#[ some tightrope shit look at this nonsense >:\ ]

[daemonusdea]

Rover performs the trust test, placing a finger under her chin and lifting. ;)

here we go bitch. – - @wandcrng.

   The line of her brow creases together, the hint of roiling question and suspicion, her single eye sharpening along with it as she feels his finger slide under her chin. The little igniting of warmth floods her again ( just how much of it is from his body heat alone? ), and what would garner swift, excruciating, painful judgement for daring to touch her instead garners…an oddly agreeable cooperation. Without a fight does she follow his lead, tipping her head to the flow of his guiding hand and until she’s staring back up into his voided hood. Did he understand the delicate nature of the situation, or how much luck there was to hold a ( out of the words of an entire continent ) demonic whore as close as he did without sudden demise? He was practically getting away with murder, himself.

        Zero allows a quiet moment between the two of them, uninterrupted, lingering on the touch. How ridiculous was it that she’d grown a little accustomed to his constant handling of her form with his incessant tugging her around however he pleased? Always placing her in such a way. A thing to be posed or paraded or patrolled or…protected-? A strangeness overcomes her ribs, as if something were trying to crack apart…she finally decides it’s time to deliver on her scowling facade, patience worn out.

     “ The hell’s so interesting? “ She roughly sneers, and the peaceful moment shatters with the delicate grasping of his hand with the unforgiving metal of hers, guiding it away to let her chin fall again. “ Didn’t your mommy teach you it’s rude to stare? “

[bindingties]

(( Obv I’ve been thinking abt a p.ersona 5 AU bc that’s who i am so im just gonna dump all the ideas i got in here & futz and add later or something idk i make aus via the ‘throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks’ method

also just bc this has been a problem lately & i lack the energy to deal w things after the fact rn: pls personals do NOT reblog my posts ^^ ))

Manfred

Manfred absolutely has a Palace.  Look at him.

The detention center / prison, courthouse, and prosecutor’s office all appear distorted, but I’m gonna go with the courthouse being the kinda ‘center’ and being where his Treasure actually is.

The detention center / prison looks like an extensive trophy room commemorating all of his won cases.  The trophies tend to have design elements that hint at the damning evidence and crime in question while also having the name of the defendant in question somewhere.  All of them are gold, except for the one representing the IS-7 case.  That one is a bronze and notably smaller in size.

Both the courthouse and the prosecutor’s office appear as temples that worship him as a god.  The office is a bit more like a bustling hub of priests that are incredibly incompetent.  The courthouse is grand and opulent with perfectly sculpted marble statues and busts of him.

There’s a slight infestation of insects which all have a pattern similar to the defense attorney badge.  They mostly scurry and run away from just about everything.  The Shadows take the form of judges, prosecutors, bailiffs, and detectives.

Safe Rooms correspond to defense lobbies.

There is a depiction of the DL-6 Incident actively showing Manfred shooting Gregory, but the style frames it more as a heretic being righteously smote than the reality of an unconscious man being shot by a petty fossilized man child.

There are cognitive versions of both Miles and Franziska and neither of them are great.  Cognitive Franziska actually still appears as child and would fight any intruders but, due to Manfred’s low opinion of her and her capabilities, she actually cannot win.  Cognitive Miles is dressed in that horrid Manfred-style red suit but like resembles Gregory to a much higher degree than Miles actually does.

The Treasure is held in a large, central courtroom.  In the Metaverse, it is a golden, weighed scale and, once brought out, is a prosecutor’s badge.

Also you bet him as a boss utilizes a lot of Electricity skills.  Also some Gun skills.  What can I say, I’m not that subtle. 

KAY

Kay vc: i can steal shit AND have superpowers?????? hell yeah!!!!

100% agree with @flairer Kay would be Sun Arcana with Yatagarasu P.ersona absolutely no doubt let’s go

Have nothing firm on how they actually.... get there???? Maybe during the Quercus Alba nonsense.

tfw an ambassador keeps flaunting diplomatic immunity so u just gotta come into incredible power to force the bastard to admit to murder himself

also just Akechi: my codename is Crow Kay: absolutely not u Mask☆DeMasque lookin motherfucker

not that im really trying to super integrate w the existing team, but kay was extremely offended by akechi’s codename choice & i have to share that

KLAVIER

Tragically started thinking that after Turnabout Succession, Klavier would develop a Palace due to worsening paranoia and lack of healthy coping. 

The distortion does cover the entire city... kinda? The thing is that Klav is very ‘the whole world’s a stage’ in an absolutely unhealthy way.  The layout and buildings are retained but it has the vibe of a music festival or other celebration?

Everything leads toward the courthouse though, which is 100% a very large and elaborate stage.  It’s hard to notice from the ground, but a tightrope is suspended way, way above it.  There is no safety net below it.  Just the cold, hard stage.

Shadow Klavier is always in the middle of a concert on that stage and the crowd oddly alternates between vicious heckling and overwhelming praise.  It turns on a dime and seems to have nothing to do with the actual performance.

Various cognitive versions of familiar faces exist in the Palace and perfectly match the mannerisms / personalities of the real counterparts... when talking to any Thieves.  If the subject of Klavier comes up, though, they tend to grow more harsh and disparaging toward him.

Cognitive Miles has the role of a manager and at first attempts to discourage any interaction with Shadow Klav because it might distract him and ruin the show.  He immediately relents, however, with the thought that he’s always wanted to fire Klavier and so any mishaps with the show would be the perfect excuse.

Shadow Klav isn’t that overly aggressive, but there are still traps and Shadows swarming the area.  While he is certainly civil, he does not hide his mistrust at all and can be surprisingly gloomy, though is somewhat like Shadow Futaba in that he’ll drop cryptic hints or express support for the Thieves’ actions.  

I love the idea of Klavier getting pulled into his own Palace due to Shenanigans™ and Cognitive Nick sees him and tells him he’s almost late for walking the tightrope and forces him toward it

Meanwhile Klav is just ‘wow idk what the hap is fuckening but my overwhelming sense of guilt compels me to do whatever Wright(?) says so i guess im abt to do a very dangerous stunt that will most certainly end in my death’

Shadow Klav does a very aggressive intervention because he does contain Klavier’s wish to help people.  He insists that Klavier cannot survive living solely like he’s a product to be consumed and destroyed.  A ticking time bomb of contradictory desires based on unknowable perceptions.

Meanwhile, Cognitive Nick grows more twisted and manipulative and begins to viciously antagonize and guilt-trip the hesitating Klavier.  The crowd likewise grows more and more restless and demanding of a spectacle.  Still, whether the crowd wants Klavier to succeed or fail is hard to determine.

Also like Manfred having a Palace kinda implies Nick as a Thief too and the idea of Nick also being there and seeing that this is how Klavier sees him is... oof ouch.

But yeah Shadow Klav is like “Are you going to continue to let yourself be chained to expectations?  Even when it will kill you?”

Obv Klav’s like “yeah, you know what? I will live for my own damn self.”  And comes into his P.ersona which is like... halfway unnecessary.  Cognitive Nick is just an asshole... not exactly a giant fucking sphinx

Can’t decide whether Klav’s Arcana is Death or Moon, though.  I like Death’s message of metamorphosis and change for him.  But also Moon’s got fun bits about facades and fear.

Nick afterward: hey um... i just wanna say that im so- Klav: i finally have some capacity to be mad at you without feeling like the scum of the earth for doing so so im gonna be 100% unashamedly pissed for a while just... give me some time. also im abt to sleep for 1000 years because holy shit

And yeah it’s not a 100% fix and Klav still has paranoia and the unhealthy perspective of being a product for consumption but like... he’s got somewhat better footing to seek and accept help.  And, likewise, does not have the subconscious desire to be hated so that he may self-destruct without guilt.  So, like, that’s a plus.

[the-light-followed]

THE COLOUR OF MAGIC (1983) [DISC. #1; RINCEWIND #1]

Rating: 5/10

Standalone Okay: Yes

Read First: NO.

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x] 

* * * * * * * * * *

Ask any Discworld fan, and we’ll all pretty much universally agree that The Colour of Magic isn’t the pinnacle of the Discworld experience.  Nobody really recommends that new readers should start here, even if it is the first book in the series chronologically.  I’m pretty much a writing-order-equals-reading-order purist, for reasons best discussed elsewhere, and even I would absolutely never start people off with this one.  (I tend to go for Going Postal or Wee Free Men—again, for reasons best discussed elsewhere.)

It’s not Pratchett’s best work.  It’s not even his tenth best work.  If I have to rate it (and I do, because that’s kind of the point, here), compared to the rest of Discworld, it’s down at the bottom of my list.

It’s pretty damn good, though, for what it is.

For me, it’s a genuine joy to read the early Rincewind books. This is because, in my head at least, it makes total sense that everything involved in them is baffling and strange when compared to the settled absurdism you get from other Discworld novels.  Further into the series, it all feels a lot more comfortable and fleshed-out: yes, the things Pratchett writes about are often genuinely ridiculous, but usually the setting explains those things and packages them up neatly enough to make them acceptable. And the characters treat everything as perfectly normal, business as usual, so the reader is gently encouraged to do the same.  

Thinking about it, I would argue that a lot of the Discworld shenanigans aren’t all that different from a lot of the real-world nonsense that we all just accept as totally normal.  Discworld nonsense and our nonsense just come from different places. For us, it’s stuff like the fact that some cops still ride horses for absolutely no good reason, or that tipping is part of a server’s pay in an American restaurant, or that water is usually free but we all let movie theaters charge us like $5 for a bottle, and what’s that even about?  In the Discworld, the thieves and assassins have unionized, and if you slip up, it’s entirely possible to just fall right off the edge of the world.  It’s weird, and it’s not exactly fine, but it’s not about to kill us right this second, so we all just let it happen. We accept it.

This is not at all the case for our unwilling protagonist, the original Discworld hero-who-is-absolutely-not-a-hero, Rincewind. He’s scared of everything.  He is a genuine, bona fide coward.  Absolutely everything that happens leaves him baffled, terrified, and/or dismayed, and to tell the truth I unconditionally respect all of this about him, because most of the absolute bullshit nonsense going down around him is baffling, terrifying, and/or simply Not Good, and he and the reader have to learn to live with that together.

Over the course of this one novel, failed-wizard-slash-reluctant-guide Rincewind is:

Involved in burning down large parts of the city of Ankh-Morpork, because he left his friend unsupervised and the city really wasn’t ready for the invention of ‘insurance’ without the accompanying understanding of ‘insurance fraud.’

Chased, threatened, and variously menaced by a sentient suitcase known as the Luggage, which canonically has huge teeth, a mahogany tongue, hundreds of little legs, and an insatiable hunger for the flesh of its owner’s enemies.  Also, it does your laundry if you leave it inside. Isn’t that nice?

