#I refuse to believe recycling is where the line of possibility ends

[starwrighter]

I am not a baby!! (Yes you are,)

(Prompt) (Previous part) (Next) (Masterpost) (Ao3)

(Part four peoples!!!)

Either something went wrong with that transmission or he was going to be stuck on this planet for 99,999 hours. Both options didn't bode well for him but one was clearly better than the other.

Ancient's how long was 99,999 hours? With a number that big he was looking at spending around ten years waiting for a rescue team to show up and help them. If everyone wasn't dead by that point they'd probably have built a super cool society with Deepsea bases and nuclear power that they'd have to give up. In ten years he would've figured out what the heck was going on with him and brought them home himself. Though, ten years would give him an excuse for why he was still around the same age he was when he left. Wipe the PDA's data beyond recovery, blame the most annoying creature or plant as what shrank him, and refuse to elaborate any further.

A transmission error was more likely than his brilliant hypothetical scenario. When a spaceship as big as the aurora crashed there was bound to be some interference. Whether that interference be artificial or not was still unclear much to his dismay.

At least he had a scanner, that was a big step for him in his progression. A lot of the actually helpful blueprints were corrupted in the crash and supposedly the scanner could help recover them. Scanning fragments of salvaged tech would be the quickest way of recovery all things considered. Destroyed beacons, singed seaglides, and trashcans were scattered all throughout the shallows, pollution likely reaching farther than what he'd explored. With a crash, this big damage likely extended much farther than what was visible to him.

Not only did their ship crush who knows how many creatures and plants, the regular and radioactive pollution would screw over future generations of fish! It was the intergalactic equivalent of a catastrophic oil spill and he was an unwilling participant in it. Something deep inside him ached at the thought of him being a participant in a planet's destruction.

Chunks of broken spaceship were bad enough for the environment on its own. Batteries, trash, fuel, and hundreds of pounds of manmade resources that'd take hundreds if not thousands of years to decompose. Every scrap of metal, every piece of plastic trash no matter the size was something to poison, choke or kill the local wildlife. Sam would be furious, this wasn't a case of natural food shortages or extreme weather, this could very well be an extinction event! Nuclear power was the default for Alterra's larger ships, and if it wasn't already, the aurora was soon to start leaking radiation all over the place!

This was one of the few life-bearing planets humanity discovered! Hundreds upon hundreds of planets have been discovered within humanity's years of space exploration but life existing without human intervention was still rare. Metal, rock, and gas were what were all that were usually brought back in the beginning. As humanity's technology advanced, they went farther into space, with more habitable planets being discovered and an uptick in thriving alien life. There was always a continuous stream of new discoveries in their universe, alien floras and fauna being discovered as often as they went extinct. Even so, it'd be a cold day in hell before he shared responsibility for any aliens going extinct.

Genetic mutations, Birth defects, and massive amounts of death were the first things that came to mind when radiation was brought into the picture. Radiation was the biggest issue so far, the melted spaceship could be recycled, no matter what Alterra's stupid rules told him he could and couldn't do. Trusting a corporation to clean up their own messes was like asking a toddler to clean up their toys; it would only lead to a conniption fit and a half-assed job. It was unclear how long he was going to be here and if when he met up with the other survivors, the need for materials would only increase as time went on.

Scanning and salvaging would have to wait until the next morning. Darkness shrouded the ocean outside his life pod, making it twice as dangerous to be out there tearing wrecks apart. Bioluminescence wasn't a skill he could put on his resume just yet nor was any kind of night vision. It would be both dangerous and annoying to swim around aimlessly in the dark when he had a perfectly good life pod he could relax in.

Standing in the safety of his lifepod, Danny ran the scanner up and down his body, the tech lighting him up a brilliant blue.

"Performing self-scan. Vital signs follow continuous pattern; no adverse effects identified. Detecting tracing amounts of foreign bacteria. Continuing to monitor,"

The PDA chimed and if Danny were an actual infant like the stupid tablet insisted he was he wouldn't have understood a word of those sentences. But since he wasn't a baby he could properly understand that there were alien germs in his body that really shouldn't be there.

Yeah, That seemed like a problem but it wasn't the reason his powers were short-circuiting. Before they even entered the atmosphere his powers were going wonky. Everything felt the same as it did before he came in contact with this "Foreign bacteria" There were no physical symptoms to complain about so maybe it was just his PDA's way of warning him he was coming down with an alien cold?

Whatever it was, Danny bet fifty bucks the metal muncher was what gave it to him. The creature had a face that screamed "Hey! look at me, I have all the diseases!" Now he was no marine biologist but scrap metal and electrical wire didn't exactly seem like the healthiest snack to chew on. Although, with the resemblance it had to crocodiles back home, one could only wonder if it swallowed metal to help with digestion?

Jagged teeth like the ones on the metal muncher weren't exactly suitable for grinding up food. Finding out the Metal muncher's stomach was full of rocks would be the least surprising thing that's happened today. Metal salvage from the Aurora was way too big to work as a stomach stone so it was more likely the creature just liked chewing on metal. It seemed just as interested in the titanium deposits as it was with the salvage so maybe it was a natural way to file down or sharpen their teeth? Hopefully, the metal munchers were smart enough to avoid chewing on wires that were actively sparking.

Opening a note function on his PDA, Danny began scribbling down everything he'd learned from his encounter with the metal muncher. Easily distracted, aggressive, territorial? Deciding everything he’d seen today was their normal everyday behavior would be stupid. There were new variables in the creature’s environment that could impact its behavior. Continued observation would be helpful as would scanning the animal in the morning. If Danny was going to be stranded on an alien planet you bet your ass he’s going to be studying the local wildlife while he’s here.

“A proper sleep schedule is imperative to the physical and phycological development of young children, " A chime played on his PDA closing the notes app without any warning. A repetitive string of Z’s overtook his screen making it impossible for him to navigate through the applications. Cheeks burning Danny turned the thing off and on again stomping with a huff when the same thing happened when it booted up again.

Taking a deep breath Danny sulked over to the storage unit. It was the only flat surface in this Lifepod he could lay down on and one could only pray to the ancients that the lid wouldn’t cave underneath him. Sleeping on the floor was out of the question. biohazardous goo coated the floor, still liquid enough to slosh around with the erythematic motion of the sea. Naturally, due to preferences, Danny decided to curl up on a surface that didn't have his melted organs on it.

________

Slithering through a barren seabed that once flourished as well as one could in a dying ocean. Mourning the lives that were lost today, he'd failed all over again. His youngest had been the one to see the precursors building raise into the sky this time. A blast strong enough to shake the island that it was built on shot out into the sky. They'd expected something to crash into the water soon after but what they hadn't expected was the size of what hit the waters.

Miles of the seafloor was torn up, and thousands of animals were dead. Jason said it was ironic, even after the precursors wiped themselves out they still found ways to destroy the planet. Bruce thought it was just cruel. It was by sheer stroke of luck that none of his kids had been close to the reaper's breeding ground at the time of impact. All of them managed to remain relatively unharmed when flames and giant pieces of rubble fell from the sky.

Surviving reapers flocked to the sight of the impact, shielded, unseen through the cloud of upturned sand and rubble. It wasn't until they caught a reaper with a familiar-looking creature locked in its mandibles, red blood spilling into the waters as it once had a decade ago that they realized it was happening again.

Nearly all who they'd found near the impact site had been unresponsive, charred, or mangled with their organs strewn out through the sea. In the clutches of the predators now circling the site dying in their arms no matter how quickly or carefully they managed to pry them from the brutal maw of the reapers. Within minutes of the impact, they'd already had a death count in the dozens. It was horrific, little bodies so much like his and his children's more vulnerable forms, dulled claws of younglings that had not yet grown old enough to hunt for themselves. Worst of all was looking into their dying eyes and seeing the agony and confusion of a sentient creature facing a brutal death just as their lives had begun. But that was the death count before the others landed.

Eggs with metallic shells and odd patterning landed all throughout the crater some even landing in the cold darkness of the void where they couldn't be retrieved. Their landings had been much gentler than the initial impact. Immediately the little ones began crawling out of their shells, confused and scared, physically weak. It wasn't uncommon for the precursors to deform the unborn, kidnaping and experimenting on children who lived and died in agony. Malformities ran rampant in this batch of younglings. Instead of soft faces and the vibrant, expressive eyes, they'd come to associate with these children, there were pitch-black, featureless heads smoother than sandstone but solid as titanium. There were points when a child that looked perfectly healthy would go limp for seemingly no reason and never move again. A sped-up gestation period was known to cause problems, let alone a hatching that was induced by precursor technology. As much as it killed him to admit, these younglings, while more abundant were sicklier than the small batch of three that'd fallen years ago.

Most if not all the healthier young ones died from the elements before they could reach them. It was devastating for Dick to find the youngling he'd been guarding in his territory, covered in the luminescent cysts that foreshadowed a certain death. The children got scared when they tried to protect them and when these children got scared they had a tendency to die from it.

Every single death felt like a personal failure. It's like nothing they could do would ever stop the hurt that the precursors continued to cause a thousand years after their extinction.

"Hey... B?" Dick's voice echoed in his mind a reassuring reminder that his son was safe and close enough to contact them. However, the emotions that came in with his son's words were anything but reassuring. Stomach filling with dread he settled on the sea bed just preparing himself for devastating news.

"We've searched the entire crater- none of them survived," A wave of grief hit him like a tsunami when Dicks words sunk in.

"Not the entire crater, there's still the one that landed in the shallows," Tim chimed in.

"We watched that egg for three hours and nothing crawled out of it," Steph groaned and Bruce could almost hear the dramatic way his daughter threw herself into the sand.

"Plus it was smoking and smelled of rot," Duke added somberly, slowly gliding through the impact site by his side.

"Geez, none of them even survived long enough to start building this time!" Dick exclaimed a mournful edge to his usual cheerful tone.

"Tch, pitiful," Damian finally decided to chime in, disappointment clear in the juveniles voice

" Who's pitiful? The babies who died today or the precursors who set them up for death?" Jason questioned, a dangerous edge seeping into the bond.

"I think it's obvious who I was talking about Todd," Damian spat.

"Considering how obsessed you are with what the last group created no, it's not obvious demon spawn," Jason sneered.

"Guys!" Dick snapped. "Arguing with each other isn't help and it sure as the lava zone is hot isn't going to make you feel better for long," Murmurs of agreement rang throughout the bond.

" One of us should still keep an eye on the egg in the shallows," Bruce clutched a piece of metal in pitch-black claws, gills flaring as he swam underneath an egg floating upside-down on the ocean's surface. "Maybe they're just late bloomers?"

"...Maybe?"

"I guess it's possible,"

"Not likely,"

"Tch, if it's already rotten getting our hopes up is pointless," Damian added to the chorus of replies.

"Try saying that when we have new baby siblings swimming around," Dick beamed.

"I will not because it isn't going to happen," His youngest argued pointedly.

"Awwwww, someone's worried they won't be the guppy of the family anymore!" Dick cooed much to Damian's dismay and everyone else's entertainment.

"I am not!" Damian snapped his voice louder than Dick's despite him being the farthest from the impact zone. "If anything I'd be glad someone else would be the victim of you people's constant smothering!" Damian spat, his words lacking any true venom.

"Whatever you say kiddo,"

"Shut up Grayson!" Laughter rang out through the bond followed by teasing and cooing. A reminder that despite everything Bruce still had living children and he hoped it would stay that way long after he passed.

( @avelnfear @meira-3919 @thought-u-said-dragon-queen @hugsandchaos @blep-23 @zeldomnyo @bytheoldwillowtree @justwannabecat @shepherdsheart @starlightcat04 @stargazing-bookwyrm @pupstim )

[ackermanshoe]

Edited lmao: warning this is kinda pointless and alot of farfetched theory and a veryyy long post please read at your own risk 🤡

Edit again: my analysis when I started it 1 month ago: 👩‍💼🖨️📇✒️🖋️✏️

My post now: 🤡🤡🤡🕯️🕯️🤡

Edit: I started writing this like ages ago but I don't see my own point with this writting and I'm editing it after reading @nini14 's Ackerman breaking the cycle analysis and I feel like both of these go hand in hand. So without further ado:

Triangles

Let's see as we all are made aware that aot significantly revolves around trios of friends such as the following :

Although these are the main trios that is noticeable, other trios can be made out by taking some characters from their original trios to make trios based on looks / character and dynamics. And this is where my argument comes in with this trio:

Their dynamic has always been mother father and son. Now let me explain, idk if anyone has heard about the drama triangle but here

These terms can be applied to MLE trio, Levi being the persecutor, Mikasa is the rescuer and the victim being Eren. In the first 3 seasons at least, Eren was being taken away and his decisions constently put him in danger, Levi being the persecutor who always gives Eren what he deserves for being a pain the ass and Mikasa being the rescuer always siding with Eren and protecting him no matter what. Do you see it?

This is Mikasa to a T.

The following is an example of the dad being the rescuer and the son "junior" being a victim, and much like Eren, could possibly refuse the hand that is helping him.

So that being said now that we have an understanding of their dynamics in the relationship, let's get back to understanding a triangle. Did you know triangles are one of the strongest shape because it has three sides that rely on each other hence shifting their energies on to each side and it makes the perfect shape for a bridge, architectures favourite. Why am I tell you this?

Because these dynamics that every trio is made up of in aot is because they have strong relationships.

Someone mentioned isayama loves putting move triangles and I couldn't help but agree, look at how many times he has placed Eren historia and an angry Mikasa? And subtly he has always ( to me at least) hinted the love triangle between Levi Mikasa and Eren, outside of their father-mother-son dynamic. Personally this makes sense to me the most, fueled by mikasa's dream. A choice was there to make and she unknowingly chose Levi.

Now this brings me to the death of all the trios Levi has been part of, from Isabel & Farlan to hanjo & Erwin to where we are now. Our situation before S4 was EMA+Levi = 4 people but we all know that a square isn't as strong as a triangle so something shifted. Eren, even with him in it Armin and him were more connected as for Levi and Mikasa as a pair it was more obvious. Especially in the conversation EMA had in that stare place as depicted on @gilly-bj 's analysis on similarities between rivamika and Mika's parents. Not only was Mikasa placed directly next to Levi although being feets apart in reality but her lines "another conversation only you two understand" it. Visually and verbally divided Mikasa from Eren and Armin and connected her to Levi. Both alone.

Yet another triangle placed by isayama intentionally or not is Armin Mikasa and Levi.

Because a triangle represents the process of recycle and reuse it also represent the cycle of life, an on going thing that doesn't stop, a history that repeats itself. And going back to Ackerman finally breaking this cycle of tragic fate, will they?

The fact that the whole manga series start at chapter 0 is very suspicious in it self. Why does it isyamaa? A 0, a circle that comes back around? A 0 which represents both the ending and the beginning? Why is the 1st chapter called "to you, 2000 years from now"? ( That's such a fucking impactful chapter name gives me chills )

Before my theory start I just wanna add that the story started from a narrative perspective makes me wanna believe in rivamika even more. Did eldians share the same fate in 2000 years? Who knows, but I know for sure Erens and mikasa's dynamic as the impulsive hotheaded doer and their protective calm but strong friend thinker will continue forever just like the never ending triangles.

I forgot all these ppls names on chaoter 0 so PLS bare with me.

The main dude who heavily resembles Mikasa even tho he is a man, has a incredible power just like the Ackerman's as a human AND he can shift into a titan???? Last time I checked weren't Ackerman's the bio product of titans? Remember is science is on a ongoing journey and forever progressing towards the impossible ;)

Hmmm

The little girl who resembles Gabi, who has the same dynamic as Eren, the girl also looks up to his inhumanly powers, a little too much alike Eren's idolisation of Levi ( and looking up to Mikasa's strength I think )?

Lastly, chapter 0 makes me believe it was set in the future. Look at the buildings, 2 story buildings I don't remember seeing buildings like this in the pre time skip era have you? I could be wrong tho.

If Isayama is as smart as we think he is then he might have related this chapter to the whole plot of aot. 🤷 Or it could mean something. And here's where my theory comes in and it may not be the most favourable for eldians. Let me start with the good part tho, the guy who looked like Mikasa is could be a descendant from the Ackerman clan, but he isn't half and half like Mikasa and Levi, he's full blooded. Which might be why he has the power to shift ( idk this kinda don't make sense since Mikasa and Levi can't buy hush )

So let's say rivamika got married had a family they always wanted and had the peaceful life and 2000 years from then this guy^ existed. Oddly familiar to great great great grammakasa 💀💀.

The cycle never ended for eldians, the whole world could still be mad at them for Erens action and has the prejudice against them for a long time. And the fact that they can shift is never going to change even 2000 years in the future. And the guy ( omg I keep calling him the guy cause I literally can not be bothered figuring out his name ) who lives in a far more developed society with richer civilization within the wall. It could be possible that Ymir or someone erased the eldians memories ONCE AGAIN after the rumbling ended. Because Mikasa levi weren't effected they probably were excused and got to live as they pleased. This dude is also the reason why I believe isayama does not consider the Ackerman's as side characters at all. In the end the story might have actually started with them, alluding to "the ending is just the beginning" as said by kingsama himself. ( Wtf am I saying lol )

So yeah in conclusion as I said yes story is weirdly really influenced by a large amount of triangles and loops. And yes ackerman probably would break the cycle of death after all living through hell fighting hell all for what? If not recreating into a heaven, giving it new life. I do believe in rivamika living the life they are destined for with each other but eldians fate might just be too tragic for me to see them as truly free people who gets to roam around outside the walls as they please.

I guess my point is that everything that goes around will come around, that will bring good karma for the Ackerman's and maybe a repeation of the past for the rest of the world. 😩😩 I think I fully somehow believe Eren is gone for good. Unless isayama draws him waking up from a long dream on his bed then 💀👀👀 I will throw myself away.

Thank you for reading 💞 once again I'm so sorry this post isn't as good as I'd like it to be I am sleep deprived right now and it isn't worded as well as of like it to be. But hope my delulu ness was enjoyable at least. ✌️💀

[natromanxoff]

19 - The Dynamic Duo V Montreux

Hello folks. I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and I thought I would give the old hard drive a clean up, so before I dump a load of rubbish I thought I'd better answer these before I throw everything in the recycle bin. Let's start with a lady from New Jersey who goes by the name of Dorothy who gave me a very interesting offer for the next time I'm in New York. If you're reading this Dorothy, could you send Jacky your email address so I can reply to you. I've just opened up a "secret" Hotmail account so I can send replies without pestering the lovely Mrs Smith all the time, and to test it I went to the guestbook and picked a few names at random. Maybe I should reply to the irate drummer, but if I do that he'll just reply to me and the girls in the office will miss out on laughing at him as well. Staying with the skin bashers for a mo, Ron Hansen in Madison is a drummer, and said he liked my jokes and reckons Mr Irate uses three sticks, two in his hands and one up his arse (his words not mine). Would I be correct in saying your a Zep fan Ron? Today's question is, "What do you get if you cross a drummer with a roadie?" The answer is a stupid roadie.

Moving on, last time around I mentioned a drink which we consumed in Brazil, and the charming Sonia and Dina informed me it was called Caipirinha, and a pleasant little tipple it was to. Somewhere in Australia there is a lady called Karen who is listening to the Offspring CD non-stop, so I'm gonna have to try and answer her question as she has such great musical tastes, even though she wants to know the..........(flashing lights, fireworks, drum roll) Hoover Salesman Story. ARGHHHH. Its actually a very short tale, and I think it's quiet boring but it seems to have grown in stature over the years, and as always I'm gonna drag it out and start from the first skiing expedition that I ventured on with RT.

Having checked my trendy little biog mag, I reckon the year is 1980, and the dynamic duo are in Montreux putting the finishing touches to Fun in Space and we have a few days off before a tour starts in Zurich when Rog says, "Let's go skiing." He had skied a few times before and was ok at it, but I had never put a pair of skis on in my life. I said, "Lets go, but you ski and I'll just get pissed." He then went on about what a buzz it is and how I would love it, etc. As we were touring soon our American crew had to fly out, so I called up Jim Devenney and told him to come over a couple of days earlier cause we were gonna ski. Jim is a great skier and was on the first flight available and I picked him up at Geneva airport ready for some fun. That night we hit the town and have too many drinks and Rog goes off to bed semi early, while Jim and myself sat out on the jetty of Duckingham Palace with a ghetto blaster, Derek and Clive tapes, and a vat of wine singing disgusting songs at full blast, which must have echoed over to France. Suddenly we hear a French voice screaming at us and we have no idea what he was saying so we carried on goofing around, and the next thing I hear is a huge splash as Devenney falls in.

Let me assure you that a drunk trying to get a drunk out of Lake Geneva is not an easy task, but we succeed and head back to DP and retire to our rooms. I'd just got into bed when I hear a crash and go to investigate, only to find JD had gone in the wrong room and was trying to get into a baby's cot, and getting him out of there was harder than getting him of the lake.

Next day Roger, Dave Richards, his wife Collette, Jim and myself set off to Zermatt, and on arrival we stock up on skis, passes and other skiing paraphernalia (big words now!) Dinner, drinks and off to bed. Next morning we're up and ready to go, and thinking I'll never ski again after this I refuse to waste money on a ski suit, so I wear jeans. My second wrong move, the first was agreeing to go. The hotel owner wouldn't let us leave the hotel without first drinking a couple of Sambuccas, not my idea of a good breakfast, eggs, bacon, tea, toast and Italian liqueurs, but who are we to refuse. Next I've got to try and walk in those godamn boots, and we eventually arrive at the top of the Matterhorn.

The OK skiers, RT and Dave set off on their own, Collette begins a very slow trip down while JD tells me he'll stay and teach me. On go the skis, and down I go, flat on my arse. Up I get and I'm off, for all of about 2ft before I'm down again. This is not any fun. After a couple more tumbles my great mate Jim said, "If you're gonna f*** around I'm going." And thats the last I saw of him all day. Thanks pal. I'm standing there watching people ski and think, "It can't be that hard. If you stand like this, lean like that, you can ski." So I stand and lean in the correct positions and I'm away, screeching down a mountain with only one very small problem, I have no idea how to turn or stop, so as I'm flying past Collette, and she reckons I looked very worried, I yelled for some advice and all she said was, "DIVE." Sound advice, so thats what I do, and by now I'm getting wet. I wait for her and then we set off together, the blind leading the blind, with me diving at the slightest bit of speed or bend in the piste. A million years later we eventually reach the bottom of this awful slope and it's finally over. Wrong. Theres a T-bar to get on so we wait in line till it's our turn. You're supposed to put the bar just under your bum and it drags you up, but I'm 6ft and Collettes about 5ft 5in, so the bar was either in the middle of her back or around my knees, and no one told me not to sit on the f***ing thing and we bounced around for a while until we fell off. I'm now getting really pissed off with all this, "Get me a helicopter," I demanded from Collete. She told me they don't just send them, you have to be hurt. I replied with, "I'll break my f***ing arm but I've gotta get off this mountain." Realising I'm not getting a copter I light a ciggie and ponder.

We agree to split up and go with someone our own height, so I ended up with a great German guy who was really helpful. Once on the T-bar I can see that it goes way up and I would have to ski back down to base camp, and in case you've forgotten, I can't ski, so I said that I was gonna bail out, and jumped off. I then head of in a straight line to the cable car, skis on the shoulder and wading through 3ft of snow in a pair of very heavy and very cold jeans. What seemed like hours of wading I make civilisation and head to the bar for a triple strength coffee and a triple scotch while everyone gawked at me cause I looked like I had a shower fully clothed. Yeah, I wanna do this again.

Dinner that night was great fun for the others cause they got to take the piss out of me. Their day will come. The rest of the nights activities shall remain sealed away, but a good time was had by one and all. The tour went smoothly and I try and put Zermatt behind me, except Collette, still to this day, takes great delight in telling everyone about it, and everytime she says it she makes me look more and more pathetic.

The next winter appears and I'm at home and the phone rings, "CT, wanna go skiing?" To which my reply was nothing like, "Oh I'd love to you fabulous little drummer boy." I can't believe he talked me into it again, but this time we were gonna do things correctly and go to Aviemore in Scotland and take lessons, this was the saving factor in his plan. So once again we pile into the Range Rover and aim north. We split the driving (for a change) and had a good journey up through the snow covered mountains till we get to the resort. A usual night was on the cards, dinner, drinks and bed, then up bright and early for some lessons and a good day on the slopes. This time we've both got the correct outfits so we head off to where our little group of idiot skiers are. We're all standing in a line, with Rog and me at the end, and each person gets to snow-plough a few feet. These clowns have less idea than my first try, and it's also incredibly cold and we've now got icicles hanging off our hair. It's our turn and we both look like olympic champions, but the only thing wrong with getting it right the first time is that the instructor then turns his attentions back to the start of the line. Here I am once again standing on the top of a mountain, freezing cold with two 'things' stuck on the end of a pair of stupid boots, and I inform His Royal Highness that the next trip away involves sand and sun, no excuses, end of argument. RT agreed that this wasn't much fun and thought my idea worth considering.

We finally heard the two magic words, "Lunch Break." We're gone in search of some good HOT food and a nice beaujolais, and we found both. We also found that the hotel bar had an amazing selection of whisky, and we had to try as many as possible. We're now semi pissed and decide that as we're warm we might as well go back to this lesson even though we are very late, and the instructor looked at us and said, "Where have you two been?" Rog came back with "Trying lots of your wonderful scotch's." He was fine with that answer and we carried on trying to learn something, and would you believe by the end of the day I could actually turn and stop.

Back to the hotel for a nap before dinner. Over a very nice meal and a couple of little drinkettes we agree that it's far to cold here and we'll clear off the next day, so into the bar we go with our earlier mission of trying all the scotch's. We were sitting at a table chatting away and cracking jokes with each other and end up talking to the couple on the next table, swapping skiing stories, needless to say mine were very short, and having a bit of a laugh, when the woman said, "What do you two do for a living?" God knows why, but I said; "We're Hoover salesmen." At first they didn't believe us but we both started going on about the difference between domestic and industrial cleaners, uprights, backpack types, ones you pull along the floor. We went on about the different wattage, suction power, the amount of pressure on Axminsters and Wilton carpets, even a couple of car expressions like overhead this and thats. What the hell do we know about vacuum cleaners? But boy are we good at this. After about 30 mins of utter bullshit the subject finally changed and they wished us all the best with our door to door salesmanship and off they went to bed. We then had to reassure each other what we actually did for a living, had some more drinks and tried to work out how we knew so much about cleaners as both of us have spent most of our lives trying to stay well away from them. We spent the drive back to London having a good laugh about the one day we spent in a Scottish ski resort.

