#I need to decide how to split it up for posting but we'll get to that in a few days

[somegrumpynerd]

Me drawing something silly

[northern-passage]

what have i been up to?

i decided to do a little check-in type post just to let you all know what i've been working on. i know things have been quiet here, mainly because i'm just not as active on social media as i used to be (but especially here)

i have been working on tnp, though. i've been rewriting chapter 2 (what was previously chapter 1) and i know a lot of people complain about rewrites but the fact was simply that i had written myself into a corner; when it comes to IF, when you have a lot of stats and branching and variations to track, you get to a point where it simply does not make sense to try and force it, and i really needed to go back and fix my coding and cut a lot of variables. which is what i've been doing, and many of you have seen how that's changed the game so far with the rewritten prologue (now chapter 1).

with that in mind, i've also done a lot of worldbuilding. again, you've seen some of this if you saw the pantheon post i made a while ago (though some of that has changed already, too, along with more edits to chapter 1 😅) and i've put a lot more thought into the setting, how the world "works" and the different relationships between countries and cultures, etc.

i will be yapping about all of that under the cut if you're interested, but if not, just know i am still working on the game. i do not have an estimated timeline for an update, but i am trying very hard to get chapter 2 out this year.

anyways, my rambling:

one of the main changes will be how Gael and Adrania function. Gael and Adrania remain similar in essence but the relationship has changed, as has the source of their hostilities. i've also put a lot more thought into the way gender roles would work in this world, something that i've previously been a bit wishy-washy on. reading more fantasy and studying lectures on the craft and understanding the way oppression works in the real world has allowed me to brainstorm a better, more realized world with tnp.

that being said, i still stand by my original goal with this project, which is that i'm not really interested in writing violent/graphic misogyny, transphobia, or homophobia. but i am interested in exploring the way empires hold power, and for tnp, that has always been through money and trade. even in the very first iterations, the major cities like blackwater and king's harbor are designed with very clear and purposeful class divides, i've just put a lot more thought into how this would actually work.

and there is also the influence of the gods; when your major religious figurehead is revered as a "mother," as well as the enforcer of justice, what does that mean for the world and the women in it? when you have gods that are genderless or genderfluid, how does that change societies perception of trans people, and gender as a whole?

i struggled when i started tnp about how to depict gender in this world, and originally i simply chose not to give it much thought, and i used a lot of anachronisms rather than actually trying to explore what transness and gender within the context of tnp would look like (i think this was my biggest mistake with Lea at the start. if you remember that you're a real one lol). and i think that's a cop out and simply not how any society would work. Adrania is an empire; people will be forced to comply to various roles and expectations in order for this empire to retain control.

so this led me to 1. reimplement the tolls, something that was present in my very first draft but got scrapped before publishing for the first time. it's easy to control people when you have papers and tolls to track them (or restrict their movements if they don't have the "correct" papers). 2. expand on the relationship between Gael and Adrania. where did these two countries come from? when did they split? how has Adrania managed to grow in power while Gael has not? and how has the plague exacerbated the hostilities? etc. we'll see a lot of this explained in the next chapter (as well as some edits made to chapter 1 again), with Adrania's trade agreements and how they exclude Gael specifically.

and finally, what gender roles are people expected to play within society? if Adrania's main god is a woman (okay, a wolf, but you get it) and a mother and also known to be a ruthless dispenser of justice, what does this mean for Adranian men and women? if their god of death is genderless and also commonly represented as a god of dreams and transitions (from life to death and wakefulness to dreams and from one gender to another or beyond) how does this impact the trans people in this world? if the god of war and harvest is sometimes a woman and sometimes a man, who benefits from elevating one depiction over the other?

lots of fun questions! which i think has led to some interesting changes in the game which makes the world feel more real. it also gives me a reason (not that i "needed" one but, ya know *gestures vaguely*) for all of the women i have in combat leadership roles: Keres, Hadrien, and Merry, just to name a few, and why someone like Redwine would be disliked and challenged as a political, landowning leader instead (and ultimately replaced by a man). while all the warrior gods are women (Wolfmother, the Moon, Stormbringer), Adrania emphasizes the male depiction of the Sun, which leads to this divide of men seeking landownership and more administrative political roles, versus women who, outside of motherhood, make careers as generals and captains and knights.

with trans people, there are similar expectations, of course, but they are also pushed towards more spiritual roles due to their perceived kinship with the death god as well as the Sun (and this also means that while motherhood is revered in this world, there is a looser definition here than in our world, due to transness being acknowledged, accepted, and an integral part of society. what "motherhood" is and what it means to people will be explored heavily in game, you just have to trust me on this one!) obviously there is a real history of trans people being seen this way, and it's something i've turned over in my head for a while. beyond the spiritual, though, trans people are seen in every other role as well, and we'll see some trans people who have little to no relationship with religion or the death god (like Merry, Lea, Clementine, Rodrick, and Rafe) and others that have an actively hostile relationship with it (Noel. lol) and including the potentially trans mc, we see a diverse depiction of trans people, as hunters and watchers and captains and healers and bards, etc. i'm hoping this still gives a well-rounded, multi-faceted look at how trans people live in this world without pigeonholing them solely as "divine oracles," or othering them from their cis counterparts.

overall, i feel that i've matured as a writer since i started tnp and i want that to reflect in the world as well. rereading the original demo made me cringe and a lot of it just felt very childish and flat, and i feel like i really didn't have a strong enough grasp on the fantasy genre, nor the skills and knowledge required to do proper, intensive worldbuilding at the time. now i think the story and setting and characters have grown a lot and i'm more capable and confident to do the things that past me couldn't. anyways thanks for reading all this, this post was just an excuse for me to talk about everything because i'm dying keeping it all to myself LOL. i look forward to catching back up to chapter 3 and finally sharing it all with you eventually!

[vaneshifts]

Another possibly helpful Vane Rant™? Fuck yes.

OMGGGG.... y'all remember my last post, where I talked about how no matter how confident we are, we'll always be wrong in some way so we need to stop being arrogant motherfuckers??

Well this is exactly what I mean. Just when I thought I had everything figured out -- at least for myself -- I get slapped with a new realisation that I still haven't stopped spinning from.

As much as I understood LOA as a concept, I didn't necessarily feel it's effects personally. This makes it super easy to doubt yourself, but it's finally clicked for me now, and I'm gonna take you guys along the ride while it's still fresh so maybe it can click for you too if you haven't felt that already.

Guys manifestation is so easy. I haven't been complicating it, per se, but I just haven't been able to make it fully work for me. Y'ALL I'M LEGIT SCREAMING RIGHT NOW IT'S SO EASY I FEEL DUMB AND SO EXCITED AT THE SAME TIME.

Last night, I had a dream about my HTTYD DR. It was kind of blurry and confusing, so don't ask me how I know it was my HTTYD DR, I just do. I was kiiind of lucid? Lucid enough to control my own actions but not enough to recognise that I was dreaming, except for like, a split second. Let me immerse y'all in this craziness rq.

I was on this mountain top, like, fucking waist-deep in snow without my dragon, but I needed to get to the edge of the mountain. It was visible, but way too far considering all of the snow, y'know?

And completely by accident, I manifested a faster form of transport, even with my dragon nowhere in sight. I slid down this snow bank, but when I got to the bottom, I hit another one that was a lot more solid. For a brief second, I was like oooh, I fucked up, because when that snow bank moved, I realised it was a big-ass fucking polar bear. Not good, right? And he was not happy that I'd bothered him.

It roared at me, and this is the moment in movies where whoever hath waketh the beast normally gets eaten really violently, right? But something in my head just clicked and I went, "wait a minute, I've tamed DRAGONS. I've absolutely got this, no sweat at all." Which was an INSANE thought to have, considering this was a dream, not my actual DR, so I had no recollection of how I'd tamed dragons before.

But the bear lunges at me like I'm dinner, and I just stand up as tall as I can in waist-deep snow and scream back at it as loud and angry as I can. It looked really startled, and while it was computing that this tiny human had yelled at it, I treated it like a strange dog, first holding out a hand to sniff and then petting very gently and friendly. Mr Bear's attitude switches up instantly, turning all sweet and friendly, and he turns his back towards me and bends one leg to show me his shoulders. I grabbed the fur there, and let him haul me out of the snow. Voila! Instead of being eaten, I had a ride.

Now, I am certain that this is not what you're supposed to do when meeting a bear irl. But here's the thing. I never doubted myself even once. I had already decided that this bear wasn't going to hurt me. I had simply decided that my way of dealing with the situation was successful. And my dream was like putty in my hands. It had no choice but to do what I said.

Now bear with me, because this is the part that some of y'all might find insane. But Vane it was a dream, but Vane it was all in your head, but but but but-- Yeah, so is everything. Babe nothing is real and everything is. Confusing as hell, right? So don't worry about the rules or the technicalities. Your reality is your playground, and I never realised just how hard I was making it on myself until that dream.

You decide. Your reality is your dream world. So fuck off with your logic and do whatever the hell you want. Manifest. Shift. Idc.

XO, love you

[pico-digital-studios]

Into, Across and Beyond!: Happy 1st Anniversary!

(Anyone new here, please go check out the webcomic yourself! There's a link to its Master Post on my account's Master Post!)

It's honestly hard to believe that it's been a whole year since I got Sonic: Into, Across and Beyond! going here on Tumblr, but I'm absolutely proud of where I've come with the project! It's not been easy plotting everything out, but it's definitely in a great state so far!

Of course, I haven't gotten this far on my own. I'd also like to thank some other individuals for helping me reach this point, as well.

@becdoesthings: for having helped with some writing, alongside some mockup work!

@mcgamejolter: for not only contributing here and there to the story, but also for bringing Mr. Needlemouse into IAB!!

SFG1235: for bringing his own little contribution to IAB!, alongside doing a fantastic job with the Mobiverse AU!

@robovoidfrog: It's been great seeing how Funkinverse could evenly tie in with IAB! without intruding on the experiences of both. You're doing well out there, dude!

@trocyte: for helping me keep on top of any important FNF tidbits for the Funkinverse side-story!

Anybody who has contributed a question to the Q&A for the project. I know it's not a load of questions as it stands, but thanks regardless!

The numerous great creators, both SEGA and the fans, that have helped shape the Sonic franchise into the diverse playground for creativity it is today!

So, then, what's next for the project going forward? Well, let's see...

Continuing to Write Any Absent Scenes

There are still several scenes in the project that don't have their writing all sorted out yet, but I promise I will get down to them when I get the time to do so! Next up in line will be the second major fight in More than One Universe, involving both Talrareth and AVA!Corrupt, like in No Way Home.

I'll also ensure that each piece of the story is interconnected between posts to let you view the stories at your own pleasure. Considering a Tumblr post can only handle so many links, I might need to split some of the stuff up here and there, but we'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

A Journey into History

In some other little news, there's a project that my friend, Nickbear/SonicFan50002 has in the works. I won't say anything major about it until he drops any personal announcement, but I can confirm that IAB!'s version of OMT!Tails is going to be amongst the game's playable characters!

Taking place between Across All Worlds and Many More Heroes, OMT!Robotnik had picked up some data revolving around an unnatural structure that showed up in another dimension, so Tails has decided to investigate the abandoned Death Egg solo to help build up his independence. Of course, the anomalies behind said structure have brought a certain old foe back to get revenge on him... one last time.

I hope you'll look forward to it when it's properly announced by Nick! It'll definitely be a change from the usual EXE formulas you've grown used to!

A Missive from 50 Years Ago

At one stage, I'll be documenting the journey of Errorverse Shadow, the Ultimate Lifeform from 6 dimensions over. You'll find he's a tad less reclusive and moody than he usually is, considering he had a bit longer of a trip after Metal Overlord was overpowered.

I plan to cover the events of his beginnings, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic '06, Shadow Generations, Sonic Forces and any other events leading up to his present day, and how much he came to grow into his own person instead of abiding to the status quo of other Shadows, and how he isn't quite alone with his wish to just have a future with someone close by his side.

I'll just say this; while he sympathises with Boom Shadow for being the only serious villain amongst all the comedic ones in his dimension, he seriously dislikes how ruthless and uncaring Boom Shadow is about positive values in life.

Museum of Memory (named after a remark in AC:NH's DLC)

The project's definitely come a long way since its inception. What you see above is one of the earlier mockups designed for the project, depicting an early battle in the storyline. The other mockups shown below are of earlier variations of the story's work before I nailed it down to a definitive version. Here's the stuff for you to see:

(OMT!Tails and CR!Sonic running through Green Hill; old One More Hero work when the sprite choices weren't finalised)

(The first depiction of the bridge fight between OMT!Tails and Shalian in More than One Universe; again, both sprite styles have changed since then)

(An earlier depiction of the early-entry Blur Gang members laughing at the name of SoniKiller; as can be seen, Mini Sonic's sprites were once the chibi Sonic sprites from CD)

(An early version of the arrival of the multiversal heroes; the older sprite choices for OMT!Knux, OMT!Amy and OMT!Cream can be seen, alongside an early draft of Nitro's then-recent redesign)

You'll notice that these four mockups are in a widescreen style compared to the Genesis resolution that I ultimately decided to stick with when I began to share IAB! on Tumblr. I'm honestly glad I decided to take those creative changes before I got started, since I'm prouder of the project that way.

A Potential New Logo?

Nickbear had considered the possibility of designing a new logo for IAB!. As of writing this post, it isn't ready just yet, but once it is, you'll see it front and centre on both the project's Master Post AND on the TV Tropes article for IAB!. Considering he designed the logo for what would've been Sonic.EXE Phantom Saga +, I can guarantee he's a master at this stuff!

Footnote

And that should be all I'm covering for now. In the meantime, while you're waiting for new stuff, be sure to check these creators out!:

@akanemnon: Hijinks ensue when the protagonists of Undertale and Deltarune cross paths.

@cultofgalaxy: Kinoko's in-progress game of origin, featuring a Metroidvania approach and many unique planets!

@itscruiseelroy: Developer of the awesome arcade-inspired indie title, Annalynn!

@piink-rose: She makes such adorable Sonic art pieces!

@robovoidfrog: Check out the work he's done for Funkinverse! He's more active on Reddit, of course.

@son1c: Designed some sweet Shatterverse AU stuff to expand on what we were shown in Sonic Prime!

NotSoDevy: A small game dev in his own right! He is currently working on his own FNF mod and a semi-official game adaptation of Sonic.EXE 2.

