#and he's doing SIX shows in a whole entire continent

[cinematic-phosphenes]

HoTD S2x01: A Son for a Son (I have thoughts and I'm keeping them here)

The Stark theme and Cregan doing his best Sean Bean accent have me nostalgic.

If getting conscripted to the Wall is an honour, then why does budget Jon Snow look unhappy about it?

No Sara Snow, okay. I’ll live with it. No Jace/Cregan (b)romance, not okay. Tumblr made me want it, only to be so denied by the showrunners.

Not more Targ colonialism erasure. "We colonised an entire continent to save the world, no really. And look, even the noble Starks agree with it!" is such a shit take, even if it's canon. I like the Targ characters, but let's not erase the original Aegon's colonial crimes.

Jace looks so pretty! Major glow up.

Dragonstone has a dragon hangar! Yay for worldbuilding!

Daemon calling Vhagar a hoary old bitch reminds me of this absolutely amazing Vhagar POV fanfic I read. (Soon the god's hoar by eldritcher on AO3) (The fic is spoiler-y for the rest of the Dance, jsyk.)

Yes, Rhaenys! Put Daemon in his place! Also, her dragon riding outfit!!!

Alyn, I see you doing an Egg by shaving your head.

Why in the hell does no one take Helaena’s visions seriously?! She’s right every time. (Can I blame ‘I had a dragon dream once’ Viserys for this? Because I want to blame Viserys for this. Look at the mess you left your kids in, Viserys! I hope Balerion bites your ass in the afterlife.)

And here we see the 'Our lives are in danger, so let's fuck about it' trope in action. I’ve heard a lot of Alicole hot takes. “Criston Cole is ‘unmanly’ for going down on a woman” is the absolute hottest of hot takes I’ve had the misfortune of encountering.

Otto giving Alicent and Criston Cole that look as they walk in. He knows what they’ve been doing.

Aegon grinning at his son like a fool. Aegon giving Jaehaerys attention and wanting him to learn how to rule even though he’s only six. Aegon trying to do better than deadbeat Viserys did. Aegon talking about pony rides in a way that suggests Jaehaerys often gets pony rides, possibly from Aegon himself. If you told me last season Aegon would somehow turn out to be the best father on this series ….. (Yes, I know that when it comes to being a dad the bar is in hell’s basement here. Yes, I know the way Aegon treats his illegitimate kids is horrific. I think there’s definitely been some retconning here and S2 Aegon is not the same character as S1 Aegon. They should have portrayed him this way from the start.)

Alicent wrote Rhaenyra letters to apologize for Luke's death and she's expecting a response?! Girl ....

My kingdom for a scene of the Greens finding out that Aemond killed Luke. My kingdom for a scene of Aemond deciding to just fully commit to the villain persona and lie to say he killed Luke intentionally. Such a missed opportunity.

Larys being an intimidating creep to Alicent again. He should go fall down some stairs.

Alicent scrubbing her skin raw. She is not okay. (I want to see Alicent cracking. Let Olivia Cooke act!)

Rhaenyra’s grief over Luke is heartbreaking. Emma D’Arcy is acting their heart out. And Syrax crying too, nooo.

Aegon walking in sync with his fratboy squad. You know they practised that entrance during one of their nightly seshes in the throne room.

Are they going to show the throne cutting Aegon?

“On further thought, I have decided ….” Aegon is hilarious.

It’s Hammer time!

Larys already angling for the Hand’s position. I know this guy is ambitious, but damn.

Just Alicent looking ethereal reading letters.

Mysaria’s accent has been toned down! (Why was Mysaria fleeing King’s Landing though? Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t get it?)

“We swore an oath to protect the whole of the royal family. So what were we to do when they turned against one another?” Jaime Lannister echoes.

"I want Aemond Targaryen." Chills. Rhaenyra only says four words all episode and it's these four words.

Jace trying to keep it together and be professional to give his report. Jace looking so much younger and more vulnerable when he’s back with his mother. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Scenes with Rhaenyra at Luke’s funeral interspersed with scenes of Alicent paying tribute to the dead, including Luke. My heart. That empty space next to Alicent in the sept where Rhaenyra used to pray. They are an absence in each other’s lives.

Rhaena crying for her betrothed, nooo.

Why didn’t they have a dragon light Luke’s funeral pyre?

The return of the Daemon crime hoodie, now upgraded to a war crime hoodie.

Making it unclear if Daemon told B & C to go after another son if they can’t find Aemond or if B & C just went rogue – that’s a cop out by the writers. Unless it comes up again. EDIT: Daemon said 'a son for a son.' He was giving them carte blanche to go after another son if Aemond is MIA.

Daemon reluctantly admitting Aemond is a good fighter. I love to see it.

Why do I get the sense that Aemond also knows about Alicole?

“Rhaenyra is a cunning spider. Long ago she pulled Alicent into her web. Intoxicated her. It is not your mother’s fault.” “Her Grace speaks with two tongues. Alicent holds love for our enemy.” So they’re both obsessed and very much not over Rhaenyra. Do Alicent and Cole both think of Rhaenyra while being unholy together because it kinda seems like it?

Ewan Mitchell as Aemond is so mesmerizing. That man has presence.

Why the fuck has no one tried to map the secret tunnels into the Red Keep and close off the ones that allow randoms to sneak in/royal minors to sneak out?

The entire Kingsguard is in the throne room guarding Aegon? And they don’t stop the ‘rat catchers’ working at night? Even if the rat catchers were supposed to be there, I feel like it would still be protocol to stop and question them. Have none of these writers been pulled over by the cops for no reason/even slightly suspicious behaviour?

I think the build up to B & C should’ve focused on Helaena and her kids instead of B & C creeping around, arguing for no reason and committing gratuitous animal abuse. (That dog kicking scene looked so real, I watched the end credits for a disclaimer that no animals were harmed in the making of.) They could’ve shown Helaena getting the kids ready for bed, reading them a story, etc. They established a connection between Aegon and Jaehaerys pre B & C but none between Helaena and the kids before it happened. Lost opportunity.

B & C was very different than I expected before I was spoiled. I guess I see what the writers were going for with Helaena’s response to B & C. She’s dissociated rather than hysterical. She’s been painted as a character who’s distanced from the world around her in general, so perhaps this is an in-character trauma response for her. Plus you could see the absolute terror in Phia’s eyes. Helaena was terrified and traumatized. She was just quiet about it.

As for her just pointing out Jaehaerys instead of trying to bargain or plead more for his life … I guess it’s because they’re characterizing her as very literalist, straightforward and honest to a fault as part of her ‘strangeness’? So she just took B & C at their word and didn’t try to change their minds because after the necklace offer failed, she assumed they couldn’t be swayed and would definitely kill her and both kids like they threatened to if she didn’t point out Jaehaerys to them. As for not pointing to Jaehaera – that wouldn’t accomplish anything. If they didn’t check that they really had the boy, one of her kids would still be dead. If they checked and discovered she’d lied, they might kill both kids. She was a mother who didn’t want either of her kids to die but perceived she couldn’t do anything to save both of them, so she felt she had no choice but to point out Jaehaerys. And then she grabbed Jaehaera and got her to safety when she saw the chance. At least she could save one of them.

As for Helaena saying they killed ‘the boy’ instead of saying his name Jaehaerys – I don’t see that as her being insensitive and uncaring about her kid. I think she was just repeating B & C’s exact word use in her dissociated state. She was on auto pilot at that point.

I do get what the writers were going for … but it’s not going to translate well to most of the audience I don’t think. I see many people interpreting it as Helaena not caring about Jaehaerys and not trying hard enough to save him. “Why didn’t she offer up her own life like any mother would?” If a large part of the audience misinterprets or misunderstands a scene or a character’s intentions or motivations, then that’s a failure on the part of the writers IMO. I’m not upset they didn’t make B & C more graphic or violent in the physical or psychological sense. (In the book, their twisted mind games were just as horrific and brutal and every bit as violent as the physical violence). But I do think that scene could have been better executed in a different way. And including Maelor probably would have worked better to illustrate the horrific, inescapable situation Helaena found herself in between a rock and a hard place.

Where the fuck are the guards? In the throne room with Aegon? Sent away by Cole to hide the fact that he’s in the queen dowager’s bed? The Greens never considered infiltration or a stealth attack? They really got complacent because they have Vhagar guarding the city.

Alicent and Cole doing it in Rhaenyra’s old room, in Rhaenyra’s bed!! Are they both imagining they’re with Rhaenyra too?! Because this is giving … high levels of dysfunction. They’re both haunted by Rhaenyra

The only thing I’ll say about Alicole is that they really should have shown them getting together for the first time. When, how and why did that happen? Who instigated it? How did they both feel about it? Again the writers don’t show the motivations they had in mind for the characters, resulting in the viewers drawing different conclusions than they’re ‘supposed to’ and it works against the story. The interviews I’ve watched seem to say it’s consensual on both their parts. (I know there’s a power imbalance that makes it problematic, but I don’t think the writers see it that way.) Again, showing the start of their first sexual encounter would have been better writing (IMO) because it could have been used to illustrate consent.

The last thing I’ll say about Alicole (okay, so I wanted to say two things) is that showing it after B & C that way by having Helaena walk in on them cheapens B & C. The true shock and horror here is that a child was murdered in front of his mother. Why add the cheap shock value of someone walking in on their parent in flagarante?

All in all, okay episode, kind of weird. Looking forward to see what they do with the rest of the material.

[finexbright]

make it make sense. and this is not even taking into fact the residencies and how "asia" never got a fine line tour

[very-grownup]

So a couple years ago, I fell into watching Chinese dramas and because my posts about the most recent one garnered some curiosity, here are the dramas what I have watched.

Hikaru no Go

DID YOU KNOW. DID YOU KNOW. THAT IN 2020 THERE WAS A CHINESE DRAMA ADAPTATION OF HIKARU NO GO AND IT IS AMAZING AND MADE ME CRY ALL OVER AGAIN? It is faithful in spirit while making understandable alterations both for the setting and to avoid managing child actors for the entirety of the series (there are about six episodes with Hikaru/Shi Guang as an elementary school student before a time jump to high school).

If you are unfamiliar with Hikaru no Go I recommend becoming familiar with Hikaru no Go, my first and still one of the best sports manga. It's what Takeshi Obata was the artist on before Death Note and my hot take is that Obata post-Hikaru no Go is mid at best.

Hikaru no Go is a sports series about the most normal boy finding an antique go board that houses the soul of an ancient go master who died too young and with go regrets, so he bullies/guilts the boy into helping him play go so he can see or play a divine go move. In the process he acquires a rival/stalker in the form of the genius son of a go master. It's amazing and the drama absolutely does it justice.

The heart of the series is the relationship between Hikaru/Shi Huang and Fujiwara no Sai/Chu Ying.

It's just a fucking good series.

The Untamed

According to one description on imdb, this is about two friends solving a series of murders. This is technically true, although it neglects to mention a few details.

Sixteen years after doing a whole lot of demonic blood magic shit and dying because of it, hated by society, Wei Wuxian (Xiao Zhan) is brought back from the dead by more super demonic blood magic and is recognized by his noble and esteemed peer/friend Lan Wangji (Wang Yibo) and trying to deal with why Wei Wuxian has been brought back from the dead leads to their investigating a series of murders that result in their becoming entangled in wider political schemes stretching back twenty years.

It's got weird pacing, prolonged flashbacks to explain a lot of the relationship dynamics, and basically an entirely self-contained sub-story that brings the main plot to a grinding halt. There are creatures and CGI effects of interesting quality. There are amazing wigs. There are piles of corpses. There's physical torture and emotional torture and some doomed love stuff and sword fights and musical instrument fights and a donkey and chicken theft and brotherhood and what you're willing to sacrifice for your goals and what goals you're willing to sacrifice for and it is based on a novel that ends in the protagonists raw dogging on the side of the road.

That part's not in the show.

Douluo Continent

Ignorant country boy Tang San (Xiao Zhan) finds himself involved in the world of martial arts and magic after discovering a hidden talent and ends up in the group of fellow martial artists who are all weird or unorthodox or hiding crucial bits of their backstory like girl who is actually a rabbit and immediately decides Tang San is her best friend/husband (Wu Xianyi), guy who needs to become powerful enough to kill his older brother (Gao Taiyu), girl who rejected an engagement to the would-be brother killer and wants to fight him (Liu Mei Tong), guy who wants to ditch martial arts to become a great actor (Liu Run Nan), and girl who is too rich to be here (Ding Xiaoying). They learn together, they grow together, they fight monsters and embark on a tournament arc, and there's an overarching mystery about Tang San and his weak but simultaneously super powerful spirit summoning.

Even though the best technique is clearly the one where the boy in question can summon a sausage that you eat and heals you.

It's very much of a specific genre that can be pretty samey, but Douluo Continent has a charming cast that makes up for its predictable plot beats.

