#(I'm not sure if there's a particular alter I like the most in the second system)

[anarcho-masochist]

It really is like my brain went, "Wow, those are powerful intrusive thoughts you've got there. You know what's more powerful? Your desire to see this guy traumatized. Have 1.5 days of maladaptive daydreaming about them."

[super-paper]

"Thank you for such wonderful comedy."

I've been wanting to talk about how MHA plays with the concepts of "fiction vs reality, the characters vs the actor, the world vs the stage" for awhile now, bc I believe understanding how MHA utilizes these concepts is pretty crucial to understanding our Big Bad (and Tomura!) (...and Izuku!) (.. etc!) (y-yeah...!!!) (wooo.....!!!!!)

If this post is more incoherent than usual, I apologize-- I'm just really enthusiastic about stories that play with the fact that they're stories and characters who throw themselves into a fictionalized role as a means of coping. I love the way MHA handles these concepts in particular, so I lost all sense of restraint as usual.

Hori: "I'm Like Dropping Hints That Hero/Villain Personas Are Actually Coping Mechanisms Lol"

"As Tomura Shigaraki and Tenko Shimura, I've got just one wish: the total destruction of everything that created that house." "If my origin as Touya and Dabi was such a simple thing, then... No, there are still things I want to say. Arguments I want to have."

I've seen a few ppl saying that it sounds awkward/strange to have the characters repeatedly asserting themselves in the third person, but imo, the emphasis on real names versus hero/villain names during these particular scenes plays into the idea of the villain/hero identities being "alter egos" that might not actually have the same core desires as the """"actors"""" that are behind these personas.

Tomura and Touya invoke both their real and villain names while asserting their respective wishes. Himiko also invokes her villain name, though it's less obvious to english speakers because she uses her real name as her villain name (in the raws, "HIMIKO TOGA" as a villain name is written using katakana-- and this is what she uses when asserting her wish). MHA plays with the idea of "fiction"/"Alter Egos" as a form of escapism and as a coping method, and at this point in time, the Dabi/Tomura/"Himiko" identities are still being utilized as a crutch/mask by these three very hurt individuals.

*loud, terrifying chanting* PEAK FICTION PEAK FICTION PE--

Ochako's fight being like the second most thematically important fight in the whole series still makes me unreasonably giddy btw.

To contrast, Ochako uses her civilian name alone when asserting her wish-- and imo we're meant to read this as Ochako wanting to save Himiko as herself, not as Uravity. Saving Himiko is not something she can accomplish as her alter-ego-- Ochako is able to save Himiko by stepping off the stage and becoming a "real" person, while also acknowledging the person behind "Toga Himiko (villain name)".

Izuku hasn't had his "I'm Izuku Midoriya"/"I'm-saving-you-as-Izuku-not-as-Deku" moment yet-- instead, we see Tomura intentionally making that distinction between the-hero-and-the-true-self by constantly referring to Izuku by his real, full name. And I'm pr sure Izuku is also the only one he does this to-- we see him referring to all the other heroes he encounters by their hero names alone, or by insulting nicknames (l-lol). Correct me if I'm wrong, tho!

(side note: Tomura switching to calling Izuku just "Hero" in the aftermath of Bakugate is actually a big step backwards imo-- it reads as Tomura trying to push Izuku away by shoving them both back in the hero/villain box and doubling down on enforcing their respective "roles." Not that I ever expected mister doomdere to make things easy, but, woof. Good Fuckin' Luck, Izuku ( ´･ω･) )

TL;DR The final arc has mostly been about tearing off the hero/villain masks to reveal who is hiding underneath— MHA's careful use of names and monikers plays heavily into that and its distinction between "alter-ego"/"true self" a lot. Which is... probably one of the many reasons why All For One still doesn't have a given name, as someone who has all but completely lost himself in his character.

Anyway! That brings us to the meat of this post: how does MHA take the concepts of "reality vs fiction" and "the character vs. the actor" and apply it to All For One (...and Tomura) (and Izuku--)?

"Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain!"

"If you refuse to submit, then I'll just rewrite the story." - it's amazing how all of this coulda been avoided if someone had just introduced AFO to Demon Lord x Reader fanfiction. (/j)

AFO fancies himself as the author of MHA's greatest tragedy (the desecration of Shimura Nana's legacy via the sacrifice of Shimura Tenko), while simultaneously inserting himself into its overarching narrative and treating himself as the leading villain of the story-- it's self-indulgent and intentionally invasive in the way that most self-insert fanfiction tends to be invasive, with him going to extremes to make it seem as though the whole story revolves around him. AFO wants to be both the author and the leading character and the leading antagonist. This greed is typical of him, but it also establishes him as a character who's more caught up in (read: trapped by) his relationship to "fiction" than anyone else. Again, MHA explores the use of fiction and alter-egos as an escape from a painful reality-- so, it's entirely reasonable to assume that this applies to AFO as well.

To me, so much about AFO reads as an escapist fantasy of someone who is utterly terrified of being put in a position where he is truly seen. The idea of being vulnerable, of being naked, of being "human," is intolerable to him. But by not allowing himself to feel and "be a human," he has effectively cut himself off from what he wants most. The character of “Shigaraki Tomura” is as much an escapist fantasy for AFO as it is Tenko-- It's just another (younger, prettier) layer of skin he can hide his true self in.

"so basically you're saying that AFO is a never nude" yes, actually :)

AFO dehumanizes Tomura through his attempts to turn the boy into his personal comic book character, but he also dehumanizes himself by desperately trying to insert himself into that “character." It's only fitting that Tomura’s innate humanity and capacity for feeling ends up rendering AFO himself painfully, painfully human-- and ultimately causes AFO's carefully constructed character to start crumbling.

If All the World’s a Stage, Then Let’s Destroy the Stage

"That stage is gone now. The theater's knocked down. How much longer can we afford to be spectators on the sideline?" "Once upon a time, a man named All Might showed all of us how to be a hero. But somewhere along the way, people forgot about the heart and soul that made the man." -MHA, Chapter 325

Tomura is attempting to destroy the stage, because without the stage there can be no "Shigaraki Tomura" (Or "All Might," or "All For One," or "Endeavor," etc etc etc). Without the stage, there are no more "characters" and no more tragedies. But-- without the stage, there are no more stories period. There are no more tragedies, but there are no more happy endings either. The world never recognizes the actor behind "Shigaraki Tomura" without the stage. The stage is not inherently a bad thing, so long as people can remember that the actors on the stage still exist outside of it.

But Tomura himself cannot imagine what happens after the curtains fall, and all that's left is Shimura Tenko. He is stuck in a role that was written entirely for someone else, but remains convinced that the role was always his and that the role defines him.

Tomura rebels against the story the only way he knows how--against an "author" who *LITERALLY* views him as a spicier self insert, and against a "setting" that treats his death as a happy ending-- but even so, Tomura still can't picture an ending that doesn't end in tragedy. His rebellion is not about him trying to wring a happy ending out of a miserable, mean-spirited book-- it's about burning the whole damn library down so he never feels let down or hurt by a story again.

Basically: Tomura cannot act outside the confines of his "character" in a way that will truly save him. Even as he rebels, he's rebelling in a way that is painfully consistent with the way his "character" is written-- and that's why AFO (the author) still poses such an enormous threat to him. Destruction cannot save him from this story when he was explicitly penned to destroy.

The only way to break this narrative is to act in a way "the author" doesn't expect, and to tap into all the traits that AFO desperately attempted to "write out" of him-- Shimura Tenko is someone who has always rebelled against his writing, his author, and the unfairness of this story with his kindness and his willingness to accept those that no one else will.

AFO cuts off Tenko's own power at the root by reinforcing Tomura's belief that the world will always inherently reject him, without fail, always and forever-- so he should just reject the world, too (and I've talked at length about this before, but this is why a story that ends with Tomura dying or locked away from society is an ending that fails in its goal to save Tomura). The more Shigaraki Tomura rejects everything and the more Shigaraki Tomura is rejected by everything, the more he distances himself from his root and the source of his power-- and the more Shimura Tenko gets lost in this character.

While AFO is terrified of someone seeing behind his mask, Tomura longs for it. Tenko has been there since the beginning and has been begging for someone to finally see and acknowledge him (both in-universe and out of universe).

"I’ll Be There, Changing Fate by Your Side."

AFO: "Blah Blah Blah Do you still believe myths can save you? Foolish creature. Let me be clear: every version of the story ends with you being slaughtered yadda yadda yadda :) :) :)" ENTER, MIDORIYA IZUKU WITH A STEEL CHAIR.

Izuku's role is that of a completely average boy who gets pulled into a narrative ''that wasn't for him"-- he has no heroic lineage, no hidden powers, and no connection to the centuries old conflict that drives the plot. He's just a boy who did the right thing at the right time and was rewarded for it. Izuku is someone who was "never supposed to be a hero" the same way Tenko was "never supposed to be a villain" per the "rules" of their world-- and Izuku, like Tomura, is someone who exists to destroy those rules and the expectations of their narrative, completely changing the ending.

But rather than burning the book and ending the story forever (like Tomura wants to do), Izuku believes that the story and characters can still be salvaged. There's always something worth saving. It doesn't have to be a tragedy, they can still change the ending. They can talk specifics after Tomura's crazy ass puts the lighter down.

Izuku, like Tomura and so many other characters, throws himself into an alter-ego in an attempt to redefine himself and escape from pain ("Nobody's been saved yet. Don't be the worthless old Deku who can't save anyone" 😬). He almost loses himself in the role of "OFA's torch bearer" the way All Might did-- but just as Izuku managed to find Toshinori Yagi and helped in convincing him that his life as Toshinori has meaning, Izuku ends up getting saved by his friends who couldn't care less about OFA's ~protagonist power~ and know that Izuku is just a goofy, awkward, human boy who needs help.

Like.... If we explore quirklessness as like... a narrative stand-in for characters that the story typically views or dismisses as irrelevant extras/npcs, then AFO's barely restrained anger at Izuku and Toshi (and possibly Yoichi if we're being honest) for daring to ''act beyond their roles'' becomes even funnier. AFO can't stand the idea of his power/the protagonist role being passed on to someone who seems so utterly unworthy, unremarkable, and plain. He can't stand the idea of someone without a quirk/"role" standing up to him, the leading character. Dude really is a toxic comic book fan to the core.

afo really said "I didn't like how things were going so I stopped reading and just wrote a better ending to the story :^)" like...... @mhareddit that's u buddy...........................;

Anyway...........!!!!! AFO is someone who cherry picks what he likes about a story while ignoring the actual intent/message of the work (#theabsolutestateofthemhafandom), but he has no intention of breaking down the dichotomy between heroes/villains and instead actively enforces it (.............#theabsolutestateofthemhafan--). He just wants to flip what side wins in the end.

Tomura wants to break the narrative because he sees that as the only way to escape from his pain (but in doing so, he permanently cuts himself off from being a part of a story with a happy ending). He wants to destroy the dichotomy between heroes and villains because heroes and villains "will never understand each other and never stop creating each other" (lol. lmao, even).

Izuku wants to break the narrative because he's realized that there's something more to this story than your standard "Hero versus Villain," "good vs evil" affair and that he cannot explore what lies behind those masks and labels without tearing them down, first.

These three work together well as a narrative set of Fucking Nerds, and AFO works well as both Tomura and Izuku's villain for all of the above reasons (& also bc he's the only one who is actually benefitting from their current society) ((which basically offers him an endless buffet of hurt and angry children he can exploit on a silver platter)).

Anyway! Kick his ass, Izuku.

[dryococelas01]

I've been thinking lately about a particular character archetype that's been really emotionally resonating with me for a while. I've had trouble pinning down exactly why and thought if I rambled on a bit maybe that would help get my thoughts in order.

I'm gonna dub the archetype the Quixote, for reasons that will soon be obvious. Both of my examples are, funnily enough, created by games workshop.

Content warning for, I guess, severely altered states of mind, alzheimers/dementia, insanity, cannibalism and I'm not sure what else. This is a bit of a weird one to tag. I'll put mental illness as a tag even if its a fantasy mental illness rather than anything real.

So I'm gonna introduce the 2 examples first, so everyone's on the same page. They are Nemesor Zandrekh of warhammer 40k and the Flesh-Eater Courts of Age of Sigmar.

So quick Zandrekh crash course. He was part of a race called the necrontyr, they got forcibly uploaded into robot skeleton bodies by soul eating gods called the c'tan and got their souls eaten in the process, becoming the necron. In the process most of them lost all personality, with the nobility being allowed to keep between aspects and the whole of theirs. They then managed to turn on and kill the ctan, and went into a several millenia long sleep. Many of the ones who still had their personalities have odd quirks as a result of their uploads, the long sleep, too early wake ups etc.

Zandrekhs condition is that he does not see the world as it is. To him, his body is flesh and blood. The many aliens and armies he fights are necron rebels and separatists, the mindless robot armies he commands loyal troops.

He has a bodyguard, Oberyn. Oberyn takes care of him. He stands by as his Lord holds feasts of rotten food for prisoners of war he regards as enemy ambassadors, watches his lord attempt to shove food into the flat metal grin where his mouth was. If one of these PoWs or a noble under zandrekh, sick of his nonsense, tried to deal with Zandrekh, Oberyn deals with them.

He stands by him until the end. He knew and loved his lord before they were machines, and he does so now.

(Quick note: some people interpret this as romantic love. I don't but I can see why. To me I have strong recent memories of my dad and me taking care of my grandma whos mind has aged, and that's how I see it. We do explicitly as of the novel Severed have obyron describing it as love). (Second quick note: these 2 are explicitly based on Don quixote and Sancho, one of Zandrekhs old abilities was called something like tilting at solar mills)

That's your crash course on Z. Now the Flesh Eater Courts.

The FSC ars a faction of flesh eating undead ghouls. They are withered and rotten, riding giant bats and undead dragons into battle, devouring the flesh of soldier and citizen alike.

But much like Zandrekh, that's not how they see things. They have a form of infectious delusion.

They are Noble knights. The giant bats are magnificent pegasi, the zombie dragon is alive and majestic, their barren wastelands beautiful and fertile, the hordes of ravenous ghouls the loyal citizenry at their command.

When they invade a civilian village, tearing at their flesh, devouring young and old alike, that's not how they see it. They see a goblin warcamp, a chaos cult hideout, a Necromancers castle. They ride in on their noble steeds, their loyal armies at their back, and save the day. And after? They have a grand feast, peasant and knight feasting side by side on rich and expensive meats.

You get the idea

This archetype so interests me for so many reasons.

Lets start with them as a moral question.

Is The Ghoul Evil? The ghouls have taken part in the butchery of innocents, the slaughter of villages and destruction of homes. They've eaten people and serve the whims of a far less deluded master.

But they don't see it that way. Not only that but they are incapable of seeing it any other way, their senses and minds completely in thrall.

There are plenty of people who do horrible things and see their actions as good, but they have the capability to be different. A violent white nationalist will no doubt say everything they are doing is for some greater good, but they have the capacity to change, they can be something that isn't a voilent white nationalist and there is evidence in the world around them that their views are wrong and abominable.

The ghouls cannot not be ghouls, they can't see the evidence in the world around them.

They can't see their rotten fraying flesh, their sharp teeth. They can't see the farmer they killed, they taste delicious chicken instead of human flesh, drink wine not blood.

They are Noble heroes to their eyes. And there's no way for them to know otherwise. They are doing good, to their eyes.

So is the ghoul evil? I don't think so. Their acts are evil acts, but there is no evil intent to them.

It's a very interesting moral question to me. I'm curious on your thoughts, if anyone sees this.

When the veil lifts.