@emistations: Does some cute Sonic art herself, and is a designer for the Black Knight Amy AU that's a part of IAB!. (I swear, Harmony Rose is just adorable! >w<)

JoeDoughBoi: The current co-owner of Sonic.exe, currently working on SonicPC and the Soulless Sonic series.

And be sure to support other little creators in the community as well! And if I'll give you one piece of advice, hold on tightly to any physical copies of media (video games, books, DVDs, etc.) that you own, since companies can't delist physical stuff from storefronts compared to digital stuff.

Well, that should be all from me for now. Catch you guys in the next post!

Oh, and have this art of Nitro and Kyuzi (once again by @mcgamejolter)!

[percahliaweek]

FAQ '25

[Pretty much copy/pasted from our 2024 page, but with some tweaks ;3]

What tag should I use?

#percahliaweek is our designated tag - you can @ us @percahliaweek so we can reblog your contribution on the corresponding day.

Where are the prompts?

Ah, seems this has escaped containment then. You can find them HERE!

Will you be doing anything on Twitter/other social media?

We considered it! However, as other social media sites have proven unreliable (especially lately), we'll be hosting the event only on Tumblr. However, you're welcome to post your work wherever you like! Just understand that without a Tumblr post we can't exactly RB your entry.

Can I do _ for the event?

Yes. Yep. That too. Seriously, so long as it focuses on Perc'ahlia (and is appropriately tagged to avoid spoiling people), you can do it. Cosplay, inspired recipes, beadwork, podfic, go wild! Well, with the caveat that no hateful content will be permitted - don't use a joyous event to rain on someone else's parade or promote hatespeech, alright?

Is NSFW content allowed?

Given the ship in question and just how canonically horny they are for each other - yes! However, we request that you tag this content as #nsfw and use the appropriate content filter on it. If posting in the Discord server, keep it to the 18+ chat. Be mindful of potential minors in fandom space and people browsing content in public.

I want to participate but haven't watched Campaign 1!

We welcome fans of The Legend of Vox Machina with open arms. As a result, it's requested that campaign fans do their best to avoid spoiling show fans for anything beyond what Season 3 has shown (VM splitting up for a break). That means late Campaign 1, the oneshots and any mention of them in other campaigns should be tagged as #cr1 spoilers (using just this tag for simplicity). Show fans, if you want to remain unspoiled, I recommend you block this on Tumblr and mute spoilery channels in the server.

Wait - what might get spoiled for me here?

The #cr1 spoilers tag should broadly cover anything TLOVM hasn't yet, but do note that Percival and Vex'ahlia pop up in Campaign 3 and so some fics might contain mild spoilers for the events of that campaign and the decades between their epilogue and now.

Is there an AO3 collection for the fanfics?

Yes! HERE it is, ready and waiting for your fics! If interested in past year's fics (which definitely deserve some love), you can find the 2024 entries HERE and 2023's over HERE!

Does my submission have to fit one of the prompts?

That would be ideal, yes! But fitting the prompt can be very loose - maybe you just use the word as a motif, or you take it in an entirely unexpected direction. We want to encourage creativity and fun more than anything else.

Help! I don't have any ideas!

We have a few recommendations (we are unaffiliated with the websites linked): Random page of the Encyclopedia Exandria Random word generator OTP prompt generator AU generator Ghost’s Spell prompts [roll 2d20?] Wild Magic Surge table Life events table If you've made prompt lists and would not mind them being featured here, reach out!

How did you choose the prompts?

Prompts were selected by a combination of admin discussion and voting in our Discord server to try and ensure a good mix of evocative prompts. Following feedback from members and a poll, we added in some alternative prompts for people who don't click with the simple word pairs!

Where can I find past years' prompts?

You can find the list and links to individual tags HERE (2024) and HERE (2023). Given 2023 was our first year, we unfortunately didn't think to tag Day 1 until after the fact (we'll need to go and clean that up).

Why late September?

On September 29th, 2016, the Critical Role episode 'Passed Through Fire' aired, which features an iconic Perc'ahlia moment (no spoilers for show fans!). Following Burr's 2023 poll on which scene is most iconic for the pairing, we decided to have the week celebrate the anniversary of that episode. After season 3 of TLOVM aired in 2024, we added October 3rd (the day Vexations first aired) to the list as a notable day to celebrate! ;3

Is it okay if I only do one prompt?

This event is intended to be relaxed and fun - one entry, or seven, or fourteen, however many you want! We've tried to announce the event earlier this year, to allow for more time for everyone to work on their entries, so please don't feel pressured to do them all the week of. And if you can't finish on time, there's no pressure: late submissions will still be RB'd and added to the AO3 collection. Mind you, after a month or two we might stop checking the blog and tag regularly, so your best bet is to @ us or post in the Discord server!

A Discord server?

We have set up a little server for this event on Discord, mostly to hang out with other Perc'ahlia fans and motivate eachother to work on our respective projects. The current link is HERE - let us know if it's not working!

Who is hosting this?

At the moment the users running this blog are @burr-ell, @blorbologist, @crithaus and @rightpastnowhere! If you have any questions or concerns (i.e. we didn't see your post and missed RBing it :c) please let us know!

Any more questions? Feel free to send in an ask and we'll do our best to answer in a timely manner!

[ciaomarie]

Chapter 2: Getting to Know You

I recently wrote a post-season 2 story about Carmy helping with Sydney's apartment search. I wanted to back track a little to get into his head space just after the Friends and Family almost disaster, but prior to the apartment hunt, during which he is hopelessly crushing on Sydney. Mostly, it's backstory and gives more context to why Carmen is who he is :)

When Carmy stumbled frozen and broken out of the walk-in the night of Friends and Family, Sydney was waiting for him. However, something in his eyes made her reconsider whatever she had been planning to say. She pointed him to sit on floor against a stove she had turned on and made him hot tea. Wordlessly she sat on the floor next to him until he finished. When he tried to speak, nothing came out. His icy mottled fist began to circle his chest, but Sydney closed her hand over his.

"We'll start over again tomorrow."

Weeks later Carmen asked her why she hadn't quit that night. She said "Your face…it looked like mine did when I lost Sheridan."

In return she had asked him what happened with Claire and if it had been her fault.

"No. She thought she knew me, but she didn't and honestly, we didn't have anything in common."

The more Carm thought about Claire the sorrier he felt about how he'd behaved and the less he regretted the break-up. Claire was his high school dream girl. She was always kind to him, despite being able to mingle in nearly every clique at school. She was as comfortable with the student government club, as she was with the skaters. Everyone liked her and for no apparent reason she frequently stopped at his locker to ask if he had gum or invite him to study. So he always kept a pack of gum for her, but was too shy to join her study group. Once she and two of her friends ambushed him after school and convinced him to come to a party the night prior to graduation. He decided he might as well not end his high school career without ever having gone to one. The party was held in woods behind one of the football player's homes. There was a bonfire, cheap beer, too few cups, and couples making out or swaying to "Die in Your Arms".

Claire found a clean Solo cup and they shared a drink as she gazed into his eyes.

"I love this song"

"Yeah…it's popular".

Natalie had been playing Justin Bieber non-stop for the last few years and Carm was almost willing to give up all music if he never had to listen to him sing another note.

He didn't remember the rest of the conversation, but at some point Claire kissed him. 12 years later when they began dating she brought up the night of the party and how he looked so surprised and blushed.

"You were so cute. I bet it was your first kiss!"

"No, but almost" he said a little taken aback. As pleased as he was that Claire was interested, he felt like her project. Something about their relationship reminded him of a cheesy 80's teen movie. Too sweet. Not enough acid.

He could have saved them both a lot of trouble if he'd not given her any number, much less a fake one. But it was Claire, the brilliant, fearless, beautiful girl he'd used to sketch over and over again and she wanted HIM. He liked her so much back then. She went off to Michigan State and he began peeling mushrooms at a restaurant eventually becoming Carmen Berzatto "the most excellent CDC at the most excellent restaurant in the entire United States of America."

But before Claire, in 7th grade summer school, there was Kyla Branson. Carmy needed to take 7th grade math again before they'd pass him to 8th grade and Kyla was a transfer student. She had just finished 6th grade, and was taking 7th grade math and English early, because she was a pianist. A whole freakin' prodigy that would be touring with Eric Clapton later that fall. The math teacher had told the class, much to Kyla's obvious discomfort.

On the third day the class split into pairs to do an assignment and Carmy and Kyla were paired. He could barely look at her. Kyla had thick curly eyelashes which framed her large black brown eyes, her hair was usually brushed up into a soft coily bun like a ballerina, she wore small white diamond earrings in her shockingly small ears, and she had an heart-breakingly cute overbite that showed whenever she smiled. Carmy was gone over this little black girl. She was very shy too, but an overachiever so she persevered in making him talk enough to get the work done.

Once she saw his sketches on the back of his notebook and said he was artist. Using his best charcoal pencils he drew a portrait of her in the privacy of the attic at home. On the last day of summer school he gave it to her when class dismissed and dashed out of the room, his face redder than Heinz ketchup. Kyla caught up with him outside and grabbed his hand leading him out of the view of the car pick-up line.

"Thank you Carmen. I think you're beautiful too" Kyla whispered and kissed him full on the mouth. For three seconds. Then she ran back to the car pick up line, got into her parent's car and Carmen never saw her again.

Once he thought he saw her. The eyes and overbite were startling familiar, but the name was different. It was the day that Sydney Adamu walked into The Beef. It was the day that someone saw who he really was again.

[marshmellowtea]

okay warning ahead of time that this post is not going to be super coherent i'm just trying to get out a stream of consciousness on my thoughts on these two bozos ghklasdjfklsad BUT as far as chris and robert's sister's relationship goes (and i'll be referring to her as ellie going forward for simplicity's sake)(i think she went by molly as a kid but as she grew up she decided that her middle name ellie is a better fit for her and that's what she goes by in uni. not at all relevant to her and chris i just wanted to share that thought lol):

(okay putting this under a cut cuz this got super long for no reason lmao RIP)

so. first of all. i think it's incredibly interesting that chris specifically says "we'll never have to work with this bunch of freaks again", implying that ellie herself is an actress, or at least involved in some aspect of the drama society. i don't have any super in depth thoughts about this other than that this makes me believe that the two of them met through theater, and i can't decide whether or not i believe chris knew she was robert's sister before he started dating her or if he found out afterwards because either one is fucking hilarious lmao. either he willingly went out with his best worst friend/catastrophic situationship's sister and thought that was perfectly fine and normal (or maybe it's revenge for robert dating his mother? either way. messy bitch behavior lmao) or he learned this information after he'd been with her for a while and it immediately gave him psychic damage. okay now that i've typed it out i am leaning more toward the second option cuz the idea of chris slowly noticing all the traits in ellie that he clicks with that remind him of robert is actually so delightful to me but i think both options have their merits lmao.

anyway. i do think these two genuinely did click with each other, is the thing. sure, it was in a superficial young puppy love kind of way (i know for a fact this relationship was SO high school in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact these two are emotionally stunted mid-twenty year olds lmao) but like, they did like each other, or at least the idea of each other. unfortunately, they just also enabled each other's worst impulses and behaviors, so it wasn't really a healthy relationship lol. i think they latched onto each other through a mutual dissatisfaction with the drama society that evolved into bitterness and resentment because they're both petty bitches at heart, and it doesn't help that ellie doesn't really know any of the drama society outside of her brother who sucks (i love him for it though <3). the only impressions of them she got were superficial interactions with them through being a part of the society in whatever way she was and chris's complaining about them, so of course she was inclined to encourage him to leave them behind. reach for something greater. fuck these weirdos, come with me and do some real acting, you don't need them, we only need each other :)

um. she quickly regrets that sentiment lmao. i don't think chris is generally a very needy person, but that's only because he actively represses every desire he's ever had. if you get him vulnerable enough, though, then that's when the neediness comes out, and he's at a very vulnerable point in his relationship with ellie. i've talked about how i think he was probably having some sort of crisis during this time related to not feeling very connected to his friends which. not to bring the bpd headcanon into this. but i fully believe his ass immediately reacted to that hurt with splitting on them and treating them as lesser than in his mind lmao, and ellie reinforcing that belief did Not Help (which i am not saying to demonize her! she did not have the full picture and was going off of what chris was telling her so of course she thought these people were bad for him lol. it's part of what made this relationship so messy). he's in a self sabotaging state, he's convinced himself that his literal entire support system is beneath him and he has to leave them behind, and he's left with one person to replace said support system. to say he becomes a little reliant on/clingy with ellie is uhhhh. well lmao

the thing is i don't think she disliked it at first. chris is a fucking pretty boy and she knows he's crazy off the bat but it's kind of in a fun way, y'know? their relationship starts as a whirlwind of passion and making out and sharing their goals and dreams of something bigger, they seem to have so much in common! sure he's a bit clingy and the venom with which he speaks about his old friends can be a little offputting but those are such minor red flags compared to how much fun she's having. i think the first moment that she starts to realize that she might be in over her head is when she shows up to dennis's birthday party and realizes that she and sandra are wearing the exact same dress, which yes is mainly because i'm really attached to the idea that chris bought that for her without realizing how insane about sandra he was being when he did that but listen this headcanon makes her expression in that moment so much funnier like ahlkgdasjlf

^ i fully believe this is the face of a woman who's starting to have some regrets lmao tell me i'm wrong. anyway

i'm not sure if i posted this yet or not but i fully believe the real dealbreaker was when he started explaining to her what his plans were for how to get the scrooge role. like, she knew he was a bit off his rocker (said with all the affection in the world btw. he's unwell <3) but i think she also assumed he was more grounded than the rest of the drama society, and normally to some degree she'd be right. but the thing is chris is A) stubborn as fuck, especially when it comes to his creative aspirations, B) in the middle of a manic breakdown where he's about to leave behind everyone he's ever loved and who's ever loved him, and C) frankly. kind of unhinged in general even without the extenuating circumstances, so of COURSE his ass thinks that kidnapping a bunch of bbc actors and hijacking their broadcast is an excellent idea for how to secure the role of scrooge lmao. what else was he going to do, something rational? he would never.

