#and down here bc they're kind of spoilers I guess

[nehswritesstuffs]

except I walked out on you when your hair was starlight

I’ve been thinking about this potential theory for a long while now (I mean, like, since last year) and I can’t help but think that it’s one of the wilder things that might come even slightly true because it just aligns perfectly with what we currently know about the Monkey Dads just being very distant fathers who end up pulling the same shit.

9122 words; pure crackfic unless proven otherwise; has anyone else thought of this bc pls where are you I want to talk to you if you have; this is very much not my usual fare when it comes to relationship and family dynamics so don’t expect, like, actual parenting; I very much expect this to be considered null and void within five chapters of canon (very specifically 1084 lol) so pls humor me okay; is it canon compliant? We’ll find out; general warning for timeskips and me just making shit up

except I walked out on you when your hair was starlight; All Dragon wants to do is bring about a more just world by exposing the World Government for what it really is. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to deal with a child’s bounty poster that looks disturbingly like his ex. [9122 words; alternate interpretation as to why the Buster Call at Ohara was the last straw]

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“You shouldn’t be here,” Clover said. Dragon shrugged casually at that.

“You’ve never been upset to see me before,” he reasoned. The young man casually leaned on the desk, giving the scholar a smirk. “I’m here to see Olvia. She around?”

“Even if she was, why would I let you see her?” Clover huffed. “Last time you were here you nearly got bodily fluid on priceless tomes of knowledge.”

“I am not the first person to have gotten lucky in this tree, and you’re just jealous it was never you,” the young man smirked. A certain platinum blonde then caught his eye and Dragon made his way around the desk and over to her side, done with pleasantries. “Old Man Clover’s bullying me.”

“Now why would he need to do that?” she wondered idly.

Oh, she knew.

“He’s jealous,” he offered.

“Professor Clover is one of the most renown archaeologists in the entire world; what would you have that he could be jealous of?”

A functioning libido, but they weren’t going to go there with other people nearby.

“Maybe,” she smirked, “I’ll have to study this condition of yours. Make sure it’s not… lethal.”

“Read my mind; pick you up at seven?”

“Seven-thirty—there’s a meeting I can’t skip again.”

“Fair.” He leaned down and pressed a light kiss against her cheek, a giggle getting out of her before walking away. “Seven-thirty!”

“Oh, and Dragon?”

He turned around, only to see the library in flames.

“Run.”

Gasping for air, Dragon sat upright in his bed, his body slick with sweat. He shakily looked around the room in the darkness—Baltigo, not Ohara.

Besides, Ohara burned ten years ago.

After turning off his alarm—it was fuck-all ‘o clock—Dragon decided it was good a time as any to get a head start on his work for the day. A full day of work would make him sleep solidly, and solid sleep meant no dreams, and no dreams meant no ghosts. He put his feet on the floor and shivered—there was nothing that could be done about the chill that seeped into the base, no matter what they did to prevent it.

The base was usually quiet around this time, thankfully, allowing Dragon to slip down the corridors relatively unnoticed. There was always the skeleton crew that kept an eye on things at night, but even they knew better than to bother their commander with anything more than a polite nod unless it was a real emergency. He was able to get to the showers and stood under the spray for a whole ten minutes before actually doing anything.

Did he feel guilty? Of course he did, but Ohara wasn’t coming back, even if its knowledge was all saved.

Then again, that’s why they were there, he reminded himself as he scrubbed his face. Ohara had been the last straw and now someone was fighting back. He’d told Vegapunk those years ago that it was because of Clover… because of the severe loss of knowledge and human life… but really… how many wars over the course of history had been waged for a woman?

Fuck.

In the end, an ex was just an ex, weren’t they? They both moved on. He had moved on.

So why was it getting to him?

Clothes, a shave, some coffee; before long, Dragon was sitting down at his desk, the dawn twilight not yet creeping across the sky. He looked at the pile of papers that had been placed in a very important pile since he’d last been in his office and grimaced—something told him he would have given the top spot to that organizational freak Bart had he known there was this much fucking paperwork involved with running a revolution. Taking the top one off the pile, he slowly started to clear out the backlog that admittedly had been growing for a few days at this point. Getting lost in work was usually fairly easy for him, and yet, he couldn’t help thinking about the real reason why he founded this seas-forsaken venture…

“They said you didn’t eat breakfast!”

Dragon snapped out of his daze as a tray was placed on his desk, culprit tilting his head in curiosity. Fuck the kid could move quieter than a cat.

“Oh, thank you, Sabo,” he said, blinking heavily. The kid’s bandages had recently been taken off and he could see the fresh burn scars, pink and shiny and raw; it pissed him off every time he saw it, and not because he hated the kid. It was almost impossible to hate someone who brought him coffee and a sandwich at… ah, shit, the sun was well past being up. “Iva hunting me yet?”

“Nah; they said they were gonna let you relax today,” the boy replied. He looked at the pile of papers that barely had a dent in it and frowned. “That’s a lot of bounty posters.”

“Yeah—I haven’t seen a lot of them either, which is really saying something,” Dragon frowned.

“Why’s that?”

“These are reissues; every so often, the World Government will reissue bounty posters of those whom they consider dangerous, even if they haven’t heard of them in a while.” He took the top one off the stack and handed it to the boy. “That one’s been circulating since I was younger than you.”

“Humming Brook… he’d be an old man by now, wouldn’t he?”

“He would.” He watched the kid’s expression—he was sharp for being only ten years old. “Does this… help at all…?”

“Not really,” Sabo admitted, handing back the poster. “I still can’t really remember that much from before.”

“It’ll come in time,” Dragon said, unsure if he was lying to the boy. The kid stood there awkwardly; neither of them knew what to do with him. If only dumping him with his dad wouldn’t mean putting him within arm’s reach of the Marines… “Say, go through these and rank them by potential for recruitment. Let me know what you think.” He took a chunk of the bounty posters and handed them to Sabo. “Just… rank them.”

“Yes, sir!” Sabo left the room and Dragon instantly felt exhausted. He hated to think what it would have been like had he been able to take his son along like planned… it was tiresome just thinking about it.

Maybe if he just closed his eyes for a little bit… yeah. That would be good.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was ironic how if someone would ask Dragon what his dreams were, he could easily say any number of things. Toppling the World Government? True peace? An unveiling of all the dirty laundry that was the Void Century’s secrets? A society designed to lift up and support everyone and not the select few? Having the ability to tell his father off to his face? He had a veritable list ready and waiting.

Except, sometimes, dreams weren’t goals and ambitions. They were places one’s brain went when they were at their most vulnerable, gripping them at their core and forcing someone to relive the impossible time and time again.

What truly were Dragon’s dreams?

He didn’t like to think about it.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“What are you thinking about?”

Dragon looked over at Olvia and saw her face remained calm in thought as she stared up at the night sky. All he could think about was how gorgeous she looked in the starlight, the galaxies reflected in her eyes as they laid on the deck of his boat.

“There’s an expedition that Clover wants me to co-chair.” Ah. “It would be about a year.”

“Don’t say you’re breaking up with me, because you know I’ll just follow you.”

“Actually, I petitioned the professor to let you come along.”

“You did?! And…?!” He waited for a response. “Olvia…? What did Old Man Clover say…?”

She finally turned her head and looked at him, her expression sharp and steady as ever. “Wake up.”

“…that was rude of him.”

“No, sir, wake up.”

For the second time that day, Dragon shuddered awake, this time being jostled by Sabo. The boy jumped back as he flung himself forward towards his desk, the present world grabbing hold of him in a vice grip. Dragon quickly caught his breath and rubbed his face with both hands—fuck, this was getting bad. He looked at Sabo and saw that the kid’s eyes were wide and confused.

“I… uh… sorry…” he squeaked.

“No, no; it’s alright,” Dragon replied. He tried to shake the sleep from his body, only making it more of a shiver instead. “Does someone need me?”

“No, sir. I have what you asked of me.” The boy held aloft the stack of bounty posters and their prior conversation came flooding back to the man. That’s right—the bounty re-issues from around the time he was too busy founding an army to pay attention to who was up next for his father’s bosses’ chopping block. “I triple-checked; there’s only three good ones out of the entire lot.”

“Are there now?”

“Yeah—most of the people this stack are either really old or already spoken-for in a pirate organization.” Sabo put most of the stack on the desk face-down, holding back three papers.

“How do you know that?”

“I cross-referenced everything with our database; some of the duds are officers in the Big Mom Pirates, or with someone called Doflamingo in the North; I doubt they’d change alliances too swiftly based on their established levels of loyalty.”

“Keep this up kid and you might be gunning for Iva’s spot,” Dragon frowned. He took a sip of his coffee—ice cold—and watched the boy’s face brighten.

“Oh, I don’t want to be the G Army Commander,” Sabo beamed. “I want to be the Chief of Staff!”

Dragon was neither awake nor drunk enough for this. “…and what does that entail?”

“Doing important things for you!”

“Sabo… you won’t even officially be a member until you’re sixteen,” he chided. “Just… show me the candidates.”

“Okay!” The kid put the first page down. “This one is called Karasu. He’s from the North and got his bounty by beating up Marines that were bullying some civilians. I think he’d be a good match.” Dragon nodded with a grunt; okay. “This one is Waters Lila. She’s Southern and is known for breaking up slaver ships en route to Sabaody. If we get her, we’d likely get her whole crew as well—forty-strong at last estimate, many former slaves themselves.” He then hesitated, staring at the last poster.

“Yes…?” Yeah… definitely not drunk enough.

“I don’t know about her, but I think it’s a good chance if we can find her,” Sabo nodded.

Dragon raised an eyebrow. “If we can find her?”

“She was younger than me when she got her bounty, so I don’t know if she still looks the same.”

“Younger than you…? Those were the ten-year re-releases.”

“Well, she apparently wants to destroy the world according to the rumors, so there is that. I would too if I sank six ships to survive a Buster Call.”

“She what…?”

“Yeah,” Sabo exclaimed, placing the poster down. “Apparently she’s from the West Blue, from this island of people who were…” Dragon stared at the photo on the page in horror, Sabo’s voice fading into nothing.

WANTED – DEMON CHILD NICO ROBIN – DEAD OR ALIVE

80 MILLION BERRI

APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION

Before him was the image of a small child, just a little older than his son was if he remembered correctly. His brow furrowed as he studied her face—there was no way she was anything other than Olvia’s blood. Her brother’s daughter, perhaps? It made him nauseous to think someone this small was listed for so much, so young.

“Sabo…?”

“Yes, sir?”

“How old would she be now? If she walked in through the door?”

“Eighteen!” the boy chirped. “I really think that she’s the best bet out of the lot—she has a pedigree.”

“I’m going to pretend you did not use that word,” he grimaced. Yeah, the kid was former nobility alright whether he hated it or not.

“Oh… well… her mom was pretty famous too! I found her bounty in the archives.” He took the top poster off the upside-down stack and held it out, making Dragon want to vomit.

Olvia.

It wasn’t her niece.

Oh, fuck, no…

Olvia’s daughter.

The only survivor of Ohara was Nico Olvia’s daughter.

A daughter who had her face, yet his coloring.

Seas almighty.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“What the hell is your problem?!” he hissed at her. She had been sitting at her desk in the ship, a lantern illuminating the papers that were scattered everywhere. The rest of the expedition party had either long-since retired for the evening, or were on the shore around the bonfire—it was just them.

“I’m only doing my job. You knew that’s what this entire trip was about.” She hadn’t even looked away from the book and that seemed to just depress him more.

“Those have been here for hundreds of years; they’ll still be there in the morning.”

“I need to get this done before we ship out—there’s only two more days.”

“Two more days here, a week there, some hours elsewhere; it doesn’t end! It’s been three years of this!”

She put down her pen at that, closing her eyes to steel herself. “You knew what this was before we left Ohara.”

“I didn’t leave Ohara thinking I’d be ignored… that I’d go to bed alone most nights… that on the rare nights we are together, you’re too distracted to even fake it.” She stood, furious. “Oh, hey, an emotion—nice to see them again.”

“How dare you…”

“I think it’s the other way around, Olvia—we should have called it off while you were out on this stupid thing…”

“I thought you were behind what we were doing!”

“…when it didn’t mean I was being ignored by the woman I love!” He hunched his shoulders as he held hers, looking into her eyes. They were so fierce… so determined then that he had nearly lost himself in them. “I’m here now, Olvia. I…” He swallowed. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this, playing second-fiddle to whispers and rocks.”

“We’re almost done. Just a few months and…”

“No.” His voice was quiet then—defeated, even—as realization settled on him. “We’re done.”

Tears ran down both their faces as he kissed her one final time.

When she went to bed that night, she went alone.

He was gone.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

All Ivankov knew was that Dragon was having a crisis.

He’d have those every once in a while in private, threatening to crack under the pressure of leadership. It was generally nothing, where he’d just do frantic laps of his office while attempting to talk himself out of whatever corner his assorted demons had shoved him into. If they were being particularly honest with themselves, it would have been a more troubling thing had Dragon not had a crisis now and then, given the sheer amount of pressure and obstacles that came from raising a revolution. All they, or Kuma, or both, had to do was simply stay with him until he calmed down and things would eventually be better again.

It had been nearly a whole day—he was not getting better.

“This is awful,” the man muttered for the fifty-second time that day. Ivankov poured themselves some tea from the service and raised a perfectly-manicured eyebrow.

“Are you havingk problems zat my Hormones vould fix?”

“No… just… fuck!” Dragon stopped his pacing long enough to take a swing at thin air before grabbing at his hair again. “I can’t believe I did that—fuck—how could I have done that?!”

Ivankov sipped their tea.

“Fucking hell, Iva! I’m having a mental breakdown here!”

“I can see,” they replied flatly. “You’re ze one vho seems to be very mum on details.” Dragon stopped moving and stared at his friend and comrade, nearly at his breaking point.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“You know I keep your secrets.”

“No, Iva… this isn’t a normal secret. This is a something that, should you ‘learn’ about it in the future, you need to pretend that this conversation never, ever happened.”

“Vhat is so drastick that I need to play ze fool?”

“I think… I think I have a daughter,” he said, his tongue feeling thick as he spoke. “I think I walked out on my daughter.”

“You don’t have a daughter.”

“…but I walked out on this woman nineteen years ago.” Dragon took the bounty posters from his desk and showed it to Ivankov, who took put down their tea before taking the papers. “That child—her child—is now eighteen.”

“Her fazer could have been a rebound and ve vould not blame zis Olvia one bit.”

“Iva, I walked because she was too busy with those damned Poneglyphs to give me the time of day—any time we did…” Dragon exhaled heavily. “She was always too out of it to concentrate on us, so I left. I can almost guarantee there was no rebound.”

“Zis is vhy you people are exhaustingk,” Ivankov sighed. “How did you know eachozer?”

“She… was from Ohara… was one of Old Man Clover’s top researchers…”

“…and so, vhen you vent to investigate Clover’s knowledge assets—drawn in by the pursuit of zingks your fazer kept you from—you fell in love viz a girl instead…? How cliché, candy.” They put the papers down on the low table and went back to their tea. “You know for a fact she is yours?”

“I had Sabo research a stack of re-issued bounties—if her registry information’s correct, she was born six months after I last saw her mother. Olvia was distant, but she didn’t sleep around.” He rubbed the back of his neck and groaned. “Fuck…”

“Vhat does her registry information say about her fazer?”

“Dead.” They had to hand it to themselves—Ivankov didn’t think that finally getting information about Dragon’s past meant that he was going to spill it all… or if he was spilling this now, it was titillating to think of what else the man might have been hiding. “She made it look like she got married, never changed her name, and quickly became a widow. I’m sure that’s why… she has her family name instead of mine.”

“I’d imagine it’d be rough on a child, carrying a name zey had no connection to,” Ivankov shrugged. “Besides, if she had your name, that fazer of yours vould have kidnapped her longk ago.”

“Bad enough what he does have,” Dragon grumbled. Ivankov waited for an explanation and never got one—it was folly to think they were getting any more out of their friend than this very specific and embarrassing tidbit. They watched as he stopped moving, instead putting his hands on his waist. “So… what do we do…?”

“Not vhat ve do… but vhat you do.” They regarded him carefully. “You alvays know vhat to do. Vill you admit to everyone zat zis is revenge for a former lover? Zat zis child is more zan ze last of her kind? Or vill you do somezingk else? Somezingk interestingk?”

“Olvia wasn’t my lover, Iva—I would have married her if I could.”

“Zat is not here nor zere. Now: vhat vill you do?”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“What will you do?”

It was a simple enough question—the royal brat and his footman were due back in the sandpit soon, so he didn’t blame her for wondering. It was just him and Olvia in his room, the pair having snuck up there while Clover was regaling the students with drunkenly-told tales of his adventures. They were sharing a bottle of cheap wine at the table by his window—no other activities until they heard their heavy-sleepers of charges snoring the next room over.

