#also if the title of this one sounds like a quote then as far as I know it isn't hahaah

[elbiotipo]

Worldbuilding: Galactic Empires

My only complaint about the Prequels is that they needed MORE politics

If you've watched Dune recently, you must have noticed the whole Emperor and space noble families thing. And yes, it's likely you heard that in WH40k too… and I HOPE you know that's where the God Emperor came from, since WH40k took "inspiration" from everywhere from Dune to Star Wars. Which also has a Galactic Empire. Like so many other science fiction franchises.

In fact, if you're a science fiction fan, it's very likely that you're familiar with space or galactic empires, they seem to be common as dragons in fantasy. Despite the fact that an empire doesn't sound very futuristic, does it?

Where did all these Galactic Empires come from? Are they just a narrative tool or are they an actual possibility? How would states and societies work in space? Let's find out, and maybe I can give you some ideas on how to write fun galactic "empires" from both a narrative and plausibility perspective.

This is going be a long post. Perhaps my longest yet. But I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Click down to continue.

First of all, where did these space emperors come from? In another post, I've talked about the influence of the idea of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in English-language fiction. However, in science fiction, I would say the influence is more direct. The Foundation trilogy of Isaac Asimov, one of the foundational (lol) works of science fiction, was intended by the author, very explicitly, as a retelling of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in a science fiction setting. He probably wasn't the first to think about a space empire, I'm very sure the term is older, but he certainly popularized it as a staple of science fiction. Now, if your contact with science fiction comes from movies, when you hear Galactic Empire you're of course thinking about Star Wars. But yes, Star Wars is also the same retelling, because Lucas was inspired in both Asimov AND Gibbon, even though I think we should appreciate Lucas' ability to bring it to life in the screen. Certainly, Isaac Asimov wasn't the first or the last to take inspiration in history to tell stories about the future.

The most influential science fiction work of all time.

At this point you're probably telling me (or not, I don't know you) about all other sorts of science fiction works that DON'T have galactic empires, or better yet, those that don't just transpose historical societies into the far future and imagine something entirely new (my personal recommendations on this area are Banks and LeGuin). And you'd be right. But the concept of a space empire seems popular and long-lived, much like feudalism in the fantasy genre, everyone has a picture of a sorts when a videogame or a book talks about a "galactic empire" or "galactic republic" or a "federation", an "empire" much like a shorthand name for "a country In Space", regardless of the presence of an actual Emperor or not. And so, it's worth exploring how this trope could, or not, work, so we can see the possible alternatives or more fun ways to approach it.

Besides, that's the title of the post. Galactic Empires.

So, let's approach this from the perspectives of Space, Time (or to keep with the theme, Spacetime) and Technology, and lastly, the most fun part, we'll explore some fun variations on this idea of galactic empires and societies.

Space:

Space is big, and I won't quote the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy here, it would be groanworthy at this point. Let's do a quick exercise instead. Let's image a "modest" space empire, not even galactic, 2000 light-years across. Sounds quite big, it encompasses most of the visible stars we can see from Earth… however, if you project it into a galactic map, it's actually a very small piece of sky, actually 2% of the entire galaxy which is about 100.000 ly across. Now, according to the Atlas of the Universe, there are 600 million stars in a 5000 ly radius from the Sun. Jesus Christ. This is actually hard to estimate accurately as the true number of red dwarfs and brown dwarfs, the dimmest stars, are hard to count, but we already know those have planetary systems as complex as our own Solar System, even planets that could bear life. Let's scale back to our 2000 ly across space empire, again, just a small cozy corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, something that would look like a small, even tiny, nation in any setting of a galactic scale. This gives us 240 million stars (from the estimated 200 billion stars of the galaxy) in this space, which is still completely insane but let's work with that.

From Atlas of the Universe, so you can compare and contrast, the stars 2000 ly from the sun (ONLY the brightest ones), and the entire Milky Way. Notice how small 2000 light years truly are at that scale.

Even if I just told you that all of those systems might be as complex and rich as the Solar System, let's rather arbitrarily say only 5% of those 240 million are worth of note. Not necessarily having life (no way I'm getting into that yet), just worth visiting or living in for the resources or the views or the cantinas… whatever. That's 12 million star systems. Okay, let's refine this further. Let's say of those 12 million, most of them are the equivalent of gas stations or farmsteads, a couple thousand people at most. The REAL places where the action happens are the systems or worlds where millions of people live, and those are few and far between (this makes both common and narrative sense, as people tend to cluster in population centers where trade, resources, etc. are). Let's say, and let's refine this further so I don't get outrageous numbers, the average population of those systems is 100 million (about the size of Mexico, Vietnam or Japan. Many sci-fi works throw worlds of billions like Earth like nothing). And those systems are… uh, like 2% of THOSE 5% 'systems of note' (a flimsly concept already but play along). That's 2% of 12 million. We got 240.000 systems or worlds the population size of entire countries, with all that implies (economy, culture, politics). Of course, 240.000 multiplied 100 million gives this speculative fictional empire a total population of… (Jesus Christ, not the scientific notations), 2.4e+13, or TWENTY FOUR TRILLION PEOPLE.

Let's wind back and remember I tried my best to make a "small" empire for a galactic-sized setting, 2000 light-years across, that's just from here to Orion's Nebula for Gagarin's sake! A trillion people is just outside the realm of my imagination, or pretty much anyone's. Can you imagine any kind of goverment system that would be enough to provide any kind of meaningful governance to 24 trillion people? In the case of a space empire, can you imagine a single space emperor, a single person, deciding over them? Keep in mind that emperors don't rule on their own (we'll talk about that), they need bureacrats to make their will done, and vassals to govern their territories in their stead. This would apply even in democratic systems, you need representatives and civil servants and more.

Let's scale back a bit before I go insane. Instead of assuming territory, let's go with population. Assume a spherical cow space empire of… 40 billion people, that's reasonable right? You can picture that in your head? Five times the population of current Earth, no biggie, we can work with that, it's all cool. Now, how big would a goverment for such a population would have to be? We actually have reasonable answers. China has about 10 million civil servants for a population of 1.4 billion people, but that's only the administrators, not including all the teachers, healthcare workers, security forces, laborers, etc. employed by the state. India has 6.4 million for about the same population. Okay, so easy math, let's say that this space empire has 6 million bureacrats for 1 billion people, for our empire of 40 billion people, that gives us a total of 240 million… just bureacrats, nothing else. Yes, you could reduce that with technology by say, half. It still means an entire Mexico-sized country of bureacrats. Imagine.

Entire worlds of this.

NOW I WILL STOP THROWING NUMBERS AT YOU, and let's just think about what this means. If we assume a space empire like the ones common in science fiction, or just any kind of… goverment at all, we're talking about, at the lowest estimates, entire countries worth of state employees, if not whole EARTHS of bureacrats. You can guess how things can get really weird fast. Current goverments as we know them just won't work at all it even if technology gets more powerful. Leaving aside, for now, things like god-like AI adminstration (yeah, have you seen what they are like now?)… to exhert ANY kind of control, FTL or not (more on that below) you would need a very, very autonomous empire, to the point it might as well not exist at all. Why take orders from A Guy who is not only far away but also has no hope at all of actually enforcing them in any meaningful sense? Why call yourself part of his "empire" that not only cannot enforce anything upon you, but also cannot benefit you in any way? Big question, of course, the benefit of a galactic or even smaller empire, but we'll discuss that later.

What could work, however, is that instead of a centralized state like we concieve it today, or even a loose confederation, even loose alliances, even pretty much anything… 'empires' (as in 'countries') In Space could be "united" by common ideas and culture instead of any institution. Perhaps not even a written delcration or constitution, but shared ideas: a culture, a religion, an ideology. Lots of different strong mini-states (that might mean billions of people…) that all claim to be part of the same "civilization", but share no goverment at all at all, just the same 'idea', in a looser way that even the most decentralized goverments you can think of. You can say "well all countries are made up" but these would barely qualify as even that. Not even the Holy Roman Empire was this fake.

Perhaps even a single person as a symbolic focus point of unity? Which would be actually a score for the proponents of galactic empires in the most literal sense. But at the same time, such an Emperor would be completely powerless to interact with the entire galaxy. His plans for, I don't fucking know, education reform or tax breaks, would have to be filtered by literal millions of bureaucrats and vassals that at that point might do whatever the hell on his name. Military-wise, his armies would count as nations of their own. However, the overall guidance of a single person (or constitution…) as a symbol might make otherwise disparate worlds to collaborate on the same causes, being part of the same greater whole no matter the distance. So maybe, instead of a Galactic Emperor, a Space Pope?

OH MY GOD-EMPEROR WAS THE IMPERIUM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? Probably not, but also yes, let's keep talking.

By the way, I'm sure you're tired of big numbers now, but I did one possible calculation for the whole galaxy, a true Galactic Empire. Asuming just 0.2% (400 million) of the 200 billion stars are populated, with an average population of one million, the size of the smallest countries that aren't micronations. The total galactic population would be 40 trillion, or 40,000,000,000,000. Five thousand Earth populations.

Time:

Or rather, space-time. We'll talk about both, because what concern us is the speed of information and trade, and that also limits the size of our empires.

I'm sure you know by now faster-than-light travel is impossible. Most of space based science fiction has it, of course, for narrative purposes. We don't want Our Heroes to spend two thousand years to get to the lair of the Evil Space Tyrant, I don't either, and I'll discuss FTL soon. But let's start with no-FTL here, just like in real life, and a smaller "empire", much, much smaller than my previous examples. A mere 250 light years across. Let's not even calculate population now.

This, quite logically, means that the fastest your communications would flow is at light speed. So if your emperor issues orders to a nearby world, say, 5 ly away, you will get an answer 5 years later. For a more reasonable distance of 60 ly, you would know the results 60 years from the descendants of those who recieved the order (now, assume however they keep in constant conversation, just with a 60 year delay), and by then, things there would have changed 60 years from the capital. You get the idea, Einstein sucks, don't need to elaborate more. At first glance, this might be another point for old-style feudal star empires, though. What better way to guarantee your empire is working well over centuries than by having an hereditary class of nobles loyal to you, no matter how much time passes (results may vary). Of course, how would you even enforce that? Rebels might overthrow them and you'll learn about it a century later, and you'll have to send ships to quash the rebellion… or would you?

Is there a point to send ships to conquer other worlds in such a situation? What kind of resources (ah, the lifeblood of empires) could you control with such an empire where transport takes decades and industry is so developed you could, theoretically, make manufactured goods yourself? I'm assuming you can, because you can build spaceships to get there in the first place (not unreasonable), but what would justify creating an interstellar goverment controlling people, trade, resources, over light-decades? Normally, it's at this point where sci-fi authors make up Something (what Atomic Rockets calls "McGuffinite") to justify interstellar trade. In Dune, for example, it's Spice, which is kind of like, to steal a joke, petroleum mixed with cocaine. But otherwise, in a no-FTL setting (so, real life as far as we know) there isn't really the incentive to conquer or even form a goverment of any but the looser kind with other worlds. Trade, maybe, but those are long-term investments, it's difficult to think what kind of good or service would be so in demand would justify it. Especially when you consider that light-speed is your upper limit, and ships might be actually way slower than that. And I'm not even gonna begin to touch relativistic effects.

I was going to make a joke about blowing a quarter of your GDP in Star Destroyers, but have you heard of the South American Dreadnought Race? One of our dumbest moments down here, surely.

Add FTL, and things change, of course. Even very slow ships, that would take months to transverse a dozen light years, would be able to justify trade in luxury goods and passengers, for instance. This is not too far from real-life either, after all, European colonial empires had travel times in the months, and they had to install local administrations such as viceroys because of this, yet rhose places they were considered part of the same empire (most European empires could be rather considered a collection of "countries" and colonies, look at all the divisions of the Spanish Empire for instance). Faster and cheaper ships would of course, mean even more trade (here, I'm using 'trade' as 'communication between worlds', not necessarily implying capitalism, it could be mercantilism or even a command economy) between worlds, even perhaps the classic trope of agrarian and mining worlds feeding the rich core worlds. The Open Veins of Latin America In Space. Fun.

The speed of your ships and communications not only determines trade, but the power projection of your state (we can discuss 'stateless' societies too, there's plenty of fun to be had). If, again, your Galactic Emperor makes a Galactic Proclamation from the Galactic Palace near the Galactic Core (let's roll with that) and he has no FTL communications of any kind, it means that his commanding voice would reach the outer edges of the galaxy 100.000 years after, that is, almost ten times the history of agriculture on Earth. If he, however, has access to ships that can cross the galaxy in say, months, yes, perhaps he can have a series of vassals all over the stars (perhaps, we'll see…), and the faster things are, the closer they resemble our current fast-paced society, but not quite, given the available resources and space in… SPACE and the possible population, as we discussed above. As you can see, the speed of your FTL or lack of it determines everything.

There is another, more *realistic* option. Instead of individual FTL ships, you could have wormhole portals connecting worlds. This is more realistic in the sense that it's theoretically possible (though we have no idea on how to make one), but it also has some interesting implications. First of all, there is an implication that such a wormhole network would be expensive to build and maintain, requiring highly complex technology, material (I'm not sure what the hell exotic matter really is) and production methods, well, more high than what you'd expect from the usual. Second, it would be something preferably fixed, with hubs, planned routes and regular transit (and for writers, it easily allows you to map your universe). Such networks would be vital pieces of infrastructure, built and maintained by central authorities, drawing routes and transport hubs in space. Yes, indeed, almost like… space railroads.

OH MY ASTRAL EXPRESS WAS HONKAI STAR RAIL REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (last joke I promise)

There is also a very strange effect about wormhole networks. Time is relative, as you know, and this is not a metaphor, it literally "flows" differently on how fast you're moving. The "universal" "speed" of "time" "seems" to be the speed at which matter moves in an expanding universe (red-shift and blue shift) as I understand it, but as you approach light-speed, time flows differently in your frame of reference. Wormholes are strange in the sense that they connect space AND time, the observable time in both sides of a wormhole would be the same, and as such, places connected by a wormhole network will "be" at the same "time". This has been talked about by some authors who have considered about wormholes in the context of space civilizations, and it's called (STOP!) Empire Time. So a space empire might not only imply a state ruling over a population and a territory, but also over a time. I have no idea how this works and it frankly makes my head hurt, but here is an analysis of transversable wormholes if you want to indulge or hit your head against a wall.

Technology:

As an extension from the previous section: Of course there is no working FTL method known in real life, as far as we know, light-speed is the upper limit for everything. Instead of constraining you as a writer, this can be one of your biggest assets.

Because if you're doing a space setting, the existence of faster-than-light travel and its speed is the most important decision you can take about it.

Got that? Did I emphasize that enough? You don't need to actually explain HOW your FTL system works, you can do some research and invent something, but you need to be clear, in your head, what it can DO: How far and how fast it can take you. A FTL system that takes months to go from star to star will be very different to one that takes hours to span the Galaxy like the hyperdrive of the Millenium Falcon. A FTL system that is cheap and can be installed in any tiny ship like in the Elite videogame would be different from the ones in Dune where interstellar travel requires enormous motherships and lots of drugs, or a wormhole network that needs massive infrastructure maintainment and probably a railway starway worker's union, or the case of no FTL at all. This is, again, the most important decision you could make for your setting, bar none. Got that? Let's continue.

FTL is perhaps the only place in science fiction where I don't care about how it works, only about how fast it goes

Now, technology. Space empires, are of course, not possible without space travel being cheap enough (not talking about FTL, just regular space travel): shipping stuff to space should be about the same as shipping stuff by airliner or, well, ships. This is not unreasonable. Efforts are being made right now to lower the cost to access space, and while space agencies like NASA might look expensive, they are not NEARLY as expensive as the money wasted in say, stealth jet fighters or fucking advertising (people who say 'why spend so much money in space when we could fix our problems on Earth' seem to forget about that all the time. But I digress.). A technologically advanced, wealthy (as in production, not literal dollars) society could easily afford as much space exploration as they wish with no real effect at all in their quality of life, indeed, it would improve it. Space isn't as expensive as it seems. At its very, very core, a spaceship is just steel and propellant.