just......imagine this with me. he thinks this plan is incredibly clever, doesn't he. he has it all planned out to a disturbingly detailed degree and he explains it to ellie with all the childlike excitement he used when telling her about his aspirations to get out of the drama society and that's when it clicks for her that oh he's CRAZY crazy. and she smiles very sweetly at him and puts a hand on his arm and tells him "that's wonderful sweetheart :) i think. we should break up" and he's like "huh" and she's like "we need to break up. we can't be together anymore" and chris doesn't even have a response to that because his world is falling apart all over again lol :")

the chris/robert parallels have always been in the back of her mind, is the thing. they have a disturbing amount in common, but she'd been willing to look past that cuz chris is sweet in ways her brother isn't and he seems to really like her, and he gives her the affection and validation she's been missing in her life. he tells her he needs her all the time and that he can't do this without her, he's incredibly touchy with her in a way he hasn't been with anyone else not since sandra, before they had their tragic bestie breakup that i'll write about one of these days lol. but again, the red flags are there—he's getting a bit too dependent on her, he's already talking about them getting married (she hasn't even met his parents yet, and if he has it his way they never will because celia would not approve of her lbr), he's really latched onto the "us against the world" mentality she's offered to a degree that's kind of uncomfortable. she's already ignoring a lot, it's just that the kidnapping plot crosses a line, and not even solely because it's a literal crime lol but also because it's just so robert.

not to bring grovebean into it but i'm going to lol i think this is the moment where it clicks for her why her brother was so entwined with this guy. they are indeed two peas in a pod, so different but also so similar in a way that makes them clash and click and the same time. i think in the back of her mind she was always aware that chris's relationship with robert would come to bite them in the ass eventually, but she just really overestimated how long that would take lol. there's no way this relationship lasted more than a few months at most, i don't think they were together for very long at all ghlaksfdlkfjds.

on another note, i don't think chris's sexuality really was a factor in the dilapidation of this relationship. idk why but i really like the idea of ellie being asexual like him, so i think they were both really relieved to be in a relationship where sex wasn't an expectation. there's also the fact that despite headcanoning chris as gay i really do think that he prefers the company of women (another way his life is so tragic LMAO), so while his feelings for ellie weren't necessarily romantic, he was genuinely invested in this relationship and really enjoyed being with her. it's just that their combined mental issues unfortunately got in the way of the relationship being functional, lol.

i have. already typed too much so i should probably wrap this up soon cuz i have to leave the cafe in a bit so :') i haven't really touched on the whole chrissandra projection of this relationship as much but that's because i haven't fully fleshed that out in my head yet, so maybe i'll write about that more later. for now uhhh here's my thesis paper on chris and ellie being bad for each other but kinda cute about it LMAO

[royjamielibrary]

RoyJamie Recomendations — Marbella (Part 1)

but i'm a fire and i'll keep your brittle heart warm by instantcaramel (Rating: Mature | Chapters: 1/1 | Words: 12,736 | Setting: Post-Season 2 Canon Divergence | POV: Jamie | Tropes: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort | Warnings: Abuse/Domestic Violence, Depression, Suicidal Ideation)

It’s tough enough to get through the day while keeping up as much of the old Jamie as he possibly can before he’s just ready to collapse into bed and sleep for twelve hours. He just needs everyone to see that he’s okay. Maybe somewhere deep down he thinks if they believe it, he’ll start believing it. Maybe he just wants to be left alone. He doesn’t really know anymore.

chemistry til it blows up, til there's no us by instantcaramel (Rating: Mature | Chapters: 1/1 | Words: 6,555 | Setting: Post-Season 2 Canon Divergence | POV: Roy | Tropes: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together | Warnings: N/A)

“Did you think you were the only person who thought Marbella was a good holiday spot?” Jamie grins. “Nah, I talked to Keeley. She said she dumped you and thought you might need company after I asked her where I should go.” or, jamie and roy fall in love in marbella, get married, split up, and figure out their shit.

maybe it's 'cause I'm wearing your cologne by Blackmustache (Rating: Mature | Chapters: 1/1 | Words: 9,130 | Setting: Post-Season 2 Canon Divergence | POV: Roy | Tropes: Getting Together | Warnings: Abuse/Domestic Violence)

"Keeley mentioned you had a spare ticket to Marbs. Said I should come and keep you company." "How did you-" "Top bird, that Kathy of yours. She had the tickets changed into my name in no time at all." Or, what happens when Jamie joins Roy for the trip to Marbella.

Underlying Sentiment by nottonyharrison (Rating: Teen and Up | Chapters: 1/1 | Words: 3,195 | Setting: Post-Season 2 Canon Divergence | POV: Jamie | Tropes: Getting Together | Warnings: Minor Homophobia)

Jamie’s been sitting in the BA lounge for half an hour when he starts to wonder if it’s all a stupid idea. Keeley’s, of course. Jamie had no part in it other than nodding and agreeing that yes, a few weeks of Spanish sun would do him well, and no, no he wouldn’t have to see Roy all that much because the villa’s huge, and okay he’ll let Keeley sort it all out for him, maybe if he could just flick Roy a wee text when he gets there that would be great, yeah? Roy gets some company for the summer. Insert shocked Pikachu.

we'll be a fine line by howdyrowdypartner (Rating: Explicit | Chapters: 13/13 | Words: 72,815 | Setting: Post-Season 2 Canon Divergence | POV: Alternating | Tropes: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort | Warnings: Abuse/Domestic Violence)

When Keeley breaks up with Roy after his spontaneous plans to whisk her away to Marbella for the summer, he makes the trip by himself, intent on forgetting about the break up as best he can through as much booze, tapas, and sunshine as one person can manage during one miserable summer. The last thing he expects is for his car to break down during a road trip up the Spanish coast, where he finds none other than Jamie fucking Tartt - who fell off the face of the Earth after his stint on Lust Conquers All - working in a seaside bar. Post-season 2 AU where, after getting kicked off of Lust Conquers All, Jamie decides not to return to England or football.

[back-on-my-autistic-bullshit]

Full Moon Stolitz thoughts

Alright I'm getting on this shit because I am obsessed with Stolitz unironically. Before I start this I want to be absolutely clear that (in my opinion) there is no "right" side in the overall situation between Blitz and Stolas. Both equally have problems that contribute to their miscommunication and I can sympathise with both of them. If you disagree, feel free to ignore this post and scroll on, I don't mind friendly debate with people I know well but strangers on the internet are a different story.

I do generally project heavily onto Blitz which yeah probably impacts my interpretation of this a lot but I'm just a guy on tumblr I'm not here to be 100% right I'm just posing my take on their behaviours etc etc

Mandatory Disclaimer: spoilers start below! Do not click read more if you care about spoilers for The Full Moon episode of Helluva Boss

That all said, I'm splitting this into three parts:

Blitz's behaviour throughout the episode

Stolas' behaviour throughout the episode

Blitz and Stolas' confrontation/argument/interaction at the end of the episode

Part One: Blitz's behaviour

Starting off with "When I See Him", the basics of it (that is played up a bit for comedy and more or less directly stated really at the start) is that Blitz is obviously covering up how he really feels by concentrating entirely on the sex he anticipates having, and acting like that is what is important to him.

Are we okay? Can't really say I'm getting by By avoiding his questions It's so complicated, I hate when it's complicated Why do I always end up in situations that are complicated?

Blitz knows there is something wrong, or off, between the two of them but he'd rather not talk or communicate about it - literally preferring to avoid the topic entirely because "complicated" = bad, and he has no idea how to fix that, despite the fact that most of his relationships have been and/or are still complicated, he doesn't know how to deal with that because he never learnt. He's started to with Fizz a bit at the very least, but he's definitely not in a place to do that with romantic relationships yet - but I digress.

Here I go again, getting in my head So I'll focus on the sexy stuff instead

Not too much to say about this part other than he is actively choosing to disregard his anxieties and worries about him and Stolas by putting on this mask of caring about the sex and nothing else. Honestly, not a surprise with Blitz, this is pretty average behaviour and is very much likely a common coping mechanism of his to avoid serious feelings when engaging in relationships of a romantic nature. Especially since he seems to place a lot of value in himself in how good he is in bed.

When I see him, I'm gonna do that thing he likes No need to change things, I'll just bring the ropes and spikes[/spice*] We've got a nice arrangement And it's working out just fine We'll keep it light

Can't wait to lose ourselves in nasty sex And make that bird squawk We'll just stick with what makes sense

Same as above, he's going to what's familiar and directly deciding he'd rather ignore any issues they have and not talk about them in favour of doing what they normally do on full moons and call it a night.

*my audio processing disorder really did not like that line, and I cannot completely tell if that's right - any mistakes in lyrics or other quotes from the show before or after this are almost definitely because of this so please feel free to correct me.

Moving on from the song, some things Blitz does or says during the conversation with Moxxie and Loona in the office that stick out to me.

It's the full moon, I gotta meet up with Stolas tonight. Felt like dressing up a little since it's been a few months since I've been inside his feathered ass.

This is personally really interesting to me since he's not been known to dress up explicitly to see Stolas before (excluding the posts that have been seen on the instagram accounts but I'm hesitant to count those as 100% hard canon, and they were outfits of a different variety - not a bowtie and suspenders as he's seen wearing in the episode). It's like he's trying very hard to impress him for.. some reason? I'm guessing he sees it as part of his whole plan to really sort of wow Stolas, get in there, get out, no touchy feely stuff. It comes off as the opposite to me though, it shows that he kind of values what Stolas think of him and his appearance - and that he wants to impress Stolas. This could just be him trying to prove his worth to Stolas so he doesn't get cast aside, but it could also be more.

This facial expression is very important to me. It's a split second frame of vulnerability in response to Loona saying the following:

Oh shit, he's getting bored of you.

This is genuine worry and concern on his face, he tried to cover it up with a smile but he is concerned. And yes, it could just be about losing the book, it probably is in part but I think it's more than that.

Loona also says this:

Yeah, man. If someone wants to see you less and less, big red flag. If they give you chances to ditch, they probably want out themselves. Just wanna be more passive aggressive about it, dicks.

When she says this Blitz reacts very on the defensive, repeating what she said mockingly and saying this:

How do you know, Loona?

It's a very defensive reaction and I'd bet he feels at least a little bit bruised and hurt at the thought of Stolas getting "bored" of him - which probably does not help at all with how he's struggling with how he currently feels about Stolas between the agreement for the book and not seeing him in a while.

Immediately after this interaction, he literally leaves his job (which like, yeah, he is own his boss I Guess he can do that whenever he wants but I can't imagine he does it a lot, I Hope, unless he thinks it's important) and goes shopping for more things to impress Stolas. It's a lot of effort to put into someone you don't really super care about, all things considered but let's just go with the devil's advocate here that it's not to lose the book and it doesn't really mean anything. Although I do find his choice to look at candles first interesting, assuming it's not for something else (resident sex repulsed asexual is struggling with thinking about that kind of thing - despite watching helluva boss lmao), Stolas seems to like candles. If I remember correctly, he has some near his bath.

An interesting detail for Blitz to know/remember/take into account, for someone he allegedly does not care about. Anddd that's it for Blitz's scenes in this episode.

Part 2: Stolas' Behaviour

Like with Blitz, I'm gonna focus on how Stolas acts in "When I See Him" first, then move on to what we see of him alone in the rest of the episode (which there's very little of, I think, unfortunately).

The summary of what I think of Stolas in this song is he clearly has a somewhat fairytale view of his relationship with Blitz still (which is only emphasised by how the song is disney princess like in nature), thankfully he knows he has to let him be separate from the terms of their agreement and has found a way for this to occur without horribly impacting Blitz's business. However, he (at least, at first) seems to think after this happens everything will go fine and be perfectly okay and happily ever after, or more likely hopes that is how the situation will end up - but we see more of his worries later on so he's evidently not completely deluding himself.

My derring-do is half disguised Behind a smile

I don't have a lot to say about this just that it shows Stolas is obviously aware that Blitz is performing at least a little when he's with him.

I swore I wouldn't dwell on the divorce

This line just interests me more than anything, it's understandable that he doesn't want to think about the divorce. God knows I wouldn't want to, but's it intriguing to see he's attempting to distance himself from it - I hope we see more about this in the future episodes, maybe.

So for my own health I'll remind myself That when I see him I know that it won't feel so tough I'll believe him And not the voice that says I'm not enough No need for an arrangement It can just be him and me I'll see us free How perfect it could be When I see him tonight

This bit is very sweet honestly, Stolas clearly yearns to be closer to Blitz - and he's trying his best to facilitate that. He just wants genuine connection and love, something he couldn't experience in his marriage with Stella. Stolas is obviously nervous and has some self worth issues to say the least, but he deals with them differently to Blitz. In fact, he finds that being with Blitz helps combat these (likely because he feels loved and/or wanted by someone).

Unrelated to dissecting the episode and the like, the voice acting for this part was incredible and I love the way Stolas' VA (his name has slipped my mind atm) conveys emotion in his voice - even while singing. He sounds very hopeful, yet the cracks and wobbles suggest how nervous he feels for the interaction with Blitz, even if he's currently acting as if he thinks it will end well.

Oh god I'll fucking die alone if this goes bad tonight

This bit really just kind of shows how nervous he does feel about talking with Blitz about giving him the crystal. And that he is scared it'll go wrong, it's nothing too crazy.

The detail of him having none of the medication he takes left is interesting to me though, just that he's still taking it, I guess - could suggest he's still struggling with anxiety etc etc.

Am I doing something I can't take back? Would he want me if he was free? And if he's only here as a prisoner What kind of a monster does that make me

Stolas is clearly feeling a lot of guilt for his past treatment of Blitz, and fear that his feelings aren't reciprocated - but it seems like he's more scared that he's been taking advantage of Blitz, than the thought that Blitz doesn't like him.

My entire life's been written in stone He taught me that I could choose

Blitz is the first person he really chose to meet or associate with, as a child and as an adult. There was no obligation to know him or socialise with him, or to be his friend (or more). In fact, it was discouraged if anything but Stolas chose to do it anyway - and it helped him realise he could do what he wanted, and gain the confidence to do so.

Part 3: Blitz and Stolas' confrontation

Stolas' body language here kills me, he's so nervous for what he's about to do, and despite his hopeful song early he's eerily somber - as if he knows this will end badly.

Blitz looks so afraid here, he's gone through all of this effort to try to impress Stolas and keep him from getting "bored" of him. Part of this is probably because he doesn't want to lose the connection he and Stolas have but honestly it's largely probably the fear of losing the book and his business that he's worked so hard for. Blitz is an incredibly ambitious person, and he's put a lot of blood, sweat and tears (mostly blood) into I.M.P and to have it taken away because of someone else due to not being good enough for them is probably one of his worst fears.

