#What to do if You Discover the Secret of the Universe While Reading a Book

[thatsbelievable]

[writeroutoftime]

women run the world

pairing: anthony bridgerton x fem!reader (requested by: anon)

summary: after comforting eloise about a woman's lack to education, anthony makes a less than ideal comment that does not end well for him

warnings: none besides anthony's stupidity

words: 1.1k

a/n: another request from forever ago, but it is finally seeing the light of day! anyway, we love anthony, but sometimes he doesn't always think before he speaks, also this GIF just made me laugh and I thought it fit well with this fic lol. this was a lot of fun to write, so I hope you that you enjoy it! as always, please let me know what you think, and have a fantastic day!

oOoOo

Dearest Reader, Even within the most ideal love match our society has to offer, there is always the possibility for miscommunication - as was the case between one Lord and Lady y/n Bridgerton. However, this author has discovered that Lady Bridgerton has set the record straight for Lord Bridgerton, and for that, she has my sincerest gratitude. Lady Whistledown's Society Papers

Eloise slammed her book shut, groaning in frustration, which pulled you and the other Bridgertons from their own little bubbles.

"Whatever is the matter, Eloise?" Daphne asked calmly, looking up from her newest arrangement on the harpsicord.

With a dry chuckle, Eloise opened her mouth. "Why is it that the men in this country are afforded every opportunity for education, yet so many of them squander it when there are countless women dying for a chance to continue their education? I mean, what do I have to do for a chance to go to university?" she ranted.

"We live in a time where those in charge have small minds, and are fearful of what women could do if given the chance to achieve more." you offered gently, knowing the reasoning would do little to soothe her anger. "I happen to think you would thrive at university, and I know you could show everyone that us women are just as equal as men."

Before Eloise could offer her thanks, an almost indistinguishable chuckle came from the chair next to you. Your head immediately whipped to the side, eyes directly on your husband as he continued to read his newspaper.

"Was there something amusing that I said?" you dared to ask, voice low and spine stiff.

Anthony folded his paper before looking back at you. A whisper of a smile still on his lips. "I simply find the thought of women at university alongside men an outlandish thought." he began. "Do you not think women would already be allowed in if there was this equality between the sexes? I mean there are distinct physical differences, so it goes to reason that there would be differences in other areas as well."

The moment the words left his lips, the entire room went silent, and all seven other heads in the room snapped towards Anthony in varying degrees of shock. The women looked appalled at the words their brother had spoken while Colin and Benedict (and even young Gregory) shook their heads, knowing Anthony was in for it.

It was no secret to the Bridgerton family, nor to the ton, that you held rather "revolutionary" ideas about women's equality and place in society. At least, you thought the Bridgerton family knew, but it seemed as though your husband did not fall into that category.

Jaw tense, you took a deep breath, trying to find the apprioate words for this situation. "Anthony, is that how you truly feel?"

It was as though Anthony sensed he had misspoken, but was unable to stop the words that tumbled out of his mouth. "I-I suppose so."

The anger melted off your features only to be replaced with an eerily calm look as you spared your husband a glance. "You're right, my dear, there are distinct differences between our two sexes. In fact, you have just proven mine and Eloise's point that our society is ruled by those with small minds. If you could only see that the world around us would not function without the women in your life. The fact that you seemingly do not see that makes me question who it is I married. Excuse me." you finished before you stormed out of the drawing room and towards your bedroom.

Silence permeated the drawing room, and no one knew what to say next. Anthony sat frozen in his chair, staring at the spot you had just been in, unsure how the conversation had spiraled in such a direction. Unsurprisingly, it was Eloise who spoke first, directed towards her eldest brother.

"Truly unbelievable, brother. Are you going to continue to sit there or are you going to go after your wife?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

To his credit, Anthony had the decency to look sheepish as he slid off his chair and went to go after you, leaving his younger siblings laughing at his expense. Though none of them followed either of you, they could only imagine the scolding her would receive.

Anthony hesitantly knocked on your bedroom door, pushing it open slightly after a few moments with no response. "y/n?" Anthony prodded, peaking into the shared room. His eyes fell on your curled up figure on top the bed and he sighed heavily. "My love, I wish to apologize."

"Apologize for what? For what you said or because you made me angry?" you tested, wanting Anthony's apology to be genuine and for the right reasons not because he was told to.

Your husband looked frozen in shock, and you watched as the gears in his mind worked overtime to figure out the correct answer. "Uhhh, both?" he finally answered, though it came out more like a question.

With a huff, you crossed your arms and narrowed your eyes. "Is that what you truly believe, Atnhony? Because if it is I don't know how this marriage is going to succeed. I thought you knew what I believed when we agreed to be together. Or was that all just to placate me in order to wed and bed me?"

"No, no, that's not true at all!" Anthony rushed to get out, and in an instant he was kneeling by your side. "y/n, I know my words were pigheadish and utterly inappropriate. I suppose I sometimes let the opinions of the ton guide my thoughts, even when they are wrong." he began, quickly holding up a hand before you could interject.

"I know, I know that does not excuse my actions. I want you to know that I fully support you in all possible ways, and I love you for your mind." he told you, offering a gently kiss to your knuckles. "You may scold me as long as you see fit, but please know I am by your side in all manners."

You were silent for a few moments, analyzing and decoding Anthony's confession. But you knew by the way his eyes soften and looked up at you with love and adoration he was completely sincere. Of course, that doesn't mean you still couldn't have your fun.

"Good." you simply said, leaning down to hover mere inches from Anthony's lips. He gratefully moved to close the gap, but you placed your hand on his chest to stop him. "Because women run the world, Lord Bridgerton. And don't you forget it." you whispered before you pushed away and left the room, leaving Anthony panting with a shiver down his spine as he watched your retreating form.

[burritowitch]

Lonnie's 'in case of my death' note from shadow of the bat #41 which according to @lesbiananitafite reads a hell of a lot like a suicide note because he is Not Normal, written out below because it is so hard to read as is:

It looks like tonight must have been that night. I know I've caused you a lot of pain and grief over the past couple of years, and I'm sorry for that. You thought you were bringing me up to be the All-American boy, playing ball on the weekends, studying hard to be a doctor or lawyer. Instead you got a criminal. My memory is tainted, my good intentions derided. And, probably, I'm dead.

How to begin to explain how I feel? The world is like an alien planet to me, the brittle laughter and hollow fun of a theme park overlaying the nightmares of war and discrimination and brutality. The people society respects-- the great and the good-- are, in most part, the small and the evil to me. It's as if I see with laser eyes, burning away the surface illusions that hide the fact that we're zombies-- puppets controlled by somebody else. Again I'm sorry, because I know you're upset. You're good people-- nearly everybody is good people-- and that's what the elite take advantage of. But society is changing. The information revolution allows every man to see the great and good are no better than him. The old power structures and their fascist ways cannot compete with the anarchy of tomorrow's technology. The time of the common man is coming. No longer will he have to march to battle as fodder for bankers and arms makers. No longer will he live in a fog of deceit stoked up by politicians' lies. The future is freedom... and all I ever wanted was to hasten its birth.

I think it all began with Xuasus. I was eleven when he became my penpal... Every month I wrote to tell him the wonders of America-- Every month he wrote back with tales of hovels and soldiers and the brutal repression that made up his life. After a year, his letters suddenly stopped. Mine were returned "Not Known." Another year passed before I found out why he Xuasus wrote once more, a single sheet scribbled in some seedy back alley. His father had been arrested and not heard from since. His mother took ill. His sister died of malnourishment. At the age of 11, Xuasus was fending for himself on the streets. Remember I asked you to help me find him, Dad? You said it was another country, the rules were different there. We could do nothing. But I couldn't just forget a friend like that. I started to haunt the library. I found out Xuasus' country was a dictatorship, at war with Marxist guerillas, with ordinary people caught in the crossfire. I found out the guns came from Europe, and Russia... and here. A few men made big profits, while half a world away, poor people suffered. I read about war and the history of war, and the psychology of war, and the horrors of war. You never knew it but--

That's when I went through those months of nightmares. Remember? Anyway, I soon realized something-- almost all wars were caused by only one man, or one small group of men. And every time the elites ordered 'Fight!' it was the ordinary men who became canon fodder-- and ordinary families followed him into oblivion.

I learned that the state is more important than the individual. I learned that politics is soaked in blood. But I couldn't accept that it had to be that way. Remember how crazy I was about books, Dad? I used to make you take me to the bookstore every Saturday. Flying saucers, cults, conspiracy theory, religion, the occult... I drank it up, tried in vain to make sense of it all. Then I discovered Scudder Klyce's "Universe" and the jigsaw finally fell into place.

Scudder Klyce worked out the secret of humanity. Vox populi, Vox Del. The voice of the people is the voice of God. The elites are parasites, vampires sucking on the life-blood of man, turning everything good and decent into foul corruption! That's when Anarky was born. I couldn't help Xuasus-- but I could give the people of Gotham a voice, no matter how small, against the forces that oppress them.

--If I am dead, please don't think ill of me. I only wanted to bring a little sanity into an insane world for a little while, I was something no one else had ever been... the voice of the people. One day-- and it won't be long-- the tyrants will die away, scorned and mocked by their former victims. One day you'll see that I'm right; maybe then you'll be proud to say "My son did that."

All my love, Anarky (alias Lonnie Machin)

[waitmyturtles]

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: Secret Crush On You (SCOY) Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I offer my thoughts on the importance of Saint Suppapong's and Cheewin Thanamin's Secret Crush on You in the annals of Thai BL history.]

I offer a very hearty THANK YOU to my dear friends @lurkingshan and @bengiyo for reviewing this draft before publication!

Well! A VERY belated happy new year from the OGMMTVC shores! I have allowed myself a lengthy onboarding back to the pattern of watching older Thai BLs due to many life circumstances around the 2023 holidays.

But I do still stay on my grind: while I was slowly watching and re-watching SCOY over the last month, I've added two current shows to the list, which I'll explain about later, and I've also taken up reading an incredibly important book to this project, Dr. Thomas Baudinette's ethnographic study, Boys Love Media in Thailand, which is giving me tremendous insight and history into the development of the Thai BL genre from direct reporting in Asia. In other words, the OGMMTVC project is still cooking along -- I'll plan to post about the book when my current watchlist is at a pause, while current shows on the list are airing.

All that being said, I'm here today to report on my watch of 2022's Secret Crush on You. Here's a little outline to keep me organized:

1) A quick reminder of how SCOY got on the OGMMTVC list, 2) A thematic hit list of why SCOY belongs on the list, and why it's so important for the history of Thai BL, and 3) A few personal takes on the show.

SCOY got on the OGMMTVC list way back in May 2023, in the comments of my glowing review of the second season of Make It Right, suggested by @absolutebl Sensei themself. SCOY is directed by Cheewin Thanamin, who had co-directed MIR and MIR2 along with New Siwaj. (He is also, famously AND infamously, the director of the recent shows Playboyy and Middleman's Love, as well as many other shows, including YYY, Why R U, and more.)

At the time of my watch of MIR2, I reveled in the fabulous endings of TeeFuse and FrameBook, the holistically loving and embracing relationships of those two couples, who were fearlessly and openly queer and committed to each other; and I compared those endings to that of another fabulous Cheewin show, 2023's Bed Friend, which also ended glowingly, after a hell of a traumatic journey, for the dear mains, KingUea.

SCOY, from a growth perspective, fits between the high school world of MIR and the working adult world of Bed Friend, showcasing Toh, the stalker-shy university junior outcast; Nuea, the popular, athletic, and gorgeous university senior, and their respective groups of friends, who, to a tee, end up with each other. In the comments of my MIR2 review, @absolutebl wrote,

"...there is a case to be made that Cheewin is having a conversation with us[,] the culmination of which is actually SCOY. It feels like everything in his career was leading to that show[.]"

I believe this is absolutely right. While the public commentary on SCOY was that the first few episodes would be hard to digest -- for me, it took until episode *9* to feel comfortable enough to ride the SCOY train -- the amount of internal and external-to-BL themes that SCOY carries within it marks it as an incredibly important show for the annals of Thai BL history.

I also want to note that, after SCOY, Cheewin's War of Y also airs in 2022, as a macro commentary on the BL industry. Without having seen War of Y yet -- I think it makes sense, and is quite fitting, that there may be similar themes between these two shows as to what SCOY was addressing by way of personal and industry-related psychologies.

I'll get into those themes in a second, but as so many of you know as well: this was also the first production for Saint Suppapong's agency, Idol Factory, featuring (for 2022) a slate of incredible new QL actors and actresses who have already made a fast and deep impact on the genre (...fast and deep impact huh huh ANYWAY).

Putting ourselves into Saint's shoes -- a man well familiar with the pitfalls of the BL industry, vis à vis his associations with his previous PerthSaint and ZeeSaint ships -- I can make a safe assumption that he approached the production of SCOY with the intent to make a groundbreaking show, and to approach the fan service side of the BL industry with as much consciousness for his actors as possible. While I'm not watching Idol Factory's latest show, The Sign, I am noting that The Sign's two stars, Billy Patchanon (of SCOY) and Babe Tanatat are very good at their fan service offerings. (Heng in this video, omg.) But all that being said, the unfortunate incident last year of the untimely revelation of Seng Wichai's and Freen Sarocha's relationship indicates that Idol Factory is also not immune to the controversies and pitfalls of the BL and shipping industries.

What I particularly loved about SCOY -- and why I agree with @absolutebl and many BL fandom veterans that it belongs on the OGMMTVC list -- is that this show unabashedly insisted that all people are people, all humans are equitably humans, and all humans deserve the same emotional and social respect as anyone else. It punched social expectations of the "winners" and "losers" down to the ground to offer nuanced narratives of most of its characters.

We see Toh (Seng Wichai) and his group of friends repeatedly put down and bullied. We see Toh and Jao kicked to the ground for their looks and presentations. We see popular Nuea (Billy) and Sky (Heng Asavarid) suffering from jealousy, insecurity, unrequited love and desire. We see Nuea and Sky objectified. We see Daisy question themself for their femme identity, and we see Daisy's group of friends become so moved and emotional about this change as to both uplift Daisy's preferences and to support them in whatever changes they want to make.

We also see -- for only the second time on the OGMMTVC list, and surely in the biggest BL up til 2022 -- a prominent femme side character in Daisy, one who is very much pursued by a cis male suitor in Touch. (The first time we see such a prominent femme character on the OGMMTVC syllabus is, again, in Cheewin's Make It Right 2, in the character of Yok, who was very out and very gay throughout that season.)

I'm going to examine this more in just a bit, but I also want to note, in a fabulous conversation I had with @bengiyo about SCOY, that this show also somewhat upends social expectations of who exactly gets bullied in a "typical" school setting. We do very much see Toh and his friend group get attacked. We see that friend group come together in support of each other. But we also see them very much accepted, as they are, by the older, more popular friend group.