And steel and propellant are very, very easy (once you got the technical research to do it) to get in space. Asteroids are MADE of iron and metals, a single asteroid is richer than all of Earth's mines combined. Hydrogen is literally the most abundant element in the universe, and water is on plentiful supply (no need to steal planets for water) on comets and icy asteroids and moons. Carbon is apparently widely available in carbonaceous asteroids, and in our own Solar System, Titan, the moon of Saturn, is basically covered in hydrocarbons (yes, OIL IN SPACE). All those resources could be very much in demand for manufacturing on a planet like for example, a future Earth that has taken its industry up to space. What's more, it's only bringing stuff up from Earth/an Earth-like or more massive planet (fun sci-fi term for you: "down the gravity well") that's really expensive. Once you get there, you can get anywhere with enough acceleration and propellant. Once there is space infrastructure and industry (and I get a feeling that it might get up fast, given that space technology would need to be very autonomous and reliable), it can sustain itself without a mother planet. In fact, if there's something I imagine would be considered a luxury in spacer life, it would be truly organic things; plants, wood, meat, wool, and so much more.

i am average astronaut man i work 15 hours in the asteroid mines to buy one burger

Which brings us to the big question; what kind of life would be out there? After all, I gave you numbers of millions and millions of worlds, it's hard to imagine at least a few of those don't have alien life. This is the biggest outstanding question in astrobiology currently and so I won't pretend to even try to answer it (my personal opinion, if you must, is that complex Earth life is extremely rare, but by sheer number of planets, it might exist by hundreds of thousands in our galaxy alone). Instead, let's try to see how science fiction looks at it.

Heinlein, another of the foundational writers of science fiction as a genre, saw alien worlds as just another frontier to be settled. Rich alien fruit, fertile arable lands, and huntable or tameable creatures just waiting to be exploited, and alien species to trade exotic goods with (or conquer). While Heinlein was not the only and probably not the first to write this subgenre, he certainly got it popular, and lots of works on his same vein follow this "frontier spirit" kind of writing, where space is seen as the last frontier to be tamed by hardy colonists in a very yeehaw cowboy western setting, and you can actually see this replicated in many modern science fiction like Firefly and the more cowboy-ish parts of Star Wars. And yes, this is balantly an expression of the 'manifest destiny' Usamerican imperialist worldview.

lots of Politics all over this Science Fiction Adventure

And yes, this idea of 'habitable' planets ready to be colonized like in a 4X videogame is also not very realistic either. We haven't found any alien ecosystems yet, but as a biologist I can tell you they would be very different from us in ways you probably won't expect. We can discuss how convergent evolution could be, a world with oceans would probably have equivalents of 'fish', 'algae' and 'worms' (I can GUARANTEE there will be A LOT of worms), we could even find very, very similar life to our own down to the body plan. However, we most probably could not eat them at all (which might sound silly at first glance but is needed to have you know. agriculture.), or perhaps even live in the same planet as them. We live in a society planet where most of the plants and animals which evolved with us can't be eaten, and many of them are toxic. It's possible, entirely likely, that the alien equivalents of carbohydrates (ever heard of L- and D-Glucose?), proteins and other substances would be indigestible to us, allergenics, or outright toxic, probably in ways we can't even think off. It's likely we won't catch alien diseases, but that's because our cells (if they even have cells) are completely incompatible with their diseases, just look at how different animal, plant and fungi cells are, now imagine whatever the fuck might evolve in a completely different biochemistry from us. There would be no farmsteads and cowboys like Heinlein wrote, living in Mars would probably be more pleasant that living in a world where everything might be toxic, not because life evolved to be toxic, just because it didn't evolve with you. If anything, these' habitable' worlds would be treated like giant nature preserves instead, you can look but don't touch.

(In one of my own settings, I sidestep this by proposing panspermia, that is, the idea that life spreads across the universe by means such as comets (or aliens) and thus shares similaritites and can eat the same stuff. A bit of a cop-out, but it does allow one to get with similar kinds of life.)

NOOO ANAKIN DON'T EAT THAT PEAR IT EVOLVED HIGHLY TOXIC ALKALOIDS IN A DIFFERENT EVOLUTIONARY CONTEXT NOOOO

But humans, if the biophilia hypothesis is right, will need nature in their lives. This is where orbital habitats come in. You know, like the ones in Gundam? Orbitals such as O'Neill Cylinders, Standford Torii (yeah, that's the plural for Torus) as well as bigger and more complex thingmajings I will write their own post about someday, have been proposed since the 1970s with technology available then, and there is no reason why a civilization with an advanced space infrastructure wouldn't try building them and even be better at it. What's very nifty about orbitals is that you can really make them your own personal custom miniworlds. Designs like the O'Neill cylinder are big, able to house hundreds of thousands, even millions of people if build to the top, but why do that? Mess with the lightining, the rotation, or the interior to make them a winter wonderland or a tropical paradise. I expect that they would be built to feed space communities at first with food that isn't imported from Earth or grown in hydroponics, and later as places to live and customize however you wish; perhaps a community would pool resources together and say, hey, we want to make an habitat that looks like a Colombian cloud forest, or the Okinawan Islands. Once they get cheap enough, and given how abundant resources are in space they might be not even as expensive as most engineering projects here on Earth, I expect actually many, many people would want to live in them, and it could be probably be very affordable, and just natural for the people who are born and raised and live and die in them. Another thing about habitats is that they are mobile. Like I said, as long as you got enough propellant and propulsion, you can move anything anywhere in space. Even whole habitats could move and cluster together depending on the local politics. Perhaps, much like city-states were the basic building block for countries in antiquity, in the future, the basic organization bloc would be the Orbital. You could have alliances of orbitals forming complex political intrigue inside a single solar system (yes, like in Gundam).

OH MY PLASTIC MODELS WAS GUNDAM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (I lied)

This all might make space empires pretty much an unnecessary anachronism. Habitats can grow their own food and resources are plentiful once you have the right technology. They can also be mobile, so they could act like migrating cities at will, choosing to stay with like-minded "constellations" or strike out on their own without the dictates of a central state. It almost looks like an ideal anarchist society.

Or does it?

There is something very important to keep in mind about life in space. The technology, that is, habitats needed for life in space will require lots of maintainance and resource management, which implies there must be strong coordinating bodies with very, very strict rules so that shit doesn't blow up and you lose all your air into space, or the resources of an habitat are mismanaged and you end up with a food or water or even oxygen crisis. There is a reason why space exploration is done by state agencies or corporations with huge state backing. Another of Heinleins's favorite tropes, Libertarians in Space, would be impossible in such a situation. Actually, in ANY space situation, and this is why this section is in technology. Living in space requires you to be able to maintain complex technology and manage resources. None of this can be done ad-hoc or be left to individualism, you have to have Rules and follow them to the letter. And also, the effect of living in your 'own little world' would probably mean people have a strong indentity sense towards their home habitat. This will mean a more communitarian attitude. But before you think I'm waxing poetic about utopian habitat cultures, keep in mind that this also can mean an authoritarian mindset. After all, cults and authoritarian regimes do have "strong communities" too. An habitat could be everything from a well-managed place with responsible citizens who look for the welfare of all, to a closed society where everybody does as they're told as long as the tech works. On the other hand, I doubt habitats in a single star system would stay isolated. They'll probably trade and communicate with other habitats, forming constellations and power groups, that would prevent this 'closed system'. However, I doubt they would be too amenable to interstellar authority. Who the hell do those people from another freaking star think they are to tell us what to do in our habitat?

To be serious for a moment, habitats can be really cool places in science fiction. Especially if you imagine they could host all sorts of enviroments, from the tropical to the polar.

As an addenum… what if you really want to live in a planet? In places such as Mars or the Moon, things would be… pretty similar to orbitals actually. Habitats separated by vast expanses of barren nothingness, only now a planet instead of space (better for maps, at least). But that isn't what you're thinking, right? What if you wanted to feel the open wind and sky instead of a canned world? Well, this is where terraforming comes in. Transforming whole planets is something theoretically possible, but that would require massive investments of resources, more massive than anything we can imagine, and time, centuries at the very, very least. So stupid ideas like "terraform Mars to escape Earth", which as far as I know is only held by dumbasses like Musk, just don't make sense. It doesn't mean that terraforming itself is a worthless idea, it is a very appealing one. No matter how cool you can make your habitat, it won't ever be Earth. It won't ever be a self-sustaining biosphere with its own ecosystem that could last millions of years. For that reason, terraforming is attractive, it's something way more than an artificial "can" orbital, it's a new living world. There is a certain mystique into bringing lifeless worlds to life, but I expect that instead of the dumb Musk "ESCAPE EARTH" idea, the motivation for terraforming would be to recreate Earth, perhaps for conservation reasons (you could have whole planets as natural reserves), perhaps for tourist reasons, perhaps for spiritual reasons or even artistic reasons. On the other hand, the methods you can use to terraform a lifeless planet can also be used to 'terraform' living planets, as we've long seen in our own world… this could be done with hostile purposes. I would expect us to be better than that, but we simply don't know.

To close this section and give this post an conclusion, I think that, since there are no real borders in space, then empires, countries, polities, whatever you wish to call them, will be formed by stacking building blocs in loose alliances or confederations. The most basic would be habitats, then constellations of habitats, then inhabited planets (though I doubt any but the most populated ones would qualify), and then star systems, but little above that, and I expect up to a certain, difficult to calculate limit of population and area (though way, way below even a fraction of a speculated galaxy), things would be just impossible to manage. The effort in bureacracy, infrastructure and state control needed to project power out of a star system and the sheer scale of space probably won't ever justify empires, much less galactic empires, but you could have very interesting variations on the theme.

Fun Stuff!

So, let's play a little with what I've told you. I'm going to write a few short scenarios that might be fun takes on the "Galactic Empire" or "Space Empires" you might be familiar with already:

The Poleis Model

When the Greeks established their colonies around the Mediterranean, they didn't do it with the expectation they would be part of the same state or empire. They founded new poleis, new city-states, based on the constitution of the mother city (hence metropolis) but fully independent. The Phoenicians were much the same, with some of the daughter cities (Carthage means literally "new city") eventually becoming new cultures far from their home cities. Similarily, why should interstellar exploration mean the spread of a united state with a capital and all? Imagine that when interstellar ships depart, they do with the idea that they are going to create a completely new home, a new poleis, not an extension of the nations or organizations that sponsored them but rather more of a 'child' culture light years away from their motherland. As they develop in mostly isolation from each other, they will become new cultures on their own, while retaining ties to the ones most similar to them. This is, in my opinion, the most realistic scenario without FTL. With FTL, however, things get more interesting, as of course, Greek and Phoenician and other poleis didn't remain isolated light-years from each other, they had permanent contact. With FTL they could organize in leagues, perhaps even alliances for the ocassional military campaigns, trade and exchange of ideas, tourism and industry, and of course the Olympics.

The Wormholes Always Run In Time Model

As I've said, wormholes are pretty much like space railroads. Railroads, like other big infrastructure projects, need a centralized authority to be built and maintained. And once you are the central authority that does so, you're already in charge of the biggest arteries of trade and communication. Which makes you basically an empire, officially or not. In fact, this is the closest I imagine a space society would resemble the states we're familiar with here on Earth. If you have control over transport and the hubs of trade and politics, and that transport and communication network allows you to implent your policies, your rule might go very far indeed, and indeed, your main hub might be a great capital, the main station of known space. Now, perhaps you might be imagining a literal space empire with nobles and all that. Why not instead something else? The Socialist Interstellar, connecting the many worlds of the galaxy through a five hundred year plan of railroad wormhole construction in the path to communism... However, this would mean that people outside of the wormhole network might develop in different ways, perhaps the equivalent of nomads to the great settled empires of antiquity. And given what I've briefly touched on Empire Time (*breakdances*), the expression "the portals always run in time" might imply even more than just an aphorism.

The Civilization Cluster Model

I'll admit this is taken from Poul Anderson, as quoted in Atomic Rockets, to which I owe an inmense debt for this post and so much more. The idea is this; space is big, as is well established. Even with FTL to shorten the distances, even if you could cross the galaxy in a few weeks, the sheer number of stars is still insanely massive. Why should any civilization 'colonize' those stars dot by dot, what value is there in invading or colonizing planets with incompatible biochemistries? And how could even begin to think how to administer a thousand different worlds, each one as complex as Earth itself, let alone an entire galaxy? In this case, civilizations, instead of spreading across the galaxy, would mostly remain in their own 'civilization clusters'; even with FTL, there are so many issues closer to home that the idea of projecting power outside is ridiculous. There would be trade, exchange of ideas, and so much more between these clusters, but never constant enough and never with the authority necessary to create a "Galactic Empire"… the worlds are too many, too diverse, too populated and too far away for that. An interstellar traveller could roam the Galaxy for years exploring these clusters spread away from each other, with their own unique idiosyncracies and civilizations inside, and then a vast expanse of mostly nothing outside them. Basically, space is too big. I like to see them as constellations among the dark sky, hence the artwork.

The No Man's Sky Model

To live in space, you need complex technology, but also resilient and durable technology ready for any kind of situation, easy to repair and replace. So eventually, I believe designs would be standarized so much that every astronaut will carry or own a collection of standarized tools (somehow this reminds me of prehistoric tool cultures). Now, even with FTL, there's perhaps little material incentive for people to leave their comfortable homeworld or habitat to live in cold space. But some will, perhaps because of the sheer thrill of it, perhaps very small bands of families or friends. With a standarized tool kit for any ocassion, these small bands would spread across space, much like ancient humans spread across the world. But instead of creating space empires, without a fixed industrial base, they would be nomads. Which doesn't mean they would roam aimlessly, they would be seeking new biospheres, new resources and new cultures, and gathering in temporary or permanent market places, festivals and pilgrimages. Perhaps they could even be the majority of humans in space, while most others stay cozy on Earth.

...

This was a very long post and it took a lot work to make, so I hope you had as much fun reading it as it was for me to write it. If you did, and if you would like to see more, I would be very, very grateful if you donated to my Ko-Fi below. Anything helps a lot especially since my country is not doing great at this time governed by a libertarian idiot (not even the fun space kind), and even a little tip encourages me to post more, I'm always working on your suggestions! You can also contact me by DM or asks if you need any help with your worldbuilding or just want to rant with me a bit! See you next time, and thanks for reading.

[livefastdriveyoung]

Author is writing a think piece, this is an OPINION. Author is not stating facts, merely making some observations, please do not take this as fact. Narrative is in storytelling and sounds confident but it is an opinion. AUTHOR HAS NO INSIDE KNOWLEDGE. THIS IS NOT FACT. If author speculates, it is not on purpose, it is just meant to be a thought piece.

Yeah ok let's talk about Nico Rosberg:

Here's how I view it. One of your best friends from childhood isn't like you. He's black in a sport that doesn't give space to anyone that's not White European, he doesn't come from money, he's in fact struggling to even travel to competitions, and he's good.

He's so good that you and your world champion father are so sure he will be in F1. You get there first but that next season he's in McLaren and he's second.

Then he's first.

You're thrilled for him. He's your best friend. He's talking about how he wants to change the world, and even then you know he doesn't just mean racing, he means the world.

Then in 2013, you're together. Michael Schumacher is gone, and you're first driver and you know Lewis and you could change the world. Sebastian wins, again, but the future feels bright.

In 2014, the car is competitive. No, it's a winner. You know you're capable, it's in your blood. You know Lewis is capable, he's done it before.

Then, Jules crashes. Everyone holds each other a little tighter. Lewis wins, but there is less jealousy and more knowing that it can be done.

Then, Lewis wins again. The team orders are killing you. You know you're capable, but Lewis is better. That's what everyone tells you. He's better, he's faster, and this boy that you have known your whole career, this man who is your closest friend, is also the scale by which you are measured.

And you snap. You have to win. It is in your blood. 2016 is vicious. The world watches as you both throw hats and towels and words in different tongues. Lewis doesn't back down, but in the end, it is not enough.

You win. And then you walk away. You have the title, have lost the friendship, and you have changed.

"we're not friends" is the quote that follows you for years. He runs away when you go for an interview. He doesn't say your name. You don't either.