Well that's it folks, the story of a small company, R & C Taylor,..... Hoover Salesmen. I did learn to ski quite well, and whilst in Gstadd doing the Shove it album Spike flew out cause he fancied learning to ski, and the fool asked me to teach him. I wasn't much help because everytime he fell over I burst out laughing cause I kept seeing myself in Zermatt, and Spike looked just as worried and stupid as I did.

Before I go I noticed that Jacky had to get her boiler fixed and said for me not to make a comment, but little things like that spark me off and I remembered that when we were recording in the Townhouse Studios I had a little, no a big affair with the studio chef. Every three months Virgin would do a magazine for all their staff, written by all the heads of various departments, airlines, studios, video, shops, films, etc. and they would say what was going on with their particular section. Alan Douglas, who was chief engineer of all Virgin studios wrote who was recording where, and he wrote, "Queen are in studio 4, and Crystal, their main man is stoking the kitchen boiler." I thought that was hilarious, but Jane went ballistic. That's it for now.

Loadsa luv Crystal (Carpet cleaner to the stars)

[gabriel4sam]

Not love at first sight (But love at the sixty-third life defying idiocy), a CodyWan story

Written for @swbigbang, with the help of @kitcatkim in the role of the patient beta and @outernorth for artist (art just there)

Because all the other members of their small outpost were not in shape (read, hungover), Cody and Obi-Wan go on a small, simple, totally not possibilities of explosions supply run.

Cody comes back with a headache the size of Coruscant, a new hate of insectoids life. And a brand new significant other, in the shape of his exasperating General

 It’s not a hangover, it’s a hecatomb. Whatever Boil had put in his new still was a terrible, terrible idea. The entire Separatist Council could do pointes in tutus on the flight deck and the vode would neither see it, nor care about it.

Cody and Obi-Wan were the only ones not drinking the day before, them and the communication officers on duty. The communication officers because they were working, and Cody and Obi-Wan, well, because they like the occasion for the men to feel free, and they can’t with their superior officers in their company.

That doesn’t mean the men are supposed to feel free enough to incapacitate the whole bunch of idiots they are apparently in charge off.

“Latrine duties, the first time we do planet fall. The whole of them.” Cody grumbles, assessing the damage with a cold, clinical eye.

“How does that even work? Does every man have latrine duties for his own latrines? Do you make them install as many latrines as they are? ” Obi-Wan remarks. He’s the usual calm and composed Jedi Master Cody knows on the outside, but the Commander is pretty sure he’s laughing on the inside. Cody had met Quinlan Vos, ok? And he poured enough hard liquor in the man to obtain confidences. Confidences which horrified him, Obi-Wan had even less survival instincts than Cody thought, but confidences he can’t un-hear. He will know forever!

Or at least, he will know until a luckier droid kills him. Cody is not an optimist about clones living long, happy, fulfilling lives. He has eyes after all and a functioning brain.

Cody glares at Obi-Wan, just in case. He has learnt, in the two years since he took his position with his General, that Jedi react pretty well to glaring. Not that it stops them from doing stupid stuff, but at least, they feel guilty about it.

If they like the glaring party only. Commander Ponds had a lot of things to narrate about Mace Windu and the horrible, horrible conglomerate mogul.

Obi-Wan takes his most innocent air, something Cody stopped believing two days in their acquaintance, when his newly minted General had destroyed a whole block of warehouses on an unnamed moon and made a grown Hutt call for its parent. It had been a bad month for Obi-Wan. No need to judge. When innocents are in danger, the cost of the repairs is less a problem and more a number for the politicians to handle. And yes, Obi-Wan knows the money used could certainly be used in other useful ways, but no amount of credits could ever buy a life, in the eyes of a Jedi. But that day, when Cody, after a few, very stressful hours of radio-silence, had finally gotten back his General, slightly charred, the hostages, hungry and thirsty and exhausted but all of them in one piece, and a terrified Hutt, in the middle of a devastated battleground, he had understood better the warning of Alpha-17. There, Cody had sworn in petto to never underestimate his Jedi, despite the irreproachable manners, the swishing hair and the smile of a holo-star.

Together, they take the time to check every soldier, to make sure nobody was busy drowning in their own fluid because they were too hangover/still drunk, to roll over. Everybody is alive, and the communication officers are getting ready to do a double shift, and ready to nib their vode about it later.

“It’s a good thing we’re on down time,” Obi-Wan remarks, “I must confess, despite the talents of your brothers, I’m not quite sure we could withstand an attack from Grievous and his various cronies right now.”

“We would get our asses handed to us, you mean.”

“Exactly.”

Obi-Wan cautiously touches  one of the abandoned drink containers, with more care than he gives to explosives.

“What did he put in this thing?” he asks, fascinated.

“You’re not testing it!” Cody immediately retorts, because he knows his Jedi, “not in the name of science, curiosity or whatever.”

Obi-Wan touches the container a second time.

Cody could swear the thing moves in return, like it wants to be pet. Obi-Wan hums, his face interested and he leans a little more in the direction of the container. If the thing starts growing whatever strange means of locomotion is on its mind, Cody is using his blaster, no matter the General’s opinion. That’s how bad holo-dramas start, with an unknown thing unleashed on an unsuspecting ship/outpost/space station. He refuses to star in one of those plot-lacking dramas his brother Wolffe pretends he doesn’t love.

The thing doesn’t move anymore and Obi-Wan loses interest and goes back to helping troopers into their quarters and their bunks.

Cody helps, but that doesn’t mean he’s not plotting terrible retributions. He knows the last few weeks have been pretty hard, the hardest in a long time, that’s one of the reasons Obi-Wan and himself made themselves scarce last night. 

Now, they have a week just waiting for the Negotiator to come pick them up. One week for the men to rest and to heal and perhaps to train lightly…but that’s no reason for the sort of screw-up Cody is seeing right now. Boil and his still should be transferred from the 501th and put into whatever part of the army that handles studies about biological warfare. Biological warfare that the Republic officially doesn’t indulge in, studying it only as a way to protect its worlds against it. But Cody isn’t convinced. He has a lot of questions he will never ask about parts of the army which are not led by Jedi, and that the Jedi are trying, with no success, to have access too. Obi-Wan has promoted him so much that the Commander now has access to documents he’s pretty sure nobody thought a clone ever would. He’s staying silent for now. If the Jedi need help with that, if they fail, the vode will try, but Cody is keeping this ammunition in reserve. He can only fire it once, because when natural-borns who aren’t Jedi realize exactly how much power Obi-Wan and the Jedi council has given him and some of the other commanders, they will try to strip them of it, he just knows it.

At the end, everybody is moaning in their bunks, or manning communication, and Cody and Obi-Wan raid the nice rations, the ones with the green seals, no less food of unkown origins than the rest of it, but certainly the tastiest. They sit down at the entry of the outpost, sharing a canteen of water between them. They don’t talk, most of the time they don’t need to.

Cody isn’t really hungry but it’s easier to trick Obi-Wan into eating something when those who surround him do too. The warmth of the sun, the sounds of nature, the nice, and so rare, oh so rare, knowledge that they have a little free time instead of having to run to put out another fire. All of this is making Obi-Wan soften, like a carving of stone suddenly becoming pliable.

“Commander?” Cody’s holocom disturbs them, and Cody startles, suddenly realizing he was lost in the light playing into the copper of Obi-Wan’s hair.

“It’s nothing, really nothing probably,” the shiny in charge of this particular console explains to them, “ one of the new models of probes  should have been back twenty minutes ago. I tried to raise it per the procedure, but it isn’t answering.”

“We’re supposed to be alone on this world,” Obi-Wan remarks, a line forming between his brows.

“They are still working the kicks out of this model,” the shiny admits, “that’s why we used them specifically on this planet where they are in no danger. We’re supposed to go back with all of them, for study, to hammer out the last problems.”

The line between the General’s brows is growing deeper.

“I will make a report to the Council about the danger it could pose to you, to send any vode on the field with materials not totally ready, and the Jedi Order will issue a formal protest.” His shoulders are tense. No matter the number of tries, the Jedi are blocked at every corner in the Senate in their efforts to better the life of the clones, even in the small things and it’s a terrible possibility that this time will be the same.

“You know what? We should go check ourselves,” Cody decides, because he wants to erase that line, that tension. “Since Boil poisoned the men, we could do it. A little trek in fresh air before breathing the recycled air in the Negotiator again.”

“Oh Cody, I can do it myself,” Obi-Wan offers immediately, “you don’t have a lot of free time-“

“Funny, I would have sworn you didn’t know the concept…”

“I am perfectly capable of knowing when my body needs down time.”

“That’s not what Master Erin said.”

And that’s how they leave the base.

It’s almost noon, birds or other small things Cody can’t honestly identify are chirping, the air is crisp and fresh, and the sky is only slightly purple, with no risk of rain. No matter how many worlds he sees, Cody is still out of countenance on worlds where the combination of gases in the atmospheres and stars emitting other waves than the Kamino sun combine to give entire landscapes strange colours. Most of the time, he’s wearing his helmet which filters the strangeness of it, and it’s only at the end of the battle, when he takes it off, that he realizes everything is weirdly green-tainted.

Also, he’s pretty sure Arc Trooper Fives was lying when he told him once he visited a world on a body guarding mission with his own Jedi were everything was glittering. He’s not putting any money on it, because Skywalker and his men were guarding the Naboo Senator. From what Cody observes, when Naboo people enter the scene, glitter just happens. He also thinks Fives is much better being Rex’s problem than his own.

Most of their supplies have already been packed for retrieval, so Cody and Obi-Wan only took one hover bike out, and for now Obi-Wan is piloting, Cody behind, and the Commander is beginning to think he made a tactical error. The plastoid of his armour is supposed to stop him from feeling Obi-Wan’s warmth, but Cody could swear he can still feel it. For all that the Jedi can seem aloof and strange, nothing makes him remember his General is flesh and blood than encircling a linen-warped waist with his arms.

 The world passes around them, the colours of the trees, the playful course of the clouds in the sky, the peaceful scenery of a wild world, with its inherent qualities and defaults. Cody likes those worlds better, untouched by sentient life. Growing up in the sterility of Kamino, there is something intoxicating in nature running its course, forests giving way to meadows, biotopes decided by climates and geology, and not by a careful hand arranging them for the maximal profits in their exploitation.

Cody understands about the need for fresh territory, with the growth of population, but certainly, certainly the most carefully hidden part of him insists quite vehemently, there must be another solution than the desolation of grey and pollution that is Coruscant. Something else than seeing the poorest people of the Republic living in deplorable conditions, never seeing the fresh green of a new leaf, as the richest ones can sample the delights of nature in carefully constructed reserves?

More and more, Cody is curious about the Agricorps, and their works to restore degraded biotopes, but he had the vague impression, when he asked questions about it to his General, that it’s a difficult subject for him.

Probably, Obi-Wan wanted to go into the Agricorps and they didn’t want him to, for whatever reasons. Cody thinks it’s more glorious to restore nature and to help feed a community than to go to war, like Obi-Wan is doing right now, or to negotiate treaties, which he vaguely thinks is Obi-Wan’s job in time of peace.

Cody’s thoughts drift gently as the journey continues, going from nature’s beauty to the exact shade of Obi-Wan’s hair when he has been under a natural sun for more than a few hours. The way the copper of it becomes richer and richer…. After a little less than two hours, they switch pilots, and Cody does his best to keep his thoughts on track. It would be stupid to crash just because he’s distracted by a flight of birds taking off with the noise of the bikes, no matter how graceful they are. He concentrates on piloting, and not on the presence of Obi-Wan behind him, his arms around Cody, and not in the colours of the forest around them, and the bucolic impression of their little expedition.

The last known position of their wayward probe put it next to a small lake, four hours away on hover bike, at the base of the mountainous regions. If this part of the world was in winter season, the most logical reason for their missing probe would be a mudslide.  Cody told in his reports time and time again that the probes should fly higher, that the field itself is much less friendlier than believed in the labs, but apparently nobody listens to him.

It’s the end of spring on this part of the planet, the probe was probably eaten by a giant fish, or something equally undignified.

They unseat on a single beach, the last known location. No more probe there than dignity and decency in the Senate. Nothing. No blackened hull of the thing if it had exploded under mysterious circumstances, best known as shoddy work in the conception. Not even a trace they could track back.

Cody turns on himself, surveying the landscape. Vegetation, mountains, peaceful lapping of water on the beach, more mountains with their snowy capes, a lot of weird looking trees. For a vacation, it would be peaceful. For missing military equipment, it’s sadly lacking.

“By incredible luck, you wouldn’t sense our missing flying friend in the Force?” Cody asks, because that would simplify things. That would simplify things, so of course the answer is no. As Obi-Wan struggles with putting together the scanner, Cody gathers pieces of driftwood, intending to start a fire. If they have to circle on foot, on uneven ground, to find the probes, nothing says they can’t do it after another meal next to a warm fire. In the harsh reality of war, Cody has learnt to wisely enjoy the few moments of peace, and he would very much like to teach that skill to his General. Obi-Wan is supposed to have decades of experience in him, but apparently he’s not aware that every sentient has their limits.

Cody is less than twenty meters from the Jedi and the hoverbike, facing Obi-Wan, his arms already full of a nice load when he sees Obi-Wan let go of the scanner, which tumbles on the stones, and turns to him, a hand already at his waist, reaching for his lightsaber.

“Cod-“ Obi-Wan yells, but the sound doesn’t reach Cody, as the stones give way under him, shifting in a dip of grey sand and Cody is gulped down like Master Yoda gobbles a small fish.

For a second, he can’t breathe, there is sand everywhere around him, on his skin, in his mouth, infiltrating his armour by the neck, and the wood in his arms squeeze against his ribs. He feels he’s gonna get crushed alive and he struggles with all his strength. Death has always been the end but he wanted to leave in combat. He can feel unconsciousness threatening and just before it would take him, he’s spit up violently and he rolls over with the momentum, the driftwood, the sand, and a few bits of the armour which didn’t survive the experience.

He can see someone lean over him, no more than a silhouette, because it’s so dark, he can feel the sand under his head, and also the head wound and the blood seeping out of it, and he takes a long breath, and it burns, all the way to his lungs, and then he knows no more.

For a long time, Cody floats. He dreams. Or he hallucinates.

He’s on Kamino again and he learns the world is without mercy for him and his brothers.

He’s training and he can feel Alpha-17’s eyes on him, pensive.

He’s very young and he doesn’t understand where the last of his batche went.

He’s older and he’s meeting his first Jedi, General Tii, and she always has a nice word for every clone, but her eyes are terribly sad every step she takes on Kamino.

He’s meeting Rex and their friendship soars instantly.

He’s seeing brothers dying and he’s seeing rescues and the world is a never ending war, but Cody refuses to let that be the only thing his brothers will know. He watches and he checks and he learns and he places his brothers the best he can, and he’s evaluating Jedi and people, and planets and his mind never stops.

Cody wakes up. General Plo Koon is leaning over him and Cody lets relief seize him, until he realizes something is wrong. No eye covers, no breathing masks, and as much as Cody can see in the very low light, the thick leathery hide acting as skin is much lighter than Plo Koon’s. A Kel Dor, but not the Jedi Master that the Wolffe’s pack would follow to the end of the galaxy and beyond.

After a few seconds of his brain going round in circles, it finally stops at a very important point: Kel Dor and humans don’t breathe the same atmosphere, and this Kel Dor is without breathing apparels. Cody goes to put a hand on his mouth in instinctual movement, like he could stop himself from suffocating, but the other lays a hand on Cody’s forearm, his entire body language non-threatening, and says something he can’t understand. That’s when Cody realizes something translucent is surrounding his head, like a bubble inflating and deflating with every breath he takes. He pokes it, very carefully. It’s flexible, slightly sticky and it smells earthy, a little like those mushrooms his General insisted he try once, when he took him to his friend Dex dinner.

Cody takes a careful breath. He doesn’t die in terrible suffering, so he takes another one. The air entering his lungs still seems appropriate for his species. He tries to sit up, moving very slowly to make the stranger understand he’s not attacking, and the Kel Dor helps him.

Seated, he can better observe the place around him. He has been placed on a pallet of light fur, in some sort of carved place, the walls decorated, not in paint, but in carving, and his armour is against one of the walls, carefully stacked. Cody wants to touch his head, where he was hurt, but once again the Kel Dor stops him before he touches the bubble. The only light comes from a small clay bowl full of sizzling oil, where a wick has been adapted. It doesn’t give enough light to help Cody see more than the small room and a crude overture in the stone, leading to more darkness. He can’t even study perfectly the features of the Kel Dor, more than to be sure it’s definitely not Master Koon.

The Kel Dor says something again and Cody makes a frustrated noise.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak your language.” The other doesn’t seem to understand that, so Cody tries Mando’a, with the same result. 

He tries the Galactic Sign Language, no results. 

He knows a few signs of the Alderaan Sign Language, the one from their Southern Hemisphere. Queen Organa taught him a few lessons once during a lockdown in the Royal Palace when he was guarding her, between grumbling about clones’s rights and what her husband better do about it in the Senate, and Cody learns fast. The Kel Dor still doesn’t react in any useful way.

“A common language would be pretty useful to know if I’m your guest or your prisoner,” Cody jokes. Sarcasm now. He’s spending too much time with his General.

He shifts, trying to see if he will be stopped from standing, but the other only helps him, carefully arranging on Cody’s torso the ending of the bubble. Now that Cody studies it more attentively, he’s sure the stuff is organic. It’s like they forced his head and the superior part of his torso into some sort of ring of weird looking mushrooms, the mycelium of one of them extended around his head. If this is producing oxygen for him, he really doesn’t want to disturb it.

The world tilts when he stands up but the Kel Dor pushes a shoulder under Cody’s arm and they go out. When Cody passes his armour, he fetches his blaster, and the other doesn’t stop him. Either he doesn’t understand it’s a weapon, or he doesn’t think Cody will attack him. Her? Them? Are Kel Dol gendered beings?

Exiting the small room, Cody can’t see. Everything is dark around them. He can hear movements and the air around him has the quality of an enormous space. A cave, he would think, but the little lamp his new friend has in his claws is not enough.

“Of course,” Cody remarks, “your eyes are much much better. You don’t need a bank of lamps.” He almost jumps when someone joins them and if his head wasn’t still ringing, he probably would have attacked, but it’s only another Kel Dor, smaller, with a skin more brown. They ask something to the first one, but again, there is no sense for Cody.

He’s guided to a stone bench and the little lamp is pushed into his hands. Kel Dor are going in and out of the little circle and Cody tries to evaluate how many of them there are, but he’s, to his great shame, not good enough to distinguish between the Kel Dor easily. He can isolate one or two who have more evident features for a human, like one missing an arm, but the rest of them, all dressed in a very similar way with some furs identical to those Cody woke up on, and the alien features. Cody feels anger against himself. He judges natural borns for not making an effort to distinguish between the vode, despite their efforts to gain their own identity by tattoos or dyes, and he shouldn’t be victim of the same bias.

Finally, someone sits next to him. Cody studies their face, trying to commit them to memory.

 People don’t seem unfriendly. He’s pretty sure the one he woke up with is some sort of local healer, and that it is this one who came back to him several times. Children even come to him, chattering in their language in a way which makes him think of the younger ones on Kamino, before some of their batches started to disappear and they started to understand what their fate in the world would be. A particularly daring little one climbs onto his lap and Cody looks around, ready to see the parent arrive and take its offspring from the strange being. But this community seems so peaceful nobody sees a problem with the child on the stranger's lap.

The little one shows him his treasure, a cube deeply carved with symbols Cody can’t decipher. Of course. In a world without sun, carving must be a medium and painting, or writing, must be inexistent.

“It’s a very nice cube,” he says to the little one, whose gender he can’t decipher. If Kel Dor have gender. He’s pretty sure he heard once that the biggest number of genders registered for a sentient species was eight, and the smaller zero, but he has no idea for this species.

The child seems pretty happy with the answer, even if they can’t understand it any more than Cody can understand their own opinion, expressed in an uninterrupted flow.

Around him, he can vaguely perceive people going about their day. How calm. How reposing. Nevertheless, peaceful or not, Cody can’t breathe the same atmosphere as them, and the strange organic concoction they put on his head to help will soon find its limits. He’s getting thirsty, for once, and he can’t drink without taking the thing off, which he can't. And that’s not even thinking about his General, who must be trying to reach him by any means the Force gives him.

If he knows Cody is alive.

No, no, he must know.

And even if the Force, whose exact limitations Cody is quite unsure of, even if the Force can’t tell Obi-Wan Cody is alive, Obi-Wan is not exactly a man to just go back to the outpost and declare him dead. He will search and search and search, and bring Cody back alive to his vode, or his body for his brothers to honour.

Cody knows: it had been a terrible row between the Jedi on one part and the Kaminoan and the Senate on another, this refusal to abandon dead clones bodies to the elements.

And, to the surprise of the Senate who was in the habits to bully the Jedi for centuries, the Jedi hadn’t budged. But Cody had seen what it had cost them: the Senate had made them pay, in late important reports who the Jedi needed for the war efforts, on refusal of important supplies, suddenly labelled unessential…

So, Obi-Wan is searching for him at the moment, and Cody needs to go to him. The ringing in his head, present since he woke up, has slightly diminished, and he has walked with more grievous wounds.

The question is now: how to mime exit to the Kel Dor, how to ask for a guide? Because if he has to feel around the cave until he finds an exit, he will, but that would be so much easier.

“Hoping there is an exit into your cave, little one,” he says to the child, who is falling asleep on his lap, “because if I have to drill through the roof to the exterior of the planet, it’s gonna cause breathing problems for your city.”

An adult approaches them, a long plaid in their hands, and they mime Cody putting it around his shoulders. Instead, Cody wraps the little one in it and puts the resulting bundle into the adult’s arms.

“I don’t suppose you could send me to the nearest exit?” He asks, and of course, the Kel Dor doesn’t have an answer.

He takes the little lamp and leaves to explore. He can’t see well more than two meters from the circle of light, and even with it, his eyes are struggling.

Soon, he’s stopped by a wall, which he follows until he finds a low door, with only a curtain. He risks an eye, feeling quite voyeuristic, but he only sees something resembling a storage space, big amphoras against a wall.

He continues to follow the wall, finds another one, loses himself in what is a succession of low houses. Above him, the roof of the cavern is still invisible and he can’t see the walls. He finds another little place with stone benches.

Or is it the same?

No, even underground, Cody is sure of his sense of direction. It’s another one place, and the city is bigger than he thought possible. He’s also walking way too slowly, because of the problem of light and his still ringing head.

“Kriff,” he whispers, sitting down on one of the benches.

“Obi-Wan, please find me,” he whispers before scolding himself. He’s no melodrama maiden, he is perfectly capable of finding the surface again by himself.

A burly Kel Dor approaches him, mushrooms in his claws and says something.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Cody tries to explain. The other sits next to him and gesticulates to the mushrooms helping, he thinks, him to breath, and when Cody doesn’t do anything, he starts placing the ones he brought against the first ones. They seem to merge in a frankly disgusting scene which is probably mushrooms porn.

“Does that mean you need to change them regularly for me to breathe?” Cody asks, despite knowing he won’t receive an answer he can understand.

 To add another problem to the long list Cody is already shouldering on, the cave floor starts to tremble and people start yelling.

People are yelling, and despite the language barrier, Cody can understand the panic with no problems.

The soil beneath his feet grumbles again. There is a sound like a rockslide, and more yells, and terror is the taste at the back of Cody’s throat, because he still can’t kriffin see.

Finally, the trembling is so terrible he’s thrown on his knees and the sound reaches a crescendo as a great light emerges from the rock soil, three hundred meters from where Cody is kneeling. It’s some sort of giant worm, with a maw higher than Cody. It roars and glows even brighter, the bioluminescence of its chitin almost dazzling for Cody himself.

 All around Cody, Kel Dor are yelling and struggling on their feet with great difficulties, as the rock soil is still trembling. The beast roars again and it sounds like a thousand ships taking off at the same time in the confined environment. As Cody is helping a Kel Dor to their feet, the pandemonium reaches an even higher spike as another worm emerges, further than the first, and the quake of the rock sends them flat on their bellies.

Cody really regrets letting Boil distribute his production yesterday, what he wouldn’t give for ten men and a rotary canon right now! Even for Hardcase, who he’s really happy is most of the time Rex’s problem, and his tastes for explosives.

He hoists himself more or less vertical, swearing all he can at the same time. He helps the Kel Dor to their feet again and then assesses the situation.

The lights of the worms let him have a good gaze for the first time at the enormous cavern they are in and the low buildings in it. Behind them he can even see big overtures, probably an entire network of caverns. An entire city in the dark, deep in the soil, protected from the outside world and its atmosphere which the Kel Dor can’t breathe, and from the Republic scanners which never knew they were there.

Protected from the sun, too.

And now that the light has come to them in the form of predators, they are defenceless. Cody can see people trying to flee, with a hand on their eyes, and with no success. By the time Cody has succeeded in approaching the scene of the disaster, at least three Kel Dor have been swallowed.

One of the worms, the closest, roars again and Cody doesn’t lose time: the maw, unprotected by the chitin covering the body, seems like a perfect target.

He raises his blaster and fires.

Another roar, even more deafening, as blood splatters all around in a gorish scene. A good part of the mandible has exploded, but the beast isn’t dead. It strikes, trying to gobble Cody like it did the poor Kel Dor. The difference is that the Commander can see in the light, on the contrary of the first victims. He evades just in time to escape certain death.

He rolls over and raises his blaster a second time, but the angle is worse than the first time, and the shot dampens itself on the chitin with no more effect than darkening it, and enraging the worm even more. 

Again, it tries to kill Cody and the man dances out of range, blessing the hours of training the Jedi gave all of them. It had been the first thing the Jedi had done, because they thought the training the vode had received on Kamino didn’t focus enough on the art of dodging.

Cody never told them it was because the trainers and the Kaminoans thought the vode easily expandable and more useful for a suicide strike. He suspects the Jedi knew, if the way they act around the Kaminoans is proof.

Dodging, advancing, retreating, taking a shot every time he sees an overture, Cody fights, more a reflex than anything, to protect the Kel Dor. He wouldn’t refuse a little help; with spears even if they don’t have other weapons, but the cavern inhabitants are useless. They are not even running away from the worms, full of the terror of death, and the light, which have come in their city.

Nevertheless, the issue of the fight was never a real question. Even hurt and far away from his usual fighting grounds, Cody was bred a warrior and he had honed the skills given to him by his genetic donor all his life. The worm, a female, is in the habit of only fighting other female worms during the mating season for access to the best breeding ponds and to gobble Kel Dor and every animal it could. It never had to fight a sentient being, especially one with a blaster.

The blaster’ shots finally damage the roof of its mouth enough and one of them burns its path to the brain. The beast dies immediately, but the nervous system needs time to receive that message. For a moment, Cody fears the convulsions of the enormous body will cause the entire caves system to collapse on their heads.