It does end on a cliffhanger that is possibly resolved in the sequel series where ... all the main characters were recast with, I'm guessing, slightly less pricey actors. Such is the way of things.

Word of Honour

Do you like knowing what's going on? Then get the fuck out of here, Word of Honour is not for you. Real ones want to be immediately submerged into chaos and confusion and secret identities. You want Mr Bones' Wild Ride in plot form. Why has former superassassin Zhou Zishu (Zhang Zhe Han) abandoned the sect of assassins he created to live in wandering drunk anonymity as he slowly dies? Why is Wen Kexing (Gong Jun) stalking him aside from poorly censored horny desires? Is Wen Kexing actually a ghost? Can any of the impressionable youths attaching themselves to Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing be stopped from their very poor choices in role models? What is up with this legendary hidden armoury and why do Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing seem unable to escape the conspiracy around it? HOW HARD IS IT TO GET WOLONG'S FAMOUS NUTS?

Not recommended for people who constantly want to know what's happening or why X is doing Y, but great if you want to watch with someone and then after an episode, walk your dogs and try to figure out what's going on and what's going to happen (you will be wrong).

Advance Bravely

What if the most ridiculously unrealistic and unhinged slashfic by a teenage girl who doesn't fully understand anything was adapted into a drama series where censorship means everything must be painted with a special "no homo" brush? You get Advance Bravely which is the most incoherently homoerotic thing I've ever watched. No one thinks you should watch Advance Bravely and you watch Advance Bravely and you agree but sometimes you just have to watch a beautiful trainwreck where the protagonist explains his lack of a girlfriend with erectile dysfunction and the series climax involves his being, essentially, trapped in a well.

Love Between Fairy and Devil

DO YOU WANT TO GO FULL SHOUJO MANGA FANTASY?

Innocent fairy Orchid (Yu Shuxin) just wants to strengthen her immortal spirit and pass the exam that would let her serve in the palace of the fairy capital so she can catch glimpses of the War God Chang Heng (Zhang Ling He) who she is hopelessly in love with. Instead, an attempt to help her crush causes her to bumble her way into the high security spiritual prison that has held Dongfang Qingcang, the Moon Supreme (Dylan Wang), for 30,000 years.

DO YOU LIKE BIG NUMBERS BECAUSE YOU WILL GET TO SEE SOME BIG NUMBERS IN TERMS OF TIME SPAN AND AGES.

Because of some plot magic, Orchid and the Moon Supreme swap bodies and loophole out of prison, much to her distress. Their fates are tied together and Orchid becomes more familiar with the wider world and the politics between the realms and how much the fairy realm's supreme ruler fucking suuuuuuuuuuuucks while Moon Supreme finds himself having feelings again after they were tortured out of him in a mystical coffin prison as a child.

Moon Supreme's closest friend is a dragon. Orchid's closest friend is an opportunistic snakeoil saleswoman. There's a pissy younger brother and a bitchy but honourable love rival. There are secret origins and reincarnation and hidden identities and the way it alternates broad comedy and melodrama and sweet romance may give you whiplash.

I just love a bodyswap, you guys.

Sailor Moon vibes but Mamoru is actually interesting and becomes likeable.

Guardian

Okay so the best thing about Guardian is not only that it's a censored adaptation of a novel with a same-sex romance, but that /the entire premise/ is altered for television purposes.

The novel is steeped in Chinese folk religion and the Underworld is real and mythical creatures secretly walk among us.

In the show?

ALIENS, BABY.

Ghosts? THOSE AREN'T REAL BECAUSE HUMANS DON'T HAVE SOULS, THEY'RE JUST ENERGY BEINGS.

It's so ridiculous it's endearing.

Anyway, it's about bros solving mysteries with a Monster of the Week vibe until it becomes about possibly the end of the world and alien domination and evil twins.

Mysterious Lotus Casebook

IT'S TIME TO SOLVE CRIMES. IN ANCIENT CHINA.

Quack doctor Li Lianhua (Cheng Yi) is just trying to live a quiet life with his dog and his horse-drawn house. Fang Duobing (Joseph Zeng) just wants to gain admittance into the martial art cop organization that's carrying on the legacy of his dead teacher, Li Xiangyi, who was maybe never actually his teacher and also wasn't killed ten years previously by Di Fei Sheng (Xiao Shunyao), the head of an evil martial arts sect who is also not dead. Not nearly as many people as people think are dead! Identities are cleverly hidden behind pseudonyms and various levels of mask!

Crimes are solved and Li Lianhua is very tired about the whole thing. It's an unwilling buddy cop sort of thing until it becomes about youthful hubris and the sins of the past and also one woman's determination to conquer the world and give it to the man she loves, even if he doesn't want the world and also doesn't love her. We love a woman who takes what she wants and if necessary cuts a man's tendons and imprisons him in a torture pool so his blood can't clot until he agrees to be her wife, don't we, folks?

Folks?

Story of Kunning Palace

The scheming empress Jiang Xue Ning (Bai Lu) dies and wakes up, eighteen-years-old, at the point in her life where she's on the verge of making the start of the decisions that lead her to the Very Bad End. She is going to make different decisions this time and prevent the things she regrets and avoid becoming the empress at all costs.

What you need to know about Story of Kunning Palace is that Bai Lu could have chemistry with a rock and she inadvertently collects a bisexual harem. Her end game love interest is Xie Wei (Zhang Ling He), the man who killed her, an advisor to the emperor, music teacher, double or triple agent, and sufferer of vampire snow madness and a fear of cats, whether adorably fluffy or badly CGI'd. But she's in love with noble civil servant Zhang Zhe (Wang Xing Yue), a pure and hardworking man who she seduced into betraying his principles, leading to his imprisonment and probable death. However, her childhood friend Yan Lin (Zhou Jun Wei) is in love with her and previously she rejected him VERY HARSHLY after his family fell into disfavour due to political machinations and Jiang Xue Ning had cemented the likelihood of her marriage to the next emperor. Also there's Princess Le Yang (Liu Xie Ning), who Jiang Xue Ning made an enemy of after the Princess fell in love with her when Jiang Xue Ning was crossdressing and did not take the reveal of her true gender well. Xue Shu (Elisa Ye) is an unfavoured daughter of a scheming lord who was the only truly loyal person Jiang Xue Ning knew as empress. ALL OF THESE PEOPLE FALL IN LOVE WITH JIANG XUE NING and you look at Bai Lu and go 'yes, that makes sense'.

It's mostly about the politics and scheming and Jiang Xue Ning trying to find a way to have a stable, satisfying life without betraying everyone she knows and standing on a pile of corpses, but the love shape Jiang Xue Ning isn't fully aware she's in is comparable in complexity to the plots between ministers and lords and dowager empresses and cousins and rebels.

The choices the characters make are maybe not always the best choices, but DAMN are they a good time.

Story of Kunning Palace is also one of the only times I have begged a character in a show to take a particular action and then she DID IT and fuck it was satisfying.

The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty

IT'S TIME TO SOLVE CRIMES. IN ANCIENT CHINA. AGAIN. BUT WITHOUT MARTIAL ARTS.

Tang Fan (Darren Chen) is a low-ranking government official and detective genius who loves food and hates routine work, but loves a fucked up crime. Since he spends most of his money on delicious food, he writes trashy porn under a variety of pseudonyms to pay his rent. Sui Zhou (Fu Meng Bo) is an imperial guard and ex-soldier with PTSD who has no time for nonsense but loves the passionate pursuit of justice and food. He's also From Money and has a very empty house that Tang Fan whines his way into after they solve a case together. Everyone is manipulated by dangerously powerful eunuch Wang Zhi (Liu Yao Yuan) who is the enemy of basically everyone, except for Tang Fan, who has the political and social awareness of a rock.

An amiably pathetic man solves a variety of mysteries, from murder to complex imperial assassination plots and also this really complicated one involving diluting the purity of silver currency, and also the executive producer is Jackie Chan.

It's missing the romance subplot that I understand is in the source novel and also apparently there's an overarching plot involving a cult?! which we don't get here, but there's lots of bombs which are almost as good as a cult, maybe? (They're not.)

Divine Destiny

This is the one we're currently watching and the ride that this show is. How many plots can be crammed into one show? How many ridiculous but true things can I say about this show?

Ji Ruochen (Ma Tianyu) is an orphan who dreams of martial arts adventures. Raised by a couple who run a Crime Inn, one day a customer robbery goes very wrong when the customer turns out to be the latest incarnation of Yin Feng, the Banished God (Marius Wang). Ji Ruochen accidentally kills the Banished God and his foster parents promptly take the body into the desert and dump it down a cliff, but not before taking a necklace made from a piece of Gu Qing, the Blue Stone Goddess (Xuan Lu), which is supposed to let her recognize the Banished God in their final incarnation. Accidentally stealing the Banished God's identity, Ji Ruochen finds himself a hotly desired commodity by the cultivation sects who are all eager to have the Banished God as a disciple for prophecy reasons. He goes with Zhang Yinyin (Angelababy), a feisty, argumentative girl who has had to work extra hard because her spirit was contaminated by a demonic root planted by the evil nine-tailed fox who is poorly imprisoned in a cave anyone can access.

MEANWHILE some dudes with amazing moustaches and a penchant for laughing in delight at their own evil have found the body of the Banished God and done some questionable mystical shit to put him in a new body and nurture a grudge against Ji Ruochen for stealing his identity.

THEN Gu Qing meets Ji Ruochen and like everyone else assumes he's the Banished God and she falls in love with him (Gu Qing having been a literal rock spirit who cultivated to immortality under the guidance of the Banished God, who followed her into the mortal realm and a cycle of 100 incarnations after Gu Qing accidentally Did A Crime) but then falls in love with HIM.

ALSO Zhang Yinyin is always at risk of succumbing to the temptation of using the demonic fox power that is within her even though that will literally turn her into a demon but maybe it's worth it if a woman who is actually a goddess who is actually a rock is making eyes at the junior you brought into the sect and are in love with and you want to be more powerful than her?

ALSO what's the mysterious power that let Ji Ruochen kill the Banished God in the first place?

IS the woman seeking revenge for the death of the Banished God's mortal incarnation his sister or his cousin or his "cousin"?

WHY is the only love language of immortals stalking?

There's a homunculus and a baby snake demon who is the most precious angel in the world and so many evil dudes delighted in how evil they are and TWO GOOD AND ALIVE PARENTS and a pair of comical monks who have a special attack with a name they have to shout out every time they use it.

Oh and the imprisoned fox demon may have an ex who just hangs out on a rock in something called the Endless Ocean wearing a mask and playing go against the homunculus he made.

And there's an ancient master who lives in an ice mountain and eats memories of love.

Also some people might be secret demons.

There's some weddings.

There's a tiny woman with an ice sword who brutally murders so many dudes.

Do you like CGI birds?

Do you like giant mechanical CGI birds that are for riding purposes?

There's a desert hermit who has a son who is a giant tortoise.

So many things are going on and terrible decisions are constantly being made and it's over a week before I can watch another episode and it's driving me mad. WHAT WILL BE THE FALLOUT OF THE MOST RECENT BAD DECISIONS?

[cloudmancy]

i don't want to be mean or anything but like. the cr/t/cal r/le girlies in the dimension 20 tag are just sending me like, i just Knew these people be just all over this season and diving in and dissecting every little detail and speculating for the larger picture (of six episodes) (plus a season that's already been out for a year) as though people like. haven't been having to Sit with the Very, Very unfinished/untold part of the world of this campaign setting for Years already? (the Widely Established Fanlore of it all XD) although that's also been also been folding in the face of. all the colin posts (like Specifically colin too past even colin+raphaniel or colin+deli). like they fell for the cr bait so hard- group of fans starved for mlm content based on their typical cr diet, see a guy (Just Some Guy) looking the way he was, see his mysterious past and divorce and arc and glowup and post-divorce talks and. yknow. whaddya gonna do. that's all they're gonna talk about when the EXPLICITLY mlm radish priest who's been grooming that VERY SAME cheese guy for five years is right there.

anyways i'm going to write all that off anon and pretend i'm not deathly scared of invoking the wrath of cr fans after that thing on twitter

IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY FUNNY YEAH. gonna address the colin part first then talk about my problems with the season under a spoiler. listen I think deli & colin are very real in that deli wants him SO bad but it's crazy that people are dancing around colin's whole thing with raphaniel. like what do you guys think was going on there 😭 'he's his babysitter' SAY IT OUT LOUD! he was fucking that radish

now for my thoughts about the plot and pacing of ravening war

I do not like that this season (that was supposed to be about a war covering 7+ years of intense political conflict and full-scale warfare involving every country in the continent) got boiled down to 2 massive timeskips & 3 battle episodes of five guys fucking around in a cave because the entire war was actually started by a secret cult. there were no battles involving the actual war + 1 skill check for entire 5 years at a time + almost nothing politics wise + they missed the ENTIRE climatic final push for the end of the war because they were underground. it's so poorly paced, I really don't know what to say. am I the crazy one here for wanting a season about the ravening war to be about the war? it just doesn't feel like the characters had any impact on the plot past episode 3 and they ONLY because they kill the queen of candia because a cult told them to. because we get alliances forged and broken and conflicts ended and rulers crowned within the span of a single sentence from the DM before we chug back off to the mycelium hivemind main plot. hot take but every season does not in fact need a plot twist big bad to fight

all of the characters in the season are genuinely the most interesting characters I've seen in YEARS. it's a goddamn shame we didn't get to spend more time with them. it sucks that each of them brought so much intrigue and backstory to the war, but every single one of them ended up contributing not much at all to the scale of the campaign because, again, the final boss turned out to be a cult within the top secret cult of mushrooms that was ALREADY a secret but there is also ANOTHER, more powerful deity to fight in the very last episode. we needed more episodes, or less time spent on battles. we needed to not bring on a DM known for having all the time in the world to wrap up years-long campaigns in 5 hour chunks at a time, for a 6 ep miniseason. we did not need two more powerscaled deities for no reason to a war that should have been about the people and not... random alien eldritch forces. we needed closure on amangeaux's child, we needed to know WHY raphaniel was poisoning the king and starting a war in the first place. aabria wrote a whole essay about karna's backstory that I would've loved to see in the show itself, but... we didn't get to see it! there were almost no politics. we did get 4 separate secret underground mushroom fights though. in a campaign about a war.