"Are you a better driver than you were in 2016?" "yes. and teammate." Live and in stereo right in your face.

Something changes after that. You live in the same building, and you sometimes ride the elevator together, but the awkwardness is not there, not like it was. He is kind to your children, the ones who would have called him Uncle Lewis. He sends them Christmas gifts.

You heal your heart and your friendship. You see that even at 40 and seven world championships, the boy you knew still has to prove himself. He still fights every day to change the world. Except now that he's got the platform, people are far harsher than they used to be. Every initiative is met with backlash, every comment taken out of context.

So you resolve to talk about him. You talk about his skill and his talent. You talk about how Ferrari is lucky, how Lewis had always wanted to wear red, who didn't? You talk about how he still drives like he's hungry, hunting, and you don't stop.

Because more than anything, you remember that little kid who no one talked to because he didn't look like everyone else. And the people with the same platform as you still continue to try and isolate him, bring him down, halt change in its footsteps.

Lewis wants to change the world. So do you. You have looked at the environment, the women who want to race, and children like Lewis who had to fight to get anywhere. So you talk and you talk and you talk, because advocacy can be subtle, it can be through talking about how someone is so talented, how they deserve everything they have. It can be about how age doesn't preclude you from talent. It can be about how women in sport are going to be the future. You say it out loud, because you can.

Love is a difficult master, but it is with you always. You love the sport, you love your family, you love your friends and the things you have done together.

Wouldn't you rise to the defense of someone you love and respect?

Author is writing a think piece, this is an OPINION. Author is not stating facts, merely making some observations, please do not take this as fact. Narrative is in storytelling and sounds confident but it is an opinion. AUTHOR HAS NO INSIDE KNOWLEDGE. THIS IS NOT FACT. If author speculates, it is not on purpose, it is just meant to be a thought piece.

[liveyun]

𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃 ; KSJ

title. white sand

pairing. kim seokjin x female oc/reader

genre. angst, exes au

warnings. mentions of broken marriage, arguments, panic attacks, hurt/comfort, missing communication in a relationship ; divorce ; non descriptive smut, allusions to miscarriage ; surprise ending?

wc. 3.3k+

listen to : playlist

masterlist | taglist

The sky is gloomy today.

Do you want to turn a river in its bed,

Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?

Warm water ripples underneath your feet, giving you a feeling of you being still alive. That certain feeling of your stomach churning never leaves you, as you inhale a deep breath. This wasn't new to you, at least you knowing that wasn't. Your heart throbbing with pain each time whenever you see colors swirling around your life, but not you. Everything felt blank, everyday was an endless loop.

Your thoughts never ran twice before committing anything, resulting in indiscretion.

You didn't know why you'd visit the beach once in the year when the water felt bizzare to your skin; but at least this feeling of your feet sinking in the soft wet sand, the feeling of the cold breeze soothing your skin calms down your racing thoughts.

If you can meet with triumph and failure

And treat those two impostors just the same

Triumph. You weren't sure of when you met triumph, but failure, for sure was met by you. Failure is the secret ingredient to your success, they say, but when you actually fail, there aren't many who still stand by their quote.

The bubbling pot of jealousy inside, being compared to others, despised, accused of being a traitor, these all were some things which you craved to forget, but some things can't be just forgotten, can they really be?

If you can bear to hear the truth they've spoken

That you stepped right in trap for fools. But when?

They get buried inside your own self, in one such deep crests inside your heart that when even a glance is spared over, your whole self falls into an endless slumber of contriteness. Was it fair to lead on in this way? Pity for others, harassment for your own self. The truth is factual, you have heard it by your own self, and you are ready to accept it all. It itself might hurt but all these things, at least have an honesty within that you haven't been through unfair means to provide you a bittersweet nostalgia.

They say that success and failures are like the two faces of a coin. They're both an outcome of luck with a probable chance of 50-50 for each. Hard work does not always bring success, no matter how hard you put in your efforts.

But they also say that to keep a drowning relationship afloat, you have to put in effort.

It hit you hard when you’d realized that the risk of risking it all can also mean losing everything you've ever had in your life.

It hits you even harder when you remember how the decade old moon pendant still rests peacefully between your clavicles, against the resonating of your heart. You'd wanted to throw that away in the vast ocean, wanting the hues of the blues carry your pain, the memories to a place far, far away from you.

But you never had the heart to part away with something so close to your heart.

It's the seventh year you're seeing the imprints of your feet on the dunes of the damp sand on the same day, every year.

It's the seventh year you're walking alone on the beach with no sounds of squeaky giggles tingling your ears.

You wonder if the pendant still holds the tiny pieces of paper between its leaves which have both of your initials imprinted, or it's faded away like your footprints on the sand with each wave hitting the coast. Like how the castles you'd build together did.

4th December.

Your heart beats like crazy within your ribcage when your fingers feel the gentle surface of the white pendant, a relic which once was the reason for your smile blooming like lilies in a pond. But now, it only reminds you of your failure— your failure to keep your relationship afloat. Of your broken connection.

It's the seventh year you're reminded once again that it's truly over.

It's the seventh year you've realized that you're no longer together with your childhood friend whom you'd married.

It's the seventh year you've realized that maybe you've died. Maybe a part of you has, because till death do us part did not do any justice to you. To your best friend, your husband— ex husband.

It's the seventh year you're living without him, as many would say that you're doing completely fine, maybe only you know that a part of you never has ever stopped yearning.

Never stopped loving him.

You take off the pendant from your neck, gently unfolding the metallic celestial halves. The white paper in both of the tiny compartments unveiled bold, black scrawls with tiny hearts surrounding them.

KSJ ♡ YN

You feel the pain right in your chest, spiraling up your lungs to down your stomach till you could no longer breathe properly.

It's not a vague memory in your mind the day he gifted you the pendant. The event replays in your head like it's yesterday, when you were both young adults with warmth glowing in your faces, in your hearts, surrounding each other with the blanket of love. You still remember how young he looked with flushed cheeks and eyes twinkling under the moonlight, half squeaking, half laughing at some lame joke. His warm, big hand enveloped yours as you two walked to the waves in this same beach, feet sinking to the white sand glowing in the night.

You still remember how Seokjin had made a note of how warm the water was in comparison to the weather, and you'd make a note of how the tips of his ears were a shade of crimson.

You still remember when he had handed you the pendant, smiling so brightly, saying that he's forever grateful to the moon for blessing him, and you still remember the freshness of his breath as his lips touched yours for the first time ever.

You still remember how scared you two were. Having discovered your love for eachother after pining like idiots, you knew you had a lot of talking to do. You still remember how hot his lips felt on your skin, promising you words of affirmation that you both got this.

You still remember how delicate he was at that night of your first time together, how gently he made love to you, and how he coaxed releases after releases from you, gently kissing your heated flesh with each stroke to your skin. How he'd turned to mush after you'd touched him back with the same passion, with the same desire.

You still remember his teary face when you'd met him at the altar, when you'd exchanged your vows of eternal love and fidelity. You still remember how different the kiss you'd both shared felt to be, almost like a seal to your newfound journey.

You still remember how happy you two were. You two had promised that you'd got this together.

You feel your eyes stinging with tears amidst the bitter smile that hangs loosely on your lips, because you still remember the first time when things got hard. Really hard. You still remember the shaking of his dark pupils like an autumn leaf hanging on the tree, quivering with guilt suppressed anger when he saw you flinch. He had yelled at you, for the first time ever. He stroked your back with flurries of apologies as he kissed you to sleep that day.

You remember how any squabbles were silenced without any communication gradually and how any quarrel would be slept on without any apologies from either of you.

Despite the slowly forming gap between you two, he'd still make sure to have prepared breakfast for you when you'd wake up late. How he'd still prepare the vase every two days with your favorite flowers. How he'd pull you closer to his broad chest, lulling you to sleep, or occasionally telling you about his days.

You still remember how slowly the arguments turned to sleepless nights with a fidgeting heart and a choking stomach. How everything was so gradual that it took you time to realize that it was happening, and you'd taken it for granted.

How the loud voices of you both threatened to blow off the ceiling, and how your eyes hurt after crying yourself to sleep. How dark the bags under his eyes seemed every morning. How scared you were when you realized that he was no longer behind you, let alone stroking your back when you were bawling your eyes out as he used to do earlier.

How you'd wake up to an empty side of your bed, how your texts went unanswered most of the time. How every day after work you'd return to an empty home, flowers withered and dead on vases and everything picking up layers of dust.

How you'd fall asleep with untouched food on the table when he'd return back to home late from work. How you'd no longer smell the piping hot food everyday when you'd woken up. You would wake up to the same, empty place, knowing that he had been there, but he left without even sparing a glance.

You'd also miss how Seokjin would return to home with a throbbing guilt in his heart, never putting off the blame in his heart which accused him for everything which has been happening in your marriage.

How his heart would shatter to pieces each time after a quarrel, realizing the situation. How heartbreaking your sobs were behind the closed rooms or the running showers.

But he'd never got to apologize, because a part of him wanted that to come from you too. He'd wonder at times if you thought the same.

You still remember the lone happiness which bloomed inside you after so long when you'd seen two lines on the pregnancy stick after days of throwing up in the morning. How you'd thought that maybe, maybe this could fix everything between you two. Everything which you weren't ready for, but were thrown onto. Everything which you didn't know existed between you two, but was clearly visible day after day. You were positive that it definitely would.

How fucking selfish of you.

You still remember his absence and his ignorance when you were so excited to let him know about the happy news. You still remember the piercing fight which took place when he returned from his three month long business trip. You vaguely remember how you'd cry for him at nights to hold you, trashing beside the empty bed, how you'd throw up and clutch yourself to sleep. How the doctor had already warned you of your difficult pregnancy and to avoid mental stress as much as you can.

You vaguely remember how he'd asked you why do you look so pale. You barely remember the panic, the pain when the conversation flowed to another fight, now you yelling at him. He'd screamed at you that you were a burden to him.

You faintly remember the agonizing pain at your lower abdomen, strong enough to blur your vision and strangle you down to the ground where he'd cried your name as you fell down, and everything had blacked out.

But you actually remember the look on the doctor's face when she told it out loud.

And even clearer, the look on Seokjin’s face.

You don't really want to remember everything else which happened after that. Your friends had taken you home, away from him, suggesting that it's for the best. Some of them had already warned you beforehand when things had started to fall gradually and they emphasized their surmise of the situation.

You don't want to remember anything else which happened after that. You don't want to remember how you'd know that his company had gone completely bankrupt, and how he'd tried his best to save it.

You don't want to remember the time when you'd sent him the divorce papers and the look on his face, ignoring his thin frame, dark bags underneath his eyes which seemed devoid of any light in them, at all.

You don't want to remember all the times he came back to you, called you, texted you endlessly and begged forgiveness for everything he'd done to you but not even once to come back to him.

Maybe he knew already that you wouldn't.

You don't want to remember the time when you'd gone to your once shared apartment to get back your stuff. It felt. . .empty and devoid of any life, your once warm home staring at your face with a cold air around it, partially suffocating you from all the memories you'd created together. Whether they were the happy ones, or the terrible ones.

You'd purposefully ignored the vase of fresh flowers greeting you or all the furniture being spotlessly free of any dust. You'd ignored how your heartstring tugged at you when you'd see that his clothes are still with your own in the closet and how the bed was changed into the bedsheets which you'd bought at the beginning of your honeymoon.

But you couldn't refrain yourself from stepping into his study. Maybe it was because you were sure that you wouldn't be seeing him anymore, and the court would be the last place and time when you'd see him. Maybe because there was a part inside of you which wanted you to hang on for him. Hang on for you, but you'd ignored that, suppressing the voice inside you.

You absolutely don't want to remember whatever you'd seen there anymore. Whether it was the unfinished yarn you'd knitted to a poorly made mass during those three months knitted to an almost finished sweater, or the photos of you both framed on the shelves where you'd previously seen trophies of his youth camping on.

From small kids grinning ear to ear to adolescent teens with awkward poses to full grown adults and your last photo you'd taken together at Ilsan a year ago then as a couple. Each of them rested one beside another and other memories which were caught in small handicrafts you'd thrifted during your small visits to nearby towns in your early teens.

Because that only makes you fall into the endless pit of guilt, again and again, realizing that you'd never heard his part of the story. Your initial anger had always refrained you from thinking that way, but you'd know that despite everything, every effort you two had put into your marriage, had been in vain. You remember how pale, dull, thin and silent he'd seemed at the day of your divorce. He'd just a thin jacket on his frame regardless of the freezing cold outside with heavy bags underneath his eyes. He'd acknowledged your presence with a slow, long stare of his dim, puffy eyes, a small single nod of his head. You'd ignored how much it hurt to see Seokjin like that, but you'd instead decided to move forward, no matter how painful it was.

You remember the silence from his side when the judge had asked him questions about the reasons why your marriage broke down to pieces. You'd held your breath in your chest which already hurt with the constant throbbing.

He'd answered with a voice that you couldn't recognise from the person you'd known for more than half of your life.

“I wasn't there for her when she needed me the most.”

The judge had asked again, why'd he give up. If he knows, shouldn't he be trying to make it up to you? His answer, perhaps, had shocked the judge, too.

“Once a knot gets tied between a thread, the knot forever remains, no matter how much you try to untangle it.”

The actual last time you saw Seokjin was after you two were divorced, sitting beside each other, having signed on the papers which officially meant that you two no longer were married to each other. Your heart felt numb with the pain and your eyes were devoid of any moisture, having exhausted them all within the painful months you'd spent alone with the memories haunting you.

You hadn't looked up at him, and you knew he didn't, too, and you didn't want to. You'd seen his fingers twitch on the paper where he held his pen, close to yours own, but made no further move. You'd itched to say something to him which you didn't know if you should've, but you'd kept quiet all the while.

You'd heard his tiny please forgive me,if you can the last time before you exited the court, but also from the place where you'd relished your memories, a souvenir to your old love.

You close the pendant with a snap.

It's the same day you divorced your ex husband.

4th December.

It's his thirty-first birthday, too.

As the waves crawl gently towards the white sand of the coast, you exhale in the breath you were holding in. You run your thumb on the craters like designs on the outside of the golden pendant, silently feeling the burden inside your chest now being a bit lighter.

You don't know if you've truly moved on, but the bitterness in the memories doesn't really feel bitter to you. At times they overwhelm you, but it's not intense.

You wonder if Seokjin is doing well.

We were taken from the ore-bed

And melted in the furnace pit—

We were cast and hammered to design,

We were cut and filed to fit.

You don't like nostalgia, but sometimes it reminds you that failure and struggle are the components who develop your character. If anything, it reminds you that mistakes were made and consequences were beared, but it also leaves you with a tingling curiosity inside. Is Seokjin living in the same city? Is he..is he celebrating his birthday today?

Birthdays for him were fun. Birthdays with him were fun.

You don't know. You guess it wasn't really within your imagination to imagine what it would be like for him. You just hope and wish he's doing okay. You hope he has healed well, or is healing well.

You stand up, your pendant still clutched in between your palms, no longer feeling the weight it carried for you, from you throughout the years of your life.

The weather begins to get chillier as the sun slowly makes its way away from the face of the world.

The low rustle of the waves and the slow whoosh of the wind tells you that it's time to leave.

Exhaling a breath you didn't know you were holding on, you turn to exit the beach. A simple smile spreads on your lips when you suddenly feel the pendant slip away from your slightly sweaty palms to the sand underneath.

You bend down to pick it up, and your hands brush against another hand which doesn't belong to you.

A warm one, and an oddly familiar,big one.

A pair of warm, curious pupils, twinkling within the dark pools of coffee hidden underneath tresses of dark hair greets you.

You look up.

“Seokjin?”

His eyes are wide and shaking slightly by the time you both stand up, your hands dangerously close to his which clasps the pendant within. He looks healthier, fuller and he's gained some much needed weight over the years. He's dressed in a white tee and black shorts, and you notice that he's let his hair grow. His cheeks have a flush which you'd notice was new to you. If anything, he looked handsomely young, as if he'd aged back.

Walk down the white sand just to watch his lonely footprints get washed away by the currents. He's trying not to fall back to the habits which tore himself away from him, but he's never been truly free from the guilt which pokes his chest in every aspect of his life.