Forced into a duel by dragon riders, where he must fight upside-down while wearing boots that basically Velcro-attach their wearers to the ceiling.

Captured, imprisoned, and scheduled to be sacrificed to the anthropomorphic personification of Fate in exchange for success in a scientific endeavor—specifically, checking the biological sex of the giant turtle carrying the Discworld on its back through the universe.

Dropped over the Rimfall, the waterfall at the edge of the Disc, which in Roundworld terminology is something like tripping and falling off the surface of the Earth and flying into the abyss of space.

Repeatedly almost forced to speak one of the Eight Great Spells that created the universe, which will do…something, possibly catastrophic, when spoken.  No one knows exactly what it does.  Rincewind certainly doesn’t.  This spell attached itself parasitically to his brain years ago, and, in the meantime, has shoved all the other wizard-y type things he could have been doing right on out of there.

So, basically, he’s going through a lot.  And this list isn’t everything, just the bits I pulled out by opening my book at random spots and reading a couple of lines.  It kind of makes sense, in my opinion, that things feel a little topsy-turvy.  Shit’s wild.

On top of that, I’d also argue that Pratchett is playing pretty fast and loose with plot and story structure in this book.  It can feel sloppy at times, more like a bunch of little vignettes that have been strung together than a single, coherent storyline. The plot loosely wobbles along the tightrope strung between Rincewind’s uncanny luck, good and bad, and cheerfully-blockheaded-tourist Twoflower’s unstoppable ability to trample through the middle of every single situation that could possibly try to kill him.  Very bad things happen, but somehow, they miraculously fail to die, and so Rincewind is still stuck shepherding Twoflower along through the next incident of someone or something trying to brutally murder them both.  There’s no real greater plot or driving need, just Twoflower with his little camera, wanting to take pictures of every beautiful and dangerous part of the Disc.

If a rabid wolf the size of a bus came up and tried to eat him, Twoflower would take pictures of the inside of its mouth and say, “Oh, wow, I’ve never seen teeth that big before!  Rincewind, won’t you take a picture of me with this magnificent beast?”  And Rincewind wouldn’t answer, because he’d be half a mile away already and still moving fast, with nothing but a cartoon cloud of dust left behind to mark where he’d been.

[Here’s the boys, Rincewind and Twoflower, just doing their best.  From the BBC two-part miniseries called The Colour of Magic, which actually spans the plot of both The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Yes, that is Samwise Gamgee playing Twoflower, and yes, I did get distracted by that a lot while watching. Twoflower has all of Sam’s earnest faith and absolutely none of his common sense.]

Fun!

The whole thing actually is pretty fun, though.  It’s witty.  It’s got something to say, even if that something is just “hey, aren’t all these identical High Fantasy Adventure books all overdramatic and ridiculous in the exact same ways?”  Pratchett is writing this book as one massive joke he’s telling about the genre, the tropes, and the archetypes, and he does a pretty decent job even by today’s cultural standards, let alone the standards of 1983.  Chances are that any point he’s making here in The Colour of Magic is something he’s going to make again, better, in a later book, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the seeds of something here.

As a main example, I’ll point out Liessa Dragonlady, who has arguably the biggest role in one of the major conflicts of this book.  Liessa is initially presented as the quintessential High Fantasy barbarian warrior lady, which would typically be more about sex appeal than any actual skill—except that Liessa is actually highly intelligent, 110% more talented and qualified as a leader and warrior than her brothers or literally anyone on the protagonists’ team, and is aware the whole time that she’s struggling against the patriarchy and her society (and the tropes) in trying to take what should be her rightful place as leader of the Wyrmberg.  The sexism exists in the Discworld, not in the writing.

[Liessa from the BBC’s The Colour of Magic, wearing—no joke—a crop top armor chest piece.  Actually, I think it’s technically a bikini, based on the bottom half of the armor.  Or should I say the lack thereof?  Classic.]

Liessa is a decent example of Pratchett’s ability to look at the tropes and the reader’s expectations, and then go and take his writing somewhere else.  But even so, I’d absolutely point to Monstrous Regiment or even Equal Rites first for anyone wanting to read a really solid exploration of femininity and what it means to be a woman in a traditionally ‘masculine’ field.  Or I’d suggest just about any book starring the senior witches or Tiffany Aching for examples of well-rounded female characters that demand respect in a world specifically designed to not want to give it to them.

But that’s just one example.  The Colour of Magic has the seeds of quite a few really good ideas that Pratchett will explore in more depth later on.

I think those seeds are part of what makes The Colour of Magic worth a read at some point, even if it’s never going to be anyone’s favorite Discworld book.  I love seeing the foundations of Future-Discworld, that settled absurdism I was talking about earlier, in this.  We’ve got our proto-Vetinari, long before he had a name, being generically threatening and Machiavellian and as close to ‘cackling evil overlord’ as it’s possible to get without actually cackling, or at least without some sort of thunderstorm rumbling in the background.  Ankh-Morpork is a wonderfully scum-filled cesspit of depravity and immorality.  There’s no effective City Watch to kick things into a rickety and leaking approximation of ship-shape, so it’s probably a good thing that the river Ankh is so thick with pollution that you don’t need a ship to cross it—you can just walk.

There’s even some early conceptualization of Pratchett’s special brand of everyday magic, the kind that will show up over and over again in the Discworld: the idea that even with a reality full of gods and wizards and hyper-powerful, monstrous things, there’s still a lot of power in everyday, ordinary people.

Pratchett is all about belief.  He preaches the importance of the self, in terms of making reality into the place we think it should be.  In Pratchett’s world, the things we believe in matter, and not just in a philosophical sense.  Belief is a real, tangible form of magic—in this book, specifically, Twoflower manages to summon an entire dragon out of nothing, just because he believes strongly enough that dragons should exist the way he’s always dreamed them to be.  In later books, sheer belief and willpower are shown to create and fuel gods and spirits, to contain quasi-demonic entities of vengeance and darkness, and to form the backbone of every other more ‘traditional’ type of magic.  

It’s nice to see the early forms of it here.  I’m not going to get too into it, because it’s going to show up a lot in later books in more significant ways (I’m thinking Hogfather, Small Gods, and even Pyramids) and I don’t want to beat that horse to death just yet, but it’s one of the foundation stones of the Discworld.  It’s somehow comforting to know that it’s been here since the very beginning.

It’s also funny as hell to see the stuff that Pratchett will eventually change, soften, or drop entirely as he settles into the way the Discworld will work.  Did you know there are eight seasons on the Discworld?  And that in my 1985 edition of the book, the footnote where he explains these eight seasons takes up the bottom half of two entire pages?

That’s one single footnote there.  The first ever footnote, even, and it’s almost a full page long and utterly ridiculous.  It’s incredible, and I love it a lot.  I also love that almost none of the details here are ever mentioned again, and if they are, it’s never in a significant or memorable way—and Pratchett certainly doesn’t waste a whole page on any of them ever again.  Well, except for Hogswatch, because Pratchett knows when he’s got a real winner.  It might have taken him thirteen years, but he wrote a whole damn book about it, and we all can agree that Hogfather is a joy and a delight.

Not so much “Autumn Prime,” “Crueltide,” “Winter Secundus,” and blah blah blah etcetera whatever.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I forgot them while I was literally still in the middle of reading them.  And what the hell is “Reforgule of Krull”?  No clue. It’s total nonsense, never seen again, and I think we can all agree we are fine with this.  

On second thought, I think Pratchett does end up using Hubward and Rimward pretty regularly as directions.  But without this info-dump, when reading other books, I think that even I figured out how “Hubward” and “Rimward” work on a flat plate of a world with a Hub in the center and a Rim along the outside.  And I am so bad with maps and directions that I literally get confused trying to give people directions to the parking lot outside my work.

I’m no good at wrapping these things up, so I’m ending this post the same way that Pratchett ends the book: with Rincewind abruptly falling off the edge of the Disc.

[Originally, I was going to go hunt down some fanart or something, but I don’t have permission to use any of that, so instead you get my doodles off the scrap paper I steal from work.  Luckily for everyone, I’m an artistic genius.  The dot representing Rincewind obviously isn’t to scale, since one human person would be much smaller than that, but if it represents the size of his body and the size of his scream, then it’s basically accurate.]

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

Rincewind’s insane luck, good and bad, is because he’s a favorite of the goddess referred to only as ‘the Lady,’ since invoking her true name means she has to leave.  She’s the anthropomorphic personification of Luck itself, and she’s the reason Rincewind always survives whatever terrible situation he finds himself in—but also the reason he’s stuck in that situation in the first place.  

Everything that goes wrong, and the dramatic escape that inevitably follows, is because the Lady likes to play dice games with Fate, using normal people on the Disc as game pieces.  

Rincewind, it turns out, is the human equivalent of her favorite Monopoly token. (The iron, maybe?  It has the same sort of Looney Tunes cartoon-anvil vibe as Rincewind’s whole, well, everything.)

Death as a character makes his first appearance in The Colour of Magic.  However, here it’s implied he actually is involved somehow in the killing process, and his role can be filled in by apparently random low-level demons on their days off, whereas later books make it clear he just collects and shepherds the dead onward, and actually the issue of his replacement is a big deal, cosmically speaking.  

Pratchett sort of avoids this issue by claiming that Rincewind’s life timer is so complicated and convoluted (because of all the weird accidents and magical incidents) that Death just can’t tell when he’s actually supposed to die.  

I guess Death shows up every time it looks like Rincewind might kick the bucket, just in case?  And in that case, all the threatening stuff he says to Rincewind in these early books must be because he’s so irritated that he has to keep coming out for no reason, only to find that Rincewind has, once again, managed to survive.  And maybe the low-level demon showing up instead was just, uh, Death trying to scare him into actually beefing it, this time…?

Although the Unseen University Librarian exists and is human for the entirety of this book and only this book, he does not appear at any point.  He’s briefly referenced—or, at least, a librarian is referenced, but this is referring back when Rincewind was young and read the grimoire that left one of the Eight Great Spells parasitically attached to his mind.  There’s no guarantee it’s the same librarian, and based on the turnover (read: murder) rate of University wizards at the time, I don’t think it’s likely that anyone managed to hold onto their job that long.  On Google, I did find a thing where someone cut together some shots of him in human form from The Colour of Magic BBC show, so that’s pretty fun:

Once he’s changed into an orangutan in The Light Fantastic, he’s described as still looking a bit like the human Librarian: with that beard and hair combo, I think they nailed it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Favorite Quotes:

“Inn-sewer-ants-polly-sea.”

“She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn’t. She was like that.”

“It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.”

“Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.”

“‘I’m sure you won’t dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city…’ ‘I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord.’  ‘Indeed? Then if I were you I’d sue my face for slander.’”