There are many more examples of these themes, but in any case:

These were nuanced, layered, and sophisticated depictions of humanity, all for a show within the BL genre that had started its journey, way back in 2014, in demanding clear seme/uke dynamics and male/female characteristic assumptions between main couples. SCOY clearly took great pains to examine and upend these assumptions. In particular, the hot tub conversation in episode 9 had me going wild; a conversation that has become legendary as it was the first time (and not the last!) that a character of Billy Patchanon's stated that he was verse:

By the time we get to 2022, I love what this conversation signifies for Thai BL. From SOTUS's Kongpob saying that he'll make Arthit his wife; to Pat clarifying to BOTH Pran AND Phupha, "I'm not your wife" -- and, now in SCOY, to Nuea being like, "oh, roles? Yeah, whateves, I'm down," is such a refreshing spin to the conversation about the demands that the genre, AND society, place on hulking cis-presenting men like Nuea/Billy.

Of course, the biggest upending to any assumptions that viewers (including myself) may have had about the dynamics between the two main couples of NueaToh and SkyJao was in seeing how deeply insecure both Nuea and Sky were of the stability of their relationships with their boyfriends in Toh and Jao. Nuea and Sky both recognized that it was literally society itself -- and the very deep internal impacts that society could have on the psyches of the nerdy Toh and Jao -- that could threaten the sanctity of Nuea's and Sky's relationships.

Nuea and Sky weren't relying or assuming on their good looks or popularity ranks to win Toh and Jao over. Nuea and Sky were very much in love with these two men, and both wanted to have holistically complete and committed relationships with their boyfriends. And Nuea and Sky WORKED for these relationships, and feared the worst, often, if an internal obstacle (like Jao's insecurity) or external obstacle (like the girls in pursuit of Nuea) got in their way.

@bengiyo, in reference to my conversation with him earlier, mentioned a social shade to all of this that I found fascinating. He noted that this show did NOT interrogate the "weirdness" of Toh and his friend group. I'm actually going to criticize that just a touch in a bit, because I would have liked more background context into Toh, myself. However, Ben makes an important point about this, because he noted to me that majority society WOULD interrogate the origins of Toh's "weirdness" -- and would NOT interrogate the popularity, good looks, and success of Nuea and his group, because majority society would well assume that Nuea and his group are... "normal."

I find these instinctual inclinations to be FASCINATING to ponder, and I really think SCOY did a wonderful job in allowing us as viewers an "in" to a loving alternate reality that those who are considered "weird" in this world deserve a fair and equitable shot at love and acceptance from all corners. Ben noted for me that MUCH more often in majority society, that being queer makes someone vastly unpopular. (Ben also noted for me that what SCOY posits for Nuea and Sky by way of their queer presentations against their popular standings would likely have led to them being ostracized in real life.)

I want to note that this loving alternate reality for the unpopular is almost exactly similar to another fictional environment created by Cheewin in Make It Right -- which prompted an early and memorable conversation between Ben and me early in this project. (Thank you so much to @bengiyo for giving me time and space to read and comment on this SCOY piece.)

I want to posit -- again, without having seen War of Y -- that all of this is fascinating territory for Idol Factory, in its first show, to tread by way of humanizing IF's gloriously good-looking talent in Billy, Heng, and others. I'll know more by way of comparison when I actually watch War of Y -- but I think SCOY does a FABULOUS job in slowly leading viewers to contemplate our assumptions about how "easy" it might be to be a good-looking and/or athletic person in society. Insecurity and instability are common characteristics among all of us. SCOY very decidedly skewers any assumptions that viewers, and society, may have about the "transcendent" nature of the show's fictional "celebrities" to bring all of its characters down to a more common and equitable human level.

By a long shot, these themes are the ones that I loved absolutely the most about SCOY. I have a few personal takes on the show that I'll share in just a moment, but one more shout of celebration that I'd like to offer to SCOY is the following:

Of all the excellent acting in this show -- from Billy, to Heng, to the utterly DELIGHTFUL Looknam Orntara as Som, to the fabulous Surprise Pittikorn as a conflicted and insecure Jao -- let me offer all the flowers to

Seng Wichai, who had me CRINGING, OMG, *CRINGING*, throughout most of SCOY.

I hope this man won AWARDS for this role. All of my feelings towards the character of Toh aside -- Seng Wichai absolutely BODIED this role. I was SQUIRMING during the first three quarters of this series. God, he NAILED every last characteristic that would make a person like Toh so interpretively painful and pitiful. That Seng left Idol Factory last year, before his relationship with Freen was exposed, is, I think, a huge loss for IF. I know War of Y is chaotic, but I actually can't wait to watch it simply to see another side of Seng's acting.

For Seng's Toh to be pursued so intensely by Nuea -- and for Toh to be so Toh throughout that pursuit -- I truly can't think of a past BL actor from the past OGMMTVC dramas that could have done a better and more nuanced job than Seng Wichai to just remain so COMMITTED to Toh's modus operandi of stalking and collecting, especially so DEEP into the 14-episode run.

I will admire Seng's performance endlessly. My very own personal take on SCOY -- which I do not want to detract from its importance in the BL genre annals -- was that I think some of Cheewin's typical chaotic flourishes did not quite comport with the complicated emotionality that SCOY otherwise served.

At the end of the series, we meet Toh's parents in rural Suphanburi -- but we don't get a sense throughout the series of why Toh decides to pursue Nuea only from afar, in stalker-like actions, for so very long. Again, this stalker behavior is only presented as an MO -- and as @bengiyo noted to me, that was likely on purpose, as a means of showing that Toh's friend group would be accepting of each other NO MATTER their unique characteristics.

We also have to wait a VERY long time in the series for Toh to be held accountable for his stalking actions, as he even continues to collect items well into his relationship with Nuea. The flip side of this is an empathic one -- he's collecting the items out of an assumption, on his end, that his relationship with Nuea WILL end. However, it's made clear that Toh had no intention to ever tell Nuea of this side of Toh's behavior.

There were other moments in the show that tonally confused me, particularly in episode 5, the first time that the group goes to the beach, where Toh is in the hotel room with Nuea for the first time, and is both overtly confident that he might get it on with Nuea, but also seems reluctant to actually pursue it once Nuea starts offering hints. I worked this out with @lurkingshan (thank you, friend!) that Toh was demonstrating a brave face and fantasy to start, but was surprised when Nuea actually reciprocated the consideration. This happened a couple of times throughout the show, and Shan's assessment makes absolute sense -- I think I could have used some language clarity around those scenes myself, particularly when Toh was talking postgame with his friends after those moments, that he was surprised by Nuea's acceptance. But, @lurkingshan -- your assessment of the pattern holds, and I understand it.

Once I finished the series, I read @absolutebl's 2022 review of SCOY, and ABL -- I totally understand your perspective. I get the pull between adoration and cringe for this show. A stalker premise is HEAVY. It didn't help, in that heaviness, to have no past context to Toh's behavior, coupled with Seng's incredible cringy performance.

If another director without as many chaotic tendencies could have directed this show -- I think we would have gotten a more complete and contextual emotionality to the show that would have helped Toh's and Nuea's relationship be portrayed as fully full-circle.

I think this is enough of a quibble that'll keep me from easily rewatching SCOY. But, towards the end of the series (@twig-tea, YOU WERE RIGHT!) -- especially from episode 9 onwards -- I felt that I finally and truly understood where this show was going, and what it was about, and I felt endeared to it.

I think many in the fandom will agree that SkyJao was actually the couple that interpreted, much more clearly, the impact of social pressures and insecurities on a relationship, and for that, I will forever shout

SKYJAO! SKYJAO! SKYJAO!

as one of my absolute favorite side pairings of all time.

SCOY was a hard watch for me because of the interruptions of the holidays, of life, and because I've gotten a little less patient with Cheewin's chaos (...I dropped Playboyy, omg, I have to admit), despite my utter admiration for his work on Make It Right and Bed Friend.

But the difficulties I had in watching it should not take away from honoring this show as a hell of an important one. It makes me admire Saint Suppapong to no end for spending his own damn money towards the pursuit of better BLs. And the acting in SCOY was truly FANTASTIC. Despite my own personal reservations, I cannot recommend SCOY highly enough -- because watching it, and enjoying it, is truly a perfect demarcation to understand how far Thai BLs had gotten to its airing moment in 2022.

[OKAY! As I mentioned above, this project has gotten even richer with the addition of my current reading of Dr. Thomas Baudinette's Boys Love Media in Thailand -- I look forward to offering my thoughts on that book after my watch project is over.

I have added a few shows to the watchlist! The recently-aired Last Twilight makes it on as a show that centered disability vis à vis BL for the first time, and Cherry Magic Thailand makes it on as Thailand's first major adaptation of a Japanese manga and dorama. I've also added 23.5, GMMTV's first GL, to the list, although the premiere date continues to be up in the air for that show.

AS WELL! An actual Japanese BL makes it on the list, ha ha! I'm obsessed with this because I'm learning from Baudinette about the Japanese roots of Thai BL. I am in LOVE with Ossan's Love Returns, and it happily features a cameo by none other than Loong Jim and Wen, who hilariously (AND SMARTLY, go get yer money, guys) franchised Moonlight Chicken to Japan. Earth Pirapat and Mix Sahaphap make the most adorable cameo, and they will be inhabiting Haruta's and Maki's roles when the Thai version of Ossan's Love starts filming later this year.

FINALLY! My own personally long-awaited KinnPorsche (OOOO-WEEEEE!) rewatch is up next, but I'm taking a beat to catch up on Cooking Crush. I can't wait for my late-night liveblogs on KP, though -- they're coming soon!

Here's the status of the list -- as always, Tumblr's web editor is NOT nice to this list, so please mosey over to this link for your very latest updates on the project!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (Links to the BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series are here: preamble here, part 1, part 2, part 3a, part 3b, and part 4) 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here)  36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist (watching)

...interrupting the OGMMTVC list here to watch War of Y (2022) in chronology and to decide if it gets listed...

37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) The Eclipse OGMMTVC Rewatch to Reexamine the Start of “Genre BLs” and Internalized/Externalized Homophobia in GMMTV Shows  39) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 40) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 41) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 42) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) 43 La Pluie (2023) (review coming) 44) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) 45) Wedding Plan (2023) (Recommended as an important trajectory in the course of MAME’s work and influence from TharnType) 46) Only Friends (2023) (tag here) (not technically a BL, but it certainly became one in the end) 47) Last Twilight (2023-24) (tag here) (on the list as Thailand’s first major BL to center disability, successfully or otherwise) 48) Cherry Magic Thailand (2023-24) (tag here) (on the list as the first major Japanese-to-Thai drama adaptation, featuring the comeback of TayNew) 49) Ossan’s Love Returns (2024) (adding for the EarthMix cameo and the eventual Thai remake) 50) 23.5 (2024)]

[isabellavolere]

Transformers Prime—Part 9: The Imposter

Masterlist

<-Previous Part

“Miko, slow down, I can’t understand you when you don’t speak with spaces between your words like normal people,” you had said as you closed the book you had previously been reading.

After the day you had been through at school that morning, all you had wanted to do was sit against the secret alcove you had found while exploring the Autobot base, crack open your book, and escape reality. But when Miko had brought you crashing from the imaginary universe of your favorite book to the present, gushing about some sort of signal Ratchet had picked up from his scanner, you were less than thrilled with her enthusiasm. 

You had also been mildly impressed by how quickly she was able to find the spot that had taken you an hour to discover, but your thoughts had been interrupted.

“But y/n, it’s an Autobot signal! Don’t you know what that could mean?” She has asked with wide eyes.

“That the Decepticons want to bait us into thinking there’s an Autobot out there somewhere so they can attack us when we least expect it?” you had asked flatly.

“Oh, you sound like Arcee!” She had wined, before turning around to go back to the rest of the bots.

An Autobot signal? Showing up on Earth of all places? Of all the Autobots that made it off of Cybertron, not including our Autobots, what are the chances that one could end up here? Next to none.

You couldn’t have helped the logical side of your brain as you’d mulled over what Miko had told you. You had just hoped, as you leaned back against the wall to continue reading, that you were wrong about the Autobot signal.

***

You lean over the railing of the balcony with Jack, Miko, and Raf, watching the swirling vortex of the groundbridge as you all wait for the Autobots to come back with Wheeljack. Instead of giving him the coordinates to the base, it was Optimus’ idea to give Wheeljack another set of coordinates so he could walk through the groundbridge instead. It seems you aren’t the only one who is cautious when it comes to new guests at the base. Suddenly five sets of footsteps reach your ears as the Autobots exit the groundbridge, and immediately your eyes lock onto the new bot. 

His chasi is mainly white and gray, with red and green accents on his chest and lower legs. You notice wheels and doors on his back, and a small cylindrical device on his side. Your observations are interrupted however when the groundbridge sparks with purple bolts and shuts down. 

Hmm, well that looks…less than ideal.

 A groan from Ratchet catches your attention and while Bulkhead introduces Wheeljack to Miko, you go to investigate the source of Ratchet’s displeasure. 

“Hey Doc, something wrong?” you ask as you walk over to the groundbridge lever.  

Ratchet just turns to glance at you, a hint of irritation in his eyes, before frowning and returning back to his work. He mumbles something under his breath as he inspects the lever and you wonder if he’s purposefully ignoring you.

“Does it have to do with the purple sparks from the groundbridge?” you ask again. 

“You saw it too?” he asks, stopping his work and staring at you for a long moment. “The groundbridge system hasn’t been the same since the Scraplet incident; I fear the system…”

Ratchet’s cut off by a loud crashing noise and you turn around to see Wheeljack and Bulkhead bump chests enthusiastically. 

“Oh joy,” Ratchet deadpans before going back to his work.

“Right then,” you frown before walking over to the living area of the base.

You quickly locate the backpack you had set down by the tv and take it over to the faded yellow couch. Before sitting down you look for Cliffjumper, hoping that maybe you and him could go out for a drive, when you see that Cliffjumper is talking to Arcee. You watch as he says something that makes Arcee laugh and you quirk an eyebrow. The smirk on Cliffjumper’s face makes you smile slightly, and you wish that they were both a little bit closer so you could laugh at Cliffjumper’s jokes too. Shaking the thought from your mind, you sit down on the couch and open up a book, hoping it would distract you. 

***

Miko’s electric guitar solo was bad enough for the ears alone, but Bulkhead’s game with the new Autobot, Wheeljack, was another; the combination of the two was enough to drive anyone crazy. Which is why after discovering that even the most avid readers wouldn’t have been able to concentrate through all the chaos, you find yourself sitting on the top of the messa that the Autobot base was hidden in, knees tucked up to your chest, staring out to the vast Nevada desert. The moon lights up the sand and a cool breeze blows your hair gently away from your face. Of all the places in the Autobot base, this one is your favorite by far. It was Optimus who had been the one to show you this place, and you would have assumed he’d be up here too if you hadn’t seen him drive off into the darkness a few minutes after you had come up. 