When he saw you seated on the edge of the coast when he was out to visit the beach that meant the most to him, he couldn't believe his eyes. Every year on his birthday he'd visit the beach in the evening with a selfish hope in his heart, which he knew wasn't rational at any cost.

He used to sit on the coast the whole night, feeling the moon soothe away the burning memories of you. Hoping he'd ever find you, but always in vain. Hoping he could apologize for everything he's done except uttering a small sorry like a fucking coward.

The beach would always remind him of you.

Your hair is shorter than how he saw it the last time. Your cheeks are fuller, and your eyes have their light returned back to their places. You sat there in the same silence which he did at a distance, refusing the rational part of him which told him that it's wrong. He'd promised himself that he'd go away before you'd get up, and you seemed lost in thoughts as he took you in. Even if you two weren't together anymore, he was happy. Genuinely happy to see you okay. After everything you'd gone through. He knew, he was by no means rightful to ever look at you even, because he knew ever since then that you don't need him anymore.

Even if he tried, he could never stop loving you. Trying to be a better man everyday, wishing he could stop time and go back, knowing it's impossible. Everyday he'd wished he could. . . .

Now you're looking at him, and he doesn't know what to say. How to talk. You looked peaceful. You looked happy. You—

But when he'd seen the pendant he'd thought you wouldn't have it with you anymore, he lost it.

“Seokjin?” Fuck. This is the second time you've called him, but he doesn't find the crease in between your eyebrows as he'd expected to. You're rather smiling, a sight which he finds his heart racing miles at.

You don't wait for his response.

“Happy birthday.”

a/n : happy birthday to our silly moon prince~ hope you liked this one which i actually managed to finish in the brink of time ong

don't be sad, he's coming back soon home! :D as always, reblogs and feedbacks are always appreciated 🌙🌹

[seravphs]

ੈ♡˳·˖✶ — NAGI SEISHIRO x FEM READER

There’s nothing as annoying as a genius, especially one that’s better than you. When you break your ankle, being forced to train the newest member of the team brings out the worst side of you - but also possibly the best?  

wc — 4.5k

tags — figure skating au, tutor au, hardworking star athlete reader x lazy genius Nagi, sports injury, self doubt, “I’m always the challenger, never the champion” quote is from Yuzuru Hanyu, title from FOB song

One more.

You’re so close to victory you can almost snap your jaws around it. The smell of it is familiar. It’s the tang of bloody split knees and the old penny copper of chewing through your lip.

Cold sweeps over your body, not from the icy air, but the proximity to greatness. This is the moment. You can feel the gold medal in your grasp already.

It’s the cleanest program you’ve ever skated by far. The cheers and gasps of the audience in response to each perfect rotation has your blood singing. You make a sharp turn on the very tip of your skate to prepare for the final jump, drawing your arms in close to your chest like a hug.

The music swells to a crescendo as you tip your head back, letting the blood rush to your brain. There’s a certain zone you hit when the moment is just right, a little like runner’s high. Like an elixir of liquid gold sparking through your veins, it’s addictive. It dances through you, making you feel light enough to attempt this last jump.

“Don’t go for it if you don’t feel ready,” you remember Coach Prince telling you.

You wouldn’t if you thought you couldn’t make it, but everything about this program has felt so right. This is the culmination of everything you’ve trained so hard for this entire year. Each breath crystallizes in your lungs, a beautiful ache in your rib cage as you feel yourself succumb to the lure of the ice.

You want it.

You’ve never desired anything this badly in your entire life, and you’re going to take it. You deserve it. There’s a violence to your thoughts, a sort of desperation. This is a moment you’ve dreamed of over and over, the seconds before you hit the peak, just like all of the skaters you’ve looked up to before.

You hear it before you feel it, a crunching noise. There was a hole on the ice just two centimeters in front of your foot. The jagged edge caught onto your skate when you lept, throwing off the angle of your entry point into the air. With that one mistake, your entire jump is wrong. Your momentum falters too fast, too much, and you’re falling, falling.

The sound of your body slamming into the ice is sickening. For a second, you’re dazed, left wondering what went wrong. There’s no more screams of joy or applause.

Your coach is on the ice, murmuring something into your ear that you can’t hear, but you try to push him away. If he’s here, that means something is seriously wrong. You try to pull yourself up, because even a failed jump doesn’t completely destroy your program. If you can at least finish-

You can’t get up.

Frozen, you look over your shoulder to where your legs are sprawled behind you. Your ankle is twisted in an ugly direction, your foot pointing the wrong way.

“Don’t look,” Coach Prince is saying, but it’s too late. You resist the urge to throw up.

It’s over.

Your dream of being the greatest has died, right here with your broken bones on the ice.

You were never a masochist before the accident. Something must’ve happened when you slammed into the ground to rewire your brain. Why else would you be here, putting yourself through the sweet torture of watching everyone else accomplish what you couldn’t?

“Man, there is something wrong with you.”

“Hi to you too, coach.”

“I hope you’re not here to skate.”

“I’m not that dumb,” you say. He doesn’t know that you’ve already decided to hang up your skates. This is the last tournament you’ll ever compete in.

“How’s the ankle? You should be resting at home, not here. Doesn’t it irritate you to watch people skate when you can’t?”

“Real sensitive of you,” you say sarcastically. Predictably, he ignores you.

“Listen, I got this kid-“

“No.”

“Come on! He’s new, he’s got to learn the ropes somehow. He’s a prospective! You were one, once.”

You wouldn’t be a good role model, anyway.

“Ask Barou.”

“They don’t like each other.”

“Ask Reo.”

His sudden silence reminds you what you already know. Reo’s too busy skating to introduce a newbie to the ice. Everyone is - the start of the season is always crammed full of training. You’re the only one who’s free, because you’re the only one who can’t train.

“Where is he?”

Coach Prince ignores the bitterness in your tone. He’s good at ignoring you - must be lots of practice.

Looking at Nagi Seishiro, you wonder why you even bothered. This boy is not going to be a skater. You’re surprised someone even got him to the rink - someone, because it clearly wasn’t him.

How is this boy even alive?

He stirs, dispelling your fears that perhaps a sloth had been mistaken for a human boy and deposited at the rink.

“Hello? Nagi?”

All you get is a groan in response. You’re starting to get annoyed.

“I’m here to show you the ropes.”

“Five minutes,” he whines.

You’re going to kill coach. Just who did he dump on you?

It’s with great effort that you get Nagi onto the ice, but at least he takes to it like a bird to water. Someone must’ve at least taught him the basics.

“Aren’t you going to get on the ice?”

“With this ankle?” You laugh. “This isn’t a class and I’m not your coach. I’m just here to walk you through some of the easy moves.”

Sometimes you help out with the beginner class. Coach likes to walk you or Reo out for demonstrations. Reo’s popular because he’s beautiful and well-known, so the students worship every move he makes.

As for you, your love for skating is infectious. It bleeds through in every lutz and axel, unbearably exposed. Every class with an appearance from you ends with students burning with the desire to extend their training into the next hour, and the next, and the next.

It makes it easy to get Nagi used to some easy jumps. To your surprise, no matter what variation you add, he nails all of them.

It’s just a little strange when he has no experience. Still, Nagi doesn’t seem like one of Prince’s pranks, if only because it looks like he’d have no energy to be involved in something like that. You decide to give him something a little harder.

“It’s okay if you can’t get it on the first try,” you tell him. “It took me a while and coach says I’m still one of the fastest students who ever got it.”

“Uh-huh,” Nagi says, and takes off across the ice.

He does a few laps to warm up. It’s a good call - most new skaters try to launch into a jump immediately, fearing they’ll lose their nerve if they don’t do it now. It’s a rookie mistake.

Nagi jumped like gravity was nothing more than a lightly amusing joke. He made it look effortless, even as you watched the muscles in his leg contract and release in an all too familiar way. You know that move. You’ve made it yours with hours of effort put into perfecting it.

Without trying, Nagi takes it for his own. The arc his skates carve through the ice and into the air steals your breath from your lungs. You’ve never seen anything like it. Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t be able to tear your eyes away from the beauty of it, frost following him through the air.

He lands, his face impassive even as you replay that moment over and over in your mind. Your blood sings with the reminder of how good skating can feel. Nagi’s leap mesmerized you. Even when you blink, he’s there, silhouetted against the black of your eyelids.

He hangs in the air, a snapshot at the height of the perfect jump that caught you unaware. Beauty that hunted and trapped you when you hadn’t even realized you were being stalked.

There’s a longing in your heart that can’t be quelled. When Nagi skates back over, you turn away. You don’t want him to see the look on your face. It’s too vulnerable.

Letting him see the miserable awe for his jump, the love that still remains despite how badly this sport has hurt you, would be like opening up your chest so he can make a display of your heart and lungs. You can’t.

“Was that good?”

“Fine.”

He shrugs. “I’m taking a break then.”

You shoot back around. “What? No! Get back on the ice.”

He stops, hovering in the doorway, halfway between the ice and the outer world.

“Huh? Why? I did it.”

“But you can do it better. You have real talent, but talent is nothing without skill. You have to train.”

“I don’t wanna.”

Throwing up your hands in disgust, you walk away. You won’t train someone who’s not willing.

Even if you see his skating in your dreams that night.

It really isn’t healthy for you to be at the rink every day when there’s nothing for you to do, but you still attend religiously after your physical therapy sessions. Reo, kind soul that he is, holds the door open for you.

“My friend is here, by the way,” he says conversationally as he walks you to your usual room. He offered to carry your bags. “He’s on your usual rink because - you know. I hope you don’t mind.”

It’s a broken ankle, not cancer. You wish everyone would stop skating around it. Even if it’s ruined your dreams, you can recognize that you’re the problem. It wouldn’t be so serious if you weren’t so diehard about skating.

But then again, doesn’t it say something that everyone else is just as dedicated? They can share your feelings, if not your methods of dealing with it. You’re more no nonsense than they are, but these are still the people that trained with you for years. That culture has leaked into you as it has into them.

A love.

A fever.

A sickness.

The walk to your side of the facility is just long enough that you have time to wonder who Reo let tag along. Maybe it’s the German genius, Michael Kaiser, though you hadn’t heard they were close. Or his model friend, Yukimiya, who sometimes skated recreationally.

It’s neither.

On your ice, you find the sloth, skating in slow figure eights.

You’re stunned. “What are you doing here?”

“I signed up,” Nagi said, casual as anything.

“You? The same person who gave up on skating immediately?”

“I see you met your new teammate!”

“Coach?” You splutter in shock, trying to understand the situation.

“Nagi’s decided to join us! I have an open spot, so he’s on Team Prince now.”

Nagi tilts his head. “So I’ll be skating with her?”

“Nope! You’re in singles, I’m just coaching both of you. When she gets better, your training times might overlap. You could learn a thing or two from her, you know!”

“I might not skate again,” you say, but you know he won’t take you seriously.

“She’s just kidding,” he laughs predictably. “Come on, let me show you this combo I taught her. Let’s see if you can beat her time.”

Neither of them get it. Your training center is full of men - you’re technically not even supposed to be there. Anri’s supposed to be your coach, but she took a pregnancy leave. She texted you the day the news broke. You still haven’t responded. You don’t know what to say.

For you, it’s not like it is for them.

You know the story. Male athletes can come back from something like this, but all women do is fall further and further down a slippery slope. Every woman who’s made it the top of the podium crashes soon enough. Two years is counted as a long run.

They push your bodies to the limit and marvel as they break down. The first fracture is only the beginning of a long and drawn out medical history.

The crowd begins to wane. They hear that you’re skating on glass. Another bad break hospitalized you for the second time. People are losing faith. Sponsors stop pouring money into you. Coach Prince has to stop training you because they won’t pay him. You go to someone else, someone worse.

They push you too hard. An almost-Olympic champion falling in their lap! They think this is their lucky break. They try to wring you dry, and in the process, your body collapses for the third time. A ligament or a tendon, it doesn’t matter. Something gives.

You keep trying, and trying, and trying, but all it does is make people pity you. Eventually, the pity turns to disgust. It’s never good to look desperate.

Your career fades out like a shooting star, the tail end a sad, messy streak that mars what could’ve been a sterling career.

You’d rather die than let that happen. It’s better to quit here, on your own terms. Better to let people remember you as the champion you were, rather than the has-been who didn’t know when to give up.

Even if it stings to know how close you could’ve gotten.

Recovery passes more quickly that you would’ve expected. It helps that you refuse to look at calendars. Counting the days would only make you strain against the chains of your cast. You don’t want to know until it’s here - it would be too painful.

“Hey, hey,” Coach says as soon as you walk through the doors. Nagi sets off a party popper. Confetti rains on you. They’re both wearing party hats. “It’s the returning champion!”

“What’s all this?” You set your gear on the ground, mindless to their little show. You’re still thinking about how you’re going to broach the topic of your retirement.

“I got the good news from the team doctor. Looks like you’re all ready to go, huh?”

This is a bad time, but will there ever really be a good one?

“Coach, I have something to tell you.”

“Come on,” he laughs, “no need to be dramatic. I don’t need the big speech - I know you’re going to work hard. We’ll get you back to number one in no time.”

“I’m quitting.”

“Huh?” Surprisingly, it’s Nagi that’s loudest, not Coach Prince.

“This is going to be my last championship.”

“Come on,” Coach Prince says, stunned. “You’re joking, right? After one injury?”

“I’m getting too old for this-“

“You’ve barely started!”

“I’ve hit my peak. You know how it is in this sport.”

He does know. The ice is fickle with her lovers. There’s always someone better and younger.

“But you’re good,” Nagi interrupts.

“You’ve never seen me,” you laugh. You’re a little pleased despite yourself that he cares.

“I’ve watched your videos. It’s why I came.”

That gives you pause.

“You make it look fun. You’re always smiling on the ice. I thought you liked it.”

“You hear that?” Coach says, his tone colored by desperation. “You can’t give up when you have a fan right here!”

“I’m not a fan,” Nagi argued. “I just thought, looking at her, that it might be fun too.”

“So basically you’re a fan.” At least coach ignores Nagi as much as he ignores you. He turns to you. “Isn’t that cute? He joined for you!”

“I didn’t say that,” Nagi says.

“You’re the reason he’s going to be in the competition next week. Give him something to look up to.”

Your blood runs cold. All of your warm feelings for Nagi disappear immediately. “What? He just got here.”

“This kind of talent is a once in a century thing,” coach continues, oblivious to your growing dismay. “We have to strike while the iron’s hot.”

You make your excuses and slip away. They taught you meditation in preparation for easing you off your pain meds. You didn’t think you’d be using it to calm yourself down enough to avoid a completely unreasonable tantrum.

It’s not Nagi’s fault he’s good.

It still sends you home from the rink until the next day.

It hurts.

But it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re giving your skating the bare minimum. Training just enough to keep you in the race. It’s not like you’ll win, anyway. You lace up your skates in the changing room, trying to convince yourself of that fact.

It’ll sting less if you kill the hope now, but you can’t help it. You’re still dreaming of gold. You can’t rid yourself of the want, even when you know it’s impossible.

Your phone buzzes.

Nagi won. Congratulate him. - P.

You stare at the text. Not only are you reminded that your coach is actually old, enough so that he actually signs off on his texts, you get to have Nagi’s talent shoved in your face.

It makes you mean. You’re itching to pick a fight.

Skating usually helps you burn off the excess energy, but you have to take it easy on your ankle. The few laps you allow yourself do nothing before Nagi, the person you wanted to see least, opens the door to the rink.

You can’t help yourself.

“Coach Prince tells me you won the competition,” you call.

Nagi skates closer. “Yeah.”

“Must be nice,” you sneer at him. “When have you ever tried for something you wanted? You’ll never know what it’s like.”

You’re always the challenger, never the champion. Even though you love skating, you can’t remember a time when you felt comfortable on the ice. There’s only ever been the desire to jump higher, land better combinations.

You can’t remember a time when you felt secure as the best. It’s a vicious competition. You only win if you stay hungry.

Nagi seems willing to starve. It irks you - all this talent going to waste. If anyone was going to have so much natural aptitude, it should’ve been you or Reo or even Kunigami - someone who would’ve used it.