"real life is messy! not everything gets wrapped up neatly! it reflects real wars!" this is a dnd show sir and when you spend 20 minutes out of 12 hours of content actually talking politics and the rest of the time fucking around with mushrooms in a cave, it starts to look less like a deliberate artistic choice and more like poorly paced plot threads that didn't get a chance to finish.

[swan2swan]

Another thing that I love about Andor is that it--like Rogue One--hypes up why the Death Star was actually the Worst-Case Scenario for any rebellion against the Empire.

For decades--literal decades--the Smart Fandom (authors of such brilliant takes as “If Imperial fighters had shields and hyperdrives and Star Destroyers had anti-fighter weaponry, they would have won”). stance has been “Oh, the Empire was so foolish for investing in the Death Star instead of a fleet of Star Destroyers. After all, what’s the point of a planet-destroying weapon? It’s too much and too vulnerable!”

But Rogue One said “Oh, no, this thing doesn’t have to blow up a planet. It can do a city. Or a continent. It can localize the boom. And target capital ships.” It gave the Death Star versatility.

And Andor? That gave the Death Star necessity.

In the show, we see how inefficient the Empire’s demands actually are. A perfect prison is understaffed and has flaws in its design; killing everyone will deprive them of necessary and cheap labor. Torturing citizens pushes them further toward full rebellion, and relying on local garrisons leads to disruption and flaws (Rebels also shows what happens when rookies and washouts sent to Outer Rim worlds face off against Elite Renegades, but that’s only relevant in that the Ghost crew could probably have cleaned up any of the Andor situations in about two hours, but they aren’t there because they’re busy). 

The Empire as a whole is sloppy and stretched thin. Even the eyes of the Emperor cannot turn everywhere at once, and the further down the line things go, the more likely it is that something will go wrong.

The solution to this?

Put everything on one station.

Make a single battlestation with a primary weapon capable of eliminating any base in secons. Give it enough elite pilots that they can reduce a strike force of thirty ships to three in less than twenty minutes. Give them troopers elite enough that when they’re instructed to “shoot without killing anyone so they can escape and lead us to the Rebel base”, they can fulfill that mission to the letter. Put a Sith Lord aboard the station so if a Jedi Knight gets on board, he can’t get off. Make the entire station so efficient and focused that it can control the galaxy by itself. 

Why worry about the quality of ten thousand garrisons when you can simply send one efficiently-run battlestation anywhere in the galaxy? 

If you have one weapon that works effectively, everything else can be as sloppy as you want. If something goes out of control, you’ll erase it. Simple as that. What are they going to do? Blow up your invincible, moon-sized battle station? Make the crew mutiny when you’re putting all of your best soldiers on board? Corupt the officers when your most efficient and loyal officers are in command? The past six months of your most advanced fighter craft--the newest line of TIEs--to have been produced have all been transferred here. The best shield generators, targeting computers, and sensors have all been dedicated to this. And it cannot be destroyed. 

The head of the ISB may call his bureau “the vaccine” against the infection of Rebellion, but the Death Star is the Cure.

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 15: Kinslayer

You know the drill. Don't read if you don't want spoilers for the whole series.

This chapter has the heron-marked blade icon, the purpose of which is probably related to the picture I've chosen for this particular entry, just saying.

Again they crossed land blackened and burned, even the soil crunching under the horses’ hooves as if it had been seared. The burned swathes, sometimes a mile wide, sometimes only a few hundred paces, all ran east and west as straight as an arrow’s flight. Twice Rand saw the end of a burn, once as they rode over it, once as they passed nearby; they tapered to points at the ends.

This is one of several odd and unexplained details. It seems to be the scar of a rather more high-tech sort of warfare might cause this but not the Renaissance fare of the subcontinent.

There were no birds or animals, not that Rand saw or heard. No hawk wheeling in the sky, no bark of a hunting fox, no bird singing. Nothing rustled in the grass or lit on a tree branch. No bees, or butterflies. ...never a minnow or tadpole wriggled out of the roiling, not even a waterspider dancing across the surface, or a hovering lacewing.

Virtually everything is dead, which really makes it all the more impressive that the grass and trees are doing okay. I'm not quite sure on the life cycle of grasses and maybe they do fine without animals but trees often like it when animals eat their seeds and poop them out somewhere better. Knowing what we know of this mirror world, there may have been a replacement for a time... but this place is alarmingly empty and with the entire animal kingdom gone, there's an ecological collapse in this world's future. Will the Wheel keep spinning this mirror after that point? Is there an outside intervention planned to keep this catastrophe at bay? Lots of weird considerations for these what-ifs.

There was one sign of life; at least, Rand thought it must be so. Twice he saw a wispy streak crawling across the sky like a line drawn with cloud. The lines were too straight to be natural, it seemed, but he could not imagine what might make them.

Another thing that never gets solved. Even the Encyclopedia offers only a guess, though what a guess it is: contrails. On the one hand, planes are ridiculous in this part of history, but on the other... It does explain the burns, if planes were conducting air raids.

The reveal's not til next chapter, but I'm gonna cover the guesswork now anyway: yes, they are contrails. One possibility is that this world's Forsaken, lacking any particular obstacles, have whipped up a sho-wing and are making absolutely sure everything in this part of the world is dead, but considering what their aircraft would have been firing on (Trollocs), that's not entirely coherent.

The other possibility is the Seanchan. Not the Seanchan Empire we know about, forged into a singular identity by the a'dam, but the Seanchan that would have existed if Artur Hawkwing and all of his descendants had conveniently died six years before the fleet was sent across the sea. A Seanchan that never invented the a'dam at all and continued to have strong, free channelers who dominated their societies. Perhaps after another thousand years they managed to find some kind of stability, improved their tech far beyond the stifled totalitarian empire ever could, and came back across the sea a few years ahead of schedule. Instead of discovering a continent of other humans, they found hordes of ravenous demons and understandably dedicated themselves to wiping them out. Rand sees them here on reconnaissance as they search the devastated land for signs of any last communities to obliterate.

This also explains why the grolm are present. They've been on the Seanchan continent since before Luthair showed up, which means they can't be sourced from this particular iteration of the continent because it hadn't diverged yet. But the native mirror!Seanchan could absolutely have used the ones they had for the same purpose they were put to in the homeland, which promptly overwhelmed whatever was left of the native biome after a thousand years of Trollocs.

Or maybe it's some other thing we'll never know. Thank you for reading my fanfic.

When he had heard Loial sing before, it had been as if the earth itself sang, but now the Ogier murmured his song almost diffidently, and the land echoed it in a whisper.

Frankly given the metaphysics of the place, it's almost a miracle that the land could sing back.

In his hands Loial held a staff as tall as he was and as thick as Rand’s forearm, smooth and polished. Where the trunk had been on the giantsbroom was a small stem of new growth.

Let's keep an eye on this mirror-staff, shall we?

“Everything is . . . linked, Rand. Whether it lives or not, whether it thinks or not, everything that is, fits together. The tree does not think, but it is part of the whole, and the whole has a—a feeling. I can’t explain any more than I can explain what being happy is, but. . . . Rand, this land was glad for a weapon to be made. Glad!”

After everything it's seen and the abuse it's gotten from the Trollocs and the burns, it's probably grateful for any chance to make a positive impact for the prime reality. Surely it must know that it's not what it used to be and feel the weird spatial distortions that the group keeps seeing.

The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. He squeezed that thought out.

Too late Rand, Moiraine's infected you!

It’s like I’m remembering it, Lord Rand, instead of smelling it. But I’m not. There’s dozens of trails crossing it all the time, dozens and dozens, and all sorts of smells of violence, some of them fresh, almost, only washed out like everything else.

One of the conveniences about being so far outside of the prime reality where the only impressions of the future you can get are magics that none of these three have on hand is that everything else has to bend around in anticipation to stay out of the way. It's a miracle they don't see what they're going to do over the next few days right in front of them.

Rand kept their fire small and well hidden in the trees.

If my "the Seanchan Aerial Corps is currently sweeping the region looking for Shadowspawn" theory is remotely true, everyone's paranoia over Fain is the only thing that kept them from being firebombed out of existence.

Then why is he running instead of chasing me? And what killed that Fade? What happened in that room full of flies? And those eyes, watching me in Fal Dara. And that wind, catching me like a beetle in pine sap. No. No, Ba’alzamon has to be dead.

Really one of the high points of this series is that few if any of Rand's questions here get fully and explicitly answered in the text. Nothing happens for bullshit motivations or entirely out of line with what's possible in the series, but there's just something weird about all of it.

The chill moon was almost full, standing high in the blackness, and the night was as silent as the day had been, as empty.

It's good to know that despite this world clearly getting very reduced resources from the Wheel that the moon is still operating correctly. After a thousand years of not giving a fuck and bizarre geometry, it wouldn't be at all surprising if the heavens were out of wack.

“Swords do no good against me, Lews Therin. You should know that.”

I would just like it on the record that it is complete horsefeathers that Ishamael - real Ishamael and not mirror Ish, which would be very funny but also play out somewhat differently - can still track Rand across dimensions like this. I mean it's not of course, but it does make you wonder how dreamers can find anyone in T'A'R instead of just close enough versions of their targets - there should be nearly an infinite number of sleepers at any given moment.

“I know you, know your blood and your line back to the first spark of life that ever was, back to the First Moment. You can never hide from me. Never! We are tied together as surely as two sides of the same coin. Ordinary men may hide in the sweep of the Pattern, but ta’veren stand out like beacon fires on a hill, and you, you stand out as if ten thousand shining arrows stood in the sky to point you out! You are mine, and ever in reach of my hand!”

Ishamael: Infinite tries means eventually one of them will be successful.

Also Ishamael: There was a First Moment which inherently means we've done this a finite number of times. Also we're never apart, Rand. Let's homoerotically wrestle.

“You find odd followers,” Ba’alzamon mused. “You always did. These two. The girl who tries to watch over you. A poor guardian and weak, Kinslayer. If she had a lifetime to grow, she would never grow strong enough for you to hide behind.”

I dunno, I feel like Rand absolutely could have hidden behind late series Egwene without much effort. He never would for so many reasons (and frankly by that point she'd say no too), but she absolutely could have been his human shield if he'd wanted her to be.

I have a thousand strings tied to you, Kinslayer, each one finer than silk and stronger than steel. Time has tied a thousand cords between us.

Now prepare to be strangled by the Red String!

This time the Wheel will be broken whatever you do, and the world remade to a new mold.

And this is probably the only time that Ishamael states the actual truth: the Dark One won't unmake existence the way he wants him to. It's a shame he only realizes this when he's crazy. If he knew there was absolutely no hope of getting out of the game, he'd probably switch back to the winning side on the ground's that it's marginally better.

Or actually knowing smart people and irrational decisions he'd probably double down and say something about how infinity makes it so there's no real objective difference between outcomes and anyway Rand or whoever pointed it out to him should shut up and die.

“Look at me, Kinslayer, and see the hundredth part of your own fate.” For a moment eyes and mouth became doorways into endless caverns of fire. “This is what the Power unchecked can do, even to me. But I heal, Lews Therin. I know the paths to greater power. It will burn you like a moth flying into a furnace.”

He's really doing his best to sell the whole, "You fucked me up ago and I'm in unbearable physical pain but despite an infinitely long track record saying otherwise I'm totally gonna beat you this time, bro". Especially with all of the homoeroticism. Rand's next lines are "I won't touch it!" and "I won't", which is clearly about the Power and yet somehow even in context sexually charged as a response to Ishamael taking off his mask after Rand begs him not to.