“It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.  But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.”

[fangsmyth]

i’ve been meaning to analyze the shit out of his poem but..... i’m on break now so i have time

it’s prefaced as “ a poem written in free verse, based on something haunting me as of late reflecting on one of my most complicated and passionate past relationships ” so while i know for a fact i could derive MANY different meanings i’m focusing strictly on this intention

i’m normally really bad at analyzing poetry but..... for Him i will Try ( this is a lot of nonsense rambling please do not mind me i am a fucking idiot if anyone has any other onions i’d love to discuss! ....p-please do not steal;;; )

gaslighting and emotional abuse warning under the cut but who’s fucking surprised

What is the meaning of a memory? A question I oft ponder Intangible and untraceable by anything but the mind Yet so potent as to leaVe one sick As if poisoned or Wounded in a literal sense.

just kind of setting the stage i guess is the best way to call this part? his first fucking stanza is god damn terrible memories leave scars that no one can see i could’ve come up with this in my goth phase

And What meaning is there in regret and longing? Can my lamentations change the past? Will they moVe the future? Shall they amount to much more than What unmoors my here and noW?

p self explanatory imo? this goes into a bit of detail about how despite the relationship being over, he’s still thinking about it and he feels bad about what he did and how he treated them.

‘ Will they moVe the future? ’ implies that despite his regret, he doesn’t feel like he’ll learn from his mistakes since he’s made them so many times before. especially so with the next line ‘ Shall they amount to much more than What unmoors my here and noW? ’

he already feels insecure, and any future mistakes he makes are just going to contribute to that;;

If I restrict my World to that but Which is before my eyes To those Whom I may touch, to that Which I might alter; One Would no doubt conclude that thoughts of You are last among What I could consider to “matter”.

this a really interesting stanza, recognizing that the past and present don’t matter, much less any people in the past that hurt him. he knows he should be looking at the here and now, but he can’t help but feel anxious about what happened and what will happen in future relationships.

( also keep in mind that ‘You’ is capitalized, not as a part of lanque’s quirk despite how naturally it seems to fit with his quirk. i kind of ended up interpreting it how ‘You’ is capitalized like you would ‘God’ and ‘Lord’ implying lanque puts this person on an insanely high pedestal? )

it’s super interesting imo that he chooses to say ‘could’ instead of ‘should’, implying he sees it as an option to stop thinking about the other but not a necessity or, for that matter, the best option he has. 

it implies that he recognizes that he has the option to learn from his mistakes, but........

And still You haunt me yet, like a scar, like a disease uneager to abate. Who are You and Who am I, after so long Without You?

it kind of hit me at this point that despite the fact that it was something lanque was recently thinking about, it’s... possible that it wasn’t a recent relationship. he’s clearly fully submerging himself into the role of the victim in this horrible relationship with emotional abuse to the point of forced codependence.

i’m legit having a hard time telling whether this is a matter of lanque making himself out to be the victim ( as emotional vampires often do ) or the very real possibility that he honest to god was the victim of a horrible relationship that left him..... permanently scarred to the point he feels like all relationships are just SUPPOSED to be that way 

i’m gonna mainly use language that points towards the latter despite the fact that i honestly believe the more obscure and difficult to explain possibility that this is him trying to put himself in the shoes of someone he treated like garbage ( since idk i feel like he’s really good at recognizing and understanding peoples’ emotions, just not so much feeling them himself )

talking about it as if he were actually the victim just makes this a lot easier to analyze

i’m kind of...... getting ahead of myself though lemme lay down the next stanza

I knoW I don’t knoW I Won’t knoW; What do I knoW but What I knoW and What can it eVen mean to KNOW?

an allusion to gaslighting. i’m bad at writing out definitions i literally just know things my brain is huge and you’re all just jealous so to copy paste from the wikipedia google search result

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.

i *loudly gestures* i don’t feel like i need to explain much further! going between saying he knows and doesn’t know, literally talking in circles and questioning what the concept of keeping knowledge even means!! this relationship kind of fucked him up!!!!!!

knoW, knoW; No!

kind of redundant that this line is on its own, just implies getting fed up and ready to leave?

Agh, though it so Vexes me, Though so little I Valued it When it Was before me, a thing and a You I could touch and see and knoW and hate and Wonder. (reVile/Worship).

AH HERE’S THE GOD SHIT AGAIN I KNEW IT WAS HERE SOMEWHERE!!!

lanque didn’t see this person as such a central figure when he was in the relationship, or it’s possible that he simply didn’t realize how important they were to him. their godliness implies that this person was always above him, that it was a privilege to be graced with their presence alone.

this (reVile/Worship) shit in my mind reads very similar to one of the ten commandments saying ‘we must fear and love god’ or some shit like that, but it doesn’t quite fit. it’s highly probable that it just implies that the relationship walked on a very fine tightrope between kismesis and matesprit ugh i went so long without using homestuck terms i’m sad now.... anyways this is call back to that implication of choice i was talking about earlier that’s built on more immediately

NoW it, and You, are a traceless ghost, and I preoccupy myself With nothing but futile tasks of (RE)definition and (RE)interpretation and circuitous dWellings on that Which I understand eVen less noW.

SUPER obvious but the person in the relationship is gone and lanque doesn’t know what to do without them. goes over how it’s hard for him to tell whether this is a refining of his pre-existing personality or just a brand new one all together. again, a choice as to whether or not that’s how he wants to approach it

the path to this reinvention is brought about through a bunch of rebounds and new relationships, ‘circuitous dwellings’ implying he possibly stayed in some of them for too long and he honest to god has no idea why? like he wasn’t enjoying himself, he wasn’t really being reinvented. it solidifies that it was flat out a new definition as lanque is more or less going through the motions

than in the times When my Wonderings might’Ve been so easily ansWered With a question or a bite or a kiss, or eVen a single Word, spoken honestly.

STRANGE to me how this starts as if it continues the past sentence despite the fact that it DEFINITELY ends in a period i double checked 

anyways

he also finds himself having a MUCH easier time following the motions than trying to internalize and understand this relationship. ‘wonderings’ being... pretty obviously just anxiety thoughts like you know how your brain just says things that aren’t true

and figuring out if they were would’ve been easy if he just said something or did something!!

Pressed though I am to giVe color to our bond I look not to onyx nor ash but that Which pulses Within our Very Veins: that so blinding jade, hard as the stone for Which it is so named,

interesting that this sort of starts an outline towards giving the subject an actual identity?

like specifically saying “pulses within our very veins: that so blinding jade” OBVIOUSLY says that it’s another jade in the cloister that this is about?

usually i’d like to say that writers usually don’t do this without reason but despite the praises i constantly speak alone in my room about the endless array of implications in every other thing that comes out of lanque’s mouth i also know v is a fucking hack and a got damn terrible writer

some gremlin at 3am whispered in my ear in the middle of the night saying this is about a past relationship with bronya and i did have some points but bronya is too good so i’m going to tell that gremlin to go fuck himself

tWisted and pulled hammered and forged shaped, unnaturally as if a chain.

there were so many things they went through to try and get this to work, but it kind of just came up as an obviously fucked up mess. likely considering that it would’ve ended/ran its course a lot better if they didn’t even try getting together. 

i wish every stanza was this simple

A stricture Within scriptures; a certain so meaningful tincture.

calling back to that whole “easily answered with a question, or a bite, or a kiss, or a single word spoken honestly” and those whole religious undertones that i keep pushing this solidifies that i’m not fucking crazy

GOD there’s so much in this little piece the very fact that his object of affection’s voice and words alone leave him feeling that he literally has no room to speak. the stricture is like a noose around his neck if he talks out of turn, hence the frustration that he knows something his wrong but he simply isn’t allowed to say something.

until he gets his hand on that ‘meaningful tincture’. alcohol gives him the courage to speak up and defy that gospel, alluding to his dependence on drugs and why they’re so important to him! it’s a lifestyle he wouldn’t give up because he’d hate to be silenced again!

Resent You though I must, EnVy You though I may,

emphasizing that shit i was talking about earlier with could vs. should, lanque feels like the right thing to do is look back at this in scorn. he should despise this person he idolized so much and envy how easy it was for them to lock him in such a vulnerable position for so long yet here he is..... thinking about them again

NoW leagues and leagues stretch betWeen us And I make peace With not but What I say.

these lines are pretty transparent. this was never resolved, there was never a proper conclusion to this relationship. they kind of just drifted apart, but lanque can take solace in the truth and completion of this poem. he makes peace with the fact that he acknowledges all of the problems in the relationship, and chooses to make them a part of him rather than something to just scowl and scoff at

You are only that Which is Within me, my blood and my mind and that is at once nothing, and the most elementary definition of eVerything.

i’m tired man i wrote like what 5 google drive pages about it i feel like i’d be repeating myself since this is his equivalent of wrapping it up and tying it in a lil bow

just because it happened and ultimately doesn’t matter doesn’t mean he didn’t internalize it?

this sort of ended up defining the person he became since it just shook him that badly man

do i need to go into more depth than that i just want some fucking chicken

[lovelyirony]

Checkmate

@thormlm

Tony Carbonell was good at what he did. He knew it, no one else did. Why? Because again. He was good at what he did. Tony stole stuff. Not snacks from the convenience store, not jewelry from an old lady’s home. 

Documents that incriminated some syndicate. Paintings that no one in public had seen them. (Van Gogh had a crazy other side to his paintings, it was wicked.) And mostly, scammed enough people into forgetting his face. He was John Howard, Arno Stark, whoever he needed to be. He was not Tony Carbonell. He was just another face in the crowd. That’s how it was meant to be. 

There’s a new cop in town. “Corrupt,” or so they say. Not corrupt, just a little bit more willing to get criminals in jail than most. They call him Captain. He’s also known as Steven Grant Rogers, served in the army for three years, honorably discharged. Awards and honors out the ass, a degree in art history, and a talent for making posters for local events on the side. 

Captain is smart. He knows exactly where Tony’s kind hangs out, where they get information, and just what they call Tony. 

They call Tony “Iron Man.” It’s a stupid nickname, earned a few years earlier when Tony did a job involving a safe. No one knew how he did it. How the safe was opened, because no one had accessed it in months. And then, of course, they don’t look at who accessed it all those months before. Who pays attention the morning cleaners? 

Tony got in, he got out. No combination, just DNA processing. They don’t know how he did it, because a.) the man was dead, and it requires a recognizable strand of DNA to be done. b.) there were no relatives that thieves knew of. 

Keyword: knew. 

Tony robbed his own father, which really most people would have a problem. But as it turns out, Howard Stark was a piece of shit, and Tony really thought that the ruby cuff links and stacks of cash deserved to see the light of day and not rot in an iron safe in some “secure” bank. 