Nagi shrugs. “At least I don’t give up when it gets hard.”

You bristle. “I never give up.”

“I dunno,” Nagi says, eyes closed like arguing with you is too much work for him. You want to wrench his hair for the disrespect. He could at least look at you if he’s going to talk back - you’re sure you never treated your coaches like this. Never mind that you’re not actually his coach. “This seems a lot like giving up to me.”

“What do you know?” You scoff.

“Nothing. Wanna show me?”

“Excuse me?”

“Like the first time. Show me the jump again.”

You know you’re rising to his provocation, but you can’t help yourself.

Even warming up doesn’t feel right anymore. The ice that once cradled you comes to you as an enemy. You were friends once, you remember. You knew the right place to touch so it would welcome you in, like a shared secret.

That knowledge is lost now, ruined with your mangled bone. It was fought for back then. You earned it with your blood, sweat, and tears.

It’ll have to be won back now.

You travel in slow rotations across the ice. Thankfully, Nagi adds no pressure. He just watches silently as you start to build speed and momentum, feeling out the right method. You can’t rely on muscle memory today. It’s too dangerous when you’ve just healed.

Even the slightest hint of wrongness in your ankle cracks your fragile psyche, but you keep moving. It’s been a long time since you had to pretend to be confident on the ice. You took the real thing for granted.

Finally, when you kick the speed just one notch higher, you feel it call. This is the tempo, and just two feet ahead is the perfect launch point.

The muscles in your legs tense as you pour all of your focus into the takeoff. You release like a spring, launching yourself off the ice with all the energy you’ve pushed against it. The air feels cold and crisp against your face, stinging your lungs as you gulp it down, but this is the pain you missed.

You land just a second too soon, but you avoid any real damage. The landing vibrates through your body, a fall too heavy to be professional. Once or twice doesn’t matter, but over and over will wear down your joints.

It’s a problem that you only had at the start of your career, but at least Nagi can’t tell. He’s looking at you with a spark in his usually disinterested eyes.

“Well?” You challenge.

“Looks like fun,” he says, and then he’s going for it.

You hate that Nagi’s jumps are a thing of beauty.

Every line of his body moves into the right place without his even having to think about it. You know it’s instinctual because there’s no way he learned all of the correct forms in days, but the tips of his fingers line up with his wrists and elbows to create the perfect arc.

Suspended in the air, he’s Michelangelo’s David, the peak of the human form.

It reminds you of the first time you saw him skate.

You’re breathless, watching, wanting. Hungry for that talent. The ease of it. The joy.

Nagi touches icy fingers to your cheek. You flinch away, but not before you catch the wetness on them. You feel impossibly brittle, like glass. If someone looked at you wrong, you’d shatter. Even your bones feel too fragile.

“Are you okay?”

“Get back to it,” you snap, then apologize. You roughly scrub your tears away and try to give him a shaky smile.

You don’t know why you’re being like this. It’s just a sport.

But it’s never been just a sport to you.

“Was it that bad?”

“Shut up,” you laugh. “You know you’re incredible. I heard Prince tried to teach you one of my signature moves. Show me.”

“Yes, coach.”

You smile despite yourself. “Prince is your coach. I’m just-“

You shut your mouth rather than think about it harder. You’re not willing to commit yourself to helping him, not when you know you won’t stay. “Give it a try,” you say instead.

Even hours after the session, you can’t stop thinking about Nagi’s jump. It was yours once, that effortless grace. All of that beauty in the palm of your hand.

You’re trying to be mature about it, but there’s a feeling that you can’t suppress. It’s normal to be replaced. That’s what this sport is about - seconds of glory.

It’s supposed to be enough, your fleeting fame. You knew it when you came into your career. You’ve had years to come to terms with it, and still, it’s hard.

You didn’t think it would be so soon.

And it’s not just Nagi, who’s only in a competition with you in your head. Soon, the next wave of girls will be nailing quads at younger and younger ages, doing things you would never be able to do even if you were their age. That’s just the way it is.

Nagi’s the only one who doesn’t seem to understand that.

“Are you really going to quit after this season? You’re too good to stop now. You should stay.”

“It’s not happening, Nagi. I told you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” You expected him to fight.

“Okay,” he says, snatching your beanie off your head and running.

You’re left standing in a moment of shell-shocked silence before you give chase. What a fucking brat. You’re just catching up when Nagi pushes himself through that doorway and launches onto the ice, leaving a crystal spray on his wake.

You freeze with your hand on the swinging plastic half-door. He’s gone where you can’t follow. Your ankle aches. You weren’t prepared to get on the ice today. It had taken you every hour of your entire commute yesterday to convince yourself to approach it.

“Come on,” Nagi goads, still in that lazy way of his. It irritates you like nothing else to see him so nonchalant when he can rile you up so easily. “Come and get it if you want it.”

The ice still scares you. Your ankle hurts a little, and you’re not sure if it’s a phantom pain or the cold leaching into your bones. You’re getting too old for this, after all. Figure skaters had early expiry dates.

Still, something ignites under your breast bone as you watch the little red flag of your beanie float further and further away from you. Nagi isn’t even really trying, making soft loops around the ice.

Come and get it if you want it.

You want it. There’s a fire burning in your gut. Even the old memory of ambition sears at your insides, kindling scraps of gold medal dreams into a roaring flame. Desire runs a steady drip through you, bleeding through every artery.

The first step onto the ice happens with brute force. You grit your teeth as you physically make yourself do it, breaking each step of the movement down.

Shift your weight to your left foot.

Lift your right leg.

Put it down on the ice.

Dig your skate in.

Lift your left leg.

Put it down on the ice.

One by one, each movement pulled out of you. You breathe through it, shaking with nerves. One after another, trying to think about it without thinking about it too hard until Nagi breaks your concentration.

“Too slow,” he says, zipping past you - still aggressively showing off how easy it is for him. How it takes no effort, while you’re straining to remember how to make this feel right.

It breaks something loose in your brain. All cognitive functions shut down. You go after him, not thinking, just acting.

Your fingers snag on the red fabric just as you remember to brake. Your body doesn’t. It’s going at a speed that would’ve been child’s play for you before you broke your ankle, but now you can’t control your skates. You slam into Nagi, knocking both of you down.

Terror flashes across your face at the memory of falling until you land not on hard ice, but an only incrementally softer chest. Nagi lies beneath you, cushioning your fall. You lift yourself up on your hands and knees, panting above him.

“You can still skate,” Nagi says, looking up at you with those quiet eyes. “You kept up with me.”

“Don’t get too full of yourself yet,” you scoff, hauling yourself off him. “I’ve got years of experience on you.”

“Then why stop now?”

Because it’s inevitable he’ll catch up. It took him days to learn what took you years.

He takes your hand when you offer it. “If you quit, I will to.”

“And?”

He blinks. “Shouldn’t I not quit? Coach said I was good.”

You stare at him in disbelief. It’s only more annoying that he’s being genuine about this.

“I don’t care whether you skate or not,” you say. “This is an individual sport.”

“But coach signed us up for doubles.”

“Excuse me?”

“He said it’s perfect. I’m new and you’re recovering.”

You’re going to be famous again. But this time, it’s going to be for a double homicide.

[jillflame]

LACKADAISY ENDGAME PREDICTION

So before we start, BE WARNED OF SPOILERS!!! I'll be drawing from a lot of different panels and bonus material, so if you would like to avoid spoilers for the comic and bonus stuff, go read everything on the Lackadaisy official website (seriously go read it its amazing) and then come right back here!

To begin, I've been in the mood for some Lackadaisy theories.

Mostly concerning the fun scavenger-hunt bonus feature on their website, jocosely titled "Funeral Home".

Everybody who's played around with the feature has figured out that if you put various characters' names into it, you get fed back quotes from the pilot. All except Atlas, who spits back this:

I've seen a lot of theories circulating that Atlas was drowned or that his death was somehow tied to water, but we know that isn't true because we get a glimpse into his death in 'Introduction 2':

Atlas was clearly shot (or stabbed, i guess, but far more likely he was shot given the importance of guns to the Lackadaisy.) But I'm not here to spectate on whether Mordecai and Mitzi killed him... yet

I'm here to talk about how whatever that 'sounds of rushing water' foreshadows is something that could potentially be a large clue into the secrets he kept in conjunction with the Lackadaisy before his death. Whether this secret is tied to how he died, whatever lead to it, or something he left behind for the Lackadaisy, it's likely going to play a large role in the series. I personally think that whatever secret lies guarded by that rushing water (probably alcohol... and lots of it) is going to end up being the key to saving the Lackadaisy when it's at its lowest...and I'm starting to fear that Rocky might end up paying the price for it.

As important as fire and dramatic dynamite explosions are to Rocky's character, he's often associated literarily more with water. The comic really doesn't shy away from highlighting the importance of the Mississippi either. ^This line in Rocky's now pilot-famous poem particularly sticks out to me too. 'Umber Whiskey Waters". It's a line meant to convey the color of the river, but it could also very much be foreshadowing at its finest. "Whiskey Waters."

The importance of Rocky's involvement isn't a mistake either, because another clue that alcohol is being guarded by the famous river could also be drawn from Rocky's own character bio pic.

We can clearly see that he's standing on a barrel with three prominent X's carved into the side. These three Xs, as I've come to find out, confirm that the barrel IS carrying alcohol, and even clue us into the type of alcohol we might be looking at.

I managed to find a useful paragraph from THIS website that states,

"An ‘X’ is also used to record the number of distillations of some alcoholic drinks. With each distillation the alcohol content rises, so the more distillations (or Xs) the stronger the brew, though the Xs on a bottle of whisky or rum do not necessarily indicate the alcohol content."

So each X represents a distillation cycle. Three X's basically mean it's the GOOD STUFF. Today, this can still be seen primarily associated with moonshine-

For those of you who don't know (like I didn't until I fell into this rabbit hole), moonshine is defined as a homemade, un-aged whiskey. It has a clear color, a corn base, a high alcohol content, and it's traditionally bottled in mason jars. (I ripped all of this right from google)

During the prohibition, the demand for moonshine would have risen drastically, but a more important key-phrase to take away from all that is the 'clear color'. Not very 'umber whiskey waters' of it, UNTIL you read about how umber whiskey gets its color.

It absorbs its color by maturing in wooden casks. And this process can take a while. One might even catch his death waiting around that long. HahHAhaAHAHAhahahah

*ahem* Sorry. But, there might be some truth there. Whiskey needs to be matured for a minimum of 3 years, many being matured for far longer than that, and only one year has passed between Atlas's death and the current timeline.

All of this for me just confirms that there's some umber alcohol in those waters, or more probably, tucked away under it. We don't know how long its been there for, or who, besides Atlas himself, might know of its existence, but let's not forget Atlas's VAST stretch of underground tunnels that the Lackadaisy provides access to. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that he might have had a tunnel or two filled with maturing whiskey, hidden deep underground, maybe close to the Mississippi... maybe dangerously close. Maybe they're a reckless act away from flooding entirely, spilling their valuable contents into the river... causing lots of destruction....

This might be a bad time to re-remind everybody of Rocky's drowning motif.

eh... im sure he'll be fine...

Furthermore... the article I linked above leaves us on THIS cheery note...

"Other applications for a series of Xs occur within the writing fraternity, whereby a writer completing a manuscript concludes the text with a single line of ‘XXX’ to signify to printers and editors that this is ‘The End.’"

[foxes-that-run]

But Daddy I Love Him

Daddy I love him is an Ariel quote, when Ariel gives up her voice for love. Taylor has given up love for her voice (career), but also not spoken up for what she wants most. But Daddy I Love Him is a continuation of a theme of how fame and fandoms have affected Taylor's personal life. What I love about this song is it sounds like an older Taylor Swift song, she embraces a country sound and speaks her mind.

While the parallels to the reaction to a relationship in May 2023 can be seen, this overlooks much of her experience with this behaviour. I don't mean to say it is not an element, but it is far from a complete story to say it is about ending a 3 week relationship with someone about whom she also said "And I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive" on the same record.

In her NYU Graduation address in May 2022 Taylor had part of the concept in this already swirling in her mind, a full year before she dated Matty Healy:

Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute by minute, ever fluctuating social relevance and likability. 

What Taylor is referring to is the treatment by the media and fandoms throughout her career, but this was never more of an issue than 2012-2014. Nothing is a terrifying as a teenager on fledgeling social media. This TikTok creator describes it perfectly:

From tabloids, twitter, tumblr, even people who looked like Taylor were abused.

So yes, Harry has had and worn t-Shirt with the song title for years, and yes they have both dressed up as Ariel. But that is not all that makes this song about Taylor loosing her love over fan behaviour... it's because she did. She lost the love she wrote 1989 including "This love left a permanent mark / This love is glowing in the dark"  about. And it continues today, there are a lot of people who still call Harry's partners vile names and think it is OK to treat others poorly because they suggest he could care for someone. I think anyone who's read this far knows exactly what I mean, probably first hand.

This affected Taylor the point the Clean Speeches on the 1989 Tour were on this topic, every night she talked about bullying, self worth and holding onto love.

The 'Daddy' is not just the fans and media, but probably her team also. I think the varied shapes in the CDs are to show this comes in many forms and roles, not just one experience. As Taylor said to Rolling Stone in 2014 before 1989 was released:

Lyrics

[Verse 1] I forget how the West was won I forget if this was ever fun I just learned these people only raise you To cage you Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best Clutching their pearls, sighing, “What a mess” I just learned these people try and save you ‘Cause they hate you

For the international fans like myself 'How the West was Won' is a 1960's film about American colonisation. I think the opening 2 lines do 2 things, place us in a country setting and also tell us Taylor cares more about speaking her mind than what may be higher bigger goals.

The second half of this verse goes on to set out that it is fans who are approaching her love lost as trauma porn, and I am here for it.

I also note the cage reference, Taylor (and Harry) have a long theme of being caged or trapped by fame, she has a literal cage in her Nashville apartment, he has a cage tattoo and they have used cage, glass boxes, fishbowls, snowglobe imagery. Here she points out the fans are not really there for her, they are seeking to control her.

[Pre-Chorus 1] Too high a horse for a simple girl To rise above it They slammed the door on my whole world The one thing I wanted

The pre-chorus furthers that the final straw has been broken, she's been cornered by fans to give up something she cares for.

Vigante Shit "Ladies always rise above / Ladies know what people want / Someone sweet and kind and fun /The lady simply had enough"

Is It Over Now? "I was hoping you’d be there and say the one thing I’ve been wanting, but no"

That is the only time Taylor has sung about ‘wanting one thing' before. This also reminds me of the Delicate Behind the Scenes, where she said she got a note from a lover and wants to be with him but realises 'it can never be him'

[Chorus] Now I’m running with my dress unbuttoned Scrеaming, “But, Daddy, I love him I’m having his baby” No, I’m not, but you should see your faces I’m telling him to floor it through thе fences No, I’m not coming to my senses I know he’s crazy, but he’s the one I want

In the chorus Taylor acts out a churlish child yelling at a father. The 'daddy' is many roles, her actual parents, fans, media and probably record company and PR people who told her she could be with the one she loved, throughout her life. She says the matching line to Harry's Kiwi, which has the same meaning.

Taylor 'floors it through the fences, fed up and unwilling to listen. This is great imagery, to break through fences, and also as metaphorical fences that have been placed around what considered acceptable for her. Cars are also a Haylor theme, including Run below and often used as a metaphor for their love escaping as it is here. (All I know is that you drove us off the road / Let’s get out of this town, drive out of the city, away from the crowds)

Is It Over Now?: Was it over when he unbuttoned my blouse?

Run: And my so-called friends, they don’t know I’d drive away before I let you go

In Kiwi Harry yells a tabloid line followed with it's none of your business. In his Harry's House ONO complete with pointing at the camera and crowd. Taylor also referenced these same tabloids headlines in the Reputation magazine.