“I can teach you to control that power so that it does not destroy you. No one else lives who can teach you that... The power can be yours, and you can live forever. Forever! All you must do in return is serve. Only serve. Simple words—I am yours, Great Lord—and power will be yours...”

This is a much better sell and frankly he should have led with this because letting Rand get used to saying no means he's got the inertia going despite the temptations. That or he shoulda kept Rand here for the full forty days, cuz grasslands or no this place is clearly desert.

I imagined it all. Frantically, he looked around. Ba’alzamon was gone. Hurin shifted in his sleep; the sniffer and Loial were still only two mounds sticking up out of the low fog. I did imagine it.

"Yay! I'm descending into the madness that will lead me to kill everyone around me and/or everyone I love!"

Seriously the only reason he's not worrying about this is that there's no time, the narrative has a different sucker punch in mind.

There across the palm was branded a heron. The heron from the hilt of his sword, angry and red, as neatly done as though drawn with an artist’s skill. Fumbling a kerchief from his coat pocket, he wrapped it around his hand. The hand throbbed, now. The void would help with that—he was aware of pain in the void, but he did not feel it—but he put the thought out of his head.

And so an exciting part of prophecy is fulfilled, but much more importantly: Rand teaches himself one of his worst coping mechanisms by putting the part of himself that feels pain into a box and ignoring it. From this temporary injury where it is a useful thing to do under the circumstances, Rand is heading for much larger forms of unhelpful denial.

Ishamael would have been so much smarter to just dose the kid with opium.

Anyway, see y'all next time!

[tctteredwings]

[ harry shum jr., genderqueer, he/they ] — whoa! KIAN ZHANG just stole my cab! not cool, but maybe they needed it more. they have lived in the city for THEIR WHOLE LIFE, working as the HEAD STYLIST AND OWNER OF KIAN ZHANG HAIR. that can’t be easy, especially at only 41 YEARS OLD. some people say they can be a little bit DRAMATIC and BLUNT, but i know them to be INNOVATIVE and ACCEPTING. whatever. i guess i’ll catch the next cab. hope they like the ride back to MANHATTAN!

IN A NUTSHELL; a smudge of eyeliner, vintage clothing, piano solo's when the sun's gone down, the slight scent of hairspray, an extensive collection of disney pins, willing to do anything for their son.

tw: bullying

ABOUT.

Name: Kian Zhang Nicknames: Ki Age: Forty-one Date of birth: 21st February 1983 Birth place: Manhattan, New York Occupation: Head Stylist and owner of Kian Zhang Hair Romantic/sexual orientation: Panromantic/pansexual

Kian was born in Manhattan, New York, along with his twin sister, his best friend from the word go.

He’s second-generation Chinese-American.

As the years ticked by they found themselves not entirely happy in their own skin, they started dressing differently, wearing the occasional smudge of eyeliner, something they attempted to embrace in high school.

It didn’t go well, the bullying soon followed; accepting apparently himself was frowned upon. Despite the multicultural city he lived in, his expression was limited in his youth.

He didn’t really listen, continued on in private, with close friends he made… with a boyfriend, someone who meant the world to him as time went on. He was someone who stayed a close friend long into his thirties, despite the break-up in senior year.

It was shortly after high school that they began to go by both he and they pronouns, something that has stayed the same ever since.

Their creativity came out over time and they embraced it, choosing in the end to make their way into the beauty industry and the Carsten Institute of Cosmetology was the place to do it.

He eventually chose to specialise in hairdressing, becoming a stylist to the stars within a couple of years of graduating.

Shortly after that they found themselves caught up in a new relationship, something that was difficult to balance, but he tried his hardest.

Within a year or so a wedding was on the cards, each detail planned out meticulously. It was to be the beginning of a new chapter for him and when they found out only six months later that she was pregnant, he realised it really, really was.

Somehow, at some point during all of this he managed to open up his own salon in the Upper East Side —- somewhere that ended up with a three-month wait for appointments at all times of the year.

Not long after their 30th birthday, the family of three relocated to London, UK, a decision that was made for her work. Kian chose to work on opening a salon there instead, a small franchise that they intended to let someone else run, but with their ethics and style.

As their time in London ticked on, cracks in the relationship began to show, attempting a slower lifestyle ( despite the location ) wasn’t working —- they were both so used to being rushed off their feet.

Two years later a divorce was finalised and Kian moved back to New York. A rocky few years followed, the pair attempting to handle parenting from different continents.

He soon met someone who changed things for him, someone who made them want to try again. A couple of years passed, they moved in together, they were complete opposites in a way, yet that only seemed to make their bond stronger. They complimented one another and it was as simple as that.

But then that ended, too, abruptly and painfully. Kian did all they knew how to do, focus on work and ignore everything else going on around them. Thankfully his son is back in the States now, his ex-wife's job changing a couple of years ago, meaning she could return.

HEADCANONS.

Their wardrobe is a rather eclectic mix of things, although their most colourful side comes out when they’re working and less so at home. At home they really are about being comfortable and nothing else.

There’s always the slightest hint of eyeliner with them, they’ve never been able to let that go.

He’s been playing piano since he was small and he’s pretty damn good at it now —- can definitely give Beethoven a run for his money.

He’s got a bit of thing for 80′s music and are playing it constantly, especially in the salon.

Can’t play sports to save their life, although they like to think they were an amazing high-jumper in high school ( they weren’t, but still mention it if anyone ever brings sports up ).

They collect Disney pins and have never been particularly shy about it.

Once got stabbed with their own scissors by an unhappy client.

[androgynousbirdtale]

Entire known universe recreated in Minecraft by 18-year-old

By Elizabeth Howell

 published 1 day ago

In a game where you can build nearly anything, one 18-year-old spent two months creating and sharing the whole observable universe.

Christopher Slayton, 18, is a long-time aficionado of Minecraft, a game that allows people to create castles, cliffs and other objects using old-school blocks. But Slayton supersized the effort. 

He created black holes, stars and galaxies using his desktop computer and shared the epic results on YouTube(opens in new tab) and in the Minecraft Reddit community(opens in new tab) earlier this month, swiftly going viral in the process.

he family-friendly Minecraft is not a traditional space game in any sense, but the mods Slayton implemented and shared on Patreon(opens in new tab) appear to place it among the best space exploration games out there.

"What am I doing with my life?" Slayton said in the YouTube video, which is now pulling close to a million views. "I've been sitting in this tiny, sweaty room for eight hours trying to build the curve on a black hole."

Minecraft, first released in 2009 and taken to a wider scale in 2011, now has more than 141 million active users worldwide, according to Statista(opens in new tab). It has attracted its fair share of small-scale space mods over the years, like this Baby Yoda in an official Star Wars DLC in 2021. But the universe? That's another challenge altogether.

"Everyone freaks out about the power and expansiveness of the universe, which I never really got that much," Slayton told the New York Times(opens in new tab). But after six weeks of work on the Minecraft universe and two weeks creating the YouTube video, he added, "I realized even more how beautiful it is."

The first problem Slayton encountered was trying to replicate the dark and light sides of planets like Earth in a game that doesn't even have a source of light. He manually put in light blocks and dark blocks, a process that took him days, only to find new issues at ringed planets like Saturn. "It took me an entire day just to space out and tilt all of its rings," he said in the video.

he journey to galactic-scale builds pushed Slayton to his limits, as he pursued ventures like skydiving to see the Earth from on high, and advanced math to recreate the continents of a planet accurately. 

He built solar flares, the famous "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula and galactic-scale structures, all to scale and all with numerous technical challenges to overcome. The big reveal at the video's end shows a true journey that feels like you're flying through galaxies.

Slayton has almost 25,000 subscribers on YouTube. For now, he told the Times, he's planning to collect a lifeguard's salary and reduce expenses (such as by living with his family) while continuing to pursue growing his online business. 

Over time, Slayton hopes to share stories through Minecraft to engage the community and to try projects like the multiverse, the metaverse and multiple dimensions. 

"I want to tell a real entertaining story, unlike how anyone else has done it in the Minecraft community or just the gaming community," Slayton said. "I kind of want to up the standards a bit."

Original Article

[bobelblogger]

CCCP attacks the rear

Between Cocks In Hard Place.

Nulutuhk Nahk

Hayah Omis

Nijumet Hcezc

Hirahita Mejiin

"The phallus is a fallacy, nurture thy self and thy seed, natural balance of whose absence will makes life bitter and sour."

First Fallopians.

Concluding her postulate with the sign of matriarchy from her heart over to her breast down to her womb back up to her heart, rose up from crouching, inhaled the crisp morning air opened her eyes beheld the cloudless pink tinted sunrise from the east, secured in her vale and crack guard, breast caps and anti gas pills.

her radio tuned to the Femlin.

"As unto the sun we shall pass over the land and cleanse it for woman kind, collected in harmonious unity, with valor in our hearts, milk in our breasts and eggs in our ovaries we go forth as a tidal wave of femmunist fury, women of CCCP give to them nothing but agony!"

As the signal to advance passed from HQ to bunkers camouflaged and brush concealed trenches two million rose up along the whole of the border as high above aviatrix flew wings pulling gliders in the thousands from mountain carved aerodomes, some rode on horse as others jogged or piggy backed armored suits as still others followed behind towing cannon, moblie AA, medical tents and repair stations, the things they carried with them each was deftly versed in its use and function.

The first villages they came to defensively as the populace came out they divided the women who were inspected and frisked for futa aligned material and men eyed by unimpressed yet benevolent Cummissars for desirable traits selection harvesting behind closed doors.

Further along the first city of Krakaw with defenses dug and manned with army divisions, under a flag of truce she strode out to meet an officer on horseback as precaution, in rudimentary russ he asked.

"Matriarch Stala breaks the treaty with Polonia, have you come seeking a fight or fornication with free men?"

"CCCP has no feud with Polonish, we need only right of way to the western border." She replied withholding venom.

"One versed in diplomacy should remember to ask before doing, I've heard of no order from high command."

"It wasn't made known less the whole continent hear of our plans, spies and saboteurs of the Falsereich abound."

"Go around, your campaign is noble but I'll not have armed foreign soldiers marching through our city for show."

"A delay of two hours to reroute would put us in danger of a gap in our advance, send for Wasraw to clarify."

"I have, you do not give me orders and you aren't passing through without consent from the head ministry."

She had one reply of niceness left in her vocabulary before the swearing and threats came so made a stern nod.

Sending word via scouts to other corps of delays in link up while she eyed the sky for foe and friendly craft, her time dial read six forty five am, forty fucking minutes behind schedule, and they still had to cross the Oder river.

"You may pass through as requested in line with agreed terms under escort and arms sheathed, shall we march?"

"The point of such theatrics puts us in peril and is the reason the enemy have gotten thus far, we shall at once!"

It was nearly eight thirty by the time they reached the border objective, soon as the Harpy and Kilpid corps passed overhead they would advance south east then north east, expecting minefields blown bridges and ambushes after the rousing of the enemy air units amid a pitched battle for the sky along the entire front, urban warfare was to be avoided, they sought to surround and squeeze until the nut cracked.

The border got crossed without a shot, no defenses only ransacked houses and barren fields told of hurried recall.

It was twelve midday exactly when the distant boom of artillery not from behind but in front began, the barrage of shells released thick yellow mist, donning our masks and shrouds anchored the flanks and braced for the tsunami of dick about to wash over us, signals from the scouts stopped as the ground rumbled and shook then ceased.

[eligaxy]

Wind

☆ℜ𝔢𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔭 : Venti x gn!Reader

☆𝔚𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰 : near death experience, you’re confused asf about everything, bad writing cause i suck, spoilers for the we will be reunited quest!! And also for venti’s backstory, venti is serious for once (yes it’s a legitimate warning🤚)

☆𝔊𝔢𝔫𝔯𝔢 : Some angst, some fluff? Idk bye🤨

☆𝔖𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶 : "It's okay, it's over now" he kneeled to be at your level, his arms still wrapped around you, and you didn't have the energy to fight your urge of nuzzling into him. "I'll always be here for you, wherever there is wind, remember I'm here too. You only need to ask." (2.8k words)

♪𝔑𝔬𝔱𝔢𝔰 : i’m an idiot simp, i did this in one sitting and half asleep, english isnt my first language BLA BLA IM SORRY FOR MY POOR WRITING BUT HAVE THIS

basically you don’t know if you can trust venti or not, head says no, heart screams yes

Also, I was listening to stormterror’s lair ost while writing it, just because its fucking amazing, you might wanna listen to it too

I’m nervous to post this?/&:! This is the second fic i’ve ever finished in my whole life

i love venti and he’s hot in his god outfit i don’t make the rules

KAY ENJOY <3

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

"Please, anybody... Just help me."

Saying you were exhausted would have been an understatement. After reuniting with your sibling, you had been frantically searching for clues about khaenri'ah and ways to Inazuma. With no luck, you couldn't find any traces of Dainsleif or of your twin. The ruins had been sealed and you had no idea what happened to the inverted statue or the corpse you had found there. Desperately, you clung into every little information you had, you would have turned every rock on this archon damned continent if you had to, which is what led you into those ruins near Guilli plains.

