#I saw like three iterations of this ask

[wallflower-ghost]

what the fuck is going on

[ask-the-pioneer]

"I've always been captivated by them. Something about the shiny exterior, how they glimmer when you tumble them around in your hands. My younger self would obsess about them, a childlike fascination. Even back then I instinctively knew they had value. My mom would use pearls I found to pay for a safe passage at scavenger tolls. We tried to bypass those points as much as we could, but sometimes it was unavoidable."

"It's a looong story…. I was found roaming the wilderness by my mentor, who brought me to er, an entity, called an interator. Do you know of iterators? Apparently they are what was left of an ancient civilization that once inhabited these lands. I couldn't wrap my head around it at first. Iterators are massive, absolutely huge, like mountains. Do you see that big structure of a regular, smooth shape?"

[She points towards Five Pebble's can in the distance]

"That is an iterator's «superstrucute». A mountain, the entire thing… is a person. It still sounds crazy when I say it."

"Ah, right, my name… like I mentioned, I got lost and my mentor found me. He brought me to his iterator. If my memory serves me right, his name is «No Significant Harassment», or NSH for short. I recall thinking at that time, «Harassment? I hope he won't be cruel to me». I had no concept of iterator names, their meaning, why it's three or however many words long. It was incredibly confusing to my young mind, though looking back at it I consider myself very lucky. The iterator was, dare I say, «god-like» (his own words), but benevolent. I saw how well he treated Hunter – my mentor – and it made me trust him more, even though I was scared and wary in the beginning."

"Would you believe it if I told you… there are stories written inside the pearls? That those things I’ve been obsessing about all my life are used for storing information? I had many of them leftover from when I lived at a scavenger outpost. One cycle, NSH noticed my interest, and – I wish Hunter had told me about this sooner, but – the iterator shot at my head with something…? And suddenly I could understand everything he said. Not that he said much, because I started crying loudly and ran straight out of there, haha. But before I bolted, he gave me one of his pearls as consolation. I think he felt bad for the scared little me."

"After that, he would eagerly read all the pearls I brought to him. That is how I learned more about the culture of the peoples who were here before me: the Ancients, their customs, why the iterators were built, and much more. It was like the knowledge of the entire world was suddenly revealed to me – to a seemingly insignificant being, a tiny speck in an endless ocean of life. It both made me feel very important, and very small. And, yeah, it has intensified my obsession with pearls beyond mortal limits. What if I could write into a pearl? I could archive the history of my entire species! All the stories my mom told me when I was small? All the places I’ve been to? Or other scugs have been to…"

[Her eyes widen, sparkling with glee]

"Y-yeah… that would be nice… sadly I am what I am – a slugcat. I don’t know how to do this very advanced stuff at all. I have no means of doing this. I once asked NHS for help, but there’s only so much he could guess from my frantic signing. I don’t think he understood me, in the end. But he did appreciate my efforts, and I was given a title – the Pioneer, like a person who is the very first to explore something uncharted. Apparently no slugcat before me thought of reading from or writing into pearls? I find it a little hard to believe."

"This one! This is a very special kind of pearl – it contains an ancient poem from which my name originated. See, my name was a gift from NSH the iterator. It’s spelled: «Mirmyntasseth». The best way I would describe it, is… it’s a name for a feeling, or an experience. The way it was explained to me, is that the word «Mirmyntasseth» is an expression of seeing a marble roll on a flat surface, then hitting another marble. Ah, right, you may not know this – a marble is like, like a pearl, but translucent and even more ornate. I was told that marbles were used by the Ancients for entertainment. They had a game where you rolled one to hit another. I'll admit, I can see the appeal. Throwing rocks is fun, although I image this game was considered a more dignified pastime."

[She tumbles the dark pearl in her hands, admiring its luster]

"The poem inside this pearl, one of its verses spells: «Eight Marbles Cast in Stone». The poem itself is long… very long… I had the iterator read it to me once, and we had to stop in the middle because the rain was coming. Maybe I will ask NSH to read it again, when I’m back at his superstructure with Hunter."

[Her gaze trails off to somewhere far away for a moment, a subtle grimace on her face. She closes her eyes and shakes off the thoughts that cloud her mind]

"So, um… yes… that is why I am called Eight Marbles Cast in Stone, or Marbles for short. I like how it sounds, it has a nice ring to it. And it’s a gift from an iterator, a god-like being. I consider it a great honor."

"…that said, I wonder why he didn’t just name me «Pearl»? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Maybe it didn’t sound cool enough. They’ve used pearls just to store information. I guess it’d be silly to be named «Dirt» because you doodle in dirt, or «Batfly» because you love eating batflies? Hmm…"

[mudkirby]

Pebbles In order of appearance.

@druidshollow lore lore lore Dune lore lore

@flickering-nightfall whole reason I draw Pebbles the way I do since first exposure

@toxictoxicities b u f f

@dennis7231 still waiting on them dropwigs >:)

@weepinglilvessel ant snooooot

@mudkirby me :> 🔫

@shkika love your Suns

@northflowerowo Sorry I shoved him so far down lol

Honourable mentions/ shout outs: @trashiiplant Howwow Knight and Wainwowld :D

@kelnexia is lurking.

@daszombes Thank you for explaining lore, giving us peak story telling and characters to simp for in the form of the Iterator Logs. What? No Pebbles? Don't care. You're on here now.

Druid's Hollow, the first time I ever saw your YouTube channel was with the Distant Frontier video after just having gotten into Iterator Logs. One of the most pivotal pieces of media you've made in my life was God- Jake Daniels. That single video alone gave me the push I needed to make my first Rainworld oc Parting Clouds. The stories surrounding your characters (and Dune) are creative beyond my ability to write stories. Keep up your top tier memery.

Flickering Nightfall, I'ma put this in a nutshell. Duckdance. After that I found your blog via Google before I made a Tumblr and became enthralled by your content. From something as obscure to me as Infinity Train to Pebbles ragdolling, you were essentially my gateway into liking Iterators. I love the purple. I need moar.

Vic, b u f f I haven't known your blog long and was introduced to you through the My Goodbye animation. Since I was sort of entirely new to Rainworld at that point, I had no idea what was happening. I just saw a well drawn thing and went "oooooo". I'm all for Suns' antenna twitches and NSH box head. Also, body pillow 💀

Dennis, one of the first blogs I found when I first started Tumblr. I found you through the @iterator-ask-blog and found bullying Pebbles hilarious. I love the way you draw the yellow things on his head and I just appreciate that you do digital in general. I do not, will not and proceeds to die if I must. I've seen quick progress with your art style as well. Keep going.

Vessel, I barely know you. Who da heck are ye? I saw your art style once and knew I needed to follow. The way you draw Pebbles and Moon are so satisfying to stare at for minutes and I had way too much fun replicating that s n o o t. I don't know what you're up to with them aside from chaos. Murky Seas' story and design are fantastic. RIP

Shkika, I only found you through the @ask-looks-to-the-moon blog and love the way you draw the Iterators. It's very stylistic without straying too far. The three fingered hands to the goofy faces Moon expresses makes me smile. B a l l s. My Suns design was more so inspired by the way you make him as you were somehow the first Suns exposure. You're the only reason I can't see him without fluff. How did you make Pebbles cute kavvkatkcfadal

Northflowo, way back in 2022 in my first exposure to Hollow Knight, I found your channel through the Baby Mantis skin video with Nosk along with the lore in a nutshell video. Any other content I saw I forgor. In any case, your channel was there in my search for knowledge on that game. Fast-forward to the near conclusion of 2023 when I was first introduced to Rainworld. In my hunt for memes and more knowledge, I found the other lore in a nutshell video and realized you were the perfect channel for me as you had plenty of other content on that subject. Your art still manages to astound me, especially with the shot you did in the map Pliocene and the Warrior Cats redraws like with the waterfall. I'm trash at drawing backgrounds and might learn something from you.

And of great importance to me, @bornt-urnge/@zigmatism

@kitterjitters /@offended-dragon

Thank you for every moment of drawing from Pokemon to Kirby to Mire (oc) and anything else. You have made some of the largest impacts on my life, drawing, game choices and I've enjoyed every moment. I want to have more ridiculous sessions like that in the future and look forward to it.

Some of you have been around in my life for some time and others I've just found. All the same, every single art piece you've made has inspired me no matter how polished, memed or "trash". All of you have made an impact on me, no matter how miniscule. I look forward to the future with anticipation for all of your art. Have a terrific year, and with my deepest gratitude, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading this.

[pahtoosh]

you’ll always have a place here

masterlist

summer celebration masterlist

18+

wc: ~1100 words

warnings: baby has a bad dream. fears of being unwanted. so cheesy. like soooo cheesy.

a/n: this piece had like three totally different iterations😭 my brain is melting i can’t look at words anymore

pairing: stucky x gn!little!reader

summary: you have a bad dream and doubt your daddies’ love for you

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

“We can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Taking care of you, babying you! God, do you have any idea how hard it is on us?

“I- I’m sorry, I-“

“We’re tired of it. We want you gone.”

𓏲 ࣪₊♡

You startled awake. There was a deep pain in your chest and you were breathing heavily. You started to remember the dream and cried. How could your daddies be so cruel?

Something came to rest on your shoulder, making you flinch.

Steve retracted his hand. “Sorry, sweetness. We heard you crying and you didn’t answer when we knocked so we decided to check on you. What happened?”

You wanted to tell him to go away, but your Dada’s gentle, concerned gaze made you feel safe. He wouldn’t hurt you and you couldn’t hurt him.

“H- had a bad dweam.”

“Aww, I’m sorry to hear that, baby.”

“D- daddies was m-mean to me an-“ the thought of repeating what your nightmare daddies said made you burst into tears again.

“What, sweetness, what was it?”

You shook your head and hid behind your hands. Bucky came up on the other side of you. “That’s okay, angel. Are you feeling overwhelmed right now?”

You nodded and crawled into Bucky’s lap, burrowing your face into his neck.

“Is someone feeling very small right now?”

You hesitated before nodding again.

He spoke quieter this time. “Does someone need their daddies?”

You were quiet, scaring Bucky into thinking that he overstepped. But then you quietly whispered, “Need daddies”. With their supersoldier hearing, Steve and Bucky just barely caught it.

Steve cooed, scooted closer, and comfortingly rubbed your back. “Daddies are here, baby.”

𓏲 ࣪₊♡

When you calmed down, Steve and Bucky brought you to the kitchen for breakfast.

“Let’s get some food into that belly of yours. Your brain needs all the energy it can get!” Dada got the food ready while Baba set the table.

“Do you want a bib, angel? Dada and I saw these and thought you might like them.”

You were taken aback by their kindness. “For me?”

“Yeah for you! Now, do you want the flowers or the stars?”

“Um, stars please.”

“Good manners, baby.” He kissed your cheek and then helped fasten the string around your collar.

Steve reappeared to put the plates of food on the table. “Oh, someone’s looking very cute right now.”

You blushed at the compliment.

“Do you want us to feed you, sweetness?”

You looked away and toyed with your bib. “Don’t wanna be a bother.”

“You’re not botherin’ anyone, baby. This is what daddies are for. Here, open wide for the pancake plane.” Steve held out a forkful of pancakes toward you.

“Can it be a submarine instead?” you asked shyly.

“Well if it’s a submarine, now I gotta start over!” Steve brought the fork from the plate to your mouth again, this time bobbing the utensil up and down slowly to make it move more like a submarine.

You giggled at the show he was putting on for you and happily took a bite.

𓏲 ࣪₊♡

After breakfast, Steve and Bucky decided you could have a little screen time and watch one of your favorite shows. They were a little shaken by this morning and thought a treat would help you get your mind off of it.

As you sat between your daddies and watched the colors dancing on the screen, your mind began to wander. You were doing exactly what your nightmare daddies hated. Forcing them to watch a show that only you like when they could be working or doing something they liked.

You daddies noticed a shift in the air. Your heart was beating fast, you were breathing a little heavier, and your eyes were pointed forward but not looking at or focused on anything.

They turned off the TV and went into caregiver mode.

Steve gently guided your hands away from scratching holes into your pants and rested your palms on his chest so you could feel his heart.