Nate crowley recently wrote a novella about zandrekh called Severed, from the perspective of obyron. In it he based zandrekh on his experience of a relative with, and I can't remember which, alzheimers or dementia (hence the / in the content warnings).

There is an amazing moment, at one point, that I'm just gonna quote.

So obligatory, spoiler for the novella Severed.

__________________

‘Well fought, old friend,’ said Zahndrekh, with companionable warmth. ‘You really ought to have rested more, but we need to leave. I must commend your rather… straightforward method of dealing with the sorcerer’s engine, and it very much appears to have done the trick. Doahht has gone off like a light, and its legions with it. But without the engine, I fear the stability of the planet itself won’t last, so we’d be much better off in orbit. Are you ready for a short jaunt up to the Horaktys?’

Obyron nearly said yes, but then he remembered the engine’s true purpose. Or what it might have been – it was so hard to recall now.

‘But… our souls, Zahndrekh. The machine… it could give us our souls back. It could give us our bodies. Please, lord, let’s at least take part of it with us, so we can know for sure.’

‘Oh, dear vargard, why do you hold on to such things? You must let the thought of this awful contraption go.’ Zahndrekh put an arm round him in consolation, and continued.

‘Let me pose you this thought, Obyron, in the hope it will bring you ease. What do you think caused you to hold true to me for all this time despite all the power you might have enjoyed through betrayal if it were not a soul? What can love, but a being with a soul?

‘Even if we all ceased to be flesh and blood millions of years ago, which of course I don’t be-lieve for a moment,’ – Zahndrekh actually winked – ‘wouldn’t it have suited us better to live in denial of that, as some fools might say I had done? Wouldn’t it be better, Obyron, just to accept our fate, and enjoy immortality for the everlasting life of merry campaigning it has proved to be?’

Obyron stared hard at Zahndrekh, unsure of what he was hearing.

‘You old bastard. You knew all along.’

‘I knew nothing of the sort, old friend. But since you seem to be labouring under some delusion that you’re a soulless machine, I thought I should at least make some attempt to set you straight.’ Zahndrekh stood up then, and patted his thigh for Obyron to join him. ‘Come now, soldier. Up on your feet, and let’s return to the flagship. If we’re quick about it, we can have this all cleared up in time for a truly astonishing feast.’

Obyron, ever loyal, obeyed his lord. He would have wept, but he had no tears.

__________________

With the authors statement I'd say this is a moment of clarity, not zandrekh having known all along as Obyron imagines. I've seen grandma having many similar ones.

Zandrekh sometimes sees the horrifying reality he lives in, sometimes the fog lifts. And he prefers the fog. There's a lot more to pick apart from that quote but that's what I want to focus on.

Age of Sigmar has a trpg called soulbound, in which you can play a ghoul. If I ever find a play group I will.

Imagine a scenario, out adventuring team has just butchered a village. The ghoul is huddled on the ground, lifting the arm of a murdered young man who tried to defend his home, ready to eat it.

For a moment, the veil lifts. The noble Knight, defender of his people looks around him.

His good freind, the hedge mage, is raising an undead abomination out of murdered civilians. The noble Knight he rode besides has lined up survivors and is draining them of their blood. The beautiful noble lady he traveled with and hoped to court has no flesh, she's a vengeful spirit.

He sees his claws, and sees what he's eating.

Imagine the horror that sets in in that moment.

He doesn't know if he's seeing the truth, or if he's gone mad. If it's the truth then he knows he's a monster, his friends terrors, the people he saved flesh eating ghouls and the people he killed innocent civilians. If its not the truth, then he's gone mad, he's being tormented by some daemon or spirit, he's cursed.

Now, the veil would likely fall shortly after and he'd forget that moment of horror, but let's say it doesn't.

Let's say our noble Knight has a choice. He knows the truth of the matter, and can choose between the veil falling again or staying lifted.

Does he choose to keep it lifted?

I like to imagine I would, that I'd accept the guilt and horror of my existence and past actions and try to be a force for good.

I know that I wouldn't. I would accept the delusion, because fundamentally the horror of what I am and have done would be too much. Reality would break me, so I would retreat and allow the delusion to take me.

I'd like to imagine my noble knight would stand up and become a force for good, redeem himself. He is a noble knight, after all.

Zandrekh sometimes sees past the veil, but keeps acting like he doesn't because the veil is preferable to reality.

It makes a wonderful character moment, something beautiful and tragic beyond my words.

Whenever I think of these moments the veil lifts something in me cries. There's something so tragic about, in the case of the ghouls, someone that is noble, is trying to do good, but is incapable of. Something sad but strangely beautiful about zandrekh choosing to retreat into joy and fantasy rather than face reality.

I don't know how to put it, it just touches something in me.

I don't know, there's a lot more I want to say but I can't figure out how to say it. Hope my rambles were at least interesting.

[steviewashere]

The Sound of Silence

Rating: General CW: Internalized Ableism, Quick Mention of the 'R' Word (It's Not Written, Quite Literally as 'R' Word)Tags: Post-Canon, Post-Season 4, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Selectively Mute Steve Harrington, Negative Self Talk, Miscommunication, Mean Eddie Munson (For a Split Second It's Part of the Miscommunication and the Plot), Eddie Munson is a Sweetheart, Neurodivergent Steve Harrington (Implied), Pre-Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson Calls Steve Harrington Sweetheart

I should say before this that a lot of Steve's thinking here, a lot of the metaphors and such used, are from personal experience. They are things I think about myself when I'm mute. So be civil and kind about this piece.

💛—————💛

Steve Harrington is a man of few words on most days. He does talk, he loves talking sometimes, has so many things to share. But on a lot of occasions, Steve can’t muster the strength to say hello. Can only make sounds, hums and gasps and subtle clicks. And often times, he hides away when he gets to that point. He’s been like this for as long as he can remember. Though, the first time it happened, he’s not sure what really caused it. Just that something was too much, or he was too little and then it all began. There had been therapists and specialists and urgent care doctors. A lot of conversations between him and his parents that often ended in him being yelled at. Something about him too far left of ‘normal’. And he knew, when the bad stuff came, that part of him may just be this way.

Now, years later, he can put some recognition to what silences him. Sometimes it’s the lack of comfortable sleep the night before. Or it’s the social energy completely drained out of him. Or it’s a particular jab that somebody makes. The raised voice that pushes him over the edge. A nightmare so harsh it rips him of not only the ability to mutter whole sentences, but also the ability to crawl out of bed.

He’s only clarified this with a select handful of people. The people in his life that were closest to him or that would understand. Robin was the second. Words written on a steno pad in the middle of the night, three days in a row where he hadn’t been sleeping properly, nightmares of a cold bunker and rough hands. Notes passed in quiet lulls, pencil scratches the only sound. She only looked at him with a sort of empathy he’s never been privy to. Her eyebrows scrunched in concentration as she focused solely on conversation in written text. He didn’t have to beg with her, which he thanked whatever god gave him her presence in the first place. Then, it was Nancy before their breakup. She could just tell. Her notes accommodated him. Space he took up was always welcoming. And her voice carried softly to his ears, gossip and pet names and gentle praise. Even if she broke his heart some time later, he would always remember her better than alcohol stained and too tipsy to make sense. Max was most recent. She, surprisingly, didn’t tease him for it. Didn’t make him feel bad. More sad than anything. Her voice was raspy in her hospital bed, “I’ll be your voice, Steve. You can be my eyes.” He could see the white, nearly iridescent glaze that permanently altered the blue color underneath. There were no words exchanged after that, but he placed his hand in hers and squeezed.

The others either didn’t notice or were too intimidating to tell. It’s not that they’re scary. But they can be harsh about certain things. And he just wasn’t ready. His voice, the absence of his words, have always been a soft, insecure, and vulnerable part to him. Laying out his cards face up on the table was too much.

But he probably should’ve considered Eddie to be one of those people that he can trust. Especially since Steve lets him move in, take up space in a spare bedroom, rummage through his cupboards. Maybe because they’re roommates. Maybe because they’re friends. Maybe because Steve wants more.

———— It was a bad night. An even worse day.

The images flashed under his eyelids every time he blinked. Blood and loose skin and wet muscles. Echoing screeches of those creatures that ruined his nearly blank torso. That sadness rippling from Dustin. His wobbling lip, wet eyes, the snotty nose, and strained yells for help. Steve’s stomach turns with every subtle movement of his body. Every single time he stretches, the scars moving with him. 

In retrospect, he shouldn’t have gone to work. Not when he woke up, throat scratchy and the seizing of his chest overwhelmingly intense with every sobbing gasp. Or when he realized, the energy somewhere else, that mustering words was the heaviest burden to bear. He shouldn’t have gone to work, where he gets yelled at for not communicating. For not counting out the change. For not selling the new movies. Where he’s called things he’s heard since he was a little boy, ‘Dumb’ and ‘Stupid’ and the infamous ‘R’ word.

He’s out of it by the time he’s able to sit down in the driver’s seat of the car. Part of him wants to bang the softest parts of his palms on the harsh, stiff leather of the steering wheel. Another piece of him wants to lean down into those same hands, pressed into the sockets of his eyes hard enough to speckle his sight with black spots, and cry until there’s nothing else to do but go home. There’s the encroaching need to scream, to hum behind his lips, wiggle his arms until they’re too tired to move, too heavy to lift, a worse burden than speaking. But he knows that it’s too open to break down in Family Video’s parking lot. So his drive home is ninety percent heaving breaths and squeezing the steering wheel to remind him he’s nearly back to his bed; his safety away from the world, somewhere where he can recharge, power through this, get back on track.

Though, he’s drained when he goes home. Exhausted. Beaten down to just a bag of meat and blood and bones. The Beemer is parked in the driveway. And he jiggles his keys in the door. And slips his shoes off, hangs up his jacket, places his wallet in the little dish in the foyer. Each step of shedding his work skin like tiptoeing on a bed of nails. Barely even makes it two steps before he’s bombarded by Eddie’s constant, erratic, and chaotic nature.

“Hey, Stevie!” he crows. “I made dinner while you were on your way back. It’s on the stovetop, covered it in foil so that it retains the heat. Oh, and I did the laundry, cleaned up our bathrooms a little bit. Made progress with the physical therapist on my bad leg and I—“

Steve sighs heavily through his nose, blinks sluggishly, and places his palm out to stop Eddie. He tries to say anything, something. But all he does is open his mouth, squeak in the back of his throat, promptly close back up, and sag. Shakes his head, sidesteps, and clambers to his bedroom.

Undressing himself like wrestling with bears. Climbing under his covers as if his comforter is a taut iron sheet. He can already sense it, the shift from charismatic Steve Harrington to odd Steve Harrington. Can’t even suppress the aching, sizzling pang that shoots through. Naked skin to his cold bedsheets. Blanket heavy. The darkness of his bedroom will coddle and consume him, he’s sure. 

Tomorrow is another day to try again. And maybe he’ll finally be able to explain himself.

But of course it’s not that simple. Of course his eyes are crusted over and burning like he spent the entire night crying. His whole body aches. And, unsurprisingly, there’s no way to conjure words from deep in his chest. Just whistled little breaths. Coming short and strained from his nose. He stays in bed for the rest of the day. Blearily, he wonders how Eddie’s doing. If the dinner from last night made it to the fridge. Wonders if the phone has rung at all, because he should be going to work.

He tries it. Tries speaking to the lonely, cold, inky blackness of his room. As if seeking for a light. The sounds strain and garble. Like his emotions are honey and he’s gargling. Choking on it. It hurts. He wonders if speaking should be like death, like a demobat tail wrapped around his tender skin, squeezing with razor blade spikes, tugging on him as stiff and thick ropes. Wonders if Eddie can hear him struggling.

Wonders if Eddie can sense him as a shadow in his own darkness, half of a man, barely a person. Thinks that there’s a million ways to explain himself, the words on paper as he did with Robin, or if Eddie will pick him up like dead star fragments and piece him back together as Nancy did, if he’ll just have to wait this out and whisper it in the fragile, sterile, fluorescent light of his childhood home—it’s a hospital in a way, maybe Eddie can perform the role of Max. Steve would offer his legs to take over for Eddie’s bad one, if he’ll be the boisterous noise that should be croaking from him any moment.

Futile, however much he wants it to work. Steve curls himself tighter in his blanket and goes back to sleep. 

Tomorrow will be another day. And he’ll be a full person again, tomorrow.

Some day, surely, he thinks on day three.

And the same on day four.

And when he can smell his skin like molded vegetables in the drawer of his fridge, only then does he stand on doe like legs, awkwardly ambling to the shower. He is twenty years old, mute as the day he was born—breathless and making noise if only to mark his presence; he thinks of himself as the stain on his bedspread, that is his presence, he’s sure. Twenty years old, moving like the toddler his mother was worried about. Crawling backwards. Unable to lift his head on his own for too long. He wonders a lot in the silence of his own existence. It doesn’t end now, in the shower with steam clearing his nasal passages. Ponders, Will I always be this way?

Surely.

The dirt swirls in invisible tornadoes down the drain. Those are his words. Still gone. Through the pipes and out to the sewer. He stands on the plush rug protecting the warm soles of his feet from the cold tile. An overly used towel, threadbare and rough, wrapped around his waist. He slips into pajamas easily enough. Hair sopping and wilted into his eyes.

Tentative creaks down the stairs. Shuffling if only to take up space. Frozen to his spot in the kitchen doorway. There, in the kitchen, shrouded in amber light with a warm mug of what appears to be hot chocolate, is Eddie. He looks up from the pale brown liquid in his cup. His eyes are richer than that of what he drinks. And Steve is startled by how sad, though ferociously angry they are.

“I know this is your house and you’re allowed to do whatever the fuck you want, but you can’t just be a piece of shit to me,” Eddie rasps. His voice is nearly hollow. Penetrated by shrapnel between his teeth. And Steve also wonders if that’s what he’ll sound like after this. This limbo he can’t control. “Seriously, Steve. I thought you were, like, changed or something. Thought you were supposed to be this good guy now. Not a douchebag, remember?”

‘Douchebag’ spits from him like acid. Steve is burning. He is sizzling. Can’t help the trembling in his hands. Or the subtle, missed by Eddie, flinch that forces him back a step.

He looks away from those molten eyes of Eddie’s. Towards the floor. At his bare feet. Going cold against the hardwood. Wants to throw it all up. The explanation. His thoughts. Every little other thing about him that’s always made him some sort of spectacle in his parent’s marriage. Am I the cold, he asks to nobody in particular, or am I the body drowning in it?

Eddie sniffles. Clears his throat. Sighs disappointingly.

Steve is five years old. His dad is sitting at the table. He is being scolded for not speaking up. Steve is eight years old, covered in mud and pink lines from being scuffed on the concrete. He is being scolded for not speaking up. Steve is eighteen years old, bloodied, beaten blue, sweaty, and soot on his new shoes. He is being scolded for not speaking up.

He is traumatized. And he is tired. And he can’t explain, no matter how much he wants.

“Maybe I should’ve expected this,” Eddie mutters, “being friends with Steve Harrington was always a sort of fantasy anyway, right? Who could like a freak?”

It’s not loud, though it disrupts the quiet Steve thought could never be broken again. He sobs. Wretched and screeching. The tears like a flash flood. His chest caving in. All the sounds escaping him, garbled and messy and drowning. He is drowning. He is different. He’s a freak. And Eddie must know, but not like Nancy does. Or he must have found something, the steno pad. Must’ve talked to Max, something.

He collapses into one of the dining chairs. A heaping mess of blood and skin and bones and meat. Just this. He is this with nothing to explain for it. 