Walking along the destroyed buildings your eyes caught sight of a dandelion and you froze. You missed them so much, why couldn't they go back home with you? All you ever wanted was to be by their side why, why were they running away from you?

You remembered your travels, the moments you shared together, their protectiveness over you, the fondness in their eyes when you smiled at them. You remember the times you got hurt and healed one another with your now missing powers. You remember sleeping by their side and being grateful to the universe to let you keep your ray of sunshine everywhere with you. How ironic.

What had they meant 'once you reach the end of your journey' ? What does that even mean? Stupid twin, if they knew you were here the whole time, why hadn't they come to you? Why were they always leaving just when they were within your grasp? Why? Did they know how much you missed them and how much your heart broke when you finally saw them? Did they?

You only realized you were crying when a small gust of wind had your wet cheek react to the cold, breaking your train of thought. Wind.

The wind is everywhere, you think, free as a bird, always accompanying every citizen of this world, never truly alone. With this in mind, you resumed your exploring, slower this time.

A sigh escaped your mouth. You didn't want to admit it, but the wind did comfort you a little. Almost as if he was here. God of freedom and of the breeze, he was more a singer than a protector and you couldn't bear to think about him. Was it true? What Dain said... Did he destroy this nation? Was he the cause of the scenery that still haunted your nightmares up until 500 years later? Your brain simply couldn't accept that Venti, your Venti, you catch yourself thinking, could have made such an act of wrath. He was the epitome of freedom, why would he take the very thing he based all of his existence on from mere mortals? Barbatos simply couldn't be afraid of being overpowered, he didn't even care about power. All he wanted was freedom and happiness for his people. Surley this couldn't be right?

But then again, who were you to deny the wipe out of an entire nation? The gods did it. They were afraid that Celestia would be overthrown by the pride of humankind, the destruction of khaenri'ah by divine beings was a fact. There was no misunderstanding about this. That was the one thing you were sure of. So why did you feel like crying even more now?

The mere thought of a gentle soul such as Venti committing innocent people to an eternity of suffering didn't sit right with you. Even when his dearest friend Dvalin had turned against him, he didn't try to stop him, didn't even ask the dragon to save him. He healed and helped him, gave him a choice.

'What is freedom if demanded of you by a god?' was the same person that asked this question the same one who committed mass murder? Genocide?

Did the little wine-lover bard you had grown fond of destroy all hopes and light your kin had?

You remember that night when he freed Stanley from his burden, freed his and his friends' spirits. You had marveled at his action, in that instant he was a god, and he definitely hadn't struck you as a murderer. You remember that look of silent pain and grief in his eyes when he sang the tales of the nameless bard he had taken the appearance of. You knew he trusted you enough to share his story, something so personal, you could almost feel the war that took down the tyrant of Mond. Oh how much you cherished that evening, treating him to some well deserved dandelion wine afterwards, his favorite, and asking him to sing you more about the time where was nothing but the spirit of a breeze.

Your heart broke a little, remembering his rosy cheeks and drunk smile, you wish you could talk to him, ask him what happened. What did he do, was he really as dangerous as you had been told? If so, then why did you feel so good around him? Why did you feel like you could give hi-

You stopped walking upon seeing a ruin guard up ahead in the distance. You're so stupid, you think. Feeling this way is not gonna get you anywhere, especially with how the bard had been missing for a few weeks now. Ever since you had last seen your sibling.

Where was he, where was he wandering off to? You walk towards the disabled ruin guard, not really paying any mind to it, still thinking about the god you longed to meet with. If you could see him, what would you even say? Would he even answer your questions? Why did your stomach feel so light and funny when you thought about seeing him, why aren't you angrier?

You're almost at the killing machine's level now, so lost in your thought you don't notice the five other similar robots hidden behind a wall next to it. You notice them only when it's too late and you've already turned them on while thinking about examining them and collecting their serial numbers. When you hear the familiar tick of the mechanism turning on, you internally panic and think about running away only to calm down moments later and think to yourself that you can simply beat it and take what you came here for. Even if you are emotionally and physically tired, you can manage, you think.

That was before hearing five other consecutive ticks right after it, and all around you.

Turning around, your gaze falls upon the small army of field tillers. Fuck.

Paimon wasn't with you today, you had asked for some time alone which she hesitantly accepted, so you couldn't ask her to go fetch help. You would have been worried if you had all your capacities but with the state you were in, you were wondering how you were going to survive this fight. You were alone, none of your companions with you, and deeply weakened by the busy day you had and the few hours of sleep you had managed to steal away from the night. Was it today you would meet your doom, with all your questions and uncertainties unanswered?

You tried your best to fight with the strength you had left, but quickly grew desperate after what felt like hours of efforts to swing your blade and being able to only take one monster down out of the six. It didn't help that you got injured along the way, their blows becoming harder and harder to dodge. After being thrown on the grown for the third time, you understood you had at least two broken ribs and that your shaking legs would soon fail you as well.

Fear crept upon you, you would die here today, alone. Alone. You couldn't talk to your sibling after all, couldn't understand. You didn't even get to talk to him one last time. Him... You would die without the knowledge of the truth about your bard. You would die alone. You didn't want that, you couldn't look death straight in the eye.

"Please, anybody... Just help me."

-

In Mondstadt, there was a musician, a weird singer everyone had heard about at least once. He lived off of his songs and was mostly known for having a great story-telling and being an alcoholic.

The number of people who knew the true nature of his identity were few and he was perfectly content with that. He didn't wish to be a god anymore, his gnosis had been taken away anyway and it's not like he had any power over the city of wind nowadays. Even if his people still worshipped him as Barbatos, it didn't sit right with him to be called a god anymore. It actually never did, he thinks to himself with a smile, he never really took any responsibilities that came with the divine title which is why he was so weak today. But it didn't matter to him, his smile turns into a soft giggle.

Sitting on a mill that was once born from his steps he looks fondly over the city he founded. Even if they were godless, the citizens were still thriving and free. He cared oh so very deeply about the place even if he rarely, if not never, showed the affection within his heart. He remembers the day he grew strong enough to dispel the storms over his actual Mondstadt, and made the weather gentle enough so that there was no need for fireplaces. Nowadays, he loves watching birds nest into the chimney tops and seeing them found their own home. It gave him a sense of belonging like no other, not above his people, but walking among them and watching them nest into this cocoon he created. He was proud of what happened to his land and would do it all over again if he had to.

Especially since it led to him meeting you. This thought doesn't catch him off guard, you often roamed around in his mind after all, and it's not like he didn't write at least three songs about you and your feat, your smile, your courage...

Ah there he goes again, rambling about you in a whisper. He turns around to the statue of him his people erected in his honor, chuckling at how they never made the connection with his signature braids. His, but not really his, since he had stolen this form from someone who was much more deserving of this power than him. Seeing his friend being honored with the statues of the seven around the land made him happy, he hoped that it was a good enough thank you gift in return for everything that the bard whom he couldn't even remember the name of anymore did for him.

Upon gazing at the statue, he remembered telling you of his long gone friend. It was the first time he had talked about him to someone else, he didn't even mention it to Venessa, she who made him believe in himself again. He could ask himself why, but he simply knew that you had something different, more than meets the eye. Perhaps it was because you weren't from Teyvat, or perhaps it was just you being as simple as your natural self but he was simply and utterly captivated by your being. You inspired him to no end, at first he thought it was because he had never met someone like you and he loved new things! But as time grew and he got to know you, he understood quickly the meaning and depth of his passions. He thought of it with a light chuckle, content with your presence alone. He really did need and want you around.

So why did he purposely avoid you like the plague?

The wind had brought to his ears that you had met with Dainsleif.

And your twin.

His first reaction was to search for you, talk to you, he wanted to be here to know what happened! You had searched so long, he couldn't contain himself, still listening to what the wind told him, he started running with excitement but... But wait, Dainsleif was... He told you what?

Oh.

So you heard about Khaenri'ah. He had stopped dead in his tracks and turned back, only sending a warm current of wind your way, hugging you from afar.

He wasn't ready to talk about this yet, not ready to face you and absolutely not ready to answer your questions. He was a coward, he thought, running away like that but what else could he do, really. It was only natural for him to be as uncatchable as air.

A sorry excuse to avoid the fact that even if his past had marvelous story like the one of the nameless bard, it also had its share of darkness, something he wasn't ready to dive back into. Especially not now when your arrival has been shaking this world up like it hasn't been since at least 500 years.

But oh, how he longed to see your face or to hear your voice. So he asked a breeze to report to him what you were up to, and where you were. Just in case! he tells himself, what if you needed help ehe? But he knows you're competent and you won't need the help of a weakling coward like him anytime soon. Or so he thought.

Because when the breeze only gives him a few words back, his blood runs cold.

"Please, anybody... Just help me."

-

As you murmured these words in your desperate state, not really for anyone but yourself as a last resort, a prayer of some sort, you tried to stand by leaning yourself on your sword and failing miserably. You didn't dare look up as you heard the loud footsteps of the metal giants coming your way. It was over, and you barely managed to accept it.

As you rested your forehead against the cold handle of your sword, you closed your eyes, tears starting to make their ways out of your closed eyelids. All you could feel was remorse.

A soft breeze moved your hair slightly and your chest felt like a black hole had taken place where your heart used to be, regretting to not have been able to meet him under the tree at Windrise one last time.

The breeze quickly grew stronger, until it felt unnatural and you looked up from the ground, only to close your eyes again immediately when you realized the wind was too powerful for you to keep them open. If you had struggled to see though, you would have been blinded by the white light that soon illuminated the whole ruins. You didn't have enough time to register the situation when you felt a hand being laid atop your shoulder, snaking around your collarbones and pulling you back into... nothing? Another arm circled your weak form and a voice you immediately recognized said

"I've dealt with things worse than you, now crumble."

You realized that if you couldn't feel a chest behind you while still being embraced by his arms, it was because he was floating above you, and not standing behind you. A look in his direction confirmed your suspicions but what stunned you wasn't the fact that he was flying, but the attire he wore. Barely covering his body, a white set made of materials that seemed like clouds and liquid gold contrasted perfectly with his regular green clothes. His hair was glowing green and his eyes that were focused on the ruin guards up ahead had a marvelous shine that you had never seen before. He had that same aura he did the night he freed Stanley, but there was also something different about the way his hands gripped you a little too tightly or the way his voice sounded.

"Venti.." You muttered his name, relief and affection flooding you all at once, in his presence you felt as if nothing bad could happen to you. How foolish could you be, just a few hours ago you were speculating wether or not he had wiped out an entire civilisation and now here you were, being saved by him and feeling safer than you had in months.

"Close your eyes, I don't want give you a headache" he said, slowly floating legs first towards the ground. His unusually serious voice surprised you (and him) but you did as he told you. Letting go of your sword and leaning back into him, you let him deal with the monsters ahead of you.

"It's okay, it's over now" he kneeled to be at your level, his arms still wrapped around you, and you didn't have the energy to fight your urge of nuzzling into him. "I'll always be here for you, wherever there is wind, remember I'm here too. You only need to ask."

Being protected by a god really didn't feel that bad. Especially when you were in love with said god.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Thank you so much for reading whatever this is until the end :’)

Don’t hesitate to comment or reblog, tysm <3

Ps: venti loves u and so do i do pls take care of urself mwah

[sketching-shark]

Monkie kid fandom: o well macaques a morally grey character he’s got a traumatic past and Sun Wukongs so mean and evil for leaving him

Reality: Macaque is literally ment to the representative of Sun Wukongs EVIL side and having a “traumatic past” doesn’t justify literally trying to kill people who had nothing to do with it he also traumatised Mk because he can and because he’s connected to Sun Wukong. Sun Wukong choose to change his ways macaque just decided “you no what am going to kill this monk because he’s connected to somebody who left me.” I don’t understand how people try so hard to Villainise Sun Wukong when’s he’s literally ment to be one of the first ever superheroes. 

Haha oh geez that is how it often feels.

Like at this point there does seem to be something of an effort to make Sun Wukong look bad in order to absolve Macaque of a lot of wrong-doing...But as you mentioned, besides it being the case that the Six-Eared Macaque was originally made to function as a representative and/or living embodiment of Sun Wukong's anger and violent tendencies (hence why Sun Wukong's a lot less prone to sudden acts of violence after he kills the six-eared simian in JTTW), given all the murder attempts and manipulation and literal acts of kidnapping/brainwashing/mind control he's committed in the lego monkey show, personally I feel like the dude is pretty much as viciously jealous & as willing to throw people under the bus to achieve his aims as he is in Journey to the West.

Like I know that Monkie Kid diverges from JTTW in a number of ways (a big change being that Sun Wukong had beat up a lot of demons instead of smashing them into meat patties lol), but one of the things that does feel like it's being lost in translation, as it were, is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory and prestige for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in direct contrast to Sun Wukong he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him, given that after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own benefit, but is also a literal cannibal.