“Not sure,” he shrugged. He looked out the window at the night sky, knowing that soon the view would change. “This place… it fits, you know?”

“For technically being here as a bodyguard, you sure are quite the pacifist,” she replied. Olvia took a sip of her drink and let out a low huff. “It’s honestly more interesting with you here.”

“Then maybe… I can come back…?”

“…to do what?” He turned his gaze to her and saw that her expression was now completely deadpan. “You’re smart, yes, but you’re no scholar. The Professor does not take too kindly to lightweights.”

“Is that what he refers to people who’ve had sex as?” he asked. She nearly choked on her drink. “I just want to be with you.”

“I know.” She saw a flicker of something cross his face, with it leaving as quickly as it came. “What…?”

“If I could just stay here, I would. Let the kids find their own way back home. It’s peaceful here… serene… like nothing bad will happen here.”

“Oh, it shall eventually,” she shrugged. “Things always happen.”

“Not like…” he paused, “not like what I’m used to with my father. There’s a certain unease in the air in a lot of places he’s sent me to, and none of it shows up here. Yeah, there’s people being petty and bad storms and the occasional drought of traders, but it’s not…” he sighed, “this place is calming, Olvia. There’s no real hostility.”

“Then maybe it would do you some good to return here,” she agreed. “Though I have to warn you: I get buried in my work when I’m not tutoring.”

“I think I can handle that; that might be when you’re the most gorgeous.”

“You don’t need to flatter me—you know what we’re doing later.”

“Doesn’t hurt to have a little extra insurance on the matter,” he winked. She giggled and leaned over, pressing a kiss to his jaw. “How much time do we have again?”

“Not enough.”

“Hmm… I think it’s enough.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It’s easy to leave someone when you realize that you can’t stand one another. Sure, actually doing it might not be easy, but once you’re gone, the effort to purge them from your life is cathartic in its own way. It’s a refusal to give them power, as they never should have had any to begin with.

Conversely, it’s difficult to leave someone you’re still in love with, mostly because it is that much of a challenge to forget. It’s still wanting them there, despite their deep, deep flaws, and yet remembering the pain of why that is simply not possible. It hurts and claws at the heart, burning and stabbing until there is nothing that doesn’t make you think of them.

What’s worse yet is when you’re both still in love, and yet they don’t stop you.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Revolutionary Army Dispatch

Official Memo from the Desk of Founder and Supreme Commander Monkey D. Dragon

The following Legacy Bounty Individuals (LBI) are to be actively recruited into the ranks. Any contact with such Legacy Bounty Individuals needs to be reported to the appropriate level of hierarchy.

-_-_-

Karasu

Age at Bounty: 25

Current Age: 35

Origin: North Blue

Current Location: North Blue (confirmed)

Devil Fruit: unknown type – appears corvid-centric – proceed with caution until confirmation

Crimes: contempt of law; resisting arrest; repeated destruction of Marine bases; torture of varying Marine officers; coordinating largest mass-release of inmates in the North Blue in 200 years

-_-_-

Waters Lila

Age at Bounty: 47

Current Age: 57

Origin: South Blue

Current Location: Grand Line, Paradise (confirmed)

Devil Fruit: none known

Crimes: grand theft; destruction of slaver ships; being impossible to arrest; harboring runaway slaves; cussing out Celestial Dragons; repeated escape from Celestial Dragon “owners”

-_-_-

Nico Robin

Age at Bounty: 8

Current Age: 18

Origin: West Blue

Current Location: unknown; potentially West Blue or Grand Line

Devil Fruit: Paramecia – can replicate limbs elsewhere

Crimes: only surviving member of the Archaeological Scholarly Association of Ohara; can read Poneglyphs; evading arrest; varying smaller crimes related to survival

HIGH PRIORITY – report directly to Supreme Commander if contact is made – capable of becoming the Light of the Revolution

-_-_-

May we stay strong in the face of our uncertain times.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Ten years.

It took ten years before Dragon heard any more solid news of Nico Robin. He had to hand it to her—she was a difficult woman to catch. Most of what he’d heard were whispers. A few people even saw her, but no one was able to get in a conversation long enough to convince her to join their ranks.

She was still alive, however. No matter what, Olvia’s daughter was still alive, and some days it was all he could do to be proud.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“I have to say, sir, you sure do know how to pick them.”

Dragon was laying down on a camping cot, the tent he was currently occupying in the far-reaching backwaters of the East, the backdrop of a civilian uprising in the distance. Sabo and Belo Betty had insisted on helming this charge, which left him sulking back at camp with a cold compress over his eyes as he fought off an impending headache in the command tent.

“What do you mean, Ahiru?” He heard the young woman’s mechanical arm click and whir as it handled papers at the table.

“One of your High Priority LBIs just had war declared on the Government for her.”

“You know Sabo has been making over half that list for years now.”

“She’s been on the list for a long while,” she replied.

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“Nico Robin.”

Dragon sat up immediately, the compress falling to the ground. “What…? Who declared war for her?”

“The crew she’s with now,” the young woman said. She held out the newspaper as her boss stood and crossed the room. “A rookie crew from these waters, it seems.”

A small gasp left Dragon without him even realizing it: the Straw Hat Pirates.

Robin found Luffy.

His children found one another.

“…sir…?” He looked at her and saw the concern on her face. “Are you alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Just…” Ahiru gave a nod, avoiding eye contact. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.” Good—he did always appreciate her discretion.

He looked back at the newspaper in his hand and allowed himself a breath of relief. After everything, his children were still finding their family—finding each other—despite his own failings.

Maybe… maybe this was how things were supposed to go.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The kids he was supposed to be babysitting were off with the old man on the first of many “field trips” to the bar when he first made his move. She was in his room going over their academic progress when he allowed his hand to reach across the table and rest atop hers. One of her eyebrows arched, curious.

“Bold,” she noted with a smirk, “but is it bold enough?”

In retrospect, it had been a miracle in of itself that they had gotten themselves put back together in time for her skunk-drunk boss to bring back his equally-drunk charges. The trio were so drunk, they found, that they completely ignored the fact they still smelled of sex and her blouse was on inside-out.

What they didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt them, right? Besides, all it took was twenty minutes and they smelled like the kids’ vomit instead.

None of this was going into the report.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

There were times where Emporio Ivankov, Ruler of Kamabakka Queendom, Founder of the Revolutionary Army, Establishing Force behind New Kama Land, really did not enjoy dealing with their varying colleagues. Out of them all, the best—also the worst—was Monkey D. Dragon. He wasn’t even all that easy on the eyes, and yet his drama was nothing they wanted to ever touch.

Except, it kept finding them.

“You. Office. Now.”

They didn’t even break stride as they entered headquarters for the first time in years, simply walking by Dragon as he was discussing something with Lindbergh and Hack. Inazuma seamlessly inserted herself into the situation instead, allowing Dragon to grouchily follow Ivankov to their office looking extremely cowed. Newer recruits could only gawk—so this was the power of the legendary Okama Commander?

“Any ozer spawn you have running around I should know about?!” Ivankov hissed. Fuck… the door was barely closed…

“Iva…”

“Don’t you Iva me,” they scolded. “I should not learn you have a son because I am savingk his life in Impel Down! Vhat is viz you?!”

“Thank you, by the way,” Dragon said. “You did an excellent job keeping Luffy alive.”

“You tell me to not pry into your past, and yet your past keeps poppingk up in ze oddest places. Vhy are you like zis?!”

“We all agreed to bring as little of our baggage into this job as possible,” he claimed.

“Havingk people ve care about is not baggage!” they argued. “Sharingk stories about our lives is not baggage!”

“If anyone knew about my family, that’d put a target on their backs they might not want!”

“Even from your friends and comrades?!”

“Yes, Iva! Everyone!”

“Tch… no vonder you vere never told about the girl…”

“Iva!”

“Zese are your secrets, Dragon! First, you have a daughter from an old flame, now zis boy one of my candies finds in Impel Down is your son?! Vhat more is zere?!”

“You know I can’t tell you that!”

“Then vhat can you tell me?!”

“That as the figurehead of this entire operation, I can’t be seen as having any potential weaknesses! I come in with nothing so I can leave nothing behind! There is nothing to complicate things! A venture was never compromised because they kidnapped my son and held him at ransom! By him remaining far away, we all were safe.”

Ivankov huffed, their scowl pointed and accusatory. “I believe in zis, and I believe in you, so you better not make me regret anyzingk from here on out. Ve cannot afford to be fightingk.”

“I’m trying, Iva,” Dragon assured. “You know that’s all any of us can do.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Sir…? The Tequila Wolf contingent has returned.”

Dragon glanced up from his coffee to see the fresh recruit standing there in the doorway of his office, absolutely quaking in his boots. It was almost adorable how the newbies were so easily categorized into either Hilariously Overzealous or Scared Shitless, with this one solidly in the latter category.

“Usually the leaders of such an expedition report to me themselves that they’re back,” Dragon noted. “Why did they send you?”

“There’s a bit of a commotion, sir,” the recruit admitted. “They were able to find a High Priority LBI while freeing the slaves.”

“Now who would that be?”

“Uh… Nico Robin of the Straw Hat Pirates, sir.”

Dragon’s stomach found his throat as he paused, taking the information in. After vanishing into nothingness on Sabaody, she was now there, in Baltigo. Ten long years and she was finally there, in the same building as him; it was terrifying to think of.

“Send her up once she’s been given the orientation,” he requested, keeping his stoic mask. “High Priorities always need a briefing from me personally as to discuss what they might bring to our cause.” It was the truth and the recruit saluted before leaving.

The wait was honestly one of the worst stretches of time in his life. Dragon wasn’t entirely certain whether was pacing for a few minutes or a few hours, but eventually there was a knock at the door and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He breathed deeply and collected himself.

“Come in.”

Olvia’s ghost walked in, almost as though no time had passed at all.

“Please close the door; I’d prefer this conversation to be private.”

“Since you asked nicely,” she nodded. Robin gently shut the door and took a few steps into the room, unsure if she should sit or remain standing like Dragon. “I hear you often debrief new additions and allies yourself. It’s commendable to be so active in the base of your organization.”

“I cannot do it on my own,” he claimed. She watched him as he walked over to the window, using it as an excuse to not look at her directly. “Does this mean you are going to join my ranks?”

“Consider me a loan of sorts,” she chuckled. “I have some time to burn while waiting to reunite with my crew and I might as well do something worth while in the meantime.” He could see her reflection in the glass; it was scary how much she looked like her mother. “Your son is something of a tricky individual to follow; it’s just a matter of chance that I’m keeping my alliances in the family.”

Oh, how little she knew despite how well she was informed.

“Has… anyone ever told you why we founded the Revolutionary Army?”

“…to rise up against the tyranny of the World Government,” she replied. He was silent. “Then again, something tells me that there’s more to it than that. There always is.” She watched him, pensive. “What was the final straw that drove you? A scuffle with the Marine Hero?”

“He barely cares about what he does on a daily basis, let alone care what I do enough to get into that big of a fight… no.” He did not turn around, instead preferring to look out the window. “It was Ohara.”

It was slight, but he heard her inhale slightly.

“What was your connection to Ohara?” Robin asked, her voice wavering slightly.

“I spent a lot of time there when I was younger than you are now,” he admitted. He sighed, then opened his mouth to talk again, only for Robin to grab his arm and turn him around to face her, eyes wild in shock.

“Did you know my mother?!”

“I… I fell in love with your mother.”

She let go of his arm and took a step back. “…oh. That must have been difficult.”

“It was,” he agreed. “Olvia was a wonderful woman. Sharp-witted, dedicated, kind, insurmountably intelligent…” He smiled to himself, letting his gaze slip out of focus towards a bit of wall. “She had hair like starlight and eyes that would reflect the galaxies.”

“Did she ever…?” Her question trailed off, unsure if she wanted to give life to the words herself.

“Your mother’s true love was knowledge, and by extension, her research. She had no room for me, so I left.”

She scoffed at that, almost relieved. “What do you have to be sorry about? It happened a long time ago.”

“Summer 1493, if you want to be precise about it.”

The only sound was the steady ticking of the clock on the mantle. Dragon focused his eyes again and looked at Robin, seeing the careful, calculating face he’d last seen over twenty-five years ago. She eventually nodded—everything fit.

“You didn’t know, did you?”

“I didn’t, though I don’t know how much good I would have been had I known and stayed.”

“You would have been there.”

“You’ve met my father—do you think I would have let him raise Luffy if I didn’t think it was the better choice?”

“That is true…” She looked him in the eyes, as though she was trying to see where the crack in the lie was. “What brought you to Ohara in the first place?”

“Initially? Babysitting. When all was said and done, it pissed off my father that I was in love, so I went back.”

“Then it is not just him that Luffy gets his defiance streak from,” she noted.

“I’m the one running a Revolution and you thought he got that from my father?”

“Merely an observation.” She smiled lightly at him, an expression so her mother that it nearly made him hug her. “Now, I think we have some negotiating involving the terms of my stay?”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Babysitting was a drag.

According to Aunt Tsuru, his dad owed the Queen of Alabasta a favor or eight and now it was Dragon’s turn to fulfill a request, as it involved the prince and his footman and not the old broad herself.

“We’re almost there!” the fifteen-year-old prince beamed. He turned towards his servant with a wide grin across his face. “Can you imagine?! That tree is thousands of years old! It doesn’t even have the Alabastian climate to help preserve it! Something that old! Still alive!”

“It truly is something, milord,” the young servant agreed. Igaram…? Yeah, Igaram and Prince Cobra. They were almost the exact same age and yet the difference between them was vast. Even though the princeling wasn’t an asshole about it, there was still that chasm Dragon knew was there… even if it was the footman that kept it there.

“Go pack up your shit,” Dragon said. “We’re going to be living on the island while we’re here, so you can’t leave shit onboard where it can be stolen.”

“Gotcha!” Cobra dashed below deck of the small clinker-built cog, Igaram close behind him insisting on doing it for him. Dragon rolled his eyes—this was honestly the last thing he wanted to be doing, but his father was… persuasive.

With his fists. The Hero of the Marines beat his son in a fistfight. Fuck.

It took another half an hour to get into the harbor at Ohara. It was a lively town, with the Tree of Knowledge dominating the landscape. Since he was contracted to be the teens’ bodyguard, Dragon went with Prince Cobra and Igaram as they went to the massive library that was carved into the tree itself, the entire building a living testament to knowledge.

“Ah, there you are.” Dragon saw a middle-aged man approach them as they entered the trunk. “Prince Cobra, I presume?”

“Yes; you must be Professor Clover?”

“That I am!” Dragon fought back rolling his eyes—everyone here was a nerd. “Queen Ouraeus told me you are almost as thirsty for knowledge as myself.”

“Indeed,” Cobra confirmed. “I have to be knowledgeable to become a great king one day, and Mother said you were one of the cleverest and learned men she’s ever met. It will be an honor to learn under you.”

“In that regard, I have to apologize,” Clover said. “Most of your tutoring will be conducted by one of my top pupils, who shall report to me on your progress. I’ve already written your mother and she has given her permission.”

“It must be difficult running this place,” Igaram noted, still staring at the interworkings of the library as they milled about.

“It is, unfortunately,” Clover sighed. “My apologies; you must be young Mister Igaram, which makes you…”

“Dragon—their babysitter.”

“Bodyguard,” the prince corrected. “He comes highly recommended from several high-ranking Marines as trustworthy.”

“Do you now…?”

“The Marine’s my old man, who can fuck off for all I care.” There was something about this Clover man that made him seem guarded… something wasn’t entirely legit. “I think he’s hoping his wayward son straightens himself out on this mission or some shit like that.”

“Then I’m sure we’ll get on splendidly,” Clover nodded. He then waved someone over, who gathered her books from the desk and approached them. “This is the one who is going to teach you lads.”

“Oh… I can’t…!” Igaram panicked. “I’m just here so His Highness…!”

“Nonsense—the Queen requested both of you be tutored,” Clover insisted. “This is Olvia-san. She is one of the most brilliant minds on this island and a native of Ohara. I leave your education in her care.”

Dragon swallowed hard—the young woman who walked up to them was one of the most gorgeous people he’d ever seen. Her brown eyes were the color of warm, lacquered wood and her platinum-blonde hair almost seemed to shimmer against her sun-bronzed skin.

“It is a pleasure to welcome the Alabastian delegation to our humble halls,” she said sweetly. Clover noticed that all three newcomers seemed overcome by her presence, which gave him an idea.

“How about if I take our newest young scholars on a tour of the library?” he offered. “Olvia, you can discuss the accommodations with their bodyguard. We can do the initial assessment after lunch.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” she agreed. Clover took the two teens with him and went off into the library, while Dragon stood awkwardly next to Olvia. “Would you like to see where you and your prince shall be staying?”

“He’s not my prince,” Dragon blurted out. “I mean… uh… my dad owes his mom some favors. It’s… complicated.”

