#(i mean it is and it isn't; certainly it's adjacent)

[blindbatalex]

bruins hrpf recs from the server #5

Hello again! The theme for this week was ✨ a fic that broke your heart ✨ Below are our recs:

rec lists so far: || week 4 || week 3 || week 2 || week 1 ||

A (Little) Slice of Heaven by Anonymous || willypasta || 11,541 words || reccer's notes: this fic rewired my brain. I read it months and months and months ago and I have yet to recover. 11/10 I come back to it way more than I probably should

(and i’ve got a plane to catch) you drove me all the way back by @fvcking-damage || mcgryz || 2,862 words || reccer's notes: this is some self-indulgent mcgryz angst i wrote a couple of years ago, idk what i was writing out with this one but. yeah

and turns to dust by adjacently || Jordan Eberle/Taylor Hall || 2,130 words || reccer's notes: i can eat taylor hall angst for breakfast, lunch, and dinner

between your love and mine by @blindbatalex || willypasta || 6,360 words || reccer's notes: This is a story about trying to reconcile two sides of your identity that are at irreconcilable conflict with one another, and what having your wings clipped like that at a young age does to a person.  I certainly broke my own heart while writing it.

dancing by @rasksmoustache || marcheron || 1,111 words || reccer's notes: This fic is so vivid and visceral and sad, it permanently altered my brain chemistry.  Unrequited (but is it really?) marcheron which gets the feeling of loving someone and being just a little too late so so well

Done & Undone by @ghostgeno || marcheron || 14,428 words || reccer's notes: 2023 Game 7, the aftermath. Fair warning: I don’t reread this very often because of how effectively it puts you in Brad’s headspace immediately after the game, in brutal, excruciating detail. And yet. And yet. If you feel like being taken apart and then put back together, if you want to feel all the loss and tenderness and love that remains despite the loss, read this fic.

good at secrets by @fridgefishwrites || prefix boys; mcgryz || 4,017 words || reccer's notes: this fic meant (and means) so much to me because it just gets what trying to live your life and build something beautiful while faced with unrelenting homophobia is like.  I love the non-linear narrative and the prefix boys but it was always Matt who stole the show for me in this story

like a stranger by blindbatalex || marcheron || 13,142 words || reccer's notes: not a fic alex hasn't read before (sorry bud) but i'm Obsessed with fics where the characters talk past each other and the angst compounds and this fic is a perfect example of that, amongst other things!!!

make no apologies by @sphesphe || marcheron || 3,757 words || reccer's notes: Brad gets himself suspended before the Winter Classic and Patrice takes it harder than he thinks he should.  He plays it off as fine, things happen, just be better Marchy but it isn't true. He's angry. After the game, Brad stops by, they have a talk and lo and behold, feelings emerge! (And much more!)

Sixth Borough by bookhousegirl || Jimmy Hayes/Frank Vatrano || 3,067 words || reccer's notes: The third in a trilogy of fics featuring this pairing. This is a very quiet little vignette featuring two former Bruins who were not stars and did not end up experiencing great success in their time here. It exists entirely in the gray of adult complications and disappointments, and refuses any easy catharsis, and is beautiful for those reasons. For those of us who cared about the Bruins in the (relatively) dismal era between 2015-17 it may come across as a tiny time capsule; for everyone else, I hope the delicate way it honors the hopes and dreams of those who don’t become hometown heroes, who don’t get the happily everafter ending, stays with you.

Westward Expansion by bookhousegirl || Jimmy Hayes/Frank Vatrano || 3,625 words || reccer's notes: Jimmy stares out vacantly at the coaster climbing the track. “Just because we’re from the same place doesn’t mean we’re from the same place.” When Frank takes Jimmy to Six Flags, he expects it to be a fun day, showing Jimmy all the rides he used to love growing up. Jimmy is distracted though, melancholy because Frank has so much promise and Jimmy took so long to get to where he is.

Wolverine Feed by @sphesphe || swaymark || 10,659 words || reccer's notes: fic that makes me ill each and every time i think about it

[mariocki]

Man-Made Monster (The Atomic Monster, 1941)

"Sometimes I think you're mad."

"I am! So was Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Lister, and all the others who dared to dream. Fifty years ago, a man was mad to think of anaesthesia; forty years ago, the idea of operating on the brain was madness. Today, we hold a human heart in our hands and watch it beat. Who can tell what tomorrow's madness may be?"

[shmalk]

141 is filled with alphas, not a single omega in sight. there are a few betas, but they're either low-ranking or transfers that were never going to last.

like you! (beta!reader) who works at reception and takes calls, scans badges and is the first point of contact for the task force.

none of them know your name, none of them even speak to you - maybe price, when you transfer a call to him, he'll mumble a thank you. or even laswell, when you bring her a coffee.

it's nothing, really, you don't mind.

only, one day, a totally normal friday, you've done the exact same style in your hair you always have, and you're wearing more clothes than you were yesterday.

price wants a coffee, sure- you make it, just the way he likes, and head towards his office. you knock, and wait a few seconds until you hear 'come in.'

the office is silent, it usually is - but this time there's more than just price inside.

they're finishing up just as you enter, soap and gaz sitting in front of the desk whilst ghost leant against the back wall.

"my apologies, captain." your voice isn't exactly quiet - why should it be, you've done nothing wrong, but its still respectful. price just nods as you place the cup down on his desk.

"thanks, that's all." he dismisses everyone in the room, and you wait for the boys to file out before you do, soap and gaz both giving you a cheeky smile.

ghost is the one to hold open the door, standing just adjacent to the doorway with his arm sprawled against it. its a heavy door, and you swallow as you pass him.

"thank you," you all but mumble out as you rush past him - straight into the break room.

you can't help but rant about the situation to your roommate whilst you're packing up your things, your phone tucked between your jaw and shoulder.

"i mean- he held the door open for me and i couldn't even look him in the eye to say thank you!" you stress, throwing your bag into your passenger seat before leaning back against your car. "god, all i wan't right now is a plate of sushi and some boba."

"too bad its pizza night, dweeb."

"thats not fair! i could loose my job, i should be allowed to eat my comfort food when im stressed out."

you stress about it over the whole weekend, and when you return back to work on monday you try to act as casual as possible. of course, you don't see ghost - price doesn't order a coffee, and youre break time comes around quicker than you expected.

you had brought- oh, theres- your favourite sushi, and a boba drink sitting where your food was supposed to be. in somewhat messy hand writing, on a small piece of paper, theres your name.

signed ' s. riley. '

i am a sucker for sweet lil moments like this !!

in my head i think that simon would like a beta, or an alpha, but in this lil snippet (which is CERTAINLY getting turned into a fic) he's big and broad and gets worried when he's with alphas because they can't think straight, he tells them what to do and he does it.

but you? you dont react to his scent or chase him down to get him to court you - so, of fource, he courts you. <3

[jellieland]

It's just like them, thinks Martyn, miserably, To want to make these things stick.

He's always been an "act first, weasel your way out of any potential consequences later," kind of guy, so immediate, painful and permanent consequences to his recklessness strike him as unfair, unwarranted, and quite possibly a personal attack.

But, well. Here he still is anyway. What's he going to do about it?

His ankle burns where the baby zombie clawed at it. His legs ache from the dripstone, and the dripstone, and, yes, the dripstone again, and also walking off Mumbo's house and perhaps slightly misjudging his landing.

His ear keeps ringing and most of his right side stings from the creeper that decided, quite rudely, to sneak up on him and then blow up directly in his face about half a second before he could raise his shield. And the gravel later on, that he'd seen falling but still not managed to avoid, hadn't helped with any of that either.

He can feel blood dripping down his back in no less then five separate places, along with his arm, his shoulder, and the side of his head—that last one bled a lot and got onto his bandanna which was pretty annoying, actually—all from his many encounters with what he thinks were probably, at a conservative estimate, about a billion skeletons.

He doesn't quite glare up at the Secret Keeper. The healing they'd given him had been too much of a relief for that; his vision had stopped swimming, that head wound had stopped bleeding so much, and it was significantly less painful to walk. But the look he gives them is certainly glare-adjacent.

"You do know injuries aren't supposed to stick around like this, don't you?" he mutters, bitterly. "I know you like twisting stuff, but this is ridiculous. It's unnatural, is what it is!"

Someone snorts behind him.

He turns, and he sees Cleo. Neat, meticulous stitches are visible across their skin. Martyn hasn't met many people with scars before, but she's one of them.

The only new one is what looks, ironically enough, like a zombie bite on their arm, entirely healed over.

"It's really not that hard to deal with if you're just patient," she says.

"Ah," he says. "Well. That's my problem right there, then, isn't it?"

"It certainly looks like it," they say, amused. They're laughing at him again. He can't even be mad, since all in all, he totally deserves it.

"Yeah, alright," he says, a bit indignant just for the sake of what remains of his pride. "No need to rub it in! I hope you realize that if healing just worked normally, I'd be doing really well, actually."

"Hmm. Right, you do tend to throw yourself off of cliffs, and then try and work out how you'll save yourself on the way down, don't you?" She gives him a knowing look. "But look on the bright side—when you do die, you'll get to be perfectly healthy again for... I give it ten seconds. After that, you'll start making decisions."

"Hey, I'll have you know I went to the Nether for ages, and got out without a scratch on me that I didn't have when I arrived!" he retorts.

"Oh, so you can be careful, you just choose not to be?" They raise a judgemental eyebrow.

"Well... I mean." He half-shrugs, then winces. "I mean. Yeah. Yes. You know this about me."

There is a brief pause. She gives him an unreadable look, eyes catching on the blood seeping through his shirt. "...Yeah. I guess I do."

He glances over at the Secret Keeper again, bold and unmoving against the unnaturally darkened sky.

When he looks back, Cleo is still watching him. "You didn't even bandage those, did you?" they ask, with a touch of what most people would think was disdain. "Let alone stitch them up."

"I mean, no? It's not like it'll do anything, is it?" he asks, taken aback. "The good old 'Powers That Be' want us to bleed, and they want us to keep bleeding! Who am I to argue?"

She narrows her eyes as though she doesn't quite understand his point. "I'm not saying that would fix it. I don't think any of us are going to live long enough for that method of healing to work." They shrug. "Would make it hurt less, though."

Now it's his turn to narrow his eyes. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," she says. "At least, so I've heard. For me, it's mostly about making sure I don't start physically falling apart, because it's really inconvenient when that does start happening."

He nods in acknowledgement. "Well, maybe I'll give it a go if I have the time." It all sounds a bit far-fetched to him. Much better to spend time working towards completing the next secret task he gets, or persuading people to give him the healing they have to spare, rather than losing hours on something that wouldn't actually help him in the long run.

(Maybe it's an echo, maybe it's just who he is, but Martyn's time is precious, and he is not giving it up for something so monotonous. Who would find that interesting?)

"Alright," they say. "If you're sure. But no one else is going to do it for you, you know."

He snorts. "Cleo," he says. "You're funny." She, of all people, should know he's already well aware of that.

"Right," they say, dryly. "Well, unless you want anything else I think I'm done here."

"Nah, not really." he says, then pauses. Frowns.

As unconvinced as he is, she really didn't have to say that to him. She deserves at least something in return.

"I will say," he says delicately, "if that advice really does help. You should probably keep it to yourself. You know. Death game, and all that."

All at once, their expression turns cold. "I think it's my business what I choose to give up, actually," she snaps.

Martyn's eyes briefly flick over to the Secret Keeper. "I mean..."

"No. I meant what I said." They cross their arms. "It's up to other people what they choose to do with it. But what I give them is up to me." She glances at the Secret Keeper, and then back to him. "No one's ever been able to tell me what I owe, or don't owe, to anyone." They smirk, and give him a piercing look. "You know this about me."

"...Yeah," he says. "I guess I do."

There is a short silence.

"Well!" He claps abruptly. "I won't keep you!"

"No, you won't," she says. "I'd best be off. This might come as a surprise, but I do actually have better things to do than hang out around Grian's creepy rock all day."

"Fair, fair." He chuckles, and raises a hand in farewell as they leave. "See you around."

Once she's out of sight, he goes back to staring at the Secret Keeper.

It's quiet.

"They're doing pretty well this time, huh?" he says. "If she keeps going like this, she probably won't get another happy ending, will she."

The air is very still, here. It's as though the place is trapped in night, even when he can see the sun in the sky.

The Secret Keeper does not answer him.

"I know you, though," he says. "You won't let it be all about being careful. That would be boring."

The thought nags at him that Cleo hasn't sounded as though they'd found any of this boring. Surely there had to be more to it than what she'd said? There had to be.

If there wasn't, then what was the point of all this pain?

He shifts, and his shoulder twinges, and he hisses quietly with frustration.

"Things already stuck," he says, unhappily. "They already stayed. I thought that was obvious."

The rock just stands there.

Judgemental. Impartial. It's impressive how it can manage to be both.

Martyn sighs heavily, and winces, and turns away. He looks towards his extremely small, entirely copied base, and a place where the sky is capable of letting in the light.

He pokes gingerly at his head wound. It's shallow, but painful.

"Maybe just this one," he mutters. "Could repurpose my bandanna. Although I guess I should probably wash it first. That would be smart." He wipes at his face. "If I don't then blood's going to start getting in my eyes. But not in a cool way, just in a way where I'll fall in a ravine by accident or something."

Nobody responds. That's ok. He hasn't exactly endeared himself to anyone, recently.

In a game that's even more about trust than usual, there's a part of him that doesn't mind being a lone wolf, as it were. At least for now. Harder to stab someone in the back if you don't let them get behind you, right?

He can make this work. He'll just have to adapt. He's good at that, usually! He just has to find the angle.

After all, he may not be patient, but he is persistent.

And he suspects being a liar will come in handy, for this one.

[rowanthestrange]

The Media Overanalysis (O)Mega Essay: Why Rogue Is The Bad Guy. Duh.

Code Mauve. Sorry, you’re a mutual and directly responded, so now you get The Post. It was bound to be someone eventually, and it was you. It’s nothing personal. You were just the first to dare my parapet.

@icantleave replied: rogue definitely isn't the master because the master is simply incapable of cosplaying someone this genuine and unlike himself, his disguises are always essentially very him with a few traits hidden or amplified.

Either there is a psy-op and Disney aired a different version of this or a solid quarter of you got brain broken by American Mr Darcy- no don’t try and run, get back here. The only running you’re doing is this essay equivalent of a 10k.

You are intelligent. All of you. And yet what the hell does this mean? “rogue definitely isn't the master because the master is simply incapable of cosplaying someone this genuine and unlike himself”

We’re going through this episode. All of it. This is not actually an ‘it is the Master’ post, it is a ‘but at the very least he sure acts like the Master would’ post, which is the above premise. But also just in general that Rogue is The Bad Guy.

Take it as the Master cosplaying Jack; a Pantheon member whose theme is Roleplay who like the others has watched the show and is deliberately filling the void daddy created and getting in by cosplaying the Master cosplaying Jack (has to be doing both to be skilled at Roleplay ala Maestro and the Toymaker’s skills in their areas, else he’d just be shittily cosplaying Jack); or literally he is just baddie Chuldur #6 fanboy who wants to bang the Doctor he saw on TV cus he’s sexy and they get Doctor Who out there as well as Bridgerton. All the concepts are adjacent:

Baddie fanboy roleplaying as Jack to fuck-slash-fuck-with the Doctor.

Places people. Let’s take it from the top:

-We start with a scene showing someone (Chuldur #2) who wants to roleplay as the bad guy because that would be fun.

-(Bonus: the writers talking about themselves - “Wonderful party, your Grace.” “Some are saying best of the season. A triumph. A new standard set. And I, of course, could not comment. But I think the real estimation of an evening is in the matches made.” I quite agree.)

-(We are also in Tredegar House, which you may recognise from The End Of Time, Spyfall, and other times in New Who. We like this place.

-There is electronic interference in Ruby’s earpiece. The Doctor scans this and finds it’s coming from Rogue. The Master is a frequent user of manipulative electronics both towards other people and to disguise himself. Put a pin in this, it’ll come up at the end. ✅

-The Doctor meets Rogue to the backing of hit pop song, Billie Eilish’s “I’m The Bad Guy”. The Master is a famous lover of fun pop, and being obvious to an oblivious Doctor. ✅✅

I wrestled with iMovie at midnight to put the lyric subtitles to this video and you are going to watch and appreciate it:

[If at any point you want out of this essay, all you have to do is come back to here and watch this video again while singing in your head along with the lyrics to receive a passing grade.]

-They deliberately work the lines around the music, not just thematically but so you can clearly hear what the backing song is. And made sure they kept the scene going long enough all the way into the next section just so they could keep the line: “I like it when you take control, even if you know that you don't, own me, I'll let you play the role, I'll be your animal.” Fuck’s sake. Most Thoschei song. Interchangeable freaks.

-Rogue is critiqued by the Doctor for not acting appropriately broody enough. The Master well known for being a fairly shit actor. ✅

-That is an American accent. This is a red flag for either being a Pantheon member, or the Master Dressing For The Occasion (which Rogue certainly has).

-“Do you practise in a mirror?” - him roleplaying would mean literally yes.

-“I didn’t know the Duchess employs a court jester.” - Alexa please search every time the Master has called the Doctor some derivation of clown. ✅

-“O…Kay…Rude. Lord-?” “Not a Lord.” Our last outing with the Master was all about his psyche-destroying discovery of being made from the Not-A-Time Lord Doctor; and if he is Pantheon The Rogue roleplaying as the Master, then just chef’s kiss line. But I will be magnanimous this early in proceedings, and let you go ‘technically a valid meta read is saying that conforms he’s not a Time Lord’. But the paragraph stands.

-He calls himself Rogue:

1. noun: a dishonest or unprincipled person. "You are a rogue and an embezzler" Similar: scoundrel, villain, reprobate. 2. noun: an elephant or other large wild animal living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies. "a rogue elephant"

If it’s the Master then straight up naming himself “The Bad Guy” is on brand. The Master is a Rogue Time Lord. That is what fandom has long called them - ‘Rogues and Renegades’. The Master is shite at names, if you haven’t had the pleasure of the Third Doctor’s company yet. Shitty anagrams, tenuous links to goals and character aspects, and crappy puns are the standard ✅. If Pantheon, then his choice in lifestyle that’s more about personally having fun (ultimately still Doctor compatible), with a group, in a non-competitive game which has no win condition other than enjoying the game, though rip to the NPC’s being played with as character, would definitely put him somewhat apart from the wreaking havoc on the universe others. If a Pantheon member, he literally did choose his own name from D&D.

-Just generalised throughout: Rogue is not actually suave. Some people find his secret awkwardness under the posh gear charming. The Master is not suave and is awkward, but desperately tries to style it out like he is anyway, that’s just his character. ✅

-We kinda feel like we’re going into some Karny Shobogony kind of cave area, we’re not, but just for the hitting home that this is another Upper Class Gallifrey mirror for the season. You don’t need to think the Master’s involved for this, don’t worry, wasn’t in Dot And Bubble was he, but that was a clear enough mirror. A person appearing as a servant forces their way up the social ladder. If you like some mirror play and are really deep in your TC ‘what kind of person would name themselves Master’, you’re having fun. Also I can’t see that type of death lightning without thinking of Simm!Master. Costly effect, but we went with it, and it does add some panache.

-Chuldur #5 is roleplaying Emily (this is used both in her disguise and out - potentially playing the same ‘character’. We’ll come back to this too, explore more later), who will be something of our Master this evening in the Gallifrey mirror if you’re going in for it. Also coincidentally is half the mirror pair with Ruby to the Doctor and Rogue. “Emily, please-” “But you consume me sir. I think of you every waking hour and I hate myself for it!” yeah we know babe… Anyone else hearing Dhawan!Master’s “I cannot bear that”?

-“I love these old skies” - all the stars makes it arguably sound more like a Flux reference rather than just light pollution. And we all know what event by who triggered that off.

-Finally we get more lines from Rogue, this has all been very one-sided. “Do you never stop chattering?” - a frequent refrain of the Master, who, fun fact has told the Doctor to shut up in every incarnation in New Who (and probably Old but this is the trivia I have) ✅

-If Rogue is supposedly wanting to stop the bad birdies, real weird he doesn’t give an appropriately flying fuck about the mysterious lone shoe. And simply says “I suggest look for the other shoe” like it doesn’t matter with a shrug. Because the Master is stupid and shite at keeping in-character. ✅ Makes sense if he’s on the bad guy’s team though. Also Cinderella. Noticing themes in today’s mirror subtext.

-They find it plus corpse. “And you knew. You didn’t even flinch.” Actually wrong, the Doctor can’t see behind him but we can. Rogue doesn’t flinch at the shoe, or coming up to the body, but when the Doctor says it’s the Duchess, Rogue does a slight ‘oh’ lean back, and then a sigh with a bit of a slump. To me this reads as a ‘oh you fucking idiots’ for doing it this blatantly, but I won’t mark it, cus you could argue that ultimately maybe a bounty hunter might care more about the death of the duchess in particular and sigh about it etc. (Or he is Pantheon roleplayer getting annoyed his gang can’t stick to a character and risking the outline going off-track and more bodycounty). “And you knew” - Rogue doesn’t keep eye contact but closes his eyes, opens them immediately up and a little to the side, thinking of what to say next style. ((This specific circumstance he couldn’t have known about prior, cus the murder happens while he’s inside))

-“This is a murder far beyond the technologies of planet Earth. It could only be done by someone brilliant.” “And monstrous.” [-horny flirting tone looking him up and down] “And ruthless.” “And contemptible.” Both: “You.” He is the Master and in with the bird gang. No bounty hunter with a heart of gold is calling the murderer brilliant because also, may have been easy to miss, but the Doctor hasn’t done anything brilliant yet unless you include owning a scanner and briefly infodumping about constellations. That is a Master talking about himself kinda line. ✅

-The Doctor thought Rogue was a murderer who was calling himself brilliant, and it only made him more horny, and proceeded to dance along with that little two-step. If I’m Master-brained, what’s he? Cus he’s usually only into one murderer. If that guy had snogged him instead of pulling the gun they’d have fucked right then and there, that scene has so much sexual tension that should not be there.

-Edit - courtesy of @katoska: “#though dimensionally transcendental pockets would explain where he'd hidden that big gun in that form fitting outfit.” - And why wouldn’t you have given him one of Jack’s guns, they’re all smaller? But they made Rogue a huge one.