Out of the corner of his eye, though blurry, he sees Eddie stand from his chair. Making some sort of aborted movement. And, without much thinking, Steve scrambles his hands forward, wrapping them tight on Eddie’s forearms, tugging him in too close. Forcing him to stumble into his knobby knees. Fingers still squeezing, fingernails biting into Eddie’s soft skin.

“Hey, whoa, whoa,” Eddie’s whispering, “Stevie, hey.” He crouches down, arms encased in Steve’s terrible hold. It’s almost hard to picture, the space and positions between them. Eddie’s wobbling on his own feet, probably sore and aching on his bad leg. Though, there’s a palm warm on Steve’s cheek. Wiping away at the tears. Trying to, at least; more keep streaming. Fingers carefully scooting into his hairline. Massaging on his scalp, pruning with the cold water in his hair. “Steve,” he murmurs, “hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry. That was—I’m sorry, Steve. I really am. That wasn’t okay.”

He doesn’t know what comes from him next to cause Eddie’s eyes to widen in both surprise and horror, but it must be something awful. A scream. Loud and piercing and high pitched. Shooting from him like a bullet, shattering everything between them. Shrapnel from between his teeth.

Eddie frees from Steve’s grasp, wrapping his arms around his shaking back, bringing him in gently. Rocking him from side to side until he’s only whimpering. Petting down Steve’s hiccuping back. “You’ll be okay,” he whispers against Steve’s ear. “I was being mean. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

Eventually, he pulls back some. Putting a small amount of space between their bodies. Steve is shaking from it all. Unable to do much. Eddie soothes a hand down his left arm. “Tell me what’s going on? How come you’ve been pulling away?”

Steve shakes his head. Placing a tired and limp hand on his throat.

“You lose your voice? Are you sick?” Again, Steve shakes his head. And Eddie goes quiet for a few slow moments. Until, a lightbulb seems to shine bright and shatter over his hair, amber light still causing him to glow, despite it all. He scrambles up off the floor. Squeezes Steve’s shoulders. Lightly says, “Stay here, okay? I’m gonna go find a pen and some paper. Be right back.”

When he’s back at Steve’s chair, the both of them significantly calmer, a brand new steno pad is in his hands. He hands it off with a chewed up ballpoint pen. “Tell me by writing it down.”

And so Steve does. Gives it back. Lets Eddie read his chicken scratch scrawl.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ is the first thing. Followed by, ‘I’ve been like this since I was a little kid. When things get bad or I just don’t have the energy, it’s like my body forgets how to talk.’

“Oh,” Eddie whispers. He blinks at the paper and looks up to Steve. A sad little smile flashes on his face. “Okay, Steve. I—I think I get it. Kind of like when my day gets really busy and then when I go home, I just shut myself in my room and listen to music until I fall asleep. Kinda like that?”

Steve shrugs and reaches for the paper again. Writing, ‘Sort of. But it’s for a long time. Like…You know now. Sometimes I don’t talk for weeks. Sometimes it’s a few hours. But I get like this a lot.’ When he’s finished and Eddie goes to speak again, Steve immediately writes some more. Eddie’s mouth shuts with the soft click of his teeth.

‘Am I really a freak?’ Is what Eddie reads next.

His head shoots up from the paper. Eyes impossibly wider than they’ve ever been. Startled and desperate and unbearably sad. “No,” he murmurs quickly. “No, Steve, you’re not a freak. What makes you think that?”

The pad trembles in Steve’s grasp. He doesn’t want to write it, wouldn’t even want to speak it. But still, he sketches, ’You asked me, “Who could like a freak?”’ He tilts his head at his own words. Ducks back in, his hands shaking too much and his eyes moist. ‘It’s okay if you think so. I’m kind of used to it.’

Eddie snatches the paper from Steve’s offered grip. He swallows heavily and locks eyes with him, they’re still so sad. He wonders if that’s what Eddie’s seeing, too. “Stevie, no,” he whispers. “No, I was talking about myself. I thought you were mad at me. Thought you didn’t like me. I don’t think of you that way.”

Steve nods, sagging with relief. And with it a few tears spring loose from his eyes. A hand softly cups his jaw, thumbing at his fat hot tears. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Not mad,” he forces, his voice like raw, out of the box grits. It hurts, but he swallows. “You are my friend,” he musters before falling silent again.

A soft, sad hum emanates from Eddie. His hand tenses on Steve’s skin, but it holds to him gently, like he never wants to let go. “You’re mine, too, you know that? I’m genuinely sorry for what I said,” Eddie says. The apology sweet and drenching. “That wasn’t okay of me. I’m sorry.”

There’s no words Steve can press from within him. He lays his hand over Eddie’s and squeezes. Eyes now open and darting between Eddie’s own. He pushes their joined hands further into his cheek, sighing with it. Boneless in his chair.

“Okay,” Eddie mutters, “I understand, sweetheart. I get you now.” His thumb soothes more. Petting—caressing Steve in a way that makes his stomach flutter. “We’ll get you through this,” he promises, “I won’t go anywhere.”

💛—————💛

[rin-and-jade]

I'm Definitely Faking: A Post about Self Doubt

Alright, i get it. Many people had done things like these but it won't stop me from taking this topic deeper than anyone had done (as i ever read them too) so, for any of you who are interested, or attempt to find a dedicated answer/discussion around this topic, please and PLEASE read it, you will not regret this.

I'm very sure most of you are doing your usual routine, until a thought strike at you fast as lightning, "wait, what if i'm just faking __", or if you knew something you "shouldn't" (say, being a system) then it makes you spiral down the rabbit hole, right? And it is not beautiful, it's extremely taxing both emotionally and mentally. Nobody wants to lie accidentally to people, what if we're actually fine? How would you know? Are you tricking people to get the attention you never received as a child?? How would you actually know?? And etc. I will tell you how. It will stop those doubts for good.

Where it all started..

First of all, anything can be the starting point to where it all goes down. But, generally speaking i think it stems from how people think of what being a system is like, and i mean it in a personal view. Too rare to have one? Probably faking, Good communication? Faking, aware of other presence of parts? I'm faking, can't switch? Faking again, darn it. You get the idea here, right?

About that crippling doubt of mine..

Why would someone panic when they think they’re faking, when real fakers never gave a fuck? The problem is not on the disorder but more on the lack of proof for certainty,, and because you start to doubt from it, you then think you’re actually faking. I have a few to say about how it attacks, so bare with me:

Tendency to think on extremes When you start to think that having something means needing to suffer for like every single second.. that one minute period of ease and relieve will be the bullet in the gun to trigger a thought of "faking". Getting a better view that, for example how depression means you can laugh or feel good from a comfort show, does not mean you don't have depression due to that particular moment.

Focusing on the wrong dot What if i tell you, that you might be looking at the wrong side? Be it only looking at one side of the coin (biased towards looking for clues to prove yourself wrong, e.g. alters are not distinguishable from each other, and so it means you're not a system) or focusing too much about how other's experience is like and if you don't relate then you're not real, or maybe you have your own assumptions/expectations about how the disorder should look like and when it doesn't meet the criteria.. well.. you know what to say.

"I feel like.." When emotions hits to the roof, logic gets thrown out from the house. Tell me who can think well in stressful moments,, the answer is no one, some can appear more collected or have a higher tolerance before they can panic but you get the point. We all have feelings at the end of the day, no one is unfeeling and no one can escape from it,, i'm not saying you have neglect it, more like i want you to be aware when those said emotions are controlling (more like affecting) your thoughts. Too much of it can throw off the balance in rationality, easier to dismiss proof, and worser decision making. So, if you feel overwhelmed,, make a quick choice on calming yourself down, it will be easier to challenge the worries and negative thoughts once you are aware and actively practicing.

This isn't my first time..

You guessed it. Sometimes one assurance won't do the trick anymore after a few weeks, it comes back with more and more bullets to shoot you down, who says the bullets are gone when someone makes a post about people that their experience is valid? You have to work on yourself, because one day, you will doubt about something people never post and you are alone,, dealing with all the murky thoughts will be less harder, if you follow these tips:

Everyone is different, the disorder never look static and same for everyone. Having a different struggle or way of functioning never equates to being a fraud. Tell yourself that.

Focusing on evidence, not on what you don't experience or have, being a green apple does not make you a pear,, you are still an apple because of its shape and taste and overall appearance. Not just because you're green, it invalidates every other evidence of what counts as an apple.

Throw away all those unhelpful confirmations, you don't need to constantly check wether your other parts are real, you don't need to know having a blackout means you're still not faking, you don't need anything related to this? Because we are going to heal and learn, confirming becomes obsolete,, as things will change, clinging onto an image on how you should be or live like will do no good. Seeking constant assurance does more harm.

Never downplay your own experiences. Easier said than done but i know someone will say right on my face that being beaten up regularly by a father is not that bad to develop trauma or a system (for example) while it darn is. If things are downplayed more often and to many aspects, you will be more prone to thinking that you're "faking". Due to the nature that developing this disorder requires severe and ongoing trauma, and guess what,, trauma comes in all forms.

With this, it will be much easier to accept you have a disorder,, and accept that it's not all black and white, actually this can be applied with anything, but my point is that. Practice more compassion for yourself, by understanding and being aware,, and not resorting to self negativity or elses, this will not be a major problem for you ever again. Also noting that yes its alright to relapse and question everything again, but this time you fight back,, you hear me soldier?

Do you copy that, *walkie-talkie sound*

- j

[coexistentialism]

did anything in particular help u get over denial bc u don’t know much abt your alters? I feel like a silly to think I could have this disorder bc I’m very clueless

Hmm... Other than my diagnosis and generally teaching myself, I'm not entirely sure.

Note here when I say "you" in this post, I'm not directing this at you, Anon, specifically!

Mostly just a lot of research. Like so much research. Please, PLEASE do research - actual research - if and when you can, even if you have to find audiobooks or find alternative ways to research, as long as you are not solely getting your information from social media! Including me man! Do your own research! I am a human being too and I am capable of being wrong! I would LOVE to share places where I research, how I research, etc. if anyone is interested in a post like that.

Talking to other systems, being in (...good..) system spaces, and learning about other systems' experiences, both different and similar to my own. You can browse blog pages, forum posts, Reddit, Tumblr, read books, watch short films made by people with DID/OSDD, find other YouTubers to watch, etc. I can also share a post about some stuff I recommend, like Forums and Reddit posts and blogs.

Throw out OSDD versus DID. I'm so serious. I think some people who question DID/OSDD have treated questioning it like way too seriously and I kinda just wanna go. Who cares man. If you suspect you have DID or OSDD, who cares, just say you suspect DID or OSDD. You. Don't need to narrow it down to one, I promise you it doesn't matter as much as the internet acts like it does. I think the DID criteria could do with changing and to be less restrictive in order to include a wider variety of presentations and experiences. At the end of the day, when somebody says they're an OSDD system, this means SO many different things for SO many different people. You ask one person with OSDD what that means for them and they might have a totally different answer than someone else with OSDD. I just think people should learn to be okay with saying "I suspect DID/OSDD, I don't know which" more often instead of attempting to figure out which one they have. The reason it's so confusing is because OSDD doesn't have criteria. It doesn't have criteria for you to meet and the internet makes shit up about OSDD, so you get fed misinformation about it and things don't add up and don't make sense because it's misinformation. So just throw this out and learn to be okay with not knowing whether it's DID or OSDD. It's okay. You don't have to narrow it down. Relax NFDKJASKD

Tips:

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ANYTHING THAT YOU READ ABOUT DID/OSDD ONLINE THAT YOU FOUND HELPFUL - SAVE IT SOMEWHERE! I promise you will want to look back at them and read them over and over again several times and each time you do, you will realize things you hadn't before. So often, I've gone back and read research papers that I've read in the past, or books, etc. and found that I understood them much better, that they made me realize a lot more about myself, etc. than the first time I read them. Or the second time, or the third time, etc.

Lots and lots of journaling, even if you think it's useless/pointless, even if you think it's unhelpful, even if you don't understand the point. I did not understand how journaling would help me figure out my alters because I was expecting myself to magically find something written there like the next day with no memory of it, and it. Does not fuckign work that way LMFAO at least not for most people. I was expecting the wrong thing, I was assuming that that was the indicators of switching I was looking for, that I was supposed to communicate to my alters in that way, but I knew that that wasn't an experience I would have, and I obviously didn't experience it, so I didn't understand the point. It soon became clear how wrong I was NFKSDNFJKADNKJDASF

It's okay to be ""cringe."" It's okay to be ""weird."" Let yourself be weird as Hell. Let yourselves be "cringey." It's okay. Be free. NFDJFNKDSA

Allow your experiences to Just Be. You don't have to figure out if that experience was a switch right now, you don't have to figure out if that voice you heard was Truly An Alter right now, I just mean that you don't have to overthink it and you can allow your experiences to simply happen and then analyze them later. It's okay. Even if they are weird, even if they are cringey, even if they're embarrassing. I mean, so long as no-one is harmed, but even in that case, it's okay to put safety measures into place, or find alternatives, find coping skills, or if something harmful has already happened, to attempt to mend it, and analyze things later, etc. Things will come to you as long as you let them, but you won't be able to figure things out if you refuse to allow experiences to simply happen instead of overthinking it, like I used to do where I constantly just felt like "but that's not truly an alter, so-" and just refused to let things Just Happen.

Most importantly: take your time. seriously. this is a process that can - unfortunately - agonizingly take several years. but the pay-off is worth it and when you start to feel that denial lessen, you will look back and feel as if no time as passed (or is that the dissociation NFJDASNFK

I think that's about everything I can think of so far!

[wordsandrobots]

For the writer ask meme: 3, 7, 14, 16, 20, 27, 34, 35, 40, 44, 61, 74 (❛ں❛ )✧

From the 'Get to know your fic writer!' ask game.

3) Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

Typically, I'll start with the overall structure. Where the section breaks go, short summaries (maybe just a couple of phrases) of the contents of each section, placing any scenes I've already started in their proper context, and establishing where I'll swap to a different character, if I'm doing that. Then I'll most likely start at the top and write it through to the end. I can write chapters out of order but find it easiest to take each individual chapter in narrative order. Sometimes I'll have pieces I'm joining up, though, so it's not always a strictly linear process.

And then when I'm done, I'll go over it again and again until I'm happy, cutting the text down to what is absolutely necessary to get my point across: I overwrite a lot on first draft, so there'll always be pruning to do!

7) How do you choose which POV to write from?

Switching character point of view is usually a structural conceit: I'll use it to guide the reader through the different angles of a situation, slowly filling in their understanding of what is going on. It's a great method for creating cliffhangers and sudden twists without being cheap (there will always be an explanation, but POV management allows me to keep it in reserve until the correct moment).

But sometimes there are parts of the story or emotional beats that only make sense from a particular character's perspective. Which is not always the one who is experiencing the beat directly, mind you. When I decided to have show what the new Ryusei-Go was capable of in Fata Morgana, it was because I thought that would be most impactful from an outside POV. Yeah, that's a really intense moment for the pilots, but by showing it at a remove, I was able to focus on how preternaturally effective the combination of developed skill and fine-tuned machine really was -- underscoring the thread throughout Wishing on Space Hardware of how damn scary Tekkadan's legacy is for everyone outside their bubble.

14) how do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

I don't exactly feel what the characters feel. They're not really feeling anything, they're words on a page. What I'm generally doing instead is looking for the right words and tempo to hit the pitch of an emotion. It's almost like music, I think, in that emotions have a rhythm to them that alters the character voice, and it's a question of tuning the scene until it conveys the right quality. Even something as simple as how the sentences are laid out can have an impact on that.