When the movements finally stop, he vaults himself over a rock slide, caused by the events, and approaches carefully. The worm is still partially obscured by the rock he emerges from, but Cody can see a good twenty meters of it. He’s bringing back a chitin part to the GAR, because he wants ships protected like that!

A sudden movement to his left makes him turn, but too late. His zoological fascination has caused Cody to make a horrible, rookie mistake, the sort of mistake which makes a rookie never have an occasion to become something other than a rookie.

For a moment, he had forgotten there was a second worm.

He brandishes his weapon, but it’s too late. Only his reflexes save him from being cut in two, but a razor sharp incisor scraps against his armour, parting it like butter and only missing the skin by half a centimetre. The worm has no interest in the Kel Dor, no matter how easy prey they are. It just wants to kill the stubborn little creature who just killed its mother. His blaster clatters on the rock, too kriffin far away. Cody rolls on himself, tries for it, but he already knows it’s too late, when the sound of a lightsaber being ignited announces the arrival of the cavalry, just in time.

Obi-Wan Kenobi arrives on the scene like an armed deux ex machina. He’s wearing Cody’s helmet in order to breath in the cavern and death is burning light-blue in his hand. Rare are the materials which can resist the power of a lightsaber, and Obi-Wan doesn’t take chances with Cody’s life, no matter how he is repelled by the taking of a life, even an animal one. The head of the worm falls on the other side of the body as Obi-Wan is still airborne from one of those improbable jumps Force Sensitive do. The second his feet touch the rock; he’s rushing to Cody, trying to assess his health.

Across the galaxy, Anakin suddenly sits down in the marital bed, sending Padmé, who was asleep across his torso, tumbling into the sheets by the violence of his movements. The vision of a chitinous torso opening, full of meaty juice, dances before his eyes.

“Ani?” The young Senator asks, once he has succeeded in making her put down the blaster she retrieved from even the Force doesn’t know where. Padmé doesn’t do peaceful when she’s woken up abruptly, something he learned quickly in their marriage. Convincing the handmaiden that every noise inside their bedroom wasn’t a murder attempt and that they shouldn’t rush in, weapons drawn, was another interesting adjustment to the married life.

“I just.….I’m not sure…” He tries to grip what woke him up, but it already has disappeared. “I think I’m hungry,” he admits, “sorry to have interrupted your sleep.”

“The droids can make you something,” she suggests, burrowing into the nest of pillows, less prone to sudden shifting.

“Do you think we have insects?” He asks.

****************************

“Cody! Cody, are you alright?”

“Obi-Wan, General, are you hurt?” Cody and Obi-Wan ask at the same time, hands searching, patting the other bodies in gestures less destined to triage of wounds and more to the simple animal need for contact.

“The air of the cavern isn’t breathable for us,” Obi-Wan says, after a few seconds and Cody nods: “I deduced that, but the thing on my head….it’s helping.”

“How did you deduce such a- Oh, um, hello.”

Around them, the Kel Dor have begun to assemble, all of them an arm on their face, trying to protect their eyes.

“Your lightsaber, turn it off,” Cody says and, making something purr in the Commander’s chest, Obi-Wan immediately obeys, no question, no hesitation.

The Kel Dors guide them away from the scene of the carnage. Cody sees a few of them with stone machetes and axes, already working on taking apart the pale flesh of the worms, working from the wounds Cody and Obi-Wan made, as the chitin is too hard on other places of the big bodies.

Cody watches for a few seconds. One of a Kel Dor yanks open the cranial cavity. Cody turns to the other side very quickly, because butchering enormous worms is apparently more than his battle-hardened stomach can take. Nothing should make the noise an axe makes against flesh.

Cody finds his little lamp again. It’s not even extinguished, the events haven’t probably lasted more than ten minutes. The universe is a hard place, thinks Cody, where he could get eaten by any abomination with too much teeth in less time than an oil lamp runs its course.

They sit next to each other on the closest bench and in the halo of the lamp, Cody inspects his General better. He’s covered in stone dust and whatever else disgusting stuff is on his tunic: he probably crawled his way there.

The adrenaline is still burning through Cody, and joy too, as he turns to his General. On the whole, he misses the days life was simpler on Kamino, with no worms for example, but on Kamino, he never heard the sound of a lightsaber and knew, with a certainty so burning it could have well resonated in the Force, that he was saved. There is comfort, in the hard world he’s living in, in the certainty that his General will tear apart entire solar systems to rescue any clones. That all Jedi would. For a clone, raised to be interchangeable, this strong-willed refusal to leave even one of them behind is a balm to the soul.

“You found me,” he says, and he tries to infuse that with professionalism, and fails miserably.

“I will always find you,” Obi-Wan promises. It’s strange to talk to him like that, with Cody’s helmet on his head. Cody hadn’t realized he relied so much on the Jedi’s face to understand him.

“Yes, sir, but for a moment, I confess I thought you would more, avenge me or something.”

Obi-Wan touches his shoulder.

“I’m sorry to have been so long,” he says, “the system of caves proved itself tricky, and the Force insisted I couldn’t just blow up my way inside.”

“That would let the atmosphere on the outside enter,” Cody theorized, “and I think, our hosts….”

Like they have been summoned, two Kel Dor approach them. They are dressed as simply as all the others Cody has seen, but on the bust of the smaller one, there is some sort of ceremonial pectoral and it has a very big difference with everything Cody has seen since stepping into the cave. It’s in metal.

“Obi-Wan”, Cody whispers, “look at that.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t speak the language more than Cody. He can recognize it’s not the actual principal language of Kel Dor, which he has heard before, but no more than that. Nevertheless, it’s less a problem for a Jedi. He can feel in the Force other’s intentions, enough to understand easily that the people here don’t want to harm them, which Cody had deduced himself hours ago, and that they want to bring them to see something.

Cody is very happy to leave the dead bodies of the worms behind them.

And to  General Skywalker eats insects! Bless the Force that Skywalker is Rex’s Jedi.

One cave. Another. Another one.

“How many are there? How big are these caves?'' Cody asks. He’s tired, hungry, thirsty, and more or less ready to go back to camp, thank you very much.

They find a ship, or more, the skeleton of a ship, in the last part of the caves system, the deepest one. It’s less a cave, and more the memory of a crash. The ship has been cannibalized, years after years, of everything useful, to the latest scrap of metal, except for the framework.

“It was probably made with a metal too dense for the meagre set of tools they have,” Obi-Wan theorizes.

“I can’t recognize the type of  ship that is, the form itself is so strange,” Cody remarks, watching it with the eye of a man trained to recognize enemy and ally ships in a nano second in the middle of battle. Obi-Wan is touching the metal with his bare skin, with great reverence.

He always loved old things, his Jedi.

The happiest Cody had seen him was for a protection mission in a dusty archive, on a faraway world. General Skywalker was with them, and the young Ahsoka too, and the intel had been faulty. There had been no attack, Obi-Wan had had his Padawan and GrandPadawan close and safe, and spent his days making amorous noises at poetry treaties centuries old.

“It’s incredibly old. Probably before the foundation of the Republic."

"But that’s….that’s old as kriff."

"During the first time of space travel, ships weren’t as reliable. They probably are the descendants of a crew of explorers. After the crash, staying inside the caves was the only long-term possibility for them, if they hadn’t the means to produce enough respiratory apparatuses. It was the only way to survive for them.  Nevertheless, it stopped anyone from finding them. And little by little, they regressed technically and lost the way to contact the outside."

"Do you really think they would have travelled from their world without a way to breath on other planets?"

"Perhaps it was stocked in a part of the ship lost during the crash. Perhaps it was so long ago, it was long before the Kel Dor knew very few worlds have an atmosphere breathable for them…Every species has the tendency to think the world at large tailored for them.”

They don’t leave immediately. Obi-Wan is of the opinion that Cody is too tired to use the path he himself used to find him. And he’s probably right. Cody’s head is throbbing where he hurt it during his fall, but he doesn’t see how he could get better here, where he can’t eat or drink.

What follows is a game of mime between Obi-Wan and the Kel Dors which Cody won’t forget, ever, no matter how much Obi-Wan asks, and he regrets he doesn’t have a holocamera.

After a time, and an unforgettable time it was, Obi-Wan and he find themselves stashed in a little room, so low they can’t stand. It’s more a bed stuffed inside some sort of structure made in the same weird-looking, weird-smelling mushrooms. Cody takes off the bubble around his head and Obi-Wan takes off Cody’s helmet.

The red head has the worst case of helmet’s hair Cody has seen, ever and Cody can’t stop an unprofessional laugh around his first mouthful of fresh water.

“I don't Not a head made for helmets, do I?” the Jedi smiles, as he tore in two a strange looking loaf of bread.

They fall on the food, famished, and tease each other at the same time. There is water and what Cody thinks is some root vegetables, and flatbread, and some meat he isn’t touching with a ten foot pool, just in case it's giant worm.  

“If you swear to wear armour instead of linen in battle, I swear to the Force I will never mock your hair,” Cody smiles in return, and Obi-Wan makes a face, like he did already wear good, solid protection instead of tunic and leggings and whatever he calls the multiple layers of his Jedi’s clothes.

“I thought….for a moment, I thought…” Obi-Wan stops. It’s rare to see him lost for words, he of the Silver tongue, the Negotiator.

“I’m not dead,” Cody reiterates, because there is no need to beat around the bush. Even risking their lives every day the Force makes, nobody likes the kick of adrenaline when one of your men is missing. It never becomes normal. It never should.

“And yet, for a second I thought you were. When I saw the earth opening under your feet and gobbling you. And when I arrived during your battle, the Force trumpeting in my heart about the mortal danger you were running to.”

“The Kel Dor were pretty useless against those things. Couldn’t let them get eaten like that. Not when they rescued me and helped me.”

“I know. I know. And I would have done exactly the same thing.”

Obi-Wan sits on the bed, less gracefully than he usually does. From where he’s leaning against the mushroom wall, Cody stares. He can see the lines around his mouth, and after his late-night conversation with Master Quinlan Vos, he knows they aren’t from laughing. He can see the lines at the edges of the eyes, discreet for now, a little more present every day. He can see the first traces of grey on the temples, simply a trace of silver in the red mane…. He’s, almost, sure there was no grey at the beginning of the war, he has seen the holos of Obi-Wan against Prime, against Jango, all those years ago, on Kamino.

Obi-Wan is burning too bright, burning himself.

And Obi-Wan isn’t the only one not getting younger. The accelerated aging isn’t exactly good for Cody’s health, starting with his knees.

One day, he won’t be quick enough for the next giant, bioluminescent man-gobbling worm. Or Obi-Wan will be too tired against Grievous. Since they met, an assignment Commander- General decided by Alpha-17 himself, their life has been full of Separatist assassins, murderous fauna, Sith assassins, murderous geology, Separatist assassins pretending to be Sith assassins, and Sith assassins pretending to be Separatists assassins, brain-washed murderous Senators, murderous flora, murderous black holes, and one time a murderous sentient ship.

The whole galaxy is conspiring to kill clones and Jedi, for what Cody can see.

If his math is right, he survived today the sixty-third attempt on his life from Fate since he left Kamino. Obi-Wan was there for most of them, and Cody was around for the latest attempts on Obi-Wan’s life.

And one day, it will stop.

Cody opens his mouth before he can talk himself out of it. Life is short and he’s a soldier slave, he doesn’t have the luxury to wait for another time.

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he says, and Obi-Wan looks like he has been whacked on the skull with a heavy object. It’s not exactly his best face, mouth round in surprise, and Cody only feels affection. Then Obi-Wan’s lips curve into a smile like a sun, blinding, warm, and the Jedi touches the side of Cody’s face.

The Jedi touches the side of Cody’s face.

He doesn’t speak. Not yet. His head against Cody, his breath sharing Cody’s own air, they close their eyes, and Cody experiences the strange idea that he’s detaching himself from his brothers.

For the first time, there is something in his hands, or well, in his heart, that he doesn’t want to share with Wolffe or Boil, or even Rex, who has become his closest brother.

He doesn’t want to hide Obi-Wan from them, but he wants….

He hasn’t the words. Not yet.

But, with Obi-Wan at his side, he hopes he will learn them.

And he hopes his brothers too can find something, or someone, so precious they need to share the joy of knowing it, but also to keep it to themselves, like he wants to keep to himself the smile of Obi-Wan when Cody tells “I love you”, or the small freckles at the side of his mouth, visible only so, so, so close.

The first “I love you” Cody hears from Obi-Wan is whispered against his lips.

The first kiss tastes of the bread offered by the Kel Dor, of the cave’s dust and it’s perfect.

They’re still in the same situation, two exhausted men, in a cave full of toxic gases, only protected from them by some unknown mushrooms exuding oxygen, and Cody feels like he could take over the entire Republic. He sleeps curved around Obi-Wan, like two parts of the same whole, touching as much as they can, and if the headache from his head wound brings Cody to the surface a few times during their nap, he feels rejuvenated after it.

After, the Kel Dor help them find the surface and Cody and Obi-Wan leave their new friends, hand in hand, quite happy to find back the sun and the sky, the fresh air of a late morning…and almost all their men crawling around their area, trying desperately to find them.

Obi-Wan keeps Cody’s hand in his and a few brothers less intimidated than others by Cody’s glare, embarrassed and proud at the same time, even bumped their big brother’s shoulders as a sign of congratulation. Obi-Wan immediately goes red, like he’s a teen on his first crush, and not a seasoned Jedi Master whose touch can bring life or death. 

Cody finds it adorable. 

*******************

It’s the middle of the night shift on the Negotiator, but Cody is still working on a different time zone, so he lets Obi-Wan sleep peacefully in their shared bunk. Their shared bunk! A notion that still makes him giddy like a shiny at their first kiss, even a month after getting together. They are taking things pretty slow, or in the wrong order, Cody isn’t sure, they sleep in the same bunk every night, but haven’t got very far in term of sex, and this perfect, because this is them, and not some sort of artificial list of relationship’s milestone. And Cody already knows, deep in his soul, that he will never love a man like he loves this one, even if Obi-Wan is killed tomorrow, and he’s sure it’s the same for Obi-Wan. 

The Negotiator is in route to join with the Steadfast, so General Koth is on board after a conjoined mission where Obi-Wan and him gave Cody new grey hairs. He finds him easily in the mess, demolishing a healthy serving. The stamps outside the rations are a different colour than the ones Cody and his brothers eat.

“Can I join you?” Cody asks.

“Of course,” Eeth Koth immediately answers and the chair on the other side of the table moves on its own, offering itself for the Commander. Cody arches a brow.

“Don’t tell Obi-Wan,” the General jokes, “or I will endure a lesson for frivolous use of the Force.”

Cody sits and they stay silent for a moment, the General apparently happy to let him come to his questions in peace, continuing to eat his meal. Despite being tailored for a different species’ nutritional needs, it looks exactly as unappetizing as most rations Cody is used too. 

“General Ke-“

“You can call him Obi-Wan in front of me,” Eeth Koth interrupts. “There is no need to be ashamed of what binds you.” He grimaces. “Force knows we will all need all the comfort we can get before everything is set and done in this war.”

“Obi-Wan and I, we had a bit of an adventure, last month.”

“From what I heard, you have a lot of them.”

“Yes but….it was…it was the first time I was around civilians. Normal people, I mean.”

“Not Jedi and not clones, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Putting apart the fact that you are normal people, and that we are too, that it is a slippery slope to consider us different, because then the rights…”

“I know you’re fighting for us in the Senate. I know. That isn’t the question…I just mean. They were civilians. Even more civilian than usual. I have only met natural borns who are Jedi and Senators and politicians or some sort of official. This was different. And I realized how little we know about the world outside the GAR. And how little we know about societies, and species who aren’t us. They raised us for war only…” Cody was almost trembling with it. Eeth Koth put a comforting hand on his wrist and Cody continued:

“Obi-Wan, I don’t want Obi-Wan to become my teacher. It’s not his role. But if we want to have a chance outside the war, us, the vode, we need to learn about the outside world. I wanted to ask you if there was something…a way…”

Eeth Koth had totally abandoned his meal and Cody could feel the weight of his gaze, the same gaze as Obi-Wan, transcending their species.

“Let me call a few people,” the Jedi said.

**********

Years later, Cody thinks a lot about that moment. Eeth Koth joined the Force during the war and Cody has to remember this moment for the two of them, this simple moment around a table, this moment which became one of the tipping point of his life. Not the too numerous almost-death, not the many battles, not even his first kiss with his dear Obi-Wan. This moment, in Cody’s mind, is the one which changed his fate. 

Eeth Koth died not even two months after that, one among a lot of Jedi who gave their life, alongside the vode, for a chance for the galaxy and its people. Not that people are particularly thankful about it: the discovery of the Sith engineering the two sides of the conflict rocked the easy confidence of the Republic in the solidity of its system.

Democracy is never forever, if people don’t work for it.

No, democracy is only saved for now, and never will it be saved forever and ever. But that shock to the system is treated by the most intelligent of the bunch like a chance to seize. All across the reunited Republic people are working hard, entering politics, creating organizations to teach the population, to hold those in power accountable…. 

It’s a sad thing so many vode, jedi and civilians had to die and suffer for that. It’s even sadder to think it didn’t almost happen. The Republic almost burned, the Sith almost won, the beloved former Padawan of Obi-Wan Kenobi almost helped murder Mace Windu, Master of the Order...Mace Windu isn’t exactly the type to hold a grunge, but Obi-Wan still needed months after that to stay in his presence, the guilt that should have eaten Anakin transfered. 

Honestly, if Obi-Wan forgave Anakin much too quickly, and Windu too, the vod needed a much longer time. Skywalker had almost helped the man who had engineered them as slave soldiers, the man who would have wiped out their free will, the poor part of it they still had. The vod had needed a long time to forgive, and would never forget, but Cody still has the desagreable impression Rex’s anger is a most important consequence in Skywalker’s mind that the almost death of the democratic system and the almost rise of a dictatorship. 

Sometimes, late in the night, Obi-Wan stays awake, something lost in his eyes than mediation never totally makes disappear, and Cody is sure that day figures in a good part in his dark thoughts. 

Obi-Wan, and Cody too, think about what could have been. If Cody hadn’t been there that day, in the Temple, who would have been in charge of keeping an eye on Skywalker in the Council Room? No one, that who. Because Skywalker was a Council member, if a very fresh one, and there wasn’t on hand a Jedi Master with enough years to take a look at a Council Member and decide he needed baby-sitting. All those Masters were deployed, or in beds in the halls of healing. But Cody, Cody was there, and since he and his General had become an item, he had taken sometimes to act, despite what his logical brain told him, not like a soldier Anakin could order around, but like an exasperated step-father. Exasperated and concerned, as the war advanced and Anakin seemed less and less attached to his morals. 

 Who would have followed him to the Senate when Skywalker had refused to wait anymore, and tackled him at the last minute? Who would have stopped Anakin Skywalker from doing something as tremendously stupid as to save a Sith pitted against Mace Windu?

And all of that had been possible because Jocasta Nu had taken the first excuse she could to keep Cody on Coruscant that month. A well-known linguist was visiting for a series of talks, and she thought he could be a good professor for Cody, and more importantly that well-know linguist had enough political power to obtain permission for a clone following his courses.

And the Republic had lived, because Cody loved linguistics, or more because he had loved the little he understood of it at the time.

But Cody refuses to let the horrors of those years of war, and his terrible first years on Kamino, define him. He prefers to think, again and again, to that moment with Eeth Koth.

Cody didn’t know exactly what he wanted. His accelerated childhood, raised for war and war only, hadn’t given him the words for it. He just knew that for his brothers and he to have a chance after the war, they needed more. Or even more terrible horrors would certainly befall them. Soldiers without wars aren’t useful anymore, and tools with no use are only fated to be dismantled for parts.

Following Eeth Koth’s call, Jocasta Nu and her assistants had descended on the GAR with determination, great efficiency and anger that they hadn’t thought about that themselves. By dint of foraging the Jedi Archives, and every friendly archives of the galaxy, for legal precedent to help the Vode, they had forgotten all answers weren’t found between the terabytes of a datapad.

Master Nu is seated right next to Obi-Wan in the public and trying very hard to pretend her eyes aren’t misty, as Cody receives his diploma, earning himself the title of Doctor in linguistics, for his work with the forgotten Kel Dor city, right next to the first Kel Dor of said city to have made the jump to Coruscant.

Cody isn’t the first clone to finish his thesis. Not surprising:  he left the GAR years later than some of them, refusing to leave before his lover, who had been pressed into service as long as the Senate could justify it, and even longer. With Anakin leaving the Jedi Order, Obi-Wan was certainly the most famous member of it for the public, and it was as if the Senate tried to make him pay the Jedi’s refusal to abandon the vode. But Cody was the first clone Jocasta Nu talked with, when she arrived to try to help the vode not in pleading that they shouldn’t be slave soldiers, but in demonstrating they were so much more.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to leave the GAR officially, that honour went to Rex who followed Ashoka to Orto Plutonia, the first clone to be officially accepted as a member of the Jedi Corps. For what Cody understands, his life consists of almost losing his toes ten times a month, hunting with the Taz and flirting desperately with every passing skirts, as Ahsoka flirts desperately with her own Senator and supervises Republic-Taz contacts. Obi-Wan and Cody went once during permission, and Cody swore to himself that the next time Rex and Ahsoka wanted to see them, it could be on a tropical atoll.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to find a job outside of the Jedi orbit. That honour went to Fives and Tup, who left together and chose the most pacifist world they could. “We were almost separated once, never again. I’m not touching a weapon again in my life” Fives had said to Cody that day, watching Tup, busy hugging Rex, with something ferociously possessive in his eyes. Now, they have a nursery of succulent plants on a small island, in the south hemisphere of Alderaan, and Cody still isn’t sure if they are the best friends in the world, or one of those pairs who took brothers in a quite different sense, and frankly, he doesn’t care. There is a small potted thing they sent as a gift on Cody’s desk, with red undertones and white flowers once a year, but the former Commander has a black thumb, and only Obi-Wan’s careful nursing in the Force saved the poor thing already thrice.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to enter academia, that honour went to Waxer, who now teaches mathematics on Mandalore and is busy reintroducing Fett’s genes into the population with a long string of ex-partners, who still like him very much and with who he raises an army of children, at least three of them bearing a name honouring Waxer.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to marry, that honour went to Jesse and Cody isn’t touching that choice of spouse with a ten-foot pool.

Cody wasn’t the first in a lot of things. But it’s ok. He doesn’t have to lead his brothers anymore. He doesn’t have to bear responsibilities for death and help who didn’t come, and for the horrors that were their life.

The vode are free and Cody can only be a brother like any other.

He can be only Obi-Wan’s husband, even if Obi-Wan jokes that now, it’s more him that will be only the husband of Doctor Cody Kenobi, his arm candy in gatherings.

[laadgovernorandsankadevi]

IPK Rewatch: EP 03; Urs

Yesterday's highlight, the pearls scattering and then Gupta's uttering the words of Khushi being a foster child, an adopted child in the family started with Khushi asking Arnav, "Aap ki didi ke bare mein koi aise bole, toh aap kya bolenge ge!"

Yesterday, Arnav simply threatens by showing her the destruction he can cause when someone even utters the name of his sister with the idea of malice or ill thoughts. Today, the reason for Arnav to truly scatter Khushi's life begins.

We see the episode opening with Khushi recalling the harsh words she's heard the night before and preparing to light something on fire. I absolutely love the inclusion of Arnav's taunt of status and wealth in the recollection. Arnav made an impression on her and as much reason Khushi has to dislike him, their is no denying that like the magnetic pull Arnav felt towards the girl whom he refused to let go until she removed her hand from his collar, Khushi also felt his pull towards her. Arnav is here to stay in her mind.

The implication that Khushi might take a drastic step aligns with how every single action of Khushi can appear more exaggerated than it is only because of who Khushi is. In this instance, we see the unraveling of Khushi to some extent. She doesn't claim to be put together, and we slowly begin to understand that how Khushi's strength lies in her ability to embrace her vulnerabilities and mistakes. The moment she hides something is when she becomes weak.

While making jalebis, there are I believe prices next to food items on the board. 16, 7, 10. I can't read Hindi so I won't go much into it but every single shot in IPK to include numbers, colours, and even ambiguous dialogue had something layered behind it. I absolutely loved the metaphorical alignment the script used.

I also loved the shape of Khushi's jalebis. With unfathomable amount of ruckus caused, the jalebis reflect her inner turmoil. We later see the significance of it when she ends up writing Arnav's name in jalebis. The growing pile of it is also reflective of how much distress she finds herself in and feels responsible for.

Returning to Lucknow hasn't been fun for Arnav's PTSD, however for now he's able to think clearly enough to know that the news of his show being ruined shouldn't be coming out to the masses. For someone who is private, hard to reach, only shows up in selective events, and keeps a close circle, a major company event being ruined with his presence there, and him being involved is a scandal for AR and can tarnish his own reputation at being a perfectionist. Funny, how few words of Khushi completely eat away at any semblance of brain for whatever time-being she is present.

Anjali is still lurking around, and she's a catalyst in us understanding Arnav outside of ASR. His anger is fake. A shield. Being ASR for the world protects him in his own eyes. Also bitwa eating oats when he's on his own but indulging whatever his family puts out on the dinner table whenever they are around shows that even if he disagrees, he respects their choices. At her insistence, and prioritising her comfort, Arnav agrees to go to the dargah in her place. Unintentionally it is Anjali and Shyam who bring Khushi and Arnav closer to each other. Yesterday's mishap included alluding to Anjali's presence by Khushi. Today, Anjali who only wishes for her Chotte's happiness has sent him on the way to meet the girl who'll be his world for the second time. Shyam's relevancy doesn't find its footing without Anjali being the reason for Arnav's wrath unleashed on Khushi.

Back here Khushi betiya has been in full swing with Jalebi Everests. There are three stacks in sight.

Khushi strives to make things right for her family. Even on the two occasions when they remind her of her orphaned status, she truly doesn't give up on their love and acceptance and finds a way back. It's symbolic of how Khushi as a person rarely gives up on love when it means something to her. She is willing to do anything which translates into her rather crooked moral compass which is also ruled by what bring happiness to those she loves. After all, the internalised message is "Khoon ke rishte se, Dil ke rishte bare hote hain!" Shashi assures Khushi of the blessings in disguise. I love his validation of her intentions. It is clear throughout the series, that if Khushi walks with her head high even after some of her decisions appear misplaced, it's because of Shashi's upbringing that she finds herself confident in her own ability to manoeuvre because she believes in the purity of her intentions and hopes that Devi Mayyian is able to understand the reasons behind her actions just as much as she does even if no one else does so.