“That must be awkward.”

“A little, but…” he shrugged, “you know.”

She gave a slight chuckle at that, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a smile. “Let me show you to the dorms.”

He nodded—what else could he do?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was difficult having Robin around, all things considered. Although she fit in amongst the other Revolutionaries with wonderful ease, there was still the fact that Dragon could not look at her without feeling a pang of regret. He hated the feeling, but did not avoid her. It was difficult, yet he knew that bringing her into the organization after such a long effort only to ignore her would be suspicious… too suspicious for him to counter. He instead kept on, as though the woman was not the mirror image of his long-lost love. Hers was not the face he waged this war over, nor was it the one that would lob the final volley.

Their venture had grown much larger than Olvia’s memory, and yet to have her daughter in their midst? However temporary? It was priceless.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The rest of the day went by in a whirl. Cobra and Igaram were going to share a room during their yearlong academic retreat, with Dragon getting an adjoining one to himself. He followed along as Olvia showed him around the tree’s internal chambers—where she would be tutoring the teens to where the kitchens were—and it was extremely difficult to keep his mind on her words and not drift off into a daydream.

Seas, she was pretty.

“It looks like Professor Clover is only partway done with his tour,” she noted as they stopped on a staircase. They could see the academic with the teens as they scoured some shelves, looking for a specific book. “They’re good kids, it seems.”

“Yeah, they are as good as fifteen-year-olds are going to be, anyhow,” he shrugged. “It’s still going to be a pain in the ass.”

“So your contract is to stay here for the duration of their tutoring?”

“Yeah, I’ve got to bring them back to Alabasta myself, so I can’t just ditch them here and be done with it. That’s not going to be fun.”

“Well,” Olvia chuckled, “if you ever need anything, let me know. I’m sure I can help out.”

He hesitated before deciding to fuck it.

“Actually, I’d, erm, like to get to know you better, please. Outside of the kids.”

“…and why’s that?”

“…because one day, someone is going to ask me who that woman is teaching my charges, and I’d like to be able to say more than the pretty one with the books.”

She smiled knowingly. “Nico Olvia; nice to meet you.”

“Monkey D. Dragon; the pleasure is mine.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Her name is Nico Robin, sire.”

“Nico…? That is a name from the past, indeed.” Cobra frowned as he looked at the photograph of the woman who was reportedly conducting business on the behalf of Baroque Works. It was late at night after everyone else was in bed as he sat up in his chambers, one of the few times he could truly talk freely with his captain of the guard. “She looks enough like her, if my memory serves me right.”

“I’m surprised I remember anything about that trip at all,” Igaram groused. “Even the smell of beer is ruined.”

Cobra chuckled at that; few things made him laugh these days, and much of it involved the past. Seas… that had been before he had even met Titi…

“Possibly,” Igaram continued, “if we appeal to her on the shared admiration of her mother, we might be able to get her to cooperate.”

“No,” the king said firmly. “If she goes by her mother’s family name, then she is likely a sensitive subject. We cannot let it be suggested that we ever knew her.” He placed the photo down on his writing desk and exhaled heavily. “That was thirty years ago… and where were we when she was thrown to the wolves as a child?”

“Burying your lady mother and readying for your marriage, not to mention the chaos that a monarch change involves.”

“…which is why I wish to slowly abdicate, to give Vivi a better transition than what I had… if we even make it that long.”

“It is a fine goal, sire,” Igaram agreed. He watched his monarch—his life-long friend—stare into the middle distance, clearly wrapped up in thought. “Is there anything else you require tonight, milord?”

“No, thank you. You may go now, Igaram.”

“As you wish, milord.” He bowed deeply. “For the good of Alabasta.”

Igaram quietly left the king’s chambers, finding that the young princess was waiting for him out in the corridor. She was such a haunting image of the late queen that it was terrifying…

…but this was a child, even if some would mistake her for being grown.

“Is she the same one that you remember?” she asked, voice quiet. He shook his head.

“Even if she was, we would have no basis on which to build a parley. We are to function as though the name is a coincidence.”

Vivi nodded slowly, considering her options. “Then I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to infiltrate Baroque Works.”

“…but Princess…”

“I can’t sit by and do nothing, Igaram. That’s not what a monarch is supposed to do. I’m here to serve the people, right? That’s not always about fancy trips to the Levely and hosting other nobles.”

“You are correct way too often for my blood pressure’s liking, milady,” he sighed, accepting their fates. “When do you wish to leave?”

“Tonight.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Dragon-san…?” He glanced over from the map and saw Cobra standing there, the kid only growing into something more awkward by the day. “How did you know you were in love with Nico-sensei?”

“I just kind of did,” he grunted. They were a full day out from Ohara, sailing back towards the entrance to the Grand Line. “Why? Someone there catch your fancy?”

“No… it’s just…” the teen worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “I’ve been taught plenty this past year, but watching you and Nico-sensei reminded me that I still don’t know what it will be like when I love someone. I imagine it’s… difficult.”

“It is,” Dragon admitted, “but sometimes it just finds you. At first it’s a like—or maybe they’re just smoking hot—and eventually you just find yourself realizing that the world isn’t quite the same without them in it.”

“…but that’s how I feel about my friends… my mother… my people…”

“Love comes in a lot of versions, kid,” Dragon shrugged. “You’re pretty observant to be a noble and understand that you should love your people—something tells me you won’t have a problem figuring out the romantic part when it comes.”

“You sure…?”

“Yeah.” He then jerked his head towards the rigging. “Get your asses up there and secure the topsail; we’re going through a real windy area soon.”

At least as the kids were up in the rigging, he’d have some quiet.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Are you sure that going back is what you wish?” Dragon asked. Robin was chuckling softly as Koala sobbed in her arms, not wanting the other woman to leave. “You could do a lot of good here…”

“I will do a lot of good anywhere I go,” she claimed… and rightfully so. “My place is with Luffy. He’s my captain and we’re not done yet.”

“Just don’t tell him that I’m still around; I’d rather do that myself,” Sabo chuckled.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“So the kids… they’re doing well…?”

Olvia shrugged as she tied Cobra’s hair back as the teen slept—last thing they wanted was for the kid to wake up and get drunken vomit in his hair. She wasn’t entirely sure that getting a sovereign prince blackout-wasted-drunk every weekend was setting a good example, but Professor Clover was not one to be argued with when several pints were on the table.

“Well enough,” she replied. She glanced over at Dragon, who was peeling an ale-soaked jacket off Igaram, and shrugged. He would know if he had the ability to sit in place while the teens were at their studies, yet school hours were often when he went wandering around Ohara, taking in the local sights. “Unless there’s a sudden breakthrough, I think there’s one thing that they won’t be able to do, but it won’t be horrible in the long-run.”

“So not something Her Highness requested?”

“Oh, she requested it, but it’s notoriously difficult. People of all ages attempt to learn and some never get it, no matter how long they try.”

“What’s that? Some sort of arcane science?”

“Reading.”

He paused, watching her as she finished putting Cobra to bed. “You’re talking about a prince and his nursemaid’s son—they’ve long been able to read.”

“Do you promise?” she asked.

“Promise what…?”

“Do you promise?” Olvia went to his side and held out her hand. Dragon looked at it, then up into her eyes, before placing his hand in hers.

“I promise,” he replied. “Better yet: I trust you.”

With a nod, Olvia helped Dragon finish with Igaram before taking his hand again and leading him out into the corridor. They went through the labyrinthine maze of staircases until they reached one that had no light down it, only darkness.

“The fragile manuscript storage room?” he wondered. She shook her head before taking the handrail and carefully stepping down into the dark.

“You know how we here in Ohara strive to uncover the secrets of the world through our research,” she explained, not waiting for him to follow. He did, which made her smile in the dark. “If your father came here and asked what sort of research we were doing, we could honestly tell him that much of it involves ruins and old tomes, surviving fragments from over the centuries. It is different from Vegapunk’s research, yet it is no different in our dedication or the danger that follows.”

“Vegapunk is being courted by the Government,” he reminded her.

“True, yet this… this is something we’re been hiding for much, much longer, and the knowledge from which we glean from this will benefit everyone, from us to Vegapunk to the young prince and everyone who wishes for the truth.”

“Olvia, what are you…?” He felt her stop in front of him and heard a heavy latch open.

“Welcome, Dragon, to the Poneglyph Chamber.”

The light from inside the room was bright as Olvia opened the door and ushered Dragon in. Once his eyes adjusted, he gasped at the sight of the giant stone in front of him, scholars all around as they went about their duties. Some stared at them as they made their way across the room, but most remained unfazed.

“You… you are teaching them to read this…?”

“Attempting; there is one in Alabasta, a rubbing of which Queen Ouraeus provided us in her youth. The secret history lies in these markings, and if we are to understand the Void Century, then we must first understand these Poneglyphs.”

“…but he’s not getting it.”

“No; I would be impressed if he ever did, if we’re being honest. His language skills lie where he’s able to understand the practical applications. Although this limits him to things such as Alabastian and Celestial and sailors’ creoles, it means that academic languages are unfortunately beyond his grasp.” She watched as he placed his hand on the Poneglyph, taking it all in. “There is nothing else in the world like it, is there?”

“Dad’s bosses would have a field day with this,” Dragon marveled. He looked at Olvia, seeing that her face was concerned and distant. “That’s your true goal here, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“That’s wonderful,” he replied. “It’s never sat well with me that there’s so much we don’t know, and the fact you’re doing it here? Sticking it to Dad and his bosses and their bosses? It’s like a military brat’s dream come true.”

Olvia nodded at that, too choked up to respond properly. Something deep inside her said she was doing the right thing by showing him their biggest secret, and the sparkle in his eyes made her heart swell.

He was going to be the one to do it.

He was going to be the one to make all their research worth it.

All they needed to do now was wait.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was a beautiful day as the Thousand Sunny sailed towards their next destination. With Fish-man Island the the Ryugyu Kingdom behind them, the crew’s spirits were high as they enjoyed their time together.

“Hey, Robin, do you want to play with us?” Luffy asked. She glanced up from her book and saw her captain standing rather close, with Usopp in the background attempting to ride on Chopper’s full-reindeer form as though his back was a furry surfboard. “It’s a lot of fun!”

“I’ll pass for now, but thank you,” she replied. Luffy didn’t go away, the teen instead tilting his head at her. “Yes…?”

“Something’s different about you,” he noted. “It’s not bad. Just… different.”

“We’re all different than how we were before,” she reminded him.

“I know.”

“…but there’s something else…?”

“Yeah.” Luffy went and threw his arms around Robin’s neck in a hug. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad too,” she replied, patting his back. “I think you might want to get back to the others—Usopp seems like he’s getting rather good at that.”

“Oh! Hey! Usopp! Let me have a go!” Luffy was sufficiently distracted enough to run off and tackle the sniper right off the doctor’s back, all three of the teens laughing.

‘Maybe, we both always had an idea as to the truth,’ she thought as she watched her youngest crewmates roughhouse. They ran around silly until Sanji came out of the kitchen with snacks and drinks, snatching their attention. ‘The little brother I always wanted was right here after all.’

[bloodgulchblog]

Alright fuck it, s2e1 liveblog.

I'm watching this with people later so the goal is just to get through it enough to sate my impatience, so I'm back to ye olde standby of watching it at high speed with subtitles on. (...Only I guess I'm gonna be slowed down by making comments, huh?)

Spoilers and uncharitable opinions and unfunny jokes will follow.

Not going to talk about stuff in the episode opener until it comes back bc there's not enough to say anything about.

5 minutes in and we're already doing whatever this is huh?

6:30 - Alright okay, fuck, Vannak took his spine pellet out and gets to have one (1) personality trait and it's animal facts and I kind of don't hate that. TV Chief is very unlikable but characters like Kai and Vannak playing the angle of having very youthful quirks bc having emotions is new is cute.

~10:00 - I have nothing to say yet about spooky shapes in the fog but I think this shot of Chief back to back with a marine is fun. Also I wonder if Corporal Perez (this character) will still matter 5 minutes from now.

Also looks like the foggy sword fight from the trailer is here, too difficult to get any kind of cap that doesn't suck out loud. I'm thinking about how I heard someone making a big deal about how Season 2 feels "less like a video game" (whatever that means), meanwhile "fog full of stealth sword guys trying to kill you" feels very very video game level.

~13:00 - Man, and I really thought that sword fighting stuff in the trailer was a solid indicator they were dragging Thel 'Vadamee into this mess. Hey guys look, Arbiter's in this season. 4,000 of him!

Additionally, if a bunch of people decide this is a ship the fandom owes me twenty dollars.

~15:00 - Congrats to Perez for surviving five minutes. Also, we're still doing whatever this is:

16 minutes in we finally get the show's opener. (It has the Halo in it now, I don't think it was there before but let's be perfectly honest it's not like I cared a lot.)

~17:30 or something, reminded once again that a lot of people are attracted to this actor

Also guess what, Keyes is an Admiral now I guess????

Do we think he still gets to get eaten by the Flood eventually? Do we think the Flood will even be in here? Place ur bets at the counter.

Anyway, they're basically diving into a big timeskip here where a bunch of planets have been glassed since last season (including Madrigal). This whole AU is weird to the bone in terms of how its timeline is shaking out.

Anyway anyway, aww here we go

"I'm not here to replace Dr Halsey, I'm here because I believe in you!"

Ohhhhh he knows all the Spartans' names already, ohhhhh they want the audience to like this mf so bad, they want it to be such a tweest that he sucks shit-

Moving right along, at 22:30 we have the Rubble having a crowd decide whether various refugees should be spaced or taken into indentured servitude, because of course we do.

tl;dw the nebbish redhead knows where Catherine Halsey is and there's a big bounty out for her and he's trying to use it as a bargaining chip to not die and everyone thinks that's very funny, also Soren is here. I guarantee he decides to go after her, but first we have to have a scene cut back to whatever TV Chief is doing.

Man I'm really noticing they haven't shown the weird ridged rubber tech suit yet this episode, I wonder if they decided to replace it.

Anyway here's Perez, I still think they want people to start shipping:

Then Jimmy Rings has a meeting with tv show's new guy they want you to like so bad.

Also he says "The O-N-I" like a complete tool. (This is how you know he sucks.)

And while I'm talking trash about him: Ackerson stop flirting, didn't they tell you nobody's allowed to be gay in Halo? Get your shit together.

Thus ends the dream of the funniest possible universe where we just had Cortana: The Show forever. Someone get the penny whistle. My heart will not go on. 😢

Fuck, I was doing timestamps, right? I'm like half an hour in.

THEY STILL WANT YOU TO THINK ACKERSON CARES, BY THE WAY, IN CASE YOU DID NOT NOTICE

They're laying this on so thick so fast there's no way he's not a shitweasel in this AU, but also that would be the funniest possible thing to me.

(If anyone ships this, the fandom owes me forty dollars and therapy.)

ANYWAY... Action figure time. (Remember to boycott Jazwares!)

Soren's kid is playing with a MASTER CHIEF ACTION FIGURE and being weird, meanwhile Soren's wife is calling him out on shit and reminding him that refugees being turned away is, you know, bad.

Congrats to Soren's wife for continuing to be the most unexpectedly sympathetic supporting character I guess, but they made Soren so unlikable off the 1st season it's hard for me to feel investment of any kind here.

35 minutes in: the Spartans are watching a space TV broadcast. They have Ca-ADMIRAL. Admiral. Admiral Keyes presenting the Colonial Cross to Corporal Perez for blah blah blah you saw the start of the episode. The shape of the ceremony and the hovering tv drone thing are obvious H2 references.

(Does this mean Perez is our Sergeant Johnson now? Vote with your phones.)

Get your face out of here, Ackerson, I know what you are.

Oh god there's another team of Spartans (Cobalt) and having adult Spartan-IIs call each other names like children is fucking weird.

Aaaaand tumblr is capping the number of images I can post here and I'm still only about half way done. Fuck. I am not doing this this way for Episode 2 I can promise you that.

(Also hey look the tech suit is back, I guess Silver Team doesn't use it so much anymore to show you they're more human now or whatever?)

[hero-in-waiting]

Director's commentary: Cockblock

Alright, this is gonna be LONG bc I have so many feelings about this story. So also, a read more, for reasons. I apologize in advance, not really.

Also? Spoilers? I guess if you haven't read the fic. Which if you do wanna read it you can find it here

first off, the moment that started it all bc tbh that's how 90% of these fics start. some random ass comment one of us make and it just takes off. (looking at u blank space)

So two things that were very evident for me with this fic was that I fully believe Jake and Bradley are capable of embarrassment, but it is few and far between. Which, don't relate in the slightest. You cannot put either of them in the spotlight and expect them not to ham it up in the slightest. They will take it to the next level, and they will not care. And this is important bc the second thing is:

They are competitive. Becoming a naval aviator is not easy, it's not something you casually fall into. It's something you want to do, and you train and study and do everything you can to get there. And on top of that, canonically they're the best. They were chosen for the mission for a reason and so they're the top of their classes/cohort/wherever they are for a reason.