-“So who do you think I am?” “I know you’re a Chuldur.” “The shapeshifters? Ha, I’ve heard of them. I’ve never met one,” *tilting head back towards Rogue and smiling* “Unless I have.” Please, if nothing else, come out of this thinking at minimum he is bad birdie Chuldur #6. Maybe we’re rewriting Frobisher. Heavily, heavily rewriting.

-“[his ship] cloaked behind that shed.” Calling the TARDIS a shed. It was Three that technically said it but the Master has repeatedly expressed his disdain for our beautiful police box before so that’s a Master-fitting line, be it intentional disdain or not yet. ✅

-Won’t call it a point, but he tells us he is a bounty hunter sent here to find them for the money. (Note: not kill - at the very least a bounty hunter would be bringing back the body to get, you know, the bounty). Aside from being a cheap and easy backstory it’s evidently morally bad, for all the Doctor literally goes ‘that is so…cool’ - which is absolutely not his usual position on bounty hunters.

-The thing he uncloaks the ship with? Same thing that controls the traps. How multitool. How sonic screwdriver. Or Laser screwdriver TCE as you prefer.

-His ship is a bird. It has wings, two eyes, and a beak. He is with the birds. He is The Bad Guy ✅. He is using and familiar with the bird ship; or at the insane alternative a TARDIS that completely disguised itself both outside and inside as neighbouring bird ship. There is no good guy answer for why he is in a bird ship. We never ask how the birds got here. But it was probably the bird ship. Bird ship.

-Meta so I can’t give it a point cus it’s beyond our scope but: “Oh you’re the Duchess! Of course, I should have scented you.” Not immediately recognising one of your own species when you should have sensed them thank god that’s not a mirror.

-His ship has an angular console in the middle of it with mirroring angular shape above it, the same taste in decor as the Master does with a TARDIS, like it’s almost designed to put you in mind of one, cute. ✅

-“This place is a mess.” Dhawan!Master’s TARDIS house and console room proper were a massive mess, these guys share housekeeping habits too. ✅

-“I live alone.” The Doctor notes this sort of ship would be piloted by two. Aw sad. Except he’s lying, he’s obviously lying, because he has dice on the table and he’s not playing D&D in his bird-shaped ship alone or with only two fucking people, is he? You need a group. Maybe of Bird roleplaying enthusiasts. Liar. Bad conduct. And failed to remove the evidence that contradicted the lie - dumbass Master behaviour. ✅

-Rogue declares “You’re a killer.” And the Doctor goes “Oh well,” before trying to sonic himself out of the situation, without actually defending himself against the charges. Maybe doesn’t feel the need to. For some reason.

-“What do those things do?” “It’s a trap. Triform on.” Now that could easily be a Master when he’s being sexier line, complete with his classic dumbass behaviour of declaring to the Doctor that something’s a trap before actually springing it. ✅

-He says he is going to send the Doctor to the incinerator. Why? ‘Uh he’s a bounty hunter’ Yeah. So why would he burn the evidence that would get him the money? Can’t just rock up and say ‘I dealt with it I pinkie-promise’.

-The Doctor attempts to sonic his way out of the trap before it finishes charging. Rogue says immediately that it’s deadlocked. The one thing that stops a sonic screwdriver. You can’t deny, that is the level of forethought the Master would manage to scrounge together. ✅

-Rogue scans the Doctor’s gadget, allowed in cus it doesn’t recognise it as dangerous device (oh the old ‘temporal grace field’ in the TARDIS, that’s a nice little mirror), and apparently the scans say it’s a screwdriver. I can’t prove this is a lie, but even we don’t think it’s a screwdriver, the last one with 14 literally was so much not a screwdriver it couldn’t unscrew screws, so unless it connects to the system with the name 15_screwdriver_1 again, feels too convenient. But a toxic Doctor fanboy would be able to identify what it was.

-I don’t know why we have a Sonic Monocular scene that cost us money and effort to produce when we could have just glanced across the table, but since all things that cost money in production have a reason, maybe the laser screwdriver style object we pan over? Point of interest but not a countable one, and either way the main argument is aligning character traits not convincing you he literally is the Master.

-“Roll for insight”, he cracked a smile, so surprising it uncloaked the Doctor’s full Scottish accent. This is the first positive character trait we have seen. We are just shy of halfway through the story.

-Telling the Doctor to “Roll for insight” after he sees the dice, is a dungeon Master’s instruction.

-of course he likes D&D, he plays it with the birds on the bird ship, he’s sent the birds he plays it with off out to continue the game in Bridgerton, he’s being their dungeon Master in real life too

-Seriously if you think Rogue is genuinely just a good guy bounty hunter and we should believe that uncritically, why would they tell us he likes roleplaying in D&D so much he picked his name from it? He roleplays. That’s one of the very few things we know about him. Why not chess? Or Minecraft? He could have liked Tetris? Why would he like roleplaying in the episode about roleplaying if him roleplaying isn’t relevant?

-The Master too adores roleplaying while also not being that great at it. Just putting that out there.

-“And it says that you’re wired for sound!” *sonics* ‘I Just Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ by Kylie Minogue plays. *Rogue looks up in full wide-eyed uh-oh then turns to the Doctor* “Now this is a surprise.” - I mean, yeah, it is actually. I mean why would there be such anachronistic music playing in a ship owned by a guy from…well funny I guess he never said and the Doctor never asked. Well from a species like…well alright uh guess we didn’t do that either. Said ‘planet Earth’ that’s a pretty alien way of phrasing it. “Hey but in the Whoniverse Britney Spears’ Toxic is a traditional Earth ballad”, and maybe usually I’d let it go, but this is the second anachronistic bit of music we’ve heard, and the third we hear later is even more pointed to draw your attention to it. No. It’s weird. You know who it wouldn’t be weird to though? Our pop loving Master! And that’s the most Thoschei Thesis Statement song in Kylie’s repertoire! ✅ (Or Pantheon sharing daddy’s Spice Girls thing for 90’s pop). The Master would also absolutely have forgotten to delete his playback history before all this and pull an ‘oh shit’ face not from embarrassment but cus he knows this looks fucky because he doesn’t have a poker face he’s an idiot that panics the second anything in his plans ever goes wrong. ✅

-The Doctor mouthing: “Boy your loving is all I think about.” A sentiment that’s cropped up multiple times now this episode. Also in a Master mirror. Mhm. It’s a sickness babes.

-But hey we’re up to two positive character traits for Rogue so far - likes D&D and Kylie (both anachronisticly).The Doctor was willing to follow him out and blow him in the shrubbery for less, and honestly, respectable. “I just have a crush on prettyboy American Mr Darcy” is a defence, not a good one, but still.

-The Doctor and Master with one turning the music on and the other trying to turn it off would be a scene, you can imagine it, don’t lie, you’re imagining Missy and Twelve right now. (I think for annoyer-and-annoyed Three and Delgado could go either way depending on the episode. How appropriate for them.) ✅

-Also Rogue attempting to snatch the sonic screwdriver from the taller Doctor’s hand as he plays keep-away. Bitchy, gay, very character-breaking with the rest of the episode, deeply funny. The Master would. ✅ Then gathering himself, putting on the I’m In Charge voice and holding out his hand for the Doctor to hand it over and he does. (Huh, have you guys as a whole watched Delgado? Is this what creates the ‘the Master would never’? Cus actually if you’ve not seen these two just be a bit silly with each other and think that’s just fan characterisation that would actually explain a lot. Eh, but Missy and Twelve(/Clara) have some silly too, if not Three and Delgado level. Hm, to ponder).

-Psychic paper would also not work on the Master and he would say “it says ‘you’re hot’” to fluster the Doctor. Also we know he’s lying about it saying that, because he’s the one saying he’s seen it written, yet immediately follows up as the Doctor babbles with, Rogue: “Is it ‘you’re hot’, or I’m hot’?” Rogue would know which word was written the funny ambiguity is only from the non-seer’s side on hearing the other person say ‘you’re’. ✅

-“Suits you, flustered, it’s a good look for you.” Finally we get some fun confidence - which only appears the second he actually gets an upper hand with the Doctor on the back foot. Like someone else we know. Also yet again we have the phrase “a good look” for you in this episode all about shapeshifting. The phrase is applied to Rogue by the Doctor, to the Doctor from Rogue, and among the birds to each other. It establishes an equivalence between them, which is odd if Rogue is supposedly the only one not shapeshifting and roleplaying.

-The boss thing, callback to the Meep. Again this isn’t a ‘convince you it really is the Master’ thing, it’s character analysis that their traits overlap and he is a bad guy. But since we’re here, the Master is often technically working for someone else he intends to double-cross while thinking he’s ahead of them (nearly every time incorrectly), and we know he is/will be involved with the Pantheon — given this guy is a dice rolling gameplayer, the Master gambling and losing to the Toymaker, just vibes like it’d be out of order and future toothening imo — while there’s nothing to say our hidden ‘The Boss’ is Pantheon, I’m gonna Occam’s Razor and assume both those plot threads tie together, and for now that’s a reasonable way to explain how the Master got involved with the Toymaker at all.

-“I’m just so trigger happy.” Literally a Master line, and one we just had: “Oh, shoot. I should've said, somebody needs to cut you down to size, then zapped you. I was just trigger-happy. I'll use it next time.” ✅

-Floating Doctor heads literally the Master’s nightmare. Literally literally but I can’t remember where from and ‘master nightmare floating head doctor who’ gets you about as useless information as you’d imagine.

-Look. Rogue goes from confidently being about to kill the Doctor. The Doctor forces the scanner to show some other of his faces with the psychic paper, does his whole speech saying he’s “not a Chuldur. I’m something much older and far more powerful. A Lord of Time from the lost and fallen planet of Gallifrey” (this is a special surprise that will help us later) “Now, let me go, bounty hunter. We have work to do.” It is cringe, it is up himself and lording over others which is nearly always punished, the Doctor uses his special Deep And Majestic voice, and our stoic confident Rogue is suddenly wide-and-starry-eyed and breathily says, “Wow.” In the fakest response I have ever seen. Sadly I am not allowed more than one video. But oh my God, if you need a refresher it’s 18:14. And if you think it isn’t fake, yes you need the refresher.

You can’t be buying that OwO “Wow”. You think that was the turning point? I know I’m supposed to provide better analysis, but the writing is cringe, the acting is completely counter to what it was a moment ago for both parties, is over the top, and you think a bounty hunter would do a 180 from that?? Why?? ‘Oh you’re showing me the faces you’ve been before, yeah, I know, you’re a shapeshifter’. Nothing in the scanner says he’s a Time Lord, just the words from his mouth, why would he not be lying to save his own skin? And again, what would a Time Lord mean in the universe now? Who gives a shit, if you know what they are you know they’re all dead and reasonable shot you’re happy about that. Failing even that, Rogue is working for the same Boss as the Meep - if the word Time Lord rang a bell it’d be cus Fourteen caused problems last time ‘bring him to me’, surely. “Wow” uwu so cool! Really??? Nothing, not a thing Rogue has done so far, indicates he would be “Wow” to that. Not a damn thing.

Fakest response I’ve ever seen - Groff is actually a good actor so it’s supposed to be fake, at least one of the writers is award winning and may well be both, and Ncuti went out of his way to make it look like unnatural arrogance that doesn’t fit with the previous acting choices either in this scene or the whole show so far. So either all these people were crap at their jobs, or, it’s supposed to smell like bullshit. Would the Master look exactly as fake going “wow” because his character needs to have the heel-turn now? Yes ✅. And that you pulled this speech in front of him would complete its vast circle of cringe and roleplaying.

And what happens next? We cut straight to Ruby and Cosplaying Chuldur #5: [Giggling] “We can’t keep hiding like this!” You guys are smart, don’t pretend you’re not smart, if you follow me you know how good writing works, and are choosing to ignore the meta and mirrors and themes of the episode in a way you wouldn’t with a normal Rusty-written one that you’d sit and deeply analyse. Different writers yes, but smart and capable and award winning ones. These aren’t two disparate stories smushed together, they’re the same story in different keys, that’s the Rule One here.

Continuing, Ruby tries to convince High Society Lord- Lady that she doesn’t have to marry another Lord but could be a normal person, and then the Lady says “I’ll marry someone lesser, and smaller…it may not be love but perhaps a kindly smile at dinner…and then a shared grave” cus she doesn’t want a normal person, that’s what Ruby wants her to want, she wants to marry her kinda shitty Lord. Because that’s what this fantasy roleplay is all about.

Okay essay portion over we got out of hand, bullet points, re-engage.

-A motherfucking owl hoots, with the subtitle “owl hoots”, while Rogue recloaks the giant bird ship, giving us a second look at it again, making sure we get the full distance shot and shimmery cloaking effect to highlight the wings if they get lost in the shadows. Rogue. Is with. The birds. It’s a bird ship. There is no good guy explanation for the bird ship and its D&D equipment that can only be used by multiple people in our episode about obsessive-roleplaying birds.

-Rogue has now packed. ‘What?’ Rogue has now packed. He is now carrying a small bag, cross-body strap over his shoulder. We will not use anything from this bag or see him access it or acknowledge it at all. He’s just brought it with him. Perhaps like he knows he’s not going to be going back to the ship again. Curious.

Dice Bag propoganda post

-“You ready for this?” [low tone] “It’s not my first shed.” - woah woah woah, where’s all the sparkle of a minute ago babes, I thought you were ‘OwO wow’, if you know what a Time Lord is you know what a TARDIS is, but you’re not excited no mo? Or he’s doing it to deliberately make the TARDIS inside reveal cooler in contrast because he knows how much the Doctor likes this moment.

-“O my God” - haha namedrop. This happens to be Mastery behaviour cus this is just the Dhawan!Master pretending to be O entering the TARDIS scene. You were catfished by this before, come on babes. ✅

-“Come with me, and we’ll be, in a world of pure imagination…” - what are you imagining babes? Are ya roleplaying son? Cosplaying? Engaging in a bit of the old fantasy right now. No? He’s just feeling in a chocolatey kind of mood? Uhuh.

-“I’m in love!” - Now isn’t this a 180 on the character? From so reticent and ‘most serious man on earth’ to loudly declaring his love for the ship. Which just so happens to be the Doctor’s number one kink. And what does the TARDIS do in response? She growls. Rule one basic storytelling - the new boyfriend is evil, we knew cus the beloved dog growls at him. Rogue said he was in love and she growled. Gave Jack a bar, an ensuite, and let him tinker with her insides. But to Rogue she growls. Baddie. ✅

-The TARDIS lights are in a red-and-white checkerboard pattern. Our dimensionally transcendental TARDIS is literally a 5d chessboard. I won’t count it, but come on.

-Speaking of dimensionally transcendental, that’s exactly what Rogue called her. Yet didn’t anticipate a TARDIS thirty seconds ago. It takes work to argue he knows about dimensionally transcendental spacetime ships but not know of TARDISes that Time Lords travel in, but does know enough about Time Lords to be dazzled by them when he clearly isn’t of earthly Lords. Much easier to go ‘eh’ keeping the story straight when you’ve got extra knowledge you’re pretending you don’t have, but also need to come across as intelligent, is hard. We’ve all played D&D or at least Let’s Pretend. It’s hard. Lying is hard.

-After a quick “and so clean” back-and-forth, Rogue runs up the stairs, hand on the bannister and leans on the railing. The TARDIS growls again, louder, like a whale. Like she did in the episode with the Not-Things, and with The Maestro. (Arguably her ‘Pantheon’ noise?) Both of them notice. Rogue’s expression immediately turns from an awed open-mouthed smile to blankness, with a head tilt and turn, slowly coming back. “What was that?” The Doctor claims indigestion and she doesn’t like bounty hunters. Not true of the ones with hearts of gold. We’ve seen her with Jack, and River, and she adores them. “It’s the moral void - no offence.” So you’re admitting it. Stating it directly. He’s not got a heart of gold, the omnipotent spacetime ship can see that he’s a moral void. That is what you have said. ✅

-“And this, from the ancient and fallen world of Gallifrey…Where the hell is that?” *buzzer* Wrong. You tried to be clever and aren’t - that wasn’t the line. The line was ‘lost and fallen’ not ‘ancient and fallen’. Oh but Gallifrey is ancient though- *buzzer* He says in the same sentence he doesn’t know of Gallifrey. And yet, he got all wide and starry-eyed over a Time Lord, when he is saying he knows nothing about them. Why? Because he can’t keep his character straight pun intended, which is a character trait of another undercover ex-agent we know. ✅

-“Well I might take you one day.” - bananas response by the Doctor for multiple reasons. ‘I’ll take you to my lost and fallen homeworld’ ok what? Second, Fifteen has for once been very open about his loss in this regard, said repeatedly that it’s gone, and how much it hurts him. Said it to Ruby, to Carla, to complete strangers. But here he’s out of character. Why? Maybe he’s roleplaying one that doesn’t hurt. Maybe because he thinks it’s the Master and is fucking with him. But I’m going with the roleplaying and saying what this character feels. Fucky from the Doctor rather than Rogue.

-“In a few minutes it will no longer be a deathtrap, you are welcome.” [Rogue casually] “Why, what does it do now?” This is all important but also pause to reflect for a moment on whether the character we saw up to this point would have handed his essential survival and work gear to a shapeshifter who claimed to be a Time Lord with zero proof and let him just modify it however. ‘He’s just a very trusting bounty hunter, is all.’ I mean he wasn’t at the start of all this though, was he.

-Doctor boundaries: I can’t let you kill it, “So instead we will transport it to a random barren dimension, no-one to hurt, no way back.” Passing over the obvious, the Doctor is the one programming this. We agree we’re probably not literally installing a randomiser onto the device, we’re just randomly picking one and assigning those coordinates. How do you know it’s barren? Oh the TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental we just reminded people, so she can probably see, she’s picking it. Ok. …So there’s no reason she wouldn’t have a record of what she set it to. That’s information we should have. Ok. Which are the letters Rogue says. Ok. What about your bounty job? Not even a response to the no-killing? Or that this seems worse if anything? No. Just ok. We’re saying that a lot in this episode. Ok. Just going along with things. Ok. I know what that word means. Ok.

-“Who did you lose?” “How do you know?” “Cus I know.” Cus we covered this earlier actually when he mentioned the usually two-person’s for captaining an asteroid hopper. Forgot? No worries Rogue, been a long ten minutes. No attempt to make a proper backstory just stares at the Doctor like a cow looking at an oncoming train and goes, “There was- …Yeah. We travelled together, we had fun, you know. And then a day came along, and at the end of that day…I lost them.” Now if this was the Master you’d be saying no shit he can’t provide details and only parrot what the Doctor always says in these situations, he is a moral void, bro has one friend and only knows what it’s like to love that one friend obsessively, he can’t even empathise enough to improvise a backstory that feels realistic. Maybe only lies have details but you can argue my guy didn’t even commit to a gender. It’s also a valid read to assume he’s just short on words at losing his fellow they/them bounty-hunter crook friend. Maybe the OwO Time Lord thing is enough to make him open up a little even if the Doctor’s done nothing to earn that trust yet. But both work just fine, if it was the Master it’d be how he’d do it. ✅

-“What about you?” The Doctor’s expression hardens here. Maybe cus it just hurts. Maybe for other reasons. [coldly, we linger on him] “I lost everyone.” Rogue still with too-wide-cow-train eyes . “But at the party I saw you with that woman...” That tone. And how we immediately wave his ‘Best Friend’ aside. Look, again it’s a watch the scene. These two are good actors, they’re excellent. And down to the ‘huh’ head tilt before Groff’s line with every microexpression he is radiating a guy playing a role while still trying to poke his roleplaymate in his open wound with a stick. There has never been just one layer in anything in the show so far why would it start now in the episode about cosplaying people to death do you part, why? Why?? The one mirror everyone can accept is Captain Jack and he was literally a con man. This is a con man you are being conned. If you look at his face and think he’s being earnest you are extra weak to con men do not give strangers your credit card details. Didn’t you have jerk friends? We all had jerk friends. That is the expression the jerk friend made when they were just asking questions *blink* *blink* don’t get upset. Or Groff is a garbage actor. But he isn’t. Just the character he’s playing is crap at acting. Go back and watch O, the cow-eyes are textbook liar, any liar, but especially the Master ✅. They’re doing a scene, it is diegetic. The acting is diegetic.

-“You don’t have to stay a bounty hunter, [beat pause] Rogue.” You can say it’s just cus he knows Rogue isn’t his real name but the Doctor’s usually fine with that sort of thing. “You could travel with me[…]the worlds I could show you…” “And what if I like what I do? Would you travel with me?” “That is quite an argument. ((No it isn’t he doesn’t like bounty hunters)) I’ll tell you what, when we both get out of this, let’s argue across the stars.” This is the Doctor and Master scene, we do these scenes every incarnation all the way since half-share in the universe, you don’t have to think he’s the Master but we know these lines damn well are. ✅

-They nearly kiss but the TARDIS cockblocks them with a beep of being finished with the rewiring, because again, she doesn’t like the moral void, and does not want the Doctor to stick his dick in it. And what does the Doctor say as he steps back from their almost kiss? “The trap is ready.”

-[Rogue is sans new bag for the indoor scenes here, I believe this is just a costuming error that happened from them probably reshooting the dancing a bajillion times, it will come back when they’re back outside again and in every subsequent scene onwards]

-They meet back up with Rubes and Roleplaying Chuldur #5. Ruby asks a very good question. “Ok, but what does anyone get out of killing these people? I mean I know they’re posh nobs and all that, but we found the housekeeper dead. I mean why would anybody do that?” And the Doctor, instead of saying ‘it’s how they steal their bodies they’re shapeshifters’ says the meta-important answer first. “The dance. The drama. The emotion.” THIS IS ABOUT GALLIFREY. High society here is a mirror for the aforementioned fallen Gallifrey. The Master didn’t just genocide the Time Lords, he killed every Shobogon/lay-Gallifreyan without Child-stolen regenerations, he killed every TARDIS, every living thing on the planet. Why? The drama.

-“It’s cosplay. All of this is cosplay.”

-The Doctor turns to a non-plussed looking Rogue and says: “You said that a Chuldur comes to a planet and tries on people like outfits just for the fun of it.” …Wh- when? When did he say that?? (I’m being facetious - he doesn’t). Also does that seem rich coming from the ‘multiple costume changes per episode’ Doctor? Mirrors.

-(If the background music here is Vitamin String Quartet I don’t recognise it unfortunately. Fun Fact, I used them exclusively as background music for my own wedding, cus I thought it’d be fun for people to try and guess the songs if things got boring and it’d be a conversation starter. Ate my wedding cake to Poker Face. We like resonating with the universe here.)