“Breathe with me, baby. In, and out. Just like that, perfect.”

When you calmed down, you broke away from Steve’s hold. Instead of crawling into your Dada or Baba’s lap like you so desperately wanted to, you hugged a pillow and sunk into the couch.

“I’m okay now. Yous guys- uh, you guys can go do whatever you want now.”

“What do you mean, babydoll?”

“I know you guys don’t want to just sit here and watch TV with me so you can go. I’ll be okay by myself.”

“Sweetheart, what makes you think we don’t wanna be with you?”

“I just know, okay?” You were getting frustrated now, why did they keep arguing with you?

Bucky connected the dots. “Oh, baby. Is this about the dream you had?” His head was tilted to the side and his eyebrows scrunched together. He looked so sad and worried.

You had to turn away.

“Sweetheart, we love you,” Steve began. “And that means we wanna spend time with you. It doesn’t matter if it’s your big activities or your small ones, we want it all with you.”

You began to sniffle and hid behind the pillow.

“Angel, maybe you’d feel better if you tell Dada and Baba what happened in that dream of yours. Can you try? We promise we won’t be mad.”

You shook your head. You didn’t want to make this a bigger deal than it already was. You felt immature and undeserving of their comfort.

“Please tell us, we just wanna help.”

You took a shaky breath and explained. “You said you didn’t wanna take care of me anymore. You said you were tired and you wanted me gone.”

“Oh, baby.” Your daddies wrapped their arms around you as you cried again.

“It was so m-mean and it felt so real,” you sobbed.

“Sweetness, I’m so sorry you had to hear that. We would never, ever say something like that to you.”

“Yeah, Dada and I are crazy about you, you know that?”

“You are?” You looked out from behind the pillow to see from your daddies’ faces if they were lying.

“Sure are. We talk about you nonstop with the team when we’re on missions, we can’t wait to get home with you. And when we’re with you, we’re as happy as can be.”

“You’re it for us. You make all of this,” your Baba waved his hand in the air, “worth doing.”

You pushed the pillow aside and hugged your daddies close. “Thank you, Baba. Thank you, Dada. I’m sorry I believed the dream.”

“Shh, you’ve got nothin’ to apologize for. Anytime you need a reminder of how much Baba and I love you, we’re here.”

[britcision]

So it’s weird to come back a couple years after you leave a place and see how it’s changed, right?

In my first year of college, a group of friends and I were the first iteration of our college’s Makers Club. The tech teachers helped us get set up, taught us to apply for funding, got us a room for meetings

And, y’know, for most of the year what we in the club had access to was the room, a projector, and the xbox one of the members brought in for our weekly Smash Bros tournament

(Before the xbox came in the Makers Club did vitally important and scientific activities like taping a member to a chair with painter’s tape to see how easily he could break out)

And as we did the budget request, we all made jokes about stupid things we could buy, because we needed to have an itinerary of everything we wanted to submit with the budget, and the teachers advised us to ask at least double what we actually wanted

(So, 10’ diamond coated charger cables, better tape, a 3D printer to print a trophy for the winner of the tournament each week, etc.)

It was basically a lunch club, almost entirely of people from our software development classes, where we all hung out and dicked around

I graduated a couple years later, and the year after that snuck back to the Maker’s Club because we’d finally gotten a 3D printer the year I graduated and I wanted to get a sneaky print cuz we charged for the filament and not much else

And gang

I saw this club when we had A Room

We didn’t even claim it full time for two years there were still other classes in it

I saw it when we had one printer, when the coolest thing we could buy was a programmable robot kit for one of those cute lil guys you can program to move his cube around and we all had to share one

The goddamn budget request must have gone through as we all fucking left, because the next year they had not just the room permanently set aside, but the closet next door set up with TWO 3D printers and a laser cutter

I booped in and out over the next year too, mostly for curiosity (and to use the printers cuz the people now running the club were members when I’d been a founder and so long as none of us admitted I wasn’t paying tuition anymore it was fair game)

The last time I saw it, they had FOUR 3D printers, two laser cutters, three more craft machines I didn’t recognize, a working fume hood, and one guy had used club resources to build a working robot hand and was teaching it to pick locks

It was. It was amazing. It was a proper, actual piece of school infrastructure, providing benefits to the whole student body

And I was there when we just played Smash and helped each other with our homework

[laurentidal]

Ice Core Report ❄️ August 2024

Decided to do a little editorial check in at the end of each month. Most of you probably don't know that, while Lauren is my real first name, that my blog is actually named for a massive ice sheet that once lay over the place where I live (the Laurentide Ice Sheet). Thus, this is a report from my ice core.

#1 Story: Suggestion Box

This one was a huge surprise for me. It took off immediately, and I had not seen that coming. I'd had this image saved in my "had potential" folder for probably three weeks before I decided on how to tell the story. It went through an iteration where this was an ice skating rink, then it was a sandwich shop. I think one draft had a "five dollar footlong" joke in it. But ultimately I liked "arcade" the best.

#2 Story: Enjoy Your Stay

This was based on fun joking conversation I had with @hypno-potion and as the scaffolding we were joking about kept getting more elaborate I was like "No there is definitely something here." I'm glad you all agreed.

#3 Story: Kitty Pet Saga

I saw this picture and immediately knew what the story was going to be. Sometimes I see an image and think "There's something here if I look hard enough" and sometimes I see an image and a fully formed idea just jumps right out of it.

#4 Story: Oh My

This is a story I actually wrote quite some time ago for an old defunct website that never really got any foot traffic. I'm glad I brought it over, because it's one of my personal favorites. The only fauxcest story in the top five this month. That's one of those kinks I think I'm just going to have to accept that you guys aren't as into as I am (and I have the data to validate that claim).

#5 Story: Daughters and Suns

The only true repost from my old blog and the only part of a series in the top five this month. This series is my favorite thing I'm writing right now (though this entry isn't my favorite in the series). There's a lot more coming so I hope you're enjoying as much as I am.

Sunda Systems

We're half way through Season 1 of my Sunda Systems investigative mind control conspiracy story. Our investigator has made several contacts and visited the campus first-hand. She also might be starting to feel some effects from her various encounters, and her keen eye for detail is missing a few clues that are staring her right in the face. But I'm sure the date she's got lined up will give her some much needed relaxation.

Please please please share this story and feel free to get interactive with it! I've put some real effort into it and I've never written such a slow burn before. I'm enjoying the ride, and I've got some GOOD (I think) twists and turns coming. I think this format could be fun to play around with as an audience. Post your theories! I love seeing that folks are engaging with more than just the like button.

Update of Magics & Mesmerism

Some of you are aware that I'm working on an erotic mind control TTRPG called Magics & Mesmerism. I'm still plugging away. As we speak, I'm writing skills for the Innovator character class. As a treat, I'd like to share with you an except from the page on Hypnotic Foci:

General Thoughts

Every story in the top five this month is a FEMALE SUB story. Noted. I tend to favor that in my writing, too, which is interesting because I think Female Over Male stories are hotter, probably because of the subversion of expectations. I'm a slut for subversion of expectations.

I think that's everything. Love you all and I'm very excited for you to see what's coming in September. One of my favorites that I wrote comes out tomorrow, and on the 13th you'll be introduced to your first Force of Nature.

Till then, keep reading, keep messaging, keep asking, and if you're feeling generous, keep donating.

[aquietwritingcorner]

And Suddenly, it was Too Much

For @tmnt-write-fight for @misshowdoyoudo

Title: And Suddenly, it was Too Much Prompt: Donnie needs someone to help him wind down after a bad experience (not iteration specific)  Fandom:  TMNT 2003 Word Count: 3128  Author: aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl Rating:  T Characters: Donatello, Leonardo Warning: SAINW Summary: It took a few seconds for the realization to hit Don. Home. They were home. The minute Leo said the word, it was like the realization of where he—where they—were standing hit Don. He suddenly realized that he was standing in their undamaged home, with his living brothers and father, and Casey Jones was alive and walking up to them, asking them if they were playing a prank on him. The realization slammed into Don, hard enough to send his head spinning and his stomach violently churning, and he wasn’t prepared for any of that.    Notes: I really couldn’t help myself. I’m so sorry. SAINW has so many neat little ways it can be played with. Also, slight reference to a fic I posted earlier this month towards the end, but you don’t have to have read it to understand.    ffn || AO3

___________________________________

And Suddenly, it was Too Much

It took a few seconds for the realization to hit Don. Home. They were home. The minute Leo said the word, it was like the realization of where he—where they—were standing hit Don. He suddenly realized that he was standing in their undamaged home, with his living brothers and father, and Casey Jones was alive and walking up to them, asking them if they were playing a prank on him. The realization slammed into Don, hard enough to send his head spinning and his stomach violently churning, and he wasn’t prepared for any of that.

Which was probably why the next thing he did was turn around, hunch over, and throw up right there on the spot.

He heard exclamations from his family, even as he sank down onto his knees and wretched again. There wasn’t much on his stomach. There hadn’t been much food in the Resistance, and he’d felt bad about eating when he was clearly better fed than most of the people there.

His stomach rolled again, as he realized where he was and what he had and remembered what he had just left.

“Don? Donnie? You okay?”

Don realized that Raph was talking to him, squatted down next to him with a hand on his shell. Don turned his head to look up at his family. Suddenly all he could see were his three very dead and freshly killed brothers somehow standing in front of him. He took a shuddering, shaking breath, feeling like he couldn’t breathe right.

“Don?” Leo said, frowning at him. “Don, come on. Say something, bud.”

Don wanted to. He wanted to respond, to do something, say something, but it was like he was frozen. He barely felt like he was breathing right, much less capable of anything else.

“Donnie?” Mikey tried. Don’s breath hitched. The last time Mikey had called out his name had been right before the Karai Legionnaires had slashed him to death. His breath caught in his throat, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“Master Splinter?” Mikey said, turning his head away from Don. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Did the Time Scepter do something to him? Or the War Staff?” Raph asked.

Leo was looking at Don with concern. “No, I…” Leo hesitated, then knelt down. “…I think this might have to do with where he was sent.”

Don’s head jerked up, and he stared at Leo. Leo frowned at him.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” he said, reaching a hand out to place on Don’s head. “I—I saw a little of each of the places all of you went, when I tried to pull you all back. Don’s was… it was dark. The Foot symbol was everywhere. He was with a bigger turtle. I think—I’m not sure who it was, exactly. I didn’t look that closely. They were running, and the bigger turtle was saying something about people working eighteen-hour days.”

Splinter frowned, gently nudging Raphael out of the way so that he could move next to Donatello, reaching out to check on him. “I did not see anything when I pulled your brothers to me,” he said.

“The Gyoji helped me—or, well, Draco and the Daimyo’s son disguised as the Gyoji. He made a… a portal of sorts? One I could look through while I tried to pull everyone back. That’s why I could see a bit of each place everyone was.” Leo explained. “But I don’t know what happened.”

Don said nothing, just knelt there, staring and shaking, his breaths still uneven.

Splinter shook his head slightly. “Come. Let us get Donatello to the couch and then we can—”

“No!” the word burst out of Don, surprising everyone, including himself. “No! I—”

And suddenly, it was too much. He looked around the lair, almost wildly. It was too much. It was just too much. A warm, unbroken home. His family looking at him with concern and warmth. The brightness and color and welcoming atmosphere. Not to mention his family.

When they had looked at him before, in that future, it had been distant and guarded, but with just a little bit of hope. Hope that had been misplaced. Hope that had failed them. He had failed them. He’d gotten them killed. Murdered. Destroyed. And now they were looking at him with such compassion and trust and concern—Splinter and Casey, too—and it was—it was—

Don stumbled back, away from the warmth of his family. It was ungraceful, panicked, and he went from kneeling on the floor to the bottom rim of his shell clacking against it as quickly moved back. He scrambled to his feet, the concerned looks his family was giving him too much and he backed away and then—

He bolted.

He ran, almost blindly, going on instinct more than anything else. He headed out into the sewers, barely even realizing that his family was calling out after him. He just fled, taking twists and turns in the sewers, going deeper and further in, into old tunnels and places that no one went, until he was finally too exhausted to go any further. He had no idea how long he’d been running, but it had to have been a while, given the state he was in. He stumbled to a stop, his legs shaking from the exertion, a sheen of sweat covering him, chest heaving with gasping breaths. His heart was beating wildly, aching fiercely. He tried to take another step, but his body wasn’t having it, and he practically fell right then and there.