And we know Jake and Bradley have history so when Nimue mentioned this idea I knew I wanted to take those two reasons and just mush it all up into the most competitive fake dating.

This wasn't going to be awkward romance. This was going to be 'i will fuck you on the floor if it means im winning' kinda romance. They wanna outdo each other, they want to be the best and sometimes that means they get in trouble (ie. the bet in the beginning of the story) or when Bradley fell asleep in Jake's lap and Of course jake would take care of him? Who else would it be?

But also, because they had had this antagonistic relationship that essentially had to be put to the side in order to maintain the belief they were the best it finally gave them a chance to see who the other person actually was with the adversarial nature of their relationship not necessarily taking a backseat to everything they're doing, but actually morphing into something else in the same way we see the rest of the Daggers kind of joking around.

And then it just keeps growing, because they don't really have defenses for each other in this context. Bradley can say the worst things to Jake (you're going to lead someone to an early grave) and it might hurt, but Jake isn't going to shut down over it. And Jake can call Bradley out (ie: the dad comment) and Bradley can get up in Jake's face but the next (whatever the fucking timeline is int hat movie jfc) day they're fine? They know how to be the antagonistic in each others stories, but friendship? A relationship? That's something new.

Especially for Jake, who did have a crush on Bradley but it wasn't something that was holding him back. It was something there, but it never stopped him from dating, and being with people and I would never classify it as love? Not truly because Jake wouldn't actually love someone who treated him the way Bradley and he treated each other, but he definitely would start sinking into those feelings as their fake relationship progressed. He saw the opportunity in the beginning of the story to get close to Bradley, just for fun, not because he's sitting there wallowing and pining and writing sad poems in his journal, but he's not gonna lie and say it wasn't also nice being that close to Bradley and not have an argument.

And then for Bradley, I really feel like the switch from seeing Jake as someone he's competing against, to someone he could be friends with, is in Chapter 4 when Jake makes him dinner, and opens up a little bit more about wanting to make it to Admiral, and how he's wants to get his PhD and he's got a plan. He's got a family who loves him, and he loves them and, unlike a lot of people, understands that while Mav isn't his biological father, he was the one who was there, and so while the title isn't 'Dad' the actions definitely are. So it was the start of a connection bc of Jake's relationship with his stepdad, who, in all the ways according to him, is his actual Dad. Bc he was the one who was there.

And it's not perfect, bc of what happened to Goose vs Jake's bio dad being a Raging Douchebag, but it's a start.

And following that moment is when we start to see them opening up more and more. Jake coming out as gay, not bisexual to Bradley and wanting to go to the gala as a statement. And then when Bradley falls asleep in Jake's lap at brunch, and they have the most minor argument but it's still them so they don't know how to handle it anymore within the context of each other and it just keeps growing and then they're kissing, and having sex and are intimate in that regards, Jake telling Bradley about his Mom, and Bradley talking about his Mom and how much he misses her even then and it's a grief he can't ever close, and it just keeps growing, and every moment is bringing them closer and closer to the edge.

But neither one of them can really toss themselves over it because they have so much history that they still haven't completely dealt with so it's hard, and complicated, esp with these new feelings.

My personal HC for Jake is that he is, while very gregarious, he also keeps things close to the chest, and he plans. And keeps making plans and more plans bc if he has a plan, then he can account for everything. But Bradley is steady, he flies steady right up until the moment he doesn't. and so Jake has a plan. And his plans have plans but for all their relationship looks real to the outside world, to each other it's still brand new because in some respects, it doesn't exist.

They have a relationship yes, but they're not IN a relationship. Not truly and so Jake can't plan for that. But Bradley doesn't need a plan because once he makes a decision, he just goes. And he wanted to tell Jake, he decided he was going to tell Jake and talk to him but talking is hard but it's a good thing he is the unholy product of Carole/Goose with some input from Mav and Ice so he will sing about it. Because he can use someone elses words to talk about it, and it works.

SO yeah, this was a very long winded way to talk about how their relationship morphed and changed because of the dumbass way they had to fake date to get funding, which is the biggest authors handwave of density ever but it was a good one. They couldn't fight anymore because they were faking it, so they, as Jake said early on, had to become friends but the problem was, there was always too much passion and fire for it to be easy, and it could've gone badly for sure. It could've crashed and burned.

But that would mean they would lose, and it's a lot easier to keep your mouth shut about shit that might once have pissed you off and let it slide off your back when you're a hyper-competitive asshole who likes winning. And when you let a lot of the anger slide off your back? Then it's impressive what can grow in it's wake.

And I had so much fun writing it, and I'm so so so glad it resonated with people.

Random other things:

Jake's Mom and his stepdad bc they were the best part of the Prometheus movie: Idris Elba and Charlize Theron

Bradley laying on the couch and lamenting to Mav and Ice is a personal HC of mine that I will never let go of. This man is Dramatic and he will be dramatic about it. Even if Ice and Mav aren't together, he will be Dramatic about it to one of them.

I figured out what songs I wanted Bradley to sing a full three months before I even got to that point. Especially You're So Vain bc I just have the image of all the daggers singing it to Jake in good faith, and before it would've made him annoyed, but now its just friends ragging on friends.

I had a whole plotline I ended up discarding where the Daggers had a BBQ style thing for and Marcus, Jake's Dad shows up and Jake is just like DAD and Payback is like "the fuck you mean Dad" and Bradley's keeping a straight face through sheer force of will alone bc Jake was right, it is fucking hilarious trying to watch people try not to ask, and figure it out.

There was also a second idea where someone asked who's sister that was. And it was Jake's Mom, bc she is young.

I may also write this at some point bc it would also be when Bradley met Jake's parents and he is PANICING bc Jake's Dad is a SEAL.

I am forever enamored of the diea that Bradley is Mav's responsibility 100% and he is like THIS CHILD WILL NOT BE A TEENAGE FATHER and proceeded to give the most horrifying, in depth discussion of sex. Charlie, Ice, Mav, Sarah, Penny. Anyone he could talk to gave him input on it. Plot twist: Bradley got laid a lot in college bc he was respectful, understood consent, knew what the fuck he was doing, and like. Word got around and as a result, he had A Lot Of Fun. But he didn't knock anyone up.

One of the first scenes I had in my head was actually the end of the fic and it was this moment:

“You said you weren’t writing sad poems. Does this mean there are other kinds of poems?” Bradley asked. “Or a journal?” Jake tilted his head down enough to see the smirk curling the edges of Bradley’s mouth, and he used his free hand to pinch his side. “No journal, asshole.”

I'm also very proud of the limerick I wrote

There once as a man we loved to mock Ge was always racing against the clock. We called him Rooster cuz he needed a booster. But mostly, I just really like his big cock.

um yeah. so this is long lol so i should shush. but i have a lot of feelings about this fic and i had fun. so 🤣 HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY LOTR EXTENDED EDITION DIRECTORS COMMENTARY ON COCKBLOCK

[servingthecuntry]

Several things to say after the newest episode

WE'RE GETTING THE FATES Y'ALL(if u didn't see the episode trailer go back to the end credits and it'll be there)

Idk why they were moved to after the chimera fight but they're coming!!!!

Also I've been listening to the audiobook and decided to make a post of what we've been missing in the show

Some stuff makes sense like cutting out argus. Maybe it would've been too hard to animate all his eyes or his role wasn't big enough to fit in the time limit. But I've been craving for a missing poster with percy. At camp he's given a newspaper of his and his mums dissapearance with him as a person of interest because gabe calls him a troubled kid with a delinquent past. I get cutting out some stuff for gabe but it couldve been easy to see them walk past a newspaper of this on the train. Also there were missing posters percy would tear down when in the human world and I just want to see one person of interest or missing person poster.

Now SPOILER WARNING(books and show) but here are the other things I've noticed:

Grover got the flying shoes because percy isn't safe in the air due to zeus

The styx oath is super super serious

ANNABETHS BEEN TO OLYMPUS

Annabeth has a crush on luke(maybe they want to retcon that idk)

I'd been wondering for ages why the kids don't have cells ITS BC MONSTERS CAN TRACE THEM

argus is the camp protector and was going to drive the kids to the coach and for some reason they cut it out so we don't get to see a dude covered in eyes

Percy and annabeth aren't supposed to get along because of their parents rivalry

Argus may ship percabeth

Percy has missing posters everywhere

Percy is a person of interest in his mothers suspicious dissapearance because of gabe

GROVER CAN READ EMOTIONS (like auras?)

Grover eats tin cans and playing cards(he's also a vegetarian)

Percys mum married Gabe bc his smell hides percy from creatures/ monsters

Chiron has had a percy related prophecy that's only now starting to make sense

There were meant to be 3 furies on the bus(i can see why they cut this out)

Monsters come back to life and mrs dodds had come back

The camp was attacked by a hell hound out for percy who was fought off by annabeth with a sword and killed by chirons arrow (I get cutting out this scene but it would've looked SO COOL)

It could only be summoned by someone inside the camp and was from the field of torment so that's how they knew hades was the one who had stolen the lightning bolt and framed percy

A hawaian shirted tourist had taken a picture of percy with riptide

I'm guessing they rewrote the coach scene so they didn't lose all their snacks and money(rip grovers tin cans)

In the book if percy dies the quest is over and annabeth and grover have to go back to camp but I don't think that's an issue in the show(or maybe percy didn't know because annabeth didn't explain to him idk)

Annabeths never actually gone out into the real world since she was 7

We got to see annabeth unsure of herself because she's never gotten to properly fight a monster since she was 7 which is a shame to cut out of the show for her character arc. Tbh theyve cut out a lot of slower character arcs which is annoying but understandable with the length of each episode

Grover can play songs to help eg the find a path song but he hasn't got the hang of it yet

Hes basically a level 1 bard

Auntie M was able to use some kind of snake charmer ability

Grover was way more fighting active in the book because he found his uncles statue earlier than in the show

In the book they used a reflection of a spear instead of annabeths cap and annabeth was calculating how off the light would be because the spear was curved. Both show off annabeths intelligence but the cap is more unique and cooler on screen

When parts of a monster are cut off they don't disappear with the rest of it and become a "spoil of war" -basically a magically remaining trophy

Satyrs aren't meant to get migranes but percy and annabeth gave grover one at medusas

I'm guessing at least 50% of percys impertinence comes from being an only kid

This isn't a fact this is just something I started imagining after the 50th time someone said "Percy" with the same energy as a cat being annoyed at another housecat and giving a warning meow before attacking it

Grovers getting a searchers license to find Pan the Greek God

Grover doesn't know what happened to his dad who was also a seeker

The search for Pan gives satyrs hope after seeing what humans have done to the world

Grover tells percy annabeth forgave him for what happened at Grovers first assignment

The furies were holding back and could've been more aggressive than they were

Grover can use his emotional reading to see what percy hides about his feeling to his dad

The thing in Percys dreams tries using him to pull itself out not to drag him down

Grover can talk to all animals

Grover is a snorer

Percy tells annabeth about his dream at this point but I don't think he's told anyone about those dreams in the show

They've not said anything about the beads on their necklaces the campers get for surviving another year. Would've been an easy merch ad but maybe it wasn't important enough yet

Children of athena are made as thoughts of athena and given to people she feels close to or something

Annabeth was sent to her dad in a golden basket with the winds of zephyr

Even though she respects her mum she has equal level of daddy issues to percy

In chapter 12 percy acts like he doesn't care about his dad's approval but grover can read his emotions and knows percy sent medusas head so poseidon would be proud

But then he wonders in chapter 13 why annabeth acts like she doesn't care about her dad who seems worse than gabe when she still wears a ring from him which is such a teen thing for him to do honestly

Whenever a monster attacked annabeth the stepmum and dad blamed her for "threatening" their mortal/ normal kids

We get a hint of architecture nerd annabeth in the episode but she doesnt say she wants to build something for athena. I assume its implied but its not clarified how big her dreams are. She wants to build something that'll last 1000 years. I won't give any major spoilers but maybe we'll get it in a future scene and I'm hoping its in her siren scene

I think that while percy loves his mum and hates his dad Annabeth hates her mortal parents and Athena was her only hope of a loving mother even though in the show she says its a kind of transactional thing

Also side note I thought the chimera was the pink poodle before it left the bag and I love that they kinda sorta reference it when we see from the human passengers pov

In the books they're careful about mentioning gods around humans but percy just straight out calls the mother of monsters a monster in front of the passengers and officers. Didn't even lower his voice or anything

Hades has a helm that can make him become darkness and make you so scared you go insane

Do they ever get something equivalent to sending stones or detect thoughts like in DnD to deal with this? Obviously normal tech is out because monsters can track it but what about magical communication methods?(the iris video call system doesn't count that seems like a premium thing if it costs one gold drachma-also the book explains demigods only use gold drachmas even though in ancient greek it would've been silver- and they have 20 for the quest so they cant just use a drachma every time they want to send a magical text which; you can't do with the iris system. Also the iris system isn't any subtler than a zoom call so wouldn't be good for hiding stuff from hades)

Percy still hasn't gotten a chance to confuse annabeth with his blue snack foods(i assume grover already knows bc he'd have had blue sweets at yancy)

Zeus allowed the mother of monsters to attack Percy

The mother of monsters hates that ant eaters are named after the echidna

For some reason riptide didn't return to percy during the fight and its mentioned in the book. Maybe poseidon kept it so he could contact him?

Also a couple notes I've learned while listening to hesiod

The cyclopes helped zeus defeat kronos and bring the titans to their time out tartarus zone(not by crafting the lightning bolt in the original myths unless I'm misremembering I think they just helped in the fight like bringing your older brother to fight your bully)

The river styx is the only female river goddess and a favourite child

I hadn't taken any notes so lmk if u want me to add more hesiod fun facts and I'll relisten to theogony

I'm stopping notes here so I don't go past chapter 13: I plunged to my death

I'm thinking of writing my notes as I binge listen to the audiobook and editing them after watching the episode before posting on tumblr. Or I've already read until book 4 of the pjo series so I may decide to hold off on listening to the audiobook until each episode airs(I have vague memories of important or memorable stuff but its been a couple years since I last read the books). I'll see how long I can stop myself from listening to the audiobook. This isn't a perfect list so let me know if somethings wrong or if I missed something in tags or comments

[elizabethshaw]

thoughts on "echoes"!! under the cut bc of spoilers:

this boxset absolutely came out at one of the worst possible times for me (my busiest day of the week, at a time when i have 6 different exams, a presentation and also assessments for my home uni to prepare for), and i fear it may have regnited my 8das fixation somewhat which is. not something i have time for rn lmao. we'll see how it goes i guess! anyway personal stuff over now-

i definitely enjoyed it overall! i'm still not entirely sure where i'd rank it in comparison with the other post-stranded boxsets but it was a lot of fun, and it was (as expected) a joy to hear this tardis team together again :)

i will say however that i did have one major qualm with it, which is that i felt a bit let down with how little it followed through with the emotional plotlines set up in the preceding two sets. i got the feeling when listening to "what lies inside?" and "connections" that they were very much going somewhere with this team's (particularly helen's) emotional arc, and while i won't deny there were some nice scenes with them in this set, the fact that these threads were otherwise left to one side most of the time was a disappointment. there was potential to do some really interesting character work in continuation from the events of those previous episodes and it just. didn't happen. i don't want to sound too down about it because i did still really enjoy these stories, but i think this side of things was missing a little bit for me. hm.

anyway, episode-by-episode thoughts:

birdsong

i think this was my favourite of the set. i really love audio drama that leans into more horror-adjacent aspects (even though i'm not a massive horror fan otherwise tbh), and also love it when audio drama just gets kinda fucked up with it. this story hit on both counts for me :)

love that this continued the running trend from the previous boxsets of the episode starting with eight, liv and helen just getting to be silly for a bit before the Horrors inevitably happen :D

lowkey actually love the concept of barcodes as a written language! part of me wants to try and work out how that could work now

scots pine trees... it never rains... bracken... sand... they're literally in breckland lmao

saying that it does also have the Suffocating Quietness going on so i think i'm onto something here...

when the vortex previews for this set mentioned a family member of helen's first mentioned in doom coalition being relevant to this story, i wasn't expecting it to be the grandmother she mentioned in "ship in a bottle". however it was actually really nice to have helen's relationship with her developed further, and it was woven into the story well i thought

being Normal about the scene between liv and helen at the fireside. i am being so normal about it

"i'm not sure i could do this with anyone else, you know? everything from exploring strange new worlds... to talking about my family." i'm fine. i'm fine!!!