I find that besides Shashi, occasionally Payal, the only other person to truly understand Khushi for her intentions is Arnav. While he eventually goes on to find the chaos she leaves behind her amusing, his respect for her cements through his understanding of how her moral compass is governed by love and intentions to do good for others rather than herself.

If Arnav is Anjali's Chotte, then Khushi is Shashi's Chutki. Ah, how I wish Shashi would've manage to recover somewhat by the end of the show. His and Khushi's relationship is a beautiful one.

The support of their neighbours seems to put Garima and Bua ji at ease a lot more than earlier when people were gossiping about the returned barat. One of the old ladies in this scene is also present in Bua ji's Laxminagar and kisses Arnav on the forehead. Ah, ipk truly had it's moment with recycling of background actors.

Khushi tends to stand behind people who support her when she is being vilified or attacked from all sides. She moves behind Garima when the goons try to come after her. In this scene with the neighbours, she stands behind Shashi. The only other person she seeks protection from besides her parents is Arnav.

Gupta gang on their way to the urs have their car stalled whereas Arnav directs his driver to drive faster. A contrast in the way the Raizadas and Guptas world works.

As Khushi steps out of the car, a red chunni flies on her face. Blessings all around.

Arnav on the other hand, I think, he sensed the difference. He even goes onto remember the dupatta on his face. This episode is the first instance of Khushi nicknaming Arnav, Laad Governor.

Throughout the entire Dargah sequence, the lines "muramat kardo muqadar ki maula!" repeat over the two when they are in the same frame. Their fates intertwined are going to find solace in each other, find their ability to heal with each other. Poetic!

Also, as they both are walking towards the shrine, they are offered blessings which Khushi readily accepts however Arnav rejects. It's an interesting juxtaposition from Khushi rejecting a lot of Devi Mayyian's signs of accepting Arnav as her protector and companion where as it doesn't take Arnav long to understand the effect Khushi's had on his ability to think since the very first moment.

Also, it's hilarious how she's asking to be able to see him once again so she can make him realise how wrong he'd been and all the while he's sitting right across from her. 

While Arnav sits silently, making no prayers, Khushi prays for her sister's happiness. But it's after this moment that their journey really starts. For now, it's been the divine stars, the blessings, the coincidences. With this confrontation between the two, Arnav turns the coincidences into a string of events he begrudgingly has to take credit for. Of course Devi Mayyian aided in these decisions, but ASR wanted to play god as well, so here we are;

He recognises her voice. If it's wishful thinking on my part that he sensed her presence and her dupatta, then this one is no wishful thinking. Bitwa is finely attuned to betiya's voice and presence, and he realises that his sense beforehand weren't betraying him. He isn't surprised to see her, she IS.

Khushi's who just vowed to make this man realise his mistake runs after he tells her to throw the mannat ki chabi he dropped. We all can go on and on about the significance of this key because it plays such a huge role in Khushi's ability to practice her Haq and ownership over whatever simmers between them but most importantly I found this scene as a foreshadowing of how Arnav treats his happiness. He goes to the mazar on the insistence of his sister. He trusts his feelings about Khushi later onwards using his sister's words as a backdrop except that once Khushi falls from his eyes (Shyam & terrace), he begrudgingly ties her to himself mostly because even in pain he finds himself to be the only one to have the right to hurt her. And here he doesn't care for whatever the key might hold. Khushi who doesn't give up when it come to love whether of family's, or his', holds on to the love just like how later onwards, Khushi holds onto the love that was between them whereas Arnav does his best to to remove memory he possibly could.

Arnav Singh Raizada, running 10-15 mins late to his meeting stops for this girl when we just saw him a day earlier walking past people he didn't care to answer. But he stops here. Arnav stopping to listen to this girl, heaving and panting with her hair falling off pins goes to show how important Khushi has become.

Also, god, Khushi truly does come as a storm. Rushing past she tells people she'll come back to apologise. 

[bigskydreaming]

So just out of curiosity, what inspired the whole Beacon Bay idea? What kind of sharks and dolphins are they? This entire thing is very intriguing to me and I can't wait to see more.

So first off, anyone who’s ever played soundingboard to my original stuff like Moukie or Adam can attest to the fact that I’m ocean obsessed, so there’s pretty much nothing I’m interested in that isn’t a mere two or three steps removed from an ocean/merfolk/sea witch AU in my head. Gimme anything and like, five minutes, and I can make it ocean themed. Space operas included. I grew up near the ocean, been surfing for ages though of course I haven’t in years, blah, but like. I’m a big fan of the deep blue sea. Its just....neat. ghaskfhalkfhla

So I’ve always had a bunch of ocean-set concepts. This particular AU came about from like, smashing a couple of them together to preserve them when my plans for doing original stuff with them fizzled out, at least for the time being. Cuz the other thing about me is the way some people like, take their fanfic and file off the serial numbers to turn it into original novels, I more often do the reverse, lmao. When I have something I can no longer do something with original-content-wise, for whatever reason, but I still like the idea, I turn it into fanfic so I can still play around with it whenever I want and like, have purpose to that, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting time by still ‘indulging’ in that concept or whatever.

Like my Batfandom fic By Lost Ways, as I’ve mentioned before....that actually started out as an original high fantasy novel set in my ‘Tales of the Citadel’ shared universe. BUT the setting ended up being similar enough to a sci-fi project I wanted I to move forward with, ‘Waveriders’ (the one with the sky pirates and the ATLA-style benders only instead of evoking the four classical elements, waveriders could each ‘hack’ a different kind of wavelength, that one) like....basically, the projects FELT similar enough in setting and various superficial elements that I started to feel derivative of myself moving forward with both, so I picked Waveriders and then recycled the setting and a lot of the plot of the sky-set fantasy novel for fanfic, just for fun.

Same thing here, though Beacon Bay is basically the mash-up of two different shelved original projects. Basically, its the plot of a CW-style show about teen sirens and the sea witch making like the Fagin to their Oliver Twists, from a pilot I wrote years ago.....it got some interest but I refused to make it less gay because lol have you met me, so it ultimately never went anywhere but I still liked the plot. 

And then remember the werewolf books I mentioned awhile back, that had the mongoose shifters in them? LOL. Yeah, so I’d written two and a half novels in that series and had this whole expansive worldbuilding of twelve different shifter clans each with their own innate magic, patron deity/creator, etc, but all my agent and editor contacts at the time were like yeah sorry, shifters are over for now, and I was like wow, can’t believe cancel culture’s real and publishing cancelled werewolves, wtf, rude, and then I was like eh, still wanna play in this universe especially with the dolphins and shark shifters which I never even really got to in those books, so I’m just gonna air-lift them out of that and drop them smack in the middle of my CW siren plot and fanfic away to my heart’s content and call that ‘being productive’ when I feel like it.

Anyway, found family was a big theme of those books and the world-building I did there in general, because again, have you met me, I’m not predictable or anything (shhh, the word is consistent), and one of my initial things there was I wanted the various shifter types to all have innate magic, because for literally no real reason that I can discern other than Whimsy, I have always been Team Werewolf in vampires vs werewolves, and I was tired of werewolves always being by default the underdogs in those narratives. Even if that does make for a good pun.

SO, I wanted to come up with werewolf magic that felt natural and organic to werewolves, like nothing too flashy or obscure, but that would make them a legitimate threat even to other supernatural creatures. And I made it so each of the shifter types were granted an active and a passive magic by the god that created their type of shifter, and with werewolves, their active magic was that of the pack gestalt. I took the idea of ‘their whole is greater than the sum of their parts’ that TW kinda briefly touched on when presenting (but never really doing much with) the idea that the more wolves in a pack, the stronger that pack was.....and I decided okay what if being part of a pack upped stats all across the board AND all shifters have a SLIGHT innate resistance to magic, being innately magical beings themselves? 

So a werewolf pack, with enough pack members, would thus not only be formidable in strength, speed, senses and speed of healing....but compound that innate shifter resistance to magic, which in a single shifter is negligible, like, just enough to make them slightly harder to track with magic or curse or whatever.....but in a whole werewolf pack, that adds up to make the pack effectively immune to foreign magic. Vampires can’t compel them, demons can’t possess them, witches can’t curse them, etc. So a lone werewolf, not part of a pack, is formidable, but nothing another supernatural being can’t take on. But a lone werewolf who IS part of a pack....different story entirely, because now most other supernatural beings, no matter what their USUAL strengths, are reduced to taking on that werewolf hand to hand, as their own supernatural gifts or spells or whatever, like, aren’t gonna do them any good against these particular foes. And werewolves are USED to fighting with just brute physical strength and attributes, which gives them the edge against opponents who are more used to being able to fall back on magic in battle.

But as much as I like sticking to a theme, I like to diversify that theme where possible, so when it came to the other shifter types, I wanted to similarly come up with ways where ‘the whole would be greater than the sum of their parts’ but in like, entirely different ways.

So with dolphin shifters, their ‘passive magic’ (in quotes cuz that’s not quite the right word for it but whatever) is that they’re all empaths, with their more active magic being weather manipulation. Their empathy is a two-way street....they project emotions as well as just feel other peoples’, which ties into the fact that their patron deity was Dionysus. Dolphin parties....legendary. But in an extremely wild, dangerous and Bacchanalian kinda way. In terms of Beacon Bay specifically, this is a bit of a problem for the BB dolphins, as the closest thing they had to an official Triton (the dolphin shifter version of an Alpha) was Peter, but they were like nope, not loving this guy, and kinda drove him out of town in the AU S1 backstory of this ‘verse, which means Scott and the others are kinda just making it up as they go along, and don’t really know the ins and outs of BEING dolphin shifters. (Derek is....elsewhere, in this. Mostly). 

So bottom line is they have reputations around school for being loud obnoxious goofs and trouble-makers, constantly playing hooky and such, but its because they don’t really know HOW to safeguard against spilling their emotions onto everyone around them so they try and err on the side of being the life of the party whenever possible, as that’s better than the alternatives in their opinion. And when they’re just having bad days and bumming hard, the whole pod will just skip school and glomp around the bumming pod member whilst self-caring, rather than like, accidentally bum out the entire school.

But their weather manipulation magic is where the gestalt idea comes into play with them, as I love weather manipulating powers, but I didn’t want to make them all Ororo Munroe, y’know? Only Ororo Munroe can be Ororo Munroe. Don’t make me scoff. I’ll do it. I’ll scoff so hard. SO I went with the idea of weather control married to manipulating storms via song and was like, okay what if a dolphin pod is like, a symphony of shifters. 

Basically, its like each individual dolphin shifter is a single voice in a chorus, and there’s magical equivalents of being a baritone, an alto, etc. Like, none of them can whip up a storm on their own. Its more that each of them can summon or conjure a PIECE of a storm with their song, with it being different for each of them....symptomatic of their magic as an expression of them as an individual. So for instance, Scott’s song is ‘tuned’ to lightning. He can call down a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.....but he can’t summon so much as a drop of rain to save his life. Literally. Its an actual plot point at one point. Whereas Isaac’s song is all about calling down rain, Boyd’s is more of an arctic wind, and Erica’s kinda summons a pressure front that in harmony with the two of theirs can whip up a mean waterspout. And then Corey’s all about conjuring fog banks with low visibility while Liam can whistle up a strong, gale-force wind but sucks at using his song as a precision instrument. Etc, etc. But the real magic is when they all use their voices and magic in concert....as a group, they can summon huge magical thunderstorms.

Also, one thing I love about using different kinds of shifters is the opportunity to explore enhanced supernatural senses that aren’t just keen sight, smell or hearing. So the dolphin shifters aren’t like wolf shifters in being able to detect chemosignals or anything like that....in fact, their sense of smell isn’t much different from anyone else’s. But they do have an ability to use what’s effectively supernatural echolocation even above water, and their sight is adapted for optimal viewing underwater, making them particularly good at seeing in the darkness even on land. 

(Also, related but somewhat tangential to both the shifter senses and dolphin ‘voices’....all dolphin shifters have a strong talent for mimicry, but this isn’t technically a form of magic, more just a combination of their control over their voice and their keen senses of pitch, etc).

The shark shifters, on the other hand, have some of the keenest senses of all shifters. Not only is their sense of smell even better than a werewolf’s, they’re sensitive to changes in pressure, for one thing. Which means on land, they can even feel changes in atmospheric pressure.....so like, the shark shifters of Beacon Bay could be in math class and then ‘feel’ a sudden drop in air pressure and thus even before some strange weather phenomenon occurs, they’re groaning like ugh fucking A, what the hell did the damn dolphins do now.

Also, their magnetic field perception is such that they can kinda ‘sense’ when people are around, just by being aware of the approaching magnetic field of another living being.

And then with the sharks, I was looking for ways to lean into the associations we have with sharks and blood, but subvert them to be less macabre and more communal. And another big theme of mine in general is like, I am DETERMINED to go to my grave shouting at the top of my lungs “Its THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT IS THICKER THAN THE WATER OF THE WOMB, NOT BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER, HOW DID PEOPLE GET THAT SO BACKWARDS ITS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF HOW ITS USUALLY STATED!”

Like, that’s just...HUGE pet peeve of mine. Its like nails on a chalkboard, lmfao, that drives me nuts. That phrase is usually cited by people using it to express like, the idea that there’s no greater force than family, specifically BIOLOGICAL, ‘blood’ relations, but its literally meant to be the exact opposite, that the blood of CHOSEN bonds, of covenants, of vows or promises, is a greater force than the water of the womb, ie being born of the same womb, as in biological siblings. The entire point of the phrase is biology ain’t shit, family is what we choose. And somehow it got turned ENTIRELY around.

(Note: Okay, so for the record, its not ‘somehow’, there’s actually a very clear reason for why that particular interpretation gained so much momentum, and that’s because for a long time it was conflated with an old German proverb from like a thousand years ago that basically translates to “kin-blood is not spoiled by water.” Which basically was meant to mean that nothing can ‘dilute’ blood relations, not time, not distance, not water. So that phrase DOES correspond to the idea that ‘blood is thicker than water.’ Problem is, there isn’t a direct trace from that particular proverb TO most USAGES of ‘blood is thicker than water,’ which when you throw in the OTHER phrase, which in its entirety is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” what you end up with is a lot of people SAYING that one when they actually MEAN to say ‘kin-blood is not spoiled by water’ and that’s where the meanings get switched. But I fucking digress. Per usual).

Anyway. So combine that particular pet peeve with my found family fixation AND the fact that this is about magic and magic means I can do whatever the hell I want, fuck your biological connections mwahahaha.....I decided to base shark magic on the idea of the blood-ties of family....but CHOSEN blood-ties, as in blood of the covenant ties.

What I mean is okay, so it first of all just made sense to me to have shark shifter communities be heavily focused around adoption, because like....let’s be real, shark shifters going around biting people to change them into shifters, and then people magically healing from....shark bites....was going to attract a lot more attention than people turning after being attacked by other types of shifters. Not to mention the fact that not only are shark attacks always big news, part of why they’re big news is because they’re actually pretty rare.

So, shark shifter communities were never really gonna propagate via lots of random shark shifter attacks turning people. So the way they DO expand and grow is by, well, family. Both biological AND adoption...as well as of course shark shifter communities taking in people who ARE attacked by rogue shark shifters, when that does happen. 

But bottom line is, there’s an additional element in play in shark shifter communities, beyond just the gene pool....and that’s like, a magical tidepool of talents, let’s call it. Because I do love me some alliteration. But also tidepool of talents is just a cool phrase, IMO.

Anyway, the main part of shark shifter magic, and how THEIR whole is greater than the sum of their parts, is that any shark shifter can draw upon or channel the talents, skillsets or knowledge of anyone else in their communal family. And whenever that family gets added to, the talents, skillsets and knowledge of the new addition gets added to the pot, so to speak. So shark shifters are kinda all like Rogue, if Rogue’s focus was less on the superpowers of other people and more on things like Beast’s scientific knowledge, Cyclops’ strategic skills or Cable’s weapons expertise.

And then their ‘passive magic’ is a form of psychometry whenever they come into contact with blood. By touching even just a drop of someone’s blood, they can get a vision of how that blood was spilled or even get a sense of where the person who spilled it is now.

As to the types of sharks and dolphins they all are, for that I went with the thing about the shape you take reflects the person you are.....all the shifters here are full shifters, and there’s no genetic component to their shifting, its purely magical, so like....just because Peter turned the various dolphins of BB doesn’t mean they all turn into the same kind of dolphin he was. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of dolphin he was on account of I don’t really care tbh, lol. Whereas Erica’s an Atlantic spotted dolphin, Liam’s a pygmy killer whale which looks like an orca just tiny in comparison and is actually a dolphin, and I found that combination of factors hilarious, etc, etc.

Same thing with the shark shifters. Even among biological relations, there’s a ton of variety of shark types. Like the twins aren’t even the same type...Ethan’s a blue shark and Aiden’s a bull shark, Tracy’s a tiger shark and Hayden’s an angel shark. Danny’s actually a throwback to an unnamed prehistoric shark, not Megalodon big but big enough to shut up Jackson when he goes on about being a great white shark. Shark and crocodile shifters are the two oldest shifter clans, old enough that literal dinosaurs fall under the umbrella of their shifter type, and thus occasionally show up even in modern generations.

[uraharashouten]

Anonymous said:

What is the long game Urahara aims to play? o:

I’ve been wondering that myself for awhile, Anon. But I think two places we can look to find clues as to his motives and end goals are his research and his chosen champions.

His Research

First, consider where he’s been directing his research efforts over the past century and change: Blurring boundaries. The Hougyoku was an avenue he used to explore erasing the boundaries between Hollow and Shinigami, before he deemed it too dangerous. After that, he turned his attention to blurring the lines between Human and Shinigami. And to that end -- creating artificial life.

Exhibit A: Isshin’s gigai. Isn’t it interesting that, when Isshin wanted to save Masaki, Kisuke already had this human-shell gigai for him to step into? No doubt it was an upgrade from the reiatsu-blocking ones he had designed for himself and the Visored on exile. But this was a new and improved model, capable of all human biological functions including reproduction, so he must have kept working on it.

Exhibit B: Ichigo.  Let’s not forget Kisuke was directly responsible for Ichigo’s conception, the product of a Quincy human and a human-locked shinigami. But that alone wasn’t enough. When events conspired -- or he conspired events -- to land Ichigo in the position of needing to get his shinigami powers back, Kisuke’s solution was to sever his chain of fate. This effectively ended Ichigo’s life as a normal Human, for good. In some sense, being the child of a dead man and now being technically dead himself, Ichigo is a functional prototype of a natural-born Human that is able to fluidly travel between the worlds of the living and the dead. Now we’re definitely blurring lines.

Exhibit C: Rukia’s gigai. It was remarkably well-made, as stated by Twelfth-Division; practically indistinguishable from Human -- and in fact, had the added feature of actively sapping her reiatsu to turn her Human, given enough time. Presumably this would represent a further revision to Isshin’s gigai. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest he might have continued his Human-Shinigami breeding program using her, if things had worked out differently.

Exhibit D: Nemu Kurotsuchi. No, she is not Kisuke’s creation. But since Mayuri is obsessed with surpassing his predecessor, doesn’t it stand to reason that his own research would be along the same lines, no doubt informed by the direction of Kisuke’s research, but striving to one-up him? Mayuri developed an artificial soul, capable of growth. That’s half the battle, right there. Which brings me to...

Exhibit E: Ururu and Jinta. We don’t know exactly what they are when we meet them, but it becomes clear that they have the capabilities of mod souls. Project Spearhead, which was about installing mod souls in recently-deceased human corpses, was retired because (at least according to the party line) it was deemed unethical. But what if you installed an artificial soul, capable of development, in an artificial human body, capable of development? Something like Isshin’s Human shell, only in child form, and with the possibility to grow...  Sorry, Mayuri, he’s still one up on you.

Why, though? Why is he so interested in artificial reproduction? Well, perhaps we can find a clue to his motives by looking at his champions.

His Chosen Champions

Kurosaki Ichigo and Kuchiki Rukia are not only the co-protagonists of Bleach, they’re Urahara’s co-champions. This is easier to see with Ichigo -- we get training montages and missions -- but a little harder to see with Rukia. Nevertheless, Rukia is important to Kisuke. At first she seems to be merely his pawn and secure Hougyoku lock-box, but as that fails to work out and both Ichigo’s and her powers develop, he seems to have something different in mind for the team -- as revealed on his ‘deathbed’, when he dramatically states he is leaving everything to those two.

And what do they have in common? Compassion. Ichigo is fiercely protective to those who can’t protect themselves, and even wants to reform Soul Society.* Rukia believes it is a shinigami’s duty to protect every conscious soul.  Now, considering that would include Pluses, recall Mayuri liquidating 28,000 of them in order to maintain the Balance during the Thousand Year Blood War. As one-time captain of Twelfth Division, that would have been Urahara’s responsibility. I have to believe that a man whose bankai is based on a Bodhisattva of Compassion would be looking for a system overhaul that would not necessitate the destruction of conscious souls, wouldn’t you? 

Kisuke wants to disrupt the Soul Economy

If you think about where souls come from and who is capable of producing new ones, you begin to see a problem. It’s apparent from canon that Shinigami reproduction only happens among those with high reiryoku, and most likely the purview of nobles. The human population of earth has grown exponentially in the last century, resulting in a high demand for souls. A number of these can be recycled from Hollows like Menos Grande that are high-capacity soul pinatas, but it still puts a strain on the system. And Quincies present a particular problem and an additional strain in that they destroy souls entirely.

Soul Society as an afterlife is already problematic, forcing Pluses with little reiatsu to live in squalor, basically waiting for their turn to be recycled. It’s not a great time for them. The ruling class actively disrupts any attempt to organize; Souls in Rukongai live in makeshift families because they can’t find their own. Anyone who exhibits any “talent” insofar as exhibiting reiryoku is either recruited to the Academy or, if they refuse to serve the Seretei, considered a dangerous element and sidelined in the Maggot’s Nest. The entire system is in place to serve the Soul aristocracy. 

Urahara was fine with serving the System as long as they left him alone to do Science -- but I believe that being railroaded by the System and sent into wrongful exile came as something of a wake-up call to him. He was always subversive; lately he has channeled his subversion into upsetting the established order in new and creative ways. He had some plan with Ichigo and Rukia that we must presume did not pan out, because -- well look at the Bleach ending. There was no climactic event requiring their cooperation. And in the aftermath, status quo upheld. Ichigo’s dream of reforming Soul Society unrealized. Mission failed, Plan B in place: Human-Shinigami breeding program continues with Kazui; procreation on the part of non-Noble-blooded Rukongai-hailing folks implemented in Ichika. But it’s hardly the best he could do...

So: imagine if, by pioneering research into an alternate means of new soul production, he could eliminate the resource constraints that lead to conflict and aristocratic control? And imagine if all Pluses could have some degree of reiryoku and a little more self-determination, rather than stuck in limbo, at the mercy of the ruling class? Imagine, if you will, that the afterlife didn’t suck so much? Wouldn’t that be nice?

...He’s working on it.

[[ shout-out to @nightbeat-cat​ for helping me hash out my thoughts, and no doubt having significant influence on them! ]]

[warsofasoiaf]

Have you played Fallout 4? What did you think of it?

Joseph Anderson had a phenomenal video on Fallout 4. Although it is enormous, so be careful. Overall, there were things to like and things not to like about Fallout 4. I’ll start with what I liked first. Throwing a cut in here because it’s long.

Combat in the first-person Fallout games has always been clunky, and enemy AI relatively largely consisted of straight charging or shooting from as maximum range as possible. Difficulty came primarily from enemy quantity, high damage output, or incredibly enemy hitpoints. The last of these has been a particular Bethesda problem in their games, with enemies being incredible damage sponges, making late-game fights a boring slog as you slowly whittle down their health while being impossible to damage in any meaningful capacity. While enemy variations aren’t nearly as high as the game’s fans would have you believe if you conceive of them as AI patterns, the AI activity did have some nice variations. Human enemies used cover, ghouls bobbed and weaved as you shot them, mole rats tried to ambush you. It’s got nothing on games with fully realized combat system, but it does make the combat that you do engage in much more enjoyable. 

All of the random crap you can pick up in a Bethesda game having a purpose is another positive. It is a true nuisance to find out when playing a game that I hit my encumbrance limit only to find out it’s because I’ve picked up a bunch of brooms, bowls, and other garbage accidentally while grabbing coin and other worthwhile treasures. Actually having these things mean an object is worthy mechanically, aside from level design; typewriters are useful as items as opposed to something that shows you that the ruined building you’re in was formerly a newspaper. As crafting is a big portion of the game, having these things provide component parts that you use for crafting on their own creates more utility in these elements of clutter which still require modeling, rendering, placement, etc. Now if you need aluminum, you’ll try to raid something like a cannery because it will have aluminum cans, which is an excellent way to create player-generated initiative. It also reinforces one of the primary themes of the game which is crafting and design, where even the trailers of the game suggest building as a key idea of the game. Certainly sensible for a post-apocalyptic game to focus on building a new society upon the ruins of the older one, and given what the game was trying to do with their four factions mechanic, it’s clear that this was their intent, and good job for trying to ensure that things factor back into their principal intent. 

Deathclaws look properly scary, the animations with Vault Boy were funny, there’s some pretty window dressing. The voice work wasn’t bad, the notable standout being Nick Valentine. The Brotherhood airship was an impressive visual. I had a little fun creating some basic settlements, particularly in Hangman’s Alley where I tried to create a network of suspended buildings and Spectacle Island where I had room to grant every prospective settler a shack. Bethesda clearly looked to create a game with mass market appeal, and I believe the metrics bears out that they succeeded in that regard. The robots in the USS Constitution quest were very funny, the writers were able to make the absolute ridiculousness of the situation work (curse you Weatherby Savings and Loan!) and framed it well as a comedic sidequest, with a final impressive visual if you side with the bots and the ship takes flight.

Now that this is out of the way, I think that a lot of what Fallout 4 did was not the right move. 

