#OH YEAH HE HAS HIS OWN LITTLE TOWER THAT EXISTS OUTSIDE OF TIMELINES

[gloopdimension]

im so Made

[bubblegumbeech]

Homemade

Day 2 Dannymay: Home

Clockwork made cookies, they were a special blend he’d invented through countless trial and error to get just right. For a ghost, they'd have enough concentrated ectoplasm to provide energy and enough positive emotion to make them enjoyable, and for a human child, he focused on getting the right flavors and physical ingredients to make them actually edible.

 He set the plate down in front of Danny. The young half-ghost had been working really hard at his homework lately and Clockwork wanted to do something small to reward him for it.

 “Are- did you make cookies?” Danny asked, looking up at him in confusion.

 Clockwork smiled and gently ruffled his hair. “Will you tell me how they taste?”

 Most ghosts lost the ability to taste early on, along with their sense of smell. Clockwork never had either though, only had glimpses into different futures with different recipes and Danny’s own reactions to them.

 “Please tell me this isn’t the first time you’ve made cookies…” Danny made a face, uncertain.

 Clockwork rolled his eyes and grabbed the plate again, “you don’t have to eat them-“

 “I’ll eat them!” Danny grabbed the plate from Clockwork’s hands, a splash of green decorating his cheeks and forming a stark contrast against his starlit freckles.

 Braced as if for impact, Danny quickly shoved one of the still warm cookies into his mouth and began to chew. Slowly his features softened into enjoyment and Clockwork got to watch as he grabbed another and then another until the entire plate was clean.

 He was glowing slightly, the oven-baked ectoplasm doing wonders for his energy levels. Existing so long on ambient ectoplasm alone wouldn’t have been nearly enough for a young ghost like Danny, so it was nice to see him properly fed for once.

 “Clockwork, these are amazing! How did you make them?” Danny asked, his eyes shining slightly.

 “That’s a secret,” Clockwork lied. He didn’t want to admit it took him over a thousand tries to actually make something edible to a human pallet, and he had enough of a mysterious air about him that he’d get away with it.

 Danny didn’t seem to mind though, he just grabbed the plate and flew over to the kitchen so he could wash it. “Okay, what do I have to bribe you with to get those again?”

 Clockwork’s core hummed in satisfaction, it was almost a primal instinct to care for one’s child and it was always nice to be appreciated. “Finished homework would be a nice start.”

 Danny scoffed, a small smile on his face. “I think you need to lower your standards. I mean, I’m passing history now right?” The single dish was cleaned, dried, and put away in less than a moment.

 “Thank you Daniel,” Clockwork said. Danny didn’t get nearly enough appreciation from those around him, it never hurt to give him a little when he could.

 A light green blush built on Danny’s cheeks and he looked away in an attempt to hide his reaction. “Yeah well, you make cookies like that again and I’ll clean your whole clock tower.”

 Clockwork smirked, lifting an eyebrow. “The infinite spirals of my clock tower and the unending trails of time that exist ever moving inside of it would certainly appreciate a touch up.”

 Danny balked, “uh… maybe I can do a room at a time?”

 “You don’t have to clean anything for cookies Daniel. I’d rather you eat than not.”

 Relieved, Danny rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled. “Thanks Clockwork.” He sighed and dropped his hand, looking over at the window to the realms outside. “Ugh, I don’t wanna go to school tomorrow.”

 There wasn’t much to say, so Clockwork didn’t. He didn’t particularly care about Danny’s academics or whether or not he succeeded in school, but he knew intimately how much it mattered to Danny. It was tied to his two obsessions after all.

   He had to go to school so he could both make his family happy and be there to protect the other students, he had to succeed if he ever wanted to fulfill his dreams of working at NASA, the human space program. At the thought of absolute failure he would stress, shut down, and grow apart from those close to him. It would put strain on his obsessions and could lead to internal core damage. It was better for now, that Clockwork simply gave him time and the chance to try and keep up.

 “You’re always welcome to visit if you need more time,” he offered.

 “I know. I’ve uh, still got homework to finish…”

 “By all means.” Clockwork followed Danny out of the kitchen and watched as he sat back down to finish his homework, content with the healthy glow the cookies gave Danny.

 He turned back to his own work and watched for anything that didn’t fit or was causing trouble, but his mind was on the next recipe he wanted to try.

       The next recipe ended up being a casserole.

 Cliche to be sure, but decidedly more filling and sufficient than just a plate of cookies, and this time when Clockwork set it down in front of his young ward he was met with more enthusiasm than suspicion. Despite the bright pink color and the more… mobile parts of the dish. It was difficult to make something that met all the necessary requirements to properly nourish a halfa      and     have it look appealing so Clockwork had hardly tried.

 Danny dug in.

 “This is the most amazing casserole I’ve ever had in my life and that includes any and all ecto-contaminated food I’ve ever snuck out of the fridge without my parents noticing how did you do that?” Danny asked, shoveling another forkful into his mouth.

 Clockwork purred at the praise, and was glad to see Danny’s glow get even brighter. It was so pale before, barely even there in a way it never should have been with Danny’s obsession and power. “I suppose the difference would be that I was doing it intentionally.”

 Danny nodded. “Makes sense.” He took a moment to pause from devouring his food to look up over at Clockwork sitting across the table from him. “Are you going to eat anything?”

 How thoughtful. He should have probably prepared for that but, well. “I’m afraid trying to eat something with that much physical matter from the human world would go poorly for me. If you’re uncomfortable I can make some tea?”

 “Oh,” Danny looked at his half finished meal, realizing something and unable to react properly to it. “Yeah, tea sounds nice, can I have some too?”

 “Of course,” Clockwork agreed easily. He would be using a delicate mixture of herbs and spices from different parts of the infinite realms that Sojourn liked to gift him whenever he bothered to visit. None of them should have any adverse effects on the boy, and if he chose the right mixture, it might actually help him to calm down slightly.

 By the time the tea was finished and cooled enough to drink, Danny had finished his meal and cleaned up so that the two could sit and enjoy their tea together.

 Danny spent a moment too long staring into his cup, the swirling neon blue of the forgoent leaves—a small blue plant native to some of the darker forest realms, similar to the mortal realm’s forget-me-nots. Clockwork didn’t know what he was thinking, couldn’t see a timeline where he actually spoke his thoughts out loud. He sighed and took a drink of his own cup, the tea’s soothing blend serving to take off the slight edge of his anxiety. It was difficult caring for a child, even with his power.

 “Thanks for the tea Clockwork,” Danny said, “and uh, the casserole too.”

 His voice was quiet, but sincere and Clockwork accepted his thanks with a small nod of his head. The rest of the evening went on like that, mostly silent but not unpleasant in each other's company. When Danny left to go back to the mortal realm he paused at the clock tower’s door and quickly turned back to Clockwork, pulling him into a quick, tight hug that had him almost freezing time instinctually before Danny pulled away and quickly flew off.

 Clockwork stayed there, floating in the entryway to his lair and felt his core practically screaming at him in delight.

 He needed a way to distract himself, maybe he could start working on another recipe?

     Pie was unnecessarily difficult, Clockwork decided, despite its place as the most popular fairy-tale dish ever mentioned. He’d made no less than three thousand six hundred and four different variations of the damned recipe and not a single one had even stayed together, much less been even remotely edible.

 He sighed. At this rate, even freezing time wouldn’t help him accomplish this before Danny arrived. He was admittedly impatient for an immortal entity with all of time under his control, and he wanted to actually be able to spend time with his ward rather than an eternity trying, and failing, to bake something.

 Which is exactly how Danny had caught him taking a failed experiment out of the oven, having arrived while Clockwork was distracted.

 “Is that a pie?” he asked, excitedly reaching for it.

 Clockwork quickly held it out of the young halfa’s reach, unwilling to allow him near his utter failure.

 Danny blinked, his face drooping into an exaggerated pout, “I can’t have some?” Clockwork felt his core ache a little. Maybe he should have stopped time until he got it right?

 “It’s not fit for consumption at the moment,” he said, carefully floating it out of reach and towards the end of the counter. He didn’t have anything resembling a human trash can, it was uncomfortable to keep waste in one’s lair afterall, so he’d have to leave it on the counter for now. He could dispose of it properly later, maybe as fertilizer for his garden.

 “Oh don’t be like that,” Danny said, floating around Clockwork and completely ignoring his very valid warning. “I’m sure it’s fine, everything else you’ve made has been delicious.”

 Well yes, everything else he’d made had been very much intended to be delicious. This one was a failure. However, Clockwork wasn’t going to admit to the amount of effort that had gone into each and every piece of food he’d made for his young ward. It would be uncomfortable at best for Danny and horridly embarrassing for Clockwork.

 “I’ll make another one for next time, please-” Clockwork didn’t even finish his sentence before Danny was grabbing a piece of the crust and shoving it into his mouth. “Daniel!”

 Danny smiled. “Yeah okay not your best work, but it’s edible for sure.” He grabbed another piece and ate that as well and Clockwork didn’t really know what to do. On one hand, he was right: it was certainly edible, there would be no adverse effects caused by Danny eating the food, and it would be just as nourishing as the other meals Clockwork provided. But on the other hand, it could not have tasted pleasant. All of the futures where he tried serving this to Danny as normal were met with disappointment at best.

 So why was he content to eat it like this?

 “I knew you couldn’t be perfect,” Danny snickered. He grabbed a fork and a plate from their places in the kitchen and then floated over to the table, pie-adjacent pastry in hand. “Are you gonna make tea again?”

 “Yes,” Clockwork answered, glaring at the pie. The horrid pie that Danny was eating because not every single meal needed to be perfect and Clockwork, as always, had been over-complicating everything.

 The atmosphere at the table was soft and comfortable. It was certainly something Clockwork was unused to, enjoying company for company’s sake. And to think they wouldn’t be here as they were, had Clockwork succeeded fully with his task. It brings up a question, actually thousands of different, related, questions, about failure and success and the weight of either.

 Danny smiled at him from over the half eaten pie. Clockwork smiled back.

 An alarm went off and Danny shoved one last bite into his mouth before flying off towards the main room of the clocktower. “Shoot, I forgot I promised Jazz to let her help with my english homework.”

 There was a flurry of papers while Danny tried to gather all of his things. Pencils shoved precariously into his bag and folders of half finished homework assignments quickly followed. The half finished pie on the kitchen table was completely ignored, as it should have been to start with.

 “You seem to be in a rush,” Clockwork said, watching amusedly. Either Danny had forgotten Clockwork’s particular powerset in his haste, or he hadn’t thought to ask for a medallion. Either way Clockwork found it too amusing to offer his aide unless Danny thought to ask.

 “Yeah, yeah,” Danny tried to say over the strap of the backpack he held in his mouth in lieu of his busy hands. “I’ll be back home s-”

 Danny blushed and stuttered out something awkward and intended to drag attention away from the slip of his tongue. But Clockwork just smiled, watching the boy finally gather his things and quickly make his exit promising to come back tomorrow for dinner.

 Wasn’t there a human saying about home and food?

[vostara]

I Am Lost - 01

Volume One: A New Guardian Component 01

pairing: - cayde-6 x female guardian x uldren sov - the crow x female guardian (eventual)

blurb: “The woman’s gaze drifts down to look at her hands. She moves her fingertips, intrigued by this odd sensation of feeling, of movement.”

word count: 2.8k+

When Verna awoke as a guardian, she knew nothing about what life is meant to be like as a Lightbearer. And though she has been told that learning about her past is a forbidden endeavor, she can’t help but feel drawn towards discovering who she once was. But her pursuit of the quest is interrupted by the growing chaos, by the Darkness spreading.

Begins with the events of Destiny 1 and will continue up to the current timeline (but hey, it’ll take awhile to get there). Verna is a void-using Hunter.

*This work is cross-posted on Ao3.

01 | … series masterlist

Tag List (Open): @mangovalkyrie

We called it the Traveler, and its arrival changed us forever. Great cities were built on Mars and Venus. Mercury became a garden world. Human lifespan tripled. It was a time of miracles. We stared out at the galaxy and knew that it was our destiny to walk in the light of other stars—but the Traveler had an enemy. A Darkness, which had hunted it for eons across the black gulfs of space. Centuries after our Golden Age began, this Darkness found us and that was the end of everything. But it was also the beginning. — The Speaker

COSMODROME

Old Russia, Earth

A pale orange machine with golden engraving zooms around a wreckage of rusted, disintegrating vehicles. Searching amongst the ruins. He stops to scan a skeleton, slumped over in one of the cars. “Ouch,” he comments, blunt, before flying away. He pauses, looking off into the distance. And then, quick, he speeds off to investigate this new area of interest. Curiosity running strong within his circuits.

His scanner flicks on once again, scrutinizing the debris. “Is it possible?” For a moment, he feels an inkling of hope. His protective shell moves away from his main body—a metallic orb—pushed apart by a glowing sphere of blue light. “There you are!” He says, confirming his suspicions. Excited, the machine puts all of his energy into bringing the skeletal remains back to life.

In its place, a young woman appears. Tanned skin forms, surrounding the broken bones. Dark hair grows, cascading in loose waves down to her mid-back. And with her first inhale of breath, a blush of pink life spreads across her cheeks. Slowly, the woman opens her eyes, and winces at the invasion of light.

“Guardian,” the machine says. He moves closer to her, flying right up into her line of vision. “Guardian?” He repeats.

The woman blinks at him. She feels sluggish, confused. Her mind still busy trying to process the concept of life, existence.

“Eyes up, Guardian!” The strange object says, inching the slightest bit closer to her face.

She tilts her head in curiosity, finally noticing the talking robot.

“It worked… You’re alive!” He says. “You don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you. I’m a Ghost. Actually, now I’m your Ghost. And you…”

The woman’s gaze drifts down to look at her hands. She moves her fingertips, intrigued by this odd sensation of feeling, of movement.

“Well, you’ve been dead a long time,” the robot continues. “So, you’re going to see a lot of things you won’t understand.”

Something yells in the distance, drawing his attention towards it.

“This is Fallen territory,” he says. His optic eye shifts rapidly to glance around the area. He’s nervous, concerned. “We aren’t safe here. I have to get you to the City.” Briefly, he flies away, before turning back to the Guardian. “Hold still,” he says, disappearing.

The woman opens her mouth to speak—tries to call out for the machine to return—but no sound escapes.

“Don’t worry,” his voice says. The sound vibrates inside of her head, and it feels ever-so-slightly unsettling. “I’m still with you. We need to move, fast.”

Almost hesitant, the woman pulls herself up onto her feet. She surveys the world in front of her, overwhelmed by the sight of sparse greenery and spreading decay.

“We won’t survive long out in the open like this,” the Ghost gives her a verbal nudge. “Let’s get inside the Wall.”

She looks beyond the clumps of rusted metal, focusing on a building that’s crumbling in the distance. With unsteady steps, she walks towards it. She stumbles in the dry dirt, gradually adapting to process that’s involved in forcing her legs into motion.

“I didn’t bring you back just for you to die again,” Ghost says. “We need to move.”

Sensing the urgency, she picks up her pace. The woman climbs through the wreckage and jogs the rest of the way to the Wall. She enters through a large hole that greets her with darkness. An automatic light resting on her left shoulder switches on, illuminating the space. She climbs the staircase to her left, ascending up a couple flights of stairs. The woman is cautious as she travels further inside, careful to avoid cutting herself with the jagged, sharp edges of broken metal. She considers grasping onto the safety railings for support, but changes her mind upon noticing that they look as if they could snap between her fingers.