[putting on my clown shoes] this is how liv/helen can still be canon in some form before helen inevitably dies! :))

i love how vivid this story felt to me. i always end up getting visuals in my head as i listen with any audio drama but some stories end up, for storytelling or sound design reasons, or both, creating really clear and vivid pictures in my mind and this was definitely one of those

i hope to god that when i visit home over the summer and listen to these with my mum (who loves these audios but refuses to listen to them without me, which is kind of sweet of her), my dad is not in the same room. i love him but he absolutely would be asking me to pause it every few minutes so he could identify the bird calls and then also getting really frustrated when i inevitably end up being unable to guess any of them correctly myself lol. the pains of being related to an ornithologist

big fan of the way things got increasingly more disturbing towards the end. i do think the eight-liv-helen era has been lacking in terms of properly creepy stories (this is just my personal taste tbf), so it was cool having them properly lean into that for once. i have to say though the mental image of the scout's body with all the roots forcing their way into her eyes is not going to be leaving me for a long time

also thought the sound design was really well done on this one!! you could really feel the discomfort of the silence i think

got slightly choked up at helen and liv singing to bex as she died. i might have just been in a weird mood while i was listening to it but. yeah. it did something to me

anyway had a lot of fun with this episode! it had a lot of elements that appealed to me personally, and the character work it did was nice. i look forward to listening to it again one day :)

lost hearts

m.r. james episode!! i've only ever read two of his stories (both of which are products of me knowing this episode was coming haha), but was quite excited for this one regardless because a) ghost stories! and b) he's actually got connections to a village in the area i grew up in, and as i've never actually seen/heard any stories set where i come from in my life, it was neat to have a story in my favourite show, featuring some of my favourite characters, star someone more or less from where i'm from :')

have to say though i am disappointed to have lost the unofficial "will they namedrop great livermere" bet i had going on with my mum and brother. it's such a middle-of-nowhere village (it's not on the way to anywhere, has 3 streets (one of which is named "the street" and another of which is actually a dirt track), and you invariably see more chickens there than actual people), it would have been deeply amusing to me for it to have canonically existed in the dwu

loved all the direct (and indirect) callbacks to "the red lady" in this story! it felt fitting seeing as on some levels they do share certain elements in terms of plot/setting, and was also just fun for me as that is one of my favourite stories :)

was also a big fan of how active the story felt (not sure if that's quite the right word?) - each of the characters had a clear role to play and all the main cast got something to do, it never felt hugely like any of them were being sidelined, which does happen on occasion with 3+ person tardis teams

if helen had punched someone at some point in this story i honestly wouldn't have blamed her

"he's like the museum of cairo, stuffed inside a... well, a-" "a rude, ungracious little twerp?" oh my god askdfjdsfjkds

(let her swear!!!)

i like how the story was riffing off some of the plot/vibes of m.r. james' actual short story "lost hearts" (helpfully one of the two i've read)! it gave it that nice kind of connection, without feeling overly derivative and like it was straight-out copying it

my only main issue with this episode was that robert felt kinda underdeveloped. they started off well in his opening scene with liv, but i don't think we got enough of a chance to get to know him as a person after that point and i think the story suffered for it a little. i don't think it helped either that he's not a family member helen had ever mentioned prior to this episode, so they were essentially having to start from scratch and with everything else going on in the narrative, didn't quite find the time to give him sufficient detail

loved the emotional moments that were brought out when helen got erased... "helen, she's my- she's everything i have left" ough

and the salzburg parallels?? liv attempting to fly the tardis in a desperate attempt to rescue her friends, much like helen did? this is so... it's a lot

i won't lie, it did feel a bit odd to me that they would go to such lengths to avoid actually naming the uni in this episode as cambridge. i suppose it may have been to avoid spoiling the "it's m.r. james!!!" reveal at the end, but given that i think anyone who would have guessed it was him from the setting being cambridge probably would have guessed it anyway beforehand either from the episode blurb or the fact that the episode literally starts with him reciting one of his most famous short stories, it feels a little pointless. i mean i clocked it as an m.r. james episode when the set was announced and i had never read any of his work at that point lmao. not a glaring issue or anything, but felt like a weird choice

anyway loved helen getting to geek out a bit at the end... i love her :')

i think i'm going to have to relisten to this at some point so i can fully get my head around it but i did enjoy it!

slow beasts

this was a solid ep. not my favourite story this tardis team has ever had, but i did absolutely enjoy listening to it, and thought there were a lot of really good ideas in it!

the colonialism plotline especially worked really well for me, it felt pertinent in just the right sort of way. it's not necessarily something new for dr who, but i think it was definitely a good example of how to do it well.

i think "simple, but effective" is the way i'd sum this one up tbh. not exceptional, but it knew what it was setting out to do, did it, and did it well, and i think that worked. it did admittedly feel a bit strange after two more complex/experimental sort of stories, but i don't think that's any reflection on its actual quality

"here is the psychic paper. be confident. it only works if you're confident." "but... i- i'm not confident?" me if i got asked to use the psychic paper tbh

enjoyed the use of the translation circuit in this one :) i have a lot of thoughts on it as a general thing so i always like seeing the ways it gets utilized in different stories

so! had fun with these! a couple of things that maybe could have gone better, but overall a set of three stories i had good fun with and i suspect will enjoy listening to again. fingers crossed the december boxset is with these guys again and they do a bit more with helen's emotional plotlines next time :)

[paigemathews]

idk why but in the prandy P3 daughters au i feel like piper would have a girl first and then her boys (maybe twin boys? i'm just bullshitting here tbh)

Okay, so, I can genuinely guarantee that this over three thousand word outline is not what you intended when you sent this, but I got this and another ask about the prandy girls AU and decided that I needed to sketch this out to at least have an idea of what happens and who else are around the prandy girls and it... spiraled. I did put this under a read more because, like I said, over three thousand words. But to actually answer your question, and I guess spoilers for the outline ahead, Piper actually ends up with two girls: Proserpina "Prose" Patricia Halliwell and Petra Penelope Halliwell. (Abi, you may say with dismay, there's no way that Piper would name her daughter Proserpina and you're not wrong! Special circumstances apply for why she did, and I actually did initially begin to dive into the next gen girls' powers and personalities here as well before realizing it was way too long already, but that information is available if anyone cares lmao.)

I also had to break this up more because Tumblr yelled at me, so we have different headings.

The Beginning

I think that the first two seasons would still primarily shake out the same, besides Andy's death, since season two is still pretty episodic

instead of that unnamed Cupid in "Heartbreak City," however, it's Coop, who kind of just gently bullies Phoebe into admitting that she's afraid of love and of losing people. (we're gonna set the stage early here.)

Additionally, Prue and Andy are still not fully together yet (bc they had been, y'know, broken up when he died) so Coop reveals to Phoebe that he's there to help them but doesn't tell anyone else yet.

Anyways, Prue and Andy end up hooking up at one point and accidentally ends up pregnant around three quarters of the way through season two but we end season two with them finally committing to one another and Perri is born about halfway through season three

During season three, however, we first see the sisters go head-to-head with the Source. They try to vanquish him, and Prue goes down hard. The Power of Three doesn't work and they're about to die when they're suddenly beamed out, revealed to be Phoebe wishing she could've confessed her love to Coop before they died. (Look, we're doing very broad strokes here rn.)

The sisters are confused because that was the strongest spell and potion that they got, and Leo goes to talk to the Elders and says that there's something blocking the sisters from their full potential and Phoebe is like "okay, what does that mean" and Leo has no idea so that takes up the back half of season three as they try to discover what's blocking them.

Meanwhile, Prue, a new mother, is having this breakdown about how she nearly orphaned her daughter and lashes out and has her plot about dealing with all of this with Andy.

Anyways, at the end of season three, we finally figure out what's limiting their powers and spoiler alert:

it's because there's supposed to be a fourth sister with them: Paige

but the Source discovers this before the sisters do and attacks once again, and this time, they're slightly more prepared but something happens and Piper is (seemingly) killed while the Source is seriously weakened so he retreats.

The Power of Four

In reality, Piper has actually ended up between planes, alive in the place you're meant to go before you die. Also, as we later find out when Leo is tearfully confiding to probably Coop, she's pregnant as well. (This will be relevant to our Pleo kid.) The rest quickly figure out, however, that wherever Piper is, she's not in the Beyond like their mother or grandmother.

But anyways, Prue is furious and going after every demon like a madwoman and casting any and every spell to locate a sister. Phoebe, meanwhile, graduated at some point during season three and is adrift and unsure what to do. She starts working with social services to help people down on their luck, where she begins running into a chaotic young Berkley grad named Paige.

Meanwhile, Piper is trying to figure out a way home and starts casting her own spells to contact her sisters. She ends up in Paige's dreams, who at first dismisses it as just being lonely and wanting family as the anniversary of her parent's death approaches and being alone for it for the first time (as Glen is unable to get back to the States in time).

Paige is a bit creeped out when she first sees a picture of Piper and sees that she's identical to the woman in her dreams but continues to dismiss it as her wishing she had a sister like Phoebe.

Anyways, something happens and Prue and Phoebe realize that Paige is their sister and Paige realizes that she's a witch. (For this, they initially believe that she's a telepath since she's able to mentally connect with Piper through planes and displays this mental connection with all of the sisters, but it's later revealed to be a product of their collective power. Her actual primary power is photokinesis, the ability to create and manipulate light.)

There's some growing pains at first, but Prue, Phoebe, and Paige manage to connect with one another and discover a way to save Piper, which is something like at the height of All Hallow's Eve or whatever.

Anyway, they save Piper and the Power of Four is established.

Either during or soon after, Piper gives birth to her and Leo's daughter: Proserpina "Prose" Patricia Halliwell, named after the mysterious woman on the plane who helped Piper and likely gave her something to help her keep the pregnancy (a life growing where one is not meant to exist)(look, I wasn't intentionally trying to sketch out stuff here, we're just going with vibes now.

Prue is also pregnant again about halfway through the "getting Piper back" arc and, if Piper gives birth end of season four, Prue gives birth to Presley about half a season afterwards.

Now, back to the sisters. Let's say that Phoebe finally confesses to Coop and they deal with their feelings and are going strong. But the Source has been working to regain his strength, and so, we get some kind of enemy sent the sister's way. With the reveal of Paige's existence and Piper giving birth, the Source decides to try to divide the sisters to weaken them by targeting the most obvious weak link: Paige.

We Still Have a Demon Romance

With Piper's return, Paige feels unnecessary, like she was a placeholder only meant to hold the second sister's place until she came back. And it isn't helped by the fact that Piper came back and had a baby, Prue is now pregnant/close to having another baby, and Phoebe is dancing around Coop who may or may not have tried to set her up with someone else.

And Paige isn't impressive to the magical community, not like the original Charmed Ones and she doesn't know what she's doing yet, not really, so it doesn't go well. But there's someone who seems to like her and look up to her and they're a fellow witch (except they're actually a demon) and he gets her and understands her.

So instead of Phoebe, Paige gets a demon romance, except she doesn't know of course. And she learns more about magic and how to use it differently than anything her sisters had taught her and a lot of it is on the up-and-up for the most part but some of it just tilts Paige a bit of a different direction.

The saving grace is that Paige is also given a charge during this time, so her Whitelighter side is tugging at her consistently so her demon lover can't pull her too far, even if Paige doesn't know yet why some things he shows her she is instinctually repelled from. And through her Whitelighter side, she gets a charge, who also happens to have an infuriating parole officer named Henry.

They butt heads a lot but both care a lot about their charge, so slowly and reluctantly become friends against their will. But Paige's demon boyfriend is getting impatient at the lack of progress, especially because the Source is starting to get vexed and regaining his strength, so he kicks it up a notch by starting to steadily bewitch Paige, a la Phoebe in s4.

In the interest of having a backup, the Source also sends a demon to befriend the sisters, especially in an attempt to target the kids and Prue's pregnancy. (After all, what better way to destroy the sisters than from the inside?)

And it takes a minute, because everything has been so hectic with everything going on for the sisters (Piper going missing and then giving birth, Prue getting pregnant again, finding Paige, etc.) that they've kinda just been lingering with this chill atmosphere for once, but start to realize something is wrong with Paige.

Andy is the one to investigate and find out that something is off about the demon boyfriend, like how he did with Rex and Hannah in s1. An oracle or seer (depending on who we wanna add in here) warns the demon that his cover is blown before Andy can get to Prue, and he knows he's no match for the Charmed Ones, so he decides to try to forcibly turn Paige, and potentially the sisters, in one fell swoop through a Dark Wedding (like Zile marrying Prue in the canon s3.) To distract the sisters, he infects the sisters, Andy, Leo, and Coop with sin balls.

This has a two-fold purpose: one, I love Sin Francisco, so shoutout! Two, Phoebe gets infected with lust and Coop with envy. Coop is envious of the men that he's tried setting Phoebe up with, and Phoebe is. lusting after Coop, so. Under the influence of the sins, they have sex! (I'm sure you can see why this will be very important later on.)

Anyways, Henry, who the demon boyfriend (who I probably should've given a name tbh) had deemed unimportant, figures out that something is wrong with Paige and tries to go to the sisters to ask about her, only to be like what the fuck.

He ends up somehow helping them realize something is wrong blah blah and they all break their individual sin/remove their sin in the case of Prue.

Meanwhile, Paige and the demon boyfriend are seemingly about to get married but Paige just looks around dazed and asks softly where are my sisters? and he gives her some bullshit about how he's the only one that cares about her or whatever and then is blasted halfway across the room by a very furious Piper going get away from my sister!

(Imagine this as being the turning point between Piper and Paige's relationship since they'd been so iffy around each other because they had no idea who the other was and thought that the other was intended to be their replacement or whatever.)

Her sisters rush to her side and Phoebe hands her a potion and gently asks her to take it, sweetie, and Paige trusts her so she does and all of the demon's tricks fail when his enchanting is abruptly wiped from her sister. Paige hesitates only for a minute before joining her sisters in the vanquishing spell.

Also Henry finds out about magic from this and has to sit down.

And this has probably been going on for the about three quarters of the season and uhhh, Prue goes into labor at the end of all this and hi ya, Presley!

And they hustle her off to the hospital and- Oh my God, Prue is cradling Presley in her arms with Andy beaming next to her and they need a middle name and everyone's making suggestions and Prue kind of just looks up at Paige, who we'll say have bonded over Paige's love of art and Prue's experience with antiquities and art knowledge, and says Artemisia after Artemisia Gentileschi and Paige points out that's a big name for a girl to handle and if Prue's sure if she handle it and they're not really talking about the name at all but Prue says that she knows she'll be able to handle anything because she's so strong and brave and will always have her sisters.

And Paige beams and Piper and Leo are standing together and Phoebe goes and leans her head on Paige's shoulder in one of those cute sisterly moments and gets a premonition of, oh, about nineish months?

Congratulations, Paige, it's a demon-witch-Whitelighter hybrid!

(Phoebe does not tell them in that moment but definitely brings it up later.)

I Feel Like Everyone is Just Having a Kid RN Here

Anyways, we get a break from all the heavy plot stuff for a minute because Phoebe and Coop are. Not talking about what happened between them and Paige and Henry are being a little weird with each other and Prue is having a crisis with Andy about what if she goes and dies on her kids like her mom and Piper isn't sure if she and Leo will be able to have another kid after her experiences on the plane between life and death, and that's all just the romance and family side of things.

On the professional side of things, Prue is struggling with the desire to stay at 415 Magazine or move to the Bay Mirror to be able to be there on the streets seeing what's going on versus the glossy photoshoots that she's been doing. Piper, after quitting Quake, had basically been working as a caterer without the money to actually buy a physical location for her building but is taking the plunge on the restaurant. Phoebe has been working at social services with Paige but isn't sure what she actually wants to do. After an episode where something forced Phoebe into helping Prue at the Bay Mirror, she begins doing some editing work there, eventually taking on a column role. Paige meanwhile finally becomes a social worker.

But anyways, Paige is struggling with what happened, her deteriorating friendship with Henry, and her impending motherhood. She finally explodes on Henry calling him out for slowly drifting away and revealing how terrified she is of becoming a mother. The two reconcile when Henry tells her that, regardless of magic, he knows that she'll be a great mother because of the way that she cares for her charges and her work and promises to be there for her. There's also plenty of bonding with Prue during this time because Paige (and Henry) definitely have a plot about babysitting little Perri and Presley for "practice."

Meanwhile, Phoebe realizes about halfway through the season that she's pregnant and she and Coop finally have to sit down and talk about it. They confess their feelings but are concerned about the forbidden romance aspect of it. Despite that, with Phoebe being spectacularly less burned this time, they decide to try and pursue it anyways.

About halfway through season six, Paige goes into labor about the same time that a demon is attempting to devour ghosts' powers or something so we get an episode featuring Melinda Warren because Paige deserves to meet her too and Henry gets some magical shenanigans. Also some nice moments with Melinda commiserating with Paige about being tricked and how she, and her baby, are still Warrens. But anyways, Paige delivers not one little demon-witch-Whitelighter baby but two! (No one expected this. Phoebe's premonition helpfully left out Henry cradling the other baby.) Either way, we now have Lillith Prudence Matthews and Morgan Melinda Matthews!