Blitz's immediate switch to trying to seduce Stolas is slightly jarring, but not all that surprising considering how this whole thing started. Blitz is desperate, trying anything to prove to Stolas he's worth keeping around. Meanwhile Stolas looks resigned, as if realising it really was just a performance for Blitz the entire time.

Stolas, please, I- I need this book. Please, I need this book, Stolas. I will do anything.

The immediate switch to begging, mixed with tears, took me off guard honestly. I didn't expect to see him do that but it makes sense considering how badly he treasures I.M.P and he really is just at the whim of Stolas and it could all collapse at any given moment.

I don't understand, why are you giving me this? Am I not like, fucking you good enough? Because I can- I can always do better.

This being Blitz's immediate reaction to getting the crystal from Stolas is upsetting. I was on the verge of tears here, he can't even comprehend that Stolas might genuinely want to give him a gift, not because Blitz isn't good enough, but because Stolas wants him to be independent. Blitz has never viewed himself as "good enough" for people and he puts on a lot of performances to convince himself he's worthy of being associated with others. This probably feels like, to him, a convoluted way of "getting rid" of him, instead of giving him freedom so he and Stolas can interact with less of a power imbalance.

This in an interesting roleplay, never done this one but I can get into it. How's this? Oh, Stolas, I'll stay with you, I love you soo much.

Blitz's immediate response to Stolas' confession being one of disbelief leading him into thinking it's some sort of roleplay or pretense because he can't possibly believe that anyone would actually love him is honestly worse case scenario and probably where all of this starts going downhill.

I have my answer, Blitz. You needn't say anything. I have wanted you, for so long. The fact that you couldn't believe that I might have these feelings about you, that your first instinct is that it's always about... sex. That's enough to know what this is.

This right here, is terrible. Miserable, even. Communication is starting to break down, Stolas doesn't realise or understand Blitz's point of view and I certainly cannot blame him for getting upset but how these two are communicating yet somehow falling victim to miscommunication at the same time is impressive at this point. They're both getting emotional, and it's fucking everything up but to be fair no one can remain 100% logical, this is nerve wracking and stressful for them both.

What? Fuck you, Stolas. You spring this feelings bullshit on me, are you fucking kidding? Can I get a fucking minute to think after everything you've put me through, you pompous rich asshole? Treat me like one of your little butler imps, you can't just dismiss me like that! I mean, you royal fucks think you can do this every time, like you can just play with our feelings because we're smaller and not as important! Well, I'm not letting you, bitch! Let's go!

This, this is incredibly cathartic in a weird way. It's not good by any means but for Blitz these bitter feelings have probably been somewhat simmering beneath the surface for a while and he hasn't been able to express them because of the nature of his and Stolas' relationship. The way he's phrasing this makes me wonder if he has previous experience with a royal demon doing this to him outside of now, and Stolas' father hiring him to be Stolas' friend when he was a child. It wouldn't be too unreasonable but putting that aside for a moment. The anger and lashing out here is probably a defense mechanism on his part, every time something has got vulnerable or upsetting in the past in this show Blitz always seems to get angry (an example that comes to mind at the minute is when Cash was celebrating Fizz's birthday - at the time he didn't say anything to Fizz but he stormed off, angry. Another one could be probably a few of his interactions with Verosika. I'd have to rewatch the show to find something more particular). The point is Blitz lashes out instead of being open and vulnerable, he doesn't mean or genuinely think any of this - and immediately regrets it as soon as he says it. But it's too late, it's been said.

Stolas flinches or pauses when walking a handful of times during this rant from Blitz, each time whenever he has an insult. Before he has even said anything it's immensely clear Stolas is very hurt by this.

Blitz. I think so very highly of you, I didn't realise you think so low of me.

This is the regret I was talking about, it's probably helped along by Stolas admitting he thinks highly of Blitz but god - he is crushed. And he immediately tries to apologise but Stolas teleports him out of there before he can even process it, leaving us on a terrible cliffhanger.

God, it's a fucking mess. They're a mess I'm so scared for the next episode and how they are even going to fix this. Someone get these gay demons a therapist, please, I beg.

All in all, ow my feelings, this episode hurt, I did cry. Stolitz have mastered the art of miscommunication, but that is hardly news. Blitz seems to have got a genuine wake-up call, sort of similar to how he did with Fizz and I'm hoping that kickstarts something to help him improve, because he does need to. At the same time, Stolas has kinda fucked up here, and does need to give Blitz more time to process since I imagine this is very fucking shocking to him. It's all one biggggg mess and god knows how it'll work out but I'm looking forward to finding out and hopefully not having my heart ripped out and spat on by the end of this season.

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

Nisha, did you know I would step on some legos barefooted for you? Anyways can’t wait to read for another fandom I have never stepped foot in and would probably never engage with the canon in just because you decided that’s what to make, and I’ve decided to read it anyways. Home cooked meal. -Rotten Anon

The opening line of this message made literal cartoon anime hearts appear above my head, just so you know <3

Also you have inspired me to post a rundown of my WIPs because I am really excited about what I have been working on. And for two of these fandoms, I know you have said you know nothing about the canon, but for the third, I am not sure, so we'll see.

My Current WIPs April/May 2024

Heaven's Gate (for The Walking Dead) - Daryl Dixon x GN!Reader. Strangers to Lovers/Soulmates/Lovers Reunited. Angst, Fluff, Hurt and Comfort. Set during Season 1 to Season 5. 17k in counting (will be a oneshot). You can find a preview here. In this fic, you and Daryl get separated when the Governor attacks the prison, and though you both believe the other person is dead (or long gone) you find each other at the most unlikely time, in the most unlikely place.

I am super excited about this fic, and the themes of hope that I have woven into it. Because yes, I unironically love writing about hope and how the human spirit can persevere - which is something that my favourite moments in The Walking Dead show. This is first draft complete and just needs to be edited.

The Jaws of Life (for DC Titans) - Jason Todd x GN!Reader. Sequel to Emergency Contact. Lovers Reunited. Extreme Angst, Smut, Hurt and (some) Comfort. Set during Season 3. 21k in counting (will probably be a oneshot - if it needs to be split up, it will be put in two parts, but I hope I can get away with a oneshot). (I highly recommend that everyone go read the original in the meantime, because it is one of my best fics ever.) In this fic, you and Jason struggle with the new meaning of your relationship after what happened with Deathstroke - only for this tentative change to be harshly disrupted by the Joker. And you're still heavily mourning when a red hooded stranger breaks into your apartment one night, seeking medical care because apparently - you owe him one.

Everyone give Jaycen @nctzenkane a big fucking round of applause for this one, because he was randomly talking to me about Jason Todd today (we were having the 'some characters are only fuckable in costume' discussion) - and I got talking about how this version of Jason from Titans makes me so passionate to write about the character. And it is solely because of him that I opened up this fic and took a good look at it - I have been thinking about this fic for months, wanting to finish it because I know I am gonna be proud of it, but I kept hesitating because I thought I had a way bigger mountain to conquer with it. But the conversation I had with Jaycen really inspired me and I wrote 5k on the fic just today, and I realized that with this momentum, I could have the first draft done by the end of this month. So I am promising myself that this is gonna be done soon.

Speaking of which - when The Jaws of Life is first draft done, I wanna host a poll so you guys can decide which of those two ^^ fics goes through the editing process to be posted first. Both will be posted (hopefully) by the end of May, but I do wanna know which one you guys wanna see posted first. Which leads me to:

Nasty (for Stranger Things) - Sub!Eddie Munson x Dom!Fem!Reader. Established Relationship. Smut/PWP. 3k (this is gonna be a shorter fic lmao). In this fic, you and Eddie have been dating for a while, but you don't like that all of his attempts to have sex with you have him taking on a (seemingly fake) dom persona. When you finally tell him that you prefer to be more dominant in bed, he isn't disgusted like you thought he might be - he loves it.

This is one I have been sitting on for a while, and right before it was ready to be posted - my brain lost interest in it like tiktok does micro trends. But I think this is gonna be really great to post while the poll for those other fics is cooking because it's short and sweet and for the past few days, whenever I have seen the cover for this in my drafts, I have gotten excited about it again. So I am excited to finish it and show it off to everyone!!

[theamityelf]

Can't I know more of DD Makoto dynamic with Hajime, Fuyuhiko, and Chiaki? Does Komaeda still got DD or not? How would his dynamic with DD Makoto in both case?

I think I'll say for now that Nagito doesn't get despair disease, specifically because Junko considers them really similar and doesn't want to do the same thing twice. Like, I think an argument can be made that she gave Nagito despair disease in canon as just a proxy because he was the closest thing she had to Makoto (in her view). But here, in her eyes, Nagito is way more useful healthy, and Makoto is way more useful diseased.

Nagito would almost certainly want to be among those caring for the ill, and I think he would have a real appreciation for the implications of everyone's symptoms. "I see. I'm sure they would all hate to see themselves like this. A despair capable of overcoming such strong personalities? I'm so excited to see it defeated!"

That said, I think Hajime, Fuyuhiko, Mikan, etc. would not want Nagito around the sick ones. Nagito would be in a very particular place where he wants to make himself useful at the hospital but everyone is aware that it could be really dangerous to leave someone so interested in the killing game alone with any of the ill (especially Ibuki).

And I think the result of this is that Nagito and Hajime would both spend a lot of time around Makoto together. (More on that later!)

I'm deciding whether Chiaki would be there, because in canon she is among those quarantined at the motel, but I do think she would be really good at handling diseased Makoto, just because she's so good at taking everything in stride and just calmly going, "Stop that." And I like to imagine diseased Makoto causally yanking out her game cartridge while she's playing it and her huffing with the most irritation anyone has ever seen from her. So I think I will loop her in with them.

I think Fuyuhiko would be constantly annoyed by diseased Makoto; they would be in constant conflict, and it would be really funny. Earlier in the killing game, I imagine Fuyuhiko would toss threats and barbs at Makoto kind of a lot, and Makoto would just take it and move on with whatever he's saying or doing, but now Fuyuhiko (through whatever means; there's no telling who's still alive at this point) has undergone some character development, and he cares about the people here, and as comeuppance for his past behavior, he's left to get explosively mad at a Makoto who will deliberately provoke him. Just chasing Makoto through the hospital threatening to murder him if he doesn't sit down and eat his food!

Whereas Hajime I think would be a little reflective about it. I think seeing Makoto in a state of poor health and acting really out of character would make him realize how close they've become and how much he's come to care about and rely on Makoto. I'm imagining some introspective moments where he's just like, "The real Makoto isn't like this at all. The real Makoto would be encouraging me not to give up."

(Honestly, since there's no telling what the cast looks like at this point in the story until I actively plot all that out, I could see some of the characters who are dead at this point in canon choosing to help out, or even taking the place of Akane or Ibuki as diseased, but for the purposes of this post we'll ignore that.)

Maybe the group organizes in such a way where Mikan cycles between patients to check on and Fuyuhiko, Chiaki, Nagito, and Hajime watch whichever two patients she isn't with. So, for example, Mikan is checking on Akane, so Fuyuhiko and Chiaki are with Ibuki and Nagito and Hajime are with Makoto. Mikan moves on to check on Ibuki, so Fuyuhiko and Chiaki go to sit with Akane. Mikan goes to check on Makoto, so Nagito and Hajime go to check on Ibuki. It just kind of cycles like that.

They split up differently when one or more of the caretakers need to rest, so sometimes Hajime, Chiaki, or Fuyuhiko have to watch someone alone, but Nagito is never watching anyone alone. He's not allowed. (Officially. He'll sneak in if he can.)

Nagito and Hajime have very different reactions to diseased Makoto. Like I said, seeing Makoto like this makes Hajime feel strongly how much he likes regular Makoto, so he's pretty upset each time this Makoto acts rude and contrary, but he's also committed to helping him. Whereas Nagito is thinking of it more in terms of what can be learned about what kind of person Makoto is, that this is the version of himself that the despair disease creates, and he's deeply curious as to how the disease works and whether one of the infected can overcome its effects. He's watching the patients very closely to see what they'll do. He's smiling and acting relatively normal, and he's encouraging Hajime to stay positive, but he's also kind of willing Makoto to prove himself, in even these circumstances. He'd be messing with Makoto a bunch.

When it's revealed that Mikan had the Remembering Disease and, as I mentioned in the other post, attempted to kill Makoto, Nagito just consumes the idea that Makoto overcame despair, both by not killing anyone under its effects like Mikan did and by successfully evading Mikan. He might clap.

[empressofmankind]

BEGGARS SHAN'T BE CHOOSERS - Part I

[Crocodile x F!OC]

SFW

(A/N) Better known as the 'Impel Down' fic, I kept mentioning the past two weeks. This is Part One. Of five? Of ten? I've given up. The total draft was > 12k. So, I split it in 3x 4k. And then, I noticed today the 'first part' had grown to >7k. So, I've split it again. I have a clear end in mind, but how long it'll take me to get there...

Originally, this fic was meant to focus around Buggy, but then a 2.53m unit of absolute bullshit got in the way. Shivs and her world class plans, good gods. Post-Alabaste, the mens are stuck in Impel Down. Shivs is dead set on springing the clown from prison. However, she'll first need to figure out where they're keeping him. On account of his devil fruit powers, she suspects level 6. And she has an excellent alibi to demand visitation to level 6. For once, the legal quagmire of technically still being married to Crocodile is going to work for her. Right? RIGHT??

In this first part, we'll join Shivs and Benji (and Mani!) as they get ready to, and make their way for, Impel Down. That's it, that's all that happens, and it took me near 4k. I am so long-winded. It's a terminal condition, I know.

Tag(s): Considering this is the entré, there isn't actually much to tag for? There's fluff and humour. There's a 10-year-old running around saying the absolute funniest shit as things go straight over her head. We got Mani the scaly golden retriever Bananawani along? Oh, and one (1) good marine.

🐊 🐊 🐊 

Beggars Shan't Be Choosers - Part I

“They're stupid clothes,” Benji said, her brow wrinkling with petulant annoyance. She was wearing a crispy white dress shirt, a green-on-ochre striped vest and grey slacks. She'd refused a dress of any sort. Her flame orange hair was neatly brushed and her small face wasn't covered in grease paint for once.

“I think you look handsome,” Shivs said as she pinned her own red hair up with a two-pronged kanzashi fashioned with golden lotuses whose inlaid blue diamonds had not seen the light of day in years.

“I look stupid.”