A skittering noise echoes throughout the building, pulling the woman’s attention to the dark ceiling.

“Quiet,” the Ghost says, half a step below a whisper. “They’re right above us.”

Making a deliberate effort to keep her footsteps light, the woman traverses further into the building in search of a way through. Eventually, she opens a door and steps into an open space.

The Ghost rematerializes beside her, and immediately begins to scan the area. “Hang tight,” he says. “Fallen thrive in the dark. We don’t. We need more light. I’ll see what I can do.” He zips away, flying deep into the darkness. “Another one of these hardened military systems and a few centuries of entropy working against me.”

As she stares into the pitch black, a rock of discomfort settles inside the depths of her stomach. Goosebumps bloom down the woman’s arms. She feels something watching her, examining her every move. But she can’t see the source.

The lights flicker on.

And illuminate the swarm of creatures moving across the adjacent bridges and walls. The woman’s eyes widen at the sight, caught off-guard by their six slender limbs, claw-like hands, and glowing blue eyes. The creatures—the Fallen—are dressed in spiked gray and silver armor, with purple cloaks draped over their heads.

The woman emits an involuntary gasp, taking a step back towards the door that she had walked in from.

“They’re coming for us,” the Ghost yells as he speeds his way back towards the woman.

“Yeah,” she responds. And for a brief moment, she is startled by the sound of her own voice. It’s coarse, strained, yet soft, quiet.

“Oh,” the Ghost pauses, stopping abruptly to look at her. “So you can speak!”

“Yeah,” she confirms, though she sounds as if she doubts this herself. Hearing hurried footsteps, she turns her attention back to the creatures that are gaining on them.

The Ghost turns to look back at the Fallen, and then rushes back to the woman. He scans a gate beside her, hacking into the system to unlock it. As the gate rises, he flies through and points a light at an object leaning against a metal crate. “Here,” he says. “I found a rifle. Grab it!”

She runs after him, quick to pick up the offered weapon.

“I hope you know how to use that thing,” he says.

Walking at a brisk pace down the hall, she detaches the rifle’s magazine and checks the amount of ammo stored inside. “You and me both,” she mumbles, clicking everything back into place. A group of Fallen soldiers jump in front of them, and the woman reacts on instinct, lodging a couple of rounds into each of their heads. Another Fallen appears, ready to strike. And, pulling out a knife from her thigh holster, she jabs the blade into the creature’s neck.

“I think you’ll be okay,” the Ghost says, watching as the fresh corpse collapses onto the ground.

The woman looks over at the Ghost, before continuing forward. Rifle raised and ready to fire. After walking through a disorientating maze of hallways and fighting off two hoards of Fallen soldiers, she stumbles into an open space with high ceilings. On the other side, a giant fan is slowly rotating behind a metal grate.

“The Fallen have a tighter hold on this place than I thought,” the Ghost comments. He heads towards the fan and looks down a new hallway. “Just a little bit further. Let’s hope there’s something left out there.”

She follows after him. “You don’t sound entirely confident.”

“I was fortunate enough to finally find you,” he says. “I don’t know how much more luck I’ve got left today.”

As the woman enters the hallway, she pauses to look back at where they had come from, double checking that none of the Fallen were hot on their heels.

All clear.

The Ghost and the woman follow the path. It leads them outside, into another field of rust and ruin.

“This was an old Cosmodrome,” the Ghost explains. “There’s got to be something we can fly out of here.”

“Cosmodrome?” The woman whispers. She takes in the sight, trying to process and understand this ever-growing pile of information.

“Right,” the Ghost turns to look at her. “You don’t know—”

His words are interrupted by the loud sound of something being launched in the distance. The woman and the Ghost whip their eyes towards its direction, watching as a smoking orange light—a flare—flies high up in the air. Gradually, it changes direction, curving towards a nearby tower.

“Incoming!” The Ghost warns, pulling the woman’s attention away from the flare.

A large portal of blue and white light forms in the sky. And through it, a ship appears and starts to descend. With the sound of a faint explosion, another ship flies through another portal. It heads towards them, landing closer than the first.

“Fallen ships!” The Ghost says. “This close to the surface?”

The woman unclips her magazine from the rifle and replaces it with a fresh one. “We should go.”

“Move!” The Ghost agrees.

She sprints across the courtyard, approaching the ship. As she nears, several Fallen leap out of the vehicle. Aiming her rifle, she shoots several of them dead before their feet can touch the ground. Moving at a quick, but steady, pace, she heads closer and continues her task of killing the creatures. Fighting her way around the swarm, she treks through the open courtyard, before entering a new building on the other side.

“I’m picking up signs of an old jumpship,” the Ghost says. “Could be our ticket out of here.”

“Here’s to hoping,” the woman mumbles.

They follow the hallways inside, pausing to kill the Fallen before these enemies are able to spot them. Eventually, they turn a corner and enter a wide, open room with a broken glass ceiling. Across the way, an old ship sits abandoned, collecting dirt and grime. It’s suspended above them, held up by multiple thick cables.

“There’s a ship!” The Ghost says.

The woman steps closer, her eyes glued to it. “It looks relatively intact,” she notes. A cluster of running footsteps storm in through the entrance behind her, and she pivots to shoot the Fallen. Once all is calm, she turns her attention back to the ship.

The Ghost reappears beside her. “Alright, let me see if I can get us out of here,” he flies up to the ship and begins to scan it. “It’s been here awhile,” he comments. “Hasn’t made a jump in centuries. We’re lucky the Fallen haven’t completely picked it clean.”

“Will it fly?” The woman asks.

The Ghost pauses and turns to look at her. “I can make it work,” he says. He turns back towards the ship and disappears as he slips inside of it. After a few moments, the ship’s lights flip on and its engine begins to rumble. Another moment goes by, and then the ship breaks itself free of cables as it raises to hover in the air.

“Would you look at that,” the woman says.

“Okay, it’s not going to break orbit, but it might just get us to the City. Now—about that transmat...”

Through a hole in the wall, several Fallen scurry into the room. “Might wanna put a rush on that,” the woman yells. She swings up her weapon, finger ready to pull the trigger.

“Bringing you in!”

Before she can fire a shot, the woman disappears in a cluster of blue lights. She reemerges inside the ship, disorientated and confused. As she stares at the different levers and buttons inside, the Ghost steers the jumpship out of the building and away from the enemies that are shooting at them.

“Let’s get you home,” he says.

“Home?”

The Ghost turns to look at her, but says nothing in return.

And unbeknownst to the duo, a stranger watches them from a distance.

TOWER

The Last City, Earth

The trip “home” is shorter than the woman anticipates. Though, she was—admittedly—a bit distracted with her face pressed up against the windows of the ship. Eyes glued to the snow-capped mountains, vast forests, clear lakes, and crumbling cities that passed by beneath them. Breaking through the dark clouds of a thunderstorm, the ship is greeted with bright rays of warm sunshine. And, pressing her nose even further into the glass, the woman’s eyes widen at the sight of a giant orb floating in the distance. Below it, a towering grey building glimmers beneath the sun’s light.

When the ship approaches the location, the Ghost switches back on the transmat and teleports the woman down onto the courtyard below. Just as her feet touch the ground, the ship flies away and disappears behind the roof of the building.

“Welcome to the last safe City on Earth,” the Ghost says. “The only place the Traveler can still protect. It took centuries to build. Now, we’re counting every day it stands.”

The woman takes a step towards the balcony’s edge, wanting a better view of the City below.

“And this Tower is where the Guardians live,” the Ghost says, flying towards the main building.

She turns to follow him, but freezes in place. She’s stunned by the expansive entryways, tall pillars, glowing lights, and red flags billowing in the wind. Robots patrol the courtyard, sweeping the ground and collecting stray pieces of rogue trash. A group of children race across the steps, led by a young boy that’s clutching a large black ball between his small hands. As the laughing children sprint passed one of the cleaning robots, it cautions them to be careful and to slow down.

“You keep referring to Guardians,” the woman says. “Is that what I am?”

“Yes.”

“And what does that entail?”

The Ghost hovers just out of her reach, his outer protective shell whirling in circles as he goes through an internal debate. “It’s normal for you to be confused,” he says, looking at her. “I’m sure that all of this is… a lot to take in all at once.”

The woman sighs, “Maybe just a little bit.”

Their conversation comes to a halt.

“Follow me,” the Ghost says, ending the long stretch of silence. “I’ll take you to—”

“Wait,” she interrupts. “I want to… I want to know who I am. Why can’t I remember anything? What even is this place? This… Tower?”

He drifts closer to her, meeting her gaze. “The answer to that is a bit complicated,” he says. “But who you are now is a Guardian, a new Guardian.”

“So,” the woman blinks, “I was once somebody else?”

“Yes and no,” the Ghost responds. “Your body—your face—it once belonged to somebody else. Beyond that, you are completely different.”

“So, you’re saying that I’ve been reincarnated?” She asks, looking down at her hands. The woman examines the bare skin, noticing long scars etched along the outside of her right forearm.

“Don’t think about it,” the Ghost says, nudging her arm back down to her side. “Pursuing knowledge about your past life is ill-advised. Forbidden, actually.”

“Do you know who I was?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

The Ghost stares at her.

But she continues to pry, “Not even a name?”

“Would you like a name?” He asks.

“‘Guardian’ feels a bit… impersonal,” she admits. “You probably have a name, don’t you?”

The top of the Ghost’s shell lowers, as if pulling itself down to represent a frown. “No,” he says. “I’ve only ever been ‘Ghost.’”

“Wouldn’t you like a name?”

“Oh!” The Ghost’s straightens out his shell. And his optic center appears to widen with brewing excitement. “You could gave me a name,” he suggests. “We could… do a trade. You name me and I’ll name you?”

For the first time, the woman feels amusement. “A fair proposal,” she smiles, “Tangerine?”

The Ghost flies around her head, contemplating the suggestion. “I like it,” he says, coming to a halt in front of her face. “My turn! What to name you,” his voice trails off, pondering his options. “Something strong? Pretty? Traditional? Unique? Do you have a preference, Guardian?”

“It’s up to you, Tangerine. That was the deal.”

Finally, he speaks, “What about Verna?”

She quirks an eyebrow, “Verna?”

“You don’t like it?” Tangerine’s shell spins rapidly, nervous. He starts to sink towards the ground, unsure and embarrassed. “I’m sorry, it’s just… it’s the first thing that I thought of. I can come up with something else if—”

She giggles softly, lifting the Ghost back up high into the air. “I like it,” the woman—Verna—says.

A/N: Thank you for reading! While I plan on keeping this story relatively close to the game itself, it will prioritize accuracy for the in-game cutscenes and spoken dialogue, and not any other miscellaneous written lore. This is simply because Destiny has an absolutely massive library of lore and I am simply a graduate student with little free time who has to write a novel for her thesis project.

Also, we'll be seeing some of Cayde-6 in the next chapter. ^^ I was hoping to squeeze him in for this one, but I felt that ending with Verna's name was a natural stopping point.

[erazonpo3]

WOWM

so What Once Was Mine came out and I read it.

My General Thoughts are that this book was something of a rollercoaster but in like a pop up carnival with dubious safety regulations and diseases in the DIY log flume water kind of way. I had some fun reading it but I also feel like I picked up a rash.

If you're like me and you enjoy picking a book apart for morsels of interesting concepts then you might enjoy it, if you think holy shit why the fuck is a literal real historical serial killer in this book I need to see this then you might enjoy it, if you care about engaging plots and character beats then you probably won't.

If you want to ask me anything specific go ahead, but otherwise for more in depth thoughts: spoilers ahead

Basic Summary of the Plot

Okay so here's the deal. The story has the framing device of two siblings in a cancer ward, where one tells the other a story. I'll get into that later, but that's how it starts. Our actual story starts with a pretty long prologue: We learn that the King & Queen got the Moonflower thinking it was the Sunflower, Rapunzel was born with silver hair, and then baby Rapunzel kills a maid who accidentally hurt her when brushing her hair.

Oh, by the way, Max is a human man named Justin Tregsburg. Yeah.

Anyway, the royal family puts out feelers for legit witches who can safely take care of Rapunzel because the baby is too dangerous, and Gothel shows up to take her away. Queen Arianna visits Rapunzel once (but is only allowed to watch through a peephole) and decides watching another woman raise her child is too painful and throws herself into restoring the kingdom's orphanages instead.

Now we're in the present. Rapunzel is nineteen and she wants to go and see the lanterns (a mourning tradition of the Dead princess in this story). She tries to argue with Gothel but gets shut down, and Gothel makes her kill a chicken to prove the point that she can't go outside because she's too dangerous. However we as the audience already know Gothel plans to sell Rapunzel off as a bride or a servant or a weapon to some other nobles, because she's evil.

Also by the way Gothel still has access to our Sundrop Flower and is using it to live forever that's just a thing that happens in the background.

When Gothel is gone Rapunzel watches as a man (Flynn) stores a satchel in a tree outside of her tower, and that motivates her to leave the tower for the first time. Then she goes back inside the tower with her prize of a crown, and a skink she found and named Pascal. Rapunezl and Gothel have another spat, and Rapunzel decides she will run off to see the lanterns and she will find Flynn and make him her guide.

She ends up at the Snuggly Duckling and she doesn't find Flynn but she does find Gina, a young career criminal girl looking to break the glass ceiling. Gina agrees to help her find Flynn. They find Flynn, and he agrees to help guide Rapunzel to see the floating lanterns for a split reward of the crown with Gina.

The Snuggly Duckling gets burned down by Countess Bathory (yes that Elizabeth Bathory) and the Pub Thugs are pissed about it and also they're helping Rapunzel even though she didn't sing the I've Got A Dream song don't worry about it. We learn that the nobles that wanted to buy Rapunzel are now hunting her down so she can go to auction.

Gina takes them to her adopted mother's cottage. Gina's mother is a white witch, who goes by the name of Goodwife. She doesn't get an actual name she's just The Goodwife. Anyhow, the cottage is a magic safe space (for now) and Goodwife teaches Rapunzel that her hair isn't inherently evil and may not even be all that deadly! Rapunzel learns that her hair has other powers too, like the ability to turn skink Pascal into a sentient Chameleon. Yeah.

Also Goodwife tells Rapunzel she's the dead princess but this isn't like, an immediate call to action. Not a lot happens until we get this story's version of the Mother Knows Best Reprise where Gothel finds Rapunzel again but has to flee, but this Rapunzel has a bigger support network and isn't buying it. Flynn and Gina decide the safest course of action is to bring Rapunzel to the castle, but along the way she gets kidnapped by the Countess.

Gothel is pissed because she still wants the money for Rapunzel, so she rallies the armies of all the opposing bidders. Flynn and Gina convince Max the Man to send for his troops, and he joins them in going to the enemy castle. Flynn tries to sneak in, gets caught, and meanwhile there's a bloody battle out the front between the noble armies. Max jumps into the fray, Gina turns around and rallies the Pub Thugs.

Rapunzel uses her shrinking magic (!) to disappear half the castle and escape with Eugene, and the Pub Thugs arrive and basically end the battle. The Captain is dying but it's okay! Rapunzel turns him into a horse :) Also Rapunzel sees Gothel and tells her to fuck off.

The story ends with a tearful reunion between Rapunzel and her parents, Eugene and Gina are implied to be biological siblings, and things are good but of course in direct parallel to Cass Gina leaves at the end to become an adventurer. The end.

(There are a few other smaller plot beats, but you get the idea.)