So for me, it's an exercise in finding the best combination of tricks and description to hit the note I want to convey. And yeah, a part of that is always going to be drawing on my own experiences and trying to capture what those feelings were like. But that's not always as helpful as you'd think. I happen to know exactly what cold fury feels like, for example, but I'm not sure I could describe it beyond simply saying 'cold fury'. That being said, sometimes that's OK. We have these common turns of phrase for a reason, and coupled to the right cues, they can be very powerful.

16) How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

Lots of ideas, always, but functionally I am currently working on two things. One is just -- all the Yamagi/Shino/+ smut I can think of and think is worth actually attempting to write. Currently a prospective six chapters of various lengths, a variety of situations and additional factors. It'll hopefully be a good time!

The second is, surprisingly, not the mooted Wishing on Space Hardware future-fic. That's still percolating as I try to draw together my ideas on it into something concrete. No, I got hit by the urge to invent some entirely new OCs and have them do a heist story.

The basic concept is a twin brother and sister who join a military company some years before everything kicks off with Tekkadan. They have the Alaya-Vijnana surgery and while it works for the sister, the brother is left paralysed from the waist down ala Bilth. Their dynamic follows from this with them swearing to do absolutely everything to stay together (this group isn't the CGS and doesn't throw out the 'failures' but they are not expected to survive long), with the brother, Kais, eventually becoming a strategist while the sister, Inas, being the obligatory a mobile suit pilot. Fast-forward to three or four years after Tekkadan's final stand and they're planning to rob Gjallarhorn on the eve of Martian independence.

I think it'll fun to explore* and ease me back into writing for characters the reader won't automatically know everything about, after several years of just doing fanfic.

*Bear in mind that 'fun' here involves me looking up the Bolivian Army Ending trope, so pitch your expectations accordingly.

20) Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

I'm quite fond of a smile that isn't a smile, or isn't quite a smile. I have a thing for performative characters, and the act of shaping oneself to a particular end in general, which leads to toying with what an expression mechanically is and what it is actually conveying. Smiles are just the lowest-hanging branch there, since they are very easy to turn unsettling.

Themes . . . well, I'm not not making a habit of poking at the wider political implications of settings, either to jab at what they're saying or just to find the potential plot-hooks that fall out of events, that the original piece of media didn't find time to explore. It wouldn't be accurate to say I set out to produce political fics: I like the aesthetic of political manoeuvring more than I care to write tracts. But I do enjoy thinking through the hows and whys of a fictional society, and contrasting different levels within it.

And if it can be called a common setting, then I will be found writing exclusively in the one from canon. I just don't really do AUs, certainly not the kind that transpose characters somewhere vastly different. If I like something, I will generally like it on its own terms. I think it's an admirable skill to be able to pull off setting or genre transposition in a way that makes sense, but I'm not interested in trying it myself.

27) What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

I'm not sure how to answer that.

For least, it's less any one task and more reaching the point of having done it so often that I get fed up with it. I will edit until I'm sick of the sight of my own words, or wear myself out of writing for spells at a time. But neither of them are tasks I find onerous in their own right.

For most . . . I think I just like being in the flow of writing, whatever particular task I'm working on at the time.

34) Five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer?

Not a damn clue. Better than I am now, hopefully. That's all I can wish for.

35) What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain? 

That they're people too.

Proper villains, those who deserve the title and aren't merely antagonistic forces, should act with the same level of interiority and depth as protagonists. They should have desires and motivations, aims they want to achieve and personalities that shape their actions.

They can absolutely be shallow, vain and cruel, but those are all things real people can be and it's always worth asking, as you would of any other character, 'how did they get to be this way?'

Nobody wakes up one day deciding to be evil. There's always a yesterday that made it seem like the best option.

40) If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

Aye aye. Coming from the person who's done the most (i.e. any) art influenced by my writing, I can't help feel this is a loaded question! :)

Honestly, there's a whole bunch of characters I'd love to be able to draw myself, or failing that, get commissioned one day. Almiria's gang in particular -- I know Almiria's costume looks like a mix of McGillis-as-general and Relena from Gundam Wing in her Sanc Kingdom outfit, and that Almiria grown-up takes after Gaelio, but it'd be nice to be able to render that in something like IBO's actual style. Similarly with things like post-everything Shino (purple jacket and all), Yamagi in the pilot-suit with short hair, or the Goibniu pilots. I think I just want to be able to draw anime stuff at all, honestly!

Scenes though . . . hmm. For the purposes of structuring my thoughts, I'm going to take liberties and go through all of WoSH in order to see if I can work out which scenes I'd like to see the most.

A Handful of Rusted Petals: Almiria and Bael.

The Grandmaster: This doesn't actually have any non-canon scenes per se, but I'd be interested in what someone might draw based off it, as a concept.

To Catch a Falling Star: Any (all?) of the reunion scenes.

Fragments of You/Pieces of Me: The end scene in bed, where Shino is asking if Yamagi just made a dick joke (he 100% did).

Let Sleeping Angels Lie: Eugene walking in on Shino while Shino is topless and showing Sri his arm.

Between Family: Again, the final scene, mostly for grumpy!Yamagi puncturing the heartfelt conversation.

The Ares Affair: The moment Ride shows up.

The Haunting of Takaki Uno: Takaki confronting Elion, specifically when he asks directly about Galan Mossa.

Frozen Sunlight: The Turbines' games-night.

Of Obsessions and Erotemes: Iverson in cold storage, looking at the bodies.

Revolution for Beginners and Polyamory for Dumbasses: The training scene with Trow, Ride and Hirume. (There's obviously a bunch of stuff in this, but I think that's the one I'd enjoy seeing.)

Under a Crescent Moon: Just anything with Ordsley struggling with everything.

Eugene Sevenstark and the Hesperus Treasure: Oh, the moment everyone has to run away from an avalanche of Haros, absolutely.

Hope Against Hope: The scene with the mirror, I think.

Love, Death and Cannoli: Probably Shino being dumbstruck by Yamagi in the pilot-suit (though I am very fond of Shino getting bullied by the Turbine kids, too).

Fata Morgana: Argi dealing with a drunk Kim.

We Three Kings: Oooo. I can't choose for this one. At a certain point, this is all a series of really big important moments. Probably the fight in the office or the confrontation in the council chamber, if we have to narrow it down, though there's also Lin and Almiria.

History of a Catastrophe: Embi and Asher in the garden, definitely.

Ragnarök in G Minor: Oh, you, specifically, will absolutely know it when we get there. (But also this one is chock full of climactic confrontations so there's dozens I'd love to see in image form!)

Day in the Light: Not posted it yet, but the penultimate scene of WoSH is a very fun one that I'd love to see drawn.

44) What mistakes do you keep making no matter how many times your beta corrects you?

Most often cludging a sentence in the edit. I have a bad habit of missing words, or otherwise reading what I think is one the page, so it's nice to have someone to catch those!

61) Why do you continue writing fics?

You can . . . stop writing them?

74) You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

I think it'd basically include all the answers to question 20. Bonus points for extended exposition scenes that double as character interactions, doppelgangers of some description, and being a post-canon continuation.

-----

Phew! Thanks for asking and asking so many!

[scriptlgbt]

I'm writing a story and I'd like to how trans people get/treat STDs. If they haven't had bottom surgery is it no different than someone with those parts who is cis? But if they have, what differences are there? How about someone with no genitals?

In general it's pretty much the same as it would be for cis people. Bloodwork and a urine sample are the standard, and aren't really any different based on what someone's genitalia is like.

Pap smears and other sorts of exams can be dysphoria inducing as well, and there's some situation where it may be difficult to use a speculum because of atrophy (which can be for all sorts of reasons, hormones, vaginismus, imperforate hymen, intersex stuff). And people whose vaginas are surgically constructed don't typically have a cervix, so pap smears don't really get done as far as I know. (Sometimes speculums are used for other things though, like making sure everything is healing right, trimming or removing stitches from surgery, etc.)

But for the most part, the differences for STI testing specifically are mostly social, and can go different ways based on who is administering the test. Pap smears are in particular stressful for trans people who may have genitalia that's been altered by hormones. (I know it's irrational but the worry about getting a boner during a pap test, for instance, has crossed my mind a lot.)

Some other testing can be thrown for a loop because of the way procedure etiquette works. I had to have a transvaginal ultrasound once to check for ovarian cysts and there were definitely parts of it that were weird for me. (Transvaginal ultrasounds involve the ultrasound wand going inside the front hole for an accurate reading of specific parts of the reproductive system.) For instance, the ultrasound tech was a cis man and as part of their protocol, a cis woman nurse had to be in the room while I underwent this procedure. I hadn't asked about that ahead of time or really thought anything about it - I was in the emergency room trying to get to the bottom of extreme abdominal pain and I figured I could endure what I needed to. But in an ideal world, I'd be able to ask for a non cis person to be in the room with me I think. (I came in an ambulance, which would not take my partner with me.) (It turned out to be a 4mm kidney stone by the way, no ovarian cysts.)

Another anecdote that may be relevant to this topic is that sometimes doctors get weird about not knowing what you're testing for, because they don't know what body parts you have (and which were added at what points, made of what material). Prior to the transvaginal ultrasound, a doctor asked me what "chromosomes" I had. I honestly told him I did not know, I hadn't ever had a karyotype test as far as I knew. The doctor stumbled over himself a lot and I don't remember what else he said right after that, other than he was fumbling, got corrected, and that he was clearly Trying His Best. I interrupted the second or third useless question with, "are you asking if I have ovaries in case it might be a burst ovarian cyst or something?"

He was instantly relieved and said yes, so I told him.

There's a big problem I've noticed, that when people talk about these sorts of topics, they aren't specific enough in order to address what they mean. We use euphemisms like "assigned female" because people don't know that someone "assigned female" can have literally any body type. People seem afraid to name body parts, so they use euphemisms that rely on stereotypes and assumptions in order to be understood. But when you realize that people "assigned female" can be intersex, can have hysterectomies, can have testes, can have phalloplasties, and that everyone's parts are more or less analogous (skenes gland = prostate, etc), you realize how useless these broad categories are. If you want to ask if someone could carry a pregnancy, ask if they could carry a pregnancy. Not if they have certain chromosomes or were DFAB. Specifics matter. If I knew I was XY, that doctor would probably have assumed that the pattern of people with XY chromosomes not menstruating would include me. And if I did have ovarian cysts, or even a pregnancy, this could have dramatically impacted my health outcomes. (There have been stillbirths because of situations like this where people did not act fast enough because of ignorance around trans bodies.) I could have given in and guessed my chromosomes when the doctor asked, but what if my answer turned out to not be true? And what if the lack of confidence in my answer saved my life in some way?

I realize this is pretty far deviated from your original topic, but in terms of testing difficulties, it does feel like the sort of anecdote that would be very informative about these issues.

- mod nat

[superbattrash]

Clark accidentally slips a comment about how Bruce looks adorable or cute or something and Bruce is infuriated by the fact that Clark thinks has thought of him as cute this whole time and gives a long ass Batman speech about “i am the night” and such🗿 Bruce is used to being called sexy or handsome but never cute!

It doesn’t manage to change Clark’s mind

Also this is my fav tumblr page ever ( ^ω^ )

Hi anon. Thank you so much :’) I’m glad you enjoy my page! 

This was just a short little scene I thought of, I hope this is somewhat near what you had in mind. If you’ve got anymore ideas or prompts, feel free to send them my way :D <3

"You're so cute when you're all focused like this,” Clark says, chin resting on his fist. He’s been staring at Bruce for a good fifteen minutes. He doesn’t mean to comment but it just slips out.

Bruce turns his head from the papers in front of him – he likes the feel of a case in his hands even though he can do everything digitally these days – and stares at Clark for a solid ten seconds. It’s tough to say due to the lenses, but Clark’s pretty sure he doesn’t blink.

"Excuse me?” Bruce eventually splutters as he leans back in his chair. “Cute?"

"Oh, shoot, sorry,” Clark is quick to say. He holds up his hands in surrender and goes for his most Bruce-calming smile. “I know we're not supposed to mix personal and League business. No one heard though, I don't think-"

"That is not my issue with this,” Bruce interrupts. “What do you mean by cute?"

The way Bruce says it makes it sound like Clark has just called him short. Or out of shape. Something vaguely insulting at the very least. Clark replays his own words in his head one, twice. It takes him less than half a second, but he still doesn’t get why Bruce looks so upset. He decides to try for honesty, it’s usually the best strategy when dealing with Bruce.

"What do you mean what do I mean?” He says and then explains further, because Bruce still looks like he’s smelling something bad. “You're cute. Adorable."

"Ado-" Bruce slams his mouth shut. "Is that seriously how you see me?"

"Well." Clark frowns. "Yea?"

"I am Batman," Bruce says, as if that’s response enough to have Clark swallowing his own words and beg for forgiveness. Bruce often tries this tactic, but Clark knows better. ‘I’m Batman’, please. Clark rolls his eyes. Not this again.

"I know, B,” he says, making sure not to sound mocking. While the rogues Bruce fights every night may fear the mere mention of Bruce’s alter ego, it takes a little more to rile Clark up. Especially when the big and scary Batman is acting like a child that got told no.

"I literally spend my nights going around Gotham and stopping criminals. Murderers," Bruce enunciates clearly, like Clark is a little slow today.

"Yes, but I-"

"I am feared by everyone, people barely dare look at me, even the ones I save, Clark,” Bruce continues. He’s pushed the chair back and has started pacing the floor. Oh no, this is another one of his Speeches. Clark should’ve known better. “I blend in with the shadows, I take down supervillains, I live and breathe darkness, I am the night."

"Bruce-"

"And you think I'm 'cute'?"

"I didn't mean to offend you but come on,” Clark says. He’s starting to worry the others will hear them. He can already tell from their movements that they’re aware there’s a discussion happening. “You're more than Batman.”

“I-”

“You are,” Clark stops him. “While I love- while I know the bat is very important to you and to Gotham, that’s not all that you are.”

“I know,” Bruce huffs and crosses his arms. There’s a slight tilt to his lips though, so he’s not actually upset. “I’m handsome, I’m rich, I’m sexy.”

He is. Clark has told him several times, repeatedly, panted it into his neck, whispered it softly in his ear. At least Bruce knows to keep his voice down enough for the rest of the team not to hear that particular piece of information. The others know that Superman and Batman are dating, but they don’t have to know all the details, if Clark has anything to say about it.

“You are all of those,” Clark agrees easily. “But you are also cute.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Bruce mutters.

“The way you scrunch your nose when you think nobody’s watching because you really should be wearing your reading glasses. Or the way you pick the pickles out of your burger but won’t actually order one without them. Or the way you are with the kids or any kids for that matter. When you raid the kitchen for a shred of cheese. Or-“

“Alright, alright!” Bruce holds his hands up to quiet Clark down. “That’s enough already, I get it.”

He sits down at the table again and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“See?” Clark can’t help but tease. “Cute.”

“I’m an old man, Clark,” Bruce tries. Whenever the ‘I’m Batman’ doesn’t work, he pulls out the age card. The cheater. “You’re merely blinded by your feelings.”

“So you’re old,” Clark says, just to see the insulted look on Bruce’s face. “Doesn’t change the fact that you’re adorable. So sweet, so kind, so cute. My eyes work just fine, as opposed to yours.” He knows he’s pushing it, but he can see the red tint spread over Bruce’s cheeks and he’s never been able to resist Bruce’s blushing face.

“Will you shut up?” Bruce grumbles.

“Why don’t you come over here and make me, old man?” Now, Clark knows he shouldn’t tease Bruce like this. But he’s made sure the others are gone before he starts. J’onn is a saint for merely sighing and shooing people out of the adjoining rooms when Clark sends him a silent request. There’s no reason for Diana or Hal to walk in on them… again.