“Look. I am not comfortable in my clothes either,” Shivs said and indicated the mid-thigh sheath dress of black lace on dark grey broadcloth she wore. She'd decided on sheer stockings to go with it, but no gloves. 

“You look pretty in them.”

Shivs turned back to the mirror to finish pinning her hair and adjusting her bangs to fall neatly from under the strings of her eyepatch. “That is the idea, yes.”

Benji put her hands in her pockets, kicking her foot, making squeaky noises against the deck boards. “What am I supposed to look like? I don't want to be pretty.”

“You are supposed to look like the most capable and well-behaved child to ever grace the Blue.” Shivs pinched her cheek, gilt bangles jangling. “And you do when you don't stand with your hands wearing out your pockets like that.”

Benji took her hands out of her pockets. They idled a moment, undecided, but then she clasped them behind her back. “Your neck looks naked.” 

Shivs laughed at that because the bateau neckline of the dress could certainly use something. “Yours too.”

She plucked one of Buggy's patterned neck scarves from a drawer and tied it around her daughter's neck, tucking the ends into the vest. “There.”

“You should wear a pretty necklace,” Benji said, though her eyes were on the scarf. She seemed to like that, at least.

Shivs didn't have all that many necklaces conventionally considered ‘nice’. Going through the few she had in her thoughts, she picked up her modest jewellery box. Then paused as her gaze lingered on the bottom drawer of her vanity. Maybe she should… She pulled the drawer open and reached among clothes she rarely wore, patting around until she found the old music box.

Its silver had blackened with age and negligence, but even so, its delicate engravings of waves and tall ships were fine. If she polished it now, the oxidation remaining in the fine creases would help pick out its details better than ever before. She didn’t, of course. And she didn’t open the lid either. She couldn’t remember if it was wound up, and didn’t want to hear its melody if it was.

Instead, she held it with both hands and turned its engraved body as if removing a lid from a jar. With a click, the top section came off. Within the tiny compartment revealed lay a small, gold hoop with a bent hinge. She’d long since let the earlobe puncture it used to occupy close. Taking a thin string from her jewellery box, she suspended it from that instead.

“Like so?” Shivs asked, drawing Benji’s attention as she fastened it around her neck.

“Don’t you have anything sparklier, like your hair thing?”

Shivs brushed the kanzashi. Though the era of having such things aplenty was long behind her, she was loath to detract from the last one that remained to her with lesser gems. Besides, he’d notice.

“Sadly, no.”

“Oh?” Benji gave her the thumbs up. “Gold is pretty too, I guess!”

Part of the reason she’d picked it was that it was 24-carat gold. Just like the kanzashi.

“Can I do your makeup?”

“Only if you do not turn me into a clown,” Shivs said as she sat down at her vanity so the girl could reach her face. Benji grinned and set to work.

When Benji declared she was done, Shivs turned to the mirror and had to admit the little girl was now officially better at this than her. She’d gone for a dark burgundy smokey eye with a flawlessly thin line of gold right at the root of her eyelashes and a touch of white on the waterline. It made the hazel of her good eye pop like nobody’s business. She was pretty sure the dark red lipstick was Buggy’s favourite to use himself.

“I like it,” Shivs said and Benji beamed. “Now, I just need shoes.”

“I'll fetch some!” 

Benji was up and running out of the cabin before Shivs could protest. It was only a few minutes before the girl returned, clutching shoes in her arms. And not just any shoes, either. She held up gold-tinted, faux leather gladiator sandals with six-inch stiletto heels that would be a trick and a half to walk on. Where had she even found those?

“These will look awesome with your hair thing and necklace!”

She didn’t disagree as she put them on, but hoped the floors of Impel Down would be neatly packed concrete and nothing else. She hadn’t walked on heels like these in half a decade. Throwing a long bridge coat the rosy beige of dunes about her shoulders, she turned to the floor-length mirror.

Benji looked her up and down with the pinched expression of a critical, pint-sized costume designer grading their latest creation. “You look very pretty.”

Benji wasn’t wrong. She did look nice. Her mood sank, settling like an anchor in the pit of her stomach. She looked like his wife.

“Why is it OK to lie today?”

“It's not a lie.” Shivs shook the morose feeling and picked up her small black bag, its gilded chain rattling as she double checked its content. “More like, hm.”

“Make believe?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose it is,” Shivs said as she snapped the bag closed and hung it from her shoulder. “It will be easier to convince them to let us visit if we look the way they’d expect.”

“Why would they let us visit uncle Crocodile? Aren’t those visits for, like, if you’re his mom or sister or baby or something?” Benji’s small face was filled with healthy scepticism, hands in her pockets once again. “We should pretend he’s my dad.”

Shivs flinched and struggled to keep her smile from faltering. “Well, only if we have to.”

“They’d have to be pretty bad people to stop a kid from visiting their father.” Benji took her hand. “I hope uncle Crocodile knows where dad is.”

“I am sure he knows.” Shivs gave Benji’s hand a squeeze. She’d no idea how she’d find out where Buggy was if Crocodile didn’t know. She couldn’t exactly demand that information on legal grounds like she had done with him. “Is Mani ready, too?”

“Yes! I scrubbed her squeaky clean and even picked her teeth and scales. She’s eaten and done a big poop.” Shivs tried to let the girl’s bubbly chatter lift her spirits. “I borrowed one of Richie’s sparkly collars and she looks flashy in it!”

“Sparkly? That sounds amazing.”

“It is! She likes sparkly things.”

“Let’s fetch her then and go before we are too late.”

Benji glanced up at her as they left the cabin. “How can we be late for an appointment we didn’t make?”

“We can be late for the only ship going there today.”

🐊 🐊 🐊 

Benji had wanted to stand upon the prow as the government ship approached the Gate of Justice out of Enbies Lobby, because the skipper had said the Tarai current that would see them to Impel Down was chock full of sea kings. Shivs sat on a deck chair with a glass of wine, watching the girl run back and forth with binoculars she’d weedled from a matelot. On account of the seastone laminated hull, she doubted they would see any. However, there was no need to dunk on her chipper mood.

They were not the only visitors, more had trickled aboard to form a modest but motley company on the deck. She’d caught snippets of conversations as they walked by: a mother visiting her son; a brother, his sister. And she had a good guess what some of them were whispering about as they stole glances her way. She’d neglected to list any details regarding who they’d be visiting, but, in hindsight, she supposed the pony-sized bananawani lounging beside her gave it away. 

She’d tied Mani’s rhinestone-infested lilac leash to her chair leg, to discourage the reptile from wandering or - worse - deciding to take a swim. Not that she had any illusion as to its ability to pull the chair straight from under her if it wanted to go. But Mani was a creature of habit and minimal effort. A minor inconvenience such as this would be enough to keep her snoozing on the deck.

“Spotted any big ones?” Shivs said when Benji came towards her for a sip of lychee ramune.

“Not yet.” Benji plopped down beside Mani, putting her skinny arm around her scaly neck as she slurped lemonade. “Did you know bananawani hunt sea kings?”

“Really?” 

Shivs remembered the way the casino halls would darken as they swam by, their shadows passing beyond the glass as they glided towards the feeding platform. The unwitting sea king never stood a chance.

“They are their only known predator and totally hunt them,” Benji babbled happily while enjoying her drink. Mani’s eyes were still closed, but she’d shifted to lean into the little girl’s petting. “Do you think sea king tastes good?”

The water would run red but only for a short while, only until the currents whisked it away. Theoretically, the creature could make it out for the Rainbase oasis connected to the Sandora river.

“I bet Mani would prefer sea king chow,” Shivs said.

“I don't think they sell that at the pet stores.” Benji pouted as she hugged Mani. “She won’t be able to have a sea king snack until she’s big enough to hunt them herself.”

Hopefully, that would take a while yet. Bananawani could grow to colossal sizes, dwarfing mid-class tall ships. Shivs had no idea what they were supposed to do with a fully grown one. Or how to afford feeding the beast if there was no prey for her to hunt on her own. Rain Dinners’ bananawani never hunted alone.

Benji emptied her bottle with a big, noisy slurp, waking Mani. “Maybe we should have brought something?”

“A deck would have been nice,” Shivs said as she watched them. “We could have played slapjack.”

“No, I mean, for uncle Crocodile?” 

Shivs flinched.

“You always say that it is nice to bring something when you visit someone. Especially if you want something from them in turn?” Benji scrunched up her face, rubbing Mani’s thick scaly neck. “I have, like, half a bag of marshmallows, but I didn’t think to bring them.”

“I have something for him, don’t worry about it.”

🐊 🐊 🐊 

Impel Down was a fortress as ugly as it was unimaginative. It spilled onto the rapidly approaching horizon as a grey stain overtaking the limitless freedom of the open sea. And as they drew near on the Tarai current, its squat towers and crenellated battlements came into ever sharper focus until they dominated their entire surroundings. Curiously, there were no cannon embrasures, machicolations or any such defences one might expect from a proper bastion. 

A fleet of warships rested at anchor along the approach to the underwater prison. The modest passenger ship they were on was dwarfed by the marine dreadnoughts they passed as the current pulled them inexorably towards the prison’s colossal gatehouse.

Benji had returned to the prow for the approach, and Shivs joined her there.

“It’s so huge!” Benji stared wide-eyed at the thick walls as they sailed under the barbican and into the secured harbour proper beyond. Mani sat beside her, holding her own leash.

“The vast majority of the complex is actually underwater.” Shivs counted the cannons peeking down at them through the embrasures, out of habit more than anything. She wondered if they had a standing firing crew to man them.

“Are we going underwater?” Benji hopped from one leg unto the other. “The Calm Belts are supposed to be full of Sea Kings! Maybe there will be a window, and I can see one? Maybe there will be wild Bananawani too!”

“It is a prison, so I don’t think there will be windows,” Shivs said in an attempt to calm the girl’s excitement and avoid utter disappointment if that turned out to be true. “It does reach quite a ways below the water surface. A few kilometres, perhaps? Yes, I think so.”

“Wow.” Turning to Mani, Benji added: “Let's find a window, I bet there will be wild Bananawani! You can say ‘hi’!”

Shivs took her by the shoulder when she saw the other visitors disembark. “Come, let’s not be late.”

Benji glanced up at her as they walked to the gangplank. “For the visit we didn-?”

“Don’t say that,” Shivs interrupted her with a quelling look.

“Right.” Benji smiled again and took Mani’s leash. “Come on Mani. Can’t be late!”

They were funnelled through the gatehouse and into a courtyard patrolled by marine sentries. Here, too, cannons peered through embrasures on all sides. Evidently, the prison was more concerned about threats to its security rising from within than without.

“Visitors for level 1 and 2 inmates, that way,” a young marine officer said as he gestured to a colleague. “Level 3 and up, with me.” The few people that joined them as they went to the marine officer gave the juvenile Bananawani plodding beside them a wide breadth. 

The officer led them up steps and into an wholly uninviting lobby. With its worn plaster walls and dirty grey linoleum floor it did its very best to make you want to leave as soon as possible. No seats, no plants, no windows, no nothing. 

“Registration check.” The marine officer motioned them towards the looming concrete counter on the other side of the unpleasant space. “In an orderly manner, gentlefolk.”

Benji put her arm around Mani, leaning into the large reptile and putting her nose against its scales as she eyed their casually hostile surroundings.

“What’s his name?” The marine officer’s tone was amiable, conversational.

“Hers!” Benji said, holding on tighter to the Bananawani.

He tried to catch her gaze with a smile. “Big girls, both of you.”

“Her name is Mani.”

“Ah, ‘she who averts harm’,” he said, and Shivs appreciated his attempts to make Benji feel comfortable. “A wise choice for such a hardy animal.”

“She’s very sweet and tough,” Benji agreed as she snuggled Mani. “I love her.”

“I am sure she loves you very much too.”

“What is your name?” Benji asked. “Mine is Benji!”

“Nice to meet you, Benji,” the young marine said. “Mine is Toby.”

By then it was their turn, and Shivs approached the desk. It was higher than such things normally were, for she was not a particularly short woman and yet she need not bend down to meet the registrar’s gaze.

“State your name and purpose?” the woman said, hands poised to take down the information.

“Figarland Seonaid. Conjugal visit,” Then added when she saw her transcribe it as ‘Sheona’: “That is without the H, and spelled with N-A-I-D.”

The registrar gave a sign of neither interest nor recognition. “Visiting?”

“Crocodile Niall.”

The woman paused when she heard that name. And Shivs ignored the whispers she could not quite catch from those behind her in line.

“Niall. N-I-A-L-L. Not ‘Nile’.”

The registrar flipped through a thick binder, finger running down a table packed with dense handwriting. “No visitation registered.”

“Preposterous,” Shivs said, overacting an affronted tone. “A signed request for visitation has been approved weeks ago.” 

“There is no record of it, ma'am.”

Benji let go of Mani to fling her arms around Shivs’ waist instead, and gave the registrar and marine officer her most watery of wobbly baby looks. “Mommy, I want to see daddy!”

Shivs rubbed her shoulder, giving the registrar the pleading look of parents the world across trying to desperately manage a child on the brink of wailing. Benji's little sob into the fabric of her dress was very convincing. Mani paced around them, uncertain but riled by the sudden change of mood.

“Can't you put in an expedited request?” Shivs suggested, trying her damndest to sound sincere. “She'd been looking forward to it, and we get so few chances.”

“No registration, no visitation,” the woman said as Benji took in a breath to start a wail.

Toby shook his head. “Let me see what I can do,” he said as he produced a small, earpiece Den Den Mushi and put the sea snail against his ear. A few transmissions later, he turned to the registrar and held up his hand. “Two visitor badges, please.”

With due reluctance the registrar handed them over to him and he turned to Benji. “There you go, kiddo,” he said as he gave her one, and then Shivs as well. “Courtesy of the vice-admiral making the curator see reason.”

“You're the best!” Benji beamed. “Look, mom, I am number 17! What is yours?”

Shivs looked at the scuffed 13 on the badge. It reminded her of a poker table she used to deal at, and the memory settled in the pit of her stomach like a fetch of cannon balls. “Not as high as yours, sweetie.”

“Come, I will see you two down to the right level,” Toby said, and led them to the elevator room beyond the lobby. There were four, two on the left and two on the right. He took them to the far right one, the doors opening as they approached.

“Awesome!” Benji said as she rushed inside, Mani hot on her heels. For the elevator was made entirely of armoured glass and provided a grand view of the ocean sprawling all the way across the horizon. The afternoon sun kissed the waves, setting sparkles to the white-capped water. And Shivs felt it beckon in her bones. 