The quest design was particularly atrocious in this regard. Most of the radiant quests boiled them down to a simple formula - go to the dungeon, get to the final room where you need to either kill the boss or get an item from the boss chest, return. In this game though, the main story quests often were boiled down to just this simple formula. You need to find a doodad from a Courser to complete your teleporter? Go to the dungeon, kill the boss, recover the item. The Railroad needs you to help an escaped synth! Do it by going to the dungeon and getting to the final room. This really hampers the enjoyment of games because the expressiveness of the setting and elements of an RPG is often explored through quests. Quests are meant to get you out into the world and give you an objective, but they are also meant to connect you to the people that you’re dealing with. If every quest is boiled down to the same procedure, that hurts the immersion, but the bigger sin is that when you return you have another quest waiting for you. That robs the player of the sense of accomplishment because there is no permanent solution to problems, even for a minute. There is no different end-state for the player to see the transition from one to the other and feel accomplished that they were the ones who did it. Other RPG’s always understood this - a D&D game might have a party save a town investigate an illness dealing with a town, take out an evil druid who has charmed the wildlife into attacking supply and trade shipments, slay goblins who are raiding cattle, there are a lot of possibilities that might even feel samey: if you’re killing charmed dire wolves or goblin cattle thieves, you’re still going to the dungeon and fighting the boss, the usual flair and variation came from encounter design. After you’d do that though, the NPC’s might say “Hey, Mom is feeling better after you cured that disease, she’s starting to walk again,” “Hey, we were able to send a shipment of wine from the vineyards out to the capital, here’s some coin for the shipment as reward for your service,” or even just a simple “Hey, thanks for taking out those cattle thieves.” There’s a sense of accomplishment even if it’s a fleeting “we did a cool thing.” Computer RPG’s are tougher in this regard, part of the sense of accomplishment in tabletop gaming is also with your friends, it’s a shared activity, but usually in that the reward was some experience and character growth and going to new content. There isn’t new content here in Fallout 4 though, because of the samey quest design and lack of progression.

The conversational depth was also ruined, with so much of the voice choices mangled by the system of conversation they designed. By demanding a four-choice system, they limited themselves to always requiring four options which completely mangled interactivity. The previous menu design allowed for as many lines as you wanted, even if the choices were usually beads on a string. The depth and variation, however, are even lower than what could be found in games like Mass Effect 3, and the small word descriptions were often so inaccurate that it created a massive disconnect between myself the player and the Sole Survivor, because they weren’t saying what I thought they would be saying. That prevented me from feeling immersed, because a “Sarcastic” option could be a witty joke or a threat that sounds like it should come out of a bouncer. The character options were already limited, with Nate being a veteran and Nora being a lawyer, but this lack of depth prevents me from feeling the character even moreso than a scripted backstory. You get those in games, but being unable to predict how I’m reacting is something that kills character. 

Bethesda needs to end the “find (x) loved one” as a means to get people motivated to do a quest, or if they don’t want to rid themselves of that tool in their toolbox, they need to do a better job getting me to like them. More linear games can get away with this, but open world games encourage the sort of idle dicking around that doesn’t make any sense for a person who is attempting to find a family member. Morrowind did this much better, where your main task was to be an Imperial agent, and you were encouraged to join other factions and do quests as a means to establish a cover identity and get more acquainted with combat. Folks who didn’t usually ended up going to Hasphat Antabolius and getting their face kicked in by Snowy Granius. Here though, what sort of parent am I if instead of pursuing a lead to find my infant son I’m wandering over east because I saw what looked like a cool ruin, and I need XP to get my next perk (another gripe, perks that are simple percentage increases because they slow down advancement and make combat a slog if you don’t take them, depressing what should be a sense of accomplishment). By making us try to feel close with a character but by refusing to give us the players time with them, there is no sense of bonding. I felt more connection to James in Fallout 3 than I did for Sean, but even then, I felt more connection to him because he was voiced by Liam Neeson than because of any sense of fatherly affection. The same goes for the spouse and baby Sean, I feel little for them because I see them only a little. I know that I should care more, but I also know that I the player don’t because all that I was given is “you should care about them.” You need time to get to know characters in game, along with good writing and voicework. I like Nick because he quoted “The Raven” when seeing the Brotherhood airship and I thought that was excellent writing, I didn’t have any experiences with Sean to give me that same sense of bonding. 

They’ve also ruined the worldbuilding. The first-person Fallout games have always had a problem with this, with Fallout 3 recycling Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and other iconic Fallout things into Washington D.C. Part of this is almost certainly the same reason that The Force Awakens was such a dull rehash of the plot of A New Hope, they wanted to establish some sort of continuity with a new director to not frighten off old fans who they relied on to provide a significant majority of the sales. The problem of course, is that this runs into significant continuity problems, now needing Vault 87 to have a strain of FEV and having a joint Vault-Tec/US Government experiment program there on the East Coast, so we can have Super Mutants. Jackson’s chameleon isn’t native to Washington D.C., but we need to have Deathclaws because they’re the iconic scary Fallout enemy, as opposed to creating something new with the local fauna, which is only made worse because they did do that with the yao guai formed from the American black bear (the black bear doesn’t typically range in the Chesapeake Basin near DC these days, but it’s close enough and given the loss of humans to force them back they could easily return to their old pre-human rangings). Some creatures are functions of the overall setting and can be global, ghouls are the big one here since radiation would be a global thing and fitting considering Fallout is a post-apocalypse specifically destroyed by nuclear war. Others though, are clearly mutated creatures and so they would be more localized. Centaurs and floaters were designed by FEV experiments and collared by Super Mutants, they should really only be around Super Mutants. Radscorpions shouldn’t be around, there would probably be instead be mutated spiders. Making things worse are that the monster designers do develop some excellent enemies when they think about it. Far Harbor has a mutant hermit crab that uses a truck as a shell (a lobster restaurant truck, which is passable enough for a visual joke even if it falls apart when you think about other trucks that they might use) and a monster that uses an angler lure that resembles a crafting component - these are good ideas but the developers needed to awkwardly shoehorn in iconic Fallout things that have no place there. This isn’t to say that I’m in love with a lot of Fallout’s worldbuilding, a lot of the stuff in Fallout 2 I found to be kind of dumb particularly the talking deathclaws, but as the series went on it took objects without meaning. The G.E.C.K in Fallout 3 was pretty much a magic recombinator which makes no sense as a technology in a world devastated by resource collapse, something similar can be said about the Sierra Madre vending machines. 

Fallout 4 though, had a lot of worldbuilding inconsistencies that really took an axe to the setting. The boy in the fridge outlasts the entire Great War, but apparently never needed to eat or drink water. This is, of course, stupid, because ghouls have always been shown to need to eat and drink - Fallout 1′s Necropolis section has a Water Chip but if you take it without finding an alternate source of clean water, the ghouls will die. Ghoul settler NPC’s that flock to your player-crafted towns require food and water. The entire thing was ruined from a complete lack of care, to build a quest where you reunite a lost boy with his still-alive ghoulified parents. I think this one bothers me not simply because of the egregious worldbuilding which isn’t even consistent in the very game it’s written it, but it’s done so frivolously for a boring escort quest. It feels scattershot, and that’s the problem I think with a lot of Fallout 4′s quests. They feel disconnected, like every writer worked in a cubicle without talking to any of the other writers. Same with things like the Lady in the Fog.

Are we done with that? Good, because now we’re going into the parts that I really dislike - the main quest and the factions. These are just awful. The developers took what folks really liked when it came to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 1 did have interesting factions but they were largely self-contained, more towns than anything else) and completely botched it. New Vegas was the clear inspiration for these factions, with the four faction model of NCR, Legion, House, and Indepenedent meaning that there were four different ways to go forward into the future, so we get three factions that fight each other and a fourth more player friendly faction that roughly resembles the Independent Vegas where you can pick and choose which factions you bring in with you and which you get rid of. Thematically, this fits in with the core of the game, crafting is a big portion of what you do and so crafting what sort of world the Commonwealth would be is simply a logical extension of it. The factions aren’t presented well though. The Railroad are impossibly naive and don’t demonstrate any rougher edges like denying supplies to humans in order to fuel their synth effort, even though such a thing should be evident if the post-apocalypse of the Commonwealth is to be believed. The Institute are sinister murderers and replacers without bringing any of the advanced technology that could provide some benefit such as the gigantic orange gourd that can grow. So much of their kill-and-replace mentality seems to be done for no great overarching purpose. The Minutemen are basically blank, pretty much just a catch-all for the player-built settlements, though the player as the leader of the Minutemen ends up getting bossed around by Preston to the point of the faction rejecting your commands to proceed with the main quest, a significant problem with Bethesda factions where you are the leader but never get any actual sense of leadership. There doesn’t appear to be any addressing of the failures of the previous Minutemen whether that be the previous summit, or new problems such as settlements feuding with each other requiring the general to intervene and mediate. The Brotherhood come the closest to a real faction with advantages and drawbacks if you squint, they are feudal overlords with the firepower to fight Super Mutants and other mutated nasties, but also violently reject ghouls and synths as part of their violent dogma except for seemingly not caring when you bring a companion around or killing ghoul settlers in settlements they control. But even then, we don’t really see the Brotherhood providing protection to the settlements that they demand for food, the typical radiant quest to destroy a pack of feral ghouls or super mutants is directed from a Brotherhood quest giver to a randomly determined location, hardly a good way to illustrate whether or not the Brotherhood is actually protecting settlements that they administer. We see little change in the way of the Commonwealth save that certain factions are alive or not because the game needs to stay active in order to perform radiant quests, so not even the signature ending slideshows can give us the illusion of effects building off of our actions. This is contrary to the theme of building a better world in the Commonwealth because there is no building. 

Special notice must be given to the Nuka-World raiders because they show the big problems with the factions. You can be a Raider in Nuka-World but only after becoming the Overboss, which is fair enough. But you’re already a Minuteman, but the Minutemen don’t activate any kill-on-sight order and Preston still helps you out. The game is so terrified of people losing out on content that they make permanent consequences rare, and when you do something like order an attack, it can be rescinded automatically if one of your companions is there. As an Overboss, you do grunt work in the Commonwealth, and the factions get mad and pissy if you don’t give them things despite even if you only give one section of the park to one of the factions, that’s more than they got from Colter. It’s like they don’t exist until the player shows up, which is exactly how a lot of modern Bethesda character and faction building seems to be. While in most computer games a sort of uneasy status quo is the desired beginning state because it gives the protagonist the chance to make ripples while justifying the existence of a status that allows the player to change it, it has to be applied consistently. 

The main quest itself is silly. There’s a decent twist with Sean becoming Father that sort of works, which would have worked much better if we had actually gotten a chance to bond with him, although the continuity of everything gets wiggy quick. When he said that he looked over the world and saw nothing but despair, I was wondering if they were going to actually bring a big question up and a debate between Father and the Player, the idea of what worth the people on the surface have, but it goes nowhere, it’s a missed opportunity. The main quest is just a means to meet all four factions and it’s a barebones skeleton at best. There are some interesting concepts they try, but what they do often falls flat. They try to establish some sort of empathy for Kellogg in the memory den, but it’s lazy and cheap because he kidnaps a baby and wastes your spouse, a wasted effort of empathy only made worse when you get criticized for not showing any sympathy. Kellogg then shows up in Nick’s memory for one second and then that little story nugget is ignored. The half-baked nature of the story keeps being brought back up, which is a pity because we actually saw them do a competent job in Far Harbor. The Followers of Atom are crazy and they really aren’t sympathetic in any way, but some of the folks inside the sub aren’t so bad that it might prevent you from wanting to detonate the sub, or at least you might think enough that you look for another solution. DiMA did some monstrous things, and if you bring him to justice, the game actually takes the time to evaluate whether or not you helped out Far Harbor, with meaningful consequences being taken if you took the time to do the sidequests which imparts far more meaning to them. 

While there’s a lot of problems that show up in terms of binary completion, the question of whether to replace Tektus and turn the Children of Atom to a more moderate path is a good question, it actually gives a lot more merit to the Institute if they were ever to have been shown to enact the same level of care. That only makes the Fallout problems stand out more, because it shows that they were capable of it but didn’t. This isn’t the only missed opportunity, synths themselves become a big problem. The goal was to create a very paranoid feeling but it was so sorely under-utilized that I never grew suspicious of folks because the game never gave me enough incentive to be suspicious of them. I didn’t think that Bethesda made synths that would give you false information or ambush you because that would have been potentially missed content. The idea of whether you are a synth or not is clearly an attempt to give the game more depth than it is presenting. You’re not a synth, Father’s actions make no sense if you are one, and DiMA attempting to make you think you are is silly because you know you aren’t one.

I think the game would have been much better if they had dropped the notion of Fallout entirely. If they had instead looked to create an open-world post-apocalyptic game focusing on crafting and building towns, perhaps with an eventual goal state of building many towns, establishing transportation networks, and rebuilding a junkyard society as a decent place (or going full Mad Max Bartertown complete with a Thunderdome for players looking for an evil and over-the-top option). That might have been an interesting game for Bethesda to potentially develop a new IP, even contracting with smaller studios for those who wish to tell story-heavy games in the setting. Instead, they applied Fallout like a bad paint job, cobbling together weak RP elements and story that made the game feel like a hydra that couldn’t recognize it was one being with multiple heads, constantly tearing the other parts of itself to ribbons. 

If I wanted to further improve it, I think I would have instead made the spouse a synth. It would require some serious reworking, but I would have made it so that Sean did believe that synths were people, or that they were real enough that the difference was negligible, they had free will. During the initial grab, the Institute took the entire cryopod where Sean was, baby and parent both. They used Sean to create the next generation of synths, but something happened with the parent, and they died during defrost. Sean hates the Institute for what they did, but what happened was truly a medical complication, not malicious in any way. When he learns that the player character is active, he creates a synth programmed to believe they are the spouse. He believes that exposing who he really is to the surviving parent would be traumatic, and as he hears that the player character is thriving, he wants to give them a chance at a normal life, and to alleviate the loss that he had in his life with the loss of his own parents. So the spouse is sent to you, and for a long time, you and the spouse have no idea. You adventure together, you build settlements together, the game encourages you to have a good relationship. It doesn’t have to be hunky dory, and I’d argue it’s actually better if it’s not. Have the spouse be programmed with some rough experiences in the Wasteland, so they’re nervous, skittish, maybe even a little resentful that the player character snoozed their way through everything, but slowly rebuild the relationship. That way, when the quest eventually comes where you find the truth, the player character has to confront that reality. Then when you confront Sean, Sean explains himself and the player is given the choice to forgive him, be understanding but still angry, or be hugely pissed at the manipulation. That’s drama that uses the core theme of what synths are about with the whole kill-and-replace motif the Institute does. There’s a plot twist that batters the player, there’s one that’s just messy and gross and tough to reconcile. There’s one where the conclusion the player comes to is valid because it’s the player themselves deciding what the meaning of it is.

So overall, I see Fallout 4 as a bunch of missed opportunities and clumsy writing wrapped up in the popular shallow open-worlds that triple-A games end up having. 

Thanks for the question, Jackie.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[toomanyf4ndoms7]

Things learned about Raiden in mk intros

Ok so I’m starting a thing where I look at mk kharacter intro dialogue, put down what is learned and at the end I do a summary of said kharacter.

this was inspired by @weemuu​ and their “Things i learned about...” posts

First up... Raiden!

Vs Raiden:

His time travel shenanigan may have caused an effect on timelines, causing one to cross over. (Given mk11s story this was eerily prophetic)

Apparently has a creature with Many names He has to deal with along with someone who wanted to fight him so badly that they don’t care about the repercussions to reality.

He seems to have had many battles with a doppelgänger.

Vs Bo Rai Cho:

Is Surprised by Bo Rai Chos survival and is a little paranoid of whether or not he is unchanged.

when Bo tells him that he oversteps his boundarys he responds by saying that he does what he must for Earthrealm. 

Vs Cassie Cage:

He has can use dry humour as seen when he notes to Cassie that she has her father’s charm. (Exact words)

He doesn’t believe she has the ‘Green Energy’ like Johnny.

Is a Mentor for Cassie and assesses her skills. (Given her response: “Whatever you say, Raiden.” This is common for Him)

Vs D’vorah:

He sees mortals protection as his purpose.

He asks D’vorah to stand aside before fighting.

Replies to D’vorahs query about a worthy opponent with a boast about his Divinity.

Vs Ermac:

Can hear Ermacs souls crying out and swears that they will be given salvation.

He considers Ermac a plague.

Possibly has the ability to ‘unmake’ Ermac. (I’m not sure if he means just killing him of if he means something involving divine power)

Vs Erron Black:

Refers to Erron as an Outworlder instead of an Earthrealmer.

Has little patience for mercenaries.

Still has a sarcastic side when he replies to Erron asking him if he’ll fight back.

Vs Ferra/Torr:

Asks Ferra to leave instead of fighting.

Seeks to “restore” them, whatever that means.

May have met them in the past since Ferra remembers Him.

Vs Goro:

Recycled lines.

Vs Jacqui Briggs:

Assesses Jacqui on her skills despite Johnny being her trainer.

Uses surprising Jacqui as a teaching method. (“As will your enemies” is not a good reply for when you surprise someone.)

Vs Jason Voorhees (I am aware that he’s a guest but I think what Raiden says is interesting):

If Raiden speaks first he calls Jason ‘misguided’ so he either is unaware of Jason’s killing sprees or he knows of his past.

If Jason walks in dragging a corpse He orders Jason to return to hell.

Vs Jax Briggs:

Has anticipated Jax’s reluctance to aid Him.

Can sense lingerings of Quan chis magic in Jax and has to be certain about Jax’s resurrection.

Describes Jax as ‘the model of restraint’ with evident sarcasm.

Vs Johnny Cage:

Has to deal with many puns made about his name by Mr Cage.

Asks Johnny if anyone has agreed with his statement that people need him with them.

If in the netherrealm he remarks that it wouldn’t be hell without Cage there.

Vs Kano:

Believes He should have killed Kano years ago.

Has contempt for Kano but who doesn’t?

Vs Kenshi:

Seeks to study Sento and would take it by force if necessary.

Warns Kenshi of dangers that come with wielding Sento but it falls on deaf ears.

Vs Kitana:

Calls her misguided and responds to her remark of guidance with “In a matter of speaking.”

He regretfully disobeys Kitana request to stand aside.

Responds to Kitanas threats by asking her if it’s curtesy of Edenian royalty.

Vs Kotal Kahn:

Calls out Kotal for feigning Godhood.

He believes Kotal stole Outworlds throne.

Vs Kung Jin:

Believes Kung Jin needs more training than what he learned on the streets.

Tells Jin he shames his ancestors. (Since this isn’t what he says in mkx story I choose to believe this is when Jin is a thief)

Vs Kung Lao:

Is surprised to see Lao, who has apparently been training in seclusion. (Richard Epcar delivers this line in such a fatherly tone and I love it)

Tells Lao that he will forgive him for his failure when fighting him.

When Revenant Lao tells him that their battle won’t be painless he laments that Lao is too far gone.

Vs Liu Kang:

After Revenant Liu kang calls him “Earthrealms worst enemy” He laments that things have come to this.

He sees Liu Kang as a son but understands that a Son must chose their own path. (Which apparently means kombat)

Feels Liu Kangs hatred towards him dishonours him.

Doesn’t want to fight revenant Liu.

Vs Mileena:

He wants mileena to end her rebellion.

He doesn’t want to get tangled in Outworld matters.

Vs Quan Chi:

Judging by the sheer contempt He says Quan chis name with he really doesn’t like him.

He always has hope with him.

When Quan mentions his friends he gets angered and warns him to avoid mocking Him.

Vs Reptile:

Utilises his wit to tell Reptile that He doubts he has the necessary intelligence to be fearful.

One of the few people to know Reptiles true name: Syzoth.

Sees Outworld as a plague.

He comments on Syzoths servitude with disappointment.

Vs Scorpion:

Expresses disappointment at Scorpions wasted potential and believes that with fortitude he could start again.

Refuses to restore Hanzos family (probably because of the whole Bi han incident).

When fighting Hanzo he Kombats him in order to test his commitment to Earthrealm.

Vs Shinnok:

Tells the fallen God that he keeps falling further. I feel like he’s been wanting to say that for some time.

If fighting in the Jinsei he tells him that his presence taints it.

Vs Sonya Blade:

Cuts Sonya off when she’s about to finish saying ‘ass’ and tells her that he won’t tolerate hostility.

Believes that he has to protect Earthrealm even though Sonya tells him that SF has that covered.

Vs Sub zero:

He rejects Sub zeros aid because He isn’t the protector of Earthrealm.

Tells Kuai that he will lose because of his lack of fear towards gods.

Vs Takeda:

His shocking wit strikes again with Takedas awkward attempt at boasting being met with “I’m clearly in the presence of greatness.”

is either immune to or has the ability to block Takedas telepathy. 

Offers to be his final test.

Vs Tanya:

mainly just repeated lines by Raiden.

Vs Tremor:

same as above

Vs Triborg:

Knows about Icarus and makes a reference to it by saying that triborg flies too close to the sun.

He has little love for the cyber initiative.

What has been learned:

Raiden takes great Pride in being protector of Earthrealm and sees it as his purpose.

He holds much regret for the deaths of his allies.

He has a dry sense of humour that shows when needed.

Is a mentor to the kombat kids.

He REALLY doesn't like Quan chi.

Has little care for Outworld.

Mortal Kombat 11 part later.

(EDIT: I PUT THAT HE HAS LITTLE CARE FOR EARTHREALM INSTEAD OF OUTWORLD, how did I mess that up?

Part two here

[tsukoyomi-fumikage]

Quirk Sicknesses (Mul-Ships)

Please, PLEASE can someone make these random-ass small drabbles into real fanfictions - then tell me - I wanna read em!

Ships - BakuKiri, MiriTama, EraserMic, ShoToko, ShigaDabi, Mineta. 

--- 1st BakuKiri ---

Bakugou slid into a fighting stance, narrowing his eyes at his sparring partner, who's arms automatically hardened into the quirk-enabled mode. "You ready, Shitty Hair?" He growled out, impatient to start and punch away at his anger of the day.

Kirishima nodded, determined. "Yeah, bring it on, Kacchan!"

"Don't call me that!" He yelled, charging forward, preparing an attack in his right hand, slamming said hand into his opponents head, smashing the rock-hard male to the side. "You know I hate it."

Red Riot stumbled slightly, reaching a hand to awkwardly rub along the spikes. "That..." He stopped dead, bringing his hand away to find blood and flaked skin coming off of his face. "Hurt...?"

Confused, his vision blurred as pain tore through his face, and at his stomach as Katsuki hit him again, unaware of the searing pain his friend was feeling. Gasping out, he lost all control of his quirk, reaching his maximum strength so suddenly and irrationally he cut the blond right across the cheek with his skin. "Shit." Swore the older boy, and he quickly stopped his attack, reaching up his fingers to press on the wound before looking down at Kirishima. "Fuck, dude! Your face!"

Kirishima Ejiro was barely hearing anything anymore, too busy trying to focus on his erratic breathing. He felt a hand touch his now slouching, soft shoulder and he flinched against it, making more skin fall off and more blood to appear. "What's happening?" He asked aloud to no one in particular, moving slowly to his knees to quell the shaking in his legs. Bakugou was in front of him, eyes wide and full shock, yet the rest of him held an expression that screamed calm... For once.

"It's a quirk thing." He said simply. The hurt man didn't understand, quirking a brow before hissing at the tug on his skin at the action. "For example my quirk thing is that I sweat more in my hands, meaning yes, bigger explosions, but more damage for me." He poked at his friends skin, watching it fall away. "Yours is... I'm not sure, actually."

Ejiro snorted sarcastically. "That's obvious."

Katsuki smiled, leaning back on his heels, swinging a little to keep his balance going. "Wanna head back to the dorms and get takeout? On me."

The sick student's eyes lit up. "Free takeout from you?" His mouth watered. "So many possibilities - man do I hope you have a lot of money!"

They ended up curled in Bakugou's room, watching netflix and eating takeout Takoyaki and clams. It made Kirishima think of Amajiki as he curled next to his friend, being held securely so his quirk wouldn't hurt as much as it had earlier.

Kirishima could say he was mad, but he pretty sure he was dying at being pressed into his crushes side. Luckily the lights were off, otherwise Katsuki might have caught his red complexion and killed him for real.

.

--- 2nd MiriTama ---

"Wo-woah!" Mirio steadied himself, balancing on his two feet, eyes squinted in concentration as he fought to keep his balance. "This is ridiculous." He spoke out loud, despite his big smile at the stupidity of his quirk.

Amajiki was sitting on the sofa in the far corner, curled up with his knees tucked against his front. "You need assistance there?" He offered, though there wasn't much he could do for someone who's quirk was for him to phase through things. That had already made itself known when Togata had shattered a glass while drinking juice, the liquid and cup going everywhere before he himself phased through the floor and landed in their neighbors apartment, completely naked and smiling awkwardly at their shocked faces. "Should I get Mr. Aizawa on the phone? Maybe he can come over?"

"No." Mirio bit his lip tightly, keeping his arms out to balance himself incase he phased again. "I've got this - they only last a few hours like your bellyaches, it's fine."

Tamaki clearly wasn't impressed, coming over to land a palm on his boyfriends cheek, surprised at the heat and the face his hand didn't just phase through the man's skull.  "You should rest." He said quite obviously. "But.. like that probably isn't a good idea."

The indigo man was at a loss of what to do for the blond, so he sighed, slowly sitting himself on the couch until Togata joined him, sitting on his legs, which were the only points of his body he was able to control at the minute; his arms phasing through the other student as he tried to wrap a arm around his shoulders. "Uh..."

"It's alright." The smaller man chuckled, switching on the TV and opening Netflix. Mirio smiled in embarrassment. "What do you wanna watch?"

.

--- 3rd EraserMic ---

"This is so shit."

Eraser dropped several doses of his dry-eye medication, then tied a bandanna to his eyes, pressing down on sore swollen skin, trying his best to completely block out the light. It wasn't the best solution to his quirk-illness, but it did quell some of the pain. Aizawa relied completely on his vision, so he obviously called work to say he was sick before beginning all of this 'treatment'. Now he just had to suffer alone for a few days before his eyes would return to normal. Until then, pure darkness it was. Gosh, he sounded like Tokoyami - he'd been talking too much with that emo-bird student of his.

Shota let out a squeak when a hand landed on his shoulder. "Hizashi?" He asked out loud, but heard so response. His skin tightened and burned at his eyes moved under his eyelids, wanting to look and gouge who was in front of him. His boyfriend always talked even if he wasn't being asked questions - unless... "Are you sick too?"

A hand tapped once on his forehead: Eraser smiled. That was their sign of a 'yes'. When Present Mic got his quirk-illness, it makes his voice go completely - he can't even mutter quietly under his breath: It's the one time where the house is filled with the quieter man's voice only. "I'll call in for you." He offered, but realized he couldn't see where he'd put the phone down. "Could you - uh..."

Something metal touched his arm and he grabbed it, feeling over the bumps and pressing the correct numbers for the schools teacher line. After a few years of getting to know his quirk, he knew it would be best if he could read braille, and like him, Hizashi had also found a way to combat his quirks problems by learning sign language - though that sign language couldn't exactly help him communicate now.

After making the call, he sighed, sitting himself on the sofa, feeling the silent adult slump next to him. "We're ridiculous." He supplied a conversation, knowing his boyfriend hated silence. "I become your mouth when your sick and you become my eyes vise versa."

A weird noise made Aizawa know he'd made Yamada laugh - it was a wheezing huff of a laugh, barely as loud as a whisper. "You sound like a dying cockatoo."

