That's enough for one day, now sit down before you fall down."

It's a toss-up which of those options John takes, but moments later he's flopped backward into the mound of dirt. He leaves streaks of mud across his face where he wipes away the sweat. Nick watches, waiting for the asshole to spring his trap, but John looks sincerely too beat up to try wrestling the gun away or making a break for it. His hair, thick with dust, clumps over his face, dropping into his eyes no matter how many times he tries to smooth it back.

To his personal horror, he finds himself offering John his canteen. He should leave John to drink his own spit with their fresh water supply as low as it is. It's what the man deserves. But they've wasted too much time and supplies on John to be stingy with the water now.

"Don't get too comfortable lying in the dirt," Nick points out, "I'm gonna put you back before Kim and Carmina get home."

John nods without complaint. He takes careful sips of water, like he's trying to mind how much he's taking, which is a fucking riot coming from the guy who did nothing but take, take, take for years.

"It's the nursery, isn't it?"

Nick stares down at the dirty bastard in confusion. "What?"

"The room," John repeats with a suspicious lack of irritation. "It was going to be the nursery."

Nick scowls. "Yeah," he says. "Not that it ever panned out."

John holds the canteen out for Nick to take back, which he does. "No," he admits, "It certainly did not."

"No thanks to you." Nick takes a thirsty swig of water. "None of you got a chance to raid our bunker, but there were a lot of other people who weren't so lucky. Lots of people didn't even have a house to hide in."

"Yes," John sighs, "I know."

The nerve John has to brush aside the damage he's done momentarily overwhelms Nick, and before he realizes what he's doing, he's chucking the canteen at John's head in a vicious game of dodge-ball that John just barely wins. "No, you don't know. You managed to find somewhere to survive for eight years, while good, honest people were left to rot away on the surface and suffer through nuclear winter because you burned down their houses, you stole their supplies, you ruined their lives! You destroyed everything before the police ever showed up! You sorry assholes kept talking about the Collapse while all of us were already living through it! Because of you ! You know ? Fuck you!"

Nick reaches his hand out to grab John, to — to strangle him, to shake him , anything to stop him from sitting there and staring cow-eyed up at him. Waiting for Nick to exact a physical price for all the anguish that he's caused, waiting for the inevitable retribution that he deserves.

But eight years is a long time to carry so much righteous anger. Nick must've set it down somewhere along the way; now that it's time to resume that bitter loathing, he finds himself coming up short. Honestly, he's too goddamn old for it. He's too tired. Eight years of fatherhood and living past the end of mankind has run the rage right out of him. The idea of expending that much effort just exhausts him. What would even be the point? John isn't even worth it.

"Just — get up," Nick sighs at last. "Kim'll be back in a while and I... don't want to look at you anymore."

John slumps into himself as he stands, shoulders caving in as he avoids looking higher than Nick's boots. He proceeds without complaint or comment up the stairs; despite that, Nick still braces himself for a surprise attack, his hand clinging to the holster. He stops at the doorway behind John, waiting for some trap to spring and feeling oddly put out when nothing happens.

"I'll bring you dinner later," Nick tells him. "From now on, you're only getting a second meal on days you work."

John nods in response, falling into his makeshift bed with as much grace as he had the dirt pile downstairs. Nick's not sure he's gonna be awake the next time he checks in, but that's probably for the best. Nick doesn't like watching the guy eat, and he hates having to interact with him.

When John fails to say anything, Nick uses his silence as an exit and quickly locks John away. He'll probably sleep until dinner, which means he'll spend all night muttering to himself again. That's just what Nick needs.

There's still time before Kim gets back with Carmina. Nick drags the dining table into the living room, taking a minute to marvel at the amount of dirt John managed to clear out. Maybe tomorrow, Kim can take Carmina on a hike or something so that he can have John do the rest of the room. Once the dirt's all cleared out, they'll be able to build proper doors for the back porch, instead of leaving it open to the elements and potential prison breaks. After that, who knows? Maybe they'll be able to string lights up in here like they did back at the Spread Eagle. They could actually find a use for the generator. Hurk was on the radio recently, boasting about party liquor and gasoline — maybe they could barter for fuel?

Thinking more than a year ahead is jumping the gun a little, especially considering they have to get through another winter without heat, but this is the first time Nick's let himself imagine that far. Kim is already prepping for next year, of course, but Nick's still a little stuck on bunker time, where everything felt like a tightrope walk to survive and keep sane. But now, well — there's floor space, and Nick's even stacked plates and silverware on the kitchen counter for dinner. It's progress that he can't miss, and for once he breathes a sigh of relief and actually feels relieved.

Kim and Carmina come back before dusk with three rabbits and, in Carmina's case, a turkey so big that it nearly drags on the ground as she carries it on her back. "Shot it herself," Kim tells him, dropping the rabbits on the table. She does it almost without a second thought, wrapping her arms around Nick before realizing, "Oh, the table's back!"

Nick grins. "Figured we could use the extra space. Look at you, kiddo!" Nick turns his attention to Carmina, who still has the turkey slung triumphantly over her shoulder. "That is one big bird."

"Yeah," she says, trying to look as casually confident as her mom. She can't help but brag, "It was coming right at us. I had to do something. "

"That's my girl," Nick says, "I need somebody to protect your mom whenever I'm not around."

"Hey," Kim protests, playfully shoving out of her supposedly loving husband's grasp, "I can protect myself, you two. Carmina, take that thing into the kitchen and start plucking."

Heaving a very exasperated sigh she must have lifted off of her dad, Carmina drags the limp poultry away. Kim watches her go with a satisfied smile, telling Nick, "She's got great eyesight. I didn't even notice it in the grass."

"Thank God. Can you imagine if she needed glasses out here? We would be royally screwed. So! What do you think?"

Kim looks back at the clear floor and the table with four legs on solid ground. "I admit, I'm impressed," she says. "I expected to come back to a funeral pyre. But look, you even got the support in!" She furrows her brows at him. "Did you have any trouble?"

"Nah. Actually, it was... uh, painfully easy. He didn't put up a fight or anything."

"Hmm."

Nick's not sure what Kim's thinking as she eyes the progress that's been made. Maybe she's wondering what John's endgame is, the same way Nick wonders. She's probably worrying about how to explain it to anyone who might ask about it — Grace, mostly, maybe Jerome, if he'd ever come out this way. Nick's sure he can just take credit and leave it at that, but maybe she's seeing some hidden angle that he hasn't caught on to yet?

"If we string some lights up in here," Kim points out thoughtfully, "We might actually be able to use the bottom floor, instead of camping outside all day."

"Hey," Nick laughs, "That's exactly what I was thinking."

"Am I supposed to pluck this whole thing myself ?" Carmina exclaims in horror from the kitchen.

"I'll be right there, honey," Nick calls, offering Kim a chair at the table. She takes it with a grateful smile, leaning into his hand as he briefly strokes her hair. "Not bad for a day's worth of work, huh?"

"Not bad," Kim agrees. Nick heads for the kitchen, unable to keep from humming some old-world song he can't remember the words to, happy to put aside his doubts about John for a couple of hours yet.

#far cry 5 #fc5 #fcnd #new dawn #john seed #nick rye #kim rye #far cry fanfic #my fic

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