But that’s not the point, is it? The point is that Tony has to deal with Black Widow texting him “lol ur in deep shit” with a screenshot of Steve Rogers texting someone that he would get Iron Man. 

Which, you know, is great. Wonderful. Tony loves that he’s being pursued by a man with more resources than he needs to catch Tony. He loves knowing this all before he gets his coffee, the one that’s flavored Amaretto, and just sitting in his kitchen saying “shit.” He loves life. Wow. Tony wishes he could live forever, this is amazing news! Great, Tony might die! 

Fact: criminals who are convinced that they will never get caught are the worst. Tony has met many criminals who boast and say they will never get caught. He smiles, says “okay”, and watches from the back of the courtroom as they get sentenced to forty years in prison, rotting. Tony knows that eventually, he may get caught. But he’ll get to that when he gets to it. 

Tony calls Pepper first. She is his lawyer that he loves more than life itself, even though she has called him “an inconvenient goblin” and “really, Tony? This again?” She loves him, though. He knows that she does. So when he calls her and says 

“Hey Pepper, I’m in deep shit! Fun!” She knows Exactly what’s going to go down. Someone is onto Iron Man. Which means that she is on standby just in case things go haywire. 

“You might want to call Jim,” Pepper says. “You know how he gets when people threaten you.” 

“Overprotective?” 

“Careful,” Pepper suggests. “He’s not overprotective, you’re just reckless and paranoid.” 

“Those who aren’t paranoid die, Pep. Consider me an expert on that.” Once upon a time, Tony had not been paranoid. 

Then there was a car crash. An uncle who smiled and said it was so unfortunate, would Tony like to go on a trip to forget about it? Dubai, maybe? And then Tony ended up in Afghanistan where he was supposed to die. 

But that’s the thing, sometimes, about Paranoia: it gets you out of some weird situations. Tony was supposed to die. But he’s just paranoid enough of dying that it didn’t happen. 

Tony calls Rhodey up anyway. “Hello Rhodey! How are you today? I am doing Fantastically Wonderful, It’s So Nice Outside, What? No, I’m Not Bullshitting You--” 

“Yeah, you are. What’d you do?” 

“It’s more of what I’m about to do.” 

“If you’re finally buying that Danny Devito cardboard cutout, I’m legitimately cutting you out of my will.” 

“You can die?” 

“This life around? Yes. What’s your point?” 

“The Captain is coming after my ass.” 

“Like...in a sexy way?” Tony splutters. 

“You are Unbelieve, no, not that way. I cannot believe you thought that within, like, two months of knowing about the Captain, that he would even look my way.” 

“So he’s looking your way,” Rhodey says. “But in a ‘I might be murdered’ type of way?” 

“Exactly,” Tony responds. “So I may die in a couple of months to a year.” 

Rhodey laughs. “You’re so stupid, no you’re not. You ate an egg roll from a gas station in the middle of nowhere and you survived. It’s fine.” 

“I really feel like you’re not getting the severity of the situation,” Tony says. “The Captain is trying to catch me. And he knows more than enough about the criminal world to actually get the job done. He knows people.” 

“Like who?” Rhodey says. “The guy’s in the police force. He just got awarded for rescuing a cat, I hardly doubt that the people he knows can actually pull this off.” He’s kind of laughing. “I got your back.” 

“Against the Winter Soldier?” 

Silence. 

“Oh fuck. You’re screwed. You’re so screwed. Do you know how screwed you are?” 

“Screwed as a nail,” Tony mutters. “So I’m going off the grid. I’ll catch you in a year or something. I don’t know. Off-the-grid schedules are tricky.” 

“Don’t do anything weird, okay? Don’t, like, blow up the White House or something to escape.” 

“I don’t have access to that much C-4,” Tony quips. “Bye, honey bear.” 

Line goes dead. Phone gets smashed. Easy peasy, lemon whatever. 

Tony has fine taste. He’s not gonna deny that much. He has Italian leather shoes, pants specifically tailored for his legs and ass, and a passion for the finer side of thread-counts and furniture. All acquired through a man who goes by Bruce and Bruce only. He used to be a radiation scientist, Tony actually knows about him. But then something went haywire, he has anger issues, and refuses to talk about deep-seated issues. Can you believe? 

But Tony walks to the store, unassuming and beige with everything else. Ugh. Tony hates beige. 

“Bruce! I have a favor to ask!” 

“Yeah, what is it?” Bruce says. “If it’s murder, I charge money for my no-doubt-eventual-counselling sessions.” 

“Nonsense,” Tony says. “I’m not doing murder, and the only thing I need for you to do is deny that I’ve ever shopped here.” 

“Why?” 

“Bruce, only scientists ask questions like ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, and the damning ‘why’. You don’t need to know.” 

“You forgot the ‘how’, Tony.” 

“Damn your perception,” Tony says, light and cheery. He’s actually teetering between the line of “Is this Okay or is it Anxiety Time,” which is better than a lot of other lines he’s teetered on. (One was literal, too, which is not good for your state of health if you’re not trained to go on tightropes, by the way.) “Anyway, promise not to tell anyone that you sell me good cotton sheets?” 

“Sure,” Bruce says. “But you also can’t tell anyone where you got the sheets.” 

“Never have, probably never will,” Tony says cheerily. “Talk to you maybe later!” 

And then comes a text. I’ve been assigned to come after you. Headstart of one hour. 

Well, fuck. Just because you’re friends with Black Widow doesn’t actually mean that she refuses to take jobs referring to Iron Man. She hasn’t refused any, but she also hasn’t been given any. 

I’ll double the sum they’re paying. 

They have blackmail on me, you can’t double that. They know more about me than you. 

Even that you like cherry-nut ice cream? 

Less than one hour, Iron Man. 

So then, Tony has to do something drastic. He may have told his driver/friend/low-key criminal hitman Happy to pose as him, buy a ticket to France, and actually get on the plane. Natasha doesn’t kill those she isn’t assigned to. And she’s real good with faces, so she’ll know when he turns that it isn’t Tony. 

Tony actually gets to an apartment in Brooklyn. It’s his back-up apartment, technically owned by his mother. His mother hates Brooklyn, refuses to go anywhere near the area, and doesn’t technically know that she owns an apartment in Brooklyn. Tony finds it funny. 

He’s wearing a t-shirt that he likes, jeans that he hates, and lugging some boxes in. Maintain the cover. 

“Hey,” comes a voice behind him. “Looks like we’re neighbors. I’m Steve.” 

It takes everything in Tony’s willpower to not just whip the knife out of his pocket, but you can’t do that to neighbors you just met. Even if they signed a contract with Black Widow to get you and maybe-kill you. 

“I’m Tony,” Tony says, because he is an Idiot Under Stress. “Nice to meet you, Steve.” 

They talk. For an hour. Steve is surprisingly funny for a guy who wants to kill him. Steve likes appetizers at restaurants, does art as a hobby, and wants to own a dog. He also used to be allergic to peanut butter but isn’t anymore, and isn’t that the Funniest thing? Tony half-laughs and says “yeah, it is,” and then Steve says it. 

“So, what do you do for a living?” 

Tony does a lot of things. He stole a Renoir. He also has sixty thousand dollars in an off-shore bank account. Which actually isn’t a bank account because Tony doesn’t like banks, but more of a dresser in a house in Manhattan Island. 

“I’m, um, tech support,” Tony says. 

“Really? I’m sure that’s interesting,” Steve says. “A lot of asking people to reboot their computers, huh?” 

“You have no idea,” Tony mutters. “Well, as lovely as it has been getting to know you, I need to get everything set up. See you around?” 

“Definitely!” 

Tony shuts the door, sits on the couch, and looks out the window. 

He can do this. It’s like a game of chess: you just need strategy. Tony used to play all the old guys in Central Park in chess, you could probably call him an expert at this point. Maybe. He’s not exactly sure of all the rules, some old guys made up their own. But still. He could do this. 

(Rhodey would be laughing at him right about now if he could see this predicament.) 

[irwinsx]

An Unexpected Announcement | Ashton Irwin

okay i got this idea out of nowhere i hope you guys enjoy!

Words: 1.2k

Warnings: pregnancy? 

Story: You announce your sudden pregnancy to Ashton, and the mountains listen for his reaction

I’m taking requests!

Three minutes. That’s all you had to wait: three fucking minutes. Why did it feel so long, as if the world could all simultaneously fall into slumber and wake up once again to the sights of clouds above? You also weren’t expecting it to be so tough, aiming a stick just to piss on it; it made a mess and you washed your hands three times over.

Disgusting.

But you had to take that pregnancy test. You weren’t married but in a loving relationship of four years. Marriage had been in the works, but both you and your partner had the awful case of commitment issues, balancing on the tightrope of your relationship. You either fell one way, into a pit of wedding bells and screeching children or into a distraught tangled mess of a breakup.

So far you both balanced with few scares of diving into the ground.

You picked at the skin around your nail, digging into your finger, over and over, lapping at the hanging skin. It just hung there, mocking you, begging to be peeled away from your flesh and aimlessly thrown to the ground to never be seen again.

You checked the timer on your phone.

2:43 remaining

Your nail ground against your skin,

1:58 remaining

It just... won't peel off…

0:45 remaining

Is that blood? Shit, I didn’t mean for-

0:00 remaining. Beep, Beep, Beep.

And suddenly, the blood on your ravaged finger didn’t matter, pooling at the corner of your nail bed slowly, yet surely. Even from across the small bathroom, leaning against the doorframe, the test beamed into the air like a stoplight.

Positive. You were pregnant and for just a second, your heart twisted into itself. A perfect combination of you and Ashton would soon find its way into the world, to smile into the sun, to run around sandboxes and give strangers high-fives while at the shops.

To your surprise you didn’t completely despise the idea of children like you previously had, but instead, you continued to imagine it: a little girl with hazel eyes and dark hair, picking out her favorite princess dresses to wear from the closet and pose in, and just like her father, would have the world's most fiery attitude.

You grabbed the test, gripping it into your sweaty palm as you tracked your way downstairs to Ashton, who sat on the patio with a beer in his hand and his computer on the table. His view looked out to Los Angeles, the mountainous city cascading across the horizon as if it was watching from the floor to peek at him.

You creaked open the door to the patio, hesitantly walking out towards Ashton as he gave you a large smile, looking back at you from his chair.

“Hey,” he introduced, watching you sit at the chair next to him, “I’m just working on some stuff”

“Yeah…” you replied, “Can you take a break right now?”

“Of course, what is it?” He responded, setting his beer down.

The knot in your throat tightened, and you decided to set the pregnancy test onto the table before him to bask in the partly covered sun, outshining it with its cross symbol.

Ashton leaned forward, tilting the blue and white mechanism towards him and read it. He put the plastic down, and in a look of shock, fell back into his chair.