He could only imagine the reply: "You look like a recycled character on BirdBox."

.

--- 4th ShouToko ---

Tokoyami couldn't believe his eyes as he walked into his boyfriends room after school, coming face to face with a bin full of tentacles, some with eyes, mouths and ears, and some with none at all. If his face could pale, it would. "Shoji?" He called out, feeling sick as his eyes refused to look away from the bin.

"Yeah I'm just in the bathroom, give me a second!"

Right. Right. He remembered that they all had bathrooms in these new dorms. Fumikage tried not to throw up and look at the dead limbs, forcing his head away from it, staring at the wall opposite instead.  

"You okay, Fumi'?" Came the concerned voice from none other than Mezo as he stepped out the bathroom, doing up his mask from brushing his teeth. "You aren't looking too well."

His thoughts went back to the arms, and he imagined them slowly decaying - how was he supposed to be okay looking at his boyfriends ripped off arms? Duple or not? "I think I'm going to be sick." He muttered, pushing past Mezo and sprinting into his own-suite, getting to the toilet just in time to throw up, curling up over the object, shivering violently.

A hand found itself on his back, and he flinched, mind going back to the Camp Incident, the blood, the missing hand on the floor, the pained expression etched into Shoji's face as his other limbs curled around the hurt one. "Hey." Came a soft voice right by his ear. "It's alright."

Wiping his beak, he coughed, looking up at the taller. "How is it okay?" He croaked out, eyeing the teen with an almost furious look. "Your arms are coming off! That's not normal!"

"Oh, that's why? I thought you were really ill!" Shoji was obviously smiling behind his mask. Kneeling down to be on the birds level, he pressed a kiss through the mask onto his feathers. "Like with your feathers, my arms 'molt'" He explained, scooping the smaller up, he brought him back into his room. The emo boy squeezed his eyes shut as they passed the limbs. "It's perfectly normal."

They both sat on the bed, and Shoji leaned over, grabbing one of the arms with nothing on and wiggling it around. Fumikage gave him 'the look' and he chuckled. "Wiggle wiggle wiggle"

.

--- 5th ShigaDabi ---

Shigaraki exhaled slowly, breath misting in the cold air as he trudged towards the bars opening, hands covered by special gloves that quelled quirks tucked carefully in his pockets. Shouldering the door open, he was met with Toga and Twice, who were both fretting over a kneeling Dabi, who was clenching his hands and tucking them into a bucket of water. "Oh sweet Jesus-" He muttered under his breath. Everyone turned at the sound of his footsteps etching closer. "What happened this time?"

"Quirk-Illness." Twice explained happily, then his mind switched, and his mouth clenched. "Bad, bad, bad!" He scolded no one in particular, waving his arms around.

Toga gave a smirk at all the boys' personalities. She was probably wondering how they ever became what was considered a 'family'; "Honestly Dabi, you could just take a quirk suppressant." She offered.

The black-haired, scarred male looked at her - any normal person would see calmness, but they all knew he was irritated. "They don't work." He said simply, eyebrows furrowing. "I'm basically just like Shigaraki in this situation right now."

Although the multiple-handed male could argue that was a bit offensive at the hint of how his quirk was uncontrollable, he shrugged. "Yeah yeah, scar-face." He drawled out, coming to sit  in front of the man and his bucket. "I take it your quirk-illness is that your hands become actual fiery magnets?"

A nod came from the taller. Shigaraki smirked under the hand over his face. Taking his own hand out, he removed his 'father' and placed him on his shoulder instead so the man could see his face. "I don't know if this'll work, but they work for me and hey-" He smiled; he knew he shouldn't, he knew it was terrifying when he did, but he smiled. "-My quirk is much more erosive than those large hands of yours."

"Yeah yeah." He took his hands out the water, watching as they lit up in dimmed blue flames. He hissed. "Fucking hurry then."

Taking both hands out of his pockets he pulled the gloves off, feeling his own quirk come back full throttle. Taking his ring finger and pinkie off of the cloth to avoid destroying the outer later, which was not quirk-suppressant, he handed them over to the man. "Here."

"oH mY gOd ShIgArAkI iS bEiNg KiNd." Twice fangirled over in the corner, probably grinning like an idiot as Dabi pulled the gloves on. "I'm So PrOuD."

"Shut it Two-faced dickhead!" Snarled the blue-haired boy, standing up and trying to grab him, but being stopped by the blue-fire quirk user. "Let me at him!"

Toga giggled, sitting up on one of the chairs, swinging her legs as she adjusted her scarf. "Boys."

.

--- EXTRA - MINETA ---

"Guys...?" Mineta asked, kicking his legs out as he fought to free himself. He was alone in the classroom way past school times. The grape-haired boy realized he probably fell asleep at his desk again and had tried to move, only to find his hair was attached to the desk. "Help?"

[happyvoidharmony]

Just a look.1

rating : M pairing : Miraxus (Mirajane/Laxus) found : fanfiction.net 

Chapter : 1/7 (proof-read by @aconstellationofmemories)

Unfortunately for her, defeat was not something he was used to. If she wanted to play that game, then he would play with her and only God knew who had the most experience in this area.

Chapter 1

The mage turned the page wearily. It had been several hours since her magazine stopped provoking the slightest interest in her without her knowing what else to do. She was sprawled on her couch with a warm blanket, a mug of steaming hot tea in hand and the unappealing magazine on her lap. It was one of the few days when she was released from her role as a barmaid, cook, waitress and manager of the guild so that she could take a break and get some rest.

Only this rest was unnecessary for her. She had never had any trouble fulfilling her duty because of fatigue since a good night's sleep was enough to her to be able to do the same the next day. But when prompted by all the members to have a few days off each month, she could not refuse. Despite everything, she appreciated these moments disconnected from the rest of the world taking care of herself or hanging out in her shared apartment with her brothers and sisters. At least, it was enjoyable in the beginning.

It had been a long time since the article in women's magazines had stopped entertaining her. Her eyes glided over the pages of glossy colored paper without finding a single catch. The printed words had lost the appeal that once captured her interest. Sometimes her name appeared, sometimes along with one or two photos of her posing. She admired the beautiful stranger who smiled magnificently at her with all her white teeth.

She had stopped modelling months ago out of a need to distance herself from that life. The editors of the magazine had recycled her old photos. They turned up everywhere, in magazines, fashion catalogs… It was not disturbing for her, for she was neither complexed nor followed by a horde of paparazzi ready to damn their souls to know her favorite tea brand. But this majestic smile that lit up the population like a sun was seeming more and more terribly artificial to her.

She had stopped modelling suddenly to avoid becoming superficial. So that this row of carefully brushed and aligned teeth always and forever remains sincere. She had offered it to the whole world and to strangers whose silhouette she didn't even know just as much as she did to her guild, her friends, and her family. She had given it so often that no one saw her without it. This comforting row of immaculate soldiers which she ended up freezing on her angelic face.

Now all her time was entirely dedicated to the guild. Her adorable younger sister wanted to offer her the freedom of any source of stress imaginable during the holidays, thus Lisanna had taken over her barmaid duties. She was so successful that the eldest Strauss had to crack her head in order to invent new occupations to kill the boredom. She had read, hummed the tunes she knew by heart, strummed the strings of guitar to accompany them, took extra care of her skin that didn't really need it, and stared at the ceiling to witness the agony dreaming of tomorrow. Of her comforting routine that would resume.

Suddenly, she heard the doorknob turn and a cold breeze drifted in from the entrance, making her shiver. A white head quickly slipped through the opening and closed the door behind her. The young Strauss took off her surprisingly thick coat for this mid-autumn season and headed to the living room where her eldest sister was waiting for her.

"Hey Mira-nee," she called out, taking off her boots. "How was your day ?"

"Restful." She replied with a peaceful smile fixed on the lips.

"I'm exhausted." The youngest sighed. "The boys were very excited today. I thought they were going to start the third great war."

Her sister chuckled.

"Were they so terrible?" She asked tenderly.

"You can't even imagine! Natsu and Gray were so unbearable that they didn't even wait until Erza's back was turned to start insulting each other again, and I'm not even talking about Gajeel…" the youngest said, sprawled in the armchair in front of the sofa.

"Poor Erza, she must be tired of always doing the police." Mirajane's breath puffed out.

"Not so much, if you ask me. She does it so well that I sometimes believe she trains at night."

The two young women were taken by a laugh at the idea of Erza in pajamas, standing on her bed, studiously repeating with her most theatrical air the lines intended to calm her friends.

"She really doesn't need it.", replied the eldest between two hiccups of laughter.

Lisanna straightened up and took a deep breath to calm her heartbeat. She looked at her elder sister with a smile as she tried to calm down from her laughter. Her gaze was attracted by the mass of colors that she held in her left hand. A Sorcerer's magazine that must have dated from last week. And she thought her sister now found these readings boring and terribly superficial. Perhaps she was bored enough to find them amusing.

"What did you do today ?" She asked, not looking away from the magazine.

"Oh, three times nothing," the other replied. Then she noticed her sister's gaze and abruptly closed it before placing the magazine on the coffee table. "I didn't want to go out so I just stayed home."

"I see…" The youngest Take Over mage exhaled, looking down. "you never want to go out ?"

The woman was surprised at this question and turned her head thoughtfully.

"Sometimes. I like going to the park and well someone has to do the shopping." She said, laughing.

The youngest smiled and tried again to express her thoughts.

"I mean… you don't want to go out ?" To meet people other than the guild members or even just go out with Cana or Kinana to do something else ?" Lisanna questioned.

The demon mage opened her mouth to answer but no answer crossed her mind. She looked at her younger sister without knowing how to answer her. However, her ideas did not mix or contradict each other. The only answer that came to her mind was so obvious and simple that she never bothered to even think about it. No. She had no desire to go to a bar for a drink and to meet new people – not in the slightest. She was already contented with her calm life and her comforting routine.

"No," she finally replied. "Not really." She paused, then stammered out her explanation, which was so obvious to her. "I don't really see the point."

Her younger sister smiled gently at this answer. She was sort of expecting it. Her elder sister was not one to consciously deny herself pleasures for others, even after her personnality change. When you paid attention to her behavior, you could see that her main character traits had remained intact. Her desire to protect others, her energy, which she now spent behind the bar and in the service to the guild, her pride that was well recognized during her fight against Jenny at the Great Magic Games – they were all unchanged from the old Mirajane. The only thing that had changed was the way she expressed them.

You couldn't really say the same about her tastes.

"You used to like this before. Going out, going to concerts… "

The young woman sighed at the insistence of her sister.

"You don't go out any more than I do even if you're quite old enough now, you know," she replied with a slight smile.

The woman blushed at this remark, clasping in her hands the tea she had poured from the teapot her sister prepared earlier. Another trait that had persisted in her. Her ability to divert the conversation when it bothered her.

"It was never my thing," she thought it good to attest.

"It is no longer mine," her elder sister gently and firmly closed the conversation.

Lisanna glanced at her – she was enjoying her tea quietly, closing her eyes. There hadn't been an ounce of wickedness in her response. Just a deep desire to close the subject. Nor had she seemed to be lying to avoid it. She was even deeply sincere and honest with her younger sister.

Lisanna took a sip of her tea. The silence that had taken hold disturbed her a little. Usually, she enjoyed these peaceful moments with her eldest, welcome after spending the day in the midst of the guild's incessant hubbub. But at this time, she felt uncomfortable. As if this silence had settled at the wrong time.

"Elf-nii-chan is coming back from his job tomorrow, right ?" She ended up asking.

She obviously knew the answer. She just wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible and break that awkward silence. The eldest Strauss nodded as her smile widened. She was grateful to her younger sister for not insisting ; she didn't want to create any friction between them. She couldn't stand the idea of disappointing her or having to impose silence on her.

"and it's only eight o'clock, so we still have time to watch a movie without being too tired for work tomorrow !" She said cheerfully, winking at her younger sister.

The sun struggled to rise on this autumn day filled with fresh air. Shivering from the cold, the demon mage wrapped her coat around herself. She enjoyed the mornings when the city woke up little by little, starting with the bakers whose smell of hot bread and pastries already perfumed the shops. The young woman always ordered an astronomical quantity to feed the mad rabbits of the guild.

The inn provided the restaurant function for the mages but also for the non-mages who wished to benefit from the warm environment. It was one of the main sources of income for the guild and the barmaid. Like a true cook, she filled the stocks, cooked, ran the bar and served customers, accompanied by her younger sister, Kinana and a few extra wandering hands.

The master had entrusted her with the entire management of the restaurant except for the accounting part which he kept. So she got into the habit of doing some shopping in the morning to get fresh produces and ordered the most from a supplier she was used to now.

With her shopping bags in hand, she went to the second large building that overlooked the city after Kardia Cathedral, turned her old key in the lock and pushed open the huge wooden door. The atmosphere was so different at this hour. The shutters were closed and the vastness of the empty room gave it a somewhat disturbing and religious aspect, like a church waiting for its faithful ones. She put her purchases in the kitchen then went to the windows to let the soft light of day invade this much too quiet space for her taste.

She settled behind her counter and began to prepare the first drinks which would soon be ordered. In just an hour, excitement and provocation would reign supreme.

She remembered the evening before. After a meal closer to a picnic, she and her younger sister had watched a cheesy romantic comedy. Two hours during which a handsome young man, rich, charming and slightly macho, finally discovered the meaning and love of his life after meeting a beautiful young woman, vainly presented as banal, who opened his eyes to the world thanks to her kindness, her gentleness and her determination to make the world a better place.

The young woman gave a small laugh at the memory of the final act when the hero finally declared his love in a quavering voice but just as inflamed while his future fiancée – because he was proposing to her – listened with teary eyes before accepting – not without a terribly fake sob – the fabulous ring – surely plastic – that he was offering to her.

Admittedly Mirajane was a big romantic. She dreamed of a happy ending with a loving man who would kiss her like it was the last time throughout her life. She liked to look at the couples in the guild – already decided in her mind – and imagine the life they would surely have in a few years, without however clearly imagining her own possible future.

She did not see herself with anyone and did not feel the need to live a passionate love with any lover. She dreamed of course, but these dreams had never taken on concrete dimensions. They remained as a fantasy out of reach, while all tried without success to make her understand that it would only take a few efforts to make them real. She knew that life was not a romantic comedy that two sisters watched in the evening to relax between two giggles.

Never had she really hoped for passionate declarations of love. If given the choice, she would choose a love as simple and pure as a snowball, although part of herself would yell at her that it would be far too boring for her to thrive there. Perhaps it was a sign that she hadn't changed so much from the adventurous teenager as she had been in the end.

In any event, she had no serious candidates for the position of great love and was not really looking for one. Perhaps it was the parade of heavier contenders who tirelessly presented themselves to her every day pretending to buy a drink. This day would be no exception.

It did not miss. When the frenzy had followed the disturbing calm that reigned a few hours earlier, the barmaid - constantly on the move - slid from one table to another with her high heels and relentlessly distributing orders. She offered her biggest smile to each face she crossed and gently rejected the many advances that many made to her.

Advances, she had heard it was normal for a young barmaid or waitress to be hit on and stopped by consumers. It was commonly accepted by all. Of course, it always bothered her when a man whose face she saw for the first time came to offer her a drink after closing, or when Macau and Wacaba kept reminding her that she just had to blink to have a date.

Although the latter stituation had become more of a recurring joke than a real invitation. It was, but without the hope of a positive response.

The door opened slowly as four mages appeared on the doorstep. A brunette with wavy hair and rectangular glasses, a man wearing a large knight's helmet, another smaller with long and green hair and the last, a tall, muscular man with blond hair. The latter went upstairs and collapsed on one of the sofas.

The barmaid brought the blond-hair man his usual beer and went downstairs to resume her activities. He followed her with his golden eyes and detailed her as usual. His bangs took in her bangs restrained on her head, her warm blue eyes, curly lengths at the end of her white tresses. They continued to roam over her fluttering black dress which hid her generous chest, her slim waist, her hips, her long tapered legs.

She was beautiful, maybe even more than beautiful. She served her customers while singing in the middle of the guild. The noise did not bother her – on the contrary, the noisier it got the louder she sang. Surely convinced that no one could hear her behind the yells of her friends. It was wrong – he heard her very well.

Her black dress twirled around her fair legs as they danced between the tables. Her arms, constantly in action, kept moving from the two trays to the top of the tables. One would have thought it was a dance from India, one of those where the entities were provided with a multitude of arms.

Her snow-white hair waved around her angelic face. She put each foot in front of the other, swaying slightly subtly so that only people looking at her for a long time could see it. He noticed it. Even though she knew he stubbornly stared at her to decipher her gestures, she didn't throw him a glance.

It had become a game between them, to communicate without words, without ulterior motives. He watched her from his pedestal without anyone paying attention to him. Several pairs of eyes were focused on her as she moved in the center of the huge scene that was the guild. She responded with her brightest smile but did not hesitate to discreetly caricature her gestures in order to make fun of the attention that was offered to her.

No one paid attention to him. He was sitting on one of the few sofas on the first floor where no one ever went. He liked to retire there to take a break, find some relaxing solitude and be able to watch the other mages as he pleased from a higher level. Especially the demon mage. He didn't have the same hopes as her suitors, but to see her making fun of their behavior was somewhat distracting.

We also had to admit that she was far from being unpleasant to look at.

She had turned her eyes to him only once today. she had served him his drink and he had glanced at her with a suggestive look. Nothing serious, just to annoy her. Because seeing her cheeks flush under his gaze was just as much fun as enjoying a little of her false prudishness that she tried to pretend was real.

But her reaction was different from what he expected. Instead of being embarrassed that he stared at her like that, she had stared back at him and smiled. Not a fake smile, but a playful and amused grin. She straightened casually and turned slowly to continue her activities.

She knew he was trying to play with her. After all, he had been doing this for a few weeks, and it had to be said that being able to have fun with his own behavior and that of others was refreshing. She also knew that none of these so-called silent advances were serious. He just wanted to push her to the edge as he always had.

She has reached her limits – she was finally tired of seeing him play with her daily. The young woman didn't like allowing people to laugh at her embarrassment. After some time looking for the solution to tell him about it, she concluded that he wouldn't stop, especially if he realized that it was actually working.

So the mage decided to act the opposite of what he expected while knowing that he would not stop his actions immediately. She had to get into his game if she wanted to get him out, but the consequences of such an act were still unknown. Was he going to be surprised ? Amused ? Satisfied ? How could she even have a clue ?

From that moment, she began to move differently, softer and more fluid. She took her time and danced between the tables. She looked and offered her brightest smile to everyone except him. She was completely ignoring him.

A strange ballet that intrigued him a lot, as if her angelic side had escaped her and her demonic side suddenly revealed to him. He was never going to see her again, this sweet Mirajane who smiled benevolently at him. Instead he would see something else that only he could see, a more evil and seductive side of her. He could say that the old Mira had returned but that was not entirely true. The old Mira would never seduce him like that.

But it didn't bother him – on the contrary, it greatly amused him. A new challenge that she launched to him, a secret game, beyond the eyes of others. How to win ? He had absolutely no idea and he knew she didn't either. He just didn't know something : just exactly how far she was ready to let this thing go and what she wanted out of it. Until then they had only jokingly played with each other, but this game was much more complex.

He went downstairs sighing. He wanted to think about it in a more private place. He headed for the door but something warm touched him in the opposite direction. He turned and his gaze fell on her cyan eyes, her irises shining with mischief and amusement. Her demon smile was teasing him on her angelic face. He raised his eyebrows and continued his way out.

The young man understood she just wanted to take him by surprise and make him fall into his own trap. Unfortunately for her, defeat was not something he was used to. If she wanted to play that game, then he would play with her and only God knew who had the most experience in this area.

[novemberpest]

many ways to give in - prologue

summary:  All she wanted to do was take a road trip, drop her car off at her brother's place and then get back home. She really, really didn't need Sebastian to come along for the ride. For some reason he was there anyway.

pairing: Sebastian Stan/Original Female Character

word count: 2.7k

warnings: none

a/n: look, I don’t know what I’m doing. does anyone? Sebastian is just too pretty. that’s the only reason I can give for this.

this will have about 8 or 9 chapters, i haven’t fully decided yet. this will be 18+, expect smut soon-ish. warnings will be updated for each chapter. this isn’t beta read.

please let me know what you think, I need validation.

(you can also read this on AO3)

The apartment was so packed, you could barely make out the walls. People of all ages were mingling and drinking, some of them deep in conversation, others shrieking over the droning music. It was much too warm, despite the unusually cold September weather. New York City was celebrating one of their greatest and it seemed like everyone came to get a piece of her.

 Dante fell deep into the cushions of the couch, barely keeping her glass of champagne from spilling. She enjoyed these kinds of get-togethers — they were far from her busy day-to-day life and there was just something about being a nameless face in a big crowd that appealed to her. Or maybe it was the opportunity to meet interesting people; because, really, if you’d meet them anywhere it was at one of Holly’s parties. As the owner of various high-end bars throughout the city she had connections to all kinds of people, and she’d never been stingy when it came to handing out invites. A true social butterfly — although Dante wouldn’t ever compare herself to her best friend, she still liked taking up that mantle every now and then.

 Holly’s flavor of the day was cute, there was no denying it. Jessica sat on Holly’s lap, a hand knotted into the thick hair at the nape of her neck and giggled like a five-year-old at a children’s birthday party. Which admittedly wasn’t too far from reality, seeing as this was a birthday party — Holly’s 36th to be precise — and despite not looking like she was five, there was also no way Jessica was actually 26. 

 Dante loved her best friend dearly, but her taste in women had always been questionable.

 “So Dante is a boy’s name right? Why do you have a boy’s name?” An obnoxious giggle spilled over Jessica's lips. “You don’t look like a boy.” 

 Dante took a long drink from her champagne flute, wondering how soon the alcohol would set in. She tried to focus on the projector someone had set up on the far wall. It was currently showing some artsy black-and-white film she didn’t recognize — not that she’d recognize many films. “My father was really into racehorses, but too fucking poor to afford one. Naming his children after them was as close as he could get, I suppose”, she explained in a deadpan voice. “My brother’s name is Secretariat.” 

 Holly’s girlfriend stared at her with glassy eyes, and Dante was sure, if her head had been see-through, she would’ve been able to see the new information slowly trickle through the lump of tissue she called her brain. Then, finally, she laughed. “You’re funny!”

 Dante threw Holly a long look. She, however, only gave an apologetic shrug and pressed a kiss to the temple of the woman in her lap. “Bunny, why don’t you go and get us another bottle of wine? You know, the white with the pretty label?”

 Jessica jumped up with all the motivation of a kindergarten child told to go get their drawing pencils. Dante genuinely hoped she would take a while.

 “Look, before you say anything-”

 “You cannot be serious.”

 “You say that, but honestly, she’s not as bad as it seems, you just need to get to know her.”

 “Please, don’t make me get to know her.”

 At this, Holly threw a crumpled up tissue at Dante’s face. “Shut up, we can’t all be celibate loners like you.”

 Dante only snorted into her drink, but didn’t reply. Her eyes wandered through the room, mentally listing all the birthday guests she recognized. When her eyes found a familiar head of tousled brown hair near the front door she paused for a second. 

 “Or whatever it is the kids call it nowadays when they’re in love with someone for years but are too afraid to, you know, just go for it”, Holly added with a knowing glint in her eyes.

 “Shut up.” Dante was really, really not in the mood to talk about him today. Which was funny, because Holly’s birthday party was the only time she ever saw him. A week ago she’d been so sure she’d be able to deal with him but now she just wanted to hide behind the sofa.

 “I’m just saying, as far as I know he doesn’t have a girlfriend right now. And he’ll actually be in the city for a while.”

 “Holly, please, we’ve been over this. Last year was a fucking disaster, and I don’t want to get back to this, like, at all.” Dante swallowed hard. “Besides, I doubt he’d be interested. Sebastian was the one who-”

 She stopped.

 Who did what? What even did he do? One year later, Dante still wasn’t sure why she was actually mad at him.

 “I know”, Holly supplied quietly. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

 Dante nodded, her expression carefully blank. She watched him get pulled into a hug and out of her immediate line of sight. A new group of people had arrived and were slowly pushing their way into the apartment, carrying various bottles of liquor. The music was just bassy and loud enough to effectively drown out most conversations from where they were sitting on the couch, and the champagne bubbling in her stomach actually made her calm down a little. Maybe she’d get through this evening — maybe even more successfully than the other five birthdays she’d celebrated with Holly in this place.

 Her eyes didn’t stray from the front door for long, even when Jessica arrived back with a bottle of red wine clutched in her hands.

 /////

 “So when are you going to Seattle?”

 Dante had emptied the bottle of champagne and was now on her second glass of white wine. Her head was pleasantly fuzzy — that was the only way she could explain to herself why she didn’t run away as soon as Sebastian and Rebecca sat down opposite of her. 

 She shrugged her shoulders, trying to formulate an answer to Rebecca’s question, while blatantly ignoring how his eyes suddenly snapped up from his beer to focus on her. “I’m not sure yet, I’ve got to drop the car off by the end of the month. I was thinking of making it an actual road trip to get away from the city for a little while.” Her eyes flashed to his for only a second but that was enough to shoot fire through her veins. She really hoped her face was already flushed from the alcohol she’d had.

 “You’re going to Seattle?”, shrieked Holly as she reappeared with a noticeably flustered Jessica by her side. She dropped down on the armrest next to Sebastian and slung an arm over his shoulders. “So is my man Sebastian.”

 There was a definite challenge in her eyes. Dante tried her hardest to ignore it. 

 “You are?”, asked Rebecca, the brunette blissfully unaware of the mounting tension between them.

 Sebastian cleared his throat. “Yeah, actually. One of my friends is getting married in two weeks.”

 “In two weeks?” Holly’s grin widened as Dante whispered an inaudible but heartfelt No. “That’s perfect timing! The two of you should just travel together. That’s better for the environment, right?”

 Holly — flying all across the country five times a week, can’t spell recycling to save her life, owning a wardrobe big enough for five families — was on top of her bullshit game tonight. 

 Sebastian’s eyes met her own and Dante could have sworn her heart stopped for a second. She saw him consider the possibility — but fuck her, if she knew what to expect from him. She didn’t understand him on the best of her days.

 “I was planning to go with Ben and Muriel”, he replied in an even tone. Relief and, Dante was afraid to admit, a bit of disappointment flooded her veins as she took a long sip from her wine. “But they had to cancel because Muriel apparently can’t get off work.” 

 She was already choking on her wine before his words fully registered. When her coughing abated, she almost hissed at him. “Why don’t you book a flight?”

 “They’re all fully booked.” His reply came fast, sharp and unexpectedly smug.

 Dante didn’t have an answer to that. She could only stare at him as she tried to understand what is happening. The way his eyes sparkled with mischief and the side of his mouth lifted just so nearly drove her insane. He knew exactly what he was doing.