MY THOTS

So here are my thoughts™.

Framing Device

I'll just state that I didn't like that the story was told via the vehicle of an older brother telling his 16 year old sister a different version of the Tangled Movie in a cancer ward. From what I've heard it also isn't normal for the Twisted Tales series to use a framing device for the AUs either.

I sympathise with the author's personal story, of course I do. That doesn't mean I'm stirred with compassion every time the flow of the story is interrupted to remind you to be sad because this is a story being told to a girl sick with cancer. It feels more than a little tragedy-porny rather than emotionally touching, and maybe that's because I'm too burnt out on real life tragedy to waste emotional energy on fictional cancer patients but we don't need to do Fault In Our Stars discourse again.

Real World References

This story goes heavy with Real World references. And another issue with the framing device as above is that you do feel like this is a story being told by someone namedropping every historical figure they know which makes it harder to get into the story.

There's like... a lot of references to Christianity, particularly in the prologue. There's a priest that thinks Rapunzel's hair is the work of the Devil or whatever. It's a lot. The Patriarchy is a thing. And that's not even getting into the Countess. I put it very succinctly in my notes so I'll paste it here:

I wish she’d just been an OC who could exist to chew scenery because the fact that she was a literal historical serial killer is super. Off putting. Like, she could have been an obvious reference to Bathory, but it feels like Miku Binder Hamilton levels of uncomfortable to me.

I miss Lady D.

Which basically sums up my problem with trying to take the setting of Tangled and put it somewhere in the Real World and somewhere on the Timeline. Who thought this was a good idea.

Misc. Thoughts

So, I used the five highlighter colours my ipad allows to organise my thoughts and organised them accordingly: Yellow for out of place IRL references, Blue for worldbuilding/character points that aren't plot relevant but still interesting, Pink for when something I find personally amusing happens, Purple for when the story feels like it's trying to 1-up the movie in some kind of way and Green for Heterosexual Nonsense. I'll touch on those last two in the Character sections but be prepared.

Also: for a book about giving Rapunzel killer hair, her hair isn't very dangerous. I wanted to see Rapunzel kill someone, and I'm disappointed that I didn't.

Characters

I'll do a deep dive into my thoughts about the characters before wrapping it up. I'm starting with Gina because she's honestly the easiest to get through.

Gina

Gina is a new character introduced for the story. She's a young woman trying to make it as a career criminal but keeps hitting that glass ceiling. So here's the down low, for all those who want to know: Gina is basically Cass, only not really. She's implied to be Eugene's biological sister, as previously mentioned, but you can imagine she's Cass the entire way through without breaking your immersion because if you imagined Cass if she were adopted by a Goodwitch rather than the Captain and had a looser, more wilderness survivor than trainee guard upbringing then you get Gina.

I liked Gina! I think she's fun as her own character too, and her best moments are when she's interacting with her mother Goody Goodwife, and she of course picks up a natural sibling rivalry with Eugene, but I was disappointed with how little she really bonded with Rapunzel because she needed to make room for Eugene and Rapunzel's romance.

Rapunzel

Okay, here's our protagonist. There's a notable effort to make Rapunzel more active in her destiny and whatever, and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. I was worried they'd try to go full butt-kicking girlboss with her but I was pleasantly surprised that Rapunzel was pretty useless in most scenes, genuinely love to see it.

With a more intimate look into Rapunzel's psyche through the medium of prose, we see Rapunzel really questioning Gothel's behaviour even before she leaves the tower, and while I appreciate that she can develop her own cynicism I feel it starts unnecessarily early. This is my purple colour; the movie needs to be "fixed" by showing the readers that this Rapunzel is quicker to distrust Gothel. She's also quicker to hatch a plan to go outside of the tower on her own, and she makes a plan to make Flynn her guide for the lanterns even though he never stumbles upon her in the tower- and even though she has a perfectly rational reason not to trust him which is that he is a stranger and a Wanted Thief.

In the moments where it does work is when Rapunzel is surrounded by her new support network: Flynn, Goodwife and Gina, who encourage her to question Gothel's sincerity, and Rapunzel comes up with her own defences for Gothel so that she can poke through them herself.

I have some other thoughts about Rapunzel's hair and her powers, like how the story provides the interesting concept that her hair gets different powers with the different phases of the moon, but a lot of the powers are uhhh stupid and also I feel like it really robs the story of the whole gripping conflict of "Yes I'm Rapunzel Yes my hair kills people what of it".

In as far as just Rapunzel herself though, she still felt pretty in character nonetheless, and maybe that's all I can ask.

Flynn Rider / Eugene Fitzherbert

My boy I am so sorry. They neutered my boy.

Long story short: Eugene in this story is the sexy lamp. He contributes nothing to the plot except to be there for Rapunzel to drool over. And of course because he won't get any character development, he starts from the very beginning as a sweet soft boi with none of the Flynn Rider characterisation from the movie because we don't have time for that, he needs to be husband material stat.

His whole character is the colour green for Heterosexual Nonsense.

So, here's the problem. In the movie, there's not a lot of time for ~friendship~ between Rapunzel and Eugene because they kind of immediately see each other as a romantic prospect. And whatever, it's a movie and there's only so much time. But this book had the opportunity to take things a bit slower and instead chooses to make Rapunzel get jealous whenever Eugene and Gina interact and for her to be constantly wishing he was holding her hand.

Say what you will about Lost Lagoon, but it tells a good romance story just by virtue of not intending to be a romance story, because the author is trying to convey a strong bond between Rapunzel and Cassandra without using "and they kiss" as a cheatcode. What Once Was Mine says "he was a boy, she was a girl, could it be any more obvious?" and leaves it at that.

Now as for how this all pertains to Eugene's character? Well, it just robs him of any flavour. In the movie there's a clear distinction between Flynn and Eugene, when we learn Eugene's real name about halfway through. We see a clear difference between the Flynn we knew- kind of an asshole, wanated to drop Rapunzel off at the Snuggly Duckling and get rid of her- and Eugene, who is sincere and chooses Rapunzel as his New Dream in opposition to his Old Dream of living alone on an island with a bunch of money.

This version of Eugene is basically Eugene all the way through, because the plot doesn't really need Eugene there but he has to be there because it's a Tangled AU so there's no Rapunzel rescuing Flynn from the guards and healing his hand scene, he just loves her immediately and that's that. They have a little spat at one point but it's cleared up later and not because they actually communicate but because they kiss.

Rapunzel only learns Eugene's real name at the very end of the story, and gives a speech about how Eugene is the real him, but it's just so flat because 'Flynn' has been sincere this whole time? Anyway he does nothing of value for the entire story except be there for Rapunzel to lust after. Eugene I'm so sorry.

Gothel

Gothel's sort of the Big Bad and is characterised as an abusive asshole, the usual. I wish there were a bit more nuance to her character but then again in this story she's not just being passively evil- taking care of Rapunzel for selfish reasons but nevertheless maintaining the status quo- she's being actively evil in trying to sell Rapunzel off.

It's notably funny that Gothel sees the Countess Bathory and is like "what the fuck".

Anyway Gothel in this story also feels very weak in part because this Rapunzel is more critical and in part because this Rapunzel has a new support network. It's for that reason the Mother Knows Best Reprise scene doesn't really work, because the original has Gothel pit Rapunzel against Eugene, whereas she can't do that here so it remains a Gothel vs Rapunzel thing.

She gets a boring death as an epilogue addendum that someone rips out the Sundrop flower, which tbh? lame. It would be a lot more fun if it were open ended but I am also preferential to Rapunzel actually using her killer hair to kill someone. Please

Captain Justin Tregsburg

It's Max. He was a human but then he got turned into a horse. what the fuck you guys

[darkpoisonouslove]

“Revenge of the Trix” Thoughts

Diving into this second special and I have to say that I am actually quite excited to see how this will go. It was fun comparing the first special to season 1 even though I kinda expected to be angered. But good news! I wasn’t. Not so much at least and I really hope that pattern will continue.

- I am not quite sure but I think they changed the timeline a little bit. Though, if it means I get the festival of the rose or that battle with the witches in Magix, I am down! I doubt it but I will hold on to my hopes until they get dashed!

- I am still puzzled by Faragonda’s remark about the “powerful forces here at work”. What does that mean? Who is she talking about? She can’t be wary of Daphne so what the hell is happening? Was she concerned at the possibility of Bloom having Dragon Fire? I really hope they will explain some of this. But I like that they added the fact that Daphne was the princess of Domino. It wasn’t in the original of this scene and I am glad they changed that.

- Okay, without the bike rescue and the way the dialogue in that scene is reworked, the Riven and Darcy stuff is way more disturbing than it used to be! She straight up spelled him without any connection being made outside of that and it just looks way too creepy. Not to mention that it does a disservice to Riven’s character as well because if Darcy never rescued him, he has no other reason to be meeting her other than “I don’t care about my friends, just about being great”.

- Spring break? Wow! We really sped through that school year.

- Was that montage from Gardenia in the original? I don’t quite remember that but it is cute as hell! And to end it with Mike and Vanessa hugging while happily watching their daughter? I will go sob now if you’ll excuse me. Beautiful.

- Wait, she’s dreaming of the night Mike saved her from the fire (instead of, you know, the fire in the flower shop)? And by the looks of it, in this she doesn’t know that she’s adopted like she did in 4kids season 1... I am actually in trepidation over this next scene.

- Well, that scene went better than I thought it would. But she really didn’t know about being adopted. I am just glad that she didn’t get mad they hadn’t told her the truth. It would have broken my heart. And they are her parents anyway.

- Omg, Bloom is asking all the right questions! I cannot believe it! I am absolutely ecstatic that they changed that part because now it is really making sense (I had given up on ever saying that in regards to Winx Club again so I vote my decision to watch the specials “fucking spectacular”). She connected the dots about getting her powers from her birth parents! I have been so salty about her not asking that in season 1 but they fixed it! Imma go happy sob again.

- Faragonda is showing her stuff now? Of her own volition? Nice! I just don’t think the “Daphne lived in a lake” thing makes sense. Didn’t her soul go there after her body was destroyed by the curse of Sirenix? That is different! And considering Faragonda’s past with the Company of Light, that is not all that she knows about Daphne so she’s kinda lying.

- Now that she saw the crown, does that mean that they don’t get to waste time going to Domino even though her powers were inside her all along? I really, really hope so! And the way Daphne presented the crown to her could be taken as symbolism about Daphne passing it down to her now that Bloom is the only living heir to the throne of Domino. That was a cool detail and a great change imo (especially if they aren’t gonna go to Domino).

- Well, Lucy’s PoV was kinda made more... understandable, I guess? Like, the wording was better... right before the very end of that argument between her and Mirta. That was somehow meaner than what happened in s1. But I actually like the change to the scene with Mirta casting her spell to spy on the Trix. I think it makes more sense than the way it was done in s1.

- How does she know there is an archive in Cloud Tower when she has never been there? I think this scene suffers from the changes. And it is also really convenient that she decided to break into CT just in time for the Trix to trick her. I think those scenes were backwards in s1 and it was after the Trix saw her in CT that they came up with their plan which was better because it didn’t look so staged. Also, “What are friends for?” Yeah, right, Sky. Friends. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure. And you weren’t totally on a date.

- That scene with the Specialists was pretty intense considering its length. Since when is Brandon being the cautious one? While Timmy is like “Sure I’ll help you commit major offense against school rules, no probs”? I could take Brandon’s behavior as a best friend’s worry and Timmy’s as a friend’s desire to help out but it still seems a bit out of place. I am just glad that Sky is taking care of the tactics instead of just throwing himself at it.

- And there is no defense system or anything here. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad. It was kinda random when it popped up in s1 (never to be seen again, mind you) but it seems a bit illogical for the school to not have some kind of protection (especially if it has powerful spells inside). Idk.

- I am stunned by Sky’s absolute dumbassery that is bordering on being an asshole (and even tipping right into it). What does it matter if she’s a witch? She is still the same Bloom she was before she learned it, wtf, dude? (Not to mention that this pisses me off greatly because it implies that all witches are pure evil.) I just can’t understand why Bloom didn’t wonder how she has a fairy form then. She can turn into a fairy and that is pretty solid proof that she isn’t a witch. Why didn’t she question it?

- Awww! I love how worried Winx are for Bloom! And I think they’re skipping classes (and risking to get in big trouble with Griselda) to go look for her. True friendship!

- What is she doing sleeping in the bushes? And why doesn’t she just try to fly there? You know, get some proof for herself that she’s a fairy since she has the wings and all?

- Why is Stormy just setting random patches of grass on fire? I agree with Darcy, it can be dangerous if she sets the whole forest on fire.

- “Why would we be so cruel? For giggles.” XDDD

- They changed Mirta’s powers to transforming emotions into energies? That is kinda cool but isn’t that what all magic does?

- The Dragon just swept the Trix away? Is that what happened? It looked like it just fucked off into the sky without doing shit but I digress. But aww at the way Tecna scooped up Bloom so carefully! It was adorable!

- If I were Bloom, I would leave Sky a very angry message and he’d have to give a real good apology for me to take him back. The moment she appeared to be something he didn’t expect, he pulled away from her. That is not someone you want to be in a relationship with. I just wish Bloom would figure out that she can do better. If he shallow like that, you don’t need him, hon. (But hey, don’t blame Kiko! And that wasn’t bad advice! If you want to talk to someone, you should fucking call them! That was good advice.)

- Oh, no! No, no, no, no! Please, not the Day of the Royals! I beg of you! Though, it will have to happen because that is what makes Bloom go back to Gardenia where the Trix corner her. But what will happen with the Diaspro story? Bloom knows that Sky is Sky. Though, he still didn’t tell her he was engaged so I guess there can be drama over that. Ugh, why?

- “That’s a relief”? Fuck you, Sky! So her not being a witch is what makes or breaks this relationship - actually, pardon me, THIS FRIENDSHIP according to his own definition - and not, you know? Her goddamn personality maybe? Damn, what a fucker. Seriously, he is so much worse than in s1. Bloom should really stop wasting time on his sorry ass and go snatch Diaspro for herself instead. Why does he have a picture of Diaspro btw? He does not really care for her... like, at all. Not that he cares for anyone, apparently.

- Oh, so now he loves Bloom? Also, great going, Timmy! Yeah, just suggest breaking off a royal engagement. Without even asking what the political situation is. That is not the best idea. I mean, there was the possibility that Eraklyon needed that marriage. Which, of course, they don’t but still. It ain’t that simple. (God, I hate giving Sky an excuse but this really is a complicated situation. Though, he could have just told Bloom about the arranged marriage instead of lying to her.)

- She could have just waited instead of going for the option of getting them all in trouble. It was only one day. But at least Winx tried to talk her out of it instead of being right there with her in the impulsiveness. And yet, they still decided to support her like friends do. That is cute!

- “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” Ya think? And yes, being around Erendor and Samara is definitely not a great experience.

- Ooh, she saw Sky directly with Diaspro! Damn, that changes things. And I hate to admit it but it makes more sense because at least now she has a solid reason to jump to conclusions.

- Oh, no! She thinks it is the Trix again. Honestly, I just wish she would have seen Sky for the lying piece of shit that he is! It would have saved so much trouble. I feel bad for Diaspro, though. She just got attacked without having done anything to deserve it. Shocking, I know. But none of this was her fault.

- Sky really did that with Riven? I thought he would be more mature than Riven but nope. He is really campaigning for asshole of Red Fountain. I know Riven started this but Sky has previous offenses against both Bloom and Diaspro so he takes the cake.