In Monkie Kid (at least according to Macaque, who is an unreliable narrator at best), he had been best of friends with Sun Wukong before Sun Wukong presumably went off to live in Heaven & abandoned all of his friends on Earth. And it is true that in Journey to the West, Sun Wukong had spent over a century of earthly years in heaven just enjoying himself before he gets into trouble by ruining the Immortal Peach Banquet and heading back down to his yaoguai kingdom. So in that regard, Macaque does have justification to hate Sun Wukong for having brought heaven's army to their mountain (of course you could say that starting a war over one banquet is a bit of an overreaction but that's a conversation for another day). What this does omit, however, is that the main reason Sun Wukong went to heaven in the first place is to see if he could get all of his monkeys to live up there, that he had spent centuries fortifying Flower Fruit Mountain from any and all threats beforehand, and that he brings back a bounty of immortality-granting wine, which all the monkeys eagerly drink. And perhaps most importantly, in the following war with heaven itself all of the assembled yaoguai were behind Sun Wukong 100%. He had already done so much for them, and they had already heard about how their great king was made to serve as a stable hand in heaven, and so got some sense of how little the heavens thought of them. This isn't to say that the Six Eared Macaque doesn't have reason to be mad at Sun Wukong or that the Monkey King doesn't share a lot of the blame for the events that led to the burning of Flower Fruit Mountain, but rather to say that all the assembled yaoguai weren't dragged into this war kicking and screaming. They seem to have regarded it as much as a power struggle with great potential rewards and which they could win as much as Sun Wukong did.

But going back to this version of the Six Eared Macaque, I find him interesting because I read him not as morally grey but rather as this frightening, somewhat tragic figure who's jealously of and resentment against Sun Wukong seems to have festered and grown to the point where it's become the sole defining feature of his life; like he's just gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to wanting revenge against the Monkey King, and in all his centuries of living he hasn't allowed anything else to shape his life. After 500 years of apparently not really doing anything, after Sun Wukong made a reappearance Macaque just seem to be targeting anyone and anything that he thinks will let him hurt Sun Wukong, no matter the cost to others or to himself. It's like he was put into the role of Sun Wukong's doppelganger/shadow/evil clone, and he's now hellbent on staying in that position, no matter how much it hurts him or holds him back from cultivating his own individuality or his own story because that's the only way he feels he gain back his past power and/or stay connected to the Monkey King. There is something really tragic about a character who feels so damaged by and/or is so obsessed with the past that they stay in this stagnant position where they never even attempt to try something different from their destructive and self-damaging behavior, but that's precisely what makes Macaque a good villain as well. Besides being a clever and calculating villain, he never developed a sense of morality like Sun Wukong, he still treats everyone around him like tools, and his self-righteousness gives him "permission" to be a relentless monster to MK, all of MK's loved ones, and Sun Wukong himself. I know it's pretty common in media these days to start a villain down the path of redemption & into the bosom of team good guy by having them be hurt by an even worse villain, but personally I would love to see a story arc where Macaque actually has a realization of how horrible his behavior has been and to feel genuine remorse for it (maybe brought about by the violence he's likely suffering at the hands of the Lady Bone Demon, in a kind of "hey being manipulated and hurt for the benefit of others actually sucks oh no I can't believe I thought it was okay when I did it"), but then also has to face the consequence of his former student and former best friend (actually likely the entire monkie crew given the whole kidnapping/brainwashing/mind-controlling thing) never wanting anything to do with him again & cutting him out of their lives completely. I think he could still change for the better under such a scenario, but the seriousness of his bad actions shouldn't be swept under the rug.

In conclusion, I think a "redemption without forgiveness" story line could work really well for Monkie Kid's version of the Six-Eared Macaque in a kind of "you can't just do horrible things and then cry about your past like that somehow makes it okay" way, and smh at the Monkie Kid fandom for all the work put into giving Sun Wukong and only Sun Wukong flak for his and Macaque's fight.

Like if you have to demonize the Monkey King, at least go after him for having been a warlord.

[ghosthunterbuck]

these little words (somehow they're changing us)

buddie (~1k)

Buck shows up at Eddie’s door with red rimmed eyes and a six pack. Eddie lets him in and leads him to the kitchen without a word.

“Chris home?” Buck sniffs, trying and failing miserably to paste on one of his signature bright smiles.

Eddie shakes his head. “At Abuela’s,” he says.

Buck sags a little. “Oh, okay.” He straightens suddenly. “You don’t have plans, do you? Shit, Eds, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come over without calling. I’ll go.”

He turns to leave, but Eddie catches him by the elbow. “Whoa, whoa,” he says, “Relax. No plans, Chris just wanted to sleep over.”

“Oh.” Buck seems to deflate, sagging against the kitchen counter.

“Tell me what’s wrong. Aren’t you supposed to be on a date with Taylor?” Eddie asks.

“I broke it off with her,” Buck says, not looking him in the eye. “Her job was always going to be more important. And I get it, I do, but I couldn’t keep going like that.”

“Are you okay?”

“I just don’t understand why I’m never enough.” His voice breaks, and Eddie feels his heart shatter.

“God, Buck, you are. You are enough.” He probably sounds desperate, but he doesn’t care.

“For who?” Buck sounds so small and broken. Eddie would do anything to never hear him like this again.

He makes a decision.

“For me,” Eddie says. “However you’ll let me be in your life, best friend, partner, more; Evan, you’re enough. Anyone who can’t see that is missing out on the best thing that could ever happen to them.”

“More?” Buck breathes.

“More,” Eddie confirms.

“What…”

Eddie swallows. He’s all in now. Time to lay his cards on the table.

“I’m not-- I don’t expect anything to change, okay? I know you just broke up with Taylor. I’m not telling you this because I want something from you. I just need you to know that you are so incredibly loved. Maddie loves you, the team loves you, Chris loves you, and I… I am so in love with you that it hurts. You are enough.”

Buck gapes at him. “I… didn’t know that was an option,” he says finally. “Eddie, I--“

“Buck, you don’t have to say anything.”

“No, I-- can we sit down for a minute?”

Eddie leads him to the couch. The scant few inches between them might as well be an entire continent for how difficult they feel to cross. Eddie picks at a fraying thread on his jeans and watches Buck. He doesn’t want to be caught staring, but he can’t look away. The expression on Buck’s face is one he’s never seen before.

Finally, Buck speaks again. “You’re… in love with me?” His voice is quiet and small.

Eddie swallows and nods, resisting the urge to reach out and smooth the furrow in Buck’s brow.

“When?”

“I figured it out when I got shot. But, uh, I think it’s been a lot longer than that, honestly.”

“Oh,” Buck says softly. “That’s why you and Ana…?”

Eddie ducks his head. “Kind of. That was part of it, anyway. The rest of it… I knew it wasn’t working. I was trying to force something that was never there in the first place.”

“That’s, uh, that’s kind of how I felt about Taylor,” Buck says.

Some of the tension bleeds from Eddie’s shoulders. However Buck feels about what he said, if he’s still willing to talk to Eddie about this, they’re going to be okay.

“She was…”

“Easy?” Eddie supplies.

Buck huffs a breath. “Something like that.” He’s silent for a few moments. “There was just always something missing, you know? She just wasn’t… you.”

Eddie snaps his eyes up to Buck’s, who looks as surprised as Eddie feels.

“Holy shit,” Buck says. “Holy shit, Eddie, I think I’m in love with you too.”

Holy shit is right.

Buck jumps off the couch and starts pacing.

“How could I have missed that?” He asks, running a hand through his hair. His curls spring back wildly in a way that makes Eddie’s mouth go dry. “This whole time, I-- and you--“ Buck spins to face him. “I really thought you were straight.”

Eddie shrugs and stands. “That makes two of us.”

“Shit, Eds, I think I’ve been in love with you for years.” Buck’s eyes are still wide, but he doesn’t move away when Eddie steps into his space and rests his hands on Buck’s arms.

“Nothing has to change, okay? Not right now, not ever if you don’t want it to. I know this is a lot to deal with.”

“You definitely got a head start,” Buck chuckles. “We’re okay, though, right?”

Eddie squeezes Buck’s arm. “You and me are always okay. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”

Buck looks at him for a moment, searching. His gaze drops to Eddie’s lips, then returns to his eyes. “Can I kiss you?” He asks, quiet and timid in a way Eddie’s never heard before.

He doesn’t waste time answering. Instead, he moves his hands to Buck’s face and reels him in, closing the small gap between them. Buck’s fingers twist in Eddie’s shirt, and then they’re finally kissing, hard and passionate, belaying the softness of the moment.

After what feels like forever, Buck breaks the kiss and leans his forehead against Eddie’s. Their gasping breaths intermingle.

There’s a hundred things to discuss, questions that need answering, but at the end of the day, there’s only one that matters to Eddie.

“Stay?” He asks.

“Yeah,” Buck answers. It feels like a promise.

[blackestnight]

can I uhhhh request modern au head cannons for: Did any of their friends or family want them to get together? | Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like? | What are their favorite things to do together? | Do they have any pets?

BOY CAN YOU. I LOVE MODERN AUS. (YOU KNOW THIS.)

Did any of their friends or family want them to get together?

hanami's a) intensely private and b) too smart to even think about romantic prospects around her family until she's had adequate time to warn her partner about their general level of Overwhelming. also, they do, y'know, live on a different continent*, so the first anyone heard about aymeric was "we've been dating for six months and he'll be here when you fly out for heavensturn have a nice trip"

*with an exception, i'll get to that in a minute

also, her friends were convinced that hanami had made up a fake boyfriend to ward off creepy asshole customers at her jewelry shop, because they never saw him and she never brought him up in any conversation not instigated by creepy asshole customers at her jewelry shop, and then he showed up at trivia night and they were like "wait, you're a real person?" which tickled him to no end. world's handsomest cryptid. (nowadays people think she's made up a fake husband to ward off creepy asshole customers, because they never see him around the store and she doesn't wear a ring, and yes at this point she does kind of do it on purpose a little bit because he is the world's handsomest cryptid and it's always fucking hilarious when new people get to meet him for the first time.)

unlike hanami, aymeric has never been able to keep a lid on his emotions in his life, so foster sister lucia spent a solid year ragging on him about that pretty shopkeeper he met who insulted his watch while he insisted that you don't just ask retail service workers on dates, lucia, it's unconscionably rude and unfair to leverage that social power imbalance and she's just doing her job and— (lucky for him, hanami has no such reservations.) at which point lucia and estinien both moved on to ragging aymeric about maybe dating someone who isn't completely rabid for once in your life, dude, but like, lovingly.

Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?

*HI, WE'VE HIT THE EXCEPTION.

yes, they did have an official first date. i'm just running with the mom squad's main street au for simplicity purposes, which is set Handwave Somewhere Vaguely Northeastern Coastal, so their plan was to go down to the boardwalk and find a nice restaurant and maybe go on a romantic sunset walk along the beach and it would all be very cute and picturesque, insert harlequin title in appropriately gaudy font.

what actually happened was hanami wound up having to babysit her nine-year-old nephew because haruki had an emergency crop up at the last minute and couldn't find a sitter; aymeric was halfway through offering to reschedule when she said "you can just come over to my house if you want," at which point estinien—who was at aymeric's place at the time for no discernable reason, aside from providing color commentary and destroying his netflix algorithm—said "this is how you get ax murdered," because hanami's house was approximately 30 minutes west of buttfuck nowhere in a corn field, and aymeric was like "well if i die i die, i guess," and went over to hanami's house, where he got to sit at the kitchen table and watch munehise avoid doing his math worksheet by asking all sorts of questions about auntie's new friend, and then hanami (who had offered to make dinner as an apology for being 30 minutes west of buttfuck nowhere in a corn field instead of in a romance novel boardwalk seafood restaurant) served up a pot of curry that was, y'know, mildly spiced by her standards, and almost had steam coming out of poor aymeric's ears, so he and hanami spent the entire meal studiously pretending that they couldn't see him literally sweating while he forced his way through the whole plate because he was too polite not to, and then once hanami had made mune go to bed they sat on her couch and drank sparkling juice (that hanami knew she'd never actually bought, but people tended to just stick weird things in her fridge and by people she means thancred) out of wineglasses (that hanami had bought and never used) and amused themselves by letting the 1950s moby dick movie play on low volume while hanami (who had never read the book) made fun of the entire premise of moby dick and aymeric (who had not read the book in almost twenty years and had hated it at the time because you always hate things you have to read for high school lit classes) tried valiantly to play devil's advocate defend The Classic Novel that he absolutely did not remember anything about, and they were in the middle of giggling over that and playing footsie under the coffee table like a couple of jackasses when haruki showed up and proceeded to embarrass everyone by declaring that hanami was the worst babysitter ever, god, didn't he say you couldn't have boys over, and in the resultant headlock wrestling match an ugly vase on the mantel got broken and the night ended with hanami bent over the kitchen sink while aymeric tried to find a non-invasive way to help pick glass shards out of her hair.

so like, could have gone better, but after they got the glass out of her hair and hanami chased haruki (and a sleeping mune) out of the house she and aymeric made out on the front porch for a while, so let's just count it as a win.