He couldn’t go on. He’d pushed himself to his limits. He didn’t even bother to move from where he’d half fallen, half sunk to the ground. He shook, tears that he hadn’t yet had time to cry starting to pour out.

He’d killed his brothers. His plan had killed his brothers. He’d seen them, heard their deaths, felt it ripping at him. It didn’t matter that they’d agreed to it. It didn’t matter that they had gone in knowing that they might die. It didn’t matter. They were his brothers, and they had died enacting his plan.

And he’d seen them. He’d seen them. The image of their broken and dead bodies was never, ever going to leave him.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there like that, eventually shifting aching muscles sit, although he stayed curled up. Time meant nothing to him, and he had no way to keep track of it, having sacrificed his watch and shell cell to the resistance. But it was long enough for someone to come looking for him, if the footsteps he heard meant anything. He recognized them, knew he should probably move so that he wouldn’t alarm their owner, but he found himself too exhausted and tired to do even that. He just stayed where he was, not bothering to move.

The footsteps stuttered for a moment, and then hurried towards him.

“Donnie?” Leo said, a touch of underlying panic in his voice. Don felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing it, “Donnie? Are you with me? Look at me, Donatello.”

Exhausted still, Don slowly turned his head from where he had it buried in his arms, just enough that Leo could see part of his face. Leo searched his face, and then sighed, settling down beside Don. Don buried his face in his arms again, and listened as Leo called the others.

“Yeah. Yeah, I found him. No. I… let me handle this, okay? Yeah. I’ll call. Okay.”

He hung up his phone, and then looped an arm around Don, tugging him into his side. Don didn’t resist, but he didn’t lean into it either. He could almost feel Leo’s frown.

“Don… you’re shaking,” his brother said.

Don said nothing.

Leo fell silent for a few moments, staying there with Don. The silence settled into them, but it left Don uneasy. It felt tense, in a way that silence with Leo had never felt tense before. It felt like… It felt like the silence with the older Leo. But this time, instead of it being Leo who was there, stony faced and holding back, radiating judgement, it was Don who was silent and holding back, putting up a wall between him and his brother.

“…Why did you run?”

The question, though quiet, startled Don. He didn’t respond right away, not even sure how he could begin to explain himself.

“…It was too much,” he said, eventually.

He felt Leo shift, just slightly.

“What was too much?” his brother asked.

“All of it,” Don replied, and his mouth felt dry. “The lair, all of you, it was too much.”

“How was it too much?” Leo asked softly.

Don’s shoulders hunched. “…It was too bright,” he mumbled. “Everything was… was there. Complete. Whole. Ready. And it felt too… too bright.”

“As opposed to here, where it’s dark and abandoned,” Leo said.

Don blinked and shifted his head up just enough to look around a little. He was in an old junction, long out of use, dark, damp, and in a state of disrepair. It honestly wasn’t that different from how broken down the old lair was. It had that same sense of hopelessness and an almost dampening effect.

“…Yeah,” he whispered.

Leo hummed. He was quiet for a moment more, and then he asked another question. “And how were we too much?”

Don tensed, and automatically leaned away from Leo a little, but Leo was having none of it, firmly pulling him in. Don felt like he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe quite right, and his heart started pounding again as he thought of the compassion his family had looked at him with, and the dead brothers he had left behind, not even able to tell them goodbye or to bury them. He’d just abandoned them. Again.

“—cared,” his voice only started working partway through his sentence. “You looked at me with concern. And—and—” his breath caught. “And you were alive!”

The answer burst out of Don, and with it, an adrenaline rush. He made to get up, to leave, to flee again, but Leo’s reflexes were faster, and he reached out, catching Don’s arms by the elbow and pulling him back down. Don was off-balance, exhausted, and not expecting this. Leo sat him down and looked him in the eyes and Don found he couldn’t look away.

“Donatello, what do you mean?” he demanded. “We’ve always cared. And we’ve always been concerned when someone is sick. Unless—” his brain started to catch up. “—unless you were some place where we didn’t.” Leo’s eyes widened at the thought. “Donatello. Donatello, I need you to tell me what happened.” Don shook his head, closing his eyes, but Leo gave him a firm shake. “No. I need you to tell me. Because I can’t fathom of a world where I didn’t care about you.”

Don let out a sob but refused to look at Leo.

Leo didn’t let him go.

“Where did you go, Donatello?” he said. “Where. Did. You. Go.”

“The future,” Don said, it slipping out. “I went to the future.”

“The future?” Leo repeated. “That place…” he paused. “The Shredder had taken over, then?”

Don nodded.

“And we… didn’t care?” he asked, hazarding a guess.

“There was a resistance,” Don said, his voice hoarse.

“No, I mean—we didn’t care about… you?” Leo paused. “No. It was more than that, wasn’t it? Because there’s no way we wouldn’t care about you, unless we had stopped caring about each other.”

Don shuddered and another sob broke out, although he nodded.

Leo was silent for a moment. “The Shredder took over, we stopped caring about each other and…” he paused, clearly turning the little Don had said over in his mind. “…and we died, didn’t we? And you…” his voice softened. “And you saw it, didn’t you Donnie? Whatever happened, you saw it.”

It was like something that had been holding him back snapped. Like just the idea of someone else knowing, even if it was just a guess, was some sort of permission or release. Don let out another sob, and practically fell into his brother’s plastron. Leo moved his arms, quickly wrapping his arms around Donnie.

“Shh, little brother,” he said, rocking Donnie a bit, tucking his head under his chin. “Shh. I have you. I promise.”

Don let out another choked sob at that, and forcibly pushed his way back out of Leo’s arms. “But you broke it!” he said, accusingly. “You will break it!”

Leo looked at him, confused. “Break what?”

“That promise! You—” He stopped, swallowing.

“I’ll what?” Leo demanded, grabbing Don’s wrist again. “Donnie, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You won’t have me! Have us!” Donnie burst out. “I’ll—I’ll disappear! You won’t know what happened! No one will! And then the Shredder will invade the lair, and Splinter will die! And then you and Raph will fight, and you’ll stop caring and stop being there! Raph will, too! Mikey will go through losing his arm, alone! Raph will lose an eye, alone! You’ll go blind, alone! April will mourn Casey, alone! And then I’ll reappear, thirty years later, but it’ll be too late! None of you will care about each other until it’s too late! When you’ll all die because you followed my plan, and it’ll be all my fault!”

His voice echoed off of the ceiling and the walls, as if it was repeating that it was all Don’s fault.

Don slumped again, leaning against the wall. He’d thought all of his tears were gone, but apparently, they weren’t.

“…Its all my fault,” he said, brokenly. “I disappear and… and everything goes wrong. You all die. You all stop caring. Because of me. Because I left. And then because you listened to me, you all die. It’s all my fault.”

Leo reached up and cupped Don’s face, firmly turning his attention towards him. “No, it isn’t,” he said firmly.

Don’s eyes met his. “Yet it is,” he insisted. “I was there. I saw what happened. I—I watched you die. I saw your bodies. I—”

Leo’s hand squeezed Don’s wrist. “No,” he said. “Don, I… I can’t imagine what that was like. I don’t want to. But if we couldn’t hold together after you disappeared, then that’s not on you. Because I can’t imagine a world where you wouldn’t fight with everything you had to get back to us. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. It was on us to keep it together, and we failed. Not you.”

Don trembled under his brother’s touch. “But I still killed you,” he said. “My plan—you listened—and you all died—”

Leo looked grim. “That’s always a possibility,” he said. “Splinter… Splinter’s gone over that with me many times. I hope I never face it. I wish you hadn’t. But Donnie, look at me.” He let go of Don’s wrist and brought that hand up, cupping both sides of Don’s face with his hands. “We are alive now. We are here. We’re whole, and we’re healthy. And now that we know this and know what might happen, we can be on guard for it. We can plan for it. And we can make sure that we never, ever, fall apart like that. We’ll change the future, and it won’t ever have to happen.”

Don stared at Leo, trembling, and another sob broke out of him.  This time, when Leo pulled him in closer, he didn’t resist, didn’t try to pull away. He just clung to his brother and sobbed. Leo tucked Don against him, holding him close. Instinctively he rocked Don a bit and, just as Don had done for him not so long ago, Leo leaned into his instincts and quietly churred, trying to tell Don in the most basic way they had that he was safe, and he was cared for. Don let it reverberate through him and let himself believe his big brother’s words.

They must have been out there a while, but Leo never rushed Don. He allowed him to calm on his own, doing his best to soothe him. He ran a gentle hand on Don’s head.

“Are you ready to go home now?” he asked softly.

Don hesitated, but then nodded.

“Good. Mikey’s probably got some soup waiting,” Leo said.

“…’m not hungry,” Don said.

Leo hummed. “Then you can have some tomorrow.”

Don was quiet for a moment. “…wasn’t certain,” he mumbled out.

“What?” Leo asked.

“Food wasn’t certain,” Don said. “I didn’t want to eat. I was too well-fed.”

Leo’s arms tightened on him. “Well food here is certain. And you’re going to eat. If not today, then tomorrow. Now, let’s get out of here.”

Leo stood, leveraging Don up with him. Don was practically spent, not an ounce of energy left in him, and he wavered on his feet. Leo was under his arm in a second steadying him, and they began the long walk home.

At some point in the walk, it all started to blur together, and Don started to lose track of where he was and which way they were going. He wasn’t even entirely sure when he ended up on Leo’s back, his brother carrying him as Don’s exhaustion took over. He didn’t even look up when they entered the lair, burying his face in Leo’s neck. Voices washed over him.

“—oing to be okay?—”

“—ust exhausted and—”

“—on the couch—”

“—needs time to process—”

“—blankets and warm—”

“—not gonna lea—”

He felt himself be shifted around, sat on something, felt someone settle in behind him. He cracked his eyes open. Mikey was sitting a mug of soup on the coffee table. Raph was shaking out some old blankets. Splinter was tucking one around Don and Leo.

Don felt arms tighten around him, and Leo’s voice in his ear. “Just rest, Donnie. I promise, we’ll all be here when you wake up.”

Don’s eyes looked at his family one more time, this time seeing them, and not what they had been in the future, and closed his eyes. He felt Splinter press his nose to his forehead, something the old rat had always done to show affection to his sons, especially when they were younger.

What he had seen—what he had done—still ate at him. But it seemed less all-encompassing now, and more like something that could, in time, be dealt with. But that was a tomorrow problem. Right now, he was going to lean against his big brother and let his churring soothe him to sleep.

[atamascolily]

I was trying to write out my thoughts about Homura and Walpurgisnacht's relationship, but I think what best encapsulates them at the moment is actually an image: the M.C. Escher lithograph Drawing Hands (1948).

Drawing Hands is first and foremost a paradox, with each hand rising out of a two-dimensional world to create the other and no beginning or end. In his book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Essential Golden Braid, Douglas Hofsteader uses it to represent the concept of a strange loop: a system (like consciousness or a musical fugue) that moves through multiple iterations, only to finally return to its starting point.

I first encounter this image juxtaposed with the Jorge Luis Borges micro-story, "Borges and I", which is--among many other things--a doppelganger story dealing with questions of identity and the boundaries between one person and another. The story ends with a confession: "I do not know which of us has written this page." The question that I ask now is, does it even matter? Is it truly either/or, or both/and?

The story of Madoka Magica is ultimately circular in nature. This is true of individual installments (here taking the anime episodes collectively as a unit), and I suspect it will ultimately be true on a collective level as well. I fully expect that the last shot of the final installment--whether Walpurgis no Kaiten or some other sequel--to end with the same imagery we saw in the "Prologue in Heaven" that opens the first episode of the anime. The end is the beginning is the end is the beginning--except that everything has changed as a result of the story that has been told; we now have the fully context to appreciate it for what it was all along.

In the anime, Walpurgisnacht created Homura by showing up in that first timeline and killing Madoka, thus inspiring Homura to make a contract and become a magical girl to save her. Thus it would be narratively fitting if Homura's actions--whether directly or indirectly, intentional or unintentional--lead to the creation of Walpurgisnacht, each of them giving rise to the other in turn.