Remember how I mentioned that the Source had a backup plan to befriend the sisters? Yeah, she's still here, slowly worming her way into their lives. Due to the twins' half-demon natures, she begins often volunteering to be a babysitter with the goal eventually being to turn them completely. None of the sisters expect anything as demonic activity begins ticking upward again and she becomes closer to their kids. It's her that lets it slip that Phoebe and Coop are in a forbidden romance soon before Phoebe's meant to give birth, and the Elders recall him to the Heavens in punishment.

Phoebe gives birth soon afterwards to Philomena "Mena" Cordelia Halliwell, naming her daughter after love and heart.

She challenges the Elders for him back, and with her sisters behind her, they falter enough that she's able to press them enough that they give her an option. She came to them on the claim of true love, and so it's that claim they'll make her prove herself on. If Phoebe is truly in love with Coop, she just has to find him. They'll send him back, no memories and in-disguise, but will guarantee that they'll be in a position to meet once more and interact. If she kisses him, it'll return his memories and they'll be free to be together. However, to prevent her from just kissing every guy she finds to try to find Coop, she has only once chance, and her next kiss will be the only chance she gets. (I did decide to add in a fairytale ass plot bc I can, thanks.) Phoebe accepts, and her romantic plot for the rest of the season and the beginning of the next is on finding Coop.

Meanwhile, the demon friend decides that if she's going to poison the Warren line of witches, why stop at only a set of twins when there could be a death-touched witch and the first ever Cupid-witch hybrid at her command? (She looks at Perri and Presley, fully witches born with no complications, and dismisses them. She is the first demon that will do this but will not be the last. Like her, others will learn that this is a mistake.) Knowing vaguely of the potion Piper took to be able to keep the pregnancy, the demon creates a fertility potion to give her to see if she'll be able to utilize another child's powers to even greater strengths. She gives it to Piper in the season six finale.

The Final Battle

During this time, the sisters begin to prepare for the final battle against the Source. Their last major battle at this was at the end of season three, and we're now at the beginning of season seven. The Source has fully recovered from their battle, and the sisters themselves are at full power with Piper recovered and Paige at their side.

Piper finds out she's pregnant again a few episodes into the season.

Phoebe finds Coop at the midseason finale, which is also when the demon friend is revealed to be a demon when she makes a move for the kids. Someone gets stabbed (idk who. Andy? Henry?) stopping her but is narrowly saved and the sisters vanquish her.

Phoebe and Coop get married around midseason as well, while Paige and Henry discuss if they want to take that step soon.

The sisters take on and vanquish the Source in the season finale once and for all, which is where I think the big storylines stop.

Shortly after the finale, Piper gives birth to Petra Penelope Halliwell. Phoebe and Coop may or may not have a second kid? Still undecided on that one. Paige and Henry move in together in the flashforward in the series finale and marry a year or two later. Andy and Prue have Pamela as the last next gen kid.

[astro-break]

New hypmic anime season and I'm BACK IN THE FUCKING BUILDING AGAIN (I feel like the Martha I'm coming home sweetie audio)

Thoughts on the 1st ep of Hypmic Rhyme Anima+. Spoilers beware

New plotline lets gooooooo I like that they're straying away from the drama tracks actually, Rhyme Anima is fundamentally a different experience from the core drama tracks which gives new material for both new and old fans OP is an actual banger, Ramuda's verse is the best fight me all you want but you know i'm right Nemu!! uh spoiler chara for anyone new to the anime I guess? Like they spoil her right at the introduction and iirc they didn't really build off her mystery in the first season. Makes her impact here a bit weaker but I'm willing to let it slide since some might not catch it (Post Editing Astro here: I haven't rewatched Rhyme Anima since it finished airing and uh. Nemu definitely was a plot point there lol they dropped it after ep 11 but she was there!) Jyushi my son I love you so much you idiot I love the little stingers for each team that they did for each team, its so cute and gives so much personality The visuals have definitely improved, a big step above the last season in terms of animation i don't see an improvement with story writing though… Pacing is still all over the place and very squished/fast paced makes sense since the cast has grown by a quarter since last season but still makes me sad that there isn't much time given to each character individually I forgot how much I love the localization of Doppomine Okay so Pink hair and Green hair in the flashback are most definitely the two in the white cloaks. Theres just no subtly with this series lmaoooo Nice that they were able to incorporate everyone somehow but too many people means that too many parts to handle I'm getting deja vu, this exact same thing happened last season…. Oh. Its the same guy. Makes sense lmfao Listen bud I have minimal rap experience but that rap was just embarrassing wow. No rhyme or flow, there was only straight passion which i mean props I guess but you suck ass Look at me being so smart and predicting all of these ahead of time without looking at any materials Did Rio just contact Jyuto with his hypmic???? Samatoki have I ever said that I love your for being a bullheaded idiot? bc I do. you're so silly Damn the typography has gotten even better, its just a lot more smooth and the animation too especially during Jiro's part is just so stylish The animation has improved a lot I'm glad it got a little more love compared to last season My guess is that maybe someone from the six divisions will fall under the anger thingy that's going around, something like the stage show. My biggest guess is that they might re-incite the Samatoki and Ichiro conflict again but I hope not. Another guess is that there will be old MCD or Naughty Busters beef which seems more plausible given that this is Sasara and Kuko's anime debut but I guess we'll wait and see THE OUTFITS!!! THE STUPID OUTFITS I LOVE THEM the art style of the ED is super pop punk and has a strong sense of style which i love. its simple but stands out really well which i love Very jjk but more toned down. Feels a bit like a cleaned up croquis drawings the smear frames is just so stylish and good, very simple and a bit messy and sells the gesture drawing kind of feel of the ED Ramuda's parrot costume i love you Those hand signs just make the first letter of each word which is really fun. Not proper JSL though I guess beggars can't be choosers esp for a series like this

Overall, a really strong start. It shows how it built off the first season and where it improved and while some things (like the horrid pacing) never change, at the end of the day its still a fun and delightful watch

If anyone wanted to read my thoughts on the first season, they're all archived here

[kristinakyidyl]

S1e7 Trailer

Hey, it's that time again where I amuse myself by going through the next HotD episode in great detail and see how much I can correctly guess.

As always *THIS POST HAS SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK*.

We open on Laena's funeral, and I really like that they added some more cultural detail here by showing us the funeral traditions of house Velaryon. I also think that it is interesting that Laena was first cremated in the way of House Targaryen and then buried in the way of House Velaryon. It makes me think that Daemon must have cared to go through the trouble of arranging that for her.

Next we have the funeral group, and they're again leaning into the color coding. Interesting to me that Viserys never wears green during these kinds of things.

When we saw the funeral in the series trailers before the season started, a lot of people were looking at that overhead shot of the coffin and saying that the water looked too shallow and you couldn't see any previous coffins, but here we get a shot of the coffin sinking and there are others in the background, which I thought was neat:

The next interesting thing to me was Vhagar. Now, I'm pretty sure the claiming by Aemond happens at night, so this isn't from that. I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm glad we'll get more than one shot of Granny Vhagar.

Vhagar again, a shot down her mouth as she's about to breathe fire. I think this is during Aemond's claiming of her:

Ok, this is hard to see bc of the size, but what we're looking at is Baela and Rhaena looking out a window at Driftmark, with a dragon walking through the scene at night. It's *probably* them seeing Vhagar when Aemond claims her. During the claiming there's an altercation between Aemond and Rhaenyra's kids wherein Aemond loses his eye (shoutout to Dreamer Helaena.). If it's happening at night, then someone has to wake the boys up so they go down there and see what's going on. So I think what happens is that the twins see or hear a disturbance and wake up the boys.

I especially think that because the next shot is of the girls waking up another child with dark hair, likely Jace:

Next there is this scene of Daemon, still at Driftmark (maybe Dragonstone? But I think most of this episode happens on Driftmark.), breaking someones' neck. I have no *idea* who this is, but I'm going to add a closer up pic we get from later in a trailer and maybe you guys can tell me who you think it is. My only guess is Laenor's boyfriend Qarl Correy, and this is Daemon covering his tracks after paying Qarl to kill Laenor. Qarl DOES kill Laenor in the books, and it's portrayed as a lovers' quarrel by Gyldayn, but Mushroom says that Daemon paid Qarl to kill Laenor and then murdered Qarl. So...I'm thinking that Mushroom might be right here. It's hard to tell in the second screenie, but that's Daemon grabbing him from behind.

That first screenie there is followed by this one of Laenor fighting with someone, presumably Qarl. It's also an interesting mirror of their play fight in e6, and his play fight with Joffrey. This is likely Laenor's death scene.

There's this scene at a dock, and IDK what dock and who that is in the foreground. Typically it's Daemon that we see skulking around in a cloak, but now that we have Larys to account for there could be more spy-type stuff, or more people creeping around wanting to be unnoticed.

I'm only going to put one screenie from this scene, but there are a lot in the trailer. It's the aftermath of Aemond losing his eye, where Alicent takes the catspaw dagger from Viserys and tries to stab Rhaenyra. Baela and Rhaena are there, and Corlys and Rhaenys are coming down the stairs. It's at Driftmark. The one thing that has always struck me as odd about this scene was that Rhaenyra is crying in the close ups of her face. Now...in the book, Laenor dies 6 months after Laena does, and this scene is happening during the aftermath of Laena's funeral (as it does in the book.). But...for the sake of brevity and time jumps, I'm wondering if Laenor does concurrently or shortly before this end up dying and *that's* why Rhaenyra is crying. So Laenor dies while Vhagar is being claimed, Rhaenyra is told he was killed, and then they find out about Aemond in quick succession so she hasn't even had time to stop crying about Laenor's death before learning that Alicent wants to poke her kid's eye out.

These next two shots are from the altercation itself. The first is Jace and Luc, one in the foreground and one injured in the background. The second is Baela and Rhaena looking on. It tracks with the idea that they see Aemond stealing Vhagar, wake the boys, and the 4 of them go to investigate. The boys try to stop Aemond and then the fight happens.

Otto the Asshole is back, and is made hand again. I was really hoping we'd get more of a reprieve from him, but no. He's back.

Alicent and Larys exchanging a look...and I think Rhaenyra standing next to Otto? IDK she's the only one with hair that color and texture at the moment. I'm assuming this is him being like "you're welcome for bringing your dad back".

Vhagar being stolen by Aemond. There are a lot of scenes of this.

This is Otto hauling one of his grandkids up by his shirt front. I can't tell which one, but I suspect it's Aemond. I wonder if maybe it's Otto that puts the idea in his head to steal the dragon in the first place. In which case....wow, fuck you, Otto. You gave not a single fuck if your grandkid got burned alive.

And that's it for this week's trailer. Basically there's not a TON about it that's a mystery. Seems like they go to Driftmark, Vhagar gets stolen, the fight happens, and Laenor dies. That makes me think that if that's the case, then 7 to 8 will be the last major time jump. I think the thing I'm most likely to be wrong about is Laenor's death. Because next episode is called "Lord of the Tides", and Laenor's death/Daemon and Rhaenyra being married is the last thing to happen before Viserys dies and the Dance really starts. So it could be that Laenor dies in ep 8, but IDK.

What did you guys think of this week's episode?

[partyinthemysterymachine]

it hardly needs to be said that i am EXTREMELY protective of what i reveal in or about GOOMT, but i WILL say this:

i view GOOMT's...... Arcs(??) (Timeline??? ?? idfk) as separated into four books. there are four reasons to separate them into four books. i will be getting GOOMT printed when it is said and done, btw, and i can assure you that these four books will also have the additional use as a murder self defense weapon

not to mention that GOOMT also being four books alongside Harry's Filicide series ALSO being in four books may or may not have Implications or Correlations, aehdkgfdghkehghaha

oh yeah. chinhands. shit. Harry's Filicide series. yeah no that's GOOMT canon LOL i know i've talked about the Filicide series before just briefly here and there but no. no, that's GOOMT canon. hahaaha. i'm pretty sure i can talk about it bc there's like. nothing Spoilers about it so yeah let's give it a gew

so before the events of The Fuckening of Silent Hill Pt 2 or 3 Depending On Who You Talk To GOOMT, Harry was starting to seriously consider retirement, or at least taking a very long hiatus from writing.

he thought it'd be fun to knock out a book that was a very personal project. a. VERY. personal. project. it was kinda dark, it was strange and ~experimental~, as many would state in reviews. and it was called Filicide.

it was published, it received its accolades and its criticisms and Harry was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and was just kind of chuckling wryly to himself that it was doing so well. and then he was going to announce that he was taking semi-retirement/extended hiatus when his agent/editor (Maggie) strolled up and /chinhand on his counter and was like. sooooooo~

........ soooooooo Filicide's doing reaaaallly well and people are wanting a sequel :) and i knoooow you said you wanted to retire, Harry. But. what if--

harry's like. mfer. jfc maggie i SAID i wanted to retire, i don't even have any more lore for that!! it was supposed to be a one-off!!! hello!!!!!! ma'am please button your blouse your advances don't work on me

sorry harry i just don't know how to seduce men with morals. anyway soooooo wouldja do a sequel oooorrrr :)c???

so basically Harry's like FINE. FINE i'll write a fuckin sequel jfc FINE but this better be THE LAST ONE--

SIKE spoiler alert it, it was not. Filicide got a sequel, yes: Infanticide. maggie was like. ummmm......... sooooo about that title,

and Harry put his foot down, like. either u publish it with that title or u aint gettin it

she's like. ok the execs said fine. but jfc, harry

Harry just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ !!!!! what did i say!!!!!!!! so now we have two books in the series. and Harry's like pls let me hiatus now. and they were in agreement. but Infanticide did really well. people were loving it. it was REALLY off of his normal writing path and while Infanticide got some more negative and weird reviews than Filicide did, Harry super didn't care (considering the extremely personal nature of these books), his publisher loved their paychecks from it, Maggie loved her paychecks, and Harry loved his paychecks too!! so happy family right??

WRONG guess again moron. HOW'S ABOUT A THIRD and i'm pretty sure that Harry was actually in the middle of writing the fourth and last book of the series (and it was hard agreed-on this time that this was going to be the last Or Else) when GOOMT then takes place. so in the series, we have:

Filicide

Infanticide

Patricide

Suicide

which, super great dark and edgy right?? makes u think u might have an idea of what the plot of those are bc they're very personal to Harry and very uhhh Telling in their titles, right??

well. what if i told you. that the series is NOT a retelling of his time in Silent Hill, but yes, has strong connections to Cheryl/Alessa/Heather, but no, not THAT strong, but also it's a sci-fi ghost story in Space. :) now what would u think of that

anyway. throws glitter. Lore

[h4zardousch3micals]

Performance Of A Lifetime - 1

Previous • First • Next

Alright, so:

1) I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG STUFF HAPPENED

2) I SWEAR THIS STORY ISN'T 90% DUDES LOL THIS WAS JUST A WEIRD COINCIDENCE

3) Despite the Fallen Stars inspiration, Loodvigg is not evil. He is baby. (Spoiler alert I guess but all the Celestials will be sympathetic in this bc I do not have the heart to make any of them evil, whether I have the heart to traumatize them is a different story...)

4) Yes I'm going to be throwing a bunch of oc's in because I can >:3

That's all I think

——

A warm sunset spilled lazily from the horizon, dyeing the usually blue waters of the Living Ocean a deep, honey-like amber. On the South-east coast of Plant Island, a hive of activity began to materialise as monsters of all shapes and sizes were drawn in by gleam of flickering red and yellow lights and the sound of carnival music. The excitement was far from unwarranted: it's not every day that the circus comes to town, especially not the renowned, voyaging Audrey's Intrepid.

Backstage, however, beyond the hypnotizing spiral of ducks swirling in a little pool and the dizzying dances of eye-bleeding colours, was alive with a different kind of anticipation - thrilling, exhilarating, tension as a dozen little monsters prepared for the most nerve-wracking hour-or-so of their lives, just a few days away.

Or, that was how it was supposed to go.

"This is ridiculous. I'm not doing this." Loodvigg snarled, the feathers around his neck bristling like an agitated cat. He wobbled on unsteady legs: the diving board felt so flimsy beneath his feet and the bucket he was supposed to land in looked as though it were miles away. He wouldn't dare admit it, but something about the incredible drop made his entire body shake with fear.

"Awww, come on 'Vigg! It'll be fun!" Glaishur called out, having to raise his soft voice to be heard from all the way down there. He stood next to the comically shallow pail with a big, goofy grin plastered on his face, apparently oblivious to Loodvigg's distain for the current situation.

"If you aren't gonna do it, why'd you climb all the way up there?" Attmoz added, jabbing an accusing finger in his direction.

"Uh," Oops. Probably should've thought about that. Loodvigg desperately dodged the question with a question of his own, "Why do I have to be the one to do this, anyway? Surely this is more Hornacle's thing?"