What are their favorite things to do together?

remember i mentioned trivia night? they make a disgustingly good team. i won't elaborate but i feel it in my soul.

also, camping. i blame you for the mental image of driving out to a nature reserve in hanami's absolutely decrepit 1980s pickup and laying out blankets and pillows in the truck bed and stargazing while they snack on graham crackers and marshmallows because they're too lazy to actually make s'mores.

Do they have any pets?

YES! they have two cats. aymeric's ancient longhaired persian queen has been with him since he was in college, when his mother adopted a kitten who came into this world a spiteful soul. her name is mandragora and he spoils the daylights out of her. she will literally sit on a barstool and eat her food off a little saucer on the counter. when she's not demanding to be fed Properly, Like A Person, Food Dishes On The Floor Are So Undignified Ugh she likes to curl up either in the windowsill or by the fireplace and glare at all who approach her throne. she's also a chronic foot nibbler.

hanami has a cat whose breed is "a cat that kept dropping dead mice on my porch so i got her spayed," and her name is katsu and hanami affectionately refers to her as a baby panther because she is HUGE. this cat is the size of a small terrier. she's also the single cuddliest cat you will ever meet, who likes to drape over people's shoulders and make biscuits on their backs while they wander around and do housework. she's strictly an indoor cat now and content to be treated like a baby and harass mandragora.

incidentally, the home screen of hanami's phone is a picture of aymeric asleep on the couch, except mandragora is on his chest and katsu is on his face, so all you can see of him is his hair and part of a shoulder.

[jack-kellys]

if it would help organize your thoughts i’d love a quick rundown of the new au 👀🥰 (for reference i don’t know what six of crows is so context would be lovely lmao)

hey there kath at long fucking last ;) so okay first of all.

what is six of crows?

six of crows is a book, the first in a duology, set in the same world as the recently netflix'd book series shadow and bone! the books and the show (which, from a i-read-the-books standpoint, it was GREAT???) definitely have made their rounds of popularity on tumblr twitter etc, so i'm sure some of you at least know of the netflix adaption. (please don’t hesitate to ask more clarifying questions in relation to this!! and about characters or lifestyle or plot. pls. my ask box is so open)

six of crows, specifically, is still one of the best books i have ever read. it takes place in a fictional sort of 1920s-vibe era that has magical elements to it. what is GREAT about it is that it doesn't center around the magic (shadow and bone does but ah i didn't like those books as much)- the magic is simply in the world and it is so effortlessly talked about and politicized. there are six main characters and together they pull the most well-written, smart, thought-out heist for a million kruge, which is their currency. and that would be all the plot context you'd need, since in theory, i would invent... a whole.. whole different fucking heist....😔

okay, but rizz, the world of the story, you said there was magic.

i did, yeah, so there are certain people--called Grisha--that are born with abilities. you'd take this sort of genetics test when you're young and you'd find out. there are different kinds of abilities that range from fire to manipulating solid matter. more to come on them though🤝.

there are five main continents--kerch, ravka, novyi zem, fjerda, and shu han, though most of the story takes place in kerch's capital city and then in fjerda where the heist takes place. five continents, five boroughs... sometimes things just work out lads. anyways, character time.

jack kelly--kaz brekker's role

this is a no-brainer i would hope. in the book, kaz is a ranking gang member of a gang called the Dregs, which fits perfectly with jack as they’re both young leaders. kaz is a very broody type of leader, very snide and aloof, and jacks jackness would be fun to write in this position. hes a criminal mastermind at only 17, of course, and crafts the genius plan of the heist himself. kaz is also extremely ruthless, which ties into his aloofness, so jacks charisma paired with that same ruthlessness? oh man. oh man thats gonna be so fun.

davey jacobs, the ghost--inej ghafa, the wraith's role

YALL in the book inej is basically an acrobatic knife-weilding spy who literally makes no noise entering rooms and can scale buildings. she's also one of few characters with a mentioned family of mom, dad, brother, etc. she's kaz's right hand, as davey is jack's. inej is also the heart that kaz doesn't have, so to speak. while jack would certainly have more of a heart than kaz (who is like. basically heartless until inej you know the drill), he doesn't often think to use it, and davey would be his reminder ("well, how do you feel about it" "who's going to be affeted by this" "no, Jack, thats murder"). also nimble acrobatic davey... yeah♥️

racetrack higgins—jesper fahey’s role

lads. this is the one that redeems my love for race (which had lowkey died out lmao!). black, sharpshooter, pretty pistol-wielding, gambling, bisexual jesper fahey is a highlight of the entire series, and is kaz’s closest person to a brother he’d ever allow himself. jack and race’s dynamic would be out of this goddamn world with them in these positions and i cannot WAIT to get into it. also race will be hiding a secret that we will find out later tehe 😌

crutchie morris—nina zenik’s role

now. for those of you who have read the series y’all might be like hmm… idk about this one… but Let Me Tell You. first of all, nina is bouncy and snappy and bold and unapologetically herself. and that is exactly who crutchie is. he is so proud of who he is and where he came from and who he’s become! nina is also a grisha, called a heartrender, which gives her powers over the human heart (speed/slow pulses down, stop hearts, i think they can like… squeeze them almost it’s wild)! which means my man crutch has powers. making crutchie nina gives crutchie and dave an absolutely wonderful dynamic so that’s very exciting🤝

spot conlon—matthias helvar’s role

YALL gonna hate me for this one lowkey LMAO… so matthias comes from a place where they believe grishas are witches and should all burn and die! gah!!!! he has a past with nina, which i plan to reflect with crutchie and spot which is absolutely BALLER… those two need more content together and i am willing to give it. you’re welcome. like spot, matthias often is quite stone-faced and serious, very much the “you guys are all idiots” while being an absolute lovesick dope all the while. very underrated character, i’m quite pleased w myself on this one AND how im gonna do ships… oh baby

and finally.

katherine pulitzer—wylan van eck’s role

oh fucking BABYYYYY this one is hype. in the book, wylan’s father is the one that hires the crows (our beloved cast) for the million dollar job, and kaz sort of recruits wylan for like. sort of insurance, that they’ll get the money or like they’ll harm van eck’s son. but he’s also a huge asset—he knows a shit ton about explosives and demolition, so he actually becomes super helpful in their little mission and he hates his dad♥️😌. kath is similar for a billion reasons, but i like kath being “the new kid” and learning about life that isn’t in a mansion, and her really wanting to escape the way her father wants her to live and find her own people. also kath is the audience’s eyes into the world of the crows for y’all so you’re welcome for this pov lmao.

}{ }{ }{

if you can’t tell im extremely excited to try and actually… mm start something again? and this isn’t the clearest description im gonna make so i have more to go for sure. ask me LEGIT anything, i am. i am begging. go ask.

[fandom-gt]

Request details: From the rehumanization series: Scott discovers Steve (maybe he shrinks and gets too close to the piercing) and he’s not thrilled at first until he learns why Steve’s there. The idea is so hot that he willingly agrees to take a disk himself and become Bucky’s plaything. It’s not all bad, because now Steve has a partner his size. - Add-ons: 3rd page (15.00)

(of note, the 3rd page add-on was purchased but not the 2nd page, so this fill is just over 2 pages.)

“Hey, bro!”

Scott’s cheerful voice was so sudden and unexpected Steve nearly dropped on the spot. He whirled around to stare wide-eyed at the grinning man, who was lifting his hand in a pleasant wave. Gobsmacked is not even remotely a strong enough word to describe the feeling. It’s a little disorienting, actually -- this is his first time seeing someone his own size in…

Christ, he doesn’t know how long. He’s lost track. Even when Scott had been shrunk on Bucky’s body before, Bucky made sure to shrink Steve even smaller. Scott had towered over him, too large to even notice him. Now he stands there perhaps just a little shorter than Steve and, he’s just realized, completely devoid of his ant suit.

“What- Scott?” He manages finally, incredulously, feeling a weird sense of vertigo - his subconscious keeps telling him he needs to be looking up at the guy, while his eyes tell him he needs to be looking down. “What the hell are you doing here? Is this- what, is this a rescue?”

“Nah,” Scott says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I heard the whole story. Man, you guys are weird.”

He sounds so chipper and positive when he says it, it only adds to how surreal the experience feels to Steve.

“But, like. Good weird. Hot weird. I got a look at you in here the last time I was down here doin’ my thing--” By down here he means along the underside of Bucky’s cock. Beyond the windows of Steve’s home, a landscape of flesh stretches on as far as the eye can see. His house is gyroscopic, it moves with Bucky’s body to keep gravity stable, so at any given time looking out the front windows affords a view of the round edge of the head of Bucky’s dick. Steve clearly remembers the last time; Scott, maybe four or five inches tall, had still been so large he’d taken to rubbing his own cock on Steve’s house, blotting out all light with it as he ground on Bucky. “And I swear I stayed hard for like six straight days afterward thinking about it. So. I volunteered for duty.”

“You-- what?” Steve isn’t a stupid man, but this entire interaction is so unfathomable he’s struggling to process it.

“I volunteered! I’m doin’ a tour, taking a sixth month sabbatical. Gave the big guy a new toy. Oh- hey, speaking of which, he told me to come get you. We gotta leave the house.” He wants us out there on the tip.” Scott points over his shoulder with a thumb, and Steve finds discomfort starting to rise up in his chest. At this scale, Bucky’s just so fucking big. His entire house is the size of the tiny little ball one screws on a piercing. His house. It’s a two story house. Leaving the safety of it means stepping into a world at a scale so incomprehensibly massive his vision can’t even take in one single body part in its entirety.

But, Steve knows, there’s always smaller. He’s learned his lesson; he’ll never know just exactly how small Bucky made him for not listening that one time, but he does remember seeing the edge of a fingernail. The thin, blunt edge, so slim at normal scale, had been as thick as a mountain. So… yeah, better to head out there at this scale than become this scale to Scott at the size he is now. Steve shudders at the thought, and the two of then exit the front door. Bucky’s cock acts as ground beneath their feet, meaning he must be lying on his back with his dick lying gently on his belly, half hard. They put a few hundred yards of distance between themselves and safety, approaching the valley between the flared ridges of Bucky’s cockhead. Scott places his hands on his hips and whistles lowly, impressed.

There’s a rumble. An earthquake. Both of them lose their balance and hit their knees as Bucky shifts, and breaching the horizon in slow motion, a pair of godlike blue eyes swallow the entire sky in their enormity. The rest of his face is cut off by perspective, there simply isn’t enough room to take the whole thing in at once. It seems to take those eyes a few seconds to finally land on them, but once they do they seem to zero-on.

“Fuck each other,” the voice commands, at such a low and deafening volume Steve has to slap his hands over his ears - even still, it makes them ring. “If you finish before I do, I won’t come on you.”

Bucky likes to play these games sometimes, issuing challenges he sees as playful. The thing is, having been living on his dick for so long, Steve’s seen Bucky come at this scale. He’s seen it from the safety of his home behind the windows, while the whole world jerked and a truly… truly incomprehensible quantity of come streamed down from above, burying his house completely in its quantity, blotting out all light.

Outside, it’d be like someone dropping the god damn ocean on him. Miles away, a hand looms in. It wraps around a distant part of Bucky’s cock too far for either of them to see -- at least until it drags the entire fucking landscape up, plowing through miles of territory at a time, dragging up skin in its tight fist and jolting the very stability of the continent he’s standing on. It stops not but a dozen yards away, bunched skin and curved fingers higher than a skyscraper, the pressure of it making Bucky’s dick absently plump.

It then strokes away again, disappearing without a trace, painfully slowly. And then it returns. And Steve understands suddenly that they’re meant to do this while Bucky’s jacking himself off; he cannot fathom how he’s supposed to be able to get off with that happening, and with the looming threat of being drown in come hanging over his head.

Scott, however, shows no such qualms. He’s already rock hard with a hand wrapped around himself, tugging a little.

“Wow, holy shit that’s hot. Fuck, I almost hope we don’t finish, huh, buddy?” He asks, swinging in to slap Steve companionably on the shoulder. “Wellp, you heard the man.”

“How- can you- are you serious right now?”

Scott smiles sympathetically, and nods down toward the ‘ground’ just as that rumbling mass of skin pulls up behind him, dangerously close to swallowing them both underneath it. “Look, tell you what, you just lay back and let me do all the work this time. Try to relax. I’ll get ya there.”

For lack of any better options, Steve lowers himself to the ground, and Scott slicks him with the first traces of precum that begins slipping down from the mountain above.

Here goes nothing.

[browniefox]

Poker Playing Family Time

@wrightfamilyweek day 6 - Routine.