“You’re pregnant?” He asked, as if he couldn’t believe what the world had told him. The mountains continued peeking from the ground, eavesdropping into the conversation like spies.

“Yeah,” you quietly said, leaning back into your chair the same way Ashton had. You both looked at each other, eyebrows furrowed, frowning into the air as it mixed around you.

But the air wasn’t heavy; it didn’t linger to push down on your chests or tug at your shoulders as you attempted to sit up. It simply was, wrapping you both into the mountains, where the sun rained and clouds whispered.

You could hear it: the clouds, mingling with the mountains, placing their bets on who was to give in first. The mountains believed love would prevail, while the clouds scolded them for believing such nonsense.

“I know it’s not what we planned--” you began until you were interrupted.

“Yeah, it wasn’t,” Ashton said, shaking his head and looking out into the view.

The mountains, who peeked over the horizon, whispering, hid away into the ground to not be seen--nor heard--by the pair. His hand met with the back of his neck, rubbing it until the skin clashed and went red.

“Ashton, this isn’t a bad thing. It’s just… a new thing. I mean, would it really be so bad to have one of us running around?” You asked, looking over at him.

“No, it wouldn’t be,” he admitted.

“Then what is it?” You asked, leaning over and resting your hand on his thigh in an attempt at comfort. Ashton finally looked over at you, and when he did you saw your daughters eyes in contrast to her dark hair and princess dress, waving a toy wand into the air.

Ashton sighed, his hand now running through his hair, attempting to find the correct words to use.

“It’s me,” he began, “how am I gonna be a good father, Y/N? I don’t have anything to compare it to, and it’s not like I can ask my own for advice or help.”

You sat, shocked at his words.

“You’re worried about being a good father? Ashton-- I don’t worry about that at all. You helped the boys grow up, you raised your siblings, you have my father to go to for questions,” you told him, “just because your father made that awful decision doesn’t mean you can’t find your way to becoming a good dad. In fact, I know you’ll be a good one.”

“No,” Ashton insisted, “I won’t. I’m terrified. What if it doesn’t like me? What if I find no connection to it? What if--”

You cut him off, “no more ‘what if’s,’ okay? It’s only now. That’s all we’re guaranteed, Ash, and right now we’re gonna be parents.

Your hand moved away from his thigh and back into your lap, where you were left to dig at your skin once again.

You both lingered, and with time, Ashton flashed a small smile, thinking to himself. You got up, sitting into his lap as he wrapped his arms tightly around you, resting his head into your shoulder. You ran your fingers lightly through his hair as you embraced him, and suddenly felt the warmth of tears pool at the nape of your neck, as well as Ashton sniffling.

The mountains rose, peeking into the sky with admiration and cooed with the clouds, who lost their bet to the mountain, and with promise, began to clear from the sky to reveal the sun, casting down at the world.

Without realizing, you had also begun to shed tears. Ashton looked up at you, and as you wiped away at his cheeks, he said, “I’m going to be a father.”

You smiled down at him, sending laughter from your lips and out to the sky, and replied, “Yeah, and a good one.”

Together you laughed; you laughed at the silliness of it all, at the worrying, at the wondering, at the waiting, because none of it mattered anymore. You were going to be parents. In months time you were both to cradle a child in your arms, rocking it back and forth to fall into slumber and dream with the stars in the sky, who would dance around your child as it caught lightning bugs outside and poked at ant holes.

The only thing left was to buy a princess dress. 

[fallen029]

Conniving

“We should get the blue one.”

Bickslow considered this, standing there, like a presentable and upstanding member of society, as Lisanna stood beside him, an actual presentable and upstanding member of society, not considering at all. No. Because she’d already made a declaration and that was final.

But she’d said it in such a way that presented a debate. Or at least room left for negotiation. As they stood before the couch in the tiny shop, it would be easy to give in. Lay down. Let her walk all over him. In their first joint venture since moving in together.

But oh, Evergreen had warned him about this.

Man, had she warned him.

“The Strauss siblings are conniving, vindictive, idiotic little shits who would do anything to destroy us from the inside out,” the woman told him quite bitterly, honestly, just that very afternoon when they all met at Freed’s apartment to discuss an upcoming set of jobs they were planning on undertaking. As the rune mage feared, this was more a suggestion than a set plan as, frequently now, a gathering without the Strauss siblings was less a Thunder Legion group meeting and more a shit on whichever Strauss they were all on the outs with. For Evergreen, who was the one constantly on the outs, it varied, but she was happy, always, to just make it the trio. “Especially Lisanna.”

“And this,” Freed sighed, not sure why he was getting involved, at all, “has nothing to do with the fact that you and Elfman-”

“We were never dating so I don’t know what you’re implying, but no, you cannot break up if you were never together, so why are you even talking, Freed? If you’re going to spread such filthy, disgusting rumors?”

Bickslow just sat there, at the rune mage’s kitchen table with the now glaring at one another duo, before asking, “So what you’re sayin’ here is that the kid, man, she’s an untrustworthy one, huh? Probably gonna pull the wool right over my eyes.”

“I honestly couldn’t care less,” Freed told him truthfully, just wishing to put the whole thing to bed already. Finally.

“Conniving,” Evergreen ended and, well, Bickslow wasn’t too sure what conniving meant, but he knew he didn’t like the sound of it.

See, him and the kid, Lisanna, heh, definitely not a kid, but it felt like that, in someways. Like they were both kids. Again. Together. See, well, Bickslow was a bit of a fuck up at times. That’s how Evergreen put it and he even heard the boss, Laxus, that sly man, he’d mutter it sometimes too, under his breath. Never Freed, nope, not once, but he was sure he thought it too.

Bickslow didn’t hold it against anyone. No. He knew.

He really was a fuck up.

It was just something inside of him. It had always been there. A little gnawing in the back of his mind that always insisted, hey, you know, things are going great, smooth as a seal, but what if...now hear it out...what if...things just didn’t? Like you did one little thing that caused the whole tower to crumble? Wouldn’t that be fun, Bickslow, do you think? If we tumbled to the whole thing? One fell swoop and everything gone! Vanished! Vamoose! All it took was some annoying here, some creeping there, and bam, you would have an entire situation crafted by your witty hands to watch burn slowly to the wretched ground.

Being the good guy all the time, all the damn time, all the fucking time, was just so draining and unnecessary, really, because you could do little things, couldn’t you? Little tiny things that hardly affected anything at all, really, but were probably not leaning towards the lighter side of things on the big spectrum wheel of life, but that was alright, really, when you thought about it, because even if you did some bad things, you just had to do loads more back, to at least keep the needle somewhere in the middle.

He was a dark knight.

Noble and concerned with the good of the realm, but dabbling in things that maybe the ol’ king forbade, fine, but he didn’t mean you, Bickslow, did he? Laws didn’t pertain to someone who was so gallant in other ways, did they? So long as you did enough good, a little bad here or there didn’t hurt anyone.

Or did it?

Who the fuck cared?

More world to burn if it did.

Bickslow was on a slipper tightrope, tussled between the good thoughts and the bad. Evergreen knew this, oh man, if anyone knew it, it was her, and also enjoyed abusing it. It was just so easy for her to get in there, in his mind, it was just one, long, continuous series of trap doors and she could stop off anywhere, inside of it, pick a spot any spot and have him believe whatever she wanted him to believe.

And that day she wanted him to believe that Lisanna was out to get him.

“Do not, and I mean it, Bickslow, do not let her just walk all over you,” the woman insisted to him, earlier that day, as Freed only sighed and resounded to the fate of never having anything properly planned for anymore because of, all people, the Strauss siblings. The horror. “She’s going to try it. You know. They all do. Strausses are the worst of the worst.”

“Which is why you dated one for-”

“We never dated, Freed!”

“I don’t think the kid is that bad,” Bickslow muttered and his babies, who floated all about his head, didn’t feel this way at all.

“Mama’s great,” they insisted to him. “Papa. Mama’s great.”

“Who are you going to believe?” Evergreen asked with a glare at the wooden thing. “Me? Or your imaginary friends?”

“Well...when you put it like that… Probably my dolls because they’re not imaginary, Ever! They’re clearly right in front of you! Can you believe this woman, babies? Gets broken up with once and things she can end the monopoly on Strausses.”

“I did not get broken up with!”

Not that it mattered. She’d planted a seed in his head and the way that the kid said that, there, in the shop, all commanding like that. Over which could they should have. In their shared, new apartment. Like she had some kind of say so just because she was the one actually buying it and he wasn’t hardly contributing anything, really, to the costs of anything at all, really, and wow, wasn’t that controlling? He felt like that was pretty controlling of her, to just let him blow his jewels on booze and smokes while she paid for the apartment and it’s upkeep. Pretty conniving.

Maybe.

He’d yet to peep a dictionary on that one, but he was pretty sure it was.

“I,” he told Lisanna, who was not looking for opinions, at all, “like the red one. Actually.”

And he held his head up high, visor glinting in the sunlight, and when he felt the woman’s eyes on him, he refused to break, even as the babies cheered for the color blue because they liked blue, it matched their pretend mother’s eyes.

“Okay.”

He deflated some.

“Okay?”

“Well, yeah.” Lisanna was already walking over to it then, on the other side of the shop. “I don’t really care, either way. It was just that Mirajane said blue was better because it would match the rugs she’s going to give us, but who cares? Right? So-”

“But you said blue.”

“And you said red.”

“Well...now I want blue.”

“Why?”

“Because… Lisanna, are you conniving?”

“What do you mean?”

He wished he knew.

“Do you want,” she asked him with a frown, “the red or the blue? Bickslow? Because-”

“Whatever you want.” He sighed down at his feet. “I guess. Lissy.”

“The blue then.”

“Okay.”

Later that night, when they ahd everyone over to their place, Mirajane was ecstatic to see how nicely it matched the rugs. Bickslow though felt like a failure and, with his head bowed, he went to Evergreen to report as such.

“Uh, Ever-”

“Can you not see,” she complained as he came over to where she was actually seated on the couch, half draped over Elfman’s lap, “that I’m talking to someone?”

“Well, just Elfman.”

“Hi,” Elfman greeted with a wave. “Did the place come smelling so smokey? Or- Oh, no, I see your ashtray is overflowing, on the coffee table. Already. Didn’t you just move in a couple day-”

“Do you think,” Bickslow spoke right over him and instead to Evergreen, “that maybe conniving could actually mean something that you don’t think that conniving means? Or maybe you were just wrong with using it in the first place? Or oh, man, hey, do you think this couch would look better if it was weirdly shapen and red? Or was this blue one nice?”

“Fuck,” Ever told him, reaching up to toy with her glass, “off.”

And well, yeah, he was in his own apartment (well, Lisanna's, which he was moving into), but he heeded her warning.