Benji gave him a hopeful look. “Are we going underwater?”

“We are,” Toby said as he put a key in the control panel and turned it.

When the doors slid closed, Shivs suppressed the sudden and overwhelming urge to get out, to leave and never look back. To stay at the surface, where they belonged. I have to, she told herself as she clenched her hands into fists around the chain of her handbag. Bugs is down there, and he hates the dark beneath the waves.

The elevator jolted to life and Shivs closed her eyes, ignoring the sound of the lapping waves against the glass as they submerged, focussing on Benji’s excited noises instead. When she opened them again, they were enveloped in blue. Sunlight still penetrated, sending curtains of light through the water. Less so with every foot they descended, as the blue grew deeper, darker.

“A Sea King!” Benji screamed, spooking Mani as she glued herself against the glass. In the far distance, blurred in the shifting hues of the blue, swam a long, serpentine creature, its body undulating as it made its way from somewhere to elsewhere. 

“It could be the Prince of the Deep,” Toby said as he came to stand beside her. “It has about the right shape. Colour too, perhaps.”

Benji glanced at him, her eyes large and eager. “Prince?”

“Yes, because he is a prince among his kind. The largest Sea King in this part of the Calm Belt,” Toby said. “Ten times larger than Coral Grove, our largest dreadnought.”

“Wow.” Benji pressed her face against the glass. “Mani could snack on that for years.”

“Wouldn’t it be tough for her to hunt such a large creature?” Toby said, not without humour.

Benji rolled her eyes. “Not right now, she’s a baby. But she’ll be big and strong one day! Bananawani hunt Sea Kings, did you know?” she said and babbled the poor marine’s ears off about the large reptiles for some minutes.

As the armoured glass elevator descended to deeper water, their surroundings became steadily darker. Shivs put her gaze on the glass floor and the pitch black abyss below. It was easier to face the darkness approaching than the light receding, the sparkle of the sun on the water surface dwindling as you sank. The sea has never been friendly to man.

Beside her, Benji had put her arm around Mani as she looked up. No more sea kings down here.

“The 6th level is also called ‘The Basement’,” Toby said, making the girl glance away from the ever more distant sunlight. “Do you know why?”

Ghosts in the attic and monsters in the basement, Shivs thought as she recalled the sailors’ idiom about grief with its haunting memories and stowed feelings.

Benji eyed him, holding on to Mani still. “Because it's dark and far down?”

Because nobody goes there if they can help it. Shivs stared at the watery dark beneath their feet. The sea floor might never come and she'd not be surprised.

“Nope!” Toby said, his smile bright in the dimming light. “Because it is where all the cool people stay.”

Benji’s mood lit up. “My unc- Dad, is super cool! He's actually made out of sand, like, for real.”

“Are you made out of sand?”

Shivs gaze snapped onto him like a hawk. He was looking at Benji, fondness soft on his youthful face. He couldn't be much older than 20 or 22.

“I don't think so?” Benji let go of Mani to brush at her clothes, then glanced at him. “Do you want to pet her?”

Toby smiled. “Absolutely.”

🐊 🐊 🐊 

Horny hell seat reservations - @tiredemomama @smut-goblin @ruledbyproblematique @momodwriter @littlemountainwolf @fanaticsnail @feral-artistry - except there's no horny. Croc isn't even in it either. I feel like a cheat.

[onlyhereforghosttrick]

No time to say goodbye - A PMD2 Oneshot

Yup that's right! Did you think I was joking? No I was NOT! It's here, it's done, and I am VERY EXCITED ABOUT THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before we actually get into stuff, small disclaimer; this fic contains the following:

Canon non-compliance

PMD2 Main game spoilers

PMD2 Post game spoilers

PMD2 Special episode spoilers somehow probably

Fan characters [all of which are mine] and canon characters alike

A writer who has no idea what he's doing

A beginning that came out better than the middle

and the eighth deadly sin: Acknowledgement of the fairy typing in the context of a pmd game that isn't super.

With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy and I hope it hurts you at least somewhat! [but like in a good way]

Makoto reached into his bag, a sense of urgency on his mind. Come on, where did I...? His thoughts were cut short and replaced with another jolt of panic as growls came from the two passages surrounding the room he was in, telling him one thing: They were closing in on him fast. His fears were quickly confirmed as the Sableye entered the room, one from each entrance, but apparently not quickly enough- as he quickly pulled out a Totter orb, slamming it towards the ground and closing his eyes to the ensuing flash.

The two staggered around slightly, confused by the bright light, and Makoto took a moment of pause to catch his breath... before quickly dashing past the passage one of them had previously been blocking. And there, on the other side were the stairs to finally lead him out of this place. It seemed he had been taking too long, though, as the Sableye had both recovered while he was climbing the stairs and were now catching up to him. Taking out the other item he had withdrawn from his bag, a blast seed, a quick spark was all it needed before the explosion was already started. Taking his last few steps through the stairs as the explosion began to now echo from behind him, each step passing through distortion after distortion until...

"HUHHHH" Makoto let out a loud gasp as he practically fell through the exit to the mystery dungeon, seemingly startling his two companions that were waiting for him to catch up on the other side. He quickly picked himself up, walking over to them. "Alright, note to self, detonating a blast seed in an attempt to cave in the exit to a mystery dungeon so you can't be followed is probably my worst idea." He brought the bag he'd been carrying around to check it again quickly. Okay, oran berries, heal seeds, reviver seeds, a few luminous orbs, apples... should be good to go.

The two he were travelling with were mons he had more than enough time to familiarize himself with. ...Well, he wasn't really sure how much time he had known them since time had been stopped for a while, but the point still stood. The two were Minami, the Grovyle he had been raising from a Treecko before all of this started happening, and Celebi, a shiny little whimsical time fairy who had for some reason decided to help them. "Well, that's your fault for misjudging their power." Celebi reminded him. Since he was a human and not a pokemon, he couldn't understand what they were saying. Instead, she had somehow managed to learn to talk to him via psychic messages, and while he wasn't sure how it worked, it made communication a lot easier, so he didn't bother questioning it.

"That, and you should try not splitting up next time. You have no idea how nerve-racking it was to imagine how poorly you would fare for an entire 12 floors with those Sableye following you." She kept putting an unnecessary amount of flair into her wording, and while that did distract a bit from the intention, he could tell her concern was genuine. "Yeah, alright, no suggesting splitting up next time, I got that. Not like we'll need to." I responded, taking my bag off my shoulder and handing it to Minami. He was the one who usually held it anyways, I just took it because dungeon items were really the only way to defend myself since I didn't have the combat techniques either of them had. "But anyways, we should get-" A shrill howl pierced past my words, a reminder of why we had to keep moving. "...going, before they show up." I finished.

In addition to the usual chasers of Dusknoir and his Sableye army, their actions had recently reached a new audience, who were somehow twice as eager to get rid of them. Two of them, both dark-types, and apparently both with names too. Makoto wasn't sure why Celebi told them that, but he supposed it made referring to them easier. The first was a Zoroark named 'Feysara'. He was very clearly the more tactically oriented and leader-y of the two, although they still managed to best him most of the time regardless. The other was an Umbreon, apparently named 'Aigiel'. Stats-wise she was a bit worse off, but sheer brutality and execution made her arguably the more dangerous of the two. Once, when talking, Celebi made a comment about 'thinking Umbreon was supposed to be an evolution tied to friendship' that he hadn't been able to make heads nor tails of. And sometimes... neither of them seemed to see it, but he thought he saw a third pokemon lurking in the shadows behind them sometimes.

Another howl cut through the lifeless trees, this one closer than the one before it. "We have to go." He quickly snapped, getting up from the slight lean he had gotten into and heading towards the next clearing. "Are you both ready?" Minami gave a nod and quickly jogged over to him to follow, but Celebi...

"I'm staying behind." That wasn't the answer he expected to hear from her. Apparently his confusion was obvious, because she quickly began explaining. "I can take them. It's not like I don't have fairy type moves or anything. Besides, someone should probably need to hold them off while you two go do what needs to be done. The passage of time is just in the clearing up ahead, and I trust you know exactly what you're doing." Makoto paused, hesitant to just leave her behind... but this was what she wanted, so he supposed it was best not to fight her over it.

"Alright. Just... tell us if something goes wrong." He accepted her wishes , continuing forwards towards the Passage of time.... towards their last hope to save the future. I can't let their sacrifices be in vain.

---------------------------

Stepping into the clearing between the continuing treeline, Celebi wasn't wrong- the passage of time was right there. Not saying a word- partially because they wouldn't be able to understand each other if they did- the two exchanged a nod, and walked forwards.

It was oddly calm as they stood before the passage, as it formed an odd rippling pattern. Walking forward into it, a sense of distortion- similar to that of the mystery dungeons, albeit somewhat different, surrounded them. Makoto knew they couldn't be held off forever, so he really just hoped that Celebi was right about them not being able to follow them through.

A rustle echoed from the trees behind them. They kept going, but Makoto figured he might as well check. Looking back, he saw Aigiel- they must have broken away from fighting Celebi, but likely only them if Feysara wasn't with her. He kept walking, until he heard something else... and turning around again... his heart stopped for a moment as he saw a Dark pulse, aimed right at an unaware Minami.

Time seemed to slow and distort as he took one step after another, pushing him out of the way... only for time to catch up again, just in time to feel the pulse impact into him and send him flying backwards.

The momentum backwards never quite stopped, just slowed enough for him to start falling instead. He saw Minami pause, before rushing ahead. He understood, though- hestitating now would make it all for nothing. And as he continued to fall, Makoto's consciousness failed him... for the last and only time.

---------------------------

When he awoke again... the sun was shining down on him as waves crashed against his unmoving body. Everything hurt. It felt like he had just been slammed in the stomach, although by what he wasn't sure.

Who was he...? He couldn't quite remember. One name came to mind, which had to be his... 'Makoto'. And the fact he was a human ...but nothing else seemed to appear to him. Was that... really all he remembered...? As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight shining down on him, he quickly realized there was someone else there: A nervous-looking Eevee.

As she seemingly realized he was both awake and had noticed her, she started rambling at impressive speeds. "A-are you okay? You were washed up here and you hadn't been moving and I was starting to get worried and- and-" He wasn't sure how he was understanding her, but asking that could wait. "O-oh, I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself yet," She interrupted herself, "My name's Aigiel. What's yours?"

[inkblackorchid]

What the hell happened with Crow: an autopsy (Part 1)

*deep breath* Hiiiiiiii.

After sitting on this for ages, I finally decided to make the Crow post. And because this ended up getting stupidly long, I decided to turn this into part one of two, maybe three, we'll see (which I honestly should have done with the Aki posts too, but oh well). So let me quickly make it clear what I'm about here: This analysis is not meant to convince people who hate Crow to change their mind. It is also not meant to dissuade people who love Crow from doing so. Instead, I wanna look at how Crow was handled during the show (up until the end of the DS arc for now, I'll dive into the rest later) and give my own take on why he developed the way he did and turned into such a polarising character. Also, disclaimer, despite the fact that I'll be making an effort to analyse things objectively, I am a mere human and obviously not the one and only expert on all things 5Ds. My only claim to knowledge here is that I've watched 5Ds several times now, love the show and its characters deeply, and like to think I have a decent amount of media literacy. Also, I take no responsibility for the length of this post. Despite me splitting things up, it's stupidly, exhaustingly long. Like, very, very long. So. Let's hop to it, shall we?

Before I get into the meat of things, there's one more thing I would like to get out of the way: I know plenty of people, even now, so long after the show ended, would answer the question of "what happened with Crow, anyway" with something along the lines of "well Blackwings got so popular" or "well Aki's VA got pregnant so Crow stole her spotlight" and I need to burst some people's bubbles here because no. Neither of these things are true. Nor is the infamous "well Crow was meant to be the main villain", actually! And I could go into all of that here, but that would be a whole post of its own for each topic, and luckily, someone else has already done all of that work. I direct you to two posts over on Reddit from @mbg159, who did an absurd amount of digging to comprehensively disprove two of the 5Ds fandom's favourite scapegoat theories:

No, Crow was not meant to be a dark signer, and most certainly not the boss of the dark signers.

No, Aki being sidelined and suddenly having less presence in the narrative than him was not because her VA got pregnant.

I really don't want this to come off as an "assigned reading"-thing, but it is so, so important to keep these things in mind when looking at Crow, and honestly? I'm just tired of these rumours at this point. It's been 12 years since the show ended, we don't need to keep believing this nonsense. And the posts linked above aren't crackpot theories or anything of the sort—they provide sources all over and all of the links still work. If you still can't be bothered to read them (they are long, yes), then at least take away this tl;dr: Crow allegedly having been planned as a villain doesn't work because there is no evidence that supports it, and both his spike in screentime being caused by the Blackwings' popularity and him "taking Aki's spot" because her VA got pregnant make zero sense because they simply don't match up with the production timeline of the show. It is literally impossible for either of these things to be true. (And believe me, I am as mad as anyone that Aki got shafted, maybe even madder than the average fan, but if it doesn't add up, it simply doesn't add up and there were no regrettable outside influences, someone just actively made shitty writing decisions and that's that.) So please. It has been 12 years. Forget this stuff. Ditch it. Let it die. Because I'm not here to spin conspiracy theories, I'm here to analyse the writing of the show as best I'm able. Okay? Okay.

Now, for the good part. Shall we start with some facts? Let's start with some facts.

Crow is introduced to the audience in episode 30, shortly after the dark signers arc kicks off. And considering that he later ends up as one of the main characters, arguably even the third most important character in the show after Yusei and Jack, this immediately stands out. For reference, the rest of the signer group is introduced within the first 14 episodes of the show. Even Aki, who is the last signer to be introduced, takes less than half the number of episodes Crow does to finally make her debut. And I don't think you could blame anyone for finding this weird. 30 episodes, even in a show with a relatively short episode length like 5Ds, is an absurd amount of time for a protagonist to get introduced. As for how he's introduced to us...

We get the gist of his character pretty quickly. He's a daredevil, he's used to flipping sector security the bird (pun not intended), he's got a soft spot for kids, and he knows Yusei well—well enough for the two of them to tag-duel some security officers almost immediately after not seeing each other for an undefined amount of time, which, if you know anything about yugioh, says it all.

(Pictured: two lads getting up to Shenanigans.)