-“Those TV signals beam out across the stars.” “What are these T-V signals?” I can’t add more than one video, so if you’re not willing to take the description on faith it’s 24:45. But watch Rogue here. He slightly turns to her with a little glare and that exact same frustrated little sigh he did with the Duchess corpse earlier. Dungeon Master’s stupidest soldier? Cus you’d think if he was annoyed she was being anachronismatised (real word), he’d have given the Doctor the shut up glare but doesn’t give him bother for it at all. Maybe he’s just a conflict averse bounty hunter. But that’s what the Master would have done, he has low lackey/idiot friend tolerance. Both reads valid. ✅

-The Doctor dances, we know what that’s a metaphor for and what episode it’s from. Good thing Rogue knows all the moves ahead of time.

-Just putting the reminder here cus there’s no clear place - I go with Master because Dungeon Master, I’m A Bad Guy, the mirrors *gestures at everything above* etc. but mostly because this is a deliberate attempt to cosplay Jack. Thus it requires someone who has watched the show. The Pantheon, the Master seems like a good bet, however, could admittedly be Chulder #6 (and they’re just supposed to be a very strong but purely mirror for the Master) and because of their different dimension-ness has watched the show on TV and has figured out how their self-insert is gonna bang the Doctor. But one way or the other, our baddie here has seen Doctor Who The TV Show in the same way the birds watched Bridgerton and this is an intrinsic part of this that shouldn’t be separated. That we have a fanboy who is deliberately cosplaying Jack and invoking him and references to that episode is important.

-Rogue: “So what is this ancient Earth tradition of cosplay?” No-one said it was ancient (twice now), no-one said it was Earth, no-one said it was tradition, even Ruby had to clarify ‘so you mean it’s literally dressing up and playing at Bridgerton?’ Rogue almost certainly already knows what it means. And we know the birds do. This is our baddie having fun. Because as the Doctor says next: “Oh, Rogue. It’s when fans dress up as characters that they like.” (Point to Pantheon, because roleplaying the Master would be dressing up as a character from Doctor Who that they like).

-General note again: both prior to but especially 13’s era really spent some subtext time building up the whole ‘The Doctor’ and ‘The Master’ are roles they play. If you know you know. We’ve been continuing on Chibs’s themes. Just reminding.

-The Doctor takes the male i.e. leading position judging by the other couples visible. As per traditional Thoschei.

-Lights dim in our usual diegetic/non-diegetic playing that we’ve been doing. Soft point to Pantheon - remember if The Rogue’s theme is Roleplaying it must be a double bluff for him to actually be being skilled at it, and he is cosplaying the Master cosplaying the Doctor, with the conceit that the Doctor gets this but not that it’s someone cosplaying the Master, thus he’s winning. If he is Pantheon this is the only potential evidence of fuckery besides having brought non-native-dimensional creatures into ours, which we do have other explanations for.

-“We need to have a big fight so one of us can storm out and the Duchess follow us.” “The Chuldur cosplay, not me.” Mhmm. You had D&D dice. But regardless if you buy that, we have now spontaneously swapped from engaging starry-eyed Personality B, back to Personality A: strong and silent.

-“How dare you my Lord! You would ask me to give up my title? My fortune? But what future can you promise me? *Rogue shaking his head, not good at deviations from the script, nor is the Master fwiw* ✅ “You cad! Tell me what your heart wants, or I shall turn my back forever!” “I…” Fifteen whispers, “Say anything.” If you are not internally writing the pre-show Doctor/Master fanfiction I cannot help you. Jo describing the Master like a jilted lover or whatever the hell it was. But at least here, with admittedly a little open-mouthed smirky smile, Rogue gets down on one knee and offers his ring. (From non-marriage hand, 4th finger, don’t completely see him pull it off but he was wearing it in the dance scene). If we are re-writing history with this cosplay, which given the Doctor’s reaction he certainly seems to consider it meaningful, that’s definitely what the Master would do here. ‘This is what I wanted you to do back then.’ ✅

-Obviously the Master has used that sort of flat-topped large round ring before, we’ve had the callback to it with the red-nailed woman and the tooth just recently. The insignia is not entirely decipherable. Most default I’ve seen is an angel (Master coding, especially if we’re wearing it upside-down hoo), I’ve also seen a ‘rod of asclepius with 3d coiling tails’ (A Doctor fanboy who has come prepared for this moment), and just plain bird of some kind given the little wings.

-The Doctor says a very genuine “Sorry I can’t- …I ca-” and runs off. (Which definitely happened the first time). This almost certainly isn’t River trauma, Twelve wore the implied wedding ring until it fell off when he regenerated. And we’re just supposed to be making a scene and this is an obvious way to do it - he’s already nearly kissed him and invited him, the Doctor put relationship on the cards, and could easily still be haha fun joke but you are still coming right? If it was just Yaz Making Everything Feel Like Touching A Hot Mind Stove then the near kiss feels like that would have been included in the trauma reaction. So presumably engagement based triggering specifically. Probably not from Cameca either. That had cocoa involved.

-Rogue seems a little surprised at this reaction. Fair all round, the Master might not have expected it either, but also the sort of thing a fanboy might not have been able to pre-empt - it wasn’t in the show after all.

-They actually join back together almost immediately and they run outside, so it wasn’t that overwhelming.

-“Oh, we must play them!” - no ‘aha’s’ from the peanut gallery, we already saw the birds can potentially not recognise each other in costume, and in the baddie camp (bird ship, he’s in a bird ship) we can be pretty sure that Rogue didn’t arrive here looking like Mr Darcy since none of the others were pre-costumed and just nicked people when they got here. (number 2 shows they didn’t pre-organise characters - “nice costume”). If Chulder #6 - nicked a guy. If Pantheon - conjured himself a bespoke Darcy form. If the Master potentially still body-stealing or simply we’re cloaked - remember the electronic interference from the start that pointed the Doctor to him specifically rather than the Chuldur? Dhawan!Master previously cloaked himself, plenty of scope there. (Why would the Master need to cloak? If the Doctor’s already familiar with his form. Either from other plans or the fact that, well, there’s a world where this could literally still be Dhawan!Master.)

-The Master nicks bodies by the way, for New Who-onlys. We haven’t actually done it for a while, and for earring interference reasons I don’t believe we’re doing it now, but it’s actually a Classic Who staple.

-“Now keep the Duchess talking, a Chuldur is strong, and if she starts to change you it won’t stop.” First, now that’s a meta, second, do we want to add a sketchy point for the gendering of the Chuldur? Cus we’ve seen one of them explicitly say they’re fine with different bodies (‘oh I wanted to be the Duchess’)? Hm. It’s an assumption on thin ice but I’ll allow it. We don’t ask Rogue why he knows so much about the Chuldurs considering they’re different dimension beings. There are non-problematic options there to be sure. But will say that Dhawan!Master was previously messing around with different dimension beings hoping to find out if they were what the Doctor was, got trapped in their dimension at the end, and these ones are literal shapeshifters. If it is the Master, he has plenty of reason to be here with them and know a lot about them. ✅ If he is a Chuldur, well, obvious reason.

-[Rogue now has his bag back on. This is why I believe it’s a costuming error it wasn’t on indoors just then - the TARDIS and real outdoor areas were obviously filmed in very different times and places, the fact the bag travelled to both is suggestive that it was clearly supposed to be a part of his outfit at this point. BTS: the indoor and outdoor scenes were obviously filmed at different times, (3 weeks of night shoots oof) they’re not actually walking in and out of the building. But it’s also a deliberate costuming addition after the ship because he wasn’t wearing it in the night scenes where he’s holding the Doctor at gunpoint or anything. Tl;dr - no bag before the “Wow” heelturn in the ship, carries bag after.]

-There’s not one but multiple of the Chuldur shapeshifters. A ‘family’ according to Rogue. (Who are playing two characters that are getting married. Oh Doctor-Master mirrors, never change). Something you’d think would be on the bounty hunter note - are you just getting paid for the first one? Can you claim extra if you make multiple runs? These are important questions. Or not.

-“I want to be the Doctor.” …How does she know it’s the Doctor? ‘Uh, the Duchess was introduced to him earlier.’ Yeah. The Duchess. Who died. Childur 1 was still the housekeeper when that happened. She knows who the Doctor is.

-Doctor-Master inverting with the “Run.” “I’m the one who usually says that.” Our beloved theme returns to us. Of course maybe it’s just the cosplaying self-inserting whatever could be any baddie by which i mean really only Pantheon or Chulder #6. Bird ship. The Master was literally cosplaying as the Doctor the last time we saw him, like physically in the Doctors clothes. And probably underwear. Does anyone in this essay smoke weed?

-“Breaking spines! Removing tonsils! Live vivisection!” Gallifrey Time Lords mirror previously engaged, re-engage plus Timeless Child. But we uh haven’t had them do any of that stuff yet and they already suck people dry (don’t. I think it’s meant to be a kind of bolus, if you know your birds of prey) so I don’t know why this line is here. Actually maybe I do - now they’re roleplaying playing scary beasts hunting prey, doesn’t mean they’re actually going to do any of those things. Removing tonsils stands out. …We have a rogue (can’t say that now. Odd?) line from Ruby at the beginning about falling over in front of a fit dentist, the Master’s in the Toymaker’s gold tooth, tonsils feel adjacent, it’s almost certainly just funny, and it is, but if that bangs any bricks together in someone’s head go to town.

-I think the “breaking spines! removing tonsils! live vivisection” line is there to showcase that they are roleplaying Baddies. Because while murdering, they have done literally nothing like that, and it’s the sort of silly thing a child would say when playing a monster trying to think of the nastiest things a monster could do). “We still have the big finale wedding to come. And then… London. We can play our games on a magnificent scale. Parliament first, then royalty. I can be King. And we can start wars with the French and the Spanish and the Portuguese, and everyone who doesn’t look British.” This is their spitballing Season Two. As another point to all being one character and that them being Secret Monsters may be accounted for in the game - Emily is always called Emily whether humanning or in bird form.

-The Doctor and Rogue hide in the carriages. (Matilda style). If you’re building that pre-show Thoschei story, hiding from Time Lords in a TARDIS was probably already there, but if it wasn’t, now it is. Or hurr durr hiding in a carriage is funny I don’t know.

-“Back to the house. We must advance with the wedding! That should get them out of hiding.” …Bestie? What does that mean? Why would that get what we were led to believe that you believe are ‘two random interesting people one introduced to you earlier as the Doctor’ out of hiding? They have skedaddled so as not to be eaten by birds, right? They’re gone, lassie, why would they come back? …Unless she already knew who a character called the Doctor was before they were introduced? And that the Doctor’s M.O. will bring him back? Cus they’ve been watching more than one show.

-We modify the transporter: “I can make this transport gate carry four.” “What if there’s more?” “Right…Six. Six maximum.” How convenient. Personally don’t feel that worry is realistic for the character to have (while acceptable to write), and that if Rogue was as he was originally portrayed, he would be saying “Worst comes to worst, I could always…” *lifts jacket* *Doctor has brief moment of distracted horniness* “Nobody is going to be shooting anybody.” But he’s so perfect pacifist for the Doctor so quickly, I guess he just never would. Of course if he’s on their side, especially if also a Chuldur, he’s not wanting to kill any of them.

-Also feels like a Dungeon Master-whisper in the ear the Doctor just goes with: What if there’s more birds? *sets it to 4* What if there were more. *immediately sets it to 6 skipping 5 entirely*. (We talked about Missy’s comment of there always being a way out being potentially meaningful re: the Master’s traps for the Doctor; and counterbalancing the Doctor giving them a way out ‘come with me don’t be evil’. This would be a fun thing to do with that. Trying to create and order a good story and satisfying conclusion based on the Doctor and other players’ choices - pure DMing work at its finest.).

-“And I thought I was interesting. A bookish little wallflower risking it all for a secret love… But you. You are wild, and brave, and rude, living a life of adventure” again you don’t have to be team Master to enjoy the Gallifrey mirror. The potential in these mirrors for the Master is mmm gorgeous and I’m so here for it. Going back in time to when One ran away with Susan and slapping him for not proposing because he would have come with you, we could fix the universe, we-

-Question, cus I’m bored and this has become sort of a general analysis essay: When the birds transformed there were at least some people inside who screamed, you hear them. …Why is the party still here and going on and everyone’s chilling. Eh maybe Dot And Bubble explained that. Or maybe it was delayed screaming at seeing the gays. That’d be a Time Lord mirror. A marriage proposal probably gets you arrested for public indecency.

-The birds speak English, French, and German. Or at least a few words thereof. Multidimensional telly and I’m surprised it’s got foreign channels? How anglocentric of me. *shakes head*.

-“This is the endgame, Chuldur’s leave no witnesses ((yes they do they just abandoned bodies everywhere)), they’ll slaughter everyone.” If he’s not a bad guy then why, why the fuck, did he spend about fifteen minutes fucking around and not shouting “If we don’t stop the Chuldur they’re going to massacre everybody the second they stop having fun! Yeah, I’m bringing the gun!” like you mention this now??? Of course he mentions it now, he’s building dramatic tension because he is like our favourite dramatic bitch. ✅

-R:“I’m sorry.” 15:“They got her.” Ruby cosplaying as a Chuldur cosplaying as Ruby (see you thought my Pantheon cosplaying as the Master cosplaying as Jack was too much - we did double-layering in the episode itself) enters the room. Rogue gives his line but immediately turns away and watches only the Doctor and his reaction (who stares for a moment then gets up and walks away). Autism collective that we all are, this:

is not an expression of someone whose heart is breaking for his new friend. Just so we’re clear. Which is an odd choice for a new love interest - no sympathetic pain, eyes closing, not even a pat on the arm. He’s just observing what the Doctor does, and then gets up and follows the Doctor out. ✅ If he’s a good guy (he’s not, bird ship) you’re not selling him well. And if he’s a bad guy turning noble, he doesn’t have that part down yet. (Also Rogue said he’d tried looking for Ruby but they’d locked the doors. They manage to get through the section they’re in just fine. YMMV. Not enough on its own imo).

-“Madam. Your Grace …Your Birdiness. I cannot sanction wedlocke…between creatures from Hell.” They let the vicar be the one with the banger line, damn. Only one with a spine. Dead obviously but getting a high-five from some angel out there. (Me turning that into a vicar’s reaction to being asked to wed the Doctor and Master, whatever the fuck they are.)

-Speaking of which, here we explicitly see a Chuldur kill a man and copy his outfit but not his face. The Chuldur. Have no difference. Between body. And clothing. *flashback the Not-Things, and Fourteen regenerating* If you weren’t sure they were mirrors, you should be now.

-“How long do they live for?” “Chuldur?” “Mhm.” *Rogue comes up from behind to stand alongside him where he can see him.* “They have a lifespan of about six-hundred years.” “Good, good. That’s a long time to suffer.” A slight negative in ‘this can be validly read as the Master’ behaviour, because this yields only a tiny expression change of a slight raise of eyebrows, not a wild-eyed smile, and I don’t think the Master’s been able to restrain himself that well since he was Delgado. God what that man could convey with an eyebrow. Also we’ve all agreed that the funniest thing is that the plan doesn’t even change, he just knows how long their torment will last now and is happy about it, and if you ever need to explain the horror underpinning the Doctor it’s that.

-Now this is a hell of a thing to reveal about yourself to your brand new love interest and companion. That you’re down for some serious torture. Thirteen went well out of her way to be a monster only when they couldn’t see her. (Works nicely as a soft threat though. ‘If you’re involved with killing mine, I will torture you til you die or the sun does’. Good to have boundaries in a relationship.)

-“Taste his inhuman scent.” - A) Nice double-meaning line considering *gestures above*, B) Confirmation she knew earlier the Doctor wasn’t human, and so combining that with the belief he would come back if they started the wedding…

-“And I am one of a kind.” “He is quite unique…” Hold this in your mind we’ll be back to it in just a minute. *

-The birds immediately recognise the transport trap, by name, and that there’s only one third of it. Which would make a lot of sense if Rogue and the birds’ ship are the same bird ship so they’ve seen it before. Can’t be that they’ve encountered Just A Bounty Hunter Rogue before - he ‘didn’t know’ there was more than one, there’s no visual recognition, and previously it led to an incinerator not something escapable from.

-That we don’t see presumably Rogue placing the other traps, not even a glimpse of someone shuffling in the background, is to me extremely interesting. Not only like with the Carla flashback scene, playing with the unseen, but perhaps critically that this certain someone might know where the cameras are…

-Were you going “why don’t they just take their shoes off” when they got stuck in the triform? Well makes sense that they didn’t now, right?! Cus we know now there’s no difference to them between their clothing and their skin! …Admittedly Ruby…hopefully is fine and as human…well maybe not human…hopefully she’s whatever she was at the start of the episode. I, uh, maybe would mark that down as a concern though.

-Ruby’s chemistry with Lady roleplaying #5 was rewarded by attempted murder as Emily sought to turn into her. That happens a lot here. Let’s not worry about them as the partner mirror for Doctor-Rogue. Or what just happened with Dhawan!Master and 13. If you consider ‘Poker Face’ to be obviously meta-relevant here but ‘I’m The Bad Guy’ not earlier, question yourself.

-* I told you we’d be back. “She smells like a Chuldur.” “Idiot! It’s a false scent from that cheap psychic jewellery!” - The Doctor smells unique but this doesn’t mean they aren’t palling around with the Master. We’re specifically given a reason for this to not be an issue and well, I guess that would explain why she gets earring interference when Rogue’s around huh? If they’re using the same technology. (Same goes for a Chuldur faking being a human etc.)

-Do I believe the Master could perform a fireman’s lift to yeet #5, yes surprisingly, he is actually physically strong, a fencer, rower, and it’s been noted before. (Ainley’s six pack haunts me still). Dhawan!Master in particular has lugged corpses. It’s only running he doesn’t do/have stamina for. However, do I think he would risk it in-situ just for cool points? Don’t know. However, for this free bit of mental torture to work, the final bird has got to be in the enclosure. If it’s not all or nothing, then of course the Doctor would release Ruby. To get the Doctor to have to choose either to kill his companion or the world? He would carry the earth like Atlas. ✅

And that’s what he immediately proceeds to do with no hesitation. ✅

“Doctor, press send. We’ve only got one chance.” “I can’t.” “Press. The button.” *The Doctor openly, loudly panicking* “It will send Ruby!” “No, Doctor, it’s fine.” “NO! No! No! No!” “If you don’t press send, the Chuldur will escape and Ruby dies anyway.”

The Rogue that you think is real is not doing this. Is not convincing the Doctor to kill his companion. He is taking out his gun, and shooting the struggling birds while they are still stuck to the glue trap. It’s not a nice thing. But it is the Heart Of Gold thing. But he’s not that. He’s just The Bad Guy. ✅

“They’ll kill us. Then this house. Then London. Then the world. You know that. You absolutely know it.”

He doesn’t. The Doctor doesn’t know a thing about the Chuldur other than that they are shapeshifters and what he’s seen. How does he even know what London is?? And he wasn’t there for the scene where the Chuldur said it themselves.

He can’t have logicked that out. There were a few deaths sure, but one housekeeper and a duchess not only isn’t ‘these are extremely dangerous and fast killing machines’-worthy, that leap doesn’t make sense.

It’s not even true in their possibly-just-roleplay Baddie Plan. ‘And we’ll start wars with x y and z and everyone who isn’t British! Bloodshed, cannons, gunpowder!’, like that is a lonnnnnnng plan. Like I said before this situation is no ‘we don’t have time to run away and regroup’ thing, they’re slow killers, and especially with Ruby with battle mode engaged she at least would be fine. But it’s that taking over London bit. Very specifically. He claims he hasn’t met them, doesn’t know how many there are, he’s not admitting to any prior knowledge of these guys. So the only way he comes up with that line is if he already knew what they wanted out of their campaign in the first place.

They have not yet proven any more dangerous than any human gunman, in fact less, they clearly can’t spray bullets, they kill one at a time and so far only people they’ve wanted the appearance of in some way. They have been in rooms crammed with people who survived the encounter. Are you going to have to leg it to the TARDIS to regroup? Yes. Would people die? Sure. But probably not her, she’s fast and has a battle bot controlling her movements. Multiple posh nobs have died already and we only got a little sad over the housekeeper. Our hearts will survive. The one putting the pressure on the situation is not the Chuldur. It’s Rogue. There is no time limit. No rush. It’s waiting for you to press the button on the Laser TCE- I mean control stick. But Rogue is not giving him a second to think. ✅

*Rogue approaches, step by step.*

“So can you do it?”

GUYS, your supposed hero is TORTURING the Doctor, who is fucking ugly crying his two broken little hearts out. ✅

“Can you lose your friend to save the world.”

‘I am very sane and staring at you in a normal way the normal amount. Choose to kill your friend yourself, or choose to allow the genocide of every person on this planet including her. I want to see you choose, choose, choose.’

“Ok, but what does anyone get out of killing these people? I mean I know they’re posh nobs and all that, but we found the housekeeper dead. I mean why would anybody do that?”

“Remember how we used to run through those streets as children? The alleys where we'd hide from Borusa as we skipped classes? All gone now. Come on, ask me why I did this.”

*Sobbing Doctor shakes his head, making his decision* [quietly] “No.”

*Rogue with hitherto unseen tenderness, wiping one of his tear away* “I know.”

No, he doesn’t! If he is a random fucking bounty hunter he does not in fact know that. He knows because he already knows the Doctor. From real life or from being a bad guy who just kind of likes to watch TV - which actually I guess does describe the Master✅✅

*Rogue kisses him. Because a tortured ugly crying Doctor is hot to him.* ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅

(If I need to explain why the Master snogging the Doctor here, or the fact that he genuinely loves him in his own twisted way, you can’t be helped, or maybe were just a Ten viewer when you were 8 so missed stuff, and have watched nothing else in the show and just stumbled back in here - go watch Twelve there’s Simm!Master in it for you, and Thirteen’s second series onwards).

Live ‘About To Be Ripped Apart By Murderous Birds In Another Dimension If She Even Physically Survives The Trip’ Slug Reaction. Ruby straight up like ‘well at least he won’t be alone’, babes we’re gonna get you some sertraline, a psychologist, it’s gonna be ok, you’re worthy of life, we’re gonna get you help, we have a therapy circle.