- Codatorta was very quick into action. It was kinda impressive. I see that the conflict between Griffin and Faragonda is non-existent here. “I see it’s not just my students who can behave badly”? This coming from Griffin? That has the exact opposite tone of her line in the original. It’s kinda like “Well, we’re in this together because obviously neither my, nor your students know what the hell they are doing.” Though, it can still be taken as a subtle dig as in “You thought you had the high ground when you sent me back the Trix but look at what your fairy has done!”. That actually sounds more like it, though her tone of voice was still a bit too soft for a confrontation.

- Hey, no nightmare monster? But does that mean that the Trix don’t get expelled from CT?

- Aww, I wish she wouldn’t just leave her friends behind! And that montage of memories. (But what the heck is Tecna doing at that fountain? Get down from there, Tecna! I thought you were the reasonable one!)

- How do the Trix know Bloom is from Gardenia? It sounds like they are the bestest of friends with her instead of mortal enemies.

- Awwwwww! Mike and Vanessa keep being so supportive! I love it!

- I actually think I like how they reworked this scene! Icy dropped them in the portal thingy (whatever the hell it was) to force Bloom to transform and lower her guard at the same time and I think it made some more sense than the original did.

- “Our ancestral witches”? That sounded kinda weird. I was just about to say in my conclusion for this special that they dropped the Daphne storyline halfway through this but I see they haven’t. I am pleasantly surprised! And Bloom actually learns that she is her sister (which for some reason was missing from the 4kids dub) as well as all the stuff about Domino. Well, all in very vague terms but still.

- I actually prefer the original way they plucked the fire out of her. It was more jarring while here the animation was just a tad bit too smooth for what it needed to accomplish.

- Oh, and here her fairy form just vanished after they took the flame? I love that! It was the one thing that instantly told me that she still had her powers in s1 because she still had her winx for a while after they took it from her. But here it disappeared the moment the Trix took off with her power. I am curious to see if it is actually gone. Though, I can understand how believing she doesn’t have it anymore can get in the way of her transforming because magic comes from emotions.

This was actually better than I thought it would be and I went in with some expectations because of the first special! I am so pleasantly surprised! The plot carried well throughout this one as well and I supported about 95% of the changes they made from the original storyline which is a lot more than I expected! There was a thing or two that didn’t make much sense, but overall, this was pretty logical! My nitpick would be with the title of this special because the Trix weren’t all that central to it and there was no revenge whatsoever here. I would call it more of a hunt, really. So that would’ve been better if it had been something else having to do with Bloom since she remained at the front and center the whole time... And that didn’t annoy me at all. Wow! I kinda wish they will rework all the seasons into specials now if they can make me like Bloom (though, I admittedly had my moments of that in s1 as well. It is just that the later on we go, the more I can’t stand her). Now I am hyped about the next one and I really hope I won’t be disappointed because it will be such a shame after the good work in this one. (Oh, and the rest of Winx didn’t have much role in this one but I was actually so absorbed in the Bloom storyline that I didn’t notice until this very moment. Man, these specials are really working a miracle here!)

[ardenttheories]

Dirk Route notes:

Very long, very rambly. I went on a fucking journey with this one. And... probably have to try and kick my ass back into gear about reading Homestuck^2. 

- Why did the Reader have that flash of a failed end? That’s significantly more in depth than other death scenes have been, and in general this isn’t a power we’ve seen from the Reader beyond maybe the pie-scene and other scenes wherein someone else has influenced them. Have I missed something (as I’m still not caught up from Tavros onwards) or is this subtle Dirk influence at a time he’s not aware of his powers?

- Dirk potentially being excited at the first human touch he’s ever had hurts my heart, just a little

- Dirk disliking the sea because it’s a physical boundary to reflect the metaphysical boundary of his distance to human society is fucking SAD

- On that note, Dirk fucking loves theatrics and is almost too excited to have another friend, particularly one he can interact with. This poor by is so desperate for attention

- Again, Dirk can interpret when the dead end is coming up, and steers Reader away from it - which allows them to vividly imagine it. There has to be a union of powers occuring here, Dirk’s Heart with the Light bestowed upon the Reader?

- Reader can hold the Sord because of their disconnect from the narrative and their simplistic form and I think that’s beautiful. It also brings into question what will happen to reality if the Reader wields it for long enough.

    - Update: What happens when Reader swings the Sord?

- DIRK LAUGHS, HAS DIMPLES AND FRECKLES. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A FUCKING DRILL!!

- Dirk thinks he needs to “earn” the right to see his friends. That’s... just about the saddest thing I’ve ever read. He’s so mean to himself. He doesn’t think he’s actually worthy of seeing them without proving his worth first.

- Dirk being unable to stop the thought that the game’s in motion simply because he can’t handle the idea that everything that was planned has been tipped right the fuck up by Reader, and believing that he can still put things back on course, partly being linked to a possible suicide if he’d literally been unable to continue with the game or to visit his friends/get the promise he’d always been promised signals that he’s always had a very strong connection to narrative relevance and his own sense of importance within it. Lacking that importance, or that strict narrative to follow, ruins Dirk

- Dirk finally giving the Reader his trust, just. He’s so eager for friendship, huh? Scared to trust but pleased by the results. 

- OH GOD FUCK ULTIMATE DIRK. First of all, how’s he found Dirk and the Reader? Is it through their connection, as Splinters? He mentioned trying to ignore it - this must be a universal part of him being the Ultimate Self. He’s connected to Dirk, perhaps living it, and... not pleased with what he sees. Which leads onto a second thought; how much does he hate seeing himself happy? Both instances of his arrows pointed to his smile - and his scribbles crossed out his face, his head. He doesn’t like seeing himself vulnerable, trusting, and willing to make friends. 

- Well, there’s some interesting rammifications in the fact that Dirk speaks through a Dirklog. His narrative control only lets him communicate through a Homestuck-recognisable style? Why the fuck is he so buff.

- What the fuck do you mean he’s making a species from scratch? What the fuck have I missed in Homestuck^2?

- Ultimate Dirk still seeing people only as what their arcs define them as, their narrative role, rather than as actual people who exist outside of that concept... And, interestingly, implying that he can fix the entire timeline. Would he intend to go back in time and fix it, or remodel it as it is? Curious how he hasn’t attempted to fix it before - which, yeah, he said he was waiting for Reader to die, but why not before this point?

- Reader finally remembers Homestuck, and Dirk considers the Reader as enough of a friend that he’s concerned for them. This is not how I wanted this to go down, but I wonder if this will increase the power the Reader has over the narrative?

- The Reader refusing to stoop to Dirk’s level and instead remaining firm that he won’t wrench Dirk’s choice away from him... please. Reader oh my god make things right. With that said, young-Dirk is still being so caring to Reader. It shows... a lot about my theory on Princes, honestly; that friendship tends to be what they have least of, and that it’s what they need to change their toxic course. That seems to be the biggest divider between Dirk and Ultimate Dirk - although I will note the irony that Ultimate Dirk, being the Prince of Heart, is destroying his Self by refusing to allow Dirk happiness.

- “Your alliegence is not to the story, but to the people within it” <- a primary example of what Ultimate Dirk’s doing. He’s not connected to the people within the story anymore, just the story itself. He’s forsaking those people for the narrative they live within. Nurturing the text rather than the people he used to love.

- “... wanted to align every part of yourself to know it all, feel it all”. Fuck. Is that what Dirk thinks this is? No wonder he’s gone off the deep end and assumes this is the Ultimate form of himself, the purest sense. He’s completely fucking insane. Not so much in the traditional sense as in the fact that he’s so overwhelmed with his Self that he thinks he has it all figured out. Reader’s right. He can’t imagine existing on a path that isn’t Ultimate Dirk any longer, and I think is so far up his own ass about it that he doesn’t even begin to assume that anything outside of Ultimate Dirk is worth it. He sees that as his perfect self. 

- The point on Dirk not needing to create more pain to control how much punishment he gets and what he deserves brings me back to the Meat Epilogue - Dirk positioning himself as the villain because he believes that’s what he should be. Reader’s trying so hard to encourage Dirk not to be that, to tell him he can have better, but Dirk’s self loathing is so severe he believes he deserves punishment. I would assume just for existing.

- “And you know how he loves -- though it’s fierce (to a definite fault), he does not do it easily” Fucking owch. That’s the Dirk we see in canon. The Dirk that couldn’t bear the thought that he’d hurt Roxy because he didn’t love her, the Dirk that adored her and saw her as their perfect leader, the Dirk who had something good to say about all of his friends, the Dirk who held Dave and talked him through his abuse with Bro. He loves a fucking lot, even if he doesn’t love freely.

- Ultimate Dirk pointing out that Dirk won’t be able to live a happy life because he’ll always wonder if it was the right choice is fucking me up. That boy can just never be happy, huh?

- OH GOD I KNOW THAT’S EARTH C. THAT’S THE TOWER DIRK OFFED HIMSELF ON IN CANDY. OH GOD NO.

- Oh my god he got Candy Dave, a Dave who just lost his Dirk, to come talk to Dave. That’s so fucking sad, what the fuck. On top of that, “Does Dirk even believe that others can, of their own violition, love him?” Yeah, probably not. He thinks he has to manipulate people into loving him - we see that for sure with Jake in Homestuck, during their main intro section - and even now, seeing Dave, he’s not sure he can just... chill out with him. Why is this route so fucking sad.

- Dave looking heartbroken when he says “it’s okay to not have all the answers”. You know he wishes he could’ve said that to Candy Dirk. But it’s interesting, too, how Dirk fixates on canon and that being the answer, and anything that’s not canon meaning he has NO answers - is that what Ultimate Dirk is so afraid of? Not knowing? It seems very likely that this lack of control and uncertainty of what he’s doing is why Dirk becomes suicidal. 

- Forgot to mention this early, but also “The ends justifies the means”; you mean, Ultimate Dirk, the same way Bro justified beating the shit out of Dave and forcing him through daily abuse with the fact that it “had to happen” for him to survive the game? They’re... a lot more similar than I realised.

- Something to note, interestingly:

Ultimate Dirk has the Heart symbol. Dirk has the hat symbol. Candy Dave has the scratched record symbol and the Time symbol at once. There’s an implication here that there’s more unity in Candy Dave than in Dirk as a whole - that Dave has accepted the things he’s experienced both as a kid and as a retired hero. Which would make sense, considering this is the non-canonical Candy timeline, prior to him becoming a robot; one where he’s still relatively unimplemented. Ultimate Dirk is still trying to identify himself with the game, with relevance, while Dirk is just a kid, on that precipice of choice.

- ... What shit did Dirk have to deal with on his end? I need to check Homestuck^2

- The importance of Dirk making his own choice is incredible. The allowance to NOT regret it, to make his own “right” choice, and not to be forced to question what things should have been... holy shit. And what a fucking switch. We’re playing AS Dirk. We’re not making this choice for him, it really is just HIM doing it. I fucking love this. Narratively speaking, this is cool as fuck, and it says something awesome - that Dirk’s right choice is the Reader and Dave, not Ultimate Dirk, which leads to a bad end. 

- Dirk’s innate need to know is, ultimately, what ruins him in the end. I find it endlessly fucking interesting that he doesn’t seem wholly into it, though - that he’s trying to convince himself as much as the Reader that it’s right.

- “It’s not about this being the real timeline or the fake one, the hard one or the easy one. It’s about it being his. If he wants it.” I will never stop being sad and elated at the same time over this single paragraph. Dirk finally accepting that he doesn’t need answers, grandeur, or a narrative. He just needs to accept his timeline, let himself live within it. 

- Oh. Well that WAS a happy ending, until Ultimate Dirk CHOPPED THE FUCKING THING IN HALF TO REVEAL THE CODE.

- Ultimate Dirk slamming Reader into the Afterw@rd? Okay. Sure. Lets roll with it. Hi Aysha. 

- Well. I need to process everything with the Director. Ultimately, it’s... just a lot to pick apart, even if it’s very blunt. She used the Reader because, knowing what’d happen, the Reader would’ve been too eager to avoid some things and force others to happen too quickly, would’ve been too awkward or weird to truly make friends - hence, lost memory. But why? I’m not quite sure about that. Doc Scratch had a reason for Friendsim - to put everyone in place for Hiveswap - but why Pesterquest? The Director mentions about things being... better? That Reader’s taken these kids universally destined to end up without happy endings, and given them a chance at a happy ending, but I really don’t know why.

- What the fuck does “they’re an artifact of the medium” mean? Where the hell did Dirk steal those muscles from? 

- Ultimate Dirk, still so fixated on character arcs that he sees Eridan’s gender exploration as a “gender arc”, and not personal development on a more human level. It’s... actually a little worrying how impersonal he’s gotten. He’s not even really seeing any of the characters as people anymore.

- “Happy people don’t get stories told about them” ... he’s. Technically not wrong. Without conflict, there’s no story; there NEEDS to be something to overcome, some arc to follow, for a good, compelling story. But I’m not sure Dirk realises that they don’t need that. They don’t need a story arc because they can just exist and be, outside of the spotlight. They don’t need OUR focus. Even if we don’t see it, they can still exist - which brings an interesting point to the Epilogues, honestly. They were a sort of punishment for our own curiosity to see how the story ended, to see more - and really, that’s what Dirk thrives on. He needs the “and more” after, not the happy ending. He needs a story, needs to be seen. 

- Ah. Ultimate Dirk trying to take over the narrative has me slightly fucked up, not gonna lie.

- Ah. So my original theories were right, and why shit never made sense even all the way back in Jade’s route. This IS the Alpha timeline, and the Reader has been doing a retcon the whole time, turning the Alpha into an outright Doomed timeline. Nothing makes sense or works because it can’t. Paradoxically, the Reader isn’t creating a new timeline - they’re changing the only one that “matters”. They’re actually changing Homestuck.

- “You would create a paradox so catastrophic it would literally tear the multiverse apart”. Well. At least we know what happens when the foundation universe is fucked up by an outside influence. 

- You get the option to not betray your friends... and the game just closes. The only way to get an ending where you don’t ruin everything you’ve worked towards is one where you never see what happens next, where you don’t have to make that choice, where you just let everything go black. Fuck.

- Sidenote: The Director wins out against Ultimate Dirk because it isn’t his arc. It’s not his story, not his role, and he doesn’t have the same power over it. And, of course, the Director is the one writing it. She has the ultimate power. 

- The Green Sun being able to tear at the narrative within Reader is... interesting, to say the least. And just that description of Reader... “The impossibility that is you, protagonist, reader, carrier of the story”. They really are just this weird little metanarrative entity that doesn’t have any right to exist, and maybe only makes the barest amount of sense to actually exist. But the Green Sun being the sum of all the narratives - the narrative itself?

- IS THIS ULTIMATE READER. DID THEY JUST MAKE THEMSELF ULTIMATE. WHAT THE FUCK. 

- They did not. They just became a First Guardian and created a fucking Locked Timeline. What the hell are the rammifications of this in regards to Homestuck? Reader’s removed this timeline from the narrative itself, while also remaining within it - so maybe this means that everything’s... both stable and unstable, somehow impossibly allowed to exist at once? Homestuck, Pesterquest, Homestuck^2? I assume Pesterquest is now disconnected from the rest of the canonical universe - in order to stop everything from ceasing to exist entirely - because how else could it work? A universe that only exists once. 