None of the other Autobots normally came up to the top of the base, so when you hear the ding of the elevator at the entrance of the roof access cave, you instantly begin to wonder. As you turn around to see who is there, a familiar red hue and warm smile makes you relax and turn back to face the desert.  

“Hey kid, I’ve been lookin’ for ya,” he says quietly as he lowers himself next to you. 

“Ah well, you’ve found me,” you say with a grin, which earns a laugh from Cliffjumper. “What’s up?”

“You’re missing the party,” he nudges you gently with his side. 

“I’m not sure I’d consider electric guitar solos and whatever game Bulkhead and Wheeljack are playing a party,” you reply.

“Not much of a party person, are ya,” Cliffjumper chuckles. 

You smile slightly and lean back on the ground, your head lying on your arm and your legs swinging over the rocky edge of the towering messa. “Not so much.”

“Mmh,” he hums and is quiet for a moment. 

A comfortable silence comes between you and Cliffjumper, filled only with the hum of his spark and the chirping of crickets. You gaze up to the sky above you, the twinkling of thousands of stars reflected in your eyes. 

“Lobbing.”

“What?” you ask as you look over to Cliffjumper.

“The game that Bulkhead and Wheeljack are playing. It’s called Lobbing,” he explains.

“Oh yeah?” you question as you sit up.

 “It was a popular game back on Cybertron for those of the Warrior class.”

“Were you in the Warrior class?”

“Was I in the Warrior class?” Cliffjumper asks incredulously. “Do Predacons fly?”

“I don’t know wha—”

“Of course I was in the Warrior class! One of Primes’ toughest bots back in the war,” Cliffjumper says, smashing his fists together proudly. “And I bet that if you were Cybertronian, you’d be in that class too.”

“Oh?” you raise an eyebrow and tilt your head slightly.

“You have that fire in your spark,” he says with a grin. “That’s how ya could take out that Con when we first met.”

“Eh, I was just fortunate,” you say with a shrug of your shoulder.

“You sound like Optimus,” Cliffjumper rolls his eyes. “Too humble. Ya gotta own your victories, especially when they have to do with taking down those Cons.”

“You really don’t like Decepticons, do you?” you ask with a chuckle.

“Not one bit.” 

“You and me both.”

You look down to your right shoulder and push back the material of your tee shirt sleeve. The pale moon illuminates your skin to reveal the many burn scars that run from the top of your shoulder to just above your elbow. The memory of the day you got that scar flashes in your mind and you can’t help but relive the experience. 

Running from the Decepticons, feeling the burn of your skin when the shot collides with your shoulder, the red visor of the Decepticon looming over you with its gun pointed right at you, waiting for the shot that would end everything. 

It was the day your life had changed completely, when you had discovered an entire race of alien robots from a planet hundreds of light years away; when you discovered him, your guardian and protector. 

“I thought you were scrapped for sure,” Cliffjumper says, breaking you from your thoughts. “It takes a certain kind of human to get shot in the shoulder and still pull through.”

“Don’t forget almost getting squished by Starscream and then kicking him in the face,” you add with a grin.

“Atagirl, y/n, own that victory,” he returns your grin, scanning your face for a moment with a proud look. “Only the fiercest of warriors could have survived that lousy Con.”

You are about to retort when Miko calls your name and you jump slightly. You hadn’t even heard her walk over to you and once your heartbeat returned to normal you turned around to give her a slightly irritated look.

“Miko, what are you doing up here?” you ask curiously.

“I was looking for you, Bulkhead’s going to tell some stories about him and Wheeljack! Do you want to come and hear them?” she asks excitedly.

You glance at Cliffjumper for a moment before turning back to Miko. “Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

“Great!” Miko says and grabs your arm, pulling you along with her as Cliffjumper’s laugh follows you from behind.

***

“So there we were, no communications, low on energon, surrounded by Cons, so what does Wheeljack do?” Bulkhead asks back in the main area of the base.

Miko, Raf, Jack, and you all sit next to each other on an energon crate with your eyes wide, leaning forward in anticipation. 

“Tell ‘em Jackie!” Bulkhead laughs. 

“Wha-what I do best,” Wheeljack says nonchalantly as all heads turn in his direction.    

“He chucks his only grenade smack into the primary heat exchanger!” Bulkhead exclaims. 

“Yeah, seemed like a good idea at the time,” Wheeljack says. 

“The joint went supernova!” Bulkhead extends his arms wide.

”Awesome,” you and Miko say at the same time.

”Yeah, I’m still picking shrapnel out of my backside.”

“I’m not surprised, given the size of your backside,” Arcee comments, causing you to try to hide your snort in a sudden burst of coughing. 

“There it is, Jackie’s signature; one grenade, one shot,” Bulkhead says with a grin. “Hey, you alright?”

”What?” Wheeljack asks.

”You don’t seem like yourself.”

”Well what do you mean?” Wheeljack asks quickly.

”I don’t know, you seem quiet,” Bulkhead comments.

”Ah, I’ve been stuck in a can too long. I should go topside before I go stir crazy,” Wheeljack explains.

”I have patrol in the morning, you can come with!” Bulkhead offers.

”Let’s go now,” Wheeljack says, turning to face the exit tunnel.

”And break up the party?” Bulkhead questions. “Come on, the gang’s loving you. You gotta tell them about the battle of Darkmound pass!”

”You tell them. You’re better at it,” Wheeljack says, turning back around to face Bulkhead. “How about if Miko here shows me the rest of your base?”

”Uh, yeah sure, Jackie, go ahead,” Bulkhead says hesitantly. 

“Tour starts now,” says Miko excitedly, hopping down from the energon crate. 

“Oh boy,” you mutter, earning a snicker from Jack.

”Do you play any instruments? Can you fly? Have you thrashed more Decepticons than Bulkhead has?” Miko begins pelting Wheeljack with questions as you watch them walk to one of the base's many tunnels.  

“You alright?” Arcee asks Bulkhead.

When you look over to Bulkhead you notice he’s acting strange. His eyes have a distant look to them and you think he’s almost…sad?

”Yeah just…out of sorts, I guess,” he replies with a frown.

”Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” Arcee says, putting her hands on her hips.

”That Miko’s making a new friend? Come on!” 

You all remain silent, unconvinced of his response.

“Something…something’s just not right about Wheeljack,” Bulkhead says quietly.

Hmm, Bulkhead would know if something is off about his best friend…the question is what.

”Bulkhead, really?” Arcee questions. “He’s traveled galaxies, you haven’t seen him in centuries, he could just be rocket-lagged or…bots do change, you know?”

”Not Jackie,” Bulkhead counters. 

***

“Look, I know Wheeljack better than anyone,” Bulkhead says, trying to convince the rest of us that something was not right. 

After listening to almost five minutes of his rant, the base had mixed feelings about Bulkhead’s suspicions. Arcee still remained unconvinced while you were leaning towards Bulkhead’s side. Something just wasn’t adding up with Wheeljack, and you wanted to get to the bottom of it. 

As if on cue, a voice calls out from the tunnel near the med bay. 

“Hey. What are you guys talking about?”

”I was just telling the guys about you and me at the battle of Darkmound Pass,” Bulkhead says, turning to face Wheeljack.

”That’s a heck of a story,” he muses. 

“Yep. Tell it,” Bulkhead commands.

”Talk talk talk,” Miko interjects. “How about after we go off-roading—“

“Miko, stay out of this!” 

Your eyes widen at the stern tone to Bulkhead’s words. Not once had you ever heard Bulkhead talk to Miko like that. You lock eyes with Cliffjumper and frown, but he only shrugs. 

“Bulkhead, easy,” Arcee says.

”I’m not sure I’d—“ begins Wheeljack, but he’s cut off by Bulkhead.

”Tell it!”

”Fine, you wanna live in the past, Bulkhead.”

You glance at the other kids with a wary expression before turning back to look at Wheeljack. 

“The Wreckers were trapped between a Decepticon patrol and the smelting pit. The Cons were vicious, bearing down on us with everything they had. Me and Bulkhead engaged the enemy, left them for scrap, then I made us a way out using their backsides as stepping stones to cross the molten metal,” Wheeljack finishes, looking back at Bulkhead. “Isn’t that how it happened?”

”Yeah, that’s exactly how it happened. Except for one little thing. I wasn’t there.”

You look from Bulkhead to Wheeljack in confusion as you hear Ratchet emit a small gasp, stopping his work to look at the bot. You can even see it in Wheeljack’s eyes, the realization that he messed up. 

Oh. Ooooh. 

And then you understand; this bot is not Wheeljack.

“I’d already left the Wreckers to join up with Optimus, but you wouldn’t know that if all you did was access Wheeljack’s public service record,” Bulkhead says. 

“Bulkhead, what does that have to do with—“ Miko begins, but suddenly the imposter Wheeljack grabs her.

”Miko!” Bulkhead yells.

Before you can even fully process what just happened, Cliffjumper jumps in front of you protectively and turns his hand into a blaster. 

“Stay back…or I’ll squeeze her into pulp,” the bot says, dropping the laid back voice of Wheeljack for something deeper and raspier.

It sends a small shiver down your spine as you look around Cliffjumper’s legs, anxiously seeing what would happen to Miko. 

“Wheeljack, what are you doing?” Miko asks quickly.

”Decepticon coward, let the girl go and face me!” Bulkhead challenges, eyes narrowed to slits at the intruder. 

“Don’t fret, plenty of fighting to come,” the Con taunts. 

“Is there a real Wheeljack?” asks Jack.

”Oh indeed, and I expect lord Starscream is making sport of him.”

At the name of Starscream your face hardens slightly and you catch a look of discontent across Cliffjumper’s face as well. The look only deepens as you watch the Decepticon type in coordinates to the groundbridge and power it up, all while everyone remains helpless to stop it.

”About time,” the Con mutters. “Now, let’s get this party started.”

As Miko struggles against the Con’s grasp, a figure from the groundbridge flies through the air and kicks the imposter in the back. This causes him to crash to the ground, flinging Miko into the air in the process, and you watch with panic and then relief as she lands in the outstretched hands of Bulkhead. 

“Are you alright?” you ask quickly once Miko is placed back on the ground. 

She nods and you all turn around to face the figure from the groundbridge; it was Wheeljack, the real one. 

“I’d shut that hole before the stink comes through,” he says. 

Just then the Decepticon gets up and pulls out his swords, and so does the new Wheeljack. They begin circling each other in the base, a perfect mirror image, like sharks in the water. Bulkhead smashes his fists together and steps forward to join the fight, but the real Wheeljack stops him with a hand. 

“Ugly’s mine.” 

In one sudden motion the two Wheeljack's collide their swords and the fight begins. They twist and turn and circle some more, and you have trouble identifying which Wheeljack is the real one, though it seems you're not the only one. 

“Which one is the real Wheeljack?” Raf asks, adjusting his glasses. 

“Uh, I lost track!” Miko exclaims. 

In one quick motion one of the Wheeljack disarms the other one, kicks it to the ground, grabs the disarmed bots’ sword, and points it at the bot. 

“That’s my Jackie,” Bulkhead exclaims proudly. 

The real Wheeljack stands over the imposter and sheaths his swords before looking towards Ratchet. “You, open the hole. It’s time to take out the trash,” and then he turns towards Bulkhead. “All yours.”

Ratchet opens the groundbridge and Bulkhead grabs the imposter, spins him around in the air a few times, and then chucks him straight into the groundbridge. 

“Nice lob,” Wheeljack comments as the groundbridge closes. 

***

Later that day, once Optimus had come back from his drive and been given all the details of what he’d missed, the base was back to normal. And this time when Miko pulls out her electric guitar, you hesitate when you turn to seek the comforting silence of the base’s roof, your footsteps halting just before you get to the elevator door on the raised platform. As you linger, you hear the tread of steps you’d come to recognize anywhere. 

“Leaving the party so soon?”

You turn around and smile slightly as Cliffjumper cocks his head slightly and raises an eyebrow. 

“Well…” you drag out the word before letting it die out. 

You look down at the other kids and their guardians who are dancing to Miko’s music and a faint smile tugs at the corner of your mouth. 

“Come on, kid, live a little,” Cliffjumper says, and extends his hand to you. 

“It’s like a recurring nightmare,” you catch Ratchet saying from near the groundbridge lever. 

“At least don’t turn into a grouch like him,” Cliffjumper smirks. 

You let out a snort and Cliffjumper’s grin widens at the sound. Having made up your mind, you climb into his outstretched hand and let him gently lower you next to Jack on the main floor. 

“Hey, welcome to the club,” Jack says with a playful nudge to your shoulder. 

You laugh and start to sway from side to side in time with Miko’s music, watching Raf and Bumblebee dance the robot.

Well, naturally.

”…that my ship’s repaired, I’m itching to know…what else I might find out there,” you catch Wheeljack saying to Bulkhead. 

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Miko exclaims, putting her guitar down and rushing over to Wheeljack. “Why?”

You see a look of sadness flash across his face before Bulkhead says, “Well, because some bots never change.”

“Wheeljack, know that you will always have a haven here,” Optimus says. 

“Jackie never stays, but he always comes back,” Bulkhead says as he gives Wheeljack a side hug and a fist bump. 

And with that, Wheeljack’s ship is located and you walk through the groundbridge with the others to send Wheeljack off. 

“There’s room for two, Bulk,” Wheeljack offers. “Even with a backside like yours. Who knows who we might find out there…some of the old crew.”

As Bulkhead turns around Miko looks down at her toes with a solemn expression, and you quickly wrap an arm around her shoulders. 

“It sounds like fun, Jackie, but my ties are here now. With them. With her,” Bulkhead says warmly.

Miko’s face lights up and Wheeljack smiles at her. 

“If anything happens to my favorite Wrecker, I’m coming after you.”

“I’ll take good care of him,” Miko says. “Now say cheese.”

Pulling out her bright pink flip phone, Miko snaps a picture of Bulkhead and Wheeljack. After one more hug from the Wreckers, Wheeljack steps into his ship and starts the engines. It slowly rises into the air before turning around and blasting off, heading towards the setting sun. You all wave until Wheeljack’s ship shrinks to a small spec on the horizon before disappearing from sight. 

Masterlist

<- Previous Part

[graceofagodswrath]

Aliens learning of Eldritch Horrors: Lovecraft Mythos

I’m a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft horror. I know most of the big stories and smaller ones. Cthulhu is horrifying, but honestly there are worse. The big man is one of the saner entities out there.