[leebrontide]

Secondhand Origin Stories, Chapter 1

I'm posting a chapter a week till we're done, as I prepare book 2 in the series for release!

For details about the book, an index of chapters, and content warnings check out the information post!

Chapter 1

Opal shifted in the hard plastic chair in the humid, cinderblock room, leaning to peer past the scratched riot glass to the door beyond. Two half-cubicles down, a woman was arguing with her husband through the g1lass, tears on her face. Opal was pretty sure she’d passed the woman here a few times before. Most of the inmates at this facility were in for the long haul. A lot of them were altereds from the same line as her dad. You got to recognize the people that actually kept up their visits, for as far as the prison was from the city.

The door opened, and Opal leaned a little further forward, forehead to the glass. She grinned. Maybe it was a little forced, but she always had to show him she was at least OK enough to fake it. This visit more than ever. She let her dark skin light up with the flitting little pink bioluminescent lights he’d recognize as a good mood, but waited until he was close enough that she wouldn’t have to yell before she actually used words. The guards didn’t like it when they used ASL, but his cochlear implant was ancient by now, and fritzed out a lot. “Hi, daddy.” 

She was 18. Too old to call him ‘daddy,’ really, and she would’ve looked weird to anyone watching. Opal was dense and well-muscled. She looked like some kind of hardcore weightlifter. Not someone who called her father ‘daddy,’ collected pretty stationary, and liked reading romances from the 1700s. But as long as they kept their voices low and conversational, and avoided gestures, nobody cared what they were saying. Everyone here was used to Nick Flynn, his bio-lights like the briefest flares of stars against the almost midnight black of his skin. Most of the Detroit line altereds had bioluminescence, which meant a lot of the inmates had it. Opal, with her wide-set black eyes, squared jaw, and high cheekbones, could not have been any more obviously his daughter.

He offered her a bright smile, not quite as forced as hers. “There’s my graduate! How’s it feel?” The smile dimmed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t--”

“Quit it,” she interrupted. She didn’t like to disrespect him by interrupting, but it turned her stomach every time he apologized for not being at home where he wanted to be. She didn’t want to be the reason he regretted what he’d done to end up here. She tried to lighten the mood. “Anyways, I’m bringing the experience to you.”

He raised his eyebrows. She wasn’t allowed to bring her phone or any electronics in with her, so she couldn’t show him the low-res video of her particular dot among the 2,000 other dots in a line getting their pieces of paper. But she was allowed to bring in a clear plastic backpack, sold especially for prison visits. She unzipped it, pulling out the slightly dented mortarboard hat she’d retrieved off the grass after she returned her own graduation hat to the rental place. His grin lit back up as she put it on her head and paused to pose, showing it off. “I have brought you your very own recent-history reenactment.”

He slow-clapped, leaning back in his chair, a faint hint of pink flitting across his features. 

“First, we sat through two hours of speeches.” She leaned back suddenly in her chair, staring up at the ceiling as if boredom could actually kill her. The hat almost fell off. She sat back up. “Then they started calling names.” She pretended to be excited for a second, then drooped back again, slower this time. “Then, the big highlight of the day--” She schooled her expression into polite, attentive interest, turning to the side as if there was actually someone there. She mimed taking the diploma before recreating the fast, sweaty handshake she’d gotten. She nodded a thanks at the invisible principal, then looked back at her dad, sitting back in her chair again. “And that was the big, exciting day.”

“You forgot throwing your hat,” he pointed out. 

She shook her head, taking the rumpled thing off. “Hat-throwing was punishable by fines and being ejected from the ceremony. Can’t have anyone losing an eye to this terrifying weapon.”

He looked dismayed. “You serious?”

She smiled ruefully, nodding. 2,154 students graduating. Apparently that was too much hat chaos for the school’s higher-ups. He sighed in aggravation. “That’s bullshit.”

She laughed.  “Well, you can write them a nasty letter.”

“Think I’ll wait ’till after your sister graduates to piss them off.”

“She and Aunt Tessa will be out next weekend.”

“Why didn’t you just wait and come out with them?”

Her gut did a little flip, and she licked her lips. She didn’t let the nervous violet lights flare up around her temple like they wanted to. But he knew the tell, and sat up straighter. “I got a bunch of money from Grandma and everybody at my graduation party. I priced it out. With what I already saved, I’ve got enough for a bus to Chicago, plus living expenses for two months, and a bus home, if I need it.”

His eyes snapped shut, and he stopped breathing for a second. She held her breath with him. They’d both known this was coming. She’d just expected it to take longer. Dim purples and yellows, almost invisible under his skin, shimmered anxiously, but disappeared as he exhaled. He didn’t have the kind of deliberate control over the lights that Opal and her sister did. When he opened his eyes, he nodded. “OK. Bigger day than I thought, then.”

She didn’t know what to say. “Yep.”

He nodded again, eyes slipping off to the side. He wouldn’t look down in front of her. He looked back at her. “You remember, baby. If they don’t take you, that’s on them. Not you. Don’t go taking any stupid risks to impress them. They aren’t worth that.”

“You are.”

This time his smile was tight. “Forget that. I’m a man. I can make do on my own.”

It was an old argument, but she was sucked into it, the same as ever. “You shouldn’t have to.” She didn’t raise her voice. She’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

He scowled, shifting uncomfortably. “Don’t start. You do this for you if you’re gonna do it. Nobody else.”

“Tch. Pretty bad superhero if I do it for myself.”

“Well, don’t do it for me.”

“I’ll do it because I can,” she said. She’d dreamed of being a superhero her whole life. It’d just taken on a different urgency after her daddy was arrested. 

“Gonna be a while before I see you, then.”

“I included the phone charges in my budget. You can call me whenever.” It was harder to fake being cheerful now. She didn’t really want to. “If it goes good, I’ll have money to visit before too long.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. For all either of them knew, it’d be years before she saw him again. And email wasn’t allowed at this facility anymore. Phone calls were an inconsistent “privilege.” She changed the subject. “Gonna miss you.”

“Miss you too. But I’m proud of you. Do your best, baby.”

She bit her lip, and made herself smile, even if she knew he could see tears in her eyes. 

She’d save lives, use the abilities she’d inherited from him for good, and use the fame and respect from her position to do something about the conditions for people like her daddy. There were too many of them.

Opal was going to be a superhero.

* * *

Issac woke up with a crick in his neck and corduroy stripes imprinted onto his face, as the saxophone wail he’d trained himself to wake up to blared from his phone. He didn’t answer it-- didn’t need to. Martin was listening. He rubbed his face, squinting in the daylight he could have sworn wasn’t there a second ago. “Wh-- shit. What time is it?”

Martin didn’t need sleep. Which made him even more of an obnoxiously chipper morning person than Yael. “Almost breakfast time.”

“You let me sleep for two hours?”

“Why not? Your essays and applications were already sent. The work on the nanites can wait.”

The trashier gossip blogs called Issac a “super-genius.” Which was inaccurate. As the kid of an altered, his genes had been scanned before birth. Just like his biological sister, his genes were totally unaffected by the procedure that turned his dad into LodeStar: Leader of the Sentinels. 

Those gossipy blogs almost never even mentioned that his mom had a doctorate in biomedicine and an MBA. Issac knew who he took after. Dad might be the leader of the Sentinels, but Mom and Aunt Jenna had built the super-powered cybernetic limbs that had brought LodeStar to the next level. Had given him flight, and kept him in the field longer than any other superhero.

And now Issac was going to follow in their footsteps. The nanites he was making would be the game-changer for brain injury treatment. The ability to repair damaged neurons according to pre-made programs. They weren’t quite ready yet-- his micro-fabricator sat silent on Jenna’s dining room table-- but they were well on their way.

Issac did deserve to get some sleep. It’d be good for his brain.

He rolled over, trusting the amped-up microphone on his phone to pick up his voice, even half-smothered against the back of the couch. That was the only way Martin could hear him in here-- Jenna’s old apartment was a dead zone for the speakers and microphones Martin used for communication everywhere else in the family home. “Tell Mom I’m not coming to breakfast.”

“I’m sure that’ll go over well,” Martin answered from Issac’s phone. Why had Issac taught him sarcasm?

“She’s the one who told me to get my college application essay done ASAP!” he argued, flinging one arm out in a gesture exhaustion turned into a limp flail. His knuckle brushed crinkled paper shoved under the couch. He ignored it. He was used to ignoring all the little leftover reminders of why Jenna’s apartment was empty.

“About that--”

Issac opened his eyes, glaring into deep blue corduroy. “Don’t even start. You already sent them out. Spare me the lecture about ‘inappropriate subject matter.’ It’s too late.” 

As a synthetic intelligence with zero biological components, Martin didn’t have lungs. But that didn’t keep him from sighing. Issac interrupted Martin’s lecture before he even got going. They’d been over this the night before. And the day before that. Issac sat up, rubbing feeling back into an arm that seemed even less happy about being awake than he was. “We’re about to revolutionize like five fields of medicine and micro-robotics, Martin. If you think I’m going to just not mention that to colleges--”

Martin interrupted right back. “I was going to tell you there’s been a miscommunication. Your father’s voiced plans to join you this morning for breakfast, to help you with the essay. It seems your mother didn’t intend for you to stay up all night finishing them, and then send them off without either of your parents looking them over.”

Issac blinked, then lay back down, and moaned his objection into a throw pillow. It wasn’t like Issac hated his dad. He wouldn’t keep his little display case of LodeStar action figures in his room if he hated the guy. It was just that Issac was stubborn and brilliant, and his dad was pigheaded and bossy. Pigheaded and bossy were fine traits for the leader of the oldest and most respected superhero team in the US, but it made for a lot of lecturing for anyone caught in a subordinate role like “son.”

“Four more months,” Issac reminded himself. He took a deep breath. “Just four months, then I’m getting the hell out of Dodge.” He gave in. Swung his legs off the couch with resignation. Mom had given up on banning him from all-nighters, but he was expected to show up at breakfast, come hell or high water. And he couldn’t be caught leaving his aunt’s supposedly empty old apartment. He could only get away with using this place at all because Martin was the building’s security system, and Issac had talked him into it.

Issac ran his fingers through his sleep-tangled mass of brown curls. He’d better get home before Mom asked where he was. Martin couldn’t lie. He could obfuscate with the best of them, but he couldn’t lie.

Issac didn’t know what would happen to Martin when Issac left for college. Issac was the only one who realized what Martin was-- not just an advanced, learning security system, but a genuine synthetic intelligence, the most sentient and complete in the world. Kept secret only because Issac could lie, and because Martin had pleaded with him not to tell anyone what he really was-- a person. Jenna had been gone by the time Issac had figured it out. And Martin hadn’t really been... this... before then.

Issac got up to wash the coffee mug he kept in here, unplugging the flash drive that held his data and shoving it in his pocket. He used Jenna’s old apartment as a refuge, but he touched as little as possible, and never left a mess. 

“Aren’t you going to be lonely when I leave?” Issac knew Martin’s code better than anyone but Martin himself, at this point. Martin was programed to be interested in, and invested in, people. In the eight years since his first activation, that imperative had grown into real social impulses. He sent Issac interesting articles and funny memes throughout the day, dropping them into his email when Issac was occupied or accompanied.

Since Martin’s substantial electronic “brain” lived in the central column of the Sentinel Plaza, and what passed for his “body” was 24 stories tall, Issac was pretty sure Martin would find it hard to attend classes or keggers. Issac’s research partner wasn’t coming with him.

“I can acquire phone lines. I’ll call you.”

Issac tried to lighten the mood. “What, are you afraid my dad will try to adopt you, and you’ll be stuck with his little speeches forever? You’re only eight, Martin,” he chided, wagging a finger. “You should have proper parental supervision.”

The joke fell flat, as he reminded them both that Jenna, who’d originally made Martin, wasn’t here to take care of him like she should have been. Issac set the mug down and headed back to the couch, but Martin’s tone was musing, not hurt. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that. If we conceptualize Jenna as my mother…Then really, as the other person who ‘raised’ me--” Issac stopped dead, not liking where this was going. “You could be reasonably be described as my father.”

No. Nope. There was so much wrong with that. Like how he considered Jenna a mentor, nearly a parent, and did not have a kid with her. Like how Issac was all of 10 when Martin was activated. Like how Issac didn’t want to be described as a teen father, even if the “kid” was a 24-story supercomputer with a smart mouth and an impressively nuanced understanding of neuroplasticity. 

Like how Issac was leaving, and if Martin was his son, what did that make Issac for going?

Damn it, he was operating on two hours of sleep and hadn’t had his morning coffee yet. He was not up to dealing with this. He tried to settle his breathing, glad that from here, Martin couldn’t detect Issac’s suddenly soaring blood pressure. “Don’t get mushy on me, twerp. You’ll fry your circuits with that sap.”

He grabbed his phone and headed out the door, back into the central courtyard, where Martin couldn’t answer him without being overheard. Issac wasn’t ready for that conversation.

* * *

Jamie poked her cereal unenthusiastically. Mom always poured her way, way too much. As if enough healthy cereal could make Jamie grow the way 16-year-olds were supposed to. Maybe make up for the growing her 15-year-old self had neglected. It was a hope Jamie theoretically shared, but she suspected any growing she had left to do was likely to disappoint.

Light streamed in through the bank of picture windows, glinting off a 24th story Chicago skyline, ricocheting off various gleaming marble and glass surfaces in her home, and poking her right in the eye. She squinted, tilting her head the other way, only to get a different ray bouncing off her dad’s bionic arm and into her other eye. Would it kill him to get some sleeves? She decided looking down at her cereal was her only safe option. 

He was 54 years old, fully old enough to have given up on tank tops. But, being age-stable, he looked like he was in his mid-20s, barely older than Issac. His curling brown hair hadn’t shown a single strand of gray that Jamie could see. He had proportions that bordered on ridiculous, with the top half of him forming a shape like a generous pizza slice with a head and arms. Granted, part of that build was due to the way his cybernetic arms mimicked body-builder arms, but that didn’t make Neil Voss look any less like a bizarrely stylized old-school comic book character.

Mom poured herself another coffee. Mom was elegant, if not exactly pretty-- tall and still slim at 56, with high cheekbones and perfectly manicured eyebrows. Jamie guessed she was considered reasonably good-looking for her age, but good-looking like a person, not like a cartoon. Mom had on a dove gray suit, heels that put her at or above the eye level of most men, and the graying version of Jamie’s fine strawberry blonde hair pulled up into a sleek ponytail. Her manicure and makeup were flawless, and carefully curated to be the classic versions of current trends.

Jamie had managed one of her brother’s old flannels over a baggy t-shirt, cargo pants, and ballet flats. She owned plenty of makeup, but she only wore it for special occasions, since she still couldn’t get close to applying it as well as her mom did, and there really wasn’t anyone here to notice or care. Her little kit was mostly an array of concealers in shades between paper-white and manila, and looked more like a filing cabinet than anything. She kept her hair short enough that she didn’t have to fuss with it much, but had at least tried to pick a cool-ish cut.  

Jamie eyed the coffee pot enviously as her dad poured himself another cup. Jamie was the only resident of the whole building whose place setting was never graced with a coffee mug. Just a couple caffeine-induced palpitations and everybody had to panic about it. “I bet I could work up to being able to drink coffee. I could start with mostly milk and a little coffee, and build up a tolerance.”

Mom raised an eyebrow. “You don’t even like coffee. You make faces every time I give you a sip of mine.”

Well, that was hardly the point. “Issac didn’t used to like coffee. Now he drinks like six cups a day,” Jamie pointed out.