After all, this is the same relationship between magical girls and witches in general--one creates the other in a never-ending loop, at least until Madoka wishes to change the cycle. Even here, the cycle remains a cycle--as evidenced by the name "Law of Cycles": the nature of the loop changes but not its structure.

The shape created by the hands in Drawing Hands is eerily reminiscent of the twofold tomoe, a Shinto symbol composed of two looping swirls, which itself is similar to the Chinese ying and yang symbol. A similar design appears in both Walpurgisnacht's mandala and Homura's shield--just as they are united in their shared motifs of cogs and gears, they are also linked by their connections to the cycle of creation and destruction.

Drawing Hands is also a good metaphor for Madoka Magica in that it involves transcending two dimensions, just as Madoka Magica's animation incorporates three-dimensional objects on a regular basis. It also suggests at the possibility of a world outside of the narrative presented in the story, that everything we've witnessed on screen is in fact a tale unfolding in-universe as well. It's also an excellent metaphor for Rebellion in particular, which explicitly incorporates Homura's floating hands ("blue-screened" to indicate they are visible only to the audience) actively puppeting the Nightmares and building the "stage" in her labyrinth upon which the entire psychodrama takes place.

Oh, and I'd be lying if Drawing Hands didn't make me think of this shot from the original series, too, although both the position and the underlying symbolism are different:

(something something Madoka's wish to save all magical girls with her own hands something something--look, there's a lot of hand imagery in this show, okay?)

That said, given Homura's salamander/lizard motif, perhaps a different M.C. Escher drawing, Reptiles (1943) will prove to be an equally fitting representation of her journey in the end.

We've already seen the salamander representing the "Dark Orb" move from two to three dimensions (and become a phone!) in the trailer for Walpurgis no Kaiten, so who knows what the movie has in store for us?

[dracomort]

Reincarnation? If you so please

For the ask game

This is really just my Tomarry reincarnation scribbles for any AUs that come to mind.

I'm cracking up rn because the only scene I have polished enough to share is one with secondary-school-student!Tom and dying-in-a-pallative-care-ward!Harry 💀

Anyway, you're welcome:

Scene

“Look at you.” The voice of a teenage boy.

Harry pried one eye open.

There, leaning in the doorway, was none other than Tom Riddle, looking perhaps sixteen at the oldest. He was dressed in a crisp school uniform that looked expensive enough to pay for private palliative care thrice over. His hair was artfully tousled in a way that might have been carefree if it had been anyone other than Tom. On the breast of his blazer was pinned the predictable prefect badge.

“This is perverse,” Harry said. He closed his eyes, wishing Tom away, thinking of Ginny, the children, the grandchildren. Anything other than Tom Riddle.

It didn’t work. He could still hear the soft sound of Tom’s feet on the lino as he approached.

“I won’t disagree.” Tom dropped himself onto the mattress beside Harry, peering down at him with his dark, pretty eyes. “You look hideous. How old are you? One hundred? Two?”

“Eighty-three,” Harry replied, “and not likely to make it to eighty-four.” It was jarring to see his sun-beaten, wrinkled old hands beside Tom’s pale, youthful ones. How would it work in this world? Would Tom continue to live a long, healthy life after Harry had passed? Would he forget him?

“You look much older,” Tom said, matter of fact.

He wasn’t the most conscious of the Toms, Harry mused. He’d met versions of him with varying degrees of knowledge of their shared pasts—some who remembered only when he saw them, some who had known for decades, some who didn’t recognise him in the slightest. This Tom seemed to remember well enough, but he didn’t hold himself with the maturity of a Tom Riddle who recalled a thousand lives. He was a boy, nothing more.

And even from the brief words they’d exchanged, Harry could already tell he had been raised by his father.

“This coming from the lad who didn’t manage to make it to his seventy-eighth birthday?” Harry said.

Tom shrugged, which was not the reaction that an iteration of him closer to Voldemort would have had. If—in his decrepit, geriatric form—Harry had dared voice that to the Librarian Tom, he was certain all the life-saving equipment currently attached to him would have already been severed. But instead, this Tom only watched him curiously, head half-cocked.

Harry was, predictably, charmed by him. However, much to his relief, he felt no great surge of attraction. It was one benefit of being eighty-three and on seven different medications with a total of forty different side effects.

“I saw your name on the door. I remembered it, though I wasn’t sure where from.”

“Almost like a half-forgotten friend from when you were very young?” Harry supplied.

“A friend?” Tom’s lip curled. “I never had friends.” He spoke as if Harry had gravely offended him by even suggesting the possibility.

“No,” Harry said, “neither had I. But that was how I felt when I read your name—the first time.”

“Hm,” Tom said, mouth twitching down. “Why’s it always you, then? What’s so special about you?” He didn’t question his own importance—as Harry recalled doing in iterations further from the core—simply accepting his place at the centre of infinite parallel universes without batting an eye. 

“You marked me as your equal,” Harry said. “Really, it’s all your fault. I’m still waiting on an apology.” His throat was dry, arms too weak to reach for his water, but he didn’t ask Tom to help him. Not this petulant, young version of him.

Tom rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

A nurse came in, almost as if she’d read his mind, bustling about and neatening up Ginny’s bags. She helped him take a sip of water, sparing an incurious glance at Tom. Harry supposed she imagined he was just another grandchild. It was nauseating enough to almost make him laugh.

“We fucked,” Tom said abruptly.

The nurse dropped the cup, the thin plastic straw spinning away somewhere under his bed. “Pardon me?”

It was likely Tom hadn’t even intended to provoke a reaction from the room. The memory had certainly just come to him. Harry had experienced the same many a time. However, while rarely was that an admission one would wish to make in front of a stranger, stating such a thing while in school uniform in front of a mandated reporter was surely near the top of the list of inadvisable decisions.

Tom flicked a disinterested glance at her. “I’m sixteen. If I have a taste for the toothless then that’s none of your business.”

“He’s only joking,” Harry assured her. “You’ve seen my records. I’m not up for any sort of physical activity.”

She did not laugh, leaving in a huff. Harry hoped she wasn’t off to make a call.

“I’m not going to have this conversation with a child,” Harry said. “Come see me in the next life.” 

“We did,” Tom insisted, perhaps not understanding that plausibility was not the roadblock to their conversation. “In an atelier out the back of a piano shop in Paris.”

“Well,” Harry said, memories of a thousand lives blurred and smudged together in his mind, “I suppose we may have.” That it was the closest iteration to this Tom did not mean it sprang quickly to Harry’s mind.

“We did, we—”

The door slid open again and Harry looked up, expecting a police officer or some sort of security. But instead, there stood an exceptionally handsome man who could have been the twin of any of the versions of Tom in his thirties that Harry had met.

“Tommy,” Tom Riddle Sr said, looking tired and rather distracted, “you mustn’t just go about bothering other patients. I’m very sorry, Mr…?” He was dressed in a crisp black suit and had his Blackberry in hand, looking like he had about a thousand things to do that were more important than apologising to Harry.

“Potter,” Harry said. “And that’s quite alright.” He was old enough to be the man’s grandfather. Never had he felt older. He was beginning to understand why Voldemort had paid him little attention or respect in the worlds in which they were fifty years apart in age.

“I was just saying goodbye,” Tom said. Then, with a sly glint in his eye, he dipped his head and kissed Harry square on the mouth. “When do you suppose you’ll die?” he asked, breaking away.

Harry glanced over at Tom’s father, but saw that he was typing out an email on his phone and had missed the exchange entirely.

“The doctors have given me two months.”

Tom’s eyes dropped to his own hand on Harry’s chest for a brief moment, then up at his face again. “This will be the last time I see you, then.”

“In this lifetime.” Harry winked. Tom frowned.

Behind him, Tom’s father cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but we’ve really got to dash. Tommy, will you come say goodbye to your grandfather?”

[bergdg]

Analyzing Invention: Jan-Aug 2024

We are now two-thirds through 2024. Each week, a new challenge has appeared as part of the Inventor's Fair, a Magic: the Gathering card design contest blog here on Tumblr.

For the uninitiated, each week, a design challenge is announced on the blog and members of the community create cards meeting the design specifications. At the end of the week, a few winners and runner-ups are selected from the submission.

So let's take a look at some of the trends so far this year - January through August.

Art. Katerina of Myra's Marvels. Illustrated by Gaboleps

The Contests

Through August, there have been 33 contests: 11 being led by @abelzumi, 10 being led by @spooky-bard, and the rest led by an assortment of judges (Note: there were 6 contest in which the judge didn't identify themselves).

Throughout these 33 contests, there have been 723 entries, spread over 110 unique participants. Of those participants, there have been 17 who have submitted at least 17 submissions (50+% participation). A special shout-out to @nine-effing-hells for their 33 submissions.

On average, there have been 22 participants per contest, with the highest being Common Wonders (30 participants) and the lowest being a tie between My Better Half, War Never* Changes and Spoiled for Choice (16 participants).

Fig. 1 - Line Graph of the Number of Entries Per Contest. Blue dots represent the number of entries for a contest, and the green line represents the 3-contest average.

The Submissions

As previously mentioned, there have been 723 unique entries (some of which had multiple designs, such as all the ones submitted for My Better Half).

In previous evaluations, we looked at all sorts of data: such as card types, mana value, and rarities. While prepping for this iteration, I asked what folks would like to see. The request: let's see some color breakdowns. So let's deep-dive!

Starting off, let's look at general color identities. If they are at least partial in the color, they'll be included here. In order:

Black: 232

Blue: 224

Red: 215

White: 211

Green: 156

Most of the colors are pretty close in the number of entries, except poor ol' green. This is the same from what we saw in the January-April update as well. (The order then was almost the exact same, with just blue and black swapping places).

The pattern is similar when we look at solely mono color entries, with Blue and Red swapping places:

Black: 91

Red: 87

Blue: 83

White: 80

Green: 55

Fig. 2 - Image of Kermit the Frog, with text saying "It's not easy bein' green".

Now let's dip into a well we haven't before: multi-color entries!

Based on our general color tendencies, you might think Dimir (blue-black) OR Rakdos (black-red) would be in the top spot. And while they do make a good showing (at #2 and #4 respectively), the top spot might surprise you:

Orzhov (W B): 35

Dimir (U B): 34

Izzet (U R): 30

Rakdos (B R): 26

Azorius (W U): 24

Boros (R W): 23

Simic (G U): 22

Gruul (R G): 20

Selesnya (G W): 16

Golgari (B G): 13

Unsurprisingly, all 4 green guilds were lowest on the list. I was surprised that Golgari was lowest though, with the general black designs being the most prominent.

For three colors, most of the 10 options are fairly close, between 3 and 5 entries each. The slight stand-out was Abzan (W B G) with 6. There has been only a single 4-color design, Atraxa's Command designed by @khyrberos (g w u b), and four 5-color designs.

There have also been 35 colorless cards designed. I'll give a note here on lands - since we are looking a color identity and not mana cost, many lands are in a color bucket, not just here in colorless land.

Well, that about sums things up for this time around. It's always cool to see everyone's submissions each week as part of the @inventors-fair! Y'all are awesome, and I can't wait to see what designs you come up with through the end of the year. And maybe, just maybe, think about adding some green :).

[solarsonicsoda]

Rating 500+ Theme Tunes - #20: The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

To me, the adventures are rather light-hearted. The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy was one of the premier Cartoon Network shows of the mid 2000s. It follows a rather sorrow girl named Mandy, a rather wacky boy named Billy, and their friend, The Grim Reaper. One of the better show pitches if you ask me. It's a well-remembered show for its comedic nature, as well as great voice performances for its main three characters and a variety of memorable side characters. Grim is the best, I love him.

Some may not remember this, but the show actually began as part of the Grim & Evil combo. There would be three segments, usually with two Grim episodes to one episode of Evil Con Carne, another show by creator Maxwell Atoms. However, Billy & Mandy would quickly gain popularity. Due also in part to a change in direction from the network, both segments would spin-off into their own full shows, giving us the Billy & Mandy show we know today. This process would actually be delayed until the full end of "Season 1" in the UK, whereas in the US half of these episodes would air under the full show title. It'd be a big hit, running to 2007 with 86 episodes under all iterations.