 “You can’t refuse him, Dee!”, Holly cried from the side in a way that made Dante want to punch her in the face. As if she actually believed his bullshit.

 But Holly was right. 

 She couldn’t refuse him.

 So without another word Dante got up and left the room.

 /////

 It was well past four when Dante decided to call it a night. She hadn’t seen much more of Holly after she’d tried to force Sebastian on her, but Dante wasn’t disappointed. Holly was a social animal through and through, always moving from one person to another to talk as much as she could. Holly was also really fucking drunk and Dante much preferred her best friend sober.

 Dante had spent the night carefully avoiding Sebastian, which wasn’t too hard considering the huge apartment and the sheer mass of friends that Holly had invited. It seemed like he wasn’t looking for her either, which suited her just fine. It was fine.

 Carding through the pile of coats and jackets in Holly’s guest room was a fucking pain. Dante almost moaned with delight, when she finally felt the soft material of her coat under her fingers. She swayed a little in her heels when she pulled it free and turned to leave, trying her hardest not to think of him and how she’d touched him in this room before, or how he looked at her earlier and- 

 The music was still too loud and despite the hour it didn’t seem any less crowded. Dante pushed her way through the front door, almost stumbled when she reached the stairs, but some other guest, a man with a bright grin and even brighter blue hair, quickly grabbed her wrist to steady her. She thanked him with a tight smile, so relieved to finally be on her way home that she didn’t much care about her clumsiness. Carefully she maneuvered past more people hanging out on the stairs, apparently just as content a little further away from the party’s epicenter. Dante could hardly blame them.

 When she finally stepped outside the crisp night air let Dante breathe a little easier. 

 It also made her realize that she was really fucking drunk.

 She took an embarrassingly long time to push her arms through her sleeves — her coat was somehow upside down twice — and searched through her pockets for some cigarettes. It wasn’t a habit she indulged in often, but she felt like she deserved one after getting out of this party alright.

 It had to be her tired mind or her one-sided focus that kept her from noticing the door falling shut behind her a second time. But when she couldn’t find her lighter in either of her pockets, a cigarette already stuck between her lips, a hand appeared in front of her face, a lighter clutched between its fingers. 

 Cold dread washed over her like a tidal wave.

 She raised her eyes from his hand up his shoulders to finally settle on his face. Dante cursed her luck. She’d almost made it.

 “What, are you gonna take it?” The low timbre of his voice cut through the night like a hot knife through butter. When she looked up at him Sebastian was smiling, teasing in that soft way that only he could.

 He clicked his thumb and a little flame popped out of the lighter. 

 Dante looked at it for a second, then plucked the cigarette from between her lips. “I’m not your bitch.”

 She took the lighter from his fingers, trying to ignore their warmth, the feel of them, and lit her cigarette up herself.

 “Never said you were.” The smile was still there, but his gaze seemed a little less playful.

 “That’s what this is though”, she mumbled, blowing out a cloud of smoke, “when men light up their girl’s cigarettes. It makes them their bitch.”

 She met his eyes in a sort of challenge, not even knowing what reaction she was trying to provoke. 

 He huffed out a laugh, looking over her shoulder for a second, before focusing back on her. “You’re not my bitch. Never intended for you to be that.”

 His answer made her deflate. She handed him back his lighter and stuffed one of her hands into her pockets, dropping her gaze to her shoes. “What do you want, Sebastian?”

 “How are you doing? I haven’t really seen you all night”, he asked instead, ignoring her question. 

 Dante let out a long breath, looking down the street — barely seeing anything with how fast her mind was spinning. She’d actually thought she could break their streak, huh?

 “This is the sixth year”, she simply said. When she faced him again, she hoped her expression was as detached as she felt at that moment — numb, even.

 But the way he looked at her wasn’t at all what she expected. His gaze dropped down to her heels — she was almost at eye-level with him now — and carefully travelled up her whole body, mustering her, filing away how the past twelve months had changed her. “You look great.”

 The cold night had nothing on the heat that exploded in her belly. Dante had seen that gaze before, knew its implications with every fiber of her being. But she couldn’t do it, not again, not this time. She’d burnt her fingers on this candle often enough and she’d finally learned to move on.

 She told him as much. “I can’t do this. Not again.”

 They were silent for a while. Dante had finished her cigarette by the time he spoke again.

 “I wasn’t playing around earlier, you know. I’d like it, if you let me tag along to Seattle. Would be great to get a bit of fresh air.” 

 Dante didn’t ask the questions that were rolling around in her mouth. 

 Am I your bit of fresh air? 

 What happens after you’ve gotten your fill? 

 Will I see you next year for Holly’s birthday again?

 She didn’t understand what she saw when she looked at him, like the information reaching her brain was jumbled, not translating correctly. His face seemed rougher and softer at the same time; older, somehow, although it had only been a year. His eyes were always the same though, cutting through her much easier than she felt comfortable with. Sebastian made her feel all hot and all cold, and it was just too much for her right then.

 Dante rubbed a hand over her eyes, squeezed them shut in hopes of drowning out the pounding of her heart and the fuzziness inside her brain. She’d always been so bad at saying no. 

 “Look, you still have my number, right?”, she didn’t give him time to reply, because maybe he didn’t and then she wouldn’t hear from him again and then everything would be fine and good, and perfect, really, “Call me in the next couple days. I’m not deciding on this right now.”

 His expression was boyishly hopeful when she looked at him again. “I’ll do that.” Sebastian reached for her but stopped himself quickly enough. “Thank you.”

 Dante nodded, allowed herself to look at him a little longer — but turned to leave before her thoughts could turn silly again. She was ten steps away when he called her name again.

 “Dante!”, and his smile was so lovely and warm, she almost went back and — “Have a good night.”

 And she gave a little wave, smiled too, hoped it didn’t look as lost as she felt, but —

 There was something hot and tight coiled in her stomach and she really, really wished she had come up with some excuse for tonight. 

 She had learned her lesson with him, right?

 When she arrived home, she decided. For once in her life she would tell someone no, she would take this trip on her own because she’d been looking forward to it for a while now. 

 And Sebastian — she’d moved on. He was a grown man, he would find a way to get to Seattle without her.

 This would work out absolutely fine, she knew.

 Except when she closed her eyes, she saw his face, his smile; felt the ghost of his fingers on hers and — suddenly she wasn’t so sure anymore.

[vaguely-concerned]

I played Death of the Outsider finally and I have some Feelings about it

and most of them not very positive. nice stuff first tho!

THINGS I LIKED:

- billie is such a good character. still new to her old self and slightly tender from coming out of the protective shell of lies that was meagan foster, full of old scars and doubts and bitterness but trying for something better, something kinder even though she still doesn’t quite understand what she’s walking towards -- the genuine care and tenderness in her voice when she talks to daud or thinks about deidre. I love her.

all that and she effortlessly IS also the queer disabled woc the gamer bros refuse to believe could possibly exist. exquisite. 

- the idea of ‘killing’ the outsider is compelling, but it’s the sort of idea that needs a full length game to support it and its implications. cool idea, completely wrong execution.

- saying that: I love that the injustice of the outsider’s creation being righted is only made possible by a long unbroken line of mercy and kindness. daud saved billie from the streets, corvo spared daud, daud saved emily and spared billie after her betrayal, billie tried to save aramis stilton and became entangled in the void, emily spared billie, billie took this job in the first place partly because she loves her dad daud and wants him to find peace. that idea is so beautiful that I wish the rest of the narrative was strong enough to hold it up lol.

there’s also something going on here with other people holding on to the important pieces of you -- that billie is ‘all that is left’ of daud after he’s dead. once he saved a child from true loneliness and gave her a purpose, made her feel seen again, gave her the closest thing she had to a home, and when he’s completely lost himself in the void... that kindness is still alive in billie, and she helps him find his way. again that is really touching and thoughtful and plays wonderfully into the chaos system in these games thematically! too bad about all the stilted dialogue and characterization messes and uh. everything else. 

- most of all I love how clear it is that billie and daud love each other. it’s a quiet love that has nothing to prove anymore, it’s survived all the blood and the ugliness and everything they’ve done to each other and to the world, a love with no demands left. it’s not the sort of love you usually see, in all its unsentimentality, but it’s real. when daud tells her he’s proud of her and trusts her no matter what she chooses to do, you feel how much he means it. (making his insistence on trying to make her choice for her all the weirder -- see my long rant of lamentation about his characterization in doto below lol)

there’s something about daud’s undramatic yet complete acceptance of and respect for billie that... I didn’t know I needed this, but it was a nice gift nonetheless haha, thank you. (it’s similar to how good it feels in D2 when you realize corvo just likes emily a lot as a person, even aside from her being his daughter. a good series for father & daughter stories)

- this carries over from D2, but I think the journal/log entries are better written and more insightful than the stuff out in the world.  

- it cannot be overstated how much the gameplay loop of these games is just... pure crack cocaine for my brain haha, very few things give me this specific kind of brain tingle. I love the sound of looting and I love the art style and ambiance and I love planning out a strategy after finding all the options and I love never being spotted or killing anyone and I love the puzzle elements they put into exploration sections and I love the feeling of how you move through the environment. it’s one of the few games where I routinely get so into it I end up with a crick in the neck because I’ve been so focused for so long and never noticed I’ve been sitting in a way that makes my entire spine hate me. I needed something to get me through the last few days and it did deliver that, at least. karnaca is pretty enough that I didn’t even mind that most of the levels were recycled from D2 either. 

- I’m not quite sure whether I understood this right but there’s a woman standing behind daud in the void -- I wonder if that is actually his mother and he’s been so close this whole time? at first I thought maybe it was jessamine but god no I hope she’s finally at peace after All That Nonsense, she shouldn’t have to hang around there anymore. there’s also a figure near him I could swear was corvo with his mask on, but he’s not dead canonically so that would make very little sense. oh well I’ll take my feels where I can get them even if I have to make them up wholesale  

- the bankheist was cool as fuuuuuck, that and the emotional impact of daud dying was sadly the height of this game for me, after that it all went mediocre real quick     

- paul nakauchi as shan yun was, as I have said before, a blast. ‘ugh I cannot continue my throat is as raw as a plucked pheasant’ fsdkfhlsadjkhfas

- daud’s funeral is genuinely touching. she gave him the entirety of her old life for a sendoff, battered and worn and dear as they both were. someone hold me 

THINGS I  H A T E D:

- the stuff they did with daud’s characterization. I am so unreasonably angry over this haha, the more I think about it the more I hate it. I think there are paths you could go with his ACTUAL character to make this work, but this was not it. I’ve said this before, but his most iconic, most defining scene is him surrendering himself to corvo’s judgement without justifying himself or deflecting the blame for any of what he’s done. this isn’t even regression in his character, it’s just.. a different character altogether. they could have gone for the angle that delilah almost managed to end the world b/c daud showed mercy and that’s the reason he’s moved to action, I think that might be a more compelling motivation for him at least. OR have him be more conflicted about how to do things -- violence is still the only tool he knows how to use but it’s not what he wants to or even can be anymore and the conflict troubles him, ‘His hands do violence, but there is a different dream in his heart’. or even use a different character for the ‘kill kill kill’ angle, he didn’t need to be here for this dlc at all.   

also, just on a purely practical level... for all his flaws and longstanding moral shortsightedness daud is not a stupid man. why the FCK would he be so sure that killing the outsider will fix anything? if I, dumbass extraordinaire, could within half a minute wonder if maybe something even worse would take the outsider’s place if you removed him... why does that never occur to the Knife of Dunwall tm, a man about Void for like half a century or whatever?? ugh fuck this, I’m having a hard time explaining exactly why it all feels weird and wrong to me, but know that it does and that I Do Not Like It lol. I feel cheated out of something important I thought I had.  

- again, this should have been a full game. (I think it is sold as one already, but it just hm isn’t) there’s way too much shit of literal cosmic importance for the game’s universe being picked up here for something this short to cover. save this HUGE idea for a rainy day should you ever want to do another game in the series and do something else with the dlc, honestly. 

- god but the outsider is insufferable in this. I don’t know what happened, but by the end I was like ‘*thoughtfully strokes chin* maybe daud has a point billie keep that knife handy’. he’s annoying and boring, which is wild to me because he was always a lot of fun in the other games.

for real tho I don’t know if this is just my atheist-but-still-angry-at-god-somehow??? talking, but daud HAS a point. people are responsible for their own actions, but the outsider didn’t have to do any of what he did either. he could have chosen to be bored through the centuries instead of seeing what people would do if you gave them such ~*morally neutral*~ abilities as y’know summoning a bunch of rats to eat other people. the game wants me to buy the ‘but really this black eyed boy is woobie tho uwu’ so badly and no I’m not buying that give me my refund I want my chaotic neutral bastard back pls. I’d probably be more inclined to want to help him like that. where’s his salt gone, arkane. if you didn’t want him to be edgy why did you make him look like that.  

- this is the lamest possible version of the outsider’s backstory lol, it feels like the pearl clutching panic about satanic cults back in the day all over. listen if it’s this easy to make a god the thrill is sort of taken out of it, if these randos did it anyone could. also how the fuck are they just normal-ish people anyway? why do they follow modern fashions? haven’t they been hanging around for thousands of years, haven’t their culture changed in any meaningful way? (I realize these aren’t the same guys as back in the day but it’s just weird) why do they speak a language billie and the player can understand? why did anyone think ‘idk some cultists no one’s ever heard of before with no thematic significance whatsoever’ was the way to go world building wise? they’ve taken all the unknowable eldritchness out of the eldritch horror and we’re all poorer for it now haha 

relatedly the last level is... just not very good. you come down from the awesome bank heist and then there’s... whatever the fuck this was.

- while I do like billie finding daud in the void and him remembering her I hate that he goes out still full of self loathing and rage when you talk him into the nonlethal option, that he can’t forgive himself or find any sliver of hope or peace. I wish there had been a few more moments for the two of them to come to peace with themselves before he gave the outsider back his name, some real catharsis. as it is I was annoyed when the outsider ‘woke up’ or whatever b/c it felt like he was stealing attention from what I was actually emotionally invested in and not done with.    

they had  n o t  built up billie’s or my sympathy for the outsider well enough either. again this is something I think they could have done if they’d structured things differently, if they’d been more deliberate in making you understand he was basically a child and letting you dwell on it. because there is a parallell there between him and billie, and billie and daud, but I, how do I put this, did not give a fuck  

in short this was really similar to my experience with D2 in that there’s enough good there that it’s all the more painful when it fails to deliver on it again and again, and it ruined things I already liked about this story from the first game (daud’s arc and everything to do with the outsider, mostly). give me some months of denial and hard core headcanon work and I’ll probably be able to live with it

[jkid4]

Spending Christmas Alone

It’s been over a year since I posted my cry for help in 2018, and I still remember it and the overwhelming response to it. The money I’ve received helped me and my family a lot to starve off eviction. Good news it that due to some foresight I took when I was at the Prince Georges County Social Services Office I was able to get Social Security Disability Insurance around March 2019. I had to use over half of the backpay to support my parents who still could not get a job no matter how hard they tried. I was also burnt out from emotionally, physically, and financially care-giving and I’ve been running on zero for years, despite the fact that I’ve gotten SSDI and this source of the burn out is from my parents. Ending my own life was not option and abandoning my parents isn’t an option because everyone in my family will call me a pile of shit instead of stepping up in my absence. I was simply forced to endure it because no one else wants to help.

I was simply forced to endure until I could not deal with it anymore. And that point came when my autistic brother had a seizure while on the his laptop and my mother was upset and screaming fearing that my brother is going to die. I could not control her emotions no matter what I done in the past, it was all bioscripted. After the incident, and the day where I visited the hospital and told my mom politely that I can’t support the family anymore and I did all I could as my brother needs round the clock care.

It took me 10 days from that to starting packing and starting to find a place to live, and for me for a person who knows no one that can help and public housing and section 8 is non existent anywhere, it was pure luck that I found a room in a house for 650 dollars and near a bus line to a metrorail station. I had to pay it out of my own pocket and from the student loan refund because social services explicitly told me that unless you have children or pregnant, regardless of disability, they will not help you with moving or rental assistance.

At one point, and I was serious, I planned to just put all of my stuff into storage, everything and just traveled across the country, because is relatively cheaper to live as a homeless person on SSDI and food stamps than to pay any money for a roof over your head.

My brother is at a group home, my mom and dad are making sure he’s doing ok and good. I’ve signed up for a part time care-giving service so I can be paid when I have to visit my parents to watch my brother. Unfortunately I have to wait for my pay to come because my first check I was supposed to received in direct deposit was sent by check instead and they it was lost in the mail. So I have to wait until next week Friday to receive it.

My mom finally has a job, paying 15 dollars a hour for the next six months with a possibility for being hired permanently. She’s also trying to get a small business running to make money on transporting elderly people to and from places using a used van. As for the house, it’s already three months behind, and I’ve told my parents to sell the house or rent it out if we can’t catch up with the mortgage. I’ve done all I could, and I’ve done enough. I come back to check on them on a periodic basis to make sure that the house is OK and make sure the trash and recycling is taken out. She’s also filed for bankruptcy, which means all of her debts are clean off.

As for me, I might has my independence back, but I’m paying for it for the rest of my life. Credit cards deb thave since been defaulted which I have to pay of for the rest of my life, same thing with student loans. This is because I’m unemployable due to a number of reasons that normal people can’t and don’t want to understand. Too many employers, even temp agencies don’t want a gap, and despite having relevant skills, too many employers don’t take resume reading seriously.

And NO, employers don’t accept caregiving as volunteer experience. Caregiving is not something you volunteer as you get nothing from it when you’re done caregiving or can’t do it anymore other than “just go to social services”.

And you will not believe the unsociltzed advice and advice dumps I get when I tell people online about my ordeal: Go watch a movie, travel, go date. Do I look I have money for all of this? And go date? Dating has changed, everyone uses phone apps to date. Worse, after age 30 you’re not supposed supposed to approach people anymore. Society has changed, and most people are stuck in the Pre-Great Recession era when it comes to getting social relations advice and job advice.

And too many employers for good paying jobs want a credit check and many will not hire anyone with a bad credit rating for any reason. This includes federal jobs, because there’s simply too many people who are in a better life position than I do. So I’m basically unemployed for life.

Oh why not the gig economy? I don’t have a car for most of them.

As for my relatives that refused to help or didn’t want to help, I can tell you straight up, that none of them offered me or my parents any help since I moved away. None of them. More proof that caregivers are just disposable and just told to shove themselves back into the job market. It worth nothing that none of them called me to say Merry Christmas, not even my friends or people I know who I contact on a regular basis. I basically don’t exist.

And this is one part of many of my life is destroyed by caregiving. I’m expected to rebuild my life with the scraps of what’s left of society that has radically changed in the past 5 years. It’s very difficult to reenter society as a ex-caregiver because there’s no resources online, and resources available are those assuming you have a large inhertance given to you. I have no motivation to live, no desires, and the interests I used to have are just chores. Chores to make sure that people who knew I was struggling for years, see that I’m still alive and I have not ended it my life. Aniem conventions, tv shows, anime, films, games, they’re all chores that I do so I won’t have to think about ending my life because my future no longer exist.

The only reason I’m not dead is because my parents would be upset, the people who know me but don’t contact me on facebook or whatever will be upset.

Even people I know, suddenly turn into social landmines because of something I did that I was out of my control, and already one of my convention exhibiters became a social landmine immediately. I didn’t knew she was going to turn into a landmine because all the years I’ve could have developed social skills was diverted to being a unpaid therapist to my long-unemployed mom. It’s simply not fair that I have to pay for this for the rest of my life for things too many people proudly take for granted.

I have too many things I wanted to do: It’s not a bucket list but a Dead List: Things I have to do before election day 2020, everything that I wanted to do before my life was stolen when I was forced to caregive for five years. After Election Day 2020, I’m done. I don’t belong in a society that has become unsympathic to caregivers or those pushed out of the lifescript or it has become polarized politically polarized. And I don’t see a future for American society other than a dystopic hellworld that I’m not equipped for and there is no future for me other than existing day to day just experiencing a dystopian hellworld that I have no interest seeing because I already know how 2020 will end and no one will believe me. If I was not forced to caregiver, I would not be worried about this, I would be more than prepared, but for me I have no interest experiencing a dystopia so that others won’t be upset.

I wanted to post this on tumblr so bad, but I had no energy to write or type this out or to post because the motivation is simply gone. While I’m back in school, all I’m doing is building more debt.

As for this Christmas? I spent it alone, I’ve only called my parents to say merry Christmas and see how they were all doing including my autistic brother. And the only thing I ate is a large baked chicken I’ve bought two weeks ago that I didn’t had the motivation to eat until today. And someone had to audacity on Reddit to insist I have a merry Christmas, even though I expressed misery.

I even didn’t had the energy to promote my gofundme because I simply don’t have a celebrity that can help me. Because in this day and age, unless you know someone that can help or have gobbs of money there is no way out of poverty.

So yeah a person with autism who has his life destroyed by caregiving, and no relative or friend or loved one to spend time with on Christmas. More proof that ex-caregivers are worthless to society despite how “noble” and “admirable” they are. But not noble enough for society to help them when they’re done caregiving and when isolated and alienated.

-------

If for some unknown reason this post blows up:

https://gofundme.com/help-jkid-get-out-of-debt/ - That’s my gofundme

https://www.paypal.me/Jkid4 - my paypal

https://cash.app/$Jkid - My cashapp

https://www.patreon.com/Jkid - My patreon for some unknown reason people are interested in what I’m doing as a hobby.

[cloudbattrolls]

Kindling

Etuuya Vannyn | Several Nights Prior | OLSC Headquarters (Space)

You’re walking along the side of a vast white marble wall, Karina keeping pace several feet to your side. Spark trolls - the apparent proper name for the lava folks - move in their usual silent flow around the two of you. You feel the heat from them even if they never come closer than six feet or so, another layer of warmth in the already hot ship. 

Their bright, solid eyes - hues of purple, orange, red, or gold - linger, even if none of them ever speak to you or the tealblood. 

You toss Karina - she’s no longer the only Tulais - the ball again, the two of you having thrown it back and forth for several minutes now. 

This time she holds onto it, stopping.

“Vannyn.” She says, though her gaze is directed outward, you think. Her horns, a pair of inverted triangles, glint in the light. 

You follow her line of sight to the park - well, that’s the closest thing you can think to call it.

Most parks have trolls sitting, maybe walking pets or lusii, chatting or climbing trees. This one has plants carefully sheltered behind great glass domes, vast curling vines and palm-like trees protected from the fiery inhabitants. Instead of benches, there are spiraling grooves cut in the floor, getting deeper as they go down. 

Some of the park trolls smile, and if you flick your ears, you can hear soft laughter as they toss orbs of flame back and forth. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine they were ordinary Alternians.

If Alternian trolls spoke to each other solely by telepathy and unquestionably followed the orders of a crazy bird woman.

“Aren’t you used to them?” You ask her. They’re new to you, but you’d assumed Firebird’s descendant must be accustomed to them. 

The tealblood snorts softly. 

Her hair, usually loose around her shoulders, is in a tight braid. She’s dressed in what must be fireproof armor, though it’s light, cream-colored, looking almost ceramic. She never takes it off, not even around her ancestor. 

Perhaps especially then.

“I haven’t been here much before.” She replies. “She found me young, but she didn’t bring me to space until I was nine. She just...warped me out here one night, showed me her people.”

“Her people? Did she create them somehow, or does she just lead them?”

Karina shakes her head, and your ears flick in annoyance.

“Both, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Don’t you care? How have you not asked, in all the sweeps you’ve known her?”

The teal jerks her head back toward you, dark-eyed gaze resentful.

“I can’t just ask my ancestor anything I want. She’s not Lifeweaver.”

You put your hands on your skinny hips and stare her down.

“I haven’t a clue what you think you know about Rhomox outside of his research, but he - ”

A wailing alarm interrupts your conversation and the Spark trolls start flooding around the pair of you, a purposeful stream splitting off toward various sections of the vast ship. Karina jumps out of the path of their rushing feet, stepping closer to you, almost too close - what is it with the Tulaises and forgetting what you are -

You stick an arm out in front of the teal to protect her, in case any of them get aggressive. She looks at you with a startled expression, but you ignore her as your eyes and head dart around, trying to block out the harsh noise and focus.

“They’re manning the fire cannons. They must’ve found a ship.”

You freeze, then spin around as her words sink in. 

“They what?”

The teal looks away, her fists clenching by her sides so hard her knuckles are nearly white. The soft rubber ball is crushed under the fingers of her hand. 

“What are they going to do, Karina?”

“We can’t stop them!” She snaps. “Especially not you. They’ll burn you up in seconds if you try!”

You hiss in displeasure, but stay put and watch as the strange fiery trolls cluster around what you’d thought were simply decorative golden domes, but must be some sort of weaponry. They all put their hands on them, and flames lick out of their body and get absorbed by the shining material - metal? Glass? It’s impossible to tell.

The glow of their eyes flickers as they do, and a few fall to their knees and pass out, only to be replaced by others as they’re shoved out of the way. 

A spurt of platonic pity runs through you, but you snuff it out and glare at the teal, hugging herself as she stares with a tight, miserable expression. The wail of the alarms shuts off.

“What’s going on?” You say in a low, intent voice that brooks no room for a refusal to answer.

“Where do you think she got all these trolls? Only some were her original crew. I don’t know how she makes them into Sparks, but I know they can die, and she always wants more.”

“A troll can only become all fiery if she makes it so?” You ask her, businesslike and scientific. “Direct cause and effect?”

Just as Rhomox taught you. 

“I think so.” She says, a bit hesitant. “She’s always been vague about it, but she acts like they’re all hers. I’ve never met one who didn’t obey her.”

Firebird laid her hands on the troll she’d send to fetch you when asking you about the drinker you’d accidentally sired. Leaning over them, protective. Like a lusus might with their charge. 

Like you would for Uunive.

“Do you know how close she needs to be to do it? Proximity must be a factor, or she wouldn’t need to bring ships down.”

“Close.” Karina admits, then swears. “Vannyn, you can’t possibly mean to - ”

Too late, you’re off running toward the same place you were brought in. It’s only a guess that the poor captured sods will be brought there, but it’s the best you have to go on.

The clatter of Karina’s feet come from an increasing distance behind you as she fails to keep pace with your drinker speed.

You turn and give her a cheery wave before skipping through the docking doors (apparently Firebird doesn’t bother to lock them).

A rush of air blows your hair back as a ship is indeed towed into the vast hangar. It’s bigger than your little cruiser, but not by much - the crew can’t be large. 

Its metal surface is covered in huge melted spots. You doubt it’s ever going to fly again; at best it could be recycled for scrap.

Fire shouldn’t be able to even travel through space, but Firebird and her motley crew say fuck physics, apparently.