The grin and hoppidy-skip jump Rogue does here when they break for air and he’s holding the Laser TCE/controller is a level of happiness we have yet to see from Rogue. A still cannot do it justice. (40:17 - though if you’re going, may as well watch the whole torturing scene from 39:00). It’s a bit more than a wee smile.

Then Rogue leaps over and knocks Ruby out of the triangle! Something he could apparently have done at literally any time before or during torturing the Doctor to his breaking point!

Why can he do this when she is molecularly bonded to the floor? We don’t know! It’s not explained! But he clearly knows his fucking device doesn’t he?! Why didn’t he tell the Doctor at any point that it would be possible to get Ruby out with a thing called a matter exchange? Who knows?! Maybe it slipped his mind til the last moment? The Doctor being the one to take her place would sure have been an answer, but oh well!

‘Maybe he didn’t want to risk his life for Ruby’s unless he really had to.’ - Then that’s shit hero and love interest behaviour isn’t it! But since it says “Matter Exchange” I’m pretty sure he could also have knocked Ruby out of the triangle using that vicar corpse on the floor a few feet away, then neither would have to die! So he must be real sure he’s gonna be ok! ✅

He’s so happy and chill. The music is happy too. Rogue jauntily throws the bouquet - ahh look who’s next to be married *wink*. This is the happiest and funnest and most genuine he’s looked the entire episode. Almost like he got exactly what he wanted! ✅

“Find me.” *click*

Ruby you’re such a dick, why couldn’t you be as happy as him? If you’d trusted the Doctor to find you instead of you die by bird and/or dimensional anomaly before he got there this could have been such a peppy scene the whole time. It’s almost like Rogue is absolutely certain he’s not going to die doing this. You know I know a character who’s been transported to a different dimension at the end of his episode before and got out of that just fine! ✅

Almost like this was the end of a live D&D session he was hosting. That’s a wrap everyone, great job. Just imagine what I’ve got in store for us next week. Good thing the car transports all six of us together! Well done for not panicking, screaming, or interrupting what I had going on with the Doctor at the end, and trusting this wasn’t going to teleport you into an incinerator. Thanks for playing along, excellent improv as always, I’ll be marking your RP points highly.

And then the Doctor screamed “I’ll find you! I promise I’ll find you!” it was very romantic, and then he got out the sonic and started scanning everything for traces, anything, he was still upset and panicky of course, I mean his new love interest had just snogged him and given his own life to save Ruby’s. But Rogue had believed in him to do this impossible impossible task so he would. So he and Ruby ran back to the TARDIS as fast as they could, maybe she’d picked something up or *gasp* she was the one who configured the trap in the first place so maybe there would be a record of what random dimension she chose! Except she wouldn’t let them access it for some reason and she kept growling and the Doctor was crying with anger and-

No wait, none of that happened, sorry, not sure why I thought it did.

Actually the Doctor went to comfort Ruby and her comfort him, sombrely put the bouquet down where Rogue was. (And left the trap technology behind. So got engaged and invented a glue/tarmac trap.) The Doctor remotely sent the Bird Ship to orbit around the moon, “so it can wait…as long as it takes”. In the 19th century. …Babe, you know they can see the moon, right? They have telescopes. This is a mavity waiting to happen.

(Genuinely choosing not to think about how we last left Dhawan!Master messing about with the two moons in the 1900’s, I’mma be real, I don’t know what was going on and when there, hope it doesn’t fit in actually because I’m not gonna get it. If he’s the Master he turns up, that’s all I ever need to know.)

-“Can’t we use the TARDIS and go find him?” Ruby asks. Good question. If the TARDIS can determine whether a dimension is uninhabited or not that’s definitely gonna narrow it down. Maybe she could outright search for him? If she, you know, didn’t hate his moral void.

-“There are as many dimensions as there are atoms in the universe.” *Ruby arm cuddles* “Anyway! It is what it is, so onwards, fine, next.” So is it ‘as long as it takes’ or are you not even going to try and find him? That and the bouquet really feels like you’re giving him up for dead and just hoping he finds his way back himself some day. It’s not what you were told to do. You can wear that ring and salute the sky with a smile all you like. He said “Find him.” Bad fiancé behaviour.

Cus the thing is, here is the ‘uwu small bean Rogue’ paradox. If this is just a normal guy, he’s not making it back on his own. He’s dying to the birds. The Doctor isn’t looking for him, and Rogue clearly didn’t think he could return on his own - he says “Find me” not “I’ll be back”. So if you believe we’re going to see Rogue again…he’s going to not be a normal guy, but be the type who can survive and make his own way back from a wrong dimension surrounded by free murderous birds. *piano rendition of The Cat Came Back starts playing* ✅

But luckily he’s not normal. He’s a man/bird with so much forethought he knew he wasn’t going to be coming back to his bird ship and took whatever it was that can save him from a teleport trap from the spaceship with him in that bag. Always have a getaway plan. That’s Masterful thinking. Unless you just think he wanted his wallet and keys on him ✅ (Point against Pantheon though - pretty sure being able to move reality around doesn’t require props. But then D&D. Maybe he just likes props.)

-“Doctor, you don’t have to be like this.” “I have to be like this because this is what I’m like.” And in our story about roleplaying, shouting out our longtime theme of the most important roleplaying of all, that we follow a character who’d rather be called Lulubelle playing The Doctor™. Doctor Who is a show.

-The fires whole and reflected and internal everywhere, like our Gallifrey mirror is on fire.

-Final additional literal-meta that may be of interest: the costume designer said Ncuti’s outfit is designed as a nod to Three - the original Thoschei pairing origin. We canonise Shalka!Doctor - famously and frankly exclusively known as ‘that animated one who made a robot boyfriend Master to be his Companion’, with lines in the episode Cornell said was indeed intended to suggest a relationship there and would have continued had that pilot been picked up. Relevant or not we’ll see.

And to all those who read that and yet still think that I am just very cynical and mean, and he really does have a single heart of gold, he’s just got flat affect and is socially awkward and autistic maybe and-

His ship IS A FUCKING BIRD. OWL HOOTS.

🎉 You did it! You read the full analysis! Great job! You passed Media Overanalysis, Rogue Edition. I told you it was a 10K. Look at how much you just read that had already been effectively covered in the first minute with just one thing.

“I’m The Bad Guy. Duh.”

(‘I am now convinced, but do you have a blessedly far shorter essay about why a Chuldur/Pantheon The Rogue perfectly cosplaying the Master cosplaying Jack would be the way to go?’ Why yes I do, strawman.)

Assorted later Additions:

Pantheon!Rogue: Why the bird ship?

Maybe that’s why the ship’s so fucky actually, DM’s love their props, this is about playing D&D In The Real World, so maybe he got one originally, short hop standard Asteroid Hopper. but now they’ve just kept (perhaps Pantheon-magically) editing it over time as the campaign and rule of cool needed. Appearance, better space travel, time travel etc. “It should look like a bird!” “…Yeah! It should look like a bird! Great idea Emily, we’ll work that in!” Of course if he’s a Chuldur this is just…their ship. Maybe classicly upgraded.

What might Rogue’s original plan for the Chuldur’s live D&D Session supposed to have been:

We know they were going to have a big wedding, but maybe that they’re also Baddies going to take over the world muhahaha! Cus they went into that monster-playing real quick and also they said that the panicking and screaming is their favourite bit - so there must have been a plan to include that after the wedding part of the game! They thought the wedding would lure The Doctor out so there must have been nefariousness in it or else why would The Doctor be drawn out? They were playing Baddies! So, thinking like what our lead bird would want for a moment, if you were to DM that, maybe he’s both playing the bounty hunter sent to catch them …But maybe also was going to do an “I Object!” scene too. Their faces in that scene, they’re so excited. Let’s say Rogue doesn’t know the Doctor was coming in advance. He’s already got ‘I’m The Bad Guy’ playing if this wasn’t a live magical edit on seeing him. Oh, maybe that’s why he chose to look like Mr Darcy. Maybe he was going to woo one of them - a good reason to already have the ring. Cus a big wedding can’t go right, that’s not drama, that’s boring. We know he’s probably cloaked - not only do they not recognise him but we have Ruby’s earring interference pointed directly at him (same tech frequency problems?) and even mention the psychic jewellery’s ability to mask a scent with a false one. So he was an NPC just meant to turn up and add some of their beloved drama. So he’d woo a Chuldur, he’ll object and then he would reveal himself as a bounty hunter with his Big Glowy Gun and trap! It was a dastardly trick! You knew he was a Rogue and a cad all along, you just let yourself fall for his deceit! *teleports to ship rather than incinerator* BRO. Even the bird’s D&D plot would naturally be the ‘I was tricking you and am actually your enemy’ twist!

Post-Empire, The case for the Chuldur Phoenix: Rogue being (unbeknownst to himself) the Master cosplaying a Chuldur cosplaying the Master.

[indigovigilance]

When They Became Their Own Side

Can I just say that gif-clipping the scenes to make this meta broke my heart all over again so good job JF, NG, MS & DT.

Anyways.

I'm going to discuss the major contenders for "the scene in which Aziraphale and Crowley became their own side," and then tell you when I think it happened, below the cut:

Identifying the Third Side

By the time you clicked "Keep reading" you probably had a scene in mind. I'm going to predict it was this:

Which is an extremely strong contender, though frankly this entire scene is filled with character-trajectory changing lines (Satan bless you JF), so I'll take it as within-error-limits if you picked anything immediately adjacent to this.

The reasoning behind it is solid: Aziraphale knows, on a spiritual level, that he is not on Heaven's team anymore. He fully expects to go to Hell. He's ready.

But he finds out that he's not going to Hell. Despite Crawley's statement that nothing has to change, we know that everything has changed for Aziraphale. Neither truly a part of Heaven nor or Hell, he now knows that he occupies the liminal third space, a realm that has been home to Crawley for quite some time. Yes, it is lonely, but maybe a little less lonely than it was before, or would have been; where once there was only one, now there are two. By the end of this scene, they both know that they are on the same side, a third side, and the pain of separation that entails. But being and knowing are different things, and I would argue that Aziraphale was on Crowley's side before he realized it, which means we have to go further back.

The Revelation of Confluence

Maybe you thought of this:

...and this scene is a great choice, because as of this moment Aziraphale knows (and Crowley knows he knows) that they have a confluence of goals and morals. Every action in the rest of Book of Job is based on the common understanding and trust relationship they establish in this scene. But again, did they need to know that they were on the same side to be on the same side? Their moral compasses would still have aligned and they would still be working for common purpose even if Aziraphale had not uncovered the ruse. I would still say we could go further back.

Establishing Loyalty

Perhaps, trying to beat me to the punch, you went back so far that you went off the page, so to speak, to Before the Beginning:

A rare but solid choice, and entirely defensible. Aziraphale has just met Crowley and rather than ratting him out or letting him face the very just and deserved consequences that the Almighty would exact upon such a divergent, free-thinking celestial, Aziraphale gives him advice to keep him safe. He is protecting the Starmaker from Heaven, which seems to put him on the Starmaker's side in opposition to Heaven. Aziraphale's first loyalty is to his principles, stretching his proverbial wing over the Starmaker to shield him from the reign of the Almighty, and no, that wasn't a spelling mistake. We see as well that the Starmaker, quite explicitly, puts his principles first. In this way the two are similarly defective (in the sense that they are defectors), but their principles don't strictly overlap here. Neither of them are fully on Heaven's side, but it would be a stretch to say that they are on the same side.

More importantly, the Starmaker isn't really on anyone's side; the Starmaker doesn't even seem to be aware that there are sides! Just a project that would benefit from some suggestions, a fresh point of view. So they certainly aren't on Aziraphale's side. But the fact that Aziraphale has tried to protect them is important, and I will reference it later, so hang onto that thought.

Forming Trust

Maybe you're a real dreamer, and your beautiful brain lighted upon this scene:

Absolutely brilliant, tumblrite, because Aziraphale isn't even going to tell God that he gave away the flaming sword to a pregnant girl, in fact he'll lie about it to every angel he encounters until the end of days.

But he told Crawley.

Aziraphale puts his fate in this demon's hands when he shares this; after all, what's to stop the serpent of Eden from ratting him out and getting him into Big Trouble? But the thought that Crawley might betray him never seems to occur to Aziraphale, and it seems that his trust is well-placed, because as we know, Crawley will never betray this confidence.

Taken in combination with Before the Beginning, Aziraphale has both kept secrets for the Starmaker and entrusted Crawley with his own secret. This bilateral trust bond is the foundation that "our side" will be built upon.

Nonetheless, up on that wall, Aziraphale still wonders if he's done the right thing, and takes reassurance that yes, being an angel and doing the right thing go hand in hand. After this, Aziraphale will continue to make choices that betray his principles, opting to instead follow the Will of God (see: the Flood). He is on Heaven's side, and whatever Crawley may be, it isn't that.

I think we can safely say that as of this moment, Crawley (besides being head over heels in love), who is already on his own side, is ready to welcome Aziraphale into that space with him, but that Aziraphale isn't taking him up on the invitation yet.

So while it's true that they have a unique bond as of this scene, it still isn't a side.

When Aziraphale accepts the invitation to the Third Side

Sure, Crowley has been on Aziraphale's side since the moment he invented heart eyes in the Garden of Eden, but Aziraphale didn't join Crowley's side until this exact moment:

We were all a little too busy being pissed at Gabriel for this line to realize that he single-handedly brought together the greatest power couple above or below the Earth.

We are simply not stopping Hell.

What they do is up to them.

Aziraphale has exhausted all his options appealing to Heaven to save Job's children, and in this moment, he realizes (because Gabriel tells him directly) that if he wants to save them, he's going to have to go behind Heaven's back to do it.

Crawley and Aziraphale aren't even in the same room. But Aziraphale, at this moment, has turned his back on Heaven and joined Crawley's team.

Crawley just doesn't know it yet.

But Aziraphale is about to go down there and tell him:

A few other meta-analysts have written on the topic of equivocation: communicating in deliberately ambiguous ways so that the person across from you understands your meaning and any unseen spectators do not. (I personally learned this term from @cobragardens, in this meta, and @ao3cassandraic's discussion of kayfabe is a closely related topic)

We should interpret the ensuing scene (which deserves a meta all its own, like this one by @majortomyourcurcuitsdead) through that lens. "You don't have to" and "I know you" are all, on their face, harmless statements, but are all equivocation for:

We are on the same side.

Crowley is understandably wary, and isn't about to let Aziraphale know that he's been clocked. But whatever pretense that he was maintaining dissolves right about here:

Circling back to the top, yes, this is the moment that they each know they know. But knowing that they were on the same side was not a necessary condition of being on the same side. Aziraphale, when he made the decision that any further appeal to Heaven was futile, and that he must appeal instead to Crawley for mercy, had already jumped into the liminal with both feet.

Crawley will try to deny it, but they both know what's up:

In Summary

This distinction may not be important, but the theme of sides is so strong that this felt like a topic worth exploring.

The argument that Aziraphale enters and exits the third team is also a very defensible one; he will denounce and then rejoin Crowley across the millennia to come. But the first time he makes the decision that he will work with Crawley to collude against Heaven and Hell occurs at the very moment when Gabriel tells him that that is the only remaining option if he wants to do the right thing.

Which raises the question: was offering Satan a contract to terrorize Job, assigning a morally ambiguous demon to execute it, and sending in a renegade angel to thwart it all part of the Ineffable Plan?

I'll let you decide.

[sailoryooons]

Obsidian | Two | myg (m)

☾ Pairing: Yoongi x f. reader

☾ Summary: You remember everything. The first time you radiated at garnet, feeling the power of the jewel rushing through you. Remember the energy pulsing at your command. And you certainly remember the face of the man who ruined your life. Then there’s Min Yoongi, the Chaotic who is the key to your revenge.

☾ Word Count: 10,945

☾ Genre: Urban fantasy, criminal/syndicate, strangers to lovers, angst, eventual smut

☾ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. 

☾ Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, depictions of injuries after being beaten up (a named side character), explicit language, depictions of unhealthy/poor living conditions, mentions of murder, depictions of murder and broken bodies/dismemberment, violent action sequences, references to nightmare and hints at ptsd-adjacent memories/feelings, soci-economic commentary lmao, some confusing world building, mentions of weapons, scenes of a past betrayal/trauma.

☾ Published: June 13, 2023

☾ A/N: This took a little longer than expected to write, but I think I really like how this chapter turned out. It is a little bit heavier on the scene setting and laying the ground work for reader's position in this story and her past, as well as her function withing the Green Dragons. The third chapter is where things kick into high-gear and there's not really a moment with the foot off the gas once its starts, so buckle in besties.

Thank you to @theharrowing for being an amazing beta reader and assuring me that this isn't boring and that the pace is okay thus far, and for pointing out my accidental Dwight Establishing A Pee Corner in the Elevator reference.

☾ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

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A name is a useful thing. You learn a secret name whispered across a table in a smokey room. 

You wonder what you can do with the name.

-

Jimin is not a fun person when he’s angry. He is plenty of fun when he’s drinking at the bar or spares you a night out on his tab as a motivator and reward, but those nights are few and far between. You would much rather be seeing spinning lights at one of the clubs in the Crimson District than standing behind Montana under the thundering gaze of Jimin Park. 

He isn’t mad at you. Well, perhaps he is a little bit for your rude interruption when he was talking to Agust. But right now, he’s mad at Burro, who is being dragged toward the front of the building where you think they’re going to shove him into a car. He isn’t dead, but he certainly no longer looks human. Swells of purple and red distorted his face, blood smeared across his face and in his eyes, blinding him. 

It’s the worst you’ve ever seen your manager punished. Jimin has shoved Burro around before, but never like this. Never until he was dripping blood and drool onto the floor, orbital bone cracking under Jimin’s radiated punch and so disfigured that he’s unrecognizable. 

The satisfaction is fleeting, scurrying away when Jimin turns that lethal stare toward where you stand in the door of the alleyway, waiting for him to address you. There is blood on his hands, staining his undamaged knuckles. You see the glint of emerald rings and feel his power ebb and flow. He flicks his hand and the blood wicks off, spattering the ground.

Outside, the air is balmy, sticking to you like a second skin. The sounds of slamming doors and the city echo through the mostly empty alleyway. It’s narrow, only wide  enough for a single waste truck to back into and haul trash then drive straight out again. It smells like the wet scum that leaks from the air conditioning units rattling in the walls of windows of apartments above and like cat piss. 

There’s a dark, Burro-colored stain on the pavement near Jimin’s shoes. He sees you looking at it and sighs, waving a hand casually. “Ignore that. Just another skid mark among many.” 

“You’ve never punished him like that before.”

“Well, I’ve also never had a manager let a fucking Circle member kill a man that belongs to the armory, either.” You hum but say nothing, keeping incredibly still. It does not appear that Jimin’s sharp anger is directed at you, but you’re in no mood to risk it. “You’ll be seeing more of the Black Lotus at the bar. And some more security temporarily.”

You think of Agust and his cat eyes. “Why the Black Lotus?”

Jimin reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a silver box. You watch, his small fingers nimble as he flips the lit and slides out a cigarette. You hear the click of the metal container before he slides it back into his pocket and puts the cigarette in his mouth. Carefully, he brings his fingers to the end of the cigarette and you feel the tiniest pulse of energy as he snaps, sparking the end to life while he breathes in the smoke. 

The energy used to light it barely registered in the jewels that Jimin wears. The emerald on his ring finger barely lights up - though it could be a trick of the light - but his other jewels remain dull and untouched. You know what it’s like to have that much power at your beck and call and the pull toward Jimin’s emeralds makes your palms itchy. 

“There’s some shit going on with the armory.” Jimin blows out smoke slowly. It wafts upward toward the night sky and smells faintly of menthol. He takes a burnt-orange drag, blows it out again and shakes his head. “It’s complicated right now. I am interested in what the Black Lotus can do for us, and this is not a terrible in.”

“The Salib’s will be pissed.”

“The Salib’s weren’t around to witness it, were they? As far as they’re concerned, that man came into the bar and beat my manager within an inch of his life, killed Rollins and only managed to be stopped by a member of the Black Lotus while my light caste bartenders called me for help. Right?”

Lying is so easy. Jimin’s admission that he’s killed one of his own men and beat another one bloody comes easily. He isn’t worried about what you’ll think of him. You know he’s a monster just like the rest of them, but he’s a monster that you trust and that protects you. That protects your secret. 

So you nod your head, blowing out a long sigh, accepting this tale that Jimin has told. He smirks around the cigarette in his mouth. “Good girl.” He gestures toward the door behind you. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t interrupt me earlier.” 

“I apologize. It was rude and inappropriate.”

“It was. However, seeing as you managed to stop the fight, I’ll let it slide.” He takes a drag. “How did you, by the way?” 

“How did I what?”

“Stop the fight.”

Digging around your pocket, you reveal the shatterwave. Jimin holds out his hand, palm upward. You drop the device in his hand, watching as he brings it up to eye level, scrutinizing it. Rolling it between his fingers, he presses the top of the shatterwave, releasing the high-pitched frequency. You both wince and you immediately feel sick as your own frequency is scattered by the sound. He presses it again and turns it off, but the ringing echoes in your ears. 

“Clever.” He deposits the shatterwave in your hand. “Why not just radiate like a normal Radiant, hmm?”

“I didn’t need to.”

Jimin tosses the cigarette on the ground and crushes it beneath the toe of his shoe. You hear the crunch of gravel and the hiss of the embers as it dies. “Right,” he laughs. “Still on your little secret weapon bit.” You scowl at him and he raises his hands innocently, eyes full of mirth. “Hey, no judgment here. It helps me too.”

Sometimes, you wonder if you’re making the same mistakes again with Jimin. A powerful man who knows how to use his charm and allure like a weapon, Jimin is the worst kind of dangerous, disarming others with his flirtatious smiles and bedroom eyes.

Jimin isn’t unlike Seokjin. They both use the power of beauty and charm to cut down the competition and to install themselves in positions of power. But Jimin doesn’t have the ability to imitate empathy the way that Seokjin does. Even now, you can never tell what was real and what was imitation with Seokjin, the line between real and mimed emotion too blurred for you to follow. 

You never have to worry about that with Jimin. Unlike Seokjin, Jimin’s mask cracks on occasion, the real Jimin bleeding through in moments of anger and desperation.

Still, Jimin has collected you all the same, keeping you safe and cared for like a coveted weapon. He asks you to do favors for him on occasion, trusting you to keep the secrets he doesn’t want his mother to know and to be his garnet knife in the dark. 

But at least you know Jimin is using you. It’s a transactional relationship, but for once, you’re in the know instead of being led like a whipped dog on a leash, looking at its owner with nothing but love and devotion. 