So I recently pulled down a Lovecraft story book from my shelf and was going back through the stories, and it made me think: how would aliens react to hearing these stories? The idea that reality is simply the dream of one ancient forgotten god, including the lesser gods. I mean, if you actually read them there is some wacky shot in there. A mythos centered around the mysteriousness of the unknown, and a true hell hidden behind blissful ignorance.

Then I thought, “what if aliens discovered these things and had their own mythos?” What if every species has stories like these, but humans have the largest collection of them all? Perhaps aliens know that these things are true, but keep their distance. Then they discover humans and their extensive experiences with these ancient evils. Then aliens do something stupid and humans reveal big secrets yayyyy. Now I’m just spitballing.

Written from the perspective of an alien historian charged with cataloging traces of the Lovecraftian mythos.

WARNING: Depictions of violence, blood, and suicide.

~~~~~~

The tales were old as time. Older than the most ancient of civilizations within the cosmos. Some evidence could always be found within every culture. Whether an art piece, an artifact, or an oral story. But all knew how to deal with such things: leave it be.

As alien races began to connect and introduce their cultures, it became apparent there was more out there than we ever imagined. But we also knew better. We catalogued the tales, the artifacts, every scrap of evidence of these ancient beings, and then we ignored them. If any of the stories were true, we needed to heed the warnings.

But we were not prepared for the Terran race. Humans. A strange alien race from a death world long thought to be uninhabitable. Now found to be beautiful. While smaller and weaker than most races, they make up for it in their cunning and wild attitudes towards the universe. Many races fear their eagerness and unimaginably huge ego, while others welcome it. Such races usually burn out quickly without interference from others. But Humans were… different. They knew how to survive, even their own kind. When we added their knowledges to our libraries, many thought it would be the data we needed to spread into the cosmos.

How wrong we were.

It was an acolyte in charge of sorting through the new data that found it all. The stories. The mass knowledge of the unknown. More than that, they were first hand experiences of the ancient evils thought to be mere myth. Yet here it was. More accumulated knowledge than every race combined.

Granted, the stories told no more about these things than others did. The difference was the accuracy. How the Humans chose to write down every piece of literature and oral history they could remember. It was remarkable. For many a klick then we sat scrounging through these tales, rewriting and translating the words.

The more we read, the more we realized what all this may mean. The Human stories dictated these ancient creatures living on their world, Terra, aka Earth. Countless inscriptions of encounters with unknown beasts and horrors. Yet when asked about such things, the Terrans only shrugged. They said that those stories had long been dismissed as ravings of the old. If such things existed, they would have found them.

It was shocking to find the young race so ignorant of these things, even though we were guilty of the same crime. But we placated ourselves, claimed we only had bits and pieces whereas the Humans had an entire network of evidence. But the Terrans did not care. These were bed time stories to them.

We dove deeper and found that while most Humans dismissed the evidence, there were many who still believed. We were warned against finding those that held more evidence and knowledge, even ancient practices of this lost culture. The humans that believed such things had created communities of wild religious belief, cults that were not afraid to defy human societal law. They were labeled extremely dangerous.

But we dove. We leaped. And we didn’t even look underneath us. We became guilty of doing the one thing Humans were known for without realizing that we were not human. We did not have their instincts nor their rationalization and wild zeal. Their immortal adventurous youth.

We did what we were warned against. We sought out a cult. These humans welcomed us, celebrated with us, danced wildly. They spoke even stranger. They seemed to think we had come not to document their history and knowledge, but to welcome the “old ones” as well. We soon realized we had “jumped from the frying pan and into the fire” as humans would put it. We walked into a deeper hell.

We were shown histories, stories, artifacts, more evidence than a historian could dream of. It was a zircasian mine, to put it plainly. The humans did not defend or act cautiously as we expected. They rejoiced. When asked why, they relented that other humans were skeptics “destined for the black pits” but that they knew we understood. They expected us to help them in some way.

It was horrifying. It was hell. It was worse than any religion could damn their evil to. The humans had tricked us. They took my colleagues, split them open and bled them dry. They committed such horrible acts upon the many colors of blood I dare not write them for others to read. The worse came after.

It was indescribable. I can only depict what I understood. The humans danced and writhed in my colleagues blood as I and Yina’sa watched. They kept us alive to “bear witness to the return.” It was as if the fabric of space was torn, contorted, ripped apart to reveal the hidden void. Black tentacles and appendages slithered out, mouths full of teeth and fangs on the skin. But the worst was the eyes. The eyes of these ancient beasts. They were eyes of all races, yet not. They glowed and swirled, power emanating like a beating heart drumming in my ears. The humans still danced and chanted, screeching with sick delight. The chanting became “unearthly”, deep and strange. As if the humans were no longer just the ones chanting.

That was when I closed my eyes. I tried to block out the sounds, tried to pretend I was anywhere but there. I heard Yina’sa screaming, then laughing her Urulian laugh. She was screeching and cackling just as the humans were, shouting hideous things in her native tongue. I just wanted it to be over, over over Over OVER OVER OVER OV-

Then gunshots. True screams. Then a cosmic screech. As if the universe was crying out in pain. The ground shook. But I kept my eyes shut. The chanting was still repeating in my ears, I could t make it stop.

I barely remembered what happened afterwards. I had to be informed by my rescuers, a team of human soldiers. They had caught wind of our escapade, and had tried to reach us before it was too late. But alas. They had dragged me from that cavern, the only survivor.

I found out that Yina’sa had struck her head against the floor until her skull split open. To find out I was the only survivor among my group was…not ideal.

The humans informed me that they cult we had contacted was one that had been under surveillance for years, suspected of extreme violence and illegal obscenities. The human governments tried to warn us against contact knowing these humans we violent and dangerous. They knew these stories were not false. They had tried to dissuade us for our safety.

But we ignored them. Now blood is spilled, and I shall never forget those blood curdling screams, nor the chant the still beats in my head.

Nah’ka thm da

Nah’ka thm da

Nah’ka thm da

~~~~~~

Wow I kinda went off the rails. Wanted to write about aliens discovering humans having eldritch evidence, then trying to keep humans from finding the eldritch beasts. But then it turned into alien hubris and humans keeping the aliens away from the shit. Surprisingly this was kinda tame compared to my other posts. And for those wondering, I have more Humans are feral stories lined up, don’t worry about it.

Hope you all enjoyed. I wrote this feverishly at 10am, so I apologize for grammar and spelling mistakes.

Let me know if you have other suggestions for stories, and if you want me Lovecraftian stuff. Love writing about eldritch monsters.

[tricksterlatte]

Akeshu Holiday Heist Special WIP

This was going to be a oneshot sequel to my completed Persona 5 Akechi/Joker fanfic, Chase the Joker, set nearly one year after the ending. While I still have a few oneshots set in their future planned, this one's entire concept was changed, and the fic was scrapped. Since I had fun writing their banter, I'm going to post the WIP here anyways. You can read underneath the cut! As it's incomplete, there is no concrete ending to this segment at this time.

Sometimes, life could feel just like a Christmas movie. One could find the true meaning of holiday cheer amidst the chaos, no matter who they are or where they came from. It was a special time of year, and whether people celebrated or not, sometimes beautiful magic happened. 

Joyful moments could be shared underneath the tree as families discover the true meaning of the holiday season, whether related to Santa Clause, the meaning of life, or Kentucky Fried Chicken. True love could be discovered underneath the mistletoe, all while some coworker’s annoying as hell kids at the office Christmas party went ooh or help me or perhaps ew, gross much? On occasion, the stars aligned just right each December, and picturesque moments captured in the mind’s eye forever would feel just like the more diverse Hallmark movies. All three of them, if you were being generous.

It was at these times one must remember Die Hard was also a Christmas movie…which was the evidence Akira needed to utilize for their current situation, no matter how Goro denied it, all while they drove towards some rich bastard’s Christmas bash on a hellbent mission.

Car rides anywhere were enjoyable as long as they were with each other, and in the end that was all Akira could ask for. As Goro rambled on and on about cultural variations of the holiday, and how supposedly none of them involved homicide, Akira just held back laughter while applying the reddest lipstick known to man. He hadn’t ever worn a cocktail dress before today, but no one could deny he looked incredible. He was dressed to the nines in luscious red, a silky wig, and enough makeup that not even his own parents would recognize him, and yet it wasn’t technically for a date. What a homophobic shame dealt to him by the gods themselves.

…Okay, his parents hadn’t seen him in years, and the last time had been Goro punching his father in the face. It was better stated that not even his cat would recognize him, but Akira didn’t want to think about that either. So instead he just bickered with the man he loved.

“Honey, listen,” Akira countered, after Goro ranted for the entire length of some bubbly kpop song about being merry and happy. “I know you pride yourself on being right about everything, and I support you unconditionally, but have you ever considered you’re totally wrong about literally everything? We are living out a Christmas movie right now. I’m right.”

“Stating I’m wrong without providing actual evidence as to why again, Akira?” Goro said with an eye roll, though his rolling eyes struggled to stay focused on the road when Akira’s dress kinda showed his upper thigh. “You would not have lasted one week in a university setting’s debate team, and it shows.”

“Hey, neither of us went to college, on account of me being a sexy criminal superstar and you being sexy and also super dead. At least I read dozens of books on mythology and cultural figures when we still had the Nav,” Akira said right back. “I’m a master debater–”

“I swear if you say ‘and also a masturbator,’ I’m hitting the brakes at mach speed.”

“I mean no, I don’t need to do that when we’re in the same room twenty-four hours a day. Wow, you have such a dirty mind, did you know that?”

Goro finally stared not at the road nor Akira’s legs, but a secret third thing–his smug, stupid face, so he could shoot Akira the nastiest of glares. “Quite the talk from someone who made a kidnapping roleplay joke months after literally being kidnapped.”

Okay, that had been one time. And they were not talking about it. Not if Akira could help it. He finished applying the last of his makeup and examined himself in the mirror. If looks could kill, Akira wouldn’t need a knife tonight. Tragically, he still needed a knife, but at least he was pretty. 

“I never joked about that again, give me and my coping mechanisms some credit. Anyways, enough talk about my abduction. Ever heard of Krampus? He’s like the Mementos Grim Reaper used to be, except real, and festive, and I’m pretty sure he murdered children. How’s that for Christmas cheer?”

“I appreciate the sentiment behind a morally dubious Christmas special, but…Krampus aside, the holiday genre as a whole is ill-suited for activities such as murder, once we put aside frequently debated titles. There is a reason films such as Die Hard and American Psycho are commonly dismissed from a place among happy-go-lucky Christmas movies, and that’s due to them only portraying the holiday as background noise in favor of an action plot. It’s only a timestamp when all is considered, nothing more.”

God, Goro was so pretentious. No wonder Akira was in love with him. Here they were, driving towards some multimillionaire’s holiday party with a heist in mind and also assassination if push came to shove, and yet Goro was blasting some American artist’s holiday music on the Jokermobile speakers and discussing American fucking Psycho versus the concept of Christmas cheer. If he wasn’t wearing nondescript black clothing and gun holsters, Akira would blame the irritated snarl gracing Goro’s face on this Michael Buble person singing some no homo anthem about his buddy Santa.

Akira just giggled in his best falsetto, preparing himself for whatever crossdressing shenanigans he had to pull for their mission tonight, and flipped his wig over his shoulder. Brief little moments of domestic bliss were nice after everything, even if most people wouldn’t get it. 

“Okay, ignore the murder then. We’re still living in a real life romcom whether you think my jokes are funny or not, since my entire life is a joke.” Another unimpressed squint as Goro kept his eyes on the road. The self-deprecation didn’t hit like it used to for either of them. Damn their efforts to rebuild Akira’s self-esteem. Those efforts were getting in the way of dark humor! “It’s December 24th, we’re on our way to crash a Christmas party, and we are romantic and comedic. We even took that don we now our gay apparel song to heart, come on!”

Goro snorted, ever the long-suffering, disgruntled man in the face of whatever the fuck Akira was doing. “That can be said for your outfit tonight, but I don’t recall a black turtleneck ever winning one of those ridiculous ugly Christmas sweater contests.”

“No, see, you’re just dressed like the gay goth cousin who sits at the kids’ table during family gatherings because he hates his homophobic relatives.” Akira knew this because he had once been the gay goth cousin who sat at kids’ tables during their rare family gatherings because he hated his homophobic relatives.

Goro looked from Akira, to the road, to their GPS. His brow furrowed and he bit his lip once he saw how little time was left until their arrival. The plan had been for Goro to park the car and follow behind closely, and Akira would do the actual infiltration with a fake identity and a fake adoration for being surrounded by the rich and pompous. The flashy getup was excessive, in Goro’s opinion, but plenty of Shido’s affiliates, and therefore Goro’s whether he liked them or not, were occupying this little gala. Of the two of them, Akira was less likely to be recognized, especially when dressed like this.

That didn’t mean Goro was fond of the idea whatsoever, but that was only one stressor among the many weighing them down tonight. As Goro parked the car, Akira finalized his appearances one more time, double-checking his heels were just short and thick enough that he could still run in them, and that not a hair looked out of place.

He only became aware of his nervous expression when Goro turned off the radio. Turning to face his partner in crime, he saw anxiety reflected back at him, and Akira gulped down a lump in his throat. “Hey,” Akira said, reaching over to grab Goro’s hand as it held the steering wheel in a vice grip. “I know this time of year is stressful for everyone, but I’m going to be okay–”

“Are you okay, though?” Goro cut him off, flexing his fingers before letting go of the wheel. He squeezed his eyelids shut and visibly fought to unclench his jaw. “You’ve spent the entire car ride cracking ridiculous jokes and making up your own lyrics to every damn orchestra cover that played on the radio, but if you’re trying to hide how nervous you are, you’re not doing a great job. I thought we talked about this.”

Akira winced. Keeping secrets hadn’t been his goal at all, but he couldn’t blame Goro for that train of thought. Old habits die hard, whether trauma was involved or otherwise. He flopped back against the headrest, shifting their hands so their fingers intertwined. Even with gloved hands, the grip grounded both of them. “I wasn’t doing it on purpose. I just know if I think too much about the worst case scenarios, I won’t be able to focus on anything else. I’m worried about you too, though. What’s wrong? Is it about splitting up?”

The telltale twitch of Goro’s hand was all the answer Akira needed. He stayed silent and gave Goro a moment to find his words, taking in his harrowed expression as Goro’s thumb brushed across the various scars all over Akira’s hand. Goro had always wielded words masterfully on television and even in battle, whether they were honeyed vinegar or vulgar curses, but words conveying his innermost feelings still didn’t come easily. Akira wasn’t good at sharing his burdens purposefully either just yet, but they were trying. 