Attmoz rolled his eye, "Fennec wants us to learn what its like to do eachother's acts so we know what they're thinking during the performance."

"Yeah! So get on with it..." A voice came from the nearby rows upon rows of almost entirely empty seats. Oh, right, their trainer was so quiet and pathetic that Loodvigg had almost forgotten he was there at all. The Sox's dark blue ears were pinned back and his vermilion eyes darted nervously around the empty circus tent. If he was trying to sound commanding; it wasn't working.

Loodvigg peered down again and felt an involuntary shudder creep up his spine.

"It's not that bad!" Glaishur explained, "Just close your eyes and pretend you're just walking down some stairs."

"If you're scared we can help get you down—" Attmoz added with an almost smug smirk."I AM NOT SCARED!" Loodvigg snarled, feathers puffing up from humiliation disguised as rage and causing both monsters to flinch. Almost immediately, he felt a pang of guilt strike his heart. He wanted to apologise, but a growing sense of shame made the words catch in his throat.

"Prove it then!"

Glaishur elbow nudged the air monster disapprovingly, "Attmoz, don't be mean!"

"Ugh, fine!" Loodvigg put his hands up surrender, "Whatever, I'll do it!"

There was probably a better way to word that - one that didn't involve taking the plunge both literally and figuratively - but it was too late for that now. Attmoz leans back slightly and folds his arms; Glaishur give him a reassuring thumbs up.

"Well, here goes nothing..." Loodvigg whimpered, taking a step forward and letting gravity do the rest of the work.

SPLASH!

For a moment, everything seemed almost peaceful. Loodvigg could hear sounds, but the rippling and bubbling of the water made everything distant and fuzzy. His stomach stung where he'd directly struck the surface of the pool, but the cool water was almost soothing against it. It was comforting, in a strange backwards sort of way.

And then, in an instant, it was over. he felt two sets of arms plunge into the oversized pail and drag him out with terrifying efficiency. He coughed and spluttered; his lungs burned from the cold water that intruded into his throat and his feathers clung awkwardly to his skull, making him feel small and weak. He was about to crawl away, to go find a nice dark corner to hide in and sulk, when an unexpectedly joyful voice caught him off guard:

"Woah! That was awesome!" Glaishur cheered. When Loodvigg blinked the water away from his eyes, he could see that the cold monster grinning from ear to ear; eyes wide and sparkling from admiration and excitement.

"...It was?" He wheezed between hacking up blobs of water.

"Yeah! You hardly moved a muscle the whole way down; you looked so badass!" Attmoz clarified.

It was probably best to just let them believe that was intentional, "Oh, yeah. It was."

"Good job, kid. I'll let Audrey know about this." Fennec approached them and said with a happy saxophone noise, well, that and an odd whistling from the cracked key on his back.

"Audrey?" He echoed, eyes lighting up at the possibility. Though neither him nor his friends had ever met the elusive ringmaster, the other performers described her as a powerful, almost otherworldly figure. To be specifically pointed out to her as special - what an honour!

"Yes, she'll be very pleased to know everything is going smoothly." He replied, his gaze was still flickering towards every little noise but now his lower eyelids were creased upwards in a slight smile.

"Wow... Lucky you!" Glaishur squealed excitedly.

Loodvigg was just about ready to slink into a cave and sleep for an entire century but, as usual, Attmoz just had to have the last laugh, "But can you do it again?"

"OH, COME ON!"

—

At the edge of the moving island the circus resided on, Scaratar studied the ripples of the water as the sun finally disappeared into the sea. A ladybird landed beside her, skittling and scuttling on its search for food, and she took the time to gently pet its smooth little wing cases before it flew away.

This serene moment was promptly interrupt by Loodvigg storming in - muttering something about how annoying a certain air monster was - and flopping down beside her. He resembled a cat that had gone outside during a thunderstorm: his expression was downtrodden and furious and his hair (normally painstakingly slicked back into place) was wild and a little frizzy.

"Woah, you alright?" She asked, unable to contain a few giggles, "You look a little... drenched?"

"I don't want to talk about it." He grumbled and covered his face with his webbed talons.

"Sheesh, okay."

Neither said a word in response and they stayed like that for quite some time: Loodvigg was too worked up to be interested in conversation and Scaratar knew to give her friend space. Eventually, Scaratar picked up one of the Circus' promotional posters and inspected it carefully. Loodvigg opened one eye, curious but not having the patience or energy to move much else.

"Why do you have that?" He eventually asked, "Where did you even get one of those? Didn't they all get sent out?"

"Uh, I got it from the pile before Fennec and Copper went to put them up around the Island. I don't know why, it just felt right."

"Oh," Loodvigg hoisted himself up by his arms and peered over at the poster, reading it out loud in an unamused tone, "New from Audrey's Intrepid, sixteen years in the making, marvel at the all new: CELESTIALS - A dramatic retelling of our world's most ancient history!"

"Well, you sure look like you need some Chapstick, don't ya?" Scaratar chuckled, pointing to a monster which resembled Loodvigg - only much older, much uglier and (as she described) much more dehydrated.

"I know, right?" Despite his exhaustion and grumpiness, Loodvigg couldn't help but crack a small smile, "And what's this? I don't exactly recall you having giant butterfly wings for ears."

"Actually, those are moth wings." She corrected.

"Close enough!" He rolled his eyes, feigning annoyance.

"Seriously though, wonder why they can never get the posters to look right."

He shrugged, "Maybe it's to make us look cooler?"

"...Because this looks cool!" Scaratar chirped sarcastically, shoving the poster in his face again which caused them to laugh out loud all over again.

"You have a point. Maybe we should ask Fennec, or one of the other performers..."

"Yeah, we should." She agreed, but the idea would soon be given up on as Scaratar's gaze shifted back to the distant sea. She suddenly asked, "Do you think there's more out there?"

Loodvigg blinked in suprise, "Of course there is. You've seen the other islands when we've landed there, even if they didn't let us put on the show 'cause we weren't ready yet, you must've at least gotten a glimpse?"

"Yes, I know. I meant... Do you think there's more out there - for us?"

Loodvigg considered the idea, "Well, if there was, surely Fennec would've told us?" Practice, practice, practice was all they'd ever really known, surely it was important if their trainer put that much focus on it?

"I suppose..."

"Do you... not like what we do?" He asked hesitantly, almost afraid of the answer, "Cause if you don't I can ask Fennec to change—"

"No, it's not that! I just...

I just wonder sometimes..."

[sloaaaa]

SPLATOON 3 DIRECT my thoughts n stuff :]

ok so obviously spoilers kjdfhgkjd i have Many Thoughts so i am gonna put everything under a readmore!

i am so eXCITED to walk around splatsvilllee!!!!!!!!! it's so much bigger n feels more Lived In!!!

n i'm guessing the music playing in the first part of the video is what's gonna play in thee tutorial? w how the music builds up and everythingg and it's of the main songg n stuuff just like how it is in the first two games!

i Need this emote

the new ink refill sprite thingy is super neat!!! a lil on the fence abt how it loooks but! i like that it shows that u get ink faster when swimming in ink!!

tHE STAGESSSS ARE SO COOOOOOLL i especially lOVE that including hammerhead bridge gives us an explanation as to hOW exactly we're transported to and from splat1 and splat2 stages -w- also it's so cool to see it finished!!! i haven't played splat1 nearly as much as splat2 but i'm happy that that stage is coming back -w- aND FLOUDER HEIGHTS IN THE UPDATE TOO also i lOVE the detail of the NILS statue being in the bg but u can't see it in the eng ver of the direct bc of the name covering it but u can see it in the japanese direct dhkdjfgs

mahi-mahi is nice too!!!!! i really liked that stage in splat1 :D and it looks so much better skjhdfgd and i am also wondering abt tHIS badboy history museum lookin stage in the updates >:3c

hello i Love the new flat clipart look of the weapons in the ui???? shown a lot better heree, i really hope that they make weapon wallpapers in splatnet 3 >:] it would also be nice if they added other ways to get wallpapers other than lifetime inkage :c

honestly idk how i feel abt the splatanas but i'm happy for the more melee leaning players out there -w-

the tacticooler is so cool ;;; i love the lil jingle it plays when you deploy it n when you take a cann ;; also the bit showing it off has some new voice clips for the players!!! which is super cute -w-

i lOVE the design of the wave breaker ;; it's that lil ball string cheap toy thing i think, plus i think the concept is super cool tooo!!! very fun special -w-

the reef slider looks cool!! not my kind of special thoughh, it's like a cross between a baller and a curling bomb hskjdfg

I AM SO HAPPY THEY'RE BRINGING THE TENTA MISSILES BACKKK AHHAHHAHAHHAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

i actually really love the new weapon currency?? it's super clever n i love that you can get weapons early!! dualie squelchers my beloved skjhdfgd n by how the freshness stars look and work i don't think that the freshness goes down when you lose a bunch now like how they did in splat 2! :0 which is really nice -w- when checking the splat website for extra details it looks like there are different kinds of liscences too! :0 bc having splatoon 2 save data grants you 3 gold sheldon liscences so that should meann that the ones on the screen rn are silverr? maybe tin n then there's bronze n silver? idk???

the music that plays in sheldon's shop is really nice ;-;

the new shopkeepers are pretty neat too -w- i don't have very many thoughts abt them :c except for mr coco he sounds so silly i love him dskjhdfg

also mURCH????????????????????????????????????????????????

and you can change the primary ability now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! which is pretty neat! i was wondering why the splatnet3 shop offered exclusive clothing now kjshdd i also really like that they did that! gives players a lil more incentive to use the app but still not make it essential to the game n stuff yknow -w-

the new freshest fits thing is really nice!! esp for people without amiibos dskjhdfg i'm glad they added that -w-

tHE NEW LOBBY UI IS SO COOL BUt also has me wondering a lil w how similar it looks to the oe ui. that coulped w the sea cucumber phones makes me hOPE that we get to see deep sea citizens around! or at least iso padre n cq maybe 🥺

they show which team is in the lead!!!!!!! i fucking love that ty it takes less brainpower now <33

and rainmaker has checkpoints now!!! which is super nice so now the rainmaker doesn't always spawn back in the middle and you don't have to do that jump off the map to bring it back thing anymore bc the checkpoints are closer to your base now so yEAH that's super nice!!!

it looks like the merged all the ranks together again :0

I'M SO HAPPY YOU CAN PRACTICE N DO STUFF OTHER THAN MIX MUSIC WHILE WAITING FOR BATTLES TO START

all the lobby updates are so nice and there's so much content i want to kiss nintendo on the mouth

it's really nice that they moved the new snack bar! now i don't have to leave lobbies n walk all the way back when my ticket runs out dkjfghs

i want to know what tHIS DOES ..collectibles? 🥺

tHEY'RE THE APARTMENTS THAT WE'VE ALL BEEN WANTING!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU NINTENDOOOO also the splatoon equivalent of furbys n long furbys kdjfhgkdj

eeEEEE PARUKOO!!!!!!!!!!! the shop music here is so cozyyyy ;;;;;; also oh my gOD i'm so happy that there's more shit to spend our coiNS ONNN AAUHGUGHUGAA n seeing that there are gatcha machines in this shop too maybe the lil gacha thingy in the lobby gives you other stuff to put in you locker too? maybe some tickets n stuff thrown in the mix?

i love the splashtags and the emotes so mUCh ough i love how much customization we're gettinnggGG even in grizzco!! u can change your uniform which i think i super awesome! (that wasn't shown in the direct but rather it was said in the splat website linked earlier skjhdfg) and it's great that they're adding another way to get tickets oughh

idk abt y'all but i LOVE the table turf battle!!! it's a lil cheesy but it's nice that there's this local thing to do in splatsville!! i kinda want a deck irl skdjfhgd and being able to play against locals!! it makes everyone feel so much more! alive!! and not just npcs glued to their store!!! also the card art is sO CUTE IDC IF Y'ALL THINK IT'S OFF BRAND OR WHATEVER I AM PLAYIGN THAT GAME AS SOON AS I GET THE DEMO (if u can even play it dskjhdg)

also hello i lOVE this lil alley there the card stuff is held

onto salmon run!! i lOVE the new boss salmonids! it's really nice how they kinda help players practice n learn abt ranked modes n specials!! this is true for the original boss salmonids too! the fry stick for tower controlll n the dolphin for splatzoness, the bigshot for the new wave breaker special and! idk abt the slammin lid but that name is super clever hdfkjghd i love the new music!!! :D

also you can use the big shot's thingy to shoot golden eggs???? i love you??

tHIS XTRA WAVE THING SCARED ME SO BAD ;;;;;;;;;;;; but also that's so cool?? i wonder what happens when you get to defeat it >:3c

ok i reached the image limit lemme make a new post

[emetkoto]

favourite emetkoto *bad* end, go.

YAY FINALLY AN EXCUSE TO EXPLAIN ENDINGS <3 I know you only asked for my favorite but I'm gonna tell you about all 3 bad ends (4 i guess if you count how in the canon ending they do not actually end up together in K'otos current life) :)

SPOILERS FOR SHADOWBRINGERS AND VAGUELY ENDWALKER

I will start with my favorite tho so I can technically answer your question first in case you dont want the rest of the essay! It's obviously gotta be the first bad end I wrote which I'll call 'together forever' bc its easier than 'bad end 1'

This one starts BEFORE the tempest section and the Dying Gasp, K'oto sneaks out of the inn room to try and follow Emet-Selch to the tempest by himself, and the Scions do NOT catch upto him in time so he manages to make it there alone! He had no intention of taking Emet-Selch up on his offer of dying peacefully where nobody could see, he had come all this way to once again try and convince Emet-Selch to hear him out and calm down, just one last ditch effort to make things right again but he's dizzy and can't see right and also in an unfamiliar(ish) place so he just kind of stumbles around until he collapses at which point Emet-Selch shows up to see his condition and try to gloat but when he's like "come to die in peace after all?" K'oto starts grabbing at the bottom of his coats and begging and pleading with him while hes literally DYING OF LIGHT POISONING and Emet-Selch is. shocked to say the least and it kind of undoes all the steleing of his heart he'd been doing by brooding down here alone…K'oto is so desperate to make this work he left his friends behind and came down here knowing full well he could die!!!! But at this point Emet-Selch has decided that things won't ever be able to work out K'otos way, but they haven't tried HIS way yet so when K'oto inevitably passes out from over exerting himself on the begging and whatnot Emet takes him back to the penthouse he'd made for himself and bound the light and stabilized K'oto <3

When he woke up he was just. So exhausted. He was tired of fighting and being the hero and being lied to and manipulated by his friends for the greater good and having people trying to sacrifice themselves for him and being Hydealyn's puppet when she wasn't even willing to save the first and having to pretend he wasn't in love with Emet-Selch…he was tired!!!! And everything hurt bc again he was Literally Dying!!!! So when Emet-Selch came and sat on the edge of the bed and gave him some of that soothing aether and held his hand and returned his memories of their wedding and offered him a way out of it all where they could stay together forever for the low price of shedding his mortal flesh and turning his back on everyone he ever knew and loved and letting the calamities and rejoinings happen. it was a pretty easy sell! He did have one condition which was they did have to try and offer their hand in friendship to the Scions one last time and Emet agreed but that went about as well as you'd imagine, they were were angry and hostile and that kind of like, reinforced everything K'oto was thinking and feeling at the time so any regrets he might've had left were kinda out the window at that point and he said "fuck it" and gave them a piece of his mind! He and Emet then went off to the Empty to find Eden so K'oto could unload the light safely and awaken Eden to take K'otos place as the Lightwarden that would bring the first back to the brink so it could be rejoined before peacing out to the rift to start their retirement <3 We love a good corruption arc!

It's only a ""bad end"" because of like, ig the end of the world and the deaths of the Scions and everyone or whatever but it's fine for them they're having a great time :)

Anyway that one's my favorite but there's two others!

The first being 'lightwarden k'oto' which starts the same as the last one but Emet-Selch resists the urge to go down and see/try to mock K'oto and just watches from his penthouse as he transforms into a Lightwarden…when K'oto doesn't immediately start rampaging he goes down to see what's going on and oop! All of K'otos feelings in that last moment had mixed together and manifested in complete loyalty and obedience to Emet-Selch :,) Emet feels pretty bad when he realizes this, K'oto loved him to the very end and he just kinda. Let this happen and now there's no way back so he just gives him a scratch behind the ears like he used to like and a kiss on the head and orders him to go fuck shit up! Once he's gone Emet leaves the first and never looks back, letting K'oto die painlessly in the rejoining so his soul can return to the aether and be reborn someday </3 shit SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lastly theres just. 'the worst one' which is the normal story upto the Dying Gasp and requires some context and backstory about the canon end: SO basically when K'oto and Ardbert talk post Vauthry before going off to the Tempest K'oto makes it clear he doesn't want to kill Emet-Selch and plans to spare him and Ardbert agrees to his plan (with no real intention of carrying it out properly bc there is WAY too much at stake to let Emet live) and they go off to the Tempest and through Amaurot and all that and during the Dying Gasp right at the end, K'oto is ready to carry out their plan which involves wounding Emet with the light just enough that he's weakened and will listen to reason, one last chance to patch things up…..but Ardbert ofc does HIS plan instead which involves taking full control of K'otos body in the last moments before they're rejoined and he stops existing to put his full force into that axe throw and aim it dead center so that it without a doubt kills (and frees Emet of his tempering but that's an extra side effect neither of them knew would happen)…K'oto isn't aware of what happened until the dust settles and it's very horrible and traumatic for him and he is FURIOUS with Ardbert but he's not there to respond to him or apologize sicne he's, y'know, gone forever :,) leaving K'oto to cope with his grief and trauma horribly all by himself for the rest of shb and all of endwalker!