Personally, I didn't see a lot of this show growing up. It had finished its run by some time once I had Cartoon Network in my home, which meant my time with it was limited. I definitely saw it here and there though once I did, and before that at friends' houses. My largest experience with it was through games on the old Sky box though. We never had one of the fancy ones, but our box had the old internet games where you could play small platformers and stuff with the remote. There was definitely a Billy & Mandy one because all my memories are of the show's vibes and not its content. But do I remember the theme?

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy Theme Tune

I very much do remember this theme! It's incredibly memorable with a very distinctive sound. That spooky, out-of-this-world tune really sticks in the brain, and sets the tone really well. It's fast-paced and fun, which is exactly what you want with such a show, whilst still maintaining that supernatural feel. It could stand to be a bit more full-on and in-your-face, but it's not strictly necessary. The laughing of Grim also adds a nice bit of specific personality to the track, not that it lacked character to begin with.

Overall, this is a pretty good theme. I love the sound and it's a good fit, so it's definitely near the top. This one is going to be very close, it's right at the top of this tier, but I'm going to settle with a B grade!

Stay tuned for more and be sure to send in any suggestions for other shows you'd like to see done (after the 500 already in the pipeline that is). Check out the intro to this series here, and check out the tier list.

[tsarisfanfiction]

The Ponytail

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Austin, Yan, Will, Kayla Yan gets a new hairstyle, and it brings a ghost back to the cabin. Austin takes matters into his own hands. TOApril day 6 - Hair Holds Memories. This went through various iterations from my initial thoughts to what I ended up writing, especially when Austin decided to get involved, whoops...

To start with, Austin couldn’t work out why Kayla and Will looked like they’d seen a ghost.  Both of them had been a bit off for most of the day, his younger sister more than once looking on the verge of tears, quivering lip and all, while Will just went blank, as though he was shutting down, and Austin couldn’t work out why.

At least, not until he saw the ghost.

It was just a flicker in the corner of his eye, a short, low ponytail, black hair on a head that was closer to the ground than his own.

Michael, he thought, startling himself because it had been three years since his first head counsellor had fallen from a shattering bridge to never be seen again, and he’d thought he’d moved on.  He’d certainly moved on better than Kayla, who had been obsessed with their tiny big brother while he was still with them, and Will, who had just known Michael for ages.  Austin didn’t think he’d been close enough with the older boy, really, to justify sudden hallucinations of him three years later.

Then he turned his head and the hallucination theory disappeared out the window as fast as it had arrived, because it wasn’t Michael, of course it wasn’t Michael.  Michael wasn’t Apollo’s only other black haired kid, and Michael had been killed by Kronos years ago.

It was Yan.  Austin knew their hair had been getting longer – they’d forgotten to get it cut before the main contingency of Aphrodite kids went home for the fall, and for various reasons they didn’t trust the year-round kids from any cabin to actually cut their hair, so they were waiting for one of the trusted kids to reappear either at Christmas, or next summer.

Until today, they’d been keeping their hair loose, because it was only just getting long for them, but something had clearly changed – quite likely their hair had started posing a risk in archery – and they’d tied it up in the obvious, low-effort style that kept it out of the way effectively.

No-one would have given it a second glance if it wasn’t exactly the same hairstyle Michael religiously pulled his hair into every morning.  Austin didn’t remember ever seeing Michael with a different hairstyle.

From the way Will kept doing a double take whenever Yan passed through his periphery, he didn’t think that just held true for Michael’s last six months in camp, either.

Yan had clearly noticed something was up with both of them, and probably with Austin, too, because they kept glancing over at them, mouth screwed into something puzzled, but they clearly weren’t sure enough to ask, which meant they weren’t sure they weren’t imagining it – Yan was quiet, yes, but they were also completely unafraid of calling people out.

They weren’t much of a healer, but the attitude still helped when dealing with idiots that thought they knew better than the healers.

Austin remembered Michael doing something similar, when he thought about it – except Michael hadn’t been quiet, ever.  For a tiny guy he’d been loud, even if that was mostly because he kept arguing with Clarisse and various other campers that annoyed him.

Neither Will nor Kayla were doing to do anything about it, though.  Will was too soft, too unwilling to imply that Yan was hurting him, even if it was unintentional, and Kayla preferred to shoot problems rather than talk about them – but she wouldn’t shoot Yan, so that meant this was a problem she was going to bury, instead.

No-one else still in the cabin had ever met Michael, so that meant it was down to Austin to sort this out, preferably without one of his siblings breaking one way or another.

Ah well, this was Will’s last year in camp, given everyone knew he was off to New Rome University at the end of the next summer, and Alice was a summer camper so while she was going to inherit the head counsellor role officially, Austin knew full well who was going to be holding down the fort for the rest of the year.  He might as well start getting some practice in.

His chance came when Yan entered their cabin later in the day, while Austin was cleaning his saxophone – the jazz one, not the one he carried around in combat because, yes, Sherman, they were different.  One was for combat music and storing useful contraptions, including his blowpipe and assorted ammo, and the other was for performance.

Honestly, he wasn’t a heathen.  Mom had bought him the performance one, and the combat one had been a gift from Dad right before Manhattan.  Not that he couldn’t use the jazz saxophone in combat at a pinch, but he’d really rather not if he had the choice.

Austin didn’t know why Yan had come into the cabin, but he wasn’t about to let the chance slip away while there was no Will and no Kayla to realise what he was about to do.

Will in particular was annoying like that.

“Hey, Yan,” he called, setting aside the polishing cloth and carefully setting the saxophone down on its stand.  His sibling glanced over at him, the short ponytail swaying with the movement just enough to catch Austin’s attention, and gods, did a trick of the light have to make them look so much like Michael?

The hair was the only thing about them that was the same!  Yan was so clearly of Chinese ancestry, and Michael had been white – tanned, Austin thought, but still white, with skin tone and racial features to match.  True, they were also both short, but Yan was a normal degree of short, instead of Michael’s tiny.

Yan looked over at him, and from the look on their face, Austin realised they’d noticed his split-second distraction, again.  “What is it?” they asked.

“Let me do your hair.”  Austin beckoned them over.

His sibling sighed and ran a hand through the hair in question.  “It’s the ponytail, isn’t it.”  It wasn’t a question, and Yan didn’t wait for an answer before heading over to him, snagging their hair brush on the way.  “Why?”

Austin shuffled some scattered reeds out of the way, so Yan could sit in front of him, and took the proffered brush.

“Kayla ever mention Michael to you?” he asked, pulling the hair tie out of his sibling’s hair and snapping it around his wrist.  He didn’t bother asking if Will had; he knew the answer to that.

“The head counsellor before Will?” Yan replied.  “A few times.  He died, didn’t he?”

It only took a couple of passes with the brush to get rid of any stray tangles Yan’s hair had picked up during the day.  “Yeah,” Austin confirmed.  “Kayla and I didn’t know him for long, but he was pretty cool.  Kayla adored him – I think Michael used to struggle to go anywhere without her following him, and if it was the archery range it was a total lost cause, not that I think he cared about that.”

“He was an archer,” Yan said confidently.  “Kayla said he was the best.”

Austin snorted slightly at the memory that arose of both of them trying to outshoot each other.  They’d done that several times – although it was really Kayla trying to outshoot Michael, because she was good even back then, but Michael had been better.  Austin didn’t know if that was still true, but they’d never know that.

“Yeah,” he agreed, leaning over to grab a box of hair elastics from his dresser.  One generic hair tie was not going to work for this at all.  “He was.”

He grabbed his own comb, too, and got to work partitioning Yan’s hair, reminding himself that Yan’s Asian hair was not going to take to braids the same way his did.  His sibling didn’t react to the tail of the comb against their scalp, so Yan had probably expected Austin to do something like that.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as Austin concentrated, splitting Yan’s hair down the middle and clipping the half he wasn’t working with away before he split the other half into three more sections.

“Michael wore his hair in a short low ponytail all the time,” he eventually said, once he had the sections to his liking and ready to braid.  “And his hair was black.”

Yan’s shoulders slumped.  “I see,” they said.  “Sorry.”

Austin jabbed him in the shoulder with the end of the comb.  “Not your fault, you didn’t know.  Besides, it’s not like he gets to monopolise hairstyles.”

“Which is why you’re redoing my hair so it isn’t like that,” Yan pointed out dryly.  “I can take a hint, Austin.”

“Braids are cooler than ponytails,” Austin sniffed.  “I’m doing you a favour.”

“And stopping Will and Kayla from looking like they’ve seen a ghost every time they see me,” Yan continued, not giving Austin any wriggle room to deny it.  “I know.  It’s okay.”

It wasn’t, not really, but Austin knew there wasn’t anything they could do about it.

“And thanks,” Yan continued.  “I know you don’t do just anyone’s hair.”

Austin tied off the first braid with a flourish and got started on the second.  “You’re my sibling,” he said.  “Why wouldn’t I?”

Braiding took some time, especially because Austin had to keep remembering not to tighten the braids too much in deference to Yan’s hair type – no-one wanted Yan losing hair when the braids were taken out – but he kept to a simple straight pattern, until Yan had six braids running from their hairline to the back of their neck.  Yan was patient, though, and they filled the time with various chatter – a lot of it questions about Michael, leaving Austin a little astonished at both how much and how little he remembered his brother.

It was all worth it, though, when they were summoned out of their cabin later by the dinner conch, and Kayla and Will didn’t flinch, pale, or otherwise show signs of seeing a ghost when they caught sight of Yan.

Yan noticed that, too, and the smile on their face was easy and comfortable as they settled onto the stone bench next to Jerry, who didn’t even seem to notice the change in hairstyle.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Will murmured in his ear, but Austin shrugged.

“I did,” he said.  “Yan wanted stories about him in exchange.”  He wasn’t enough of an asshole to say Michael’s name to Will, but his older brother still winced a little.

“Sorry,” he said, “I should’ve-”

Austin flapped a hand at him impatiently, cutting him off.  “It’s fine,” he insisted.  “I wasn’t as close as you, or even Kayla.  It was easier for me.”

Will still didn’t look happy about it, but Jerry suddenly exploded into some rant or other about cricket (again – Austin did love his British brother, he did, but his obsession with that sport could get seriously grating at times), which made attempting to have any more conversation pretty much impossible.

From the satisfied smirk on Yan’s face, and the nod they sent Austin, he was pretty sure his sibling had provoked Jerry on purpose.

Whatever worked, Austin supposed.

[schismusic]

Joy Division, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love New Order, too

Spring is weird as hell because one time you have this glaring sun that powers you up like being plugged into a wall outlet, then not five minutes later clouds begin to gather and you feel like you're going to die if anything goes south. So the most obvious combination to represent two sides of this same coin, emotional and meteorological, is Joy Division and New Order.

Sometimes you need Transmission or Shadowplay for the sunny days — impassioned jolts, sparks flying everywhere. Sometimes The Perfect Kiss hits harder on a cloudy afternoon, coming back home and in need of that extra push to not fall asleep in the train. It's surprising to realize the versatility displayed by both bands, or the same band in two different iterations according to whomever you ask. Peter Hook says, as late as 1993, that the laziest member of New Order is Ian Curtis. Or again this other person, in the comments under the Atmosphere official video on YouTube, who went to see New Order (Hooky-less New Order, which might be a relevant distinction) at the O2 Arena a couple of years ago and they gave an encore, says "Those of us who stayed got the privilege of watching Joy Division perform three of their songs". Interesting outlook on the matter. I personally saw Peter Hook and the Light play both Joy Division records and, I'm pretty sure, an encore comprised of just Love Will Tear Us Apart at the Arti Vive Festival in Soliera, back when it was still free to attend some of the events. I remember being pretty mad that Hooky had stopped to take pics with basically everyone and then left exactly as I was approaching. In retrospect I don't exactly blame the man, it was like midnight anyway. I remember nothing of the back trip home.