Kiwi "I'm having your baby / It's none of your business"

[Verse 2] Dutiful daughter, all my plans were laid Tendrils tucked into a woven braid Growing up precocious sometimes means Not growing up at all He was chaos, he was revelry Bedroom eyes like a remedy Soon enough, the elders had convened Down at the city hall

In the second verse Taylor establishes that she has gone everything asked of her:

Style - "I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt"

Style - "So it goes, he can’t keep his wild eyes on the road"

Yet is denied freedom and the elders decree the match is unsuitable. I think the elders are her team. She describes the muse as chaos and revelry. This is very reminiscent of the I Knew You Were Trouble introduction poem, but while in 2012 Taylor was contrite and said it was too much she now revels in the revelry:

"And the crazy thing is I don't know if I'm ever gonna feel that way again, but I don't know if I should. I knew his world moved too fast and burned too bright, but I just thought, how can the devil be pulling you toward someone who looks so much like an angel when he smiles at you? Maybe he knew that when he saw me. I guess I just lost my balance. I think that the worst part of it all wasn't losing him it was losing me"

[Pre-Chorus 2] “Stay away from her” The saboteurs protested too much Lord knows the words we never heard Just screeching tires and true love

The 'daddy' has now forbidden the love, this is reminiscent of Love Story: "And my daddy said, “Stay away from Juliet”

[Chorus] And I’m running with my dress unbuttoned Screaming, “But, Daddy, I love him I’m having his baby” No, I’m not, but you should see your faces I’m telling him to floor it through the fences No, I’m not coming to my senses I know he’s crazy, but he’s the one I want

'Crazy' and Madness are a Haylor theme, particularly in the Blank Space music video, and these lyrics

Wonderland "And in the end, in Wonderland, we both went mad"

Kiwi "She's driving me crazy, but I'm into it (Oh) and "It's getting crazy, I think I'm losing it, I think I'm losing it"

But many more songs:

[Post-Chorus 1] I’ll tell you something right now I’d rather burn my whole life down Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning I’ll tell you something ’bout my good name It’s mine alone to disgrace I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing

I love the last line, vipers dressed in empaths clothing, that is exactly what they are.

[Bridge] God save the most judgmental creeps Who say they want what’s best for me Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see Thinking it can change the beat Of my heart when he touches me And counteract the chemistry And undo the destiny You ain’t gotta pray for me Me and my wild boy and all of this wild joy If all you want is gray for me Then it’s just white noise, and it’s just my choice

The only time Taylor has described someone as wild in lyrics is in Style "So it goes, he can’t keep his wild eyes on the road"

Afterglow "Chemistry until it blows up"

I love the end of the bridge, elsewhere on the record Taylor describes her long term relationship as grey, staid and boring. For many years some fans have shoehorned this person into lyrics because they want to see themselves in her, as they settle down they want her too. From my point of view some rather loud warning signs in songs were overlooked, or seen as 'she's remembering the past/when they first got together' to avoid accepting she was unhappy and wanted out.

Out of the Woods "The rest of the world was black and white But we were in screaming color"

[Verse 3] There’s a lot of people in town that I Bestow upon my fakest smiles Scandal does funny things to pride, but brings lovers closer We came back when the heat died down Went to my parents and they came around All the wine moms are still holding out But fuck ’em, it’s over

This verse is where I think it becomes clear than the 2023 lens is at best reminding Taylor of a past love, because that relationship never came back. Matty has said they never dated in 2014, there was no controversy around her attending concerts then. They dated for a few weeks then stopped talking, and of story.

However Harry and Taylor did sing about a hidden relationship for years. In fact Taylor wasn't connected to anyone else in a serious way for three years. In particular

Wildest Dreams: I said, “No one has to know what we do”

This Love "This love came back to me, oh, oh, oh"

I know places : "Somethin' happens when everybody finds out / See the vultures circling, dark clouds" and "we're bulletproof I know places (Hide) and you know for me, it's always you"

…Ready For It?: "Island breeze and lights down low, no one has to know"

I Know Places TV's lyric video for got a very TTPD themed look.

[Final Chorus] Now I’m dancing in my dress in the sun and Even my daddy just loves him I’m his lady And, oh, my God, you should see your faces Time, doesn’t it give some perspective? And, no, you can’t come to the wedding I know it’s crazy, but he’s the one I want

Taylor is asking her fans, parents, media if they have grown up, from when they were teenagers playing with her real life, do they have perspective and willing to accept that she loves someone of her choosing?

And no, they can't come to the wedding, but I bet they have Eras Tour tickets....

[fox-guardian]

time for some assorted stoker swap au excerpts in no particular order because i need to share this thing in some capacity so bad. i might've shared some of these before but i Don't Care it's been months anyway

[ID: A series of snippets of a google doc in dark mode.

"Bone app-the-tea,"

After much hesitation involving pacing his room and making jokingly threatening faces and gestures at the screen and quoting vines at it to calm his nerves, he finally pressed the apply button with a yelp.

Two hours and one dramatic reading of some awful werewolf fiction later,

He was surprised. He was delighted. He was very likely fucked.

Danny looked up at him guiltily with the bucket of popcorn resting on his stomach. ".... I have good news and bad news." Tim's face fell as he straightened up. "What have you done?" "Good news and arguably bad news, depending on your personal thoughts on it," he elaborated, standing up, still holding his popcorn. "I repeat," Tim said, pressing his palms together and pointing at him, "what have you done?"

"Either way, I can't imagine the whole staff is wearing corsets and hoop skirts." ".... That'd be pretty cool though." "It would be, actually."

A resting bitch face is all it was, that's alright. He lived with a guy with a resting bitch face, this was fine.

Danny thought for a moment. "I.... have a background in urban exploration. Would that be useful?" Jon and Sasha looked at each other, and then looked at him. "That would be very useful," Jon said, with an air of curiosity to his tone. "Very, very useful," Sasha added, grinning mischievously. "Hey, he's my partner now," Jon said, jabbing a finger at her. "I get to go out in the field with him first."

"Sounds like I didn't die in Artefact Storage," Sasha replied.

"I'm an adult," Danny said, sipping from his novelty beehive mug.

Next thing he knew his back was hurting and he was upside down on the floor

".... Danny, did you-" "I might've gotten some light carbon monoxide poisoning in the attic." "Danny!" Tim sat upright, setting his mug down.

"Then fuck 'em,"

"Then, I repeat, fuck 'em."

"You all deserve it~" Danny said, blending his natural nerves into the false face of a fidgety fanatic.

"Yeah.... " Danny says, forever changed.

Danny tried to dream up as much mental eyebleach as possible. Kitty cats and puppy doges and bees half stuck in flowers, kitty cats and puppy dogs and bees half stuck in flowers. This was going to be fun to tell Tim about tonight.