You never want to be a dog again. 

“Come on,” Jimin murmurs, gesturing toward the door. “Let’s close the bar and get you home for the evening.” 

Jimin does exactly that. He stands near the front door, arms crossed as he watches his men clean up and lockdown the bar. You close out the register, scribbling the very small sum made for the evening before letting yourself into Burro’s office to lock the normal cash in a safe. When you come out, you offer Jimin the zipped bag of profit for the night and he surprises you by waving his hand.

“Split it with you and the kid. For the trouble.”

For the trouble is another way of Jimin saying as your reward. It also means for your silence and for your continued loyalty. It isn’t hard to understand the multiple meanings of Jimin’s words. Jungkook bows and thanks Jimin numerous times, still wide-eyed and nervous around the Primus of the Green Dragons.

As second in command, Jimin’s power isn’t just in the glittering gems on his fingers and ears. He has influence among the Crown Cities and is a prominent member of the ruling body of the Armory, second only to his mother. The thought of the Green Dragon’s Dominion sends a shiver down your spine. While her son has taken a liking to you, she has not. 

Despite protests, Jimin sends one of his men to escort you home. The walk isn’t far and you do it alone for most nights. Sometimes Jungkook is heading in the same direction to meet unnamed friends of his, providing you safety in numbers. You always have the protection of your hidden emerald, though you rarely have to use it.

Living in Market Town has given you enough experience to know what streets to take home and what groups to avoid. The Nulls tend to be more courageous the closer you get to home and farther away from the pockets of stores where Nulls and Radiants alike shop. For the most part, though, you slip through the shadows until you make it home.

Home is a giant, living thing. The Breathing Wall isn’t the real name of the towering complex with thousands of windows and thousands of residents. It was named something official long ago when the building wasn’t sun-bleached concrete and dotted with balconies spilling with life. Towels over railings, clotheslines drifting in the breeze, plants poking through the railing, rainwater catchers. Every porch facing the north was bursting at the seams, the apartment begging to be relieved of the cramped, teeming life inside. 

Having an apartment alone in the Breathing Wall is a rarity. Your neighbors hate you for it, whispering snidely as the family of seven packs inside tiny walls, hissing when they pass you on the stairs. You ignore them in favor of keeping your head down and keeping your senses alert.

Murder is no stranger in a place like this. It thrives in the overcrowded halls, neighbors killing each other over too much noise, residents going missing only for their neighbor to knock down their shared walls for more space. The community is the administration in the Breathing Wall, and you know that you’re on borrowed time before someone decides a girl living alone in a building so desperate for space is a worthy target. 

Inside your unit, you stand in the darkness. Silver moonlight shines in patches through your grime-encrusted sliding glass door. You’ve welded it shut, not wanting anyone to be able to get through it. It’s a simple home with a single mattress on the floor, a table with uneven legs and a mismatched chair, a fridge that hums loudly, and a tiny bathroom where the water is as likely to come out brown as it is clear. 

It isn’t much. In fact, it’s nothing compared to the life that you used to live. You try not to think of the differences, especially knowing that you’re better off on a thin mattress with a lice risk than in bed with the snake that haunts your dreams.

There is no evidence of that life now. None of the fine clothes, none of the crystal glasses. There isn’t even a mirror in the bathroom to look in when you flick the light on, though that had come later, when you couldn’t stomach looking at yourself after. 

After. 

In a way, it feels like your life is split into two parts: before Seokjin and after Seokjin. 

The before is memories that you try to keep under lock and key, stored away only when the information is useful for Jimin’s errands. Thinking about before, when your sheets were softer than clouds and your bed kept warm by rough but gentle hands is too painful. It reminds you of your stupidity, of your willingness to be used. 

The after is filled with its own misery. Shadowed by paranoia wherever you go, keeping your head down and trying not to cause too much of a fuss. Becoming the punching bag for people who think you’re a Null or light caste. 

At least you’re in control. Or some crude imitation of it. 

Dinner is hot and fresh courtesy of Jimin’s guard - Alec - walking home with you. He was more a symbolic presence than anything, his Green Dragon crest turning away anyone whose eyes lingered too long and the sapphires drilled into his knuckles letting others know where he was on the caste. Even with sapphires, you could have sent him through several buildings. 

Freezing water douses you in your shower. It reminds you of the water crashing down in the market today after Agust’s sabotage. Eyes closed and letting the metallic-scented water rush over you, you think of Agust. The shape of his eyes, the doll-mouth. He’s still an enigma to you, and you can’t help but roll the words he said to you around and around again. 

Call if you need. 

Agust’s voice had been like velvet when he offered. Surprisingly, you believe that if you called him, he would answer. It feels a little silly to trust a stranger - and a Dominion of the Black Lotus of all things - but somehow you think that if you told Bolero to call his boss, Agust would show up in a floral shirt and a smirk pasted on his face. 

As though you can scrub away the images of him in your mind, you furiously rub your skin with soap. It does nothing but lather poorly and leaves you feeling raw and sensitive when your scratchy sheets scrape over your skin after laying down in bed. 

Around you, the world is loud. You can hear the family fighting on the other side of the wall that your bed is pushed against. Mira’s voice is shrill and high-pitched, overpowering her husband's soft, rich timbre. Their kids are silent, trained in the art of their parent’s battles. 

Noise echoes out in the hall too. Slamming doors, heavy footsteps, voices rising and falling along with the occasional blare of music as a door opens and shuts. The entire world is awake and bursting at the seams as you lay alone in bed, looking at the cracked ceiling where a tiny spider has built her web. 

Falling asleep in a building full of bodies that never stop moving and people that never stop living is hard. You live in the center of the noise, always consumed by the constant hum of the building. And yet tucked into the corner of your mattress with the faint smell of mold and clutching your emerald close to your chest, you manage to drift off, waiting for your alarm to wake you the next day.

-

A dogwood-scented breeze twists the curtains of the bedroom. You wake up to a loud crash from somewhere in the house, feeling dizzy and disoriented as you fumble out of bed, limbs heavy with sleep. Morning light shines gold through the window, painting the mostly white bedroom in a shower of warmth. 

Shouts and thudding footsteps echo on the other side of your closed door. You ease your way toward it, trying to piece together the sounds of chaos and glass shattering. There were four additional people in the house beside you and Seokjin, and by the thudding feet, you know there’s more now. 

Seokin is nowhere in the bedroom and you pulse lowly, reaching your energy outward with slow-reaching awareness to map out the house. You feel the shiver of power from the garnet on your ring, bracelet, and jewels encased on your incisors like bloody fangs. 

Seokjin is in the living room surrounded by dark caste Radiants. You don’t know why he doesn’t rip them apart and obliterate them with his onyx that’s permanently fused to his ribs. He is a walking skeleton of power that cannot be stolen, and yet you feel no throb of inky, dark power from him.

Your home is full of sapphire, amethyst caste Radiants, and a single emerald caste that you know is Riya. Riya’s energy is flaring as she makes her way toward the silent onyx that is Seokin at the center of the fray. You cannot tell which energy belongs to Dol and Laurent but you taste the crackling vibration of amethyst jewels and you hope it's them.

In your sleep-addled brain, it takes a moment to realize you’re under attack. Your mind races as you bolt for the door, gathering power in your hands as you do. It seems someone has discovered your private home, tucked away in the farthest reach of the Kim territory in Millenia. Few people know about this place, meant to be a safe space for you and Seokjin to hide, to keep away from the violence of your world. 

When you step into the hallway, you see the black kraken of the Achilleos family sigil and snarl. So they have made their move on you, seeking the thorn in the side of their family. It’ll mean war, of course. You belong to the Primus of the Kim family, the most powerful lineage of Radiants in the Crown Cities. 

You are untouchable. 

The woman in the hall runs at you, energy crackling at her fingertips like lightning. You don’t blink, dropping down into the thrumming power of your garnet jewels and pulsing. The throb is deep and you feel the shiver in the hall as your power explodes toward her, catching her hard and sending her backward. She hits the wall with a thick crunch and falls limp, limbs twisted the wrong way and eyes staring, but not seeing. 

If you had the power of onyx, you would have blown her apart. The urge to caste drop is always there, the dark jewel nipping at your feet and begging to be used, taunting you: Try it. Try me. Reach for me. See if you can do it. 

There are more important things than reaching for power just out of reach, though. Like speeding through the halls, skidding to a halt to peer at a pile of bleeding limbs and shattered bodies. You avert your eyes when you see that Dol has a head, neck, and middle section but nothing else. His blood is on the walls, death on canvas. You vaguely make out Laurent next to him, though there is no face to confirm it’s him. Just a feeling. 

Emerald power shivers in the house. You run toward it, a moth to the flame. You cling to the feeling of Riya’s energy, begging her to keep fighting. There are dead men and women belonging to the Achilleos family as you clear the east wing of the house and launch over the railing, landing hard on the first floor.

Wood splinters beneath the weight of your energy. You radiate higher as you approach the living room, two amethysts swiveling to meet you. You barely think about it as you breathe in the weight of the grand foyer behind you, thrusting your hands forward and throwing the entire room at them. Unlike the woman in the hall, they’re ready for you, wood and glass and tile shattering against their shields. 

Momentum is everything in a fight between Radiants. You keep your energy flowing like a river, manipulating the power from the garnets as you radiate and turn your energy into hard, red glass that’s sharp as daggers. It’s a trick rudimentary dark caste Radiants learn as children, shaping their energy into solid form. 

The red shards rain down on their shields as you approach. You don’t stop your assault, the red daggers forming faster than they can follow. There isn’t much distance between a sapphire and amethyst on the Jewel Caste, but the skill difference between an elite garnet and a decent sapphire is worlds apart. 

Radiating feels like nothing else in the world. It is power rushing through your veins, like an uncontrolled dam break, water drowning everything in its path. When you were a child, this breaking of the dam into your power would make you sick - many Radiants get sick from the after-effects until they learn to control it.

Now, you let the power of garnet explode outward. You shatter their shields, red splintering against blue. Panels of wall rip back and fly into the living room with the force of your explosion. This time, the garnet shards you form hit their targets with wet, meaty sounds. 

What you find inside the living room makes you stop. 

Seokjin stands in the middle, arms linked behind his back. The people surrounding him don’t have him captive. He is surrounded by a mix of the Achilleos Kraken’s and Kim Red Claws, standing in a semi-circle and facing you. He is unharmed and passive, watching you with glittering dark eyes.

Riya is on her knees, head facing the ceiling. Her nose is bleeding and there’s a gash on her forehead, and her lips are parted. Her breathing is ragged and from where you stand, you can hear that there is fluid in her lungs, the phlegmy gasps of air hinting at internal bleeding. 

Terror squeezes your heart. Riya is only sixteen years old, face round with youth, shaking as her lungs squeeze out air. Filling with blood and fluid. Not healing. Dark hair sticks to where she bleeds on her forehead and her clothes are damaged and stained. 

You look at Seokjin who does nothing to help the girl kneeling on the floor, frozen in place by the thrumming power of an amethyst radiant. Eyes darting back to Riya, you take a single step toward her and Seokjin hisses, making you come up short. 

“There she is,” Seokjin announces. His eyes are dead set on you. “There is the woman who killed Chrisoula Achilleos.”

You pause, mouth falling open. “I- what?” 

You did kill the Dominion of the Achiellos family, but under Seokjin’s orders. Under instruction from the Kim family and with their consent and love. You - you did it for him. Seokjin looks down his nose at you and suddenly, you feel very much like a roach beneath his shoe, recognizing that look before. It’s the look that the Primus of the Red Claw gives someone before he’s about to put them in their place.

Or send them to their graves.

“Admit your crimes and we’ll let her live,” Seokjin orders you, eyes flicking to Riya. There isn’t a single look of concern on his face for the girl, who is now coughing wetly. Blood-tainted spit comes out of her mouth, frothy. She has minutes. “Confess, traitor.”

“I…” you’re at a loss for words, looking back and forth between the girl you’ve taken under your wing and the man who you love. Who loves you. Who loves Riya like his own blood. “Jin, what are you talking about?”

There is no flicker of emotion there. Seokjin looks at the man standing closest to Riya, and you see the decision on his face before he says the words. 

“Kill the girl.”

Your scream shatters a thousand worlds. 

-

Most mornings, you wake up screaming long before your alarm goes off. On the bright side, there are so many people in the Breathing Wall that making a little extra noise isn’t so bad.

Gray light filters in through the glass door. You spent a few minutes laying on your sweat-soaked mattress, heart beating hard enough that you feel it in your stomach, making you sick. A shiver rushes through you, muscles clenching as you try to stop it. Sweat makes the back of your neck and the small of your back sticky, sleep shirt clinging to your skin as you slowly roll over.

Memories turned dreams plague you every time you shut your eyes. Sometimes the memories are out of order or distorted, like watching a holoscreen with a broken transmitter, splitting the image and playing warped images. Sometimes, like this one, they are in perfect order, so real that it feels like you're back there in that house, waking up to an empty bed. 

Dreams don’t capture the real horror of it. The brightness of the blood and the sound of bones cracking doesn’t quite translate in dreams, but you remember it nonetheless. Can picture the exact shade of pink the foam in Riya’s mouth was. Can see the sickly pallor to her olive skin. Can recall the exact blank look on Seokjin’s face as her neck cracked, severing her spinal cord. 

As long as you never let anyone that close, you know you will never have to scream like that again. 

With sore limbs and popping joints, you pull yourself up from the floor. Opening a cabinet in the kitchen, you reveal a small, pitiful wardrobe. Though it isn’t much, you do utilize the laundry mat down the street that the Green Dragons own free of charge, meaning your clothes are nicer and softer than anyone else waiting in the line at the always-packed community laundry on the first, tenth, and twentieth floors. 

At the center of the thousands of lives in the complex is a stairwell, hollowing out the middle with a dizzying circle of stair after stair. There are two elevators of course, but you’re as likely to get stuck inside of one for two days as you are to find one working. You remember the time you had to share the cramped space under flickering lights and a neighbor whose name you didn’t know who kept urinating in the corner. 

Life in the Breathing Wall is constant. You press yourself to the wall of the staircase as you begin the descent down fifteen flights, rolling the stiffness from your shoulders. It’s a good way to get the blood pumping in the morning and now you’ve done the journey enough times to not get sore, but it’s still a task. 

More than once you stop on the stairwell to press out of someone’s way. People carrying furniture, baskets, bags, and groups of kids move in a tangled flow up and down the stairs. When you get to the bottom, the lobby is filled with a line of people watching the arrows above the elevator go up and down, hoping that the car comes down soon. 

Stepping over a woman selling crystal bracelets that she asserts will tap into one’s ability to radiate, you end up outside in the hot breeze. The city has not yet made the full turn to autumn, but the wind promises something cool in the future. For now, it kicks up dirt and sand from the dry landscape just outside of the city's edge. 

Behind you, the complex is a wall of movement. You leave it behind, starting on the road and narrowly avoiding a rumbling vehicle towing a trailer of junk. Morning sun bakes the top of your head and the pavement as you navigate to the subway, flicking through the text Jimin sent you overnight.

Hoseok is stepping in as manager for Montana. Stop by these places to order replacement furniture for the bar. 

Relief that Burro isn’t coming back relaxes your shoulders. You have no idea who Hoseok is, but you hope he is even a third better than Burro when it comes to competency. Still, you’re not overly thrilled to be waiting for the creaking of the subway as it wobbles on tracks, lighting flickering on and off above you. 

The train car is only moderately busy today. You manage to find a seat next to an old woman who could be sleeping or dead - you’re not really sure and you don’t want to check. Leaning your head against the metal wall behind you, you let your eyes fall shut as the car rocks back and forth, gaining speed as it heads to its next stop. 

Around you, everything fades to dull noise. You’re tired, frowning when you start thinking of your dream. Your memory. It was a particularly vivid one, etched in your mind permanently. You’re unsure if it’s better or worse to dream of things in such detail. 

Memories will kill you one day, you think. You were haunted by memories of your early childhood before meeting Seokjin for years, and now you’re plagued with him. The man who takes up the space of most of your life, the face you see when you go to bed, the voice that whispers to you in your dreams. 

Above you, the speakers on the train let out a loud chime and declare what station you’re at. Eyes fluttering and adjusting to the light, you squint and lean forward, elbows pressed to the top of your knees to support you as the car slows down. 

This stop is cleaner than the last. There are transportation robots patrolling on the landing, stopping and ensuring that people know where they’re going. You see sanitation workers changing trash receptacles and here, there are train schedules and maps displayed across a dozen screens that are hung up over the escalators to the city above.

Aurora is a wealthy district, with cleaner air and better infrastructure. Here, the buildings are all in neat rows and decorated with shining sculptures and gardens with flower arches. Patrol robots roll down the wide sidewalks and cars hum by, moving slowly in traffic. 

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like you’re in another world when you visit the wealthy districts. Even the building style here is different, opting out of tall skyscrapers for white brick villas and single-story shopping malls. Here, people stroll on the streets walking their dogs. Here, there are no overwhelming holographs advertising body modification and simulated sex. 

Clean. Curated. Calm. 

There are so many worlds within the sprawling city of Diade. Each district looks so entirely different, like they’ve been pulled out of a simulation and dropped onto the map. If you look into the distance, you can see the great towers of Civ looming like knives. Adjacent to them on the other side of Market Town is Pulse. 

You choose not to go to Pulse. Ever. 

Citizens glance your way when you pass them on the street. Everything here is so pristine and built with neat lines. Even the clothes on those who walk by are geometric and linear, seams pressed, flat stitching in comparison to your pants that don’t fit quite right and have mysterious stains and the shirt that looks like the idea of red more so than the color. 

Utopia. The word jumps out at you as you turn down a shopping district filled with clean-looking clothes and stoic art displayed behind glossy windows. It stands right on the edge of Green Dragon territory, rolling to the coast where the sea salt sprays against the cliffs.

Just a little south and you’d be in Viper territory. The thought makes you shiver and move a little faster, keeping your head down. The Manoban family hates you as much as the Kim family and it’s best to keep away from their sneaking eyes and vipers. 

At the first shop, you’re nearly denied at the door. You flash the small Green Dragon charm shoved in your pocket and the woman relents and mutters an apology that doesn’t feel very just. Even as Jimin’s envoy, she watches you warily as you point out pieces of tables and stools to replace the old ones. She takes down the order and sends you on your way. 

It’s much the same at each place Jimin sends you. A wary are you lost followed by forced tolerance. Jimin might be the refined prince of the Park family but any respect and niceties reserved for people who matter aren’t wasted on you. You don’t mind - you’re not here to rub elbows or ask for any favors, so winning the affections of the elite isn’t at the top of your to do list.

If you had to do it though… you try not to think about it as you skip back to the subway, checking your phone for the time. Your next shift starts soon, though you’re not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do with a bar with bare minimum furniture. Still, Jimin didn’t say that the bar was closed, so you know you’re expected to show up regardless. 

A group of people dressed in tight fitted clothing, harnesses and LED accessories get on the train with you. Your eyes ghost over their tattoos and the hint of body modifications, lips twitching. They’re the kind of people that Seokjin liked the least, rich enough to spend their money clubbing and sweating out drugs in underground basements and raves. You always thought it was a bit hypocritical, given it was his clubs and drugs they indulged in. 

Such hypocrisy used to be your life, though. The big names of the city, building the perfect little system to keep them at the top while frowning at the bottom for being at the bottom. Jimin is a part of the machine, of course, and so are you. But to try to escape the machine is to die, so you’ve tried to hide yourself in a small part, a useless cog that no one cares about. 

When you get off the train to drop yourself back into Market Town, you can’t help but look over your shoulder at the group. They’re giggling at a glittering holo on someone’s phone. Looks like an entertainer of some sort, maybe someone that they’re going to see in Pulse. 

The doors shut and cut your vision off. There’s a loud announcement that the subway is leaving as the car rolls back for a second before shooting forward, carrying the strangers away from you where you’ll never see them again. 

Setting sun paints Market Town spilled-blood red. It warms your face as you stick your hands in your pocket, moving along the streets flush with people heading toward the shops and stalls and strips of businesses. Anxiety prickles your skin as you get closer to work, the weight of the night before weighing down on you. Surely the Salib family has already burned down the establishment in retaliation. Or perhaps they’re waiting and you’ll die a fiery death on your shift. 

Montana is still standing when you turn the corner. The usual members of the Night Sphinxes lean on the cracked walls of their buildings and smoke clove cigarettes. You eye them more than usual as you head up the walk, waiting for one of them to ask you a question. Waiting for them to push off the wall and come across the street.

They don’t. You warily push the door open to Montana, a new sensation tickling the back of your neck. You know Agust is in the bar before you see him sitting on the only stool left in the building. Jungkook looks at you from where he’s leaning on the bar listening to whatever Agust is saying. He nods in greet as you stand at the threshold, staring at Agust’s back.

He’s broader than you remember from the night before. Today he’s in a white t-shirt that he fills out nicely. His shirt is tucked into jeans, showing off a narrow waist that looks dainty compared to a trace of muscle you can see through the shirt. 

Slowly, you head toward the bar. You give Agust a wide berth, keeping your eyes trained to him as he speaks softly. You can just barely hear the low notes of his voice as you get closer, the tingling in the back of your neck increasing. 

When you enter Agust’s vision, he grins in your direction. His eyes are glittering, his smirk crooked and deadly. There’s something about the way he looks at you that makes you want to shiver. Instead, you clench your muscles, fighting the rippling reaction of whatever his gaze inspires and head to Jungkook. 

Ignoring Agust, you ask Jungkook, “So we’re just gonna work with half furniture and…” you look around. It’s just Agust sitting at the bar with his gaze pinned on you. “A single patron.” 

“Jimin said the new manager would be in tonight.” 

“Great.” You glance at Agust. “What’s he doing here?”

“He is holding up his end of the agreement. I said I would offer protection and damage control for what happened with my man last night.” Agust gestures to the bar. “Services rendered.” 

“You’re going to single-handedly stop the Salib’s if they come bursting through that door?” 

His lips twitch and he looks down at the amber liquid in his glass. “I’m equipped.”

There is little doubt in your mind that he is. Instead of answering, you throw him a dirty look before heading toward the back, giving some lame excuse about going over finances while you wait for the new manager to arrive. In truth, being near Agust with the static feeling on your skin makes you anxious. 

If Jungkook has any qualms about entertaining your new guest, he doesn’t say anything. He goes back to saying something about sports, voice vanishing as you move into the store room and to the office tucked away near the emergency exit. 