- The Reader made the single best timeline. One where the kids can just exist happily. I’m unsure if this is a good or bad thing - that yeah, there should be no consequences, since Reader is looking over them, but on the other hand... is this really the good ending we’re allowed? Will more be added to this, the good ending abruptly continued and the story resumed? There’s a lot of things unanswered - such as what’s going to happen with HIC, since there’s no game influence left to provide her with LE power - but do we want them answered when we know the Epilogues were our punishment for wanting answers? Will they be answered?

So the question becomes: Sequel, or no sequel? And what does the True Ending mean in the grand scheme of things?

[bigskydreaming]

Hi! I'm new to your blog but found a few posts that were about a JayTom ship, and I was wondering who Tom was? And also you've mentioned in a couple of posts the idea of Jason having a lineup of Titans in his age range and you talked about the Ray and Damage in one. Do you have a whole lineup in mind for them and if so, is there a post on that somewhere?

LOL man, I really need to start pulling all my posts about JayTom and Jay’s lineup of Titans together for some kind of a masterlist, so thanks for the reminder haha. Like, I saw this ask and thought of various posts to point you towards but ugh, I don’t know where any of them are.

Anyway, so. The Tom of JayTom. Aka my ideal ship for Robin!Jason in the series of one-shots about an AU where Jason doesn’t go to Ethiopia in ADITF and thus never dies, that’s kinda grown out of that of a one-shot I started as a writing commission a couple months ago, if anyone else remembers that….the one that was like ‘what if Jason called Dick after the Garzonas incident and Dick sided with Jason’…that one. 

Which then snowballed into ‘well, then I could give Jason his own lineup of Titans who are in the same age range as like a younger gen learning from Dick’s generations of Titans but still older than Tim’s generation of YJ and then eventual Titans.’

Sigh. Oh, me. Right! So! Anyway! Tom in JayTom is Thomas Bronson, the son of JSA member Ted Grant, aka Wildcat. 

Tom and Jason have never ever interacted in canon as far as I know, as I don’t think Tom’s ever appeared outside of JSA and Jason never appeared in that book either before or after his death. BUT by the magic of winging it and Canon Has Not Definitively Contradicted Me, I think the two of them are feasibly in the same age range, so I’m going with them both being fifteen when they meet here.

Tom’s a scrappy, street smart, attitude throwing teenager with daddy issues of his own, lol, thanks to Ted’s general non-existence in his life, for most of it….and he’s also tiny, like, 5′6″ and 135 lbs even at the end of his teenage years. LMAO, I honestly don’t remember, but I think that might be the whole basis of this ship for me, or where it originated. Like, I happened across Tom’s stats as listed on one of the DC wiki sites, and was like, lol oh, he and Robin!Jason could be pint-sized punks together! And then from there, I had the inevitable thought “okay but now make them gay” and then from there I fell into my usual trap of “oh no, it was supposed to be a joke but now I’m taking it seriously and seriously pondering how it could seriously work.”

And then from there it consumed my brain and devoured my life. I swear, it was Dick/Kyle all over again. Ugh, my brain is so problematic.

So anyway, this is Tom:

He’s a werepanther, he can shapeshift into a panther form to fight, which brings up an interesting facet of his character and something I think could be really fun to play off Jason and his own issues…because Tom hates fighting. HATES it. Will run from a fight at any given opportunity rather than engage….but its not because he’s a coward, or doesn’t have heroic instincts of his own, and its not even because he’s not GOOD at fighting.

Its that he’s scared of himself, and scared of hurting whoever he’s fighting…at least more than he means to. Because he has trouble controlling his shift when in fights. His panther form just comes out in response to his own amped up levels of aggression. The fight or flight response for him is actually more like “flight or turn into a raging whirlwind of clawed and fanged fury that can’t stop won’t stop until he’s definitively won his fight….which by extension, usually means his opponent is currently bleeding out on the ground from a few dozen deep claw marks because Panther!Tom’s claws and fangs are SHARP.”

Now pair this fear of his own power with Tom’s natural belligerence and problems with authority at certain points in his life, AND his desire to follow in his hero father’s footsteps as well as his resentment and giving himself grief every time he realizes he even has that desire, because he doesn’t owe his deadbeat dad shit and can’t stand that he nevertheless admires him in a lot of ways and still feels a desire to prove himself to him…

Then pair him up with Jason during his Robin years, going through similar issues and emotions as well as a comparable dynamic with Bruce as him not dying in Ethiopia nevertheless changes nothing about the two of them likely clashing more and more over their views on how to deal with criminals and the appropriate levels of aggression when dealing with them….

And that right there, IMO, is super strong potential for a dynamic couple with a lot in common and yet occasional clashes of their own due to different opinions on which direction to go in so as to address those shared issues…but who likely would never hesitate for a second before backing each other up and presenting a united front against anyone else who tried to give one or the other shit for any reason whatsoever.

Also, I have vastly amused myself with the thought (and the occasional post here and there) of Ted and Bruce continually glowering at each other and blaming each other’s son for being a bad influence on their son, who has never done anything wrong in their life ever, CLEARLY (even if Bruce had actually just grounded Jason the day before. Whatever. Ted doesn’t need to know that).

Anyway, so that’s the JayTom I reference now and then. I’ve always maintained that Jason could really benefit from having a stronger support system of friends distinct to him and not sharing similar dynamics with any of his siblings, so then I was like, well if Jay doesn’t die, and I have him and Dick closer in this AU than they’re usually written as being, plausibly Jason would spend a lot of time at the Tower to get away from Bruce and his own fights with him. 

With Dick being more than able to relate to trouble dealing with Bruce and thus happy to lend a sympathetic ear….and eventually maybe express to Bruce that it might do them both some good for Jason to make more friends his own age and have some normal routines that took him out of the house and Gotham enough that he and Bruce don’t constantly feel like they’re breathing down each other’s necks and keeping tension a constant thing between them. A little space now and then could benefit them both, give them chances to cool off after their fights and actually MISS each other before readdressing the issues.

So then I could see the Titans kinda sending out invitations/recruiting various teen heroes around Jason’s age that they’d all maybe had their eyes on for awhile as kids who could benefit from the same kind of team unity/group support that helped them so much when they were that age just a few years ago themselves.

Which leads me to where I am now which is….I still haven’t settled on a solid lineup, because I came up with too many choices, lol. Basically, my parameters were I wanted characters who could feasibly be said to be in the same age range as Jason and Tom, and didn’t have super strong associations with any other characters that would create any kind of conflict with them being on a Titans team at this point in the timeline instead. And because I’m all about my thematics, I wanted them all to have certain root issues in common that they could all bond over and actually, y’know, support each other with and through. 

(The same way I think Dick’s generation of Titans actually has certain distinct themes and issues that almost all of them share and can relate to in varying ways, which I think has a lot to do with how quickly and fully they all bonded and why they created such lasting friendships and teams between them. But that’s a whole other post, lol.)

So the central shared issues I decided to focus on for Jason’s age group of Titans were: teen/young heroes from abusive homes or runaways, ones with issues and fears stemming from and regarding their own powers or tempers, etc, and misfits who were regarded warily by other or older heroes and considered potentially able to end up on either side of the hero/villain line in the sand.

Which Dick’s generation of Titans, which of course includes Raven, Kory, etc, would not be in agreement with that last part, and thus be all the more likely to recruit these specific teen heroes and be like nyah, nyah, watch how with our help and oh yeah, SUPPORT, they all become the best damn heroes that ever did heroically hero. Suck it, JLA-holes!

(And then Donna would be like, not you Diana, you know we’re cool, its just I gotta do the team solidarity thing and Dick, Garth and Roy are still being Displeased with their mentors/dads at the moment, and also we’re all kinda ticked you guys stole Wally. Btw, we’re stealing the new Green Lantern kid, because Revenge and stuff. He’s ours now, you snooze, you lose).

 So, Jason’s lineup of Titans will consist of some of the following, I’m just not 100% sure which yet, because I have to whittle down the list.

1) Jason (nominally mentored by Dick, but the latter just calls it an excuse for brother bonding time and neither of them make much reference ever to having any kind of actual mentor/protégé relationship like I see the rest of Jay’s lineup having. Plus, Jason unique from the rest already has a mentor in Bruce anyway, so his situation and reasons for being part of this team aren’t quite the same from the others, especially as one of my reasons for this AU was always addressing the issues I have with Bruce’s parenting before the canon event point of Jason’s death, and like…..so like, Bruce does get better once Dick calls out some of his shit with Jason based on his own experiences with Bruce and then later Jason returns the favor by calling out Bruce for taking Dick for granted and no longer putting in the same effort connecting with his eldest and being an actual PARENT to him like he used to).

2) Tom Bronson/Tomcat (who else would act as his personal mentor other than Gar aka Beast Boy aka Changeling, the shapeshifter extraordinaire?)

3) Grant Emerson/Damage (recruited by Roy and his personal protégéand likely BFFs with Jason IMO, as I think their temperaments are complete opposites but Grant’s the kind of kid who would roll his eyes and dolefully follow his troublemaking best friend Jay into likely danger, because his power to blow things up really comes in handy with the kind of scrapes Jason gets himself into and this in turn is a really handy thing to point out in the aftermath of pulling Jason’s butt out of a scrape and then gloating but in the totally mature and “I’m much too nice to actually be gloating, you must be mistaken about what’s happening here” manner in which I see that going down. And in terms of the parameters I mentioned, Grant grew up bounced around abusive foster homes, is watched like a hawk by various groups and heroes because of the huge catastrophic potential of his powers, which he has his own fears about, and also he has no idea who his parents are either, and I imagine him and Jason going on a ‘find out who our real parents are roadtrip’ after graduation or something).

4) Ray Terrill/The Ray (potentially recruited by Kory and her personal protégé. He was briefly a member of Tim’s Young Justice team, but part of the reason he was never that close with the other members was he was a little bit older, just a couple years or so, but enough to put him squarely in Jason’s age range. Also comes from an abusive home, and spent the majority of his childhood living in complete darkness because his asshole uncle told him he had the same powers as his father which meant sunlight would be harmful to him and make him dangerous to be around. When in reality, like his dad, Ray’s powers are fueled by sunlight and he’s like a living solar battery, keeping him afraid to leave the dark was just meant to keep him passive and powerless. Even knowing his uncle lied now, Ray still has long had fears about his own powers, unable to totally shake the fears his uncle instilled in him).

5) Todd Rice/Obsidian (potentially recruited by Raven and her personal protégé. He and his twin sister Jenny-Lynn Hayden are probably a bit older than the rest of this team, but their ages aren’t definitively linked to any points in the DC timeline, so there’s no real conflict between handwaving them as aged down to be right around the same ages as the others. Todd and Jenny-Lynn are the twin children of original Green Lantern Alan Scott aka Sentinel, and the DC villainness Thorn. They grew up in separate foster homes though with Alan unaware of their existence for most of their childhoods. Todd’s childhood was notoriously rough, with him having several abusive foster parents. He’s canonically gay and mentally ill/neurodivergent, which several of his foster homes targeted him for. In addition, his shadow powers are tied to a dark dimension that’s said to prey on his mental state and led to occasional times where he’s been a villain briefly, and at all times his powers are regarded fearfully by most people and with him shunned and avoided because of them. All of which I think makes Raven an ideal mentor for him).

6) Jenny-Lynn Hayden/Jade (Todd’s twin sister, even though they didn’t grow up together for the most part. Honestly, she doesn’t share in a lot of the issues the rest of the team prospects do, and had a relatively good childhood before her powers developed and she found her brother and they started operating as heroes together. But upon learning who her brother and dad are, she’s always been committed to growing closer with them, so I think anywhere Todd goes in this AU, she’d definitely follow, and its not like the team can’t benefit from a heavy hitter like her, let alone more girls. Not totally sure who I picture as most mentoring her in specific, probably because I don’t see her as being recruited per se, so much as just going with Todd when recruited….but I’m thinking maybe Garth, actually. Garth has a lot of range and versatility with his powers and magic, which makes him ideal for mentoring someone who not only has the same powers as a Green Lantern, limited only by her imagination…..but who also might benefit from being mentored by someone who ISN’T a Green Lantern because she doesn’t share their traditional weaknesses and thus she’d be best off training with someone whose own techniques and instincts aren’t geared around weaknesses that are literally irrelevant to her powerset).

7) Courtney Mason/Anima (A metahuman runaway who was almost sacrificed by a cult before her powers kicked in….she’s also right in the same age range as Ray, Grant and Jason, and has briefly been a member of a couple Titans lineups but never for long and usually only for big event stories. But she fits the runaway/rough home environment parameter as well as fear of her own powers….she absorbs life energy from people and animals and can potentially kill them by draining too much. She also has a separate power that’s basically a connection to an other-dimensional spirit called the Animus that she can summon forth and unleash on her enemies. I’m thinking she’d make a good recruit/protégé for Jericho actually, for a number of reasons).

8) Cynthia Reynolds/Fantasia (? Maybe? Not sure yet. Not her actual codename, but her actual codename is a slur, so I’m def gonna make up a new one, I just haven’t 100% settled on what it is yet. Suck it, DC. She’s most known for being a member of Justice League Detroit along with Steel, Vibe and the Ray, but she’s the right age range to end up recruited to be a Titan here instead, like Ray. Also is a runaway from an abusive home, and often deals with mistrust and suspicion due to her illusion powers. Perfect recruit/protégé for Lilith, IMO).

9) Cisco Ramone/Vibe (Also created as a teenage hero to be part of the Justice League Detroit lineup, which makes him the right age range and he’s another runaway. The nature of his powers makes him a good fit to be a recruit/protégéof Mal Duncan/Herald).

10) Amy Allen/Bombshell (Totally self-indulgent on my part given that I basically would ignore the vast majority of her storylines and writing, which I think suck. She was in the Titans stories revolving around Tim’s generation of the team, but she was always stated to be a few years older than the rest, like in her late teens when the majority were probably sixteen, so I think she’s a good fit for this age range. Also had a crappy home life and parents, and her powers are hugely destructive in certain applications…she basically has the same powerset as Captain Atom, though she’s never had any kind of official mentor or sidekick relationship with him. Also, I think Captain Atom is an asshat and a dillhole and he sucks, but I do like his powers, so reinterpreting Amy as a character who doesn’t suck and playing around with her powers instead is solid decision making on my part and renders Captain Atom irrelevant now. I think I shall kill him. Because I can do that. Anyway, I think she doesn’t need him as a mentor but could make a good recruit/protégé for Leonid/Red Star).

11) Carla Moretti/Cinder (Odd choice, given that she’s only ever really been used as a villainous member of Deathstroke’s anti-Titans team and was easily in her twenties at the time. Pyrokinetic who happily makes bonfires out of her enemies but written with zero attempts at nuance, like a total one note villain framed as having long since abandoned her own humanity….which bugged the crap out of me, as she was given a super angsty backstory of childhood sexual abuse and that’s just ‘why she’s like this’ and I have a deep seeded loathing for asshole writers writing survivors as villains and just blaming their casual homicidal ways on their abuse while serving up said villains to just be punching bags or dominoes for the heroes to knock down on their way to the Boss Fight. So I do have inclinations towards making an actual Titan out of her, like with Amy, because surprise surprise, both these characters being written shittily and one note was the work of the same writer, shocking. So I’d just handwave her down to the right age range and have her recruited/mentored by Donna, probably…more due to me thinking Donna would be the best person to help her deal with stuff because she’s mastered the art of avoiding avoidance via having Dick Grayson as a BFF. So with them its not really because Carla needs mentoring with her powers specifically. Idk, Carla anyway you slice it I think has a lot of rage, and Donna knows what to do with that. Written right, Donna’s not a character who judges or shames a victim or survivor for being angry…she gets angry with them, and helps them find options for what to do with that now.) 