And now the "bad end" here is that Ardbert DOES let K'oto do his thing or K'oto is so determined he can't take control (either or, as long as Ardbert doesn't stop him) so Emet-Selch is hit but not killed and as he's kneeling there seemingly wounded and ready to surrender K'oto approaches him to try and talk it out but surprise! Emet-Selch was not as badly wounded as planned and he is still very very tempered bc he wasn't struck with enough light and he is MAD and not at all in his right mind, so consumed with rage and grief and desperation he kills K'oto when he gets close enough, possibly while K'oto is trying to embrace him i haven't decided bc i dont think about this one BECAUSE IT HURTS!!!!!! Anyway K'oto dies and Emet retreats immediately and the Scions are left to die in the first in the rejoining </3 he feels like shit about it but he kinda uses those feelings to drive him to keep doing what he's doing with the rejoinings, very "if he was stronger that wouldn't have happened thus humanity is still too weak" and all that

There is a good ending version here where things do go right, Emet is hit just enough to weaken but not kill him and with enough light to undo his tempering to Zodiark and K'oto is able to get through to him and get him to surrender and admit mankind's strength and he stays with him for the rest of msq and his life <3 but this aint about that its about the sad ones

[morphogenetic]

Mediaposting 2023, #12: Succession Season 2

i think I like season 2 Overall less than I do with season 1, but when the episodes are bangers (6, 7, 9, 10) they are fucking BANGERS.

i also have literally no idea where season 3 and 4 are gonna go. like other than the one spoiler I know about s4 [which I'm not really surprised happened at this point] and the fact that kendall gets a shaved head eventually....NO idea what happens. at all. other than the repercussions that I'm sure happen after ep 10 lol

more spoilery thoughts under the cut (though tbh they're more about what I think is gonna happen next season)

-I knew about the "can't make a tomlette without breaking a few greggs" line. vaguely. what I did NOT know was that the line was said in THE SENATE

-honestly just so many good tom and greg moments. "we here for you" is still so fucking funny. the water bottle thing. Tom complimenting greg on his blackmailing skills. it's all so toxic and so so good

-speaking of Tom. "i wonder if the sad I'd be without you is bigger than the sad i am with you" is such an augh line and it's phrased in such a tom way. divorce arc so real

-shiv was so real for letting rhea be ceo and then immediately leaving bc of the cruises stuff. she girlbossed too close to the sun in episode 6 but then girlbossed her way back down to earth too

-i REALLY want to see if Roman actually gets therapy or if they just let him suffer like they did w kendall only getting two days of rehab. im also feeling like he might get more attention next season since shiv was more focused on during s2, when kendall was most important for s1, so maybe each season is more focused on one particular character?

-it's also fascinating to me that even though Roman is clearly the comedic relief sibling...he's smarter than he looks. he couches it in a lot of acting like he doesn't know anything - and he doesn't a lot of the time, lol at him buying the wrong soccer team - but like...the piece of episode 10 where he doesn't think the buyout will work? and in a way where his dad won't really get mad at him for it? he's kind of incredible at socially engineering people, in the way that youngest siblings often are. i don't think he'll ever lead the company but he could definitely be a way bigger player next season

-i know the entire point of kendall is that he's incredibly inscrutable and hard to figure out and like, a+ to jeremys acting on this, but he is even more inscrutable than usual this season. which felt weird after season 1 where he was definitely complicated but at least I could understand what the fuck was going on with him. now I'm a little ???? about it. i guess that's what happens when he's more of a background player this season though

-...but the divide between ep 9 and ep 10 kendall is both wild and totally expected. constantly going between defending his dad and treating him like a God and then saying he's a horrible person? on point. 10/10 no notes

-also I didn't really start paying attention to this until near the end of the season but the way that people have conversations in terms of the physical space between them is so important. it stood out to me with Logan and his kids. with Roman and Logan they sit apart but not distant, like business partners. logan and shiv? at first they had business partner spacing, then they had family member spacing. logan and kendall? circling each other like fucking sharks until the very end where kendall kisses his dad on the cheek right before betraying him. God. peak

-(SPEAKING OF THAT. THE PHYSICAL DISTANCE BETWEEN SHIV AND TOM DURING THE THREESOME CONVERSATION USED TO SHOW THE EMOTIONAL DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM. CHEFS KISS)

-ending the season on a boat was perfect after the season ends up being about the cruises drama. so perfect. i know it has the metaphor of pushing someone overboard too but (gestures) Boats

-i feel like I need to rewatch this season specifically when everything ends because a lot of the episodes felt....not pointless, totally, but more filler-y than season 1? like I really don't even remember what happened for most of the season outside of a few specific moments and I literally just watched it. idk. i mean the same is kind of true for season 1 but season 1 felt like it had more defined mini-arcs and I can remember more of what happened in that way

-i could write a whole thing on the pierces bc I think that was the most compelling part of the season outside of eps 9 and 10 but. ill spare you the details

-i like how by the end of the season greg is totally unimpressed by the size of the boat. luxury corruption arc

-tom and greg are absolutely having a screaming match next season about having the documents even after burning them and i cannot fucking WAIT

[caught-a-ghost]

~time for a reread~

it's been well over a year since i read down to agincourt the first time. the deancas slowburn, the worldbuilding, and the brilliant cast of oc's you come to adore. i completely fell in love with it.

spn a la tolkien baby~

since i have a terrible memory i kinda wanna document some of my reread. feel free to filter #dragonfly rereads dta. this is for my own personal enjoyment more than anything else and it's not going to be that deep. i'm just using this to remember shit.

since i know people want to read it for that bookclub thing soon (awesome!) i'm putting the first one of these under a cut since i'm not going to be spoiler free. please block my tag if you want to avoid those!

chapter 1 here we go

"I promised Sam they'd be together in the end," Lucifer tells him, shrugging to rearrange his still immaculate coat. "Don't worry, Cas, he'll be fine. From what I understand, he had a pretty good time the first time. He'll adapt." "No," Castiel answers. "He won't." Lucifer looks up from his sleeve, a pitying smile freezing on his lips, eyebrows knitting together in dawning confusion. "What--where is he?" "How would I know?" he answers curiously. "Slaughtering the reapers was possibly a miscalculation on your part. Without their guidance, it's very easy to get lost."

god i think we're seeing a remnant of the cas who made Thee Deal here. and i think he used it to secure the safety of endverse dean's soul. im gonna cryy 😭

Pausing at the door of the jeep, Castiel hesitates briefly, and a surge of adrenaline hits him hard enough to make his hands shake, don't stop as clear as if the words were spoken in his ear, don't look back. Only Orpheus was stupid enough not to listen to warnings delivered without ambiguity; it's too rare to get one of those to discard with impunity. I don't want to hurt you. Castiel stiffens, turning to search the empty parking lot. "What?" There's nothing but the lack of breeze to answer him.

i completely did not remember this bit and it's driving me insane. who are youuuuuu (one of the goddesses we've already met or someone new 👀)

and i forgot how much i love this cas! cas: ~only orpheus was stupid enough to turn around~ also cas: *turns around a second after having that thought*

"Why'd you do that to your hand?" Dean asks, settling beside him again; a hunter even now, eliciting information from the most useless of witnesses at the most pointless of all times. "Cas?" "I don't remember."

that cut was totally made for Thee Deal 👀

While he guessed the reason Dean was going into the city, it didn't occurred to him that Dean might not even know where it was he had appeared.

they're both missing time scully, they're both missing time

"Eventually I have to sleep, and I would prefer to do so with some assurance I'll wake up." "You think…" Dean stares at him. "I'm not gonna kill you, Cas, Jesus!" "Do you give your word?" Castiel asks, smiling slowly at Dean's horror. "Unless I take your soul as collateral, why on earth should you keep it?"

they're so messy <3 they have no fucking idea <3

It's been a week since he got here, suddenly scrambling for footing behind broken dumpster and staring at eight demons surrounding an armed man that even after three years Dean would recognize anywhere. The skinny, slumping mortal body in a too-big jacket with an indifferent hold on a rifle stared at him with the infinite blue eyes of an angel who might have traded his sword for a gun and immortality for the dirt of humanity, but had never stopped being a soldier. And very abruptly, to the surprise of those demons, he seemed to remember just that.

aaack i need to knoooow. were these demons a part of it??? is this where it happened??? (wasn't there some kind of reality damage that started in the city? was it here?) were the demons taken off-guard bc they had just worked together with cas and suddenly cas didn't remember??

what is the timeline here? dean seems to have been brought in before endverse dean's death. why??

seperis does this thing in particular that drives me completely bananas (in a good, but feral way). they'll drop little nuggets of information that feel off in the moment, ignore it until later, and then hit you with the realisation that the nugget hinted at a massive reveal or character moment (the fucking spanish thing!)

i'm not likely to do these for every chapter. just those damn nuggets

i also skipped most of the ancient rome stuff the first time around and im wondering if i should stick those out this time 🤔

excited though 👀

[stitchthesewords]

I'm having many thoughts about many things tonight.

Where did the rift come from. How long has it been there or has it slowly been growing.

Is it like a Venus fly trap, does jt have a weird affect on those around jt

I guess a better analogy is like a moth to the flame

Where is grian from and why doesn't he look like other avians

Is he from another reality/universe

And if so then why is he there? What was hw running from at the start or was it just the rift

Is the rift sentient?

How does scars magic work, specifically the glyph thing he put on the back of grians neck and on mumbos too and why was it cold?

What.does scars staff look like?

*also mumbo and scar very gay

Where did you get the inspiration from. The rift au?

(I know you probably can't answer alot of these because spoilers but yeah)

You are correct in that I can't answer some of this unfortunately. But, you know what, I CAN answer some of it.

The Rift comes from [REDACTED] and it [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED] :)

Well I'll tell ya. Does it? Does it not? I think looking at light w tentacles made of light that can grab things would have a weird affect on anyone - but as to the rift itself ACTUALLY having an effect? who knows.

Grian is from [REDACTED] and [REDACTED SO MUCH REDACTED OH MY GOD REDACTED REDACTED WOW ITS REALLY DARK IN HERE REDACTED REDACTED]

As to what he was running from - well. THAT will be answered his soon! :)

Is the rift sentient. This one is interesting. I think uhhh yes? Sort of? It definitely has some way to think for itself. namely bc it is my babygirl and i said so but there are also story implications there.

SO Scar's magic - Do you remember the xp potion fountain that Mumbo made. I'm not going to write out in so many words 'scar used this many levels' - instead the way it works in Rift au is that XP orbs are absorbed through the skin and you can feel the magic lightly buzzing underneath your skin until you use it. It's such a common thing for people that it's something they don't notice anymore - but its what powers things like enchanting, spellcasting, naming things on an anvil bc in Rift AU anything that gets a name on an anvil now has like. a Name. Like capital N Name. So its a Name that carries weight to it, be it for spellcasting or for history making - but people can name other things without needing xp. The other thing is that it deteriorates over time in Rift AU so people can't just sit on it forever. NOW as to Scar's magic - it'll be explained why later but just know he needs this energy first and foremost to be Alive and THEN needs bonus energy to cast spells. He is always topping off his energy as is any other elves or fae in the world [there will be others!! Cub, for example] - Vexes and Allays and some other mobs similarly depend on this energy in order to keep existing. So as to the glyphs. Those glyphs allow Scar to A. Sense where they are at all times in a sort of vague sense. I haven't gotten to use it and also write from Scar's POV yet but he basically feels a gentle tug in the direction that Grian and Mumbo are. He was able to use this tug to follow Grian down into the caves through the way - since he could see Mumbo it was easy to pick out where Grian's tugging went. B. There is a special kind of map which allows him to see more or less exactly where they are. Obviously, if they're underground or say, in the Nether or End, they won't show up on an overworld map but. He does have a map.

So I imagine that Scar's staff is a wooden staff. It is NOT a carved wooden staff, like for example the staves Scar and Tubbo use in Midnight. Instead, as you might've noticed, this wood is alive. Scar's staff started as a branch on his treehouse - the tree is sort of a living amalgamation of a bunch of trees. They're all sort of in a ring and form one tree going up but they can move and twist as Scar needs based on his magic. The staff is the same way. It is a living extension of Scar's tree so it can be a staff or shift in his hands to form a cane when he needs to lean. I imagine it being like, one thicker bit of wood surrounded by thinner twigs? And there is a gemstone [I believe I made it an emerald - I'm currently doing my own reread of my AU whoops] embedded in the top of the staff which, when the staff is a cane, is embedded in the end of the 'handle'

^ The staff is sort of this vibe. Uh thinner, and not an actual tree, but like. Stripped wood and/or smooth bark with woodsy vines/twigs running its entire length. As to the actual shap, that sort of changes day by day. It is a living tree, sort of, and they do move. This one moves more than a tree IRL but it does move. I think it tends to be sort of straight but kind of warbly or crooked in a way? It's a very casual looking walking stick most of the time, since I imagine Scar is a semi-casual dude. sort of. He's more casual in rift au than he is in Midnight.

*nods sagely* mumbo n scar very gay

As to inspiration - I just kind of took the early episodes of S9 and kind of mashed a bunch of stuff together. Genuinely, my only inspiration for this was hermitcraft - well. + the life series. But I went from what they were doing on hc and said "huh you know i think it would be cool if this mechanic worked like this or if this was like that' until the puzzle pieces fit together. Fun fact the only thing that was set in stone when I started rift au was that Grian was a grey parrot who did not look like other avians! and the rest of everything you're reading is just riffing off HC.

^ As a bonus, Grian in my mind is based of an African Grey Parrot! So - the red tail feathers my beloved.

[galaxy-forgotten]

Hi, I drew a quick gijinka of the new boy!

I originally was gonna post this pic of my current Elfilin gijinka before the game released (along with my expectations for his storyline), but now that I've beaten the main game, I'm kinda glad I held back! It's nice to have a full picture of the character so I can talk more accurately about him!

He has a blue ribbon in his hair bc Kirby gave it to him btw :D

WARNING: MAJOR spoilers down below + another pic I drew after beating the game! Kirby and the Forgotten Land is best played blind, and I highly recommend that if you haven't gotten a chance to finish/play the game, it might be best to scroll on. Ima talk about some things bc I'm literally so excited and hyped up about this game, I love it dearly

So, before the game released, I was amused by the idea that people were expecting Elfilin to be secretly evil lol. My guess was that he WASN'T actually evil, but he would be manipulated BY the actual evil into doing evil things, since he ended up getting captured in the trailers. We haven't had a support character like this (as far as I remember) who was actually evil, so I didn't really see the cause for alarm. Sure, all that hullabaloo was brought on by the memory of Magolor (and Marx, but mainly him), but folks, Magolor didn't actually follow Kirby through the levels. He wasn't really present on Kirby's adventure. He stayed back and let Kirby do all the work! Elifin was more of a support character akin to Ribbon and Elline! We haven't had a character like that turn out evil! If that were actually the case, it, along with the rest of the game as a whole, would be a first for the series!

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I can't believe I was so close though lmao 😂

Fecto Elfilis (along with the previous forms/phases) is one HELL of a final boss for the series. Like, I love this boss + its design so much!!! I saw Elifin's eyes and IMMEDIATELY suspected that there was so much power hidden behind them, and boy was I right XD

I love the fact that Kirby now has a buddy that he can relate more to. I mean, they're both immensely powerful, almost eldritch beings who, had they not been so kind and compassionate, would be entirely capable of destroying all reality as we know it. We know that Void Termina/Astral Birth and Fecto Forgo are what Kirby and Elifin COULD'VE been, so the fact that they have that common thing with one another is so cute 😭

Speaking of Fecto Elfilis, I made a quick gijinka of them! Will be updating later, but here's what I have now.

They have no mouth bc they speak entirely through their psychic power lol.

Also, Fecto Forgo was actually terrifying. I'm glad this game leaned HEAVILY into the body horror apart from just Mouthful Mode, because that whole sequence was nightmarish. I know the game literally came out two days ago, but I'm so hyped about where the series is going and what they're choosing to do with it, especially concerning the lore!