Water drips from the ceiling in the office, making it smell dank. The air is cloying and you slide a broken cement brick in front of the door to keep it from closing, letting out the stale air. It’s not a well-kept office and there are papers, inventory orders, and cups everywhere. A computer console sits in the corner, orange light blinking to indicate it's in sleep mode.

Instead of powering it on and going straight to trying to weed any of the mess Burro has left behind, you start cleaning up the office. If you’re going to get a new manager, it might do well to start with a clean office, especially if he’s anything like Burro leaving you to manage the bar most nights. 

While you clean, you never lose the sense of Agust’s presence in the bar. He sits at the back of your mind and awareness like a candle, flickering and warm as you shove things into a trash bag. You still don’t understand why his existence presses down on you the way it does. Curiosity almost sways you to go out and talk to him. Learning where your curiosity gets you keeps you where he can’t watch you. 

After an hour of picking it up, the office looks better. You haul the bag over your shoulder and toss it into the overflowing dumpster in the alleyway. You pause, staring into the night. City sounds echo down the alleyway, reminding you of just yesterday when you stood outside talking to Jimin. Burro’s beaten and bloody face flashes in your mind, a new reminder that as much as you like Jimin, he’s still deadly. 

Inside, you sense the arrival of other people. You lock the door, focusing on the shape and feel of their energy for a moment. Two emeralds and something strong but a little scattered, power like a lightbulb. It’s not a common feeling, but you suspect you know the reason for the flickering energy, walking to the front of the bar and slipping through the door. 

Jimin is leaning against the bar with a single elbow, grinning lazily as another man you don’t know speaks to Jungkook. Agust is still sitting where you left him, his hand on his glass of whiskey. At your arrival, his ochre eyes settle on you and don’t move. You want to squirm under his gaze. Instead, you wipe your hands on your pants and approach Jimin and this new man, eyes flicking between the two. 

The stranger is handsome. That’s the first thing you notice about him. His dark hair is a little long, gelled back elegantly to reveal smooth skin, and a long, narrow face. His ochre eyes are focused on Jungkook, sparked with interest as he stands easily with a hand tucked into his suit pocket. His face is delicate and reminds you of the fresco paintings you’ve seen in Aurora. 

When he speaks, his voice is playful and warm, rising and falling with a hypnotizing cadence as he says something to Jungkook that makes the younger tuck his chin to his chest and blush, shaking his head. It puts you on edge, this man who looks at Jungkook with glittering eyes and a hungry smirk. 

Jimin turns to look at you and smiles. His eyes crinkle at the edges, his genuine happiness easing your alarm as you lean on the bar, palms pressed flat to the top of the sticky surface.

“Thank you for running all those errands,” Jimin says, reaching into the coat of his jacket. Today he’s in pink silk, a startling color that flushes his face full of color. He looks good, an emerald dragon brooch pinned neatly to the lapel. “Hoseok will be doing that shit from now on and you can return to your duties as expected.”

With nibble fingers, Jimin flicks a neatly folded band of bills at you. You don’t move at first, staring at the wad of money. Jimin sighs and rolls his eyes. “You earned it. Don’t think I don’t know you haven’t been running this fucking place.”

Bowing at the waist you take the offering from him. Your eyes flicker to Hoseok, who regards you with interest. There is something about him that puts you on edge, the flickering energy of a Chaotic crackling against your nerves like electricity. 

Hoseok extends a tan hand to you, grinning. It’s a disarming grin but you still feel on edge, reaching over the counter to shake his hand. It’s warm, long fingers gripping firmly. You get the sense of a flickering flame, the feel of the color red. Like you, but broken. Stranger. 

Carnelian, you think as he pulls his hand back. He’s a Chaotic who radiates with one of the stones that’s not on the Jewel Caste. You let go of his hand and stare. It’s so unusual to meet someone on the Chaotic Caste, whose energy radiates in unexpected and uncontrolled ways. You only know a single Chaotic and she’s as dangerous as she is helpful, her power uncontrolled.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Hoseok says. He seems honest, leaning on the bar. “I’m sorry you had to deal with poor management before me. You can understand Jimin’s predicament, though, having to please Burro’s father. You won’t find the same failures with me.” 

“Good to hear.” 

Carnelian is a dark color on the Chaotic Caste. It’s hard to decide whether he has the potential to be stronger than you or not, which is the problem with the Chaotics. While Chaotics are technically Radiant, their power is different and manifests in ways that don’t touch the same frequency level as the traditional Jewel Caste. 

From your limited understanding of the Chaotic Caste, most Chaotics are relatively weak. It’s difficult to use stones like carnelian and tourmaline, the contents and frequency of them are not as easily accessible as the other gems. But there’s limited science suggesting that those who use the stone on the Chaotic Caste have great ability, manipulating energy and stones that are more unforgivable. 

Your eyes drift to Agust who watches with muted interest. Perhaps that’s why he is so hard to read. He doesn’t feel like Hoseok, who sparks with energy. Agust feels like an oppressive buzz, like he is a dam holding back a wave of power unfamiliar and strange. It’s rare to meet one Chaotic, let alone two back-to-back. 

Hoseok sits on the stool and peppers you and Jungkook with questions about the establishment and its patrons. They’re easy questions - good questions, even. Your wariness doesn’t quite leave, though Hoseok seems nice enough. It could all be a facade - most likely is a facade - so you remain diligent, answering his question neutrally and watching the way his eyes slide to Jungkook in a way that makes you bristle. 

Agust is silent through the exchange, lifting his finger for a refill. Jungkook takes care of him. Agust’s eyes flicker to you again but you don’t meet his gaze, wishing he would stop. You’re unsure why he’s so fascinated with you but his gaze makes you nervous. Makes you pick at a splinter on the bar until Jimin tuts at you, muttering something about destroying his bar further. 

Jimin dismisses himself when Hoseok asks Jungkook to give him a tour of the building and walk him through a day in Jungkook’s life as a bartender. It’s an obvious ploy to get Jungkook to himself, turning Jungkook blossom pink as he leads Hoseok toward the back, your eyes zeroed in on them and for any sign that Hoseok means him harm.

The door swings shut and you strain your hearing, listening to Jungkook’s soft voice as he takes Hoseok to the office you just cleaned up. Agust chuckles behind you, low and throaty. You ignore him, letting your energy expand to keep a pulse on the two men out of your line of sight. 

“You’re protective over him,” Agust notes. “Cute.”

“Loyalty isn’t cute. It’s the bare minimum.” 

“Most don’t know the true value of loyalty.”

You turn over your shoulder, throwing him a cursory glance. He’s leaning on his elbows, hands laced in front of him. It’s hard not to look at his fingers, long and rough, knobby at the knuckles like they’ve been broken a few times. “And you do?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Still unsure why.” 

“My man destroyed the bar and put you all in danger. I’m here to ensure that doesn’t happen again.” 

“Why you though?” 

His lips twitch and he raises a brow. “Why not me? I told you I was equipped.”

“You’re the Dominion of the Black Lotus. Is this not beneath you?” 

“A lot of things are beneath me.” You catch the innuendo in his words and look away. “This is not one of them. Consider it an act of good faith on my blossoming friendship with Jimin.” 

“So you’re kissing his ass.” He shrugs a shoulder and sips his drink. “If you think he’ll buy it, you’re wrong. Jimin might seem like he’s swayed easily, but he won’t give you whatever it is that you want just because you flatter him a little.”

“You wound me. As charming as I can be, that isn’t what I’m here to do.” He chuckles and begins to trace the rim of his glass. Again, your gaze goes to his long fingers. “You can put the claws away. I can still work for what I want while being genuine.” 

Again, you’re reminded of the similarities between this man and Seokjin. Charming, playful. A master with words, revealing truths and intentions only when it suits them. You know that’s how you fell for Seokjin’s machinations for so long, unable to realize that sugared half-truths are more dangerous than lies. 

You grab a rag and rub at the sticky counter furiously, as if you could scrub away Seokjin’s grinning face from your memory. “I bet you’re getting used to what you want just like the rest of them, hmm?”

His eyes darken, finger tracing the rim of the glass coming to a stop. You can’t help but admire his hands. There’s something brutal and delicate about them at the same time, made to create art but hardened by the need to create violence. 

“I’m not in the Armory,” Agust says darkly. “What I get, I work for.” He lifts his chin a little, eyes zeroed in on you. “Never mistake my motives and intentions for those who belong to the Armory.”

“Then what do you want?”

It takes him a minute to answer. He lifts the glass to his lips and drinks the rest, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. You stare at the smooth canvas of his neck, the urge to bite down on it suddenly taking over. 

“I want what I’m owed,” Agust finally answers, setting the glass down on the bar. Again, his eyes are piercing. “You should too.” 

Your heart skips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, Agust gives you a meaningful look, a strand of dark hair falling in his face. “I’m heading out for a smoke and a walk. Call me if you need.”

“I don’t even know how I would do that.” 

With a satisfied grin, he pulls his phone out and taps on the screen. You feel your pocket vibrate, your hand flying to it and pulling it out. The holograph flashes a message from an unknown number, but it’s obvious who it’s from. 

Now you can call.

“Did Jimin give you my number? Why do you have my number?” Agust pulls a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and shrugs, spinning on his heel and walking toward the door. You hear the snap of his fingers and the small pulse of energy as he lights it without a lighter or match. “Can’t you just deal with Hoseok? He’s the manager.”

“I mean it,” Agust says, voice soft. He gives you a final look. “Call me if you need me.” 

Questions unanswered, you watch as Agust exits the bar, the door slamming behind him. Behind you, the TV drones about some accident in the Bluffs. You tune it out, mind racing with questions surrounding the one very confusing, dizzying Agust. 

He has to be somewhere on the Radiant or Chaotic spectrum. You ponder it when Jungkook and Hoseok come back through the door, talking amicably about art. Jungkook seems enamored, eyes wide and hands moving as he describes something beyond your skill to understand with digital art, but Hoseok is tuned in, umber eyes bright. 

Hoseok sits down at the bar, leaning on a hand. His attention turns back to you and you find yourself dodging the usual questions: Do you have family? What did you do before this? What are your hobbies? After his third attempt to get you to open up, Hoseok gives you a bit of a knowing smile tinted with something you think might be sadness before he stops his prying. 

“Where’d the troublemaker go?” It takes you a second to realize that Hoseok is talking about Agust. “Out for a smoke?”

You nod. “Are you familiar with one another?”

“Vaguely. He and Jimin are working on some business ventures together but it’s best to keep my nose out of those sorts of things.” Hoseok gives a lop-sided shrug. “He’s dangerous, but I’d prefer him to be the kind of dangerous on my side, you know what I mean?”

You do know what Hoseok means. You were that very danger that the Kim’s liked to keep by their side like a trained hound until they needed a scapegoat. “I suppose,” you offer instead. Your eyes drop to the carnelian bracelet hidden under his jacket sleeves earlier. “Carnelian?”

He smiles. “Chaotic. Does that make you nervous?”

“No,” you answer honestly. “Just surprised. I only know one other Chaotic.”

“Ah, well I’m much better company than Agust, I assure you.”

A pause. Your eyes snap up and you tilt your head. “So he is Chaotic?” 

“Is that not who you were talking about?” You shake your head. “Ah, well. Not like it’s a secret exactly. He is a Chaotic, but he keeps whatever he’s radiating at pretty close. I’ve only seen him go down to carnelian, so who is really to say. I saw him use an amethyst once, though.”

“Chaotics can’t use jewels. Can they?”

Hoseok shrugs. “I’ve never been able to grab a hold of a garnet or any of the like colors. But I can certainly feel jewels around me, sort of like a battery that is just out of my reach. Rumor has it that someone strong enough could, though.”

“And you don’t know how strong he is?”

“Strong enough to matter.” 

You hum but say nothing else. Strong enough to matter is a good enough answer in this city. Especially among the Armory families and the Circles. 

Hoseok is nice and eager to learn. You and Jungkook begin walking him through different drinks after he admits he’s never been a bartender before, but would like to know what to do in the event that either of you are unavailable. It’s different. Good, but different.

Agust returns but sits in the corner of the bar with a tablet, the blue glow on his face making him haunting. A group of young patrons eventually stumbles in, loud and slurring as they head to a booth. You see Agust look up at them, his dark eyes assessing them before catching the dragon tattoos and the green colors. He resumes whatever it is he’s doing, uninterested. 

He looks at you occasionally, of course. You sense it when his eyes land on you, making you fidget. You studiously ignore him, refusing to give in to the urge to look up at him. You want to ask him questions, though, about him being a Chaotic and to see what he knows about you. 

Over and over his words echo in your head: I want what I’m owed. You should too. 

What does this man you’ve known for barely two days think you’re owed? It unsettles you. But tomorrow is an off day and you know just the person to visit for information, though you’re less than enthused to pay her a visit. 

-

Purple smoke and the smell of vanilla and cinnamon cloy the air. The smell clings to the shag carpets and the tapestries hung over the walls, swaths of colors and patterns dizzying in the dim light. You take a seat in a purple crushed velvet chair, the springs creaking in protest under you. The air is thick with the dramatic smoke drifting from the small gap between the curtained hallway, making you dizzy.

Letting a little energy out, you radiate around you, clearing your air and keeping it perfume free. Azi has a flair for the dramatic, keeping the lounge to her little seer den dark, cold and full of incense that smells strong enough to give you a headache for the rest of the day. 

A man sits across from you, looking around the room, fingers fiddling in his lap and teeth worrying at his bottom lip. He has no energy signature - a null - and he’s dressed in a wrinkled business suit, forehead slicked with sweat despite how cool it is in the room. 

People from all over the city come here to the trenches of Market Town to find Azi’s hole-in-the-wall. It is a haven for fortunes not yet told, and questions that need answering. Thousands of souls cross the threshold to ask her their most coveted questions in exchange for a glimpse into the future, a comforting hand to guide them, a way through the uncertain.

It’s absolute bullshit, but you don’t go to Azi’s for fortunes whispered across jewel scattered tables. The jewels are fake, of course. Azi isn’t as stupid as to allow that much power on the table, but the nulls don’t need to know that, and most of the Radiants who visit the secret-collector of the Green Dragons can’t tell which jewels are real and which aren’t. 

The velvet curtain opens, sweet vapor drifting out like fog. Azi sticks her head out, her silver hair braided over a shoulder. Her ice-gray eyes flicker to the man waiting on her and he stands, rubbing his hands against his wrinkled pants. Her attention flickers away from him and lands on you, her brows rising as she assesses you, crows feet intensifying as she squints.

“You wait,” she says to the man who begins to head toward the back. His mouth drops open, crestfallen as she looks at you with a frown. “Come on.” 

The man sputters but Azi silences him with a sharp look and he sits down immediately. You don’t blame him, the older woman’s gaze can cut diamond. It’s hard to tell how old Azi really is. Lines by her eyes crinkle in the low light when she scrutinizes you in the hazy backroom where she does her readings, but her skin is otherwise flawless. Her cheekbones are angular, her face all shadows and edges in the low lighting of the room. Some of it is cosmetic, shadow applied to her brow bones to make her seem intimidating. 

Azi doesn’t need the dim room, sharp features or fake jewels scattered across a linen-covered table to be intimidating. She fills the room with her energy, letting it radiate around her as she takes a seat and leans back, drinking you in as she taps a ringed finger on the table. 

“Well?” she prompts. “I have clients, as you saw.”

Instead of answering her, you lean back in the seat and look around the room. It’s been a few months since you’ve visited Azi but the den looks mostly the same. Deep purples and reds, glittering beads hanging from the ceiling to cast refracted light on the walls, candles that provide very little light flickering atop every covered surface and shelf in the room except the table between you.

Behind her is a swath of crushed velvet curtains. They pull against a hidden, open hallway, the air current sucking them in. You wonder if she knows it gives away where two jeweled guards hide, but you’re unconcerned. Azi works for Jimin and though you’re not her favorite patron, it’s better for her to have the favor of someone Jimin’s fond of. 

“You do know I can’t actually see the future, right?” she sighs. “You’ll have to tell me why you’re here if you want an answer.”

“Just taking it in, Azi. It’s been a while.”

“Nothing here changes. Spit it out.” 

She’s cagey. Unusual for someone normally cool and unbothered. You file that away for later, intending to find out why your presence has visibly disturbed her. 

“The leader of the Black Lotus,” you offer, gauging her reaction as you ask. “What is he?”

Silence. There is a flicker of confusion in her eyes and her mouth twitches before she schools her features and shakes her head, relaxing her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ve met him once or twice and I know he’s recently had an interest in some Green Dragon business.” 

“What Green Dragon business?”

“Ask Jimin.” 

“Perhaps I will.”

She smirks. “If you could, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Maybe I just missed your presence,” you sigh. You lean your head to the side, cracking your neck, momentarily distracted by the satisfied pop in your left shoulder. You let your eyes drift shut for a moment, feeling the brief respite in your tight joints before you open them to see her staring at you intently. “I just want to know what kind of Chaotic he is.”

“Don’t know. Keeps it close, I hear. Some say he’s radiated at opal in front of them, others say tourmaline.”

“Chaotics don’t radiate at multiple colors like Radiants.” She lifts a shoulder, hand poking a jewel absently on her table. It’s one of the fakes, but you can feel the buzz of her sapphires on her rings and wrist. It slides under your skin like an itch you can’t get to. “What do you want for it?”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “I don’t have any information to trade.”

You think about seizing the sapphires on her hands. You could do it if you wanted. Could reach out mentally and seize control of her jewels and drag her over the threshold to hell. But Azi thinks you sit at emerald and thinks she holds the power in your Jewel Caste dynamic, so you let her think that, letting your frustration coil like a snake in the grass. 

“You have a tell when I offer something you can use.” You reach into your pocket and pull out the wad of cash that Jimin gave you at Montana. It hurts to throw it on the table, thinking of all the things that you could use it for instead of this. “I don’t need change.” 

She debates. Looks at the cash and then you before shaking her head. “I’ll give you the single thing I know in exchange for a single favor at my time, place and discretion.”

“No.”

“Then no deal.”

“I’m not pledging myself in service to you without knowing what the deal is or the risk. We aren’t friends, I don’t do you favors. We make even trades. A placement on the caste isn’t equal to any favor any time.”

“I’m not offering you the color of his caste. I don’t know it, but I know something that might lead you there.”

“Take the money.” 

“No.”

Fighting the urge to drop into her sapphires and give them a tug is difficult. Your instinct to strong arm her and make it hurt for what you want is so strong that you almost do it. But patience and playing your cards close to your chest is a new, learned instinct. It’s pride that makes you want to show her force. But you know the moment you do it, your secret is hers to sell.

It’s an uneven trade. A piece of information that might help you with no indication before agreeing what it’s actually worth. Your favor at any time and any place is quantifiable as a limitless reward for what she knows. If you agree and she tells you something easily discoverable, you’ll be more the fool for it. 

Azi has been nervous, though. Her energy vibrates high, ready to launch if she needs it, and the two men behind the curtain are shifting back and forth, listening. You can’t tell if she’s nervous to see you or nervous to ask you for the favor. It’s possible that it’s both, but the queen of secret selling asking you for an unnamed and undated favor is a desperate ask in her position. 

She’s in trouble of some sort, you’re sure. Still, you pick the cash up off the table and shove it back into your pocket, relieved that you can keep a hand on it.

“Limitations,” you tell her and she glowers, opening her mouth to speak but you cut her off. “No murders and nothing that could directly harm Jimin.” You stretch your hand over the table. “Square?” 

Azi hesitates, rolling the offer around as she works her jaw. She’s irritated, but she leans forward and grasps your hand. Hers are soft and strong against your callused fingers. “Square.” 

Dropping her hand you sit back in the chair. “Spit it out.”

“The leader of the Black Lotus calls himself Agust-”

“Azi, I fucking swear-”

“But it isn’t his real name. His real name is Yoongi.” 

Yoongi. A softer name than you expect, yet it somehow fits him. A man hard at the edges and maybe a little sofer on the inside. Pretty, but lethal. It certainly suits him better than Agust, but unless his name is his most prized possession, it doesn’t do you much good. 

“How valuable is the name?”

“Jimin doesn’t know it.” 

“Has Jimin asked you for it?” A nod. Huh. “And you didn’t ask him for a favor?” A shake of her head, which means Azi is under the assumption she needs a favor out of the regulation of the man who holds her leash in the future. “The person you came by the name from?”

“Died in your bar, I believe. Something about a member of the Black Lotus fucking his wife, which wasn’t true.” Azi smirks. “Convenient, isn’t it?” 

Yes, you think. A man turning up dead after knowing Agust - Yoongi’s - name at Jimin’s bar where Yoongi’s bannerman had been drinking is unsettling, but you can’t imagine what the specific motive is. Yoongi made it clear he was keeping on Jimin’s good side for something business related and Azi’s confirmation of them working together reinforces that. But why kill a man who knows his name as his new partner’s bar? 

Annoyed at Azi and unsettled by your new puzzle, you walk toward Montana for your shift, footsteps heavy. A dying sun chases you all the way to work and vanishes beyond the horizon as you open the door, entering to see Jungkook and Hoseok working in tandem behind the counter. There are a few patrons enjoying drinks, even. Sitting at the newly delivered furniture you ordered on Jimin’s behalf.

In the back corner of the bar in his newly claimed booth, Agust - Yoongi - looks up at you. He’s dressed in a black t-shirt and ripped jeans, boots kicked up on the bench across from him. He lounges against the back of the side, eyes shining as he grins at you like the two of you share a secret. 

Yoongi. You think of the way the pretty name suits the very pretty man as you ignore him once more, heading to the bar to greet a smiling Hoseok and blushing Jungkook. 

Yoongi doesn’t take his eyes off of you for the rest of the night. 