My first contact with Joy Division happened when I was thirteen and very much in my prog era. I was in Rome staying at an aunt of mine's place for my fourteenth birthday and she told me I could get a CD, since I had gotten some money saved up over time. Some Facebook page dedicated to Pink Floyd I'd liked (yeah, Facebook at age thirteen — I literally just wanted to play a fucking Flash game, back when Facebook allowed them, and I ended up getting to be terminally online. Crazy how things turn out) used to share a lot of memes and fanart relating to the Unknown Pleasures album cover, and me being a massive Pink Floyd head at the time I thought "I mean, if these guys are pushing this band so hard, that's gotta mean something". The album cover was pretty striking, admittedly: a far cry from the paisley ass paintings that I had grown to accept as the gold standard for the music I liked, but its simplicity struck a chord closer to The Dark Side of the Moon, or perhaps The Wall. Those were records I liked a lot, probably called them "the best records ever made" to more than one person, not like they aren't but that's a very bold statement to make when your listening experience consists exactly of

Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor when I was six;

Daft Punk's complete discography (minus Random Access Memories, which wasn't out yet) when I was twelve;

Pink Floyd's complete discography, courtesy of a CD collection coming out with some Italian newspaper, that same year;

a couple random classic rock records recommended to me by older friends and relatives usually well into their fifties or sixties at the time, random people on Internet forums — which, for clarification, I did not actively attend, preferring to just lurk from time to time — and the OndaRock "milestones" page.

So browsing through the surprisingly expansive CDs section of this electronics shop in Rome, and being mesmerized by a vinyl rack in the days when Music on Vinyl was the final frontier of pretending you could re-analogue the digital ("you mean to tell me these are like CDs, but bigger? Whoever designed these truly lived in the future"), I came across that very same album art that had stricken me so hard. I had listened to the first seconds of the album on YouTube, but that weird drum sound — so echoey, so distant, ultimately not particularly powerful, meaning it didn't really sound like Bonzo: it sounded more like my own band, which at the time didn't even exist yet — I didn't really know what to make of. This store I was in had one of those preview listening machines that would scan the barcode on the CDs and give you a small snippet of the song. I pull the CD up to the scanner, the scanner lights up green, I put on the headphones and the solo from this comes up:

Clearly they had to be kidding me. I had come to know, sneaking into infinitely many rehearsals with the band from my mother's town, what it sounded like when someone tried to play lead without something else filling up the arrangement (even though I didn't really know all that, or at least lacked the vocabulary to properly express it) and, for Christ's sake, didn't these guys notice rehearsing? It sounded empty, weirdly so, and it wasn't my thing, I thought. I put that CD away and picked up a band I knew I'd like — Genesis, specifically. So Nursery Cryme became the first CD I've ever paid with my own money, the very day I turned fourteen. Not a bad pickup. I remember being very impressed with the fast blurring lead guitar on The Musical Box and digging the sweet pastoral atmospheres of For Absent Friends and Harlequin. I still think of that record more often than one would probably assume looking at this blog, or my most played on Spotify. At the time, that was the best move I could take, really: why beat my head against a record that, as your average prog nerd ballbreaker, simply wasn't speaking to me?

Then all of a sudden in August of the same year my friend's dad hands me a 16 gigabyte USB drive, full of random music from all eras of rock. A lot of it remains inscrutable to me for a really long time, most notably Tom Waits (see related post), but I spent the whole month reading random folder names, seeing if something catches my eyes, and at one point I come across the Mars Volta. Open the folder up, read the names of their first three records, and my first thought is "Christ, these guys look incomprehensible. I'm about to have some fun". Long story short: I end up having a lot of fun, the Mars Volta turns into my favourite band at the time and finding out that they had previously been called At the Drive-In makes me gain some measure of respect for punk rockers: if they tried hard enough, I must've thought, they could prog as hard as anyone. In the meantime the ghost of Joy Division remains at the back of my head. I feel like I'm missing something, for the first time in my life: it's not them, it's me. Too bad that same realization didn't occur to me when it came to the people in my life until much, much later, but that's being fourteen for you I suppose. Early King Crimson and the Mars Volta were the pinnacle of violence to me, and not even the very few Metallica songs I'd downloaded just to see what would happen scratched that itch. It felt a bit too cauterized for some reason (I would later find out I had been looking in the wrong direction the whole time: the Black Album "sucked", according to my favourite metalhead of the time, who somehow catalyzed my interest from the very second I saw him in the school's courtyard. Hard to imagine why I would imprint on people like puppies do, but what the fuck, not like I've ever outgrown that anyway, I've just gotten better at managing it). But I felt there was more than violence to this, or different forms of violence. When Christmas came around and my relatives tried to get me presents, my mother asked if there was anything specific I was interested in, and I basically told her "look, if they can get me some CDs off of this list, I'm golden". It had some bangers on it, namely Noctourniquet by the Mars Volta — it's one of their best and I will die on this hill, be warned — and The Downward Spiral, which might as well warrant its own post in an ideal world. But the best of them all I think came from a random purchase, once again with the little money I had lying around at the time.

Closer appears to be, right away, a bit more concrete, and if there's something inexperienced music fans like is a pretty packaging that conjures a strong emotional response before they've even played the record. Compare a color-inverted graph of pulsar emissions to a literal funerary monument. Opening up the booklet I was shocked to see that Genesis was used as a negative point of comparison (bad omen, I thought) by people close to the band, and I came across much more detailed information about Ian Curtis's untimely demise — at that time, something far too removed from my experience to be faced with the delicacy and attention it deserves. Atrocity Exhibition hits like a ten-ton truck, a reference which at the time I wouldn't have been able to make for obvious reasons, and Isolation exposes all the nerve tissue under the skin. Passover comes in and strips everything even barer, and then A Means to an End turns… danceable, for some reason? Big emotional moment with The Eternal and Decades, which I thought actually took them closer to my usual tastes. And yet at the same time I kept looking at Colony, Heart and Soul and Twenty Four Hours as the most compelling cuts. Geometric assault sounding like sheet metal if it were music; rhythmically driven emptiness that serves as a minimal backdrop for depressed poetry, and finally a rocking ebb-and-flow that would probably inform a lot of my interest in GY!BE-like post-rock in the coming years. Very interesting to think that the same guys who'd done Unknown Pleasures could think of this. To this day, when asked, I still do think that Closer is the best Joy Division record, but what does it even mean when the records are exactly two, compilations notwithstanding?

It was around this time that it came to my attention that both Joy Division and another band called New Order had a record called Substance out, both published by the same recording company, both coming out within a year of each other. Looking it up, it turns out it's fully intentional, because New Order is simply Joy Division minus Ian Curtis. It would turn out to be a tad bit more complex than that. Anyway, I look New Order up and kind of have to do a double-take. Synthpop? In my Joy Division? More likely than you'd think, considering Isolation exists. But yeah, that sort of seals it — I wouldn't care about this New Order for a million years. Until all of a sudden a couple of years later David Sylvian bursts like a comet in my face, which of course leads me straight to Japan, the same year as I'd come across Berlin-era Bowie, and you can probably guess where this is going, right?

Well, you'd be wrong. I still don't check out New Order. There's a whole new world open to me — vaporwave and therefore R Plus Seven come to my attention, which leads me to dissect that record like an alien tool of unclear purposes. This of course leads me onto an ambient tangent, taking me back to my Tim Hecker listens of that same year, which has the effect of renewing my interest in "pure" electronic music and the then-rising post-dubstep movement. The sheer experience of sound, the dazzling modernity and innovation, is what's in at the time. I have no time for nostalgia-pandering dimwits: the future awaits. Then all that jazz from the first Godflesh post hits, then God pulls the funniest gag in the history of viral infections to my memory, and I have some time to actually look back, a bit less prejudiced. As it turns out, synthpop is not the devil, as some of you might have surmised by now, and as I relisten to Blue Monday I realized I have never listened to either of the Substance record. I do know some, most perhaps?, of the tracks on the Joy Division one, and I do think the New Order one has the more striking cover art — not to mention I knew, by this time, that this was the one to give Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance its name, and that Your Silent Face soundtracked one of the most memorable moments in Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson. As the ultimate Hideo Kojima stan, I couldn't let this slide, so I pop the record on and get hit with this:

Way to go, guys. Holy shit. I knew that Ceremony was a Joy Division cut before they could record it, but what the hell — Bernard got it, too. It wasn't a matter of singing ability with songs like these, it's just getting it, finding the right energy. They had that right energy. And then it hit me just as many times these dudes have made Blue Monday over and over again before actually getting it right, and everytime I look into it it's funnier and funnier to realize just how many different attempts it took them to finally be Kraftwerk, but augmented — with the stellar results we all know. Everything's Gone Green, 5 8 6, Temptation potentially, all lead up to this one moment in the history of dance music where somehow three dudes and a girl hailing from Manchester managed to out-gay the Pet Shop Boys (by their own admission, apparently), to shake the whole world's collective booty, to do whatever it is they were supposed to do in this last comparison that would ideally make the previous one a bit less obnoxious but whatever, it's 3am as usual, you know how it goes by now don't you? But then after Blue Monday the record keeps going, and thank god it does, because it's banger after banger. How do these guys keep doing it?

So I spend some time with that record, then it fades down, then it comes back up last month, when the weather calls for it and its parent company. Which is when I find myself watching the Control movie for the first time, surprisingly enough seeing as I already enjoyed the work of Anton Corbijn as a photographer. Looking at all that, it is revealed to me that Joy Division never really having died is not a bug, it's a feature. Everyone is gasping, I get it, but please pick your jaws up and check this out: the band has never learned how to play their respective instruments. One might go so far as to argue they play their own stuff their own way, and that's basically it. Nothing could be further from the truth. These guys jammed, a lot; that's how Joy Division wrote songs, that's how New Order wrote songs, even going as far as having Bernard Sumner fucked up on acid so he could find the chorus to Temptation or the whole band bombed out of their minds on X in Ibiza clubs to write, basically, the entirety of Technique — and even then, not really, there's a couple jangly tracks that the X would most likely render unlistenable but what do I really know? Point being: it might now have been sparked by a music teacher or instructor, it might not have been the product of a process comparable to that within Television, which led them to organically seek out better, more "by the book" musicianship, but New Order were incredibly familiar with their instruments, had formed an element of comfort and understanding that counterbalanced the alien-ness to music terminology.

Peter Hook recently uploaded a Yamaha-sponsored video to his Instagram, which I am pretty sure has a say in running, where he jams on a Yamaha bass and, you know, it sounds like Hooky alright, but it's never a discernible bassline until he kicks into the A major strumming that opens Love Will Tear Us Apart. Before that, he just strolls around the neck, leisurely strumming away at power chords imbued with that thick chorus and reverb combo he became renowned for. I would never, in my wildest dreams, have imagined I'd find myself thinking "okay, awesome, stop talking — I want to hear you jam a bit more" referring to one of the musicians who were part of possibly two of the craziest storiest in the history of contemporary rock'n'roll, also notorious for playing the rockstar whilst carrying the minimum possible baggage of technical knowledge he could. Once again, this is nowhere near a knock to the man — quite the opposite. Ian Curtis asked "persistence, well, what does it matter?", and Hooky (and, of course, the other members of New Order) found a way to constructively answer that question. Moments before Coil, but a bit later than Israel Regardie, they said "persistence is all" and built a brand on finding a way to consistently sound like splendid, eternal, golden children: "like crystal", impassionate, tightly-knit performers with the purity of a child's heart. Ian Curtis had, in certain ways (at least artistically), the purity of a child in his heart, which some might even argue was a distinguishing feature of most of his literary idols — if you think about it, William Burroughs could be your dirty-minded classmate who walked in on his parents sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom (had his parents been gay men, the metaphor would probably fly better, but that most definitely wasn't the case). So the heart of Joy Division remains untouched, if a bit more naked. Heroes of post-punk, sons of the silent age, you can sleep soundly tonight.

[acoraxia]

Erlang and Wukong's rivalry runs very deep. There was this ancient poem that said if those two teamed up, they could achieve anything.

Also, there was this old version (I think the first?), of Lotus lantern, where Chenxiang had to fight against them. In this version, he manages to defeat both of them. it's the only record where someone manages to beat Wukong and Erlang although as I said, it's an old version, and it depends how people want to see it. I don't quite remember if it was mentioned if Chexiang merged with the lantern in this version or if the lantern appears in that old version. I believe that one of the reasons why Chenxiang can defeat Erlang is because the lantern is a creation of Nuwa. Then there were more versions of Lotus Lantern and Wukong became Chenxiang's mentor.