Which is just such fantastic news.

“Have you come to see the creation of more fledglings? You could have just asked.”

She’s hovering many feet above you, yet her voice is as clear as if she was speaking in your ear.

“Well, go on and show me then, if it’s all aces with you.”

You put your hands in your pants pockets as if it hardly matters one way or the other.

A ripple of laughter reaches you, and she melts a hole in the ship’s door by shooting a stream of fire from a hand. You half expect the crew to come out guns blazing, ready to die in the style of true Imperial trolls, but nothing happens.

Wary of the red-hot edges of the hole, you run over and peer through it.

No one ran out because no one seems to be able to stand.

You breathe in, the familiar visceral scent of death present. A few trolls seem to have been literally cooked by convection, the ones closest to the ship’s edges. Their flesh is seared and bubbling, their horns blackened and crumbling.

Others seem to be alive, but barely, writhing in pain on the floor and hardly paying you any mind.

You walk in carefully, trying not to step on the wounded. Part of you wants to feed on their blood, but you ignore it. Hardly the time.

As you go further in, through a few sliding doors, you find a few trolls huddled together. They flinch at the sight of you, but one - dressed in grays, no apparent symbol showing - grabs a gun and points it at your chest.

“Who the fuck are you? I’ll shoot! Are you with the Empire? Why did you capture us?”

Huh.

“So you’re not Imperial?” You query. 

They look just as confused as you feel, only with added anger.

“Fuck no! I have no idea what the hell’s going on, but we’re not Empire! Are you?”

“Do you see a trident anywhere?” You ask dryly. “Believe me, the most highly the Empire thinks of me is as a science experiment. Also, I didn’t capture you.”

“Then what are you doing on our shi - ” 

All of you flinch from the heat as Firebird melts a hole in the ship roof and swoops down, landing in the room you’re in.

“You are about to witness a glorious thing, little Vannyn.” She says to you, as if the other trolls don’t exist, slack-jawed at her appearance. She hardly fits in the space, even with her wings folded up against her back.

The claws of her bird feet click against the floor as she steps toward the troll holding the gun, speaking to them in what you assume is meant to be a reassuring voice.

“You’ve been running from the Condesce for a long time, but I am here to save you.”

“By melting our ship? Yeah, I feel real safe!” snarks the troll who you feel rather endeared to, even if you know it can’t end well for them.

Why did Firebird attack the ship so recklessly? Karina said she wants as many trolls as she can get. Most are still alive, though some may not be for much longer, but a few were definitely dead. 

She laughs gently, and with a burst of red and purple fire, their gun begins to melt. They drop it instantly, wide gray eyes full of fear and hate, long ears pinned against their buzz-cut head.

“Don’t worry. You will have a whole new life.”

She bends down on her scaly knees, the tips of her wings brushing against the floor. The other trolls have fled out the other door, but she doesn’t seem to care. Probably because there’s nowhere for them to run.

Cupping her hands around their head, their size making the troll’s face look small, Firebird breaths deeply and exhales a strange teal fire from her mouth that surrounds like the troll like a cloud.

For a moment it simply hangs there.

Then the troll writhes and thrashes, and you see their skin start to smoke and blacken, then harden into stone, blood running from their eyes as they start glowing - 

You lunge at her, tearing out feathers that sear your skin, and she drops the troll, slapping you back with her shimmering wings. A faint clattering noise sounds, but you’re not sure if it’s real or in your jostled thinkpan.

“You dare interfere?” She says, in a voice that sounds almost like a raptor’s screech. 

“Eat me.” You manage, pulling yourself up off the floor after slamming into the wall. Not only was that a hell of a whack, the heat of her is a good reminder how outmatched you are. For all your strength and regeneration, you’re almost powerless against the teal.

The clattering noise gets louder and Karina bursts in, panting, her skin and braid slick with sweat.

“What...the fuck...is going on?” She demands between breaths.

You and Firebird both stop, looking at her and then each other.

“Leave us.” says Firebird dismissively, the troll on the floor making whimpering noises. “This isn’t for your eyes.” She flicks a hand at the door the younger teal just came through.

You study Karina’s white armor. Where are the catches for it? It almost looks like it’s all of a piece, but that’s not possible. There has to be some seam or join.

“But it’s for Vannyn’s?” She cries. 

There. Buckles, nearly the same color as the strange ceramic material.

“They have a chance of understanding. If they can stop acting foolish.” She replies, casting a glowing glare your way.

Karina’s teal slit pupils flick to the troll on the floor and she takes a step back. Then another. Closer to you, which is helpful.

“What...what’s going to happen to this troll?”

Firebird sighs, but also makes an annoyed chittering noise, her wings shifting.

“It isn’t your concern, Karina. Go, before I lose my patience.”

You yank off the younger teal’s breastplate in one swift pull, put it in your sylladex, and dart behind Firebird. You jump onto her back, using her wings as handholds as she thrashes, and scale her so that you’re gripping her shoulders. Your head is above the melted ceiling of the ship now, she’s so bloody tall, and your claws dig into her boiling hot flesh, teal blood running down the skin. 

You can feel your skin starting to burn.

“Take the survivors and get out!” You yell at your boss. “Take my ship!”

She doesn’t move as Firebird screeches, her wings beating and slamming into the confined space now, and you jump.

You leap up through the melted hole and come back down, trying to land on her shoulders - 

The eight foot tall woman plucks you out of the air with both hands gripping your body, baring her fangs as her feathered ears puff up in fury. She holds you up level with her face, only a few feet away.

“You would deny these hunted trolls their salvation? The Spark takes away pain! It makes trolls anew!”

Her half-transformed victim lets out an agonized moan below.

“And it makes people your minions, isn’t that convenient? Burning themselves out to power weapons to gather more trolls for you?”

Her eyes narrow.

“How can you not understand? You, composed of so many small parts? This is no different. We are all part of the Spark; I simply guide them to its power.”

Karina’s still here. Well, bugger her, she gets to see what comes next.

You smile at the crazed fanatic in front of you, showing all your long sharp drinker teeth. Your arms may pinned to your sides under her grip, but that doesn’t matter.

Not when you open your mouth and spit a mass of worms in her eyes.

She drops you to claw at them, swearing and screeching, and it’s not long until she kills them or they get cooked from the heat. 

So you jump, this time landing on her shoulders as planned, and send more into her throat, her nose. She writhes, but with less strength, and you whisper in her ear.

“Unlike you, I don’t need to ‘save’ other people to feel whole.”

She goes stiller yet.

You bend over and trace a claw under her chin as she did to you when you first met.

“I can feel my worms dying from your heat, but you can’t scream, can you? Can you even breathe? Tick tock, Firebird.”

You catch on fire.

Well, there it is, all that blinding pain, making every nerve an agony, every worm withering.

You fall off, burning, and Firebird turns to you. You’re rewarded with the sight of worms in her face before they blacken and crumble, turning to ash. 

Clothes and flesh, you’re doing the same. How haven’t you passed out. You’re burning away, skin and fabric and works all slowly turning to black and gray ash, piece by piece. A hand. Your legs. Your horns. 

“Don’t kill them!”

Bit late, Karina. Idiot child. Should’ve helped the ship trolls. 

The other victim on the floor looks at you in horror and sympathy alike.

“If I spare them, you will not question me again.”

“Yes!”

“They will obey.”

“I’ll make them!”

“They will witness this, and remember they cannot challenge me and win.”

You watch yourself burn away, half of your body gone to the excruciating flames, and finally Firebird releases you to sweet unconsciousness.

[bellsadventuresworld]

                                                 Metabolism

You’ve probably heard about a little thing called metabolism that gets a lot of hype in the weight loss world. You’ve probably also heard something along the lines of “I have trouble losing weight because I have a slow metabolism”, “My eating disorder has destroyed my metabolism so I’ll be fat forever”, or even the most cringing of all, weight loss adds boasting:  “Boost your metabolism by using this simple trick…”.

With all the propaganda and misinformation posted carelessly online, how do you know what to trust? A simple Google search on the topic can be misleading and overwhelming as research is often long, tedious and conflicting in nature. Below is a compilation of slow, methodical research from scientific journals and other sanctified, credible sources. Please note that the information in this post should never be used as a substitute for medical advice from your doctor. This is simply an attempt to evaluate the correlation between weight loss and metabolism. More specifically, this post is intended to explore what eating disorders do to the metabolism and bust some dangerous myths about increasing the rate of weight loss. Strap in my rexy friends, you’re in for the long haul with this one. Let’s educate ourselves and reach those goal weights! (If this is too long to read in one go, I get it! Book mark it for later and digest in sections)

Note that there is a lot of physiology, systems and different topics that contribute important, valid information to this particular discussion. Without writing a text book sized post I cannot possibly cover all of it. The goal of this post is to give you a brief understanding of metabolism. As I grow this blog I will break down subtopics for further explanation.  

Section A: What is metabolism?

We hear about it often but few of us know what it really is or what it actually does.  Your metabolism is defined as the sum total of all biochemical reactions that take place in the body over time. This includes basic life-sustaining functions like breathing, circulating blood (I.e. vasomotor tone, heart rate and contractility), repairing damaged cells/ mounting immune attacks on foreign bodies, halting cancerous cell production, supplying glucose to the brain in order to think, and a multitude of other cool, autonomic things your body does to keep you alive. Just like a car, In order to keep a metabolism running we have to supply the body with gas. In this case the currency is the dreaded calorie. Those autonomic functions we just talked about that allow us to laugh over memes or ogle over thinspo have a base need for calories called the basal metabolic rate. Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the number of calories your body needs to survive everyday if you don’t do anything….seriously. All you have to do is lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and your body will burn calories. Pretty neat. Everyone’s BMR is different and is based on factors like height, weight, gender, and body fat percentage. Your personal BMR can be calculated easily online. We will get to why this is important in a bit or maybe in another post, but first we need to finish building some foundation.  Your metabolism works like this:

There are two main functions of the metabolism: anabolism and catabolism. To illustrate this, we will describe them as construction teams. Think of anabolism as the building team responsible for installing a new skyscraper. Anabolism is the process that takes protein building blocks synthesized from the food you eat to make new materials and cells to maintain your tissues. Think of catabolism as the demolition specialists. In other words, this team is responsible for breaking down the old skyscraper to make room for the new one.  Catabolism is the process that breaks down existing body fat and carbs to recycle into new energy (the bodies chosen energy source is ATP but we will discuss this topic another day as this post is already extremely long). In fact, It is estimated by some researches that as much as 10% of the calories from carbs and proteins you eat are used during digestion, meaning you don’t store those calories as body fat. One by-product of breaking molecular bonds is heat, and therefore catabolism helps regulate body temperature too (hence why most of us are freezing ALL THE TIME when heavily restricting or fasting).  So all of this is great, but what does it mean?

Let’s talk about what would happen to the skyscraper if our teams didn’t work right. If the demolition team didn’t have enough usable materials from the tower they torn down to give the building team and no new materials were provided, the new tower would never get built and the project would fail.  If there is no excess body fat to burn and no caloric input, catabolism processes begin to attack vital organs, muscle and bone in order to free energy. This is why eating disorders cause your hair to fall out, your skin to chap, become wrinkly and irritated, your bones to become brittle, your organs to die and you to live in a perpetual state of cold. You might be reading this thinking “I’m not underweight yet and I still have some of this happening”. You’re right. You probably do, so what’s going on? The body is really good at surviving on very little (thank you cave man ancestors) and has lots of safety guards in place that are very inconvenient to our disordered approach to weight loss. When we severely restrict and regulate our caloric intake, the brain sends signals to the body that sound all the alarms and we enter a state of starvation (we will talk hormones another day). Just like a chipmunk over the winter who doesn’t know the next time he will find food is, our metabolism gets greedy and stuffs its cheeks with copious amounts of calories to store. This is why long periods of fasting are proven to slow the metabolism and cause weight gain.  Other methods like intermittent fasting are more effective weight loss techniques (again we will discuss this in another post). Note that the posts you see about fasting for ten days and losing 20 pounds may be real but are dangerous and unrealistic for most people. At that point in a fast weight loss may become rapid because the body is being forced to use the last of the reserves it has to keep you breathing. Remember that these reserves are your organs and muscle tissue- the things that keep you ALIVE.

Section B: I have control issues- so how do I make metabolism my slave?

Bottom line: You don’t, you can’t, and you never will be able to…mostly.  Sorry friends, this one hurts but unfortunately your metabolism is greatly determined by your genetics, body composition, and natural sex…. All things you don’t have control over. It’s obvious we can’t change our genes or inherent sex (even if you transition into the opposite sex, you were still born with hormones and reproductive organs specific to one gender or the other. Your chromosomes don’t change even as you become who you were meant to be). Men generally have a greater proportion of muscle to body fat and therefore a faster metabolism than women. Women generally have a slower metabolism and carry a greater amount of body fat than men because we are tasked with supporting child birth. It’s also important to understand that as we age, our metabolism generally ages with us and slows down.  Now let’s chat about body composition.  When I was first putting together information for this post I refused to believe that I don’t control my body composition. I mean if exercise more and eat less I will have more muscle and less body fat right? There. I changed my body composition! Not quite… while that statement is true in some regards, that’s not the kind of composition we’re talking about here. We are talking about your frame and body size.  I am 5 ft 1in tall and labeled as “petite”. I have a set amount of muscle on my body that is very different than a person who is 6ft tall. Regardless of how good of shape I am in and the amount of muscle mass or tone I have, the 6 footer will always have one up on me. The taller you are, generally the more calories you will burn in a day because you physically have more mass (not fat) to move. The same concept applies to animals. It will take a giraffe more energy than a Chihuahua to move its body every day because the giraffe is 49 times bigger than the Chihuahua. Does this mean the Chihuahua is fat because it uses less energy and burns less calories that the giraffe? Does it mean the giraffe is fat because it needs to consume more calories than the Chihuahua just to get out of bed? Of course not! We can’t compare the two because they are inherently different, but as humans we like to compare everything about ourselves to everything about everyone else. This leads to a lot of disappointment, binges, purges and tears. Trust me, I know this first hand as I’m sure you do too.  Understanding your metabolic needs and ignoring others will help you reach that goal weight so let’s stop comparing as it just tears us down.  

Section C: Are you sure I can’t increase my metabolism?

Your metabolism can be altered for short periods of time but generally stays at a constant rate. In other words, drinking your black coffee can give you a boost in calorie burning power for an hour or so but will not add significantly to your daily caloric burn. Oh, and did I mention that when the body is used to getting certain foods or stimulants it becomes dependent on the item and it loses its super power? That’s right, not only do you have to drink coffee every morning to function, but that bitter black stuff you force yourself to drink stops boosting metabolism altogether. Win-Win right?

Contrary to popular belief, your metabolism plays only a minor role in weight loss and should not be the main focus of your journey. Instead you should focus on lifestyle choices like what you eat, when you eat and how much physical activity you are doing. At the end of the day, regardless of where our calories come from, weight loss, in a nutshell ,comes down to caloric deficit. You will not lose weight if you don’t burn more calories than you eat. Below is a list of popular ways to “increase” your metabolism as well as the truth behind them.

Myth #1: Exercise boosts your metabolism long after you stop- AKA “the after burn”

Exercise will increase your metabolism in proportion with the amount of muscle you gain. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, the faster your metabolism. The concept of after burn is a novel thought that you continue to burn calories long after your work out stops. This is only half true. Exercises that elevate heart rate like swimming, biking, running and high intensity workouts burn lots of calories while you’re doing them but not so much at rest. Metabolism is kind of like breathing. You breathe hard and fast while you’re running and for a few minutes after that but then your breathing becomes normal again. The metabolism works the same way. You may continue to burn an increased number of calories for a couple hours after your workout ends but eventually metabolism will return to a resting state. Keep in mind that your brain, heart, kidneys, liver, and lungs account for most of the energy used in a day as they never get to rest. Exercise is important but is not the main source of energy consumption.

Be sure not to overindulge in calories after a workout thinking you will burn them all off. You won’t. That being said, you do need to refuel the body with some sort of clean protein after a workout if you would like to gain the muscle you worked for.  You might be thinking “but I don’t care about the muscle….I care about the skinny!!” I’m here to tell you why you should care.

We aren’t talking muscle like the body builders and Instagram fitness models sport. We are talking lean, functional muscle that is vital for holding your bones together. More importantly, your heart is a muscle and needs to be maintained.

I personally aim to eat a light, healthy meal within an hour after my work out, especially if I trained hard that day. An example of something I might throw together post workout would be a bed of spiralized zucchini with homemade marinara sauce and broccoli (broccoli is high in protein) or a salad with a variety of fresh veggies, toasted nuts or seeds and a light vinegar dressing. If I really can’t stomach a real meal after working out I at least try to heat up a cup of green peas with salt and pepper. The salt is an electrolyte important for muscle contraction and green peas are surprisingly high in protein and low in calories: one cup of frozen peas has about 130 calories and contains 8.6 grams of protein not to mention vitamins A, C, calcium and iron. I like these options because they are low calorie, high volume so I feel full and I am able to sleep without hunger pains.

Eating after a workout also helps avoid binges (have you ever fasted and worked out like crazy? The hunger is 10,000 times harder to control). I cannot stress enough how important it is to avoid a binge, purge, restrict cycle. It wreaks absolute havoc on your metabolism. Eating disorders confuse the body and force it into a state of reduced function so we have to do our best to provide nutrients where we can.

Regular aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is the most efficient way to burn calories and includes activities such as walking, bicycling and swimming. As a general goal, include at least 30 minutes of physical activity in your daily routine.

If you want to lose weight or meet specific fitness goals, you may need to increase the time you spend on physical activity even more. If you can't set aside time for a longer workout, try 10-minute chunks of activity throughout the day. Remember, the more active you are, the greater the benefits.

Safety reminder: if you are fasting or heavily restricting (below 500 cals per day), don’t work out. If you feel the need to do something, a simple walk will suffice. You wouldn’t try to run a car without gas, don’t try to run your body without food. Be smart. Life is a balance, learn to listen to your body and hear it when it tells you how much it can take.

Strength training. Strength training exercises like weightlifting a couple times a week are really good for bone structure. You don’t have to left heavy and become bulky, but putting the bones under strain and weight is a good way to strengthen them. Over time, as you continue to lift, the body will remodel your bones and they will become physically thicker around the areas under the most stress. These areas are your joints and connection points. Strengthening and thickening the bone won’t make you appear any bigger then you are, it simply offers protection to your frame. Lifting is good for everyone but a critical consideration for my female Anna’s reading this. Women are already at a greater risk of developing osteoporosis (a painful condition where the bones become weak and brittle and break easily) and adding an eating disorder on top of that more than doubles the risk of developing early onset osteoporosis. Strength training and making sure you are consuming calcium are vital for saving yourself from a lot of pain and irreversible damage to your joints and bones.  

Lifestyle activities. Any extra movement helps burn calories. Look for ways to walk and move around a few minutes more each day than the day before. Easy things you can do that help keep you active without having to slave for hours in the gym or eat large amounts to keep up with heavy exercise are as follows.

Taking the stairs more often and parking farther away at the store are simple ways to burn more calories. Even activities such as gardening, washing your car and housework burn calories and contribute to weight loss. When you’re making food or tea, do some calf raises, stretch while reading a book. Movement is medicine. Include it however creatively you can

Myth #2: Eating certain foods can boost your metabolism.

Let me step on a soap box real quick. Friends, you have to believe me! Downing cups of apple cider vinegar, cold water and green tea really isn’t helping as much as you think! And really, who actually likes the taste of pure vinegar? Eating foods like green tea, caffeine, or hot chili peppers will not help you shed excess pounds. Some foods and drinks may provide a small boost in your metabolism that help jump start the body, but not enough to make a significant difference in your weight. Here’s the skinny on some popular metabolism boosting tricks.

Tea: Tea, namely green tea, is a popular go to for weight loss but slow down before you make tea time all the time. Below is a statistic that can be a bit confusing:

“Studies have found green tea contains a compound called epigallocatechin gallate, which may increase the calories and fat you burn. A 2011 meta-analysis published in Obesity Reviews found that consuming about 250 milligrams of epigallocatechin gallate (the amount in about three cups of green tea) helped boost metabolism enough to burn an average of 100 extra calories a day.”

This study talks about how green tea was found to increase the metabolism and aid in weight loss. 100 calories a day seems like a pretty good trade-off for drinking a few cups of hot, naturally flavored water. Buts lets break this down. First, this study was conducted with overweight individuals. The higher your starting weight, the easier it is to drop pounds quickly. Without further research, it’s hard to say if individuals staring at a normal weight or underweight would see the same results. Likely not. Second, this quote fails to reveal the sample volume that was used or discuss moderators of weight loss. In one review of multiple different studies on green tea and weight loss, it is clear that the correlation between dropping a few pounds and drinking tea is complicated by factors like the amount of caffeine in the tea and the ethnicity of the individual consuming the beverage. Caffeine is an appetite suppressant and can likely add to short term weight loss. It’s hard to say if caffeine free green tea helps burn fat as efficiently as caffeinated varieties. Then there is the issue of caffeine dependency and resistance. Just like coffee, eventually the caffeine loses its fat melting capabilities.

I’m not saying not to drink tea. I personally drink a lot of it because I simply enjoy it. I try to stay away from highly caffeinated teas and beverages because caffeine makes me personally feel pretty sick. There is a tea for everything. I do a post about it soon.

Cold Water/cold showers: Okay, let’s talk H2O and ice baths. Water is an extremely important part of life. We hear it every day- drink more water, drink cold water! Stand under a cold shower! Etc. But let’s take a closer look. The act of being cold does cause the body to generate heat which in turn does speed up the metabolism. The human body has a very narrow set of ranges it can survive in known as homeostasis. In order to maintain homeostasis, the body must stay balanced in PH, electrolyte levels, temperature etc. The reason cold water does technically increase metabolism is because the body has to actively burn calories to warm the water up to an acceptable temperature. In cases where you are not consuming the water but instead surrounded by a cold environment, the body induces shivering to mechanically warm itself. Shivering also actively burns calories because the muscles are contracting hard and fast to generate heat. The amount of calories burned by drinking cold water or submerging yourself in ice water is negligible and varies greatly from person to person and therefore is not a great or pleasant way to burn fat. Drinking cold water on an empty stomach can be really painful too, again I know because I’ve tried it. Last thing I want to mention is the danger of ice baths and eating disorders. If you are underweight it can be dangerous to make yourself really cold because your body doesn’t have the energy to keep you warm enough. The result of a core temperature that drops too low is unconsciousness, malfunction of organs and eventually death (that is if you don’t drown in the water after you pass out).

Spicy foods and cayenne pepper: The idea that spicy foods burn excess calories comes from a compound found in peppers and other hot foods called capsaicin. Studies have found capsaicin to burn around 10 additional calories per meal if consumed in high doses. Most people can’t tolerate the amount of spice needed to increase the metabolism by any significant degree, and even if you could, assuming you ate spicy food in appropriate doses at every meal, every day, it would take you about six and a half years to burn one pound of fat (math based on a healthy weight male individual).  My point is this- if you like spicy food, by all means eat it, but if you’re forcing yourself to do cayenne pepper and lemon juice shooters in the morning, stop. It’s really not worth it and can cause more harm than help- no one wants burns in their stomach or down their esophagus.

Superfoods: Be careful what you read and trust as reliable information. “Superfoods” are often packed with nutrients, antioxidants and other beneficial compounds but no one food or drink is going to make you thin….especially not overnight. We all hate to hear this but weight loss comes with consistency, clean foods and exercise. Patience is a virtue we can all learn to appreciate on this journey. The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends cutting calories by 500 to 700 calories a day to lose 1 to 1.5 pounds (0.5 to 0.7 kilograms) a week. If you can add some physical activity to your day, you'll accomplish your weight-loss goals even faster and keep yourself out of harm’s way.

Myth #4: Eating small meals during the day increases your metabolism.

Unfortunately, there is little scientific evidence that eating small, frequent meals boosts metabolism. Even though eating small snacks instead of large meals isn’t proven to boost the metabolism, spreading your meals out may help you avoid binging. A more constant intake of food can make it easier to stop once you start eating because the body is no longer worried it won’t be feed for hours on ends. Snacks should contain mostly fruits, veggies and lean proteins. Gold fish are tasty but carry no nutritional value. How much you eat is a factor in weight loss but it also matters what you eat.

Myth #5: Getting a full night's sleep is good for your metabolism.

 A good night's sleep will NOT boost your metabolism but neglecting to sleep can trigger weight gain.  The chronically sleep-deprived in general tend to consume more calories than necessary, possibly to deal with feeling tired. Sleep deprivation can cause your body to produce too much insulin, which can lead to increased fat storage. We’ve all been there staring into the fridge at three in the morning trying to fight off the urge to binge because we can’t sleep. Sleeping with an eating disorder can be hard. I am naturally an insomniac and sleep very little, so being a hungry insomniac is even worse! The goal is seven to nine hours of sleep per night but shoot for what you can. Some things I do to help with the sleeping issue:

           -No napping during the day: If I nap, I don’t sleep period.

           -No technology 1-2 hours before bed

          -No food an hour before bed: Eating too close to bedtime leaves me                     feeling bloated and prevents me from sleeping

          - Having clean sheets and a tidy bedroom: I find it easier to sleep in a                    clean environment. I also enjoy sleeping with a weighted blanket

          -The bedroom is only for sleeping and sex. I try really hard not to do other             activities in my room including playing on my phone, watching Netflix,                   reading etc. I want my body and my mind to understand that when I slip               into bed I wish to sleep, not lie awake staring at the ceiling.

         -Daily exercise: like I said, personally I naturally have loads of energy and            have trouble sleeping. I find that when I exercise throughout the day it’s a            bit easier to catch the Z’s at night. This being said I like to meditate and                stretch before bed as well. It’s a nice peaceful way to wind down, calm                any nervous energy and banish any negative thoughts that haunt you in              your slumber.

        -Drinking hot tea: There is no research or Proof behind this one. This is                 only my observation but sipping on hot herbal tea (un-caffeinated!!) helps             me relax and wind down for the night. I like peppermint tea before bed                 because it is gentle and helps settle my stomach.

Summary:

Weight loss is a hard, frustrating journey- especially when you’re on an Anna fast track. Arming yourself with information isn’t going to make your disorder go away or make it easier to cope with but it can help you restrict safer and understand what it is you are doing to your body. If you have questions, comments concerns or topics you’d like me to discuss in further detail let me know! My inbox is always open to anyone.

As always stay safe and know that you are loved

Bell

Sources

https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2009135

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-truth-about-metabolism

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/metabolism/art-20046508

https://www.rush.edu/health-wellness/discover-health/how-metabolism-really-works

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000893.htm

https://muscleevo.net/cold-showers-weight-loss/