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THE JEWEL CASTE (from least to most powerful)

Light Caste

Diamond Citrine Aquamarine Jade Rose

Mid Caste

Peridot Topaz Turquoise Ruby Smokey

Dark Caste

Emerald Amethyst Sapphire Garnet Onyx

THE CHAOTIC CASTE (in general, from least to most powerful)

Opal Quartz Tourmaline Carnelian  Obsidian 

GLOSSARY

Circle - Lower gangs who are not in the Armory Chaotic - Those who vibrate at the frequency of stones outside The Jewel Caste. Some Chaotics vibrate at a higher frequency than Radiants. Dark Radiant - Those who vibrate at the low-colors and high frequencies Jewel Caste - The order of least to most powerful vibrational jewel frequencies  Light Radiant - Those who vibrate at the lighter colors and lower frequencies  Mid Radiant - Those who vibrate at the mid-colors and medium frequencies Null - Those who don’t vibrate at the same frequency as the jewels and cannot radiate Radiant - Those who vibrate at the same frequency as the jewels and thus can radiate Unjeweled - A radiant who doesn’t have any jewels on them to help radiate

[extra-vertebrae]

Hello! I followed u an eon ago on a different account, and am so excited to see ur art come up on my feed again. Idk if this is the best place to send this; Id feel awkward sending a whole email for this and I dont have a twitter anymore (dumpster fire.) i love all ur designs, but I keep coming back to ur pokemon ones. I’m so fond of them. It makes me want to experiment w body horror art.

I know ppl have sent u mean-spirited asks in the past abt them. I just want to say: I went thru ur old art and said a variation of “aww, a cutie!” Or “oh, poor babyyy :(“ in the occasion that their breeding has created things like chronic pain. At no point was I thinking. Idk, they were ugly or mean (to the pokemon franchise)? To me, ppl like that just have bad taste 🤷🏽‍♀️

I do wanna see more of ur original stuff, certainly! Im just being nostalgic rn.

Thank you so much for your message! I'm glad you still enjoy those old designs, and that they're inspiring you to give body horror themes a try!

Thankfully most of those types of messages are gone, though I'm sure my lack activity in the Pokemon space since then has probably helped a lot in this regard.

Haha, I still find a lot of them pretty cute, too. There's some good design shapes and ideas in some of those older pieces that maybe I can recycle and refine or develop into something new someday.

I definitely would like to share more original work; I'm going through a sort of transitional phase with my art at the moment, so there isn't much to share that I legitimately feel like posting. I can, however, share this lineup of vehicular characters that were sketched up some weeks ago for Funky Town:

I've always had a general appreciation for mechanical shapes and design; I've learned that that general appreciation runs deeper than anticipated, so hard surface focused / adjacent design has been where my mind has been at recently.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Do you think they should have went with the Chosen One plot for Anakin when they made the prequels? I've been rewatching the original trilogy and there is no mention of any prophecy. It seemed more like Anakin was a very powerful Jedi, but nothing grander then that.

Then, all of sudden the prequels are saying that he is the literal messiah of the Galaxy, destined to bring balance to the Force.

I mean, this isn't the blog for that, anon.

It's really not the blog for it not just in the sense that we talk about how things are here not how we want them to be but also because I think the Original Trilogy are also incredibly bad movies. They're not winning awards for being any better than the rest of the gang or any more righteous, they just have nostalgia, a few great actors carrying the weight (but only a few and not even some of the most important ones), a fantastic soundtrack (that admittedly is strikingly similar in parts to Holst's The Planets), and some great special effects and editing as of the time that George has tried to strip away with every passing year. It's no skin off my nose if the Prequels took some liberties to make things better (and... the thing about The Prequels is that they're not better, of course, but the plot is a lot more compelling than 'the Death Star blew up once' followed by a short break then 'the Death Star blew up twice')

But as for your question, it didn't strike me as too odd we didn't hear of it, because that's the whole thing: Jedi culture is wiped out to two known survivors (that we see anyway). And per those Jedi survivors, Anakin was very clearly not the chosen one as he did anything but bring balance to the Force.

So, you have Obi-Wan who doesn't want to talk about fucking any of it and lies through his teeth multiple times to Luke because he just doesn't want to talk about any of it. Then you have Yoda who wants to talk about it even less.

Neither is bringing up "did you know there was this prophecy where your father was supposed to bring balance to the Force? Boy, did he sure not do that".

Vader certainly isn't bringing it up either as, well, look at his miserable life and how much he hates himself and the Jedi. He's not bringing up their stupid prophecy that clearly wasn't true.

Remember very little is known about the Jedi for the common people, especially after Palpatine's taken over and spread propaganda and such. Han doesn't even think the Jedi are real and if he does it's "that weird space religion cult thing that died out???"

That is to say the prophecy is not common knowledge and especially not for people like Luke, Han, or even Leia for that matter for all she's a little more Jedi adjacent.

Even within the Jedi we see that people don't take the prophecy seriously. That was a Qui-Gon thing. He was super into that prophecy, yo, and the other Jedi (Yoda, Mace, Obi-Wan even) all sort of stared at him looking very upset for insisting on this.

And in the war, while Anakin was an exceptionally talented Jedi, he wasn't really used as a propaganda piece/seen as the only Jedi who would save them all.

The prophecy was just the reason Qui-Gon insists on training him despite his age and is one of those things that seems to have actually been correct for all that no one will ever admit it.

(@therealvinelle can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm going to lay down something that will make people very upset: Anakin being "The Hero with No Fear", seen as one of two great Jedi in the war who are doing so much for the cause more than anyone else, and the extra focus on this prophecy was an invention of Disney's 2008 The Clone Wars, not the films.)

[cock-holliday]

Hello, forgive my ignorance but I was curious how you could be a butch well being bi, since I believe it is a lesbian term. (No offense or anything intended) :)

Short answer: because I am. Believe what you want, it isn't--or certainly not exclusively.

Long answer?

Similar prev ask

Another similar prev ask

Would also recommend looking into the history of the term 'bi lesbian' and the historical overlap of sapphic (and adjacent) communities.

And here's some Dyke Marches including bisexuals in their definition of "dyke"--a term people have tried to be even more exclusive with then butch. (Boston and San Fran respectively)

And now another excuse to post "I Know What Butch Is" an essay by S. Bear Bergman from Butch is a Noun:

"I know what butch is. I know, and I’m going to tell you, so listen up and take notes. First of all, butch is a noun. And an adjective. And a verb.

Butches only ever wear jeans and boots, except if they’re wearing suits, and they keep their hair clipped down to a flattop you could putt off. Except if they have to for work. Or if they want to for sex. Or if they want to for some other reason. But otherwise it’s denim and leather and butch wax, kid, and don’t you forget it. Unless you’re vegan.

Toughness, even at the expense of gentleness, is a butch trait. Butches are outlaws. Also gentlemen. Gentlemen who open doors and pick up checks and say “after you” and hold your umbrella over you in the rain while the water drips down their sleeves. But butches not gentlemen if being a gentleman means imposing on the unsuspecting their sexist modes of acting out the cultural paradigm of the helplessness of women. Except if the unsuspecting are crying and need a handkerchief, or elderly and need a seat to sit down in, then it’s all right. Probably. But butches should never wait for a femme to tell them specifically that it is all right to behave in a gentlemanly fashion, they should just go ahead and do it because femmes like a butch with confidence, unless it turns out that she finds it offensive and feels as though you have imposed your gender fetish on her, you arrogant bastard.

And butches are monosyllabic, until you get to know them, which they will not allow but want, or will allow and want, or will allow but don’t want, or won’t allow and don’t want, so you may or may not get to know them, but you should try, or not. But butches are monosyllabic because all that talking is girl stuff, you know? Butches grunt in answer to questions; they speak sharply and emphatically. They do not share, process, or explain because these are activities that bring nothing but trouble, unless they are bringing relief to the troubled heart of a butch carrying around too much hurt or pain, though butches do not actually feel pain; they’re tough enough to either slough it off like dead skin or deal with all of that themselves. Unless someone wants for them to be emotionally available, in which case they can feel their feelings even though the presence of feelings is suspect in the first place, but they must stop immediately as soon as someone else is having a tough time so that all their resources can be directed to soothing that person.

I know what butch is. Butches are not beginner FTMs, except that sometimes they are, but it’s not a continuum except when it is. Butch is not a trans identity unless the butch in questions says it is, in which case it is, unless the tranny in question says it isn’t, in which case it’s not. There is no such thing as butch flight, no matter what the femmes or elders say, unless saying that invalidates the opinions of femmes in a sexist fashion or the opinions of elders in an ageist fashion. Or if they’re right. But they are not, because butch and transgender are the same thing with different names, except that butch is not a trans identity, unless it is; see above.

Butches are always tops. They always fuck the girls, and, for that matter, their partners are always girls; there is no such thing as a butch who is attracted to men. Well, transmen, but that’s just butch-on-butch repackaged as faggotry. But no non-trans-men. Unless the butch in question is a non-trans-man, then it’s okay. Except that non-trans-men cannot be butches, because butch is a queering of gender that assigned-male people cannot embody, unless they occasionally can, in which case they have to be gay men. Or the partners of femmes. Or not. But no one with an assigned-female body can be a butch and do it with assigned-male men. Unless they’re femmes. Or butches. I’m really putting my foot down on this one.

I know what butch is, and butches definitely, absolutely, do not get fucked, even if it feels so good to have someone slide in sweet and hard and rock them just right. They might eat pussy but they never suck cock, because licking pussy is chivalry without pants, and, of course, any butch would want to do anything to please the femme in hir life, if there is a femme. Which there has to be, in order to be a true butch, except if there does not have to be, but you cannot be a misogynist about it either, which a lack of interest in femmes and their attendant delights may be read as—if there is a lack, which there shouldn’t be. But anyway, cocksucking is about ownership and dominance, so butches must always be the ones having their cocks sucked, unless the owner of the cock being sucked by a butch is tied to something, but if a butch were tying down someone with a cock of some variety then the above rule would quite likely be violated, and I think I’ve been very clear about that, so never mind.

Butch has a lot of privilege because butches pass as men a lot, and butches also have a lot of privilege in the queer community because butch reads as queer and femme doesn’t always, and being able to pass to keep one’s self safe isn’t privilege if you’re a femme but it is if you’re a butch. Unless this is a butch who can pass as a heteronormative woman, in which case ze’s not really a butch anyway because no butch could do such a thing. Except that some of them can and also having kids really helps, even though no butch could have kids because of the rule about not getting fucked and also because that’s a femme’s job, but not everyone really understood their butchness all the way along and also sometimes there are fertility issues and also sometimes there’s not a femme so we’ll grandfather in some children but we’ll be suspicious of those butches. Unless they’re really great butch dads of whatever sex, in which case we’ll think it’s the damn cutest thing in the world and punch them on the arm, or if they’re awesome butch moms we’ll make approving comments about their ability to raise feminist men, but otherwise no children and no heteronormativity for sure, except for assigned male butches who do not exist.

Besides all of that, the butch pays. If there’s only one butch on the date. Unless the femme wants to. If there’s a femme present. If there’s a femme present, the butch pays unless hir paying would upset the femme or unless it creates class issues for the butch or patriarchy issues for the femme. Or if it’s two butches on a date, which they shouldn’t be. Or they should. In any case, they arm-wrestle for it. Except in such situations in which a public display of aggression on the part of butches, or an interaction which may be read as such, could potentially be detrimental to the community, to the mental health of those witnessing the act, to the butches themselves for feeling compelled to act out normative masculine-gendered conflict-resolution tactics, or to the glassware of the dining establishment, which so often gets broken. But otherwise, the butch always pays, and there’s just no getting around that.

I know what butch is. Butches are a brotherhood, or possibly a sisterhood, which would be a marvelous way to reclaim butch’s roots in the lesbian community except some butches were never part of the lesbian community and some were but aren’t any more, but placing masculine identities on butches is disrespectful, except when it’s desirable, but anyway, butches are a tribe, a tribe of people who have been maligned endlessly for, and in fact forged an identity in part out of, not fitting the gendered expectations of the culture in which they exist (until or unless they work to pass as men, which always or never or sometimes happens and is absolutely a great or problematic thing), so butches are very open to gendered variations in others and would never, ever try to make another butch feel like shit for having displayed a behavior which does not fit the microculture’s standard of what it means to be a butch, which is a useful or idealized or ridiculous or just plain complicated standard, so it should be adhered to, or critiqued, or aspired to, or not. Butches would also certainly never try to school younger butches in ways that are angry and dangerous because they feel like the process of toughening has disappeared from modern culture and butches need to be tough, dammit. Butches who do those sorts of things either are Real Butches or are Not Real Butches, depending who you ask.

There, that should be perfectly clear."

[blackbat05]

Fate

Adam Warlock x Reader

Plot: Who knew a mundane activity could help you to develop a new bond in the strangest of ways?

Genre: PG-13 (Mentions of public attack, please do not read if it triggers you)

A/N: I have no idea why but I suddenly decided to try writing for Adam Warlock! Honestly, Will Poulter caught my eye way back in maze runner (yes I know) and I hope he does well! The movie isn't out yet so I'm leaving a lot to my creativity here. If you like it, do reblog! Feedback is greatly appreciated! Also, if you do like my work and if you can, do tip here!

Tired.

You were so very tired. Yet you were so restless. Somehow the sage advice from your mother rang loud in your ears despite the grueling schedule you had just gone through today.

An exercise will do you some good.

Cursing under your breath, you prepared to head out in your workout gear. As they say, the starting is always the hardest.

Getting into a rhythm with the music, you started on your usual route. Shoes pounding the pavement, you let yourself feel the burn on your thighs.

Sure, you despised running. If there was an easier way, you would take it without a doubt. But there were upsides to it as well.

Such as the fresh air, the familiar scent of spring, and freshly baked croissants mixed together.

It was definitely not the man that you ran face-first into.

As you collide with him, you almost bounce off right into the parked car at the side of the pavement. Bracing for the impact, you didn't expect a pair of arms to wrap you by the waist.

"Are you alright? I mean, did I hurt you? That's what Quill told me to say if I offended someone." The man mumbled the last part loud enough for you to hear. You can't help but be amused at his choice of words. Standing back upright, you're able to take a better look at the man- scratch that.

You were looking at a god.

His skin was unbelievably golden as if it was kissed by the sun. It certainly didn't help that his chiseled features were staring at you unabashedly with piercing eyes.

Snapping out of your stupor, you nod a little too fast for your liking. You allow your eyes to run, hovering over his figure, wondering how hard you must have run into him to almost get a concussion.

Or was it the other way around?

Get your head out of the gutter.

"I wouldn't say you offended me. I wasn't really watching where I was going either." You gave your most amicable smile. To your slight disappointment, the man seems to be lost in thought as he stares beyond you.

Get real and get your arse moving. You have no business with him anyway, he's just some stranger whom you bumped into-

You attempt to sidestep him to continue your journey when he grabs you once more right as a blast throws the two of you back onto the ground.

Ears ringing, you realize the man's trying to rouse you from your shock. All you can see is chaos as people around you run frantically for shelter.

Carrying you away from the open, he gently places you down. You struggle to get your hearing back but you know what he's trying to tell you.

"Stay here."

Before you can argue, he leaves the temporary shelter he found for you and walks into the open. Just what was he thinking?

"Are you mad! You'll get yourself killed!" You screamed enough for your throat to go hoarse.

The man looks over his shoulder, an unreadable expression on his face. And then, the unbelievable happens.

Eyes glowing bright yellow, he leaps into the adjacent building with frightful speed, crashing the windows on his way through. A flash of bright light and soon enough, the assault on the streets stops.

You don't realize how hard you're trembling until a hand rests on your shoulder. You are now looking at a woman with big black eyes and antennas attached to her head staring at you curiously.

"Go to sleep."

***

You jolt with shock, panting wildly. What kind of a crazy dream was that? You were positive you were going insane with all the recent stress.

Wait... this wasn't your house. Why did you feel like you were on a moving spaceship?

Scrambling out of the covers, you press the button, planning a great escape. You see a knife discarded at the entrance. Yeap. You had to get out of here.

Arming yourself with the weapon, you creep out of the room and make your way to the front of whoever kidnapped you. As you inch forward, you could hear hushed voices trying to climb over each other at once.

"What were you thinking Adam? I mean I'm reckless but this is a whole new level! What if someone saw you?"

"Reckless is an understatement. You should have seen Quill, he was a hot mess."

"Not now Rocket! Drax can you check on sleeping beauty? The mechanics should have worked by now."

At the mention of what you presume to be you, you raise your knife and make the most intimidating face you can conjure at this moment.

"Somebody has three seconds to tell me what I'm doing on a flying spaceship or I'll cut someone's head off. Trust me, I can be pretty mean with this knife."

You see the man- Adam as you have learned staring at you along with the rest. Seeing how no one was making their move, you advance forward, holding the knife to his throat.

To your shock, Adam smirks, pushing away the tip of the knife with his ring finger without breaking eye contact with you. "Drax, you should really keep an eye on your stuff you know."

Another man with a hulking figure and dark green skin shrugs helplessly. "Sorry."

The third man in a red leather jacket rushes over to stop the altercation. "Please put the knife down. We have not kidnapped you. In fact, we haven't left Earth yet. Remember the blast? My name is Peter Quill and if you would we can explain everything to you."

You turn your attention to him, letting Peter continue.

You can't believe your ears- that have now been equipped with some sort of alien tech, courtesy of the talking raccoon that was tinkering away at the control panels, oblivious to the absurdity of it all.

"The blast affected your hearing and Adam bought you here to get it fixed. It may be a little weird but you feel comfortable in no time."

You nod numbly, trying to process this information. "Can I speak to Adam in private please?"

Peter nods, ushering the others who seemed eager to stay. Once the doors to the smaller rooms had slid shut, you approached the man.

"I appreciate what your team has done but I don't get it. Why did you help me? You could have just left me."

Adam pauses and for a split second, you're positive that he's almost zoning out on you.

"You were concerned about me. No one was ever concerned for me before."

You frown at his admission, silently sitting beside him.

“Well, I don’t know what you went through but you deserve every bit of concern. Even if you can fly through buildings and practically indestructible.” You hold his hand to which causes him to freeze momentarily.

But you don’t let go. Instead, you wait for him. Confused, Adam slowly interlocks his fingers with yours before holding it tighter. He looks at you, as if to seek your approval.

“Thank you Adam. Thank you for saving me.”

Your intimate moment was broken by his team as they stumbled out of the room, a lopsided grin on Quill’s face that you choose to ignore. Even so, Adam doesn’t let go of your hand.

“Well then! I hope that settles everything. I’m so sorry but we really must get going. And I’m not going to be accused of kidnapping another human into space.”

You blushed apologetically to which the rest of the team accepts good naturally with the exception of the raccoon whom which you were still weirded out by to be honest.

Walking down the steps, you see Adam slowly trailing behind you, hesitant to leave to god knows where. You see that he’s struggling to form his words, so you decide to take the lead.

“If you come back to Earth again, I’ll be happy to show you around.”

He blinks at your offer, breaking into a smile. “I’ll love that.” Adam strides over to you, giving you a last goodbye hug before getting back into the jet, leaving his lingering trace of his embrace.

You can’t explain it but as you watch the jet soar into the skies, you feel like you will see him again very soon.

Just like your first encounter, it would be fate.

[3cosmicfrogs]

Jay what about an au where NMJ and JGY switch bodies right after Sunshot finishes. Say at the phoenix mountain hunt.

you come on this here website and call me by my government name? before marriage???

five headcanons for a Freaky Friday situation after the pmh....hmmmmm

~Gender Dysphoria~ let's get the easy one out of the way first. You know me, i cum the second someone says "blorbo transgender" so naturally anything even Body Horror Adjacent will have Gender Feelings. They needn't even be trans as long as some sort of gender yuri is happening.

everyone would find out immediately. There's no way nmj could spend five minutes in Jin company without making a decisively un-Guangyao-like sarcastic remark. There's no way jgy, who is Deflection Georg and makes 100000 vague statements per day, could tolerate being confrontational.

Ok maybe not everyone, but our Main Cast certainly find out very quickly. NHS figures it out within 3 minutes of the switch ('jgy' started scolding him immediately while 'nmj' just kept smiling, it's creepy-) and naturally this means that lxc gets recruited to help fix this. Somehow, as is tradition with AUs that involve dubious magic, wwx gets involved which naturally means lwj is present as well. jc is also there, though his main purpose seems to be yelling and being outraged at things because someone has to be responsible in this mess, and by god it's gonna be him.

Naturally the whole Switching Situation cannot be fixed overnight and they must Pretend To Be Each Other In Public. This leads to a lot of heartfelt confessions about social status and societal expectations on both ends (not only on jiggy's side. yes, we've done jiggy's pressures and circumstances to hell and back, don't worry, we'll cover them here again, but like. give me MORE. build this world with me. take my hand.) They both grow as people and learn to appreciate each other and be more empathetic and bla bla bla you get the gist.

i think it would be super fun if jiggy can hear baxia now (and maybe feel the effects of early onset hereditary qi deviation???). she would be absolutely delighted by this skinny scared-but-bitter-determined-vicious little Human who is inhabiting her master's body. He's just so fun to scare at night and isn't it hilarious to whisper evil things in his ear and why is your sabre always talking to you da-ge?!

*6. Bonus headcanon! because this is a 3zun Dubious Magic au naturally the absolutely only way to resolve this after all of the conversations are had and revelations are made is by sex. ah, the wonders of dual cultivation... the traditional way most Strange Magic gets solved in this genre of AU, apparently, and who are we without traditions? If it so happens to help with certain hereditary diseases...

[a-dragons-journal]

Singlet+

I've been meaning to write this one for a while, so let's see how this goes.

~1k words; essay on the experience of one person who sits right on the funny little edge between "normal roleplay experience" and "actual plurality".

So, let's start with this: I am not plural. But. I do seem to live in a weird space juuuuust on the edge of plurality (and no, I do not mean that I'm a median or blurry system - I mean on the edge of that).

For one thing, I'm a daemian - that is, I practice daemonism; that is, I have personified and given faux autonomy (fauxtonomy, if you will) to my "internal narrator" of sorts and he now lives in my brain with me as a thoughtform, a brain companion, in the shape of an animal. Strictly speaking, that does qualify us for plurality, but we personally don't view our daemonism through that framework and consider ourselves a singlet (as hilarious as the plural grammar makes that sentence, I know). Many daemons don't consider themselves plural; this isn't particularly unusual - in muir case, Locke is a part of me before he is anything else, and while yes there are forms of plurality that look like that, for us personally it makes more sense to view him as "part of me, therefore, still one person".

For another, I had... basically plural experiences when I was younger. I don't want to talk about the details publicly, but suffice to say that for many years I had what I would now call headmates, and I suspect that if I had been exposed to plural spaces during that time period, they may well have stuck around permanently, instead of "fading out" and eventually disappearing as is what actually happened. To this day I don't know how "real" or "imaginary" they were, and I doubt I ever will - they were certainly real to me at the time, but I have also always been very good at suspension of disbelief. Trying to analyze it in any great level of detail is made basically impossible by my piss-poor episodic memory rendering the memories of that time so fuzzy that I can't rely on them for details.