12) Hero Cruz (Lesser known Titan, has a device called the Dial H device that lets him turn into a different hero with different powers depending on the setting he puts it on. Basically Ben 10, but Hero came first. Doesn’t really fit most of the parameters, other than being around the right age range, and not even sure who would make a good mentor for him though I wanna say Vic, but not totally decided yet. Mostly I just like him and think he’s underused, so whatever).

There’s also a few other candidates that I have mostly ruled out but not totally. I thought about using the aged up version of Chris Kent, and just introduce him earlier than he showed up in canon. And then Kara/Supergirl could be his mentor because I kinda handwave her into Dick’s generation of Titans anyway, even though it was the alien Matrix version of Linda Danvers that was the only Supergirl ever on the team. Whatever. She should have been a Titan all along anyway. But also Chris would fit the team well as he had an abusive childhood as well, at his dad General Zod’s hands, and again, I just like the character. 

Thought of including Virgil Hawkins/Static too, even though I think he’s closer to Tim’s age range. And again, just another character I’m a fan of and think is underused, but he would definitely be an odd man out in this group because like….he comes from a happy, healthy, loving home and family, and he loves his powers. So he would constantly be just like nodding his head along while his teammates talk and like ugh that sucks, but 10/10 absolutely can not relate, my parents are awesome.  Same with Natasha Irons/Steel, who really would have to be handwaved to even be in the right age range, and again has a happy loving home environment and a superhero uncle of her own so its not like she needs a Titan mentor…..but I kinda wanna see Karen Beecher/Bumblebee take her under her wing anyway, and have them be science nerds together.

Also pretty much the only reason I ruled out Connor Hawke too, as he doesn’t really match the rest of the team in any of the parameters except for feasibly being right at the upper edge of the same age range. But again, I just love the character. 

So I’m probably gonna end up throwing at least one of these other characters in there anyway, lol. I do know myself).

Anyway. So that’s Jason’s lineup of Titans, or at least the candidates as they exist bouncing around in my head now. Also, they’re pretty much Team “Everyone is Gay Except For When They’re Bi.” Which, granted, is basically how I view Dick’s generation of Titans, but with them I have to be like Make It So, in my brain, whereas with this group like….canon’s actually done the work for me for the most part lol. Ray is gay, Todd Rice is gay, Courtney is bi, Hero is gay. And I can’t actually find anything confirmed Tom was stated to be gay somewhere in canon, but I SWEAR he was, like, ugh this is bugging me.

But anyway. That’s that about all of that.

[orangeccreamsicles]

Dirk: => Theorize

TT: You know a lot about Sburb, don't you? TT: In the short time that I was a sprite, I cataloged as much information as I could, thinking it may come in handy. You could say that the knowledge granted to me could be categorized as "a lot". TT: That being said, I only know what a sprite would know. I’m not fucking omniscient. TT: Why? TT: I’ve been thinking about my future self.

TT: Ah. It’s not good to dwell on events out of your control or out of the realms of possibility TT: But it is still possible, is it not? TT: Under specific circumstances, I can foresee you becoming the you we were able to catch a glance of. Extremely specific circumstances. TT: And what about not becoming him, but becoming someone who ends up playing? TT: There is a greater possibility there. TT: That’s enough for me to want to do a little digging. TT: Fine. What is it you were looking to know? TT: Derse and Prospit are the two planets on which your dream self can appear, I know that already. Are there any conditions which must be met to appear there, and can they exist outside a session? TT: The game decides which planet you inhabit based, for the most part, on core parts of your personality, and just a bit of fuckery. TT: Alternates of myself have never appeared, separate from you or not, nor have any civilians, so I would deduce you must be an active player with their own form to appear. TT: I've known instances in which the moons and planets can be removed from their session along with its players, as well as instances in which a moon may be transferred to a new session, but there are no records of either Derse or Prospit existing independently from a session. TT: And my dreams? TT: They match very closely with accumulated descriptions of Derse. A purple planet, populated by black chitinous folks, violent in nature, and sensationalizing nobility not yet awakened. TT: A prince, a knight, a rogue, and a seer, tucked away in towers high above the general population, while a war stirs in the tabloids between the Dersites and Prospitians. TT: It is likely that your dream self has awoken early on Derse, but keep in mind that the possibility that these dreams are a reflection of your fears of the future taking form in rumors you’ve heard of a death game is also present. TT: Sure. TT: So. We may yet play the game. TT: We knew that the moment we realized who your future self was. TT: But the differences were large enough to disregard that future. What about now? TT: Now, it’s the same story. Nothing has changed, save for your newly acquired knowledge. TT: What about his cause of death? TT: That’s a different matter entirely. TT: Is it? Burnt to a crisp by a psionic. Have I pissed off any psionics that you know of recently? TT: The alternian empress has psionic capabilities. TT: Why the fuck would we be fighting the empress? TT: I’m not sure. TT: Who do you think it’s more likely would have killed me? An angry psionic from a separate timeline, unaffected by whatever may happen in this timeline but certainly affected by where I stick my nose and how far I take it, already known to be on bad terms, or a far off empress who barely acknowledges the Earth anymore, targeting some random fuck off already slated for death by a game created by who knows what. TT: We don’t know if it was just or heroic. TT: We can make a pretty good guess. TT: It could go either way. TT: One possibility is more likely than the other. TT: Perhaps. Don’t rule out other factors. You’ve met other psionics, we may meet more yet. TT: He was years in the future. We don’t know who killed him or for what reason. TT: We only know the cause. If that. TT: Didn’t he say you and Sollux were on relatively good terms? TT: He said that they were okay, but he fucked something up. I’d say this is as good of a fuckup as we’re going to get. TT: Fuck. I don’t want to see a worse fuckup than this. TT: Neither do I. It was pretty bad, dude. TT: Fuck off. TT: Oh, are we done? I can fuck off quite easily if you’re done wasting both of our times. TT: And by that I mean fuck off right back here, I’m not done. TT: Picking up on some of Vantas’ vocabulary, are we? TT: Pick up the pace. I may have all day but that doesn’t mean I want to spend it talking to you. TT: It’s still likely to turn out similar to the future we’ve seen. TT: It’s a possibility. One that’s more likely than, say, you turning into a murderous psychopath and killing everyone you know and love. TT: That’s comforting. TT: What else do we know? TT: He and Bo were matesprits up until his death. He and his session had yet to win. At some point he and Wig vacillated pale and pitch. TT: I can’t help but feel that last part is unimportant. TT: That’s all we know. What else do you want me to say? TT: Something more substantial than my imminent relationship drama would be nice. TT: I’ll be sure to let you know when you decide to talk about anything other than that. TT: Seriously, you do not shut up. TT: I’m lonely, I’m sad, I’m feeling angry and betrayed, can’t you find someone to vent to that isn’t me? Like Joanne! Or Roxy! Or Cass, I’m sure she’d love to know about how in the few hours after you came home and celebrated, you managed to fuck everything up! TT: Can we get back on topic? TT: Uncomfortable because you don’t want to confront your mistakes, aren’t we Dirk? TT: The future version of myself that we saw isn’t a self in which I’m able to become, at this point. TT: Correct. TT: But something similar is possible. TT: Likely, even, depending on how much of your dreams are real. TT: So. TT: So? TT: What do we do? TT: Don’t ask me, dude. you're the one this affects. I'm just the guy that runs the numbers and tries to keep you from getting too far into your own head. TT: By the way, I’m pretty sure that’s a thing you’re doing right now. TT: Is there a way to prevent the game if it’s already slotted to begin, or to stop it once it’s started? TT: Those two questions are, really, asking the same thing. TT: If it’s meant to begin, it’s already started. TT: In a sense, it’s always been running. TT: It’s already here, and all that. TT: The only solution I can see for now is to abandon this universe to be destroyed by the coming meteors, and escape to a new one. TT: Still, that is entirely hypothetical. Perhaps you’re doomed to play and it would simply follow you to your new world, dooming every subsequent place you choose to hide out in until the weight of the worlds you’ve killed drives you to face your fate. TT: Perhaps it doesn’t matter what you do. TT: ... TT: Too much? TT: I’ve been reading a lot lately. TT: You have a flair for the dramatic. TT: It has to have a beginning point, doesn’t it? TT: If it’s some sort of loop, there has to be a starting and ending point, even if they create themselves. TT: I have some theories regarding loops and Bro that you may want to hear out some time, by the way. TT: As if this conversation couldn’t get any more lighthearted. TT: The starting point would be the creation of the game itself, kickstarting events that would lead to the empowerment of the final boss, as well as the creation and destruction of the universe. TT: You’re getting a little off track. TT: Right. TT: The closest thing you could get to a starting point is the development and revitalization of old codes by the companies Skaianet and Crockercorp, depending on the universe. TT: Of course, those were only found, not created. TT: Those both sound pretty fucking familiar, dude. TT: They sure fucking do, man. TT: So Jane and Jade or Jake are responsible for the apocalypse game? TT: They had nothing to do with it in timelines I’ve studied. Plans for their development and release were far in development before either of them would have even be aware of their inheritance.  TT: So they could be in development now. TT: If they are, they won’t be released for a while yet. It’s kind of a big fucking deal in any timeline when they’re announced. TT: Great. TT: So the bottom line is, either I’m fucking delusional and seeing things where they’re not, TT: Entirely likely if you ask me. TT: I didn’t. TT: Or, we’re completely fucked, my dream self is awake, one of those companies are going to release a death game that we either ignore and go down with the rest of the world, or play and have an extremely high if not guaranteed chance of dying in some other horrific manner. TT: That sounds about right. TT: And even if we survive, that only heightens the chance that I’m going to fuck up yet again and piss Sock off enough that he burns me to a crisp. TT: The future is bright. TT: Fuck! TT: Lmao. The chances of any of these things happen individually are low enough, but the longer you go on the worse the chances get. TT: BUT. TT: If you’re so worked up about this then we can plant a copy of myself in Mom’s lab. TT: Skaianet has a subdivision studying and predicting meteor paths, that’s what she does. TT: Kind of suspicious that a company responsible for the end of the world VIA meteors has a branch dedicated to looking at them. TT: Or, it’s a major company that deals with all kinds of fields, the largest of all being the development of new technology, which happens to line up with the massive influx of advancements regarding space travel that communication with trollkind has brought upon us as a society.  TT: I like my theory better. TT: You would. TT: This is something that you’ve had on your mind for a while, yeah? TT: I’ll tell you right now, it’s not going to happen, and if it does, we’ll be able to figure it out in time to make a real plan about it. TT: So stop fucking worrying about it. TT: If there were a problem, I’d tell you. TT: You’ve made sure of that.

[chaos2go]

So finally rambling about Dryst in BotW where I’ve decided he would ‘originate’ from. Land-of-Hyrule will always be where he really belonged and there are quite a few things he’ll be missing in translation but oh well. I can’t really place Alden in this game (okay, I could in some respect given timeline is figured out 100% even then... well, I want Alden to be with the koroks >C XD Just imagine. Alden in his sword spirit form with a korok leaf on his face so he ‘fits in’, trying to do the korok stuff, picked up the Mr. Hero thing, etc.). and Zahir fits in just fine with OoT (though with her, a BotW counterpart could work better given the stables). Either way, this game opened up the chance for a lot of my characters that didn’t really fit anywhere but where LoZ characters but especially Dryst. Aliza, you can have a house out there in the scary Hyrule too!

But there are SPOILERS below. Don’t read any further if you don’t want any! Though I’ll be honest, they’re nothing major given I haven’t been everywhere or done divine beasts (only watched) XD. Plus there are some ‘speculation’ things in there given there isn’t solid information on some junk. So excuse shoddy headcanon crap where appropriate.

Now if you’re reading this, I’m sorry if it gets a little long. I want to touch on his background changes and what exactly he’d do in the game as I imagine he would have some interaction with Link given he is a sheikah and the sheikah had a connection to him. In no way would he be over 100. If anything, he’s still around the same age which makes him a young whipper snapper! Also I don’t know if ‘magic magic’ actually exists but I’m just going to ignore that for now. It looks like it’s only items and special people so we’ll find out? Yiga clan teleportation looks like it’s to do with the talismans/wards/omamori(???)... But yeah XD Here we go. Sorry if this is boring!

Dryst would be born in Kakariko about 75 years after the calamity returned and Link was sent to the shrine. Much like LoH, he was kind of a spoiled kid who didn’t want to end up being a 'menial worker’ like his parents. Plus don’t forget the landing in trouble. He wanted to be someone important and do something important. Though the game doesn’t show it exactly beyond a few moments one memory scene, he wanted to be someone who helped guard the royal family. At the very least, he wanted to do something outside of the village that wasn’t research given there is no royal family at this point. Fighting the calamity and guardians to ‘thin them out’ really was his big idea as who knew when and if the hero would return.

Needless to say his parents weren’t keen on him trying to learn to fight and tried to redirect his ideas to research instead. It only directed him to learn about legends beyond what he was taught about the calamity, shiekah slate, etc. while trying to read books about combat. Despite many punishments, he still tried to sneak out and learn to fight. His parents barred others from teaching him which only hindered him further than his already lackluster skill. This drove him to just want to leave his hometown and try to find someone who could help him or to learn on his own. It wasn’t a big deal as some sheikah did this anyway though most opted to stay and wait for the hero’s return. Dryst was more dead set on fighting.

After one particular fight with his parents, his rage had just gone through the roof. His parents were trying to convince him that only the hero could fight the calamity and if he really wanted to help, he could still change his focus to researching. Dryst elected to take this as a chance to just leave the town entirely as he was done. He never informed his parents of this choice but rather went to Impa who he saw as the main problem for why the sheikah were so passive. Upon meeting her, he stated how this whole sitting and waiting didn’t help anyone. There had to be some action given there were still things bad in Hyrule given the calamity and the Yiga clan. Monsters were a problem, rebuilding was a problem, and all his people did was take care of themselves now. His frustrations towards the village poured out, especially against his parents. Impa could see his troubles and only informed him that she wished him well in his journeys across Hyrule. It wasn’t the first time a youth had felt that way and she actually encouraged him to leave. Dryst didn’t see her words as trying to help however. He told her that he had no intentions of returning. Then he left.

Hyrule itself was just too much for him. He did his best to survive and barely scraped by for the longest time. If anything, he had to learn how to fight a bit better against monsters just to survive. The original plan of making it to another race’s home just fell flat as he was constantly lost and struggling. Thankfully he ran across a woman who helped him out. That of course being Aliza much like in LoH. This would be very similar to LoH as Dryst would be quiet and open up about many of his problems after initially being berated by her. She’d offer him a home but still scold him and mother him when necessary as he would have been only about 17 (far too young to be out on his own according to her). Aliza overall doesn’t see why he has such an interest in actually fighting the monsters and the calamity. But she doesn’t wish to stop him as she sees he feels the need to do it and prove himself. If anything, much like in LoH she wants him to do what he can and find his place which obviously wasn’t with his people.

Over the years, Dryst’s skill doesn’t really improve beyond tiny things but he’s become good at other things. He’s made it to some of the places in Hyrule he’s planned on going and has found out a lot of legends. Despite his navigation still sucking, he has learned a few tricks to getting around that has helped him immensely (aka teleportation given we don’t know how it works >C so the wards or magic). Being known as a braggart and helping people out with menial tasks too has put him in a rather good position.