By the way, I would give you the link to where I saw the fsyy movie, but I literally had to refresh the page all the time to be able to see it, so I don't think you'll want it.

Greek Mythology: we have over three stories for the same myth and it’s weird and hard to follow every time! Nothing can beat us

Chinese Mythology: Hold my wine.

Funny thing is that you’ll find various different sources saying different things and we can’t revive Wu Cheng’en to ask him what his canon would be. Like the fact that in FSYY (from what I’ve read thus far) Yang Jian is the son of a Prime Minister rather than the Jade Emperor or how in other myths his names range from Li Erlang to Li Bing or Zhao Yu. The most popular version being Yang Jian though.

I remember reading that Chenxiang was taught by SWK, I never heard of the version where he defeats Wukong so that’s interesting. I thought his mother made the lamp too? Super interestingnckdnxk I love learning about myths and other iterations. Was the poem about Erlang and SWK working together from JTTW or some variant like that? Or was it its own poem :0?

oomfie idc so long as i get to see the dang movie i’ve been waiting for 84 years

[too-many-tildes]

Too Many Tildes' Amazing Isekai Adventure, Chapter 1

(I'm going to regret this.)

My name is Too Many Tildes. I have dark, navy blue plating with white eyes and light blue tildes underneath them (hence my name~) My gamer headset is shaped like cat ears and I wear a fluffy pink feather boa with a very fashionable cyan tank top and night-sky themed pants. My nail extensions are painted red just like my :3 face and my feet are shaped like high heels. This is the start of my story.

It was a cycle like any other. I was admiring my collection of Catboy Pebbles images (A.N. if u dont know who that is get da rubicon outta here!!!!) Suddenly my homosexual overseer alerted me to something funny happening outside. I looked through the feed and saw... A METEOR!!!?????? And it was SHAPED LIKE A TRAIN?!?!??!!? And it was headed STRAIT FOR MY CAN!!!!!1!1!1!111!!1!11! I gasped right before the train struck me, exploding me into one billion pieces!!!11!! The world was going dark around me as my chamber shattered and I fell down. The last thing I remember seeing was flames surrounding my structure and the bright, beautiful sky.

~ ~ ~

"Hey! Listen!"

I groaned and opened my eyes. Omg!!!! I'm alive?!!?!?? I glanced next to me and saw... my overseer????

"Get up, catboi," it said, turning all different colors of the rainbow. I decided to just lay there instead until its feelers tickled my face.

"Hey~ Stop that~" I said, shooing the overseer away with my hand, but it just teleported to the other side of me.

"You can't sleep on the dirt in the middle of the forest," it said firmly. Forest? I sat up and looked around. Sure enough, I was surrounded by trees!!! But I also noticed... MY CLOTHES WERE GONE!!!!!1!!!!1111! I wasnt naked tho, just wearing horrible peasant clothes. BUT I DIDN'T HAVE P[ATNS!! All I had on wad a plain white cloak. 

"Where da rubicon am I, oveseer~?" I asked. The overseer rolled its eye at me.

"Rude. I'm Ounce the Overseer. We're in the Iakesi forest," it explained. Iakesi forest? Id literally never heard of such a place. Though the name kinda sounded familiar...

My thoughts were interrupted by the rustling of the bishes. I stood up quicjkly, which was weird considering Id never stood on my legs before. It came so naturally to me for some reason. Three orange lizards emerged from the bushes, grinning at me. I hadnt realized until now how big they actually were.

"Oh shit, yellow lizards!" Ounce shouted and darted onto my shoulder. I thought they were ornage but whetever. They were wiggling their antennae s they approached me, and openned their mouths. Lizards weren't supposed to be this active, were they?

"Tildes you have to run the other way NOW!!!!!" Ounce yelled in my ear. I didn't know what tghe lizards would do to me but I wasn't going to stick around to find out. I turned tail and ran in the other direction. The leaves crunched underfoot and the trees blurred past me as I ran.

"This is just like that hit game PSMD!" Ounce said as I sprinted. I didn't know what the heck it was talkin about.

Suddenly I tripped and went tumbling down a slope I didn't even see. The foliage scraped against me as I flailed around. Then I collided with something metal with a loud BONK followed by an "oof!"

I locked up from my faceplant and saw purple?!??

"Ouch..." said the purple. I scrambled away and saw the purple was ANOTHER ITERATOR!!1!!!!111! I must have crashed into him and knocked him to the ground.

"Omigosh~! I'm sorry~!!! R u ok~???" I said quickly. The other iterator sat up and looked at me. He had funny asymetrical antennae and soft pastel eyes so beautiful I could get lost in them~

"I'm alright, I think..." He brushed some leaves off his rumpled dress. It was a really cute dress, tan with red rose patterning all over it and frills at the end of the sleeves. He was wearing an apron over it, with a cute little bow tied at the back.

"Stop staring," Ounce hissed in my ear. But where else would I look?

"What about you?" He asked. "You crashed right into me. Are you alright?" His voice sounded so soft and concerned.

"Um~! Ya~!! Just fell off a cliff running away from lizards haha~" I stuttered. The iterator gasped.

"Oh! Are you sure you aren't injured or anything?" He stood up and helped me stand as well. I blushed when he took my hand.

"I'm fine~ Just as fine as you~" I said smoothly, winking. One of Ounce's feelers slapped its eyeball. He seemed to freeze for a moment, eyes wide as he stared at me. No doubt flustered by my charming pick-up line.

"O-kay..." he said slowly, letting go of my hand quickly. He bent down and I noticed a woven basket tipped over on the ground. He must have dropped it when I crashed into him. Scattered all around it are... SHROOMS????? Omgosh, had I just bumped into a DRUG DEALER?!?1/!?!?

"Why do u have shrooms~!?" I blurted out. He flinched at my words, but looked up at me with confusion.

"W-what? Oh, I was gathering wild mushrooms. They grow around this time of year," he said, gingerly picking one up and placing it in the basket.

"They aren't drugs, Tildes, they're just mushrooms," Ounce whisper-yelled in my ear. I batted it away from my shoulder because it was being seriously annoying rn.

"Oh no~! I'm sorry I caused u to spill them~ Do u need help~?" I crouched down to help pick up the mushrooms but he quickly shook his head.

"No no, it's fine! It's okay!" He said. "It was an accident. I can get these by myself." Okay, well now I'm left feeling kinda awkward. I tried to think of something to break the tension as he placed the last of the mushrooms back in his basket.

"Hey~ I never got ur name~ I'm Too Many Tildes~" I said. He looked at me a little funny, but I couldn't figure out what he was feeling.

"I'm Nothing Well-Made," he said. "It's... nice to meet you... Too Many Tildes."

"U can just call me Tildes~" I responded.

"And I'm Ounce." the rainbow overseer appeared between us. Nothing startled backwards.

"Gah! A talking overseer?" he exclaimed.

"Uh~ ya~ dont ur overseers ever talk to u~?"

"No!"

"Please calm down," Ounce said gently. Nothing took a moment to compose himself, but he still looked totally freaked out by my talking overseer. "Nothing Well-Made, would you be willing to let Tildes spend the night at your shelter? She's lost, and has nowhere to go."

"Um..." Nothing glanced at me nervously. I was also reminded that UH HOW DID I GET HERE??!?!??? I THOUGHT I DIED TO A METEOR!!!!!!!!1!

"S-sure," he said, distracting me from my thoughts. Nothing beckoned for me to follow. "My cottage is this way."

The forest around us grew darker as we walked, probably from a combination of the oncoming rain clouds and night falling. Ounce stayed perched on my shoulder as Nothing led me through uneven terrain. He glanced behind every so often to make sure I was following. I liked that.

We finally came to a small copse in the woods. In it stood an run-down cottage shelter. It looked dirty, and it was covered in ivy and moss. A small, fenced-in garden was planted next to it, but I couldn't see anything planted in it at the moment. The cottage must have been very old to be in such a haphazard shape. Or maybe, it simply wasn't well-made. (A.N. see what I did there~? :3)

"You live here?" Ounce asked, zipping down next to Nothing. "How does this thing withstand the rain?"

"We put a magic seal on it that prevents the rain from damaging it," Nothing explained. "My boyfriend did most of the work though. He knows more about magic than I do."

I felt my heart sink down into the void sea. Nothing was already taken? Of course he is~ I thought. A cute boykisser like him would have trouble staying single~

Completely oblivious to my heartbreak, Nothing opened the cottage door wide and gestured for me to step inside. I entered with a lot less enthusiasm than I started with when I first met him. The inside of the shelter was small, but cozy. Everything was bathed in warm colors, and potted plants seemed to decorate every surface. A small love seat was positioned in front of an inactive fireplace, and the kitchen was so small that it would struggle to fit two people inside. I didn't see a bedroom anywhere, so I could only assume it was upstairs, seeing as there was a small staircase leading to a second story.

"Woah~ Ur place is so cute~" I said as Nothing followed inside and closed the door.

"Thank you," he responded nervously. "F-feel free to make yourself at home on the sofa. Is there anything I can get for you?"

"You got any water~?" I asked. I was getting pretty thirsty by that point.

"Of course! Ice or no ice?"

"No ice pls~"

Nothing walked into the kitchen to prepare the water as I went to have a seat on the sofa. It was a nice, soft sofa. I wondered how often Nothing and his boyfriend got to cuddle in front of a roaring fire. Must be nice~ I thought.

As I sat, I could hear Nothing and Ounce talking quietly in the kitchen. I couldn't make out anything they were saying though. I wondered if Ounce knew how strange it was for me to suddenly appear here, off my string. Nothing was also off the string, assuming he had one. Odd.

Nothing walked into the living room with two glasses of water and handed one to me. "It's filtered water," he said. He unplugged something from behind his head - some kind of long tube - and put the end of it in his glass. I suddenly realize I had no clue how to drink water.

"It's a water intake tube. You have one too," Ounce whispered to me. I put my hand behind my head and felt around until I brushed over something thicker than a wire. I pulled at it, and the end of the tube came loose. I put it in my glass of water and automatically started drinking, cooling me off.

"So~ Where's ur boyfriend, Nothing~?" I ask innocently. Nothing stiffens, and Ounce glares at me.

"Um," he stutters. "Well, he's not been home for a while. He's-"

Nothing is cut off by a knock on the door!!! OMG IS IT HIS BOYFRIEND!?!?!??!??! Find out next chapter!!1!!111!!1!1!

---

Nothing Well-Made belongs to @meatcatt

[tennessoui]

“You always this quiet?” for the playmaker au (or whatever au you feel like fits this) 💖

hi hello !! this is a ficlet for the playmaker au; specifically the part of the au where: obi-wan, already under mob boss anakin's thumb and in love with him, kills a man who sneaks into their house, goes to prison for it, and is released only for his father, qui-gon jinn to whisk him away to try and talk some sense into him. this ficlet is their reunion when obi-wan escapes his father's "vacation"

(sorta)

(2.5k) (warnings: dark anakin, mob boss fic, morally questionable obi-wan)

Obi-Wan’s hands make knots with his fingers in his lap as he stares out the window at the Coruscant skyline flying by. It feels so strange.

To be home.

Or—to be close to home. But not there yet.

“Alright, you gotta tell me,” the cab driver says, turning down the radio and looking back at him over his shoulder. “You always this quiet?”

Obi-Wan frowns, first out the window, then back at the cab driver. “No,” he says finally. And–alright. Quietly.

“I wouldn’t normally even ask,” the cab driver says. Obi-Wan isn’t quite sure he believes him on that front, but he doesn’t interrupt. “But we’ve been driving four hours, fare’s at two hundred and sixty dollars, and you haven’t said much since the address. To a restaurant. Boy, were you not able to find a flight to Coruscant? Why’d you get into Bandomeer and ask me to take you to Coruscant?”

Obi-Wan shrugs. “I’ll double the fare if you don’t ask anymore questions.”

This is sort of risky.

After all, it’s not his money he’s giving out to random taxi drivers.

It’s Anakin’s.

And he hasn’t seen Anakin Skywalker in two and a half months.