They were both getting better about trust and honesty, but sometimes Akira worried parts of them would always be trapped in the past, terrified of losing one another, or maybe in some long-lost Palace there was Goro, kneeling on some bloody floor or panicking in a hotel room, or there was Akira, trapped in a diner or tied to a chair in that hellish basement or crawling across frozen earth in a desperate rush because he couldn’t let him die, not here, not again–

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” Akechi’s voice broke Akira out of the spiral before it could properly start. Suddenly Akechi’s head gently bumped into the side of Akira’s, and his thumb rubbed circles against Akira’s knuckles. Right. It was December, in the present day, almost a full year after three no good, very bad days. They were alive. They were okay. “I’ll admit I’m not fond of splitting up. I…I can’t lose you again.” Okay, so maybe Akira wasn’t the only one spiraling over that possibility. “If you no longer wanted to mingle with Shido’s trash, I would gladly take our little getaway car and drive wherever you wish–”

“Nope, I’m still going,” Akira butted in. He wasn’t offended by Akechi’s offer, but he didn’t want to back down now, and he knew Akechi didn’t either. He could do this. It wasn’t like he had to kill a million people, all he had to do was break into some big wig’s computer with a flash drive and then get the hell out of there. Hopefully no one paid attention to him, once they got over the dress and heels. “I have a dagger and I’m not afraid to use it, and I have my earpiece just in case. You have a sword and multiple guns and an actual sniper rifle. Give the both of us some credit! I killed a god three Christmases ago. A little breaking and entering is what the kids call small potatoes.”

Akechi said nothing, but at the rate he was stressing, he would fracture every bone in Akira’s hand, induce heart murmurs faster than you could say four Five Hour Energy shots, and go bald by age twenty-three. Refusing to let the man who was essentially his husband lose all his hair, Akira indulged in their old favorite vice: deflecting and changing the subject. “Also, this isn’t the getaway car. Stop besmirching the good name of our dearly beloved Jokermobile–”

“It’s not a good name at all, Akira,” said Akechi as he forced himself to relax. He didn’t buy the facade, but Akira wasn’t trying to fool him. They both just needed to calm down before they did anything reckless…even if a heist was also reckless. “Your habit of naming inanimate objects is getting out of hand. This isn’t the Jokermobile, it’s a black 2016 Toyota Highlander, and you only named it that because you wanted to make rear-ending jokes.”

Well, it was a good thing they had only been rear-ended by an actual car once, then. Akira took full responsibility for that one, it was his fault for trying to drive with a broken leg. Pour one out for the fire hydrant, the greatest victim of that hit-and-run besides Akira’s psyche. “And yet you never thought of a better name. Checkmate.”

“You’re insufferable,” Akechi sighed. 

“I think you meant irresistible, honey,” said Akira.

“Oh, pardon me. I meant to say you’re irritating and irresponsible. My mistake.” 

Goro didn’t give Akira time to reply before he unbuckled his seatbelt and inspected his holsters. “Do you have the flashdrive ready to go?” Akira reached into a side pocket of his dress and showed Goro the flash drive, shoving it back inside once Goro nodded. “And your dagger?” He flipped his skirt completely to the side, exposing lacy black underwear on top of the dagger strapped to the thigh lacking a dress slit. Goro forcibly ignored that and interrogated him again like the bastard cop he once pretended to be. “And your earpiece?”

Wow, not even a verbal reaction to his underwear of choice? Bummer. Akira rolled his eyes and gently swept the wig away. Barely visible inside his ear was the earpiece, but it was in place just as planned. Smiling and hoping the red lipstick wouldn’t smudge onto his teeth, he flashed Goro a thumbs up. “Yes, Goro, I’ll hear your illustrious voice loud and clear. What about yours?”

“I put mine on before we left. I came prepared, unlike you.”

“It’s not a competition, Goro.”

“Akira, we turn everything into a competition whether we like it or not.”

God, could Goro stop making good points tonight? He was beating Akira in the argument category of the Rivalry Olympics. Fucker. Conceding for now, Akira pouted as Goro let go of his hand to climb into the back. “Do we have any of those canned coffees left?” he asked while Goro inspected his ammunition.

“I grabbed extra at the 777 earlier, along with some other beverages,” Goro replied, briefly ignoring his mission prep in favor of caffeinating the idiotic love of his life. As Goro reached into their cooler, he continued, “Some are black, some have cream or sugar. How do you want your coffee tonight, my dear Joker?”

“Black like my soul, Crow,” Akira replied, fondly recalling his dear pal Satanael on the anniversary of a god’s death. Goro gave him a long, hard look, then hurled a bottle of milk at Akira’s face. Naturally, Akira caught it with all the proficiency in the universe. Then he hurled it right back at Goro, who snatched it from the air without even looking. Well, if Satanael wasn’t allowed, then Arsene better be. “Fine. Something with French roast, also like my soul.”

[milkytheholy1]

Everything Ends: Part 2

Ultimate Masterlist. Part 1.

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

NEW YORK - 2022

"Easy does it, Leo." One step. 

"You've got this." Another step.

"Concentrate." Another step.

"The whole world is counting on youuuu...toooo break the pizza box stack record!" he beamed out, "One hundred, twenty-five boxes." said boxes began shaking as he kept up his pace.

"You know, they say it couldn't be done. But look who's doing it, moi." Leo bragged, taking everything in his stride, "You know that's Spanish for Leo." Donnie hovered beside him, with his phone in hand and your voice on the other end cheering him on, "Wooooooooh, go Leo!"

"Go ahead, my non-lingual friend, count your unhatched fowl. My record stands until you reach the top, which, according to my calculations of wind speed, biometric pressure and dew point, is highly unlikely."

Your voice rang out from the phone, causing Donnie and Leo to flinch while you screamed, "Goooooooo Leoooooo! You can do it, baby! Yeahhh!" The red-eared slider beamed, his ego was definitely at its height. 

 "Wha-" Donnie gasped out, flying backwards as Mikey leapt up onto the thick cables, "According to my calculations, as long as you believe in yourself you can do anything!" 

Leo stretched his arms out, eyes purely focused on the end goal, "Thanks, little brother. No one believes in himself more than me. Leo! Leo! Leo!" he began chanting, which obviously set you and Mikey off, "Leo! Leo! Leo!" And all that cheering seemingly helped as he made it to the top, smashing Donnie's previous record. You and Mikey went ballistic, well more so Mikey than yourself.

"There you are, I've been looking all over for you guys." Raph interrupted your cheering, your voice dimmed down on the phone and you hummed, "Busted~"

Leo ignored your comment and danced along with Mikey, "Oh, hey Raph! Guess who just broke the record?"

"WHAT? YOU DID? How many- I mean, ugh, stop distracting Raph!" he grumbled to himself. However on your end, the atmosphere wasn't as enjoyable, bright lights and sirens were sounding off in the lair; it was Donnie's bad guy alert.

"H-hey guys, Donnie's stalker alarm is going off." you mumbled out, thankfully they listened, unlike last time. Leo started jumping up and down as he prepared himself, throwing some punches out in front of him, "Finally some action, there's this new trick I've been wanting to try out." he grinned, raising his katana in the air. 

"There's been a robbery at the museum and the vehicle is heading towards tenth street." you informed them, Leo thanked you and ended the call. 

"Aha, a 317.9-39.4!" Donnie gasped, pointing his finger up in the air matter-of-factly. The others just stared in confusion, "Oh come on! Has nobody read Donnie's Big Book of Bad Guy Codes?"

LAIR - NEW YORK - 2022

This was going to be a long night, you'd just sent the boys off onto their next bad guy mission and April was investigating something at her university. You weren't exactly sure what though, she only left a vague note, something about discovering the truths of her university; A+ for effort you suppose.

So that just left you and Splinter. Together. Alone. 

Ugh, you wanted to claw your eyes out, it's not that you hated Splinter in any sense of the word, he was just..a lot to handle. You had been sitting in Leo's room, messing with some things idly while you cheered him on from the sidelines. Honestly, you were amazed Donnie was able to find a hideout like this one, but you suppose the market for secret underground lairs is very niche.

Lightbulb!

Of course, it was so simple, even those two crab guys could have thought of it! Explore the lair! Nothing is cooler than exploring abandoned tunnels and sketchy holes. With your phone's flashlight armed in your hand, you left the comfort of Leo's railway cart and headed out on your own. You could faintly hear the idle chit-chat of Splinter's soaps in the background, man, did that guy sure love T.V.

After exploring for an ungodly amount of time, you entered what appeared to be a dojo, "I didn't know you guys had a dojo here?" you muttered under your breath. The room was encased in darkness, a lone flower growing in the centre of the room through the cracked cobbled stones. You waltzed up to the paintings hanging on the wall, they looked very traditional, possibly something Splinter had stashed away somewhere. 

But what truly brought a smile to your face laid on a shelf at the back of the room, littered amongst the burnt-out candles and essence sticks was a framed photo. The picture was a little ripped and the photo frame had seen better days, but the image brought great joy to you.

It was a group photo, taken the day after their famous Shredder fight. You were all a little batted and bruised, but you held large smiles and everyone was holding someone. It made it even more memorial when you recall a certain red-eared slider asking you for dinner moments after, maybe that's why he looked so nervous in the photo.

But what piqued your interest tenfold was the photo behind the photo, "What?" you huffed out. You tugged on the ends of the paper, unlike the group shot, this wasn't in a frame. Slowly bringing it out into the light of your phone, you could faintly make out the face of a young boy.

Suddenly the candles that plagued the dojo lit, the flames dancing on the wick as the room emitted a faint orange glow. Alarmed, you took a step back, basking in the way the fire bathed over you. Stood solemnly by the dojo's entrance was Splinter, he didn't say anything he only stared. To say you were terrified was an understatement, he slowly walked up to where you once stood. Using the stepping-stool gifted to him by his sons, he held the framed photo in his hand with a fond smile on his face.

"I see you like looking at pictures, hm?" he hummed wistfully. You gently nodded your head, stumbling to turn your phone's flashlight off, "I-I didn't mean to intrude-"

"Nonsense, (Y/N)! You are family, you are always welcomed." you think you just felt your heart cry a little at his declaration. Splinter hopped off the little ladder and went behind a curtain right to the shelf, his robe long enough that he gave the illusion of gliding.

He emerged only seconds later with a brown shoe box, he held it carefully in his arms as he shifted the lid open. The box was full of family photos, some taken on polaroids and others taken on film, it was a hodgepodge of technology in one box. His nimble fingers combed through the photos, pulling one out at a time.

He'd show you the photo with a smile and cackle as he shared the memory behind it, but one photo caught you off guard in particular. Shoving aside the baby photos, that you definitely had to go back to later, you plucked the still image and gawked. Between your fingers was a photo of you and Leo, your bodies illuminated by the pale full moon behind you.

You remember this night vaguely, April was throwing a party for an end-of-school celebration. She held it on the rooftop of her apartment, you remember spending most of the afternoon decorating it with fairy lights and vales attached to wooden fences. It was such a tranquil night and it only amplified when Leo took your hand and brought you away from the loud music and cheering.

"(Y/N), I know we've only been together for a few months, but-" he swallowed down the lump in his throat, he looked back into your eyes; they sparkled in the light. He grinned and squeezed your hands in his, "I love you."

Apparently, someone had captured the moment with you both unaware, but god did it make for such a beautiful picture. Splinter had caught you staring at said image for a while, a proud smile on his face. He coughed a little to gain your attention, "You and Blue, you make- you make a very good pair. I'm happy he found someone, someone who not only cares deeply for their partner but for the family that came along with them."

You teared up at that, not quite being able to hold it in anymore. Letting the picture slip from your fingers, you leapt at Splinter and embraced him, "Thank you, Splinter." He rested a hand against your back, small tears filling his own eyes, "Please, call me dad." 

"GUYS! HELLO! ANYONE! SPLINTS!" April's yell disturbed the sombre moment between you both. Pulling away, you jumped to your feet and rushed to the living room where April stood. She was tapping her foot against the ground, impatient. One hand was braced against her hip, while the other combed down her face, "Finally!" she huffed when your figure came into view.

"April, whatever is the matter?" Splinter questioned, perhaps his sons were in trouble? Or maybe the Shredder had returned? Or maybe-

April tugged the unconscious boy from behind her back, it's weird how you didn't see him until now. He flopped onto the ground, face-planting into the concrete; you cringed at the sound. Looking from him then to April, you pointed your finger at the limp, but breathing, body, "Did you drag him through town?"

April swatted away your joke, her lips were pulled down with worry, "H-he showed up at the university, called me commander I think?"

"Commander?" Splinter gawked, April shook her head, "It was like he knew me or something, where are the guys?" You pulled out your phone, skimming your finger across the screen until you got to Leo's name, it rang for a while.

But he did eventually pick up, "Yellllooow?"

"Leo, you and the guys need to get back to the lair pronto. There's, uh, something we need to show you."

"Okie doki loki, on our way!" 

[somethingblu3]

The Discovery Of Love (Chapter 1) | Quinten Quist

Read on Ao3 here

18+ minors dni.

Masterlist | The Discovery Of Love Masterlist

Fandom: The Discovery Of Heaven, De ontdekking van de hemel

Summary:

When Onno discovers you and Quinten childhood best friends are Soulmates he's over the moon Max not so much. Max is terrified at the thought of his possible son being in a relationship with his best friend's daughter while he's in denial that you and Quinten have been seeing each other for months. You both try and keep it under wraps but you both know it's only a matter of time before someone finds out the truth.

TW: secret Relationship, Virgin Quinten, the birds and the bees Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Healing, Healing Soulmates, Canon Divergence,Alternate Universe,POV Second Person, Forbidden Love possible incest

Pairing: Quinten Quist x Female Reader, Quinten Quist x Afab Reader

Word Count: 2,801 (Finally wrote something over 1K! for once)

Graphic Credit: @keep-it-light

Note:

Lightly edited. To be clear i've aged Quintin up to 19 years old. Max's daughter is AFAB and uses she/her pronouns. Also I hope the formatting is alright tumblr's sucks.

Onno Quist figured that at one point in his life he would have to tell his young and innocent virgin son about sex but today would not be that day. Quinten seemed far more interested in architecture than girls that was until he finally noticed you Max’s daughter. At first Onno was taken aback by his growing attraction but as he observed his son it seemed like a match made in heaven in Onno’s eyes at least. Max seemed totally against the idea when Onno brought it up one winter evening over dinner. As he spoke and dug into his turkey Onno’s eyes were fixated on Quintin and you outside in the snow Quinten with his nose stuck in a book of course and you were showering for bugs to add to your collection butterflies especially seemed to be of your most recent hyper-fixation.

It was sweet watching you two bond even if Quinten did seem vaguely disinterested at first that was until he finally looked up from a page in his book bookmarked between two fingers and watched in awe as you bent over to collect a wounded butterfly and shove it into a clear jar.