Dad’s tone was so gentle, it felt brittle. “Issac doesn’t have the same sensitivities as you.” Jamie couldn’t get over the way he seemed to think he was breaking bad news to her every single time he brought up her health issues. As if, wow, gee, she hadn’t noticed any of them before now. 

Now that she thought about it, maybe Dad had been the main person fussing over her pulse the last time she’d tried coffee. He was probably at the heart of the conspiracy to deny her the caffeine the rest of the country ran on. 

She could almost swear he didn’t used to be like this. He didn’t used to treat her like a bundle of liabilities. He even used to say that Jamie was just like him. But it seemed like the older she got, the younger she looked to him.

Jamie went back to poking her cereal. Family breakfast was as close to a sacred ritual as her gentile mom got. Picking fights was absolutely not allowed. 

Mom handled the subject change for her. “Speaking of sensitivities, how are Talon’s girls doing? I heard Anna was in for chemo again.”

Jamie was content to switch topics. Altereds from every line-- every type of alteration-- were prone to strange, obscure health problems, since they had bodily systems normal people didn’t. Talon was on the Santa Fe superhero team. Like Dad, he had super-healing. Unlike Dad, he’d passed his superpowers on to his kids. 

Most of the other kids of superheroes had superpowers. And most of them were younger than Jamie-- young enough to think Jamie was cool just because she was a little older, even though she dressed bad, never went anywhere, and never did anything. Jamie moderated a little closed book-club forum for them, since a lot of them were as bored and isolated as Jamie was. None of them were allowed on social media. Most of them went to online schools. And a lot of them weren’t lucky enough to have siblings in their families’ bases. Jamie didn’t usually care about books for 12-year-olds, but it was a small, easy thing she could do for them. “I don’t think she even minds anymore. Last time she only stayed for about two weeks. She just saved up a few shows to marathon and finished the book club book early.” Jamie sincerely tried not to be envious of a sick 12-year-old. But Anna bounced back from cancer and chemotherapy faster than Jamie could shake a stomach flu. 

Mom and dad both shook their heads, frowning. Mom tapped her plum-colored nails on the white marble of the kitchen peninsula while dad tried to reorganize the universe by frowning, with superhuman strength, at his fork. “Thank G-d you and Issac are healthy.” 

Jamie heard that a lot. The assumption was that she herself would pick her current body over an altered version. She didn’t think anyone had ever actually asked her if she’d trade in generalized frailty for super strength, speed, endurance and healing, even if it came with greater risk of serious complications. She was pretty sure she’d get a lengthy lecture on thankfulness if she ever did answer a question like that out loud. She was expected to be grateful for her dubious good health. And since her wish to grow up to be a superhero had gone from cute to sad years ago, she’d learned to keep it to herself.

She’d tallied it all up, once. She’d put mom down as the responsible party for Jamie’s anemia, shellfish allergy, hellish periods, low blood pressure, absurd proneness to sunburn and freckling, overbite (now corrected), acne (sort-of now corrected) and nearsightedness (also now corrected). She’d placed the blame for the asthma, wussy stomach, mild scoliosis, low bone density, and susceptibility to gingivitis on Dad’s pre-alteration genes. Dad didn’t actually have to deal with any of those things anymore, though. Which was why Mom was now Jamie’s favorite. Whether that was fair or not.

Her brother Issac had gotten acne and a cross-bite. Science had saved him from the acne better than it had saved her, and could have saved him from the cross-bite if he wasn’t a baby about going to the freaking dentist.

Dad patted Jamie’s shoulder, light enough to be an insult to Jamie’s ability to sit upright on a stool. He didn’t look at her, though. These days, he always seemed to be looking over her head, instead of directly at her. As if it pained him to have to look so far down to see her. He addressed Mom. “So, Tillman, where are you hiding my other offspring? If he doesn’t show soon, he’s going to have to wait for me to get up before I help him with that essay.”

Mom made a face. They’d been divorced since Jamie was less than two years old, but they were a lot closer than most divorced couples. They sort of had to be, as neighbors living in the same high-security building. “Were you up all night again?” 

“Justice never sleeps,” Dad quipped back halfheartedly. He did look a little rumpled, and his eyes were bloodshot. A little strained, now that she looked closer. Which was odd enough to be interesting. They hadn’t had anything more than a two-day mission in months. Why should he be worn out enough for it to show? He’d seemed OK on TV yesterday, during that interview.

MARTIN interrupted. “Mr. Voss, Dr. Tillman. I have just received a direct communication from Secretary Bridgewater asking me to inform you that he intends to come to the residential floors of the Plaza shortly to speak with you and the other Sentinels.”

Jamie choked on her cereal. The head of the Altered Persons Bureau did not make house calls. Jamie didn’t think he’d ever even been to Sentinel Plaza, even though 20 of its 24 floors were APB offices. He worked out of the DC branch. Yael hadn’t ever even met him, and he was xyr uncle. He was like the Wizard of Oz-- invoked and referenced, but never seen. She managed not to drown in her breakfast and cleared her voice for action “Why?”

“He declined to provide that information,” MARTIN intoned.

“He wanted me to be there?” Mom clarified, glass halfway to her mouth.

“You were specifically requested, yes.” 

It was rudely last-minute, and Mom had a medical technologies conglomerate to run, so Jamie expected concern or irritation. She didn’t expect the amount of alarm on both her parents’ faces, or Dad’s furiously muttered “Shit,” as he started to get up. “MARTIN, tell Drew and Solomon to come over--”

This was the sort of chance Jamie had been waiting for. An opportunity to take a stand.

“I’ll get Issac!” Jamie volunteered, jumping off her bar stool. She knew what happened next. Something was happening, so she, Yael, and Issac would be shunted off to some obscure corner of the residential parts of the tower and told to stay put.

She bolted down the hallway, trusting that her parents’ interest in discussing this without her there would keep them from wondering why she was in such a hurry to get Issac. She’d get Yael, next. If she was going to turn this into an opportunity, she’d need backup, and fast. 

She banged her knuckles on Issac’s door hard enough that they stung. No answer, but the shower was off. “Issac!” she called through the door, banging it again. 

The door swung open on an damp and irritated older brother. His usual trendy outfit was marred by the way his ubiquitous headphones-- placed just behind his ears, but blaring jazz music-- made his wet hair stick up like the scruff on a poorly-manicured purse dog. He looked exhausted, which meant he looked cranky. “You look like crap,” Jamie commented.

Issac raised an eyebrow. “Thanks. Hi. What do you want? I’ll be at breakfast in a second.”

“Secretary Bridgewater is gonna be here ‘shortly.’ Here in the house levels.”

Issac frowned. “Yael’s uncle?” 

Jamie nodded. She could just about see the gears turning in Issac's head. “And he wanted to talk to Mom and the whole team, so you know it’s something important. He wouldn’t come all this way to talk about finances.”

Issac frowned. “He didn’t say why?” 

She shook her head. “But Mom. Which means finances, huge policy change, a threat to the tower, or--”

“Or one of us,” Issac finished. Jamie nodded. That was why they had to act fast. “Shit,” he muttered. “OK. Go…tell Yael or something.”

He moved to shut the door. She shoved her foot into the doorway-- and winced, as reclaimed wood connected with thin canvas shoe-- but it kept him from closing the door. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Issac! This just makes it even more important that we stick together. If this might be about us, we deserve to know what’s going on. And you know they’re going to try to shut us up in Dad’s apartment or something--”

He paused, curious but hesitant. “Yeah. They do that.”

Jamie warmed to the subject immediately. She hadn’t been sure Issac would hear her out, but she knew he hated information being kept away from him. And there was a lot of information being kept away from them. Like where, exactly, Jenna had gone. Like where their own dad was, when he’d sometimes disappear for a day or two without the team and without appearing on tv. Like how nobody would talk about Yael’s parentage, even though they all already knew! That last one was especially insulting. “So we should do something about it! Take a stand. Right?”

For a moment, she thought she’d lost him. She prepared herself for another hurried pitch, but there was an extra spark in his eyes that stopped her. She remembered it from the Great Hanukkah/Christmas Gift Investigation of 2026 and the Puppy-Smuggling Attempt of 2025, plus a few other illicit escapades the three of them had pulled off or attempted over the years. They were mostly too old for that kind of thing now. She didn’t need to know what her presents were ahead of time.

But this-- this was worth breaking rules for. Especially if it really was about them. He grinned at her. “All right, Jamie. Way to grow some balls.” Jamie gave him the expected eye roll at his grossness. He punched her arm, and graciously ignored her minor stagger. This time, his suggestion was part of their conspiracy, rather than a dismissal. “Go get Yael.”

Perfect. If Jamie and Issac were in on it, there was no way Yael would sit on the sidelines. Jamie grinned back at Issac, then ran off to complete their team.

* * *

Yael's fist connected with Papa’s face. Xe darted backwards, out of his range.  At near seven feet tall, xe had far superior reach compared to his six feet, five inches. But he was faster. Yael noticed too late that xe’d been focusing too much on his fists, and he’d snuck one of his legs behind xyr. A sweep and a shove, and Yael was flying backwards across the room.

Xe hit the ground in a controlled roll that only stung for a second, and was back up, fists ready, in one racing heartbeat. Dust motes swirled frantically in the morning light between them. Yael was relieved to see a grin on his face. Xe laughed at1717 xyr own mistake to distract him from the few spots of glossy gunmetal gray xe’d felt seep out of xyr skin the moment xe’d hit the ground. 

Sparring with the Sentinels was critical for xyr training. But sparring with Papa was sometimes more like a super-powered game of tag. It would stay fun, as long as he didn’t see those silvered spots. He’d learned to not freak out at xyr shape shifting, but any sign of xyr exoskeleton would grind the match to a halt, and he’d bolt.

But he hadn’t seen. For once, xe was thankful for the straight sheet of nearly black hair that xe usually resented for the way it looked nothing like Papa’s dark gold waves. Xe’d had it cut over and over again trying to make it fall even a little like his, but it wasn’t happening.

At least Yael's hair could cover for xyr occasional silver slip-up.

He laughed, because xe laughed. The booming sound echoed in the huge, empty training room. The others would just be getting up and having their breakfasts, but Yael and xyr papa had been awake for hours. Xe’d have to find Drew later and try to talk him into a match. At least with Drew, Yael had some chance of winning. It helped to balance the productive ass-kickings xe got from Papa.

Yael hurtled forward, but ran right into a solid, but not especially painful, punch to xyr kidney. That was a point in Papa’s favor, but he’d had to move in closer to do it, and xe threw a well-formed side kick at his stomach as he tried to get out of range. He was still too fast. But xyr foot at least grazed his shirt! It was close enough to a victory for Yael to crow a triumphant “Ha!”, bouncing on the balls of xyr feet.

Papa chuckled, shaking his head. His guard dropped to signal Teaching Mode. “That’s not a strategy, dove. When you’re fighting real enemies, I don’t want you getting hit just so they’ll get close enough for you to hit them. With reach like yours, there’s no excuse.”

Yael stayed in stance, but waved a padded hand airily, pretending that it was a plan and not a side effect of distraction. “No one heals faster or better than I do.” As far as superpowers went, xyr pedigree was unmatched in the US, and difficult to rival even on a global scale. Xe was the sole second-generation member of the Heavenly Rule line. And aside from xyr, there were only two first-generation members left alive. 

He rolled his eyes, but his smile didn’t falter. “Oh, what I’d give to be seventeen and convinced of my own immortality again. Try not to take too much after me, princess.”

Yael hated that xe still looked for ways xe took after him. Still looked for any similarity in their features, even though xe knew they wouldn’t be there. Xe understood why they were missing. He called xyr birthparents his siblings as a mark of love, not genetic relation. They were from the same alteration line and had grown up together, but weren’t any more biologically related than Yael was related to Drew, or Neil. Xe could mimic Papa’s features, if not his colors, and had, privately. But he knew xyr face. There was no point in pretending they looked more alike than they did. 

It was obvious that everyone living in Sentinel Plaza knew exactly who Yael got xyr genes from. Not that any of the adults would talk to xyr about it. They always told xyr to talk to Papa, and he avoided the subject with the kind of urgency he usually reserved for avoiding machine gun fire. 

Xe’d given up trying to force the issue. Was trying to be patient. But xyr taboo exoskeleton and its ability to manipulate temperature and make ice out of thin air was way too useful to ignore in a real fight. And xe was 17-- adulthood was right around the corner.

Of course, the marketing team would want to riff off those powers for xyr superhero name and costume. Yael had come up with several superhero brands for xyrself already. “Mercury” was xyr favorite this week, since it was associated with temperatures and a highly malleable form. Xe’d even sketched some costume designs. But Mercury was more of a light silver color, whereas the exoskeleton membrane was closer to hematite. And there was already a Hematite out west. 

MARTIN interrupted from overhead, and they both dropped their stances. “Excuse me. Secretary Nodiah Bridgewater is en route to the building and is expected to arrive ‘shortly’ to converse with the Sentinels and Dr. Tillman.”

Yael gaped at the ceiling. 

“What?” Papa croaked in a tone that ripped xyr attention from the ceiling to him. His expression was filled with an intense, intimate fear. His eyes flicked to xyr, giving him away. He only lingered on xyr for a moment, but Yael felt exposed to the spine as xe saw him catalog the gap where their family resemblance should be.

His voice snagged between apology and command. “Stay here.”

That hurt way more than any punch xe’d ever buckled under. In one instant, xe’d been assessed, and come up short. “I want to meet him!”

Nodiah Bridgewater was the only other surviving member of the Heavenly Rule line, Papa’s only remaining sibling, and one of the only living people who’d known Yael’s birthparents well.

He clearly expected the objection, but was pulling off his protective gear without looking at xyr. “Now’s not the time.”

“Not the--?! This is the first time in my life we’ve been in the same building together!”

“That should tell you this is serious, and I need to talk to him.”

“Then talk to him.That doesn’t mean that I can’t--”

“No, Yael.”

Xe reached xyr hands out entreatingly. “I won’t get in the way, I swear--” 

He gave xyr a stern glance, with some unknown fear bubbling under the surface. “Stay. Here.” 

He turned. His broad back made a psychological barrier as solid as if he’d bricked xyr in. As he reached the gym’s door back into the central corridor, he nearly ran over a panting, flush-faced Jamie. “Oh. Jamie. Good.” He looked back down the hallway. “Where’s your brother?” 

“He’s coming.”

Papa nodded, sidestepping Jamie’s tiny body as she slipped sideways into the room.  Yael’s hands clenched to fists, and xe headed after him, but Jamie was moving as purposefully as Papa was, and xe only got a few steps before bird-boned fingers stopped xyr in xyr tracks. Jamie looked up at xyr meaningfully. She didn’t say anything until they heard the elevator ding its closed-door signal.

Xe growled and turned on xyr heel, heading semi-obediently to a bench and stripping off xyr training gear. “Why’d you stop me? Do you know who’s coming?”

“I only stopped you for a second. Issac and I think we need to show a sort of…united front. The three of us.”

“To do what?” Nodiah. Right here in the building. One floor up, with Yael stuck down here. Xe forced xyrself to slow down, or xe’d shred the glove xe was trying to get off.

“To tell them we’re tired of them excluding us from everything! We think Bridgewater is here because of one of us-- I mean, probably you, but--”

Xe stopped. “Me?”

“And they’re still trying to keep you from knowing what’s going on.”

“You think he’s here to see me?”