There is history there. These two know each other's decks. They know how each the other plays. They can work together immediately and seamlessly. This is a big deal. Aaaaannd... It immediately begs some questions: If this guy knows Yusei so well, and they are really close friends, why the hell is he only showing up now? Why wasn't he helping Yusei put together his duel runner? Why didn't he help him stick it to sector security at the start? Why weren't they in contact?

The thing is, the show never really answers any of that. At least not properly. We can only read between the lines as to why Crow wasn't with Yusei from the start. (At least in-universe. Irl, it's easy enough to guess that Crow was not there at the start of the show because the writers at first didn't think they'd be putting this side character Takahashi originally came up with into the show.) Which brings me to the Enforcers. (Side note: As a sub watcher, I know the Japanese name is Team Satisfaction and I know Kiryu's catchphrase works a million times better with that name, but "Team Satisfaction" will always sound like a boyband name to me and I like to mix and match the sub and dub names based on what I like better on an individual basis anyway, please bear with me.) And before I properly open that can of worms, I feel the need to point something out: After Crow made his debut in episode 30 and got the opportunity to show off his duelling a bit during episodes 30-31, we are immediately introduced to Kiryu/Kalin at the end of episode 32. What this means for Crow is that he has zero backstory at this point and his character had zero time to settle. His only tie to the main story, as far as the audience is concerned, is that he's Yusei's friend from however long ago, and aside from that, he's only got two other things going to endear him to viewers: 1. he stands up to sector security (whom the first season did a pretty good job of establishing as pigs) and 2. he cares for abandoned children. He gets a "Save the Cat" moment and a tie to the main character, and that's it. Just to put that into perspective, we know the most important points of all the other signers' backstories by that point. Jack and Yusei's deal is made obvious to us within the first five episodes; the twins, though the narrative largely only spares them breadcrumbs, anyway, at least have that bit about Ruka/Luna having been in a coma at one point and having a connection to the spirit world shown during episodes 18-19; and though it once again takes Aki the longest to reveal what she's all about, we at least have a good idea of why she is the way she is by episode 24, and we get the icing on the cake of her traumatic past during the narratively excellent duel in episodes 40-41 (no, I will never shut up about how much I love this duel). Plus, she arguably has the most complicated backstory, so it's no surprise that it takes longer to reveal. But here's where the Enforcers come in again.

(And here we see the arguably most deranged rat bastard of a man (affectionate) in the entire show. But hey, at least he has an exquisite sense for dramatics.)

As far as backstory for Crow is concerned, the Enforcers drama initially revealed during episodes 33-35 is as much as we get for him after his introduction. His later duel with dark signer!Bommer/Greiger during episodes 51-53 offers a bit more, but more on that later. First, I want to preface this by saying that I don't think it was a coincidence that Crow and Kiryu/Kalin were introduced so shortly after one another. Because at this point in the story, I think Crow's main role is to add a counterweight to Kiryu/Kalin. To Crow, whatever happened with the Enforcers was evidently not enough to break the friendship between him and Yusei—they're still close and get along well. And then we have Kiryu/Kalin—for him, whatever happened with the Enforcers was a big deal and he's more than a little resentful about it, to the point of wanting to murder Yusei in revenge. (It is also noteworthy that this is the first thing that ever calls Yusei's character into question, because here is a guy who evidently knew him well once and absolutely loathes him, and it's clearly not because of his Satellite upbringing, his marker, or any of the stuff the other antagonists up until this point hated him for. Yusei fucked something up here. Big time. But let's not get sidetracked.) So, what does the Enforcer drama tell us about Crow, anyway? Frankly, not much. We learn two things: One, same as Yusei and Jack, Crow was all for the "liberating Satellite"-thing at first. Two (and this one's way spicier), unlike Yusei, he had the guts to ditch Kiryu/Kalin when it became clear he was willing to go too far. He was even the first to do it. (And I'd argue that if Crow hadn't walked away, Jack wouldn't have, either, but the relationship between these two is a whole other funky can of worms.)

(I love how Yusei grabs him like a naughty cat every time Crow gets worked up.)

The thing is, I wish I could say this tells us something integral to Crow's character, but looking at the rest of the show... it kind of doesn't. Implicitly, it shows us that he draws the line somewhere, and where people he loves doing absolutely insane things is concerned, he does it sooner than Yusei. It's just that this is never brought up again. And as far as his introduction is concerned, this, the first dark signer!Kiryu/Kalin duel, and him rushing to get Yusei to Martha's on his runner is the last we see of Crow for a while.

(For the love of all that's good and holy, why on earth did he deposit Yusei on his runner like that, shrapnel-stab-wound-side down?? Did he pull out the biggest piece of shrapnel before doing this? How did Yusei's legs not drag on the asphalt? Why did nobody think to tie something around his stomach to slow down the bleeding? Ok I need to calm down I'm overthinking this)

After this bit, the signers are pulled centre stage for a while—which was to be expected, for one, and also seems like the right call, writing-wise. After all, they're the ones the audience expects to save the day. As far as viewers are concerned at this point, Crow is just Some Dude who happens to be good friends with Yusei. We've had characters like this before. Hell, the opening episode of 5Ds introduced us to a whole four of them, and for all we know, Crow could have a first been intended to be precisely that, just another Satellite side character, who just so happens to have ties to the Enforcers-debacle that the others don't.

However. Where the writing for Crow as a character, especially considering where he ends up later, is concerned, this looks like less of a smart move. Because the "set-up" (if you can even call it that) to make Crow a protagonist later is... shaky, to say the least. And I'll be frank with you, I'm pretty sure this is because Crow was intended to be neither a dark signer nor a signer (which the Reddit post about him I linked above also proposes). In other words, it was never meant to be set-up in the first place. Considering how the show developed and turned him into a protagonist later, though, I can't help but wonder how Crow could have been written differently to make him actually slot in well with the rest of the signers without stepping on many people's toes. But before we dive into hypotheticals, let's continue looking at what they did with him first.

We see him between episodes 30 and 35, and then he briefly poofs out of existence until episodes 43-44 where he... mistakes Yaeger/Lazar for a dark signer and has a duel with no outcome against him, which only barely serves to keep him relevant.

(The face of a dark mastermind, servant of an ancient, immeasurable evil. Truly.)

Though him outmanoeuvring the vice director despite all the data he has on him shows him to be a cunning duellist, it feels a bit like a throwaway episode, like the show saying "oh yeah wait don't forget that this guy's also there". Crow exists in the narrative—and gets to duel, which sets him apart from Yusei's other Satellite friends—but he does nothing to advance the plot, despite getting whole episode segments dedicated solely to what he's currently getting up to. He's just kind of there, and it doesn't help to set up any of what comes later, except the idea that he can and will fight a dark signer if he finds one, maybe. But the thing is, Crow vanishes after this duel. Literally.

(Run, bird boy, run! Or, uh... drive?)

And look. The way this moment looks? With the black fog literally catching back up to Crow on-screen? And with what he says, swearing that he won't die here, which is strikingly similar to how the other dark signers refused to die, swearing themselves to revenge instead? I get why people thought this would be the moment Crow died and turned into a dark signer himself. But the thing is, even without all the hints pointing to Goodwin instead of him from the start (Goodwin speaks about being willing to sacrifice Satellite within the first ten episodes, the condor is literally on his shirt, ffs, and the corresponding geoglyph is shown in the background when he talks about the Nazca Lines, I am not making this up), Crow becoming a dark signer makes zero sense because it doesn't fit his character. He has no motivation to become a dark signer, because the dark signers ultimately aim to destroy Satellite. And even with what little the audience knows about Crow at this point, it is crystal clear that Crow would never destroy Satellite, not to speak of sacrificing the children he cares for to summon an Earthbound Immortal. It simply doesn't work, because his character doesn't work like that. Crow is deeply protective of Satellite—as his devotion to making it better during the Enforcer days shows—and he is even more fiercely protective of the kids he takes care of. Destroying either or both to turn the world into a literal hellscape instead goes against everything we've seen him say and do up until this point.

However, this is where we have to address the refrigerator in the room.

(Ah yes. The fridge for Crow. The fridge for Crow that was there from the start. The fridge that Crow totally had the time to curl up and hide inside of. The fridge specifically for Crow. Crow's fridge.)

Every time I watch this moment, I don't know whether to laugh like a maniac or heave the biggest sigh of my life. Even when you're being extremely generous with the show and its writing, there is no getting around the fact that this is as though someone wrote DEUS EX MACHINA all across the screen in bold, red letters. And again, I get why people thought this was the moment where the writers decided to do a 180 and turn Crow into a good guy instead of a dark signer due to the popularity of his cards or whatever. The production timeline still doesn't add up, but I get it. And cards or no cards, you can tell that someone made an out-of-left-field decision in Crow's writing for this moment to exist, because the way things were going for him before, purely based on visual evidence, it looked more like he was going to be another victim of the ominous black fog here, for someone (presumably Yusei) to have an angsty moment about later. (Or, hell, perhaps somewhere around this point, they decided that the final boss duel against Rex Goodwin would be a 3v1 turbo duel, which Aki, despite being a kickass duellist, categorically couldn't participate in because she doesn't have a license at this point! It could have been as simple as that.) To contextualise this, between Crow vanishing and him reappearing here, 7 whole episodes pass. He vanishes in episode 44 and reappears in episode 51. His saving grace is that all the duels in between canonically take place within the same night, which is why it's technically not unrealistic for him to be stuck in a fridge for a few hours. Technically. Ok, but what does he reappear for? Well, to have his very own dark signer duel, of course.

(Not pictured: Bommer's hilariously large runner.)

This is the first time we get to see Crow actively contributing to the larger plot, and in light of where he ends up later, I think this duel does a world of good for him. Firstly, it offers us more backstory (though still less than for the other signers), establishing why Crow's so attached to his orphans, why he's so close to Yusei, and throwing in tidbits like how he learned to read from duel monsters cards. It's "Save the Cat" moments all over, and it also does two other things well: For one, this is the only dark signer duel we get where both parties technically have the exact same goal—revenge. Bommer wants to avenge his hometown, Crow his kids. This duel, more than anything else, shows us that Crow could have become a dark signer—in a world where doing so didn't also mean destroying Satellite and killing his kids. Plus, it's the only duel against a dark signer we get that is fought and won by someone who, at this point, is not a signer. And this is especially important to me because it supports themes the show already began establishing with Rudger/Roman Goodwin and continues much later with Team Ragnarok and the likes: Fate is bullshit, the future is not set in stone, it is determined by what we do here and now and we have to fight to make it better. Therefore, contrary to what "fate" would dictate, Bommer/Greiger is not beaten by a signer. He's beaten by Crow. This is an extremely solid bit of writing that 100% supports the show's themes. (Arguably, this duel might have been even more solid if Crow hadn't actually turned into a signer, because him as a non-signer who stayed a non-signer would have been an even bigger "fuck you" to fate than him becoming the replacement fifth signer later.)

And, well, we know where Crow ends up after that. Seeing as he's been freed from fridge-prison and seeing as Aki doesn't have a runner yet, but the final boss duel is set up as a turbo duel, he joins the fray next to Yusei and Jack to fight Rex Goodwin. And the only thing this duel does for Crow character-wise is bring the whole Daedalus Bridge story full circle.

Which. Let me swing back to that for a second and put on my extra big nerd glasses because wouldn't you know it, I'm a greek mythology nerd and when I hear the name "Daedalus", I perk up like a dog that just spotted a piece of ham.

(Pictured: The least OSHA compliant bridge in the world, probably.)

So. As not to derail this with greek mythology, the short version of the Daedalus myth, as far as it's relevant here, for people who don't know it: Daedalus was a famed architect of Crete, who (among other things) built the labyrinth that kept the Minotaur imprisoned. What he also built was a pair of functional, sort-of mechanical wings held together by wax (because he needed to make a quick getaway at some point, but let's not go there). And he had a son: Icarus. Who famously donned the wings his father built and flew too close to the sun, which made the wax holding the wings together melt, causing him to fall into the sea and die, leaving his father to grieve.

I don't think it's hard to see how the Daedalus-Icarus story connects to the bridge. The Daedalus bridge is named after the genius inventor, reaches into the sky towards the sun, and our mechanical wings in this case are the wings attached first to Rex Goodwin's duel runner and then, you guessed it, the Blackbird. This would lead us to liken Rex Goodwin, of all people, to Icarus, then. And I'd argue the comparison works, too. See, the reason for which Goodwin actually built the bridge at first is left completely up in the air. We know that Crow believes a version wherein the "legendary duellist" wanted to build that bridge to reunite Satellite and the city—and the thing is, for all we know, that might be true. Goodwin never contradicts it, he only claims he was doing it to "oppose destiny" (read: follow Rudger/Roman's plan to take his brother's mark, assemble the signers and fight and win against the dark signers instead of having someone bear both a dark signer and a signer mark on themselves).

(Since when does becoming a dark signer make people swole, anyway? Where was that beef when Kiryu became a dark signer?)

Perhaps along the way, he thought he might as well reunite Satellite with the city, since things were already going to hell there. (Before he became director, which I find very interesting. Did the city decide immediately after the explosion that Satellite was contaminated and needed to be isolated or some such? Were efforts made to reunite city people with their relatives who might now have been stranded in Satellite? Did MIDS, hoping to cover up their mistake, lobby for cutting the Satellite off from the city? Was corruption involved? So many questions...) Or perhaps he simply built the bridge for himself, to get back to civilisation in order to follow his brother's plan and everyone else just interpreted it differently. It matters little—the only thing that matters is how Crow sees it. To him, building the bridge was obviously an attempt to reach the city, despite how hopeless things in Satellite seemed, and Goodwin's final ditch effort to jump off the bridge and "fly" on his duel runner was an act of defiance that turned him into a legend. Most importantly, both these things connect to freedom for Crow. Freedom from the misery in Satellite, freedom from sector security, and arguably, freedom from destiny. But then Goodwin tells him that all building the Daedalus Bridge and jumping off it did for him was teach him that destiny is inevitable. And Crow calls bullshit, because of course he does.

And I'd argue this is even more of a reason why Goodwin works as Icarus: He jumped off the bridge (flew too close to the sun), fell and lost his arm (the wax melted and he crashed into the sea), and ultimately, that fall completely changed his outlook on life and turned him from a (possible) hero into a villain (he "died", metaphorically speaking). This led to him now confronting every hopeful, younger person with the outlook that fate cannot be altered unless you're willing to sacrifice your very humanity itself. And there's Crow, a non-signer partaking in a "destined battle" only signers are supposed to be part of, calling bullshit on all of that merely by breathing.