Onno grunted at the sight. What kind of partnership would you two be, he wondered. Obviously, it's less complicated than his own with Ada. Max was intelligent of course funny and affectionate, and he had been Onno’s best friend for decades, but Onno did find it odd that he knew nothing of the Mother.

“So she just abandoned a baby on your doorstep?” Too interrupts what must have been Max’s hundredth argument on why you and Quinten being together would be a terrible idea.

“Yes, that’s right. Just a name tag I hardly remember the women a one night stand” He recounts.“And so, how did you know she was yours?” Onno inquired. Max paused as he cleansed his pallet with a sip of wine.

“She was a virgin. Part of the deal was that I would make her night the most memorable of all, so in return, she would heal my Emphysema.” Onno nods. “Seems like a fair deal. You really need to quit the smoking though why don’t you give those patches a try? I think they even make gum now.”

“Gum? Have you ever seen a guy my age chewing gum?” Max scoffs. Onno drops the subject these days Max was careless about his health he had gained some weight and he was getting weaker even you had started to notice. You and Quinten were always out running around in the garden either chasing after the dogs of each other.

“Their not”“I never said they were.”“You're reading too much into it like you always do.”“Nonsense” Onno frowned as he rested his chin on his hand “Look at them! Don’t they remind you of someone?” Onno hums as he raises his brow subtly.“I have no idea who you are talking about”, Max rebuttalsOnno rolls his eyes.

“You and Ada, of course,” Onno coos. “You were head over heels in love with her, practically drooling over her when you first laid eyes on her in that bookshop”, Onno remarks. “Was not?” Max says defensively, “Why deny it? Onno probes

“Does it matter if they’re soulmates or not?”Onno scoffs “When did Max Delius loose interest in daughter’s soulmate?” Onno scoffed; he couldn’t believe it. What was the big deal? Before they had met Ada in that bookshop, all they used to pound over was Soulmates, other than science and philosophy.“Since her Soulmate was Quinten Quist”, Max snaps. He knew it. He bloody knew It.

“You thought he wasn’t.”

“I was wrong.”

“When did you discover?” Onno asks curiously, his complete focus on Max and Max alone.“Last Summer. Quinten spent most of his days in the lawn chair reading he had a nasty sunburn didn’t you notice? He was red like a chilli pepper, and then she touched him, and he was back to his normal pale self. Not only that there was a time when Quinten burned himself with a hot glue gun when he was trying to make a replica of a building she touched his finger, and it healed in a matter of minutes no burning sensation” Max recounted.

“Those could just be a matter of coincidences”, Onno suggested. “Just like us.”“No not like that” Max says shaking his head.“There was another incident one that I hadn’t told you about” max says he pauses as if he’s trying to collect himself. “Which incident?”

“We went out to the lake one hot evening teaching Quinten how to sail, if you remember. Well one night he fell into the water. We were both horrified we though something terrible had happened to him he could have died or he could have experienced head trauma. Luckily, I managed to swim in and save him. When I rescued him onto a nearby dock, she kissed him, and he was perfectly fine.

“You never told me” Onno.Max shrugs lightly. “I didn’t want to worry you about everything going on with Ada; besides, Quinten was fine. She healed him, kissed him, and he woke up; his bruises faded away, and his concussion was gone”, Max explained.“She kissed him?” Onno asks, taken aback, his eyes wide“Yes. She was attempting CPR,” clarified Max“And after the kiss, what happened?”“We went home. They didn’t say anything to each other. Quinten stormed off to his room; he was in such a state,” Max recounted“He was angry? About the kiss?”“He broke one of his plane models on purpose.”

Onno’s eyes flickered back to the two of you in the garden. Quinten’s eyes hadn’t returned to his book yet his lapis lazuli eyes where completely transfixed on you as you show him the little creature you had just added to your collection for once he seemed actually interested in the insect as you shovel it into the palm of his hands. Quinten never liked dirt, but Onno figured he would make an acceptation for you.

“He must have forgiven her then” Onno observes himMax turns in his chair as he watches the two of you giggling.

“Yes he must have” He obverses. You were getting to close for Max’s liking he couldn’t have you two together certainly not as soulmates you were both already best friends, inseparable since birth. Now that you were both adults, it would be merely impossible to keep the two of you apart. It would be only a matter of time before you two begin to act on your feelings and become intimate; it was a topic that made Max feel sick to his stomach the thought of his daughter being with his best friend’s son in that way, just like he was with Ada.

He could remember It like It was yesterday being so young and in love tangled in each other he had never seen such an obvious pairing than to two.

“You’ve had the talk with him, I presume?”Onno looks up perplexed he’s already devouring the pudding the table was still completely covered in food you and Quinten had barely touched your supper.“About Soulmates? Yes, he’s always known they exist. I’ve never shied away from that.”

“No, not Soulmates. Sex. I would prefer it for your son not to knock up my daughter, especially as she has just turned eighteen. Her mother would have a heart attack.”

“And you wouldn’t.”

“You know what I mean,” Max says as he sucks on his bottom lip. “When are you going to tell him?” Max probes, “Tonight. That is my plan if things go accordingly.”Max hums.

“I’m sure it’ll go down well. Remember the time you told him Pluto was a planet?”“He was devastated and didn’t talk to me for weeks”, Onno reflects.

“And how do you think he’ll react to learning that babies don’t come from Stalks?” Max inquires Onno groans he had high hopes before but Max’s comments were enough to diminish his attempts.

“Alright then I think we best be going” Max announces as he gets up. You and Quentin must have been out there for hours you must have been freezing cold Onno pulled Max by the wrist of his suit.“Huh?” Max murmurs

“Wait” Onno instructs him firmly his eyes still on you and Quinten in the garden.

As you take the butterfly back from his hands, Quinten jerks his hand away immediately. He kisses his finger as if he had been bitten but still seems to be in pain. You then murmur a few words to him barely audible through the glass door he then seemingly stretches out his finger, and you kiss it.“There's your proof right there”, Onno comments.“I knew they were I just didn't want to admit it to you” Max reveals. “The thought of them..”

“Is it just because he's my son?” Onno asks, “No, not just because of that...”

“Then why?” Onno prods. Max sighs as if he's trying to compose himself, but then he catches his wristwatch in the corner of his eye.“It's getting late; thank you for having us.”

“Why won't you answer my question?”

“It's not important” Max shrugs Onno doesn't by it something's off.“Would you like the rest of the food wrapped up then?” Onno asks as he stares down at the full table; he can hear you giggling from outside as Max opens the door.

“That would be nice” He comments his eyes still transfixed on his daughter.“My Ladybug it's time for us to go” Max announces he's clearly caught you and Quintin of guard sharing a moment as you stare into his bright sparkling Lapis lazuli eyes.“But Father” You groan can I stay for a few more hours? I want to see Quintin's train set.” Max rolls his eyes “No” he says firmly. “You have your exams next week to prepare for.”

“Aw fine” You groan as you shove the jar into your satchel Onno grins.“Did you catch a good one?” Onno asks “A Saddleback”, You announce joyfully “I'm sure Quentin will be researching it later” Onno comments “Not after the thing bit me.”

 “It wasn't a spine it was a bite and It only did that because you almost crushed it with your big hands!” That comment earns you a smack from Quentin. You hiss and Max glares at him “Enough we'll be going” Max says as he takes the tin foiled wrapped food from Onno and they walk down the hallway.“Goodnight,” Onno says as he closes the door

“Good luck”, Max whispers“I'll need more than that”, Onno remarks as he reaches for the bottle of wine.*******“What did you want to talk to me about, Father?” Quinten approaches him with a book in his hand about the history of butterflies. Perfect, Onno thinks.“I wanted to talk to you about something important” Onno starts Quentin doesn't look up from him as he sits at the table; he is completely immersed in the book's pages.“Is it about Mother?” He asks, “No”, Onno replies.

“It's about something more serious.” This finally makes him look up and push the book away from him.

“Alright then, what is it about? Quinten wonders.“You know how we've always told you that stalks deliver babies?” “Yes”,Quinten confirms.“Well, that's not entirely the case.”“So you lied to me?” Inquires Quinten“I wouldn't say lied more bent the truth.”

“Why?” Quinten asks his Father curiously Onno takes a breath wishing he had taken a sip of the wine instead but it was too early he had to man up and get this over with.“Quinten. As you know, a man falls in love a woman sometimes they are soulmates sometimes they are not when they are though they can heal each other's wounds, emotional or physical.”

“I already know this, Father” Quinten buts in“I know but let me get to the point” Onno stresses “When they fall in love they might decide to have a baby but the stalk doesn't deliver it the stalk doesn't exist so get that story out of your mind. To have a baby, the couple they procreate...As in, they have sex.”

“Sex?” Quinten repeats, “Sex, yes.”

“And what's that?” Onno sighs yet he reists the wine “It's a partnership between two people someotimes to produce a child sometimes just to have fun and produce hormones” Onno tries to explain in a way Quinten would understand.

“And why are you telling me about this, Father?” Quinten asks him, seemingly not phased yet.

“Well, I've noticed how close you and Max's daughter have been getting recently, and I wondered if you were both...intimate.” “Why would you want to know that?” Asks Quinten

“Well if you were I would like to know that you where both beeing safe. If not, you could risk her getting pregnant, and Max wouldn't be too happy about that,” Onno remarks.

“But aren't babies a blessing?” Quinten questions. “They are, but not everyone wants one or can have one, and I thought I would make sure that if you two were together, that you were both safe.”“Well, we're not”, Quinten announces. “Good”

“But we're soulmates, aren't we? You saw the way that butterfly bit me...spited me,” Quinten recounts “I did...Max told me about the sailing incident:” Onno reveals“He did?” Quinten asks defeatedly 

“Why were you angry? You would be lucky to have that girl as your soulmate she seems like the perfect match she's intelligent, curious quirky and wise like you” Onno observes.“You would think” Quinten sighs “But I guess...i was scared I didn't want to ruin anything between us as friends” He reveals.

“Oh well, that is very respectable, Quint”

“Please don't call me that, Daddy. I'm not five years old anymore”, Quinten groans.“Oh well, very well. I'm just glad that you and her are just friends.

*******

“Oh fuck!” You pant as Quinten thrusts himself deeper into you. He had to keep you quiet. The palm of his hand was wrapped around your mouth as he rutted inside you in The Greenhouse.“We can't let them hear us”, Quinten reminds “Slow down!” You reprehend him. Since you had become intimate over the past few months, Quinten was like a wild animal in a heat and seemed to show no signs of slowing down.

You didn't mind of course, it was a nice distraction and a nice stress relief but it would be nice for you two to spend time together without the sex for once no matter how mind blowing it truly was.

You groaned as you came down from your orgasm and you prayed it was your last your legs were shaky as you held onto one of the plant pots for your life. Quinten held your waist firmly and you felt a mix of your and his cum dripping between your legs luckily the aroma was easily hidden by the musk of the plants. Quinten buries his lips into the back of your head. Seemingly satisfied, you watch his reflection in the window's glass.

“You told him we weren't seeing each other, right?” You ask “Of course” Quinten replies as he steps away and helps you get dressed picking your torn skirt from the floor.

“Do you think he bought it?” You ask him curiously Quinten had to be smart about this Onno Quist was a very smart man much like Quinten.“I think so,” He recalls.

“Although I don't think this tear in your skirt is going to help much” He comments and a grin spreads across his lips.“I hate you”, You murmur rolling your eyes.

“That's not what you were crying out a few moments ago.”You hit him just like he did on Christmas. You watch him as he leans closer, parting his lips and pushing your hair behind your ear.

“We probably shouldn't see each other for a while just so they don't catch on. Why don't we stage a fight?” He asks, cupping your cheek. Lost in his Lapis lazuli eyes, you didn't have much room to think this through.“Okay,” You tell him. He was about to lean in and kiss you, but then there was a knock on the greenhouse door.

“Darling,” Max calls. “You should be studying.”“Alright fine Father” You reply. You give Quinten a small nod as you leave, but he feels Max's eyes on him. You both had to sell this fight you couldn't risk his Father and Max finding out you where sleeping with each other behind their backs may as well have fun with it Quinten thought as he watched you leave.

[recusant-s-sigil]

So you know how the card combat system in CoM is never brought up again in the mainline series (non-mobile games)? This got pretty long, so it’ll be under the cut. Spoilers for Union Cross. TLDR: Ven’s presence in Castle Oblivion is what made it have the card system.

According to the 8th of Ansem the Wise’s secret reports in KH2, “[Castle Oblivion] consists of 13 floors above and 12 floors below ground, with the contents of its ‘White Rooms’ transforming in response to its visitor’s memories.” Those memories are etched onto cards, created by sampling specifically Sora and Riku’s memories. Who is the first person we see create these world cards?

Marluxia, who also teaches Sora how to use the cards to his advantage in combat for some reason. Come to think of it, why does Marluxia show Sora how to use the cards? In-universe, I mean. And how do the CO-assigned Org members know how to use them as well? But I’m getting off-track. We’re here to talk about why the cards are the combat system, not how the characters know how to use it.

Castle Oblivion is a place tied to the Age of Fairytales by its inhabitants, both as the Castle and as the Land of Departure. Ven is from then, as are Marluxia and Larxene, who both end up there. Eraqus is (probably but not confirmed to be) descended from Brain. Xehanort calls the Land of Departure a second home and is also related to a Union Leader, Ephemer. Remember, the contents of the White Rooms reflect the memories of the Castle’s visitors, so what then would happen if someone resided there? Would their memory, no matter if they consciously are aware of it or not, affect the whole castle to such a degree that the combat system reflects that of a bygone era?

Did you know that Kingdom Hearts χ, the browser game, used cards as its combat system? Ever wonder why Flick Rush exists? Dark Road also uses cards in its combat system, though it’s less a game of War and more “hit the enemy with sleights as fast as possible before their turn arrives”.

In Unchained χ and Union Cross, instead of cards, your player character uses Medals, which function basically the same but are exclusive to that specific game. Medals don’t show up anywhere else in the series, unlike cards.

At the end of Union Cross, it’s revealed that the events of Unchained χ were taking place inside a datascape, a digital recreation of the real Daybreak Town. Makes sense, then, that Medals only appear in that specific stretch of time/gameplay. We also discover that Dream Eaters, both Spirits and Nightmares, are actually wielders whose hearts have been kept safe by their Chirithy, transforming it into the technicolor Pokémon ripoffs of Dream Drop Distance. Only makes sense that they’d use cards for Flick Rush in that case, right?

Ever wonder why Luxord’s title is the Gambler of Fate when his attribute is time? Cards and dice, the main weapons he and his subset of Nobodies use, have been associated with fortune-telling since they were invented. Card reading, especially Tarot, are popular forms of attempting to predict the future or find out something important about yourself and others pertaining your/their destiny. But in this series, destiny is never left to chance, meaning no need to gamble. Perhaps Luxord is hoping to game the system while staying within the rules.