So from here on out, imagine Dryst as he is in the group save magic, save siding with demons (as there isn’t really an evil side to go with unless he went Yiga which he would probably wouldn’t even try given they can’t give him anything he wants), and save having Alden. He’s just a guy trying to do good deeds and show off. He would slowly be learning what he really needed to do with his life.

If I were to do a story however, he would run into this hero. Given how everyone plays the game differently, I don’t know how or when I would plan on them running into one another. Dryst would know very well the towers showing up would be a sign of his return. It would make him question whether or not he should return to his village. Unlike in the group, he would try to go there (his shame being the only real reason he hasn’t this time). Aliza would encourage trying. I imagine that it would more or less be him meeting Link right after Link had spoken with Impa. So the poor hero would have to deal with more “Wait, is that what I think it is? the sheikah slate?!” crap.

Given what the game says about Link, I imagine Dryst would just tag along and try to show off his knowledge. Link wouldn’t have much to say and honestly he’d probably test Dryst’s limits. Dryst would be useful in his knowledge however on some items that may have been forgotten (just not memories). He’d also have some input on other races (still being racist towards gerudo but not nearly as bad). Still there would come the time where he’d get left behind whether it would be warp, a shrine, or just an area he wasn’t allowed. I’d imagine somehow he’d be able to make it through the Lost Woods (if only because EVERYONE DESERVES TO SEE KOROKS... gonna just say I think they probably choose who to appear to but eh, w/e) and get a bit of story there thus finally learning that Link doesn’t remember everything and feeling kinda crappy that he assumed Link did. Overall just bro-ventures though. Dryst often getting a shorted on the adventure due to being left behind and just not being as skilled.

However I’d love to add some characters in to help build friendships besides Aliza. I am wondering about some LoH concepts (like a zora OC I couldn’t figure out an occupation for) to be adapted and then perhaps I can turn around and use them in the group too. IDK XD There’s just like... a lot I want to talk about but this ramble is kinda long. I’m just happy there is something beyond LoH he could fit in to.

I’m giving up on this ramble as of now because it’s late XD And I should be in bed. I could hit on specifics if anyone cars.

[amourete-blog1]

(( “hey so i know your whole shtick is ‘peace and non-violence’ but like can i have your blessing to kill this creep already”

tagging: @hereticalsym69ls @auratimoris @sugary-empress @trolljacksparrow (nad was mentioned a couple times)

begin log:

aberrantcadenza Anxiety Catpeets, at your service. You've been slowly growing more uneasy as the night wore on, wording and rewording what you were going to say, stalling for a time to ask. When finally you reach a break in the night when he doesn't seem to be occupied, you gather your courage...

"Xanthe?" You tuck your hand into his, threading fingers together. It's half for your comfort, and half for his, since these conversations are inevitably nerve-wracking. Hopefully he won't pick up on the severity. "Could I... talk to you outside? It's about the thing I mentioned. I won't keep you long."

hereticalsym69ls She gets your attention with your name and slips her hand into yours. Automatically your fingers curl around hers and you smile to her, because when aren't you ever happy to see her? She seems nervous though. And ready to talk about whatever the issue was before.

You rub your thumb over hers in a soothing gesture. "Yeah, of course. Lead the way."

aberrantcadenza He's too good to you, really. You can't help feeling that he won't feel the same once you actually tell him what it is. God, this is going to be a mess... Why are you asking? You already know the answer.

You lead him outside the Hive, where you can sit on the step in the cool desert air. A calm, undisturbed place to talk...

"... About yesterday." It's a start. You try to sit comfortably and it doesn't quite work. "This... thing with Hellen. It's gone too far. I don't know how much you recognize this, but your *life* was actually threatened by her. If Nadaya hadn't been here..."

hereticalsym69ls You follow her out and join her to sit on the step. When she begins you start to catch on. Oh. So this was about that in particular.

You don't respond at first. Choosing instead to look at the ground some feet ahead of you. How do you answer that? You know very well what that woman is capable of. You know first hand what she can and would do to you.

"... She can do much worse if she wants to. Having me waste away would be too gentle and go against what she'd really want."

aberrantcadenza "And that's *exactly* what I've been afraid of since it happened."

You give his hand a small squeeze, and look over at him, trying to catch the shift in his expression while you continue. "This can't go on. We need to do something. We need to stop this because it's getting out of hand, and Xanthe, I'm *scared.* Just being with you is no longer enough. I was beside you when this started and she still got to you."

You take in a shaky breath, and here, look down.

"And I have a solution - or, one was provided to me - but."

You don't think you have to say it.

"... I don't think we have any other options."

hereticalsym69ls Your thumb rubs over hers again. Half for her sake and half for your own. "If it gives you any sense of comfort, she doesn't want to kill me. ... But perhaps that isn't comforting at all."

If she knew what the truth was, you doubt it would be any kind of comfort. Though perhaps she could be less afraid and more angry instead.

"I know what you're suggesting. It's not the first time it's been offered."

aberrantcadenza "I know where you stand on killing and violence. I would support you to the end of my existence, you know that." You face him, asking him to look at you with both your hands on his. "But I'm asking you to reconsider. You don't have to do it. I'll do it. I won't be alone. We'll take care of her, she'll be out of your head and no one will have to be afraid, you can actually start to heal from whatever the *fuck* she did to you - Please, even if you won't say now, please consider it. You know I would never ask this of you if it weren't our last resort."

hereticalsym69ls You look into her eyes as bidden and you know she means what she says. You know what your stances have been before. You know what  you've said before.

The problem is you also know your own conviction has wavered a few too many times.

"... I know. I've said before that... I don't want her dead. I just. Wanted all this to stop."

You pause. Finding now that you don't think you can say this to her face. You can't look at her. How shameful, you think, that you should be like this after everything. Your eyes look away from her even if your face doesn't turn away. It's better to look down to the side, anywhere but her.

"I don't care what happens to her now."

aberrantcadenza You keep hold on his hands - gentle enough that he knows he can pull away, but firm enough to offer some sort of comfort. Your eyes never once leave his face. He feels so vulnerable, weak, conflicted... tired.

You kiss his forehead, one hand lifting to touch his cheek.

"Would you rather know, or not know? It's up to you. I can keep you in the loop, or I can keep quiet and we can act like it never happened. I would never put the burden of this sort of knowledge on you."

hereticalsym69ls "... I don't know. All I know is I don't want any of you near her. I don't want her getting her hooks into you too."

You shut your eyes and turn into her hand to kiss her palm.

"She'll use whatever she can to break you. Nothing's off limits with her."

aberrantcadenza "Someone has to do it." You bump foreheads with him, closing your eyes. "I'll do everything I can to keep myself alive, but I want to try. I have to. And... Like I said, I won't be alone. ... Condy was the one to offer, actually. Sugary. She said she asked Corvin too." You smirk. "He said no, although I know he'd love to get a piece of her too."

hereticalsym69ls "Her and Nadaya both have offered it before..."

You give a weak smile and nuzzle her when she bumps your forehead. "He really does. But."

And you frown again. "Out of all of you he's the most likely for her to take over. He's been exposed to her almost as much as me. I can't let him near her again."

aberrantcadenza You kiss the tip of his nose.

"Then we'll do what we can. I don't know if she's inviting anyone else, but we're going to do this. We have to. I'll even help make plans, as opposed to just rushing in and doing it." You wink. "Shocking, I know."

hereticalsym69ls You sigh a little and take a moment to consider it. Really consider it.

"... If you can keep her from using her voodoos, I won't have to worry about any of you going to. Deal with her. Aside from Corvin... If you can't disable her voodoos, I don't think inviting Nadaya is good. I fear she could do a lot of damage to him."

aberrantcadenza "Do you know how to do that?" You had asked Riddles, in as vague a scenario as you could, if a chucklevoodoo user could be stopped without killing them. Timelines differ, as you know... "If you know anything of her vulnerabilities, things we could use to stop her, or protect ourselves from her, anything and everything will help."

hereticalsym69ls You have to think about it. The truth is you knew very little about that woman beyond her hobby and how horrible she was. "I don't... What I know is she has a huge monster of a lusus with a nasty disposition. I know that if she can find a person's vulnerabilities, she will use them to her benefit. I know that if she hasn't gotten to you already, she can't get in unless she's close enough. ... I know that she isn't above using me as a hostage."

aberrantcadenza "How big exactly is her lusus, and is it with her often?" You commit every scrap of information to memory, and try to keep your voice as calm as you can. "Can she use her powers on multiple people at once?"

hereticalsym69ls "She's taller than Nadaya, by around a foot I think, and her lusus is big enough for her to ride on." You frown remember how she liked to tower over you. "Yeah. She can. She works for the empire, I imagine they saw it as an asset. ... I don't know how big her range is, though. I don't know how many she can affect at once."

aberrantcadenza "What does her influence feel like? So we'll know how to recognize it - as much as you feel comfortable describing. Is there anything that can be done to slow or guard against it?"

hereticalsym69ls You look down and away again. "... Cold. Heavy. Like claws scratching around in your head. She can make you feel scared or uneasy and you don't really know why. She'll target what you're afraid of. Make you see things. Hear things. Feel things. It will seem so real."

Your hands tense as you recall it. "She'll make you believe a lie if you let her. All I've ever had against that. .... All I ever had were you, to remind me I'm not alone. That I'm loved and I'm safe with you."

You look up at Felide, expression stern. "You have to hold on to the things that are real. You can't let her convince you otherwise. You can't let her isolate you."

aberrantcadenza You, being stubborn, impulsive and just a little overconfident, give him a reassuring smile when you nod. "I don't know how much isolation can scare me anymore. I lived it, and I did not die. I came back, found Nepeta, found *you.* But I'll remember."

You look down at the red ring on your hand, thumbing over the cats carved into it, over its delicate coral setting. "This is real. She can mess with my pan, but she can't take this from me. I think we have a chance."

hereticalsym69ls Your expression softens and your reach over to cup your hand behind her head and pull her close so you can kiss her forehead.

"Be careful. It's okay to run if you need to. I'd rather have you all come back to try again later than lose anyone thinking it had to be then and there."

aberrantcadenza You purr, leaning in to him and relaxing, for the first time since he left Beforus.

"I will. I promise. Thank you... I love you, and we're going to put and end to this. We have to."

hereticalsym69ls "... You're not disappointed with me being okay with this?"

Advocating for non-violence and not murdering people is kind of your thing. It's your Brand(tm). This is your reputation here.

aberrantcadenza "I support you in all your teachings of non-violence, but..." You shrug, and give him a little smile. "Sometimes you need to change tactics. Especially if the other side doesn't give half a shit about non-violence."

hereticalsym69ls "When does the other side ever give half a shit about non-violence?" You sigh tiredly with a little bit of dramatics and rest your forehead on her shoulder.

aberrantcadenza You wrap your arms around him, grinning. "You're doing everything you can. I'm proud of you for holding out this long, but equally proud for knowing when to try something else. I *never* want you to run yourself into the ground for the sake of a reputation, stubbornness, or anything else. I love you. I want you to be safe, well, and happy."

hereticalsym69ls You sigh even louder and more tiredly and lean on her more heavily. Time to make dramatic whiny groaning noises.

aberrantcadenza You, meanwhile, pretend that he's *so* heavy, and you're being crushed! Oh no!

hereticalsym69ls Time to lean on her more! Gravity is suddenly forcing itself on you so much! Oh no!!!!

aberrantcadenza Oh NO!!! You make a feeble cry as you are pitifully crushed under the weight of your darling, beloved life mate - who you kiss before taking your last gasping breaths. He hath killed you.

hereticalsym69ls Woe is you, your terrible weight has squashed your love to death! Perhaps you can give her a reviving kiss...

Or you can blow a raspberry on her neck.

aberrantcadenza AWFUL. You come back to life just to shove him away and complain loudly. "*XANTHE*"

hereticalsym69ls She shoves you away and you snort. "Felide!"

aberrantcadenza "You're the WORST and I'm divorcing you right now immediately, you awful, terrible, sweet little fish, you gigantic nerd..." You grumble in your clear, absolute disgust that is not at all joking, and purposefully mess up his hair while you stand. "Come on, it's getting cold out here. I want to kiss you and not feel like I'm freezing."

hereticalsym69ls "Pfft!" She messes up your hair, which probably doesn't look too different from how it usually is anyway. You get up after her and stick your tongue out.

"Alright, alright." Though you were feeling rather cold yourself, too. You head back into the hive with her.

[blaperile]

Homestuck Candy Epilogue - Reactions Pages 13 - 16

Page 13:

Holy SHIT. I totally agree with Dave, this feels like straight out of a horror movie.

What the FUCK is Gamzee doing over there? Does Calliope have anything to do with this, seeing as he was sticking by her side all the time, earlier?

I mean, jesus, didn't Dave come straight from John to here? He couldn't have been far behind Gamzee, who was only just there at John and Roxy's date.

And man, what the hell happened to Dirk? From what Gamzee's saying it seems like he might have left this reality behind somehow. Did he go to the same place wherever Meat Dirk is also headed to?

It seems like Gamzee is on some deep shit again, somehow. How does he know about the stuff with the black hole and what's behind it? Did Dirk tell him about all that? Or did Calliope? Or does Gamzee know it from somewhere else?

Welp, so there's the robot Dirk had been building for Rose.

And of COURSE it ends with a note to Dave. When is Dirk/Bro ever NOT about notes?

The question is... what's in it? Does he explain something? Or... is he asking Dave to also come to where he's gone?

You know, I was almost expecting Dave to find Dirk's dead body in here, but apparently not.

This page just goes to show much of an impact Dirk/Bro keeps on having on Dave. It's like he's left a splinter behind in Dave's mind, like he has his own Brain Ghost Dirk just like Jake or something.

Page 14:

..........WELP.

THAT....SURE JUST HAPPENED.

Looks like he went for the suicide after all. :(

And of course, no way for him to go out but with a decapitation...

I just wonder... what is this last act of relevance he meant? Is he "transferring" his soul to his Meat version, or something?

Or is he trying to set someone (Dave?) in this reality on a path of relevance due to his suicide and/or the note he left behind?

I wonder what even is in the note... did he explain why he'd commit suicide? Or is it about something else?

abundantChewtoys has a good point about the similarity to where Meat Dirk ascended the tower, and Alternate Calliope was trying to slow him down. And where it seemed like he was going to shoot Karkat... but instead he shot Jade.

A pivotal moment where it seemed like a murder was going to take place but it wasn't. And now it was a suicide.

What intrigues me the most here is that Dirk became "you" in here... the first character in the Candy Epilogue to become that.

Is someone (Calliope???) pulling strings on Dirk here or is this really entirely his choice?

Man, I wonder what the rest of this Epilogue is even going to be like... everyone's going to be totally shook by his suicide, right?

Especially Dave... this won't be good on him at all. He's going through such difficult times right now, and felt he needed Dirk to get out of it, and now Dirk's gone...

I wonder what Dave's first reaction is going to be... is he going to try to use his Time powers to undo Dirk's death? Is he going to be STOPPED from doing that, through narration?

You know... what with how Candy Dirk considering his existence in an unessential timeline completely pointless and committing suicide provides a very interesting perspective on what this means for other versions of Dirk...

First of all, pre-retcon Dirk. He knew he lost, and then just let himself be taken in by the glitches, and was seemingly killed by that. Kinda in that regard.

Next... let's talk about Bro. More specifically... the Bro from DAVESPRITE'S timeline.