“Just—nervous,” he says apropos of nothing, except every minute they’re getting closer and closer to Anakin’s restaurant, which means every minute they’re getting closer and closer to Anakin.

And as much as Obi-Wan has missed him like a limb or something even more integral, he can’t—he doesn’t know if Anakin feels the same way.

After all, it’s been—five whole months since they last touched one another. And then two whole months since they even saw each other.

Who knows what Anakin feels towards him now after eight weeks of radio silence? Even if it hadn’t been Obi-Wan’s choice—

“Hot dinner date?” The cab driver asks like it’s a joke

“Something like that,” Obi-Wan murmurs, relaxing back into his seat. They’re on Temple Street, which means they’re almost home.

Obi-Wan is almost home.

—-----------

When Obi-Wan got out of prison for obstruction of justice but really self-defense but really murder, the thing he’d wanted more than anything else in the world was a plate of coq au vin from Anakin’s restaurant, which really just goes to show how much Anakin Skywalker has ruined him. Especially because he doesn’t even like coq au vin.

It’s just that he’d only ever had it at Anakin’s restaurant, sitting on Anakin’s lap, the mob boss feeding it to him like he was something to be treasured, and after three months being locked away, guarded, threatened, leered at, and spat on, that’s what he wanted. Anakin. Anakin was all he wanted, and the man had visited him weekly while he was away, each iteration of him looking more and more like he was close to snapping, so Obi-Wan thought he’d be the first to greet him once he was released, had tried to get into less fights in the days leading up to his freedom—he didn’t want Anakin to see him all bruised, but mostly he didn’t want Vader to have an excuse to be too gentle with him.

What he should have known to expect but what still blindsided him completely was his father. Or more specifically: the presence of his father in the warden’s office.

Qui-Gon Jinn hadn’t even looked at him, hadn’t even talked to him as he chatted with the warden about Obi-Wan’s performance, as if he had enrolled him in an especially challenging maths class instead of ensured that he went to prison for murder.

And then—worse—he’d swept him out of the prison all together, drove him out of its gates and straight to the airport. Qui-Gon had decided it was time to use the months’ worth of leave he’d been accruing since Obi-Wan was a child.

He took them to a beach house owned by someone who owed Qui-Gon Jinn a favor.

Obi-Wan’s first meal after getting out of prison was a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, watery and burnt respectively.

The worst thing was, if Qui-Gon had made such an effort even just two years ago, Obi-Wan would have—he’d have done anything his father wanted. He’d have eaten all the waterey scrambled eggs in the world if it was Qui-Gon Jinn trying to cook for him.

But now he knew what coq au vin tasted like with the secure weight of Anakin Skywalker’s arm wrapped around his waist. Now he knew what having Anakin Skywalker’s attention on him feeltt like, the totality of it, the destruction. 

He lasted two months at the beach house with Qui-Gon before he could orchestrate his escape. Two whole months where he couldn’t contact Anakin or anyone from the mob. Two whole months where his father tried to talk to him about it—about the undercover mission, his health, his psych tests results—and Obi-Wan would reply with stony silence.

Two whole months in another prison, when all he wanted was Anakin and coq au vin and the twins and, hell, he even started missing Ahsoka, which is when he knew it was really time to go.

His father had gotten him a new phone, but without any of the contacts he needed, and he didn’t know any of their numbers to call them and tell them he was coming back. He’d tried the restaurant’s public line all of five times, and had gotten a string of bored and uninformed servers who probably had never seen the owner in their lives, let alone would actually pass along a message to him.

So he’d left the phone at the beach house. He’d left everything at the beach house actually, everything except his wallet and a change of clothes. He’d bought a flight with what little money he had in his bank account—having forfeited most over to Anakin early on in their relationship—and landed in a city four miles south of Coruscant, to make it that more difficult for Qui-Gon to track him.

Then he’d gotten a taxi.

A taxi which is now pulling into the restaurant’s valet area at Obi-Wan’s direction. A taxi which is now putting on its brakes as the driver turns to look back at him expectantly. 

“Nice restaurant,” the driver says. “That’ll be five hundred and twenty credits.”

On his person, Obi-Wan has about twenty credits. In his bank account, he has about three hundred.

He winces, and then winces again when the cab driver’s face shifts from expectant to thunderous. “Boy,” he says like it’s a warning. “That’ll be five hundred and twenty credits.”

The moment Obi-Wan thinks about fumbling for the door handle, the driver locks them in.

“You’re paying me what you owe,” the guy says, and Obi-Wan’s mouth is dry because he really didn’t plan this far ahead even though he’s starting to think that maybe he should have.

“Look, the man I’m meeting—he’ll pay you, I promise. He’s good for it—no, really, look—he—”

The cab driver shakes his head, anger written all over his expression. “Calling the fucking cops,’ he decides, reaching into the foothold of the passenger seat.

“No!” Obi-Wan cries because involving the police is the last fucking thing he needs, not when Anakin Skywalker is right there. 

So fucking close and even if he’s angry at him for leaving him for two fucking months on top of his prison time, even if he’s found some other kid to call his, Obi-Wan needs to see him. 

He feels wild with it, the need bubbling up in his chest and making his hands feel like—like loose weapons because if this man, if Sebulba F. Vane is what is standing in between him and Anakin, he won’t be for long, not if Obi-Wan has anything to say about it. Not when he’s gotten so far, not when he wants him so much.

Before Obi-Wan can figure out how to reach through the protective glass barrier and hurt the man and before Sebulba can actually finish calling the cops, there’s a tap on the driver’s window.

The valet.

“Excuse me, sir,” the valet says, “we’re going to have to ask you to move, as you’re—Ben?”

Obi-Wan has never felt happier to see Waxer’s face. “Waxer,” he breathes, trying once more—futilely—at the door. “Is Ani in tonight?”

Please, please let Anakin be inside.

“Yeah,” Waxer says, looking between the cab driver and Obi-Wan. His brows wrinkle. “Ben, is there a—”

“Look,” Obi-Wan tells Sebulba. “Look, let me go get him, alright, he’ll pay you double the five hundred. I swear it.”

In the rearview mirror, Sebulba’s lips curl up into a sneer. “Heard that one before, haven’t I?” “It’s true,” Obi-Wan says, not above begging. “He—for me, he would.”

“Ben, what’s—”

“Come with me,” Obi-Wan bargains. “They’ll park your cab, but you can come with me to Ani’s table, to make sure I don’t run, yeah? One thousand and forty credits. Just let me go!”

Sebulba thinks about it so long that Waxer starts reaching for what might be a walkie-talkie on his belt but could just as easily be a shadowed gun.

“Please,” he says, not above begging, and Sebulba relents, unbuckling his seatbelt and unlocking the car doors to get out himself. Obi-Wan scrambles with his own door, but before he can get it open—and make a run for it—Sebulba is there, hand gripping like a brand around his shoulders as he drags him out of the vehicle.

“Little bitch,” the man says, but Obi-Wan’s just spent three months in prison. He’s been called worse things. “Fucker makes me drive four fucking hours and now I’m doing legwork to get paid?”

Waxer, for his part, doesn’t immediately get into the cab, and instead watches them with narrowed eyes.

“It’s alright,” Obi-Wan tells him, even though Sebulba is holding him quite tightly.

It’s alright because Anakin is inside that building, and that’s quite literally all he can think about.

Sebulba has one hand clamped tightly around his neck and the other on his hip. The hostess gasps when she sees them enter the building. She’s new.

“Second floor,” he tells her.

“The second floor is reserved tonight, sir,” she replies without even flicking her eyes down to the table map in front of her. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Second floor,” he says again, even as the arms around him tighten. “I’m a bit late, but he’s expecting me.”

“And—your guest?” she asks, eyebrows high up on her head.

“He’s a bit of a surprise,” Obi-Wan says. “Have to keep the romance alive somehow.”

The hostess obviously has not been trained on what to do in this situation, because she lets him pass. The stairs to the second floor are long, a double staircase that leads into a more private setting where Anakin conducts his business.

As they begin their trek up, Obi-Wan can feel the eyes of the dining guests on them.

“You—look, you shouldn’t—” he says, halfway up the stairs. “Let me go.”

“So you can run?” Sebulba asks on a scoff. “Fat chance. I’m holding your ass tight until I get that one thousand you think it’s worth.”

“No, I—look, you really shouldn’t,” Obi-Wan tries to twist away, a byproduct of his good upbringing, his moral code. “For your sake,” he adds, thinking about the way Maul had died in the very room they’re about to enter. “Don’t touch me.”

“Fat chance,” Sebulba repeats, and pushes open the closed mahogany door roughly. “Ani,” the man calls into the new room as if he’s not tempting the devil by calling its name. “Brought you a gift, Ani.”

Anakin Skywalker’s head is tilted down. There are stacks of paper in front of him. On his left, Rex is gesturing to some sentence on one of them. To the right, Ahsoka is trying to wrangle Leia into eating her food instead of trying to throw it at Luke.

At the sound of his forbidden name in a stranger’s voice, Anakin Skywalker’s head lifts from the paper to stare straight at Sebulba, face expressionless until his eyes catch on Obi-Wan.

He stands so immediately that his chair clatters to the ground.

“Obi-Wan,” he says, voice loud and soft and a scream and a whisper and the only thing Obi-Wan ever wants to hear again.

The cab driver slides his arm around his neck in a loose chokehold. “What the fuck is your name,” he mutters, but it doesn’t matter because Anakin is striding forward, and Luke and Leia are screaming because he’s back—he’s back and he’s been missed and in a few moments, he’ll be touching Anakin again, which is what he’s wanted since he was forced away from him.

Only the arm tightens and shifts him away, back slightly. Sebulba thinks he’s found leverage. He just wants his money, credits he deserves.

But Anakin’s eyes catch on their points of contact, the arm around his throat and the hand on his waist, and Vader’s eyes begin to burn when Sebulba has the sheer gall to move Obi-Wan’s body further from his hands.

It’s Luke that finds him first, rushing past his father to jump and cling onto Obi-Wan’s leg, tiny face rubbing against the fabric of his pants like a cat would. “Obi, we thought you’d never come back,” he says, little hands twisting and worrying at his pants. “We thought we’d never see you, we thought you hated us, Daddy said he couldn’t find you, Daddy said you left—”

Obi-Wan tries to drop to his knees, intent on hugging the child, both children, and never letting go.

Sebulba stops him, hand on his hip coming up to wrap around his wrists instead, forcing them behind his back. “This bitch,” the cab driver tells Anakin, “says you’d pay a thousand credits for his ass.”

Vader stands very, very still, eyes the only thing moving as he traces them over and over Obi-Wan’s face, his body, like a starving man looks at a feast. He’s very, very silent.

“But now I’m thinking Ben here mght be worth even more than a thousand credits,” the cab driver says, and Obi-Wan closes his eyes because he recognizes that tone of voice.

Greed.

Sebulba is getting greedy.

“Obi-Wan?” Anakin’s voice is deceptively soft as he closes the remaining gap between them and lifts his chin with two fingers. “What do you think, little mouse?”

His eyes are dark, almost black, and his hands feel—his hand feels so nice on his skin.

The thought comes that if Sebulba weren’t here, they’d be kissing already. Touching. Obi-Wan would be seated in Anakin’s lap, the twins on either side.

“I don’t care,” he says, because what Anakin is really asking is whether or not he should allow the cab driver to live, for the crime of touching Obi-Wan, for the crime of keeping them apart.

Should he pay him the money he’s owed? Should he pay the money he has requested? Or Should the cab driver pay for the slight of touching Obi-Wan with his life?

And Obi-Wan doesn’t care. He’s home.

Finally, he’s free.

And in his freedom means he doesn’t have to care because Anakin will make this decision for him.

“He brought me home,” he says to be fair and impartial.

Anakin smiles, thumb brushing the hidden dimple of Obi-Wan’s cheek. “Yes,” the mobster says. “But now let's make sure he cannot take you away again.”

The mahogany doors creak shut behind them.

Obi-Wan hopes the murder will not take place in front of the children.

"Perhaps you should have waited in the car," he tells the cab driver with a sigh. "I apologize for that, but it's not as if you didn't miscalculate yourself."