Back to world cards. Doesn’t the way they work seem oddly familiar? They use the memory of a person to project a world for them to interact with within a single location. Sounds very much like the Book of Prophecies creating worlds from the future it saw (the memory of that future etched in its pages) for wielders to collect Lux from the safety of Daybreak Town, since the actual worlds are too far away to get to besides using a Corridor of Darkness or similar.

I could go into how Skuld, Sigurd, and the Dark Road Norse Name crew connect to this (and possibly speculate about Sigurd’s role in Missing-Link), as well as the strange pods in CO/the Mansion and the significance of the Master’s Defender Keyblade being the one used to lock away the LoD but that’s more research than I could possibly stomach right now so I’ll save that analysis for another time. Besides, that’s more related to fate in general and not specifically cards so it’s probably best to keep that separate anyways.

If you made it this far, I want to thank you for reading! This is something I’ve had on my mind for a while and it feels great to finally get it down on paper (or rather, in a post).

[torscrawls]

Space Case

The first chapter of my contribution for the Invisobang is now out! You can read it here or on my AO3.

Artwork by the amazing MinnowMarsh and Amar Art!

Summary: Danny runs into some astronauts from NASA’s lunar mission while trying to do his homework on the moon. This leads to new friends, a new job, and eventually to Danny finding a place for himself out in the stars.

Also, Danny gets to be a gremlin in space.

Lunar Surface: Habitat 00

The first time Danny appeared they didn't know what to do.

There was a child. A teenager. Sitting at their table. Their table on the moon.

Cecilia Perez had worked for NASA for many years. She had been fascinated by the universe and all its secrets since she was a little child and had felt extreme delight in slowly uncovering and discovering new aspects of it through her work.

She had had the immense fortune of being chosen as one of the crew for a new project with a semi-permanent base on the moon.

It had all gone above everyone's expectations and now they had built the majority of the base and set up their residence there. Cecilia herself had lived in her, with generous words, quaint living quarters for a week now, together with four others. They were the first wave, the trials, and they learned so much every day.

Few things really surprised her anymore, as she had woken up to everything from blaring alarms to a surreal vista of storm clouds covering a majority of the visible side of Earth, but this…

This.

Cecilia was currently frozen in the doorway to the communal kitchen, staring with wide eyes and open mouth at a boy sitting at the table and reading a book.

A boy she had never seen before.

A boy who hadn't come with them on the shuttle here.

A boy she had never heard anyone even mention. And everything surrounding this mission was as heavily monitored and controlled as it was possible to be.

She stood there, staring, for what had to be a fairly long time, the boy didn't seem to notice her as he scrunched his brow in concentration and wrote something down in his notebook that laid splayed open on the table at his elbow.

He had almost blindingly white hair and was dressed in a jumpsuit that honestly didn't look too different from their own, and for a second Cecilia wondered if she had forgotten one of their teammates. But he was young, he didn't look to be older than maybe 15, and despite the familiar style of his clothes, what was out of place was the way it shone; despite being made out of primarily a black material, it was covered in shining white specks eerily resembling the stars just outside. The speckled dots started on the black of his arms and legs, few and far between, but got increasingly denser closer to his hands and feet until they blended together into pure white. Either his clothes were embedded with tiny LEDs, or they were in fact glowing.

She stood there, utterly flabbergasted, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation to what she was seeing, any explanation to what was right in front of her, until she heard someone approach her from behind and Naomi Watkins' voice said "Well, what's wrong, Perez? You got yourself stuck to the hull?"

Cecilia Perez slowly turned towards her colleague—her friend—keeping the boy in her periphery as she whisper-shouted her reply in a panicked voice, "There's someone at the table!"

Cecilia was determined to not let her friend walk past her before they knew it was safe and did her best to block Watkins' way into the kitchen, feeling a bit ridiculous since the other woman was so much taller than she was.

Watkins gave a short laugh—too loud—as she pulled her long curly hair up into a ponytail, and Cecilia tensed as she turned her focus back to the boy, but he didn't seem to have noticed the sudden sound. Watkins smiled easily and asked, "What? Is it Lovelace?"

Cecilia shook her head even as he wished that the person in the kitchen was indeed their shorthaired, buff, slightly intimidating, but familiar, commander. "It's—it's a stranger. I don't know who it is."

"Come on, we're only five people," Watkins said as she pushed into the doorway beside her, leaning to see into the room, "you're saying you don't remember one of us after all this ti—"

She stopped short as her eyes landed on the stranger, still reading, sitting at their kitchen table. "Okay, what the fuck."

"Right?!" Cecilia hissed back, eyes still fixed on the stranger.

"Have you informed Commander Lovelace?" Watkins asked.

Cecilia shook her head. "I just found him." She opted for not including the fact that she had been standing there staring for an indefinite amount of time since.

Watkins gave a short nod, her eyes also trained on the stranger.

As they both watched him he slowly reached up a hand and both of them tensed where they stood, before he flipped a page in the book. Grumbling under his breath as he did so.

Cecilia let out a quiet and relieved breath before asking, "Well, should you or I go and tell her?"

"We can use the com?" Watkins said as she slowly leaned closer to the wall, reached a hand up, and pressed the com to turn it on, making it spark to life.

The sudden sound succeeded in drawing the stranger's attention where all their whispered conversation had failed and he whipped his head around to look right at them with wide surprised eyes.

As if they were the ones who were where they shouldn't and had surprised him.

And those eyes. They were green enough that the color seemed to spill from their edges, leaking into the room and casting his face in an almost eerie light; seeping the color out of his cheeks until he looked almost as pale as a corpse.

His sudden movement made both Cecilia and Watkins startle, the latter badly enough for her to remove her hand from the com, turning it back off.

Well, it was too late for stealth now anyway. Cecilia exchanged a look with Watkins, gestured for her to stay back, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and asked, in a voice that was only slightly shaky, "Where did you come from?!"

The boy silently pointed to the wall to the right, but Cecilia was well aware that the only thing outside that wall was the surface of the moon itself, no structures or ships or anything.

She took a step closer to the table and pressed on, "Who let you in?!"

"No one," the boy said as he raised his hands in a disarming gesture. His voice seemed to echo strangely in the room. "Sorry. I just wanted to use the table for a second. And I was curious who you were. I haven't seen you here before."

"What do you mean you haven't seen us here—Who are you?!" Cecilia asked, and she would be the first to admit that it came out as quite aggressive, but she was confused and she was stressed and she needed some damned answers.

The boy smiled at that and extended a hand as if greeting. "My name is Danny!"

Cecilia did not take it, instead looking at the appendage cautiously as she asked, "Alright… Danny. What are you doing here?"

The self-proclaimed Danny sent a pointed look down at the book still laying splayed open on the table in front of him before looking back up at her and Watkins with a raised eyebrow. "…My homework?"

And that… was not the answer she had been expecting. She looked over her shoulder to exchange a glance with Watkins, but she seemed just as confused from where she hung back by the door. She looked back at the boy with an incredulous, "Are you serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be? I like to do it here sometimes, on the moon, I mean, but this time when I got here I saw this place! And I just wanted to drop by and say hi and maybe see if you had a table or something. My back hurts from sitting on the ground all the time."

"Why are you doing your homework on the moon?"

"Well I get left alone here! Mostly." He sent them an almost accusing look. Cecilia didn't know if she was expected to feel apologetic or not.

"We're sorry?" Watkins piped up from the doorway.

"Don't be!" Danny sent her a smile and a thumbs up, "I love your work!"

"But that's not an explanation!" Cecilia exclaimed in frustration.

Danny shrugged. "It's the answer to your question. Maybe you should ask better ones if you don't like the answers." The boy calling himself Danny paused, before continuing in a quieter and almost distressed tone of voice, "Oh, Ancients. I'm turning into Clockwork."

He was infuriating, no doubt about that, but he didn't seem hostile. At least not yet. If this was some kind of trick, some kind of attack, then at least maybe she could learn more about him first.

"What are you even doing?" Cecilia leaned to the side, trying to get a glimpse of the book lying open on the table; maybe she could get some answers that way. She needed something to tell the higher ups after all this.

"I'm working on a project for my science class, it's about theoretical travel between planets, and what better inspiration than real space, am I right?"

"I—I guess?" Cecilia agreed before frowning as what he said really registered, "Wait, you're what? In high school?" How did a seemingly ordinary kid end up all the way out here? And from what he said, it didn't sound as if this was the first time he had been here.

Danny gave a small grimace at that. "Yeah… But not for long! Hopefully I'll get into a good college and then I can come back more officially!"

She was almost scared to ask. "Officially…?"

Danny nodded with a big smile and shining eyes. "Yes! I want to be an astronaut one day! It's been my dream my whole life!"

"Seriously?" Watkins exclaimed, looking exasperated. "You're on the moon."

"I know! Isn't it amazing?" He smiled. "So?"

"No, nothing," Cecelia said as she shook her head, before muttering, "Well, how are we going to explain this?"

"Explain what?" Danny asked as he tilted his head.

"You!" Cecilia said with a gesture to encompass all of him.

"Well, what's the problem? I can… I can leave, if you need me to? I didn't mean to cause any trouble," he said and he looked so crestfallen as he said it that Cecilia almost felt bad. Almost.

"Do you have a way of getting back?" Cecilia asked, feeling ridiculous even saying the words. "To Earth, I mean?" If that was where he came from…

"Yes! Thanks for asking though. It was great meeting you guys," he gushed as he gathered up his book, notebook, and pen and smiled at them. "You're just as nice as you seemed from the interviews."

Cecilia gave a mute nod and a strained smile, a part of her was almost morbidly curious to see what he would do next, and considering the silence beside her, she guessed Watkins was in a similar position.

Danny waved at Cecilia and Watkins before walking towards the wall to the right, and then passing right through it and disappearing from sight.

Leaving the kitchen empty except for Cecilia and Watkins.

"Well," Watkins drew the word out on a sigh as she slumped against the doorframe. "We didn't cover this in training."

Cecilia found her eyes trained on the spot where Danny had just walked through the wall. Like a— "Is the moon haunted?!"

Watkins was silent for a long while, and when Cecilia finally managed to tear her eyes away from the wall and look at her colleague, she found her frowning at the com. "…Who's going to tell the commander?"

[soudlenoop]

“What even happens in this AU of yours, Mr. Big Time Gambler?” Part 2.5

HYPERCHROME AU CHAPTER 2.5: SURGE’S TIME TO SHINE

Theme: https://youtu.be/mVurA44hwiw?si=yVqoFLEZIQ0AGezO (Kickstart My Heart - Motley Crue)

Hey, look, check this out! I can count without going up a number! This is the first of the subchapters for Hyperchrome AU. These subchapters (which I’ve lovingly dubbed “point-fives”) typically focus on the corresponding main chapter’s events, but from a different character’s perspective. They can also take place before the events of the main story, and act as context to the actions of another character, or something. Speaking of something…

Chapter 2.5 takes place at the same time as Chapter 2, and focuses on the misadventures of Surge Laverock the Tenrec, who starts out as an average student (Yeah, kids actually do have school in this universe) living an average life in Starlight City, counting down the days until Winter Break… but then, PLOT happened! How did it happen, you ask? On a school trip to a power plant, Surge finds herself in a classic case of “wrong time, wrong place” when she gets a little too close to a generator that suddenly goes haywire, causing herself to get shocked at a dangerously high voltage.

Luckily, Surge survives, but she soon discovers that the accident granted her the power of electrokinesis! Inspired by the various comic book superheroes she read about, Surge decides to use this newfound ability to fight evil! Unfortunately, uhh… well, it’s not as easy as it looks.

The rest of the chapter consists of Surge slowly getting accustomed to her status as a hero. Along the way, she meets many new faces, while simultaneously getting into WACKY SHENANIGANS!!!

What kind of new faces? Well at one point, Surge meets Kitsuna Keller the Fennec, after saving him from getting the crap beaten out of him or something, I don’t know. They become very good friends, ok? I’m very tired of writing this.

Surge also has Amy Rose, her friend that she has in school, which she DOES go to. She likes Sonic a lot. Like a whole lot… Like, seriously, she’d do anything for Sonic… yeah.

But also, we got villains. 3 of them, in fact. At some point, Surge attracts the attention of infamous crime boss, Clutch Carnby the Opossum, after her heroic feats are recognized by the mainstream. Clutch, feeling the stress of GUN’s recent appearance in South Island, fears the possibility of what is essentially a second Sonic, and hires 2 mercenaries to take Surge out.

Who are these 2 mercenaries? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you. The first one is Mimic the Shapeshifter, an Octopus who can take the form of virtually anybody. He’s weirdly secretive about his past, but that doesn’t matter, he’s still pretty good at what he does.

The second one is Nicole Stilgram the Weasel. Why, yes, she IS the sister of Nack Stilgram the Weasel, the guy I mentioned in the Chapter 2 description! Don’t be confused, though, they’re very different. See, while Nack is a GUN soldier in this AU, Nicole acts more accordingly to how Nack acts in the actual games.

Basically, these 3 miscreants give Surge a whole heap of trouble, and eventually, they actually seem to have her cornered in an alleyway, but an oddly lucky slip-up by Mimic gives Surge the chance to escape! Naturally, Clutch and Nicole begin to give chase, before being suddenly stopped… by Mimic?!

Immediately, a gaggle of GUN soldiers appear from every angle, weapons all pointed at Clutch and Nicole, but not Mimic or Surge. Hey, wait a sec! That Octopus is no miscreant! I don’t even think he’s a mercenary! Mimic’s shapeshifting-form-thing that I should explain slowly dissolves, revealing a GUN uniform! …If you haven’t caught on yet, the big twist is that Mimic is a spy from GUN. Bet you didn’t see that coming, and yes, I DID foreshadow it in the Chapter 2 description. You can call him… Private Mimic Nisemono. Wh-… No, “Private” isn’t part of his name, that’s just his rank in GUN.

So, the group of GUN soldiers arrest Clutch, but unfortunately, Nicole escapes. Before leaving, Mimic apologizes to Surge for any confusion, and then goes off to do… y’know, GUN stuff.

A little while later, Clutch is broken out of prison, with the help of Nicole… who promptly shoots Clutch in the back, killing him! Now, NICOLE is the infamous crime boss! Or something like that, I don’t know, I’ve been writing this for too long.

I’m gonna be honest with everybody, I had a real hard time writing this. I guess I just lost motivation a bit there, but hopefully, I can find it again for Chapter 3! See you next time!

[the-joy-of-knowledge]

The perks of being a late bloomer.

I am inspired by late bloomers, the people whose talent, capabilities, and ideas were discovered later in life, and have to play catch up with their peers only to succeed beyond the expectation of the world.