“Oi, boss,” he sighed as he found Laxus in the kitchen with Freed, who was trying to explain to the former that, once more, his meetings had been overrun with Strauss nonsense and look, here came some more. “Do you know what conniving means?”

“I look like a fucking dictionary? Huh? Bickslow?” Laxus was not in a good mood. But then who was? When they got drug over to their girlfriend’s little sister’s apartment on the one your first night back in town after a super hard job? “And what’s this I hear about you and Ever not listening to Freed? If you don’t plan for jobs, what are you gonna do? How up unprepared?”

“It’s kinda my thing,” the seith admitted as Freed merely groaned because, yes, it very much so was.

“You and Evergreen are so messed up in the head, just from dating those two Strausses,” Laxus told him with a frown. “You know that? Can’t even think about nothing else anymore. Why is that? Huh?”

“Because they’re poisoning their minds.”

When both Bickslow and Laxus looked at Freed, he bowed his head some.

“Just a remnant of Ever’s tirade, from before,” he assured them. “Now that she’s back with Elfman, I’m sure we won’t hear it again.”

Until, well, they were officially off again.

But right now they are on and life was good.

Unless you wanted to plan for upcoming jobs…

“Boss, you’re datin’ one too,” Bickslow pointed out to the man and Laxus snorted around his beer can.

“Mira ain’t a Strauss,” he told him darkly. “She’s a Dreyar in training.”

And oh, Freed missed the old Laxus too.

If he could go back in time and do anything, it would be to stop the joining of their two houses. The Strausses and Thunder Legion did not belong together.

Clearly.

“Hey, boss, that’s real cute. You tell that one to your woman yet?”

Fuck no.

Then she might actually wanna have that serious conversation about marriage again that he did not want to even think about. It made his stomach sick.

Or maybe it was all the beer he’d been guzzling since arriving.

Mmmm...nope.

“Lisanna’s not using you, Bickslow. For anything.” Freed grimaced some as he said, “If anything, you’re kind of the one using her.”

“How do you figure?”

“What part of the rent are you paying?”

“Well… I picked out the couch.”

A poison. They truly were. Freed didn’t agree with Evergreen on much in those days, but surely that.

Sighing, Freed asked, “Don’t you guys ever think fo inviting anyone else? To these? Or gatherings?”

“Fuck no.” And Laxus was walking on then, when he heard Mirajane calling for him in the other room. “Hate everyone else even more than I hate all of you.”

“I love ya too, boss.” Bickslow beamed as he disappeared out of the kitchen. To Freed though, Bickslow only said, “But if we invited other people, then we all couldn’t hang out. Together.”

“Yes.” Freed only ran a hand over his face with a long sigh. “That’s quite the point.”

Alone in the kitchen now, Bickslow was actually kind of glad when Lisanna came to join him. She brought his dolls, anyways, who’d taken to following her around that evening. As they both sat together, on the counter of their apartment, sharing a drink while he smoked, Lisanna looked at him with a curious glance.

“So are you gonna tell me what’s been up with you? Today? Or are you just kind of freaked about this whole living together thing?”

Shrugging some, Bickslow said, “I just… Well, you’d tell me, wouldn’t ya? If you were tricking me? Lying to me? Using me?”

“I mean, probably not,” she admitted slowly and he nodded because, yes, that didn’t sound like something someone would do in that situation. “But… I can tell you honestly right now I’m not. If it makes you feel better.”

“Only if you promise not to destroy the Thunder Legion from the inside out.”

It was a bit too late, but she held up her pinky anyways and, well, you can’t break a promise that wasn’t whole to begin with.

[vengeancect]

you like making rpg maker games right? are there any reoccurring characters or themes that show up in them? who or what do you take inspiration from?

it’s a very weird surprise that anyone cares or knows enough about me to even ask this, like you’re genuinely that interested. i don’t think i can answer your questions, at least allow myself to answer them, but i can explain to you what the two games ARE, hopefully in the driest most neutral way that won’t make the audience in my head cringe    oh wow this didn’t go very well FUCK

i made the first one (skull island) i think starting on august 31st 2016. i stopped making it somewhere around late november. i made it purely because someone had kindly gifted me the program, and i felt like i’d be ungrateful if i didn’t make something with it. my initial idea was to just throw some awful 15 minute long thing together, use some “random” humor, show it to some people, they’ll laugh and forget about it and i’ll be free from this. but as it went on i felt compelled to put more things in it. my internet was going out often back then so i’d just be left alone working on it for hours on end. i made a starter area and then a hub area and then the 3 main areas and their respective secret events. as it went on, i had ideas and understood i wouldn’t be able to fully realize them due to my nonexisting talent. it was this very strange exhausting tightrope between shame and irony. i went from making areas to trying to draw my own assets, an extremely infuriating experience. i made a school, a city area leading into a park leading into a lab, and a night-time highway leading into a tunnel leading into my patience running out and me getting sick of this and just ending the game. everything about it is completely unbalanced. i went through the trouble of designing enemies even though i could never figure out how to make most of them attack during battles. i incorporated real chat logs and things i’d heard about in the past into their own “levels” and events. the “main character” was still just a stock rpgmaker sprite even though i had gone through the trouble of editing other sprites for characters to make them semi-original. very uncomfortable dialogue was written. you could get a whip as a weapon, from an NPC who tells you “you look good with it”. or something. the bgm for that area was text to speech voices saying “you were always sick, i was always sick”. it stopped being a joke, but it wasn’t serious, it instead became nonsense. there are no themes. there’s no inspiration. nothing could justify this.

when making it i remembered this text file i had from back in 2014, where i detailed areas and the plot of a game i wished i could make but never even tried to. it was about the world disappearing, the protagonist being the only human left alive. his name was mori. he’d find other characters eventually including a little boy who liked watching stars. i put no thought into how it would work, i guess i just unconsciously knew it couldn’t realistically be made without a lot of knowledge, hard work and talent. i thought it would be funny if i tried bringing those characters and areas into life ayway, into this stupid half-joke clusterfuck of a game. the stargazing kid does nothing but despair about how his existence is tainted, how he wants to “go back”, ie. go back to being an idea of something good. parts of that old text file flash by the screen constantly in the background. i made roleplay scenarios from when i was 13 into “””gameplay”””. like “follow this red line in a void, you are then led to a house (that is just a blue rectangle), go up the stairs and meet this naked faceless boy with a suicide note written into his body, who then blows up in a shower of blood and gore.” a random battle happens just before the final stretch of the game. it appears to be a mound of scrap metal and junk with an old TV sticking out the top. this is a reference to another character that appeared in the old concept. a “cool” bad boy character with a TV for a head. i guess that’s how you can tell it was written in 2014. the final boss is Mori, who talks about “leaving this world” through death. in a horrendously drawn replica of my bedroom, you find the original synopsis for the 2014 game, in the end it asks “what happened?” over and over again. the final bit of gameplay in the game is a calm scene with a character talking to you about how all of this was meaningless and you shouldn’t worry about it. you walk by a bunch of graves. the final screen is 3 graves, one for Mori and one for the stargazer, and one open grave for you. you jump in it and the game ends. a quick joke that could have gotten a laugh out of someone turned into a 3 month long self-indulgent masochistic shameful project of fetishized inability, then recorded and put on youtube to satisfy my digital hoarder compulsions.

OKAY NOW FOR THE OTHER ONE in 2017 i tried my hand at making some assets and characters for a game, another fucked up grand concept like the 2014 one and just as impossible to implement. shame got the better of me this time and i gave up. near the end of march 2018 a person i know had made a joke game on Unity just to get acclaimed to the engine. this one was actually successful, short, and made me laugh. i thought it would be funny to one-up said person and make a game myself. and then i tried. and then i learned i couldn’t do it and immediately lost interest. but for some reason i didn’t stop

instead i made safe room, which i developed for all of april and released late may this year. so i made it in less time than skull island, even though both games are just about an hour long, and with this one i had used almost entirely original assets. huh. i repurposed the characters and areas i drew in 2017 and made up a new “””story””” involving them, though some of the usual self depricating “hahaha wasted ideas asshole” humor came through in this one aswell, nowhere as much though. a young boy is stuck in the basement of some mysterious man who had presumably kidnapped him from somewhere. his condition is a mystery and so are the motives of his kidnapper. there is this smart-mouthed, incessant, gameplay interrupting voice constantly coming in and deriding him for everything, but at the same time almost empathizing with him. the voice is confused about it’s own existence. you have nothing to do but watch time go by mercilessly, dreaming to try escaping from your situation. there are no battles in this one. there are two puzzles except they don’t work. i couldn’t figure out how to make them work. i also didn’t care. i stole a lot of music, because in skull island i was terrified that someone would copyright me and hastily cobbled together a bunch of ear-splitting bullshit. at this point i was begging to just stop. stop doing this kind of shit. it’s not funny. it’s not cool how i made this despite not wanting to, despite having years of free time and infinite resources and tutorials on how do anything at my fingertips. this is just shameful. this time there’s 4 “levels” except one of them is like 5 minutes long. i wanted to go a little further with this barely-a-concept i made up. laziness had something else in mind, however. again the “inspiration” is taken from the strange internet interactions i had in the past. fake stories from other people. one trick pony. you go from a forest, to a small house in the “woods”, to a snowy, corrupted mountain taken from a stupid dream i had years ago, to a creepy museum. it’s more…polished than the last one? i guess? it has an unique text box. the main character’s sprite is edited. there’s a place where you have to jump to platforms. sometimes there’s “animated” sprites. i suppose it’s an improvement. the best, nicest looking thing in this game wasn’t made by me. you could play this with your eyes closed, though that’s absolutely not to the game’s detriment.

“You are locked in a room. Some time has passed, enough for you to start doubting everything. You have to escape, you guess, but it’s hard. It gets harder to do anything the more time goes by. You’re forced to depend on him, the person who brought you here in the first place. Most days, there’s nothing you can do. In the middle of all this, I came to exist. Let’s figure this out together, okay?“ this is it’s official description

oh god i hate this. oh man. oh wow what a fucking idiot i am. i can’t even tell if this is ignorant or just narcissistic. i’m just gonna leave this here and go away

[finsaraan]

i just want you to know - this is the abridged version. i wrote something longer. and it was really prosey fancy and vaguely like an actual ficlet, but i felt like, there isn’t a chance in hell of anybody finishing this unless i file off at least a few paragraphs and fill it with the amusing use of casual language and luis-from-ant-man-style retellings to juxtaposition the setting and theme of the story being told

anyway @kohledtouch @championofstendarr @laelaloola (especially u u agreed to this and u didn’t even kno, this is a lesson in looking before u leap) y’all enabled this, gotta face the consequences of ur actions hit me up w/ how many paragraphs u got in before ur soul left ur body and idk what i’ll owe u but i’ll owe u something LMAO

Well he’s Titus Mede II’s son and his name is Alexandros and his mum is Olympias the emperor’s second wife and she married him when she was 17 bc her family wanted the power and she’s a descendant of a usurped Septim emperor from way yonder through the mists of time. So she has this baby boy, hooray, he’s adorable with his wavy blond hair and his odd eyes, one’s blue one’s green, and he spends his childhood frolicking barefoot through the White Gold Tower’s private gardens which it would realistically have as the home of the royal family, and chilling with the soldiers in the barracks, and the grooms in the stables, learning filthy language and all about war. His parents don’t get on because his mum doesn’t take shit lying down and doesn’t and never did love her husband, so if he’s remotely rude to her, which he can be because he’s just like that but also stressed all the time, she snaps right back and then he snaps back because he’s a proud man and not good at apologising and then it spirals out of control. 