For another, my experiences with OCs are often... soulbond-adjacent? Recently in particular I've had a lot of funny experiences with an OC of mine, a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign I'm a part of (Viridian Caldwell, for my own future self's reference), which led me to do some research on soulbonding because of how fictive-adjacent the experience of her is.

And yet. The answer is a definite no. I get very strong impressions and echoes from her; she "gives" me facts about her and her life that simply Are and that I feel as strongly about being true and unchangeable as I do about my own noemata; she's almost a separate person living in my brain sometimes; I somehow come up with near-prophetic knowledge about her world (as confirmed by my Storyteller, who happens to be part of a system alongside a number of fictives from the world in question, including several who know Viridian personally) with zero explanation on a semi-regular basis.

And yet. The answer is no. Because while I seem to have all the effects a soulbond proper would produce on my end - she is not aware of me, not really. She is not conscious of my world and my life. When I really quiet my own brain and reach out to call out and see if someone's there, there's only silence. It's as though I have a one-way soulbond somehow - which, of course, puts me in the fun gray space between "soulbond" and "normal roleplay/writing experience".

And she's not a unique instance of this. This just happens to me with OCs, although it's been a bit more dramatic with her because of the presence of fictives from her world to converse with (and, realistically, because of the real-time roleplay aspect that a TTRPG has that a video game or the writing of a fanfiction doesn't).

It's as though my brain has the capacity for plurality, but it just... doesn't manifest fully.

And, truth be told, I kind of prefer it this way. I like being a singlet; I would kind of hate having to share headspace with other people. Especially since, if my childhood pseudo-plurality experiences are anything to go by, we would not have good separation of thoughts and memories and true privacy would be very difficult if not impossible. Plus, because of that, I would... probably never get over the doubt of Is It Real Or Not, and I don't need that stress in my life. (For this reason, while I'm 99.9% sure that if I intentionally tried to bring her over as a fictive, it would work, I will not be testing the theory just out of curiosity.)

I wonder if I didn't train myself out of the ability to be Plural Proper, to be honest. Not intentionally, but - I may have mentioned that my power of suspension of disbelief is very strong, and as a child this came with me being extremely easy to manipulate because it was very easy for me to fall into believing things that I wanted to believe. (Again, I don't really want to talk about the details, but suffice to say I had a pretty bad case of Protagonist Syndrome, as it were, for a while.) I had to learn to combat that natural tendency of my brain for my own protection (especially as someone active in witchcraft spaces) - and I wonder if it didn't come with the side effect of immunizing me to developing true plurality (at least without actively trying) by shutting down any attempt by my brain to form a true headmate in the process.

I don't know. I might never. All I know is that while I am, after careful consideration, definitely a singlet, I do seem to live right on the edge of plurality, and it comes with some weird experiences. (And I would like an explanation for why I keep spitting out nigh-prophetic knowledge of this campaign's world; if I find out Viridian is a fictotype of mine or something I'm going to flip my fucking lid.) I've started half-jokingly calling myself "singlet+", half as a joke on cis+ (ie, someone who's questioned their gender and come to the conclusion that they are indeed cis but has a better understanding of their experience of cisness for it) and half as an "unless" "unlesss...?" acknowledgement of the weird border area some of my experiences sit in. It's... not really a serious label, but also isn't entirely a joke.

So... yeah. Singlet+, I guess. Another victim of the "if you only have two words for fear in your language, one for mild test jitters and one for life-threatening terror, you're going to have a lot of trouble describing a lot of normal human experiences" problem of how our language around plurality often works.

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (December 17-23, 2023)

Episode 7 of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters laid down significant Monsterverse lore, showing the moment Monarch finally revealed itself to the public (under hilarious circumstances) and how the organization's partnership with Apex Cybernetics began. I did not find May's long-awaited backstory super compelling, to be honest, I think because the proto-Apex company was so thinly sketched. And that Frost-Vark better not be dead. :(

An incredible three Godzilla comics released last week: DC/Legendary's Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong #3 and IDW's Godzilla: War for Humanity #3 and Godzilla Rivals: Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon. The crossover lit a certain section of the Internet on fire with the revelation that Godzilla did, in fact, kill Superman the previous issue. Writer Brian Buccellato chalked it up to Godzilla's atomic breath having "a radioactive signature similar to [K]ryptonite," which as handwaves go is pretty good. Behemoth and Scylla had moments to shine as well, and the issue ended with Lex Luthor discovering a Mechagodzilla eye. Glad Godzilla won't be the only Toho character in the comic; that would've been a bit lame.

Godzilla: War for Humanity remaining a thrilling read, and the Super MOGUERA debuting in this issue is not to be missed. Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon starts with a content warning for depiction and discussion of attempted suicide, which certainly surprised me. It's another strong issue, neither callous nor didactic, and told so efficiently there's plenty of room for the titular bout (which sometimes has felt like an afterthought in Rivals stories). Also, Jet Jaguar talks—something Toho forbade in a comic earlier this year, for whatever reason. Anyway, he's exactly the 'bot you would expect him to be. Hope IDW can keep him chattering in the future.

You've probably seen my flurry of posts already, but it bears repeating: The Boulet Brothers' Dragula, a drag reality competition found on Shudder, aired a kaiju episode. Reality TV isn't my bag, but I thoroughly enjoyed the competitors' kaiju-inspired costumes and performances. I also kept ping-ponging between awe that Americans are just expected to know what a kaiju is now and yelling at the hosts for, say, not naming any kaiju outside of Toho's Big Five.

Hot on the heels of the black-and-white re-release of Shin Godzilla comes Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, which has to be the best title one of these things has gotten. As with Shin, this is no mere filter; each shot in the film was regraded, with director Takashi Yamazaki striving for "a style that looked like it was taken by masters of monochrome photography." It opens in Japan on January 12; no word yet on whether it will play in any other country.

Godzilla will follow in the steps of pop culture fixtures like The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars with Godzilla: The Official Cookbook by Kayce Baker, due from Titan Books on September 10. (You can tell it's official because he's actually on the cover.) 60 recipes lie within. It's a given that I'm going to buy something Godzilla-related that's this silly; I just have to pick up another cookbook first so it won't be the first one I ever own.

I was surprised to realize that McDonald's has never done anything Godzilla-related; far less prolific fast-food chains have worked with the monster, from White Castle to Carl's Jr. The first salvo in the campaign was pretty underwhelming—BE@ABRICK figures that can only be won via lottery, with an entirely plain Godzilla. That replica MogeGoji suit looked great in the ad, at least. Tokusatsu is being kept alive in the Godzilla franchise through some truly odd means. The follow-up ad/promo was a lot better, but that's a matter for next week's post.

This is at least kaiju-adjacent—James Wan's long-gestating The Call of Cthulhu movie seems to finally be going somewhere, as revealed in roundabout fashion by a Deadline article. I thought the 2005 silent version was just fine, but presumably this will be produced by his company Atomic Monster, which is long overdue for an actual giant monster movie.

[absolutebl]

Hi ABL!

I was wondering if you had any posts about the use of sound effects in BL - the slide whistle for checking people out/boners simply gets me every time.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve watched so much American produced media and tuning out the same concept / soundscape since I’m so used to it.

I’m also always surprised that with this love of sound effects, there hasn’t been the classic echoing noise that’s heard across oceans when they open lube!

Anyway I love your blog! It’s been an incredible resource in appreciating BL in all its glory :)

Hi!

Why All those Sound Effects in BL RomComs?

I don't have a specific post. I mention it in some of my guidance and warning posts about Thai and Taiwanese stuff in particular, in general I am not wild about it... but I have grown accustomed to it. It can certainly be off putting to new watchers.

One of the worst offenders was Lovely Writer. I think I docked a whole point off that show because the sound was SO intrusive and jarring within the context of the drama.

These days the more comedy and the more pulp, the more likely and frequent the sound effects. Also Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Japan are the biggest offenders.

It's simply a comedic tradition. I think of it as similar to panto or commedia dell'arte. It's certainly true that a lot of ancient Greek and Roman plays likely had sound effects, as indeed would have Shakespeare. No to mention Kabuki theater. In fact, it's like throughout the history of stagecraft, sound effects were more common than not.

However, it's not particularly common or popular in American modern cinema out of Hollywood because it's associated with children's performances and clownishness. Like the voice overs, cartoon sound effects now are seen as somewhat clumsy and childish, not to say old fashioned.

There is an element of mistrusting the actors not to convey the correct emotion. Like the actors need audio help to do their jobs properly. But also like the audience can't be trusted to understand and so we feel "talked down to" by the sound effect. At least I do.

Yes I am aware this is a personal hang up.

Instead I think it's meant more as a communal nudge, like "we all together are responding in a certain way to this." Isn't it funny?

I also wonder if it's the influence of anime et al. (I'm really not an anime person partly because of the soundscapes. But then I don't like cartoons. Or Disney. Just not into kid's stuff. Never have been. Even when I was a kid.)

Here's someone else's perspective on Thailand's use of sound effects.

And Japan's.

I would say I'm accustomed to it now, but I still don't ever enjoy it. In fact, I often appreciate the "gritty" drama BLs like The Eighth Sense or I Told Sunset About You or Eternal Yesterday BECAUSE at least high angst means no sound effects.

Also less likely to sing.

All hail dark BL's good side? The silver lining.

For the record and to show my "history of BL creds" I'm gonna give a shout out to the SINGLE best use of a sound effect in a BL-adjacent piece of media....

THE BEST BL SOUND EFFECT EVER AWARD!

drum roll please

THE POP SOUND

Made by Pree pulling out of Ram's ykw just just after railing him.

Series: What The Duck

(can't remember if it's season 1 or 2, and I will never rewatch that cray cray)

Country: Thailand

I am aware I am being crass but this moment was honestly, truly, hilarious. It's a very sexy scene and then that sound. So funny.

I expect a comment from those few of you who remember this moment.

(source)

[fandomfluffandfuck]

Personally, as a dom, I've never experienced what I would consider a full-blown drop. I've had some close calls, but my (unfortunately) extensive experience with depression and other mental health problems has enabled me to be on top of knowing the symptoms of drop. I recognize them, and I can usually take care of myself if I don't still have access to the partner that I had a scene with.

So, if you're looking for something where I incorporate lots and lots of own experience into a fictional scenario in the same way that I did with this post concerning what it feels like to get hard (which, if I'm assuming correctly, was something you would've been interested in based on your wording here, lol) that isn't what this is.

BUT

I certainly have ideas for Chris experiencing it, and I couldn't get them out of my head. Even if I'm not currently taking writing prompts

Chris doesn't even notice there's anything going on with him until Sebastian calls him. Okay, well, truthfully, he doesn't let himself notice that's there's anything going on until Seb goes full decective on him. Then, his boyfriend pulls the emotions up in a big tangled ball from deep in his chest, somewhere behind his lungs and heart, through his mouth. Bringing them to his attention, better than letting them fester, but still painful.

"Chris?" Sebastian speaks first, voice just a touch tinny over the phone.

"Hey, babe," Chris mumbles. He's tired. It's the middle of the day in Massachusetts. He's on vacation. He didn't stay up last night. He has no idea why he's tired or why his back hurts.

"Hi!" Seb shakes him from his thoughts.

"...did you call for somethin'?" Chris replies, licking his lips, when Sebastian says nothing else, "it's, what, 12 there? Shouldn't you be in bed? What time is call in the mornin'?"

"Don't worry about it," Sebastian tells him, his voice smooth and easy, "I called 'cause I miss you."

Chris wants to huff and roll his eyes, but it won't come out. Instead, he weakly offers, "it's been three days?" Has it been three? Already?

"What, I'm not allowed to miss you yet?" Sebastian teases lightly.

Chris shrugs, forgetting that Sebastian can't see him. Dodger plops his head into his lap with a doggy sigh. It feels like he misses Sebastian, too.

"Besides," Sebastian's voice is softer now, "you've barely texted."

A big, fat question mark hangs over his head suddenly, "huh?"

"You haven't texted me. I mean, you have. You text back, but I've been texting you first."

"Oh?" Chris hasn't really... is he doing that? He hasn't meant to!

"Mmm-hmm, I'm missing all my Dodger-and-boyfriend selfies. Usually, I get at least one every day. Or if it's not both of my boys, it's just Dodger, or a tree or flower or the sky or your breakfast or something."

"Oh," Chris feels bad. There's a knot in his chest, and it's tightening. Has he been ignoring him? He's been... what has he been doing? He's been scrolling. He kept sitting down to read and not being able to focus. So, he gets his phone out instead and... disappears into it until Dodger noses him for walks or dinner or it's time to sleep, and he lays down and thinks about Sebastian and gets stuck in anxiety spirals. Not because of Seb but. Adjacent?

"Then when you do text back, I dunno," Chris can practically hear him scratching his head, "you respond to what I'm saying, but it's not... not the same," Sebastian finishes lamely.

"I'm sorry, baby," Chris says with his whole chest. He is. There's guilt knawing at him now. He's been absent. He doesn't--didn't mean to.

"It's okay, I just want to know what's up. Are you okay?"

Chris swallows.

Is he okay?

He thought, he doesn't know, but he thought he was having a good old anxiety spiral, missing Sebastian after his recent departure, and that ache for his boyfriend had just dug up some older wounds about not being enough. And thinking about not being enough came with friends. Unwanted friends. Friends that add to not being enough by telling him, actually, he's kind of disgusting. How can he control Sebastian like he does? If he loves him, how can he do such things to him? He's too extreme, isn't he? He's too controlling, isn't he? Is he even a good man at all? Why is he like that? Why does he want the things he wants? He shouldn't want them. Does Sebastian like it? Does Sebastian even like being dominated? Is he just taking advantage?

"Chris, honey?" Sebastian's voice sounds like honey. Sweet and smooth.

"Yeah?" Chris rasps, voice hoarse despite how Seb has been doing the bulk of the talking.

"Are you okay?"

"I--" Chris has a false start. He doesn't know what to say, or how to end that thought.

Now he's thinking about the last time he saw Sebastian. Before he left for the airport. They couldn't help themselves, transitioning from innocent to R-rated goodbyes. However, Chris did put his foot down, gently, over one thing; they couldn't have too intense of a scene when they were already running the risk of making Seb miss his flight. Chris would feel awful if they didn't have enough time for at least a little aftercare. If he floated too high, scene-ing too hard, Chris didn't want him dropping on the plane ride. The moment they had was satisfying regardless, with Sebastian on his knees and--

Chris misses that.

He misses Sebastian.

He misses the clarity of being with Sebastian. Touching him. Feeling him. Breathing him in.

So. He's thinking of what happened right before he left. He's thinking about what it's like to share a scene with Sebastian, not a scene on a film set, (although any of those scenes are magic), too. Because it's Sebastian. He's a fucking world class actor and a world class submissive. Of course, acting opposite of him is incredible. Of course, dominating him is incredible. Clarity and peace and focus. His submissive. Collaring. Protecting. Caring. Providing. Strength for his submissive but weakness, too.

An insatiable urge for him.

Only him.

Sebastian.

He would do anything for his submissive.

His partner.

"I don't know," Chris finally murmurs his answer.

Sebastian hums, "alright."

"Alright?" Is... is he supposed to add something here? He doesn't know what to say.

"Yeah, that's okay. It's alright. However you are, whatever it is, I want to know about it. Even if you don't know, y'know?"

A lightning strike of feeling strikes through Chris' chest. Raw and breaking. He tries to swallow around the weight piling up at the back of his throat, but all he ends up doing is choking for a moment.

Palms clammy, eventually, Chris manages, "h-how's the set?" he's clinging to his boyfriend's voice.

Sebastian rattles off one detail in answer, then another and another and another when Chris just keeps asking questions. Questions that pour over his lips and don't always make a ton of sense. That doesn't even matter. Why is he asking that? Chris can feel his battery, his energy, depleting--draining down to nothing, and yet his mouth is running a mile a minute. His thoughts are dragging on, slogging awkward and slow through mud, but his questions only keep coming. Paradoxical.

How are you? Are you okay? You're not too cold, right? It's winter there, isn't it? Are you having a good time with the cast? Do you like them? They better like you, do they even realize how fucking great you are? Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Do you miss me? Do you miss fu--

Chris is in the middle of his spiral, wanting, desperately to know everything that's going on in Sebastian's head when, suddenly, Sebastian says his name. He doesn't yell. Just the opposite, he whispers it.

Chris hears it.

Chris hears, more than feels, his mouth snap shut.

"Chris, baby, if you want to fly out and come see me, you can just say it."

"No, I don't. I," his voice comes out small, nothing like the rambling, louder, and louder mess he was just making, "I, I..." There's a heavy rock in his throat that he has to swallow dry and scraping, then, "y-yeah. Can I? You're not too busy?"

"'M never too busy," he reassures him.

Chris makes an aching sort of sound. Wounded. He can't help it. He knows that, and he's stupid for thinking otherwise, but he just... hearing it is good. He wants to curl up in those words, he wants to curl himself into a ball and bundle up in Sebastian's side and have him stroke his back. He's so tired. He misses him so much.

It's only been a few days.

At the same time that he misses him so fucking bad and he wants to be embraced and held, he missing him so fucking bad and he wants to take care of him like he should. But also like he shouldn't. Sebastian is grown. He can care for himself, and he doesn't need Chris to impose, bleeding his controlling longing all over him. Chris has always needed to be needed.

"That sound good, baby?" Sebastian asks once they have the details in place, when and where.

Chris nods. He forgets, again, that his boyfriend can't see him. Running in ceaseless circles. But Sebastian, magic, understands nevertheless.

Then, Seb signs off, letting him go with reassuring reminders to sleep and eat and take care of himself. He'll text him later, once they've both gotten some sleep.

In a few days time, the only way Chris can drag himself out of bed--one limb at a time, peeling the sheets back, and struggling his way into sweats, dropping Dodger off at his Ma's house--and make it to the airport is by knowing that all that stands between him and Sebastian is a few hours. He just has to make it through the plane ride.

A plane ride that he mostly sleeps through, despite having just crashed all night.

When Chris finally, finally fucking lands, he's moping through baggage claim and the, just, whole fucking airport with his baseball cap tugged low and his sunglasses, the largest, darkest pair he owns, hoping no one recognizes him and deeply wishing that he insisted on having Sebastian meet him at the airport. The passing thought entered his head but he was thinking less about himself and more about public appearances then. He's thinking more of himself now. And he wants Seb. So badly. He misses the way he smells and how he laughs and his eyes and--

He could've gotten a later flight that would've worked. Right? So Sebastian would be done filming for the day and he could've been here. Now?

Chris is vibrating out of his skin, fingers curled into fists around his backpack's straps and suitcase's handle. He can't wait to be alone with his boyfriend. He's closer to him now yet he just misses him more.

However, maybe it's a good thing that Seb isn't there. Because. The moment he is there... the paparazzi would have a field day.

The moment Seb lets himself into the rented apartment he's staying at for filming, the door isn't even closed! Yet, Chris is already collapsing into him.

His hands immediately land on his hips but they quickly wrap around his waist--wrapping him tightly, securely up in his arms while he buries his face in his neck. He's warm and he smells like coffee and sweat and Sebastian. Chris knows because he's pressing his nose as hard into the junction between his neck and shoulder and breathing him in as he can. He needs him. He's probably stretching Seb's shirt with how hard he's grabbing him, but he can't find it in himself to care--he'll pay costuming whatever they ask himself. His eyeslashes sweep shut. He already feels better. More centered. Steady. Like he's standing on two feet again, finding purchase on a softly carpeted floor of a familiar, warm home.

"Seb," Chris whispers into his skin like it's a prayer. He doesn't realize he's crying until he feels the wetness from his own eyes on Sebastian's body. He clings harder.

Sebastian squeezes him back, whispering too, "hi, baby."

They stand, hugging--cuddling, really, in the entryway for enough time that Chris' silent tears turn into sniffles and dry eyes. The feeling of Sebastian's heat against him echoes through his bones. He relishes in it. He doesn't stop clinging, though. He can't. All he can do is hold him and breath. Hold him and breathe as Seb heards him over toward the living room, bringing him with him and settling their bodies together on the couch, legs and fingers tangled, Chris on top of him, blanketing him.

Their hearts were racing, exilerated by the chance to be close enough to touch once more--in the same timezone--but now they slow. Steady and deep, chest to chest. Pumping blood and love through their veins, dissolving into their muscles. Lying lump and heavy, slumped into each other.

Chris tries hard to breathe out every drop of tension in his body under the soothing swirls of Sebastian's palms over his shoulders and back. It isn't hard to relax like this, when he's here, but the last dregs of emotion are especially deep seated, heavy, and hard to drain away. He shivers.

"Cold?" Sebastian asks.

Chris shakes his head. No.

Never.

Seb knows exactly what he wants. Seb knows what he needs. Seb knows what he feels somehow, even though Chris feels like a walking, unidentified swirl of anxiety. Seb knows what he wants to hear. Chris doesn't have to say a damn thing, Seb is just in his head, answering every silent question--rattling on in a soothing tone, I missed you so much. I miss everything that we do. I miss kissing you. I miss touching you. I miss sleeping next to you. I miss the things you do to me. I miss the things you make me feel. I love you.

They fall asleep.

Then, when they're awake again, late into the evening, and they've peeled themselves apart just enough to stand hip to hip, waiting for water to boil, mugs poised to happily hold their tea and honey, steaming away--Sebastian is back in his head, wandering around his skull, sight-seeing.

"Hey," Seb finds something that takes his fancy--that ugly insecurity that he's not what Sebastian wants or that he takes too much, he controls too much. He sees and he tugs him close.

Chris smiles.

"Remember when we first got together--"

"Yeah?" He already feels lighter.

"We were just barely hooking up and I told you, you could go harder on me. Then, when you didn't get what I meant," his grin is sly, his sparkling eyes shifty, "I explained it to you, and you..." he chuckles conspiratorially, "didn't spank me that hard at all."

"Hey!" Chris laughs softly.

"And I had to talk you up to doing anything more than hitting me on the ass sometimes." Sebastian kisses him on the cheek, "now look at you! Now you regularly blow my mind with how kinky we get."

Chris opens his mouth to say something, he's already chuckling, but Seb is there--

"You give me more than I knew how to ask for. I like it. I love it. And I have more than a lifetime's worth of evidence that you do, too."

Chris sighs, swaying into him, "I love you."

"Love you, too."

"Thanks for getting me outta my head, Seb."

"Anytime."