“Well, it makes sense. You’ll be eighteen in October, and everybody knows you’re going to be a Sentinel. He is the head of the Bureau that handles that.” That did make sense. And Nodiah might see every adult in the tower as some kind of parent to Yael-- that was how he and Papa had been raised, after all. Yael’s mind jumped over everything xe’d done in the last year-- or, no-- in the last few years, that could impact xyr uncle’s impression of xyr. There were too many-- and xe had no idea which of them he knew about. Did he know about the childhood wall-wrecking tantrums? Did he know xe had defended Issac when they were kidnapped three years ago? Did he know how? 

Issac appeared, damp, disheveled, and with one shoe. “And that’s my eviction,” he proclaimed. He waved a slice of toast. “Cold toast. One slice. This is what she gave me.” He took a bite of it, continuing with his mouth full. “What kind of parent gives their teenager a single slice of cold toast for breakfast?”

Yael sighed, spiking a padded glove against the ground spitefully. “One who wants said teenager out from underfoot right away.”

“Pretty much,” Issac agreed. “So are we doing this, or what?”

Jamie piped up. “I think we should figure out quick what exactly we want to tell them--”

Issac interrupted dryly. “How about ‘this is bullshit’?”

Yael bounced xyr leg impatiently. “We don’t have time for a deep discussion. Who knows when he’s going to get here?” 

“MARTIN?” Issac prompted.

“He has pulled into the parking garage,” the system answered.

Yael's breath caught. If xe didn’t get permission now, xe’d end up looking like a kid throwing a tantrum when Papa told xyr ‘no’ again in front of Nodiah. No good. “Then we need to get moving.”

So Yael got moving. Issac followed with long strides, and Jamie scrambled. Xe took the small staircase that linked the three residential floors, taking the stairs four at a time. Xe wouldn’t usually make Jamie scramble, but the window here was so small--

They came out to the top floor through the unobtrusive door between Drew’s apartment and xyr own. The top floor’s central courtyard was large, well-lit, and filled with plants. Doors to each apartment made a pentagon around the courtyard, which had a column of elevators in the middle. Yael only saw Neil, walking across. He stopped, squaring his shoulders, raising his chin, and adopting the look of someone ready to have an argument he didn’t want to have. So Papa had warned him, already.

Xe reorganized xyr body. Slimmed xyr hips, squared xyr jaw, flattened xyr chest out, and even gave xyrself a little more length to xyr legs and spine. Twinges of pain flared all over xyr body at the sudden stretch, but it was worth it to meet Neil looking every bit as strong and immovable as he himself was.

Neil’s voice was even, trying stiffly to smooth things over. “Yael, we can talk about this later, right now--”

Issac cut in. “Right now, you want us out of the way.”

Neil tried again. “Until we know--”

Yael interrupted this time. “Until we know what? Whether or not he’s my uncle?”

Drew came around the elevators in the center of the room. He was the only one left on the team who could show his age. And right now, every year showed. “Yael, fuck’s sake. Now’s not the time for infighting.”

Drew was the most reasonable person on the whole team. He was the only one left who wasn’t actually and directly a parent. Yael always thought that made him a little easier to talk to. Xe turned to him. “I don’t want to fight. But he’s probably coming to talk about me. And I want to be there for that. He’s never even met me-- why can’t I be there?”

Jamie spoke up unexpectedly, her voice thin but a little too loud. “We all want to be there, if it’s going to be about one of us.”

Issac’s voice wasn’t thin at all. Yael could have wished xyr strongest supporter sounded less muleish. “We’re staying.”

Melissa and Papa appeared from the Tillman apartment, completing the assembly. She spoke first, no anger or fear in her voice, only well-worn certainty. “No, you are not.” She focused on her daughter. “I thought you were helping out, not staging a riot in the courtyard.” 

Xe appealed to xyr papa again. Xe was running out of time and options. “It’s not a riot. We just want to be involved when important people are talking about us.”

“No. Now do what you should have done the first time.”

The words ripped out of xyr before xe could grab the strength to hold them in. “Why are you trying to hide me?”

Papa flinched. Even Melissa flinched. He knew xe’d seen it, and tried to cover it with bluster. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Yes, you do!” Jamie argued.

Melissa's voice layered on top. “Jamie, keep your voice down!”

Once Melissa raised her voice, it was all over. Neil and Melissa were arguing with Jamie and Issac. Papa wasn’t paying attention to anyone but himself. Drew was, for reasons Yael didn’t catch, arguing with Papa. No one would hear xyr words. Xe locked them down. Xyr questions were too hard for xyr to waste when nobody would notice. Xe looked down at xyr feet, squirming restlessly in xyr yellow boots. What else could xe do that’d be fast enough to matter?

Xe focused on not being silver.

A fast twitch of movement grabbed xyr attention. Jamie’d stopped mid-sentence, head whipping around to look towards the elevators and freezing in place like a rabbit who’d been spotted.

The elevator door opened to Secretary Nodiah Bridgewater.

* * *

Read the next chapter here!

[shadensp]

Basic Gen 1 pet hexing Tutorial - Dogz

Hello! I thought it might be fun to do a basic hexing tutorial for tumblr. I'm sure there are others out there but, there's always the need for a refresher corse and a new post won't hurt.

This tutuorial is far from the most advanced and I do my best to assume no hexing experiance. There are many more tutorials on Whisker Wick and RKC. At the time of this tutorial they are the central hubs for the online petz community and are always filled with people who can help answer questions too.

First is the tools needed to hex for the Petz games(note I will be hexing in Petz 4 but the ideas are transferable to at least Petz 5 and I believe Petz 3).

NOTE all the tools I list are FREE to get from the sites I link to.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

You can in theory use any hex editor, but if you're like me and they intimidate you a bit I highly recomend getting LNZ pro from Sherlock Software. It is the program most of the community uses too so if there are problems it is easy to find help. If you happen to be in the babyz community as well this program works for them as well. You will also need the petz editing manual. Through the tutorial I will refer to this as LNZ.

Also from Sherlock Software I highly recomend Petz Workshop, I will be useing it in the tutorial and it's great if you're more of a visual person. It has some limits but overall works nicely. Through the tutorial I will refer to this program as PW.

While on Sherlock Software, if you don't have it already I suggest getting Petz A for enhanced game play, and petz pic factory is a life savor to help organizations. Tinker is if you want to get into toy/clothing hexing.

The other program I cannot recomend enough is Brynn's anchor utility. It can be found on Flea Bagz along with the auto spotter.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

NOTE! This method of hexing, hexing on the breedfile itself, causes hexed liniage if you breed them. This can be useful and even fun, but is something to keep in mind.

It changes the base coding of the dog/cat and alters there genetics a bit so they can have offspring with colors that would not normally occure.

For exampe great dane masks should only come in brown and black -

(Special appearacne by Coke and Townie, two of our Danes)

However, with hexed linage they can come in other colors such as orange, red, blue, tan, cream, white,

(Denzel, Pitch, Twice, Tallis, Siddie, Sim)

This is only for ball areas not paintballz. Paintballz do not mutate colors unless there's extra hexing in so those are not affected.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

ALSO NOTE! BACK UP YOUR FILES! ANY FILE YOU OPEN WITH THE INTENT OF HEXING! BACK IT UP! I keep a zip file of all my OBs stashed away in a dark corner as well as one with the fixed files I use. Things can go wrong. You don't want to loose a file and not be able to get it back.

Also do frequent saves while working. These are older programs. Things crash with no reason.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= We've got the programs now to select what to hex.

A golden retreiver.

There are minor differences between different breed files but for the most part they are the same. The bigg thing to think about is the pug nose - and it's none existance, the chihuahua(and I belive papillon too) have different nose numbers than the other dog breeds because they have a single ball instead of the 2.

DOG NOSES(not cat noses, catz can be done like any other ball)

The first thing I'm going to do is change the golden's nose color. There are two ways to do this:

The first is done completely in PW(you can use LNZ too but as I said, I prefer visuals when I can so I only do it in PW on the rare times I use this method). I rarely use this method, I've spent years hexing for the petz kennel club and this particular method violtates the rules about changing a file.

In PW, once the file you need is open(in this case the Golden Retriver.dog) you'll see some buttons across the top with circles on them. the second from the end has a circle with half the line thicker than the other.

Click it.

Down in the bottom above the text box that tells you you've opened the file and all that are two other boxes. The top one says "outline style:" and is a drop down,

Yep click it.

You'll get a selection of No outlines, both sides(this is the one it auto selects), left side only, right side only, and draw as a nose(this is what the dog nose is already!). When I do this method I do "no outline" but feel free to play with the others and the thickness of the lines. I know some people have done some awesome things with them.

Once your line is selcted thengo up to the modle of the dog and click on their nose!

And the nose is gone! Now back to your top menu!

The second button, the one that has a gradiant from red to blue/purple?

Click it.

Your bottum menue has changed again, click on the "color to paint" square

A color picker popup will appear! please note that the last few rows(especially the last two) are very unreliable for being the color that shows up in the game(And that from one persons computer to anothers they're known to just not match.).

Once you've picked your color click on the two nostril ballz that we clicked for the outlines thing as well as the third little black ball beneath them. Note that some colors do not let textures work despite what PW may show.

And that's it, that's method 1 for dogz nose color changing.

You can add the nose shine with paintballz(we will cover paintballz in general later).

Method 2 is in LNZ pro. This is the method I prefer useing.

Once you have the file open down the side of the inner window is a list of smaller menus. You want the one that sayz "LNZ"

Depending on your breed, the letterz on the inner menu from LNZ may be different. You want to open which ever one does not say "PUP"

There are sections labled with brackets you will want to scroll or use the "tools" menu and the "find feature" until you get to [Paint Ballz]

Depending on your file there may or may not be more than the paw pads. Note the lines following the semi collons. These lines are ignored by the program! It's a great way to make notes. Also note that the three lines after ";jowl color" all have an extra number at the end, that "0" anchors the paint ballz. A general rule(rules are made to be broken so you do you!) paw pads are the only ballz that are not anchored. Another note, the texture(last number in a row before the anchoring "0") in the paw pads is "-1" this means that there is no texture there, this will apply to any ball or paint ball you want to have no texture!

Now adding paintballz to the nostril ballz to cover up the "draw as a nose" line. You'll other than the first two paint ballz(which are the nose shine, which you can 100% use on the previous method) they're massive(200% the diameter of the ball) this is simply to cover as much area as possible. They're also anchored but have a -1 texture. The 5th number in each row is the color, you can change it to whatever number you want(remember the pop up window from PW? SAME numbers!) If you would like the code to save for quick coppy paste -

;nose 41, 40, 0, 0, -1, 15, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 0 17, 40, 0, 0, -1, 15, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 0 41, 200, -0.05094715, 0.1532611, -0.9868715,183, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 41, 200, -0.994278, 0.09509034, 0.0486745,183, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 41, 200, -0.02459138, 0.1358954, 0.990418,183, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 41, 200, 0.9602911, 0.09167686, 0.2635078,183, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 41, 200, 0.01550517, -0.988771, 0.1486324,183, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 41, 200, 0.01009679, 0.993927, 0.109577,183, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 17, 200, -0.01085464, 0.1983058, -0.9800801,59, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 17, 200, 0.98462, 0.1341251, 0.1119551,59, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 17, 200, -0.08383274, 0.1538555, 0.9845306,59, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 17, 200, -0.9783014, 0.1952212, -0.06939042,59, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 17, 200, -0.01415273, -0.9899525, 0.1406904,59, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0 17, 200, -0.001355877, 0.9942293, 0.1072673,59, -1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 0

I use the same one every time, just changing the color number.

At this point I like to erase the other painballz if I'm not going to use them. However, I know the jowl color is the paint ballz are the cute mustashes that Labs and goldens sometimes get that I absolutly love and I want to keept them. However, i don't like any paint ballz bellow my paw pads so I moved them above the nose and renamed it.

Something to note - your notes in breed files will not transfer to the pet file. Also, PW will unanchor paint ballz so always save that for last.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

COLORING! WEEE! I do this in PW.

OH NO THE NOSE! It's totally fine, we'll take care of it in a bit.

At this point it is best if you have an idea for what you want to hex, but if not you can wing it, that's always a fun time.

Hit your gradiant ball color circle in your top menu bar on PW

Select your color in the bottom just like the nose in method one.

And start coloring ballz!

Each ball can be selected indivicually(also look at the mustash!).

OR On the left side of PW,

There are tab menus, select the one that says "Balls".

Select multiple with ctrl+right mouse or shift+right mouse(remember that to pay attention to things like R Eye and L iris. If you don't want to cololor the whites of the eye(R or L eye) or the pupil (R or L iris) you don't want to select these.

At the bottom of the selecting box is a button that says "apply to all ballz"(when it's not squished like my window does). hit that and...

it's like a bucket fill! Now you can do multi colors of course, just select a different color like you selected the first and start coloring ballz.

And stick around for part 2 since I hit the limit of photos I can post in one post. HERE IS THE LINK FOR PART 2

[likeabxrdinflight]

get 2 know me meme

tagged by: @crithir said if you see it, you're tagged. And I saw it, so...

tagging: In the spirit of the boops, boop! you're tagged now.

Do you make your bed?

Only if someone's coming over.

What’s your favorite number?

7 because it was usually my assigned number in elementary school. There was a whole system where we all had numbers after our names that we had to put on the top of our assignments, and because it went in alphabetical order, and because my school was small and the class configuration rarely changed, I was writing "Cora - 7"* at the top of my assignments for years. So a fondness for the number 7 kinda stuck.

*Cora is not my real name but wouldn't you like to know.

What is your job?

Technically the things I am currently employed to do and receive financial compensation for are administering neuropsych assessments to children and then a second part time job as a care aid for a disabled woman.

Arguably my dissertation is my real full time job, except no one pays me to do that. Actually, I pay them so that I can do that. So...

If you could go back to school, would you?

Absolutely not, I'm still trying to get out of school! (one more year one more year one more year...).

Can you parallel park?

Technically, yes. Skillfully? Eh...

A job you had that would surprise people?

None of my past jobs have been all that surprising, I think...human services and customer service, haven't we all been there? Maybe the day camp for disabled kids was a little bit unique.

Do you think aliens are real?

I think it's incredibly arrogant to assume we're the only planet in an ever-expanding universe to have developed life, so yes. What that life looks like, however, is up for debate.

Can you drive a manual car?

I cannot, but more than one person has threatened to teach me.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

British period dramas. And recently, Taylor Swift. I got caught up in the cultural moment of the Eras tour and it turns out when you're not just listening to the pop radio hits, she's a helluva writer. "Would've, Could've, Should've" did unfortunately alter my brain chemistry. I refuse to call myself a swiftie though, I will not be associated with...any of that.

Tattoos?

None yet, but I have a couple ideas- I want "she rules her life like a bird in flight" with some little birds next to it, possibly on my shoulder? Then I want a monarch butterfly on one of my forearms, probably the left, and finally a latin phrase that's connected to my family, I'm thinking on the underside of one my upper arms, again probably the left arm. Undecided on that though, because if I do the butterfly on the left arm maybe I should do the lettering on the right? Or vice versa?

...this is why I haven't committed to anything yet on top of them being expensive.

Favorite color?

Historically, yellow, but more recently blues and purples.

Favorite type of music?

Usually I go for a rock/pop punk sound. But also showtunes. And sometimes just regular pop. I'm kinda basic idk.

Do you like puzzles?

...in video games, sure. Actual table top puzzles? Eh.

Any phobias?

Wasps. Heights. The general concept of death.

Favorite childhood sport?

Ballet and tae kwon do (I almost made it to black belt but then college happened).

Do you talk to yourself?

Constantly. Often as if I'm talking to other people. Sometimes to my snake, Sammy.

What movies do you adore?