One day in particular when Alexandros is four, it’s soon after the death of his older sister, who was the crown princess and very capable and absolutely doted on by the emperor who’s distraught about it still, he goes to his mum’s room late at night only for the emperor to come in soon after absolutely sloshed, immediately getting his kit off, and Olympias, hoping to make him go away and also shield her baby’s eyes, hides Alexandros and says ‘no we can’t do the do it’s that time of the month’ but he’s like ‘you said that a week ago you HAG’ but now that she has her baby she’s feeling very protective so she snaps right back more viciously than usual so they start a proper shouting match until Alexandros bursts out screaming SHE HATES YOU GO AWAY GO AWAY, only to be grabbed by a stunned and horrified and slightly embarrassed (bc hes naked) emperor and tossed quite violently from the room. He’s caught by the guard on duty who takes good care of him while he screams because honestly that was a pretty traumatic experience. Once he’s put to bed and then up the next morning he doesn’t remember it, but it does scar him psychologically. The marriage goes downhill quite badly from there, it was their worst argument yet, there were a lot of insults, Titus feels very attacked by his now-crown-prince son’s apparent hatred of him, Olympias is livid that he handled her baby so roughly - it all makes everyone bitter.

Now when Alexandros is seven his education has yet to start and he’s a bit too cosy with the common soldiery that man the Tower, as someone puts it ‘he speaks as if he was conceived against a barrack wall’. Also, he hasn’t had a lot of interaction with his father, who doesn’t have time for children really and is still kinda put off by That Incident and by the very guarded way his son looks at him when the boy’s brought up for inspection days that let Titus see how he’s doing. So Titus thinks, to get him away from his mother’s influence, because she’s probably turning the boy against him (tbf she is), he’ll send him off to Cloud Ruler Temple to be mentored by this Penitus Oculatus commander called Leonidas. Leonidas thinks Alexandros is a spoilt brat. He has the child doing a soldier’s training from dawn until dusk, feeds him two spare meals a day, gives him shitty blankets and makes him sleep outside if he’s been disobedient (and if it’s not gonna kill him), and while this does mean that Alexandros is really good at taking hardship when he’s older - his soldiers will love him because he’s known for refusing to take food, water, or shelter if there isn’t enough for every single man - it’s also frankly irresponsible on Leonidas’s part, because he chronically underfeeds a growing boy, and Alexandros ends up significantly shorter than average for the rest of his life.

Now he’s twelve and his training with Leonidas is done, so he’s back home. He sings at a court banquet and a grumpy Titus Mede - who thinks he sounds a lot like his mother when he sings and is REALLY put off by it - humiliates him in front of everyone by telling him it’s a stupid waste of time for a prince to learn an instrument. Alexandros runs away and blackmails a soldier he knows, who's travelling home to sort a blood feud, into taking Alexandros with him. There’s a battle between two tiny villages and Alexandros makes his first kill, takes the head home, and feels a lot better knowing he is officially A Man at twelve when his dad didn’t have HIS first kill until he was sixteen. Now Alexandros gets his own retinue, a bunch of generals’ sons around his age, and he meets HEPHAESTION. Hephaestion is a babe, they hit it off immediately, and it’s barely any time at all before they’re completely inseparable. They’re soulmates. The same day that they meet, Alexandros makes another lifelong friend - the stallion Bucephalus, who nearly tramples some people in a panic at a horse fair, but Alexandros realises it's been mistreated and gentles it until it lets him ride it, ooh ahh very dramatic and you bet your ass Hephaestion is swooning in the background.

Fifteen years old, Alexandros is sent off with his friends to study some real important shit like philosophy and morality with a former Psijic monk (who isn’t actually former he says that but actually he’s an active Psijic - they sent him to try and influence Alex to take a good and wholesome path) called Aristotle. Alexandros never gets the hang of magic but he likes medicine and learning about nature and discussing abstract topics. Supposedly, doing this all in some chateau out in buttfuck nowhere is so he doesn’t get distracted but once again, Titus wants to separate Alexandros and his mother. The only time Alexandros leaves is to be summoned to various battles or sieges around the provinces for experience and because he and his father get on quite well when they’re out on campaign, they think the same tactically and Alex does admire his father really, he just feels guilty because his mother’s a woman with drama and flare running through her blood (descended from Tiber Septim rememeber), and lets him know when she feels betrayed. It’s a very emotionally scarring situation, because he can’t please one parent without angering the other. But on campaign it’s ok. He flourishes, he’s clearly got the knack, and the soldiers really love him ‘cause he comes into the healers’ tents to talk to the wounded men and tell them how brave they were. He’s got an incredible memory for names and faces, he never forgets anyone he’s met, and it’s a big thing when you’re just some lowly soldier and the crown prince remembers you and says he saw you, first up the wall in that siege, terrific job mate. He really craves the adoration of his people, it’s so much simpler than the mess his family is in. Be nice, make an effort, the lads love you. No nonsense there.

Sixteen now, he’s left as regent (of the entire empire!) when the emperor goes off on a longer campaign, but has to embark on his own one when there’s an issue with a big load of Forsworn. He does insanely well. He’s sixteen. Sixteen! Half of the enemies he comes across can’t even take him seriously, until he slaughters them. You stop laughing pretty fast when Alexandros’s legion comes at you. More than that, he gets there from the Imperial City faster than the soldiers sent from actual Skyrim, and they show up half way through like ‘whu?’ but Alexandros ropes them in no-nonsense and as they incredulously ask the Imperial soldiers ‘how old is this guy?’ they’re just given a knowing look and told ‘wait ‘till you see him in action, then you’ll know’.

At seventeen (he’s up to a lot now) his mum is pestering him to start churning out bastards because he’s unusually celibate for his age and status. She’s feeling very insecure because she’s engaged in some political fights and frankly the only reason she’s alive is because she’s wife of the emperor and mother of the crown prince; if she looses that status, she’s a goner, and at the moment the only reason she’s still married to Titus is because if he divorces her he weakens Alexandros’s claim to the throne and that could be chaos if Titus were to unexpectedly perish. So a potential heir from Alexandros would strengthen her position, and also give her another baby, which she wants because she’s feeling very excluded from Alexandros’s life. Rather than inevitably fail to walk the tightrope between his parents, he’s taken to only speaking to them when summoned, and confiding in Hephaestion for everything instead. After Alexandros dodges a series of prostitutes sent by his mother to get him producing and maybe separate him from Hephaestion a little, he pretends he slept with one to get his mother off his back, and ends up, in the aftermath, getting jiggy with Hephaestion for the first time instead. They’re as madly in love as ever. All their friends can tell It’s Happened, and some bets are finally won.

Now shit goes terribly wrong, and it’s about to get convoluted - the emperor takes a fancy to the daughter of one of his generals, Attalos. If she becomes his mistress, and has his children, and Titus really takes a shine to her, her noble birth makes her a really strong candidate for marriage, PLUS, Attalos is rumoured to be a Thalmor informant. That would put Olympias and Alexandros in the doghouse and in serious danger, but take a big weight off Titus’s shoulders, because he no longer has a mortal enemy in his house and a son influenced by said mortal enemy. Alexandros just tries not to rock the boat. On the return from a state visit, father and son and entourage are hosted by Attalos at his villa on the road. Attalos gets drunk and alludes to the potential union, suggesting any children from it are better than a child of Olympias, and then he insults Olympias a lot, thinking he’s being subtle, but he’s not, because he’s completely smashed. Alex is pissed. When he calls Attalos the fuck out, Titus gets pissed at him and tells him to check himself. Alex calls out him next, telling him to stand up for his own heir, unless he’s a desperate old man who’ll lick Attalos’s feet he’s that thirsty for the man’s daughter, who is frankly much too young for his old ass - also, they all know the rumours, Attalos is a filthy Thalmor informant, so he’s probably trying to suck up to them as well.

(The retelling of this gets him a lot of points amongst Thalmor-haters and if you hear it retold in certain places the string of inventive insults that prefix ‘Thalmor’ is about as long as the entire rest of the story.)

Titus is pissed, as you would be, to the point of drawing his sword, maybe a bit extreme, but he trips and falls on his face. Alexandros utters the immortal line ‘look, men, who the people thought would cross the tyrants for them - and he falls crossing from couch to couch’. Alexandros then has to book it, taking Olympias to her relatives in High Rock, then disappearing himself into the Druadach Mountains. He pisses Titus off for a bit by making it seems like he might be gathering allies in the mountains to go to war, but eventually messengers get sent back and forth and after a lot of debate, a peace is agreed to, and Alex and Olympias are welcomed back to the Imperial City. Things are still hella tense. Hoping to fix this, Titus sends Alexandros into Skyrim to deal with this civil war business that’s popped up, planning on following along later because his health is real fucked up just then. He’s been in a lot of battles, he’s like swiss cheese at this point.

Now at this point if I’m feeling indulgent, this is the point at which Alexandros turns out to be the Last Dragonborn and has to deal with all that shit. Otherwise, he just shows up and does his Alexandros thing, which is kicking ass and actually trying really hard to come to a peace agreement. The emperor wants to crush the Stormcloak rebellion entirely, but if Alexandros were to get his way - you know, like if he were to suddenly and unexpectedly become emperor himself - his offered treaty to Ulfric would be a formal apology for the failure of his father to honour his title as protector of the realm and chosen of the Divines; an offer of total religious autonomy, total autonomy in the deciding of any High King or Queen; and a getout clause that lets Skyrim legally secede from the empire if the jarls together decide that the current emperor/empress is failing in his or her duty to protect the rights and well-being of the citizens of Skyrim, failing to honour the gods that put them on their throne, offending egregiously the cultural beliefs of the people of Skyrim, or proving themself unworthy of the respect and power of the Ruby Throne.