If this is you, welcome on board. You will now have a seat on the table with J.K Rowling, Oprah, Vera Wang, Viola Davis, Julia Child, and even Rani Hamid who began playing chess at 35.

As a late bloomer, here are things that I have learned about myself.

Opportunities come to me only after I have made a change. A major change in my life is usually followed by a string of opportunities. However, it takes a while to make that change either due to imposter syndrome, inferiority complex, or childhood behaviors that I haven't gotten rid of. I believe my life changed for the better when I began making significant changes in my life, I took more risks and built my confidence. Now, every opportunity is a sign that I have indeed grown.

Uncertainty was a secret weapon. Till today, my passion grows bigger and bigger to include everything that I never knew as a child. I did not know my skills as a teen, I was not particularly gifted in anything, and I also was too shy to interact with other people. So, it was hard to decide how I wanted to live my life or what my major would have been. This made me fall in love with reading biographies. I did it so that I could get an idea of how people make life-changing decisions in times of uncertainty

It is all in the process: The universe will force the late bloomers to succeed. I mean that I just had to do well because the universe is like an algorithm that pushes you to things according to your interests. Taking culinary lessons to a 30-year-old mum is different from a 15-year-old student. The former has to learn to not only be a good cook but to be able to do so with a much bigger responsibility. Hence they are forced to learn faster and make better decisions.

The catch-up process is rapid: The rate at which you learn or improve when you do so intentionally and for your own benefit is massive. You would be completely blown away by your capacity. Your achievements will shock you. You will learn faster than normal because you are combining experience, intelligence, and grit.

It does not matter when I started: I delved into literature last year, and I made a goal to read one classic a month and I have read 6 so far. Who can tell when I read them? No one, absolutely none. Hence the time I started is immaterial to my growth, all that matters is that I have read the books.

You will always be the tortoise of your group. When in a group, I am usually the one who gets everything last or later but when I do, trust me it feels like the most. The story of the tortoise and the hare will forever be my reminder that I can get to the finish line even if it appears to be slow or late. I will still get there.

People will confuse your bloom for luck. Those who never knew how your started will always call you lucky.

With love,

Black Pearl

[roachleakage]

On Crackpots and Crack Theories

I'll be happy to admit, I didn't share most of the "supporting evidence" in The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria because I do not have the expertise to debunk many of the claims they're making. I'm not an occultist or a historian, I'm a guy who likes to read horror fiction. However, I do know a couple of things about sussing out crackpot theories, so I figured I would share some of the tells that let me know this book is full of shit.

1: Crackpots make extremely grandiose claims.

Most scientific theories are not what you'd call earth-shattering. Important, yes, but not the kind of thing that would upend your entire understanding of history, the universe, whathaveyou. When exceptions arise in actual science, they're met with surprise from everyone, often including the scientists who made the discovery in question.

Crackpots, on the other hand, are nearly always trying to start a revolution. They might claim to have discovered some heretofore unfamiliar (yet fantastically effective!) form of medicine, an incredible facet of history that will change how we understand civilization, whathaveyou. In the preface to The Secret of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria, A.P. Sinnett claims that the idea of Atlantis is the missing key to understanding history; that, indeed, it is impossible to understand how humans spread and diversified if you don't take their information into account.

2: They are overconfident in their "findings".

As I said before, real science usually involves very few revolutions. So when an actual scientist makes a discovery that seems to Change Everything, the very first thing they are going to do is try to disprove it. And then, usually, try to disprove it again. Because if your results seem to upend everything that has been observed up to this point, the problem is most likely on your end.

Crackpots do not want to disprove their theories. They don't even want to test them, and avoid actual peer review like a vampire avoids sunlight. Instead, they release their ideas through avenues that they know won't earn them too many questions, such as ordinary book publishers, non-scientific magazines, or TV and radio. They might claim that they were forced to these outlets by mainstream science trying to "suppress" their theories - which is a sure clue that their ideas don't stand up to scrutiny.

3: Their "mountains of evidence" are piles of straw.

As you might imagine, building evidence to support a theory can be tough work. It usually involves a lot of experiments, studies, peer review, more studies, and of course, cross-referencing your findings with fellow scientists to rule out other explanations for what you've seen. And the bigger your theory, the more work and rigor it's going to take.

Crackpots skip all that, and instead scavenge the work of other scientists for any bit of information they think serves their purpose, no matter how disparate or irrelevant. For example, W. Scott-Elliot has pointed to the discovery of underwater volcanoes and significant volcanic activity in the Atlantic as evidence that a continent existed there and was destroyed by calamity, despite the fact that the presence of volcanoes does not prove a continent any more than the presence of dog shit proves there is grass underneath. Similarly, the (supposed) existence of portraits of Black people in Central America does not prove that those people were Atlantean, as the book claims.

He also points to several alleged parallels between different cultures around the globe. While I cannot speak to the extent that any of these may be true, what I did notice is that they are all divorced from any surrounding context that might explain the similarities or reveal them to be less close than Scott-Elliot is claiming. Of course it sounds impressive when you claim that several Central American cultures have practices that neatly echo Christianity, but even if we assume that much is true, what did these practices actually look like? Did they really serve the same exact purpose as similar Christian practices? We are never given the details that might answer these questions, just the vague claim that they are totally the same, you guys.

Additionally, many of the similarities they cite occur between completely different sets of cultures - raising the question of whether they should even be viewed as related in the first place.

4: They frequently appeal to ignorance and speculation.

Crackpots love to use supposed gaps in current knowledge as evidence that their theory is correct. For example, Scott-Elliot claims that we don't know how people successfully brought bananas from the Old World to Central America, and points to a German botanist (notably not an archaeologist or other expert on the subject of human travel) who concluded that they must have been transported prior to the current Ice Age by "civilized man".

The thing is, the existence of a mystery that your theory might potentially solve isn't proof that your theory is correct, especially when it is so elaborately detailed (the claims of "root races" and so forth) and covers such a broad swath of alleged history that it can easily take credit for any random coincidence in the world. Additionally, the idle speculation of one racist botanist does not prove in any sense that there is no other way bananas could have traveled.

5: One or more of their major tenets has already been disproven.

Even if 99% of the claims in this book were correct as written, there is no possible way that it could prove that a continent called Atlantis really existed between America and Europe. Why?

Firstly, because Plato made Atlantis up. He explicitly said as much in the story where he introduced the concept. It was never real, it was an elaborate metaphor created for the sake of a thought experiment.

And secondly, because geological records have already shown us how the continents got to their current shapes and positions - and it makes much more sense than the placement of an entire continent between Europe and America that was sunk into the ocean by natural disasters, especially when you factor into the shit that the Atlantis theory doesn't explain. Now, in all fairness to Scott-Elliot, the concept of Pangaea wouldn't be formed for nearly 20 years after this was published, but now that we do have that information, we can safely consider the sunken continent hypothesis to be bunk.

So that, in a nutshell, is how to debunk crackpots when you have no idea what the fuck they're talking about. You're generally going to run into at least a couple of these red flags, but it also pays to just keep your critical thinking hat on and ask yourself if the claims you're reading really sound all that reasonable compared to anything you might already know about the subject in question. Research helps too, but in this case, since the text handily disproved itself, I couldn't be assed.

That's all, see you later!

[rphelperblog]

Beautiful YA Book Quotes

inspired by @enchantedwritingdesk​ - feel free to edit or change pronouns for rp purposes- varied subjects of quotes all considered beautiful written by critics in the realm of Young Adult books of all genres

“You may be born into a family, but you walk into friendships. Some you’ll discover you should put behind you. Others are worth every risk.”

“If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend, you’re more than lucky.”

“Don’t get stabbed. It makes everything awkward.” 

“We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither.” 

“Broken isn’t the same as unfixable."

"Some walks you have to take alone."

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”

“Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today’s tasks.” 

“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared.”

“Don’t get stabbed. It makes everything awkward.” 

“You should eat a waffle. You can’t be sad if you eat a waffle” 

“Making a decision isn’t about knowing every potential consequence. It’s about knowing what you want and chasing a path that takes you in that direction”

“When I read, I feel emotion all on my own. Emotion no living person is making me feel.

“The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.”

“I think that maybe forgiveness is like change—it comes in small steps.” 

“People really are like houses with vast rooms and tiny windows. And maybe it’s a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other.”

“Even in its first faint traces, love could alter a landscape. It wrote unimagined stories and made the most beautiful, forbidding places.”

“I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.” 

“If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system. That’s much more powerful than rebelling outside the system.” 

“The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.” 

“Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you.”

“We can’t know what’s going to happen. We can just try to figure it out as we go along.” 

“Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.”

“What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?”

“The funny thing about armor is that it doesn’t just keep other people out. It keeps us in. We build it up around us, not realizing that we’re trapping ourselves.” 

“Take care not to listen to anyone who tells you what you can and can’t be in life.” 

"Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story."

“When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.”

“Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.” 

“Our private tastes in books showed a hint of our secret selves.” 

“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.” 

“I feel like I need to speak out, because if no one speaks out, if no one says, this is me, this is what I believe in, and this is why I’m different, and this is why that’s okay, then what’s the point? What’s the point of living in this beautiful, great melting pot where everyone can dare be anything they want to be?”

"The universe is bigger than anything that can fit into your mind."

“Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.” 

"I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good."

"You could rattle the stars. You could do anything, if you only dared. And deep down, you know it too, and that's what scares you the most."

“Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.”

"Things were rough all over but it was better that way. That way, you could tell the other guy was human too."

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.” 

“We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That’s why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.”

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young."

“Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose.”

"I know that the whole point—the only point—is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go."

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

“I believed, and still believe, that you can build your dreams brick by brick. That you can accomplish anything with persistence.” 

”A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” I really hate this expression. I bet fish would totally want bicycles.”

“It was impossible to feel alone in a room full of favorite books. I had the sense that they knew me personally, that they’d read me cover to cover as I’d read them.” 

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."

"Child, no one is ever ready for anything. I would never doom you to that. What sort of adventureless life would that be?"

"The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like clouds, and she would ring them out like the rain."

Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it"

“She delighted in the smell of the ink, the rough feel of the paper between her fingers, the rustle of sweet pages, the shapes of letters before her eyes.” 

“It’s amazing how the more you read, the less you know.”

“Our private tastes in books showed a hint of our secret selves.” 

"It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys."

"As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”

"Because sometimes chance and circumstance can seem like the most appalling injustice, but we just have to adapt. That's all we can do."

"Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life."

"I'm done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed."

"Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it."

"Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live."

"We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong."

"There's no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it."

Why would you be given wings if you weren't meant to fly?"

"People never really died. They only went on to a better place, to wait a while for their loved ones to join them. And then once more they went back to the world, in the same way they had arrived the first time around."

"I wanted a love thick with time, as inscrutable as if a lathe had carved it from night and as familiar as the marrow in by bones.”

"You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it’s a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.”

"Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now."

"People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right."

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you."

“I trust you to find the good in me, but the bad I must be sure you don’t overlook.”

"We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken."

“It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.”

“Sometimes there’s beauty in the tough words. It’s all in how you read them.”

"But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way...Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield."

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough."

“I wonder what it’s like to have that much power over a boy. I don’t think I’d want it; it’s a lot of responsibility to hold a person’s heart in your hands.”

"Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other. "

“You need to be yourself, but you also shouldn’t feel like you have to fight everyone, even yourself, to be it.”

“I bet you could sometimes find all the secrets of the universe in someone’s hand.”

“Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyway.”

"Doubt everything at least once. What you decide to keep, you'll be able to be confident of. And what you decide to ditch, you will replace with what your instincts tell you is true."

"Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark."

“There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.”

“We all bear scars ... Mine just happen to be more visible than most.”

"But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there."

"Just as a river by night shines with the reflected light of the moon, so too do you shine with the light of your family, your people, and your God. So you are never far from home, never alone, wherever you go."

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."

"When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly."

"Things are rough all over."

“I think you can sort of slip out of your life and it can be hard to find a way back in.”

“To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.”

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."

"All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside."

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

[aizawas-upper-left-wisdom-tooth]

Idea for a fanfic. This could be of any fandom. The fic takes place in a world that has something significantly different from our world. (Ie-. Pokemon, LOTR, DC, MARVEL, ect.) And it's a fandom that the fanfic author is a real nerd about so they know a bunch of details about the story and interworking of the world and characters.

Then enters our MC. MC could be a self insert/YN/OC does not matter, but they are originally from our world and universe. Then they somehow get transported(or my personal favorite, reborn) into the fandoms world. The catch??? They are not a fan of the media that they are now a part of. Here's my example of what spurred this idea.

MC is reborn, they remembered dying then they were trapped for a while in a tight room and they feel different from before. One day it's too tight and they break free! Only to discover they are some weird bird monster thing they don't recognize??? and now they're stuck in the nest while growing up??? When they finally learn how to fly they're ecstatic at finally being able to see the world and any of the creatures outside because they haven't seen anything other than their mother and maybe siblings since hatching. They spread their wings and are doing dips and dives and are so happy to finally be rid of the nest and- is that a fucking Jiggly Puff??????!!!!!

Turns out they're like a Ho-Oh or something and what they know of Pokemon is only the base random tidbits from existing on the internet and hearing people talk about it at school. Now they have to deal with random cults, gangs, and scientists going after them because they're super rare and practically a god or something! Bonus if they decide to be like some random quite kids Pokemon who has no interest in fighting, or some sweet old lady who's only other Pokemon is a Magikarp who keeps almost drowning??? despite being a literal fish???? and now they're attached to the old lady and don't want her to be heartbroken about this dumbass fish that won't fish properly?????

But this could be for any fandom at any point in that fandoms time! They could be any character! Imagine them as Harry Potter but they haven't watched the movies much less read the books! Maybe when they were like 12, but they were 48 when they died!!! and that was a lifetime ago and now they have to deal with Voldemort and the Dursleys??? Horcrux?? There was something about a Sword or Gryffindor?? Was that one of them?????

Or ending up in DC comics and deciding they want to fight crime so who better than Batman to train them!? Nevermind how I know your secret identity Bruce! Whos this guy? Your son Damian? I thought his name was Dick? Where's Batgirl? What do you mean which one????

Bonus points if they're actually a convincing liar and most of the freakouts are in their heads where we get a front row seat to the panic and pure "fake it till you make it" attitude with small povs of other characters thinking to themselves about how "it's so amazing this 7year old is so competent!"

Or the exact opposite, where they were a full adult who just got spat out in this new universe and everyone around them is like "What do you mean you didn't know Aliens were real?? Superman literally just saved you last week? What do you mean what does that have to do with Aliens?? Superman is an Alien!!!! How did you not know this?????

IDK, but tag me/lmk if anyone goes anywhere with this because I love this idea of someone having just random tidbits of mixed (and sometimes wildly inaccurate) information from their previous life/world about this new world and the story lines in it!