Remember how Davesprite mentioned that he never saw Bro again during the 4 months that doomed timeline lasted? What if Bro realized he was in a doomed timeline and also committed suicide over there?

Heck, even Brobot counts. He killed himself to take out his uranium heart, to help Jake out.

Dirk's really got suicide down to a science. He had no problem to kill his real self to awaken his dream self to save his friends.

And when they were on the God Tier crypts, I believe Dirk mentioned something about how he had no problems to commit suicide, but simply didn't want to kill Roxy.

Jesus christ, this guy...

Page 15:

Wow.... WOW.... That was a rollercoaster of emtions.

First of all, I wasn't expecting that we'd be skipping straight to the funeral, but now on second thought I guess it made sense.

It's still left unclear now what exactly was in Dirk's note. From the little they mentioned, it seemed like it was a bunch of words that didn't seem to make sense.

But I guess he DID try telling them about what was going on in his mind, and why he did it?

Secondly, it seems like Gamzee also attempted to tell them... but Gamzee being Gamzee, probably nobody actually understood anything of what he was trying to say.

Still, it seems like Gamzee's been set on some kind of path by Dirk.... The path to the future, where he'd find Calliope/Caliborn? Which I find curious, seeing as at first it almost seemed like Calliope was setting him upon some kind of path!

Speaking of the devil... where in the dickens is Calliope? Pretty much everyone of the characters had dialogue, or was at least mentioned as being at the funeral, in this page, except for Calliope.

Yeah, there's literally no way Calliope isn't up to something, right?

I'd honestly be surprised at this point if she ISN'T the narrator here.

But if she is... why does she seem to be pushing John and Roxy towards each other, and away from her? Is she also planning on doing something drastic? Like, leave this place in the same way Meat Dirk did (not Candy Dirk)?

And if she is, did she actively push Dirk into committing suicide here? Why the heck would she do that???

Or is she just going ALL the way into her "fanfic" persona, writing stories about these characters she loves without involving herself for some reason?

I bet we're going to get some insight into that soon.

Anyway, let's go back a little. I'm happy to see Dave's doing relatively fine, despite everything that's happened, and that he seems to have found his footing with Jade and Karkat. He held Jade's hand in the church, and he was seemingly about to kiss Karkat outside the church.

That's a relief, I feared he was going to be totally derailed by this event.

Also, I actually wasn't expecting John to offer to retcon this event. I had really only been thinking about Dave's powers.

But it makes sense Dave took this decision. It was Dirk's choice and Dave wants to respect it, and that's very noble of him.

It's curious that John is now failing to use his retcon powers. I mean, he did manage to do it earlier in the Candy path, to retrieve Gamzee!

Is it that he's losing the power because of the fact that weeks have gone by since the timeline split from the Meat path? Or... is the narrator simply preventing him from retconning this event?

By the way, this page is an interesting parallel for page 15 of the Meat path. That was also an incredibly long page, in that case it was for the fight against Lord English.

Page 16:

...Oh man, this page is giving me a weird feeling. TIMESKIPS. TIMESKIPS EVERYWHERE. MIXED FEELINGS ALSO EVERYWHERE.

Let's start with the straight-forward part. John and Terezi continue being amazing in their conversations. And I love how Terezi's almost spelling it out for John that she feels like John is her kismesis and it's still going way over his head. xD

She continues being out there... alone. Or so we would think!

It's hinting that Terezi is alone out there, still looking for Vriska in an alternate version of the Furthest Ring compared to what we saw in the Meat timeline... but is it???

We've never seen MULTIPLE versions of the Furthest Ring, only just one. And it's not like Meat and Candy seem to represent two different possible ways for the single timeline to go, it's being hinted that these do co-exist. Meat Dirk and Meat Rose had a look right into the Candy timeline, and Candy Dirk's hinted at John picking the other choice as well.

So what's the deal? IS there both a Meat Terezi and Candy Terezi or is there just one? Is there something this Terezi isn't telling us?

Is this the same Terezi as in the Meat timeline, further down her path where she's already lost John and gone with Meat Dirk? Or what is going on?

ARE we ever going to see more of Terezi here in the Candy path, or is it going to be limited to her interactions with John? That we can only take her word and won't find out what she's actually experiencing, that she isn't hiding something?

So that it's left up to us to decide if this there is only one Terezi, or actually a separate Meat Terezi and Candy Terezi?

Anyway, so John and Roxy are having a baby!!! :O

I already had a feeling that was going down as soon as the timeskip was mentioned, the fact the wedding already happened, and that John truly felt like an adult now.

On one hand I'm so happy about that... on the other hand it still feels a bit wrong. I'm not going to repeat everything I said about the previous page, but it's almost like Calliope is kind of pushing John and Roxy towards each other and completely ruling herself out.

Especially with what Terezi mentioned on this very page, how it seems that things are going so fast between John and Roxy. That makes me even more suspicious that she's explicitly saying it.

I mean, especially with Calliope ruling herself out of the equation, this probably would have happened in a natural way between John and Roxy, but maybe not this fast.

Same thing actually with Dave and Karkat! Like John mentions here, they still seem to be figuring things out, whereas in the Meat timeline Dirk basically forced them together sooner.

It's heartwarming to see that Terezi's gotten back somewhat in touch with Dave and Karkat. After everything they've been through together, they deserve that.

On the other hand... the situation with Jade. That's pretty sad to see that things aren't working out that well with Dave and Karkat there. :(

Also, do I even want to acknowledge what the FUCK that was about Jane and Jake with Gamzee? xD

Let's... let's just assume Jane wanted to try a threesome or something for kicks... Okay I'm going to completely stop thinking about this now. xD

[readingclubstuck]

Section 11 image descriptions

Page descriptions for all pages with flashing images (except for 003049, [S]: Enter, which has its own post [link: here])! Trigger warnings for this section are [link: here].

2973: [S] Jade: Pester John.

A yellow moon floats in a cloudy sky as a loading screen. Then it fades to the moon of Prospit near Skaia. Jade begins talking to John from her dreamself’s keyboard. The minor moon of Prospit rotates closer to Skaia, which flashes white occasionally. Jade’s tower grows ever closer until it is almost entirely in Skaia.

We zoom in on Jade’s tower; clouds around it turn to space, then John holding the cruxite apple. We see Jade continue to type, and the screen splits to show her roboself typing for her. We zoom out to see the real tower, which turns out to be just an image juxtaposed on the dream tower by a passing cloud.

Another cloud shows John’s house in the Medium, then Rose’s house, on fire; Rose’s house in the snow; the tree growing from the remains of John’s house in the future; Dave’s house; just the shape of Bec’s head in cloud; the active volcano by Jade’s house; John’s head in cloud.

It’s unclear what happens next; the dream tower appears to be standing on rock near the active volcano, then we see a cloud with space and a spirograph portal in it launch a meteor, which turns to cloud when it exits the cloud image it is in. The meteor smashes into the rock by the volcano, making a crater with a mysterious light at the bottom.

Jade hears the impact and indicates to John that she heard an explosion. The crater by this time has filled with lava, and we see Bec emerge. Jade’s roboself tells John she will go outside and look, and Jade’s dreamself and roboself both go out near the volcano.

Jade looks surprised at the light with a spirograph in it in the lava; Jade’s roboself looks at the frog temple in the water. Jade tries to approach the light but Bec blocks her. Jade’s roboself is also blocked by Bec from going into the frog temple.

Jade goes back to talking to John on top of the dream tower. Meanwhile, John’s dream bedroom, covered with clown graffiti and with a harlequin imp doll on his bed, is empty. John is no longer sleeping there. We see John, his eyes still shut tight, floating near his dream tower, as Jade looks on. She begins to fly closer and John begins to blink his eyes open.

We see Skaia and Jade’s approach, flashing between the previous flash where he saw clouds turn into things important to him, such as Dad’s face and the cake. The girl’s silhouette he saw is now Jade, of course, and the silhouette flickers to her dreamself, but just as she finally approaches, both Jade and John’s real selves wake up, simultaneously shaking their heads.

Narration includes these two pesterlogs:

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002069

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002193

2976: ==>

There is a picture of Jade’s island, with the frog temple at the center.

[Panel 2] Bec sleeps in the grand foyer, while Jade’s Grandpa is silhouetted by a raging fire.

Narration: Bec has never allowed you to enter the MYSTIC RUINS for reasons you never understood. You always assumed it was on account of your protection. But your dream has strongly suggested to you that is where you need to go now!

Since your DREAMBOT is secured in its chamber and does not need to be looked after, Bec is taking a nap in the GRAND FOYER as he usually does. Perhaps you can take advantage of this and sneak out of the house another way?

2985: Dave: Eject your modus and set it to Scrabble values.

Dave selects ‘eject’ on his modus, and everything goes flying everywhere, scattering all the birds. The swords slice up the smuppets. Dave catches his phone.

[Panel 2] Dave selects the hash function where each letter is a different value, Scrabble style.

Narration: You dump all this crap all over the roof.

You then set your modus to the SCRABBLE HASH FUNCTION for some reason. This function always makes it a little less intuitive to calculate hash values for items, and therefore more cumbersome to rap with. But you guess that's kind of a moot point now that your BRO flew off fuck knows where. His mysterious ways transcend irony once again.

2988: ==>

Rose stands on her bed staring out her window, out of which is only visible the tree and fire.

Panel 2: Dave pesters her on her computer while Mutie sleeps.

Narration: You have finally finished your building project. You have done about all you can do for John. You don't think you can provide much assistance against all those ogres this time, but at least now John appears to be armed to the teeth.

All there is left to do is wait for Dave.

2989: Rose: Captchalogue and send John code for his present.

Rose stands in front of the purple package. There is still fire outside the window.

Narration: That would certainly hasten the parcel's delivery, but the gift is not finished yet!

You have spent months accelerating your knitting skills to be able to make the gift of perfect sentimental appeal. You even incorporated a cherished heirloom you have had as long as you can remember.

When he sees your staggering gesture of sentimentality he will finally understand. He will understand that in the game of facetious sentimental gestures, no one gets the best of Rose Lalonde.

2993: Rose: Answer.

We see Rose’s computer, which instead of the pretty octopus lady, at this point in the past is a distressing picture of a purple octopus-faced monster attacking a city. In the TROLLSLUM, the username grimAuxiliatrix flashes, its face rancorous.

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling tentacleTherapist [TT] --

GA: Why Is It That When The Subject Of Temporal Mechanics Is Broached Your Sparing Human Intellects Instantly Assume The Most Ingratiating Posture Of Surrender Imaginable

GA: Time Is Not That Difficult To Understand

GA: It Is A Utility That A Universe May Resort To In Order To Advance A Desired Degree Of Complexity

GA: Or May Not Resort To If That Is The Case

GA: Its All Pretty Pedestrian

GA: But No

GA: When Time Travel Comes Up You Present The Face That A Man Shows When The Breeze Gradually Alerts Him To His Absence Of Netherdressings

GA: I Dont See How We Are To Properly Agitate You All If You Continue To Insist On Failing To Understand Basic Concepts Which Common Infants Effortlessly Manage To Describe Via Scrawlings In Their Own Puddles Of Sloppy Discharge

TT: Have we spoken before?

GA: Yes

GA: In The Future

TT: You and your friends never cease to invent ways to strengthen the credibility of your assertions.

GA: Oh My It Is Your Human Sarcasm Again

GA: I Enjoy Listening To It And I Wish Doing So Could Serve As My Primary Form Of Recreation

GA: There See I Just Did It Too

GA: Saying The Opposite Thing To Emphasize My Contempt

GA: But Suddenly I Feel More Primitive And Hate Myself A Little More

GA: It Was Like This Funny Miracle That Just Happened In My Heart

TT: I would admire the sophistication of you and your fellow future-dwellers a little more if you seemed to be aware the word "human" only functions as that sort of adjective in bad science fiction.

TT: But I won't be rude and change the subject.

TT: There's a still a bit of unflagellated straw poking out of your rhetorical effigy over here.

GA: Oh Dear

GA: No We Arent From "The Future"

GA: But We Are All Already In Agreement That You Dont Get It And Never Will

TT: I thought you said we spoke in the future.

GA: We Did

GA: Your Future

GA: For Me It Was Only A Couple Minutes Ago

TT: I understand.

TT: You exist in some temporal stratum through which you have communication access to various points of my timeline.

TT: It's not that complicated.

GA: Yes Thats Right

GA: Will You Try To Talk Some Sense Into Your Idiot Friends

GA: So That We May Proceed To Bother Them All On More Rational Terms

TT: I try to every day, with mixed results.

TT: But you see, it's not that I don't understand you.

TT: It's just that I don't believe you.

TT: Because it's nonsense.

TT: Albeit persistent and coordinated nonsense.

TT: Why would a bunch of temporally dislocated trolls want to harass a group of friends throughout completely random points in time?

GA: I Will Admit This Campaign Of Provocation Wasnt All That Well Thought Out 

GA: Dont Tell Anyone I Said That

TT: Alright.

TT: Maybe you should get some trolling tips from us humans.

TT: Our sparing intellects are probably better suited to it.

GA: Yeah Maybe

GA: Why Dont We Be Friends

TT: You want to be my friend?

GA: I Think So

GA: I Think Were Supposed To

GA: You Suggested As Much Earlier

TT: You mean I did in the future?

GA: Yes A Couple Minutes Ago

TT: Probably because I remembered you mentioning it in the conversation we're having now?

GA: Thats Likely

TT: Hmm.

TT: Your commitment to this roleplaying scenario is intriguing.

TT: What choice do I have but to accept?

3018: ==>

An explosion occurs low on the remaining temple tower.

Panel 2: This panel is drawn crudely. The tower falls over and lands with a LAND! sound effect that shakes the whole image. WV and PM throw up their hands in surprise.

Narration: Oh no!

3021: ==>

The reticle moves quickly from PM to the round station.

Panel 2: An explosion occurs in the side of the round station.

Narration: YOU ARE THE LAW WHOOPS

3025: ==> WV flails distractingly in the reticle.

Panel 2: a rocket shoots out of the frog temple with a SHOOOOO noise. It tracks smoke everywhere in a long winding trail that lands exploding the side of WV’s station.

Panel 3: WV goes flying in the flames and smoke, with Serenity blinking frantically.

3028: ==>

The box blurs and flashes as it is sendificated.

Panel 2: PM stands beside a successful SENDIFICATE message on the screen.

There is a transparent gif of the word ‘MAIL’ made up of a collage of envelopes and stamps.

3031: ==> 

Grandpa Harley, alive at this point, holds an enormous gun that is shooting with a giant BLAM.

3037: WHOP

the word WHOP flashes in white over a red striped star background.

3038: ==> 

Dad, standing in front of a safe outside his cell, punches Jack Noir with said WHOP effect.

Narration: You bear the vicious brunt of this story transition directly in the face.

You are getting really tired of this feisty man and his busy fists.

3040: ==>

Dad holds out a lighter and lights Jack’s hat on fire. Jack falls a few inches, one eye squinting closed and the other eye opening in surprise.

3048: Dave: Install beta.

Dave types away on the computer, which shows a speech bubble with a spirograph symbol inside.

Panel 2: Rose types in her own room, the speech bubble from her laptop showing the Sburb logo.

TG: alright im installing this game finally

TT: Where doing this man?

TG: yeah

TG: you could almost say

TG: where making this

TT: Go on.

TT: What is it where making this?

TG: TRANSPIRE

TG: [sunglasses emoji]

TT: Excellent.

TT: Let's make shit take place.