Kiki's Delivery Service, Mary Poppins, Anastasia, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, and I have a soft spot for 2000s teen movies (think Mean Girls, Freaky Friday, Bring It On). Also, unfortunately, the Harry Potter movies are permanently imprinted on my brain and I cannot disentangle them from some of the most special parts of my childhood. Azkaban in particular is strongly linked to my relationship with my best friend/sister in spirit.

Coffee or tea?

Tea but coffee is growing on me.

First thing you wanted to be growing up?

I think it was veterinarian? That's the first thing I remember anyway.

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #17:

Ragged Glory, Part 3

When I was a senior in high school I experienced big-deal, pure, adrenaline surging joy - the kind that feels like it forever changes the shape of your face - three separate times.

Two of these moments happened separately on the same day, beginning in the afternoon with an obvious and rather pedestrian origin: I got into college. What's more, I got into a trophy school that would allow me leave home permanently and still be a goldilocks' drive time away from the two most important things in my life at that point: my ladyfriend and the summer camp job where she, I, and most of our friends worked (and where we listened to a lot of Built To Spill). I remember running from the mailbox and past my father, on my way to nowhere in particular, while ripping open the big heavy acceptance envelope, my ideal future suddenly revealed like a sparkling second sun.

My famous brother chronicled that same day's night from his own perspective earlier this month. We went together that night to see The Breeders play, yes, but The John Spencer Blues Explosion opened the show and they melted my already-altered-by-the-day face. Spencer crept around his Theremin like a tricked out cosmic bullfighter, tempting it to shout and gurgle and spin. The drummer broke several kick peddles in his mammoth exuberance; they had no bass player and no sense of composure whatsoever. I was not on any drugs, but it sure felt like it. And they were really good drugs.

John Spencer and his mates were, at that point in my life, the loudest, most alive thing I'd ever seen on stage; and keep in mind that I had already seen Tom Petty and Bob Dylan twice each, Neil Young three times, a crumbling and brutal Uncle Tupelo once and the Dead and Paul Simon more times than I frankly remember (there're years of future Dollar Bin posts left to come about all those shows).

I'm not saying the John Spencer Blues Explosion compares to those acts or played comparably good music that night. Instead, what I mean is that I was just right there with them: they were so alive, and so was I. And so I was SO, DAMN, HAPPY.

This video is from that same Spring, but not from my show. Had this been from my show, and had I filmed it, there would be almost no coherent footage: I spent the whole set wriggling like a fish on a line who just couldn't wait to be hauled bodily out the dull ocean and eaten raw.

And then Kim Deal came out immediately afterwards and chain smoked her frantic set away while not just blowing up the room, somehow, with an acoustic guitar, but she also managed to elbow, kick and head butt a whole cage of pedals around her, all the time singing with the cigarettes still in her mouth.

So, obviously, that whole show was the second time.

That year's third big-deal, pure, adrenaline surge of joy came, of course, in a record store. I was the good part of a year into my quest to find The Holy Grail. Not the real thing of course; that was of no interest. Rather, as should be obvious to the dedicated readers of the Dollar Bin, I was searching for my own copy of Neil Young's On The Beach.

I've already outlined how I'd heard the record long before finding my own copy, so suffice it to say that when I finally came upon On The Beach in a Venice Beach shop that year I screamed out loud and ran all over the shop, bearing it aloft in my triumphant hands. Keep in mind that this would have been late 1993 or early 94: eight or so years before Nabster and very much in the era when Young refused to issue the album on either CD or tape, meaning that you literally could not listen unless you found a vinyl copy or found some Neil Young freak to tape it for you.

Well, last weekend, when I talked that same ladyfriend, now my very patient wife, into dropping me off at Amoeba Records in Berkeley in the middle of our 12 hour drive home from a Spring Break trip, I did not run around whooping with another Neil Young record in my triumphant hands.

But I should have!

After all, look what I found after 30 full years of searching:

That's right, folks. I passed on 60 individual Dollar Bin finds and bought my first vinyl copy of Ragged Glory instead (that's not strictly true: I bought 18 other records at the same time for a buck each, so I didn't actual passed on anything - but saying so justifies my extravagance).

Okay, it's time to actually drop the needle (very carefully!) on this thing. Let's do this.

Good God...

I've already written about the record, without actually owning it, twice so feel free to read my Part 1 and/or Part 2. But I'm here to tell you that, after an initial 10 years of listening to the album on the tape I bought at age 14, then another 25 of listening to it digitally, it may be all in my imagination but I feel like I'm listening to Ragged Glory for the first time. It sounds like Neil is performing Country Home while riding piggyback on my shoulders. And we're hang gliding through flames.

Okay, I'm actually having a bit of a religious experience. Jesus Frickin' Cristo: Young is forever going on and on about how the perfect echo dies when you transfer his music to digital and, even though I'm a big record guy, I always kinda roll my eyes. After all, I've said it before and I'll say it again: I dwell in the Dollar Bin, not Nathan's VGG++ Nerd Shack.

And don't get me wrong, as advertized there is some bustle and pop on my new copy. But I'd be disappointed if the occasional scuffle weren't there: they add the kind of textures Joe Freakin' Lala could never even attempt, and, Sweet Billy Talbot, I'm hearing bass notes I've never heard before and the drums - THE DRUMS!

(By the way: you can disregard all the shade I cast on Love To Burn in one of those earlier posts - that track just started up and it suddenly sounds fresh and urgent as it spins forth from my record's new, precious grooves. I suspect the same thing will have during Love and Only Love when I get there...)

I'm so happy, friends. I'm SO HAPPY all over again. I'd even slow dance with Stephen Stills right now if he asked, just as long as we blasted my personal copy of Ragged Glory while we swayed.

[rhythmmortis]

gif tutorial: selective colouring

turning this gif

into this gif

(requested by @oogelyboogely)

quick disclaimer: i'm mostly self taught, so a lot of the methods i use might not be the most efficient or the ones that other people use, so apologies about that!!

with this tutorial, i'm assuming you know the basics of how to make a gif (loading in frames, turning them into animation frames, etc), but if need be, i would be more than happy to make a tutorial on that too

i use photopea, a browser-based photoshop replica that's free to use and i highly recommend it!

first step is loading in all the frames, which should look like this:

the main thing i want to be in colour is his hair (and the petals that fly around him when he unhoods, same colour so it shouldn't be too much of an issue to deal with). however! for this particular gif, i want his eyes to also be the same/similar shade of pink so they're also in colour.

for this i'm gonna go to the top bar and go to layer > new adjustment layer > hue/saturation > blue, which should give you an adjustment layer that looks like this

if i move this around, this is also gonna change the background very slightly, which we don't want, and it won't change the colour of his eyes very much.

in order to change just the blue of his eyes, i need to adjust the slider at the very bottom. this shows the spectrum of the colours selected and the colours it's changing. if you're testing this, i would say change the hue to 180, then mess around with the adjustments until you've found a setting that only changes the selected hue

this seems to work well for this, so im gonna keep this adjustment layer specifically for changing the eye colour and move onto another

everything i want to be in a specific colour is now in that colour, so i'm gonna move onto working on making everything else in greyscale. it's exactly the same process (using a hue/saturation adjustment layer), but you're altering saturation to -100 (making other colours grey), and changing lightness (which colours you want to be a lighter shade of grey in the greyscale)

this gif in particular shows a specific problem i have with doing this: red and red-adjacent tones with selective colouring. many skintones fall under red hues when altering them, so when trying to isolate a red colour, it can get a bit finnicky. the spectrum slider tends to get very precise with the hue/saturation adjustment layer.

shown here, i'm using a new adjustment layer and going for the red to try and desaturate the skin tone, and you can see it's desaturated the hair too, so i need to adjust the spectrum so it only gets the skin tone (while i'm doing this, i'm also going back to check on the first frames where the petals are to make sure they're not affected by this since i want them in colour too!)

next up is the back wall which is a blue tint (as exampled with changing the blue setting with the first adjustment layer, we can now use the blue adjustment on the second adjustment layer freely since it won't affect the eye colour anymore)

while doing this, it's important to go over all the frames occassionally, especially with scenes that have a lot of varied colours, because a lot of the time, some layers may have stray areas of colour that fit into what is still allowed to be in colour, in which case a 'replace colour' adjustment layer (layer > new adjustment layer > replace colour) should be used to try and get out specific shades you don't want to be in colour. it's not an issue in this gif, but in cases where it is, those adjustment layers can pile up, but that's natural! (it can also be used in cases where you're close to greyscale but not quite there, just eyedrop the colour and set saturation all the way down)

after this, i'm just gonna do some adjustment layers to alter lighting to make sure the colours are balanced well (curves, levels, brightness/contrast, etc), and it should be done from there!

remember to save psd files regularly so you have backups of your work in case anything happens! hope this was helpful and if you'd like me to elaborate on anything, please ask!

examples of some of my gifs with this effect include: this, this, and this

[fateinthestars]

I guess it's time for another thoughts/review/rambling post. This time let's cover the special stories A Divine Autumn with the Gods: Wishes and A Divine Autumn with the Gods: Punishments.

Spoilers under cut

A Divine Autumn with the Gods: Wishes

Leon: Sweet Sparta

Oh yikes, let's never ask Leon to help with motivation. The methods he used to try and help MC with her exercising plan here, sheesh!

I love how when there's this massive banquet with the vegetables MC bought with her that Leon is still eating meatballs. He's worse than Zyglavis is with Chocolate Ganache. 😂 (Actually he might be the worst out of all of them for sticking with one specific food stuff - the others all have their faves but most of them are at least pretty willing to try something else. Even here Leon seems reluctant).

The first exercise plan was extreme but I would hope Leon would make sure she was never actually in any danger... the second though? Well it's all her fault for saying he was the only lion she needed in her life but yeesh.

As I said in my random ramble about how I'd envision it going if MC asked them to redecorate her apartment, Leon would definitely get the wrong idea.

Still at least you get some of really sweet Leon in this. He loves MC just the way she is.

Teorus: A Steamy Exchange

Oh good grief. Yes this is where I start to see the Teorus that frustrates me again.

You've summoned a giant potato. You really think no one else was going to pay attention to what you were doing?!

The wandering off leaving MC to sleep and accepting potatoes that other girls are offering him (cos of course they are, it's Teo *sigh* ) I probably wouldn't be that frustrated about if it wasn't for one thing: And that's how possessive he usually is over MC. He really is clueless over how his actions makes others feel.

At least the ending is somewhat sweet. Also: fluffy cloud vehicle!

Huedhaut: Memories and Music

Ahh, this is just sublime. I love how Hue has actually at some point taken the time to learn how to play the flute and him teaching MC how to play is just so sweet... it's not like that it's a good way to get some time to themselves at all 😉

Just calm, sweet moments with Hue, the MC, and a flute.. oh though I mustn't forget Hue's usual teasing and sarcasm either.

Talking of which, the opening of this might be my favourite part about it just because it's so silly. Sheesh, MC, the longer you take to try and ask him something direct the more he's gonna use that to his advantage. I really like how he winds all the others present up too. Hue knew exactly what he was doing here, pfft.

A Divine Autumn with the Gods: Punishments

Scorpio: The Awkward Artist

Sheesh. MC didn't really have much luck here. I don't think her suggestion would have gone down that well anyway but that damn King went and made it even worse.

Sweet ending though.

Dui: Tempting Bodies and Gourmet Treats

Poor Dui. People keep putting his beloved in danger.

That aside this one is ridiculous. The heavens has some very strange things - candy that can alter your body?!

It's interesting that it's implied here that they normally just sleep together and hold hands. Seems this one is one of the earlier ones in their relationship, maybe even the tipping point into them having sex more often.

(Oh great now I'm going to have to try and work out where everything could theoretically go timeline wise aren't I?)

Ichthys: Not Your Average Fairy Tale

Pffft. Ha. Hahahaha. Oh dear oh dear. Ikky has some really cute and funny special stories, even if quite a few of them seem to be set before MC is dating him.

I love how he latched on to the expression 'get into the story' and did just that. I was somewhat expecting that from how it was set up but... I wasn't prepared for him picking a particular story to just eat candy. 😂

Despite this messing about in books you do actually get the more mature side of Ichthys for a bit here too. The Ichthys MC would later see at the event for his parents in his sequel story.

Ranking attempt

Huedhaut

Ichthys

Leon

Dui

Scorpio

Teorus

[angstenthusiast]

Heeey, it's me again lol

What are all the ways Chris is gonna die in Stone Blue? Not sure if I missed a post of yours about it or if you have more.

OOOOH!!! I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED THIS QUESTION!! THIS IS GONNA BE LOADS OF FUN TO ANSWER!! >:D

Okay so, I don't have everything figured out quite yet, but I can at least tell you about the stuff I've gotten figured out by this point in time.

The first way he goes out is the one time where he himself actually dies, the rest are either fake versions of him that were conjured up by the three gatekeepers or a replay of this memory in particular. He and Martin were exploring a cavern looking for any creatures that might be living there and just generally checking the whole place out. Chris had noticed that something was a bit off soon after they entered, and suggested that they leave a bit earlier than they had originally intended, but Martin convinced him into staying for just a bit longer so that they could continue to look around.

After a bit more exploring, a rockslide started while they were still inside, and the two of them attempted to book it out of there and head towards the exit. The whole cavern was shaking which was making it a bit harder to move, and Chris tripped over something while they were in the final stretch. It didn't stop him for too long, but it caught Martin's attention and caused him to turn around to possibly run back and help his brother if he needed it, and just as Chris was about to pick up speed again, a stalactite fell from the ceiling of the cavern above them thanks to all of the shaking going on and went straight through his stomach.

Obviously that stopped him right in his tracks, Martin froze for a second and then attempted to run over to him to help get him the rest of the way out of the cavern, but the rockslide finally caught up with them before he could get anywhere close, and it crushed Chris and got Martin stuck. Martin was dealing with less rocks where he was because he was closer to the exit, but Chris was not so lucky. He died there buried underneath a fuck ton of rocks and bleeding out.

What's even worse is that when the rest of the team finally got there, they couldn't even dig him out because of the shifting of the rocks he was buried beneath and the sheer number of them that were blocking their path, and the only reason they were absolutely sure he was dead was because they couldn't pick up any life signals no matter how hard they looked.

SO!!! That's how the real version of Chris passed! But how about the others? How do they go out?

The version of him that my friend Azzy has nicknamed "Mangled Corpse Chris", who the three gatekeepers created for a trial centered around seeing how Martin would respond to "terror," (or something like that, idk I'm still figuring it out,) dies by being crushed under a stone gate after chasing Martin throughout a section of the trial.

The fake version of Chris that is the most reminiscent of him out of all the ones that the gatekeepers come up with, (who I've nicknamed "Pale Blue Chris",) dies in Martin's arms from blood loss caused by an obstacle the two of them were dealing with just prior, before promptly turning to dust as the trial ends.

And if we were to count the version of Chris that is seen during the "Greatest Regret" trial, who is technically just a slightly altered memory, he dies the exact same way the real version of him did, impaled by a stalactite and then crushed under a rockslide.

Now, there are multiple other fake versions of Chris that show up throughout the trials, although they don't technically die in the same way as the others do. At worst, they just disappear at the end of the trial that they're in/just generally disappear if they're something like a hallucination from Martin caused by a lack of sleep, food, and water over the past 3 days spent going through these trials. Although they do find other ways to be of use to the plot and Martin's suffering.

Whether they're there to give Martin a false sense of hope, make him feel even more guilty for the real Chris's death, or just generally make him suffer even more, all the fake versions of Chris have some kind of purpose during these trials, they just aren't all executed in the same way.

Anywho!! That's about it in terms of all the different ways Chris goes out in this au. Thank you so much for the ask!! :D It was loads of fun to answer!!

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day!!