end ID]

~~~~

also the current working titles for the chapters i have so far!

1 - some wednesday night in august 2013 2 - how to ace a job interview 3 - *spongebob voice* IM READY IM READY 4 - field work 5 - another day another dollar 6 - stakeout!

this update isn't much but i thought it'd be fun to share some stuff out of context :) and hopefully it motivates me to write even more lol

[honey-beann]

I'd Burn Every Soul I Knew (If I Thought the Fire Was Warming You)

rk boys (Nines, Connor, Sixty) x Reader

Chapter "One" - In Medias Res

Word Count: 3,169

Welcome to the first part of my new series, the title of which is listed above (and is also a quote from an unreleased Hozier song lol).

This series will be all three rks x reader, except unlike a normal series, we'll be starting things off randomly from the middle! As the series goes on, we'll go both backward and forward in time to give exposition and make sure there's clarification in various parts! I'm super excited for this, since I've never done anything like it before, and I hope you all enjoy!

Note: For some initial context, know that the boys were never detective androids in this universe, but were rather created for another purpose entirely :)

"We shouldn't leave her alone right now, but she needs to get cleaned off and warmed up, so do you want to stay out here with her, or go draw a bath?"

You could hear Connor's voice distantly, as if he were underwater or several rooms away, and the thought made you scowl, the idea of being any closer to alone than you already were instantly causing your anxiety to spike.

Damn, you really had gotten too used to having them all around.

In front of you, you could scarcely see a thing despite your eyes being open, your vision unfocused and blurry as you tried not to look too closely at either of the men in front of you. You had no interest in taking note of just how blue their usually white shirts were the way you had on the car ride back to your apartment.

"A bath? Have you been paying any attention to her since we got back? She's half delirious, you're basically asking her to pass out and drown in there if she takes one now."

Sixty's voice sounded even further away than Connor's, and you buried your head in your hands at the sound, a persistent and gnawing reminder of the one voice you hadn't heard.

"She needs a bath, Sixty. Put her in a shower and she could end up falling over, which is a far more likely outcome with her in the state she is now."

You heard Sixty scoff in response before footsteps that you felt more than you heard faded away as he presumably made his way towards the bathroom.

Connor on the other hand, walked towards you so gently that you scarcely would have noticed him if it weren't for the way he said your name, quietly and with caution, as if afraid you would shatter at the sound.

You shook your head indignantly, not wanting to look up and see all of the blue blood that had gotten on him earlier, desperate to escape to a reality where none of this was happening.

Connor sighed, his hand coming to rest gently on your shoulder as he spoke,

"I changed already, you don't have to hide."

He murmured, his tone ever so slightly amused but mostly just cajoling as he tried to persuade you to see the truth of his words for yourself.

Slowly, as if the speed of your actions might change the outcome, you lowered your hands from your face, slowly allowing your eyes to glance over the room a few times before finally coming to rest on Connor, who was giving you what you imagined was supposed to be a supportive smile, that just so happened to look much more like concern.

You sighed shakily, murmuring a gentle thanks in response to his thoughtfulness regarding his bloodied clothes. You hadn't expected to be so upset by them, but then again, you'd never expected to see them at all, much less on your androids, and far less from them.

It was a staggering experience to see that they truly weren't invincible. You wished you'd never had to find out at all. At least not the hard way, not like this.

Connor hummed in response to your soft words, reaching down wordlessly to tug at the hem of your shirt, pulling the white button up out of your dress slacks with ease before he raised a questioning brow, asking without words if he could keep going.

You nodded.

It would be far from the first time Connor had seen you mostly or even entirely naked, in fact, they all had at this point, having taken care of you for so long.

You were better now, less weathered by pain and illness thanks to their lingering support, but you couldn't help but almost wish the suffering back to take away the dull ache of fear and uncertainty in your chest.

You had only just finished questioning whether or not the constant discomfort would truly have been worth it when you realized that Connor had removed all but your undergarments from you, folding your stained clothes over his forearm before he took a silent step towards the laundry room just down the hall.

"Don't."

You said, your voice quiet but stern, causing the android in question to halt all movement almost instantly. He turned to face you soon after, his head tilted slightly but his expression one of patience, as if he were willing to wait all day to find out what you were thinking.

You sighed shakily,

"I want you to burn them."

You said, watching as Connor's brow rose before he looked down to the clothing in his hand, clearly not understanding.

You elaborated.

"I don't want to see them again, I couldn't bear to be reminded of..."

You trailed off, but Connor took the opportunity to nod in understanding regardless, placing the clothes on a nearby breakfast bar stool before he approached once more.

"Okay, if that's what you want then I can do it while you're resting later in the evening."

He reasoned, not giving you any time to argue about details before he switched topics entirely.

"Sixty just notified me that your bath is ready. Is there anything you want to bring in with you?"

He asked gently, and you shook your head, far too eager to have the remnants of today washed from your body to care about your comfort.

When you entered the bathroom, Sixty was waiting for you, his hand skimming across the top of the water as he checked the temperature to make sure it was the way you liked it.

"It should be between 99 and 102."

Connor stated matter of factly, causing Sixty to hum dismissively in response.

"I know."

His gaze shifted up from the water's surface to where you were standing.

"Any better?"

He asked, his words brief but their meaning heavy, as per usual when it came to him.

You shook your head silently in response, reaching your hands backward to unclasp your bra as you did so.

Suddenly, without warning, Connor's LED lit up a bright yellow, and he straightened up a bit, brow raised, before making eye contact with Sixty, his tone calm despite how obviously little he enjoyed saying what he was about to say.

"They want someone to come down and answer some questions about Nines. Can you stay with her?"

Sixty seemed to falter for a moment, hand no longer skimming the top of the water as he contemplated the meaning behind what Connor was saying.

If he was considering leaving you here with him alone, than the situation was likely dire enough for it to be worth soothing their emotional human companion.

He nodded.

"Where else would I go?"

This reaction immediately caused Connor to shake his head in response.

"No, I don't just mean at the house, I mean here in the bathroom with her. She has some bruising on her ribs that I didn't notice earlier, so she shouldn't be left alone in the tub."

Sixty's gaze shot over to you, scanning your body for signs of injury until they landed on your left rib cage, where they lingered for quite a few moments before he finally nodded again.

"Yeah, we'll be fine. Just don't let Nines find out or he'll blow a fuse."

The joke was in poor taste, but Connor did little more than roll his eyes in response before his focused returned to you, his hand reaching over to unclasp your bra for you before you could find your way back to earth after hearing that Nines was bad enough for the medical staff to need some questions answered.

Still, out of little more than habit, you shrugged the garment off of your shoulders before shimmying out of your underwear, stepping over them afterward with a blank expression as you worked persistently to avoid seeing yourself in the mirror.

Connor noticed this, and shot a glance towards his successor before he nodded to the both of you in farewell.

"I'll be back soon. If you don't hear from me for a few hours, assume everything is alright. I will keep you updated on the important things."

He promised, reaching over to offer a hand for you to hold as you stepped into the tub before finally letting go a few moments after you were sat down, his eyes trained on yours as he did his best to convey that everything was going to be alright with his actions alone.

It did little to quell the growing anxiety in your heart, but you appreciated the effort nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Sixty reached forward to turn the water on once more, filling the tub further now that you were inside of it in order to ensure it was at the perfect temperature for you in the moment.

Connor and Nines rarely let you choose things like this, since the warmer the water the higher the chance of you feeling faint afterward, but Sixty was always far more concerned with your comfort the very second you were experiencing it than he was the future. From his perspective, he could fix whatever issues your body threw at you as long as you actually bothered to tell him what they were.

In fact, in his eyes, it would be worth it to rend his artificial skin from his artificial bone just to ease the unwavering pain in your eyes.

Just to make you smile.

Whether or not he really knew that he felt that way, was an entirely separate issue.

And the only one he was truly concerned with, was whether or not you did.

That, and the way your eyes stayed fixated on the now slightly blue tinted water that you had sunk your body into, afraid to look up and see your reflection staring back you, to see how the life giving vitality of another had changed it.

Sixty sighed at the sight of your obvious struggle, knowing all too well the feeling of being unable to look at oneself in the mirror.

Or, to see yourself so physically in another who was so clearly superior.

He got up without a word, and, making a show of it so you knew what was about to happen, flicked the light switch off.

With that persistent glow from overhead gone, the only thing illuminating the room was his LED, which made it nearly impossible for you to know whether the blue in the water was the light, or the blood of a loved one.

"Can you get in with me?"

You voice rang out so suddenly and with so little warning that Sixty paused as he stood near the closed doorway, his mind searching for an easy answer that would not come.

He was not usually the one you went to for comfort, Connor knew your heart best, Nines your mind, and that had left Sixty with your body, and he had learned to understand that with as little physical interaction as possible.

The sight of his hands resting upon your skin unsettled him, as did the way you trusted him so easily, as if you weren't so readily aware that he had been built for violence, brutality in the cases where it became necessary to protect you from some unknown evil that you had grown to fear but never to name.

It confused him, how comfortable you were with hands that had maimed and killed so many and gently touched so few.

Confused him, and left him wishing he were capable of holding you the way that the others were. So gentle, not for fear of harm but rather to convey a message of understanding, of comprehension far beyond what Sixty worried he could manage.

Built to look so similar, it was a shame to be so different.

He wordlessly got into the tub behind you, watching and undressing on approach as you scooted forward silently, the water sloshing around your fragile form as you made room for his threatening presence in that way no one else ever did, or he imaged ever would.

You knew his intentions regardless of his still mouth and tensed hands, always so good at seeing, so good at understanding.

Blessed be the hands you touched your monsters with, blessed be the eyes you saw them through.

If he could make them permanent fixtures on this earth he would, but instead he knows he'll simply have to shed his own consciousness the very moment you do the same.

Loyal brute, loyal fool, loyal follower, anything if he is yours.

Everything if he is yours.

He settled in behind you so easily that it almost felt like he belonged there, a thought so foreign that it did not even register until long afterward, while he was watching your hair dry by the smoldering flame of the tinder you had provided Connor with earlier.

The air had smelt of thirium when he realized it, burning gore and rose shampoo, which came from where you stood beside him.

He had thought of the petals of the flower as he stoked the flames rising off of your still burning shirt, thinking of the way that they all folded together so perfectly, so completely, that he could surely be nothing more than the thorn on your stem.

But then he had thought of the bath tub, and the way that your back had felt slotted against his chest as the warm water lapped at his synthetic skin, and how your hands had felt on his arms as you used them to keep yourself from slipping slightly on the slippery porcelain while the water settled.

Even as a well fitted thing, he had still caused a disturbance. When did he not?

But the future was still unknown for the moment, so he did not think about these things as he settled into the water behind you, instead choosing to ask if you were comfortable, only to be met with silence when you simply nodded, head tilted back in what the android took as a request, a gentle invitation, to make sure it was clean.

Sixty ran a few gentle fingers through your hair, doing his best to de-tangle what he could without hurting you before he began to cup water into his palms, using it to cleanse your locks of any dried thirium that had begun to grow thick and clotted there, so ironically similar to blood for all that it was not.

When he was done with that, he found the bottle of shampoo that he liked the scent of best beside the tub, and massaged it into your scalp, being careful not to pull.

He truly did know your body best of all, no matter how frightened of it he was.

You leaned into his touch slowly, as if hesitant to do so, and he said nothing about any of it, choosing instead to warn you to close your eyes as he used his hands to gather water once more, rinsing your hair of anything that had remained stuck on after it's de-tangling earlier on.

Your body came next, and you stood for that part, shivering in the cool air as it came in contact with your warm body, allowing him to not only feel your frailty, but also see it even clearer than he already had.

It was remarkable how much power something so fragile had.

Once you had been thoroughly cleansed of any traces of the day, Sixty was cautious in turning the light on again, eyes trained on your reaction thoughtfully all the way up until he had you wrapped in a towel and leaving the bathroom entirely, bound for your small room of soft robes and a plush mattress, one he had picked out (with the help of his "siblings" of course. Nothing ever got past them otherwise).

Sixty's thought regarding his counterparts had him faltering slightly as he guided you over to the edge of your bed to sit you down as he searched for clothing comfortable enough for you to sleep in later that evening.

He had seen the exhaustion in your eyes, and if Connor had been here, he would be insisting that Sixty was keeping you awake for all of the teary tired present in your gaze, but the younger android knew better. He knew you would fight it off until Nines either walked through the door himself, or was carried through in a bag of miscellaneous parts by his predecessor.

Not wishing to dwell on that thought, he soon settled on a large t shirt you had bought him at a concert a few years prior. He hadn't particularly enjoyed the music, didn't even really know how to back them, but you had seen him looking at it and bought it without a second thought.

So giving no matter how much was taken, he worried you might one day lose yourself to the pull of selflessness.

A selfish concern to be sure, how ironic.

Helping you get dressed with particular care being given to your bruised rib cage, Sixty was sure to scan your vitals multiple times throughout the process, always convincing himself that it was more for Connor, who could see the live data, than it was for him.

He was a liar, but he didn't need to admit that to himself, much less to the world.

Once you were finally comfortable and ready to relax for the evening, Sixty silently followed you out into the living area, setting you up with your favorite blanket on the couch (despite pretending to be surprised when you mentioned to him that it was your favorite when he laid it over top of your still vaguely shivering form) before he tried to think of something you could eat.

He had just come up with a few ideas to present to you when he noticed your shoulders shaking as your head rested heavily in your hands, and without a sound, he approached, sitting down beside you.

He let you cry for a little longer after that, so unused to comforting you in favor of his counterparts that he was rather unsure of what to say until finally, he simply said the only thing that came to mind.

"He's going to be okay. None of us are ever going to leave you, not as long as you need us."

His tone was firm and far less compassionate than the one Connor or even Nines may have used, but it must have done the trick, because you looked up at him weepily soon after, eyes wet and hands shaking as you took a deep and unsure breath.

"So you'll always be here?"

You all but wheezed, so desperate for comfort that the straining in your lungs was nothing if it meant receiving reassurance from someone.

Sixty responded without hesitance, his tone deadly serious as he spoke,

"We are yours. We won't leave unless you ask us to."

Connor called about Nines exactly 9.86 seconds later.

masterlist

AO3

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Animation-twitter, animation video essay youtube, etc. would probably be better off if they assumed every upcoming animated movie was going to be CRAP.

The director of INSIDE OUT 2, Kelsey Mann, has talked a bit about the picture recently. After all, it's out in less than two months... And immediately, so much of what he's saying is either being misread or quoted out of context. Something something Anxiety is going to be "the villain", something something they cut characters Shame and Guilt out of the movie because they felt it was too heavy, something something-

And we've got other people freaking out that Pixar showed 35 minutes of it at CinemaCon... LIKE... What's THE issue? Pixar has done that before! CinemaCon attendees were treated to half-hour chunks of Pixar movies in the past, like MONSTERS UNIVERSITY. When TOY STORY 3 was coming out, Pixar prepared a cut of the movie that ended just as the toys were escaping Sunnyside Daycare... to show to college campuses across the country a month before release.

Y'all need to calm down.

This movie isn't even out. We don't know how it'll tell its story exactly. Maybe there's more here than it seems? Maybe Anxiety will be an antagonist in the sense that she's doing what she feels is right, or is straight-up malevolent. I doubt it's the latter, that would be kind of... Not nuanced? For a sequel to INSIDE OUT? Having Anxiety just be an evil scheming bad guy just doesn't seem like it'll happen, nor is it a good idea. I think director Kelsey Mann meant that by her kicking the other emotions out of the main control room, she'll be the "big bad" of the movie. Why she kicks those emotions out could be related to how anxiety tends to work within the human brain. Taking control of your brain, thinking that it's steering you to make the right decision, making you cautious of dangers more so than "Fear" does. Pixar movies have had antagonists in the past that aren't necessarily evil, they just think what they're doing is right.

I also doubt that Pixar would let out a movie that flat-out stigmatizes people who suffer from anxiety disorders, such as myself. Maybe the Shame and Guilt characters were cut from the movie because director Mann, writer Meg LeFauve, and several others just didn't like the direction the story was going with them in it. Maybe it was too depressing for THEM, not because of any concerns for kids in the audience. People tend to associate Pixar with "tearjerking storylines", maybe it's possible that this went WAY TOO FAR at one point? I don't know, neither do you. Pixar's team isn't Disney Animation's leadership. Pete Docter is less controlling than John Lasseter based on everything I see and hear, but there are probably still some ground rules and some do's-and-don'ts. But I think it was ultimately down to the director not enjoying making the film back when it had these characters in it. As a writer/creator myself, I sometimes pull back when I feel something I'm making is causing ME lose the drive to make the thing in the first place. Maybe it hit too close to home for Mann, LeFauve, someone- Just a few variables, ya know? Not just "Pixar is too afraid to be sad", "Disney's telling them what to do", etc. etc.

Maybe animated movies shouldn't have this kind of pre-release thing... How about, just... Movie title, release date, BOOM. Nothing else. No interviews with the filmmakers and cast, no nothing... Wanna know more? You have to see it when it comes out! Put that in big letters in the teaser trailer!

But if they did that, twitter and the YouTube Animation Opinion Industrial Complex would sound the alarm: "They're not saying anything... IS THIS MOVIE IN TROUBLE???"

(sarcasm for those last two sets of sentences)

You can't win. And watch... It'll come out, and it'll be disliked for some weird reason. Probably because it isn't... PUSS IN BOOTS 2 or whatever. While the rest of the world goes, "Yeah, that's was pretty solid." And said population streams it on Disney+ a gazillion times. I'm not part of this "animation fandom" thing, quite frankly I don't even know what half of these people want most of the time. It seems like every movie is an oncoming stinker to them, and it ends up being a stinker. Sometimes the worst thing ever made, a work of evil. You know I still see people raging over that completely harmless CHIP N' DALE RESCUE RANGERS movie from two years back? The fuck is that all about?

I get that INSIDE OUT is a sequel to a beloved Pixar movie, I get that the original movie means a lot to so many people. I love it myself. At the same time, I'm not gonna be weird about a sequel I never even wanted until the day they announced it. Okay, if it isn't very good, I'll just go on with my life. But we're not even there yet... It's not out... This is the only INSIDE OUT sequel. Now if we were coming up on an INSIDE OUT 3, and INSIDE OUT 2 managed to somehow upset everybody? Then I'd somewhat understand...

Others will dole out their dislike of recent Pixar movies as their reason, but you know me... I feel each Pixar movie - for the most part - is a statement of its filmmaking team. Not a Mr. Pixar person coming up with each and every movie. (That was Lasseter in a sense, lol.) If "animation is cinema", then you oughta look at these movies as director-driven. I feel the other way around reduces the films to a brand, and not the people who actually make them. INSIDE OUT is first and foremost a Pete Docter-directed film... Made at Pixar. Not a "Pixar film". Pixar isn't a person nor is it a collective, it's a place. It should be judged on how functions as a movie and as a sequel to INSIDE OUT, not up against other movies made at the studio by other people. Like I'm not here for THE INCREDIBLES or UP, I'm here for an INSIDE OUT sequel. I know, that's a very radical opinion to have. Silly me!

I just don't get it... I'm just gonna do it the old-fashioned way... I'm going to see the movie, and hope that I like it or get something out of it.

[theragnarokd]

[i deny anything to do with this. dirk writing fanfiction, modern no sburb au, rated T so far, lots of self loathing and judginess]

It was the end of the evening shift. He did a lot of closing nowadays, night blurring into dawn: there wasn’t anyone to drag him out. Not anymore. On the counter, there was a finished drink, the customer’s name written on it in sharpie. His coworker must have ducked out just before calling out their name. He picks it up. It’s not until he calls out the name that it registers: “Enkidu!” From the back of the coffee shop, a familiar figure approaches, and Gilgamesh’s heart clenched. For a desperate moment, he dared to hope.

Dirk exhales, rereading the paragraphs for typos. Then he saves it into the folder titled Oubliette, and opens a different text file. His SBaHJ reverse-mpreg vore isn’t going to write itself, and Dirk can’t disappoint his readership.

Even as the thought forms, his inbox dings. His heart speeds up at the view of the sweetest words known to man or machine:

[AO3] Comment on SBaHJ: the Romeomance

Of course he immediately opens the notification.

centaursTesticle left the following comment:

My admiration, as always, is yours. I would be happy to read more in this GRIPPING tale

Dirk permits himself a small smile. This guy has been commenting on Dirk’s fics, first in a binge and now on every new installment he updated. Dirk mentally fist-bumps him before opening his WIP folder, where the relevant fic document lives. It’s a good day.

It is not a good night.

Dirk should go the fuck to sleep. Or at least to shower. He washed the dishes earlier and his shirt has more unmentionable fluids on it than his latest fic update, which is saying something.

Instead, he goes to Romeomance’s page and hits refresh.