Alexandros is real fucking confident. And he enjoys the enormous ‘fuck you’ he’s sending to any future rulers that don’t live up to these standards, because even if the treaty focuses on Skyrim, is they were to pull that getout clause and secede, everyone would follow whether it applies to them or not.

Back in Cyrodiil, while Alexandros is either being Dragonborn or not, the emperor is making plans to divorce Olympias and marry Attalos’s daughter but with legislation that secures Alexandros’s position as heir, hoping it’ll placate him even though his mother’s just been slapped in the face essentially. And on top of that, there’s a member of the Elder Council called Pausanias Orestes - he and the emperor were bang-mates, once upon a time, but Pausanias got dumped for a younger, hotter bloke. Pissed, Pausanias calls the guy a lil’ bitch, and the guy goes and gets himself killed being extra in battle to prove that he’s not. His kin, upset, have their revenge on Pausanias in a very dark and disturbing way because they don’t want to kill him because he’s still on fairly good terms with the emperor. Pausanias entreats the emperor to get him justice. Titus makes Pausanias head of his bodyguard, which is a very big favour, but doesn’t punish them that abused Pausanias. Eventually, Pausanias becomes a member of the Elder Council. Now here’s the thing; who’s the man that did that to Pausanias? It’s general Attalos, father of the girl emperor Titus Mede wants to marry, the man that’s about to achieve a real big power boost just by getting his daughter to bang the emperor. Oh dear. And guess who was with the entourage that stayed at Attalos’s villa the night of the bust up that Alexandros ended up having to flee; who had to stay in the house of the man that had wronged him and never been punished for it? Pausanias. Alexandros noticed this incredible cruelty at the time and apologised to Pausanias for it. Pausanias likes Alexandros for that reason. So when someone comes to Pausanias and says; we want to assassinate the emperor, and Alexandros is in on it, will you go to Skyirm and hire the Dark Brotherhood? Pausanias says yes. The thing is, Alexandros isn’t in on it; he’s far too pious to ever consider killing his own father. But there are those that thing the Medes are getting a little out of hand and if they all happened to die then that would be very handy for certain point-eared control-freaks who have a violent need to be absolute cunts and are the Tamrielic equivalent of that person who comes into your inbox and nitpicks your TES lore knowledge in a very condescending way, especially over things that are honestly subjective.

[autisbians]

pwompt: juno has a melt down and tries to call peter, peter cant answer, juno keeps calling, peter comes back to like 50 missed calls from juno and hes like Oh Shit and juno doesnt pick up when he calls back bc. meltdown. and then a few days and more missed calls later peter comes home and juno is Messed The Fuck Up bc self doubt and yeha (i tried making this shorter than the other one so i wouldnt have to send 2 asks again ajdjdjdn)

The very moment Juno gets into his apartment, slamming the door shut perhaps a little too loud and effectively startling himself even further, he can’t help but to fall to the floor. Buries his face in his hands, pulls at his hair, smacks his forehead a few times, sees the tears fall onto his quivering knees. Slams his head against the wall behind him and lets out a whine, and everything is coming in like a drill to his skull and it fucking *hurts* and Juno doesn’t know how to stop it, doesn’t know if he’s even capable of stopping it, and it’s all crowded and horrible.

He flaps his hands and it doesn’t help, claps and it doesn’t help, rocks as much as he can and nothing is helping and he doesn’t know why and it’s all just… bad. He can’t figure out any other terms for it, not right now, with everything refusing to sort itself out in his head, all his thoughts merging into one nonsensical mess of sounds and words that is impossible to comprehend. Just taking up space that Juno doesn’t know how to get back. He slams his head against the wall again because it doesn’t help but it feels like something and it makes that pile of thoughts tremble a bit and maybe if he does it enough everything will unravel. He doesn’t know. He’s frantic.

After enough shifting-of-things, though, he gets one fragment that is useful to him; Peter. Peter had told him that, if he felt like this or if anything like this happened then Juno needed to call him right then and they would take it from there, and perhaps other ways of solving it if that didn’t work out but Juno couldn’t reach out far enough to touch those. So he needs to call Peter. Okay. He can do that, he thinks, has done it before, can do that (had he done it when he was like this, he wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember exactly but surely it wasn’t that different?).

It takes him a few minutes to get up because everything is intruding and it feels like there’s twenty cinderblocks weighing him down, but he manages. Walking is harder than he thought, and he has to stop a few times because his legs are unsteady and the sound of his own footsteps is suddenly the equivalent of nails against a chalkboard. Juno eventually settles with just keeping his hands over his ears, and it doesn’t help much and all he wants to do is flap his hands and bang them against his head a little but they’re keeping some of the sound out right now so he can’t do that. Deep breaths. It’s hard, when even that seems too loud for right now, when all he wants is complete, utter silence. Except for maybe Peter’s voice, because that made him feel safer, calmer.

He stumbles over to his comms (he’d left it in his apartment because back before this he’d still been out of sorts, less than now but still, and had forgotten it), dials Peter’s number with trembling fingers. Juno’s sitting on the floor again, tired of standing, needs something firm beneath him instead of just blank air. The ringing of the comms is going to make his head split open, and he covers his ears again even though it doesn’t help too much because at least it muffles it all a bit. He groans, which turns into another sob, and he moves his hands up so now his forearms are covering his ears and his hands are gripping his hair. Spikes of pain that maybe distract him the slightest bit, and it hurts but Juno can’t find it in himself to stop.

Peter doesn’t pick up the first time, so Juno tries again because Peter has to. Peter’s—Peter’s *going to*, it might just take a few tries but Peter’s going to because that’s what they’d talked about and Peter hadn’t lied, he didn’t lie. But then, did Juno, did Juno *know* that? Had Peter been lying? And Juno just hadn’t realized, because he tries again and there’s still no answer and maybe Peter hadn’t been lying to him and maybe Peter was just mad at him and Juno didn’t know which one was worse. He tries calling again and it’s all getting harder by the second and everything is making less sense and Peter was mad at him wasn’t he and Juno had fucked up again and Peter wasn’t going to come back and Peter was mad at him and it’s a loop that Juno can’t get out of and he screams because he doesn’t know what else to do. He tries calling for another thirty minutes, and he’d try for more but by then he’s too far down and he doesn’t know *how* anymore and he just cries and hits himself and nothing’s getting better.

Four hours later, nothing has changed, except Juno is quite a bit louder and is finding it quite a lot harder to control how much he’s hitting himself and with how much force and everything hurts and is loud and there are scratches and bruises all over his arms because he can’t *stop*. And when his comms start to ring, he doesn’t check to see who it is, just throws the thing across the room and screams again because it barely even registers that it’s Peter calling and all Juno comes up with is that the buzz is too shrill and sharp and he hates it and Peter’s just going to yell at him. He wants to leave but he doesn’t know how he would go about doing that or where he would go or anything so he just stays where he is and tries to make everything not so intense. He does not succeed in those efforts; if they could even be called efforts at all.

Juno doesn’t manage to get himself into bed until the early hours of the morning, can’t focus enough on the clock to say when, but he thinks it’s after midnight and before four in the morning. He’s still shaking, still crying then, but he’s exhausted and knows that Peter, if he does come back, would probably be more angry at him if Juno passed out on the floor. Or maybe not. Juno doesn’t know but he thinks it’s better to be safe than sorry in this situation. When he wakes up, he feels the same as he did last night, and even though he knows it’s because he didn’t help it at all so when he slept it wasn’t fixed which means now it’s more broken, that doesn’t mean he feels any less scared.

There is a voice in the back of his head that sounds exactly like Peter’s telling him to get out of bed because you’ll only feel worse if you stay like this, Juno, I’ll help you with anything you need me to, except Peter wasn’t there so Juno didn’t know if that was worth anything. So he doesn’t get out of bed, because he feels too numb and tired to even move, and his brain-body translation service is out of order for today. He’s just… worn out. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s had an episode like this one, because Peter was always there to fix things before Juno shattered them further, but now Juno was alone again and probably would be for a while and now he’s helpless again because that’s how it always fucking turns out, isn’t it?

Juno doesn’t eat or anything for, for a while. Rest of the day. Just stays in bed. Goes in between meltdowns and shutdowns and can’t find a comfortable place to reside and it’s hard, everything’s *hard*, and Peter was supposed to come back tonight but Juno doesn’t think he’s going to. Until, well, the door to his bedroom opens and it’s sudden and part of Juno wants to break down and cry and hurt all over again but the other is just too fucking worn out. He can’t stay on the tightrope between them, but at the same time his brain doesn’t seem to be falling to either side and Juno can’t control what he’s doing, so he just waits until something happens.

That something being Peter, in the doorway, softly saying, “Juno, love.” And Juno’s done for. He blinks, and suddenly Peter’s beside him and going on and on about something, his words tumbling out too fast for Juno to keep up with and there’s tears falling rapidly down Juno’s cheeks and this is where the shoe dropped, then. So when Peter doesn’t stop or slow down, just keeps on sounding so *like that*, Juno gives up on it all and just screams for a few seconds and hits Peter’s shoulder. Peter goes silent, then, holds a hand out tentatively. Juno hesitates, then, because Peter doesn’t seem to be yelling at him, takes it.

“Dear,” and Peter’s slower and gentler now, that’s a relief, “I didn’t mean to- I’m sorry. I should have come home earlier, should have picked up the call the first time you tried. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, and I- *Juno*.”

Peter’s tone goes firm and shaky somehow simultaneously, when he says Juno’s name, and Juno follows his eyes and Peter’s looking at his arms and oh, maybe Juno had done more damage than he’d though. “I’ll… I’ll get you fixed up, as soon as you’re alright with that. I’m not upset with you at all, darling, I promise. This is my fault; you couldn’t control what happened, and I’m sure everything was very frightening, then. I love you.”

Juno is not sure about how good he’s going to be at talking, right now, so he doesn’t. Peter’s looking at him with this, this *importance* that Juno can’t quite name. Juno’s trembling, still. Peter asks quietly, “Is it alright if I hug you? Would you like that, right now?” Juno gives a nod that’s so tiny it barely even qualifies as one, more accurately labeled a twitch, but Peter seems to understand. He slowly wraps his arms around Juno, resting his chin on Juno’s head, making Juno feel a bit more… secure, or something. He goes limp, a little, lets Peter hold him up. Glances down at his arms again, and, well, Peter was right to worry, and Juno hadn’t exactly remembered doing that and he goes to hit himself again because—because a lot, but Peter stops him before he can, a weak grip on his wrist. “Don’t hurt yourself, love. You’ve already done enough of that, I think.”

Juno still trembles, and he still cries a little more, but Peter ends up lovingly soothing the jagged lines all down his arms anyway, and it’s… nice. Everything’s not fixed just like that, of course, it doesn’t work like that, as much as Juno wanted it to. But it’s less bad, maybe. And that means something.