(Bird boy is angry, watch out)

This moment could have been exemplary to emphasising the show's later themes (and I think to those who love Crow, it is), yet, at the same time, I understand why some people think the writers fumbled the ball with his introduction and role in the plot and cast of characters too much for it to hit as well as it could have. There is also the argument to be considered that the whole Daedalus Bridge-thing, though it might thematically fit Satellite, feels like it could have been written in solely to prop up Crow's character and give him something to clash with Goodwin about. Which, you know. I can't refute that, really. It might have been. And the timeline on Goodwin's shenanigans as the legendary duellist is a bit wonky, too, unfortunately—after all, we know only that the Zero Reverse happened 17 years before the show's start, when Yusei is only a year old. Crow's story would then lead us to believe that Goodwin, after somehow surviving that explosion, stayed in Satellite long enough to see it start turning into a floating heap of junk. (Which means this either happened very quickly or it took him a good few years to start building the bridge; both options have some logisitical issues.) Then he builds the bridge, gets cornered by security, jumps off, and... Then what? He looses his arm (but somehow manages to hold onto his brother's??), somehow makes it over to the city anyway (wow, he must be a great swimmer), then... manages to get hired by the public maintenance bureau somehow, only to climb the ranks at record speed and become director within only a few years? (Or did he meet Iliaster first and they somehow helped him climb to the city's political top?) It's all rather nebulous, and does suggest that Goodwin was not originally written with this bit as part of his backstory in mind. But can I prove that? Nope. Might also just be another instance of the writers fumbling the ball, despite having a solid story outline.

At the end of the day, Crow closes out the dark signers arc by establishing himself as a part of our team of heroes—which is, of course, strongly emphasised by him receiving the dragon's tail mark, while the dragon's head switches over to Yusei.

(The Crimson Dragon, probably: Oh, sod it. Fine, the other guy went batshit and you actually helped. Here's your mark. I'll get you a dragon later or whatever.)

Now, I know this in and of itself was already a polarising moment for people—and the funny thing is, I know that even some people who like Crow hated this moment. And I can see why. Crow's whole thing during the latter half of the DS arc up until here was that he was the only one taking part in the destined battle who was decidedly not destined to be a part of it. He was repeatedly spitting in fate's face, and as I mentioned, this could have been brilliant to throw some weight behind themes the show later brings up again. So in terms of character writing, this moment might have undermined Crow's character, rather than supported it, because it feels like less of a reward and more of a "gotcha": If you're extra uncharitable, Crow suddenly isn't the guy who defied fate and fought for the future (does that ring a bell?) anyway, he's the guy who was supposed to become a chosen one anyway and, like Yusei during the start of the Fortune Cup, simply didn't have a visible mark yet. However. There is also the bigger picture to consider. Character writing aside, Rudger/Roman Goodwin dying would have had a rather sizeable impact on the story, had nobody else become a signer in his stead—because there are supposed to be five signers and Rudger/Roman dying would have seen the group short one chosen one (and short one dragon, but we'll get to THAT can of worms in part two). So, to add my two cents for a minute, I don't think adding a new signer was a bad idea, per se. The execution of this move, however...

And I can hear you yelling. "Rua/Leo should have become a signer instead". And yes. I get that, too. And yes, I know Life Stream Dragon was teased before Black-Winged Dragon was ever conceived of, probably. So yes, Rua/Leo should have become a signer earlier. The question is just where. Because the way this final boss duel is set up, nobody could become an additional signer before this point, it would have turned Rex Goodwin's whole shindig on its head. (Even though the duel against Dimak/Devack could have been a good opportunity to reward Rua with a signer mark early.) Arguably, making Rua a signer instead but letting Crow join the main cast anyway could have made for a stronger showing overall. It would have made the twins harder to sideline the way they were later. And it would have kept Crow's "piss on fate"-theme.

But. This is what we got. Crow got a fast-paced introduction, was quickly made as likeable as possible, had an unfortunate stretch of episodes where he vanished very suspiciously (what I wouldn't give to know what decisions were made among the writers in that period), came back to make a very strong showing against Bommer/Greiger and then participate in the final boss duel against Rex Goodwin, where he got to shove his fate-nonsense back in his face, too. A smooth character arc? Hardly. And with everything laid out like this, I get why he rubbed some people the wrong way. Similarly, I get why he's some people's absolute favourite, though. Both sides have a basis in canon. (But please, let's not justify either with decade-old production conspiracy theories, okay?)

To close this out, allow me to do my thing for a moment and imagine a 5Ds canon where Crow was handled in a way that allowed his character to shine more, and maybe not piss as many people off.

Imagine a Crow who was there with Yusei from the start, alongside Nerve, Blitz, Taka, and Rally. A Crow who was, maybe, angrier at Jack for leaving and stealing Stardust than Yusei was, and who was determined to help his friend get his dragon back. A Crow who still had his kids to look after, and who introduced us to the Daedalus Bridge legend way earlier, to establish it as an organic part of Satellite culture, and who maybe drops hints about the Enforcers earlier, too. And we switch back to him every once in a while as the Fortune Cup is going on. Maybe he's the only one who's slippery enough to outrun Yaeger/Lazar's people when they come to capture Yusei's friends in order to use them as blackmail against him. And he starts looking for them, and runs into Saiga/Blister, and learns what's going on over in the city. Maybe he tries to follow Yusei because all of it rings alarm bells for him, maybe he doesn't because he figures security will be too tight now that Yusei has escaped. Instead of them stumbling out of a container to find TV conveniently playing the Fortune Cup Finale, Yusei's friends are found by Crow, who gets them back to the hideout, where they all catch the finale with Saiga/Blister. (Optional: If we want him to stay a signer, maybe he gets a weird feeling while watching the finale.) Then Yusei's suddenly back and Kiryu/Kalin's introduction proceeds as we know it. Yusei's injured, but Crow sticks around for a little longer, leaving only once he knows Yusei's gonna be fine. Then he decides that he needs to take up arms against the dark signers, too, because like hell is he gonna let anyone destroy Satellite and sacrifice his kids. He can still duel Yeager/Lazar while Aki and Yusei are duking it out in the hospital and the signers learn what the hell being a signer means, it matters little. Maybe this time, he outruns the black fog—barely—and there's no fridge. And he realises that stuff makes people vanish. While the signers start their big battle, he races back to check on the kids and finds the same disaster we already know, and everything else from there on out proceeds as previously. (Except that maybe, the first time Crow sees Jack again, he has some choice words for him for legging it to the city and stealing from Yusei.) Whether he turns into a signer at the end or not is up to preference, I think.

Nobody has to be on board with this version, but this is probably how I would have adjusted it to make things less jarring.

For now, see you in part two.

[illumalux]

Alright. I've got words I need to eject into the universe so here goes. For those few people who've followed me for ever and ever, you may have seen a few infrequent posts about my long-time dnd group and how magical they are, and that is in fact true. But I have absolutely been holding out on y'all with how cool this story is. Yay captive audiences and cool lore!

Because I know I'm going to lose the plot so fast it's not even funny, I'm going to go ahead and tag the tumblrs of everyone on the group so that they can see this, and maybe possibly add on later. please. pretty please.

We have the immeasurable @honorsongs, who keeps the lore straight(ish) and me sane(ish)

The incomparable @onyxmirage who adds glorious chaos to everything without fail

The illustrious @koithemushroomwhale who always has the most out of pocket shit to "yes, and"

and the impeccable Lex (who has not given me her tumblr) who makes the best campaign memes a bitch could ask for

Now, this game has been going steady for a little over two years now, and when you have a bunch of storytelling nerds stuck together for that long, eventually one of you wizens up and remembers that hey, maybe we should start writing this down. (Thanks Honor)

I took a long hard think on what's the best way to introduce the world to this, and while a synopsis of the first story will inevitably come, this is my blog and I'll start wherever I damn well please. And in that case, I think we're going to start at the beginning of this world. And I do mean the very beginning.

In the beginning, there was the Universe.

(There was also Nothing, but we'll get back to that later.)

Where did the Universe come from? All of the children ask, and to that I say, simple. Depending on which makes more sense to you, either the Nothing got very bored of being the only thing (or not) in existence and created the Universe, or perhaps the Universe has always existed alongside Nothing. Remember, Time doesn't exist yet.

Now one day the Universe got very tired of being everywhere, everything, all at once, and decided that the easiest solution to this problem is to simply split itself into pieces. It named these pieces by the jobs they would do in the world, and thus these concepts were born.

First was Creation. That one's self explanatory, yeah? To create anything else, Creation also has to exist. Now Creation, for the purpose of this story, is also Destruction. You cannot have one without the other, and it would be a whole lot of work for the Universe to separate them, Besides, that loses the fancy number the Universe had picked out!

Next came Time, who was really kind of needed at this point. It's very hard to keep track of things when Time isn't here. Time also invented the concept of space, which made things even easier to track. Now creation had a place to put everything it made.

After time came Nature. In the space that Creation filled, things began to bloom. Green things, yes, but also reds and violets and golds, all sorts of lovely useful growy things.

Nature then worked with Life, the fourth sibling to fill the world with things to dance among the nature, to bring Creation's carvings into being. This is where animals stem from, though Life has expanded it's domain a bit in the past few eons.

After Life breathed existence into the world, there came Energy, who suffused the creatures with boundless vigor to chase and to play, who drove the running streams and the whistling wind forward.

Now at this point, things were happening, and they needed a bit of direction in which to happen in. This is where Fate came on the scene with its great plan for the inhabitants of this world.

And in this world, there were a few creatures who became a bit more noticeable than the rest. These creatures were called Humans by Creation, and they needed a hand to guide them. In this, Humanity was born to watch over those that began to rule the newly-created world.

Humans, funny things that they are, took note of all the things happening around them, and took note of their own penchant for losing details as fickle Time moved onwards. So they invented writing, words, stories, and they began to keep note. In this, Knowledge came to be.

With the gift of Knowledge, Humans began making leaps and bounds, becoming ever more complicated. Unsatisfied with simply trusting in Fate, they began to create codes and structures, implementing law and math and structure. For this, Order comes to be.

But Humans, in their ever-growing greed for moremoremore kept pushing, Eventually they ran into others like them, and they disagreed, for their Order and Humanity were not identical. They found sharp sticks and solid rocks, and they attacked each other in pursuit of more. In this came Conflict.

In the early days, it was not uncommon to see these creatures-gods, as the Humans called them-walking freely amongst the world. To follow with the customs of the Humans that welcomed them, the gods took on names that came to the center of what they were created for.

Creation became Ruin, for it felt sorrow in the end of time. Time became Gate, a passage between spaces. Nature became Wild, for that was the word most often used to describe it. Life became Heart, the center of all that moves and breathes. Energy became Vigor, delighted at this new word Humans called it. Fate, steady in its ways became Kismet, only adorning what was already present. Humanity took on the name Message, ferrying peace between different groups as only a messenger could. Knowledge called itself Chronicle, for a human word that meant to collect. Order adopted the name Torus, in adoration of the creation called math. And Conflict, taking inspiration from the things created to further it, took up the alias of Pike. This is how the gods would be known from then on.

But this world was simply a bit too perfect. The gods were not content simply watching it from afar anymore, instead wishing to partake in the magic that was living. So the gods chose to shed their mantles, leaving them behind for a life.

But the Universe could not cease to exist so easily. These mantles, roles, found ten Humans, each who found solace in a god, and offered them a chance to better the world themselves. These Humans took up the mantle, and thus began the cycle of exchange within the gods.

After some time, Humanity was greater, stronger, powerful enough to forge cities. Their largest was called Shirun, and it was the city of the Gods themselves.

But to tell the story of Shirun is a whole nother story in and of itself.

(That's not to say I won't share it. I have to record everything after all.)

Signing off for now,

Genevieve Persephone Trevor, Unpaid Intern, Scribe of the Gods

[attemptinghobbies]

Week #48-63: The Long Quiet

So, after November 18th I got super into the Pokemon TCG competitively and really wasn't painting miniatures. I saw how little attention my previous post got so I didn't think you guys would want updates on that specifically. During that period I went to Canada and played in the American Regional Championship in Toronto. Unfortunately, I receieved pretty horrendous matchup after awful matchup, even getting paired with Tord Reklev, a runnerup at the World Championships, in round three. It was a close match, but I ultimately lost due to my own mistakes.

After my performance I took a break to focus on my current career path which has taken quite some time to get to the point I am at currently. So I have not had much time to paint anything. It's been a tough 15 weeks I'm not gonna lie.

However, I did come back to play at a double case tournament for Prismatic Evolutions at my local card shop. I went undefeated and split the winnings with my opponent leaving us both with five Elite Trainer Boxes.

These ETBs were for my wife, so while I could have turned around and sold them on the market for scalped prices I let her decide what to do. She wanted to open them, so we did. People were not kidding, the pull rates in this set are horrendous. We did not pull a single thing of note.

It was actually excruciating opening 45 packs and not getting even one Special Illuatration Rare.

I did finish the commission I was doing for a friend, but I only have a couple pictures showing off the cultists and a short video showing off the berzerkers. I wish a got a picture of everything together.

After finishing that commission I took on another commission for a Lord on Pegasus for a local player's Kingdom of Bretonnia Old World army.

His scheme was incredibly simple so I got it done fairly quickly. I may eventually take on the other 80 Models he wants painted for his full fighting force. We'll have to see on that one.

In the intermission between commissions though I've been working on my wife's Seraphon Spearhead because I want to encourage her to play the game more often. Especially after getting the store anniversary Spearhead/Combat Patrol mat so we can play at home.

I still need to paint her Kroxigors, but I also need to paint my own Spearhead. I've also been having a lot of fun trying out different things on my own guys. My AoS army has kind of just become my hobby curiosity army. I've tried a lot of different techniques to get different results on my own models.

Painting has been a lot more enjoyable for me lately which is nice. I think it's just been the freedom of being able to paint whatever I want with my AoS army as opposed to painting a unified force with my 40k army. I haven't painted a single Death Guard unit since my last post involving them. I do plan on eventually finishing my 40k units, but the people around me have been focused on AoS so that's where I've put a lot of my focus. That way we can all participate in the hobby together.

Anyway, that's pretty much everything I have been up to since November of last year. Sorry to have been absent for so long. It's been an insanely busy year so far and I don't see it slowing down whatsoever.

Be safe out there everyone.