Not even a tick on the visit count.

This is stupid. Dirk is being a useless idiot. If people can’t appreciate his subtle satire and how it corresponds with the tone of the original comics and movies, that’s on them, and not on him.

There’s a newer fanfic than his with twice the hitcount, not even looking at kudos.

Well, so what? People like what they like. As long as Dirk is happy with the stuff he writes – and while he’s always aware of places he could improve, he rather is happy with it – what does it matter what response some other person’s fic gets?

The title is a lower-case quote from a song that was in the top 40s ten years ago. The tags include Enemies to Lovers, Only One Bed, and Slow Burn. (The fic isn’t even 10K, and it’s marked as complete, so Dirk is a teensy bit skeptical of how slow that burn is.)

Dirk clicks in. Maybe he can learn a thing or two.

The first two paragraphs make a fairly clever allusion to the famous stairs monologue. It’s a surprisingly fresh outlook on a piece of canon that’s been worn to palimpsest and back by fanon. It could be a good fic. Dirk might enjoy it. Better, Dirk might learn how to write something that isn’t worthless drivel–

He closes the tab.

This would be an excellent time to go shower.

He opens the tab again. He reads through the story grimly, marking how the dialogue sounds lively and not like two finger puppets squeaking at one another. Yes, okay, it’s a stylistic choice for Dirk. That, and he can’t fucking write dialogue to save his life.

By the time Dirk reaches the author’s notes at the end, the only argument he can make against deleting all his own fic is that it can serve as a cautionary tale.

The end notes thank two beta readers. Dirk runs his fics past Roxy when he can swing it, but for the most part, he hasn’t managed to attract a beta reader in years. Maybe that’s why everything he writes gargles balls.

There’s also a link to the author’s entry in the Every Little Bid Helps fanfic auction. Dirk clicks on the link mostly out of self preservation: if he rereads this fic, he really will orphan his account. That would be sad for that centaursTesticle guy, wouldn’t it? Think of the testicles. The centaur ones.

[cryptid-artha]

The God of the Bible is a Lovecraftian Horror

Disclaimer - This is not meant to offend anybody. If you are offended by the idea of this, just scroll past and don’t read it. This was just for fun, and a bunch of observations I have made. This isn't even meant to be taken seriously and is in no way an attack against any religions, Christian or otherwise. People are allowed to interpret Mythology however they want - no Mythology is above this, so I can take Abrahamic mythology and interpret it however I want to. Thank you.

If you aren’t easily offended and want to read something fun, keep reading!

I have come to the conclusion that the God of the Christian Bible is a Lovecraftian Eldritch horror. Here is the proof.

1 - His real name is never mentioned. Yahweh, Jahova, Elohim … these all mean “Lord” or “King” or “God” and are actually just a title. His real name is said to be unknowable, and that no man may utter it. Many of the Lovecraftian names are not really the name of the creatures mentioned, but rather a translation or title. Even the name people commonly know him by, God, is just a title. It simply describes what he is to the people who follow him.

2 - To look upon the face of God was said to cause blindness, death, or possibly insanity. He is said to be incomprehensible and unknowable. Look at what happened to those who touched the Ark of the Covenant, and what happened to them.

3 - People who had close contact with him went crazy. Ever read Revelations with all the crazy creatures and monsters described? It isn't just revelations either, crazy stuff happened surrounding this entity all throughout his book.

4 - There are incredibly loyal followers who continue to believe despite everything that seems to go against logic and reason. They have engaged in animal sacrifice. There is even a major story in their book about a human sacrifice that is at the core of their entire belief system. There was also a story about a man who was willing to sacrifice his own son on a single command. They built great and ancient monuments to him. Some could, arguably, call many of these followers a cult, has been one of the most dangerous and influential groups throughout history, and was part of what brought about the Dark Ages.

5 - There are tales of destruction and horror - about the End Days when he would come back with terrible wrath, and his followers hope for it to happen and even preach on the streets to spread this dark news.

6 - A quote from the bible says that “I thousand years is but a day to the Lord”, showing just how far removed from anything human this entity is.

7 - The Bible mentions how the Sons of God and the Sons of Men interbred… to create Nephilim. They were described as mighty giants… That sure sounds a lot like the Human/Great Old One hybrids from the Dunwich Horror, or the Deep Ones connected to Dagon.

8 - Jesus, who was said to be his son, had strange powers, survived Crucifixion, and vanished, said to have”Ascended into Heaven” - if no body was found, wouldn’t it make sense that he faded away to nothing like Wilbur Whatley did after his death? That adds to the idea that “Jesus” was a hybrid between a human and a Great Old One.

9 - Further on the subject of Jesus, he was said to be his son - but the Angels were also called the Sons of God - does this mean they were the Spawn of a Great Old One? Sure seems like it to me. Their behavior also lines up with this, in how they exist to serve their master and do his bidding.

10 - The Angels were described with inhuman and twisted features - such as one that was literally wheels covered in eyes and wings. Just like creatures spawning from Lovecraftian Horrors.

11 - He draws many parallels to Yog-Sothoth.

This passage about Yog-Sothoth:

“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.”

and

“It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yoggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebula know by an untranslatable Sign…”

And verses describing God from his book:

Revelation 22:13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.“

Revelation 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

God and Yog-Sothoth both come from Arabic origin, so the lore matches up as well.

Yog-Sothoth AND God both impregnated a human woman in their texts.

Yog-Sothoth siring twins, and Mary having a single child.

12 - His followers have their own book like the Necronomicon. It is called the Bible… which translates to simply “The Book”. Like the Necronomicon, the Book is full of dangerous creatures, horrors beyond time, instructions for rituals and laws, and terrible dark tales that would make the sanest man cringe

If you have anything to add, feel free to! Again, no offense or harm is meant. I am not religious, but I have nothing against folks who are as long as they aren't hurting anybody.

[leonsbunny]

Behind The Moon Shadow

( Ethan Winters x gn!reader || aquarium date fluff !! )

authors note: title is from a song by lamp! also, the information about moon jelly mating can be found here! i got the information quoted word per word from there for this fic!! enjoy (^3^)/

warnings: established relationship, forehead kissing, no usages of (y/n)

The refracted beams of blue reflect off your face, Ethan watches the awe in your features as you stare eagerly into the moon jelly tank. He stares, mindlessly at you, comfortably out of habit. Not at the giant acrylic fish tank encapsulating moon jellies in their own little pod of time. In a way, you were both in your own little pod of time, Ethan thought.

Your eyes shift from the tank to the cutesy-looking plaque adorning its base. Ethan's eyes follow yours. Silently, he reads it to himself. You do the same.

"Oh, ew…." You chuckle to yourself once you finish reading through plaque. "Hm? What is it?" He asks, eyes narrowing down at the plaque. He only skimmed through it, probably not catching whatever you were audibly and jokingly, interjecting about.

You pull his hand close, gently towards you, and point at the plaque. You read it aloud, tracing your finger as you go against the words indented along its metal. "Female moon jelly brood their larvae on their oral arms…" you repeat the words off the plaque, word for word. "Ew…" you both say, which causes Ethan to laugh softly, covering his laugh with his other hand. The one you weren't holding gently yet securely onto, as if he, like the moon jellies in the tank, would mindlessly float away, drifting away from you. Though, that would never happen. Not in a million years.

The both of you laugh softly to yourselves, taking the words "oral arms" off the plaque literally. "They…they don't even have arms!" You say, your dumb yet true remark makes Ethan laugh louder, unable to hold his snorting chortles in any longer. His hand leaves his mouth, letting his laughs mellow out until you're both spent.

You both pant quietly, not that it mattered. Not many people came to the aquarium on weekdays. It took a minute to get that giggly feeling out of your system. Your cheeks still felt stretched from laughing too hard. The smile lines on your face deepened, not that it mattered either. Ethan's did, too. You were both happy in your own little capsule of time.

He palms for your hand again, guiding the both of you to a nearby bench. His hand rests in yours. Instinctively, you lean against his shoulder. His eyes travel up the curved aquarium tank walls. You can see the blues of the tank reflect off his eyes. His eyes were tired, his crows feet were wrinkled up into a soft smile. Though there was a faint smile on his face, it showed more in his eyes. Soft tired eyes smiling up at the drifting waves of the tank, the soft rays of light reflect off of his features. Moon jellyfish mindlessly float around in the tank, some of them crowding together in an almost couple-like fashion. How cute.

"Look, it's us," Ethan softly points out, sticking a finger out at two jellyfish clumped together. Following the artificial waves the tank made to stimulate their ocean home. "You know, they do that when they follow the same current." He explains, reciting what he skimmed through on the plaque in front of the other, less smaller tank. "Kinda like us, huh?" Ethan adds, causing your eyes to soften.

The ambience of the aquarium, the white noise of artificial waves crashing gently against one another, the faint sound of jazz coming far off from somewhere you couldn't pinpoint made everything Ethan was spewing out fuzzier than usual. You didn't know why.

You cup the sides of Ethan's face, looking up at him with softened eyes.

"Yeah, like us." You murmur a kiss onto his forehead. Pulling away to sink back down in your seat. Mindlessly watching the waves and moon jellies alike.

[liketwoswansinbalance]

Update and More Facts about The One True School Master of Vault 41

The Update:

I've finally been doing more transferring of my notes and partly-written, unordered scenes into one document, so things are in chronological order. Thus far, draft zero of TOTSMOV41 has reached approximately 151 pages, or, by its word count, 48,042 words. Although, a lot of the document is made up of my extraneous notes, so it's not all actually story.

⸻

The Facts:

The fic will have various epigraphs, and one of them is a Japeth quote.

There will be no true epilogue because I'm leaving room for sequel potential.

After the Wizard Tree business unfolds at the Bank of Putsi, the vast majority of the fic is set at the Schools.

I haven't exactly decided on a structure for TOTSMOV41 yet, so it might either consist of a triumvirate of "parts," with each section being exceptionally long, working like a triptych of sorts, or it will be broken up into more traditional chapters, possibly of varying lengths. My plan, once the whole fic is done, would be to post a section per week or so.

Does anyone have an opinion on the structure? At the moment, I'm leaning toward having three, massive sections because it makes the most sense narratively, especially with regards to time and settings, and could flow better.

That said, unless anything changes drastically, the title of part one or chapter one will be: "Of Solipsism, Sophistry, and Storians."

Originally, it was "Of Sophistry and Storians," which I thought was more compact, and it had a better ring to it while more directly featuring the "balance" between "Sophie" and "Storian" that may be present. Yet, ultimately, the longer title proved more accurate to the contents of that part.

The other two parts are tentatively titled: "Great Mistake II and Great Mistake III" and "Phantoms, Prescience, and the Pen."

Also, for your reference, if needed, I've synthesized definitions from various sources:

Solipsism (n) = the quality of being very self-centered or selfish, or, in philosophy, the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist, that what's in your mind is the only reality that can be known and verified. Solipsism comes from the Latin words for alone (sol) and self (ipse), and means that only the self is real. Alternatively, it implies excessive regard for oneself and one's own interests, to the exclusion of others; preoccupation with oneself; extreme selfishness, centeredness, or self-absorption. Also in a neutral sense: isolation, solitude.

Sophistry (n) =

-The use of specious but fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.

-The deliberate use of fallacious reasoning, intellectual charlatanism, and moral unscrupulousness.

-Subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation.

-Reasoning or arguments that sound correct but are actually false.

-Cunning, trickery, craft.

The entire fic technically takes place over the span of approximately one day, or less than a day, really. It's more like several hours have passed, not days or weeks. Though, it's not as insane as you'd think, probably. Well, the plot itself is insane, admittedly.

Although, perception-wise, to the characters, and experientially, to readers, it will feel as if it all takes place over weeks, instead of a single day. Time flows differently within the crystal, and the broken crystal ball condenses time, and so, whilst in the crystal, Agatha, Sophie, and Rafal experience far more than what several hours would allow in reality.

And, it's not quite time travel, even if that's how it may appear. For a particular, currently undisclosed reason, I'm going to call it "psyche travel," by the term I remember Soman using for ACOT.

Lastly, Rafal will come to dread the prospect of nonexistence, which I intend to treat as a concept distinctly separate from death. Not to worry though! It'll be explained eventually.

[chirpingfromthebox]

My favorite bits from Boston's post-game press interviews after PWHL Finals Game 3

You can find the entire video here! Be sure to give them some views/likes/nice comments, because her channel is great and the support helps more people find it.

At the table were Megan Keller, Hilary Knight, and coach Courtney Kessel.

Technically, my title here is a lie. Usually I just pick my favorite parts, but this is just all of them, because they only asked 4 questions. The whole video is only about 3 minutes long. It could be that the reporters just didn't have anything more to ask given the circumstances, or it could be that they were picking up the STRONG vibes that the Boston crew very much did not want to be there.

Hilary Knight especially looks like she would throw hands at anyone who asked an impertinent question.

Transcriptions under the break.

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REPORTER: For any of you guys, given everything you have done this season so far to get to this point, what are the emotions to keep it alive for one more game?

COURTNEY KESSEL: Two more games.

REPORTER: Sorry! Two more games- one more win at least.

[for context, from the way it sounded I do believe this slip-up from the reporter was a legitimate mistake of phrasing and not a dig at Boston.]

MEGAN KELLER: I mean, I think all year long it’s been a journey for this team. We’re used to having to fight for everything. For every inch. Playoffs, this finals, it’s a series. So we have to find a way to turn the page here and learn from this game. We’ve got two more games coming up.

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REPORTER: For Courtney, how would you describe—or for a player—just how difficult it was to get any shots net in the early goings of that second period?

COURTNEY KESSEL: I think Minnesota’s done a great job of setting up a trap after they score. They’ve done it in all three games. We’ve gotta find a way to beat it, to get pucks in with possession and not chase the game.

R: Maybe I’ll follow up, for Hilary, what do you think the forwards can do to get a little more space or generate more with what they’re giving you?

HILARY KNIGHT: I’d say that a lot of our forechecks are broken. So it’s just that second quick support and making sure that we’re placing pucks in a position to help us play into our speed that we have. We have a handful of talented players, so just having that disconnect has really bit us tonight.

[if you only watch one part of the video watch this one. To quote @hockeyisforwomen: “Knight is absolutely steaming.” I can't properly describe to you the levels to which she appears to be fighting to keep her cool. You can see it the whole interview, but here it's on full display.

Also note that she's been tapping her pointer finger the whole session, but by the end of the session she's switched to her middle finger. Just a coincidence? Or a message to the press? You be the judge!]

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REPORTER: For Megan, how much life did you guys get from Alina’s goal there at the very end of the second period? Breaking the long shutout streak. Getting you on the board with just a few seconds left in a tight game.

MEGAN KELLER: Yeah, I think that gave this team a lot of life. You know, it’s fun scoring goals. Especially under two seconds. That’s happened quite a few times here. I think going into the third it definitely gave us some life. And just a few defensive breakdowns at the end there that kinda cost us.

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REPORTER: For Courtney, what’s you message, kinda, turning that page and pushing, getting ready for another one so quickly turnaround in this series?

COURTNEY KESSEL: I feel like our backs have been up against the wall for quite some time. We were down 5 points heading into that World’s break. I think the run we went on to get us where we’re at is something to- it’s an accomplishment for sure. So we know what it’s like to fight back and we’re going to continue to fight.

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[End of Interview]

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What I got from these interviews is that this loss seems to have really rattled Boston. They are either about to crack under the pressure or they're about to go absolute beast-mode on Sunday.

Personally, I'm hoping for the latter. As much as I want Minnesota to win it all, I love the Boston team. They've struggled a bit this season, but when Boston brings the heat? My gods, they bring the fire! And there's nothing better than best-on-best. If they can turn this loss into fuel for the game on Sunday the way they've been doing ever since the world's break? Oh my friends, it'll be epic.

[daily-rcp-poli]

*It seems that Dave was asleep but quickly got up, ready for whatever bullshit (his and my words, not anyone else's; after all, Homestuck itself is that) he had ready. Although IRL school demands IRL, not transitioned Dave to study, in this hour he's good to yap*

Alright...the thing is, a part of me alwahs doubt my own judgement on others, especially as I'm poor with judging myself. But there's no denying that I was already in the right track all along! So, you got: Knight of Mind! Some powerful classpect, although every one of them are powerful when used properly (although since I'm no SBURB player, at least this "THE Dave", I got no classpect powers. But my classpect is pretty neat as well).

So, since I'm lazy af rn, here's a quote from a tumblr blog that focuses on classpects: "Knights use their aspect as a weapon, exploit their aspect for any situation, and defend others with their aspect. Mind is all about logic, decisions, the outer self and tactical planning. Therefore, the Knight of Mind uses their mind to fight and defend, allowing them to be masters of battle tactics."

Knights also...hide under a persona. Either that is a shadow of their true potential, or hiding their true selves...mostly the latter, most of the time. As for you, you seemed to be quite a good example of such classpect used with (almost) full potential! You used strategies to make your fellow Rescue members organized, and no offense to Jin but you had more leadership effort since you're way more present than her. <-Blud still thinks Jin is the 'true' leader and will die on that hill

Although there is a canonical Knight of Mind in Homestuck [who is it? I ain't telling; go read the gogdamned comic or search ;) ], you were quite the opposite of her. You used your knowledge for real instead of hiding it, but even then there's that case of an "outer self" with you. However, unlike Roy, you seemed more stable with the emotional and mental parts of your identity, although still something...that may or may not be quite concerning, I suppose?

I've met many Polis who were as strategic as you but used it for other reasons, whether for good (like my Murder Drones AU!Poli/Price) or evil, others who emphasized the "No usey knowledge" thing—although it's not in a "cool lad" persona but in a kinda stoic sona instead—and some who were supposed to be a Mage, which understands their aspect quite well. Although that case for that last one is due to various...shenanigans.

Although the thing is...I wonder if that first variation of you that I've met as a kid is still around. As in, "narratively significant" around. Maybe he is, but who knows, really? We're all puppets of fate, and for someome like me...myself. But in the end, all is good...and I wish it was in my actual world.

I was far from it for a reason...

"Oh my word.."

Poli blinked several times, processing said information.

"Well, good morning to you? Woah, you manage to type up a whole storm after waking up? Impressive."

"Knight of mind, huh? That sounds like a cool title. So I'm sort of a knight? Also.. there's other Poli's out there? Like, other versions of myself?"

"I seriously learn something new everyday from you all.."

[appalachianapologies]

okay so I was tagged by @lailuhhh and @rosieblogstuff and I think one other person (i am so sorry i forgor) many days ago and i am finally doing the first sentence of ten works thing. I guess the general consensus is no one knows whether or not this is for WIPs or posted things so like many others I'll just do a combo of both :D

From a wip that is uhhhh 22k and counting long, titled in my google docs as simply "fuck it desi lore," starting off strong with a sentence that I don't think is actually grammatically correct but you know what sometimes the vibes matter more than grammar and you can quote me on that: Later, Desi will feel guilty for it.

From chapter one of Remittent Distress, we have a line that sounds like it's going to be macriley WHICH IT IS NOT- (PS she's just out on a little mini mission she's not dead or anything) During the three days that Riley has been gone, Mac's been coping poorly.

Another chapter one first sentence, we have the first line of what's shaping up to be my next book! Cue the school intercom noise... "Good morning Ravens, happy Tuesday, and happy first day of school!"

Next we have chapter one (not the prologue) of False Dawn, which is a WIP that keeps me up at night and makes me feel far too many emotions at once: Bozer has a strange affinity for sending physical letters.

We have a bit of a secret fic that's up next- set in Tender Mercies universe, except this is set approximately 10 years in the future from Aground, the most recent fic in the series. Mac makes it a single step into the visitation cell before freezing on the spot.

Next up we have the first line of one of my favorite fics of mine, where we get some Sam Cage! (sam my beloved). Get ready for the first sentence of Episteme! Samantha Cage, despite her evergrowing want to be out of the life she threw herself into, isn’t exactly sure how to stay out of it.

Okay so this is the first line at the moment, but might not be if/when I finally get around to writing the vast majority of this fic. After drafting out an entire fic on a plane ride about a year ago, I only actually fully wrote out a few paragraphs. Here's the beginning of it as of right now: “Arriving in forty-five minutes,” comes the eventual answer through Mac’s earpiece. 

Now we have the first line from Past + Fire + Present, purely because I think it's a fabulous addition to the whole point of this post (and also this does happen to be a fic that i am quite happy about how it came out). The first sentence is a little bit lack-luster though... Hands.

Changing things up a bit, this next sentence is from my 95% finished The Martian fic that has been 95% finished for over a year at this point. I really just need to write two more paragraphs and post it at this point, but here's the start! Sneaking out of Beck's quarters as soon as he stepped out to talk to the rest of the crew was probably not the brightest of plans, but I can’t take it back now.

And to end things off, we're going to hop back to Remittent Distress, but this time in the form of the first sentence for chapter three! (Currently working on it, fear not) It’s to be expected.

I'm fairly certain that at this point everyone that I know has been tagged in this (and I'm also like a week or two late at this point), so if you see this, assume you're being tagged! (and also if you write your own please tag me somewhere in it so I can read your sentences :D)