The Wrights enjoy some bonding time at the Borscht Bowl Club. Can also be read on AO3 right here :)

oOo

It’s kind of a miracle that, despite it all - despite Daddy working five days a week at the Borscht Bowl Club and the other two with his Secret Project, and then Trucy (once again, in the new school year) trying to do a single show every-other weekend and then school on the weekdays - that there’s still ever a chance for Trucy to help Daddy out with his poker games.

Daddy has made some kind of deal with the Borscht Bowl Club over the years so that he’ll only take on the more serious poker players once a month; a saturday evening, the last of the month, when Trucy didn’t have a show. Trucy was more than willing to move around her schedule at the Wonder Bar as she needed to go with Daddy on those days. Daddy had told the staff he just liked bringing his daughter with him, his good luck charm. It was normal, after all these years, and none of the staff nor the usuals so much as blinked anymore at her trailing after him.

Usually, Daddy drives places now, but on Big Poker Nights, when he’s with Trucy, they walk from the office to the club. They leave right after Trucy gets home from school, walking down the street, chatting about Trucy’s school day and the bits and pieces of Daddy’s Secret Mission he’s willing or able to tell her. She rattles off the countries in the North American continent with Daddy checking her answers on the practice sheet. When she’s done, Daddy complains about annoying people he’s had to meet with or talk to - never by name - and practices a heavily-edited version of some speech with each recital of it getting goofier and goofier until they’re both laughing as they walk through the club doors, out of the warm sun and into the cold.

“Evening Phoenix, Truce,” Ms. Vanessa greets them, and Daddy makes a token effort to quiet down his laughter, “There’s an early competitor tonight. I know you don’t like other challengers on the big-shot nights, but he’s dumb and paid top dollar, so how could we say no?”

“Well, I suppose a warm-up can’t hurt,” Daddy shrugs. He looks over at Trucy, eyes half-lidded, his performance appearance in place since they left home. He nods over to the Hydeout, “You want to watch this one too, or stay up here and work on homework?”

“I’ll come along, Daddy!” Trucy chirps.

“Alright then, right this way, Wrights.” Vanessa bows comically low and leads them to the poker room. They pass by the piano on the way, and Trucy’s backpack is place on top of it. She waves to the staff and they all wave back, most of them smiling at seeing her. Daddy has said they like her more than they like him, and he’s right.

After all the times she’s been down there, Trucy could find her way to the Hydeout in the dark, which she kind of always does every time, considering the dim lighting on the stairs.

“He talked a big game when he showed up earlier today.” Vanessa says to Daddy, and he nods.

“So you’re throwing me a soft ball to start with tonight, huh?”

“Now, you of all people should know better than to assume anything about an opponent before you see them.” Vanessa half-heartedly reprimands.

“But Daddy’s gonna blow him out of the water, huh?” Trucy says and gets a chuckle from Vanessa.

“Yeah, he probably will.”

The dealer stands during the poker games, but Trucy’s extra chair is already down here. Like the other two, it’s a swivel chair, and she hops into it and twirls around a few times.

“I thought I was going up against Phoenix Wright, unbeaten Poker Champion, not some kid.” The man who’s already sitting at the table sniffs, and Daddy finally comes in through the door.

“Sorry, but these days Phoenix Wright’s also a full-time dad, I hope you can pardon my little darling being here.” It’s worded like an apology, but it’s clear that Daddy is absolutely not at all sorry about it. Trucy smiles innocently, like a perfect angel, and the man turns up his nose with a sniff and a ‘hmph’. Ah, so he’s going to be one of those guys.

“Really, letting a kid in here? Your own daughter? Well, ‘darling’, I hope you like watching your dear old dad’s reputation come to an end.” The man brags. Daddy just blinks slowly at the man, unimpressed, while Vanessa rolls her eyes and takes her place at the side of the table. Trucy rolls her chair to be next to Daddy and he ruffles her hair.

“Mr. Allen, Mr. Wright, are you both ready?” Vanessa asks, and the game starts after they both nod.

Trucy mostly keeps her eyes closed. Slipping into her tell-catching ‘mode’ comes so easily at this poker table, but she needs to be on her top form for the real competitor later tonight. She listens as the cards are shuffled, as soothing and familiar as the sound of rain, and then are dealt out. She half-listens to the match as she leans against her daddy. She opens her eyes every-so-often, mostly to see where the chips are standing at the moment. Trucy catches some of Mr. Allen’s tells, big and noticeable movements most of the time that there’s absolutely no way Daddy misses.

It ends with Mr. Allen angrily flipping the table over and spitting vulgarities at Daddy while he cover’s Trucy’s ears, even though they both know she’/ already heard all those words.

“Well he seemed nice,” Daddy jokes and Trucy giggles, “Alright, let’s get some borscht, yeah?”

They spend the next four hours on the piano. Trucy is allowed - encouraged, even - to plunk around on the instrument whenever and however it suits her fancy. A small stack of extra cash grows next to him from people who refuse to listen to her daddy’s terrible music while eating. Trucy gets some homework done, taking up nearly the entire table next to Daddy that they’d used to eat dinner. As Trucy makes her way through worksheet after worksheet, the staff member on the other side of the table cycles through whoever is best at the subject. Math homework is always fun, because it always creates a whole crew of people ignoring the tables they’re supposed to be waiting and the jobs they’re supposed to be doing as they try to solve the equations. Not that Trucy usually needs all that help, but they seem to like to try either way.

You can always tell the moment when the big, important player enters the building. The staff suddenly stand up straight, all eyes on the person, ready to wait on that person like a king. Daddy gets tense, but that kind of tension nobody but Trucy ever seems to notice.

This time, it’s a large woman with a long braid of colored hair. She looks around the club with a sort of honest curiosity that’s hard to come by with people like her, and when she spots Daddy at the piano, the woman smiles and comes right over.

“Oh, Phoenix Wright! Oh my, the legend himself, in the flesh! Well, I thought I’d never be here, but here I am, and there you are! Oh, right at the piano, just like they said you’d be! You can’t play, right? Or is it ‘Wright’? Hehe, do you get it?” The woman chuckles at her own pun. Daddy gives a shrug.

“I hope you didn’t come with too many expectations. Rumors have a way of getting a little out of hand.” Daddy says. Daddy never tells his challengers how true the undefeated poker champion title really is.

“Well, I mean, six years undefeated? It’s a little much to try and sell, huh?” The woman winks at Daddy and laughs again.

“Has it really been six years already. Ah, time, you cruel cruel mistress,” Daddy mourns, playing a chord on the piano. By now Vanessa has come over, and Daddy stands up, slouching with his hands in his hoodie pocket, “Well, Ms. Jackie, shall we get this show on the road?”

“Oh, of course, of course. I mean, I’ll probably stay around and try the food afterwards - do they really only have borscht here? I’ve never had it. Is it any good? What does it taste like? - but I mean, why stall? I’m so excited to see the legendary Wright in action.” Ms. Jackie rambles on as Daddy and Vanessa slowly start to head towards the Hydeout for the second time that night. Ms. Jackie walks right next to Daddy, talking about how she’s from out of state and so very excited when she heard the rumors - undefeated! Six years! How remarkable! How insane! How intriguing! - and now she was here and she was so very very excited.

It isn’t until both Daddy and Ms. Jackie have taken their seats that Ms. Jackie seems to even notice Trucy as she takes her own, the chair already right next to Daddy.

“Oh, and who is this little angel?! Oh my, isn’t she just precious with her little cape!” Ms. Jackie coos to Trucy.

“I’m Trucy Wright. I like watching my daddy play poker. I hope that’s okay.” Trucy tilts her head and smiles sweetly. Ms. Jackie practically melts.

“Ooooh, how sweeeeet! Well, I’m Jackie Blackerly, sweetie.” Jackie reaches across the table and Trucy shakes her hand kindly. She likes Jackie, she decides. But liking the opponent has nothing to do with the poker match itself, unfortunately, and Trucy doesn’t tell Jackie that she’s well out of her league. Maybe Daddy holds the champion title, but they both know that it’s really Trucy who never loses against the high-ranking opponents.

“Is it okay if I sit here? I’m Daddy’s good luck charm, you know.” Trucy tilts her head.

“Oh of course, of course! Oh my, nobody ever mentioned Mr. Wright has such an adorable daughter!”

“Are you both ready to start?” Vanessa asks. The cards are beyond well shuffled by now. Daddy nods, and then just like that, the warm and pleasant emotions disappear from Jackie’s face, like they’ve just been shut off, a blank mask over them.

“I’m ready.”

The cards are dealt, Trucy’s hand wraps around her Daddy’s arm, and just like that, the game, the tells, the truth, everything just slips into focus. She’s done this hundreds of times now, the world almost moving at a crawl to watch the little twitches and microexpressions. The code for telling Daddy what to do, a squeezing of his arm for different amount of times, is simple enough, and basically muscle-memory. Part of Trucy thinks she’d actually struggle a bit to do poker on her own and forget that she’s the one who’s supposed to actually be making the decisions and playing the round, not just delivering the information. She’s played this team version of the game many many more times than she’s ever played it ‘normally’.

Their winning the game is practically inevitable, but to be fair to Jackie, she clearly knows what she’s doing as well. Her tells are subtle, small, and take Trucy a lot of focus to find.

It’s a shame, really. Trucy had been hoping to maybe talk some more with Jackie after the game, but tonight is not going to be one of those. Already, Trucy’s head is pounding like the beating of a drum, feeling drained from the hard work. She curls up in her chair as the results are called, pretending she’s a little girl who is just tired and sleepy instead of someone trying to block out the sound of Jackie congratulating Daddy. Her chattiness, something Trucy had found fun and endearing, is now the last thing Trucy needs. Jackie heads up while Vanessa cleans up the cards and Daddy gently rubs Trucy’s back.

“How you doing, kiddo?” Daddy whispers. Trucy shakes her head. She feels him shift next to her, and then him saying, “Vanessa, think Trucy and I are gonna head out now.”

“Poor kids all tired again, huh?” Vanessa says. With her eyes closed, Trucy can’t see any tells or anything, but sometimes she wonders if Vanessa has caught on to their little trick here, “I’ll finish up here, get the kid back home and in bed.”

“Thank you, Ms. Vanessa.” Trucy says, making an effort to open her eyes up, the dim lighting of the Hydeout not yet searing with the migraine still in its early stages.  Daddy slips his hand into Trucy’s, and together they go back up to the bar.

Trucy makes a token effort to help Daddy get her homework together from where it’s strewn out all over the table. Ms. Jackie comes over and is saying something, a lot of ‘Oh, are you leaving already? Oh my I was just amazed, you were amazing down there! Have you always been a poker player? Now that I’m thinking, you look sort of familiar. Have I seen you somewhere?’ And Daddy says ‘Haha, yeah, gotta get my little Trucy to bed, you know. You clearly know what you’re doing. Nah, but I’ve always been great at bluffing. Must be your imagination, I’m nobody important.’

She sneaks a peak at Daddy at that moment and sees his little tell, looking down with his eyes shielded by his hat, a sort of melancholy smirk marring his face, a little twitch of his fingers. He’s lying. He was somebody important; maybe not in the big grand scheme, maybe not a world-famous magician, but he was important to some people. Trucy wants to say “you’re my Daddy, you’re important to me,” but the pain in her head spikes and she squeezes her eyes shut again.

After a moment, Daddy grabs her hand again, and she keeps her eyes closed as he leads her out of the white and annoying noise of the bar and out onto the street. It’s still warm, even at night, and she realizes she forgot to grab a grape-juice bottle. Daddy seems to notice the same thing, letting go and telling her to wait there as he runs back inside.

He’s back in a second, the cold bottle pressed into Trucy’s hand, and she puts it against her forehead as they walk. It’s beautifully numbing to the pain there, and she zones out, focusing on the feeling as they walk down the street, completely silently this time, back to the office.

Recently, after so much practice, Trucy’s been getting better. She doesn’t always have a migraine after games, especially against the easier players. But Ms. Jackie had been good, and so Trucy is tired again. She wonders if her grandpa would’ve been able to teach her how to do this without getting a headache if he was still alive, he always seemed to understand Trucy’s little trick, but there is no way to know now.

When they get to the office, Trucy goes right to her room. The blinds were already closed earlier, before they left, just in case, and the curtains are closed to further block out any of the last beams of light. Her room is almost pitch-black. Daddy takes the bottle from her and hands her the little rice-filled frog they keep in the freezer, and the froggy friend rests on her forehead. Some medicine and a glass of water is placed in her bedside table, and she makes an effort to take it. It doesn’t always help, but sometimes it does something.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Truce.” Daddy whispers. Trucy cracks her eyes open, and from the light of the open door just barely catches Daddy blowing her a kiss.

She’s happy she’s able to help Daddy. She doesn’t care if she gets a terrible headache from it, because he’ll take care of her until it’s over, and even through the pain, she can’t wait to spend time with him again next month.